by M. G. Herron
In the meantime, she needed to make sure that lidar data got saved. “Harmony, send the last five minutes of the lidar stream to my console.”
“Already sent, Admiral,” the AI responded.
“Show-off,” she muttered.
The holoscreen brightened softly as the packet arrived. Her heartbeat quickened as she called it up. Kira was reviewing the path the Kryl drone had led Captain Nevers on when another pilot’s voice cut in over the comms.
“He’s not responding. I’m going after him.”
“Harmony, who is that?” Kira demanded.
“Captain Casey Osprey.”
Kira opened her personal communications device. “You will do no such thing, Captain. Return to your assigned patrol path and protect the Mammoth fleet.”
“I can’t leave him behind, sir,” Captain Osprey said. “Permission to go after him? I have eyes on his Sabre.”
“So do we, Captain Osprey. Stand down.”
“Sir!” Osprey said. “As the flight lead, his safety is my responsibility.”
“You have your orders, Captain Osprey.“
The captain ignored her, however and Kira saw on the lidar that she had begun to angle down toward the moon, entering the moon’s gravity well in the same direction the downed starfighter had fallen.
“Captain Osprey, this is your last chance. Turn around or I will take over your starfighter and bring you back myself.”
A ringing silence filled the bridge. All officers had frozen at their stations. Kira didn’t need to see the face of the hotheaded young pilot to know that Captain Osprey was fighting an internal battle with her conscience—obey orders and abandon her squadmate, someone she was obviously close to, or disobey orders and go after him like the hero she imagined herself to be.
This silent struggle was one Kira was intimately familiar with. It was never easy to watch someone you loved face danger on their own… but that was a burden soldiers of the Solaran Empire had to bear. Sometimes, for the greater good, you had to let your friends fight their own battles.
Captain Osprey couldn’t know that Kira had no intention of leaving one of her pilots behind. The pilot hadn’t heard Kira give the order to dispatch a SAR team. Assuming Captain Nevers survived the crash—and he had about a fifty percent chance of doing so, if the skies were clear and he stayed conscious after entering the moon’s atmosphere—and followed protocol, the Search and Rescue team would pick him up in a matter of hours.
Captain Osprey’s starfighter continued on its vector toward the moon.
“Captain Osprey,” Kira repeated. “This is your last warning. I will RemOp your starfighter and bring you in if you do not stand down immediately.”
“Ahhh!” Osprey yelled. “Damn you!” There was the sound of a fist against metal as she punched the control panel. The path of her starfighter continued its pursuit of the injured drone.
“Harmony, bring Captain Osprey back to the Paladin.”
“Yes, Admiral.” The path of Osprey’s Sabre veered around as the AI took control of the craft.
Kira closed the comm link. Better if she didn’t hear the string of insults the captain would undoubtedly hurl in her direction. That pilot just did one of the hardest things any flight lead had to do—leave her squadmate to fend for himself in enemy-occupied territory—and she needed space to vent. “Colonel Volk, I want the video footage from Captain Osprey’s cube as well.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And she’s to report to me as soon as she lands.” Kira didn’t care that three generations of Ospreys had fought the Kryl. Not even the daughter of a retired Inquisitor got special treatment under her command.
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Volk said.
A flurry of activity resumed on the bridge as her officers returned their attention to their stations.
Short work was made of the remaining pack of Kryl drones on the other side of the moon. Those that got away descended to the moon’s surface. Her starfighters were ordered not to pursue. It was the responsibility of the Robichar ground forces overseeing evacuation to defend the civilians planetside. Except for the Search and Rescue team who would retrieve Captain Nevers, she needed the rest of her forces in orbit around the planet, ready to protect their retreat upon arrival of the bulk of the Kryl hive, still headed in their direction.
Kira took advantage of the pause to return to the lidar readout on her personal holoscreen. She played the relevant section through several times. Captain Nevers’ quick reactions and tight flying had allowed him to gain on the Kryl drone, little by little, as it maneuvered through the Mammoth fleet. Though he had abandoned his patrol path, she felt a grudging admiration grow for the young pilot’s dogged pursuit. His flying and his stubbornness reminded her of someone she had once known very well: the now-legendary Captain Ruidiaz. The two seemed to have similar flying styles, as well as similar hardheaded personalities which made ignoring orders to pursue Kryl craft seem like a sensible decision in the heat of battle.
These were fleeting thoughts, however. Her attention was occupied by the teardrop icon representing the unusual Kryl drone. Her eyes hadn’t deceived her; the ship dropped off the lidar for half a second before reappearing behind Captain Nevers. If it hadn’t skipped over such a short distance—and if drones were outfitted with the right kind of drive, which they weren’t—she might have thought it had entered hyperspace.
As she played it back again, her breath caught in her throat and her heartbeat danced in her chest. She had never seen such a thing before and it confirmed her deepest fears: the Kryl were evolving. She didn’t know how, but here was the proof. They hadn’t been licking their wounds over the past dozen years of intergalactic peace—they’d been developing new technologies that made them more dangerous than ever.
