The human race is now fast food...
| Novel Information | March 2004 |
| Author | Schuyler R. Thorpe |
| Copyright | 2002 |
| Genre | Adult Fantasy |
| Word Count | 213,513 |
| Original Page Number Total | |
| Single-Spaced | 540 |
| Double-Spaced | 930 |
| New Page Totals | |
| Single-Spaced | N/A |
| Double-Spaced | N/A |
| Rewrites? (0) | 2007 (basic editing) |
| Original Version? | Yes |
| Completed? | Yes |
| **LANGUAGE AND VIOLENCE. READER ADVISORY RECOMMENDED.** |
Chapter 1
Kamarian Science Institute.
In some ways, Noyen mused, I guess that I’m at fault for what happened. She tapped the keys lightly on her console, staring at the information that lay before her. It was the probe information that Dr. Peters had collected at the beginning of the month--which she had been poring over since both her and Donald left together only two days prior.
One supporting the other.
For no reason at all, hot tears began to slide down her cheeks again as they had for the last five hours. But she was beginning to wonder if she would have any strength left to cry at all after tomorrow.
Jealously bubbled up from deep within her, and she was ready to scream again like she had, but unfortunately for her, her throat was already raw from doing so.
Why?
The question didn’t seem to yield up any new information that wasn’t already present.
Why does she love him so much, that she’d risk everything? Does she know that she’s throwing it all away just by something like that? In her book, government jobs were hard to come by these days, even before the energy crisis started four years ago. But now it was getting increasingly difficult because of the asteroid problem.
Probably, another part of her answered truthfully. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been so blind to what’s been going on within myself as well.
Did she love Donald the way that Debbie has? Noyen shook her head, not sure if she should answer that one. She had known about the younger scientist’s infatuation with her assistant, and she had hoped that it was some passing crush that was going on, but she never realized how deep it was up until three days ago, when she found out that they had slept together.
Something that she could’ve done with him, but there were regulations prohibiting workplace romances.
Especially with bosses and co-workers. It created an irreversible paradox that couldn’t be solved if such a relationship were to develop.
I...I...love you, Donald Truman....she thought to herself wistfully and laughed.
Even her inner voice was shaking.
Cassandra sighed, lazily twirling her forefinger around until she accidentally hit a random key.
The probe data vanished and then showed the asteroid.
Nothing new there, she thought glumly.
But her opinion changed one a path was being highlighted in red hash marks by the computer, and zipped out of the system at an elliptical angle.
Same thing as before. She confirmed, and was about to take her eyes off of the monitor screen, when the course was being overlaid by maps of star systems upon star systems.
Between the nearest inhabitable one (about 75 light years away), and the one following that (400 light years away), was the black hole.
“Come on, you stupid computer. Show me something that I haven’t seen before.”
It did. In a display of dazzling graphics and colors.
Like a free floating camera, the computer zoomed right up to the black hole so fast that it left the woman’s stomach in a sudden lurch. Then it flipped to one side in an almost slow, gentle, arc. Afterwards, it spun completely around in a 360 degree motion, centered slightly to the right to get its proper bearings, before sucking her in so quickly that Noyen nearly panicked.
Now running on pure adrenaline, she instinctively gripped the sides of her chair in a blind effort to stabilize her equilibrium, while all five of her senses rose and fell along with the spiral patterns that computer was interpreting as the black hole’s inner structure. As it obediently followed the purple and black vortex in speeds of that exceeded that of light itself, Cassandra sat there too terrified to move.
In a small corner of the screen, maps of every recorded star system in the computer’s main memory flashed by at incredible speeds, and before she could react, the computer generated representation of the black hole collapsed, spitting her out so fast that it left the woman scientist dazed for about a minute.
But the computer didn’t stop its journey until it hit a system that had a single star and six planets. She looked at the inset of the star maps, and found that it was slowly making it’s way to the third planet in the system. From her perspective, it looked a little green. Nothing like her world at all. And surrounding the planet was a thin ring of rocky debris, and a single satellite--whereas Kamar IV had two.
The computer stopped right there, highlighting the planet in small red brackets.
Cassandra was astounded. She checked the computer’s readings and found them to be most accurate.
“Holy shit...” She said in astonishment. Then a thought came to her, and she quickly calculated the distance between Kamar IV and the newfound system.
The results were less than shocking.
3,464 light years away!
Even at maximum speed, it would take a manned spacecraft 35 months to reach it.
The woman asked the computer how long it took her to get there, through the black hole. While the computer digested her request, she sat there and reflected on the question.
It was all purely theoretical of course. No vessel designed by the Kamar V’s ship yards in the past 25 years could produce a ship advanced enough to withstand the immense gravitational forces and the compression waves within. She knew this even as the computer beeped her for attention.
And sighed as the information came up one glyph at a time.
Even in the face of 30th century space technology....
She read the middle paragraph, ignoring the algorithms and computer formulas. It read: Based on previous sensor scans on space sector 535, grid 3; results on Class Ten anomaly are as follows: New information collected in the last seven (7) days reveals severe space/time continuum distortions. It is unlikely that even a starship once belonging to the Forge class of vessels could withstand the gravimetric stress while passing through. If one were to be modified, the time it would take to complete the trip would only be approximately four standard minutes. Plus or minus 30 seconds.
Noyen almost fell out of her chair.
“Computer. Transfer information from my desk to the main view screen out in the main work area. Now.”
“Transferring....transfer completed.”
Noyen ran out of her office in a sudden rush, and was immediately confronted by a larger than life representation of the world.
The sight took her breath away.
Now that she could see it more closely, she discovered that it wasn’t completely green, fore it had a few patches of blue poking here and there on the equator. But when she rotated the world in the opposite direction, she saw an ocean that was much larger than anything she had known. But looking at some planetary schematics, she was stunned to find out that this planet was six times larger than Kamar IV.
The woman whistled in admiration.
Such a beautiful world...
She tore her eyes from the visage long enough to compose herself for a few moments.
Sightseeing would have to wait. It was time to get everyone here to share in this monumentus discovery. But first, she had to make a call to someone.
Bruan Province.
The hover bus made one last stop, and already Jason had given up hope that he wouldn’t be seeing Caroline again. Not with all these kids crowding around him, and asking all sorts of questions.
The boy didn’t realize the kind of impact that fame had brought him--not to mention the problems that came with it.
He watched the scenery change as the hover bus slowed to a crawl, and then finally, to a stop. From where he was sitting, he couldn’t see the entrance of the door very well, mainly because of another kid’s head was in the way. But that didn’t stop his normally sharp hearing from picking up the slight hiss of the double doors opening with ease, and Jason straightened a little so that he could see who it was. At that point in time, his breath was ragged as he felt his pulse quicken when he saw the dark brown curls of a young girl that had quietly came up the stairs without a sound. He expected the bus driver to say something to her, but instead he heard him gasp with surprise, but not much else. He peered over the front of another teenager’s shoulder, and expected to see the one pretty face that he had grown to love. Jason felt the color of his own face drain slightly when his eyes registered what his mind could only begin to comprehend.
Shock.
He saw her as he had always seen her: Delicate eyebrows that arched slightly whenever she was serious. Green eyes that were like haunting orbs of mystery that took his breath away whenever she looked at him. Full, red lips that pouted whenever she couldn’t get her way, or when she was slightly annoyed. And teeth as white as the pure driven snow. His mind also showed her face as that of an angel, of some vision that didn’t escape his notice, with her soft cheekbones protruding just slightly, and ended with a barely noticeable imperfection in her chin. He remembered her telling him about an accident that she had when she was younger. An accident that left a tiny scar that was only visible close up. Her sharp nose did nothing to distract him from the fact that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.
For a growing 13 year-old boy on the verge of 14, it was the most important element in his life.
Now?
Now it seemed like that changed for an instant when she finally came into his field of vision, all the while trying to hide her face with her hand. But the second she removed it, he was stunned to see a large bruise on the left side; one that had started to discolor.
When she moved a little more, he caught a fleeting glimpse of her mother, Michelle Taylor. He saw her standing there with what looked like an expression of contempt on her face, as she stood there on the side of the road nonchalantly. But as the bus started to pull away slowly, he saw the anger that burned in her eyes, and then what resembled a look of triumph.
That set Jason Scott off.
“You bitch!!” He exploded suddenly, all the pieces suddenly falling into place. His tumultuous outburst scared the shit out the girl in back of him, as he made a furious grab for his E-pulse blaster that lay partially exposed in his back pack. He fumbled with the safety lock for a second, before he made a desperate lunge for the aisle--only to trip over someone’s foot that happened to be out in the aisle floor...
And fell flat on his face, his whole body hitting the deck of the hover bus like dead weight, and the sudden impact knocked the wind out of him. Both his arms and legs were sprawled out haphazardly.
Rolling over, he gasped, “I’m gonna fucking kill you!” He vowed darkly, and got back up in record time, and made a dash for the front of the bus. But because of the cast that was still on his right leg, he wasn’t making very good speed, and that allowed two other teenage boys to leap up and restrain him along with Caroline who wore a startled expression on her face as she struggled against the tensile strength that now surged against her arms as she fought to hold him back.
Jason looked out the window frantically as the woman started to walk back to the house.
“Come back here!” He screamed with rage, all the while struggling to get free. But no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t. Not in the condition he was in. His right leg already started to send his mind signals that told him that it was achy, because it was trying to do something that it wasn’t able to do just yet. His chest was hurting from the added exertion.....not to mention his brain.
And all the while, Caroline–the girl of his now re-occurring dreams– was whispering quietly into his ear, while putting a restraining hand on his--the one that was holding onto the E-Pulse blaster.
“It’s okay....it’s....oh-kay...” Then– like a balloon– Jason felt the sudden rush of energy flee from his slender frame like frightened horse. He sagged against her slightly, feeling what little strength that was holding his body up all the while, leave him as well.
With the help of the others that were involved, Caroline helped him back to his seat; all the while hearing him mutter clipped phrases of vengeance.
“Jay. It’s all right....shhhhh...” Caroline whispered soothingly, placing a gentle hand over his mouth in an effort to calm him down some.
It worked. She noticed the few strands of his blond hair in his eyes, and brushed them out of the way with a caress of a fingertip. She gazed at him for a moment, seeing the anger that burned at the same strength as the girl’s mother.
“How can it be all right? Your mother hit you!”
Caroline looked a bit uncomfortable for just a moment.
“Yes....well...I deserved it.” She finally admitted after a moment’s hesitation.
Jason didn’t believe her.
“For what?” He asked, suddenly finding the strength to sit up straight in his seat as the hover bus continued to ascend to it’s minimum cruising ceiling of 3000 feet. A second later, someone came by and dropped his backpack in his lap without a further word of explanation.
Caroline Taylor hesitated again, and then made some silent gestures in the small space between them.
Jason felt his face go white.
“She hit you because of that?”
“I’m afraid that it is my fault. I accidentally blurted it out during dinner last night, and my mother caught on and forced a confession out of me.”
“More like blackmailed you.”
Caroline brushed her hair out of her eyes as she leaned back, and nodded sullenly.
“Yes.”
Jason shifted in his seat in an effort to get more comfortable, and stared at his blaster.
“That’s not right,” he said in a low voice, while re-engaging the safety lock on his weapon. “I can’t believe that she would hit you on the account of we shared together as one that particular night.”
“Well it wasn’t just that which justified the bruise on my face.”
“No?”
Caroline drummed the top of the empty seat in front of her with two forefingers lightly.
“We....got into a fight last night, and that’s when she hit me.”
Jason leaned back and sighed.
“Parents shouldn’t be hitting their children because of things that are beyond anyone’s control. I thought that society nowadays had accepted that by now.” He looked out the polarized window, and saw the landscape rushing past him in a blur. All he could see was square patches of farmland in the distance, and large cities along the coast that was just barely visible on the cloud covered horizon.
“But I guess not. Just because you and I are in love with each other, doesn’t give them the right to interfere with what we do.”
Caroline was taken aback by his words. She took his hand and squeezed it gently.
“Jason. I do love you. I really do. But maybe my mom just wants to protect me from being hurt.”
“Like she has been? I seriously doubt that she’s gotten over the death of her boyfriend that quickly already.” He offered quietly.
“Well...yeah. Your right. She hasn’t. Not the way that I want her too, and maybe that’s because she doesn’t want to. You have to understand one thing about my mother: When it comes to romantic relationships, she has developed some pretty strange vices, especially when it comes to men.”
“Especially the ones that she loves with a passion, like her daughter?”
Caroline felt her cheeks go warm. “Stop it. Flattery will get you nowhere.”
Jason smiled wolfishly. “Seems to have worked so far.”
Battleship Victorious.
The situation suddenly went from tense to critical all in the matter of a few seconds after Jellico ordered what sounded like their unconditional surrender.
Michael Turner stared at the image of Admiral Jellico as he contemplated the monitor next to him.
“Did Senator Norris put you up to this?” He asked flat out.
Surprise betrayed the admiral’s hardened features of his face, but he covered that up quickly.
Michael saw this.
Too quickly. What’s he hiding anyway? The man wondered.
“No.” The heavy set man replied forcefully. “He’s asked that I force a peaceful surrender on you before you can cause even more damage with that ship of yours.”
The admiral turned to consult the lit flat screen that was displaying the battle group’s numbers, and ticked off each silently in his mind, before glancing up at the wall screen.
“So bringing in a battle carrier, three frigates, six cruisers, and seven destroyers is forcing a peaceful surrender?” He snorted, shaking his head in the process. “Somehow, I seriously doubt that.”
Jellico shifted the bulk of his weight to one side for a moment.
“It’s called a show of force. Something that’s been used to enforce the government’s policies.” He looked off to the side, acting as if he was consulting something. “And by what I read so far, you’ve broken just about every one of them, with of course, the exception of maybe one.”
“And what’s that?” He asked.
“Disobeying direct orders from a superior officer.”
The admiral couldn’t help but laugh at that one.
“You have got to be kidding me!”
Lisa gazed at the view screen with a certain amount of confusion.
“With all due respect, Admiral, you cannot be that superior officer. You and Michael are of the same rank.”
“I got mine three weeks earlier that he did. Ask him if you don’t believe me.”
Turner raised his hand just a little.
“That doesn’t really have any direct impact on the issue at hand, Jellico. The fact is, is that you are being controlled, and you don’t know it yet.”
“Control?” The admiral scoffed at that notion. “It’s called following orders from a higher source. And I advise that you do the same and surrender.”
“You don’t get it, do you? Senator Norris is manipulating you. He knows that if you destroy the planet’s only existing Sea Star, it’ll gain him more than a foothold in the Kamarian government. Probably more so, that he’ll have enough support in next year’s elections.”
Before Jellico could open his mouth to protest, Lisa stepped into the conversation.
“Admiral, he doesn’t care about you. He only cares that he can get someone to do his dirty work. If the President knew that he was trying to get a billion credits worth of weapons, equipment, and personnel destroyed, that would effectively put an end to whatever plans that he’s trying to hatch out into the open. And he doesn’t want that. All he cares is that you follow his orders and not question any part of it.”
“Sounds like you two have already made your minds up. Is this what you want? To die at the hands of your fellow officers?” He asked in all seriousness.
“Do you know what we’ve been trying to do?” Turner interjected, before Lisa could respond. She gave him an acid look, but he waved her off in a subtle manner.
“Yes. Your on a mission of subterfuge. You’ve already proven that by destroying the Fifth Continent’s existing shore batteries, and you’ve already taken over the Farragut Spaceport by eliminating all its existing personnel.”
“Wrong. We’re on a mission to save this planet from total destruction from a rogue asteroid.”
Jellico stared at him for a moment, shock etched on his pallid features, and the laughed in his face.
“That’s a good one, Turner. Where in the world did you cook that one up from? A novel?”
“It’s the truth, Jellico. As for the spaceport’s personnel, they’ve gone missing. We assume that they’ve died from an unconfirmed affliction. I sent a landing party over to go talk to some people that live in a township, six miles from the spaceport.”
“Uh-huh,” he muttered. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Believe whatever you want, Admiral. The bottom line is that I’m not going to surrender.” Michael smiled thinly. “Your more than welcome to try and stop me of course.”
Jellico was quiet for a second.
“I’m sorry to hear you say that. I had hoped that you would give up without resorting to unnecessary bloodshed.”
Turner looked the man square in the eye.
“If it’s anyone’s blood that’s going to be spilled in these waters today, it’s going to be yours.”
The heavy set man shifted uncomfortably in his command seat for a moment, not sure how he should respond to that.
After a minute’s hesitation, he said, “You really think that you can stop a carrier battle group?”
“I’ll die trying, Jellico. Even if that means destroying your ship in the process.”
Jellico considered that.
“Patriotic to the very end, eh?” He looked in Captain Lisa Borghese’s direction. She was watching the whole thing out of the corner of her eye while going over some battle simulations on the flat screen.
“And you, Captain? What’s your position on this, as the Sea Star’s commanding officer?”
“I stand with Admiral Turner on this one, sir.” She returned unflinchingly, with a not so subtle tone of defiance creeping into her voice. “And it’s the Victorious now, Admiral.”
“Victorious, huh? Are you sure about that? The battle has hardly begun.”
The woman stood her ground, unwilling to back away from this one.
“If you fire on my ship, you’ll find out soon enough.”
Taken off guard by her remark, the admiral stared at her for a moment.
“Cocky to the end....” He sighed, and then clapped his hands together sharply. “Well, there will be no one to blame for what’s going to happen today.” Jellico glanced at one of his monitors. “I wish this didn’t have to come to pass, but you leave me no choice in the matter.”
Turner nodded.
“Noted and logged. Good luck, Admiral.” And shut off the comm link. He looked in Lisa’s direction.
“How’s it coming?”
The woman glanced up from the tabletop display and shrugged.
“I’d feel better if we had another support ship with us. But I think that we might squeak by on this one if we’re careful.”
Michael studied the test results of the battle simulation she had just run.
“The word careful isn’t in the officer’s manual, Lisa. But luck is something that is considered an important element in any given combat situation.” He read the concern in her face. “I wouldn’t worry too much, Lisa. If I know Jellico, he’s more than likely to play his other cards first than show his actual hand.”
“So in other words, he’s just bluffing.”
“Maybe. But he’s also been known to pull a wild card out of his deck from time to time.” He studied another set of battle tactics. “But in any case, he’s expecting us to either have a weak hand or fold before this day is out.”
Borghese snorted.
“I highly doubt that. I have a strong ship, and a strong crew. I’ll show him the meaning of weak before this day is out, so help me God.”
Michael smiled.
Darh township.
Lieutenant Lia Parker could almost feel the cool air pressing against her bio-hazard suit as she ran down the trail that led into the township. The only difference this time was the fact that she was running away from it, and not towards as the party had earlier.
Coming up on top of a hill, she could see the distant lights of the battleship lit up in the darkness, as it was still in the same position where it had been most of the day. Farther out, she could see pin pricks of white light dancing on the horizon, and discovered that they belonged to ships.
One.
Two..
Three...
She stopped counting after ten.
“Good god...” She muttered with awe.
“Holy shit...” Baker commented from behind her, having come to a complete stop.
“That’s not the word I’d use, but it’s a pretty fair assessment that we’re going to get our collective butts kicked.” Doctor Ina Eugene replied as she watched the might of Kamarian Battle Group 16 close in slowly on the Farragut Spaceport.
Then she saw movement.
It wasn’t anything definite at first, but she could barely pick out a shadow--a silhouette--of something moving to and fro like a crazy drunk after a night out.
“Hey...” she said, tugging on Parker’s arm sleeve. “There’s one over there, and other one over there...and there’s a group of them over there.”
Nelson frowned. “Something’s not right.”
Engineer’s Third Mate Daniel White strained his eyes for a second.
“What do you mean, ‘something’s not right’? They all look normal to me.”
The man cuffed him upside the head lightly in annoyance.
“Maybe to those who only use half a brain!”
“Look who’s talking! I don’t even know how you managed to make it this far as a security officer!”
“With skill.” Harry sneered. “Which is something that I highly doubt you even have. I can’t even begin to imagine how you became Lee’s third-in-command in the first place.”
“Try balls, shit-for-brains. I’m no slouch when it comes to high-tech equipment on board ship.”
Lia broke up the testosterone laden brawling for the time being by imposing herself between the two men; forcing them to separate unconditionally.
“Easy guys. There will be plenty of time later for the traditional head butting. Right now, I need you two clear headed, so that when we reach the spaceport, we can start talking to some of those people that I spotted just a while ago.” Then she started down the hill. Both men looked at each other and shrugged.
“Fine by me.” White said simply, and followed his commanding officer’s lead.
Nelson growled some before following suit.
Battleship Victorious.
The ship lurched suddenly, almost throwing Lisa off balance as she was just finishing with final preparations for the upcoming battle.
“What the hell was that?” She asked, going over to her command chair and checking some of the overheads for a status report.
“High tide, Captain!” Ralph called out from his station, cringing in his seat as the shrieking of metal was finally getting to him.
“Do we have enough clearance to move out?” Lisa returned as the report came back okay. Then she accessed some tactical information.
“Yes ma’am!”
“Then let’s get going! Begin docking maneuvers with the launch platform immediately!”
The helmsman complied.
“Moving to new course, 115 mark 4. Engines at one-third power.”
CVB Wellington.
The blue lighting that signified Action Stations was starting to play havoc with Jellico’s vision. But he refused to back down as he was studying a tactical display screen which was buried into the ceiling at a slant.
“Target is starting to move, sir.” A woman at the helm console piped up unexpectedly, her long, dirty blond hair starting to get in the way of her hands again. She pushed the flowing strands to side, only to have it come to rest at a completely different spot. The admiral thought that he had told her to get it cut according to regulations, before coming on duty three hours ago.
Apparently, there must’ve been a miscommunication somewhere along the line.
There will be plenty of time later for proper discipline.
“Any indication as to where?” He asked, knowing that there was really nowhere to escape for Captain Borghese’s precious battleship. In another three hours, his ships would have her completely cut off.
“Sensors is reading the target as moving just over 300 feet.”
“Any signs that she’s getting ready to fire?”
“Negative, Admiral.”
He stroked the gray hairs on his jowled chin.
“That’s very odd. She knows that I outgun her sorry ass by a factor of seven. Why doesn’t she at least resist?”
The same woman looked over her shoulder at him.
“Maybe she’s buying time.”
Jellico snorted.
“And maybe she’s full of shit.” He shook his head, and then thumped the arm of his command chair in impatience. “Enough of this waiting. Have the heavy cruisers Graff, Tolwa, and the Knight move into firing range. Tell them to use their High Velocity missiles on that ship. I want it disabled, not destroyed.”
“Yes sir.”
Battleship Victorious.
“Marauder-class cruisers closing in at thirty-five miles, bearing two-zero-three degrees, mark six-four.” Hayes called out from behind her.
“How many?” Lisa asked as she went over to her command chair to confirm the sighting.
“Three.”
“Three?” She echoed in the red lighting of the bridge.
“That’s affirmative. Thirty miles...twenty-five...” Alex reported. “Now reading missile activation on all three ships. High Velocity style missiles. Type II.”
Lisa plunked herself neatly onto the soft cushions of her command chair.
“Action Stations!” She barked. “Raise all defense shields and prepare to fire!”
The lighting turned an electric blue and everyone on the bridge manned their combat stations.
Ralph Davis scanned his console and nodded back to her.
“Shields up and at full power.”
Jessica Morton called out from her Weapons station, “all missile batteries ready to fire....laser batteries charged and ready...plasma gun turrets fore and aft manned and ready...” She checked off one last item of interest. “Photon torpedo launchers armed and ready to fire.”
“Excellent.” She said, just as the first wave of missiles made first contact with the energy shields–blossoming into large fireballs as they exploded viciously.
The Victorious shook repeatedly as she struggled to absorb most of the raw energy directed at her and valiantly shrugged off the rest.
But a second later, more missiles of the same type struck more aft and then amidships, causing the deck beneath the woman’s feet to tilt just a couple of degrees.
“Status!” Lisa yelled.
“Shields holding! Minor damage to Decks Seven and Eight!”
