“Gone,” Odelea said, sitting up as well. “Along with my specimen.”
Foster sighed in a dejected manner facing Odelea. “Remember when I said it was a bad idea to bring him along?”
“I’m sorry,” Odelea said. “I didn’t know the second would be here.”
Foster examined her hands and arms, noting her tattoos still glowed. The maelstrom and Dragon Knights were still in the area. Sitting in sickbay was not the place she needed to be. She leaped off the medical bed, the built-in scanners within it ceased to monitor her vital signs as she stormed over to the glass sliding door.
“Wait, I’d like to keep you in observation for another hour,” Kostelecky called out to Foster.
“In another hour we’ll all be dead,” Foster said. “Dom, with me, Rivera, get to engineering and have Saressea give you a quick rundown.”
Foster debated in her head amongst the ringing noises that wouldn’t stop as to what she should do with Odelea. Her antics, as she feared, put the entire ship in danger, during their first mission at that, and possibly the last thanks to the delay they experienced. She cast thoughts aside for the time being, it only amplified the pain in her head.
Foster and Williams arrived at the bridge and made a half smile when they saw Chang and Nereid waste no time doing what they could to assist and learn of the new functions the Kepler had to offer.
Foster took her seat in the captain’s chair. “Chang, you think you can fly this?”
Chang sat at the helm giving its terminal, controls, holograms, and screens a long stare down. “Shouldn’t be an issue, EVE filled me in on the new stuff.”
“Good enough for me,” Foster said. “Get us back into the fight!”
Chang returned to his old duties as if he was aboard the Carl Sagan, and input commands that prepared the Kepler to initiate its launch sequence, as its entry ramp lifted up, closed and sealed shut.
“It handles like a fighter,” Chang said as the landscape seen from the viewer lowered out of sight, replaced by the stars of space, and the raging maelstrom in orbit. “I might be better at the helm of this than the Carl Sagan.”
The Johannes Kepler broke away from the gravitational pull of New Babylon, rushing into the fray that had been brewing in orbit since their arrival. Burning remains of UNE ships that weren’t so lucky drifted past them, invader ships half vaporized by nuclear missiles did the same. Chang’s skill guided them past the carnage, zigzagging away from the scattered remains of ships from both sides. The Johannes Kepler soared towards the remaining UNE ships that still held their ground sending steady streams of particle cannon fire onto fleeing invader ships.
“Looks like they’re retreating,” Williams said, eyeing the tactical holograms at a vacant station.
“Your assumption is correct,” EVE said. “A Hashmedai plasma frigate unexpectedly entered the system and began to assault the invader ships.”
Foster’s eyebrow rose. “Is that so?”
EVE gave Chang the location of the Hashmedai ship mentioned. The view screen updated giving them the closest possible zoom of a lone Hashmedai destroyer, flying elegant circles around three invader ships, multiple wyverns, and an invader charybdis within the center.
“The Rezeki’s Rage . . .” Foster said with a grimacing glare. “Peiun, you fool.”
“The actions of that ship have forced the bulk of the invaders to retreat to the anomaly they arrived from,” EVE said. “Furthermore, it would appear their actions have resulted in deterring that invader group from carrying out an assault on Terra Nova.”
The Rezeki’s Rage’s plasma cannon fire focused heavily on the charybdis ship with each pass it made. Foster was impressed that such a large ship like that was able to perform the dives and twirls it was able to do, it was no doubt the reason it had lasted as long as it did solo.
“He’s tryin’ to destroy the charybdis. Without it, this attacking fleet will be stuck,” Foster said.
The Rezeki’s Rage scored three impressive direct hits against the charybdis, burning a third of its fleshy hull and damaging whatever cybernetics it had. Another hit should finish it off, Foster thought . . . then cringed as four invader ships flashed into their view and unleashed heavy covering fire directed at the Rezeki’s Rage.
The charybdis pulled away from the assault and adjusted its course to one that would take it directly into the maelstrom. The singed flesh of the bio-ship quickly began to regenerate, undoing all the Rezeki’s Rage’s efforts. It stood alone to face the remaining escort convoy and the four new invader ships that slipped out of FTL to confront it.
