Old Ironsides

by Dean Crawford

  Nathan walked to the boarding ladder and climbed up, and then the light in the hangar grew brighter as though somebody had switched on a light for him. He looked up in surprise and saw his reflection in the canopy, no longer that of an Aleeyan but now his own human face.

  Nathan jumped into the cockpit and sank down out of sight in the enormous seat before anybody could spot him. He put Schmidt’s projection unit down on a console to his left between ranks of switches, and searched desperately for a power console. He found one a few moments later and plugged the unit in.

  The power bar on the side of the unit flickered into life and he took a deep breath and hoped against hope that Schmidt was still in there somewhere.

  ‘Who the hell are you?!’

  Nathan looked to his left and saw a towering Aleeyan pilot glaring down at him from the boarding ladder, a helmet clasped in one giant hand.

  ***

  XLIV

  ‘Sub luminal in three, two, one…’

  CSS Titan rocketed out of super luminal cruise as Admiral Marshall stood on the command platform and gripped the combat rail tightly as he saw the featureless black display screen suddenly flare bright white and then the Earth loom up swiftly to fill it.

  ‘Sub luminal, shields up, launch all fighters!’

  Olsen’s order boomed across the bridge deck as the specks of Phantom fighters shot away from Titan’s launch bays, their ion engines flaring blue-white as Marshall looked at an orbital city not ten thousand meters from their location.

  ‘There he is! New Washington orbital, he’s in attack position!’

  ‘Helm, maximum speed, intercept him!’ Marshall yelled.

  The helmsman was already in motion, Titan rolling out and accelerating toward the vast orbital platform as a cloud of Aleeyan Hawk fighters soared out to meet the Phantoms fanning out into a combat spread. Against the earth’s immense blue, green and white surface flashes of plasma energy flickered between the two closing waves of Phantom and Hawk fighters and then they merged as one into a writhing ball of pilots all fighting to the death.

  ‘Their weapons are charged,’ the tactical officer warned. ‘He could fire on us at any instant!’

  Marshall stepped off the command platform and approached the main screen. The Aleeyan warship was turning alongside New Washington, her starboard batteries coming to bear upon the defenceless city.

  ‘No,’ Marshall said. ‘He’s not going to shoot at us.’

  ‘You kidding?’ Olsen uttered. ‘He’s closer to that city than any Aleeyan has been in two centuries!’

  Marshall lunged instinctively for the helmsman’s controls, even though they were already moving as the helmsman reacted to Marshall’s train of thought. Titan surged forward even as the rest of the fleet burst from super luminal cruise around them.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Olsen demanded of his captain as the huge warship accelerated forward.

  ‘Cutting them off,’ Marshall growled back. ‘We can’t shoot from here for fear of hitting the platform ourselves!’

  ‘If we don’t blast him now he could escape again!’ Olsen insisted.

  ‘Escape isn’t his plan,’ Marshall said as he watched the Aleeyan ship manoeuvre into position. ‘He’s here to finish what he started.’

  ‘Incoming signal!’ the communications officer cried. ‘It’s coming from inside the Aleeyan ship!’

  ‘On screen!’ Marshall ordered.

  ‘It’s not a visual signal,’ the officer replied, ‘it’s holographic.’

  Marshall frowned, and then in the middle of the bridge the glowing blue figure of Doctor Hans Schmidt appeared. The admiral stormed toward him as he pointed at the doctor’s shimmering and ephemeral form.

  ‘You’ve been deactivated!’

  ‘I’ve been framed,’ Schmidt replied. ‘The enemy of mankind is not the Aleeyans but a man.’

  ‘Shut him off!’ Marshall yelled at the communications officer.

  ‘We’ve all been deceived,’ Schmidt went on. ‘The only person who can figure out who is behind everything is on that Aleeyan ship right now, so you can’t destroy her!’

  Marshall’s features screwed up in distaste. ‘You think that anybody aboard this ship gives a damn what you think, Schmidt? That Aleeyan ship is going to take out as many of our people as it can and you’re defending it? You’re a traitor and a liar!’

  ‘I am immortal,’ Schmidt replied, ‘technically at least. What reason would I possibly have to want mankind erased from existence? Without you, I can’t myself exist.’

