by C H Gideon
“Everything’s in place,” Asya noted. “There’s really nothing we can do but wait.”
“That’s the worst part of it all,” Maddox said. “Put me in the fight, and I’m fine. Tell me to wait, and the anticipation just sucks the life out of me.”
“He’ll be here before you know it,” Jiya warned, “so stay frosty. We’re ready for this.”
And they were, Reynolds realized.
Every variable he could control had been rigged their way. Now the only real concerns were luck and the overwhelming power of Phraim-’Eh’s armada.
Either could sway the odds away from the SD Reynolds, but the AI wouldn’t let himself think that way.
He and the crew had survived against all odds since they’d started this mission, and Reynolds would be damned if he failed now.
Not with so much riding on him.
He’d stand over a fallen Phraim-’Eh and deliver the final blow of the battle no matter what.
“Button up, folks,” Asya called. “We’ve got incoming.”
Reynolds didn’t bother to sound any alarms or dim the lights as they counted down the last few seconds before Phraim-’Eh arrived and engaged them. It wouldn’t do anything but heap stress on the crew, and he didn’t want to do that to them.
In fact, he contemplated dancing a jig and singing Gaelic battle songs to motivate them, but then he remembered he was a terrible dancer and Takal hadn’t designed him with a pleasant singing voice.
Guess I’ll just have to lead them to victory, then, he thought with a laugh.
“He’s here!” Asya announced.
Phraim-’Eh’s command ship Gated in, the rest of his fleet following behind.
That was when the fun started.
Explosions erupted as soon as they arrived, the fleet Gating in close to the planet in order to barricade it against Reynolds’ aggression.
They’d walked right into the trap, Phraim-’Eh’s impatience getting the best of him.
The cloaked mines wreaked havoc among the enemy ships, forcing them to veer off and break ranks as more and more of the mines went off.
That only pushed the ships into more of them.
A damaged ship filled Reynolds’s viewscreen as one of the destroyers ran into the cloaked stash of pucks Reynolds had cobbled together to provide an extra surprise.
It worked perfectly.
The impact tore through the ship’s shields and the pucks drilled into the armored hull so effectively that a gaping, venting hole was left behind.
Tactical took the opportunity to fire a salvo of missiles to finish the job the pucks had started.
The destroyer was struck dead on, its flank shredded by the rattling explosions. Listing, the ship veered into more of the mines, which put it out of its misery.
The ship, engines flaring, slowly tumbled away, lifeless.
“Down to nine!” Geroux reported.
It was still too damn many.
Then another of the destroyers was bleeding its atmosphere behind it.
“Using cloaked Pods really ought to be illegal,” Tactical said, laughing as Jiya remotely piloted another of the rigged Pods into the side of the destroyer she’d already hit.
“Use what you got, my mama used to say,” Reynolds remarked.
“You don’t have a mother,” Tactical fired back.
“Now you’re just being mean. Focus that shit on the bad guys,” the AI told him.
“We’re taking fire!” Asya announced.
“That asshole, Phraim-’Eh, is one single-minded motherfucker,” Jiya noted. “I’ve got a cure for that.”
Jiya maneuvered several of the cloaked Pods through a narrow passageway in the field of mines and set them on a collision course for the Godhand.
One was accidentally set off, caught in the crossfire, but the other two slammed into the Godhand’s shields and detonated.
The shields absorbed the impact and Phraim-’Eh’s ship kept coming, bearing down on the SD Reynolds.
“Lure him back into the mine lane,” Reynolds told Ria. “Let him think we’re retreating.”
“On it!” she replied, easing back to draw the Godhand in.
The ship shuddered and bucked unexpectedly, and Reynolds was forced to grab the arms of his seat to keep from toppling out.
“What the hell was that?” he called.
“One of the fucking destroyers broke through the minefield and rammed us,” Asya explained, rapidly scrolling through the damage reports as Ria compensated for the impact.
Tactical hammered the destroyer for daring to kamikaze them, and Jiya added insult to injury by slamming several of the cloaked Pods into the bridge of the ship.
