Contagion

by David Ryker

  And they knew almost nothing about us, and yet they had showed no hesitation about eliminating us.

  The Chordatid drone fleet flew out ahead, the ships on the left and right ends of our lines sending some smart missiles after them to protect their flanks.

  I watched with impatience, glancing from the external view to the timer on the airlock. Five seconds before I could even get out of this damn airlock. A couple of minutes before we could get into the fight.

  A hell of a lot could happen in two minutes.

  Turns out a hell of a lot could happen in five seconds.

  The Chordatid drones fanned out and came at the lead enemy formations from all angles, flanking them in ways that in my time as an infantryman I could only dream about.

  The drones swept in on the enemy, attacking the lead formations from all directions but focusing on one ship in each formation. Smart missiles arced around and came at the enemy wedge from both sides.

  Then something curious happened.

  The shimmering green lines of power connecting the ships winked out. This happened on all the formations at the exact same time.

  A moment later the smart missiles slammed into several of the clam-shaped ships, blowing them to pieces. The drones focused on others, their explosive slugs and smaller missiles hammering on the ships’ hard outer casing. Only a few went down under this punishment.

  Then the Centaurian ships struck back.

  From each of the ships, fat spheres of power shot out like green ball lightning. They fired in rapid succession, targeting drones coming in from all directions with frightening accuracy.

  Damn. We had been so impressed with their communal power we hadn’t figured on the possibility they could be autonomous. Drones spun out of control, their circuits fried, or burst into a thousand pieces as their explosive slugs detonated from the charge of energy.

  Then a loud buzz told me the fighter deck had been cleared of atmosphere. I slammed on the thrusters as soon as the bay doors had opened enough for me to fit through.

  Not a single man or woman in my squadron hesitated. Shooting through that narrow space at full acceleration was nothing after having their first test flights in the wreckage of that broken moon.

  The other Shadow Fighters came right behind us. Turns out Dri’kai and Subine pilots don’t like to be one-upped.

  I steered the ship on a heading that would take us into the thick of it, and then switched back to the view from the Dri’kai battleship. It had better sensors than our fighters and we could see up close what we were about to get into.

  The Chordatid attack drones were already down to two-thirds their number. They were quick, and handled by expert remote pilots, but no matter how they ducked and wove, those bolts found them. And their weaponry was too weak. I saw eight of them converge on a single Centaurian fighter, covering its surface with impact sparks from slugs and micromissiles. It kept firing until three drones were blown apart and the other five were moving away, then the thing targeted another drone passing by.

  Damn, the drones had focused enough firepower to puncture the hull of a human destroyer class ship, and those were twenty times the size of these things. Were they solid?

  I watched in growing dismay as the battle turned against the drones. One by one they got knocked out of the sky. Every now and then they managed to focus enough firepower to take out a Centaurian fighter, but they lost twenty for every victory. Smart missiles launched by our allies got a few more, but not nearly enough, and this was only their vanguard. Long-range sensors were detecting plenty more.

  Our three squadrons of Shadow Fighters flew in an arrow formation, my squadron at point. Despite the Dri’kai and Subine pilots having practiced much longer, Qiang and I were two of the best pilots in the whole fleet. These ships were so smart that nerves and reflexes counted more than experience. Training up in these unfamiliar machines was a piece of cake. If any of our allies objected to a primitive newcomer like me being in command, they were practical enough to keep their mouths shut about it. We had a war to win.

  The other fighters came in a series of arrows arrayed in a line behind us. They were slower, but still plenty strong. The plan was that our Shadow Fighters would hit the Centaurians hard, break up their formations, and the more numerous fighters would swoop in for the kill.

  That was the plan.

  Plans have a way of going to shit once you engage the enemy.

  This one sure as hell did.

  17

  It had only been a few minutes since the start of the battle, and our first wave was more than half gone. We flew through the wrecks of countless drones, my sensors registering the occasional impact of debris too small for me to notice in time to avoid.

  It didn’t matter. This ship was tough enough to ignore a few bits of dead drone.

  I was calm. Focused. I’m sure the ship had given me its usual jab under the shoulder blade. Weird to think that a hypo came right out of the seat. Weirder that it had figured out my condition and developed the correct medicine. I understood almost nothing of what was going on around me—the enemy, the part of space I was in, not even my own ship.

  What I did understand was that I had to keep my head together or I’d be a dead man.

  I led my squadron at a Centaurian formation that was busy fending off a drone attack and ordered the other two squadrons to do the same on two other formations that were similarly occupied.

  Just as my squadron moved in, the Centaurian ships turned their fire on us, ignoring the incoming drone fire completely. It was like they sensed we were a bigger threat.

  Pulses of green energy spat out at us like surreal ball lightning. I swerved to avoid one, then had to bank hard in the other direction to avoid another.

  We zeroed in on an injured Centaurian fighter, which was already pockmarked by drone hits and suffering more every second. I gave the damn thing a long burst from the nose autocannon and both turrets. The rest of my squadron did the same.

