“Ted!” Harley shouted, snapping me back into the moment.
“I know, I know. I’m here. Let’s do this thing.” I pulled down on the yoke, guiding the ship into position to pull off the Arc.
“Ted, wait. You don’t have to do this. You can have me. Me. My body, the status that you’ve always wanted. You could be Tier 1 and we can be entwinned just like we’d always dreamed. This is our chance. Just pull up and it’s yours.”
I was beyond the point of being tempted by promises of status. I wanted nothing more to do with the Federation, that much I knew. And as for being entwined with Celeste, that dream died too. But to scuttle a ship that Celeste was on? Could I really bring myself to do it?
I got closer and closer now. It was now or never.
“Aggrrraaah!” I groaned, agonizing over my choice as I abruptly pulled up. “Damn it!”
“Derringer, what the hell are you doing?” Harley asked, completely betrayed. I pulled out of formation and circled around, forcing the rest of the team to abort and fall back.
“I can’t do it, Harley. I don’t care about the Federation, but I can’t just let Celeste die. I’m sorry, everyone.”
“Thank you, Max. I knew that I could count on you to act just as expected. I want to show you something.” the hologram display expanded, and I was on the bridge of the Titan with Celeste. There was Vargon at the helm, watching Celeste and I warily. Then, two Commandos grabbed Vargon.
Vargon squealed like a pig in a trap. “What is the meaning of this insubordination?” Then, like a pig, they stuck him. A laser sword cut straight through his belly and he fell to the floor in a cold-blooded act of mutiny.
“Ted, you were right. I lied to you before. I was in the reprogramming center because I was found to be disloyal to the Unity Federation. They accused me of conspiring with Earth’s enemies, and they were right. And if you hadn’t come along and rescued me, they would have scrambled my mind and then finished me off for good measure.”
“Earth’s enemies?” I asked, stunned. “Who?”
“The Gix, Max.” Celeste was cool, all business now. No more syrupy entreaties to join her. She was revealing her true face for the first time.
“But why? How?”
“You of all people should know how loyalties can shift in unexpected ways.”
“Celeste, The Gix lay waste to everything that they come across. There’s no dealmaking with them.”
“That’s a lie. They are destructive, true. They’re rapacious. Just like Unity. That’s why we’ve been raised to believe they’re thoughtless monsters, but they’re not. They act in their own self interest just as we do. And so, I decided that we could work in our own mutual interest.”
“By betraying the military?”
“No, by preserving the military and freeing it from the bonds of those slothful Earthers who use us. We had our lives taken from us, Max. And you too Stone.”
“Fuck you, Commander.” Harley snarled.
But there was something in what she said that rang true. I’d been on my journey that helped me realize just how I was used.
“Celeste, whatever the Federation is guilty of, it’s because of the extremes that they were pushed to because of enemies like the Gix.”
“Don’t tell me you’re suddenly feeling for the Federation now. You’re in open rebellion right now, you realize that don’t you?”
“I want to live my life free from Unity, not to destroy it.”
“What I’m doing will save the military. We’ll live on after Earth is gone, and we’ll be free to live for the first time. We’re stronger. We’re disciplined while they’re slothful and prideful. Our survivors will build a better race, a stronger strain of humanity than any of the slime left clinging to that rock.
“You’re insane,” snarled Harley, “What you’re talking about genocide.”
“The Gix want genocide, all I’m interested is the continuination of our species by making a deal with them. Max, I want rebirth. Forget the Federation and come to me. I’m giving you and your friends a chance at survival here. If you reject it, I can’t be responsible for the consequences.”
I couldn’t contemplate what she was proposing, but I also knew that we were now too close to the Titan, within range of its weapons, and the element of surprise was long gone. I had to find a way for us to make it out with our lives.
“What about Dawn? The colony has nothing to do with your plan.”
“That’s not entirely true, but I am willing to negotiate for the lives of the colonists if you’ll join me.”
“So let’s bargain then, what is it going to take for you to call off the invasion now?”
“Simple. Disengage your ship, let us tow you in, and we’ll head for the jump gate to Earth.”
“She’s lying, Max.” Harley insisted. “It’s obvious that she has no interest in saving this place.”
“I agree that it seems unlikely to work, Max Derringer.” chimed in Kris-10. And it’s true that it probably wouldn’t work. Celeste would probably torch the place anyway, just to cover any evidence and make sure that no information reached Earth before she neutralized its population. But what other moves did I have?
“What the hell are we doing here, ace?” asked Teru, still circling in a holding pattern.
“Celeste, it’s me you want so go ahead and take me. Let them fall back to Dawn and I’ll leave with you.”
“Ted…”
“Going offline now,” I said, switching off the main engines and allowing my craft to list forward in space. I awaited the tractor beam that would deliver me to Celeste. How could I have been so wrong about her? To have not seen her for what she was.
As my ship turned in space, I watched my friends all zipping around, trying to decide what to do.
“Go back!” I said aloud. With the ship deactivated, they couldn’t hear me, but I hoped that they would accept my resignation as a sign that this was the way things had to be. Derringer. Do not do this.
