by Adam Moon
She said, “Thanks again for alerting me.” To Molly, she asked, “How did he get out of stasis?” She didn’t try to hide the accusation in her tone.
Molly said evenly, “It appears as though he tampered with his pod. I detected two small charges detonating right before he disconnected his IV’s. It stands to reason that those charges opened his pod door, allowing him to wake from stasis.”
Sarah said to no one in particular, “We should’ve checked his pod over before we stuck him in it. He was a saboteur. I should’ve kept that in mind. I should’ve been smarter.”
Crusoe said, “Well, it’s over now. Goodnight, Admiral Miller.”
“Thank you, Captain Crusoe. Thanks for everything.”
Then the monitor turned black.
As Sarah got back inside her pod, she couldn’t get the image of Jason’s head being twisted around in such a horrifying manner out of her head. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she had changed on a fundamental level during the voyage.
Fight
“Ready for battle, Captains?” Crusoe said as Sarah slowly woke from stasis.
“How long were we out?”
“The entire trip. We’re there. Wake your people.”
“Shit.”
“Just remember that these bastards want us dead for their own glory. Remember that they render entire species extinct for fun. They went after Earth, probably too late, but the gesture was there. They killed every living creature on my planet. Keep those thoughts swirling around in your head and let the anger move you to action.”
Sarah stood straighter and said, “The Velors may defeat us but we’ll make it a fight.”
She heard Jack’s voice yell, “Death to the Velors!”
And Jane said, “Molly, wake my crew. We’re about to fill space with alien blood.”
Sarah yelled, “Molly, wake my crew and troops right away.”
“Yes, Admiral Miller.”
Man, she liked the sound of that. But she feared she wouldn’t get to enjoy the moniker for too long.
She turned the monitor on and was spellbound by what it showed her. The seed planet was beautiful beyond her wildest imagination. It looked much like Earth, but with bluer seas and smaller continents. The star it orbited was large, as large as the sun looked from the Earth. The entire scene made her heart weep for home.
A single moon appeared from behind the opposite side of the planet. It was difficult to tell from this distance, but it looked like it had liquid water running across its surface.
What a find. Too bad it was bait.
Urgently, Crusoe’s voice issued over the speakers, “They’re on to us. I spot three very large ships on the other side of that moon. Their thrusters just ignited. Move your asses, people. We don’t have much time. I’ll intercept them. Let me take the hits and then you move in.”
Sarah and Jack said, “Shit,” at the same time. It would’ve made her laugh under different circumstances.
She could hear Jane breathing rapidly over the speakers. She just hoped she could keep it together for this. It was too important to let fear cloud judgment.
Sarah rushed below deck, ran past the ignorant frozen colonists, and had Molly open the hatch to Pod Bay Two. The infiltrators were suiting up as she walked inside. The others looked primed for action. That was good.
The handful of colonists in this pod bay had no idea how lucky they had it. They’d get to sleep through their own demise.
She led the infiltrators into the airlock and told them to be ready. If she opened it, they had to act quickly. Then she led the rest of them to the command station.
Once inside, she realized how many troops she actually had at her disposal. There was barely room to move. They all stared at the monitors in a daze. They could see the mammoth alien ships come around the moon. Some of them gasped and one of the guys passed out. The ships were clearly designed to inspire fear in the enemy, whoever that might be. They were unnaturally colored with black and brown markings. The brown spots looked like dried blood or rust. Each Velor ship was about as large as Crusoe’s lead ship, but they were boxy and long like a misshapen coffin. Their most easily recognizable feature was the vast array of weaponry jutting out of each ship, like spines on a sea creature. On top of each was a single humungous cannon and an antenna with a large orb at the tip.
On a whim, she asked for more volunteers to help the infiltrators. She had to get some of these people out from underfoot.
To her surprise, a bunch of hands shot into the air. She led them below deck and handed out the extra suits. Of the fifty extra suits, only four remained unused. She was a little miffed when she handed one of the suits to Robert Smith, her recently appointed second in command, but she let it slide. He was a soldier; he should be fighting.
She led the volunteers to the airlock. She opened it and mixed the two groups up and then instructed half of them to station outside. That would be team two. Some of them didn’t know how to spacewalk, so she needed experience on both teams.
With that done, she rushed upstairs in time to see the big lead ship captained by Crusoe taking fire from the Velor ships. When she saw the firepower they possessed, she wanted to crawl into bed and go to sleep forever. But there was no room for cowardice here.
She was pleased to see her gunners already situated. Her flight crew was monitoring the battle intently.
A handful of soldiers were just milling around, so she commanded them to supply whatever the rest of the soldiers needed. “If a gunner needs water, you’d better be there with a jug. If someone faints, you revive them.”
Then she took her seat at the captain’s chair and ordered Molly off-line. Crusoe was right: if Jason had sent any intel back, then the Velors knew exactly what Molly would do under every single circumstance. Now they were unpredictable.
“Move as close to that ship as possible,” she said, pointing at the nearest Velor craft. “When I give the word, open the airlock.”
“One of her pilots argued, “But I thought we’d fire on them first.”
