by Bobbi Ross
"Greetings illegal Protectorate ship. I am Captain Veldar Asmot, Commander of this ship, the Harbinger.” He regarded me with an appraising look that twisted my gut. “If I'm not mistaken you must be the infamous Captain Caspia Jones, are you not?”
“Yes I am and you must be the I've-never-heard-of-you Ass-mot." I deadpanned.
For a flitting moment a glint of pure malice flashed in the void filling his dark eyes.
His face strained to unveil perfect, white teeth. “It's so nice to finally meet you, Caspia Jones." He meant the omission of my title as an insult. Just looking at the maniacal psychopath made me feel dirty like I had just bathed in a fetid carcass-laden cesspool. Looking around the bridge it was obvious that my crew felt the same, except for Trex. Couldn't quite read him at the moment.
"I can't say the same," I replied.
He allowed a fake laugh to slip through his polished and unnaturally uniform teeth. "Now now Captain, manners please. You've had your little fun, but now playtime is over. I'm here to accept your surrender on behalf of the Novokin Alliance, and allow you to reap the consequences of your deluded actions." His smile was so practiced I thought it would crack the unbreakable glass of my forward viewer. That's fine, I'd play this sheetek's game.
"What actions would those be?" I inquired. Then the dick-nose had the nerve to 'tsk' me. Tsk, like I was a five year old caught sneaking cookies before dinner.
"Come Captain, surely you can't tell me that you've forgotten about your nasty business with the Prime Minister," he lied. I felt my blood begin to boil. "There's also your theft of property on both the Deep Proteus space station five and the Novokin regeneration facility on Clussera 3. You must understand as a civilized race we cannot allow assassins and thieves to run amok in our system."
It was all I could do not to pull the gun from my side and shoot his ugly face off my view screen. My knuckles whitened on the arm rest of my chair, my voice rough and raw reverberated through the com.
"It's NOT your system," I hissed back at him. Shoulders raised, head leaning forward I challenged the big bad wolf.
All pretenses of this being a friendly chat dissolved along with Asmot's plastic smile. "Your people and New Astoria's provisional government would say otherwise," Asmot balked. Then a practiced look of utter despondency painted his face, "and that included, I might add, the former Prime Minister of New Astoria. May his soul rest in peace."
"You know that wasn't us," I spit through gritted teeth.
He waved his hand dismissing that particular detail like an annoying Floturan harvest season ChuCheye gnat. "Of course it wasn't Captain, but let's not muddy ourselves over details. On that note, are you going to surrender or is this going to have to get difficult?"
This guy was praking nuts, and that scared me. His voice, his eyes were completely devoid of emotion. We were nothing to him. Nothing more than flies to swat. Sheeteks I could deal with. Megalomaniacs, power-hungry warlords, pregnant Floturans sure, but the crazy ones always gave me pause. Unpredictable. Operating from a moral compass so far left from center that they'd get lost on a straight line.
I guess I was taking too long for tall, dark and purple. That would be another thing I would have to remember about him.
"Listen Captain," he began, trying to control the look of ominous glee in his face. "I'm going to give you a choice, so you can never fault the magnanimity of the magnificent Novokin Alliance. If you surrender now, I will allow your crew to not only live, but go free. I can also guarantee you that there will be no retribution taken on the inhabitants of the mining colony for the charges of aiding and abetting a known criminal. Furthermore, there will be no charges of receiving stolen merchandise from said criminal. And since I'm feeling generous today, I’ll allow you ten minutes to decide." He waved a hand and his image faded to black.
Trex piped up first, "You cannot believe him Captain. He's a butcher, destroyer of worlds. His words smelled sweet but tasted of acid." I could see the veins in his neck pulsating as he spoke. Skeck, the pain in his eyes made me want to run over and wrap my arms around his big golden neck. But then everybody on the bridge would expect me to cuddle them too. And I don't have the time for that.
"Obviously, surrendering to that pompous ass isn't high up on my to do list. So let's open the floor, give me options people," I called out.
