“Fuck it, strap yourselves in, hold tight, and hope for the best. I’m shooting for the stars,” I said, buckling myself in, and breathing through my nose.
I stared at the screen in front of me, and momentarily calculated the odds of failure. I kept my calculations to myself. If I even uttered a single truth of what I’d just mathematically worked out, then I thought that my men and women would lose all hope. Because truthfully speaking, there wasn’t much hope left.
I had dug myself into a hole. A hole that I feared was so deep I’d risk falling out of the other end. But I didn’t know where this hole would take me. I had the best intentions at heart, but at the end of the day, those intentions weren’t going to win us a revolution. Only willpower and bravery would. So I would have to be brave.
I punched the accelerator on the Alpha Ship One, and watched as the ship dipped slightly. The nose of the ship pointed downwards for a few seconds, and then came bobbing back up like a flotation device. The ship would automatically steer itself toward the coordinates that had been installed on the navigation module - coordinates that the prisoner had given me. Coordinates to his planet - a planet where we were scheduled to land with the Pilgrim Tech President in our custody.
So I didn’t need to do much - all I had to do was get us past this battle. I pushed the accelerator to a hundred percent, and maxed the engine power as well. The ship rattled from left to right as the engines shook violently within their housing chambers. I could hear the engines moan and groan as I put the ship through its paces.
The battle in front of us was getting nearer. Flashes of light glared through the portholes on either side of the Alpha Ship One. It had a disorientating effect. It was as if we were at some sort of dance party, the lights flashing on and off, like strobe lighting. But this wasn’t a party. Nor was this a dance. This was a war zone. And the lights were emanating from ships being blown up. Some of those ships were Earth ships. Others were rebel ships. But I was only focusing on making sure that our ship didn’t end up a flash of light as well.
I dipped the ship once again, the nose of the ship pointing downwards, trying to avoid a direct collision with some of the ships on the outskirts of the battle. None of the ships had noticed us yet, nor had any of them tried to contact us. I knew that if any of the Earth ships ended up spotting us, then they would want answers as to why we were near a battle zone.
We were not a designated army ship, so we had no business being in their vicinity. I was just hoping that I could get away from the battle before it came to that. I wouldn’t have the answers that the Snake Pit Fighters were looking for. And if I didn’t have those answers, then they would have an answer of their own. They, after all, are known to follow protocol. Protocol states that an unidentified non-military ship that finds its way onto a battlefield can be deemed as hostile by the Earth Defense League.
So the stakes were high. So high in fact that I’d already made two mistakes. The first mistake was not cloaking the ship. And quite frankly, it was the biggest mistake of all. The second mistake was thinking too much. And in thinking too much, I had allowed the first mistake to on slip by, and before I knew it, it was too late to rectify.
“Shit, I forgot to cloak!” I said out loud, more to myself than anybody else. But I knew it was too late.
As the Alpha Ship One passed the crest of the battle, I saw two Snake Pit Fighters in the distance. And unlike the other Snake Pit Fighters, they were not facing the enemy. They were facing us. And I knew this was it. They’d spotted us. The gig was up. The game was over. It was too late to turn back now. I had to deal with whatever was about to happen.
“They’ve spotted us. I repeat, they have spotted us. Dale, saddle up on the gunner’s seat, and take aim. If they fire on us, I want to at least be able to defend against it.”
Dale grunted, and I could hear him readying up the weapons. We had two distinct weapon modules onboard. One of them was a laser weapon. It was short range. And the other was a cannon system. That was long-range.
But I wouldn’t mistake my ship as a battleship. It was a haulage ship. It had the capability of defending itself against possible piracy, but it certainly didn’t stand up against a military vessel. And the two Snake Pit Fighters in front of me, the ones that had spotted me, they were military grade. Their ships were outfitted with hundreds of mechanisms, mechanisms that had the unique purpose of destroying vessels of all sizes.
So it was safe to say that I was absolutely terrified.
