MotherShip (18 page)

The first, single blow would have to find its mark—there would not be time for a second try with the hybrid weapon.

“Okay boys and girls!” Kyle shouted. “Break!”

Surprisingly, the three human fighters broke from the frenzied T'kaan fighters buzzing all around them and drove straight for the battle cruiser coming at Mother.

“Try this out!” Minstrel shouted as her weapons fired again.

“Lock missiles.” Kyle ordered.

“I've got a bogey... no, five Hunters! Coming after us fast. We've got to rush it!” Jaric shouted.

“Forget the computers! Aim and fire!” Becky shouted above them all.

Kyle grinned as he sized up the ship and its direction in a single glance.

“Eat my fire!” He yelled as all his missiles leapt away. In the next instant, he kicked his fighter hard and spun it completely around killing the engines simultaneously. Now flying backwards through space, he fired his lasers straight into the T'kaan fighters that had been chasing him—the Hunters had become the hunted. Explosions lit up the stygian darkness as two of them exploded in sudden fireballs.

Becky and Jaric sent their own missiles and then each turned in opposite directions, one right and the other left. T'kaan tracers flew around each of them like a blizzard of shining death.

“My shields are below twenty percent.” Becky cried as her ship shuddered under twin impacts.

Kyle glanced quickly at his own—just as they dropped to zero.

“Break off!” Kyle yelled into his comm. “Break off!”

Jaric gritted his teeth as he punched his engines to the red line and beyond. The children's three fighters flew out of the swirling dog-fight and out toward the stars as each one worked feverishly on repairing their highest priority damage.

Mother's shields blossomed again as the cruiser sent a second salvo into her from its horns. She surmised that the T'kaan considered her the biggest threat, as now the frigates were racing to join the capital ship, ignoring the crippled Mewiss vessel. In seconds they would bring their own guns to bear on her, and then it would be too late.

Finally, her hybrid weapon showed fully charged. She checked her sensors and found the range was prime. She sighed within her circuits. There was no doubt she could take out the cruiser, but she needed this kill to be spectacular; to make an impression on the approaching frigates—to trick them into rapid retreat. She couldn't outmaneuver both frigates with her damaged engines

The cruiser was coming head on, showing Mother its smallest profile.

“My weapons are powered again,” Minstrel reported to Mother.

“Hold your fire,” Mother answered.

Mother waited, her dark manta-ray shaped silhouette still on a collision course with the cruiser. But inside, Mother readied her engines—to give them all she had just one more time. Silently inside her mind, she promised herself a good repair before any more skirmishes.

A third salvo leapt from the cruiser

Mother's sensors had anticipated this to within bare milliseconds. As the blasts erupted from the enemy guns, she pushed her sub-light engines hard as she twisted and rolled. Alarms screamed inside her electronic mind as her engines roared and then sputtered and coughed.

She felt them surge a second time, and then stutter, and then surge again. All throughout her electronic being circuits popped and complained. Her primary power source went off line and was immediately replaced by her backup. Lights dimmed everywhere inside her corridors.

But somehow, she danced between the deadly tracers.

Now, it was her turn.

Righting herself slightly above the cruiser now, and with a better firing angle, she aimed her mighty weapon.

“Surprise!” Jaric shouted as he watched.

The gargantuan bolt of energy that leapt from her nose sent a powerful greenish glow all along Mother's hull in a ghostly reflection.

All of her power concentrated at that precise moment did its damage just as it was calculated. The oversized bolt leapt straight for the cruiser's shields.

But it did not blossom across the cruiser's shields, not like a normal weapon. The immense beam drove straight through the shields as if they weren't even there. With a flash, the mighty stroke blew apart the entire forward section of the mighty ship. The resulting explosion then sent a shower of white light outwards in a ball of shimmering sparks. Milliseconds later, secondary explosions began rippling down the entire length of the cruiser—explosion after explosion.

When the last sparks evaporated, there was nothing left where the ship had been just seconds before.