Sarah locked him in a stare and he blushed and turned away. “Sorry, Captain.”
“They have superior ships, firepower, and knowledge of space battle. We only have the element of surprise, and by God will they be surprised by a bunch of lunatics busting through their hull and fighting them hand to hand. They call themselves warriors, but I think we have the real warriors.”
The entire room yelled, “Hurrah,” as one.
She fought the urge to smile.
Infiltrators
Ship number three captained by Jack Mayberry made a bold move. It fired everything it had at the center ship. Ship three’s thrusters moved it to and fro, up and down, as it closed the distance, avoiding too much damage. Some of the rounds pierced the alien hull, as was evidenced by the escaping atmosphere that looked white and wispy against the black void.
The warship began to turn towards ship three, so Sarah yelled, “Gunners, hit that bastard with everything you’ve got.”
The alien ship began to take serious damage from both. It maintained its turn, though, seemingly oblivious to the Seeder’s assault.
They closed in on the other ship; the sirens blared, indicating that the airlock had been opened. Then it blared a second time to let them know it was closed again.
They watched the monitors closely as slow dark human shapes moved towards their intended target. Luckily, their target wasn’t yet under fire.
The Seeder lurched and a deafening boom nearly knocked Sarah out.
Molly came back on-line and said, “Impact to Pod Bay Two. Hull breach has been sealed off. We’ve lost seventeen stasis pods.” Then she went off-line again.
One of her pilots said, “Oh shit.” The ship her infiltrators were going towards had spotted the suited soldiers and it was firing on them. Luckily its aim sucked. A handful of soldiers were hit and tumbled away from the group, but by then they were already close. She watched as they caught the alien ship and clung on. Th
en a pinpoint light appeared, the acetylene torch that would cut through the hull already hard at work. Her heart swelled with a kind of species-oriented pride. Those men and women had more courage in their pinky toes than all the occupants of the alien ships combined.
But then a large antenna on top of the alien ship lit up like a flare. A spot just a hundred feet from the infiltrators glowed brightly and then went black again. What happened next surprised her. Some of the soldiers were pulled away from the alien ship and floated off into space.
She remembered that Jason had told them about the Velors’ use of gravity wells. “Fire on that antenna. It’s some kind of gravity generator.”
She watched as the antenna was reduced to a useless nub by her ship’s guns.
She changed the view in time to see Jack’s ship come under heavy fire. She could barely believe it was still operational. Air leaked like water through a sieve from pockmarks all across its hull. It wouldn’t last much longer. She ordered all of her gunners to target the ship again and unload, if only to save Jack.
Before she had the chance to ponder where Jane’s ship had gotten to, it appeared in frame, traveling at incredible speed. It went straight into the alien ship attacking Jack’s. The impact was silent as the grave, but incredibly destructive all the same. Atmosphere gulped out of both ships in huge bursts, followed by flames that licked themselves out.
Her gunners sat in stunned silence.
Sarah swallowed the frog in her throat. Jane was an incredible woman and they’d been through a lifetime of highs and lows together, and now she had made the ultimate sacrifice.
Before the silence became poisonously pervasive, she changed views back to her brave infiltrators. They were cutting through the hull, but some of them were also prying at the metal with their bare hands, and making progress too. One of them disappeared from view, followed by another. Soon, the torch was abandoned and spun away into space.
She quickly ordered team two to enter the airlock and get ready to follow team one inside the enemy ship. The sirens blared and blared again, letting her know they’d launched themselves bodily at the aliens.
She ordered Becky, the redhead mechanic, to go check out the hull breach and see what she could do. Becky took a team of stragglers with her.
Then Sarah ordered the flight crew to find the lead ship on the monitor. After a few seconds of images flashing on and off, Crusoe’s ship appeared. She had expected it to be under fire from the only other ship that wasn’t actively engaged, so she was shocked to see four warships firing upon it. Where the hell had they come from? For the first time, she considered the option that they were screwed.
She felt the ship rock and ordered her flight crew to find the source. They searched the skies and stopped at an image of the ship they’d sent the infiltrators into. It had listed on its side, reminding her of a sinking boat. There were jets of smoky atmosphere erupting from various hull breaches and small explosions that took chunks of it into space. Then, like ants from an anthill, she saw her men and women leave the ship and float back towards the Seeder. She ordered the outer airlock doors opened and then she sent a dozen troopers below deck to assist the infiltrators.
She changed view to Jane’s ship again. It was utterly wrecked, everyone on board surely killed by the impact or the resultant loss of systems.
To her amazement the alien ship she’d dove into was starting to right itself. Slowly but surely, it began to move under its own power. Just as she was about to order all weapons to deploy, Jack’s number three ship came into view and unleashed its entire arsenal on it. Physical projectiles as well as energy weapons blasted the alien ship to pieces. An entire side of the ship sloughed off and shot away under the power of the gushing atmosphere.
Vague shapes floated out of the wreckage. They weren’t human, but from so far away it was difficult to say exactly how different they were. What was clear, though, was that they were all dead.
Everyone in the command station whooped and cheered. Celebrating death still rubbed her the wrong way regardless of whether it was human or not, so she immediately changed the view, with the knowledge that Jack had it under control.
