by Nick Webb
“Red alert, all hands to battle stations!” came the voice over the loudspeaker. Lieutenant Youngblood, from the sound of it. “Captain to the bridge!”
“Did you think I was going to take a dump first?” he muttered under his breath, and quickened his pace toward the bay doors.
“Captain! Wait! You’re injured!” Commander Rice was pointing down at his leg, which, upon closer inspection, was indeed oozing an unseemly amount of blood. He could hardly feel the pain—just a dull ache from his calf.
“No time. We’ll patch it on the bridge with a medkit. Have the nurse meet me there,” he called behind him as he continued his sprint to the doors. But the sprint had become a shuffle.
“Captain, I insist. You’ll pass out before you even get there, and then what good will you be in a battle?” Before Granger could even protest, Rice was on the comm. “Bridge, this is the XO. You’re going to be on your own for a few minutes. Keep us alive, please. Get us out of here. Rice out.” He motioned to one of the deck hands. “Medkit! Now!”
Granger was still shuffling toward the door, but each step now was becoming agony, and slow, like trudging through a swamp. “No . . . time . . . Commander. No . . . Goddammit.” His vision was going starry, and he grabbed hold of the threshold as he came up to the bay doors.
Before he knew what had happened, he was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling of the shuttle bay. He could tell, vaguely, that Rice and the deck hand were working on his leg.
“There you are, Captain. Passed out for a minute or so. We got you all doped up now so you’ll be pretty on point for the next hour, but this leg—”
“Fuck the leg. Stop the bleeding and get me to the bridge!” He was yelling, but his senses were still a bit blurred so he couldn’t quite tell how loudly. But the look on the deck hand’s face told him the answer. Pretty damn loudly.
The ship shook again with another explosion, and he could swear he felt an impact. Something big hitting the ship. He swore under his breath, and again, from the deck hand’s face, he could tell it wasn’t so much under his breath as more yelling. He saw a box lying next to the kneeling Commander Rice. “What the hell is that?”
Rice looked at him, and it was his turn to swear. “Damn. Your memory meds are wearing off, sir. Most likely interacting with the stimulant I just gave you. We’ve got to get you to sickbay.”
“No! I gave you a direct order, Commander. Get me to the bridge—now! Or I’ll send you both to the brig for a fucking week.” He started to stand up, grabbing the arm of the deck hand to help himself up. The room spun and shook, and he couldn’t tell if it was from another impact or explosion, or if he was just experiencing extreme vertigo.
Probably both.
His threat had worked, and Rice and the deck hand were each holding an arm, escorting him down the hallway toward the lift. His balance was reasserting itself, and the fog started lifting from his mind and vision. He heard Rice talking to someone at the periphery of his attention.
“—his medication. Yes. Fifty cc’s. And the quick flesh patch. Yeah, I know. We’ll get him there as soon as he lets us. Rice out.” Commander Rice pulled the comm away from his ear. “Nurse Jackson is on her way.”
The door to the lift opened and they climbed aboard. “Bridge,” he said. Within twenty seconds, they were there. The marines at the entrance to the bridge down the hall saluted. He shook off the deck hand and saluted back as he passed. “Off to the shuttle bay, Yeoman. Thank you for your help.”
The door to the bridge slid open and he stepped into chaos. The tactical station was a hive of activity, with Lieutenant Youngblood directing what appeared to be an orbital battle between the Defiance and a small fleet of tiny satellites.
Except—he peered at the view screen in the front of the bridge—the satellites looked strikingly similar to the floating sentry cannon that had killed Ensign Shin. It made him rage that they’d had to leave the man’s body on the planet, but he gritted his teeth and controlled himself.
“Why aren’t we q-jumped out of here?” he shouted, grabbing his command chair armrest and pulling himself into it as the ship lurched again.
“There’s some kind of quantum spatial dampening field coming from the surface, sir,” said Nagin at navigation. “Like a big, invisible cone, and we’re at the center. I’ve been trying to initiate the jump, but—nothing.”
