Home in the Stars Box Set

by Mason, Jolie

  “What enemy? Non-human? In all the exploration of the many galaxies we've never found non-human life. We settled every planet we found.”

  Morgan looked haunted. “We've found it”, he said. “You just haven't been told about it.”

  That made him shiver a bit. Morgan sounded nuts, but, ruthless he might be, Emery had never known him to be crazy or dramatic. If he was correct, then what else could be out in the Rim.

  A knock sounded on the office door. Valek went to answer, exchanging soft words with the crewman on the other side of the door. He heard just a few words, before Morgan looked back over his shoulder. “You may get an introduction shortly”, he said, and was gone. The door slamming shut behind him, not locked. He went to try it just to be sure. He and Luca traded dismayed looks.

  “Is he snapped?”

  He shook his head. “I don't think so. I've never seen him be anything but calculating and ruthless. This is certainly not what I expected.”

  “I thought we were dead”, she answered.

  He cut his eyes to her. “If my choice is to bring you into this life, then we may still be.”

  “Oh, hush,” she said testily. “I'm the boss of me, and I'm not letting you die. So shut it.”

  “Very mature argument there. Are you channeling Ari?”

  She giggled at the thought. “I could be.”

  The spin up to FTL kicked in right then, and they were leaving Havoc behind. “Are we headed out to the Rim?” Luca asked.

  “I think so”, he said.

  6

  They hadn't been confined, so Luca pulled Emery's hand, dragging him to the door. They stepped out. The activity level had certainly increased. Crewmen shouted information and ran for consoles. The bridge was awash with blue alert warnings and tension.

  Morgan stood before the viewscreen, eyes turned on a comm console to his left. “That can't be right.” He pointed to the screen. “As soon as we spin down, I want that ship on screen.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sir,” a young female fresh-faced ensign begged her superior's attention. “Sir, we've received a communication, a transmission from the ship.”

  He stepped to her in three long strides. “What are they?”

  “The translation matrix is having trouble finding the pattern, Sir. Whatever they are, the language isn't like ours. Not even a little.”

  “Is there audio?”

  “Yes, sir.” Luca listened beside Emery as the alien sound poured from the speaker in guttural clicks and grunts, leading into high pitched wails. The sound of the voice was tinny and confined like it seeped through the filter of a helmet.

  The ensign played the message twice before Emery made a sound and whispered, “There's the pattern.”

  “What?” She looked at him.

  “I see it. Hear it. Whatever. I have encryption training. It's almost like code, sequenced patterns. It's a message, not one to one communication. It's not conversational.”

  “Okay”, she said. “Should we tell them that?”

  He sighed. “It's our universe too. They're just as likely to blow it up as save it.”

  He strolled to the ensign's console and shouldered her aside. The girl took obvious offense, but stopped her protests at only a slight nod from Morgan to let him work. Several moments past as Emery stood there with hands flying as he entered the sequence pattern he'd noted in the audio. The sounds of the message were on their tenth play through when the sound garbled and jolted. Once then twice, and suddenly the matrix translated three words. “Incursion. Our worlds.”

  Everyone stopped what they were doing just then to listen. Emery waited as the console calculated one more time. “Your people... Incursion. Leave our worlds immediately.”

  “Shit!” Emery put every ounce of disgust in his voice. “Well, that made a twisted sort of sense”, he said to Morgan. “The Rim planets. How far out are we building new relays?”

  “We just wrapped up the fifth system, and headed further to explore Solidat. The newest find, but it's just an ice planet. It has mountains, geologic features and rock formation, but unless anything of value is discovered in the survey, it was expected the direction of the survey would change. We were about to begin looking for more mining resources in the systems we've already expanded into.”

  “Apparently, you showed up on someone's scans.” Emery shook his head. “I'd really hoped you were nuts, Morgan.”

  Morgan shot him a disgusted look as if the last thing he'd ever be was crazy.

  “Sir, the ship is coming up. Dropping out of FTL.”

