Second Earth

by Stephen A. Fender

  “For crying out loud, Kestrel! Put on your big-boy underwear and get the job done. Besides, it’s far from a permanent assignment. Commander Saltori needs the assistance of a veteran pilot, and your number came up. Congratulations. Now shut up and get it done!”

  There was an audible sigh over the intercom. “Yes, sir. My wingman is going to have to return to base for repairs, though.”

  “Fine. I’m sure you’ll live without them for a few minutes. Coordinate with Saltori and take out as many of those fighters as you can. When the odds start swinging in our favor, I want you to take two squadrons and attack that carrier directly. We don’t need them to get any closer than they already are.”

  There was a moment of silence, then a chuckle of laughter over the intercom. “So, let me get this straight: you want me to take two squadrons…about twelve fighters’ worth…and assault a capital ship?”

  “Yes.”

  “With no other assistance?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Begging the Captain’s pardon, but are you out of your damn mind?” Shawn balked. “That thing could squash us like a bug.”

  “Then you’d better make sure you hit the right part of his windshield first, Commander.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I need to find any weak spot on that ship, anything that our weapons can quickly damage. Once you do, I will send in the cruiser Breckenridge for a close-range attack. I can’t risk committing another capital ship until we can find a definitive vulnerability on the alien. Until then, you have your orders, Commander.”

  “Yes, sir, I got them,” Kestrel snapped back. “I just don’t believe them.”

  “Good. Rhea out.” Krif signaled Caitlin, who cut the communications channel. He watched as Ripper-One and -Seven gained a high angle of attack, then leapt down and engaged two more Beta fighters. When both targets were destroyed, Ripper-Seven performed an abrupt turn to port and made a beeline for the Rhea. He saw Bagpipes’ craft quickly pass two friendly fighters that were not otherwise engaged. “Commander Hayes, get me the pilot of Freelancer-Four. Have him escort Ripper-Seven back to base ASAP.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away,” she said, and then began issuing the orders to Lieutenant Vistani.

  * * *

  Shawn flew into the fray of enemy fighters, cannons blazing, trying to knock out as many of the unknown aliens as he could. Although the enemy had vastly different flight tactics than the Sector Command forces, they were no less effective at eliminating their foes. As Shawn turned sharply to starboard to avoid an incoming missile, he saw the Shamrock markings of two Cobra fighters get blown to pieces by three Alphas that had ganged up on them.

  Kestrel tried to punch up their specific communications frequencies on his computer, but by the time he was able to scream, “Get out of there!” it was already too late. The first Shamrock was holed through by laser fire. The second Cobra managed to get out of the sights of the other Alpha, only to collide with an ELINT from the Discoverers a half-second later, blowing both to pieces instantly. Shawn had to immediately push his control stick forward, sending his Maelstrom into a steep dive, to avoid the quickly expanding debris field.

  Seconds later a fighter appeared on his port side, and it wore the black and red tail markings of the Red Skulls. With a band of thick red paint bisecting the fuselage, Shawn recognized it as Commander Saltori’s fighter. He opened the communications channel, giving Saltori the new combat order that had been handed down by Captain Krif. While neither of the pilots was delighted with the prospect of engaging the enemy capital ship directly, they both resolved to do their duty the best they could—or die trying.

  Commander Rylani Saltori’s Skulls had taken quite a beating. The 535th space interceptor squadron was down to four fighters from its original seven. One of the pilots lost was the Skulls’ executive officer—a man of some high distinction, both in and out of the cockpit. With one of Shawn’s own fighters down, and two more back at the carrier getting repaired, he was also currently down to half his starting strength. Eight fighters, no matter how advanced and maneuverable they were, were no match for a capital ship. During the Galactic War, when Shawn had decided to take on a Kafaran ship all on his own, he had gotten lucky. When one of his missiles had inadvertently entered in through a partially open hangar hatch, the demise of the Kafarans had been assured.

  Today, however, would be very different. The two squadrons didn’t even know where to begin looking for a weak point in the intruders’ hull, let alone how to exploit it with less-than-adequate weapons. Nonetheless, Shawn had done his best to devise a plan against the lumbering enemy warship.

