The Expanding Universe 4: Space Adventure, Alien Contact, & Military Science Fiction (Science Fiction Anthology)

by Craig Martelle

  “You will fly me safely,” she said, and it was not a question, but a statement of fact.

  She looked at her mother.

  “It will be safe, and we do not have time to argue. Sselesteth wants us to care for her people.”

  At that, she looked up at the pilot she’d chosen.

  “It’s time to go.”

  To give him credit, the pilot looked to both Vaughn and Anlin, catching their brief nods of permission, before letting the child pull him towards his ship. As Talie returned her attention to the captain, she heard the sselestine’s bewildered question.

  “How did you know?”

  And Sasha’s inevitable response.

  “The ship told me.”

  She made it sound as though he should have known. Talie allowed herself a small smile as she followed the captain to his craft. Beneath her feet, the deck vibrated with suppressed power, and, in her mind, Sselesteth spoke.

  “I want no-one in range.”

  Talie didn’t have to ask ‘in range of what’; she knew—and it grieved her that she could not follow the ship on its final journey.

  “I will not allow it. Keep my people free.”

  And Sselesteth was gone. Talie tried to think of a way to thwart her without breaking her promise, and could not. She followed the captain into his craft, and buckled down. The hangar bay doors opened as soon as the canopy closed over them, and the small craft guided itself out into the dark. Talie didn’t try to touch it, not wanting to disrupt the pilot’s control.

  “No!”

  The sselestine captain’s startled denial made Talie look up in time to see him take his hands off the controls. Their ship turned agilely around them, taking them in a perfect trajectory to land at the colony’s small airfield.

  Curious, Talie tried to sense what the craft was doing. When she couldn’t, she tried to link to its control system, and found herself blocked.

  “She is controlling the descent,” the captain said, and his voice caught.

  He was silent until they had landed, touching down and running his craft over to where the colony’s small squadron was waiting. Once it had come alongside the human craft, the sselestine fighter unlocked its canopy, and shut down.

  Completely.

  Looking out across the airfield, Talie could see the rest of the sselestine’s fighters doing the same. Their pilots either sat in shock, or ran their hands over unresponsive panels. A closer look at the human craft saw their pilots doing the same. Talie was not alone in tapping the orbital’s feeds to see what happened when Sselesteth met the pirate squadron.

  To Talie’s surprise, the pirates did not try to take the mother ship out of the sky. From what the colony satellites could collect, they demanded the ship’s surrender, and took the slow in her advance as compliance. Collins’s arrogance was breathtaking.

  He ordered his fleet to surround the ship, not questioning why Sselesteth might choose to allow it. Only Kaskali’s Fire hung back, its captain voicing the need for caution. He was silent when Collins threatened to remove his cut of the profits for sselestine technology—silent, but still suspicious.

  It was not enough to save him.

  Sselesteth allowed the first shuttles to dock as the fleet surrounded her—and then she enacted the only plan that would guarantee the survival of both the colony and her own people. She exploded into a multitude of incremental shards, dying in progressive layers as she sent waves of debris tearing through the enemy fleet.

  All around her ships were torn apart, and Collins’s attack was halted.

  Talie’s shocked cry joined the horror voiced by all who saw it. Her tears were not the only ones to fall. She did not try to speak to the others as she descended from the cockpit. Nor did she acknowledge the sselestine captain as he called to her, when she ran for an empty fighter.

  He was not the only one she ignored.

  She was lifting back into the stratosphere, in a craft newly free of Sselesteth’s control, as the first pilot taxied out to follow her. She stopped to at the space station long enough to refuel, before heading into the slowly expanding debris field, her speed locked to slow, and her shields on full.

  When fatigue and low fuel forced her back, she made it clear she was going out again.

  “There might be survivors,” she said.

  “The scans show no life,” the station’s observation unit told her.

  “I still need to fly it,” she told them. “Please.”