The nearest satellite erupted with a shimmering blue beam, similar to the one fired by the sentry cannon. The ship shook as it struck.
“I assume we’re returning fire, Lieutenant?” he yelled to Youngblood at tactical.
“Aye sir! Except, the gigawatt lasers are ineffective against those things. No idea how. And the PDC cannons—these things are so agile and fast they can mostly avoid them. All we’ve got is the railguns. But those are slow to reload and—”
“Yeah yeah, I got it, there’s dozens of these things and we’ll never make it picking them off one at a time.” He swiveled back to face the screen. The fleet of satellites was swarming the ship, even as the helmsman managed to put the Defiance through a series of impressive evasive maneuvers.
It was terrifying.
And yet, it was like riding a bicycle. After two months of second-guessing himself, feeling sorry for himself, feeling like a burden on everyone around him, he was finally in his element.
It felt good. Real good.
But good wasn’t enough. The swarm of satellites was converging on the Defiance, and the ship started to shake with the impact of dozens of beams.
“We’re not going to last much longer like this, sir!” said Youngblood. “Several decks are vented to space. Power plant coolant leaks reported from engineering.”
Commander Rice shook his head in disbelief. “Who the hell are they?”
“I don’t think it’s a who,” said Granger. “Rather, what. Have we detected any life signs? Comm? Have you been hailing them?”
“The entire time, sir,” said Baatar at the comm station. “No response whatsoever.”
“No life signs either,” said Youngblood. A particularly strong explosion nearly knocked him out of his seat. He leaned forward and stared wide-eyed at an indicator on his console. “Power plant offline! We’re on batteries and caps, sir!”
Rice leaned in toward Granger. “Sir, we’ve got to get you to an escape pod. Maybe we can hole up on the surface until help arrives.”
He shook his head at the younger man. “Son, no one alive even knows we’re here.”
No one alive, he thought. Especially if those things out there are what he thought they were. He remembered them. Almost.
They were not alive.
But before the memory could take shape and form in his mind, something else happened on the viewscreen.
“Sir! A ship just q-jumped in!” said Nagin. Granger made a mental note to instruct the young green ensign not to narrate what everyone could clearly see on the screen in front of them.
“ID?”
The ship looked like a small gunship with an impressively large cargo bay. Private, perhaps from a merchant corps, or a solo operator. They had no idea how much danger they were in, most likely.
But the ship’s cargo hold door started to open, and no sooner had it lowered halfway than a smaller ship leapt out.
A fighter. An IDF fighter. Followed by three more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Poincaré Sector
World IXF-459
High Orbit
The tiny satellites darted this way and that, taking aim at his fighter with their blue energy beams, but, thankfully, they were missing.
It’s not that they were slow or inaccurate, it’s just that he, Commander Ethan Batshit Zivic, was the greatest fighter pilot in the known universe now that his old man Ballsy was gone.
Chatter came over the comm from his squad. “You know why this is so easy?” said Barbie, his Aussie pilot.
“Because I’m amazing?” said Moonshine.
“Nah. It’s becau
se I’m the greatest fighter pilot in the known universe,” replied Barbie, blasting his way through a pair of satellites that had strayed into his sights.
“Hey, man, that’s my line. Stick with your own catchphrase, Mr-Put-Another-Shrimp-on-the-Barbie,” said Zivic. He powered through a little cluster of satellites and picked off two of his own. “That’s three already for me. How many you at, Barbie?”
“Thirteen.”
Shit.
“No one likes a show-off, Barb,” he retorted, using the name he knew his friend hated.
“Watch it, you little motherfucker.”
“You kiss you mother with that mouth?”
“No, but I kiss your mother with that mouth. And she’s dead!”
Zivic snorted—no one else would have gotten away with that except Barbie—and fired off another dozen rounds at his next target, feeling the warm satisfaction of seeing it erupt into an explosion of brief flame and debris.
“Uh, guys? Hate to interrupt, but—” came Spectrum’s voice over the comm.
