by Nate Duke
Banner ran back into Lady Elizabeth’s home. “The neighbors don’t want to speak. Some of the butlers have offered me to stay and wait until their masters return, but nobody says if they’ve seen her. The service can’t speak about the neighbors, not even if we represent the Navy. Half of the town is in her ball, so they haven’t seen her either.”
Most of the North Star’s crew were spread around the spaceport. They’d attempted to find her in the shopping district, visiting some of her acquaintances, or even hidden in the ballroom. She’d disappeared without trace.
Banner sat down on one of her large and ornamented couches. He studied the expensive leather and said, “This house is well beyond my own fortune. Would you kill for it?”
“The question is if Lady Elizabeth would kill for it,” I said.
I wasn’t worried for her motives for killing her family or how she’d managed to inherit her father’s and brother’s fortunes. I was worried that she’d conspired with the enemy, bribing them to attack the port and keep them under siege, and hoping that her experience managing the port would lead to keeping the post as governor… or as governess, or however a female governor is called.
What? I didn’t learn high-level politics in class.
Banner shook his head. “Seemed empty-headed to me. When did she turn into a genius manipulator?”
She’d been a manipulator all along, and her flirting with Banner and her bipolar attitude towards me were all part of her strategy. I’d been blind not to notice.
“Sir,” Flanagan said through the intercom. “We’ve spotted Lady Elizabeth.” He sounded annoyed. Had she tried to fight back and knocked him down?
“Excellent,” I replied. “Bring her to her home. Lieutenant Banner and I will be happy to interrogate her.”
“We’ve only spotted her,” Flanagan said. “She’s stolen one of our transport shuttles, bribed the men on the bridge so that they let her take a ride, cloaked the shuttle, and disappeared into space. The geniuses here didn’t consider it necessary to inform of the lady’s activities.”
Banner raised an eyebrow at me, amused. “She’s bribed the men on watch? What kind of men do we serve with?” He crossed his arms and leaned back on the couch, chuckling.
It wasn’t funny. Lady Elizabeth could be escaping before a final attack from the enemy. She might’ve been behind the attacks, and now we had nobody to question and no idea of what to expect.
This wasn’t the time for anyone to laugh.
“She might be selling our secrets to the enemy,” I said.
“We were already screwed before she left.” Banner tapped on the intercom in his ear. “Any sign of the enemy?”
“The new radars aren’t working anymore according to the little guys here,” Flanagan replied through the intercom. “Permission to smash their heads against a solid object.”
“Permission granted,” Banner said with a broad grin on his face.
Several thuds started sounding from Flanagan’s side.
“Wait.” Shit, the intercom! I tapped on the intercom. “Stop hitting anyone,” I said. “Tell them to search for anomalies, noise, or whatever they find in the region. I’m on my way.”
Flanagan complained that he couldn’t hurt anyone and said that real men weren’t scared of a good old fight.
I headed for the door without thinking. If we didn’t detect the enemy, they could reach the port, board us, and murder everyone in their sleep before we even noticed.
We were screwed.
Chapter 31
The bridge remained silent in the hours that followed. Everyone feared another attack, and we hoped that we’d hear the enemy coming if we kept silent. Engineers had swapped to using keyboards instead of neural controls to reduce their error margin. Everyone’s hands typed constantly on their input panels. They wrote programs to determine the enemy’s location, but they hadn’t found anything.
Flanagan had gathered some of the midshipmen on the bridge to keep them still and quiet. He sat on a chair and most of the kids sat on the floor, wide-eyed and scared of his tales of outer space. He’d told them of one of the Navy’s best moves during the war with the old Tsar. Flanagan had served under Captain Anderson, one of our greatest naval heroes. They’d been outnumbered in the previous battle, and the Tsar’s Fleet had forced them to retreat to Titan. Titan is a moon covered by a thick mist. They’d hoped to use it to hide from the Tsar.