“Return fire! All weapons!”
Morton complied; returning the favor. Racks upon racks of Harpoon missiles left their launch tubes that were buried into the sides of the ship, followed by a string of torpedoes that arced out towards the horizon–little blue dots of sparkling energy surrounded by solid cores of antimatter. The laser batteries followed suite–unleashing their deadly green beams of destructive energy. The 25-inch plasma gun turrets followed soon after, belching forth the same kind of destructive energy, but on a larger scale. On the bow of the ship, a large 105mm deck gun barked rapidly in five second intervals– sending pellets of red energy into the night.
Heavy Cruiser Graff.
Kamarian Heavy Cruiser Graff (901) cruised at 25 standard knots, fighting the brisk winds that were blowing across the deck and the 12-foot sea swells that were lapping at her bow. On her forward deck sat one of four missile batteries that were loaded with the new style High Velocity missiles. Forty feet aft and below, sat the TORMIN defense systems. Farther aft of the 400 meter vessel sat two, 65mm deck guns that were situated on the port and starboard sides of the heavy cruiser. In the center of the two and elevated up, sat a 12-inch gun which were capable of firing high energy plasma rounds at ten second intervals.
On the bridge of the heavy cruiser, a 30 year-old man with burning red hair (that came from dyeing it too much in a past life), intelligent brown eyes, and a chiseled face that was now showing signs of unrestrained glee as the man pumped an empty fist into the air.
On the main view screen, Captain Nick Mullen watched as his beloved missiles hit the battleship with unrestrained fury.
Fifteen miles to starboard, the heavy cruiser Tolwa had launched her missiles and seconds later he saw them striking the aft portion of the ship. Further out, at a position of 21 miles and closing, the heavy cruiser Knight’s salvo was close behind the second wave–striking the Victorious amidships.
Satisfied that he had struck the first blow, Mullen felt his blood quicken as he anticipated what would happen next. He turned his gaze to his Weapons’ officer.
“Bring secondary missiles to bear–” he started to say, but a huge explosion knocked him off of his feet before he could finish the order. He picked himself up, amazed that he only had a few scratches on his face. Looking around the small concave bridge and found to his dismay that a few of the crew weren’t so lucky.
“S-status!” He coughed as smoke started to pour in from one of the bridge’s shattered windows. He gasped when he saw a good size hole in the bow of the cruiser. But what was worse was that the Harpoon missile launcher was destroyed; leaving a visible trail of mangled metal and missile fuel.
His First Officer staggered forward, holding his arm.
“Shields are down by forty percent, Captain! We took a serious hit to the bridge and stern by Harpoons–” he never completed his sentence before the ship was rocked by more successive hits. Nick lost consciousness. When he came to, he found that he had a funny ringing in his ears. The cause of that was pretty obvious as he caught sight of a fireball as it finished erupting in front of the heavy cruiser.
A second later, he thought he heard someone’s voice. But through the haze and pain, he wasn’t sure who it was.
Then he heard it again. This time the sound was closer.
"–ptain!” Someone screamed at him, and the same level of confusion set into his mind until he saw the face of his First Officer, Gary Young. The man was shaking him gently, trying to get him conscious.
“W-what?” He mumbled, feeling an odd pain in his jaw. He gingerly explored the right side of his cheek and found a piece of metal lodged there. He drew his hand away and discovered it was bathed in crimson.
“Sir! We’ve got to get you to Sickbay!” He was telling him over the din of further explosions.
“Sickbay–?” He echoed in confusion.
Young looked at his CO and hauled him to his feet. “Sorry sir, but it looks like you’ve suffered a concussion as well,” Then he motioned to someone off to the side. “Ensign Shultz will take you down below.”
“The ship–?” He wondered dimly, as he was being ushered into the turbo lift.
Young shook his head adamantly. “Don’t worry about the ship sir, I’ll take care of everything–” the doors closing off the world in front of him before the floor beneath him trembled.
Heavy Cruiser Tolwa.
Steaming in with all batteries ready to unleash a third wave of missiles, the Kamarian Heavy Cruiser Tolwa (744) closed in on its target with apt determination. With all fusion drives running at full power, Captain Greg Hamilton didn’t even see the first wave of torpedoes come in as they detonated along the waterline of the heavy cruiser, throwing up huge amounts of water and punching a hole in the aft section of the cruiser in the process
Water rushed into the Engineering section, giving Commander Marsha Levine a bird’s eye view of what affect it had on human bodies, as she witnessed a few of them being brushed aside violently with very little warning.
Alarms squealed in earnest as the woman fought for her balance in the midst of the chaos that was going on around her. But it was no use.
Just as she got to one of the emergency control panels, the water had finally caught up to her. Caught unprepared for the sheer force of the current that circulated throughout the large Engineering section, the woman was pulled under by it for perhaps a second before she surfaced–gasping for the breath of life that her lungs ached for so badly.
“Hahhhnnn....” She wheezed, feeling the intense pressure on all sides of her body. It was worst on the upper part of her chest.
“Emergency Alert. Hull breach in Main Engineering, section 75-C. Please initiate containment fields on affected sections.” She heard the computer drone automatically.
Love to do that, but half this place is underwater. Marsha thought with a tinge of irony. What a way to go...
Then the lights went red as main power died, and all she could hear was the soft lapping of saltwater against the walls. It was an eerie sight, seeing the water glow an electric blue in front of her, but disappearing into the darkness the farther away she got.
Emergency lights...came a thought, before an upsurge of air bubbles propelled her up and over a half submerged balcony railing.
That surprised her more than being startled. The reason for that was because she had effectively been traveling up three levels into the auxiliary control deck, where all the backup systems were housed.
Levine shuddered as the cold water bit into her, but her body automatically started to compensate for the loss by raising her temperature by a few degrees. It wouldn’t be much, but at least she wouldn’t freeze before she managed to get into one of the auxiliary control rooms.
The door didn’t open like it was supposed to, and she had to use a floating piece of galvanized metal to wedge open the doors and squeeze herself in.
At first glance in the square-like control room, there was a few bodies floating in the milky white brine that was now coating the walls.
She couldn’t tell who they were as she waded up to the control panel that was sunk into the far wall in front of her, nor did she care at this point. Brushing her black hair out of the way, the woman studied the panel of flashing lights for a moment, before she started hitting the correct light panels in sequence. After the final tap, after the final pushing of a button, the lights grew bright again as auxiliary power was restored and the emergency force fields were now in place.
Marsha saw one panel was blinking rapidly, and she tapped it a couple of times.
“Crap!” She said in mute frustration. The pumps were out of action for the time being. That meant that there was no way that the ship could pump out the excess water.
She hit the darkened comm link that was next to it, but got absolutely nothing.
“Ahhhh....hell!” She bit out before the room tilted, and she was thrown back into the water again. Whacking her head on one of the walls, she sank deeper until her back hit the floor with a gentle thump!
Slipping into unconsciousness, the last thing she heard was the roar of explosions and the sharp reports as the ship struggled to return fire at an unseen enemy.
However the odds of surviving a direct assault by a battleship with 30th century technology, was very small indeed.
CVB Wellington.
Admiral Jellico couldn’t believe what was happening already. He gazed at the incoming damage reports from the three heavy cruisers and swore silently.
Damn!
It didn’t help the situation much, but it did make him feel a lot better.
He studied the reports again to make sure that he wasn’t interpreting them in any way, shape, or form.
In the end, the heavy cruiser Graff had taken several direct hits, most of the damage was sustained at the bow and one missile battery. However, the bridge had sustained a major hit after being struck by the Victorious’s small laser batteries. Captain Mullen was reported to be in serious condition with a lacerated jaw and a skull fracture. Overall, the attack left 50 of the ship’s complement of 940 dead.
The next report he read wasn’t very comforting either. While the Graff had taken its share of the missile hits, the Tolwa was hopelessly crippled by the barrage of photon torpedoes. It was reported that most of the hits were sustained below the waterline, where a good-sized hole was blown into the ship engineering section–flooding it.
With that much damage, the ship was surely going to sink in a matter of minutes. But despite a seven degree list to port, the vessel’s containment fields were established a few minutes after being hit. From the sketchy reports that the man had received, Captain Hamilton reported that he was dead in the water until engine capacity could be restored. But he also communicated the fact that all main and auxiliary pumping stations were out of action and could not be restored. Despite the damage, Hamilton was able to engage the Victorious for a few seconds with her aft deck guns and missile batteries.
Jellico grimaced. After that, he knew, the cruiser came under fire again, but luckily, all of the return salvos missed.
He shifted to the third damage report from the Knight, and found nothing of serious consequence. Since the heavy cruiser was 21 nautical miles from the action, she suffered the least amount of damage, only taking a minor hit to one of her forward gun batteries.
The heavy set man was still pissed nonetheless. He looked at Patterson with unchained fury in his gray eyes.
“Have the frigates Fury and Baron, assist the Tolwa and the Graff. Order Captain Stacy Hamilton to rendezvous with the Knight. Bring in the destroyers Shelton, Larmont, and the Redding from their picket lines. Instruct them to use torpedoes this time, but tell them to keep their distance and not–I repeat–not engage that battleship.”
The woman accepted the communications pad he was handing her.
“Yes sir. What about us?” Francine asked.
Jellico studied the tactical readouts on an overhead monitor positioned over his command dais. “Bring us into firing position, but slowly. I don’t want to alert Borghese or Turner to what we are doing. After that’s completed, prepare to fire the RDC and launch the A-6’s and the R-7’s immediately.”
“Simultaneously?” The woman queried.
“No. Not simultaneously. After the fighters have launched and are away, we’ll unfurl the cannon and fire. By doing that, we’ll not only knock out the Victorious’s shields, but it will provide our pilots with a clear and easy target.”
“Very good, sir. I’ll carry out your orders.”
Battleship Victorious.
“That was rather simple.” Turner was saying with a certain amount of satisfaction as he studied the after battle reports in the CIC. “But I was kinda hoping that we’d be going after the carrier first.”
Lisa stared at him with a certain amount of surprise.
“Sir. The Wellington was way out of the range of our main guns. There was no way we could maneuver the ship in such a way that would’ve afforded us a clear shot. Not when we’re nearly finished with the docking procedures.”
“So essentially, we take out the little guys first and deal with the big fish afterwards, huh?”
“Looks that way.”
The comm link sounded. “Bridge to Admiral Turner.”
Turner hit a button near him. “Go ahead.”
“Admiral, sensors are showing three destroyers, one heavy cruiser, and one frigate closing in on our position.”
“I’ll be right up.” He switched off, and turned to Lisa. “Ready for round two?”
The woman nodded. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 2
A huge 300,000 kilometer gap presented itself as the asteroid passed out of the shadow of Kamar IX, to its next destination.
But time and distance meant very little as it continued on.
Darh township.
The explosions died down by the time they reached the spaceport, but they weren’t out of the woods just yet.
“Jeez...” Lia Parker murmured, seeing a couple of sickly yellow glows on the horizon through her night vision goggles, and the small hole that was on the port side of the battleship.
Daniel White looked out towards the vessel, agreeing whole-heartedly.
“You ain’t shitting! It appears as if the whole entire ship has taken a bitch of a beating! I can see some minor fluctuations in her shields, and some other sporadic energy readings radiating across her bow! But I assume that’s from the aftereffects of the 65mm gun that had replaced the other one, which was blown off by the EMP blast back at the Fifth Continent.”
Lia nodded while checking her immediate surroundings.
“It looks that way, doesn’t it...?” She frowned. “Wait. Where are the people that we spotted earlier?”
Daniel looked around and shrugged.
“Dunno,” then he saw some movement to his right. “There....over there...” And walked over to the shadowy thing that was hunched over some black mass.
Lia followed at a distance with the others fanned out in a standard search pattern, when she noticed something wrong. However, that bad feeling didn’t surface until she passed a random dead body that was missing a head, and had a hole punched into its chest.
“Hey buddy,” the man began, taking a hold of the thing’s shoulder.
“Daniel! No!” she screamed, and started to run towards him, whipping out her blaster in the process.
The officer turned around. “What?” Then the young man heard a high pitched screech that definitely sounded inhuman, but it was far too late for him to do anything about it.
Daniel turned and saw the thing’s clawed hand pull back, getting ready to thrust its sharp talons into his chest, when its head suddenly blew apart in a combination of gray matter and red mist.
The body slumped to the ground while Daniel screamed in abject terror as he tried to wipe the remains off of his visor.
“Down you stupid idiot!” He heard someone shout in alarm, followed by a thin red beam of light which pierced the darkness.
A hollow pop! sounded into the air, and the engineer’s third mate heard the sounds of yet another body hitting the ground.
He bent down to shine his helmet’s internal lights on the body, and was mutually shocked to see blue fabric covering the front of it. He also saw a circular insignia hanging loosely on the sides of it’s shoulders.
He caught a glimpse of the familiar four star insignia that denoted the Kamarian Navy. Then he saw what looked like a picture of a mountain range below it, with three suns rising simultaneously.
This person once belonged to the Farragut Spaceport! He thought as he walked over to some of the other bodies that littered the ground here and there, and found that they both bore similar insignias.
He saw Lieutenant Parker fire on another ‘thing’, and ran over to her.
“Lieutenant!” He called out just as another creature rose up from the impenetrable darkness. He had no choice but to bring it down with a well placed laser blast. The creature went down, quivering methodically from the hole in its chest. Then it convulsed a couple more times before it finally stopped.
“What?”
“I think that I just found some of the base’s personnel–” He had to fairly shout over the shrilling of the laser blasts.
The woman stopped firing for just a second.
“What?”
Daniel shrugged in a noncommittal manner.
“I know, I know. It sounds crazy. But the thing that attacked me was wearing a Kamarian naval uniform.”
“Are you sure?” She asked, while readjusting the power setting of her blaster.
“Yeah. I’m positive.”
Lia looked at him worriedly.
“Then we’re screwed.”
“Why?”
“According to the personnel records, there are approximately 3,500 people stationed at this base.”
“So?” Daniel countered, not fully understanding.
Eyebrows raised in surprise, she explained.
“Simple numbers, Mr. White. We are only eight people with a limited amount of weaponry. We can’t last long against these things unless a way can be found to wipe them all out.”
“But that would be genocide!”
“No. That would be justifiable homicide.” She gazed at him for a second before walking towards the landing that would eventually lead them to the pier; and their hover skimmer.
“Get everyone else together. We’re leaving.”
Kamarian Science Institute.
Doctor Cassandra Noyen watched as 40 members of the main staff filed through the corridor, each having sleepy expressions on their faces.
She felt slightly guilty for getting them up earlier than they were used to, but she couldn’t help it: This discovery was far more important than anything in the world. Her only concerns was that Donald and Debbie weren’t here to share in this. Her comm link was down when she tried to call the young woman at her apartment, and she had to leave a message on Donald’s.
But other than that, there was nothing that she could do.
Taking a deep breath, she activated the main monitor.
“Sorry in getting you guys up earlier than your used to, but I felt that this couldn’t wait until morning.”
Some of the staff assembled looked a little bleary-eyed, while others not getting up after midnight, wore the looks of the dead. Still, they paid attention to her nonetheless as she talked.
“On the screen before you is a computer generated representation of one of our probe’s findings. These findings came from the work of one of our own, Dr. Deborah Marie Peters. She had been spending most of her spare time in trying to determine the asteroid’s primary point of origin, and her efforts have finally paid off.”
“So where is she?” Someone from the back asked in a clear voice.
Cassandra hesitated.
“She’s...taken a couple of days off on her own tuition.” Her mind flashed back to the last 48 hours ago when she had told her directly that she was fired. “Anyone have a problem with that?”
No one challenged her, and they waited patiently for her to continue.
“Okay,” she continued unabated. “This is a computer enhancement of the black hole that was discovered some time ago.” The screen switched over to an elliptical disk that spun slowly in space.
“From what we could determine at first is that the asteroid had no true point of origin. That is until I accidentally did something to my terminal while reviewing the probe’s findings, and this happened.” She touched a sequence of keys, and the rest of the people watched as the screen zoomed to the black hole and flipped to one side in a gentle arc. Then it spun around completely 360 degrees, before the image itself was sucked in.
Noyen watched from the corner of her eye and saw the expressions of a few in the front row, as they turned slightly green from watching the stomach churning spins and turns as the vortex continued to unfurl at amazing speeds. As before, the map inset containing all known star maps whipped by at a blink of an eye.
Then like some animal disgorging its last meal, the team members found themselves in a large expanse of space that none had ever seen before. Finally after a few minutes of moving through space, a star system like none other presented itself to them, and the staff found themselves weaving to and fro among the six planet star system.
The speed of the images slowed until they came upon a third planet that had a ring of rocky debris and a single satellite.
The computer highlighted the lush green planet with a pair of red brackets, and that’s where Noyen left off.
“As you can see in the upper quadrant of the screen, the distance traveled is nearly 3500 light years away. The computer indicated at the time it took to cover this was at four minutes exactly.”
Stunned expressions greeted her, and she raised a hand before the melee of questions could be brought to bear on her.
“I know what your thinking: It’s far faster than anything that we have, given our current state of advanced technology. But let’s not get carried away with outrageous theories and hypotheses.”
A woman in the back raised her hand.
“Yes?”
“What star system is this?”
Noyen looked at the map inset and frowned slightly.
“Computer indicates it as Y-6079.” A ‘Y’ designation rating meant that it was new and unknown.
She moved the image out and it was replaced by a highlighted region of space.
“This whole sector of space as you all well know is relatively unexplored by ships and sensor probes, so there isn’t a whole lot of information for us to go on at this time other than the fact that we now know where the asteroid had come from.”
Another hand.
“Yes?”
“When you said that the asteroid originated from this planet, did you mean that it originated from this planet directly, or did it originate from some where’s else?”
“I’m not sure at this point in time. Probe data has remained inconclusive.”
“No energy trails, or anything to suggest that it had traveled under its own power?”
Noyen dismissed it.
“To suggest that this thing has engine capabilities is ludicrous. An asteroid has no such propulsive abilities that I’m aware of.”
“But what about the theories that Dr. Peters proposed that someone had cut this asteroid from a much larger mass?”
“It’s still all in theory. But we have every reason to believe that that someone did.” Noyen replied.
“From this planet?” The same person asked.
Noyen gazed at the man with short red hair and glasses.
“As I said: The findings have been rather inconclusive.”
“So you don’t know then.”
“That’s right. I don’t.”
“So what’s the point of coming here, if you haven’t found anything concrete?”
The guy was getting on her nerves, she could sense that much.
“The whole point of coming here, is so that each of you know that we’ve made a considerable amount of progress as a whole, rather than individuals.”
“In case the government caught wind of this?” A brunette standing next to the red-haired man ventured.
Cassandra snorted.
“The government can kiss my ass for all I care. Not once has any of it’s representatives come back to let me know if any contingency plans have been drafted and implemented. So as far as anyone’s concerned, our elected government officials are too caught up with themselves to notice what’s been happening out in deep space.”
“So what happens if they do?” Another piped up.
“What if they do? The question you should be asking is: What can they do? And as far as I’m concerned: Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“What about planetary evacuation?”
“With what?” Noyen countered evenly as she shut off the screen, and looked at a blond haired man that had asked the question. “We have nothing on this planet that can safely evacuate the planet’s 23 million people and all the supplies that we need to go to the next inhabitable world.”
“So essentially we screwed, right?”
The woman sighed. “Seems that way.”
First Continent.
Battleship Victorious.
“Time!” Turner called out above the explosions that were coming from the incoming energy blasts.
“Seven minutes till intercept!” Ralph responded as he held onto dear life.
THUNK!
THUNK!
THUNK!
THUNK!
The battleship appeared to have tilted three degrees to port as the launch mechanisms firmly gripped the ship.
“Initiate launch configuration!” Borghese yelled above the chaos that resounded in her ears.
“Initiating!” The ensign confirmed, hitting a series of switches.
Down below, the mechanism started. But it would take an hour for the ship to be raised into the proper position.
Lisa cursed when she saw the clock start running backwards from 60:00.
Dammit!
They would be extremely vulnerable from this point on.
Heavy Cruiser Knight.
15 miles and closing, the Kamarian Heavy Cruiser Knight (603) dogged the assault frigate Newark as both vessels readied their weapons.
Four miles farther in, the destroyers Shelton, Larmont, and Redding were jockeying for position and readying their torpedoes.
However, Captain Jack Rollins noticed something strange when he saw that the battleship wasn’t moving like he had hoped it would.
“Ready the Hyper V’s, Mr. Jefferson. I want that ship disabled.”
“Yes sir,” the black man answered as he pecked at his controls. “Missile batteries #1 and #2 ready to fire.”
Rollins looked to starboard, and saw the Newark’s gun crews scurrying around, while they prepared for the next assault against the battleship. He knew that Stacy Hamilton would not rest until some amount of justice would be served for her husband’s defeat at the hands of Admiral Turner.
“Fire.”
Assault Frigate Newark (129).
Captain Stacy Hamilton listened to the incoming damage reports from the Newark’s sister ship, the Fury.
She wasn’t too pleased that her husband’s heavy cruiser–the Tolwa–was crippled by the torpedo attack. But she would avenge his loss with the new Scorpion gun and the complement of Badger missiles that she had at her disposal.
“Ready weapons.”
“Weapons ready, ma’am.” The woman manning the Weapons’ console replied.
“Fire.”
Battleship Victorious.
A high pitched alarm went off somewhere on the bridge.
Morton checked her board and cursed. “We have missile launch, Admiral!”
Turner spun around.
“What?”
Another alarm caught her attention.
“Cannon fire now ma’am!” The girl’s expression was one of alarm. She turned to Lisa. “Scorpion configuration!”
“Shit–!” The woman swore and jumped out of her seat, down the small flight of stairs, and looked over Jessica’s shoulder.
What she saw wasn’t good.
“Drop us! Now!”
Turner overheard her. “Are you crazy? Dropping is into the water when we’re elevated up by 27 degrees is suicide!”
Lisa glanced up at her former lover with mild annoyance as she held on for dear life as the first missile struck.
“You’ve got a better idea? Now’s the time for them!” She clenched her teeth as the ship shook from more successive hits.
Ralph Davis’s finger was poised over the button that would release them from the launch platform. He looked at the front display.
“Captain. We don’t have much time.” He said quietly.
Lisa looked at Michael. “What is your decision sir?”
Turner stared at the tactical display with a certain amount of helplessness. If he gave the order to disengage the ship from the launch platform now, they would have to re-circle around and try again. And that would take time.
He cursed his own stupidity as well.
So be it. If Jellico wants to be an asshole about and force the issue further, then I’ll give him a reason to hate me even more.
“Do it! And increase the ship’s integrity field while your at it!”
“Aye, aye sir!” Ralph answered and hit the proper control sequence.
Sensing new instructions in its small mini-computer, the platform collapsed almost instantly from where they were positioned; causing the ship to plunge like a falling tree into the water. That in turn produced huge waves, but for now they were safe. For about one second anyway.
A moment later, an intense beam of yellow light punched through the space from where they were previously, and slammed into one of the towering buildings in back of them.
A thunderous report echoed throughout the surrounding area and through the bridge of the battleship.
“Oh my god...” Lisa heard Michael mutter with subdued astonishment.
A check of the aft sensors revealed the horrific damage that was caused by one shot: Not only did it hole the first building– and destroying the top half in the process–but it successively punched sizable holes in three others, before being stopped by one of the nearby mountains.
But even the mountain itself had a 300-foot crater that had been produced by blast, which was visible from the starboard side of the Victorious.
Less than a minute later, the ship came under attack by Badger missiles.
The entire bridge crew hung on for dear life as the ship shook and rattled from eight or nine direct hits, before all was quiet.
Lisa couldn’t believe this. “Doesn’t Jellico ever believe in giving up?”
Turner looked at the tactical screen once more. They were now reporting movement 11 miles away from the spaceport.
Punching in a request for further information, he found that they were destroyers. Same number as the heavy cruisers that they had engaged earlier, but not enough to truly make a difference in the final outcome of the battle.
