by Lee Guo
Betelgeuse Combined Fleet
Flagship, Beginner’s Luck
Flag Bridge…
Vier Kleingelt stood up, splashing her body against the holoimages that scattered around her. A myraid of colors and hues painted her admiral's uniform and she stammered. “No—they wouldn't...”
That was their whole fleet, she thought. Every single feline light attack unit – every single feline hunter-killer – Vier surmised as she gazed at the main holomap, was now being sent to take out her last two remaining MABs and their trophies.
When she sat down, she was in a world of headache and thought. Her mind raced. The enemy was sacrificing their fleet and everything they had to make sure she would not be able to take home her trophies. It made sense, and surely she was actually happy in a way that they were no longer even concerned about winning the overall battle, but the fact that now, she had no chance of taking home her trophies, gave her great regret.
So, what must she do?
Sitting in that admiral's chair, surrounded by holograms of various hues and colors...her mind raced and raced.
There was absolutely no way — no way — she could save her MABs and the enemy ships they had incapacitated and boarded. There were just too many feline light attack craft that at least a dozen of them would get through her sphere of protection and be able to h-wave her MABs.
And if she couldn't save them...
Then the only option would be to lessen the damage, and take advantage of the fact that the enemy was no longer even trying to win the battle.
Suddenly, a curious idea came about into her head. It took a little longer, but soon she was able to formulate a plan. Using her combat control interface, she sent out orders to allow the incoming enemy ships to enter her defensive perimeter — the same defensive perimeter that protected her MABs. Once they were in, she would order her warships in that same defensive perimeter to shoot at the sides and rears of the enemy ships that hunted her MABs. There would be no way the enemy ships could protect themselves from all those h-beams coming from all those directions. They simply didn't have the h-deflectors to block it.
Yes...she concluded. That was the best plan. Instead of facing the incoming enemy ships head on, and suffering the damage of their H-waves from the front, therefore not being able to cause much damage to the enemy. Because she couldn't shoot her h-beams at their fronts which were well protected by their h-deflectors—she would instead, spread out her inner defensive perimeter ships and let the enemy seep through.
As for the crews of the MABs themselves, she had other plans.
Using her control interface, she pressed buttons that enabled her to communicate with the COs of the MABs.
A marine officer spoke, audio only, “Hello? This is Captain Huang of the Marine Attack Ship Delta Star. Who is this? I'm very busy.”
Vier cleared her throat. “This is Rear Admiral Kleingelt from the flagship Beginner's Luck. I need to know your status.”
“Uh, sir, yes, sir. My status! Uh...that's sorta complicated, sir.”
Vier was a little irritated. “How far are you in taking control of the ship, captain?”
“Not far at all, sir.”
“How long would you estimate it will take you to take control of the alien vessel's propulsion and defensive systems?”
“Propulsion and defense? Sir, I can't even estimate that we'll be able to take control of any systems within the day. The Cats blew everything up when they realized the battle for this ship was lost. They blew it all up, sir. The central computer is in pieces. We have guys trying to repair the central computer, but I have to tell you, sir, that it is very unlikely we can do that even if the central computer was intact. Their command pathways and the wiring of their ship is completely alien to us. We marines are trained to able to decrypt databases that are known, such as human or Orion circuitry. We have no idea how to rewire circuitry that is completely alien. At the moment, my best suggestion is that you keep us safe, so the assault boats can keep its jammer field and its warp bubble around this Cat ship, so we can be towed to safety.”
Vier shook her head, fully knowing that the captain could not see her face through the audio only channel. “I'm afraid that's not possible, Captain Huang. The entire enemy fleet is after you.”
“Really? Sir? Really?”
“Yes. Please take all your wounded and any prisoners and any carry any able artifacts you can find, especially anything that looks like valuable alien technology, and return to your MAB immediately. I have a hunch that those coming after your MAB system aren't concerned with keeping the ships we've captured — their ships — alive.”
“Yes, sir. Will do, sir. Is that all?”
“Good luck, Captain. Kleingelt out.”
When the communication closed, she pressed buttons enabling herself to communicate with the other captain from the other MAB that was still alive.
Betelgeuse Fleet
Alpha-nine Wing, Squadron 8 “Night Shadows”
Fighter 1
Lucinda couldn't believe her eyes. She was still alive. That very fact said a lot about her ability to dodge death, even when she wanted it to come. “Thank you, Carl. Thank you for saving me, you silly-headed kind-hearted buffoon.”
“No prob, boss,” Carl Jensen said, snickering over the net, whose actual distance in the universe was less than 10 meters away.
“Are you going to tell stories to your grandkids about how you saved your squadron commander's ass even when she explicitly gave you orders not to do so?”
“Yes, ma'am, I'm gonna, ma'am. And I'm gonna be proud of it. And so should you be glad. Means you'll get to live one more day, so you can kick Cat-butt one more time.”
“Buffoon,” Lucinda replied, not sure whether to congratulate him or to continue berating him.
