by T. R. Harris
Adam scanned his active screen. There were hostiles everywhere. He cranked up the maneuvering well and shot farther into the stellar system Sherri had placed them in, the one swarming with enemy warcraft. It wasn’t her fault. The Nuoreans were serious about this entry point. It was located in an obscure region of the galaxy, lightly populated and poorly defended. They could bring in three or more fleets before having to break off. That many ships in one contingent would be hard to counter. They could stake claim to half an arm of the galaxy with a force that large.
As Adam guided the Najmah Fayd into the star system, the cluster of alien warships following becoming a bright mass of contacts on their six, their gravity signatures melding into one. The dominant star in the system was a main sequence yellow, about three times the mass of the Sun. There were the requisite rocky inner worlds, but none classified as habitable. No help—in the form of allied starships—would be lifting from their surfaces.
Adam checked the chronograph on the bulkhead. He still had fifty-one minutes to kill before he could safely jump over to the transit zone. He knew of history-altering space battles that didn’t last that long. He could always jump to another location, but before making the final leap to the TZ they would have to make sure they could safely land without crashing into another starship. And that meant a close-in recon.
“They’re coming from in-system now,” Riyad reported, “trying to box us in. Might be a good time to exit stage left.”
“Are we ready?” Adam asked Kaylor.
“Fully-charged.”
“Where to?” Sherri asked.
“Take us to the other side of the entry point. We still need a look at the TZ. We want to be in the middle, and not along the edge. Too risky.”
“You’re good to go.”
Adam jumped the ship.
As he was expecting, there were Nuoreans here as well, but the defensive screen they’d established was beyond this new location. Once inside the main defense line, the enemy ships became scarcer.
That didn’t mean they were out of hot water. Two main-line battlecruisers were changing course, heading their way. With three minutes required to recharge the TD batteries, the Najmah Fayd was trapped in normal space, operating on standard gravity-drive, just like any other starship.
Without warning, Adam gunned it, racing headlong toward the enemy warships. Flashes from bolt launches lit up the hulls of the invaders, as six fiery balls of plasma headed their way.
“Hold on,” Adam ordered.
The inertia compensators within the Najmah Fayd were rated AAA—the best available—but the corkscrew maneuver Adam executed to weave his way through the incoming bolts strained their limits. Everyone—except Adam—cried out as shoulder restraints cut into tender flesh and g-forces rattled brains. Fortunately, the pain didn’t last long, before the ship was beyond the attackers and coming about for a run from behind.
Copernicus fought to bring his eyes back into focus, but soon he had the alien warcraft lined up in his sights. He fired a barrage of powerful flash cannon bolts at near point-blank range. Energy bolts have a nasty habit of losing intensity over time and distance, but this close they blasted through the diffusion shields and slammed into the aft maneuvering engines of the Nuorean warships. Hull metal deformed into wide blossoms on each ship as the fiery glow of the engines faded. The ships slowed, falling to a steady velocity based only on forward momentum.
Adam slowed the Najmah Fayd as well and steered his much smaller ship just above the top-oriented hulls of the invaders. Viewports were lit, and from within he could make out tiny dots—aliens holding their breath, defenseless against the will of the Humans now that their engines and weapons were dead.
Before departing on the mission, the Najmah Fayd had stocked up on some of the latest weapons from the Human military research departments, as well as from the Juireans, Formilians and even the Incus. Some were exotic, others throwbacks to a simpler time.
“Why don’t we test out a couple of those bunker-busters?” Adam said to Coop. He felt no compassion for the helpless crews on the other ships. They were the heartless enemy, and would continue threatening the Milky Way if allowed to live.
“My thoughts exactly. Give us some separation. I wouldn’t want to scratch your fancy new paint job.”
The two small devices Copernicus launched against the Nuoreans weren’t exactly bunker-buster bombs, but they served the same purpose. They were designed to penetrate the hulls of enemy ships before detonating a mini-nuke deep inside. If just one of these tiny weapons managed to get through, that was all she wrote.
