by Greg Remy
She reached the end of the corridor, but was unable to properly stop and crumpled into the wall. Zoe quickly up-righted herself and stood horizontally on the wall. Bruised and battered, she looked down sideways through the corridor. A great relief came over her as she spotted the hatchway to her ship at its end. Zoe looked upward at the hallway she had just navigated and went pale. The far end glowed bright red and was undulating from the extreme heat and pressure; the corridor was literally melting away.
Suddenly, a mighty rivet-snapping wave rolled through the hallway’s end and it exploded. Zoe’s body went into an automated run as though she had been trained to race at the sound of a gunshot. Her body, free from thought, moved impulsively with pumping arms and legs. She scampered through the corridor, ricocheting off all its sides toward the hatchway of Dock 103. Her mind was insulated from her being. Instinct was now the sole conductor of all ratiocinations. Explosions rocked the ship about Zoe. No longer were they just behind her, but from all around.
She reached the hatch, securing her hands on it, and looked back. Behind her flames were rushing through the corridor, rushing towards her. They almost seemed to form a devilish grin, much like the Grandeur’s.
Zoe clawed at the hatchway. There was no intelligence, just feral muscles pulling at levers, scratching at rivets, and banging on the porthole. Moments later, a click sounded inside the door’s mechanism, signaling the correct combination of bangs and clangs had opened the Byzantine gateway. Zoe scurried into the vacuum seal, the portal from hell to salvation, taking once last glance at her assailant. The inferno was coming directly at her, shooting sparks and hurling shrapnel with mechanical, maniacal laughter. She slammed the hatch closed and vaulted herself toward her ship’s awaiting entryway.
As soon as Zoe was inside her craft, she dashed to the cockpit, scrunching Darious to the side of the captain’s seat and took the helm. Thrusters were instantly at maximum. There was a loud pop as the vacuum seal was ripped from the Grandeur’s vessel. Flames licked around the edges of Zoe’s windshield. With the engines at full tilt, the ship’s two occupants were instantly pressed flat against the seat. They shot out from the firestorm, just as the entirety of the enormous moon vessel ruptured and was consumed by explosions. After the initial vibrations of her craft, everything soon settled and became evident the immediate danger had passed.
Zoe shook her head as disbelieving consciousness returned to her.
“Wow.”
She brought up the rear view on her projection display and saw the giant vessel had been torn apart and was now being besieged by rubicund clouds from ongoing tertiary explosions. As they reached a reasonable distance from the shattered moon, Zoe’s mind relaxed into a composed quietude. She sighed, letting loose nearly all the air from her lungs.
She turned to Darious. “Now that was a close one.”
Chapter 46
The Torpor Torpedo
The pair wasted no time in fixing the remainder of glitches on the ship. Before long, it was running like a well-oiled machine. Zoe plotted a course away from all planetary systems to a silent, sanctified sector of space. She then put her ship on auto-pilot with long-range scanners set to announce any anomalies and met up with Darious in the main chamber.
He took her hand and guided her to a seat, setting a first aid kit on the table. As he began to dress her wounds, she looked at him, observing his eyes deeply focused on tending to her injuries. A couple times, Zoe winced from the pain, but she was always comforted by his gaze. Zoe put her hand to Darious’ cheek and brushed his damp hair back. He had cuts upon his face and a nasty gash atop his ear. She reached out to take up a medical sowing needle from the kit but Darious put a hand over hers.
“In a moment,” he said gently. “Allow me to take care of you first.” He slowly and meticulously worked his way from her arms upward. “You have a cut along your lip,” he said and gently wiped the drying blood from it with a cloth. Darious leaned in close and Zoe could feel herself falling toward him. She caressed her cheek against his. They shared a soft kiss. Zoe rested her head on his shoulder and he put his arms around her. Her pain melted away. All their hardships, everything that had happened since they had met, within this moment was all worth it.
After a bit, Zoe straightened up and considered their current situation while staring into Darious’ profound eyes. “Darious, I met the Magister responsible for all this.”
His expression darkened. “He is the one that did this to you, is he not?” Zoe nodded. “I shall kill him if I ever meet him.”
