by Jay Allan
“They had a wormhole ship cloaked along our flight path, and they’ve dropped us right where they want us!” Captain Reese replied. “Evasive action and engage! Stick to your wingmates, Guardians!”
Dead ahead Alara could see no less than a dozen red bracket pairs on the HUD, and her scopes were similarly crowded. The nearest enemy had been auto-targeted for her and it now appeared on the right holo display. She saw that the enemy target was shaped like an open shell with glowing red portals in the opening between the gleaming top and bottom halves of the shell. Alara assumed the glowing portals were some type of weapons. The ship type read Sythian Shell Fighter, and the scale was 35 meters long by about 20 meters high.
Even as she watched, the ship’s central red eye flashed brightly, and she looked up to see purple stars begin spinning out of the darkness toward her, arcing off in all directions at once. Suddenly a missile lock alarm began beeping in her cockpit, accompanied by a warning from Ethan that one of the enemy fighters was trying for a lock on her. A second later Alara heard, “Guardian Four, break!” followed by the piercing wail of another siren.
It took her a moment for her to realize that she was Guardian Four, and that the siren meant a missile had locked on to her, but a moment was all she had before the first spinning star hit her, and Alara’s eyes were overwhelmed by the brilliant flash and deafening roar of the explosion.
Chapter 14
Somehow Alara’s fighter emerged from the fiery wake of the explosion without any damage, but forward shields were critical, as displayed by a red bracket at the top of the shield gauge with the number 12% above it. A word began flashing below the shield display—equalize—and Alara told Ethan to do exactly that, bringing her overall shields to 78%.
“Ethan, set shields to equalize automatically!”
“As you wish.”
“Frek, there’s too many of them!” Alara heard Gina Giord, Guardian Five, say. “Help! I can’t—” Her voice died in static.
“We’ve lost Five! Watch yourselves, Guardians!” Three said. “You can’t shoot the enemy warheads, but jink hard just before they hit and you’ll lose them. Enemy fighters are slow and not very maneuverable, so get behind them and stay there to keep them from getting a lock on you!”
A stream of affirmative clicks came over the comm, while Alara focused intently on the spinning purple stars that were still streaming toward her. When the next one drew near, she did as she’d been instructed, pushing the stick down and firing a quick burst from her afterburners to accentuate the maneuver. She saw the enemy missile flash by close overhead, and she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Bringing her nova’s nose back up to hover her targeting reticle over the nearest enemy fighter, she found she could already make out the gleaming silver top and bottom halves of the shell. The largest of the cluster of red portals in the center of the fighter glowed ominously at her.
Then her reticle flickered green and emitted a soft tone. She pulled the trigger, and three bright lances of light shot out from her nova, momentarily illuminating her cockpit in a bloody light. The lasers hit and elicited a brief spark of flames from the shell as a big piece of it broke off and spiraled away. The shell’s central red eye flickered out, and Alara pulled the trigger again with an accompanying skrish.
Her lasers hit home once more, and the target exploded with a flash of light. As the light faded, the debris quickly turned as cold and black as space as they sped off in all directions—a deadly hail of invisible projectiles. Two of the larger pieces collided with the shell’s wingmate, knocking it sideways and provoking a stream of flames before the fighter exploded in another blinding flash of light.
“I nailed two shells!” Alara crowed into the comm.
“Good! Get another, and cut the chatter!” Captain Reese said.
Alara watched another fighter line up on her. She heard the warning beeps of a missile lock and quickly moved to target the enemy before it could fire. Just as her reticle flickered green, she saw the shell’s central red eye flash a brighter red, releasing another of the spinning purple stars. The missile lock alarm squealed. Alara gritted her teeth and pulled the trigger, sending a fire-linked burst flashing out toward the enemy fighter. Two of the laser blasts made glancing hits, carving deep black furrows in the top, while the third bounced off into space.
Now the enemy fighter was just 1.5 km away. The missile it had fired at her swelled brightly, filling Alara’s entire view. Her missile lock alarm screamed out a solid tone, and Alara jammed the stick forward. The missile flashed by close overhead, and Alara thanked her luck that those warheads, whatever they were made of, didn’t have proximity fuses.
