Chapter 10

Date: 1st April 2395
Location: Inshell Asteroid Field, 30 billion KM from Europa Colony

 “Hey Thor, how’s she handling?” Griff asked over the comm link connecting the four fighters flying in formation.

“Great, it feels like I just took off from Europa.” I replied. The flight crews were well experienced at fixing battle damaged fighters and had done an excellent job replacing the engine that had been destroyed during the fight.

“We’re coming up to the debris field now. We’ll engage one at a time; I’ll designate targets. RVP Alpha is set; if you’re not engaging then hold position there,” he replied on a channel to the whole formation. A radio click from each of the other pilots marked their confirmation, to which I added my own when a marker appeared both on my scanner and my HUD for the rendezvous point.

“I’m up first, then Pyro, Foxtrot and Thor.” He announced after receiving our acknowledgement. With Pyro leading, Foxtrot and myself flew to the RVP while Griff accelerated to full speed and began engaging targets.

From the distance at which we were sitting we could see the streams of blue billowing from Griff’s fighter, and explosions as the stream connected with one of the floating hulks of long abandoned ships. After twenty minutes, he returned to formation, satisfied that his targeting systems were correctly aligned. Having been allocated his targets allocated, Pyro accelerated away from the group just as Griff dropped into position. The same thing happened when Pyro returned and Foxtrot flew out to test his weapons systems, and after an hour of sitting at the RVP, it was finally my turn.

Increasing thrust to full, I was thousands of kilometres from the others in moments, approaching the debris field and the ten targets marked on my scanner and HUD. For the first test, I stopped the fighter and lined up the shot. Though the target was locked and I was in prime firing position, the first volley of shots I fired went far to the left of the target; an old shuttlecraft hull. After inputting a few quick calculations to the computer, I reacquired lock and fired again; barely grazing the edge of the shuttle. My third volley was spot on, tearing straight through the hull and out the other side, igniting a series of small antimatter explosions along the way. For the second target, Griff had launched a target drone to provide a moving target. With the weapons now firing where they were supposed to, the computer had no problems predicting the drone’s simple flight path. The next few targets ranged from old Daggers to tiny satellites, testing the computer’s ability to adapt to various target signal sizes. The final target was the rotting hull of a cruiser long since abandoned to space, judging from the wounds on its surface probably from extreme battle damage. Though the antimatter cannons would eventually eat their way through any armour, it would be far more effective to use missiles on such a target were it live, so targeting the locations where the ship’s energy systems would be, I launched my two missiles, each one scoring a direct hit on its target.

Dropping into position directly behind Griff, I joined the rest of the group in diamond formation for the trip back to the Tallinn. An hour into the journey, Griff’s joyous hoot was transmitted over the communication system.

“I’ll bet this is something you’ve never seen before, Thor.” He said as a number of bright blue shapes passed around our ships. “Light Angels, kid. Don’t know what they are, but they love playing with us.” The shapes; somewhat similar to poorly defined manta rays, constantly changing size and shape had turned and from the side of my fighter I could see a few chasing the engine stream of the fighters on either side of me. Accessing the rear view of my own, I saw one riding along mine.

“Watch this!” Pyro called out, increasing power and flying out in front of the group, closely followed by Foxtrot maintaining his position about fifty meters to his left. Twisting in an open barrel roll, the two ships’ streams formed a short double helix, with an Angel just behind them. When the ships crossed paths, the Angels split up, sharply turning to chase the other ship rather than following their original one.

“Don’t just sit there Thor, that one chasing you has gotta be bored; give it something to chase!” Foxtrot called with an exhilarated tone.

Angling away from Griff’s ship I rapidly boosted the engines to full, the angel lagging behind slightly before easily catching up to me and sitting a few feet from the rear of my ship. Hitting the overburn I was pushed into the back of my seat as the engines sent the ship flying at 225,000 km/s. From the camera I could see the Angel falling behind, cutting across when I turned to try to catch up. When the overburn cut out to prevent the engines melting and the reverse thrust initiated to reduce the stress on the ship’s chassis the Angel overtook me, circling back in front of me and passing through the left arm, leaving a rapidly fading blue glow where it had intersected my ship.