The reality of it all was, if he hadn’t extended his miniature warp bubble around Lucinda's fighter at just the right time, she would’ve never been able to kick Cat-butt again, and she really liked doing that. In fact, after she had killed off that mega-destroyer or heavy cruiser, or whatever it was, she’d been regretting the fact that she may never be able to do so again. It gave her such a thrill, such a feeling of accomplishment, of being able to exact revenge for her husband’s death. Truth be told, although it had begun as something of a desire to revenge her lover, she could easily see that now it’d blossomed to something else entirely, something that was pleasurable in and of itself.
She relished the ability to kill, hunt, and torture one's enemies, to really see them fall before her. It enabled her to feel a satisfaction that was unequal to any type of happiness she had experienced before. This new euphoria...came from being in a position to do something that was pleasurable, not just pleasure from attaining a goal in itself.
As Lucinda sat reconnoitering in her cockpit, she whispered to herself, “This day, a true, unrelenting sadist is born. You — Cats — have no idea what is about to happen to you by keeping me alive.”
And as she watched the battlemap in her cockpit, gazing at how all the feline starships were now moving to an area of the battlefield that wasn't even near her, she thought…Keep running away, you cowards. Next time you face me, you'll wish you had done exactly that.
Light Cruiser Hukna Sevank
Unknown Corridoor/Walkway…
It hurt like hell.
His ribs felt like they were on fire, yet he had accomplished the impossible. He was walking.
If it weren't for the powered armor, he would not have been able to do so. Huang had adjusted the motor sensitivity in his exoskeleton suit, so that it required much less pressure to move itself and as a result, his own body within it.
Now, he was glad he was on the path out of this hellhole that had killed off 70 percent of his men. As part of the rear guard, he was surrounded by two of his platoon mates, while the lieutenant led the rest of the men much further away in the distance.
Rear guard be damned, Huang thought. The two men to his left and rig
ht were babysitting him, to make sure he wasn't picked off by any feline survivors.
The status of his operation? Huang groaned. It had failed. After all the crucial systems on the ship were blown completely by chemical explosives, there was no way Huang and his men could take control of the ship's propulsion systems or its defensive emitters. The hyperspace suspender device, or what they thought was the feline variant of the hyperspace suspender, was shot. Worse, the antimatter stores had been blown to pieces as well. If they weren't in a mass-energy-conversion jamming field, those stray antimatter particles would have blown the ship to pieces. Thank god for neutralization and hijacking safeguards.
Then again, Huang mused, trying to take control of the ship would probably have been impossible even if the crucial areas hadn't been blown. His men, skilled technicians that they were, had no idea how to hack the computer systems that were totally alien to them.
So, the only objective they had accomplished was that they had neutralized most of the enemy combatants within the target before the enemy could do something even more damaging — like blow the ship up from bow to stern.
The fact that they had lost 70 percent of the group was nothing compared to achieving that objective. Still, the idea that kept rolling around in Huang's head was how all the enemy ships not been after this vessel...the MAB he flew in on would still have been able to take the enemy trophy to safe harbor, then this very outcome would have made him proud of that accomplishment. Too bad, that outcome was an impossibility now.
He had to get off this alien ship before it was destroyed by its own allies.
Huang’s sensors showed that there was no hostile forces anywhere nearby. His map showed there was scattered fighting as groups of his men tried to escape back to their marine shuttles, but none of that happened near. It seemed safe...
A clang sounded to his right.
Before any of his men could respond, a sharp bellow screamed throughout the tunnel. The warcry followed with an impact that smashed into the man to Huang's right. The armored soldier yelled, but his sound soon disappeared into a bloody gurgle.
“Stay back, Captain!” the man to Huang's left yelled, who had pulled out his monomolecular blade.
Huang was able to see in fantasy-like detail the object that had killed one of his men. The Cat wore no armor, nothing but a pale red uniform with heavy blast marks. Apparently, it must have taken it off at some point. It held in its hand a gigantic and thin blue glowing sword, which Huang instantly knew had to be monomolecular as well. Its warcry was like a lion's as it tangled itself at Huang's remaining guard.
The two combatants smashed into each other. They slashed their swords in varying degrees, trying to cut the opponent's sword at the right angle. The blades clashed and electricity sparkled. Then, when the two disengaged, they tilted their swords towards each other. It was like a medieval combat scene, as the two parried each other's thrust.
This all happened so fast—so fast that before Huang could even retrieve his own sword, the battle in front of him was decided.
The unarmored Cat had pierced its opponent’s armor easily with its mono-blade, right through the armored marine's abdomen. The marine screamed in pain, before the Cat sliced its sword upwards from where it had entered, literally carving its opponent in two.
Then, the Cat glared at Captain Huang.
Huang could have sworn it was grinning in the darkness as seen through his helmet's night sensors. The Cats could see in the dark without visual apparatus, Huang concluded.
The Cat launched at Huang, who’d already leveled out his sword high above his head in attack position. This is it, thought Huang, glaring at his enemy through his helmet's sensors. This is how my life will be decided!
His next thoughts happened as if in slow motion. Huang knew he wasn’t a skilled fencer. He’d never passed the class at marine academy. He only knew one thing, which was speed. He knew his rifle was useless — the moment he had it angled on the enemy, the Cat would cut his rifle into pieces or himself. His only recourse was to attack with his blade — now.