“Once the Tsar’s ships arrived,” he said, “we hid our fighters and bombers behind Titan. The Tsar’s men expected us to hide under the atmospheric clouds and used their best scanners to look for our ships and supply nodes.” He let out a loud laugh. “We’d placed decoys and fake weapons everywhere, so they started attacking and shooting at the clouds while we flanked them, cut their retreat, and wiped them out.”
The midshipmen gasped with the details about how the Navy had eliminated the enemy. The Tsar had surrendered a month after his humiliating defeat, and we’d had a short period of peace.
Human expansion in the universe hadn’t given us extra breathing space to stop fighting each other. Instead, colonizing the galaxy was only making everyone more imperialistic, more paranoid that their enemies were building advanced colonies elsewhere. The world was at war, and nobody would ever be happy until we killed each other.
Banner was leaning on one of the walls by the door. He was meditative, worried about something. He’d been closer to Lady Elizabeth than me. He denied all interest in her, but it might’ve been just a pose. He noticed me observing him and straightened up, clasped his hands behind his back, and acquired his indifferent officer’s pose. He planned to remain an officer until the very last minute.
We talked and considered leaving, but the North Star wasn’t repaired, and retreating meant sentencing the port’s inhabitants to death. Besides, we weren’t able to fly faster than the Cassocks, and we had no chances if they caught us. Fleeing wasn’t an option.
“We can’t stay here and die, sir.” Flanagan stood up and left the midshipmen’s story unfinished. “We can’t wait here and let the enemy crush us.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” I said. “Just staying here and fighting until we’ve fixed the Star.”
“Or stay and die,” Flanagan murmured.
“Stop it, will you?” I said. “I don’t want you to demoralize the crew or make anyone think that we have no way out. We’ve repelled two attacks. We might be lucky and keep doing it until the enemy gets bored.”
“Yeah,” Banner said sarcastically. “They might run out of bullets or something.”
I glared at him. He wasn’t helping.
“Don’t take me wrong, sir,” Flanagan said. “Sirs. I want to go out there and fight, run away, or do something. I don’t want to stay around waiting for an invisible enemy to attack us.”
Waiting to be destroyed isn’t fun for anyone, but we had no choice.
“I’ve caught her!” Gupta pushed himself back from his control panel and gestured in the air to display a holographic version of his screen in the center of the bridge. It showed a small transport shuttle, flickering a few light minutes away from us.
“How have you bypassed her cloaking system?” I asked.
“I haven’t,” Gupta said. “She’s appeared on her own.”
The ship continued flickering for a few minutes, until something headed towards it and destroyed the shuttle. A smaller object, probably an escape pod, left the shuttle seconds before the collision. The shuttle exploded in space.
“Looks like she’s annoyed her masters,” Flanagan said.
“And looks like we’ll soon have company,” I said. “Beat to quarters. They are coming.”
Chapter 32
We launched armed satellites to protect the port the best way we could. With limited resources, there wasn’t much we could do during the wait. We assigned the midshipmen to supervise menial tasks to get them out of the way, and most of the responsibility fell upon Banner as well as myself.
&n
bsp; Banner supervised the pilots and rehearsed strategies in the simulators. We didn’t want to reveal our plans to the enemy in case we were tracked, so nobody left the simulation room. Banner and his pilots had large bags under their eyes; they hadn’t slept much. None of us had.
As if an imminent attack hadn’t been enough, the locals weren’t satisfied with the upcoming battles. Their protests had caused a stir outside the main shopping district, and we’d had to double up the men holding them. Some had attempted to burn down some houses, but we’d stopped them on time. Flanagan had taken it upon himself to control the masses until we were attacked again, but his actions only yielded temporary results. He kept trying, though.
As for me, I spent the days running from the bridge to the hangar, and then chasing after the North Star’s engineers to get them to improve our defenses. This wasn’t a battle of strength or courage; only wits would make us survive.