  The cruiser bobbed as the spin down occurred. It was just a gentle tug backwards, and then the sensation of dropping gently. The viewscreen lit up with the dark of deep space, and, suddenly the largest ship she'd ever seen. It was spherical, black and intimidating as hell. The ball design filled the screen. It was that big. Darting out from all angles were spikes. She moved closer to the screen, the spikes were gradually ascending and had massive entry points at the end. She was a pilot. It wasn't hard to understand the design.

  Over her shoulder, she said to Emery. “Guns, I'd bet on the smaller ones. Flight launch on the larger.”

  He nodded at the assessment. “She's right. And I doubt these guys like us very much, Morgan. We need to pull out.”

  Morgan eyed Emery. “So we abandon the system and all our personnel?”

  “You evacuate and assess. This is bigger than anything the Imperials have.”

  Morgan simply walked to the ensign's position and began to discuss first contact in hushed tones. Emery and Luca traded looks. He crossed the short distance. “Any ideas?”

  “Wait and see?” She said it sarcastically. “He's not going to give up expansion of the empire over a spiky tech race. He's going to fall on his sword.”

  “What are the odds this is the only ship like that? Realistically? A race that can build what is essentially a massive, mobile space station with defensive capability unmatched by anything human. Are they gonna stop at just one?”

  “No”, she answered. “Em, you're forgetting something. This isn't our ship. It's his.”

  He sighed quietly. “Wait and see, then.”

  “We need to consider escape options. He's gonna get his ass handed to him.”

  “Already thinking.”

  “Think faster. He's going to do something stupid, any minute now.”

  The ensign had prepared by then a simplistic message using the matrix to open dialogue with a pissed off race of unknown origin and number. There was nothing dumber that could be done at that moment. Luca shook her head, even as the message was sent. She had no doubt, judging by the earlier transmission, that simple message would result in a great big fuck you.

  It took longer than she'd expected. She and Emery watched from a console by the door as the alien battleship expelled multiple small and spiky designed fighters from every available launch tube.

  “And, fuck you, it is.”, she said reaching for the console. “Cruisers can have fighters. How many do you have, Morgan?”

  “Ten per ship. Two battle contingents.”

  “Forty fighters. Wow, you are taking screwed to a new personal best, I imagine. Get those fighters out there. Order them to pick off the launch tubes.”

  “What?” Morgan stared at her as her fingers flew.

  “Morgan! They already have about fifty birds in the air. How many more do you think a ship that size has? Shoot the damn launch tubes.”

  “She's right. It's damage control.” Emery said, staring at scans.

  Morgan issued the order staring at her. “All ships, fire at will. I hope you trust her judgment, Charles. I'm trusting yours.”

  The cruisers had one distinct advantage, maneuverability. The awkward mass of the alien vessel made it lumber in space. It wasn't designed to evade, but to outlast. The cruiser launched fighters in a staggered formation, and they began the hard work of destroying every launch tube they could sight.

  The cruiser swung a
round to take a firing run at the alien ship. Their weapons shot bright red into the ship causing minimal damage. One of the young bridge crewmen ran the damage analysis and said dishearteningly, “Superficial only, sir. We'll run out of reserve power before we make a dent.”

  As her words faded away in the hustle of the bridge, the crew exchanged information on the battle which was worse and worse by the moment, and the ship reverberated with a direct hit. The explosion that followed seemed to echo along the corridors, but that wasn't what happened. Like dominoes, one explosion led to another then another. Klaxons rang out in loud warning, red and white lights alternated along the bridge screen that had now gone black.

  Luca groaned and rolled over on the floor. She'd tried to grip the console and ride it out, but she'd been tossed about like everyone else. Her head hurt.

  The command crew trained for these scenarios. Each of them jumped to their feet to remove the wounded and obtain status reports on the rest of the ship.

  She hoisted herself up on the sturdy podium, and hurriedly pulled up the battle reports she could. It couldn't be worse. She looked over at the last place she'd seen the commander of the vessel and Emery. Morgan pulled the young ensign to her feet.

