Wrath of the Void Strider (38 page)

Solemnly, she nodded.  “I know.  They didn’t tell me, but I know.”  She drew a deep breath.  “If there was any other way, I’m sure someone would’ve thought of it by now.”

Humorously, he laughed.  “I’m sure there’s another way, and I’m sure someone’s thought of it, but this is what we do.  We kill, and we don’t stop killing until we’ve conquered.  And then we just keep on killing.”  He closed his eyes, tilting his head back as he massaged his temples.  “What’s going to happen to me when the ithirals are gone?”

“A long and glorious career with the Union Navy Star Fleet, right?”  She prodded his shoulder.  “Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

He opened his eyes and leaned forward.  “Definitely not.”

She teased, “You don’t want to be the sabre they rattle?”

“I really don’t!  It makes me sick to my stomach to think of all the lives that’ll be lost.  I accept that it has to be done to buy our survival, but you saw those people on the
Draconian
!  They weren’t that different from us.  Men and women with lives and… photo albums, and chess boards.”  His shoulders sagged.  “Half a million of them on each of those battle stations.”

She lost herself in his eyes.  “Yeah, I know.”

Dumbstruck by her beauty, he stammered, “Valerie, I…”

“It’s okay.”  Reassuringly, she squeezed his forearm.  “I can only imagine how hard this is for you.”

His heart ached.  “No, that’s not it.”

Tears gathered in her eyes, and she tilted her head as she smirked.  “I know it isn’t.”  Shaking her head, she whispered, “But she’s waiting for you to come back to her.  Don’t you dare throw that away.”

“I don’t want to do this,” he whispered, and he rested his forehead against hers.

She held him close.  “I wish you didn’t have to.”

In time, they parted, and he asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be planning an attack?”

“Attack’s planned.  My team’s hanging out in the mess hall, doing their best not to think about what’s right around the corner.”  She tugged on one of his epaulettes.  “Some of the guys are a little bitter about me being appointed to the rank of officer, but they’re getting used to me.  I try to salute when I’m supposed to, stand straight when I’m supposed to, and that helps.”

“You’re amazing, you know that?”

She sat straighter and winked.  “Yeah, I know.”  Climbing to her feet, she huffed, “I better get back to my team.  I just wanted to say hi, in case I don’t get another chance.”

Slowly, Gavin stood up and straightened his uniform.  “You’re secretly an optimist.  You can’t hide it from everyone, you know.”

Valerie beamed.  “Yes I can.”  Playfully, she blew him a kiss.  “See you after.”

“You know you will.”  He watched her exit the hangar, vanishing around the corner.  Blowing into his hands, he plopped back down on the crate and watched the sparks as they rained down upon the deck.  In time, he found his way to his quarters.

He inhabited a Spartan chamber, painted black with yellow trim.  It had a single porthole, a couch, a view screen, a bed, and an end table.  A tall pane of smoky glass divided the living area from the bathroom and his closet.  On the first night he spent there, Gavin had downloaded an image of the
Sanguine Shadow
from the
Wraithfin
’s starships registry, transferred it to a sheet of LED paper and affixed it to the wall next to his bed.

With a woeful sigh, he paused briefly before shedding his uniform and stepping to the far side of the smoky pane.  With a heavy heart, he stood under the shower and ran steaming hot water over his body.

·· • ··

Gavin’s door chimed and opened.  He shouted, “I’m not dressed!”

“My apologies,” said Zerki.  “Gavin, it’s almost go time.  We need you on the bridge.”

The pipes groaned as he slowly turned off the water.  “I know.  I’ve been trying to memorize the location of that pulsar.  If I can pull in the gravity a little ways out from the surface, it should be enough to disable the ithiral starships without killing everybody aboard.”  He toweled dry his body, his hair, and lastly his face.

“That’s not what Command wants.  Their astrophysics team was firm about the minimum effective gravity threshold needed to collapse those battle stations.  If you move it out even a little, that could give the ithirals enough time to destroy us.”  She crossed her arms.  “Hey, I can only imagine what you’re dealing with right now, but please—I beg you, stick to the plan.”

Gavin exhaled deeply, and he hunched as he wrapped himself.  “You’re right.”  He crossed from behind the smoky pane into view, his gaze faraway.  “I wish I had more time.  I know I could get it right if I just had more time to practice.”

