The bridge fell silent as Evelyn walked in, followed by Bra’hiv and Andaim and then a stream of fighter pilots, patches on their flight suits denoting their membership of either the
Reapers
or the
Renegades
. They assembled below the command platform as the captain stood.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. ‘Our sensors prior to super–luminal leap confirmed that the Veng’en cruiser was intending to pursue us. It would seem almost certain that they will do so now with a vengeance, with the aim of eradicating us from existence. Their commander, Ty’ek, is aggressive but inexperienced. I can only assume that the Word has decimated the ranks of the Veng’en in open conflict just as it did our own people on Ethera.’
Idris rested his hands on the railings before him as he gathered his thoughts.
‘Ty’ek cannot be reasoned with. He seeks only revenge. His fighters still outnumber ours two to one at best and his vessel boasts twice the Atlantia’s firepower. If we face him in open battle on an even playing field, this time we surely will be destroyed.’
Idris smiled grimly.
‘Which is why I intend to level that field a little. We will draw the Veng’en into a battle on our terms. Renegades, you will maintain the close support role and ensure that none of the Veng’en fighters come close enough to effect a sustained attack. Reapers, you will lead the assault on the cruiser itself in an attempt to disable her.’
Evelyn’s eyes widened as Andaim spoke up. ‘One squadron against a fully–armed battle cruiser?’
‘Atlantia will support you with salvos from our main guns as usual, but we will not be engaging the cruiser in direct combat.’
‘I don’t get it?’ Evelyn said. ‘How can we defeat her then?’
‘Because we’re going to let Ty’ek think that he’s got us cornered and make his aggression and spite work in our favour.’
Lael’s voice spoke over the gathered pilots and soldiers. ‘Sub luminal velocity in sixty seconds.’
‘This is it,’ the captain said and clapped his hands together once loudly. ‘Get to your ships and prepare for launch. You’ll realise what I have in mind as soon as you get spaceborne. Make every shot count!’
The pilots turned and jogged from the bridge as Evelyn stared up at Idris.
‘If Ty’ek doesn’t go for it..,’ she said.
Idris smiled down at her.
‘He’ll go for it,’ he replied. ‘Now get out of here and go raise hell, it’s what you’re best at.’
*
‘Where are they?’
The temperature on the bridge of the Veng’en cruiser was sufficiently hot that a faint haze of moisture hung in the air, like the veils of mist that enveloped the tropics of their home planet, Wraiythe. Moisture glistened on the walls as it condensed against the cooler surfaces as Ty’ek paced up and down.
Although skilled metallurgists and ship builders, the Veng’en were by their nature forest dwellers and to some extent the huge ship mimicked their homeworld, the walls painted shades of green and black, the lighting a deep yellow hue reminiscent of the hot star around which their homeworld orbited. Control consoles were also slick with moisture, touch–screens sealed air–tight to protect the electrical circuits within.
The main viewing panel remained black, but a few of the ship’s passive sensors were able to detect the gravitational waves rippling behind the Atlantia as she fled through the space time continuum.
‘Three minutes ahead,’ came the reply from Ty’ek’s First Officer, Rivlek. ‘We shall have her before long, captain. She cannot flee forever.’
Ty’ek knew that no vessel could remain at super–luminal velocity indefinitely. The huge energies required were a drain on any vessel’s resources and required replenishment before further leaps could be made. The Atlantia, a medium–sized frigate, could maintain super–luminal only for a few days before she would be required to replenish her hydrogen fuel.
Her captain, no doubt, was using the time to prepare his people for a battle that they could not possibly win. Sansin had duped Ty’ek twice in a row, but this time there was nowhere for him to run. The nearest planetary systems were several weeks’ away even at super–luminal velocity. The Atlantia would be forced to slow down to refuel in deep space, alone and with nowhere to hide, and when it did Ty’ek would be there and ready.
‘Maintain pursuit course and keep the fighters and our troops at full readiness,’ Ty’ek ordered. ‘I want to know about it the moment the Atlantia returns to sub–luminal velocity.’
‘Yes, captain,’ Rivlek replied.
