War Angel: part eighty-eight

2142- Inside Pluto

Wilma raised the top of the bed so that Jack was almost sitting up. She shook her head at the sight: two black eyes, three broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, bruised kidneys. He was lucky to not have a punctured lung. The rest of his body was covered in bruises as well, and it was, she thought, miraculous that he made it back to the ship and to the medlab. “You’re a lucky man, Jack Keys,” she said as she looked him over.

He smiled weakly. “Oh, tell me about it, doc. Will I be able to make it to the dance?”

She snorted. “You’ll be able to go back to your quarters. If you behave. No fooling around with Sarah for a little while, unless you want to pop a lung and aspirate blood in the middle of it.”

“You know how to kill the romance, Dr. Gray.”

Gray shook her head. “Be happy that there’s some romance left. Until we save the planet, the rest of us are going to be in a long dry spell.”

Jack blanched. “I did not need that in my head. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She backed away from the table and looked across the room. “I need to get back to that skeleton you brought me.”

He coughed and cleared his throat. “About that. As M’isti was beating the life out of me, he said something that could have been a lie or it could have been a truth he was tantalizing me with as I died. He mentioned something about ‘the tomb of Prince S’agas T’horoth’ and about eradicating a genetic mistake.”

“Well, Earth has spent two hundred years piddling around with genetics. I would guess that the Omegans are no different. Maybe what we have will show us what they have been up to.”

“Fingers crossed, doctor. The sooner we solve the riddle, the better.”

Richard pulled the power coupling away from the wall and examined it thoroughly. He sat down and then began looking for nicks, dents, and cracks, making sure that the Angel’s journey through the interior of the Kan’Tar had not left any damages that could come back to bite them later. “It wouldn’t do,” he said to himself, “to randomly blow ourselves up.”

A response startled him. “I agree completely,” Sarah chimed in. “I’m glad you’re down here checking this stuff out.”

He shrugged. “It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

Sarah sat down next to him. “That seems to be your instinct.”

“Huh?” Richard looked at Sarah, puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, you have a nose for doing the right thing. The smart thing.”

“That hasn’t really been my strength in life. I’m mostly good at screwing things up.”

She gave him a light punch in the shoulder. “Which is how you wound up with the nickname Clover. But think about what you have done in the past couple of days: FTL travel worked, you snuck onto an alien ship, you rebuilt the War Angel’s systems from inside that alien ship, you guided us through that ship’s interior, gave us a pathway out, and then helped get us safely away.” She paused to think about it, and then smiled at him. “That’s pretty much a year’s worth of work to most people. At least.”

“Wow. I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

Sarah stood up. “So you’re a Clover. But now it isn’t an ironic nickname. It’s a reality. This ship… none of us… would be alive without you. So when you’re examining these power couplings, keep that in mind. Clover.”

His head tilted back down toward the power coupling in his hand. He brought it closer to his eye, and then reached for a microscope and examined it further. As he did, a slight grin crossed his face for a moment, and then he put it back and moved to the next one.

“I don’t even know what to say to that,” Gina offered, plopping down on her bed. “I just don’t.”

Kate laid down next to her, propping her head up with her arm. “I can’t say that I do, either. It was an honest, pure moment of bravery. I didn’t think he had it in him.”

“Do you think he did it?” Gina paused for a moment, trying to picture it in her head. “Killed himself, I mean?”

“I hope so.” Kate saw Gina roll her eyes. “Not like that, bitch! I just… no matter what a piece of crap he was, I hope he had a choice. I certainly hope he wasn’t taken alive and then blown up when the ship went kaboom.”

“Agreed.” Gina shifted so that she was on her side, facing Kate. “So how do you feel about… what you did?”

“It was the right thing to do at the time.”

“This isn’t that time. It is, however, the end of a genetic line.”

Kate rolled onto her back. “I hate you. Let’s talk about something else. Like your fancy flying. Very impressive. You totally saved our asses.”

“Fine. Change the subject. I will admit to being pretty happy with how much better I am getting at flying this thing. That being said, I would prefer to not do so through the interior of other ships. Ever. Again.”

