Starhold's Fate

by J. Alan Field

  Admiral Marius appeared before Pettigrew. His hologram wavered, the transmission disturbed by either the battle surrounding Typhoon or fighting near the Lytori leader himself.

  “Pettigrew, the Massang are repositioning their civilian arkships around the Threshold, using them as shields for the facility.”

  “Damn it! I will not be responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians.”

  “It would be Harradoss’s doing, not yours,” asserted Marius. “What are your orders?”

  “Have all Coalition ships cease firing directly at the Threshold itself. We will do this the hard way,” Pettigrew said as Typhoon suddenly shivered again. “Our forces are to concentrate fire on the Vanguard warships. Marius, do you have any word from Sulla? The closer her ships get to the sun, the more our tracking fades. The radiation from the star is interfering with our sensors.”

  “No word,” said Marius. “Sulla will succeed. I told you to let the Lytori handle the generators. Sulla will succeed. Marius out.”

  The tactical display showed that eight nearby enemy vessels had survived their encounter with Battle Group Swoboda. They were pulling away now, on track for a rendezvous with the Massang reinforcements. While Coalition ships had taken out two enemy cruisers and crippled another, the passing force had also inflicted damage. Three Sarissan destroyers had been demolished and the battleship Broadsword was having trouble keeping pace as Swoboda ordered the wide turn for the next attack run.

  A staffer from one of the flag bridge stations got the attention of Captain Nyondo.

  “Ma’am, something’s not right here.”

  The ensign tossed a virtual window in front of the senior command staff. It was a mash-up of tactical icons and live pictures from Sarissan drones. Harradoss’s eight ships were closing rapidly to join their compatriots, but suddenly and almost wildly they started to veer away. The newcomer Massang forces sprinted to battle speed, firing on their comrades who had just minutes ago engaged Battle Group Swoboda. Missiles jumped from one cluster of Massang vessels to the other. Those that were close enough blasted away at their brothers with arc emitter batteries.

  It was over quickly. Several of Harradoss’s ships had already lowered their shields in the presence of friends to conserve power and were overwhelmed by the new arrivals in short order. The battleship Regent of Valor was set upon by four newcomer battlecruisers, all firing their surgewave projectors in a ruthless coordinated attack. Within minutes, the Regent ceased to exist.

  Pettigrew and his staff sat dumbfounded on the Typhoon’s flag bridge. Abruptly, Daemon began to wobble on his hind legs again. “Admiral, incoming hail from the new Massang force.”

  On the main viewscreen appeared a Massang male. Unless Pettigrew missed his guess, this Massang was older than those he was accustomed to facing in battle. On the heavy side, his skin was more reddish than orange and the vertical ridges of his face somehow seemed weathered.

  Daemon prompted his commander. “I have activated the real-time AI translator, sir.”

  Pettigrew looked at the Massang’s image, trying to grasp this new development.

  “I am Admiral Charles Pettigrew of the Trans-Stellar Coalition. Identify yourself.”

  There was a short delay allowing the computer to interpret. As the conversation progressed, the time lag grew shorter, although it always disconcerted Pettigrew to hear words that didn’t match what was coming from the lips of the other speaker.

  “I am Sturka zel’ Nor,” answered the Massang. “Governor of—” The reddish-hued alien paused for a moment. Had something gone wrong with the translator? Pettigrew glanced over at Daemon, who gave him a Lytori shrug.

  “Formerly Governor of the planet Moz,” corrected Sturka. Pettigrew could hear the bitterness in his voice even through the translation.

  So that’s it. You are here for revenge.

  “Coalition intelligence has informed us of the attack against your world,” said Pettigrew before Sturka interrupted.

  “Attack?” blurted out the Governor. “It was an unprovoked massacre! Harradoss slaughtered my people. He is a murderer—a monster.”

  Pettigrew strained for control. The petty human deep inside him wanted to yell back something about knowing how the loved ones of Kolo Khiva felt now, but he checked that impulse. Still, it was hard to sympathize with a Massang leader considering the many atrocities they themselves had sanctioned.

