by Crucible
“He’s not getting away,” Jordan vowed.
Redfire did not like this at all. “Halo, why would the ship wait until now to try and evade.
We’ve chased him across half this hemisphere. Why now?”
“You figure that out,” Jordan answered. “I’m staying on him.”
“I think this might be a trap,” Redfire warned her.
Jordan considered this. “All right, arm weapons. Let’s finish him and get ourselves out of here.”
Redfire surveyed his tactical board. “Too late. Something’s coming up behind us…”
“An enemy ship…?”
“Either a thousand fighters flying really close together,” Redfire told her. “Or one great big giant ship.”
The enemy ship they had been pursuing was bearing down toward the floor of the desert.
As it approached the ground, it arced upward and banked hard right, toward a huge ship that hid risen from its hiding place in the canyon below.
The ship that lifted off the desert floor was the shape of a crescent moon, but chunky, with a great bulge in the center, a superstructure where the mighty turbine of its fusion star—drive engine was located, along with command and weapons sections.
“Get the hell out of here!” Redfire ordered.
Jordan pushed the thrusters all the way forward. Basil’s enhanced Gravity Engine warped time and space around the ship, creating a mini-hurricane in the planet’s atmosphere and blasting strange sigils in the dust and ash beneath them.
Jordan switched to ship-to-ship comms. “Basil hailing Pegasus Flight Command, we are being overtaken by an enemy vessel. Losing speed. Capture imminent. Reiterate auto.” She punched the thrusters as far as they would go. Balls to the Wall. “Come on, baby, we’ve been through worse than this.”
Its speed was extreme. A bow wave of atmosphere boomed around it in every direction.
Basil began to shake. “We’re losing speed,” Jordan stated in a calm tone of voice., But the great crescent-moon ship came up behind them, and engulfed them, like a shark swallowing a goldfish.
Pegasus — Main Bridge — PC-1
“Contact with Basil has been lost,” Shayne American reported from the Mission Command station.
“Try hailing them,” Keeler ordered.
“No transponder signal from the Aves,” American told him. “I will attempt to hail Flight Commandant Jordan.”
“Commander Keeler,” Alkema called urgently. “You’ll want to take a look at this.” On the forward monitors, the giant crescent-ship rose from the smoky atmosphere.
Pegasus’s scanners zoomed in, and did their best to track it. The crescent-shaped bits were a dirty white color, the chunky portion in the middle was a dirty silver.
“Holy …” Keeler tried to think of something holy.
“Situation 1,” Alkema called. “All hands to battle stations. Prepare for imminent attack.”
“Look at the size of that,” Keeler heard a technician say in the background. How did we miss it? He wondered.
“They’re headed right for us,” said American.
Tactical stations strained to put weapons on the approaching ship. Honeywell barked, “Sir, recommend we arm Alpha Class missiles for intercept. Maximum yield.”
“They’re accelerating,” Alkema reported. “Intercept in fourteen seconds.”
“Orders, Commander?” Honeywell demanded.
Keeler turned to Atlantic, who was on the helm. “Can we evade that ship?” Atlantic answered, “Aye, sir,” but looked positively terrified as he brought his helm interfaces on-line and kicked Pegasus into gear. Gravity engines pushed waves of space and time aside and bore across the planet’s sky.
“Lock and enable weapons,” Keeler ordered. “But standby.”
“Sir?” Honeywell asked.
“American, any response from Basil? ” Keeler asked.
“Neg, captain, no response from Basil,” American reported.
“Weapons, Commander?” Honeywell demanded.
Keeler briefly made a face of exquisite agony. “Fire,” he ordered.
A brace of Hammerheads shot out from the bow as the crescent moon ship closed on Pegasus. The alien ship pivoted, and suddenly was enveloped in a pink, white and blue field.
The missiles hit the field and detonated. Meanwhile, the ship accelerated, and its field expanded in space like ripples in a pond. The energy ripples were diminished by the time they hit Pegasus, but they were strong enough to bump the ship good and hard.
