Despite that Voltan held position, eye to eye. Said: “That ship is more advanced than any of ours, and may well be a surviving example from our history. I do not intend to destroy it. Furthermore, it is not our imperative.” Now he stepped back, pointed casually at the giant viewscreen and the planet covering it as he walked away: “That is our imperative.
“This is an invasion.” He continued across the expansive bridge of the mighty dreadnought, putting useless distance on he and Kang but it was symbolic, and Kang’s hate continued its meteoric rise. “Do not lose the vessel again,” he instructed his silent crew, as if to mollify Kang if only a little, then informed them: “I will be in my tac room.”
“Yes, lord.”
Before he could make his departure one of the other crew added: “Lord, the smaller craft has gone into the ocean.” Then: “We might lose it.”
Kang looked from Voltan to the viewscreen, to Earth, to the reporting crewman—to any other fragment of info he could lock onto. Voltan turned. Faced Kang from across the bridge knowing full well what Kang was thinking, knowing how badly he wanted that one as well but, as with the other, unwilling to take unusual or extreme steps.
“Mark its entry,” he instructed. “Track as far as you can. Register it on scans and watch for re-emergence.” Then, making his intentions perfectly clear: “Engage no pre-emptive breach of the atmosphere. Maintain the fleet on this course.” He turned and resumed walking across the bridge to his tactical room.
“Prepare a standard demand for surrender and wait for my command to broadcast,” he said as he went. “Compile a registry of all command channels and feed that to me.
“I will be on with the Tremarch.”
He said this last as he reached the door leading from the bridge. It slid aside on his approach, he entered and it closed behind. Leaving the bridge in silence.
Kang stood at the command dais, at the center of the room, staring hard at the alien faces staring back.
**
General Peterson made his way into the bustle of the command center, which had quickly become a giant situation room, aides in tow. He was met immediately by three senior officers already on hand. The cavernous space was complete chaos.
“So what’s all this chatter about?” he asked no one in particular, looking beyond the bustle to the glow of dozens of screens and their heavily engaged operators, larger screens on the far wall surrounding the giant central screen, all of them displaying data that looked quite alarming. “What’s the drill and why wasn’t I notified?” Everyone in the room was in motion. Even the people seated at screens looked like they were going a hundred miles an hour.
“We’ve been trying to make sense of it,” one of his staff officers reported. Peterson had been briefed on his way there, after being interrupted over dinner—an excellent fillet at the best steakhouse in town—he was still grumbling—and instructed to proceed in at once. If it were an actual drill he would’ve known about it, though he supposed it was possible some oversight committee or task force might’ve slipped in a practice run including him in the surprise, and if they did what he was looking at was a better enactment than he’d ever put on himself. He’d know soon enough; at this level the President was about to be the next call.
“Around seventeen-hundred local we began zeroing in on signals detected just inside the lunar orbit. Near as we can tell they did not arrive from a distance, unless they did so at impossible speed. They were either invisible until they got close, or they simply appeared in proximity.”
Peterson looked at the reporting officer. “Simply appeared? What, like popping out of thin air or something?” This whole business was rapidly giving him a sour stomach.
“Maybe. We don’t know. Just that the signals weren’t there, then they were.”
Peterson didn’t know what else to ask at this point. The in-car briefing was that a fleet of alien vessels were in orbit and moving closer, no contact yet made. At that point details were sketchy. At that point he’d still been thinking this was a drill and plotting who to blame for the very inconvenient interruption.
He tried to process everything he was seeing.
The officer nodded. “That’s all we can determine so far. We have thirty-six distinct objects—”
“Thirty-six?” Now he looked directly at the man.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re telling me there’s thirty-six alien objects out there? Not one UFO. Not a few. Thirty-six.” He thought back. The briefing officer in the car did say a “fleet”. Peterson hadn’t believed it.
He hadn’t believed any of it.
“Yes, sir. At current count.”
His butt was puckering and he felt that sinking feeling in his gut. This was getting worse, not better.