The bolt had split the cruiser open like a ripe melon.

Mother's sensors now locked onto the oncoming frigates.

What would they do?
Even as she pondered, she began distributing valuable processing cycles in order to repair the damage she had already sustained.

A new problem arose. Her engines were off-line, she had pushed them too hard with her last, frantic maneuver. That sustained forward momentum was pushing her inexorably towards the oncoming frigates—against her will. She couldn't turn.

It was all a bluff now, a huge one. And it was the last card she had to play.

Jaric, Becky and Kyle were flying a good distance away now, trying to escape as had been their impromptu plan once Mother had taken out the battle cruiser. But the T'kaan fighters pursued them tenaciously. In less than a minute, the T'kaan fighters would close again with the three fighters. And the humans had little or no shields.

Mother felt despair for the first time. She replayed the T'kaan battles once again in her logic circuits, and sighed. The T'kaan did not scare. They did not run.

“They are still on course for your Mother. It does not look as though she or they will turn from their impending collision,” Minstrel said with a surprising calmness. Without warning, the Circle Ship disappeared within its Stealth Mode.

“Minstrel!” Jaric shouted.

“Minstrel can't leave us. Not now?” Becky gasped in disbelief.

Mother's sensors registered the frigate's powering up their weapons. She knew with a certain heaviness that it was finally over. She had no engines to maneuver, not even to run. She had no weapons except her normal armament and they would not be enough to disable two frigates before she herself fell before them.

All she could do was watch as they destroyed her.

She flew toward impalement on their black horns of death. As the final seconds passed, her thoughts turned to the things she loved most—her children.

They too, would die. Ending the human race.

The frigates drew closer. Onward they came, straight for her.

Her processors burned with super-activity, but no answers came. There was no answer. The T'kaan would win this small battle in a tiny corner of the universe. But a page would turn in the history of the universe as the last chapter ended for the human race.

Mother had only one regret. She had come to believe that she and the children could have dealt the T'kaan the defeat they deserved. If they had found allies.

If there had only been more time.

“Their weapons are primed!” Becky shouted as she stared are her sensors in shock.

Mother watched the approaching horns in a detached, logical way. She wondered, for the first time, what death would be like—for her.

The tracers from the ship's weapons leapt unexpectedly.

The Mewiss, left to themselves a few moments after the T'kaan had turned away to face Mother, had frantically worked their damage control and successfully brought their weapon's systems back on-line. In that very instant, the Mewiis colony ship fired every gun it had into the rear shields of the T'kaan frigates as it closed from behind. Both frigates shuddered visibly under the multiple impacts as the Mewiss scored direct hit after direct hit. Moments later, the rear section of each frigate's shields buckled.

Mother, still on her collision course, noted the communications signal the Mewiss ship sent in tandem with the salvos. Probably a warning signal to their home world in case the Mewiss ship was destroyed—a warning message to all the Mewiss worlds about this attack.

Mother fired her twelve guns into the frigates, her blasts blossoming across their shields as they shuddered again. She would make them pay, at the very least.

Unexpectedly, Minstrel's spherical ship suddenly emerged from Stealth. At point blank range, her laser blasts fired and blossomed across the frigate's forward shields. Now the forward shield sections buckled, leaving the T'kaan ships completely vulnerable to attack from all sides.

In quick retaliation the weapon horns spat their death, not toward Mother, but toward the circle ship of Minstrel as it streaked away.

The first tracers missed. But Minstrel's ship reeled from the remaining blows, and many of the spherical ship's internal systems began to fail in sprouting, shining sparks.

Mother noted the costly damage Minstrel's ship sustained. All for her.

Mother hummed with electronic satisfaction as her engines finally came back on-line. She veered sharply away and began calculating another attack vector.

“Look!” Jaric shouted.

Unbelievably, the two T'kaan warships turned hard and rapidly gained speed. They had turned in the opposite direction Mother had taken—making a course for the far off main fleet.

“Should we go after them?” Kyle asked excitedly as he checked his ship.