  “My condolences to you and your people,” was what came out of his mouth instead. He was walking through a minefield here. Pettigrew understood what Sturka wanted, but this man was still the enemy. On the other hand, he was also someone who could be very helpful.

  “I’m not here for your pity—I’m here for an agreement, Admiral,” Sturka said. “I will command my ships on your behalf to stop Harradoss’s folly. In return, after this battle is won, you will declare a general cease-fire across all star systems. I will do the same for Massang forces.”

  “I can’t do that,” stated Pettigrew flatly. “Firstly, I don’t have that kind of authority. And secondly…” Pettigrew hesitated to gage Sturka’s immediate reaction, but there was none. “Secondly, Governor, I think you need this fight more than I need you.”

  One of the characteristics shared by Massang and humans was the habit of smiling. Sturka stretched his mouth wide.

  “You are correct, Pettigrew,” Sturka admitted. “Harradoss described you as cunning. You are the only human he fears—did you know that?”

  Pettigrew chose to ignore the comment. A system-wide battle was raging out there and he did not have all day to sit and parley.

  “Governor, if you join us to stop Harradoss, I will promise that in any peace talks which take place after the fighting, I will personally advocate for a fair and just treatment of the Massang people. However, there can be no more slave worlds and the Massang leadership must answer for their past actions. Those two points have been mandated by the Coalition and are non-negotiable. Now, do we open fire on each other or go after the person who slaughtered your world?”

  Sturka hesitated as he looked off-screen, probably to his advisors. All the while, his forces and Battle Group Swoboda were coming closer to each other. They would be within missile range in a matter of seconds.

  “It is agreed,” Sturka said at last. “Harradoss will pay for what he has done to my people, and to my precious Moz.”

  * * * *

  Engagement plus Five Hours

  “I once saw Ruslan Shevchenko wrestle a moon panda on the planet Threnn,” said Uschi Mullenhoff. “He did it on a bet.”

  “Pandas are cute,” said Aoki.

  Mullenhoff snorted out a laugh. “Not on Threnn. Wild pandas on that planet have evolved into carnivores. Some are huge, over two-hundred kilograms.”

  The command staff watched a combination of icons and camera feeds as the Sarissan Ninth Battleship Division under the command of Captain Ruslan Shevchenko took the lead on Battle Group Swoboda’s advance to the Threshold.

  “So, this wrestling match—did Captain Shevchenko win?” asked Nyondo.

  “Of course not,” laughed Mullenhoff. “It was a draw.”

  Pettigrew grinned. “Did Shevchenko ask for a rematch?”

  “No,” admitted Mullenhoff. “But neither did the moon panda.”

  Subtlety had never been Shevchenko’s trademark. Perhaps that was the reason Swoboda had assigned the man and his ships to spearhead the Battle Group’s formation. Flanked by a mix of Sturka’s battlecruisers and Essadonian heavy cruisers, Shevchenko’s battleships bulled their way forward.

  A mere hour ago, the idea of humans and any Massang working together would have been absurd. It took every ounce of diplomacy and tact that Pettigrew could muster to convince his allies to accept Sturka zel’ Nor’s offer of cooperation. The Essadonians in particular chaffed at the idea, understandable after losing millions of fellow citizens to a Massang sneak attack three years ago. However, after a lively conversation, Pettigrew persuaded them it would be
worth it to end the war today—if they could.

  The Massang forces loyal to Harradoss tenaciously resisted. Over on the starward side of the Threshold, the progress of Battle Group Marius had stalled. Some of the Vanguard’s most veteran units were fighting the Lytori to a stalemate. Thirty million kilometers away, Battle Group Leversee was pulling back to regroup for the second time in the past three standard hours. Leversee’s forces were in shambles and not likely to make it anywhere close to the main target.

  “Commander Mullenhoff, can we reposition any of our recon drones to find out what’s happening with Battle Group Sulla?” asked Pettigrew, clutching at the arm of his chair as the ship quaked. Two Vanguard missiles had snuck past Typhoon’s point-defenses and slammed into the armored hull somewhere forward of the flag bridge.

