by Joshua James
Olsen nodded. “They’re masking the size of the force until they see what they’re up against. There’s no pretense here – this is a skilled commander.”
He could see the light glowing in space now, indicating the laser cannons getting ready to fire. But Cadinouche had made the right calculations, and the enemy’s own shield now provided cover between the ship and the station.
“Sir, with all due respect, what happens if they turn their shields off?” Novak asked.
“They wouldn’t risk doing that,” Olsen said. “They could end up destroying their modules, creating more damage than it’s worth for one measly mining ship. Besides, they’ll have us in range soon enough.”
“But they already know that their old fleet admiral is under threat. Plus, Arstan space station weapons have come along well during the last few years. Their torpedoes now have auto-navigation capabilities, and their weapons can track at precision, with only a few meters’ error.”
Olsen found himself frowning over at his new XO. “Seems like something you could have mentioned earlier.”
“I’ve only just realized it, sir. I remind you my recommendation was to flee, and you’ve already discarded that option.”
“Duly noted,” Olsen said as he scratched at his chin, also noting that she’d defended herself against a superior officer, which was something he expected of senior officers but didn’t necessarily know to expect from Novak — even if she did clearly think highly of herself. She was still an enigma to him.
“Incoming, sir,” Schmidt said. “They’re firing torpedoes.”
“Before the laser turrets?” It didn’t make sense. If a torpedo hit them before the laser turret did, its energy would disperse into the shield. Shields were much better at taking damage from matter-based weapons than energy-based ones.
He watched in dismay as the station’s shields turned themselves off in the wall in front. They had probably thirty seconds — ships nowadays didn’t engage in close combat. “Fire back at it, Schmidt.”
“Sir, I—”
But Schmidt didn’t have time to finish the sentence before one of the laser turrets from the Arstan defense station ignited. It passed right through one of the gaps in a cluster of shield wall latticework and hit the Tapper’s shield right on. The ship rocked, and the protective sheen of blue surrounding the Tapper faded to nothing.
Olsen realized immediately why they’d done it. This way, the Tapper wouldn’t have time to start the second shield before the torpedoes hit.
Shortly afterwards, the viewscreen was filled with bright blue light. They could see a trio of missiles approaching now, like an overexposed will-o’-the-wisp out of a fairytale picture book.
“Brace yourselves,” Olsen said. “We’re going to get hit.”
He had only just enough time to turn on the emergency mag-floors, so hopefully, no one would get thrown too far or too hard by the force of the impact.
22
Call her a psychopath, but Kota couldn’t help but love the way explosions looked and felt. The thunder, the shaking ground, the rising torrents of flame, the brilliant intensity of light, followed by smoke like the whole place was covered in a forest fire.
And this final stage was the best time to move in. Cover up the mouth, don’t breathe it in too heavily, don’t even bother to check if the guards are dead. Just move forward, grab the target, and either succeed or die. Maybe there was another way, but she didn’t know it.
“Singh, it’s time,” she said. “Follow my lead.”
“Yes, sir,” Singh replied.
She just had to hope that the ordnance had blown a hole large enough for her to get through. That was the worst thing that could happen right now. But if that didn’t work, she’d unleash a whole XM-461 magazine until she’d punched a hole through.
Before Kota sprinted forward, she changed the comms channel. “Connery, Turgin, status report,” she said, but she didn’t wait for a reply.
Her legs took her as fast as she could without them cramping out. She’d kept herself fit, fortunately. The Tapper didn’t have a gym, but they had girders and magnetic floors, making the ship suitable for a variety of high-intensity weight training. Pull-ups took on a new definition when the floor pulled you back towards it as you lifted yourself.
Singh kept pace, lagging ever so slightly, but Kota only checked over her shoulder at him twice before she reached the front of the mansion. The smoke burned in her lungs, even with her mouth covered by her sleeve, and she could only see a meter ahead of her if that.
As she’d wished for, the steel bars over the front door had been mangled and wrenched inwards by the explosion. The door had also been blown inwards, meaning they had a clear entryway. Part of the caged door still spanned the base of the entrance, and so Kota would have to vault over it. She looked at Singh, noting that he was much larger than her. Technically as a sergeant, she should send him in first.
But she’d never been one for technicalities, and she knew it made much more tactical sense here to take the lead. “Cover me,” she said. She tucked her rifle against her waist and held down the safety as she vaulted over the remains of the bars and forward rolled across hard tile into the hallway.
“Stop right there,” a voice chittered before she could look up and raise her rifle. “Any sudden movements and I’ll kill.”
An Arstan crocodile-man stood in a doorway into a much larger room. He leaned against some stone stairs leading up onto a mezzanine, kept there by several thin concrete pillars. The Arstan had a rougher face than the guards, and his snout was longer. They said that the older an Arstan got, the more their snout grew.
The alien had a pistol in his hand, pointed right at Kota. Singh took the opportunity to tumble into the room, rolling to the side of where Kota stood. The Arstan panicked, turned the gun on Singh, and let off a shot, which hit the wrangled metalwork behind.
