Twin suns of Carrola (Starshatter Book 2)

by Dark Knight

  They had little luggage between the four of them, since the young couple had all of their possessions safely back on Vasilisa’s spacer shuttle “Princess frog”. Awesome had his star-fighter “Insanity” and him being a three foot tall hamster, the under-seat space was big enough to house all of his personal stuff. Dozan’Re had one of his friends – a member of the local militia that he was a former guest of, literally hop and bring his duffel bag on the spot. The armor suit he’d looted from the last engagement was already at the docks. He had left it in storage there, since it was damaged and beyond his current means to fix. The kil’ra ordered the automated loading system to transfer the crate with his armor into Starshatter’s cargo hold. He could ask the others for help with its restoration later. After a short while Brynjar arrived with a mag-lift car in tow. His large strides quickly bringing him next to Starshatter’s docking arm.

  Everyone was chatting while waiting for Cav’s docking teams to load both ’Princess frog’ and ’Insanity’ into Starshatter’s hangar bay. Anit’za’s unfortunate shuttle had to be sold shortly after repairing it, and with Brynjar’s towering Strategic armor laying in its new mecha pit, there was exactly enough space in there to accommodate all of their machines.

  Dozan stayed slightly back from the main group. Together with Lilly, he watched as the space construction vehicles and the larger docking mecha arms gently placed both fighter and shuttle inside Starshatter’s open hangar. Dozan looked at Lilly, fixing both his cape and ornate cap, before taking a deep breath and asking the question whose answer he’d dreaded since she pleaded for his help:

  “Tell me now, Lilly, how all of it happened. And I will ask you to spare no details – no matter how painful it is for you.” – he placed his gloved hand over her head gently – “I ask this of you because Vengeance is an act that requires most meticulous preparation. Both as a Kil’ra and as a morale officer, it is my duty, nay privilege, to visit deadly harm upon those monsters!” – Dozan’s hands reflexively gripped the hilt of his sword and the handle of his Beretta railgun. Remembering his old human master’s speeches and with raised head, he cited in a low voice:

  “Victims, those who were kidnapped and sold as pieces of flesh – Justice! There will be a reckoning for the crimes of your captors and their abettors yet. Doom will be upon them, swift terror grasping their hearts and minds. Ever knowing that violent death hounds each of their steps in the depths of the shadows and space...”

  Lilly’s entire body resonated with his words, and she suddenly felt her small frame capable of great feats of strength and bravery. Now with her fear all but gone, the scar-covered bunny calmly recounted her grim tale of suffering and survival. For her, time suddenly stood still. Lilly remembered, and she recounted everything that had happened to her almost like a droning automaton; all of her battles and the slow, agonizing crawl through the forest. At the end of her tale, as she recounted her last desperate clash with that taz’aran scout trooper, Lilly noticed some of her crewmates standing grouped around her and Dozan. They had slightly differing expressions on their faces, but the prevalent feelings were anger and sadness. Vasilisa almost hissed:

  “Thank you for reminding me why I can’t stand those taz’aran pieces of shit!” – and turning on her heels stomped towards Starshatter’s airlock, pistol hand twitching close to the holster. Her husband Alric, somehow kept his composure and muttered with barely contained anger – “Back to their old tricks I see. The long sleep that I had, has changed everything, even the scale of things. War,” – he whispered ominously – “War always changes everything!” – and followed in his wife’s footsteps, he strode slowly towards the starship. Brynjar sighed heavily and noted:

  “How will they fare if they’d picked on somebody their own size, or bigger?” – he clenched his fists and Anit’za winced. He’d imagined how the large Asgardian was punching fist size holes in the taz’aran tanks. The dzenta’rii suddenly thought of something else and quickly caught up to his new armory officer – “Commander Alric, I need to ask something of you!” – Anit’za looked back, and trying to envision Brynjar holding an item, made a series of strange motions with his hands – “I gather you are a weapon’s specialist, yes? Wonderful!” – Not leaving the somewhat startled marine the opportunity to reply, Anit’za continued – “I’ll give you a lot of salvage and you will craft something for... him.” – and he pointed at his Asgardian mecha jock. They both stood beside Starshatter’s airlock, and while his new captain continued fleshing out what he had in mind, Alric’s smile grew even wider. He happily nodded in agreement, and gently pushed the now confused Vasilisa past the airlock’s doors.