  The two squadrons formed into a single unit and began attacking the carrier, then were joined a few minutes later by the Unified Marine pilots of the Devil Dogs, and each began alternating strafing runs against sections of the intruder’s hull as they tested for weak spots in the design. All ships—big or small—invariably had some spot on them that was weaker than the rest, and Shawn hoped to find it quickly and capitalize on it.

  Most of their combined efforts had proven futile until a missile from Red Skull-Three created a sizeable crater on a flattened part of the enemy’s outer hull. The Marines’ Devastators quickly pounced on the weakened area, sending several bursts from each of their rapid-fire cannons into it. The area around the initial crater began to heave and bulge as internal explosions continued to wreak havoc long after the last of the Rippers had fired their own lasers. Smoke and fire began to pour out of the affected area, now about a twenty yards in diameter. The damage wasn’t enough to be fatal, Shawn thought, but it was a start.

  This thing can be hurt. And if it can be hurt, it can be killed.

  The three squadrons disengaged from the intruder and re-formed near a vacant spot in the combat sphere. They only had time enough to compare notes before they received an incoming communications form the Rhea. Kestrel and the rest of the pilots listened intently to the message in horror. Just when it seemed that the Unified forces were getting the upper hand in the battle, the intruder had begun launching another wave of fighters.

  As far as the numbers went, the odds were again even, but Shawn knew better. The Unified pilots were beginning to feel the fatigue of combat, and they were now facing off against a well-rested and rearmed enemy.

  Shawn pulled his stick to the right, making a hard turn to starboard as he engaged another Alpha. He fired his last missile, watching intently as it streaked across the blackness of space and found its target a few moments later. The Alpha exploded in a fizzle of sparks as Shawn trained his cannons on another Beta. He watched out of the corner of his canopy as two fighters from the Hunters were wiped out in a single pass from a solitary Alpha. It’d come in quickly across their flanks and raked their cockpits with white-hot bolts of energy, killing both pilots instantly, and causing the burning fuselages to drift for some time before careening out of the combat zone.

  In the intervening moments, time seemed to slow down for Shawn. As fighters from both sides maneuvered and died around him, he watched as his sensor display showed the Sector Command forces beginning to dwindle to dangerous levels. Of the initial one hundred nine craft that had begun the attack, only fifty-two combatants were left. The Freelancers were gone, as were the Shockers. The vast majority of the Rapiers and the Streakers were out of commission, floating helplessly until someone could rescue them or they were blown away by stray weapons fire.

  Shawn glanced up from the screen in time to fire off another burst of laser fire, causing a Beta to change course and move away from a hammerhead-shaped Devastator it had had been tailing.

  “Commander Kestrel, please respond.” It was the voice of Commander Hayes.

  Shawn accepted the transmission while simultaneously looking to see if there were any enemy craft nearby. “This is Kestrel; go ahead, Commander.”

  “Commander, we’ve got even more incoming.”

  “Specify?” he asked quickly, firing a missile at
a stray Beta, only to have the enemy fighter successfully evade it.

  “Sensors are showing another capital ship approaching from outside the sector.”

  From outside? He wasn’t aware that any other Sector Command vessels were so close. As far as he knew, the jump gate to Second Earth was still functional, but it was more than a day from their current position, and the Rhea would have known well in advance if another ship was scheduled to come through.

  “One of ours?” he asked hopefully.

  “Negative, Commander. And this time, it is definitely Kafaran.”

  My God. The situation had just gone from dismal to absolutely hopeless. Shawn said a rapid, silent prayer before he spoke again. “It’s confirmed?”

  “Affirmative. Captain Krif requests that all forces disengage and return to the Rhea immediately. Try to pick up any survivors you can along the way, Lieutenant Commander. We are evacuating the area.”