“What is it, buddy?”
“The satellites. They’ve split up into two groups.”
Zivic glanced at his tactical status board. Sure enough, the little buggers they’d been battling at this altitude were just a small offshoot from the bulk of them, which had now split up into two groups, one zooming straight back toward the Defiance, and the other toward the Crimson Phoenix.
“Well, shit.” A thought struck him. “You don’t suppose—these things are actually smart? Like, didn’t they seem too easy to you?”
Spectrum grunted. “Huh. You think this little batch here was playing rope-a-dope for us to lure us in and distract us while their buddies are heading out to attack the main targets?”
“Only one way to find out. Let’s see how good they are. We’ve got to split up. You and Barbie head out to—”
A voice over the comm cut him off. “Negative, Commander Zivic. Protect the cargo ship. We’ll be fine on our own, now that you’ve distracted over half of them for us.”
“Captain Granger?” said Zivic. “Is that you?”
“The one and only.”
“Uh, aye, sir. You sure?” He gunned his engine and swung around to head back toward the Crimson Phoenix, which was already performing a series of evasive maneuvers to shake off a half dozen satellites.
“Sure’s sure. We’ll send over some q-jump coordinates. Let’s rendezvous as soon as we get out of here. No need to stick around for a fight. Granger out.”
Zivic and his three squadmates converged on the group that itself was converging on the Crimson Phoenix. And, sure enough, the group scattered, each wheeling around in a great loop and homing in on his and his mates’ fighters.
“Woah. They didn’t do that before,” said Moonshine.
“No shit. They were playing us. These buggers are smart—shit!” Zivic jerked left on his controls, but not before one of the blue beams vaporized his right wing.
“You okay?” asked Barbie. He’d swooped in behind Zivic’s tail and blasted the offending satellite to oblivion.
“Yeah. No atmospheric dogfights for me, though.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Defiance plunging down into the atmosphere itself. Its hull started glowing red.
“Batshit, Granger’s going down!” yelled Moonshine.
An array of tiny red dots surrounding the Defiance lit up soon after, with tiny trails of red debris streaming off of them. “Granger, you bloody genius,” Zivic murmured. “Negative, Moonshine. He’s just smarter than these robots. Everyone head back to the Crimson Phoenix. Let’s q-jump out of here. Proctor? Have you received the rendezvous coordinates yet?”
“Yep, just got ‘em. Get back in here—my finger’s hovering over the button.”
“Roger that,” said Zivic. “Everyone—hot landing. Go!”
“Don’t scratch my deck!” said Danny.
They dodged and weaved their way through dozens of blazing blue beams, Zivic losing his left wing to match his blasted right wing.
“Did he just say don’t scratch my dick?” said Barbie, right on his tail.
A violent collision threw him forcefully against his seat restraint as he landed on the cargo bay deck. Danny was going to kill him—he was sure he left deep gashes in the landing deck metal.
“I’m in!” said Barbie, echoed moments later by Moonshine and Spectrum.
“Hold on,” said Danny, and the familiar jerk of the q-jump drive tugged at his stomach.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Poincaré Sector
World IXF-459
ISS Defiance, Low Orbit
Bridge
“Sir, over half the sentry satellites have changed course to deal with the fighters,” said Youngblood.
“Good. While they’re distracted, full thrust into the atmosphere. Straight into the gravity well. Now!”
Rice, from behind his chair, shouted. “But sir, we’re going over forty kps! Our hull is gonna fry, even with thermal dampers on full—”
“Yeah, and what do you think it’s gonna do to the enemy, Commander? Do it, Ensign.”
The inertial cancelers struggled to keep up with the change of momentum, and he felt the ship plunge down toward the planet. It loomed large on the view screen, and he could start to see the edges of the screen turn red as they hit the atmosphere.
“We’re losing some of our PDC cannons!” yelled Youngblood.
“All our external sensor packages just fried sir!” called out Platt.
