Emwan

by Dain White

  “Copy danger close,” Yak replied.

  “Are we on fire?”

  “Negative on that fire, sir, these suits are wired to limit shots that would hurt us.”

  “Uh huh,” I replied, as noncommittally as I could.

  My head was just pounding and my ears were ringing solid.

  “Yak!”

  “On it,” he replied laconically, and I watched an incoming group of targets drop rapidly.

  “Give ‘em hell kids,” I gritted, as a series of enormous wallops hit us amidships.

  The attack was definitely on.

  I felt at times like my teeth were literally shaking out of my skull, but I kept working my screens, flying the ship, trying to maintain the course as best as I could.

  Without a doubt, this was the worst experience of my natural life. I had been in some pretty heroic situations before, situations where I felt like I might have bitten off a wee mite bit more than I could chew, but this was the proverbial bite.

  Drifting, about to roast myself a deeper shade of red in this oven, with a big shot coming… and this infernal hammering and crashing… it was almost more than I could take.

  I had to take it though. I had to hold fast. I had to see this through, for my crew.

  “Captain, topside systems are repaired,” Janis called out smartly. “I am nearing completion of the screen dampeners, and have tasked the other assembler on the klystron pumps.”

  “Very well,” I hollered over the cacophony.

  “Captain, our topside turrets are solid red!”

  I yelled back as calmly as I could. “Steady on, son. They’re pretty useless against these critters anyway!”

  We were enveloped in fire, and our world was a blurry, shaking mess. I felt like my collarbones were about to snap, and tried to hold my breath as much as I could for support.

  “Firing!” I yelled, and pulled the trigger, roasting a frigate that was passing us high and right, clearly looking for an overhand flank. Shielding my eyes and watching the screens, I watched it come apart and banked the shot.

  “That wasn’t so bad, Pauli!” I called out. We hadn’t held the shot for very long, but the heat dissipated more quickly, and the cool breeze on the back of my neck felt glorious.

  “Firing again!” I yelled, as a target of opportunity moved across our bow. This time I only held it for a moment, but I cursed as the target was still clearly maneuvering, and had to do a bit of heel and toe to pull it back into line for another, more significant burn.

  “Fire mission complete,” I yelled over the din.

  “Sir, we’re seeing some yellows in wetnet… portside, frame fifty,” Pauli called out.

  “Can you do anything to help with that, son?”

  “Not if there’s a physical break, sir, not without my kit and some time to repair the nodes.”

  “Can you route it so it’s redundant?”

  He laughed, a bit of a wild, manic laugh, but it was nice to hear all the same.

  “It’s already highly redundant, sir – we’re about to lose direct wetnet to ring three, but I think I can re-hook everything back through ring two with code.”

  “Janis, help him as needed,” I yelled back, leaning on an eyebrow for support.

  We listened to the world come apart for a moment more as I fought to hold the line.

  “Janis, I need those drives,” I said softly, lips barely moving. We were doomed without the ability to maneuver. We had plenty of power still to our hull, and we were holding our own, but the shock and heat and fury of the assault would eventually take us apart from the inside out, no matter how stout this old ship might be.

  “Twenty-eight seconds, sir,” she replied confidently.

  I shook my head. “You have fourteen, my dear, at best. Make it happen please. I need this.”

  “Fourteen seconds, aye,” she replied swiftly.

  The route Em had for us had a pretty hot burn coming up, rapidly. My eyes flashed through my screens, my eidetic memory drinking up the moment, consuming as much information as I could as my eyes passed by.

  “Janis…” I called out, as the clock hit the five count.

  The moment approached, 3… 2…

  “Done sir,” Janis called out, and I mashed the drives hot to six gravities and we burst out of the massed fire, and into the fight.

  Chapter 12

  08242614@02:54 Shaun Onebull

  “OOH-RAH SKIPPER!” I yelled as the Archaea thundered into life and roared ahead of us.

