by James Aspen
“Time to go, Commander! We don’t want to get boxed in!” He fired once more, as if to add an exclamation to his point. The blaster bolts stopped flooding the corridor, and Edolit assumed his blast found its mark.
“Okay, take point. Ja’el, stay behind him and I’ll take up the rear.”
“Where to?”
“Still to the hanger, they’ll have a shuttle of some sort at least. Take the long way to throw them off. Head towards the engineering deck,” Edolit said as they reached the end of the corridor. She scooped up the blaster from the fallen crewman Omaro had shot, letting the Scyllarian keep both other weapons they’d recovered. “Let’s see if we can cause some chaos to keep them guessing.”
Omaro nodded and turned right, his weapons at the ready. She didn’t need to tell him to have his Ambra plan the route for him. He was way ahead of her. She liked that about every member of her team, they were all adept at acting out implied orders and taking the initiative. For scouts like them, it was the difference between life and death.
Response to query received.
Report.
Zyp reports two enemy engagements. First was defensive engagement en route to the Gate. Paul disengaged after destroying two starfighters and went on the float, full dark. Second engagement is an assault on the bomber wing.
Edolit’s skin flushed the bright violet of surprise. Did he really make a frontal assault on an entire squadron? Result of second engagement?
Bomber wing destroyed, minor hull damage to The Specter. Zyp reports Paul is currently attempting to neutralize fusion bombs launched toward Earth.
Edolit turned the corner behind Ja’el, surprised at the lack of resistance that they faced as much as Paul’s performance.
Display battle statistics for Paul.
Nian displayed his stats into her HUD without comment. Edolit blasted a crewman who had the bad luck of opening his quarters to investigate the alert in front of her.
[Engagement 1: 3 lancet-class light starfighters. Enemies destroyed: 2. Damage Reported: 0. Shields lost: 85%. Lasers fired: 567. Accuracy: 11%. Missiles fired: 0. Missile hits: n/a].
[Engagement 2: 12 ravager-class heavy bombers. Enemies destroyed: 12. Damage Reported: 3% Hull Integrity Loss. Shields lost: 100%. Lasers fire: 2301. Accuracy: 15%. Missiles Fired: 8. Missile hits: 7. Fusion Bombs Destroyed: 2].
Edolit was impressed. Paul was performing far better than any other pilot she’d seen on their first mission. He’d ignored her orders to flee and taken out the bomber wing like she would have wanted. He’d also known to disengage when he was outclassed by the starfighters. She’d sensed that he was special when he had agreed to help her, but she was surprised at how well he was doing.
Did Zyp indicate why his performance is so proficient?
Zyp reports Paul has spent 458 Earth hours in a flight simulator prior to their bonding, his pilot aptitude far exceeds Zyp’s expectations for his species.
Blaster fire made her duck back behind a corner, pulling Ja’el back and shielding the Grr’alis with her body. They’d been found.
Give Paul the coordinates to this ship and send him an order for extraction when he’s done with the bombs. And give me locations for the enemies around the corner.
Done.
Edolit rolled out from behind Omaro and downed one of the Varanul with a quick series of shots from her blaster, using her Ambra’s data to guide her aim. If she weren’t on stims, she would have only needed a single shot, and she cursed her inaccuracy with a snarl. Omaro caught the other Varanul squarely in the chest as Edolit’s motion drew its fire, and it dropped to the deck in a heap.
“Okay, let's get moving. Looks like we’ve got another ace pilot in the crew now. We just have to hold out long enough for pickup.”
Ja’el and Omaro looked at each other questioningly, but said nothing. They trusted their commander completely and would get an explanation when the time allowed for it. She hoped they didn’t see how tired she was.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE FIRST CHOICE had been an easy one for Paul. Saul Paulo was one of the biggest cities in the world. Paul felt a surge of relief when his missile tore the fusion bomb into a cloud of base elements.
Two bombs left. I project the targets to be Mexico City and El Paso.
