by Nick Webb
Chapter Forty-Five
Main Promenade
Christchurch Corporate Business Park station
Vellini, High Orbit
Vellini System
Tiberius Sector
Bratta tried hard to keep his hands from shaking, but they just wouldn’t. He jammed them in his pocket, curling them both into fists, squeezing tightly and hoping that the sensation would drive away the tremor.
Smith had just shot that guy right in front of him, then walked out like it was nothing. Bratta hadn’t even seen the gun, let alone been able to prevent it. If Smith had been aiming at him…
It was okay. All he had to do was get through this moment and out to the Aerostar. Then they could have a long talk about it and work through this. It was okay, it was going to be okay—
“Freeze!” shouted someone from down the corridor, a woman in a guard uniform, pointing a rifle their way. “Halt!”
Fwip. The woman crumpled onto the deck, curling up into a ball.
Lots of people were staring. Smith just continued to walk, as completely normal and casual as you please, completely ignoring the people gaping.
Wait.
No.
They were looking at him. At Bratta.
“Uhh…” Bratta began to slowly walk toward the airlock, just as Smith was doing. Casual, easy strolling. Try not to keep arms rigid. Try not to look too out of place.
“He’s here!” Guards started shouting all around him, their voices echoing off the bulkheads. “The intruder’s here!”
Well, that tore it. Bratta yanked out his gun, the weapons sight snagging on his holster. He managed to untangle it, then waved the thing around like a lunatic. “There’s… there’s some kind of intruder!” He shouted, pointing to a random guard. “It’s—it’s this guy!”
The people wearing orange suits seemed to be ignoring them. Guards, however, were moving in towards him, rifles up against their shoulders.
“Hands on the ground! Drop your weapon!”
What to do, what to do? he felt like a total moron, standing out in the middle of nowhere, with no cover or protection, just standing there with a gun in his hand.
“Drop it now! Or we’ll put you down!”
Everyone started shouting all at once. Smith was nowhere to be seen. More guards came in, angrily pointing their rifles at him. Bratta, facing down a dozen guns now, slowly raised his hands.
Well, this was a shitty way to die.
Chapter Forty-Six
Aerostar
Docking Bay 1
Christchurch Corporate Business Park station
Vellini, High Orbit
Vellini System
Tiberius Sector
Chuck chewed on his fingernails, watching the guards descend on Bratta.
They’d been made. Bratta was giving up. Smith was nowhere to be seen, probably slipping into the crowd, escaping. But Bratta … there was no way he was going anywhere.
He needed some way of helping them. Think Chuck, think! There’s gotta be a way to save the day…
Nothing came to mind.
Lily grunted quietly in the back of the cargo bay, the thick metal collar still around her neck. “Protein bar.”
This wasn’t the time. Not the time. Not the…
Or was it?
“You want a protein bar?” asked Chuck, cautiously, reaching into his pocket.
“Protein bar,” said Lily, her pupils dilating.
She was just like a kid. A huge, hulking, angry, hungry kid. And kids needed chores. Tasks. They thrived on expectation-reward.
“Okay,” said Chuck, cautiously withdrawing one of the thick hunks of processed food, “if you want the protein bar, you have to do something for me first…”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Main Promenade
Christchurch Corporate Business Park station
Vellini, High Orbit
Vellini System
Tiberius Sector
A ripple of terribly loud gunfire made Bratta flinch. Rounds screamed as they bounced off the deck, the ceiling, the bulkheads; and then, from the airlock that lead to their ship, a guard was thrown—flying almost a full yard off the ground, hitting it again with a sickening crunch and sliding way, way across the deck. An ear-piercing howl followed, and then Lily—her massive head scraping the roof—burst out of the airlock, grabbing a nearby black-armored guard and, with a nauseating crack, picking them off their feet and ripped them in half. A half-eaten protein bar stuck out of her mouth like one of Reardon’s toothpicks.
