by Damon Alan
“I understand, Captain Dayson, but that’s a lot of firepower in the hands—”
“I’m logging your concern. Send them out in packs of four, two grapplers and two grappler-killers in each squad. The grapplers will pack high EMP nukes, the G-Ks will pack anti-missile defenses and twin anti-ship railguns. Am I clear?”
“Crystal, Captain.” Batalova didn’t sound pleased.
It didn’t matter. Sarah knew grapplers, and this was the loadout needed to stop Orson. Dead or alive.
Sarah was beginning to question her choice in appointing Batalova captain of such a vital ship. Maybe it was just that he didn’t want to be in battle anymore than she did. She’d give him a few days to warm to the idea, or she’d have a face to face with him.
“Passive sensors only, except for the Hinden. Orson will expect us to hunt for him, but he doesn’t need to know how many assets we’ve brought to the fight. If we detect the Schein, orders are to EMP it into inoperability. We will then close in and retake the ship, rescuing anyone Orson is holding against their will, and arresting any mutineer who surrenders. Anyone who doesn’t surrender without a fight will be executed on site.”
“Executions?” Sarah heard Seto whisper to Harmeen.
Batalova’s silence betrayed his hesitancy as well.
“Combat against our marines is a clear indication of guilt, Mr. Batalova. As commanding officer, in a war zone, I have the authority to summarily execute mutineers, deserters, or traitors.”
“Yes,” Batalova responded. “Yes you do. I thought we were stepping away from Alliance regs, and I wasn’t aware that Oasis was a war zone.”
Sarah wished she’d taken this call in her quarters. She heard anger in Batalova’s voice. He had hoped this sort of thing was over, she could sense it. She couldn’t blame him for that. It was time to put away the stick for a moment. She switched to his first name. “Andovan, I get it. I do. But this is a time for military discipline. Orson killed thousands of people in his attack on Zeffult. It is our duty to make him pay for that so the adepts see we are a people of our word.”
A long silence preceded his answer. “You’re right, Captain. I’m sorry I hesitated. I thought the losses in our fleet were a thing of the past.”
She sighed. “As long as there are evil people, my friend, the good will have to sacrifice blood to contain them.”
“I’ll get our boats loaded and on patrol,” Batalova said. “Right away.”
They discussed a few more details, and Sarah closed the channel. Discipline had declined dramatically since Hamor. The fleet had suffered a lot. But this operation would not only protect Refuge, it would remind the crews of the fleet that they are a team. And that punishment was swift for those who would abandon their duties.
* * *
First contact was two days later. But not the contact they wanted. A message arrived from a point in space millions of kilometers from the possible locations of the Schein. Orson was using a drone and a laser relay to avoid giving away his position. Sarah moved him up a notch on her threat meter. That was a sound tactic.
Seto put the image on the main screen.
“Sarah Dayson, are you looking for me?” Orson asked. “That wasn’t part of the deal I offered, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to demonstrate once again my sincerity. But this time, dear Captain, I will hit you where it hurts.”
The image faded out.
He knew she was hunting him. Somehow he’d won the first round, and it made no sense.
Sarah burst into action. “Seto, get me Batalova on screen and then advise Refuge that they may have incoming. Harmeen, calculate a location for that drone, see if that gives us a clue about Orson’s position. Set condition one in the missiles section, spin up our FTL nukes. All crews to railguns, an incoming strike on our position is imminent.”
“Aye, Captain,” rang out in unison.
Batalova appeared on the main screen. “Captain?”
“Andovan, I need precise course plots for all six active search squads, I want to know the positions of any asteroids or comets on those patrol routes that may have hidden the Schein’s position.”
“We’ll get on that immediately,” Batalova responded. “Did something happen I should know about?”
Sarah sent him the comm file from Orson, then waited as he watched the brief message. “Somehow he figured out a vector for us and searched accordingly.”
“Galaxies,” the man muttered. “He’s got a knack for this type of thing.”