Paul glanced at the combat map and groaned. The bombs were wide apart now as they angled towards their targets. Choosing one would vector him far away from the other. By the time he got a missile lock and fired, he wouldn’t have much of a chance to shoot down the other with his lasers. He knew it was a long shot, but he would try, anyway.
Of course it would have to be two places I know. Paul thought about Mexico City, a sprawling city with bustling crowds of people. El Paso… well, it had to be another large city with a military base. It also happened to be where his father had moved after Paul’s mother died, wanting to be closer to his old army buddies.
Paul blinked sweat from his eyes and decided, spinning the ship around his target and scanning for a lock. He didn’t have time to second guess himself; the decision had been made.
Now he had to live with it.
Tears burned at his eyes, blurring his vision. He suspected Zyp was blocking his nervous system in some ways because he felt unnaturally calm, his hands steady as he waited for the crosshairs to flash from yellow to green. He blinked, tears breaking free from the corner of his eyes.
The crosshairs pulsed green, and he squeezed the trigger. The missile’s drive plume was immediately lost against the backdrop of the bright planet below.
Paul didn’t wait to see if the missile hit its mark. He had to have faith that it did its job. He looped back towards the other bomb and keyed for a target lock, his heart racing. Earth filled his viewport now, the bright blue of the oceans hiding the glow of the remaining bomb. He was completely reliant on his instruments and his augmented vision to find the plume against the brilliant colors of his home.
A small icon appeared on the HUD, and he angled towards it. The bomb was moving faster than before, pulled by Earth’s gravity. His crosshairs flashed green, and he squeezed off a shot. The shot missed, the slight movement of the controls from the pressure of his finger on the trigger enough to make him miss such a small object.
You have new orders from Commander Vyn, you must break away.
“Quiet, Zyp,” Paul spat. “We’re not done yet.”
Paul gave up on finesse, on trying to line up a perfect shot. His only chance was to get lucky. Hundreds of thousands of people’s lives depended on him, his father somewhere among them.
Paul squeezed the trigger and held it. The steady stream of laser fire filled the space ahead. He kept firing, trying to line up the shot with micro-adjustments of the controls. He held his breath and willed a shot to hit its mark, for the bomb to explode. For the man he thought he had let go of long ago to be safe. For there to be some chance at reconciliation.
Hundreds of shots and still the bomb streaked towards the North American continent. Paul could see the glow of satellites now, streaking past in tight orbit around the planet, glinting as they reflected the sun. Close enough for the targeting computer to pick them up, his combat map filled with hundreds of targets flagged as unknown. He didn’t let it distract him, even as the HUD display flashed red warnings around multiple satellites in his flight path. He kept firing, kept trying to make the crosshairs flash green.
Kept trying to save them.
The bomb glowed orange as it hit the atmosphere. Paul let himself hope it would break apart, that the rushed bomber was supposed to fire inside the atmosphere. He kept firing, willing the bomb’s plating to melt away in the atmosphere. Or break apart in a burst of slag from a lucky shot. Or a secret space defense laser that was rumored to have been made in the eighties.
Paul was panicking, his hand shaking. His palms coated in sweat and vision blurred with tears.
Pull up Paul, the heat shields are rerouted to engines! The atmosphere will tear us apart!
Paul growled a curse and kept firing until the power ran out to the laser batteries. He watched the last shots streak from the ship and miss the bomb, leaving him staring at their fading glow. He kept squeezing the trigger as tears streamed down his face, willing one last shot to come. To make the shot. To save El Paso. To save the man who’d shown him the stars before his wife’s death had made him become broken and lost.
Instead, Paul pulled up on the control and cut throttle, and settled into an orbital path. He rolled the ship, filling the viewport with the familiar outline of North America. He kept his eyes glued to the bomb until it faded from view and disappeared from the targeting computer’s range. Then he watched the glowing lights of El Paso in quiet resignation until a bright flash of hellfire consumed it. Hundreds of thousands dead in a moment, without warning.
Somewhere among them, his last family member was gone.