  “Do you have a reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “Either put me out, or let me go,” she’d challenged, and both Vaughn and her current husband, Grant, had stepped in.

  “Let her go.”

  In the end, Dianne had been called in. Talie didn’t know what she would have done, if the colony leader had denied her, but Dianne had caught her eye, and nodded.

  “Let her go. I’m sure the captain will explain when she’s ready.”

  ‘The captain’ had no intention of explaining. She didn’t need to be told there was no hope Sselesteth had survived, but the possibility haunted her, nagging at the depths of her mind. Talie handed her duties of integrating the sselestine to Anlin and Sasha, although neither would speak to her—and then she flew back into the field.

  She would not explain why she insisted on flying through it. She acknowledged the chances of finding any survivors were next to nil, but said she’d like to try. In truth, there was only one survivor she wanted to find, one mother, in all the debris field, that she needed to reach before they brought in the ships to clear it.

  She’d been searching for close to a fortnight, aware of the message traffic between the colony and Coalition Central, when the fleet controller met her as she prepared to leave on another foray. Talie quickly salute the woman, and went to keep walking, but the controller laid a hand on her shoulder, halting her in her tracks.

  “Whatever it is you’re trying to find out there, Steron, you need to find it today. The clearance ships jump in during the next shift, and start in the morning.”

  Talie felt her face freeze, and struggled to hide her alarm. Judging from the controller’s expression, she didn’t do a very good job of it. Still, she tried for gracious, although more anxious to launch.

  “Thank you, controller.”

  The controller let go of her, but kept in step with her as she crossed the deck. To Talie’s surprise, there were several other figures moving towards the section where the small fighters stood. She glanced at the controller, but the woman said nothing—until everyone had converged on Talie’s craft.

  At that point, the controller turned and looked Talie in the eye.

  “So, spill, Captain. What exactly are you looking for, and how can we help you find it?”

  Talie sucked in a sharp breath, and met the controller’s eye, and then let her gaze shift out to the twenty men and women squeezed into the space between her chosen craft and the next. She shook her head, and went to climb into the cockpit, but the controller grabbed her arm.

  “They won’t let you launch until I say so—and I say we’re all in this together. You’ve covered most of the debris field, but you won’t cover what’s left, alone—not in the time you need. And I don’t think you’ll come in until you find what you’re after, and I don’t want to see you court-martialed just before you retire. I, we respect you too much for that.”

  She gestured to the folk gathered around them, and Talie recognized that all the pilots, both sselestine and human, were present, and that the hangar space was more crowded than she remembered.

  “What are you looking for?”

  Talie swallowed down the lump in her throat, and willed the tears prickling her eyes to stop. From the look on the controller’s face, she meant what she said, and the other pilots were crowding close.

  “We’re here to help,” said an all-too-familiar voice, and Talie recognized Grant as he stepped around the side of her craft. “If it’s important to you, it�
��s important to all of us. We’ve known you long enough to know that.”

  Talie sighed.

  Grant didn’t often interfere, but when he did, he was as bull-headed as she was.

  “Fine,” she said, and hurried on before she could change her mind. “I’m looking for Sselesteth.”

  Grant’s jaw dropped, his expression was echoed by twenty other faces.

  “The sselestine mother ship?” He paused, staring at her as she nodded, then added, “As in, the ‘I’ll blow myself up and save the day sselestine mother ship?”

  Talie nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “As in the one thing our daughter and granddaughter will never forgive you for?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Well F—”

  “Grant!”

  He blushed and shook his head.

  “Count me in,” he said. “That old girl and I need to talk.”

  The controller rolled her eyes.

  “You got a picture or something you can send to the rest of our implants so we know what we’re looking for?” she asked.

  Talie obliged.

  “Here.”

  She waited until they’d all received what she’d sent, and then shrugged free of the controller’s hand.

  “If you don’t mind. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  The controller’s next words made her pause.

  “What makes you so sure it’s this?”