“He certainly does,” Sarah snarled.
“Depending on how long the message took to get to us from Orson’s message drone, the FTL missiles may already be at Refuge,” Harmeen advised her.
Sarah’s eyes narrowed, she struggled to keep any more of her emotions from her face. Her fingernails bit into her palms. “I’m well aware, Mr. Harmeen. Thank you.”
She looked at the tactical screen. All greens, no red. “Go active on the sensors, full power.”
“Full sensors, sweeps in relevant target arcs,” Harmeen replied.
Nothing, but it could take hours for a return. She’d wait. It would give her time to calm down and work on a rational plan.
Chapter 28 - Foundation
Sunrise of Firstday
Time passed.
When Eislen opened his eyes, sometimes it was light, sometimes dark.
The storms that had cleaned the ship of the newcomer death ash had also broken the vessel. The aft mast lay cracked over, split at a section about two spans above the oar deck. It had crashed toward the back and now lay embedded in the rear top deck.
Even worse the ropes tied between the two masts had pulled the front spar down as well, buckling the oar deck in the process. The base had ripped up through the frames of the ship before tumbling overboard. Two men were lost scrambling to cut the ropes that tied the loose timbers to the vessel.
Eleven bodies, men from the oar deck, were stacked topside, ripped apart by shattering beams and splinters flying through the air like the newcomers arrows. Bogner lay among them. Elvanik lay below, nursing a gaping wound in his leg. If it remained free of infection, he’d live.
Somehow the hull had remained water tight.
The cloth sails of the rear mast fluttered aimlessly in the wind, slapping against the wooden surfaces they draped. Men rested on the remains of the oar deck, accepting the shade the higher parts of the ship provided. Of the twenty-four oars on the vessel, only seven still functioned, and five of those were on the same side of the ship.
The captain of the fishing vessel plopped down next to Eislen’s spot. “Well, adept, what do we do?”
“My name is Eislen. Of Kampana,” Eislen said firmly.
The man speaking to him stared a moment, then nodded.
It wasn’t the captain’s duty to understand why Eislen had abandoned the adepts to become a champion of the people. He only had to believe it.
Eislen answered the original question with a question. “Is it possible to repair this enough that we could make it to land?”
“It will take some time,” was the answer.
“We have nothing else in the way of options,” Eislen said. “We have water, the ship’s catchment system was filled by the storm. We can fish.” Eislen pushed against the hull wall behind him and stood up. “What we need now is to accept that the gods want us to live.”
“You sure about that?” the captain asked. “Seems to me they tried very hard to kill us.”
Eislen’s frown halted that line of talk. “You’re wrong, Captain. They have shown me too much to let me die at sea.”
The ship’s master nodded, then started moving from rowlock to rowlock, looking to see if any of the oars could be saved.
Eislen went topside, Salla met him as he crested the ladder.
“I’m not sure it’s safe to eat what fish remain from their last catch,” Salla said as she waved her hand at the crew below. “We’re going to need food.”
Noting the pain in his bel
ly, all he could do was agree. He grabbed her hand and dragged her to the bow of the ship.
“I’m not that good at this, Salla. Alarin would probably make fish leap from the sea straight into our baskets, but I can’t. I don’t have his abilities.”
“He took you as an acolyte for a reason,” she answered. Her voice rose at the end, it was more of a question, or maybe a hope than a statement.
She had faith in him. He’d never really encountered that before. Before he’d just been a goatherd. Then when he was with Sarah Dayson’s people, he was an oddity, and a clueless fool. He’d been helpless as people more powerful than he had destroyed his village and everyone he loved.
He looked at Salla.
Well, almost everyone.
With Alarin he’d been a grown man learning the things adept children were taught. And it had been hard for him.
But Salla, she thought him unstoppable, a pinnacle of morality for the people.
He wasn’t going to let her down. He kissed her until she gasped for air.
