The Hidden Ship

by Mark Wayne McGinnis

  Taking a closer look, I had to smile. It was none other than Jhally, who was supposed to be lying on his deathbed, and who was now answering my question.

  He said, “The control panel is nowhere near where Mike was telling the robot to look for it.”

  My jaw fell open as I watched the robot start running within the large flight bay. Ships of all kinds, some smaller warships similar to those nearby aiming their weapons at us, as well as a number of Shredders, parked one after another along the outer perimeter of the bay.

  “There it is,” Jhally said.

  I said, “General Chiv . . . once that shield comes down, how fast can you scoot that Crusher of yours inside?”

  “Fast enough,” he said flatly.

  I said to the rest of the NightHawks, “Prepare to move, everyone. Fast! Diddle-daddle and you die.”

  And then it happened. The energized aqua blue flight bay shield blinked off. The XL5’s big maneuvering thrusters immediately came alive and within four seconds the Crusher was accelerating toward the opening.

  That’s when the Earupitan armada of warships unleashed total hellfire upon us. First one, then another, and then another of our NightHawks Shredders exploded. The XL5 slid safely inside to safety. Karen, Yeager and myself wasted no time—we flew as countless plasma bolts crisscrossed all around us. In a matter of three seconds, my Shredder took no less than five indirect hits. My portside wing disintegrated right as I entered the flight bay. Karen’s Shredder lost its tail section in a blaze of green energy bolts. Yeager, coming in right behind us, didn’t make it. His ship exploded just as he cleared the flight bay entrance.

  My ruined ship crashed hard down onto the deck and proceeded to slide sixty yards, all the way across the flight bay. Dazed but unhurt, I slid open my canopy. Karen was already leaping down from her Shredder’s wing, onto the deck. Then the flight bay’s energized shield came back online—all incoming enemy fire, suddenly stopped.

  Ten feet away, the towering robot loomed high above us, motionless. Armed men, women, and Earupitan Marshals were already streaming down the XL5’s ramp. I spotted Donny and then Matt—both were in full combat mode—both barking off orders to our remaining Takebacks. Moving as quickly as they could manage with Jhally’s arm draped over his shoulder, Mike helped the injured Mannarian traverse the sloping gangway.

  We were all, close to two hundred of us, looking around at our surroundings. The voluminous flight bay spanned hundreds of feet from one side to the other and continued on deep into the bowels of the habitat. High above us, hundreds of feet up, I could see a myriad of hanging catwalks and pedestrian causeways. Clearly, this Solaris Habitat was immense.

  Jhally, with Mike’s help, moved directly toward the far-side bulkhead. There he began tapping at an integrated console. Immediately, a virtual 3D projection came alive in front of him. Jhally shook his head, then turned toward me. “This isn’t good.”

  chapter 48

  Talk to me,” I said, approaching Jhally and what appeared to be a virtual schematic of the ship’s interior now suspended in the air.

  Jhally said, “There are twenty primary levels that make up this habitat, all of which are above us. Each level is independent of the others with its own dedicated power grid and separate environmental sub-systems. And each level has its own dedicated security forces . . . the barracks, a central armory, and an integrated weaponry to repel the advancement of hostile intruders. Each level contains a centralized bio-vault where the Earupitan females reside. Those vaults are about as impregnable as anything I’ve ever seen.” Jhally looked at me, his reptilian features revealing more than just the accumulation of stress and worry from the past few days, but something else as well—resignation.

  I tried to ignore the constant pinging sound in my ear puck—the overlord was hailing me again. Finally, I opened the channel. “Your Eminence?”

  “You will find any future escape from that flight bay impossible, Captain Polk. And you will find access to any other areas of the habitat impossible. Whatever your intentions were, Captain . . . you have failed miserably. And while you pose no threat to our cherished female Earupitans, you are marooned. Only if you surrender now will I be able to spare your lives.”

  “Oh, really? You’d do that for us . . . let us go? Just like that?”

