by Dean M. Cole
Then she recognized the rotating shape. "Yes!" she said excitedly.
Slowly rolling along its long axis, the Helm Warden floated where the dreadnought had been. As the nearest side scrolled across her field of view, weakly reflected starlight undulated across the carrier's flowing, aerodynamic lines.
But the ship had been emptied. How did it get here?
Then she knew!
Sandy grinned. "Jake Giard! You perfect man, you!"
Her smile faltered as a jagged protuberance broke the lower profile of the carrier's smooth lines. The irregular outcropping rotated toward her. Earthshine from the nearing planet revealed the rust-red color of its cratered and charred surface.
Pent-up air burst through Sandy's lips as if she'd been gut struck.
"That can't be …" Sandy started to say, but then the alien face rotated into full view, and she knew it was all too true.
Somehow, the Zoxyth dreadnought had melded with the Helm Warden. Like a nightmarish beast emerging face first from a pool of black mercury, the front half of the sculpted reptilian visage glared out into space from the smooth skin of the carrier's side. As the Warden continued to roll, the alien head's swept back, horn-shaped ears rotated out of view, and the monster appeared to scowl at Sandy as it regarded her over its slitted nose.
"No," she whispered, trying to wish the vision away. "Oh God. No, Jake."
***
Aboard the Galactic Guardian, Admiral Johnston stared through the view-wall and watched as the sculpted Zoxyth face scrolled back into view. "What in the hell happened?" he said in an astonished voice.
Beside him, Admiral Tekamah wavered unsteadily but didn't answer. Johnston extended an arm to the supreme commander, stabilizing him.
"Thank you, Bill," Tekamah said distractedly.
Johnston nodded. He cast a nervous glance overhead. Above them, the star field shone through a blown-out section of the bridge's ceiling. A few minutes earlier, an enemy laser had cut a long, straight-edged hole across it. Before the force field had sealed the opening, several officers had disappeared through it, carried to their death by the explosive decompression. Johnston had narrowly avoided the same fate. As he'd slid across the floor, Bill had grabbed onto a console. However, Tekamah had tumbled past him and then flown upward only to slam back down when the force field sealed the breach. Both men still bled from the multiple cuts and contusions they'd received during the event. And Bill suspected the GDF admiral had suffered a concussion as well.
Still a bit unstable on his feet, Tekamah gestured weakly at the hole. "It'll hold," he said too loudly.
Bill saw blood oozing from the man's ears. Johnston touched his own and found them bloodied as well. The rapid depressurization must have ruptured their eardrums.
He pointed a red-stained finger at the view-wall. "What happened, Ashtara?" he asked again.
The GDF admiral still didn't respond. Johnston gave the man an appraising sidelong glance. Tekamah blinked confused, unfocused eyes. Finally, his brow furrowed, and he yelled, "What?"
Johnston faced him and grabbed both of the man's shoulders. He gave the GDF admiral a gentle shake. "Stay with me, Ashtara."
Releasing a shoulder, Bill pointed toward the view-wall. "It looks like the Helm Warden jumped into the battle."
Turning from the surreal image, he studied Tekamah's eyes.
Still staring at the expansive display, the Argonian admiral blinked again. Then his eyes focused, and a haunted look chased out the confusion.
"Order your fighters to hold position!" Tekamah said in a suddenly animated voice. "Don't let them jump back in!"
Johnston nodded and made the radio call.
Then the hologram began to reconstitute over their heads. Apparently, the quantum storm whipped up by the enemy missile had finally relented. Outside, the protruding portion of the enemy ship rotated out of view again.
On the bridge, the GDF supreme commander grabbed the holographic rendering of the Helm Warden, stopping its modeled rotation. Then he turned the holographic version of the ship so that the Zoxyth face stared back at them.
Studying the miniature carrier, Tekamah shook his head. "I think their godsdamned gene weapon is still hot." He tilted his head to the model and said, "Watch this."
Suddenly, the holographic Helm Warden began to fade. Through the translucent carrier, Johnston now saw the complete enemy ship. The dreadnought remained intact. Except the portion of the face that protruded from the carrier's skin, its entire mass now lay encased within the structure of the Warden.