  “Sir, we could redeploy every drone we have and still not break through the binary’s interference,” Mullenhoff responded. “Right now, only Sulla and her people know what’s going on over there.”

  “I hope she’s OK,” said Nyondo softly.

  Captain Sulla was not the most congenial Lytori that Pettigrew had come across during the war, but he knew that if she considered any human to be a friend, it was Nyondo.

  Actually, the most congenial Lytori he had ever met was Daemon, who suddenly sprang upright and pointed at the tactical screen with a foreclaw. “Look!” he said. “Look at Leversee!”

  Battle Group Leversee had withdrawn to reform their lines, all the while being chased by their Vanguard opponents. As the Massang units closed, however, Leversee’s forces suddenly executed braking maneuvers, a move which must have taxed their inertial dampers to the limit. Employing a variation on Pettigrew’s Hixaran gambit, Leversee’s ships rapidly turned on their pursuers.

  The Massang quickly found themselves facing weathering volleys of Coalition missiles and stealthy Scion torpedoes, one of the deadliest weapons in the Sarissan arsenal. In what seemed like an instant, Leversee’s Group had turned the tables and closed to energy weapons range. Dozens of Coalition gauss cannons opened fire on Vanguard targets while Leversee’s flagship, the Victor Polanco, closed along with its escorts on the lead Massang battleship.

  The Big Vic, as the Polonco was known throughout the Imperial Space Force, brutally ripped into its foe. The Massang ship tried moving to bring its surgewave cannon to bear, but the Polanco’s helm skillfully held them just outside the firing arc of the forward-facing wave projector. The Big Vic and its consorts riddled the opposition battleship, reducing it to scrap before moving on to the next cluster of Vanguard targets.

  “Admiral, you need to see this,” said Aoki as spontaneous cheers for Leversee’s forces spread across the flag bridge. She swiped her hand at the surface of a pad and physically flipped a virtual screen across the deck which sprang open before Pettigrew. “Some of Harradoss’s warships are beginning to mix in with the civilian arkships. They are trying to use them for cover.”

  “Cowards,” muttered one of the nearby staffers. Pettigrew agreed wholeheartedly.

  “But these guys are headed somewhere else,” pointed Nyondo at a cluster of four Vanguard battleships. “They are moving to queue up at the mouth of the Threshold. How much you want to bet that Harradoss is on that lead ship?”

  Pettigrew stood. “Daemon, contact Admiral Marius and have him—”

  “Admiral!” shouted Mullenhoff. “Our sensors show that power is coming on all across the Threshold complex. It’s happening, sir—the Massang are bringing the Threshold on-line.”

  * * * *

  “Captain Sulla, we cannot maintain a target lock.”

  The bridge of the Heshke was quiet. The only noise was the occasional moan of the ship’s hull straining under the tremendous pressure of the star’s heat. Temperatures inside the Lytori battleship had already risen to over eighty degrees Celsius and were continuing to climb. One by one, the onboard cooling systems were failing, unable to cope with the external conditions. Hull temperatures had just surpassed 700,000 kelvins.

  Sulla looked around the bridge. Several of her crew lay incapacitated on the deck, a few others were already dead. Some of the androids—the lucky ones—had crashed. They were about to end their existence in an oblivious state, what the humans might call unconsciousness.

  “Show me the positions of our remaining ships, Lieutenant Alquist.”

  “We are the last active vessel, Captain.”

  “Lieutenant, is there any indication that our telemetry is making it out of the corona to the fleet?”

  “None, Captain. We’ve lost all contact with Coalition forces. We are alone.”

  “Then it is up to us,” said Sulla, attempting to rally the others.

  “We could try firing Theta shards,” suggested Alquist. “They have no electronics for the heat to fry.”

  Her acting XO’s suggestion had merit, but time was running out. Sulla estimated that they would all be dead within ten standard minutes—fifteen at most. If they died before taking out the last of the primary targets, the Coalition might not only lose the battle, but the war as well.

  Shards were kinetic weapons. What Alquist suggested was literally throwing rocks at the last surviving near-field generator.

