Death Drop (The D-Evolution)

by Sean Allen

  The hull shape was unique and would have been enough to capture Dezmara’s imagination, but it was the top half of the ship that left her awestruck. There was a dark line that would have clearly marked two weather decks—one at the bow and another at the stern—separated by what would have been a waist deck if the the top of the ship had been open to the elements. But it wasn’t. A shimmering dome, like the chambered shell of a giant Wadiian Nautilus made of liquid metal, arched from bow to stern and seamed perfectly with the gunwale.

  The Ghost was slightly ahead of the the Lodestar and the Maelstrom—leading its own funeral procession toward the blue planet in the distance—and as the mystery craft turned hard to port, Dezmara caught a quick glimpse down its long flank. Its side was lined with three rows of round doors. Each portal was a perfect circle that spiraled out from the center in overlapping sections: miniature replicas of the half-shell dome immediately above and concealing what Dezmara was certain was an exotic, alien interior. The ornately decorative shapes were strangely beautiful, but as captivating as they were, she knew they had a deadly purpose; and, as if her very thought triggered the action, that purpose cracked the shell coverings and hatched with awful fury.

  The captain of the vessel was good and as he made his turn, the spiraling portals opened, each section peeling back into the next, just enough to allow the cannon barrels hidden beneath the metameric doors to extend through the diameter. Each glinting tube coughed orange in quick succession, so the aftmost gun fired just as the arching tail of the ship swung parallel to its prey.

  Jets of fire erupted from the Lodestar and then were gone, quenched by the sterile emptiness outside its breached hull. Glossy oil paintings; vases with colorful patterns in blue, green and gold; antique furniture with intricately carved legs and arms of exotic dark wood; and locked trunks with unknown contents hemorrhaged from the gaping wounds and tumbled on every axis into the ether.

  Dezmara watched. Without control of her ship and with no weapons, she was a captive to the unfolding melee, and disbelief numbed her from head to toe as she took in the scene. She was watching a conflict that, no matter the outcome, would change her life forever, but she wasn’t sure if that change would be for good or ill. She crinkled her brow and snapped a look at the com before being pulled back to the action outside the window. Her nervous mind craved the battle—or more accurately, the outcome of the battle—but a thought from a more reasonable place took over. “Sy, are you there?”

  “Luv…I can’t…I can’t believe this is happenin’.” Simon sounded more entranced than she did.

  “I need you to focus,” Dezmara said sharply. Pangs of guilt bored into her stomach for telling Simon to do something she was having a hard time doing herself, but she pressed on. “The engines. Any chance we can get’em back?”

  “The starry is shot, luv, but I think I might be able to work a little magic with the porter—think it’s jammed with shrapnel. If I can clear it out, she might turn over.”

  “Do it as quick as you can. I need at least one engine and flight controls to keep us from becoming a pile of scrap on Clara’s surface.”

  “Right, luv!”

  She had never felt so helpless before. Dezmara was torn between the possibility of living and having to prepare for her death again. The previous, which she preferred, required a miracle with a huge side order of luck as well as flight controls and an engine. “Was that it? Can you think of anything else?” It occurred to her that if Simon couldn’t get the main engine back on line, she might be able to work with the auxiliary stabilizers and she blinked from her trance and reached for the console, but before she could hail the engine room, she was wrenched back to the window by movement.

  Rilek was taken by surprise but he wasted no time in responding to the threat. The Lodestar buzzed over top of the Ghost, barrel-rolling to the other side with an agility Dezmara didn’t think possible from the battered and worn looks of her outsides. Rilek and Saraunt were in perfect sync, and before the Lodestar had pitched the smallest fraction of a degree, the Maelstrom dove on the ambushing vessel and let loose with all its forward machine guns. The swarm of projectiles glanced off the slick, liquid-like, metallic skin and sparks hung in the air, marking each bullet’s initial hit and beckoning the wayward lead back to its mark before giving up and withering in the unrelenting cold. The mystery attacker shrugged off the assault and banked under the Ghost in pursuit of the bigger threat—the more heavily armed and formidable Lodestar.

