by D. M. Pruden
Brief flashes of light popped in the wake of the destructive tide, like a trail of sparks. The phenomenon confused Hayden, until with sickened understanding, he realized they were human bodies, incinerated by the terrible energy that consumed the ship.
“Holy shit,” said Malkovich, his eyes glued to the viewer. Hayden looked at the captain, whose attention was also riveted to what unfolded. The shock on his face was unmistakable.
The dark energy cannon, like the armour that protected Scimitar, was gifted to them by the Glenatat to confront the Malliac. He’d only seen it employed on that one day that they met them in battle. Even in that situation, a much lower charge level was used that permitted rapid firing of the weapon in combat. None of them had any concept of what the cannon was capable of at full power.
The shared trance was broken by Cora. “Iliad has fired her main rail gun. Impact in five seconds.”
There was only enough time for Hayden and the others to brace themselves.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Iliad
HAYDEN FLOATED IN deathly silence, confused about where he was. He opened his eyes to blackness and panicked.
Weightless, he flailed about until his hand struck something, sending a jolt of pain along his arm. His aching head and body convinced him he still lived.
Where was he?
The last thing he remembered was...Iliad!
As the understanding of the situation sank in, he groped about for some kind of handhold and tried to shut out the images that flashed across his mind.
All he could see was repeated replay of Deimos’ crew being atomized.
How many had he killed?
After finding the back of his chair, he paused to slow his breathing and calm his racing heart. Swallowing around the lump in his throat, Hayden quietly spoke into his headset.
“Cora, are you okay?”
“I’m still here.”
“Do you have control of anything?”
There was a brief pause before she replied. “I can’t get access to anything. You’re still breathing, so we’re lucky the environmental systems aren’t compromised, because there would be nothing I could do if they were.”
“What is still operating?”
“I can’t say. Hayden, I’m blind and helpless.”
“What the hell did they hit us with?”
“The sensor logs are offline, but before the lights and gravity went out, a rail gun projectile slammed into us. It exploded with some kind of quantum level distortion.”
“Quantum fusion? How is that possible?”
“You saw Malkovich’s stealth ships. These boys have had time to tinker with things.”
“I suppose so...why were we hurt?”
“Hard to say. There are a couple of microfissures in our hull. It may have been a lucky shot.”
“Why didn’t the Glenatat armour hold up?”
“You’re still breathing, aren’t you? The numbers I crunched as the rail gun hit us told me that thing was travelling with enough relativistic mass to cut us in half. The armour is why we’re still talking.”
“Can you tell me anything about the state of the ship?”
“We’re still in one piece, but that shot took out all my automations. I have very restricted diagnostics; basically, I can tell you some of what’s wrong and deduce the rest, but I can’t do a darned thing to fix any of it.”
Blind and crippled, they were a great big target for Iliad to finish off. The only reason they yet lived was because Stromm wanted Scimitar.
“Okay, let’s take it one step at a time. Engines?”
“Offline.”
“Weapons?”
“Do you really need to ask? Everything runs off the engines.”
Hayden’s mind whirled, running through the list of every system. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the few remaining lights on the control panel glowed like red and green stars against the void. An idea struck him.
Pavlovich and his cousin were arguing somewhere in the dark, and it was apparent from their conversation that neither of them was injured.
“Can I still fire the cannon from my station?” he asked Cora.
“You should be able to, but there is no way to energize it.”
“Maybe there doesn’t need to be. How much recharge time elapsed before everything went down?”
“A little over thirty seconds, but that is only enough for five percent after our full power discharge.”
“Do you still have access to the external sensor net? Can you tell me what Iliad is doing?”
“I’m blind, Hayden. Even communications are down if you wanted to surrender.”
“That’s not exactly what I have in mind.” He filled her in on his forming plan.
“Yes, that is possible, but you would have to time everything perfectly. If they take a second shot at us, we won’t survive.”
“Kovacs needs this ship intact. He’ll verify that we’re disabled before he sends over boarding parties.”
Pavlovich’s voice boomed from the dark. “Kaine, who the hell are you talking to?”
Looking in the direction of the captain’s voice, Hayden’s adapting eyes made out a silhouette against the few, still active control panels on the bridge. Then a patch of brightness lit up the far side of the room when Malkovich turned on a torch retrieved from the emergency locker.
“Cora and I have a plan, sir.”
“So does Cesar. He’s going to order his ship to launch and take a run at Iliad.”
“No! There is a better way. We have a partial charge on the energy cannon— enough, I think, to disable her, or give her a very bloody nose.”
“I’m all for hammering Kovacs with everything we can,” said Pavlovich, “but you’re forgetting we are dead in space. There is no way to point our cannon.”
“Yes, I think there is. We can use Malkovich’s ship’s engines to provide manoeuvring thrust for Scimitar.”
The cousins looked remarkably similar as they considered the plan.
“I don’t see why that couldn’t work,” said Malkovich, “but are you sure your weapon will do any good?”
Hayden swallowed hard. The truth was, he had no idea what it could do at such a diminished setting. All he knew was that there would be only one shot, and he had to make it count.