Ty’ek stepped off the bridge and crouched down on all fours as he launched himself down a deeply winding corridor. The walls were not of bare metal but lined with dense, twisted vines as though the entire vessel had been overcome by jungle growth. Ty’ek leaped from vine to vine, sweeping down the corridor far faster than any human being could run until he reached a fast–moving channel of water that flowed like a river through the ship. Ty’ek dropped into the river and let it carry him at high speed through the massive hull.
The forested interior of the cruiser was more than just a deliberate attempt by its architects to preserve something of their homeworld for crewmembers destined to spend months, or years, among the stars while at the same time providing a source of oxygen for that same crew to breathe. The hot, dense air was also a deterrent to any enemy attempting to board the ship, the lungs of most species ill–adapted to sub–tropical climates. Likewise, the act of moving around the ship kept the crew’s cardiovascular prowess at a high standard unlike many other species, whose muscles and bones degraded in strength with long exposure to low or zero gravity. The cruiser maintained a quasi–gravity not through the electromagnet method favoured by the human’s Colonial forces but via massive, fast–rotating centrifuges arranged along the cruiser’s keel. Loaded with particles responsible for giving objects mass, the gravitational waves emitted by the centrifuges produced a near–normal gravitational field within the vessel.
Rage seethed through Ty’ek’s veins much as the river seethed through the cruiser. All Veng’en’s hated humans, they always had, but Ty’ek had more reason than most. His father had fought at Mal’Oora, a savage engagement that had cost more Veng’en lives than most other battles put together. Fought when a Veng’en battle fleet had encountered a human battle group near the small moon of Mal’Oora, a strategically valuable forest world in Veng’en territory, the engagement had lasted more than three days and involved heavy fighting both in orbit and on the moon’s surface. Both sides had been equally matched: the humans had more vessels and soldiers, but the Veng’en knew the territory better and the moon’s humid atmosphere favoured them in combat.
The engagement had ended more due to a mutual lack of fuel and ammunition than any decisive victory being attained, and as both fleets limped away with their dead, dying and injured numbering in the thousands, so one Veng’en of immense importance to Ty’ek had been counted among the deceased: his father.
No single event in Ty’ek’s life had fuelled him for a life of combat and revenge more than the loss of his beloved father. As was customary in Veng’en culture, his father had abandoned Ty’ek into his mother’s care as a newborn. It was the sole aim of any young male Veng’en to come to their father’s attention not through such feeble notions as compassion or love, but through actions on the battlefield. All that a father needed to know was his son’s name, and vice versa. Sooner or later they would cross paths, and if the son’s or the father’s actions were valiant enough, they would learn of each other’s presence and be reunited as warriors upon a field of victory.
Ty’ek’s father died in the glory of combat long before his son ever had the chance to meet him.
A series of exits flashed by as Ty’ek floated at speed through the ship. He waited until he reached the one he wanted and pushed to one side of the channel, reaching up for the vines that dangled outside the exit and catching them in one hand.
His momentum pulled on the vines and he swung around and up out of the water to land smoothly on a walkway. Ty’ek leaped into the adjoining exit corridor, which led a short distance to the cruiser’s landing bays. The stench of burning foliage and scorched metal tainted the air as he strode through a bulkhead and into the bays.
The Atlantia’s bombardment of the bay had shattered the hull of the cruiser, the blasts probing deep into the vessel. Fourteen Veng’en lives had been lost, their corpses sucked out into the freezing void of space, the deceased denied the honour of dying in battle against a truly hated enemy.
Ty’ek took in the scene of devastation. It looked somewhat as though a city had been built inside a forest and then the whole burned to the ground. Thick smoke coiled around the scorched stumps of giant trees that sprawled upward around the edges of the huge hangar, their immense limbs helping to support the ceiling. Beneath them were the smouldering remains of several Scythe fighters, their pilot’s charred corpses still strapped into the cockpits where they had burned to death.
With the bays doors open and fighter craft landing when the Atlantia had struck, the bays had been exposed to the vacuum of space. The blasts had then ripped through bulkheads and exposed the interior of the ship, sucking crewmen out and providing extra fuel for the flames. Interior shield doors had automatically closed when the fires had been detected reaching beyond the landing bays, preventing the blazes from probing too far into the cruiser, but not before considerable damage had been done to the ship’s crew and Scythe fighters.
