Flight of the Magnus

by L S Roebuck

  North remained silent.

  “Take these two to a holding cell,” the Chairman said, as faceless officers jumped to enforce her will. “Let Queenie pass judgement on the dark one. Prepare Sparks for a pre-extermination interrogation. She may have failed at Magellan, but perhaps she has unwittingly brought us information we can extract to benefit the common good.”

  “If you hurt Sparks, I’ll will personally introduce you to the vacuum of space,” North shouted, his fists clenched hard.

  The Chairman, giving no heed to North’s threats, turned to a female lieutenant. “Note the toxic emotion exhibited by this alpha male. Many have been tempted to channel this, this … masculine energy into a powerful military force. But the risk is too great. We must engineer this out of males.”

  “Yes, Chairman,” the officer agreed robotically.

  “So, you are this Chairman I keep hearing about,” North said. “Shouldn’t you be on Arara, building your grand utopia?”

  The Chairman ignored the question. “So, you are the handsome Marine North, whom Kimberly wrote about in her reports. Her description doesn’t do you justice. You are quite the specimen.”

  “You knew Kimberly Macready?”

  “Raven One,” the Chairman said thoughtfully. “Of course. I personally selected her for the Magellan mission. Magellan was the most important, don’t you see? It was to be the vanguard to protect us from Earth’s inevitable retaliation. Utopia was mean for Magellan.”

  “Utopia? That Frankenstein ship grafted onto this waypoint?”

  “We’ll, it’s not exactly grafted. No matter. Kimberly was my best. I sent my best. But she took her undercover role to far. First Alroy. Then two daughters. When Joti told me, I must confess, I was pissed.”

  The chairman suddenly swung her left hand against North’s face. The backhand smarted something fierce. North resisted wincing and crying out in pain, but he wondered if his cheek bone had been broken.

  “It’s rather surreal to see you in person,” the Chairman said calmly, as if the flash of violence had never happened, as she stood inches from North. She reached out again, making North flinch, but then she ran her cold fingers over the scar on North’s chin. “Kimberly didn’t like the influence you had on her daughter, Amberly. Amberly was Kimberly’s mistake, and she paid for it, didn’t she? Killed by her own daughter? Matricide. Sick.”

  “How do you know this?” North asked, running timelines in his head. “We suspected you still had spies Magellan. So it’s true?”

  The Chairman did not respond to North and continued, “The weakness of humanity starts with the family, then the tribe. Family verses family, tribe verses tribe, nation verse nation. How much human suffering starts with the first flaw: family. The common good transcends this selfish preference for one’s own blood. Family corrupted Kimberly, and then family betrayed her. Don’t you see, Commander?”

  “Amberly didn’t have a choice,” North protested. “Kimberly was trying to kill everyone on Magellan.”

  “AND WHAT OF IT!” Boomed the chairman, who pulled her arm back again to strike North, but before executing the blow, she let her arm drop. “What of it? Such a small price to pay for the perfection that is coming. Ten thousand measly lives? Out of billions? You thought paradise would be cheap? That it wouldn’t cost blood? Kimberly’s life was worth more than every soul on every waypoint. Hers is a genius we’ll never see again.”

  “You’re insane,” North said.

  “Araran history won’t see it that way. History will remember you, however, and how you tried to stop true goodness from destroying evil forever, and how you failed. And history will remember the evil Amberly Macready, who martyred her own mother for her own selfish ambition.”

  “Leave Amberly out of this,” North shouted.

  “Why?” the chairman asked as she paced back towards her chair. “She could have been a prince of Arara – but she chose vanity instead. When we arrive at Magellan, Amberly will realize the full error of her ways. She will suffer for her betrayal in ways she never thought were possible. In the end she will wish that her mother had succeeded, and she was dead.”

  “Arrive at Magellan?” North asked, his eyes growing hard.

  “You thought we were going to just let Magellan live?” The Chairman explained. “No, Magellan will either join us, or die.”

  “I don’t know what secrets this Magnus has,” the Chairman looked at North as she sat back on her thrown, “but do you believe that I haven’t been preparing for this eventuality? Magnus is coming back, we know. We’ll see if she is a match for Utopia, shall we?”

