Dutiful Daughter

by Kellen, Christopher

  The countdown on her command console blinked down its last few seconds.

  "Invaders have reached weapons range of Alpha," Young breathed.

  Trace held her breath. The hum of the ship around her, even with its engines running silent, seemed incredibly loud.

  She watched her tactical plot. Lines tracked across the screen in all directions, representing the frantic weapons fire. Lights, green and red both, began to wink out as ships were destroyed in the silence of space. It was far from her first space combat, but there was a strange distance in her mind, knowing that she was in command and many of these lives depended on exactly how she executed her duties and tactical plans.

  She knew that the surprise that she was going to achieve would be near-total. There might have been a ghost on the sensors when she’d made her tight-beam connection with the Admiral, but any tactical officer worth her salt would have been entirely focused on the defense fleet ahead of them, not watching for tiny variations in the space behind them.

  It was almost like a simulation, watching the missiles, bombs and lasers fly back and forth across her tactical spread. It was bad, and both sides were taking heavy losses. The Vega defenders were taking even more damage than she’d feared possible, and she bit her lip to keep from speaking aloud.

  She watched her tactical plot closely. The invaders seemed to be directing an uncanny amount of fire at the fleet's command ships – the Alpha Lyrae, the Sirius and the Orion. It was almost as though they could see through the fleet's EW jammers.

  That's ridiculous, she chided herself. They're just getting lucky. There's no way that Castoran sensors can see through our jammers.

  “Approaching mark Theta,” Young said, identifying the invisible point in space that she’d delineated as their moment to begin full power-on. “All-systems activation in four minutes, fifty-nine seconds.”

  It couldn’t be fast enough. Alpha was taking heavy losses. She had no idea exactly how much damage her squad of light cruisers could inflict on the enemy, but with near-total surprise, she was looking forward to finding out. She consciously shut out the knot of tension and terror that tightened in her stomach. Her eyes were locked on the new countdown on her display.

  It reached zero.

  Five seconds later, the hum in the decks suddenly resumed from its eerily silent ballistic-running mode as the engines started burning once again. "Weapons, engines and shields powering up, Commander," Young said.

  She gave a grim smile at her tactical readout. A five-second delay was extremely low for a simultaneous power-on of all systems. She felt a surge of pride for her crew, who were performing above and beyond the normal expectations. A ship’s captain with a green crew might expect a delay of thirty seconds to a minute before such an order were executed, but hers were mostly veterans – and all very, very good at their jobs. Young had easily redeemed himself for his earlier error.

  "Let's see if you were expecting that," she muttered with a wicked grin.

  The ships made no visible changes on her display, but she could almost imagine the terror on the tac officer's face on the other side. To have four ships suddenly spring to life behind you, with shots at the rear quarters of the ship, where shields and armor were decidedly less thick, was a frightening proposition for anyone. She'd felt that terror many times, although usually in simulation. Let's see how you deal with that one, she thought gleefully. Bet you just had a coronary, metalhead.

  She peered more closely at the readouts on the weapons being fired by the invaders. "Young... do the parameters on the bogey's weapons match Castoran spec?"

  A pause. "The output's much higher..." he began. She almost thought she could hear the gears turning in his head. "No... it can't be..."

  "What is it, Ty?" she asked, keeping her voice level.

  "Those... they're Vega lances, ma'am! They're... that's our fleet out there!"

  Her breath caught in her throat. "What?"

  "That must be Administrator Atherton's fleet! The Castorans have never had that kind of firepower!" Young was breathless, rambling. "I don't have any idea why, do you want us to disengage, what should we do..."

  "Enough, Mr. Young," she snapped, as formally as she could manage, and he fell abruptly silent.

  God, what should I do? She asked herself. The knot in her stomach was back and tighter than before, threatening to overwhelm her.

  "Get me Admiral Flynn!" she ordered.

  There was a pause. "Skipper..." Ensign Frasier began. "I can't reach the Alpha Lyrae."