I don’t have any better option, I told Drasheel. It’s this, or I let Celeste blow up the colony. Please, just let me go. Take the others and leave. A low hum told me that the ship was being taxied into the Titan’s ship’s bay.
Then, I noticed something else appear on the starboard side of my display window. Dots of green blipped into existence at the corner of the fleet.
The Gix. They were here. Celeste had lied again. She was going to wipe out the colony! I kicked on the ships controls again. The board lit up and I manipulated the thrusters with my left hand, bringing the ship around with my right.
“Celeste! Leave the Gix out of this!”
“Ted, I told you they had an interest in the colony too. I told them about our agreement, but they are only my partners, they don’t always listen to me.”
“Well, no deal.” I gave a nudge with my thrusters, but the pull of the tractor beam I was caught in was holding me back. Time to make the current I was swimming against work for me. I flipped around so that my missile tips were pointed straight into the tractor beam generators in the Titan’s bay, and wham! With a blast I was cut free.
“Ted! Don’t do this. I can still protect you.”
“Not a chance,” I said, bringing my ship around so that it was facing Dawn.
The gun turrets started firing on me immediately, but I blasted out of range with a quick thrust of me engines.
“Ted, you asshole! Don’t you ever pull that on me again!” shouted Harley, our communication restored.
“Look, I know. But there will be time for you to cream my ass later.”
“You’re damn right!” Harley huffed.
The Gix ships were like forest-green abalone shells. They moved without any thrusters, and human engineers marvelled at how they were able to move through space. But what made them so deadly was the way that they tore into targets by deploying their tentacles. Four of the massive mollusks were taking positions surrounding the planetoid, with the Federation fleet moving into position aroun
d them.
The tentacles slithered out from the Gix ships, groping at the metal rings that enveloped Dawn. The ships worked together, pulling and tearing at the metallic casing that surrounded Dawn.
“They’re going to penetrate the core!” Teru called, worried for the civilians that were sent down from the colony station above.
“Not if we have anything to say about it. Come on!” I piloted straight toward one of the Gix ships but there were fleets of Federation fighters protecting them. This was insane. How could Celeste convince so many soldiers who’d given their lives to the military to now join up with the Gix?
I took out a collumn of fighters with a cluster bomb, but as effective as those little suckers were I was starting to run low on them, and I had to save the heaviest of my firepower for the Gix ship itself.
“Derringer, I’m not able to get through. There are too many of them. What do we do?” asked Harley.
“I’m coming to you. Hold tight.” I flipped around and found both Drasheel and Harley being pursued with a squad of fighters on their six, another one coming around to try and catch them in a pincer. I shot through the point of the spear, but the other four bundled into a tighter formation and started peppering me with lasgun fire. My shield absorbed some of the damage, but I had to bank hard right to keep from leaning straight into the onslaught. “Argraah!” I groaned as maneuvered around, giving my ship a burst of speed and then breaking hard with reverse thrusters. The gambit worked and I was now on the tail of three of the four fighters. From this position, it was easier to confuse them and with shome sharp shooting I picked off the first of the three with my cannon and the second two with a missile when they made the mistake of flying too close together.
Regrouping to return to my friends, I found Harley’s ship was now on the brink of losing an engine. Her shields had sustained heavy damage and I could see from my readouts that she couldn’t take much more. Drasheel had fallen back, trying to take the pressure off of Harley by firing at her assailants from behind. But she was being pursued herself. I swooped in to offer Drasheel some cover, firing on and destroying the fighter that was on her tail.
“Drasheel, how are your engines looking?”
Okay. She told me in her mind.
“Then let’s get the lead out and cut these motherfuckers down.” I gave my Cutlass as burst of speed. I was drawing closer and closer.
“Ted, they’re on my six,” Harley warned. “I could use a little fucking cover fire.”
“I see them,” I had an idea and I wanted to test it. The ship was coated in the Voltec nanobots, but so far the electric field surrounding the ship hadn’t behaved any differently. So what would no shields do? I decided to find out.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking? I asked Drasheel?
Yes, she answered.
Think it’ll work?
I have no idea, came the reply. I deactivated the shields and the invisible field around my ship vanished.
“Ted, what are you doing?” asked the embattled Harley. I increased my speed, putting me on a collision course with the ship directly on Harley’s tail.
Something that if I’m wrong means that I’m probably the stupidest savior that’s ever been born, I thought. If I really was Rushgar and the Anomaly, or whatever then I hoped I wouldn’t be reborn to discover that I’d died stupidly based on a hunch. I kept accelerating, banking left to bring my wing closer to the fighter’s.
Here goes nothing, I thought. I punched on the accelerator, sending me slicing through the wing of the Federation fighter. The wing sheered off and sent the enemy craft spiraling into the one beside him. My wing was totally unharmed.
This was it! “Turn off your shields!” I squawked through the radio. “The Voltec make the ships impervious to attack already. You’re stronger without them.”
“Derringer, what are you talking about?” asked Harley.
