The Terran Gambit

by Nick Webb

  “Admiral Trajan, this is Captain Jacob Mercer of the USS Phoenix. I’ll have you know, sir, that I have fourteen quantum field torpedoes locked on your hull, and if you don’t cease fire immediately I will order my XO to fire.”

  The Admiral’s voice crackled over the speaker, barely audible through the jamming, high and mocking. “Captain now, is it? Congratulations, Commander Mercer, on your promotion. However, as the most senior officer currently in orbit around Earth, it pains me to inform you that your former Captain acted in haste, for I do not ratify his decision. Commander, your ship signaled its surrender over an hour ago, and yet here we are still fighting. Do you withdraw your surrender?”

  “Stop the bombardment and we’ll talk.”

  A hint of exasperation crept into the Admiral’s voice. “Commander Mercer, there is nothing to talk about. Either you surrender or you do not. Make your decision. Honestly, I would love to add the Phoenix to the fleet and would prefer not to damage her further. But if you do not board a shuttle and turn yourself in on my ship immediately, I will pulverize what is left of the Phoenix’s thrusters and let her burn up in the atmosphere. It will make quite a show for the remnant of the Resistance still on Earth—” he paused, letting his mockery sink in, “though I suppose there aren’t many Resistance members left down there, they having all been transferred to the Nine … now the Three.”

  The explosions rocking the ship grew more violent, as the railgun fire stripped away layers of the outer hull and began to expose sensitive systems underneath.

  “Captain, hull breach on decks three through six, forward section,” said Po.

  Dammit.

  They were losing, and Jake knew it. He almost couldn’t believe it, after the struggle they’d had to survive that day. He racked his brain, thinking, grasping onto any idea, any thought that would give them a fighting chance.

  The image of the bloodied, broken drunk on the floor of the bar from the previous week flooded into his mind. He remembered the frenzy he felt when he attacked, knowing that if he let up and allowed the man to stand, Jake would be crushed. The only solution had been to damage him so badly he’d never stand up. Win that battle so crushingly, so thoroughly, that the man would never even think about coming for him that night or ever.

  And he decided. The only way forward seemed clear to him now. Trajan must die. Cut off the head, and the body follows. Cut him off, even if it meant sacrificing himself. And his crew.

  “Megan, clear the entire forward section of the ship, all decks. It’s time to channel our old friend, Admiral Pritchard.” Po glanced up at him, asking him with her eyes if he meant what she thought he meant. Jake nodded to her before approaching the helmsman.

  “Ensign, on my mark, full power to thrusters. Aim for the center of the Caligula, straight at the bridge. It’s time we took their queen.”

  “Full, sir?”

  “You heard me, Ensign.” He turned back to tactical. “Ayala, get me Lieutenant Grace.” She hadn’t responded before, but Jake refused to believe the worst.

  ***

  Anya Grace ducked again, just in time, as another strafing burst of gunfire raked across the wall behind her. Glancing back at Nivens, she gave him a quizzical look and mouthed, How many?

  Three, he mouthed in reply. She motioned for him to cover her as she ran around the adjacent fighter to flank them, but was interrupted by someone calling her name.

  “Anya, you copy? Lieutenant Grace, please respond.” Mercer. She glanced up at the wall panel where the voice had originated from and shouted in reply. “Yeah?”

  “Anya! You’re ok!”

  “For the moment.” She popped off another short volley of bullets.

  “Anya, you still in your fighter?”

  “No.” She glanced over at her burned out ship. “It’s seen better days. Why?”

  “Can you get to another one?”

  “Maybe.” She looked over at the entrance to the cockpit of the fighter she huddled under. It was right in the view of the three soldiers firing at them. “If you ask real nice and all.”

  “Anya, you need to shift out to the Caligula. Take out their gravitics. And while you’re at it, shift over to the Roc, and the Heron, and relay them some calcs from engineering to get their own gravitics back up and running. We’ll forward you the message from here. Ready?”

  “I said, only if you ask nicely,” she said, smirking. She loved getting under his skin.

