Francescan War Chronicles 1: Space Knight Denxeiter

by C. K. Pershing

  The monster suddenly shot forward at such a high speed that Feln barely had time to get out of the way. It hurtled past him and he turned just in time to see its eight arms swing down in a square pattern to crush Denxeiter inside. He pulled back and the claws on the ends of the arms slammed shut mere feet away from Denxeiter’s chest.

  “Xeiter Beam!” It was the first time Feln had tried the weapon since it was damaged. Denxeiter’s head crest glowed and sparked before a beam of white hot energy shot out. The enemy spiraled its arms outward and spun out of the way of the beam. Feln followed after it, the Xeiter Beam chasing after the thing, but he had to disengage the weapon when the enemy flew in amongst some Francescan ships.

  This damn thing wants me to accidentally hurt my own people.

  The ships that the enemy flew in between had no intention of being used as shields against friendly fire and opened up on the monster. It was fast, but not fast enough to dodge all the beams fired against it.

  The heavy cruiser Drenwhul scored a hit near the tail of the enemy that knocked it off its course momentarily. Feln was right there in an instant to take advantage of the hit and fired his pistol, blowing one of the tentacles off of its tail.

  A corvette was flying slightly behind Denxeiter and slowed down to fire its electric cannon at the still-wriggling tentacle. The thing vibrated in pain as it became charred from the inside out until it was just a burned hunk of meat. Ever since what happened with Ganxeiter and Katashka, nobody was taking any chances. It was now standard operating procedure to completely destroy any piece of an enemy, no matter how innocuous it might seem.

  The monster looped up and over the deck of the Drenwhul and raked it with beams emitted from its eyes. The cruiser’s shields mostly held, but some shots got through and caused some explosions. Huh, the Drenwhul scored the first hit and this thing is trying to get revenge, Feln noted. That proved to be a bad idea because the Drenwhul returned fire and blasted one of the enemy’s arms off. The alien careened sideways, deciding on a different strategy and with its remaining seven arms, grabbed the corvette that had just killed the tentacle that Feln shot off.

  It kept flying along in between various Francescan ships with Feln and a couple smaller ships in hot pursuit. These kinds of speeds and maneuvers were the type that light craft like Aldens and planes would be good at, but they were needed at the perimeter in case more enemies like this should arrive outside the fleet.

  Even so, he looked back and forth to see that he now had an escort of two other corvettes and a gunship. Meanwhile, the enemy was taking apart the corvette in it hands with almost surgical precision. Feln could see the tendrils snaking inside of the corvette and soon after, his comms channel was filled with the screams of the crew.

  “Dammit, it’s possessing them!” Feln yelled. “Destroy the corvette if you can’t hit the enemy. You’re doing them a mercy!”

  The gunship opened fire, the four mega particle cannons on its wingtips focusing at a point ahead of the ship and magnified into one large beam. The beam lanced out and after burning a massive gash into the side of the enemy, hit the corvette square in the center. The enemy quickly dropped the corvette before it exploded in its hands.

  “Good work,” Feln said to the crew of the gunship. “Believe me, you saved them from something horrible.”

  “That was my brother’s ship,” came the simple reply from the gunship’s captain.

  “I’m sorry,” was all Feln had time to get out before the alien suddenly spun on it axis so that it was facing Denxeiter and his small escort of ships. The enemy reversed speed and shot forward, its mouth open in a gaping maw of razor sharp teeth. It slammed directly into the gunship and brought its mouth down hard, closing those teeth around the small ship and biting it in half. It quickly spat out the part of the ship still stuck in its mouth and the two halves exploded behind it.

  In less than twenty seconds a family has just lost two of its sons, Feln thought bitterly. We’ve gotta stop this thing, but it’s too damn fast.

  As if proving the point, the enemy switched course yet again and suddenly blasted downwards. Its control of inertia and changes in speed struck Feln as something almost magical. Who knows, maybe these monsters also have some kind of magic too— just different from ours…

  Feln was getting so turned around chasing this thing that he had no idea where they even were. A quick look around told him they were near the Tannhauser. But instead of attacking the carrier, the monster flew past it toward a another target. The Tannhauser’s gunners made the thing pay for ignoring them as they hit it with a full broadside as it passed. Another arm was blown off and a gouge in its body started trailing something that was most likely blood.

