“The Lucani Ibron are not invincible, Admiral. No one is.”
“Do you think you can stop them, Captain?”
Anastasia’s eyes glazed over, and she ignored the question. “All three planets—they were destroyed at the same time?”
The Admiral nodded gravely.
“Then we are dealing with three separate ships?”
“Unless they can be in three places at once.”
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” interjected another officer, from off-screen.
Anastasia ignored the officer’s remark. “Can we track them?”
“We have deployed tachyon detector beacons,” replied Admiral Green, Wright’s highest-ranking tactical officer, as the screen changed to show him. “The beacons, which were developed when the Lucani Ibron made contact ten years ago, can detect Lucani Ibron hyperspace movements within their immediate vicinities. However,” he continued, “the enemy vessels have begun avoiding the beacons. Only when they get within a few hundred parsecs of Earth will the beacons be closely-spaced enough to ensure full coverage.” He stared hard at the Captain. “And by then, it will be too late.”
“What were their last known positions and headings?” she asked.
“The limited data we have received indicated the three ships heading toward three new Confederation planets,” Green answered. “And since they have yet to attack these planets, we are assuming that they are still recharging their primary weapons.”
“Then presumably they still have that limitation?”
The Admiral cocked his head. “Presumably.”
“What are we going to do?” Anastasia asked. “You mentioned evacuations?”
The viewscreen re-centered on Wright. “We have begun evacuations of the planets,” replied the Fleet Admiral. “But they will never be completed in time. We predict that we only have a few hours left before their arrival.” The Admiral removed his monocle. “And the Inferno is the only ship not already stationed there that can make it to any of the planets in time.”
What little color remained in Anastasia’s porcelain face instantly drained. “And what about the other two planets?”
The Admiral tapped his monocle softly on the hardwood table. “New Burma is the most densely populated of the three. That is where you will go.”
“But, Admiral—”
Wright raised a bony hand. “I pray that you will not fail us again, Captain.” He replaced his monocle, steepling his fingers once again. “That is all.”
Anastasia stared at the Fleet Admiral unblinkingly, holding his gaze for several tense moments. Then, without a word, the Captain spun out of her chair and stormed off the bridge.
“God help us all,” she heard someone say as the doors closed behind her.
. . . . .
Zach awoke with a start, and instantly regretted it. A scything lance of pain ripped through his skull, and for a moment Zach felt—rather, wished—that he would simply pass out again.
“Commander? Commander Wallace?”
Zach reopened his eyes—more slowly this time—making no attempt to move. A kaleidoscopic burst of light rewarded the effort.
“How do you feel, Commander?”
Zach thought about this for some time. “Am I dead?”
There was a hollow laugh. The sound pained Zach’s ringing ears. “No, Commander. You’re going to be fine.”
Zach sighed—another painful experience.
“Too bad.”
When next he woke, the searing pain had been replaced by a mute throbbing, and Zach filled his lungs with recycled air, belatedly surprised that no new pain accompanied the process. He sat up slowly, recognizing the familiar layout of the infirmary, and spent the next several minutes testing each of his limbs.
A nurse droid hovered into the room. “Please lie down, Commander,” it droned. “The doctor will be with you soon.”
Zach ignored the machine and instead hoisted himself off the bed, gingerly putting weight on his feeble legs. As he steadied himself, a sudden torrent of memories coursed through his mind, bringing back with awful clarity the last few minutes before he had been knocked unconscious. “My squadron,” he mumbled. “What happened to my squadron?”
The nurse droid looked at him with hollow, helpless eyes. “If you would just lie down, Commander, the doctor will—”
“What happened to my squad??”
As if in response to his question, the doors swished open and an elderly man entered the chamber. “Calm down, Mr. Wallace,” he soothed. “Just try to calm down, please.”
Zach’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll calm down when you’ve told me what happened out there.”
“Very well,” the doctor agreed. “But perhaps you had better sit down.”
