by Craig Allen
Jericho’s fleet had been divided into smaller battle groups, and all ships within those battle groups were ordered to maintain a distance of less than ten kilometers from one another. Such a distance was ridiculously close, but it ensured they wouldn’t get caught off guard by cloaked ships appearing suddenly between other vessels. If the toads did try such a stunt, they’d be lucky to sandwich two ships within a battle group, at which point they would be easy targets for grasers.
The plan was risky. Certainly, cloaked ships would be defending the mine, but the humans needed the extra exotic matter. Furthermore, they had to secure that mine so the toads wouldn’t use it any longer. If anything, the operation was a dry run in case they did have to attack Kali while they had their stealth fields.
Jericho stifled a yawn, hoping to appear only mildly interested in the events. The calmer he appeared, the calmer everyone else felt. He watched the main viewing globe as the icon representing the Churchill approached the top of the zero-g tunnel.
Jericho kept his concern lashed down tight, but it was there. One wrong move, and he’d lose an entire cruiser and her crew, like what happened to the Washington. Christ, why did I agree to this? He didn’t want to go down in history as the admiral who presided over the genocide of not just one intelligent species but tens of thousands—the most unique planet in known space reduced to radioactive dust, all because of him. He promised himself that when and if that time arrived, he’d let the Spicans carry the burden.
The Churchill’s officer spoke over the comm, his voice elevated in pitch. “Gravimetrics has confirmed the tunnel goes all the way down to the surface. Jesus, it’s just like Doc said.”
“Can they confirm the existence of the mining facility?” Jericho asked.
After a pause of several seconds, most of which was due to the millions of kilometers between the Churchill and the Tokugawa, someone finally responded, “Negative. Too much distortion on the surface, and the corridor is too narrow. We’ll need to go down there and confirm it visually.”
That had been the plan all along, to verify that the destruction of the Kali vessel inside the tunnel hadn’t damaged the facility.
“Very well,” Jericho said. “Proceed. All ships maintain active scans. If there’s so much as a probe out there, I want to know about it.”
Jericho put a hand to his chin. That the toads would simply leave the facility unguarded seemed odd. At any rate, the toads would have attacked by that point.
Then the other shoe dropped.
“Contact! Tokugawa, this is Odin. Reading debris off our starboard bow.”
“The hell’d that come from?” It was the Churchill. “We had full actives on.”
“Joan of Arc to Tokugawa,” someone said. “Reading the same debris near us. And… closing. ETA thirty seconds. Christ, they came out of nowhere.”
“The Texas here. Reading debris approaching from two five zero by three zero five relative to our position.”
Jericho studied the readings on the main holovisual. He’d expected the toads would have to deactivate their cloaks before firing, but the objects were not what he expected. They were no bigger than hoppers, but they weren’t hoppers at all. The design was unique enough tactical couldn’t identify it. The ships were long and spindly, like giant tactical torpedos, but they were going much too slowly—somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty meters a second.
Jericho needed a moment to understand. Shit. “Battle stations. All ships. Prepare to be boarded. Defense grid online. Let’s see if we can grase them down before they make contact.”
~~~
Cody’s eyes widened. “Boarders?”
Sonja grabbed Cody’s arm, alarmed.
“Marines, move!” shouted a lieutenant, the only officer on the deck. “Arm up and man your posts. Gunny”—he pointed at Sonja—“get Dr. Brenner to safety, and then get your ass to your post.”
“Yes, sir.” Sonja grabbed Cody by the arm. “Let’s—”
The ship’s deck vibrated, causing everyone to hesitate for the briefest of moments before continuing out into the halls. Cody followed with Sonja beside him.
Another moment after that, an alarm sounded, which took Cody a couple of minutes to place. “Is that alarm what I think it is?”
“Intruders.” She hesitated at the doorway, checking both directions.
Cody tried to remember how far they were from the outer hull. He pulled up a map on his internal viewer. They were precisely five main bulkheads away.
