by Jay Allan
Jake grit his teeth and swore. He looked down at one of the tactical team members—his head was nothing more than a bloody, unrecognizable mess. Another man nearby moaned, and coughed. Blood spewed out his nose and sprayed the deck plate under his face. The Fidelius. The Firebird. No. Jake knew that Admiral Trajan had no intention of accepting their surrender. The man was out for blood, and would stop at nothing until the Resistance was completely and irrevocably crushed.
“Ben, you’re insane! Do you realize what they’re going to do to us?”
Ben nodded, flicking off the comm. “We’ll be put away for a long time.”
“No! We’ll be executed, Ben. We’re dead!” Jake advanced on his friend and yelled in his face. “You really think Trajan, after sacrificing the crew of the Fidelius and putting the rest of his fleet at risk just to nail our asses to the wall, do you really think he’s going to just throw us in jail? He’s going to kill us, Ben.”
Ben brought his face down to Jake’s and yelled back. “What the fuck do you want us to do, Jake? Keep on firing and get our asses handed to us? It’s over! We’re dead in the water! We’ve got nothing left!” He’d grabbed Jake’s uniform with his fist and looked about ready to toss his friend aside, and Jake’s own fist reared back, looking for a target.
Po, looking up from attending to a prone Ensign Ayala, pounded the deck plate. “Jake! Get a handle on yourself. Ben, he’s right. We’re dead. We can’t surrender. Jake, Ben’s right, if we don’t signal our surrender, we’ll be dead in minutes instead of weeks. Get a hold of yourselves, both of you.”
Another secondary explosion rocked the ship and threw them both back to the floor, and Ben’s head hit the command console on his way down, knocking him cold. Jake scrambled back to the comm station, and, seeing an incoming message from the Caligula, piped it through audio.
The voice of the imperial comm officer sounded triumphant. “This is the NPQR Caligula. Admiral Trajan’s orders are that you open your fighter deck bay doors and prepare to be boarded. All able-bodied men and women are to be kneeling with their hands behind their heads when approached by the boarding parties. Caligula out.”
Jake pointed at Po. “Megan. What’s the status of the quantum field missile launchers? Can we launch all of them at once, and hope one gets through?”
She shook her head as she studied her board. “Launchers are offline. And the launch tubes look too damaged to get anything out of them.”
Jake floundered for another option. “What about … what about gravitics? Are they up yet?” He turned to the helmsman.
“No sir. Thrusters only,” the man said with a moan. In the chaos, Jake couldn’t even remember the young officer’s name.
Jake thumbed the internal comm open. “Engineering, bridge. What’s the status of gravitics? When can we shift?”
The sound of yelling and klaxons met their ears. After a moment, an agitated voice, heavy with an Italian accent, answered. “This is engineering. Jake, is that you?”
“Bernoulli? Thank God you’re alive. What’s our status?”
“Commander Xi is missing. There was a whole compartment that got blown open to space. Jake, there’s a lot of bodies down here, and many that are left have severe rad exposure. We’re looking grim.”
“And the gravitic drive? Can it be fixed? Alessandro, if we don’t get out of here now, the Caligula’s going to either blast us to hell, or board us and blast our fucking brains out.”
“I don’t know Jake. We got hit pretty hard. But Jake, you saw the Firebird, right? And the Raven? Those birds didn’t go down from railgun fire. I saw it on our screen down here, and Jake, I tell you, those were anti-matter induced blasts.”
“Are you saying they lost anti-matter containment?”
“Not at all. Well, eventually they did. But their explosion patterns matched those accidents from CERN. CERN, Jake! Where we did the experiments on the new gravitic drives! Jake, I think they’ve been tampered with.”
Jake glanced up at Po. “How many of ours are left?”
She tapped her board and gaped. “Three. Barely. Us, the Roc, and the Heron. “
Alessandro overheard. “Exactly, ma’am. And if I were to guess, I’d say that if you were to scan them, you’d see that their gravitic drives are out, too. They couldn’t get away, and that’s the only reason they’re alive.”
