No Man's Space 1: Starship Encounter

by Nate Duke

  “And are you going to stop us?” one of the rebels shouted at him. He was aggressive and armed with a large hammer. He was about as tall as Flanagan and would’ve made any grown man cower in fear and cry for his mother.

  Instead, Banner smiled casually at himself with a condescending undertone. “On the contrary; I’m here to watch history unveil itself. Several of my countrymen want to destroy a ship because they’re angry, while the enemy – which could well be the Cassocks – mercilessly destroys us. But you have the right to express yourselves, whether it’s creatively or destructively. I won’t complain.”

  The men stared at him with curiosity. Nobody was supposed to remain in control of his emotions or his bladder when facing such a mountain of a man.

  “Oh, you hadn’t heard of it, have you?” Banner continued with a half-bored tone as if drinking a glass of scotch in the wardroom. “We’re about to be attacked by an entire fleet and they haven’t even accepted our surrender. They don’t care that you have women or children aboard the port; they seem fixated on destroying everything.”

  The protesters stopped breaking things and gathered around him. They weren’t violent anymore, just listening at him like one listens to a prophet or a messiah.

  Banner stepped forth and clasped both hands behind his back in a classic officer’s pose. “We were about to leave the port to fight the enemy and delay the unavoidable. If we’re unable to defeat them, we’ll immolate ourselves with an unheard-of explosive capacity and take down as many enemy ships as we can. I can’t ask you to risk your lives to save the port, but I ask you to leave peacefully and pray that we’re successful. If you aren’t religious, just hope for the best.”

  The protesters stared at each other and hesitated. They were armed, and their arm muscles flinched with the tension of holding their hammers, bats and other weapons.

  Flanagan roared in laughter. “They’re gonna kill him,” he said.

  “Shut up, Flanagan,” I said.

  He was right, though. You can’t stop a mob and make them turn around just because you’re trying to save them. They’re a mob; they wanted to break stuff.

  Instead, the protesters lowered their weapons.

  The large guy said, “Can we help?”

  The others nodded in unison and offered to help too.

  Banner turned to one of the cameras so that the protesters didn’t see him and winked at us. He turned his intercom back on. “Problem solved, Wood,” he said. “We have a bunch of volunteers waiting for tasks to be assigned to them.”

  “Come back to the bridge, Banner,” I said flatly.

  Know what? I don’t mind that someone else succeeds, but I hate to acknowledge when someone follows a hunch against my will and proves that he’s right.

  Chapter 43

  The North Star was ready to take off in our last attempt to stop the enemy. It didn’t matter whether we won or we lost; we were likely to fall either way. Banner had stayed on the outer decks to assign his new volunteers to different tasks, and in the meantime I had to captain the ship and make sure that I didn’t get us all killed.

  “They’re deploying a bunch of ships.” Gupta passed several updated maps to me, showing fighters and short cylindrical ships that looked like bombers.

  “I guess it isn’t a social visit,” I said.

  “Shall we open fire, sir?” Gupta asked.

  “Let me talk to them again,” I said. “Just in case they’re lost and looking for a way back home.”

  Gupta turned on the communications systems and sank into his chair as if he’d expected the enemy to kill us outright just by sending a message. I was serving with the bravest men in the Navy.

  “Hi again, buddies,” I told the invaders through the intercom. I waved at the screen in case they were catching the images too. “I’ve noticed that you’ve come back for more of the same. We’re outnumbered and we know you can crush us, so why don’t you say what you’re after so that I tell you why we can’t give it to you.”

  No response.

  “You know this is against all articles of war, don’t you?” I continued. “You’re supposed to let us live if we yield before you destroy us. And, honestly, I don’t think we have much choice.”

  Nothing.

  I told Gupta to turn off the communications. At least we’d tried, and now it was either them or us. More likely them, but nobody could blame us for not trying.

  “Get the men ready for a party,” I said. “We’re at war.”

  Banner reached the bridge once we’d taken off and set course for the enemy. “Have I missed anything?” he asked. “I was setting tasks to the men.”

  “Just a lieutenant’s insubordination and unnecessary risk,” I said. “And he’s been lucky enough to survive.”

  “Really?” Banner looked surprised. “Haven’t heard of him.”

  I threw one of the greasy neural controls and HUD glasses at him. He took it with one hand and hesitated before putting it on. “Someone could clean these every once in a while,” he said.

  “Tough luck that we don’t have time for it.” I pointed at the neural link I’d placed around my head. If I ran the risk of catching something, everyone else had to put it on too.

  Banner sat on the commander’s chair beside mine and turned on the star chart. His glasses showed so many enemy dots that he tried to reduce the noise. It wasn’t noise; it was the enemy fleet.

  “Shit,” he murmured. “Are they real?”

  “Nah,” I said sarcastically. “Gupta’s spent the morning adding them to a simulation.

