The Arwen Book one: Defender

by Timothy Callahan

  “So,” Marjorie said, “you want the Regals to make you a hero?”

  “No, more than that, I want them to think of me as a legend.”

  “You help save their planet, and I’m sure they will,” Kel replied.

  The chef brought in a tray with three cups of coffee and two plates of food. Marjorie’s plate had a hearty mix of fruit, eggs, and bacon. She liked the traditional meals, stuff that reminded her of her life back on Earth. Kel’s plate had large pancakes drenched in butter and syrup. She knew from his odd eating habits that this would most likely be the only thing he ate for the rest of the day. Martians were like that; they only ate one large meal throughout the day. Captain Cook and Commander Kel dug into their breakfasts while Ricter drank his coffee.

  “Tell me, Captain Cook, how long have you been in the Corps?”

  “Most of my life,” Marjorie replied. “I joined when I was old enough to join and worked my way to where I am now. Took me nearly ten years before I got this ship, and I’ve been captain of it for twenty.”

  “Long time to be a captain,” he replied. “Don’t they think you’re admiral material?”

  “She is,” Kel said. “She just doesn’t want to leave the chair, isn’t that right?”

  With a smile, Marjorie replied, “More or less, that’s true. Admirals don’t get to fly around the universe; they sit behind desks. I’d much rather be where the action is.”

  “So, the two of us aren’t that different, then, are we?”

  She could not think of anyone from whom she was more different than the professor. “You’ll have to explain what you mean. I don’t see us having much in common.”

  “Oh, we do. Hell, I’m not a military guy, and even I’ve heard of the great Captain Cook and the Arwen. This ship was the only ship to survive the Lunania ambush, am I right?”

  She nodded, trying not to remember that particular battle. There were only five ships in the fleet when several Lunania battle cruisers appeared out of wormhole space and started blasting away. The Arwen only survived by the sheer luck of having a skilled engineer who sacrificed his own life to get the emergency escape wormhole open. “You do know some history, Professor.”

  “It has nothing to do with that. That story has become a legend amongst the fleet. I’ll admit, I haven’t been on too many military ships like the Arwen, but I’ve been on enough and heard enough tales to know the Arwen is a ship that will one day be in a museum. And right next to it will be a big picture of her most famous captain: you.”

  “I still don’t see how that makes me like you.”

  “Don’t look down on me just because I want to make a name for myself. You already have, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I think you like the notoriety. That’s why you can’t leave: the Arwen without the captain is just another ship, and you, without the Arwen, are just another admiral.”

  “Well, thank you for that observation, Professor. I don’t really enjoy talking about myself, so I’m going to change the subject. What do you think we’ll find when we arrive at Regal tomorrow?”

  The smirk on his face reflected victory. It seemed the two of them were going to be fighting throughout most of this trip. Marjorie found, much to her surprise, that she might like going toe to toe with this man. “Well, if it’s as big as the reports say, then it’s not going to be easy to destroy from the outside. A comet is really nothing more than a giant snowball in space, and—”

  “We all know our science, Professor Ricter. Tell me something I might not know.”

  “Fine, what I was getting at was this. Since this comet didn’t originate in this system, it could be made of just about anything. It might not even be a comet in the traditional sense. If it’s got an iron core, then it could be impossible to destroy in time. What we might have to do is dig inside and blow it up from there, and that could take time as well.”

  “We’ll have about thirty hours from the time we arrive to the time it’s supposed to crash. How long do you think it’ll take for you to determine if we need to blow it up from the outside or the inside?”

  “Depends on the competence of my assistances. So far they seem okay, but we won’t know until we get there, will we? I think that I’ll know within a few hours.”

  “Whatever you need at that time, you can have it.” She looked over at Kel, and then quickly added, “You are right about one thing: for the first few hours of this mission, you’ll be the most important person here. After that it’s my show.”

  Chapter Four

  Marjorie sat in her chair watching Kel run around the bridge. She enjoyed studying him work so hard, yelling when needed, complimenting when someone did well; he radiated leadership. Pride swelled her belly knowing she had some part in making him that way. He stood in front of her; his skin glistened with a thin layer of sweat. “Leaving wormhole space in three minutes, particle accelerator charging up, strangelet creation in fifteen seconds.”

  “Well, it’ll be nice to get out of wormhole space,” she said. “I miss seeing stars.”

  Kel walked over to the bridge engineer and patted the crewman’s shoulder. “Keep an eye on the strangelet particle ratio. We don’t want to create more than we need.”

  The man nodded and continued with his work.

  “All right, we’re all set. Particle accelerator running at one hundred percent. Strangelet creation in three seconds. Opening front cone in one minute.”

  “How close are we going to be to the comet once we exit?” Marjorie asked.

  “Once we get out and powered up, we’ll be at the comet in about ten minutes.”

  The front of the cone opened and the ship rattled as the particle accelerator slammed atoms together. The sound the tip of the cone made as it opened reminded Marjorie of the sound a forklift made as it lifted cargo upwards: a high-pitched, loud whining noise.

  “Exiting wormhole space in five, four, three, two, one.”

