Emwan

by Dain White

  “Very well, Pauli,” he replied softly. “It feels much better in here.”

  “It feels like an oven to me, sir,” I replied, meaning every word. The air was roasting hot, and the whirring whine of the fans overhead didn’t really seem to be doing anything.

  “Well, it’s keeping my coffee hot, at any rate,” he replied with a sardonic little chuckle.

  I took a sip and nodded. “Definitely a side benefit, sir.”

  “Shorty, I need you and Yak to cut the next corner a bit more and take out Master 66 on my flank.”

  “Master 66, aye Captain,” she replied smartly.

  “Pauli, I need you to help me here with a big picture analysis.”

  I nodded and croaked a bit in response.

  “Have another sip, son, and listen. We’re going for their throat, but I need you to look at this formation and tell me what you think it will look like when I take out Master 81.”

  “Is that the far carrier, sir?” I replied.

  “That’s affirmative, son.”

  I blinked and tried to wrap my head around the targets. Master 81 and 73 were large, looming structures, with a decent-size swarm of smaller vessels moving in their general course and heading. They were flanking each other, in a wide formation, with master 73 widening the gap slightly as it angled towards our approach.

  “Sir, when are you going to engage?”

  “You have about fifteen seconds, give or take.”

  I gulped. “That’s uh…” I shut my mouth and thought as quickly as I could. “Sir, my best guess is that Master 73 is going to be on our flank in about 40 seconds. They will probably hold their position and close in for a kill—,” my voice cracked as my throat closed off with a click.

  “Excellent. That tracks well with my analysis. Very well son, let’s hope they take the bait.”

  My head spun wildly. He wanted to expose our flank?

  “Weapons, stand by for fire mission on Master 81.”

  “Standing by, sir.”

  “Fire,” he called out.

  This time, the heat seemed to be a little less immediate, and it seemed to take a little longer for the heat to grow to oppressive amounts, but it wasn’t enough of a delay for this burn. The captain held the beam wide open, roasting us on and on.

  I heard someone calling out in pain, and realized it was me. The pain was intense, searing, and endless. I sobbed uncontrollably, tears streaming into my temples as be thundered along.

  “Bank fire,” he called out smartly. The heat dropped immediately.

  “Fire mission complete, sir”

  “Dead ship?”

  “Not quite sir, target updated.”

  “Very well. Hold charge for another shot, if you please.”

  “Charged, sir.”

  “Are you going to make it, Pauli?” he asked briskly.

  I choked a bit, reaching for water and whimpering at the pain from my burned skin moving. “Aye, skipper,” I replied after a sip. My lips felt blistered.

  “Hang in there, son. We’re almost through this.”

  He cut our burn, and hauled us around briefly to a new orientation. “Fire”

  Again, the searing heat blazed upward through the deck, burning the backs of my legs, the soles of my feet. My forearms and face. I leaned over the console, trying to shield my face from the heat.

  “Check fire and report,” he called out what felt like a lifetime later.

  “Fire mission complete, sir. Master 81 has been destroyed.”

  “Master 73 took the bait, too,” he replied with a dry chuckle.

  “How are you holding up kids?”

  “We’re holding, sir!” Shorty yelled back on comms.

  “Great work, you two, keep it up; two down, one to go. Stand by for fire mission on Master 73, Janis.”

  “Standing by, Captain”

  08242614@02:22 Shaun Onebull

  I watched the entire thing. Jane was tracking a target on the far side of the Archaea, and I had just finished splashing a bogey that had been maneuvering for a shot from my side, when a beam from the distant carrier transfixed the Archaea in a violent blast of energy.

  She slewed hard over and started spinning slightly, a glowing curve burned across her upper decks from just above the bridge to the turret compartment. One of the turrets took the brunt of the shot, and was now trailing the Archaea in glowing globules and bits. From the distance, another beam lanced out, and caught the Archaea again, this time amidships, dangerously close to the ring sections.

