War Angel: part fifty-one

Jack’s door chimed and it swung open allowing Sarah to enter. She looked at him leaning against the wall and cocked an eyebrow at his odd positioning. “Permission to drop the formal crap, Desperado?”

He exhaled. “That would be fantastic.”

“Whatcha doing in here? Getting all broody and moody?”

Jack ran his fingers through his hair. “I am,” he said with a bit of flair, “planning.”

She nodded. “That’s good. How’s that working out for you?” He opened his arms and shrugged. “Oh. That badly, then. Well, that is sort of why I’m here- the whole ‘what’s next’ thing.”

He looked at the ceiling. “I know we didn’t win that one because we had a genius plan. I’d like to avoid being that stupid again.” Suddenly he shifted his gaze to her. “Survival is going to be a matter of cleverness. So here’s my first bit of cleverness: this tub needs a first-mate. You’re elected.”

Sarah mock curtseyed. “I’m honored and thrilled.” He started to reply but she cut him off. “Okay, first thing I want to suggest.” Jack let out a short laugh. “We need to fix the gunnery problem. In our first firefight, you had an unqualified crewmember working the weapons.”

“That crewmember helped design the retrofit of the ship,” he replied.

“But,” she said, steadying herself, “we have an crewmember on board who could kill everybody here in about three minutes, whether by hand or with a weapon. I think we should consider letting her play with the guns.”

Jack sat forward and reached for the comm. “Bridge? F.A. are you there?”

The comm. crackled to life. “Present.”

“F.A., how would you feel about shifting over to the weapons console going forward?”

“Like it was home,” she replied.

“Done,” Jack said, then closed the channel. He looked up at Sarah. “Anything else, first-mate?” She sat down next to him and began lifting his shirt over his head.”

“I’m in the mood to break any rules that might involve fraternization, Captain.”

Gina strolled onto the bridge, stretching and yawning. She saw Kate slouched down in the captain’s chair, feet propped up on a small crate. “And here I was worried you wouldn’t find a way to relax,” she said.

Kate looked over her shoulder and watched Gina walk down to the conn and sit in the pilot’s seat. “I’m not uptight every hour of the day, Gina.” She paused, then added, “just most of them.”

The War Angel’s pilot snorted. “Wow! Kate Stinson just made a joke! It really must be the end of the world.” The duo looked at each other for a moment and let that statement sink in, neither wanting to address the reality. Finally, Gina filled the silence. “So what’s been going on?”

“I shot an asteroid for Richard, which I thought was great. But he swore a lot, so I think cannon three isn’t quite as fixed as he thought it was.”

“Richard knows how to swear?”

Kate nodded. “In a very real way, it turns out. Guess he just needs the right push. There may be hope for the boy yet.”

“Don’t tell him that. You know—“

“I’m not blind. I’ve caught him looking at me, and then he gets all nervous and shy. It’s cute. Pathetic and sad. But cute.”

Gina shook her head. “Ouch. True. But still: ouch.”

“Oh- Jack called down and asked me to take over at weapons. So he seems to be getting a clue. Slowly.”

“That’s a relief. Both the clue thing and that you’ll be doing the shooting. No offense to Sarah, but…”

“…She doesn’t exactly have my skill set. Right.” Kate cracked her knuckles. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to our next shot at those bastards. With any luck, Jack is reading those old journals of his and coming up with ideas for how we can take the fight to them. If we don’t, I’m damn sure they’ll bring the fight to us.”

Suddenly, the hyperfrequency light lit up, accompanied by a loud chirping sound. Kate and Gina stared at it as it whistled and tweeted, and after a couple of minutes it finally stopped. The light began to blink at a slow, hypnotic pace. Finally, they looked at each other and shrugged.

“You were saying?” Gina said.

War Angel: part fifty

2142- In Orbit Around Pluto

Jack leaned against the bulkhead in his quarters and exhaled softly. He mentally replayed the battle against the Omegan ship, step by step, analyzing the decisions he had made, looking for what went right and what he needed to improve upon. His logical, rational mind told him what he already knew: the War Angel had been damned lucky to survive that fight.

