Fury to the Stars (Universe in Flames Book 2)

by Christian Kallias

  He pulled as much as he could with both hands, exerting opposite forces on each sides of the splitting door system. When that didn’t work he decided to concentrate only on the right side of the door, with similarly meager progress. After some considerable effort it finally started to budge. A few moments later resistance finally gave out completely and the doors fell outward. An enormous Zarlack body came crashing down headfirst, directly in front of Spiros, who for a split second thought he’d surely have a heart attack.

  He looked at the dead body in front of him, reflectively. He wasn’t used to killing. He was a scientist, an inventor. Sure, some of that was sometimes used to kill, now that this was war. But typically he saw his inventions more as a way to help the Alliance better defend itself, rather than increasingly efficient killing machines for technology’s sake. But he knew full well that through all these years as a scientist, he had to fully convince himself of the moral sincerity to this inner argument.

  After all there were two sides to every coin! But he had long decided, whether consciously or subconsciously, that he lived life better by sticking to the side that gave him less daily grief and resistance. Plus, no humanoid oppressor had ever tried to bite him.

  He brushed the old conundrum aside. He entered his lab and sought out the troubleshooting bench immediately. He plugged a cable in the back of his head to access his neuronal augment implant, in order to salvage the precious files he had taken such risks trying to access. The diagnostics program immediately returned an error code, as he’d feared. He felt a pit forming in his stomach. He knew he could’ve very well fried the memory banks with his irresponsible over-clocking, though he still argued with himself that without it, he would never have decoded the file at all.

  He looked after old pet projects, trying to rearrange some sense of where his work had been disrupted. He opened some cupboards and, of course, precious ordering had all been messed up; many things were missing. He felt the indignant anger of a scientist slowly rising within him: he liked things neat and ordered. All he found in each new cupboard was more and more chaos.

  “What life forms in their right minds store explosive fluids near power packs?” He groaned out loud. He reveled in no longer feeling afraid or worried anybody would hear and barge in. He was the last man standing.

  After ten minutes searching, he managed to find the small crystal tube with a blue label. He put it under a scanner and gleefully confirmed that the nanites were still in the tube, and still operational. These particular nanites were designed to scan for data from implants or any data storage device and dump the results over the network, making an exact copy in a very little amount of time. The wonder was it worked whether the device was powered or not. He only hoped that there was still some coherent data to be recovered!

  They’d never been tested. He remembered promising himself to never ever play with untested nanites, after an accident twenty years earlier where some badly programmed nanites ran amok in his blood stream, almost claiming his life. He pondered as he looked at the crystal tube. He decided to sift through the code once more, in order to be certain.

  His mind was finally at full capacity again, and he relished it. He’d slept long enough in the regen tank to basically strip away the stress fatigue from the occupation, and it furthermore had given him a boost in energy he hadn’t felt in years. Unsurprisingly, around the same time he’d needed to use one of them again, as he… sort of… blew off part of his face—in another experiment gone wrong.

  Was he a reckless scientist? Perhaps. After five minutes sifting through his code, he decided to add a simple failsafe: a manual disable command for all nanites in his code. It was something that should have been there in all his experiments, he admitted to himself begrudgingly. He opened the lid of the crystal tube and placed it at the back of his neck entry port. Then he entered a command with his free hand on the terminal, and the nanites activated.

  Looking at the diagnostic logs a few minutes later, he could see that they had started copying data blocks randomly. A few of them had been selected to put the data back into a cohesive, coherent and usable data stream. One minute later the log reached its end; data had been sent to a network location, and the nanites went into sleep mode.

  He opened up a holo-display and recovered the data the nanites had duplicated. Some of it was his own implant operating system: some logs, and other assorted junk, like pictures he’d taken with his brain over the last few years. But he was happy that the data stored within his disabled implant didn’t seem to be corrupted. He’d still probably need to change the implant, and restore a backup from the data dump he was searching through.

  He brushed that thought away, as his eyes met with a file he didn’t recognize. At first the computer didn’t know how to display the file, but Spiros knew why that was. Thinking on his toes, he quickly installed a translation subroutine so the terminal could not only display but also translate Zarlack into Universum. Then an extremely detailed schematics rundown appeared of what looked like a gigantic installation located inside the Gatos Nebula.

  A feat in and of itself! he thought. File notes concerning the nebula’s composition made him wonder how they’d managed to construct anything in such a volatile environment without blowing themselves to kingdom come.

  One thing in particular caught his attention: an immensely powerful shield generator. But it followed, of course, that the whole shipyard’s construction would depend on this one thing. It must have been built first, and allowed them to not only shield themselves from catastrophe during the assembling of the rest of the facilities, but also helped reduce the nebula’s atmospheric particulate density within the shielded area. Surely it would take a major catastrophic explosion for any of the particles to ignite within the shielded area.

  It was an ingenious design, one he admitted he’d probably never have thought of. The shield generator was itself also protected by a self-generated shield engine, much more powerful than even the biggest Zarlack’s or Obsidian ships carried onboard. While his scientist mind was in awe of all the data he was observing, he had to remind himself that he had a job to do.

