by Jamie Sawyer
“Lieutenant Pakos,” Atkins said, “please do tell me that she is the only one.”
Pakos grimaced. “I’m detecting a further bio-signature emerging from the asteroid field, Captain.” She swallowed. “It’s bigger than the first.”
I could see it too. Two motherships, in tandem, were assembled between the Oregon and Helios.
“Can you pull us out?” I demanded. “Retreat – go back into Q-space?”
Better to cut our losses – report to Command that we had met resistance.
Atkins shook his head, still intently focused on the holo. “Impossible. We’d risk damage retreating through this debris without a properly plotted course, and the Q-drive will take a minimum of six hours to calculate a return trajectory—”
“Then jump out of this star system!”
I knew that was equally unrealistic, but I wanted to try something – anything – to get us out of the threat-range of the Krell warships.
“And into a black hole or a gravimetric storm? No. We’re fighting.” He lifted his head, pointed to the weapons pit. “Weapons officers, be at your stations.”
The weapons crew assembled around the bridge, occupying dedicated pods towards the nose of the vessel. Without ceremony, each of them jacked into their weapons systems. Reports of the railgun, laser batteries and plasma torpedo systems coming online were shouted across the chamber.
With admirable calmness, Atkins shouted: “All hands prepare to engage. The Krell have found us.”
My mother was an Alliance Navy ensign. My memory of her had an age-blurred weakness to it: I could recall little about her, save that she had a kind face and was well-intentioned. She died before the Krell had even been discovered but it felt like she had given up living a long time before that. Back in her time – only a generation ago – starship crews suffered greatly from the time-dilation issue. Short Q-drive jumps cost her years in objective time. The subjective journey time to Alpha Centauri might be six months, but for the rest of the human race three years had passed. Even from a young age I remember my father seemed to age at a different rate to my mother; he growing ever older, subjected to the march of time, she remaining youthful. I think that was what eventually led my father to take on more distant tours of duty – trying, in some perverse way, to reach equilibrium with her. This woman with whom he shared two children, but with whom he increasingly had no connection.
My mother never held a starship commission and she had no dreams of being a senior officer. She wasn’t a career sort; this was a job, to pay the rent on our tiny high-rise. That kind of money was hard to come by for Earthside work, and the military were always looking for fresh meat.
But she lived for her shore-leave. That was when she shone. We tried to keep in contact via FTL video-link – she would call us for birthdays or special occasions – but that wasn’t the norm. I remember her in snapshots. My sister Carrie and I were passed between distant aunts and uncles as we grew up, and I treasured the time I spent with my mother.
I remember one night very well. I was an objective eight years old. My mother had been on shore-leave for two whole weeks, which was something of a novelty. My father was on operation somewhere off-world and so this leave was just for Carrie and me.
Braving the fallout and the local hood-gangs, my mother had taken us out for the day. This was before the public services had been permanently suspended and most of Detroit Metro was placed under martial law, but even then the Metro was a dark enough reality. I can’t remember where she took us, but it was probably a local park or shopping mall.
Once we were back home, Carrie had flopped into bed early. My mother sat up with me in the tiny bedroom, and we watched from the tenement window as the stars came out. I hadn’t ever been into space. Sometimes my mother would tell me stories about the adventures that she had experienced. It was exciting but frightening. Long after she had returned to her assignment I would lay awake at night worrying about her.
But that night was different. Although I was tired I was happy to just sit with her and watch the night sky. Downtown was busy and hot, but focusing on the emerging stars gave me some calm.
“Have you ever had to fight another starship?” I asked. “Aunt Beth lets me watch the news-feeds sometimes. They show pictures.”
My mother sat silently for a long while, smiling to herself. It wasn’t a joyful expression but rather a sardonic, almost bitter smile. I was about to ask her again – thinking that perhaps she hadn’t heard my question – when she finally answered.
“Starship battles are the most dangerous sorts of battles, Conrad,” she said, slowly. “The deep kills men. Never forget that. Space isn’t your friend and will turn on you in an instant.”
“But I watch the feeds,” I insisted, “and the Alliance captains know what to do. I saw that the Alliance took down two Directorate ships just the other day. I’ll bet you are great in a starship fight.”
She continued to look out into the night sky. The smile never left her face.
“There’s no honour or skill in a starship engagement. There’s nothing special about it. The only trick is whoever shoots first, wins.”
The tone of her voice didn’t broker any further discussion, and I fell silent.
That was the last time that I ever saw my mother. My sister and I received a letter from the Department of Off-World Defence the following month, informing us that the United American government was grateful for the sacrifice that Jane Harris had made. Her ship had been destroyed during a skirmish with a Directorate vessel in orbit around Jupiter Outpost, and regrettably there were no recorded survivors.
The lead Krell warship sailed so close to the Oregon that I thought she was going to ram us. The prow of the ship was literally on top of the Oregon.
“Closing blast-shutters!” an officer yelled.
Like that’s going to do us any good, I thought. If the bitch is going to hit us, we’re dead in the water.
