Explorations: War

by Richard Fox

  “Tyler,” I shouted, pressing to break through to him.

  “I got it, I got it.” Tyler’s funk was broken and he rapidly tapped on his console.

  I grabbed my arm rests as Ranger’s engines fired. We started to angle up, over the ship. I felt the pressure build in my chest, and the engines on full burn rumbled through the hull.

  “No, no, take us under the freighter,” I quickly assessed. My old combat instincts had been dulled by years of civilian exploration flights, but they were already starting to kick in. We needed cover from whatever had just taken out that ship. “Get that hauler’s bulk between us and whatever is pounding it. Rice, get on the com to FCF HQ. Find out what the hell is happening here.”

  An easing of pressure, then I was slammed back as the engines burned again. We began to descend under the ship. I heard the dull clanging of things striking the hull.

  “Are we taking fire?” Rice shouted between chattering into her radio.

  “Negative,” Tyler growled, his face focused as the broken freighter loomed over us. I saw the flicker of debris, of bodies slamming into our ship, backdropped by the vast flat horizon of Earth. “There’s a lot of shit out there.”

  I could just see over the terminator. Burning patches of fire covered swathes of the night side. Whoever these bastards were, they were smashing our homeworld to pieces.

  We soared under the freighter. The destroyer-sized vessel attacking the ship was occluded by her unfortunate remains. I saw another ship, its bulky hammerhead shape suggesting it was one of our cruisers arcing around before us. As she came bow on, a swarm of bright blue points of light erupted from her torpedo tubes and streaked towards the destroyer. They slammed into the ship. It exploded in a silent fireball.

  Good work. Someone had just killed the bastards who’d blasted an unarmed freighter to pieces.

  I swiped a holo-display into existence in front of me and focused my display on another mysterious ship which streaked down towards the cruiser from a higher orbit like a bird of prey. A swarm of fighters flocked around her. I zoomed in closer on the mysterious enemy.

  It just looked wrong to me, as if it hadn’t been conceived by a human mind. It had an elongated bulbous appearance, more like a beetle than a ship. Plates of green-grey armor covered the strange lines of her intimidating hull.

  We were in the middle of a goddamn alien invasion and they were kicking our asses.

  And Ranger had nothing to shoot with, nothing to defend herself.

  Our cruiser turned, and streamers of tracer fire erupted from her flanks in a savage broadside. A staccato of explosions flickered between the two vessels as the alien fighters took horrific losses. They continued swarming in, relentlessly peppering the cruiser with fire. A beam of some kind lanced out of the alien ship, piercing the cruiser’s hull. A shower of debris erupted out of the opposite side. It continued firing, carving the ship into pieces.

  “Tyler, just keep us evading until we can get the displacement drive recharged,” I shouted. We weren’t going to survive long in this mess. A thought occurred. “We need to get into survival suits. We get holed in this mess, then we’re dead if we stay in shirt sleeves.”

  I climbed out of my chair and spun it around, and opened the cabinet built in the rear. I slipped on the vest-like garment and slapped the front. The smart material began stretching and contorting, growing into a skin suit. I pulled out the helmet and thrust my head into it before sitting again. I noticed Rice had done the same. That left our pilot. “Tyler, transfer control to my station and get into your suit. Rice, please tell me you’re talking to someone.”

  A holo-display appeared in front of me, overlaying the raw visual image. Boxes outlined where the clashing ships were, attitude bars appeared, and numbers flicked across the view, denoting relative velocities.

  Crap, Tyler had been dealing with a lot of traffic.

  The digital ladder of our vector extended into the thick of the fighting, where gargantuan ships were pounding each other with horrendous volumes of fire. It looked like Earth’s mammoth battleships were striving to hold the line between High York Space city and an onslaught of even larger alien vessels.

  If we went into that maelstrom, we would be little more than a gently fading ember as Ranger’s atoms dissipated.

  Problem was, we only had so much Delta-Vee left to play with before we slid between them. We were going into that mess whether we wanted to or not.

