Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales (Stars & Empire Box Set Collection)

by Jay Allan

  “Yes, sir!” Deck Officer Gorvan replied.

  “Comms, tell the Guardians before they leave the hangar that we need an escort to the gate, not a bunch of loose cannons. They are to flank us to the gate, breaking off to engage only when the enemy gets to within five klicks of us.”

  Ethan heard the comm officer relaying his orders, and then he turned back to Caldin. Noting the frown on her face, he asked, “What now?”

  “If you use up all of our torpedoes now, what are we going to do when that fleet reaches us?”

  “Do the math. At current speed we’re less than ten minutes to the gate, counting time to decelerate. We’ll use no more than forty torpedoes. That’s less than a tenth of what we have in the arsenal, let alone what’s already loaded in the torp bays. We’ll be fine.”

  Caldin nodded, but by her pursed lips, Ethan could tell she disagreed. That was okay. Ethan didn’t require his crew to always agree with him, just so long as they always obeyed.

  * * *

  Alara and Captain Reese shot out the back of the Defiant in tandem, flying out over the rocky red surface of Forlax II, a dymium-rich rock with a thick, toxic atmosphere that was swirled with white clouds. Below those clouds they could see high mountain ranges, and sparkling between them lay vast lakes of methane that caught and reflected the red light of the system’s sun.

  Just visible over the moon’s horizon was Forlax itself—a rocky giant with thick red rings of asteroids, which Forlax II orbited. Both of the gates in the Forlax system were found in a low orbit around Forlax II, since the intention had always been to develop the moon for dymium mining. Alara shook her head to clear away those thoughts. She wasn’t sure which of her two sets of memories they’d come from, but they weren’t helping her now.

  Tearing her eyes away from the view, Alara studied the position of enemy contacts on the grid as she followed Captain Reese in a tight turn to starboard which would bring them onto the Defiant’s flight path. She was comforted to see that the nearest enemy ship was more than a thousand klicks away.

  But even as she watched the group of enemy contacts, their positions abruptly changed, all of them shifting by more than a thousand kilometers in an instant. Alara blinked and tapped the screen. “Ethan! What the frek? How is the enemy suddenly right on top of us? Did they jump to SLS?”

  “The contacts on your gravidar appear to be cloaked, Kiddie. Their locations are being updated manually from the Defiant.”

  “Great!”

  Alara saw the red bracket pairs appearing all over her HUD as they supposedly came into range, but she tried to ignore them. If the enemy location data wasn’t up to date, it would be dangerous to trust.

  A flash of light caught Alara’s eye as she swung onto the Defiant’s flight path, and she saw a torpedo exploding ahead of the cruiser. That explosion abruptly blossomed into a much larger starburst of light, and Alara blinked spots out of her eyes as her canopy polarized a second too late.

  The Defiant had just hit a cloaking mine with a blind torpedo. Lucky escape, Alara thought.

  And then the red contacts on her gravidar disappeared and reappeared all around her, but this time they were accompanied by visuals of the enemy ships. She saw swarms of enemy fighters de-cloaking all around them, followed by two Sythian battleships.

  Alara’s eyes widened as a wave of purple stars began spinning toward them from the nearest battleship. Then space was alive with the streaking orange glows of shell fighters’ engines crisscrossing through the Guardian’s formation.

  “Live contact! Break and engage, Guardians!” Captain Reese said.

  Alara’s missile lock alarm squealed abruptly. “Frek!” she hissed, stomping on her right rudder. She turned straight into the Defiant’s flight path and soon she cruised low over the hull, watching the cruiser’s batteries swiveling. Torrents of red laser fire flashed out as those batteries found their targets and tracked passing enemy fighters. And then two sets of thick blue dymium beams shot out from the Defiant, one for each of the enemy battleships. Those beams sounded through her nova’s simulated sound system with a deep, reverberating hum.