  We got rewarded by seeing the ship crack and then break apart.

  Someone let out a cheer over the comm link, only to get cut short as a burst of energy made a direct hit on one of my fighters. The ship spun out of control.

  No time to see who that was or even if they were still alive. I banked to avoid a shot and dove in on another ship in the Centaurian formation. The remaining members of my squadron followed, as did the drones.

  We got that one too, but the other ships in the enemy formation took out most of the drones in the vicinity and one of my squadron members.

  “We need a new strategy!” Avram shouted into the comm, her voice cutting close to the edge of panic.

  Shit. I had a squadron of mostly civilians in what could be the toughest battle of my life. It wasn’t fair to them and it wasn’t fair to me.

  Fuck it. Life’s not fair.

  “Spread out!” I ordered. “Take on the ships two to one.”

  I was hoping that splitting up would keep each Centaurian fighters busy and make us a more diffuse target.

  Avram and I converged on a Centaurian ship. Just then a smart missile fired by that massive Vrimjlen missile battery streaked between us to slam into the little clam thing. It spun out, making me and the gymnast miss our shots, and then it did something strange.

  It steadied itself out of the spin and, cracked and chipped, moved away, back toward the center of its fleet. Thin green sparks crackled around its hull.

  It was retreating? We hadn’t seen that before. Could Centaurians feel fear? Was there really some thinking, feeling mind in that thing?

  No time to dwell on that, because right at that moment the second wave of Centaurian formations came up, as did the wave of Dri’kai fighters.

  And at that point I lost track of what was going on. There was no time to think, hardly any time to issue orders, I could only react. The sky was filled with pulses of energy, streams of autocannon fire, and fleets of missiles.

  Avram stuck close to me, probably figuring I
would get through this somehow. That made one of us. Poor woman. She should have put her faith in someone a little less crazy. I shot right for one of the new formations and fired a pair of missiles at one of the ships.

  It blew one missile right out of the air, and its neighbor blew up the second one.

  A moment later two of Avram’s missiles followed, and the Centaurians didn’t have time to fire again.

  The one-two punch threw the lead enemy ship into a spin. I didn’t see what happened after that because I had to dodge a series of shots. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Avram dancing around in the sky as green pulses flew all around her. She was flipping and spinning and pirouetting like she was on the mat competing in the Olympics. It was almost beautiful.

  Less beautiful was the charred chunk of a Dri’kai fighter that slammed right into me.

  Red warning flashes lit up my viewscreen. The ship went into a spin, there was another impact, and when I finally righted it I was well out of the fight. A readout said the ship was healing and hadn’t taken any critical damage.

  It took me a second to get back into the game, and that second gave me a look at the big picture. The fighters of both sides were in a tangled, crazy mess. There were no more formations, only individual dogfights, and we were mostly losing. Our missile batteries, unable to lock on targets in that chaos, had to hold fire. That meant losing our edge.

  And then I saw another strange thing. One of our Shadow Fighters had left the huge swirling battle and was following a wounded Centaurian ship that was heading back to the center of the enemy fleet.

  A readout told me it was Avram.

  “What are you doing?” I radioed her as I hit the thrusters and followed.

  “Taking this one out,” she replied, “and seeing where the other ones are going.”

  I almost barked at her to stop screwing around and get back in the main action, but then I saw what she had seen—a steady stream of wounded fighters headed into the center of the Centaurian fleet.

  I switched to long-range scanners as Avram caught up to the wounded fighter and pummeled it with autocannon fire. Midway between the front line and the Centaurian whaleships hovered the reddish spheres. A wounded Centaurian fighter, perhaps the first one we saw cut and run, moved up to a sphere and landed on its surface. The sphere pulsed a little and grew a shade brighter.

  “Computer, what’s going on over there?”

  “Unknown. Scanning. Some form of energy transfer using unfamiliar technology.”

  “Well that doesn’t tell me a hell of a lot,” I grumbled. “Avram! Stop kicking a man while he’s down and follow me.”

  “I’ve almost cracked this thing in half.”

  “Move!”

  She moved. We flew at maximum speed for the sphere.

  “It’s like a fuel tanker,” Avram said. “Maybe we can blow it.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  And it was a pretty fucking obvious plan too. The Centaurians saw it, that’s for sure.

  From the nearest main ship, hundreds of kilometers away, came a wave of energy pulses. It was almost like a giant pixelated picture, hundreds of dots headed our way, but with no set pattern.

  “Hide and seek!” Avram shouted.

  “Huh?”

  She was already banking low and left. I followed. Just in the nick of time, we got the red sphere in between us and the enemy fire, and it passed all around us.

  “Don’t talk in metaphors, it’s too slow,” I growled.

  “Sorry. It was the first thing to come to my mind.”

  My fault. These people were too green to be in a battle. But what choice did I have?

  We moved toward the mysterious sphere, keeping it between us and the main Centaurian ships like some dying star eclipsing a planet. No fire came from the sphere. The main ship in the rear, helpless, held its fire too.

