by Travis Hill
Irina waited for her overlay to redraw, but instead felt the sudden increase in acceleration. The gel around her tightened, along with her throat, as the ship’s engines pushed themselves to the limit for thirteen minutes then cut off. She endured Silver Fleet’s decel flip before sensors went dark again at Huang’s next order to jump. Hundreds of icons lit up her HUD within thirty seconds, with more appearing out of nowhere each second.
“Weapons hot, fire away,” Huang ordered.
Raiden’s engines kicked in once again. Irina watched as Silver Fleet attempted to fly backward through a cluster of Kai warships, the closest three hundred thousand kilometers off their port bow. Once two volleys were away, Huang ordered another jump. A bright flash in Irina’s helmet alerted her to the destruction of the battleship TCN Fariss. When her display went dark again, she replayed the log, grimacing at the result of Fariss impacting the closest Kai vessel—a heavy battleship according to ALVIN.
Irina wondered how long ten ships could hold out against what was now over six hundred Kai warships. Her thoughts were interrupted by impact warnings the instant Silver Fleet translated to their new coordinates. A short vibration created an odd noise as the hull, armor, and frame absorbed a Kai warhead.
“Port side impact, sixty-ton conventional warhead,” Lt. Anders announced over the tactical channel. “Outer armor is at ten percent around sectors seventeen through nineteen. Hull breach in Deck 6, no casualties.”
“Mark,” Huang said, ordering the fleet to jump once more.
“Admiral,” Aweke said. “Hercules didn’t translate with us.”
“Status?” Meyer asked. It was the first time in hours Irina heard the man speak aloud.
“ALVIN is updating, but it looks like she took a hit to her fusion reactor just before we translated.”
“What about us?” Huang asked.
“We’re lucky the hit didn’t take out anything critical, but we’re heavily damaged, Sir,” Anders said. “Nothing that will hinder us. Armor and hull are solid around the XBD systems.”
“Roger,” Huang said.
“Sir, Sikorsky has a reactor breach and their inner hull is open to space,” Anders reported a minute later.
“Captain Odonal?” Huang asked over the fleet comm channel.
“We’re holding together, Admiral,” Odonal’s voice replied. “But we’re not going to have enough fuel to continue in about seven minutes. We’ve shut down all decks below 2. We’ve vented all our reserve oxygen and have a single reactor online. Orders?”
“Take as many as you can with you,” Huang said, his voice heavy but determined.
“Roger that, Admiral,” Captain Odonal replied. “It was a good plan. We’ve got this.”
“Mark,” Huang ordered.
Irina’s display went black once again, then redrew quickly—minus TCN Sikorsky. With Silver Fleet down to nine ships, she wanted to gnaw on her fingernails, punch her thighs, even stand up and scream just to do something, anything other than passively watch as the remainder of Task Force Nightfall was systematically wiped out. She staved off madness by focusing on the updated tactical display. Her focus quickly returned to the unanswerable question of just how powerful ALVIN must be to fight a time-lagged battle.
“Jumping to the outside edge?” Meyer asked.
“Ah, curiosity killed the cat and all that,” was Huang’s only reply.
Irina glanced toward Huang’s chair. She could only see the lower half of his face, his mouth pursed in a short, straight line. His body language was masked by the command chair and console, but she was glad he finally seemed as tense as the rest of his crew. She’d worried for a few hours that he might be a sociopath who had turned off his emotions to get the job done.
Her tactical display updated a minute later, allowing her to replay Sikorsky’s suicide run into the middle of two hundred Kai capitals at the best speed the doomed battlecruiser could muster. ALVIN was still piecing together the final outcome, but the battlecruiser had either damaged or destroyed three more Kai capitals before slamming into a cruiser’s starboard quarter, sending both ships into uncontrollable trajectories as their reactors first collapsed, then ruptured. She knew without a doubt the Kai were determined to suffer any amount of casualties to put the humans down for good.
