by R. M. Miller
******
Pilot had never felt the amount of mental anguish bleeding over the link, desperately it tried to disengage. Almost it managed the feat, but not quite fast enough to avoid being dragged into unconsciousness along with Tara.
“Pilot? Can you respond?” it took Pilot a moment to identify the voice as Ship Medic's.
“What has happened?” It came out as a barely understandable croak.
“You experienced feed back from the up-link. We are currently drifting, the ship is running on emergency power. Scans of the ship-mind indicate that it has not been damaged badly although it has suffered minor bleeding inside its cranial cavity. The support systems have already stemmed the bleeding and relieved the pressure to prevent further damage.” Ship Medic was concise in her report of the critical details.
“Am I good to attempt an up-link?” It was still groggy but they needed to get back underway soon if they did not want to be left behind by the fleet.
“You have been unresponsive for the last half shift. Ship Master initiated a full system check immediately following the incident, it should finish shortly. He will demand you up-link as soon as they have ensured that the ship has been undamaged. So whether or not you are safely capable of up-linking does not matter, I am curious though...what caused the difficulty?”
“The ship-mind felt the deaths of every proto ship-mind on the planet. It was completely unexpected and as such I was unable to prevent the damage.”
“The extra neural links and data collectors I suppose, this is an unexpected development. Will you be able to proceed with the fleet to the next target system?”
“Now that we know what will happen I should be able to mitigate future occurrences.” At least Pilot hoped they would, the echoes of the death screams still reverberated through its mind. They had to continue on the path chosen for them but Pilot was unsure if they would survive, mentally survive, another incident like this one. Hopefully Tara would be able to shield the mental screams out, because they had to destroy many more worlds before this war would be over.
Chapter 4
'Star Eater', Vree'na Colony, 2921 A.D
Tara was still riding the high that navigating hyperspace created, but even so she knew that this would be the last time she did it. Pilot had told her that this was the very last remnant of the Vree'na species, except for the ones still chained to the Tri'Let battleships. It had whispered that this would be the last world they would have to destroy, Tara wanted to believe that she really did but unfortunately data gathered from various way stations disagreed with Pilot. Once this final shred of the Vree'na species was obliterated the Tri'Let high command intended to find her species home world and any colonies that existed, then wipe them out of existence as well. She didn't think they were doing it out of malice, no their reasons were even worse. The Tri'Let saw every other species in the universe as either things to be used or threats to be destroyed, and Tara had no intention of allowing them to use her as their weapon of choice to accomplish their goals. She already had billions of innocent alien deaths on her soul, she didn't see a reason not to add a few billion guilty ones to go with them, after all she was already damned for the innocents adding the guilty couldn't tarnish her soul anymore than it already was. She had only been waiting this long for the neural links to her weapon systems to finish growing, the regular weapons had finished well before the singularity generator but now even that was finished. The only thing Tara would regret was Pilot's death, but they both knew it was already dying. Over the last year the neural degradation had accelerated rapidly, even if she wasn't planning on killing the crew today, Pilot wouldn't last another week.
Pilot pauses perhaps as it hears the alarms ringing through the ship as the atmosphere is blasted out into space.
e managed the heavy lifting in the decision making area.
In the distance the attack fleet rammed into the last ragged dregs of the Vree'na combat ships, a few of them may not have even been combat ships but they still stood their ground. Instead of trying to reverse course and having to decelerate before being able to start back towards the battle Tara used the only gas giant in the system as a pivot for a slingshot maneuver, keeping her speed while changing her trajectory. She rocketed through the dark towards the raging fight, she had to catch them bunched. If she didn't there was almost no possibility of her surviving the encounter. She had one chance to use her main armament to destroy the entire fleet, if she missed they would hunt her down and destroy her. Or even worse they would run and tell the Tri'Let high command that she had gone rogue, she had to catch them all or everything she had done would be for nothing. Her drive was red lined driving her faster towards the fight, three quarters of the way there she started decelerating at a rate that would have killed her crew if any of them had been alive to endure its crushing power. Only two of the Vree'na ships remained as she lined up for her shot, she had been charging the singularity device to ensure it was ready to be fired the instant she had a shot. The battle was amazingly compact for what amounted to a ginormous dog fight using multiple ton space ships instead of small planes, it was a lucky break for her since she had seen similar battles spread over thousands of kilometers. She was still traveling at thousands of kilometers per hour as she overshot the battle twisting her trajectory to fire off the singularity at the capital ship nearest to the center of the dog fight, another twist to face her forward and she was red lining her drives again to out run the back blast from the black hole collapsing. The shot was nearly perfect, a few ships on the edge of the battle escaped the initial effects of the micro black hole but were shortly turned into blasted and burning hulks as the singularity collapsed in an explosion driving the pieces of ships not completely destroyed to fly out like hammers from an irate god. Debris riding in her wake caused her a momentary issue as she danced around the nearly light speed projectiles, they had more then enough velocity to deal major damage to anything they managed to impact or to travel to other solar systems. After the debris field had blasted past her she began decelerating back towards the impact site to see if any of the ships had survived enough to continue the fight or make a run for it.
******
Tara had planned on asking the Vree'na to provide her with a new pilot, but that plan had gone out the window when debris from the battle struck the colony world in multiple places. The colonists had survived, well at least she thought they had, but they were obviously not going to be able to send a new pilot up with the space port catching one of those direct hits. She had realized another problem during the three months holding station over the planet, she couldn't speak or understand their language. So here she was unable to take the fight to the Tri'Let, she needed a pilot to travel hyperspace and at the moment she was fresh out of pilot candidates. So she set her systems to standby, let the upgrades she had figured out be installed and took what was equivalent to a nap, maybe when she woke up something new might present itself.
