“I was just thinking about what you said about their lives being a prison and how even if they’re happy, it’s still a prison,” Casten said.
“Yeah,” Paress said.
“But you know, watching them riding along like that, with this amazing sunset and everything. They really do look so happy and perfect together. Look at how she leans against him sideways in the seat with absolute trust and how here and there, he reaches down to touch her hand. Their lives are perfect. They really don’t need anything else.”
“Yeah,” Paress repeated. “I was thinking the same thing. The world could end and they’d welcome the chance to experience whatever death and destruction it brought together. They’re killers, but I guess we can be glad they’re our killers.”
“And we can let them have fun while the world ends as the two of us get the hell out and save our asses,” Casten said with a laugh.
“Oh, most definitely,” Paress agreed. “I’m not ready for a glorious death just yet— or any death for that matter.”
The two vehicles drove on to the runway of the small dusty spaceport. Paress and Casten found it humorous that there was no fence or boundary of any kind around the place, security being more of a concept than an actual practice. The closest thing to that security came in the form of an ancient mech trooper that slowly drifted along the periphery of the runway in a march that it had doubtless done for over a century.
Upon arriving at the runway, Johnny circled around Allepexxis a couple times, he and Cassie pointing out various features of interest to each other. Parked nearby was the squat form the Wespe, covered in the ever-present dust of the planet. A casual viewer could be forgiven for thinking the little starship was brown thanks to all the dust covering it, when in fact, she was actually the standard light blue-gray of the Francescan Star Navy. Her nose and front section were black thanks to heat shielding, but even that was getting buried under the dust.
“I wonder how she came to be called Wespe,” Paress said, looking at the ship’s name on the side in large white letters. “She’s so short and chubby she totally looks like a bumblebee, not a wasp. So she should be called “Hummel”.”
“That’s probably the lead ship of the class,” Casten said. “I’ll check some time when things are slow around here.”
“I have a feeling things are gonna be slow around here a pretty good bit,” Paress said. He parked outside the small hangar where they borrowed the utility vehicle from and sat there a few minutes as Johnny and Cassie finished checking out Allepexxis. The two eventually rode over and Johnny pulled up next to Paress and Casten and turned off the engine.
Lowering his motorcycle’s kickstand, Johnny hopped off, followed by Cassie, who tugged down her skirt an inch or two from where it rode up, although it was still dangerously high.
“Now that’s a hell of a Machine ya got there,” Johnny said with a note of awe. “Damn, look at ‘im, Cass. He’s longer than the Wespe even!”
“Over twice as long,” she said. “The Wespe’s about four-hundred feet. Allepexxis is a thousand.” She looked to Paress and Casten for confirmation.
“Yep, good eye,” Paress said. “Although a lot of Allepexxis’ length is in the tail. We’ve brought that up a lot over the years, actually.”
“Where it really gets crazy is if Paress spreads the wings all the way. 2,200 foot wingspan,” Casten said.
“Heh, now that’ll put the fear o’ Jesus inta some folks I’d imagine,” Johnny said with a laugh.
“It actually has gotten some people to surrender,” Paress said. “Not always, but if they happen to be really superstitious or something, I’ll try to put Allepexxis in front of the sun and spread the wings. It casts such a big, dark shadow, that some of the more guilty-feeling get pretty worked up.”
Johnny laughed. “I like that. Well, the Midnight Group’s generally a bunch of hardasses so it might take a little more to scare them off. But looking at your Machine here, I’d say you might have enough to convince ‘em.”
“Well, Allepexxis does this other thing,” Paress said, “where if I really start pushing him, the heat exhaust ports under the armor open up and a whole lot of flames start shooting out.”
Johnny’s eyes widened and his smile broadened. “Izzat right? I think I’d like t’see that.”
“Sure,” Paress said. “Point me at a big ship during our tour and I’ll make it happen. Depending on just how much I get things going, the flame’ll get bigger and bigger and then his teeth and nails and stuff also start growing.”
Johnny laughed, “Damn, who the hell built this thing? I like his style.”