A human commander would have immediately ordered the fleet to disperse to avoid the collateral damage of suicidal enemies. Yet the Kai seemed content to only space their ships a few thousand kilometers apart, as their fleet coalesced into a tighter ball to keep the humans penned in. Even after Huang jumped Silver Fleet thirty seconds above the Kai superfleet, the aliens simply turned and accelerated toward them.
“Aweke, are we ready?” Huang asked thirteen minutes later.
“Kai ships are all within .16AU of our projected translation point,” Aweke answered. “Black Fleet is aligned and awaiting your jump command.”
“On my mark,” Huang ordered his navigator. “This is it, ladies and gentlemen. It was a pleasure to serve with you, and it is a good thing to die knowing we’ve done what we could to preserve our species. Hopefully it’s enough.”
Irina’s display went blank once again, immediately redrawing. She had to use the filter control to keep her HUD from becoming a mass of confusing lines, vectors, and positions.
“Weapons hot, focus targets until we’re done,” Huang commanded. “Captain Meyer has tactical authority to paint them. Anders, get those reactors primed and the XBD set to activate either on my command or ALVIN’s.” He switched to the fleet-wide comm. “On my mark.”
Huang gave the order. Irina’s HUD updated to let her know the seven remaining ships had each translated to seven different points away from Raiden, leaving the flagship exposed and alone with at least eight hundred enemy warships on all sides. Irina saw the results three minutes later when dozens of Kai ships winked out along with Silver Fleet’s vessels. She wouldn’t live long enough for Raiden’s sensors to confirm Black Fleet’s escape to the far side of the rogue planet.
“XBD is ready, Admiral,” Anders announced.
Before Huang could reply, Raiden shuddered heavily, then again ten seconds later. Alarms rang until someone cut them off, leaving only the bloody red glow of the bridge and the haunting sounds of air venting to space along with armor plates and frame girders tearing themselves away from the ship. Another impact rocked the ship, followed by a new set of alarms that had to be silenced.
“Admiral,” Anders said, his voice conveying worry for the first time since the Kai arrived. “Admiral, we’re venting from multiple breaches. Thrusters 3 and 5 are offline.”
“Unlock XBD, authorization Delta-46118. Admiral Mattias Huang, UCN Forces.”
“Unlock XBD, authorization Gamma-33392. Captain Rickus Meyer, UCN Forces.”
“Unlock XBD,” Irina said without hesitation. “Authorization Zeta-00666. Operations Commander Irina Drazek, UCSF.”
“Fucking Drazek,” Huang muttered. “Goddamn sorry time for a sense of humor.”
“To the devil with them, I guess was the theme when they chose my auth code,” she replied with a laugh.
“XBD unlocked and ready,” ALVIN announced.
“Until next time,” Huang said cryptically. “Begin rotation and activate weapon.”
The fusion reactors fed the X-Ray Bombardment Device’s four output generators. Ten seconds after Admiral Huang ordered the weapon’s activation, the first pulse killed everyone aboard TCN Raiden. Irina’s consciousness faded quickly, her last thought one of appreciation that it was relatively quick and painless. As the slowly spinning battleship continued to rapidly discharge the XBD’s lethal radiation, Kai warships closest to it began to go dark, their crews receiving overkill doses while their ships’ systems became little more than useless, inert components.
Kai vessels on the outer edges continued to fire at Raiden, their commanders unaware of what was happening two light-minutes away. Raiden received a fatal blow from two dozen simultaneous warhead impacts se
conds after almost six thousand railgun slugs stripped its combat armor—but by then she had made three dozen rotations. What remained of Raiden broke in half, the bow of the ship continuing to rotate in place, the stern quickly gaining distance as it spun away. Eight hundred thirty-two capital-class warships drifted along their final trajectories, the ghosts of the now-dead Kai now piloting them into oblivion.
EPILOGUE
“Captain,” Lieutenant Tryn said over the comm, “we’re five-by-five for launch sequence.”
“Roger that, Lieutenant,” Captain Rudinsky said. She turned to her XO. “Are you ready?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Captain Farmer said.
“Maybe one day we’ll wake up and I’ll just be ‘Talia’ and you’ll just be ‘Bethany,’” Captain Rudinsky said with a sigh.