Po’s fingers danced across her console. A grave shadow passed over her face, and she looked up. “He’s right.”
Jake flustered. “That proves nothing, Alessandro. They’re probably just like us, they just got hit so hard that—look, buddy, it doesn’t matter. We’ve got to get out of here. The question is, can you fix it?”
“Well if I were to realign the gravitic field generators such that the harmonic resonance more closely matched the quantum state of the—”
“Alessandro, I don’t have time. Yes or no, and give me a time.”
“Yes, Jake. Two hours.” An explosion sounded through the speaker. “Maybe.”
“You’ve got one. Mercer out.” He smashed a fist onto the console, turning the comm off.
“Jake,” Po began, her voice steady, but her jaw beginning to clench, “the Caligula is awaiting our reply. They say they’ll resume their attack in two minutes if we don’t.”
Jake took a deep breath, and pointed a finger at the station. “Patch me through.”
She opened the channel, and Jake cleared his throat, spitting out a wad of blood that had seeped out from an empty tooth socket—he tried to remember when he’d lost it, but couldn’t. “This is Jacob Mercer of the Phoenix. Your terms are acknowledged, Caligula, but we’re having catastrophic system failure over here. We can’t get our bay doors down. We request technical assistance to restore power and systems control. Otherwise, it’s likely to be several hours before we can resu—”
“Lieutenant Commander Mercer, this is Admiral Trajan. Where is your Captain?”
So. The Admiral speaks.
“Sir, Captain Watson is in sickbay. His condition is grave.”
“And your XO?”
“Dead, sir. I’m in command of the bridge at the moment.” He glanced down at his friend, Ben Jemez, and felt slightly guilty for not picking him up and running him down to sickbay. The fall might have snapped his neck for all he knew.
“Our sensors indicate you have auxiliary power. You should be able to get the doors down just fine. Redirect power from life-support if you have to.”
“The pneumatics are shot, sir. It’s not a matter of power only, but of damage to the equipment. Our crews are on it, but it’ll take time, sir. Again, we request assistance with—”
“You lie, Commander. And let me tell you what I do with liars. You are familiar with the planet Glazov, I presume?”
Glazov. The imperial prison world, notorious for its frigid labor camps on the icy tundra, just like the Soviet Gulags of old. Jake had heard stories from captured Resistance fighters who had been sentenced to serve there. Those that made it out reported a vicious climate, alternating between extreme hot and extreme cold, and even more brutal guards.
“I am, sir.” He struggled to rein in his mouth. He wanted nothing more than to strike out with a flurry of insults and curses at the butcher on the other end of the comm.
“Then you might be aware of a particular little labor camp on one of the frozen southern islands. Balaka. The tongues of liars freeze my very soul, Commander, and as reward for the web of falsehoods they weave, they live out the rest of their days in the diamond mines of Balaka, where their hands freeze to their picks by the end of every long, bitter day, and their noses and ears fall off from frostbite by the end of the first week. Now tell me Commander, what is the status of those doors?”
“Standby, Admiral, I’m receiving an update now…” He muted the comm channel and motioned over to Po. “Are those doors operational?”
“Of course they are. What did you think to gain by lying to him?”
“Time.” He keyed open another
internal comm channel, wiping sweat and blood from his brow. “Flight deck, Commander Mercer. Who’s down there?”
“Lieutenant Grace, sir. What the hell is going on?”
“Too much to explain, Anya. Listen. You’re about to have visitors down there. First, get the flight crew out. It’s about to get a little hot down there.”
“Where’s the Captain?”
“Maybe dead. Just listen. Get everybody out, then I need you to do something for me.”
Momentary silence. “What is it?”
“Get in your bird. When their boarding party arrives, I need you to do one of those maneuvers we practiced.”
“The short range gravitic shifts?”
“Yeah. Their carriers will come in to land, and at the exact moment the last one passes the threshold, I want to you shift to the entrance of the flight deck, less than a meter away from the incoming carrier, and right next to the bay doors.”
