by C. T. Phipps
“She collects outcasts.”
“That she does. Do you want to become part of her collection?” Clarice leaned over and picked up a nearly-full bottle of Sunburst lager.
Not very potent but good for early-morning drinking.
I looked to one side. “I don’t know yet. When I left the Crius Reborn movement, I swore I would never kill anyone ever again. That lasted about a month until I was forced to kill a man in a fight over some salvage. Later, I killed a lot more people trying to survive.”
I still remembered wrapping my hands around Captain Thompkins’ throat, throttling the life out of him after he’d caught me trying to rob his office so I could get away from his crew. Sadly, not the most shameful moment of my life.
But close.
Clarice tapped the top of the Sunburst bottle, causing its iris to open before she handed it to me. “Any lingering loyalties to the Archduchy?”
“No,” I lied. “There was nothing good about the Archduchy. It was an organization that existed purely for the enrichment of the nobility as well as increasing its own power. Prince Germanicus was a monster.”
I still wished, as bad as it was, it had blown the hell out of the Commonwealth Navy and dropped a hundred asteroids on Albion.
“Then look after yourself,” Clarice said. “I’m starting to become fond of you.”
“That’s just because I’m possessed of nobility-reserved cybernetic arts for pleasing a lover. Ones extracted from millions of simulations and studies to pass amongst ourselves.”
Clarice blinked. “Really?”
I took a sip of the Sunburst. “As far as you know.”
That was when the Melampus’ jump alarm blared. That meant we were arriving at Ida’s target ship.
Hells.
I threw off the covers and began to get dressed.
Chapter Eight
The cargo bay was full of crewmembers frantically running back and forth. Yellow lights flashed both in the ceiling as well as the sides of the cargo hold while high-pitched sirens wailed. It took a second for me to register it wasn’t the jumpspace alarms blaring but the Melampus’ combat alert. Yellow lights meant the situation hadn’t reached critical, but everyone was to report to their stations. Second Mate Jun’s soft melodic voice was stating the ship’s barriers were holding at 99%.
We were under attack.
Fuck.
Space was full of a thousand potential dangers: pirates, terrorists, rebels, deserters, or local armies which had decided to engage in some pre-emptive looting, were just some of the human-based ones. The galaxy was so impossibly huge and the space lanes so incredibly vast that there was little to prevent raiding from being a lucrative business prospect to anyone willing to risk their lives stealing from others. Then I remembered we were visiting a ship Ida claimed would be the key to unraveling my doppelganger’s organization and wondered if we were under attack by my countrymen.
If so, we were doomed.
There was no way an old tug like the Melampus could stand against Crius military hardware, upgrades or not.
“Raiders?” Clarice asked, following behind me and looking for the captain.
“We can only hope,” I muttered.
Thankfully, we found the captain after passing just a few cargo containers. Ida stood in front of Isla, young Hiro, Holtz, and our chief mechanic, Munin. All of them were underneath the three Crosshair starfighters that were having their transport ladders moved up to their sides.
The starfighters were kept fueled but required time to power up. Worse, the ship hadn’t exactly been prepping for combat and we had members frantically trying to prepare for deployment of our meager defenses. The Melampus had rockets, strong barriers, and defensive plasma weapons in addition to the starfighters, but nothing which would stand up to military hardware. I really hoped we weren’t about to be annihilated by our own trap.
“You!” Ida pointed to me, the moment I came into her view. “Get in your spacesuit and get up there.”
“What?” I asked, confused. Surely, she didn’t want me to join the starfighter attack on our unseen enemy?
Wait, of course she did.
Dammit.
This day just kept getting better and better.
Ida clenched a fist and gave it a short shake. “We’re being assaulted, and I want these Crosshairs out there taking care of them. We’ve got six Chel Corefighters and a gunship out there. William is on the bridge sending blasts and the ship’s completely-nonexistent-on-paper rockets against it, but I want those things gone!”
“Chel, my God,” Clarice said, her voice low. “Captain, what have you gotten us into?”
I agreed with her sentiment.
Chel were every spacer’s nightmare and something even the Commonwealth hesitated to tangle with. As much as the rest of the galaxy considered Crius obscene for meddling with human DNA and cybernetics, the Chel had been a group of human colonists who had survived the Great Collapse and the subsequent Galactic Dark Age by bio-forming themselves to live purely in space. The results were a tall, albino, hairless race of malformed zero-g-dwelling spacers who scarcely qualified as human anymore. A few believed them to be one of the few human cultures in regular contact with aliens and were possibly uplifts.
The Chel occupied a large swath of territory in Sector 8 and had a simple policy of killing everyone who wandered into their territory. Those that fell into their hands were very often tortured to death and their twisted bodies left as a warning. They were the only race the Commonwealth had flat out been defeated by. Then again, that was probably because they had no worlds to attack and the largest fleet in the galaxy. Clarice, for reasons of her own, hated them above all other things.
“What are they doing out here?” Clarice asked, looking at Ida with an almost-accusatory stare.