The waters ahead of the ship were calm, and Eislen peered over the side of the vessel into them. He closed his eyes and reached out with the gift.
Coldness remotely punched his gut as his awareness plunged into the ocean. The fabric of the water sang its tune, told the reality of how it existed. He sensed temperature, varying pressure waves from living things below, as well as the push of the current.
Deeper. Light faded.
A barrier passed, and below the water was saltier. Sound surrounded his essence, and he sensed it both as waves of force passing by and the undulating tones of an underwater beast.
There. In the darkness. A creature both massive and slow, its mouth gaping open as it fed on beings tiny yet numerous.
Eislen wrapped himself around it, into it, learning its shape and design. Why had the gods built such a massive beast?
Two giant reservoirs of air were located in the ribcage of the animal. Lungs. They must allow it to remain underwater for hundreds of times what a man could. Eislen sensed the thudding heart of the creature, and the massive artery that ran down its center.
This would do.
Although the seawater was cold, it had heat to give. Eislen transferred some to the beast, to the muscle below the lungs. As the muscle involuntarily squeezed in response, air burst from the creatures nostrils.
It began to rise toward the surface, probably unaware of what had caused the spasm.
Eyes still closed, Eislen pointed aft. “Go get the Captain,” he ordered Salla. “Tell him to bring tools to kill a great beast.”
Moments later eight men swarmed around him as the beast broke the surface of the water. It was magnificent, and as long as a dozen men laying foot to head. As the creature arced back toward the water, Eislen transferred heat from one place to another once again. The creature slammed lifeless against the waves as its heart burst and its brain froze into crystalline death.
It immediately started to sink.
The men on the front deck hurled spears, they called them harpoons, into the beast. Ropes were hastily tied off to cleats on the deck. Only a few seconds passed before the lines grew taught as the creature’s body tried to return home below.
“Bring a winch,” the captain ordered at the top of his lungs.
Three men raced off.
The ropes were slowly passing through the hands of the sailors. With a jerking shudder one of the ropes went slack.
“We’re going to lose it as the harpoons rip out,” the captain said. His voice was filled with disappointment, despair danced in his eyes.
Eislen reached down to where their potential salvation tugged against puny barbs and flesh slowly tore.
Another harpoon broke loose.
He reached into the beast again, once more transferring heat to the monstrous body. The liquid in the abdominal cavity began to boil. Pressure rose and the stomach distended as a steam bubble formed inside.
The downward motion stopped, and the middle of the creature started to rise. He heated the fat just below the skin of the tail section, and a blisterous bubble popped outward as steam pressure forced skin to rip from underlying tissue.
The ascent speed increased.
With the head hanging low, the creature popped to the surface.
“Bubbles of heated steam are holding it at the surface,” Eislen informed the captain. “Inform your men that if they burst those, the creature will sink and the man doing the bursting will probably be burned badly.”
The captain nodded and started barking orders.
They tied a rope around one man, and handed him a wicked blade, made from the iron of the newcomers just as Eislen’s knife was. The blade was long and curved.
Lowered down to the body of the beast, the sailor began hacking away slabs of fat and red meat. Portions as big as a man’s head were handed up, one after the other. Other men raced them toward the back of the ship, to the firestone. There the meat was carved into strips, some cooked now and other pieces laid out to dry.
Several hundred pounds were harvested before something within the creature surrendered to the pressure. At the front of the animal, from the mouth, a huge gurgling sound preceded a geyser of tissue and fluid as the bubble inside finally found a way to force itself out. The creature’s jaw was forced violently open as all manner of things vile spewed into the sea. The wind splattered droplets of salty internal fluids onto the foredeck, splattering the crew there with speckles of red.
The stench was of heart blood and bile.
The body plunged down into the water, no longer buoyant. The man was dropped into the sea as well, but being tied off saved him from being dragged down.
He slipped the blade between his teeth and began pulling himself up hand over hand with the rope. Eislen was impressed the butcher had the sense not to drop his knife into the water. They hoisted him over as the last harpoon tore from the body of the beast and it disappeared forever into the darkness below.
