04 Dark Space (46 page)

“What’s what?” Delayn asked, checking the grid. A moment later he let out a long whistle and shook his head. “Looks like the Sythians didn’t wipe out their fleet after all.”

“Looks like,” she replied. The Avilonians didn’t just have fighters in the air. Now there were several large starships roaring up from the ground and racing toward the engagement around the Zenith. They all looked to be the same class as the cruiser which had found them in the gravity field a few short hours ago. Counting just the ones she could see out the porthole-sized forward viewport of the escape pod, there were a least half a dozen.

Looking out to the hazy orange line of the horizon to see if she could find any more, Caldin realized that the city was on fire as far as the eye could see. Millions must have died in the attack.

“Never thought I’d live to see this twice,” Delayn remarked, obviously reminded of the original Sythian invasion by the apocalyptic scale of the devastation before them. Caldin saw Delayn reach out beside him to find Esayla Carvon’s ebony hand. Esayla was kneeling beside him and leaning her head on his shoulder.

That display of affection had Caldin looking away, out the rear hatch to watch the
Intrepid’s
final moments. Her thoughts turned to a certain corpsman—Corpsman Markom Terl—her lover and longtime friend. She chewed her lower lip, hoping against hope that he would have enough time to escape. The flaming bulk of her ship sailed inexorably toward the Zenith Tower like a giant torpedo, trailing a fat plume of ugly black smoke. Here and there an escape pod came jetting out of the flames, fleeing the doomed cruiser in just the nick of time, but those pods were too few and far between to be carrying the entire crew.

Caldin wondered absently what the Avilonians would do to them if the
Intrepid
took down the Zenith Tower, and with it, their AI god, Omnius. She needn’t have wondered. A dozen white-hot beams suddenly shot out from the Zenith, converging on the doomed ship.

It
burst open like an overripe piece of fruit, and Caldin flinched away from the blinding light of that explosion. An ominous roll of thunder reached her ears just a moment later, and then she turned back to look. The
Intrepid
was gone. In its place, a hail of tiny fragments sailed on and splashed harmlessly across the face of the Zenith, provoking a telltale flicker of light—
the tower is shielded
, she realized.

The escape pods she’d seen streaking out of the fiery ruins of her ship were now nowhere to be seen. Turning back to Delayn she asked, “How many made it out?”

He was quiet for a long moment, forcing her to repeat the question.

“Just three. I’m sorry, Captain.” Delayn turned back to her, his pale blue eyes filled with a suspicious sheen of moisture.

“Any from med bay?”

“Let me check, ma’am . . .”

Caldin’s heart beat double time in her chest.

“V-966-14!” he said, calling out the pod’s tracking number.

“Hail it!” Her heart beat faster than ever with the fearful hope that one of the people in that pod was Corpsman Markom Terl. She watched the back of Delayn’s head in an anxious silence, he hands alternately clenching and unclenching.

“They’re not responding, Captain . . .” Donali said slowly. “The pod must have malfunctioned and launched by mistake.”

Caldin felt something cold and hard settle in her chest like a lump of granite. She swallowed thickly and nodded. “Carry on, Commander.”

Chapter 30

H
igh Lord Shondar sat watching the battle from a high orbit, safely cloaked and concealed behind the lines on his command ship, the
Gasha.
But there was no concealing his disappointment and rage. The Avilonians had lost their fleet, their world laid bare and defenseless. They had been
his
for the conquering! The glory was to have been his alone!

Now . . . now they were suddenly firing back and coming at him with overwhelming force. Shondar stalked up to the edge of the simulated star dome which covered his bridge. He gazed down on the glittering jewel that was Avilon and let out an angry hiss. That jewel had almost been his!

“My Lord, what do we do now?” the chief operator asked.

Shondar took a minute to reply, his glowing white eyes fixed upon a darkened patch of the city below. It was dark for all the thick clouds of smoke that hung over it, obscuring city lights and raging fires alike. That black region was dimly lit by the continuous flashing of lasers, missiles, and exploding Shell Fighters, as well as by one curiously bright point of light which glared up at him with the intensity of a sun.

