by G. P. Eliot
Too late to stop us, though! Hank was grinning from ear to ear…
As the Dalida flew straight into the advancing fire of the Pequod.
13
“Forward Shields down 30%!” Madigan was calling from the Gunner’s console. The Dalida was swooping through the near orbit of the research planetoid X3-2e, with the Jackal’s menacing warship, the Pequod, flinging everything that it had at them.
Impact Warning! The ship warned them, as the Dalida was suddenly flung to one side by the explosion of something very large and very nasty on their planetward side. Probably some kind of heavy missile, Hank thought.
“Give me more power, Cortez!” Hank shouted.
“Engines still warming up, Captain!” Cortez’s voice returned. “It’s been sitting in an icebox for however long– there’s no way we’ll get to full capacity any time soon!” The man sounded stressed. Nothing new there, Hank thought.
“It can take a beating–but it’s not a warship…” Madigan was growling as he popped open the twin rear laser canons and set them to auto-fire on the Pequod.
“Madigan’s right, Captain,” Steed was hissing through gritted teeth. “The Pequod is just better at blowing things out of the sky than we are. She can harry us and dodge our attacks until she hits something important–like the engineering room, or the air processors…”
“There must be something we can do!” Hank snarled at the situation. On the viewing screens above them the multiple targeting vectors were swinging wildly across the scene as the various weapons of the Dalida tried to catch up with the rolling and racing Pequod.
“This is a generation ship, intended to be blasted across the infinite reaches of space–didn’t the Union give it better armaments?” He said.
“Boss?” It was Ida. “I know you haven’t had time to read the ship’s manifest–but if you had, then you’d know that this ship comes equipped with a full complement of personal attack fighters. State-of-the-art. Union-built.”
“It does? Ida-baby; you are a godsend!” Hank said.
“That’s why you have me…” she said back, managing to sound proud.
“Madigan? Steed? With me!” Hank was already leaping from the chair. “Full command transfer to Operations Desk,” he said, giving Lory a small nod. I know she can handle it. If anyone can–then Lory Cox can.
And then Hank and the two others were racing to the lift to take them to the Dalida’s launch bay. They were about to take the fight to the Pequod, and it was going to be up close and personal.
“I have you now…” Hank whispered at the sight of the Union light destroyer, the Pequod. Somewhere on board that vessel would be the Jackal and probably a dozen or so trained Wolverines.
But still, a small part of the Captain’s mind–the small, sensible part–knew that it would be a big task for a single-person Union fighter to take down something the size of a light destroyer.
The warship swam like an accusation in space. Glossy black and gun-metal grey, with its forward parts encrusted with heavy lasers.
But damn, that ship was fast! Even Captain Snider was a little in awe of the thing, as he watched it flip as gracefully as a hawk away from the heaviest of Dalida’s laser canons, before letting all of Dalida’s smaller arms scatter across its shields like confetti.
“I bet he’s laughing at us, even now…” Hank growled, and opened fire.
These one-person attack fighters were mostly designed for fighter-to-fighter battles–which meant that they had medium, punchy laser cannons and small laser ports. Hank knew that his ship would be able to fire two or three times faster than the light destroyer–but unless he found a weak spot in the Pequod’s armor–then it would be more or less useless.
“But what are these babies?” Hank saw the ship’s tactical hologrammatic map.
SECONDARY WEAPONS: Meson Missiles (6)
Meson missiles! Yes! Hank hit the Activate and immediately a red targeting triangle appeared over the hologram, which he could pull with his hand to where he wanted it to hit on the enemy ship ahead of him.
His attack fighter was flying behind the light destroyer, which was starting to come abreast of the Dalida, obviously intending to perform a full barrage of shots from the Pequod’s side, fore and aft guns all at once. Such an attack could cripple her, Hank thought in alarm.
His finger hesitated a little as it swept over the distant Bridge of the Pequod–that would have been delicious, because he knew that a man as insane as the Jackal probably would want a front row seat of his enemies’ demise. And the thought of the Jackal being on the business end of a two-meter-long Union missile was almost too good to miss…
But no. The Bridge will be one of the most shielded places of the entire ship, the Captain knew.
Side Gun Batteries. He hit the Launch, and then hit two more times.
With a shudder to the small arrow-head of a craft, Hank felt the three weapons modules deploy and from them burst the meson missiles, he watched as they shot forwards at insane speeds.
Meson missiles were essentially bombs, as they contained a tiny generator that was programmed to reach critical mass just before the moment of impact. They kicked out some of the most volatile particles to known science–mesons.
“Captain–they’ve got a weapons lock on you!” Ida said worriedly.
