Destroyer

by Craig Martelle

  “That is what I expect.”

  Katamara moved to his station and manipulated the side launchers. He spoke quietly into the comm at his station as he directed the technician about what to do. When the noisemakers had been loaded, the lights flashed on the launch panel.

  “Ready,” he reported.

  The commander returned to his station and activated the ship-wide intercom. He didn’t bother maintaining the quiet that was standard operating procedure while under cloaking. “Shipmates. Crew of the mighty war vessel Traxinstall. We have destroyed five enemy ships and heavily damaged one more, but they still have an armada remaining. We have found the lynchpin of their invasion of our systems. When we’ve destroyed the station, they’ll know this space is too hostile for them.

  “Then we’ll destroy their Gate, after those who wish to escape do so. We don’t have enough weaponry to destroy all their ships. When we return to Myriador, we will have no ordnance remaining. We’re already running low, but we’re not yet finished. Only when we’ve sent our last message to this heinous enemy will the burden of our mission be complete. Only when the aliens turn tail and run will our task be over.

  “That’s when we’ll take what we can, boarding the enemy ships, finding a Gate drive, and taking it. Maybe we’ll be home quicker than it takes the planets to revolve once around our sun. I don’t know about you, but I’d like that.”

  The commander let the crew digest his words for a few moments before continuing, “A strike at the heart of the vile beast, then we go home to the glory of Myriador.”

  The ship resounded with cheers, but not the commander’s and not the weapons specialist’s. They gave each other knowing looks. The risk increased with every attack, and in no way could they defeat all the ships. Many would remain behind. Too many aliens.

  The invasion had begun, and even with Lord Mantis’ best efforts, he couldn’t stop them. Returning home while aliens remained would be tantamount to treason. He and his entire crew would be executed.

  The mission had shifted. Steal a ship with a Gate drive; a small ship like the one that had hounded them. Only with that technology in hand could they return home.

  And live.

  “Prepare to launch the decoys.” The commander watched the live feed coming across the main screen. He estimated the drop points, waited for the cue from the weapons specialist, and issued the command, “Launch.”

  The small devices fell into space. Unshielded, they didn’t leave a ready signature like the mines, but they were programmed to broadcast just such a response once they were in place. The Traxinstall moved and dropped more, nine in total, each carefully deposited to move the blocking ships one direction or another to open a small gap through which a mine with a magnetic grapple could be flown.

  It would home in on its target, hook itself up, and detonate with the very power of an exploding star.

  That was the plan. The ship aligned itself to dart forward and send the mine on the perfect trajectory. When the decoys started to squawk, the defending ships launched a barrage that was more impressive than anything the commander had ever seen before. He tore his attention away from the mass of weapons discharges to give the order.

  “Launch the mine.”

  The ship lurched forward and just as quickly retreated, lest it get hit by stray fire. It backed farther and farther away until it was clear of the light show.

  The mine drifted through the opening adjusting and accelerated on a terminal approach to the station.

  “Open up. It makes your failure easier to swallow,” the commander told the main view screen. The explosion whited out the image. “Boom.”

  “Report!” Felicity shouted into the cacophony of fear generated by the explosion that sent them reeling. The station shuddered from the impact, metal screeching and groaning as it twisted and bent.

  No one answered the station manager, and tears welled in her eyes as she listened to her beautiful station writhing in anguish. Her breath started to come in ragged gasps.

  Is the air gone? Is this how I’m going to die? she wondered. One man stood out. He seemed calm and breathed regularly. She was panicking, that was all. Crises show what real leaders are made of.

  “Help your neighbors!” she shouted, walking confidently into the mass of hysteria. She touched arms and shoulders to calm people, and gave simple words of direction to give them something to do other than be afraid. “Help her up.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” somebody replied.

  “We are still alive, and with each breath, we continue to live. Revel in that! We have the greatest fleet ever out there protecting us. If they weren’t there, we’d already be dead. Let’s hear it for our brave warriors!”

  The cheer was weak. She jammed her fists against her hips and looked down her nose at the people. “Is that the best you can do?” she drawled. “Our warriors are out there. Hip, hip…”

  “Hooray!” many cheered. It was a start.

  “When these doors open and we are free to dust ourselves off, I better hear a louder cheer than that.” She smiled radiantly at the people, to discover that the station had quieted. The protests of the assault had subsided. The air continued to flow. The heat was there. And the doors remained in place.

  Ted, you better get your ass in gear and stop this maniac. I’ll make you happy that you did. Just come home to me, Felicity pleaded.

  “Get that ship out of here!” Terry ordered.

  “Launching now,” Smedley replied.

  “Gap the shield and send it through. No more danger-close Gates, please,” Micky added.

  The ship dashed forward, and a Gate appeared almost instantaneously. The ship went through it and was gone.

  The gravitic shields snapped back into place.

  “Ted, they just hit the station with a nuke, and it’s not pretty.” Terry didn’t know any other way to say it. “We’re on our way now to help in the search for survivors.”

  “Please give me control of the ship. We will execute Operation Whitewash on my command.”

