Flight of the Magnus

by L S Roebuck

  “Commander?”

  “Carlos, I’m going to try something crazy,” Nyota said. “I want to get the first kill.”

  The Khan maneuvered behind the same corvette Nyota had been tailing before.

  “Hey, Khan,” Nyota said to her ship’s eponymous VI. “Can you auto pilot us to within, say three meters of the bogie?”

  “At that range, we could take damage from the bogie’s rear thruster,” Khan replied.

  “I know, so maybe put us off center a meter or so on the z-axis. Please execute the maneuver.”

  “Executing.”

  At the speed they were traveling, colliding with the bogie, particularly if it adjusted speed unexpectedly, was highly possible. Nyota had to rely on the computer pilot to adjust faster than she could. She hated computer pilot, but she had to know if she could get inside the range of the point defense system.

  “Are you crazy, Nyota?” Carlos’ asked over comms.

  “Shut it, Carlos,” was her reply.

  The two ships were locked in a formation that almost seemed choreographed now. One miscalculation would cause a fatal collision. The Chasm pilot spoke into an open channel. “Earth vessel, are you mad? What’s the point of killing us both.” Nyota imagined the pilot sweating.

  The Chasm pilot tried to break away, but his ship lacked the speed.

  “We are now three meters away from the target and holding,” Khan announced.

  “Can you get us as close as two meters?” Nyota said.

  “The possibility of my making a fatal adjustment at this speed at two meters distance is 30 percent and not advised.”

  “Get us closer. Two meters distance please,” Nyota commanded coolly. “I want to smell this guy’s butt.”

  “Understood,” Khan replied. “Shutting down all extraneous processor tasks to devote maximum computational ability to the autopilot. Two meters and holding.”

  “Hey, Chasm leader,” Nyota said on the open channel. “My guess is your bullet defense has to be projected, maybe three meters?”

  “Get off my back!” the Chasm pilot said nervously. “Wait. What?”

  “Allow me to be the first to welcome you to hell,” Nyota said as she spun up the Khan’s chain guns. The point defense system seemed to activate as well, and as Nyota expected, her ship was partially inside the field – specifically, the business end of her chain guns.

  With no energy shield between the bullets and the Chasm ship, the vessel was quickly shredded. The Chasm pilot screamed over the open channel, and Nyota wondered if he would die from space exposure or from bullets ripping though his flesh.

  Then, the Chasm ship exploded.

  Debris from the fireball immediately slammed into the Khan, sending the ship in a rapid, uncontrolled spin.

  “Chairman, our corvettes in pursuit of the runabout have been engaged what looks like a complement of Magnus’ corvettes,” a grey-clad officer hastily spouted, clearly out of breath. “Somehow one of our fighters was destroyed by ballistic attack.”

  The Chairman struck North again with the back of her hand, slopping blood from the Marines lacerated mouth onto the otherwise meticulously clean floor of the Chairman’s secret headquarters.

  “How many corvettes are on Magnus?” the Chairman continued her interrogation. North smiled.

  “A million.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” the Chairman said, turning from the bound Marine. She started barking orders at her entourage. “Launch Utopia, and tell Captain Niki to nuke the Magnus as soon as that ship is in range. If Magnus retreats, pursue until destroyed. That ship is the only thing that can stop us now, now that Marquette is ready to take up its watchdog orbit over Arara.”

  “I don’t understand,” North said. “Why do you need a watchdog?”

  “Simpleton. Resistance on the planet is too hard to subdue with traditional forces. From space, we can just bombard resistance. There is nowhere to hide. And there’s no way to disable or take out a waypoint from the surface of Arara. Marquette is the ultimate enforcer. We will watch over the beloved community from on high.”

  “And only Magnus could take out a weaponized fascist waypoint?” North surmised.

  “Fascist? Such an outdate term. Such slander,” the Chairman said. “I don’t have to listen to this outrage. You are nothing, Commander North. Good day to you.”

  The Chairman pointed to her two brawny bodyguards. “Put the commander out an airlock. Immediately.”

  Sparks sat up with a start. She was lying on some sort of metallic bed or gurney, soaked in her own sweat. The Chairman? Here! Crap! Sparks thought. Her head buzzed worse than any hangover she’d ever known. I’ve been stunned!

