Titan Fleet: The Invictus

by Jason J Black

  “Orders, Cap?” Nova is very excited to get started. She follows Pace onto the bridge.

  “Systems check, and anymore on comms yet?” Nova heads over to her seat with a skip in her walk.

  “It has been very quiet, Cap, but will keep my ear to the ground and get back to you later.” She begins flipping switches and the console lights up yellow and other lights begin to flash. Pace leaves the room, knowing things are all in hand on the bridge, and does a tour of the ship, making sure everything is fastened down and ready to go. People are eating in the canteen and are generally doing their last minute checks. The ship is a hive of activity and as Pace enters the loading bay from the lift, there is a man talking to Tom next to the crate. They are on guard duty 24hrs a day, so he walks straight over to see who is on board his ship without his invite.

  The man turns to face Pace as he approaches, and looks Pace up and down.

  “You must be Pace.” The man says in a deep voice.

  “It’s Captain Pace to you, and everyone else aboard my ship. Who are you, and why are you on my ship?” The man is now standing opposingly, with his hands on his hips. His short crew-cut blond hair and his dress sense spells military to Pace.

  “Well, I am Captain Miles of the Robur, for your information, and I hope you run your ship as well as you run your mouth, Captain, because if you do we may just have a chance out there.” The two captains stand silent for a few moments weighing each other up.

  “So why don’t you take your ideas and your captaincy back over to your ship along with Tom’s special crate, and put it with your special crate and have a party over there, and stop getting in my way on my ship!” Pace walks up to Miles and his face is just inches away from the other man’s. “Or do I have to have you removed.” Pace, with disgust in his eyes has made it clear, and Miles knows he has outstayed his welcome, so he turns and begins walking out of the loading bay onto the dock.

  “Oh, it’s been a pleasure, Captain. I’m sure we will see each other again soon, under different circumstances, and Tom, remember what I said.” Tom stands in front of the crate, with crossed arms, not saying a word.

  “You are meant to be my security, yes?” Pace raises his voice so Tom can hear well. He does not respond, just stays quiet. “In future no one comes on board my ship without my say so, am I clear?”

  Tom stands defiant while the words wash over his head. He replies with a simple, “Yes.” Pace storms off in a mist of red, with eyes shooting daggers at his back as he leaves.

  An hour goes by and everything is set. Captain Pace takes his seat on the bridge just behind Nova. He has a great view of the whole bridge, as he is sat a little bit higher that the rest of the crew. To the left of Nova sits Megan, and to the right sits Sam, both on their own consoles and at the ready. Rusty is sat in his own seat in the engine room, and the security team are sat safely in their rooms. The two robots finish their hatch and airlock checks, and magnetise themselves to the floor. They can still move around the ship with ease, without any problems, should they be needed. The crew had all had a small drink and smashed a bottle of wine on the ship’s bow to give them luck, and she was named The Invictus and now they were ready, all seated in anticipation of take-off.

  Pace flipped a switch to talk to the whole crew. “This is the Captain. In a few moments we will lift off into the stars, not knowing what lies beyond our planet, but what I do know is that if we stick together and help each other in times of need, we will overcome any obstacle, no matter how challenging it may be. Welcome to your home, The Invictus.” Pace flips the switch off and braces himself like the others.

  “Light the fires, Nova.” Nova flips a switch and holds on to her hand controllers. Talking herself through the take-off as she goes.

  “Dock clamps released, power initialised, Cap. Burn on engine one, in five, four, three, two, one.” The engine comes online, and then one after another, until all four engines are burning gold and humming, the ship springs to life. More instruments light up as the power feeds the ships systems and the ship is rattling and shaking a fair amount. “Lift thrusters engaged, Cap. Hope I make this enjoyable.” The ship leaves the ground gently and hovers about ten feet off the ground. In front of the Invictus, the Robur also floats like a feather, swaying from side to side a little.

