by Gregg Vann
“I don’t think your people trust us, Tien,” Speaker Lews stated sarcastically.
“You can’t blame them for being cautious. You wouldn’t act any differently in their position.”
“Actually, we’d never even be in their position. We wouldn’t have gotten involved at all.”
“Of course,” I replied. The Speaker’s honesty was a refreshing change from the environment I normally operated in—one where lies were frequently told, even when the truth would serve.
The door slid open behind us and Uli strode into the room with an armed escort. As an Udek spy, and potential but untested ally, I was being tolerated—but not completely trusted. As an unrepentant and remorseless Brenin invader, Uli was a true enemy in their midst, and was being afforded all the caution her status demanded.
“Now that your usefulness is over,” I said to her, “I suppose you’ll just sit back and just watch the fireworks?”
“Believe it or not, Udek, at this point, if I could do more to help I would. After you lose this battle, the Saba will kill me. As Yano, and sister of the marshal’s assassin, I will die today. There is no other possible outcome. My only hope of survival is a victory by you pathetic barbarians. As such, I am resolved to my fate.”
“I’m glad to see your lack of confidence in us hasn’t wavered,” I said.
“I’ve seen nothing to convince me that you have even the smallest chance of victory. Have you?”
I didn’t answer her, turning back to the display instead, not willing to admit that her assessment of the situation matched my own. I watched as the Brenin vanguard slowed their ships slightly to reform with the main fleet; they were consolidating their formation before attacking. Thankfully, this maneuver gave the Obas advance force enough time to return to the planet and rejoin their own flotilla—now entrenched behind a shifting wall of Udek warships. Eraz was clearly arranging her own vessels for the coming attack based on what she’d learned about the Obas capabilities.
On the tactical display, the two sides looked like an even match, number-wise anyway. The combined Udek/Obas force actually outnumbered the Brenin, but history told us that numerical advantages meant little against their shield technology. No…Uli was right; there was no reason at all to be optimistic. But as a rule, I never gave up. Ever.
And I wasn’t about to start today.
“One hour,” Boe called out. “The Brenin will reach Obas in one hour.”
“Very good, Master Pilot,” Lews replied. Then he turned to Peq. “What news on the shield problem?”
“We’ve made some excellent progress, Speaker. I’m forced to admit that the Udek engineers are very proficient. Not as capable as our own, of course, but quite helpful. We have a much better understanding of how the shield works now…but we still haven’t discovered a way through it.”
“Find a way,” Lews responded sternly.
“We will, Speaker. We will.”
“Colonel Eraz is hailing us sir,” Boe interrupted.
“Go ahead.”
“Speaker Lews, I have placed my ships between the Brenin and your fleet. My planners tell me this is the best way to handle their…deficiencies.”
“Deficiencies?” Lews bristled, clearly angry. “Are you implying that our fleet is weak, Colonel?”
“Actually, Speaker, if you will calm down for a moment, I’ll explain that it’s just the opposite. Your ships have immense firepower, but let’s be truthful— they aren’t very resilient. By placing my ships at the forefront, we can protect yours, allowing them to shoot at the Brenin through firing solutions spaced throughout our formation. Our combined offensive capabilities should do a hell of a lot of damage, shield or no.”
Speaker Lews breathed out heavily. “My apologies, Colonel Eraz, these are trying times.”
“For us all, Speaker. But we have an opportunity here, and need to establish a clear command structure before the Brenin arrive. We can’t have orders coming from your ships, the planet, and me. One person needs to be in charge, and quite frankly, that person should be me. I have the requisite experience that your captains lack. No insult intended.”
“None taken, Colonel. I will place Master Pilot Mems in command of our fleet, and then instruct him to coordinate our actions with you directly. I will also notify him to put our ships at your complete disposal during the battle. Master Pilot Boe will transmit those orders now.” Lews nodded at Boe, but the other Obas stared back at him, clearly stunned.
“Do it,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Boe replied, hesitantly opening up a channel to relay the instructions.
“Thank you, Speaker Lews. I’m going to meet with my staff first, and then contact Mems myself to discuss battlefield communications protocols.”
“Understood, Colonel.” Lews stepped forward and stood directly in front of the monitor, drawing Eraz’s full attention; they looked at one another intently. “Use our ships well, Colonel Eraz. The fate of my planet rests in your hands.”
“I will, Speaker. I promise.”
Eraz disconnected, and Lews looked back at me with a surprised expression on his face. “For an Udek, she seems most reasonable.”
I repressed a laugh. “She’s happy now, Speaker Lews. Commanding a large fleet in an important battle is a field officer’s dream assignment.”
I didn’t bother telling him that just a few scant days ago, Eraz was merely the underling of the general normally commanding this fleet—or that I’d killed her former boss and was directly responsible for Eraz’s recent promotion. It might cause Lews to lose faith in her, and he had enough to worry about already. Besides, I knew Eraz was competent; she didn’t get to where she was through failure.
The Speaker and I watched the screen as the distance between the two fleets narrowed. The scale made it seem as if they were right on top of each other already, but then the view wobbled, readjusting itself to zoom in closer. The gap between the two armadas returned, along with a distance gauge on the right-hand side of the display.
