One Dark Future

by Michael Anderle

  “Damn.” Cutter clucked his tongue. “When you say it like that, it makes me feel like a badass.”

  “Raphael, do it,” Erik ordered, turning to the image on his screen. “Obliterate the ship.”

  Raphael nodded quickly. “We need five to ten more minutes. Lanara’s making some modifications, and Emma’s finishing her calculations. They’re hurrying as much as they can, but there are only so many shortcuts we can take.”

  “That’s fine. It’s not like we’re under attack.”

  “Damn it.” Cutter jerked his head down toward a data window. “Oh, this isn’t good. You shouldn’t tempt fate, Blackwell.”

  “What’s wrong?” Erik asked, his voice tight.

  Fate could screw off. The Hunters were going down.

  “Something’s happening with the other ship,” Jia explained with a sigh. She pointed to different data windows containing numbers and graphs Erik could barely interpret. “All sorts of increased readings. This isn’t good.”

  “This entire situation isn’t good,” Erik replied. “But can you be a little more specific about what ‘not good’ means?”

  Raphael summoned a new data window and tilted his head, murmuring something under his breath. “I think we’re running out of time. Some of the readings we’re getting off that ship are similar to what we’d see in a jump drive. I think they’re powering up for a jump. I don’t know why it’s taking so long, but there’s a lot we don’t know about them.”

  “You keep working on your plan.” Erik nodded to Cutter. “And go ahead and give me weapons control.”

  “Why?” Cutter looked at Erik like he’d lost his mind. “We unloaded everything we had, and it didn’t do crap. It did less than crap. You think they’re suddenly going to drop their shields?”

  “I might not know crap about hyperspace physics, but I’m willing to bet if we’re pounding that thing with weapons, we can delay its jump. Fields are like that.”

  “Firing a bunch of weapons will prevent us from doing what we need to do, too,” Raphael interjected.

  Erik tapped at a virtual display to link all the weapons together for a combined volley. He’d need to stretch this out, and they were too far out to mess with drones. “Does your setup mean we can’t shoot at all? This plan doesn’t do any good if they jump away.”

  “I suppose not.” Raphael shrugged. “We can do all the preparations, but you probably won’t be able to shoot during the last minute or so. Besides messing with some of the fields, we’ll need the power.”

  “Fine. You, Lanara, and Emma continue to get ready.” Erik tapped a control. “I’ll keep him busy until it’s time.”

  Erik fired turrets and cannons simultaneously. It was all but impossible to miss, given the size of the target ship and its lack of relative motion. As before, the beams and pulses struck the ship but didn’t penetrate the outer defenses.

  “That doing anything to stop the energy?” Erik asked.

  Raphael smiled. “From what I can see, yes. There’s no way they’ll be able to stabilize for a jump with these readings.”

  Erik attacked once more. Satisfaction filled him despite the lack of damage. Stalling was something he could do.

  A lack of return fire meant it was now a race, one he intended to win.

  “How tough are you, you bastard?” he muttered.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Jia kept reminding herself that no matter how powerful the Hunter ship was, it’d been sitting barely active in ice for thousands of years.

  Quick repairs might be impressive given the scale of time, but the enemy was not operating at full capacity.

  Any small malfunction might give the humans an opportunity to carry out their plan.

  The Bifröst wasn’t a mouse taking on an elephant. She was a venomous snake nipping at the ankles of a wounded jackal. With speed and agility, she could bring down the larger prey. Just because something was hard didn’t mean it wouldn’t work.

  Raphael’s plan didn’t worry Jia. They would win. They weren’t a ragtag band of misfits, even if they might look that way from the outside. The man currently designing a dangerous if limited-use weapon was one of the best in his field. Being a goofy fanboy didn’t make him an idiot.

  Lanara’s acerbic personality was matched by her skill as an engineer. Emma had earned her right to be arrogant, her skills having been displayed on countless occasions during her time with Erik and Jia.

  Cutter was a damned good pilot.