Tekamah expanded the image until it filled the overhead space. Looking up, both men stared into the paired ships.
Where physical material from one vessel crossed that of the other, the structures had melded together like a nightmare painted by Salvador Dali. Along their combined lines, smooth metal contours surreally flowed through cratered asteroidal surfaces.
Shaking his head, Admiral Johnston whispered, "Jesus wept."
***
"Roger, Galactic Guardian Actual. CAG, out," Colonel Newcastle said over the fleet-wide EON network.
Now that the hologram was working again, Richard studied its rendering of the battlefield. Somehow the emptied Helm Warden had jumped back into the combat zone. He stared at its smooth lines for a moment. Then comprehension washed over Colonel Allison. He smiled. "You son of a bitch! Way to go, Jake!"
"Sandy!" Richard said over their personal electro-organic network connection. Looking over his left shoulder, he said, "I think that's Ja—"
His voice died mid-sentence as he realized the link had failed and that Sandy's fighter wasn't with him. Nothing but empty space floated off his left wing.
Richard opened a squadron-wide channel.
"Phoenix Squadron, check in!"
One by one, every fighter save one sounded off.
"Where in the hell are you, Sandra?" he said, trying their personal EON link again.
Nothing but the perfect silence of a dead digital connection answered his query.
He reached into the hologram and magnified the battlefield again. As he zoomed into the image, a tiny dot between the Helm Warden and the remnant of the Galactic Guardian swelled into the husk of a destroyed but still recognizable Phoenix Starfighter.
"Oh fuck," Richard whispered. He started rocking back and forth. Subvocalizing, he began to repeat, "No! No! No!" in a constant loop.
"Colonel Allison? Are you still with me?"
Closing his eyes, Richard made a quick head shake. Then he opened them and accepted the connection.
"Sorry, sir."
"No, Richard, I'm sorry. I see it, too. I know you were close, but there will be time to mourn her later."
"Yes, sir," Colonel Allison said.
"Did you notice the Helm Warden?" asked the CAG.
Richard furrowed his eyebrows. Of course he'd seen the Warden. It was a damn big ship, hard to miss.
"Uh, yes, sir," Richard said after a brief pause.
A paternal tone entered the colonel's voice. "Son, did you also see the enemy ship?"
Allison blinked. He couldn't believe he hadn't given the bastards another thought, although he'd assumed it must be hanging near the battlefield. The weapon must still be hot. Why else would Johnston warn them off?
"No, sir," Richard said. "I don't see it on the display."
"You need to take a closer look at the Helm Warden, Colonel Allison."
"Okay, sir. Looking now."
He manipulated the virtual holographic model, stretching it until the carrier appeared to fill the fighter's overhead confines. Like the real ship, the rendering slowly rotated about its long axis. It still looked like a normal GDF carrier.
Richard started to reopen the connection but then froze.
"What the hell is that?!"
Two horn-shaped protrusions slid into view at the bottom of the ship. Impatient, Richard grabbed the virtual carrier. He rotated it manually and came face to face with their enemy.
"So
n of a bitch!"
He reopened the connection. "How in the hell did that happen?" Belatedly, Richard added, "Sir."
"Damned if I know, son," Newcastle said through his East Texas drawl. "But you and I need to get in there."
The colonel's words barely registered. An epiphany had slammed into Richard like a sledgehammer: both of his friends were probably dead.
"Y-Yes, sir," Richard mumbled. Finally understanding the East Texan's intentions, Richard sat up. "Yes, sir!"
"Good," Newcastle said. "If they're not … well, you know …" He paused and then sighed. "If they're alive, you and I will find them, Richard."
Newcastle activated the fleet-wide EON connection. "On my mark, I want each fighter wing to jump to its newly assigned coordinates."
As the colonel spoke, several waypoints popped up in Richard's holographic display: one for their two starfighters and six others for the air group's fighter wings. The CAG had distributed them in a defensive perimeter that sat more than a hundred miles outside of the combat zone.
