by Jay Allan
At first he’d just run the odd courier mission, flying a small flitter around Roka City—no questions asked. He never got to see the cargo, which always fit into a small black carrying case, but he was strictly warned to stay away from authorities. His cover had been that he was a rich young man, spoiled to excess, and just out joyriding, looking for girls to pick up. He’d never been searched, but there’d been a few close scrapes when he’d had to lose pursuing patrollers in the winding canyons and multi-leveled streets of Roka City. Once his employment agency realized what a good pilot he was, they had him running interstellar hops. Before he knew it, he was making enough money to pay for more than just food; he was paying for his mother’s expensive medical treatments and making it look like she was cashing in on a pension she didn’t know she’d had. He’d even had enough money left over after all of that to store up a significant rainy day fund, which had eventually been what he’d used to buy his house with Destra, to make a life for them and Atton. He’d had a good run like that, smuggling stims for over two decades before he’d finally been caught.
And now, now all of that seemed like a dream—like those memories belonged to someone else’s life, not his. Ethan began absently studying the grid, forcing himself back to the here and now. He had a bet to win.
At his disposal he had four cruisers, including his own, six destroyers, and dozens of nova squadrons, all of them spread out and combing the system with active sensors for an invisible enemy, but space was too vast to pick up the muted signatures of heavily cloaked Sythian vessels, and Ethan had read the mission reports from the other pilots who’d gone through the sim before him—no patrols had ever found Sythian ships before they’d wanted to be found. Also from the mission notes Ethan knew which way the Sythians were coming from, and when, but he had just a few minutes to gather his forces into a unified front before the Sythians would strike, and gathering his fleet in that time would be impossible at relativistic speeds.
“Comms, have our vessels make short SLS jumps to the following coordinates…”
The XO interrupted him before he could speak. “What about our fighters?”
Ethan shook his head. “No time to collect them. We’ll have to do without them for a while.”
His XO snorted. “A while? The battle will be over by the time they get here. It would be better to go evasive now and fall back to Roka while the other ships collect their novas.”
Ethan ignored the advice. “Falconian to 9-4-9.” He waited a beat for the comm officer to relay the command. “Borealis to 9-4-4.” Again he waited while the comm officer spoke softly into his headset. “Tretina to 4-4-4.” Those were his other three cruisers. He also had half a dozen guardian-class destroyers to collect. “Make the destroyers line up at 10-4-1, 10-4-2, 10-4-3, and so on.”
The comm officer went on relaying the orders into his headset, and Ethan turned the other way, to his chief engineer. “Set our shields to maximum, all front and sides, and increase weapons power. Rob engines to do so and set shipboard systems to emergency power only.”
The engineer nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Helm, kill thrust.”
“Kill thrust, sir?”
“Yes, we’re not going to outmaneuver an enemy we can’t see.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ethan caught a look from his XO. “Traditionally commanders have done well to keep engines powered,” she said. “The Sythians have a hard time keeping up with their slower drives, and their weapons have a shorter range than ours.”
“True, but until we know where they are, we can’t be sure we won’t be running straight into a trap.” That was another thing Ethan had gleaned from the previous pilots’ mission reports. “They need their cloaking devices to get close to us, and I’m not going to help them do that faster by roaring around blindly at full speed.”
“Hmmm,” Ethan’s XO said, but she left it at that. He didn’t recognize the blonde-haired woman who was his second-in-command, but from the gold chevron on her sleeve and the silver icon of a venture-class emblazoned over it, he realized that she was a Deck Commander, and that meant she outranked him by a considerable margin. For the purposes of this mission, however, Ethan was in command. He turned away from her to address his gunnery chief. “Guns, have all of our pulse lasers and beams standing by. On my mark I want them to begin a firing pattern on low power. Have them fire a volley every five seconds, staggered. I want them firing in all directions at once. Don’t hit our own, but make sure they each sweep their guns to cover a fifteen degree arc. Paint three overlapping circles of fire around us, and keep those circles moving so we cover as much of space as possible. We’re sounding out the enemy, so have them on the lookout for any direct hits, lasers and beams abruptly disappearing into nothingness, bits of debris flying out of deep space—that sort of thing. The minute any one of them sees something strange, have them flag it on the grid.”