“I will always be there to carve you a path.”

Gina brightened. “Oh, wow! That sounded like it had some sentiment to it! Admit it! You have a heart!”

Kate rolled and faced away from Gina. “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you. Because you’re such a bitch!”

“I’m your best friend, bitch,” Gina responded with a giggle. “And you know it.”

“Ugh. Fine.”

The two both rolled onto their backs and stared at the ceiling. The room went silent for a while, only the hum of the ship’s systems in the background. Words flooded into the minds of both women, but neither one chose to speak them. Instead, they turned away from one another and went to sleep.

Jack closed the journal and set it down on his nightstand. It was a Herculean effort to do even that, as rolling on his side was not possible thanks to his myriad broken pieces. As he did, he thought he heard footsteps outside his door. Realizing he was laying around in only his undergarments, he made a move to slide off of the bed and get dressed like a proper ship’s captain.

But before he could speak or move, he heard the code being tapped into the pad next to the door and it opened, revealing Sarah Matto in silhouette, carrying a computer padd.

“About time to get yourself moving, champ,” she said with only a hint of sarcasm. “Why aren’t you out and working yet?”

Jack cleared his throat. “I got caught up in some reading. Smartass.”

She walked across the room and kissed him gently on the lips. “Looks like these are the only part of you not broken.”

“Sad, but true,” he said, shaking his head. “What brings you by?”

Sarah took on an official tone and handed him the padd. “Status of the ship update, Captain.”

Jack took it from her and examined the available data. “No ships heading our way. That’s promising. We hid our tracks well.”

“They were kind enough to dig the hole, so why not use it?”

He continued. “Repairs seem to be going great. Richard is really on it.”

“I let him know how happy we are with his performance.”

“Nice work, Commander.” Jack read further. “So the bad guys are regrouping at the moon. Have to keep an eye on that.”

“They’ll be looking for us. Hard. But for now, they’ll have to figure out who is replacing M’isti. That should buy us some time. Hard to believe this crazy plan of yours worked, Jack.”

“It worked, but it cost us. We lost a crewmember. And we have to assume that they will find a body or two, discover the bug, and produce a cure for it. We won’t be able to use it again.”

Sarah shut her eyes tight, seeing the dead bodies of Omegans at her feet again. “I’m okay with that, Jack.” He handed her the padd. “So what next?”

The War Angel’s captain laid back and stared at the ceiling. “Well, we still have plenty of bad guys. But hopefully, our side did get a little stronger.” She looked at him quizzically. “They took our fleet out of the air. But on the ground, there have to be resistance cell.” He smiled grimly. “There are always resistance cells. If they have eyes on the sky, they know what happened. The RGC is gone. That should boost some morale.”

“I hope you’re right. So maybe we have a chance. Maybe we win. Someday.”

He nodded. “Someday. And when that happens, I will accept my fate knowing I did the right thing.”

She tilted her head at him. “What does that mean?”

Jack closed his eyes. “I committed an act of mutiny. I murdered my superior officer. That can’t go unpunished.”

“And you saved our lives in the process. Oh, and if we win, then you also saved the planet. I think they’ll overlook that, don’t you?”

He turned his head to look at her. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I won’t run from it. On the day we win, I will report to whoever replaces the Admiral and turn myself in. If military protocol is followed properly, I will spend the rest of my life after that in a cell. Exactly where I belong.”

End WAR ANGEL volume one

War Angel: part eighty-seven

From the Journal of Steven Keys- August 28, 2030

It has been a long six years, but today it paid off. Day after day after day of working around the clock, and we have a result. A beautiful result.

Oh, I suppose from an aesthetic point of view, maybe not so much. She still looks like a brick. A flying brick, one capable of navigating off the planet and into space, but a brick nonetheless. We welded her together with so much armored plating that I thought it would be a miracle if she elevated even a foot off the ground, but damned if she didn’t do that and more. The cannons consume so much power that it’s frightening, yet we put four of them on her. When I think about the power core inside her, it makes me shiver. But she works. That was the job.