  “I said spare your lives, I did not say anything about granting you your freedom.”

  “I don’t know, I imagine we could live fairly comfortably here in this bay for quite a while. There are food replicators on the XL5, and probably on the other ships in here, too. I think we’ll just sit tight here for the time being. I’m okay knowing we have blocked access for any of your other vessels to enter the flight bay . . . so you won’t be making any deliveries any time soon.”

  The overlord said, “Let me tell you how things will progress from here, Captain. Sooner rather than later, Solaris Habitat’s security forces will storm that flight bay. Prior to that, though, the surrounding atmosphere—your breathable air—will be flushed from the compartment. You likely have already noticed that the temperature has dropped significantly. It won’t be long before you will be forced to stay cloistered within one of the space vessels where there are controlled environments. So you see, Captain Polk, you have already been defeated, you just haven’t come to terms with that fact yet. I’ll give you two hours to surrender. After that, you will be solely responsible for the deaths of those same people you are trying to protect.”

  Irritated, I cut the channel.

  “So how many Gaps are we talking about here?” Matt said from behind me.

  “One hundred of the overlord’s most highly trained soldiers,” Jhally said.

  I looked back to see Matt and Donny. Both were standing with their arms crossed over their chests. Donny shrugged, giving me a it’s a no big deal expression.

  “That’s one hundred security forces on each level. Two thousand total.” Jhally emphasized.

  I thought about everything Jhally was saying. I watched as more warships passed outside the flight bay’s energy field. There would be no escaping this vessel. We either succeeded here today or we’d die trying. But how do we succeed breeching not just one heavily fortified habitat, but twenty? And do so with a fighting force that is untrained and one-tenth their number!

  “Unfortunately . . . there’s more,” Jhally said. He pointed up to the slowly revolving projected schematic. There are eight lifts that allow access between the various levels.” He looked away from the projection and stared deeper into the depths of the flight bay. “There . . . you can see four of the lift access ports at the far end of the flight bay. You can also see that not one of the lifts are even down here. And, Brian,” Jhally paused for effect, “there are no adjoining stairwells like you would have within a high-rise building on Earth.”

  Two hundred rebel souls stood in silence, waiting for me to magically come up with something that would contradict Jhally’s dire accounting of our situation. I saw Karen rubbing her bare arms. It was getting colder in here. What I wanted to do was find some hidden place, a corner here or a nook there, to just think things through. Instead I turned to all those that had followed me here. Karen returned my gaze and, remarkably, offered me a bemused smile. Donny raised his brows questionably and Matt stared impatiently at having this prolonged delay. I moved into the crowd seeing big Randy and his mother. She scowled and said, “Time for you to man up, boy . . . don’t be such a pussy!”

  Shawn McGee placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder and nodded with confidence. “You got this, man.”

  Some here had been saved back at the dome, others were members of my original Takebacks group. Not one of them was unarmed. I recognized some of the weaponry from my own armory, but there were also plasma rifles and mistmakers too. I continued to move amongst this pathetic rebel force. A rebel force that had, somehow, accomplished more than anyone else. More than the armie
s of all the great countries on Earth. But perhaps the overlord was right. Perhaps all our actions to this point had been for naught.

  “Just give me a second,” I said to no one in particular as I strode away from everyone. I kept going until I was another thirty yards deeper into the bay. I stopped and looked up—took in the technological wonder of such an amazing spacecraft. I looked all around me—at the numerous and impressive parked spacecraft that loomed tall nearby. I tried to ignore the fact I could actually see my breath now—condensation of the moisture in the cold air. We were all going to die here and there was nothing I could do to avoid that outcome. Maybe I should reconsider the overlord’s offer—what choice did I have?

  And then I started to chuckle. A chuckle that soon turned to laughter. Concerned faces stared back at me and that seemed funny too. My giddiness subsided and I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes. I found Mike staring back at me. I gestured him to come join me. He did as asked but his expression mirrored the others. He thought I had totally lost it—the pressure had gotten to me. And we were all fucked.

