by Ryk Brown
“Packer Two, ditto.”
“Jesus, I’m having a hard time tracking all these fighters and still maintaining a good perimeter to protect the troop jumpers,” Luis admitted.
“Jess, give him a hand,” Nathan urged.
Jessica quickly moved back to the tactical console, relieved to have something to keep her busy. “You take port and I’ll take starboard?” she suggested as she stepped in beside the lieutenant.
“Gladly,” Luis replied as he moved over to make room for her. “Packers Three and Four, jump in five……four……three…holding fire…”
Jessica’s hands went up off the console, demonstrating that she was not currently firing any weapons.
“…one……jump.” He looked up at the view screen briefly as another troop jumper appeared from behind a blue-white flash, even closer to them than the previous one. “Resuming fire,” he announced as both he and Jessica reactivated their respective weapons.
“Packer One, deploying troops.”
“Enemy fighter count is down to thirty-seven,” Mister Navashee reported.
“Yes!” Jessica cheered. “Make that thirty-six!”
“How about thirty-five,” Luis added.
“Nice.”
“Jump flash,” Mister Navashee reported. “Scout One, three hundred kilometers to our port side.”
“Packer Two, deploying troops.”
“Packer Three, contact. Breaching now.”
“Scout One reports the last KKV is ready to snap launch,” Ensign Souza reported.
“Very well,” Nathan replied. “Tell them to jump out and launch the KKV without delay if that battleship gets main power back on line.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Packer One, troops away, disengaging.”
“Packer Four, contact. Breaching now.”
“Packer One, exit target aft, left of centerline, and jump clear,” Luis ordered as he temporarily stopped firing with his forward turrets to starboard of the Aurora’s centerline.
“Packer One, exiting target aft, left of centerline. We’ll reload and return.”
“Comms, tell all Packers to jump in at a safe distance and do not approach unless cleared by site command,” Nathan warned. “We may not be back by the time they return.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Packer Two, we’re empty. Disengaging.”
“Two, exit target forward, right of centerline,” Luis ordered. “Hold on your aft turrets,” he told Jessica.
“I got it.”
“Packer One, jumping.”
“Packer Two, exiting target forward, right of center.”
“Packer Three deploying troops.”
“Four fighters are grouping for a run at midship, target’s port side,” Mister Navashee warned.
“I’ve got them,” Jessica assured them. “Cover my part of the bow with number seven so I can get extra guns on these fuckers,” she told the lieutenant.
“Got it. Feel free to use the quads, if you’d like.”
“Packer Four, deploying troops.”
“I like your thinking, Lieutenant,” Jessica said as she brought the starboard quad rail gun online and swung it toward the target. “I’ll just set it for a tight repetitive sweep…and…damn! That fucked them up, didn’t it!”
“Packer Three is empty, disengaging.”
“Three, exit direct target port,” Luis instructed.
“Packer Three, exiting to target port.”
“Dropping fire, starboard midship,” Jessica announced.
“Three fighters coming over ventral from our port to starboard!” Mister Navashee warned urgently. “Midship line!”
“Packer Three! Nose down on exit!” Luis warned. “Three bandits coming over the top on your six!”
“They’re going to get him!” Mister Navashee declared.
“Packer Three!” Luis yelled over the comms. “Jump, jump, jump!”
“He’s jumping!” Mister Navashee exclaimed. “I think he made it. Yes, I’ve got him! Two hundred kilometers below and to starboard!”
“Packer Three is clear,” the pilot reported from his new position clear of the danger. “Ya’ll are too easily excited.”
Luis looked at Jessica. “Since when do Corinari pilots use ya’ll?”
“That’s probably my fault,” Jessica admitted as she continued firing.
* * *
Captain Nash continued to struggle within the confines of the maintenance crawler, straining to track the action occurring all around him. Falcons and combat jump shuttles jumped in and out of the area, both close in and further away, appearing and disappearing behind flashes of blue-white light. They hammered away at the enemy ships as they fought to keep them from picking through Scout Three’s debris field at their leisure. Somewhere in that field, there was at least one, possibly two jump field generators, and the Jung wanted them badly.
As best he could tell, a combat jumper and a Falcon had already fallen victim to enemy fire, as had at least five Jung ships. But the chaos and explosions of enemy weapons fire had sent debris scattering in all directions, which all seemed to fly in the direction of Nash’s fragile lifeboat. One of the crawler’s legs had already been torn off by one of the impacts, as well as two of the mini-arms on the front of the unit. So far, he had been lucky in that none of the debris had struck his windows, but he feared his luck would not hold out much longer. One inopportune strike…
He tried not to think about the danger he was in. In fact, he had already resigned himself to the fact that he would not survive. Instead, he tried to keep track of the activity around him, keeping score, so to speak, for what little good it would do him. He kept telling himself that he had to keep track of the two sections of wreckage that he believed still contained intact jump field generators, on the off chance that he were rescued.
