Colonies Of Earth: Unity War Book 1

by C. G. Michaels

  “Dammit! Adelard, fire two more missiles.”

  “Aye.” Then, “Two direct hits!”

  “Reindeer?”

  The young woman beamed. “Significant damage to enemy craft, Captain. We gave them a good punch in the nose this time!”

  A cheer rose up from the bridge. Brid didn't indulge, but she felt the relief and a grim sort of satisfaction. Take that, you bastards.

  The bridge's cheer ended abruptly as the Abraham Lincoln took yet another hit, this one far worse than any of the others. The shot left a huge portion of the warship's port side charred and open to space. The Lincoln tilted, then listed to the side.

  She was done for.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Just outside Enas's atmosphere

  A lock of dark blonde hair slipped free of its moorings to shadow Brid's right eye, but she scarcely noticed. She was too busy staring at the listing form of the once-great Abraham Lincoln, which now filled the main viewscreen, her hull scarred and, in one particularly noticeable section, actually broken, a piece of the bulkhead floating nearby like so much space debris. Bodies had been sucked out of that hole, and they drifted, too, farther and farther away from the Lincoln, drawn into the vacuum of space.

  How many of them had the explosion killed? How many more had died while being torn from their home into that vacuum? And how many yet hung on? An unprotected human being could survive up to two whole minutes in the void without suffering permanent injury—the skin and underlying tissue would swell as the body's water started to vaporize in the absence of atmospheric pressure, but human skin was strong enough not to burst; and if returned to proper atmospheric pressure, the skin and tissue would revert to normal. Even the body's blood pressure would stay regulated if the person didn't go into shock. A few of the Lincoln's expelled crew might still be alive out there.

  But it would take far longer than two minutes to send someone out to rescue them. Brid could do nothing to help them.

  She was only glad she couldn't see their faces.

  Captain Yancey's rich baritone broke through the static on the ship-to-ship comm: “We are down to emergency life support. It's getting damn cold in here, Stephenson.”

  “Hang in there, Aiden,” Brid said. “We're on our way.” She thought a lot of the Abraham Lincoln's captain, who'd befriended a certain awkward, naïve, and overly-eager first-year midshipman at the academy even though he'd been two years ahead of her because—as he claimed—he'd seen potential for greatness in her. Brid had yet to achieve any form of greatness, and quite a lot of what she had achieved in her career she owed at least in part to Aiden, who'd always been there for her whenever she needed some advice, a sounding board, or even a good old-fashioned talking-to. She intended to be there for him now.

  The Takarabune took another hit, shaking Brid where she stood; she had to grip the arm of her chair to keep from getting knocked to her knees on her own bridge. “Report.”

  “Life support down another ten percent, ma'am.”

  “Return fire.”

  “With pleasure, ma'am.” Adelard fired, pumped his fist. “Direct hit!”

  “Damage?”

  “Nothing significant, Captain,” Reindeer said.

  A tense moment passed in which Brid heard the subdued background noises of a ship in distress—the Abraham Lincoln on the ship-to-ship comm—Aiden's orders being hurriedly followed, rapid movements, the sound of labored breathing. Then Aiden's voice again, muffled as though he were talking with his mouth covered: “Emergency life support is failing. Repeat—emergency life support is failing. We've had to utilize oxygen masks. There's no saving her, Brid.”

  “I know. We'll be there in—how long, Reindeer?”

  “Twenty miles, ma'am.”

  “Aiden, do you copy that?”

  “Copy, Takarabune. Let's just hope we can hold out that lo—” He was cut off by a missile coming in from the Abraham Lincoln's port side. It hit the already disabled ship with a shuddering crash that Brid could hear through the ship-to-ship, and a large section of the upper deck went flying at some speed, powered by the blast. The ship-to-ship turned to static.

  “Lincoln.” Experienced though she was, Brid found it difficult to keep the panic out of her tone. “Abraham Lincoln, do you read? Come in, dammit.”

  A lengthy pause followed, during which everyone on the Takarabune's bridge held their breath. The ship-to-ship returned briefly, went back to static, then cut out completely. Then, abruptly, it snapped back on again.

