Galaxy Dog

by Brett Fitzpatrick

  "Come on, Jay," she yelled, "We have to get to Knave before that ramp retracts."

  Everything was moving extremely slowly, or so it seemed to her, an effect of the time dilation provided by her super-advanced armor, but her advantage in speed was mostly reflexes. It wasn't much use in a foot race. Altia ran as hard as she could, realizing that the armor she was wearing didn't have actuators and wasn't helping her at all. Perhaps the original wearers were so strong that they didn't need the help, but Altia with her human muscles was never going to catch the gunship. It was already clearing the airlock before Altia had run half way across the docking bay. The realization dawned on her that there was just no way she was going to make it, the distance between her and the gunship just kept on opening up, and worse, the nose turret was slowly tracking to point at her as the gunship backed out.

  She felt an impact in her side, as Jay shoved her down to the floor of the bay. The shot from the massive mass driver in the gunship nose tore over their heads and gouged a huge divot of metal out of the bay wall.

  "Roll," came a mental command.

  She was vaguely aware that it didn't originate in her own mind, but came from the AI brain of Jay but she was past caring about such feats of magic. She just rolled to the side, scrambled to her feet and ran for some cover.

  "Powers," she cursed, "We lost him."

  "No we didn't," Jay said, "Yort, transport him out of there."

  "Attempting transport now," came Yort's voice.

  "Attempting?" Altia said, as her armor folded away.

  She watched dispassionately as Jay's armor underwent the same transformation. The panels of armor split apart and folded one after another until nothing was left but a small hexagonal badge on his chest. Time suddenly sped up, what had seemed glacial was now racing like a heartbeat.

  "The target vessel is moving too unpredictably to achieve a successful teleportation. It is also accelerating fast and will soon be out of range," Yort said.

  "Chase it, disable its engines," Altia yelled, "Make the teleport."

  "I am not authorized for fire control," Yort reminded them, "One of the crew will be required on the bridge for those duties. Also, attempting to shadow the gunship will mean we will be flying predictably, and this will expose us to increased enemy fire, the damage we sustain will be considerably worse."

  "I'm on the way to the bridge," Altia said, "Somebody has to do some shooting around here."

  As Altia ran for the bridge she was almost thrown from her feet a couple of times. Yort hadn't been kidding when he said they would be exposed to more damage by chasing the gunship. Altia reviewed what she had learned about the Galaxy Dog's weaponry. They had spent numerous hours in asteroid fields, firing weapon spreads and experimenting with different armaments. She knew the bigger guns on board would reduce the gunship to a small cloud of debris in a single shot, which would not be great for a successful teleport. She needed something with pinpoint accuracy, with enough punch to stop the gunship but not so much that it was reduced to a cloud of exotic particles.

  "The needle guns," she muttered, as she came round the corner onto the bridge and vaulted into her command position. She settled into the acceleration couch on its pedestal, surrounded by her monitors and control surfaces.

  ***

  The Galaxy Dog was flying too predictable a flight path, matching as best it could the movements of the gunship. It was taking a horrendous amount of incoming fire, entire surfaces were becoming denuded of armor, the raw structure of the spaceship exposed. Yort was flying the Galaxy Dog efficiently and well, turning damaged areas away from the worst fire, concentrating shields above bare patches, but it couldn’t go on for long, they would soon run out of luck and be hit square by an energy beam or a rod of accelerated mass that couldn't be deflected or dissipated enough, and they would be undone.

  "Come on, Altia," Jay yelled, as he ran onto the bridge, “shoot.”

  Altia fired the needle guns again and again, tearing away heat sinks and communications arrays from around the engines of the gunship, but not disabling the drives.

  "Almost," Altia said.

  The bridge shook as they took more incoming fire, but Altia tried her best to ignore it, to concentrate on her prey, to line up her next shot.

  "Gotcha," Altia said, as she saw the shot tear into the small spaceship's thrusters. Their shields powerless to stop them. The gunship was left floating predictably, unable to jink and swerve.

  "Teleport lock achieved," Yort said, "Transferring. Knave is aboard ship."

  They felt a lurch as the Galaxy Dog was able to resume its own unpredictable flight

  Altia jumped from her position and ran through the corridors to the teleportation chamber. Knave was slumped on the floor. She ran to him and checked his pulse, found it still beating, but he didn't look good. His face was swollen, his eyes blackened and there were cuts on his arms. They looked fresh, she guessed the marines on the gunship had been trying to cut his armor away, and if they had marked his flesh they had obviously being using powerful lasers. Knave opened his bruised eyes.

  "Welcome to the land of the living," Altia said.

  "Nice to be back," Knave murmured weakly.

  "Let's get you to sick bay," Altia said, gently, "Though I'm not sure where it is yet. You'll be the first customer."

  "No thanks. I'm not sleeping while the ship gets blown up by the cursed Tarazet Deep Space Fleet."

  Knave struggled to his feet and headed for the bridge. Altia accompanied him, making sure to stay close in case he stumbled. Altia reached the bridge first and climbed back into her acceleration couch. She took over the big guns and left the medium armament to Jay.

