Resolute Glory (The War for Terra Book 8)

by James Prosser

  Farthing stood still as the woman returned. She had changed the pitch of her voice to a higher register and was now nearly screeching at him. He stepped back from her even as she stepped closer. She raised a hand to his shoulder, extending a claw through his uniform and into his shoulder. He growled in pain, pressing her away from him even as blood leaked through the damaged fabric and down his shoulder.

  “Marshal!” he barked back at her, not knowing what to do. “Please, I must return to my ship…”

  “What have they done to you?” the woman asked, lunging at him and pinning him to the door. “Why are you not responding to me?”

  “I don’t understand what—”

  “Farthing, I have been emitting pheromones since you entered this room,” she replied, holding him against the cold bulkhead. “You have barely shown interest. Have they neutered you?”

  “I don’t…” Farthing said, confusion clouding his mind. “I do not sense any pheromones. I smell only … I do not smell anything. I cannot sense your heat. I do not understand.”

  “Farthing, you have endured more than most of us and continued to battle on,” the woman said, softer now that she was pressing him against the wall. “Your senses could not be so dull as to not sense my desire for you. You have been hobbled by battle, and I do not want you in my fleet.”

  The marshal pushed off him, backing away with a snarl. Farthing looked around the room, not wanting to understand what was happening, but was forced to accept the reality. Everything she had done, from the form-fitting body suit to the aggressive questioning, was a mating ritual among his people. He had not sensed the emotion in her. For the first time, he felt as if he had been blinded. He had been among the humans for so long he had forgotten the pheromone-based language of his own people. Now he felt as if he should be able to scent the woman and there was nothing but the odd smell he had sensed since the battle over Sol.

  “I am no longer welcome in the fleet then?” Farthing asked, trying to restore his decorum. “I will take my own route to home.”

  “You may travel with us, Captain,” the marshal replied, lowering her crest. “I fear you may be needed less in your ship and more on the ground, though. We know your father is alive.”

  “My father is…” Farthing said, stepping closer to her. “How do you know of this?”

  “He was once a political rival of the Chancellor and a well-known member of our government,” the female said, again stepping closer. “He has been captured and his execution will be broadcast to the entire system. The Chancellor is taking every opportunity to announce his victory.”

  “He is to be executed like a common thief?” Farthing said, rage making his crest rise again. “When?”

  “We have less than a revolution of the sun if we wish to stop the Ch’Tauk and take back our planet.”

  “I must return to my ship,” Farthing said, turning back to the door. “I must leave immediately.”

  “Farthing, wait … I know you want revenge for the dishonor but you must wait for the fleet now. If you go now, you will die along with your father.”

  “Then I am part of the fleet?” he replied, turning back to her. “Your games are not our way and my time is fleeting.”

  “It was not a game, Captain,” the marshal said. “I … I cannot associate with my own fleet, and I am in need of … attention.”

  “You mean you are…”

  “Yes, and I believe you need as much as I do,” she replied, stepping closer and reaching for him again. “You have been damaged by the war. Let me help you repair the damage.”

  “I…” Farthing replied. “I must return to my ship and I—”

  “You are no warrior,” the female said, her crest rising at the sight of him. “You are an impotent pet of the Terrans. You may leave my ship and my fleet.”

  “I am no pet,” Farthing replied, his own crest slowly filling with blood. “My disability does not prevent me from fighting.”

  “You cannot hunt with a loss of sense,” she said, stepping away. “I see only a citizen incapable of—”

  Farthing reached for the woman now and pulled her back to him tightly. She flared her whiskers and let loose a low growl he felt through their clothing. With a quick motion, he bit into her neck—not a killing blow, but one to hold her while he ran his hands along the edge of their clothing. She howled in return. When he let her up, she pulled back from him.

  “I believed you to be neutered and ineffective at battle.”

  “I am neither,” he replied, stepping close again and pressing against her soft fur. “I will prove both to you.”

