“Friend,” she said, staring off into the distance. “That’s a word I haven’t heard in a while.” Turning to him, she gave him a scrutinizing look. “Do you even know my first name?”
“Lyrica,” Yen smiled warmly. He was glad he had read through her personnel files after coming aboard the Revolution. “Ma’am, please let me know if I’m overstepping my bounds, but it’s not just the crew morale that’s bothering you, is it?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not just the crew. We’re getting ready to engage in a battle that will be remembered for generations to come. Students at the Academy will study our exploits. I should be streaming toward the Terran rear vanguard with all haste and confidence, ready to crush their ships. Instead, I can barely focus on the mission because my crew is in chaos.”
The Captain took a deep breath. “We need this nasty business behind us, Yen. We need to get focused on the mission ahead.”
“Horace told you about the confession, I assume?” Yen asked.
“Yes,” she replied, “but he also told me about his conspiracy theory. Once people get wind of a witch hunt on board, we will never regain the focus we need to defeat the Terrans.”
“Then don’t tell them.”
“Excuse me?” she said, raising her eyes to meet his dark gaze.
“Don’t tell them about the conspiracy,” Yen said again. “The only other people that know about it are Horace and I. If you order us not to talk, neither of us will. The crew can go on believing that the murderer has been captured and punishment pending. They can stop worrying about a killer and get back to taking care of what matters: planning an attack.”
Yen leaned forward, resting his elbows heavily on the hard table, before he continued. “The point is, ma’am, that we need to get moving. You leave the witch-hunt to Horace. He has the Crown and will get results one way or another. Let me get back to working with the Squadron. And you… you get back to being our Captain.”
Lyrica nodded, smiling softly. “I could use the distraction of being Captain.”
“Nothing keeps you more focused on battle than knowing that twenty-some Terran Destroyers are only a few slingshot maneuvers away.”
Captain Hodge laughed, the sound echoing through the dark room.
“Thank you,” she said, the strength returning to her voice. “God, I could use a change of scenery right now.”
“The best I can offer is a long journey ending with a whole lot of plasma bursts in deep space,” Yen said jokingly.
“I’ll take it,” she replied, her tone subdued again. “Yen, I’m going to be relying on you heavily over the course of the next battle. With Merric gone, you are both my Squadron Commander and the Tactical Officer for the Revolution. Those are both heavy responsibilities, especially with what we’re charging toward.”
“You need to believe we can do this, that we can take out the entire Terran Fleet, or we’ll never win,” he stated sternly.
“I know, but we don’t even have a plan other than getting there before they do. After we’re there, what then? We sit and wait for Terran Destroyers, flying in at high velocity, to charge right down our throats?”
“I’m prone to think that’s a bad plan,” he replied. “However, there are other options. And what better place to discuss them then right here?”
Yen’s fingers flew over the keyboard located in front of his seat. Slowly, the gloom in the room receded as a sun and number of planets took shape in the space above the table. He continued to type, adding a hashed blue line that entered from the far side of the elliptical orbit of the planets. Finishing, a red-hashed line entered from the opposite side of the galaxy, intersecting the blue line near the second planet.
“Based upon our entry data and the projected information from the Terran Fleet, these are our entry points into the galaxy,” he began, his voice deepening as he began the formal brief. “This is our starting point for tactical decision making.”
“All right,” Captain Hodge replied, nodding enthusiastically. “Let’s see how this plays out.”
She pointed at the seven large planets orbiting the small yellow sun. “We assume that the Terrans would enter the system and immediately take up position on the dark sides of the planets furthest away from the sun, springing the ambush once we were fully committed to entering this system. Can we use their tactics against them?”
Yen shook his head. He began typing again as he spoke. “I probably didn’t depict this scenario correctly. You’re correct, ma’am, that the Terran Fleet has historically used very similar tactics to what you’re describing when engaging the Alliance. But you’ve overlooked one key point to this scenario.” As he stopped typing, the yellow sun darkened, casting all the planets into shadow.
“Deplitoxide. There won’t be a dark side to the planet when we get there,” she concluded.
“Exactly. Every planet will be dark, which means that the element of surprise is lost when trying to hide in the shadows. No, if we want to win, we’ll need something a bit more drastic.”
They sat in silence, both watching the planets roll lazily around the now blackened sun. The inner planets burned hot on the display, even in the virtual darkness. Their surfaces were seas of molten lava having been in close orbit around the small but intense sun. Even as the planets cooled in the darkness, the lava flows hardened into a rocky, craggy surface that offered no hospitality for landing ships. Yen’s eyes, instead, tracked to the four gas giants framed by the magma planets close to the sun and the icy rock near the exterior. His eyes narrowing, he started typing again, modifying the display. The gaseous outer layers of the planets peeled away; mile after mile of gas clouds disappeared into the ethos as Yen probed their chemical make up. Next to each of the four planets, chemical equations and ratios began to appear in bright red font.
“Ma’am, could our ships withstand the battering winds underneath the atmosphere of these gas giants?” Yen asked, already feeling his excitement growing.
