“Do you think it’s the invaders?” Pierce said.
“I’m hopin’ someone just spilled some coffee all over the communication equipment,” Foster said as cold sweating ensued.
“We are minutes away from the wormhole, Captain,” EVE said. “Do you wish to change course?”
“Might be a wise choice,” Tolukei said. “Allow your military to investigate first, and determine if it’s safe for us to venture in.”
“EVE, is the UNE aware of the situation?” Foster said.
“All UNE vessels stationed in the Sirius system have their QECs linked with the system’s central QEC relay,” EVE explained. “If said relay is down, those ships will be unable to signal for help during an invader strike, only their psionics. With that said, there is no mention of a telepathic SOS anywhere within UNE communications channels. Please bear in mind if the ships in Sirius are engaged in combat, shipboard psionics will be overtasked with their duties to send an interstellar telepathic message. Nearby UNE ships are preparing to investigate, however.”
“How long would it take for them to arrive?”
“Most ships have been redeployed to Earth in the aftermath of the invader’s attack,” EVE said. “A fleet leaving now would arrive in Sirius in approximately twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours . . . and we’s minutes away,” Foster said, and watched as the enormous space wormhole built for ships increased in size via the view screen.
“Not to mention the fastest ship,” Pierce added.
Foster made her decision. “Stay on course, EVE.”
“Understood, Captain.”
“Let Saressea know we’s might be headin’ for a bumpy ride.”
The Johannes Kepler crossed through the wormhole, hurling it out of the Wolf 359 system, into the Sirius system. Ship wide sensors failed to pick up anything out of the ordinary at first. Tolukei’s ESP, however, guided them to a disturbance within the system. One that existed just below a debris field that was once a space station and the home of the Sirius primary QEC relay. As Foster feared, every single UNE ship was engaged in combat, with its largest concentration of ships fighting before the clouds of the maelstrom, which appeared in orbit around New Babylon, the Poniga homeworld.
The light emitted from the maelstrom shined a dark reddish hue onto the bridge and its crew as they approached it and the battling UNE ships in opposition of invader ships at high FTL speeds.
“It’s the same fleet we encountered, isn’t it?” Pierce said.
Foster nodded. “It’s just one maelstrom, thankfully.”
“So, a one-sided battle?”
She recalled the Carl Sagan’s last moments in space, back when the invaders first arrived in Sol and obliterated half of the UNE fleet stationed there. It was just one invader fleet, pitted against multiple Earth fleets. Sirius, as expected, was going to have smaller numbers to defend it, now more so than ever as other fleets were recalled to fortify the defense of Earth. And the nearest fleet is twelve hours away? There’s no way they’ll hold out that long without backup.
The only saving grace that could be seen was the fact that the wormhole hadn’t been annexed like the one in Kapteyn’s Star. Civilians on Terra Nova could flee on transports, though their window of opportunity to do so was closing with each second. The lack of evacuation transports on the sensors didn’t help put her mind at ease, nor the small group of invader capital ships en route to Terra Nova according to Tolukei. If Terra Nova and New Babylon fell, so did the other worlds within the system.
And if Karma was truly the bitch it always was, Foster stood to lose her mother for eternity since her previous actions resulted in Chevallier losing hers.
“Where do we begin?” Pierce said.
“We ain’t got no idea where Williams and Chang are right now,” Foster said.
“But if they’s still on the planet, then we’s gotta buy ‘em enough time to escape. Take us to the fight, EVE; let’s give the UNE a hand.”
“Understood, Captain.”
The Kepler pushed through space at its high FTL speeds, nearing the clouds of the maelstrom and the scorched world of New Babylon. The shields of UNE battleships sparkled in unison with the thunderbolts coming from the clouds. Foster felt the tattoos across her body react and glow brighter the closer they approached the battle and the maelstrom that fed more and more invader ships into the system.
“Captain, I sense there’s activity on the surface,” Tolukei said.