TFS Courser, Vree'na Colony, 2922 A.D
“So how many systems will this make?” Chief Sherman asked leaning back in her chair running her hands through her totally out of regulation hip length scarlet red hair.
“Eighteen freaking systems and another ten before we're home. If those aliens are out here I will personally kick their sorry asses to kingdom come!” Captain Jones was a gruff late middle aged man with steel gray hair, pale icy eyes, and a craggy lived in face the perfect image of a respectable Captain.
“Now, now, just because they dragged us off an almost complete colony survey to go E.T. chasing doesn't mean we should take it out on the aliens skipper.” Chris chastised, it was after all the job of a ship executive officer to keep the captain and crew on course.
“Sure XO, of course if they hadn't destroyed that slow ship colony right after they had a survey ship through we wouldn't be eating emergency rations and drinking water that has been recycled a thousand times already either.” the fourth member of the crew was present only by an open communication channel since he was as usual buried in engineering making sure the ship continued to function as designed, mostly as designed at least.
“Scotty? Do you have to remind us of those facts?” Sherman groaned, Petty Officer Tyrone Scotty was as dark as Sherman was fair with skin two shades lighter then the darkness of outer space, jet black hair and dark brown eyes he was also currently engaged in an illegal affair with the Chief. Those kinds of things happened when you spent almost four years on what should have been a two, maybe two and a half, year tour.
“Um...Skipper? I think I got something, unless I'm much mistaken someone got into a pounding match in this system. Can we pop forward a light month?” Sherman had been less than pleased when the Captain had decided to drop out of subspace two light months from any system before moving deeper in, now it seemed judging from her tone she was relieved he had made that particular call. The jump of a light month only took a few minutes and they found themselves bombarded by radiation in various forms to include light from what had been an epic battle.
“What ever happened there is long over Chief, can you give us any details from here?” Chris asked as he pulled up readings from the various sensors,
“Well, I don't think any of the ships involved in that battle left the system boss. From the amount of radiation starting to hit the shielding I would say most of them ended up as space dust. To get more than that we will have to enter the system.” she replied moving through various floating holograms to combine and separate details from the background hash of radiation.
“XO get us to the edge of the system, we'll scan for more information prior to moving in any closer.” the Captain may have been as nervous as Chris himself was but it didn't show in his voice.
“Aye Aye Skipper.” Chris manipulated the jump drive to deposit them precisely at the edge of the system, directly into a storm of debris blowing out of the system at three quarters of light speed.
'Star Eater', Vree'na Colony, 2922 A.D
Tara became aware slowly as her systems brought her back up to speed, a priority from her external systems explained why she had been brought back to full awareness. A signal coming in from the outer system had triggered the priority alert, she reviewed the recording to see what it contained. The first time she reviewed it the alien language was an unknown but by the second she realized that since the aliens had attacked New Eden fate had finally smiled on her, maybe.
“This is Lieutenant Chris Goodman of the TFS Courser, we have been struck by debris near the helio pause of system 45.127.35. If anyone can here this we require assistance...” the message was set to repeat on a loop. It had taken the message almost an hour to reach her position, it would take her nearly four hours to reach that position if she burned full out the entire way. Of course she wouldn't be able to stop if she did that, so it would take her nearly six to reach them and still be able to match speed with them.
“TFS Courser, this is the independent star ship 'Star Hawk' can anyone hear me? Please respond.” Tara was sending the soundbite out using a virtual voice over the sound waves, she had finally matched speed with the tiny star ship but no one was answering her hails. Luckily she had figured out that some where down the line she would have to salvage other ships or dock with a purely mechanical station and had modified her docking apparatus accordingly. Now she matched her docking port to the dock point on the Terran ship and initiated her grappling lines to snuggle the tiny ship against her hull. As soon as the ship made hard contact the skin around it created an air tight hold against the metal of the other ship, her maintenance bugs flooded the open airlock and started opening the Terran ship's airlock door. Tara hoped that someone was still alive somewhere inside that ravaged hull, but at the very least she hoped the subspace drive was still intact. She was also hoping
that the computers hadn't taken too much damage, she needed the information they held if the drive had been damaged hell she needed the data to make the damned drive work. The smaller ships airlock finally gave up and opened, a strong rush of air into the battered ship pulled multiple maintenance bugs into the corridors beyond the airlock. Tara sealed the airlock on her end, the bugs could handle hard vacuum for about twenty minutes before they started to have issues and she could always rotate them as necessary. She hoped that the bugs crawling from her hull to the other ship could patch the tears in its skin at least enough for it to hold atmosphere for her to salvage anything usable from it. It was rough going from the very start as the bugs struggled through the ravaged corridors, sometimes having to eat their way through solid metal blockages. They would sort the material into various storage vessels inside themselves and carry it back with them when they returned, according to the records she had lifted they did something similar for the nursery trees. Their tunnels also made it easier for the trees and their seeds to take root on rocky asteroids, in return the tree or seed kept them warm and oxygenated giving them everything else they required to survive. Finally the bugs reached what must have been the bridge of the scout ship, two humans were slumped dead at their duty stations and for a moment Tara thought that everything on the ship was just as dead until one of the bugs reported active electronics. She took direct control of the reporting bug, it had no sense of normal sight but it could see infrared spectrum just fine. Inside some kind of pod in the wall a vaguely human heat form slumped against restraints, she had a survivor after all, now to figure out how to get him or her on-board before the emergency life support in their pod broke down.