“Where are we headed?” Cody amended the question. “Well, I know we’re headed for safety, but where exactly would be safe?”
“On a ship being invaded by monsters?” Sonja stopped at another corner. “The nearest weapons locker sounds good to me.”
“To hide or pick up a firearm?” Cody wanted to do both.
“Guns make me feel safe.” Sonja peeked again then headed around the corner. “C’mon. It’s down the passageway and—”
A crack echoed from down the passageway, followed by the rattle-rattle of a G-1 Gauss rifle. Shouting intermixed with the gunfire, not all of it human.
“Shit.” Sonja grabbed Cody and half dragged him through the nearest hatch into a room small enough to be a closet. Grav-plate stabilizers, tools, and even old-fashioned mops lined the walls. The room was a janitor’s paradise, but nothing there could remotely function as a weapon.
“I thought we’re going to the weapons locker.”
“Too late for that.” Sonja slammed the hatch door behind them and hit the lock. It spun into place with a hiss and a tone. “They’re in the next passageway over.”
“You know that just from listening?”
A growl muffled by the door punctuated Cody’s question. Heavy footsteps rattled the deck as they stomped down the passageway. Whoever, or whatever, it was stopped just outside the hatch, and a silence followed.
Cody wanted to ask if whatever was outside could break through the hatch. Granted, it was made from the same plasteel as the inner bulkheads. Cody was sure it could withstand a lot of damage.
The hatch bulged inward with a clang loud enough to be heard halfway across the ship. They both pressed themselves against the far wall. The locking mechanism stretched briefly against the strain before returning to its original position. A red light flashed on the small holoconsole of the lock.
Red lights never meant anything good.
~~~
“Hull breach!” an officer shouted. “Multiple sections!”
The holodisplay showed the dozen or so points along the starboard side where the ships had impacted. The same thing had happened on most other ships in the fleet, including Spican ships. From the size of the vessels, three or four Kali creatures could be inside each. Maybe more. That meant creatures bred for war were flooding the ship, but that was why ships had marines.
“Repel boarders.” Again, Admiral Jericho kept his voice calm. Unfortunately, their problems were just beginning.
“Contact! Tacs inbound! Engaging!”
The holodisplay showed him the location, course, and number of the inbound torpedoes, of which there were many.
Low-powered grasers lined all sides of the ship for just that reason, and those grasers went to work. The holovisual highlighted the paths of the antitorpedo grasers as they licked at the tacs, removing them one by one. A few detonated near other vessels but not close enough to do any real damage. In fact, despite how many torpedoes there were, they didn’t come close to what was necessary to overwhelm the fleet.
Jericho frowned. The toads weren’t stupid. They had something else planned. He just couldn’t see it yet.
“Track their course,” Jericho said. “I want to know their point of origin.”
“Torpedoes approached from two one four by oh two one. Range one point five million klicks.” The officer furrowed his brow. “But there’s nothing there, sir.”
“Cloaked ships,” Jericho said.
“Contact! Three two five by oh five two. Range…�
�� The officer physically stepped back from his console. “Jesus. One thousand klicks.”
Jericho raised an eyebrow as more vessels appeared out of nowhere, strategically placing themselves throughout the fleet, and all of them nearly on top of other ships. That made torpedoes useless unless they wanted to hurt themselves as well as the enemy.
Maintaining composure was getting harder for Jericho, but he gave it his best. “All ships, stand down on tacs. Fire grasers as you have solutions.”
~~~
Another impact rattled the door, stretching out the hinges. The door would never work again, not to mention that it wouldn’t be attached much longer.
Cody searched quickly, his faith in the strength of the locking mechanism evaporating with each impact. He would’ve given anything to have a gun, even just a coil pistol.
Then he saw something. Next to a shelf was a small hatch a little more than a meter and a half across.
Sonja saw it, too. “Maintenance hatch. Open it.”