Foster looked at the hot volcanic planet adorned with blue domes that housed the indigenous population. “Well, it is the Poniga homeworld . . .” she said drily.
“I mean beyond the domes that houses their people,” Tolukei said. “I sense a transport . . . and psionic activity.”
Tolukei sent a holographic overlay from his station over to the view screen, highlighting a region of the surface of the planet that was just below the source of the maelstrom, opposite of them. Foster faced EVE. “What do you got?”
“Nothing at the moment, Captain, please be aware the navigation point Tolukei has provided us is on the direct opposite side of the planet, our scans will not be able to get a clear reading from our current position.”
“And that side of the planet is where the action is, we’d have a decent fight on the way down to find it,” Foster said. “EVE, I know the ‘V’ in your name stands for versatile, but are you adept enough to fly this across the surface of the planet to the navigation point?”
“Standby,” EVE said as her face twitched briefly. “Yes, Captain, I am now able to do so. Do you wish for us to descend?”
“Yes, EVE, take us down now when ready.”
The Johannes Kepler appeared in orbit around New Babylon as it exited from FTL and dove down toward the surface of the planet, utilizing its ability and small size for atmosphere flight—or lack of it in the case of New Babylon. Numerous domes of the planet’s surface passed below the low-flying Johannes Kepler on its course to the navigation point at the opposite end of the planet experiencing daylight and the storms of the maelstrom.
“Wait . . .” Foster said slowly to EVE. “What do you mean, now?”
“To complete your request, Captain, I needed to download and install an update,” EVE said with her hands behind her back, remotely operating the Johannes Kepler. “It is now part of my programming; I have general knowledge of operation of this ship while flying near the surface of a planet.”
Leaving flight of a ship in the hands of an AI was one thing, leaving it in the hands of one that had to download and install an update in order to do it made Foster’s face grow stiff with worry, the same kind of worry both Pierce and Tolukei possessed as they learned of the risky situation they were in.
“Err . . . so what you’re saying is, this is your first time?” Foster asked EVE.
“That is correct, Captain, the tasks I have performed since my activation have been limited to modifying computer hardware, data analysis, assisting in engineering, and preparing citrus tea for Saressea before she goes to sleep.”
“So, you’ve never done this before,” Pierce said to confirm what he overheard. “And you needed to download an update on how to pull it off in the first place.”
“That is correct, Doctor Pierce,” EVE said to him. “This will be an interesting experience as the software update is still in its beta testing stage.”
“Tolukei, you got the overshields active, right?” Foster hastily asked him.
“Yes, Captain, we are prepared for combat,” Tolukei said.
“Combat is the least of my worries right now.”
The maelstrom appeared over the horizon, eclipsing the sunlight from Sirius while the Johannes Kepler closed the distance between it and the navigation point. Foster eyed one of the domes off to the side as they flew past it. It brought back memories of a time she and her team had been trapped inside one, trying to get out to regroup with the Carl Sagan.
“Nereid . . .” Tolukei blurted out. “I feel her mind down
here; she must be the one in the transport.”
When Foster last checked, Nereid was on her way to be deported to her homeworld of Meroien elsewhere within the Sirius system. “Are you sure?” Foster asked Tolukei.
“Yes, I have spent many hours training her mind, this is her, and she is in distress.” Tolukei updated the holographic navigation point on the view screen. “She is beyond those hills, we must hurry.”
EVE’s ability to remotely fly the ship brought them to hover above the hills in question. The view screen switched to a view directly below them, via its external cameras. Wyverns hovered around a transport, a transport of Hashmedai design from what Foster could tell, and from what EVE’s scans revealed. In between the two was a glowing psionic protective dome with two or three figures inside, it was hard to tell with the colorful rippling effect and their distance. The wyverns tilted their heads up at the Johannes Kepler, as it idled above them. Their wings began to flap, their jaws lowered, most likely to roar as they took to the skies.
“EVE, do you have to download and install an update to teach you how to engage in combat with this ship?” Foster asked.
“No, Captain, that has been preloaded into my matrix,” EVE said.