  Jane and I hurtled after, firing as we went. Targets were everywhere, and our route was corkscrewing around their perimeter, hooking inward towards their last remaining carrier.

  It felt good to see the Archaea flying again. Jane and I hadn’t been able to do much but try to hold the enemy at bay the best we could, but the Archaea had just been getting an absolutely solid beating. She was scorched almost completely flat black, and even though had cooled down considerably, when I scanned thermals she still glowed from the heat.

  And still the enemy fire poured upward from the last carrier, streams of high-energy projectiles from what looked like a million turrets, a small handful of destroyers in tight formation, while the remaining vessels folded inwards, coming in around us like a giant flower.

  “Jane…” I started to speak, and my voice cracked.

  “Shoot and move, Marine,” she replied tersely. “Movement is life!”

  I swallowed my fear and what was left of my pride, and held a quiet moment for my family, my friends, my people and the quiet green hills and valleys of my homeland. I thought about my Cuth-la, and her huckleberries, and the salmon, fighting endlessly upward against the rushing roar of endless conflict.

  As I thought about everything I loved, I chased a demon dressed in nothingness that dealt in death and doom to everything she looked at.

  I struggled to keep up, to keep focused. I fought to hold up my end of our relationship of death and love, or war and hate. I fought for her honor, my Jane, and for the lives of my friends. The more I thought about the world I loved, and the people in it, the more I wanted to see this through, to complete this mission, and save it all.

  We wove like needles through a tapestry of fire, our hands spears of light, pounding mercilessly on target, again, and again.

  Occasionally, our world went momentarily dark as the captain fired, and mighty ships in the far distance burst open, exploded in ruin and chaos, trailing plasma and great electrical sparks that arced into nearby ships.

  Each time he fired, our enemy grew weaker.

  “Yak, on your six!” Jane yelled. I instantly switched my vision behind me and pivoted with a mighty twist, and hurled fire at point blank range into the huge looming decks of a cruiser that had just hove into view, right on top of me.

  My shots tore deep into the hull, but their turrets fixed on my position immediately, and blasted me into a spinning, sparking mess of light and heat, and I felt my poor muscles screaming.

  “YAK!” Jane yelled, her voice filled with a wild, rising tone of panic.

  “I’m alive,” I called back nonchalantly, but it hurt so badly to breathe. My ribs felt liquefied.

  “Hold this line, Marine,” she growled, and blasted fire past me into the turrets that were still tracking all around my position. I got myself oriented and poured fire into the target as well, until it came apart around us in a series of brilliant blasts, oddly silent in the depths of space, yet undeniably effective and ultimately final.

  “No time to lose, we need to move!”

  “Copy,” I replied with another wince, and chased after her, following the twisted plume of the Archaea.

  08242614@03:01 Gene Mitchell

  The city lights lit the high clouds and the world with an orange glow, and the evening chilled from a sea breeze, carried aloft from the pounding surf that boomed and crashed into the caverns of the tidelands far below.

  I huddled on the promontory overlooking the eastern bay and the industrial quays of
New Turiana, and watched the glinting sunset light sparkle and flicker across the rolling waves of the mauve waters far below.

  If I held still, I could hear the grinding and cracking of the stones under the waves at the breaking surf, as they rattled and crashed across each other. Holding even more still, and holding my head sideways to the winds, I heard the muted grumble and roar of the endless city.

  I looked up and saw stars on the farthest horizon, and wondered what it would be like to go there someday, when I got older. I wanted to climb to this spot so that I could watch the world, to see the glittering city, to watch the blast pans and the quay, the ancient world of the mariner transposed by the ever-present plumes of ships clawing for high orbit from the pans.

  Someday, I’d go to the stars.

  08242614@03:01 Captain Dak Smith

  Seven targets left.

  I had to hold to our current plan at this point and pray they were roped in. Yak and Shorty were flying like fiends, but they were taking occasional hits, and each time I saw it, I wanted to die.

