The other two Resistance ships had apparently become angry enough at the loss of one of their own that they had turned to pursue the Melody Tryst rather than the Grey Vistula. Jennings corrected his course to take them opposite of Petrova’s path, hoping that it would help get her get clear of the gravity generators faster. Plasma fire slammed into the aft shields of the Melody Tryst, and Jennings threw the ship into another series of dives, climbs and rolls, trying to keep his ship as far out of the line of fire as possible.
“Aft shields at sixty percent,” Fix muttered.
“Squawk, can you do anything?” Jennings demanded.
“Recharging. Diverting power from non-essential systems,” Squawk answered rapidly as another salvo slammed into the Melody Tryst, throwing all of them against their safety harnesses.
“Might be a bad time to mention it, but there are two squadrons of TGF fighters heading this way,” Fix pointed out.
Jennings saw them on his screen and yanked the controls hard over, piloting the Melody Tryst straight at the fighters. “Fix, switch fire control to manual,” he ordered. “I want you to clip those birds, not incinerate them.”
Fix grunted an affirmative as the Melody Tryst rapidly closed the distance to the TGF fighters, the Resistance ships still hot on their tail and pounding away at their aft shields with plasma cannon fire. The six fighters sent a salvo of torpedoes toward the Melody Tryst, forcing Jennings to roll, juke and spin his ship out of the way a half dozen times. The fighters switched to plasma cannons as the Melody Tryst got closer, and a torrent of green fire raked the front shields of the ship. Jennings held his course though, plowing straight through the fighters’ formation as Fix opened fire, sending a few blasts of red energy into each of the fighters, hitting engines, stabilizers, sensors or wings. The damage was not enough to destroy any of the fighters, but it sent them wobbling off course, tumbling through space. While not all of them did exactly what Jennings had hoped, two of them plowed into one of the Resistance cruisers tailing them, causing it to detonate in another fiery flash.
Michelle had felt rather useless during the battle, so she had kept her eye on the sensors that displayed the Grey Vistula’s position. It vanished suddenly. “The Grey Vistula’s no longer showing on the sensors,” she said excitedly. “They must have jumped to FTL.”
“Alright,” Jennings said, feeling a sense of calm overtake him. “We did what we had to do, now let’s try to get the hell out of here before we get slagged.”
Chapter 38
1
General Dominic Ounimbango watched the battle developing with a great deal of uncertainty. While the Intrepid was greatly outnumbered, it outclassed all of the opposing Resistance vessels and had already destroyed two of them. His fighter wings, which had been slowed by a crash in the hangar at the outset of the battle, had recovered nicely to destroy another of the Resistance ships. The rest were keeping the TFS Tora at bay, which was the only real threat to his ship. Even though they had no ability to escape, Ounimbango did not doubt that they could easily overcome the Resistance fleet.
Slightly more concerning to him was the fact that the Grey Vistula had managed to escape- he had as much dirt on Petrova as she had on him however. He could always deal with her later if he needed to. The concern was Pahhal. The Gael had ordered her taken into custody and had wanted her, her crew, and her ship destroyed as a part of Operation Aurora. Ounimbango had no idea why, of course, but he also had no idea why the Gael wanted one hundred and eleven specific humans. They could always hunt Petrova down, but Pahhal should be happy that he kept the girl with him, he supposed. At least she was not a part of the jailbreak.
The other concerning aspect to him was the fact that the Gael Overseer was conspicuously absent from the bridge. While he rarely made appearances, Ounimbango had thought that a battle may have been important enough to bring him out of his quarters. The Resistance had tried to prevent Operation Aurora from being completed several times, and this had to be their last gasp effort, Ounimbango thought. If he were the Gael, he would want to oversee the battle personally, to ensure that nothing got in the way of his operation.
“Sir, we’re getting a report from Corporal Miller,” Colonel Malik al-Ansari announced.
Ounimbango was distracted as he watched one of his bomber wings destroy another Resistance ship. “Who?” he demanded.
