The Apex Warriors

by Marc Stevens

  The forward screen confirmed the Troop Master’s statement. There were more than two dozen damaged Prule ships detected in the minefield. Unfortunately for us, there were an additional one hundred and two resource platforms, battleships, and destroyers still hanging around that did not jump back to the planet. All of them got a read on our sloppy exit transition and launched a salvo of missiles. Klutch made a hard turn to clear our datum and used our gravity drive sparingly to put some distance between us and our exit point. Tria was dumping decoys and the last of the mines in our wake. She was hoping a missile would strike one, and the rest would home on the detonation.

  I desperately wanted to be elsewhere. “Klutch can you jump again?”

  “Negative Commander, the repairs to the system are not complete and the AI is warning me off until they are.”

  Our rear sensor feed was whited out by a series of detonations that rapidly multiplied until it looked like a constant rain of sparks. “The missiles are homing on the decoys!” Coonts shouted.

  The Prule’s answer to the premature detonations was to launch more missiles, thousands of them. Klutch’s eyes got a little wider as he tried to maneuver out of their target envelope. The tech the Prule was using was dated, but the sheer volume of the attack was leaving us no place to run.

  Tria turned to me with a grim expression on her face. “The shuttle’s supply of mines and decoys is depleted. We are down to one hundred and sixty stealth missiles. Once they are gone, we will have to rely on the shuttle’s energy weapons and point defense systems”

  Klutch was not out of options yet and crabbed the nose of the shuttle around so he could still maintain his heading. It gave our forward point defense rail cannons a firing solution on the incoming barrage. The weapons threw out a wall of exploding frangible projectiles. The magazines ran dry six minutes later. Now we only had six small energy beam projectors for point defense. The torrent of oncoming missiles started exploding and the Prule changed their tactics.

  “The Prule ships are jumping to hyperspace!” Tria warned.

  I had a bad feeling the Prule were not calling it quits and going home. The premonition was justified.

  Klutch suddenly called out. “I am detecting transition distortion waves on multiple vectors along our current heading.”

  The Prule Bio-machine running this horror show knew its business. Our escape corridor was quickly closing. We were going to be trapped between what was left of the missile barrage and the warships. The shuttle still had several modern cutting-edge energy weapons but they would draw a line directly at our location once we opened fire.

  Coonts didn’t like what he was seeing on the viewscreen any better than I did. “Klutch, how much longer till we can jump?”

  The Troop Master brought up the shuttle's systems repair display and shook his head negative. “The AI is estimating fourteen minutes.”

  The Grawl turned to me. “Commander, I will make sure the Principal Investigator’s med pod is secured for evasive maneuvers.”

  I nodded affirmative and watched him leave the flight deck. I knew the pod was already secure. I suspected that Coonts did not want to be a distraction to the Troop Master or Tria when we finally stopped running and went on the offensive. He might also have wished not to see his fellow clan members fall in our remaining minutes.

  Klutch was trying to thread the needle and avoid the closest jump distortions. He was doing pretty well until two appeared directly in our path. As he made another hard course correction, the Prule ships started materializing around us. The Chaalt cloaking systems would hide us but I doubted if the negation equipment would be enough to cover our drive signature so close to their ships.

  Tria was thinking the same thing and brought the shuttle’s shields online. Her quick thinking may have saved us all. Prule point defense weapons lit us up and flared brightly against our shields. Klutch pulled the nose of the shuttle up sharply and engaged the gravity drives. He rolled us up and over the back of a battleship and dove for open space between a destroyer and a resource platform. Just when I thought we would shoot the gap the destroyer turned into us cutting off our escape route.

  “The shields are going fast!” Tria warned.