Two more green dots appeared on the theater-sized star map.
“Hoi! Glad you could make it, Lead,” Guardian Three said.
“Form up Guardians and head for 99-54-0. We’re getting out of here.”
Alara found the green diamond which appeared on her map and stomped on the left rudder pedal to turn toward it. She saw the flashing gray clouds of the Stormcloud Nebula swing into view, along with a solid wall of red bracket pairs. Barely visible behind that sea of red was the small green diamond which was her waypoint.
“There’s too many of them to fly through!” Alara said into the comm. “We need to plot another jump now.”
“Negative, Four. Drives are still cooling, and until we get clear, we can’t afford to decelerate for SLS or to stop maneuvering. Guardians, switch to Silverstreaks and set proximity fuses for 150 meters! I’ll assign your targets. We’re going to punch a hole.”
Alara’s target came in and appeared as a larger, bolder set of brackets than the rest. She lined it up under her reticle and thumbed over to torpedoes using the hat switch at the top of her flight stick. Just as the reticle turned red to indicate a solid lock, she heard the warning beeps of enemy missile locks start sounding through her cockpit. She ignored them and focused on the more muted beeping of her own target lock. As soon as her reticle emitted a solid tone, she pulled the trigger, sending a pair of Silverstreak torpedoes flying off on the fat, glittering silver contrails which gave the torpedoes their name. Thinking back to what Ethan had told her about dumb-firing torpedoes, Alara waited a few seconds and then fired off a second pair behind the first, these two without a target lock. Then her torpedoes were spent and she switched back to lasers. More torpedoes appeared trailing out all around her as the rest of her squadron fired off their volleys.
The beeping of enemy missile locks suddenly turn more urgent, culminating in a pair of sharp wails from the missile lock alarm. In that instant she saw the enemy fighter wave erupt with dozens of purple stars, all of them spinning off in different directions. Two purple stars spun toward her, and Alara gritted her teeth, waiting for them to get close. Before the wave of enemy fire reached them, their torpedoes began to explode. Alara felt a flash of vindictive satisfaction, but as those explosions faded, she realized that the enemy fighters were still there.
“Frek!” The enemy was shooting down their torpedoes before they even got close. A quick look at the star map revealed there were dozens of enemy fighters still ahead of them, but even as she looked, a pair of enemy contacts winked out with tiny flares of light erupting on the star map to mark their explosions. Not all of the Silverstreaks had been shot down. The two she’d dumb-fired had found their mark, but by the look of it, those two were the only ones.
“Ahhh!” someone screamed, and Alara spared a precious second of attention to see another nova winking off the grid. She couldn’t see many green contacts anymore, but she guessed that was because the sheer masses of red enemy contacts were obscuring them from view.
Suddenly the purple stars were upon her, and Alara pulled another evasive maneuver with her afterburners. Both missiles missed, but then enemy missile lock warning tones sounded through her cockpit with renewed force, and three more alarms blasted at her in quick succession. She looked out through the top of her canopy to see more enemy missil
es rushing at her. These three were much closer than the previous pair. Alara began a sustained-boost barrel roll, hoping the missiles wouldn’t track a tight spiral, but they followed her dizzy spin in lazy arcs. She shot through the center of the three spiraling missiles, but this time one of them hit her, exploding with a deafening roar and a blinding flash of light.
“Port shields critical!” Ethan exclaimed. “Equalizing.”
Alara looked up to see her shield display reading 77%, and then she saw the glowing red eyes of the enemy fighter wave glowering at her, seemingly just a few dozen meters away. They were too close for comfort. She thumbed over to lasers and fired off a quick burst at the nearest one. That blast hit, sparking brightly and shearing off a piece of the enemy fighter. The damaged shell broke formation and went evasive. Alara applied left rudder to swing her reticle over the next target, but the warning beeps of enemy missile locks began to sound once more. A second later, the warning beeps turned to screaming sirens, and Alara had no time to react; the enemy was too close; she looked up to see two more purple stars flashing toward her, and she executed a spiraling dive with full right rudder and afterburners to the max, hoping to elude the enemy missiles again—
It was too late. Both missiles impacted, and she heard a sickening crunch as something tore away from her hull.
