Embers of War (Adventures of the Starship Satori Book 8)

by Kevin McLaughlin

"Get ready, people. They're going to be on top of us in another few minutes," Martelle growled.

  He'd massed the entire platoon here. This was where the battle for the ship would be fought. There were other ways the aliens could pass around them, but that wasn't the pattern they seemed to be following. They were storming straight through the ship, making a beeline from their entry point to the center. Their movement wasn’t hard to track. They were knocking out every security camera in their path as they traveled.

  Near as Martelle could determine from the video feed before it had been stopped, they’d managed to cut through the outer hull. Probably linked their ship up to the side of the Independence and then sliced their way right in. The spot they entered was an empty barracks room - a perfect spot for entry.

  Which meant the enemy knew the ship, or the Naga version of it, anyway. This had to be the enemy the Naga was fighting. The tactics and weapons were nothing like what he was used to seeing the reptilian aliens use, so that meant it had to be…something else. Another life form.

  The HUD across his helmet faceplate pinged another flash at him, showing another camera down. Whatever this enemy was, it would be on top of them all soon enough.

  “Get ready,” he said over the tactical net. “Here they come.”

  Flashes of light burst toward them from down the hall. The beams burned sizzling patches in the walls or ceiling where they impacted. Martelle ducked instinctively, and a beam of energy slashed through the air where his head had just been. Too close. From his new prone position, the old Marine aimed directly down the hall and fired a burst of rounds.

  All about him his Marines did the same, laying down a barrage of fire that filled the hall.

  “Grenadiers, send two HE shots,” he called out. A moment later there was the loud ‘shunk’ sound twice as the 40mm grenades screamed from their launchers and rocketed down the hall. They detonated in twin flashes of brilliant fire. The hot air from the explosions slapped Martelle across the face a moment later.

  No more energy blasts were fired their way. Was it over that quickly? Martelle didn’t think so. His gut said that this battle was just getting started. He might have given the enemy pause. But they weren’t dead. They were assessing his strength, trying to find a way to win tactical advantage over him. What would their next move be? What would he do if he were them?

  It wasn’t a question he could even begin to answer. He didn’t know what they looked like, what their strengths or weaknesses might be. He only knew that whatever they were, the Naga were damned near terrified of them. And the Naga were tough enough to have earned his respect. Anything that scared them wasn’t going to be easy to beat.

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” Martell called out. “Any movement, call it out.”

  “There! Got something!” Lance Corporal Adams shouted.

  Martelle saw it too. He blinked once, unable to understand what he saw at first. The smoke from the grenades was hard to see through. It looked like the ceiling, walls, and floor were all moving, down there in the smoke. Like they were rippling. Undulating.

  “Fire!” Martelle shouted. He lit up the hall with his rifle, the other Marines firing as well. The first rank of the enemy troops emerged from the smoke, crawling forward along the ceiling, walls, and skittering towards his men on the floor.

  They weren’t remotely human. They weren’t even humanoid. But he’d seen them before. Martelle had watched the footage from the battle for the lunar base. He’d seen the monstrous centipede-like insects that the Satori’s crew had fought.

  These were the same. Except…not quite the same. Martelle spotted protrusions from their spines that he hadn’t seen in those videos. Then all together, those protrusions erupted in beams of light, blasting away at his men. One of the Marines fighting next to him was hit and collapsed with a hole cut through his chest.

  The nightmare creatures swarmed down the hall, closing to bayonet range, their deadly forelimbs slashing and cutting. The entire battle was in jeopardy, and if this spot fell, the entire ship might go down. They had to hold this place.

  Martelle gave a roar and rose to his feet. One of the things dropped from the ceiling in front of him, opening its jaws wide. He ducked under one scimitar-like claw and then fired his rifle’s grenade launcher at point blank range into the monstrous mouth. The thing’s head exploded. He looked around for a new target, and the battle for the Independence began in earnest.