  “Madam Chairman, I do know what secrets Magnus has,” Ryder said, bowing low. “I’ve been spying on that ship for the last year. With your permission, may I confer with your tactical officer?”

  The Chairman offered a thin smile. “Ryder, you have served us well. Honored destroyer of Cortez, and survivor. You will have a grand appointment in the Ministry of Truth, dear woman. Yes, take your leave immediately. Let’s hope your information will give us a critical advantage.”

  Ryder rose and left the room, with several officers following her. North couldn’t believe how foolish he had been, that he didn’t see Ryder was Chasm.

  “Ryder, we saved you, and this is your gratitude. You’ll pay for this! Ryder!” North shouted as the door slid behind the spy.

  “North, your time runs short,” the Chairman said as her eyes that followed Ryder out the door once again focused on the captured Marine. “And it looks like the flight of the Magnus is coming to an end, as well.”

  “Whatever power Utopia has, it’s nothing compared to the Magnus,” North boasted.

  “You speak out of ignorance, loyalist,” the Chairman retorted.

  “We have particle beams with accuracy for tens of thousands of kilometers that can disable your engines and your weapons. Just like we did on American Spirit. We have a fleet of quarter-light speed capable corvettes you will never be able to target. Their chain guns will shred Utopia. You all should just surrender now! Do you hear me?” North shook as he looked around and shouted at the officers. “What do you have against those? You will all die at the hands of the Magnus!”

  The woman who North assumed was a second-in-command stepped up and shouted back. “Did you see that personal point defense system the Chairman used to dissolve bullets? Everyone one of our ship-to-ship missiles is equipped with one! You can’t shoot our ordnance down. And some of our warheads are fusion-powered. Can your precious Magnus take a direct hit from a nuke, filthy traditionalist?”

  “But what about the corvettes?” North demanded.

  “Stupid man! We have our own fleet of –”

  A shot echoed through the chamber, and the lieutenant fell to the floor, dead with a bullet through her head. The Chairman was standing with a gun at the end of her outstretched arm.

  “Idiot woman,” the Chairman sighed. She holstered her sidearm, sat back down in her chair, and looked to another officer. “Clean up that mess. And someone get a signal scanner on this Marnie.”

  A male tech officer who North guessed was barely 20, timidly approached North with what he assumed was some sort of device that scanned for EM frequencies.

  “Let me save you the trouble,” North said. He knew he wouldn’t get any more enemy intel to his retreating Marines over the personal comm channel he and Mateo had left open. But he had enough to make Magnus cautious at best. “Hey, Mateo, looks like I’m signing off. Hope you’ve been listening. Looks like I’m going to buy the farm. If you make it home, tell her… tell Amberly I love her.”

  “Tell her yourself, Commander,” North heard Mateo’s voice through the open channel on his communicator. “We’re coming for you.”

  “Get the intel back to Magnus, that’s an order. For the fallen, and for Magellan, friend.”

  “I understand,” Mateo said, and North could hear his voice choke up with sudden grief. “Wilco. Godspeed, Commander.”

  “North out.” No
rth then poked his pinky finger into his inner ear and carefully popped his micro-communicator and handed it to the tech who stared dumfounded at it.

  The Chairman, in what seemed like an instant, sprung from her chair to the tech, grabbed the tiny comm unit from his hand, crushed it between her index finger and thumb.

  “Find his compatriots! Don’t let them off this waypoint,” the Chairman shouted. The hidden command center immediately buzzed with activity.

  North smiled, seeing he had gotten a rise out of the otherwise unflappable Chairman.

  The Prime’s engines were hot. Kilo looked over at Rhodes. “Are they onboard, ensign?” Kilo pressed.

  “Goldsmith?” Rhodes nearly shouted through the ship’s intercom. “Status?”

  The enlisted Marine’s voice responded. “We’re all on. Airlock is secure.”

  Rhodes pushed back her black mane. “They’re on to us. Get us out of here!”

  Mateo rushed on to the bridge. “Move before they launch their corvettes.”