  Klutch grunted out an oath and put us right up against the destroyer’s shields. A lightening like spray erupted where the shields came into contact with each other. Tria opened fire with the shuttle's main weapons and the Prule ship’s shield flared then disappeared. She sent a salvo of five stealth missiles into the breach as Klutch killed the drives and made a turn that was overriding the gravity dampers. We were crushed by the sudden Gs and I was flattened to the deck. It felt like the hand of our maker reached out and swatted us. The shuttle went tumbling wildly end for end as Klutch yelled out non-stop Tibor oaths. I was stunned speechless as he somehow stopped the uncontrolled spin. The view on the forward screen was filled with the Prule destroyer breaking apart into large brightly glowing pieces.

  Klutch had no choice but to drive us straight through the debris field as blinding beams of energy crisscrossed our path. The remaining Prule ships were shooting from every possible angle in an attempt at hitting us. In another incredible feat of piloting skills, the Troop Master turned hard toward the largest destroyer fragment and dove us into the hollowed-out remains of its hold. He hit the forward thrusters but it was not enough to completely arrest our forward inertia and we made a rough stop into the stowed cargo that was not jettisoned from the fragment. The crash imparted momentum to the already tumbling wreckage. With each revolution, our rear sensors showed more Prule ships gathering to search for us. The Troop Master’s trick of hiding in the remains of the destroyer was brilliant. It would give the field generators the time necessary to bring our shields back up to something that resembled a protective status.

  Any thoughts that the Tibor would be the only one to think such a thing, was wiped from my brain. A Prule energy beam sliced through the ship fragment just forward of our position, splattering our shuttle with molten spalls and wreckage from the hold. The impacts making an unwelcome clatter on the shuttle’s hull. We now had a view of a starfield filled with crisscrossing Prule ships. I was clinging to the back of Tria’s chair and managed to pull myself back to my feet. Our choices for an alternate hide were quickly running out. As my grandma used to say, we were going to be jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

  Klutch turned to me and smiled a big toothy grin, verifying my supposition.

  A resource gathering platform laden with ship parts from the planet's orbit suddenly filled our view. It had holes in its hull and cargo deck that were spewing large firey sparks and non-stop smoke. I surmised it was a victim of the minefield or possibly a survivor from the opening salvo of our attack on the Prule installations. Either way, it was way too close for comfort and blocked our only escape route. Unless the Troop Master could figure out a way to get turned around, we were screwed. The ship fragment we were hiding in, was quickly going to pieces.

  Tria frantically pointed at the Prule ship. “There Klutch!” She yelled. “Its shields are down, go now!”

  I was going to yell a selection of choice four-letter expletives at what I thought was a ramming maneuver. They all caught in my throat when Klutch accelerated so hard the overworked gravity dampers could not keep up. My feet came off the deck and my helmet bounced off the back of Tria’s seat before I flew backward into the bulkhead.

  Anything I might have said, or mumbled, would never be heard. Klutch yelled over our comms to brace for impact. The last thing I saw before I went crashing into the back of the cockpit seats, was the flight deck hatch opening and Coonts crawling through it. When my eyes finally found their proper orientation, Coonts was laying next to me with a disturbing look on his face. Tria was now the one shouting. She sounded euphoric and was telling Klutch, how she could not believe he did it. I had no idea what “it” was, but we were not soiling the floor at our maker’s feet. My brain started collating my thoughts in a coherent order. It ar
rived at the conclusion we were still breathing because of another piloting miracle pulled off by the Troop Master. Since our maker was nowhere to be found, I pulled myself up, so I could get a look at what part of hell the Troop Master chose to crash into. I was startled to see my ruminations were not that far off. We were now partially buried amongst the ship fragments heaped on the back deck of a Prule resource gathering platform. Why Tria would find this to be a jubilant moment, was beyond my comprehension.

  Klutch and Tria began shutting down all the shuttle’s systems that might give the Prule a whiff of our newest hide. My attention was riveted to the viewscreen when I noticed the weapons on the front of the resource platform swivel more or less in our direction, and open fire. Tria shifted the sensor feed. The viewscreen revealed the Prule ships were now targeting the last of the destroyer's parts that were large enough to shelter a vessel. Her plan to hide in plain sight was working because the indiscriminate fire from the Prule, ceased right after the last of the destroyer’s fragments were annihilated.