“I don’t know. Focus on getting them away from our target,” Ida said, giving a dismissive wave.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked, wanting to make absolutely sure she wanted me to take up arms. I wasn’t going to be fighting my countrymen, terrorists or not, but that was a small consolation if I was going to be fighting a race literally born to spaceflight.
That was when Munin, real name Maria Anna Gomez, walked up to me and handed me a spacesuit with a combat-hardened helmet and personal barrier. She was a short woman of mixed Commonwealth-Crius ancestry, light-brown skin, long black hair, and a notably curvaceous form, accented by her tube-top as well as form-fitting work pants. A tattoo of a raven stretching its wings was visible on and around her belly button.
“What she said was get in the fucking flyer and blow some bad guys up!” Munin said. “Do that crazy fighter thing you do.”
“Crazy fighter thing?” I said.
Munin glared, her point obvious. We didn’t have much time until the fighters were ready to deploy and, while the barriers were holding, they wouldn’t be holding long against a sustained Chel attack. Thank God it was just six fighters and a gunship. I’d never been particularly grateful the Melampus was a slow armored turtle before, but it would take a long time to knock us out.
They would, though, if we couldn’t blow them out of the star lanes.
I had to do this
No! Dammit, I was not going to be manipulated into this! We had combat pilots who could fly for us. I would rather die than end up flying a starship for the same Commonwealth that had destroyed my homeworld.
“I’m not a combat pilot anymore!” I said, stunned at their attempts to dragoon me back into service. “I don’t know how to fly a Crosshair!”
Truth be told, I could probably figure out how to do it at a glance. Commonwealth starfighters weren’t that different and I did have an enhanced brain just for navigation. Logic had nothing to do with my argument at this point, though.
“We need your help, sir!” Hiro said, doing his best to look intimidating despite the fact he looked like a porcelain doll.
Holtz just looked at me with the same blinding hatred he did ear
lier.
“We don’t have time to argue, son,” Ida said. “This is real.”
Isla looked at me. “I understand your motivations, Cassius. I’ll respect your decision either way.”
“I won’t!” Clarice said. “Get in the damn ship! You’re trained for this. Our own pilots are washouts and dredges!”
“I resent that, ma’am,” Hiro said. “I was driven out of the Commonwealth Navy for reasons unrelated to my combat performance—”
“Shut up, kid,” Holtz said.
“Yessir,” Hiro replied
The female voice then said, “Barriers now reduced to seventy-six percent.”
That…wasn’t good.
I was willing to die to prevent myself from joining the Commonwealth, but I wasn’t willing to let the others. Where the hell was David Albernathy? The actual head of the Melampus’ starfighter squadron?
“All right,” I said, as I started to pull the spacesuit over my uniform. “But I’m in charge. Everyone obeys what I say, even you Holtz.”
Holtz just kept his gaze even. His expression was murderous. I didn’t care. I’d fought with pilots who’d wanted to kill me before. I didn’t think this was going to be a bonding experience, though.
Just a survival one.
“How long until the ships are ready?” I asked, looking to Munin.
“Just a few minutes. My babies are kept in tip-top condition for this.” Munin then narrowed her eyes. “You realize I will kill you if you get a scratch on them.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” I replied.
“Dead bang. I’ll slit your throat in your sleep.”
“Understood.”
Munin made a throat-slicing gesture for added emphasis as I walked over to the transport ladder for the lead starfighter. The three starfighters’ engines were powering up now and would be ready to deploy in just a minute or two. I had to get into the cockpit and ready myself or this flight was going to be short its captain.
It was a strange feeling, once more going into battle and I’d have been lying if I wasn’t excited. The problem was I was going into battle on behalf of my enemies and I didn’t care. I could have lied to myself and said it was to protect my friends here on the Melampus, but the truth was I just wanted to get back behind a starfighter’s control.
Isla stopped to give me a kiss on the cheek and a hug. “Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
“Stay alive. Clarice and I would miss you if you died,” Isla said.
“I’d even break out the good scotch to toast you,” Clarice said. “Probably.”
I gave an uncomfortable smile. “So noted. I look forward to returning to the arms of my lovers.”
“Don’t get sappy, Cassius,” Clarice said.
“Godspeed!” Isla said.
I was still getting used to the values of the Commonwealth and other outsiders regarding relationships. On Crius, one partner was always superior to the other with possessiveness part and parcel to all relationships. It had helped lead to the dissolution of my father’s marriage to Amita Plantagenet as neither would submit to the authority of the other.
Pleasantly, outsiders seemed to love and be loved wherever they pleased. Fights still happened across the ship when commitments were made, or misinterpreted as being made, but they mostly considered sex to be just an enjoyable pastime with no strings attached. Indeed, it was my friendship Isla and Shannon valued far more than any physical encounters we may have had.
Which, in a way, made me sad.
The ship’s computer intoned. “One enemy target destroyed. Barriers at sixty-six percent.”
Ida said, “Excuse me, I have to get to the bridge and take control from First Mate Baldur before he gets us all killed. Behave, you boys.”
Holtz attached himself to the transport ladder beside me. Hiro did the same and the three of us ascended to our ship’s cockpits. I put my helmet on and it sealed around me before flooding me with warm atmosphere. The lights in the hangar turned red and the cargo doors prepared to open. All the remaining crewmembers proceeded to head to the pressured doors around us and passed through them.