Captain Farmer frowned. “I don’t know if I want to be that friendly with you.”
“Fuck off,” Rudinsky said, then kissed her on the cheek. “After you,” she said, waving her hand to the empty hibernation creche.
Bethany Farmer climbed into the creche and situated herself, sticking her tongue out at Rudinsky’s leering gaze over her naked body.
“I heard the Genesis ships have the new submersible gel couches,” Beth said.
“Yeah, well, they’re civvies I bet. Probably demanded and recalled a few Senators until they got the luxury models.”
“You have too little faith in humanity.”
Talia laughed. “Look where we’ve ended up. At the ass-end of known space and about to jump blind for a few years, then sleep for a thousand more.”
“Don’t forget all while letting ALVIN make decisions for us,” Beth added.
“At this point, maybe all those movies had it right, that we should have built true AI and let them rule us.”
“Or exterminate us.”
Talia made a rude gesture toward her XO. “Go to sleep. That’s an order.”
“I wonder what happened to Silver Fleet.”
“You know what happened.”
“I know. I just meant I wonder how Huang played it all out. The man was insane.”
“You say that like it’s an insult,” Talia said with a laugh. She gave Beth another kiss, this time on the lips. “Go to sleep. Now. I can’t zip up until you’re in.”
“See you on your two thousandth birthday, Grandma.”
Captain Rudinsky displayed her middle finger to the woman she’d grown close to over the course of the mission, then instructed ALVIN to zip her XO up. She took one last look through the smoked glass, barely able to see her friend and part-time lover’s features, then let her gaze pass over the small officer’s hibernation quarters. Almost three-quarters of the creches were empty thanks to the skeleton crew of forty instead of Xenix’s normal crew of four hundred.
Talia walked to her creche and climbed in. Her thoughts bounced from Admiral Huang’s nightmare game of chicken-jump, to Bethany’s slender fingers twirling a lock of her short hair, then to the four hundred nineteen remaining humans aboard the thirteen ships of Black Fleet.
“ALVIN, zip me up,” she said.
“Have a pleasant sleep, Captain Rudinsky,” ALVIN said in its gender-neutral voice.
“And don’t go gaining sentience or anything like that,” she added, as the cover closed over her and the gel began to reshape itself. “Good night, ALVIN,” she said sleepily a few minutes later, then drifted into darkness.
GLOSSARY / TERMINOLOGY
The Assembly - Terran Coalition congressional branch of government. Senators from member planets serve five-year terms, no term limits.
AU ( “Astronomical Unit”) - 1AU is the distance from the sun to Earth (149,597,870km). It takes light photons 8 minutes 20 seconds to travel this distance.
1AU = 8.33lm (light-minutes)
1ly (light-year) = 63,241.1AU
Chancellor Chantalle Ryley - Last chancellor of the Terran Coalition, the high executive position in the Coalition’s government. Presides over The Assembly and casts deciding vote in the event of a tie.
Couch - slang term for “creche.”
Creche - a self-contained pod or chamber capable of keeping occupants safe during extreme pressures from high-g acceleration, and/or during periods where hibernation is preferable (either for extended high-g acceleration maneuvers or when time scales are near or beyond average human life expectancy).
CR-31 - Terran Coalition Marines’ mechanized fighting suit. Powered exoskeletal frame covered by carbon-composite armor plates. Thousands of charged relays provide a rudimentary energy shield capable of neutralizing small-arms plasma rounds, while the armor plates are coated with a “smart” digital pigmentation layer to aid visual camouflage. The CR-31’s software suite is network-capable, from squad to division-level engagements. Able to withstand the vacuum of space and all but the harshest planetary atmospheric conditions, the CR-31 fighting suit easily outclasses any known alien infantry unit in the stellar neighborhood.
CR-33 - United Coalition Special Forces fighting suit. A heavily modified, lightweight fighting suit for covert infiltration and sabotage operations. Everything that the CR-31 is but in a lighter, smaller package with added features such as heat waste nullification, extended-use comforts, biological filtration, on top of an upgraded software package with Command & Control functions and electronic warfare capabilities.