  “Follow the Robur out, Nova, nice and easy.” Pace looking around in his auto-seat, which moves in the direction he looks.

  Beep, beep, beep! “A message coming in, from Eve Thorn, sir. Shall I patch her through, Captain?” Nova, requesting an answer, turns to look at Pace.

  “Yes, please do, Nova.” A face flickers up before his eyes on a large screen, which they all can see and hear.

  “Ah, Captain Pace, sorry I could not attend the take-off. I just wanted to wish you all a safe journey. Oh, and you will be following orders from the Robur, which is our lead ship in this endeavour. Captain Miles is a great captain, as I’m sure you are aware.” Pace, looking a bit confused replies.

  “I thought this was a simple salvage operation; get as much resources as possible. I don’t need to be led, Eve. I am more than capable on my own. Of course, we will assist the other ship, and vice versa, but we both hold the same rank.” Eve is set on the Robur being lead ship and Pace gives up trying to argue with her after a few moments, and signals Nova to cut the feed to the comms. The screen goes blank. Pace’s plans have not changed any in the slightest, and he assures his crew of this.

  The Robur drifts slowly out the space dock, and slowly followed by the Invictus, the two ships head out of populated space and each in turn thrust upwards into the massive black expanse. Engines roaring like thunder, the people below look up in shock to see these two Titan ships growing smaller and smaller as they go out of sight. The noise is deafening on the Invictus, and the forces are heavy on everyone’s bodies. The crew are shaken and bumped around until all of a sudden, nothing. The air becomes still and the shaking stops, the engines are running so quietly they can hardly be heard at all. The windows go from a red colour to black, and billions of stars are able to be seen. Everyone scrambles out of their harnesses to their nearest window, to view a sight that is not seen that much. Everyone is standing taking in the view. There are so many stars to look at, something rarely seen on Foloss, due to the dust in the air. Many of the crew have been in space before, but when they were children escaping Dalgen 9. Pace, Nova and Megan were the veterans at this, due to their pilot training, so after a while they sit back down, busying themselves on their consoles.

  “Cap, the Robur has set a course and relayed it to us, shall we follow, sir.” Nova lays in the course, knowing what Pace will say before he says it. With a simple ‘yes’ from Pace, the ship turns to the right and the rear of the Robur is seen once more.

  “Sam, be sure to scan the area when we get there. What is ETA?”

  Sam pushes a lot of buttons. “Yes, sir. About two days, sir, until we arrive at the destination. Sir, the area is in the middle of nowhere. It seems a little odd.”

  Pace walks down over to Sam’s console and looks at the star map. “Mm, I was expecting a planet or something. Keep your eyes peeled people, and let’s get some rest, we have all been so busy the last few days, and that’s an order.” Pace turns to walk off the bridge, but pauses for a moment to listen to a faint sound of buzzing.

  “Shush! Can you hear that? It’s not the engines. A sort of a buzz. I can’t quite place it.” Pace pauses for a little while longer, still not knowing where the noise is coming from.

  * * *

  “Buzz, buzz, Pace baby!” Briggs laughs. The whole take-off was being watched on screen by the security team, via the flying spy that went unseen to the bridge crew. “I will bring him back now, sir.” Tom looks on the screen and smiles at the little spy. He knows how useful it will be in the future, especially with this bunch of mad ones as crew. Briggs waits a few moments for the spybot to find its way back through the maze of wires and tunnels to their room, where it lands and recharges. />
  “Two days until we find the wreckage. Now, we don’t know if we will find any PD missiles floating around, but if we do, we need to get them on board a.s.a.p., without the others noticing. Of course, we should be at minimum safe distance when we fire our PD. We should expect resistance from the crew before we do, so no getting too close to these people understood.” Tom is sat looking at his team, wondering if anyone will let him down, but thinking not, as he made great choices this time around.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Rusty is analysing the engines power output and it seems very efficient indeed, but deep down Rusty knows he could tune it to make it go faster, if he had the parts. He taps in a parts list on his litepad and then looks at his gauntlet for a time check, before storing it back in his secret place, like the captain ordered. He heads towards the canteen with a recipe in mind for tonight’s dinner, only to be confronted by Pace, who tells him to sit at the table and wait for the security team to show their faces. Addressing the others, Pace is ready to make a stand against the security team tonight, and start off as he means to carry on. He fills the others in on his plan and they are all in agreement. They all sit and wait at the table patiently, until the security team arrives. The security team all walk in together, expecting hot food on the table, all laughing and joking until they see an empty table.

