by Geoff North
“You have a soft touch. Maybe you should transfer to Medical section when we get home.”
“That would be more stressful than fighting aliens. Sick people make me nervous.”
“Is that your hypochondria talking?”
“Yeah, I guess.” He rubbed the last bit of dark red away from her chin. “Data storage is a lonely job, but it’s relatively safe.”
“So was military training. I’d give anything to be back on the simulation deck instead of being stuck in here… no offence.”
Hail grinned. “None taken.” He checked inside the pocket of his flight suit to make sure the homing beacon was still active. The light was still blinking red. “What are the chances of them really finding us?”
“We’re way off course. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”
“I might have to.”
They both laughed out loud at that. Kella looked directly into his light blue eyes and considered telling him she couldn’t think of anyone else she’d rather be stuck inside a gunner’s turret with. A band of light passed over his face—a reflection. She looked straight up, through the canopy dome they’d replaced ten minutes earlier, and saw a streak of silver pass over the gorge.
Hail had seen it as well. “They’ve found us! Ambition knows we’re here.”
“I don’t think that was anyone from home.” She handed Hail his helmet. “Get ready.”
A bolt of orange shot down, blinding them. Bee’s left wing was blown to pieces into the rock wall next to them. “We’ve got to get back out!” Kella shouted. She pulled the emergency canopy release handle, and the glass covering popped off and rolled away. Hail pulled himself out and grabbed onto Kella. A second explosion tore through Bee’s back end, throwing the two forward, over the ship’s front and onto the ground.
Kella got to her feet first and dragged Hail up from his knees. “You ever fire a side cannon before?”
Hail reached for the pistol holstered against his right thigh. “In the practice tank, and those rounds were tracking bursts only.”
“Me too.” Kella was already pointing her weapon up the gorge trail. “They said firing live rounds feels just the same. So if you see anything move, shoot.”
Hail’s hand shook as he followed her back to the top. The weapon bobbed back and forth erratically. This was insane, he thought. It couldn’t be happening. Reality set in again halfway up. A streak of blue light punched into Kella from a hundred meters ahead. She fell back into Hail. He lowered her to the ground and fired his side cannon blindly. The concentrated plasma burst struck the gorge wall fifty meters beyond and sprayed melted globs of rock.
Seconds later something appeared in the far range of Hail’s exterior helmet light—something big running on six legs. Hail took better aim and fired two more rounds. The first burst took out one of the legs, the second smacked directly into what looked like its head. The thing collapsed to the rock floor in a shower of sparks. It slid along a few more feet, kicking up grey dust and churning out smoke before coming to a stop less than thirty meters away.
Hail jammed the weapon back into its holster and began dragging Kella back to the ship. There wasn’t time to see if she was alive or dead. He worked for the next ten minutes in a daze, pulling her back into the gun turret and replacing the canopy cover over both of them.
The cabin pressurized. Hail removed his helmet and spoke to her. “Kella… Kella. Are you still with me?”
Her eyes opened behind the visor. “Yeah… with you still. Looks like… that practice in the tank paid off.”
Hail looked down and saw a dark red splotch spreading out rapidly on her side. The space suits they wore were designed to release a second ‘artificial skin’ beneath the main fabric in case of rupture. That interior membrane had begun to pull away in the cabin’s oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere.
Kella Sa was bleeding out, and there wasn’t near enough gauze or bandages onboard in what remained of Bee to stop it.
Chapter 14
Colonel Geth Cules barked out orders to the squadron bosses around him as he suited up into his heavy-armor space suit. The bosses scrambled away and issued their own commands to the platoon chiefs. The chiefs then instructed their miluns to get in their fighters and haul their sorry asses out into space.
Geth paused a few seconds before lowering his helmet into place for one last look at the mayhem erupting before him. They should’ve been ready for this; they’d been preparing for centuries. Another discharge of alien weaponry pounded somewhere against Ambition’s outer hull. The cavernous military bay walls shuddered. A few more hits like that and there would be nothing left to fight for, the Colonel thought. He pounded each of his boots into the deck plating beneath him for good luck, stood up from the removable stairs set against his fighter, and climbed into the gunner’s turret.
The canopy began to drop down automatically once he was seated. The five bosses, ten chiefs, and five-hundred miluns that had hastily begun to assemble four minutes earlier in Ambition’s primary ‘fighter garage’ were strapping in and powering up their ships as well. Geth spoke into his helmet mic, addressing all of them on an open line. “We’re not sending out anymore goddamned scouting parties… no more training runs in empty space. This is the real deal.”
The thirty-meter wide exterior bay door had begun to lift open. A translucent sheet of green appeared before it—the emergency atmospheric shield had activated, guaranteeing any stragglers not yet safely buckled in had less than thirty seconds to get their canopy covers down and cabins pressurized. Geth’s milun pilot signaled the Colonel with a thumb up that every fighter was ready to go. “Our people have been attacked and killed,” Geth continued. “The last defense net fighter was destroyed less than a minute ago, and I want that race of alien slime to pay for their sacrifice.”
