Human, page 26
part #1 of Humanity Ascendant Series
“How’s this?” Oliv asked.
Eth took a quick look and nodded. “Give ‘em a salvo of missiles and then carry on as you see fit.”
The vibration of the second salvo tingled in his feet.
“You gotta admit the old gal’s got guts,” Hendy said, putting their ship into a sideways drift to port.
“So do I,” Oliv muttered, “and I’d like to keep ‘em in my belly, thanks very much!”
Eth grinned, despite the stress of the moment. If Bau were traded into Oliv’s shoes, she’d probably spill her own guts – going from an electress to some jumped up native officer…
Oliv reached up to drag the second swarm of missiles together and redirect them. “Diverting the second salvo. I think they’re trying to ram her!”
The new target reticules centered on a frigate that did indeed seem to be heading straight at the port side of Bau’s cruiser. The gunboats were turning to protect her but they wouldn’t have time to burn through the enemy’s shields.
The deck vibrated as the third salvo ejected.
The missiles of the first two salvos arranged themselves into a pair of waves, the first overwhelming the frigate’s shields, the second obliterating the unfortunate warship.
“She’s onto something. They’re definitely trying to protect their leaders.” Eth enlarged the area of the hologram around Bau’s ship. “Oliv…”
“I see it.”
There were now two frigates bearing down on Bau. It seemed extraordinary that the crews would sacrifice their lives for a lord who’d lost so much prestige. Though he’d reclaimed Gimmerai, Shullat had lost Arbella and he’d lost two fights trying to take it back.
It was why Uktannu had left Shullat alive. Mishak’s traitorous uncle had been involved in the recent defeats, as well as the one at Heiropolis, but Shullat already had the oaths of his captains and crews. They might not be happy about that but they had no conceivable option but to obey.
There was no chance, if Shullat were killed, that they would willingly bend the knee to a dishonored leader like Uktannu.
“We could do a lot more damage if we were able to spread out our missiles, rather than using them to protect one hard-charging Quailu,” Oliv groused.
The two frigates changed course to avoid one of their own cruisers.
“Just keep her alive,” Eth ordered. “If we end up getting her killed…”
They had no orders to be here. Their only justification was in protecting an electress who happened to be on good terms with Sandrak and, therefore, Mishak. There was the fact that that they’d created this problem for her by driving Uktannu in her direction in the first place.
Of course, that would be an unpopular argument in Sandrak’s eyes, as it laid a sizeable portion of blame on his family.
It was a sketchy excuse and it hinged entirely on bringing her through this debacle alive and preserving her status. She’d be worse than useless if she lost her power and influence. The presence of Eth and his Humans would tie Sandrak and Mishak into the story of her fall.
Damn that oracle and his hints.
The two frigates turned back in toward her vessel.
Eth remembered how he’d stopped a Quailu from raising his weapon when they’d taken the Mouse from Uktannu’s forces at Heiropolis. He wondered if he could stop Father Sulak from talking...
He shuddered. It was bad enough picking up the feelings of his own people, like a spy in their midst, but it would be worse to actually force his will on someone he respected.
And, even worse, he might accidentally kill Sulak in the process of trying to shut him up. He shivered.
What if he killed someone without trying…
“She’s scoring hits on the suspected command ship,” Oliv said. “The redirected third salvo is closing in on the two rammers…”
Just then, an Arbellan gunship threw itself bravely into the path of the closer frigate but the enemy ship shifted upwards to avoid it, effectively shielding the farther enemy ship.
Bau’s cruiser was taking hits and Eth’s stomach felt as though it were being punched every time her shields took an impact.
But her shields were holding.
So far…
Oliv’s missiles slammed into the nearer frigate, again in two waves. Most of those designated for the farther ship assessed that they wouldn’t be able to maneuver enough to hit it after flying around the closer target and so they re-designated themselves to the nearer one.
Only five of the weapons reached the farther frigate and they only struck glancing blows along the dorsal shielding. Eth watched in horror as it bore in on Bau’s cruiser, leaping out of his chair as the enemy frigate fired a last salvo of missiles and kinetic weapons before impact.
He knew he was watching the end of free Humanity as the frigate displaced the already-weakened shielding of the cruiser. The glowing silhouette of energy was pushed back against the ship’s hull extending out from the far side before the shield generators, torn loose form their mounts, lost reserve power and failed entirely.
“No!” he said softly as the frigate plowed into the large cruiser, massive electrical discharges jumping between the jagged edges of the two doomed warships.
Eth was filled with adrenaline he couldn’t use. His audacious plan was falling apart before his very eyes and all he could do was watch. The Lady Bau was as good as dead. Her cruiser’s engines must have taken damage because the two ships were slowly spinning their way down into the atmosphere of the gas giant.
The frigate’s engines might still be sufficient to defeat the planet’s gravity but not with the dead weight of an entire cruiser hanging from her bow. Even the shuttles, designed for use on habitable planets, would have too much to deal with at their current depth.
“Ho!” His eyes suddenly grew wide. “Gods curse me for a fool! Glen, get me a channel to Warrant Hela.”
