Francescan War Chronicles 1: Space Knight Denxeiter

by C. K. Pershing

  “Ah shut up. You and I have had some beautiful moments recently and you’re already ruining them.”

  “Pssh, I’m not the one trying to work out some kind of sibling sex back-up plan.”

  Feln rolled his eyes. “Alright, I’m ending the transmission now.”

  Aaltskog saluted with a giggle. Her screen went black. Feln shook his head and snorted. That girl really has me wrapped around her finger.

  He flipped his comms over to the main channel. “Captain Feln Koenig, #34 Denxeiter, ready to launch.”

  Kesh’s window came on Feln’s screen with both Kesh and Larkin inside. “Roger that,” Kesh said.

  “Good luck,” Larkin said before they both saluted. “Prepare to launch.” The window with Kesh and Larkin went off and the hangar doors above Denxeiter opened as the launch countdown appeared on his screen.

  “Here we go,” Feln said just before the countdown reached zero and Denxeiter was catapulted into space.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Feln spent about fifteen minutes putting Denxeiter through various maneuvers, starting with simple acceleration/ decelerations and progressing up to spiraling rolls and hard turns. As always, Aaltskog was dead on with her adjustments and Feln found himself not having to change his way of piloting to compensate for Denxeiter’s change in mass. He knew this was also thanks to Denxeiter’s main computer learning how to deal with the changes, but Aaltskog’s contributions couldn’t be ignored.

  “Having fun?” Aaltskog’s smiling face popped onto his screen as he saw the small gray tug she was piloting drift up close to Denxeiter.

  “Yeah. I was just thinking how clumsy these controls are and was like, ‘yep, that’s my girl’s handiwork.’”

  “You sir, are a liar of the highest degree. I saw you twirling around like you were in some kind of space ballet.”

  “I know. No, you’ve really done great work again, as always. I was just thinking that when you showed up.”

  “Flattery makes me hot.”

  “Well then you oughta catch on fire after this. I was even thinking that yeah, Denxeiter’s computer is helping too by learning. But I think your adjustments haven’t just helped me, they’ve even helped Denxeiter’s computer itself by making it easier to learn.”

  Aaltskog fanned herself and licked her lips, “Oh baby, I’m so wet right now! Let’s ditch this mission and go somewhere where we can be alone.”

  Feln waved her statement away. “Darling, though, seriously. This is really good work. The more I think about it, it’s scarily good work. From a straight piloting standpoint, I honestly can’t detect anything different. I’m not lying when I say that if any bad guys showed up, I have full confidence that I could run rings around them as if there was nothing wrong.”

  Aaltskog, who looked like she was going to say some more racy comments at the beginning of Feln’s statement got an expression that grew more earnest as he went along. When he finished, she said, “You know I don’t know how I do that. I just somehow do. My body knows. I’m not sure I really deserve the credit.”

  “Yeah, you always say that, and maybe it’s true. But I think it’s also true that maybe deep down somewhere, you do know what you’re doing, and just kind of, I dunno, get in the zone as it were. And when you come out of it, tah-dah, you’re done.”

  “Hmm. Well, maybe. Although it still doesn’t explain why I’m so lousy at math.”

  “Maybe math doesn't put you in the zone.”

  “Heh, that’s probably true. I can’t really say I’m the kind of person to get excited by such things, much less reach some kind of state of zen while doing math problems.”

  Feln shrugged. “Well, give it a chance sometime.”

  Aaltskog shook her head. “Nah, I’ll stick with what I know. Or…don’t know. Or something.”

  “Fair enough.” He looked down at the colony below them and tried not to linger too long on the large portion of it that was destroyed when the Uhlinder slammed into it. So many people dead in such a short amount of time. They were civilians who weren’t even expecting to be in the middle of a battle, much less to die in such a horrible way. What had been their home was now their graveyard. If only he’d been able to stop Ganxeiter…

  “Feln…” Aaltskog said softly. “I know what you’re thinking and please try not to. It wasn’t your fault.”