A single beep sounded in his right ear. He was receiving a private communication from Ambition’s Military Commander Second, Seginus Boo. Geth cut the open feed and listened to the soft-spoken man. “Just thought you’d like to know before setting out… The bridge took a direct hit. The Captain, his second, and at least eight other section heads were killed in that first round of attacks.”
Geth ground his teeth. “That puts our newly appointed General in command of the ship.”
“Correct. And it now makes me the Captain’s Second. We’re all moving up in rank, Colonel Cules. If you make it back, chances are you’ll have my old job.”
Geth grimaced. “To hell with that. I’ve been waiting my whole life to take it to these bastards. I belong out there where I can make a difference.”
“I agree wholeheartedly. Make a difference, Colonel. Show the Pegans what we’re made of.”
The communication ended. The atmospheric shield winked out. The Colonel’s ship—nicknamed Shark by his grandfather seventy years earlier—was closest to the fully opened bay door. It was the first in two staggered lines of fighters that extended back into the bay for half a kilometer. Geth instructed his pilot to take them out. “Follow my lead, fighters. For Ambition… for Earth… for our future.”
Shark lifted from the floor and swung to its port side towards open space. Sulafat had been an old fool, Geth thought. Tor Emin wouldn’t be much better, but at least he had a military background. The half-drunk Colonel was even preferable to that bitch Ries, or the incompetent Shain Agle. He pondered why Sulafat had skipped over Seginus and placed Tor in charge. Why Emin instead of Geth himself, for that matter? They were the only two equally-ranked colonels serving on Ambition, and Geth was ten years older.
Who the hell cares? Shark cleared the bay and set off into space. I’m where I need to be… where I want to be. The pilot angled their fighter a few degrees starboard. Geth could see a massive black impact gouge a hundred meters below the garage bay door. Ambition’s entire exterior was undoubtedly peppered with them by now. The alien weapons delivered plenty of punch, but the Colonel was sure they could hit back harder.
Something much smaller caught hi
s eye—a pulsing blue light no bigger than a man’s fist. It was attached to a featureless white cube approximately a quarter the size of an Ambition fighter ship. The cube had adhered itself on the outer edge of the bay door Shark and eleven other fighters had already flown past.
There wasn’t time for the Colonel to train his guns on it. There wasn’t even time to yell at his milun pilot to take evasive action. The alien device exploded, tearing into the open bay and shooting outwards at the departing ships. Geth didn’t feel a thing in the instant he was atomized.
Ambition’s chain of command had lost a few more links.
Chapter 15
Platoon Chief Laris Bear watched in horror as fighter after fighter was incinerated in an oncoming wave of fiery orange. Two-hundred and fifty ships were being lost before his eyes. Over five-hundred fighting men and women taken out in a single hit, and he would be one of them in another moment or two.
The energy from the alien weapon continued to disperse down the length of the bay. It had begun to lose some of its ferocity. Fighters were no longer evaporating one after another, they were being lifted and slammed into the next ship in line. Laris clutched onto the gun control handles inside his weapons turret and braced for impact.
The force at which the neighboring fighter slammed into his ship was still shocking. He felt his left shoulder dislocate against the safety harness. The gun controls broke off in his hands, and the canopy over his head popped off. The inside of his cockpit was folding up against his side. There was a second jarring collision from the right as his ship careened into an interior bay wall. Metal squished up a little more all around him and suddenly stopped.
Smoke billowed out from a hundred cracks in the demolished console and sparks rained down around the stunned Laris for a full ten seconds before he could comprehend that he’d survived. He tried unbuckling the harness locks with both hands but his entire left arm had gone numb. Laris struggled with his right and finally got them unfastened. He called out to his pilot in the cockpit below. She didn’t answer. It took another minute to wriggle his legs out from under the wreckage and climb out onto the crumpled hull of his ship. There were no wings left to stand on.
He crawled down to the pilot’s cockpit, hoping the young flyer was merely unconscious. She had been squished flat, some of her interior organs had oozed up between sheets of buckled steel. Laris turned his head away quickly and fought the urge to gag.
He avoided looking down at her again and surveyed the destruction around him. It was considerable. More than three quarters of the fighters closest to the now destroyed hangar door were gone. Those that remained—the twenty-four ships under his direct command—were squeezed up around Laris in a steaming, half-melted wall that looked like mud. The green atmospheric shield at the far end of the bay had reactivated, attempting to cover a much larger opening than before. The vacuum of space had suffocated the flames and cooled the melting debris enough to re-establish a breathable environment once again. It had all taken place in less than a minute.
He lifted his visor and called out a single name. “Tania!” No one answered. He shouted it again and heard only his echo. Laris removed his helmet and tossed it down to the floor. The visor shattered upon impact. It didn’t surprise him; everything else had broken and failed to work. He called his wife’s name again, but she didn’t answer. He kept yelling, hoping that someone—anyone—had survived besides him. Nothing. He climbed down from the remains of his ship and checked through the wreckage anyway. A booming automated voice called out over the sound system.
Warning… Limited life detected in fighter bay 1. Atmospheric shield will discontinue in thirty seconds to preserve ship power. Warning… Atmospheric shield will discontinue in twenty-five seconds.
