by Tony Healey
Jessica cleared her throat. “Captain, I was about to go see the engineering section. See if there was anything I could do to help.”
“I’ll lead the way,” Dolarhyde said. He turned back through the entrance and left.
“Yuh want me to hold the fort?” Hawk asked her.
“If you wouldn’t mind. There’s little I can do up here until we have this ship up and running,” she said. “In the mean time, use what scanning capabilities the Warrior has to keep a tab on our visitors.”
“Aye,” he said.
“I can only hope the Defiant is en route to join us. And perhaps Chang has managed to rally up some Krinuan support. We’ll need all the help we can get to keep Carn’s hands off that pyramid…”
2.
Captain King could hardly have known just how prophetic her words were. Commander Chang had arranged for a sizeable fleet of Krinuan ships to join the Defiant in answering Commander Greene’s call for assistance, though they would still arrive a little late to the party.
“How long till they reach us?” Chang asked Rogers.
The helmsman checked a readout at the side of his station. “Two hours.”
Chang cursed under her breath. She opened a comm. channel to engineering.
“Chief? What’re the possibilities of opening her up a bit? Give us some extra power? I want to get there as soon as we can. I don’t think we can afford to wait for our Krinuan backup.”
* * *
Meryl Gunn rolled her eyes as she hit the reply button on the comm. panel.
“Believe it or not, I am trying everything I can down here,” she said sarcastically.
“I know, Chief, but we need more.”
“She’s in rough shape,” Gunn said. “I can only push her so far.”
“With all due respect, Chief, if it means pushing her till she flies apart then that’s what I’m going to do. Whatever it takes to get the Captain and Commander Greene out of a jam,” Chang said.
Gunn ran a hand over her face. The mention of Commander Greene had stopped her in her tracks, reminded her of the panic that fluttered in her stomach when she heard the distress call. She didn’t know if she could deal with anything happening to Del. Not after all they’d been through. The Chief took a deep breath. “Understood. I’ll do what I can. But you’ll have to trust me on this. I wanna see them safe, too.”
“I know you do. Keep me posted,” Chang said and closed the channel.
Gunn felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Belcher.
“Are you okay, Chief?” he asked her.
Gunn straightened up, puffed her chest out. She gently removed his hand from her shoulder and patted his arm. “Come on, we’ve got a ship to fly to pieces.”
* * *
General Carn stood with his hands clasped behind his back, legs slightly apart, as he took in the forward view. The cosmos raced around them, a blizzard of stars against the darkness. His breathing was slow and measured, though his mirrored visor gave no sign of that fact. It hid every aspect of whatever was happening on his face – if indeed he still had one. Many had tried to determine why he wore the mask, and what he looked like beneath it. And they would never know, not while he still had a heartbeat: albeit the pumping of an artificial one.
Remarkably, the General felt at peace. His ship – a Dreadnought class borrowed from the Naxors – raced toward the location of one of the pyramids. It could very well be the pyramid he’d been searching for all along. And its location may well be guarded by Krinuan forces. He knew he could be headed toward a fight… and yet it did not phase him. Battle never had.
Such cool, logical calm had little to do with whatever artificial organs kept him alive. It came from instinct. True, his skill with a blade and his tactical prowess had won him battles. But it was his nature – that of a killer – that had kept him alive.
And he knew it was that same killer instinct that would see his mission through. No matter what, he’d find the pyramid that would unlock the universe for them.
The Draxx Dominion, the one power in the galaxy to which he’d sworn allegiance. And not only the Dominion as a whole, but the Queen herself. At the same instant his thoughts turned to her, the General heard movement behind him. He’d ordered he be left in peace on the observation deck. Not to be disturbed.
Except by one.
“General,” she said.
Carn turned, bowed his head. “My Queen.”
“What is our progress?” the Draxx Queen asked him.
The monarch of the entire race stood twelve feet tall with a long, green body that snaked behind her for twenty feet. She had several legs, two pairs of arms and could almost have been mistaken for a kind of giant insect. But there was no mistaking the reptilian face and eyes. Nor the rattle at the end of her tail, or the forked tongue that flickered from her mouth every few seconds. She wore a crown of twisted metals set with precious stones. And all the while, almost unnoticed by her, a series of smaller creatures clambered all over her body, cleaning the Queen’s leathery green skin and moisturising her joints.
“We’re nearing the location of another artefact, your highness,” Carn said.
“General, I do not doubt your plan to get us home. But so far we’ve seen little success,” the Queen said. “Are you certain it will work?”
“Your highness, with all due respect, the artefacts are our only hope of getting back to our own galaxy, back to the Dominion. However, I believe that with the right one… the key that unlocks the others . . . we can return to our galaxy, stronger than when we left.”
“And I trust your plan, General. I simply advise caution,” she said. She walked slowly past him to gaze at the forward view.
“What I do, I do not only for the Dominion… but you, your highness. My Queen,” Carn said softly.
“And you shall be rewarded when we return,” the Queen said. “When you take your rightful place at my side, as we lead the Dominion into the future.”
Or the past, Carn thought to himself. First we must go to the past. Do what must be done. Only then will the Draxx reign supreme.