Red messages flashed across the HUD, but he ignored them, focusing on the bright glow of the explosion fading into glowing embers as anything not vaporized by the explosion burned in the night.
Paul, starfighters have been on an intercept course since we engaged the bombers. The first group will arrive in minutes. You must cloak.
Paul wiped tears from his eyes and tried to force himself to reset the power settings. His breath was vapor, the residual heat of the cabin long lost to the void of space. He stopped and stared at the embers, unable to move. He’d failed. He wasn’t able to save them. He wasn’t able to save him.
Paul. We must go.
Paul barely heard Zyp’s voice. Something in him had broken. He had descended within himself, and the details of the outside world faded away. Visions of the explosion looped through his mind, and he imagined the heat of it searing his skin away. He was shaking, his body chilled while his mind overloaded with the imagined heat of a fusion blast.
Paul vaguely registered the flash of a message on his HUD while imagined himself burning.
[Shock response detected. Emergency override protocol engaged].
Paul’s mind continued to be lost in the fire, but he felt his body moving. He experienced nothing but a cool numbness, didn’t want to do anything but sit and wait for the starfighters to tear the ship apart. He wanted to join the people he failed in a fiery blast. To join his family in quiet nothingness. Despite his nihilistic impulse, his body moved. With a detached fascination, he watched his hands moving over the control panel. He couldn’t feel them anymore. They looked and felt alien, wrong. Like they belonged to someone or something else.
I’ll take care of you, Paul.
His hands smoothly reset environmental control to 25%, set cloak recharge to full, and rerouted all weapons systems into shields. The motions were methodical and robotic under Zyp’s steady control. He watched his hands move from a distant place, his mind locked out of his body, like watching a video feed.
While the cloak batteries recharged, Paul’s hands punched in a series of coordinates into the navigational computer he didn’t understand, strings of numbers separated by dots and commas. His mind fixated on the numbers, and his fractured mind interpreted them as the death toll, climbing exponentially.
Course set. Cloak recharge at 15%, Cloak re-engaging.
Zyp’s words didn’t break through Paul’s haze. He stared at the navigational numbers, telling himself they were the count of the dead. Somewhere in his mind he registered the slight pull of inertia against the pit of his stomach, but still he stared. The view of Earth shifted in the viewport as the transport rotated and streaked away. Another message flashed in his HUD.
[Emergency Override Protocol Complete. Twilight Protocol engaged].
Paul’s last thought before sleep was forced upon him was of the people he had just failed. Of his father, unspoken to for years, burning alone in the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE BRIDGE OF the Wildfire was silent as Captain Numoh forced himself to remain passive, staring blankly at the tactical screen. To the crew, he projected the calm indifference that his station as a leader demanded.
Inside, he was raging, reeling from the reports of a single target destroyed and the loss of his entire bomber squadron.
Years of careful planning and manipulation. Years of being trapped at the edges of civilization. All wasted. All because of one primitive human, barely of age in its own culture and ignorant of its proper place in the galaxy, had been seduced by rabble. The human had proved far more capable than predicted, ruining years of planning in moments. Even if a single bomber had destroyed their targets, the human governments would scramble to destroy each other with misguided counterattacks, helped along by the efforts of the human ambassador.
Instead, a single, minor target had been destroyed. A relatively insignificant military base in a mid-level city. News reports showed human governments already blaming terrorists for the blast. There would be no plea for aid by the Ambassador. No legal justification for Numoh to take control of Earth’s recovery under the laws of the Federation.
It left Numoh with little choice. He had to order the orbital bombardment of the planet to begin as soon as the Wildfire was in range.
Commander Keul interrupted him. “Captain, we have been unable to locate the escaped prisoners. Shall I expand the search?”
Captain Numoh turned to his second in command and struggled to remain stoic. The disruption of the bombers was unfortunate, and his superiors would surely have much to say to him about it, but the escape of the prisoners was another matter entirely. No amount of explanation would free him of the stain on his station. Numoh could feel his position fading away. He’d be lucky to be Captain of an ore hauler by the time he regained order of the operation. The Resistance had foiled his every move, and if he didn’t get the situation under control quickly and quietly, he stood to lose everything.