  “It is true that Theta shards have no electronics, but they also carry no explosives. We would have to bombard the target for hours to destroy it. We don’t have that much time left,” Sulla insisted. Her forces had destroyed the first three generators along with their energy projectors. Only this single facility remained. They had come so close, and Sulla was determined not to die while embracing failure.

  “It is time. Transfer helm controls to my station. If anyone on the bridge would prefer to enter sleep mode at this time, you have my permission—and my thanks for your excellent service.”

  The few remaining androids nodded her way, raising foreclaws in salute. “It has been an honor to serve you, my Captain,” declared Alquist.

  “For our people,” shouted Sulla loudly, adding in a small voice which only she could hear, “and for you, Marius…”

  The battleship Heshke accelerated to two-thirds of maximum velocity before it crashed into the final Massang near-field generating station.

  * * * *

  “Crescendo just took three more hits to her forward gun deck. She’s dropping back. It looks like they’ve had it,” unhappily reported Nyondo.

  Pettigrew rubbed the back of his neck in frustration. “We can’t afford to lose another battleship. Have Khopesh and Scorpio close on Crescendo to give her cover. Contact Captain Glover and ask her for a status report.”

  Battle Group Swoboda was locked in a fierce firefight with a Vanguard battleship squadron. Governor Sturka had sent word that this particular squadron was an elite unit under the command of an accomplished Massang military leader named Cyprian. He was certainly living up to his reputation: in only thirty minutes, Coalition forces had already lost two battleships and four cruisers.

  Several thousand klicks behind Cyprian’s forces, twelve Massang warships were now lined up in formation before the giant mouth of the Threshold, which was pulsing with energy. Small shuttle-size vessels and dozens of maintenance robots flitted about, apparently checking on last-minute details before full activation.

  “How far are we from that thing?” asked Pettigrew of anyone who could give him a quick answer.

  “Just under a hundred thousand klicks,” responded Aoki. “We have… Wait, grab onto something! Incoming surgewave!”

  Those staffers up and walking around tried to brace themselves. Seconds later Typhoon shook, but the damage didn’t feel that severe.

  “One of Sturka’s battlecruisers crossed in front of our path and took the brunt of the blast at the last minute,” said Nyondo. “Brave thing to do—or foolish, not sure which.”

  Pettigrew’s eyes narrowed. “Sturka wants Harradoss and he thinks I’m the best bet to deliver him. He doesn’t want anything bad to happen to me. Problem is, at this rate—” Typhoon shuddered again as
an enemy polaron beam stabbed at the starboard ablative armor.

  “How far away from the Threshold are the others?” asked Pettigrew.

  Daemon answered. “Admiral Marius is well distant, still fighting the same Vanguard force. Admiral Leversee is the nearest now—almost within missile range and closing.”

  Pettigrew grunted acknowledgement. “Have Leversee—”

  “Admiral!” shouted a staff ensign to his left. “The Threshold!”

  Pettigrew looked to his tactical display. Sensors showed areas of the massive hyperspace conduit going dark, powering down section by section.

  “Uschi?” He didn’t want to get his hopes up too fast. “What’s happening, Commander?”

  “There has definitely been an interruption in the power transmissions,” said Mullenhoff as she looked over her status screens. “Our drones are showing zero power transmissions from the near-field generators at Cor Caroli. Chaz—the generators are dead. Sulla has done it!”

  The flag bridge erupted in celebration, quickly stifled by the Chief of Staff.

  “As you were, people!” bellowed Nyondo after standing and placing hands on hips. “I will remind you all that we are still in the middle of a battle!” Typhoon helped the captain drive home her point when an alarm sounded and orange warning lights began to flash. It was the alert that the ship was about to lose artificial gravity. If they weren’t already fastened in, staffers scrambled to climb into a seat until the voice of the XO came across the shipwide speakers.

  “Cancel zero-gee alert.”

  Nyondo turned to Aoki. “Lieutenant, any contact with Sulla or anyone in her Battle Group?”

  “No, ma’am, not yet,” Aoki answered, adding in a sympathetic voice, “but there is a lot of sensor interference because of the star’s magnetic field. It could be a few minutes before they clear the interference.”