by Damon Alan
“That’s from that fleet. Target?”
“The decoy we were hiding near,” Harmeen said. “It’s boosting straight at it.”
Sarah grabbed her mic, and set it to the tactical frequency for this combat. “Marines! Thirteen minutes. Get back on board the Stennis now!”
Two minutes later the missile impacted the trap Sarah had laid for Orson, shattering the asteroid it was on. The explosion sent a burst of radiation into space, although too distant to be a threat to her crew.
“Four megatons yield,” Corriea said to her.
“They’re not messing around. A few kilometers from us and that would be the end,” Sarah said. “We’re in no condition to ride out an attack.” She momentarily studied the tactical screen. “Take us closer to the Schein, help those grunts cover the distance.”
“Move it, marines,” Corriea barked into his mic. “Override your safety protocols for docking. We’re moving toward you.”
“Are they going to make it?” Sarah asked.
“ETA of last boarding pod is ten minutes,” Seto answered.
Sarah looked at her acting first officer. The look on his face crushed her. They were going to leave Eris behind, abandon her again. Even if she was alive, the Hive would end that possibility forever.
She keyed her microphone, and spoke only to him. “I’m sorry, Peter,” Sarah whispered.
“We tried, Admiral. We tried. She might still be on the Gaia.”
Sarah frowned. He was right. She probably was on the other ship. “If they found her, it would have been during the jump here. They’ve had no reason to transfer her to the Schein yet.”
He nodded.
They waited, inactivity grinding at the nerves of everyone.
The first of the marines reported back aboard.
Four minutes to go.
“What’s our destination?” Corriea asked.
Sarah didn’t get a chance to answer.
“Hive fleet has jumped to us, and they just dropped to realspace,” Harmeen said. He’d regained most of his calmness. It had been a long time since any of them had fought at this level.
“Location and distance?”
“Almost on top of us. Zero-eight-five mark one-one-seven. Eighty-four thousand kilometers.”
“Evasive,” Sarah ordered. “Put Orson between us and that fleet. He can be our armor.”
“Entering evasive stance,” Harmeen answered. “With our damage we won’t be very effective.”
She ignored that. They would do what they could do. “How can they be that close?” Sarah asked, rhetorically in anger.
“The Hive have hounds too,” Harmeen answered. “We probably failed to see one while concentrating our attack on the Schein.”
Of course. The signals from the fake colonies had drawn the attention of the Hive fleet right to them. The nearest one had played the part of the colonial hub. It drew them in.
“They’re firing,” Harmeen said. “Railguns only. Putting an anti-missile shield between us and them, it looks like.”
“Full tactical on screen,” Sarah ordered. “Roll us and bring our railguns to bear.”
“In process.”
“Full sensors. Activate the jamming suites.”
“We’re slinging ECCM like mud,” Corriea replied. “At least that system isn’t degraded.”
The tactical situation was untenable. The Schein was dead, unable to move. The Stennis was in no condition to fight one undamaged warship, let alone engage the dozens of enemy ships now on the tactical display.
The Stennis was moving behind the Schein too slowly for Sarah’s comfort.
“Launch blooms from the enemy fleet. Missiles away. I’m not detecting any FTL bubbles.”
“They think they have us. They’ve scanned us, and realize we’re not carrying a singularity,” Sarah said. “Why waste an FTL missile if the enemy can’t jump away?”
“To be sure they get us?” Seto suggested.
“That’s not how machine logic works,” Sarah answered. “They play odds every time.”
“When those missiles get here—” Harmeen started to say.
“—We’ll be gone,” Sarah said, interupting him.
“Emille Sur’batti,” Sarah yelled into the briefing room. “You ready?”
“Anytime.”
“We wait until the last second,” Sarah said. “We leave none behind that we can help. As soon as our last marine boards, hit the Schein. Spin up tubes eight and sixteen.”
Corriea activated the missiles in their tubes.
“Why are we shooting?” Seto asked.
“To keep the Hive from taking him,” Sarah answered. “Standard protocol. It’s more about the information stored on that ship than it is about him.”
“He deserves for them to take him,” Seto replied, “but I get it, sir.”
That response was surprising coming from her. Seto was not known for her aggressive or vengeful ways. Sarah explained. “It’s about keeping the location of Refuge out of Hive hands.”
“Missiles ready,” Corriea said. “We are mostly in the fire shadow of the Schein now.”
Thank goodness. One thing has gone right.
Behind the bridge, in the briefing room, Sarah heard a collective gasp from the adepts.
“What was that?” Alarin asked. “What have you done?”
He wasn’t asking Sarah. He was asking Emille. All of the other adepts around the table seemed to be unconscious.
Uh-oh. Sarah’s stomach twisted. Was something wrong with the adepts? Would they be able to jump?
“A thing I learned from my teacher,” Emille responded.
“Admiral…” Harmeen said. His voice was fearful once again, far more than before. His tone dripped uncertainty and disbelief. “I’m detecting a massive neutrino burst from the star.”
Sarah didn’t understand what was happening. There was a connection between the neutrino burst and Emille, she was sure.
