The Kafaran fighters themselves were an odd amalgam of shapes. They had a cigar-shaped central fuselage, with a series of transparent view ports placed almost directly on the nose. On either side of the main body, held on by a series of forward-swept beams, were angular pods. The forward half of the pods served as the weapons bay for whatever armament the craft held, with the fighter’s engines on the rear of the structures. All this, together with the reflective green color of the alloy that coated its surface, gave the fighter the appearance that it was moving, even when standing still. It was sleek, it was beautiful, and it was deadly.
As the Kafaran fighter ahead of him disintegrated, Shawn knew it was time to act.
“All right, team. Break and attack!”
Inadvertently, he had slipped his fighter behind another Kafaran who was preparing to fire on a turret of opportunity. Hot its tail, Shawn had a sudden, brief recollection of the Galactic War. How easy it would have been for him to take out this Kafaran back then. Now, nearly a decade apart and hundreds of light-years from his last battle with them, one was sitting directly in his crosshairs, offering no resistance, practically begging Shawn to open fire. Shawn reached a finger to the trigger on the control stick, hovering over it, then lightly stroking its surface beneath his gloved finger. His grip wasn’t tight enough to fire the destructive missile that was armed and ready, but something in him kept telling him to do it, that no one would know. Really, his mind told him coldly, what was one more dead Kafaran, anyway?
Shawn tried to physically shake the voice aside. He couldn’t kill an innocent being, even if it were one of those accursed Kafarans. He simply couldn’t shoot him in the back.
Or could he? After all, it was they who were responsible for the death of his wife. They were the ones who had invaded, and they were the ones who’d begun indiscriminately killing the colonists who had ventured out into space in search of a new home. They’d started the war that claimed billions of human lives and now, after a protracted amount of silence from their area of space, they were back. And for what? To help humanity battle the Meltranians? Never had Shawn known a Kafaran to be so sentimental. No, there was something more going on here, something he had yet to put a finger on.
Yet, here was this Kafaran deck fighter in his sights, a fighter that was opening fire on an enemy vessel that knowingly and without provocation attacked and destroyed a Unified Sector Command destroyer. The Kafarans had nothing to lose. They could have simply stood on the sidelines and watched as the Meltranian vessel picked apart the useless defenses of the USC’s strongest ships in what would have been a gloriously useless five-minute battle. But they did intervene—and lost one of their own destroyers in the process. Even now their pilots were out here, just as Shawn was, and just as this Kafaran ahead of his fighter was—living, fighting, and dying in the void.
Shawn watched as the Kafaran craft pitched its nose down, coming even more squarely into his sights—now at point blank range. He couldn’t miss it if he tried.
Do it, the voice said again. Do it now, before you miss your chance!
Shawn’s eyes squinted, a reflexive move he made to get a better visual on the target in front of him. He glanced down at the weapon monitor, a faint green wireframe diagram of the Maelstrom and her weapons outfit. He watched as the image of the armed and highly lethal missile flashed on the inboard side under his right wing root. The Azure, a medium-range missile with a highly lethal armor-piercing warhead, would easily shred the Kafaran fighter in a split second. It was ready to launch. It was waiting to launch. All that required was the flick of his finger.
Do it, the voice called out unrelentingly. For Sylvia. For Second Earth. For all of them.
Shawn inhaled his ship’s recycled air slowly deeply, feelings its coolness on the back of his throat. He then exhaled leisurely, and the almost metallic taste of it wafted across his tongue. He moved to pull the trigger.
It’s been said that, in the stillness of space, you can sometimes “hear” the most peculiar things. Sometimes it’s the wind, or air hissing out of some imagined crack in your canopy. In that brief half-second before Shawn could fire the weapon, a voice sprang into his mind—one he hadn’t expected to hear at all. Surely, this is what those perceived noises must have sounded like. It was something just on the edge of his conscience, vying for temporary control of his faculties.
