Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  Canada deployed her own decoys, and ECM hashed targeting sensors trying to blind the Merki sensors, but for all of that she wasn’t a true warship. Her counter measures and weapons were designed to hold off an attack for the minutes she needed to jump, not defeat a heavy cruiser with more than three times her firepower.

  Canada bucked as lasers and grazers slashed at her. Her shields held, but still she was shaken and slammed by incoming missiles. Point defence frantically beat them back, killing dozens and then hundreds, but then the inevitable happened.

  A missile got through and detonated.

  Canada lurched and damage alarms screamed; yet her section seals held and she continued to fight. Crewman fought to save friends trapped in the debris, but all too many died from the sudden decompression when razor sharp shrapnel careened through compartments breaching their uniform’s integrity. On the bridge, Colgan was white faced at the catalogue of damage being reported. His ship was being destroyed before his eyes, and it was his fault. He could have jumped outsystem, he still could if his displays were correct, but no, he had to be a hero and his people were paying for it with their lives.

  The lights dimmed, and flickered back to half intensity as something failed. He looked up wondering if this was the end, but as the lights failed completely, emergency lighting took over.

  “Report,” Colgan barked.

  “Merki cruiser badly damaged, but still combat capable,” Ivanova said. “We’re down to one more salvo of missiles and our lasers.”

  The lights suddenly flared bright again as damage control repaired the power feeds to the bridge, but Colgan hardly noticed.

  “Save the missiles until I give the word. Continue action with energy mounts.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Helm, take us in to point blank range at max. I want you to scrape the fucking paint off her!” he snarled.

  “Aye, sir,” Wesley said and rolled ship.

  “Weps, give them every missile we have at point blank.”

  “Aye, Skipper.”

  “Are you sure, Captain? We’ll not escape the blast wave,” Commander Groves said.

  “We will.” Colgan prayed he wasn’t lying. “We’re going in at max. With luck we should be clear.”

  Canada bore in taking hit after hit. Her shields began to fail even as she reached the cruiser. Ivanova smashed a button flat, and Canada’s missile tubes spoke. The Merki ship shuddered and spewed atmosphere, as the missiles slammed home before any defence knew they were there. Hit after hit went home as the ship tried futilely to track Canada as she raced on by.

  One of Canada’s missiles did not launch; the power runs to the accelerator rings in the tube were down. Chief Williams, trying vainly to resurrect the shield generator for the aft quarter, was up to his elbows in circuitry when he knocked a severed cable.

  He jerked and bit his tongue with a yelp as the current arced through him. He survived with his hair smoking and standing straight up, his team barely survived his cursing, but the Merki cruiser had no chance. The missile spat forth and slammed into the enemy ship. So close was Canada, that the missile actually penetrated the Merki’s hull before it detonated within the ship.

  The enemy ship erupted in nuclear fire.

  Canada was racing away, but pieces of wreckage impacted her unprotected aft quarter. Canada rolled presenting her port shields to the wave front, and that saved her. The fury of exploding magazines and fusion reactors washed over her, but as it receded, she limped onward with two drives down, and one fluctuating so badly that it was cut from the circuit a moment later.

  “Target destroyed,” Ivanova reported, her voice heavy with satisfaction.

  “Very well done, Weps,” Colgan said. “Francis, pass the coordinates of Naktlon to the helm.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Course laid in, sir,” Janice Wesley said a moment or two later.

  “Execute at best speed.” Colgan turned to Lieutenant Ricks. “Get me damage control.”

  “Aye, aye. On screen, sir.”

  Chief Williams appeared on the main viewer. Behind him, he could see space suited figures hurry by.

  “Chief, I know we have damage all over the place, but I want you to concentrate on the jump drive. We seem to have won the war here, but I don’t trust that. I want to be able to jump if I have to.”

  Chief Williams frowned in puzzlement and looked aside at his boards. “But there’s nothing wrong with the bloody…” his face flamed. “There’s nothing wrong with it, sir.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir. My boards show it as operational and charged. Have you tried it, sir?”