“The same guy that built Denxeiter,” Casten said. “Ferdinand Locke. Allepexxis was his first. Denxeiter’s his last.”
“Well hell, Denxeiter ain’t got nothing like that built in,” Johnny said. “I think I’ve been gipped.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Cassie said. ‘He loves that Machine and he’s a real holy terror at the controls.”
“Singlehandedly getting this place cleaned up and doing the same in neighboring systems, I believe it,” Paress said. “I’m always happy to see an expert at work and learn a thing or two.”
“To be fair, you probably won’t learn much from this guy,” Cassie said nudging Johnny’s elbow. “I don’t think he knows how he does it. But he gets things done, so I guess that’s all that matters.”
As they were talking, a small group of people came down the Wespe’s loading ramp and approached the group. They were led by the ships’ captain, Weber, who Paress and Casten had met when they first touched down at the spaceport before going into town. Everybody went inside the hangar and after about twenty minutes of planning and giving Casten the coordinates of where they’d be going to enter into Allepexxis’ jump computer, they all went about the process of getting the mission underway.
As they left the hangar and Paress and Casten split off from the group to board Allepexxis, Cassie said, “Casten, you’ll be with me in mine and Johnny’s quarters. We’ve got the connections there to hook our data pads up and do any ops and synch work.”
“Actually, Allepexxis has a backup operations cockpit that the Companion can use,” Casten said, “So I’ll be there for this mission, and well, for most missions until the Feuerlilie returns. Paress and I will be partners on this adventure, which should be interesting…”
“You know it,” Paress said.
“Hmm, an extra cockpit for the Companion,” Cassie said. “Too bad Denxeiter doesn’t have one of those.”
“Darlin’, even if he did, I wouldn’t want you along and maybe gettin’ hurt. That cockpit’d be useless, cuz I wouldn’t let ya in it.”
“Hey Paress,” Casten said, “Johnny actually cares about what happens to his Companion.”
“Yeah, because he has a Companion who’s worth caring about. I’m stuck with a Companion who was happy to remind me, has a Jackass Setting hardwired to ‘on’.” Paress waved to Johnny and Cassie and climbed up into Allepexxis’ cockpit access, followed by Casten. “Alright, lets show these guys that they’re leaving this sector in good hands,” Paress said as the main blast door closeed.
“You got it,” Casten agreed. They shook hands before Casten went down the branching access tube to his own cockpit, the internal blast doors closing behind him.
Paress entered the main cockpit and strapped himself in, as he’d done hundreds of times before. Allepexxis was already in stand-by mode, having been Awoken on board the Feuerlilie and then landing on Latmus. The screens and controls snapped on when he grasped the control sticks. Casten’s image came on in the usual small window and the two of them waited for the rest of their team.
Since Cassie and Johnny had to board the Wespe first and then get situated into their respective places, Paress had to wait a few minutes before a window with Cassie inside came on, followed by one labeled Capt. Johnny Vogel, Francescan Imperial Star Navy Space Knight Rank AA9, FRANCESCAN IMPERIAL STAR NAVY ULTIMATE FLEET ESCORT HYPER BATTLE
MACHINE #34: “DENXEITER”. This was followed soon after by one final window labeled Capt. Hayes Weber, Francescan Imperial Star Navy Commanding Officer I.F.S.N. WESPE.
“Hello, Space Knights,” Captain Weber said. “This is only the second time I’ve worked with more than one of you and I’m looking forward to it. Let’s depart and be on our way.”
“Aye sir,” Paress said. Although he and Johnny technically were only answerable to the Imperial Household, it was customary and honorable to follow the standard chain of Navy command. In the current circumstance, that chain of command led to Captain Weber at the top. “We’ll follow you.”
“Acknowledged,” Weber said and moments later his starship gently lifted off and flew straight up, silently moved along by its repulsor drives. After giving the Wespe a good head start, Paress throttled up Allepexxis own repulsor drives and the black dragon sprung into the air and followed the carrier up. Johnny could have also piloted Denxeiter into space, but considering he would have had to dock back inside the Wespe before jump, he’d informed everyone beforehand that he wouldn’t launch the Hyper Battle Machine until after their first jump.
