Emwan

by Dain White

  “How come you never ask me to do my worst, sir?” Yak called on comms.

  “You never seem to need encouragement, I guess.”

  “Fair enough,” he replied with a chuckle.

  “Shorty, though, you know… she’s a softie.”

  I laughed; if he only knew.

  “Uh, with all respect, sir, she’s a ruthless operative.”

  “Unless there are puppies involved, Yak… then what is she? You and I know she’d be in a crying pile of puppies.”

  “That’s not fair, sir. You and I would be as well. We need puppies aboard, I think.”

  “Steady on, son. I am not necessarily disagreeing with you, but I think we should work on defeating this fleet first.”

  “You know, I could head back to New Turiana, and get us a couple of puppies, and meet you guys back here if you want.”

  “Tempting,” I replied. “I think I’d rather get puppies too, sir.”

  “Mutiny eh? The old ‘but we want a puppy’ tactic, and right on the very precipice of battle as well.” He paused for what I can only assume was a sip of coffee, so I took one as well, and waited for the other shoe to drop.

  “We can’t get a puppy, kids. What is he going to do when we pull six gees? Yipe in fear, that’s what. A starship is no place for animals. How about this though, we need to make visiting a pile of puppies a priority. Surely the Service can allow us this distraction, on account of us saving the universe and all.”

  “Well we should save the universe first, sir,” Yak said flatly.

  “Indeed. It would seem that our current missions is now almost primarily motivated by puppies, but that’s just fine. You know these critters would eat puppies, I’ll bet.”

  “They would sir, definitely,” I called out, an involuntary shudder down my spine accompanying the memory of them hauling around half eaten, filth-encrusted corpses in their tunnels.

  “Well, even more reason to go into this with our full heart, kids. We’re not just doing it for us, or for humanity, we’re doing for everything that would suffer if these things spread through the galaxy. There isn’t anything we know of they won’t kill, eat, or destroy, and it looks like it’s our lot in life to make them fail, or die trying.”

  “Ooh-ra, sir,” Yak called out.

  I swallowed another slug of coffee and frowned. I had thought about the end, considered what form it might take, but I didn’t want it to be in a nameless battle in Altair. I wanted it to be surrounded by grandchildren, in front of a fire, with a full belly of tasty food and a nice endless nap on the couch.

  The thought of us dying out here seemed pretty probable, sadly. I tapped into the Archaea’s gravimetric feed, and painted all targets in the system, and my bladder involuntarily contracted.

  Up until this point, I hadn’t really had the time to think, much less look at the big picture. Surely the captain was, so I focused on the task at hand. But seeing the array of ships ahead of us was daunting, to say the least. There were three full carrier groups, with a myriad of frigate-size vessels and even some larger capital ships, at least two that I could tell.

  This was an invasion force.

  Chapter 10

  08242614@01:50 Captain Dak Smith

  “Is he resting, Janis?” I asked, keeping an eye on a contraction of forces to starboard. What were they protecting?

  “He is, sir.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s doing rather well, but weak enough that I felt an induced coma and deployed crash bars would be best for his recovery. He wasn’t handling the shock of impact as well as I had anticipated, sir, but I think he will be much better off now.”

  “I agree. So, can I fly again? I can’t go into battle here, holding maneuvers to two gravities. That’s simply not going to work. I knew we were racing time here with Gene, but I am afraid we’ve run out of options.”

  Her response was immediate, and brisk. “He should be fine at this point, now that he’s calm and comatose. I will be sure to notify you the moment that his condition changes, or requires a change in your flight plan, sir.”

  “Very well,” I replied. That’s really the best I could hope for.

  “Captain, can I ask a question?” Pauli called across the bridge.

  “Go,” I replied.

  “Are we going to die?”

  “I sure hope not, son,” I said confidently. “I guess anything is possible, but I am pretty determined to survive this.”

  He shook his head, looking at a ghost of Yak’s screen, covered in targets. “How can we possibly survive this?”

  “Well, son… my plan is pretty basic here, I guess I thought it was pretty obvious,” I paused for a quick sip. “If I can take out the support vessels here, we can skedaddle, and leave the rest to die in the depths of space if we need. The support ships have to all be killed, however. Speaking of which, I am going to take out Master 47, Janis. I need full power on my mark.”

  “Full power, aye,” she replied immediately. “You may fire when ready.”

  “Very well… fire.” I called out, right as the target moved into the solution. “Hold the beam, if you please,” I gritted out through clenched teeth, noting the cold air of the bridge had almost immediately been replaced with penetrating waves of heat.

  “Bank the shot,” I called out a few moments later, once I saw the target destroyed on screen.

  “Banked, aye,” she replied. The whining roar of the recyclers behind us struggled to scavenge the heat out of the bridge. Even through Duron, this was an absolute beast of a gun.

  I pulled back up and over towards a shot on Master 56, another frigate – though nothing like any frigate I had ever seen. It looked to be similar in size to a frigate, at any rate, but looked like a shell, almost like a bivalve of some kind, with a prominent ventral ridge. For all I knew, that’s what it actually was.

  My next target in this run was Master 48, a heavy destroyer that looked like a faceted splinter, a giant shard of some sort of heavy, obviously armored material.

