Warlord's Invasion (Starfight Book 1) (28 page)

The tube was transparent, and she could see the vast kilometer long dreadnought behind her, its thick armor plating filled with holes from h-wave impacts. Its oblong shape rested like a giant injured whale. She could see the gravity emitters and the polaron cannon ports as well as the missile ports and all the grav shield emitters. This had been her home for a month. She knew she would never see it, again.

In front of her, the destroyer
Demosthenes
looked like a baby whale. From her vantage point, it was big as well, but not nearly as big as her dreadnought. It was roughly 1/5
th
the length of the ship behind her, but only about 1/100
th
the volume.

…Then she was already through to the other end. She flew through the
Demosthenes
’s boarding hatch and into the arms of a bulky marine sergeant who caught her before she fell face first into the gravity plating of the new starship. “Thank you,” she said.

“No problem, uh—Admiral!”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Captain Willock said emerging behind her, who had not forgotten to decelerate a bit after reaching past the tube’s midpoint. “Now, which way is the bridge?”

“Ah, this way!” the sergeant turned to another marine. “Bachsted! Take the Admiral and the Captain to the bridge!”

“Yes, sir, Sergeant Miller!” a marine private replied. “Follow me, sirs and ma’am!”

Betelgeuse Combined Fleet

Temporary Flagship, Destroyer Demosthenes

Bridge…

The bridge of the
Demosthenes
was much smaller than that of the
Beginner’s Luck
. That was because there was no admiral’s alcove, nor a controller’s section adjunct to the alcove. The main holomap was about a third as large, meaning it was as tall as a human. There were also fewer people maintaining the three rows-rings of interface consoles surrounding the captain’s chair.

It took a little less than four seconds before someone noticed Vier’s presence. “Admiral on the bridge!” they said.

Everyone stood up and saluted.

“Back to your stations,” Vier shouted. “Captain.”

“Yes, ma’am!” the bearded, red-haired captain answered from the center. “Name’s Denmark, ma’am.”

“Display the location of the nearest enemy units in relation to our fleet!”

Captain Denmark barked orders to a sensor lieutenant, who then changed the main holomap, so that it zoomed away from the docking picture of the Demosthenes and Vier’s dreadnought.

She gazed into the picture and calculated the distance, then came up with one hundred light-hours. There wasn’t time at all! “Have the fleet reestablish the information net and command channels with this ship, Captain Denmark,” Vier announced. “I need to see the status of the boarding and evacuation on the other ships in the fleet. Use priority authorization code Vier-209-mark-21-Bruce.”

Denmark nodded to a communication officer to his left, who inputted Vier’s code into the command net. “Fleet is responding. Receiving data,” the officer replied.

Suddenly, new numbers appeared on the main holomap and the forward wallscreen. She could now read the statuses of all the ships in her fleet. The average debarkation rate was 68%. That meant 68 out of every hundred crewman in her dreadnoughts and battleships and heavy cruisers had actually made it to the smaller, lighter vessels.

She gazed at the holomap. The enemy fleet came closer. 98 light-hours now.

“Comm,”Vier said. “Message to all ships within 140 light-hours of the nearest enemy hunter-killer, tell them you have six minutes before the boarding tubes must be cut.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Six minutes later, she gave the order. “Cut boarding tubes in section A of the fleet. All ships in section A are to rescind boarding tubes and begin Evasion Protocol immediately when it is safe.”

“Sending orders, ma’am.”

Vier hated to be the doom bringer of the men and women still trapped within the larger ships but she had to do it, otherwise the smaller ships would never make it out alive. She duplicated that order two minutes later for Section B of the fleet, and then again, for Section C. When Vier’s destroyer’s time came, she ordered the same thing for Section D. She estimated that in total, she probably managed to save 80-85% of the crews onboard the heavier ships.

As her ship the
Demosthenes
began the Dispersion Method, she watched the Beginner’s Luck dwindle away on the rear monitor in the aft wall. The entire dreadnought, now computer controlled, initiated its warp suspenders and headed in the opposite direction to attack the incoming enemy ships, to buy time for the fleet with crews in them to escape.

Minutes later, she saw on the map as h-waves slammed into the
Beginner’s Luck
, who was firing its own h-beams at the three hunter-killers that surrounded it.