  It was a short-lived victory. “Tria, I don’t like the sensor readings I am detecting!” Klutch called out.

  Coonts and I peered over the Tibor’s shoulder. We could see the reason Klutch wasn’t happy with our choice of landing zones. He had a sensor read on the Prule ship’s hull in the infrared band. There were several brightly glowing heat signatures emanating from inside the ship. Many were over two thousand degrees and climbing. The worst of the images was not far from the platform’s stardrives. To put an appropriate phrase to what I was seeing would be difficult. The first to come to mind though, was “dead man walking.” The Prule ship was literally dying and in danger of exploding if the uncontrolled fires were to reach the engine spaces.

  Tria grimaced and swore in Earthman English, something I have never heard her do. To make matters worse, two battleships and another resource gathering platform came close alongside the faltering barge and dropped their shields. The Prule were attempting to evac their remaining sycophants to safety. Docking booms extended from the ships to the platform’s escape hatches. I doubted if we would be welcomed on the boarding list. We needed to move, but that course of action was almost impossible with a Prule battleship three hundred yards directly above our shuttle.

  Klutch suddenly yelled an oath of his own, then looked over his shoulder at me with a maniacal grin. “The jump drive is back online!” He declared.

  Of course, Coonts had to kick a bucket of piss on the Troop Master’s exclamation. “This is a Chaalt shuttle. We will have to engage the gravity drive, or the stardrives before the jump generators can obtain the necessary charge for a transition.”

  His comment was well above my engineering knowledge, but the look on Tria’s face confirmed its accuracy. We were stepping from one steaming pile to progressively bigger ones, and long overdue for a break. I was wondering if the sheer volume of murderous scum we were sending to our maker for judgment, had finally worn down the patience and forgiveness shown to us over the years. It was hard to say if my question was being answered or not, but geysers of flame and debris shot up from the barge's hull in several places around our position. One of the Prule docking umbilicals was ripped apart and the molten fragments belched into the rescue ship’s spaces. The ship rolled hard away from our swiftly dying platform, spewing smoke and Prule minions into the void.

  The Troop Master's eyes widened and he burst into laughter then pointed at the forward viewscreen. “Did you see that?” He roared.

  We were beginning to wonder about Klutch’s sanity. The incredulous looks on our faces stifled his mirth. He activated the shuttle’s gravity drive, sending salvaged parts flying in all directions as we rose from our hide. Not wanting to miss another chance at taking a swipe at the enemy of all, Tria opened fire on the two remaining Prule ships at point-blank range. The shuttle’s energy beams cut huge burning swaths through the unshielded ships. She gave each a three missile salvo to the guts. Klutch activated our shields and then overrode the gravity drive with the stardrives, illuminating us as a potential target for the rest of the Prule fleet. Our maker must have heard my silent pleas, and decided to detonate the anti-matter containment cells on the Prule barge. The explosive release of energy would blot out any detection of our stardrives coming online. While it seemed like the destruction of the resource platform was a stroke of divine intervention, it also included a penalty shot for all my doubts. We were still within the danger zone of the detonation and the shockwave rapidly caught up with us. We had taken some rough rides in the past few days, but those paled in comparison to the one we got this time around. We were struck by a tremendous blow in the rear of the shuttle by a large piece of the resource platform. It sent us tumbling directly at the wounded Prule battleship.

  Klutch fought our spin trying to regain control. “ We lost the stardrives and the gravity drive is sporadic.” He yelled over the din of cockpit alarms.

  The anti-gravity generators were also balking again. I could feel the heavy G- forces of our spin wash over me in waves.

  Tria called out another unwelcome consequence of the impact. “Our aft shields are down, and the forward array is at fifty-two percent,” She warned.

  Coonts must not have wanted to be left out of the conversation and added his usual gloom and doom to an already bad situation. “The cargo hatch atmospheric sensors are showing the hold is decompressed.” He added.

