Earth Song: Etude to War (44 page)

Chapter 47

May 9th, 534 AE

Planet K Star System, Contested Territory, Galactic Frontier

Aaron flipped the Phoenix shuttle over and applied heavy thrust to change the crafts vector as two of the Mok-Tok fighters tried to catch him in a crossfire. They didn’t seem to know how to deal with the unusually slow shuttle that was both heavily armed and possessed many times the shields of a normal fighter. Aaron once again thanked whatever urge had caused him to mount two heavy beamcasters under the base of each forward swept delta wing.

One of the two harassing fighters tagged him with a pair of energy weapon hits, both easily absorbed by the Phoenix’s shields, then tried to reverse itself and escape. Aaron locked it into the crosshairs and pounded it with three beamcaster salvos until the craft turned into a ball of fire and debris.

Now another pair of fighters were after the Ibeen again. It was an insane game of tag, and Aaron knew he was not winning. The Ibeen was listing now and not even responding to the attacks. The sensors showed half its shield arrays down and most of the rest ready to fail. Thousands of Rangers already aboard the transport were in eminent danger of dying. And that was when things went from bad to insane.

The system’s star, a mid-sequence orange class star, should have been good for another billion years or so, not that Aaron was an expert on such things. He knew Pip would be able to spout volumes on such matters. What he did know was that those kinds of stars don’t just suddenly explode. So when it did just that, he was stunned beyond words.

“Minu!” Aaron almost screamed into the radio.

“Are you okay?” came her voice back a second later.

“The fucking sun just exploded, I’m not kidding, the star here just went supernova!”

“How…what?”

“I don’t know, it doesn’t matter, we’re in deep shit!”

“That is confirmed,” Lilith broke in. “The Mok-Tok are disengaging as we speak. Sensors indicate the star became unstable five minutes ago and precipitated to a nova-like state in only 225 seconds. This is an impossible coincidence.”

“Regardless of the situation, what do we do?”

“I have taken remote control of the shuttles Pip was forced to abandon when he was attacked.”

“Is he okay?” Minu asked her daughter. “And can we get the rest of the Rangers off planet in time?”

“Pip is in light shock from the neural feedback caused by the damage to the Ibeen. His ship is damaged but the damage is localized to nonessential systems. If Aaron can assist, we can just barely manage to complete the evacuation and flee the system.”

“I’m breaking orbit to land at the rally point right away,” Aaron told them and altered course.

The fighters he’d been locked into a life or death struggle with only moments ago were spinning out of control now. Several would shortly burn up in the atmosphere while others were heading away from the planet. Only one was accelerating at maximum gravities towards the fleet carrier. The Kaatan was maneuvering between the Mok-Tok capital ships and the planet, but the enemy showed no interest in continuing the battle.

Just a hundred and seventy-five million kilometers away the formerly quiet star had become a huge white-out on the sensor screens. It was now a coalescent ball of uncontrolled destruction exploding outwards at the speed of light. The visual light and gamma rays would arrive in just over nine minutes. The ships’ shields would handle that well enough.

However, the heavy particle wave front would come in just over an hour after that, and it would obliterate everything in its path, including Planet K. If they weren’t gone by then, there would be no reason to worry about anything. They’d all be dead.

* * *

Minu turned to the current leader of the Leesa, standing before her in his blood splattered combat armor and looking like a somewhat larger and more viscous Rasa. Their species was purely carnivorous as opposed to the human allies who were omnivores; otherwise the two peoples could have evolved on the same world. Regardless of where the Leesa came from, they were utterly defeated.

“There has been a disaster,” she informed them, their own translators rendering her English into the Leesa native language as she explained.

“This is not possible,” the Leesa leader replied.

“Whether it is possible or not is irrelevant.” Minu had the clamshell doors of the combat suit’s chest open so she could talk to the defeated reptiles. Like other Concordian members, once defeated the fight was gone from them completely. “In just over an hour this planet will cease to exist.”

“What are we to do?”

“Do whatever you want, we are leaving.” She sealed up her suit and turned towards the exit. The Leesa leader watched her in stunned shock, unable to decide what to do. She’d already discarded any concern for their fate as the suit’s doors closed to once again lock her inside.

Minu was out the hole she’d made and preparing to jump before she realized Cherise wasn’t following. She swept her display around to find the other suit standing in the center of the warehouse. The status displays showed everything in the green and the operator’s vitals all normal as well.

“Cherise, come on, we need to evac.” No response. “Cherise, wake up girl!”

“I can’t, I just can’t,” she whispered into the radio.

Minu linked their suits and looked through Cherise’ view. She was surrounded by piles of Leesa bodies. Not all were dead; some were trying to crawl away with broken and torn bodies leaving bloody trails behind them. She’d set a course of carnage through the ranks of enemy support staff, killing indiscriminately until Minu called a halt, then just stood there in the midst of the death and destruction.

“We need to get out of here now,” Minu told her friend.

“No more, please…”

“Damn it, this is not a good time.” Minu engaged the suits AI command overrides and fed it instructions. A second later she used some of the precious remaining fuel to jump over the adjacent building and towards the extraction point. The other suit followed close behind on automatic.

As she was making her final jump Minu could see two of the Ibeen shuttles coming in for a landing and the Phoenix only a few kilometers away turning on final. Right on time, the afternoon sky above the war ravaged ruins lit up in the most spectacular aurora borealis she’d ever seen on decades of galactic travel, followed immediately by a blinding flash from the star.

Her suits’ optics instantly dimmed the display, blacking out the area around the star. What came back a few seconds later were the rapidly glowing remnants of a star, visible to the naked eye and frightening to behold. Death was coming at a high fraction of the speed of light. A moment later she landed next to the logistics branch detached Chosen who was assigned to this division of Rangers.