  “Takarabune, this is the Abraham Lincoln. We read you,” Aiden said. He sounded worn, breathless . . . but he was talking. “I'm not dead yet, Brid.”

  Thank God . . . ! “Lincoln, what is your situation?”

  “Captain,” Reindeer said.

  “What?” she asked, more sharply than she'd intended. None of her crew would interrupt her without due cause, but she couldn't help getting irritated at this particular interjection.

  “Captain, the enemy ship is attempting to maneuver between us and the Abraham Lincoln.”

  “On screen.”

  Reindeer pressed the appropriate button, and the main viewscreen switched from a close-up image of the Abraham Lincoln to a wider shot, this one encompassing the alien warship as well as the Lincoln. The enemy was indeed slipping into the Takarabune's path, blocking her way to her ally.

  Kaipo gaped at the screen. “God! They'd sooner make themselves more vulnerable to attack than let us rescue our wounded? Motherfuckers—!”

  “If that's what they want,” Brid said, “let's give it to them. All stop. Daniau, fire at will.”

  “Aye, ma'am!” Blue lasers pulsed out of the forward cannons, each one a direct hit at this range.

  “Yes-s!” Reindeer's arms shot up over her head. “Enemy shields weakening!”

  “Agai—!”

  The Takarabune rocked violently. “Forward shields down ten percent,” Kaipo said once he could make out the reading. The aliens might be more vulnerable in their current position, Brid thought, but they were far from defenseless.

  But then, so was she.

  “Fire!”

  Adelard complied just as the Takarabune took another hit that snapped Brid's head back as she struggled to remain seated. She took it as a sign of the marvel of modern engineering that her coffee cup had yet to tumble out of its holder. “Status!”

  Reindeer turned to face her, showing a dark stain where the blood had soaked through the bandage Pilirani had applied to her forehead. “Enemy shields continue to weaken, ma'am. They're not down yet. Adelard, have I ever told you how handsome you are? Mwah!” She blew him a kiss.

  “And here I thought you only had eyes for me,” Kaipo said with a pout. “Forward shields down to eighty-five percent.”

  “Kaipo, the day I have eyes for any man, you'll be the first to know.”

  “Than-kew! That's what I want to hear.”

  “Lincoln, what is your situation?” Brid paused for an answer, her nails gripping the arms of her chair until she thought the pleather would surely crack. She allowed herself the luxury of squeezing the life out of the chair for a moment—only a moment—because she needed to, but she forced herself to stop before anyone could see her weakness. “Takarabune to Abraham Lincoln. Please respond.”

  “I'm . . . here, Brid.”

  She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. “Aiden. What's your situation?”

  “We're abandoning ship, heading down to the surface. Life support is negligible . . . Shuttles are being boarded.”

  “What about you, Aiden?” He loved his ship the way all captains loved their ships: with an all-encompassing, obsessive fierceness that any lover would be jealous of. A ship became like a living thing to her captain, a creature he possessed and who, in turn, possessed him. It made no difference that the government owned the Abraham Lincoln—in Aiden's mind, that was his ship, and Brid didn't trust him not to do something romantic and foolish.

  “If you're worried
about me going down with the ship,” he said, “don't be . . . I have every intention of living on until we kick these aliens' collective ass.”

  “Can you get to a shuttle?”

  “After everyone else is safely away . . . But there's a bit of a problem, I'm afraid.”

  Her heart went cold. “What kind of problem?”

  “We're being boarded.”

  “God, Aiden, you've got to get out of there! Where are you?”

  “Still on the bridge. I'm about to head for the docking bay now.”

  “Do you have a clear path down there?”

  “Won't know for sure until I get there . . . but yes, I think so.”

  She bit her lip. “Don't lie to me, Aiden. Not after all this time.”

  “All right, Brid. No, I'm not at all sure I can make it . . . But I have a gun, liberated from the bridge weapons closet. If I have to go . . . I'm taking as many of those mothers as I can with me.”

  “Be careful—you could hit the bulkhead.”

  “It's not the bulkhead I'm planning on hitting!”