  Like punching a hole in the side of a cardboard tube, the strangelet particles ripped a large hole into real space. Arwen exited wormhole space at a cautious speed. To anyone watching from outside, it would look as if the great ship passed through a hoop hovering in space, its stern hidden inside wormhole space, its bow glowing as bright as a sun.

  The monitors Marjorie used to view the outside of the ship blinked on. One of the cameras detected a swarm of small ships and swiveled around to view them. Several small boxes marked each unidentified object as ‘unknown.’

  Captain Cook leaned closer to the monitor in front of her. She looked up and asked with stern authority, “What are those?”

  The computer ran a fast check in its database. Ten Regal attack fighters heavily armed. She didn’t need anything else to go on; she knew instinctively the Arwen was under attack. “Battle stations!”

  The first fighter launched several rockets. “Raise the shields!”

  “No power for shields,” Kel said in an oddly calm voice. “We’re still charging up the main batteries.”

  The missile hit the naked skin of the Arwen, penetrated inside the armor, and exploded. Sheets of reflective metal peeled off into space.

  A second fighter launched its payload, followed by a third and then a fourth. Each hit the hull causing more destructive damage.

  “The missiles aren’t strong enough to penetrate our hull too deep, but if they keep firing we could get a hull breach,” Kel said, running over to a computer whose warning lights had lit and blinked frantically.

  “Get power for the shields up first, then weapons,” Captain Cook ordered.

  The last fighter fired its payload into the ship and broke off. Marjorie followed them on her screen as they met up and gathered into another formation. This time they formed a long parallel line next to the Arwen like a long string of pearls. They hovered in space, waiting until all the fighters were lined up. Then, one at a time, they rocketed toward the Arwen.

  Marjorie had fought in battles like this before. The enemy, for whatever reason, felt their own
lives were worth losing for a cause. They were the most dangerous enemy to fight.

  Kel hung over one of the stations yelling at the man behind it. “Get me the shields, now!” Then, frustrated at the man’s lack of action, pulled him out of his station. Kel frantically moved around the computer screen. “Shields up, but only at ten percent.”

  “We need more!” Marjorie felt helpless, watching the fighters as they grew close to her ship. They had spaced themselves out in such way that they would not crash all at once, but instead seconds apart.

  The first fighter collided into the shield and vaporized. Another fighter struck the shields and collapsed them. Less than a second later, a third fighter crashed and exploded. The debris from the impact was disintegrated by the fourth massive explosion from the suicide attacker. The fifth and sixth fighters defected off the hull and exploded harmlessly a good distance away. A seventh fighter hit but did not explode.

  The Arwen screamed as its metal was torn, burnt, and ripped from its skin. The last three fighters exploded seconds apart. Blackened scorch swaths marked the surface from aft to bow and from port to starboard. It was always the silence after an attack that made Marjorie nervous. She feared whoever they were would attack while the Arwen was crippled. “Damage report!”

  “Shields are gone,” Kel said. “We have several hull breaches. I'm waiting on causality reports now.”

  “Who attacked us?” Marjorie asked. She did not want to make the same mistake she had made before; not now, not ever. She didn’t recall reading anything that would warrant an attack. If she had, she wouldn’t have told anyone where the Arwen would be when she entered space. Leaving wormhole space was the perfect place for an ambush, and whoever attacked knew that.

  “Might I suggest we talk to the Regals?” Kel asked.

  “You’re damn right we will. Get me the ambassador now; I want to talk to her.”

  ~*~

  Ling Mia nervously paced around her office. It was too late to warn them of the attack; she had just found out about it a few minutes ago herself. If the Plick faction somehow managed to destroy the ship the Corps was sending, then she would have to help organize an evacuation of the planet. Because they didn’t have nearly enough ships for the entire population, she knew it would be an impossible task.

  Because of her expertise in alien culture and language, she was assigned as the temporary ambassador as well as a translator when Ambassador Thruman had to be called away unexpectedly for a family emergency. That emergency was six months ago, and they still hadn’t sent someone out to replace him. Ling did her best to assume the role that was thrust upon her, but she felt completely overwhelmed and wished she could go home.

  It wasn’t that she hated Regal; in fact, she and Blueic Deimen, the Pullma representative, had formed a friendship. She just didn’t like the feeling of not knowing what she was doing when it came to diplomacy. She knew they were a backwater world that the Alliance had only a passing interest in, but she had hoped to have been replaced by now.

  Her computer chimed, and she rushed over to it. On the screen appeared a woman with short, graying hair and a very angry look on her face. “Are you Ambassador Mia?”

  “Well, sort of. I’m Ling Mia, but my status as ambassador is a temporary one.”

  “Are you the one who is supposed to keep me informed about this system?” she asked sharply.

  “Yes,” Ling answered meekly. “Are you guys okay?”

  “You knew about the attack?”

  “No. Well, yeah, sort of. I just—I just found out about it a few moments ago.”

