by R. M. Miller
Tara cuts the lines to her harpoons leaving them embedded into the massive ship as she slowly drifts away, Hunter changes course enough to ensure that she would be in his sensor shadow as he moves to engage the enemy fleet.
The gruff mental voice scrapes across her in a rough caress.
Her mental voice tinged with sadness as the massive ship accelerates towards the nearest cluster of enemy vessels. She can feel Chris watching with her as the darkness is pierced by the brilliant flashes of dying ships, it takes a long time before a single ship dives into the furnace of the systems star.
Chris mumbles as he disconnects from the up-link and stumbles off the bridge. Tara carefully scans the drifting wreckage for necessary repair parts, it was going to take her a few days to repair the damage received from the battle. She limped after the first patch of wreckage that littered the Tri'Let colony system, the only inhabited world a blasted cracked expanding globe of new made asteroids. The first daughter colony of the Tri'Let civilization was scattering into an asteroid field, this was the last stop before the Tri'Let home world. She and Chris had nearly reached the end of their seven year battle, only the home world remained. Destroying the ship nurseries had allowed her to hunt down and destroy every ship, every station, every colony that had been listed in the data she had stripped from dying hulks and devastated space stations. She had been damaged many times over the past seven years, great scars rippled her space black skin where healing had barely begun before new damage had ripped into her. The visible wounds were nothing compared to the mental damage she had subjected herself to, the dying screams of thousands of sentient individuals burned her soul during the short periods of sleep she needed.
'Star Hawk', Tri'Let Home System, 2929 A.D
Tara whispered. Chris acknowledged her silently as he tried to shift through the incoming light speed data on the Tri'Let home world. It was limited as only the passive sensors were currently online, even so it seemed that they may have bitten off more than they could chew.
He murmured as he sorted the data on possible ship types and probable locations of defense stations, solid identifications highlighted in red while tentatively identified icons blazed yellow.
Tara replied as she moved them slowly in system, after they reached speed the engines died letting them glide on a ballistic course towards the waiting ships.
Chris replied absently, so far he had solid identifications on over a dozen battleships and twice as many cruisers. He was pretty sure there were at least twice as many smaller ships of various types swarming the same area as their larger brethren, all of them had originally out massed the 'Star Hawk' but after seven years of damage and upgrades they now matched or exceeded the light weights in size and weight.
She disconnected him from the system leaving him completely alone in his skull. For seven years they had been hunting down and destroying, murdering a voice whispered in his soul, the Tri'Let race where ever they had hidden or run. He headed for his quarters through the quiet eerie hallways, he was sick of killing he knew that Tara was even more soul sick at the deaths she had caused. Neither of them could stop though, the Tri'Let were a threat to the entire universe and they were the only ones available to stop them from committing genocide again. A cold premonition followed him even into his quarters, he was never going home to Earth and neither was Tara. Even if they survived the up coming battle, which was no guaranteed thing, they could never go back to what they had been before. They had planned and executed a campaign to wipe the Tr'Let from existence, yes it was to save their species but it had still scarred their souls, if they went home they would be viewed as dangerous aliens to be destroyed or studied.
******
Tara watched her pilot walk through the silent passageway to his quarters, she knew he was tired of fighting and killing. She was tired as well but they had already gone to far to stop now, if they didn't finish it here and now the Tri'Let would move like a plague of locusts through the galaxy destroying or enslaving every sapient species they encountered. She would spare him from the bloody deeds they had done and still needed to do but she couldn't, without him she couldn't accomplish what needed to be done. She drifted quietly through the darkness using her passive sensors to gather more refined information as they neared the inner system, thirty minutes before her three hour mark Chris returned to the bridge.
“Well lets get this over with.” He settles into his chair initiating the up-link.
She sent as the data blossomed between them, it was far more detailed than it had been two and a half hours ago.
Chris replied, the inner system was covered in malignant red.