Entering through the starfighter cockpit’s trapdoor, I climbed into the seat and strapped in. The ship was almost completely powered up now and ready to depart. I watched the cargo bay doors open with a glowing blue barrier keeping in a collection of the air and heat.
“It’s good to be home,” I muttered, checking the controls before turning off the A.I. interface. I didn’t need a machine to do my flying for me. “Let’s go.”
A countdown from five occurred and the ship magnetically propelled us into the darkness of space as our engines fired behind us, sending us out into the starry abyss of our battlefield. The starfighter’s computer linked with my long-dormant Combat Universal Processor—my mind filling with data even as there was a slight lag due to the incompatible formats of the technology.
I saw the five U-shaped chrome Chel Corefighters on the outside of the dagger-shaped gunship to which they were attached. All of the Melampus’ data on the ships and their capabilities instantly became part of my memories. The vessels were good, Crius-level technology, but not as good as I’d expected with rumors of Chel advances.
Sensors showed the vessel the Crius gunship had attacked with a long Kronos-class cargo freighter the size of a small space station floating in space. Its SIP registry marked it as the Rhea. There were several bits of Crius starfighter wreckage and the burnt-out remains of another Chel gunship floating around it that I presumed to be the remnants of a battle we’d missed. A black hole was in the star system, the one we called the Thirsty God. We were far out of range from its gravity pull, but its presence made this a strange spot for anyone to set up shop.
The five Chel Corefighters stopped their green plasma barrage of the Melampus to engage us, moving sluggishly despite the level of their technology. The fact they could easily dodge the Melampus’ crimson blasts and rockets proved they couldn’t be underestimated, though.
“Engage the Corefighters with plasma weapons only, preserve your rockets for the gunship,” I said.
“We need to take those things out, we’re outnumbered!” Holtz growled at me.
“I’ll deal with that,” I said, my voice steady.
I brought my ship around and engaged the speed as much as possible, dodging the Chel’s green plasma blasts, before sailing past the Chel Corefighters, then flipping my ship behind them. I proceeded to open fire and blew two of the vessels into stardust. It seemed the Crosshair’s cannons had been upgraded by Munin, even if they were heavy on the generators. Unfortunately, no sooner had I done so, than one of the Chel ships turned and blasted at me.
“Try to hold those other two off! They turn sluggishly,” I said, moving the Crosshair around to avoid the Chel Corefighter’s attacks. This pilot was much better than the others and adjusted to each of my movements.
“Any suggested maneuvers!?” Hiro said, struggling as he came under fire from one of the remaining two fighters.
“Not over an open channel!” I said, feeling a glancing shot wipe out 90% of my starfighter’s barriers in an instant.
Dammit, I was sluggish.
Too much alcohol and not enough practice.
Why the hell was I out here?
That was when an idea hit me. “Take them along the Melampus!”
“What?” Hiro shouted back.
“Do it!”
I pulled the Crosshair to buzz the Melampus even as its barely-trained gunners filled the stars around us with plasma blasts. I easily dodged around them, even as the Chel Corefighter behind me did the same while in pursuit.
That allowed me to turn my starfighter around in an instant, knowing where they would dodge and blow the enemy fighter to pieces. Like shogi, the national sport of Crius, it was all about maneuvering your opponent where you wanted.
Three dead.
And for what?
“Sir!” Hiro shouted from behind me. “My barriers are down!
”
I swung around my starfighter once more and checked the sensors. Holtz had killed the fighter he’d been engaging, but Hiro’s was damaged and his attempt to lead the enemy against the Melampus had just resulted in the enemy vessel slowing him down. I opened fire repeatedly to give the boy a chance to escape, but the Chel vessel dodged between my attacks, the Melampus, and the rockets Hiro launched in defiance of my earlier order.
That was when the pilot was shot down by Holtz.
“Impressive,” I said, genuinely impressed by the spacer’s efforts.
That was when Holtz launched his rockets against me as well as a torrent of plasma fire.
“What are you doing?” I shouted, trying to dodge as alarms went off all across the Commonwealth vessel.
“Avenging my brother,” Holtz said, coming in for a death run while I struggled to stay ahead of both plasma as well as rocket attacks.
Holtz’s shots were frighteningly close and my responses weak. The Chel gunship, meanwhile, retreated into jumpspace after losing its fighters. In my ear, I heard the Melampus’ bridge crew frantically shouting for Holtz to stop. None of it would do any good, though, and I knew he was resigned to dying if it meant killing me.
Throwing everything into my engines, the extra energy gave me enough boost to stay ahead of the rockets even as a blast sailed past my cockpit in non-sensor visual range. Turning around the vessel while going in reverse, I fired randomly in hopes of striking the approaching rockets, which detonated one after the other.
That was when I heard the target-lock alarms.
Holtz had me.
And then he didn’t.
His ship had exploded.
The boy, Hiro, had shot him down.
His own squad mate.
Chapter Nine
“What the hell was that, Ida?” I asked, standing in the captain’s quarters. It was a half-hour later after returning to the Melampus.