by C. Gockel
His Skimmer didn’t so much dive as fall, poisoned side toward the surface. Stratos fired at the enemy ship for all he was worth, and then at the warhead the enemy dropped.
“Volka,” he shouted. “They can jump at least three times fast. Tell everyone!”
Volka gasped and was in the present, on the bridge of Sundancer, Sixty staring down at her. “The Dark’s faster-than-light ships can jump at least three times fast.” Her body swayed. Had Stratos known she was there the whole time, or was that last message a shot in the dark?
“Stratos took out one of the Dark’s ships above Odessa,” she said.
Cheers echoed in her mind.
At the same time, Noa, Sixty, and Alaric demanded, “How?”
“Free-gating close and ramming into it,” Volka said.
“Free-gating won’t work in atmosphere,” said Alaric.
Volka nodded to herself. “No.” And that’s where most of this battle would take place.
Noa said, “Every second we wait, their defenses are shifting. We’ve been through the scenarios.”
Volka looked up at Sixty. His face shield was up; his eyes were on hers. She could smell him—metal and plastic and the scent that was engineered to be attractive. He also smelled like her, and Sundancer, and maybe … ozone? Electricity had a scent, or maybe it was the dryness in the air where it passed. He’d been “eating” a lot of power the last few days. Perfectly natural, and gracious even, for a person who didn’t need food to save it for those that did.
She wished they’d had time to be lovers in the physical sense. She felt stupid for waiting for marriage now, but it had seemed important when it seemed they might live. And maybe the hormone blockers hadn’t helped her decision-making process. Things were brighter now, clearer without the nagging floating of her stomach.
He was still looking at her. She wished she could communicate with him telepathically; she’d tell him everything she’d just been thinking.
He was still meeting her gaze … looking at her like he couldn’t get enough. Maybe he already knew.
“It’s time to begin,” Noa said.
“I’ll see you on the other side, Jerome,” TAB said over the ether.
Jerome’s vision was a countdown, and his hand was tapping along on the faintly humming box that was his anti-jamming device. He was chewing gum double time. Thirty seconds left. Lieutenant Young in Nightwing with James, Rhinehart and her Skimmer, and he and Farsong would go through first, followed by a single Luddeccean LCS.
“‘Course you will, TAB,” Jerome said.
“Being in a Luddeccean fighter is interesting. But not as interesting as being plugged into you. It doesn’t dream or even enjoy flying. Don’t get you or your dreams blown up.”
“You either, Buddy,” Jerome said, touched, even though he was relieved not to have the AI “onboard,” making comments like, “Jerome, you have an inordinate amount of pictures of women’s feet. Is that normal?” while he was trying to enjoy said pictures of feet. It was hard to relax with TAB in his head.
“It doesn’t matter as much if I get blown up,” TAB replied. “I still have my server.”
TAB didn’t want to be just his server, and Jerome knew it, but the countdown was a second to one and—
“Now.” He wasn’t sure if the thought was Farsong’s or his. They were light, and they were solid again, the LCS just off their starboard, Nightwing just ahead of them both. Planet Zero was directly in front of them, shrouded in heavy clouds. There was no ether; all communications depended on James’s Q-comm and Farsong.
Farsong trembled, and Jerome saw into the clouds through his ship’s eyes. They concealed one of the Dark’s ships, maybe a fighter carrier, conventional, loaded with missiles that would infect the Skimmers, and guns that would take down LCSs, too. The mission was to keep the path clear for the other LCS; they’d need the combined firepower of more than one of the Luddeccean ships to blow up a singularity beam and clear a path for the Uriel. The Dark’s fighter carrier was a problem. “You seeing this, Volka?” He addressed her directly, knowing Farsong would send her his thoughts. “You share it with someone with ether.”
“Lower the cannons,” Jerome ordered, and they crashed into the clouds.
Solomon wasn’t with Alaric. The werfle had stayed behind in Time Gate 8, to help protect Luddeccea, and Alaric from his wild werfle bite if he should have to leave his body. Alaric’s shoulders felt too light as he leaned over the bridge’s holotable. It was showing a static rendition of Planet Zero.