  “Prove one here and the other in battle,” she said as he took her neck again. “I want to see the Emperor’s head on a pike.”

  “If I do so, you will follow me in the fulfillment of a promise?”

  As he ran his fingers along her body, she began to fall away. Instead of allowing her to go, he swept her into his arms and held her tight. She allowed a new sound from her throat, a long keening he had always associated with desire.

  “Prove to me you are a worthy mate and I will follow you,” she said. “But first, you must follow me.”

  As their uniforms fell to the floor, Farthing realized how easy life could be if he followed orders. And so he did.

  23

  Alliance Carrier Zeus

  The bridge seemed to shift sideways as the Gizzeen cascade weapon slammed into Zeus’ shields. Dalton held tight to the arms of his command chair even as the crew below were tossed into the air. Gravity wavered for just a moment and he felt his lunch rising. The operation was not going as simply as he had hoped, but the mission was on schedule. He had only to hold out for a little while longer and the massive vortex would implode and their enemy would be cut off from reinforcements and their only path home. Another hit and the lights dimmed but held. Modifications to the ship’s shields were paying off for the big carrier and for the mission.

  “Deploy the frigates to six-one mark one-seventy,” Dalton ordered, looking down into the command pit below. “Pettigrew is getting slammed. I want those slug-throwers in between the cruiser and the bulk of the enemy.”

  A shaky chorus of acknowledgements replied crisply from the pit. Dalton called up the local area map and tried to find weak spots. Chang’s plan was to spread wide and lead off the Gizzeen so the single shuttle could make it through the lines. After rendezvousing with the rest of the force and examining the losses from the Barathist fleet, he realized that plan would fail. His changes had amounted to forming a wedge with Zeus in the middle and the refitted frigates. Vadne technology had been adapted to the older ships so that the vessels now used an electromagnetic ram to shoot carbon rods at the Gizzeen. It had been one of the only weapons they had found which could penetrate their armored battleships. His fighters were vainly strafing the living ships, hoping to deliver killing blows when the rods blasted through.

  “Get Lightning One and Thunder Three over to cover Spandau,” Dalton said, spying a weakness in the line. I need power diverted to the structural containment. Take it from life support if you have to, but I don’t want to have to close the launch bays.”

  “Captain, the Barathists are breaking away and heading for the maw,” called a sensor officer from below. “The shuttle is under fire.”

  “Tell them to get back in formation and send whoever isn’t likely to shoot the damn shuttle rather than save them.”

  “I’ve got the Tonal on the way. They are reporting minimal damage to shields and a full complement of missiles.”

  “What are they waiting for?” Dalton replied to the voice from the pit. “Give me a report on the sharks.”

  Sharks, as they’d come to call them, were the fast, tough little fighters piloted by the Octopods. They had turned out to have been one of the greatest surprises during the battles. They were small enough to go head to head with the Gizzeen fighters, and tenacious enough to take on the larger vessels. Dalton’s reticent to use them directly and keep them in
the rear had turned out to be fortuitous when the Gizzeen had swung in after the initial attack. The sharks had managed to hold off the alien horde long enough for Dalton to re-deploy. As soon as the other ships had arrived, the sharks had dispersed among the fleet and provided a vicious back-up.

  The screen at the front of the bridge shifted as the captain tapped a few commands on the arm of his chair. Instead of the forward screen, Dalton wanted to see a wider view of the battle. Sensors engaged and created an overhead map of the battle area. In three dimensions the Alliance battle fleet looked more like a cone pointed towards the open maw of the vortex. Surrounded on all sides, the cone was surging port and starboard as the Gizzeen forces rallied to break the human lines. Dalton pulled up his holographic image and moved forces around on the area map. Corresponding orders were called out below and the fleet rearranged itself into a flatter plane. The small blue dot of the shuttle was nearing the open hole in space, surrounded by a fleet of Octopod sharks.

