by E. R. Torre
“The Type 6 is online,” Delmont said. “Here comes the Cavalry.”
The Type 6 Displacer, a metallic spherical ring with a hollow center, lit up. Within the hollow center lights flashed in a swirl and in moments an interdimensional corridor was established.
No sooner was it stable that a group of twenty dark spacecraft came through it and into Pomos space.
The enemy drones, belatedly realizing the area they were meant to guard was invaded, turned from the Type 2 Displacer and moved to intercept the just arrived ships.
As quick and deadly as the drones were, they were no match for these spacecraft.
A short battle ensued and electrified charges rained down from the just arrived ships and at the incoming drones.
The first drone hit with one of those charges crumbled into ash and the other drones, realizing these invaders presented a very real danger, attempted to flee.
None were as fast as the mysterious space crafts.
The dark ships spread out and with surgical precision chased down and mercilessly slaughtered one drone after the other until there was only one left.
The final drone sought shelter around Pomos, unaware the pursuing craft had maneuvered her there.
As the drone flew toward the destroyed platform, it did not see the camouflaged vessel Sergeant Delmont and Catherine were in.
“Like a lamb to slaughter,” Sergeant Delmont said.
He activated the ship’s offensive systems.
The drone, still unaware of the danger, shifted its surface while preparing for orbital entry. Its outer hull moved like liquid metal which, in a way, it was. The billions of nano-probes linked together to form her whole strengthened the ship’s underside in preparation for the heat it would face upon entering the planet’s atmosphere.
Before she could create this shield, Sergeant Delmont pressed a button and a burst of energy emerged from one of their ship’s cannons. It slammed into the drone’s side.
Fully half of the drone’s surface was immediately incinerated. Pieces flew off and dissipated while the remains of the craft spun out of control.
Sergeant Delmont hit another switch.
In the darkness of space, their ship appeared directly before the injured drone. Her energy cannons glowed with savage energy but the larger craft did not fire.
“The drone’s internal systems are active,” Delmont said. “She’s in hibernation but capable of repairing herself.”
“How long?”
“At least a week.”
“Long enough,” Catherine Holland said.
Their ship’s thrusters came alive and the vessel moved away from the stricken drone. The other ships in Catherine Holland and Sergeant Delmont’s group flew to and opened fire upon the Type 2 Displacer. They destroyed the ancient device.
Afterwards, they converged and made their way to the Type 6 Displacer.
“The injured drone is attempting to access the Type 6. Very subtly.”
“Not subtly enough,” Catherine Holland said and smiled. “Make sure she knows where we’re going.”
Sergeant Delmont contacted the Type 6 Displacer and set the destination coordinates.
“Done,” he said and activated the auto-pilot.
“This is it,” Catherine Holland said. Goosebumps filled the flesh on her arms. “The moment we’ve been waiting for.”
“The shadow war emerges into the light,” Delmont said.
23
The injured drone spun in a decaying orbit around Pomos.
A large portion of its body, in pieces and ashen from the attack, floated alongside it.
There was no sign of life within the vessel and in another week’s time, the planet’s gravity would surely claim her as it did the Space Elevator and Platform.
There was still time.
The vessel’s nano-probes conserved power while methodically repairing the ship’s considerable damage.
Those same nano-probes allocated a fraction of her energy to watch the attacking vessels approach the Type 6 Displacer. They successfully connected to the Displacer’s computers and accessed their mysterious enemy’s destination coordinates.
The injured drone saved these coordinates. Once her attackers were gone and as soon as she was able to do so, she meant to forward what she learned to her master.
From that moment on, all systems focused on repair protocols.
On the fourth day following the attack, the ship’s damaged engines were able to initiate a series of short, guided bursts.
The bursts allowed the ship to stop its wild spinning and stabilize her orbit.
There remained many repairs to perform but the ship took this time to conduct a full examination of Pomos and the area surrounding it. More importantly, it needed to determine if her attackers were still around and whether any of the other ships in her group survived.
That second question was answered quickly. After sending out a variety of messages and waiting a full twenty hours to receive replies, the injured drone was rewarded with complete silence.
The drone discontinued all attempts at finding surviving drones and, instead, allowed a portion of her nano-probes to continue scanning the area in case her attackers returned.
The drone ran its visual and sensory memory of its last flight and the attack. It attached the information to the attacker’s destination. A complete report was created.
The report need to reach its master.
As soon as was possible.
24
Epsillon Merchant Vessel Apokalupto, on the fringes of the Skryty Solar System
Joannah Reveles, Captain of the Merchant Vessel Apokalupto, took a sip of her coffee.
She sat at the center of her ship’s bridge and was surrounded by a crew of ten officers who worked the craft’s various controls. Two navigated while another pair were on the lookout for nearby vessels. Three officers watched the internal systems while the remaining three manned her defensive arrays. They had little to do but wait for –and hope against– the need to use them.