“I suppose so, but we’d be flying blind once we entered,” she answered, unclear as to what Yen was proposing. “Those planets are virtually massive thunderstorms, unleashing electronic fury between the cloud layers. That sort of electromagnetic field would disrupt every sensor and communications relay we had. Put us in those clouds and we wouldn’t know the Terran Fleet was there unless they skimmed the surface of the clouds.”
“Or unless one of our ships was situated in the atmosphere of the gas giant as a lookout,” Yen explained. A small blip appeared above each of the four gas giants. “Our sensors would only be able to reach to the surface of the gas clouds if we flew inside. But that would be far enough for a single manned fighter to sit and observe the Terran’s approach. They could send the attack signal, yet be small enough that the Terran’s would never even know they were there.”
“And the Terran sensors?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“Wouldn’t stand any more chance of penetrating the gas giants than ours would of escaping. There wouldn’t even need to be a reason to let them know we’d arrived ahead of schedule.”
“Squadron Commander Xiao,” she said, regaining the military composure Yen was used to, “I do believe this plan of yours might just work. Head to the bridge and let them know to begin full acceleration toward the first of the slingshot positions. I will continue to look over your work and make sure we haven’t overlooked anything. In the mean time, you have the helm.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Yen said as he stood, bracing in a salute. As Captain Hodge returned his salute, he turned to leave.
“Yen,” the Captain called after his as he reached the door.
“Ma’am?”
“Good work, Yen,” she said with a smile. “I mean it.”
Yen nodded before leaving the room. As the door slid shut behind him, the smile dropped from Captain Hodge’s face and she turned off the holographic display of the planets. Instead, she turned on the small monitor that stood in front of her, typing in her alphanumeric sequence as the co
mputer queried her for the command code. With the code entered, the Captain found herself staring back at her own image.
“Continue personal correspondence to High Council,” she ordered. In the corner of the screen, a red light began to flash, letting her know that it was, once again, recording her message.
“He was just here,” she began, speaking into the concealed camera. “As I stated before we were interrupted, I am concerned about all our safety…”
CHAPTER 25:
Commander Lucience sat silently on his throne within the Black Void. The chair’s high back dwarfed his slouching form as he watched the colored figures scatter across his three-dimensional display. The blue squares that represented his own forces were in full retreat ahead of a sea of red dots, signifying the rebellious natives of Miller’s Glen.
“What is happening on the ground?” he asked the two Terran bodyguards who stood protectively behind him, his voice little more than a growl. “My troops are in full withdraw from a ragtag collection of insurgents. And I still don’t see my fighters in the air.”
Both guards scanned rapidly through massive amounts of data that were displayed on their hand-held screens. Numbers flashed quickly across the display, reflecting in their wide eyes; the screen’s light glowing warmly on their skin in the dark room. After minutes of silence aside from the clicking of commands on their console, one of the guards spoke.
“My Lord,” he began hesitantly, “the fighters are conducting pre-flight checks and will be in the air momentarily. However, it appears that a worm has infected our satellite system. The virus has been devouring lines of data pertaining to visual displays.” He gestured to the map of the city in front of Lucience. “Rebellious elements are simply not being displayed as a result. They are, for our purposes, invisible.”
“How could this have happened?” Lucience asked, anger creeping into his voice.
The second guard interceded. “Sir, this planet was formerly used as a layover destination for pirates and smugglers. It is very possible that they had access to computer systems and radar arrays capable of sending signals to our satellites. Were that the case, their computer could have made contact with our satellite and uploaded the worm.”
“Is it possible to purge the worm from our systems?”
“I’m not sure, sir,” the second guard replied. “From our location, I cannot verify which systems have already been infected.”
Lucience slammed his fist down onto the display before him. “So this is spreading?”
“I believe so, my Lord.”
Running a hand nervously across his face, the Commander took a deep breath before reaching forward and turning off his city map. “Contact the Ballistae. Inform them that we are evacuating this city and that it is to be destroyed from space once we are clear.”
Commander Lucience heard one of his guards clear his throat nervously behind him. He clenched his teeth in frustration, knowing he would not be hearing good news.
“Communications with the Ballistae are currently inoperable,” the guard said, stuttering. “It appears the worm has infected the communication relay systems as well.”
“What else has this damn worm infected now?” Lucience yelled into the dark room.
Keryn rushed from the cover of the collapsing wall and fired into the retreating Terran forces. Though her men had routed the defenders along the edge of the business district, due to the sacrifice of the Lithid forces, the Terrans still posed a significant threat. Sliding for cover behind the next closest barricade, she ducked as volleys flew over her head, both from the Terran defenders and her own force’s withering return fire.
The revolutionaries advanced slowly into the rubble fields, trying hard to avoid the large open areas and crowding dangerously behind the half walls and slabs of stone that littered the field. Nearly a quarter of her forces now carried weapons, salvaged from the dead Terrans they passed. As the battle went on, more would be carrying weapons, not because they kept finding new stockpiles of rifles, but because attrition left her constantly with less and less troops. At the rate she was losing men, she wouldn’t need more than a couple of transport ships to evacuate her full force once they reached to warehouses. The same one hundred weapons that had once accounted for a minor demographic of her revolutionaries now meant she had a fully armed front line of soldiers.