  “No of course not,” Colgan said, his face heating in embarrassment. He had assumed that after the pounding they had taken, it must be offline. “Carry on, Chief.”

  “Aye, sir,” Williams said in a puzzled voice. He was replaced on the view-screen by a tactical overlay of the system.

  “What happened to his hair?” Groves said with a grin. “It looked like someone tugged him through a mouse hole backwards.”

  Colgan chuckled.

  “Naktlon dead ahead… what’s left of him,” Janice announced.

  “On screen.”

  Everyone groaned when they saw what was left of Naktlon. The forward half of the cruiser was tumbling away on a course that would see him exit the system eventually. It was so badly battered that Colgan doubted there could be survivors.

  “Try to contact him.”

  “Aye, sir,” Ricks said doubtfully, but a moment later, a fuzzy picture appeared.

  “Tei,” Colgan gasped in relief when his friend appeared. “Hold on, I’m coming to get you out.”

  “Tei’Colgan. You should have left when you had the chance,” Tei’Varyk said in a dead voice.

  “We destroyed the last one for you.”

  “And what of the ships landing troops on Harmony?”

  Colgan turned to Commander Groves at scan. She was punching in commands at her station like a demon.

  “Do not Canada’s sensors reach so far? Naktlon’s are destroyed, but we’re still receiving intermittent transmissions of the landings.”

  “Oh my God,” Commander Groves said looking up from her position at scan in horror. “We have Merkiaari in the inner system, Skipper. They must have slipped through when we went after those two cruisers.”

  “Class?”

  “Troop transports with escort, but they’re too much for us. A kid with a slingshot is too much for us now,” she said bitterly.

  20 ~ Hope

  Child of Harmony, Shan system

  “He left us,” Brenda said with tears of rage in her eyes. “After all we did for him, the bastard left us.”

  “He had no choice,” Janice said sadly. “None at all.”

  James nodded. He glanced through the open hatch at his friends sitting in the cabin and then back to Janice. “What do we do?”

  “What can we do?” Brenda spat. “He abandoned us.”

  “We hide as the Shan are doing. I want a gun,” Janice said staring at the images coming in on the monitors. “A very big gun.”

  James turned back to watch the Merki landings on one of the lander’s monitors. The cities were a chaos of running and fighting people. The Shan military had deployed to slow the Merki troopers down while the cities were evacuated, but the Merki had the advantage of being able to pick and choose their landing sites. The Shan had to remain mobile and not dig in, or else risk annihilation from above.

  Shan civilians had banded together to fight, and were dying in their millions as untold numbers of Merki gravsleds poured out of the grounded landers. The gravsleds spread out and flew slowly down the streets firing at anything that moved.

  James was sure they had their reasons for hitting certain buildings while leaving others untouched, but for the life of him he couldn’t understand their tactics. The buildings seemed chosen at random. Some collapsed immediately burying those hiding within, while others burned. Clou
ds of smoke and ash billowed up and filled the sky.

  James felt his emotions welling up when the monitor showed him heaps of dead Shan. They lay where they had fallen still clutching their mates and cubs. The picture suddenly whirled crazily and then stabilised. Whoever was manning the camera was taking a hell of a risk. The picture blurred and zoomed in upon a gravsled just turning into the street. On the ground in front of it, a large formation of Merkiaari troopers led the way. Suddenly they came under fire and scattered into cover.

  Explosions dotted the street zeroing in upon the gravsled. It was hit multiple times and lost power. It slammed into the street carving a trench in the road before rolling and bursting into flames. A Merkiaari trooper jumped out of the shattered wreckage waving his arms and roaring in agony. His armour had not protected him from the flames, his entire body was alight. His fur fed the flames until another trooper shot him in the head.

