by Letts,Jason
No one knew if that was because they were unable or unwilling to improve, but before the explosion there was talk about how the Magellan and the new fleet might be enough to counterattack on the Silica’s home turf, maybe knock out the construction facilities making their fighters. But that was a long time ago, and the devastating blow to Earth meant the Silica would be able to freely spread their way around the galaxy with their full-throated malice and mediocre ships.
The thought depressed him, so he switched over to the set of scenarios they could be facing as they approached Detonus. The simulator had masterfully rendered scanner data of the planet, their space stations, and the ships. In the most favorable scenario, he sailed with little resistance right down to the planet’s carved but desolate surface and blew the gamma station to bits. Once that was knocked out, he had a field day destroying secondary targets, places that appeared to be manufacturing centers, mining facilities, storage hangars, even shopping malls and schools. After they’d killed eleven billion, each shot to get back at them felt good, no matter the target.
In more challenging scenarios, the Detonus fleet moved to intercept the Cortes even before he’d had a chance to flip the power back on, leaving him no choice but to try to outmaneuver them until the weapons systems came back online. Their unmanned ships were small, sometimes too small to show up on the radar or to lock onto, forcing Loris to fire without the assistance of the guidance systems. That was where being rusty hurt him. The enemy ships closed in, pummeling the Cortes’s shield generator with surgical precision.
Once they got close, the Cortes made use of its other weapons, including its latch and drills. It was able to catch and demolish several of them in a matter of minutes, but before long the hull had been breached and the simulation shut down, marking defeat. Loris enjoyed losing in simulations, because it was an opportunity for him to improve.
“Let’s try that again,” he said.
Restarting the program, Loris resisted the urge to bring the Cortes to life earlier than he would have. But this time, instead of simply trying to avoid enemy fire, he tried to buy time by breaking from his course and fleeing in the opposite direction. He dropped charges in his wake and waited to see if the enemy ships would be smart enough to notice them and steer clear.
Before they exploded, everything went dark. It happened fast and he felt fabric pulled tight over his eyes.
“You didn’t know you had a stowaway on board,” said a female voice close to his ear. It was Brina, and a smile came to Loris’s lips.
“I should probably take care of that first,” he said, attempting to get out of his seat, but she held him down.
“Not if you don’t want those bad guys to shoot you. They’re coming in fast at five o’clock. Watch out for the meteors ahead. Your energy weapons will arm in just a few seconds,” she said.
Loris took a breath and attempted to operate the console blindfolded, responding to her observations as best he could. They took the Cortes closer to the meteors and even managed to shoot down a few enemy ships.
“Oh no, they’ve knocked out the engine,” she said. Loris hit a few more buttons, producing a strange plunking sound.
“What was that?” Loris asked, attempting in vain to peek below the fabric.
“You’ve just ejected the oxygen tanks. We only have minutes to live,” she said.
“Did I really?” Loris laughed.
“The bad guys have left us to drift and suffocate. How do you want to spend your last moments of life?”
Her hands were on his shoulders. He felt the blindfold hanging over his nose.
“I’ve got a few ideas.”
He felt her weight on his lap as she straddled him in the chair. Pulling the blindfold off, her slim figure glowed in the simulator’s lights. Seeing her looking down at him with her chestnut eyes and sneaky grin was euphoric. Unable to resist, his hands crept under her shirt and felt her bare sides. She set her hands on his chest and leaned in for a long kiss. Afterwards, she put her arms over his shoulders and nuzzled her head against his.
I’m afraid that all the progress I’ve made will be wiped out if I lose you,” she said. “Because of me, future generations will think being a psychologist will mean being a nutcase who knows so much but can’t manage her own mental state.”
Loris set his arms on her back and held her close. He knew she wanted him to do this, in fact she wouldn’t have it any other way. But the price would be high if it didn’t work out. It all depended on if the easy or difficult simulation proved a better representation of reality.
“I’m going to come back. I promise. But we can worry about that when we get to it. For now, I haven’t even left. And we have this entire night together.”
Brina sat up and smiled.
“I know you’re a survivor, but we’ll have to see if you can survive tonight first,” she said, grasping his shirt in her fists and pushing him against the seat’s back rest before leaning in for another warm and delicious kiss.
Brina gave Loris the best sendoff he could’ve asked for, and he was riding high as he put on his space suit and stepped into the airlock. Panic and Lopez were with him, while Stayed, Redhook, and a few others were climbing aboard the Balboa. The Magellan was already decelerating, and the plan was for the two ships to detach quickly before the station started gaining steam again on its way to Detonus.
Loris took his seat in the cockpit of the Cortes, knowing he was in for a long day and they wouldn’t be getting to the fun parts until much later. There’d be several hours of quiet drifting through space in which he’d have nothing to do but think about all the people he needed to deliver payback for.
“The Magellan has reached optimum speed for detachment,” Lopez said.
“Captain Stayed, are you ready to get this show on the road?” Loris asked over the com. The reply came back crisp and clear.