  Rilek moved to the starboard side of the Ghost, happily using Dezmara’s ship as a shield against the vicious guns of the shell-helmed menace. The trailing flame of his engines stretched and grew brighter as he accelerated hard. The marauding ship swooped from underneath Dezmara and company at an angle to catch Rilek and put another broadside volley into his flank, but the cunning admiral had other plans. As soon as his pursuer crested the nose of the Ghost, Rilek slammed his throttles to all back full.

  The alien craft had taken the bait, and it hurtled past the viewing panes with only meters to spare. The blast of its engines rocked the helpless Ghost and Dezmara fell into her chair, clutching the rim of the seat with both hands to keep from meeting the floor for a second time in sixty grueling seconds. As it arced past, the violent tremors decreased to a small humming vibration, and Dezmara looked out of the cockpit and onto the stern of her unknown savior. There, etched across the tail of the ship like a charred black brand, was its moniker: Triton.

  The captain of the Triton had overcommitted, and in the split second it took for him to realize his grave error, Rilek had maneuvered directly behind him. Shells were tearing from the Lodestar’s deck guns and four cannons that appeared from large rectangular bay doors on both sides of the bow. The Triton’s swirling engine fairings, two on each side of the tail section, spiraled closed, swallowing the demon red exhaust glow like mollusks drawing their feet into the protective confines of their armored shells. But it was too late. The upper starboard engine belched flames, and when the conflagration evaporated, there was nothing left but gnarled pieces of blackened metal where the fairing had once attached to the hull: Rilek had scored a direct hit on one of the Triton’s engines.

  Dezmara’s hopes dropped like heavy stones in the sea. She didn’t know who was in the Triton or what would happen if they destroyed Rilek and Saraunt, but she knew what would happen if the admiral prevailed, and she was pulling for the survival of herself and her only two friends in the universe. Her spirits lifted again as two nautilus doors opened on the tail section of the silver ship, and the cannon barrels that appeared pumped back and forth as they alternated firing salvos in their wake. The shells sped by without leaving so much as a scratch on the rusty hull of the Lodestar, but the rounds weren’t meant to cause damage—they were a distraction.

  Rilek couldn’t move directly to his left or he would slam into the Ghost and risk damaging his own ship, so he took evasive action by swinging to his right in a pendulum motion. And as he made his move, so did his adversary. The Triton looped back and rolled on its side, opening fire with all of its portside guns now pointing straight down at the top deck of the Lodestar. Dezmara was on an emotional roller coaster and, just as she thought she might live to add this amazing battle to her incredible repertoire of pub stories, she shot into the depths of despair once more. Rilek launched into a vertical dive as the Triton attacked, putting the most valuable components—the engines—farthest away from the barrage and saving himself and his crew from what was certain to be a deathblow. She pressed her cheek against the cold viewing pane, her hot breath fogging out in a half circle on the glass, and looked after them until the battling ships passed out of sight beneath her. “Dammit!” Dezmara cursed and then, just as she thought she couldn’t get any lower, something occurred to her. “Where the hell’s the other ship?! Oh, SHIT!”

  CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!

  The Maelstrom was back, and its big caliber machine guns were finishing what they had started before th
e Triton showed up. “All it takes is one round,” she said to herself as the bullets stitched their way along the port side of the ship and up over the top, missing the cockpit by a hair’s breadth. Saraunt rolled his odd-looking craft over and looped downward, pulling out of the acrobatic move directly level with Dezmara’s line of sight and charging straight for her. “This is it,” she said in a disbelieving tone. She had been almost sure they would somehow get out of this one, but she had been pretty lucky since getting up this morning. “Death always gets its due, even if you’re not ready to pay up,” she thought. Dezmara put her arm around Diodojo’s neck and felt the warm pulse of animal blood coursing through his veins; she felt his fierce spirit, she felt his life. She put her other hand gently between his ears and stared straight ahead. The Maelstrom was so close Dezmara could see the barrels on its forward guns start to spin—a deadly precursor that would last only a fraction of a second before lead flew from the revolving chambers and chopped her to bits.