“Yes, sir,” the weapons officer said.
Ethan could sense his XO glaring at him again, so he turned to face her with a patient smile. “Yes, Deck Commander Caldin?”
“We’ll run flat out of energy before the enemy even gets here. What’s more, they’ll see us shooting and simply stay back out of range until we’re spent. By the time we’re out of charge they’ll swoop in and de-cloak all around us, blasting us to bits while our guns are still recharging. We won’t have a single joule of laser energy left to shoot them with.”
“We’ll still have our warheads.”
“They’ll shoot them down! You can’t rely on warheads. Sythian ships have better point defenses than we do, and their gunners are more accurate by far.”
“Trust me, Commander, and remember who is charge of this mission.”
Loba Caldin looked away with a scowl and out the forward viewports.
Ethan waited, watching the countdown he’d set up on his captain’s table. The Sythians were due to attack in less than one minute. He watched as his ships began winking off the grid as they jumped to SLS. Ethan bided his time, hoping his gamble would pay off. Leaving his command vessel all alone, under no power, he felt sure that Ithicus wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to take him out early. Once all of Ethan’s other vessels were in SLS, and the timer he’d set up reached ten seconds, he turned and nodded to the gunnery chief. “Mark!”
And suddenly space around them was lit up with streams of red and blue laser fire. The deck began vibrating underfoot with the continuous release of energy.
Ethan watched keenly on the captain’s table, waiting for the gunners to find and flag targets. He didn’t have to wait long. Dozens of waypoints began appearing on the map all around them, marked by the gunners as possible enemy targets. A moment later, Ethan heard the gunnery chief report, “We have multiple contacts!”
Ethan nodded decisively. In that precise moment the rest of the fleet dropped out of SLS all around his cruiser, and he called out, “Transmit coordinates to our other vessels and tell them to concentrate fire, warheads only, set to detonate close to, but not right on top of the enemy targets! Have their laser batteries begin sounding out the enemy at the coordinates we’ve supplied, and keep our batteries firing in the existing pattern. Arm our missiles and stand by for my mark. Helm, full speed ahead.”
Ethan looked up and out the forward viewports to see the first of his cruisers, the Falconian, which lay just off their starboard side, opening up with a volley of dozens of streaking missiles and torpedoes. The first torpedo reached its designated coordinates almost immediately, and flared in a blinding starburst explosion. As that explosion faded, a second torpedo hit, adding to the first one’s explosive punch, and then, even before the rest of the missiles had found their mark, there came an enormous secondary explosion, and the large flaming bulk of an enemy ship appeared out of nowhere, slowly cracking in half. The rest of the warheads streaked in and exploded just behind the first two, chipping away at the doomed vessel’s thruster banks.
“One down!” Ethan roared, and the bridg
e erupted with an abbreviated cheer. Suddenly the deck rocked underfoot and their shields hissed noisily as enemy fire found them. Ethan’s gaze shot back to the captain’s table to see more than a hundred enemy signatures appearing all around them.
“Evasive action!” Ethan ordered. “All guns target the nearest enemy!” The ship rocked with an explosion. “And equalize our shields! Have the fleet form up with us. We’re getting out of here.”
No wonder Roka had fallen. They were just ten against a hundred plus. The enemy ships were unshielded, their drives were slower, and their weapons were shorter ranged, but their hulls were still hard enough to crack that Ethan didn’t think he stood much of a chance. He was facing an entire armada, not a fleet. Ethan noted the flaming wrecks which had appeared all around them—nine in all—which were the result of his initial sounding for the enemy. Nine of the enemy cruisers had been taken out before the enemy had even managed to fire a single shot. Ethan grinned. It had been a logical maneuver, since the Sythians couldn’t fire while they were cloaked—due to some sort of energy trade-off—and they took just long enough to de-cloak that the missiles had all found their targets before enemy point defenses could come online to take them out.