The polarizing feature of the forward viewport protected those on the bridge from the blinding flash of two simultaneous explosions. Adam smirked. Although there were an estimated four thousand alien warships surrounding the entry point, he found solace in the fact that they could now subtract two from that number.
“How much longer?” Adam asked, annoyed. He was anxious to get the real mission underway, and all this screwing around at this end of the transit line was getting old.
“Ten minutes,” Sherri reported. “But I wouldn’t cut it too close.”
“What’s the traffic like?”
Sherri and Jym studied the nav screen. “Pretty thick in the middle. Looks like a lot of ships are rotating back to the home galaxy.”
“Can you get us in?”
Sherri smiled, a wicked, confident grin. “Piece of cake, Captain Cain. Give me ten seconds.”
The next jump ended up almost too close for comfort. The Najmah Fayd appeared near the center of the transit zone, the huge bubble in space which was the primary area that would be sucked to the Andromeda Galaxy. A clunky-looking spacecraft lay off their starboard quarter at a range of about two thousand meters. That was razor-thin by space standards. Adam looked at Sherri, his forehead furrowed.
She just smiled back and bounced her eyebrows.
“Threats?” Adam asked the room.
Riyad studied his board. “Take your pick. There’s about two hundred ships all packed in here, waiting for the train ride back home. Most are giving off minimal offensive signatures; probably a lot of supply tubs. But there are a few squadrons of warships—none of the biggies, though.”
“What are they doing?”
“Not much. I don’t think they expected us to jump into the fire—at least not voluntarily.”
The clock on the wall was down to four minutes. If the Nuoreans held to schedule, the jump would be coming anytime now.
“The ships on the perimeter are initiating their gravity drives,” Kaylor announced. This was good news. Vessels outside the main transit zone were still subject to the effects of the powerful gravity-well. They powered up their engines to keep from being drawn in.
“Looks like this is the real thing people!” Adam called out.
“Incoming warship,” Riyad reported. “Lining up to fire.”
Adam looked at Coop. “We can’t move…not now. We have to hold them off.”
“A Hades?”
Adam nodded. “Good idea, Mister Smith. Give ‘em hell.”
A moment later the ship lurched, as Copernicus launched one of the new Hades IV missiles at the incoming warship. This was one of the weapons that used primitive technology to overcome advanced countermeasures. Defensive energy shields draw power from attacking plasma bolts, as well as any other device relying on electronics for guidance and detonation, rendering them ineffective until the screens became fully saturated. The Hades missile was conventional in that regard; it was the warhead that made the difference. It was packed with several thousand metal ball bearings the size of marbles. They would be released moments before the missile impacted the shields. The missile itself would be destroyed, but the cloud of deadly ballistic hull-shredders would pass through the electronic barrier with impunity, until they perforated the enemy ship like a mini-gun through rice paper. The weapon was new…and the Najmah Fayd had a compliment of thirty-five such missiles onboard—now thirty
-four.
Riyad manually angled the shields to counter the incoming bolts from the Nuorean warcraft. Without maneuvering, this was the only way to achieve maximum defense; however, he didn’t have to stay at the controls for long. A moment later the entire forward quarter of the alien warcraft disintegrated.
All exploding warships follow the same basic evolution. First the hull is breached with incoming fire. Next the interior atmosphere explodes outward with the force of a powerful bomb, using pressurized air to multiply the effect of the initial attack.
As the Nuorean ship dissolved into a cloud of debris, fragments buffeted the shields and hull of the Najmah Fayd, causing little damage. Adam still scowled at Copernicus. “There goes my paint job!”
Coop just shrugged.
After dispensing with the man-o-war, Adam noticed the supply ship next to them begin to move away on maneuvering jets. Another vessel to its starboard side was late in clearing a path and the two ships came together. There was no explosion or other catastrophic damage, just a lot of dented metal, along with—Adam imagined—a fair amount of yelling between the two captains.