Huang thrust at his enemy, who easily countered his attack by parrying his blade in a direction that neutralized it as a dangerous element — meanwhile his enemy stabbed its blade into Huang's left arm.
Huang cried out in pain, and the Cat grinned as it pulled out its blade in a way that cut through Huang's bone and literally left his arm hanging in its socket through the connected muscle. The very act gave Huang time to pull his own blade back into attack position using his right arm.
He's toying with me.
His armor was useless. It hindered him. Huang wished he could take it off, but he bit down on his pain and slashed against with his blade. The alien parried the slash easily, and countered with his own. Huang pulled his head back as the alien's blade cut into his helmet and narrowly missed his face by a centimeter. Huang's in-head's display suddenly spasmed as power loss and electricity ran throughout its internal readouts. Huang cried as the free energy burned his face.
Although his in-HUD no longer worked, Huang could see through the hole the Cat's blade had made into his helmet. Along with the sparks from his damaged helmet, he used that hole, despite the fact that every cell in his face hurt.
Huang slashed, again. Miss. He slashed again like a wounded and scared animal. Miss.
A spasm of pain suddenly appeared in his back. It was as if a lightning rod had been shoved into his back muscles.
Huang knew what it was, and he knew if he moved, it would make the wound from the sword that had been thrust into his back worse.
He also knew what was coming. All the Cat had to do now was pull the monomolecular sword up or down through Huang's body and he'd literally be sawed in half.
“Do it! Do it, you sadistic bastard!” Huang yelled, the very act making the wound more painful.
Yet, the slice never came.
The sword was gently pulled out. Huang could feel it as it slid out of his back muscles, as it cut through every tissue in the opening like knife through butter.
He tried turning around, but his legs, his abs, and his mind gave out.
“Why?” Huang whispered, before he passed out from the pain.
Battlespace…
Ga warships zoomed towards the single most protected part of the human fleet — the two remaining MABs. The surrounding human warships waited for them, setting a trap, because their commander, Rear Admiral Kleingelt had opted to spread out her defensive sphere, instead of creating a denser ball of human warships to protect her trophies. Doing so, she allowed for more angles of attack as the enemy intermixed with her lines.
Although this strategy allowed for a greater chance for Ga warships to gain weapons range on her MABs, she suffered less losses to her dreadnoughts and battlecruisers, and damaged more of the enemy's light attack ships. It was impossible, the human commander knew, to be able to protect her MABs against this many enemy ships. Instead, she let them die, while pretending to protect them.
Within minutes, hundreds of warships, both feline and human, exploded in an ever increasing fury in the most deadly stage of the battle, as ships slashed at each other with h-beams and were pummeled by h-waves on a scale unseen before.
Weight by weight, the humans still traded off far more tonnage to sink Ga ships, but the severity of the trade became more even.
Eventually, however, the Ga ships penetrated into the human fleet's innermost defensive sphere. While being shot from all sides, some of them gained weapons range on the two MABs, and they fired.
Flagship, Beginner’s Luck
Flag Bridge…
“I can't do anything about it, Admira —”
Vier watched as alien h-waves slammed into the MAB's aft section, eradicating two hundred thousand tons of hull and blinking away one hundred human personnel. Energy conduits split open, pouring dangerous starship plasma in every direction. Entire systems that weren't erased by the wave altogether went offline, including the ship's warp suspenders. T
he assault boat and its alien captive now were fading away from the universe.
Vier wished she had a way to save the three hundred marines and the two hundred remaining MAB crews, but unless they could turn on the trophy's h-space suspenders, the men were dead. Another human warship could connect its warp bubble with the one that is fading, therefore giving a place for the marines and their cutters to escape, but that warship would be an immobile duck in water and could be easily targeted by h-waves.
No, the marines were dead as long as enemy ships were nearby. She wasn't going to suicide another warship.
She gazed at the holomap. Now, there was only one marine transport left.
Technically, in the overall scheme of things, there was no reason for Vier to pay attention to the MABs and their actual survival. Their trophies were dead no matter what happened, but—the sole remaining MAB could escape destruction if it disconnected from its trophy — once it became mobile, it was much more difficult to hit — and that was what interested Vier. Some of the alien captives taken by Captain Huang's marines could be useful. They were the only alien captives humanity had in the entire war, after all.
As for Captain Huang himself, she hadn't heard from him in a while...
She hit a button, interfacing her voice with Huang's chain of command. “Are your men all back into the cutters, Lieutenant?”
“Almost, ma'am,” a voice replied.
“ETA before you and your men are all aboard the main transport?”
“Two, three min—” the line dropped dead.
She twisted her head and looked at the holo of their bubble. Two, no, three h-waves had slammed into the MAB's bubble. But none of it had hit the MAB itself — Vier thanked god — the h-waves had hit the larger trophy instead. The outer hull of the alien vessel they had been boarding was now severely crippled, but... it didn't matter since she knew it'd be lost anyway. What did matter was that the remaining marines got out. “Lieutenant?”