“Report,” she ordered.

“We’re packing them in within close tolerance of the shuttles according to your daughter’s details on the craft’s capacity, but we’re going to run out of room for some of the equipment.”

“Screw the equipment,” she snapped, “get everyone on those damn shuttles as fast as you can. If there’s time, load what equipment we can at the last second.”

“Yes, Chosen,” he replied and turned to bark orders to his assistants. She was just about to order Cherise’s suit to board one of the now ready shuttles when Lilith’s voice entered her mind.

“Mother, I’ve sent four of my shuttles down on emergency approach to assist.”

“Excellent, thanks, that will be a huge help. I’m going to send Cherise along with Kal’at and his man in the other damaged suit. Cherise is ill.”

“I will have the medical intelligence standing by,” Lilith said.

“It is not that sort of illness.”

“I don’t understand.”

Minu shook her head inside the suit. “It is complicated. Simply see to her comfort and attend to the injured Rasa soldier. I’ll lift aboard the Phoenix with Aaron when the last personnel are aboard.”

“Understood,” said Lilith. “I am going to have to go aboard the Ibeen.”

“Why is that?”

“Pip is not responding to hails, and has disconnected himself from the interface. He may have been injured during the battle in space.”

“That’s not good. Can you pilot both ships?”

“Not at super-luminal speeds, no.”

“Don’t waste time. How much do we have left?”

“The particle wave front will arrive in fifty-six minutes.”

* * *

The Kaatan moved in and quickly docked, controlled by the instincts of her pilot and combat intelligence, Lilith. The Kaatan was not a huge ship so docking was not strictly impossible, though also not something that would normally take place. Lilith had decided the time involved in using a shuttle was an avoidable delay, so she’d sent her shuttles to aid the evacuation and docked directly.

She paused for a minute after docking as the light speed gamma ray radiation burst of the exploding star washed over the two ships making their shields flash in multi colored hues. The Ibeen’s few automated systems kept the ship safe from such simple threats as a radiation pulse. After noting the remaining time, Lilith floated through the docking connector and into the Ibeen.

She stopped at the entrance to link with the other ship’s computer and manipulate the gravity controls. She'd been working hard to increase her muscle tone over the years. Even with all that work she could barely walk in normal gravity. It was far simpler to negate gravity in the companionway and move about as she did in her Kaatan.

Though she'd never been in the ship, its schematics were etched into her computer enhanced brain, allowing the lithe redhead to move about as if she'd visited a thousand times before.

As she moved she passed occasional groups of Rangers, all surprised to suddenly find themselves in zero gravity. She made certain that when gravity was restored after passing it was done gradually to avoid injuring anyone.

Just as in the Kaatan, the improvised CIC was located in the central most part of the Ibeen, in the shaft nestled between the fourth set of five massive cargo balls. It was a two hundred meter trip through the curving corridors to reach the modified bulkhead. The newly installed door stood open as she swam through the nearby hallway and into view.

“Pip, please answer,” she spoke as she cautiously approached.

The lights in the CIC were reduced, the walls covered in the same active displays as her own back on the Kaatan and displaying the space outside complete with the planet below and deadly exploding star.

Pip floated in the center, slowly spinning on three axes, his back arched and head back with eyes wide open and staring. The smell of human feces reached her nose as she slid through the doorway.

For a minute she feared he was dead. Lilith accessed the ship’s limited medical intelligence and queried through the link to Pip's mind. He still lived. She floated towards him.

“Pip,” she called out again as she drifted closer. “You need to wake up.”

“Am I dead?” his voice rasped, dry and choked. Slowly, he ceased the arched pose and curled into a fetal ball, still floating and spinning in the center of the CIC.

“You have experienced a trauma, but you are still alive.”

“Still alive?”

“Yes, very much so.”

“What happened?”

“You were attacked. The Mok-Tok used tactics that were more advanced than my database indicated were common for that species. They sacrificed more craft than I expected to be acceptable in order to get past me and at you.”

“I was dying… the ship was dying.”

Lilith nodded. He was in a bad way. “You need to reconnect to the ship.”

“Fuck that.”

“The star has exploded.”

“I know.”

“We need to be ready to leave the system. There are thousands of humans whose lives depend on you.”

“I didn't have a choice. They were killing me.” Pip mumbled something unintelligible then repeated “They were killing me.” She cocked her head, wondering what he was going on about. “I won't, I can't be inside that thing again. You fly it.”

“It isn't possible. I cannot fly both ships in supra-luminal travel.”

“Then leave the Kaatan.”

Lilith could see he was recovering his senses, but the suggestion came like a physical blow across her face. Both in his audaciousness, and in the fact that it was a logical decision. There were thousands of lives aboard the Ibeen, and more on the way aboard the shuttles she was piloting while speaking with Pip. The Kaatan couldn't hold a fraction of them while the Ibeen could hold all of them, and thousands more. “I… I cannot.”

Pip linked with the ship again and used the gravity controlling fields to stop his spinning so he was facing her. His eyes were red and swollen, cheeks hollow. “Can't… or won't?”

“Won't,” she said, head back and eyes shining.

Pip smiled for the first time. It was the first time he'd ever seen Minu in the young girl. She may have looked somewhat like her mother, but seldom acted like her. Lilith usually took time to make her decisions, carefully weighing options and only deciding when the outcome was certain. That stopped when her ship, the Kaatan, was in the balance. To Lilith it was more like a child than a ship. An animate thing, a part of her body almost. “So you would trade all these lives for your ship?”