by D. R. Rosier
Nadia looked curious, “When did you know?”
Chrystal looked thoughtful, but she was hamming it up.
“Oh… I was about a week old I think?”
Nadia shook her head, “That’s kind of sweet, and romantic. How long did it take him? Bridge?”
Chrystal pointed at her chest, “I had to grow these.”
He gasped, “Lies. It only took me four years… and I waited very patiently for another two years before she grew those wonderful breasts.”
Chrystal giggled, “True, yes, bridge, we have two minutes and forty-eight seconds.”
They moved to the bridge, which now sported seven seats and a larger three-dimensional holographic table instead of a screen.
They all turned as Alyndra came into the room, without any clothes over the ship suit at all. She looked devastatingly lithe and sexy in it, and obviously had no qualms over showing them all her body, in every detail.
He cleared his throat, “Come take a seat, that’s your coffee right there.”
She tilted her head, “Did I do something wrong, this garment covers everything, yet Nadia seems distressed.”
He said, “Wrong, no. But humans as a species, including A.I.s, are very tied to their… reproductive urges, and you are an undeniably beautiful woman. The suit on its own doesn’t leave much to the imagination.”
Nadia sighed and explained further, “My culture is different, but I’m out here to learn, just as you must. Please don’t take offense, you just surprised me, any human would have covered up further unless they were being seductive on purpose.”
Alyndra studied Nadia for a second, and I realized she was probably combing through her mind for a more cogent explanation.
“I think I understand, my race is different. We experience pleasure during copulation, much like your own, and can even feel urges to seek it out when appropriate, but it isn’t so intrinsic to our everyday lives that it would even come up in this kind of situation,” she said, and then walked over to her chair and sat down.
He thought she might have gone to change, but then he wasn’t going to complain about her not doing so either.
She took a sip of coffee, and said, “It’s bitter, but good.”
Chrystal said, “Fifteen seconds.”
He asked, “How many of those ships do you feel comfortable controlling?”
Chrystal thought about it, “Maybe half, plus this ship.”
He sent her his plans as more of a fast download, ten would have to be enough, because he had to keep an eye on the big picture, not get caught up controlling ten ships. They’d run out of time for a normal briefing by discussing… other things. Very silly things in hindsight, compared to strategy right before battle. That’s where his mind should have been the whole time, not on the three ladies sitting on the bridge with him. In his defense, he was male, and young, while the three ladies were very distracting.
Then they dropped out of subspace, a few light minutes from Feilia.
The data started coming in, and he sighed.
He announced, “They’re on the planet already.”
Alyndra nodded, “We have ground weapons they were avoiding, and hadn’t yet figured out how to defeat. We couldn’t touch their large ships, but we’d have slaughtered their landers. The Feilia are far more… peaceful.”
The three ships were in a similar formation around the world, and their sensors were reading several landers, and several thousands of alien lifeforms on the planet surface. The enemy hadn’t even tried to communicate, and this was the first real look he’d gotten at them.
They were humanoid.
That’s about all he could say, because all the ones on the ground were in armor of some type.
“Let’s clear the skies. Start the plan.”
They took off toward the planet at point four the speed of light, and the ten shuttlecraft launched. The small craft were tiny, the size of vans, but their gravity emitters, and power cores, were just as powerful as the destroyer’s. They just couldn’t use subspace energies to attack effectively, but with his plan they didn’t need to.
They closed range slowly, and simply ignored the enemy’s attacks, which wouldn’t break through their shields at all when they weren’t firing back yet. They did send the energy back to the enemy, but the small six inch holes were nothing to the two-mile-long ship.
He was impressed with Chrystal, and a little bit with himself. He really had made her mind very flexible for multi-tasking.
Chrystal said, “We’ll have to experiment another time, I can’t get the field through their apertures, or maybe since they know about that type of attack, they made a defense for it.”
“No problem, we’ll be in gravity emitter range shortly.”
She nodded grimly, and he wondered how she was doing with this. She must agree with his decision to fight, or else she’d have objected to this course of action, but how much was it affecting her?
He didn’t have doubts exactly, but it hurt him to kill, he felt guilty. What did that mean for her? He was commanding the fight, but she was the one actually doing the killing.
He shook off his thought when they reached gravity emitter range, he could talk to her about it when things slowed down. Maybe after the sex they both desperately wanted, he thought their tension was pretty high after those two months of perceptive time figuring out the subspace weapon issue.
Two months in which he’d had time to miss Nadia, and her absence had made his heart grow fonder as they say. Maybe that’s why he felt as strongly as he did after only four days of knowing her, less than four really. Those two months without sex was probably also why he was letting his thoughts wander again, he really needed to pay attention to the battle.
The destroyer they were in flipped up and showed its belly to the enemy, which was the largest surface, three hundred by one hundred feet. The gravity emitters reached out and tore at the enemy’s hull, overcoming their gravity shields and crushing the emitters in a three-hundred by one-hundred-foot area. The destroyer had far more gravity emitters than the original scout ship had.