  Feln looked ahead of where the enemy was going and realized with horror it was aiming for the small tug towing a pallet of tarp to the Tannhauser. Aaltskog!

  No sooner had he thought that, than Aaltskog appeared on Feln’s screen. He could only look at her out of the corner of his eye because he had to keep such close attention on the enemy. “Feln?” she asked. “That thing’s coming for me…”

  “I know, but it won’t get you!”

  “It’s too late,” she said. “I love you!”

  “No!” Feln screamed.

  He was suddenly bathed in a blinding light and he felt his body get very numb. But then the light settled down into a warm glow. Feln noticed that everything seemed to go into slow motion, except for himself and Denxeiter. Even the enemy that had until now been moving so much more quickly, now seemed to be moving ridiculously slow. Feln easily sailed past the alien and headed toward Aaltskog’s tug. It seemed like he had all the time in the world now that everything else was moving so slowly. He glanced at Aaltskog’s screen and noticed she also existed in the same rate of time that he did.

  “Is this Resonance?” Feln asked.

  “It’s close, but not quite,” she said. “I’m pretty sure you were going there, but I pulled you out.”

  Feln thought about the initial blinding light and his body going numb before things seemed to settle into the warm glow and everything else slowed down. “So then what is this?” he asked.

  “Think of it as being at 99.99999% Resonance, give or take a few decimal points.”

  “Wow, that close?”

  “Yeah. And before you ask, as always, I don’t know how I’m doing it, I just am. I saw you starting to fade, and my body did the rest.”

  “Okay.”

  “I can’t hold it for much longer though. So whatever you’re gonna do, do it now.”

  “Got it. Let’s do this. And by the way, I love you too.”

  “I know you do.” She smiled. “Okay, we’re coming out of it so get ready…now!”

  With what seemed like the force of a massive explosion, Feln suddenly found himself back in real time. He looked behind him to see the enemy that was once in front of him out of reach far in the distance but closing fast. Directly in front of him was Aaltskog’s tug.

  “Okay, darling, watch this!” he said to her.

  Denxeiter landed on the pallet carrying the tarp and picked it up. Twirling it in a tight arc, Feln brought it down around Denxeiter and draped it across the robot’s shoulders like a cloak. Feln could see the alien getting closer, but there was a slight wobble in its course, no doubt wondering how Denxeiter had gone from being behind it to so far ahead that Feln even had time to wrap the tarp around its body.

  “Ha, I think it’s scared,” Aaltskog laughed.

  “Well, it damn sure better be,” Feln said. “With this cloak ensemble, Denxeiter’s looking pretty bad ass right now, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Told ya it’d be cool.”

  “You were right,” he agreed, watching as the alien was almost on top of him. He leapt from the pallet and flew straight toward the enemy. “And now…Durandal!”

  The giant sword materialized in Denxeiter’s hand and Feln raised it above the robot’s head to bring it down just as the alien reached what it thought
was going to be easy prey. The enemy managed to stop just in time from getting cut in half, but hadn’t stopped far enough. Durandal still cut about a quarter of the way into the thing’s mouth, shattering its teeth and making half of its eyes explode into blobs of yellow pus.

  It shook violently and staggered backward trying to get away, but it was too late. The two corvettes that had been following it with Feln had now caught up and unloaded every bit of weaponry they had into the thing. While its skin was tough, the corvette crews knew their business and made sure to fire into the gaping wounds caused earlier by the larger ships’ heavier weaponry.

  Blood started to spill out of the creature’s mouth and it howled in pain and anguish. For a moment it looked like it was going to try to escape, but then remembered just how gigantic it was compared to its assailants. The remaining tentacle on its tail lashed out and slammed into the side of one of the corvettes, bending the small ship in half before it finally broke in two and exploded.

