Shards of the Abyss

by Ronald Brandenburg III

Order, but the others don’t want to come out publicly against the New Order. You seeing them against the backdrop of the gas nebula was simply bad luck for them.”

  “If they are here to attack us though, we are still in danger. A small wing of old Falcons won’t stop a ship that big.”

  “Our prospects don’t look very good, but we will be able to get a message out. That’s better than being surprised by this ship and being wiped out without the New Order having a clue. The commander may even try to negotiate our surrender, though I doubt he will do that.”

  Jesse took what the doctor was saying and realized that he probably didn’t have a long career in the New Order military if what the doctor said was true. Meekly, he continued the conversation.

  “What will happen?”

  “Well, I’m not an officer, but I think they will start with an orbital bombardment. They will not waste ground troops until every building has been destroyed, but after the bombardment they will land a couple transports filled with soldiers to wipe out any survivors. Then, they will move on to the corporate mines on the planet. Nobody left alive on Aridia to say that this faction or another was the aggressor. The ship will jam our communications once they enter the system here, so we can’t send a message out, but thanks to you we will have sent our message long before then.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy.”

  “Sorry Jesse, the universe is a cruel place.”

  Jesse got quiet again and watched the data slate spit out more data from the satellites. Nothing new came from the satellites before sundown. Jesse figured that looking through the telescope would at least be more colorful than looking at a black screen with green lettering all over it. The afternoon passed very slowly as Jesse contemplated his demise. He had always known death was close by. Uriah had been a wreck that was slowly falling apart with the residents nearly powerless to keep holding it together. Several times, a meteor storm had hit the station and depressurized multiple sections at a time. He and Rick had worked around the clock to patch things up as best they could. Sometimes people died; there was nothing that they could have done.

  Finally, the sun set and Dr. Mojave turned the telescope on. Jesse repositioned himself so that he could watch the big screen that was linked to the telescope. Instantly, the ship appeared on screen in much better detail than the night before. Clearly, it was a warship, but it wasn’t a battleship or a dreadnought, probably just a cruiser.

  “I’m going to run the images through a ship identifier program. Hopefully it can tell us what ship that is and who owns it, but if it was built at a private shipyard and not scanned by a New Order vessel, then it won’t appear in the database.”

  The observatory was quiet except for hums as the computer ran through the known database of warships. It took a while since the images fed into the program were from extremely far away and the database of ships was very expansive. After the program had started, Dr. Mojave had widened the field of the telescope to start looking for other ships. He moved slowly so that the computer could compare different shots to analyze the differences.

  Jesse brought up an image of the cruiser, which was extremely blurry so he couldn’t make out any ports. Thinking back to his training though, he didn’t remember cruisers being described as carrying any kind of fighters, but they had turrets and rail guns. More than enough to defend against the old squadron of Falcons that were all that defended Aridia.

  The night past slowly as Jesse came to the realization that he probably wouldn’t survive the encounter with this mysterious ship. The only excitement came early in the morning when the computer decided that the ship was the ISS Penelope from the Hermitage Corporation; an older cruiser that still boasted a formidable array of weapons that were more than capable of sustaining an orbital bombardment. The Hermitage Corporation was loosely aligned with the Confederacy of Traders, but had not publicly declared their support.

  Dr. Mojave sent the data to Commander Hammac to relay back to the New Order Military Command. They would put the Hermitage Corporation under investigation and freeze their assets. At least something good would come from this, Jesse thought. At least no other ships had been found in support of the Penelope.

  Once the sun came up, the telescope became useless again. All the satellites were trained at the incoming ship, but no new information was coming in. Less than an hour after the sun’s rising, Jesse couldn’t keep his eyes open and fell asleep at the desk that he had been sitting at all night. Dr. Mojave let him sleep, there was nothing that Jesse could do anyways, except be anxious and pester him with questions. The doctor was used to long nights and wasn’t as exhausted as Jesse was, tired yes, but not exhausted.

