The Adventures of Connor Jakes: Masks (The War for Terra Book 1)

by James Prosser

  “Connor!”

  Melaina saw Bonnie and Tuxor running across the bay. Both were armed, although Tuxor’s baton seemed to be getting more use against the rampaging howlers. Both drew up close as the former slaves moved off towards the freighters. Melaina gave Bonnie a quick look as she spotted a bleeding burn on the other woman’s shoulder. Bonnie waved off the look and turned to Connor.

  “Captain, I left Parker and Mendel on the Liberty,” she said. “I thought you might need some help getting these people out of here.”

  “Great thinkin’, Bonnie. You and the frog get into the lead ship. Melaina and I will take the second. Have Liberty run interference as we go. If anyone can cause chaos in the air, it’s those two idiots.”

  “What about me?” Bric asked, stepping closer to hear.

  “You stay with us,” Melaina said. “I need to keep my eye on you. The twins can go with Bonnie.”

  “The twins?” Jakes said, looking at the pretty android. “You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

  “Eyes up, Jakes,” Melaina responded, putting her hands to Connor’s face and lifting his eyes. “It was the most convenient thing I could find. I didn’t want to have to carry two soup cans around.”

  “Hey,” Jakes replied with a grin. “I ain’t complainin’.”

  The two teams split up and began herding humans onto the freighters. The ship Connor selected was finished, with only cosmetic enhancement left to be added. Bonnie’s ship was painted with a shipping company logo and wild teal stripes down the side. Rene and the doctor stayed on deck until the slaves were able to get on board. The twins had taken control of the howlers and were keeping the reptiloids occupied as the humans escaped. Some remained trapped by the guards on the other side of the assembly line, clawing at their captors. Others simply continued their work, dead to the preparations around them and wanting only to be done with life. In the end, they could not help those who had already decided to die. As the last of the freed slaves moved into the hold, Connor settled himself into the pilot seat and held up a small device.

  “It’s time for Phase Two,” he said, pressing a button on the box.

  The shipyard shuddered as tons of water fell through the roof of the cavern, detonated by the explosives set at the bottom of the lake above. The water washed away reptiloids and attendants as it battered the space frames. The ramp on the freighter began to rise even as the final humans looked back down the tunnel to the oncoming wave. As the ship rose on invisible drives, Rene Malik finally felt he had kept his promise. In Rene’s arm was a little girl whose name was a number and on whose face was a look it had never held before.

  Hope.

  9

  “What happened above Aleinhelm? There are things I would prefer not to think about. There are other things I prefer to remember alone. In either case, Connor Jakes should not have had to endure that battle. He deserved better.”

  Tuxor

  After-Incident Debriefing Notes

  The two freighters lifted through the cloud layer towards the blue sky above. Boxy and inelegant, the ships came equipped with heavier shielding than either the warships or passenger liners from the other lines. They were heavy and filled over capacity with slaves, but still moved steadily upwards as needed. The yacht, Sweet Liberty, had been flying escort duty around the bulky craft since they had lumbered from the open shipyard doorways. Just after takeoff, a wall of water had flooded the tunnels and washed tons of metal, unfinished ships, howlers, slaves and reptiloids out into the ravine below. The loss of so much life had been slightly mollified by the salvation of the cargo in their hold, but it still felt as if they could have done more to save the humans left behind.

  The compact, functional bridge of the freighter was packed, with Connor and Melaina sharing the main console and Rene monitoring communications. Bonnie had relayed coordinates for the nearest M-space jump lane, and both ships were now heading out towards freedom. So far, there had been no resistance to their escape, although the disruption of Veles’ computer networks and the destruction of the shipyard had probably created enough chaos to keep them free of fighters until low orbit. Planetary defense fighters would be waiting for them as they breached the atmosphere. The ship rumbled under their seats as more power was applied to the thrusters.