“Expand your search, and post guards at all nodes for critical systems.” Numoh forced his turmoil to boil beneath the surface of his voice. The result was something that approximated the icy commands of an Admiral, and judging by the way his commander shifted uncomfortably, he was sure he hid his turmoil appropriately.
“Sir, we don’t have the troops…”
Numoh’s scowl silenced the aging Gryx. “Awaken all off-duty crew. Place all non-critical stations on minimum staff levels, and arm all remaining unassigned crew. Have them formed up into fire teams and search the ship. I want them recaptured or neutralized within the hour.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else?”
“Keep me updated on the search for the Resistance transport. I don’t expect the scum to show themselves again, but keep our starfighters on the search, anyway. That will be all for now, Commander.”
Commander Keul bowed stiffly and turned to belay the order. Numoh watched the Gryx move slowly across the bridge with a cool confidence. For the first time in his career, Numoh wondered if he should be in control of a warship, if he should leave it to those below him who seem to move at ease in command. Turning back to the screen, he shook the thought away. Madness, he knew his place, and he’d show the petty world he was tasked with sedating soon enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“WHEN’S OUR RIDE get here, Commander?” Omaro chittered while he downed another Varanul with his blaster. He tossed the body of the crewman he had been using as a shield aside and turned to Edolit, his maxillae twitching questioningly.
“Unknown. Zyp reported in an hour ago before engaging cloak they had to go dark. Paul was in shock after the bomb impacted.”
Ja’el stopped looking towards the corner for more guards, her remaining arm outstretched with her stolen blaster, and looked at Edolit in shock. “Paul? You recruited a human, didn’t you?!”
Edolit nodded. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“General Thriss will not like that. You went against his explicit orders,” Omaro said. He pulled the body of a Varanul away from the computer terminal and tossed it to the deck unceremoniously. It landed with a sickening thud.
�
��I think the General will forgive me when he sees Paul’s performance,” Edolit said. She moved to the terminal and began tapping the screen, the smell of ozone and burned Varanul making her wheeze.
“Well, he’d better pull through if you want to make the case to the General.”
Edolit opened the menu for the environmental controls and took the temperature control offline. Varanul were cold-blooded, and losing residual heat would slow them down.
“He’ll pull through. He just saw an entire city die. Zyp will make sure the ship is moving to pick up up while it sends Paul to sleep to recover from the initial shock,” Edolit said as she continued her work. She knew the shock would likely turn into post-traumatic stress and Paul would feel the effects for years, but she kept the knowledge to herself. Edolit believed in him enough to know he’d pull it together enough to make the pick up.
She opened another menu and checked the crew assignment files.
Nian, copy files and analyze for crew numbers and deployment locations.
Copying.
Edolit opened each file quickly, allowing Nian a fraction of a second to copy the data from the screen, and then did the same for the troop assignment files and ship schematics.
A blaster bolt flashed against the wall to her left, and she flinched. Ja’el and Omaro pinned down the Varanul and laid down suppression fire to send its squad mates diving for cover.
“Time to move,” Ja’el said.
Edolit opened one last file randomly and glanced at it for Nian. It could be a shipping manifest for sundries for all she knew, but she hoped it was something important. She stepped back and shot the terminal twice with her blaster. That should cover my tracks, she thought. She spun in time to send a blaster bolt into the forehead of a Varanul that had looked out from a packing crate it had been using for cover.
She tried to shift her aim to another Varanul that was firing towards Omaro, but her vision blurred and her shot went wide. Omaro cried out as a blast burned into his chitin carapace. She fired again, and the shot met its mark. The room quieted after the creature’s death jerk sent one last blast splashing against the wall beside her. Her skin burned from the molten metal as the blast splashed against her arm, but she ignored it. She rushed to Omaro and checked his wound.
