Chase gazed at the holo-image. “I have to admit, I love the way the F-140 looked, so I’m glad you used the same design, just with a darker paint job.”
“So do I,” Yanis agreed. “But while on the outside not much seems to have changed, under the hood is a whole different story. First, it’s twenty percent heavier and bigger. Of course, on the hologram you can’t really tell, but that allowed me to find the space I needed to load it with every gadget and system I could think of, and to reinforce the plating now that quadrinium is no longer an issue.”
Yanis clapped his hands brusquely.
“Now to the good stuff, shall we? Since it’s bigger, I managed to put redundancies and self-repairing systems pretty much on anything critical, but that’s not all. I loved the fact that the original F-14 Tomcat has twin engines, so I replicated that design with our latest generation engines. A higher-yield, secondary power reserve doubled the number of laser cannons, and it can now carry an additional twin torpedo complement or four missiles, depending on your ordnance choice.”
Sarah clapped her hands in applause.
“Why, thank you,” said Yanis, turning to Chase and adding casually, “See, that’s not so difficult.”
“Show off!” snorted Chase.
“Look who’s talking,” both Yanis and Sarah said in unison, laughing right after.
Chase nodded reasonably. “Touché.”
“But that’s not all. Of course, every F-147 will come with those neuronal link interfaces you guys are so crazy about. Again, the logs showed it’s more efficient than the traditional stick, rudder, and physical HUD. Earth pilots actually seem to adapt faster to it than our own, for some reason, but still, after sufficient training, everyone seems to get used to it and there are gains in efficiency as well.”
He got suddenly to his feet.
“But now for the grand finale.” He rubbed his palms together.
“Oh, for the love of—”
“Ah-ta-ta-ta... This one requires special mention,” Yanis insisted.
“You should have started with ‘one more thing’ then,” said Sarah casually.
Both Yanis and Chase looked at each other, and, after a while, when it became clear they both didn’t get the reference—after all how could they?—Sarah added, “It’s a Steve Jobs thing. He was the CEO of Apple until he passed away. God rest his soul. And when he was still alive he would keep a special reveal at the end of his speeches, and would say ‘one more thing’ and everyone in the audience knew something special was about to happen.”
“I’ve heard a lot about Apple. That nice, chain-smoking tech Cedric mentioned it took a little more time to hack their computers compared to something called ‘Windows’ when he had to teleport the EMP to the behemoth Zarlack ship.”
“Apple? Windows? Who thinks up these names? In comparison, your StarCrusher is a stroke of genius,” said Chase.
They all laughed for a good while, then Sarah added, “True. When I stop to think about it, the naming of Apple as a company is a weird choice, but then it worked. It became the most successful tech company until… well, until you guys showed up, basically. I wonder what happened to them or their products, in fact.”
“I know what happened,” said Yanis. “Some of their best engineers are working with me on the F-147 and the other pet projects I have. Some of them were sent to other R&D stations, and Earth still produces smartphones and tablets, but a single model of each, infused with some of our technology; mostly so the damn things don’t die for lack of power after a single day’s use. And of course with higher processing power now as well, we’ve upgraded them to quantum computing. They’re now fully awesome.”
“Steve Jobs would be proud of you, at least for the upgrades. Not sure he would have liked the fact that all this is made without profit for the company.”
“Right. Still, what matters is that we adapted something that was well done originally on your world and made it just more efficient, ecologic and available to anyone who needs to use it.”
Chase scratched his neck.
“We’re getting off track. What about you tell us what other changes you made to the StarCrusher?” said Chase, clearly impatient to know what more it could do.
“Right, back to it. The next thing was actually inspired by you. You remember when you told me to look at a way to increase efficiency to the remote control of a squadron?”
“Absolutely,” Chase recalled. “I loved having the option to fly remotely. Of course, it’s not quite as efficient as just flying my own ship, and, to be honest, sometimes it feels a bit like sacrificing a huge number of ships, but—”
“Exactly! Why would we lose entire ships when we could lose much smaller ones?”
The question lay in the air between them.
“You want to build smaller ships?” Chase frowned.
“Drones!” Sarah cried, as if she’d won a game show.
Yanis beamed at her. “Exactly! I’ve looked at the concept of drones in human warfare; it was all the rage before our arrival. And I can see why. They allow soldiers to do tactical missions without incurring loss of life.”
“Sounds good to me,” Chase said with a twinkle in his eyes.
“I’ve loaded them onboard the F-147s. Each craft has four drones, all pre-programmed with your sub-routines as well as a full auto mode, and so the onboard computer can pilot them based on the data we’ve gathered from the logs and statistics we’ve recorded during your engagement. We’ve also taken into account analysis of Zarlack attack patterns and coded that in. For you, I’m sure you’ll prefer the manual mode, in which case you now will have access to them and your commands via the neuronal link; but for less experienced fighters, the drones will auto pilot themselves based on your sub-routines, still adding firepower and efficiency to dogfights.”