  ‘You’re doing just fine right now and you’re aboard the Aleeyan capital ship,’ Marshall shot back. ‘Forgive us if we’re not entirely convinced of your concern for our welfare.’

  ‘Nor are the Aleeyans!’ Schmidt insisted. ‘We’re trapped aboard and they’re hunting us!’

  ‘We?’ Marshall snarled.

  ‘Nathan Ironside is with me,’ Schmidt said. ‘It is he who ensured that my data banks remained active despite your deactivation of my mainframe. He knew that I could not possibly be behind the Aleeyan’s attempts to reintroduce the plague to mankind.’

  ‘Ironside is still alive?’ Marshall asked, his eyes wide.

  ‘Surprised, admiral?’ Schmidt challenged. ‘Concerned, perhaps?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ the Executive Officer demanded.

  ‘That the person you should be hunting down is not myself and certainly not Nathan Ironside,’ Schmidt replied as he looked pointedly at Admiral Marshall. ‘It should be somebody with a great hatred of the Aleeyans who has long yearned for a reason to declare war on them, somebody with a true grudge to bear.’

  Olsen glanced at Marshall and scoffed. ‘Give me a break, Schmidt. Nobody’s buying into an idea like that and…’

  ‘Admiral Marshall has gone rogue,’ Schmidt snapped. ‘He is the driving force behind the attack on the colony vessel Icarus, because despite all that the Aleeyans have done they were not present in the area in which the vessel was attacked. I have the data logs, Admiral, the evidence directly from Havok’s ship that places it seventy three light years from Icarus at the time of the attack. You’re fighting the wrong enemy.’

  The bridge of Titan fell silent as Admiral Marshall stared at Schmidt as though he were a deer caught in the headlights of a car.

  ‘You’re insane,’ he uttered.

  ‘No more so than a man who has repeatedly stated that he believes all orbiting citizens to be less worthy than those on the surface, and who has repeatedly called for open conflict with the Aleeyans. What better to help a plot to overthrow the Senate than a supposed Aleeyan attack on human travellers deep in the cosmos? What better than a new plague to conveniently wipe the orbital cities clean of their infected populations and clear the way for a new generation of pure humans?’

  In the silence on the bridge every pair of eyes seemed to be staring at Admiral Marshall, who stared back at Schmidt in silence with his mouth slightly agape.

  ‘Nothing to say, admiral?’ Schmidt demanded. ‘No rallying cry for your troops or valiant words of battle? Cat got your tongue?’

  Marshall’s face reddened and he clenched his fists by his side.

  ‘A false flag operation and genocide?’ he hissed. ‘You, a damned doctor, come onto my bridge and accuse me of trying to forment a war for my own ends?’

  ‘You’ve gone rogue, admiral,’ Schmidt snapped back. ‘Military blockade on the orbital cities so any infected people cannot escape? An entire fleet now in earth orbit for the first time in centuries? The Senate’s long standing protocol to avoid combat with the Aleeyans overridden without a vote? I accuse you only of the facts, admiral – it’s down to you to explain them.’

  Marshall’s face screwed up in rage and he pointed at the communications officer.

  ‘Shut him off and block all of his signals!’

  The officer hesitated, uncertain as she glanced across at Olsen.

  ‘Do it,’ the Executive Officer ordered. ‘Shut
them all down.’

  Schmidt smiled bitterly at the Executive Officer. ‘Et tu, Olsen?’

  Olsen pointed at Schmidt, horror etched into his features. ‘You snivelling twerp, if you were alive I’d throttle you right here and now! I’d sooner die than sell out to those inhuman creeps!’

  Olsen stormed up to the communication officer’s panel and slammed his hand down on an emergency broadcast block switch. In an instant, Schmidt’s image flickered out as Marshall whirled to the tactical officer.

  ‘Charge all magazines, maximum firepower, take her down!’

  The officer hesitated. ‘But Schmidt said we still have people on board her.’

  ‘We have one person aboard her!’ Marshall screamed. ‘And a hundred thousand aboard New Washington! What’s it going to be, lieutenant?! One person who already died once, or a hundred thousand denied the chance to live the rest of the only lives they’ll ever get?! I’m not behind this plague and the Aleeyans must be destroyed!’

