by Lance Berry
One afternoon, Mara entered the gym on deck twenty-nine.
There were a few crew members present, lifting weights or running a circular quarter mile around the area. Mara’s head turned at the sound of repeated cussing coming from an unmistakable voice. She walked over to a more secluded area of the gym, to see Tanner Matthews wearing a workout gi and pacing angrily in a circle. David and Travis stood nearby on mats, both similarly dressed. David had a somewhat amused look on his face, and Travis seemed a bit embarrassed.
“Tanner, calm down—” David said, holding his hands up.
Matthews threw an arm out, angrily waving David off even as he turned to Rand. “How do you do it! I’ve been practicing karate for years, and I can’t lay a damn hand on you when we spar! You keep flipping me like I’m a four year-old!”
Mara snickered at this last, and the three men looked to her.
“Oh, great,” Matthews exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air in exasperation. “Don’t you start!”
Travis Rand shrugged as he moved forward a bit. “You just don’t practice Jeet Kune Do, is all. Karate’s all well and good, but its movements are too fixed. JKD teaches you to flow with every situation.”
Matthews rolled his eyes. “Oh, so now it’s ‘JKD’. You’re such fucking hot shit, now it’s ‘JKD’…”
“Tanner. Relax.” There was significant displeasure in the captain’s voice, coupled with a warning. Matthews ignored it and pointed to Rand. “You and me—the shooting range, right now! I can still shoot the eye out of a bullfrog at a hundred paces!”
“Tanner, what are you so bent out of shape about?” Mara asked, perplexed at the entire situation. Yet the security chief was halfway across the gym, heading toward the far door which separated the firing range.
“C’mon, hotshot,” Matthews said as he waved Travis on.
The newbie and the captain looked to one another. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” David offered.
Travis shrugged. “Should I let him win?”
David’s eyes widened at the seeming self-aggrandizement of the statement. “Oh, heavens, no,” he said with a laugh. “As a matter of fact, I might have to lay down a wager on this one.”
The shooting range consisted of several mobile and stationary targets, each placed far enough away from the practitioners that they’d have to really work to earn solid hits.
The ammo in the Zuk-Lar .40s and Blastrifles used were old-style pellets that also carried more heft to them than the antimatter packets in standard use, which also served to force shooters to adapt. Tanner shot 95% of his targets…Rand shot 99%.
“Wow,” Mara said as the last shot rang out and a faux Calvorian fell to the ground, nearly four hundred feet away.
Travis set down the Blastrifle and looked to Matthews, a neutral expression on his face. Matthews hung his head in shame. “I feel like such a eunuch.”
Travis placed a friendly hand on his shoulder. “I’ve just always been really good at target practice. Sorry.”
Matthews chuckled mirthlessly as he looked up once more.
“Is there anything you don’t do well?”
Rand considered it. “I’m a lousy card player. You found that out when I first got here.”
The memory brought a wistful smile to Matthews’ face. “Oh, yeah…double or nothing, next round of poker?”
Travis shook his head. “No. I need to keep my retirement funds intact.” Matthews genuinely laughed this time and the two men shook hands.
As the quartet left the firing range, David said to no one in particular, “Why is it that every security chief I know is a hothead?”
Chapter 37
June 9th, 2190.
It was 0200 hours when the ODC clicked on, stirring David
Christenson from a sound sleep. “Bridge to Captain Christenson,” Tanner Matthews’ voice rang out.
“Captain—?”
David gently untangled his limbs from those of his wife, who was beginning to rouse as well. With a light sigh, he sat up on the side of the bed. “This is Christenson. What is it, Tanner?”
“Sorry to wake you, sir…but you’ve got a vid transmission coming in from Command. Eyes only.”
As Tanner had spoken, David got to his feet and went over to the closet, pulling out his uniform jacket. Sensing his movement, the smartware began to raise the lights, but he ordered them down to one-quarter of standard. “Thank you, Tanner. Patch it through,” he said as he slipped the jacket on, only closing it halfway. Whichever Joint Chief was calling, he wanted to be certain they knew they were disturbing his sleep.
The ODC clicked off and the vid-com clicked on, the stylized UEF eagle immediately snapping into crystal clarity as the words ‘incoming transmission, passcode required,’ flashed over it. David rethought his idea and closed the jacket all the way.
He quickly ran his fingers through his hair as well.
