by Geoff North
Raze had belonged to Shain Agle not so long ago, but the ex-General wasn’t in command of military operations anymore—Tor Emin was, and Tor’s orders from the top were clear; lead a three-pronged attack force against the planet of Pega, and rescue Hadar Cen in the process.
Tor opened a line to Ambition. “We’re ready here, Gacrux. Send out the reinforcements and wish us luck.”
“They’re on the way now, General.”
The line was closed without another word. To hell with Gacrux, Tor thought. He didn’t need the propulsion head’s blessings, only his co-operation. Ambition was under the command of Neil Lennix once again, its rightful leader. If anyone had issue with that, they could join Ly Sulafat in the brig.
Sixty moving lights appeared from the far side of Ambition. The video drones rose above the massive ship and formed a three-kilometer-long line. They had all been converted into collapse bombs, and there would be one accompanying every four fighter ships in the force heading for the planet. Tor spoke again into his helmet for all the men and women surrounding him to hear. “Okay everyone, punch your call numbers into the computers so our watch dogs know which ships are theirs’ to protect. We don’t want them getting confused and mistaking us for Pegan fighters.” The drones started to separate into smaller groupings, heading towards their assigned ships.
Tor gave the order to begin their mission. “In groups of three, people. One wave at a time. Alpha—you’re up first.”
Eighty fighters and their accompanying drones broke away from the main pack and swung out over the surface of Mantus. They picked up speed, and within half a minute disappeared from view altogether. “Go, Beta,” Tor commanded. Eighty more ships and twenty more drones headed away, around the moon’s opposite side.
A voice broke in through Tor’s helmet speakers. “General Emin, this is Admiral Lennix. Keep an eye on your herd, bring back as many as you can.”
“Affirmative, Admiral. I’ll be bringing Hadar Cen home as well.” A few hours ago Tor had wanted Hadar dead. But things had changed. He no longer had to keep the Council and its objective a secret. Order had finally been restored aboard Ambition. The original command team was back in charge. Tor would gladly bring Hadar Cen home to a hero’s welcome.
“General,” Lennix continued, “there’s someone else here that would like to speak with you.”
There was a pause. “Hello, Tor.”
He had never heard the man’s voice before, but Tor knew instinctively who it belonged to. “Hello, Major Weston.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting you, son. We have a lot of family catching up to do. Come home safe.”
Tor had dreamed of this moment, hearing the voice of his distant ancestor—meeting face to face with him. Now that the moment was actually here, he had no idea what to say. “I… I’ll see you soon, sir.” The audio feed to Ambition was cut, and Gamma group departed last.
Squadron Boss Wez Canis was the first to fly around Mantus and see the planet of Pega through the canopy cover of his ship. It hung in the blackness like a blue and white gem, seemingly defenseless and totally vulnerable to attack. More than a hundred yellow points of light suddenly appeared on the canopy’s grid before him, indicating the planet was anything but helpless. “Multiple contacts, Alpha. Spread out and send the drones in first. If this goes as planned, we won’t have to fire a single shot.”
The eighty fighters cut their speed to half and broke into four groupings of twenty. The drones accelerated, and shot ahead. Wez watched as the approaching alien ships blasted six of them away in less than three seconds. A blinking red spot on his grid indicated the drone assigned to his four ships wasn’t one of them. He reached forward and held a thumb over the switch that would automatically trigger the drone’s fold drive to stall. Wez kept his eyes glued to the red spot as it moved closer towards the yellow points.
Fifty kilometers. Forty… Thirty… Twenty. An alarm buzzed through his helmet speakers, and Wez pulled down on the switch. The red spot disappeared, taking nine yellow points of light with it. Six more dropped off the grid a few seconds later, and another ten moments after that. Wez took a few slow breaths and waited for the fourth drone to implode. More than a dozen alien contacts blinked out of existence on his grid. “Evasive maneuvers, people. We don’t want to risk the chance of falling into those collapse events before they close up completely.”