  “Morgan”, she called. “Morgan, you need to see this.”

  The man met her eyes. She thought for a moment he would ignore her. He stomped to the console where she had pulled up a battle scan that pretty much spelled the doom of every man and woman on these Imperial ships. She watched his face, keeping her mouth shut. He wasn't a fool.

  Morgan's eyes widened. “All of them?”

  “All. It's over. Right now.”

  She actually felt sorry for the man as he realized his fleet was obliterated in less than a few minutes of combat. He pressed a single button on the console and the klaxon changed. Morgan spoke into the ship wide for a moment, defeated. “Abandon ship”, he ordered quietly.

  Valek Morgan walked proudly away to another console to her right to supervise his evacuation, and Luca continued to pull up the streaming data of the battle.

  Emery appeared at her side wiping his brow where he'd apparently banged it hard into something. She looked him over, finding nothing else obvious, she said, “Headache?”

  “You bet.” He moved one of her hands off a small readout screen that ran the energy scan of enemy ships. He pointed to the rear of the massive alien gunship. “Did you see this?”

  She looked it over. “No, what am I looking at?” She stared in fascination at the orange and red blotches indicating energy transfer in the rear quarter of the vessel. “Wait”, she said then.

  It happened again. Right there. A massive charge.

  “What is that? Generator in the aft sections?”

  “A barely contained power source.” Emery smiled at the screen. “That ship runs hot, very hot. One shot to that weak point and that thing goes up like a nova.”

  She frowned. “Only one problem. Nothing to shoot.”

  He pulled up a holoscreen. “How's propulsion?”

  “Working, but not well.” She licked her dry lips. “Shuttles are all away. Nothing left but pods.”

  He looked up at her nervous words. “Do you trust me?”

  She nodded, transfixed by the small, cocky smile he tossed her. She did trust him. He was a very capable man. However, that was a very large ship of angry aliens.

  “We don't have any guns, remember?”

  “We have the ship. Is the FTL drive still active?” She stared at him a moment. The FTL? Her eyes widened to the size of small planets.

  “You want to fly our ship into their ship?”

  He pointed at the display. “Into that spot. At precisely the right moment.”

  “Emery, we don't know exactly what that power source is.”

  An electric short zipped in the space above their heads as he leaned in to gaze at her softly. He cupped the back of her neck with his hand. She saw one thing in his face, the certain knowledge that they were done. “We have what exactly to lose here?”

  She let her hand creep up to encircle his wrist. “And everything to gain?”

  He smiled at her broadly. “Now, you got it, Angel.”

  Luca leaned closer. “You're crazy.”

  Emery let his hand brush through the curls along the back of her neck, and said, “I know.”

  He kissed her, suddenly. It was hardly more than a chaste peck on the lips, but it said a lot. “Start the calculations. Pull us back, if you can get helm controls. I'll fill the captain in.”

  Luca turned back to the console. “Oh, I can get helm controls.”

  She adjusted propulsion to move them back off the massive ship, but not so far that the alien vessel could read their intent and have time to evade. They just needed a break from being an enemy target.

  Luca started her calculations. She wasn't sure this wasn't beyond her skills as a pilot and navigator, but she would try. She thought fleetingly of the Carry Bell, hog tied to the Imperial ship and felt a twinge. She crawled into the Bell's docking system and got several scans off the ship's computer. Her heart sank.

  The Bell was spaced. She had no environmental controls, no air, and in several places hull breeches that could fit a truck through. If they could have towed her back to civilization, she'd have been repairable. But this little fleet of ships was cooked. They weren't getting back to civilization. She made the call to leave the Bell docked to the Imperial ship, giving their little projectile more weight. The Bell would get a burial at sea. It was about all any of them could expect at this point.

  ***#***

  Emery found the captain issuing orders to a group of guards to get into a pod and deploy as soon as it was full. He followed Morgan's path as he wound through one of the pod bays. “Morgan?” He said it loudly, echoing through the large chamber. “Morgan!”

  “What?”