Zoe pulled herself tight against Darious and closed her eyes. “He is a terrible man.” She opened her eyes. “However, he admitted there is something behind all of this. I hope our impending higher-energy scan will shed some light on his secret.” Zoe sat up and gave Darious another kiss. She looked him over and smirked. “Look at us; we’re covered in tar, blood, and sweat. I bet we’re the best smelling couple in the galaxy.”
After they finished addressing each other’s injuries, Zoe returned to the cockpit to check on the status of her craft. She could hear Darious collecting their war-torn rags and dumping them in the trash shoot. With a single, hollow thump, they were shot out to space and Zoe felt renewed, as if that unhallowed part of her had been purified. Darious joined her momentarily after.
“All clear on scanners,” she said as he bent over her seat.
“That is good to hear.”
“Yup. And just an hour or so until the results from Wormy reaches us. Oh, the anticipation is always the worst.” Darious took a seat on the arm of her chair. She patted him on the knee. “Hey, how about I warm us up some—”
Suddenly a red alert flashed across the main screen. Zoe and Darious froze in place.
‘Incoming Armada’
Darious stood with a jolt. “Incoming armada?!”
Zoe too was in disbelief. “Incoming armada!? An entire armada!? Darious, battle stations!”
He flung himself to his post and Zoe prepped her ship’s systems. Azimuthal thrusters were pre-fired, the ship’s small weapons array was brought online, backup systems were all charged with full redundancies, a set of Zoe’s custom programs were placed at the ready on a quick-jump list to her left, and all exterior protocol ports were shut off to avoid the possibility of any hacking attempts—lest Zoe get a taste of her own medicine, without a spoon full of sugar in the vacuum of space.
Zoe turned to Darious. “Ready?”
He nodded. “Ready. T-minus thirty seconds until they are upon us.”
Zoe spun back around and fiddled her fingers over her projection console. This was going to be the truest test of her ship to date. Even though an entire CF armada was bearing down on them, Zoe felt assured, more than she ever had, that with Darious and with her ship, there wasn’t anything she couldn’t accomplish.
“Incoming!” shouted Darious.
The first wave of the fleet slowed from their superluminal speeds, skidding to a halt around Zoe’s craft. They were large destroyers. The ships formed a blockade at fifteen-degree separations from one another, preventing any hasty move from the tiny craft at their center.
Zoe initiated a routine and sent out a pulsed wave to the ships, the same communication overload harmonic she had used against Dr. Saknussemm and Kappa, but the effect was null, as she expected. It was worth a shot. While her ship was recharging its energy banks, Zoe scrolled through other alternatives. Against a CF fleet their options were limited, very limited. She activated another program, sending out a burst scan to look for weak points in the CF embattlement positioning. Her ship’s computer crunched a million scenarios, tracing out thrust, agility, and the capabilities of the many bodies to search for possible escape routes. Results were also null. There was no escape possible. Okay, thought Zoe, so that’s out too.
“Weapons locked!” called Darious.
“We’re safe for now,” said Zoe. “They are just making sure we stay put until the big guys show up.”
Zoe swiped
through more unscrupulous programs. Nothing here could help them. Her eyes then broadened at the thought of Dr. Saknussemm’s Z-Pulser program. Oh, but that might end badly for them, really bad. The possibility of unknowns was too much to attempt it. Zoe rapped her fingers on the console. She decided that as counterintuitive as it might seem, their best option would be to wait for most of the CF ships to arrive and stir them up, creating as much chaos as possible, then they could have a chance at escape. Statistical probabilities be damned. The thought reminded her of Kappa, the undisputed champion of controlled chaos.
Zoe slowly throttled forward and wound her ship in a tight figure-eight, like a fish surrounded by sharks.
“Ships inbound!” called Darious.
Just then dozens more CF vessels entered the area, reducing the view of the stars beyond. Large dreadnaught-class ships formed strategic outer rings around Zoe with smaller frigates and corvettes strategically filling in gaps of the bulwark.