None of them had considered how difficult it would be to slow the ship coming out of the tachyon drive. He had asked someone to play gunner who had no practice and no training with the equipment. A smart captain would have entered such an engagement with a backup plan and an escape route in place, just in case something went horribly wrong. “The entirety of my plan,” he realized, “was to keep shooting until we hit the target we were aiming for.”

“I had no idea how tough the ship would be to maneuver once we started taking hits,” he thought, and his pilot was barely qualified to fly. One word kept popping into his mind, over and over and over: “stupid.” He rubbed his temples. “Very, very stupid.”

And yet… as stupid as they had been, they won. The War Angel was now stocked with supplies that gave them a cushion. Time wasn’t on their side, but it also wasn’t hanging over their heads like a sword, either.

Suddenly, Jack slapped the wall above his head. “If we can beat a ship like that being stupid, then we can damn well take these bastards on by being smart!”

Richard connected the last two wires inside the open bulkhead and then dropped his pliers into his back pocket. His lips uttered a silent curse as he stared at the intricate machinery, and then he stepped to a comm. port and hailed the bridge.

“Bridge. F.A, here, Clover. What’s up?”

He cleared his throat. “I just polished up behind the panel where the… thing… was found. I think cannon three should be ready to go. Need’s to be tested, though.”

She suppressed a laugh. “I think I can shoot something for you, Clover. Hang on.” Richard could hear her bustling around the bridge. After a minute, her voice returned. “I’ve got a nice, small rock of some kind about a thousand kilometers off that side of the ship,” her voice echoed through the corridor. “Targeting…” she paused, “umm, you may want to step far away from the area you just fixed. Just to be sure.”

His eyes opened wide. “Uhh, yeah. Right.” He jogged away from the comm. and yelled his readiness.

“Five… four… three… two… firing!”

Outside, on the hull of the War Angel, cannon three sprang to life, firing a burst of energy through the blackness of space, striking a passing meteoroid with its righteous fury and reducing it to its component atoms.

“Direct hit!” Kate yelled. Richard began walking back to put the cover over the bulkhead, but as he did, a small burst of electricity and fire burst forth from the conduit. He grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher and began spraying it over the burning circuitry controlling the cannon. Suddenly, the comm. sprang to life with a stream of profanity and anger that Kate would have guessed Richard incapable of even knowing.

“So, there’s a problem, then?” she asked gently.

The channel closed without him replying.

War Angel: part forty-nine

2142- Midway between the Earth and the Moon

Life aboard the Kan’Tar was a portrait in organization and discipline. Soldiers, always armed and armored, strode confidently down the ship’s corridors in packs of six. Each Omegan carried himself as though death awaited around each corner; ramrod posture, arms at the side prepared to draw his sidearm, eyes that could bore a hole through the hull with their focus.

Yet they would rarely see action.

Promotion to the Kan’Tar was a reward for distinguished service to the fleet. Only the finest of warriors were given duties aboard the fleet’s flagship. It took years of working one’s way through the ranks: first you trained as a pilot or as infantry; then, if you were worthy and you survived long enough, you were assigned to a B-class warship; demonstrate potential there, and perhaps you were be assigned the center seat of leadership. However it went, Omegan soldiers all knew- the B-class warship was where most Omegans finished their careers and their lives.

But those that were truly special were granted special appointment to the Kan’Tar. The ship was not elegant in design, of that there could be no argument. Its size was too large. The top was smooth and flat, the component pieces of the rail gun existing down the center of the ship. Indeed, one looking at the Kan’Tar from a certain angle might suggest that taken on the whole, the vessel itself somewhat resembled a bulky rifle. However, this rifle was designed to hold and weaponize small asteroids and other debris before firing them at helpless worlds in the Omegans’ path.