  “Shunt all power from the restraint systems and call back to the passengers that it’s about to get real bumpy,” Jakes yelled back to Rene. “These things weren’t designed to move fast in atmosphere.”

  “Bonnie is reporting approaching defense fighters from above,” Rene replied. “She doesn’t think there’s any way around them.”

  “They’re faster than we are but don’t have the shielding. Tell her to run straight through them.”

  “Straight through?”

  “Those ships don’t pose much of a threat,” Jakes replied. “As long as they don’t have anything heavier to bring in, we should make it to the jump point without a problem.”

  Rene went back to the communications console and relayed the message. Melaina had just spotted the fighters on her own screen, still outside the atmosphere but circling their probable insertion point. The freighters were equipped with strong shields to defend against pirate raiders, but had no weapons systems save cutting lasers mounted on their flat noses. It was mainly used to clear asteroids in deep space, and at lower power to align the ship with docking stations. Just in case, Melaina activated the system.

  “Hey, Captain!” the voice of Parker Trega erupted from the bridge speakers, startling the crew. “D’ya want us to go on ahead and clear a path?”

  Sweet Liberty had cradled in the sensor shadow between the two freighters. Parker and Mendel had been diligent in following their orders and not leaping ahead to check for attackers, but Connor felt the time had come to release them. Liberty’s combat systems were heavily modified and could take much more of a pounding than ships three times her size.

  “Go on ahead, boys,” Connor called. “These elephants we’re flyin’ ain’t gonna be much help in a firefight anyway. Clear us a way to the jump point and try not to blow up the orbital station, alright?”

  “Roger, boss,” Parker replied, the smile in his voice filtering over the comm system clearly. “Moving ahead to blow things up.”

  On the sensor display, the yacht shot ahead of the freighters, their shield and weapons systems snapping on as they broke atmosphere and shot towards the approaching fighters. Connor dialed back thruster power and raised his own shields. He could feel the pull of gravity beginning to fall away as the ship entered low orbit. The pull ahead was much easier. He had forgotten how responsive the feel of a large ship could be, and how they were designed to give the pilot a feel for their surroundings, making docking and landing much easier. A flare of lights on the sensor console showed Sweet Liberty had engaged the fighters ahead and were making short work of the lightly armored patrol craft.

  Bonnie began to pull her freighter further away, making the two ships harder to target and keeping their shields from overlapping. Connor could see the flashes of light as patrol craft were destroyed by the yacht ahead. All was going according to plan. He refused to allow himself to relax, however, as breakaway fighters were flitting in from the edges of their sensors. The small ships began to pound the freighter’s hull, not doing much damage but sending reverberations through the hull and rattling their nerves.

  “Connor, we’ve got a fall-off of shield power in the primary buffers,” Melaina cried. “Some of those shots are getting through.”

  “How’s Bonnie?” Connor asked, not taking the time to look at the sensor screen.

  “She’s okay. It looks like her ship went through final calibrations of its systems, but ours didn’t.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Connor replied with a grin. “Rene, get in the back and see if any of those people ever worked on the shield systems.”

  “I’m on it,” the man replied, unbuckling and setting off through the door to the cargo hold.

  C
onnor was struggling to keep the bulky ship on course. The fighters were attempting to herd them closer to the orbital station, where their defense cannons could blast through their hull. Melaina tried firing the laser cutter, but it had no effect. She checked the power levels to find the ship had been locked into low power mode. The best she would be able to do was paint a dot on the hulls of the attacking fighters.

  “Sorry, Cap’n,” Parker’s voice called from the speaker again. “We got held up. We’ll take care of these guys for ya,”

  Sweet Liberty swept past them, cannons firing wildly at the fighters. Connor watched from the projected viewport as the yacht bobbed around the smaller ships, leaving fiery explosions in their wake as the oxygen within the fighters ignited under fire. Liberty turned nose-down, swinging in under the freighter and around to attack another ship from above. It was like watching a hornet attacking mosquitoes while defending an elephant. As much as he maligned the two men on board the yacht, he was glad they were there to keep them alive.