  ***

  On her monitor, Shivia watched, transfixed. She saw the interior of the gunship, a team of marines and the center of the screen was empty. The insectile armor was gone. It had blurred, shimmered and now it just wasn't there anymore.

  "Teleportation," she whispered, "Was that teleportation? That is absolutely impossible. Raven, get me the admiral. We must have that ship, at all costs."

  ***

  Back on Galaxy Dog the sheer numbers of the enemy was starting to tell.

  "There's no way through," Jay said, "There are just too many of them."

  "We're taking a lot of damage," Altia said.

  Knave came onto the bridge, clambering slowly up into his tall chair.

  "We keep fighting," he said, "Something will pop loose. It always does. We just have to keep fighting and keep our eyes open."

  "Well," Altia said, "if you're fit for duty, you might as well make yourself useful. Power up the needle guns and see if you can take out some of the smaller hostiles."

  "I'm on it," Knave growled.

  There were a number of smaller hostiles, Knave saw, all nestled within the minimum range of the big guns, where Altia couldn't target them with the main armament, and even Jay on the medium guns couldn't reach. They were staying close, like a shoal of fish, and taking any opportunity they could, when Galaxy Dog's shields fell, to pepper the flanks of the bronze warship with fire. Usually they mistimed it, but they were doing real damage when they got the timing right.

  "We'll have to do something about that," Knave said, and splayed his fingers out across the hieroglyphs of his fire control console.

  He only understood the bare bones of the system, little more than which hieroglyph was target and which was fire, but it was enough. He touched the targeting hieroglyph and felt a force like a monkey's fist grab his brain and squeeze. The pressure was connected to a strange alien symbol that appeared in front of his eyes, strange but recognizable as cross hairs. He used a combination of thought and twitching movements of his fingers to center the alien gun sights of his needle weapons on one of the spaceships of the Tarazet fleet and then he pressed the trigger button.

  On the flanks of Galaxy Dog, a battery of small turrets emerged from their bays and waved left and right, up and down, as they followed Knave's commands. Then, as the
target was acquired, streamers of wafer thin metal were projected at the target. Their impact force was almost pure velocity, and they tore at the target spaceship like a hailstorm.

  The target was a gunboat, probably with a crew of four or five, if it even had a crew, Knave hoped it didn't. He hated Tarazet, but not the people actually doing the fighting, people like him. The hailstorm of metal needles tore the spaceship in half, smashing the two parts away in different directions and creating a cloud of debris. It was a small victory, just a drop in the ocean in comparison to the forces they were facing. Knave glanced at a tactical display, looking for the next target, and noticed something strange, near the Seat of Reason.

  "Do you see that?" he said.

  "See what?" Altia and Jay said in unison.

  "There," Knave said, "That spaceship is out of position."

  "How do you know?" Jay asked suspiciously.

  "Trust me," Knave said, "I've seen enough near orbit deployments to know what they look like. The vessels in orbit don't usually bunch up like that. It's putting too many eggs in one basket, means you can lose two ships to ground-based cannon, instead of one."

  "I think you're right," Altia said, "And by bunching up, they have left a gap. There are fewer spaceships in the cordon at that point there. We'll only get one chance to try and break through their lines. We may as well make our attempt there. Put a long range scanner view of the spaceship on main screen, Yort."

  The spaceship that was out of position appeared in the view screen, and something was clearly wrong. Its thrusters were lighting erratically as it followed a complex course.

  "I can see the name," Knave said, "Cutlass."

  "All right, let's make a heading for the Cutlass. Did you hear that, Yort?" Jay said.

  "Computing route," Yort answered.

  "If we have to ram the Cutlass," Knave said, "Is that a course you can follow, Yort?"

  "That would be offensive maneuvering," Yort said, "I would expect that the maneuver would fail, based on my design and programming, possibly without warning and at an inopportune moment."

  "I was thinking that might be the case," Knave said, "Transfer manual control of navigation to me."

  "Are you nuts?" Altia asked.

  Knave took control of navigation and was immediately assailed by what seemed to be a sea of numbers vectors and symbols, all exploding inside his mind. He pulled his hands from helm control and grabbed his head. It felt like he had hit it on a low metal ceiling.

  "Yowch," he grunted, "What in the powers was that?"

  "That was the helm control interface," Yort told him, "Your mind failed to... erm... encompass it."

  "I was never any good at encompassing," Knave groaned, holding his head, "Can you simplify it a little, so it will fit in my noggin?"

  "Computing," Yort said, "a simpler interface has now been designed, it will select for you as default-"

  "Thank you," Knave interrupted and forced his hands back down on the helm controls.

  He felt another flood of information, but this time it was manageable. A sphere appeared in his mind's eye, with the Galaxy Dog at the center. The enemy were arrayed all around and they were closing in. With the distance between the enemy spaceships closing all the time, the anomalous position of Cutlass was even more obvious. Knave could see an escape route. He stared at it and saw that the symbol for the Galaxy Dog was now moving toward it.

  "I can feel you in my mind," Altia said, "I can see what you see. More telepathy, more magic."

  "I'm in here too," Jay said, "And my guess would be a sophisticated neural network, with non-local components."