Then Chrystal, as to the plan, absorbed energy from subspace and routed it all to the bottom of the hull, until it was at ten percent, and fired it into the perfectly sized hole they’d just cut. They weren’t exactly head on with the ship, but hit it at an angle. The large beam of energy dug into their hull on starboard front quarter, and ripped through ten of the eighteen decks, slowly rising up inside the ship until the energy pulse exited out the top deck close to a mile and half through the ship.
The ship amazingly, didn’t explode, and started to move their way quickly. It was a waste of time however. He didn’t forget the first time they’d tried to ram him and wouldn’t let them close.
“Back away to keep this distance.”
Chrystal nodded in response, obviously very busy, but the ship started to move as the gravity emitters dug another large hole in the shields a little further along...
At the same time, Chrystal controlled five shuttles which attacked each of the other two enemy vessels. They were being attacked by the enemy, but their shots weren’t strong enough to destroy the small ships. They reached out and ripped and tore at sections of hull, to not only destroy the emitters, but to open up a car sized hole. Then they flew inside through the hole in the shields.
The small ships then activated their subspace apertures, and being within the shield, even a weak continuous beam was enough to destroy any matter in its path, and they literally carved the two ships apart.
The first one exploded quickly, which had the unintended effect of throwing the shuttles away, into the energy curtain around the outside of the ship before it could fade. The additional subspace energy added to the still firing ships, which caused the field to fail, and the five shuttles exploded.
The second ship fell into pieces, some of which exploded, but many didn’t. Those small fighters returned to the ship.
“Manufacturing replacements,” Chryst
al said evenly.
Meanwhile, his destroyer lined up on the new hole in the enemy ship’s shields, and opened fire at ten percent. He held his breath for a second, as another one hundred yard by one-hundred-foot hole appeared through the enemy ship. This time, after a couple of seconds, it exploded and turned to dust.
“Life signs in the broken up enemy ship?”
Chrystal said, “Affirmative, they are not responding to any frequencies or transmission types I’ve tried.”
Nadia asked, “Are you going to kill them?”
He sighed, “I want to, but they’re helpless, so no. Still, we don’t have search and rescue capability, and they’re all in combat armor and won’t communicate with us. Alyndra, can you get anything from them?”
Alyndra said softly, “If you wish, I can try, but you’ll have to move the ship in very close. Just a few hundred yards.”
“Is what I’m asking offensive?”
Alyndra replied in a subdued but still oddly lyrical and alluring tone, “No Mike, I just don’t like all the death.”
He nodded, “Chrystal, slowly close with the enemy, and keep our subspace shields active.”
They moved toward the large pieces of the last remaining ship, the others being blown to dust, and moved up beside them. They just left enough distance so that their shields wouldn’t eat the pieces.
Alyndra sighed and closed her eyes, they waited.
“How are you doing with all of this baby? I love you, very much, I’m so sorry we have to do this.”
Chrystal replied, “It’s self-defense, we are defending others in the Empire. I… don’t enjoy it, but I won’t torture myself about it either. Look what they’re doing on the planet below, invading without even a demand for surrender, or compromise. I love you too Mike.”
Alyndra shuddered and opened her eyes.
“Their minds are chaos, and all they know right now is hatred, rage, and the desire to kill. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill anyone who came to assist, and if they could they’d blow themselves up right now for the chance to take out this ship. I don’t know if that’s always what they feel, but right now it’s all about destruction, and… hunger.”
“Hunger?” he asked.
She nodded slightly, “I believe they consume their enemies.”
He frowned, and accessed the command system, and flared the shields. He refused to ask the one he loved to do it herself. Basically, he created a low level pulse of subspace energy, that ate everything in its path for several miles around the ship. It wasn’t very strong, but without subspace shields, any level of subspace energy was enough to annihilate normal matter.
He waited for the judgement from his companions, but none of them said a word as the holographic display cleared of enemy debris, and enemy lifeforms. He took a couple of sips of coffee, and delayed speaking until he was sure his voice would sound strong, and not like a shaking leaf blowing in the wind.
“What are our options on the ground?”
Chrystal said, “Not good. They’re dug in and well-fortified in Feilia’s cities, and have strong artificial gravity shielding above their positions. Ours are much stronger, but the amount of gravities we’d have to apply to override their field would destroy much of the city around their fortifications, not to mention it could cause harm to the planet itself.”
That wasn’t good. Subspace weapons were out as well, because it would destroy the atmosphere. If they had artificial gravity, kinetic strikes were out as well. Not that they had anything on the ship that could be used for a kinetic strike.
“Suggestions, anyone?”
Alyndra said, “Miroth.”
He nodded, “We’re going there next.”
Alyndra sighed and shook her head, “You misunderstood, I must get used to using complete sentences. It is a habit to use a single word, and have my companions read the rest of the idea from my mind. I will adjust. Miroth has the best ground warriors in the empire, even the Xaran would have trouble against them. What I meant was, if we go to Miroth now, and free their orbitals, I believe their ground forces would not only wipe the floor with their invaders, but they would join us in gratitude and return with us to help clear the ground on Feilia.”