Things looked grim: engineers lacked manpower and materials, we didn’t have enough trained pilots, and we were screwed. If another of those gigantic flying saucers attacked us, there wasn’t much we could do to fight back. At least the lightbulbs were back in place, and we’d kept York and Kozinski out of the way too.
The wait is always the worst part of battle. I was green enough to fear the upcoming fight and worry that it could be my last. The first time you look at death and see it staring back makes you fear everything you do.
I should’ve felt confident with my awesome 3-week boot camp experience, but I wasn’t. I hadn’t been properly trained, I hadn’t been given the tools to lead a ship or a spaceport to victory, and I’d already had enough beginner’s luck in the previous fights. Nobody has unlimited luck.
My beginner’s luck had to last for one more fight, or we’d all die.
Chapter 33
We didn’t need to wait for long for the enemy. Their ships appeared on our radars and our screens simultaneously. Flanagan stepped forward and whistled at the screens; his way of saying, We’re in trouble. Banner and the midshipmen didn’t say anything; they simply stared at the dots as they popped on our radars.
I didn’t recognize the ships’ shapes or their physical characteristics; they were a new design and I hadn’t even heard about it. Some were like flying saucers, with weapons at the top and bottom, and constantly rotating decks in the middle. Others looked like normal ships, longer and smaller, and without any rotating decks. They’d deployed a legion of fighters, which orbited around the port ready to attack.
They hadn’t spared in the number of ships they’d sent to visit.
I turned on the long-range communications and ordered one of the men to broadcast my message in all known channels. We weren’t particularly good friends with our visitors, but being at a total disadvantage encourages you to be nicer to unwanted guests.
“This is Acting Captain James Wood,” I said. “You’ve just entered our port’s space. We’re generally friendly people and we’re happy to talk, but if you don’t send any messages our way, we might misunderstand you and think that your intentions are hostile. We don’t want such misunderstandings, do we?”
Banner raised an eyebrow at me. “Should we be so informal with them? They’ve attacked us.”
“Wood wants them to think we’re happy to negotiate,” Flanagan said. “Gives us extra time to think of something.” He glanced furtively at the screens. I don’t know if he was scared at all or if he felt comfortable with the idea of being crushed by a technologically superior enemy. He crossed his arms and focused on the badge on the left side of my chest. “No disguises this time, sir? You can do your magic with enemy uniforms and we can get rid of them before they realize.”
“Wish it were that simple,” I said.
Without knowing the enemy, we couldn’t dress as them. We lacked their uniforms, we lacked their ship designs, and we lacked just about everything. We didn’t even know their language, so we couldn’t address them until they spoke to us.
Well, we could always keep trying to make them talk, couldn’t we? I told the men to broadcast a second message, this time with video.
“Hi again, buddies.” I waved at the camera lazily. “Not sure if you’ve heard of the Laws of Space, but you’re supposed to show your flag, tell us why you’re attacking, and give us the option of yielding. Not that we’re planning to yield, of course, but it’s nice to see whom I’m fighting.”
No response.
“Might be shy, sir,” Flanagan said.
“Might know that we have nothing to do against them,” Banner said. “So they don’t bother talking.”
I shrugged. “It might just be a language issue. Mind if we broadcast using a translator? Change my message to all known languages, see if they reply.” I waited for the engineers to turn the broadcasting systems back on. “It’s very impolite of you not to show your face, you know? I’m not obsessed with manners and protocol, but I wouldn’t want to think I’m being attacked by an unmanned drone. Are you guys Japanese? Chinese? New Soviets? No? Come from Europe?”
Nothing.
I hate calling people and not getting a response. Makes me feel unwanted, just like when I called the pretty girls at school and none of them replied except to tell me I was a nerd. I was a nerd; didn’t it make me sexier?
“Looks like we’re up for another fight,” I said. “Beat to quarters, Flanagan. Get everyone ready to repel the attack.”
