Resolute Omnibus (The War for Terra)

by James Prosser

  “You stupid woman,” Erik replied, pushing the gun barrel into Tuxor’s flesh even harder. “They didn’t capture me. I have been dealing with the Empress herself for a decade. Didn’t you ever wonder how the Ch’Tauk knew about this planet in the first place?”

  “You betrayed your own people to the Ch’Tauk,” said Tuxor, wincing with his large eyes as his flesh began to split under the barrel. “Why would you do this, Erik?”

  “You don’t talk to me, you slimy creature,” Heyerdahl said, raising his arm and sending the gun crashing down on Tuxor’s head.

  The big alien slumped to the floor as the soft skin of his head cracked open and dark bluish blood began to gush out. Tuxor fell forward, apparently lifeless as Heyerdahl moved away from the body. His shirt was now covered in Karisien blood and he sniffed the air as he moved back towards the door.

  “Melaina, that’s what you never understood,” the man said, pointing the gun at her. “I was not one of the greatest. I am the greatest human mind in centuries. My weapons designs are light years ahead of anything else ever conceived. And you know what I got for it? I was sent here to this mud ball to rot with you morons.”

  “Erik, please,” Melaina pleaded as the man backed closer to the door. “Don’t open that door, for the love of all that is holy I am begging you!”

  “All that is holy?” Heyerdahl replied with a sneer. “You haven’t seen holy until you have been in the presence of the Ch’Tauk Empress herself. Did you know that she is a living God? For the last year I have been living on Ch’Tauk myself and changing the way those creatures think and live. I even introduced Hawaiian shirts into a culture that never wears clothes!”

  There was a rustle of movement from behind Melaina as one of the Corsairs returned from deeper inside the bunker. Erik raised the pistol and fired, sending the big man named Greg flying back into a wall. A gaping hole had opened in his chest as the small plasma weapon that Jakes always carried burned through the bone and flesh of his body. Melaina screamed as she saw the man slide to the floor, a shocked expression permanently on his face.

  “One down,” Heyerdahl said. “A planet left to go.”

  A roar erupted from the floor as Tuxor rose to his full height in front of Heyerdahl. The two and a half meter tall Karisien had risen up while Heyerdahl had pointed the gun at Greg. He swung one of his lower arms around to swat the gun from the man’s hand. Heyerdahl’s expression changed to panic as he looked up at the angry amphibian. Tuxor’s head was covered with bluish blood and he seemed to glower at the man in rage.

  Heyerdahl tried to push the big alien, but Tuxor wrapped all four of his arms around the man’s back and lifted him up into the air. Heyerdahl screamed obscenities as Tuxor spun around and tossed the human against a wall. There was a sickening thud as Heyerdahl slammed into a hardened tree root and fell to the floor. The man tried to stand, but Tuxor was on him again, lifting him by the stomach and throwing him again across the room. This time, though, Heyerdahl managed to twist in the air and land with his feet against the wall. He bounced from the wall, absorbing most of the impact with his legs, and landed facing Tuxor as the native scientist advanced on him.

  As Tuxor lunged at the human, Heyerdahl ducked and came up under the swing. He slammed his fists into Tuxor’s unguarded midsection and heard the whoosh of air as his punch landed in the alien’s midsection. Tuxor folded and landed on his knees. For all of his ferocity when angry, the amphibian was not built for fighting and could not withstand a precise hit like that.

  Heyerdahl, now breathing very heavy and standing over Tuxor, looked around the carnage that he had created and laughed. The Karisiens were obviously terrified of him, but were not warriors and would not follow Tuxor’s example. Melaina was on her knees, tears running down her face as she saw what he had done to her friends.

  “Have you ever seen that big gun on the front of one of the Ch’Tauk dreadnought?” Heyerdahl asked Melaina. “It is an accelerated plasma projectile that actually phases in and out of M-space as it accelerates towards its target. When it strikes any object, it disrupts the molecular bonds that hold the structure together, effectively disintegrating a ship with one hit. It was one of the first things I shared with the Ch’Tauk. It allowed them to invade the Confederation so quickly.”