“Take that!” she shouted as the Pods exploded on the heels of Tactical’s missiles.
The destroyer veered off and lost control, drifting through the minefield to end its days in a flash of light.
“Sitrep!” Reynolds demanded.
“The starboard engine is damaged,” Asya called. “Down to seventy-eight percent thrust.” She growled as she examined the reports streaming in on her screen. “Son of a bitch! That last blow smashed a hole in the aggro center. We lost a couple of printers and about a year’s worth of food.”
“Please tell me it wasn’t the coffee!” Jiya asked, wide-eyed.
“No,” Asya replied after a moment. “Looks like it was mostly vegetables.”
“No loss there,” Ka’nak remarked.
“Hello, scurvy!” Tactical joked. “Welcome aboard.”
“The Godhand’s still coming,” Ria announced.
A ship-rattling blow backed up her statement.
“Shields are buckling on the starboard side,” Asya advised. “I’m buffering them with the Gulg techniques, but I’m not sure how long they’ll hold.”
“They’re eating mines, and I’ve rammed a couple Pods up their ass,” Jiya called. “That ship is a beast.”
“We might have to pull out the ESD again,” Tactical warned.
“It’s too soon,” Reynolds told him. “Not yet. Hold it in reserve.”
“Not much use if we’re dead,” Tactical said.
Ria veered off as the Godhand closed, expertly piloting the superdreadnought through the open spaces between the fields of mines they’d positioned, gaining some distance between the Godhand and the Reynolds.
“Nice move, Ria!” Asya congratulated. “That’s bought us a couple of seconds.”
“I’m punching the clock on a few more,” Tactical announced as he blasted a wounded destroyer and took it out, sending it careening toward the planet below.
“I hope that fucking thing lands on and kills Phraim-’Eh’s favorite cow,” XO cursed.
“We’re running out of mines,” Geroux reported. “They’ve done a lot of damage, but the enemy is throwing tracers now and clearing them out.”
“I’m almost out of rigged Pods, too,” Jiya warned as she slammed another of them into a listing destroyer.
That was the final blow against that ship, and it exploded, its damaged hull unable to take any more.
“Seven,” Asya called.
“Six and a half, technically,” Reynolds corrected. “We’ve got one drifting who’s moved out of firing range. Unless they fix what’s wrong soon, they’ll be completely out of the fight.”
“That’s still steep odds,” XO noted.
The Godhand swept back around then, pounding the SD Reynolds with railgun fire from above.
The lights dimmed and alarms sounded. but this time Reynolds didn’t bother to address it. He let both go as Ria fought to evade the cult’s command ship.
“Anything, Takal?” Reynolds asked over the comm.
“Another minute,” he shot back. “Hit a snag. The process is locking up.”
“Phraim-’Eh is going to hit us with a snag if you don’t hurry up,” Reynolds growled.
Ria maneuvered the superdreadnought around, taking advantage of the remaining minefields and managed to get them behind the Godhand.
&nb
sp; Tactical and Jiya jumped on the opportunity and unleashed everything they had.
Explosions rippled along the rear of the ship, tearing through the shields and scoring the hull. Other than a moral victory, it did little to slow the massive ship down.
“I wished we’d have thought to put explosives on those damn tracer rounds we dotted the Godhand with earlier,” Tactical said.
“If the missiles and rigged shuttles we’re hitting it with aren’t taking it down, the tiny bits of explosive we could have added sure as hell wouldn’t have done anything.” Reynolds shrugged.
“Can we do anything else with those things, Takal?” Jiya asked over the comm.
“Busy here,” came the reply, followed by a curt, “No.”
“ESD time?” Tactical asked.
“Not yet,” Reynolds told him again.
Tactical didn’t even bother to complain. He unloaded a salvo of missiles into the rear of the Godhand as the flagship evaded, muting most of the damage.
“All the Pods are done!” Jiya advised. “I’m chucking pucks out of the bays to see if we get lucky.”
