by Jay Allan
Ben pursed his lips, looking down at the table, and the floor beyond. “I’m ready. What do we do?”
Jake smiled, and grabbed his friend by the hand, steadying him as he took his first steps. “First, we beat the shit out of this boarding party, then, we beat the shit out of the Caligula.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Jake nodded, pulling Ben toward the exit. “So do I.”
-o0o-
Lieutenant Anya Grace knew danger. She’d grown up with it, living with parents who thought the best way to raise their rebellious daughter was to throw her into the cold Alaskan wilderness for two weeks with nothing but a shirt, pants, and a pair of her brother’s old leather boots.
With her parent’s newfound devotion to the Emperor’s religion came a host of other trials as the zealous couple tried to indoctrinate their daughter, but Anya would have none of it. Even after her brothers had tried to implement their parents’ wishes by force. A few broken noses later, they soon wished they hadn’t.
This was different, but only in the sense that those coming after her had guns and ion cannons rather than spiteful words, guilt, and fists.
“Everybody move! Clear the deck. All techs report to deck thirty, aft, and all pilots and gunners bugger out of here before I kick your asses. Let’s move people, we’ve got some special guests coming!” She ripped open the gun locker and selected an assault rifle and a small sidearm before locking it back up. As she turned, she was forced to stop suddenly to avoid colliding with her gunner. “Nivens? Get the hell out.”
“No,” said the young man. “I’m coming with you, whatever you’re doing.” He looked down at her, noticing her donned flight suit and helmet under one arm.
“I said get out. This deck is about to be crawling with Imperial troops. Move!” She pointed at the door.
“You’re getting in your bird. And if you are, then so am I. And you can’t stop me.” He walked over to the equipment locker and pulled out another helmet.
“Watch me.” She pulled the sidearm out of the holster strapped to her chest and pointed it at the young man. “Get the fuck out.”
He steeled his chin, but didn’t move. “No, sir. You’ll have to shoot me.”
She stared into his eyes for about five seconds, then smiled, pushing the gun back into the holster. “I like you. Let’s go.”
He followed on her tail, weaving around fallen equipment and debris that littered the floor from the explosions of battle. “What’s the plan, Lieutenant?”
She explained what Jake had told her over the comm. “Holy shit!” he said. “What’s the point of all that?”
“Actually, it makes perfect sense, Ensign. Mercer told me we have to buy time for engineering to get us the hell out of here, but if we refuse to be boarded, they blast us out of the sky. If we start firing once they get here, they’ll leave and then blast us out of the sky.” She wrenched the door to their cockpit open and began climbing up. “But if we let them land on the deck and make it look like their last carrier to enter suffered some kind of gravitic malfunction, a hiccup, and at the same time arrange for said hiccup to force a closure of the bay doors so that no more carriers can enter, or leave for that matter, well then, that buys us some time.”
“How?” Nivens did not look convinced.
“Leave that to the commander. That’s his job.” He climbed in after her and sat at the gunner’s station. “Ready?” she asked.
“Whenever you are, sir.”
“Good. Here they come.”
Anya sealed the hatch and remotely keyed the bay doors to open. With a roar that reminded her briefly of a tornado, the air rushed out of the flight deck, and the doors slowly ground away from each other, revealing several distant carriers on an approach vector. She entered in the coordinates, double checking the numbers to make sure no part of the ship would be stuck outside the bay doors when they began their emergency shut function.
“Get down. They can’t see us,” she said, ducking under the console herself. No rumble indicated the passing of the carriers, but their shadows darkened the viewport of their fighter as they floated by. Anya peered up through the rear viewport, watching as the last carrier approached the bay doors.
“Almost here. Brace yourself, Nivens.” She held her breath. As the last ship passed the threshold, she pressed the button on her console, entering the command to shift.