  There was no other team in the UTC who could pull off what they were about to do, which was why it had to work—for both them and the human race.

  Plasma shots exploded against the outside of the Hunter ship, still doing no visible damage. It was more like a fireworks show than a battle.

  Jia tried to imagine how much damage they would have delivered had they been firing on a colony or a city. The contrast between that and the lack of damage to the Hunter ship was awe-inspiring.

  Erik didn’t continually fire the weapons, instead firing impressive-looking but mostly ineffective volleys every couple of seconds. They were a mouse poking the elephant in the eye until it charged and fell into the spiked pit.

  Did whatever or whoever was controlling the ship understand what the humans were up to? Did they have any clue about the pain and destruction the jumpship was about to summon?

  Jia sure hoped they didn’t. She wanted their final moments to be filled with shock and horror.

  The Hunters had made one big mistake. They had dared to look down on humans as an inferior race. Today, the team on the bridge and in the engine room would prove to whatever intelligence was running the alien ship that humanity wasn’t to be taken lightly.

  Cutter was right. This was effectively the first battle of a galactic war, and the human crew would win it through a combination of ingenuity and trust in one another.

  And if they died, it wasn’t like she’d be around to worry. Despite the situation, Jia smiled at the thought.

  The parasitized humans had implied that they knew the humans were using Navigator technology. Jia allowed herself to be outraged on behalf of the ancient race. For all she knew, they could have also been bastards, but at least they’d inadvertently gifted humanity with advances, and now one of those advances would help destroy their ancient enemy.

  Jia frowned at a sensor display. “Wait, something’s happening with the other ship, more localized than before. I think they’re tired of us taking potshots. Cutter, evade!”

  “Oh, shit!” Cutter yelled and pulsed all the lateral thrusters.

  Two bright red lines of energy spread around the perimeter of the Hunter ship and met in the middle. With a bright flash, shimmering scarlet pulses burst from the ship and sped toward the jumpship.

  So much for the enemy’s weapons being offline.

  Cutter’s anticipation and reflexes saved the Bifröst. The attacks narrowly missed, the pulses continuing past into space.

  “Emma, please reinforce the shields,” Erik commanded.

  The movement of the ship and the limited arc of the cannons made it hard to line up every weapon, but he swiveled the turrets to focus on the source of the last attack and opened fire. If attacks could disrupt the jump, they might be able to do the same with the weapons.

  “Emma needs to concentrate on the calculations,” shouted Raphael, his face red. He grimaced. “Sorry, but what she’s doing is different than a normal jump. Keep us alive, but keep Emma and Lanara out of it until we pull it off.”

  “Understood,” Erik replied.

  Jia saw a huge grin take over Cutter’s face as he dipped the ship. The huge vessel might not be the Argo, but the enemy’s attacks were proving scattershot and clumsy.

  At least someone was having a good time under fire.

  She smiled, realizing something important. “I don’t think their targeting system, however it functions, is working right. You can do it. You can keep protecting us.”

  “You have a limited window to
maneuver,” Raphael explained to Cutter, sweat dripping down his face. He tapped a data window, and two lines appeared on one of the radar displays. “If you’re closer than the front line, we’ll die in the shockwave. If you’re farther back, we won’t be able to open it, and I assume the Hunters will end up finishing us off.”

  “I can do this all year,” Cutter offered cheerfully.

  His smile was infectious. We will do this, she thought

  The Hunter ship released another barrage, and another hard lateral burn paired with a dive saved the jumpship. With most of the power to the grav compensators routed elsewhere, the abrupt movement challenged Jia’s stomach.

  They might survive the battle, but she was glad she hadn’t had much to eat.

  “Can’t I just back up and then thrust forward when it’s time?” Cutter asked. “I am awesome, so I can keep doing this, but I have no problem with doing the easier thing if it’s possible, right?”

  All the earlier fear was gone from his face, replaced by unmistakable excitement. Fight had won over flight.