Everyone started shooting. Rounds bounced off Lily’s hide, seeming to only aggravate her. She charged toward another guard, bodily slamming into him and blasting him up against the bulkhead.
Bratta raised his gun back up and, carefully, took aim at one of the guards. He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. The gun roared. He opened his eyes again. The guard was laying on the ground, crumpled in a heap.
For a moment, his chest tightened. He’d just… killed…
But then the guard sat up, rubbing her armored back. Bratta’s handgun had struck the armored plate. The guard twisted around, her features distorting angrily.
Then a fwip, barely audible over all the other gunfire, sent her sprawling back down to the deck again, unmoving.
Bratta broke into a run toward the airlock, feet thumping against the deck. Rounds snapped and hissed all around him, tinking off the metal surfaces. Lily roared again, picking up any guards she got close to and breaking them like matchsticks, rounds throwing up sparks as they bounced off her body.
Chuck held down the airlock, crouching in the opening and firing at people with his pistol. He had a stern, resolute look on his face as he carefully took his shots in spite of the danger. He reloaded just as Bratta sprinted past the airlock door.
And then he was safe.
“Lily!” Chuck shouted. “Come on! We have to go!”
“Have to go!” roared Lily, swinging a guard like a club and slamming him against his fellow guard. She then turned and ran toward the airlock as well.
Bratta hesitated, staring down the giant mutant as she barreled toward him, stepping back into the Aerostar.
Lily ran in. Chuck emptied his magazine then ducked back inside, too. The Aerostar broke off, detaching forcefully from the airlock with a groan of metal.
Then everything went weirdly silent except for a ringing in Bratta’s ears and a shaking of his hands.
What the hell kind of data had they recovered?
Chapter Forty-Eight
State Room - Admiral Jack Mattis’s Quarters
HMS Caernarvon
En route to Vellini
Vellini System
Tiberius Sector
Mattis wasn’t sure how long he slept, but when he woke up, everyone had cleared out of his room including Ramirez. That didn’t exactly surprise him, but it did disappoint him.
Nothing else about her of late had been disappointing, so he was content to let that one slide, just laying there with a stoned, happy look on his face.
The speaker in his room emitted a crackling noise. “Action stations, action stations. Assume NBCD state zero. Action stations, action stations.” Then a noise that sounded like an overdriven guitar, but transitioned to a low alarm.
Mattis realized with a start that he was hearing the Royal Navy version of the General Quarters alarm. The absolute worst way for a CO to wake up. Especially after knocking boots with Ramirez…
“Shit!” Mattis sat up in his bunk, braining himself on the lower bunk. “Shit!”
Rolling out of bed, the events before he fell asleep flew back into his head. He was still dressed, even though his uniform was crumpled now, it would do. He staggered out of the State Room and sprinted down the corridor toward the bridge.
When he got there, he saw the green-blue-gray orb of Vellini on the main monitor, a floating ball of a world hanging in space, its surface almost completely covered in what he could only presume to be a layer
of garbage so thick it blanketed the ground. The world was a third ocean, but instead of blue water, the liquid was a dark, murky brown, stained with streaks of gunmetal grey. It had two sets of rings, faint blue, forming a large X over the southern continent.
The missing ship, Skunk Alpha, was there too, hanging in space like a vulture ready to shit on a landfill. The Caernarvon’s computers had ringed it in a bright red circle.
“Permission to enter the bridge, Captain,” said Mattis, almost forgetting his manners.
Spears waved him in without saying anything, her eyes fixed on the enemy ship.
“Admiral Mattis, right on time,” said Blackwood, her voice charged. “We’re still detecting building energy readings from that thing. It’s definitely got a mass driver onboard, if the readings are anything to go by. And there’s plenty of space garbage for them to load and fire. No wonder they made their way here…”
Mattis glanced at a console, lit up and full of information. Blackwood’s appraisal looked correct. “Yup, seems like. I can’t believe the Forgotten would fire on such a heavily populated world.” He eyed Spears. “Do you think there is the possibility that the ship is actually still piloted by future-humans?”
