by Terry Frost
“Multiple contacts leaving the Hive nest, Admiral. Sensors show more than a hundred fighters, sir,” Ensign Cherny said.
Talking to his crew in general, Allen said, “We’ve lost twelve of our combat wasps and one hornet. Perseus has taken damage so we must get Colossus into the battle. Gordo, bring her about so we can utilize our rail gun on our starboard side. Drop the shields on my command.”
Colossus can only use her weapons when the shields are down. Same holds true for all ships with shield technology, at least all ships the admiral had seen so far in this realm.
“Captain Sokolov, this is Admiral Allen. Bring the Perseus inside the Colossus. I don’t want to lose a cruiser during our first meeting with these ant bastards.”
“Order received. We are heading to the bay, sir.”
The Hive fighters were closing fast as the remaining two squads of combat wasps, three hornets, and the Striker was beginning to engage, but there were too many of them. General Dubois ordered twenty of the thirty wasps that were covering Colossus’s flank to move around to begin engaging those alien fighters that were getting through.
Just two miles away now, Allen waited for another thirty seconds before he ordered the shields down. The rail gunner was ordered by Dubois to commence firing on the attacking fighters.
The railguns shot thousands of rounds in a matter of seconds and were taking out several attackers. Two Hive heavy ships had made it through the front line and were homing in on the massive ship.
Suddenly one of them exploded into thin air thanks to the handy work of the Striker. But the other released a powerful volley of projectiles on its own that hit the big ship on the bottom deck area in the middle section.
Colonel Hammer and Prince Gorvik were steadily doing their part but there were too many alien ships buzzing around them. What made it worse was the hit Hammer’s hornet took during the first wave had suddenly shut down one of his two thrusters.
With one thruster out, he was flying at half speed and was no match for the pursuing Hive fighters. With the big blue planet looming large in his window, he decided to dive into its atmosphere thinking he could lose them in the clouds of the planet.
Captain Slain saw Hammer heading for the planet and could tell he was down to one thruster, and could in no way make it through all the enemy fighters and get back safely on the Colossus. So he came to Hammer’s aid to help buy him time to get down into the atmosphere of the planet.
The Striker vaporized two of the four Hive fighters before the Striker started taking damage from enemy fighters on his six. Slain had to break off support for Hammer and turn to engage those shooting at him.
But just as he turned to engage, he could see that Jak had made it to the planet. Oddly, the Hive ships broke from their chase and turned back towards the ongoing battle. Colossus had lost another eight wasps, and with Perseus out of commission and the Striker taking damage, Admiral Allen ordered all ships back to the Colossus.
The Hive just had too many fighters engaging, and Ensign Cherny informed him six more heavy fighters just came out of the center bay of the Hive nest.
As the Striker and the other wasps and hornets were making their way to the main loading bay, both rail guns and every ion cannon were defending the retreat. Once loaded, Allen ordered the shields to be raised as he ordered Chief Engineer McManus to get the ship ready to jump.
“All ships on board, Anatoly?”
“Aye, Admiral. All are in the bay except for Colonel Hammer and his hornet, sir.”
“Where the hell is Hammer?”
Rear Admiral Petrov told him, and Allen said, “If I know Colonel Hammer, he will hunker down on that planet until we can get back and pick him up.” Allen pressed his comlink and said, “Chief, make her jump.”
Chapter 28
Once through the stratosphere of the huge blue planet, Jak had to find a place to land, and do it rather quickly. The hornet’s right thruster was smoking and beginning to catch fire. He would prefer to just take the time to be amazed and filled with joyous wonder at the sight of the beautiful new liquid world, but he didn’t have that luxury at the moment. He had to land and get it done in under two minutes.
Jak was flying the hornet just off the east coast of the long continent he saw while flying with Slain on the Striker. His position was near the center of the extremely long continent as he brought the struggling hornet lower to the surface.
His right thruster blew itself out extinguishing the flame as it did. The ship became hard to keep level, and if he didn’t land soon they would start to roll, which could cause the hornet to crash nose first.
They came into the planet when it was about to turn into night and the star Calphor was slowly sinking below the horizon. Jak saw a long stretch of beach coming into view and knew the area was going to have to do.
The beach wasn’t very wide as it was lined with a forest. A forest of trees that had to be at least a couple hundred feet tall with trunks three times wider than the great Redwoods in northern California back on Earth. If Jak hit one of them they would be done for.
Suddenly the sound of an alarm went off signaling that the remaining thruster was about to flare out and the hornet would be dead weight. He pushed the nose of the hornet down and slowed enough to start his approach.
Jak brought his hornet to within a couple feet above the beach and killed the thruster completely. The hornet hit the soft sand and bounced then hit hard, then slid for several hundred feet before coming to a complete stop.
The three people on the downed hornet didn’t escape without some bruises but were alright.
“Everyone alright?” Jak asked.
Gorvik and Junal shook their heads if they were okay.
Jak checked the readings for the planet’s atmosphere, and they were in luck as it was breathable. But before doing anything else he figured it was question and answer time. He couldn’t begin to imagine why his two stowaways were on his ship and knew there would be many pissed off Daakie officials looking for them.