  Terry nodded to Micky, who tapped his command codes into the console. “It’s all yours, Ted.”

  “Execute.” Ted’s word was simple but carried a heavy weight.

  Ships started to fire at random intervals. A few ships from Alpha Squadron and Delta fired first, intermittently. Beta joined with a scattershot approach. The War Axe mains spooled up and sent small particles accelerated to near light speed through the void.

  The fire bounced through the area, syncopated and coordinated.

  Terry stood mesmerized, staring at the screen.

  All of a sudden, each ship implemented maximum rates of fire, filling the void of space with lasers, plasma, particles, and slugs. Missiles rocketed away from the Harborian battlewagons and exploded in dizzying arrays.

  The fire stopped, then started anew with random shots followed by more intense fire.

  “Hey, buddy,” Terry told the alien. “Here’s a big ol’ bucket of ‘fuck you’ to pour over your fire.”

  “Get us out of here!” the commander shouted, no longer the master of calm. Too many weapons had come far too close. The Traxinstall pivoted hard and accelerated toward the Gate down what appeared to be an open corridor. The farther from the station, the wider the corridor became. They jockeyed back and forth, looking for clear space, but the beams continued.

  Until they stopped.

  “Keep on it,” the commander ordered. The pilot maintained the acceleration, knowing that it would take a while to slow down.

  And then the fire started again, but it was far behind them. “Slow us down and bring us in behind their Gate.”

  The pilot conducted a series of radical maneuvers in order to bleed off speed without exceeding the power curve and making the Traxinstall visible to the enemy. He enjoyed the power of driving the ship, and he was happy that he could please the commander. He brought the destroyer smoothly around the back side of the Gate.

  “Prepare to deploy the mines.
Set for command-initiated detonation.”

  “What the hell is that?” the navigator said aloud.

  “The Gate,” Bundin said. “Everyone is at the station or the shipyard. Who’s to say that he’s not going to trap us here after eliminating our support base?”

  “Did you see that explosion?” Slicker remarked from the bridge, transmitting her words to the cargo bay where her three squad members waited. “Look at that return fire!”

  Bundin brought up the video screen. The other warriors watched it on the heads-up displays inside their suits.

  “Fuck me!” Bon Tap exclaimed. He started to bounce with excitement at the sight of the massed fire.

  B’Ichi wasn’t immune to the rush of the weaponry simultaneously deployed. He was fascinated. The Keome had nothing like it.

  “Take us to the Gate, Dionysus. Boner and B’Ichi, you’re going into space. We need to make sure they’re not out here.”

  Bon Tap stopped vibrating. “Say what? I’m open to any ideas, but I’m not sure how me being out there is going to help us find that ship.”

  “I’ll be out there too,” Bundin said.

  “Without a suit?”

  Bundin didn’t dignify that with a response. Maybe someday they’d construct an armored suit that would fit him, but until then, he’d simply hold his breath. He was capable of operating in space without any support equipment for up to thirty minutes. Beyond that, he’d suffocate before the cold and vacuum would affect him.

  “We’ll search the Gate to make sure it doesn’t have any explosives attached, and then we’ll physically search as much space as we can cover until we have to return to the ship. Those are your orders. I expect you to carry them out.”

  “There’s the old Bundin we know and love,” Bon Tap mumbled.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Anything?” Terry asked skeptically.

  Micky cocked an eyebrow and listened carefully. He could always hope.

  Smedley sounded somber. “There is no debris or other indication that the alien ship was hit.”

  “Ted, check out that debris we picked up and see if you can figure out how it was cloaked.” Terry signed off without confirming that Ted had heard the message. Smedley was working with those in the maintenance bay, scanning and rescanning the recovered materials. He would have informed Plato, who would have shared everything Ted needed to know.

  Terry returned to the tactical display and added the latest attacks. Micky climbed down from the dais upon which his chair sat. Joining TH, he studied the colonel more than the tactical situation.

  “Have we heard from the station?” Terry asked softly.

  Smedley answered. “Power is in disarray. It’s a spiderweb of wiring to hold the inner bulkheads in place. Two of the three power systems are trashed, but the third system, a backup with the miniaturized power source that Ted installed, is holding steady. That’s the only reason the station survived.

  “Casualties?”

  “Seventeen that we know of.” Smedley was straightforward. Stretching the truth or obfuscating in order to spare feelings didn’t work with Terry Henry Walton.

  “What’s next?” Micky asked

  “Besides search and recovery operations at the station? We have to be wearing him down,” Terry suggested. “We have to. We’ve expended enough firepower to cut a small planet in half.”

  The colonel’s eyes jumped back and forth across the tactical display. “Where did Ramses’ Chariot go?”

  Micky couldn’t find it, scowling as he searched fruitlessly.

  “Ramses’ Chariot is holding position near the Gate,” Smedley reported.

  “Take us there right now!” Terry changed the tactical display to show the Gate and the one ship near it. “Get Dionysus on the hook to tell us what he knows that we don’t.”

  “Bundin had a hunch,” Smedley replied. “There are two warriors in their armored suits and one Podder outside the ship.”