“Let’s get moving. I’ve got an awful twitch in my trigger finger,” he said.
Loris gave the order to Lopez, and the Cortes separated from the station and began to slowly pull away. He glanced through the window to see the Balboa following suit alongside.
“If you don’t mind my asking, did you really not know he was your father?” Panic wondered aloud. “How is that possible?”
“It’s complicated,” Loris said.
“I understand it,” Lopez added. “I mean, who doesn’t have so many children that it can be hard to find the time to tell them all who their father is?”
Loris chuckled to himself, hoping they’d remain this relaxed throughout the mission.
“All right, let’s hit the engines and get over to the rendezvous point,” Loris said.
Taking another glance through the window, he set his sights on the sun in the center of the solar system and the target planet somewhere nearby. They were going to have to be careful; making mistakes that cost lives was not acceptable. Loris was about to return to his console when he thought he saw a speck of something pass across the sun.
“Have we read any movement from the fleet around Detonus?” Loris asked.
“Nothing that would indicate any awareness of our presence,” Panic answered.
“Let’s stay sharp.”
They hadn’t been traveling for more than ten minutes before a sudden jolt shook the ship.
“What was that?” Loris asked.
“We’ve been hit! I’ll get the proton shields up,” Panic said.
“The scanners…take a look at this. It’s unbelievable,” Lopez said. While he began communicating with the Magellan, Loris took a look at lights echoing all around them on the console. Red dots seemed to disappear completely at about a quarter of the distance of the scanner’s maximum range. Digging a little deeper into the reports on the console, Loris was able to confirm that these ships met the same profile
“These ships have something that makes them invisible except at close proximity. Let’s coordinate with the Balboa and take a defensive posture,” Loris said.
/> “We’re taking more fire,” Panic said. “It looks like they’re firing electrical bursts.”
Both Loris and Lopez turned to look at her to see if she was being serious.
“Our ships should be able to absorb that with no problem,” Lopez said.
“Yes, these attacks pose virtually no threat, and I’m not detecting any other type of weaponry in use. It’s possible with enough fire they could disrupt some of the Magellan’s circuitry, causing it to overheat and fry or something,” Panic went on.
The ships were black, perhaps made out of a material similar to the probes. Heat signatures signaled that these were not unmanned vessels after all, but they carried probably a single occupant each. Loris caught more glimpses of them through the window as he took a moment to adjust to the possibility that the enemy fleet was basically powerless against them.
“I suppose we should return fire, right? Let’s start with the plasma cannons,” he said, bringing up the ship’s weapons interface. One ship appeared to be buzzing around them, pelting them with electricity with all of the effect of getting splashed at the beach.
Loris locked on and fired, sending a capsule full of irradiated material barreling through space. The enemy ship had no time to react. The collision sparked a reaction that blew the pesky fighter into pieces. It was hard not to smile with satisfaction that they’d got one back in the name of Earth. Loris continued to return fire, destroying enemy ships with perfect accuracy. He switched to photons to pick off those that were further away. The Balboa was now swatting down fighters left and right as well.
“They destroyed Earth but they’re hopeless in a space fight? It doesn’t add up,” Lopez said, sounding almost disappointed.
“They did spot us approaching and were coming to intercept before we even noticed, so they do have that going for them,” Panic said.
The number of enemy fighters rapidly diminished. The Cortes casually executed a few maneuvers to keep their adversaries rounded up, continuing to shoot down ship after ship that attacked them in vain.
“The simulator didn’t have anything like this,” Loris said. “It wasn’t even an option to just fight through their entire fleet rather than try to knock out the gamma station.”
“What do you make of that big one?” Lopez asked.
“Looks like a command ship to me,” Loris said, spotting it on the radar. A medium-sized vessel, somewhat larger than the Balboa or even the Hudson, kept a healthy distance from the fight, neither firing nor fleeing. While the small fighters from Detonus had more of an aerodynamic needle shape, this squadron leader had long wings along each axis that spun around an oblong body. It reminded Loris of a pinwheel.
“Yeah, but what do you think it’s doing?”
“Watching its pilots die pointless deaths,” Loris shrugged. “But we’re running out of targets and hanging around like that isn’t going to get it any mercy.”
The last enemy fighter was added to the floating junk pile when the Cortes and the Balboa turned to the command vessel, which attempted to make a belated escape. Like the fighters, it had no shield to speak of and it didn’t move particularly fast.
“It’s yours if you want it,” Stayed said over the com.
“Wait, they’re hailing us. There’s a language file the ship’s InferRead system can translate,” Panic said.
Loris held his finger above the button to fire. He pulled back, knowing that being spotted meant their mission to float into range and attack the planet was already a bust. The Magellan was closing in on their location. It brought a smile to his face to think that he’d hear the ship’s occupants begging him to spare their lives.
“Sure, let’s bring them up on the monitor,” he said. “Make sure the Balboa and the Magellan are listening in.”
