by Tony Healey
The Defiant shivered from the hits but the defences held. Ensign Slavin shot everything they had at the underbelly of the Naxor whale, several of the warheads slicing through whatever protective shielding the larger ship had and tearing into the hull.
“Direct hits,” Beaumont reported.
“Good work. Rogers, cut power and take us up, right behind their engine mantles,” Chang ordered.
Rogers didn’t have time to question the order, though he did manage to raise an eyebrow at the unorthodox manoeuvre. They tore past the Naxor ship, and Rogers pulled the Defiant up. The Union ship creaked around them at the sudden exertion, as it shot vertically through the backwash of the Dreadnought’s engines.
“Slavin, get ready to fire again,” Chang said. “Helm, tip us back so we’re horizontally aligned to their dorsal, and put us in a barrel roll.”
Rogers bit his bottom lip with concentration as he threw the Defiant backwards, and around in a spin. Two systems blew out around them, showering the bridge momentarily in a confetti of white sparks.
“FIRE!” Chang yelled.
Ensign Slavin unleashed the might of the Defiant‘s weaponry against the bigger opponent, and Chang watched with satisfaction as explosions bloomed across the Dreadnought’s hull.
* * *
Carn gripped a hand rail as the Dreadnought shook around him.
“Do not toy with them. Blow them away. Fire your warheads.”
Seconds later, dozens of swirling balls of glowing energy spat forth from the sides of the massive ship.
* * *
“Incoming!” Beaumont shouted as they once again left the Dreadnought behind them.
Commander Chang didn’t have a chance to say anything before the enemy’s firepower impacted against the Defiant‘s shields. It was as if the old ship had slammed into a blast door. The shields buckled beneath the strength of the Dreadnought’s warheads, and fires broke out over the bridge.
“Sprinklers!” Chang yelled to no one in particular. The sprinkler system doused everything with water, dampening the multiple fires around them. At the back of her mind, Chang was silently thankful that each console and control was water and air tight, hence the feasibility of such a safety device.
“Commander, we have damage reports coming in. Shields are down,” Beaumont said.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Chang said. She patched herself through to engineering. “Chief! How’re we holding up?”
The comm. system hissed and gargled static. “Working on it. You’ve got hull plating, but the shield’s kaput.”
“Understood, Chief, do what you can.”
* * *
Captain King grimaced when she saw the Defiant take the crippling hits from General Carn’s ship. Now, she thought. Now’s the time.
“Activate the decoy. Signal Captain Praror we’re a go,” King ordered.
“Takin’ us out,” Hawk said. The Warrior rumbled underfoot as he piloted them away from the protective magnetic interference of the planet’s north pole toward the battlefield.
“Decoy activated,” Commander Greene reported. “Controlling the mirror independently as discussed.”
“Excellent.”
The decoy device was another experimental piece of tech loaded onto the Warrior back in the day. It mapped the exterior of the ship and created a holographic duplicate that could be manipulated and controlled separately to create the illusion of more ships than there were. However, where it differed from previous attempts at the same technology, the Warrior‘s device registered as a real ship to enemy sensors. Not as a hologram, or blip on their readings. But as an actual vessel. For all intents and purposes, the decoy was really there.
“Captain Praror is moving on ahead, as planned,” Greene said.
“Let’s do this,” Jessica said. “Hawk, go to full thrusters. Let’s pounce on them.”
7.
The Dreadnought gave chase to the smaller, but faster, Defiant. Inexplicably, the Union ship was still holding up.
“The enemy has partial energy shielding back online,” one of the officers on the bridge reported. The Captain moved to relay the order, and General Carn grabbed him by the lapel, the Naxor’s feet dangling inches off the deck. As with all of the other Naxor on the bridge, he was not of the lower class, the more brutish Naxor who constituted the soldiers and manual labour of their society. He was of the higher class, the more intelligent offshoot of the Naxor race. They were almost human . . . almost.
“I heard him you fool!” Carn snapped, then tossed the Captain to one side. He skidded along the deck backwards, slamming into the bottom of a series of consoles. His head made an audible crack against the metal console housing and he was out cold.
Carn paced to the front of the bridge and watched their weapons fire past the Defiant once again.
“Open a communications channel with the Defiant. I want to see her Captain,” Carn said.
A moment later the front viewscreen changed to show the bridge of the Defiant. He didn’t recognise anyone there.
“I am General Carn, of the Draxx Dominion.”
“I’m fully aware who you are,” the woman in charge said. “What do you want?”
“To look you in the eye. To see my opponent.”
The woman smiled. “I hope you like what you see. Shame I cannot see your own face, General.”
“You will die here, earthling. You and your ship.”
“Strong words,” the woman said and made the cut signal. The connection was severed.
Carn took a deep breath. “Fire every available weapon at -“
“General! Three more enemy vessels! Closing fast!” a Tactical Officer cried to his right. Carn stormed over to where he was sitting to look at the readouts. On the sensor screens were three clear signatures.
“So . . . it’s an ambush. Bring us about. Lock weapons on the lead ship and open fire as soon as they’re in range.”
* * *
“They’re turning,” Greene said.
