by T. J. Jones
He took a couple of deeper breaths to convince himself this was a better idea than it sounded like. So far it was a losing fight. Shaking his head, he sighed. “To hell with it, let’s get this over with.”
They stepped in, weapons at the ready. Rounds were flying before most of the staff even looked up. The Glayan sensor tech caught several rounds in the back; the fire control officer struck with one blast from Dekav’s staff weapon. Tacent Cor went diving for cover and scrambled to a safer position though did not return fire. Docent Vay remained standing tall and firm at his position atop the command center, looking down his nose at the commander and Dekav. Adrian hated that sneer in his eyes. The “I’m better than you” look. He remembered that look from high school bullies until he started punching them anytime they looked at him wrong.
Adrian put another round in one of the wounded officers while glaring at Docent Vay. Vay smirked. He seemed different to Adrian somehow. Not as composed as he had been. A little unhinged even. He had figured Vay would be off balance, but the man — if such a word fit him — looked straight off kilter.
“Commander Rain.” He clapped slowly. An emphasis on each strike of his palms echoing in the large now mostly empty command center. “Well done. Truly. Bravo. At last, we meet for the final confrontation of this charade.”
“Give it up, Vay. It’s over. There’s still time to walk away from this.”
Vay’s expression shifted to stunned confusion. “Walk away?” He laughed. The antennae on his head bobbing slightly. “Whatever makes you think I would simply walk away from my moment of triumph, you pink-skinned fool. All your efforts, all your little victories, they end here, with you dead at my hands.”
Adrian dropped the pistol and shrugged off his jacket. “Well, like Doc Holliday once said, I’m your huckleberry.”
“What?” Vay asked with genuine cluelessness.
Adrian sighed. “You guys are such a dead crowd.”
“Enough! Your witless jokes and humor will not forestall this. Not now that I have you here. You see I planned for you to come for this. I am going to strangle the life from your very body.”
“Well, you’re welcome to try, big guy.”
Vay launched himself from his platform with a howl of rage knocking Adrian onto his back. The two slid several feet as Adrian jerked left and right to avoid several blows from Vay’s balled up fists. They struck the deck plating without him even flinching. That concerned Adrian.
“You have some big paws.” Adrian shifted positions and scrambled out from under Vay. He rolled a few times before getting to his knees and then back to his feet. Vay was much slower about standing up, like a predator that had become fixated on its prey. The look Vay was giving Adrian made him shift uncomfortably.
Vay snarled at him, and Adrian laughed nervously. “My, what large teeth you have.”
This did not sit well with Vay, however, causing the Loerian to swing at him and scratch his chest leaving four small red lines framed neatly by his torn shirt. Vay licked the blood from his talons.
“You were supposed to say ‘the better to eat you with,’ not just cut right to the talons. Come on, man, stay on script here.”
Vay tackled him over a console as he was trying to see how Dekav was doing with his task. Vay snapped his jaws at Adrian a few times close enough that he was convinced Vay’s breath was bad. He grabbed a loose chair and smashed the docent on the side of the face with it, sending the Loerian sprawling onto the floor in an unceremonious heap.
“It’s called flossing, big guy. Do it.”
Vay rose slowly with a focused glare accented with a grin. “Oh, I’ll floss. With your uniform after I’ve picked your bones dry.”
“Gross.” He glanced over. “Dekav?”
The Eaon was typing rapidly at the computer console. “Still working. Keep him distracted.”
Vay turned to Dekav with a look. “What’s this?”
Adrian face palmed. “Great.” With no other choice, he charged Vay and drop kicked the Loerian square in the jaw. Scrambling to his feet, Vay was propped on his elbow on the ground moving his jaw. It popped several times, shifting it back into place. Once it moved without making any more noises, he glared at Adrian so hard; Adrian was convinced Vay was going to laser beam him or something.