Newcastle continued. "That'll keep you outside of the gene weapon's range. Colonel Allison and I will jump into the battlefield and make sure the Helm Warden took out the damn thing. You are to hold station until you hear from Colonel Allison or me." After a pregnant pause, he added, "Or until you see the weapon's light wave."
"Vlad," the CAG said. "If that happens, I want you to take out the whole thing with a nuclear bunker buster."
"Da, comrade," the Russian officer said.
"If that weapon goes off, the bastards will have the still functioning parts of the Helm Warden at their command," Newcastle said. "Don't hesitate, Vlad. Don't let them escape. You won't be hurting my feelings. I'll already be long gone."
"Don't worry, friend," Vlad said icily. "I remember what they did to Mother Russia. I'll take care of them."
After a short pause, the CAG said, "We jump in twenty seconds."
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Sandy's heart raced as she stared across the kilometer-wide gap. A thousand-meter canyon of empty space sat between the major and Jake's likely location.
She had no idea if he was even alive.
Numerous calls using her suit's short-range radio had gone unanswered.
He could be trapped or hurt. Sandy shook her head. She didn't want to consider the other possibility, wouldn't consider it.
She had to find him, help him.
Now!
But she didn't have any means of propulsion, any way to get across the gap, not in a controllable manner, anyway.
The thought drew a leery eye to the fire extinguisher. Sandy had seen the hackneyed emergency employment of improvised thrust in enough science fiction movies to know it was a recipe for disaster.
Sandy shook her head. There had to be a better way.
Something flickered in her peripheral vision. As she turned in that direction, she saw a small piece of debris floating away from the fighter's floor. Then another light flashed from the gray surface.
"What the hell?" Sandy whispered.
A second chunk of debris—slightly larger than the first, but moving even slower—had ricocheted off of the floor. Concentric rings of blue light radiated from the point where it had impacted.
As darkness returned to her fighter, Sandy had an epiphany.
And a plan.
***
"I need to check Sandy's fighter, sir," Richard said over their direct EON link.
"Okay, Colonel Allison," Newcastle said hesitantly. "But you may not like what you find."
Richard nodded without commenting. He didn't want to dwell on the possibility.
A moment earlier, their two fighters had popped back into the battlefield. Both ships now floated side-by-side with their noses pointed at the Helm Warden and its conjoined alien tumor.
Richard started to turn his fighter toward Sandy's. Then he stopped.
As the flagship of the Galactic Defense Forces and its formation of ruined ships passed over China's southeast coast, entering Earth orbit, the sculpted alien face rotated into view. Illuminated from below, the nightmarish visage appeared to glare at Richard with all too real malevolence.
Tearing his gaze from the face, a face that looked exactly like the beast Jake had killed aboard the first alien ship, Colonel Allison shook his head and then guided his fighter toward the black husk of Major Fitzpatrick's ruined Phoenix Starfighter.
As he rocketed toward the ruptured hull, the small vessel swelled from a featureless point into an all too detailed image of charred destruction. Richard's entire body tensed in anticipation of what he might see within the burned husk. He stopped the vessel about a hundred feet from the remnant of her drifting fighter. From there, he could see about a third of its exposed interior.
It looked empty.
Like a reluctant family member drawing back a morgue shroud, Richard craned his neck, trying to see deeper into the cabin.
"Where are you, Sandy?" he said.
Colonel Allison still didn't see anything. He needed to reposition to a better viewing angle. His hand crept into the fighter's control interface.
Suddenly, the visible portion of the ruined fighter's floor convulsed.
"What in the—?" Richard started to whisper, but then a white blob flew out of the ship. He flinched, yanking his hand out of the flight controller. Luckily, he hadn't been gripping it yet, or his fighter would've jumped a few kilometers aft, out of the battlefield.
Moving from left to right, the egg-shaped blob sped across his field of view.
The speaker in his helmet sparked to life. "Richard?"
Colonel Allison blinked. "Sandy?!" he said over the suit-to-suit radio. "Where are you? Wait, is that you in the egg?"