  Banner didn’t like the news. He tapped on his HUD glasses and eventually turned them off and went back to holographic simulations. They were less precise and more difficult to see, but at least you didn’t have all the enemy bombers right in front of your nose. It can get intimidating if you’re as outnumbered as we were.

  Hatfield entered the bridge and ignored the complaints from some of the bridge crew. Doctors weren’t supposed to leave sick bay during a fight unless there was a medical emergency elsewhere. He ignored them and sat on the subcommander’s chair. He produced an expensive collectors’ neural control from his suit’s chest pocket and a pair of glasses from an inner pocket. He put them on and stared at us, surprised. “I can’t believe how you can use the ship’s equipment and place it on your heads. Do you have any idea of who can have used it?”

  “Midshipmen, probably,” I said.

  “Exactly.” Hatfield nodded and took out some disinfectant towels for us. “Midshipmen have questionable hygiene habits. I wouldn’t get close to anything they’ve touched.”

  “And why are you on the bridge?” I asked.

  “Because you lack officers,” Hatfield said, “and doctors aren’t born doctors. I didn’t have the soul to become a captain, but I was a lieutenant for longer than either of you. I can stay here and help during the battle… unless you’d rather have one of the midshipmen sitting here.”

  No, I’d rather keep the midshipmen away from the bridge. I thanked him, gave him control of a third of the ship, and crossed my fingers that he remembered that being an officer isn’t about attending balls or dancing, or about acting polite. Being an officer is about surviving and making your crew survive.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Being an officer is like riding a bicycle.

  His participation on the bridge was against the rules, and it sounded awesome. Who cared about the rules anymore? The Admiralty had lost touch with us, and only Banner’s father was able to contact us. We could do with a third officer who was over 5 feet tall.

  We sent our fighters and unmanned drones to fight them, but our guys kept falling like roaches running into one of the wealthier regions on Earth. They had no chance against the enemy.

  We were going to be annihilated by an enemy that we hadn’t even met. Difficult times require difficult choices. It was time for us to use all our cards and hope that it was enough.

  “Blow up our satellites,” I told the men. “
Blow everything up as long as it has an enemy ship within range.”

  Chapter 44

  We blew up the satellites, and the few men aboard the spaceport kept shooting. We destroyed a bomber or two and a few fighters, but that’s all we achieved with a brutal collection of nuclear weapons.

  Hatfield controlled his fighters with expert accuracy, and Banner and I did just as well. Eventually, our ships fell one by one under the constant rain of projectiles and bright beams from the enemy. I’d never seen those weapons before. Enemy ships were so technologically advanced compared to us that they weren’t even trying.

  “Just tickling them,” Flanagan said. “We might as well stop and let them engulf us.”

  I wasn’t going to give up. If I had to fly the North Star towards the enemy and blow her up, I would. Even if it turned out to be useless, I had to give it a try.

  “We should’ve brought the lightbulbs with us,” Kozinski murmured.

  “Lightbulbs?” York glared at him. “Lightbulbs are useless against this enemy; they’ve told us already. What do you want them to think, huh? That we can’t do anything but grunt work?”

  “But I was trying to―” Kozinski began.

  “You were trying to make us look like fools,” York said, “as always.”

  “Gentlemen, please,” I warned them.

  “Sorry, sir,” Kozinski said.

  “Won’t happen again, sir.” York nudged Kozinski and stared sternly at him.

  The bombers flew over the spaceport, launching bombs and drilling holes in her hull as if it were made of paper.

  I stood up and got ready for my final speech. The men no longer hesitated; they knew what I was about to say.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, “there’s no point in continuing this journey together. Our only choice is to blow the North Star up in the middle of the enemy fleet, and we only need one man for this. It’s time for you to head over to the escape pods and return to the port.”

  The men stood up, looked at me, and glanced at each other.

  “I think we’d made it clear, sir.” Flanagan stepped forward and headed for the captain’s escape pod on the bridge. “This is a formal mutiny. You can accept our company in this suicidal mission or you can jump into a pod and go back to the port yourself. I’m sure that Lady Elizabeth will be glad to see you again.”

  York and Kozinski both stepped beside Flanagan and pointed at him.

  “What he’s said,” York said. Kozinski nodded in agreement.

  The crowd had spoken: they didn’t care that I was their officer, and they were ready to die with me. Should I be happy or annoyed about it?

  Chapter 45

  The flying saucers became larger and larger as we approached their formation. The men remained silent and observant of the enemy as we slowly approached them. Nobody dared to breathe too loudly in case we were shot dead. The enemy could’ve crushed us with one of their bright energy beams, but they didn’t.

  “And this is when we die,” Flanagan said flatly. “I would’ve expected my heart to fail for not keeping up with my affairs.”

  “He means in bed,” Kozinski murmured at York.

  “I know what he means,” York murmured back. “I’m not stupid.”

  “I was sayin’ it just in case,” Kozinski said.

  “Sir, we have a transmission!” Gupta said. He turned it on. Hopefully, the enemy would give us their terms and offer us a peaceful option that didn’t involve killing us.