And there were other concerns eating at him. Stella and the rest of the crew were not aboard Iliad, but they were still on Pictor Prime. If he didn’t do enough damage to her, there was a very good chance Kovacs could send a message to Stromm, endangering their lives further.
“It will be enough,” he said, sounding more confident than he felt.
“Well, do it,” said Pavlovich. “Cesar, you should go to your ship now before Kovacs gets trigger happy again. If this doesn’t work, you may be able to fire a couple of shots before he detects you.”
Hayden watched Malkovich move toward the door carrying the flashlight. Suddenly, he realized a problem he hadn’t considered. “Communications are down. We will need to coordinate somehow.”
Malkovich grabbed at the door and stopped himself from drifting through it. In the dim light, he appeared like a ghostly, floating spectre. He pointed at the viewer that displayed a jittery image of the star field. “Keep your eyes on that screen. I’ll turn us slowly to make it appear that we are still adrift. When Kovacs’s ship comes up on your targeting scanner, you’ll have your shot.”
“We only have enough juice for one,” said Hayden.
“Then make it count,” said Malkovich before he pushed off and floated out, unencumbered by artificial gravity.
Hayden made a quick estimate of how long it would take him to get to his ship. Glad that the general had taken the flashlight, he pulled himself back to the gunnery alcove and strapped himself in the chair.
He took the opportunity to adjust and confirm that the targeting imager was still active. He tried to breathe away his anxiety when a thought undid it all.
Activating his earpiece,
he spoke softly. “Cora, you still have time; hop in one of the synths and board Malkovich’s ship. There’s nothing you can do while we’re in this condition. You may as well be safe in case this doesn’t work.”
“Tsk, Lieutenant, you should know that I will never abandon you or the cap’n.”
He cut his reply short when he heard Pavlovich approach the alcove.
“How confident are you that we can damage Kovacs, Kaine?”
All Hayden could think of were the countless dead of the destroyed ship. He pulled himself together and swallowed the dry lump in his throat.
“You saw what it did to Deimos.”
“I had no idea it would destroy it. We’ve never fired at full power. I just wanted to make sure we disabled them or at least make them reconsider taking us on.”
“I’m pretty sure we’ve given Kovacs second thoughts about a lot of things, especially when his rail gun didn’t cut us in half,” said Hayden. “He has seen most of what Scimitar is capable of. We can’t let him gain control of this ship.”
Pavlovich nodded. “Letting him and Stromm have access to such powerful weapons would be a disaster; giving them faster-than-light capability as well would be unforgivable. With our technology and the things the cynosure might unveil, they would go on a rampage of conquest that hasn’t been seen since the Spanish armada sailed Earth’s seas.”
“Well, at five percent power, I can’t tell you if the weapon will have any effect on them. If it doesn’t work, we can’t prevent it.”
“Yes, we can,” said Pavlovich. He pulled a small device from his pocket.
“What’s that?”
“This is a detonator. A long time ago, I fitted the FTL drive with a failsafe to ensure it never fell into the wrong hands. One press of this button, power source or not, it will self-destruct. Scimitar and anything within ten thousand metres will become dust.”
Hayden’s throat was too parched for him to swallow. “I didn’t realize I’d signed on for a suicide mission.”
“Kaine, don’t paint me as a heartless monster. I wasn’t going to let my cousin launch his ship without taking you and Cora along to safety.”
“That’s comforting, except that we’re still here.”
“Yeah, I know. I guess we’d better hope your plan works, for all our sakes, eh?”
“You are such an asshole, Pavlovich, playing with people’s lives—”
The captain touched him on the shoulder and pointed at the monitor. “Save your self-righteous indignation for later, Kaine. We’re coming around on Iliad.”
Hayden watched the rotating star field slowly reveal the approaching warship. Overcoming his anger, he leaned over the control panel and made sure everything was ready for him to fire. He stared at the red light that identified the firing button.
So much power. So many already dead by his hand.
“Malkovich made good time,” Pavlovich said. “We must not have been too far off target. Man, that ship is big. How close is she?”
Pulled from his maudlin thoughts, Hayden focused on the little his instruments could tell him.
At five percent, he hoped the cannon would be enough to disable Iliad, but there was no way to be sure. It had to work. If it failed, Malkovich would unleash his nukes, ensuring Iliad’s destruction. This was the only way to stop the bloodshed. He had to try.
“I have no way to tell her range, sir. Sensors are offline.”
“You mean to tell me you have no targeting control at all? Shit.”
Silence fell between them as they watched the screen fill.
“You can’t miss something that big, Kaine. Push the button.”
“I’m waiting for their engine section to come into position.”
“Don’t get fancy with our only shot. Fire!”
“In a second...” Hayden’s hand was poised over the activator. He felt Pavlovich’s hot breath on his neck as the big man hovered over his shoulder.
“Shoot the damned cannon. Now!”
Hayden risked a glance at the captain. Beads of sweat, nowhere to go without the pull of gravity, accumulated in a sheen on his forehead.
