by Dean M. Cole
The change in the room was palpable. The men and women began to focus on Richard's story and less on their own concerns. He described the events from his personal perspective—providing nuances and angles not available in a news report. He effectively personalized the situation, giving the officers ownership of the struggle. Richard was planting the seeds that, he hoped, would lead to the formation of a cohesive unit.
Finishing the narrative, he scanned the room. Richard still saw hints of apprehension and dread, but the vast majority of the faces staring back at him now looked resolute, determined, ready to receive their orders.
That, or they were just tired of his voice.
Either way, it was time to hand out shuttle assignments. There were way too many people for the Turtle to carry on one or even ten trips. The stack of papers in front of Richard had all of the pilot's names. The admin officer that had handed him the two-inch-thick pile of documents said that he had sorted the personnel by country.
Looking across the geographically segregated theater, Richard smiled. On the podium, he cut the ream of papers like a deck of cards and began to shuffle the sheets.
***
Stepping over another vacated uniform, Jake entered the bridge and was immediately overwhelmed by its breathtaking scale and grandeur. The EON had provided him with mental images and detailed specs on the operations command section; however, seeing it with his own eyes was far more impressive.
The bridge's interior was roughly the size of a high school gymnasium, both horizontally and vertically. A huge, floor-to-ceiling view-wall filled the long, forward-facing side like a curved, two-hundred-foot-wide, super-ultra-high-definition television screen. It looked similar to the one inside the Turtle, but significantly larger. The other three walls had the same ancient, antiqued bronze look he'd seen in the ship's expansive halls and passageways. Something akin to an earthly bird of prey, like an eagle or a hawk, adorned the upper corners. Each appeared to be caught in a perpetual dive toward the center of the bridge—their talons outstretched, beaks thrust into the onrushing air, their wings pinned back.
With the EON's assistance, he accessed the bridge's hologram controls. As Jake activated it, he almost fell forward. Earth's surface suddenly filled the lower rear portion of the bridge, immersing Jake knee-deep in a sloped rendering of the Atlantic Ocean. The size and clarity of the hologram, coupled with the planet's odd angle, momentarily disoriented him.
Regaining his balance, Jake looked up from the ocean to see a rendering of the GDF fleet hovering overhead. He also saw small green icons that the computer identified as the Earth-based Vampire Squadron. It looked like the rest of Newcastle's fighters had rejoined him in space. Like a malevolent overseer, a red rendering of the Zoxyth ship remnant hovered some distance to the left of the fleet.
Jake knew the bridge contained another level, an invisible elevated command deck. He walked up to one of its dedicated lift points. As he stepped into the yellow ring of light, he began to rise. A moment later, the lift gently deposited him onto the clear force field-generated floor. As soon as he landed on the translucent surface, Jake gained access to an enhanced range of controls. This elevated deck served as the main control point for all fleet-level commands.
Staring into the hologram, he magnified the rendering. Using thoughts instead of gestures to adjust the display, he zoomed in on the fleet.
"Wow!" he whispered. A crooked grin curled one corner of his mouth.
Inventorying the empty Argonian fighter fleet, he discovered their institutional framework. The GDF had organized their units in a hierarchal structure that any human military officer would recognize. Jake left the ship unit assignments unchanged and directed them to their standard parking pads. No need to reinvent the wheel.
Standing on the elevated deck, Jake watched hundreds of green holographic fighters stream into the ethereal Galactic Guardian that now floated just over his head.
As the last fighter disappeared into the carrier's aft section, Jake turned to Vampire Fighter Squadron. With a mental command, he assigned them to a specific hangar location. One thought later, they joined the fleet's organizational structure.
This is awesome, Jake thought. He looked at Newcastle's seventeen fighters. Eight to port and seven to starboard, each vessel hovered oriented on the twin hangar bay openings like prison guards monitoring returning inmates. Stepping closer, Jake kicked something. When he looked down, his excitement died. He frowned at the empty Argonian uniform crumpled at his feet. His EON identified its rank insignia as fleet admiral.