  The Prime’s thrusters fired and the ship pulled away from the exterior hull of Waypoint Marquette. Lt. Kilo’s hand moved through the pilot’s magnetic resonance screen, commanding the runabout to full power as it sped away.

  Mateo looked at the doppler. “Three corvettes have cleared the Marquette hanger,” he said. “We’re not going to make it. Rhodes, transmit our sit rep and North’s comm log to the Captain and hurry. If they get to us before we can transmit —”

  “Can’t we fight back?” Goldsmith asked.

  Advika had just made it to the bridge, eyes wide, full of adrenaline and fear.

  “Transmit the message first,” Mateo said. “Once we know the information is safe, then we can turn and fight.”

  “I’m good, but I can’t beat three corvettes,” Kilo said.

  “We all knew the risks,” Mateo said. “Let’s finish the mission, then bring whatever pain we can on those Chasm bogies. Rhodes, how is the transmission going?”

  Condi chimed up. “Two minutes until we are in bogie firing range.”

  The ensign looked at her magnetic resonance screen. “Almost there. We should make it.”

  “Keep running, Kilo,” Mateo said. “The more distance you give us, the more time we have to finish the transmission.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Kilo said. “In fact, even better, make yourself useful and man the chain gun.”

  “This is it then,” Rhodes said, looking to Advika. “The transmission is complete.”

  The ship wide comms crackled to life.

  “Prime, this is Nyota. We’re coming in full throttle. Your escort back to Magnus is here!”

  “Wing Commander Nyota, I’ve never been so happy to hear your voice. We have three bogies bearing on our aft, ETA, less than a minute,” Lt. Cho said from the command chair.

  “Prime, keep your course steady. We’re on them.”

  Rhodes looked out the bow portal and saw six growing lights heading straight toward them. Within seconds, the Magnus corvette wing zipped past the Prime.

  “So awesome!” Rhodes shouted loudly.

  “Alpha wing, we weren’t expecting you for hours. What happened?” Kilo said into the ship-to-ship comm.

  “The captain was just impatient,” the wing commander replied. Then she addressed her pilots. “We’ve trained for this for years. You know what to do. Let’s take out those Chasm corvettes. Weapons free and go give ’em hell.”

  The Battle of Marquette had begun.

  Captain Obadiah had given up smoke vaping many years ago, but he thought this was as good as any occasion to relapse. He puffed on a thick cylinder protruding from his mouth, and examined the tactical screen.

  At the tactical table were senior officers, along with their support yeomen.

  The captain blew a thick stream of smoky vapors out his nose, and then turned to the communications officer on deck. “Bring me a live link with Prime as soon as they are in encryption rage.”

  The scrawny officer, Fuego Boot, looked up from his post across the bridge. “Secure comms in two minutes; we should have the Prime safe in harbor in less than 10.”

  Lt. Commander Alicia Bright’s green eyes were crossed as she intently studied the live tactical display. “Nyota is now in weapons range. The enemy corvettes must see they are outnumbered two-to-one, and they are not breaking off.”

  “If they are the original models transported out with Marquette, we should easily be able to out maneuver those SOBs,” Boot said. “Based on their pursuit speed, Condi reports we have a six-x speed advantage.”

  “Excellent,” Obadiah mused. “I hope we make short work of them.”

  “I have the Prime on comms,” the scrawny officer said.

  “Magnus, this is Prime. Thanks for sending the cavalry,” Rhodes’ voice crackled over the speaker.

  “Rhodes, what’s is the XO’s status?” the captain asked.

  “We lost him sir,” Rhodes replied. “Also, missing are Sparks and Ryder. Also looks like Ryder was a turncoat.”

  “Dammit,” the captain swore. “Boot, tell engineering increase speed to point-oh-two c. Alicia, launch Beta Wing and tell the Marine squad commanders to prepare for grappling gangways.”

  “That’s risky,” Blight replied through red bangs hanging over her pale forehead. “We don’t have enough on-the-ground intelligence.”

  “Captain, Cho here,” North’s second-in-command spoke through the radio. “They did not have the major waypoint corridors locked down, though the main Tube is out of order. North’s handiwork. No doubt they will soon lock everything down. I think the longer we wait, the more we lose whatever advantage we have.”