Yumiko and her crew have been working so hard on the navigational system, and I am incredibly proud of her. I know I’ve been singing her praises every day like a lovesick puppy, but she deserves them. Our planet hasn’t really designed a ship meant to travel around our system and return. We have sent probes to deep space, and probes to Mars, but they were not meant to return. They had a course plotted for them and they went.

This thing should go wherever it is meant to go.

Of course, the job is far from finished. This is just the first one. We have seven more in various stages of development. We have been learning as we go with this first one, and because of that, the others should get better and stronger as time allows. I don’t mind saying that is my favorite aspect to it. This project is about fighting back, yes; we want to meet the Omegans in the skies and drive them away. But beneath that, we are engaged in pure, basic science. Hypothesis, experiment, result. Repeat as needed. Even a literature nerd like me can appreciate that. And my personal knowledge base has continued to grow. In the past twelve years, since all of this started…

Wait. It sounds better this way: if I were to extrapolate what I have been doing over the last twelve years to the life I left behind, it would be something like this – I have basically earned the equivalent of a doctorate in Physics and a doctorate in Electrical Engineering, as well as a Masters in Military Science.

Pretty goddamned impressive when I think about it.

But it has always really been about survival. We stayed down here, out of the way, and the Omegans never came close to finding us. In order to keep it that way, we are going to properly launch her from New Zealand. We’ll fly her on the water top at a minimal speed, make her look like a boat, and when we get here there, we’ll turn up the juice and get her into the atmosphere.

True to form at this point, I will be there to see it.

Biggest news of the day was that I was listed as a member of the initial launch crew. I’ll be part of the engineering contingent, as well as part of any repairs that need to be made. As always, I find the idea exhilarating and completely terrifying. Considering that this is the first ship of this kind, there is plenty that can go wrong, and I suspect that anyone on the repair crew will be extremely busy. If I had my preference, I would wait for one of the later ships, but that is not to be my fate.

My theory is that I am being used as a good luck charm. After we got down here, word spread about who I am and what had happened to me. I was asked to share my story numerous times, and the people here also tagged me with the label of “survivor guy.” So maybe they think my presence onboard will help.

They seem to forget all the ones who died next to me. I don’t think I’ll remind them.

It wasn’t enough that I was listed as part of the crew, though. Somehow, I wound up with the honor of naming our flying, over-powered brick. One of the pilots, a guy we call Fish, was tracing his hand across the helm, and he smiled and said he felt like we were about to become angels of death. I shook my head at him, disagreeing, offering up that we were hopefully about to become angels of redemption. That we could use this ship not just to destroy, but also to release our world from the bondage of war.

Fair point, right?

Well, the Colonel was standing behind us as we were talking, and he interrupted, noting that war was always about both of those things and more. That it involved death, destruction, heroics, cowardice, redemption, greatness, and humanity at its worst. I pondered that for a moment, and nodded in agreement. “Then I suppose we’ll do all of those things with this ship,” I replied. “All-encompassing angels of war.”

“Doctor, that’s brilliant,” he smiled, shaking his head. “I think you just gave the old girl a name.”

“I did?” I asked him, baffled.

“Tonight, before you all leave, we’ll have the ceremony, and christen her. This big beast will go out into space with the perfect name.”

So in a few minutes, I will be heading down to the main cave to commemorate the ship, and then I will put my life into its hands. I will kiss Yumiko goodbye, and head back out into a world I will not recognize. But maybe when we are done, we will create a better one.

Time to go. Good luck to us all. And if there is any type of higher power in this universe, may it bless my new home, this flying brick known as the War Angel.

War Angel: part eighty-six

The Revenge-class battleships were created with two purposes in mind. The first was to be able to take a beating. The Omegans had spent years pounding on Earth and its defenses, and to the point where ships like the War Angel were introduced, nothing had proved able to withstand the enemy for long. Instead, ships and armor withered and folded, lacking any capability to withstand the alien onslaught.

