The Wrong Side of Space (TCOTU, Book 3) (This Corner of the Universe)

by Britt Ringel

  Heskan wanted to interject but stopped himself. It’s not my place.

  “Stephan,” Lombardi said earnestly, “we can win if we stay together. You do not need to do this.”

  Christova shook his head. His smile faded. “We all know that is not true, Komandor. This is the only way some of us will get back home.”

  Lombardi’s face flashed with frustration, then anger. “Dammit, Stephan. Why now? Why do you have to be so damned noble now?” she asked.

  The smile reappeared. “If it helps, Isabella, I am not doing this out of nobility. I am doing this for the Commonwealth. Unlike you, no one has any reason to question my loyalty, Komandor.” He changed his gaze to look directly at Heskan’s screen. “It has not been easy, Commander. You will never be my friend but you are a respected adversary, and I believe an honorable one. You once promised that you would return my people to the Commonwealth. I make this sacrifice with confidence, knowing that even though I will not see my family again, those that survive will because I believe in you, Garrett Heskan. Do not let this sacrifice arise from a lie.”

  Heskan opened his mouth but the comm screen darkened as Christova cut his connection. Heskan looked at Lombardi’s screen, and she returned his gaze. “He always insisted on having the last word,” she remarked. “How does this change our formation?”

  “It doesn’t,” Heskan replied. “We’re just a smaller triangle now.”

  Lombardi’s face twisted in suspicion. “You knew?”

  Heskan avoided the question. “Have the cutters begun their runs, Jack?”

  “No. All the alien ships are on an intercept course with us but they are still massing near the super-carrier. Over four hundred of them now, sir. And counting.”

  “Komandor,” Heskan said, “depending on how successful Vaettir is, we’re going to have our hands full shortly. I suggest we table this discussion.”

  “Maintain our current formation and good hunting, Commander.”

  Christova’s light cruiser and the Parasite ships hurled toward each other with a combined closure rate of .43c. Nearly the first minute of Vaettir’s charge was uncontested. Alien cutters were still emerging from the super-carrier and the massive wave around the enormous ship now numbered six hundred ninety-four. When the light of Vaettir’s actions finally reached the Parasite mother ship, it issued orders and seconds later, scores of cutters began to break away from the formation still coalescing around the gigantic craft. One hundred cutters rapidly began their own headlong dash toward the lone cruiser, which did not react to the threat. Instead of rotating to present her broadside to the multitude of incoming enemies, the sleek light cruiser’s bearing stayed true.

  On Kite’s bridge, the wall screen easily displayed Vaettir’s twin forward heavy batteries orienting to engage the horde. A dozen seconds later, two small debris fields appeared 7ls ahead of the cruiser. During the four-second recharge of Vaettir’s Issic lasers, the remaining ninety-eight cutters reduced the distance between them by 2ls. On her next salvo, Vaettir’s forward-facing light laser batteries accompanied the second barrage of Issic fire. The charged particles of energy took just five seconds to merge with their targets, ushering another six cutters into oblivion. The light lasers would pulse five additional times over the final eleven seconds. In total, thirty-two cutters were culled from the rushing wave of one hundred.

  Twenty-three seconds after the first barrage fired from Vaettir, she took her first hit. The cutter’s prize for successful interception was annihilation against Vaettir’s shields, which absorbed eight percent of the kinetic energy but deflected the remainder to starboard. The molten mass of alien alloys tumbled away even as Vaettir’s shields collapsed in milliseconds. During her charge and subsequent defense, Vaettir had closed the gap between herself and the super-carrier to a scant 13ls even as the gap between the wave of intercepting cutters and Vaettir reduced to nothing.

  The light cruiser’s bow crashed through the wave at a closure rate of nearly half the speed of light. A bright flash on Kite’s optical marked the collision of cutters but the Hollaran light cruiser pressed on. Her vector line began to shrink on the tactical plot, her speed dropping from .22c to .17c in the span of six seconds. However, still facing the super-carrier, Vaettir’s drives pushed steadfastly against the F-Two enhancer field of the Parasites.

  “She’s still slowing, Captain,” Truesworth announced, “but fighting against the drag.”