If the men doubted him before, they did no more. Eislen walked to the back, to the cooking stone with claps on his back, gathering in pledges of duty and vows of renewed faith.
Later they feasted, gathered around the firestone. Morale was high and hope flittered from man to man. Everyone knew Eislen was an adept now, but none of them treated him as such. He’d worked alongside them, and earned their respect as a person.
As they now considered him worthy, they listened as he told them the adepts had ruled over them long enough. By the time the meal was over, the twenty-seven remaining crewmen of the fishing vessel were sworn to Eislen’s cause.
Before sleep that night he looked at the distended bellies of the crewmen laying on the deck. Probably not the most graceful or beautiful army, but it was a start.
The next step was to find a way to shore.
Chapter 29 - A Strong Defense
30 MAI 15329
Two FTL missiles dropped out of highspace, nearly simultaneously but half a million kilometers apart.
One of the missiles raced toward the surface of Refuge, the other toward a hollowed out asteroid containing Sarah Dayson’s greatest non-human affection — the Alliance FTL battle cruiser, Michael Stennis.
A radar shielded intelsat orbited above Refuge. Due to line of sight issues, the rudimentary AI operating the small satellite activated a rapid burst comm circuit, sending a tactical intelligence report to a similar device orbiting Ember. That satellite relayed the information to an information screen on the surface of Refuge, where a small visual alert flashed on the screen of the on duty watch officer.
The officer was outside, sipping coffee, staring at the brilliant waters that surrounded the town.
As the missile heading toward Refuge splintered into multiple reentry vehicles, the blinking alarm on the display became auditory. The watch officer raced inside, losing precious moments as he oriented himself to read the screen.
MULTIPLE BALLISTIC ENTRY VEHICLES DETECTED
PROJECTED TARGET: J
ERNA CITY, NEW KORVAND AND THE PROXIMAL AREA.
His coffee mug shattered as it hit the floor.
* * *
A vessel rested inside a rock cocoon, waiting for a time when the Seventh Fleet possessed the resources to repair the damage caused by Merik on Fandama. Few knew the location of the warship, and in the last months it was rarely visited.
A minimal crew of caretakers remained on board to assess damage and prepare a plan of action for future repairs.
The starship shook as a missile impacted the surface of the asteroid housing it. Alarms long silent sounded ship wide as nearby radiation levels spiked.
A crewman near the science section pondered the cause as he grabbed the handhold nearest himself and hurled himself toward the bridge.
Were they under attack? Hive?
On the bridge the main viewscreen had automatically come to life. NEARBY NUCLEAR DETONATION DETECTED - YIELD THREE MEGATONS flashed on the screen below a tactical representation of the Stennis and the surrounding area. The man grabbed a console and brought up damage control. MINOR GAMMA RADIATION DETECTED AFT OF DECK FORTY-TWO.
This level of radiation would pose no harm to the ship or the occupants in the short term. He didn’t know enough about radiation exposure to determine if there was a long term issue.
Another alarm flashed, gaining his attention.
AI CALCULATIONS INDICATE DRYDOCK ORBIT INSTABILITY. ATMOSPHERIC CONTACT WITH PLANET EMBER IN APPROXIMATELY ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-NINE DAYS.
The bomb had struck the surface of the asteroid, functioning as a powerful rocket and altering its trajectory. The asteroid’s path around the planet was now decaying, and would soon be consumed in the atmosphere of the gas giant below.
There wasn’t enough crew to operate and move the Stennis, nor were there heavy load shuttles here that could add the energy needed to stabilize the decaying orbit.
There wasn’t even a shuttle for evacuation. The fleet needed every one of the small vessels it had for day to day logistics.
This situation was above his pay grade. He tried to contact New Korvand on Refuge, but the bomb must have destroyed any communication equipment on the surface of the makeshift drydock.