Admiral Feyhdyak, Jake realized, shaking his head at the insanity of the day's events.
Dragging his gaze from the vacated uniform, he turned his attention back to the holographic Vampire Fighter Squadron. The process of getting them to their assigned hangar space took a few more steps.
He activated the modified radio. "Vampire Six, this is Galactic Guardian Bridge, over."
"Galactic Guardian Bridge, this is Vampire Six. Hot damn, son! You're doing a fine job! The Argonian fleet just flew into the hangars!"
"Thank you, sir," Jake said. "I've given access to your squadron. The Galactic Guardian's tractor beam has been set to guide your ships to their assigned pads. Figured I'd better alert you, so you're not surprised when your ships start moving."
"Roger, Guardian," Colonel Newcastle's gruff voice crackled over the radio. "I've just received word the Turtle will be lifting shortly with its first contingent. I want you to remain on the bridge for now. I'll link up with the senior commanders, and we'll meet you on the bridge for a debriefing."
After a quick consultation with the EON, Jake responded. "Copy, Vampire Six. I've set up an illuminated pathway, a set of moving lights that will lead you to the bridge from the exit at the hangar's forward wall."
"We'll see you there. Vampire Six, out."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Just as Remulkin was sure his body would surrender to the energy burning through it, the light evaporated, chased away by the familiar sensation of parallel-space entry. A moment later, his guts wrenched again. Not the burning, family-stealing fire this time, only the regular yank from superluminal speed.
After a short jump, the ship had apparently dropped back into regular space.
Thramorus struggled to his feet. Hunched over, he tried to shake off the sensations that threatened to overwhelm him. Breathing heavily, with hands on his knees to support his upper body, he looked around the airlock.
The ship seemed normal. Its interior walls now glowed with their usual intensity. The parallel-space jump had only lasted seconds, but considering the vessel's superluminal speed, he knew an appreciable chunk of a light-year now sat between them and the enemy. He knew that the GDF took steps to make their emergency egress parallel-space jumps untraceable. So they were safe from the Zoxyth's weapon, for now.
Finally able to stand upright, he stumbled to the airlock's inner door.
Tucked into the bottom of the battlecruiser's nose, the small room's location placed him a good distance from the bridge. Having spent a sizable portion of his short military career assigned to a deployed carrier, Remulkin knew his way around the fleet's complement of ships. While he'd never served on a battlecruiser, he knew the ship's logistician would be waiting on the other side of this airlock door. The officer's duties would include tractor beam operations.
As he drew close, the door opened.
Remulkin froze.
Something was very wrong.
Instead of the anticipated post-jump bustle, deafening silence oozed through the open door. Only a slow staccato drip pierced the ominous quietude.
"What the fuck?" Remulkin whispered.
Lying across the floor as if cleaved at an odd angle, a man's upper torso blocked the exit. His extended right arm looked like it was reaching for the door. Below the elbow, his left arm was gone. With surreal clarity, Remulkin watched as a swelling drop of blood desperately clung to the stump's lowest point. With a quivering release,
it lost its battle with gravity and fell into the waiting puddle of blood. The loud report of its splashdown caused Remulkin to spasm as if he'd been shocked.
Beyond the halved body of the man—likely the logistics officer—long, bright red streaks of arterial blood adorned every surface, even the ceiling.
With growing horror, Remulkin stepped over the officer's extended arm. The dead man's empty pants—sitting in the spreading pool of blood and half-covered with unrestrained entrails—lay flat where his lower torso should have been.
Closer now, he realized the officer's upper torso was tapered. The shape under his tunic showed the man was cut along an angle extending from his central back, just below the shoulder blades, down and forward to just above his pelvis. Visible in a gap between his shirt and pants, only entrails and blood extended below the bisecting line.
Remulkin realized that the man had been bending at the waist when it happened.
Empty socks extended from empty shoes into empty pant legs.