  But the plans and the highly resilient encryption confirmed him one thing: this installation was important to the enemy. If they left in such a hurry, it could mean only one thing. Something or someone put their plans in jeopardy. Gatos was only a few hours away in hyperspace, at what was once the outskirts of Obsidian territory. The Alliance or any other power out there must have been in the process of attacking the facility. That meant that he needed to contact them at all cost, so he might be rescued from here. Once he’d found a way back to the Alliance, he could give them all his precious research to fight back at the enemy.

  He brought up a status of the station. Everything was running reasonably well, all considering; his station was fully operational. He considered opening a subspace transmission, and just flooding it with a distress call. But this might also attract the wrong crowd, and whether or not they could decrypt the message, they could probably still track it. So he decided first to install R&D upgrades into the station’s systems. The weapons would require some hardware upgrades to be fully upgraded to his specs, but some of his energy efficiency subroutines could probably give them a sufficient boost in power. His ace in the hole was that he’d already installed pretty much everything needed to make the shields at least stronger than anything Obsidian or Zarlack.

  An hour later, he was satisfied that he could defend himself and the station from even a medium-large fleet, should the enemy get the transmission before the Alliance did. He started working on his message. He also added anti-jamming subroutines into them, so they would cut through enemy jamming fields. He considered that part was vital, especially if Obsidian and the Alliance were fighting it out in the nearby Gatos system.

  He reviewed his modifications one last time and then hit the comm button on his terminal to start recording his message.

  Here goes nothing, he thought before he started
talking.

  C H A P T E R

  XXVII

  The chaos after the rescue maneuver had left many aboard the Hope wounded or knocked unconscious. Chase called for medical emergency aid to the bridge but nobody arrived. Doubtless similar incidents had happened all over the ship. With most systems down when ripped from the nebula, they’d all felt the full brunt of abrupt acceleration, as well as the hasty jump into hyperspace.

  One thing was sure now, Ares had been right: evidently Argos needed Chase alive. That act had provided definite proof. It still bugged him that he didn’t know why, but at least Sarah, he and the baby were all still alive, thanks to it.

  Sarah seemed a little shaken up from everything that just had happened.

  “What the hell was that? What just happened, Chase?”

  Chase lifted one finger to make her wait before answering, and opened a channel to engineering.

  She lowered her eyebrows, looking frustrated he didn’t answer.

  “Yanis, please respond?”

  A few seconds passed and he repeated the request but still no answer. A pit started forming in his stomach as he remembered the promise he’d made to Fillio.

  “Yanis!”

  “Uuuuurgh... I... I’m still here, but my head is ringing.”

  Chase sighed in relief.

  “You’re okay, buddy?”

  “Wouldn’t go that far. What the hell was that? And how are we still alive and discussing it?”

  “As improbable as it sounds, we were rescued by a behemoth-class Zarlack ship.”

  “Nah, I’m dead or asleep and this is a dream. Ouch! No… I’m awake. I can’t believe it.”

  “I can. I don’t know why, but it’s clear that Argos wants me alive.”

  “How would you know?”

  “He told me a second before he rescued us.”

  “Yeah, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The guy obliterates the Alliance, almost destroys Earth. And now he saves you from the very trap he erected in order to kill us? Do you see the irony here?”

  “Look, I can only surmise that he never thought I’d sacrifice myself in order to save the fleet. Furthermore, since it’s now pretty clear that we have a spy in our midst, he must have known I was onboard the toughest ship. He probably thought he could thoughtlessly destroy the opposition and just spare me.”

  That gave Chase pause. Whoever was working with him would be someone relatively close. Someone with access to sensitive data.

  “How’s the ship doing, Yanis?”

  “Power is restored to ninety percent. We’re no longer in hyperspace but we’re still in tractor lock. We can’t feel it anymore because our inertial dampeners are back online.”

  “The crew of the bridge is pretty shaken up. Some haven’t regained consciousness. I need to make that ship go away.”

  “Then use your precious gadget. It ought to give you enough control to make that happen.”

  Right, Chase thought, the neurolink interface!

  “Thanks, Yanis. Make sure the ship purrs like a kitten. I think this is going to be a long, hard day.”

  “No shit!”

  Sarah was still there, fixed on Chase expectantly.

  “Sorry, I just didn’t think it was necessary for me to say the same thing twice.”

  “You could have just said that. However… What the fuck?”

  “I know.”

  She made a head movement that could only underline her previous comment.

  “That’s why we need to deal with him once and for all.”

  Chase put the cylindrical neurolink devices to his temple and went back to his captain’s chair. He sat down and closed his eyes.

  “We need to get back to the rest of the fleet, stat,” he added for Sarah’s benefit. “Give me a minute to get rid of our tow truck.”

  “One minute, huh?” she said with a smile.

  “Uhum,” Chase said with a smile.

  Chase powered the shields, which effectively shut down the tractor beam linking the two ships. He then lost no time powering up the main guns, turrets and torpedoes, and locked on the target. He activated them all at max power, giving a new meaning to the phrase “give it all you’ve got.” The ship’s shield took most of the incoming fire, but they quickly lowered. Once the first main guns’ plasma canon fired, they were almost down to nothing. Then the ship blinked as it entered hyperspace, fleeing.