  “There’s maydays and distress calls all over the network. I’ve got FCF HQ general system-wide communications on the line. They’ve given an execute order for something called Operation Exodus. All ships are to report to High York immediately to take on refugees.”

  Operation Exodus? I felt a hollow sickening feeling in my stomach. There was no subtlety to that code name. The FCF was saying they were abandoning Sol. This was happening too fast. Sol was dying, the biggest space battle in history was occurring all around us, and we were told that high command had already given up.

  I felt a bead of sweat trickling down my brow. I shook my head, dislodging it, and pushed us down lower, striving to avoid the worst of the capital ship engagement.

  Then I saw it.

  Something in low orbit. It was vast, beneath it a column of fire stretching down to the surface. It must have been miles long. Thick armored plates slid organically around its outer layers as piercing light emerged from between the gaps.

  “Rice, switch focus. I think we’ve got a major enemy asset at Z minus…” I checked the display. “Twenty kilometres below us. Can you get a read on whatever it’s firing at Earth?”

  The display focused in. The streamer of fire carved a brutal red scar across the North American Midwest. Kansas had just been obliterated.

  “Sonvabitch.” I felt my lips curling in a snarl. They weren’t just content to defeat our fleet, or even let the sick Sol do their dirty work. They were sending us a message. “Status on the displacement drive?”

  “Sixty percent charge, Skipper,” Rice called back. “I’ve got a civilian-band SOS.”

  My first instinct was like all good spacers. What can I do to help a distressed ship? That was rapidly followed by the second thought that we were in distress ourselves.

  “There’s going to be a lot of that,” I said. “We need to get our situate—“

  Rice stabbed her console and I heard a scared voice. “This is Sprinter 118. We’ve suffered engine damage. Please help us, I’ve got a bunch of kids on board. Please!”

  “Brad.” Rice looked at me, her eyes wide. “That shuttle’s on our vector. We can help them.”

  Damn it. Okay. “Get me a solution for an intercept.”

  I saw the vector ladder begin to angle down in the display. A box icon surrounded a glinting object. The shuttle.

  Shit, that would put us right between the capital ship battle and that… whatever the hell it was pounding the hell out of the US. From Earth’s surface, columns of smoke rose. Surface to space missiles streaked up towards the… the mothership.

  The plates slid around, reorienting themselves. Flame reached out from between them and contemptuously touched each of the missiles, turning them into gently rising flickering embers.

  And I realized what I was seeing.

  “Rice, that ship. It isn’t firing, is it? It’s unleashing something.”

  “Skip, it’s hitting out with a plasma torch. I’m seeing the flux lines and temperatures I’d expect from a coronal mass ejection.”

  I leaned forwards as I looked at the ship. The plates whipped around, lifting, sliding and flipping as if it couldn’t remain still. And within, a blinding light coursed out.

  “Are you saying they’ve got some kind of fusion reaction contained in there?”

  “Kinda, boss,” Rice said. “It’s like they’ve got their own tame star in the middle of that thing. When they open the shell, it lets a plasma torch out, I’m guessing as both a weapon and propulsion. If that hits anything, it ain’t gonna get much more des
tructive than that.”

  Time slowed for me as I synced up what I was seeing now with what we’d encountered in the Tau Sagittarius system all those years ago. Half a world had been blasted by what we’d assumed was a massive solar flare.

  Except that wasn’t the case, was it? Had they known these invaders had been coming and fled in those huge arks before they’d been glassed?

  Perhaps they’d—

  I felt myself being slammed into the side of my chair. A low whistle told me the hull had been breached and I swept my face plate down. “Tyler?”

  “We’ve been hit.”

  No shit. The insistent warble of alarms told me we’d just taken a massive blow.

  My hand fought the horrendous forces as it reached up for the holo-display hanging stubbornly before my face. I keyed the reaction control engines, trying to get our spin under control. Our rapidly spinning X, Y and Z axis steadily stabilized even as another Earth cruiser rumbled over the top of us, the thick armor of her belly already pitted and scarred. She fired a volley of missiles at something behind us.

