Dark Space: Avilon (35 page)

Lord Kaon watched the enemy ship enter the light stream and drop out a moment later—right on top of them. The gills in the sides of his neck flared with shock, and his twin hearts beat suddenly faster.

“What is thisss?” he hissed. “The humans send this puny vessel to taunt us!”

“It is cloaked, Lord Kaon. They don’t know we can see them,” Lady Kala replied from the command chair to the right of his own. “They must be trying to analyze our formation for weaknesses.”

Kaon rubbed his translucent lips together, thinking. “No, that is not it. Look . . .” He pointed to the holographic star map hovering in the air in front of his command chair. “They are setting course to intercept us.”

They watched together in silence. Lord Shondar spoke up from Kaon’s left, “That is not an intercept course. They mean to collide with the
Kilratha!
”

Kaon’s eyes grew even wider than their usual aperture. He studied the enemy ship’s heading and ETA, querying the
Kilratha’s
computer for a prediction of how fast the enemy vessel would be moving when it reached them . . . and how much energy it would impart in a collision. When he saw the answer, he hissed.

“We must shoot them down!”

“We cannot,” Lady Kala replied, “not without revealing that we can see them.”

“We cannot allow them to destroy us, either! Weapons! Track that ship!”

Lady Kala flew out of her chair—literally—flapping her glossy black wings and landing on the crew deck below. “Belay that order!” she shrieked.

Kaon gaped at her and slowly rose from his command chair, astonished that she would contradict his orders. This was her ship, but he was the ranking Lord. “You dare to defy me?” he said.

“This is not your battle, Kaon. Queen Tavia has command.”

Kaon hissed and subsided to his chair. He had gone too long without a direct superior. He had almost forgotten what it was like to submit his plans for approval before acting on them. “You are right. The Queen must be informed.”

Moments later the Queen’s round face appeared projected in the air before his command chair. Tavia’s glossy obsidian skin and glowing red eyes robbed the child-like impression that her visage gave. Being a Kylian like Lady Kala, the two of them were almost impossible to distinguish from one another.

“What is it, Kaon?”

“Have you noticed the enemy vessel that tries to collide with the mighty
Kilratha?”

“Are you certain that is their intention?”

“There can be no mistake. We must open fire on them before they slice us in half, My Queen.”

“You will do no such thing!”

“But, My Queen . . .”

“Where is Lady Kala?”

“She is on the crew deck, Glorious One.”

A loud
whoosh
sounded behind Kaon and he jumped with fright.

“I am here, My Queen.”

Kaon turned to see Kala land behind his chair.

“Good. You now have command of the
Kilratha.
I trust that you shall not ask me such foolish questions.”

“I shall not.”

“Good.”

The queen’s nightmarish face vanished as the contact ended from her side, leaving Kaon’s eyes watering and itching with frustration. Lady Kala came to stand in front of him a moment later.

“You are sitting in my place.”

Kaon rose slowly, woodenly from his seat of honor and command. His tail thrashed the deck as he stood aside.

“You do not have long to sit in it,” he said, glaring down on Lady Kala. “The enemy draws near, and both you and your queen insist that we do nothing!”

Lady Kala ignored him. “Helm, begin evasive maneuvering! Full speed ahead.”

Kaon’s gills flared with surprise once more. “You mean to evade them? What is the point? You may as well shoot them! Either way they must know that we can see them.”

“No, Kaon. Ships move. That is why they have drive systems, is it not? The enemy will see our evasion as coincidence, nothing more.”

“Then they will try again to ram us.”

“But by then we shall not be a stationary target, making it impossible to reach a lethal velocity. They shall splash harmlessly off our shields.”

Kaon sat in the vice lord’s chair that Lady Kala had occupied only moments ago. His eyes continued to itch and water. Tears began streaming down his face as his frustration mounted. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Perhaps Shallah, the Supreme One, had been right to send Queen Tavia to take his place. Had he lost his instinct for command?

“The enemy fleet is almost in range, My Lady,” the sensor operator reported.

“Weapons! Stand by!”

Kaon hissed quietly to himself, hoping that Kala made enough of her own mistakes in the coming battle to eclipse his prior lapse of judgment.

* * *

Hoff held his breath as they flew into weapons range of the Sythians’ formation—

But nothing happened.

He had half expected them to open fire with a withering assault of missiles and lasers. The fact that they hadn’t seemed to agree with the Grand Overseer’s assessment that the Nulls aboard the
Emancipator
had been trying to trick them.

Hoff let out the breath he’d been holding, and continued watching while the Avilonians pressed onward, flying closer and closer to the enemy. They flew past the nearest warships and into range of hundreds more.

Still no response from the Sythians.

“It would appear your caution was unfounded, sir,” Tactician Okara said.

Hoff didn’t waste his breath on a reply. He sat there, stroking his chin as the Avilonian fleet flew to the center of the Sythian formation, where the enemy’s command ships lay.

After just a few minutes, the navigator called out, “We’re in position, sir!”

“Good. Hold steady. Start feeding our current coordinates and flight path into your jump calculations.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re still worried that they can see us?” Okara asked. “If they could, they would have opened fire by now, sir.”

“Transmission coming in from the
Justinian!
The fleet is in position. We are to power weapons and open fire on their mark . . . mark is set for one minute and counting.”

“Gunnery!” Hoff called out. “Get your crews ready! Remember, shoot to disable. Helm—make sure we keep our distance as much as possible! We want to avoid any blind fire that gets directed our way.”

Without energy shields raised they were dangerously exposed, but space was vast. It was unlikely that the Sythians would score a blind hit on any of the tiny specks now encircling their command ships.

“Crews ready and standing by, sir!” the gunnery officer reported.

