by Mark Tufo
We were under propulsion speed and there was only so much Tracy could do, especially with so many ships about to get their piece of us. She dipped lower, heading for the atmosphere. I hoped when we broke apart that our pieces would do maximum damage as they slammed into the planet.
“Two ships, no, three ships are within range. They’re preparing to fire,” Lane shouted. “A battle-class ship has launched from the surface!”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I said. “They keep spares around?”
If I listened closely I could hear the death toll of the bell signifying our passing.
“Cutting this shit pretty close, Mike.” BT was leaning forward.
“Four ships; the lame duck has come in,” Lane announced, like it fucking mattered. When four guys jump you and are walloping the living snot out of you, you don’t count how many fists are raining down, you just hope that at some point they’ll stop before you’re dead– although, I didn’t think that was going to be the case this go-round.
“General, you’re going to want to see this.” Pender had put the semi-circle of ships up on the screen, but something wasn’t quite right. One of them was firing on the others and they were either turning to attack this new threat or to get out of Dodge.
“No, it can’t be. That’s…that’s–” I started.
“Beth.” Tracy about vomited the word out of her mouth.
“Hot fuck I knew it!” BT was clapping like a kid at a birthday party where Spider-Man had just shown up. When he whistled I almost laughed.
It was the Stryver ship I was certain we had lost in the time bubble.
“They have a rail gun,” Fields said.
That did not bode well for us.
“Fields, keep targeting ships–make sure they know we’re on the same side. Colonel, get us out of range of that goddamned rail gun.”
“That won’t be easy,” she said.
“What part of this looks easy?” I told her. Beth’s ship took out two Prog vessels before they even had a chance to acknowledge her presence. The projectiles it shot out just punched through the hull like a finger through used single-ply toilet paper. They never had a chance. We were chasing a Prog ship that was desperately attempting to get away; I wasn’t sure if they could not buckle due to design, some sort of damage, or extreme negligence on the part of their commander, but they weren’t even shooting. Fields scored a hit on their engines that left them virtually dead in space. As we rose up and over them, he cracked open the top shell like a hungry otter at a crab buffet. Tracy had to bank us out of there hard to keep from hitting the debris field. Of the remaining two crafts, one turned tail. The battle ship buckled out of there, pretty much giving his planet a gigantic middle finger.
And then there was one. It turned to meet us and the Stryver vessel head-on. The rail gun had much more range than either ship of Progerian origin. We sat back and watched as the Stryvers tore the last cruiser apart. I’d never really seen them play with their prey before, but that was exactly what they were doing. They shot a half dozen rounds that, according to Pender, went directly into the buckle drive, making sure that they could not leave. The next few rounds went into their secondary engines and weapons bays, respectively. At this point, instead of finishing them off, they stopped; there seemed no real rhyme or reason other than to make them suffer. After another minute, two more rails were loosed.
“Pender?”
“I’d say life-support, sir.”
“Colonel, move us in for the kill. This is war and I want them dead, but we’re no cat and they’re no mouse. This shit stops.”
“You really want to get in behind that?” BT was pointing to Beth’s ship.
Beth’s visage dominated the screen. I looked to Lane; she shrugged as if to say, “I didn’t do that.” Beth took a moment to look around the bridge. “Good to see you again, my love.”
I said nothing.
“Cat got your tongue?” She let out a small laugh. “Where’s my husband? Did he not have the balls enough to fight this battle?”
“He’s dead. Killed in the battle to take over the ship,” I said curtly and tight-lipped. Maybe an emotion or two rippled across her features, but if they had, I would need playback and super slo-mo to decipher them and still there would probably not be enough video evidence to make a conclusive answer.
Disingenuously, she said, “Pity.” She turned to the side for a moment to someone off screen. “The Stryvers wish to know what you are doing?”
“Finishing this.”
“You cross our field of fire and we are combatants,” she said.
“And we aren’t now?” I asked.
“Technically, I suppose so. That stunt you pulled in the buckle stream nearly ended us.”
I copied her phrasing and hopefully nailed the tone. “Pity.”
She blew right past it as if it had never happened. “Lost some arrays and sensor equipment and most assuredly going to need a paint job, but not much more.”
“You were stuck in the bubble as well?” I asked.
“We were. Terribly frightening few minutes. Once we figured out how to escape, we waited until you did as well so that we would continue in the same time.”
“You knew it for what it was?” This from Pender.
“Of course. The Stryvers are very far advanced in the modification of time.” She looked to the side again. “Oops, it appears I may be saying too much. Any whoos, the millisecond it took for us to follow you cost us a few hours; that’s why we’re late for the party. Just so happy that we didn’t miss all the fun.”
“Oh, there’s still plenty to go around. Six Prog vessels have buckled and should be back soon,” I told her, hoping that would buy us some time to figure out our next move. If Beckert could get us fixed, possibly we could buckle out of here the moment they showed and let her deal with it. Although, there was nothing stopping them from following us and we already knew they could catch us and basically, we were back to square one: Man versus two larger, stronger, and more technically evolved species.