The Main Bridge shuddered. Keeler grabbed the arm of the Helm station to keep from falling over. Alkema kept his eye on the tracking monitor.
“They’re changing course,” Alkema reported.
“Where?” Keeler asked, the stress of the moment briefly overwhelming his ability to ask a coherent question.
“They’re heading straight for the primary,” Alkema reported,
“The primary what?” Keeler asked.
“The primary… the sun, sir, they’re headed straight into the sun,” Alkema explained and had the display extrapolate the course of the crescent ship from planetary orbit into the corona of the sun.
Keeler pointed at the screen. “Follow that ship.”
“Laying in a course,” Atlantic warned. “I can’t match their acceleration curve.”
“We’re leaving Keeler undefended,” Alkema warned.
Keeler ordered. “Hold the course. Atlantic… engines to maximum.” Alkema bit his lip. He knew that the question was not one of power output but of simple mass and acceleration curvature. Pegasus was too big, and the aliens had a head start. But the pathfinder ship broke orbit and roared up after the ship.
“They’re closing on the primary’s corona,” American reported a few minutes later. “They’ll be destroyed.”
“Can we get a missile lock?” Keeler demanded.
“Too far out of range,” Alkema told him.
Keeler pounded the control arm of his captain’s chair. “Shit!” The alien ship disappeared into the sun’s corona. Shortly thereafter, there was a brilliant flash.
“They’re gone, sir,” American told them.
“Is there any chance TyroCommander Redfire’s ship crashed on the surface, or somehow evaded them?” Keeler asked.
Alkema and American traded meaningful glances. “It’s a longshot, sir.”
“Which is much better than any chance they had of surviving a crashdive into the sun,” Keeler said. “Return to the planet, and prepare some combat search and rescue missions to survey the surface.”
Chapter Ten
Lexington Keeler – The UnderDecks
From the deck above, a string of rumbles and booms rolled across the length of the ship like a heavy-metal thunderstorm. “What the Hell?” Trajan Lear said. “Another attack?”
“I think it’s over,” Driver said when the bangs and roars had rolled away. And they waited in silence just to be sure it had passed.
Muffy, the love slave, drew herself out of her cryo-hibernation pod and wrapped herself around Christmas’s muscular arm. “I belong to him,” she explained. “And even though you may harbor intensely erotic urges to take my body, and ravish me in every way the human mind can imagine, you can not have me. I am his, and his alone. I am a sex slave.”
“He told us that already,” Trajan Lear informed her.
She continued although she had not heard him. “I know you want me. Even now, the warm stench of your arousal permeates the air between us. You imagine me naked and writhing beneath you in the throes of depthless passion… but you can not have me, for I am his, and his alone.”
“That’s great,” said Trajan Lear. “Listen, you wouldn’t happen to know how to make it up to the Landing Bay? It’s rather urgent that we get back.”
“The Landing Bay?” Christmas asked. “What is it?”
Driver answered. “It’s a big hangar with lots of ships where we’ve established our command post, and that’s why it’s important that we get
back there, right now!”
“A command post?” Christmas asked.
“We’re trying to restore Keeler’s systems,” Driver explained. “When we arrived, you were hours away from smashing into the planet’s surface.”
A brief flicker of recognition flashed across Christmas’s eyes. “I now recall the battle. We arrived in the system to find that the human colony had been attacked and destroyed by an alien invasion fleet.”
“The Aurelians,” said Driver. “They’re called Aurelians. We encountered them at Bodicea, and Coriolus. They also wiped out the colony at Medea. The Pathfinders Odyssey and Republic have also encountered Aurelians, or worlds destroyed by them.”
“What do you know of them,” Christmas asked.
“We can give you a complete report at the Command Post,” Trajan Lear replied. “But, seriously, we need to get back there.”
“I believe I can show you the way,” Christmas said. He began walking. Although he didn’t say so, Lear and Driver picked up that they should follow him.