Cody pulled at the lever, which opened at his touch. Sonja pushed him inside the maintenance hatch. Behind them, another crash made the door bulge enough to strip off one hinge.
Once Sonja was inside, Cody slammed the hatch shut, but they had no way to lock it from that side. On the other side, the room’s main hatch finally gave way. It bounced off the wall, rattling the maintenance hatch. Cody searched the area in the meager light from a tiny source over the door, one bright enough to give away their position.
A plasma torch rested at his feet. He picked it up and started to fire it up near the light, only to be stopped by Sonja. She reached for the edge of the light, and at a flick of her wrist, the light shut off. The artificial optics in his eyes immediately adjusted his eyesight for the dark, in which he saw Sonja gesturing for him to follow with one hand while her other pressed a finger to her lips.
Carefully, Cody sidestepped his way along the narrow conduit, which couldn’t have been wider than a meter nor taller than a meter and a half. He tried to avoid tripping on the pipes snaking their way along the floor while at the same time avoiding the various conduits, optic wires, and control-panel emitters overhead that did God only knew what.
Squeals echoed in the room they’d just abandoned. Whatever was in there was breaking or throwing anything not bolted down. Sonja picked up the pace, and Cody did his best to follow, still gripping the plasma torch. They hadn’t found an exit yet, and they needed to quickly. Without a coil pistol at the bare minimum, no human could stand up to those creatures. They’d evolved in a high-gravity environment where even the prey were as strong, smart, and vicious as any predator. They could turn a human into lunch with ease.
Then again, they were also large. Cody doubted they could follow Sonja and him down the narrow passage, wherever it led—assuming the boarders were toads and not something else.
Suddenly, the crashing and banging stopped. In the darkness, Cody could make out Sonja’s lips as they formed the words oh shit.
The maintenance hatch started to rattle, gently at first, but he knew that would change.
~~~
The Tokugawa had done a full burn on forward thrusters to gain some distance, and the other vessel simply closed. Another clone of the original Kali ship, it continued to remove layers of the Tokugawa’s outer armor with grasers.
Jericho let the captain handle the engagement with the cruiser. He focused on the fleet as a whole, which had turned into bedlam. The Kali ships had appeared out of nowhere, sending the entire fleet into chaos. He’d expected a cloaked fleet and planned accordingly. What he didn’t expect were the torpedolike attack vessels. Such was the nature of battle plans: They died upon contact with the enemy. At that point, formations were out of the question. All each ship could do was handle the nearest threat directly.
He barked orders to his team, who relayed those orders through their own comm channels. Once the Odin had destroyed a series of smaller attack vessels, he ordered it to assist the Texas and the Nuevo Leon. They had been doing a pretty good job of whittling down a cruiser on their own, but it was taking a toll. Battle damage scarred their hulls, and the Nuevo Leon had lost one of her Daedalus struts.
On top of it all, the Spicans dove into the battle like berserkers. Some charged headlong into the fray, grasing ships at close range. Others ganged up on a single vessel, annihilated it, then moved on. They’d behaved the same way during the war. Their lack of tactics gave humans an advantage, but their ferocity was often beyond comprehension, and when the Spicans did use strategy, it was frightening to behold.
The temptation to get frustrated was mounting, but Jericho kept it in check. He’d managed to organize a handful of ships into a wing that proceeded to destroy other vessels. So far, two destroyers had been disabled but not destroyed, thank goodness. They managed to limp away as the Joan of Arc provided covering fire.
Between the boarders and the battle, things looked grim, and the element of chance could always make things worse.
~~~
“C’mon.” Sonja’s voice was low. Cody barely heard her, but as soon as she spoke, squeals and growls erupted from behind them. The rending of the plasteel echoed through the maintenance passageway, followed by the maintenance door being tossed aside.
“Move!” Cody pushed Sonja forward as the squeals of Kali’s denizens grew louder.