Zerki nodded as she brought him his shirt, undergarments and pants.  “Here,” she said, and she passed him his clothing.  “Don’t torture yourself with maybes and what-ifs, and don’t doubt yourself or the righteousness of our cause.  They brought this on themselves.”

“Don’t torture myself?  Stick to the plan?”  He shook his head, his expression pained.  “Captain, in less than an hour, I’m going to kill millions of people, partly because I never took the time to master what I can do.  I had days to practice, and I didn’t do it!”  Clenching his jaw, he wrung his shirt and hissed, “Why?  Why didn’t I do it?”

She rested her hands reassuringly upon his shoulders.  “Let it go.  You have to let it go.”

Startling her, Gavin dropped his clothing and embraced Zerki tightly.  “Did you know that today is Taryn’s birthday?  She’s nineteen, today.  Did you know that?  I should be back on Afskya, celebrating it with her and her mom.”  He pulled away.  “But I’m not.  I’m here, and I didn’t even think about it when we said goodbye!  I didn’t even wish her a happy birthday.”

Zerki bored into Gavin’s stare with her own.  “Gavin, I need you to pull yourself together.  Right now.”

He exhaled audibly and nodded.  “I know.  I… I’ll be fine in a minute.”  He picked up his clothing and eyed the door.  “Be right out.”

For a moment more, she studied him, and she at last nodded.  “See you on the bridge.”  She exited his quarters, and he finished getting ready.

Gavin walked along the
Wraithfin
’s corridors and soon arrived at her command deck.  He stepped through the bulkhead, determined, and his eyes befell Zerki.  “Captain,” he said and saluted.  Looking to Hull, he added, “Captain,” and saluted him as well.

“Glad you could join us, Santiago,” said Hull.  “We’ll be dropping out of warp shortly.”  Hovering in midair near the bridge’s main view screen, holographic projectors displayed images of the battle fleet in motion.  Every bridge station was manned.

Designated Orion Fleet, a host of capital ships composed the war group that the
Wraithfin
belonged to.  Nine battleships moved into close formation.  Easily five times as long as the corvette, the fleet’s most massive starships were built around a centerline gravity keel.  It allowed for twelve main guns to be mounted, six dorsal and six ventral.  They bristled with ball turrets, and their upper prow sections bore a strong resemblance to the warships’ maritime predecessors.  Their hulls had been painted gunmetal with brick red accents.

Three starfighter carriers accompanied the war fleet.  Command towers stood tall, mounted to starboard crew sections that ran the length of each starship.  Heavily armored and fully enclosed, expansive fighter hangars made up the port halves of the carriers.  All three wore coats of metallic black, trimmed with matte green.

Twelve heavy cruisers drifted closer, forming a protective crescent around the carriers.  At four times the size of the
Wraithfin
, they shared little else in common with their Terran-made fleet mates.  Ospyrean in design, their wide, curved dual hulls were mounted to an ovoid central weapons array, giving a hawk-like quality to their overall appearance.  Like other Union starships, they had been painted gunmetal, and they were distinguished by white and gold accents.

The battle group’s eight light cruisers originated from the same ospyrean shipyards.  They looked similar to their sister starships in all respects, save for their central weapons arrays.  Flatter in appearance and proportionately much longer, the light cruisers’ weapons decks each gave home to a pair of narrow turrets armed with extended-barrel gauss canons.  They moved to join the bulk of the fleet, careful not to overlap any warp fields.

Fifty destroyers moved into position under the carriers and cruisers.  They were noticeably shorter from stem to stern, but otherwise looked similar in design to the battleships.  Missile turrets sprang from the dorsal and ventral hulls, standing back-to-back with their forward facing primary gun turrets.  Placed lower and farther out from the missiles and main guns, secondary gun emplacements remained on standby, and the destroyers were peppered with ball turrets.

Their numbers were bolstered by thirty-three corvettes.  Similar in appearance to the
Wraithfin
, they housed all the same weaponry but benefited from full-time shields.  What they lacked in stealth, they made up for in armor.

Every one of the capital ships was dressed in Union badges, their registry designations and their proper names.

One hundred heavy bombers formed up at the rearmost ranks of the fleet.  Broad, rear-mounted wings reached out from their fuselages, and tall stabilizers angled outwardly from each of their wingtips.  They were squat in appearance, their canopies set back from their spade-like noses.  Three long-barreled fixed guns faced forward, two turrets pointed out from the flanks, and another turret faced rearward. Behind and above the cockpit, two massive torpedo turrets rose as high as the stabilizers.