“That sounds really good, but how tough are they? I doubt they are as solid as fighters.”
Yanis nodded. “You’re right, how could they be? But I’ve used the same power source I used in the shielded torpedoes, so they’re tough little suckers. They’re shielded, with a small yet rechargeable secondary power reserve. They fire single laser cannons but are modular in frequency and power distribution. And finally, they can be either remote detonated as mines or used as shielded torpedoes if required.”
Chase studied Yanis critically. “You haven’t slept since the last attack, have you?”
“Not so much,” Yanis admitted. “After what happened on Earth, I wanted us ready for whatever Obsidian and the Zarlacks had to throw at us. These bastards need to know we won’t let them walk all over us.”
He sat back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. The presentation was apparently over and he’d done his job well. He was shocked, however, when Chase leapt up from his seat and gave him an unexpected hug.
“What’s that for?” Yanis stammered, a little stunned.
Chase flushed self-consciously. “It’s something I picked up from the humans. It’s what you do… you know… when you’re grateful to someone.”
Yanis and Sarah exchanged a knowing look and Chase was quick to change the subject.
“Wait—what about cloaking?”
“Snap! I knew I forgot something,” admitted Yanis. “Perhaps you’re right, I do need to sleep and relax a little.”
“Can it be installed? It would be a tremendous advantage tactically, and I take it with your access to the Omegas, you must have the means to install that tech as well, right?”
“As a matter of fact it already is. I just forgot to tell you about it. And… there’s a catch. The F-147 emits a much stronger power signature than the Alliance starfighters, and is considerably larger too. So there are some limitations...”
“Such as?”
“Well, you can only cloak the ship for a minute or two, depending on your energy levels.
Chase shrugged. “More than enough in most situations.”
“If only it was that simple, I would agree. While the new prototype fig
hters also lose most of their shields while in cloak, they still can maintain about forty percent of them up and even fire while cloaked, which makes them true predators in battle conditions. The F-147, unfortunately, cannot. It’s simply too big. It has too many systems and not enough juice to do everything while cloaked.”
“I see. That’s still an advantage under the right set of circumstances. We just can’t use it in the middle of a frenzied firefight with multiple targets in pursuit. Especially if the fact of de-cloaking means having no shields. How fast do the shields recharge once de-cloaked?”
“Fast enough. As fast as they would in normal combat conditions. I’m trying to figure a way to flash charge them so they could be restored faster, but I’ve had limited success so far.”
“Limited success?” Sarah asked.
“I fried half the capacitors and blew up the other half during testing.”
“Ah,” she replied, letting the subject drop.
Chase nodded hastily. “Yeah, for future versions it will be good, but as it is, it will definitely give us the edge against the Zarlacks.”
Chase noticed Sarah had become quiet again, which, when the subject of technology, weapons, and blowing stuff up was involved, wasn’t really in her nature.
“Don’t you agree, love?”
She barely registered the fact that he addressed her directly, but after a few seconds, she answered. “I... I’m sorry. I’m suddenly not feeling very well. Please don’t misunderstand me. This is an awesome craft, one I want to test very soon, but I think I need to go get some rest. I feel a little queasy.” She turned towards Chase. “With your permission?”
“Of course. We’ll finish up here and I’ll join you later,” Chase answered with a smile.
“Thank you.” She turned to Yanis and shook his hand. “Great job on the new ships. I can’t wait to see them in action. Until next time.”
Yanis nodded and she left the conference room. When the doors closed he turned back to Chase. “That was a little odd.”
“She lost an uncle during the battle. He had become kind of a father figure for her after she had lost her parents.”
“Oh... I didn’t know.” His face fell. “I sensed something wasn’t going well, but I didn’t know what it was.”
“Not to mention what she had to endure while captive. That took quite a toll.” Chase sighed. A toll on them both. “But she’s strong. She’ll get through it.”
“Something you’d like to talk about?”
“No, she barely told me about it. It’s probably a very private and delicate subject, so if she wants to tell that tale herself, she will in due time.”
“Absolutely, I understand.”
There was a sudden tension in the conference room and Chase was determined not to let it fester. “So, when will these be ready?”
“The F-147… I should have a couple of them ready in the next few days.”
“I take it the Prometheus-class ship will take longer?”
“You’d think so, but both the commodore and admiral were adamant they wanted this ship and the next ones of their class to be ready as fast as humanly possible. So we’ve literally built an entire army of bot droids to build them at an accelerated rate. It meant squandering some quadrinium, but they both felt that it is worth it. If you ask me, the admiral has something in mind.”
“So when should I come in and test it?”
“Give me one or two more days. Then it should be ready to go.”
Chase’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, like I said—thousands upon thousands of builder bots have been working on it relentlessly for days now. It can probably already fly now, but we have the engineers onboard doing all the testing, making sure everything is safe and all that.”