  “I wonder who the Podder who’s dancing around out in space is?”

  The War Axe accelerated through an arc as it veered toward the Gate. “I can see what he’s thinking, and after we lit up the sky, it makes sense that the alien was somewhere other than close to the shipyard or the station.”

  The War Axe raced ahead. “Two minutes to station.”

  A voice spoke through the overhead. “Bundin here.”

  “Corporal Bundin! How are you communicating?” Terry asked.

  “An upgrade to my voice processor. It works like your chips.”

  “What drove you to the Gate?”

  “With the magnetic grapples we found, I thought it best that we survey our new Gate to make sure there weren’t any mines attached, waiting for someone to transit before they exploded. I don’t know what that would do, but there’s no way it could be good.”

  “One step ahead of the rest of us, Corporal. Well done.” Terry looked at the ceiling. “Christina, get everyone suited up and ready to go. We need the entire Company out there to check that Gate for hidden explosives. We have to do it manually because they could be cloaked.”

  “Two platoons are ready now. The rest of the warriors will be ready in five minutes,” she noted. Five was longer than TH wanted, but since they were supposed to be using their off-time for sleep, he couldn’t rush them. Not everyone was instantly alert when they woke up.

  “Launch the Black Eagles,” Terry ordered.

  “On our way,” Aaron said happily. In less than fifteen seconds, the two space fighters zipped out the front of the ship and assumed a complex pattern of combat patrols around the War Axe.

  Terry held his breath in anticipation of something terrible. “Smedley, send a message to the Federation to cancel all traffic to this Gate until further notice. If the Gate starts to spool up, shut it down.” Although it could be too late by then, he didn’t add.

  Clifton’s hands flew across the controls like a virtuoso. Terry leaned around the man to see the look of satisfaction and joy on his face. “I wish everyone loved what they did as much as you,” Terry said.

  “I don’t often get to put the Axe through its paces, but this thing is a treat to take to the edge,” he said without missing a beat. Smedley could have flown the ship, but there was something to a pilot’s sixth sense. Terry nodded in agreement and turned to leave the bridge.

  Char grabbed his arm. “Where are you going?” she whispered.

  He looked confused and pointed to the hatch.

  She pointed at the floor. “Your place is here. Let Christina do her job. Let Kimber do hers. Let Joseph and Petricia watch over them, as they always have. Let Aaron and Yanmei be out there with them. You will see it all from in here.”

  “But...”

  “Colonel.” Char’s eyes sparkled.

  “Major.” Terry bit his lip and glanced at the hatch.

  “No.”

  He turned back to face the screen and put his finger to his temple. Joseph?

  TH! I thought you’d forgotten me. How can I be of service?

  Don’t let anyone die out there. Terry looked for his daughter, but she was waiting with Kai, watching the hangar deck and ready to respond should their services be needed in supply, maintenance, or medical.

  I would never let anyone die. I won’t ever forget what you did for Petricia and me.

  You didn’t owe me for a single minute, let alone a whole century. You’re my friend, Joseph. I would do anything for my friends.

  As would I, TH. Sorry, gotta go out there and not let people die now.

  Butthole.

  Thou gorbellied dizzy-eyed pignut! Joseph replied.

  “He called me a pignut.” Terry looked at Char, who put her hands up and shook her head. “Joseph.”

  The War Axe rammed to a full stop. The warriors raced for the hangar bay door and threw themselves out before activating their jets and flying toward the Gate. Through the small gap in the shield, they continued.

  The shield closed, and the warriors were away.


  “Why is that ship here?” The commander asked the rhetorical question, not to get an answer, but wanting to vent his frustration. Two mines had been launched, using the Gate as a block between the Traxinstall and the small alien ship that had been following them for too long.

  The mines slowly floated through space until they clanked heavily onto the external structure of the massive technological marvel.

  “First mine is in place,” the navigator reported. After a few moments, he announced the arrival of the second mine.

  “Move us into position to fire into the aft end of the small ship.”

  The crew worked with flawless precision. They sensed the final battle was coming. With the mines in place, they could secure the small ship, seize its technology, and leave.

  The weapons specialist’s hand hovered over the launch button. They had planned on four mines to guarantee the Gate’s complete obliteration. He looked at the commander for guidance.

  “With the impending arrival of the big ship, we’ll be discovered if we launch another. Stand down from the mines and prepare to fight, Katamara. We seize the small ship, and then we run. We’ll bring back the greatest treasure Myriador has ever seen—the ability to create a stable wormhole through which we can travel the universe.

  “When we return to this place, we will come in force, and we will destroy the aliens. We will erase all memory of their existence, and then we will reach into the heart of their homes and squeeze until they bend to our will. That is what we will deliver for our people. One more battle, crew of the Traxinstall. And this one will determine who reigns supreme in our space.”

  The ship slipped smoothly through space, flying close to Ramses’ Chariot on its way to pivot and line itself up to fire directly into the engines.

  The commander ordered, “Take them offline, but don’t destroy the ship.”

  The weapons specialist dialed in the parameters and the image came up on the main screen. It declared that the target was locked.