In the blink of an eye, the view outside the viewports changed, and a catastrophic clang ripped through the cabin. Outside, Anya saw debris from the flight deck where they had landed fly up past the viewports, and klaxons began to sound through the speakers, indicating the hull breach they had likely caused in the wall next to their landing zone. As expected, the bay doors began to shut automatically.
Anya blew the hair out of her eyes. “Would you look at that, Nivens. We’re alive.”
-o0o-
The bridge of the Caligula hummed along with quiet Corsican efficiency. The battle had gone exceedingly well, and, in spite of the loss of the Honorius, Captain Titus nodded approvingly at his readout as he watched the situational progress. Six of the nine Terran battleships had been consumed in blinding explosions. Six. He’d never seen such a thing, and he couldn’t help but be in terrified awe of Trajan. He was a genius, certainly, but a mad, psychopathic one.
They’d lost eight ships now, six of them new, top of the line heavy cruisers. And all just to defeat the Earth Resistance? He wasn’t sure it had been worth it.
“Sir,” said the officer manning the sensor station.
Admiral Trajan looked up from his command station. “Yes, sensor officer?”
“My readings indicate a gravitic signal from the Phoenix, sir. It was just a blip.” He studied his board some more, and Admiral Trajan approached the tactical station, his head cocked.
“What do you mean, a blip?” The Admiral’s eye danced over the sensor officer’s board.
“Well sir, I was reading the gravitic signals from our carriers entering their flight deck, when all of the sudden the gravitic readings spiked, but just for a fraction of a second.” He tapped a few more buttons. “And there appears to be damage to the flight deck, sir. I’d wager a guess that one of our carriers’ gravitic drives malfunctioned and either crashed or disrupted the localized gravitic field and damaged the Phoenix somehow.”
Trajan stroked his chin and nodded slowly. “Perhaps. You’re still reading the Phoenix’s gravitic drive is down, are you not?”
The officer glanced at his readout. “Yes, sir.”
“Any gravitic signals from any of the Phoenix’s fighters?”
“No sir. And sir? The fighter bay door is closing—it looks like it’s an emergency shut operation.”
The Admiral paced back to the command console, still stroking his chin, apparently lost in thought.
“Problem, sir?” Titus asked.
“Possibly, Captain.”
“Gravitic drives often experience blips such as these.”
Trajan pierced Captain Titus with an icy one-eyed glare. “I am aware of the flight specifications of our gravitic drives, Captain.” He turned back to his console. “But what are the odds of it happening right now?” Trajan tapped a few buttons on his readout, his face turning more studious.
“Comm officer,” he said, pointing to Evans. “Patch me through to the carriers.”
“Aye, sir. Channel is open.”
“Major, this is Admiral Trajan. Our guests inform me that the surviving senior staff will receive you when you arrive. Have you landed, yet?”
“Yes, sir. Disembarking now, sir,” came the marine’s voice. There’s no sign of the crew, but the bay hasn’t repressurized yet—there seems to be a hull breach somewhere in here.”
Admiral Trajan glanced knowingly at the Captain. “Very well, Major. When you see the senior staff, your orders are shoot to kill. Place everyone else under arrest.”
“Acknowledged, sir. Shoot to kill.”
“Trajan
out.” Trajan’s face seemed inscrutable. “And now a hull breach, Captain. Do you know what a hull breach means in the fighter bay? Or anywhere else on the ship for that matter?”
“Decompression?”
“Correct, Captain, but the answer I was looking for was emergency bulkheads. This means the boarding party will face a delay as they negotiate the pressure drop between the bay and its adjacent corridors.”
“So you don’t believe this was an accident, sir?”
“I do not. Tactical,” he turned to the tactical station. “Prepare the railguns. Do not fire, but be ready on my command.”
Titus cleared his throat. He’d just about had it with Trajan killing his own men. “But sir, what about our boarding party?”
“We will give them their chance, Captain, but something tells me the Major and his men might face a little resistance.”
