“You may consult with your sources, Admiral,” Ardeis continued. “They will confirm what I have told you. But, when you do, remember that this is but a warning. I have other agents on other worlds. You consider Imraec Tarc to be a little world. And you consider the Imraehi to be a little people. But we are a great nation. And we are proud. And we will do whatever it takes to go on being a great nation.
“So let me be as clear as I can, Admiral Seirvek. If your task force does not turn around and leave this system within ten minutes, more cities will be destroyed and many lives will be lost. And it will be on your head.” Ardeis then gave Seirvek and amiable smile. “But really, it is a simple matter. There is no sense in drawing this conflict out any further. Devotion to your cause at this stage would simply demonstrate a denial in the fact that it is lost. Ask yourself, when does courage turn to reckless abandon? Is there any logic in leaping into the rapids when there is no hope of saving the drowning child?”
Seirvek held Ardeis’ gaze. “Some would argue that we cannot know whether there’s any hope or not unless we try.”
“Proponents can be found for a myriad of arguments,” Deramar replied. “Their existence alone hardly validates their beliefs. Ten minutes, Admiral.”
The transmission ended.
“Communications,” Admiral Seirvek said. “Contact the Phalamkian authorities for confirmation.”
He waited while the call was made, not moving, not even shifting his gaze from the blank screen in front of him.
The communications officer turned around. “Sir, the Phalamkians report Kerali is leveled, along with Sabis, Laein and Varnis. Several more cities in the region report severe damage as well. The death toll is uncertain but is already estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands.”
There were several audible gasps at the news. Someone let out a rather Hie’shi specific obscenity that generally wasn’t permitted on the bridge but Admiral Seirvek didn’t notice. Even now, he hadn’t moved. He stared at the blank communicator screen.
At his side, Captain Areim stirred. “Sir? We have six minutes left.”
Seirvek whirled on him. “And what would you suggest I do, Captain? I am thinking.”
“Withdraw, Admiral,” Areim said. “Several hundred thousand people just died. If we stay here, millions more will follow.”
Admiral Seirvek took a deep breath and exhaled, his gaze on the blank screen once more.
“Not,” he said, “if the Imraehi have no chance to communicate with their agents.”
Areim frowned. “Admiral -”
Seirvek turned to him again but without any anger in his gaze. “What we choose to do now, Captain, will send a message to many of our enemies that could have far reaching consequences. I believe our message should be that terrorism doesn’t work and that anyone who uses such underhanded tactics as this against us will wish that they hadn’t.”
He then addressed his officers. “Communications, flag to all ships. Prepare for battle. Gunnery, prepare electron shockwave charges. Your targets will be the Imraehi cruisers. Fire on my signal. And, communications?”
An otherwise unoccupied communications officer responded. “Sir?”
“Prepare to send out a broad spectrum jamming signal on the frequencies coded Blue, Green, Yellow and Red in that order. Jam each frequency for ten seconds and then repeat the process.”
“Yes, sir.”
Admiral Seirvek narrowed his eyes. “Gunnery. Communications. On my signal. Now!”
Many things happened at once. Numerous glowing orbs, trailing flares of bluish-green shot towards the large Imraehi warships, winking out before impact, collapsing in on themselves. Then from the points where they disappeared, spheres of faint light emanating in pairs engulfed many of the Imraehi ships and faded. The running lights of these vessels disappeared as well and electrical discharges danced over their darkened hulls.
And, while these great ships were turned to lifeless hulks in the space of a heartbeat, numerous other vessels in the enemy ranks, including many of the privateer ones, were torn to pieces, spurting burning clouds of gas like mythical monsters in their last death throes. The mines that the Imraehi had placed in such enormous quantities around their world were turning, as it were, on their masters and their allies. The signals that they transmitted to stop the mines from attacking them were being blocked and the mines, without the intelligence of sentience to guide them, threw themselves onto the Imraehi navy as though they had been longing to attack them and were now unable to restrain themselves.
Another piece of debris, hurtling out from the scene of the destruction, tore through the Lantern’s hull.
“Marlin!” Carla cried out. “On our starboard!”
The Tollum shook his head, shaking off handfuls of his feathers as he did. “I’m trying, Captain, but something’s jammed here. The -”
There was a horrible cracking sound.
Carla jerked forward in her seat and as the straps yanked her back, she slammed her head into the seat and threw up as her body recoiled.
Her head slumped onto her chest as the lighting on the bridge cut out and all was dark.
The deck shook underneath Jiang, throwing her off balance and into a bulkhead. She managed to raise her arms to shield herself but she still reeled from the impact. Then, after taking a moment to regain her balance, she stumbled forward.
A human male appeared in the corridor in front of her, coming the other way.
For a moment, she contemplated shooting him dead. However, with the chaos that had to be going on outside and the artificial gravity threatening to go off, the man probably had more important things on his mind to worry about than the possibility of intruders.
He brushed past her with a mumbled apology and disappeared around a corner.