And those numbers were dropping rapidly.
Not long now, I thought. Soon, this will all be over.
One way or the other.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Brenin attacked without a word: no warnings, boasts or demands, just energy weapons and ship-to-ship missiles—hundreds of them flying toward the combined fleet guarding the planet. But the Obas and Udek weren't sitting idly by; they sent out waves of destruction of their own.
I watched as the heavy clusters of merging munitions slammed together—causing massive explosions that vaporized or deflected both barrages. Very few weapons from either side survived long enough to meet their intended targets, and both factions saw this and took remedial actions.
The Brenin focused their substantial firepower on small sections of the allied wall of ships, blasting through the thick-shelled Udek vessels to get at the more fragile Obas behind them. Dozens of ships died as a result. The allies responded by targeting ships on the extreme edges of the Brenin shield, methodically blowing them up, one by one. But every time one of them burst into fragments, the shield simply reestablished itself at the next Brenin ship behind it.
And the shield never fell.
It was taking a tremendous amount of effort to destroy each individual Brenin ship, and just as in every battle prior to this one, the attrition numbers were favoring the invaders. For every enemy vessel the allies managed to destroy, they lost ten of their own. And that ratio was untenable—pointing to a very short fight if nothing changed. But unfortunately, it did…
For the worse.
“They’ve fired missiles at the planet,” Boe yelled out, and all eyes in the control room shot up to the display. “Scans indicate toxin in the warheads.”
I watched as the missiles exited the Brenin shield, sailing through a hole punched in the Udek line. There were twenty of them in all, and as they pushed past the last of the defending ships, they started to change course—spacing out to follow different
parabolic trajectories across the planet’s sky. Twenty Obas ships broke formation and sped after them, each choosing a missile and accelerating after it.
“They will never be able to shoot them down at those speeds,” I said under my breath.
Speaker Lews heard me. “That’s not their intention, Tien.”
Eraz’s face burst onto the screen, disrupting our view of the chase. “Speaker Lews! What the hell is going on? I need those ships back here. Now!” Her image shuddered as her ship was hit; a second impact sent her flying forward but she caught herself and regained her seat.
“They are following orders, Colonel,” Speaker Lews said somberly.
“Whose?” she demanded. Static began to fill the channel and white flashes distorted her image.
“Mine,” he replied.
Eraz’s face was replaced by the tactical display, just as it focused in on an Obas ship sailing through the atmosphere. The vessel was noticeably gaining on one of the Brenin missiles, and according to the display was within a hundred meters of it. The video was being beamed in from an orbital surveillance platform and was crystal clear. I could make out the ship’s markings easily, and realized that I’d seen them before—leading the fleet against the Brenin vanguard.
It was Mem’s ship.
I was just about to ask Lews what they hoped to accomplish when the vessel exploded in a massive fireball, taking the missile, the ship’s crew, and Master Pilot Mems with it. The image then zoomed back out to show the entire planet, before splitting into nineteen different screens, each displaying one of the other pursuit ships as they all followed suit—each one exploding as they neared the missiles they were chasing. The hushed command center watched intently as in less than two minutes, all of the missiles were wiped out—along with the crews of the ships sent to destroy them.
“It was the only way to be sure,” Lews explained. “We discussed this with the fleet as soon as we found out about the missiles—deciding to place proximity devices on nearly every one of our ships for just this contingency. The on-board computers made sure they would be close enough before detonation…we had to be certain that the toxin would burn up in the explosion as well.”
Despite the Speaker’s obvious conviction that he’d made the right decision, his shoulders sagged forward and his voice wavered as he spoke. “There was just no other way to be sure.”
The view changed once more, this time to encompass the entire battlefield. I watched helplessly as Eraz tried to close the many holes blown through the defensive line by the Brenin. But now, she was also struggling to compensate for other weaknesses in the line—created when the Obas ships left the formation on their suicidal charge. It was simply too much to overcome.
She didn’t have a prayer.
The Brenin continued to pound the weakened areas, moving their fleet in even closer—turning the conflict into a face-to-face shooting match where ordinance could no longer be intercepted by countermeasures or opposing fire. As a consequence, the allied ships were being shredded to pieces, while most of their shots bounced harmlessly off the Brenin shield.
I made a quick calculation based on what I was seeing; the ratio of destruction had jumped up to twenty-to-one, in favor of the Brenin. This battle’s outcome would be decided in minutes at that rate. Eraz needed to come up with something fast.
“Speaker! Speaker Lews!” Peq yelled, drawing everyone’s attention away from the catastrophe unfolding on the screen. “We’ve found it! A weakness in the design.”
Lews pushed aside the melancholy that was consuming him—the result of watching so many brave Obas die. “Well don’t just stand there,” he barked. “What is it?”
Peq took a deep breath and collected himself, but it did nothing to curb his enthusiasm about the discovery. “The shield links every ship in the Brenin fleet together,” he began. “They each have an on-board generator that accepts an incoming connection from one vessel, and then sends it on to the next; it is a closed, serial system. When we destroy one of their ships, the shield signal just falls back to the next generator unimpeded. It’s why it never fails.”
