Resolute Omnibus (The War for Terra)

by James Prosser

  They separated from their embrace and she pulled out a small square of fabric from her pocket and wiped her face. She blew her nose loudly and the sound echoed in the vast hangar deck. They both laughed as they looked to see if anyone was around. They stepped over to a stack of crates.

  As they crouched down behind the crates, Alice reached behind Lee’s neck and pulled him down into a kiss. At first surprised and awkward, the kiss turned deep and passionate the longer they held it. By the time they pulled away from each other, Lee had to take a deep breath to stop his head from spinning.

  “When Wizard died,” she said, “I felt all the old feelings return. The anger and confusion came rushing back to me. I never wanted anyone to sacrifice themselves for me. I don’t want you to feel—”

  “Alice,” he said softly to her. “I care for you very much, but don’t start planning my funeral yet. Besides, I’m a self-absorbed asshole, remember? It’s not my style to think of others like that.”

  She slapped him across the face. It was not a strong slap, but it left his cheek stinging for a few moments. He rubbed his cheek as he looked back at her. She had that old smile back on her face again and it made his heart stir.

  “You deserved that,” she said. “If for no other reason than to remind you when you say something like that to the next woman.”

  Lee nodded at her and they both reached out to each other again. As they embraced, Lee heard the voice of Captain Ortiz drifting across the hangar deck. They quickly stood and tried to compose themselves. Lee straightened his uniform jacket as Alice tried to press down her deckhand overalls with one hand. As Lee stepped around the crates to try to see the captain, Alice swatted his bottom.

  “You had a spot of dirt on your butt,” she said, as he turned to her. “You’ll have to wait until I get off shift at eight for anything more.”

  Lee turned back around to find Captain Ortiz standing directly in front of him. He felt his face burning with embarrassment. The captain looked back at Lee with a knowing smile on his lips.

  “Captain,” stammered Lee. “Crewman Bennett and I were just discussing the new fighters.”

  When Lee turned back to indicate Alice, he saw she had already gone. He looked back at the captain, the redness on his cheeks deepening. The woman could already be heard issuing orders to the other deckhands as they loaded fuel onto a passenger shuttle.

  “Of course, Lee,” said Ortiz. “If you are finished, I need your help.”

  “Of course, sir, absolutely,” he replied, thankful for the other man’s discretion.

  “We’re ready to disconnect the umbilical lines to Baal and pull away shortly, but the last batch of passengers is refusing to leave. I hoped that maybe you could talk to them.”

  “I’ll do what I can, sir” he replied, a little confused. “But don’t you think Henry would be better at this?”

  “Henry is staying on Baal to look after the civilians, and I don’t blame him,” the captain replied. “Hathaway has always been a little hard to take, but he seems to have been stretched thin these last few years.”

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, sir,” Lee said. “A few of the Edison crew have expressed their apprehension as well, and I think they may have a point.”

  “I know, Lee,” Ortiz said, starting to walk to where the shuttle, and a group of civilians, were positioned. “We’re taking most of the engineers with us and the Karisiens, but a few of them are staying behind to try to get Baal working again.”

  Lee nodded his understanding. In the few days since they had docked with the immense carrier, the engineers had been crawling over Baal day and night, trying to repair the crippled ship. Hathaway had even allowed the elves to take a look at the fusion reactors and they seemed to have gotten the power plant back to startup mode. The admiral had promised to share power with Austerlitz and take on the civilians from Terran Princess until they returned.

  As they approached the group of civilians, a stout, dark-skinned man came forward to meet the captain. He had an air of authority; the others had obviously delegated the role of leader to the man. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and dark pants that had been well cared for, but showed signs of long wear. Lee noticed a silver pendant hanging around his neck on a thin chain.

  “Mister Rao,” said the captain, indicating Lee. “Have you met Commander Pearce?”

  “No,” said the man. “I have heard much about the man, though. It is good to meet you, Commander Pearce.”