“Not in my experience.”
Farragut Spaceport.
The landing party was closer to their objective than a few minutes ago, but that didn’t stop the things from chasing them.
Parker ran as fast as she could despite the confines of her suit. However, at this point in time, she was more afraid for the safety of the others under her command than her own life.
She still couldn’t believe that the creatures they had encountered used to be the spaceport’s personnel. But the more she thought about what Daniel had told her, the more she was convinced that something happened here that wasn’t even reported by the spaceport’s commander.
As they ran through the streets of the deserted spaceport, Lia caught sight of a brilliant flash on the horizon. A second later, she saw the battleship detach from the launch platform.
The massive ship plunged into the cool waters of the bay, and mere seconds later, a beam of yellow light screamed through the air and hit the tallest building behind them.
“Down!” Lia screamed as debris started raining down.
She heard someone scream and the rest of the party’s cries of surprise was drowned out by the tumultuous roar. Lia grabbed the sides of her helmet in an effort to make it stop vibrating from the effects of the sonic boom. But it didn’t stop her teeth from rattling as she covered her head for protection.
It was sometime before it faded away, and the woman looked up to see the last of the dirt and debris settle down in front of her.
“Everyone okay?” She called out.
At first, nobody answered her summons and then her ears picked up the familiar voices of the landing party.
However, Shillings was the only one that didn’t answer her and she called out to him again.
No answer.
Getting back to her feet, she went over to where her people were standing, relieved to see that most were none for worse for wear.
“Has anyone seen Shillings?” She asked.
Most of them were to stunned to answer, until she saw Baker digging at a large pile by himself.
“Ensign? What are you doing?” She asked, coming over to him.
Baker replied, “Digging out Shillings. He’s buried underneath this pile.” Lia watched him toss rocks and other pieces of debris out of the way, and pitched in to help.
“I heard someone scream.” She said, removing a slab of pointed shale. Tossing it, she heard it break on the permacrete.
“That was him.”
After five minutes of digging, they removed most of the pile and found him unconscious; his left leg pinned under a permacrete barrier that had come down as well.
Richard strained to lift and found that it was too heavy to move by himself.
Then he heard the familiar screeching of...
A head popped up from behind the barrier, and Lia couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman due to the reflection on her helmet. But when she got a good look at it through her internals, she found that the transformation was too advanced for any positive identification. The thing’s head was more streamlined at the top, slightly dome-shaped in some respects, with a crest running down the middle. It had no nostrils that she could see, and it had beady black eyes that reflected the light that she shone on it. But what was eerie was the fact that they had no pupils of any kind. Its skin was now a leathery brown with a light hue of green running down the length of its chest. The thing’s arms were thin and muscular, but still ended in those sharp claws that were the creature’s trademark weapons of death.
And that’s what the woman wanted to stay away from the most.
Before she could react, a concentrated burst of red light lanced through the space between Baker and the thing, causing it to fall backwards; writhing all over the place.
But that in turn attracted the attention of others that were in hiding, and Lia knew that they were in serious trouble.
“Everyone evacuate...now!” She ordered at the top of her lungs, but Baker refused to budge.
“That means you to, Ensign.”
Richard looked at her in defiance.
“No way, ma’am! I am not leaving Brian! Me and him were good friends since the Academy, and I’m not about to let him die at the hands of these sick fucks!”
“I’m not asking for your opinion, mister! I am giving you a direct order to get your ass moving!” She returned hotly. “I do not take kindly to having my orders questioned under fire!”
The security officer stood his ground. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I’m not going to leave an injured shipmate!”
Lia couldn’t believe it.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed, Ensign?”
“No ma’am. I’m simply following tradition. And I won’t break it for any given circumstance.”
“Your a jerk, you know that? Are you trying to get us all killed for something as stupid as this?” She pointed to the gathering crowd of creatures that were making their way towards them.
Baker leveled his blaster not at the creatures, but at her instead.
“No, ma’am. But I dully suggest you get the hell out of her as soon as your able. I’ll try to hold them off as long as I can.”
Lia gazed at him unwaveringly. “You really care about him, don’t you?”
“Like if he was my own brother. Ma’am.”
Parker backed off in understanding, and brought out her comm link.
“I can order a focused barrage of gunfire from the Victorious, Richard. If that’s what you want. In effect, it could take some of the heat off of you while you try and free Shillings.”
Baker smiled.
“That’s mighty generous of you, Lieutenant,” he held out his free hand. “It’s been an honor serving with you, ma’am. Now kindly get the hell out of here.” He looked at Shillings and then at the partially broken barrier.
Then he looked at his blaster. An idea started to form in his mind.
He quickly readjusted the settings on his blaster and then fired at the slab.
A red beam in the form of a thick line leaped into existence, slowly eating its way into the permacrete. At first, there was some resistance to the beam, but the barrier finally succumbed to its fury.
“This is going to take awhile, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to commandeer your weapon, so that I can protect both myself and Brian here from attack.”
“But that’s going to leave me defenseless!” The woman protested.
“Your only a couple hundred yards from the hover skimmer...maybe less. Once you order the ship to lay down some covering fire, you’ll be protected from any outside attacks.”
“How can you be sure?” Lia questioned.
Richard Baker stopped for a second and looked at her.
“Because they’ll be too busy trying to get me while your making a break for it.” He resumed firing a second later. “Now go.”
Lia stood there helplessly for a scant moment, before she slapped her blaster into his outstretched hand.
“Good luck, Richard.” She half-whispered, as the security guard looked towards the star filled sky.
“Tally-ho.” She heard him say as she brought the comm link to her lips.
Battleship Victorious.
Raphael Davis studied the readouts on the forward most console in front of him.
“Approaching first turn, sirs.” He reported as he laid in a course to adjust the ship’s heading.
“Course 183 mark 210.” Turner said automatically, trying to picture what Jellico had in store for them. “Decrease speed by 20 knots standard as you make the turn.”
“Yes sir.”
Lisa was monitoring the communications station while waiting for the next watch officer to arrive, when she picked up a broad band comm signal.
“Borghese here.” She answered, flipping a switch.
“Lieutenant Lia Parker here, ma’am.”
“How are things going, Lieutenant? Have you departed for the ship yet?”
Silenced reigned for a second.
“No ma’am. I have an injured man down, and one of my security guards is trying to get him free. But we have another problem.”
Lisa motioned for Turner to join her.
“What’s the problem?” He asked quietly, and she whispered what she had heard so far into his ear.
“Really?” He toggled another switch.
“Parker? This is Admiral Turner. What sort of problem are you referring to?”
“We’ve located the spaceport’s personnel.”
“Wonderful!” Borghese exclaimed, feeling a little relieved at hearing some good news for a change, rather than some bad news.
“It won’t be so wonderful once I tell you what happened.” She explained in full detail of what had taken place in the next two minutes.
“Good lord...” Michael whispered heavily. Lisa’s expression was a little pale, but she managed to keep the bile in her stomach where it belonged.
“How could this have happened?” She asked, but Turner shooed her away.
“Lieutenant? What’s your current situation?”
“Critical to say the least. Those things are trying to get at Richard, but he’s holding them off with my blaster. But I need you to lay down some covering fire at coordinates 16-27-60.”
Turner nodded. “We’ll get right on it.”
Lisa cut in. “Good luck, Lia.” She offered.
“Thanks, Captain. I’ll be seeing you at the rendezvous point at Gate 7 as promised.” The comm link was severed.
Borghese gazed at the console for a moment longer.
“I can’t believe this.”
Michael agreed.
“I know. But from what Parker told us, we’re going to have to do more than lay down covering fire for the landing party. We’re going to have to find a way to obliterate the entire spaceport with one concentrated shot of firepower.”
Lisa frowned. “This ship doesn’t have anything on board that could do the job.” She said.
Suddenly, Michael Turner smiled secretly.
“But I know someone who does. And it may mean for us to go toe to toe with the devil.”
“Jellico.” Lisa confirmed.
“Yep. His battle carrier has a RDC mounted underneath the flight deck, and we just might get him to fire it at us.”
“Hold it, hold it....A while ago, you said that you didn’t want that thing to be fired at us.”
Michael was thoughtful.
“Did I? Perhaps. But I was thinking at close range...? No. At the distance the carrier’s at, we might be able to sustain a direct hit. Now while that doesn’t sound too appetizing, we could angle the shields so that the shot is redirected onto the spaceport itself.”
Lisa pondered over that idea.
“It’s risky. We could also risk blowing the entire shield grid while doing it.”
“Maybe so, but we’re fresh out of options and we have destroyers breathing down our necks even as we speak.”
Lisa glanced at the monitor screen positioned over her command chair.
“But their ten miles out. Their firepower won’t be much more than an annoyance to us.”
“True. But I’m more worried about their torpedoes. When those ships get within five miles from the ship, they’ll launch a spread of them at us. And we may not be able to dodge them all.”
“Then what?” She asked.
“Then we’ll see if we’re still here.” Michael replied.
Farragut Spaceport.
Lia turned off the comm link and walked slowly backwards towards the hover skimmer. Then she broke into a run.
Even though she was getting farther and farther away, she could still hear the sounds of those horrible creatures and the whine of her blaster, as it was being used to hold them off with.
And despite all this, the woman felt naked without her weapon, but there was nothing that she could do now.
Then suddenly, the sky behind her lit up like a flashbulb, and then a second later, a thunderous roar was heard.
The ground beneath her quaked with anger as the energy beams smashed into the permacrete 70 yards away from her position.
The next bombardment sent her sprawling to the ground.
Cries of pain echoed through the air, but it wasn’t human, that much was certain. More like a high pitched squeal of agony and then nothing.
Lia smiled grimly as she picked herself back up and headed down the pier’s steps and then towards the hover skimmer. But before she could reach it, something heavy slammed into her like a runaway hover train, knocking the wind out of her completely.
Struggling in the sand with her unknown combatant, the woman fought tooth and nail, before swinging her arm sideways– and connected with her opponent’s head.
In response, the person howled in pain from being struck so hard and she was momentarily startled by it’s reaction.
“Jeez, Lieutenant!” The person protested. “You didn’t have to hit me that hard!” and rolled off of her, clutching the side of his face.
It was Nelson.
“Sorry about that, Ensign. I thought you were one of those things by the way you tackled me.” The lieutenant picked herself up again for the second time in a row, and brushed the sand off the front of her suit.
“As did I. Ina spotted a dark shape picking itself off of the ground, and thought it might’ve been one of them. So I snuck up from behind and tackled it.”
“You tackled me.” Lia said tartly.
“I know that now,” said the man sheepishly, and brushed himself off a second later.
They both watched as the battleship continued to lay suppressing fire to the immediate area before it finally died down.
“Where’s Baker?” The man finally asked as he got into the hover skimmer. Lia followed right behind him.
“He’s getting Shillings free. But he’s also had to contend with those creatures as well.”
Ina shuddered involuntarily.
“I hope he makes it,” she said, before a large shape reared up in front of the skimmer and then dumped its seemingly bulky cargo gently onto the floor.
“Made it,” a voice that belonged to Richard Baker huffed as he climbed in, sitting down in the small acceleration seat– his hand flopping somewhat uselessly to the side. The blaster he had been carrying, dropped out of his hand along with the other one, and clattered to the floor.
Most of the landing party was shocked as they looked onto a man who they thought had died, but instead risked his life and that of a fellow crewmember without a second’s worth of thought.
“You made it!” The ship’s doctor squealed with joy before anyone else could say anything, and watched with some private amusement as she jumped out of her seat to give him a great, big, hug.
And a kiss as well.
But all she touched was plastic and soft fabric of the suit itself.
He extricated himself none to gently from her slippery grasp, smiling all the while.
“I believe that I just said that.” He pointed out.
Handshakes and words of gratitude filtered his way as Daniel White started to maneuver the hover skimmer away from the beach and out into the open waters of the bay.
Personally, he couldn’t believe what he had seen, let alone experienced.
“Wonder what’s next?” He whispered.
But the answer to that question was a ball of fire that erupted in front of them, and he was thrown to one side of the craft.
The hover skimmer spun out of control.
Chapter 3
Bruan Province.
Class had started, leaving Jason to wonder what happened during his absence. Judging from the looks that he had gotten from the others around him: Not much.
Still, he couldn’t brood over that, when he had lessons to learn in history.
“In the year 2515–67 years after the first colonists from the Blue World had arrived to Kamar IV–the first of three civil wars was started by what person?” Mr. Carson asked pointed to the main holo-vid screen that had been used for a completely different purpose at one time.
A boy in the back raised his hand.
“President Palen?” He answered.
Groans went up in the class and one of the boy’s friends shook his head.
“Daren! Your such a moron! Palen died in 2492!”
“So who was it, Mr. Brentwick?” Carson said in a straightforward tone.
“It was Drakes. Nicholas Drakes. He ascended to political status after the premature death of President Harnoff and took over the Kamarian Central Government.”
Carson nodded cagily.
“That’s very good, Mr. Brentwick. But what did he do that caused the civil wars?”
“He disbanded certain elements of the fledgling government, preventing the colonists from receiving fair representation in the Planetary Congress.” Jason muttered to himself, while accessing something from his desk pad.
His teacher perked up at that answer, and he went over to his desk.
“Please speak up, Mr. Scott. I do not believe that people heard you.”
Jason nodded, clearing his throat.
“I said, ‘He disbanded certain elements of the fledgling government, preventing colonists from receiving fair representation in the Planetary Congress.’ ” His teacher smiled.
“Exactly!” He patted the boy on the shoulder in approval. “And because of that, the Fifth and Seventh Continents were plunged into a two-year civil war that dragged two other continents into it. Subsequently, this event was the primary catalyst for more unrest that was the underlying spark for two other bloody conflicts in 2522 and ‘27.”
Jason nodded.
Most of the small wars were fought because the government was only interested in its own personal drives. Much like Stevenson is now. It was kind of funny though, he thought with amusement as the class wore on.
After class, he was approached by his teacher as the last of the class exited.
“Mr. Scott? How is your leg holding up?”
Jason glanced up at him.
“Fine, sir. It still hurts like hell when I put too much pressure on it.”
Carson studied the holo-vid for a moment, before turning his attention back to him.
“I see...” He sat down next to him and looked at the boy directly.
“I heard you had an altercation on the bus this morning. Would you care to talk about it?”
Jason froze. He learned from personal experience that when someone addressed him in this manner that something was up.
“Am I in trouble for that, Mr. Carson?”
“Not really. But I would like to hear what you have to say.”
“Sir. Most of the time that I hear that, my parents are usually the first to be notified of whatever trouble I had caused.”
“Their probably concerned about you, that’s all.”
“Mmmph,” the boy snorted. “You don’t know my parents like I do.”
Mr. Carson smiled.
“Probably not, but it doesn’t mean that I’m concerned. I promise you that I won’t cast judgment on you after you tell me.”
Jason stared at his desktop holo-vid screen.
“I’m not so sure.”
Battleship Victorious.
A console behind Lisa exploded as the assault frigate Newark fired its Scorpion gun on them again–this time inflicting a moderate amount of damage on the ship.
“Shield Number Three has failed and Two is nearing overload!” Raph called out as he held onto his console for dear life.
“Gun Turret Number Three is non-operational. I have three crewmen dead, six others injured; one seriously!” Turner reported. “Number Six turret has partially failed and One is suffering a misalignment in one of its gyro-dyne stabilizers!”
“Damn!” The woman swore helplessly. “Do we still have photon torpedo and missile capabilities?”
Michael checked the damage report that had in from Commander Lee.
“Yes!” He yelled as his internal balance shifted with the explosions that continued to rock the battleship.
“Then hammer that blasted ship!”
“Davis! Launch another salvo! Target is at coordinates 13-53-87. Mark!”
Ralph entered the coordinates like a pro and locked in the auxiliary guidance computer for increased accuracy.
“Firing!”
Even with the damage the valiant ship sustained, she still had some fight left in her as the plates slid aside once more, and up rose the photon launchers. Through the haze and the smoke that cascaded from the ruined Number Three gun turret, they still had a job to do.
One second later after the missiles were launched, the torpedoes spewed their hate and fury in four salvos of destructive energy balls. Then afterwards, they lowered back down and the hatches closed.
Assault Frigate Newark.
Stacy watched with paternal pride as the Scorpion gun had done its job. Her husband’s failure had been finally avenged.
“Course and speed of target?” She asked.
“Sensors record no change in target’s position. However, I am reading-” then a gigantic explosion hurtled the woman out of her command chair and to the floor.
Fires broke out on the upper deck of the command bridge and she heard people screaming and moaning all around her as more torpedoes nailed the frigate with unrelenting savagery.
“D-damage report!” She gasped as her ribs felt like they were on fire.
The ship’s computer didn’t respond at first.
“Hull breach on Deck Five, section Three. Hull breach on Deck Seven. Engineering reports flooding.” It finally reported with a grating voice.
Her First Officer Tanya Preston came forward, holding her white handkerchief to her forehead. Already it was deepening in color from the gash in her head, leaving her feeling slightly lightheaded from the loss of blood.
“Captain...” She whispered. The she stumbled forward until Hamilton caught her.
“Easy, Lieutenant-Commander. You’ve been concussed pretty badly. Try not to move.” The ship quaked a little, throwing both women to the floor.
Preston looked up at her commanding officer.
“You were saying?”
Heavy Cruiser Knight.
The missile attack caught Captain Rollins off guard. Even after ordering evasive action and the deployment of the anti-missile guns, a half dozen out of the 20 missiles launched by the Victorious struck the heavy cruiser amid ship–at the point of one of its shield contact generators.
The generator exploded in a fireworks display, illuminating the port side of the bridge with a harsh glare of light. That one shield failure inadvertently caused a cascade reaction in the four other generators–shutting them down. That left the ship naked and vulnerable to attack.
The second, third, and fourth missiles struck along the upper part of the cruiser laying to waste to most of the cruiser’s superstructure and decks.
Fires broke out as the cruiser heeled over for a moment and Rollins felt the searing heat of his face as an aftereffect of one such fire that he had been exposed to.
“Hull has been breached, sir!” His Weapons’ Officer howled as the air was being sucked noisily out of the rupture in the starboard side of the bridge. “Emergency containment fields have not been established!”
Rollins gripped his command chair with determination as the vacuum from the loss of air pressure was starting to tug on him like an unforgiving monster.
Then a horrendous explosion nearly shattered the man’s ears and the shockwave lifted him up out of his seat and slammed him to the deck.
The wind knocked out of him, Jack tried to get back up, but discovered that his legs were broken. He couldn’t remember how it happened, but the pain was starting to catch up to him.
Gritting his teeth and sucking it in, he croaked, “Mr. Jennings. What is the source of that explosion?”
The brown haired man picked himself up off the deck and brushed bits of debris off of his console.
“Critical hit sir! Main Engineering!”
Rollins struggled to get to his command chair, to hit the button the would connect him to Main Engineering.
His bloodied fingers latched onto the edge, but it took all of his remaining strength to heave himself up onto the arm, where his armpit was covering the comm link. Moving slightly to the side, the man hit it lightly.
“Engine....En...” He coughed. “Main Engineering! Come in!”
Static.
“Shit!” The man cursed violently.
Then the air around him got increasingly warmer–no!–hotter...
Suddenly–
Assault Frigate Newark.
A bright flash seared the night sky, blinding Stacy Hamilton.
A minute later, a high pitched explosion rattled her teeth, not to mention the low frequency sonic vibrations that rumbled through the ship’s skin.
Before she could ask, the light faded to a dying ember before fading away completely.
“What the hell was that?!?” She whispered, horrified to think what might’ve taken place.
Preston went over to a tactical display and was just in time to see a large dot wink out of existence.
Calling up some information, she nodded with barely contained sadness.
“Ma’am. We’ve just lost the Knight.” She checked some sensor readings. “Computer readings indicate no survivors.”
“Conduct a second sweep of the area to make sure.”
The woman nodded.
“Yes, ma’am.”
A minute or so later, she confirmed her earlier findings.
“No survivors, Captain.”
Hamilton slumped in the tactical station’s chair.
“Admiral Jellico isn’t going to like this.” She groaned.
Bruan Province.
Jason finished, feeling less anxious as time went on, but at the same time, feeling more tense as time went on.
And if the stunned expression of his teacher was any indication to what might lay ahead for him, the boy definitely didn’t want to find out.
You reap what you sow...came the ancient saying that his mother used to tell him from time to time when he was a lot younger. Somehow, it fit in this case. But he was making dangerous assumptions here, and it was best that he not say anything more that might incriminate himself further.
What a zero! He scolded himself. What’d you think that you just did?
He looked at Carson, seeing the older man looking back at him.
“Well...?” He tested.
Mr. Carson exhaled before saying anything.
“It appears that you’ve put yourself in quite a fix, Mr. Scott.” He got up and went over to the side of his desk. “But I would’ve never thought it would’ve come to that.”
Jason bristled slightly.
“And what was I supposed to do? Say no?”
“Given the situation you described to me, it seemed fitting somehow that you were positively taken advantage of. I can’t really say a whole lot on the issue, since I’ve had no direct experience myself, but it puts you in grave jeopardy with those around you, should word leak out.”
Jason rose to his feet.
“Caroline and I love each other very much, Mr. Carson. But what your trying to do is insist that something will happen, regardless of the outcome. But since neither I, nor Caroline are squealers, it’s a safe bet that no one will know.”
“Can you be sure of that? Miss Taylor’s mother knows. How long will it be before your parents will find out?”
“Find out what? That what happened between two people would be considered love?”
Jason’s teacher crossed over to him, placing a hand on his desk.
“I’m not sure. If someone were to look at this from a different angle, it would be considered rape.”
“Rape?!?” The boy bit out somewhat harshly. “There is no such word .”
Carson sighed.
“In the Old Language, it was quite common. It is defined as: ‘performing sex by force by one party member upon another unwilling second party member.’ ” He stared at the built-in monitor screen that sat upright on his desk.
“Nowadays, there is no such law regarding that word or statute.”
Jason snorted.
“And you think that’s what I did? Was ‘rape’ Caroline, as you so eloquently put it? I could do no such thing! What we shared was something that I will not forget.”
Carson smiled thinly.
“I know you won’t. But the question still remains: How do you think people will react to your situation?”
“I’m not sure. But I believe that since no harm was done, and no one was physically injured, I’d say that we did nothing that would be considered normal among others outside my age group. Or have you forgotten that kids my age go through certain hormonal changes, physically and emotionally?”
Mr. Carson sat down on the desk next to him carefully.
“I’m well aware of what puberty brings, Mr. Scott. I have a daughter at home who is going through similar changes herself. But that is besides the point in this matter. I ask you this: Are you ready for what lies ahead for you in the future?”
Are you ready for what lies ahead of you in the future...?
Suddenly Jason’s mind was torn away for an instant–
Explosions registered in his mind, like the newborn sunrise on this nameless world that he has been a prisoner for far too long.
He hears the roar of engines dropping to a pitch and then cascading explosions as fighters from the overhead outpost make their strafing runs. Then out of the smoke and fire, comes a giant robot that he has never seen before.
“Are you all right?” The voice asks in a commanding tone of voice, while cradling a huge cannon in its metal shod hands that looked very much like a human’s–but not.
“Yes, I’m fine. But Allura is injured. She, who has been my companion and friend, is injured.” He cries out to his savior, and then looks down at the silver skinned woman that had saved his life on many occasions. But now, it looked like that would not be possible now.
He gazes down on her, seeing the dark silver gash across the upper part of her chest. The wound was severe. Perhaps, too severe for her to regenerate efficiently.
The woman’s eyes open in a flutter, and he holds his breath.
“Allura,” he whispers. “Try not to speak. I am here. I am here…my love...”
She looks at him with gentle surprise.
“Are you...are ready for the future...?” She manages to say in a broken voice.
“What?” He replies in confusion.
“The future...are you ready for it?” She says again, her voice getting stronger.
“Yes...I suppose...Why?” He asks.
“Because what you have faced in the past, you will face again in the future. But you will do so without my help.”
He looks at her.
“But why?”
The woman in silver gazes up at him with an expression of sadness and love.