“Without help, that Hashmedai frigate will not survive this fight,” EVE reported.
The Rezeki’s Rage was facing its end. Even if it were to turn and flee, it was limited by sub light speeds and its crippled state, if its blacked and partially melted hull was of any indication. Then there were its shields that were on the verge of failing according to sensors, while seven beams of tachyons struck it from multiple angles.
He sacrificed his ship to save human lives . . . it was a thought Foster never in her life would imagine processing as she glanced at Williams and the holographic tactical model of the battlefield he interacted with. The charybdis was making its retreat back into the maelstrom thanks to Peiun’s actions, which would inevitably force the remaining invader ships to take on a defensive stance rather than offensive. Terra Nova’s fall was prevented because of him, and the UNE forces defending New Babylon were given the chance to stay in the fight longer.
Peiun, a Hashmedai, saved her mother’s life and the lives of the humans and Poniga and Undine in the system.
It was time to return the favor.
“Mr. Chang, take us into the maelstrom,” Foster briskly ordered.
“Captain?”
“Let’s give them something else to shoot at, lord knows the UNE is gonna hold at New Babylon and pick off what ships they can rather than jump in to save the Rezeki’s Rage.”
The Johannes Kepler flipped around, and its engines pushed them into the vortex of the maelstrom. Scattered beams from tachyons weapons sent a clear message to the brave crew of the Kepler, stay away. The Kepler replied with a message of defiance via its forward particle cannon, vaporizing the wyverns that attempted to intercept them.
The Johannes Kepler sunk into the storm-like vortex and entered a universe where clouds and thunderbolts fueled by dark energy became a reality. The pursuit for the charybdis ship ahead of them had begun. Nereid and Tolukei endowed the Johannes Kepler with a double-strengthened psionic overshield, deflecting scores of enemy fire. Sadly, shields and overshields did nothing to protect the outer hull of the Kepler from the mysterious clouds it flew through that began the slow process of removing the ship from existence by disintegrating it.
“Status report,” Foster asked as she noticed her tattoo’s glowing intensify and her thoughts seemingly fuse with the universe they entered.
“The invaders have broken off their attack,” EVE said. “They are pursuing us.”
“Of course, we’s crashing the party,” Foster said. “Target the charybdis vessel, unload everything we got.”
“Alert, structural integrity is failing,” EVE said.
“I know . . .” Foster said, grimacing. Without the substance the Rezeki’s Rage had protecting them, the Johannes Kepler would not last long. Their window of opportunity was closing fast, like the vortex that allowed them to enter the maelstrom.
Foster’s tattoos split her thoughts in half. One half of her mind was focused on the bridge and her duties as a captain, the other, was one with the maelstrom, like an outer body experience that gave her an omnipotent view of the situation around her ship. Every minute that passed saw a thin layer of the Johannes Kepler vanish due to the corrosive effect of the clouds. For all intents and purposes, the Johannes Kepler was disappearing. It was up to Chang’s elite piloting skills, in conjunction with the Kepler’s MRF, to get the job done.
“The last ships of thei
r fleet is entering behind us,” Williams reported from his terminal.
“Good, let’s round ‘em all up inside here,” Foster said. “The charybdis is their ticket home, if I’m right, they’ll pull their forces out of Sirius to defend it.”
A hard turn to the left followed by a barrel roll pulled the Johannes Kepler away from a tachyon beam directed to them by the last remaining invader ship that had entered the maelstrom. A second roll placed the Kepler directly above the fleeing charybdis and its plasma-burned skin nearly fully healed.
“Captain, vortex of the maelstrom is closing,” EVE said.
Pierce checked his instruments. “If that thing shuts we’ll all be trapped, unless you’re up for navigating us through like last time.”
“Unless this charybdis can spill the goods all over us, that ain’t happenin’,” Foster snorted.