  The tactical officer hesitated a moment longer and then he glanced at the gunnery stations and nodded.

  Titan plunged toward New Washington and rolled as the helmsman brought her with tremendous precision into line with the Aleeyan vessel, rushing in toward the gap between the warship and New Washington’s vulnerable surface.

  ‘One thousand metres!’ the tactical officer called. ‘She’s charging weapons!’

  ‘Hold course, fire as you bear!’ Marshall yelled, and then added: ‘May the universe make us grateful for what we are about to receive.’

  Titan soared in from the blackness of space and plunged into the narrow gap between the Aleeyan warship and the orbital station as the warship’s plasma cannons opened fire in a tremendous barrage of vivid red plasma light.

  *

  Nathan pushed down with his feet and lunged outward at the Aleeyan pilot, shoved him hard with all of his strength. The giant pilot cried out as he flew backwards off the ladder and crashed onto the deck, the ladder tumbling to one side as Nathan ducked back into the cockpit.

  ‘Schmidt, are you there?!’

  Nothing responded, the cockpit silent as Nathan heard shouts of alarm and saw Aleeyans rushing toward him with their sharpened teeth bared in rage. He looked about the cockpit and saw that most of the switches and dials were demarked with crude labels: Oyl Preshure, Hite, Landing Legs, AirBrayk. He saw one marked Canapee and he hit it instinctively.

  The fighter’s thick canopy hissed as it closed, and as soon as it slammed shut Nathan reached out for a manual locking system he had seen to his left, which drove a bolt through a clasp and sealed the canopy shut just as dozens of Aleeyans rushed up to the side of the fighter, shouting and screaming in fury as their fists pounded the thick canopy.

  Nathan looked about him in desperation, the seat too large for his body and too low in the cockpit for him to see much. His pilot’s license training drifted through his mind from years before, in his time at least: Brakes on, fuel cock open and feed set to fuller tank, ignition off, master switch on…

  Nathan began to recognize the panels around him: radio and signals on his left, landing gear and flaps on forward left, airspeed and other dials above them, radar and some sort of tactical display in front of him, warning panels and fuel controls on forward right, and battery and engine start controls on his right. Nathan saw the master power switch a moment later and he hit it.

  The cockpit glowed into life all around him just as two Aleeyans clambered up onto the fighter’s nose and raised heavy looking metallic tools in their giant hands, ready to smash right through the canopy itself.

  ‘Er, shields?’ Nathan asked himself desperately.

  A massive crack shattered the silence and Nathan looked up sharply as the nearest Aleeyan slammed a huge wrench down against the canopy and a fractured splinter cracked through the scratched surface. Nathan could see that the canopy would only take a few blows like that before it failed. He looked down again and searched for some switch or other that would activate whatever shielding the craft had, and then the wrench hit the canopy again and he heard ragged, guttural cheers from the other Aleeyans surrounding him.

  ‘Come on!’ he yelled. ‘Sheilds?!’

  The Aleeyan raised his hand for a third time and the wrench plummeted down. Nathan squinted and then a blue haze appeared and the Aleeyan was forcefully hurled clear of the fighter as the shields glowed into life and Nathan heard the engines start.

  ‘What did I do?’ he asked thin air.

  ‘You screamed like a girl,’ Schmidt said as his blue head shimmered into life in the tactical display before Nathan.

  ‘Can you get us out of here?’ Nathan asked as he tried to veil his relief.

  ‘I can get the ship started and I could let the computer navigate us down to the surface, but I’m afraid with the battle raging outside that would see us facing certain death at the hands of the CSS fighters. You’ll have to take us through.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘And you’ll have to strap in,’ Schmidt added as he automatically raised Nathan’s seat so that he could see better out of the cockpit.

  Nathan pulled the seat harnesses over his shoulders and clicked them into place, yanking them hard to tighten them up enough to keep him in place as he saw the Aleeyans open fire with blasters and rifles at him.

  ‘Don’t worry, their hand weapons can’t penetrate the fighter’s shields.’

  ‘No,’ Nathan agreed, ‘but that thing can!’

  Four Aleeyans were pushing what looked like a cannon toward them, the ugly black barrel pointing straight at the fighter.