Space spun around them as the helm tried to evade enemy fire, and Ethan watched out the forward viewports as hundreds of blinding purple stars shot out from the nearest enemy cruiser and rushed at them in spiraling arcs. These were the Sythian warheads, their preferred weapon for all occasions—tracking packets of energy that were impossible to shoot down, and went off like a Hailfire missile. A few dozen of them exploded in a fiery cloud on the bow of the cruiser and chipped off a flaming chunk of the ship. Ethan watched on the captain’s table as another enemy cruiser winked off the grid behind them, and then his attention was drawn back to the forward viewports as a blinding blue flash of light shot out from their bow. Their batteries had switched focus to the enemy in front. Ethan watched bright blue beams draw flaming lines across the enemy cruiser’s hull. Not more than a few seconds later the enemy ship fell silent and Ethan’s gunners moved on to the next target.
“Port shields critical!” the engineering chief called out. “Equalizing.”
“Get up to that wreck and use it as a shield!” Ethan pointed to the flaming derelict before them which was now venting fiery streams of atmosphere into space. They flew past the ragged remains of the enemy ship, close enough to see the shifting blue and lavender patterns on the gleaming hull. A stream of purple stars which had been meant for them slammed into the derelict and it erupted with even more gouts of flame. For the time being, however, the derelict was holding off enemy fire.
“Aft shields critical!”
Suddenly the deck rocked with an explosion, nearly knocking everyone off their feet or out of their control stations. That was the first warning that something was wrong with the inertial management system. Ethan felt the deck tilting dangerously under his feet.
The engineering officer called out: “IMS failing!” And that was Ethan’s second warning.
Thinking fast, Ethan called out, “Helm, cease maneuvering!” But it was too late. The inertial management system failed, and everyone flew into the ceiling, following the path of their inertia. Ethan felt no pain from the impact, since it was only a simulation, but he saw the world around him fade to black as though he’d actually been knocked unconscious; then the simulator pod hissed open, and he was left blinking up at the glow panels in the ceiling of the simulator room. He lay there for a long moment, a sense of failure and helplessness washing over him. He’d been there, fighting for his home, and not only had he not he saved Roka, but he hadn’t even managed to take out more than a small fraction of the enemy fleet. Ethan grimaced. He’d surely lost the bet with Ithicus—not that it mattered. He wasn’t going to be around long enough for Ithicus to collect.
A moment later, a familiar face appeared above his pod, and Ethan found himself staring up at Deck Commander Caldin. She held out a hand to help him out of the pod. Once they were standing face to face, she nodded abruptly and smiled. “Good job, Adan.”
Ethan blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You did surprisingly well.”
His eyes narrowed at that. Surely she was mocking him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Your mission was a complete success. You beat the high score, and you beat my own personal best by an order of magnitude.”
“I did?”
She nodded. “What … how many ships did we take out?”
“Twenty in all. The previous record was four.”
Ethan’s eyes widened. “And you?”
“My record was two.”
Ethan gaped. “Did the war always go so poorly for us?”
Caldin shook her head. “It generally went worse. The Sythians didn’t have any territories to defend, and we couldn’t track their movements. The result was that they roamed around in massive fleets like the one you just saw, and we couldn’t optimize our defenses, so our own forces were always hopelessly outnumbered.”
“We should have grouped together, sacrificed a few worlds to meet them on an even footing.”
“We tried that, but they just kept hitting us wherever we weren’t, and our worlds fell even faster.”
Ethan grimaced. “Kavaar…”
“Don’t worry. We’re making a better accounting for ourselves now that the shoe’s on the other foot and we’ve adapted their cloaking tech.”
