by Nick Webb
“Exactly what it sounds like, mate.” Barbie said, seemingly confident that was an adequate explanation, and returned to formation with Spectrum, and the pair darted off to intercept an incoming squadron of Dolmasi fighters.
“Bucket and Ace, help them out. Looks like they’re going for the Farragut—she doesn’t look to be in good shape….”
He squeezed off another few shots and felt the satisfying rush of euphoria as another bogey blew apart into glowing slag. A glance at a counter on his HUD told him that he’d reached twenty. “Eighty-one more to go,” he muttered.
“These are apples to oranges, Batship. One of these counts for two Swarm fighters, at least,” said Ace.
“Tell that to Ballsy. If I say something like that, I’d never hear the end of it. Watch your ten!” He pushed his controls to swing up and wide over her wing as she dropped down, exposing the approaching pair of bogeys to his sights.
“Thanks,” she breathed into her headset.
“Let’s go help them out.” He pointed his fighter towards the Farragut, which was spouting huge gouts of flame as propellant mixed with oxidizer near the port engine. The five fighters zipped around the broken vessel, picking off any Dolmasi fighter that strayed too close. Before long, the fires gushing out from the tears in the hull went out, and the rush of Dolmasi fighters had slowed to just a trickle.
“I think they’re good. Let’s go help the Libertador with those other bastards. That’s Admiral Tigre’s ship—Proctor will flay me alive if we let something happen to—”
A green flash nearly blinded Zivic and he yelled out.
“Batship, PULL UP!”
Ace’s voice in his headset was loud enough to ring in his ears, but he managed to pull his bird away at the last second. Right where he was headed, a pair of Dolmasi anti-matter beams were boring into the Farragut’s hull. Right near where the reactor room would be….
“Get away! Now!” Zivic ordered his squad, and they peeled off towards the Enterprise.
And just in time. An explosion ripped through the main body of the Farrugut, and the rest of the ship convulsed, breaking apart in a thrashing cloud of debris and fire.
He swore out loud.
Dozens of voices were yelling out over his comm-line as other squads rushed to intercept a wing of Dolmasi fighters veering towards the other ships in the San Martin fleet. Ace’s voice broke through the confusion. “Come on, Batship, Enterprise is taking it on the nose. If we don’t help relieve the—”
She didn’t even finish her sentence before it too exploded. His viewscreen dimmed to block out the glare.
“I sure hope she’s got a plan,” Bucket muttered over the comm.
“It’s Admiral Proctor. She’s always got a plan,” replied Zivic.
But as he watched the tragedy unfold, he started to doubt it.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Wreckage of Moon El Amin
ISS Defiance
Bridge
They’d lost the Farrugut. And the Enterprise. And three frigates. Proctor surveyed the layout of the battle—the remaining ships flitted in and out of the expansive debris field left by the destruction of El Amin, and the fighters swarmed among them. Sixteen fully-armed relentless Dolmasi cruisers among them.
They were losing. If she didn’t do something, quickly, all would be lost. The Dolmasi were fighting in a way that she hadn’t seen before.
It was like they were unleashed. Whatever the Ligature had done to them through the centuries, whatever moderating, calming influence the Skiohra had had on them through the meta-space link was now gone, and it manifested in the very feel of the battle.
They were ferocious. They were fast.
They were lethal.
“Captain Rojas, pull to starboard and relieve pressure on the Libertador, and we’ll cover you.”
Whitehorse was concentrating intently on her tactical board—the designers of the Defiance had streamlined and simplified the ship’s design such that just about all the ship’s military functions could be controlled by a single officer, if necessary, to be able to run light with a small bridge crew. But it didn’t mean it was easy. “I … I don’t think Tigre’s going to make it, Admiral. The Libertador is listing—its port dorsal thrusters are stuck on, and there’s no power to the other thrusters.” She looked up at Proctor with a pained look. “She’s starting to spin out. And in this debris field….”
She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Proctor watched in horror as the Libertador arced slowly, surely, towards one of the larger asteroids—a giant chunk of rock that was slowly orbiting the gradually-coalescing fiery ball that would some day be the new El Amin.