“Belay that order,” Atkins shouted back, a hard edge to his voice. “I want to see space with my own eyes.”
I searched the faces of the crew around me. All were pale with horror. If we were breached by the Krell ship, even if we made it to the escape pods, there would be no help out here. Only a slow, interminable decline as supplies ran out – light-years away from the rest of the human race.
I felt helpless. This was not my fight.
“Evasive manoeuvres,” Atkins declared. “Pull us aftwards, all power.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Are the null-shields holding?”
Like most military vessels, the Oregon was equipped with null-shields: a projected energy field, capable of dispersing incoming enemy fire. It worked best on energy weapons but could be used to counter other ballistics as well. The Krell vessels had a similar technology, although it was of some biological origin.
“She’s inside the null-shield,” Pakos explained.
So that was the enemy strategy. To pull so close to us that our shields were useless. It was the sort of gamble that a human warship would never take, because it left the attacker open to a retaliatory strike. I watched now as the null-shields projected by both ships met; resulting in a miniature storm of evanescent blue embers.
“She’s firing!” someone yelled.
The first Krell ship opened fire with a brief volley of bio-plasma shots. Inside the enemy ship were specialised, living cannons – grown to generate bio-energies every bit as lethal as the manufactured weaponry of the Alliance military. Plasma raked the hull of the Oregon. Somewhere port-side, not far from our position. The Oregon’s gravity well stuttered and the bridge shook violently as impact after impact tore into the hull. I staggered with the force of each hit, grappling the edge of a bank of monitors to stay on my feet. My gut lurched and I tasted bile at the back of my throat. Sparks exploded from a nearby terminal. An officer slumped over one of the weapons stations, dead.
I wanted to yell out for a damage report – to get answers about how badl
y we had been hit – but bit back on my words. This was Atkins’ ship: he was in command out here.
“We have ablative plating,” Atkins murmured, by way of explanation. “Lieutenant, maintain power on the shields. It’ll take more than that to bring us down.”
I exchanged a worried glance with Jenkins.
“But not much more,” she said to me, voice barely a whisper.
“Everybody in one piece?” I asked.
Blake rubbed a bloody graze on his head, but it was only superficial. “Just about.”
“Lieutenant Caitlin is dead,” another officer called across the bridge. “The primary railgun is inoperative.”
This was my chance to do something.
Fuck it – I’m not dying like this.
I dashed across the bridge to her post. During the preliminary bombardment, she must have hit her head hard against the console. Either that, or suffered some kind of cerebral feedback from the Krell attack. I pulled her jack-cables free, unplugging her corpse. There was no doubt she was dead: her eyes and mouth were wide, blood pooling at the ears. I hauled the body out of the chair and slid into it myself.
“Sorry, Caitlin,” I said. “But I need your weapon.”
Starship crew and simulant operators shared the same jacking connections – those hard-wired ports at the top of my spine, in my forearms. The jacks were still warm from the dead officer’s connection; one of them slipped out of my hand, slick with her blood. The other weapons officers turned to look at me, one or two standing from their stations with concerned expressions.
“What the hell are you doing?” Pakos shouted at me across the bridge.
“What does it look like?” I replied. “I’m taking control of the railgun. I don’t see anyone else doing it.”
“You’re not trained! The railgun requires extensive operational experience to fire—”
“And I’ve already told you – I’ve done this before.” I really didn’t care what she said; I wasn’t going to sit there while this battle played out around me. At least I could make a difference with the railgun.
“Leave him, Lieutenant,” Atkins directed. The tone of his voice suggested respect – perhaps he wasn’t such a rules-man after all. What I was doing right now: this was most certainly against regulation.
There was a jag of pain as each of the cables hit home. In truth, although I had done this before, I wasn’t experienced in the use of shipboard weaponry. The principles of connecting with the Oregon were roughly the same as operation of a simulant. It was the nuances that differed.
It took a moment to make the neural-link, then I was online.
I am the Oregon.
New information flooded my synapses. I was the machine. Targeting data uploaded to memory buffers in my head. For a few seconds, the flood of information was disabling – just like the initial rush of transition. Physically I was still in the bridge, but with a thought I commanded the primary railgun: a living human being inside, an enormous inert railgun outside. The holo in front of me snapped into focus.
“Primary railgun online,” Pakos declared behind me.
“Fuck yeah!” Kaminski yelled.
“You might like to take safety measures,” Atkins said. “This ride is about to get bumpy. Initiate defensive measures with lasers please.”
The Krell warship was positioned overhead, dominating the bridge view-port. The Oregon’s laser batteries began shooting, meeting incoming fire. With each pulse the lasers illuminated the scarred and battered underside of the enormous ship.
“Has the fleet fought this hostile previously?” Atkins asked.