As soon as Alara’s ears cleared enough from the booming roars of the missiles exploding against her fighter, she heard—“Starboard shields critical! Forward shields depleted! Severe hull damage detected!”—followed by a low hiss of air escaping from her cockpit. The sound grew softer and softer, and then another hiss started up, close beside her ears. Both noises ceased, and Ethan said, “Your suit has been isolated from the cockpit’s air supply. Keep your helmet on until the cockpit is re-pressurized.”
Alara scowled and pressed the button below the hat switch on her flight stick which was assigned to target nearest enemy. A red arrow appeared at the top of her HUD, indicating the direction she’d need to turn in order to find her target. A quick look at the rear scope indicated the target was directly behind her. A moment later she heard something hissing off her aft shields, accompanied by bright flashes of light. Some kind of laser cannons? she wondered. A quick glance at the shield gauge showed her shields dropping fast. They went from 42% to down below 30% in just a few seconds.
I’m frekked, she thought, still pulling through a tight turn to get on the enemy’s tail. The hissing sound stopped, her cockpit’s air now fully depleted, and then Alara saw the big, reflective dome of a shell fighter appear just above her canopy. She boosted to tighten her turn, and the enemy came under her targeting reticle just long enough for her to fire off a laser blast at point-blank range. Three red beams collided with the enemy fighter, hitting the shell’s pair of glowing orange thrusters and punching through to the reactor. The fighter exploded instantly, and she soared through the roaring cloud of flaming debris and out the other side. “Ruh-kah!” she screamed over the comms. “I got another one! Take that you dumb frek!”
“Forward shields critical,” Ethan commented.
But Alara’s AI was the only one to say anything. Alara frowned and triggered the comms again. “Hello? Anyone need some help?” She took a quick look at her star map to find the nearest friendly, but she couldn’t see any green amongst the red. “Ethan, target the nearest friendly! I can’t see anyone on the grid.”
“Alara. . . .” The AI sounded unusually subdued.
“What is it?” she said. Enemy missile lock tones swarmed through her helmet speakers, and she gritted her teeth as she broke into a sudden evasive pattern.
“You are the last surviving member of your squadron.”
Alara blinked. “I’m the last . . .” She couldn’t find the words to speak, let alone the clarity of mind to tell Ethan what to do next. She felt numb as the reality sunk in—everyone else is dead. And then the beeping of enemy missile locks turned to multiple alarms as the missiles locked on to her. She heard the first one explode before she could even react, and then everything turned as bright as the inside of a sun.
* * *
—THE YEAR 0 AE—
Destra patched up the man they’d rescued as best she could from the medkit aboard the hover, but he was still in bad shape. Now that the layer of white dust had fallen away from his clothes, she could see that he wore the tattered remnants of the signature black with white trim uniform of the fleet; there was no insignia left, but a few of the badges on his left breast pocket remained, marking him as an officer of distinction. He was obviously a survivor from the defense of Roka.
Lessie finished packing food into the back of the hover, and now she walked up to see how the man was doing. When she noticed the fleet uniform, she scowled. “Hoi, he’s ISSF?”
“Seems to have been. He must have escaped in a pod. He’s lucky to be alive.”
“Well frek him!”
Destra looked up with a frown.
“They left us here, Destra! To die.” She gestured to the man, and he groaned softly as if in reply. “I say we return the favor. He’ll just be one more mouth to feed, anyway.”
“He’ll also be able to help us scavenge food and supplies when he’s better.”
“And attract more attention from the skull faces while he’s at it. Just leave him, Destra. We need to get out of here.”
The man groaned again and his eyelids fluttered. Destra began nodding, as if she’d acquiesced. “All right, shoot him then and we can go.”
Lessie’s brow furrowed and she took half a step back from the wounded officer.