  “I agree,” the captain said as he puffed. “Execute assault plan Optima Two. If the civilian traffic is light on the waypoint, we can move faster to the command.”

  “Yes, it seemed that way,” Cho replied. “We have you on visual now.”

  “Excellent,” Obadiah said. “Get on board and I want you, Rhodes and Bollard up on the bridge on the double.”

  “Wilco, Prime out.”

  “Should we be worried about this point-defense-system?” Boot asked.

  “They were developing that sort of technology on earth 100 years ago,” the captain said. “But no one could ever get it to work. The computing technology and energy reserves needed are just too great.”

  “Maybe Chasm was able to make point-defense work.” Boot suggested. “What then?”

  “Then, Feugo, we have a problem.”

  This is going to be a problem, Nyota thought, as she rubbed her dyed-blonde buzz cut.

  “Alpha-six, put some distance between you and Bogie One,” Nyota gave orders as she glided her corvette, the M.S.S. Khan, behind the lead enemy corvette. The Marquette’s corvette attempted to juke Nyota with some evasive spinning, but the ship’s inferior speed made it impossible to get clear. Nyota essentially had a point-blank shot as she matched the Chasm pilot, move for move.

  “Chasm corvette, this is Wing Commander Okapi Nyota of the United States Spaceship Magnus. You are ordered to surrender immediately or be destroyed. Please power down your vessel and prepare to be taken aboard as a prisoner or war,” Nyota said in a commanding voice that made it clear she meant business.

  “Wing Commander Nyota,” the enemy pilot responded over the open channel, “please take your corrupt evil ways and go back to Earth and leave us alone, or we will be forced to destroy you. Quit retarding humanity’s perfection!”

  “Stupid death cult,” Nyota muttered and she switched on her secure channel to Magnus. “Wing commander to Magnus, permission to blow these Chasm traitors to into space junk?”

  Blight’s voice came back over the comm. “Wing commander, the captain confirms weapons free. Light ’em up.”

  “Confirmed, engaging. Nyota out.”

  Finally, you murderous bastards, it’s payback time, the wing commander thought. She pulled the trigger on the manual guidance yoke and immediately the chain gu
ns spun up, sending hundreds of rounds of explosive ammo at the Chasm corvette in her sight.

  Okapi Nyota had never seen actual ship-to-ship combat, though she had done drills and simulators enough to expect quite an explosion when 50 mm explosive bullets shredded the carbon-fiber hull and engine of a corvette.

  But after nearly 30 seconds of nonstop weapons fire, Nyota had seemed to deal no damage to her target.

  “Magnus,” the lead pilot called back to her base ship, “I can’t explain it. My chain guns seem to have no effect. It’s like the bullets are just … disappearing.”

  “Nyota, this is Bollard,” the chief engineer’s voice filled the cockpit. “It’s the point-defense system that North was able to get us a warning about. We may be able to get past it with a particle beam. Surely they can’t deflect energy weapons discharging at just under the speed of light.”

  “Great,” Nyota said. “We don’t have particle beams on corvettes.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Bollard said sarcastically. “Captain says to either keep them occupied until Magnus is in rage – four minutes – or if you can, draw them into our range sooner.”

  “Copy,” Nyota said, glancing down at her tactical display. A Chasm ship had broken formation and was charging her stern. “Crap!”

  She rolled off of the ship she was tailing to get out of the line of fire of the second bogie bearing down on her. Her ship didn’t have any magic defense system, and those bullets fired from the enemy corvette would tear her apart with ease.

  Nyota juiced the Khan’s engines and quickly put hundreds of kilometers between her and her assailant. She made a wide bank, identified a target, and attempted to get behind it.

  “Anyone got anything?” a deep, male voice came over wing comm channel. “My bullets are useless. Wing commander?”

  Even without the computer identifier, Nyota recognized the voice of Carlos Spike, probably her best pilot – at least in a simulator. “Everyone, stay out of their scopes. Just try to keep them tied up until Magnus is in range. We have the agility advantage, but our weapons seem to be useless. Unless…”