A jump flash went off no more than ten meters away from him, above and to his right. Despite its silent entrance into his immediate area, the intensity of the flash at such close proximity startled him, causing him to duck instinctively. Had he been looking in the direction of the flash at the moment it had occurred, he would have an entirely new problem to deal with.
It was a Falcon, and it passed right over him at what seemed like incredible speed, although he was sure that to its pilot it was just the opposite. The interceptor fired weapons, both wing and nose turret plasma cannons. Two missiles dropped on rails protruding from the interceptor’s open weapons bays, streaking away on fiery tails, a second after which the ship disappeared in another blinding flash of light.
Nash squinted his eyes tight as the interceptor jumped away, opening them just in time to see one of the departed Falcon’s missiles destroy a Jung shuttle in a blaze of yellow light. The second missile turned sharply, following another shuttle that was attempting to evade attack, but they were unsuccessful. They too, disappeared behind the yellow flash of the missile’s warhead.
“Damn!” the captain exclaimed, the excitement of what he had just witnessed causing him to forget the danger he was in. The entire scene was an almost ethereal spectacle to behold. Fighters and shuttles, dancing about in absolute silence, the only sound that of his own rapid, labored breathing. Examples of the ultimate in man’s technology, flashing in and out of existence, as they tried to destroy one another. It was almost sad, in a way.
Another flash, much larger than anything he had yet seen, despite the fact that it was further away than the rest, interrupted his thoughts. “HELL YEAH!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, as he recognized the curved lines of the Aurora.
“Jump complete!” Mister Navashee announced from the Aurora’s sensor station. “Multiple targets! I count six attack shuttles and twenty-three fighters!”
“Zoom in on Scout Three
’s wreckage,” Nathan ordered. The view screen faded out briefly, then back in with a close up view of the debris field and the Jung shuttles moving about within it. “Jesus,” he muttered. “Mister Navashee, can you identify those sections? Can you tell which ones might have jump field generators in them?”
“Working on it now!”
“Tactical, target your fire on any enemy ships nosing around that wreckage, first,” Nathan ordered. “How many Falcons do we have left?”
“I’m picking up two Falcons and two combat jumpers!” Luis replied.
“Comms, tell the combat jumpers to move to a safe distance and hold for now. Order the Falcons to concentrate on the outlying fighters so they don’t get tangled up in our fields of fire.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Targeting bandits within the debris field!” Luis announced.
“I’ll target fighters near us,” Jessica told him.
Nathan continued to watch the view screen. “Helm, take us in close to that wreckage and pull us in underneath. I want to force them to come in from our dorsal side where we can keep the most guns on them.”
“Taking us in close and under,” Mister Chiles replied.
“I’ve got the port forward section,” Mister Navashee reported. “Enough of it is intact that the port jump field generator is probably intact.”
“Lieutenant, target that piece of debris and take it out!” Nathan ordered urgently. “I don’t want anything bigger than a pebble left out there! Hell, target everything that looks even remotely interesting!”
“Captain,” Jessica objected, “what about survivors?”
“Mister Navashee, are you picking up any life signs, any escape pods?”
“Negative, sir, but between the residual static charges left over from their jump, and all the weapons fire around, someone could be standing on a piece of hull waving a flag and I could miss it.”
“Are you sure about that port section?”
“Yes, sir,” Mister Navashee assured him. “The silhouette matches, and there are no pressurized spaces within that section of a scout ship.” He turned and looked at the captain. “There’s no way anyone could be inside that piece of wreckage.”
“Tactical, take it out,” Nathan ordered.
“Targeting the wreckage with the port plasma cannon,” Luis replied. “Locked on… Firing.”
Bright red-orange bolts of energy fired from the Aurora’s midship plasma cannon, not more than a few hundred meters away from Captain Nash. The bolts slammed into the largest piece of wreckage left over from the propulsion section of Scout Three, blowing it apart. Debris spread out along an angle opposite the Aurora’s plasma fire, slamming into pieces of wreckage further away, sending them ricocheting in different directions like an out-of-control cosmic billiard game. Like drops of rain tapping on a porch roof, tiny pieces of debris bounced off the hull of the captain’s crawler-turned-lifeboat…turned coffin.
Something caught the captain’s eye. A faint sparkle of light, repeating over and over… Something spinning, coming toward him…growing larger.
Captain Nash flinched as a spinning piece of debris the size of a man’s head smacked into his left window, causing it to crack. “Oh shit,” he said out loud. The crack began to spread, little-by-little. “No, no, no!” He glanced at the backup mechanical pressure gauge and found it was dropping. He was leaking precious oxygen into space. “Fuck!” he exclaimed as he started fumbling around, looking for some way to signal the Aurora. “Jesus! She’s right there!” he exclaimed in frustration. His salvation was not even a kilometer away, and yet he had no way to get their attention, no way to let them know that he was alive…at least for a few more minutes.
“Target destroyed,” Luis reported.
“That’s eight down,” Jessica announced as she continued to target the attacking Jung fighters.
“Two Jung shuttles are leaving the debris field!” Mister Navashee warned.