Emille’s voice drifted to Sarah’s ear. She was explaining something to Alarin. “Peter Corriea told me that when a star dies, it is because the fire goes out in the center.”
By Harmeen’s gods, what have I unleashed?
“Admiral.” Harmeen said. Total calm had returned to his voice, although as she turned to look at him his eyes betrayed his inner panic. Adding to the surreality of the moment, the first of the Hive railgun rounds began impacting the Schein. It started to come apart on the view screen behind Harmeen’s head.
She understood his fear. Seeing how out of control everything was, she wasn’t feeling that calm either.
“The star is going nova,” he said.
Chapter 11 - The Ultimate Flare
22 Gusta 15329
The Schein shuddered violently. Klaxons blared, and blast doors slammed shut.
“What’s going on?” Orson screeched.
Jace’s eyes widened as he looked at the sensors, then he pushed a visual to the main screen.
The Stennis floated in darkness, her railguns spitting orange hot death in his direction.
An explosion from somewhere aft rocked the ship.
“How is this happening?” Orson cried. “She can’t be here. She doesn’t have FTL.” This was his worst nightmare, and defied everything he knew to be possible. Didn’t the rules of the universe apply to Captain Dayson?
Orson grabbed the PA. “Set condition one. Battlestations! Get to your damned battlestations!”
Jace was practically wailing. “We can’t fire back. They hit our weapons first.”
“That’s not how this works,” Orson yelled. He searched his control panels looking for an answer. Anything and everything he might throw at Dayson was gone.
Gone.
She’d pulled his teeth so fast it was over before he even knew it was happening.
“How did she get that close without you seeing her?” Orson screamed at Jace.
The panicked voice of his overwhelmed co-mutineer was shrill. “I don’t know. One moment she
wasn’t there, then she was.”
“It doesn’t work like that.” Orson pulled his small chemical pistol from his jacket and shot Jace in the chest. He drank in Jace’s look of surprise. “You traitor. You were with her the whole time.”
“I was the only one with you…” Jace said as his voice faded out. Fear was gone. Desperation was gone. The man settled peacefully into his fate. He mouthed an unintelligible word, then his head rolled to the side.
He was dead.
“Good riddance,” Orson said, smiling, despite the ringing in his ears. “You were always questioning every order I gave. Standing in the way of every brilliant move I had. Now I know why.”
The comm chimed, Orson answered it.
“Orson? Orson? It’s Andersott. Marines are starting to board us,” the medic said.
“So get a gun and fight them.”
It was clear the weakling was crying. “You promised us everything, you asshole!”
Asshole? Nobody was allowed to say that to him.
“Andersott, come to the bridge. We need to talk.” Orson fingered the pistol. It had two shots left. Andersott… and who else?
“Screw you. I’m going to surrender.”
“You’ll do as you’re told!” Orson barked angrily.
The line went silent.
“Aaaarraaaa!” Orson screeched.
He jerked his head around to look at the main screen. Fire from the Stennis had stopped at some point. Now small fleas jumped from it onto his ship. Some were apparently already attached, sucking away the life from Orson’s plans.
He closed his eyes, and thought of Heinrich. He wondered what she’d do without him, if she’d wish him to return, or would her imprint fade and she be free to do as she wanted? He hoped he haunted her mind forever.
So I’m about to die. Or get arrested, which is only a delay of the same ending.
He held the pistol to his head for a moment, but couldn’t do it. There were giant holes in his ship thanks to Dayson’s railguns, but he couldn’t put one in himself.
Great.
Alarms sounded on his console. The sensor array was detecting something.
A gravity wave? What did that mean?
He looked up at the main screen. The fleas were stopping and turning around. The ones already attached to the Schein were detaching and moving off at full thrust. What was going on here?
His comm chimed again. “Orson.”
“Sir? The enemy ship is disengaging their marines,” someone said to him.
“I see that. Makes no sense, does it?” Orson replied. “Try to find out why.”
“Ummm…” the voice said.
He had no sensors. No way to see what was happening.
Disgusted, Orson closed the link.
After staring at Jace’s body for several minutes, Orson finally spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
He keyed the PA system. “Anyone who knows why Sarah Dayson’s marines have disconnected and retreated, call the bridge. I want to know.”
Half a minute later and there was still no response. Nothing. Angry, he shot Jace’s corpse.
Gah! One round left.
An alarm went off on his console. “What the? A neutrino burst? What was that?”
Who could he ask? Screw the rest of his crew. He had no time for stupid people. “Leopold?”
“Yes, Captain Orson?”
“I was worried you might be out of commission. Good. I need you to answer a question.” Orson looked toward the AI’s speaker. “What caused that neutrino burst we just experienced?”
“Neutrino bursts around stars generally mean one thing. The star is starting to go nova. That, however, makes little sense with this class of red dwarf. It should burn hundreds of billions more years, and then die a whimpering death. Not go nova.”
Orson floated in silence for a moment, then sighed loudly. “Okay, thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome Captain. I do advise we move away from the star at top speed. In short order we will be struck by a burst of powerful radiation, then some minutes after that the material shockwave will reach us. If we survive the radiation, we won’t the shockwave.”
