The two Raython fighters streaked through the inky blackness, maintaining battle flight formation as they closed in on the hulking battleship.
Mayae Rees was not a pilot with combat experience. She had drawn the escort duty that morning, which consisted of baby–sitting a dead merchant ship for twelve hours straight while fending off boredom. Now, for the first time ever she had been scrambled for real with live weapons and was bearing down at attack velocity on a heavily armed battleship that weighed a hundred thousand times more than her Raython.
‘We’re being jammed,’ came the reply from her wingman, a young pilot called Jay who had also been recruited from among the civilians. ‘I got nothing from the Sylph or Atlantia.’
Mayae glanced at her Situational Awareness Display, or SAD as the other pilots referred to it with grim humour, after the depressing data it often revealed about how outnumbered they were. The holographic image in her natural line of sight revealed the shape of the Veng’en vessel ahead, a sleek, nasty looking craft bristling with heavy weapons. It also revealed her own Raython, that of Jay’s, and of a further eight Raythons some distance behind them forming a defensive perimeter around the Atlantia and Sylph.
‘What do we do?’ Jay asked her.
Mayae gripped her control column tighter.
‘Stay on course, don’t waver,’ she ordered, sounding a lot more confident than she felt. ‘Stay close. Our communications will be fine as long as we don’t split up.’
Their orders before the jamming began were clear: intercept, but do not engage. Mayae had never fought in combat before but she had heard the tales of the Veng’en’s thirst for conflict and their unrivalled bloodlust. Even pirates, it was said, avoided them like the plague.
‘We’re almost in weapons range,’ Jay informed her.
‘Stay out of reach of their cannons,’ Mayae replied. ‘We’ll go high and right. Keep your eyes open.’
Although the distant reaches of space around them were speckled with starlight, none of those suns were within a light year of their position. Deep in interstellar space, the faint glow of starlight was all there was to illuminate their own craft and the Veng’en battleship.
Mayae spotted it almost at the last moment, even though a small digital reticule had circled it ever since she had locked her sensors onto it minutes before. The huge vessel emerged from the deep blackness, a shadow against space that eclipsed the stars ahead. She glimpsed the shape of its immense hull, no running lights showing – battle order, the limit of its plasma cannon range demarked by a vivid red translucent sphere on her SAD.
‘Break right,’ she said calmly.
The two Raythons pulled to the right, arcing around the outermost limit of the Veng’en ship’s cannon range and climbing up. Mayae looked out to her left and watched as the huge warship drifted by, its engines extinguished as it cruised toward the Atlantia and the Sylph.
‘Looks silent, like the Sylph was,’ Jay observed, his voice becoming calmer.
‘Pull back, you’re too close.’
Mayae eased her Raython away from the cruiser, but Jay remained on course. ‘Negative, Mayae. They’re not showing any signs of aggression.’
Mayae kept her eyes fixed upon the battleship as she turned slowly to the left, circling around the ship’s stern.
‘Maybe she’s deserted too,’ Jay suggested.
‘No,’ Mayae murmured as the two fighters arced around the Veng’en cruiser. ‘Their course is too direct. They’re aboard all right. Let’s move out, give them some space and…’ In that instant her sharp young eyes spotted the flares of light accelerating out of the cruiser’s hull, one after the other. ‘Contact, enemy!’
‘I see them,’ Jay confirmed. ‘Ten, no twelve, no…’
Mayae’s pulse raced as she counted thirty fighters blasting out of the cruiser’s hull and racing up toward them on an intercept course. Before she could even think of what to do next, the intercom crackled and the signal from Jay broke up and was lost.
‘Razor Three, come in!’ she yelled.
A burst of static replied and then she heard Jay’s panicked voice reach her faintly over the intercom.
‘There’s too many!’
Instinct took over and she called back to him. ‘Intercept course, battle flight, now!’
Jay responded with admirable efficiency, both Raythons hauling round to point directly at their attackers, narrowing their target profile.
‘Jink and weave!’ Mayae shouted.
Both Raythons began weaving left and right, making themselves almost impossible to hit as the vicious looking Veng’en Scythe fighters raced toward them. Curved and narrow like a blade, with long plasma cannons on the tip of each wing like the talons of a bird of prey, the Scythe fighters were less manoeuvreable than the Raythons but packed much heavier firepower.