Behind him, two creatures had fit into the narrow conduit somehow, squeezing themselves into the conduit and changing shape with it, as if they were blobs, but their heads resembled that of toads, though without the metallic plates. Claws raked at the walls as the creatures dragged themselves down the narrow passage like a wall of monsters charging toward them.
Sonja let out a shout. “There!”
The maintenance conduit ended in a hatch identical to the one behind them. The hatch was a good twenty meters ahead, though. Another glance behind told him they wouldn’t make it before Kali’s angry denizens reached them.
Sonja ducked under a bulkhead and nearly hit her head on a pipe low enough to constrict the passage even further. The less-than-meter-square opening was enough for her to get through and would just be as easy for Cody. He wasn’t sure if the Kali creatures could squeeze themselves through the narrow passage, but they’d gotten a lot farther than Cody thought possible.
Cody ducked to fit through the narrow opening, and as he did, he noted lettering on the pipe: Warning! High Pressure!
Cody lifted the plasma torch he still held. As he slid under the pipe and as the Kali creatures behind him closed to within two meters, he touched the activation switch with his thumb. The torch snapped to life with a crack, superheating the air around the bright flame. He pressed it to the pipe just as he passed it and was rewarded a split second later.
Sonja spun around as the pipe burst with a pop not unlike a coil rifle firing. Coolant or steam, Cody didn’t bother to check which, sprayed and hissed all over the Kali creatures pursuing them, and they didn’t like it one bit.
He pushed Sonja forward. “Don’t stop!”
Cody followed her, his curiosity at what the fluid was doing to the creatures failing to overcome his desire to escape.
~~~
Jericho’s eyes widened as a Kali cruiser adjusted its course to avoid a pack of Spican vessels hounding it. As it did, the cruiser approached within the pull of the neutron star. Trying such a maneuver took either guts, stupidity, or sheer desperation.
For a moment, Jericho was sure the Kali ship would make it until several Spican torpedoes snaked through the Kali ship’s graser defense system, impacting close to the anterior hull. The detonations weren’t enough to destroy the ship, but they were plenty strong enough to send the ship into the gravity well of the neutron star.
Jericho did his best to avoid pounding the desk. The destruction of an enemy ship was a good thing, but that particular method of death was a threat to everyone near the star.
He barked out an order. “All ships evacuate. Put as much distance from the ne
utron star as possible.”
His staff relayed the commands, sending translations to the Spicans as well. The captain of the Tokugawa gave the order as well, diving the ship near enough to the star to gain momentum without getting ripped to their constituent molecules by the star’s gravity. As a result, they’d be on the other side of the star by the time the Kali vessel impacted the surface.
He prayed everyone in the fleet could get away in time. Those that didn’t wouldn’t be around any longer.
~~~
Sonja’s shoulders relaxed as soon as Cody dropped the half meter from the maintenance hatch to the deck. Behind him, the hatch closed.
Five marines surrounded them, coil rifles pointing at them for a split second. A second later, they lowered their weapons. A marine behind Cody removed his hand from the maintenance hatch after securing it via a wheel lock and shoving a baton through the wheel to keep it from spinning.
“Marine,” Cody said, trying to catch his breath. “There are toads, or something like that, on the other side of the hatch.”
“Yeah, Doc, I figured as much.” The marine spoke matter-of-factly, as if nothing was threatening them mere meters away. “You all right, Gunny?”
“I’ve been better, Sergeant,” Sonja said. “What’s our status?”
“About three dozen intruders got on board somehow,” the marine said. “We’re in the process of cleaning them up, but something big is happening. Not sure what.”
Sonja crossed her arms. “Well, what—”
A klaxon sounded, along with a panicked voice. “All hands, prepare for impact. Brace brace brace.”
“Fuck.” The marine put his hands against the wall, as did every other marine.
Sonja pushed Cody against the wall and leaned against it. Cody did the same. Either a torpedo was going to impact or, unlikely, another ship would impact.
He couldn’t imagine which would be worse.