“First Skimmer and LCS team is in.” The words were Volka’s, and not from the Uriel’s Q-comm connection to James. At that thought, the holo swirled, and he was looking at clouds above Planet Zero. Within the clouds, the shape of a ship shimmered in shadowy outlines.
“A fighter carrier,” Ko whispered. “Conventional at least … she’s decades old if she’s a day.”
Noa—Admiral Sato—was aboard the Skimmer Nightwing with James above Planet Zero. Her voice cut across the bridge through the Uriel’s Q-comm connection. Her words were clipped, as though each were a swear. “That’s System 3’s Dixmude. I’d recognize her anywhere. She was reportedly decommissioned due to lack of funding.” In the holo, shadowy fighters launched from the Dixmude. “She’ll have a complement of forty-three fighters if she is at full capacity.”
Alaric’s comm officer jumped. “Coordinates are in. The enemy is moving the singularity weapons. Sir, there is only a minute left before the gap closes for LCSs.”
Alaric’s eyes narrowed. There were other, narrower openings the Skimmers could slip through, but they would have to fight off anything they found at the other side of those openings alone.
“Sir,” Ko said. “Another gap may be less well defended.”
Or could be defended by the ships they’d engaged when they’d discovered the shipyard.
“Launch our LCS now,” Alaric ordered.
“Yes, sir!”
Alaric’s brow furrowed. They’d immediately be engaged by the enemy and would block the rest of the Skimmers from entering there … Hearing his thoughts, Volka said, “We’ll take the next gap to the south east and join the engagement from there.” … As soon as they could, was unsaid.
“The Skimmers are away, sir.”
Alaric reached up to his shoulder before he remembered that Solomon wasn’t there. The Skimmers were faster than any conventional ship and able to withstand conventional weapons, but not the Dark. Volka was brave, had fighting instincts, and she was resourceful, but her fighting instincts were honed on land. He wished he’d be able to see the battle, be able to do more than stand on the sidelines until the Uriel could free-gate into Planet Zero’s system. It wasn’t just desire to see the mission a success. For all that there was bitterness between them, he didn’t want Volka to die in this mess. “Take care of her, Little Ship.” Alaric wasn’t sure if he whispered or merely thought the sentiment, but the “I will!” must have only been in his mind.
Sundancer turned to light … and then was solid again just above Planet Zero. The remaining Skimmers were in Phalanx position just behind them.
“Take care of her, Little Ship.” Alaric’s words hung in Volka’s mind, even as she stared at a massive warship, silhouetted against Planet Zero’s glossy black waves.
The warship was rising toward them, but it was no matter. The Skimmers were too fast … she blinked. But it would follow them to the others. Would that be wise?
Her mind brushed Noa’s … but Noa was busy commanding the other ships.
Volka hesitated; the twelve Skimmers that had arrived with her were holding the equivalent of their breath, and her captains were, too. Sixty’s back was to her, silhouetted against the clouds, shoulders tense.
“Do we join the others or engage?” she asked the question aloud, and she asked Alaric.
Sixty put his hands against the hull. “Our phaser cannons aren’t going to do much about those.”
Alaric’s thoughts were in her mind
, fast and urgent. It was a Crimson-class cruiser; she knew all its vulnerabilities—useless to the Skimmers with their light weapons. She knew they could easily outrun it. She almost ordered her small group to join the others by the most direct means possible, but then Sixty said, “Chart a course to the others as fast as you can but cut above the shipyard.”
She blinked at him. “They’ll think that is our destination, and hopefully send their ships—”
To defend it, Volka didn’t hear him say. She was already giving orders to her Skimmers, sending them over the shipyard at speeds far past the speed of sound. If they convinced the Dark that was their destination, the Dark might send reinforcements there, taking the pressure off Noa as she battled to take down a singularity weapon.
Volka didn’t see the shipyard as they flashed above it. She saw only the battle looming ahead, in the eyes of the Skimmers and in the hearts and minds of her captains. She couldn’t have pulled her mind away from theirs; it was too natural to read their thoughts. As natural as defending herself in that first fateful fight aboard the Leetier.