  Jia looked at her screens. "The delays continue to suggest the weapons aren’t fully repaired.” It might take them minutes to fix them or days, but it didn’t matter because Raphael’s plan would be ready before that.

  “It’ll throw off my calculations and calibration if we pull too far back,” Raphael shouted. “Keep in the zone and let us finish them.” He ripped his attention away from Cutter and returned to his data windows. His fingers flew over two separate keyboards, and he stuck the tip of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth.

  Jia focused on the secondary controls. She was doing her best to offer dynamic power routing in the absence of Emma’s and Lanara’s attention—any small thing that would allow Cutter to concentrate on dodging attacks.

  Cutter’s continued manipulation of the large ship was impressive, and she took note of how he made use of timing and specific thrusters to pull off maneuvers she wouldn’t have thought possible. She might be naturally talented, but he was talented and had years of experience.

  A third barrage erupted from the Hunter ship. Cutter’s stomach-churning maneuvers dodged most of the pulses, but a blast clipped the side. The Bifröst lurched and shook. Alarms sounded, and new windows popped up in front of Cutter and Jia. Thruster damage, fire, and a loss of hull integrity joined the loss of two turrets on the damage report.

  Jia grimaced. “Just keep flying. I’ll handle everything else.”

  Cutter’s nod was almost imperceptible. He didn’t divert his eyes from the vital displays and windows in front of him.

  Jia’s quick commands evacuated the oxygen from the fire-ravaged compartment and dropped emergency bulkheads. The glancing blow had vaporized an outer compartment like it was nothing, but fortunately, it was nowhere near the crew quarters, the soldiers, or the cargo bay.

  “We can’t take many more hits like that,” she offered, licking her lips. “And if they hit us dead on, it’s going to blow a major chunk of the ship away.”

  Raphael wiped sweat off his brow. “Almost there. Just keep us alive.”

  Erik shifted to continuous fire concentrated on the source of the enemy’s counterattack. The invisible lasers and bright plasma blasts pelted the center of the Hunter ship.

  Seeing no obvious damage, Jia wasn’t sure if their attack accomplished much. Her intense focus on backing up Cutter blurred the seconds together before the next enemy attack. This time Cutter managed to evade the entire attack.

  Jia took slow, even breaths as she monitored system damage. The Hunter ship let loose another deadly barrage.

  Cutter shouted triumphantly as he made the thrusters dance. “That’s right, assholes. I’m Cutter Durn, and I’m the best damned pilot in the entire galaxy. There’s no way you can take me do—”

  The Bifröst shuddered, and bright light blinded Jia. Shrill alarms sounded. Sparks flew everywhere, and heat ate at her face. An acrid stench filled her nostrils.

  Jia’s head throbbed. Something hot and moist slid down the side of her head. She opened her aching eyes and gasped. She was looking straight out a jagged hole in the bridge. Pieces of the ship floated in the distance.

  Small fires had broken out in the front of the bridge.

  Her heart thundered, and even the faint shimmer of the emergency oxygen field wasn’t enough to keep it in check. If they hadn’t been strapped in, they would have been knocked out of the ship. She touched the side of her head and brought her hand forward.

  She was bleeding.

  “Cutter, get into the back, and I’ll start the emergency bulkhead sequence,” Jia shouted. “One more hit up here and we’ll lose the field and the oxygen, but at least that’ll put the fire out.”

  She turned her head toward Cutter. Massive burns covered most of his face and upper body. His head hung loosely to the side. His eyes remained wide open and staring into the distance. Large metal fragments had pierced his abdomen, chest, and heart.

  He wasn’t breathing.

  Bile rising in the back of her throat, Jia craned her neck to look into the back. Raphael was pale with a painful-looking cut on his cheek, but obviously conscious, based on his fevered typing. Erik looked more annoyed than wounded, but two small pieces of sharp shrapnel lay in his lap near scratches in his suit. If he hadn’t been wearing it, they might have gutted him.

