Yokaze circled the giant, feigning attacks, looking for an opening. As he maneuvered, he noticed that certain attacks caused Loki to back up. Not much, but enough. Yokaze altered his attack pattern to guide Loki backward toward the bulkhead near the Science station.
“Surrender, Loki,” Captain Sheppard said from behind Yokaze.
“I would not give him the honor,” Yokaze growled.
“I’m going to kill this insignificant pipsqueak first,” Loki replied. “We can discuss the terms of my parole once he’s dead.”
“Are you sure about that, Sergeant?” the CO asked.
“Hai!” Yokaze exclaimed, sheathing his wakizashi. “He has no honor and must die.”
“Any other time, I would say to capture him,” the CO replied, “but in this case, I’m willing to make an exception. If he won’t surrender, kill him so we can get his stinking body off my bridge.”
“With pleasure.”
Without warning, Yokaze sprang forward to the side of the giant. Loki was unprepared for the sudden attack and slow to respond. Expecting a feint, the giant held the battle axe across his chest to block and counterattack.
But no feint or attack occurred. Yokaze dodged past the giant, jumped onto the Science console and then took another two running steps up the wall behind it. Reaching the height he needed, Yokaze pushed off the wall, doing a backwards somersault with a twist. The giant was slow to turn due to his injuries, and Yokaze landed on Loki’s back, driving his katana between the giant’s shoulder blades, all the way to the hilt.
Grabbing a handful of the giant’s suit, Yokaze pulled himself up to stand on the sword’s hilt. A hand reached back, but before it could grab him, Yokaze drew his wakizashi and stabbed it down through the gap in the giant’s collarbone, again burying it to the hilt.
With the hilt as a handhold, he drew his tanto and cut Loki’s throat. A geyser of green erupted, which Yokaze only partially avoided as he flipped off the giant, somersaulting to land on his feet next to Loki’s side.
Yokaze strode over to the CO and saluted. “It is done, as ordered,” Yokaze said.
The deck shook as Loki collapsed behind him.
Engineering, TSS Vella Gulf, Anti-Jotunheimr System, December 23, 2021
Staff Sergeant Loftis’ icon went red in Lieutenant O’Leary’s in-head display. “Spuds, is there anything you can do for her?” He waved a hand to indicate the interior of the anteroom that led to Engineering proper. It was a mess. Giants and pieces of giants were everywhere, and the entire area was whitewashed in green blood. It looked like the fevered splatter painting of a crazy man. “She deserves to be saved.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but she was too far gone when we got here,” the medic explained. “How she held on as long as she did is amazing. She must have had a tremendous will to live.”
“She just wanted to do her job,” the sailor standing nearby said. “She said she was told not to let the giants into Engineering, and she didn’t.”
“Who the hell are you?” Lieutenant O’Leary asked. “Wait, you look familiar…”
“I’m Culinary Specialist Seaman Matthews, sir,” the sailor said. “I’m one of the stewards in the wardroom. The master chief here…that’s his body by the hatch…grabbed me to help defend the space. I really didn’t know much about anything so I wasn’t very helpful. I did kill the last giant, but it was too late to save her.”
Lieutenant O’Leary looked the sailor up and down in disbelief. The cook’s shoulder stuck out from his body at an unnatural angle. “You killed one of the Jotunn?” he asked. “By yourself?”
“Yes sir,” the cook said. “I finally figured out how to use one of their guns,” he said, nodding to the Jotunn flechette rifle lying nearby. “I killed the giant who was going to kill her, but by then he had already beat her up pretty bad.”
“You fired that rifle?” O’Leary asked, disbelieving. “All by yourself?”
“Yes sir,” Matthews said. “It had a pretty good kick, which is probably why my shoulder doesn’t seem to be working quite right at the moment.”
“He’s in shock, sir,” the medic, Corporal Anaru Ngata, interjected. “It looks like his shoulder is separated pretty badly. Probably a couple broken bones in there as well. When the adrenaline runs out, he’s going to hurt a bunch.”