Alpha group swung away from the remaining Pegan ships. Eighty more friendly contacts appeared on the chief’s grid. Beta was on its way to deliver a second round of deadly drone attacks. “We’re on our own now, Alpha. It’s up to our gunners to get us through the next wave of Pegan defenses if there are any. Planet-bound fighters—you have your landing coordinates. I’ll see you all on the surface soon.”
A flash of white from the starboard side of Wez’s fighter blinded him momentarily. One of the four ships in his grouping had been destroyed. More alien contacts had appeared on the grid directly in front of them. He locked on to the lead ships and fired his missiles. An eruption of orange appeared moments later.
“You got one of them, Boss!”
“Yeah, imagine that.” Wez seemed more surprised than his milun pilot. Up until now, the Pegan ships had seemed practically invulnerable to conventional weaponry, and almost impossible to detect with their scanners. Perhaps they had already expended the best of their military capabilities in the attack on Ambition. The alien avant-garde was behind them. The two species were now fighting with equal capabilities.
A second Ambition fighter blew apart half a kilometer above them. “We’re spread too far apart! They’re picking us off one by one. All Alpha fighters form up around me—we’ll create a wedge and drive it through the center of them.”
The remaining fighters pulled in tight to the boss’s ship. They fired all weapons simultaneously, throwing a concentrated bombardment of missiles and laser bursts into the heart of the alien force. The Pegan ships began breaking apart, returning fire as their main body spread out. Five more Alpha ships were blasted away, but the majority made it through.
Wez’s pilot spoke again. “They’re forming up again behind us, sir!”
The squadron boss pushed down on a pedal with his left foot and the entire weapons turret spun around. “Full speed to the planet, pilot. We only have to hold them off for a few more seconds until Beta group shows up.” Wez fired a pair of missiles at two advancing Pegan ships. One hit its target; the other missile blinked out of existence along with the second craft. “Looks like there here already.”
Beta’s collapse bomb spread couldn’t be witnessed with the naked eye, but its effects could be seen on the canopy grid as one red Pegan blip after another vanished. General Emin’s Gamma group would clean up whatever alien threat remained after Beta.
“Entering planet’s upper atmosphere, Boss. We’re on the home stretch.”
“I’d hardly call it home yet.” Their fighter began to shake and rattle as it punched into heavier air. “This war’s just getting started.”
Chapter 43
Captain Sulafat was being taken from Ambition’s brig back to his personal quarters. That’s all the information the four-man-armed escort would give him. The elevators and travel tubes had been cleared before hand; he hadn’t seen a single member of his crew—hadn’t been allowed any contact with another living soul—since his incarceration.
Incarceration for what?
Sulafat may no longer have been in command, but he hadn’t committed any crimes. He had been against the war, but had abided to the vote. He had even approved the conversion of video drones into collapse bombs, giving them the upper hand in the conflict. So why was he still in wrist restraints?
He had felt sorry for himself for too many years—questioning his ability to lead more than ten thousand people into a questionable future at his age. But age had its benefits. He knew all of them by name, and the four guards pushing him towards whatever fate waited ahead were no exception.
“Arneb Lepus,”
he said the first name without looking at the man directly to his right. “Your father was in security as well. He was a good man.”
Lepus took hold of his shoulder. “Keep moving, sir.”
“Sir... I’m relieved to hear you can still show some sense of respect.”
The man to Sulafat’s left wasn’t as gracious. “Keep your mouth shut. You’re not giving orders anymore.”
“Al Nair. Your mother was a teacher. She’d be disappointed in you, son.”
“You talk like my mother’s dead. She isn’t. Neither is Arneb’s father. Maybe if you’d spent the last few years being more involved with the lives of the people onboard this ship instead of plotting a return to Earth, you wouldn’t be where you are now.”