Jiang relaxed. Then she wondered if she should follow him. However, a nagging feeling made her continue along the corridor in the direction she’d been heading and she came out onto a steel mesh platform with indistinctive mechanical components beneath it and a row of large round holes in the walls above it.
She inspected the first such hole. There was a metal seal just past the rim and a box with various buttons and levers beside it. She studied the box for a moment, worried that perhaps everything would be labeled in old Phalamkian but fortunately, her fears were unfounded. And, given that she’d just seen a human leave the area, it made sense that the controls would be in Corsidan.
Pressing a few buttons and turning a lever, she opened the seal inside the hole. Peering in, she saw a long tube with white walls and warm lighting. Lying along its length was what appeared to be a pile of perfectly straight metallic rods but with a series of articulated joints along their length. They could no doubt fan out to form the nets she’d been looking for but they were more rigid in their construction than she had expected. However, she had found them.
Now, the question that remained was what she could do about them.
Deramar Ardeis stared at the display screens depicting the destruction around him. Then he turned to the commander of his flagship, his eyes opened wide, and for a moment he struggled to speak.
“That Hie’shi commander is mad!” he blurted in disbelief. “He’s mad!”
The commander frowned at his displays and the information that was flooding in. “He may well be mad, sir, but he’s no fool. It’s almost unaccountable what he’s just done. The mines...” The commander stopped and then shouted across the bridge. “Communications. Flag to all ships. Move away from the mines immediately.”
“Sir,” an officer replied.
The commander then looked at the rest of the information. “And as for those cruisers, we detected waves of ionized gas, followed by electrical energy with the results being...” He turned to Ardeis. “Well, you saw for yourself what they did, sir.”
“How can we defend our ships against those weapons?” Ardeis demanded.
“We can’t,” the commander replied. “Against those weapons, this isn�
�t a warship. It’s a defenseless target. If just one of those torpedoes detonates in range, then you and I, and every individual on board this ship, will be dead.”
“You can’t be serious,” Ardeis protested.
“I’m perfectly serious,” the commander replied. “And if you don’t give the order to evacuate our cruisers, then I will relieve you of command and do it myself.”
“But we can’t let it end like this,” Ardeis cried out. “Not with victory in our grasp.”
The commander glared at him. “You are wasting precious time, Lord Ardeis! I’m assuming command.” He turned away. “Communications, flag to all cruisers. Abandon all ships. Fall back to the surface. Signal Orbital Six to fire all stinger nets and then signal all hands to abandon the orbitals.”
“Yes, sir.” The communications officer began relaying the orders and soon automatic evacuation messages blared over the speakers.
“You’ve thrown everything away,” Ardeis told the commander, his voice trembling as he spoke.
“Not everything, Lord Ardeis,” the commander told him. “Now get to your ship.”
A horrendous crash, followed by a loud hiss, almost deafened Jiang and she fell to the mesh floor of the platform, screaming with her hands over her ears. Then there was a second crash, and a second hiss. Jiang struggled to her feet and ran into the corridor she had come out of before. The stinger nets, whatever they were, were firing out into space.
“Captain!” Admiral Seirvek shouted. “What’s that station firing? Give me visuals!”
The screens in front of him displayed odd projectile weapons, numerous metal shafts fanning out in one direction and meeting together at the other.
“We’re getting very high energy readings off them, sir!” someone called out.
“All ships, evasive action!” Seirvek called out.
He watched the projectiles, narrowing his eyes as he tried to make out what they were. Then one spread out, latching over the prow of one of his Tridents like a great net. Then, at all the points where the net contacted the ship’s shield, there were a series of successive bright sparks that flared up and died out, only to flare up again.
“They’re draining the Pincer’s shields,” Captain Areim called out.
And so they were, Admiral Seirvek saw, each point of contact some independently powered device burning through the shield, the succession of flares like a succession of direct blasts hitting the same point again and again until they punched through. And however much energy these devices burned, they showed no sign of running out.
Within seconds, as he watched, the points of the net burned through and the shield gave out. Then the points latched onto the ship itself and hull breaches, too numerous to count, tore it open. Burning fumes poured out and then all was black and silent.
“Retreat!” Seirvek ordered. “Communications. Signal all ships to retreat!”
“Sir!” Captain Areim called. “We just lost fourteen Tridents, two Narvashae Galleons, six -”
Seirvek cut him off. “Get us out of here, Captain, before those figures get any worse.”
Now alarms blared from hidden speakers and emergency lights, bright orange in color, lit the corridors in an eerie glow.
Jiang kept on however. She knew where she was going now. Around her, people poured out of rooms and ran in the opposite direction. Some gave her stares as she pushed her way past but they didn’t stop for long. Whatever had them spooked, these people were terrified.
Then she came into a control room of sorts. A bank of instrument panels along one side drew her eye, and there was a line of vertical lights above one of the panels. In succession, one after the other went from emitting a dull red glow to a brilliant fluorescent green flare.
Over forty of them were already green and there appeared to be forty that were still red but the number was dwindling every second.