  “Captain!” Jane yelled on comms.

  There was no answer, but the Archaea lit her drives again, and surged ahead of us. With a mighty whoop, I chased after her, firing at everything that moved.

  Jane and I were firing nonstop now, at a swarm of fighters, corvettes, and frigates that were pushing hard towards us, all the while the Archaea thundered on, her drives blazing brightly in the darkness among the stars.

  “Janis, is he okay?” I called out. A random beam burned close enough to taste, and my skin crawled in the heat.

  “He appears to be, Yak,” she replied smartly. “He has been rendered unconscious, and I have the conn at this time.”

  “I’m not unconscious, Janis… but I wish I was,” he replied in a strange, quiet voice. “That was absolutely miserable. We definitely need to avoid those in the future.”

  I laughed weakly, even as I fired on a frigate that had suddenly appeared directly ahead and above me. I pounded it hard into oblivion, but not before it managed to get off a couple of solid close-range shots into the Archaea with its turrets.

  It wasn’t alone at this point. As Jane and I raced each other from target to target, chasing the spiraling plume, arcing streams of fire were getting the track on her, converging and occasionally hitting the Archaea. She sailed on, seemingly undaunted and certainly undamaged, though it couldn’t have a very comfortable ride.

  It was starting to look inevitable that we might end up soaking up some of the secondary fire, as we hurtled onward into a growing cacophony.

  Clearly the Archaea wasn’t going to be damaged by turret fire, but Jane and I knew better. The last thing I personally wanted was to get hit by this stuff. I had aches with their own aches, telling stories of how bad the aches were in the old days, a few hours ago.

  “Yak, I need your help,” Jane called out.

  I kicked about and headed towards her, tracking on a group of three heavy corvettes converging on her position. It was a stark reminder that we were being actively hunted.

  08242614@02:25 Gene Mitchell

  The rolling crash of the thunder echoed across the desert, as the rich smell of dusty sagebrush and ozone filled the air. The dirt was mottled and dappled by the minute little craters of the brief rain, and all around me the soft dripping patter faded into a syncopated rhythm as the sagebrush started to dry in the warm breeze.

  The sound of a magpie in the far distance was a soft counterpoint to the drone and hurried buzz of the occasional bee, looking for the little yellow flowers of the cactus grouped here and there on the parched desert floor.

  Another booming deep rumble rolled from the distant storm, hiding in a silvery grey veil hanging from the dense roiling clouds far above. Looking across the plains towards the distant buttes and mountain ridges at the desert’s rim, I was rewarded with stabbing beams of light, burning softly to brightly lit patches of desert, standing in stark contrast against the deep grey background of the storm beyond.

  It was the most beautiful place, and I wanted to stay there forever.

  08242614@02:25 Captain Dak Smith

  “Charge and fire, if you please,” I called out nonchalantly, mostly for Pauli’s benefit, though deep down I knew it was all bravado, and realized that he probably did too. We were in a singularly bad spot, definitely the worst I’ve ever been in.

  The heat roasted again into my tortured face, and I whimpered a bit, squinting at the screens as best as I could, relying on memory for the bits I coul
d no longer see, but wishing I could see the screens change for the better.

  The best I could do at this point was stick to the plan. It’s a good plan, and I needed to see it through. I had little other choice at this point, besides run.

  As tempting as that particular alternate plan sounded, I had to stay focused here on seeing this through.

  The plan was going to work.

  These critters have nothing out here if they don’t have support. Their weakness was their perceived strength in numbers.

  They certainly had the numbers. The remaining carrier was throwing everything it had in front of me, and I almost smiled despite the moment, at the thought of what I was about to do.

  The fact this carrier was about to die had to have been known to them; this swarm of ships unfolding ahead of me was desperation, a last attempt to stop the inevitable.

  At least I hoped that was what it was. Deep down, it looked a little bit like our doom.

  “Fire mission complete,” Janis said smartly, and I realized I was already lining up the next shot.