Nair was right. Sulafat may have known the names of everyone presently serving on his ship, but he hadn’t kept in contact with many of the men and women that had served when he was a younger man. Apparently their opinions of him had been handed down to the sons and daughters. The resentment and mistrust had been building for decades. Sulafat didn’t bother saying anything to the two remaining guards trailing after them.
They arrived at his quarters. The place had been tidied up. Every piece of broken furniture, every last shred of paper from his destroyed books, and all the pictures that once hung on his walls had been removed. It felt like he was being erased from Ambition’s history, and in a sense, that was true. All that remained was for him to hear it from the man that had stripped him of his command.
Admiral Neil Lennix was seated at the head of the conference table. Nash was standing behind him, a silent and unmoving sentinel. Sulafat paused and stared at the man. His skin was too white, his sunken eyes appeared too dark. That’s what spending seven hundred years frozen solid can do to you, he supposed.
“Captain Sulafat,” he announced. “Please take a seat at the end of the table and we’ll begin your trial.”
“Trial? You’ve already relieved me of command. What crime have I committed? Nash… how can you just stand there and allow this to happen?”
Arneb Lepus pulled him along. Sulafat looked at each of the dead-eyed, pale faces seated at the table. Men and women born on Earth—military leaders and corporate executives that had been revived to fulfill Ambition’s original mission—a mission he had regrettably started to carry out.
He was forced down into the chair where Tor Emin had received his promotion. “I’ll ask again, what crime have I committed?”
“Gross incompetence,” Chort Leo answered. He was sitting at Lennix’s immediate right. “Your negligence and indecisiveness led directly to this ship being attacked. Hundreds of lives lost, including your CS and three other section heads.”
Zosma Lion—the only other crew member Sulafat knew personally in the room—was seated next to Chort. “You almost lost this ship before we made it to Pega. That would’ve been very bad for business.”
“Business? You oversee our religious communities,” Sulafat said. “What the hell are you even doing here?”
A few people chuckled. The woman sitting next to Zosma spoke. “Mr. Lion represents far more than Ambition’s spiritual needs. He is the last in a long-serving line of faithful employees. He is a representative of Ganymede Unlimited, Phoebus Mining, and Kuiper Belt Power—the three largest sponsors of this venture.”
Sulafat recognized all the ancient corporate names. They were still etched into plaques and bulkheads throughout the ship, ancient reminders of Ambition’s original purpose. “This vessel was militarized centuries ago. We were sent out here to respond to the Pegan threat—not to further the needs of some power-hungry conglomerate.”
“We were sent out here to do both,” Lennix replied calmly. “Pega did indeed threaten us a long time ago, but there was more to it than that. Very few people living on Earth at the time were aware that we’d contacted the Pegans first.”
“That’s… not how it happened,” Sulafat said. “They found us.”
The man seated to the left of Lennix leaned forward. “Both civilizations had been aware of each other’s existence for almost fifty years, but we initiated first contact out of necessity. Earth’s power demands were great—our population had grown to record levels. The terra-formed cities on Mars, Europa, and Callisto could no longer accommodate our growing numbers. We had to spread out, but couldn’t tell our people the entire truth.”
“Major Weston is correct,” Zosma said. “Earth needed Pega’s resources, and we had to have a good reason to go take them.”
“The Pegans turned you down,” Sulafat finished for him. “They said no, and told you to stay away. This entire mission, all these long centuries of travel… it’s all been based on a lie.”
Lennix stood. “They still threatened to end our existence!”
“Only if you entered their system!” Sulafat was standing now as well, shaking his cuffed hands before him. “They were defending themselves!” Arneb and Al Nair took hold of his arms and pushed him back down. “You can end this now, Admiral. We’ve had no contact with Earth in over seven hundred years. Something’s happened—something must have changed during all this time. This damned mission of ours no longer has any meaning.”
The Admiral placed his fists on the table. “Captain Ly Sulafat… I find you guilty of once harboring traitorous intentions of turning this vessel away from its original mission. I find you guilty for the deaths of over six hundred and twelve Ambition lives. Does anyone here wish to say a word in the Captain’s defense?”