“Well, do what you can for him,” O’Leary said. “For a cook, he’s had an awfully busy day.”
“Yes sir,” the medic replied.
“Hey, Lieutenant?” Matthews called as O’Leary turned to leave.
“Yeah?”
“What do you have to do to join your unit?” the sailor asked. He nodded toward Loftis’ body. “I want to be tough, just like her.”
“Send me a request, and I’ll forward it,” O’Leary replied. “We can use people who aren’t afraid to do what needs to be done.”
Sergeant ‘Good Twin’ Austin jogged up. “All of the giants here are dead, sir. None made it past this one right here.”
O’Leary nodded. “Thanks.” He switched to his comm. “How’s it going up there, Contreras?”
“Lieutenant O’Leary, it comes at great cost, but I am able to tell you that Loki is dead, and the bridge is once again ours.”
“Copy,” O’Leary replied. “Gunny Dantone, what’s your status?”
“About the same as Lieutenant Contreras,’ sir. We killed a bunch of the damn giants, but have a number of our own casualties. If you’re taking suggestions, I vote we pop back over to our universe and nuke the shit out of the bastards’ planet, sir.”
“I don’t know what say I’ll have in it,” O’Leary commed, “but I’m all for it too. You know what you call 10 million dead Jotunn?”
“No sir. What do you call them?”
“A good start. Get the wounded checked out at Medical, clean up what you can and we’ll meet back at the Armory afterward.”
“If I send everyone to Medical that is wounded,” Contreras replied, “our meeting will be somewhat delayed. I don’t have anyone, myself included, who isn’t wounded in some manner. The fight to reclaim the bridge was…intense.”
“Understood. Go get checked out; I’ll see you when you’re done.”
There was a commotion at the hatch as Night and four troopers entered the space. Unlike the rest of the troops already there, they were easy to spot as their suits were spotless; everyone else’s suits looked like a weird Christmas design of red and green.
Night strode up to O’Leary, who saluted. “Welcome back sir,” O’Leary said.
“Thanks,” Night replied. “What’d I miss?”
“A lot of killing and the deaths of about half the platoon,” O’Leary said, anger heavy in his voice. “The bastards were in here before we knew it and stopping them was difficult. I’m looking forward to killing a whole fucking bunch of them, as soon as possible.”
“You’ve got blood on your face,” Night noted. “Are you hit?”
“Nope.”
“Are you going to wash it off?”
“Some time. Just not yet. This damn war just got personal.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
CO’s Conference Room, TSS Vella Gulf, Anti-Jotunheimr System, December 24, 2021
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to thank you for dropping what you were doing to come here, as well as for all of your efforts over the last 24 hours. Cleaning up after the attack will take some time, and we may never fully recover from it.”
“You got that damn right,” Lieutenant O’Leary muttered.
“Even though the cleanup continues, we need to move forward if we are going to recover Lieutenant Commander Hobbs before the Jotunn find and kill him. To that end, the ship is enroute to Jotunheimr as we speak. For those of you wondering what we’re going to do with the remaining Jotunn in this universe, the answer is nothing because they don’t exist. All the giants on the Vella Gulf are dead, and their ship has been destroyed. I was worried they had jumped back to our universe when we couldn’t find it on the
scanners, but Solomon tells me the ship detonated catastrophically shortly after the away party left it.”
The CO turned to Night. “I assume your men had something to do with that?”
“Damn straight, sir,” the soldier replied. “I built a bomb, and our engineers showed me where their fuel lines were and how to breach them. They expected at least the last quarter of the ship to be completely destroyed in the ensuing explosion.”
“They were wrong,” Captain Sheppard said. Night’s eyebrows rose.
“Actually, more than 1/3 of the ship was vaporized, and the rest was so thoroughly shattered that it was hard to find on the scanners. Well done.”
Night nodded, not in acclamation for destroying the ship, but in acknowledgement of having done what needed to be done. There was no joy or satisfaction in the successful completion of such a task.
“The bottom line is that we’re probably safe while we’re in this universe,” the CO said, “but we need to work out our plan for what we do once we jump back to our universe.”