  “Grace! Get your ass on that boat and get to work!” His voice sounded far more anal-retentive than normal. The corners of her mouth tugged up even farther.

  “All right, sir, but you owe me a date or something when this is all over. Or at least another good screw. Grace out,” she said, before he could respond.

  She pointed at Nivens. “Cover me!” she said, and stood up low to prepare to run. A spray of fire from Nivens sounded out, and she was off, sprinting as fast as she could towards the cockpit door. Wrenching it open and jumping in, she winced as the door was sprayed by a flurry of bullets just as it shut.

  “Looks like I finally get to be both the pilot and the gunner,” she said to herself as she transferred control of the ship’s weapons systems to her console. After a quick sensor sweep of the Caligula, she pinpointed exactly where she needed to shift to, and punched in the numbers to the gravitic drive.

  “You ready, Grace?” said Mercer through the fighter’s comm.

  “Ready,” she said, pulling the seat restraint on over her chest.

  “I’m piping the instructions you need to send to the other ships. Now get out of here!”

  “Copy.”

  After igniting the main engines, with a pull on the controls she lifted the fighter a meter into the air, and nearly punched the command to shift when she caught sight of the group of enemy soldiers hunkered down behind the burned-out fighter. Grinning, she swiveled the fighter’s gun turret on the front bow and raked streaming red high-caliber fire into the other ship, inciting an explosion that sent the group flying backward.

  Satisfied she left her people with a fighting chance, she punched the shift command, and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

  ***

  Jake closed his comm and shifted in his chair. “Ayala, patch me through to the rest of the ship.”

  Ensign Ayala keyed a few switches on her board. “Go ahead, sir.”

  “Attention all hands. Grab a hold of something and brace yourselves. It’s about to get a lot rougher sailing.” He looked back at Po. “Is the forward section clear?” Several particularly rough impacts and explosions buffeted the ship, and Jake had to catch himself on his chair.

  “Nearly. Another minute.”

  Another massive explosion from the Caligula’s railguns helped him make the decision he didn’t want to make. The impossible decision. “No time. Ensign, now. Full speed ahead.”

  The sudden acceleration knocked nearly everyone on the bridge off their feet as the ship began speeding up at over one g. “Distance to Caligula?” he shouted.

  “Half a klick and closing fast!” yelled Po in reply.

  Jake climbed up to the captain’s chair and strapped himself in. “All hands! Brace for impact!”

  As the image of the Caligula loomed larger in the viewscreen at a frightening speed, Jake began to wonder if this was his final mistake. He made a point to ask Bernoulli if there was some gambit in chess that sent the king on a suicidal attack run at the queen.

  Not likely.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CAPTAIN TITUS EXAMINED HIS COMMAND console from the center of the bridge. He looked back at Admiral Trajan. “All railgun crews are firing, sir. Shall I signal the ion beam cannons as well?”

  “Not yet, Captain. We’ll see if this gets Mercer’s attention. He thinks he’s going to get out of this, you see, and we need to convince him otherwise. I would really like that ship in my fleet, but if he doesn’t cooperate, then so be it.” He turned to tactical. “What is the status of the boarding parties on the Roc an
d the Heron?”

  The lieutenant touched a few buttons on his console. “Crews have landed, sir, and have secured the fighter decks. They’re beginning to fan out throughout the ships.”

  Trajan nodded. “Good. Comm, get me the boarding crew chiefs.”

  Ensign Evans spoke into his comm set, and after a moment glanced back up. “I’ve got them, sir. Colonel Hamm and Colonel Stauph on the channel.”

  Trajan cleared his throat, his adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Crew chiefs, as you secure the ships, isolate every officer of the rank of lieutenant commander and above, and execute them. Out of sight of the crew so as not to encourage uprising. Understood?”

  After a moment of hesitation, both soldiers responded. “Yes, sir.”

  “It is not the usual way we do things, Colonels, I agree and I understand your concern, but we’re facing Resistance on the Phoenix, and I don’t want that repeated on the other ships. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” came the reply from both.