Foster grinned. “Then let’s push ‘em away.”
The wyverns swarmed the Johannes Kepler from all angles, unleashing a relentless barrage of tachyon beams from those fitted with cybernetics, waves of plasma breath attacks, or kamikaze dive-bombs, all of which caused Tolukei’s psionic overshield to ripple rapidly. EVE acquired targets quickly with her quantum computing and released a steady burst of slugs from the two forward rail guns.
The wyverns that got hit exploded with bloody results when high velocity rounds traveling at near-light speeds shredded their bodies. Tolukei assisted in the battle by using his telekinetic mind to control the rapidly fired slugs, forcing the shots that missed to turn around, come back and try again to hit their target. Wyverns that got too close to the Johannes Kepler, either intentionally due to a dive-bomb attempt or accident, were flicked away by Tolukei’s thoughts.
The skies became clear of all wyverns after the Johannes Kepler made its third and final circle around the action zone, leaving behind mangled wings, bullet-ridden bodies of wyverns, and chunks of their flesh and blood painting the flaming hellish lands below.
“All hostile forces have been eliminated, Captain,” EVE said.
Foster felt like cheering but knew the battle was far from over. There was still a fleet of invader ships directly above in orbit, more than capable of sending more wyverns down, and more than capable of directing their tachyon cannons to the surface to finish the job.
They needed to act quickly.
“Set us down someplace safe,” Foster directed EVE.
“Searching for suitable landing space now.”
It took EVE’s processors four seconds to scan the landscape and locate a suitable landing area for the Johannes Kepler, one that would keep it close to the Hashmedai transport and the psionic barrier outside of it, where Nereid supposedly was. Landing thrusters outside the Johannes Kepler fired, allowing the ship to quickly, but safely, come to a landing eight meters away from the transport. Its landing gear deployed and worked as legs to keep the ship steady when it touched down on the burning and radioactive surface.
The forward view screen updated, zooming in on the transport. Its main doors had opened, and Foster saw what looked like Nereid using a psionic bubble to protect four other personnel, two of those personnel needed to be carried.
Foster leaped out of her chair and headed for the bridge’s exit. “Let’s give ‘em a hand. EVE, have Doctor Kostelecky meet me in the cargo hold.”
The entry ramp of the Johannes Kepler lowered, its shield and overshield prepared to iris and allow the fleeing five to escape danger in the form of invader reinforcements from the skies above, Foster guessed. Though their panicked faces suggested something else was out there lurking. Foster charged into the cargo hold while Kostelecky stood behind her with medical instruments in hand as the epic rescue unfolded.
The three running bodies, carrying the bodies of two others, ran past the two layers of shields outside the ship and marched up the ramp. Nereid, Chang, and Chef Bailey? Foster had to give him a double take, but it looked like him, rugged and dressed like a monk, but it was him. Williams and Rivera were the two that needed to be carried in. Their bodies dropped onto the floor unresponsive, though Williams made a subtle grunt while he went to crawl back to his feet. How, and why, they all ended up together outside the barrier domes of the planet, was a question to be asked later.
“Becca,” Williams said to Foster, huffing and puffing. “We got to get out of here, now.”
“Gonna be getting ready for takeoff in a few, what’s wrong?—”
Everything became a chaotic mess, interrupting Foster in the process. The still-open entrance to the ship and lowered entry ramp became a liability. Blue ribbons of psionic light danced past her into the cargo hold materializing the femme fatale figure of the Dragon Maiden, armed with her glowing Voelika.
Foster took one step toward their intruder and paid the price with a bash across her face from its staff weapon. She assumed everyone else inside suffered the same fate, if not worse, when she heard a torrent of violent thumps and cargo boxes hurl through the air, no doubt by a telekinetic mind.
Foster’s head spun around as she came to, and her wrist wiped a trickle of blood that dripped from her nose. The bodies of everyone she had stood with seconds earlier were on the floor, slumped up against the wall, or on top of a cargo crate. The Dragon Maiden stood up top of the second-level balcony within the cargo hold, irritating Foster’s ears with heckling laughter, and then retreated into the nearby corridor.