“Well, that’s great. We need more ships and soon.”
“Yeah, I think that’s on everyone’s agenda at the moment; that and trying to repair whatever damage was done.”
Chase shook his head. “On that front, I don’t know that we really can. But I guess whatever help we can provide in terms of reconstruction will be welcome. Humanity lost some of its history in that attack; it must not be easy to deal with that. I’m sure we’ll feel some of those repercussions—”
A loud explosion cut short his sentence as the windows in the conference room suddenly shattered into a million pieces.
15
Ryonna almost fell from her bed when the ground beneath her started shaking and rumbling. It felt like an explosion. Ronan came running from his room in alarm.
“What was that noise?”
“I think something exploded,” she answered, going to the windows to get a better look.
One of the buildings nearby had a column of smoke rising in the sky. The question now was: was it an accident, or an attack?
“Something bad happened,” she murmured. “Take your weapons. We need to check it out, and perhaps there are people who need our assistance.”
“Why should we care?” asked Ronan defiantly.
“Look, Ronan, I know you think you’re already a tough warrior and you try to be a good Droxian, but let me remind you that without Chase and his friends, we would both be dead. I have a debt to repay. I don’t need to tell you how important honor is to our people.” She threw on her jacket. “And there’s something more than that… they’re our friends.”
The door chimed.
“Come in!”
It was Tar’Lock. “What the hell was that explosion? I thought this place was safe.”
Ryonna shook her head. “I don’t know, but let’s go check it out.”
With that, the three of them left the flat at a dead sprint.
The explosion had sent Chase to the floor. He looked around the conference room but all he could see was smoke. His ears were ringing and it took a few moments for him to regain all his senses. He called out to Yanis.
“You okay, buddy?”
No answer.
He looked around and saw Yanis on the floor, still unconscious, buried beneath some light rubble. Chase’s heart stopped in his chest until he saw that his friend was still breathing. He quickly reached out to check his vitals and slapped his face gently until he regained consciousness.
“Urgh... What the... What was that?”
“An explosion.”
“Again with the obvious…” Yanis attempted a smile. “But why?”
Chase’s face darkened. “I don’t know, but let’s go check it out. Some people might need our help. Can you get up?”
“I think so.”
Yanis moaned in discomfort but managed to get to his feet. He looked up, pleased with his efforts, but paused at Chase’s expression.
“What is it?”
“Sarah. She barely left. We need to try and locate her.” Without hesitation he tried his comm. “Sarah, do you hear me? Please respond? Sarah!”
No response.
“We gotta find her!” he said, his voice trembling.
Yanis walked towards the door but it wouldn’t open. “That’s just great!” he said, letting escape a long breath of frustration. “Gimme a minute to get this open—”
“No need; move aside.”
“What?”
“Just get out of the way,” Chase insisted. He raised his hand and called as loud as he possibly could, “Anybody behind the door?” There was silence. “I’ll take that as a no.”
A bright-blue ball of energy formed in his open palm. The next second, he fired it at the door. It burst open as if it was made of cardboard, most of its structure ricocheting against the next wall and falling to the ground in the now accessible corridor.
Yanis’ expression was a mixture of bewilderment with a healthy bit of fear.
“Right, you didn’t know I can do that,” said Chase with a tentative smile.
The engineer’s jaw fell open. “What the fuck, man! What WAS that?”
“Short version, my Fury powers.”
“Fury? I think I n
eed the long version.”
“Sure, but not right now. Let’s try and find Sarah first. Follow me.”
They took off, running through the corridors. The damage to the building seemed minimal but it had obviously lost power. After a minute of running towards the exit, however, secondary power kicked in and low-powered lights started to fill the corridors. Nevertheless, when they tried the elevator, there was no such luck.
They went towards the nearest stairway and ran down ten flights of stairs until they reached a point where some damage had taken part of the stairway. It was still smoking and some sparks were flying about from broken electrical conduits around the damage. There was a way across, but it involved leaping several yards to the remaining stairway.
“I can make that jump. Can you?” Chase inquired.
Yanis looked at the drop and then at Chase with clear incredulity in his eyes.
“Not a chance, but go. I’ll find another stairway and catch up with you.”
Chase nodded and wasted no time jumping the thirty-foot gap, landing easily on the other side. Before Yanis could register it, his friend was no longer visible.
“Right, let’s find another way down,” he said out loud.
Chase got out of the building and took the way he thought Sarah would have gone. He was so full of adrenaline that he didn’t realize how fast he was running. In just a matter of seconds, he saw the smoldering rubble of the adjacent building—the one the explosion had clearly been meant for. At first, he was going to give it a wide berth, focused on his mission to find Sarah, but as he got closer, he spotted a familiar watch sticking up from beneath the rocks.
“Sarah!”
His heart started pounding, but he was relieved to hear an answer almost immediately.
“Chase?” Her voice was weak. “I’m stuck. I think I might have broken my leg too.”
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