“It’s happening!’ Sherri yelled. “Oh damn…here we go again!”
Chapter 2
It had never been fully settled whether the transit over two-and-a-half million light-years happened instantaneously, or whether those taking part in the journey experienced some kind of time lapse. Either way, it didn’t matter.
One moment the Najmah Fayd was in the Milky Way Galaxy…the next it was in Andromeda.
Yet there was one thing the crew discovered conclusively upon landing in the huge, alien galaxy: Passing through a pair of super-massive blackholes on the way here drained most of the batteries and caused diffusion shields to, well…diffuse.
“How long to recharge?” Adam barked out. This wasn’t asked simply for information, but for survival. All the ships that had made the jump now rested in the center of a huge, open area of space. And just outside the boundary of the transit zone sat five thousand Nuorean warships, each waiting their turn to make the next jumps to the Milky Way.
“Raise the shields!” Riyad yelled.
“I got nothing!” Copernicus replied.
“The batteries—for both the shields and the jump drive—will take ten minutes or longer to recharge,” Jym reported. The tiny alien strained against his safety harness, his natural excitability held in place by the straps.
Adam’s heart was in his chest. He wasn’t expecting this. Maybe a few minutes to build up a jump charge, but not ten minutes sitting defenseless in the middle of the largest enemy fleet he’d ever seen. But then he noticed something curious.
None of the enemy ships were moving to engage.
“I think we caught them by surprise,” Kaylor said from the co-pilot’s seat.
“Yeah,” Sherri agreed. “We’re the last thing they expected to see appear at this end of the rainbow.”
Their fortunate reprieve didn’t last long, however. Their jump companions were bolting away on chem drives from the Najmah Fayd, moving off in every direction. Adam was also sure comm links were blowing up with reports of the intruder. Still, it took the Nuorean captains a few moments more to get the message, after which several of the huge battlecruisers began to move into the transit zone.
Adam gripped the control stick and cranked it over hard to the right. The ship surged forward on its own chemical exhaust, making a beeline for the outer perimeter of the TZ. They reached it only seconds later, and plowed straight into the middle of the Nuorean fleet.
“I think we should have taken a vote on whether to commit suicide or not,” Riyad said from the comm station. “That’s usually a very personal decision.”
“Just hold on…I have an idea.”
The massive Nuorean contingent was operating on chemical drive as well, being too close to one another to use gravity-wells, even light maneuvering wells. Several of the ships on Adam’s starboard side reacted to his arrival by unleashing cannon bolts at the small Human starship as they sped by. The distance-to-target was measured in hundreds of meters—not thousands—and the hot plasma balls were at the Najmah Fayd in seconds flat.
That’s when Adam flipped the ship over on its back. Every bolt, rivet and weld throughout the ship protested in no uncertain terms, the screeching and whining adding to the chorus of screams from the inertia-tortured crew. Adam had used a combination of chem drive and maneuvering jets to send the ship into a pinwheel motion he didn’t even know it could do. But it worked; the bolts passed under the Najmah Fayd, heating up the hull only twenty feet away.
But then the plasma bolts kept going. Three Nuorean cruisers on the port side of the Najmah Fayd had their vision blocked to the launching of the bolts. Their shields were down—a fatal mistake—and the six bolts burned effortlessly through their grey hulls a heartbeat later. The ships shuddered violently, as secondary explosions erupted from within.
Two other ships had also launched bolts at the Human ship, and it was all Adam’s crew could do just to hold on as he performed another series of twists and cartwheels to dodge the incoming ordinance. This time, however, the nearby fleet was ready for the rogue bolts. Some of the ships raised their shields in time, while another abruptly changed course. Unfortunately for the fleet, this unexpected course change set off a chain reaction of collisions in the neat rows of alien warcraft. A small explosion was seen off in the distance, while the rest of the damage consisted of banged up hulls and torn off antenna arrays.
But the shooting stopped…as Adam had anticipated.