“Corporal Miller,” al-Ansari repeated. “The leader of the security team you sent from the bridge to the engineering deck.”
“I’m in the middle of a battle,” Ounimbango spat. “I already know that Petrova and her people have escaped. We can’t do anything about that now.”
“It sounds important,” al-Ansari added.
“Fine,” Ounimbango growled impatiently. “What?” he demanded as the face of a young security officer appeared on his monitor.
“Sir,” Corporal Miller began. “Engineering and the supply station are a mess.”
“We can get repair crews on it once this battle is over,” Ounimbango snapped.
“Understood, sir, but we found a body at the bottom of water reclamation,” Miller said hesitantly. “The body of a Gael.”
“A… Gael…?” Ounimbango repeated slowly, fear rising in him.
“And that’s not all,” Miller continued. “We found a room full of what looked like freezer units.”
Ounimbango looked confused. “We have tons of freezer units in the supply station,” he said.
“Not for humans, we don’t, sir,” Miller interrupted.
“Where was this room?” Ounimbango demanded, fearing the answer.
“In between the supply station and the entrance to engineering,” Miller responded.
Ounimbango was one of the few people on board the ship that knew that Pahhal had built his own private storage facility on the Intrepid in that room, a room that only the Gael had access to. Why had he kept some sort of cryogenic freezers in there, he wondered to himself. The prisoners from Operation Aurora, he realized suddenly. That was what the Gael had picked up at Barnard’s VI.
“Are the freezer units full?” he asked Miller.
“No, sir, all are empty,” he replied. “We think we found one of them though. There’s a body over by engineering that looks like he was wearing pajamas. They aren’t standard crew issue, so I thought…”
“Can you send me an image?” Ounimbango demanded.
“Of course, sir,” Miller answered.
A few moments later, Ounimbango was looking at the dead face of Ciaran O’ Sullivan. “Any sign of a twenty year old woman there?” he asked of Miller. “She wouldn’t have been TGF.”
“No, sir,” he replied. “All we’ve found are our own personnel, the Gael and the man whose image I just sent to you.”
Feeling that his worst fears were about to be confirmed correct, Ounimbango pulled up the internal sensor feed from when the Grey Vistula departed and queried for the number of life signs aboard the ship. The sensor logs showed one hundred and thirty people were on board it. Petrova had not only broken herself out of the brig, but had killed the Gael, and had freed all one hundred ten members of Operation Aurora, losing one in the process. That was not like Petrova, he thought to himself, she was not one to think of others.
“What’s the position of the Grey Vistula?” he demanded.
Al-Ansari checked his monitor and said, “She just jumped to FTL.”
“Damn it!” Ounimbango roared.
“There’s something else,” al-Ansari reported. “Another ship launched itself from the Grey Vistula before it jumped.”
“Ships of that class don’t carry fighters,” Ounimbango countered.
“Confirmed,” al-Ansari said. “The ship matched the configuration of the Melody Tryst.”
“Jennings?” Ounimbango roared.
Jennings was dead, he had to be, Ounimbango thought to himself, but now everything made a little more sense. Jennings was the type of person who would have chased down the Intrepid to get the girl back, s
prung Petrova from the brig in exchange for her help, and helped facilitate the mass breakout of Pahhal’s detainees. He had no idea how he had done it, but he could always ask him that in a nice interrogation chamber.
“I want that ship in our custody,” Ounimbango ordered. “Now. They must be taken alive.”
“The Melody Tryst just crippled six of our fighters,” al-Ansari reported.
Before Ounimbango could even curse at this latest development, a crewman barked from across the bridge, “Sir, new contact dropping from FTL…”
There was a pause.
“What is it, crewman?” Ounimbango roared.
“It reads as a Gael supercruiser,” he reported at last.
“They’re hailing us,” the communications officer said. “They managed to cut through the jamming somehow.”
“To my station,” Ounimbango ordered, a lump beginning to form in his throat.