“We will rule the galaxy…” Carn said.
The Draxx Queen’s mouth broke into a wide grin, showing all four rows of pin-sharp teeth. Venom fell from her fangs as she salivated at the thought of universal domination. She gazed out at the stars.
“Yes. We will dominate, as it was always meant to be,” she said. Her slitted red eyes locked onto his. “Together.”
Behind his mask, the General smiled.
3.
“Engines now at one hundred and fifty percent,” Gunn told Chang on the bridge. She’d gone up there to deliver the news personally, and to see the Commander face to face.
“Great work, Chief. This cuts our travelling time by a sizeable chunk,” Chang said. “I think the Krinuans are struggling to keep up, and for an old ship that’s good.”
The reinforcements tailed the Defiant, with over an hour separating the older Union vessel and the small Krinuan ships. They’d contacted the Defiant to announce the fact that they’d noticed her speeding up and were pushing their own engines to excess in order to maintain the pace.
Gunn led Chang off to the side by the tip of her elbow. “Can I have a word?”
“Yeah, of course, what is it?”
“This ship has been through hell, and she’s nowhere near where she needs to be,” Gunn explained in a low voice, almost a whisper. “I really don’t know how she’ll hold up to a fire fight.”
“We don’t know if that’s what’ll happen, yet, Chief.”
Gunn gave her a look that said, Yeah right. With our track record?
“Chief… what do you want me to do? Seriously, what choice do we have? If they’re in trouble, we have to try and help. Ship be damned,” Chang said.
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“She’ll hold together,” Chang said.
“I wish I shared your optimism. For what it’s worth, I’ll try my damndest to keep her
in one piece. But I don’t make any promises. I’m just warning you, if the old girl takes too much of a whopping… well…”
She didn’t have to say the last. Commander Chang understood all too well. But still, they would continue to race toward King’s location. And they would do what they could. The Defiant would see them right, she knew. She’d not let them down yet.
* * *
In the engineering section of the Warrior, Captain Jessica King glanced about as the lighting flickered, died, then a moment later came back to life.
Commander Greene rammed two wired connections together and the old ship gave a satisfactory rumble.
“That’s the engines!” Jessica said. “You can tell it a mile off.”
Dolarhyde closed his eyes. “Just as I remember it.”
She gave Greene a hard couple of slaps on the back. “Well done, Del! Well done the pair of you. We’re in business!”
Commander Greene wiped his hands on his trousers and looked around at the controlled chaos of the engineering section. Organized mayhem.
“Thanks,” he said. “So now what’s the plan?”
Jessica raised a finger. “One thing at a time, Del. I have ideas. Do we have power to weapons?”
He checked the engineering station. “All systems nominal.”
“Right. Then let’s get up to the bridge. I have to talk to Captain Praror. There’s something I saw in the ship’s inventory we can make use of.”
Dolarhyde’s eyes widened for a second. “I believe I know what you’re talking about. A clever ruse, if you can pull it off. Though it was never tested that I know of.”
“Have I missed something?” Greene asked.
“Come on,” King said and led the way out of engineering to the bridge, where she explained her plan… something that might buy them some time, at the very least.
If she could defend the pyramid without unleashing some of the Warrior‘s more deadly arsenal, then she preferred to do that. Besides, they had no time to prep the top secret weaponry. To remove it from storage, correctly load and activate it. There were too many variables and not enough time. But what she had in mind was a fairly simple case of installing one mechanism and after talking to both Commander Green and Captain Dolarhyde, she was confident it would take little more than thirty minutes to do so.
As the pair of them went off to do so, King moved toward Hawk at the helm console. “How’re we doing?”
“Fine. I’m readin’ enemy ships incomin’,” Hawk told her. “Yuh ain’t got long, Cap.”
“It’ll be close, but we knew that anyway,” King said.
“If we just had a star fighter…” Hawk said wistfully.
She smiled. “I know, Captain. Next time we’ll make sure you have one.”
Jessica sat in the command chair.
Fingers crossed there’s a next time, she thought.
* * *
General Carn stood among the Naxors on the bridge, watching them bring the Dreadnought to a halt. The alien planet slid into view, and immediately the sensors of the huge ship swept the system for any signs of other vessel. The sweeps came back negative.
“We’re alone, my Lord,” the Captain of the Dreadnought reported to him.
“Excellent. Take us to standard orbit of the planet,” Carn ordered.
4.
Jessica watched on the Warrior‘s viewscreen as the Naxor ship slowly approached the planet.
“They just swept over us with their front sensor field,” Greene said from a nearby console. They were all on the bridge now. There was nothing more to be done elsewhere on the ship. “And as we hoped, the magnetic pole of this planet has shielded our presence.”
“Mother Nature’s very own invisibility cloak,” Jessica said.
“The device is working as expected,” Greene said.
“Hawk, hold us steady for the moment but be ready to move,” King ordered.
“Yes ma’am,” Hawk said, then he frowned as a new blip appeared on his monitor. “Hold on…”
Jessica sat forward. “What is it?”
He turned back to her. “The Defiant. She’s here.”