She would review the video footage of Captain Osprey and Captain Nevers to corroborate her theory. But first, she had to secure the civilian fleet. Kira forced her eyes away from the holoscreen.
“How’s that Mammoth doing?”
“They’re patching it up now, sir. It won't be fit to enter hyperspace for another few hours. And even then we’ll have to be careful it’s properly shielded.”
She nodded. The Mammoth that got hit with a torpedo was a risk, but the repair techs manning it were among the Empire’s finest. The repairs would be completed before the rest of the Kryl hive arrived. She would make sure of it.
“Dispatch additional repair units. They need all the extra hands they can get right now,” Kira said. “I want that Mammoth ready to go in three hours.”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the meantime, check in on the shuttle schedule. See if we can do anything to speed up the evacuation.”
Kira returned to the lidar recap, then checked on the status of Captain Osprey. The pilot had just landed in the hangar of the destroyer. The rest of Nevers’ squad had been recalled as well.
Kira returned to the command couch and drummed her fingers on the armrest as she thought through the implications of this discovery. She had already pointed out to Imperial Command and the Colonization Board that the Kryl hive’s sudden activity couldn’t be without an explanation. At the time, they had demanded to know the reason for the hive splintering from the bulk of the horde, and she had been unable to supply a satisfactory explanation. In the end, they had grudgingly agreed to evacuate Robichar, the only colony that happened to be in the path of the hive’s apparent movement. And getting them to agree to that had been like pulling teeth from the mouth of a madman.
Evacuating this colony was only a minor setback to the board. In the time that the evacuation had been approved, charters for two new colonies had been signed. Those colonization efforts were already underway.
If she could figure out what this meant, she would have evidence to present to the board that would force them to call a halt to their aggressive colonization efforts. The last thing they wanted, if the Kryl were indeed on the move again, was to continue colonial expansion—especially if th
e hive had been developing new technologies during their hibernation. It was impossible for the Fleet to effectively defend all the new colonies; that’s what had Kira so worried. But of course, she needed proof to convince the board of anything. Especially without direct involvement from the cloistered Emperor.
She was working through how to approach the board with this evidence when a tremor shook through the floor of the bridge.
“What was that?”
Harmony turned her glowing face toward Kira. “There has been an explosion in the hangar, Admiral. I’ve managed to contain the atmosphere. Currently assessing the damage and preparing a report.”
A pit formed in the bottom of Kira’s stomach. “Earth’s last lights. Colonel Volk, you have the bridge.”
A security team fell in behind her as she marched into the halls of the Paladin to deal with the next emergency.
Six
Elya was flung back into consciousness while the world spun around him. His head rattled and, for a terrifying moment, he thought he was a child again, fleeing Yuzosix. Elya, his mother, and his two older brothers had fought their way onto a shuttle in order to escape the planet during a Kryl invasion. He remembered the ship shaking so hard during launch it felt like his brains would rattle right out of his skull.
The same feeling now consumed him as his body was thrown against his safety harness. His helmet rebounded off the cockpit’s frame, splashing black and red smudges across his vision. It was only thanks to thousands of hours in the cockpit and the deep grooves of muscle memory that Elya reached out blindly and found the controls by feel. He kicked the rudder in the opposite direction of the spin and held it there, then shoved the stick fully forward to lower the nose. The jet didn’t respond. His flight controls were unresponsive.
Hedgebot blinked bright red. The little guy was jammed into a corner by the centrifugal force of the spinning craft. Elya tried the thrusters and found that all of his engines were dead. That’s when he remembered what had happened: Kryl drones dropping in among the Mammoth fleet and attacking, then drawing him away before phasing through his ship in an impossible maneuver and shooting out his engines.
The other ship! He craned his neck, looking around, but didn’t spot it. Maybe it had burned up in the heat of atmospheric reentry.
Did the Kryl drone really phase through my ship? Or had I imagined that?
His mind recoiled when he remembered the even more unsettling part of that experience—that the drone he’d been chasing had been piloted by a monstrous Kryl. Not a living Kryl spawn shaped like a ship, as he’d been taught in his xenos class at the academy. Had the pilot’s face been partially human? Or had he imagined that? Elya knew only that he’d passed within inches of the arachnoid alien.
That drone had been manned.
There was no time to consider these questions, no matter how wild their implications were or how scared he might be. He was too busy to be scared. His first order of business was to land the Sabre safely. Though the world outside of his cockpit continued to whirl about him, he began to make out landmarks—a cloudy blue sky, green and red treetops, a dark jagged scar of a mountain range in the distance. He was plummeting to the surface of the forest moon and would soon be turned into paste if he didn’t get this thing under control.
Hedgebot scurried around his seat and busied itself behind him, motors whining as it struggled to move. The sound of soldering filled the cockpit as it operated a set of repair tools Elya had installed into its machinery, an after-market improvement that had been required to clear it for military use as an astrobot. There was a racket of noise, a burning smell, and then the control column in his hands rose to life as power returned. Hedgebot scurried back in front of him, its warning lights fading from a deep red to a burning orange.
“Hang on, little buddy,” Elya mumbled. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
The creature beeped erratically in an irritated tone, letting Elya know that, Yes, any bot with danger sensors could detect that, you idiot.