People change, Mister Kestrel. It was Melissa’s words, and in her own melodic voice. As if he were succumbing to the control of them, the words seemed to stop everything around him. His cockpit filled with a silence he had never known before. Soon even the thought of the Kafaran in his forward sights disappeared. There was no missile, and no Maelstrom warship. It was just Shawn, and the soft voice of the woman for whom he had come to care so much.
People change, Mister Kestrel, the voice said again. Was it really true? Could people really change their inherent nature? Were these the Kafarans that killed his wife? If they were, would their deaths make any difference in the here and now? Did they, like most sentient beings, carry their own regrets around like old luggage that should have been tossed out long ago? Did they have families and loved ones they’d lost during the war? Surely they must, Shawn thought. Surely there must be, or have been, some Kafarans at some point who thought things needed to be different. They were here, now, dying for the USC personnel.
Regardless of their ulterior motive—if one existed at all—they were helping, and Shawn had to admit that the Rhea and her quickly dwindling complement of fighters could use it. He could very easily dispatch this alien, and it was true that no one would probably be any the wiser for it.
No one that is, except for himself.
No. Shawn needed this alien alive, if only to help turn the tide. Whatever the outcome of this battle, they were on the same side for time being. He had never turned his back on a comrade before, and he wasn’t about to start now. In that split second of revelation, Shawn eased the pressure of his finger and moved it safely away from the trigger.
Melissa was right. People do change. Not in a moment. Not overnight. Perhaps not even in half a lifetime, but they do all have the same potential for change.
It was in that moment the Kafaran fired its forward lasers at the incoming turret. The bolts of red energy hacked out from the Kafaran fighter and severed one of the four barrels off the Meltranians’ weapon. A split second later, the Kafaran pulled up sharply, giving Shawn Kestrel complete access to the target. The Maelstrom’s auto-targeting system locked onto the weapons platform, a glowing green set of crosshairs now following the target on Shawn’s heads-up display with precision timing. He didn’t even need to think about the trigger on the control stick, or the medium-range missile already at his command. He simply squeezed the yellow trigger and watched as the missile streaked away from his fighter. It struck the turret dead center and blew it into two large fragments that spiraled away from one another, with the rest of the assembly sparking and arcing with unconstrained energy.
Shawn pulled back on the control stick of his fighter and sailed over the smoking remains of the turret. The Kafaran he’d been trailing a moment before was nowhere to be found. It seemed as though a dozen others had risen up to take his place. They attacked the Meltranians from every angle, firing their destructive beams of green energy into every corner of the beast.
The undamaged Kafaran destroyer, now dangerously close to the Meltranian, was trying to stop the more powerful enemy vessel with everything it had. Shawn watched helplessly as the large-caliber Kafaran cannons had little to no effect on the seemingly impenetrable hull of the intruder’s vessel. The telltale signs of the Meltranians’ isotonic cannon began to form again, and Shawn feared that the Kafaran vessel wouldn’t stand a chance. By the time the white light again filled space and the enormous bolt of energy flew from the cannon, the Kafaran craft had abruptly changed course, causing the isotonic round to fly under the destroyer. However, several Sector Command pilots—and twice as many Kafarans—were i
n the direct line of the blast and were vaporized in seconds.
The bolt of energy continued unfettered until it grazed the underside of the Kafaran carrier some moments later. Due to the stronger shields of the carrier, and the distance between the two warships, the round seemed more to bounce off the shields than to be absorbed by it. The Meltranian ship, seizing its chance to destroy the Kafaran capital ship, wasted little time in pressing its advantage.
On the bridge of the Kafaran carrier, Admiral William Graves had different plans. He ordered the carrier to pick up speed and to come alongside the intruder’s vessel at a distance of eight hundred yards, intent on broadsiding the Meltranians before the enemy could get off another round from its powerful cannon.
Shawn watched his sensors for a moment as the two ships came near to one another, and it took him only a moment to realize what Admiral Graves was planning to do. As a species, a broadside attack was far from what a Kafaran commander would have done in William’s place. As it was, it might turn out that just such a maneuver would save all of them in the end.