“Because you have a gift that neither time nor space can easily extinguish. You must use that gift to unlock the secrets that you have been carrying for so long; deep within your mind...”
“Jason.”
Jason sat there in a daze for a second. Not sure what just happened. He asked that much as his teacher lifted his hand from his shoulder. It was obvious that he had been trying to snap him out of it.
Out of what? He wondered.
“What?’ He asked distantly, feeling somewhat disconnected with himself at the moment. Whatever just happened, happened because of something inside him was awakened prematurely.
But what? The boy questioned silently, even as the teacher answered him.
“You zoned out for a minute there, I thought that I had lost you.”
“I wonder...” Jason ventured.
“Say that again?” Mr. Carson repeated.
Jason shook his head in slight irritation.
“Nothing. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. It was almost like I was some where’s else, but I can’t remember exactly where.”
His teacher stroked his goatee thoughtfully.
“Daydreaming will do that to you.” He supplied helpfully.
Jason glanced at him.
“It wasn’t daydreaming, Mr. Carson. I have never daydreamed in my life, as far as I can remember.”
“Sure you do. Every young boy that I have in my class does.”
Jason picked up his pack and stood.
“Well I don’t.”
“Deny what you think and do, Mr. Scott. But the truth will eventually catch up to you sooner or later. Remember that when you go home today.”
“I will.”
CVB Wellington.
In all the times that Commander Francine Patterson had worked with Admiral Jellico, she had never seen him so pissed in his life.
The second she saw him on one of the corridor monitors, she knew that was an understatement.
How she describe a normally composed man that now had a thundercloud sitting directly over his head?
She still thinking about that when he came onto the bridge, the expression on his face unchanging as he sat his big girth down onto the soft cushions of his command chair. He glowered at one of the tactical screens, seeing the damage reports that were coming in.
“How’s the launch preparations coming?” He asked.
“Nearly finished.” Patterson answered automatically.
“Let me speak to the flight commander of this attack run.”
“Aye sir.” The woman contacted the flight deck captain in charge, and through him, she got a hold of the flight commander.
“Captain Franklin is on comm channel five, Admiral.”
Jellico tapped into the appropriate comm frequencies.
“Jellico here, Captain. Go ahead.”
“This is Captain Ronald Franklin, sir. I almost have my squadron ready. Strike squadrons 5 and 6, however, are on hot standby.”
“Launch your squadrons as soon as your able, Captain. Turner given me enough shit to last me a lifetime.”
“I know that sir. I saw the Knight go up in a huge fireball too.”
“Then you know what your up against.”
“Yes sir. I know perfectly well.”
“Then you don’t need to be reminded of what you need to do then.”
“Crystal, sir.” And the link was severed.
First Continent.
Daniel White was left momentarily stunned, as he struggled to get a hold of his bearings while the hover skimmer continued to veer out of control. The next few salvos that were fired, missed the hover skimmer by a wide margin, but the Chief Engineer’s Third Mate thought that it was close enough in his book. Even as he managed to get a grip on the steering column, a geyser erupted in the back of them, adding more confusion to the problem then first anticipated.
Lia shook her head to get rid of the ringing that resonated in her ears--not to mention her brain.
“What happened? Is everyone all right?” She asked in a strong voice as she leaned up against the inner hull of the hover skimmer, breathing a sigh of relief. The ringing had finally stopped, but she could not vouch for the others in the matter.
Mutters of acknowledgement and relief reached her ears and the strawberry-blond woman nodded.
“Good.” She looked over the partially bent railing that was the result of one of the near hits earlier and spotted a burning glare on the horizon.
“Damn.” She whispered in amazement, wondering if it was one of the ships that was pursuing them. Maybe a big mother...? But it was to early to tell at this point. All that concerned her at this time was the well being of her crew, herself, and the remainder of the mission.
Reflecting back to what had just happened, she laughed silently.
Yeah, that’s a good one. What mission? I would call it a fight for survival than anything else. How many times have I confronted death in the face of danger? She was interrupted by the gentle hum of the engines as they powered up again, and she glanced in Dr. Ina Eugene’s direction.
“How are things going?” She asked.
The woman’s head snapped around in sudden fright, and the lieutenant realized that she had inadvertently scared her.
“Sorry about. I didn’t mean to startle you...” she trailed off once she saw the dark stains on her hands in the pale moonlight of Copernicus.
The lady imagined that it was from the leg wound that Shillings had sustained from being buried underneath all that rubble back at the spaceport.
“Not good.” She said quietly, having recovered from her episode. “His leg is broken in two places, and there is a tear in one of the major arteries in his leg. I’m applying all the pressure that I can to keep him from bleeding to death.
“What about the vascular regenerator from your med-kit?” Lia ventured.
The woman hesitated for a moment.
“I...er...rather...” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “I lost my med-kit when the hover skimmer spun out of control.”
“You mean it’s gone?” The woman replied, horrified.
“Yep.”
“Christ.” She muttered under her breath, watching the horizon again, seeing various pin pricks of light in the night as they were coming closer.
Chapter 4
Third Continent.
City of Jeron.
Nine-thirty in the frigging evening...Tyler fumed. Where the hell is she?
He looked at the holo-clock that was mounted on the wall of the kitchen and saw that it was actually a few seconds past that.
An hour earlier, he had entered his parents’ home and started to put a light meal together in hopes that she would be home soon. He was worried that she was lost or something, but he knew that wasn’t true. She was a big girl and she could look after herself.
Still....
He went over to the foot of the stairs to look out the window when something jumped him from behind and he fell to the floor, one side of his face smacking solidly into the hardwood that it was made up of.
Karen whistled to herself, finally feeling happy that something in her life was going right. In her arms bulged a couple bags of groceries that she had bought from the corner store mini-mart, wondering what her former leader was cooking just for the two of them.
A second of unconsciousness was all that separated Tyler from his attacker. But the moment he came to, he found that he was being dragged across the floor and was about to be let go, he surprised his attacker with a long snap kick to the face.
Momentarily stunned, his attacker let go of him and clutched the one side of his jaw where his foot had connected.
That gave Tyler enough time to get with the program and off the floor within a matter of seconds.
“You picked a poor time to pick on me, you bastard.” He taunted openly, hoping that his attacker would take the initiative and launch a counterattack. But instead of doing that, he heard the man cursing and fuming at his carelessness.
“Actually, I was planning to throw you out the nearest window...” He turned and Tyler was confronted by his very own brother.
“But why?” He asked, confused by the expression that was now imprinted on his brother’s wrinkled features.
The man laughed.
“Why? You have the balls to mock me throughout the hostage crisis, and then you and the rest of those Enforcer goons had me deposed as President of this planet!”
Tyler back away in a defensive stance, not sure where this conversation was headed.
“Kyle. You were the one that started this whole mess to begin with. It was only fair that you were the only one to reap what you’ve sown.”
Kyle growled.
“And what do you know, you piss ant little shit? You had no interest in politics to begin with. Only that damned terrorist group of yours.” The elderly man balled his fists tightly.
“Their not terrorists, Kyle. Their people who felt that it was time to take matters into their own hands, simply because the government -yours- was ill-equipped to handle the people’s basic needs.”
Kyle almost lashed out at him for that comment, but somehow restrained himself.
“What needs? What the hell are you talking about?”
Tyler stared at him.
“Are you that fucking dense? Haven’t you been paying any attention to what’s been going on?”
“Yes.” The ex-president finally admitted. “But I believed that there were other ways to deal with the problems at hand.”
Tyler could see that he was finally getting through to him.
“But it hasn’t worked. Whatever you had planned hasn’t worked.”
Kyle’s eyes flashed with anger.
“It will. I swear to god it will.”
Tyler snorted.
“Is that the only thing that you care about? Is power? What about what other people are feeling right at this moment?”
“Fuck ‘em.”
His brother stared at him.
“You haven’t changed then, have you?”
“Not as much as you think I have, dear brother.” He smiled with a malicious grin.
Karen walked along the darkened sidewalk, her arms feeling leaden after carrying her burden for so long. But that did not matter; she would feel gratified with someone she cared about and risked her life side by side with, over a hot meal.
Then her journey turned to a familiar one, as she spotted the familiar white fence and the house that once belonged to her leader’s parents.
But the inner joy and contentment that she had been feeling for the entire evening changed to apprehension and then fear, as her ears picked up the shattering sounds of a window being broken violently and a body being tossed out onto the air- cooled grass.
Karen White nearly dropped her groceries when she heard the gruff voice of a man that she thought that she would never see again, after her most recent close encounter over a couple of weeks ago.
“You shit!” He heard the man say. “You have no idea who your screwing with! You may think you’ve won back in the chambers of the Planetary Congress, but there are things that you have not even begun to dream about, that have been set into motion...” The man kept opening and closing his fists, tightening them and relaxing them.
“Do you understand me?” He hauled the other person up to his feet and looked him in the eye. “Do you?!?”
The other man glared back at him. “Sure I do. It just means that your more crazy then ever. Why?”
“Crazy is as crazy does, dear brother. I am the future of this pathetic world. Only I have the power to reshape it in any form I want. And there is nothing that you or anyone can do about it– ” and was suddenly rewarded with a hard punch to the midsection, causing his attacker to double over in pain.
“Looks like I just did, Kyle. Guess what? You’ve just failed. Live with it.”
“Never!” The old man gasped. “I shall prevail– !” He staggered to his feet, clutching his stomach and stumbled backwards, almost tripping over a half-buried root in the process. Looking at his brother in confusion, Kyle ran off into the darkness.
Karen decided at this time to make her presence known as she stepped out from behind the tree she was hiding, and approached Tyler carefully.
“T-Ty..?” She inquired tentatively.
The man that was formally in charge of the Steel Knights stood regally for a moment before relaxing.
“I’m okay, Karen. Are you all right?”
“A little shaken, but otherwise unhurt.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that, Karen. My brother was obviously hiding in the house, when he caught me off guard in the hallway. Now he’s gone again.”
Karen looked at him.
“So why didn’t you detain him for the authorities?”
“Detain him? How can you detain someone that just tossed me out the window?”
The woman smiled. “Restrain him first?”
Tyler shook his head.
“If it were only that easy.”
Bruan Province.
Jason Scott closed the door behind him, and he heard it click as he went into the living room.
But he was surprised to see not only his parents, but Caroline, and his mother sitting on the sofa.
Actually, he wasn’t sure if they were more surprised to see him or vice versa.
However, that changed when he saw the anger smoldering in the woman’s eyes and he knew that he was in deep trouble.
“Uh...hi...” He started, hoping that it wasn’t a bigger deal than he thought it would be.
“Sit down, Jason.” His father said softly. The boy looked at his mother and she nodded as well.
The teenager did so, his eyes refusing to meet anyone, even Caroline’s.
Samantha started first.
“Jason, honey. It was brought to our attention that something has come up that has me and your father worried.”
Yep. De––eep trouble.
“W-what is that?” His voice sounding lame in his ears.
“Your behavior on the bus, for starters.” John said openly.
Jason sighed and sat next to Caroline.
“I was mad mother. Caroline was hit by her mother. I felt I had to do something.”
Michelle glanced at him sharply. “By threatening me with your blaster?”
Jason almost rose, but Caroline put a hand on his, and shot him a warning look.
Michelle caught notice of the gesture and snorted.
“Go head, Caroline. Hold his hand. Or better yet, why don’t you screw him like you did on the hill?”
Caroline gasped and Jason started.
His parents looked at the woman in shock.
“Excuse me? What did you say?” John rumbled.
Michelle looked at him.
“You heard me. My daughter and your son have eloped on the hill together. She told me all about it.”
The girl stared at her mother coldly.
“More like forced a confession out of me. That was before you struck me.”
“You argued with me, Caroline. You enraged me. I had no choice but to retaliate...”
Caroline pushed her hair out of the way.
“By hitting me? Was that anyway to solve things diplomatically?”
Michelle lashed out suddenly, gripping her by the arm. She deliberately applied pressure and continued to squeeze until she winced.
Jason grabbed her hand abruptly and pried it away with all of his strength.
“Don’t you ever do that to her again, do you hear me?”
Now his parents were getting into it, by sitting Michelle back on the sofa, and then his father gripped him by the shoulder.
“Jason...”
“Dad–!” He interrupted him in desperation, before he started losing control of the situation. “Don’t start on me, okay? I love Caroline.”
“I know you do. I’ve known since we were held hostage. But I never thought that it would boil down to...” He trailed off, feeling slightly uncomfortable with what he was thinking about. He saw Michelle settle down, while Caroline continued to stare at her mother.
Samantha Scott started talking to each of them in turn quietly.
Jason Scott shook head.
“It was never like that, dad. You guys think the worst of things the minute something completely different comes to light. I mean, haven’t you ever known what it’s like to be in love?”
“Well, sure. But that’s because we’re adults. Not teenagers.”
Jason snarled under his breath.
“So it’s different for us kids, huh? Haven’t you ever figured out by now, that that’s what teenagers do? It’s been like that for centuries. You can’t fight what’s purely biological in nature.”
John looked at his son and then at Caroline who had a pissed off expression on her face while she massaged her injured arm.
“So who started it?”
“Dad!” He whispered fiercely. “That’s not fair!”
“Sorry.” He apologized. He looked over at his wife.
“Sam? Are you all right?”
His wife nodded, her lips trembling for a second, before she reasserted some inner self control over herself.
“Yes. I’m fine. I’m just a little unnerved by the whole thing. Just thinking that our little boy was the one that started this...”
“Michelle tell you that?” He asked.
The woman nodded.
“Well, he didn’t. Michelle’s exaggerating again.”
Her gray eyes widened in surprise.
“Huh?”
“Caroline did it. But as I see it, neither forced the other. I suppose that it was something that they both wanted.”
“Are you serious?”
It was John’s turn to nod. “Yes.”
Samantha groaned half to herself, half to John.
“Oh god...and I thought that I had the perfect little boy...”
He smiled a little.
“We still do, honey. He’s a teenager for god’s sake. He’s going to be going through this when he gets older. It’s natural.”
“Natural? John....having sex with a girl two years older than he is not natural.”
John watched Caroline talk with her mother quietly while his son looked on.
“So what is? How do you define natural?” He put an arm around his wife gently. “How do you define love?”
She leaned against her husband.
“Love is something that is shared between two people that are in love.”
John nuzzled his wife’s hair.
“Look at our son, Sam. Look into his eyes. See what he sees.” She did so and was taken off guard by what she saw.
“I don’t believe this...”
“Believe it. Right now Jason is experiencing what it is like to be in love. The wistful look, the doe-eyed expression on his face...it’s all clear that he loves her.”
“Doesn’t mean anything. It just means he has a crush on her.”
John dropped his arm away and took his seat on one of the chairs.
“Honey. Your missing the whole point. Jason is truly in love with her. Didn’t you notice the way he reached out and grabbed Michelle’s hand, and then tore it off Caroline’s arm? He’s preventing her from being further injured.”
Sam sat down in confusion, as both Michelle and her daughter finished their conversation together for once, rather than yell at each other.
Jason held his breath until Michelle spoke.
“We’ll be leaving now. I need time to think this over,” she glanced at the boy. “Until I do, your not allowed to come near my daughter until I resolve this issue personally.”
Anger boiled in the teen’s stomach until Caroline took his hand and squeezed it.
“Don’t worry, Jay. Mom’s just blowing off steam.”
“How can you be sure?”
Caroline batted her eyes at him before planting a kiss on his cheek.
“Trust me on this one. I know.”
Jason nodded in resignation, all the tension dropping from his heart to the pits of his stomach. He didn’t look up when Caroline waved to him from outside the window as her mother took her away from him.
Samantha and John looked at their only child, seeing the pain in his face.
“Honey...?” Sam began, but was startled when he rose to his feet.
“I’m going to my room, mom. Please call me when dinner is ready.”
John held her back when he left the living room, the limp in his leg still evident even with the free movement cast that was on it.
“No. Don’t. He needs time to himself. I’ll talk to him in a little while.”
Battleship Victorious.
“Destroyers moving in from a position of three miles and closing!” Ralph hollered from his station.
“Hell!” Borghese moaned. “They must have moved in while our tactical systems were offline!” She keyed in something on the overhead monitor and watched as a schematic diagram of the battleship came up.
She tapped some sections of the diagram and looked over at her First Officer who was manning one of the environmental stations.
“Deploy magnetic blisters along the starboard and aft sections of the ship! Prep ship for incoming torpedoes!”
“Yes ma’am!” Alex pointed to someone manning the far end tactical station, and the man nodded– pressing a couple of switches on his console.
Sections along side the battleship-above and below the waterline– slid back, and large tear-shaped armored partitions slid in their place, and locked.
“Torpedo blisters in position!” Hayes called out, just as the first alarm went off.
“First wave of torpedoes coming at 67 knots standard speed, Captain. I’m counting at least eight!”
“Come to new course 141 mark 7! Ahead two-thirds!”
Ralph made the necessary corrections to his board and looked at one of the monitors in front of him. The view screen curved to the left as the ship heeled over.
Another alarm went off.
“I have incoming fighters closing in at the one mile defense parameter of the south side of the continent. All air defense systems on the continent have just been activated–!”
Gun emplacements around the continent and the spaceport itself rose out of the dust and debris and opened fire at the incoming fighter squadrons– streamers of fire launching themselves into the dark skies above them.
Captain Ronald Franklin homed in on his target.
“No action yet. My sensors have recorded the ship deploying magnetic blisters...” He looked at some of the readouts that were in his HUD. “Now reading some action around the edges of the continent and at the spaceport–” Streamers of tracer fire erupted all around his fighter and the man jumped. “Holy shit–!” He swore as his fighter started to buck and pitch under his steady hands, leaving the fighter pilot to start concentrating on keeping his craft in the air long enough to get a bead on what was firing on him.
Further aft, he saw a small fireball light up the darkness and a voice crackled over the comm link.
“We just lost Ghost fighter 33. I suspect that he was hit by what appears to be anti-aircraft fire–” The link went dead as static drowned out and another fireball lit up the dark sky over the open ocean, as another unfortunate pilot met his demise.
“Ghost fighter 26 is gone sir.” Another pilot chimed in on the intercom circuit. Franklin decided that he had enough. “All fighter squadrons start your runs on the target in 15 seconds.” He said into the comm. Then he contacted Admiral Jellico.
“Sir, this is Ghost leader. I’ve lost two of my fighters to incoming fire and I’m beginning my run.”
“Roger that, Commander. I’ll take care of the problem. Wellington out.”
Explosions rocked his fighter some more as the comm channel switched off and Franklin switched on his forward missile systems.
CVB Wellington.
Jellico nodded to his Weapons Officer.
“Prepare the HERMES for firing.” The man nodded and pulled down a series of levers to his right and then hit some switches.
“Initiating startup sequence. One minute to firing.”
On the prow of the battle carrier, the underside of the flight deck peeled back mechanically as all four sides of the bow retracted slowly and a huge barrel that was shaped like a well honed cylinder rose from its custom built housing, its opened but slightly tapered end glowing with star fire.
Locking into position, the cannon shook as a power build up took place.
Jellico felt the floor underneath vibrate as energy reserves were reaching a crescendo and the higher end frequencies were beginning to get on his nerves.
“Power is reaching 77% and climbing. 45 seconds now, sir.”
“Launch the remaining fighter squadrons from the starboard and port catapults and fire as soon as power reserves are peaked.”
“Aye sir.”
“Speed 40 knots and closing, Captain! 5000 yards!”
Turner looked at a monitor, showing the position of the torpedoes and the relative positions of the destroyers that had launched them.
“Launch countermeasures and bring the aft batteries to bear on those destroyers. I want them off our ass!”
Captain Borghese nodded to Morton’s third watch replacement, Lieutenant Travis Jettson, who punched a button.
Aft of the ship, small doors slid back, revealing some small circular tubes. Seconds later, large cylindrical objects were jettisoned by two’s for several seconds, and splashed into the water.
A minute after that, the three plasma gun turrets rotated into position, and the gun crews manning them opened fire on their respective targets.
Sonics booms echoed slightly on the bridge and Lisa smirked.
“That should shake those bastards for a few rounds.” Then the deck tilted suddenly and the woman instinctively gripped the arms of her command chair.
“Okay, what’s next?”
Turner looked at her. “Bombs.” He reported.
“Bombs? Who would be bombing us at this point in time?” She stopped Michael from replying with a hand. “Let me guess: Jellico. Right?”
The man nodded.
Borghese slumped back in her chair.
“Perfect.”
Parker knew that they were getting closer.
The lights of Gate 7 were clearly visible from where she was sitting. Soft blinking, red lights.
“How is he?” She asked absently, forgetting that it was the fourth time that she had posed the question to Ina since the bombardment had stopped, almost a half hour ago.
“No change.” The woman said, her helmet off, and her matted hair slicked with sweat.
“Will he make it?”
Ina showed the woman her hands. They were now caked with Shillings dried blood.
Lia sighed. “Guess not.”
White peered up in the night sky, seeing the small spots of light up there, flying in a uniformed pattern when the area around them opened up in tracer fire.
“What the–?” He muttered before he saw one explosion in the sky followed shortly by another.
Then the battleship abruptly launched countermeasures before it swerved away from whatever dangers it was facing.
Nelson shook his head.
“What the hell is going on?” He wondered out loud.
Then the bombs started to drop. Sonic screams started to fill the air like banshee wails.
Huge black geysers of water erupted in front of them, tossing the tiny hover skimmer around like a cork in turbulent seas.
“Someone’s dropping bombs on us...” Lia heard Baker say as he ducked from the explosive roar that was being heard as the ordinance tried their best to hit a moving target.
Daniel managed to gain control of the skimmer before a 1500 lb Hi-Tex Explosive bomb slammed into Gate 7– obliterating it completely.
A wall of fire surged toward them like a tidal wave, and almost overwhelmed the landing party with its suffocating heat.
However, the effect it would’ve had died out way short of its intended goal, and left the party somewhat flushed and dry.
“Uggh-!” Ina groaned, feeling the strength leave her arms and she flopped over onto her back, feeling the gentle swells lap at the hover skimmer.
“Thirsty?” Rose asked from somewhere off to her immediate left.
“Yeah...” Then she felt a cold water bottle being thrust into her grimy hands. “Thanks,” and drank from it deeply. Feeling better, she and Rose started to hand out more water bottles, when Nelson reported that he had just felt a strange vibration– almost a humming sensation really– before it was gone.
Lia peered over the port side of the hover skimmer and was just in time to see a small wake from a large object passing underneath them.
“Torpedoes.” She confirmed as she leaned back. “The Victorious must’ve launched countermeasures to dupe the incoming torpedoes from hitting them.”
“Who’d be firing torpedoes at us?” Daniel asked as he set a course back to the ship. Then an explosion registered on everyone ears and Lia’s hair fluttered in the sudden wind that blew up from the blast effect.
The battleship listed slightly to port as more torpedoes found their mark, exposing the magnetic blisters that were supposed to protect the ship from them.
Apparently not.
Baker brought out a pair of macro-binoculars and zoomed in on the dancing dots on the horizon.
“Destroyers.” He said. “At least three. But they’ve taken some damage too.”
“From what?” Ina wondered.
“The battleship no less. Turner and Borghese must be raising hell against whoever’s firing at them.”
Then silence permeated the open waters, but the explosions on the battleship continued as fires started to break out on the aft sections of the ship, leaving Parker to wonder if they would have a ship to return to.
Battleship Victorious.
Smoke choked the bridge of the battleship as Lisa leaned against one of the ruined environmental stations that was once manned by some of her best crew.
Now some of them were dead, and she realized that none of them were invincible in this fight against Admiral Jellico.
But the destroyers weren’t giants either as a passive scan of the three showed that all of them suffered moderate damage as well; one apparently taking on water.
“Damage report?” She asked as she studied the overheads for any new information. However, most of them were blank of any new information.
Black as night.
Scanners must’ve been affected by the torpedoes...
“We’ve taken on some water on Deck Nine, section G-43.” Hayes reported, while bandaging his arm. In the dim lighting, she could see a dark stain spreading down his torn uniform arm.