Kota turned the opportunity to raise her rifle and turn on the sight to create a laser pinpoint on the lapel of the white robe that the alien wore. “I think it’s you that should lower your weapon,” she said. “Fleet Admiral Frega, I presume. Singh, check the reference.”
Singh glanced back at the amber glow the shot had burned into the metal behind him, let off a sigh, and then raised his watch, looking up and down between it and the Arstan. “It’s him.”
“No guards, Frega?” Kota asked.
The sides of the Arstan’s mouth folded up into what looked like a grin. “I sent them out to check out the commotion outside. Sons of Hastara, I wanted to retire from this.”
“Your defense station sent out reinforcements to try and stop us kidnapping you.”
“No,” the Arstan replied. “They sent out police ships to arrest me and five other Arstan officials. And it’s not a fully-fledged defense station, just a way of policing this house arrest. You would have thought our federation would give better protection to those who’ve served the military for so long.”
Kota glanced around. “You mean this isn’t a retirement home?”
“You humans aren’t the only ones who have to deal with politics, you know. Things are complicated right now in ways you can’t even possibly imagine.”
Kota turned to Singh. It shouldn’t be her having this discussion with the fleet admiral, but the captain. “Truss him,” she said.
Singh moved forwards, a Marine-standard spool of carbon-reinforced titanium wire in his hand. He took hold of the Arstan’s massive-fingered hands and pulled them hard behind his back.
“There’s no need for this,” Frega said. “I’ll come peacefully. Something tells me I might be better off with you than here.”
“Protocol is protocol,” Kota replied, and she kept her rifle trained on Frega as Singh nudged him towards the door.
Come to think of it, she hadn’t heard back from the other two. She raised her wrist to her face again and spoke into the watch. “Connery, what’s your status? Report in.”
There was static on the line, and K
ota feared the worst. She couldn’t hear Connery’s voice at all. “Connery?”
“Sorry, sir,” Connery replied; his voice came out broken. “We had to engage the enemy. There were four of them, plus another five from the house. But we had good cover, and they came staggered, so we brought them down. They didn’t seem like regular troops, sir.”
“Meet us at the Extractor in ten minutes,” Kota said. “We have Frega, and we’re ready to take him back to the ship.”
“Affirmative, sir.”
Singh was watching here, waiting for an order. She nodded to him, and he pushed Frega out through the hole. Kota followed behind and emerged to the freshness of the air, since the smoke had trailed away.
“Kota, are you there?” Olsen’s voice came alarmed over the comms channel.
“Affirmative, sir,” she replied.
“Abort mission and get back immediately. We’ve taken heavy damage and are powering up to FTL-warp.”
Shit. Nothing was ever so easy. “But sir, we’ve got the target.”
“Then make sure you get him here in ten minutes, because I don’t think I can give you more time.”
Kota didn’t even take time to assess the situation. “Frega,” she said, “if you don’t keep pace, we’ll shoot you in the head. No questions. Singh, you heard Olsen, get moving.”
She then opened up the comms channel to Connery. “Those ten minutes, make them one. If you don’t make it, I’ll have to leave you behind.”
Ten minutes? Damn, could the Extractor move that fast? Granted, ships left planets more quickly than they entered them. But the longer it took for them to get there, the tougher it would be for Redrock to pull this off.
As she kept sprinting, she opened up one last comms channel. “Redrock,” she said. She almost said ‘Babes’ over the open channel before she caught herself. She’d never live that down. “Get the ship ready. We’re gonna need to move fast.”
23
The Okranti arrived at its destination — the site of a brilliant, flaring amber sun. Captain Kraic, commanding officer of the Okranti, looked out of the curved 360-view window on the observation deck of the topmost CIC module, with his hands on his hips. This was Kraic’s favorite room on the ship. Such beautiful sites he’d seen since he’d joined the Navy. He would have seen nothing like this on his homeworld of Krsst, a swampland always blanketed in a fog so thick that you couldn’t see more than a mile on the clearest day. And the cities were worse — industrial powerhouses where high-density metals were smelted and then sent up to the orbital shipyard, where they constructed the Arstan modules.
The observation deck was sparsely furnished. It existed solely for anyone who wanted to see outside for real, rather than through a computer screen. It connected to the ship through an airlock hatch on the floor that could close off the room from the rest of the vessel if the deck’s windows happened to break for whatever reason.
Down below the deck, several construction modules had gathered around a massive warhead — the largest ever known to any civilization in the galaxy. Drones flocked in and out of the flight bays, carrying curved parts and welding them into place around the spatial detonator. The warhead was constructed of an alloy of titanium, platinum, and metrinium. It was the latter metal that gave it enough thermal durability to break the surface of the sun. It had to be launched at high enough velocity that it could reach the core of the sun before the warhead melted away. Then the spatial detonator would ignite, and the star would go supernova.
A female Arstan scrambled out of the airlock hatch and stood beside Kraic.
“Any orders, Frande?” his XO, Commander Horst asked. Frande literally translated to liege, a remnant of the Arstan medieval age when they fought with pikes and rode great toads into battle. The salutation had survived through formal circles since, especially in the military. Anyone of officer rank would call their superior by this title. Subordinates should be referred to by name, and no one below officer rank had any titles. All non-commissioned crew simply knew who was in charge and got on with things.