  “Where’s the food?” says Shanks, upset with the bareness of the table.

  “I don’t know, you tell me. You were meant to cook tonight, so we should be the ones asking where’s the food. You have let the crew down and yourselves too, now we all go hungry until you cook for us. That’s right crew, eh?” Pace folds his arms along with the rest of the crew, all looking at the security team and waiting for answers and food. The pressure of their stares is beyond words.

  “Like I said, we are your protection, not cooks.” Interrupting Tom before he could go on, Pace reminds Tom how he let someone on the ship without Paces permission.

  “Security is still to be seen around here, Tom. You lot expect to eat around here, so you will cook and that’s an order, or you will face punishment for disobeying a captain’s orders!” Pace stands up and smiles.

  “Dream on, Captain. You’re not really gonna get us to cook. We are the ones with the guns!” Laughing with the others, Briggs waits for Tom and his orders. Tom walks over to Pace and standing square on to him, he pushes Pace back a little.

  “You can shove your orders, boy, and I await your lame punishment. Is it going to strike me out of the sky or something?” Slightly looking over his shoulders at his team, Tom is taken unawares by a sucker punch from Pace’s heavy metal hand, and is sent flying across the room at light speed and crashes to the floor. Tom’s team react like the trained troops they are and raise their gauntlets. The three of them are stood together at this point, but they are already met by the crew pointing their gauntlets at them.

  Tom, standing back up by the doorway, laughs. “You are all fools. You are no match for my men. We have a stalemate I believe, and this time you won’t get lucky with a sucker punch.” Tom’s plans to rush Pace are short lived as a large darkened figure reaches into the room from the doorway, and Tom’s head has found its way into a large metal hand. Tom is lifted off the floor, crying in pain.

  “You were saying, Tom? Have you met Anc yet? To some of your men he is a stupid robot, but you see he has many jobs around here too, just like the rest of us, and he just loves to throw things out as trash. So unless you want to float in space, you will cook tonight and you will follow orders.” The grip tightens on Tom’s head, almost crushing his skull, the blood rushing to his brain to try to protect it from the immense pressure. Pace continues, “Now give me your weapons and we will say no more.” Tom agrees, waving his arms frantically and gesturing for his men to put down their weapons, before he passes out, hanging there unconscious for all to see. “For insubordination and as Captain of this ship, I place you all under house arrest until further notice, understood.” Tom’s men look in disbelief and silently agree with nods, before being escorted to the brig and locked in, along with the unconscious Tom.

  “Damn it man, no supper now.” Briggs bangs on the door after it closes.

  Even Talia is locked in the same room now. “I lost sharing a room with a girl, instead of you smelly gits.” She sits on the bunk, head slumped in her hands.

  Anc returns to the canteen and waits for further instructions from Pace. “They are confined in the brig, sir.”

  Pace thanks everyone for their support, but all he has running through his mind is the crate, so he takes everyone down to the loading bay, and they all stand staring at the crate with worried eyes.

  “We need to know what’s inside this, and if it’s bad I want it off my ship.” Pace starts to play around with the combination on the crate, not having much luck.