"Egg? Oh, yeah. That's me!"
Smiling, Richard shook his head. "How did you …? Where did you—?"
"No time," Sandy said, cutting him off. "Just meet me on the near side of the Warden."
Reaching back into the flight controller, Richard spun his fighter to face the carrier. Sandy's cocoon, or whatever the hell it was, shrank to a white dot as it continued to fly toward the silver-black skin of the massive carrier. Then it dwindled to a tiny point and finally disappeared altogether.
"You're going too fast!" Richard yelled. "You'll just bounce off the side!"
"No, I won't," Sandy said. "Unless I keep … talking to … you," she added through a series of grunts. Static filled the last words as increasing distance started carrying her beyond the suit's radio range.
Still staring after her, Richard shook his head.
His connection to Newcastle reopened.
"What's Major Fitzpatrick's status, Allison?"
Even though he'd also been fitted with an Argonian spacesuit, the colonel had been too far away to receive the transmissions of their suit radios. And without her ship's network connection, Sandy hadn't been able to activate an EON link.
"She's … alive," Richard said haltingly.
"You don't sound so sure of that." Before Colonel Allison could reply, Newcastle continued. "Just get her out of there, and let's start working on getting to the Helm Warden."
"Uh, she's already there … I think."
"You think? I thought you said you'd found her."
Richard slid his hand back into the flight controller.
"I did, sir." This time, Richard didn't wait for a reply. "Just follow me," he said as his fighter shot toward the Helm Warden. Belatedly, he added, "Sir."
After a pregnant pause, Newcastle said, "Okay," drawing out the word.
Within the holographic rendering of the battlefield, Richard saw the colonel's man-made space fighter fall into formation with his Phoenix Starfighter. The pair slowed as they approached the part of the ship that Richard estimated as her likely point of impact. Richard winced at the mental image elicited by the thought.
His suit speaker sparked to life.
"Over here!" Sandy said in a staticky shout.
At the same moment, he s
aw a flicker of light to port. Looking left, he saw it flash again. For a brief instant, a bubble on the skin of the massive ship lit up like a Chinese lantern.
Richard turned his starfighter toward it. Seconds later, the two fighters drew to a halt a few feet away from the blister that had generated the intermittent light.
Upon closer inspection, the Chinese lantern analogy persevered. Just aft of the protruding bridge section, it looked as if someone had glued the end of one to the skin of the Helm Warden.
On the side of the city-sized ship, it was impossible to judge the scale of the object, but then Sandy's head and shoulders protruded from its top. Floating in the open end of the roughly six-foot-tall by four-foot-wide lantern, she waved. The movement jostled the pregnant cylinder, and it strobed again.
"In here," she said, urging them with a beckoning gesture. "I found a way in!"
Shaking his head, Richard managed a smile. Jake, you're a lucky bastard, he thought.
Then the grin faltered as he saw that the icon for their direct EON connection remained grayed out.
"Giard! Are you there, buddy?" Richard shouted into his spacesuit radio.
Now close enough to access his fighter's network, Sandy opened a direct EON connection with him and Newcastle. "It's no use, Richard. I tried as soon as I got close enough. The Warden's network is down, and I can't raise him on the radio. He must be out of range."
"Okay," Colonel Allison said.
Just in case Giard could hear them, Richard transmitted again. "Hang in there, Jake! We're on our way, buddy!"
***
Sandy watched Richard slide through the hatch. Then she felt gravity begin to exert itself. All three of them glided to a soft landing on the floor of the small inner chamber.
Standing in hard vacuum, Sandy stared expectantly through the opening. She watched the field of stars rotate across the now empty airlock door. As the Warden continued its slow, axial roll, the hazy obscuration of Earth's atmosphere scrolled into view and slid down from the top of the opening. Then the planet's horizon streamed across the panorama. Less than a hundred miles below the formation of ships she saw the frozen landscape of Northeast Asia glide beneath them. Isolated white clouds hugged the permafrost of Northern Siberia like cotton balls resting on a field of snow.