  They were getting back to business each time though, though a few moments ago, I had seen Yak take a solid hit to the chest, a hit so hard I honestly thought he was gone, but his ‘good to go’ comment afterwards sounded like a person who had just spilled their afternoon tea.

  These kids had my respect; that was for sure. I vastly preferred the bulk of the Archaea for weather like this.

  Master 74 was coming up for a shot, and slid perfectly into gimbal lock.

  “Firing!” I called out, and held it a little longer than necessary, feeling the heat build.

  “Janis, it’s still too hot up here,” I called out.

  “Captain, we need to replace our aperture shielding,” she replied.

  “Obviously that’s not something you can do now.”

  “I could do it sir, but I would like to keep both assemblers at work on systems inside the hull.”

  “I concur, sir,” Pauli yelled.

  I grimaced a bit as my forearm rasped against the console. “Well, we’ll just have to roast a bit more, Pauli. We won’t take that carrier without a long burn.”

  “I am not sure we have a long burn capability at this point, sir,” Janis replied.

  That didn’t brighten my day, at all.

  “Can we get it back, and right smartly?” I replied immediately.

  “I am not concerned for the Archaea, sir. I am concerned for you. You have received too much tissue damage at this point, Captain.”

  “Too much?” I leered, then immediately winced in pain trying to move my arm, and looked at it for a moment.

  I took a good look.

  “You’re right, my dear. We’re cooked.”

  At that moment a thought leaped into my head.

  “Janis what temperature is it in Engineering when we fire?”

  “Engineering is warmer than you may want at this moment, sir.”

  “Almost certainly, but could we survive it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well, Em, you have the conn,” I called out while mashing the 1MC, all channels. “All hands aft, all hands aft.”

  I hauled off my crash bars, and grabbed my cup. “Move it, son, we’re on the clock here.”

  “Meet you there, Grampa,” he called back, but I had the leap on him. I was halfway to the bridge hatch before he was loose from his bars.

  It hurt though, to the point where I wanted to move as little as possible. Every time I reached out for a grabber, or kicked for the next one, my skin felt like it was made of living fire.

  “We’re going to need more than Bacta, son,” I called out.

  “Yeah, this hurts, I won’t lie. It’s pretty damned uncomfortable, sir. We should go get one of those medical comas like Gene, and wait for Janis on the other side.”

  “Only seven more targets, Pauli,” I called back encouragingly, waiting for him at the gun deck. As he made it down the companionway, I held on so we could kick to the gun deck rail. Normally, I’d have launched for the forward lock, but the occasional lurches and lunges of the deck as we soaked up kinetic impacts were throwing us around enough that we were going ‘hands-and-feet’, in the grand tradition.

  “This hurts so bad, sir,” Pauli whined, but I really could do much more than nod in agreement. It did hurt. My thighs felt like big hickory-smoked hocks of agony, and moving them made me want to chew them off to escape.

  I was actually starting to feel hungry, as well.

  “I could really go for a steak right now, Pauli.”

  “Ah sir, you know, that doesn’t make this feel any better.”

  “I know, but imagine, Pauli. Perfectly seared, lightly peppered, with that strange savory spice Gene uses.”

  “That sounds awesome, sir.”

  “Now tell me for a moment, if you didn’t hurt as much, son.”

  “Nope, can’t do that Captain. My current pain is unending, and larger than the universe.”

  I laughed wryly, and mashed the forward lock as he hove to on the far side of the lock. A booming crash from forward rolled through the hull of the Archaea, shaking us momentarily off of our feet, only to rebound in agony back off the deck right as the ambers flashed.

  I grimaced and gritted my teeth as I starfished a bit to get oriented for a grabber, then watched the door helplessly as it opened while I waited to land.

  Pauli was through the door first, but I was a close second. In the brightly lit lock, I was aghast to see little pus-filled blisters all over Pauli’s arms and face, and I hoped my face looked better than his. He looked like a lobster, with flushed white patches on his cheekbones, and his skin looked tight and shiny, and almost completely red, except for a patch under his chin.