  I hoped that Sael’s med pod did not take any damage. As long as it was still sealed she would be okay. The pods had their own power supply and could keep an occupant alive indefinitely as long as the integrity of the pod was not compromised.

  “Hold on!” Klutch shouted.

  The viewscreen was filled to its entirety with the hull of the Prule battleship. It was belching smoke and sparks from its severed rescue boom and moving away from the detonation zone under its own power. Just when I thought we might miss the Prule ship, there was a flash of sparks and lightning-like discharges. It was not a clean miss. We skipped off the slow-moving battleship’s belly shields. The jarring collision did manage to slow our spin. I would take that as a positive and was just glad we were still alive to talk about it. Unfortunately, things were going from bad to worse.

  “The shields are offline and they are not responding to a hard reset. The generators must be damaged or destroyed.” Tria said with obvious worry in her voice.

  “What about weapons?”

  Tria shook her head negative. “I am reading major faults on our energy weapons and the missile launcher is inoperable.”

  We were up to our eyeballs in problems and there was nothing I could do. I was just hoping that was the last of them.

  “Commander,” Coonts called. “We have a serious problem!”

  I flinched and ground my teeth in frustration. The Grawl engineer was looking at the small monitor on the bulkhead that gives the flight deck a view of the hold. Coonts was pointing at it. I grabbed the edge of the hatch and pulled myself to his side. His comment was an understatement. I could see the Milkyway galaxy through a hole in the rear of the shuttle. A large portion of the cargo bay hull was missing.

  Coonts ignored that obvious distraction and pointed to one side of the screen. “The Principal Investigator’s med pod is still secured to the deck. The blinking light on its side indicates the emergency sealants have failed to stop a leak and the pod is slowly losing atmosphere.”

  “Is there something we can do to stop it?”

  “Judging by the extent of damage to the rear of the shuttle, I suspect the pod suffered particle damage and is undoubtedly leaking from multiple locations. Since the pod is too large to move into the cockpit, I am afraid there is little we can do without somehow getting the Principle investigator back in her armor.” Coonts said shaking his head.

  I looked back at the monitor and knew that would be a no-go. Opening Sael’s pod would kill her sooner than later.

  “Nathan,” Tria said in a hushed voice. “The atmosphere generators are
offline. If we open the flight deck hatch we will decompress the cockpit. There is no way to safely get Sael Nalen back into her armor.”

  I looked back at the monitor and saw another light start blinking on Sael’s pod. I looked down at Coonts. “I know it is a warning, but what does the other light mean?”

  “That is the pod’s temperature alert. The interior temperature is abating.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and exhaled. It did little to calm my anxiety. Sael was going to die and I could not help her. Our fates would soon be the same, and that outcome was something I could not change either. Both Tria and the Troop Master got up and stood at my sides. Klutch put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a big toothy grin.

  He dropped his usual military manners and addressed me by my given name. “Nathan Meyers, going to our maker is not a bad thing. We have helped others who would have been enslaved or perished and have done well for so few to stand against so many. My Patriarch was very wise and once told me, do not go to your maker dreading death. To show fear and pity about your future, will only cast doubt about your past. Go with a smile on your face and be proud, because there will be no choice when you are finally summoned.”

  I no longer wondered why Klutch seemed overly happy and didn’t have a care in the universe when we were having some of our darkest moments. He was fully embracing his Patriarch’s philosophy. The small smile on Tria’s face said she agreed. Coonts however, wasn’t exactly on board with our destiny coming to an end. I saw him retrieve a data recorder he had placed on the shuttle's main console. He turned to us and his eyes were wide and staring.

  He pointed at the front viewscreen. “It shouldn’t be long now.”

  We turned and saw what had him so shook up. Three Prule destroyers were moving directly at us. I pulled Tria against me and retracted my helmet, then gave her the best smile I could muster. She retracted hers and I planted a kiss on her I hoped she would never forget.