  Master 56 was first though, positioned as it was near a corner of the core formation. I wanted their perimeter to fall; I wanted their attention to be split between offense and defense. I wasn’t going to push through that sector of space, nor was I going to assault through the flank at Master 48. Each of these targets was a calculated feint, a determined attempt to force them to redeploy.

  My actual attack vector was hopefully thus disguised to some point, as its elegant simplicity was balanced only by its sheer audacity. They were going to know what I was up to shortly.

  “Kids, I am going to maneuver for-real now; Gene is resting and trussed up safely. Try to keep up, cut corners off my route if you must, but I am going to have to start actively flying now.”

  “Fly right, sir,” Yak replied on comms.

  “You too, son,” I keyed back in return. “Pauli, got your bars on tight?”

  “As tight as I can get them, sir,” he said in a small voice.

  “Very well, Janis, Make ready to fire.”

  “Ready, Captain.”

  I watched Master 56 and 48 slowly converge, and held position on their heading with the pedals.

  “Fire and hold,” I called out as soon as the solution lit up.

  “Fire and hold, aye,” Janis called out as I held my head down towards my console, where I could still see the screens.

  “Fire missions complete, sir,” she replied a few moments later. As I fed power to the drives and kicked us over towards Master 77, part of me noticed Masters 56 and 48, completely through-hulled and clearly dead. I held the pressure on through the burn and shoved the bow hard over to port, and lined us up reasonably well for an accelerating ballistic arc that should let us hook across all three carriers.

  “You have my route kids?” I called on comms.

  “Aye Captain,” Shorty called back.

  “Very well, here we go!” I lit off the reac drives, and punched hard on the next burn, telegraphing the move. The
first carrier hove into view forward, through a sea of incoming fire. A flight of corvettes with fighter support were crossing on a tangent, but streaks of fire from Yak and Shorty were already converging on target, and they were coming apart. I held on, burning hard enough to make me grunt softly, riding the fire.

  Master 82 was definitely a carrier. Three destroyers in formation closed ranks around it, like giant slabs of faceted metal, indirect fire pouring towards our position through space.

  “Keep an eye on incoming, ladies, and feel free to suggest any course correction you can to help.” I gritted out.

  Janis replied immediately, in a calming tone. “Please remain on course, sir, we’re doing our best.”

  “I am sure you are, my dear,” I replied smoothly. “I need a firing solution on Master 82.”

  “Onscreen, sir,” she replied.

  “Captain, wait!” Emwan shrieked out.

  My eyebrow crawled off the top of my skull involuntarily, but I waited. The route remained unchanged, so I held the burn and kept it green.

  “What’s the situation, Em?” I called out softly, after a brief moment.

  “Sir, we need to hold off on our attack, or Master 85 will flee. We need to hold our initiative a little longer, sir.”

  “Fair enough,” I replied, a brave eyebrow fighting against the acceleration as we thundered on.

  08242614@02:03 Jane Short

  The Archaea’s plume burned on ahead of us, punching through the remnants of the corvettes, as Yak and I chased her wake as fast as we could go.

  We were no match for the Archaea. Even full out, Captain Smith was effortlessly pulling away, leaving us behind. Our only hope to keep up was to cut the corners of his route, which put us in front of the targets maneuvering towards his flanks. Luckily, the furious burn he had punched in was the perfect misdirection to allow us to maintain our stealth profile.

  At that point, we were mostly just trying to keep up though, as Captain Smith raced into the unfolding chaos ahead of us.

  “Yak, his next course change is coming up; let’s start cutting this corner!”

  “Solid copy, Jane,” he replied, and we punched hard on a new course. Moments later, the sky lit up again as the Archaea lit off her reac drives on a hotter burn, as the last feint of this attack run started.

  I had thought for sure that the captain would have taken the shot on Master 82, the looming bulk of the carrier blotting out a significant amount of the sky, even at this range, but he might be waiting until he can see the whites of their eyes, for all I knew. He was a superb tactician, so I wouldn’t put it past him to hold to the last shred of initiative in a fight like this.

  It was clear to me that he had thus far only done harrying damage to their positions. His fire was devastating, but it was chaotic, and seemed like he was flailing for targets wildly.

  I knew this wasn’t the case. I knew he had specific reasons for his targets – but I also knew that his chaotic approach was pretty much the only thing keeping us alive, given the withering return fire burning across space around us.

  Yak and I were cutting the corner nicely, so to speak, and were well positioned when a destroyer suddenly hove to ahead of us on the captain’s flank.

  “Target front!” I called out, and unloaded everything I had directly into the looming destroyer.

  Yak’s fire reached out as well, and the impacts from our fire flashed and cracked across the hull of the vessel, blasting glowing craters deeply into the hull, pounding deeper and deeper as we continued to hold sustained fire on the target.

  His stream of fire converged on mine, and together we hurled death downrange, blazing and blasting a white hot pit into the hull, pounding deeper and deeper, until a tectonic blast blazed out, a ring of high-order ionization that hurled enormous hunks of slagged glowing destroyer ahead of it.

