Earthless: The Survivors Series

by Letts,Jason

  Lopez nodded and a wide grin appeared on his face. Beating the controls on the console, he threw the engines into a quick burst, making the Cortes flash forward over the enemy ship. The bladed legs drilled through the ship’s exterior and then pumped it full of carbon-fortified smoke. Lastly, they deposited a charge and detached.

  “We don’t have time to sit back and enjoy the fireworks,” Panic said. “More ships are being diverted toward us from the main thrust, which is about to reach the Magellan. They need us with them.”

  Now a short distance away, they watched through the windshield as the Silica cruiser blew apart into bits indistinguishable from the rest of the rubble.

  “Let’s just clean up the rest of our mess,” he said.

  The Cortes fired a series of charged ion blasts at the landed ship, destroying its engines and some of its weaponry. The Silica remaining on the surface couldn’t do anything but watch them fly away.

  “They’re closing in fast, about ten of them,” Panic said. Even in just the time they’d been in the command center, so much had changed about the formation of the planetary fragments that retracing their steps was impossible. The narrow gap had closed up, and fields of thicker rubble couldn’t be brushed aside with the shield.

  “Let’s see if we can let the Earth do some of the work for us,” Lopez said. He slowed the ship down until they were in sight of their pursuers and then began to pick up speed. “Do you see that sharp curve in the rock, almost like a jagged fishhook?”

  They raced along the surface, zigzagging away from incoming fire, toward the steep arcing slope. The Cortes veered hard along with the turn and then spun in place to face the pursuing ships pocketed in the curve. It opened fire with rockets and blasters, much of it striking the wall behind and blowing it into bits that collided with the fighters. Only one of the ten managed to escape, and the Cortes again grappled on, but this time its legs shredded the roof and pulled out the occupant. They floated helplessly.

  “Maybe one day we’ll discover intelligent life in the galaxy,” Loris said.

  They set a course back to the Magellan, which was much too large to be able to maintain a proton shield. Its defenses consisted of photon turrets, ion cannons, and EMP bombs as a last resort. Sustaining heavy fire from dozens of Silica warships was not its forte.

  “Get into formation,” came the voice of the ranking officer on the Hudson over the com. The Cortes would be late to the fight’s start, but they were coming into range to get a good view of it. The Magellan’s fleet began firing at the incoming swarm, sending flashes of light streaking across space.

  “Tell the others to get clear and we’ll head right into the middle of them,” Loris said. They needed to find a way to disrupt their attack pattern before they could close in on their targets.

  “Charged and ready,” Panic said.

  Shields up, the Cortes swooped in to intercept the pack, forcing enemy ships to scramble or risk a collision. Once in the middle, the ship expelled static charges as strong as lightning in eight directions, damaging the enemy ships and bringing them to a halt. From there it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

  “We’ve got some making a run for the Magellan’s reactor,” Sonia Firth said over the com from the Balboa.

  Loris glanced at the radar and saw that their main thrust had continued on despite the fighting. They were moving fast enough to make it difficult to catch them in time. The fleet set a convergence point, and Loris readied one more trick up his sleeve.

  “Price, prepare the override.”

  Through the viewer, they saw the station’s cannons taking their first shots at the attackers, but the Silica were nimble enough to avoid the fire.

  “I’ve got a signal. The one in the rear,” Price said. Loris waited until they’d nearly reached the convergence point before giving the order.

  “Engage the override,” he said.

  Suddenly, the rear ship in the swarm heading for the Magellan fired at its allies, destroying one, two, three of them in a matter of seconds. By the time the others began to react to one of their own being hijacked, all five ships of the Magellan’s fleet were on them with guns blazing. Most of the Silican ships failed to even get off a single shot before the entire pack was reduced to a pile of floating debris.

  After that, they only needed to pick off a few stray fighters before the entire attack had been neutralized. Loris breathed a sigh of relief when it was all over. He’d take a broken leg any day over the loss of a single human life. That kind of luck couldn’t hold out forever. The fleet prepared to dock at the Magellan.

  “That was easy!” Lopez said.

  “It was,” Loris replied. “But how do you think it’ll be next time now that they know the planet is gone and the rest of us are sitting out here with only a handful of ships?”

  CHAPTER 6

  Loris had fractured his fibula in the fight and needed help exiting the Cortes and moving through the docking bay until the station’s medical staff got to him. The problem was that most of the rest of the station’s occupants crowded around as well, making it impossible to get through the spacious concourse. Fortunately, the chiefs found their way through to him.

  “Superb performance,” Yamaguchi said, shaking his hand and smiling. Loris appreciated a fellow military man with whom he could share his satisfaction. But the rest of the chiefs didn’t seem pleased at all.

  “I want to go back,” Firth said. “We only got a few specimens, and there are so many more out there just waiting to be picked up.”

  “Absolutely not,” Loris said in a sharp manner that seemed to draw surprise from some of the onlookers. “We need to leave the area now and get clear of the solar system.”

  “What? Why? We blew the Silica out of the water,” she said.

  Loris sighed. Not many people had a taste for history like he did.