Hammer unlocked his pilot’s seat and let it swivel just enough for him to face both the prince and the Venic. He could see in their eyes the apprehension from what was about to come next.
“What are you two doing off the Daakie homeworld? Why the hell did you hide on my ship?”
They both started to speak at the same time but were interrupted by Hammer when he said, “One at a time. You may go first, Prince Gorvik.”
Prince Gorvik took Junal’s hand into his and looking lovingly at her said, “Junal and I have promised each other to be life mates. We want to be with each other for as long as she lives.”
Junal, looking into Jak’s eyes said, “Daakie cannot get betrothed outside of their race. We couldn’t be together, and if King Gaakin knew his nephew desired to build a life with me, I would be taken away in the night and my precious Gorvik would never see me again.”
“Whoa, just a minute. Don’t your people live to be several hundred years old? And what about you, Junal? How long on average do the Venic live?”
“That is of no concern to us, Earthling. We will share spirits during our time together and long after she lives no more.”
Something about the way he says Earthling is about to grate on me Jak thought.
“Prince Gorvik, it is true that Humans are from the planet Earth and that does make me an Earthling, but that is not the proper designation when conversing with us. Have you heard me refer to you as Daak Prince Gorvik? My designation, militarily speaking, is Colonel Hammer. My social name is Jak Hammer or simply Jak.”
“I shall remember this, Jak Hammer.”
Jak looked over the prince’s shoulder and couldn’t believe what he saw just a few yards away from them. It was a creature resembling centipedes on Earth except this one was six-feet tall and nearly twenty feet long.
“We are about to have company. Hold on to something.”
The giant alien creature walked over the top of the hornet and just kept on going.
All three occupants were a little rattled, but that was about it. As he watched the creature amble along he thought damn thing didn’t care about us, we were just in its way. If that thing is any indication of the size of creatures on this planet we could be in for some serious shit.
“Do you have any weapons on board, Jak Hammer?” Gorvik asked.
Jak put his hand over the blaster in the holster on his hip and said, “I have this, two quassrifles, and a few gravity grenades, but that’s it. The blaster will help with small to medium targets and the quassrifle should take down something as big as that huge bug that just walked over my hornet. Anything bigger the rifles might slow them down, but we might have to empty the cylinders before they did some real damage, and I only have four reloads.”
Prince Gorvik pulled open his long black overcoat and touched his cho-ka and the serrated disc Jak had seen several Daakie soldiers carry.
With his fingers on the handle of his cho-ka, he said, “This will momentarily stun animals, but this will cut heads off then come back to me.”
“I know what the cho-ka is but, what is the name for that,” Jak asked, pointing at the disc.
“It is called a Singa. The weapon sings or makes sounds while flying.”
“Well, at least we aren’t totally defenseless, and we may very well need to cut some heads off.”
Jak looked at Junal and asked, “You wouldn’t have any weapons hid underneath that (he thought about saying ‘form-fitting’ but decided against it) blouse thing.”
She raised her blouse only an inch or so above her tiny waist and sewn into her waistband, pulled back a zipper and produced an object that looked like a letter opener, held it up and said, “Junal can damage life with this.”
She pressed a small silver button on the front of the object and a glowing twelve-inch humming blade shot out the end.
Prince Gorvik gave her a quizzical look and she shrugged her shoulders.
He said, “Why did you not tell me you had the weapon?”
Junal smiled and said, “You did not ask, my Prince.”
Jak said, “I’ll be damned, she is a Jedi.”
Junal asked, “What is this, Jedi.”
“Nevermind, it is a reference to a story told many years, uh, I mean periods ago on Earth.”
Jak checked some readouts on his control panel and saw the outside temperature was sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit and it was almost completely dark as the last rays of Calphor had disappeared for the day. He was hoping the huge planet’s orbit would bring daylight back around before too many hours had passed.
“I’m going to try to get in contact with Colossus. Maybe if I can get through they will send a ship to us if they aren’ still fighting the Hive.” Then he thought, if and if and if.
He tried for a long ten minutes then decided either his call wasn’t penetrating the stratosphere, or the Colossus either lost the fight, or they had to jump away. He wasn’t worried that much about them not surviving the battle and thought it was more than the call couldn’t go through, or they had to jump. Just in case it was the latter, he reached up to his control panel and turned on the hornet’s recovery beacon.
“I have no way of knowing how long it will be before the star’s light shines on us again, but we aren’t going exploring this world in the dark. So if you will go open that locker there on the wall, you will find two pillows and a couple thermal blankets. We will rest now and hope nothing else bothers us tonight.”
“I cannot lay beside Junal. It would not be proper to do so until we are betrothed.”
“No problem, Prince Gorvik. You can sleep in the co-pilot’s seat and I will sleep in mine.”
****
Back on planet Daak, all hell had broken loose. Prince Gorvik and his tender, Junal, had been missing for several days. A citywide, then continent-wide search had been conducted utilizing thousands of Daakie citizens and almost every available military personnel with no luck.