  Erik shook his head at Cutter’s body, frowning. “I’ve lost fire control. Get back here, Jia, and take control. Based on their previous pace, we’ve got fifteen or twenty seconds at most before the next shot. He worked his ass off to save us. Don’t waste his work.”

  Jia wanted to ask if Erik didn’t care about Cutter, but that wasn’t fair. They’d both seen good people die during their time together. There was always a price for hunting evil, and today, it’d been high.

  She unstrapped her harness and flipped over the seat, the reduced gravity making it surprisingly easy. She jumped and half-floated into a seat farther back and pulled herself down. After strapping herself in, she summoned primary virtual controls with a couple of quick commands and hand gestures and activated an emergency bulkhead.

  With a whoosh, the bulkhead dropped and separated the front half of the bridge from the back half, protecting them with more than a single oxygen field, but also leaving Cutter’s body on the other side.

  Jia pushed the death out of her head.

  Survival.

  That was all she could concentrate on, or they would all end up like Cutter, and millions of other people would suffer and die.

  The Hunter ship fired again, this time with a smaller number of shots. It didn’t matter if it represented contempt or weakness. Jia would take every advantage offered.

  Jia managed to avoid all but one shot, which sheared another turret off the ship. They’d hit about twenty percent of the thrusters.

  She understood the enemy ship’s motivation when they fired another smaller barrage more rapidly than before. Careful dodging saved the damaged jumpship, but Jia didn’t know how long she could continue to evade, given the state of their ship.

  “We’re done,” Raphael shouted. “Now you can run!”

  “Die, you monsters!” Jia yelled as she started turning the ship.

  Jia didn’t know what to expect. She’d seen footage of hyperspace gates opening, but the process was different than how their current vessel beat the limits of FTL.

  A tiny but unbelievably bright dot appeared in the center of the ship, as if a heart was shining from the inside. Jia’s brain had just begun to register what she was seeing when the dot exploded into a storm of kaleidoscopic particles. A devastating blast wave of pure white energy ripped from the center of the ship and expanded in all directions.

  It was less an explosion than an erasure.

  The wave ate the Hunter ship from the inside out, the pieces breaking into other pieces, and colorful arcs of energy leapt across the ship, leaving clouds the only memory of the once-mighty Hunter ship.

  The Bifrö
st’s thrusters pushed the ship away. The wave continued closing on them and threatened to overwhelm the fleeing jumpship. Jia didn’t know what to do except continue fleeing at top speed.

  She roared her defiance as they continued to accelerate. The wave struck the ship, sending it into a spin, and then dissipated. The rest continued spreading, weakening as it moved through space.

  More alarms sounded, along with more damage reports. There were so many hull breaches, it was like someone had fired a ship-sized shotgun into the back of the vessel. They’d lost more thrusters, and there was a breach in the cargo bay, but not severe enough that emergency seals and bulkheads couldn’t handle it.

  Without a word, Emma took that over for Jia.

  There was no time to fear. No time to worry. There was only time to survive.

  It didn’t matter if Jia had reduced power and fewer thrusters. Dying at this point would be an insult to the men who’d already given their lives. It’d prove the Hunters right about humanity.

  Jia canceled out the spin with counterthrust and decelerated. She took ragged breaths and blinked to clear her eyes as she consulted the damage reports before looking at the feed and what remained of the working sensor displays.

  The Hunter ship was gone, with only a loose cloud of debris marking its previous position. They hadn’t just ripped it to pieces, they’d obliterated the enemy.

  “Anyone else hurt, Emma?” Jia croaked. She winced at the throbbing in the side of her head.

  “There are minor injuries among the uniformed boys and girls,” Emma replied somberly. “Mr. Durn was the only fatality. There is, of course, massive damage to the ship. The jump drive is mercifully intact, but I wouldn’t recommend attempting to do that before spending some time engaged in repairs.”

  “I-it worked.” Raphael wiped away tears. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Yeah.” Erik nodded. “Believe it. We won.”

  Jia stared at the nondescript gray emergency bulkhead, picturing the man’s body on the other side. “But not without losses.”