He swallowed. “Get the President on the phone.”
“I spoke with him just before you arrived,” one of his senior officers informed him. “I felt it couldn’t wait.”
Peterson stared at him. And as he wrapped his head around the reality of what was unfolding before him the last lingering taste of that amazing fillet faded and he had the terrible sense that may have been his last meal. An icy fear gripped him.
This was happening.
CHAPTER 5: THE BOARD IS RESET
Bianca’s stomach rose in her throat as the Reaver tore in at a steep angle, down across the icy crescent of one of Jupiter’s moons. She had no idea which one, nor was Nani giving a tour. The blonde scientist was hard at it, flying the ship with intensity, banking side to side, accelerating and changing direction at rates of speed that seemed impossible. The stranger part of it was that there really was no feeling of force, of dropping or pulling, left to right—nothing. At least not much. Whatever incredible power moved the Reaver also acted to hold them in place. And so, watching out the overarching domed viewscreen was like watching a ridiculously realistic movie. Like a 180-degree 3D IMAX. One of those simulators that just gave you the sense of being jerked around because your eyes told you so. Not because you really were.
Only this was no cinematic trick. This was all very real.
“Hold on,” Nani was gritting her teeth. Bianca gripped her chair—there were still harnesses, and she and Nani both wore them—holding on as directed as Nani spiraled the giant ship like a corkscrew, made two rapid changes of direction, hooked first one way then back the other, dove into a rugged ice canyon and went low. They were on the daylight side of the moon, crystal-sharp shadows falling stark across the jagged terrain, no atmosphere to cloud or haze the view. The scene was brilliant.
Bianca watched all this out the forward screen, eyes glued. She flicked a quick look at Nani, sitting just ahead in the console closest the front of the bridge, her own head scanning back and forth as she flew. Mostly she just flew. Seat-of-the-pants, it seemed. One with the machine, intent on ducking away from their pursuers.
At that Bianca craned her neck, looking behind for the dozenth time—the sharp, blurred, arctic landscape even more disorienting from that angle, rushing away as Nani tried to make them a difficult target. And there, not far behind, were the three Kel ships. Doing their best to keep up.
So far they hadn’t fired and the anticipation of that, along with the intensity of the escape and everything else, had Bianca’s entire insides in a knot.
“I don’t want them to see where we enter,” Nani was straining though there was no real strain involved. It felt like a strain, and Bianca was right there with her. She turned ahead, gulping as Nani banged them through a tight set of canyon curves. The formations were giant, roomy, but seemed to close in as they raced ahead at ungodly speeds in the giant starship. It wasn’t natural for something as big as the Reaver to be moving that fast, like a jet fighter or something. Faster. Like a video game. The size of a building yet it whipped back and forth with insane one-two snaps, Nani pushing the envelope with split-second decisions and hair-raising close calls. Frighteningly, the equally massive Kel destroyers were proving just as nimble. Mostly.
Bianca held tighter to the chair as the difficulty level of the canyon increased. Nani kept on it and Bianca spared another quick glance behind, wondering if one of the pursing Kel would carom off the canyon walls; like those little bowtie fighters in Star Wars or something, chasing the good guys through the asteroids. But so far the Kel hadn’t descended all the way in. They were pulling back; flying high, outside the canyon, keeping the Reaver in sight but not dropping into danger. Every now and then they would disappear from view as peaks or giant overhangs zipped overhead, but mostly remained right there, in the sky, watching and hanging close. Bianca wondered at Nani’s purpose for even being down there, putting themselves at risk while the others stayed clear. Maybe it kept the Kel from firing. Whatever Nani’s strategy Bianca said nothing.
She just held on.