Almost ten minutes later, the Wespe and Allepexxis leisurely made their way into orbit around Latmus and then began to move away from the planet.
“Our jump engines are spooled up and are ready to jump to the first system on our itinerary,” Weber said after another few minutes.
“Roger that,” Casten said. “As are ours. Our jump computer is locked on to your transponder and our control is synchronized to yours so we’ll follow you into the same jump field. Ready when you are.”
“Acknowledged. Entering jump in five…four…three…two…one…jump.”
Space around the starship and Hyper Battle Machine distorted and then the two suddenly blinked out of the normal space around Latmus. Reappearing inside jump space, the Wespe departed for their first stop after receiving confirmation that Allepexxis was ready to follow. Paress duly followed along behind the starship and roughly fifteen minutes later, the two dropped out of jump space to appear in extra orbit from a small planetoid.
Paress had expected to be immediately involved in a battle with pirates as soon as he came out of jump, but nothing happened. This area of space was empty with no sign of activity save for the debris of previous battles.
“So, y’see here, this whole thing is a bit of a cat ’n mouse sorta deal,” Johnny said with a laugh. “Last time we came through, there’s a fight. You can see all the stuff leftover.”
“Yeah,” Paress said, watching as some small wreckage was pushed aside by one of Allepexxis’ navigation deflectors. “Over in the Grinlap Zone, the systems were more in a straight line, so it was pretty easy to find targets. I can see how over here, it’s more of a chase through all these interconnecting locations.”
After patrolling around for a while so that Paress could feel familiar with the system, and just in case some pirates jumped in, the Francescans jumped out and into another system…and then another after they found nothing in the second system.
“Well, I certainly can’t complain about you doing your job,” Paress said. “Is there anybody even left to fight?”
“I ‘ppreciate the confidence,” Johnny said, “But yeah, there’s plenty. You’ll see as we start gettin’ in more. There’s some systems made up o’ thousands of asteroids and they just get in deep there— like tryin’ t’ get some termites out of a wood pile.”
After some more patrolling, they were just about to jump out, when suddenly a large group of distortions began to appear all around them.
“Ah! Here they come!” Johnny said like a starving man watching food being brought to him. “‘bout time! Denxeiter launching!”
Paress was impressed with how quickly the doors under the Wespe opened up and a giant gray robot with black highlights flew out, a long cape flowing out behind it. The Wespe immediately throttled up her engines to blast free of the incoming enemies. Only a very few heavy assault carriers were built to stand up to anything approaching front line combat, but the Wespe wasn’t one of them. Aside from some small anti-aircraft guns, the little old escort carrier was armed with four 9” beam rifles as her main armament— medium guns in front that could certainly hurt, but they were generally to be used to fight her way out of any predicaments and get to a safe place.
The Wespe had nearly made it out of the danger zone when the pirates finished their jump. The carrier opened up with her guns and four beams lanced through a smaller pirate’s shields and blew the ship apart before it even knew what hit it. Before any other nearby pirates could react to the little carrier escaping from their area, Johnny fired a thin, white beam from Denxeiter’s helmet crest that sliced through the enemies, carving them into giant chunks before they exploded. Allepexxis’ tactical computer identified the weapon as the Xeiter Beam. The Wespe safely away, Denxeiter turned its attention on the rest of the group.
Seeing Johnny take care of the Wespe’s immediate danger, Paress had already spun Allepexxis around to face the rest of the pirates. In the Grinlap Zone, pirates would sometimes immediately surrender, powering down their weapons so that Paress could arrest them. Nothing like that was happening here as Paress realized that fifteen starships were all targeting him and Johnny. Moments later, beam fire arced out from the ships and reached out to kill the Space Knights.
“Whoah, these guys don’t mess around,” Paress said. He shifted Allepexxis sideways and fired the Searing Flame in a tight pattern. The flame splashed against some pirates’ shields, overwhelming them and then incinerating the ships behind.