“Dolarhyde, draw every bit of power from other systems and have it rerouted to the forward shielding and the engines,” King ordered.
“On the case,” Captain Dolarhyde said, his hands working the controls as if he’d never been away from them.
The Warrior thundered beneath them, its engines working at full capacity for the first time in decades. They rushed upon the Naxor Dreadnought.
“They are locking weapons,” Commander Greene said. He looked up. “They’re firing.”
“OPEN FIRE!” Jessica yelled.
Hawk let loose the Warrior‘s arsenal of warheads and guns as they sped over the top of the Dreadnought, narrowly missing what was shot at them. The Naxor’s fire streaked past in a blur. Hawk swung the Warrior left and right, lifting her wings as if she were a bird in flight. At the same time, he rained weapons fire down on the bigger ship. The hull erupted here and there behind them, the Warrior‘s firepower disintegrating the Dreadnought’s hull as if it were paper.
Jessica turned to Dolarhyde. “Don’t tell me these are standard weapons, either?”
Dolarhyde shrugged. “I must’ve forgot.”
Jessica laughed. Hawk dipped them down, took them around the Defiant in a wide arc.
“They’re firing at the decoy,” Greene said.
“Good work. Have the decoy veer away from us, give us some breathing room for a moment.”
“Aye.”
She watched the holographic ship split from formation alongside the Warrior, drawing the Dreadnought’s fire away from them for the time being.
“Make contact with the Defiant. Get a status update,” King ordered.
“Aye,” Green said.
She watched on the viewscreen as Captain Praror’s ship buzzed about the Dreadnought, inflicting punches of damage wherever it hit.
“I have them on audio,” Commander Greene reported.
* * *
The Defiant gained distance from the Dreadnought as it engaged the other ships.
“I have the Captain, sir,” Beaumont said.
Chang frowned. She watched the smaller ship as it flew past them, demonstrating speed and agility. “Put her on, Ensign.”
“Commander?”
“Yes Captain,” Chang said. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
“And yours. Do you have reinforcements on the way?”
“Yes but they’re still a while away,” Chang answered.
She heard Captain King draw in a sharp breath. “What’s your status?”
“Energy shields are back up and running, but only at fifty percent. We have damage all over the ship, but all systems are still working. We’re doing okay, Captain.”
The Defiant jolted from an impact to her side and Chang gripped the arms of the command chair.
“Keep her together, Commander, you’re doing great,” King said.
“Thanks. I will.”
The line went dead. The Defiant took another hit. This time the lights flickered before returning to full strength.
Chang looked dead ahead. “You heard the Captain, everyone. Hold your nerve.”
* * *
“The enemy is attempting to retarget us,” Greene reported. “Luckily, they’re struggling to keep up with us, but that won’t last.”
“I understand, Commander,” Jessica started to say, then stopped mid-sentence.
She felt herself go slack-jawed. Her words tumbled away without sound, like a handful of marbles dropped on a floor. She sat there, unable to speak, unable to move for the voice in her head.
Captain.
It could only be one person. She knew that voice. And in a strange way – in a way she couldn’t possibly explain – she’d been expecting it. Subconsciously, Jessica had waited to hear Dana’s voice.
Captain. You must hear me.
I do, Jessica thought. I hear you, Dana.
I need more time.
I’m doing my best, Jessica told her.
Trust me, I will have the artefact out of harm’s way, but it’s taking longer than I hoped. Each one is different. They work entirely separate of one another, though connected by some means I still don’t quite understand.
The Warrior vibrated around her, and Jessica was faintly aware of someone saying something about a direct hit, but that was as far as it went. In a way, it was akin to hearing muted conversation in another room. It wasn’t immediate.
But Dana’s voice was. Because it was right there, straight away, in her brain.
In her thoughts.
We’ll hold them off as long as we can. But the minute he releases craft to land on the surface, I’ll be hard pressed to stop them and fight him at the same time.
Understood, Captain, Dana said. Best of luck to you.
Everything was coming back to her now. The sounds, sensations, smells of her surroundings coming back into focus. Becoming sharper, more defined.
Dana…
Yes Captain?
When will you come back?
A long pause. She didn’t think Dana would even answer her.
But then: When the time is right.
The next thing Jessica knew, she’d tumbled forward out of the command chair, her arms barely keeping her head above the deck plating. And in that same moment, the Warrior nearly shook apart.
* * *
“Excellent! Continue firing!” Carn said with what came close to joy as he watched the small Union ship dodge around their streams of fire. Bolt after bolt slammed into the little ship, yet still it held together. Kept moving. Kept buzzing about them like some metal bumblebee.
“We are re-aligning the warheads,” a helm officer reported.
“Fire them as soon as you have a lock,” Carn ordered.
He clasped his hands behind his back. Behind the mask, behind the mirror into which every fallen enemy had looked in their final moments, Carn grinned.
“Sir! We have a lock!”
He inhaled. Already he felt victorious. “Fire.”
* * *
She heard: “Damage to the port engine.”
And: “. . . leaking coolant!”
Then: “They’ve locked weapons.”