  Alara forced herself to ignore the distractions of the greater battle going on around her. She concentrated on the beep-beep-beeping of missile lock warnings. As the beeps sped up to nearly a solid tone, Alara activated her grav lifts and bounced her fighter straight off the Defiant’s hull, leaving the enemy missiles to go streaking by underneath her. They slammed into the Defiant with a bright flash of light, and another dozen missiles followed that one, impacting one after another on the top hull of the cruiser with a steady roar of simulated explosions.

  Alara grimaced, and the next thing she heard over the comms was, “Guardians! The Defiant’s shields won’t take much more of that!”

  Stepping on her left rudder, Alara pulled a sharp turn to get on the tail of the nearest enemy fighter and then she fired off two quick fire-linked blasts from her lasers. Both volleys hit, and the shell exploded brilliantly.

  “Ruh-kah!” she whooped as she sailed through the explosion. Debris pelted her canopy, hissing off her shields. She targeted the next nearest enemy fighter and pulled up hard to find it in her sights. A quick look at the gravidar showed tiny green nova fighters splintering off in all directions to follow the enemy fighters, leaving the Defiant to race away from the engagement at top speed. Alara frowned at that, and then the comm crackled.

  “Guardians, you are not to abandon the Defiant’s flight path!” Captain Reese said. “Stick with your wingmates and keep up with our objective. Swat away any shells that get too close!”

  Alara heard a few affirmative clicks and saw the green icons of their fighters flashing on the grid to indicate they were the ones who’d activated their comms. All of the novas turned back to follow the Defiant—except for one. Alara focused on the straggler and tapped the icon with her finger for more information. It was Guardian Twelve—Stix.

  Abruptly, that icon shone a brighter green to indicate Stix had activated her comms, and Alara heard her say, “I’m cut off! They’re all over me!”

  Alara stepped on her rudder. “Hold on, Stix, I’m coming!” She lined up on the nearest enemy fighter chasing Twelve, but quickly saw that Stix was right. There were no less than a dozen shells on her tail, and like a total greeny she was running in a straight line away from them as fast as she could.

  “Go evasive, Twelve!” Alara said.

  “They’re locking on!” Stix screamed.

  “I said break!”

  Alara thumbed over to her own missiles and tried for a lock at extreme range, but before she could even line up her target, the enemy fighters fired as one, and an entire wave of shining purple stars shot out after Twelve.

  “Frek! Wait for them to get close, Twelve, and then go evasive! They can’t track sudden changes in direction.”

  “I’m going to try to outrun them!” Twelve said, sounding panicked.

  “You can’t outrun missiles, Stix!” Alara saw the missiles drawing dangerously close to Twelve and she shook her head. She fired off a Hailfire with a weak target lock and saw her target break out of the enemy formation to evade. Alara gritted her teeth and thumbed back over to lasers to fire at the next nearest enemy, but the enemy fighter was out of range, and her shot went wide.

  Now the missiles were seconds from reaching Twelve and she was still flying straight. “Break, Stix!”

  “I’m gonna run! Don’t worry! Meet you back at the transfer station.”

  Alara’s brow furrowed, and that was when she realized that Stix had lost it. She’d suffered a mental break. The missiles drew within a hundred meters of her, and Alara screamed into the comm. “Eject, Stix! Eject!”

  Abruptly the space where Guardian Twelve had been flashed with the light of multiple explosions, and her icon winked off the grid.

  Alara screamed incoherently and began pouring laser fire after the enemy fighters who’d shot Twelve down. They began coming about to meet her head on, but Alar
a didn’t care, she just stabbed the trigger over and over again, strafing the enemy formation. Alara winged two shells and sliced a third one into two pieces before her comms crackled with. “It’s too late to help her, Two.” That was Captain Reese speaking. “Get back here before they cut you off, too!”

  “Frek you!” Alara muttered under her breath.

  Guardian One went on, “Stick together, Guardians! You want to go blazing off on your own? That’s what happens!”

  “Frek you, Reese!” Alara said again, but this time she said it over the comms. “I didn’t see you breaking off to help her!”

  “Get back in formation, Cadet, or you’re going to be left behind.”