  The two men exchanged handshakes and stepped back. Lee had taken a position beside and just behind the captain. The civilian representative was flanked by two other men who each looked very serious.

  “The captain was saying there was a problem with the shuttle?” Lee asked the group.

  “No, sir,” Rao replied. “The shuttle is just fine. We have just decided not to be on it.”

  Lee looked to the captain for reassurance. The men ranged in age from Ortiz’s age to younger than Lee, and seemed to represent a cross-section of the passengers left on the ship. They were all standing around the shuttle with their arms crossed, refusing to board.

  “Mr. Rao,” Lee began. “I can assure you that the passenger shuttle is perfectly safe. You’ll be on board the Baal in a few minutes, where you can settle in. We will be back to pick you up in a few days.”

  “We are not going to Baal, Mister Pearce,” replied the man to the nods of his fellow passengers. “We want to stay here on our home.”

  Lee looked at the men and shook his head. It was natural that these people should feel that the Princess was their home, with Earth a nearly-forgotten dream, but the situation was not safe for civilians. Ortiz looked back to Lee with an exasperated sigh.

  “Mister Rao,” the captain said. “We may be going into a dangerous situation. I cannot be responsible for the safety of the civilians on board the Princess while we search for Resolute.”

  “Please, Captain, call me Banu,” said the man, raising his hands palm out to stop the man’s speech. “I understand about the danger, but we have decided to stay and help here on the ship. It is our only home now and we choose to defend it.”

  “Listen, Banu,” said Lee. “We may come under fire from a Confederacy battleship or worse. I realize you think that this ship is like home, but—”

  “No, Commander Pearce,” interrupted Rao. “It is not like our home. It is our home. Now you can accept our offer of help — many of us have military training or other skills that will prove useful — or you can lock us in the brig. Either way, we will be on this ship when you go to M-space.”

  The captain and the pilot looked at the civilians and then to each other. The man’s logic was sound and Lee couldn’t think of any further reason to remove these people from the ship. The captain nodded quietly and returned his look to Rao with a sigh.

  “Okay, Mr. Rao,” said the captain. “I guess we can use all the help we can get. Please see Mister Ragunathan in security to get yourself on the duty roster.”

  The men turned back to the group and waved their fists in triumph. The small crowd raised a cheer and began to gather their belongings and leave the hangar deck. Rao stayed behind as the other people left.

  “Captain,” said the man. “I want to thank you for allowing us to stay. We have felt like unwanted cargo for the last few years. You don’t understand what this means to us to feel useful again.”

  The dark-skinned man turned and left the hangar deck, joining the other two men at the door. Lee realized that the entire group, despite racial differences, all shared one thing in common: they all looked very tired, but also determined to fight for the only home they still had.

  18

  The Terran Princess was on its fourth, and what Lee hoped would be its final, jump through M-Space. Their first jump had been to recharge the power supplies depleted by the power transfer to Baal. During that stop, Lee had needed to familiarize himself with his fighter again.

  The elves had been working overtime t
o repair and refurbish the Crowned Eagle class fighter. So much so that the captain had decided it needed a new classification all to itself. His new fellow pilots had decided it should be called the Silver Eagle in honor of its stripped-down color. Lee had taken it out of the Princess for a quick run and found the new fighter almost an entirely new ship indeed.

  What had once been a powerful two-seater had become an even more deadly single seat fighter. He found that the ship had been provided with an engine upgrade that the scientists on the Edison had designed before the invasion. It could propel Lee at nearly three times the speed of any other fighter he had flown.

  His plasma cannons had also been stripped out and retooled. The ship had previously had six forward-facing cannons shooting charged, spun-plasma bolts. Once again, the gifted engineers and their busy little friends had upgraded and changed his weapons for the better. He now possessed four forward-facing gun ports and two rear-firing cannons. Although the rear-facing guns were still the standard plasma cannon, the forward ports now fired a photon wrapped-charge plasma beam capable of cutting through Ch’Tauk armor like a hot knife through butter.