Shondar’s eyes narrowed on that singular, bright point of light, glaring straight back at it. He knew it wouldn’t be long before even his cruisers and battleships succumbed to enemy fire, falling from the sky to burst open on the ground like overripe gob fruit.

It was time to retreat. “Have our drivers cloak their ships and return to orbit. They are to rendezvous with us here before we leave. We return no better than when we left. Shame is upon us all.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

Shondar bit back a roar of outrage. A part of him had known a world as vastly-overpopulated as Avilon could not be subdued so easily. He had suspected it was too good to be true, but he had barreled on foolishly, blinded by visions of glory which were now eclipsed by shame.

How could he have been so foolish!

The humans would pay.

Reluctantly, Shondar sent a brief, telepathic update to High Lord Kaon. The battle was lost; he was returning to Dark Space. Kaon wanted details, but Shondar ended that brief contact abruptly, making it clear that he was not in the mood to analyze his defeat.

“Our drivers report they cloak successfully and are breaking off from the engagement. They return to orbit.”

Shondar gave no sign he had heard that update, and no one bothered to ask if he had. He stood watching as the darkened patch of city below grew darker still with the sudden absence of weapons fire. He bared his black teeth in an ugly smile. The Avilonians could not shoot what they could not see. Cloaking technology had won the war with humanity. Now it was being put to a far less glorious use, shielding Shondar’s fleet from eyes and sensors as it retreated. It was the first Sythian retreat in the history of the war, and the shame of ordering it fell on him. He hissed once more, displeasure rolling off him in waves.

Then, suddenly, something terrible happened.

The clouds were lit up once more with flashing light, and Shondar felt an uncommon stab of fear. His upper lip curled, and his brow wrinkled with confusion.

“My Lord! The drivers report their ships are being fired upon!”

“This is not possible! They cannot detect us! Have the drivers evade!”

“They do evade, My Lord. The enemy strikes us still!”

“Have them activate flash shields! De-cloak the
Gasha
and do the same! Get us away from the planet!”

The
operator
at the helm began turning the mighty
Gasha
away from Avilon. Mere seconds later Shondar saw the blinding speck glaring up at him from the planet suddenly swell to twice its size and brightness, unleashing a terrifying beam of light. Shondar watched it slice through the kilometers-long bow of his ship, and his glowing white eyes widened with shock.

“How do they see us?!” Shondar demanded, his voice sounding suddenly shrill. The bow of his command ship cracked away in a molten ruin.

“Flash shields active!” the operator in charge of engineering called out just a moment too late. Fortunately, the
Gasha
could live without its bow, but now Shondar’s shame was magnified.

“Get us away from this place—now!” Shondar hissed.

“What of the fleet?”

“Leave them!”

*   *   *

Atton saw the Avilonians open fire on the invaders at last. Dazzling white beams crisscrossed the sky. Hundreds of starfighters rose to greet the alien swarms. Red lines of pulse lasers streaked out from them, reaping the sky, and the alien armada began raining down everywhere around him.

A ground swell of hope buoyed his spirits and a grim smile began tugging at the corners of his mouth.
Sweet revenge. Serves the kakards right!
It was beginning to look like Avilon might pull victory from this massacre. Atton had to force himself to stop gloating and focus on his immediate surroundings. Whether or not they won, it was still imminently possible for him to die. A pair of Shell fighters roared by, running from the
Intrepid,
which
they had been bullying just a moment ago. They cut down across his flight path at an oblique angle, followed by twice as many Avilonian fighters. They were spitting streams of bright red lasers at the enemy shells.

A moment later those two Shells exploded with synchronous
booms
and Atton’s Nova rocked in the shockwave. Racing up toward the
Intrepid,
he
mentally toggled his comms for the command channel and sent a message: “Control, this is Guardian One, what’s your status?”

No answer.

He followed the
Intrepid’s
flaming ruin across the sky, hoping against hope that they could hold out just a little longer. The Avilonians were scraping the Shells off them like bugs from a hover car’s windshield.

“Guardian One, this is Control, we—
skriss
. . .”