  “Nobody plans on hitting the bulkhead.”

  A low chuckle. “You knocking my skill at firearms, Stephenson?”

  The Takarabune suffered another blow, delaying Brid's answer. Her bones were beginning to ache from all the shaking. “Be safe out there, Aiden.”

  “You, too.”

  She signed off, her eyes travelling to the main viewscreen, which had been taken over by the death-black of the alien warship. The Abraham Lincoln could no longer be seen. Only the fighters zipping past and that monstrous, terrible ship . . .

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Just outside Enas's atmosphere

  The Abraham Lincoln drifted, a dead shell, its people abandoning it, C-340s birthing themselves into the frozen black. The alien warship blocked Takarabune from tending to her fallen comrade, so the human shuttles made their way instead towards the planet below, their aft thrusters burning orange, their speed nowhere close to that of a human fighter, much less that of the Copperheads.

  And Copperheads did follow them, Copperheads and the svelte alien shuttles that foraged in the dark. They came for the humans, those sinister transports, docking in the Lincoln's bay and allowing alien beings on board to do who-knew-what to those unfortunates who remained behind.

  But it was one unfortunate in particular who lived in Garner's unsettled mind: one Ilana Carlsen, she of the sage green eyes who had, only the night before, decided she and he could use a cooling down period. He saw the alien vessels board the Lincoln and leave, presumably with captives; and he saw the C-340s diving for Enas with the enemy on their tails.

  Ilana could be in one of those shuttles.

  Garner broke away from the dogfight between the Copperheads and the Banshees and sped towards the nearest human transport, which had a pair of bandits on its five and seven and an alien shuttle on its six. From this angle, the C-340–which wasn't very well armed to begin with–couldn't hit the enemy fighters. Garner didn't know if the pilot could even get a visual on the Copperheads; he'd have to rely on radar to hit the target.

  “Vasilescu,” Jaden said over the comlink, “where the hell do you think you're going? We're in the middle of a furball here!”

  “There are human escapees who need our help.”

  “There are human fighter pilots and a warship that needs our help, too.” Then, when he didn't alter his course, “Dammit, Garner, get your ass back here!”

  “He's right,” Adam said. “Those C-340s are all but defenseless. I'm going to help him.”

  “Simonis! What the hell?!”

  A minute later, and Adam arrived at Garner's three o'clock. He gave a thumbs-up and offered a lopsided grin. Garner returned the favor.

  “Sorry, Jaden,” An said, “but they'll get slaughtered out there if they go it alone. Hang on, guys, I'm coming with you.”

  “Me, too.” Lanei made her way towards them. Without a word, Fault joined their group; and then, with a curse, so did Jaden.

  “If we get court marshalled for abandoning our posts,” she said, “I'm claiming insanity.”

  “Peer pressure is more like it,” said Adam.

  “I know why you're doing this, Garner,” Jaden said. “You can't know she's in one of these shuttles. You can't know that she hasn't been captured already, or worse.”

  “She's not the only one in danger.”

  “No, but she's the only one you're thinking about.”

  He fell silent, angry at Jaden because she didn't want to do this, angry at her for being right. The six of them caught up to the C-340, but the Copperheads spotted them and engaged, leaving the alien transport still with the human craft. Garner climbed in an attempt to meet one of the fighters, which was trying to get above them for a strafing run. Everybody else banked except Jaden, who dove, rolled, and came up to fire on the second Copperhead. She made a direct hit, breaking the ship into pieces.

  “Bull's-eye!” Adam shouted so loudly into the comlink that Garner winced. The bandit at Garner's twelve o'clock peeled right, hoping to get out of his range of fire. He banked left, staying on the enemy and shooting as soon as he had an opening. He missed, and swore.

  An, Fault, and Lanei were on the enemy shuttle, not daring yet to attack because of its close proximity to the C-340. The aliens had no such misgivings and let loose a barrage of red beams. The three Banshees banked, barely eluding death.