  At such a high closure rate, over fifty cutters had actually failed to intercept the cruiser. Heskan watched the nimble ships spin quickly to reface their escaping prey and begin to decelerate impossibly fast. “How many hits did she take, Jack?” Heskan asked.

  “It’s impossible to say from this angle, Captain. There’s still fifty-three cutters actively chasing her though, so maybe a dozen,” Truesworth estimated.

  Heskan shivered. A dozen. The bow of that ship must be a living hell right now. How quickly will they lose control over her? Incredibly, the tactical plot showed the remaining cutters had already killed their momentum and vector lines on each were growing from the opposite direction as they began to make second runs toward Vaettir. They had only fallen 4.2ls behind the light cruiser, which itself was now just 9.3ls from her target.

  “Will those cutters reach Vaettir in time?” Heskan wondered aloud. Three cutters exploded as the light cruiser’s rear-facing armament joined the contest.

  “Vaettir’s down to point one-four-C. She needs another twenty seconds. Those cutters will overhaul her in less than fifteen,” Truesworth answered.

  When Vaettir breached the 5ls barrier with the super-carrier, the alien ship transmitted additional orders. Those orders took less than a second to be received by the six hundred sixty-two lingering cutters in the Parasite holding pattern, who were patiently awaiting the final thirty-eight of their brethren launching from the mother ship. The orders took a further four seconds to be carried out.

  Vaettir had stubbornly resisted the alien technology pushing against her thrust. Although she had lost over half of her initial speed due to the F-Two enhancers on the cutters protruding from her bow, her combined closure rate with the speeding carrier was still .34c. If the alien mother ship suspected Vaettir’s intentions, it showed no outward sign. The colossus continued directly for the Terran fleet at her best speed, completely without concern.

  Heskan cringed as the pursuing cutters clawed closer to Vaettir’s stern. Nearly half had been destroyed by defensive fire but the dozens that remained could hardly miss. Ahead of Vaettir, the larger swarm of cutters was thrusting away from its consort and toward the human cruiser, now just 1.8ls away.

  Several events occurred during Vaettir’s final five seconds of existence. Additional cutters slammed into Vaettir’s stern. Four of the alien ships impacted her primary and maneuvering drives, incinerating themselves but also causing catastrophic damage to each affected propulsion unit. Inside the cruiser, Christova had ordered that the cores of each of Vaettir’s three power plants be exposed at the precise moment of impact with the super-carrier. Due to the collisions suffered from the stern-chasing cutters, and the resultant reduction in speed as their F-Two enhancing fields were applied, the calculation of the time of impact was off, resulting in Vaettir’s detonation 0.23 seconds early. The Hollaran cruiser exploded .078ls in front of the seven hundred cutters preparing for their own imminent collisions. The super-carrier, 0.4ls behind its shuttles, entered the explosion radius just over a second later.

  The confluence of events happened in the blink of an eye for Heskan. One moment, he had been wincing as alien cutters crashed into Vaettir; the next moment, the optical erupted into a cascade of blinding light. Kite’s filters quickly dimmed the screen containing the explosion, permitting Heskan to see the alien super-carrier emerge from the destruction, silhouetted in the tremendous blast. How could it survive that? Heskan asked himself incredulously. He remembered his own experience with the freighter, Orphan, and could barely believe that any ship could
withstand traveling through the fury of a core overload.

  Trying to tear his eyes away from the hypnotic optical, he examined the tactical plot. Hundreds of flashing cutter icons along with their “uncertainty zones” were appearing where Vaettir had been seconds ago. Incredibly, the plot also displayed a few dozen cutters emerging from the zone of devastation.

  To his left, he heard Vernay’s shaky voice. “Jack, how many cutters survived and what’s the status on that carrier?”

  The optical had fully recovered now. Heskan’s eyes bored into the image of the super-carrier. Its bow was a glowing, twisted wreck. Where smooth lines of the enormous ship had once been, an atrocity to geometry existed. Deep ravines gouged into the bow of the ship as tonnes of debris cascaded from its mouth. It looks ten times worse than Anelace did, Heskan thought.

  “Jack?” Vernay questioned again.

  “What?” the sensorman stammered. “Oh. I’m looking now, ma’am.”

