First Encounter

by Jasper T. Scott

  The Avari stepped into the airlock, its boots ringing loudly on the grated deck panels. Below them looked like some kind of drainage system. That was also familiar. A place for air and decon sprays to drain away or get sucked out.

  The Avari paused and tapped a space beside the inner doors. A glowing screen appeared, projected over the surface. It tapped a symbol on that screen, and then the inner doors banged shut, sealing them inside. The alien turned to face them, still not removing its helmet.

  Lori realized that she could breathe the air inside the ship, but maybe it couldn’t. Had this Avari prepared the environment for his human passengers ahead of time, thereby making the air unsuitable for itself to breathe? Or was it wearing a helmet for other reasons?

  Before she could wonder more about that, a bright flash of light blinded her, and a loud hissing sound began. She tracked the sound, her eyes landing on a molten orange hole in the ceiling of the airlock. The air inside began stirring violently around her. The Avari shrieked and ran to the other set of doors leading to the interior of its ship. Another bright flash slashed through the air, and a wave of heat washed over Lori. A second hole opened up, and the volume of that hissing noise doubled. That was when Lori got it: those bright flashes were lasers punching through the ship. The doors sprang open, revealing a long corridor with more dull gray metallic surfaces. “Come on!” Lori said, and yanked Keera up with her. They ran and scrambled through the opening just as another laser punched through the ceiling of the airlock. The doors slammed shut behind them. Warning sirens started up somewhere inside the ship. Thinking this was their chance, Lori ran after the Avari, hoping to take advantage of his distraction to overpower him or take his gun. Two more flashes of light slashed through the ceiling directly ahead of her, dazzling her eyes, and she skidded to a stop.

  At the end of the corridor, a set of narrow doors parted and the Avari burst through into what looked like a small cockpit.

  By this point the hiss of escaping air had turned to a roar. It was whipping around them furiously, tugging her hair. Lori began to see spots dancing before her eyes. The air was getting thin.

  Another pair of lasers flashed through the hull, scalding Lori’s cheek—

  She sprang back, her reflexes taking over, and then fell hard on the deck.

  Another flash came, so close that it blinded her completely—

  And her daughter screamed.

  “Keera!”

  The roar of escaping air abruptly stopped. Lori whirled around, blinking her eyes furiously, searching for her daughter. Keera was standing a few steps back with a long, slender gun pressed to the side of her head.

  A second Avari was holding that weapon, but this one was much taller than the first, and it wasn’t wearing a helmet. The alien’s features looked vaguely familiar as well. That familiarity registered in Lori’s brain a split second later.

  “David?” She couldn’t believe her eyes. It was him all right, but Doctor Grouse didn’t look the least bit human anymore—or sick. He looked exactly like a bigger, taller version of Keera.

  He tilted his head, and his cranial stems twitched, but he didn’t reply—as if he no longer recognized his own name. Or maybe he was no longer capable of human speech.

  “Don’t do this,” Lori pleaded, hoping to appeal to whatever humanity he might have left. “We need to get back aboard the Forerunner before—”

  “Sit down,” David growled in a flat, emotionless voice. So he could talk. He nodded to a long bench seat along one side of the corridor.

  Lori pushed off the deck and started toward the bench on shaking legs. She heard footsteps trailing behind her as Dr. Grouse escorted Keera.

  Wondering what had happened to all the holes in the hull, Lori glanced up and scanned the ceiling. But there was no sign of any damage. It had to be self-repairing. Or maybe shields were holding in the air.

  Another growl sounded from David. “Sit down.”

  Something thunked, and Lori felt a subtle tug of acceleration as they flew away from the Forerunner. Somehow that acceleration didn’t knock her off her feet, but even more curious was the fact that gravity continued to pull them down even though they were no longer attached to the Forerunner’s thrusters.

  “Where are you taking us?” Lori asked as she sat down. David pushed Keera down beside her.

  “Secure yourselves,” he said.