Moments after that, the flagship flared like a new sun—obviously one of its reactors had been penetrated.

Vier breathed out a moment of sadness, but stopped short of feeling remiss — it died with guns blazing, and that was precisely how Vier wanted to remember her flagship.

Battlespace…

Six hundred warships – human ships of the line – smashed into the ranks of the feline H-Ks with their hyperbeams slashing. The Ga countered with their hyperwaves hammering into the non-crewed hulls. Since the human fleet of six hundred computer controlled ships were unoccupied, and since their lighter allies had evacuated in the other direction, these ships were no match for the far numerous waves of Ga H-Ks. The AIs fought well, but they were only AIs. But they did buy time for the crowded human ships to get away—succeeding only in that measure.

Within an hour, one hundred and sixty additional Ga H-Ks were destroyed with all six hundred human dreadnoughts, battlecruisers, and heavy-cruisers lost. A tonnage trade of 100 million tons of Ga vessels for 12 billion tons of human warships – one of the costliest trades in human maritime history.

Nevertheless, the other human vessels did get away. Because of the last minute transportation measures taken by Vier Kleingelt, the vast majority of the fleets’ remaining crews were saved. Since all the remaining human ships could maneuver at a minimum speed of 25,000 SL, very few of them were destroyed before exiting the sensor range of the Gas’ farthest hyperspace probes.

CHAPTER EIGHT

6 hours later.

January 25
th
3987 AD

Remnants of the Betelgeuse Combined Fleet

Temporary Flagship, Destroyer Demosthenes

Temporary Officer’s Quarters, Room 5D, Deck 3…

V
ier tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. It couldn’t, because she could not stop thinking. That was what happened during battles and it took days before that habit wore off. Oh, but it would eventually come – in the form of absolute collapse.

The sedatives never worked. It never worked.

She closed her eyes, but her brain continued to show her images of holomaps, holodisplays and bridge informatics. She saw the men and women she had cared for and the faces of the commodores and rear admirals who had looked up at her, and she remembered Mu Pei’s face, who kept reappearing at the oddest times, no matter how hard she tried to think of something else. Then of course, there was that face that simply would not disappear – the face of the young burned man in corridor 41B, deck eight. She saw him – the boy – his body meshed with blood. His uniform, burnt, red and black instead of dark blue. She saw him plead to her – “Help… Help…” Every moment she closed her eyes. She saw Willock’s face most of all, how she hated his face, because it kept reappearing to the left of the boy, instead of by itself as would happen, if she imagined the command bridge.

“Fuck,”Vier muttered aloud. “Fuck you and your dilemma—my dilemma.”

Willock groaned in the bunk beneath her. She waited a bit, and then his snoring began, again.

Fuck you for doing what’s right. For doing what was necessary. I hate that word now, even though I’ve made a career of it. I hate ‘what’s necessary’ more than I hate anything.

Yet, she reminded herself, she had followed that phrase perfectly ever since she took command of the fleet from Mu Pei.

Moreover, as much as she hated Willock for convincing her to abandon the boy, she had done the same thing a thousand times more by ordering the boarding tubes to be cut. Why is one instance a tragedy but a thousand times a necessity?

She pondered on that thought for a while, trying to push the whole thing away, but her mind would not stop concentrating on the boy’s burned face.

Hate. Hate. Hate.

Her logical mind knew that such an emotion was reckless and pointless, but the word kept appearing in her head. She hated the Cats, and their entire reason for conquest, she hated their ships and their weapons, and their abilities to use them – and she hated herself for letting things to get to such a disastrous point, for being so gullible.

How could you, Mu Pei? How could I?

Somewhere in her brain, she knew she had done what was absolutely necessary, that she had played the game perfectly well, but the other part knew that she had
failed
. She’d failed humanity and allowed things to come to such a state of being.

10 million spacers. 10 million spacemen. 10 million
humans
, dead – in what was the greatest military tragedy so far in the war, or for that matter, all wars during the last century. The trap had been set and humanity – she – had fallen for it. No matter what she did, she could not envision herself as a savior but rather part of the victimized, the loser, the gullible prey.

She tried to calm herself, to stop the painful emotions, to convince herself that she had done everything within her power to stop that inevitability from happening, but nothing could stop the flood of failure from crashing through her walls of logic and her induced belief of her own limits of responsibility.