“I’ll stand, thank you,” Zach replied, but a sudden wave of dizziness forced him to reconsider, and he slumped back on the bed. “The last thing I remember, we broke off to attack …”
“Your squadron has been destroyed, Commander. Only yourself and Lieutenant Brennan have survived.” The doctor stared dolefully at the sterile metal floor. “I am sorry.”
But Zach did not hear his apology. He had passed out.
. . . . .
Dex brooded over his assignment in his austere quarters aboard the Cerberus. He loathed riot duty—even when the rioters were violent, he could not bring himself to shoot at civilians. And the danger from a teenager with an overcharged hand blaster was as real as that from a Vr’amil’een soldier with a mass driver cannon.
Dex ground his teeth together hard. There was a sudden crack and Dex looked down to find that he had snapped the input stylus he had been holding very neatly in two.
He was angry. He focused on the anger, massaging it in his mind as if it were a tangible thing. He concentrated furiously on his current mission. The more he did so, the more he knew he was avoiding the true cause of his rage.
Commander Rutcliffe rubbed his temples and looked across the Spartan room to a holocube on the small desk. The picture it displayed, suspended above its base, was of Ryan, his massive arms folded across his barrel chest like a superhero, and Alexis, tiny by comparison, mimicking his pose. Though she tried to ape his stern expression, she could not hide her habitual smile. They both looked rather ridiculous.
A thin smile found its way to Dex’s lips, but was quickly replaced by a pained grimace. He closed his eyes in a vain attempt to shut out his feelings.
You are a soldier. You are strong. Feelings are for the weak.
He exhaled and heavily hung his head.
The Commander checked his nanocomputer to find that he still had over an hour until their arrival in the Charnus System. He picked up the datapad he had been studying and tossed it to the floor. He had all but memorized the information therein: maps, personnel ledgers, probable terrorist locations, recent events. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of his mission was that several local Confederation government buildings had been attacked in the past week, resulting in some serious damage and the deaths of two government workers and a soldier. The terrorists could not just be ignored.
But what can I do? Dex wondered. I’m a soldier, not a negotiator—not a counter-terrorist expert. How am I supposed to stop the attacks without simply killing every teenager who throws a rock?
Unconsciously, Dex found his gaze had strayed back to the holocube on the desk. His vision blurred, and, for the first time he could remember, the Commander was crying.
. . . . .
“Commander? Commander Wallace?” The nurse droid hovered down the metallic corridor after Zach. “I do not believe the doctor has cleared you for duty yet.”
“I’ve just cleared myself for duty, tin-head,” Zach fired, slipping into the transport tube and keying it closed. The droid’s voice faded away as Zach was whisked down to the ship’s flight deck.
The door slid open and Zach walked down a short hallway, stopping at his locker only long enough to grab his helmet, and entered the hangar. Though his personal ZF-575 was damaged beyon
d all hope of repair, sulking piteously in a corner, Zach found a suitable replacement and used his nanocomputer and his security clearance to pop the canopy and activate the ship. As he climbed the short entrance ladder and hopped in, snagging his hospital gown in the process, he was reminded that this was the second time this week he was going into battle without his flight suit.
The hangar boss hurried over to check on the unscheduled departure, but Zach waved him off, starting up the ship’s engines and keying for the hangar bay doors to open. The boss evidently knew better than to try to stop the Commander, and he did not attempt to override the bay doors’ opening. As soon as there was room, Zach shot the ship through the gap and keyed the hyperdrive for Zebulon Beta, a solid three hours away from the Utopia system, even at top speed.
Zach had no idea if he would get there in time, and he had absolutely no idea what he would do to stop the Lucani Ibron ship once it arrived to destroy the planet. The only thing Zach was sure of was that the Lucani Ibron would pay—he would make them pay—for the unspeakable destruction they had wrought upon the human race.