  Adam and Jaden rose above Garner's opponent from opposite sides and fired, creating a short-lived ball of flame. Garner led the way to the enemy transport, but had yet to get within range when Fault broke formation and dove sideways between the alien vessel and the human one. He could have reached out and touched either craft, it was so close, and Garner heard Lanei gasp in fear as Fault's Banshee scraped both shuttles. The alien ship pulled away, and once it had put distance between itself and the humans, Lanei and An both let loose a volley of lasers. Nothing remained of the alien craft.

  They had travelled into Enas's atmosphere. From here the planet looked blue, green, and beige, with great drifts of white clouds that sauntered across the globe. “One of us should stay with the shuttle,” said Garner, “in case somebody else makes a play for it.”

  “You're it,” Jaden said. “The rest of us will–Fuck!”

  “Say again?” Adam asked.

  “Five bandits, two o'clock. Garner, you and An stay with the transport. The rest of you, look alive. We're about to have bandits for breakfast.”

  “Yeah,” Adam said, “but about that fucking thing . . . ”

  “Don't get any ideas, Simonis.”

  “Not with you. I mean, you're attractive and all, but Lanei is more my type.”

  “Can it, Simonis, and get your head in the game.”

  As the Banshees rushed to meet the enemy, two of the Copperheads broke off and headed Garner and An's way. “Looks like we've got company,” An said grimly.

  “I've got the one on the left.” Garner got into position and pressed the trigger on his guns, but the alien dodged and returned fire. The lasers zipped past, so close that they made a sanguine glow in his cockpit. Garner glanced at his read-out: the enemy had missed the shuttle, as well.

  An was in trouble. His adversary proved more dexterous than he, and in spite of the Banshees' ready adaptability, the Copperhead had started flying circles around him. “He's got a lock on me,” An said. Worry darkened his tone.

  Garner had problems of his own. His antagonist had a bead on him, as well, and Garner couldn't shake him. But he had an idea. “Bank left.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it. Now!”

  An went left; Garner went right. They passed over each other, and as they did, their opponents tried to follow; when they did, they ran straight into each other, ending their own lives. Garner tried not to think too hard about that. He barely had time to check how the others had fared when An spoke.

  “Shit. Bandits on our six.”

  Fuck, not again. He l
ooked: half a dozen this time, and they had an alien cargo vehicle with them, one with big-ass guns. He ran his scanner on the CV in case he could get some intel. The fighters split: four on him and An, and two with the CV, chasing down the human shuttle. The human transport had by now dropped several thousand feet towards land; Garner could no longer see it.

  He flew right at the first Copperhead and shot it out of the sky, the dying flame of its explosion washing over his Banshee. The next one clipped his wing, leaving scorch marks and severing the tip. As the bandit came around for another pass, Garner performed a High Yo-Yo, sacrificing speed to climb above the alien and pulling in behind it. As he completed the move, his speed increased and he was able to get within range and strike.

  A direct hit. A feral exhilaration flooded through Garner's veins. He angled his plane towards An, who had dispatched one of the enemy fighters. The second Copperhead had gotten above him and locked on.

  “An! Look alive!” Jaden and the others had finished off the alien ships they'd been combating and now headed for An and Garner.

  An did a nosedive in an effort to shake the bandit; the enemy stayed hot on him, but didn't fire. “He's playing with me.” An conducted a Split-S, but still couldn't dislodge his opponent. The alien was going to piggy-back him until it grew tired of the chase and finished him off. Garner pushed his Banshee to top speed and closed some distance between himself and the Copperhead. The swifter craft ducked right, gaining speed, but Garner got it in his sights before it flew out of range.

  The shot kicked the fighter into a smoldering downward spin towards Enas. Jaden followed.

  “Hext, where are you going?” An asked. “He's done for.”

  “We've never seen the enemy's face,” Jaden said. “Can you imagine what we could find out if we retrieved a body?”

  “With what?” asked Fault. “We're in fighters, not CV's. We got no room to put a body.”

  “So we'll call for help once we secure the perimeter,” Jaden said. “Or we find one of the shuttles that's landed on Enas and get them to take us back with the body to the Takarabune. Either way, we have valuable intel. Now, are you with me or not?”