  FLASH!

  A blinding explosion of light pierced the viewing panes on the Ghost. Dezmara was knocked to the floor by the concussion, and the Ghost shook so hard in the aftermath that it felt like it was tearing itself apart. The trembling stopped and as she lay there on the floor, an image was scorched into the backs of her eyelids. It was the Triton, and it had appeared off the starboard side of the ship and annihilated the Maelstrom with a perfect cannon shot before it could open fire on her. Dezmara couldn’t believe it at first, but then the com crackled and she knew that what she’d seen just before hitting the deck was real.

  “Woohoo—looks like our friend there’s gonna save our bloody skins!” Simon bellowed triumphantly. But Dezmara wasn’t so sure. Her only friends were aboard the Ghost, and she didn’t trust anyone else; and besides, Rilek was still out there and he wasn’t going to take the demise of the Maelstrom and its crew lightly.

  “Get that engine up, Sy—now.”

  “Err…yes, ma’rm,” Simon said awkwardly, “I’m on it, luv!”

  They drifted onward. They passed far enough from Clara’s moon to be unaffected by its gravitational forces, and with nothing else to divert them from their original course, Clara 591 grew bigger and bigger through the viewing panes with each passing moment. But Dezmara was worried. Rilek was smart, and although she had no idea who the captain of the Triton was or where the ship came from, she knew what she would think if she were in Rilek’s position. She would think that the Triton and the Ghost were in league together, and she wouldn’t let either one of them escape. Unfortunately, the Ghost was the easier target, and Rilek meant to finish what he had started.

  Dezmara shook her head as she watched the Lodestar pull to the port side, its guns tracking the most likely fuel tank location in a maneuver that was hauntingly similar to the first time Rilek moved in for the kill—right before the Triton showed up. It was obvious the strange craft was protecting them, but Saraunt’s attack had caused the Triton to break off pursuit of Rilek in order to intercept the Maelstrom, and the admiral used the opportunity to its fullest advantage. Rilek was now on the port side of the Ghost, poised and ready to strike, and the Triton was to starboard, hopelessly out of position to stop him.

  The Triton maneuvered, banking hard to port in a last ditch effort to get a clear shot at Rilek, as the two big deck guns on the Lodestar stopped searching and locked onto to their target. Dezmara had had enough. No more words of farewell, no more gestures, no more tears. If death was here, let it be done. The guns threatened for milliseconds that passed like ages. Dezmara waited. Her legs were weak with exhaustion, but she stood firm and balanced herself on the back of her chair—she wanted to die standing up. She was staring so hard at the dark tubes her eyes burned, imploring her to blink before they shriveled and cracked in their sockets, but she knew the moment she did, Rilek would pull the trigger and she would miss it. And then it happened.

  The gun barrels aboard the Lodestar pitched upward. Dezmara blinked in confusion, and her eyes, getting the respite they were aching for, stared even harder as her nose pressed against the pane. Rilek wasn’t just withdrawing his guns, they were tilting along with his entire ship—something was wrong. Dezmara continued gaping in utter bewilderment as the Lodestar listed to port, its bow drifting slowly downward like a huge fish dazed from the exertion of battling for its life. Dezmara lurched back from her viewing panes as four large explosions flared from Rilek’s ship. The Triton had found a clear line of fire and, despite the Lodestar’s disengagement from the battle, pounded its enemy without mercy.

  “And here ends the legend of Rilek and the Lodestar…” Dezmara said softly. Even though he had tried his best to kill her, it was an amazing battle and a story worthy of the final moments of the greatest sailor ever to sail sea, sky, or stars. “I just hope we live to tell the tale,” she thought as the Triton crossed her bow and slowed to pull even on the portside. “Ah, hell…”

  Dezmara glanced down and her eyes followed the decimated Lodestar as it entered Clara 591’s atmosphere and began its meteoric fall to doom. At that moment, something inside her longed for Rilek to recover—another ingenious gambit executed to perfection—and pull up with guns blazing again, but she didn’t know why, and then, all of a sudden, she understood.