“Are there any other survivors in stasis?” Driver asked.
“Negative. The other survivors of the attack evacuated,” Christmas reported.
“Where did they go?” Trajan asked. “To the planet? If so, we have some bad news about that.”
Christmas explained. “They left for the last colony we called on, a world called Arkangel Pegasi.”
“How?” Driver asked.
Christmas paused to examine a hatchway, and inspect the section beyond for structural integrity. ” Lexington Keeler faced complete destruction on several occasions during our journey.
It became clear that existing evacuation protocols were inadequate; the lifepods did not have sufficient range to take their occupants out of the zone of danger. The Aves required too much time to launch and load. We constructed mass evacuation vessels that would enable the crew to evacuate quickly. We had finished ten by the time we reached this system. They are equipped with cryostasis pods and equipped for long journeys at high sub-light. The Arkangel system is 22 light years from here.”
“How fast are they,” Driver asked, following him into the next section.
“Capable of reaching .9 c,” Christmas answered as Muffy licked his ear.
Trajan made a relatively easy mental calculation. “By now they’re out of intercept range.”
“We could call them back,” Driver suggested.
Christmas grunted. “The ships are on auto-pilot. They will not return.”
“All right, so the crew is gone and you are the only survivors,” Driver said.
“She is the only survivor,” Christmas corrected him. “I am dead.”
“Right, right,” Trajan Lear said. “I keep forgetting you’re dead. Maybe it would be easier if you weren’t walking around and talking so much.”
They passed through the service bay annex and came to a large hatchway. “This is the lift to the Primary Landing Bay.” He touched the control pad, which remained dark and unresponsive.
Trajan Lear scanned it. “There’s no power going to that control pad. It’s dead.” He drew his pulse weapon. “I’ll see if I can blast it.”
Christmas intervened. “That won’t be necessary. We should be able to pry it open. Even if it isn’t functional, we can climb up the shaft.”
“Are you going to help with that,” Trajan asked. “Or are you too dead?”
“He is very strong,” Muffy assured them.
“These implants have given me strength far greater than the average human,” Christmas explained. He put himself to work on the hatch, working his fingers into the place where the doors split apart.
“Your implants don’t appear to be standard Republic or Sapphirean technology,” Driver observed. “Where did you get them?”
“A planet called Electra,” Christmas explained, the strain in his voice the first emotion of any kind they had heard from him. There was a sound of grinding metal, and the half of the hatch he was working on pulled to the right. As it did so, an avalanche of debris – structural supports, optical fibers, and pieces of wall – spilled into the chamber.
Driver and Christmas peered into the hatchway. “Completely blocked by debris,” Driver said. “That sound we heard must have been some kind of structural collapse.”
“Is there another way to get out of here?” Trajan asked, an edge of fear to his voice. He really did not like being in the UnderDecks.
“Give me your device,” Christmas ordered. Lear handed him his scanner. Christmas directed an intense scanning beam into the hatchway. “It is as I have feared. The entire intermediate deck above us has collapsed. We have no direct access to the landing bay.”
“Can you show us how to get around the debris?” Lear asked.
“I believe I can,” Christmas answered. “We’ll have to drop down two decks and move 22
sections forward, then we can access the hardened MagRail access shafts. We can take those back to the Landing Bay.” He rocked his head back as though working out the kinks. “Let us go on.”
The four of them made their way down the service corridor.
“Are any other parts of you artificial?” Trajan Lear asked a few steps later.
“Za,” Christmas answered.
“Do I want to know?” Trajan persisted.
“Probably not.”
“I notice your uniform is different,” Driver said in a blatant attempt to change the subject.
Christmas’s uniform was black, with red piping. Made of a material that caught the light and swished it around like fine silk. The uniform itself seemed to have movement of its own, independent from the wearer, cutting through the air and arranging itself flatteringly around the musculature.