The Dixmude was level with Young’s, Jerome’s, and Rhinehart’s Skimmers and eleven Luddeccean LCSs. It wasn’t even firing on them. It didn’t have to; the allies were completely surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered by the Dark’s fighters. The Skimmers were trying to keep the Dark’s phaser fire from striking the LCSs—but there were too many enemies. One of the LCSs had been winged badly and would have plummeted, had it been battling the full force of Planet Zero’s gravity. Volka didn’t mean to reach out and touch the mind of the captain in the injured ship, but she’d seen him in the briefings, she knew who he was … and she was inside his head in an instant. The ship couldn’t afford to lose much more altitude. She heard the captain’s voice in her head … “If we just keep our heads above water, we can do some good up here …” They still had torpedoes. They still had phaser cannons that outpowered the ones the Skimmers had. He was frightened. He was ashamed. He couldn’t lose this battle for his people. Not so early.
And Volka saw in Noa’s mind where her reinforcements needed to go. She had shied about controlling anyone, but now, with lives on the line, she found her mind leaping into the waves, pushing the twelve Skimmers she’d led from a half a planet away into the fray and forcing the ones in battle to make way in the same unconscious way she controlled her own hands, a small part of her whispering this is wrong … and yet not doing so would be like watching passively as your own hand was cut off … And then they had joined the fray, but the Dixmude had not. They had minutes to take down the Dixmude before the Crimson-class arrived.
“Lower the phaser cannons,” Volka ordered. Aboard the Skimmers, the order was enacted before the words had even left her lips.
Alaric sat in his seat on the Uriel. He was prepared to jump in an instant, but it had been hours since Volka’s Skimmers had joined the others. He watched the holo pensively. The Crimson-class had arrived. Worse, it was above the allied forces, protecting the singularity weapon above them. The cruiser was raining Dark weapons—a Skimmer had been caught—but it had spun around and a Luddeccean ship had fired phasers upon it, cauterizing the wound, as it were. One of the LCSs would soon be lost … not the one that had been hit early—the Nesher that had had issues with its Net-Drive. There’d been a fire in the ship, its electricals had been damaged, and it hadn’t been able to dodge the phaser fire of a small fighter that normally would have been only a nuisance. Alaric doubted the ship could free-gate, but she still had torpedoes and cannons, and the captain was resisting the urge to tell his crew to abandon ship—conceivably a few could be picked up by the Skimmers, or the Nesher might dock with the Uriel … if he could get there.
The allies were boxed in on all sides. There were too many fighters, and the Dixmude would be as difficult as the singularity beam itself to take out. Maybe more difficult. The Dark wasn’t using the singularity weapons in atmosphere as it had in System 33, perhaps because the atmosphere of the planet below was valuable to it. Unlike the Dixmude, the singularity weapon wasn’t firing on them. Because Time Gate 33, Trina, had sacrificed herself when she’d been transformed into a singularity weapon, the allies knew that singularity weapons were destructible. The Dixmude confirmed this by taking out every torpedo lobbed at the weapon. The allies had downed dozens of fighters, but another always took its place either from the Dixmude or rising from the planet’s atmosphere. That the allies hadn’t been wiped out already was testament to the Skimmers’ unusual speed and resilience to conventional weapons. They surrounded the LCS, deflecting most of the barrage both with their own phaser fire and their bodies. Still, they were losing.
The scene was piped in from a single viewpoint—James’s. Occasionally his friend would answer questions put to him by the priests. Occasionally …
“We have news from Atlantea,” his comm officer said.
… Occasionally, they got news from home. The Uriel, pride of the Luddeccean Fleet, had more than one Q-comm.
“A small pod of Infected managed to land—”
Alaric kept his face neutral. He had visited Atlantea, on official business only, of course. The moon was cold, its gravity was inconsequential, but there was water beneath the ice, and steam vents broke through the surface here and there. There was an old Republic colony, half submerged in an earthquake, that the Luddecceans had rebuilt, taking advantage of the Republic’s grav plating. It was primarily a military base, with some aquaculture for self-sufficiency. But the base was the former colony, and it was beautiful, even though it was half-submerged—a gleaming glass Venice in the glow of an immense orange giant.