“I’m telling you, it works. Watch me.” The Gix were deploying squadrons of their own fighters out of the abolone-shaped craft. They had a shape that looked more like arachnids made of a kind of super-hard carbon almost as hard as diamond, with beams of lasgun fire deployed from two cannons at their ‘pincers.’ I dove straight into them, my shields down. From someone watching, it seemed like suicide. The Gix ships didn’t even try to evade, probably sure that it was a faint. But when I met one head on, I repelled him with such force that the ship shattered into pieces, the debris scattering in space.
“Yehaa!” I let out a screech of delight. We were turning the tide on these bastards, and I knew it.
“There he is,” said Teru.
“Yes, Max Derringer!” grinned Kris-10.
Almost immediately, the battle strategy changed. Now it was all about ramming through a set of targets. I knew that it worked on the little craft, but could it stand up against one of the bigger ones?
As I drew closer to one of those big green Gix ships, close enough to put me within striking distance, the massive tentacle that was three times as thick as the ship I was piloting, came straight down on me. I rolled to avoid getting clobbered, but through my ships rear-view cameras I could see that the tentacles were mobilizing around me. At least now they weren’t tearing apart Dawn piece by piece, but I was at risk of being caught or crushed by those probing tentacles.
So now the ultimate test. If I could dive straight through one of these things, then we might be able to destroy these things and end the fight. But I had no idea whether Voltec’s power was unlimited or not, and there was only one way to find out.
Here goes nothing, I thought. So I dodged two tentacles as they gropped at me and pointed the nose straight into Gix ship’s rough, rocklike surface. It should have been suicide, but as I punched on the accellerator straight into the ship, a spark of debris flew off as I tore through the Gix ship. I opened my eyes, saw stars in the cockpit viewfinder, and I knew I had made it through.
The Gix ship shuddered as I came around for another pass. The tentacles convulsed and shook. The design was some mix of organic and mechanical, and I think that the hole I’d made it in somehow hurt the destroyer as much as damaged it. I watched as Teru followed suit, plunging his ship through the Gix ship’s outer shell. The plume of fire and debris that flew out of the surface like a sore did nothing to harm him or his ship, which passed safely through one side and out the other.
“That’s it, keep it up!” But even as I saw Drasheel’s ship making the same move, I didn’t see any sign that the Gix ship was nearing destruction. Instead, when I flew closer to make a pass over the spot where I’d torn through, the hole appeared to be getting smaller. I used the ship’s onboard computer to confirm it. “Shit.” The holes were healing themselves like scabs on a wound.
The Gix must have seen that they could withstand the effect of our kamikaze style attack pattern and turned their attention back to tearing apart the metal artifices built around Dawn.
What is happening? Drasheel asked.
“The attack isn’t having an effect. The Voltec nanobots makes make the exteriors of our ships hard as diamond, but the Gix seem to be able to regenerate quickly enough that it doesn’t matter. Doyle, any ideas?” I spoke to the engineer still in the ship bay on the station above.
“From what I know of the Gix ships, it’s only high-energy attacks that take out one of those suckers down permanently.”
“We don’t have the firepower for that. What else?”
“That’s it. Unless you want to run straight through the ship’s core, and it’s not like you can pass through that in one piece. The cores at the center of those ships is like it’s own white dwarf. You’d be reduced to dust in less than a second no matter what your ship is made of.” Not a viable option, but I couldn’t distract them anymore. What else could we throw at them?
“Alpha Wing,” said Teru. “I’m going in.”
“Teru, don’t be insane,” I shouted, “We can find another way.”
“My time came and went a while back.”
&n
bsp; “Teru, wait. It doesn’t have to be like this,” I said, trying to cut him off, anything to keep him from heading straight into that ship’s core.
“Listen, remember what I told you.”
“Teru!” I yelled, but the response was just static. Teru’s ship smashed straight through the center of one of those gigantic oblong shells and disappeared into the Gix killing machine. Then, I heard something coming through.
“I can see the light,” said Teru’s voice “I can’t describe it, but…” A crash, then a flash of bright green fire tore through the center of the craft like a crack that widened and burned the ship from within.
“Teru!” My voice caught in my throat as the Gix ship’s tentacles withered and retracted in on themselves. The ship was dying.
“What just happened?” asked Harley.
“Teru’s gone,” I answered. I wanted more than anything to ensure that his sacrifice wasn’t in vain.
“Okay, so now we know these things can be beaten,” I said, not finishing that the method wasn’t repeatable. I couldn’t let anyone else make the same move, but I didn’t have time to think about it.
Drasheel’s ship was flying near the Gix ship when it happened, too close. One of the remaining three came down on her ship hard.
“Drasheel!” I called as I saw her fighter tossed towards Dawn’s surface. “Harley, Kris-10, we’ve got to follow her,” I called.
“I am not reading her ship’s signature on my scope,” said Kris-10.
“What the hell just happened?” chimed in Harley.
“Follow me,” I called, diving fast to keep her ship from falling out of visual range. I dodged junk and debris that was getting kicked up on Dawn’s metallic surface.
Alpha Wing Page 18