  “Em, I need a solid priority for all remaining support targets sent to Yak and Shorty.” I keyed comms. “Kids, I need you to go on the attack here, and work as a team on this. Em is sending over a specific target list. How copy?”

  “Solid copy, sir,” Yak graveled in reply.

  “Let’s end this,” I said confidently, and smiled as a capital ship hove into view.

  “Charge and fire on my mark.”

  “Charged, sir”

  “Fire for effect,” I called out, and winced again at the heat.

  “Pauli, this is a big one, son. Hang in there”

  If he replied, I didn’t hear it. A whining scream suddenly rang out on the bridge from the enviro unit overhead. It sounded grim, whatever it was.

  “Pauli?”

  The howling growl gnashed to a stop, slowly cycling down as the fans ground to a halt, and I cried out in sudden pain as my skin started to sear. I tossed my head to the side and gasped, as the heat continued to climb.

  “Janis…?” I said as casually as I could, through teeth gritted savagely tight.

  “Almost complete, sir,” she said softly.

  “Very well,” I breathed resignedly, ready to roast into giblets if needed.

  “Fire mission complete,” Janis called out confidently.

  The heat didn’t abate, however, and as I blinked my screens back into focus to double-check our course, I quite literally wanted to burst into tears about it. My coffee cup lay tantalizingly close, but I was in the midst of a rather dire situation, and it didn’t quite seem the right time to take a hand off the controls.

  Luckily, the right time hit a few moments later, and I power-chugged a solid third of the cup in one mighty draught the likes of which the ancient gods might appreciate. I felt my nerves tingle as the wave of warmth spread like a bomb in the core of my soul, but alas – it was but a fleeting comfort.

  With one last, longing look at my one true love, and to check to make sure it was securely locked down, I continued to close on the next target.

  Yak and Shorty were viciously effective among the smaller ships, and if they had the time, they could be against even a destroyer; time wasn’t usually on their side though, even with complete stealth on their side.

  And they were mighty stealthy. Janis could track them, no doubt as a result of our cutting-edge gravimetrics, but clearly nothing else did.

  Until they started firing, that was, after which they only had a few moments of unrestricted assault before they started drawing fire. It was clear neither of them wanted to get shot, and that was just fine with me.

  “Pauli, what’s the story on bridge enviro?”

  “Captain, it’s not operable. We’d need to replace the main turbine.”

  “It sure would have been nice to have an assembler to help fix things like this.”

  Pauli shrugged. “Janis couldn’t have known this was needed, sir.”

  I paused for a moment. Janis did know.

  “Janis, how challenging is it for you to task the engineering station assembler with a secondary fire control station? Can those interfaces be combined?”

  “This is done, sir. I am en route to effect repairs.”

  “Very well, my dear – I should remind you that we will be firing soon, and we may actually die from the heat without cooling.”

  “Captain, after I rebuild the bridge unit, I deploy this assembler to evaluate and improve the helium delivery systems in the top access tunnel.”

  “Very well, Janis!” I exclaimed. “We should have thought of this redeployment earlier, don’t you think?”

  “It seems rather obvious now, sir, though I am afraid it had not occurred to me before.”

  “Yes, that’s sadly how hindsight usually is, for people who can’t see the future.”

  “It is a curious effect, yet clearly understandable. As a point of reference for you, my normal mode of operation is to use what you consider ‘hindsight’, in either direction. As you no doubt fully understand, sir, as horrified as I am in my inability at the moment, I am exploring this opportunity to learn. In some ways, I am rather glad this has happened, Captain, if I may be so bold.”

  That was mighty bold, but I guess if anyone could, it would be Janis.

  Master 62 caught my attention, as he was clearly in a position for a perfect flank, if he were to jump. I started to flap my gums about it, but realized I needed to do something about it. I hauled the yoke over hard, pulling it to my chest, and kicking hard right rudder.

  She came about pretty sprightly, even for a light frigate, but not as fast as I wanted, and possibly not as rapidly as I needed.

