Starship Defender: Beyond Human Space

by Michael Keats

  I took it as an invitation to join them as an equal. I hate to hide while others do the fighting.

  Chapter 28: Kate

  Kate observed the charts and information on the screens in the strategy room. Someone had left everything turned on for her to see. Someone wanted to warn her about General Dovrik’s intentions.

  The charts included detailed maps of Earth and all her countries, of starbases orbiting around Earth and even of colonies and bases on other planets. Dovrik had collected information for years. Dovrik had spies on Earth.

  When Vortos had abducted Kate and forced her to board one of the Defender’s shuttles, he’d seemed a madman. The emergency signal had attracted Dovrik, and she’d considered it a coincidence. Now that she was in front of so much information, she wondered if Vortos had worked alone as a spy or if someone else worked with him.

  Another note rested on one of the desks in the room. Kate picked it up and read it: it contained a simple map from her current location to another location marked escape. Someone was either helping her to leave or guiding her into a trap. Knowing Fraterans, the latter was likelier. In either case, she lacked any other options.

  Several alarms sounded just outside the room and the lights around her turned brighter.

  Kate remembered the alerts aboard the refugee ship and the safety drills. They’d always rehearsed evacuation strategies for a potential attack, and these alarms were identical. Dovrik’s ship was under attack.

  She tried to turn on the communication systems on one of the computers, but her DNA had been blocked from the machines. Sending a message wasn’t possible. She was alone.

  She had to escape aboard a shuttle, but she wasn’t going to leave all the information there. She had to destroy the computers and get rid of some of the threats against humanity. The longer Dovrik took to complete his plans, the longer humanity would have to get ready to fight him.

  Some of the adjacent rooms contained a few substances that would react violently and cause a large fire when mixed. She’d learned chemistry even before leaving her home planet, and the room was about to burn fiercely. And just in case a fire wasn’t enough, she stole several cables and some tech from a storeroom and prepared an electromagnetic pulse to destroy all electron-based devices. This was a war, and someone had to make the difficult choices.

  John leaned on the door frame, inspected the liquids she’d prepared, and shook his head. “Planning a fire, you pyro?” He coughed and almost fell forward.

  Kate ran to his aid. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “What kind of doctor are you? You’re supposed to stay still and recover. You’ll only hurt yourself even more if you don’t rest.”

  “There’s too much to do to rest,” he said. “I’m not going to stand aside and see you kill yourself by trying to act the hero.” He coughed. He wasn’t fit to talk, and much less to go anywhere.

  For the first time in a very long time, she feared for his survival.

  “John…” she began.

  “I’m Jarlis, Qad,” he replied. “Jarlis.” He shook his head and struggled to breathe. He was in an awful shape, and yet he was obstinate enough to continue trying to protect her. He fell forward, but she leaped on time to catch him. He chuckled to himself. “What kind of world do we live in that a girl has to save a man?” He didn’t sound arrogant or demanding. He was tired and his joke barely had any strength in it. He wasn’t fit to speak, he wasn’t fit to stand, and he wasn’t fit to protect her from anything.

  They’d been friends for a long time. It was about time that he trusted her and let her make her own mistakes.

  “I’ll manage,” she said. “I’m a grown woman and you need to rest.”

  “And I’m a bloody surgeon,” he replied. “And I know what’s better for me. And right now, I’m going to save you because it’s more important than a few scratches and wounds.”

  They argued, but John was right. He had little hope to survive, and someone needed to send a message to the Defender. Humans knew nothing about their technological differences or about strategies that could help them defeat Dovrik. She’d explored the ship, but above all else, she was Frateran. She knew things about her own world that the Defender’s radars would never detect. Without this information, humans had little chance to defeat the Frateran Armors.

  She kissed him farewell with a light and fraternal kiss on the cheek.

  He stopped her from leaving, held her wrist and looked into her eyes. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned. “Don’t come back, no matter what. Get the DNA melder and hide it until both Fraterans and humans are ready to use it.”

  She didn’t need his advice to take care of herself, and the DNA melder was the least of her problems. She needed to escape, and warn the Defender.

  Now was the time to see if the handwritten note she’d found was right. If it was, she’d escape the ship. If it wasn’t, she’d head straight into a trap.

  She’d be blind about her fate until she took the risk.

  Chapter 29: Kate

  The path to the escape shuttles wasn’t short, but the corridors weren’t guarded. It almost seemed like someone had distracted the Frateran armors and set them to guard somewhere else while she escaped. She wasn’t going to question it, though.

  A few Frateran armors guarded the hangar. They were busy trying on their helmets and getting ready to man the ships to repel the enemy. They were at war. It was the best time to flee the ship.

  She went for one of the escape pods. It was a small and manageable spherical shuttle with manual controls and a neural link. She opted for the manual controls. Neural links were designed for Fraterans who had behaved like Fraterans all their lives. She barely remembered how Fraterans thought, so she wasn’t ready to use any of their mental controls. It would only make the trip bumpier and the landing more difficult.