Another thought, however, meandered at the edge of Zach’s consciousness. He tried to push it away, but to no avail—and he knew—deep down, he knew—that his actual motivation stemmed not as much out of a desire to protect the innocent people of Zebulon Beta, not as much out of a desire to repay the Lucani Ibron for the destruction of Landus, or Utopia, or even the Indomitable a decade before. Zach knew full well his primary motivation, the thought that smoldered most fervently in his mind, was to avenge the slaughter of his friends, the late pilots of Wolfpack Squadron.
Zach found the knowledge of his true motives somewhat comforting. Without even realizing it, within a few moments a thin smile had formed at the Commander’s lips.
. . . . .
A familiar pattern of streaming starlines surrounded Anastasia, a spectacular backdrop she steadfastly ignored, her attention instead focused on the display of the chamber’s holo-vid projector. Displayed by that projector were news reports and Confederation briefings on recent activity she had missed during her recent catastrophic missions and subsequent self-imposed communications blackout. It was hard to believe everything she saw had happened within the past 72 hours.
The reports chronicled petitions to secede filed by four Confederation planets, one of which had apparently become the new center of SPACER activity. Who in the organization had survived the destruction of Landus, Anastasia did not know, but she morosely concluded that it was probably the violent fringe types too extreme even for the SPACER mainstream. That the new headquarters were located at Charnus Prime was hardly surprising.
Three planets destroyed … four more seceding. Anastasia wondered if a government had ever lost seven planets in 24 hours before. And she knew the carnage was far from over.
The planets that hadn’t seceded weren’t faring much better. Riots, looting, and anarchy were all common. Several cities had declared martial law, and many of the more powerful city-states had taken the opportunity to stir up old feuds and declare war upon each other.
Three planets, of course, were vainly trying to evacuate in the face of their imminent demise.
The Vr’amil’een, well known for their propensity to pounce at any sign of weakness within the Confederation, had begun their largest offensive since the assault rebuffed by Daniel Atgard in 3040. Though the Vr’amil’een treaty still theoretically forbade the reptilian race from producing any capital warships—Cruiser class or larger—the past decade’s continuing unrest within the Confederation had caused that mandate to go largely unenforced. Consequently, the tenacious Vr’amil’een had rebuilt their armada to pre-assault levels. ConFedIntel reports claimed that most if not all of the Vr’amil’een forces at Utopia escaped before the planet was destroyed, and massive fleet movements toward two new Confederation systems were underway. The skeletal defense forces stationed in these systems—depleted by attrition and the loss of ships being used in the evacuations—were no match for the sizeable forces headed their way.
Anastasia sighed. She would trade places with those planets’ defenders any day. They didn’t have a Lucani Ibron ship coming for them, after all, and compared to one of those incomprehensibly invincible monstrosities, the entire Vr’amil’een Armada seemed infinitely less menacing.
The Captain fought to clear her mind, focusing on what lay ahead. After her failed attempt to stop the Lucani Ibron ship at Landus, Anastasia had spent many hours with Vance in engineering, trying to determine if there was any way to make her ship’s SDU effective against the seemingly invincible aliens. Though there were few adjustments that could be made to the terrible weapon—such as remodulating it to tweak the frequency—Vance had also explained that the weapon was far more effective at closer range, and, though Anastasia had no desire to get any closer to the alien ship, it at least left her with some hope.
Anastasia re-checked her chronometer, finding that only a few minutes remained until they were set to arrive at New Burma. She flicked off the holo-vid projector, still spouting scenes of terror and rebellion, and walked to the room’s metallic door, which opened silently at her arrival. She stepped through and onto the bridge, where her crewmates awaited her.
“I was just about to call for you,” Commander Zeeman said. “Only three minutes to realspace emergence.”
Anastasia nodded and found her way to the Captain’s chair, settling into it with trepidation. Her mood was tense, but not panicked—perhaps simply because the situation seemed so helpless that even panic would do little good.