Turning to chase the Angel I fired the engines up to full and spun on the ship’s axis. As soon as the manoeuvre was complete the front of my ship become filled with Angel.

As my body passed through the shimmering blue light, I felt a strange tingling all over my body, a little like during a cleansing cycle but distinctly different. When I regained my senses, I gasped for air, winded. My throttle and HUD had cut out and I was stationary; apparently down around 20% on energy. After having recovered my breath I looked around and saw another Cutthroat sat stationary directly in front of me.

“If flying with Angels isn’t enough, he has to go further.” Griff said mockingly. “I know of about four people who have managed to merge with an Angel, they’re usually way too fast and agile. Guess you got lucky. Again.” Still breathing heavily, I wasn’t sure lucky was how I would describe it.

“OK guys, form up. It’s time we were getting home,” Griff called to the rest of the group, who fell into formation behind and to the side of him. Firing the engines back into life, I took up my position directly behind Griff and settled in for the remainder of the flight back to the ship.

“What the hell happened here?” Griff asked rhetorically as we came into view of the drifting, dead hulk of the Tallinn.

The blackened hull gently rotated freely, no light or signs of life whatsoever. A large section of the rear of the ship, apparently severed from the rest of the body by enemy fire, had come to rest a few hundred kilometres from the rest of the ship.

“This is Commander Griff to any surviving M Military personnel, is anyone there?” he called over the comm, and waited for a response. He repeated his message, then once more but there was no response.

“What the fuck is going on out here?” Pyro asked; “There’s not supposed to be anything going on around here, it’s dead space.”

“It’s those fucking Cannelli.” Foxtrot muttered. “This is just like them; sneak up somewhere and throw wave after wave at the enemy, overwhelm ‘em.”

“See why everybody drinks, kid?” Pyro said with a bitter tone. I couldn’t do anything but stare at the hulk before me. When Lark and Larenko had been killed, I knew I didn’t have time to think, and when I woke up on the Tallinn I knew that it had caught their maps and transmitted them back to Europa. With the ship destroyed, there was no way for the crews’ maps to be forwarded. With the possible exception of a few, sent before the transmitter went down, everyone aboard was truly gone.

“I don’t think there’s anyth...” Griff began but was cut off by a weak signal, completely unintelligible but definitely from someone nearby. “You’re breaking up, please repeat.” He called out, trying to raise the survivor. Again the transmission was badly garbled but we did manage to make out the word ‘armoury’.

“It’s coming from the Tallinn.” Pyro reported.

“We can’t leave whoever it is over there.” Foxtrot piped in.

“Agreed.” Griff said, “Pyro, you and Thor go check it out.” I gulped, in order to get aboard the dead ship we would have to park our Cutthroats near to a breach, open the canopy and push off, without any way of adjusting our flight. It was a very risky manoeuvre and though I had heard about it being done in the past, had never done anything like it in my life.

After a dozen small corrections, I had positioned my ship about twenty feet from a hull breach. Taking the small plasma pistol from underneath my seat and attaching a tool belt, I opened the canopy. For a moment I struggled against the seat restraints as the atmosphere in the cockpit was blown out. Uncoupling the restraints I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and pushed off.

I hit the wall heavily, winding myself as I oriented myself with the corridor. Without power there was no gravity, and unlike the Marines’ armour suits, my boots were not magnetised, meaning I would have to move using whatever I could get a grip on and pushing off.

A moment later, Pyro slammed into the wall behind me and after scrambling for a grip for a moment stood next to me.

Unsure of where we were, I looked for a door. Quickly spotting one, I read the etched tag; ‘L19S09-3’ Level 19, Section 9. We were on the lower decks and towards the rear of the ship.