  Moments later the tally had been made. “There are ninety-eight cutters, ma’am, but a lot of them appear to be drifting. We have thirty-nine making way toward our position.”

  “Just thirty-nine?” Heskan asked skeptically. “That’s all?”

  “Yes, sir. Curator’s sensor data matches our own.” Truesworth typed rapidly into his console. “We’re still evaluating the super-carrier, ma’am.”

  Heskan peeled his eyes off the devastated alien mother ship and sent a comm request over the command channel. Arnold accepted immediately.

  “Looks like that Christova chap just saved this fleet, eh?” the New Londoner opened without preamble.

  “Indeed,” Heskan agreed. “We could still have up to a hundred cutters but the few left are acting a little erratic. Thirty-nine are coming at us in one wave but the rest seem to be just drifting.”

  Lombardi entered the channel as Arnold answered. “Well, between the three of us, we can handle what’s out there. Curator has about twenty minutes before our main drives are functional. Our maneuvering drives will be online about ten minutes after that. I assume we’re holding this formation for now?”

  “Yes,” Lombardi confirmed. “At least until we have fought off the incoming wave. It will arrive in about two and a half minutes. After that, we will reassess. I will contact you again shortly.”

  Two minutes and thirteen seconds later, the cutter wave entered into the 10ls weapons envelope of the Terran fleet’s heavy lasers. As the energy bursts from their weapons raced across space at the speed of light, a second salvo fired four seconds later. A third salvo followed just as the initial barrage reached the cutters at 8ls. The first shots annihilated twenty cutters. By the time the alien ships had dipped inside 6ls, another ten cutters had been erased from existence. The AMS pulse laser turrets were just preparing to fire their opening shots, when the third fusillade from the heavy weapons defeated the rush.

  “All clear,” Spencer said triumphantly. “And it looks like the rest of the cutters are still adrift.”

  Heskan looked to Vernay. “Your analysis, Lieutenant?”

  After a thoughtful pause, Vernay theorized, “Probably a mixture of ship damage and radiation. Even if the cutters weren’t destroyed outright, they flew right through the overload zone. They had to take some pretty incredible amounts of radiation.”

  “So you think they’re dead?”

  “If not dead, at least combat-ineffective,” Vernay hedged.

  Inwardly Heskan agreed with the assessment. “What about your thoughts on the alien carrier?”

  “Seriously messed up… but I bet live Parasites are still onboard. The carrier entered the zone a little later and because the ship itself is so massive, it had to have shielded some of its… crew.”

  Heskan nodded. “Good analysis.” He heard Truesworth’s console beep.

  “I have a comm request from Phoenix, Captain.” The split images of Lombardi and Arnold filled the wall screen.

  “Commander,” Lombardi started, “I am ordering a general attack. I realize Curator will not be able to participate but I fear that the alien mother ship may reverse course and dive out of the system now that it is clear they have failed.”

  Heskan’s heart skipped a beat. I hadn’t thought of that. “Agreed, Komandor. Jessie, make way toward the super-carrier.” He turned to face Spencer. “Tony, I want weapons fire on those cutters whether they’re moving or not. RSLs will focus on the carrier until it’s gone.” Heskan looked back toward Lombardi. “Komandor, I request you let Kite lead the way. We’re better suited to clear out the remaining cutters and we’ve been through too much to lose another ship because we rushed things.”

  Lombardi nodded and said, “Phoenix will be two light-seconds behind Kite. We will rotate to bear upon the super-carrier at ten light-seconds and concentrate our fire on it.”

  To his left, Heskan heard, “We’re losing a chance at capturing some of their technology, Captain.”

  He turned and stared at Vernay who shrugged apologetically. “I’d like them blown to hell too but I feel compelled to mention it.”

  Heskan looked at Lombardi, who had obviously heard the exchange. Her severe expression and slowly shaking head bespoke her decision. “No, this is our chance. I will not tempt fate. We will quickly and decisively eradicate all Parasite presence from this system and then dive away.”

  Heskan nodded again. “I concur, Komandor.”