Crusoe was leading the four warships away from the fight but he was taking heavy damage. The Velors were probably wondering how it was still being piloted when it was clearly long free of any breathable air.
Velor
The sirens blared when the airlock filled with infiltrators. She hated to leave the captain’s chair for even a second, but she had to see that they were alright. She rushed below deck after instructing her people to fire on anything alien.
When she arrived, her infiltrators were being led out of the airlock. There were just a dozen or so of them left, some of them bleeding from wounds. How they’d managed to hold the holes in their suits shut while still navigating across empty space accurately, she couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
And they had a captive with them. The Velor prisoner was not what she’d expected at all. In her mind’s eye, she’d expected some kind of arachnid-like beast with horns and claws. Maybe it would slither like a slug, but it most certainly did not look like what her imagination had warned her to expect.
It was thin and tall, bipedal like a humanoid, with a thin layer of gray fur covering it head to toe. It had just one eye in the front and center of its face. If the eye were situated a little higher up, it might have reminded her of the Cyclops of legend. Its mouth was an oval that closed like a butthole and it had no nose at all. If it had hearing apparatus, it wasn’t obvious on first inspection. Its head was overly large, barely held up by a thin, wrinkled neck.
But the most ridiculous thing about the creature was its attire. It wore loose robes colored pink and black. The robes had tassels dangling with what looked like tiny dead insects fastened to the ends of each. Its feet, or hooves, or whatever the heck it possessed, were hidden by boxy looking footwear, multicolored and gaudy. But the footwear didn’t appear to be made of anything pliable. It looked to be painted metal or stone. Its hands had five fingers with a thumb-like appendage on either side that acted like pincers. It had no nails but each finger had an ornate, brightly-colored gem embedded into each knuckle.
When Jason had taken human form, he’d truly altered everything about himself. The Velor before her wasn’t ugly per se, it was just kind of silly looking.
Sarah’s first impression of the Velors was that they were a race of beings so bored and decadent that they tried just about anything to spruce their image up and stand out. But she reserved the right to change her mind when more information became available.
The creature began to gasp for breath. None of the infiltrators had provided it with a suit or helmet during the spacewalk.
Robert Smith stood by her side, panting. “We think that guy’s the commander, that’s why we took him. Maybe we can use him to negotiate.”
The thought of negotiating had not crossed her mind. She hadn’t thought they’d find themselves in such a favorable position. She thought they’d all be dead by now. “Leave him in the airlock for now. You guys take a rest. You’re heroes in my book. I’ll send down a half dozen men to guard him.”
Robert laughed and then a few of the others joined in. He finally said, “These guys are wimps. You could probably send the weakest, smallest soldier down here, and that would be overkill. If not for their weaponry we would’ve killed them all in record time.”
Sarah nodded and watched as the pathetic Velor was dragged back into the airlock.
Apparently Jason had misled them regarding the might of his people. Maybe that was why they never fought a fair fight.
Obliteration
Sarah took her seat and watched in awe as her gunners enlarged the gaps in the hull of the ship the infiltrators had just wreaked havoc on.
She made them stop when she realized it wasn’t worthwhile. They were only shooting off in celebration of their victory.
But there was little cause to celebrate yet. There were sti
ll four warships to contend with. She changed the view on the monitor just in time to see the lead ship captained by Crusoe crash right into and then through one Velor ship, and then just seconds later, tear into another one.
Jack was there now too, emptying his guns into the front of a third. She zoomed in enough to see several small figures floating towards the fourth ship — infiltrators from Jack’s ship about to deal death to the aliens within.
She had a gunner aim at that alien ship's gravity generator and take it out before it had a chance to do to these infiltrators what that other ship had done to her men.
Crusoe’s ship was in pieces by the time it was done tearing through the two warships. Its thrusters went cold and it floated aimlessly, out of control. She zoomed in on his airlock and waited with bated breath for him to come floating out.
After a full minute, she saw a lone silhouette launch itself into space, but rather than launching himself at the Seeder or Jack’s ship, it threw itself at the wreckage of the closest enemy ship.
Crusoe disappeared through a gap in the hull, and Sarah could only imagine the carnage that awaited the poor survivors of the crash. They’d never seen a destructive force like Crusoe before.
The fourth ship was doing nothing to help its failing comrades. Its Velor captain was clearly scared stiff. Then, in a single mighty explosion, it tore itself apart. The shockwave rocked the Seeder and Sarah had to hold on to the sides of her chair so she didn’t hit the deck.
When the wave passed, there was an eerie silence as her crew mourned the deaths of the infiltrators who had no doubt caused the explosion in the first place.
In the bottom right corner of the monitor, she saw Crusoe’s tiny body leap from the alien wreckage to the next closest wreck. He found purchase and disappeared within. He was taking a hell of a risk, but he was clearly still furious enough at the Velors that the rewards outweighed the risks.
The ship Jack was firing at burped out all of its atmosphere at once, blowing it clean in half. The two halves spun away from each other quickly. Dead Velor bodies floated off into space.