Hank swung the flight handle. “Maximum shields!” he called out desperately, already knowing that the shield generator on his little fighter would only be able to deflect the lightest of the Pequod’s weapons.
And it was clear to Hank that the Jackal apparently didn’t want to use the lightest weapons. Not after all the trouble that he and his crew had caused them.
A searing white bolt of a heavy laser canon shot out from a swiveling emplacement along the top of the light destroyer. It was a ribbon of twisting, constantly burning light and fire that missed Hank’s wing by a matter of feet.
“Too close!” he breathed, checking the three small vectors as they slammed into the Pequod’s side shields.
The light destroyer had weapons modules everywhere. That was what they were built to do, after all. But the places with perhaps the least number of weapons were the sides–as they also had to be filled with things like crew cabins, gymnasiums, and essential factories and workshops. As such, the weapons modules were strung on a line along what would be the thing’s ribcage–a horrible progression of bulbous nodules.
Direct Hit!
The first meson missile didn’t even reach the hull of the Pequod, instead it burst in a ball of light against a rippling, bubbling blue field.
“Damn!” Hank shouted, just as—
Direct Hit! The second meson missile hit in the same place, but this time instead of a half circle of light and flame, Hank saw the full globe of an explosion. Blue lines like lightning bolts spread out from the spot as the right-hand side shield fractured and failed, and the Pequod was pushed away—
Just as the last meson missile swam into the same spot.
Missile Neutralized! A whisper-quick laser beam needled the racing meson missile, causing it to explode just a heartbeat before it could make contact.
“No!”
The near-ship explosion was still enough to send the Pequod further out from the Dalida though, giving the generation ship just that little bit more time to get her engines warmed up.
“Great shot, Captain!” Madigan said, as he swept past Hank’s ship and deployed three of his own Meson missiles, this time attempting to target the Pequod’s main engines.
There was a rush of light and flare from Madigan’s ship as he fired his missiles, but the light destroyer’s A.I. was clearly top of its range. As soon as Madigan’s missiles had engaged their attack thrust, three needles of the same laser light stabbed out at the approaching dangers, harmlessly blowing them from the sky.
“Commander Lory? How are we doing on those engines?” Hank hit the Dalida’s channel.
“Not even 60%, Captain!” her harried voice came back.
>
“Move your butt, Boss!” Ida was saying, as the entire tactical holo-screen started to flash red. He’d been targeted!
“Why didn’t you warn me earlier!?” Hank swept the flight handle down towards the floor, but still his screen flashed red. That meant that the missiles or torpedoes were close.
Where were they?!
“Captain–on your three o’clock!” Steed was shouting as his fighter pulled up and away over Hank’s head.
What’s on my damned three o’clock? Hank thought as he punched the enlarge on the holo-controls to see what can only be described as a small and dark cloud of hate.
“Hunter Drones!” Hank said in almost outrage. Hunter Drones were–usually–no bigger than a man’s fist, and with a tiny explosive dart at their end. They could be programmed to key into a certain bio-signature and had an effective distance of almost two kilometers.
They were supposed to be terrestrial weapons. Not space-based ones.
But the fighter’s enlarged view showed that the Union had clearly been busy. These Hunter Drones were much bigger–the side of an entire arm perhaps, with simple rocketry at the back, and the same wickedly sharp point at the end–only this time probably loaded with far more explosives.
“They’re not big enough to get through my shields, clearly…” Hank started to say.
“One might not. But twenty?” Ida countered.
Dammit! Hank swerved to one side for the red screen light to click off, and then immediately clicked back on again. Oh yeah, he remembered. That was the thing with Hunter Drones, they were almost inescapable.
Twenty super-powered Hunter Drones. How many would it take to slam through his fuselage?
He swerved the ship again, for the same result. It was like trying to shake off a cloud of angry Vixolian wasps! And by now, Hank realized that his desperate flight to shake them off had only put more space between him and the others.
“Maybe that was his plan all along…” Hank growled as he performed a near-perfect barrel roll. “Drive us fighters away, so the Jackal could concentrate on the Message…” On his tactical screens he could see the bulk of the Dalida still swerving ahead as its rear shields were constantly lighting up in the blue ripples of shields. The generation ship was taking a hammering, and the Pequod was right on its tail…
Drive us away… Hank thought. That was the key flaw in the terrestrial version of the Hunter Drones, wasn’t it? They could only last for a couple of kilometers before they ran out of signal from their base unit.
“Well, these ones are almost six times that size…” Hank made a quick calculation.
“Twelve kilometers, Boss,” Ida managed to patronize him, even at this disastrous juncture. “I’d run for fifteen, just in case.”
“Has Lory been at your programming?” Hank said, flipping the engine power to full and blasting his thrusters.