  The rest of her crew soon gathered and followed suit. It took them only half an hour to prepare Starshatter for take off, it had already been well stocked with fuel and supplies. While the new crewmates explored the ship’s interior, stored their gear in the Armory and personal possessions in their cabins, Lilly found her way into Brynjar’s mecha pit. She climbed up the towering hull of his mecha, safely secured by a multitude of mag-locks and megasteel cables, and huddled her small scar covered body in its large cockpit. There, she finally succumbed to mental fatigue and fell asleep.

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  After the vessel’s FTL engine split, bent, and warped the space-time around its hull making the jump into hyperspace possible, Brynjar found Lilly and covered her with his pilot’s jacket. The bunny was twitching in her slumber, and the Asgardian sighed heavily – he still was unsure of how she had survived facing the taz’arans all alone. As far as he was concerned it was a combination of grit, frontier colonist stubbornness, and a lot of straight dumb luck. Yes, the under-preparedness of that taz’aran unit did help her greatly. Brynjar managed to grab some information from the local G-net access node on Cav right after he and Lilly had met for the first time. Apparently she had not simply survived, but managed to take out multiple star troopers. The report that he’d read stated one full section of veteran scout troopers and even a bloody GAV. He imagined the thing chasing her around the jungles – GAV’s were a nightmare for ordinary foot soldiers. She shot it down with a plasma grenade that was launched from a simple sling. Not an easy feat to achieve, and by somebody who was in essence a peaceful farmer just one month ago. Once more the Terrans managed to surprise everyone – others would’ve succumbed to their wounds or ran away, shaking in fear, praying to their Gods that they’d last long enough until reinforcements came to save them. No. Not the Terrans. He checked if Lilly was snug, folding one of the sleeves of his jacket under her ears and closed the cockpit. On his way to ten forward he recollected how they met for the first time and when he entered through the main doors of their ship’s recreational area, the Asgardian was sporting a big toothy smile.

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  Brynjar sometimes forgot what his fame as a mecha champion meant – many youngsters and others had traveled to Cav colony just for an autograph on a holo-pic. Some sought advice, others, were all too desperate to become his apprentices. Brynjar did not desire to accommodate hundreds and sometimes thousands of requests, so in a crate next to his door he left a bunch of handcrafted models of his mecha. He had personally signed each and every one of them on the back with his new call-sign “The Rock”. After signing under captain Anit’za and moving shop to Starshatter’s hangar, he of course, placed the same crate outside. Usually the local kids who ran errand on the docks loitered around afterwards playing pilots and mecha jocks, pointed the fans and others to his new mecha pit.

  One day, a month after that devastating battle against the pirate mecha lances, Brynjar found sad faced Lilly standing beside his damaged strategic armor. The bunny had casually wandered inside his mecha pit, twiddling with one of the models in her hands. He was intrigued and stopped working – bunnies he’d seen before on Earth, obviously, but not one that horribly scarred. Trying to cheer u
p the, then unknown to him creature, Brynjar leaped down from his mecha’s torso and gracefully landed on the bay floor. He lowered his large Asgardian frame and offered his left hand for a fist bump. From the side all of this looked so comical that by the time the bunny had reluctantly fist bumped back with her paw, so tiny in comparison, a chuckling captain Anit’za came out from behind one of their big cargo crates. It appears that he had wandered off a couple of hours earlier into the cargo hold, and lost in thought dozed off on top of one of the empty containers. He left the two startled, immediately addressing the bunny by name and even mentioning her profession:

  “Chief engineer Brynjar, would you do the honors and give Lilly here a tour of the ship? You are a farmer and exobiologist extraordinaire, hailing from Carrola Prime am I correct, brave Terran client?” – not leaving the small bunny time to answer he continued – “Please, ask her the questions as you walk about, my Asgardian friend. You know, the special ones.” – he winked at him and strolling towards the hangar’s exit lift added – “After you finish we can have a little snack together in our ship’s ten forward!” – his face transformed into a shining mask of persuasion, eyes transfixed on both of them slowly blinking, mouth widely smiling, the shine of his perfectly maintained teeth gleaming in the dimly lit hangar bay. Brynjar sighed and nodded at the now not-so-unknown bunny.

