by M. J Kreyzer
Seeing the Helios coming up on either side of them, the two massive ships that dwarfed the craft they rode on, Luke reached new determination. He thought of how long they’d fought, how far they’d come, the people who died in the Praemon invasion and in the countless other destructive Communal campaigns, the Durants who were exterminated, the families that had been ripped apart, the dreams crushed, lives ruined, and Luke grew stronger in his resolve. He couldn’t make any decisions for the Ditrinity, but Luke would make sure that he made it to Pyre.
No, not just him. Everybody. The Ditrinity, Rush, all of them would make it. Hendrick was right. There wasn’t any more time to live for those he’d lost. It was time to fight for those who were still with him.
Hope you’re ready, Marcus. Luke thought to himself as the ship entered the space between the Helios. We’re coming for ya.
The ship banked hard to starboard. The framework of the ship, having never been strained in the way it was, groaned under the unfamiliar distribution of weight. Further between the two Helios they flew, the world outside rotating around them as everything was starting to be pulled to the right as right became the new ‘down’.
“Find something good to hang on to.” Luke said as he got out of his chair and positioned his feet next to a control console where they’d soon be standing. “Pilots make sure you don’t go anywhere. I need every sweep working and accurate.” Luke hit the intercom button and waited. A long tone sounded through the speakers located all around the entire ship. “Ditrinity, Rush, and all crewmembers brace yourselves for a ninety degree starboard bank.”
Throughout the entire ship the crew moved to the starboard walls as the ship continued to rotate.
Soon Luke was standing on the control console as he watched them plunge further and further into what could be the biggest mistake he’s ever made. It’d either be a success or a slaughter, and if it ended up being the latter than nobody would live long enough to fully realize it. Watching the dozens of glowing blue turrets on both ships did nothing to ease his anxiety. As they charged, the glows became brighter and brighter until they appeared to be bursting with energy. They were about to fire.
“Full power to what is now the starboard shield and divert all weapon power to the sweep lasers. Pilots glass anything that looks like it might fire back. Recalibrate the grav-plates for starboard lift.”
They all understood the plan. And now they knew that Luke was doing something nobody had ever tried. Sweeps had been used on aircraft before but never fired sideways. Their immense energy was made possible only by the massive anti-gravity plates on the ship’s belly. These sweep lasers were limited by their versatility and could only be fired from a ship’s belly. And now Luke had thought of a way to use their incredible power in ship-to-ship combat.
Luke’s heart pounded in his throat. Just outside the ship he could hear the electric buzz of the Helios’ turrets, merely seconds away from unleashing their full power on their obsolete Mysto.
“Captain their cannons are at maximum charge!”
The Furo charge from each cannon sent sharp static throughout the ship. The bridge was silent. Everybody watched the screens as they waited to die or escape. They couldn’t see the Helios anymore, only hear their weapons as they prepared to shred their tiny cruiser. Standing on rails, control panels, walls, and any flat surface, they stood stalk still, unblinking, barely breathing.
In the starboard turrets the Ditrinity sat with their unpowered turrets angled up. They knew as well as Luke what would happen if this didn’t work. Their hands wrung the handles of the turrets as they waited for the inevitable and spectacular firefight.
In the medical lab, Hendrick clutched the gurney on which Sable laid, holding it still. And though Sable was like she was, lying unconscious, pale, and on the brink of death, Hendrick knew what Luke was doing, and it put a smile on his face.
Please, Luke prayed. Please, God, let this work.
The buzzing frequency of the Legionnaire cannons reached a glass-shattering levels, sounding much like a Charger then, suddenly, they stopped.
Here it was.
“FIRE THE SWEEPS!” Luke shouted.
“FIRE ALL!” The Pilots yelled as they relayed the order.