  The nautilus doors flanking the Triton opened and three rows of gleaming cannon barrels protruded from their centers and opened fire.

  Chapter 36: Eyes of the Betrayer

  “Battle stations!” Rilek bellowed over the pulsing aahoouga of the alarm before turning back to the wheel and gripping the com in his feathery hand. The Ghost had broken course and the time for shadowing a suspect had come to an end: it was now time to kill a murderer.

  “Captain Saraunt, engage!”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral!”

  The emerald green flames of the engines glowed brighter as Saraunt maneuvered his ship higher. He had been an ace fighter pilot in the Brigadier Wars that had wracked his planet for eight years when he was a young lieutenant in the Kandish Royal Flight Force. The war took his wife, a daughter and two sons—casualties of heavy bombing—and the loss of his family drove him mad. From that moment on, Saraunt only lived to fly his death machine on any mission—the more dangerous, the better—and to kill as many of the enemy as he could before being blasted from the sky. Ironically, it was his death wish that kept him alive: truly flying without fear of the grave or hesitation was an advantage very few pilots could claim.

  When the war finally ended, Saraunt had shot down two hundred and five enemy aircraft. He was hailed as a hero, but the killing didn’t heal his broken mind; it made it worse, and he returned a shamble of a man to an empty home. For years, he simply existed—not wanting to live but unable to face the dishonor of taking his own life—and found solace, like so many of his countrymen and enemies alike, at the bottom of a bottle.

  In another revelation of fate’s cruel and ironic sense, it was the invasion of the Durax that brought him back from the darkest fringes of his mind and made him whole again. Like the rest of his people, down to the last child, in one swift and terrible instant, he had forgotten whatever it was that justified the hatred and destruction of his fellow Welku and the immediate pain of his loss. All differences, including race, land, resources, riches, belief, and power, dissolved into absolute oneness when faced with annihilation. Saraunt took to the air once again—not for his countrymen or even his people, but this time, for his entire world and every last thing on it. Now, the Maelstrom, Saraunt, and his five crew members were all that was left of the Welku.

  Of course, fighting on-world was in his blood and the tactic of dropping down on unsuspecting enemy craft had not only served him well in the wars long ago, but it was almost instinctual. He liked the angles the maneuver opened up for the battle to come, and as the ship reached the height he wanted, Saraunt’s big voice barked an order. “FIRE!”

  The mechanical brrrr-brrrr-brrrr-brrrr-brrrr of the Maelstrom’s guns rattled in the bridge, and the control
console flashed, indicating the barrage had hit the target. Saraunt’s lips twitched in a wry smile that was suddenly chased away by wide, startled eyes. The Ghost, apparently unharmed by the attack, pulled into a loop and was arching back at them with astonishing speed. Before he could react, the enemy ship had vanished above them. The disappearance snapped his mind into focus and he tried to counter the move before it was too late. “Hard to starboard—all guns, fire!” But he was too slow. The Ghost peppered the rear of the ship with gunfire and flashed in front of the gun turrets like a phantom shadow, and the Maelstrom’s orchestra of bullets sailed over top of her, gliding into the unkown.

  “DIVE!” Saraunt commanded. It was such a close call, for a moment, Saraunt thought his order had spilled from his mouth as a last reflex—inertia of the mind and body following their final electrical impulses—before they all died. He was thrilled to hear his order repeated and feel the ship respond.

  “Dive, aye!”

  The Maelstrom dropped with its bow pointed downward like a breaching fish longing for the water to cover its odd, soaring hulk again. Saraunt could see the blue burn of the enemy’s engines in front of them, and he twisted the ship left and then rolled it back to the right as tracer rounds from the Ghost’s top guns searched for purchase in their hull. The gunner was good and Saraunt had a hard time steadying the ship long enough to get off a clear shot. “Dammit!” he shouted as he broke off pursuit. Rilek was beyond the bow of the Ghost and directly below them, and he couldn’t risk a shot missing the target and hitting the admiral. The Lodestar would have to fend off this attack on its own.