  “You bastard!” Melaina cried. “You killed your own race for what? Your own damned ego! You are a bigger monster than the Ch’Tauk!”

  “Would you shut up, you mouthy bitch,” Erik said. “You know, I’ve decided not to kill you. I think I will add you to my new harem when I go back to Ch’Tauk. After all, I need to repopulate the human species in my own image.”

  It was the last thing Heyerdahl ever said as the top part of his head exploded in a blast of bone and gristle. His mouth continued to work as if he was still trying to talk despite the loss of his brain. His body stood for only a moment before he fell first to his knees and then slammed into the ground, gore flowing from the wound in his skull.

  “Would you people shut up,” said Jakes, holding the dropped gun in his damaged hand. “I am trying to get some sleep.”

  23

  Alliance Carrier Zeus

  Captain Franklin Dalton leaned forward in the command chair of the former Confederation Carrier Zeus. His holographic displays were lit up with red dots indicating Ch’Tauk fighters and destroyers all around them. He pressed a button on the arm of his chair to ready his fighters for launch. In his hangar bay, he knew that sirens had begun to sound and flight crews were running to their shipboard stations.

  “Pennyman,” ordered the captain. “Signal Terran Hope and the support fleet to stay well behind us.”

  “Aye sir,” replied the orange furred felinoid. “Demeter and Jobs are both reporting sporadic attacks by Ch’Tauk fighters, but everyone else is clear.”

  “Once we launch, send Vultures to the surface to cover the civilian escape ships.” Dalton said. “Send the Red Lightning squadron to assist the support ships.”

  “Aye, sir,” replied Pennyman. The man was efficient and had served as a junior officer under Captain Blackmon before her death. He tapped keys and relayed orders without hesitation.

  “Captain,” said Franklin’s first officer, Commander Diana Bach. “There is a Ch’Tauk dreadnought at the center of this attack that seemed to be directing things. Maybe we should direct our fighters there.”

  “Send Thunder three and four to keep them busy, Diana,” replied the captain, monitoring the battle. “We need to get the heat off of the Baal group first, then, we can take the fight to the enemy.”

  Dalton spared a moment to look at his first officer. The woman was tall and strikingly beautiful, but had a hard edge to her when it came to the Baal strike force. She was in the pit area checking on fighter deployment and ensuring that the Zeus engines were not being overtaxed. The ship had endured four years on the run and had not had enough time to refuel or resupply before heading into battle.

  It had taken Dalton hours to get Bach calmed down after the first visit by Captain Pearce and his squadron. She seemed to harbor misplaced anger at the captain of Resolute and he needed to find out why. It had taken him a bottle of wine and almost half a pound of precious chocolate to pry the information from the woman, but when he did, he understood why she hated the man. She blamed him for the loss of her fiancé, Captain Blackmon.

  Although Bach had been a senior officer in charge of the computer systems, she had explained that she had fallen in love with the former captain and the two had kept their relationship secret. Franklin had known the captain for two years before her death and had not known about the relationship between the two women, but it did not surprise him to find out about it.

  He turned his attention back to his holographic display to watch as his fighters deployed. Zeus carried Peregrine, Crowned Eagle, and Vulture class fighters as well as two squads of older, Golden Eagle class ships. The fighter wings were each named in honor of the lightning throwing god of Olympus. Despite the enormous
damage caused by the Ch’Tauk Invasion fleet, Zeus had somehow managed to keep most of her fighters and crews.

  The blue dots indicating his own ships began to infiltrate the red, showing Dalton that his ships had launched and were giving back to the armored enemy. He saw a wing of Vulture class bombers peel off and head for the surface, following the orders he had just given. Two squadrons of Peregrine fighters headed directly for the giant Ch’Tauk dreadnought. The blue of his own fighters began to mingle with green dots from Baal and the battle was truly underway.

  The fleet was outmatched by the alien attack force despite the addition of the Zeus and her escorts. The battle platforms deployed by the Alliance destroyers helped add muscle, but the alien ships were far too numerous. Eventually, Dalton knew, they would be worn down and defeated by the Ch’Tauk and humanity’s last stand would be over.