  She looked the around the poorly lit space, and realized that it was the Dr. Lind’s clinic. She peered across the room and saw, on another gurney, Meliana, unconscious. Sparks forced herself to stand, her temples throbbing, and walked over to Meliana.

  “Hey, girl, wakey-wakey!” Sparks pleaded, and Meliana slowly opened her eyes, reached her arms above her head and rubbed her artificially white hair. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Sparks saw a plastic tray with a half dozen rainbow colored stim injectors, evenly spaced out. “Do you know what those are?” She asked Meliana, who was struggling to sit up.

  The door swung open, and she saw a tall, dark curly-haired man, with a gun strapped to his hip. Sparks thought he looked surprised to see her up and about.

  “Queenie!” Meliana cried.

  “What the—” Queenie said, expecting his victims to still be stunned.

  Sparks grabbed the tray and flung it into Queenie’s face, injectors flying all over the room. Queenie went for his gun, but instead collapsed when his femur cracked with a loud snap under the pressure of a leaping kick from Sparks.

  “Auuughgths!” Queenie cried in intense pain.

  Sparks grabbed the gun – a loaded pistol, she guessed by the weight – and aimed it at Queenie.

  “Get on the gurney,” Sparks commanded, waving the gun in his face. “Now!”

  “I can’t even walk,” Queenie cried.

  “Oh my, oh my. You let them kill my husband,” Meliana had picked up the tray and slammed it into Queenie’s face. “And my baby!” She hit him again, and this time, the corner of the tray ripped a chunk of skin off Queenie’s face, blood surfacing quickly.

  “Wait! Wait!” Queenie said.

  “Just pull the trigger,” Meliana said. “By gods, be done with him.”

  “Slow down, Meliana,” Sparks said. She wasn’t afraid to take a life, but to kill someone who had been neutralized gave her some pause.

  Sparks back was to the door as it slid open again. Dr. Lind came barreling through, throwing the full force of his body into the petite woman. She dropped the gun as she fell, and it slid into the hands of Queenie.

  “Lady, get back on the table now, and let Dr. Lind do his work,” Queenie said, as he forced himself in a sitting position against the wall. He aimed the gun plainly at Sparks.

  Sparks put her hands in the air and slowly backed away.

  “Do you know how cross the Chairman would be if you are not properly interrogated?” Queenie asked. “Meliana, you need to sit down as well. You know, I was going to spare you torture. But since you decided to rearrange my face, maybe I’ll let Dr. Lind take a turn on you, too.”

  Meliana spat at Queenie as she slowly backed up and sat down on her table. Dr. Lind had gathered up the injectors.

  “Lind, how could you, like, side with Chasm?” Meliana said as tears welled up in her eyes. “You led us into a trap. What about Barack? What about Ehud?”

  “I’m sorry Meliana,” Dr. Lind said. “It was me or them. Join or die, they said. I joined.”

  “Like, what about Pinita?” Meliana asked.

  “She made her choice. She wouldn’t join,” Lind replied. “Out of my hands.”

  “Coward! Sooo much coward!” Meliana shouted angrily.

  “Maybe, but I may get t
o see this paradise Chasm is building.”

  “You idiot,” Sparks snickered. “There is no paradise. I used to believe in Chasm. But now I see the perfection they promise is slavery to the Chairman and her chosen elite.”

  “Get it over with, Dr. Lind,” Queenie said, waving the gun. “And then get my leg patched up. It hurts like the dickens. And I’m gonna need some stitches on my face.”

  “So, the first one is an intoxicant, the second is a hallucinogen, and this orange one essentially reduces your inhibition to zero,” Dr. Lind said, indicating the three injectors he was palming. “Please lie down, Sparks. Queenie will shoot you if he has to.”

  “Believe it, babe,” Queenie smiled a mouth full of crooked teeth.

  Sparks laid down on the cold metal, and reached her hand slowly into her front left-hand pocket, and fingered two small orbs.

  “Please don’t,” Sparks said.

  A shot rang out, putting a hole in the wall just a few centimeters above Sparks’ head. “If you say anything else, it will be the last thing you say,” Queenie threatened.