  It spun in place and shot forward, nearly swallowing the other corvette whole. Even with so many of its teeth destroyed, it still had enough power in its jaws to bite down on the corvette and crush it into an unrecognizable mass of metal. The corvette went down guns blazing, but it didn’t seem to matter. The monster’s stomach was apparently made of very strong material. That was proven all the more when the corvette exploded somewhere deep inside the alien, but it didn’t seem to be fazed.

  Feln watched in horror as what he thought was going to be a victory was turning into a defeat. When the enemy spun around to attack the corvette behind it, Feln had meanwhile found himself face to face with the tentacle on the the creature’s tail section. As its mouth chewed on the corvette, Feln was busy fending the tentacle off. It shot out at him in quick strikes that he barely dodged.

  After the alien finished eating the corvette, it spun back around to face Feln and opened its mouth wide, ready to do the same thing to Denxeiter it had just done to the corvette. Without thinking, Feln shot Denxeiter forward into the thing’s mouth as soon as it was opened wide enough for Denxeiter to fit. He held Durandal straight up as he went and tore forward into the creature’s interior.

  Durandal jammed up into the roof of the enemy’s mouth and as it tried to close that mouth around Denxeiter, it screamed in pain as Durandal jammed farther into its innards. While its interior could survive a corvette’s explosion, the focused energy in Durandal’s blade was an altogether different issue. Feln began to spin Denxeiter as he traveled down the interior length of the creature’s body, Durandal still slicing the innards of the thing out as he went.

  This thing might be able to bite down on something relatively flat like a corvette, and even survive the “indigestion” of an explosion, but nobody likes to close their mouth over a knife jammed in vertically, Feln thought.

  The area inside of the creature was getting smaller, mainly due to its shape of being larger at the mouth and ending almost at a point in its tail. There, Feln stopped and pulled Durandal free from the alien’s innards. He looked behind him and saw the thing’s guts resembled a spiral-peeled apple behind him where he had rotated Denxeiter while flying inward.

  He flung Durandal out across the left side of Denxeiter’s body and yelled, “Wave Slash!” as he pulled the sword horizontally across in a wide motion. The blue arc of light and shockwave the sword released blew out the inside of the creature, its guts spilling out into space. It caused a gash so large that Feln could actually see to the outside of the monster’s body. He pushed through the gaping wound and Denxeiter emerged near the tail tentacle of the alien.

  The thing was writhing in pain and screaming. Feln was amazed it was still alive with the amount of its guts now floating outside of its body. The tentacle suddenly shot toward Denxeiter and wrapped itself around the robot’s leg.

  “I’ve had enough of this damn thing,” Feln said. The mouth at the tip of the tentacle had opened and revealed the smaller tentacles inside. Feln jammed Durandal down inside and twisted it in a slow, crunching circle, gutting the tentacle before unceremoniously wrenching the sword up and gouging it from the body of the enemy. The tentacle floated in space, dead, but Feln still blasted it with the Xeiter Beam to burn it up.

  No longer anywhere near as fast as it had once been, the monster tried to limp away, but Feln wouldn’t let it get far. He started to hack at the things’ body with Durandal savagely, the monster’s blood and guts flying everywhere. Its screams grew louder but Feln was unmoved. “Yeah, scream! How many of our dead have you eaten? How many more people have you killed since I found you?”

  At that moment something happened that Feln would never forget for as long as he lived. The thing turned to face him and held up its remaining arms to hide its face. It then stretched those arms out in surrender. Was this thing actually begging for mercy? Feln relaxed Durandal slightly as the creature’s remaining eyes regarded him.

  And then suddenly Feln remembered what Aaltskog had said after the enemy had tried to take over her body. These things aren’t just any other species. They’re evil. And I’m not just saying that because they’re our enemy. They. Are. Evil.

  “Den Aegis!” Feln yelled and Denxeiter spun its cape around in front of the robot in a protective arc just as the alien fired a massive blast of beams from its eyes. The beams were so hot that Feln could see their glow from the other side of of the Den Aegis. They also burned the alien’s remaining eyes out of its sockets with another scream. It had put too much energy into its attempt to finish him off that it actually hurt itself.