  “Blue Lightning, veer off twenty degrees by three-four-zero,” ordered Bach, standing by the communications officer. “You’ll get caught in the crossfire from those battle platforms.”

  “Acknowledged, Zeus,” replied the Peregrine squadron commander. “We lost blue four to one of the cruisers; can you send us some back-up?”

  “Blue one, we can send Thunder nine to your location, stand-by,” replied the first officer, turning to the weapons officer and pointing at a display. “Soto, can you clear away any of those fighters?”

  Dalton looked to the weapons firing control display and watched as Lieutenant Jim Soto relayed instructions to the gunner’s stations below. Dalton felt the deck beneath him vibrate as the carrier’s guns began to launch bright orange plasma bolts into the battle. Ch’Tauk ships fell away in pieces as they were hit by the enormous energy blasts, but more continued to replace them. Dalton began to wonder if there was still a jump point open somewhere nearby, allowing the Ch’Tauk ships to stream in. Terran fighters could not travel in M-space, but Ch’Tauk ships were not restricted by the enormous energies between universes.

  Two of his Golden Eagle squadrons began a run at the nearest Ch’Tauk destroyer. The alien ships did not carry battle platforms like their Terran counterparts. Instead, the ships were heavily armored and covered with cannons from stem to stern. The older two-seater ships lacked the most modern shields like their newer cousins, but were slightly better armored. They only had forward facing cannons so the pilots had to head straight at their targets if they had a hope of hitting anything.

  The Golden Eagle’s tore through space at the alien vessels, opening fire far in advance of their effective range, trying to clear a path through the enemy fighters that were swarming the area. Two ships were destroyed when the destroyer began to return fire, but the remainder of the old fighters accelerated and began to score hits on the tough alien armor.

  Dalton nearly fell out of his chair as the carrier was hit by a massive energy bolt from a nearby cruiser. Her shields, which had begun to be rebuilt by the little aliens that Pearce had called Elves, held up, but were severely weakened by the power overload. Dalton’s indicators slowly began to climb again after only a few moments, though, as the energy began to feed back into the shield grid. He had never seen a shield system modified in the way that Pearce’s Elves had worked out, but the system seemed to be holding up under the pounding.

  “Zeus” the voice of Commodore Chang announced over the bridge speakers. “Mars is taking damage and our fighters are tied up with that damn dreadnought, got anyone you can spare?”

  “I see Genghis Khan just standing around,” Dalton answered. “I can relay the message and see what we can do, Baal.”

  “Thanks,” replied the commodore, stress making his voice seem higher pitched than normal.

  Pennyman relayed the order to the Terran battle cruiser and Dalton watched the big ship start to move across the battle. Although second in size only to the carriers, Genghis Khan had been outfitted with a modified thruster system that augmented the electromagnetic drive system As the waves of energy pulled the big ship through space, the giant chemical engines pushed. They had acquired the modified thrusters after a battle with the Ch’Tauk nearly two years ago. They were a gift from an alien species who had declared their independence from the Ch’Tauk. Zeus had exited her jump directly into the path of a Ch’Tauk destroyer during the following civil war.

  The battle cruiser moved to attack the Ch’Tauk ship that had been harassing its Terran counterpart, Mars. He watched the two Alliance ships try to flank the Ch’Tauk ship, but the alien vessel seemed to dance out of the way. According to Dalton’s displays, Mars was operating with only minimal shields, but its weapons systems were still firing at the other cruiser.

  Mars seemed to limp away from the Ch’Tauk ship, still taking hits from the small insectoid fighters. Genghis Khan took a wide turn, angling its stern towards the enemy ship. Dalton saw the Ch’Tauk cruiser hesitate in space, as if trying to decide which target was sweeter. To Dalton, it was like watching a predator with a choice of a wounded buffalo, or an unguarded calf. The alien cruiser finally began to turn towards the wounded Terran cruiser, choosing the easier target.