She surveyed her bridge officers, analyzing their demeanors before this, their biggest test together. Commander Zeeman looked to his status consoles, an expression of calm but serious concentration evident on his face. He bore the look of a battle-hardened veteran, a seasoned officer whose 35 years of combat experience had chiseled away any vestiges of nervousness, indecisiveness, or fear. Only a slight tapping of his index finger on his chair’s armrest hinted that any stress whatsoever lurked beneath the Commander’s controlled exterior.
Byron Johnson, to the Captain’s left, flicked his eyes nervously from one console to another, double-checking readouts but clearly not absorbing them. Though, at age 68, Johnson was the oldest member of Anastasia’s crew, he had spent most of his years in the service drawing up tactical strategies from the safety of the ConFedCom Headquarters Building. His files, in fact, showed only three years of sporadic shipborne experience, and it was unclear as to whether he had ever actually tasted combat. Anastasia hoped his services would not be needed in an emergency, and she tacitly reminded herself not to call on him to make any split-second decisions.
Ariyana, seated at her astrometrics station in front and to Anastasia’s right, outwardly looked nervous, though Captain Mason knew from prior experience that she would perform admirably under pressure—even the unparalleled pressure that would soon be at hand.
Lieutenant Matthews, to Ariyana’s left, stroked the control stick with an anxious energy borne not of nervousness, but of excitement and anticipation. Anastasia had known another pilot—the inimitable Zach Wallace—who had shown such signs before entering battle, and he had used his intensity and adrenaline to perform feats of piloting skill and finesse that could only be described as superhuman.
“Captain,” called Victor, interrupting her analysis, “we have arrived.”
Anastasia nodded and Cody pulled back on the hyperdrive lever, returning the Inferno to realspace and bringing the beleaguered planet of New Burma into view.
Transport ships, personal shuttles, and cargo carriers dotted the viewscreen, their bluish and yellow-white drive trails visible over the winking lights of the darkened nighttime half of the planet. The frenetic activity, the incomprehensible radio chatter, and the preponderance of lights on the planet’s surface all hinted at the pitifully incomplete state of the evacuation.
“My God,” whispered Ariyana, “it looks like they’ve hardly begun.”
But Anastasia did not have time to curse the harsh logistical realities of a full-planet evacuation. Preceded only by a trill alarm from the short-range sensors, the now-familiar outline of a Lucani Ibron ship appeared out of the void, constricting into its signature ovoid shape as it emerged into realspace. Anastasia double-checked that her ship’s terrible Subspace Destabilization Unit was fully charged, and ordered Lieutenant Matthews to bring the ship within range of the aliens. As she did so, she fought unsuccessfully to push from her mind the knowledge that, when she fired, several of the evacuating ships would be caught well within her horrific weapon’s lethal range.
Strangely calming to her was the thought that she would probably be robbing the people on those ships of nothing more than the last few seconds of their lives.
* * * * *
CHAPTER 14
Zach tried to push the overtaxed hyperdrive engines even harder, but, even with the safety protocols manually disengaged, the engines were simply at their limits. The ZF-575, however, as one of the smallest ships capable of hyperspace travel, moved at a respectable pace, one that would bring Zach to Zebulon Beta within a few minutes, a few minutes that would feel like an hour to the impetuous pilot. When he arrived, he would be without the firepower of his fighter-carrier, the Divine Hammer, a far slower ship unable to reach the Zebulon system remotely in time for whatever was about to occur there.
What Zach alone would do to the incoming Lucani Ibron ship, he still had no idea, but he felt as if the sheer power of his unbridled rage would be enough to overcome his enemy. Maybe he thought that, upon the alien vessel’s arrival, lasers would simply issue forth from his eyes to smote the murderous Lucani Ibron. His hatred was so palpable he almost thought it would be enough.
His fighter’s weaponry was formidable, however: wing-mounted class VI plasma burst cannon, silicon-refractor optical-discharge laser turrets, and missile tubes capable of launching the deadly Hellfire missile. The heavy fighter’s considerable firepower made it the match of Corvettes and Frigates several times its size, and Zach Wallace was as adept at using that firepower as any person alive.
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