  I placed a hand on Mike’s shoulder just as Shawn McGee had done minutes earlier. I gestured to the flight bay around us, “Tell me, what do you see, Mike?”

  He shrugged and let out an exasperated breath. “A prison?”

  Murmurs from the others came back in agreement.

  “And those craft all lined up over there?”

  “Shredders . . .”

  “And those big ones down there farther into the bay?” I asked.

  “Looks like three of the smaller Crusher craft and another XL5 like this one,” he said gesturing to the XL5 he and the others had arrived here on.

  “And Mike, what is this thing here?”

  “You mean the robot?”

  I nodded.

  “Well . . . it’s a robot.” He shrugged. “What’s with the twenty stupid questions?” He looked at me, annoyed. And then, slowly, he smiled as realization crept in. “Those Crushers. They probably each have a collapsed assembly bot within—”

  I cut him off, “Mike, would you be able to control those bots same as you did this one?”

  “With Jhally’s and a few other’s help, yeah, sure.”

  “Can you make them climb?”

  I watched his eyes as he took in all the little nooks and crannies that spanned the surrounding bulkheads. Mike looked up. “That’s probably some kind of reinforced metal plating up there. Might be a challenge for the bots to break through,” he said.

  “Okay, how about we make them a trap door then?” I said, gesturing to the neat line of Shredders.

  It took close to an hour for us to make the necessary preparations for battle. Most everyone had withdrawn into the warmth and higher oxygen levels within the XL5. The rest of us struggled within the now quickly dissipating atmosphere of the flight bay.

  Mike and the small team he had assembled were busy awakening five assembly bots—bringing them out of their hidden Crusher craft compartments, awakened from their hibernation modes. One by one, they began to take shape there upon the flight deck—great metal leg and arm appendages expanding outward from their massive barrel-like torsos. It wasn’t long before our army of five forty-foot tall headless giants stood motionless before us. Next, Mike instructed his team on how to control and maneuver the mechanical beasts.

  Karen, now wearing someone’s oversized coat, was spending her time sprinting between the various Shredder crafts determining which were operational and then getting them flight ready—going through a kind of pre-flight checklist she’d come up with.

  Jhally, Donny, Matt, and I pretty much stayed huddled around the habitat’s projected schematic. For some reason this same level of information was not accessible within the XL5’s command center. We were all finding it hard to breath and the temperature had dipped into the low thirties—close to freezing. Donny had come up with an ingenious way for one of the robots to be solely dedicated to the transferring of our fighting forces up to the levels above. Seems there are open compartments within the torso of the big bots that are about ten foot wide by eight foot high.

  “We can squeeze, I don’t know . . . maybe teams of fifteen or so in there at a time.” Donny said. “The roof of XL5 seems to be about the right height. We’ll have the teams enter through the access panel there on the bot’s lower back area.”

  There were nods all around.

  “Unfortunately,” Jhally said, “the compartments are not pressurized, so both temperature and the lack of atmosphere will soon be an even bigger issue.”

  I had started to notice movement high up above us. Soldiers were scurrying along the catwalks—undoubtedly taking up positions to fire down at us.

  “They are wearing vac-suits . . . with helmets. Our time is quickly running out,” I said.

  More nods all around.

  I heard Karen in my ear puck, “I have three Shredders operational . . . I think. Good news, cockpits are getting nice and toasty. We going to do this, or what?”

  Before I could answer, plasma bolts rained down on us from above.

  chapter 49

  The integrated control panel to Jhally’s right erupted into a shower of sparks. Streaks of bright blue energy careened off the deck plates and nearby bulkhead. We all ran—fortunately, we knew what our respective jobs were. On my way to my awaiting Shredder, I hailed the XL5’s command center. “Get the ship’s guns activated. Return fire!”