Ethan’s eyes widened. That was the first he’d heard of cloaking devices aboard human ships. During the war, finding ways to adapt Sythian technology had been pure fantasy, but somehow since then they’d made significant advances in that department.
Ethan heard more pods hissing open all around the room and his attention was drawn off to watch as the rough dozen other pilots in the simulator room climbed out of their pods and started toward him and Loba Caldin. “So the war is going well now?” Ethan asked absently, his eyes settling on a red-faced Ithicus Adari.
The deck commander turned to watch, too, as the other pilots approached. “Quite well, yes, but you won’t have to trouble yourself with that for some time. Seems like Firestarter is on his way to the frontlines instead of you. Pity though. We could use someone with your instincts out there.” She turned back to him then. “And not in the cockpit of a nova, either. I’m going to recommend you for immediate promotion to a command position.”
Ethan turned to meet her gaze with a frown. “The fleet has open command positions?”
“We’re salvaging more and more ships every day.” She shrugged. “Should my recommendation be accepted, and assuming you pass the tests laid out for you, you’ll be in command of your own cruiser before you can blink.”
Ethan blinked. “Well, I don’t know what to say…”
The others arrived then and began offering Ethan their congratulations, some of them genuine, others envious or suspicious—as though he’d somehow cheated.
“Don’t say anything yet,” Caldin replied, shouting to be heard above the ruckus. “But I’ll be in touch.”
Ethan nodded and turned to Ithicus who had stopped before him with an angry scowl. Ethan’s eyes narrowed, but Ithicus thrust out his hand, and Ethan accepted the handshake warily.
“That was some stunt you pulled, Skidmark. Nice.”
And then Ithicus let go of his hand and walked off. Ethan watched him leave while enduring a steady stream of offers from the other pilots to buy him drinks in exchange for insight into his strategies. Ethan decided to take them up on it, and he followed them back to the bar. He didn’t have anything better to do, and maybe one of them could help him find his quarters later, but as Ethan reached the doors to The Basement, he felt a crushing wave of fatigue come over him. His head began throbbing and he felt another maddening tickle start in the back of his throat. A moment later that tickle sent him into a fit of coughing which had the nearest pilot staring at him curiously.
“You all right, Skidmark?”
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Ethan nodded as they walked inside the rec hall. “Yeah, brua. Throat’s just a little dry from screaming orders, that’s all.”
The other pilot grinned. “Well, we’ll fix that! Egrit!”
-o0o-
Supreme Overlord Altarian Dominic, commander in chief and head of state for the ISS—what was left of it anyway—sat in a vast, luxuriously-appointed room which served as his quarters aboard the Valiant. It was the middle of the night, but he couldn’t sleep. He needed to steal a few hours for himself, even if he had to rob himself of sleep to do so. All day, every day, he was under constant scrutiny, constantly forced to uphold an image of himself that he didn’t feel inside, but here, away from all the prying eyes, all of his pretenses were stripped away and he could finally relax and be himself. No one knew what that stripped-down version of him looked like, but that couldn’t be helped. The overlord had a certain persona to maintain, a certain confidence and optimism to uphold—like he knew exactly what he was doing, and no matter what he would never fail.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Dominic turned his big black chair toward the room’s broad, floor-to-ceiling viewport, and he looked down upon the ice world of Firea far below. He studied the whorled blue and white patterns of the glaciers on the surface, and they brought to mind images from his youth on Roka IV. He remembered watching as a young child from the balcony of his home as the snow shivered down from the colossal mountains around Roka City—avalanches that were periodically triggered by the miners as they blasted for dymium with detlor charges.
That seemed like a lifetime ago. I am quite old now, after all, he thought with a wry twist of his lips. His hair was white, his features thoroughly wrinkled—these days when he looked in the mirror he didn’t even recognize himself.