  “Son, how do I look?” I asked, as the lock cycled us through to the cargo hold.

  “Burned, sir. How do I look?”

  “Burned,” I replied with a dry chuckle.

  “We should seek medical attention, sir.”

  “There’s a large kit in engineering, son,” I said as brightly as I could. “We’re going to survive this.”

  “I am not sure I want to,” he whined, as we scrabbled like scuttling crabs along the scaffolding towards the aft lock.

  I laughed at his misery, despite sharing it completely. What else could I do? We were in a grim position.

  Another massive smash hit us again, forward. Luckily, this time we were firmly rooted to our grabbers and able to hang on, but it was close. A sudden wailing alarm shrieked out, and it took me a moment to realize what it was.

  “Janis, report!”

  “Pressure loss forward, sir, but the breach is regenerating, I expect the compartment to be airtight again in 45 seconds.”

  “Very well,” I replied and hustled Pauli ahead of me into the aft lock. Once I made it through the opening hatch, he mashed the cycle control.

  Again we waited, staring at each other, each of us no doubt hoping the other looked worse.

  “My teeth hurt,” Pauli said off-handedly, as the aft lock cycled open.

  “You need less coffee son,” I replied casually, with a slight wince as my port eyebrow reminded me it needed to visit a doctor as well.

  “Good thing we cleared the bridge, sir,” he said quietly.

  I nodded as the aft hatch opened, and we skipped up the ramp and into Gene’s world, all glistening and shiny… and astoundingly loud.

  “Gotta switch to comms, son,” I called out.

  “Copy.”

  “Janis, I need screens and flight controls here.”

  “Onscreen, sir,” she replied a scant moment later.

  “This looks like a trainer,” I replied, remembering the countless hours I spent in flight school trying to master these.

  “It seemed like a logical interface for you to remotely operate the Archaea, sir. It has been calibrated to the same movement characteristics of the helm station.”

  “Nicely done, my dear,” I replied proudly. “Pauli, get your hands on that
kit and let’s crack it open.”

  “Kit, aye,” he replied and leaped for the rack.

  “Here you go, sir,” he called out a moment later, and tossed me a tube of Bacta cream that made my skin tingle and left me with a deliciously numb sensation wherever I rubbed it. Rubbing it on my forehead was exquisite.

  “Pauli, get yourself strapped in son, we need to get back to work,” I called over while I moved Shorty’s main screen to the left and minimized most of Gene’s screen to the right, and brought up navigation and targeting front and center

  “Aye sir,” he replied, hauling down the crash bars on the side console.

  “All situated?” I asked after he stopped whining and whimpering.

  “Good to go, sir”

  “About time,” I groused with a smile, in case he looked over. We had done pretty well, considering the bridge was airless at the moment. We were mostly operational back here still, though I really preferred physical flight controls over a pure interface, I had enough time at the helm on enough different vessels, it wasn’t terribly challenging either way.

  She handled differently, but I guess that’s to be expected, now that we weren’t strapped up in her bow like some stone-age sacrifice. Her ride was a lot more comfortable back here, in fact.

  Now I know how Gene gets away with so many naps.

  I didn’t have time for a nap now, unfortunately. I hauled her over for our next transit, trying to position for a leading shot on Master 82, clawing hard for all available delta-vee on a wide hooking loop.

  “Prepare to fire,” I called out, as Master 82 slid into gimbal lock, and I locked in the shot as soon as the pip lit.

  “Hey, that’s not so bad,” Pauli remarked, and I had to agree. It wasn’t comfortable back here by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t the roasting oven our bridge stations had become. Back here, we just had the roaring racket of the machinery, the whining of pumps, the roar of the reac drives, and under it all, the deeply warbling rumble of the tokamak, operating at maximum capacity.

  It was really exceptionally loud, but we were a little more protected by the structure and configuration of the hull as it wrapped around Engineering and onto our drive nacelles.