  Feln sighed, “You’ll never convince me of that. But don't worry, I won’t argue now. Let’s go get what we came for.”

  “Okay…but I’m not gonna let that go. I’ll keep quiet for now, but I won’t let you beat yourself up over it forever.” After waiting a few seconds to see if Feln would argue, she said, “So anyway, we’re supposed to go to Loading Dock C. Governor Zalk has the tarp waiting for us there on a pallet. I’ll put the tractor beam on the pallet and we’ll take it back to the Tannhauser.”

  “Got it. Lead the way.”

  As they traveled along, Feln realized that this was the first time he’d been outside the Tannhauser since his rescue from the planet below.It was also his first chance to really study the situation of the fleet since the last battle. What he saw made his heart sink. Aside from the terrible devastation wrought against the colony and the destruction of the Uhlinder, he noticed that the fleet had a lot less ships now than before the battle. No matter where he looked, there were gaping holes in the defensive sphere around the Tannhauser and the colony.

  “You told me it was bad, but I didn't think it would be this bad,” he said to Aaltskog.

  “Well, having a fleet carrier explode in the middle of a tight defensive formation and then slam into a colony tends to cause a chain reaction of destruction.”

  “Yeah. It’s just, damn, when I think that this is all that’s left of what was two fleets combined into one…” He watched small service vehicles and robots clearing debris and towing the lifeless hulks of destroyed ships away from any areas where they could collide with still-functioning ships.

  “There’s also the matter that while everything was going sideways in here, there was an enemy fleet attacking from outside at the same time. Their timing was perfect and when the Uhlinder was sunk, the enemy used the shock that everyone was experiencing to break through. Thank God for Admiral Kesh. He kept everything together and took command of the fleet once Admiral Lenz was killed. He somehow rallied what was left and we fought them off.”

  “So many of our ships are in such bad shape. Do we have anybody operating at or near 100%?”

  Aaltskog was quiet. And then, “Nope. It’s bad. I mean really, really bad. I don’t think the admiral wants to scare anybody, but we’re hanging on by a thread. One more fleet attack and we’re dead.”

  “Well, don’t count me and Denxeiter out yet. We’ll put a stop to them.”

  Aaltskog gave a sober smile, “I know you will.” They pulled near the specified loading dock. “Here we are.”

  Governor Zalk’s image came on Feln’s screen. “Captain, it’s so good to see you and Denxeiter out and about. We were really worried for you when you made planetfall.”

  “It’s good to see you too, Governor, and thanks for your concern. …I’m sorry I was too late to help your colony.”

  Zalk shook his head. “Nonsense. You have nothing to apologize for. Just promise me you’ll avenge all those we lost.”

  “Sir, that’s a promise I’m happy to make.”

  “Excellent.” Zalk then said to Aaltskog, “Now then my dear, if you’ll give my dock crew a few moments, they’ll move the pallet you came for into position.”

  “Thank you sir, standing by,” Aaltskog said. While they waited, she and Zalk chatted about various fleet gossip. Feln smiled thinking about how even during hard times like now, some things never changed and that even someone with a long and distinguished career like Zalk could hold his own with Aaltskog as one of the wickedest gossips in the fleet.

  Then something caught Feln’s eye. It was down at the end of the colony destroyed during the last attack. With all of the d
ebris and lightning storms from the destroyed solar arrays combined with the gaseous nature of the area, Feln couldn’t be sure what it was. In fact, with so much general chaos swirling around, it might not be anything. But just as he was about to look away, he saw it again. Something long and so thin as to be almost invisible was plucking debris from the space around the colony and pulling it into the wrecked interior of the colony itself.

  Feln kept watching and eventually it happened again. From this angle he couldn’t tell what it was, but something was definitely inside the destroyed section of the colony and using some kind of long tendril to grab debris floating nearby.

  He broke in on Aaltskog and Zalk’s conversation, “Sorry to interrupt, but Governor, is there a service team near the destroyed end of the colony using some kind of grappling cable for clean-up work?”

  Zalk turned to check with some personnel off screen. “No, Captain, why do you ask?”