“If we can get deep enough into the gas giant’s atmosphere they won’t be able to track us,” Nani made little noises as she spoke, wrenching them down a narrow, long basin with lots of overhanging peaks, “but if they’re too close when we enter they might be able to stay in sensor range, at least enough so we can’t lose them,” and she nosed into a deeper crevice. As she did Bianca noticed a few of the screens showing schematic graphics of the terrain; what looked to be a pretty thorough scan of the moon’s surface. She wondered if the Kel instruments gave them as clear a picture.
It seemed Nani did have a plan.
“Hold on,” she said and Bianca did. Tighter, sensing what was about to happen, and as she grabbed the harness she actually let out a grunt and a small retch as the Reaver came to an abrupt halt.
Instantly.
From, like, ten-thousand miles an hour straight to zero. Wham! That fast. Even the Reaver’s dampening systems weren’t enough to reduce the lunge against the harness and it hurt. She would’ve flown from her chair if not for the straps. Her eyes felt like they’d surged out of her head and were only just starting to go back in the sockets as she realized they were at a standstill. Hovering dead center in the narrow crevice, beneath the overhanging, craggy ice, out of view of most of the sky overhead. She could only assume the Kel had continued racing on up above at the same speed. How the Reaver could possibly stop so quick …
“Here we go,” Nani said and, just as suddenly they were flipping back the other way, nose in the other direction and launching down the winding canyon back the way they’d come. Faster this time, it seemed, ripping up miles of steep ice walls in those first few seconds until …
Nani popped them up and over the surrounding peaks, banked immediately down and out the other side onto a wide, rugged plain of broken ice and stretches as smooth as glass and …
Hit it.
Like nothing the Reaver had yet done. Bianca was jabbing her head around to see if the Kel had caught that incredible turn of direction when … the Reaver lunged, so fast she was, again, hurt by the surge. It whipped her neck and she yanked it quickly forward, scrunching down and unable to breathe for an instant. They were now moving so fast even the farthest distant terrain, the stuff still miles and miles and miles away, was coming at them in a complete blur. The horizon scrolled to meet them in such a mad rush she actually felt the upward vertigo as Nani held the ship down against the curve of the moon, like negative gees, hugging the horizon rather than shooting off into space.
Absently she wondered if this was as fast as the Reaver could go. It was completely, totally, insane.
For a fleeting instant she found herself in awe of their ship and how hard it was working to spirit them to safety.
All at once Jupiter came into view. Huge. Far but seemingly right there. In fact at that speed it rose to view so fast it filled the screen as soon as it came into sight. They were wrapping around the moon so fast, so hard …
“We’ve got it,” said Nani and …
Zoom! she let it go and they shot straight out, clearing the little world. Gone, just like that. No longer hugging the surface, the icy landscape no longer beneath them and they were at last shooting out into open space, straight for the massive planet. Faster. Like it was almost there. Bianca chanced another look behind. Thought she saw the Kel destroyers back there, dark specks against the surface of the moon. A shiny surface they were rapidly leaving behind. Incredible. From science class she knew the moons of Jupiter weren’t giant but they were still moons, and this one was receding like a dirty white beach ball. One you’d just thrown away and that kept accelerating. From full-on surface to the whole moon to smaller moon to smaller and smaller till just a tiny ball till … no more than a shiny bright dot at a distance and shrinking.
Holy shit this thing is fast.
She was pretty sure, even if those specks were the Kel, they would never catch them now. She turned back front.
The speed of the Reaver was mind-boggling.
Nani had said it was faster than the Kel and there was little doubt of that now. When they popped out from their jump near here, a little off but still in sight of Jupiter, the Kel had arrived right on top of them before they had a chance to do anything else. Nani had, in turn, scrambled to figure out how to react, racing toward the nearby moon where the chase began.
“Did we make it?” Bianca asked. “Are they back there?”
“They’re back there,” said Nani. “But we’ll enter the clouds far ahead of them. By the time they reach our entry point we’ll be well beyond their ability to track.”