Positioned between the tractor beam control panel and the airlock door, the only portion of the officer's body still present was that part closest to the airlock's inner door, the portion closest to the nose and apparently farthest from the enemy weapon.
In the nose of the ship with his back to the airlock, Remulkin faced aft and considered how much of the battlecruiser lay behind that line.
He already knew the answer.
All of it.
"Oh shit!"
***
Just as fast as it leaped into the emergency parallel-space jump, the Helm Warden dropped back into real space. As it did, the compressed fisheye of stars ahead of the ship's nose blossomed to surround it.
Still doubled over, Admiral Tekamah gripped his command console. The internal voice of his resynchronized network id still screamed for his attention. Not now, he sent to his other half.
With a massive application of will, he stood upright, bracing himself against the console. Through withering pain and clenched teeth, he ordered, "Report!"
The tactical officer struggled to her feet. "Checking, sir."
As the woman consulted the data streaming through her console, Tekamah surveyed the scene beyond the view-wall. Signaling the fleet's arrival, hundreds of flashes illuminated the bridge. Each pulse of the ethereal light signaled the arrival of another ship as it dropped back into regular space.
"Sir, the fleet has rejoined."
"How much of it?" Tekamah asked in a cracked voice.
"All but Monarch's Stand and 1st Fighter Squadron, Admiral." In a choked voice she added, "They still haven't checked in. I can't see their subspace transponders either. The enemy must've reactivated the disruptor."
"It doesn't matter. We've lost them," Tekamah said flatly. Glaring through the view-wall, he studied the white point of light of Chuvarti's star and pointed at the woman. "With that subspace jammer back in place, we can't transmit the self-destruct command from here. Send a fighter back in. Tell them to fly into the Chuvarti system until they get close enough to transmit the self-destruct code via the backup radio channel. They are to keep their distance from all enemy ships, and if the disruptor field goes down, they need to perform an immediate emergency egress."
"But sir, you can't know they're all gone," she said. "There might be survivors on those—"
"No," Tekamah said, turning from the display and cutting her off. "They're gone. Now, transmit the order, Major."
After the briefest hesitation, the officer complied.
Tekamah shook his head. He should have recognized the dropping of the disruptor field for what it was, should've ordered the emergency fallback that instant.
The woman looked up from her console. "What was that light, sir?"
"A godsdamned banned weapon!" Tekamah shouted.
The woman's head snapped back as if he'd slapped her.
"Sorry, Major," he said.
She blinked her confusion. Myriad questions blossomed across her face.
The admiral shook his head. "No time," he said softly. "I'll brief everyone later."
"Yes, sir," she said after a brief pause.
Tekamah activated a small hologram recording of the moments before the fleet had jumped out of the Chuvarti system. In the paused video, the image of the doomed Monarch's Stand and the dreadnought that had destroyed it coalesced before him. Melded perpendicularly across their mid-sections, the two ships expanded until the battlecruiser was about the size of a man.
Tekamah stepped closer. His face glowed red and green. The majestic lines of the Argonian ship contrasted sharply against the rocky protuberances of the dreadnought's cobbled together asteroids.
Activating the three-dimensional video, Tekamah watched as the weapon's energy wave erupted from the melded ships, instantly enveloping both.
Verbalizing his EON commands, he said, "Slow playback a thousand times. Magnify Zoxyth bridge section to max resolution. Replay from one millisecond before weapon detonation."
His electro-organic network issued the commands.
Tekamah stepped back.
The holographic representation of the enemy ship's bridge grew to fill the space between the command deck and the high ceiling. Its cold, red light washed across the bridge.
The admiral rotated the enemy ship. The carved asteroid's Zoxyth face glared down at him, its fangs forever frozen in the act of crunching an Argonian skull.
"Play," Tekamah ordered through his EON interface.
The alien's partially opened mouth started glowing. Even at the incredibly slow replay speed, the energy wave raced outward, quickly expanding out of view.
"Reverse," Tekamah ordered.