“Authorization Christenson, David. Passcode G-237751-Alpha.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Mara sitting up in bed, a questioning look on her face. He held one hand partway up, bidding her to hold off on querying him for the moment.
The face of a middle-aged, stern-faced general David was unfamiliar with appeared on the screen. To the lower left of the screen, the words “Line security: Red” flashed continually, making the captain aware that this message was encrypted in so many different ways that it would take months for the enemy to decode it—even if they could ever manage to intercept it.
“Captain Christenson. I’m General Bruce Hackert.”
“Good morning, General,” David replied easily and saluted.
The general returned. “Sorry to interrupt your sleep, but obviously this is urgent. I have new orders for you, and I assure you, they’re the most important you’ve ever received. Very recently, information has been given to us which has been poured over and verified. The Calvorian Alliance has assembled an attack fleet which is set to strike directly at Earth in no more than five hours. This fleet is massive, Captain…it is designed specifically to subdue our world once and for all.”
David frowned slightly. “I understand, General.”
“We’ve already been notifying other ships to assemble with you at one light-hour away from Earth to form a counterstrike force of our own. Once the defensive unit is formed up, you will proceed to Jupiter and make your stand there. We have two problems facing us, though: one, we have no idea just how large this enemy fleet will be. Our source didn’t have that information, unfortunately…but taking into account our own protective fleet around Earth, it would have to be exceptionally large. This leads us to our second problem, which is that we can only pull in just over five hundred Cruisers for your squad.
After verifying our source’s information, Tactics & Planning has come to the conclusion that the Calvorians have been doing one hell of a job keeping us distracted over the last few months, engaging our forces in distant systems just far enough away that almost none of those ships can reach us in time.”
“They’ve been planning this for a while.”
Hackert nodded.
“Yes. They’re turning out to be smarter than we ever gave them credit. We can’t afford to pull any of our ships from Earth’s own protective force, Captain. Should you fail—”
“We won’t.”
Hackert nodded again. “Understood. I’m sorry we’ve never met before, Captain. I’ve been an admirer of your accomplishments on the battlefield for quite some time. I honestly believe that if there is any human being capable of turning back the enemy at this darkest moment, it’s you.”
“Thank you, General. I do appreciate that. Sir, if I may—?
This intel about the enemy fleet…where’d it come from?”
For a moment, Hackert seemed to be considering whether he should tell him or not. “I’m not at liberty to say. That was part of the condition for the intel being released to us. I will tell you that it comes from an alien species—and not the Cuscat
ians.”
David’s eyes widened slightly. “Another alien species—?”
Hackert nodded slowly. “Apparently one that’s been watching our little scuffle with the Calvorians for some time… and has a vested interest in the outcome, although they can’t get involved themselves.”
“Hmm. Seems our little corner of the galaxy’s becoming more populated by the second. At least they were nice enough to slip us a note in class.”
Hackert actually chuckled at this. “Exactly.”
“Anything else, sir?”
The general shook his head. “Just good luck, Captain. May
God go with you.”
With that, Hackert severed the transmission on his end.
The stylized eagle came back into view on the screen, but David switched the com off. “Christenson to bridge. Tanner, what’s our time to Earth?”
“We can be there in two hours at top speed.”
“Get us there in one. No debates with Jamie.”
“Understood, Captain.”
“Christenson out.” The ODC shut off and David turned to his wife. “You heard all that, eh?”
Mara nodded as she swung her legs over the side of the bed.
“Do you think Tholin will be in charge of their fleet?”
“It would make the most sense. And I’ve been itching for a piece of him ever since our last encounter at Castor.”
Mara walked over to her husband and wrapped her arms around his neck as she straddled his lap. “Well, then today’s the day we finish him off.”
David smiled. “Confidence level high. That’s a good thing.”
He turned more serious as he said, “We need to schedule an emergency shift change, about thirty minutes before our rendezvous. Going into a fight like this, we should have only the best at all stations.”
“I agree,” Mara said as she reached down, holding him firmly and beginning to stroke. “But we can get some other things accomplished beforehand.”
David shook his head. “No sex before a fight. Primary rule.”
Mara looked him in the eyes. “Let’s just fuck, then.”
David smiled as she repositioned to secure herself atop him.
“Well…that I can do.”
Chapter 38
Things had been going so well.