The scout-ships had been dancing around the enemy, dropping mines in their paths, but now was the moment for their underlying design philosophy to really shine.
A holographic Hela appeared in front of him, hunched over someone he couldn’t see, probably Gleb in tactical. She turned to him in surprise. “Sir?”
“Warrant, you’re to make for the Lady Bau’s cruiser at best possible speed, dock your ship directly to her bridge and take her off. Is that understood?”
“Ahm…” Hela frowned but cleared her expression almost immediately. “Yes, sir!” She stood and turned. “Eve, you heard?”
Eth heard Eve’s affirmative over his helmet speakers.
“Get us moving!” Hela ordered.
“Keep this channel open, Warrant,” Eth ordered. “We’ll try to clear the road for you.” He gave a slight upward nod to Oliv as he said this and she returned the gesture before turning her full attention back to her weapons.
Center Stage
H ela felt like cursing. A widely varied range of pithy comments came to mind but she refrained. She even had a few thoughts on the lieutenant’s mental capacity, which surprised her. Only a few days ago, she’d been in awe of him.
Being ordered on a probable suicide mission had a way of updating your outlook.
Your Last Chance had two pitch drives but they’d be pretty deep in the gas giant’s gravity well by the time they broke contact with Lady Bau’s cruiser. It was going to be a near-run thing and with her boss listening the whole time.
With that in mind, she decided that cursing him out was probably not the wisest course of action.
Eve was already racing their scout-ship down to the stricken cruiser at top speed, so Hela turned and headed aft to arm herself, still limping from her encounter with that communications array. She found Meesh standing at the starboard opening in the hull with a tactical holo in front of him and a mine in his right hand.
“How’s your ass?” he asked with a grin.
“Still sore.”
“My offer to massage it still stands…”
“No thanks,” she said, watching as he dragged an enemy icon from the holo and slipped it into the mine’s interface screen. “We all know where those hands end up.”
“Your loss,” Meesh tossed the weapon out the side and turned to grab another from a locker that sat up against the forward wall of her sleeping cubicle.
She’d somehow managed to forget that she was sleeping next to so much destructive power. She shook her head, clearing it of the irrelevant thought as she grabbed two pistols and moved over to attach her tie-off next to his.
Meesh looked up from his next mine as she slapped a sidearm onto the mag-plate at his hip. “Expecting trouble are we?” Then he chuckled darkly. “Of course we are. We’re about to waltz into the midst of a panicked Quailu herd-mind and pull their leader away from them.”
He targeted his mine to a frigate and tossed it out. “They don’t really care about our little scout-ships,” he said. “They can see we don’t carry guns or missile launchers so we’re minelayers, at best. I figured ‘why not?’”
There was a brilliant flash and the last ship he’d targeted showed a trail of debris coming from its stern.
“That one’s free!” he shouted, fogging the visor of his suit for a heartbeat before the life support system recovered the moisture. “Doctor Meesh’s micro-singularity suppository – guaranteed results!”
“Heads up,” Hela snapped. “We’re coming alongside.”
‘Coming alongside’ sounded so graceful and stately. The reality was anything but.
She’d been through a few close approaches now but it was still unnerving to stand there, at a hole in her hull, as a massive cruiser burst across her field of vision, blurring into place so quickly that the mind rebelled at the change in perspective. Her knees flexed as though she were going to leap away but she mastered her instincts and stepped closer.
The hulls came to within a hand’s breadth of each other and they flowed together, creating an opening onto the bridge of Bau’s flagship.
Hela stepped through and found close to a dozen helmeted faces looking back at her. Angry with herself for not having already thought to do so, she switched on a proximity channel, regretting the lost seconds. “Lady Bau?”
One of the suited figures stepped forward. “I’m Bau,” she confirmed. “And you are?”
“I’m the one who’s here to take you off before it’s too late,” Hela replied, not even noticing how rude she was being to a princess of the realm. The Hela of two months ago would never have believed herself capable of such an answer.
Bau didn’t seem to take offense at the tone or the deliberate misinterpretation of her question. She merely came toward Hela and didn’t argue when both Hela and Meesh took her by the arms and hustled her through the opening to Your Last Chance.
“Eve, we’ve got her. Break off and get us back up to the fleet!” She was just telling herself that things had gone surprisingly well when she was shoved out of the way and pushed against the stanchions that surrounded the two engine mounts.
She turned to see the small engineering space crowded with Bau’s bridge crew. Three more of them were still pushing their way onto Your last Chance when the hulls separated and the small ship pulled away as fast as she’d approached. Two of the last three Quailu fell into the gap while the third backed away into his own bridge to get a running start.
He raced out the hole in his hull but the nimble little scout-ship had been out of his reach from the moment it had started moving. He drifted down, out of sight.
Hela pushed her way through to the bridge, seeing Bau on the way and dragging her along with her. She tied off Bau’s suit next to Oliv’s station before stepping over to Eve. “Can we climb out?”
“Just barely,” Eve replied in clipped tones. “Another ten seconds and we’d be on a one way ride.”