Purpose number two was, of course, the exact opposite. Humanity had been seeking the chance to truly dish out some punishment in retaliation for the suffering and humiliation they had been suffering. There was the hope of avenging the lost and the dead, and by reverse engineering Omegan technology and making what was hoped would be improvements, the crafts were sent into the fray.

To the surprise of most, it actually worked. On both counts.

Kate triggered all of the War Angel’s cannons, and blasts of energy erupted through the power core of the Kan’Tar. The blazing red bolts of destruction carved through battery containment nodes. They tore holes in reactor feeder lines. Coolant tanks ruptured and spewed liquid through the compartment. As all of this happened, the War Angel hovered in place, lingering to watch the results of her work. It was, Kate thought, a thing of beauty.

“Reactor heat levels rising exponentially…” Richard’s voice was steady. “Getting readings of fires starting beneath us. The batteries are leaking energy everywhere!” He punched up the main viewscreen, and the crew could see tendrils of energy erupting throughout the core area. Blue lightning arced across the compartment, some cascading off of the War Angel’s shields, and when it hit walls, it sliced through.

“Just like we hoped,” Jack whispered. “The hull is vulnerable from this side of it. If you have the right kind of ammo, of course.”

As the crew watched the show, Richard continued monitoring what they were seeing. After a minute passed, they saw a bright orange flash come from the floor. “Whoa!” Richard jerked backward in his chair.

“The reactor?” Sarah asked.

He nodded at Gina, and she put the ship in motion. “Time to go, everybody,” she said quietly. She maneuvered the ship down through the core and toward the energy conduit that led to the engines. “We are in exit pattern. F.A. do you have targeting?”

“Roger that,” Kate replied.

The War Angel sailed ahead, and as they aligned next to the conduit, Kate set three of the cannons to fire directly ahead, carving a path that they hoped would take them through one of the massive engines that propelled the Kan’Tar across space.

Energy flared from behind them as they entered their new path, rocking the ship and jostling it. “Steady as she goes, helm,” Jack said, his voice beginning to wane. “Steady…”

Gina sat rigid in the pilot’s seat, her arms tightly pressed against her console as she focused every bit of concentration on holding the War Angel in the small tunnel that Kate was carving with the cannons. “Steady,” she whispered. The ship continued forward, easing its way through, when suddenly a large explosion came from behind.

A massive CLANG was followed by the sound of grinding metal as the ship bounced off of the left side of the tunnel. Fire and energy swept across the shields, almost smothering it. On the bridge, the crew lost balance, though no one flew out of their seat, something that everyone was immediately grateful for.

“Not my fault,” Gina offered up in an angry tone.

“Acknowledged,” Jack responded. “But we might need to speed up a bit. Kate?”

The ship’s gunner gave a brief grunt. “Urgh. Maybe thirty seconds until we poke through an engine.”

Jack settled back into his chair. “Let’s hope we have ‘em.”

Two more cannon bursts, and suddenly Richard became animated. “I’m reading actual space just dead ahead. We are really close.”

Kate smiled and fired again. The blast tore through the engine housing ahead of them, and suddenly, there it was: open space. Free of the Kan’Tar’s insides, the War Angel was a free ship once more.

“Richard, I need our relative position and a course for Gina. Kate, what’s on tactical?” Jack summoned the last dregs of his energy. “Sarah, get the scoop ready.” He paused. “Talk to me, people!”

Kate’s voice cut through the bustle first. “Trouble! We have four B-class cruisers less than a minute from our position, and they should be reading us right now, too!” She stepped back from tactical. “I’m good, but not that good,” she said. “Sarah?”

“Forty-five seconds to full deployment of the scoop.” She looked at Richard. “If we have a course.”

Not looking up from his screen, Richard barked a reply. “I’m working on it!”

“The cruisers are shifting course and heading our way,” Kate chimed in. “They can fire in about thirty seconds, but at that range we’ll be able to take some hits. They get closer, and…”

Jack coughed. “Pick your targets, just in case you need to buy us time. Gina, full stop.”

All heads on the bridge whipped around to look at Jack. “Jack… Captain… that keeps us dangerously close to the Kan’Tar,” Gina said. “This thing could blow at any time.”