“Michael, your ship is still moving to intercept the Progerian vessel, that is not advisable.”
“Just finish them then; there are rules to war.” I was hot.
“Rules?” she scoffed. “There are no rules and don’t you go pretending that there are. I watched you in those games; the depraved things you did to all those poor souls.”
“That’s how you saw it? Why, then, would you have ever wanted to be with me?”
“Low self-esteem, I suppose.”
I almost choked trying to hold back a cough covering a laugh. “Low self-esteem? I don’t know anybody with less humility than yourself.”
“Careful my love, one word from me and my new friends will destroy you and your precious wife. Hey, I don’t see your big green friend; where’s he off hiding at? The chapel? He saying a little prayer to save his soul?”
The anger welling inside of me looking to vent was immediately dissipated when she spoke of Dee, and I could not hide it from my features.
“He’s dead? He is, isn’t he.” She was smiling, fucking smiling! I was a gesture away from telling Fields to fire on her, even though I knew we were out of reach. “You must be crestfallen. If you come over here, I will comfort you the best way I know how.”
If I thought Tracy wanted to throttle Beckert earlier, she wanted to tar and feather Beth–but possibly only after a good skinning. I shook my head, imperceptibly, I'd thought, but nothing got by owl eyes.
“That’s right. You keep your little bitch at heel,” Beth said. “As for the Progerian vessel, we will be launching shuttles to board it. You will back away. Any advancement will be considered an act of aggression, and though we sit in peace, at the moment, that will change abruptly and it will not go well for you, my love.”
“Enough with the ‘my loves already.’ Holy shit, Beth, we dated for a few months while I was a Freshman in college, and even then, you weren’t in love with me. You’re twisting your
jealousy into something you think is love. See, that’s the problem. There’s so much wrong with you I don’t even think you know how to love someone, I mean other than yourself. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that until it somehow sinks in.”
“If there were not six more ships coming, I would actively advocate that we destroy you now. You are missing the point. I don’t have to love you. I am the most powerful woman in the galaxy, and you are the most powerful human man. I figured that out a long time ago. The two of us together? Well, we could rule like kings…no–like Gods!”
“She’s going all Egyptian Pharaoh on your ass,” BT said; he wasn’t smiling. Beth was undoubtedly off her rocker, but she was sitting somewhere near the helm of the most powerful ship in the region, even when the Progs returned. Just this once I kept the filter in my brain and mouth turned on, and wisely said nothing. I couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t involve a whole bunch of go fuck yourselves.
“For the moment, we don’t have time to chat. The Stryvers are heading aboard the Progerian vessel to harvest it.”
I could feel the bile in my stomach churning about as it thought on the Stryvers sitting down to enjoy their meal of crocodile meat and alligator stew. They’d known exactly where to shoot to disable the ship, and for nefarious reasons. I guess it was safe to say that they enjoyed canned food.
“Tracy, get us out of range. How much time do we have until the Progs come back?”
“The first two will be here in forty-five, sir.” Lane said.
I undid my seatbelt to walk around; my missing leg took this bad time to somehow fall asleep. I was rubbing the mechanical replacement, hoping to get some circulation going back through. That, and it took my mind off of having absolutely no idea what to do. Wisely or not, the planet had stopping firing upon us, maybe realizing that they had no air support to go with them, and they were basically sitting ducks.
“Lane, let someone on the planet know I’m sending a few troop transports down to airlift some of my own off the surface; if they are interfered with in any way I’ll destroy a continent.”
“Which one, sir?” he asked.
“All of them.”
“No reply, sir,” she said after a few minutes.
“Can’t wait any longer. Send them down.”
“Making a beachhead?” Beth came back on the screen; she was smiling.
“I have some friends on the surface; I’m picking them up.” I thought it smart to tell some of the truth, but not all. The Rodeeshians had been created to ferret out Stryvers; I don’t think they’d be all that appreciative of our rescue mission.
“Is this some sort of trick?” she asked, naturally.
“Just because you are always scheming doesn’t mean the rest of us are. It’s three transports; we won’t move, they’ll go to the surface, pick up our people and be back. That’s it.”
She didn’t say anything as the screen resumed showing space.
“Is any one going to tell me there’s a way to stop her from doing that? Lane, you’re in charge of comm. Can’t you lock her out?”
“They’re not really taking control; they are pinpoint narrowcasting, forcing our receivers to accept the signal. I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
“Beckert?”
“We think we can shield them enough, not positive,” Beckert said over the monitor. “She looks bad,” he thought worth adding.
I thought the same thing but I wasn’t going to say anything about her appearance that might inflame my wife, good or bad. The less I said about her the better. Of course, she did though; crazy has a way of eating you up. That, and she was surrounded by nightmares–well, not even nightmares, because what she was around were living and breathing, not just manifested by stress and diet.
“You have until the other Progerian vessels show up. If your transports are still down there, their safety cannot be assured.” Beth popped up like a fucking clown after the weasel song.