“But, won’t that cause all sorts of trouble? You know you can’t have any other solid surface touching an object caught up in a gravitic field, localized or otherwise. We could damage the doors, and probably the carrier.”
“Lieutenant, I’m counting on it. Orders understood?”
Another momentary silence. He knew she was weighing her chances of survival. They didn’t look pretty. Then again, none of the odds looked pretty at that point.
“Yes, sir. Understood. Grace out.”
He flipped the mute off. “Admiral, good news. The crews have got power restored to the flight deck’s hydrolics. We can receive the boarding party there. I will personally turn myself over to the commander of the party, along with any other senior officers I can find alive.”
The Admiral’s husky voice sounded over the speaker. Jake could almost hear a sinister grin on the other side of the line. He’d heard rumors of the man’s ghoulish face, and had no desire to meet him yet. “Very wise, Commander. And if I hear any reports of gunfire directed at my troops, I will withdraw them, and blast your ship to oblivion. Trajan out.”
Jake breathed deep. A moan to his left caught his attention, and he saw Ben wince and move a hand vaguely up to his head. Jake reached down and started to hoist the man onto his shoulders.
“Po, you good here?” he said, wavering unsteadily on his still sore ankle. She nodded. He wasn’t sure why he noticed, but her bun had come partly loose, her hair spilling over her left shoulder. The young grandmother had vanished, replaced by a dazed, but resolute Resistance officer. “I’m getting him to sickbay, and checking up on the Captain. Then I’m heading to the flight deck. When what happens, happens, ask the Caligula if there was a malfunction with one of the carrier’s gravitic drives, and if its crew requires assistance.”
“Sure thing, Jake,” she called after him as the door closed behind the pair.
-o0o-
Sickbay was a mess. A slick, bloody mess. Streaks of the red stuff marked the walls and the floors, with occasional bits of tattered, bloody uniforms that had been cut away by surgeon’s scissors. An entire hallway of moaning, shell-shocked men and women lying on the floor led up to sickbay itself, and the scene within revealed too many bodies and too few beds. Doc Nichols stood in the center and barked orders at his medical staff and volunteers like a man possessed.
“Doc! I’ve got one more. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, hit his head pretty hard or something, but I need him. We got hit hard on the bridge.”
“No shit?” Nichols waved his arms at Jake as if he were scaring a dog off his front lawn.
“Come on Doc, with the Captain down, the XO dead, and Xi missing, Ben and Po are all I’ve got up there.”
Nichols scowled but beckoned for him to follow. He pointed at a gurgling, struggling man laying on one of the tables. Jake thought he recognized him from engineering. “Put him there.”
“But Doc, there’s already someone there.”
“Not for long.” Nichols stood over the man, whose face looked half burned off. His uniform had melted to fuse with his skin, and thick, acrid fumes of the mixture of flesh and smoke rose up to meet Jake’s nose. The doctor reached for the man’s hand and held it as he struggled for breath. “Easy, son. You’re almost there,” he said in a voice far more soothing than Jake would have given him credit for.
The man stopped struggling. A last wheeze escaped his mouth. The doctor motioned to one of the nurses and pointed at the body, and the harried man came to lift the deceased away. It was like some surreal dream, like Jake was watching something from above his own head and from a distance.
“There. It’s free now,” he said to Jake, pointing at the table. “Quickly.” Jake focused, and laid Ben down on the bloodstained examination table and Nichols peered down to look at him, waving his data pad over his neck.
“He’s knocked cold. Probably a concussion. Minor nerve damage in his spine, but with a quick treatment he’ll be fine.” He glanced back up at Jake. “You wasted my time for this?” Doc Nichols waved the nurse back over and pointed at the man. “Get Commander Jemez up and running. He’s needed on the bridge,” and, turning to Jake said, “Come with me. There’s someone who wants to see one of you.”
Perplexed, Jake followed the doctor back to his office, where lying on a make-shift examination table was the Captain. His eyes were open, and he struggled for quick, shallow breaths. Jake glanced at his abdomen and saw a stack of white cloths pressed against his skin, tinged throughout with dark, crusted blood. Doc mumbled in Jake’s ear. “He’s got massive internal bleeding. Nearly every organ’s got contusions and lacerations up the ass. Go talk to him. He’s not going to make it.”