Explosions erupted all around the ship as the remaining mines went up, doing what damage they could.
It was minimal.
The enemy fleet was reforming on their command ship, and the entire group was coming about, angling attack vectors toward the Reynolds.
“I’m going to have to start throwing rocks soon,” Tactical called. “Munitions are starting to tank.”
“Shields are at forty percent,” Asya informed. “Thirty-nine,” she corrected as another blast rattled the ship’s port side.
“Deaths?” Reynolds asked, even though he didn’t want to.
“Negative,” Jiya’s answer came back. “Our moving all non-essential personnel to the inner quarters and replacing almost every job on the ship with bots has kept our people safe. We’ve got some injuries, and a few serious ones, unfortunately, but no one has died.”
“A damn miracle is what that is,” Maddox said.
“We could use another of those right about now,” Ka’nak exclaimed.
“Though I don’t dare consider my people or me a miracle, I would imagine something like this is what you mean.”
Jiya snapped around at the unexpected voice to see Xyxl right after he materialized on the bridge, the Reynolds’ shields now attuned to allow him to board without resistance no matter their setting.
“You have impeccable timing,” Reynolds told the alien. “Now help us take these pieces of shit out!”
“As you wish,” Xyxl replied.
Gulg warships appeared in the space above the Reynolds then, Gating in and engaging the cult’s fleet.
“About damn time!” Ka’nak whooped.
Chapter Twenty
“Three fucking ships?” Reynolds snarled a few seconds later when he realized the entirety of the backup Xyxl had brought with him. “You only brought three ships?”
Xyxl, having shifted his energies into the humanoid Reynolds and the crew were used to, did his best imitation of a shrug.
“I have apparently reached my allotment of starships,” the alien explained. “Three was all my people were willing to provide.”
“It’ll have to do,” Reynolds said.
“If it helps, I transported down to Takal’s laboratory for a moment before I came here,” Xyxl offered. “I aided him with the last of the program we concocted. Takal is still uncertain given its experimental nature, but I have absolute faith that it will work as designed.”
Reynolds grinned broadly. “I’d kiss you if I didn’t think it would fry my circuits.”
“A simple thanks will suffice,” the alien protested.
The AI spun away from the alien as the Gulg ships ganged up on one of the enemy destroyers and took it down.
“There we go,” he said, then triggered the comm. “Time’s up, Takal. Put your baby to work.”
“As you wish,” Takal replied.
“Pull us out of the fight, Ensign,” Reynolds ordered as the ship was targeted by Phraim-’Eh’s Godhand.
The ship trembled, and Reynolds could feel the blow to his core as Ria raced to comply with his order.
“Shields at twenty percent.” Asya wiped sweat from her brow, eyes narrowed as she both commanded the superdreadnought and kept track of all the damage reports as they whirled across her monitor.
“Can we buffer them again?” Reynolds questioned.
“Not if we want to keep the ESD in reserve,” she replied matter-of-factly. “We’ll end up trading one for another if we go that route.”
“I can help a little with that,” Xyxl told them, “but it won’t be much. My own energies are depleted from the journey here.”
Reynolds nodded. “We’ll make do,” he said.
The Godhand pulled back as the three Gulg ships went after it. Bursts of energy trailed after it, tearing at its shields, then the massive ship swung about and returned fire.
Reynolds didn’t see what happened because a destroyer filled his view then. It opened up, and the SD Reynolds bucked under the assault.
Then it was over and the destroyer was veering off, its lower hull shrieking past not twenty meters above the superdreadnought as Takal’s and Xyxl’s program took hold of the ship and usurped its command just as Jora’nal had done to Gorad’s and the Gulg ships.
“Holy Fuck!” Jiya cheered.
“It works!” Takal shouted over the comm. “It truly works. I’m in complete control of the craft.”
“I knew it would,” Reynolds told him.
He caught Jiya grilling him with a raised eyebrow.
“Okay, I’ll admit…I really wanted it to work,” he clarified.