  “What do you think it could be?”

  “You could try, this, too,” and the controller sent a frequency distortion.

  Grant groaned.

  “You better hope we find it in this last section, or we’re never getting her out, until she’s checked the rest of it for that signal.”

  The controller turned to face him.

  “We don’t find it in the last section, and your wife will have company.”

  It was a promise, one echoed by the twenty or so throats gathered around them—and it was all Talie needed to hear.

  “Let’s go,” she said, and sent them search quadrants; there was no point doubling up.

  No time either.

  They were still searching as the cleaners arrived, refusing to surrender the field, until they were done…

  … or it would have been until they were done, if Talie hadn’t felt a familiar presence brush her implant.

  She cut her engines, coming to a slow halt, as she reached for the presence once, again.

  “Sselesteth?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “To find you.”

  “You promised to care for my people.”

  Talie located the source of the signal Sselesteth was using to reach her implant.

  “I am.”

  A small piece of debris spun helplessly in the void, and Talie maneuvered, until she brushed it with her shields.

  “But you are here. Who speaks for them on your world?”

  Talie dropped the shield long enough to nudge the debris piece with her hull.

  “Anlin and Sasha carry out my duty.”

  She grunted as she slammed the shields back into place, trapping the piece against her hull. Sselesteth didn’t seem to notice.

  “So, you have broken your promise.”

  Slowly, Talie eased her fighter towards the field’s edge, almost holding her breath, as she left the area where she’d first heard Sselesteth’s voice.

  “No, Mother. I am fulfilling it the best way I can.”

  “And how is that?”

  Talie breathed, again. Sselesteth’s signal was as strong as it had been inside the field. Her ship showed it moving with her as she flew. Turning back towards the orbital, Talie signaled the recall to the rest of her small fleet. To her relief, Sselesteth travelled with her, her voice just as strong, if not more insistent.

  “How do you fulfil it, when you are out here, and they are alone?”

  “By returning their mother, so she can be with them for as long as she can.”

  Author C.M. Simpson

  I grew up in the far flung Australian towns of Mount Isa, Alice Springs, Bowen and Mosmen, with a few places in between, and learned early the joys of reading. With the likes of Andre Norton, Douglas Hill, Anne McCaffrey, John Christopher, Alan Dean Foster, and Harry Harrison, for company, it's not surprising that I love a good story, especially one that explores a far-flung future, many stars away. You can find me at: https://cmsimpson.blogspot.com/

  Alaska’s Vengeance

  By J. L. Stowers

  It should have been a simple rescue mission, but when an enemy vessel packing heat and a major grudge intercepts the warship Alaska's Vengeance, it's up to Captain Dani Devereaux and her crew to outsmart and outlast their ruthless adversary.

  “Brace for impact!” Captain Dani Devereaux called out. The guns on the massive enemy Vaerian ship let loose another barrage of white energy blasts. The attack was in sync with an assault from a dozen single-pilot fighter ships.

  Alaska’s Vengeance shuddered as shots made contact with the already weakened shields. Dani relaxed her white-knuckled grip on her console and raised her hand to the communications device in her ear. “Peterson, anytime now would be great.”

  “We’re doing the best we can out here, Captain. These fighters are better than any others we’ve encountered.”

  Dani watched as Peterson’s red-tailed fighter zipped around the Vaerian destroyer in pursuit of the quick fighter ships. Her own ship focused fire on the enemy’s primary weapons system, the yellow-hued shields lighting up as the attack made contact. The destroyer’s guns began to glow again as they charged for another attack.

  Dani veered Alaska’s Vengeance away from the weapons mounted on top of the enemy ship and dipped beneath it.

  “Now we’re talking!” Jag shouted from the right side of the bridge as he fired the remote-linked weapons into the underbelly of the ship. “Their shields have got to be about shot.”

  “Our shields are down to eighteen percent; theirs are estimated around the same,” Cassia alerted the crew.