  Lombardi continued as if she had not heard Heskan. “This might be our only opportunity to escape unfollowed. Every minute we spend by the tunnel point is another minute closer to having another super-carrier dive into the system. We cannot waste Christova’s sacrifice.”

  “No need to convince me, ma’am,” Heskan said disarmingly. “We already have a lot of information on them anyway. Let’s clear them out and go home.”

  Lombardi’s shoulders fell slightly as she sighed. “Yes, let us get on with it. Home for some of us is still very far away.”

  * * *

  The extermination process took a little under half an hour. The remaining alien cutters never organized for a final attack and, instead, died in singles and pairs to the sporadic AMS laser fire from Kite. The alien super-carrier proved to be more resilient, surviving the combined fire of both ships for over two minutes. Heskan had never heard of an instance where a single capital ship withstood such continuous punishment without breaking apart. Eventually, the gigantic ship began to shed fragments as RSL and Issic laser fire carved the ship into pieces. Interestingly, the ship did not explode which resulted in an additional ten minutes of laser barrages focused upon pieces of the crumbled carrier large enough to be deemed habitable. During the clearing of the space around the tunnel point, Phoenix recovered Vaettir’s lifeboats.

  By the time the butchery was complete, Curator’s drives were functional. The three survivors assumed their triangle formation and made way toward the tunnel point farthest from them in the Junction Two system. The other two unexplored tunnel points were estimated to lead northward, making them undesirable options. Fortunately, Junction Two’s final tunnel point seemed oriented to lead nearly directly toward Brevic space.

  Heskan remained on the bridge for the entire eleven-hour journey across the system. With the fleet closing on the Type-A tunnel point, he was looking forward to some well-deserved rest. The fleet had not stopped to exchange Lieutenant Selvaggio for the Hollaran marines or liaison officer and there was no intention to do so.

  We need to disappear while we can, Heskan thought. And it would be just our luck to have a second super-carrier enter the system and detect our tunnel disturbance because we wasted time stopping to transfer crew. It can wait until we hit Junction Three.

  “Dive command coming, Captain,” Ensign Meyer stated. She finished entering commands on her console.

  Vernay checked her own console to ensure that all sections had reported ready for Kite’s dive. “Dive in sequence, navigator,” she answered for her captain. Seconds later, the two-toned dive bell sounded and Kite slippe
d into t-space.

  Chapter 16

  Lieutenant Selvaggio leaned back in her chair as she studied the briefing room. Like Heskan, Komandor Lombardi seemed to prefer using the smaller bridge briefing room rather than the large one located one deck below. Her meetings ran longer than Heskan’s, but this was expected considering the brevity of Heskan’s meetings. Selvaggio had been surprised when Lombardi insisted she attend the department head meetings despite her junior rank. Further, she felt she did not have much to contribute because she had no official duties aboard Phoenix, other than as a liaison. Even so, with her “battle station” on Phoenix’s bridge, Selvaggio had been very pleased to provide insight into how the heavy cruiser’s escorts might react during key moments in the Parasite battle. Although her observations were obvious to her, she believed the sincerity of the Hollaran command crew’s compliments regarding her understanding of Brevic military combat operations. In retrospect, Selvaggio realized that many of the Hollaran actions seemed utterly alien, so her own ingrained Brevic responses must be equally unusual from their perspective.

  Although operationally unfamiliar, Phoenix’s command crew impressed Selvaggio. They were professional and cool under pressure. In particular, Lombardi and her first officer made an extremely good team, if a very different one compared to Kite’s leadership. While Heskan was a mentor to Vernay, Valokov acted more as a restraint for Lombardi. She was a willful and brilliant ship’s captain but she also bordered on brash, in Selvaggio’s opinion. The fiery-tempered captain was unreserved in her opinions during battles and seemed completely without filter in heated moments. At least you always know where you stand with her, Selvaggio reflected. She’s very direct and handles people straight on. She’s also not much one for large gatherings and seems to prefer dealing with people one-on-one. Although they had been sailing through t-space for over twenty-four hours, this was the first meeting Lombardi had called since their last battle with the Parasites. The meeting had touched all the usual bases from ship and crew to expected future actions. Selvaggio noted that the first officer ran most of the meeting and Lombardi only interjected briefly to emphasize the points important to her.