The crew of the Najmah Fayd sat in stunned silence as their ship drifted slowly past dozens of enemy warships, all sitting idle, daring not to shoot for fear of friendly-fire casualties. Copernicus didn’t light off his weapons, either. That might initiate an all-out firefight regardless of the friendly casualties.
Adam glanced at the chronograph on the bulkhead. Someone had reset it to reflect the time required to recharge the batteries. Adam pursed his lips in disgust. All his great tactics and wild maneuvering had only eaten up three minutes. They still had another seven to kill. He focused on the last word in his thought: kill—as in to die. The question now became: how long would the Nuoreans let this strange truce last?
The comm line crackled.
Adam turned to Riyad and nodded. A dialogue with the aliens could buy them time.
“This is the Noobean Security Vessel…Bob,” Adam stammered. “We inadvertently entered your restricted area in the Milky—I mean the Kac—Galaxy. We mean you no harm. We just wish to return to our galaxy.”
Riyad frowned, and then mouthed the word ‘Bob.’
Adam shrugged.
“Noobean…?” a Nuorean voice said over the comm link. “Our reports are conflicted. You are an enemy warship that intentionally breached the staging area in the Kac.”
Adam watched the seconds tick off the clock. “That’s not true. Why would we do that? It would mean certain death.”
“Your ship performed extraordinary maneuvers. That confirms your identity as a Kac warship.”
“I said we are a security vessel. Of course we would have capabilities beyond those of normal ships. I understand the Nuoreans have extensive files on all the races within the Kac. Please check your records. You will find the Noobeans are neutral in the present conflict.”
“Neutral? There are no neutral parties. We have made no such agreements. All races within the Kac are potential challenges.”
“Check your records. You’ll find that is not so.”
There a long pause on the comm-link. The clock was down to one minute, forty seconds.
“I…I am checking, yet I still do not understand the nature of your claims,” said the alien through the speakers. “Transit ships are reporting your vessel appeared unexpectedly in the transfer area, after destroying two of our ships in a prior engagement. Then you destroyed a third within the zone.”
“They’re mistaken. Check your records.”
> The nearby ships in the Nuorean fleet had been slowly moving away, opening up space around the Najmah Fayd. They were preparing to engage and making enough room to do so. It was going to be tight.
The clock ran down to zero.
Adam muted his microphone and looked anxiously over at Jym. The alien shook his head. “Another twenty seconds,” he said.
An enemy cruiser had broken the line and was moving in behind the Najmah Fayd. Adam rested his finger on the jump button, waiting for Jym’s word. The Nuorean ship moved a little closer, making sure that if intruder initiated any more radical moves, they could still strike their target.
Jym nodded…and Adam pressed the button.
The greenish glow filled the viewport once again.
“Where we going?” Riyad asked.
“Does it matter?” Sherri answered. “Just anywhere out of the hornet’s nest.”
The glow flickered momentarily before returning, and a moment later, the clean black of normal space filled the port.
Adam breathed a sigh of relief. That was—
“We have company!” Copernicus yelled from the weapons station.
“Not more Nuoreans?” Riyad said.
“Not more…the same. We pulled that attacking ship along with us in the TD jump…and he’s firing.”
Perhaps Adam should have warned the others before he acted, but he didn’t; he figured they would forgive him after he saved their lives. He initiated a small gravity back-well, which jerked the ship to the rear, throwing everyone forward in their seats. The small singularity also gobbled up the two incoming plasma bolts.
Unfortunately, the enemy warship was too close on their six to avoid the gravity-well—as well as the careening Najmah Fayd.
The angle of intercept was off by just a fraction, which avoided a full on collision with the alien starship. However, the gravity-well had done a job on the forward superstructure of the enemy warcraft, absorbing most of the nose of the ship while sending huge chunks of debris racing into space before Adam could shut down the well. But the Najmah Fayd still had momentum and crashed into the mangled mess of the Nuorean battlecruiser becoming entangled within the metal skeleton.