Whumpf! The sudden G-force threw him back into his seat as the fighter screamed ahead of the cloud of Hunter Drones. These things might be deadly, but they were no match for the speed of a Union attack fighter, Hank congratulated himself. The red lights on his console kept on flashing once, twice, and then blinked out.
“We’ll give those little turdburgers a wide berth,” Hank said when he’d reached the fifteen-kilometer mark, turning the ship to where he knew he would intercept with the Pequod and the Dalida, and hit the thrusters on full once again.
The entire maneuver only took under ten seconds in an advanced ship like his–but it was still time that Hank knew that he couldn’t afford. He could only hope that both Madigan and Steed had managed to keep the light destroyer busy enough for Cortez to get the engines fully operational.
Hank was not expecting to see the Dalida getting larger and larger in his viewscreen, with a great blackened hole high in its side…
No!
14
“Cortez… I need that damn power like, yesterday!” Lory was hissing fiercely as she worked in front of the Professor.
Alan Serrano was a man who had never been particularly used to all the military trappings of the Union, but he liked to think that he had quickly grown accustomed to warfare and violence during his flight from their control.
The man now realized that he had been completely wrong in that assumption.
“Substantive verb conjugations...substantive verb con—con—” he was doing his best to try and think as he worked on the Message, but every time the Dalida shook and bounced, all that Serrano could think about was what would happen first–would he just evaporate into a ball of photons and mesons? Or would he be sucked out into the vacuum and slowly freeze and asphyxiate to death?
“Computer! Divert available power to shields. Close all unessential decks down!” Serrano flinched as he heard Lory say. Even she sounded stressed–although, to be fair, Serrano thought it was more pure rage that he was hearing from her rather than the terror that he was feeling.
“Serrano–message update!” Lory called out to him, further distracting from the task. “If we can get the coordinates where the Message came from–we can bring the others back in and jump to it!”
“It would be wise to ascertain the motivation behind the Message first, Commander…” Alan said. After all, everyone knew that the Message contained valuable technological inventions–but look at what societal and political damage it had already caused–the man thought. What if that was the intention of the Message–to destabilize Union and Confederate politics?
“Professor?” Lory shot him the sort of look that demanded answers.
“I need more time, Commander!” Serrano was saying, just as the viewing screens overhead flashed a warning orange and the entire Dalida lurched to one side.
“Impact Warning Ship Section 4: Hydroponics!” the Dalida’s computers read.
“Dammit!” Lory pulled down hard on one of her flight sticks as she pushed with the other, and the vision of stars ahead of them started to wheel.
Can you barrel roll a generation ship? The thought flashed through the Professor’s mind. But in any case, Commander Lory Cox was not only attempting it–but managing to do it.
“Enemy Vessel’s Weapons System Maintaining Lock,” the computer helpfully pointed out.
“Piece of—” Lory snarled.
That was it. Serrano couldn’t work like this. And he knew that he had to. This is my chance, he berated himself. All his life he had been dreaming of a better way. A higher purpose.
One that my parents would never understand… He thought as his hands left the message display and instead initiated a small Privacy Field around him and his console. Instantly, all sounds of the Commander and the shrieking computers vanished, leaving the Professor in a muted bubble of serenity.
Ahh… Of course, he knew that the Commander–either of his two Commanders, Lory or Hank, could override his own personal Circle of Bliss–but that wasn’t the point. He had to get his head in the game.
And do what my parents never thought that I could.
Serrano remembered their slightly mocking laughter, and their authoritative proscriptions. ‘The Union was the life of humanity!” His father, the patriarch of their wealthy family would say–which even at the time the younger, nerdy Alan had thought made no sense.
Now he knew that it made no sense.
‘The Union is a well-oiled machine…’ was another of his father’s favorite aphorisms. That one was more intelligible to the younger Serano; it translated to ‘since my son will clearly never be something worthwhile like a Union fighter pilot, then he’d better play his part as a military scientist!’
Which was what he did, he had to admit. Although the military part of his Astro-Physics degree, graduate degree, and eventual professorship was like the wallpaper around the more-interesting discoveries. He had tried to push towards the new, the innovative–the truly interesting in his research, but then the Union officials would come along and cherry-pick every meson-gluon equation for its application in military technology.
B
ut not anymore… Serrano’s mind was clearing of the panic that he had momentarily felt just before. He felt it settling once again into that pin-point focus he got when he was working on a new discovery. It had always been like this–an internal zone of silence to match the exterior one he had created for it.
That was the thing about knowledge… Serrano told himself as he brought up the entire script of the Message and holo-projected it in front of him, minimizing it so he could look at all the tens of thousands of garbled characters from afar.