Uttering a wordless cry, she rushed to the panel and looked it over. Below each light was a number and she knew what each one was for.
“There’s got to be a way to stop these things,” she muttered, her gaze racing back and forth over the controls.
Then, seeing a promising lever, she lunged forward and dragged it back. There was a loud whir and then silence.
She looked at the row of lights. Forty-six were lit green. However, even after a handful of seconds had passed, the forty-seventh remained a dull red.
She breathed a sigh of relief, ran a hand through her hair and brushed off some of the sweat pouring down her brow.
Then the station rocked violently once more and she was thrown forward, catching herself on the panel. She let out a startled cry and staggered back as the deck heaved again.
Someone was firing on Orbital Six.
In high orbit over Imraec Tarc, three behemoths charged towards the lines of the Imraehi defenses, with a trail of smaller but nonetheless formidable vessels behind them. The Freedom-class Dreadnoughts, the Liberator, the Determined and the Just, ploughed into the fighting, without any heed of danger. Stray mines flung themselves at the mighty ships but exploded harmlessly along their flanks while their powerful weaponry tore relentlessly into what was left of the Imraehi defense.
Maia Kaleilae, the Adopted Lady Erama, flicked on her communicator. “Admiral Seirvek. Get your people out of here.”
“I copy, Lady Erama,” Seirvek replied, grief evident in his reply. “I’ve already given the order.” There was a slight hesitation. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Maia replied. “Gunnery, demolish that station.”
“Drackson?” Naima cried out, wiping at her eyes as a bit of smoke escaped from a shattered instrument panel.
“We’ve reached the Albatross,” her partner replied. “Maybe we can pick you up.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Naima told him. “There’s debris everywhere here and... what the -?”
She screamed as something slammed against the glider. The strap of her harness snapped and she and Asten were thrown against the hull.
There was a burst of static from the communicator.
Jiang leapt as the deck lurched under her. A piece of railing fell across her path as she landed though, tripping her and throwing her onto her side.
Tears rolled down her cheeks and she looked up, trying to get her bearings. A monstrous shape loomed over her, silhouetted against the whirling shafts of orange light that filled the room.
Then recognition dawned on her. This was one of those battleroids, tested and abandoned as being too difficult to control under combat conditions. But that was all right with her. She had no intention of taking it into combat.
She scaled a ladder by its side, scrambled into the cockpit and pressed two switches that looked somewhat familiar. Two things happened at once. The canopy closed over her and sealed itself, and the control panel lit up.
She smiled through her tears. However this vehicle had been originally designed, the people who’d modified it had tried to make it as similar to a conventional ship as they could. Which, she realized, may have been the reason why their modifications were unsuccessful. She was no expert on naval vehicles but from what she’d heard, the control set-up the Federation used for their battleroids was nothing like the one they used for their fighters. After all, they were different things.
Putting the thought aside, Jiang initiated what she guessed were the main thruster controls. The battleroid lurched forward, tearing through the ceiling of the hangar and tumbling head over end into the void, and she blacked out from the motion. Behind her, Orbital Six caved under the blasts of Maia and Zak’s task force, collapsed in on itself and exploded, scattering debris in all directions.
25. Last Words
Carla blinked and pushed herself up onto her knees and elbows. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was.
In the dark, someone passed her a flask. She took it and drank a mouthful. “Thanks,” she muttered as she handed it back. Then she looked up.
It was Reece who had given it to h
er. Now, he was helping Eroim and handing him a medical kit. Then Carla saw him attend to Kailis. Marlin, although he was injured and his feathers were blotched with red, came over to help and together, without saying a word, they assisted Kailis off the bridge.
For some reason, Kailis gave a look of apology that made Carla almost break down. As if Kailis had anything to be sorry about. There was nothing any of them could have done with all the indiscriminate destruction around them. With an effort, Carla pushed herself up from the deck and looked at Eroim.
“Reece left you a med kit, Captain,” he said, nodding to her chair.
Carla nodded and opened it. She pulled out a healing patch and clamped it on her forehead. “Thanks, Eroim.” Then she frowned. “What happened to all the lights?”
Eroim groaned and sat down at his station. “We’re on emergency power, Captain.”
“Do we have life support?” she asked.
The old man nodded and when Carla looked at him now, he really did appear to be an old man. His humor, the mischievous glint in his eye... these things were no longer there. Right then, he just looked tired.
“We have life support,” he said. “But we don’t have anything else. Steering. Engines. We’re stranded here, Captain.”
He hung his head and clasped a withered hand over his face.
Carla understood. It didn’t matter whether they were close by to a planet. In the end, the Lantern was just a tiny speck in the middle of a vast field of debris, waiting for its turn to be plucked from the heavens by the reach of the planet below and to burn up as a meteor in the evening sky.
She let out a slow breath. “Have we got anything else? What about the communicator?”
Eroim smiled and tapped at the controls beside him. “To some extent,” he said. “But we’ve got next to no range. And I can’t set any frequencies. All we can do is send an open broadcast and hope to hell someone’s close enough to hear it.”
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