He leaned over the Captain, who looked up into his eyes. “I asked for Jemez,” Watson said, through gritted teeth.
“Sorry, sir, Jemez is out cold. He’ll live, though.”
The Captain looked more relaxed with the news. “Is the ship safe?”
“No, sir. We’ve still got an Imperial fleet out there that’s about to board us. We’re working out a plan now.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jake saw the doctor hover nearby, listening to his friend’s last moments. The old man’s mouth curled into a tight frown, as if willing himself not to cry.
Watson’s voice gurgled, “Get the ship to safety. Find Pritchard. He’s out there. I know. Find him. Get the ship to safety, Jemez. That’s your final order.” Jake wondered if the man was entirely lucid, having called him Jemez.
He coughed, spewing up a mouthful of blood onto his heaving chest. He reached up to his lapel and ripped off his captain’s insignia. He looked back at Jake and tried to focus. He frowned when he saw who it was. “Here. Mercer, take these. They’re for.…” He wheezed again.
“I’ll do my best sir.”
“Give them to Jemez. By fleet standing order nine, I hereby advance Ben Jemez to the rank of Captain, and transfer command of the Phoenix to him.” He coughed blood again. “Get the ship to safety.” His breathing quickened, his eyes widened, and he reached out his other hand to Nichols, who grasped it. “Oh my…”
His hands stiffened, then fell limp. Nichols reached down to close the man’s eyes.
“See ya, Dick, you old bastard.” Nichols reached up to wipe an eye.
Give them to Jemez. The man’s last words echoed through Jake’s mind. And transfer command of the Phoenix to him. To Ben Jemez.
Not Ben. His best friend was capable, smart, trustworthy … but not Ben. Jake knew, without a doubt, that Ben was not the one to lead them out of the emergency.
He staggered back to sit on a bench by the wall. Nichols glanced over at him, then approached and looked at the floor. Silence pervaded the office, punctuated only by the occasional scream of some patient in the adjacent room.
“I can’t do that. He’s—he’s good, but…” Jake couldn’t even put into words what he felt. If there was a rule or a regulation or a ship schematic ever written, Ben knew it. But he didn’t know people. He didn’t know strategy, and he didn’t know how to win. To do
whatever it took. He didn’t have that drive. Not like Jake. He’d learned it from watching his father. From deciding he’d never, ever end up like that drunk bastard.
“You know what you have to do.”
Jake looked up at him, scrutinizing the doctor’s face, trying to read the expression he’d used in his voice. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. We both know what has to be done.”
Jake slowly nodded. “Will you support me?”
As if in answer, Nichols turned back to the body of his friend. “Dammit, Dick, I love ya, but not even you were the best man to get us out of this mess. And certainly not your protégé.” He glanced back at Jake. “Go. There’s a ship to save. And maybe a planet.”
Feeling as if the whole situation were completely unreal, Jake stood up, squeezing the bloody Captain’s insignia in his hand, and strode out of the office. It was like he was walking in slow motion, like the sights and smells and sounds around him were something he was watching from afar, like a videogame. He walked past the rows of bloodied men and women and made for the exit.
“Jake?” a voice croaked out at him.
He turned. Ben had woken up. He walked over to his friend.
“The Captain?” his friend continued.
“Dead.”
“Did he say anything? Before he died, I mean?”
“He did.” He looked down at his friend. He touched the man’s shoulder. “He promoted me, gave me command of the ship.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“Was he fully awake? Did you make sure?” Ben started to push himself up from the table to a sitting position, but winced.
“He was, Ben. The Doc was there and everything. He mentioned you. Said you were one of the finest officers he’d ever met. But at the last moment, he, well, he said what he said.” He glanced back at the exit. The troop carriers from the Caligula would be arriving any moment now, he knew, and he had to get ready. “Look, Ben. We’ve got to move. If we have any hope at all of getting out of here, we need to move now. You with me?”