  “This was a routine raid of about fifty ships. Now that they’ve spotted a weakness, they’ll be back as fast as they can get here with twenty times that. Do you remember the story of the moon colony that got hit when we made first contact? They managed to fend off a couple of scouting ships, then before many of them could get on a transport home, a squadron of fighters wiped the place out. If we don’t leave immediately we’ll be overrun.”

  Firth didn’t say anything more, but she did look to Yamaguchi to see if he shared a similar assessment.

  “With what they’ll bring, ten ships like the Cortes wouldn’t cut it,” Yamaguchi said.

  Some commotion behind them in the docking bay got their attention. Some crew members drove the probe out on a crane and lifted it into the air for all to see. Like before, it took the eyes time to adjust enough to see the runes in the blackness. Gasps and murmuring, as well as some clapping, erupted around the concourse.

  “Where should we go?” Chief Aylward asked. Her engineering department managed the ship’s navigations and would be carrying out the order.

  Loris paused for a moment and closed his eyes. It was a question with repercussions, but to him there was only one path.

  “We now have information about the flight path of this probe and others like it,” Loris said, raising his voice to the crowd. “I don’t think it’s any mistake to assume that the maker of this probe had something to do with the bomb that destroyed Earth. The console from the command center should be able to tell us something about how fast this thing was traveling and how far it came. That’s the path we need to take.”

  There were many skeptical faces around him but none more so than that of the Chief Liaison.

  “Forgive me, Commander,” Iotache said from among the other chiefs. “We could go in any direction we like. It would be more prudent to set course for a habitable planet we could live on.”

  Loris glared at him, recalling Stayed’s suggestion that he had some ulterior motive to undermine him.

  “That might seem reasonable, if you believe we are like rats that should scurry and hide under rocks when they are threatened,” Lor
is said, growing more confident. “But if you have any sense of justice, or any feeling of loss for the billions of people who died just days ago, you know that simply turning a blind eye to the brutal destruction of our loved ones and homes is not possible.”

  A wry smile came to the old man’s face. Iotache scratched some white stubble by his ear.

  “And what will we do when we get there? Remember that these life forms just destroyed our planet with a technological feat that we could never dream of. What if we arrived at their doorstep only for them to instantly incinerate the Magellan, making the human race extinct in a snap? Wouldn’t it seem then that handing ourselves over to them so they could finish the job was a poor choice?”

  Loris felt his heart rate rise. The anger at this man was bubbling within him. Iotache would forsake everything they lost in the guise of reason. He was cunning.

  “Humanity will not run and hide. We face our challenges head on and we will find a way to succeed. Those who did this will be held accountable. And if it came down to it, we have the means to wreak destruction on our enemies. We can jettison the reactor and set it off,” he said.

  “Leaving us drifting for eternity. What you offer is blind hope for our injustice. If you believe what you say is right, put it to a vote among everyone in the station. We should all have a say when being marched off to our deaths is on the table,” Iotache said.

  Loris shook his head as another threat to his position reared its head.

  “If you had more of an appetite for history, you’d know the democracies of the past failed because the will of the majority was often at odds with the best interests of everyone. I am the commander of this station, and I know my belief in humanity is shared by everyone aboard, save perhaps you. We will find the ones who did this to us and bring them to justice,” Loris said.

  His words were rousing enough to garner cheers from at least some of those present. It quelled Iotache for now, leaving him and a few others to turn their backs and stride away. Now Loris had to get to work to make sure his choice was the right one.

  The Commandership came with an office not far from the mess hall and an assistant who went by the name of Drew Tupper. Drew had combed-over brown hair and dark shadows under his eyes. He was oddly needy in a way that made Loris question who was assisting who.

  “The Chief of Scientific Research, Riki Lala,” Tupper said, escorting the slight woman in while Loris was at his desk. It had been a few hours since returning from the mission, and the argument in the concourse still had him burning inside.

  “Please have a seat,” he said to Lala, who took one of the chairs across from the desk. She handed over a tablet with some of their findings about the probe. He’d only been able to glance at it before he was disturbed.

  “How come you never ask me to have a seat?” Tupper asked, his arms crossed over his chest. Loris looked at him for a moment.

  “Would you like to sit down?” he asked.

  “That’s nice of you to offer,” Tupper replied, settling in to the other chair.

  “How did it go?” Loris asked Lala.

  “Analyzing the flight path and point of origin for the probe was largely a perfunctory exercise,” Lala said. “We were able to measure the probe’s velocity and estimate the distance it must’ve come using data found in the Unified console. There’s an overwhelming likelihood that it originated in an area of space so remote it’s known only as Quadrant 764.”

  Loris leaned forward over the edge of the desk, thrilled to know where they needed to go.

  “Excellent. Any sense of what’s in Quadrant 764?”

  “Planets, obviously,” Tupper said, shaking his head. “I’m not a scientist and even I could figure that one out.”

  The last time Loris urged Tupper to restrain himself, he got a ten-minute rant about how unappreciated he felt for all of the step-and-fetch tasks he did. Lala kept an even demeanor as she glanced at Tupper.