  Chapter 10

  The fifty-odd assortment of fighters and bombers—all that remained of the Rhea’s original complement of over one hundred combatants—turned almost in unison to head back to their carrier in retreat. As Shawn watched his sensors, he was astonished to see that the still-unidentified invaders were doing the same. It seemed that the arrival of the Kafarans into the melee had shaken the fight out of both sides.

  And there was little doubt that it was the Kafarans. Looking down at the long-range sensor display, Shawn would have recognized the distinctive shape and coloring anywhere. Kafaran vessels, no matter their size, all looked like greenish, ovoid boulders. Some were stretched thin, while others were almost spherical. The only smoothness on their hulls was a grayish, almost cowl-like covering over the forward-dorsal area that extended in a nearly unbroken line across the spine. Along the sides, extending to what should have been the keel, were hundreds—sometimes thousands—of soft green lights. At times arranged in clusters or in geometric shapes, these were often attributed to being view ports or small thrusters. On the stern were the drive engines, always recessed into the hull and with a sharp, tail-like protrusion spreading over them, their bright green glow signifying that they were as fast as they were dangerous.

  The vessel that had just moved into the Second Earth system was no exception to these rules. It looked like two enormous, egg-shaped rocks, placed on top of one another with the top-most one jutting out slightly more forward than the other. Along its silvery spine was a tall spire, perhaps a hundred feet long, pointing aft as if it were an unfurled poisoned quill. A countless number of pinpoints of glowing green lights dotted its entire surface, and Shawn didn’t need to verify with his computer what he already knew based on firsthand experience: this was a Kafaran heavy carrier, second only in armament and strength to a Kafaran battleship.

  As the majority of the Rhea’s fighters made their respective approaches, Shawn—along with Raven and Commander Saltori—formed a protective screen that would guard the landing Sector Command fighters, whiles simultaneously watching both the unknown invaders and the Kafaran carrier for their next moves.

  Shawn watched his sensor display with awe as two gravity wells—unthinkably close to one another—formed with little warning, just behind the Kafaran carrier. In a sudden flash of dual brilliance, two additional Kafaran ships entered the area. Seeing that they were smaller and sleeker than the carrier, Shawn guessed by their size that they were both destroyers. He quickly opened a channel with the Rhea’s command center.

  “Commander Hayes, are you seeing this?” he asked, still looking wide-eyed at the two lumbering forms.

  It took a moment for Caitlin to come back over the channel. “That’s confirmed, Ripper-One. We now have three Kafaran ships on the midrange sensors. We’ve crosschecked their hull markings and physical characteristics with known vessel types, and have confirmed the presence of one carrier and two destroyers.”

  “What’s their projected heading?”

  “Stand by,” Hayes replied, followed by a pause of nearly a minute while the command center correlated the data. “Their initial insertion-point heading put them directly on an intercept course with the Rhea. However, since they jumped in they have gone to a full stop.”

  It never ceased to amaze Shawn that the Kafarans had long ago figured out how to jump into a system without the need for a jump gate to be stationed nearby. During the Galactic War, the Kafarans used this to their advantage, but Sector Command quickly discovered an inherent weakness in the design: it took an enormous amount of power to accomplish such a feat. Any enemy ship that performed such a maneuver would be nearly exhausted of energy until its reactor could recharge. That took time, and it was then that Sector Command fighters would usually pounce.

  “No movement at all?” Shawn asked in understanding. The Kafarans easily had the numerical superiority in the engagement, but he knew that a ship of the size of the Kafaran carrier could take up to thirty minutes to recharge.

  “None, Commander,” Caitlin replied flatly.

  “What about the invaders?” he asked, his mouth going dry at the sight of so much destructive Kafaran might before him.

  There was another pause on the communications network before she responded. “No movement. All enemy fighters have returned to their ship. However, there seems to be a lot of communications traffic coming from the Kafaran carrier and directed at their destroyers.”

  During the Galactic War, a concerted effort had been undertaken to intercept and decode Kafaran message traffic. After years of study, it had proven an almost fruitless endeavor. Although the scientists at Unified R&D had discovered how to divert the enemy’s communications, whatever system the Kafarans employed to send the traffic was still totally alien and beyond deciphering by Sector Command forces.