“The armoury’s on deck seven, section six.” Pyro said, pushing off down the corridor towards the front of the ship. When we reached the bulkhead separating sections 8 and 9, rather then opening it, Pyro pushed up towards the ceiling and opened a hatch. At every bulkhead junction was a small sealed passageway, just large enough for someone to crawl through. Each side of the bulkhead one ran vertically between the deck and the one above, and a horizontal passageway connected the two. Using the passages, a person could go around a bulkhead or between decks in a form of basic airlock, without risk of decompressing the next section in this sort of situation.

“I’ll go first; give me a minute then follow. Go to 18, 8.” Pyro opened the hatch as I held onto the bulkhead’s manual handle. A blast of atmosphere blew past him and he crawled into the passage, closing the hatch behind him. Watching the time on my neural link I waited a minute, giving him time to traverse the passage and seal the other side before I followed.

The light from the Cutthroats had illuminated the previous hallway just enough to see, but the passageway was pitch black. Pulling the hatch closed behind me, I felt my way to the horizontal crawl way and pulled myself along, my helmet hitting the far end with a thud. Opening the upper hatch I crawled out, pushing up to the ceiling then back onto the floor.

Pyro was standing in front of me, fixing a torch to his wrist. Quickly sequencing myself one from the tool belt, I did the same and we moved silently to the next bulkhead, pulling ourselves along the walls. We repeated the process, moving between decks and sections until we arrived at Level 16, Section 6, where we simply moved vertically.

There was no atmosphere in deck 7, section 6 when we arrived. It seemed that every section we had passed through had at least one hull breach, and unlike the bulkheads the normal doors were not sealed. Fortunately, as a high security room, the armoury was sealed with its own bulkheads and did not have any external walls, so with a little luck it would still be pressurised.

A gust of air greeted me when I cracked open the hatch into the armoury, indicating that it was indeed still sealed. Readings from my suit showed the temperature was below freezing though, and unless the survivor was wearing a flight suit or Marine armour they wouldn’t be surviving much longer.

Three bodies were lying in one corner of the room, one showing very faint signs of life. “Over here.” I called to Pyro, who was searching the other side of the room. Rushing over, he knelt by the unconscious body and rolled it over.

“Find some energy cells.” He ordered as he knelt by the figure, “Your tool belt should be able to make him a flight suit but it’ll need a lot of them.”

Thankfully, the armoury had plenty of emergency kits on hand and I soon managed to rustle up twelve cells. Instructing the tool belt to create the suit, I switched between the different cells, replacing each one as it was rapidly drained. There was less than 3% power remaining of the eleventh cell when the suit was ready.

While I prepared the suit, Pyro stripped off the survivor and injected him with something he had just sequenced.

“Get him in the suit, quickly. He won’t last long.” He ordered, inserting the probe of another freshly sequenced device into his arm.

Struggling, I pulled the suit onto him. Flight suits, being one piece, were entered from the neck and fitted snugly; when the person who was wearing it was an unconscious dead weight it was much harder to put on. Finally, I snapped the collar to his neck and picked up the helmet lying next to me. It was only when I was attaching the helmet clasps to the collar that I took a moment to look at the person’s face, immediately recognising his identity.

“We got company, guys. Finish up and get the hell out of there!” Griff’s voice shouted over the comm as an explosion shook the remains of the ship.

“We can drop straight down to level 19 and cut through the bulkheads now. If anyone else is still alive on here, they won’t be for much longer.” Pyro said, hoisting the unconscious body onto his shoulders.

I opened my mouth to speak as another explosion threw me to the ground, shaking away any doubts I had about leaving behind any potential survivors; if we waited any longer the Cannelli would destroy the ship with us on it, along with anyone else. Scrambling to my feet, I pushed off of the nearest object to hand and followed Pyro out of the door.

“You go first,” he said when I reached the bulkhead door. “I’ll lower him down to you, then follow.”