  They fumbled with odd, springy restraints that were many sizes too small for Lori. She looped her arms through them, but Keera managed to buckle them over her chest.

  Another thought occurred to Lori. “You were the one who killed Ferris and Asher, weren’t you?”

  David bared sharp white teeth at her. “They had to die. They tried to stop us.”

  Horror washed over her and her jaw dropped. “Stop you from doing what?” she demanded. “Can you hear yourself?”

  David wordlessly turned and walked to the opposite bulkhead. He tapped the blank gray surface, and it changed, becoming bright with stars and space: a viewscreen. A holographic keypad with alien symbols appeared to one side, and David spent a moment tapping away, then gesturing at the screen with his hands.

  How did he understand Avari control systems? They must have brain-washed or programmed him somehow. That Avari hiding on board had probably woken him from cryo days or weeks ago while everyone else was still asleep. Somehow Asher and Ferris had missed it, and they’d paid the ultimate price for their inattention.

  David holstered his sidearm to free up his other hand.

  Seeing what might be her only chance, Lori began creeping out of her restraints.

  Two of David’s cranial stalks turned to face her, and she froze. A series of growls erupted from him, and he whirled to face her. “Do not get up!” he growled. Then he turned back to the screen and its holographic controls.

  “He’s like me,” Keera said in a small voice.

  “No, honey,” Lori replied. “He’s not.”

  “Then how come I can hear him in my head?”

  Lori gave her daughter a hard look. “What do you mean you can hear him in your head?”

  “I can hear him, and if I close my eyes, I can see what he’s doing.”

  Lori blinked and looked back to David. Were they somehow sharing a telepathic connection? By what mechanism? It didn’t make any sense. And yet, it would explain how Keera had predicted Ferris’s and Asher’s deaths the night that they’d died. She’d imagined herself killing them, but it had actually been David’s thoughts running through her head.

  Lori watched what he was doing with fresh interest. Was there any remnant of him left? Or was the man and colleague she’d known completely gone now?

  A pair of familiar, bullet-shaped black fighters with sharply curving wings appeared on the screen. Bright red lasers were flashing from their wingtips.

  Scimitar fighters. Those were the lasers they’d seen flashing through the Avari ship. Lori wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or worried. She and Keera were trapped in here, too. If those fighters succeeded in stopping the Avari from escaping, what would that mean for them?

  David tapped another sequence of symbols beside his screen, and then a group of silver projectiles leaped out toward the approaching Scimitars, riding on bright blue tongues of fire.

  Missiles.

  Lori’s eyes flew wide as the incoming fighters broke off their attack and scattered in opposite directions. “David, what are you doing?!”

  Again, he gave no reply.

  Lori had been worrying about the wrong side of this engagement. The Avari obviously had some type of shielding, but Union fighters were no better than eggshells with engines strapped to them. Whoever was piloting those fighters, they needed to shoot those missiles down, and fast.

  Chapter 41

  Clayton saw the enemy ship de-cloak, and almost instantly the sprays of condensing air escaping it vanished. In the same instant, their lasers stopped eliciting visible effects from the target.

  “Shields are up,
” Clayton said. “Hit it with everything you’ve got. Target the engines.”

  “Torpedoes, too? We don’t want to blow it up, Cap.”

  “Everything but.”

  “Copy. Rail guns arming.”

  Clayton activated the pair of rail guns in the nose of his Scimitar, all the while firing a steady stream of lasers at the aft end of the target where a bright blue glow of engines had just appeared.

  Range to target was down to just 0.9 klicks. The target was artificially magnified by his Scimitar’s combat computer, so he saw when it detached from the Forerunner and blasted away in an evasive spiral. He also saw the exact moment in which it fired off six bright silver projectiles riding blazing blue thruster tails. The missile lock alarm squawked three times in quick succession.

  “Ordnance incoming!” Delta said in a strained voice.