 “Where are the rest of the starships we saw at Edenbridge?” Gavin quietly asked.  “There were four or five times as many in harbor.”

Zerki said, “They’ve got their orders.”  She nodded toward the main view screen.  “Focus on our part of the battle.”

“Right,” he whispered, and he walked to the tactical station.  It was manned by a brightly-plumed ospyrean giant who nodded as Gavin stepped close.  “Hey,” he muttered, but the ospyrean didn’t reply.

After reviewing a message from the Orion Fleet commander, Captain Hull announced ship-wide, “We will be engaging the enemy directly.  All hands to battle stations!”

Klaxons blared throughout the starship.

Fleet captains checked their synching, and the countdown commenced.

“Here we go,” said Zerki, and she gripped the rail tightly.

“4… 3… 2… 1…”

The Union war fleet dropped out of warp, and the ellogon home world raced up to meet them.  Thasad’s thick, cloudy atmosphere blurred her aquamarine seas and verdant continents.  Scattered throughout her thermosphere, city-sized battle stations glinted, kissed by the light of Thasad’s yellow sun.  Immediately, a trio of ithiral starships moved to engage Orion Fleet as her constituent vessels scattered.  At the same time, the Union’s Hydra, Perseus, Cepheus and Pegasus Fleets dropped out of warp at various points around the planet.

As one, every battle station moved, adrift only for a moment before they formed up in threes and pursued the Union battle groups.  Carriers disgorged their starfighters, and they sped away from the planet, each at a different angle.  Blue beams began to cut through the void, tracking fighters as readily as the larger vessels.

The
Wraithfin
’s cloak engaged as she rocketed toward an ithiral starship.  Her helm was blind in that state, but the navigation computer projected most likely paths of travel for all surrounding vessels.  When she uncloaked, she was right on top of a spaceborne metropolis, arriving just as the enormous vessel was bringing its main gun to bear on the
Puerto Rico
, one of Orion Fleet’s battleships.

Gavin closed his eyes and reached out.  He found the pulsar, Centaurus X-3, and he found the battle station’s center of gravity.  He didn’t look as the two points converged across countless parsecs, but he heard the gasps as towers folded in on themselves, as entire decks were torn apart.  Cheers rang up from the bridge crew as the battle station imploded utterly and was gone.  His shoulders sagged as the woman manning active defenses again cloaked the
Wraithfin
.

Nearby, heavy bombers swarmed around an ithiral capital ship, blasting at its shields, firing salvo after salvo of missiles, but none of them punched through.  The battle station’s protective barrier clipped one of the bombers, and the tiny craft vanished in a cloud of sheered metal.  The bombers scattered, tearing away from the ithiral starship at top speed.

On the dark side of the planet, battle stations cut through Hydra Fleet’s heavy cruisers, reducing them to scrap and cinders.  Three ithiral starships converged, forming a vast, floating wedge that encompassed Cepheus Fleet’s starfighter carriers.  Within seconds, blue lances had destroyed them completely.

The
Wraithfin
appeared over an ithiral capital ship as its main cannon connected with the destroyer
Willis
, annihilating her.  Small turrets moved along the towers, tracking the
Wraithfin
as Gavin closed his eyes.  In that moment, the ithiral battle station lowered its shields, and its upper turret array fired upon the corvette that threatened it.  Her cascade shields soaked the initial blasts, but they were quickly stripped away.

The battleship
Trinidad and Tobago
advanced as the enemy battle station’s main cannon swung around to receive her.  Fired from squadrons of heavy bombers, volleys of missiles flooded in, seeking the exposed ithiral starship.  They exploded upon its heavily armored outer hull, but did little damage.

“Come on, Gavin,” Zerki breathed.

Alarms blared from the active defense console.

Hull shouted, “Ready the phase hopper!”

The
Wraithfin
shuddered as searing blue needles chewed into her ventral armor.

“This close to their starship?” cried Zerki.  “We could reappear
inside
them!”

Glaring at Gavin, he growled, “We’re out of time!”

Salvos of cannon fire erupted from the
Trinidad and Tobago
’s main guns.  They tore apart more than half the small turrets and worked steadily down the length of the towers.  She continued firing, even as the battle station unleashed its main gun and eradicated her.