By their nature, the Krell did not give their vessels names. There was no ship title and no identification tag on the hull. To the Krell Collective, I doubt that this particular ship had any individuality or distinction beyond her size and mass. But the Navy held records, and every Naval engagement during the course of the Krell War had been catalogued in detail. Every vessel was studied, every tactic deployed considered. If a starship had a known weakness, then it would be recorded. All Navy ships were equipped with a database of known hostiles. It might give us an edge, no matter how miniscule.
This played out around me, but my focus was somewhere else entirely. I searched for targets outside with the railgun. There was something animal about the machine, something desperate. It hungered for a target and I reined it in. I commanded firepower capable of decimating an entire fleet. It was exhilarating, intoxicating.
Data flowed across my mind’s eye. It was so similar to operating a simulant, yet so different.
“Database match acquired,” a young officer called triumphantly across the bridge. “Primary hostile is Death of Antares. Category four. Last Naval engagement was seven years ago, claimed lives of nine hundred crewmen aboard battleship Virginia Central—”
“Keep to the essentials, please,” Atkins replied. “We don’t have time for the detail.”
Not to mention the effect that the disclosure would probably have on the morale of the bridge staff. A battleship was four times the mass of an assault cruiser like the Oregon and the news that this alien vessel had taken one of those down would be understandably unwelcome.
“Known weakness on starboard port!” she blurted back. “Uploading the data to you now, Captain. It took a hit during a sighting at Proxima Yaris, as a result of a Naval bombardment—”
The Oregon listed again, and I swayed in my seat with the motion. Something else struck the ship, this time so hard that the entire spaceframe shook. Might’ve been a larger piece of local debris, or perhaps a solid-shot weapon deployed by the Death. Space outside was crammed with potential targets now.
“The Death has a weakened arterial wall at the connection point between the rear engine and the third hangar port,” Atkins said. “From here, we have a clear shot at her belly.”
A holo sprang to life showing the Death of Antares – a spinning wireframe diagram. Markers illustrated the weakened spot: the location of the previous Naval bombardment.
“Charging particle beam accelerator,” a weapons officer declared. “Acquiring target.”
“Permission to fire. Commence bombardment.”
The view-port flashed again, and a glittering beam shot across space. Against the black, the light was so bright that it left an after-image on my retinas. The weapon scoured the underside of the Death of Antares, causing a rupture between two armoured plates. Fluid and assorted debris erupted from the vessel, spilling out into space. The ship continued her slow and interminable manoeuvre overhead, but I could tell that she was hurt.
Damn it. I felt a pang of annoyance that I was not the operator to take first blood. The railgun swivelled angrily outside.
“Did we kill it?” Blake asked, excitedly.
The weapons officer’s impact had caused some minor structural damage – a report filtered through to my station.
“Not quite,” I growled. “But we’re close. This is my kill.”
The ship sailed overhead, and I saw my chance.
I didn’t wait for an order. I opened up with the railgun. It was nothing more than a dumb killshot weapon – slow and unguided, but absolutely lethal at this range. It could punch a hole through hull plating and open the enemy ship to vacuum. That was the goal: make the enemy ship bleed to death. I fired a short volley of super-accelerated shots into the underside of the Death.
To me, immersed in the operating system of the Oregon, each shot seemed to take an eternity to reach its target, all the while the Death firing barrages of bio-plasma into the Oregon. The reality was that it took microseconds for the rounds to impact.
I knew that the Antares was dead before she did.
First one, then two, railgun shots pierced the lower hull. Assisted by the Oregon’s AI, my aim was good, and each shot hit the same weakened seam on the underside. In slow motion, the rounds punched right through the armour plating. More debris poured from the puncture wound, more fluid spilled out into space – freezing before it
had even left the vicinity of the vessel. The ship seemed to wobble, the engine-light flickering. The bio-plasma pores stopped firing.
“Confirmed hit,” I declared. “She’s moving beyond our shield perimeter.”
A cheer went up across the bridge. This was better than I had expected. I felt a surge of hope run through me. The weapon still hungered, and I felt the enormous barrels cooling, but if nothing else I had bought us some time.
There is still another one out there, a voice sounded in my head. That was either me, or the railgun AI – now reloaded, eager for another target.
“Any database match on the secondary hostile?” Atkins yelled.
“The Great White, sir,” the same officer from earlier replied. “Responsible for the scuttling of three Alliance Navy ships at the Battle for Gavis Prime.” What was it with this officer and bad news? “Category six. No known weaknesses, sir.”
“What’s a category six?” Kaminski called.
No one bothered to answer him. Krell starships were categorised according to their threat level – based on intel held on specific vessels, cross-referenced with size. A category six ship was big.
“What category are we?” Kaminski followed up.
“We’re a three,” I called back.
“Ah, shit.”
The Great White made ponderous progress through the asteroid field, firing brilliant lance-weapons as she went. She was further away than the Death and well outside our null-shield. Each shot fizzled against the shield, now holding firm and protecting us. The enemy ship was still partially concealed by the asteroid field and as she moved the loose debris was sent scattering.
I’ll take you down just as easily, I promised. The railgun was getting the better of me. I had to fire.
“I’m continuing fire on the Death,” I declared.