My chief engineer raised a finger. We all waited while she presumably finished her scan of the enemy ship. Anya shook her head. "They've upgraded Captain, at least compared to the other Jarl class ships we’ve seen. It's possible that what he has out there is more than a match for us, at least firepower wise."
"Meaning…?" I prodded.
"Meaning that we have maneuverability and structural integrity on our side. The Razor’s solid. That thing out there is gigantic, a monster even, but she's put together piecemeal."
“Like Frankenstein’s monster,” Julie chimed in causing everyone to look her way wide-eyed for a second before they turned around resuming their jobs. Often I wondered what planet she was raised on.
My engineer kept tapping buttons and scrolling through schematics as she spoke. "It seems like they've kept adding to it. There are independent energy supplies all over the ship to power weapons, propulsion and the like."
"Like the Borg." Julie offered. After a moment of us staring at her she used both hands to wave off our dumbfounded looks.
I turned back to Anya. "Meaning that it also has a whole lot of weak points. Some of which I assume maybe less protected than others?"
"Exactly," she answered, giving me her full Duskanite sharp toothed grin.
"Could we disable their ship like we did last time?" Jaxx interjected.
"Maybe, but only maybe," she mused. "Like I said it's got a number of independent power supplies. There'd be no way to take out all the generators. And there's no doubt that some will have better shielding than others. Maybe we could affect a handful of systems, but most likely a ship this size would just shake off any kind of EMP we throw at it. Worse off Captain, even if that ship was falling apart, Goddess hear my words, most of its big guns would still be firing at us. It would take half a dozen warbirds to make it through battle with that monstrosity and come out intact."
"We have to consider the miners too, " Jaxx chirped in.
Skeck, there had to be a way out of this, I just couldn't see it. If we ran, the colony could be in danger. If we fought, there was a good chance we'd lose. Something that Anya said about the ship being piecemeal was niggling at me. Hmm...
"Captain, something’s happening with their ship!" My ensign yelled, cutting off my train of thought.
"It's moving," Jaxx reported. We all stood paralyzed and watched as the behemoth maneuvered itself closer to the mining colony. "They've positioned themselves dead center over the settlement."
Double skeck. Asmot wasn't gonna make this easy for us.
Anya was already on it, relaying real-time info from her scans. "I'm reading a large energy buildup. It's more powerful than anything I thought a ship like that could produce." Anything that confused Anya was of great concern to me. I was about to ask for clarification of the energy type, when she cut me off. "And it just launched five torpedoes."
We tracked the lethal projectiles. They seemed to spread across the outer atmosphere of the colony.
"Captain..." Anya's voice seemed hollow and distant, a far cry from her usual snark.
We could just make out something resembling a gun extending from the bottom of Asmot's ship. It crackled with a crimson energy, before an angry scream of red tore through the vacuum of space. It hit the inner stratosphere of the colony’s asteroid. In an instant, the sky caught fire, blazing like a sun in the dark expanse of space. It was all the oxygen from the planet's surface being consumed by it. The breathable atmosphere of the mining colony was gone.
They were all dead.
A tomb like silence filled the bridge as seconds stretched into what felt like hours. Unable to stop my teeth from chatter
ing, I looked to the others. My chief engineer's face had lost all color and emotion. Julie comforted my weeping and pregnant first officer. My ensign shook his head back and forth as if willing what he had just witnessed out of his mind.
A strong solid hand found my shoulder. I met his eyes through my tears, his stone like gaze, his meaning understood. I gave him a terse nod.
"Charge all weapons!" I shouted in my fury. No, wait. Maybe, just maybe… "Belay that order. Launch all escape pods, and target them at the largest concentration of life forms on the colony. Do it now!"