“Captain, we are getting a hail from one of the Snake Pit Fighters in front. It’s on the emergency channel. I suggest you answer it, or we won’t be breathing in the next two seconds,” Philip said, who was seated at the comms desk.
I raised my hand in the air, and signaled him to allow the hail to come through. Within the blink of the eye, I was face-to-face with one of the Snake Pit Fighters. The video-calling mechanism had been turned on. And we were now both staring at each other. He was wearing a combat helmet fitted with a visor that covered the majority of his face.
All I could see of him was his teeth. And they were gritted. It was obvious to me that he was nervous. Nervous that I was a rebel. I could see the reflection of his ship’s command console on his visor. And in that reflection I could see that he had a lock-on on our ship. My heart began to beat incredibly fast in my chest.
I could feel the sweat dripping down my face. The hairs on my neck were standing on end. And a ringing was sounding off in my ear. I suppressed the urge to beg for mercy. I didn’t want him to think I was the enemy.
And truth be told, I was not.
I had no interest in destroying his ship. All I wanted to do was get as far away from the battle as possible. But I didn’t think that would hold up as a good defense. So I quickly flicked through my brain like a Rolodex. I was trying to find the right answer to this situation. Not that I knew what the actual situation was yet. He hadn’t said anything. But I knew that whatever he was about to say would not be favorable toward me, or my ship. And it didn’t take long for that assumption to become true.
“Alpha Ship One, this is Snake Pit Fighter 767. You are entering an active battlefield. If you do not turn around and return to Earth, then I will have no choice but to destroy your ship. Do you understand?” The pilot said, his teeth still gritted, the reflection of the lock-on he had on us still visible on his tinted black visor.
I had to think fast. I couldn’t stutter. I needed to answer him. But I didn’t know what to say. Luckily, Philip had zoomed the camera into my face. He couldn’t see the goings-on directly behind me. He couldn’t see the Pilgrim Tech President bound and taped up to the chair. He couldn’t see the rebel soldier sitting next to him. Because if he could see that, he wouldn’t be talking to me now.
But then I had a brainwave. What if it wasn’t too late? What if it was just the right time? The right time to cloak the ship? The right time to disappear? The right time to get the hell out of sight?
“Cloak activated,” I said, the expression on the pilot's face quickly changing.
I heard an alarm sound off within his cockpit. The lock-on was no longer activated. He’d lost sight of me. And he knew it. But he could still see me on the screen. My face staring back at him. And he’d heard exactly what I’d said.
He took a punt. He decided to fire, noticing that I hadn’t manually turned the ship yet. A missile fired straight at us. But I’d hit supercruise mode at the same time that I’d activated cloak mode.
The missile missed. One second we’d been right in front of him, and the next we were two miles past him. The Alpha Ship One shot through the battle, flying underneath the waging warships. I quickly turned the face-to-face camera off, and disengaged communications with the Snake Pit Fighter.
“They are following us!” Philip shouted.
But I was way ahead of them.
Super cruise mode allowed us to shoot past the battle in half a minute. We had cleared over forty-eight miles within those thirty seconds. The Alpha Ship One was
no longer in the heart of the battle, and we were now gaining pace, leaving the other ships behind us in our proverbial rearview. I noticed that the two Snake Pit Fighters were indeed still following us. But the ship was cloaked, so they wouldn’t be able to ping our location.
I knew that once we reached a certain threshold of seventy-five miles north of the battle, then I could hit warp drive once again. But we still had around ten seconds before that could be accomplished. And ten seconds was plenty enough time to get caught out by the Snake Pit Fighters that were on our tail.
As I said before, their ships had magnificent capabilities. And if they got close enough, the cloaking device on my ship wouldn’t stop them from pinpointing us. I was pretty sure that at that very moment in time the pilot was engaging his inferred sensors. If he activated those sensors, and got close enough to us, he’d be able to catch the heat signals coming from the Alpha Ship One.