“Great. Thank you Leopold.”
Orson had finally learned how to drive this thing. Sort of. He activated thrusters to turn the ship away from the star, then stroked the forward throttle bar on his display.
Nothing happened. He pushed it full forward, which should give him 8Gs or so.
Nothing.
Several massive explosions rocked the ship. Sarah Dayson had changed her mind about capturing him, it looked like. Now she was hitting him with her guns. Strangely, the impact explosions stopped after a few seconds. Maybe Dayson decided to leave him so the nova would kill him.
“Well, that’s just fine,” he said. Tears formed at the edges of his eyes, he brushed them away and they floated off somewhere. “This isn’t how I die.”
He keyed up the ship to ship comm system. He pointed a laser link at the Gaia, then sent his final message to Heinrich.
“Heinrich, I want you to know that I really did love you. Not at first, but it grew. I didn’t plan on taking anyone else for myself.”
Orson paused. It was hard to say the words.
“Leopold?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“We are unable to use the main thrusters.”
“Then we will no longer exist in the very near future, Captain.”
“How long?”
“We are four and a half million kilometers from the star,” Leopold said. The red dwarf appeared on the main viewscreen in its own view box. “The light from it takes fifteen seconds to reach us, so we are already seeing the symptoms of whatever has happened to it. It’s rapidly shrinking, indicating fusion has halted in the core. How that is possible, I don’t know. But at this moment the entire mass of the star is rushing toward the center. If fusion resumes at that time, the entire star will detonate in a nova.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“I don’t know exactly. When the star explodes there may be enough high energy radiation to kill you fifteen seconds after that. If not, you will be sickened by the radiation, and then suffer that agony until the material shockwave reaches us approximately four to six hours after the nova begins.”
Orson was numb. He was surprised by that, but curiosity spurred him to ask questions. “So not long.”
“No.”
“What will the shockwave do to us?”
“It will be mostly single atom molecules, but there will be a lot of atomic level abrasion to the outer layers of the ship. It will ablate the hull away, until the Schein is nothing more than single atom molecules as well. A tremendous amount of radiation will be created, ensuring that if you didn’t die from the light pulse, you will die then.”
“Huh. Well, thanks for that.”
His mind had never felt so clear.
The main viewscreen sputtered with static, then popped to life. “I have restored minimal sensors and targeted external visuals,” Leopold said.
Looking up at the display, he noticed the Stennis was taking on the boarding pods it had launched earlier. The nova explained that mystery, at least. Dayson was moving her ship closer to speed the recovery process.
Sighing, he turned the visual on the Schein’s main screen full forward, toward the star.
Over the next several minutes he watched as the star grew dimmer. The surface was barely luminescing at the moment.
“Multiple ships detected. Range, eighty-four thousand kilometers,” Leopold said.
Okay, now she’s rubbing it in.
“Captain, the ships in the other fleet are of Hive design,” Leopold commented.
“Of course they are,” Orson replied. He laughed maniacally. “Why wouldn’t they do their best to kill me also?”
The movements of the Stennis, crossing over the top of the Schein and taking their current position made sense. They were using Orson as a shield w
hile they recovered their marines.
Seconds later, all of the pods were back on Dayson’s ship. Then it blinked out.
“So that’s how she snuck up on us… huh,” Orson whispered to nobody.
He turned his attention back to the star. For a split second, it blinked out. Immediately thereafter it flared brightly, and a spherical wall of plasma rushed outward.
His skin burned as radiation penetrated the hull of the ship. He wondered if he’d be alive when the wall of atomic hydrogen and helium tore his ship into nothingness.
“Well, Dayson, you won,” he yelled with radiation damaged vocal cords. His voice sounded gravelly, and crackled. He glanced at Jace, amused that he had given his partner a quick and easy death. “Hey, buddy. Turns out I did you a favor.”
His attention returned to a magnified image on the viewscreen in front of him. Several of the ships in the nearby Hive fleet had arcs of electro-static lightning playing across their surface.
“So that’s why she blew up the star.”
Orson coughed blood as several of the Hive ships exploded in succession.
“By the stars. She’s the luckies—”
Orson fell to the deck, grabbing his head in protest of the pain that suddenly burst forth behind his eyes.
His last visual was two nuclear missiles from the Stennis about to slam into him.
Consciousness fled as a second wave of Hive railgun fire hammered into the hull. The nukes scattered what debris remained.
Chapter 12
Bn74x00 prepared its fellow colonies for combat as they approached the drop to realspace.
Liquid sodium already rushed through the cooling vanes on the drive core, carrying the heat of a highspace spinout safely away from the singularity.
As the fleet returned to regular space, the first thing 00 noticed was a conspicuous lack of enemy vessels.
Something was wrong. Only two enemy ships were nearby, and they appeared to have been in combat. One cruiser had a cloud of debris around it. Fires burst from the hull in several spots, and the hull was open to space in several locations. The other cruiser exhibited damage from a previous battle.
“Engage maximum combat awareness,” 00 ordered the fleet. “The humans will attack as soon as they detect danger. Fire defensive railguns in an anti-missile configuration between this position and the human ships.”