  “Status?”

  A flash. I looked again. The cruiser had been bisected by a beam. Both halves drifted apart. Behind us, an enemy vessel bucked under the explosions, then recouped and started to yaw back towards us.

  “Rice?” I roared.

  “They’ve holed the displacement shell.”

  Damn it. Ranger was made up of two components, a displacement sphere and the ship nestled inside. Without the sphere, we would be trapped in-system.

  “Is it still viable?”

  “Negative. They’ve blown the hyperconducters. I’m sending out Alvin, Simon and Theodore to spool out more.”

  Shit, the sphere itself was little more than a ball of hyperconducting cable. We had to hope the three spider robots would be able to either fix the lines or lay down more cable, and that was while we had a pissed off enemy ship behind and were still heading into the thick of the heavy ship engagement in front.

  I glanced at the display showing the ship coming about behind us. Explosions still riddled her hull from the beating our cruiser had given her, but frankly, it looked like the hits had just pissed her off even more. She was going to fire any second now and then we’d be done.

  A line of explosions stitched along her flank. For a moment, I thought they heralded the launch of some kind of munition, but then the craft began tumbling, all attitude control lost. A squadron of fighters tore by us, so close their engine exhaust buffeted our already out of control ship.

  Thank you, whoever you were. On a whim, I tapped on the display, focusing it in.

  Those markings? The stylised wolf grin across its bow. It couldn’t be, could it?

  “Open a com channel to the lead fighter in that squadron,” I shouted.

  A face, nearly obscured by his visor reflecting twisting wreckage and blossoming explosions, appeared on my display. I could make out just enough of his features to see it was my old protégé.

  “Cunning? Is that you, old man?” the man said without preamble.

  “Carter Fuckin’ Hayes.” I couldn’t help but give a laugh. “I should have known you would be in the thick of whatever the hell is going on. Speaking of which, just what is going on?”

  “Ha.” Hayes looked up at something through his canopy. His face began to contort as he pulled a high-gee maneuver. He came straight and level again, panting. “Listen, Cunning. We’re in the shit here, but I don’t have time to explain. We’re the only ones to have broken through to that dreadnaught which is pounding the surface, and I have to do something about it.”

  “Roger that. What can we do to help?”

  “Unless that swish-looking explorer ship has any weapons on it, the only thing I can think of right now is getting to High York. They’re going to need every displacement drive ship for the evacuation.”

  “So that’s it, then?” I looked at the display again. One of the battleships was engaged in a devastating broadside duel with a huge alien vessel. Thousands of kinetic rounds rained from her flanks in a brutal deluge.

  “Cunning, it ain’t been good.” Hayes’s voice was quiet. “Look, man. I’ve got the tasking to do a torpedo run on that dreadnaught which just glassed Wichita.”

  My eyes flicked between the huge capital ship and Hayes’s face. I said the only thing I could. “Good luck.”

  “Fortune favors the bold. Hayes out.”

  I turned to Tyler. “Can we make an intercept on that shuttle?”

  “It’s going to be tight, but doable if we burn now.”

  What were we waiting for? “Execute.”

  Hayes’s dozen fighters angled away towards the dreadnaught. It was massive, and the plates sliding and whipping around it gave it a furious appearance. I hoped his plan involved something more than just strafing the damn thing.

  More pressure on my bruised chest as the ship decelerated to make a rendezvous with the shuttle tumbling end over end. Now we were in visible range of it, I saw its engines had been sheared off, leaving a glittering spiral of fuel crystals.

  “Distressed shuttle,” I called into the com. “We not going to be able to rendezvous with you until that spin is stabilized. Fire your RCS thrusters and get yourself straight and level. Rice, get the sphere hatch open. We’re going for a hard dock.”

  “On it.” Rice tapped on her console. The bay door on the bow of Ranger’s displacement sphere irised open.

  I looked at the display. Hayes and his squadron were spiraling towards the dreadnaught. A shoal of alien fighters raced towards them. Fire ripped both ways, explosions tearing through both swarms of fighters.