  “Damn nice shot, kids,” Captain Smith called out reverentially on comms. “Keep it up!”

  “OOH-RAH SIR!” Yak screamed on comms. He was wired as tight as I’ve ever seen him, and I won’t lie, it made me feel a little weak at the knees. I didn’t have any time to consider my current feelings however, as our world started coming completely apart at that time.

  08242614@02:11 Shaun Onebull

  “Jane, I have Master 64,” I called out, punching hard into the weapon ports of one of the approaching destroyers with one hand, and popping fire selectively at a flight of smaller fighters coming from the same sector with the other. The sky was getting full. Returning first burned through space towards me.

  “Copy Yak, I am on 71, will shift fire to 64 momentarily.”

  “Copy,” I replied quickly, switching fire from both arms into the central ridge of Master 64. The gravity railers were completely recoilless, but I was getting a solid workout even through my locked armor from the violent thrumming from each shot. My shoulders and arms were starting to ache.

  The damage we were doing was undeniable, and so far, the enemy didn’t seem to have the armor to withstand it. The destroyers were tougher than the smaller vessels, but sustained tactical nuke-sized blasts just pounding non-stop into the hull of your ship is a recipe for a very bad day aboard any vessel.

  Well, just about any vessel.

  The carrier I thought we were going to attack first was sliding off to our flank, with another destroyer pacing our current route between us, while heavy corvettes and flights of fighters swarmed onto our current heading. Its sheer bulk, blotting out a huge amount of sky, concerned me.

  We might be able to take out destroyers, but Jane and I could probably shoot at that ship until we ran out of ammo.

  The Archaea was another matter, however. Her shots were viciously effective, and utterly overwhelmed the enemy vessels’ defenses.

  Her wake was littered with the slagged hulks and remnants of ships the captain had killed, sailing on forever into infinity.

  I didn’t have time to think about it though, the captain’s next target was the destroyer maneuvering between us and the carrier. Captain Smith was swinging around slowly, almost casually.

  “From here on, kids,” he called on comms. “We’re in it now.”

  I swallowed, as Jane answered, “We’re with you, sir.”

  “Firing,” he replied, and another incinerating beam blazed into space, transfixing the destroyer until it glowed.

  “Again,” he called out, and fired immediately on the aft quarter of the carrier, punching deeply into the hull with a fusing blast. He held fire, and just burned deep into the hull while accelerating ahead of us, riding his plume hot into the fight.

  08242614@02:16 Steven Pauline

  The heat on the bridge roasted on and on, searing my lips and the skin of my forehead, until I felt like I was roasting from the inside out.

  “Pauli, we need better cooling, son,” Captain Smith called out across the bridge behind me. “We’re going to roast in our own juices here.”

  “Trying, sir,” I called back. The drives were thundering on behind us, my screens were all but impossible to see through my squint.

  “Captain, if we could open the bridge lock, I could task the companionway chiller to help pull heat off the bridge.”

  He considered that for a moment. “Very well, bridge hatch is open. Janis, please dog that hatch immediately-as-needed, and check fire.”

  “Fire mission complete, sir.”

  “How are we holding up, Janis?”

  “We’re doing fine, sir, nothing to report.”

  “Very well, make ready to fire.”

  I blinked and worked frantically trying to haul heat aft using the companionway as a heat sink. My toes felt burned, and I held them off the deck as much as I could.

  “Fire,” he called out again, and I lost view of my screens as the heat rolled on again.

  “Holding that for a little longer, son… how’re we doing with the heat?”

  I squinted furiously into the glare, even with the filters on full, the light washed everything white. “It’s to
o bright, sir,” I gritted through my teeth.

  “Banking fire here in a moment son, work fast.”

  “Fast, aye,” I replied. The moment the heat turned off, I was blinking and hammering the keys, calling up subroutines I had written to failover to the companionway chiller.

  “Fire mission, report,” the captain called out. “Is that a dead ship Janis?”

  “It would seem to be sir.”

  “Pauli, are we there yet son?”

  “Almost, sir,” I called back over my shoulder. The temps were coming down, but not as much as I had hoped. “Sir, it’s not cooling as well as it should, but nothing looks wrong.”

  “Very well, let’s take a look. Janis, I see some lower values on the topside coolant harness, would that matter here?”

  “It would indeed, sir. I am afraid I am unable to dispatch an assembler at this time, however. I need to remain on station in Weapons and Engineering.”

  He hauled us over and shoved an extra few gravities of acceleration down hard, pressing my skull tight into the crash cushions.

  “Any chance Gene can wake up and help?”

  “I am sorry sir. It would not be advised at this point to utilize Gene.”

  “I see,” he replied tersely. “Well, it’s still green, for what that’s worth.”

  “It is well within operational parameters at this time, but I do agree it is an area of concern.”

  “Well, unless Pauli wants to climb up there and start swapping out pumps, we’re probably committed to a good roasting.”

  “Captain, part of our problem appears to be secondary heat damage. We have maintained hull integrity, but secondary heat has an impact on internal systems.”

  “Good to know. We’re going to want to minimize getting hit any more, regardless, but it’s still good to know.”

  “I’ve done everything I can here, sir,” I called out.