Zoe looked over her long-range scanners. About half of the fleet that her long-range scanners had detected had arrived. Just a few more and she could use the last incoming bit to her advantage. Zoe continued inputting minimal power into her engines.
“Weapons locked!” said Darious.
“None powering, correct?” asked Zoe.
“Correct. 1,242 individual weapon locks.”
That’s a lot of locks, thought Zoe.
More ships flooded onto the battlefield. Zoe’s computer now counted upwards of two hundred ships surrounding them.
“Darious, in a moment I’m going to try something very, very stupid. Strap in.” She heard the click of his belt as she placed her fingers at the ready on the projection console. “Here goes nothing.” She plotted out a twisting course, per the computer’s best simulation, and engaged the ship’s controls. Zoe’s ship rocketed toward the closest frigate.
Right before impact, she pivoted upwards, nearly dousing the CF ship in the trail of her thrusters and then completed a similar maneuver over the next three closest crafts. She could see the CF armada was already shifting positions, reacting and anticipating her possible machinations.
“Weapons powering!” shouted Darious. A red alert suddenly appeared on Zoe’s screen. “Weapons fired!”
Plasma bolts from the nearest battle group shot towards Zoe’s craft. She spiraled her ship, avoiding the brute of them. Only two shots grazed her hull. Zoe then began wrapping her ship about a large destroyer as if tying a bow around it whilst fighting the centrifugal forces that pushed her away. She completed loop after loop, confusing CF volleys, before soaring perpendicularly from the innermost CF globule. Zoe’s computer chirped; they had managed to pierce through the interior CF barricade, leaving that central circle of certain destruction. It would take that task force time to regroup and thus for the moment, they were an afterthought.
Ahead of Zoe and Darious, outlying CF vessels were now tightening their formations and drawing inward. Zoe could see more warships arriving in the distance, rushing in so fast they appeared to materialize from nothingness. An alert onscreen refocused Zoe’s attention. Another volley of plasma bolts was searing through space toward her ship. She wasted no time, powering toward a semicircle-shaped frigate and bringing her ship as close to it as she could. She pivoted hard-right, just as the underbelly of her craft skimmed its hull and then she shot off vertically. Zoe saw one of the blazing blue bolts strike the frigate and smirked at the CF’s clumsiness. They were, after all, getting outmaneuvered by a small ship built from a junkyard.
Zoe’s computer signaled a pair of CF cruisers pulling up alongside one another. A momentary advantage! Zoe swiftly navigated between them and matched their velocity, using them as cover and appreciating they couldn’t risk shooting one another at such close range. The advantage was indeed fleeting, as the two vessels quickly split away from one another and their turrets turned toward her ship. The reprieve however, had allowed Zoe to stretch her fingers and prepare for the next round of cat and mouse.
“Missiles locked! Missiles fired!” yelled Darious.
A multitude of alerts flashed across Zoe’s screen. Playtime was apparently over. She piloted her ship straight ahead, hoping she could reach the enormous warship she had in her sights and use it as a shield. The missiles rounded just behind Zoe’s ship, madly clawing through space. Just as the closest of the projectiles was in arm’s reach of her craft, Zoe spun her ship and arced it around the great vessel within a finger’s caress of its exterior. A missile clipped one of the warship’s antennas, exploding on impact and sending a fireball across a good portion of its hull. Zoe swooped downward, experiencing a hard G-force and strained to keep her hands on the console. She then leapt from one portly ship to another, glancing off each before turning away in a different direction to the next. All around her craft, constant torrents of missiles whizzed by, some inadvertently impacting CF ships while others spun madly off course, lost to space. Zoe could only imagine the yelling of CF commanders seeing the crisscrossing of deadly projectiles across their bows.
Zoe’s computer signaled another safe gap and she immediately seized the opportunity, pushing thrusters to maximum and swirling around a CF frigate that had broken rank in the confusion and created that transitory opening. An explosion at Zoe’s starboard nearly shook her from her seat. She quickly altered course to elevate the disorder around her. Her computer beeped with expanding possibilities of escape. There! From the projection console, Zoe picked out a proposed outbound route with a ‘moderate’ success rate. With rapid finger movements, she plotted the course, tweaked it, and looked outward. Probabilities be damned. They could make it. Zoe wiped all screens and put forth all power to the engines, speeding toward freedom.