“You okay?”
Alex looked at her momentarily before cinching the knot on it while gritting his teeth against the pain.
“Fine.” He grimaced. “We’ve lost shields in half a dozen places, and one of our gun turrets aft is knocked out of action.”
“Where did those fighters come from that attacked us?”
“My guess that it would be from that battle carrier.” Hayes answered while he tried to operate the console in front of him with one hand. “Anti-aircraft batteries on the starboard side have been destroyed by the bombing runs and by one of the torpedoes.”
“How are the repairs coming?” Lisa asked, even though she knew that it was a hopeless gesture.
“Between the battles and our attempts to reach the launcher again, it’s a slow process. But all the damage control parties are working as fast as they can.”
“How soon till we reach the launcher?” She persisted.
“Six minutes.”
Lisa turned back to the view screen, seeing the line distortions on it. It wasn’t an even fight by her book. Even though they managed to cripple some ships and destroy another, Jellico still had the upper hand.
Case in point with the torpedoes.
Earlier, Turner had gone down to Main Engineering to help with Lee in the repairs, and to make sure that nothing was wrong with the Star Jumpers. That left her a few minutes to herself while the battle raged on.
In her mind, the ship had performed admirably as a sea going vessel. There was much that wasn’t known about its starship capabilities until they launched. It had been rumored for some time that the ship was more than it appeared, and many at the Defense Committee thought it was the ultimate defense against any encroaching outsider.
That disturbed the woman.
If it was considered the most expensive venture in human history, why would Senator Norris go to great lengths just to have it destroyed?
Another alarm went off somewhere on the darkened bridge and someone turned on a hand held flashlight to see what it was.
“Another attack, Captain! Two squadrons this time, ma’am!” Someone called out.
“Two?” Lisa went to the only functioning tactical station. One out of seven on the bridge. “I guess Jellico has something else up his sleeve then, if there’s only a couple of them coming at us.” She sat back in her command chair, noting with distaste that there was a sizable tear in its leather interior.
Remind me to tell somebody to get it fixed, she thought as she tied one of the blank monitors above her into the tactical station. But there was no way to tell if it was working, so she smacked the side of it to get it going.
The monitor flared up, as whatever power was left was surging through its damaged circuits.
“Shields?” She asked as the new-tac information was being brought up.
“67% of efficiency. Not enough to repel both squadrons.” Alex’s voice was heard as he was busy trying to repair some of the station’s damaged components from the inside. Lisa could see a part of his body poking out from underneath the console, while watching his hand grope for a power tool that lay on his side. Once the hand had found it, she saw it disappear into the crevice and then the soft humming as it went to work.
“What will it take to repel both of them?”
Raph overheard her as he walked past to return to the helm and answered sardonically, “A miracle?”
Lisa lashed out at the passing ensign playfully, but missed.
“Besides that, you oaf.”
But it was Hayes that answered.
“The shields need to be at 80% or better to successfully repel the attack.”
“Engage auxiliary power then.” Lisa prompted.
“Non-op. One of the torpedoes took out a fusion generator on Deck Seven. That effectively cut us off any more available power that we had.”
“Damn!” She swore openly in mounting frustration.
The lift doors opened, admitting both Lee and Turner. From the low tones in their voices, it appeared that they were having one intense conversation.
“Anybody home?” She asked as they passed by her, and went down the steps to the helm and navigation center, and conversed with Davis.
Hayes had finished his work with the tactical station and wiped his good hand with a rag gently, careful of injury to his left arm.
“What’s up?” He asked.
“That’s what I like to know,” Borghese answered angrily, getting out of her command chair. She approached both Lee and Turner, and was just in time to see Ralph’s head nod in agreement before turning back to his console.
“Okay you two, just what the hell is going on?”
Both Michael and Gregory looked at her for a moment, before the admiral answered her.
“We’re going to attempt something that hasn’t been done before, and therefore more dangerous than anything known.”
“What’s that?” She asked.
“We’re going to initiate the ARM system a little early. It should provide more protection for the ship until we are launch ready.”
“The ARM system?” Hayes inquired. “What the hell is that?”
“Atmospheric Reconfiguration Mode. It’s essentially a re-entry defense mechanism purely designed for the ship whenever it entered or exited inside a planet’s atmospheric envelope.” Lee explained.
“You mean that the ship can’t do either until this is in place?” Lisa asked.
“Right.” Michael confirmed.
“So what’s so dangerous about initiating it right here?”
Lee had a troubled expression on his face.
“We’ll sink like a rock.”
“What?” Lisa exclaimed suddenly.
Turner placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Greg’s exaggerating just a little. We won’t sink right away, but it will play havoc with the ship until we can get airborne.”
“When will that happen? We just lost our window of opportunity an hour ago!”
Lisa thundered impatiently. “That asshole Jellico has cost us precious time to get that damned space station!”
Turner shot her a warning look, before Hayes interceded.
“What space station?”
Turner looked at him sharply. “It’s nothing that you won’t find out soon enough, Commander.” He grabbed Lisa by the arm roughly and pulled her aside. “You open your mouth again, Captain, and I’ll have you confined to quarters!” He whispered in a harsh voice.
Lisa’s eyes widened at his suddenly venomous attitude.
“In a frigging battle?” She snorted. “Yeah right!”
Turner stared at her.
“Don’t test me, Captain. This mission is on a need-to-know basis. None of what transpired has at the beginning of this misision should be spread among the crew. You don’t know who might be a government sympathizer here!”
Lisa looked at him coldly.
“Is that what your worried about here? Is who is a sympathizer and who isn’t? Has it ever occurred to you that some of my crew might be a little curious as to where we’re going, and why we’re suddenly under attack by a carrier battle group?” Her mouth twitched a little from the anger and tension that reverberated throughout her body. Michael backed down just a bit. He didn’t want to see her angry now, not when they were under combat conditions.
“Your right,” he said finally. “I have no right to question your own judgment or authority on this matter. Sooner or later, they will all know won’t they?” He walked away from her, and approached her First Officer, Alex Hayes.
“Commander? I wish to apologize to you officially. I had no right to say that to you.” The man looked at him briefly before nodding.
“That’s perfectly understandable, sir. I....I guess I was being a little too nosy for my own good.”
“No you weren’t.” Michael disagreed lightly. “As First Officer of this ship, you should’ve been appraised of the mission objectives. Not be kept in the dark.”
Alex stopped what he was doing at the tactical station , and turned around.
“I wasn’t kept in the dark, actually. I knew that our mission status had been changed once we passed the Fifth Continent. I knew that you two were up to something.”
Turner stared at him with undisguised astonishment.
“You knew? My god man! Why didn’t you say something about it?”
Alex turned back to what he was doing.
“Because, sir, it’s none of my damned business. If something came into conflict with ship’s operations, than I’d squeal. Otherwise, I keep quiet.”
“Mmph.” The man murmured just as the first bomb was dropped two hundred yards aft of them, detonating underwater. A plume of water shot up into the air like a rocket; soaking a couple of ensigns that had come off duty.
“First wave approaching. That was a close one, sirs.” Raph breathed as he made the necessary course adjustments.
“Make sure that none of them hit us, or we’re dead.” Lisa ordered as she walked up the short flight of stairs and then sat back down.
“Prepare to activate the ARM system.” She glanced up at the banks of monitors that were embedded into the ceiling and saw that only half of them were functioning.
Sensor capability is less than 50%, but it’ll have to do.
Then the comm officer turned to her and said, “Captain. I’m receiving two incoming transmissions: One is from the landing party, and the other...” The man listened for a second. “The other is from Admiral Jellico.”
“Really? What does that old fart want with us now?”
“Probably our surrender.” Turner quipped.
The comm officer shook his head.
“Something about eminent destruction of the Victorious.”
Lisa was puzzled.
“So the message wasn’t directed at us?”
The comm officer nodded.
“Appears that way.”
Chapter 5
Bruan Province.
Jason sat on his bed.
Why must things be so damned difficult? Another part of him asked. Why can’t I just be who I am, and let history take care of itself?
The question resonated from deep within his mind, and for a second, he couldn’t remember where in God’s name it had come from.
Tired...that’s it…I’m just tired. Tired of the way things have come to this point, leaving nothing changed.
Jason turned the reading light that was next to his bed, watching the shadows of the suns wane like a dying ember, before total darkness claimed his sanctuary, and allowing his mind to wander like it always had.
So he started with the large mirror that sat on his dresser. It was rectangular like it always had been, reflecting what was on the dresser’s surface.
A small comm link, a tiny radio transmitter that he hadn’t used in over three months, a dust covered holo-vid screen that had gone neglected on his part, and finally, some personal affects that included a picture of him and his family.
As he focused on the photograph of his mother in her red dress and white blouse, his father wearing his Sunday’s best, and him as a 10 year-old wearing a different colored cap other than the one he was used to, and putting on a childish face, he had the urge to smack himself for being such a total zero.
An imp. That’s what I was. A stupid imp of a child that had no reason whatsoever to act more mature in the photograph that was taken by another no-name aunt.
The teen sighed.
Why has my life been so difficult as of late? Why can’t I be the normal role model– poster boy– child instead? Why did I have to allow myself to be dragged into this situation for which that I have had no control over?
Mentally kicking himself in the head would do no good. Society–as far as he knew–had no answer or a simple cure for the one emotion that everyone had been guilty of as of late: Love.
No matter how many times he had gone over it in his mind, there was no escaping the feelings that he still had for Caroline.
Love, lust, a puppy dog style crush....there were so many things to describe the attraction that he had felt towards her.
But none of them seem to fit. None of those simple words could amply underscore what he was feeling. It was something else entirely.
But what?
The answer, it seemed, was too remote to fill in what his mind so desperately wanted to embrace. To feel whole after so long.
Jason stared at the top of his desk. Something small was glowing.
Something that he had missed.
Getting up, he walked slowly over to his desk, letting the light of the thing guide him till he picked it up.
The object in question was long, irregular, and rock-shaped. It also sported some crater-like marks that were very familiar looking.
Going back to his bed, Jason laid the chain style pendant on his chest, feeling the slight warmth that it exhibited.
He smiled.
So I hadn’t lost it after the incident at the hospital. Mom must’ve put it there after they had brought me home.
But even as Jason fell asleep, even as the pendant started to glow even more, he would never know that the real truth behind it.
For some strange reason, his mother never placed it there to begin with.
It had simply just appeared on its own.
John sat on the sofa, a paperback in one hand, and a small shot glass resting quite comfortably next to him. Below his feet, lay Spot. The animal’s pointed head rested on his front paws, dark eyes half closed.
Samantha came in with a smile on her face, the tension and frustration visibly gone from her semi-exotic features.
“I went to get him for dinner, but he’s fast asleep, with that pendant.”
John looked up from his book. “What pendant?”
His wife stopped, confused by his question. “The pendant that I found in his hand...”
John shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t seem to recall such a pendant.”
Samantha turned away, wondering if what she had seen was an illusion, or was simply a figment of her own imagination.
“What are you thinking about, Jason?” The silver skinned woman had asked, seeing the pained expression on the human boy’s face.
“No,” he answered stonily. “My dog’s been severely injured by that last attack, and I don’t know if he will survive.”
The woman sat down next to him, her simple loin cloth falling slightly below her supple waist as the weight of her dagger dragged it down some. But that unconscious act did nothing to reveal her stunning beauty that he had gotten used to, since the Star colonizer Falcon had crashed almost two months ago.
“Your pet will make it. My father’s people has the brightest minds in the tribe working on him as we speak.”
“Your father’s people? What do you mean?” The boy asked.
“In your language, I’m ‘adopted’. ”
Jason glanced up at her.
“In other words, you aren’t from around here, are you?”
The silver skinned woman nodded.
“Yes. I’m from some where’s else. Although, I have no memory of it, my parents told me of a planet that is as red as your blood. At one time, they said, it was not like that. I was told it was once like yours. Your planet from eons past.”
“The Blue World?” Jason murmured. “Are you saying that your people have connections with mine?”
The woman in silver shook her head.
“I’m afraid not. Your kind has no knowledge of our existence.”
Jason stretched, feeling the tension leave his body slowly.
“Up till now.”
She smiled at him, her white teeth painfully bright in his eyes.
“Yes. And you have taught me many things that I could not have learned on my own. I thank you for it.”
She drew him close to him, wrapping her arm around him. She placed his head on her chest.
“Do you hear that?”
Jason could feel the blood rushing to his ears as his heart thundered with anxiety.
“Yes. I do.”
“That is the sound of my heart, Jason. The sound of the universe. The sound of life itself.”
“Uhh...” He stammered, not sure of how to respond to that statement.
“Listen to the sound it makes, mixing with your own, as we sit here entwined...”
He could not figure out what she meant by that. All he could remember was how surprisingly warm she felt to the side of his face, as she crooned softly to him, before he–
Woke up.
Jason’s eyes fluttered open as his mind was being dragged back to a semi-conscious state of awareness, only to discover that it was Spot curling up next to him.
He flopped his arm over his pet, petting him for a couple of seconds before sleep overtook him again.
This time he fell into a dreamless sleep.
CVB Wellington.
Francine went over the reports from the battle so far, and reported her findings to Jellico.
“The Sea Star has taken a considerable amount of damage, but is still maneuverable.”
Jellico smiled.
“Not for long, I’m afraid. Status of the cannon?”
The Weapons’ Officer studied his board.
“Ready for firing.”
“Then fire.”
“Yes sir.” And pressed a switch.
The few fighters that managed to get past the ship’s anti-aircraft defenses, dropped their loads at the point where the shields were the weakest.
Lisa cringed when they went off, throwing everyone around for a loop, as the bridge area was rocked by a near miss.
“Status!”
“Shields down by 15%, ARM circuits show fluctuations across the board!” Raphael shouted in alarm as consoles around him exploded and erupted in a shower of sparks.
“Damn it to hell!” Lee swore and went to the aft Engineering station to check on something.
“I’m reading a energy flux in the Star Jumpers. I can’t tell if it’s an overload or what!”
Turner pecked at the control console he was at, swearing over the inefficiencies with technology, the ship, and the government in general.
“Fix it! Or we’re history!”
The man nodded, his fingers flying over the surface of the console in desperation, as he tried to fight a never ending battle with Death itself.
“Got it!” He crowed. “Fluctuations have stabilized!”
Jettson looked up at Borghese.
“Captain, I’m reading a high energy reaction at three-one-zero mark four! And it’s coming right at us!”
Turner’s face turned white at hearing that bit of news.
“Activate the ARM system: Now!!”
Ralph hit it.
Or tried to.
He looked at a schematic overlay of the ship and shook his head.
“No good! I’m reading a new set of fluctuations in some of the port shield generators!”
“What?” Lee roared with surprise. “At this point in time?” He turned back to his console and saw the screen in front of him flash desperately at him.
“This isn’t good...” He wailed hopelessly.
Lisa looked at Michael with fear in her eyes.
“Is there anything that we can do? To stop it from hitting us?”
Turner stood there helplessly.
“I don’t know. With the shields in danger of failing, there’s not much hope that I can give to you.” He confessed as Hayes stepped forward.
“There might be a chance. A slim one. But a chance nonetheless.”
“What is it?” Lisa asked.
“If we can channel all available power to the forward shields and drop the aft ones all at once, we might be able to deflect one full powered shot.”
“That’s suicide!” Lee said angrily as he came down from the upper deck of the bridge. “There’s no way in hell this ship can withstand a shot from that battle carrier. That HERMES cannon it carries has an EMP carrier wave that is designed to short out the shields when they are at their weakest.”
“But if we channel all available power to the forward shields, the EMP won’t effect us at all.” Michael said quietly.
“It’ll fuck us up, that’s for sure.” Hayes commented. “We won’t have the power to repel another attack.”
Turner disagreed. “Not if we angle the forward shields.”
“Why would we want to do something like that?” Lee wanted to know.
Lisa stepped in between the two.
“It’s nothing to worry about, Commander. We have reasons for doing that. Okay?”
“Fine,” the man conceded. “But just remember that I told you so.” And he returned to his station.
Lisa turned to Michael.
“Are you sure you know what your doing? Angling the shields like that?”
Turner nodded.
“We discussed this earlier, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. But I’m concerned about the effects that it will have.”
Michael smiled.
“I wouldn’t worry too much, Lisa. This ship can take a lot of punishment.”
“Alright. Let’s do it.”
CVB Wellington.
Jellico watched the track of the shot, watching as it closed in on its target.
C’mon....c’mon.... he urged silently.
Battleship Victorious.
“Forward shields are at full strength, Captain. Angling now.”
“Tell me again how this is going to work?” Lee asked as Turner joined him at the Engineering station.
“Quiet simple, really. In short, when the shields are angled at various degrees, it’ll create a parabolic dish effect, this allowing the incoming blast to be blunted somewhat and redirected at different points and then shot outwards like a bullet.”
Lee called up the shield specifications and frowned.
“According to this, the ensuing blast will be aimed directly at the spaceport. Why?”
Turner sighed. He figured that the time for the truth was now. He hated the secrecy game as much as he hated the fucked up politicians in the Kamarian government.
“The landing party discovered a possible threat to us, and I’m having it eliminated.”
“But that’ll destroy the spaceport when that shot hits!”
“Can’t be helped.”
Raph looked at his display.
“Seconds now, ladies and gentlemen.”
The sky grew brighter as the blast ranged in, causing Lisa to shield her eyes.
“All hands brace for impact. Damage Control parties stand by.”
And pray.
CVB Wellington.
The shot disappeared from his screens, and the old man whooped with joy.
Francine restrained from sharing in on the celebration, because she was too busy conversing with Little.
“It’s done, Commander. We’ve done it!” He looked at her for a moment.
“What’s wrong?”
“The power generators connecting to the cannon blew after we fired. The weapon itself is fine, but there is no way of firing it again.”
Jellico talked with one of the men on the upper level of the bridge, before coming down to her.
“We won’t need to. I just spoke to the senior flight director, and he says that we’ll be able to use our squadrons without any further resistance. We’ll re-arm them and refuel, and then launch another air strike.”
Francine accepted that.
“All right. But I can’t help but wonder if we’re leading ourselves into a fight that we can’t possibly win.”
Jellico glanced at her.
“I thank you to keep your pessimism to yourself, Commander.”
Francine bowed slightly.
“Yes sir.”
Lia Parker raised her comm link to her lips for perhaps the third time as the hover skimmer approached the battleship.
“Admiral Turner? Captain Borghese? Come in please.”
Daniel shook his head.
“Perhaps the comm system is dead.” He offered fatalistically.
“And maybe chickens quack.” Baker retorted.
Lia put up her hand for immediate silence before the situation got out of hand.
“It’s obvious that we won’t be able to get in the old fashioned way, so we’re going to have to use one of the emergency egresses on the aft side of the ship.” She sat there for a second, trying to visualize the external layout of the vessel. “Section 32, Junction C-12. A little aft of the Number Two gun turret.”
Daniel snapped his fingers lightly.
“That’s simple. We’re only thirty yards from there. But we’ll have to abandon the hover skimmer though.”
Echoing Turner’s earlier words, the strawberry-blond haired woman said, “Can’t be helped.”
“Impact in three...two...one....” Raph counted down and held onto his console as the shot slammed into the forward shields like a charging bull, causing it to reverberate like a huge tuning fork.
“Good––God!!” Michael gushed in pure awe, as he brought a hand to his head in order to make it stop throbbing like a gong. “What a hit!”
Raph was affected in a similar way.
“Yeah. No kidding...” he shook his head some to get rid of the nausea that he was feeling and glanced at his controls.
“Shield power has been reduced by at least half. I’m reading power failures across the board. Every part of the ship was affected by that blast.”
Lisa looked at the view screen, and was taking by surprise to see that it was blanked out.
“Forward sensors are fried, Captain.” Hayes reported. “We’re getting no data streams from any of the still functioning computers.”
“That’s just great!” Lee fairly howled. “That’s just fucking great!” He stormed off towards the bridge hatch and into the lift.
The entire bridge crew was surprised by the man’s sudden outburst.
“What the hell else can go wrong?” Was the last thing he said before the lift doors finally closed.
Ralph gazed in Jettson’s direction.
“Guess he’s having a bad day,” he said as he pecked at the helm controls for a moment, before reporting that the beam shot had hit the spaceport.
The hover skimmer bumped up against the battered and scorched hull of the battleship gently, while Lia tried to access the emergency egress’s automatic control system.
But to her dismay, the panel didn’t respond to her actions like it would normally, under normal conditions.
Baker rapped his knuckles hard on the blemished armor.
“Knock, knock! Anyone in there? Landing party arriving as scheduled,” he shook his head in amusement. “Or make that unscheduled.”
Ina rose up on her haunches, steadying herself by the railing.
“Shillings is starting to come around. I gave him an emergency shot of Pironaline to dull the nerve centers around the damaged parts his leg, but it won’t last long.”
The woman looked at him in surprise.
“I thought you said that you lost your med-kit?”
“Lost it, yes. But I found a hypo with a few ampoules of pain killers. But I used them up trying to get him stabilized.”
Lia sighed.
“Okay.” Turning around to the egress’s control panel, she pressed her palm against the manual access plate and pressed slightly against it.
A slight hissing sound was head and the panel popped open.
Lia plunged her hand into the small recess, past the jungle of wires, and felt around for the release handle.
After a second, she located her objective and yanked.
The door slid open, and a bare metal portal opened like a clam tipped on its side, thus allowing the landing party a view of the inside of the ship itself.
But instead of bright lights and the gentle hum of machinery, there was nothing but the distant yammering of human voices and total darkness.
Not even the vessel’s running lights were on.
How odd.
Then the sky in back of them lit up like a solar flare at close range, blinding her.
“What the–?” She heard Daniel White exclaim as she struggled up and into the hatchway.
Halfway in, the deck underneath her trembled, and she wondered just what the ship had hit.
Or if the ship itself had been hit by something indirectly.
Then, just as quickly, the spaceport behind them–the one that they had just been to–erupted in a mushroom cloud of hot fire and corrosive winds.
Lia struggled to keep her balance as she began the process of helping the others, feeling the harsh wind nip at her exposed cheeks.
With Baker and Nelson’s help, she managed to get Shillings on board without further injury to himself, and Rose cut away the hover skimmer as soon as the rest were aboard.
The fair skinned woman looked out towards the now burning spaceport. She wondered if any of those creatures that they had encountered survived the blast.
Ina checked Brian once more before heading out towards the darkened corridor.
“Let’s get down to Sickbay.”
Lisa looked at a holo-clock that was nearby.
“20 seconds everyone.”
The battleship had finally made its way back to the launcher, and the woman got out of the way to allow for the damage control parties to come in and repair the damage done to the bridge.
“You realize that we’ll have to wait an hour before we can launch, don’t you?” Michael informed her as the ship was bolted into position.
“Screw it,” she answered curtly, staring at the now functional view screen.
“Okay,” Turner replied as he took a seat behind her, accessing some of the launch controls for the platform. “So how are we going to go about doing that?”
“Disable the automatic timer.” Lisa said simply. “That way, it’ll free up the ship and allow us to take off directly.”
The admiral nodded.
“Sounds sensible.” He got up and went to one of the auxiliary monitoring stations, and pecked at the controls for a second.
“Got the disabling code numbers for the launcher. Ship is now tied into the launch sequence,” he changed something on the board and looked at the view screen.
“Launch sequence initiated. We are go for engine startup.”
Raph took that as his cue, and hit a programmed sequence of his own.
The aft section of the ship transformed automatically, the brass screws that drove the ship now retracted within themselves–sliding inwards into specialized holding compartments.
Then that section extended outwards, straightened, and finally stopped; forming a flattened cross-like shape. Four doors opened after that, allowing square shaped thruster units to jut out just a little, before locking into place.
Davis looked at his board and nodded.
“Systems are calibrated for intra-atmospheric flight. Damage control parties are finishing up their repairs on the hull. ARM system is on standby.”
Lisa checked the tactical display.
“Shields?”
“Non-op. Redirecting that blast took all the shield power we could spare. Lee reports that he’ll have to dismantle each shield generator and rebuild them.” Hayes reported from his post.