  “Excuse me, sir. May I take a look at that?” Sam bends down hear the crate and scratching his beard he takes over. “Umm seems simple enough, you just have to be gentle with it you see, like this.” The combination has been bypassed and the lock opens. A strange coolant leaks out from around the edges where the seal is now broken. Sam lifts the lid, half knowing what they are going to find inside. There is a large missile device with coolant all around it. There are a lot of lights flickering on and off, and for a moment everyone is relieved to see what has been kept from them, and then the relief turns to fear. An impending doom has now raised its ugly head on their ship, which is now their home and it does not feel good at all.

  “So Sam, do you know what it is? You seem to be at home with it.” Asks Megan in a worried voice.

  “Well in sort, Ma’am. It’s a big bomb, and not good for our well-being.” Sam jokes to make light of the situation. Taking a closer look, Sam reads the letters on the side of the missile, and says them out loud. “PD1! Oh my, this is not good at all. It’s a Planet Destroyer, I’m afraid. You don’t see many of these around these days.” Sam takes a step back away from the missile. Scratching his beard some more, he goes quiet. Pace closes the lid back down. He has seen enough of this dooms day device. In one way he will need to keep it on board, and another he wants it off his ship. What planet do they want to destroy is the question. He hopes it was not meant for home.

  “Ok, I want their rooms to be searched. They could be hiding something of use to us, or plans to hinder us. Whatever it is, I want to know. Oh, I need you to monitor the brig, Megan, to make sure these suckers don’t escape, and run around on my ship upsetting my crew.” Pace winks at Megan before asking Sam to change the combination on the crate, but before he closes the lid back down, he puts the missile into another container, away from the original crate for safer keeping.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The ship is on auto-pilot following the Robur, and everything is now quiet. The crew once again gather around and feast themselves on Rusty’s amazing cooking, and the security team is forgotten, and there is even laughter and joking at the table, which is so good to be a part of. It is surprising how separating negative people from positive people has a great refreshing effect, thinks Megan as she eats, looking at smiles all around. If she had it her way, she would have blasted them out of the airlock when they had the chance, but that was not for her to decide, besides Pace was doing an amazing job as captain and she was his girl and proud of him, which brought another smile to her face as she tucked into her stir-fry.

  “So Cap, what are we going to do with that lot in the brig? We just gonna leave them there?” Nova speaks with half a mouth full of food.

  “No, Nova, they may have their use yet, we don’t know what to expect when we arrive at our destination. We could encounter blue skins or worse.” Pace loads up his fork like a digger truck lifting a ton of muck, and loads it in his mouth along with a silent yum.

  “Blue skins, never seen one, do they exist, sir?” Rusty enquires. Pace lifts up his shirt to expose the blue skin part of his body, never seen before by the crew.

  “Does that answer
the question, Rusty?” Pace chuckles a little then lowers the shirt once more, before scraping his plate for the remnants of the lovely food. He goes on to explain how he got his skin and his new metal arm and how it had changed his life in a big way. At first he felt disconnected with life and felt like a reject. He felt useless and dirty to have this alien skin. He had started to become accustomed to it now, and felt that it might be useful in the future, so all was not lost. After he finished the story, Pace decides to sit on the bridge and reflect on the day. Thoughts flash through his head and letting his mind just wonder, he drifts slowly off to sleep in his command chair.

  Megan has decided to check in on the prisoners in the brig in the loading bay, to make sure they are snug. She walks closer to the cell and everyone seems to be alright, even Tom is now wide awake demanding to be let out and banging on the thick shielded transparent wall.

  “Enough of that!” yells Megan. “Do you know how stupid you all look? All you had to do was follow a few house rules and all this could have been avoided without fuss.” She shakes her head, and then checks on the door console. “We will see you again in the morning, and hopefully you will comply with the Captain’s orders, or it will be more time in the brig for you lot.” She raises her eyebrows before turning her back and walking away, feeling hateful eyes staring at the back of her head. As she goes out of sight, Tom turns to his men and in a reluctant voice agrees that they should try to muck in with the others for the time being, until launch time at least. The words tasting sour on his lips as he speaks. For now they will just have to settle down and wait until morning without food.