  “We have an option for you.” Emery waved the man over. Morgan tapped a crewman's shoulder, putting him in charge of the pod being loaded.

  “What's your plan? I'm up for anything that isn't getting blown to hell and back.”

  Emery paused before he said anything. Morgan wasn't going to like this since it actually involved blowing the ship to hell and back. “Well”, he said. “We found a power signature we can take advantage of, hopefully destroying the ship with it.”

  “Walk back with me. You've got your girl working on it, I assume?”

  “She should be flying your ship by now, yes.”

  The two men raced back along the chaotic corridor to the bridge where Luca stood feverishly issuing commands to the computer verbally. She'd managed to get the viewscreen back up, and the sight was terrifying and majestic at the same time. The alien ship showed in profile against the black. Three remaining fighters dodged myriad enemies in a last ditch effort to protect the escaping pods. The shuttles that made it were already clear.

  “Alphas Two, Four and Six. Break clear now.” Luca's voice rang with authority. She'd assumed command completely.

  “Bad copy. Imperial One”, returned the fighter.

  “Bad copy, my ass, Pilot. I am about to blow this thing to shit. Do you wanna be standing in the way?”

  Silence lasted about a beat before the fight left the man's voice. “No, Ma'am. Do you think you can take this thing out?”

  She straightened her shoulders. No one else would have heard the lie in words. “Alphas, Get clear. Cover the pods.”

  “Copy. Good hunting, Ma'am.”

  Morgan looked Emery's way. “What exactly does she think you can do?”

  Emery cleared his throat. “We're gonna throw something big at it.”

  Morgan's mouth fell open slightly. “My ship?”

  Without looking their way, Luca stated baldly, “You're down to two Cruisers at this point, Officer Morgan. Wanna wait for this one to be exploded for no reason?”

  “Well, when you put it that way….”

  “I need your security code to disengage engine safety protocol,
then get on a pod.”

  Shaking his head, Morgan grimaced, but he read off the code to the ship's computer. He made one more evacuation warning with the ship wide, and turned to look at the two of them. “There's a pod behind that door.”

  He pointed toward a small hatch off the bridge. She nodded at him. The three of them in that room knew any pod launched too close to the explosion would be unlikely to survive any blast made by the collision of the ships. Morgan didn't say that. None of them would.

  “How will you be certain they don't evade the presets?”

  She looked away. “We can't.”

  Emery stiffened. Her body language was evasive. He'd trained in reading people. “And what was your solution?”

  She turned away. “Trick you on board a pod before initiating jump.”

  “You intended to stay behind?” His heart rate picked up incrementally as the consequences of that kicked in. He would live, and she'd be… stardust. Anger burned through him like lightning. It was a hell of a thing to plan.

  Morgan turned to both of them. “No”, he said. “This is my ship. Show me what to do.”

  “You won't live through it.” She whispered.

  The commander glared at her. “There's always something we don't live through. Show me.”

  She did. Emery watched the firefight on the screen moving away from them as they retreated to get space to jump the FTL. When she finished giving him instructions, Emery stepped closer to her. She stood quietly by the console staring at the officer.

  Morgan gave a jaunty smile. “Don't bother about me, Ms. Brine. Keep moving.”

  She nodded sadly. Emery grabbed her arm and pulled her into the pod.

  ***#***

  Luca felt the seat hit her backside as he slung her in the pod and banged the manual hatch control. “Strap in”, he ordered with an edge in the words. Neither of them said anything else as he activated the pod. It seated eight in a round chamber, there was a short range propulsion system to put distance between them and the explosion. They had three days food and one week of air. The pod shot away from the Imperial.

  The pull on her stomach made her sick. There was no vid screen in the pod, and no way to steer anyway. This was simply an escape vehicle. She fought the force of the propulsion to don the headset. A holo console appeared in the air before her. She pulled up a scan of the area around the Imperial. It didn't take long for the Imperial to jump into FTL. She watched the scan, bracing. It hit the alien ship. A long moment passed, and then she didn't know anything because her world went dark.