“Za, our uniforms were redesigned by one of the planets we visited, as part of a trade agreement. The planet was called Jackhead. Three-fifths of its surface area is uninhabitable wasteland. The remaining two-fifths are covered by a vast sea, whose shape is almost perfectly circular. The ocean occupies an enormous crater, the result of a collision with another planet that almost split the world in half, and accounts for the complete uninhabitability of the rest of the planet.
“In the middle of this ocean is a small archipelago of islands, whose combined area is less than 100,000 square kilometers. The entire planet’s population of 190 million people lives here, most of them in a city called Jackhead. Most of them are in gigantic thousand-story towers that rise from the islands, or in some cases, the sea-bed. They have also constructed ocean-cities with names like Nautica, and Aquatica, completely artificial, built on platforms partly above the sea, and partly below.
“You would expect such a people to be starved for resources, barely clinging to survival, but their city was every bit as modern as any on Republic, and they were all well-dressed, well-fed, and provided with ample personal comforts, albeit under very crowded conditions.
“The people have developed an incredibly complex economic system. We began negotiating with, offering them technology in exchange for diplomatic contacts with Sapphire and Republic. I am not sure exactly what happened next, but, somehow, apparently they are now the legal owners of Lexington Keeler. ”
“Really?” Trajan Lear asked.
“Za, I think it is insured for several billion of their currency units.” As he spoke, an overhead support gave way, and several panels fell from the ceiling just in front of where they walked.
“I hope it covers Acts of Evolved Superhumans Who Think They’re Gods,” Lear joked.
“Actually, it insures the ship against everything except battle damage, damage due to crew negligence or incompetence, and natural disasters.”
“What does that leave?” Driver asked.
“Nothing,” Christmas answered. “Now you understand everything you need to know about the Jackheads.”
Pegasus – PC-1
Prime Commander Keeler, Adrian Honeywell, David Alkema and a pair of Tactical Specialists reviewed the last known telemetry fr
om the lost Aves Basil.
It wasn’t very high quality imagery, a fact the analysts had already apologized for repeatedly. The planet’s atmosphere was particularly energetic in the area where Basil disappeared. And so, the only thing revealed by the telemetry was Basil being swallowed by a stormy black cloud and the huge alien crescent ship emerging from the top of the bank.
“And after that, we lost Basil,” one of the Analysts said.
“Well, obviously,” Prime Commander Keeler growled, rolling his eyes. “But, what exactly happened? Did they crash?”
“No distress call, and no locator beacon,” Technical Analyst Saic replied.
The other analyst, Sark, cut in, “However, the alien ship put out a huge electromagnetic burst as it fired up through the clouds.”
“If Basil’s engines exploded, the same effect would have happened,” Saic offered unhelpfully.
“So, they were destroyed?” Keeler said, his voice breaking in disbelief.
“That is possible,” Honeywell admitted. “But it would have had to have been total and instantaneous.”
“They could have collided,” Alkema suggested.
Keeler pounded the top of the table. “Any number of things could have happened.
Actually, only three. They collided, they were destroyed, or they crashed. Or, some weird rift in space-time opened up and they flew into it. That’s four.”
“No such thing,” Honeywell protested.
“Do you think it’s safe to send a search team?” Alkema asked. “Scan the surface for…” he did not want to say debris.
“Scans of the area are clean for 400 kilometers in any direction,” Tactical Analyst Sark told them.
“But they were also clear before the attack.” Said the other. “This enemy has some way of spoofing our sensors.”
“Use Accipiters for the search,” Honeywell decided. “We have to be careful about our manned assets. Speaking of which, the risk to the ground mission I think is too high. We should pull them out.”
Keeler looked like he was considering it for a moment. “They’re probably safer on the ground than in the air, at least as far as we know. Can we spare them some warfighters?” Honeywell did that exhaling thing. “I’ll see what I can round up. Between the situation on Keeler, and our state of high alert, warfighters are at a premium right now.”