“What’s wrong? If we leave him here, he’ll die, either from his wounds, or from Sythians finding and eating him, so the kind thing to do would be to put him out of his misery.”
“I . . .” Lessie shook her head. “You do it. It’s your idea.”
Destra snorted. “No, it’s yours. You just don’t have the guts to call it what it is. Leaving him here is murder, and I’m not going to have his death on my conscience.” With that, she turned back to dressing the man’s wounds.
“Fine!” Lessie hissed, and turned away with a scrunch of gravel grinding underfoot.
Destra finished binding the man’s wounds and administered a sedative to keep him quiet. That done, she moved him onto a hover gurney she’d found for transporting cargo in the back of the transport. She had to lift his feet onto the gurney first and then his torso, since Lessie was sitting in the transport with her arms crossed, refusing to help. As soon as she was done, she triggered the gurney’s controls, causing it to rise off the ground, and then she pushed it into the back of the transport.
All the way back from Covena they heard the man moaning deliriously. Every time he did Lessie shot her a scathing look. Destra ignored her.
“Don’t you think Digger will mind us bringing him back?” Lessie asked.
“It doesn’t matter. We didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s no room for him.”
“We’ll find a space, even if he has to sleep on the gurney or the couch.”
“Digger might kick us out. . . .”
“Hoi! We’re done talking about this. You let me deal with Digger.”
“Fine.” Lessie crossed her arms once more. “But if he asks it was your idea.”
Destra turned to glare at the blond-haired woman sitting beside her. What was it about disaster which brought out the worst in people? This was hardly a time for humanity to be sabotaging the collective survival of the species with an it’s-either-me-or-you, survival-of-the-fittest attitude.
When they drew near Digger’s hideout, Destra drove down off the road to the forest and parked by the trees again, but this time she found holo sheets in the back of the hover and spread them out over the transport to camouflage it. The sheets made the hover completely invisible to the naked eye, so Destra took a moment to turn in a slow circle to get her bearings and make sure she could find her way back to the spot. Satisfied that she knew where she was, Destra turned
to Lessie. She stood by the hover gurney, covering the trees with the ripper rifle as her eyes darted among the shadows between the trees. Lessie had managed to tie up all of the food they’d scavenged below the gurney using some netting they’d found in the back of the hover.
“Are you finally done?” Lessie asked. “I feel like someone’s watching us . . .” she said, glancing around nervously.
“Let’s go,” Destra said. She didn’t bother to offer any trite reassurances. They both knew that a whole army of Sythians could be standing right behind them, and the only sign of them would be the wind they’d feel from the aliens breathing down their necks.
Destra moved to take charge of the gurney and then they started into the forest. Lessie went ahead while Destra brought up the rear, pushing the gurney along. They moved as quietly as they could, but every crunch of needles and leaves underfoot sounded like an earthquake to their ears. Destra’s foot caught on a root and she stumbled, reaching for the gurney for support. She accidentally grabbed the man’s injured side, and he screamed.
Lessie shot Destra a horrified look, and they both abruptly stopped to listen to the fading echoes of that scream—and to the response it might have provoked.
When no other sounds came from the forest, Destra allowed herself a sigh of relief. The man on the gurney moaned softly as he fell back to sleep.
“Frek, Destra!” Lessie whispered as she gave a shuddering sigh of her own. “You’re going to get us killed like that! Let’s try to keep it down.”
And that was when they heard a distant roar of engines starting up. Lessie’s eyes met Destra’s once more, but this time there was no mistaking the fear in them. “Run!” she screamed, and both of them snapped into action. Lessie began running through the forest at top speed, leaping over fallen logs and ducking under low branches. She didn’t bother to cover the trees with her rifle anymore, and she didn’t look back to make sure that Destra was still with her.
Destra struggled to keep up while pushing the gurney along in front of her. They kept glancing at the sky as they went, and the sound of engines roaring grew closer and closer until Destra felt sure the enemy ship was right above them, but there was no sign of it. Could it be cloaked? she wondered.