“Target the fleeing shuttles and fire!” Nathan ordered.
“Targeting!” Luis replied. “Firing!”
“One down, one went to FTL!” Mister Navashee reported.
Nathan exchanged concerned glances with Jessica and Luis. “Comms, order one of the Falcons to pursue the fleeing shuttle and take it out.”
“Yes, sir,” Ensign Souza acknowledged.
“Keep scanning that debris field, Mister Navashee,” Nathan continued. “I need to know where that starboard jump field generator is.”
“Yes, sir,” Mister Navashee replied.
“That’s twelve down,” Jessica reported. “The remainder are breaking off,” she added. “They’re bugging out.”
“To where?” Nathan wondered.
“Based on their course, I’d say they’re headed for Kohara,” Luis replied.
“Captain,” Ensign Souza called from the communications station. “Combat One Five reports they’ve located Scout Two’s debris field. They’ve also picked up transponders from four escape pods!”
“How much debris?” Nathan asked.
“A couple of larger sections,” the ensign replied. “Nothing from the drive section, a few pieces from the forward section, including part of the forward cabin, with one survivor inside.”
“Launch Bulldog Six to recover the escape pods, and send a SAR shuttle for that guy in the wreckage.” He looked at Luis. “It’s gotta be Roselle.” His eyes shifted to Jessica. He could tell by her expression that she was trying not to get her hopes up from the news of the survivors.
“Captain!” Mister Navashee exclaimed. “Something strange in Scout Three’s wreckage! Something’s moving!”
“Moving? Moving how?” Nathan asked.
The main view screen shifted, moving over and zooming in on a rather mangled looking object.
“Is that a crawler?” Luis wondered.
The screen zoomed in further.
“I think you’re right,” Nathan said.
“The arms are moving,” Jessica realized.
The screen zoomed in even closer. The pair of arms that the operator would use in order to manipulate objects outside of the crawler during exterior repairs were waving back and forth frantically. The screen zoomed in even closer still, revealing a man, animated and looking slightly panicked, with dried blood on his face and in his matted hair.
Jessica gasped. “It’s Robert!”
“Is that a crack in his window?” Luis asked.
“He’s losing pressure,” Mister Navashee warned. “He’s got maybe five minutes of air left in that thing.”
“Ensign Souza, redirect Bulldog Six to recover that crawler and Captain Nash, ASAP.”
“Yes, sir,” Ensign Souza replied.
“Mister Riley,” Nathan continued, “perhaps you can hit that crawler with one of our spotlights, and maybe flash our running lights, so Captain Nash knows we see him.”
“Yes, sir!” Mister Riley acknowledged gladly.
Nathan watched as first one, then a second spotlight swung over to illuminate the mangled crawler. He could clearly see the expression on Captain Nash’s face transform from desperation to joy, as he realized help was finally on its way.
Nathan turned around to face Jessica. “You’re right, you Nash’s are hard to kill.”
Jessica smiled.
The cargo shuttle’s crew chief and the two rescue technicians dragged the mangled crawler into the back of the shuttle’s cargo bay, its mechanical arms scraping against the sides of the bay.
“Closing cargo door,” the copilot called out over the comms.
“Bring the gravity up slowly!” the crew chief called over his helmet comms, “and start the repress cycle, quick! He’s almost out of air!”
Three men in pressure suits guided the damaged crawler to the f
loor as the slowly increasing gravity pulled them all toward the deck. The hiss of pressurized air filled the cargo bay as the pressure slowly returned, now that the cargo door at the aft end of the shuttle was fully closed.
With the crawler now resting against the deck on its backside, the crew chief climbed up onto its face to access the front of the crawler’s canopy. “Pull that lever on your side down and twist to unlock the emergency canopy release!” he ordered.
“We’re not fully pressurized yet, Chief,” the copilot warned over the comms.
“We’ve got more pressure than he does!” the chief argued. “Do it!” he ordered as he did the same on the other side. The canopy released its lock along all four sides, allowing the entire section surrounding the captain’s head to fall backward onto the deck.
“Get the O2 on him!” the chief ordered.
One of the rescue technicians handed the other one, nearest the head of the crawler, an oxygen mask connected to a long feed line. The second rescue technician placed the mask onto the captain’s face.
Captain Nash was pale, his lips blue from lack of oxygen. He looked like he’d been through hell, with dried blood all over his face and hair, his uniform soaked with sweat, lubricants, and whatever else he had come into contact with during his escape.
And he wasn’t moving.
“We’ve got to get him out of there,” one of the rescue technicians said.
“Grab the power wrench out of the tool cabinet on your side,” the lead rescue technician instructed the crew chief. “Start removing the bolts along your side so we can remove the front arm assembly. That should give us enough room to get him out safely.”
“Can’t we just pull him out the top?” the crew chief asked.
“No way. We don’t know what injuries he has, yet.”
“Pressure at seventy percent,” the copilot announced.
Captain Nash’s eyes started to flutter.