  “Sir,” called the sensor officer from below, “I’m reading something new coming through the vortex. Carrier size or maybe bigger.”

  Dalton rearranged the screen again, converting the colors of the surrounding space to something more recognizable. The thick blue particulates that streamed from the vortex and formed the cataract area made it difficult to use real imagery. Instead, they used their M-space engines to clear small area and re-image the space to normal colors. On the big screen, a huge Gizzeen bio-ship was slowly emerging from the swirling void. A quick check showed the path of the ship as directly in front of their shuttle.

  “Order the sharks to engage the threat,” Dalton ordered. “They have to keep that shuttle out of the line of fire.”

  Gizzeen ships emerging from the maw were weak until they could acclimate to space on this side of the dimensional divide. The only chance they had was to get the Octopods in close and damage the ship enough the shuttle could still pass by.

  In response to the new arrival, the Gizzeen forces began to move away from the fleet and converge. Dalton again was forced to rearrange the ships on his tactical area map to compensate.

  Another shudder ran through the carrier as a hole opened in the lines, allowing a Gizzeen fighter to attack the carrier directly. On the map, blue dots swung around to engage the red. For the briefest moment, Dalton felt the clinical nature of what he was doing. He was directing lives to die based on a series of blue red dots on a holographic screen. As each dot flared and disappeared, lives were lost. Not just those lives, but the lives of families and friends and colleagues and soldiers were lost. With every blue dot, his resolve grew to end the war or die trying.

  Sir,” called the voice from below. “The shuttle! It’s gone!”

  Dalton looked at the tactical map, searching for the dot that represented the weapon to end the threat. It was gone. Inside the capsule was another life, one of the white creatures known as the Engineers. They were sacrificing themselves to end the war. If the shuttle was gone, so too were their hopes for an end to the conflict.

  “What happened?” Dalton called. “Where did they go?”

  “I think the new arrival ran into it,” the voice called back. “One minute they were there and the next it was just gone.”

  “Re-deploy the fleet,” the captain called. “We need to exit this situation now. Recall the fighters and get into position to jump out of here.”

  There was a tremendous crash and Dalton was thrown backwards into the wall of his office. He felt the pain of impact and slid to the floor, wheezing for air. When he opened his eyes, the sound of fire and screams shocked him from the pain. He looked around the now smoky bridge to see his command chair broken and spitting sparks to one side, and a hole in the bulkhead to the other. Banks of controls in the pit appeared to be burning and he could smell roasting flesh. His first thought was his crew and he tried to get to his feet. Gravity was tilted on the deck and he fell twice before regaining equilibrium.

  “Engineering, report!” Dalton barked. “What the hell was that?”

  “Cascade weapon,” called a voice from the pit. “Shields fell on the port side and let one of those things through.”

  “What’s left of my ship?” the captain called, wiping a trickle of blood from his mouth. “What have we got left?”

  “Shields are down all over. We’ve lost M-space for at least ten minutes until they can adjust the gravity,” the engineering officer called. “We still have weapons though, but the launch bay is on fire. It looks like the launch doors are stuck shut.”

  “Keep me informed,” Dalton replied. “Do we have communications?”

  “Aye,” replied a young man from below. “Internal is messed up, but we can contact the other ships. Des Moines was hit by one of those things, though, and I can’t get her back.”

  Dalton processed the information. Des Moines was a fast attack ship used for close support. While the loss of the ship wouldn’t compromise the retreat, Zeus’ condition would. With his chair destroyed, he had no access to his tactical maps. The smoke on the bridge was clearing as the fire suppression system engaged, but he was still coughing up blood from the impact. For the first time since he had discovered the man was missing, Franklin Dalton wished Ronald Chang was here.

  “If we still have weapons, let’s use them,” the captain said. “Open fire on anything targeted as a threat. Don’t hold anything back. We’re not on support duty anymore, we’re on escape.”