  “Because something down there is grabbing parts of debris and pulling it inside the shell of the colony. I almost missed it, but something is going on. I’m gonna go check it out. I don’t think it realizes I’ve spotted it— whatever it is.”

  “Should I send some of the home guard as escort?”

  “No, I’m going to see if I can sneak up on it, and too many ships coming with me might alert it,” Feln replied as Zalk nodded. “Aaltskog, you go through with transporting the tarp. As soon as you can get the tractor beam on it, get back to the Tannhauser as fast as possible. I don’t want you out here in a tug if this goes bad.”

  “Alright, but remember, just because I tuned Denxeiter to work in his current state doesn’t mean you can just do business as usual. Not having the navigation deflector fully functioning is gonna make things much harder in a fight.”

  “Understood. By the way, let Admiral Kesh know what I’m doing but ask him to keep things quiet while I scope this out. I don’t want to spook whatever it is.”

  “Got it. Take care and come back to me, okay?”

  “Of course. Moving out.”

  He turned off his comms just in case whatever he was hunting was able to monitor communications. Thanks to interference, it likely didn’t pick up anything from this far away, but who knew what would happen if Feln got closer to it with an open comms line.

  He skirted Denxeiter along the surface of the colony until he got near the destroyed section, all the while keeping watch for the strange tendril. It zipped out and kept grabbing debris as if nothing had changed, so Feln dropped Denxeiter down through an opening in the ruptured skin of the colony.

  He gently landed on what had once been the main street of a small town located inside the colony. The artificial gravity here was gone, so chunks of buildings, vehicles, debris and corpses of dead colonists hung motionless in the air around him. The whole scene was both surreal and nightmarish.

  Straight ahead of Denxeiter, a few miles distant, Feln saw the tendril flip up from approximately the same level of ground he was standing on, sail into the sky and snatch some more debris and quickly reel it back in. There was a large grouping of buildings ahead and whatever the thing was, it was obviously sheltering inside.

  Feln hovered mere feet from the street’s surface and moved slowly forward, carefully picking his way through the debris. With the navigation deflector nearly dead, he had to manually move things out of his path or risk a collision that could alert his quarry.

  What made already terrible work even worse, was the amount of bodies he had to move. Sometimes the bodies were so charred from the Uhlinder’s explosion, he didn’t even realize what they were until he pushed them aside and saw limbs swaying with the motion or break apart. Other times, the bodies were fairly well preserved with the exception of missing limbs. But the worst were the groups of bodies of people that huddled together waiting for death to take them: a mother holding a child close; two people in a final embrace who may have been lovers or simply two strangers trying to take comfort in each other’s company in their last moments.

  The greatest tragedy to all of this is that this was supposed to be a peaceful mission, Feln thought. But this is worse than any full scale combat mission I’ve ever been on.

  “We have to keep our promise to the governor and avenge these people,” Feln said out loud to Denxeiter. “And to avenge Katashka too.” As always, Denxeiter stayed quiet.

  Feln finally reached the point of origin of the tendril. There was a large building directly in front of him and as he watched, he saw the tendril shoot up out of the roof, go into the sky and pull something in. Now that he was close enough to see, Feln realized the tendril was similar to the tentacle he had seen go inside Ganxeiter as well as what attacked him on the planet. But it was also different— more slender in shape, with an end that had a grasping claw that it used to grab the debris it was hauling in.

  There were no windows in this part of the building so Feln couldn’t look inside to see what the thing was, but at least he knew it couldn’t see him either. There was a light ping as Denxeiter’s computer identified a point of interest for Feln to view. He tapped his screen to activate the item of information and saw that Denxeiter had managed to zoom in on what the tendril had been grabbing and pulling in. It wasn’t just debris, but the bodies of the dead colonists. Feln watched this same procedure a few more times and each time it was a body, nothing else.