The face of a Gael appeared on the screen, looking relatively indistinguishable from any other Gael that Ounimbango had seen. “This is Fleet Admiral Jorrarius,” the Gael announced. “I wish to speak with Overseer Pahhal.”
Ounimbango tried to put on his most sympathetic face and most sycophantic tone as he said, “I’m very sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Fleet Admiral. It is with deepest regrets that I must advise you that Overseer Pahhal has been killed.” The Gael Admiral barely flinched at this statement, so Ounimbango rambled on, “I worked with Pahhal for some time and always found him to be…”
“And what of the prisoners? The one hundred and eleven prisoners?” Jorrarius demanded. “Where are the souls?”
“The same team that infiltrated our ship and assassinated Pahhal, facilitated the escape of the prisoners of Operation Aurora,” Ounimbango explained with as much an apologetic tone as he could muster.
“All of the souls have escaped!” Jorrarius roared.
“No, no, no,” Ounimbango said, terror seizing him and forcing him to search for an answer. “One of them was killed in the escape.”
Jorrarrius’s eyes narrowed further and he seemed even more full of rage, but he did not say anything. He made a motion with his hand and the communication cut off. Ounimbango breathed a sigh of relief. He barely even heard his tactical officer shout that the supercruiser was targeting them. There was a flash of light and the TGF Intrepid was incinerated by the Gael supercruiser’s forward weapons, the massive energy beam cutting instantaneously through the Intrepid’s shields and armored hull, until the Intrepid detonated, exploding into millions of tiny pieces.
2
Captain Noichi felt like he was the lone member of the bridge crew that did not get overly excited or panicked when the Gael supercruiser had dropped into the middle of the battle. The behemoth of a ship, easily twenty times the size of the Intrepid, which was a good deal larger than the Tora, was an old, familiar sight to Noichi. The elongated organic shape of the ship with its intricately curving wings that looked like sails on an old-fashioned Terran sailboat had been carved into his mind since the war. While he should have felt terrified to go into battle against a class of ship that the Terran Federation Military had never defeated, there was a feeling of rightness about fighting the Gael once again. For too long, the Resistance had fought fellow humans, collaborators or Terran Gael Force mostly. Now was the opportunity Noichi had been waiting for even as he watched the Intrepid explode- a chance to take the battle to the Gael once more.
“Gravity well generators are active and massive,” his navigation officer reported. “We cannot retreat.”
“Nor would we want to,” Noichi replied before punching in a series of codes into the monitor in front of his captain’s chair, opening a channel to what remained of his fleet. Six of his nine support craft had already been destroyed. “This is Noichi to all remaining ships. Focus all fire on the Gael supercruiser.”
3
“Where the hell did that come from?” Lafayette demanded.
“It was the Intrepid,” Michelle said from the sensor station on board the Melody Tryst. “The Gael ship destroyed it.”
“Never thought the Gael would do us a favor,” Jennings muttered as he swung the Melody Tryst in a new direction, away from the Gael supercruiser’s location.
To his surprise, the Resistance ship that had been following them and had battered his aft shields down to twenty percent did not follow the maneuver. It continued on course, headed straight for the Gael supercruiser. Jennings checked his readings and saw that the other remaining Resistance ships were doing the same.
“Crazy bastards,” Jennings said admiringly as he set the Melody Tryst on a straight course away from the supercruiser. “Magellan?” he asked of Lafayette.
The Cajun shook his head. “The Gael activated their gravity well generator as soon as they dropped out of FTL,” he said. “You know how powerful those are. It could take us a week to get far enough outside of it at sublight.”
“Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but we have a dozen TGF fighters bearing down on us,” Fix said.
“Throw everything you can into the aft shields,” Jennings ordered Squawk.
“Nothing left,” the engineer reported.
“What about forward shields?” Jennings demanded.
“Forty-five percent,” Fix reported.
“How long until those fighters are in range?” Jennings asked.
“Two minutes,” Fix answered.