A long moment of quiet passed. The bridge of the Reaver was eerily quiet, in fact. For all the energy involved it made little sound. No fans, no electronic hums, no roar of engines; just that barely perceptible, low-frequency pulse of the powerplant. Bianca glanced back once. The specks were gone. This was now a race of pure speed, pure power, and the Reaver had more. Way more. It was leaving the Kel pursuers solidly in the dust. She suspected the Reaver could just keep going and totally outrun them, but she guessed the Kel could use that other drive, the warp drive, displacement engine or whatever, and keep overtaking them or generally keep them on the run. It made sense, what Nani was doing, finding a place to hide so they could think, so they could figure out what to do, but Bianca’s urge, with such a clear advantage, was to just keep on it.
Haul ass forever.
Gigantic Jupiter now covered the entire front of the screen, a wall of colored clouds; side to side, top to bottom; empty space could only be seen to the far left, right and above, at the top of the dome. They had to be close. She knew Jupiter was, like, way big, and that Earth would fit easily into that famous red spot, but it was a bit disorienting to be traveling as fast as she knew they were and not be smashing right into it.
Space was truly huge.
“I’m slowing us down,” Nani said. As if on cue Bianca felt a gentle fall forward against the harness, like going forward into the seatbelt in a car braking slowly. That subsided quickly and she felt sudden vertigo as she had the idea of falling into the outer bands of the colorful atmosphere. Until then it looked like they were heading sideways into the giant planet. Now the sensation was that they were falling down toward the ground.
Did Jupiter even have a ground? She guessed somewhere down there it did. She thought she recalled it was a big rocky planet when it formed, big enough at last to start piling on gas until it became what it was today.
The wisps of clouds grew thick, light faded and soon they were into dark, gloomy, swirling walls of gas.
It was creepy.
“How deep do we have to go?” she asked. She knew whatever figure Nani gave her would mean little to her, but felt like she needed to talk right then.
“I’m curving now,” came the answer, and Bianca thought she felt them pulling up.
“I’m going a little lower then I’ll fly us around to the other side. We’ll take up position there and maintain line-of-sight with Earth. From there I should be able to passively grab transmissions.”
They flew on in silence through the gloom.
“Here’s good,” Nani tapped a few controls and leaned back. N
othing much seemed to change but Bianca assumed they were now holding in one spot. Somewhere deep in the clouds of Jupiter. She looked up. Imagining Earth to be up there. Far, far away. The gloom was a little lighter that way, but not much. Maybe the sun was up there. Or maybe Nani had them upside down and she was looking toward the core, imagining the extra lightness. Maybe it was all in her head. There was no way to tell.
Deep, barely perceptible shudders passed through the ship now and again. Like wind or something. Lightning raced suddenly through the distant murk and she jumped, a sharp white streak of brilliance, twisting and branching in all directions then it was gone. She remained cringing, waiting for the boom. When it came it rumbled the bridge dully, not nearly as fierce as the brilliance of the flash promised. A few moments later another. Then another. A small lightning storm had spawned.
She looked and saw Nani had swiveled around to face her. Sitting in the chair, harness still on. She seemed completely unconcerned with the high-voltage display outside. In the next flash Bianca saw streaks of tears glistening on her cheeks.
Then, with the next flash, she could swear she saw Nani’s lip tremble.
All at once her own sadness gripped her and she unbuckled and rose. Unsteady at first but she got her footing and went slowly over to her friend. Nani just sat there, looking up at her as she came close and stood in front of her. Now Bianca could see her lip was definitely trembling, tears sliding down the curve of her cheeks, and in that moment, as she stood before her, Nani began to shake. Tiny little tremors but they were there, and in witness of that Bianca started crying too. The force of it overwhelmed her, and where she thought she was about to be strong, about to comfort Nani in this time of darkness, she found herself instead breaking down. She went to her knees beside her, leaned in and Nani reached for her in an embrace. The straps caught and she unbuckled and threw her own harness aside, slid forward to the floor and pulled Bianca to her. Bianca squeezed her and they held each other tight.
Star Angel: Rising (Star Angel Book 4) Page 4