  “I’m going to swing around for another drive-by,” Dani said as she banked the Galactic Conglomerate ship and angled it back toward the destroyer for another pass. “Hit it with all you’ve got, Jag.”

  “My pleasure,” he replied as Alaska’s Vengeance’s weapons systems began to hum with power.

  Dani could almost hear the grin in his voice as he called out, but she didn’t dare look away. The battle had gone on far longer than she was used to. Typically Vaerians came in with guns blazing and little regard for their own safety. This battleship was a different story. Instead of fully powering weapons, they diverted a fair amount of energy to their shields, a rare move for the GC’s long-standing enemy.

  “Cruz, how much longer before our backup is here?” It wasn’t in Dani’s nature to shy away from a fight, but her orders were to come to the defense of the Denver, a nearby Galactic Conglomerate warship on the verge of being overpowered. They hadn’t expected to come in contact with an elite Vaerian destroyer as soon as they dropped out of hyperdrive.

  The ding of a bell from Cruz’s station drove Dani’s eyes to the graphics display, where a countdown timer now appeared. Dani frowned. Help was too far out. She had to end this now.

  “Woodworth is down, Captain,” Peterson announced over the comm.

  “Keep on those fighters; we’ll handle the destroyer. You worry about your men, Peterson.”

  “You got it.”

  Peterson and his squadron whipped past Alaska’s Vengeance, chasing the agile Vaerian fighters as Jag fired another round at the battleship’s shields. As soon as they were out from beneath the Vaerian ship, it fired on them again, causing alarms to sound.

  “That one took us down to twelve percent,” Cassia announced. “By my calculations they should be around ten or so.”

  “Drop our shields down to five percent and divert the power to weapons. It’s now or never.”

  The border on Da
ni’s console flashed red as Cassia lowered the shields to critical levels. She circled her ship around, quickly diving under the destroyer that was easily three times larger than Alaska’s Vengeance. Jag fired upon the enemy once more, the orange shields taking the brunt of the energy blasts before the last burst from the guns on Alaska’s Vengeance made contact with the hull of the destroyer itself.

  “Yes!” Jag shouted, pumping his fist into the air as a small explosion erupted near the Vaerian ship’s engines.

  “Bringing us around again. Finish her off, Jag,” Dani ordered as they completed another run beneath the enemy.

  Before she could bank for another pass, the swarm of Vaerian fighters dove at them from their position above the destroyer. Peterson and his pilots were hot on their tails, firing at the one-man ships. The energy blasts from the GC ships converged on the lead fighter, which was gunning straight for Alaska’s Vengeance. The small Vaerian craft burst apart, sections of debris exploding outward. A second Vaerian fighter flew into the debris field and lost control of the craft after a wing was sheared off by a large fragment of twisted metal.

  The damaged fighter barrel-rolled behind Alaska’s Vengeance, then slammed into the engines before Dani could maneuver out of the way. An explosion tore through the aft section of Alaska’s Vengeance, the vibrations echoing across the ship. On the bridge, the power flickered before going out completely. Not a moment later, the emergency reserve power was up, powering only vital systems and emergency lighting.

  “Shit!” Dani yelled and hit her mostly darkened console with the heel of her hand.

  “The destroyer is powering primary weapons,” Cassia warned.

  Dani clenched her jaw. They were so close. A quick glance at the display of the ship’s systems confirmed her fear. The explosion had knocked their shields and weapons out, and reserve power was only enough to provide life support and communications. She hesitated momentarily before overwriting the power systems to drop life support to minimum function to divert power to the shields. If help arrived when it was supposed to, then they wouldn’t need long-term life support anyway. And if not, well, they’d be dead anyway.

  “Brace for impact,” Dani announced to the ship once more. She bit the inside of her cheek, hoping the shields would take the brunt of the attack, but instead of emitting a blast of energy from their weapons system, an explosion occurred aboard the alien ship.