“Well, Johnny’s carrier did just blow away a ship without any sort of preamble and then Johnny killed another couple,” Casten said. “Isn’t this pretty much self defense from their point of view?” Paress was glad that Casten had the sense to keep this conversation private between the two of them.
“Maybe,” Paress said. “Then again, from what we’ve read on these guys on the way over, they don’t really seem to be the surrendering type.”
“Maybe they’ve tried in the past, but stopped when Johnny kept killing them in the process.”
“Heh, that’s a fair point,” Paress said. “On the other hand, Captain Weber doesn’t seem like the type to start shooting people for the hell of it.”
Paress flew forward and threaded between the beams fired by two other ships. He landed on top of one and ripped out the ship’s insides while sending a blast of flame down the side of the other ship, cutting it in two.
“That’s because he’s now caught up in Johnny’s way of doing things. He can’t give these guys a chance to surrender if he wanted to. It’s gone too far,” Casten said.
“Well, you just said Captain Weber’s ship actually fired before Johnny did,” Paress said. “Maybe it’s Johnny who’s caught up in Weber’s super violent ways. Didja ever think of that?” They both laughed at how unlikely those chances were.
Paress glanced over to see Denxeiter unsling two large pistols from holsters and blast a couple more pirate ships, their hulls shattering as the massive shots smashed through their shields and blew gaping holes into their bodies. A smaller gunship flew in behind the Hyper Battle Machine and before Paress could warn him, Johnny had already spun around and fired two perfectly placed shots into the ship’s bridge and then sidestepped as the flaming wreckage flew past and exploded. Like Johnny himself, his Hyper Battle Machine seemed to move with unnatural speed.
I really don’t need to worry about covering him, Paress thought. He’s been doing this for a long time. Way longer than me. He knows what he’s doing.
The ship that Allepexxis was still crouched on was starting to explode from having its insides torn out, so Paress jumped off the doomed craft and shot straight up and over another ship that was lining up to fire at him. He spun over the ship and aimed straight down, firing the Beam Lancers on Allepexxis’ shoulders. Six high-intensity red lasers with beams so focused as to almost look solid carved the enemy ship in
to neat slices before it burst into flame and exploded.
Two more ships came down from overhead, firing beams and torpedoes as they came. Paress quickly adjusted the cone of the Searing Flame to the wide angle and fired, the flame pouring out in a giant, blinding tornado that ignited the torpedoes all at once while they were still relatively close enough to the ships to pop their shields. He quickly focused the flame down into a smaller, more focused beam and sent it crashing thought the ships, burning out their insides while tearing them apart. As the ships exploded, Paress looked around, searching for another target, but soon realized all the enemies had been destroyed.
“Hey, not bad,” Johnny said. “We went through those boys like a hot knife through butter.”
“Yeah, one Hyper Battle Machine’s usually enough,” Paress agreed. “Two might be overkill.”
“Heh heh, that’s the spirit.”
“Those two sidearm pistols Denxeiter carries suits you.”
“Yep, he didn’t come with ‘em when I first showed up. I asked the fellers at the Academy if they could gimme something in my Machine to match my personal style.” As Johnny spoke, Paress was reminded of the two huge revolvers under Johnny’s poncho. “So’s they did that and here they are.” Denxeiter spun the guns and holstered them expertly.
I wonder how long it took Cassie to program that move in, Paress thought with a smile. He found the extraneous maneuver charming.
“That’s interesting,” Paress said. “That the Academy gave you custom weapons that you requested. I never would’ve thought of such a thing.” He looked over his display at the weaponry Allepexxis carried. “Of course, I can’t really think of anything to add to my weaponry…”
“Got the idea from Denxeiter’s first pilot,” Johnny said. “She was a bit more of the hack ’n slash type. A real ace with the sword. So she asked the Academy to give ‘er one for this rig and they did. He’s got a big sword that can appear fer a time.”
Space Dragon Allepexxis Page 36