The charybdis moved in and out of sight from the view screen. Each time it came back into view Foster gritted her teeth, for it was still in one piece and its wounds mending itself. It was the opposite of what she needed it to be. “Mr. Chang, why isn’t that charybdis dead yet?”
“Kinda hard to aim and stay out of their line of sight at the same time,” Chang said. “FTL weaponry is no joke.”
“Chang, use rail-guns only,” Foster ordered.
“Aye, Captain.”
“Tolukei, guide those slugs into that charybdis, and only the charybdis, nothing else matters.”
“Understood, Captain,” Tolukei’s monotone voice replied.
“Nereid, you’re on overshield duty.”
Having two psionics was quite handy, it was one of the major advantages Radiance ships had back in the 2030s, and probably still today. The Empire lacked the means to create psionics, a limitation that plagued them to this day. Meanwhile, humans were still new to the world of psionics and had only begun to compete.
With the final invader ship and swarm of wyverns inside the maelstrom, the Johannes Kepler made its last stand, while it still existed inside the mysterious plane of existence. Its twin rail guns discharged high-velocity rounds that took on a life of their own. Tolukei’s telekinetic thoughts took hold of the rounds and forced them to seek out and fill their target with holes. Chang didn’t need to take aim or utilize targeting scanners. He just held down the weapons fire command and executed the elusive dodging rolls needed to keep the Johannes Kepler together amidst the assault.
The key to avoiding FTL weapons was to not be in the line of sight of them when they were fired. That meant staying mobile, moving when invader ships attempted to reacquire you as a target, and keeping your distance from the swarm of angry wyverns rapidly fluttering their wings and flying circles up and around the Johannes Kepler. Whenever the chance came up, Chang had the particle cannon beam cut swathes across the organic hull of the charybdis, bringing it one step closer to its end.
An end that came with cheering on the bridge, when the charybdis spun out of control and exploded into meaty chunks and flaming bits of cybernetics. The two green sacks that were a dominate part of it exploded afterwards, spreading the mysterious substance in all directions amongst the chunks of flesh that remained.
“Ha! Smoked that fucker,” Chang triumphantly shouted.
“Soak us with that goo and then get us the hell outta here!” Foster said, directing Chang to a floating glob of the protective substance.
The Johannes Kepler’s dove into and out of the wavy glob, coating the hull with a murky gel to prevent the ship from vanishing from existence within the maelstrom as stage two of Foster’s plan came into effect, escape. Tolukei’s psionic mind returned to assisting Nereid powering the overshields and Chang continued to dodge the ship about, keeping them away from the invaders’ weapons range.
“So, any idea where the front door to this place is?” Chang said. “Sensors are sending back error messages.”
Chang’s flying, as amazing as it was, didn’t help. His dives, rolls, spins, and erratic movement placed them off into the deeper reaches of the maelstrom. They were out of visual range of the vortex’s opening that led back into normal space, assuming it was still open.
Foster allowed her thoughts to become one with the maelstrom again, and her tattoos’ glow reached their maximum luminosity. She sensed Williams, Nereid, and Chang give her an odd glare, understandable as they weren’t brought up to speed of her newfound abilities. A staff meeting after this fiasco ought to cover that. If we get out of this alive.
The tunnels the invaders used to bore their way across the maelstrom and into normal space emerged into Foster’s head. She sensed the particular tunnel they used to enter. It was close, the battle had indeed made them veer off course and out into a thicket of clouds. With her eyes shut and her brain touching the realm around, Foster verbally guided Chang back onto the right course, back onto the invisible pathway they were in, and back on a course to the normal universe. The vortex slid back into view on the screen as a shrinking black and star-filled hole with the planet of New Babylon in the horizon.
Foster forced her physical body to pull her thoughts back in, as alarms across the ship began to make a racket overhead. The invader fleet was still a threat.
“Full speed ahead and ignore everything else,” Foster said.
The Johannes Kepler accelerated at maximum FTL speeds on an all-or-nothing race to the finish line located outside the maelstrom. Staying out of the invaders’ line of sight was impossible, considering the large gathering of ships they had to fly past just to close the distance between them and their closing gateway back home, one Foster was unsure of how to reopen.