  She adjusted the seat for her size, disabled the autopilot, and prepared the artificial gravity generators for as soon as she flew out of the ship. She didn’t recognize most of the screens or interfaces to control the shuttle; she’d have to improvise. With some luck, ships would be user-friendly enough for an inexperienced pilot. If she wasn’t lucky, she’d end up crashing onto something or flying into a sun. Better to try than to remain trapped aboard a Frateran vessel.

  Fredler, one of the guards who’d visited her when she’d first ended up aboard the ship, entered through the hangar doors. He noticed her aboard an escape shuttle and touched the top of his forehead and his stomach. Had he helped her escape?

  She didn’t have the time to ask him any questions. She turned on the shuttle’s engines.

  Just then, several Frateran armors entered the hangar after Fredler and headed straight for Kate, but she was already leaving. Some of them punched Fredler’s stomach and arrested him, but the simple man stared at her shuttle with a broad smile on his face. He didn’t stop looking at her until she left the hangar.

  Some of her people supported what the refugees were doing.

  She checked the radars every few seconds in case someone had decided to follow her shuttle. They hadn’t, but she couldn’t relax about it. She was fleeing a Frateran general’s ship, and generals don’t like to lose against anyone.

  The silence aboard her shuttle only made matters worse. It was an artificial silence, only with the engines as a constant companion. She’d left the ship and sought freedom, but the feeling of solitude magnified the tension of waiting for an attack.

  The ship would surely open fire soon enough. She had to get out of their shooting range before they reacted.

  With the Frateran Armors after her and knowing that she’d gone, they’d go immediately for John. He might not have had enough time to set fire to the computers and break their hard drives by the time someone got to him.

  General Dovrik’s laugh sounded through the shuttle’s communication system.

  Her plan had been dumb, but she’d managed to almost flee the ship.

  “Fierce and relentless,” the
general said between chuckles. “Just like your family.”

  Yeah, right. The classic villainy speech where the bad guy indulges in his murder of her family. She’d heard it a thousand times, and she wasn’t interested in hearing it once more. She muted the communication systems.

  The ship’s weapons pointed at her and followed her trajectory. It was only a matter of seconds.

  The general overrode her communication settings. “Did you think that human cloud-based computer systems would be more advanced than our own? Burning down one of our computers doesn’t change anything.”

  At least she’d made them spend a fortune on new computers. Buying tech for a starship cost a lot of money, and that was enough to annoy a general. She didn’t care if she hadn’t been completely successful. She’d be of more help if she managed to board the Defender and return to Earth.

  Kate tapped on the communications systems to switch to an open communication with nearby ships. The Defender appeared on the radar screens, but she couldn’t board her unless she warned them first. No human ship would like the idea of being boarded by another Frateran shuttle unless they knew that an ally was piloting it.

  She didn’t manage to change channels. She was still alone.

  “Sending your traitor friend to do the dirty work was a low move,” the general continued. “I’d have expected more of you.”

  John.

  Kate had forgotten about him, but it was too late to go back. If the general had captured him, he was dead. With his wounds, any form of aggression was likely to finish him off.

  “Let him live,” Kate warned. “He has nothing to do with this.”

  The general tut-tutted. “I’d say he does. We’ve caught him setting fire to my machines, and I’m guessing that you ordered him to do so. I’ll have to clean the room and replace the systems. That’s a lot of work. I’d call both of you a nuisance. Do you know what I do to nuisances?”

  They shot them down. And she was still within firing range.

  She wasn’t going to beg for her life. She’d take whatever came her way, but she wasn’t going to beg. She tapped one last time on the communications systems to try to contact the Defender. Still nothing.

  “Do you have any last words you’d like to say to your doctor friend?” the general insisted.

  She had many things to tell him. She’d admired him like an elder brother, and she’d trusted him like a close friend. But this wasn’t about giving John one last message, but about giving the general the satisfaction of hearing her last words before he shot her down. This was about his ego, and about using her fall as propaganda for his supporters.

  “Screw you, Dovrik,” she said instead. “I’ve burnt one of your computer rooms down. I’d have set fire to the whole ship if I’d had the time.”

  Right. That sounded much less likely to end up on a propaganda film.

  She only had to wait until they shot her. She closed her eyes. It wouldn’t take long.

  “I’ve heard better goodbyes,” General Dovrik replied. A Frateran gun sounded on the other side of the line, ending the conversation.

  They hadn’t shot her down. Dovrik had shot John instead.

  Her only friend and her only ally was gone, and she could do nothing to bring him back.

  And now she was in the middle of space, between two starships, and with no way to contact her friends. The general had surely known that she wouldn’t manage to contact the Defender. She had to choose between being shot by them or drifting off into space and starving. She hadn’t been worth the bullets.

  Chapter 30

  The marines and I boarded our fighters and prepared to attack Hostile Alpha.

  I disliked the idea of trying to board a ship that I didn’t know much about, but we didn’t have many other choices. The Earth’s best scientists had helped us leap into a new technological era, and we’d fall back into a dark age if we lost them.

  “Everything all right there, sir?” Hightower said through the fighter’s communication systems. “I’ve seen you struggle to lift off from the Defender. Need an instructions manual?”