And if he was able to pinpoint the exact location of our ship, he’d be able to get a lock-on once again, and end our mission before it even began. Not only would it end our mission, but it would also end our lives. I was certain of it. So I had to come up with an alternative to permanent death.
“Philip, EMP his ass!” I said.
I heard Phillips' voice crack, as if he was about to disagree with my order, but then I also heard the unmistakable sound of the Alpha Ship One hitting the two Snake Pit Fighters behind us with a blast wave.
That blast wave would, in hindsight, give our position away, but at the same time, it would also disable the electronics onboard the two Snake Pit Fighter ships. Their electrics would be out for a few seconds, but it would be a valuable two seconds nonetheless. We would have enough time to reach the threshold, and hit warp drive. And unless the Snake Pit Fighters were willing to warp drive along with us, then we would be safe.
A big ship like the Alpha Ship One had the ability to sustain warp drive for a lot longer than a fighter ship like the Snake Pit Fighters behind us. Their ships were smaller, yet more effective in the battlefield, while the Alpha Ship One was built with defense in mind.
It’s what it did best. Running away, as fast as it could, to another star, to safety. For a long time, I had dreamt of flying a battlecruiser – a ship capable of destroying anyone that comes across it. But after many close shaves with other ships, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Alpha Ship One will do me just fine.
“Ready to warp,” Teresa said from her console.
We reach the threshold, and I activated warp drive. The Alpha Ship One un-cloaked, revealing itself for a few seconds, before it melded into the blackness of space, and disappeared within the blink of an eye.
We were now one step closer toward the rebel’s planet. One step closer to victory…
Chapter Twelve
The Commander of the Annex Rebel Fleet emerged from the elevator feeling positive. He had been told that his underground scientists had hit a breakthrough in their mission directive. The elevator he had just walked out of had been built to reach an underground bunker he had constructed on the rebel planet. It was a bunker that he hoped the humans would never find if they landed on his planet.
For that was the plan. Draw them out, direct them toward his planet, and wait for the rest to fall into place. If he was going to stand a chance of defeating Earth, then he would need them to fight him and his people on his terms. A battle against Earth Defense League wasn’t going to be winnable in an environment that the humans were used to. To win against a battle-hardened enemy, victory could only be attained on unfamiliar ground. And the rebel planet that he held like a chess piece in his arsenal, was definitely unfamiliar ground.
Earth and its people had no idea that it even existed, let alone what its purpose was. The Alpha Ship One was the key to drawing them toward the planet. He had managed to convince the captain and its crew that they would be playing a vital part in this revolution. And even though that was partly true, the Commander was leaving out an integral piece of information.
The president of Pilgrim Tech was bait. And when trying to catch something big or small, the juicier the bait is, the easier the catch will be. Luckily for the Commander, the rebels had managed to dangle the juiciest bait of all. And now that they had their live bait, they could progress with their mission. The true mission.
A mission that not even the majority of his men knew about.
He was serious about winning this war. He was serious about defeating Earth and its corrupt government. So serious in fact, he was willing to give away the location of his trump card. That trump card was the planet he was on right now. The people back on Earth, the ones trying to stop him in his crusade would be so distracted by the possibility of obtaining the location of the rebel planet, that they would be blinded, so blinded in fact, that they wouldn’t even be able to tell that it was all a trap to begin with.
Bait and switch – one of the oldest plays in the book of war. And it looked as if it was working just fine. They were tracking the Alpha Ship One. Just like he’d planned. The crew of the Alpha Ship One did not know it, but they too had a mole onboard their ship. And that mole was the prisoner, the prisoner that they had kept alive.
The prisoner had installed a decryption device on the computer system onboard the vessel. Its job was simple, it would decrypt the signal emanating from the ship, and ping it toward Earth. It would attempt to rouse the suspicion of the controllers back on planet Earth, and the way it would do that would be by sending out a Morse code communications module.