Whatever the comm officer had been about to say was cut off with a burst of static. A flash of light followed, and suddenly the
Intrepid’s
thrusters were gushing fire and smoke. The ship took a sudden dive toward the planet. A quick look at the grid showed it going dark. The cruiser was running in low power, but Atton was sure after the explosion he’d witnessed that it wasn’t by design.

Mere seconds later, he saw a flurry of escape pods jet away. They were abandoning ship!
Frek,
he thought, still
rushing up to greet the
Intrepid
, as if he could somehow stop the cruiser’s suicidal plunge to the city below.

“Sara, plot a trajectory for the
Intrepid,
” he said.

A moment later, a curving red vector appeared on the grid, reaching out from the doomed cruiser
to the tallest tower in the city below.
The Zenith Tower,
Atton gasped.

It wasn’t even another minute before the Avilonians responded to the crashing ship. Blinding beams of light converged, and Atton saw the
Intrepid
begin breaking up into flaming chunks.

Then it flew apart with a terrific
boom
, vaporizing all but the smallest specks of debris. Atton gaped at the explosion now blossoming a few short klicks from his fighter. Then came the shockwave and his Nova began to buck and twist under him. He battled with the flight stick for just a second before the shockwave passed. In its wake came a hail of superheated grit and small, molten debris which hissed off his shields and stole a few percentage points of charge. That was all that remained of the once majestic cruiser. Atton’s gaze dropped to the grid to look for the escape pods he’d seen fleeing the ship.

There were just three left.

Targeting the nearest one, he hailed it saying, “Pod vee nine sixty six dash four, this is Guardian One, what’s your status?”

The comms crackled with a familiar voice—that of the
Intrepid’s
XO, Deck Commander Delayn. “Good to hear from you, Guardian Leader. We’re all right, but a bit shaken up. We have the captain with us. Where’s the rest of your squadron?”

“I’m it,” Atton replied.

“Kavaar. . . .”

Atton felt the same dull shock coursing through him. Out of the over one hundred men and women who had been aboard the
Intrepid
when they’d set out from Dark Space, they’d be lucky if a dozen had survived
.

“Mind giving us an escort to the surface?” Commander Delayn asked, interrupting his thoughts.

“It would be my pleasure.”

Atton brought his Nova around until he had the glowing blue thrusters of the escape pod under his crosshairs. When he drew near to it he saw that it was charred and blackened on the outside, revealing just how lucky it had been to escape the explosion that had taken out the
Intrepid.
Atton kept half an eye on the grid to make sure no enemy fighters were vectoring their way.

“Sara,” he said, “Set the TDS to maximum sensitivity and add pod V966-4 to our watch list. I want to know the minute a Shell so much as wobbles onto our flight path.”

“Yes, sir,” the AI replied.

A moment later the TDS screeched with a warning and Atton saw a Shell Fighter ahead of them begin flashing on the grid as it banked toward them. Sara had auto-targeted it for him. Pushing the throttle up past the stops, Atton surged ahead of the captain’s escape pod, and then thumbed over to lasers. Lining up for a shot, he brought the red brackets of the target under his crosshairs. The targeting reticle flickered green and he held down the trigger. Lasers screeched out in a continuous stream toward his target, and its shields began to drop. Then came the
beep-beep-beeping
of an enemy target lock, and an alarm screamed out a warning as a glittering pair of Pirakla missiles leapt out toward him. The Shell fighter’s shields dropped to 46% and then it dove away, breaking out of the head-to-head and leaving Atton to deal with the missiles now vectoring in on him. A moment later his TDS blared out another warning just as a group of Shells angled in on him from his starboard side and began firing dazzling violet streams of pulse lasers across his path.

He began yawing erratically from his straight-line course in order to throw their aim. The missile lock alarm grew progressively louder until his ears began to ring with the sound. “I get it!” Atton roared. “Sara turn down the volume on the TDS!”

The alarm diminished and then the missiles were upon him. He nosed down and hauled back on the throttle until the glittering purple stars of two Pirakla missiles appeared to shine down into the cockpit like twin suns at their zenith. As soon as he’d judged they were just about to hit him, he triggered his afterburners and pulled up hard, letting the alien missiles skate by behind him with bare meters to spare. Strident purple light continued to flash around his cockpit—