Then the Veng’en opened fire.
Plasma blasts from thirty Scythe fighters, each firing two rounds, blazed in a dense cloud toward Mayae as she weaved her fighter left and right. The shots zipped across the empty space between the closing fighters in little more than the blink of an eye, and she saw her cockpit briefly illuminated a bright red as the cloud of shots flashed by at tremendous velocity.
Mayae stopped weaving and saw one round skim her wing, the Raython rocking violently as the plasma scorched the Raython’s panels.
Then she heard the scream.
Jay’s fighter was hit head on by three plasma blasts, the rounds smashing through the Raython and shattering it into a blossoming fireball of burning fuel and shattered components as Jay’s scream was cut off abruptly and his craft disintegrated into nothingness.
Mayae called out helplessly and then the swarm of Veng’en fighters roared past her, scattering to avoid collisions. Mayae threw her throttles wide open as she pointed her Raython toward the oncoming defensive screen of Renegade Squadron and hoped that she could outrun the Veng’en craft.
She craned her neck around her seat and saw through the rear of her canopy the Veng’en fighters wheeling around to pursue her. She looked back ahead and at the last moment saw the Veng’en cruiser’s plasma batteries open up, a ripple of red flashes illuminating the massive hull as she opened fire.
Mayae glimpsed her SAD, her own fighter deep within the translucent red sphere surrounding the Veng’en cruiser. In her haste to escape and evade the fighters, she had forgotten about the cruiser’s guns.
Huge plasma rounds rocketed up toward her and she yanked her control column hard left and then hard right, hauling the Raython into tight turns to avoid the savage onslaught of cannon fire. Blasts rocked the little fighter as the rounds detonated all around her, shuddering through the fuselage as though it was being hammered by asteroids.
She glimpsed a bright crimson flare directly ahead, as though a giant star had burst into life before her very eyes, and then she felt an instant of unimaginable pain as her entire body was vaporised as the enormous plasma round smashed straight through her Raython and obliterated it from existence.
*
‘Razor Three and Four are lost, sir!’ Mikhain called across the bridge, his features twisted with regret and anger. ‘They got in too close.’
Captain Idris Sansin clenched his fist and hammered it against his seat.
‘To hell with the warning shots! Fire now! Fire everything right at them and close for combat!’ he bellowed.
The Atlantia shuddered as its batteries opened fire upon the Veng’en cruiser, a broad salvo of fearsome blue–white rounds rocketing away toward the distant cruiser. The plasma charges raced past the defensive fighter screen and Idris glimpsed the Veng’en cruiser’s hull briefly illuminated by the shots before they ploughed into it one after the other in a blaze of impacts.
The Veng’en cruiser turned slowly away as the blasts hammered its hull, a trail of debris spilling from the impact areas and a glowing line of fires appearing as the wreckage cleared. Idris watched her lumbering to one side, her fighters turning toward the Atlantia’s defensive screen of Raythons.
He was about to order the Atlantia’s fighters to engage when Lael spoke, her tone distinctly surprised.
‘They’re not returning fire, sir,’ she said.
The captain hesitated, watching the Veng’en cruiser as it slowed and stopped in an attack position high on the Sylph’s starboard bow. Lael’s voice reached him again as though from a distance.
‘They’ve aimed all of their weapons at the Sylph, sir, and they’re signalling us.’
***
Kordaz stared up at the sick bay ceiling as he curled his long fingers back against the restraints that pinned his thick wrists to the gurney, and from the tips he extended a single, pale coloured talon. The razor–sharp talon worked against the stiff restraint, a dense fabric tough enough to never be snapped but vulnerable to being sliced.
All Veng’en were patient. A trait evolved while hunting in the dense forests, where it took time for the wildlife to return to normal after a Veng’en had passed through, hunters might remain crouched for endless hours awaiting the perfect moment to ambush passing prey without alerting dangerous predators to their presence. Veng’en were capable of extraordinary feats of mental endurance and Kordaz was no exception.