Spears considered that, drumming her fingers on the armrest of her chair. “Doesn’t change our response to it. Commander Blackwood, report status on our reinforcements and get ready to engage that ship. I want all our guns speaking and our strike craft blasting the billy out of it.”
Reinforcements? Mattis craned his neck, looking over Blackwood’s shoulder while trying not to get in her way. There were numerous incoming Z-Space signals. As he watched, the world around Vellini lit up with a series of intense but brief flashes, dozens or more, ships translating from the strange otherworldly reality into real-space.
His chest tightened. “Where did those ships come from?”
Spears grinned over her shoulder at him. “Admiral, while you were sleeping, your good friend Admiral Fisher came good for us. Maybe I should let you take a nap more often.”
As he watched, the whole sector lit up as the Caernarvon’s computers identified the ships. USS Lafayette, USS Grapple, USS Pearl Harbor, USS Quincy; half a damn fleet had shown up. And at the lead was the USS Warrior. A ship he knew well. Fisher’s old command, before she commanded a desk. He was hardly surprised when her voice came over the line.
“This is Admiral Fisher,” she said. “Admiral Mattis has something of mine. I want it. Now.”
Mattis couldn’t help but smile. “No problem, Admiral,” he said, leaning over Spears’s chair so his voice could be heard. “Help us win this battle and the captive future-human is all yours.”
“Very well,” she said, her tone stony. “USS Warrior, ready to engage.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Pilot’s Ready Room
USS Stennis
Vellini, High Orbit
Vellini System
Tiberius Sector
Guano sat in the beanbag until the General Quarters alarm sounded. As though in a trance she stood up, walked calmly to the locker room, and changed into her space suit. Her eyeballs itched, dry and rough, but she didn’t seem to mind. It was a distant, far away concern that barely registered.
“Hey Guano.” Flatline clapped her on the back, good-naturedly, as he pulled up the thick, armored trousers of his space suit. “You got here fast!”
“Didn’t leave,” she said, clipping on her helmet and checking the seal. Her voice came out electronic and distorted. “Those beanbags are nice.”
Flatline whistled, gyrating his hips around as he struggled to pull the pants up. “You slept in the ready room? That’s some wicked shit. Those saggy things are terrible for your neck.” He snickered. “You missed a sweet strip poker game. Should have seen Frost squirm when I showed her my pair of aces.”
Normally this would have been a great opportunity to tease Flatline. He almost always lost, literally losing his shirt. But she didn’t want to. Couldn’t feel it. “I’m totally fine,” she said, and walked out to the airlock into the hangar bay like a robot. Out to her ship. Climbed aboard her ship. Performed the preflight launch check. Launched out into space. Legs and arms stiff as cords.
“Okay fuckheads, listen up,” said Roadie, an edge of genuine tiredness and frustration creeping into his voice. “Missions callsign is Tornado. I know we’ve flown three sorties in sixteen hours, but I don’t want to hear it. I know Flatline got his cock out again and I really don’t want to know about that, nor restate my policy on no below-the-waist nudity for flight crew. Anyway, Flatline’s joystick aside, we have a hostile cap-ship out there about to fire on a planet of garbage using garbage. Who knows why, and who cares. We can’t let that happen for—reasons. Break.” He paused. “So. Standard assault on capital-ships. Watch for defensive missiles and AA batteries, and keep your guns tracking on the engines. Engines are always a weak spot. You know that. I know that. Let’s get it done and get home so we can get some proper shut eye. All ships, break formation and attack.”
Most of the flight gave tired sounding acknowledgements. Guano felt as alert as she’d ever been. “Confirmed. Tornado 1-2, tally.” She flicked the master arm switch off. “Let’s give ‘em hell.”