  Alara studied the gravidar, noticing now that the Defiant was getting very close to the exit gate. Pulling back hard on the stick for a loop over, Alara pushed her throttle past the stops into full overdrive. The thrusters roared, and she watched the nova’s acceleration jump from 145 to 185 KAPS. At that rate it wouldn’t take long to catch up to the Defiant and its novas, since they were all decelerating in preparation to enter SLS.

  But that also made it easy for the enemy ships to catch up with them and make another pass. Alara saw fighters and battleships alike racing up behind the Defiant, and she grimaced. “They’re coming around for another pass!”

  Alara saw streams of red laser fire erupting from the Defiant’s turrets, blasting pursuing shell fighters by the dozens. The accompanying explosions lit up the star map and Alara peered down on Forlax II to see the space above the planet peppered with the flashing light of explosions, making the swirling clouds appear fraught with lightning.

  Yet for every dozen shells that winked off the grid, another dozen swarmed out of empty space to take their place. Alara eyed the spot where the enemy fighters were appearing, thinking that there must have been a cloaked Sythian carrier there.

  “Guardians, disengage your thrusters and show them your teeth!” Captain Reese said.

  “Our teeth?” one pilot asked.

  “Flip your fighters 180 degrees and shoot those frekkers down!” Guardian One clarified.

  Alara saw the nova fighters ahead of her do as they were told, disengaging their thrusters to maintain their current heading while flipping over to pour bright red streams of fire-linked lasers at the waves of pursuing shells. Alara was about to turn her fighter around to join them when she noticed friendly fire flashing close by her cockpit. “Hoi! Watch your aim! I’m still out here!”

  And then the mauve light of Sythian lasers began tracking her from behind, and she heard a flurry of impacts sizzling off her shields.

  “Aft shields critical . . . equalizing.”

  Alara broke into a barrel roll, trading some of her forward acceleration for evasive maneuvering. She watched the Defiant flying ever-closer to the gate. They were almost there. They were going to make it!

  But suddenly the gate disappeared, swallowed whole by a massive Sythian Battleship as it de-cloaked right in front of the gate.

  “Frek! Where did that come from?” Ithicus asked.

  “Guardians switch to torpedoes and target that motherfrekker!” Captain Reese said.

  And then the side of the Sythian battleship erupted with a blinding wave of missiles.

  “Too late!” another pilot screamed.

  Before the Defiant could even react, the enemy missiles slammed into it. The light from the explosions seemed to consume the cruiser, and the simulated roar which came from Alara’s sound system was deafening. As the light of the explosions faded, Alara saw a giant chunk of the Defiant’s nose crack away in a fiery ruin and begin tumbling gracefully toward Forlax II.

  “We’re frekked!” Gina said.

  “Torpedoes! On my mark!” Captain Reese said. “We’re dumb-firing.”

  Alara snapped out of it and thumbed over to Silverstreak torpedoes. A moment later she and a handful of novas had formed up on an attack run. They let their torpedoes fly, and the battleship reacted instantly, erupting with bright streaks of laser fire. Alara saw one pair of torpedoes go off like a supernova beside her, rocking her fighter with a pelting wave of debris.

  “Starboard shields critical,” Ethan warned. “Equalizing.”

  When the fiery light of the explosion cleared, Alara saw just four torpedoes out of a dozen slam into the enemy battleship. Those torpedoes punched a gaping hole in the battleship’s pristine, mirror-clear hull, and shiny, black-armored bodies began tumbling out into space. Despite the damage, the battleship kept firing, and they were too close to fire another volley. Alara pulled up hard and roared over top of the enemy ship, noticing in her peripheral vision as she did so that the Defiant was doing the same. With her slower engines and lesser maneuverability, the cruiser just barely cleared the Sythian battleship. As it passed over top, Alara saw it erupt with beam cannons and lasers, strafing the topside of the enemy ship. It reacted with another wave of spinning purple stars which connected in the narrow gap between the two ships with a blatant disregard for the battleship’s own proximity to the blasts. The explosions roared through Alara’s helmet speakers, and she squinted through the brightness to see flaming pieces of both ships go spinning off into space.

  Alara grimaced. At this rate, there won’t be anything left of either of them. . . .