“Miguel, you’ve got to cut that dorsal thruster,” she yelled into her comm. “Miguel!”
Tigre’s voice cut through the din of the bridge. “It’s ok, Shelby. Remember Tim’s old moves? Here, hold my beer.”
Whitehorse, Babu, and Liu all looked up, brows all furrowed, not understanding him. But the meaning was quite clear for Shelby. Tim Granger’s old moves often involved launching starships at enemies like they were common bricks. He used ships like a brute force projectiles, earning him his nickname, Bricklayer. “Miguel … no!”
But it was too late. On the screen, the pair of active thrusters on the Libertador flared with a sudden rush of increased power, and the massive ship accelerated into its arc. Except now, with all its power dumped into those two thrusters, the path changed slightly.
Right into the path of a Dolmasi cruiser.
“Miguel….”
The Libertador rammed straight into the Dolmasi ship, puncturing it on its stern like a skewer. And the pair of them rammed right into a second Dolmasi ship, nudging it into a new course.
Straight into the giant chunk of rock. The three ships crashed into the surface of the asteroid, triggering explosions that ripped through all three….
Culminating in the triggering of the Libertador’s reactor. Tigre must have removed the safeties, allowing the anti-matter to be liberated from its control matrix during the secondary explosions that ripped thorough the hull. And in a blinding flash, all three ships disappeared, taking a significant chunk of the asteroid with them.
When the glowing slag dissipated, half the asteroid was gone. Including the Libertador, and the two Dolmasi ships.
Whitehorse had been yelling at her, but she hadn’t even heard. “What?”
“I said, Admiral, we were hit by a few stray mag-rail slugs. We’re venting something. Which means—”
Proctor finished her sentence. “They can see us.”
As if on cue, the nearest Dolmasi cruiser unleashed its anti-matter beam straight at them. The ship jolted so hard that Proctor almost thought they had hit an asteroid themselves.
“Hull breach! Down in the fighter bay,” said Whitehorse.
“Babu, you’re on damage control. Go coordinate the marines—they’re on patch duty.” Proctor gave Babu a slight nod as he ran off the bridge, then turned her attention back to the battle. “Get us into that debris field.”
“That won’t hide us, ma’am.”
“No, but whatever we’re venting may just blend into the clouds of dust and debris from the remains of that explosion, and might throw them off for long enough for us to get a few well-placed kicks in.”
The Defiance veered towards the tumbling asteroid and the glowing remains of the three destroyed ships. A pair of Dolmasi cruisers followed them, pelting them with blast after blast of the green anti-matter beam.
“Shelby, get the hell out of here!” Volz’s voice shouted out of the comm.
“The commander doesn’t just turn tail and run from the battle, Ballsy, you know that—”
“Shelby,” he interrupted, “look around. The battle’s over. They’re just mopping up now. We’ve got half our strength left, while they’ve only lost a few ships. It’s over. Let’s get the hell out of here before we lose everything.”
Dammit, he was right.
She’d lo
st. She had been on the verge of victory, nearly defusing the Dolmasi threat once and for all.
And now Admiral Tigre was dead, she was about to die, and lose the entire San Martin defense fleet, all within a few minutes.
“You’re right. We need to protect San Martin. Regroup there. Their orbital defense platforms should give us cover if we’re pursued. Odds will be better.”
But not much better.
She flipped another comm switch. “All fighters, come home, combat landings. Now!”
It took an agonizing full minute before the last fighter screeched to a landing on the fighter deck. “Now, Liu!”
Moments later, the q-jump drive engaged, and San Martin appeared on the viewscreen, replacing the dull, glowing slag cloud left by the ISS Libertador and the other ships. While Proctor was grateful to not be flying blind, the inverted colors on the infrared screen made everything feel eerily unfamiliar, as if she were living in some sort of alternate universe. Focus, Shelby.
Liu let out the breath she had apparently been holding. “We made it.”
Proctor stared at the screen as the other ships in the San Martin defense fleet q-jumped in around them: too few. Finally, the Independence snapped into existence, and she allowed herself to breathe as well.