  Come on, Hayes. Get in there.

  “Velocity is down to five meters per second between us and the shuttle,” Tyler shouted. “It’s going to be rough on us. And them.”

  The shuttle’s Vernier thrusters fired in sequence, striving to get the small craft at least pointing the right way.

  I was jarred forwards. An almighty crash and a grinding noise. The shuttle had slid into the bay, scraping in the cramped confines against Ranger herself.

  “She’s in,” Rice shouted. “I’ve got Alvin and Simon securing her down. It ain’t going to be pretty, but we’ll be able to burn.”

  The sooner the better.

  “Ranger, Hayes here. We’re going in for a run on the dreadnaught.”

  I glanced at the display. Less than half of Hayes’ squadron had blown past the interceptors, plumes of exhaust extending out from their engines as they raced in on full afterburners. The alien interceptors were arcing around, but would struggle to catch up.

  From beneath each of the fighters, a bright blue point of light emerged. They streaked towards the dreadnaught at horrendous acceleration even as the fighters began arcing away.

  The torpedoes slammed into one of the shifting plates. At first I thought the ship was shrugging them off, but then I saw the plan. The plate juddered, then ground to a halt just as it began flipping over. Another slid under it, tearing them both off.

  A torrent of fire, as hot as a solar flare, erupted from within the ship, reaching across space. It touched a collection of alien vessels, incinerating them even as they closed on the tattered remnants of the human fleet battling above them.

  The dreadnaught twisted and turned, either striving to get its flare away from its allies or just plain out of control. It limped away towards high orbit, licking its wounds.

  And we had a gap in the enemy lines.

  “Taylor, get us through that hole. Now.”

  I felt a pressure build on my chest as we fought for High York, and the Exodus fleet.

  ***

  “So we can keep ten of those kids on board?” I squeezed the bridge of my nose.

  “And that’s pushing our life support balancing to 125%. Any more than that and we go into a serious deficit and we’d be dead within a month.” Rice’s voice was quiet.

  And that would leave four kids who would have to be left behind.

&nb
sp; The battle was still raging outside, and the sun was dying a little more every hour. Staying would be a death sentence for those left behind.

  Ranger was docked at a mooring protruding from High York’s vast sphere. Our original thought had been that we couldn’t just space the kids, we needed to offload them. But then we’d learned that there were no ships left to take them. Every vessel in the Exodus fleet was full to the brim.

  I came to a decision. “What’s the life support loading on an adult versus children?”

  “Around two to one.” Rice frowned as she looked at me. “What are you thinking?”

  I stood from my chair. “We save as many as we can.”

  I ran my fingertips across the top of the console. Ranger had been a good ship. We’d seen some sights, discovered wonderful things. But if this Exodus project was to succeed, if we were going to succeed on a new world, we needed the young to do it. The young like the kids we’d picked up.

  “Captain… Brad,” she said, turning to look at me. “I know what you’re thinking. But it doesn’t make sense. Those kids can’t fly this ship.”

  “But you can. You and Tyler,” I said. I felt strangely sanguine. I knew what I was doing was the right thing. “And the scientists in cryo. You’re going to need them when you get to your destination. But me? I’m just supercargo. An old man.”

  “I volunteer to get off too,” Tyler said, his voice shaky. “We’d fit the last two in, then.”

  “Nope,” I responded. “The ship needs a pilot. And an engineer. It doesn’t need me. You’ll take all the kids and figure out the life support deficit on route. Permission denied.”

  ***

  “Come on, get her loaded up. We don’t have all day,” the man called at the weapons technicians jacking a torpedo into the weapons bay of his fighter. The cavernous bay was full of military vessels, from small fighters to troop transports, all cycling through to get rearmed and refitted for their next sorties.

  I jogged over. “They’ll work faster if you stop bellowing at them.”

  “Bradley ‘Cunning’ Cunningham.” Hayes turned from his admonishment. “What the hell are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be heading out to the Exodus muster point in that sweet-ass piece of kit you skipper?”