FTL (“Faster Than Light”) - the ability to travel vast distances at speeds greater than the speed of light (299,792 km/s). FTL drives typically “fold” (Kai, Rathala, Hanura) or “slice open” (human, The Seven, Veridian) space, depending on the species’ drive mechanics.
(note: “FTL drives” are not actual engines capable of propulsion — they are typically complex reactors capable of producing quantum effects within a defined sphere or “bubble.” The amount of energy required to fold/slice space is determined by distance and the physical mass being translated)
g - short for “gravity,” a measurement of force during the acceleration of a starship.
Light year - the distance light travels in one standard Earth year’s time. Speed of light (“c”) in a vacuum = 299,792km/s. It takes 8 minutes 20 seconds for sunlight to reach Earth, 43 minutes to Jupiter. Moving at the speed of light, it would take a ship 4.22 Earth standard years to arrive (acceleration only) at Proxima Centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor. It would take an estimated 100,000 years to travel at light speed from one edge of the Milky Way Galaxy across its center to the other edge.
STD (“Save the Day”) - a joke within all branches of the military: i.e. a mythical weapon or technology that suddenly appears at the last moment to defeat an enemy and “save the day” for humanity in its darkest moment. (Another connotation is that anyone believing an STD might magically appear must have a sexually transmitted disease—usually late-stage neurosyphilis—that has affected their minds)
TCN (“Terran Coalition Navy”) - Military ship prefix.
TTL (“Time To Live”) - slang term or abbreviation within Coalition naval/ground units signifying the time expected incoming munitions will arrive on friendly targets.
The Wire - Communications medium based on the same physics as humanity’s “quantum space” (or “Q-space”) FTL drives. Ultra-precise quantum “slice” of the universe that allows real-time data transmissions. Working at the smallest scales in the known universe, the Wire has modest power requirements (unlike Q-space FTL drives, which must translate physical mass, usually in the millions of tons range).
Hundreds of millions of commercial and military Wire transmission nodes provide coverage across most of the stellar neighborhood outside of Kai-controlled territory, but the power requirements are generally too taxing for consumer-level communications equipment (which connect through the Wire transmission nodes).
The Kai are able to close “local” sections of the Wire slice, but the barely understood mechanics of quantum entanglement keeps the enemy from closing or even disrupting sections of the slice outside the range of their equipmen
t (estimated to cover anywhere between 10AU and 1ly).
(if you have any other terms/definitions you would like me to explain, just send me an email!)
CHARACTER LIST
LAUNCH SEQUENCE I:
Dennis Ryan Shaw (12, M) - main character
Captain Lara Shaw (39, F) - Dennis’ mom, former fighter pilot
Rear Admiral Jason Shaw (47, M) - Dennis’ father
Dya Guzman (12, F) - Dennis’ best friend on Daedalus-IV
Captain Seong Jun (22, F) - Pilot of TCN Icarus
Sergeant Horace Blaine (24, M) - Terran Marines, attached to Icarus with the 109th Shipboard Operations Detail (CR-31 operator)
Lt. Andrea Kurtz (33, F) - Terran Marines, 109th SOD’s commander (CR-31 operator)
Alyna Prajapati (12, F) - daughter of Lt. Commander Anand Prajapati, Terran Navy
***
LAUNCH SEQUENCE II:
Silver Fleet (Task Force Nightfall):
TCN Raiden (HBS, 900 crew, flagship)
Commander Irina Drazek (F) - United Coalition Strategic Forces - Special Operations field agent
Fleet Admiral Mattias Huang (M) - Terran Coalition Naval Forces - Admiral/Commander of Silver Fleet
Captain Rickus Meyer (M) - Terran Coalition Naval Forces - Captain of TCN Raiden, a modified heavy battleship
Captain Nasira Sawalha (F) - Terran Coalition Naval Forces - XO of TCN Raiden
Lt. Ferla Korrigar (F) - Navigator, TCN Raiden
Lt. Commander Sten Hellewege (M) - Navigator, TCN Raiden