The ensuing carnage rocked the entire ship violently. Both Helio’s fired all their cannons simultaneously, The starboard side of the ship exploded in white light as the cannons impacted on the ship’s shields. On the belly, dozens of steel-melting sweep lasers scourged the entire side of the other Helio, turning the armored steel into what looked like melted, glowing candle wax. The ship was knocked back and forth as explosions rocked both ships. Billowing columns of flame erupted from the Helio and Luke’s Mysto as missiles, particle cannons and ballistics scathed the Mysto’s underbelly while the sweeps destroyed cannons, ignited ammo caches, resulting in a brilliant and terrible display of flaming, explosive carnage.
“REPORT!” Luke yelled above the din.
Crewmembers fell from their perches and plummeted to the floor, screaming as they fell to their deaths. Flames had sprouted up from control panels around the room with the intense electrical surges. The bridge, once again, was engulfed in sheer chaos. The Pilots, however, kept their ground and kept fighting.
“SHIELDS AT FIFTY PERCENT!”
“SWEEPS OPERATING WITH SEVENTY PERCENT POWER REMAINING!”
An explosion nearly shook Luke from his makeshift platform. Cracks shot up the walls and across the floors as the stress was becoming too much. Luke stood firm. “HOW ABOUT OUR BOOSTERS!”
“SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT CHARGED!”
“WE’RE LOSING POWE R FAST! WE CAN’T HOLD THIS TYPE OF POWER OUTPUT!”
“Keep flying!” Luke took a look at the video screen at his feet. The entire frame was filled with the port side of the enemy Helio. He watched the sweeps melt away at the ship, cutting through the steel like butter and exposing the interior of the ship in some places. He gritted his teeth in a grim smile. It was working.
“SHIELDS AT TWENTY PERCENT!”
“SWEEPS AT THIRTY PERCENT AND FALLING FAST!”
“NINETY FIVE PERCENT CHARGED!”
Luke pointed swiftly to the pilots. “Cut the power to the anti-gravity by fifty percent!”
They immediately obeyed. Crewmembers were lifted off their feet as the Mysto fell out from under their feet, entering into a brief free-fall. Without even suspecting that they’d make such a swift maneuver, the Helios hadn’t ceased firing. Both ships fired mercilessly and unintentionally upon each other, inflicting incredible damage on the other.
“Hit the boosters, restore full power to the anti-grav’s and get us upright!”
Everybody was thrown back as the engines fired to near overload as the boosters ignited. Loose objects and careless crewmembers were hurled towards the rear of the ship as its speed increased by over a hundred and fifty miles per hour in less than five seconds.
The proximity alarms, which had been blaring throughout the entire firefight, stopped. However, an entirely new set of alarms were buzzing and beeping throughout the bridge and across the entire ship. Fire alarms, power failure alarms, alarms warning of poor structural integrity, everything. But the gunfire had stopped and they were, if only for the moment, in the clear. The ship had taken more damage than Luke would have liked. But they were still living which is what ultimately counted. Luke sat back down in his command chair and hit the comm. buttons that would connect him with the Ditrinity.
“You all still alive back there?”
He released the button and heard cheering. Morlo roared victoriously while Pontious and Vyvyr even expressed their excitement. Encouraged, Luke hit the button to the Med lab.
“Nate,” He said, softer than he spoke to the others. “Everything good back there?”
The reply wasn’t immediate, something that made Luke immediately nervous. His anxieties disappeared as Hendrick’s voice came back in reply, sullen, but more optimistic than it had been.
“As goo
d as we can be.” He said. He looked back down at Sable who’s condition hadn’t improved. Gently he placed his hand on her sweat dampened forehead, smiling hopefully down at her. “We’re on our way to Pyre now. Hang in there.” He checked the IV that he had placed, checked her heartbeat and repeated the process several more times. There was nothing else he could do, but he wouldn’t just sit back as she slipped away from him. During the maneuver a stray piece of medical equipment had sliced her arm. The cut was still there. Hendrick ignored it and kept his hopes up.
“Just hang in there.” He muttered. “We’re on our way to Pyre. The war’s ending tonight. And it’s because of you.” Hendrick smiled proudly at her. He knew she couldn’t see or hear him. He kept talking anyway.
The dark feeling that strangled him was one that was one of the most potent he had ever felt. Never before had he been emotionally open, a fact he was once proud of. Now, he really didn’t care.