“Sir! There’s been another explosion on the Phoenix. Looks like a secondary explosion, sir, from a short near their capacitor banks.” The sensor officer studied his readout closer. “And it looks as if it damaged their sensor and communications array. It’s sending out a broad spectrum signal, as if the auxiliary power system just got dumped into the array.”
“Can we hail the boarding party?”
“No sir, the new signal is interfering with our communications.”
Titus came up behind Admiral Trajan. “We did hit them pretty hard, sir. Power surges are to be expected after a battle like this.”
Trajan snapped his head and skewered him again with his gaze, before turning back to tactical. “Be ready with those guns, Lieutenant.”
CHAPTER 8
JAKE MERCER AND BEN JEMEZ jogged toward the fighter bay, stopping by the marine barracks to check if anyone was still there.
“I’d imagine they’ve all been recruited for damage control,” said Ben.
“Probably. But we’re going to need a bigger army than the two of us.” He poked his head into the barracks, and sure enough, it was empty. He keyed open the arms locker using his command code and tossed an assault rifle out to Ben before selecting one for himself.
“Jake, you realize that if we repel their boarding party, the Caligula will just blow up the ship? This is supposed to be a surrender.”
“I know. That’s why we need the Caligula to think the surrender is proceeding normally for awhile.” He gave Ben an abbreviated version of his plan, then opened a comm channel to engineering.
“Alessandro, what’s our status?”
Bernoulli’s voice crackled over the speaker. “I need another hour, friend. This crystal substrate has taken a beating like a naughty cheap prostitute.” Jake grinned at his friend’s caustic sense of humor. The chaos that had sounded through the speakers from engineering the last time they had spoken had died away, thankfully.
“Fine, buddy. Take all the time you need,” Jake said sarcastically.
Alessandro’s voice indicated the humor was lost on him. “Excellent, friend. Bernoulli ou—”
“Alessandro, if we don’t get the hell out of here within half an hour, we’re screwed. Got it?” Jake yelled into the console. “What’s the status of our communications and sensor array?”
The quick change of subjects didn’t faze Alessandro—Jake knew that was his modus operandi. “Functional, Jake. Why?”
“Any way you can make it look like we just had a system failure down there, and send out some white noise as a jamming signal? We need to stop all Imperial communication between their ships and with the soldiers about to land on our fighter deck.”
A moment’s silence. “I suppose if I dump power from one of the cap banks, it’ll look like a secondary explosion from an overload, and then if I do a direct feed from the auxiliary power line right into the sensor array, it might come across as an accident,” he said, seeming to read Jake’s mind. It had to look like an accident or they’d attract Trajan’s ire—more of it.
“Good, do it.”
“But Jake, that will damage our sensor array. And we’re using nearly all our auxiliary power for life support. I can’t guarantee we’ll be breathing much while that thing is on.”
“Understood. Mercer out.”
He glanced up at Ben. “Let’s get down there. It’s show time,” he said, as they swept out the door. On the way to the fighter bay, they came across handfuls of marines carrying wounded to sickbay or otherwise assisting those engaged in damage control. The pair grabbed the marines who were armed, and by the time they arrived at the fighter deck’s conference room they had rounded up ten soldiers, including Sergeant Pearson, the gruff marine commander of the Phoenix that Jake remembered from the transport the day he arrived at Liberty Station just a week or so ago.
Jake pointed at the emergency bulkhead that separated them from the fighter bay doors. “This is our defense point. No one gets past here. Understood?” The marines all nodded.
Sergeant Pearson spat a wad of chewing tobacco on the floor. “What are we looking at, sir? Ten? Twenty?”
“Sensors indicate four troop carriers. You do the math, Sergeant.”
The man reached into his pocket to draw out his snuff, and thumbed a wad into his lower lip. “Yeah, that’s a shitload all right.”
Jake forgot to smile, and started spouting off a stream of commands. After nearly a minute, he continued giving instructions, almost not hearing the voice interrupting him.
“Captain?” Jake almost didn’t understand what Ben was saying. “Captain?” Ben said again.