“But how does that help us?” Lews asked impatiently.
“Because we’ve uncovered a flaw in the way the shield signal is compiled and maintained. Any ship can start its construction, but that first ship becomes primary and must remain part of the matrix. If it’s destroyed, the shield will fail completely, and the Brenin would have to spool up the entire thing again from the beginning, with a new primary. That process can take up to five minutes from what we’ve witnessed. And they can’t simply bunch other ships around it for protection; they have to maintain a minimal spacing for the shield to form—the primary will always be exposed to attack. If we can determine which ship it is and destroy it, we can get inside their defenses before they have a chance to raise the shield again.”
“But how can we tell which ship?” I asked.
“We are working on that now. Neither our scanners nor the Udek’s can detect the subtle signal changes between ships—those slight variations that would help us to pinpoint the primary vessel.”
Speaker Lews pointed up at the wall display—where Obas and Udek alike were dying with increasing regularity. “We don’t have time to develop a new technology, Peq.”
“We don’t have to,” I said. “We can use the scout ship I stole to get here. Its scanners should be able to analyze the Brenin shield and find the primary. We can then pass on the target’s location to the fleet.”
“Then allow me to go,” Boe said. He jumped up from his console to stand at Lew’s side. “I’m the only Obas that has ever flown that ship, Speaker. It must be me.”
“Yes…yes,” Lews said. “Then go. Go now.”
“Yes sir.”
“I’m going as well,” I announced. “I will explain everything to Colonel Eraz on the way.”
“Very well,” Lews said, and then he waived to dismiss us.
But we were already moving.
We ran out of the room and headed straight for the hangar—using a dome car to reach the mountain cavern in just a few minutes. The scout ship was open and waiting when we arrived, and we ran past some very confused maintenance personnel to hop aboard—powering up the systems and sealing the hatch behind us. Neither one of us said a word as Boe spun the ship around and glided toward the exit.
I watched with annoyance as the airlock doors wound through their slow and deliberate cycle, tapping on the console in front of me as we waited. When the exterior doors finally opened, we burst out into the ocean, continuing to build up speed as we left Edo behind. Boe brought the nose of the craft up and pointed it toward the surface.
We were ascending so rapidly now that the scout ship started to shake—vibrating so badly that I feared it might violently fly apart. The metal hull groaned under the enormous strain, filling the ship with disconcerting noises as it underwent rigors its designers never envisioned. I looked over to challenge Boe—to tell him to throttle back before we found ourselves swimming—but his face told me that he had it all under control. He was concentrating on the system readouts with total focus and determination, competently pushing the ship to its absolute limits while still keeping it all together in one piece. And his face also told me something else, but it was information I already knew.
I wasn’t the only one desperate to get into space while there was still a fleet to save.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The scout ship blasted out of the ocean and into the bright sunlight of Obas; there was no seamless transmission between mediums this time, it was a hard jolt, followed by an even harder acceleration. Boe was flying the ship as if his life depended on it, because it did—all of our lives did.
As we rose higher into the atmosphere, I was able to see the battle taking place ahead of us. It was difficult to make out individual ships from this distance, until they exploded—then they flashed brilliantly, screaming out for notice at the end of their lives. And those telltale explosions w
ere everywhere; the gradually darkening sky was filled with them. Before we achieved orbit and threw ourselves into the midst of all that fighting, I pulled my gaze away from the forward window to call Eraz.
“We’ve found a way to disable the shield,” I told her. “For a few minutes, anyway. It all hinges on destroying a single Brenin ship; the Obas engineers should be sharing the particulars with your people now.”
I was so excited to tell Eraz the news that I neglected to look at her…really look at her. When I did, I was shocked to see her face covered in blood—running down from a deep laceration across her forehead. Her tunic was also ripped at the right shoulder, and a black burn mark stretched across the top of her chest. But despite these obvious injuries, she reacted as if all was going according to plan.
“Good news,” she said. “Unfortunately, we are in a full retreat. I’ve ordered all of our ships into erratic defensive maneuvers and directed them to scatter out in small units. The Brenin are currently pursuing the largest surviving group…which would be mine.” I heard a loud explosion in the background and her image flickered.
“We are heading toward you now, Eraz. Try to swing the fleet back into some kind of attack formation as soon as you’re able. We hope to have a target for you momentarily.”
“I’m on it,” she said, signing off.
We broke through the upper atmosphere and into space, where I immediately turned on the scanners and started sweeping through the Brenin formation. They were just ahead of us now, chasing Eraz’s group just as she’d said—picking off the slower and damaged allied ships as they fell behind. Using information uploaded by Peq, I adjusted the scanners to single out the shield signature—measuring the strength of the transmission as it moved between the Brenin ships.
Got you.
It was far more than a subtle difference; the primary lit up like a flare. But that was probably due more to the sensitivity of the Brenin scanners than any actual output differences. I opened a channel to Eraz. “This is our chance, Colonel. I’m sending you tracking coordinates on the ship now. If we can destroy it, the shield should drop long enough for you to get inside it.