Their escape from the maelstrom with the Rezeki’s Rage was different since it had opened as they approached. The exact opposite of what it was doing now. There was no time to figure out exactly how the rules of this universe worked, especially with the light show of tachyon beams behind. They needed to get through that vortex, and it needed to happen five minutes ago.
“Let’s go! Everything you got!” Foster said to Chang amongst the violent tremors that rocked every deck on the ship.
“Direct hit!” Williams reported.
“Not much I can do about that, Captain,” Chang said. “Gotta keep us on a straight path or we’ll never make it!”
Foster addressed her psionic duo team. “Tolukei and Nereid strengthen the aft overshields.”
“Understood.”
The vortex shrunk more.
They still weren’t inside.
“Why aren’t we there yet?” Pierce said, panicking.
It shrunk to a size barely large enough to fit the Johannes Kepler through.
“You wanna get out and push to make us go faster?” Chang said.
The vortex continued to swell up.
“We’re not going to make it, are we?” Pierce said.
“Shut up, man, I got this!”
The vortex shrunk to the size of a fighter, Foster shuddered at the thought of what might happen if they tried to cross through anyway.
“Shit, shit, shit!”
Foster’s head returned to her out of body experience. She experienced the feeling of floating outside of the Kepler, watching the suspense unfold from a bird’s eye view. She felt the vortex shrink and the feeling of normal space-time and physics just beyond it, slipping away from her hands.
Hands.
It gave her an idea.
She envisioned her thoughts working as hands, hands that wedged themselves into the closing vortex. Hands that in turn pulled against it, forcing it to stop swelling, and then forced it to expand open.
It was working, she couldn’t explain how or why, but it was. The vortex grew large enough to allow the Kepler through. Foster’s body, mind, and trippy vision that felt one with the ethereal universe demanded it. This was the break they needed, and she had no means of communicating with the crew with her physical body. Her thoughts were too deep within the maelstrom.
Go, go, go, go! Her thoughts roared as she felt the Johannes Kepler continue
its race to freedom.
The task she bestowed upon herself was exhausting, and definitely not something she could do for a prolonged period of time. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be a psionic that overused their powers—
The bridge of the Johannes Kepler appeared. Foster found herself standing with her hand extended out as if she was attempting to touch an invisible force in front of her. The bridge crew stood, raising their hands in victory, screaming and cheering loudly as the normalcy of space appeared on the viewer. The Johannes Kepler soared past the battle-weary UNE fleet standing overwatch of New Babylon.
Foster lowered herself back into her chair little by little. She stared ominously at her tattooed hands as their diminishing glow faded away while the maelstrom’s vortex did the same and diminished from existence. “Any sign of hostile forces?” Foster asked, breaking her silence.
“None have been detected, Captain,” EVE said. “It would appear they have been trapped within the maelstrom.”
“Hopefully permanently, now their means of leaving is gone,” Pierce said.
Foster smiled having remembered the intel Peiun had gathered. The charybdis didn’t just provide the invader fleets with a way in an out of the maelstrom, it also sprayed the protective substance onto the fleets that remained close to it. The invaders trapped inside weren’t just stuck without any means of an exit. They were also doomed to fade away into nothing, a fate they almost suffered.
“I wouldn’t cheer just yet, they still got the other two fleets,” Foster said.
“Incoming transmission, Captain,” EVE said as her android eyes blinked to process the data. “It is the Hashmedai frigate.”
Foster let out a warm smile. “On screen.”
Peiun’s hologram appeared in front of the viewer, sitting on his chair on the bridge of the Rezeki’s Rage with his hands folded, and an impressed look growing across his face. “Remarkable ship you have there, Captain,” Peiun said.
“Remarkable bravery you made there, Captain,” Foster said. “Thanks for coming to the aid of my people.”
“And on behalf of myself and the crew of the Rezeki’s Rage, I thank you for risking yours to save us.”
Celestial Incursion Page 40