  She looked down at her tactical plot. The green light that had been marked V.S.S. Alpha Lyrae, the defending fleet's flagship, had vanished from the map.

  Her heart skipped a beat.

  “They're targeting the command ships, Skipper,” Young called.

  “Comm traffic says that the Alpha Lyrae is taking the most hits, Captain,” Frasier said, her voice hollow. “The fleet is trying to maneuver to compensate.”

  "It's too late..." her mind reeled. It wasn't possible, how could the Alpha Lyrae have gone down? She tried to continue speaking normally, but her voice cracked as she spoke. "How... who is left in command?"

  "I... I don't know," her communications officer stammered.

  "We have visual confirmation!" Young cried out. "The ship in the lead of the attacking fleet is the Tyrannus... it's the Administrator's flagship!"

  The Tyrannus. Her father's pride and joy. He'd had it commissioned by the Administration specifically for him and his Second Fleet. Her heart seemed to be pounding in her throat, nearly choking off her airway. She struggled to breathe normally.

  The plan. The plan? The idiot had actually gone and done it?

  She could not remember a time when her father had not talked about his plan. His masterful plan, the one he had devised with her mother. The plan that would put him in charge of the Vega Syndicate as its head of state, trade and military.

  Her mother had died before she was born. In fact, that was the reason she’d been born. She had four older sisters and two older brothers, all born naturally. She was not. Her father had cloned her from her mother’s genetics, leaving out his own entirely. The Vega Syndicate were widely known for their cloning technology and their genetic engineering ability, available to all at the highest possible price.

  Of course, he hadn’t been able to leave well enough alone. He’d tinkered with her mother’s genetic code even then, making Trace faster, stronger and smarter. Her father had grown her in a vat, raised her in her mother’s shadow, all in the intent of having his partner in crime back again. He had children – he’d commissioned Trace to replace the wife he’d lost to a freak air traffic accident.

  When Trace had decided to join the Navy, her father had objected. He’d told her that she needed to stay with him, to be a ‘dutiful daughter’. She’d pressed him, though, saying that a career in tactics – not to mention Academy training – would better prepare her to assist him when the time finally came. Of course, she’d had no intention of doing anything of the sort, but it had gotten him to finally relent. She hadn't dared mention that, technically, she was no more his daughter than his wife had been. No, that would have only pushed him into his hot-burning rage. That was how he liked to think of her – his daughter, his great accomplishment, a copy of his dead wife engineered to be more perfect than she'd ever been.

  Since she’d joined the Navy, she’d made as little time for her father as possible, putting him off so that she wouldn’t have to hear about his godforsaken plan anymore. He always expected Trace's reactions to be just like her mother's, always expected her to be the perfect mirror image of a dead woman that Trace had never met, and she hated every minute of it. The disappointment in his eyes when she didn't say something just the right way, or didn't have the same quick, light-hearted answer that he was looking for, made her crazy. He wanted her to be someone that she had no intention of ever becoming, and her resentment had grown, even as his insistence that she comply with his wishes got stronger.r />
  With the help of her enhanced genetics, and not a small amount of her own iron willpower, she’d gone from being Administrator Atherton’s daughter to Commander Trace Atherton, recognized for her own achievements and skill. No one had ever forgotten just who she was, but she’d made them look past it. Forced them to.

  Her father had been full of bluster and talk. She'd always been certain that's all it was. After all, what powerful man had any lack of ambition? He'd talked about details, but she'd always ignored him, letting him blather on as much as he wanted, without taking too much of it in. The less I know, the less likely I am to be arrested if he ever does try it, she'd always told herself.

  Dammit, why couldn't she have listened to him just once?

  She had never had an intention of helping him in this. It seemed he finally knew that. She was an officer in the Vega Syndicate Navy, and she had a duty to fulfill. He was going to launch his coup against First Administrator Gregane, the man who had led the Vega Syndicate into the greatest golden age in a century, and she, by an extraordinary stroke of destiny, was in the perfect position to deal hellish death on him and his traitor allies.