To emphasize her point, an explosion rocked the short walls of the ruined building nearby, behind which more than a dozen of her soldiers had been hiding. She could hear their screams as they tried to apply pressure to wounds that poured blood onto the soft white snow.
Glancing around the corner of her building, she observed the small Terran rear defenders who were stalling her forces amongst the ruins, their black uniforms blending into the dark sky but standing out in stark contrast to the white snow. They fired repeatedly into her advancing troops, slaughtering them with impunity. However, she also noticed them scanning the turrets located around the outskirts of the field, the surprise evident even from her location.
They are waiting for the turret guns to start firing, the Voice said with glee. But they won’t be firing for them today.
The Voice was right, Keryn knew. Her Saboteurs had done a great job disguising her ambush from the Terran observer satellites, had blocked communications between the ground forces and their air support, and had silenced the deadly turrets.
Not completely silenced, the Voice whispered mischievously.
As Keryn mused over the skill of her Saboteurs, she heard the familiar thump of a grenade launcher being fired. The Terran defenders fired explosive rounds rapidly through the rubble, the explosions erupting in waves of heat and overwhelming vibrations in the air. She ducked again as flying debris pelted her and more cries of pain rang through the dark day. Keryn snarled in anger as she allowed the Voice to infuse her body with generations of warrior skill.
Spinning around the rubble, she fired rapidly, striking Terran riflemen as they crouched behind their protective cover. After a number of the defenders fell, she noticed the grenade launcher turn in her direction, the Terran who held the massive contraption turning slowly with it. Her eyes quickly scanned the area, taking in the remaining rubble and, with surprising efficiency, calculating angles of the standing stone. Her conscious mind hardly noticed the thump of a grenade being fired in her direction, the Voice nearly completely in control of her body. The round glanced off the short wall beside her, wobbling through the air after its ricochet. In a blur, her hand flashed out and snatched the grenade from the air. She smelled her own flesh searing from the heated round, but held firm as, in her vision, mathematical equations began dancing before her eyes. Complex angles and velocities appeared beside hastily sketched lines, showing the impending results of her throw. In milliseconds, Keryn plotted her attack and threw the grenade. The round bounced off a far wall, ricocheting in perfect concert with her equation. Rebounding, it struck an outcropping of stone, flipping wildly into the air. In her mind, Keryn heard the voice complete the countdown before the grenade’s inevitable detonation. On cue, the explosive flipped lazily over the wall behind which the Terran defenders hid, following the path upon which the Voice had decided. It exploded, causing the wall to buckle under the force and decimating the Terran soldiers. Those who didn’t die in the explosion leapt from behind their cover, burning and screaming in pain.
Keryn stood and motioned for the others to follow. “The way is clear,” she yelled. “Don’t let your momentum stop! Keep moving forward!” She ran forward, leaping over rubble and opening fire on the few Terrans who still remained in their defensive positions.
Nearly halfway across the field, Keryn’s heart froze as she heard the whine of engines rapidly approaching their location. Glancing into the sky, she could see the red trails of flames behind the Terran fighters that wove through the sky on an intercept of their position. Squinting against the darkness, Keryn could imagine the pilots watching the advancing revolutionaries from behind their night visio
n displays, pushing aggressively the button, which would launch missiles into her soldiers.
“Incoming!” she screamed as she dove for cover. “Everybody get down!”
She had no sooner landed behind her new concealment than the first of the rockets slammed into the rubble field and hell was unleashed all around her. Time froze as flares in shades of red and orange lit up the dark sky. Rubble appeared as falling stars, tracing flaming arcs over her head as entire foundations of building vanished in the heat. The flames ripped the air from her lungs and poured thick black smoke into her eyes. Beneath her, the ground buckled under the assault, lifting her from her prone position and tossing her like a doll through the air. She flew, weightless as her hair cascaded around her and the ground transformed from a frozen wasteland to a blazing inferno. After floating through the air, gravity harshly reasserted itself and slammed her back onto her stomach. Keryn fell hard on a jutting stone and cringed as she felt a rib crack on her landing. Pain lanced through her chest as she clawed for air; the little oxygen that hadn’t burned away in the fire now resisted her call as her broken rib hindered the expansion of her lungs. She coughed, trying to expel both the smoke and the fear that now clutched her as she struggled for breath.
Relax, the Voice commanded. Relax and let the air come.
Though still panicked, Keryn obeyed and let her body relax. Slowly and with great trepidation, her lungs filled with oxygen and the colorful stars that had erupted in her vision slowly receded. Alcent rushed to her side, singed but otherwise unharmed. She watched, still stunned, as his lips moved but she heard no noise. Keryn’s brow furrowed as she watched him, his lips calling her name as he rested his hands firmly on her shoulders. As though a dam broke free within her ears, sounds flooded into her mind with a garbled cacophony. She could hear a dull roar of fires burning uncontrollably all around her and soft screams tore through the air. In the distance, she could hear Alcent’s voice approach like a stampede of words.
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