“Watch out Zoe!” shouted Darious. “Ship inbound!”
Just then, an enormous CF worldshaker intercepted them from superluminous flight, covering the entirety of Zoe’s bow window. She immediately cut power from forward thrusters and engaged a full reverse. The ship wrenched, nearly tossing Zoe from her command station as equipment from the main chamber clattered on the floor. She quickly managed to regain control and skirted her craft to a stop while tilting it upward in the process.
“Weapons fired!”
“Thrusters to full!” Zoe shouted. “We’re goin’ up!”
A volley of plasma bolts and projectiles erupted from the giant vessel toward them. Zoe ignited the main forward thruster and began winding her ship with the hope of making it a more difficult target to maintain a lock onto.
Zoe looked out at the massive ship waning below her field of vision. Alerts sounded. The rest of the CF fleet was now also firing upon them.
“No. They are launching everything! No!” she yelled at her console. Desperation was quickly setting in.
Zoe maneuvered her ship as fast as her reflexes would allow. Her mind was racing; her heart could not keep up pace. “Darious. Darious we’re not going to make it.” Her screen indicated that included in the massive bombardment, 1,211 Scalar-class torpedoes were whipping through space toward them.
“Captain!”
“Darious! I’ve got one thing left to try!” Zoe then whispered to herself, “one last try.” She quickly brought up a new menu, navigated through her list of folders, zoned in on a particular subsection and initiated its contents.
Her ship fell to a dead stop. With all hell raining on them, Zoe rerouted all engine power to a single computer program.
“Captain?!”
“More power!”
“Aye Captain!”
As Zoe typed away, shutting down all subsystems and rerouting every microwatt of power, she could see Darious was virtually alongside her, deactivating bilateral systems and others she had missed. Her projection console signaled that the thousands of CF projectiles were now within mere kilometers. There were only seconds before impact. With one last breath, Zoe turned off the tracking sensor array, utilizing even its power for her singular purpose. She glanced down at the projection console.
The Z-Pulsers had been successfully turned inwards, their focal point centered within her own craft, and Dr. Saknussemm’s algorithm was fully prepped. Zoe pressed enter.
The brightest light ever witnessed by mankind occurred on this day. Beyond the mind’s corporeal comprehension, it momentarily blinded both sight and thought impartially. At the heart of this brilliant aurora was that bantam craft belonging to Zoe Halloconst. To any that could have perceived through such light in that instant, her ship would have appeared to suddenly fracture—cleft in half—then splinter into millions of ongoing creasing fractals and furthermore into an innumerable number of dimensionless fields. In that marked moment, the ship’s two occupants would have screamed; they would have flailed their limbs and gone insane had they been able to glimpse the breadth and depth of dot-point reality expanded to infinity and back again.
Zoe had dared to use the higher-order algorithm turned in toward her own spaceship. She had dared and fired the Z-Pulsers with every bit of power her craft had. If Zoe could have stuffed her soul into it too, she would have. The amount of energy injected unto itself at staged resonance nodes bent classical space to degrees unfathomable. The light from the ignition point had instantly and completely engulfed Zoe’s ship. It had engulfed the entire region and in that moment of doing so, had filled every shadow with pure, unheeding light.
Just as quickly as the light begun, it ceased. A single cough came from the smoky cabin.
“Agh. Uhh.” Zoe slowly opened an eye, revealing a familiar metallic floor. She sat upright. “Darious?”
There was the sound of grating metal behind her chair. She rushed over and helped lift the debris from Darious. He coughed and sat up, looking at her.
“Zoe. What did you—? How are we—?”
She took Darious’ arm and helped him to his feet. They stood with arms around each other’s shoulders. The smoke was rapidly being filtered out and normal lighting had come back on in her ship. As Zoe looked around, she noted the low grumbling of her ship’s engines, indicating they too were online and idling. Zoe and Darious looked out of the cockpit window. The sight was unbelievable.