He had survived the cold of the Sylph when required by remaining crouched in a foetal ball on his feet, his muscles tensed to generate heat and keep his core temperature much higher than his surroundings. When doing so close to the engine bays he had often heard the Infector swarms hiding inside clatter against the doors, sensing his presence. He had endured the appalling human food even though some of it had made him vomit, taking small amounts at a time and allowing his stomach the chance to adapt to the unfamiliar textures and contents. The reduced meat in his diet had left Kordaz weak, but not so feeble as to reject the idea of escape.
Now his people were here and he had news for them. Great news.
His talon sliced through the restraint on his right wrist. Kordaz did not move as the restraint fell away, but instead swivelled his eyes to look at the two doctors. Both were sitting on chairs nearby. One was slumped asleep, his eyes closed and his arms folded across his chest. The other was engrossed in a data pad.
Kordaz looked at the sick bay entrance. He could not see the Marine sentries outside but he knew they must be there. The human general would not have been so unwise as to leave the room unguarded.
Kordaz considered his options. He was normally more than a match, physically, for two humans, but his condition had deteriorated over the months he had spent alone aboard the Sylph and he could not be sure of disarming the guards before they could get a shot off. He did, however, have the element of surprise and the doctors were unarmed.
Kordaz slowly reached across to his left wrist and loosened the restraint there, slipping his thickly muscled arm out and then laying the restraint loosely across his wrist again. He lay back and then coughed quietly, a rasping sound that immediately attracted the attention of the doctor with the data pad.
The man stood up and walked across to the gurney, apparently unconcerned.
‘Do you need water?’ he asked.
Kordaz sat bolt upright as one hand flashed to the doctor’s mouth and sealed it shut as the other grabbed him about the throat and yanked him close, one sharp talon pressed tight against the pulsing thread of an artery in the doctor’s neck.
‘One squeeze and you’ll bleed out,’ Kordaz hissed, his bright yellow eyes glaring into the doctor’s. ‘Loosen the straps.’
The doctor’s eyes swivelled to the restraints around Kordaz’s ankles. With one hand, the doctor reached out and worked them loose. Kordaz pulled his legs up slightly, making sure that they still responded as they should, and then clambered off the gurney as he kept the terrified doctor pinned to his chest.
The man’s eyes brimmed with tears, his fear rank and shameful as Kordaz tightened his grip around the doctor’s throat. The man gagged, squirmed for a moment, and then his eyes rolled up into his sockets and he slumped in Kordaz’s powerful arms.
Kordaz set him down on the deck and then crept toward the sick bay entrance.
He glimpsed the edge of a Marine’s camouflaged fatigues on one side of the door, and then the barrel of a rifle held at port arms on the other. So uniform, so predictable. Kordaz slipped close to the doors but not close enough to activate them, sucked in a deep breath of air, and then waved his hand to activate the doors.
They slid open and he lunged out, grabbed the Marine on his left in a ferocious grip and hurled him into the Marine on the right with enough force to lift both men off the deck. The soldiers smashed together, their weapons pinned between them as they crashed down onto the deck, and Kordaz leaped upon them and pinned them down beneath his immense weight.
Kordaz grabbed the Marine beneath him by his hair and yanked his head up before smashing it down into the face of the Marine beneath them both. A sickening crack echoed through the corridor as the two soldiers slumped unconscious. Kordaz climbed off their bodies and grabbed their plasma rifles, slinging one across his back by its strap as he hefted the other into a firing position and crouched down alongside the fallen men. He rifled through their webbing pouches and pocketed their plasma magazines.
‘Don’t move.’
Kordaz froze and then slowly looked over his shoulder.
The doctor who had apparently been asleep crouched behind him, a small scalpel pressed against Kordaz’s neck as he pressed his weight against Kordaz and the rifle slung across his back.
‘I know where to cut you, so drop the rifles,’ the doctor said.
Kordaz peered at the little man whose face was trembling with supressed fear, his eyes wobbling in their sockets. But despite his fear, the doctor held his ground. The blade was pressed against a tiny spot where, beneath the bulky plates of cartialage that protected Kordaz’s spine, a small gap led to an artery. The humans had learned a great deal about Veng’en biology during their many wars.
Slowly, Kordaz reached around with his left arm as he kept his gaze upon the doctor’s fearful eyes, and his long finger curled around the trigger of the rifle slung across his back.