The flight split up and darted toward their target, a swarm of sharp daggers seeking the heart of their enemy. The enemy capital ship was emitting huge amounts of energy, and where there was energy, there was heat. Her FLIR lit up like a giant burning star at the center of her scope, and the warbling tone of missile lock rang in her ears.
Not yet. Too far away. The hostile ship was just a distant glimmer.
“All USS Stennis strike craft be advised,” said an unknown voice. Her HUD showed it as the voice of the flight coordinator from the USS Warrior. “Further assets are coming to your side. Be wary of buddy spikes, and call your targets. There’s going to be a lot of strike craft out there. All friendly. Make sure we don’t shoot each other in the back… Or front.”
“Confirmed.” She adjusted the gain on her targeting radar. “Tornado 1-2, Weapons tight.”
Another voice cut in over the same channel. Authoritative and calm. “This is Admiral Fischer to all strike craft. Coordinate with the Warrior. Call for fire support on this channel.”
Great, they had help. And from more than just the Stennis. That would be a huge boon.
Flatline yawned behind her. “Man, I am tired. I can barely shoot straight. I just couldn’t sleep…”
She thumped on the back of her chair. “There’s stims in the med cabinet. They’ll wake you up.”
“Stims, man.” Flatline muttered something dark, followed by a faint hissing noise. “Whoa!” He laughed, suddenly alert. “Whoa. Okay. Okay, I’m good now.”
With a grin, Guano turned her attention back to the hostile ship; the massive metal box floated in space, charging its weapon, nose pointed down to Vellini.
Her left hand drifted from the control stick to the communications panel.
CUT OFF THE HEAD OF THE SNAKE
Her fingers typed the characters as she watched, with no input from her. Then, slowly, her finger hit the send key.
Chapter Fifty
Muhammad “Roadie” Yousuf’s J-88
Vellini, High Orbit
Vellini System
Tiberius Sector
The image of the hostile ship filled Roadie’s cockpit, its engine exhaust glowing white-hot in his infrared, the warbling of the missile lock tone ringing in his ears. He’d hoped to never see another one of those deadly future-human ships again. It hung in space, ominously still, with the massive Vellini shipyards hovering half a dozen kilometers behind it.
“Here we go,” he said, pulling his J-88 to the side and low, rolling its little stubby wings, aligning toward the large saucer dishes of the ship’s engine exhaust, to the red trails streaming behind them. “Fox two, fox two.”
His J-88 shook as the twin streams leapt away, tiny darts streaking silently toward their target. He watch
ed the timer tick down till impact. Thirty seconds, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…
“Contact!” said Frost, his gunner, her voice coming in a little too loudly. She was always too loud. “We got radar signatures coming from that ship… they’re strike craft!”
Strike craft? From a ship that size? Roadie risked a glance at his radar. He could see them too. Fast moving objects flying out from the hostile capital ship.
They weren’t ships. They were high speed anti-fighter missiles heading right for them.
Roadie squeezed the talk key. “Flash traffic, all craft, evasive maneuvers!” He jammed the stick back into his gut, pulling the nose of his J-88 up high.
Missiles streaked past them, bursting in white flashes as they exploded in the formation, spraying their deadly load of shrapnel in all directions.
The cloud of metal washed over the ship like a cloudburst, metal screaming as it bit into the outer hull. His port engine flared, sending the ship tumbling, then burned out. Flames and smoke poured from the starboard engine and it spluttered, the ship jerking as it tried to right itself with two broken wings.
Alarms wailed all around him as he fought for control. “Frost!” he roared. “Get the starboard engine back now!”
No response.
Instinct took over. The three rules of aircraft navigation. Aviate, navigate, communicate. He didn’t have time to check on Frost. She couldn’t talk to him either. He had to fly. The ship was in a lateral spin. If he couldn’t pull out, the g-forces would eventually overwhelm him. With a shaking hand that felt like it was made out of lead, he reached out and tapped a screen. Emergency power to starboard engine.