  James changed to another channel, and flinched at what was being shown. Someone was hiding in a building and filming the street outside. The scene could have been culled from any one of a thousand newsreels shown during the Merki War in the Alliance, except this one starred Shan not Humans.

  He had no idea which city was being shown, or on which planet. It didn’t matter. Similar scenes were being played out everywhere the Merkiaari had landed. He reached out to select another channel, but Brenda stayed his hand.

  “I need to see it.”

  Hiding from the truth wouldn’t help matters. He nodded and watched trying not to let Brenda see what he was feeling.

  Merki troopers were firing into the packed street cutting Shan down by the hundreds. They fired their plasma rifles and gauss cannons non-stop. Blood coated every surface until it looked as if some mad artist had painted the street red.

  James covered his mouth with a hand and swallowed sickly, trying not to vomit. He glanced at Brenda only to find her crying silently. The camera shifted. It focused on the other end of the street, where Shan bit and clawed at Merki troopers in a desperate attempt to escape slaughter. He watched a huge Merkiaari female grab a Shan cub and tear it in half above her head. She did the same thing to an adult a moment later when he attacked her. He might have been the cub’s father. There was no way to know.

  “Oh God, Oh God, Oh God…” Brenda chanted. “Please make them stop…”

  James shook his head. Nothing would stop them. They would come here next… if they hadn’t already. He craned his neck to look at the sky through the cockpit windows. It was just blind luck he’d chosen to visit here, and not Harmony while the Merki chose the opposite—maybe.

  “What are we going to do?” Brenda whispered unable to look away from the horror.

  “Hide, that’s all we can do. Hide and fight when the time comes.” James flicked switches bringing the navigational computer and sensor arrays online, and then started the engines.

  “Where are we going?”

  The lander lifted and hovered over the landing pad.

  “The mountain keeps. It’s the only place.”

  “Will they let us in?”

  “I hope so,” he said and concentrated on flying low. He had no real idea if the Merki had sent ships to Child of Harmony, but if they had, he wanted to stay low and unobtrusive. “Better go back and tell the others what’s happening.”

  “I’ll go.”

  “Thanks, Jan.” James glanced at Brenda’s tear streaked face. “It will be all right.”

  “No it won’t,” she whispered. “They’ll kill everyone on Harmony and then they’ll come here and kill us.”

  There wasn’t anything he could say to that. She was right.

  Flight time to the keep was less than an hour. He could have reduced the time to almost nothing if he had dared boosting for orbit, but that would have been suicide. He flew fast and low, with the shuttle’s sensors on passive. The Merki troop ships were huge things, and they showed up clearly whenever he got within range of one. The gravsleds were insects in comparison, but their drive systems used a lot of power. As long as he concentrated hard on their output, the sensors gave him just enough time to divert wide around them.

  To James, the hour seemed to crawl by, but eventually his destination loomed ahead of him.

  The mountain range would have been impressive if he hadn’t been looking for a landing place without being shot down. On his final approach, he had to bank sharply when targeting sensors locked him up, and sirens wailed throughout the cockpit. With his heart pounding fit to give him a heart attack, James checked his monitors and reluctantly turned back. He never wanted to go through that again.

  “I’ll have to land in the foothills.”

  Brenda grunted unhappily, but she didn’t object as he set down not far from the tree line. “I’ll collect some supplies.”

  “Tell the others to grab the Box. We’re going to need it.”

  “Yeah,” she said in a subdued voice.

  James waited for everyone to climb out before he eased the lander off the ground, and slowly worked his way under the trees. It was a tight squeeze, but he managed to get under cover before he ran out of places to go. He landed and quickly shut down the engines. He powered down everything he had access to. He had no idea how stealthy the lander was, or how easily the Merki might find it, so he did his best to make it invisible. The only thing left was the maintenance system, but he couldn’t shut that down without risking being unable to restart it. Besides, he didn’t know how.

  He jumped to the ground and keyed the hatch closed before resolutely turning away, and leading the others toward the mountains. At first he set a fast pace, but he soon realised the others were out of condition. Their progress slowed to a crawl. He said nothing, but Brenda could see his concern.