Soon a video stream appeared over the ship’s windshield displaying a ghastly looking creature that would haunt Loris’s nightmares. This Detonan had yellow-green skin hanging loosely over its skull. If a human had been starved to death in a tub of lye, it might look something like the being displayed on the screen before them. These hideous, mold-eating, methane-breathing destroyers of Earth appeared to be the embodiment of death themselves.
“Relief your attack at once!” came the translation from InferRead after the Detonan produced a series of strange guttural sounds from its mouth. Loris kicked the stand to his console in an attempt to punish the program for its weak rendering of the alien language.
Loris got up from his seat and stepped toward the monitor. He was going to relish this.
“Why are you telling us to stop when you were the ones who attacked us first?” he said.
The Detonan glanced away from its screen, perhaps also fighting with its translation program or perhaps terrified that it was about to die. Awkward, jerky mannerisms could’ve been its normal style of movement, but Loris still got the impression that it seemed nervous.
“You have invading my space. We are no choicing but to retaliate,” it said. Loris couldn’t help but grin. That was everything he needed to hear.
“I wasn’t talking about your fighters out here on the edge of your system. You attacked us first when you detonated a bomb on Earth that destroyed the planet and everyone on it. But I’m glad you have a sense that it is justified to react when one has been attacked. I know you understand what we have to do after you killed eleven billion men, women, and children. You not only took their lives, you took our future, you took our past, and you took our home.
“I know we will have your utmost sympathy when we take all of that from you in return. We will spare no one. Your fleet will be pulverized. Your cultural monuments will be defaced and demolished. Your children will be extinguished. Your species will be eradicated and the universe will go on as if you never existed. We’re not interested in being morally superior or more merciful than you. We are here for revenge.”
When he finished, Loris had the pleasure of watching the impact of his words on his adversary, who visibly recoiled. Its milky, iris-less eyes grew darker until they were almost large black beads.
“We do no atrocities! We do no atrocities!” it said over and over until Loris interrupted it. Watching that creature deny what it had done only because it was now outgunned made him angry.
“You cannot lie to us! We’ve traced the probes to your planet. The one on Earth triggered when the bomb should go off, leaving the planet a floating field of rubble. You did this, and you continue to do this. We’ve seen you send more probes, threatening destruction on more planets. I’m going to put a stop to this once and for all,” he said.
The Detonan quaked, raising three-fingered hands and twisting them at the wrist in a gesture Loris could only guess at.
“You mistake. We send a probe to alert your danger. It tells the time of doom and points to the bomb package. It’s the sunshadow people that hunt and kill worlds. We are weak and can only alert danger and hope for save themselves. The sunshadow are evil killers. They want to be the only life.”
Loris peered hard at the creature, trying to sort out what it meant and what it knew about the destruction of Earth. Could it be that they’d been wrong about the probes? Wrong about who destroyed their planet?
“By sunshadow, it’s talking about the habitable planet on the other side of the sun, I believe,” Panic said. “We hadn’t identified any ships in that area or signs of an advanced civilization, but it’s possible the scanners failed to identify them too.”
“Yamaguchi is coming through with a revised plan of attack to take Detonus. Straightforward smash and dash,” Lopez said.
Loris froze, stricken by the fear that they were going after the wrong people. Wiping out millions of aliens to avenge Earth was one thing, but doing so without cause would be an unbearable mistake, more so if those people had actually been trying to help.
“Lopez, can you run this by Riki Lala to see if this passes muster with her?” he asked before turning back to the screen. “If you were trying to tell us that our planet wa
s about to be destroyed, couldn’t you have included something in the message about the bomb that would cause it? No one was able to even figure out what these symbols meant until after it happened.”
The Detonan wiped its cheek after a pustule burst and began to leak some kind of ooze.
“The probe is a warping of time. It can only convey time,” it said.
Loris stewed, growing increasingly frustrated with a conversation leading away from his intended course of action. It would’ve been so much easier if there was a way to catch the Detonan in a lie, but so far everything was hard to dispute.
“Lala says that it’s impossible to erase ambiguity when determining the intent behind the probes,” Lopez said. Loris sighed and clenched his fists.
“She would say something like that,” he muttered.
“I’m beginning to pick up signals of more of the Detonus fleet moving in our direction. I wouldn’t call it an attack formation, but this command ship is getting some backup,” Panic said.
Loris felt pinched for time. He needed to make a decision and it had to be the right one.
“Tell us what you know about the sunshadow people,” he said, hungry for something that would clarify what they needed to do. The Detonan’s eyes began to grow lighter.
“They are people simple but deceptive. We have spent thousands of years to build our technology. They have spent thousands of years to build power of mind. They can travel great distances, control, and create all with power of mind,” it said.
A thought occurred to Loris, one he thought would trip them up.
“If the sunshadow are intent upon destroying all other life, how come they haven’t managed to exterminate you?”
“Our atmospheres mutually incompatible,” it said. Loris waited for it to go on, but all that followed from the enemy ship was silence. Struggling to figure out the meaning, Loris turned to Panic for help. She rubbed her eye as she thought.