* * *
Carn watched the Defiant race toward them, and he felt the blood boil in his veins. He felt pure hatred wash over him, irrationally and yet completely founded in what he’d experienced of that ship and her crew.
Time for me to end this, once and for all, he thought. End that ship. End that crew. End HER. Captain Jessica King.
“Ship approaching fast,” the Naxor Captain told him.
“I can see that you fool,” Carn spat. “I want every weapon on line. Blow it out of the sky.”
* * *
“Enemy vessel dead ahead,” Beaumont reported.
Chang nodded curtly. “Any sign of the Captain?”
Beaumont shook his head.
“Helm, maintain present speed. Full power to energy shields and keep the bow faced to give them the minimal target area,” Chang ordered. She keyed through to engineering. “Chief, we’re firing up the energy shield. Good to go?”
“Aye, but don’t give me any surprises,” Gunn said.
Chang closed the channel. No promises, she thought.
5.
“So what do we have at our disposal?” King asked.
“Fore and aft guns, two tubes with warheads primed,” Greene rattled off the top of his head. “There’s some kind of firing pod beneath us. It’s loaded, but I’ve not had chance to figure out what with yet.”
Dolarhyde cleared his throat. “That would be an experimental type of cluster bomb we were carrying but never had the chance to test. One of many little pet projects command stuffed into my ship.”
“Do they work?” King asked him.
Dolarhyde shrugged. “As I said, we never used them. But I suppose they must have been finalised when they were fitted on board.”
“And we’re good to go with the other device?”
Greene nodded. “When you need it, I’ll activate it from the console over there. Should provide us with a decoy image for as long as we need it.”
King opened a channel to Captain Praror. “We’re ready over here, Captain. If you have no objections we can begin as soon as they’re in range.”
“Agreed. Praror out.”
“Hull platin’ charged at full strength,” Hawk reported. “Bringin’ us about now.”
On the viewscreen they could see the Defiant approaching the now closer Naxor Dreadnought. Soon the old Union ship would be on top of them. Jessica knew it was a matter of seconds before the Naxor fired on the. She just hoped Chang had the Defiant fully prepared.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to make contact?” Greene asked her.
Jessica shook her head. “No. Maintain silence. They know we’re here somewhere. They might’ve even worked out where we’re hiding. In either case, we’re about to butt heads with General Carn. It’s going to happen. We have to use this little bit of grace for what it is, an advantage.”
“Understood.”
The Warrior hummed around her. Despite her declining orbit, and her age, the ship had been perfectly preserved up there in space, waiting for them to find her. And she carried a veritable treasure trove of dangerous weaponry, though Jessica was hesitant about using some of it. The Directives still held. If the Krinuans knew just what the Warrior had in her cargo holds, they might try to utilise them in their ongoing war with the Naxor. And suppose they used something from the Warrior to wipe the Naxor out? To commit genocide… she didn’t think she could live with that. In fact, she knew she couldn’t.
Jessica spared a glance at Captain Dolarhyde. How strange, she thought, to not want to get back in the chair. To not want to resume command of your own ship.
Would she be the same, if she were removed from her command for such a long period of time? Would she lose the taste for it?
The captain’s chair felt worn in, used. It felt comfortable to her. Dolarhyde had commanded the Warrior on untold, top se
cret missions. And now he sat at a station behind her, monitoring the readings from the engines and reactor.
It didn’t feel right . . . and yet it felt totally okay at the same time. She herself hadn’t felt better in months. The MS wasn’t a weight on her shoulders right now. It was like a stormy sea against her legs. Right now the tide had gone out.
But it would return.
Captain Jessica King shifted in the command seat and watched the Dreadnought start to turn to port.
Rounding on the Defiant, she thought. Here we go.
6.
The Dreadnought flashed its guns in their direction.
“The enemy vessel is firing,” Beaumont reported.
“Sound collision,” Chang said. The emergency lighting burned deep red. A klaxon shrilled around them. “Brace yourselves.”
The Dreadnought’s fire rushed upon them like lightning bolts. The shots crackled against the shell of the energy shield.
Rogers lifted a hand to shield his eyes but his other remained at the helm controls.
“Helm, dip our nose. Drop us one hundred metres,” Chang ordered. She turned to Ensign Sandie Slavin at the weapons station. “Slavin, return fire. Don’t hold back.”
Slavin responded to the order by unleashing the Defiant‘s main batteries. They strafed the hull of the Naxor Dreadnought.
“That’s it, Rogers, take us under them. We have one thing on our side. We’re smaller. More agile,” Chang said. “Slavin, when we get under there I want you to fire all tubes against their lower hull.”
“Aye,” Slavin said. The Ensign’s eyes flicked from the screen to her readouts at the weapon’s station, her hands ready against the controls.
* * *
“Evasive to starboard, fire lateral cannons!” Carn ordered.
The Naxor Captain relayed the order, and the crew at the helm responded an instant later, rolling the ship to the right. Again the Dreadnought reverberated from the recoil of its own weapons.
* * *
The Defiant ducked beneath the Naxor ship, the Dreadnought’s fire exploding in multiple eruptions of energy against their shielding.