  ‘Weapons active!’ Schmidt snapped. ‘Take them down!’

  Nathan reached for the control column between his knees and he pressed the central red button without even thinking about it. The fighter bucked where it sat as two massive plumes of red plasma energy burst from its cannons, rocketed across the bay and slammed into the Aleeyan weapon with a bright explosion that sent components, flaming body parts and plasma spraying across the deck.

  ‘Cool,’ Nathan uttered in grim delight.

  ‘They’re closing the bay doors!’ Schmidt warned.

  Nathan saw a set of massive doors thunder down, blocking their access to the hull’s outer doors.

  ‘They’re all closed!’ Nathan said. ‘How the hell do we get out of here?’

  Schimdt smiled. ‘We knock. You know how, right?’

  Nathan’s thumb rested on the fire button again and Schmidt grinned with mischievous delight.

  ‘Get us out of here, Captain Ironside!’

  Nathan’s hand landed instinctively on the throttle bank to his left and he cautiously advanced them forwards as Schmidt activated the mass drive and the fighter lifted off the deck and the undercarriage retracted.

  Blasts of rifle fire splattered glowing plasma across the hull and the canopy, but the shields brushed the blows aside as the fighter turned inside the landing bay and Nathan aimed it at the outer hull doors.

  Suddenly the walls of the hangar bay around them split as though cleaved by giant axes of fire, brilliant explosions ripping through the bay and tossing fighter aircraft aside like dry leaves. Nathan saw the bodies of the Aleeyan warriors surrounding the fighter blasted aside, their bodies turned to charred wisps by the fearsome heat.

  ‘The ship’s coming apart!’

  The massive bay doors crumpled beneath the blows and the bitter vacuum of space hauled the atmosphere out of the bay amid swirling vortices of flame and destruction.

  ‘Full power, let’s go!’ Schmidt yelled.

  Nathan pushed the throttles open and the fighter rocketed toward the solid barriers of the outer hull doors as the inner doors descended before them. Nathan felt himself slammed against the seat by the acceleration and forgot to squeeze the trigger.

  ‘Fire!’ Schmidt yelled in horror.

  Nathan pressed the fire button as he flew the fighter straight through the hangar and shot beneath the inner doors as a blast of plasma smashed into t
he outer doors and surrounded the fighter, alarms blaring in the cockpit as the craft was consumed by the inferno.

  ***

  XLV

  Vasquez hit the street just as he saw Titan swoop in from out of nowhere.

  The city had fallen deathly silent, dense crowds all staring in horror at the sight of the immense Aleeyan warship looming outside their city, her aggressive and angular hull illuminated by the glow of the earth far below and her bristling weapons all pointing at the city as she closed in.

  Vasquez had a momentary glimpse of those cannon’s barrels starting to glow bright red and then all at once a massive salvo of plasma blasts burst from within them and rocketed like brilliant red stars toward the city’s protective shields.

  A horrendous chorus of screams echoed it seemed across the entire city as the plasma salvo thundered in, and then Titan’s huge bulk loomed into view even closer than the attacking warship. The blasts from the Aleeyan’s stern weapons crashed into Titan’s vast hull amid blossoming explosions that flared brightly, illuminating the interior of New Washington like red lightning bright enough that Vasquez was forced to shield his eyes with one hand against the blasts.

  Titan soared into full view, her immense size overwhelming at such close range as she roared silently past in the vacuum of space outside. Blast after blast hammered her huge hull, clouds of glowing red plasma churning on her far side as she took the brunt of the blows in her heroic dive to protect New Washington before she finally began to fire back.

  ‘Yeah!’ Vasquez yelled above the screams, and even as he did so those screams morphed into cheers and cries of elation.

  Thousands of fleeing citizens whirled instinctively as they heard the change in tone of the cacophony and then joined the cheering as Titan moved into her protective position, vivid blasts of plasma bursting like erupting volcanoes from her hull as she was battered at point-blank range by one of the most powerful Aleeyan warships ever built. Her own plasma salvos blasted back one after the other, bright blue halos of light bursting across the Aleeyan ship’s flanks one after the other and sending tumultuous clouds of debris spinning into space amid flaring fireballs.