  Instead, we received a high-pitched squeaky sound. It wasn’t regular nor random; it seemed to follow a pattern. It sounded almost familiar to Earthen sounds, but it had a very rare pitch to it. Or perhaps it had strange undertones, similar to a constant hum.

  “I’ve heard the song before,” Kozinski said. “Back in India.”

  “India? India?” York said. “When have you been to India?”

  Kozinski stared ahead meditatively. “About twenty years ago. Met a pretty lass and ended up aboard a shuttle to India with no money to go back.”

  York chuckled to himself. “It explains your disappearance. Thought you’d been drunk for a year.”

  The high-pitched sounds continued. It was no song, or at least no human song. It sounded closer to scratching vinyls, but it sounded like a message of some sort. Whoever was aboard the gigantic flying saucer wanted to say something.

  “Is it a warning?” Banner said. He’d assumed the same as me.

  Flanagan shook his head slowly. “We’ve hit something we don’t understand. This ain’t no human message or interferences, I’m telling you.” His face turned pale and he stepped back with trembling hands.

  “Come on, Flanagan,” I said. “You can’t seriously think that aliens are attacking one of our ports.”

  Flanagan shook his head. “If you’d heard the space tales I’ve heard, you’d think like me. You can’t judge unless you’ve seen men with blank eyes after encountering something. This is just the beginning.”

  Honestly, I didn’t care if it was the beginning or not; we were still screwed. We had a bunch of explosives and we could take a couple of flying saucers with us as we fell, but we wouldn’t free the port from the attackers.

  The lights flickered, but we hadn’t been shot. Seconds later, all the screens on the bridge turned off simultaneously, and the holographic image of a man appeared in the center of the room and in our HUD glasses. He was taller than average and with a three-day beard. He wore a Navy captain’s uniform, but I’d never seen him before.

  The holographic man didn’t speak. He simply gave us a naval salute and disappeared. With his disappearance, the lights returned and the screens turned back on. The flying saucers gathered their fighters and bombers and left immediately.

  What the hell? They’d saluted us after trying to kill everyone on board. And they had way better technology than us. Why was the man dressed like a naval captain and didn’t even bother to introduce himself?

  “Were they on our side?” Kozinski asked.

  For the first time, York was as speechless as the rest of us.

  I’d heard of similar feats before, although from honorable warrior cultures. Once they realized their superiority over the enemy, they sometimes allowed defeated enemies to live if they showed enough courage. We were ready to die, but we were the only ones who knew it. And how had they hacked into our systems? No country had deciphered our inner communications or gone through our frequency shields.

  Their disappearance had spurred more questions than answers. We wouldn’t get more answers for a while, and the Admiralty was going to ask us many more questions.

  Chapter 46

  Flanagan sneaked away to pick the lock to our wardroom liquor cabinets, and York and Kozinski followed suit. Everyone else dispersed, but Banner remained meditative looking out of the faux windows on the bridge. They were actually screens, but I always ended up forgetting that the bridge rotated at a constant speed and that we would’ve ended up very dizzy when looking out.

  “They’re gone again.” Banner’s voice was so quiet that I could barely hear him. “Think they’ll come back?”

  “They can come back if they want,” I said, “but they weren’t eager to destroy us.”

  Banner nodded to himself, but his eyes remained fixed on the screens. This had been his first command experience, and probably his first flight aboard a Navy starship. Not a bad way to start, eh?

  A message from the Admiralty arrived almost immediately after the enemy left. They wanted to see me… and they extended their congratulations for my behavior in combat. At least they weren’t going to court-martial me for not letting Banner take command. I know I was in my right to lead, but the Admiralty’s whims and wishes don’t always go by the book.

  “What do you plan to do once we go back to Earth?” I asked Banner.

  “I might study to become a proper officer,” Banner said. “Maybe engineering. What about you? Father suspects that you might be given your own ship to command.”

  Me? Cap
tain? I hadn’t thought of it. Well, actually, I had. I liked the idea of captaining my own vessel.

  “Then I’ll need a posh officer or two,” I said. “Someone who gets along with the gentry. Know anyone for the job?”

  “I’m not calling you sir,” Banner said, “or risking my life for silly governor’s daughters. And next time we end up stranded in space, we’re going the other way, never to the outskirts.”

  The brief silence that ensued reminded me of the recent attacks. We were going to face many dangers in the coming months, and this was only the beginning. The Navy needed to get better weapons, or we’d all be crushed.

  And if I ended up being a captain, I wouldn’t be able to blame the captain for anything. I wasn’t going to like command…

  Okay, okay. I was very excited to command, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it until I got the promotion. Happy now?

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  Books by Nate Duke

  No Man’s Space Series:

  Starship Encounter (Mar 2016)

  Galactic Archaeology Series:

  Space Relics (Nov 2015)

  Broken Starships Series:

  Missing Heroes (Dec 2015)

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 Nate Duke.

  All rights reserved.