  * * *

  Ethan braced himself on the railing running around the captain’s table as another wave of missiles slammed into the Defiant, this time along her keel. “The frek! They just hit themselves with that blast!”

  Caldin grimaced.

  “We can’t take much more of this!” Delayn yelled up from the engineering station. “Decks one through three are venting atmosphere, and we lost three gunners!”

  Ethan whirled around. “Helm, get us clear and bring us about! We need to fire back with torpedoes, not just beams and lasers!”

  “Yes, sir,” Damen Corr replied.

  Ethan stared out at space, his chest rising and falling quickly, his eyes darting as he tried to come up with a plan. The top edge of the gate sailed by underneath them, and Ethan grimaced. The Sythians had blocked off their exit. Either they ran to SLS now, with their own drives, or they had to crack open the battleship which stood in their way.

  “Helm, belay that last order! Delayn—will we still have enough fuel to send a corvette to Obsidian Station if we jump to Odaran without a gate to assist?”

  Delayn looked up from his station with a frown. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe’s not good enough! I need an answer!”

  The old engineer pursed his lips. “I don’t know, sir! I need time to calculate!”

  The deck rocked under their feet with another impact, and Ethan clutched the railing running around the captain’s table to keep from falling over as the IMS flickered.

  “We don’t have time! Give me your best guess.”

  “I think we will.”

  “That’ll have to do! Helm, spool up the SLS! Set course a few million klicks from Odaran—we don’t want to be too predictable or there’ll be more Sythians waiting for us in the next system. Send the coordinates to our novas—they’ll have to meet us there.”

  “Yes, sir,” Damen replied.

  “Sir!” Delayn called up from the engineering station. “The Guardians won’t have enough fuel to make it that far on their own.”

  “They will if they go back to the gate! Damen—” Ethan turned to see the nav officer blinking up at him. “Make sure the end point of our jump is somewhere along the space lane between here and Odaran. That way the novas can just drop out of SLS early to reach us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ethan turned to look down at the captain’s table just in time to see another wave of missiles go spinning out from the enemy battleship toward them.

  “Brace for impact!” someone said.

  The deck shook violently underfoot and they heard the distant rumble of the explosions.

  “Aft shields critical!” Delayn called out.

  “Boost power!” Ethan
replied. He whirled around to address Deck Officer Grimsby. “Comms, tell the Guardians to cover us while our drives are spooling. Soon as we’re out, they can squeeze through the gate and we’ll meet them at the rendezvous.”

  The deck shook with more impacts, and Ethan grimaced.

  “Delayn! What’s our status?”

  “Aft shields are at 32% but I had to drain power from the front and sides, so we’re exposed there.”

  “It won’t matter. All the enemy contacts are behind us—”

  Caldin met his gaze. “That we know of.”

  Ethan acknowledged that with a quick nod. “We’ll have time to adjust the shields if something else de-cloaks. Weapons—keep firing torpedoes ahead of us, just in case. I want one every five seconds, timer set for seven.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Ethan saw the battleship at the gate turning to follow them, but they’d be too slow to catch up. The Defiant would be out of range in just a few seconds. As for the pursuing waves of Sythian fighters, however, they were catching up fast—and there were a lot of them.

  As if reading his thoughts, Caldin nodded to the grid. “What about those shells? There’s over two hundred in system, and at least fifty will reach us before we make the jump.”

  “Let’s hope our fighter screen is enough to hold them off.”

  Caldin met Ethan’s gaze over the glowing blue grid cube rising out of the captain’s table. She didn’t need to say anything. Fifty to their thirteen were horrible odds, and on top of that, their pilots were as green as grass.

  It would be a miracle if anyone survived to reach Odaran, let alone Obsidian Station.

  Chapter 20

  “Guardians, we’re going to SLS before we take any more damage out here. There are approximately fifty shells in pursuit. Keep them off us until we jump, and then head back to the gate to make the jump yourselves. We’ll be dropping out of SLS early to rendezvous in the neighboring solar and make repairs. Coordinates are being sent to your navs now.”