Returning his attention to the target, his finger twitched as he forced himself to wait for the optimal moment. Then, when his desired target lined up on the screen’s crosshairs, he activated the weapon.
For a brief instant, nothing seemed to happen.
Then, evidence of their desperate discharge unfolded before them.
Iliad shuddered as a front of distortion rippled across the targeted section. The ship’s entire structure convulsed. The gigantic vessel sharply altered course, as if swatted by an invisible hand.
Lights along its hull winked out, and small explosions from overloaded energy conduits burst in a path of brilliant flares that raced outward from the engineering section.
“That was five percent?” said Pavlovich, shocked.
Iliad rotated slowly, dark and lifeless. Shortly, multiple small flashes erupted along the ruins of her hull as dozens of emergency escape pods launched, carrying survivors to relative safety.
Hayden wondered where they would go. Maybe to one of Elgar’s moons, but with the colony destroyed, he doubted any of the surviving rebel bases would welcome them with open arms.
Cora announced over the speaker, “I restored the secondary comm network and managed to tie in to the systems aboard the general’s ship. He is in communication with Iliad.”
“Let me hear it.”
The speakers buzzed and crackled.
“—don’t know why you’re being so stubborn, Kovacs. Do you need more shit kicked out of you?”
“Malkovich, I would never yield to you, even if it were my only chance of survival.”
The general chuckled. “I am your last hope. Surrender, before I start taking pot-shots at your escaping crew.”
“What the hell is he saying?” said Pavlovich. “Cora, patch me in this conversation.”
“Working on it, Cap’n.”
“You do that, Malkovich. It will only be a matter of time before my signal reaches the fleet on its way from Pictor Prime. When it does, every one of the prisoners will be killed, just like your wife and two sons.”
A long pause ensued before Malkovich replied, “They died when you pigs destroyed the colony.”
“Oh, no, my old friend, they were very much alive, along with a hundred others. Stromm had them executed when your agent made an attempt on his life, and he’ll have no problem doing the same to his current prisoners if anything happens to me.”
“Is Kovacs out of his mind? Cora, I need to cut in on this communication, now!”
“I’m sorry, sir, I need more time.”
He pushed himself toward the door. “Keep trying. Shut it down if you can. I’m going to Malkovich to talk sense into him.”
“Captain, wait,” she said. “The general’s ship has fired on Iliad.”
“No!” said both men, almost in unison. Pavlovich stared at the image on the viewer while Hayden watched the events unfold on his targeting monitor.
Bright engine flares from three missiles painted a path to the drifting wreck. Seconds later, they impacted the forward section of the ship, erupting in a cascade of blinding flashes of nuclear fury. An expanding sphere of brilliant energy engulfed the escape pods in the blink of an eye.
Scimitar’s bridge was silent as a tomb as the reality of what had just happened settled on them.
Iliad, battered and scorched, hurtled away from them with nobody left alive on her decks.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Remorse
SEVEN HUNDRED AND twenty-six were confirmed dead.
Every part of Hayden’s body was numb. His eyes felt swollen to three times their size from his tears.
None of those victims would ever return to their families. There weren’t even bodies to bury.
Before Scimitar’s arrival, the biggest tragedy of those people’s lives was their sudden, unimaginable isolation from the empire. Hayden
had visited doom on them twice in their lifetimes. Now they could be harmed by him no further.
He rubbed at the tip of his finger, trying to forget what it felt like to push the firing button that snuffed out so much life.
So many souls torn from their bodies...if there was such a thing as an immortal soul. He hoped so. If they had none, then his sin was compounded beyond his ability to comprehend.
Or endure.
He stiffened and listened as someone called his name.
It was Pavlovich. He’d finally made his way to the forward cargo hold, where Hayden hid.
Power and gravity were still out. Malkovich had put out a call to his people, but they wouldn’t arrive for several hours. Scimitar’s skeleton crew had returned some time ago—he didn’t know exactly when—and started with repairs.
After the immensity of what happened sank in, Pavlovich rushed from the bridge to confront his cousin, leaving Hayden alone in the darkness to face the full weight of his own guilt.
At one time he’d naïvely believed he’d grappled with that beast over the previous decade, and while not able to defeat it, they’d arrived at an impasse. This day he realized that particular demon had been merely the warm-up act.
The number of people who’d died by his hand was impossible for him to wrap his head around. With a simple, deliberate contraction of one of the weakest muscles in his body, he’d replaced the Malliac as the great threat. When they killed, it was still because of their species’ struggle to survive. They consumed worlds, and lives were lost in the process.
He shook his head to clear the images of flames and bodies that flashed across his mind’s eye.
Weeks before, he had set ablaze a building because it was to his advantage to do so. He made a decision to send a squad of soldiers to an icy death in the cold vacuum of space. Not an hour ago, he’d once more visited doom on someone who stood in his way.
Pavlovich tried to argue that it was kill or be killed, but that wasn’t necessarily true. Scimitar had withstood the fury of an alien armada. There was no conceivable way in Hayden’s mind that Deimos presented a significant threat to them.
He’d allowed himself to be cowed into agreeing with Pavlovich and his cousin that shooting first was their best course of action.