  Seventeen

  The Satori rocked again. Beth heard metal screaming somewhere as the enemy weapons tore into her ship. The armor they’d put on this new version of the Satori was much stronger than it had been on the old vessel, but it had limits. More alarms sounded, and she had the feeling they’d finally exceeded the stress tolerance of the plating.

  “Hull breach, port side!” Ayala called out. “We’re venting air. Sealing the section.”

  “Damage report,” Beth said.

  “Number three railgun is out. Nothing else vital got hit,” Ayala said. “This time. But…”

  The enemy ship flickered back into space again, exiting another wormhole. Now it was above them and forward. It opened fire the moment it appeared, stabbing out at her ship with those same twin beam weapons.

  “Foster, evasive. Roll the ship, our armor is still stronger on the bottom,” Beth said. Then she whirled to the lieutenant on guns. “Hall, nail that thing!”

  “Yes ma’am,” both of them replied almost in unison.

  The Satori rocketed through a dive and roll, avoiding one of the beams entirely and taking the other on her belly. The railguns stabbed out at the enemy ship. Beth mentally crossed her fingers, hoping they could score a hit. So far this fight had been incredibly one-sided.

  The alien vessel opened another wormhole and sped forward to evade their fire, but two of the railgun rounds exploded against its tail before it could make a clean getaway.

  “Yes!” Hall said.

  “You keep pounding that thing every chance you get,” Beth told her.

  “On it, ma’am.”

  The ship had re-appeared again, and the Satori shook once more as it was pummeled with more blasts. They couldn’t take much more of this pounding. Beth checked her instruments. Their own wormhole drive was still operational. They could flee, but she hesitated. If they ran, then the people on the planet below would be defenseless. She wasn’t sure if this ship had figured out they’d left people down there, but they’d surely check the landing site to see what the Satori had been up to.

  Worse yet, Beth still couldn’t be sure if these aliens had a means of tracking them through a wormhole jump. She was pretty sure they were the race which had created the drive in the first place, so they likely knew a lot more about how it operated than she did. If she ran for home she might just be leading them back to Earth.

  That she could not do. Which meant fleeing to some other star system, which would drain their drive for an hour or so, leaving them stranded. Unable to help the crew on the ground or get back to Earth.

  There was another way, though.

  “Majel, plot me a jump point sixty light seconds above the ecliptic. I want some breathing room,” Beth said.

  “Sixty…?” Ayala asked.

  “It’ll take that long for the light of our arrival to reach them,” Beth said.

  “Coordinates set,” Majel said.

  The alien cruiser swung in at them another time, gun blazing. It was time to go. They might survive another pass, but any one of these runs might damage something vital. Like the wormhole drive.

  “Do it!” Beth said.

  The wormhole appeared in front of the Satori. Then Lieutenant Foster goosed the drives and they shot forward. A moment later they were out in deep space. The planet was a distant point of light, looking much like any other star.

  “We’ve got about a minute before that thing shows up here,” Beth said. “I need ideas, rapidly.”

  “We can’t run, can we?” Ayala said.

  “Not easily, no
. It’s our last ditch. We have enough juice in the drives to reach Cyan, but no assurances it won’t follow us if we run,” Beth said. She didn’t need to mention the risk to Earth if they jumped there. Ayala nodded, and she could see the understanding in his eyes.

  “I believe I might have an idea,” Majel said.

  “All ears,” Beth replied, glancing down at the timer she’d set on her console. The seconds were ticking away rapidly.

  “Their attack sequence is too rapid to be manual. It takes time to set coordinates for a jump, even for a powerful computer,” Majel said. “I’ve analyzed their attack, and it demonstrates a pattern.”

  “Can you predict their jumps?” Beth asked.

  “They’ve stuck with a Fibonacci Sequence as the base for their algorithm so far. I believe I can,” Majel replied. “But we’ll need to survive one pass before I can predict where they will arrive next.”