“Not all of us. Not by a long shot.” She stared at the screen, waiting for the inevitable. “And those bastards are going to show up any minute.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The shuttle from Boston to New York was quick, not even making it to sub-orbital space before beginning its descent through the atmosphere. Twenty minutes after blasting off the launch pad, the four of them were already waiting at a crosswalk on eighth avenue with a crowd of people. Traffic was heavy—there was a UE Congress session starting that week, and all the diplomats from fifty different worlds were streaming into the city.
“Carla, dear, stop prancing,” said their mother, who was grinning ear to ear.
“Sorry, mama, I just can’t help it.” Carla looked like she was on cloud nine, even though their father had hinted on the shuttle that there might be some punishment at school for their “missions.” But right then, in that perfect moment, nothing could bring her down.
The crossing signal changed and the crowd of people waiting on the sidewalk began to cross the street. Shelby and Carla followed their parents in the last group that moved out onto the street before the warning signals began to flash indicating another light change.
“Come along, girls.” Shelby watched her father eye the traffic nervously. These off-world folks brought lots of people with them. Aides, attachés, personal assistants, family members, drinking buddies, corporate cronies—lower Manhattan became an unruly madhouse during the General Session of the UE Congress.
As always, the dream proceeded relentlessly. There was no stopping it.
In the dreams, Proctor, or at least the adult version of Proctor hanging over the child version of Proctor like a ghost, would always scream out at this point. And sometimes, in her ghost mind’s eye, she thought she saw teenage Proctor cry out too. Could almost hear her screams.
A ground car raced around the corner. It was an ungodly bright green, complete with air spoiler and what she assumed were racing stripes—some unimaginably expensive toy of the son of some inter-solar corporate oligarch or senator, the plaything of a scion son of a rich family, which scion held other human life in such low regard that when, after Carla’s limp body landed in a broken heap across the street, the monster kept right on driving as if he’d only hit a speed bump.
She flew like an angel. Like one of her mother’s imaginary angels.
She tumbled like a rag doll. Soaring through the air, until it collided with a red brick wall on the other side of the street and collapsed into a heap.
Proctor had learned, years later, that the police had indeed apprehended the driver, though through his rich father’s string-pulling, he got off with only a year in a UE prison.
One year. One year in exchange for Carla’s life.
As it always did, even in the dreams, time slowed down. Adult Proctor simultaneously watched her sister fly through the air, and watched teenage Proctor kneel over her, screaming, weeping hysterically.
“Car! Carla! Carla! Oh God, Carla! Oh God, Carla!”
Distantly, she knew she was hearing sirens, her father’s shouts, her mother’s screams, and somehow teenage Proctor managed to calm her nerves enough to search her sister’s neck for a pulse. The broken, twisted neck.
She felt it. It was weak. It was slow. But it was there.
Carla’s eyes were open, skewed up and to the right, wide open. Her mouth formed words. Shelby leaned in close to hear them.
“Shell. Shell. Listen. That brick wall jumped out of nowhere … saved me. It’s a miracle … would have died. Would have flown into … the pit … the hole … the pot. Boiling oil. Where they fry the donuts. The oil is black. A hole. A hole. But not empty. But the brick wall. It’s a miracle, Shell. Shell. The elf bird. Follow it to Mars. Look, it’s there….”
Shelby looked to where Carla was staring. A crow, perched in a branch above them—Carla, in her delirium, must have thought she was back in the shooting range simulator, seeing the crow as the elf bird. She was talking gibberish. And now her eyes closed, and Shelby felt her pulse. It was still there. Weak, but there.
One in a million, she whispered, as with her other hand she reached for the necklace under her shirt. She thumbed a few beads and repeated the prayer.
“Please God, don’t take her now.” She repeated it like a mantra, even as she was pulled away by the emergency crew, even as the emergency shuttle took off for the hospital three blocks away. Right up to the point where the emergency room doctor stepped into the waiting room, his head bowed low, his eyes pained. And when he looked up to deliver the news and met her eyes, she knew.