Captain. He still couldn’t believe he was hearing those words directed at him. The thought terrified him. People were going to die today because of his decisions. Innocent, good people. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that.
Then why the hell did you take command, dumbass?
“What is it, Ben?”
“Sir, the Captain’s place is not on the front lines of a firefight, but on the bridge.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, Ben, we’ve got to repel these sons-of-b—”
“Captain, your place is on the bridge. There’s more to command here than just a firefight. Get the hell up there, Jake,” he said, and Jake could almost feel the reproach in his voice. It should have been him. Captain Watson had chosen his protégé, and it should have been him. Jake suspected that Ben knew it, and wondered if his friend had suspicions. Most likely.
But they’d all be dead by now if Ben were the captain. Jake knew it. “Fine. You got this?”
Sergeant Pearson spit another brown wad onto the floor. “He’s right, sir. Let us grunts do our job and you go do yours. Don’t worry, we’ve dealt with these pussies before. I commanded the battalion that took out the Imperials in D.C. three years ago. Pushed the motherfuckers into a corner of some office building, and then blew them straight to hell.”
“Get up there,” Ben repeated. Jake swore, and tossed the assault rifle to a marine who carried only a plasma-rpg launcher before running out the door.
“Arrogant bastard,” Ben muttered under his breath.
-o0o-
“What do you think, Commander, is today our day to die?” Ensign Ayala didn’t even look up from her console as she spoke, but continued her work of coordinating weapons repair crews.
Po looked up at her, concerned. The fact was, she had thought they were going to die during the final stages of the attack not an hour earlier, but once she saw the look in Jake’s eyes when he was dealing with Admiral Trajan, she wondered why she had given up so easily.
“You know, Ensign? I don’t think so. But then again, it’s what we all signed up for, didn’t we? For battle and glory, or revenge or what have you.” She knew what her motivation was when she first joined. The searing memory of her husband’s stiff body still freshly engraved on her mind. And the rest of them. She continued speaking, so that the thoughts wouldn’t surface. “Why did you join?”
“The Empire destroyed my world when my grandparents were still children, Commander. They turned it into a radioactive wasteland that won
’t be safe for human habitation for thousands of years. Our people pledged to return, but as they reached out to the stars, they made another pledge. A pledge to never lift up the sword against anyone. It’s strange, Commander, when an enemy invades and utterly destroys, and then the victim blames itself for the violence and promises to amend its ways.”
“So you joined the fleet to explore then? To see new worlds and cultures?” Po noticed some odd readings from her board, and could only think to absentmindedly ask obvious questions.
“No, Commander. I set out to end the Empire. With whatever tools I have at my disposal.”
Po glanced up in surprise. “So you don’t eschew violence? Like the rest of the people of Belen?”
“I will not strike another human. I will not wield a weapon and draw blood. I will not raise my voice in anger. But an ion beam cannon? A railgun turret? Will I relay orders to weapons crews to use them against the machinery of the Empire? I will. My father nearly disowned me when I joined the Resistance. He said I was rejecting our traditions. Our culture. Our beliefs. But I think to stand by and let the Empire continue to exist is an even deeper betrayal of our beliefs.” She paused, and looked up, a quizzical expression on her tattooed face. “Does that make sense?”
“A little, I guess.” Po turned back to her console. An odd power build-up on the sensor array…
“It sure didn’t to my father. My mother sent me with her blessing, but even she didn’t quite understand my reasoning. She prayed her rosary and begged the saints to change my mind. She promised a life of service to Saint Anton, the patron saint of Belen, if he would come to me and turn me from my chosen path. But here I am.” Her smile made the leaves and branches splaying up onto her face contort, making Po wonder how early the Belenite youth received their tattoos. It was comforting having the young woman around—like having a personal spiritual advisor, someone who could look down on any situation and reassure them all that it was in god’s plan or Minerva’s plan or Buddha’s plan, or whatever other deity the young woman was attuned to.