  “Thanks for the tow!” Chase added sarcastically.

  While he would never admit it out loud, he was glad the ship escaped. He could have blown it out of space without breaking a sweat, but they’d just saved his whole crew. Whether it had been remotely controlled by Argos, or captained by one of his lackeys didn’t really matter. That ship had saved their hide, so he was glad he didn’t have to deal with any conscience conundrums which eradicating them would have brought.

  He displayed a star map on his virtual instruments and attempted hailing the rest of the fleet through the Destiny.

  The face of Commodore Saroudis appeared in the virtual view screen, but the image shook.

  “Chase? How is that even possible?”

  “I’m afraid to say, Argos saved our hide. I don’t understand it either. But what’s going on? Things look shaky over there.”

  “Argos? What? Yeah. I’m so glad to see you, no matter the reason. Where are you right now? We’re getting our asses kicked. We can’t jump out of the area. They’ve brought three Jump Interdiction Fields ships and we’re in the middle of a kill box.”

  “Send your coordinates. I’ll be there shortly. You hang on, Adonis!”

  Chase realized it was the first time he’d ever addressed his former captain by his first name.

  “Roger that. Coordinates sent. Hope you can help us out of this mess or we’ll be dead in minutes. We’ve already lost four ships. All Obsidian ships but one were destroyed. But the last one just decided to retreat at subspace speed. Fortunately the Droxians are holding steady, and have only lost two ships.”

  “Hang on, we’re on our way. Sarah, you’d better go to your StarFury. We’ve got to help the fleet. They’re under attack.”

  “On my way,” she said, storming out of the bridge.

  Chase entered the coordinates and activated hyperspace engines. With a blur they entered the hyperspace corridor.

  When the Hope got out of hyperspace less than a minute later, Chase was mortified by the chaos and fireworks from the ongoing battle. Indeed, the Zarlacks had them surrounded, though probably with no more ships than their own forces. But the fact that they were all around the fleet made things more complicated for the Alliance battle group. Chase analyzed his sensor data and saw three ships that were heavily damaged within the Zarlack ranks. He locked every torpedo available onto the first one, directed every turret to fire towards the second and tagged the third for later, since it was currently out of range. He unleashed the full power of the Hope upon his newly designated targets, as he felt the Fury in him boil with rage and determination.

  He transferred every ounce of energy from redundant and non-essential systems to the weapons, even transferring thirty percent of shield power so he could boost weapon efficiency to one hundred and thirty percent. The salvo of twenty-five torpedoes blew up the first ship immediately. The resulting shockwave lowered the second destroyer’s shields by a hefty margin upon impact. The continuous stream of turret fire continued pounding and draining them. He then brought main weapons to bear. He selected a twenty-five percent shot so the recharge would take less time, and fired upon the crippled ship. The last of its shield collapsed, while the long range turrets’ fire started to blow holes in its armor. Soon the enemy stopped firing, after losing main power, and a single torpedo strategically launched towards the launching bays had the expected result of generating secondary explosions. The second destroyer ripped itself apart, spewing flames, crewmen and debris all around it.

  “Welcome back, bro,” said Argos in his mind.

  “I’m just gettin
g started. I’m coming for you next!” said Chase, feeling like he was in a trance.

  “Now is that any way to thank me for my leniency? How ungrateful of you.”

  Chase’s blood boiled, but he decided to not let his brother’s antagonism divert his focus from the battle. He would first turn the tables on that battle, then deal with Argos.

  A beep informed Chase that the third ship he had tagged just entered main weapon’s range. It was time for the crew to say goodbye to their dear lives. He fired a full-powered shot from the main guns, which vaporized the ship upon impact.

  “Impressive toy you have bro... Let’s see how it works when you get all the aggro, shall we?”

  “Give me everything you’ve got, Argos. Try and enjoy yourself while it lasts though; your hours in this world are limited!”

  “Your overconfidence will be your downfall.”

  Chase forced himself to not continue the banter, as he knew full well that it created more rage within him, that he could lose control. At the very least it would cloud his judgment and this wasn’t the time.

  Suddenly, almost every ship from the Zarlack armada adjusted vector towards EAD Hope. Oops! Soon he was taking fire from at least seven destroyers, two of them behemoth class. Chase quickly redistributed power to reload his shields. He managed full power and then some, and gritted his teeth: quickly weapons were no longer the priority, shields were.

  “Dude, are you seriously piloting the Hope in battle with only your mind?” said Yanis over the comm.

  “Easy peasy.”

  “Yeah, something I don’t understand though: you seem to be affecting systems I haven’t even given you control over. Like power distribution. How the hell are you managing THAT?”

  “I don’t know, but it seems to be working.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Granted, I know little about Furies, but damn!”

  “Nothing but instinct.”

  “What matters is that we kick these guys’ asses. I’ll let you do what you’re doing. Obviously you’re now in charge of this battle.”