  “They can’t help it.”

  “I know,” James said. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “No, but I could feel you thinking it.”

  He laughed and hugged her to him as they ambled through the woods. “How did it happen?”

  “What?”

  “How did we happen so fast? We’ve known each other for years, but we’ve only really known each other for a few months.”

  “I guess it must be love,” Brenda said.

  “Must be,” James said and kissed her.

  “Really,” Bernard said, with an exasperated sigh. “Must you two do that at a time like this?”

  “What better time?” Janice said eyeing Bernard with speculation that made him flush. “There might not be much left.”

  Bernard nodded sombrely. “Did you know that I’m unmarried, dear lady?” he said with a grin, and took Janice’s hand for a kiss.

  “Why, sir. You do take liberties. Do it again.”

  “Delighted,” he said and obeyed.

  They made their slow way through the forest. James walked with an arm around Brenda’s shoulders. Janice and Bernard held hands chatting and laughing quietly. Bindar walked alone carrying the Box, closely followed by Sheryl and David. They were not a couple, but they walked arm in arm seeking mutual comfort in unknown surroundings.

  The other members of the team walked in a nervous knot through the shadows of the forest. All had packs on their backs containing a few meagre supplies, but none had anything close to a weapon.

  The forest was densely populated with trees and heavy undergrowth. More than once they stopped in fearful silence listening to something rustling in the brush. On closer inspection, they found traces of some kind of animal, and from then on they were more watchful. As the sun lowered in the sky, James called a halt and they made a cold camp. He explained that having no idea whether the Merki were near, he didn’t want fires lit and perhaps attracting them.

  “What about the animal tracks we found?” David said peering nervously into the trees.

  James peered into the darkness uneasily, but then he shrugged. “There’s nothing to be done, David. I think we’ll be safe enough. The tracks were shallow. Probably made my something small.”

&nbs
p; “You hope.”

  “Yes, I hope.”

  After eating a meagre meal from the emergency rations they had brought from the shuttle, James lay down with Brenda snuggled up close to him. It was a pleasant night, thankfully not cold, but he found himself unable to sleep. What had happened to Canada? Had she been destroyed, or had she jumped outsystem as Brenda believed? He hoped it was the latter, but he doubted Colgan would do that without a very good reason. Maybe he went for help. If he did, they wouldn’t see any for a couple of months, plus however long it took to assemble sufficient forces to contest the system’s ownership. He had no doubt Admiral Rawlins would want to fight, but would the Council let him?

  He hoped so.

  The next morning, they set out again. As before, James led the way and they were soon out of the forest and into the foothills. This was the most dangerous part. There was no cover here, and if anyone looked down at the right time they would be spotted. Their pace fell to a crawl as they struggled into higher elevations and gasped for air. He relieved Bindar of the Box, and continued his stumbling way ever upward. Brenda took a turn for an hour, but although the Box wasn’t heavy, it was an awkward size, and struggling up a steep trail with it took its toll.

  Around midday, James began actively looking for one of the entrances to the keep. Sheer rock walls and rubble strewn goat paths were all he found. Did this planet have a goat analogue?

  “I know it’s here,” James said worriedly. “She showed me right to it, but it looks different.”

  “Are we lost?” Brenda whispered as the others sat down to rest.

  “No-no,” James said quickly.

  “We are, aren’t we? If we are, you would tell me right?”

  “We’re not lost. I think they might have sealed the keep already.”

  “Oh.”

  After a short rest they moved on until they entered a canyon that looked very familiar. The sheer cliff-like walls towered high into the air making James feel very small. He found a distinctive outcropping of rock below which the entrance to the keep should have been, but when he reached the rock face, there was no evidence that it wasn’t a natural rock formation. He ran his hands over it, trying to feel any difference in texture or temperature… anything that might reveal the entrance, but there was nothing.