  “He’s correct. There’d been no research done on that area before, but we’ve identified a trio of planets orbiting a star. Only one seems to share the elements we’ve traced from the bomb used to destroy Earth. We’re calling it Detonus. I’ve conferred with Chief Aylward to determine that it will take the Magellan an entire year to get there.”

  While a year was quite a long time, Loris had actually expected something much longer. Uncharted space had a way of devouring time that would’ve left Einstein flabbergasted.

  “And what do you think about the plan to reach Detonus?” Loris asked. Having Lala’s support could make a big difference among the other Chiefs.

  “I understand you have a reason for it,” she said.

  “And do you think it’s a good reason to do this?”

  “Are you asking me to make a judgment about the plan?”

  “Yes, I am,” he said.

  “I don’t make judgments. I only make calculations,” she said.

  Loris pursed his lips and clenched a fist under the table. He wanted to continue to press her, but he noticed Tupper was about to burst at being excluded from the conversation.

  “Tupper, how many friends and family did you lose back home?” Loris asked. The man squinted and shrugged.

  “I know this might sound strange, but I didn’t have anyone close to me. I couldn’t stand my parents and left home at age seven. I moved around a lot doing odd jobs and sleeping wherever. The truth of it is I’ve never met another human being that had any appeal for me. I think once you reach a certain number of people, all of the people after that don’t have anything more to offer, so I don’t count what happened as being all that bad,” Tupper said.

  “From an empirical standpoint, they were all just sets of proliferating genetic material,” Lala said.

  Loris’s mouth hung open. He was in disbelief that anyone, let alone two people standing right in front of him, would’ve been so dismissive of the near annihilation of the entire species’ eleven billion members. Any attempt to drive home to them the importance of what he wanted to do was going to be a wasted effort. He reeled for a few more moments before moving on.

  “What can you tell me about the probe and the ruins?” he asked, now slumped against the side of his chair like he’d been slugged in the head.

  “The probe is composed of a compound that we’re completely unfamiliar with. I’ve reviewed the research performed by Unified scientists, who’ve identified the composite elements and tried to replicate the material, only for something very different to come out. There’s something here we just don’t understand, and that extends to the runes, which defy any attempt at deciphering. We’ve run these symbols against every kind of code, language, and pattern in existence and nothing seems to match,” Lala said.

  Loris shook his head and took another look at the tablet, which had some comparisons and showed where they broke down.

  “We’ve got to keep working on it. These probes have a story to tell about the bomb that we absolutely have to know before we reach Detonus.”

  Lala nodded slightly, like she was swaying in place.

  “One thing I can confirm for you is that all of the probes had identical markings. Whatever they were trying to tell us, they tried to tell us the same thing over and over.”

  “Good to know. Please have Chief Aylward set a course for Detonus at maximum speed. Let’s continue working to decode the probe and gathering information about Quadrant 764,” he said, getting up from his seat gingerly to avoid more pain in his injured leg.

  Riki Lala performed the necessary salutations and exited the room, leaving Loris with his assistant, who rubbed his hand against his face.

  “The next time you’re going to ask me to sit through a boring meeting, could you at least provide some sort of refreshments?” Tupper asked, storming out of the room.

  Loris made a mental note to find a way to get his assistant reassigned. He wondered if he’d be able to find a way to do that without the help of Tupper, who no doubt would sprawl into such a dramatic performance of
self-pity and indignation that Loris might never survive to the end of it.

  A few days passed and talk of their quest for justice and the journey to their destination circulated around the station. Loris heard snippets of conversations when walking the corridors or stepping into the gym for physical therapy, which had done a marvelous job of healing his leg and keeping him pain free, but as soon as anyone saw him the topic of discussion made a sudden shift. Armand Iotache clearly thought he could wrest power based on public opinion, and Loris had to find out how people really felt about their mission.

  Messages he’d received directly avoided it, with the exception of one from Kelly Reid.

  “With my breeding program in place, we could increase the human population by nearly fifty percent by the time we get to Detonus!”

  Loris grimaced at the tablet like he’d just opened a container of rotting fish. Waiting around until he got a sense of how everyone felt wasn’t going to work. He decided to go to someone who knew.

  Brina Morse was studying in a reading room when Loris found her. It was hard to tell if she was fully focused on the screen or just staring blankly, but the room was otherwise empty and Loris had to find out from someone he could trust to tell him the truth.

  “Forgive the interruption. I need to talk to you,” he said.

  Brina jerked her head up and glanced around the room as if she’d forgotten where she was. It was strange behavior from someone he knew as always so steady and observant.

  “Oh, hi. It’s you,” she said.

  He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he pressed ahead.

  “Do you mind if we talk about your recent interviews? I need to get a finger on the pulse of the station.”

  Brina turned her head to face him more fully. Her chestnut brown hair caught the light in a way he couldn’t fail to notice.

  “What’s your concern?”

  “I’m concerned that there might be widespread disapproval of my plan, that people think I’m unnecessarily putting their lives in danger, or that I’m losing the support and confidence of the people I need to count on to execute our mission,” he said, surprised at his own candor.