Kraic turned to Horst. Arstan females displayed their beauty in shades of blue, and Horst was one of the bluest he’d ever known. She had a particularly refined snout, and sharp teeth underneath her jaws — both also considered attractive features. But she also seemed incredibly unsure of herself sometimes, and that was something that Kraic hoped to set right.
“Horst, once I have orders, I will relay them,” he snapped.
Horst dropped her hands and folded them in front of her scaly, bandy legs. “I’m sorry, Frande. It’s just that the crew are asking when we get to prepare the warhead. I fear if we don’t give them answers, there’ll be riots.”
“Then let them riot, and show your superiority by driving a stun-prod into them. Horst, you need to learn to take control like a true Arstan. Order needs to be forced in the military; that’s how our civilization works.”
“As you wish.” Horst turned back towards the hatch and sauntered towards it.
Kraic would find out exactly who had complained, and give some of them a few lashes from the prod himself soon. But for now, he wanted to savor this moment. Because soon, they were going to unleash the greatest catastrophe in history on this star and its surrounding system. An entire human base and its arsenal wiped out within minutes, due to an awesome weapon no one in the galaxy had seen before.
“Wait,” Kraic said.
Horst turned around. “Yes, Frande?”
“Is there any news from the ambassador?”
“Not yet…” She trailed off, gazing at something through the windows. “Although I believe it might be coming now.”
A speck of white light had appeared over to the left of the sun. The Tauian ship was uncloaking quite a distance away, but it was gaining on them fast, the curves in the strangely-built vehicle now becoming visible.
A beeping started coming from the ship’s speaker. “He’s hailing us, Frande,” Horst said.
“Good. Put him on-screen.”
Horst nodded and placed the thin, broad holo-disc that she carried on her hip on the floor. This had serrated edges, so it doubled as a throwing weapon so sharp it could slice right through an Arstan’s thick neck. Kraic had one too, but he felt more comfortable having that at his side, should anyone ever turn on him. Although Horst was probably the least likely of the crew on the Okranti to attack him, executive officers had attacked and killed their commanding officers even in recent history.
Horst stepped forward and pressed a button at the base of the disc, turning on a thick beam of white light that shone out of the center. This soon faded to reveal the multi-colored Tauian ambassador in his full, smooth-skinned splendor.
“Ambassador Oort,” Kraic said, and gave a deep bow.
“Captain Kraic,” he replied. “I suppose you are ready?”
“Yes, but first, I trust we have the right coordinates.” All suns looked the same, and the human shipyard was light-years away, so it was always better to double-check.
“This is the Ripley system, yes,” Oort replied. “And there are currently fifteen super-dreadnoughts and approximately thirty billion humans on surrounding planets that will be wiped out by the explosion.”
“Good,” Kraic replied. “And do you have word on what happened to Captain Olsen’s ship? He put on quite a show in the Hardy-Myers Belt.”
“He’s currently being taken care of on the planet of Kandora. He tried to extract Fleet Admiral Frega, but I alerted the Jinardu station of their location, and my sources say they’re currently in combat. I very much doubt they’ll escape.”
Kraic scratched under his chin with a claw. “What if they do? Couldn’t you have just killed them yourself?”
“Captain Kraic, I have explained already how this is a test that I cannot interfere in, other than giving basic advice. My superiors very much feel that your race should be supreme rulers of your galaxy, but that opinion might change if you prove yourself incapable. And if a rudimentary defense s
tation can’t beat a tiny mining ship, what hope is there for you?”
Kraic swallowed. “We’ll annihilate them if they come running after us.”
“And it’s that fighting spirit that has put you in high favor with the leaders of our honorable meritocracy. That, and the fact that you don’t seem to be afraid to die.”
Kraic wiped away some mucus that had appeared underneath his ear glands. This was a suicide mission, and everyone on board knew it. They needed to be there to ensure that the warhead entered the sun, and no other civilizations arrived and got hold of the spatial detonator before it had a chance to unleash its carnage.
But after the deed was done, their names would go down in history as those that turned the tide of the war against the humans, so that they could eventually win the war. They’d have statues erected in their names, and their descendants would live in peace in an Arstan galaxy.
“We’re not,” Kraic confirmed. Like any creature alive, the Arstans hated pain, but they weren’t afraid of death.
“Then it’s good to see everything’s going as planned. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other meetings to attend to.”
“I wish you well,” Kraic said. Then after a considered moment, he added, “Frande.”
But the Tauian didn’t register the significance of the honorific, nor did he reply. Rather, he cut himself off the comms-channel and shortly afterwards, his ship ghosted back into space.
24
Redrock’s toe tapped rapidly against the floor of the Extractor as he watched Kota, Singh, and their Arstan captive sprint towards the shuttle cargo doors. Connery and Turgin had already made it back, and they were in the cargo bay with Riley, but it seemed having a hostage might have slowed the other two Marines a little. Redrock wasn’t sure he could get back to the Tapper in ten minutes, let alone eight, but the thought of leaving Kota behind made him sick. It just wasn’t going to happen, mission be damned.