Flanagan ran outside to drag everyone to their battle stations. He could’ve used the intercom, but physically visiting everyone’s quarters guaranteed that nobody would accidentally miss the battle. He wasn’t as good as Kozinski at blunt object diplomacy, but his fists and baton were fairly diplomatic too. I’m a pacifist and I hate violence, but the idea of dying encourages you to be more tolerant with others’ belief systems.
Gupta approached me with a worried expression. “We don’t have enough satellite bombs to get rid of them. What should we do?”
“Nothing,” I said. “We can’t use our only large weapons yet. Let them approach, let them attack, let us see their firepower, and let them show where they keep their weapons. If we use our satellites now, we won’t have anything to fight.”
Gupta nodded and left to stop everyone else from launching attacks on their own.
The first waves of fighters attacked and headed straight to the spaceport’s outer decks, shooting at weapons and life support systems. They knew our port’s design as well as if they’d designed it themselves.
The battle began, and we shot at them with our flimsy weapons but we left our satellites intact. Our weapons couldn’t destroy them, but I wasn’t going to waste our satellites on the fighters. If we ran out of defenses with the fighter waves, we wouldn’t be able to do anything against the larger ships. I’d rather sustain fire from fighters than from those behemoths. Just a personal preference.
The ground shook with some of the fighters’ impacts. They depressurized our outer decks, broke axial elevators, and toyed with us while we tried to shoot back. Our plasma rays hit them but barely scratched them. We needed much more powerful weapons to stand a chance of destroying them, but we kept trying.
The men remained silent, shooting at their enemies. Banner and I joined them, but we barely did anything either. We were as useless as using the weapons’ AI systems and letting them shoot at the enemy.
We took a short break, and Banner cleared his throat to speak to me. He didn’t want to speak out loud unless I gave him permission.
What? Did he want to retreat? To use an escape route for officers to flee while the enemy annihilated everyone else? I wasn’t going to let him leave anyone behind. We were the officers in charge, and we weren’t going to let anyone die if we could help it.
“What do you want, Banner?” I asked.
“We can’t fight back,” he said. “We don’t have the weapons or the manpower unless we think of something.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said sarcastically.
“I can buy you tim
e,” he said. “Let me take the pilots. I’ll fly around the ships, play tag, try to destroy one or two, and give you extra minutes in case you can do your magic.”
He wanted to risk everything to fight? It was suicidal.
“I won’t be able to bring you back if you’re hit,” I said. “None of the fighters, actually.”
Banner nodded. “I know. The lads and I have talked. We knew we’d have to do this.”
I nodded. We both knew we had nothing to do against the enemy. We were ants fighting Goliath’s full bladder: he didn’t even need to crouch to drown us. Neither of us acknowledged the suicidal mission; we simply shook hands.
We were going to need luck, and both of us were likely to end up equally dead by the end of the day.
On days like these, it’s best not to get up from bed.
Chapter 34
Banner and the pilots boarded their fighters and everyone on the bridge looked at the security camera footage to see them leave like heroes. The bridge remained silent aside from occasional impacts from the fighters.
They were unlikely to return, and nobody wanted to break the silence to show respect for death.
Banner led his fighters in triangle formation and began following the enemy. The enemy fighters shot several warning shots at Banner and his men, but they only hit a couple of our ships. Instead of annihilating us, the enemy fighters turned around and let Banner’s men herd them away.
The larger ships retreated with the fighters, and soon our space was clear of enemies.
They were still there, of course, but they’d turned their cloaking systems back on.
“Is this supposed to happen, sir?” Cook asked.
No, it wasn’t. The enemy was either playing a morbid game before annihilating us, or we were missing on something. What had made them retreat?
“Well, this is weird,” Banner said through the intercom. “Should we go back?”
“Yes, but don’t get too comfortable,” I said. “I’m guessing it’s not over.”