  “Trajan out.”

  “Admiral!” The lieutenant manning the sensor station had nearly jumped out of his seat. “The Phoenix is on a collision course. She’s accelerating!”

  Titus felt a sudden rumble from the deck plate, and heard a distant explosion, followed by a louder blast.

  Admiral Trajan spun around to the sensor station. “What was that?”

  The blood drained from the lieutenant’s face, and seeing that, a knot formed in Titus’s stomach.

  “Something just hit our gravitic drive, sir. We’ve lost gravitic thrust. Conventional thrusters only.”

  Titus yelled. “What was it? A ship? A fighter? Did someone on the surface fire at us?”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “There was a brief gravitic field spike before the explosion. I don’t know, sir. Whatever it was, it’s gone. No fire from the surface, nothing from the Phoenix. But we’re dead in the water, sir.”

  “Conventional thrusters! Move us out of the way!” Titus yelled again, but knew it was too late—the other ship had already accelerated to a speed far faster than the Caligula could reach in the seconds remaining to them.

  Trajan turned to tactical. “Make them at least pay for it, Lieutenant. Maintain railgun fire.” The calmness with which he said it almost unnerved Captain Titus.

  Titus and Admiral Trajan both spun to look at the front viewscreen and watched as the Phoenix grew larger, eventually filling the whole wall.

  He’d never been in a ship collision before. Was the energy sufficient to destroy the ship? Titus thought back to the battle over Earth three years ago when Admiral Pritchard had maneuvered a ship straight into the Behemoth, delivering a mortal wound. With a shudder, he thumbed open the ship-wide comm. “All hands, brace for impact.”

  Trajan kept his arms firmly by his side, as if in defiance of the approaching ship. Titus wondered if the Admiral had any other meticulously planned-out strategies up his sleeve. Trajan’s quiet murmur gave him his answer.

  “An interesting move. And that gravitic signal … I should have guessed that the scientists at CERN had something—”

  The impact interrupted him, and everyone and everything that was not strapped down flew halfway across the bridge, several officers slamming into the wall—one at an odd angle, which, Titus noticed at the periphery of his attention, caused the man’s neck to snap back, most likely killing him instantly.

  When Titus finally got to his feet, he nearly had to cover his ears against the screeching of metal on metal as the Phoenix continued its grinding slide to rest firmly in the bow of the Caligula. Glancing at Admiral Trajan, who climbed to his feet near the wall, he ran to assist the man.

  Trajan’s face dripped with blood, the wall panel having left a deep laceration across his cheek which continued up and over onto his forehead. Luckily, the path of the gash was over the already empty eye socket, or Trajan might well have lost his sight that day. The Admiral removed a spotless white handkerchief from his front jacket pocket and dabbed at the blood, waving Titus off.

  “Comm. Signal to the other ships to open fire on the Phoenix.”

  Titus protested. “But sir! They’re lodged in our hull! If they blow, they’re taking us with them!”

  Trajan flashed an eerily calm, bewildering smile. “Yes, Captain, that is true. But the fact remains that I am committed to the plan. To the goal of wiping out the Resistance once and for all. And Captain,” he lowered his chin and stared at Titus with his now even more ghoulish, bloody face, “We are not committed like the hen, but like the swine. I am willing not just to sacrifice a few of my precious eggs, but my flesh. That is the duty of an Imperial officer. Remember that,” he added, coldly.

  “Yes, sir,” Titus said, with a faint voice.

  “Sir! I’m reading another gravitic disturbance, this time from the Roc.”

  Trajan’s face snapped toward the lieutenant so fast that blood actually flew off his cheek, splattering onto Titus’s uniform. “Are their engines back online?”

  “No, sir.”

  The grinding screech of metal on metal finally ceased, and Trajan strode back to the command terminal, studying it intently.

  “Comm. Tell the fleet to hold fire momentarily. Sergeant Tomaga,” he said towards the comm speaker on his console.

  “Yes, Admiral?” the commander of the fifty-first brigade replied over the speaker. He headed up the group of specially trained shock troops usually reserved for planetary surgical strikes.