Her one in a million God was a false idol.
She did not believe.
The doctor spoke incomprehensible words, and left. Her father was an inconsolable, blubbery mess. And her mother sank onto her knees pleading to an imaginary vending machine deity for her daughter back. She would do anything. Give anything. A transaction. Put a coin in, out comes a blessing from the vending machine god. One thing in exchange for another. Everybody wins.
But all Shelby could do was serenely stand up, rip the necklace free—a handful of beads scattered onto the floor—and throw the remaining bits at her mother’s feet. She left before she said something she would regret for the rest of her life.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Orbit over San Martin
ISS Defiance
Bridge
They waited several hours, enough time for Proctor to rest, but the Dolmasi fleet never pursued them in all the way to San Martin. Perhaps they thought there was a larger defense fleet held in reserve. Or perhaps they were more damaged than it appeared during the battle. Either way, the Independence and the Defiance orbited San Martin, along with the remnants of the San Martin defense fleet.
Eight ships. Eight, out of the original eighteen that Admiral Tigre had brought with him.
She couldn’t even bring herself to do the math. How many people per ship? She tried to think about something else.
Damage control and repair was enough of a distraction. “Liu, what’s the status of the stealth? Are we back up yet?”
“No, ma’am.” Liu seemed to work tirelessly. She didn’t even look up, and hadn’t had a break in hours. She just hunched over her console on the bridge, struggling to get their stealth system back up and running, studying the manuals, occasionally consulting with Lieutenant Qwerty who would lend a hand with the various systems checks and diagnostics.
At least, that’s what she assumed they were working on. Proctor had bigger fish to fry. She’d been talking on and off for the past hour with Captain Volz, debating whether to request a fleet transfer from the nearest UE system in case the Dolmasi showed up again and the planetary defenses were inadequate
. But then that would leave the other world with their ass hanging out if the Dolmasi decided to strike there instead.
Technically, it should be Oppenheimer’s call, but her trust in the Fleet Admiral of IDF had waned to a point where she wondered if he wasn’t even on their side—at the very least he was displaying a frightening level of incompetence.
“What do you think, Ballsy? Are they going to show up again?”
She could almost hear him shrug over the comm. “Doubt it, if they haven’t by now. Nothing’s stopping them from waltzing in here and razing the surface after snuffing us out. Poof. One billion dead. Biggest loss since the war.”
“It could be that they know nothing about what orbital defenses we have. They’re good, but not that good: just a few dozen ion beam cannons on the surface and orbital mag-rail platforms. If the Dolmasi come in just right, out of reach of the platforms and the cannons, then we’re goners.”
“I guess we’ll have to stay in range of the platforms. At least until the Independence has finished repairs—Admiral, we got hit pretty bad over here. We’ll need to dock at Wellington Shipyards at Calais for at least three months. Hang on, I’ve got news….” His voice cut out as he listened to a report from one of his bridge crewmembers. “Ok, we’ve got a report from the scout ship that CENTCOM San Martin sent back out to El Amin. The Dolmasi fleet’s gone. No sign of them. And q-jump signatures indicate they got the hell out of dodge.”
She shook her head in relief. Good, at least that disaster was averted. For now. “Who’s the new commander here? Who was Miguel’s second in command?”
“Vice Admiral Tillis. Good guy. I knew him on the Farragut back in the day after you left for IDF HQ.”
“Good.”
Volz’s voice changed. “Why? What are you thinking?”
“Ballsy, something’s going down. That anti-matter torpedo that just appeared out of nowhere? First of all, there shouldn’t be any left. They’re banned. Second, it had a meta-space shunt attached to it. Third, and I repeat, it came out of nowhere. That can mean only one thing. Mullins has a stealth ship. And he’s provoking a war with the Dolmasi. Something about those meta-space spikes seems to draw them in. Provoke them. Today his target was San Martin. Tomorrow? The only question in my mind is, where does he arrange for the next attack? That’s my priority right now. We need to stay one step ahead of him, and prevent him from starting a war we can’t win.”