  “They’re probably coordinating their efforts for an attack,” Shawn replied. He glanced down to his short-range sensors, silently delighted that the last of the Rhea’s fighter wing had landed without incident. The next voice he heard over the communications channel was that of Captain Krif.

  “Kestrel, I’ll need you to land and rearm your fighter. I have a feeling that neither one of our friends out there is going to let us get away from this sector without a fight.”

  Shawn shook his head. “You’re kidding, right? You want me to go back out there? That’s crazy.”

  Krif’s voice was laced with disdain. “Take a look out your view screen, Commander. We need to put some distance between ourselves and those bastards out there. At full speed, it will still take us eighteen hours before we’re close enough to the jump gate to make the leap. The only way we can make it is to slow whatever advance the enemy is going to make—and rest assured, they are going to advance. It’s simply a matter of time.”

  Are they? Shawn wasn’t in the mood to argue with Krif, no matter how wrong he felt the captain’s stance on this matter was. When Raven signaled that she and Commander Saltori would be remaining spaceborne while he rearmed and refueled, Shawn slowly brought the nose of his Maelstrom in line with the carrier’s landing deck and angrily signaled his approach. As soon as Commander Hayes gave him the appropriate signal, he switched the landing computer on and allowed the Rhea to take momentary control of his fighter, moving him quickly toward the fighter’s designated landing spot.

  When the hangar bay’s bulky outer doors had closed and the bay was properly pressurized, the equally large inner doors parted before the solitary fighter. The guidance beams took over, carrying Shawn’s Maelstrom through the opening on its way to a launch station where it would get rearmed and refueled. His fighter slipped silently past Sylvia’s Delight, slumbering peacefully in her maintenance bay on Shawn’s left side. Examining the Mark-IV with pride, Shawn wondered if he’d ever get the chance to sit at her controls again. With a slight jolt, Shaw’s fighter traversed another decompression door, and he now found himself in the main hangar as his fighter continued past the remainder of the Rhea’s once-proud combat wing.

  It was no surprise to Shawn to see that som
e of the fighters that had returned from the battle would never fly again. Some had gaping holes in their wing structures or fuselages—or both. Near the exit ladder on one of the Devastators belonging to the Marines’ Rough Riders squadron, there were several thick streaks of blood that had dripped down the side of the craft and formed a pool on the hangar deck. In an effort to avert his eyes, Shawn turned his head to the right, only to see several of the Rhea’s crewmen pull a lifeless body from the shattered cockpit of a Seminole fighter belonging to the Golden Suns. Leaning his head back against the padded rest of his seat, he looked up in time to see a Trickster from one of the jammer squadrons pass overhead, its lower turret ripped clean from the fuselage—presumably along with its operator. Shawn offered a prayer for the wounded and dead personnel as his own debilitated fighter moved beyond the chaos of the main hangar bay and into the relative peace of the launch bay.

  As soon as his Maelstrom came to halt in launch bay four, Shawn noticed Trent leaning casually beside a stack of crates that had been piled several yards away from the fighter. After unstrapping and extricating himself from his cockpit, Shawn took several labored steps down the exit ladder that would bring him to the mechanic’s level. He hadn’t realized how tired he was until he was able to stretch his legs after the heated combat.

  “You okay, Skipper?” Trent asked, absently rubbing at some grease on his hands with an equally dirty rag.

  Shawn couldn’t help but smile at the irony of the maneuver. “A little tired, but I’ll live.”

  Trent nodded toward Shawn’s fighter nonchalantly. “Looks like the ship held up pretty well.”

  Shawn turned to give his fighter a visual inspection. There were several scorch marks and pits along the once-sleek fuselage, and his mind could recall when each of them had taken place. He looked to the port vertical stabilizer, holed through in multiple places and held together by only a thin strip of exterior skin. At that moment, the strip gave way, and gravity finished off what the alien fighters had started. A three-square-foot section of the stabilizer fell, bouncing off the port wing and crashing to the launch tube deck.