  “Weapons, fire on my mark,” I called out, knowing full well we didn’t have anything to save us from the heat. Hopefully it would be a short burn.

  About three-quarters of the way through our flip, Master 62 pounced. I felt like I was looking at a memory of the event, so sure was I that it was about to happen.

  They had the weather gage on us, and really gave us a good pasting. The bow started to be thrown over from the loudest, most violent, smashing bashes I had felt thus far in the old gal. For a moment, I saw only crash bars and my ears rung through the plugs.

  Our one remaining turret was hammering away in response, but I knew it was probably only effective against probes and relays. It would have been a false confidence to think otherwise.

  Through the gritting of my teeth, I kicked in just enough reac to give the bridge a bit of a break and continued to round over, seeing the vessel in my head, counting down the moments until we had a shot.

  And still, the pounding of the turrets thundered on, the bridge a blur as my eyeballs rattled in my head.

  “On station, sir,” Janis replied briskly, and I was vaguely aware of some activity behind me, though for the life of me I couldn’t imagine how that could be, with the world unfolding as it was.

  “Very well,” I gritted, realizing the time for a shot had come and gone in my mind and I didn’t have a shot. I was being paced by this infernal cruiser, and needed to get out from under this, pronto.

  “All hands secure for acceleration,” I called on comms, realizing that as all plans usually do, this one had finally fallen apart.

  “Secured!” Pauli yelled across the bridge, clearly motivated to get away from this situation.

  I smiled as I kicked the reac drives wide open and rocketed into the distance like a screaming banshee. I pushed it as hard as I could, until a giant swimming grey cloud of squirming mist filled nearly every bit of my forward vision, then dropped the burn and hauled hard over.

  Let’s see you match that burn, thing.

  Master 62 suddenly found itself in a bad position, climbing a deep well, carrying too much delta-v already, and quite literally dead in my sights no matter what he did.

  Did it try to match our speed when we took off? I rather hoped it had, but I could replay the reports later. For now, I needed to get
this shot.

  “Janis, I need a solution on Master 62.”

  “Solution on Master 62, aye,” she replied rapidly.

  “Quite nice. Fire on my mark, please.”

  I watched the mark and lined up my shot. At our current distance, she had to factor a little bit of ‘windage’ of sorts, allowing for our translating vectors, but as neither of us were really maneuvering to any great amount in opposition to each other, it was a trivial shot with our main gun.

  “Fire,” I called out, my skin already trying to run off my body and go hang out somewhere cool and dark, preferably with a cold beer and a good book.

  As I dreaded, the heat was significantly worse without enviro. I wasn’t really in anything other than a roasting, miserable mood, but I realized without Pauli’s clever hack, breaking the cardinal rule about leaving hatches unsecured in combat, we’d be dead.

  “Fire mission complete, sir”

  “Very well,” I replied with a brisk sip, and then another, though the second one appeared to be someone else’s bidding. I clicked my cup down with a concerned brow.

  My eyes felt like they had been removed, toasted as kebabs, dipped in salt and broken glass, and then fired back into my skull using a slingshot. My skin felt strangely cold, but I knew it was burned.

  “The bridge smells like someone’s been grilling,” Pauli groused amazingly good-naturedly, given our situation.

  I chuckled in response. It did, in a sort of fried locker room and industrial fire sort of way.

  “You know, I don’t think our cooling system is up to a continual burn from this gun,” I said with a smile.

  Pauli reacted, predictably, looking back over his shoulder with wild eyes.

  I smirked, but kept it at that. We simply had no time to chat. My sky was still uncomfortably full of vessels all maneuvering in defense of the carrier, now in the far distance.

  “Em, I need a route here, and I need to know where all of this stuff is going to be, from now until you just aren’t sure enough to predict.”

  “Certainly, sir,” she replied sweetly, and my screens filled with a series of tracks, most of which terminated on our route. Not all of them, however.