It wasn’t long after that Shawn noticed five Meltranian Beta fighters coming in from his port-forward quarter. There didn’t seem to be a single friendly vessel around to assist him until three Kafaran fighters screamed over his canopy and headed for the Meltranians’ position. Shawn, never one to be outdone by anyone—friend or foe—rushed into the fight behind them. Each of the Kafarans took out a single Meltranian ship, all with their short-range lasers. The last two belonged to Shawn. He could see that the two enemy fighters were close together and in a tight formation. He immediately launched two of his fragmentation missiles and watched as they converged at the center point between the two enemy vessels, exploding and showering the targets in a spray of white-hot metal fragments.
One of the fighters seemed to be damaged beyond the pilot’s ability to control it. It screamed out of the combat zone and Shawn never caught sight of it again. The second fighter streaked off, presumably to lick his wounds, and then came back around on Shawn’s tail looking for revenge. The fighter moved faster than Shawn could turn, and then pelted his fighter in a hail of lasers. A handful of them pierced his wing, severing his weapons control for that side of the fighter. Luckily for Shawn, a lone droid fighter took out the Meltranian before it could do any further damage, and Shawn wondered briefly if it was Trent at the controls of the helpful little craft.
By now, the Kafaran carrier and the Meltranians were in an all-out slugfest. It looked to Shawn like the seagoing battles of old Earth. Each ship was firing with every laser turret at its disposal. The blanket of energy that stretched from one ship to the other was nearly impenetrable, and none of the fighters from either side of the conflict dared to venture anywhere near the battling capital ships. Unfortunately, with Graves now trying to attack the Meltranian on its port side, it had left the Rhea woefully unprotected—with the Meltranian free to fire at the USC carrier at its leisure. That Graves and the Kafarans had distracted the Meltranians to this point was probably the Rhea’s only saving grace.
The destroyer Breckenridge tried to close the gap between itself and the Meltranians as well. It raced ahead of the Rhea and acted as a shield for the Unified Government’s largest and proudest carrier.
The Kafaran destroyer, meanwhile, had completed a leisurely turn to port, with the Meltranians now firmly inside its weapon range. While the Meltranian vessel fired on the Kafaran carrier on its port side, the Kafaran destroyer began attacking the intruder’s starboard. And with the Breckenridge firing on the Meltranians’ bow, victory seemed only a few shots away.
That’s when the Meltranian ship, seemingly indifferent to the flanking attacks it was under, fired its main cannon at the Breckenridge. The shot came with much less warning than with previous iterations, and Shawn could only speculate that it was a far weaker version of the blasts previously launched. The salvo, nonetheless, was completely effective. The sparkling blue isotonic round struck the Breckenridge’s bridge structure, all but severing it from the rest of the hull. Now at half-speed and still slowly accelerating, it continued straight along its previous path—heading right for the intruder.
The Meltranian vessel altered course. The movement, however, was too late. The smoldering wreckage of the Breckenridge plowed into the lower spire-like superstructure of the Meltranian vessel, shearing off almost a quarter of the intruder’s mass in the process.
Shawn watched as a large chunk of the Meltranian vessel floated away, sputtering and spurting raw plasma in its wake. Through the entire ordeal, it never once ceased turret fire on either of the Kafaran ships.
Raven’s voice came over the communications channel as loud and clear as if she were sitting right next to Shawn. “Seriously? Won’t that thing just die already?”
“It looks like it’s going to take more than just raw firepower to knock that thing out,” Shawn replied. “Almost every energy weapon we fire at them is being absorbed into the ship. We’re going to have to beat it into submission with warheads.”
“And how do we do that, exactly?”
Shawn smiled to himself. “Philliums, that’s how. If we can set up a string of concussive shockwaves near their hull, we could probably do some major damage.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “You want to use the fighters as mine layers?”
“Yes, I do. Is anyone out here equipped for it?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s not a usual ordnance load for a fighter.”
“You know what that means, right?”