“I don’t get it, sir,” Lieutenant O’Leary said. “Why don’t we negotiate from a position of strength? Can’t we just jump back into our universe and say, ‘Give us our guy or we’ll toss your crappy-ass planet into a black hole?’ Then, once we get Lieutenant Commander Hobbs back, we go ahead and do it anyway? That would teach them.”
“It might work to get him back,” the CO agreed, “however, it probably wouldn’t be great for long-term relations with the Jotunn.”
“And that should bother me, why?”
“Because we need to think more long-term for the…” Captain Sheppard’s voice trailed off, and he stared at O’Leary for a moment. “I think you’ve got…some dried blood or something on your cheek.”
“I know,” Lieutenant O’Leary replied. “I like it there. It’s a reminder to never trust the Jotunn.”
“You’re forgetting that what they did is totally within their code of honor. They never actually declared a truce with us; all they said was that they wouldn’t shoot their ship’s weapons at us, which they didn’t.”
“With all due respect, sir, I don’t give a shit. They intentionally tricked us and lured us in so that they could attack us. I lost about half my men and women in that attack, and I’m damned sure I won’t trust them ever again. On second thought, hitting their planet with a black hole is probably too nice. Maybe we can firebomb the shit out of it or hit them with some disintegrators from orbit. I hear they hurt a lot.”
“Okay, Lieutenant O’Leary, I understand where you’re coming from. In fact, I feel the same way as you toward them. I’m the dummy that allowed it to happen and almost lost his ship because of it. When I say I understand, I understand! Now, we have to get past this if we’re going to get Lieutenant Commander Hobbs back and have any hope of completing our mission.”
“Our mission?” the Vella Gulf’s executive officer, Commander Russ Clayton, asked. “You mean the mission to go to the Dark Star? You can’t be serious about continuing on. With all the people we’ve lost, and the damage the ship has sustained?”
“Yes, we’ve had losses, and the platoon has been particularly hard hit. However, we are further into enemy territory than any Terran ship has ever been. To go all the way home and send another ship in our place would take months and would give the Shaitans time to finish off the Ssselipsssiss and start on the Mrowry. Or maybe they head for us and wipe out the Kuji. Either way, if we go back now, we will be allowing the Shaitans to get an even bigger head start than they already have.”
“I’m sorry, Skipper, but I just don’t see how we have enough capability to take on both the Shaitans and the Jotunn. If we continue toward the Dark Star, we will have to fight both of them along the way. Sure, we’ve had some pretty good success against the Shaitans, at least recently, but if we have to go head-to-head with another Jotunn vessel, we’re going to be hard-pressed to win, even against something our size or smaller. With our losses, we don’t have the manning or resources for another long battle.”
“I understand that,” Captain Sheppard replied. “Not only do I understand your position, I agree with it, too.”
“So we’re not going to continue on toward the Dark Star?”
“Yes, I fully intend to press on,” Captain Sheppard said.
“But—,”
“I said I agreed with you that we couldn’t continue against an alliance of Shaitan and Jotunn vessels,” Captain Sheppard replied, interrupting his XO. “It isn’t my intention to do so, either, at least, not if we don’t have to. But I’m not sure we do.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think there are cracks in the alliance between the Jotunn and the Shaitans,” the CO said. “We’ve seen instances of it everywhere we’ve gone. The Shaitans don’t trust the Jotunn enough to give them jump modules, but here, in this system, we fought a Jotunn vessel with jump modules. Where do you suppose the Jotunn got them? I’m willing to bet that Loki pulled the same stunt on one of the Shaitan vessels he did with us. He probably got the technology he needed and then dumped their ship into a star somewhere to hide the evidence. If the Jotunn are willing to risk that, then their alliance is on shaky ground.”
He looked around the table, meeting each officer’s eyes in turn. “I’m hoping to talk with the Jotunn rulers and get them to dissolve their alliance with the Shaitans. If I can do that, we won’t have to worry about fighting the Jotunn on the way to the Dark Star…at least I hope not, anyway.”