A second set of nine officers were in the crew quarters resting. Various personnel shuffled in and out while the Captain remained in place, her attention on everything going on. She was pumped with enough stimulant to keep her awake during this stage of the trip.
The Skryty system was a hostile, near inaccessible asteroid wasteland which made it perfect for ships like the Apokalupto. Indeed, any vessel with illegal cargo relished the opportunity to make itself as invisible as possible.
The Skryty system was one of the ship’s stops before making its way to the Pandora Displacer. Rarely used, the Displacer was left stationed there over seven hundred years before by a robot exploratory vessel at the dawn of Epsillon Empire’s first major growth spurt. Back then, robot vessels transported Displacers to distant solar systems which were thought to be prime territory for expansion, exploration, or settlement.
Sending robot vessels was a cheap and minimally risky way to get a Displacer to these systems, even though it took well over one hundred years for them to travel through real space and make it to their destination. Unfortunately, for every system which proved inhabitable there were hundreds which were disappointments. Further, many robot vessels encountered catastrophic failure well before reaching the end of their journey.
In the case of the Skryty system, it proved to be another such disappointment. Of the system’s five planets, only one was the proper size and had conditions which made it a candidate for terraformation. This planet, however, experienced frequent earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, and unlivable temperatures. Over time terraformation could be accomplished but the costs required to do so far exceeded the needed investment.
The system was abandoned but the Displacer’s placement at her perimeter allowed other exploratory vessels to arrive in minimal time and, from there, to move through real space to even more distant, and hopefully better, systems. Once the robot vessels carrying Displacers reached those systems, Skryty and the Pandora D
isplacer were no longer in much demand. A skeletal crew remained behind to keep her running in case of emergencies in systems further down –or up– the line but otherwise she was hardly used.
When the Epsillon Empire’s Corporations began their rule, the crew of the Pandora Displacer found they could make good money turning a blind eye to vessels with questionable destinations and even more questionable cargos.
Records of transports were erased, lost, or simply not noted yet few doubted the Empire was aware of and, at least for now, tolerated these smuggling operations. Mild attempts were made to constrict the illicit trade but when tensions between the Phaecian and Epsillon Empires boiled over, the military decided sending vessels to this distant system was a waste of valuable resources.
Even with a light military presence, smugglers used the Pandora Displacer with great care. One never knew when the Empire might change its mind and become interested in the cargo passing through these parts.
Captain Reveles laid her cup down. The Apokalupto neared the Azure Asteroid belt. This area had the thickest concentration of asteroids and was all that remained of a planet which, millennia before, was ground down by the movements of the two planets it once orbited between.
“What do we have?” Captain Reveles asked.
“We’re nearing quadrant five of the Azure,” John Vaughn, her First Officer, said. “No sign of Empire Scouts.”
“What about other vessels?”
Vaughn shook his head. A tense silence settled over the cockpit and, after a while, he said:
“Sir, perhaps that sensor reading was an echo.”
“It was no echo and it was no glitch,” Captain Reveles said. “Don’t convince yourself otherwise.”
Over the past three years the Apokalupto was forced to outrun a dozen vessels, only a couple of which were Empire Patrols. In lean times, and these times were lean indeed, smugglers had a nasty habit of turning to piracy to make ends meet.
Captain Reveles felt there were eyes upon her ship the moment their cargo was loaded on Proxima three days before. A day later and well after initiating her run, the ship’s sensor equipment detected two blips which might have come from a ship tracing their route. If a vessel was tailing them, it was obvious what they were after and this sector of the Azure was a perfect place for an ambush.
“Take the fifty one corridor,” Captain Reveles said. “We haven’t used it in a while.”
“Aye sir,” the navigator said.
Each route’s number was designated by ease of travel. As the asteroids moved in orbit through the solar system, they retained a general formation that changed little over the years. As long as no vessel or celestial object crashed into them, the field’s movements were dictated by a history of many thousands of years of such orbital swings.
With the help of auto-pilot, the route could be traveled quickly and, once outside the asteroid field, the Apokalupto was only hours from the Displacer and her final destination.
One hour passed. Then another. By the third hour, the tension within the bridge dissipated, if only a little.
Two of Captain Reveles’ crew, a couple, requested permission to retreat to their quarters.
Captain Reveles considered the request. The two spent most of the trip on the bridge and were owed private time.
“Permission granted,” Captain Reveles said.
The couple thanked the Captain and walked to the elevator at the other end of the bridge. Before its doors opened, proximity alerts blared.
“What’s happening?” Captain Reveles yelled out.
“We’ve got… sir, our route is blocked!” Vaughn said.
“Disengage auto-pilot and come to a full stop!” Captain Reveles ordered.
The couple hurried back to their stations while the Apokalupto’s engines whined. The vessel slowed and, on the main view-screen directly before the bridge, the crew watched as a mass of asteroids moved about quickly, spinning and slamming against each other as if caught in a violent maelstrom.