  “You sneaky bastard, I’m done with you,” Feln said. Before he even got the words out of his mouth, he slashed out with Durandal and sliced the remaining arms from the alien. Now it was nothing more than a ruined mouth trailing blood and organs as it screamed in pain and perhaps defiance.

  Feln jammed Durandal into the monster’s body halfway down its length and started dragging the thing along toward the colony.

  “You made your home here for awhile,” Feln growled. “Well, now you’re gonna die here!”

  He whirled Denxeiter around, swinging the monster in a massive arc before twisting Durandal to release the thing’s body. It flew helplessly into the area where most of the colony’s destroyed solar arrays were. The electricity arcing back and forth between the massive panels like lightning caught hold of the alien monster and surged across and through its body. As it got closer to more ruined arrays, more tendrils of electricity hungrily leapt out and grabbed hold of the thing.

  The screams it had made before were bad enough, but now they grew deafening as the monster was cooked from the inside out, smoke pouring out of its eye sockets, mouth, and wounds in its body. The screams were cut short as its brain suddenly exploded out of its eye sockets and turned to charred ash. Soon, the monster was nothing more than a blackened hunk of burned meat floating in space.

  Feln deactivated Durandal and pulled out Denxeiter’s pistol. He sent a hail of shots at the dead husk of the monster. Other nearby ships joined in and soon it exploded into countless chunks of debris.

  Aaltskog’s tug floated up next to Denxeiter. “Thank God that’s over,” she said. “That thing was the worst yet. Where did it come from?”

  “I think it was left behind from the last battle, slipped in by one of the possessed ships, but at the time was small enough not to be noticed. And with the terrible sensor reception here, nobody picked it up,” Feln guessed. “I figure it’s just been hiding out in the wreckage of the colony and slowly eating and getting bigger. Those lightning storms have probably helped mask its signature. Who knows how big the damn thing would have gotten if I didn’t interrupt its feeding?”

  “Maybe that’s why they haven’t attacked us the past couple weeks,” Aaltskog said. “They were just biding their time for ‘Junior’ there to get big and strong enough, before mounting another unified attack.”

  “Probably.” Feln thought of something. “Another good thing that happened thanks to your idea for
the tarp: if we wouldn’t have been at the colony to pick it up, I wouldn’t have been there to spot that thing. There’s a good chance it would have gone completely unnoticed until it was too late. When I think about how much trouble it caused just now, who knows what it would have been capable of doing at full strength?”

  “Yeah, I’m just gonna try not to think about that,” Aaltskog said.

  “Good plan. And I do apologize for giving you such a hard time when you first suggested it.”

  “Nah, I’ll admit it sounded a little crazy on the face of it. But I’m glad I did think of it.” She grinned.

  “Well, we’d better let the admiral know to put extra scouting parties out there to look for other things like what we just fought. That bastard might have siblings hiding out elsewhere in the colony.”

  “I’m sure the Admiral’s already realized that after today’s performance. Although it’s not like we have any extra scouts to spare…”

  “Yeah, I know,” Feln said.

  They flew back to the Tannhauser.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I believe that it’s time we make plans to leave this place,” Admiral Kesh said.

  Feln remembered that the last time this idea was floated was in the meeting room on the Uhlinder and Kesh had been overridden by Admiral Lenz’s plan to stay where they were and await rescue. But now they were in the Tannhauser’s meeting room and Kesh was the de facto leader of what was left of the fleet.

  Besides Feln and Kesh, Aaltskog, Larkin, Valisia, Governor Zalk, and a few of the fleet’s other captains were present.

  “Admiral Lenz’s plan to stay here and await rescue had a level of logic that I think made sense at the time. That is why we’ve adhered to it in the weeks since the tragedy that claimed his and so many others’ lives,” Kesh continued. “But as this recent battle has shown, against an enemy that we only located thanks to Captain Koenig’s keen eyes and sheer luck, we aren’t safe here either.

  “Aside from the massive loss of ships including the Uhlinder and the the other ships we lost in prior battles, this battle cost us three corvettes, a gunship, and damaged five other ships. While we have the edge in shield strength and firepower, the enemy is wearing us down through sheer attrition.” Kesh turned to Larkin. “Captain?”