Fuck. Why was she so bedazzled by this? Hadn’t she saved 4 million lives by ordering the crew transfer? Shouldn’t she feel glad instead of guilty?

Why? Why? Why?

The kid. The boy. The image of him had started this. The feelings of guilt and loss, reversal, and suffering.

I’ve got to rationalize myself out of this…
Vier tried to convince herself…
I have to, or I won’t be fit for command.

She needed to see a therapist. She got out of bed, put on her uniform and headed out of the small makeshift room that served as officer’s quarters for a ship that swelled its population by twenty times.

Corridor 5A, deck 2…

“What do you mean she’s unavailable?” Vier cried.

“She’s booked for the next two days, ma’am,” the android clerk replied while standing in the middle of well-lit
crowded
hallway.

“But I’m the Admiral of the
goddamn
fleet!”

“Sorry, queue rules still apply, ma’am.”

“Need help?” a strangely familiar voice asked.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw Captain Willock’s unshaven face. He wore no uniform but his slacks.

“How did you know where to find me?” Vier asked.

“A hunch,” Willock smiled.

“I uh—I actually do,” Vier murmured. “Let’s go someplace quiet, Captain.”

“You can call me Kahle for now,” Willock urged. “We’re off duty, aren’t we?”

“Sure, Kahle. Where to?” And then she remembered she hated him. She followed him through corridor after corridor, searching for a safe quiet place, but there were none. The ship was jammed with people from room to room. People sleeping on mats. People eating from food canisters. The smell of human exhale was unbearable. The oxygen recyclers must be working on overdrive,Vier surmised. Finally, they settled on one place where they knew they’d get silence and privacy. Their quarters in room 5D, deck 3.

“You’re thinking about that rating in the Beginner’s Luck?” Kahle Willock asked. “The one I told you to abandon?”

Vier nodded. They were sitting in the bottom bunk with their legs dangling, a feet away from each other. Vier realized she hadn’t had a roommate since her posting as a junior lieutenant seventeen years ago.

“Survivor’s guilt.” Kahle nodded. “I bet.”

“I don’t think so,” Vier replied. “And even if it were. How could you say that when you were the one who caused it?”

Kahle gave her a blank look. “Did I? I simply saved your life.”

“The boy,” she said, as her thoughts refocused on the core of her emotions. “I can see his face. It’s burned into my subconscious. I can see him gasping for air. The blackened skin. His gaze with his remaining eye. To this date, I’ve survived many encounters with death where others around me have not, but never have I felt—no, never have I mourned—in such a passionate regret for leaving someone behind.”

Kahle took it all in. “What is so memorable about this boy that is different from all the others you’ve lost? The scars? His looks?”

“What else could it be? I never knew his name. I’ve never even encountered him before those minutes in the walkway.” Then it her.

Like a rock suddenly falling on her head, she sat there stunned, unable to move, in complete shock. The boy reminded her of her brother twenty, no—twenty-five years ago. She’d been a teenager then, just starting adolescence. She had a brother, a wondrous soul, who always protected her – did things for her – who would go through the world and back to make her happy, and then suddenly he was gone. All his hopes and dreams, all his love and commitment, gone in an instant. She’d blamed herself for his death. She hadn’t done well enough. She hadn’t loved him enough. She hadn’t inserted herself into his life and understood him well enough. She hadn’t tried to find out what was going on in his head before his…

Suicide.

Suddenly, her well of protection broke. All her years of trying to forget, trying to make it feel less, trying to numb herself, suddenly…

You can never let go of the past.

You can just stop giving a shit about it.

Just make yourself immune to the bad feelings it gives you.

She’d said these words over and over a long time ago. “You can…”

She cried — like a little girl with no control of her emotions, no barrier or status or role to protect. Her tears fell off her face onto her ankles and then onto the floor. Her gurgle and moaning tried to burst through the door of her room, but luckily no one beside Willock saw or heard her.

Willock did what any man or woman did, and she supposed she shouldn’t expect anything more from him. He hugged her with his arms, embracing her, his commanding officer reduced to a long forgotten teenage girl, her flag captain, and afterwards…

They kissed.

Regulations be damned.