  Ling realized she was talking to Captain Cook of the Arwen. She had no idea they would follow her advice and send the greatest ship in the fleet. Inside she breathed a sigh of relief. If they sent the Arwen, then all would be okay. Captain Cook spoke to someone off the screen, then shot her attention back to Ling. “I thought this was a friendly system. I was not told there would be hostility. We’re lucky that no one was killed, but the Arwen was damaged. Please, Ambassador Mia, explain to me what I’m facing.”

  She hated being called Ambassador, but she guessed the title was correct. “I’ll send you the report now. The attackers are called the Plick. They’re an old religious faction who believes when the world ends only they will survive to build a new society. When news of the comet reached the general public, they saw it as a sign the prophecy will come true.”

  “And now they want to prevent us from stopping it?”

  “Yes. They don’t want anyone to stop judgment day. We had no idea they had the ability to get their hands on fighters. For centuries they’ve been a peaceful religion, but now—”

  Captain Cook held her hand up, stopping Ling from talking. “I’ve never had time for religion. Tell me, do you think they will continue to be a threat?”

  Ling shook her head, “I don’t know. I’m not privileged to that information. I do know the governments are working on it. The Plick are spread out all over the planet and have some very powerful friends in many of the smaller states, so tracking them down is difficult now they’ve gone into hiding.”

  “Thank you, Ambassador. I’ll be contacting you shortly. I do not want any more surprises, so if you get any news, you contact me right away.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ling replied as the image faded from the screen.

  ~*~

  Kel stepped out of the elevator, and the first smell to assault his senses was the strong smell of ozone. The fire suppression foam, once it started to dissipate, had that very unpleasant side effect. The ship’s firefighters walked around sucking the white foam up with vacuums strapped to their backs. Kel nodded at them as he inspected the damage. Most of it seemed superficial. Black smoke stains formed oddly shaped patterns on the silver walls.

  He had been ordered by Captain Cook to inspect the damage while she talked to the ambassador of Regal to find out who attacked her. He had thought the days of war and surprise attacks were over for the Arwen and its captain. He knew her well enough to know she was thinking of retiring. She seemed a different person after the Lansing corridor attack a year ago. It wasn’t something he could place his finger on exactly. He wondered if the old Captain Cook would have invited an arrogant fool like the professor to breakfast after a confrontation.

  Kel and his team inspected several areas near the inner hull. The damage could have been a lot worse; the Arwen’s cone shape helped deflect the impacts away from the ship and the fire suppression system, along with the firefighters, contained the fires quickly. To Kel, it seemed a miracle no one was killed.

  “Commander, you need to see this,” one of his men yelled from a storage room.

  Kel walked over to the room and looked inside. Boxes, crates, and other debris has been scattered as if hit by a tornado. There was the distinct whistling sound, as if air were escaping through small holes. However, that wasn’t what prompted the call. Protruding from the wall was one of the Plick fighters. The front end had been crumbled inward from the impact. Almost half the ship was inside the room; the cockpit visible, open, and empty.

  On the floor was a line of red blood. Kel and his officer followed the trail from inside the room and out into the hallway where the droplets became smaller and less often. Eventually they all but disappeared. “Looks like we’ve got an intruder,” Kel said. “Call security; we’re going to have to search the area. The alien is wounded, but looks like a fast healer based on how quickly the blood trail stopped.”

  Kel looked around. No vents or open doors were visible. The intruder seemed to have just disappeared and could be just about anywhere by now.

  Chapter Five

  Captain Cook read the report Ling sent her. The Plick were peaceful until they found out about the comet. No one knew where they got the fighters, but Ling, in her own speculation, suspected they had formed an alliance with one of the smaller countries. There was no evidence of this and no action could be taken on pure conjecture.

  Marjorie hated not knowing what an ene
my was doing and not having the means to find out. There wasn’t anything she could do to get more information, so she had to let it go.

  A red alert popped up on her screen. It was a priority one message from Kel. “What’s going on, Kel?”

  “Captain, we think we have an intruder onboard.”

  Marjorie felt her heart jump at the words. An intruder on her ship? She could think of nothing worse than to have some enemy infiltrating her home. The violation dug deep into her gut. In a calmness that betrayed the turmoil building inside her, she replied, “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “When we came down to examine the damage, we saw one fighter hadn’t exploded. It penetrated deep enough into the ship to expose the cockpit. No one was inside, but we did find a trail of what looked like blood. We did a search of that area but didn’t find anything.”

  “Fine,” she sighed. “Lock down all vital parts of the ship and keep looking. Let me know when you find it.”

  On another screen another alert appeared, this time it was from Professor Ricter. She was surprised it took him this long after the attack to contact her. “Captain Cook, is the danger over? I can start my work?”

  She was slightly taken aback by his sudden politeness. “We’re doing a damage report on the ship. Once I’m confident that we can move without further damage we’ll be on our way.”

  “Damage report? Good, I’d like to add something to that report.”

  “You can send the report to Kel, who—”

  “No, Captain Cook, I can’t. I just tried to do a sensor scan of the comet and found that the sensors are out. I’m going to need access to either a probe or a shuttle, and I’d like to have it now.”

  “Now, Professor?”

  “Yes, now. I want to get as much information as I can before we arrive. Now that your ship is crippled and might not be as powerful as it was before—”