  "That's just a fancy way of saying magic," Altia said, "I'm talking with you, but I'm not moving my mouth. This is magic."

  "Whatever," Jay said, "See these two spaceships."

  Two spaceships lit up in the tactical display they all now had in their mind's eye.

  "I see them," Altia said.

  "It looks like they're trying to close our gap," Knave said.

  "So," Jay said, "We have to kill them before they do. Altia, you take the big one, and I'll take the other one."

  "No," Altia said, "We should concentrate our fire, take out one spaceship at a time. Our shields are low and armor compromised. We have to reduce the fire we are taking as quickly as possible."

  "Okay," Jay said, "Just start shooting."

  Knave watched the icons slowly dance, the Galaxy Dog nearing the gap, while the enemy repositioned to close it. There were innumerable lines tracing from Galaxy Dog to one of the enemies - the target picked out by Altia - but there were many more coming the other way. Knave concentrated on some of the most worrying clumps of incoming missiles and Galaxy Dog started to dance, trying its best to move its massive bulk out of the way of the incoming fire. Trying not to be at the positions likely selected by enemy targeting computers.

  "We're taking less damage," Altia gasped.

  "Thanks to my fancy flying," Knave whooped.

  "Yes," Yort said, "Your instincts are a valuable randomizing factor to add into our evasion routines. You must keep focused, keep concentrating on reaching your target location and evading enemy fire."

  "No problem," Knave said, "Will do."

  The Cutlass wasn't even firing any more, which was good because, if it had been, they might already have been dead. They were closing in on the gap, but there were still two adversaries firing from close range. The Galaxy Dog icon started flashing red.

  "I'm not exactly sure what that means," Knave said, "but I'm pretty sure it's not good."

  "I can read those warning symbols," Altia said, "And, trust me, they're not."

  "We are at vanishingly close range now," Altia said, "I'm slaving the needle guns to the other weapons."

  "And I'm gonna open a window and throw my shoe at it," Jay said.

  Knave saw the enemy icon go red and start flashing, and, as he watched it, the icon unpacked and he was treated to a camera view of the spaceship splitting at the guts and losing armor like a lizard shedding its skin. The lights across the hull flickered and died, as did the guns.

  "Our goal isn't to destroy it, just silence its guns," Altia said.

  "Of course," Knave said, “Nobody has anything against the poor souls on board.”

  "Okay," Jay said, "Switch targets to the other one"

  The impacts that had been exploding and detonating across the huge slabs of armor of the spaceship in the view screen stopped as the Galaxy Dog's guns moved on to new targets. The Tarazet Navy spaceship was left hanging in space, dark. Knave stared at it.

  "Snap out of it," Altia yelled, "We'll have your hole clear in a jiffy, Knave, and we're going to need you to fly through it."

  The other spaceship went dark, and Knave accelerated for the gap in the cordon that had been torn open. There was no need for fancy evasive flying any more, just a straight run until they got the jump to warp travel calculated. Knave watched the Cutlass as they left it behind. He wondered what had happened, a helm malfunction, or engine problem perhaps, but then he saw it move towards its nearest neighbor.

  "We're through the wall of spaceships," Altia yelled, "Pedal to the metal, Knave. Get us out of here. This was a bad idea. I'm so sorry. I really didn't believe Shivia would try to kill us."

  "People," Jay muttered, darkly.

  "You live and learn," Knave said, "And it was your shooting that extricated us from this trap. Some fancy shooting."

  The stars visible on the view screen were paralaxing so fast they looked like fireflies.

  "Warp speed achieved," Yort said.

  "How is the damage?" Jay asked.

  The icon representing Galaxy Dog in their tactical display was still flashing red.

  "Damage levels are critical," Yort said, "We can not survive another battle. We must find somewhere safe to effect repairs."

  "Then, let's go find a place to hole up," Knave said, "Yort, can you take over helm. Just put as much distance as you can between us and any pursuers."
/>   "Helm is now under my control," Yort said.

  They all three relaxed away from their stations. Getting stiffly up from their acceleration couches. Knave was in the worst shape, almost stumbling as he descended from his platform, but they were all beat up.

  ***

  "Chase them," Shivia yelled.

  "But there is a problem with the Cutlass, " the admiral said.

  "I don't care," Shivia said, "We have to secure that spaceship. If there is even a chance that it drops out of warp, we have to be there to take it as our prize."

  "It was severely damaged," the admiral conceded, then he turned to his second in command, "Give the order, commander. Pursue the target. Into warp space."

  The entire Tarazet fleet accelerated along the same vector as their target. If the spaceship maintained its top speed, they would surely lose it, but if it faltered, they would overhaul it and capture it.

  It seemed at first that the entire fleet had followed their prey, but, in fact, three spaceships had been left behind. The Cutlass and the two dark spaceships. Shuttles emerged from Cutlass, searching the remains for survivors, and even non-survivors, as long as there was sufficient remaining of them. The Cutlass waited for their shuttles to return, and once the scavengers had finished picking clean the bones of the two wrecks, they returned to their mother ship, and Cutlass then accelerated away at warp speed.

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