  “Oh, now what the Hell is this?” Feln demanded to no one in particular. “Why am I not surprised? And you can be damn sure that whatever’s in there is eating them.” He shook his head angrily. “Okay, whatever this thing is, that crap’s gonna stop right now.” He unholstered Denxeiter’s pistol in the remaining hand and held the barrel of the gun against the wall of the building, ready to blow a hole in it and kill whatever was inside. “Mealtime’s over, asshole!” he yelled as he pulled the trigger.

  The blast from the gun easily blew a huge hole in the wall of the building. Feln kept firing into the hole although he couldn’t see anything through the smoke and debris. After a few more blasts from the gun, he slowly stepped inside. Expecting to see the destroyed remains of some kind of alien monster, he was surprised to find the building’s interior empty.

  The remaining walls of the building were intact, so whatever had been in here didn’t escape out the other side. Feln instinctively aimed his gun up while looking at the ceiling, expecting an ambush, but there was nothing there. That meant the enemy was below! Confirming his suspicions, Feln saw the clawed tip of the tendril poke tentatively out of a small hole in the floor. He quickly aimed his gun to blast the thing when the entire floor suddenly exploded around Denxeiter.

  “Dammit!” Feln gasped as an entire swarm of tendrils poured out of the cracks in the floor and started grabbing at Denxeiter, trying to pull the robot down into the steadily collapsing ground. He launched into the air, narrowly missing a group of tendrils that were attempting to grab Denxeiter from behind. He crashed through the ceiling of the building, gaining altitude to escape from the subterranean enemy and fired the twin beam cannons on Denxeiter’s forearm, setting everything inside the building ablaze.

  He kept up a prolonged stream of fire until the ground caved in and the thoroughly wrecked building imploded inward to fill the hole. Suddenly, four massive clawed arms shot up out of the wreckage and grabbed for Denxeiter. Feln expertly dodged all four claws (he made sure to give another silent thanks to Aaltskog’s expert tuning job) and hovered overhead waiting to get a better look at the enemy. The arms moved around frantically as they searched for him. Feln shot at them while staying out of reach, but he didn’t seem to be causing any damage.

  Suddenly four more arms shot up out of the smoke and debris and joined the arms that were already reaching blindly for Denxeiter. Feln flew higher up to avoid capture, still sending shots into the arms as he went. Upon knowing that Denxeiter was out of their reach, the arms retracted back down into the hole. Feln flew up and away from the area of the colony and was just about to signal for some help bombardin
g the hole to kill whatever was down inside when the entire area around the remains of the building suddenly exploded in a shower of dirt and construction materials.

  From the gigantic cloud of debris emerged the enemy’s full body, covered in a slick, oily brown pus that made Feln sick to look at. It was shaped like an upside down pyramid with two arms on each corner of the pyramid for a total of eight. In the center was a giant mouth that consisted of two rows of circular teeth that shifted back and forth in a rotating pattern. Between each set of arms were large yellow eyes with more pus-like material leaking from the edges. There were also tendrils coming out at either corner of each eye. Feln realized that the tendril he had been watching earlier apparently wasn’t just one, but rather multiple tendrils “taking turns” grabbing the corpses of those unfortunate colonists. The bottom of the thing ended in a point where two large tentacles whipped around in a frenzy. Overall, it was at least six times bigger than Denxeiter, the size of a medium cruiser.

  Why do these damn things keep getting bigger and uglier? Feln asked himself. He switched over to fleet wide comms, hoping he was close enough to a communications booster to pick up his signal. “Alert, there is an enemy inside of the fleet’s perimeter. It just emerged from the destroyed section of the colony. It’s very large and very dangerous.”

  “We hear you, Captain,” Kesh’s voice answered. “Attention fleet, this is Admiral Kesh. Maintain the outer defensive line in case the enemy decides to use this as another chance at a two-pronged attack. All ships inside the perimeter are to help Captain Koenig and Denxeiter to defeat the invader.”

  The alien monster had stayed still during this interchange of Francescan communications, some of its eyes fixed on Denxeiter, others looking at any other potential targets. But once Kesh finished, it focused all of its eyes on Denxeiter.

  It was listening to us and making its own plan, Feln thought. These things are getting smarter.