  Beth thought as she watched the seconds tick away. It might be enough. If Majel was right about the pattern. If the enemy kept to the same pattern. If their own weapons were strong enough… Which reminded her. There was one weapon system she hadn’t unleashed on these aliens yet. It was time to drop that hammer.

  “All right. We take evasive when they arrive and try to return fire,” Beth said. The young officers in charge of those duties nodded solemnly. “When they jump, we jump immediately after them. Majel, try to place us right in front of them when they arrive.”

  “Right in…”

  “Immediately in front of their arrival location,” Beth said, stressing the word. “Foster, be ready to turn the wormhole drive back on for another micro-jump the instant we arrive from our jump.”

  Beth glanced down. The timer had reached zero. She held her breath. The next few seconds would either doom her ship or save it. She’d done virtually all she could.

  “Enemy ship off the starboard wing!” Hernandez said.

  Beth didn’t have to call for evasive action. She could feel the ship maneuver as Foster’s acrobatics pushed more acceleration than the inertia system could handle. Space spun past on the view screen. There was the distant thudding sound as the railguns blazed away.

  “Enemy jumping,” Majel said. “Initiating following jump.”

  The wormhole appeared directly in front of them, exploding in brilliant light. They leaped through, a short jump that seemed to take no time at all. The Satori exited the wormhole and saw - another wormhole! Majel had done it! The alien ship was only a few hundred meters ahead of them. They’d collide in seconds.

  “Now, Foster!” Beth shouted.

  He hadn’t waited for the order this time, either. The wormhole was already activating, slashing out a hundred meters ahead of their ship. The enemy ship had no time to evade. It collided with the front of their wormhole beam.

  Early on in their experiments with the wormhole drive, Beth had learned that it was capable of doing considerable damage as well as opening a portal to a new location. While the side of the wormhole facing the ship carried anything through intact, the far end of the wormhole was a place of incredible gravitational flux. When matter came in contact with that forward element of the wormhole, it tore the atoms apart.

  Beth had the briefest glimpse of the nose area of the alien ship coming apart before they blinked away, transported clear by the wormhole. The Satori re-appeared an instant later, some kilometer distant, just in time to watch the alien ship explode completely. All that remained was a flash of light and a growing field of debris.

  She sagged back against her chair, feeling weak from the sudden dip in adrenaline. It was over. She’d beat the thing. Beth was dimly aware that the bridge crew was cheering, and she smiled, letting them have their moment. They’d earned it. Humanity had faced yet another new foe and come out on top. This ship might not have all the bells and whistles of that alien craft, but they had done all right, applying a little bit of human ingenuity to the problem.

  They’d also gotten incredibly lucky. It could easily have gone the other way. Beth shook her head to clear it. “Let’s get back to the planet. We need to pick up our people and get the hell out of here.”

  “Oh, shit,” Hernandez said, almost under his breath.

  “That’s not the sort of language I want to hear on this bridge, Sergeant,” Ayala said.

  “Sorry sir,” Hernandez said. “Just… You have to see this.”

  He tapped his console and the view-screen changed. They were looking at the planet Dust again. But the planet wasn’t alone. There was a ship orbiting it. Beth sucked in a breath. She’d seen that ship before. It was the same one - or the same class, anyway - which had tried to tractor her in, when she was piloting the old Satori.

  “My god,” Ayala said. “How big is that thing?”

  “Very big,” Beth said.

  “About a kilometer long, sir,” Hernandez reported.

  “Has it seen us?” Ayala asked.

  “Unsure. This all happened a minute ago, too, sir. If it jumped out to us we wouldn’t see it depart on the screen until a minute after it got here,” Hernandez said. “But it should be picking up the destruction of that smaller ship right about now.”

  “Ready a jump,” Beth said.

  “For where?” Majel asked. “Earth?”

  “Can’t risk it. Prep coordinates for Cyan,” Beth said. “We can’t fight that thing. Be ready to jump as soon as it…”

  The thing arrived directly in front of them before she could finish speaking. It lashed out with a torrent of energy. The Satori bucked like it had been struck by a massive hammer. The beams tore deep into the ship, wreaking havoc on the hull and the more fragile systems beneath it.