“That is a great plan,” the XO said, “but only if it works. What’s in it for the Jotunn if they break their alliance with the Shaitan? As honor-bound as they are, they won’t want to go back on their word. We would have to be able to give them an awful lot to turn their backs on the Shaitans. What do we have to give?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I can’t imagine they are happy with the genocide they’ve been performing on the Ssselipsssiss planets. Maybe if I can convince them they’re next, they’ll see the Shaitan as betrayers and will be willing to betray them first.”
“That’s pretty thin,” Night said. “If things go badly, I don’t have a whole lot of force to back you up. I would recommend keeping our forces as far from their ships as possible. If they get people onto the Gulf again, I’m not sure we can turn them away.”
“Understood,” Captain Sheppard said, “and I’m going to try my damnedest never to put you in that position again.”
“This is what we have to do to accomplish our mission,” Captain Sheppard continued, his voice strong; “if we fail, we will have to go back to Terra, and someone else will have to come all the way back here in our place. No matter who they send, the crew won’t be as experienced as we are, and they are more likely to fail. If not us, then who? If not now, then when? We are here now, and we need to give it try. No, we need to succeed. If we don’t, the Shaitans are likely to pour into our sector of our universe, and you saw what they do to the planets they conquer. Genocide. I don’t want that to happen to Terra. We need to stop it here, and we need to stop it right now. Are there any additional questions?”
“No, sir,” the XO said. “When you put it like that, it’s obvious we need to try.”
“Not try, XO. We need to succeed.”
Outside the CO’s Conference Room, TSS Vella Gulf, Anti-Jotunheimr System, December 24, 2021
“Can I talk with you a second?” Night asked Lieutenant Bradford as they left the meeting.
“Sure. What can I do for you?”
“Something O’Leary said in the meeting reminded me of an idea I had a little while ago. I was wondering…you may have read the report about the disintegrator round that Arges fired at me during the assault on his castle. I wondered if it would be possible to put something similar on the end of a missile to spray it around on a Shaitan vessel. Something that if it missed, we could turn back off again so we don’t end up with disassemblers tearing up our ships or people.”
“I’ll take a look,” Lieutenant Bradf
ord replied, “although I don’t remember ever seeing a disintegrator in the replicator database.”
“It may not be in there,” Night replied, “as the disintegrator was outlawed. Even if you do find it in there, it’s probably password protected or however they do that shit. If it’s not in the replicator database, I’m not sure where you would look, but Arges had one, so the technology still exists.”
Ducting, Jotunn Ship Falcon, Jotunheimr System, December 24, 2021
“Okay,” Farhome said, “time’s up. What’s your brilliant idea for getting us out of here?”
“Brilliant idea?” Calvin asked. “I don’t have one. The only idea I have is a totally shitty one.”
“Totally shitty is better than nothing, which is the sum total for everything else we have. What’s your idea?”
“Steal a shuttle and fly out of here.”
“How are we going to get out of their weapons range without being destroyed?”
“I don’t know,” Calvin replied. “That’s why it’s such a shitty idea.”
“What about the fact that we can’t go through a stargate in a shuttle?” Burkuri asked. “We can’t even jump into the other universe in one of their shuttles. How are we going to escape?”
“No idea,” Calvin replied. “I’m still trying to figure that out. Hopefully, the Vella Gulf will show up and rescue us before we’re destroyed. Stealing a shuttle is only a means of buying more time.”
“That’s a shitty plan,” Burkuri noted.
“I know. If you’ve got any ideas, I’d be happy to consider them.”
“Maybe we could capture their captain,” Paxton said. “Based on what I’ve seen, he’s the only Jotnar worth capturing. If we took anyone else, Captain Magnusson would most likely just destroy the shuttle and not worry about the collateral damage to his crewman. The crew, though, probably wouldn’t destroy a shuttle with Magnusson in it. We’ll have to capture him if we’re going to get away.”
The Dark Star War (Codex Regius Book 3) Page 22