“No wonder he was pissed off earlier. He has to literally fix everything all over again.” Lisa muttered sympathetically.
The comm officer put a hand to his ear, as the comm piece buzzed with new information.
“I’ve just received a report from Sickbay. The acting Chief Medical Officer reports that the landing party has just arrived with Brian Shillings in tow. They say that his condition is serious but not life-threatening.”
Turner looked up from his work, a frown creasing his face.
“Just how in the hell did they get back aboard ship anyway?”
Lisa shrugged.
“I’m not sure. Apparently they must’ve found a way in.”
“But–” He started.
Lisa silenced him.
“That’s not important right now, Admiral. Our main concern is to get the hell out of here. It’s already...” she checked the holo-clock. “0400. We’ve wasted enough time with Jellico, and now its time to concentrate on the mission objective at hand.” She pointed a finger at Raph as the deck finished its tilt at a 45 degree angle.
“Launch us, mister. Launch us now.”
Ralph turned back to his station.
“Yes, ma’am.” And hit the button that would tell if they would succeed or not.
With a thunderous roar of star flame, the huge vessel vibrated with increasing power as she was poised to lift off into the sky. For the first time in her operational life, she was preparing to strike out for all of humanity’s sake.
But there were some that felt that the ship was a definite threat to the sovereignty of all things combined, and thus did everything to block or hamper its progress.
But as her name implied, the Victorious refused to buckle under the pressures of the politcal monster that was now a threat to her. Instead, she–along with her crew–rose above it all. Damaged yet proud, it was ready to do battle with a threat that it hardly knew, but felt that it was in the best interest to all at heart to accomplish the impossible.
And now?
Now it was just a matter of time.
But first they needed to escape the clutches of one who was still determined to bring them down no matter what.
CVB Wellington.
Jellico couldn’t believe it.
The ship had survived his assault.
Survived!
And just when the report had come in that all of the returning fighters were service, and prepared for launch, did the impossible come through the comm circuits.
“Target is longer stationary, but in flight, sir.” The deck captain reported. “She just lifted off seconds ago.”
Jellico’s jowled features burned with rage and anger.
“Then have the light cruisers Platt, Collier, and the Rutledge launch their TORMIN’s at that blasted ship!”
Patterson hesitated for a second before issuing the appropriate orders for a counterattack.
Chapter 6
Deep Space.
Between Kamar Eight and Nine.
Light fractured for a second, before space itself was filled in with a monstrous fighter that seemed too big to be there.
But that didn’t seemed to deter Captain Jeremiah Freeman as he rotated his ship for a better bearing of his target destination.
After a few seconds worth of adjustments, he Jumped again.
Battleship Victorious.
Raph didn’t like this. Not one bit.
“Acceleration to point two. Minimum rated speed for safe atmospheric flight protocols.” He reported.
“Excellent.” Lisa murmured.
Hayes was at the modified sensor station, when he picked up something.
“Captain? Sensors have recorded the presence of two objects coming in on an intercept course.”
“Identification?” Lisa asked.
Alex brought up the information to one of the overhead monitors above her. “Nothing concrete. Except that it’s cylindrical in nature and under power.”
Michael looked at the monitor screen for a second.
Whatever it was, it was getting closer by the second. Then as the thing in question turned slightly, the man knew what was pursuing them.
“Shit!” He swore, furious at himself for his own bling stupidity. “It’s a Torpedo Missile Intercept!”
“Say what?” Hayes asked. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s a bitch of a weapon if it ever catches you with your pants down.” He glanced in Jettson’s direction.
“Launch intercepts. Immediately.” The brown haired man nodded, hitting a pair of color coded switches on his board.
In the same tubes that helped with dispersing the torpedoes, twin orange flares were ejected with swift haste. Small and thin, the countermeasures started their small engines that ignited with fury as they drove their payload of explosives towards their respective targets.
The TORMINS’ themselves had no idea what was happening as they hit the intercepts head on; exploding into small suns as they vaporized.
CVB Wellington.
Cheers went up among the bridge crew as sensors recorded the explosion almost three thousand feet up.
Jellico of all was the most noted of all in his own celebration.
Patterson didn’t like it one bit.
The fat bastard dances like a wallowing pig in a mud hole, celebrating the deaths of fine men and women aboard one of our own, and the destruction of a formidable ship.
But she was smiling a second later when a new report came in. The Rutledge’s captain was reporting that the target was still outbound and accelerating.
She heard Jellico order a second launch as she exited the bridge.
She no longer had a reason to smile.
“Second set of missiles inbound.” Alex reported. Turner gripped the side of Lisa’s command chair as the battleship wobbled to and fro like a drunken sailor, in a vain effort to evade the newest threat.
“Launch another set of intercepts,” Michael calmly said as he crossed over to the helm station’s spare chair behind Davis, and sat down.
Jettson pressed the same switches, and waited for computer confirmation.
Nothing happened.
A red light showed up on his board.
“We’ve lost countermeasure capabilities, Admiral. 20 seconds till impact.”
“Ready missile systems then. Aft tubes one and two.”
Jettson nodded.
“Missiles armed.”
“Fire.”
Launch tubes different from the ones that fired the intercepts opened, and seconds later, twin contrails of fusion fire corkscrewed through the air before slamming into their targets.
The deck beneath them shuddered as the shockwaves passed close by, unhindered.
“That was close.” Lee ventured softly to Turner as he came out of the lift. “Engineering is ready for the shift to ARM.”
“We’ll have to initiate the system at 10,000 feet. If we go over that, we could be subjected to extreme wind turbulence and quite possibly, sheer.” He quietly said. Lee went over to his Engineering station and brought up some information.
“Currently we are at 6,500 feet and rising. We should reach the 10,000 foot ceiling in a few minutes.”
“Barring any further interruptions.” Turner replied, watching the tactical monitor in front of him.
CVB Wellington.
The last trump card for the battle carrier group lay in the Light Cruiser Rutledge (308), her sister ships, the Collier (297) and Platt (296) had expended their missiles, but the damage caused was negligible.
Captain Tracy Greer stared out the forward window as the TORMIN missile system swung into position; the rack themselves carrying a fatter version of the weapon.
“Preparations complete, ma’am.” Her First Officer reported, slightly out of breath as he had finished running up the stairs.
“Fire the two, and track them to their target.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The light cruiser shuddered as two new monsters of destruction roared into the early morning sky.
At 7,000 feet, the early morning suns peeked above the cloud tops like burning jewels, highlighting the fleeing battleship as she struggled to reach the upper limits of the atmosphere, and the cold caress of space itself.
Jessica Morton relieved Travis Jettson from the Weapons’ station and sat down; keying in her identification and code number.
“Identification accepted. Weapons’ online and ready.” The computer informed her.
The young woman glanced at one of the aft sensor scans that was now having to track any incoming missiles.
Beep! went the screen.
Two red dots showed up on the screen like a pair of glowing eyes. From her perspective, they appeared to be standing still, but that was only part of the illusion. In reality, the missiles were traveling at twice the speed of sound and increasing every 30 seconds.
“Missile Alert, ma’am! Computer identifies them as a modified Type II TORMIN. Two miles and closing.”
“Nine thousand feet now, Captain.” Hayes informed her.
Lisa looked at Turner for a moment, but he shrugged indifferently.
“It’s your call, Captain.”
“Initiate the ARM sequence in 15 seconds.” Glancing at Jessica, she asked, “Are the countermeasures functional?”
The woman checked.
“One tube is now functional, the other is still under repair.”
“Launch whatever’s still available.”
Now only one intercept stood against two monsters that continued to gain on their potential victim.
However, there was a significant difference this time.
Unlike it’s companion, the first TORMIN dodged the incoming intercept and kept going, accelerating even faster.
The second one, however, wasn’t quick on the uptake and was thus the only casualty in this coming struggle.
Morton sounded the alarm the second the explosion died away, surprised that the intercept had detonated the way it was expected to.
“First TORMIN closing rapidly. I estimated 45 seconds till impact.”
Lisa swung her command chair around in her direction.
“Can you launch another intercept?”
The young woman shook her head frantically, as her fingers flew over her board.
“Negative, Captain. The launch tube has shut down due to mechanical failure.”
“Shit!” The woman cursed, slamming a fist on the padded arm of her command chair. “Initiate ARM sequence now!”
Lee typed in the ARM coding sequence and punched in the final set of passwords.
“Starting.....now.”
What looked like a battleship now was considered past tense once it changed over to Atmospheric Reconfiguration Mode.
At the point the ship’s computer core received the signal, drastic changes began to take place.
The first change involved the six plasma gun turrets, as parts of the forward and aft decks retracted, allowing the turrets to sink back into the depths of the ship itself. All the missile systems slid aside, tucked into special compartments to allow more room for the large guns as they rode six different rails that was part a complex delivery system. As they slowed to a halt, each locked into place at precisely the right moment, according to a preprogrammed location.
The second change involved the outward appearance of the ship as ablative armor (designed for intra-atmospheric use only) slid into place over the ship’s normal armor, allowing for a smooth flight into space. The changes started aft and quickly worked its way forward, until eventually it would take on the appearance of a more compact version of itself, but more streamlined.
But the only drawback was that the ship was defenseless until it reached orbit. A fact that was still resonated in Lisa’s mind as she listened to the ARM’s armor snaking its way across the bridge and sliding into place over the forward view port’s, cutting off any sunlight that was in at that moment.
“Status?”
“75% complete. 15 seconds now.” Lee reported.
15 seconds too long. Will we be able to complete the process and sustain a serious hit at the same time? She wondered.
The TORMIN angled slightly as it homed in on the weakest point in the battleship’s new armor–the point where it hadn’t been fully completed.
Kicking in emergency acceleration, the missile rode in at full power until it struck the port side of the bow where the armor had yet to engage.
Then it exploded.
Chapter 7
Bruan Province.
Jason woke up the next morning to the sounds of his alarm clock and the gentle bump! of a door being closed.
Huh? A part of his mind registered, feeling the effects of last night’s headache.
Wooziness, nausea, and butterflies in his stomach.
The organ growled audibly, reminding him of the hunger pains that it was experiencing.
Must’ve skipped dinner last night. He concluded as he slid out of bed unevenly, feeling the aches in his legs and the jittery muscles as the nerves along them were fighting for control.
Stretching a little appeared to help, and Jason was a little surprised to discover that he was wearing his clothes from yesterday.
Changing into some new ones, and checking the reserve paks in the charge unit, he went downstairs to find his mother there and Caroline talking quietly at the table.
Glancing at the holo-clock, he found that it was past nine-thirty on a Saturday.
Where had the time gone? He thought as he strolled into the kitchen nonchalantly, hoping to find something to eat.
But his mother was one step ahead of him as always and told him that his breakfast was in the microwave.
“I was in your bedroom, checking up on you. You slept like a log, honey. Are you okay?”
Jason nodded, gulping down some orange juice in a hurry, feeling the empty hollowness in stomach appease just slightly as the liquid beverage hit it with a sharp jolt.
He grimaced slightly as it rebelled only slightly from the harshness of the juice, but gurgled in response.
Caroline smirked.
“And hungry by the sound of it.” She reached over to pat his stomach lightly, causing Jason to cringe slightly at her touch. But he endured it as the microwave chimed, indicating that his breakfast was ready.
Slipping out of his chair to get it, his jacket pocket snagging on the arm’s end. But it was really the chain part of the necklace that he had slept with most of the night, and he stopped momentarily to tug it out.
Laying the elongated rock-shaped object on the table, he moved over to the microwave to get his meal.
After returning to his seat, he found that his mother had his necklace and was examining it with a critical eye.
`”Where did you get this?” She asked.
“Get what?” Jason echoed, before stuffing some scrambled eggs into his mouth.
His mother’s sharp blue eyes bore into his.
“This.” She answered, holding up the necklace.
Jason swallowed.
“At the hospital. I found it in my hand when I woke up.”
Samantha nodded.
“I know. I found it clutched in your hand when you passed out in my arms. But later, it...vanished.”
Caroline’s eyes bulged out just a little.
“Are you serious? It’s right there in your hand!” She exclaimed mildly. “How could it just disappear?”
Jason didn’t know right off.
“I have no idea,” he answered truthfully. “But the strange thing is, is that every time I hold it, I begin to have these strange visions.”
Caroline took hold of his hand.
“What kind?”
The teenager stared at his food.
“I-I’m not sure. I don’t really know what they mean, to tell you the truth. All I know is that I keep seeing myself and this woman that I hardly know, and...”
Caroline squeezed his hand.
“Shhh...it’s all right, Jason.”
His mother dangled the necklace a little while longer before giving it back to him.
“Maybe it means something.”
“I guess. Somehow, though, I feel that I belong in that other...’reality’. As if all of this is some kind of dream.” He sighed. “I dunno. It’s all very confusing.”
Samantha gazed at her son.
“Jason. Your experiences might be related to the coma your were in for a very short time.”
Caroline nodded in agreement.
“That could explain the dreams you’ve been having.”
Jason stared at the necklace, wondering if that true.
He got up.
“Where you going?” His mother asked.
Jason looked at the both of them. “Outside for a moment. I...need to think.”
He walked out before either of them could stop him.
Elarin Province.
The gentle sunlight filtered through the window, stirring the form of one man and one woman, both partially naked.
Truman opened one eye to the morning light, feeling the burning glare as the rest of him woke up to....
A delicate hand lying on his chest.
“Good morning–?” He murmured in a half confused state.
“Unless you think something is wrong with it...” His partner answered; the hand moving away and peeling away the silk sheets that draped over the both of them.
Debbie rose to her feet, feeling the strength surging through her limbs as she stretched.
“Ahhhhnnn-!” She groaned, wrapping a part of the blanket around her as she made her way to the bathroom.
Donald laid there for a second, thinking back to last night.
Whoa...mama!
He sat up slowly, seeing the blanket on the floor. The way it was positioned, it looked like it was pointing out the obvious.
“So now what?” He asked out loud, forgetting that his lover was just a few feet away.
Debbie peeked her head out of the doorway just a little, her expression puzzled.
“What‘s that mean?” She asked.
“What are we going to do? Other than having great sex?”
Debbie smiled in the mirror, while applying some makeup.
“Find a new job, I guess.”
“With our government credentials? It’ll be hard enough to find work in the civilian sector.” He got out of bed and proceeded to the railing where he saw the destruction that they had caused while in the throes of passion.
The couch, the chairs, cushions, rugs.....
All hapless victims that now lay in the state of disarray as he contemplated the hour or so worth of cleanup that he would have to do before leaving for the unemployment center in the city of Grenalt.
Then his eyes settled on the comm panel.
A light was blinking.
What the–? He thought, wondering who in the hell would be calling them at this time of day.
“Don’t tell me it’s that half-stuck up bitch that fired our ass....” He muttered under his breath as he walked down the flight of curved stairs, crossed the living room, and walked into the small study.
He tapped a button.
“Comm channel 17-B; Kamarian Science Institute. Lomar Province. Speaker on the commlink at this time is Doctor Casssandra Ellen Noyen, director of the institute. Time of recording: 0540, KST.”
“Go.” He instructed the unit, hoping that it wasn’t a chewing out session, or a rebuke.
The monitor in front of him flared to life in a haze of pixels, choppy static and lines.
Then a picture of a woman with brown hair and gray eyes gazed into the video pickup.
But to his surprise, she didn’t look angry at all. More like excited and anxious.
Why?
Cassandra’s full lips moved as she spoke.
“Donald? Pick up, damn you!” The image hesitated when it didn’t receive a prompt answer.
“Okay, look. I need you two down here as soon as possible. Debbie’s made a critical discovery in the asteroid’s primary point of origin. Please pick up, guys.” Cassandra sighed.
“All right. I’ll leave you this message in hopes that this reaches you and finds you well.”
The message ended abruptly, leaving him in the dark for a moment.
What did she hope to gain from bringing us back? Was the question before Debbie came up behind him, slipping a hand around his mid-section.
“I heard you talking to someone. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, fine. But you won’t believe who just left us a message.” He sat down in the plush chair, trying to sort out what he was going to say to her.
“Who?” Debbie asked, kneeling before him.
Donald looked down at her with a worried look.
“Cassandra. Cassandra Noyen.”
City of Jeron.
Morning found Tyler on the couch and Karen sleeping soundly on an air matress when the door was broken in violently from a well placed kick.
The sounds of splintering wood and breaking glass woke him up first, and he automatically reached for his blaster.
However, that was cut short when someone barged into the small living room and kicked the weapon out of his hand.
“Don’t move!” The individual in gray body armor snapped harshly, planting a black boot on his wrist and applying pressure to the tender flesh of that part of his arm.
Tyler gritted his teeth against the pain that his brain was sending and rasped, “What the fuck is going on here?”
The man ignored him for a second and looked over his shoulder.
“Lieutenant! I’ve subdued the terrorist responsible! What do you want me to do with them?”
Tyler looked at the man in shock.
“Say what?” He gasped, feeling the numbness creeping into his arm. “I’m no terrorist!”
The man looked at him.
“Could’ve fooled me. We got reports of a fight that broke out here last night. And we have eye witness accounts of you and the woman here on the lawn, and a middle-aged man running away.”
“That was my brother, you asshole! The former fucking president!”
“Right,” he answered, lifting his boot off of his wrist. “Tell me another one.” He hauled the man up and planted him roughly back on the sofa.
Another person entered the picture amidst the struggling woman whom was being held down by two other armored men.
“That’s enough, Sergeant. There’s no need for excessive force.” Said a surprisingly soft voice. Tyler wasn’t surprised to find that it was a woman behind the voice as she removed the visored helmet that covered her head. Golden locks of auburn hair fell around her shoulders, adding to the dark eyes which stared back at him in half-apology, as she motioned to the two men next to her.
“My apologies. My men can get overly excited with themselves when situations like this arise. No sense of control at all.”
Karen rubbed her arms to get the circulation back in them after getting back up off the floor. “Tell me about it.”
The woman looked at her before Tyler spoke up.
“What’s the meaning of this? You come barging into my parents’ house without proper authorization, and then rough the both of us up without explanation. Why?”
The commander shook her head.
“As Sergeant Quixton here said, we got a report of a fight taking place at this residence.”
“Between my brother and myself.” Tyler offered outright, not bothering to conceal the truth much longer.
“About what?” She asked, barely able to conceal the surprise in her voice.
“Politics mostly. Or the blame game. I’m not sure which was more obvious to him. But it soon became apparent that he was determined to kill me first and then ask questions later.”
The woman glanced at the now boarded up window.
“By throwing you out this window?”
Karen nodded, stepping in on the conversation.
“Yep. But Tyler didn’t stop his brother from leaving either after that.”
“Didn’t?” The woman replied, eyebrows raised.
Tyler sighed.
“If you think that I can physically stop someone who’s almost taller and stronger than me, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“Couldn’t you have knocked him out with something?”
“Tried that earlier, but he got the drop on me that time too.”
The squad commander was puzzled by that statement, but Karen came to her rescue.
“When we were a part of a much larger organization, we tried to stop the President from his own insanity. We failed.”
The auburn haired woman smiled.
“That was obvious from the start. But what I don’t understand is why would you want to?”
Tyler stewed there for a second.
“Because I believed that something had to be done to stop his attempts at gaining more power through blackmail, bribery, and murder. This planet’s population cannot survive under someone like him.”
“What relation are you to the former president then?”
Quixton sneered.
“He claims to be his brother.”
“I am!” He snapped defensively, balling his fists. “This turkey thinks that I’m making that part up!”
The woman turned to the sergeant.
“One more word out of you and I’m going to have you thrown into a holding cell when we get back.”
The man gazed at her before nodding reluctantly. She turned back to Tyler and bade him to continue.
“My name is Tyler Stevenson. At one point, I was once the leader of the group formally known as the Steel Knights.” He stopped for a moment, as if trying to digest whatever thoughts that were floating in his head.
“I suppose that it all started back when we were in the Planetary Congress, as my brother had put me and a few of my people on trial for high treason against the Kamarian government. I knew that then that the whole thing was a farce because of the way he was acting. But it seemed to make no difference to him. None of the representatives believed a word of what I said about the whole incident. I was even being told by a couple of senators in the upper dais floor to shut the hell up. Not that it mattered. My brother let me talk, even though I knew it was a lost cause.”
“So what happened next?” The woman wanted to know. She found this story very interesting even though she was a part of the Special Defense Forces. Morals aside, she wanted to know the truth, even though it meant disobeying direct orders.
“Simple,” the raven haired woman next to him started. “After a rather long speech, we were told of the choices of execution. But the funny thing was that the ranking government official had to be the one to announce the choice of death.” He laughed quietly. “Come to think of it, I couldn’t imagine that my own brother would be my executioner. But he was. Just after a few hours of delays, he came back up to the podium to announce the form of execution. Then...”
The woman sat down on the edge of one of the living room chair. The men that were with here followed suit around the area– trying to find a place to sit.
Relax.
“Then what?” The woman prodded.
Tyler exhaled slowly.
“Then one of the side chamber walls imploded and Enforcers broke through. Soon after, a firefight erupted between them and their government sanctioned counterparts. After that, the head of the Enforcers– Captain Terry Westfield– told my brother that he was under arrest and charged with conspiring to blow up the Planetary Congress. A fact that he backed up when he showed one of the detonator paks. That drove him over the edge and he escaped.”
The woman sat there in silence.
“It’s hard to believe that President Stevenson would go to these extremes just to gain power...”
Karen studied the woman for a second.
“So who are you?”
“Captain Amanda Teller. Special Defense Forces affiliated with the Defense Committee.”
“Senator Norris, eh?” Tyler muttered. “That guy is nothing but a black sheep in the game of politics. There is nothing that he wouldn’t do to gain a piece of the action.”
Amanda shot him a hurtful look. “Do you really, truly, believe that?” She asked.
Tyler hesitated for a moment. “There is nothing to suggest that his intentions are pure. The way he has had things done in the past, would keenly suggest that he has a personal agenda of his own.”
“No doubt about that.” Karen agreed quietly.
The woman understood at that point.
“So am I just as bad just because I work for him?”
“Didn’t say that,” the man countered easily. “I’m saying that the man himself is not to be trusted.”
Quixton snorted sarcastically. “I told you this guy was going to be trouble. But would anyone listen to me?”
“Shut up, mister. I mean that. Everyone on this planet is entitled to their own opinion. Even if it is a bit misguided.” She held his gaze as she said it.
Tyler brushed aside the insult, while Karen bristled slightly.
“Last time I heard, people were shot for that.”
Amanda checked her rifle for any obstructions before answering him.
“That’s right. But it depends on the circumstances.”
Karen had to laugh at that one.
“Your joking right? Kamarian Law 20648, subsection 5 states: ‘No anti-government conversations or spiels of any kind will be tolerated in public or private with any government sanctioned agency or per personnel. Failure to comply with this law will be executed with no questions asked.’ Dated July 15th, 2643. By then President Andrew Peterson.”
Amanda was impressed with the woman’s sense of total recall.
“Your well acquainted with history. Especially classified government records dating back over 300 years ago.” There was no doubt in the woman’s mind that she was being threatened.
“It’s a knack. In my former line of work, it was a useful trade. I’d like to think that I should know what I’m going to be up against.”
The captain nodded slowly, realizing that she was being targeted deliberately because of what she was. Then she lightened up unexpectedly.
“Well, I guess that I can’t win at everything now, can I?”
Tyler shrugged indifferently.
“I guess not.”
The three gazed at each other for a minute, before Amanda rose to her feet.
“In that case, we need to get going since everything here is under control.” She gripped Tyler’s hand. “Don’t hesitate to call us if things get out of hand again. Okay?”
The former leader of the Steel Knights smiled thinly.
“Sure. I won’t forget.”
“Good. In that case...” She waved to the others and they left as quickly as they had arrived.
Teller followed suite.
With the exception of the door shutting gently against the broken door frame, silence reigned in the house.
Tyler sat there for a minute longer before getting up.
“I’d better clean up the mess they left behind. It would make no sense in leaving it like this.”