Someone asked, “On the ice or in the water?”
Alaric forced himself to show no emotion. If the Dark got in the water, the colony, and all of Atlantea’s exotic underwater life, was doomed.
The comm officer shook his head. “No other information.”
“Data from System 11 says that an Infected pod reached the surface of the second planet,” a weere priest said, shoulders rising and falling. “Fortunately, it is uninhabited.”
Alaric didn’t point out that System 11 had been depending on that planet for aquaculture and agriculture. Odessa was too dry and its soil too poor, even after centuries of terraforming, to sustain all the denizens of System 11. Odessa would have to open its gates to the Republic, and then Infection was assured.
“The Skimmers can’t maintain this level of combat much longer,” Ko said. “They’ll be losing cannon charge soon.”
Alaric leaned on his elbow, and his hand formed a fist. They were losing … they would have lost later, rather than sooner if they had not attacked, but that didn’t alter the fact. Something had to change soon.
Something had to change soon. Volka felt it deep in her gut; the knowledge came from Alaric, Noa, Young, and Dr. Patrick.
Sixty was stretched out on the floor, hardlinked to the cannon, hands wrapped around its controls. Jumping from the floor, Sixty shouted suddenly, “Cannon’s been hit, still has charge, reel it in!”
Sundancer must have seen what he needed from Dixon’s head, because Sixty and Dixon began pulling the cannon, smoking and deformed, out of Sundancer’s hull. The bridge instantly stank of plastic and plasma fuel. Two members of her System 11 crew were already there with the replacement, and two more were ready to take the old one and salvage its charge.
Something had to change. She stared through Dr. Patrick’s eyes up at the Dixmude. A second later, her stomach clenched as a small drone slipped through his gunner’s defenses and exploded. Inky gray veins of Infection began to spread across Dr. Patrick’s ship’s hull.
“Take cover behind our line,” Volka ordered him.
Dr. Patrick let his ship slip beneath their line, rolling over so that a Luddeccean gunner could cauterize the Infected area, but that left two ships covering what had been covered by three.
Dr. Patrick thought, “I am the weakest link. My ship and I have the wrong instincts.” It wasn’t self
-pitying. It was unfortunately true. Dr. Patrick wasn’t a Marine. He had always been the voice of caution—and that caution, that instinct to think before striking, was what had drawn the last reluctant Skimmer to him. It was what made Dr. Patrick valuable in normal times, but it was the third time this had happened, and he’d let the phaser fire through that had damaged one of the LCSs. Volka kept those thoughts locked tight.
Dr. Patrick stared up at the Dixmude, watching the torpedoes and phasers launching from the Dark’s ship, studying their trajectories. His gaze fell heavy on the forward most hover engine.
He whispered to his ship, “Do you see any ships above the Crimson?”
“No,” his ship replied. “Above the Crimson-class cruiser is only the singularity weapon. There is no room for any other ships.”
“That was my thinking,” Dr. Patrick thought. He noted that only a few phaser shots had damaged the time bands along its sleek sides; they were mere scratches, and the torpedoes launched by the LCS at the Crimson-class had all been intercepted by fighters. They needed a different weapon.
… As soon as the thought had crossed his mind, he thought of one.
Volka saw what Dr. Patrick was thinking. “No, it will never work.”
“That ship has to go down,” Dr. Patrick thought. He thought of Earth, and of a place called Maine that was cold even in the summer, even when the sun was bright, and of a little cottage on the beach with walls so battered you could see light through them.
“The fighters can’t keep coming,” Volka argued.
“And yet they do,” Dr. Patrick said calmly. Not just from the Dixmude, but from the planet below.
“Don’t—” Volka’s eyes opened. Sixty was stretched out on the floor. He was hardlinked to the new phaser cannon. He didn’t look up at her. He couldn’t; torpedoes were being launched from the Dixmude, and he was concentrating on them.
“We might make it,” Dr. Patrick responded, not believing it was true. He was a man who didn’t believe in miracles. His ship was ready, he was ready, and he felt bad for his crew. Would he really do this to them?