  “The forward section of the Caligula is currently mated, after a fashion, with the bow of the Phoenix, and my console tells me there is a route you may send your men through. Get on that ship, Sergeant, and finish this nonsense.”

  “Yes, sir. Sending out squads now.”

  Trajan turned to Titus. “Captain, speak with the other captains on a secure channel, and let them know about the Resistance’s new technology, and to be ready for it.”

  “New technology, sir?”

  “That is exactly what I said. We’ve picked up two gravitic signatures now,” his eyes lost focus, as if staring at a far-away object, “No, three. One as the troop carriers first entered the Phoenix’s fighter bay, one right before our gravitic drive was hit by an unknown source, and another one aboard the Roc—”

  “And another one just now aboard the Heron, sir,” the lieutenant interrupted.

  Trajan looked annoyed at being cut off, but continued. “Obviously, the Resistance scientists have developed not only the new gravitic drives for the capital ships, but for the smaller fighters as well. I suspected they were on to something, but our scientists back on Corsica swore that the new gravitic field approximations could not apply to small-mass, low-energy systems. It appears they were incorrect.”

  “Very well, sir.” Titus walked over to the comm station.

  The Admiral leaned back over his console. “And it is a technology that will prove most useful to the Emperor and his fleet.” His voice dropped to an almost conversational tone as he continued studying the readouts on the console. “We will capture it, Captain, one way or another.”

  ***

  Lieutenant Anya Grace watched with glee as the torpedoes raced away from her front bow and struck the core section of the Caligula, blasting a hole in the ship and sparking secondary explosions from cut power lines. With a deft finger, she pressed the button to initiate a gravitic shift to the fighter bay on the Roc, not willing to wait around to see the aftermath of her handiwork. They’d notice her eventually, and would start firing soon afterwards.

  The fighter bay of the Roc snapped into place around her, and instantly she knew something was wrong. A large group of imperial soldiers was streaming into the bay’s anteroom, and Anya had to shake her head at the oddness of it all—not a minute before she had been firing her fighter’s guns at imperial shock troops in an exact replica of the fighter bay she now found herself in.

  There were far too many soldiers to take out with her guns, not right away at least, so without waiting
another second she squeezed the trigger of her torpedo launcher, launching a missile which slammed into the anteroom, sending a massive fireball blazing back into the fighter bay and pelting her viewport with shrapnel and ASA suit-clad body parts.

  Before the survivors could return fire, she transmitted the calculations to the Roc’s computer, with instructions for it to route them to engineering and the bridge. With another press of the gravitic shift engagement button, the flaming fighter bay blinked out, only to be replaced by yet another fighter bay, this one on the Heron.

  Four imperial troop carriers sat on the deck, but otherwise the bay was deserted. “Damn,” she muttered. The imperials must have already made their way up into the body of the Heron, and she supposed the ship was probably already lost, given the number of carriers present in the fighter bay. With nothing other than spite, she squeezed the trigger of her guns, and raked a stream of staccato red into the nearest carrier until it exploded, following up one by one with the others until they all were nothing but flaming debris.

  She transmitted the calculations to engineering and the bridge again, hoping against hope that there was still someone there to retrieve it, and act upon it. With one last glance at the burning wreckage of the troop carriers, she initiated a fourth shift, this one back to the fighter bay of the Phoenix, sending up a wave of shrapnel from shifting into place too close to the deck.

  “Bridge, this is Grace. Mission accomplished.”

  She set the fighter down with as soft a touch as she could manage, bringing it to rest on the mangled deck floor, but instantly wished she hadn’t as the entire fighter bay lurched towards the bow, and she would have flown out of her seat had her restraint not been firmly attached.

  “Sounds like the Admiral didn’t appreciate his gift,” she said to the empty cockpit. Looking out the viewport she saw Nivens sprawled out on the floor, apparently having just been knocked down by the sudden shaking and rocking of the ship. Ben Jemez was still pulling himself to his feet as she wrenched the cockpit door open and jumped out.