That lack of elegance was more than made up for by the destructive power of the craft. In order to protect itself when it went into asteroid storms to arm itself, the external hull was five times thicker than that of a B-class. The sides and bottom were lined with a dozen laser cannons. Any ship that dared strike at the Kan’Tar soon realized its folly… just before it was blasted into atoms. Through the history of the ship, most didn’t even bother trying. Thus, the Omegans stationed aboard the ship spent days upon days training and practicing against one another. Without doing so, they would likely not see battle again in their lifetimes.

Earth, though was different. The humans had dared to assault the Kan’Tar directly during their first clash with the Omegans. In the aftermath, the Omegan Hierarchy had been forced to conclude that the humans’ strategy was a clever one- they ignored the main ship and concentrated on destroying the rail gun itself, the one part of the ship unprotected by the hull and laser cannons. The damage done, and the redesign, took decades to complete. Now, the Kan’Tar was once again on Earth’s doorstep. Waiting. Watching.

The Omegan soldier stood at passive attention before his leader, F’ath M’isti. F’ath had spent almost every waking moment of his life in pursuit of the warrior arts, proving himself to be one of the greatest soldiers his society had ever produced. During the first war against the humans, he had served on a B-class vessel as a pilot, racking up an astounding number of kills. In their second engagement with humanity, F’ath found himself in a leadership position, captaining a B-class. As that campaign wore on, it was his ship, time and again, that achieved the most victories against their foe. It was that gift which ultimately sent him to the shipyards to oversee the final pieces of the reconstruction of the Kan’Tar; a project that finished ahead of schedule thanks to him. His reward? It would be F’ath M’isti would lead the fleet back to Earth and finish the humans for good.

F’ath spoke. “No survivors?”

“No, my leader. The data remnants we have been able to recover suggest that they set the weapons system to overload and explode. The ship was in pieces when assistance finally arrived. We detected no signs of escape pods on the planet or on any of its moons.”

“May they hunt well in Erestia.” F’ath pondered his next move. “Very well. I promised retribution for resistance. When you leave here, you are to proceed to the quarters where we are holding Admiral Kelly. Tear out his spine with your bare hands. Make sure you do so on camera, that we may broadcast it to these defiant ones and show them the price to be paid for their lack of obedience.”

“It will be done, my leader.”

F’ath nodded at him. “Go now.” The soldier bowed and left the command center, leaving the Omegan leader alone with his thoughts. M’isti queued up the data on the War Angel that his technicians were able to mine from the EAD’s computer systems. He scratched his chin absently as he read, muttering to himself as he went. “I remember this ship well from my days as a pilot. She was a strong one. Her crew fought bravely and honorably.”

The screen shifted, and pictures of those now aboard the War Angel now filled his vision. “But these… I know nothing about them. Data recovery shows that this Morrison was not acting as captain and that lifescans showed one fewer person on the ship than what we were expecting. Children… children have a warship. Yet somehow they defeated one of ours. They must be dealt with.” He began reading the personnel profiles, absorbing as much as he could about who his enemies were. It was while reading one of those that he found the key to eliminating whatever minute threat that the War Angel represented. F’ath opened the Omegan internal communication systems and hailed a nearby B-class ship.

“Commander of the Chimera, speak and reply!”

The comm. system crackled to life. The voice on the other end sounded stunned to hear M’isti calling directly. “Yes, my leader. How may I serve?”

“You have a prisoner from the planet in your care. I wish him to be moved over here to the Kan’Tar. Immediately.”

“Of course, my leader. To which prisoner are you referring?”

F’ath scanned his screen, looking for the information he needed. “Prisoner 1212 from Q-system.”

The B-class captain responded immediately. “It will be done, my leader. He shall be on the Kan’Tar within an Earth hour.”

“Very well.” F’ath closed the channel and stood from his seat. He walked around the command center for a few minutes, contemplating his next move. Within a day, planetside operations would go into full effect, and within half an Earth year, this particular project would finally be completed and the Omegan people could put the tiny mudball behind them. In the meantime, nothing would be allowed to be left to chance. They had been fortunate once, and once was enough. The presence of the prisoner should drain the fight from them quickly.

And if they tried to fight? No fool, no matter how clever, would last long in battle against the Kan’Tar.