King Gaakin was beside himself with worry. The next Daakie royal groomed to take his place was nowhere to be found. After several reports from all over Daak with no leads to the young prince’s whereabouts King Gaakin called for an emergency meeting with all his top people.
Everyone knew their king and was ready for him to boil them in hot plasma if they didn’t satisfy his questions. There were eleven Daakie present, four influential Daakie citizens, and seven military commanders, one of them being Burseq Maalik. They all were standing at attention as Gaakin walked down the line and asked each one, “Where is my nephew?”
Most hung their head in shame because they had no answer for their king, but when he stood in front of the Daakie Military Commander Caid Tikik and asked the question, “Where is my nephew?”
“My King. We have not found young Prince Gorvik, but I have a suggestion as to where he may have gone.”
Every head turned to see what Caid Tikik was going to say.
“Speak up, commander of my military.”
“It is possible he is with the Earthlings.”
“Why would he be with the Earthlings?”
“Maybe they took him, Your Grace or that Venic female persuaded him to go with her to her homeworld, Obon.”
“If I may, Your Grace?” asked Burseq Maalik.
King Gaakin nodded in approval.
“What makes you think that the Venic female would have him go with her to Obon?
“It is rumored that Prince Gorvik and the Venic female wish to join as mates.”
“You mean to say Prince Gorvik has desires to make her his mate?
The king looked around his chamber and said, “We will all take a seat and talk about this, and I demand to know what makes you suspect that the Earthlings may have my nephew.”
All eleven Daakie sat at a boomerang-shaped table, facing their king as he walked up three wide stone steps to his throne and sat facing them.
Chapter 29
Colonel Hammer hadn’t slept but a couple hours, mainly because the prince snored most of the night. He sat in his seat staring out into the darkness. Around 2:00 a.m. he sat up straight in his seat because he saw about a hundred green glowing bulbs about the size of a beach ball, and they were flying out of the forest and coming in his direction over the beach.
In a whispered voice he said, “What the hell are those things?”
Before pushing the panic button in his mind he decided to wait and see what the damn glowing things were. The glowing creatures were blinking periodically and didn’t stay luminous the whole time.
When they got close enough to make them out he laughed, thinking giant lighting bugs. What a crazy assed world this is.
He didn’t have a plan for what he and his two charges would do when sunrise came, but he did know they weren’t going to spend another hour in the damaged hornet once he could see where they would be walking.
Finally, the sun was beginning to break the distant horizon, but before leaving the hornet he tried several more times to make contact with Colossus. With him trying to reach the massive ship Prince Gorvik and Junal began to stir and after a minute or so woke up.
“Good morning, sleepyheads.”
“I fail to see what is good about being marooned in this world, Jak Hammer,” Gorvik complained.
“Come on, Prince. Waking up on this planet is much better than being dead. Wouldn’t you agree, Junal.”
“Yes, I would agree, Colonel Hammer.”
Looking embarrassed Gorvik said, “I need to urinate.”
“Me too,” Junal said.
“Well, that is one thing we all have in common. I’ll be the first, then stand guard as Junal takes her turn, then you Prince, will go last.”
Gorvik grumbled as Jak opened the cockpit and stepped out to relieve himself. He walked from the back of the hornet to the cockpit and took Junal’s hand and helped her down. She hurried to the other end of the hornet as Jak keep his eye on the forest less than fifty yards away.
When Junal finished, Prince Gorvik hurrie
d out of the cockpit and went to the rear of the ship. Junal stood next to Jak as they waited for the prince to finish his business. Gorvik walked up to Jak and Junal and stood by them.
“It's time for us to do some exploring. You two stand by the ladder while I retrieve the rifles and the only provisions we have on the hornet.”
A minute or two passed, then Jak handed the rifles down to the prince, then came down the ladder with a small duffle bag with a meager amount of food. He took a rifle from the prince and let it hang from his shoulder. Prince Gorvik did the same with his rifle and they began walking towards the forest.
“Early this morning you two missed some very interesting flying bugs that glowed. The lit up the entire beach around us. We have bugs like those on Earth, but these were a couple hundred times bigger. Everyone keep watch as we go through the forest. We have no idea what lives in this world, but it probably won’t be long before we start to learn what does live here.”
Even before they took a couple steps towards the forest, Jak thought the readings I took on the atmosphere showed a very high level of oxygen. A much higher level than on Earth, Daak or Hopus. That could explain why everything in this world is so damn big. I just pray there aren't any carnivores here.
Before entering the forest Jak stopped a few yards from the edge of the woods and looked up at the nearest tree to him. He couldn’t see the top of the tree because it was extremely tall with foliage so thick starting around twenty feet up.
“Look at the size of those leaves. Each one is the size of dinner plates. I’m beginning to think everything in this world is gigantic.”
A second later all three jumped as they heard a loud screech and flapping wings. A very large winged animal the size of the hornet came flying out less than thirty feet from where they were standing. The animals plumage was bright red and green with a yellow colored head.
“Whatever that thing is I hope it doesn’t eat meat,” Jak said, as the bird thing flew out over the ocean until it disappeared from sight.