“Uh oh,” Adrian muttered as Vay stood up and howled at him. Vay stomped after him taking wide arcing swings at him. Adrian for his part did a decent job of avoiding having his head taken off. Vay caught him on the side with a vicious knee that sent him tumbling over another console. He peeked under it at Dekav who still looked busy.
“Are you writing a book?” he shouted at Dekav impatiently.
Dekav did not bother replying, staying focused on the task.
Vay grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and hurled him across the command center. He struck another console and felt a few ribs give out. Fire lit up his chest and he groaned under the pain. Vay stalked over to him, reaching down and balling Adrian’s shirt collar up in his fist. He leaned close enough he could have bitten Adrian’s cheek.
“I’m going to enjoy tenderizing your meat.”
Vay reared back and struck him square in the face. Then again, and again. Blow after blow. The pain was immense. The impact convinced him a runaway shuttle struck him square in the face. His vision was starting to blur and get splotchy. He could taste blood in his mouth but could not tell if it was coming from his nose or mouth. Maybe both? The blood vessels in one of his eyes ruptured and things started to tint red.
A glint caught his eye between blows from Vay though. His pistol. It was out of Vay’s eyesight. Deftly he snatched it up, tucking it into his waistband. He looked up at Vay defiantly.
Vay laughed, looking down at him. “How pathetic. Even on the doorstep of death, you glare at me insubordinately.”
Vay backed off, and Adrian crawled backward on his elbows before trying to stand up and swaying on his feet. “I can do this all day.” He lifted his hands again.
Vay smiled enthusiastically. “I used to think your tenacity made your dangerous. Now I see it has simply made you too stupid to know when you are defeated.”
“Tomato, tomahto. Whatever cooks your goose, big guy.”
Vay took a swing at Adrian. It went wide as Adrian sidestepped the fist, reaching out and grabbing it at the wrist. He spun the arm in a wide exaggerated circle to preserve momentum as he circled around Vay and stepped into him, forcing the Loerian down to his face. Adrian drove several strikes into what he figured would equate to Vay’s rib cage, but the carapace felt much harder. Like he had just kicked the deck plating. He backed off Vay limping slightly.
As Vay rose, he chuckled to himself. “As I suspected. You lack the brute strength to injure my exoskeletal hide. Face it, Commander, you are physically outmatched, mentally outwitted, and hopelessly out skilled. This is your end.”
He tried to grin, willing himself to gut through the blunt pain and throbbing he was feeling. The doc was going to give him hell for this. He was sure of it. “What can I say? Mom always said I was too stubborn to know when to quit.”
Vay chuckled. “I’ll pass on my regards to her when I subjugate your home world, making sure your family is first and that they know it is because you failed here and now.”
“No, no, you got it all wrong. See, this is where I lull you into a false sense of security and somehow miraculously beat you.”
“You are as delusional as you are stupid.”
Adrian laughed and then winced as his chest lit up with fire and ice. “Guilty as charged. But you know what?”
Vay canted his head curiously.
“I’m not lying. While we were rolling around, I picked up my pistol. I get that sadistically rearranging my face can be distracting if oddly cathartic. See, that is the problem with people like you. Too full of themselves, too self-assured. I may be delusional. I may even be stupid too. I didn’t have to come up here, sure. Certainly didn’t have to take this beating. But we need
ed something to keep you distracted while my friend here erased my navigational charts from your database.” He paused and glanced over to Dekav, who nodded to him.
“See, I didn’t just walk up expecting to fight you hand to hand and walk out unscathed. I knew I was outmatched. I just had to keep you distracted only just enough. You are off balance, Vay. You let your arrogance and dreams of conquest keep you blinded to problems in the present.”
“You’re bluffing.” Vay scowled, rushing forward. Vay immediately slammed to his back sprawled out from several rounds striking him in the chest and shoulder.
“I can’t say I never bluff. But this time, I wasn’t.” He spun the pistol like a fancy western cowboy and tucked it back into his holster.
The Truth’s alert klaxons rang out. “Alert. Warp core destabilizing. Evacuate ship. Evacuate ship.”
Adrian glanced back to Dekav. “Was that you?”