  She knew that her father would have had complete details on these wargames if they had been planned out even a month in advance. Was it possible that he'd specifically timed this to separate her and her squadron from the rest of the fleet? Was he watching, waiting to see how she would react?

  That's impossible, she thought. If even one tiny thing had changed, this exercise might have gone completely differently, and my squad could have been anywhere.

  Still, it was a nice thought. She intended to surprise him with her reaction, if he was wondering at all.

  Despite the horrific battle raging before her, a vicious grin stole over Trace’s face. Castorans she’d be willing to kill for honor, for duty, for Vega.

  Her father, on the other hand... she’d kill him just because she’d been given the chance.

  She glanced at the master tactical plot again. There were many fewer friendly ships than there had been only moments ago. Based on what she could see, it was entirely possible that she was now the senior surviving officer in orbit around Vega Prime. It was time to do as much damage as possible. "Tactical, do we have weapons range?"

  "Affirmative, captain," Young squeaked.

  "Good. Send the word to the task force. Target the Tyrannus and open fire."

  "Aye, aye, Skipper," he said.

  **

  V

  The four cruisers charged their weapons opened weapons fire on the aggressors. Laser lances cut swaths through the hard vacuum, tearing through shielding and armored plating, rending vast open wounds in the sides of the ships.

  Microfusion bombs fired from every available opening. The weaker points in the invaders' armor were still pointed toward the Renaissance and her squadmates, and though the cruisers were not heavily armored, they were very heavily armed.

  Four ships died in the opening salvo, spilling oxygen and personnel into space like blood. Before the aggressors could respond to this new threat, the cruiser group unleashed another silent wave of death and destruction, killing two more ships and wounding seven.

  Eight of the remaining seventeen ships in the attacking fleet turned to face their new attackers.

  The eight ships: two dreadnoughts, three heavy cruisers and three destroyers, led by Administrator Thomas Atherton’s Tyrannus, opened fire on Trace’s four cruisers. Missiles howled through the empty space between them, blasting jamming transmissions as they sought an opening in their targets’ defenses. The missiles’ AI programming calculated odds and trajectories with millimeter precision, set to deliver their microfusion warheads deep beneath the cruiser squadron’s point-defense threshold.

  All in all, two hundred and eight missiles were fired from Tyrannus and her allies at the cruiser squadron led by the Renaissance. One hundred and eighty-four were stopped short of their targets by point-defense lasers stabbing outward, destroying the warheads before they could get close enough to be dangerous, and electronic warfare shorting out their tracking devices and sending them staggering off-course to detonate harmlessly in the emptiness of space.

  That still left six missiles per cruiser.

  Miniature suns blossomed in space as the missiles’ microfusion warheads detonated upon reaching their target.

  Revolution, one of Renaissance’s squadmates, died instantly under the heavy pounding of the warheads when her starboard engine compartment was struck dead-on. The deadly light show of the missiles was joined by a much larger and even more violent explosion as Revolution’s reactor went critical.

  At that very moment, Tyrannus and her allies opened fire with their energy weapons.

  Lances and grasers leapt across the divide in less than a second, rending holes and gashes in Renaissance’s squad. All three of the remaining ships began leaking atmosphere as compartments were torn open to the vast emptiness of space.

  **

  VI

  "Damage report!" Trace yelled over the shaking of her ship. Anguish had blossomed in her chest as she read the readouts on the Renaissance – now it only worsened as casualty reports, both from her own ship and her squadmates, scrolled across her screen.

  "We're venting atmosphere on decks seven and eight!" Richards said. "I can't contact Engineering!"

  "How are the engines?"

  "I don't know, Commander! I can't get anyone down there!"