A ship this size was meant to have a crew well over one hundred souls. Subtracting the life pods that had been damaged in the first Novokin attack, and the few who had decided to flee only to be blown out of the sky during the second wave of the invasion, we still had over sixty functioning pods with their own individually functioning air reclamation units. If the Kalemta people of the mining colony could get themselves into one, they could survive for weeks. Or at least until someone picked them up. Either way, they were going to have to save themselves.
Chapter 13
"That's the last of the pods Captain," Jaxx announced.
By this point I was shaking so much I wouldn't have been able to stand if not for the chair I held a death grip on. I barked out what I believed would be one of my final orders, "Charge all weapons."
The visage of the soulless Novokin blinked onto the screen. The smug prak was sitting back in his chair, hands steepled and eyebrows raised as if to say, Oops. His voice was smooth when he spoke, "Oh darn, I said ten minutes, didn't I? I meant one minute. You have to forgive me Captain, the situation was so tense."
"What the prak is wrong with you?" I spit. “You soulless scum of –."
"Every single thing I choose to do is sanctioned!" Asmot screamed, rising to his feet. Even through the view screen the spray of spittle was visible and a few strands of his perfectly coiffed hair seemed to work their way out of order. He ranted on, "I am a certified Captain of the Novokin Alliance and my will is law. I have you outgunned Captain, but I think now I will arrest your entire crew. Obviously, you have to pay for your crimes, in public I might add. But some of my crew have expressed interest in that one."
Anya bared her teeth when his finger pointed towards her. Then it crept over to Julie, and I felt the temperature in the room drop 10°. "And that one over there with the Floturan. Wait, do my eyes deceive me? Is the male pregnant? Oh the games we can play with him."
I held my tongue and let the bastard drone on unimpeded. An imperceptible tilt of my chin let my first officer know to charge the weapons to maximum. Having served with Jaxx for several years, I was sure he had already targeted several key points on the enemy ship. And if the book taught me anything, it's never mess with a pregnant Floturan male.
Asmot turned his head to someone off screen. "Now really Captain, charging weapons while we're having a discussion? Tsk, tsk. You must know how much worse it will be for you if your ship fails in a firefight. Do you know what I'd do if you so much as –."
The proximity alarm blared on both ships.
"Captain, we've got another ship incoming," Jaxx chimed in. "Alliance signature, a Thegn class light cruiser."
Praking great, as if the goliath in front of me wasn't bad enough – he brought a friend. It was then I realized Asmot had stopped talking. He wasn't expecting a ship. Curious.
Both crews sat in silent vigil as we watched the Thegn ship exit from hyperspace. The moment it emerged a dozen escape pods blasted away from it. That's a new tactic.
Asmot seemed to recompose himself, and turned his attention back to the viewer. He had the smugness dialed all the way up when he addressed us. "Surrender Captain, it seems that you're not only outgunned, you're outnumbered too."
No sooner had he spoken when a second figure appeared on the viewer.
What in the eight infernos?
"Liam?" I questioned, even though he was right in front of me.
He blew me a kiss before answering, "Right as always Cas. I know I always swore to you we were just having fun, but that was a lie and for that I’m sorry. I've always loved you Caspia Jones, and always will."
With that, his image flickered off leaving only the murderer and his massive instrument of death on our screen. Liam's small light cruiser, the Vorce must've fired its thrusters on maximum. Before Asmot's people had a chance to react, the small ship drove itself into what appeared to be the main engine of the Novokin warship.
"Noooooo!" I heard someone yell, so far away, it couldn't have been me.
My hands lifted to shield my eyes. The initial explosion lit up my bridge like the mid afternoon sun on a New Astorian summer's day. A chain of smaller reactions lit the sky white, then red. Half of the monstrous ship in front of us went dark. Liam had given us a chance, and I wasn't about to squander it.
Refusing to look down, lest I saw the gaping hole in my chest where my heart had been ripped out, I managed to choke out one last command through my tears. "Get us the hell out of here."
Episode 4
Prologue
The large, muscled man tried in vain to wedge his thick fingers underneath the ill-fitting body armor. He swore the barrack's bunks were rife with bedbugs. None of the other soldiers ever complained like him. He snorted in frustration. Rounds were boring and tedious. Especially this early in the morning with no one around to talk to.