The energy wave shrunk back and disappeared into the Zoxyth ship's bridge. Extrapolating the motion, Ashtara placed the weapon's location at the sculpted asteroid's geometric center.
The tactical officer interrupted his thoughts. "Sir, the Liberator hasn't checked in."
Tekamah looked at her. "You said all other ships had checked in!"
She nodded. "Their transponder is responding to pings, sir. But I can't raise anyone on her bridge. They're not responding to radio or subspace hails."
He deactivated the display. Turning from the dissolving hologram, Tekamah said, "That's the battlecruiser I sent to pick up the scientist. Keep trying them."
"Yes, sir."
Turning from the officer, Tekamah accessed the Liberator's data.
Nothing.
The battlecruiser had been well into enemy-held space.
He tried to open a direct EON connection with its captain.
Commander Bazil didn't respond. Her icon remained grayed out.
The Liberator was as silent as a cemetery.
Tekamah instantly regretted the analogy.
At least cemeteries had occupants.
***
Leaving the horrific scene behind him, Remulkin walked out of the ship's tractor beam control room. As he traveled aft from the vessel's nose, the circumstances in each consecutive room confirmed his worst fears. In every compartment, empty uniforms lay strewn about in random patterns. He saw no other partially vaporized bodies. These crew members had completely vanished. The doubled-over and curled-up positions of all the person-shaped articles painted a picture of pre-death agony.
Breathing heavily, he hurried through the sections. Passing deeper into the ship, he found more of the same.
"Shit!"
Now running, Remulkin quickly passed from room to room, working toward the ship's central lift. His heart raced as his panic mounted. He slid to a stop in the lower deck's central chamber. Wide-eyed, he stared at its hundreds of empty uniforms.
Mounting panic threatened to overwhelm him. It felt like his heart would soon burst from his chest. Bent over, Remulkin struggled to breathe, but every breath just brought him closer to vomiting. His unnerved sprint hadn't helped.
"Oh Gods," Thramorus whispered. He closed his eyes, but the vision of blinding light swallowing his family chased him
out of that dark refuge. Facing that agony now would finish Remulkin just as assuredly as would a plasma bolt to his heart.
The scientist stared at the floor. "Have to move!" he said between gasps.
A few labored breaths later, the giant fist squeezing his pounding heart seemed to relax its grip. Presently the ringing in his ears subsided.
Finally, Remulkin stood upright. When he didn't pass out, he walked on trembling legs toward the lift. It opened, revealing two bodies. The crew members floated slack, unmoving in the lift's gravity-free zone. Their backs were turned to him. Hidden behind their slumped-over uniforms, it looked like their heads were hanging down. Extending his right arm, the scientist reached into the tube's weightless environment.
"Hey," Remulkin said as he reached for the nearest crew member's shoulder. "Are you—?" His hand closed on empty fabric. Stifling a scream, he yanked back his arm. The empty uniforms tumbled out of shape and began to float around in the zero-G environment of the lift's interior. Without gravity and disturbing drafts of air, they had maintained their shapes and positions despite the absence of their former occupants.
Panic tried to take him again.
Bending over, he inhaled deeply. When he could no longer hold it, Remulkin released the pent-up breath in a long, cursing exhalation: "Fuck, fuck, FUCK!"
Holding the grab bar adjacent to the lift opening, the scientist inserted his arm into the gravity-free cylindrical space. He quickly swept it through the drifting clothes as if their owners might return at any moment. As they passed into the central chamber's normal gravity field, the empty articles fell into a pile just outside of the lift.
Avoiding the heaped uniforms, Remulkin leaped into the tube too fast. He ricocheted off the lift's interior walls twice before arresting his weightless inertia. The man held an interior handhold and extended a trembling hand toward the lift's controls. His third attempt activated it. The scientist began to rise toward the distant bridge level. His body accelerated up the narrow tube. Speed-blurred deck markings flashed past him. As he neared the top of the lift tunnel, their passage slowed. Then he stopped just below the tube's upper limit.