by D. J. Holmes
“Is it really complete?” Simmons asked. She had just appeared beside Sarah and the lead scientist.
“I’m reviewing it now,” the scientist replied. Then, after another few seconds, she leant back from the terminal. “It looks ready. Without an Elder ship to test it on though, we can’t know for certain if it will work.”
“That is a risk we will have to take,” Simmons replied.
She opened her mouth to say more, but the sudden addition of hundreds of minds to the station’s cognizance made her stop. Sarah knew what the new arrivals meant. With her mind, she accessed Hope V’s external sensors. Closing her eyes, she watched as more and more warships dropped out of subspace. In all, there were twenty-two. I hope it’s enough, Sarah thought.
“Right,” Simmons said. “I have just spoken to Vice Admiral Hailey; the fleet will be departing in nine hours. He wants to have a briefing with the fleet Captains and then run some live fire exercises with the combined fleet before we launch the mission.”
“But Earth,” Sarah began to protest.
“Can wait a few more hours,” Simmons broke in. “If the fleet isn’t capable of fighting together, something we haven’t practiced yet, then there is no point taking it to Earth. Our homeworld will just have to wait a few more hours. And as for you, you are going to go to your quarters and sleep. We will need you at your best. Something you are a long way from right now.”
Sarah made to protest again. She wanted to participate in the fleet exercise. Another yawn betrayed her. “You need to sleep,” Alexandra said into Sarah’s mind, backing up Simmons. “You fight better on your own. We don’t need to drill with the fleet.”
“Fine,” Sarah said, to both Simmons and Alexandra.
“And you’re going too, so get some sleep,” Simmons added as she gently kicked Kevin awake. “Here, both of you take one of these.” She handed them each a small white pill. “It should put you out for about seven hours. You will feel like you have slept for far more though.”
Though Sarah didn’t want to be seen to need a pill to sleep, the idea of feeling like she had caught up on all the sleep she had missed seemed very appealing. Without grumbling, she took the pill from Simmons and headed out of the lab they had been using to develop the virus.
“I’ll have my scientist do one final review of the virus and then I’ll send it to Alexandra,” Simmons called after Sarah and Kevin.
Sarah nodded and continued on her way. She was already thinking of her bed. Instinctively, she reached out her hand and found Kevin’s. In silence, they walked through Hope V to Sarah’s quarters. When they got there, Kevin pointed to the quarters opposite hers. “I had my quarters reassigned so that we are neighbors. I wasn’t sure if we would get to actually get some sleep, but if we did, I thought it would help with the separation.”
“Good thinking,” Sarah said. She squeezed his hand and then let go. “Get some rest, we’re both going to need it tomorrow.”
“Aye, Aye, Captain,” Kevin said as he saluted Sarah with a smile
She stuck her tongue out at him and then entered her quarters, all the while shaking her head. Kevin was picking up a few bad habits from Alexandra. Quickly, she removed her flight suit and jumped into bed. She didn’t even bother washing, she could do that when she got up. Popping the pill into her mouth, she swallowed it and laid her head down on her pillow. With her last conscious though she sent a command to Alexandra. “Get Destiny ready, tomorrow we take on a battleship.”
*
Sarah awoke to the feeling of someone gently caressing her hand. “Wha… what is it? Is it time to go?”
“Not yet,” Kevin’s voice replied. “But I wanted to wake you. You’ve been asleep for seven hours. You should feel well rested.”
“I do,” Sarah said as she opened her eyes and smiled at Kevin. Then she saw the look on his face. “What is wrong?”
“Nothing,” Kevin answered a little too quickly.
“Now who is trying to lie to who?” Sarah said as she flicked Kevin’s hand away from hers playfully. “Come on, tell me.”
“It’s just...” Kevin said trailing off.
“Just what?” Sarah prompted.
“I was sitting in my quarters, thinking about today. About the coming battle,” Kevin said.
“And?” Sarah followed up.
“I don’t know, I’m not sure how to say it,” Kevin replied, his face reddening. “Maybe I could show you instead?”
“What do you mean?” Sarah asked. She didn’t need to wait for a reply. Almost immediately, she felt Kevin’s mind move towards hers. At first, she resisted his approach. They hadn’t formed a meld except for when they had been running simulations. There was no need to form one now. Then she realized Kevin wanted to share his thoughts with her. He had something to communicate that he couldn’t use words for. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, she let his mind approach.
Within seconds their minds were touching. Slowly at first, and then faster and faster they swirled around and around each other. Without a task like flying a ship to focus her thoughts, Sarah struggled not to lose herself in Kevin’s mind. It was fascinating to her, the more she looked, the more she wanted to see.
Then, Kevin pushed a bunch of feelings and thoughts towards Sarah. Recognizing that this was what he wanted to share, Sarah embraced them. What she found shook her to her core. Kevin’s priorities had completely changed over the last few weeks. He had a new desire, one that was eating away at him, right on the eve of the battle he had trained all his life for. More than he wanted to live up to the expectations of his family, more than he wanted to fight the Elders, more than he wanted to free Earth, he wanted to kiss her. He couldn’t stand the thought of dying without having done it, at least once. Sarah’s face reddened. How could he have these thoughts towards me? Where are they coming from?