Nodding, I pushed through the hatch, leaving it open. As I passed through the lower hatch to level 8, Pyro pushed the unconscious body of Dover through for me to catch as he drifted to me. I barely had time to grip Dover when Pyro followed, immediately opening the hatch to level 7 and going through. As he had done before, I lowered Dover to him before proceeding myself and heading through the next hatch.

It took a fraction of the time it had taken us to climb through the ship to reach level 19, and while I carried Dover, Pyro moved ahead, blowing the explosive hinges fitted to the manual internal doors, clearing the way back to the breach where we had positioned our fighters.

“When we get to the ships just line yourself up and jump. Your cockpit has enough space and life support for both of you.” He called as he blew the final door. When he reached the end of the corridor he pushed off, hitting the floating fighter’s open seat with enough force for it to move backwards slightly. I hesitated for a moment when I reached the end of the corridor. With open space in every direction, there would be no second chance if I missed.

The canopy closed and sealed as I hit the back wall of the cockpit, which immediately began refilling with atmosphere. A stream of weapons fire and an explosion to my left marked Pyro’s end as his fighter drifted apart. Without thinking, I initialised the engines, and rotating as rapidly as I could, pushed the throttle to maximum and kept pushing. Red lights lit up all over the cockpit as I overrode failsafe after failsafe to prevent the engines overheating.

“Hey kid, slow down before you blow yourself up!” Griff called over the comm after an unknown amount of time. “We left their scanner range about five minutes ago.”

With the feeling returning and the adrenalin subsiding, I pulled back on the throttle, reducing to half thrust. Immediately, the reverse engines kicked in and the speed dropped. I was amazed when I saw the numbers dropping from over 270,000 km/s. To my knowledge nobody had ever managed to go past the 260,000 barrier and return in one piece. While technically an engine in space could have an infinite top speed, the stresses that built up at those speeds were immense and few ships’ structural integrity could take it.

Checking my scanner, only my own fighter and Griff’s were in range.

“Foxtrot?” I asked already knowing the answer; Griff’s long silence confirming.

“Deactivate your Temporal compensator,” he said eventually. “We’re a long way from Europa and you just burned a whole lot of fuel. Hopefully if you experience the temporal dilation from near light speed, you will have enough supplies to last for both of you.”

Dover’s unconscious body was sitting on the base of the canopy, between my legs. From the readings being fed to me by the ship, it looked as if he was warming up, but it was taking a lot of energy for the ship to look after him and keep us both supplied with atmosphere. After the playing with Angels and live fire draining the reserves, both fighters were running pretty low.

“Accelerate to full speed, then cut off power to the compensator. You’ll need an override code to do it, use Griff-5381-FDD.” Griff ordered.

Inputting the code when asked it took a few minutes to override the system and the dots outside began to move much faster.

“No, and be quiet.” I sighed, for the fifth time after Dover had asked for more rations. Every hour, the energy level dropped a little more, and even at top speed we were more than two days away from Europa. He had regained conscious a few hours ago, and after realising he wasn’t drifting dead in space, had been demanding food every few minutes.

“But I’m STARVING,” he moaned. “I was just about to sit down to dinner when the Tallinn was attacked. These things have sequencers in them! Just one chicken wing!”

“You see this gauge?” I asked exasperatedly, pointing at a very low, red flashing gauge displayed on the canopy. “That shows how much energy is left. When that reaches zero, everything stops; that means no control, no weapons, no food, no AIR. We need to save all the energy we can for now.”

Dover went quiet and just stared ahead. Jupiter was getting steadily larger as we approached but it was still little more than a speck. What I hadn’t told Dover was that from the numbers I had been running through my head and from how fast that little gauge was falling, we probably wouldn’t make it in time.

While Dover sat quietly, I did my best to cut as much power consumption as possible. Reducing the oxygen production should save some energy, and lowering the temperature would help too. By the time the changes kicked in, the temperature was barely above freezing and we were both very tired and light headed.