  “Liberty, watch your back,” Bonnie warned over the comm. “There’s another squadron on your tail.”

  The ship rumbled again as another flight of patrol craft approached from the rear. Melaina tried to turn the ship, presenting the more heavily armored midsection toward the attack, but the pilots in the fighter craft were too good. As Liberty came around again to attack, a brilliant light flared and the ship seemed to break in half. Static erupted from the speaker as Connor watched his home disintegrate.

  “Eli!” Connor called, hoping to hear from the men. “Parker! What the hell just happened?”

  “Captain,” a voice crackled from the speaker. “I don’t think we’re gonna make it to the rendezvous. Get outta here!”

  Connor couldn’t tell which of the two men had sent the signal as he looked to the screen. Sweet Liberty was equipped with escape pods, but he couldn’t see how badly the bow damage was or if they could make it. The two halves of Sweet Liberty were tumbling away towards the atmosphere below.

  “Can we go back?” Connor asked, reaching for the controls to turn the ship around. “I think we can—”

  “Connor, no,” Melaina shouted as she placed her hands over his. “There’s something coming up from below. It’s big. It’s what shot down Liberty.”

  “Whoever they are, they’re gonna pay for killing my ship,” Connor said, looking at the woman with a fiery intensity. “And my friends.”

  “How?” she asked, softening her voice to get under his rage. “We don’t have any weapons and that ship can tear us apart.”

  At first, she thought he might turn the ship after all. Instead, he placed his hands on the controls and increased thrust away from the planet. They were still being pounded by the fighters and he needed to get distance between them and whatever was rising. A yellow light turned to green on his board, and he saw the shield indicators go to near full. Connor didn’t pray, but he thought about it at that moment.

  The ship suddenly lurched as it was struck from below by a massive plasma burst. Connor’s board lit up with warning lights. The shields had absorbed most of the damage, but they were standard shields, not designed for combat against a capital ship. Connor shunted power to the stabilizers and waved away smoke that had begun to waft down from the overhead controls. He tapped the display panel, trying to get it to show him what had attacked them. When the image cleared, his blood ran cold.

  The ship was huge, with a banded armor configuration common to only one species. Jakes had fought his share of those ships during the war, but had never had to face one in an unarmed freighter. The Ch’Tauk dreadnought raised above the gravity well, small projections on the bottom glowing bright red in the darkness of space. From its hollow tip, an angry orange-red glow pulsed. Faster than the freighters despite its bulk, the dreadnought had outpaced them through the thick atmosphere and now passed them into space. For a moment, Connor just stared at the display, not believing what he was seeing, then the screen changed and a wide smiling face filled his view.

  “Jon,” Holcombe said, his jowls wiggling with the effort. “I think this has gone on long enough. Turn around and I won’t have to destroy you.”

  Connor pushed the throttle fully forward, trying to fly around the massive warship ahead. Every few seconds, pulses of plasma burst from the dreadnought, pushing the freighter further back towards the planet. Jakes knew the ship could vaporize them with a single shot. For some reason, Holcombe must still think he could convince Jakes to accept his old name. He looked back to the display to see the smiling face of the fat man.

  “Go to hell, chubby,” Jakes said. “Parker and Mendel will be waitin’ for ya.”

  The freighter turned back, this time towards the dreadnought’s hollow nose. Melaina saw their new heading and gasped. She reached for her own controls before Connor stopped her hand. He looked back into her eyes with a surety she had never known she missed.

  “Live or die, precious,” Jakes said. “Either way, we’re all gonna be free.”

  Melaina released her hands from the controls and sat back. The dreadnought grew closer, the hollow nose glowing like an angry eye as it grew on the display. Holcombe’s face popped up again. He seemed calm, but a bead of sweat had appeared on his forehead. Rene stepped back onto the bridge just then, evaluating the sight before him before sitting back in the communications seat.