Both women flinched as a large piece of warship tumbled past them. The gas giant was pulling down the debris as fast as the combatants could create it.
Hela came to the executive decision that now would be a very good time to not get hit by falling debris.
The Universe, however, thought it knew better.
A suited figure, moving too fast to identify, flew down through the top of Your Last Chance’s hull, smashing the power couple to the starboard pitch drive and killing the Quailu who’d been sitting with his back to it.
The hull began flowing back into place but couldn’t find the mounts for the power couple. Alarm holos flashed to life above them, pulsing in emergency colors.
“If anyone’s been sitting on a clever idea,” Eve shouted, “now would be a great time to share it ‘cause we’re going down!”
E th brought his clenched fists up as though ready to fight. His belly felt like it was filled with glass shards.
His desperate gamble had worked, but then the vagaries of combat had snatched salvation away once again. The scout-ship would never be able to lift all those people, not on one engine.
The rest of the enemy were blinking out of sight as they opened paths. Vector analysis indicated Bau’s capital as their likely destination.
But the victor had already been named.
He glared down at the decking before him. Every face on the bridge was looking his way. Damn them! “What are you all staring at?” he demanded, not looking up. “I don’t see any of you coming up with a way to salvage this fornicating mess!”
That wasn’t entirely fair, he knew, but he was weary of their constant expectations. Still, it wasn’t their fault he was grown for a leadership role.
How would they fare if I just jump off the ship and give myself to the gods? he thought morosely. That, at least, would solve all of my problems because…
The sour face turned to a reckless grin as it came to him. “Sometimes,” he whispered, “the gods must bring you to your lowest point in order to raise you up…” He got up, waving off Oliv’s inquiring look as the adrenaline took its grip.
“Oliv, take command,” he said, walking past her. “Follow the enemy to Bau’s home-world and help Tilsin. If she loses that planet, we might as well kill her ourselves.”
“Take command?” She turned to him in shock. “Where the hells are you going?”
But Eth was already running. He raced past her and straight out the port-side opening in the Mouse’s hull.
The HUD in his suit showed the location of the stricken scout-ship and he angled toward it with small nudges from the thrusters on the backs of his hands.
The system had been designed for getting around the outside of a ship in space, not for flight in an atmosphere but he figured he stood a decent chance of reaching Your Last Chance. He almost laughed at the name he’d chosen for the scout-ship.
It truly represented his current situation.
He could see the hull now, growing rapidly as he approached in free-fall while she was straining against gravity with her single remaining engine. He rotated his body and used the thrusters to begin braking.
It wouldn’t do any good to smash into the side of the ship, though it would mean an end to his worries.
I suppose I should be grateful,” Eve said, peering up through the upper windows of the cockpit, “that the Universe is treating us to a properly bizarre death.”
Hela looked up and her mouth fell open. “Minor gods preserve us – who the hells is that?”
The figure slipped out of view behind the upper hull and Hela turned to run back to engineering. She was just in time to see the suited figure slam into a trio of unsuspecting Quailu.
The figure stood. “Where’s Bau?”
“Bau?” Hela echoed, still amazed at what she’d just seen. She barely recovered her wits in time to avoid looking like a fool. “She’s tied off next to the tactical station.” The Lieutenant was here? He’d jumped to her ship?
“Good!” He waved her over. “Give me a hand here.”
She took a step forward but froze when he grabbed a Quailu and shoved him out the opening in the hull. The others must have felt the sudden, brief flare of terror before he fell too far away to be sensed. They began edging away from the opening.
Eth grabbed another and hauled him over to the gap, shoving him out as well, and that was when Hela shook off the horror at what he was doing. He’d come because the scout-ship was too heavy to climb back into space.
It probably didn’t stand a chance anyway, not with an engine knocked out, and the other scouts were too far off to reach them in time. Still, he was determined to do whatever it took to give them a chance. She pulled out her sidearm and deactivated the safety.
Eth had come because he didn’t think she would have the resolve to kill a dozen Quailu in cold blood. She couldn’t say for sure she would have thought to do it herself.
And she couldn’t say she’d have acted on it. She’d killed Quailu but that was combat. Killing allied Quailu was another thing entirely.
Now that he’d gotten the ball rolling, however, she realized these Quailu were doomed either way. There was no need to screw her own chances and, more importantly for the eventual inquiry, those of the Lady Bau.
She shot one of them and the others, feeling his pain, decided she represented a worse danger than the less immediate peril of falling to the core of a gas giant.
In the end, they killed at least half their own number as they crowded away from the Quailucidal native with the handgun, pushing those who were closer to the opening until they began falling out. Eth shoved one of the last three while Hela shot the other two, watching them fall back and out.
After a maturation and a lifetime of conditioning, it felt terribly wrong…
…and, yet, there had been no other option.
Eth came over to where the Quailu Hela had shot lay holding his shoulder, desperately trying to keep the atmosphere inside his punctured suit. The lieutenant grabbed a foot and she rushed to grab the other one.
Without a word, they dragged their struggling victim to the hole in the hull and tossed him out.
“Are we still losing altitude?” Eth asked.