  At least she had some choice in the whole matter, as he’d found out, that despite him assuming he was in possession of great planning skills – that Dzenta’rii was far, far superior by any stretch of the imagination. It was in fact he who had posted the mecha contract on the Net, and tweaked every possible occurrence in such a way, as to ensure that the famous Asgardian battlemech pilot would end in his employ. Brynjar was at first dumbstruck and perhaps a little bit annoyed, but then came to the instant realization – that this captain was exactly the person who would utilize his considerable talents to their maximum possible extent. Making a gesture with his large hand the Asgardian noted each feature of his starship’s hangar and mecha pit, in the end asking Lilly the very first question from Anit’za’s list:

  “Think carefully and answer me only after giving it serious thought – Do you consider yourself an interesting person?”

  The bunny’s face twisted, and at first Brynjar was unsure of what was happening inside of her head, then she laughed. Quietly at first, she picked up speed and soon was laughing loudly, with tears of joy streaming from her eyes. Lilly grabbed his sleeve and after a quick couple of tries to regain her breath answered:

  “No, I’m just a simple scrub. Really... I grew watermelons for the better part of my life. How special and interesting could I be?”

  Brynjar didn’t even have to swipe the holo-file on his PDA – the answer was consistent with the parameters that his captain had plugged in.

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  Starshatter slid out of hyperspace and her new navigator, Vasilisa, nervously blinked a couple of times, overwhelmed with a sudden feeling of Deja-vu – a large debris field comprised of many a spaceship hulk floated straight ahead on their course. Before reaching Carrola prime and entering a stable orbit, they had to either navigate through it, or avoid it altogether. Above her nav-controls a small holo of the ship was projected, displaying situational data-streams from all of its sensors. Vasilisa knew this design well – a rare and heavily modified version of the first Terran patrol cutter named lovingly “The Brick” by its first crews who fought and died in it. Initially, it was supposed to be named the ’Flagpole’ class, but the new name stuck and even high command had adopted it, seeing how the ship instantly garnered for itself a legendary reputation. The first batch that flew out of ’Earth Orbit One’s’ space station docks did so just in time to fight off wave after wave of pirate fighter craft, bombers, fast attack gunboats and dropships full of invasion troops. They chomped off such a huge bit of Lord Mahimm’s advanced attack wave, that he was forced to commit his heavier starships before Earth’s planetary defense satellites were completely wiped out. That cost the bastard even more ships, big ones this time, shot to slag by the satellites’ long range railguns. The escorts then engaged those frigates and their crews died heroes deaths – after taking catastrophic damage and with weapons inoperative they rammed the enemy. Vasilisa always thought that those first models were all lost that day. Apparently this one, had somehow survived.

  Bricks were in essence “mutated” fleet escort ships – the initial design, as she remembered it, was intended to be a nimble craft, bristling with point defense guns. What the fleet got in the end was a compromise; the ship had a combination of rapid tracking turrets, supercharged main engines, and a small battery of cannons to boot. On top all of this the engineers over-armored its hull to such an extent that they had to add another main engine, redesigning the thing on the go during construction. The small rotation section in the middle was removed to house even more guns. The bridge height was lowered, and outfitted with the, then new, transparent megasteel. The navy corps of engineers chose survivability and weapons over providing crew comfort and gravity. The shape of the hull was well... brick-like, with two big armor encased plasma engines, their exhausts ever so slightly sticking out from the ship’s aft. It was reminiscent of the overly long bricks that people used to build old village homes with. The edges were angled so that long mag-rails could be used to switch the firing arcs of the PD turrets circling the hull on all sides. The hull was painted traditionally in dark navy blue. On full burn that Brick from hell could catch up to and shred to pieces almost all of the star-fighters and bombers it faced. With the addition of afterburners Vasilisa could easily outrun torps, and outperform everything that she knew of – and her being a Spacer, she knew a lot about starships.