I bit down on the part that wanted to say I’d ensure the safety of my own ships, but right now that could be construed as a lie. If the Stryvers wanted to play nice for a minute, I had to accept it; shit, I’d willingly accept it. We could use the help and the time it afforded, even if both were only borrowed.
“Sir, we’ve lost comm with the transports,” Lane said.
“Before or after pick up?”
“Before.”
“Colonel, bring us down into the atmosphere; if someone is screwing with our ships I want them to understand just how serious the repercussions are.”
“General, we’ve talked about this.”
“Yes, Colonel, I realize this is like driving a brick in airspace, but if the Stryvers want to shoot us down, there’s not a whole bunch we can do about it.”
“Are you seriously already forgetting about the planetary defenses?” she asked.
Did I answer that one? Would look like an idiot either way.
“Bring us down nice and slow. Fields, you get ready on weapons. I want anything that so much as lobs a stone at us to be uprooted and destroyed to the point where it never existed.”
We broke through the upper atmosphere and were cruising at a couple of miles above the surface. Nothing, not a peep–not a radar blip, not a wayward bird flying by, nothing. It was as if the entire world had gone dark. We did two complete revolutions and heard nothing. The Prog vessels would be back in about ten minutes and this was not where we wanted to be.
“Got them, sir. They’re burning fast, coming in hot. Being trailed.”
“Scramble fighters. Weapons hot. Fields, clear them a way home.”
The three transports were rising in a near vertical position; they adjusted course once they caught us on their screens. Fifty Progerian fighters were in tow. We could only rally twenty-five to meet them, but the might of the Sentinel more than made up for the uneven odds. Fields was hitting them with pinpoint precision. Flicking them out of the sky like bothersome gnats. The trailing transport was leaving smoke behind it, but was still under its own power. No matter how many fighters Fields destroyed, those pilots would not get the message that they were over-matched. They had the scent of blood in their noses and would not let go the pursuit; considering what we had done to them and what we were taking from them, I can’t fault it.
It was nearly an even battle by the time the Sentinel fighters were able to engage, but somehow they had the element of surprise; the Progs were so fixated on taking out that shuttle they barely paid any heed to us. Fighters were zipping past each other with speeds that would have made F-18 pilots drool back in the day.
The transport lurched to the side as it took another bevy of hits; our fighters congregated to the Prog ships and weapon-locked on to them. The battle was intense and quick, but it was already too late for the shuttle; the rear exploded outward and the nose dipped violently down as she lost power.
“Shit,” I said as we watched it pitch downward. It was like an arrow that had been shot straight up, lost its momentum, and was now under the mercy of gravity as it was pulled straight to the surface. I could sympathize with the men and Rodeeshians aboard that vessel and the absolute terror they were going through. BT knew what I felt, he couldn’t even look. The resultant explosion as it hit the ground hardly lit up our screen but I could imagine the tortured twisting and squealing of metal, the beings crying out in pain and horror and the all-encompassing flames that marked that site.
“Have the fighters look for survivors.” I turned away.
The lead fighter got as close as he could and his onboard camera gave us all the information we needed to know. There was a debris strewn crater where it had struck and little else. I could only hope their deaths were quick.
“I do hope it was no one you cared for,” Beth said. My brain was having a difficult time reconciling the sudden image change. Shock and pain were still on my face. “Too bad your wife wasn’t on that ship. Well, whoever it was obviously meant something to you.”
> “What do you want?” I asked savagely, my arms hanging by my side, fists curling up and releasing.
“A lot of misdirected anger, Michael. I am merely informing you that the Progerians will be back in two minutes and where you are sitting, you look like a big fat juicy berry ready to be plucked.” She laughed as she once again signed off.
If I could have punched myself in the head without any one seeing it, I would have done so. That I needed Beth to remind me I needed to get to a safer place, irritated me to no end.
“First of the transports are aboard,” Lane said.
“Recall the fighters; have them burn hot–they’ll be landing on a moving craft.”
“Colonel, as soon as that second transport is aboard, start climbing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lane, when and if Tabor gets aboard, have her report here.”
BT looked over. “You sure?”
“Beth won’t know what they are, but I’m betting the Stryvers will. I want them to be as afraid of us as I can make them.”
“And how do you know it won’t just infuriate them more?”
“That’s a good and valid point, my friend, but they’re going to do their best to kill us when this is all over, anyway. How much more dead can one get?”
“I don’t like that morbid humor shit.”
“Neither do I; looking for an edge. Somehow six Prog vessels and an entire hostile planet have become our secondary threat.”
We had just escaped atmosphere when the Stryver ship began to move toward us. I thought this might be it, right until a Prog vessel showed up not more than ten thousand miles to our starboard. That sounds like a long distance, but in space, it was like we were close enough to shake hands. We were staring straight down every weapons port they had, yet they had not fired.
“Ah, Fields, get on that please.”
He was a moment quicker than the Stryvers, who had not yet closed the gap. We peppered the front end of that ship and still, they did not fire. The Stryvers began their dismantling, they wanted to go in once again and do some…cleanup.