4
The Resistance fleet’s few remaining ships had gotten in a few good shots on the Gael supercruiser, but the weapons on that ship were far too powerful. One blast and the retro-fitted freighters that the Resistance had turned into warships were destroyed. The Tora, the only surviving Resistance ship, had sent a full column of fire and a salvo of torpedoes at the supercruiser and had barely made a dent in the cruiser’s aft shielding.
The supercruiser’s aft cannon opened up on the Tora, but Noichi’s pilot was better, swerving to avoid the attack while his tactical officer sent another cannonade toward the Gael. The Gael returned fire, and this time, the Tora was not so lucky. It was not a direct enough hit to destroy them instantly, but it was a devastating blow. The concussion of the hit shook the Tora so hard that crewmen smashed their faces into their consoles or had their necks broken. The shields were knocked completely out as everywhere consoles overloaded and exploded, sending sparks and shrapnel flying everywhere.
Captain Noichi caught a piece of shrapnel in the gut and he fell to one knee. All around him, fires were breaking out on the bridge. Most if not all of his bridge crew was dead, and he knew the next hit would kill them. He did not intend for there to be another hit. Stumbling slightly, he made his way forward to the pilot station and pushed aside his dead crewman. Ramping up the sublight engines to maximum, Noichi sent the Tora on a collision course for the supercruiser, aiming for the massive blue aura that was the Gael’s FTL engine. In that last moment, he finally understood his old captain’s reasoning behind killing himself at the end of the battle for Earth. Some things were worth dying for.
5
The explosion of the Gael supercruiser was massive enough that it looked like a star going supernova. A blast of energy rushed out of the destroyed ship like a surging red-purple sphere. Lafayette let loose a cry of excitement as the Magellan computer began calculating their FTL jump.
“Course?” Lafayette demanded.
“Anywhere,” Jennings demanded, his eyes still locked on the sensor readings on his console.
The TGF fighters were thirty seconds from firing range, but it looked like the shockwave would hit them at about the same time.
“Time?” Jennings demanded.
“Twenty seconds,” Lafayette said.
Jennings distinctly heard Fix muttering something that sounded like a prayer as there was a collective intake of breath from everyone on the bridge. The FTL indicator on his monitor suddenly went from red to green just as the nearest fighter opened fire on him. Jennings punched the FTL engine activator, stars turned t
o starlines, and the Melody Tryst leapt out of the system. With a little satisfaction, Jennings noticed that the TGF fighters were destroyed by the blast wave from the destroyed Gael supercruiser.
Sighing contentedly, he said, “We’re all clear.”
Chapter 39
1
There was a sense of celebration on the bridge of the Melody Tryst that lasted for several minutes. Jennings and Lafayette grasped hands firmly, which Squawk imitated energetically to each person in the cockpit in turn, getting even Fix to begrudgingly participate. Beauregard flashed Jennings a winning smile, and Michelle strode forward to wrap her arms around the captain then planted a kiss softly on his cheek.
“I didn’t say thank you yet,” she said.
“Dis is going to get awkward,” Lafayette announced, at which point Michelle turned bright red, released Jennings and sat back down.
“Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m starving,” Jennings announced. “Could probably go for a nap too.”
“I should probably take you to med bay first,” Fix said.
“For what?” Jennings demanded, then held up his arm that Pahhal had shot. “For this? Please,” he said with a roll of the eyes.
“How many times have you been shot in the past few days?” Fix demanded.
“Honestly, I’ve forgotten,” he answered genuinely.
Fix glared at him.
“Fine, I’ll let you work your magic,” he said. “As long as Marquis starts cooking something in the meantime. Some sort of victory feast.”
The smile on Jennings’ face vanished as the Melody Tryst was yanked out of FTL, and everyone who was seated felt themselves thrown against their seat straps. Michelle was tossed forward, and Beauregard quickly caught her to keep her from flying into the viewscreen. Plasma shots erupted all around them, slamming the ship around, the Melody Tryst’s shields barely holding. Sparks flew from the instruments, and the lights flickered ominously.
111 Souls (Infinite Universe) Page 39