“This isn’t how I expected to die.” Dover muttered sleepily.

“Shut up, save your energy,” I replied harshly, struggling to keep my eyes open.

“I was supposed to die a hero in some battle somewhere, saving some great Admiral.” He continued. “I was going to have a big funeral, big....” He fell asleep.

Taking the emergency kit from under my chair, I opened one of the food bars. They tasted vile; like a mixture of rubber and pre-eaten stew, but they contained a lot of energy and nutrients. I recycled everything in the case except the bars and smiled slightly as the energy meter actually rose a little; it wasn’t much but when every joule counted, it could make all the difference.

Tapping a screen next to me I began to write a letter;

“Dad,

I’m sorry I couldn’t make you proud. I thought I was ready for life out here, but I couldn’t even last a week. I know I should have spoken to you before I took my ship out, and I shouldn’t have even thought of engaging that first group. Tell Lark and Larenko I’m sorry I ended up getting them killed and losing their ships. If I hadn’t taken them to that field they never would have been killed like that, and I probably wouldn’t be dead now. Please don’t feel bad, I brought this on myself and there’s nothing you could have done. I’m sorry.

 —Sven”

 I tagged the letter for transmission when power was high enough. Even if we didn’t make it to Europa alive, the fighter should at least drift there and would be retrieved for investigation. Sitting back, I felt a tear roll down my cheek, followed by another. I quickly wiped them away when I felt Dover stir at my feet.

“What happened?” He asked, confused.

“You fell asleep.” I replied, “I had to turn down the oxygen.”

“Oh.” He said simply. “I’m cold.”

“I had to turn that down too.”

Climbing up despite my protests, he sat on my lap and hugged me tightly.

“It’ll keep us both warm,” he said in my ear, then hesitated. “And thank you for coming back for me.” I began to tell him that we would have gone back for anyone, but the rhythmic breathing told me he had fallen asleep again. As his body heat slowly penetrated my suit, I felt slightly better. It connected us somehow and it felt comforting, knowing he was there. Unable to hold myself any longer, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

I knew the bleeping noise wasn’t good. Bleeps never are good. Chimes are good. And jingles. Jingles always sounded as if they were happy. I remember one of the jingles from an Argus entertainment network advert. Everyone was jumping around and smiling. Jingles are good. Not like bleeps. This bleep sounded very bad.

Opening my eyes, I saw the little red gauge was flashing wildly. Jupiter was about the size of a tennis ball in my cockpit. I had never played tennis. There were a lot of things I had never played: tennis, rugby, golf. My dad talked about them sometimes from back on Earth, but I had never played them. Some seemed really silly; running around with a ball and trying to get past others with it. Nobody got anything out of it, it was just running around.

The gauge was flashing rapidly, the bar at less than 5% remaining energy. Five was a good number. I remember a lot of fives. Five fingers, five toes. Five minutes. Five...percent. That was bad. That’s low. I concentrated on the bar as hard as I could, trying to keep my mind from wandering. The low oxygen must have been affecting me.

We were still over three billion kilometres from Europa, and my estimates showed we had just enough power for about nine hundred million kilometres, after that there would be no more air, no more heating and no more control.

Checking the systems confirmed that there was no more energy to be salvaged from anything; the craft was running on the barest minimum systems, but it wasn’t going to be enough. To my left hung Griff’s fighter; It was missing a few armour panels and was looking very much worse for wear but it was keeping pace with my fighter easily.

“Pretty...” I muttered as I saw an Angel pass in front of me and vanish. NO. Things don’t vanish. Not right. I shook my head to restore order to my thoughts again. Looking around there was no sign of any Angels; it must have been a hallucination. It wouldn’t be long now until the end came. At least Griff would be able to tell everyone what happened. How it was all my fault that the Tallinn was attacked and how I didn’t do enough when we had to fight those ships off. Hopefully my dad wouldn’t be associated with my failure.