Cold silence.
“Chort Leo and Zosma Lion will accompany you from these quarters under armed guard. You will be taken directly to fighter garage 2, where your life will be terminated by a firing squad.”
Sulafat was picked back up and forced towards the travel tube exit. He resisted near the doorway. “Nash! You can’t allow them to go through with this. We don’t need to go to war, we never did.”
“Unit Three,” Lennix said. “Accompany these men to the bay, and see Sulafat’s dead body ejected into space.”
“Yes, Admiral,” the robot obeyed. “It shall be done.”
Chapter 44
Tor Emin’s fighter set down in the grass with a heavy thump. “That was a rough landing, Foma. Perhaps your mind was elsewhere?”
“Sorry, General. Flying one of these things through a planetary atmosphere was tougher than I thought it would be. It was nothing like the simulations we ran back home.” The milun completed her landing checks and looked out around them. “And seeing all of this in person wasn’t something… well, it isn’t anything like I imagined.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to adjust.” Tor flipped the canopy release switch and began unbuckling. “Your orders are to remain here with the other fighters.” He pointed to a featureless grey building without windows off in the distance. “According to Nash, the Pegans have moved Hadar Cen again, back inside that facility.”
“You sure we can trust Nash, General? It seems awful strange that robot can track the movements of one of our people from so far away.” She hesitated and then added. “Maybe the Pegans are feeding him false information.”
“Maybe they are, maybe they’re not. I quit trying to figure out what makes that machine tick a long time ago.” Tor climbed out onto Raze’s port wing and began lowering himself to the ground. “Don’t worry about Nash. Let’s concentrate on finding Hadar.”
Tor jumped down to the grass and surveyed their surroundings. Thirty-six fighter ships had landed in the clearing from groups Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. They had planned for sixty.
Squadron Boss Wez Canis approached the General, his arm extended out in front of him. Tor took his hand and shook it. “Good to finally see you on solid ground, General. We’ve been monitoring Beta and Gamma group activity since setting down. I’d hoped we’d cleared a wide enough path for you to follow, but it looks like the Pegans had some other ideas.”
“Yeah, we had a little more to clean up than expected. How many fighters left in orbit?”<
br />
Wez grimaced. “One hundred ten.”
“One hundred ten,” Tor repeated in a whisper. “Two hundred and twenty more lives lost since setting out from Ambition. That throws total casualty levels close to a thousand.”
“Almost ten per cent of our world,” Wez added grimly.
Tor once again found himself wishing the hit he’d delivered on Hadar’s ship had killed him along with Kraz Corvus. No single person was worth that many lives. He wished Chort Leo could’ve revived the Seven sooner, and avoided a fighter-led attack on the planet altogether. The arsenal of ancient nuclear warheads stored on Ambition could have prevented all of this. Ly Sulafat had been too much of a coward to launch them. Admiral Lennix wouldn’t hesitate when the time came.
Tor clapped Wez on the back. “Not one more, Boss. I want you with me when we storm that building.” He stripped out of his space suit as all the other soldiers had done that had landed on the planet before him. He then opened the storage compartment located at the exterior of his fighter and began donning his lightweight body armor. Tor reached into a hidden pocket and produced a silver flask. He took a long swig and offered it to Wez. “Go on, finish it off. We’re going to kick some alien ass, and nothing makes you kick harder than this stuff.”
The boss waved it away. “I don’t think so, sir. We should—I want to keep my head clear.”
“Suit yourself.” Tor drank the rest down. “We’ll get good and drunk together back home when all this is over.” A rumbling noise sounded above them. They looked up and saw three Ambition fighters flying through the clouds. The ships roared over them, and disappeared into the far horizon a few seconds later. Tor set his rear end into the grass and pulled on his combat boots. “Have any of the sky patrols reported enemy movement?”
“Nothing yet. No activity on the ground whatsoever. It’s damn strange, I thought the place would’ve been swarming with activity.”