Earth would wonder what the significance of that Morse code meant, and all eyes would be on the Alpha Ship One. Putting that together with the fact that the Alpha Ship One was harboring the President of Pilgrim Tech, then all resources would be diverted toward the ship, and apprehending it. But Commander Korr knew that the Alpha Ship One was good enough to shake off any attempts at capture. That is why the Commander chose the Alpha Ship One. And that is why he knew that they would successfully lead planet Earth and its forces toward the cloaked planet, a cloaked planet where a big surprise was awaiting the soldiers of Pilgrim Tech.
The Commander walked down the underground maze system toward the scientist’s layer. The underground complex that the Commander had commissioned was large and efficient. Everywhere he turned, people worked tirelessly in bringing to life the vision that he had for his revolution. The majority of the fighters that the Commander governed had no idea of the true extent of the power that the Annex Rebel Fleet had.
If they’d known the true power at their disposal, then maybe they wouldn’t be so willing to lay their lives down on the line to fight Earth and its Snake Pit Fighters. For the Commander knew that the vessels he had sent out to fight Earth and its defenses were merely cannon fodder. He wanted Earth to grow confident in knowing that the rebels didn’t pose much of a threat. They would grow so confident in fact that they would be willing to jeopardize the safety of their planet by diverting all of their resources toward the rebel planet. And when they did that, then his master plan would come to fruition.
A plan that the Commander was so proud of that he couldn’t help but grin as he walked into the scientist’s lab and confronted the lead scientist that’d been working on his secret project.
“I take it that everything is going well down here?” The Commander asked.
His voice startled the scientist, making the frail old man turn on his heels to face his ferocious leader. But he didn’t have fear in his eyes, no, not at all, he had excitement and jubilation smeared across his mug.
While others were frightened of Commander Korr, this particular scientist was infatuated. He couldn’t quite believe that this little plan of his was working. Not only was it working, but it was borderline perfect! It was a plan that was sure to cause ripple effects across the Universe. So no, the scientist was not afraid, but he was happy. Beyond happy. Happy that Pilgrim Tech were about to pay for their sins.
“Yes sir, the cloning is at 99%. The other one percent should take
no longer than two hours to complete. And once that’s done, then the rest is up to you,” the scientists said, holding a clipboard in both his hands, admiring the statistics on the paper attached to the clipboard.
“Good, I’m glad that we’re making such progress. Inform the others that they are on their way. Soon, Earth will know the true extent of our power. And once they see it, they will bow down to their rightful leaders – us, the Annex Rebel Fleet,” the Commander said.
The scientist nodded his head emphatically. The Commander was correct. Earth would soon know the true extent of their power. And once they found out what the rebels had been cloning, there’s no doubt that public favor toward the rebels would increase.
A revolution like this was all about the numbers. Numbers that can override society – a society woven with corruption – a society destined to succumb to the numbers – it was simple mathematics, really.
***
I got up from my seat and stretched my legs. We were still warping toward the rebel planet, and judging by the estimated time of arrival left on the computer screen, I had an hour or so to think things through more clearly. This whole situation felt like it had occurred out of the blue.
No less than twenty-four hours ago I was onboard Sector Eight, minding my own business, enjoying my life, getting ready to re-enter the field. And then this happened. And it happened fast. It all kind of felt like a blur to me. A smudge in reality. A smudge that I couldn’t wipe clean. A smudge that I had to deal with. But truth be told, I had no idea how to deal with this. I was having second thoughts already. And what was making the second thoughts even more prevalent was the fact that my crew hadn’t uttered as much as a single word to me about this ordeal since we’d welcomed the President of Pilgrim Tech on board.
Maybe they were having second thoughts as well. I hadn’t really given them an opportunity to voice their own opinion, let’s not forget. I’d decided for the majority of us that we should consider siding with the rebels. And it was a decision that I would have to live with. But it got me thinking; was it a decision that they would have to live with as well?
Destroyer of Worlds (Alpha Ship One Book 2) Page 15