“Level playing field,” Jack told her.

Richard jumped in. “Got it! Gina, sending you course coordinates now. Sarah, prepare to open the scoop.”

“Patience,” Jack interjected. “Sarah, prepare to fire up the scoop on my mark. Kate, where are the bad guys?”

“Looks like they’re trying a flanking maneuver. Fifteen seconds to optimal firing solution for them.”

Jack smiled. “Richard, give me a twelve second countdown.” The engineer popped a countdown clock onto the viewscreen. “Sarah, at zero, get us out of here. Everyone brace yourselves.”

Time seemed to crawl to a snail’s pace for the ten seconds left on the clock. Kate watched as the Omegan cruisers moved into place to surround the War Angel. Gina watched as the navigational computer readied itself to pilot once the scoop was opened. And Richard and Sarah held their breath waiting for zero. When it came, Sarah fired up the tachyon scoop, and the War Angel jumped into FTL mode, leaving the Omegan’s without a target.

Five seconds later, a series of massive explosions tore through the remainder of the Kan’Tar. The release of energy from the ship’s power core and batteries cracked and separated its super-dense hull. As the reactor melted down, further weakening the hull, it took out what batteries and power conduits remained. That left only one thing to happen:

The Omegan flagship ruptured and exploded in a bright ball of blue light. The super-dense hull came apart as the pressure wave ripped through the rail-gun carrier, and as it did, those chunks scattered in a spherical arc. The four ships that had closed in on the War Angel were destroyed by the initial blast; six more ships were dealt mortal wounds by pieces of the Kan’Tar tearing through their own hulls.

Without warning, the alien enemy had just lost twenty percent of its fleet.

War Angel: part eighty-five

Wilma and Sarah stood on either side of Jack and draped his arms across their shoulders. From there, they began a slow, deliberate walk through the ship and toward the medlab. As they walked, fell silent, his thoughts turning inward and to managing his pain.

He had been hurt before. Injured, even. But this was by far the worst physical condition he had ever been in. Yet, there was comfort in that; his thoughts darted back to his ancestor, and the torture he had endured at the hands of the Omegans all those years ago. Steven Keys had lost pieces of his bodies to these animals, he remembered, and all things considered, he had gotten off relatively lucky in this case.

As they passed through the War Angel’s corridors, their footsteps echoing softly off of the metal floors, every comm. station in the vicinity lit up and activated. “Hello? Hello?” came Kate’s voice, filled with tension and impatience. “Where are you people?”

Wilma and Sarah looked at each other across Jack’s body, and realizing that they needed to answer, they moved in unison with him to a nearby comm. station. Sarah flicked the switch to open the channel and responded. “We’re taking Jack to medlab.”

“Belay that! Get your asses to the bridge! We need to leave, remember? Jack can get a bandage later!”

Sarah’s nostrils flared and she felt her chest expand. She started to scream, but Jack reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. “She doesn’t know,” he whispered. “It’s okay.” Jack coughed a little, then spoke into the comm. “We’re on our way. Desperado out.”

The two women looked at Jack in disbelief. “I cannot recommend you –“ “Of all the stupid, macho posturing –“ He stood quietly while they spoke their piece, not interrupting. Finally, when their anger abated, he held up his hand, cleared his throat, and spoke in a clear, direct voice. “Doctor, if you would, please give me a painkiller and a stimulant. I need to get through the next fifteen minutes, and then I can lay down and let you do your job. Sarah, I understand you’re upset, but I need to be on the bridge to see this through. We aren’t clear of it yet, and I can’t rest until we are.”

“I don’t like it.” Sarah fixed him with a cold glare. “I can get us out.”

“I know. And I may still need you to. But I have to try.” A sharp sting pinched Jack’s shoulder, and he turned to see Dr. Gray withdrawing an injector. “Ow.”

Wilma put the injector back into her bag. “That should buy you some time. Don’t waste it.”

Jack straightened as the medicine coursed through his system. “I won’t.”