  “Shut up, Hightower,” I said. “I wouldn’t pick on anyone if I flew in sinusoidal paths.”

  “Sinusoidal?” Hightower laughed. “You’re using too many big words for a simple-minded marine like me, sir. I’d call it flying drunk. Your grandiloquence doesn’t fit aboard a fighter.”

  Grandiloquence? A simple word indeed.

  “And why are you going so slowly, sir?” another marine asked. “Scared, perhaps?”

  “Don’t project your fears on me,” I replied.

  “The commander’s forgotten to piss before leaving,” Harry’s voice said. I turned around, and his hologram was sitting right behind me in my fighter. “Puts him in an awful mood.”

  Several of the men roared in laughter and encouraged Harry to say more. Harry gave me a broad smile. He was ignoring my orders, and he didn’t care.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Harry,” I said. And how had he ended up aboard my fighter? Holographic systems weren’t supposed to work inside fighters. It didn’t matter; he could also appear in my glasses just to make me go mad.

  “And you shouldn’t either,” he said, “you’re the officer in charge and I’m the ship’s AI. You’re here for the girl, and I’m here to protect my investment. You’ve promised me a share of the loot, remember?”

  “Loot?” I said. “When have we turned into pirates?”

  “Remember the moment you’ve ignored Fleet Command’s wishes and made me impersonate your aunt and convince everyone to follow you? Makes us partners in crime. I demand to be partners in success too.”

  Hooke tapped on her microphone to hurt our eardrums and get our attention. “Yes, yes, yes. All of you are testosterone-driven idiots, but this is a mission and I’m in charge. I don’t care if the acting captain or the Pope drop by to help us. I’m not going to let anyone lose focus for some of your manly banter. Got it?”

  Several of the marines agreed, marine-style. Harry complained about their loudness.

  The enemy released the drones. Hooke told us to remain calm and to keep in our squad formation.

  The theory was easy, but the drone swarm created a thick mist of small drones around us. They shot and collided against my fighter and didn’t let me see anything beyond my own nose. The radars went mad with so many drones. The defense system was designed to blind us. The enemy captain was simply playing with us.

  Harry recalibrated our radars to ignore the drones and only show the main ship.

  I enabled our weapons and shot at the drones, but every drone that fell was replaced with two new ones. They never ended.

  “One of your magic tricks would come handy right now,” I told Harry.

  “What do you want me to do?” he said. “Snap my fingers and make them disappear? Doesn’t work like that. I can’t do anything aside from removing them from the radars. Want something else? Do it yourself.”

  Awesome. The drone storm was there to stay.

  “Scared of bees, sir?” Hightower flew near us and shot many of our drones with his lasers. He flew through the mist like an elephant surrounded by minuscule insects: he didn’t care if they crashed onto him. His hull stood the impacts. “Want me to clean the region up for you?”

  I turned on the engines and emulated him, shooting at everything that flew nearby and colliding at whatever drones I didn’t manage to destroy. We opened several paths though the drone swarm, and the remaining drones’ lower density stopped being as efficient as before. They were ours.

  Many drones gathered up around Hightower, flew towards him and collided against his hull. He shot the ones in front of him, but they were too many. I headed towards the area and shot the drones around him and behind him. My fighter cleared his path and let him maneuver and finish off the rest.

  “I can manage just fine with the drones,” I told Hightower. “Need more help yourself?”

  “Enough help for the time being, sir,” Hight
ower said. “I’ll give you a call if I’m about to be shot again.”

  Hostile Alpha opened its hangars, and I took it as an invitation. The whole squad headed towards them.

  A squad of enemy fighters flew out and headed towards us.

  Curses. It turns out that hostile ships don’t like to invite enemy pilots into their hangars.

  We still had a few drones annoying us, but the fighters were stronger and faster.

  The radars showed a transport shuttle amongst the enemy lines. A fairly stupid choice of ship for a military confrontation, but at least it wasn’t going to complicate our lives further.

  The enemy fighters were designed like arrowheads: small, flat, and pointy. They seemed designed both for outer space and for atmospheric settings. Their swift movements weren’t their best advantage, though; they rotated and changed direction almost instantly, as if they had no inertia.

  We shot at them, but their flight remained erratic and unpredictable enough to dodge our shots. They headed right, then left, then advanced towards us, and then drew circles in space to show off. Our weapons, both automatic and manual, had nothing to do against such erratic movements. If someone was flying those things, he must’ve been puking all along. Their tech was decades ahead of us.

  We flew in circles, flew in opposite directions, and flew towards each other. It was hard enough to dodge enemy fire, but we somehow survived.

  “Mind getting rid of this thing for me, sir?” Hightower said through the intercom. He had an enemy fighter stuck to his tail and barely managed to avoid its fire. “I’ll do the same for you.”

  I looked back and another ship followed my trail. The enemy fighter was persistent, it was impossible to repel, and it avoided all my missiles and laser beams. Time for some action.

  Hightower and I flew towards each other, each with an enemy fighter on our tail. We kept shooting back at our respective fighters, but their ability to change direction was too high for our weapons, even for the guided missiles.