  I was now helping to support Jhally, his crutch had dropped somewhere along the way. The alien was struggling to breathe now—his seven-foot-tall body mass required a hell of a lot more oxygen than that of a Human. All three of the awaiting Shredder’s argon boost drives were cycling steady and loud. Karen had left the closest two craft for us. Plasma fire from above continued. I was thinking we were fortunate that we hadn’t been hit—no one’s aim up there seemed all that great. Of course, that’s precisely when Jhally was hit in the shoulder and I was hit in my right calf. My lower leg felt as if someone had jammed a white-hot poker into it—fortunately, it still supported my weight. I continued to push and shove Jhally up onto the closest Shredder’s wing.

  “I’m fine . . . go!” he yelled down to me.

  I ducked and ran beneath his craft and sprinted, as best I could with my injury, to my awaiting Shredder. Within seconds I was seated and cursing at the canopy to hurry up and close.

  “Hey, handsome,” I heard in my ear. I looked to my right and was just barely able to make out Karen’s face within the cockpit.

  “You ready to do this?” I asked.

  “Sure. Piece of cake. See you on the other side.”

  Lift thrusters engaged, Karen’s Shredder was rising up within the flight bay. Jhally’s craft was next and then mine. I stole a quick look out over my starboard wing and saw one of the big assembly robots was positioned right up close to the XL5. Mike had it stooping down a bit—like it was taking a crap. Donny, on the Crusher’s roof, was ushering people and a few Gaps, one who was unmistakably Dalm Mor Stroph , into the bot’s open compartment.

  “I’m taking these fuckers out,” Karen said over our comms.

  “Have at it,” I said, poised to do the same. My wing guns came alive as I strafed a horizontal line of plasma fire across one of the lower catwalks. No less than ten Gaps were hit—two of which were propelled right off the catwalk—arms and legs flailing as they plummeted to the flight deck below.

  This was part of our plan. Karen and I would clear the walkways and catwalks of enemy shooters, while Jhally concentrated on breaching the flight deck’s ceiling using his gravity-disruptor cannons. He was now flying upside-down now—fuselage belly angled toward one of the predetermined weak points we had selected earlier.

  “Show off,” Karen said.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  I actually like the unique thunderous sound those big can
ons make when engaged. Karen and I continued to take pot shots at the catwalks, although most of them were already ruined or had fallen down to the deck below. Enemy fire was down to a minimum.

  Jhally was circling above and was upside down again. Boom! Boom! Boom!

  “How’s it looking, Jhally? Having any success?” I asked.

  “Not so far. I’ll make another run at it, but you and Karen may need to assist me.”

  “You know how I love blowing shit up,” she said. “So don’t be shy asking.”

  Jhally made three more runs at the same ceiling location before chiming back in, “We have a breech!”

  I could already see it. The bay’s ceiling looked as if a massive fist had punched a hole right up through it. There was a gaping ragged hole with surrounding bent up metal shards. “Good news! But that may still need additional pounding to enable our bots to crawl up through. Jhally, why don’t you get started on another access while Karen and I take turns expanding this one.”

  “Copy that,” Jhally said.

  It took another ten minutes before the three of us had four ample-sized breeches situated close to the side bulkheads. Oxygen levels were already bad when we’d started this operation, I could only imagine how bad it was for everyone now. Two of the robots were now scaling the bulkhead walls on opposing sides of the flight bay. One was halfway up, the other a little lower.

  I hailed Donny.

  “Go for Crazy Horse. Good work breeching the next level, Polybius.”

  I smiled at his return to using our code names. “I take it you’re in one of those climbing bots?” I asked.

  “There’re twenty of us. Packed in here like sardines. Let me tell you, Stroph’s got some mean body odor going on in here.”

  “So oxygen levels are still okay?”

  “Yeah, must have been those holes you guys poked into the upper floor. Temperatures and atmosphere seems to be normalizing.”

  “Copy that,” I said. “Hey . . . good luck up there. I’m landing now. Will catch the next ride up.”