Hoff nodded, his eyes on the countdown projected on his ARC display.
Ten seconds . . .
nine, eight, seven—

A bright flash of light illuminated the bridge. Hoff minimized his ARC displays to see what was happening.

All around them, space was alive with spinning, sparkling purple stars that flocked and swarmed like a cloud of insects. The light show was dazzling and strangely beautiful to look at. Enemy lasers were faster to reach their targets, leaping out in blinding torrents and slamming into the
Dauntless
with perfect accuracy.

“Shields!” Hoff yelled to be heard above the simulated
roar
and
sizzle
of their hull melting out from under them. “Helm! Get us out of here!”

“Jumping in five, sir.”

“Shields at 10% and rising!” engineering reported.

Then the first missiles began to hit them. The explosions sounded like thunderclaps, and they heard an ominous
shriek
that went on and on.

“Hull breach!”

The world turned white. For a moment Hoff was afraid that was it. Then stars and space returned. He saw a bright, snow-white crescent on the horizon.

Firea.

Hoff shook his head, trying to rid his ears of the residual ringing from the explosions. “Report!”

“Shields recovering at four percent. Hull breach on deck 22. No major damage.”

One of the drone decks. Hoff nodded. Those decks were depressurized, so the damage wouldn’t be critical.

Hoff eyed the star map, searching for the rest of the fleet. He’d been prepared, so they’d jumped away to the far side of Firea, but the rest of the fleet was still surrounded by Sythians, caught in the thick of the fight. Hoff saw two Avilonian cruisers simultaneously explode as they succumbed to enemy fire.

“They’re being slaughtered,” someone whispered beside him. Hoff turned to see that it was his XO, Tactician Okara. Her jaw was slack with horror, her glowing green eyes fixed and staring as the Avilonian fleet was cut to pieces.

She looked as frightened as he felt.

“Orders, sir?” someone else asked. It was the ship’s navigator.

“Engineering—what’s our status?” Hoff replied.

“Shields at 25%.”

Hoff came to a decision then. His ship, the
Dauntless,
was a covenant-class battleship—eight kilometers long with a crew of over 50,000 drones, and two thousand living crewmen. They had over a hundred thousand torpedoes on board. Those munitions could be quantum-launched from extreme range, and the
Dauntless
was much faster than her Sythian counterparts, so there would be no concern about return fire. Even without the rest of the Avilonian fleet to support them, the
Dauntless
would be a formidable foe.

Hoff mentally selected one of the Sythian command ships from the star map on his ARC display. “Gunnery! Open fire on that ship with everything we’ve got. Shoot to kill.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Helm, keep us away from the enemy. Engineering—activate SLS disruption fields.”

“Yes, sir,” they said, one after another.

“Sensors! Get me a virtual rendering of the battle and put it on the main screen.”

“Focal point, sir?”

“For now, our target. Comms—launch fighters! Have them fly cover for us. I have a feeling there’s going to be a
lot
of Shell Fighters coming our way very soon.”

“Yes, sir.”

Okara turned to Hoff, her eyes still wide and blinking. “You’re going to fight back?” she sounded confused.

“Did you think I would run?” Hoff smiled and slowly shook his head. “No, Okara. From what? They can’t catch us.”

The main viewport shimmered, and their view of Firea transformed into a virtual rendering of a Sythian command ship. It was a massive, teardrop-shaped cruiser with organic lines and a shining lavender hull. Explosions began sprinkling that hull with fire as torpedoes teleported straight to their target. The alien ship’s shields flared brightly with the assault.

“Enemy shields at 84% and dropping!”

The Sythian cruiser fired its thrusters, turning to run, but there was nowhere they could go to get away from the assault.

After just a few moments, the glow of the Sythian command ship’s shields began to darken and fade. The torpedoes tore blackened holes in her outer hull. Gunners fired over and over again at the same spots, digging progressively deeper. Explosions flashed
within
the enemy ship. Thick clouds of debris spun out into space. That went on for long seconds before the enemy command ship cracked in half.

A cheer went up from the crew. Even Okara looked revitalized.

“Good work!” Hoff targetted another command ship for his gunners to fire on. “One down. Thirty to go.”

Okara sat up beside him. “We’ve got incoming!” she yelled.

Hoff mentally set the grid to center on their ship. A vast sea of red enemy contacts had appeared in orbit above Firea. They’d jumped straight into the
Dauntless’s
path.

“Break orbit!” Hoff ordered. “Have our interceptors cover us.”

“Yes, sir!”

Okara gasped. “There’s over ten thousand fighters out there . . .”

Hoff was about to order the ship’s gunners to begin firing torpedoes at them until he heard that. Ten
thousand.
Quantum-launching warheads at them would be inaccurate and highly wasteful. It was probably exactly what the enemy wanted them to do. They’d waste all their munitions on the enemy’s fighters and be unable to do anything to their capital ships.

“Have our X-1’s engage the enemy. Hit and run only. As soon as they’re out of ordinance, come back and re-arm.”

“Yes, sir.”

“They’ll be torn apart,” Okara warned.

“Not if they’re good pilots,” Hoff replied. “All they have to do is drop their missiles and run.”

“And then what? We have six squadrons—seventy two interceptors. It’ll take hundreds of attack runs for them to take out all of those fighters!”

“It’s going to be a long engagement,” Hoff agreed.

The star map flickered with movement, and another sea of red enemy contacts appeared in front of the
Dauntless,
this time on her new heading. The Sythians had hemmed them in on two sides.

“Helm! Adjust course . . .” Hoff trailed off as another four groups of Shell fighters jumped in—starboard, aft, top, and keel. The
Dauntless
was completely surrounded.

“We need to plot a jump back to Avilon,” Okara said.