  Another of the small clam-shaped fighters lighted on the red orb. Again there was a pulse of power, and the sphere glowed a bit brighter. The same thing happened twice more as more fighters landed on its surface.

  The sphere began to move. We moved with it to keep the main ships out of sight. It was slow and keeping up with it as it tried to give the main ships a line of fire proved easy.

  Why didn’t it move faster? It had been when the fleet arrived. Did refueling the fighters drain its energy?

  A warning beep told me we’d been noticed by more of the enemy. Several Centaurian fighters had sheared off from the main fight and were coming after us at full speed.

  We didn’t have much time.

  “One chance,” I told Avram. “Fire every missile you got and follow up with as much autocannon fire as you can.”

  I punched in a target location and sent it to her. We’d throw everything we had at the exact same spot and pray it actually did something.

  “Fire!”

  The missiles flew out toward the sphere, dwindling to fiery points. Still flying at top speed for the target, I hit the triggers for all three of my autocannons as Avram did the same.

  Several of the clam-like ships detached from the sphere and raced toward the incoming fire.

  Only one made it in time, getting nailed full force by a burst of autocannon fire and then one of my missiles. The fighter shattered, and the rest of the missiles and explosive slugs shot right past it.

  All of them hit exactly where we had aimed.

  It convulsed like a big balloon, faded to almost black, then burst a blinding red. I clenched my eyes shut as the viewscreen turned dark to block the light. If it hadn’t, I would have surely been blinded.

  Then there were warning lights flashing and alarms ringing. The fighter spun, my gut wrenching and my mind almost blacking out as the inertial dampeners failed.

  I think I did actually black out for a second, because when I could make sense of my surroundings again the viewscreen had become clear and the stars were righting themselves. Several warning messages scrolled past in my helmet visor, but I couldn’t read them. I was half blind with the hazy red afterimage of whatever the hell Avram and I had just done to that thing.

  Avram!

  “Avram, you there?”

  No response.

  “Avram!”

  “Right here, Commander, I—”

  Her comm cut off. The ship’s computer, sensing what I wanted, switched the screen to focus on Avram’s ship, spinning far below me. Dimly through the afterimages in my eyes I saw it get blown apart by the fire of several Centaurian fighters.

  A warning buzzer. My ship’s computer switched the view to my upper left, where an entire formation of Centaurian fighters bore down on me.

  I ran.

  I put full thrusters on and headed back to the battle. Yeah, I retreated toward a battle. In that mess I’d still be a damn sight safer than I would be facing this damn formation alone.

  The pursuing ships fired, but I was too far away and I dodged the shots easily. I spared a glance at the sphere, and did a double take.

  I almost didn’t recognize it.

  Remember when I called it a balloon earlier? That turned out to actually be the case, more or less. The thing was deflating, shriveling, the energy the Centaurian fighters had been leeching off of it having vanished. That last flare it sent out when we hit it seemed to have been it shorting out, or going through its death throes. These things had been living creatures once, and might have been so still. Avram might have killed a slave. We might have put some vast extraterrestrial beast out of its misery.

  Dodging more long-range shots, I ran through the ship’s vitals. The burst of energy from the alien sphere had almost shorted out the circuitry, and the ship needed time to fix it, or “heal” as it said. I was also out of missiles and had several minor injuries to the hull.

  “It is recommended that you do not engage in combat for at least fifteen minutes,” the computer advised.

  “Tell that to the enemy ships chasing us!”

  “I do not speak the Centaurian language.”
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  “Well, that’s a relief. I’d still like to know where you came from.”

  The computer didn’t reply to that. Big surprise.

  The pursuing ships stopped firing and sped up. Interesting. Could they transfer power from weapons to engines? And what the hell kind of propulsion system did they have anyway? I couldn’t see any thrusters or anything else. They just moved.

  And moved fast. They were catching up. I wasn’t going to make it to the anonymity of the battle before they caught me.

  There were seven of them. I could take out one. Maybe two. No way I could even get a shot off against all seven. They might not give me a chance to get a shot off at all.

  No point in moaning about it. I took a deep breath and readied myself to bank sharply, turn to face the enemy, and die fighting.

  18

  In battle you quickly learn who your friends are.

  In this particular battle, my friends turned out to be Qiang, two Dri’kai I barely knew, and a Subine whose name I couldn’t pronounce.

  Their names all showed up on my readout as their four Shadow Fighters moved out of the main battle and headed straight for me. Even reading the Subine name, I still couldn’t pronounce it.

  Who cared? He was coming to save me.

  As they got into a V formation, I sped toward them, ready to turn at the last second and take my place with them. I sure hoped to hell that they had some missiles left. Autocannon fire didn’t do much to those motherfuckers.

  “Qiang, am I glad to see you, I—”

  Qiang and his men flew right past me at an angle that took them away from the formation on my tail.

  “What the hell?”

  To say I felt let down would be an understatement.

  That is, until I saw their target.

  Another of the red spheres.

  It glowed brightly like a beacon in the night, a score of small fighters adhering to its surface.