  She bit down fiercely on her lip, nearly drawing blood. Another hit or two like that, and they would be done for. The Revolution and the Triumph, two of the ships in her battlegroup, had taken worse hits and were currently floating dead in space. Commander Russell's ship, the Rebellion, was still mostly untouched.

  "Fire with everything we have!" Trace shouted.

  "Lances two and three are down... I think we've lost a torpedo bay, but I can't tell for sure! Our systems are glitching out, we must have lost at least one server!"

  Her tactical plot was fritzing as well, unable to keep track of everything going on all at once with the amount of heavy damage they had taken. She slammed her fist on the armrest. "Damn it!"

  The ship lurched violently, and Trace gripped the armrests of her command chair to keep from being thrown.

  “The Rebellion is taking hits, skipper! I don’t know if it can…”

  Young’s shout was cut off as a terrific explosion rocked the command deck of the Renaissance. The tactical station behind her left shoulder exploded in a shower of flame and sparks as the conduit carrying its power overloaded. The anti-flak backing of Trace’s command chair stopped the shrapnel from killing her instantly, but a charred body was catapulted up and over her head, landing on the deck a few feet in front of her.

  She spared only a short glance at the body, but she could hardly recognize it. After just a moment, her breath caught. Oh, Ty...

  The ship heaved again as another lance of energy stabbed deep into her bowels, and the lights went out.

  **

  VII

  Trace blinked as the red emergency lighting came on. She was floating above the deck a few feet away from her chair. The lights of the screens had gone out completely, leaving only the battery-powered emergency lighting giving off its barely-luminescent glow.

  "Report?" she asked, her voice thick. It felt like her tongue was swollen to three times its normal size in her mouth.

  "Commander!" a voice said. "I'm glad you're awake." It was Richards.

  "Report, Lieutenant?"

  "We're dead in space," he shrugged. He's in shock, she thought. His eyes were glazed, apparent even in the dim red light. "The systems are offline. We've got nothing except whatever remaining atmosphere is left in here. Even the artigrav's dead."

  There was no sound, no movement, except for the blood pounding in her ears and Richards' soft breathing beside her. He was silhouetted against the red light, looking like a shadow floating next to her.

  "We're not dead," she said, with a faint in
flection of hope.

  "We're the only ones, at least up here," Richards said sadly. She looked at him; he had a nasty laceration over his right eye where blood dripped freely, but he barely seemed to notice. "I think Frasier got hit by some debris. I don't know about the rest, but there's nobody up here moving. I'm no medic." He deliberately avoided looking at the scorched body of Lieutenant Young, floating a few feet toward the foredeck. A stab of pain went through her as her eyes flicked to Young’s inert form.

  "What about emergency comm?" she asked, her voice harsh.

  He shook his head. "I don't know. I haven't been able to raise anyone. The doors are all sealed shut. I think the corridor outside might be depressurized."

  "We need to get to a lifepod," she said, trying to adjust to the sensation of zero-g. The bridge spun around her - at first, she thought it was just her head, but then she realized that she was indeed spinning slowly in the air. Training took over and she twitched her muscles to stop spinning. "There's an access in the briefing room.”

  He shook his head. "Maybe we should just wait for S&R."

  She managed to right herself so that Richards no longer seemed upside-down. "We don’t even know if there’s anyone on our side left with any kind of search and rescue capability. It's all right, Zack. We'll get out of here. There are emergency suits and plenty of oxygen on the lifepods. Someone will come pick us up."

  He nodded. “Hopefully whoever’s left out there has more regard for the Articles of War than you do – no disrespect, of course, Skipper,” he hastily amended. “I wish we knew who won out there.”

  She gritted her teeth. "I don't think it was us. It certainly wasn't Vega. We'll be lucky if the system has enough ships left to defend it. If we're not lucky, the Castorans will decide that this is a perfect time for a real invasion and just roll right over us, superior technology or not."

  Trace pushed herself off of the deck so that she floated in the direction of the briefing room. He floated along behind her, drops of blood forming a hovering trail behind them.