  “Break, break! Activate AMS!” Clayton cried as he activated his anti-missile system. Needle-thin lasers began snapping out in rapid-fire bursts, tracking the incoming missiles. At the same time Clayton slammed the stick left to roll his fighter, then hit the pedals for the lateral thrusters in alternating patterns to execute a barrel roll. The incoming missiles tracked him easily through that maneuver, and the AMS wasn’t working.

  Gritting his teeth against the G-forces already in effect, he mentally pushed the throttle up to the max and jerked the stick up at the last minute. The missiles were moving too fast to correct and screamed past him to all sides.

  “AMS isn’t working!” Delta said through a gasp for air. “Those missiles must be shielded.”

  Clayton backed off the throttle and glanced at his sensor grid to see Delta’s fighter narrowly escape the three red blips chasing it. “Flip around and hit it with the main guns,” he said.

  Clayton took his own advice and disengaged the main thrusters, flipping back the other way while still riding his own momentum. Now facing the missiles, he targeted the first one with his primary cannons and then let loose with both his lasers and rail guns.

  It took three linked-fire salvos to take the first one out, and then he was out of time. Pushing the throttle all the way up again, he kicked his fighter through a last minute turn, and managed to lose them. Disengaging thrusters again, he flipped back and tracked them for a second time, but this time they were looping back faster. The missiles were learning, backing off the throttle to make faster turns.

  Clayton only managed to snap off one shot before it was time to juke again.

  “They’re adapting!” Clayton said.

  Delta let out a noisy breath, blasting static through Clayton’s speakers. “I just took one down. Two to go.”

  Clayton pushed the throttle up again, trying to buy some range, but the two blips chasing him on the grid looped around and accelerated even faster, screaming in and leaving no time to take advantage of any breathing room he’d bought for himself.

  The missile lock alarm screamed in his ears, beeping faster and faster as the enemy ordnance drew near. He waited until the last possible second and then kicked his fighter into a diving spiral.

  The missiles sailed by above his canopy. Rather than complete the maneuvers, he disengaged the primary thrusters again and flipped the nose up for a parting shot. The wing-mounted lasers had an extra thirty degrees of movement, so the targeting reticle tracked up faster than the nose of the fighter could. It blazed green and sang with a solid lock, and then he snapped off two fire-linked shots. Another missile exploded in a fiery burst of light.

  “Got another one!” Delta crowed.

  They were each down to one missile left. The one tracking Clayton’s fighter came screaming back around and he executed another emergency maneuver before disengaging thrusters and taking it out.

  “Three for three,” Clayton said. He checked the grid and saw the final red blip wink off the screen as Delta took it out.

  “Cap, you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  He was. The grid was blank. Besides the two green wedges of their fighters and the giant green spear that was the Forerunner, there was nothing but empty blue grid squares on sensors.

  “They cloaked again,” Clayton said.

  “Yeah,” Delta replied. “Now what?”

  His fighter appeared, cruising alongside Clayton’s own on a bright blue tail of thrusters. Silence fell as they both considered the question.

  The steady hum of air cycling through Clayton’s helmet and thrusters roaring behind him filled the blank canvas in his mind. He hated to admit it, but it was over. The Avari had used that momentary distraction to perform another disappearing act, and now, short of firing lasers around randomly in the slim hope of hitting some invisible target, they were shit out of luck.

  “Let’s pack it in, Lieutenant,” Clayton said.

  “We can’t just let them go.”

  “No choice. RTB.” Clayton banked back around, heading for the distant speck that was the Forerunner. It had been cruising on without them at a steady 1G of acceleration this whole time.

  Delta’s fighter swept back into line with his, close enough that he could have seen the former Marine’s face if his cockpit canopy were transparent instead of mirror-plated.

  Clayton watched the fighter, admiring its smooth, sloping lines. The fight now completely over, Delta retracted his fighter’s wings and hard points.

  And then his Scimitar became limned in a fiery green light. Molten fissures appeared, and the whole thing cracked apart in a molten wave of debris. Delta’s body went tumbling free.

  Anger and shock surged, leaving Clayton frozen. “Delta!” he screamed over the comms.