  The final modification reinforced the shield that covered the fighter. It seemed the elves had cooked this modification up themselves, without the help of the engineers or the Karisiens. The new shields used the polished silver skin of the ship to amplify and redirect Ch’Tauk plasma energy. Lee had been told that the shields now absorbed and stored the destructive energy, and even reinforced itself with it.

  As he sat in the cockpit of his fighter, waiting for the Princess to leave M-space, he looked around the hangar deck to see his new squadrons. Now known as the “Demon” squadron in honor of their former carrier, they each had upgraded Peregrines. While not as powerful as the Silver Eagle, they had improved shields and weapon power, as well as improved electromagnetic propulsion, designed by Melina Petros herself.

  In the fighter directly to Lee’s left, Alice was staring intently at the hangar door. She had decided to keep her call sign as “Princess.” To her left was Aztec, idly checking the readings on his cockpit monitors. To Lee’s right was the newly renamed Danny Green. He had decided on the new call sign “Merlin” in honor of his fallen comrade. Beyond Merlin were two new pilots from Baal. Jackal was a young woman with wide almond eyes set in an expressive face. The final pilot had chosen Baron as his call sign. He had explained that he was a descendant of an ancient Earth pilot who had gained fame in an earlier war.

  At each stop, the six fighters had launched and trained together for the coming confrontation. Since they had no idea if the Resolute would greet them as a friend or foe, the captain had felt it necessary to be prepared for anything. The Demons had decided that the best way to be ready for the battle was to wait in the hangar bay as the Princess came out of a jump, and launch as soon as the fiery corona was shed.

  A siren sounded across the hangar bay as atmosphere vented out of the ship. As the immense space converted to vacuum, the siren became silent and the nervous knots in Lee’s stomach grew tighter. He knew they depressurized when the ship was returning to normal space. That meant they needed to be ready to launch.

  “Demons,” said Lee over his radio. “Activate anti-gravs and get ready to launch.”

  Each pilot acknowledged the command and he saw the fighters lift off the deck in a smooth, silent motion. It would only be a moment before the hangar door would open to space and they would launch at whatever they found. Three times they had found nothing but more breadcrumb clues left by someone on Resolute. Since Admiral Hathaway estimated that they only had two weeks left until the Ch’Tauk realized that their patrol ships were missing and sent out a frigate to track them down, the Princess was running out of time.

  The hangar doors opened as the lights went dark. Ortiz would have turned all the exterior lighting off to make the cruise ship harder to spot. Lee activated his shield and began the warm-up cycle for his new weapons. A flash of orange flame swept away from the rapidly opening door. The corona that always surrounded ships leaving M-space had finally dissipated.

  “Lock and load, Demons,” Lee ordered his squadron. “Launch fighters on my mark.”

  “Roger, Flyboy,” said Alice. Lee had decided to keep the new call sign, to the amusement of Alice and the squadron.

  “Launch,” said Lee.

  His ship leapt into the darkness of space followed swiftly by the rest of his squadron in tight formation. Lee’s scanner told him there was a large target to starboard that was not the Princess. As Lee angled his fighter towards the signal, he noted that the Princess had activated her own shields. As he saw the Demons form up at his wings, he saw the single unknown target resolve into over a dozen ships with a single, large target at the fore.

  “We’ve got hard target signals, Demons,” said Lee to his squadron. “Stay calm and keep our formation until we know what we’re dealing with.”

  “Unknown starship, this is the Confederate battleship Resolute,” crackled a strong voice over the radio. “Please identify or we will open fire.”

  “It looks like we found the right address, Flyboy,” said Aztec. “Should we knock or what?”

  “Hold position and wait for Princess,” said Lee to the fighters. “This is the captain’s show.”

  “Battleship Resolute,” announced the voice of Captain Ortiz. “This is the Terran Princess from Earth. We are a civilian vessel. Please stand down.”

  There was a pause from the radio after the message, and Lee could just imagine the crew of the Resolute bantering the name of the cruise ship around the bridge. He only hoped that Ortiz’s words would be enough to avoid a conflict.