Sarah almost yelped when Kevin’s mind prodded her. He had just poked a part of her brain. When Sarah examined it, she found a whole host of emotions she had been suppressing. She knew she had been intentionally not thinking about Kevin and their situation, but she didn’t think she had been holding back that much. Gently, she moved to examine her own feelings. As soon as she touched them, they came welling up and threatened to overwhelm her. Suddenly she grasped just how fond she had been growing of Kevin, very fond in fact. She loved to be in his presence, to talk with him, to laugh with him, to hold his hand. As she seriously considered kissing him for the first time, she realized that she wanted to do so more than anything else. Today they would be going into battle, against horrible odds. There was a very real chance they would both die. She didn’t want to die without having expressed her feelings for him.
Pulling herself out of the meld, Sarah opened her eyes and looked up to find Kevin standing over her. With both her hands she reached up and pulled Kevin’s head down to hers. For a second she was surprised Alexandra didn’t have a smug comment to make. Then, all other thoughts were driven from her mind as she lost herself in the feeling of Kevin’s lips.
*
As Sarah and Kevin walked hand in hand towards the access hatch to Destiny, they encountered Director Simmons. It looked like she was waiting for them. From the gleam in her eye, it appeared she knew they had taken their relationship to another level. For the second time in just an hour, Sarah felt her cheeks turn a deep red.
“I have come to wish you good luck,” the Director said. “And to let you know that I hope to see both of you, alive and well, in just a few hours. It seems, that if everything goes well today, I might have a wedding to plan. Just one more reason to fight with everything we have today.”
Sarah felt Kevin’s embarrassment rise to match hers. “Are you not coming with the fleet?” she asked, wishing to change the subject.
“You won’t be changing the subject when we come to talk about it,” Alexandra said. From the discomfort she felt coming from Kevin, Sarah guessed she had spoken to both of them.
“It’s good I’m not the jealous type,�
� Alexandra added.
“Give over,” Sarah thought to the artificial intelligence. “And butt out.” As Simmons had already begun to answer her question, Sarah quickly tried to catch up.
“I wish I could, but I have not trained for this. If things go badly, I will have to be here and save what I can of our people.”
“I understand great grandmother,” Kevin said. “We will do you proud.”
“See that you do,” Simmons said as she pulled Kevin into a hug. After kissing him on the cheek, she held out her hand to Sarah. “I knew your coming would change everything, I just didn’t think it would happen this quickly. You truly are a remarkable young woman. Don’t let us down.”
“My mother died to make this day possible,” Sarah said as she allowed the image from her dream to float into her consciousness. “I will make sure she didn’t die in vain.”
“Farewell then,” Simmons said as she stepped aside to let them on to Destiny.
As they stepped through the access hatch and made their way to the bridge, Sarah felt slightly disorientated. Destiny seemed different. “What happened?” she asked Alexandra.
“There have been a few alterations,” Alexandra said coyly.
From her tone, Sarah knew something was up. “Changes you didn’t think it necessary to tell me about?”
“You said to let the Hope V engineers have access to the ship,” Alexandra said in mock protest. “I don’t know why you are getting upset. I didn’t let them do anything you wouldn’t. It’s not my fault that some of us have been working while you and Kevin were enjoying yourselves.”
“Fine,” Sarah groaned. She wasn’t in the mood for this. “I’m not cross, just tell me what you did.”
“Well it was the Hope V engineers really. It turns out they already had plans in place to modify any Elder warships they managed to capture. They have been using their nanites to make upgrades.”
“Such as?” Sarah pressed.
“We have two extra laser cannons, just as exciting, they and our other ones have had their power output increased by twenty percent. We have about thirty percent more point defense beam emplacements. On top of that, our energy shield’s efficiency has been increased by forty percent. The engineers were able to work wonders on my anti-matter reactors. Human energy production technology is far more advanced than Elder tech.”
Sarah did the calculations in her head. “Combined with the changes we made, that makes us about as powerful as an Elder cruiser, less their extra anti-matter missile tubes, doesn’t it?”
“I believe so,” Alexandra answered. The pride in her voice was unmistakable.
“Good,” Sarah said as a feral smile spread across her face. “If Klixar tries to get in our way, he’s going to regret it.”
Chapter 44
As Destiny dropped out of subspace with the rest of the human fleet, Sarah scanned space around her. She knew the Elders didn’t expect them, but today was too important to let her guard down. Only once she was satisfied no other ships were nearby did she turn her attention to the human ships. Having never flown together before, a couple of destroyers were out of formation. They were quickly righting their error. The rest were sitting, waiting. All the human ships were accounted for except Hawk. Vice Admiral Hailey had agreed to allow Divar to keep command of the corvette. In the upcoming battle, she would play escort to Destiny. For now, as the human fleet sat in space just a light year from Earth, Hawk had gone on ahead to make sure there weren’t any last-minute surprises waiting for the humans.