In spite of the very real danger, Elya grinned.
With neck muscles straining from the effort, he pushed down on the rudder pedal and shoved the stick forward again. He didn’t have full control, but the Sabre began to respond. After a concerted effort that felt like he was manhandling a SecBot on elimination mode, he exited the spin and the plane entered a glide. He struggled to keep the nose straight with one hand while, with the other, he adjusted the attitude flaps on the wings. The engines may have been dead, but with limited electrics he could now control the pitch of the plane.
His elevation continued to drop precipitously, from ten thousand meters, to nine, to eight… Keeping the mountain range on his left side, Elya angled toward the only open space visible amongst the tree cover. There was a long track of pavement that might have been a runway. It sprung out of a crowd of buildings that may have been a small town, or perhaps just the outbuildings of a spaceport.
He directed the starfighter toward the clearing and the strip of pavement visible there.
As he dove through a layer of cumulus clouds, and the items on the ground began to enlarge in his vision, he picked out columns of smoke. A roaring sound filled the cockpit even through the sound-dampening seal of the starfighter, followed by a flash of light as an explosive hit the largest building next to the runway—presumably the spaceport. More smoke billowed up. A Kryl drone arced into the sky, away from where the bomb had been dropped.
Those not immediately incinerated in the blast scattered in every direction as hundreds of people and dozens of vehicles fled for their lives.
Elya veered away from the spaceport. He needed to get there so he could contact the Paladin, but he couldn’t guarantee a safe landing in all that chaos. It would do no good to survive this landing only to walk into a firefight.
He kept the wings of the starfighter level and pulled the nose gently up, still fighting against gravity, watching his airspeed and taking care not to stall his craft. With feeling returned to his controls, he managed to direct the plane out over the forest, looking for another safe place to land where he wouldn’t get himself impaled by one of the thin trees that spread like a carpet of reddish-orange and green nails over the ground.
The Sabre gave small shakes each time it touched the edge of a stall, and each time he had to drop the nose a fraction to maintain the glide. He picked out a small clearing. It would have to do. He had just enough time to take a deep breath as the ground rushed up to meet him.
An explosion of dirt rushed over the canopy, blocking his view with rich red soil. Hedgebot tumbled over his shoulder and struck the metal frame with a sickening crunch.
The Sabre skidded forward for a long time. He hit something hard, maybe a boulder, that sent the ship bouncing and spinning again. There was a loud crack as he plowed into something else—a tree?—and Elya’s helmet smashed against the side of the cockpit, darkness crowding the edge of his vision.
And then there was stillness cut only by the sound of his own ragged breathing.
The darkness receded. In its place rose a keen, gurgling nausea. Smoke filled the cockpit, making him cough. He tried to discern his surroundings. There were thin patches of blue sky visible through the soil-covered canopy, trees in the distance, and dirt piled high against the windows. He tried to open the canopy, but it was stuck.
Beep-boop, Hedgebot beeped from the floor. Elya sighed in relief. They’d made it down alive, both of them. And he’d like to keep it that way.
A panel of safety glass at his right protected a standard-issue SB-44 Imperial Blaster and a multi-use hatchet combo tool. Somehow it hadn’t been broken in the crash. He flipped open the protective lid and pressed a button that caused spiderweb cracks to shoot through the glass. Cracks were then pumped full of a clear liquid which, in turn, dissolved the glass into a pile of sand.
Elya swept the silicate grains aside with a shaking, gloved hand. He removed the hatchet, spun it around, and used the handle to pry the canopy loo
se until he’d formed a crack big enough for Hedgebot to pass through.
Hedgebot slipped out and limped crookedly away from the Sabre, pulsing yellow-orange. Elya gave it a moment to do its thing while he tried to calm himself. Hedgebot was measuring the atmospheric pressure and gravity, checking the air for toxic elements, and reporting the results back to Elya’s tab. He didn’t know where his tab was, though. A lot of good that did. He rooted around until he located it under his seat.
The tab was dead, its screen cracked. He dropped it back to the floor.
Hedgebot glowed blue, indicating that their surroundings were safe, at least for the moment. Elya felt his whole body sag in relief. He wouldn’t be able to see the specific results of the bot’s measurements, but he’d long ago come to trust his little hedgehog-shaped companion. The blue light was good enough for him.
Elya used the hatchet’s butt to pry open the crack in the lid of the starfighter, releasing the rest of the canopy. Its powered hinges finally activated and did some of the lifting for him. Then, holding the blaster in one hand and the combo tool in the other, he stuck his own helmeted head through the opening.
Elya’s starfighter seemed to be alone in a clearing, or rather, buried in the treeline at the edge of it. There was some screaming and yelling in the distance, but it wasn’t close enough to locate its source. He pulled his head back inside. There was one more thing he needed to do first.
The Kryl drones which must have followed him to the moon’s surface and bombed the spaceport would continue their search, eventually finding his Sabre and coming for it. Standard operating procedure was clear. Elya’s task now was to scuttle the Sabre so that the enemy couldn’t use it, either for its weapons or any intelligence they could glean from it.