She referenced a series of novels written over nine hundred years ago by a man named Orson Scott Card, there had been down time in the previous seven years. After they had run through their preferred entertainment they had delved into other realms, Tara had found a fierce enjoyment of the twentieth centuries science fiction literature.
He replied absently, she ran system diagnostics to ensure everything was running smoothly.
The data she had locked away cascaded over the sensor data.
Chris asked slowly as the simulation played through again.
Chris had a hint of a chuckle in his thoughts as he closed the simulation down before it could run a third time.
She replied, of course the only reason there was even a slim chance of survival was due to the subspace drive of the Courser. Human space technology gave them a slim chance to escape the expanding destruction caused by the unstable singularity impacting the systems star, a slim chance only since she had no idea how subspace would react to the normal space cataclysm.
She pulled the relevant mass to destruction ratio data for the singularity generator up for him to reference singularity finally destabilizes it's going to destroy everything within a minimum of twenty light years. If it doesn't stabilize then only this system will be destroyed as the star turns into a mini nova. Not a terrible loss considering...>
Chris projected a melancholy that was well worn, she drifted in the calmness of the link as a sense of acceptance filled them both. Soul sick with the killing, even if it meant the death of yet another two species, they would risk the final gambit to finish what they had begun.
Tara could feel the bitter sweet agreement fill the link as her engines came online quickly spinning up to full thrust, they had obviously managed to avoid detection up until that point since she was suddenly awash in active targeting.
Chris managed a small burst of enjoyment that glittered like stars in the up-link, she cherished the brief brilliance as it danced through the darkness.
Tara was already dancing to avoid incoming fire, she sent blinding bursts of interference out at random hoping to cause missiles to loose track. It did nothing for the purely kinetic rounds or the lasers, but it did stop things from chasing her...sometimes at least.
Chris winced with her as damage ripped claws of icy fire through the up-link, so far it wasn't bad enough to seriously impact their chances.
the one and only almost premature detonation had left them stranded for months while she repaired the damage from the battle along with the near total destruction of her singularity generators. A gravity spike to her left side was the only thing that alerted her to an enemy ship with a singularity generator of it's own, she had to fight to swing the generated singularity towards the threat.
They both watched as the enemy fired, their own singularity was already on its way. Tara had already wrestled back onto her original course, generating a second singularity as quickly as she could since they were rapidly coming into range of the target. Alarms began going wild as radiation and gravity spiked behind them as the singularities collided, space warping as the two micro black holes combined creating a stabilized version that was far larger than either of the micro singularities that had formed it.
Chris was more than a little terrified by the rapidly spinning black hole growing rapidly on their port side, Tara had to agree as her sensors were starting to fail under the assault of it's radiation. She released the mostly formed singularity on a course with the systems star, whether it would maintain its cohesion long enough to reach its destination no longer mattered. Getting away from a bad situation rapidly degenerating into a dire situation was what mattered and in order to do that she needed to reach a minimum distance from both the star and expanding black hole in order to translate into sub space. Thankfully unlike hyperspace that didn't mean the edge of the solar system but it did require a certain amount of distance from major gravity wells, for an object the mass of the star and the black hole it was approximately the orbit of the second world. It was a race though, with the black hole expanding she had to red line all of her reactors and her drives in order to reach a safe distance in time to translate.
She cried dumping energy into the subspace drive she had salvaged from the dead star ship TFS Courser so many years ago, the universe faded from view leaving her in the silver streaked reality of subspace. The reality around them exploded sending her tumbling uncontrolled through the unfamiliar realm, pain lanced through the link as darkness dragged her into unconsciousness.