The bridge door opened, and Sarah walked in, followed by Jack. Gina, Richard, and Kate stopped and stared as they watched Jack. Torn clothes, blood everywhere, it was not the sight they had expected to see.

Kate spoke first. “Dammit, Jack, I’m sorry. I should have –“

He waived her off. “Nothing to worry about.” He looked at the damaged and messy bridge. “I see you all have been redecorating.”

“We’ve had our moments,” Richard said.

Jack smiled. “What do you say we get out of here? Gina?”

“Ready to continue forward.”

“Kate?”

“All guns primed and ready.”

The War Angel’s captain sat gingerly in his chair. “Let’s head for the power plant and the engines.”

Seconds later, the cannons roared to life and once again began carving their way through the interior of the Kan’Tar. As they did, Gina maneuvered the ship steadily forward. The deeper into the ship they went, the more bodies and debris that passed by the ship’s windows. The bridge remained mostly silent, the only noise made by calls for course adjustments and changes in targeting.

It was, Sarah thought, a grim business they were involved in. More killing. More death.

After five long minutes had passed, Richard turned around with a surprised look. “One more round of shots, and we will be right outside the power plant. On the other side of the plant are the actual engines. Wow.”

Jack closed his eyes and absorbed what Richard had just said. This was it. If they could pull this part off… “Sarah, how are the shields looking?”

“Back to 96%.”

“Will they hold up?”

She exhaled loudly. “I have no idea. They were designed to increase efficiency beyond anything else in the fleet. But they weren’t designed to protect the ship from something like this thing blowing up at close range. We’ll get overload, just like we did at Saturn.”

“Which we survived. Just like we’ll survive this.”

Sarah shrugged. “Well, we can’t exactly go back the other way.”

“No,” he replied quietly.

A round of cannon fire and the ship moved forward again, then suddenly, the War Angel was inside the Kan’Tar’s power core. Gina halted their forward progress, and looked over her shoulder. “Richard, plot me a course.”

He looked across his screens and shifted his focus to various areas of the compartment. Various pieces of the Kan’Tar flashed back and forth across his screen, until finally he stopped and settled on one particular section of the massive Omegan ship. He activated the main viewscreen and it displayed a large conduit on the opposite side of the power core. “That,” he said, his voice betraying his nervousness, “looks like our best path. That conduit is feeding energy to the outer engines. We follow it, we should theoretically fly right through them and out.” He shrugged. “Theoretically.”

“All right,” Jack said louder than he needed to, “let’s get this done. It’s all in the timing. No mistakes. You all know what you have to do.”

Gina plotted her course and her speed. Kate set her targets, each cannon programmed for a specific target. Richard readied himself to guide both women through their jobs. In the meantime, Sarah moved to Richard’s side and activated the controls for the tachyon scoop, putting the device into standby mode. Around the bridge, they all nodded at one another once they were prepared for the next step. As it reached Sarah, she spoke up for all of them. “All stations reporting ready, Captain.”

Jack slid forward to the edge of his seat. He clenched his right fist slowly and repeatedly. A long pause held in the air as each member of the War Angel’s crew waited for him to speak. Finally, he did:

“We are go!”

War Angel: part eighty-four

K’alat wiped blood from his brow and flung it away, splattering the floor next to his chair. “Fire! Fire weapons! In the name of all the dead in Erestia, eradicate that ship!”

The Omegan at the weapons console turned to face his commander. “Unable to lock on target. The debris between us is –“

The Serr’Donn’s commanding officer jumped out of his seat and sprung himself at the weapons officer, grabbing him by the throat and choking him. “Then. Guess. Fool!” K’alat released the warrior, the younger man quickly turning back to his station. “We cannot allow that ship to do any further damage to this vessel.” He stood tall and looked around the bridge at each officer. “Is that understood?”

To a man, they all nodded assent.

“Firing!” the weapons officer announced, his voice rasping for air.

“Hold onto something!” Gina yelled. “Engaging thrusters… mark!” She pushed a button on the helm, and suddenly the War Angel went straight up. The thrusters propelled the ship for little more than half a second, and then reversed direction for half of that, stopping the ship dead in its tracks before it hit one of the upper decks of the Kan’Tar. As it did, blue bolts of energy passed directly below the War Angel, tearing through areas of the Kan’Tar that the Angel had yet to start destroying.