  Jesse had an oddly good sleep, none of the usual tossing and turning. As a result he had a few dreams; they all featured the ISS Penelope coming to doom them, but how she did so changed with each dream. The first one had an array of light falling down amongst them, destroying every building on base. The last one showed Jesse an orbital bombardment followed by transports landing and disgorging troops that came to slaughter them all. With a start, he awoke in the semi-darkness that Dr. Mojave liked to keep the interior of the observatory at.

  “I have an idea.”

  “What” the doctor had dozed off in the early afternoon.

  “The Penelope is going to come in and bombard the base. Then send troops down to mop us up. If we hide out, away from the base, then attack the transports; we can fly the transports back to the Penelope and take her. That would even strand the Hermitage troops that landed on the planet. I need to talk to Commander Hammac.”

  “He won’t listen to you, but I will relay your idea.”

  Within moments, the doctor had messaged the commander.

  “Well, he has heard your idea. It is up to him to implement it.”

  “Do we have any new information on the Penelope?”

  “Nothing new, but we do have confirmation that it is her. And the NOMC has received our message, but as expected they cannot render us aid fast enough. The satellites have been cut off by the jamming; we only have the telescope at night now.”

  Dr. Mojave fell quiet again, as Jesse could think of no further questions. The two of them stared at the screens on their desks until the sun set again. Dr. Mojave started the sequence to initiate the telescope and they waited for the observatory to come to life.

  “The Penelope is already starting to jam us. We lost long range communication just before sun down. We will probably be unable to communicate with the base in a few hours.”

  “Do we stay here or go back to the base?”

  “Well we are both non-combatants. If we go to the base, we may give away some of the positions that Commander Hammac has laid out. There is a chance that we will be ignored here, at least at first.”

  “Do you have a couple rifles here?”

  “Yes, in that closet over there.”

  Jesse went and found the rifles. His training kicked in and he quickly broke it down and inspected the inner workings to ensure that they were in good working order.

  “If and when they come for us, maybe we can take a few out.”

  Dr. Mojave didn’t respond, but had a tight frown on his face.

  The night passed slowly as both men watched their screens as the Penelope grew slowly clearer as it neared the planet. The corporate ship still moved slowly, as though it didn’t realize they had been spotted. The telescope had a lock on its target and continuously re-focused on the ship, which meant that the ship never looked bigger on the screens.

  “It’s going to be here sooner than I thought”, the doctor said as much to himself as to Jesse.

  The two of them watched the screen as the hours rolled by.

  “I think you can see it directly overhead if you go outside. It won’t look like much more than just another star, but if you watch long enough, you should see it move against the background.”

  Anxious to do
anything new, Jesse shrugged and walked outside. After ten minutes, he picked it out from among the background of vibrant stars. It didn’t look very big, but it was out there and Jesse knew there was nothing to stop it from wiping them all out.

  “Jesse! Get back in here. The Penelope is powering up its capacitors, it’s about to start the bombardment.”

  Jesse ran back inside. In truth, the observatory would not be much cover, but it was something. They watched the screens as the Penelope charged its cannons. The two of them watched as the cruiser launched its first salvo, a few minutes later, they both felt the tremors as the Penelope started hammering the New Order base an hour away. Jesse said a short prayer for the troopers that were still at the base, Commander Hammac never said if he was going to use Jesse’s plan. He just hoped that the trooper’s weren’t huddled inside the building on base. Those were obviously the first targets from the Hermitage ship.

  The barrage lasted fifteen minutes. The telescope could not be retrained to look at the base, so Jesse had no idea how much damage had been done. A few moments after the firing stopped, smaller ships left the bay on the underside of the ship and headed towards the surface.

  “They are sending ground troops.”

  Dr. Mojave and Jesse had absolutely no contact with the base since the ship was jamming every frequency. The New Order had deemed it a waste of materials to