The Horizon met with several dozen sister ships to comprise the 79th Division, the initial stages of its defensive force. Once all ships were accounted for, the task force used their null fields to jump to Jupiter and rendezvoused with the 128th, 34th and 91st Divisions, combining into one final super-fleet of five hundred and thirty-six ships. The plan was to use Jupiter’s massive gravity to mask their presence until the Calvorian assault fleet arrived, then take them unaware. Due to the combined immense pull of Jupiter’s gravity and the sun’s, any traveling ships larger than a transport had no choice but to come out of lightspeed relatively close to the Sol system’s outer edge anyway, since artificial wormholes tended to destabilize near larger planetary bodies. This is why the Alliance’s attack fleets could never fully catch UEF unawares by suddenly appearing over Earth itself.
The Watch Station on Pluto informed the Horizon when the alien fleet entered the Sol system. For a brief moment, hope reigned on the flagship’s bridge when it was reported the Alliance’s fleet was slightly smaller than the human one. But then confirmation came in that no less than forty dreadnoughts were present within that enemy fleet.
Forty.
From her position at the Ops console, Mara had to fight to stifle the gasp which wanted to rise from her throat. In all the encounters between UEF and the Alliance’s fleets, it was a rare thing for the humans to encounter more than one or two dreadnoughts in the Calvorians’ squadrons. But forty—! There could be no doubt whatsoever: this was the endgame the Calvorians were fighting, and the only possible outcome for humanity was success or surrender.
David’s tactic worked, and the gas giant’s gravity masked the
Earth fleet’s presence enough that it was able to set upon the enemy ships before they knew what was going on. Due to the presence of the dreadnoughts, it was an amazingly uneven battle, but under David Christenson’s command, the Earth ships managed to hold their own. They disposed of nearly ten dreadnoughts, before one of the alien commanders got it into their head that if they took out the Horizon, the human fleet might then fall into disarray. Several of the Calvorian ships boxed in the lead Heavy Cruiser, pounding away at its shields in an attempt to smash into the hull and crush Earth’s best chance at salvation.
Set upon as the flagship was, several of its MPRS lines began to short-circuit and overload. Shield grids weakened, communications were lost between decks, and the outer hull was strained to the limits of its tolerance, with ruptures appearing at several different points. On the bridge, the auxiliary tactical console where a lieutenant was stationed began to emit sparks, on the verge of overloading right in his face. The young man was surprised into fearful inaction, but David raced over to grab him by the arms and toss him out of harm’s way. What happened next would haunt Mara Christenson’s nightmares for years to come…
“DAAAVIIIIIID!” Mara screamed as the console blew fully, the light from the explosion so bright that for an instant her husband seemed to disappear within it. When it died down, David fell backward and thudded heavily to the floor where he lay unmoving.
For Mara, at that instant the battle and everything else happening around her ceased to matter. She jumped out of her chair, stumbling across the floor which shuddered under the ongoing barrage, and kneeled at her husband’s side. To her surprise, Travis Rand arrived also, abandoning his own post at helm. David was a mess: his uniform jacket and shirt were torn, rent completely. His face and chest contained uncountable bloody scratches and cuts from pieces of the auxiliary console that had cut into his flesh. His face down to the upper portion of his chest was virtually blackened, as they had caught the full brunt of the blast. His hair was tousled wildly and his left eye singed shut from the heat. He was breathing, but only barely, as it came in shallow rasps. Mara lifted his head onto her lap, tears streaming down her cheeks as she gently caressed her husband’s face and he stared back at her with his one good eye half-open. She barely heard Rand shout to Buttlefield to have Ben Williams come to the bridge.
“Oh David, oh David, oh baby, please…hang on, hang on, my love,” she whispered weakly, almost unable to speak as she was so overcome with shock. He couldn’t die, there was just no way…he wasn’t just her husband, it wasn’t just because she knew that without him she had no life, no reason to go on. He was David Christenson, for God’s sake! The hero of the United Earth Force and the man who repelled enemy invasions as easily as most people drew breath. There was no other like him, nor could there ever be. He just couldn’t be mortal, like the rest of them…
Please, God. Please, don’t do this. No matter what, no matter what it takes, I’ll do anything. Please don’t take my husband from me.
She had waited for someone like David all her life. Through all the years of pain, humiliation and loneliness, she never gave up faith that there was someone for her. Someone who would treat her with respect and bestow genuine affection upon her, someone she could love in return. They had been married five years and never had a fight. Most friends couldn’t go that long without getting into altercations, let alone married couples.