  She wasn’t piloting the ’Princess Frog’ anymore, but a venerable two hundred meter long vessel of war. Albeit sluggish in comparison with her exploratory shuttle, the ship’s controls were just as responsive and she couldn’t wait to fly it in battle. The back of her spacesuit was free and Vasilisa could spare the space for another mural. Piloting Starshatter like a tiny shuttle rather than as a small starship was her Spacer’s challenge now, but before reaching for the holo-brush she’d have to achieve the feat first. With its design specs like they were, that certainly would be possible, fun and devastatingly scary for her enemies to witness firsthand. Without turning her attention away from the ship’s controls, she chimed:

  “Cap, whad’ya say? We can race through the debris field or dance slowly around it? I can safely fly this baby anywhere, just so you know Cap!” – she again looked lovingly at the main navigational controls of Starshatter. Old, polished by the touch of dozens or maybe even hundreds of navigators before her, everything was kept in excellent working order nonetheless. That entire exquisite assembly could’ve easily been the part of any Spacer ship navigational pit at sometime in its existence. Those were the ship’s original controls that came factory stamped straight out of the docks on ’Earth Orbit One’ – she knew, because she checked the serial numbers after they slipped into hyperspace firsthand.

  Anit’za looked at the main holo-screen and then turned his head towards Cat, smiling, with an inquisitive and expecting look in his eyes. His XO was standing at attention next to his command chair and instantly nodded:

  “Navigation make a course correction, take the best rout throughout the outskirts of that debris field!” – she quickly spat her very first bridge command and turned around awaiting her captain’s reaction. He unleashed a devilish smile back and continued to calmly tap the command chair’s hand rest with his index finger, resting initial ship command decisions squarely on her shoulders. Something then piqued his interest and after considering for a few seconds, Anit’za added:

  “Chief engineer Brynjar! I need you to use the ship’s sensor array and scan that debris. Set it on passive, we, of course, don’t want to startle any of the possible ambushers lurking within.” – the dz
enta’rii muttered scratching his chin, while all of the bridge crew gave him puzzled looks – “Why you ask? If it was me, I would’ve done exactly the same – that field is an excellent place for an ambush if I ever saw one. Or did you think the taz’arans who demolished our system operator’s colony would simply lose a battalion strong force of star troopers, multiple starships, and then never return back to check what’s what? We need to reach the colony, land on it, and find the dead man’s scanner before they do. It should be well hidden that DMS, and had sensor-log recordings of all taz’aran ships that entered and exited Carrola’s orbit. If we want to find out where they ferried the kidnapped colonists to, that is.”

  Cat quickly shot some follow up orders after getting her captain’s hints – “Lilly, try and lower our ship’s sensor profile by masking the main engine’s ion trail! Vasilisa, lower the speed to one third standard cruising and use the larger debris to further mask our signature!” – she inhaled – “Brynjar, stand ready to activate all main weapons and shields on my word! Forward any passive scan data of the big debris to Navigation before Vasilisa issues a course correction. I declare ship condition White – silent running!” – Anit’za silently nodded again, his smile ever widening the more he listened to his XO. All those talks he had with her and the games of chess were finally paying off as he knew they would.

  “Awesome, I need you to take a stroll ahead on our course with your starfighter. Do some quick scouting while you’re out there.” – Anit’za ordered the hamster, who was sitting in their secondary navigational pit, making slight course corrections from time to time, aiding Vasilisa’s all but perfect piloting. It wasn’t in any way essential that he did so, but everyone found the hamster’s presence soothing and he could suddenly drop some sick jokes to lighten up the mood.