  Sparks put her fingernail into a slot in one of the orbs of her pocket.

  Dr. Lind pulled out the small intoxicant injector. As he bent down to inject Sparks neck, she reached her hand out of her pocket and shoved the orb deep into Dr. Lind’s nose.

  “Wow!” Sparks said as she grew flush from the injection.

  Queenie tried to shoot Sparks, but Dr. Lind had stumbled between them, crying out in pain and clawing at the orb imbedded deep in his nasal cavity. The two unused injectors fell to the floor.

  “Get out of the way, Lind!” Queenie leaned forward to try to get a clear shot on Sparks who was climbing over to the far side of the gurney, but he couldn’t stand up for the pain in his broken leg.

  Meliana eyed the injectors, and in a split second, scooped them both up and lunged at the distracted Queenie. She pushed both injectors into his neck.

  “Holy crap!” Queenie said and he dropped the gun.

  “Get down, Meliana!” Sparks said as she flipped the gurney on its side and crouched between it and the wall.

  Dr. Lind had nearly clawed his nose off.

  Too late, sucker, thought Sparks.

  Dr. Lind’s head exploded, essentially vaporizing his brains and skull, but large fleshy torso fragments flew across the room. The force of the explosion pushed the gurney into Sparks and shoved her up against the wall. A fire had broken out, and pink retardant started spraying, covering everyone and everything in the room.

  “Mel- mel- anna,” Sparks struggled to say, “Are you okkkkkaaay?”

  “I’m fine, I think,” she responded. She looked down at Queenie. She couldn’t tell if he was unconscious or dead. She looked at the blob that was Dr. Lind. Definitely dead.

  “If get you to a pod, will you take me back with you to Magnus?”

  “He he he he he,” Sparks giggled. “I am sooooooooo lit.”

  “Great, let’s scoot,” Meliana said. She picked up the gun and was about to hand it to Sparks.

  “Oooohhh, a gun,” Sparks said. “I miss my guns.”

  “On second thought, I’ll hold onto it. I think I know a pod we can escape on.”

  “No… nooo…. rrr… no.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Nooo. Not no… Norrth. We have to get North. I can’t live without him. I loooove him.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Action stations,” Captain Obadiah tossed his empty vape smoker on the command table. The bridge had grown hot with human activity. “Rhodes, get me Nyota on the horn. Weapons station, report.”

  “Suri, reporting in sir,” the gunnery chief’s voice projected over the bridge speakers. “All tubes ordnance laden. Particle beams one fully charged. Two is powering up – three minutes until charged.”

  “Rhodes, do you have Nyota?” the captain said.

  “Negative, sir,” the teenage officer said in an unusually quiet voice.

  “See if you can get Carlos to get a visual. I want my wing commander back. Put me on ship wide.”

  “Yes sir,” Rhodes said, swallowing each word.

  “Attention, this is the captain. We’ve traveled for 18 years and more than eight light years for this moment. Our lives were meant for this. Fulfill your destiny. We will liberate Waypoint Marquette, we will defend Waypoint Magellan, and we will avenge Waypoint Cortes. We have this strong ship, our friend, the Magnus. But don’t count only on our particle beams and antimatter drives. Count on our humanity. Our individual talents, and our voluntary love for each other. We were not forced to be here. We chose. We choose our future, and that is why we are better than Chasm, and that is why we must win. Godspeed to us all.”

  “Captain!” Blight looked up from the tactical display. “It’s massive. The ship, Utopia, is debarking from the waypoint. It’s headed on an intercept course.”

  “Full stop,” the captain said. “Let her come to us.”

  Rhodes felt her stomach jump into her head as the inertia dampeners kicked in.

  “Gunnery chief, let’s see what the particle beams can do against point defense,” Obadiah said as he looked around for his vape smoker. “Target Bogie Three. Rhodes: Tell Lt. Spike to get clear. And find Nyota.”

  Rhodes picked up her headset to comply with the captain’s orders, her eyes welling with tears. The captain noticed.

  “Rhodes,” the captain looked at his youngest officer with compassion. “North is not your fault. Not your responsibility.”

  “We should not have left them behind,” Rhodes said.