  “Jon, you can’t win. I will have my property back, and you as well. You might as well accept it.”

  “I told you to go to hell, fat boy. Do you need directions?” Jakes said, shutting down the feed from the dreadnought and increasing power to the thrusters.

  “Captain,” Rene said, looking at his own sensor screen. “I’m showing an M-space jump point opening up.”

  “At least Bonnie got away,” Jakes replied, looking back at Rene. “There’s that.”

  “No, sir,” Rene said, double checking his instruments. “It’s an incoming point. There’s a ship coming through. Bonnie is still here.”

  Jakes flicked a switch, closing off the view of the dreadnought and switching to the long range feed. The familiar blue-brown vortex of a jump portal was fading even as a ship emerged. The energy corona surrounding the ship indicated its size as just larger than the freighter. It was still smaller than the dreadnought, but he still couldn’t make out a configuration. As the fiery energy bled off into space, Jakes saw a sight he had never thought to see again. In a flash, he pulled the throttle back and turned the freighter away from the dreadnought. The ship seemed to lurch again as the warship fired at their underbelly. Their shields were almost gone, but Jakes knew they would not need them much longer. He pulled the freighter up and over the top of the warship as the new arrival appeared fully ahead of them.

  The ship was long and covered with open gun ports along each flank. She was gray with a rounded stern containing her M-space drives. The rounded nose was lit up and he could see a small indicator where the bridge would be. Along the underside, where the small hangar deck was just beginning to open, the name of the craft was painted. It gave Jakes and Melaina hope for survival they thought they had lost.

  Resolute.

  10

  “The truth is, the Confederacy was made up of two types: the haves and the have-nots. The haves spent all their time trying to stay that way and the have-nots spent their time trying to be like the haves. Neither side ever got what they truly wanted.”

  Banu Rao

  The Life of a Hero (Unpublished Autobiography)

  The battle was short. Although the dreadnought was several orders larger and much more powerful, the Alliance battleship had a battle-tested crew and an advanced shielding system the Ch’Tauk vessel could not penetrate. Fighter craft from Resolute punctured the dreadnaught’s hull in several places and inflicted serious damage to their drive systems. In the end, despite heavy fighting on board, Albert Wilhelm Holcombe and his crew were placed under arrest by the captain of Resolute. A search of the orbital debris found only pieces of Sweet
Liberty. No sign of the escape pods. Bonnie’s ship turned back to meet the other freighter and rendezvous with Resolute. Rene shuttled over as soon as they were close enough, using one of Resolute’s complement. The ship also brought Victor over from the other freighter. He was happily fixing the slaves in the hold.

  As Connor Jakes stood at the airlock, waiting for the docking ring to seal, he wondered about the last moments of his two lost friends. They had led an adventurous life, and in the end died as heroes. Jakes thought back to the times they had shared and mourned for them. Tuxor seemed to be taking it hardest. Among them, he had actually spent the most time with the two men. Bonnie said he had gone back to the hold to tell the former slaves about the men who had sacrificed their lives for them. It seemed fitting.

  The red light over the door turned green as the seals were pressurized and locked. The door rolled away, revealing Captain Lee Pearce of the battleship Resolute standing with his hands at his side and a half-grin on his face. He was wearing a spotless white uniform with dark navy trousers and high boots. The rank pins at his collar gleamed in the light of the airlock.

  “How many times do I have to rescue you, Connor?” Pearce asked, stepping into the freighter.

  “Aren’t you supposed to ask permission before coming onto another man’s ship?”

  There was moment as the two men sized each other up again. Connor was slightly taller than Pearce, even with the boots, but Lee held himself straighter. Jakes’ wide smile spread across his face as he extended his hand to the other man. Pearce grasped hands and shook vigorously. Lee leaned in closer and wrapped a hand around Conner, who seemed uncomfortable with the gesture, but gave a tap back. As they parted, Lee saw Melaina standing behind and pushed Connor aside to give her a hug as well.