It took Divar twenty minutes to return. When Hailey sent out the final fleet formation along with a countdown for the jump to subspace, Sarah saw he had made a last-minute change. Checking the intelligence update sent out with the final orders, she understood. Divar had spotted an Elder frigate patrolling the edge of the Sol system near where they intended to jump in. Hailey had assigned two destroyers to take it out.
Opening a COM channel to her crew, she gave them one final speech. “We’re jumping into the Sol system in thirty seconds. This is it. I know none of you have seen real combat before. It will be scary, but if you do your job, we’ll see each other through. Let’s teach these Elders who really owns this system.”
All the former slaves from Berius had elected to get neural implants in the couple of days it had taken to develop the virus. They weren’t yet experienced enough with them to form a battle meld, but even so, through the small ship cognizance they formed, Sarah felt their fear spike. At the same time, there was a grim determination. All were prepared to give their lives to free Earth. Some were on the bridge with her, others had been trained by Alexandra to work in engineering or damage control. All knew what was expected of them.
Satisfied they were ready, Sarah reached out and melded with Kevin. She could feel his excitement and anticipation growing, no doubt she felt the same to him as well. Gingerly, she reached out towards Vice Admiral Hailey’s flagship. As the Admiral felt her mind, he folded her into the fleet cognizance. Suddenly Sarah was aware of the other Captains. She could feel their fear and excitement. Having never fought as part of a fleet cognizance, Sarah was afraid that being aware of what the other Captains were doing would distract her. Hailey had insisted she join them though, with every Captain aware of her actions, they could better protect her.
As Destiny jumped into subspace, her vision blinked for a second as her view changed to show subspace around Destiny. Then, just ten seconds later, it blinked again as Destiny exited subspace. They were here.
Sarah sensed the concentration of two Captains in the fleet cognizance sharpen. Destiny’s sensors showed two destroyers break away from the human fleet and accelerate towards where Divar believed the Elder frigate to be.
It didn’t take long for the Elder frigate to detect the new threats. Foolishly, instead of turning and running for safety. It powered up and accelerated to engage. Hailey sent orders for the rest of the fleet to form up around his flagship and accelerate into the system. As Sarah obeyed, she kept one eye on the two human destroyers about to fire the first shots in the battle to liberate Earth.
They were beaten to the punch. The Elder frigate launched eight anti-matter missiles at the lead human destroyer. In response, that destroyer dropped back level with the second. Together, their point defenses easily dispatched the missiles. Instead of firing their own, as Sarah expected them to do, they continued to accelerate towards their target. Conserving missiles, Sarah thought. In the coming battle, every missile was likely to count.
As soon as they entered range, the Destroyers opened up with their laser cannons and tachyon pulses. The tachyon pulses were all but useless against a ship’s armored hull, however they did interfere with its energy screen, making it easier for laser beams to penetrate it. As each pulse spread out as it raced towards its target, they were difficult to dodge.
Soon the Elder frigate was coming under sustained fire. Vainly it tried to fire back, however its weaker lasers couldn’t penetrate the human ships’ defenses. When the first human laser beam burst through the frigate’s energy screen and burnt a large hole into its hull, Sarah pumped her fist. The battle was over. Sure enough, a second, then a third beam hit the frigate. One must have damaged the frigate’s engines for it all but stopped taking evasive maneuvers. One of the human destroyers pivoted, lined up its two particle lances and duly blew the frigate apart. When the fireball dissipated, nothing was left of the Elder ship. Sarah sensed Hailey send his congratulations to the two destroyer Captains, then he gave them orders to re-join the fleet.
With the skirmish won, Sarah turned her attention to the main Elder fleet. Though the human fleet was still at least three hours away from reaching Earth, the Elders were already reacting. Various frigates and cruisers that had been patrolling the system were rapidly accelerating towards Earth. They were trying to link up with the battleship before the main fleet action began.
Around Earth, it looked like there were ten cruisers already in formation with the battleship,
along with twelve frigates. Once all the stragglers joined the fleet, there would be twelve cruisers and fifteen frigates. Alexandra’s estimates suggested the battleship had the firepower of four cruisers. If one human destroyer was approximately equal to an Elder cruiser, then it looked like Hailey had a slight advantage in numbers. Hopefully that meant the battle should go to plan. As things stood, Hailey intended to stand off from the Elder fleet and use the human’s advantage in missile range and point defense tech to take out most of the Elder cruisers. Then the fleet would move in and Sarah would get her chance to take on the battleship.
Strangely, the Elder battleship wasn’t leading the fleet away from Earth at a high rate of acceleration. Calculating the trajectory of the two fleets, Sarah estimated that they would meet just ten light seconds from Earth. Sarah didn’t understand. If she was the Elder High Admiral, she would be trying to lead the human fleet away from the shipyard. If even just one or two destroyers managed to break through the Elder fleet, they could cause some serious damage to the orbital structure.