‘How many do we have left?’ he asked the first officer he came across, whose uniform was stained with soot and grime and blood.
‘Two squadrons,’ came the barked reply. ‘We lost a quarter of our vessels in the attack, and several more to the Raythons in battle. We’re not ready for this captain. Our people are not experienced enough to attack a ship like the Atlantia and…’
Ty’ek turned, his shoulder whipping around as the back of his fist smacked across the officer’s jaw and sent him sprawling onto the filthy deck. The crewmen working nearby stopped what they were doing and watched as Ty’ek stamped his clawed foot on the officer’s chest and from a concealed sheath in his sleeve produced a blade of silvery metal almost as long as his hand.
Ty’ek leaned down, the point of the blade pressed against the officer’s neck.
‘You would run away from a human?’ he hissed.
The officer shook his head, his teeth bared and his eyes glowing with rage.
Ty’ek pushed away from the fallen Veng’en officer and glared at the crew around him.
‘I want every last available fighter ready for launch within the hour. If there are no pilots remaining then you shall man them yourselves!’
The crew looked at him in silence, not one of them daring to oppose Ty’ek.
The Veng’en captain turned slowly to leave, just as a communication console beeped at him. He walked across to it and pressed a button to see a screen flicker into life and an image of his second–in–command, Rivlak, staring back at him.
‘They are slowing, captain,’ he informed Ty’ek. ‘We shall be upon them within minutes!’
Ty’ek felt a soaring excitement and anticipation rise up within him.
‘Prepare for battle!’ he shouted.
***
‘All pilots, this way!’
Evelyn jogged alongside her fellow Reaper pilots as they tumbled from the ready room and out into a corridor, carrying their helmets under their arms as they followed the Launch Control Officer toward the launch bays.
‘You got any idea what the captain’s doing?’
Teera was a young female pilot who had joined the squadron only days before having passed her flight training and earned her wings. She was slim like Evelyn, with short–cropped blonde hair and bright blue eyes that matched her skin: the pale blue tint to her was a legacy of being the fifth generation of humans brought up on Oraz, a moon that orbited the blue star Rigelle in an outlying system.
‘I’ve got no idea,’ Evelyn admitted, her legs feeling rubbery as exhaustion threatened to overwhelm her. Even talking seemed to require an immense effort. ‘I just hope it’s going to work.’
The pilots burst out into the launch bay, ranks of Raython fighters lined up alongside the walls with their canopies open and cables snaking from beneath their hulls as groundcrews fussed over them.
‘Reapers to port, Renegades to starboard!’ the LCO yelled as he stopped running and turned to face them. ‘Reapers launch first, you’re on offensive. Renegades, you’re the defensive line – stay close to the Atlantia. All but three of the Raythons are now serviceable: if your fighter is not here then you’re on bridge duty for tactical support. No arguments, just get to your fighters or posts and get out there. Give ‘em hell!’
A brief cheer rang out in the hangar as Evelyn and Teera dashed toward the waiting fighters that bore the growling skull motif of their squadron.
‘Looks like I’m in luck!’ Teera cried in delight as she identified her Raython by its tail–code letters stencilled on the fuselage, parked amid a long line of fighters with cockpits open awaiting their pilots.
Evelyn felt sure that her own Raython would be absent, her flight training incomplete and Andaim having been unwilling to pass her and award her wings. And now, more then ever, Andaim was angry for her deceit and would probably have withdrawn any idea of support. She scanned the long row of waiting fighters and her heart sank as she realised that hers was not among them.
She turned to the LCO, who jabbed a thumb over his shoulder and grinned.
Evelyn looked past him and saw two Raythons being towed out from the maintenance shed that adjoined the launch bay, the craft hovering a few inches above the deck. One bore her tail–code and M.D. G’velle’s name beneath the canopy: the other, that of the Commander of the Air Group, Andaim Ry’ere.
Evelyn saw Andaim walking alongside his Raython, his helmet cradled under his arm as he approached. She walked toward him.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
Andaim nodded, not smiling but not outwardly hostile either. ‘I’ll live. Your Raython has been repaired, refuelled and rearmed and you’re ready to go.’