  “Jump!” Beth cried.

  Light flashed, and the ship spun wildly out of control.

  Eighteen

  The Satori screamed out of the wormhole, bleeding atmosphere and venting fire. Beth’s vision was a red haze. She’d hit her head somewhere along the line. Her hand went to her forehead and came away wet. She was bleeding, and it was dripping into her eyes.

  Smoke was everywhere. Several consoles had shorted out during the brief moment they’d been blasted by the alien dreadnought. The lights were out, but emergency lighting came on a scant few seconds after their arrival.

  “Status,” Beth tried to say. Her voice sounded weak to her ears. She tried again, projecting all the strength she could into the command. “Status report.”

  “We’re in the Cyan system, near the innermost gas giant,” Majel reported. “Wormhole drive was too depleted to get any closer. Drive battery is drained for now.”

  Ayala coughed and got himself back up from where he’d fallen to the deck. He made his way to his console, which was still alive with flickering lights. More red than not, from what Beth could see of his damage control board.

  “We made it out in one piece, but there’s massive damage across the ship,” he said. “Those beams tore right through the hull plating. We’ve got casualties on every deck, all weapons are down. Life support is more or less functional.”

  “More or less?” Beth asked. They needed to breathe if they were going to have a prayer of fixing their ship.

  “It should hold long enough to get some patches on the damaged systems in place,” Ayala said. “Recommend we start there.”

  “Lieutenant Foster, we have any maneuvering ability?” Beth asked.

  “Some,” he said, testing his controls. “Looks like we’re not going anywhere too fast.”

  Beth pulled up a sensor reading of the system on her tablet. Her console was shot, shorted out beyond any hope of using it soon. The system was made up of a single star with five planets. The inner three were solid, but the outer two were massive gas giants, and there were clusters of asteroids between them. That might give them someplace they could hide.

  “Make for that nearest asteroid field,” she said. “We’ll duck in there and make repairs to the ship.”

  “Just another piece of space rock?” Ayala said. “That won�
�t save our people on Dust.”

  “Neither will us getting ourselves blown to bits. We’re stuck here for at least an hour. Let’s make the best use of it we can,” Beth said. “If we can get enough systems operational by then, we’ll see about returning to Dust. Otherwise…”

  Ayala nodded. “Otherwise we sit tight and hope that smaller ship didn’t have a chance to send too much information on us to its mother ship.”

  It was a slim hope, but Beth nodded. For now, it was the best they could do. For the next hour, they left a skeleton crew on bridge duty while everyone else participated in repairs. Life support turned out to be the easiest solution. Other crucial repairs would be longer in the working. The wormhole drive remained operational, which was a miracle Beth didn’t want to question too much. Of all the systems on the ship, that was the most critical, and the only one they could not repair at all if it was badly damaged. No one on Earth knew precisely how the damned thing worked, and damage to that system would effectively strand them light years from home.

  For that reason, it was placed in the most secure and heavily armored section of the ship. The ‘engine room’ was effectively an armored box at the very heart of the Satori, built with every protection they could engineer around the crucial systems which maintained the wormhole, their sub-light engines, the inertial dampener, the computer system housing Majel’s mind, and myriad other alien systems. All of which might as well be magic for all Beth could understand about how they functioned.

  That room hadn’t been pierced by the brutal attack. But more of the human-crafted systems wreathed around that inner sanctum had been damaged than remained functioning, it seemed. They had to get the railguns operational as soon as possible. But the repair team in charge of the port guns quickly discovered that one of the weapons was just missing. A shot had blown half of it completely clear from the ship, and smashed the other half beyond any hope of rebuilding.

  The other weapons were thankfully not as bad off. Systems overloaded by power surges, conduits cut, and computer systems either damaged or fried entirely were scattered all over the ship.