  As the ship turned away, Genghis Khan executed a maneuver that Dalton had only seen performed once in practice. The big battle cruiser seemed to pivot along its center spinning in space like a top. As it came around, pointing its bow once more at the enemy, the battle cruiser opened fire A massive whole was opened in the other ship’s stern. Mars quickly accelerated, powering up its engines and getting out of the way of the Ch’Tauk ship as it lost propulsion and shot straight through space towards one of Karisia’s moons.

  The captain of the battle cruiser, a native of the planet Tomel, was a natural born hunter. His species, a porcine race that was usually small and broad chested, were aggressive and unexpectedly keen strategists. When the short alien had first suggested the maneuver to Dalton, Franklin had reacted with skepticism, not wanting to believe that any ship that size could spin like a fighter. Dalton had requested that the other captain try it out first and had been stunned when the other man performed it immediately with perfect precision.

  Franklin Dalton respected the talents of other species and tried to allow these talents to grow under his command. He knew that his father had gained a reputation for being intolerant of others, but that man was from another generation and had rarely spent time with his son when he was growing up. Eventually, Dalton had taken his mother’s maiden name to avoid being confused with his father, who had already risen to captain and beyond by the time Franklin was a cadet. Truth be told, as he learned more about his father and the man’s attitudes towards non-humans, Franklin was glad that he had distanced himself from the man who he had never really known.

  Dalton’s displays showed the battle in stark numbers. Despite the losses that the Ch’Tauk had taken, they still had numerical superiority over the human fleet. Zeus had managed to wade into the battle and was now surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of fighters. Dalton had avoided using the ship’s plasma cannons while still in the thick of things to avoid hitting his own fighters, but now he saw that he needed to swat at some of the insect-like ships that were trying to pummel the carrier with their own cannons.

  “Soto, can you get rid of some of these mosquitoes for me?” Dalton asked his weapons officer. “They are getting in the way. We need to move off and let the fighters work.”

  “Aye sir,” replied the lieutenant, signaling fire control to aim carefully.

  Dalton heard Pennyman warning the fighters to back off and away as the carrier began to launch plasma fire into space. The captain saw that the bolts had been powered back to minimal to give the Terran ships time to back off. As soon as he saw the last Peregrine move out of direct firing range, Soto ordered the cannons to full and the Ch’Tauk ships started to burst from the barrage. Once again, though, it seemed that for every ship they shot down, another took its place.

  “Commander,” Dalton ordered. “Get us out of here if you have to ram some of those fighters.”

  “Aye, si
r,” Bach replied, turning to their pilots. “Give me engines at one-half and forward shields to full. Let’s try not to scratch the paint for the Captain.”

  It was odd hearing the joke coming from his first officer. She had become so stern in the last few days that Franklin thought the woman had forgotten how to smile. He began to realize that the battle that they were fighting may be exactly the therapy that Diana needed. He had felt it too as he watched his fighters engage the enemy. For the first time in years, he felt like what they were doing was not running from a fight, but taking the fight to the aliens that had taken their home-world. He understood how his first officer felt, now as he saw the Ch’Tauk cruiser that the Genghis Khan had damaged smash into the small moon, he finally felt like they were taking their revenge.

  “Captain,” relayed Pennyman from communications. “There is a jump point forming on the other side of the battle, behind the Ch’Tauk lines.”

  “Who is it?” Dalton asked. “Is it one of ours or more of them?”

  “I can’t tell yet, sir,” replied the feline. “The signature is kind of odd. Whoever it is has the strangest transponder code I have ever heard.”

  “Pipe it over the speakers, Pennyman,” Dalton ordered. “Let’s hear this weird code.”

  Transponder codes were usually a series of electronic signals that informed ships of each other’s identity. Unintelligible by most species hearing, the sounds were meant to be interpreted by other ships. As Dalton listened to the code being projected at full strength from the incoming ship, his mind refused to make sense of what he was hearing. Transponder codes had always sounded like random screeching to the carrier captain and they never, ever had a beat.

  “Captain,” announced Pennyman. “I’ve got it, sir. It’s Resolute.”

  Dalton heard his first officer groan as the ancient Terran opera of Der Ring des Nibelungen began to play over the ship’s speakers.