Fortune smiled on Victol. He spied one of his comrades at the entrance to the shipyard. The well-toned young soldier with the light purple hue to his skin doubled-timed his steps down the base hall. "Hey Marlek, anything to report?"
The grizzled, old warrior rubbed his bald head from back to front, seemingly unable to accept the loss of the epic battle with his hair early in life. He flashed the younger guard a narrow stare. "Are you serious Victol? Nothing ever happens out here or will ever happen out here." Fishing in his pocket, he paused to chew on a piece of dried Garnick tail. It had been last night's dinner. Some kind of indigenous mammal. The cook had guaranteed it was edible. Victol did not believe it.
"We won't see any action now that we liberated this sector of space. I doubt there's anyone left here stupid enough to attack a Novokin shipyard."
Rat, that's what the pink-skinned Terran chef had called it. Victol grinned to himself in approval, then drew a dour look across his face to speak in earnest. "That's not what the latest chatter says."
"You need to get your head out of your ass, lest you want to squeeze the purple off!" The older guard guffawed. "And stop listening to that cook Jaspers. Sure he can make a mean meal, but his stories read like children's fairy tales. " He spat out coarse hairs between strained bites.
The younger guard let his rifle drop to his side as he raised both hands up in surrender. "Whoa Marlek, it wasn't him this time. Got this from a lieutenant on one of those Drengr class heavy fighters. He was in here for repairs last week."
"Really, go ahead and enlighten me," the older male murmured, smacking his lips over a particularly tough section of his leftover meal.
Victol cast a suspicious gaze up and down the hall before he leaned in to his friend and whispered, "The Lieutenant said there was some rogue ex-Protectorate Captain. She has been attacking ships on the outer rim. Even managed to go toe to toe with Red Sky." His eyes went wide, like he had just found trilornium fungul gold in his under dressings.
Marlek laughed, "Yeah, I’ll believe that one when Kalliorian pigs fly." The ground shook and the air shuddered in the distance. He cast a speculative glance at the door he was guarding. "Must be another solar storm brewing."
Another loud rumbling rubbed at the soldiers' nerves. Victol put his ear to the door. As if he would actually be able to detect something through the thirteen inches of solid Desinite steel. He stood there, like a child trying to secretely listen to his parents’ argument before he turned back to his friend. "I know we're pretty far out, but a shipbuilding yard is a fairly strategic position, isn't it? Do you think ther
e's a chance this ex-Protectorate Captain would attack here?"
The old veteran stepped out from behind his Desinite steel and carbonite reinforced glass booth. He threw a heavy arm around the younger guard's shoulders and shook him, "She wouldn't dare. Our post is one of the most heavily armed. This daft Captain would need a fleet of ships to even get close. And even if she had a fleet, there is no way they could get past the early warning detection net. We would spot them sectors away, and then they’d go – poof."
Even as he smiled and clapped Victol on the back, the thundering noise outside drew closer. Soon a low whistling whine crept through the door. It seemed to come from inside the electrostatic atmospheric dome.
"What in Falks is that?" The young guard's voice tinged with apprehension. "It sounds like something incoming. A missile maybe?”
The bald man cast the young guard a look more often saved for small children. He smacked him on the back of his head, "Are you still fretting about this Victol? You need to pull your head out of your ass."
The young guard remained unfazed by the hit. Panic bled through his words. "There was nothing said about any kind of storm in the briefing this week. Besides the weather on this planet is stable. Artificial atmosphere stable."
Marlek dropped his head to his chest. He let out a deep sigh. "All right Victol, you win. Help me get this door open. We’ll have a look for ourselves to put your young mind at rest."
Bright lights pierced the darkness the older guard expected to find. The whistling noise was definitely getting closer. Jaw slack, eyes narrowed, he tilted his head to help his mind comprehend what he was seeing.