“Report.” Luke asked in a calm voice. The rest of the bridge was a disaster. Crewmembers went about dousing flames, others in repairing circuitry, while others tended to dead, dying, or injured companions.
“Artillery energy cells are dry and ruined. They won’t recharge.”
“Shields are at four percent.”
Rough shape. Luke looked to the navigation team. “And the Legionnaire navy?”
“We have our distance sir. Closest Legionnaire cruiser is twenty miles to the south. The Sestik Mountain Range is just ahead.”
They had cut it close, but they were in the clear. Luke pounded his fist triumphantly on the armrest of his chair. “Pilots, adjust the mist shroud to emulate Cirrus spissatus, take us to forty thousand feet and set course for the woods just north of New Eckis. We set down there, ditch the cruiser, and-“
“We can’t pull that off, Captain. Our engines are on borderline overload and that stunt we just pulled damaged our anti-grav plates beyond repair. The system’s about to shut them down.”
Any ounce of excitement that Luke felt was gone. Everything they’d just done, all of it, amounted to nothing more than a suicidal crash landing. “So, what you’re saying is-“
“We’re not making it another twenty miles, much less to New Eckis.”
Merino, though dazed, went into a furious rampage on the platform above, yelling to himself as his ship cruised to its unavoidable doom.
“Legionnaire cruisers are coming down on our six! Strikers are inbound!”
No Pyre, no smooth landing spot, no cover. If they bailed right now then they’d get destroyed by enemy aircraft. If they stayed on board, they risked death by riding the ship to their potential death.
“Options!” Luke got to his feet and shouted. “Give me options!”
Silence. A few people worked at their computers. No help came of it.
“You!” Luke shouted, stomping over towards his navigators. “Nearest mountain range. What is it?”
“That’s the Sestiks.”
“BESIDES THOSE!”
“That’s the Byfaynes! We can’t make it that far!”
Luke yelled and put his fist through a nearby control panel. Everybody in the bridge watched as Luke fought to contain himself.
They were so close. All they needed was ten percent more power and they could have made it. Ten percent! And now the Ditrinity, Rush, the crew, everybody, had no choice but to plunge headlong into the bowels of hell. And again, Luke’s mind went to Sable. They had only one place to go. She wouldn’t make it.
His anger and frustration spent, only guilt and discouragement remained. Slowly Luke stepped back to his chair and sat down, rubbing his face with a gauntleted hand and resting his chin in his palm. He stared into space as his mind blanked. He was tired, and once again his efforts came to nothing.
The proximity alarm started back up, breaking the bleak and dire silence.
“Captain…” Said the Chief Navigator, quietly and without alarm. “Enemy aircraft closing on our six. The signature is too large and I can’t get a reading on exactly how many.”
“Thank you.” Luke replied solemnly, pausing and turning towards the pilots. “How long until the anti-grav plates give way?”
“Four, maybe five minutes.”
His stomach tightened. That wasn’t nearly enough time for the Ditrinity and Rush to regroup. Their best chances at survival would be to stay where they were and brace for impact. But Luke had seen what happened when the anti-grav plates failed. Starting from the rear they’d shut down, and as each one died that portion of the ship would snap off as the weight became too much to handle. Then, one by one, as each of the seven plates died, each section would fall off and plunge violently to the ground. The front of the ship, the portion with the bridge, was the last to go while the charged plate remained charged for several more minutes keeping the front aloft until it too fell to the earth.
His friends would go before he did. They’d be scattered across the Sestiks, one of the most unforgiving places on the planet, by themselves. They’d be alone with the entire Legionnaire army hot on their tails. Razorbacks, Styklers, carnivorous Quos, cannibalistic, man-eating Wylsks, Hoppers, volcanic badlands, and they’d have to traverse all of it with the Legionnaires hunting them down.
Luke hit the intercom button and spoke to the entire ship.
“Crewmembers, Rush, Ditrinity, listen up.”