  The projection screen snapped back to life and Dalton had his first view of the damage. Ships systems were lit up in red as the damage from the cascade weapon became apparent. He could feel the plasma cannons firing as the weapons officers carried out his orders, the screen lighting up as beams of red-orange plasma blasted through the Gizzeen lines. Although immune to the direct attack, the Gizzeen were forced to swerve back to avoid the blasts, which moved them directly into the path of the frigate slug-throwers.

  Slices of living armor were torn from the hides of the Gizzeen vessels. Dalton could see fluid, most likely blood, streaming off into the thick blue particulate. The Gizzeen responded with blasts from their cascade weapons, disabling and rupturing the hulls of the frigates while the remainder of the fleet tried to turn. Losses were mounting and the captain began to wonder if they would have enough ships to move to the next target. He watched as two more green dots disappeared and thousands of lives were snuffed out by the enemy.

  “Sir!”

  The voice that cried out from below was full of hope. For the briefest moment, Dalton expected to look up at the sight of the battleship Resolute streaming from M-space. Lee Pearce had been a constant thorn in his side the last few years, but the man did have a way of showing up at opportune moments. Instead, when he looked to the big screen, he saw the vortex between universes collapsing on itself. In the center, the massive warship was tumbling end over. The front half of the ship had been neatly sheared away and the back half was nowhere in sight.

  “The little white bastard did it,” the captain whispered to himself. “It worked.”

  There was a moment where everyone on the bridge paused. Even the crews fighting the still smoldering fires were in awe of the destruction. As the shockwave moved outward from the vortex, the Gizzeen ships closest to the behemoth were slammed aside. Others were able to turn away and ride the dissolving particulate away from the now blossoming star beneath. Space was clearing fast and a cheer rang out for the small victory.

  “Don’t start cheering yet, people,” Dalton called out. “We’ve closed the door but the houseguests are already here. Recall the fighters and let’s get the fleet outta here.”

  The crew responded with a new vitality. The enemy had been hurt, proving they weren’t invincible. Fleet Captain Franklin strode onto the walkway over the command pit and stared down at his crew. He saw officers and crew working together, issuing orders and repairing systems. When the engineering officer called to say their M-space generator had been realigned, he gave the order to bug out.
There were a few more skirmishes as the fleet regrouped and turned towards cleared space. The Gizzeen, for their part, seemed disorganized and confused by the defeat. Many of the enemy vessels also turned away. Dalton assumed they would be moving on to another site as well. It would be a long war, but a quick count showed him they could still fight it, and with every victory he could gather more systems to their side.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Dalton ordered as the ship translated into M-space. “On to Site Theta and the next target.”

  It wasn’t total victory, but it was a victory. As Dalton stared at the new M-space vortex growing on the main screen, he realized something even greater had happened. It was a victory without either Lee Pearce or Admiral Ronald Chang. It was his plan and his victory and it would be his war, and for the moment he was satisfied with that. The hull vibrated as they translated into M-space. The blue and brown membrane between worlds that seemed to have become a battlefield itself welcomed them. Its turbulent waters had yet to calm, but he knew his ship would sail true.

  24

  Battleship Resolute

  “Patience,” the Engineer’s voice whispered in Alice’s ear. “You have assimilated the knowledge but not the skill.”

  “Shut the hell up and get out of my head,” the mechanic replied. “If you want to be useful, hand me that spanner.”

  The appearance of the little creature on board the battleship should have startled the crew. No one had seen one of the ancient multi-dimensional aliens aboard since Farthing had brought them all. Instead of reacting in shock, though, the crew had taken the little white creature in stride.

  Alice’s mind cleared while she was near the injured M-space generator. The modified housing had been able to traverse great distances in M-space in seconds, but the damage incurred during the last battle had been too severe for it. Resolute needed a crew of hundreds to work on her, but she had Alice and Booth and the handful of crew who had smuggled on board. Even with the help of the Engineers, the task seemed insurmountable.