  “That wasn’t your call,” the captain said. “North knows the mission is paramount. You brought us critical information. We’ll get North back. Sparks, too. Have faith. They are both incredible people.”

  “Spike is clear of Bogie Three,” Blight reported.

  “Blow it,” the captain ordered.

  Lt. Carlos Spike had nearly emptied his ammo reserves attempting to wear down the point defense system on Bogie Three. Thing has to suck a lot of power, the pilot reasoned. Spike had joined the Alpha Wing when the Magnus had stopped at Waypoint Cabot. Spike was the best Marine pilot on the waypoint, and when Captain Obadiah told him about Magnus’ highly classified mission, Spike knew this was the best offer he was ever going to have to get out his mundane life defending Cabot from … nothing. The last seven years on Magnus had been equally boring until the Battle of Magellan. Now, two years later, he was back in action. Real action. Of course, the stupid guns are useless, Carlos thought.

  The corvette he was tailing, designated Bogie Three by Magnus, hit its retro thrusters. Spike had to dive deep on the relative z-axis of his corvette, M.S.S. Menudo, to avoid colliding.

  “Spike, this is Magnus,” Rhodes said over the wireless. “Do you—”

  Now Bogie Three was on his tail. He pushed his hand forward through the dense magnetic resonance yoke, and kicked the manual accelerator pedal. “Magnus, no time to chat. I have flames licking my ass here.”

  Bogie Three didn’t waste any time to take its shot. The corvette unloaded its own spray of explosive ordnance.

  A single bullet found its target, but only shredded a cosmetic fin.

  The Menudo spun wildly to avoid the additional fire as it accelerated. Even with the inertia dampeners, Carlos nearly passed out as 4G of effective pressure pushed him hard into his seat. The superior engines on the Menudo slipped the ship out of the firing range of Bogie Three.

  “Yowza! That was close Magnus. Looks like I got nicked,” Carlos said to the radio. “But I’m cool. I’m cool.”

  “I think you just made history as the first Marine pilot to be hit in a space dogfight,” Rhodes said.

  “Don’t report that,” Carlos said, dejected.

  “Captain orders you to break off and find Nyota,” Rhodes instructed. “We can’t find her. We’ve got Bogie Three for you.”

  Carlos did a 180-degree turn, and in the process, the Magnus in all its gleaming glory, came into view.
He had never seen the firing tubes open with its torpedo-like ordnance in strike position. He scanned about eight or nine of the fifty tubes open. He noted the Magnus must be at action stations, as many of the portal windows that would have normally exposed lit rooms were dark. Non-essential lights shut off during combat to make it harder for enemy ships to make a visual detection.

  Suddenly, a sustained yellow streak of what could only be described as liquid light, shot from the Magnus and intersected with Bogie Three. The point defense system seemed to disperse the beam before it could reach the corvette, which was attempting to retreat toward the flat cylinder form of Marquette.

  A second beam fired from the Magnus. The point defense system seemed to hold it back as well. The beams persisted, and Bogie Three attempted all manner of evasion, but Magnus’ computer would not lose its target so easily.

  Carlos pointed the Menudo at Bogie Three and began a strafing run. The last remaining corvette from the original Marquette dispatch was moving in to get a shot on the Menudo, even though several Magnus corvettes were testing its point defense system by showering it with chain gun fire.

  “Lt. Spike, what are you doing? You were ordered to get clear of bogies.”

  “Boring,” he said as he lined up Bogie Three, still being assaulted by two particle beams, in his sites. He pulled his firing trigger and found the limit of Bogie Three’s point defense system.

  Menudo’s bullets shredded Bogie Three’s cockpit, killing the pilot immediately. The point defense failed, and both particle beams sliced up Bogie Three, leading to a spectacular explosion.

  “Wooo hooo! Magnus, is that the first space kill in history?”

  “Negative, Carlos. Nyota got a kill. But we can’t find her. WHOA! Careful on your aft, you’ve got —”

  Lt. Carlos Spike did not live to hear the rest of the sentence. The ship-to-ship missile had traveled so fast that Menudo’s sensors barely registered it before it embedded into the ships engines and exploded into a disintegrating fireball.

  Silhouetted against the lights of Marquette, the mighty Utopia, on the move, claimed its first victim.