She opened her eyes. Pushed herself up. The Warrior tilted back crazily, like some kind of animal climbing a wall. The whole ship vibrated, thrummed, beneath her. A set of hands lifted her up by the armpits, and she got to her feet then settled back into the chair.
“Captain! Are you okay?” Dolarhyde asked her.
She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I think so.”
His hand was still on her shoulder, as if holding her in place so she wouldn’t fall again. She patted his hand, looked up at him. “I would consider the harness.”
She frowned. Then she looked down and saw what he was pointing to. The safety harness straps at each side of the command chair.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” she said and buckled herself in. “Thank you.”
Dolarhyde smiled somewhere beneath his great, bushy beard, then went back to his station. Jessica turned around.
“Jess, you okay?” Greene asked her. He didn’t even look up. His hands flew across the controls, beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.
King didn’t get a chance to answer. Alarm bells rang all around her.
“Incoming warheads . . .” Greene said, his voice trailing away. He looked up, shocked. Then sense kicked back in and he worked furiously with the controls. “Diverting all energy to the aft hull plating. Hopefully it’ll hold.”
Hawk took them into a steep nose dive. Jessica clung to the arm rests of the command chair, the Warrior tumbling in a corkscrew manoeuvre. Her stomach lifted into her mouth, then back down toward her feet.
“Brace–” Greene yelled. Then he was silenced as space opened up around them in an almighty explosion.
* * *
General Carn watched the Warrior tumble and die in front of him.
“Direct hits. They are disabled,” a Naxor crew member reported.
“Load a nuclear warhead into tube two,” Carn said, his voice calm and collected. “Then send them to oblivion.”
8.
Commander Chang would have stood up were it not for her own safety harness holding her in place. “Report!”
Beaumont scanned the smaller vessel. “Their atmosphere is intact, and I’m picking up life readings inside,” he said with relief.
“They’re spinning out of control,” Rogers noted as he glanced up at the viewscreen.
No power, Chang thought.
“Commander!” Beaumont yelled as he spun about. “I have a radiological alarm!”
* * *
“Report!” King shouted. “And stop these goddamn alarms.”
A moment later, the noise stopped. Systems were still online. She could see the lights twinkling in random patterns on the different stations around her.
“Temporary loss of power,” Dolarhyde said. The dim emergency lighting cast long shadows on the old man’s face. He looked like a caricature of a castaway as he got up from his station.
“Where are you going, Captain?” King asked.
“Down to engineering. We need power. I’ll do what I can,” he said.
“Be careful down there,” she said.
He nodded and left.
“Hawk?”
The helmsman bashed the helm terminal with both fists. “Hell! There ain’t nothin’ there, Cap! We’re a sittin’ duck!”
Commander Greene drew a sharp breath. “Captain, I’m picking up a nuclear signature.”
“Where from?”
“The enemy ship,” Greene said. He swallowed. “If they intend to launch a nuke at us, we won’t be able to outrun it.”
King gritted her teeth together. She watched the blank viewscreen, willing it to come back to life. Hoping beyond hope for the ship to get them out of a jam.
“Understood,” she said.
* * *
“How long till we get there?” Chang asked. The Defiant headed toward the Warrior‘s position.
> “Twenty seconds,” Rogers replied.
“They have launched the nuclear warhead!” Beaumont yelled. “Fifteen seconds till impact.”
The Warrior’s going to disappear before our eyes, Chang thought. And who knows how powerful it’ll be? It’s a completely alien design.
“Increase power to engines and shielding. Every last inch of power, whatever you have. The dregs in the bottom of the tank. Give her all you’ve got!” Chang shouted. The Defiant raced toward the Warrior.
A bright, sparkling yellow light tore away from the bottom edge of the Dreadnought, headed straight for the Warrior.
“Eight seconds to impact.”
“Come on come on come on,” Chang said.
“Five.”
“We’ve cut the gap,” Rogers said.
“Turn! Turn! Turn!” Chang shouted and closed her eyes, waiting for the nuke to slam into the Defiant‘s side and blow them to kingdom come. Rogers rolled the Defiant to starboard, offering her port side flank for the nuke. Sacrificing her wing for the sake of everyone and everything they held dear.
The explosion tore through the Defiant in a blinding white flash. It sent her veering away, barely missing the freewheeling form of the Warrior. The resultant damage ran across entire decks, penetrating vital systems that immediately died upon exposure to the void. Atmosphere and particle matter spewed from the gaping hole in her side, like blood and guts from a slain beast.
For all intents and purposes, the Defiant was dead.
* * *
The blinding light faded away. Seconds beforehand, the viewscreen had come back to life, revealing the Defiant‘s desperate bid to close the distance between them and the incoming nuke. Jessica had watched, helplessly, as the weapon smashed straight into the Defiant.
Now she wondered if her command was still there. Still in one piece. She doubted it, and her heart felt like a lead weight in her chest at the mere thought of it, but there was always hope . . .
“The Defiant‘s still there!” Greene said. “Not answering hails just yet, but they’re still there.”
Immediately, her thoughts turned to how she would enact revenge. How she would hit back. Inexplicably, they were still in one piece. They were still alive, against the odds.