“Steady,” he said, his voice finally feeling the old stability, the old confidence.
The ship lurched several times as the alien satellites, now with a clear shot, pelted the Defiance with their blue beams. But each of them were now glowing red too, like a constellation of angry red comets surrounding them.
“Ensign, when their q-dampening field disengages, get us the hell out,” he said, calmly.
His demeanor seemed to have calmed Nagin at the helm, in spite of the chaos surrounding them. “Understood, sir.”
“Does Mr. Proctor have our rendezvous coordinates?”
“Aye, sir,” said Baatar.
Ensign Platt’s eyes were wide and unblinking as she stared at her console readout. “And . . . the field is destabilizing. Almost . . .”
Granger was following the progress on his command monitor. “Now!”
The helmsman tapped the q-jump initiator, and in a flash, the view of the dusty brown and green plains below disappeared, replaced by a field of stars.
Granger breathed.
And breathed some more. He released his death grip on the arm rests.
“Thank you, Ensign Nagin. Steady under fire. Good. You’ll go far.”
Ensign Nagin’s hands were shaking, but he nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
Granger stood up and nearly fell as his injured leg started to give out. But he grabbed the arm rests again and steadied himself. He was about to give his next orders when he noticed nearly everyone else on the bridge had stood up as well, staring at him.
Lieutenant Youngblood started clapping, joined by everyone else. A few shouts and whoops mixed in with the clapping. Granger waved them down, but it took them several moments to quiet down.
“Granger’s back,” called out one of the tactical crew, a goofy—but proud—smile plastering his face.
“Settle down, kids. We made a good escape, yes. But a good escape is a terrible substitute for a good victory. We’ve got a long way to go.” He saw several of their shoulders slump a bit. Remember, Tim, remember what it was like. “But good job, people. Very, very good job. You did your duty, you did it well, and we’re alive because of it.” He let the brief words of praise sink in. “Now get back to work.”
Out of nowhere the nurse was at his side, crouching down to examine his leg. He tried to ignore her as he talked to Rice. “Now, Commander, let’s go look at what’s in the box.”
“No can do, Captain. Doc’s orders. You’re coming with me,” said the nurse,
from somewhere below his knees.
He scowled at her. “Pardon me? Nurse . . . ?”
“Nurse Jackson. And in the absence of a CMO on board, I’m it.”
He shook his head. “Acting CMO’s can’t order the captain around, Ensign Jackson. I’ll be down to sickbay in—”
She interrupted. “Sorry, sir. In your long absence, fleet regs have changed. Look it up. You’re coming with me.”
He glanced up at Rice. He nodded. “Sorry, sir. She’s right.”
The scowl deepened. “Fine. Bring the box to sickbay. We’ll open it there.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Irigoyen Sector
Bolivar
Ciudad Potosí
She should have paid us more, Danny heard Fiona say in his mind.
Jerusha’s hands were tied as to the amount, darling. She gave us what she could.
I’m just saying, given that we sustained a few direct hits from those orbiting sentry drones, we should have insisted on hazard pay.
Well Granger was in no condition to haggle a new price with us, now was he? He probably doesn’t even realize we already left.
They were escorting their cargo—a family of Britannian refugees—off a landing pad at the spaceport in Bolivar’s largest city, Ciudad Potosí. Zivic had given them the go ahead to head out from the Defiance, given that Granger was in sickbay, and Danny thought it wise to not keep his client waiting. Word of mouth about shitty taxi service travels fast. Even in an economy with a severe shortage of interstellar transports.
“Mr. Proctor, I can’t thank you enough. Voyage was smooth, the state room and five course meals were phenomenal, and more importantly, we’re here in one piece.” The man—Mr. Hughes, if he remembered right—was the last of the refugees to get off the Crimson Phoenix. The bustle of the spaceport’s main promenade was such a din that Danny could hardly hear the man. His wife was herding the couple’s three small children nearby. Fiona was leading the way, gesturing them toward customs, a small office with a line snaking out of it at least a hundred long.