Dekav bowed his head with a soft smile. “Indeed.”
“I’m rubbing off on you yet.”
“I simply asked myself what you would do if you had access to the systems unprotected as I had.”
“And blowing the core came to mind?”
“Well, you’ve done it once already.”
“Point taken. Ok, let’s get off this bucket.” He fetched his jacket and activated his comm device. “Rain to Odyssey. I think we have overstayed our welcome here. Two to port back.”
“Understood, Commander, we’d be glad to have you back.”
From the rear flank of the battlefield, the Odyssey thrusted forward, its subluminal engines shunting exhaust as hard as they could to force the ship forward. One of the engines was trailing plasma leaving a smaller teal green trail of gas matching the larger pattern left by the damaged nacelle. The ship swooped close to the Truth.
Vay struggled up from the deck plating, watching as Adrian and Dekav dematerialized in a flash of light from his command center. He howled in a blood rage. As they began to wink out of existence, Adrian waved at Vay.
“Goodbye!” Adrian said in a sing songy voice taunting the Loerian.
The flash of light blinding him and Dekav began to fade as the teleporter room on the Odyssey began to sprinkle into view in front of them. Once the process was complete, the chief nodded to them. “Commander. Welcome back.”
Adrian grinned, flinching. Dekav reached out to brace him. “Good to be back.”
“I’ll call sick bay.”
Adrian shook his head. “I have to get to the bridge.” He looked to Dekav. The Eaon nodded and they limped out of the porter room. The trip to the bridge was painful, thanks in part to his broken ribs and bruised body and face. He felt like he had just fought a bear, or maybe an angry bull or something. Eventually, they hobbled to the bridge doors. He had never been so relieved to see those doors in his life. After spending what felt like hours inside the Truth, it was good to be back home. On his own ship.
“Get the ship out of the combat airspace, the Truth is going to pop,” he ordered the moment he was on the bridge. Mary Jo stood up and gasped. Vail nodded inputting the orders. “Open a channel to the Eaon fleet.”
The computer chirped and Tiaahl nodded to him. “Channel open, Commander.”
“Attention Eaon Fleet and Arbitrator, this is Commander Rain of the USS Odyssey. The warp core of the Truth is undergoing destabilization. Cease all combat activity and seek immediate safe distance.”
The arbitrator’s face appeared onscreen. “Confirmed, Commander Rain. It’s good to have you back among us.”
Adrian nodded, glancing at his crew and doing his best to smile through the swelling on his face. “Yeah, it’s good to be back. We’ll talk later, but this isn’t over yet.”
The channel cut, and he looked to Tiaahl. “Open a channel to the Truth.”
Mary Jo’s station chirped several warnings. “Commander, there’s a singularity forming within the Truth.”
Docent Vay appeared on screen, the image distorted jumping to static occasionally. “Rain!” Vay scowled.
“Docent Vay, this is Commander Rain of the USS Odyssey. We have noticed your vessel is under distress. We are prepared to negotiate your surrender and allow you safe passage aboard our vessel.”
“Commander?” Mary Jo asked. Vail and Tiaahl both looked at him questioningly as well. Solamen and Dekav both seemed equally uncertain of his choice.
“Commander, is this wise?” Dekav asked him, being closest to him and speaking in a hushed tone.
“Well, now, I figure it’s the right thing to do. Diplomacy and all that.”
“Commander, given the circumstances, I think it’s safe to say to hell with diplomacy,” Dekav replied.
“I would rather die on my ship than take aid from you filthy pink-skinned subjugates!” Vay howled.
“Noted,” Rain said. “Lock all weapons on the Truth and fire.”
The Odyssey opened fire on the Truth with all weapons blazing. The beam cannons lanced out, carving into the hull of the massive vessel as the lens of the singularity began to creep from outside its hull, warping the Truth’s exterior. The explosions blossoming along it muffled, devoured by the singularity as the Truth’s hull was twisted, broken, slagged and consumed.