Laris made his way back through the debris, limping over the remains of what was once fighter ships and human beings. He looked down at his broken helmet and cursed.
Twenty seconds.
There were three exits at the far end of the bay. Laris made it to the first and discovered the door melted into the joining wall.
Ten seconds.
He ran towards the second exit. There wouldn’t be time to make it to the third. The second door was smeared in black, its surface pitted with shards of glass and slivers of metal. Laris pressed a button on the console pad built into the surrounding frame.
Five seconds.
The door opened and Laris slipped through. He needed to get to Ambition’s second fighter garage and get his hands on another ship. The Pegans would pay dearly for what they’d done.
Chapter 16
“Garage 1 is gone, Captain,” Argus reported from the communications terminal. “An alien explosive attached itself to the exterior and detonated moments after the doors opened.”
Sulafat was leaning against the arm of his command chair, still attempting to catch his breath. He stared at the main viewing screen trying to make sense of it all. Ambition’s automated video drones were displaying the ongoing assault from a kilometer away on nine separate channels. One by one the feeds were blinking out. The Pegans were destroying everything. The drone situated near garage 1 had been the first to go. “How many people lost?”
“I can’t give you an accurate number, sir.” She was listening in on a dozen lines simultaneously, and reading from a dozen more screens around her. “But it sounds bad from what I can make out. More than two-hundred fully powered fighters were still inside, so if you do the math—”
“At least four-hundred lives,” Sulafat finished.
“There’s more. From what I’m hearing it seems that what’s left of Military Command believes the bridge was hit along with your quarters. They think you and most of the section heads are dead.”
There was another distant rumble. Sulafat felt a brief shudder under his feet. Another part of his ship had been hit hard. I should be dead. He tried to take a full breath. The attempt was agonizing. His lungs had been damaged. I should be out there drifting in space… not Sheratan. He smacked an open palm against the chair console, but felt nothing. More suffocated nerve endings. It had been even worse for Vin Vir. She was in good hands, he thought. Gulum would take care of the girl.
“It’s true, sir.” Tor was leaning against the weapons station on the other side of the bridge receiving communications of his own. “They think I’m the Captain now.”
Sulafat spun his command chair around slowly. He took in every major section: communication, weapons, propulsion, environment, and navigation. There was a flurry of disorganized activity at each of them. Faces he recognized but couldn’t put names to were running from console to console, gathering information on the ship’s condition and trying to account for the dead. Where had they all come from? Why had his bridge gotten so crowded?
“Captain?” Nash was standing down on the main deck next to him. “Are you well enough to continue? Perhaps we should go to Medical.”
I should be dead. We should all be dead. But we’re not… I’m sitting here for a reason.
Sulafat shook his head at the robot. “No medical, not yet.” He stood up and yelled. “Everyone that doesn’t need to be on the bridge, clear out now!” He staggered down the steps towards the weapons section. “General Emin, tell your officers the bridge and its command structure is intact. This old captain isn’t retiring just yet.”
“Yes, sir,” the relieved Tor answered. “Garage 2 is awaiting instructions. All ships are fired up and ready to go.”
The Captain glanced up quickly at the remaining drone videos left on the main screen. Garage 2 feed wasn’t among them. “Keep all remaining fighters inside. No one else is going out and losing their life today if I can help it.”
Sulafat picked up speed and confidence on his way to communications. He slammed a fist down on Argus’s console and took great pleasure at the dim stinging he felt there. “Turn off all the goddamn chatter. Keep emergency lines open only. We can’t help anyone with everyone trying to talk at the same time.”
He s
houted more commands to the people left around him. “We’ve taken heavy damage, but Ambition is still functioning. Let the Pegans believe she’s dead. Cut all power, except to environmental and medical.”
“Captain, is that wise?” Nash asked. “It will leave us completely open to further attacks.”
“It will, but I’m hoping their curiosity will stop them from destroying us altogether.” Sulafat climbed back up the command dais and sat down again. “Let them believe we no longer pose any kind of threat.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult,” Argus muttered. “We never did.”
“Pardon me?” Sulafat asked. “I didn’t catch that last part.”
“Nothing relevant, Captain. Just wondering out loud.”
The last two video feeds died out on the main screen. Sulafat turned to Nash. “Are any of our fighters still out there?”
It took the android less than a second to lock onto a signal. “One ship twelve and a half kilometers aft of Ambition. The pilot and gunner are both dead, but I should be able to maneuver what’s left by automatic control.”
“See if you can establish video… we have to see what’s going on out there.”
The blank view screen flickered. Moments later an image of deep space filled the bridge. The stars were moving lazily by on a diagonal path. The fighter they’d locked onto was drifting. Ambition came into view a few seconds after. Sulafat heard Argus gasp. Tor cursed quietly.
Their home was a smoking, pitted ruin. But she was still in one piece, Sulafat noted. Not everything was lost. The ship moved off screen as the dead fighter continued to list. Six more objects came into view. They were narrow strips of silver, running parallel to each other in uniform formation.