Several of the asteroids, some as large as the ship itself, shot forward.
“By the Gods!” Captain Reveles shouted. “Back us up! Get us as far away from he—”
Before she could finisher her order the Apokalupto violently shook. One of the stray asteroids slammed against the ship’s starboard side.
Within the cockpit, three of the crewmen were thrown from their chairs. One landed with a sickening thud against hard paneling and lay still.
“Quickly!” Captain Reveles yelled out.
She gripped the edges of her chair lest she too be thrown to the floor. The ship’s internal artificial gravity weakened and the smell of fried circuitry filled the cockpit.
“Seal the bridge!” Captain Reveles ordered.
One of her officers ran to the elevator and tried to activate the control panel. It wasn’t working. He reached for the manual lever and spun it around, slowly sealing the elevator door.
“Got a rupture on cargo deck two,” another officer yelled. “Sealing that compartment.”
The ship moved away, backing up from the volatile rocks while slowly –too slowly– gaining distance from the maelstrom. When their ship moved far enough away from the danger, Captain Reveles jumped from her chair and ran to the stricken crewman. The young man lay face down upon a pool of his own blood.
Captain Reveles very gently turned him over. She winced at what she saw.
“Sir, is he…?” Vaughn asked.
Captain Reveles laid the crewman back down.
“Henderson’s gone,” she said before removing her jacket.
She gently laid it over the fallen officer’s upper body. There would be time, later, to properly mourn their loss.
Captain Reveles returned to her chair and gazed at the view-screen. The smoke within the cockpit cleared and the artificial gravity was back to near normal. The crew watched the asteroids whip and ram against each other. They would do this for many more years to come.
“What in Hades is going on?” Captain Reveles said. “Did we deviate from our course?”
“No sir,” Vaughn said. “Autopilot followed the proper route until now.”
“Then explain what we’re seeing.”
“Analyzing,” Vaughn said. He shook his head. “Sir, as of the last records, that wall of rock simply shouldn’t be there.”
“What caused it?”
“Perhaps a foreign body –a very large and fast moving one– plowed through this area,” he said. “Though that wouldn’t explain… Sir, based on the movement of the asteroids, its cause could only be some kind of blast or, more likely, a series of blasts.”
“Ships around these parts don’t have enough firepower to cause that kind of disruption and to my knowledge, there hasn’t been any heavy battleships in this area in years.”
“What was the last vessel to pass through here?”
“According to records, the Ulysses. She was here five days ago.”
“Did she report any problems?”
“None.”
“So whatever happened here occurred no later than five days ago?”
“Yes sir,” Vaughn said.
A burst of light glowed from within the asteroid mass.
“What in—” Captain Reveles began.
From the maelstrom emerged a dark, angular vessel. She was the size of a large transport ship and her port side glowed with heavy energy discharges. She flew past the asteroids and directly at the Apokalupto.
“By the Gods!” Captain Reveles shouted. “Evasive action!”
Even as she spoke, she knew the unidentified object was moving too fast to avoid a collision.
Incredibly, the ship’s outer body appeared to liquefy and change shape as it drew nearer. The object’s nose sharpened until it was like the tip of a dagger.
“Brace yourselves!” Captain Reveles yelled.
For a split second the object disappeared from the view-screen. What followed was the terrifying sound of metal slamming against metal.
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Most of the cockpit crew was thrown from their seats and onto the floor. Alerts and alarms blared. Several computer panels went dark while emergency lights flickered on and created a hellish red glow.
The crewmembers who hadn’t been thrown from their seats worked the controls furiously, trying their best to stabilize the craft.
As suddenly as they began, the vibrations stopped.
Captain Reveles lay on the floor next to her chair, her right arm bent back well beyond where it should be. She held her broken arm and forced herself up. Blood flowed from her nose and her face was very pale.
She looked at the forward view-screen and watched as the ship that slammed into her vessel sailed on and disappeared into the distance.
The crew around her moved. Most were in better shape than the Captain, though from the various cuts, blood, and bruises, every one of them suffered at least some minor injury.
“What’s our status?” Captain Reveles asked.
Navigator Vaughn held his nose and the blood gushing from it. He used his free hand to log back on to his computer.
“Sir, the ship’s lower third quadrant… it’s…”
“How damaged is it?”
“Sir, it’s gone.”
25
Captain Reveles swallowed hard.
If the third quadrant of the ship was gone, so too was the rest of her crew.
“We’re all that remains,” Vaughn said. He could barely keep the horror from his voice. “That ship sliced right through… right through...”
“What about the oxygen recycler and life support systems?”
“Cut off.”
“Engines?”
“Offline. Pod One and Two and Aft Three are still there, but they took an incredible amount of damage.”
“Can we repair them?”
Vaughn checked his computer. He shook his head.
“The batteries were sheared. There’s so much missing… No sir. There’s no way we can fix them.”