Karen rose to her feet as well.
“I’ll help.”
Chapter 8
Battleship Victorious.
Lisa Borghese came to, feeling an egg-sized bump on her head.
All around her, alarms hooted and howled.
Somewhere in a far off distance the piercing shriek of air escaping from a hull breach.
She heard Michael screaming as the vessel dipped horrendously down like a wounded bird, and the explosions that were being felt even as she staggered back to her feet.
“D-damage report!” She gasped as she felt the symptoms of a headache coming onto her full blown.
Or it could’ve been a migraine.
“We have a hull breach in the bow! Decks Seven and Eight! We’ve also got one here on the bridge in the lower level, and several others have been detected aft. We’ve lost ship wide communications, and Commander Lee reports that we have also lost maneuvering capabilities!” Alex called out while holding onto his console for stability.
“We’ve lost?!?” She asked above the howl of the winds that permeated the bridge.
“No!” He hollered back. “Not if we re-route the damaged circuits and apply maximum thrust to the impulse engines!”
Lisa managed to make her way to her command chair before the vessel pitched violently due to increased air turbulence. That caused her to hit the back of her command chair at a wrong angle, and she felt the muscles of her back protest mildly from the unexpected abuse. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she watched the view screen take a spiraling dive as the ship started to lose altitude at a terrifying pace.
“What would that do?” She asked in a loud voice before the emergency bulkheads closed off the breach and she was able to speak normally again.
“It’ll give us an uncontrolled burst of acceleration until we clear the atmosphere. It’s that, or risk a shit load of trouble once we crash land back into the ocean– !” Hayes said as he began to assess the damage reports that were starting to come in.
Lisa accessed a an overlay screen above her and found that to be mostly accurate to a certain degree. The tricky maneuver would give them the necessary burst of speed, but in the end they would be rocketing out of control for the next ten seconds.
Better that than facing down Jellico again.
Lisa knew that they wouldn’t survive a second encounter with him.
“Do it.”
Alex nodded to Raphael, and the man punched in the firing sequence.
“Hold onto your butts, people. Three...two...one...” At that point, the impulse drives fired, and in the next second, the ship accelerated like a bat out of hell; the gee forces pinning everyone into place before the artificial gravity started to kick in.
“Ugh!” She moaned as she felt the sudden empty feeling take hold of her entire body as they blasted into the upper limits of the atmospheric envelope.
The view screen in front of her showed a hint of what lay ahead, as the last wisps of a planetary atmosphere gave way to interstellar space.
“Initiate Starship Reconfiguration Mode immediately!”
This time it took an ensign at the main engineering station, Ralph, and Jessica Morton to start the transformation sequence.
What had taken place in ARM, was quite different as the battleship changed into its starship configuration.
The armored shell that protected the ship from the stresses of atmospheric travel retracted completely as the entire ship began to physically change in appearance.
The first changes to take place was both sides of the battleship bulged out slightly in a slanted box-like shape.
Star Jumper configurations.
The Engineering section also grew exponentially, but remained the same as the impulse drives finally revealed themselves while locking into place. A moment later, they were automatically test fired for one second.
The mid-section of the battleship lengthened almost by command, as the bow of the battleship opened up like a petal flower, as all sides unhinged, forming a claw- like extension.
But in reality, they were the armored doors for one gigantic energy cannon that was situated in the bow.
On the aft and fore decks of the battleship, armored partitions rose into place, exposing numerous missile launch tubes. On both sides of the forward and aft decks, photon torpedo tubes swung out of their hidden compartments, rotating in a complete 360 before locking into position.
The plasma gun turrets had a new role to play in this configuration, as they slid into position at the bottom of the ship as secondary weapons’ batteries.
Ralph studied his readouts and nodded his approval.
“Configuration to starship mode complete.”
Lisa decided that a little payback was in order.
“Ready weapons.”
Turner looked at her.
“That’s a little extreme, Lisa.”
The woman’s dark brown eyes flashed at him in anger.
“That fat bastard down there messed me and my ship up pretty bad! I think it’s time I paid him back for all the pain he’s caused me.”
Michael raised his eyebrows at that.
“By initiating a planetary bombardment?”
Borghese smiled mischievously.
“Something like that.”
CVB Wellington.
Commander Francine Patterson stared at her monitor screen, wondering what to say next.
She had heard from many of the passing gun crews that the Rutledge had scored the decisive hit and the battleship was heading back down–having lost all propulsive capabilities.
But that changed when she got a call from the bridge.
“The damned ship just took off like a bat out of hell just a few seconds ago! All hands return to battle stations!”
Francine groaned.
Will he ever learn?
“Combat status!” Jellico barked. This whole battle exercise was turning into a debacle of unimaginable proportions.
“Three destroyers, three light cruisers are still action capable. The rest of the battle group are still conducting repair and rescue operations with the other ships as I speak.”
Jellico growled at what the CIC Officer was telling him.
This wasn’t good at all.
“And the battleship?”
The helmsman looked at his displays.
“Lost track of her. I think she just went interstellar.”
The fat man snorted.
“Unlikely. I’ll bet that bitch of a captain has something up her sleeve...”
No sooner had he said that, did the sky grow immeasurably bright as the battle carrier was hit by successive hits from above, and one of the escort cruisers took a direct hit seven thousand yards off her port quarter.
Exploding like a fireball in the early morning sky, the man shielded his eyes from the glare until the forward flight deck erupted in fire. Several parked Cominske R-7’s exploded like fireworks as stray laser blasts hit their fuel cells.
Francine stumbled onto the bridge, as the ship was rocked by several direct hits. Smoke filled the bridge area and she coughed, before she grabbed the nearest crewman closer to her position.
“I just heard an explosion! What the hell hit us?” She demanded, but the man was in a daze. She turned and found Jellico staring out at the blazing forward deck of the battle carrier. The man appeared to be in a semi-catatonic state. There was a nasty cut on his forehead.
“Admiral–?”
“It’s gone. All of it....gone...”
Patterson watched out the forward view port as the remaining ships of Battle Group 16 struggled to get out of the way of the incoming fire that still raked the ocean’s surface.
“Helm! Come to new course 127 mark 6, all ahead full!”
The injured woman at the helm console struggled to comply with her order.
“We’ve got damage in Main Engineering! I’m only able to bring the engines up to half speed!”
Francine moved the admiral to one of the empty console seats, and sat in the command chair for the first time in her career.
As she watched the battle carrier slowly move away from the affected area, she could hear Jellico muttering, “I can’t beat him. No matter what I have...I just keep getting beaten...”
The woman sat there, hoping that wouldn’t happen to her.
She touched a comm stud on the arm.
“Sickbay...”
The firing had stopped.
Lisa looked at the damage reports with a certain air of smugness.
“No response from the surface. It appears that the bombardment had worked.”
Turner nodded.
“Looks that way. But I doubt that Jellico will be driven off for very long, once he realizes that we are no longer here.”
Borghese studied the monitors above her.
“Prepare to Star Jump in two minutes.”
Michael complied, seeing the immediate change in her from a battle hardened warrior, to a mission coordinated Kamarian naval officer. After talking with Ralph on the matter, he turned back to her.
“Course plotted to Kamar II, Captain.”
Lisa smiled. Now comes the truth in the matter.
“Jump.” She ordered.
Shields operating at full strength, energy ribbons crackled and spat incoherently from the spatial discharges that were coming together for the first time in their short infinitesimal lives.
But the trick was to get them synchronized for the task ahead.
The slanted box-like extensions that were now part of the ship, glowed brightly for a couple of seconds.
Space around the newly configured battleship froze, then all points of light appeared to be sucked inwards at incredible speeds--leaving a brief silhouette of the Victorious herself.
With a silent cold bang of white light, it vanished.
Bruan Province.
Jason looked up at the sky, catching a glimpse of a pin prick of white light glowing brightly for an instant and then vanish.
The asteroid? He wondered. Then he shook his head. No, that can’t be right. The thing is still coming. Determined to destroy us all.
“Jason?” A soft, feminine voice called out, and he spun around; only to be confronted by Caroline.
For the first time in his life, he saw her in a completely different way than he could understand. And it wasn’t the fact that she was dressed completely different either. (She was sporting a rose colored tee-shirt that somehow rode high up to her mid-section, and a pair of blue jeans. Instead of pumps that once graced her feet, she was in a pair of white high-top sneakers. Her jet black hair was tied in the back by a red ribbon. But that allowed a few strands of hair to partially obscure the diamond earrings that were pierced into her ears.)
But it was something else entirely.
Emotionally wrong? Or is it just the fact that I’ve grown up too fast for my liking? The boy wondered.
He turned away from her, tightening his grip on the necklace. The various edges bit into the soft flesh of his hand, but he ignored the messages of discomfort that his mind was sending.
“Please don’t turn away from me,” Caroline pleaded, the worry in her emerald colored eyes evident as she approached him slowly. “Surely there is something I can do to help you with your....problem.”
Jason tried not to smile at that one. But failed nonetheless.
If it was only that simple. Yes, let’s help the teenager with the crazy dreams of the future...
If he could call it that.
At this point, he wasn’t sure what to think of the images his mind was still processing even now.
Too chaotic...
Impenetrable...
Still...
Unsolvable?
Jason felt Caroline’s gentle hand on his arm as she turned him around, so that she could see his face.
See the confusion that she knew existed in his beautiful blue eyes.
“Jason. Look at me.” She implored hopefully, knowing that she was just as confused as he.
She took hold of his face and forced him to look at her.
“Please?”
Jason sighed.
“Very well. What is it?”
Hope flared in the young girl’s heart as she finally reached him.
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
Jason looked deep into her eyes, trying to picture himself as he was in the future. That is...if that future still existed.
All he could see was a troubled thirteen year-old with a lot to cope with, and no way to properly communicate his mounting bewilderment without sounding crazy.
“I...I can’t. At least, not until I can find out what is causing these dreams to happen whenever I fall asleep.”
Caroline sighed affectionately. She took his hand and covered it with hers.
“You’ve got to quit fooling yourself, Jay. Your psychosomatic experiences is just the trauma that your mind had to cope with while you were comatose. There’s nothing wrong in admitting that. I won’t hold it against you.”
Jason tore his hand away abruptly, startling the girl a little.
“But don’t you see? It’s nothing like that at all.” He made a fist. Caroline thought that he was going to lash out, but then she realized that it wasn’t the case at all.
He was just releasing some of his frustrations.
Flexing his hand slowly, he could feel the tension leave his body, but his mind still remained clouded by his emotions.
“I can still feel her presence every time I go to sleep. I’m sure of that now. Someone that I haven’t met yet. And in every dream, she’s there. Talking to me like I’m some savior to her people...”
Caroline was baffled.
“What are you talking about?” She could feel him slip out of her grasp the minute he started to talk about this mystery person as if she had some special connection to him.
And what about us? Where do I stand in this? The girl asked silently, wishing that she could understand what he was talking about.
She watched him quietly, waiting for an answer.
Jason glanced at the necklace that he had in his hand.
So simple. Yet so mysterious. Is this the Key that she was talking about? The dreams were starting to come back to him now. For some strange and perhaps unknown reason, he was beginning to remember. In bits and pieces anyway.
Why now?
“I’m not sure. There’s so much I have to tell you, I don’t know where to begin. It’s so confusing.” He inhaled slowly, and then exhaled. “All I know is that I have a connection with what’s happening to this planet in particular, and the future events that I keep seeing in my dreams.”
“And the necklace?” She asked, accepting what he was saying as half of the answer that she was looking for. Caroline noticed that he held the thing almost reverently.
“A clue of some sorts. Or an answer to this whole mess. I can’t be sure what it represents.”
“What about me?” She asked in a small voice. “Where do I stand in this?”
Jason looked back at her, seeing how the choice in topic conversation had affected her.
He didn’t mean to hurt her feelings.
Jason watched a thin trail of tears roll down her slightly rounded cheeks, and he went to her.
“I’m sorry, Caroline. I didn’t mean...” He stopped to gently wipe the tears from her face with his hand.
“Forgive me.” He whispered.
Caroline looked at him, her eyes glistening.
He bent his head down.
She raised hers. Their lips met.
They kissed.
Watching from the window, Samantha turned her head away from the touching scene.
Emotions of a completely different kind roiled within her.
But it wasn’t anger.
Samantha nodded to herself, feeling her heart skip a beat as her mind replayed the same image of her son kissing another girl.
It wasn’t possible. But it wasn’t unthinkable either.
How is it possible? Were things that obvious when I was young?
Her son had changed. No, something within him changed. But it was something mysterious and good. Not bad or evil.
Fourteen years old in a couple of weeks and already in love.
The woman sighed.
The great expanse would prove to be no testament to the thing as it continued its journey towards its destination. Space before it was nothing but a velvet blanket, full of twinkling stars, planets and many other celestial bodies.
Things that were considered a tempting target to a large body of dense iron and nickel.
Soon, very soon, a long journey would end.
Kamarian Science Institute.
Cassandra tapped her manicured fingers on the keyless pad in front of her; her anger growing by the second.
Where the hell are they? She thundered in her own mind as she watched the computer replay the black hole/vortex simulation over for the 305th time.
Each time she saw it, she wondered if she would be going crazy any time soon.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two, very familiar people come into her office.
Too late, she thought tiredly.
To put off any further ease with the situation, she put on her best face and smiled.
“Nice of you two join me. Did you enjoy your time off?” Her smile broadened as she said it. But in her heart, it was the pain that still echoed greatly.
Pain at seeing a chance lost because of her hardened attitude towards a particular person and the inability to express her feelings towards another. She figured that this is what drove Deborah into Donald’s arms.
Or vice versa
Her former assistant nodded, while Debbie’s expression turned slightly hostile.
“Fine,” she answered, feeling the sudden urge to snap back at her. But she held back. “And yours?”
The hostility surged forward as the woman bristled inwardly.
Why is it that we are always butting heads? Is it because we both love the same man? And does she know this?
She kept this thought to herself. Instead she replied, “Not as much as yours. I had to spend most of the last two days analyzing your probe readings on the asteroid.”
Almost immediately, her composure changed to one of curiosity.
“Really? What did you find?”
Noyen transferred the data from her office station to the wall screen that was in her office.
“The asteroid’s final trajectory was pinpointed to a black hole some 4,000 light years from the Kamarian star system. While going through some of the data, I accidentally hit the keys, and the simulation changed.”
Keying in the next sequence, the three watched as the stomach-churning maneuvers as the computer sucked them into the vortex and spit them back out.
While the other two were in the process of regaining their bearings, Cassandra extrapolated what they were seeing.
“From what we uncovered, this black hole is something of a doorway to this other planet that we believe is only 3464 light years away from here.”
“Manned flight should take about....30 months at most.” Debbie figured offhand.
“35.” Donald corrected graciously, before Noyen step in. The woman glared at him for a moment, but he just shrugged. Cassandra tapped her foot lightly; a signal that she was growing impatient with the both of them.
“Finished?” She asked acidly. She saw the way he looked at her, and it made her even more angry. Why does he do that to her in front of me? Is he consciously aware of the way he tortures me so?
Debbie nodded. “Yes.”
Cassandra pushed her way between them. “Okay then.” She pointed to some of the data streams that were junctioned in tandem with star system that was presently listed.
“Y-6079. One sun, six planets. The fourth, currently uninhabited is the source of the asteroid. However, there has been some disagreement on this issue by the rest of the staff.”
“Figures,” Debbie said softly as she scrutinized the screen. “How fast was the revolutions?”
“The what?” Noyen asked, perplexed.
“The speed at which the computer was displaying the information at the time of entry.” Debbie expanded some, tapping a finger on the fourth planet thoughtfully. “Very unusual makeup. A ringed planet? Isn’t that supposed to be rare?”
Donald nodded.
“I believe so.”
Cassandra called up the necessary information.
“It took the computer approximately four minutes to complete the journey.”
“Four minutes?” The younger woman answered in astonishment. “That’s impossible!”
Cassandra smiled. “That’s what some of the staff said. But it’s all here. The data streams, everything.”
Debbie Peters studied her findings up close and personal while Donald was busy with the preliminary data streams. While the two were engrossed, Noyen kept looking at her monitor from time to time to see if anything had changed, but so far it was a moot point.
Nothing had changed.
And that was the frustrating part.
Between this and trying to sort out my feelings....
It in the long run, it would be a losing battle.
But for which one?
Then Debbie’s strong and confident voice cut into her personal reverie, leaving the woman a bit flustered.
“It’s a transwarp conduit of some kind.” She said with a certain amount of conviction.
“A what?” The other two chorused in shock.
Debbie brought up another diagram.
“While looking at the results of the computer simulation, I found some unusual subspace wave variances that were embedded in a standard spectrographic scan. These variances bear an almost uncanny resembled to the ones in our own Star Jump drive system. I suspect that because of these variances, this black hole is not as it seems.”
Cassandra laughed.
“Preposterous!” She shook her head. “How can a black hole be different?”
Debbie tapped the wall screen monitor for more information.
“I-I’m not entirely sure....yet.” She scrutinized the diagram which had been pushed aside by a simple command. “But I believe that this was created artificially somehow.” She brought up a probe scan of the black hole and a nebula that was a beautifully painted vista of stars, gases, and cosmic dust clouds.
“The Stardust Nebula.” Noyen murmured, feeling the elation and awe that she had felt when she had first laid eyes on it.
“Right,” Debbie answered. “A kaleidoscope of gases, stars, and a mix of other stellar matter that is floating in one gigantic cosmic soup.”
“So what does this have to do with the discussion at hand?” Donald asked.
“Quite simply, this whole nebula is being drawn slowly towards a real Class 10 spatial anomaly.” She brought up a distant probe scan of a part of space that was quite close to the nebula. Running it at normal speed, they could see that it was indeed being drawn by some unknown force.
A force that was revealed by the computer as a black hole. It wasn’t a classic spiral like others, but more like a misshapen tear.
But it was there.
“How can this be a Class 10? It looks like a piece of shit!” Cassandra said disbelievingly.
Debbie touched the screen, accessing some more data streams.
“Has a point seven-three-three gravity variance in the surrounding quantum fields.” She looked at Noyen. “Anything above a 700 rating is a Class 10. Regardless of its size.”
“Oh.”
Peters turned back to the screen, and accessed a comparison chart.
“The whole point is that black hole– the one that’s 4000 light years away– was apparently constructed and given a duplicate set of gravity variables that is normally found in real ones. The difference between the one in the Stardust Nebula, and this one is the phase shifts that are constantly in motion. A normal black hole usually phase shifts periodically into the ultraviolet spectrum. But this one shifts in the lower broad band spectrum– by at least two bands.” She accessed a stellar cartography chart and nodded.
“By my calculations, it’s contained in the red and blues. There is also noticeable tips in the black and yellow. But according to these scans done in the past month, that only happens once every 173.6 hours.”
“Seven days?” Donald wondered. “Then it’s only done it 12 times in the last three months.”
Cassandra was puzzled. “That doesn’t explain its artificial nature. Why would anyone want to build something that resembles a black hole, but isn’t in this frame of reality?”
Debbie was at a loss for once in the discussion. She glanced in Donald’s direction for help.
He shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I flunked Quantum Research and Theoretical Physics in college.”
Debbie slapped him lightly on the arm in annoyance. “I can only guess, but it’s a shot in the dark.”
“So shoot.” Cassandra prompted tightly, suddenly not satisfied with the way things were going. The way it was heading, she was certain that she wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Well the first clue is the speed of the computer simulation. At four minutes, it was almost instantaneous by my books, which gave me that uncomfortable feeling that this anomaly is more than it seemed. The time difference, four minutes compared to 35 months indicates that this is indeed a conduit that was used as recently as eight months ago. The energy decay around the mouth would seem to indicate that. The second was the selectiveness of the star system that we were ejected from. I’d be happier if we ended up in the middle of nowhere, knowing that this was just a natural occurring phenomenon. But it isn’t.” She pointed to the inset of the six planet star system.
“That leaves no question that someone here uses this as some sort of entry point into our side of the galaxy.”
“But why?” Donald wanted to know.
“I’m not sure.” Debbie admitted finally, her mind drained of every theory conceived so far. In reality, she was feeling the burn.
Gazing at the displays that were set before her, she sighed. “One thing is certain though: We’re a target."
Chapter 9
WNN.
After two weeks, you’d think this place would be buzzing with more activity, Corsairs thought as he stepped through the door that would eventually lead him to the studio.
It was a place that he had worked for the last five years, and now he was wondering if things would ever be the same.
Especially since Katherine was gone.
He was still thinking when he unexpectedly ran into Alfred.
“Uh...hi.” Said the man in a distracted voice. He was viewing a data pad when the collision took place. “Welcome back. Did you enjoy your time off?”
Frederick nodded absently.
“Mostly. I took the time to do a little fishing with my folks, and spent a little more time at the beach...”
“Anything else?”
“Nope.”
Alfred tapped on the pad.
“If your interested in knowing, during the past couple of weeks have been hell. There have been rumors of the President being sighted in five provinces so far, and the deaths that have been piling up all over the world.” He went to the next screen.
“The Navy has denied of a conflict that took place in or around the deserted First Continent. Scattered reports are also confirming-unofficially of course-that the existing spaceport there was destroyed.”
Corsairs was confused.
“The President was sighted–? Deaths–? Naval conflicts–?” He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
Alfred Hitchcock sighed. “Trust me on this. Since you were gone, all hell has broke loose.”
“Tell me about it.”
The director checked his watch. “I’ve got a lunch break coming up. Care to join me?”
“Sure.”
Outpost 42.
The servo drill whined for a moment until Hagman put the instrument down.
Three weeks of this and this is the thanks that I get.
The Star Jumper assembly was still in shambles after one of his engineers suggested a complete refit.
Next to him sat one of the six hyper drive modules. An unfortunate victim in this lengthy process. Not aesthetic in design as he liked it to be, but it was functional to say the least. Rectangular in shape, and round on the corners, it allowed easy access to the most complex components and circuitry ever thought of.
He drilled into one of those ends of the three foot module, and laid down the implement. Afterwards, he opened the access panel and peered into a world of wonder and awe.
Blue surges of energy greeted the engineer as he dipped one insulated hand into the thing’s thin wires and circuitry, and began to work his way through the module at a selective pace.
So far, according to his previous scans, there was nothing wrong with the Star Jumper module itself. Well, at least, not this one.
Five more to go, and yet he still had to contend with the drive’s main power core.
“Coffee?” Someone behind him asked.
“Black, with two sugars and cream.” He responded immediately while closing up the module. He ran a metal sealer across the top part of it, before someone handed him a covered mug. Steam rose from the top as he took a tentative sip and groaned outwardly as he laid back.
“Gods....that hits the spot.”
Lieutenant Jerry Price smiled, the officer bars still fresh on his engineer’s suit.
“I appreciate the confidence you have shown in me in the last couple of weeks.”
Hagman smiled. “Officer training already gone to your head, mister?”
“No sir. Just want to thank you for recommending me for the promotion.”
“You’ve already done that.”
Jerry’s face flushed. “Sorry, sir.”
“Don’t fret it. You’ll get used to your new rank very soon.” Zeke took a gulp of the still hot coffee.
“How are the repairs coming, sir?”
Hagman grunted a little at that particular question. “You should ask. Getting there is becoming a little slow, considering the shortage of parts on hand.”
“I hope that Freeman gets to Kamar IV in time. Otherwise, it’ll be all over the rest of us.”
Zeke looked at him. “I wouldn’t worry. Jeremiah’s a pretty capable on his own. I’m pretty sure that he’ll be okay.”
Folded space. Grid two-zero-zero.
“Coming up on Jump point. Please prepare for de-acceleration in 20 seconds.” A computer voice interrupted Freeman’s sleep.
Despite the roominess in the cockpit module, the man still felt cramped.
“Uhh–?” He moaned as he shook off the effects of his slumber, and looked at the forward control console.
Nothing out of the ordinary, but one part of the console was beeping for attention.
Jeremiah checked to see what was so urgent.
“Jump point in ten seconds...”
Oh, yeah. He thought, as he reached for a small side lever in front of him.