I smiled as the sound of an Angel’s magnetic field interacting with the hull of my fighter rang throughout the cockpit. It was a nice tune. Humans can’t make tunes like that. Some people used to make nice tunes. Some weren’t as nice as others. Some were horrible.

I realised my thoughts were drifting again and tried to focus on what was happening. Looking around again there were no Angels to be seen; it was my mind playing tricks on me again.

For a moment I closed my eyes and saw what looked like a Cutthroat in front of me, in my mind. Opening my eyes there was nothing but Jupiter. I felt a presence in the back of my head, not like the neural link but something else. It felt as if there was something sitting right behind me, but all that was behind me was a seat, engines and a whole lot of nothing.

Suddenly everything aboard cut out; no display, no light, nothing. Even the engines were silent.

‘This is it.’ I thought to myself. ‘Time’s up.’

I closed my eyes and prepared to blow open the canopy; better to die quickly than to freeze. Just as I reached for the detonator to the explosive charge the craft shook violently and all the systems started coming online, even those I had disabled and overridden long ago.

The power gauge now being displayed, not only on the cockpit, but also through the neural link, which had been one of the first systems switched off, was actually rising. 10%, 20, 30.... Looking around, I couldn’t see any ships, but there was a faint blue glow from behind me.

The craft shook again as the engines fired up, then apparently went into idle. Even without the engines giving thrust, the registered speed was rising rapidly, through 200,000 km/s and on past 280,000, where the number simply changed to a series of dashes. Looking across, I saw Griff’s fighter still keeping pace, but it seemed to be riding right on the tail of an Angel. In front of me, all I saw was a blinding blue light, presumably another Angel. The air was quickly coming up to a normal temperature and from how I was feeling, the oxygen was returning to normal.

As quickly as everything had changed, it returned to normal. Suddenly the blue light dissipated and the speed registered as zero.

“Patrol Echo Sierra Six to unknown craft, state your designation and intentions.” An unknown voice demanded over the comm as alarms started screeching all over the cockpit, indicating someone was locking onto us.

“This is Commander Griff, MMV Tallinn, Authorisation code Griff-5381-FDD.” Griff called out.

“Hold your position while we verify. Do not power your engines or weapons or you will be fired upon.” The voice ordered as the alarms continued.

“Do as he says, kid.” Griff told me over a private channel.

“Commander Griff, you will follow this patrol to Europa One. Any deviation will result in your immediate destruction.”

“Understood.” He replied to the patrol leader before telling me to remain in formation and follow him in.

One fighter took up position in front of Griff and moved towards the station I recognised as Europa One, orbiting the moon I called home. While Griff and myself followed the lead fighter the rest of the group remained behind us, maintaining weapons lock.

“The station will take over remote control as soon as you are in range.” The voice advised, “You will be taken to a secure berth where you will turn yourselves in for identification.”

Moments later, the displays on my cockpit and in my head vanished and were replaced by a ‘Remote Control’ message. Releasing the flight controls, I sat back and watched as we were flown into the station’s secondary hangar bay and automatically set down. Facing me from the entrance to the pad were six Marines in full combat armour, with their weapons trained on the cockpit.

With Dover still unconscious and tightly held to me, I sat in my flight seat when the canopy opened.

While the rest of the Marines maintained their aim, one slowly moved forward until he was a few feet from me. Recycling his weapon, he lifted Dover from me and moved back, never removing his gaze from me.

“Dismount!” One of the other Marines ordered, “Keep your hands visible.”

One at a time, one handed, I uncoupled the clasps holding me in the chair before jumping down to the deck, immediately falling down. Since I had been sitting in the chair in zero gravity for so long, my legs were too weak to support me.

With their weapons still aimed at me, three Marines surrounded me; after visually examining me, one recycled his weapon and roughly picked me up, holding me over his shoulder as he walked us into the station.

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