“No,” Roslyn said nervously. “What?”
“Bagpipes.”
Raven’s eyes went wide. “You’ve got to be kidding!” she replied heatedly. “McAllister? She’s not up for that.”
“She’s on board the Rhea now getting her fighter repaired. Her craft was damaged earlier, but I’m sure it’s spaceworthy by now. Contact the carrier and have them outfit her with a full load of Philliums and tell them to get her back into space double-time.”
“Yes, sir,” she said uneasily. “But, in my opinion, this is not a good idea.”
“Well, I’m all out of good ideas here, so I think it’s time to delve into our bag of bad ones.”
Back in the hangar deck of the Rhea, Ensign Clarissa McAllister was just reentering the hangar after checking in with Captain Krif in CIC. She’d only been back aboard the carrier for fifteen minutes—time enough for the carrier’s technicians to replace the damaged engine core and install a new auxiliary power unit into her fighter.
The most advantageous thing about the new Maelstrom fighters were their ability to be repaired quickly, with major component swap-outs taking only a few minutes, versus considerably longer times for the older Seminole-class interceptors. This was the first time that “rapid repairs”—a term coined by the technicians—had been performed during actual combat, and it looked as though the thoughtfulness of the design was going to pay off. In minutes, Clarissa knew she’d be back in space with the rest of her squadron.
As she approached the scratched, pitted fighter that only an hour before had been beautiful and gleaming, she heard her name called from across the cavernous hold. Helmet cradled under her arm, she turned her head toward the originator of the call, her golden tresses fluttering with the sudden movement.
Her violet eyes locked onto the handsome Sergeant Trent Maddox as he bounded across the hangar from one of the many compartments that lined the compartment’s walls.
“Hey,” he wheezed, stopping at her feet to catch his breath. “Where you going in such a hurry?”
She smiled as she laid a gentle hand on his face. It seemed to instantly revive him. “I’ve got to get back out there,” she said, jerking her head toward the launch tube. “Weren’t you just piloting one of the droid fighters?”
“Yeah, and I just died. Some Alpha got the best of me when I wasn’t looking.”
She smiled playfully. “You look pretty sexy for a dead guy.”
Trent’s shoulders slu
mped and he frowned pitifully. “And you look like you just got here.”
“And now I have to go back, love,” she said as she patted his cheek sweetly. “Sorry.”
“Can’t we get a cup of coffee or something before you go?”
“Not unless you plan on sharing it with me in the cockpit.”
The pained expression on his face told her that he wasn’t looking for a paltry date. The sorrow in his eyes told her what she needed to know.
She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be back soon.”
“I understand,” he said with a slow nod. “It sucks, but I understand. You have your duty…and you have to follow orders.”
“That’s right,” she said with a smile. “But I’ve got a heart, too. It doesn’t follow anyone’s orders but my own. Trust me when I say that I’ll be back soon.”
Trent smirked. “Fine. Go…go kill some aliens.” He then admonished her with a wag of his finger. “Just make sure you’re home in time for dinner.”
She cocked an eyebrow and smiled mischievously. “Not just any aliens, dear. I get to destroy a whole ship.”
Trent went wide-eyed as her words sank in. “Oh, my God. That is so hot.”
She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips gently. “Just you hold that thought until I get back.”
“Oh, you can count on that!”
No less than six minutes later, Ensign Clarissa McAllister was flying on Shawn’s starboard wing, a full load of eight Phillium missiles on her Maelstrom—and little else, save for her short-range lasers.
“I’m not sure I can do this, sir,” she told Shawn over the tac-net.
“We’ll be right behind you, Clarissa. Just get as close to the Meltranians as you can and let the missiles go.”
“It’s not the getting close to them part that bothers me, sir. It’s the speed that I’ll need to do so. I mean, can’t I just launch these things?”
“No. We need them to explode near the hull, not on it. You’ll need to be going as slow as possible; otherwise your inertia will carry the missiles beyond the hull and out into space.”
Second Earth Page 23