Richard vomited.

Kate, who had braced herself, looked over at Richard and shook her head in disgust. “Not cool, Clover!”

The young engineering wizard looked over at her, wiping away vomit and spittle from his lips. “Not a fan of motion sickness, F.A.” He then straightened himself and began studying the sensor field. “They missed. Did some of our work for us.”

“It was a nice move, Hime. What else do you have in your pocket?” Kate asked, her own mind racing furiously. Gina shrugged and stuck out a thumb, moving it from up to down position and back again. “Right. Which will only get us so far.”

“They’re preparing to fire again,” Richard cut in. “Their sensors are trying to lock on us. I don’t think they can, but a decent guess will…”

Kate snapped her fingers. “That’s it! Clover, what is our shield strength?”

“92% and holding steady.”

“Excellent. Gina, on my mark, this is what I want you to do…”

Sarah watched their exit hole carefully. “I think that last blast missed the Angel. Nothing got back to us, at least. Nothing too heavy, I mean.”

“No ‘splosions, either. Ship’s still safe.”

“For now,” she said softly.

“Right. Move closer to the exit? I kinda want to see the show,” Jack rasped. She nodded, and they began sliding toward the end of the tunnel.

“Almost have them in lock!” the Omegan gunner howled with near-delight. “Firing… now!”

“Now!” Kate yelled. Gina’s fingers swept across the helm and the War Angel instantly moved at maximum thrust, taking a curving course through the open damage of the Kan’Tar’s insides, first moving downward… and then moving in a straight line right at the Serr’Donn.

As the ship moved, the Omegans’ weapons once again missed their target. For eight seconds, the War Angel carved a path back the way it came, crashing through the debris it had stirred up and hitting full stop less than one hundred meters from the Serr’Donn. At that speed, and in these circumstances, Kate knew, the Angel would have been almost invisible to the enemy ship, and it would take a full second for them to register the War Angel’s presence at point blank range.

Plenty of time.

“Missed!” the Omegan gunner howled with agony. “They are gone from my scanner! They are –“ His head snapped up and his eyes went wide as he looked back at K’alat. “May we all hunt well in Erestia.”

The Omegan commander offered no reply, save bowing his head.

“Suck on this, you ugly, purple bastards!” Kate released all four of the War Angel’s cannons on full power, pounding the Serr’Donn with eight total blasts. Blazing red energy bolts tore through the Omegan craft, melting the hull, destroying everything in their path, including the ship’s power core. Within seconds, the Serr’Donn exploded into millions of pieces, unable to withstand the point blank destructive power of the War Angel.

The explosion rocked the Angel, sending shockwaves through the decks, but the shields did their job and protected the crew from the worst of it.

“That was amazing,” Gina said, letting out a low whistle.

“I need to vomit again,” Richard added.

Kate stepped back from the weapons and smiled at the two of them. “Belay the vomiting, Clover. We have a rescue to finish. Gina, take us back to where we left off, please.”

“With pleasure.”

Sarah and Jack stood on what was left of the platform at the end of the tunnel, watching the aftermath of Kate’s maneuver against the Serr’Donn. “Gotta admit… pretty impressive…” Jack said, coughing between words. “Wish I’d thought of it.”

“Not something we can do every time, though, right?”

He shook his head. “Worked here because of the terrain, which confuses sensors.”

“Too bad.”

They saw movement at the far end, and soon enough, the War Angel was making its way back in their direction. The ship moved at a steady pace, taking care as it approached so that there was a buffer between it and Sarah and Jack. As it settled near them, the rear of the ship shifted and pointed towards them, and the loading bay door opened. Standing there waiting was Doctor Gray.

“Anybody need medical attention?” she asked with a wink.

Jack coughed and spat blood on the Omegan deck before stepping into the Angel. “I could use an aspirin or two,” he said with a grim smile. “And maybe a new spleen.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” the doctor replied.