Every person on board had been celebrating, unaware of the impending equipment failure. The Ditrinity and Rush, just from the tone of Luke’s voice, knew things weren’t good. They paid close attention.
Luke began talking but found himself without words. He didn’t want to tell them. He didn’t have the heart. “We… we will not be making it to Pyre.”
Their spirits left them. Smiles melted, laughs died, and everybody, with their hopes smashed, kept their attention.
“During the firefight with the Helios our engines and anti-grav plates were heavily damaged. The engines will fail within twenty miles, the anti-grav plates will die any minute, and the Legionnaires are no more than a mile behind us. As each plate fails, each of the seven sections of the ship will break off one by one until the ship has been completely dismantled. Once you hit the ground… you’re on your own. There is no time to make it to your friends if they are in other parts of the ship. Find a spot to brace yourself and hang tight.”
The Ditrinity listened. They, more than anybody, were the most excited about getting to Pyre. It was the day they’d all dreamed of. Now it was further away than it ever had been.
In the medical lab, Hendrick had his hands on Sable’s forehead, quietly muttering the same prayer he’d heard Seraphine give with a quavering voice. They were by themselves, and the only noise they heard was the tinny sound of Luke’s voice over the microphone.
Luke paused. He thought about the last words the Ditrinity had heard him say. He ditched the formalities and spoke just to them.
“Ditrinity… Morlo, Vyvyr, Pontious, Hendrick, Sable… I… I’m sorry. I’m sorry I abandoned you. I’m sorry I realized my mistakes too late. And I’m sorry I couldn’t save us. No matter what you did for me, how you helped me, I blew it off as nothing. I’ve spent so long wanting to get revenge for those I’ve lost that I’d forgotten to fight for those I still have. I came back to Leramato because I realized that.” Luke released the button. This wasn’t going to happen. He wouldn’t forget how he’d felt just ten minutes earlier. He hit the button again. “We’re going to make it to Pyre. I promise you that. Every last one of us. And we’ll take the lives of the unholy bastards who put us here in the first place and get our first taste of freedom in almost two decades. And when you all get to down on the ground, keep your heads down and stay alive. We do this together… I will find you!”
There was a stressed groan that tumbled through the ship. Everybody looked around them as they felt the shivers running beneath their feet.
“Grav plate number one has gone critical!”
They didn’t have much longer. Luke hit the comm swit
ch once again.
It was dead. Sparing only a moment for regret, Luke got to his feet and sheathed his sword. “Pilots plot course for the heart of the Sestik Mountains. Descend until we’re scraping the mountaintops. Tess!”
Tess, with minor cuts and bruises, appeared at his side.
“Stick with me.” Luke said, walking towards the upper platform. He checked the pipes and cables that ran along the walls and discovered where the Grav plate at their feet started and ended. “When the rest of the ship goes, we’ve got things we have to do. Our portion’ll stay in the air for a few minutes longer before the plates give way. We have to give the others time to get out and get safe.”
“So what’re we doing?” Tess asked.
Luke looked at her but didn’t answer. He faced the rest of the crew on the bridge, standing at the edge of the platform and raising his voice as he addressed the beaten, exhausted group.
“There’s never been a single time in my life when I’ve seen a naval crew as brave and trusting as you all have been. Thank you.” Luke nodded towards the Pilots. “Set the ship to auto-pilot. Everybody get to the back of the bridge and wedge yourselves some place tight. This part of the ship will be impacting the hardest.”
There was a reverberating rumble at the rear of the ship. The entire craft tilted back as the rumble grew louder. Then, the distant, creaking sound of metal tearing itself apart. The ship began to decelerate.
“The rear portion of the ship is gone.” The head pilot sounded.
Luke acknowledged him as he got his strategy together. “I’m going to hold off the Legionnaires as long as I can. All of you get out, get hidden, and work your ways back to the Byfaynes. The Darks’ll find you there.”
Another rumble. The stress once again became too much.
“The second portion is gone!”
“Get into crash positions.” Luke said as he went to leave the bridge. “It’s been an honor serving with all of you.”