Jiya chuckled.
But even with Takal and Xyxl’s secret project having borne fruit, the Reynolds wasn’t out of danger.
Two more of the destroyers maneuvered into position and pounded the ship.
The bridge went dark, then the emergency lights fluttered and came on. The crew were cast in deep shadows.
“Shields at twelve percent, Captain,” Asya reported. “One or two more hits and we’ll be counting on the armor alone,” she warned.
Takal’s controlled destroyer streaked past them again, crashing headlong into the first of the two destroyers chasing the superdreadnought.
There was a thunderous boom when they collided and the two ships spun away, forever entangled.
“One of the Gulg ships dropped off the scanners,” Asya told the AI, casting a furtive glance Xyxl’s direction.
“My people transferred to the next ship in line, so don’t worry for us,” the alien assured them.
“That is such a neat trick,” Jiya commented.
“It has its benefits, no doubt,” Xyxl agreed.
“What’s the count, Asya?” Reynolds asked.
“Four, not counting your half a ship, which still hasn’t rejoined the fight,” she replied.
“Three if you remove the one I’ve just taken control of,” Takal crowed. “Though I have to admit, these ships are quite difficult to maneuver.”
The Reynolds was struck from behind, weapons fire strafing its length as Ria dodged to avoid the full impact.
“Godhand is on our ass,” Asya said.
“That’s a bit perverse,” Ka’nak said from the back of the bridge.
“My companions are on it,” Xyxl assured, but the superdreadnought ended up on the receiving end of yet another blast of fire.
“Shields are fucked, Captain. Cooked,” Asya told the AI. “All that stands between them and us is the armor.”
Two of the remaining destroyers tag-teamed one of the Gulg ships, slipping around behind it while it engaged the Godhand.
Its hull was ripped open at its flank, and although it wasn’t a killing blow, the ship had no choice but to veer aside and break off its pursuit of Phraim-’Eh’s command ship.
Takal released control of the ship he had previously grabbed after shooting it off into spa
ce, and he took the reins of one of the destroyers that had just wounded the Gulg ship.
That ship spun on its companion and opened up at close range. The targeted ship’s shields flashed, but most of the blasts struck true, blowing through its defenses.
The wounded destroyer listed, lost control, and began to tumble. It collided with one of the few remaining patches of cloaked mines, which only compounded its misery.
It tumbled end over end and disappeared into the blackness of space.
“Can you grab the damn Godhand?” Reynolds asked the inventor as the monstrous ship recovered from the Gulg attack. It reengaged the Reynolds after a destroyer assailed the last of the functional Gulg craft and peeled it off the Godhand’s back.
“We’re not going to win the fight like this,” Reynold said more to himself than anyone else. “We’ve got to do something different.”
He glanced at Jiya, wondering she would do in that situation, and it came to him.
Something crazy.
“Coordinate with me, Xyxl,” the AI called. “Ria, bring us about as sharply as you can without ripping us in half.”
The ensign did just that. The ship felt as if it might tear apart at the seams, but it held. “Tactical, hit that asshole with everything we’ve got left right where I’m marking the target.”
He spun on the alien.
“Have your ship do the same, Xyxl,” he urged. “Fuck it! You too, Takal. Put that borrowed muscle to work.”
All three ships converged on the Godhand, angling around to come at it from the same side. Accidentally obliging them, the command ship turned away to avoid a possible collision, only to mistakenly give them an easier target.
The trio of ships fired within milliseconds of one another, each blast crashing into the Godhand’s shields at almost exactly the same spot.
To disastrous effect.
A ripple formed in the enemy’s shield and it ran outward, the combined attacks tearing a hole in the Godhand’s defenses.
Reynolds knew it would only last for a moment.
“Ka’nak, Jiya, on me,” Reynolds called.
Though they had no idea what he was summoning them for, both crewmembers raced over to his side by instinct, eyes wide, questioning what he expected of them.
Reynolds overrode the transport system and sent them hurtling across space toward the rip in the Godhand’s shields.