  No reply.

  Clayton kicked his fighter into an evasive maneuver just before a second laser stabbed through the space he’d been flying through. He tracked that laser back to the empty space it had emerged from and brought his own guns to bear. Twin lasers flashed out repeatedly, and the rail guns in his Scimitar’s nose thumped hard with glinting metal projectiles. Each one packed enough kinetic force to detonate like a missile on impact. Before the first projectile could arrive, the enemy ship re-appeared and his shots elicited bright flashes of light from its shields.

  Clayton kept up a steady rain of fire, all the while juking in random directions.

  Green lasers lashed the space around him, missing repeatedly. But then one scored a hit and his starboard wing evaporated.

  A screaming roar filled Clayton’s ears, and it took a second for him to realize that it was him. He’d be damned if this alien bastard would kill him before he could avenge Delta’s death.

  The enemy ship took two solid hits to the engines, both of them rail gun projectiles. They exploded with brief flashes of light, and one of three engines at the back of the Avari ship went dark.

  His next pair of lasers hit home as well, drawing jets of white mist as more air escaped from inside the ship.

  He’d finally taken down the shields.

  The Avari vessel went evasive, but Clayton didn’t let up. He kept firing steadily, making sure they couldn’t cloak again.

  The comms crackled to life, and Clayton expected that it might be the Forerunner or maybe the remainder of its Scimitar squadron come to offer support.

  But it wasn’t. The voice was flat and emotionless, and it was his.

  “Cease fire immediately or the woman dies.”

  Shock briefly beat out all of the other emotions crowding Clayton’s head. They know our language. And my voice. He squeezed off a final salvo before releasing the trigger.

  Silence fell, and the enemy ship sailed on. Clayton kept dodging and weaving, chasing it and making himself as hard to hit as possible, but it wasn’t firing on him either.

  He tried sending a reply to that message on the same channel. The fact that they could speak English and transmit messages in a way that their comms could understand was both shocking and hopeful. Now they could finally negotiate.

  Clayton picked his words carefully, setting an equally hostile tone. He doubted the Avari would r
espond well to weakness. “Send the woman and the girl out in pressure suits or an escape pod and we’ll let you go.”

  “There is only one of you, and we have the advantage.”

  We? Clayton wondered. He shook his head. “If you have the advantage, then why did you threaten to kill someone if I didn’t stop firing on you? It won’t be long before my crew sees you and trains much bigger guns than mine on your ship.” Clayton spared eyes for a glance at the grid and saw green specks darting out the back of the Forerunner. More Scimitars. “And I have more fighters incoming.”

  “We’ll vanish, and they’ll never find us. You’ll be dead long before they arrive.”

  “Or maybe you’ll miss and I won’t. I’ll burn another dozen holes in your hull and this time maybe I’ll hit something vital—like your reactor core, or your head.”

  A hissing roar of static came back over the comms. It sounded like the Avari was laughing.

  “I only spared you because she begged me to. Don’t make me change my mind.”

  “She who?”

  And then an enemy contact alert began chiming rapidly, and tens of red blips began peppering the grid. Sleek teardrop-shaped black vessels appeared all around the bulkier ship that he was chasing. Multiple squadrons of enemy fighters, all facing him and approaching fast.

  “You have lost. Go back to your ship.”

  A larger vessel materialized behind those fighters, automatically magnified with everything else. It was massive. Clayton stopped maneuvering. It wasn’t his piloting skill or deft maneuvers that had kept him alive. There had to be hundreds of lasers trained on his ship right now, including ones on that larger ship that were probably big enough to take out the Forerunner with one shot. The Avari had deliberately stopped short of killing him.

  “This isn’t over,” Clayton said through gritted teeth. “We’ll find you.”

  Silence answered him.

  And then static came crackling in, followed by: “Falcon Leader to Captain Cross! Please respond. I repeat, Falcon Leader to Captain Cross. Waggle your wings if you can hear us.” The message was from one of the Scimitars racing in from the Forerunner’s location.