“Alright, get us out of here.”
The Odyssey’s engines grew louder but the vessel’s position remained unchanged. Adrian squinted. “Is it getting bigger?”
“No, sir, we’re sliding toward it.” Trident growled. Her hands danced across her console in a flurry trying to compensate for the growing gravitational mass before the Odyssey.
Adrian paged engineering. “Tia, get my ship the hell out of here.”
“Commander, the core is at maximum warp. I can’t give you any more.”
“Then I need options. Now.”
The ship groaned under the gravitational stresses of the singularity. The arbitrator’s image popped on screen. “Commander, your ship is too close to the event horizon. You need to escape now.”
“Yeah, we’re working on it. Think you could give us a hand?”
The arbitrator frowned. “I am sorry, Commander. None of my vessels is close enough to make the risk. I will pray for your success.”
“Thanks. Rain out.”
He looked back to his people with a helpless expression. “Mary Jo? Tiaahl? You guys are usually full of ideas.”
Mary Jo’s face scrunched for a moment. “Hang on.” She started rapidly typing at her console going through the mathematics of her idea. Adrian turned back to the main screen. It was starting to crack, along with the hull.
“Commander, the ship is starting to fracture and buckle under the stress.”
“Keep those shields at max, Lt.,” Adrian ordered Tiaahl. “Keep all power to those engines and shields. Pull every last joule from any other system you need to.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor.” – Marianne Williamson
USS Odyssey, Bridge
3 Faction Battle site
Adrian leaned against Dekav for stability as the ship began to protest the gravitational strain from the singularity they had created by destabilizing the Truth’s wrap core. The fact that he was seeing the strain physically in the ship was cause for concern. The warp engines were maxed at full throttle but the ability to warp and deform space meant shit against the larger singularity. In essence, the ship was sliding downhill if one were to imagine the maw of the singularity in a 3-D plane.
It was clear the warp engines just were not generating enough spatial deformation to clear them of the gravity well they were slipping into. Adrian glanced over to Mary Jo who was still rapidly typing and working on her console. If he could have tapped his foot impatiently without it sending jolts of pain up his leg, he would have.
“Mary Jo, any time now.”
She continued to work furiously at
her station nodding at his verbal prodding. “Working on it, Commander.”
“Working on what?” he asked trying not to sound like he was leaning over her. Well, he was not but if he could have, he would have.
“The calculations for this.” She nodded to the screen as she projected her work on it. It depicted a detonation at the mouth of the singularity. “We need something that can generate enough force to destabilize the singularity and provide us additional momentum.”
Tia’s portrait popped up, showing her and some of the main engineering down in the bottom right corner of the screen. “Captain, looking at these numbers, we could probably hit those if we ejected the warp core and detonated it at the right moment.”
“Do it!” Adrian ordered with a wince.
“Hull stress fractures forming all over the ship sir,” Tiaahl said.
Down in the main engineering, a shield slid down over the core as the access points locked off and coupling clamps unfastened with loud metallic clanking and a snap hiss at each point. When the last clamp shot back, halting with a hard jolt, Tia pressed the eject button. On her computer display, she watched as the sensors tracked the warp core moving farther and farther away from the ship. The computer had an overlay showing her relative to Mary Jo’s math where the core would have to detonate for maximum efficiency.
“Now!” she shouted.
She triggered the core. There was a ripple in the fabric of space just in front of the makeshift black hole that gasped before light overwhelmed it. A micro star blossomed out of the darkness and shoved the Odyssey well away from the devastation that had once been the Truth and Jubilation. Tia and Mary Jo used the warp core of the Odyssey to create a tidal wave in the fabric of space. If the situation weren’t so life and death he’d have considered applauding them.
As the ship’s momentum began to ebb thanks to Ms. Vail using the subluminal engines to reverse the speed of the ship, several Eaon vessels fell in with the Odyssey to provide it escort. The arbitrator appeared on the screen.
“Commander Rain. Well done. Again you’ve pulled off the impossible.”