Huh, apparently angels really were kick ass warriors, not that they were really angels, but the thought struck him as amusing.
He smiled, “That’s an excellent idea. Thank you Alyndra. How long for Miroth Chrys?”
Chrystal replied, “Just seven minutes.”
He nodded, “Let’s go.”
They dropped into subspace level two, and made a course for Miroth. He took another sip of the coffee, or tried to anyway, and noticed he was out.
“Anyone else need more coffee?”
He didn’t really need it of course, caffeine had no effect on his android body, but it tasted good, and at least Nadia and Alyndra could get a good coffee buzz going.
He stood up and so did everyone else. Luckily, the kitchen was very close to the bridge, since they only had seven minutes…
Chapter Seventeen
“That’s different,” he said absently.
They’d dropped out of subspace a few light minutes out from the planet as usual, but this time one of the ships started to move their way immediately. It was different, so it didn’t seem right. He wasn’t sure what to make of it though.
“Launch three ships for each of the two staying behind at the planet, I think five each was major overkill.”
Three should work as well as five had, in theory. It was also less for Chrystal to keep track of, which would mean she’d be a little more present on the bridge for this battle.
Like at Feilia, as soon as the enemy ship got into energy range, they started to fire, and Chrystal just magnified the energies as they literally circled the ship and shot right back at the enemy, and blew a small hole through the large two-mile-long ship.
The power readings were identical, so he cautiously dismissed his concern, but continued to watch the scans closely. There was something there, but he couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t until they were halfway between energy and gravity range when it all went to shit and the enemy sprung a trap.
The enemy ship ramped up the power tremendously, and then seven shots fired at once, a sustained barrage of only two seconds, which was too short for him to take advantage of by the time his sensors caught up, but was plenty long enough to cut the six shuttles into scrap, and his ship almost in half.
He dropped his perception filters and everything around him slowed, including his own body, his breathing mask sealed in slow motion. He wondered how they’d increased power like that, and why they hadn’t done it sooner.
Chrystal sent, “What the hell was that?”
“They suckered us, even took damage to hide their upgrade until we were too close to retreat. My guess is they only got one of their ships finished in time to meet us. I don’t suppose you figured out that gravity aperture thing, otherwise we’re probably dead.”
He’d been too damned confident after taking out the three at both Feilia and Selana-Esari. They should have taken the time to figure out how that gravity generation through subspace apertures was done exactly, but he hadn’t wanted to waste the time since it hadn’t been needed then. After all, every moment meant more of their allies on the planet’s surface would be killed and eaten.
Well, it was needed now.
He looked at the scans again, and now that their enemy was using full power he figured out what they must have done. All of their subspace energy was being routed onto their inner backup shield, and then routed up to their primary, which was extremely dangerous. Of course, he supposed it was less dangerous than being less powerful than his ship.
Their primary shield was made up entirely of emitters that only created fields, which gave them about a fifteen percent edge over his ship, a gain of over thirty percent of what they’d had previously.
It was an edge he could close if they lived, and did the same insane thing. If a
n emitter failed on the inner shield, it would destabilize the whole shield for just a moment while the system compensated, which is why they had two in the first place. Due to field geometries in their current configuration, if that happened the outer shield would literally bounce the energy back at the ship before the inner field could stabilize. So they’d not only given up their redundant protection, but made it so a single point of failure would be even more disastrous than a single shield.
Well, maybe he could make a three-tiered shield, and load the energy on the center shield, so he’d still have that safety margin. They certainly had the power to burn. The enemy had probably manually swapped out emitters, and upgraded software, and couldn’t have added that third tier. But he could make it happen fast with the energy/matter conversion tech.
If they survived long enough, which was looking doubtful.
He started to run calculations and designed their new three tier shield, which would add another twenty-two percent power and edge the enemy out again by seven percent, while he waited for Chrystal’s answer about the gravity field propagation through subspace.
The inner two shields would be a normal seventy to thirty percent mix on emitters, the outer shield would be purely for shields and wouldn’t be able to interface with subspace at all which is what would account for the power increase. He then had to figure out how to pass the energy from the middle to the outer shield, which wasn’t actually that difficult. He verified the design in a few simulations, and saved it to all of his ship designs.
The inner shield wouldn’t do anything, except catch the energy if the middle shield destabilized for any reason.
His ship groaned and vibrated, he imagined it looked like a loaf of bread, cut three quarters of the way through.
The enemy ship fired again, five pulses, tearing five holes through the hull. They couldn’t use a sustained beam, because the separate parts of his ship were holding energy to fire back if they did.
“Chrystal?”
She finally replied, “I’m working on it.”
No pressure, but Alyndra would be dead, forever dead, if they couldn’t figure it out, even if the rest of them could come back. Unfortunately, even if he’d thought of it, which he hadn’t because he’d been too busy being cocky thinking they were safe, that wasn’t even an option.