  “Terran Princess,” a new voice sounded over the radio. “This is Captain Chang. You claim to be a civilian vessel, but we are monitoring six fighter crafts that launched from your hangar bay. I say again, identify yourself and your intentions or we will open fire.”

  Lee saw the image of the Resolute begin to move across his screen. He activated the viewer and requested magnification so he could see the battleship. The image grew to show him a ship he had only seen in history books. The old warhorse glided towards his position, though, like a modern ship of the line, and Lee noticed that the ship bristled with gun ports that were rapidly being warmed up.

  “Resolute,” said Lee over his radio. “This is Commander Lee Pearce of the Confederate Combined Forces. We are here on a mission from Admiral Hathaway on the carrier Baal.”

  Lee figured that the honest parlay wasn’t getting them anywhere, so he gambled that the mention of the admiral might get Chang’s attention.

  “Hathaway,” questioned the voice of the Resolute's commander. “You’ve been in contact with Admiral Hathaway?”

  “Captain Chang, this is Captain Ortiz of the Terran Princess,” broke in the voice of the captain. “We have been searching for you for the last few days at the request of the admiral. We would like to know your intentions before we proceed.”

  There was no response from the warship. It continued to advance on the cruise liner. Lee continued to monitor the weapons ports on the ship as he came within visual range. They were still reading as armed and active. He wondered how long the shields on the Princess could last under a barrage from those guns. He didn’t think it would be long.

  “Demons, break formation and spread out,” Lee ordered, deciding on a more cautious stand. “Do not fire unless fired upon. Is that clear?”

  The six pilots acknowledged his order and took up positions wide apart, facing the oncoming battleship. Now that Lee could see it clearly, he was in awe of the old ship.

  She was twice as long as the Terran Princess with a rounded body that extended back into a blunted tail. Instead of the large annular ring of the cruise ship, the Resolute had flat projections that wrapped the body lengthwise from bow to stern. Her hull was scorched and pitted from multiple plasma burns, but she seemed to be intact. The battleship had obviously seen numerous battles of her own, and had fared better tha
n the gargantuan carrier Baal.

  “Captain Chang,” said Ortiz again. “Please stand down. We are a civilian vessel under orders from the Confederate military. However, we are prepared to defend ourselves.”

  Ortiz sounded desperate over the radio and Lee couldn’t blame him. The battleship began a turn to present itself broadside to the cruise liner. Lee had seen the maneuver on paper during his time at the academy, but had never witnessed it in person. Resolute was turning her guns fully on the unarmed Princess and preparing to fire.

  “Lee,” the voice of Alice pleaded over the radio. “We’ve got to do something. We can’t let them open fire.”

  “Jackal and Princess,” Lee ordered. “Form up on me. Aztec and Baron watch our rear. We’re going to make sure they know we can defend our big sister.”

  Lee pivoted his fighter as the two women pulled their own ships alongside. He pushed his throttle slowly, not wanting to appear too aggressive. The Peregrine fighters struggled to keep up with his faster ship, but stayed in formation on either side of his ship. He flew his fighter straight at the nose of the battleship, knowing that it must look like a gnat attacking an elephant.

  “Commander Pearce,” said the captain over his radio. “Stand down.”

  “Fortune favors the bold, Captain,” Lee replied. “I’m just taking a stroll.”

  “Commander Pearce,” the voice of Captain Chang erupted over the radio. “Follow your captain’s orders and stand down.”

  “You first, sir,” replied the pilot. “I’m getting bored.”

  Lee slowed his fighter just outside the shield range of the battleship. Jackal and Princess followed suit, holding position on his wing tips. Lee saw that Aztec, Merlin and Baron were flying back and forth behind them, performing maneuvers to evade any possible impact if Resolute opened fire.

  “Captain Ortiz,” said Chang. “You say you were sent by Admiral Hathaway?”

  “We were, Captain,” replied Ortiz, sounding nervous. “He gave us your last coordinates and we followed your trail from there.”