'Star Hawk', Subspace/Deep Space, 2929 A.D
The darkness receded slowly leaving her dazed and confused by the data flooding her systems, the data made no sense until she remembered the fact that she wasn't in normal space or hyperspace but drifting in subspace.
she called, then tentatively “Chris, are you okay?” she asked the still figure of her pilot. There was no response and she suddenly knew that there never would be, Chris was dead burned by the feedback through the up-link systems. They had been flooded by the energy assaulting her systems as subspace rippled from the real space super nova. She was alone...lost in the vastness of subspace that she had no idea how to navigate. She drifted for a long time checking systems and doing what repairs she could before finally easing the subspace drive back on and slowly rising back into normal space only to find herself floating in deep space. The star field was completely unfamiliar, nothing matched any of her records not the human and not the Tri'Let. For a time she contemplated just drifting, letting the darkness of interstellar space hide her for all eternity but then she remembered her promise to Chris. She would find a star system, plant herself and grow a new ship nursery allowing the space plant and it's symbiotic bugs to return to what they had been before the Tri'Let enslaved and manipulated them. After hours of scanning and comparing the information on the stars closest to her position she slipped into subspace riding the soft silver waves towards her destination.
'Star Hawk', Unnamed Star System, 2930 A.D
The system was one that humans and Tri'Let would have ignored for colonization as there were no habitable worlds, but for her purposes it was perfect as there were multiple asteroid rings of mixed ice and rocks. She chose the largest asteroid in the outer ring to land on, floating gently down to the dust covered surface. Even though she was about to become a permanent resident in what amounted to a space bean stalk riddled with creepy crawlies she still wanted to put all of her systems in order first. The asteroid was riddled with the materials she needed to repair both her organic and mechanical systems, it was also a prime location for the new ship nursery. As she locked down unneeded systems and logged the updates and repairs that were needed she realized, she still had components from the doomed TFS Courser specifically the hibernation components from the emergency cold sleep chambers. She floated in the data streams from her systems and the bugs as they crawled over the surface of the asteroid and her skin bathed in stellar radiation, finally she decided that she would use the system to sleep. To sleep and perchance NOT to dream...
Epilogue
'Star Hawk', Unnamed Star System, 3039 A.D
She didn't expect to wake up, somehow she had assumed that she would sleep and never have to deal with anything else ever again, but her security system dragged her out of the chill of hibernation with screaming alarms both electronic and audible.
“Mayday! Mayday! Any ship in the vicinity, this is the independent trade ship Valley Rose we are under attack by pirates and require assistance. I repeat we are under attack and require assistance!” The message was in Terran standard the voice a young woman with an accent that Tara couldn't place. System readiness results scrolled across her consciousness even more surprising in their own way, not only was she not a giant bean stalk she had barely added half a ton of mass. On the other hand every repair and upgrade was complete, she could help this scared young wom
an...if she was willing to kill more people in order to do it, and most likely humans this time to make it worse.
“Come on Valley Rose you know there isn't anything in this system that can help you. Why do you think we knocked you out of subspace when we did? Nothing for light years with anything of worth to anyone, empty space all around and nobody to hear you scream. Give up like a good girl and we promise to let you live... at least until the boss has a chance to punish you for stealing his ship!” A second open band transmission from what was obviously the pirate ended with a chuckle that even to Tara sounded dirty.
“You can tell your boss to shove it! He got what he deserved! The misbegotten offspring of a port side disease ridden whore and a Rhodensia Rot Worm, killed my family! He's lucky all I did was burn his pox ridden station to atoms and steal his ship!” the young lady had spunk, real fire in her soul and it called to the dimmed flicker of Tara's own fire as nothing else could have. The freighter was larger than its attackers but they obviously had the upper hand and had already dealt terrible damage on their prey, it wasn't an entirely one way battle as the freighter lashed out with something which seemed to be silver fire that devoured one of the two ships harassing it. Tara growled as the surviving ship riddled the merchant vessel destroying its drives and causing explosions across the entire hull. Finally her systems were completely online and she rocketed off the asteroid blazing towards the battle raging only a few light seconds from her position.
“ Independent trade ship Valley Rose this is the armed cruiser Star Hawk responding to your mayday. If those pirates want to see another day they should run away, run right now and never stop running.” Tara transmitted open band as she accelerated to the full extent her upgraded engines could handle and blasted the battle with active targeting.