Foster ascended up the ladder to the upper deck and charged after her.
There was no time to call for help, not without a working intercom, which EVE hadn’t gotten around to installing. Whatever the Dragon Maiden had planned to do, it involved the deck the two were on as it pushed deeper and deeper toward the rear end of the ship via the corridors. Odelea was still in her lab, Saressea was in engineering. They were both at risk and they both had HNI.
The Dragon Maiden forced open the doors of the lab with its mind. Odelea was its target, Odelea who had been studying the captured Dragon Knight. Odelea was seconds away from experiencing its wrath once it saw what she had done.
Foster charged into the lab tackling the armored Dragon Maiden from behind, plowing their bodies to the floor. She heard it growl and curse in its language seconds before it leaped to its feet with haste, haste that was greater than Foster’s.
Foster made her second strike against the intruder, ramming her fists across its armored face. It hurt Foster a lot more than it hurt the Dragon Maiden, but she refused to give up. Punches and kicks were dished out by Foster, none of which seemed to have any effect. The Dragon Maiden used its Voelika to deflect Foster’s second and third wave of hand-to-hand attacks, then used it to sweep her legs out when she went for another kick.
Foster saw the ceiling as her head hit the floor, and admired how slick its design was, including its lighting fixtures, there wasn’t a single pipe in sight—
In came the Dragon Maiden with its raised Voelika, blocking out the imagery of the ceiling, ready to bludgeon Foster’s face. She rolled her body away from the blow and cringed at the loud thump the weapon made as it crashed into the floor where her face had just been. A psionic pull ended Foster’s dramatic escape, yanking her body to stand before the Dragon Maiden, a body that was sent spiraling back to the ground with a right hook delivered via the end of the Voelika. That end being the part of the staff that was decorated with a solid figure of a dragon, the pointy corners from the figure sent painful stinging pains into Foster’s head.
Foster’s vision became distorted. She crawled across the floor, hoping it was taking her away from the armored vixen behind her. She heard its footsteps clang behind, it wasn’t done
with her.
It stood behind her, or was it to the side? Foster’s spinning head couldn’t tell. Foster heard the Dragon Maiden raise its weapon upward. She heard strange sounds and then felt the weight of an unwanted and heavy object crash onto her.
Foster’s vision faded away. A small pool of blood formed next to her body.
40 Peiun
Rezeki’s Rage
Paryo orbit, Uemaesce system
August 12, 2118, 17:40 SST (Sol Standard Time)
There were four space wormholes close to Amicitia Station 14. One led into UNE space, another, and most controversial one, led to the Morutrin system, another led to Aervounis, the capital of Radiance, while the last took travelers, such as the Rezeki’s Rage, through it into the Uemaesce system, the location of Paryo and the capital of the Empire.
The Rezeki’s Rage, as instructed by its Empress, entered orbit around the frozen homeworld of the Hashmedai race. Several of its major cities were blackened and bore the scars of war from the recent invader attacks. Such devastation was something the Hashmedai people worked tirelessly over the centuries to prevent Radiance and the UNE from having the satisfaction of doing. If only we knew of the invader’s existence beforehand . . . Peiun’s thoughts echoed as he watched his wounded homeworld rotate on the view screen.
One of the many space bridges in high orbit around Paryo appeared over the horizon. They were moderately sized and staffed space stations outfitted with the Empire’s most advanced psionic amplification technology. The Rezeki’s Rage made its approach past spinning hulks of ships that were once part of the mighty Imperial fleet, coming to a full stop ahead of the designated space bridge as swarms of medical transports slipped past the battered frigate.
Whatever the Empress has planned for us, it better be a simple task. This ship can’t take much more. “We’re here, what does she want?” Peiun bellowed.
Celestial Incursion (Edge of the Splintered Galaxy Book 1) Page 38