“Are you kidding? Just shut up for once, alright, Big K.” Jaric said with sarcastic wit as he started laughing.

“Exactly!” Becky agreed with a sigh of relief.

Moments later, in a hyperjump flash, the much reduced T'kaan squadron leapt beyond light speed.

“But why?” Becky said aloud. Asking the question that was in all their collective minds.

Only Mother had registered the sudden communications signal that had been sent from afar to both the frigates during the height of the battle. That same channel had been used to send an answer moments later. A two-way communication sent to the main squadrons of the T'kaan Third battle fleet.

Many light years away, inside the black ships crowned with horns over their prows, the many-legged aliens scurried with renewed activity. Among the flowing folds that covered the dark interiors of their warships, the T'kaan officers gathered inside the fleeing frigates as they returned to the Third fleet. Their tentacle arms slapped the folds with growing urgency.

“Huntress attack with weapons so strong! Vengeance we need, right what is wrong!”

The clicking of tusks filled the ships—their hated enemy must die.

“Soon we eat Mewiis, lay new T'kaan eggs. Suck their golden fluids, lick their sticky dregs.”

A new war would now begin. The data they had stolen revealed there were many Mewiss worlds, enough so that the Third would grow substantially with this cycle. All signs were right that this war would be good. Most important, they even knew the precise location where the home world was located.

Only the mysterious appearance of the Huntress caused a stir of alarm among the War Leaders.

Many light years away, aboard the T'kaan battleships and cruisers gathered near the Great Horned ship of the Third, The Great One spoke and gave instruction.

The T'kaan leaders met and talked for many days inside the ships of their fleet. The Leaders and warriors alike spent hours at a time eating on the last of the frozen human remains in order to remember the humans.

The walls bled purple in the ships of the fleet, adding to the pleasure of the war feast.

Still far away, the two returning T'kaan frigates forwarded the rest of the Mewiss data. The plundered data from the destroyed Mewiis ship were quickly examined in greater detail, as well as that stolen from the crippled colony ship.

They soon discovered a surprise in the data they had never anticipated.

There was not just one race in the Mewiss sector. No, among the many, many worlds there were three races to war upon. The foolish transmission even revealed to them the exact coordinates that made up the boundaries of each of the Three Kingdoms. For the first time in a millennia, the coming cycle took on new meaning—a special meaning. The leaders of the Third hummed this meaning long, until it took the form of words.

“What we are, what we do. War and breed, great and true. To the Kingdoms Three—Thrice again One and Darkest to be.”

Two communiqués from the Third fleet were sent out to the far reaches of the galaxy. One message, two destinations.

Against the black canopy of space the horned prows of the T'kaan ships slowly turned as one toward their next victims—toward the Three Kingdoms.

But the fleet did not sail at full speed as the War Leaders pondered and waited for the answers to its twin message. The answers came quickly with hushed excitement—and secret coordinates for a special meeting of the T'kaan and Great Ones.

Still, it would take time until the others arrived.

Three powerful squadrons continued toward the Three Kingdoms, they would test the strength of the Mewiis, they would attack the first Mewiis worlds and report back. The main bulk of the T'kaan Third fleet turned toward the secret coordinates.

The new cycle began....

“First Contact is the most important moment between two sentient races.” The voice of Minstrel whispered into the ears of the three humans. They stood upon the planet in which the Mewiis had directed them. “My translator will allow communication with them easy enough.” Minstrel, invisible, was floating among Kyle, Becky and Jaric. The orange star of this second planet of three stood high in the yellow sky. The Mewiis had only agreed to this face-to-face meeting after they had put several days distance between them and the recent battleground.

“They have only known the Hrono and Kraaqi in all their existence; you will be the first race they have met in their entire history. Be especially careful,” Minstrel's ghostly voice whispered.

“Where are you?” Jaric asked in a low voice as all three looked furtively around.

“As I said before, Minstrels observe unobtrusively. I will be a Watcher at this historic event for both your races. Hurry, they are coming.”