The fighter shuddered slightly as the drive shut down, and the ship Jumped back into normal space with the same silent bang.
“Mass alert. Sensors are detecting two large bodies bearing 223 mark 15.”
Freeman glanced up and saw a large blue gas giant coming up rather fast.
Kamar V.
It was Kamar V...
“Slowing down to half impulse, cutting in primary thrusters....now.” Almost immediately, the Goliath began slowing down, arresting the speed to minimal headway.
“Okay....changing course to 113 mark 5.” The squadron commander entered the corrections and watched as his fighter approach a massive skeletal structure that looked empty, but was actually just part of an elaborate illusion.
There were huge box-like structures attached to the outer part of what was a huge superstructure that was rectangular on one side, square on the other, overlapping a few times to produce a complex weave of metal and towers.
To his left was shipyards and berthing rings, and the center was nothing but a small dumb bell-shaped structure which was pulsating with power.
Freeman scanned the surrounding area until he found what appeared to be an airlock.
“Nothing of consequence, but I’m going to play it safe just the same.” He maneuvered the Goliath up next to it carefully, and latched on.
Thunk!
Hisssss....
He popped the hatch open and was instantly greeted by a cold blast of air that made the skin on his hands crawl.
“O-o-o-h....” He chattered, feeling the warmth of his body escape into the frosty air.
Better get a life suit.
Steeling himself against the numbing cold, he popped his head back into the cockpit, and opened a small box behind the acceleration chair.
A topaz-blue suit reflected the light in the module, glinting in the man’s eyes for a moment.
He dragged it out, and slipped it on as fast as he could.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he could feel the cold-resistant material act as an incubator for his body, allowing him to maintain his body temperature, and giving him much more mobility.
Pulling out a portable hand lamp, he made his way down the darkened corridor, giving him a wide vista of the area around him.
Narrow beams of white light bounced off the bare steel walls, giving the captain the impression that there was no paint on them to begin with.
Just to be safe, he activated the homing beacon on his suit’s utility belt, allowing him a way back to his ship.
He ducked his head into the open door, and found some pile crates and other various pieces of equipment that he didn’t recognize.
Nothing here that would provide a useful purpose, so he went down the corridor at a slow pace, and found what he was looking for.
The plaque on the wall said, ‘Engineering Control.’
Bingo!
He went in, and was greeted by a bank of darkened power consoles and monitor screens.
Not good. I expected this place to be at least somewhat active....
He managed to make his way to the auxiliary control system without tripping over anything, and after a few minutes of fiddling, he got the console working properly.
Piece of cake! He thought excitedly, and started accessing the primary diagnostic programs that were embedded in the computer.
One minute later, he found nothing wrong with the console and decided to power up.
But slowly.
The view screen came on in a flurry of static and white noise that lit the room with an eerie feeling of loneliness.
After it cleared, he used a simple scan to check out the rest of the complex.
So far, there was no sign of use or damage for that matter, but cosmic dust was evident on most of the steel rafters– a sign of disuse.
“Mmph. That’s the government for you.” He shut down the terminal and continued on his quest.
Finding the parts bay was no problem.
But it soon became clear once he got there, there was nothing usable that he could bring back to Outpost 42.
He picked up a power converter, and realized that it was badly outmoded.
Fifty years old by my estimates. He thought, looking at the corroded contact points.
He set it down on the maintenance table that it lay on, and checked some of the lockers that were scattered in the bay. There were machine repair shops and engine rebuilding pits that were dark.
In the way back he came across a large shape that he couldn’t quite make out. Playing his hand lamp up and down the large object, he discovered a large green tarp had been thrown over it, and judging by the mildew that had grown on it, it appeared that it had sat there for almost four years.
His ears picked up the quiet drip of engine coolant falling onto the debris strewn permacrete, and he couldn’t resist the urge to take a much needed peek beneath the tarp.
What he saw surprised him.
But what was more surprising was the crack on the head he received as someone clubbed him from behind.
Bruan Province.
The walk home proved to be more of a trip down memory lane, as his mind drew him back almost three months prior to the same spot in the street that he had to retrieve his cap from.
Still, there was no hover car, or an enraged driver determined to run him down...
No nothing.
Jason continued on.
“Is he coming?” Caroline whispered, taking another peek from behind the drawn curtain. Her dark brown hair was flowing freely around her small shoulders, as she strived to quit bouncing up and down in barely suppressed excitement.
Samantha opened the door slightly and took a look.
“Nope. I don’t see him anywhere.”
Caroline backed away from the window.
“I wish he’d hurry. Waiting is something that I’m not comfortable with.”
Jason’s mother gripped the girl by her shoulders and smiled slightly.
“Well if your ever going to be a part of this family, you’ll have to have to show a little bit of patience in this house.”
Caroline’s emerald eyes blinked with surprise for a second.
“What are you saying?”
Samantha leaned against the door.
“You love my son, don’t you?”
“W-well, yes...of course I do.”
Samantha’s eyes softened.
“I know you do. I saw you kissing him out on the lawn yesterday, after our little discussion.”
The teenaged girl’s expression reddened just a little bit.
“Jason was trying to tell me the reason behind his dreams. He was so...fixated on this woman that he claims that he has a connection to, but he won’t tell me who she is.” She stared at the floor for a second. “I feel that I’m losing my hold on him.”
Samantha Scott gazed at her.
“Your not. Jason....well...he...” She trailed off, trying to find the right words. After a minute, she said, “Caroline, honey. He’s just a boy at 14 years-old boy with dreams and fantasies. I’m sure that’s all they are.”
Caroline wasn’t convinced.
“I realize that your trying to defuse the situation with theoretical possibilities, but I won’t accept that. Every time I go over the conversation in my mind, I’m finding myself convinced that he is actually seeing events that haven’t happened yet.”
“Are you saying that my son has powers of clairvoyance?” The very idea was ludicrous, and even she had a hard time believing that one.
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that–” Caroline started, but was interrupted by a knock on the door, and a familiar, “Hello! Anyone in there?”
Caroline squealed sharply with surprise, and ran for the kitchen.
Samantha took a deep breath, and counted to three before opening the door.
Her son was standing there with an amused expression.
“I was beginning to suspect that everyone had disappeared or something.”
Her mother smiled, and hugged her son. “No we haven’t left.” And hugged him even more.
Jason started to suspect something was up.
“Mom? What’s going on? I’m usually not hugged this much...” his voice sounding muffled by her light sweater.
Samantha extricated herself from her son, and nodded. “There’s a reason for that.”
“Oh?”
“Do you like surprises?” His mother asked.
“Yes.” Jason said, feeling the excitement build.
“You’ll like this one.” She answered, opening the door and gestured him to follow.
Chapter 10
Kamar V.
Whatever passed for consciousness, seemed like a fleeting ghost skirting the edges of his sight, as he opened his eyes for what appeared to be the first time in a long while.
In his mind, it felt like an eternity.
“Awake? Good. I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to regain consciousness. Sorry about the knock on the head, but I don’t like people snooping around my ship.” A voice said.
Freeman groaned softly, feeling the aching numbness on the back of his skull as he tried to raise himself to a sitting position.
It wasn’t the most gratifying thing that he could have done, but it helped with the blood rush that had finally reached his brain.
Then he felt a warm hand on his forehead as it applied a damp cloth to a cut that he had gotten.
The throbbing feeling was an obvious testament to that.
“Hello?” He ventured as the hand withdrew, and the footsteps that accompanied it, fading with each passing moment.
“Don’t talk. I’ve been trying to get my ship’s relay converter back on line all day, and I’m still having problems with the damned thing.” There was some shuffling around, and a curse.
Jeremiah Freeman tried to get up, but realized that his hands and feet were bound with some old-fashioned rope.
Rope? Why the hell am I being tied up for?
“To keep you from escaping.” The same person completed for him, and it was only a second before he realized that the person talking to him was a woman.
A woman? What is with these generalized stereotypes? Why can’t I be talking with someone different?
“Probably because you have trouble accepting the truth about yourself. You believe that everyone that you’ve associated yourself with has be of a male gender based society. Why can’t it be with a woman?”
A picture of Tiffany Eddington popped into his mind.
“Ah...so I see. You have some strong feelings for this woman. That’s why you are shocked to discover that I’m also one too.”
Silence.
“And feelings towards me once you determined the gender of my sex through my voice. But immediately squelched. How interesting.” A whine of a servo drill echoed through the empty confines of darkened repair bay.
“What are you? Some kind of empath?” Having someone read his thoughts before he could speak them in person, was rather unsettling.
“No. More like a telepath. The name’s Hunter. April Hunter.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
More whining.
“I’m not surprised. I’ve been living here for quite some time.”
“Four years, judging by the mildew that I found on the tarp.”
A soft tinkling of laughter reached his ears.
“Oh it’s much longer than that. It’s been close to 300 years since I’ve been with my own kind. Your the first friendly face that I’ve had the pleasure of seeing in quite a while.”
“But how? I thought this place had been in operation during the last six years.” Freeman wondered out loud.
“I have ways of keeping my whereabouts a secret. Even from you humans.”
Jeremiah struggled with his bonds for a moment. But no matter how much he fought the strands, he could not get himself loose.
“Struggling will do you no good. I’ve made sure that those bonds would keep you from escaping me.”
He stopped, trying to re-focus his thoughts on the conversation at hand.
“So what do you mean by us ‘humans’? Aren’t you one?”
“Not really.” The woman answered, setting down the relay converter. She picked up something, and examined it. “I belong to a race of beings that are not indigenous to this quadrant of space.”
“But you appear and look human. How can you say that you are not?”
The alien looked in his direction. “Because we chose to inhabit this form when we are away from our world.”
The squadron commander was confused. “I don’t understand.”
The woman came into his range of vision, and in the dim light, she was strikingly beautiful. Dark brown hair that framed a semi-exotic face with brown eyes. Her slender, but slightly muscular frame exhibited a certain amount of strength that he knew that wasn’t present in women he knew.
But what can be said of the alien species that they’ve run into in the past?
“It is more simple for you to understand that I’m here on a mission of great importance, and that your help would be most appreciated. If you can assist me, I’ll see what I can do to give you back your freedom. Is this a deal?”
Jeremiah could see no reason to refuse her offer.
“Good. Then lie down on your side, and I shall cut your bonds.” A sharp snik! of a blade being extended, and then the soft sawing sounds of the rope being cut was being heard, and in a second, he was free.
The squadron commander rubbed the feeling back into his hands as he was helped up.
“What do you want me to do?”
The alien woman looked at him.
“I need some information for starters. My ship’s primary computer core has been down for the last 20 years and I’m afraid that the information I have on hand might be outdated.”
Jeremiah Freeman stretched.
“I’m going to have to get to my fighter. The computer there might have some information, but it’s nothing compared to what Outpost 42 has for information.”
“Outpost 42? How is Captain Foreman?”
The man was surprised, as she handed him back his hand lamp before returning to her work at hand.
“Your familiar with the outpost?”
“I was. I had some run-ins with the commander of that outpost 15 years ago, while I was searching for a new energy source. Unfortunately, they did not have anything for me, so I retreated back to this deserted shipyard.”
“I can’t believe that this place has been neglected for that long. I found parts that were five years old down here...” He checked the lamp to make sure it still worked.
“Parts that were dismantled from my ship and lay on those tables,” she replied, holding up the relay converter, and changed some of its settings with articulated fingers. “You might be surprised what you find in places like these.”
Jeremiah walked over to the nearest doorway, and gestured out into the dimly lit corridor with his hand lamp.
“You coming?”
Hunter looked up.
“Uh...sure.” She joined him, walking carefully down the corridor until they came up to a slight bend in the hallway.
“So what can you tell me?” She asked as he checked with his lamp, blaster out.
“What do you want to know?”
“If my people’s sworn enemy is here in this star system.”
Jeremiah chuckled.
“Nobody but us humans, or so the joke goes.”
The woman’s eyes glowed in anger, startling the squadron commander.
“That’s not funny, Jeremiah. You would not make light of a serious situation, if you really knew what you were up against.”
“Okay....” He murmured in a semi-apology as he rubbed the afterimages from his eyes. Blinking a couple of times, he found that he could see straight again. “But since we don’t, there is really no sense in worrying, now is there?”
She abruptly slammed him up against the wall in anger, and Freeman found that he couldn’t draw in a single breath.
“Don’t mock me, human. If that’s what your species is. You don’t know what my people have had to deal with after the destruction of the Blue World. We had to escape from our enemies, only to discover that they had found us again, 150 years ago.”
The man’s eyes widened in pure astonishment.
“Did you say the Blue World? That’s were our ancestors were from! I mean, that’s where we were from! That means your...”
“Not human, and not related. That’s what I can read in your thoughts.” She let go of him.
“You’ve got to be kidding! If you came from the Blue World, then you have to be!”
April sighed. “You don’t understand. We’re not from your Blue World; the planet your ancestors came from. We originated from another world entirely. Our people escaped from there when we were found by our enemies, and as far as I know, we’ve been on the run ever since.”
Jeremiah started walking again, confused by this woman’s words.
“But why?” He managed to say before coming up to a closed hatch. He started to fiddle with the panel next to it, hoping that it would open.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “It seemed like they were intent on finding something that we possessed and they would not allow anyone to interfere with their mission.”
“Sounds personal.” Freeman commented as he got the thing open, and a blast of cold air greeted the pair. Protected from the cold, the man found that his unwilling companion wasn’t as she was chaffing her arms.
“For a telepath, you would’ve figured out by now that most of this place is under sub-zero conditions. You should be wearing a thermal suit than a tee shirt and shorts.” He wasn’t going to mention the legs that she had on her, and averted his gaze to look into the darkness that enveloped the corridor beyond.
He could feel the woman’s eyes burning into him, but didn’t say anything as they continued on.
“My fighter should be two corridors down. I think that once there, I should have a spare suit inside.”
“Then let us hurry then.” She whispered, her breathing becoming puffs of white vapor in the cold air.
The trip was quiet, save for the occasional creaks and groans of the superstructure as it flexed slightly in the weak gravity.
“I still don’t understand why your here. What possessed you to take refuge in a derelict shipyard?”
“It was the most secure facility in this star system. There was another, but most of that was exposed to the cold vacuum of space and uninhabitable.”
“Okay. So why are you here?”
“I am, or was, an advanced scout for my people. I was supposed to secure new allies for the war against our enemy. Unfortunately, when I arrived, your species was too war-like to be communicated efficiently for possible alliances. With my ship damaged, I was forced to choose a suitable hiding place.”
“Hide where?”
“Here. The place was built and currently being occupied by your ancestors, so I chose here until my ship could be repaired. But I didn’t realize the scope of the damage.”
“And you’ve been stranded here ever since?”
“Basically. But your people have simmered down since then, and I sped up the repair process, hoping that I could initiate first contact with your planetary government.”
Freeman stopped abruptly at another doorway that would lead to his fighter.
“That’s, uh, not a good idea at this point.”
“Why not?”
“Well things have gotten a bit out of hand, and you’d be seen as a potential threat.”
“There is nothing that I can’t handle.” April said confidently. But Freeman shook his head as he accessed the emergency release codes.
“I think that would be the understatement of the century. Things have changed so drastically, that safety is only an illusion these days.”
The woman looked at him for a moment, before nodding.
“So I see. And why is that?”
Freeman’s face flushed with embarrassment, before he went and explained.
“Politics mostly. I’m pretty sure that your familiar with that concept.” The computer beeped, and the door opened.
He stepped through the door and she followed.
“Familiar yes, but never used. Self destruction is not the way things should be carried out. Not if you want results.”
“I take it your people doesn’t have a central government of any kind then,” he said as he kneeled by the closed hatch, and accessed the release controls.
“No. Not in the classic sense of the word.” April answered, as the hatch sprung open easily, and he climbed down into the cockpit.
Rummaging around in the same box he pulled his suit from, he located a smaller emergency thermal suit, and pulled it out.
“Should fit,” he said in a way of an apology, and handed it to her.
The woman slipped it on, and thanked him.
“No problem.” And sat in the acceleration chair.
“Computer. Access all records dating back the last...what? 20 years?”
April nodded.
Tapping in some requests, he waited until the information to come up.
“Couple of minutes.” Jeremiah confirmed. Then he gazed up at her dangling legs and then at her shapely body. Then at the soft features of her face.
“So where exactly did you come from? If that’s not imposing too much...”
“Approximately 3500 light years away. It took me 75 years to get here.”
“And you survived...that long?”
Hunter smiled. “Of course. Our life spans centuries. Even eons in some isolated cases.”
“So 75 years to you is a drop in the bucket then?”
April’s eyebrows arched slightly. “What’s that mean?”
Freeman sighed. “A drop in the bucket means that it’s barely significant to make a noticeable difference in one’s life. It’s a slang term from the Old Language that our ancestors used to speak from long ago.”
The woman digested this in silence.
“Then you are essentially correct. It is a ‘drop in the bucket.’ ”
“See? Your getting the hang of it.”
April was thoroughly perplexed. “The hang of what?”
Captain Freeman sighed again.
“Never mind.” It was becoming apparent that she was going to question everything that he said, no matter how obscure it sounded.
The computer beeped him, indicating that the information he requested was there on the HUD.
“Here we go.” He moved slightly out of the way while she read what was on the ghostly display.
The woman eyes moved back and fourth while her mind absorbed the text. After a few minutes of studying, she nodded.
“It appears that you were correct after all. Your culture is in a state of serious flux due to the energy crisis, and this asteroid that you personally fought, but lost.” She sat back. “I...I guess there is no hope for me in returning home now.”
Jeremiah was suddenly moved by this woman’s plight.
“I wouldn’t say that. I’m sure that Commander Sanchez wouldn’t mind helping you out.”
April Hunter’s blue eyes widened with gentle surprise,
“According to your computer records, your Outpost 42 is disabled. How can it help me here?”
“Once we get our engines back on line, we are supposed to take a trip here to stock up on anything that might prove to be of use to us.”
April laid on her stomach, dangling an arm into the opening.
“Will you come back for me?”
Freeman face turned red at her subtle attempts at flirting with him.
“If everything goes according to plan, I will. I have to stop at Kamar IV for the parts that we need, and hopefully, it will allow us to intercept the asteroid in time to destroy it.”
The alien woman accepted this as the truth.
“Then I will wait, and continue with the repairs to my ship.” Then she got up and backed away from the canopy.
Jeremiah closed the canopy and started up his fighter. He flicked on the external mike.
“Will you be all right here, by yourself?”
Yes, he heard her say in his mind. I always have been. But seeing you has giving me hope.
The man smiled to himself before he launched.
Bruan Province.
“Surprise!” His father shouted, causing his son to jump a good three feet in the air.
Jason felt a surge of adrenaline for about a second, before his nerves settled down.
“Uh...thanks.” He answered sheepishly, while his mother came up from behind, and put a birthday cap on his head. Then she gave him a kiss on the cheek, while he received one on the lips from Caroline.
“Happy birthday,” said the girl while giving him her present. He opened the small teal box that had a blue ribbon perched on it carefully, and found what looked like a circular shaped locket.
Gold in appearance, the boy stared at the gift that puzzled him and he was about to open the cover, when her hand covered his.
“Open it later.” She whispered in a breathless voice. “It’s sorta private.”
Jason glanced at her in surprise.
“Why?”
Caroline shuffled her feet uneasily.
“Ah....cause it is, that’s why.”
The boy accepted her answer, and decided at that point, not to pursue the subject any further.
His father gave him a rather large box-like gift that he handled gently as he set it on the table.
“This is from your mother and I. Since you like watching the stars and all....” He left it at that as he slid across to him. “Open it.”
Jason did so, and when he removed the cardboard lid, his face registered awe and amazement at what the gift was.
“Oh my god....” He breathed. He lifted the cylindrical device from the wrapping paper, and checked it with a careful eye.
“A high powered micro-telescope. One of the newest models to come off the line. You can actually see Kamar XII at night.”
That piqued the boy’s curiosity.
“Really? Cool. Maybe I’ll give it a trial run tonight.” He undid the lens cover on both ends, adjusted something on the small panel display, and turned on the power pak at the base of the instrument.
After a couple of seconds of looking through the micro-telescope, he aimed it at Caroline, and said, “Say hello.”
The teenager struck a pose, and smiled.
“Hi.”
Samantha chuckled while looking in the direction of her husband.
“I’d say things went rather well, don’t you think?”
John looked at her.
“Immensely.” He turned around and gazed at the white confectionary object that sat behind him on the table.
“Speaking of which...” And drew it out from beneath him carefully. “Don’t you think that it’s time to cut the cake?”
She beamed at him, and with magical flourish; produced the knife from behind her back.
“Sure. But let’s get the birthday boy to do it.”
John nodded whole heartedly. He rose from his seat, and approached his son.
“Jason. Your mother wants you to cut the cake. Sort of a birthday tradition.”
The boy smiled as he went over to the table and took the smooth-edged knife from her graceful hand and with one careful slicing motion; cut into it.
“There.” He said as he made a square motion with the knife, and with a small spatula, managed to lift a sizable portion onto a small saucer.
“Here.” He offered to Caroline. But the girl declined saying, “Sorry. But the birthday boy gets the first slice.”
Jason inclined his head curiously.
“Another tradition?”
“You got it.”
While Jason was cutting the cake, Samantha Scott heard someone knocking on the door.
“I’ll get it.” She said, and left the kitchen.
The knocking on the door increased by the time she got there, and when she opened it, she was surprised to see Michelle Taylor there.
By the looks on her face, it appeared that she had just been running.
“Did I miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“The birthday party.”
Samantha blanked out for a second before snapping to.
“No. It’s still going. Care to come in?”
“Sure.”
Michelle stepped through the doorway, and into the house.
Once she was through, her daughter immediately hugged her.
“Hi, mom. I love you.” Michelle hesitated for a moment before returning the gesture.
“Having fun?”
“Yes.”
Michelle picked up a small plate that had a piece of cake.
“Good.” She ate a bit off the edges of it, savoring the yellow frosting for just a moment.
“I’ve come to say that....I’m sorry for my previous outburst, honey. I had no right to order you not to see Jason.” Samantha almost dropped the fork she was using in shock.
Jason nearly choked on his piece, hacking some of it up, all the while, eyes watering. He wiped both with a hand, and then put his plate down. John came over and thumped his back lightly to help with the air flow to his lungs.
Caroline didn’t say anything at first.
“That’s a surprise, coming from you.” Samantha commented.
Michelle looked at her sharply, but said nothing.
“I’ve had to do a lot of thinking. And I’ve come to the conclusion that love is anything that you make it.”
“Is that so?” John queried. He was a little amused by this sudden exchange.
“Yes.” She wouldn’t elaborate any further on the subject, so she continued to nibble on her slice of cake.
Jason excused himself from the party, knowing that even though it was his, he felt that this was one meeting he could live without. However, he did pick up on the conversation as he made his way to his bedroom, he heard Caroline’s mother say how sorry she was, and how she had no right...and so forth.
Okay, he thought. Now I know who’s full of crap.
But maybe he was being too harsh on her. After all, Michelle was a mother who had just lost someone she loved, and her daughter was in love with him.
Kind of strange, but maybe she hasn’t gotten over her boyfriend’s death after all.
Jason laid down on the bed, and opened the cover to the locket.
Upon activation, a holo image of Caroline appeared, all dressed up in a nightgown.
His heart pounded for a full minute, before his senses started to kick in and his heart rate started to slow down to near normal, did he realize that it wasn’t what he thought it was.
“Jason, my love. I hope that this message finds you well, since it is on your birthday. My mother as you know hasn’t come to grips with Ernest’s death too well, and I believe that is why she has been a little harsh on us because she is seeing something that she lost.” The image hesitated somewhat before continuing. “Don’t hold this against her, okay? She is a really nice person once you get to know her. Secretly, she is very happy that you and I are in love, and I think from my personal point of view, she doesn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.” She looked at a holo-clock and realized that she late in getting ready for bed.“Well, I have to go. I love you, Jason Scott.” She blew him a kiss, before the image faded out and he closed the cover.