Warlord's Invasion (Starfight Book 1) Read online

  It was a simple fact that even technologically inferior species could inflict damage on his armada. It had happened before and from appearances, it looked like it could happen, again. Hal-Dorat reminded himself that it was impossible not to suffer some losses in battle. He would, of course, have to take full responsibility when he reported the outcome to the Great Commander.

  The Great Commander would understand, Hal-Dorat thought...He always did. Despite all appearances of might and ambition, the Great Commander never inflicted his wrath on him personally, although he couldn’t say the same about the other subjugators. The Great Commander had always taken a liking to Hal-Dorat, much like a father would to a favorite son.

  He shook his head. It was too early to think about the consequences of suffering damage to a few of his warships. The missiles had not even impacted, yet.

  He focused on the incoming missiles carefully...

  Time passed. He eyed the five thousand Pra missiles as they now accelerated to half the speed of light towards his warships. Soon, they closed to within one hundred C’lats of his warships and he witnessed his anti-missile countermeasure net fire. The net was made of thousands of drones that could fire multi-dimensional flak warheads. They detonated, and the region all around the Pra missiles shattered with millions of explosions that warped space itself. By the time the Pra missiles had penetrated through his defensive flak layer, less than four out of ten still functioned. Still, it was about two thousand Pra missiles. These remaining missiles veered towards only a few of his leading warships and slammed into the shields.

  Immediately, damage alarms rang throughout his fleet, centered around his forward ships. A hundred or so casualties blinked out of existence. One hundred Cats had been killed. His readouts reported that the forward armor on those ships had suffered severe damage, almost enough to penetrate the inner layers on those same ships.

  “Lance commanders, report!” Hal-Dorat demanded.

  “Forty-seven dead on the Krashlah! Krashlah’s forward nano hull has suffered extensive damage! Forward weapon bay has been dematerialized!”

  “Eighty-two dead on Putah!”

  And so the reports came in...

  Hal-Dorat hissed. This was something new. The Pra had indeed wounded him. However, the damage was minor. None of his ships had lost engines or structural integrity. The singularity cores on his ships had suffered no damage. His fleet remained strong. It was just the frontal armor and a minor part of the frontal inner hull on board those ships that had been damaged.

  With the worst over, Hal-Dorat immediately gave the order, “Lance commanders, decentralize the fleet. The Pra’s main threat to us have been depleted. We can now spread out and chase the Pra’s fleeing warships individually. Let the hunt begin!”

  “With pleasure, Subjugator!”

  Hal-Dorat licked his lips at the idea that the greatest part of the killing was about to begin.

  Shuttlecraft A1-01a

  Cockpit…

  Vier Kleingelt’s body buckled against her seat straps as the evacuation shuttle pulled its highest G’s. The inertial compensators on the shuttle were working at maximum, but she had told the pilot next to her to accelerate as fast as the shuttle’s hull integrity could withstand. Unlike the standard typical space fighter, the evacuation shuttle had four gravitic emitters instead of one. Normally, these emitters could bask the shuttle in an even layer of gravity, thus giving the crews a sense that nothing was accelerating even if the shuttle was pulling over one thousand G’s. In this instance, all four gravitic emitters were operating in overdrive, which caused gravitic inequalities throughout the hull of the shuttle. The shuttle was pulling one thousand two hundred G’s of acceleration, as fast as possible without flattening the human crews into pulp.

  The evac shuttle had one extraordinary thing that a mark nine fighter did not. It had a hyperspace translator device. This device, operating by creating a shear in space-time, could open the portal to another smaller universe called hyperspace. However, it could only be used outside a star’s gravity well.

  Vier eyed the 3D minimap on her cockpit display. It told her that the distance between her shuttle and the hyper limit was approximately two astronomical units. At 1200 G’s, it would take approximately thirty minutes before her shuttle could enter hyperspace. The other dots on the minimap represented other escape shuttles as well as enemy warships. She had told her escape shuttles to follow different routes, because banding together would allow them to be more easily killed. As a result, the friendly escape craft veered in every direction.

  Already, the alien warships had altered course to intercept all the friendly targets trying to make it to the system’s gravity well.

  “Uh, admiral? We have a problem,” the pilot noted.

  “Tell me about it,” Vier sighed.

  “One of the alien warships have launched a missile at us.”

  “What type of missile?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. Sensors couldn’t read the missile nor have the system ever encountered it before. It is simply a very fast moving small object similar to the ones that had silenced all the fighters.”

  Vier gulped. Was the same fate about to happen to her and Shenks as it had happened to the fighter pilots? “What is its exact trajectory, chief?”

  “It’s heading straight for us, ma’am. It’s adjusting course to whatever I adjust.”

  “Time to intercept?”

  “Sixteen minutes, ma’am.”

  Vier felt a clump in her throat. She knew that the VA-89 evacuation shuttle had some countermeasures for just this type of situation, but she didn’t know effective they would be against a missile with unknown technology. Her shuttle did not have any more advantages in terms of countermeasures compared to the mark nine fighters. “Fire countermeasures at optimum range, chief.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She began unbuckling her seat straps. She wanted to talk to Shenks.

  “Admiral? I’m not sure if that’s wise,” the pilot remarked.

  Vier nodded, but ignored the warning. When she was free, she climbed to the back door. Despite the sudden G’s, she found she could navigate through the cockpit.

  She entered the passenger compartment. She saw dozens of wounded crewmen all tied to seats. She nodded to them before reaching a particular stretcher.

  In front of her, her friend Anton Shenks lay strapped against a medical stretcher. The stretcher itself was tied against the seats surrounding it. The medical crews had ceased to work on him, as the environment was impossible. All everyone could do was think about getting out of the system alive.

  He had bandages all around his body. His blue-black captain’s uniform was covered in blood.

  “Anton,” Vier whispered. “We’re still alive. Can you hear me?”

  Shenks grunted.

  “We’re going to make it out of here. We’re pulling as many G’s as we can.”

  A moment’s pause. “You’re lying,” he groaned. “I always know when you’re lying.”

  Vier smiled. “You’re right, Anton. It doesn’t look good at all. In fifteen minutes, we’re going to be hit by some type of missile. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us after that.”

  Shenks grinned, too. His smile flexed his bandages. “Just meet it and find out. It can’t be worse than what I’m in.”

  Vier fell into the seat behind him. She fastened herself to the seat straps. “This might be the last time we’ll have an honest talk. You would think I’ve said everything I wanted to say...” Vier suddenly felt a funny feeling in her eyes. When she touched them, she surprisingly found tears. It was odd. The last time she cried was when she had been a kid, when her mother had died. She sat there, beside Shenks, for five minutes, which was a near eternity to her. It was the type of silence that only true friends could share, the type of silence that only occurred between two bonded souls.

  When it was over, she said, “I’ll see you later, Anton.”

  When she returned t
o the cockpit, the shuttle chief was busy talking to someone on the tachyon channels. “Yes, sir. The admiral is on board.”

  Vier buckled herself in the seat beside the pilot and eyed the minimap, again. The cockpit was filled with electronic chatter. “What’s happening, chief?”

  The pilot looked at Vier with a glimpse of hope. “The captain of the cruiser Dartmouth has decided to alter course to intercept the missile. He’ll use his entire missile countermeasure suit to take down that one missile!”

  “Why is he doing this?”

  “Because he wants to save you, ma’am!”

  Vier nodded. What could she say? No, don’t? She wanted to live damn it, and if that meant accepting the help of another officer, she was glad to accept it. “Tell him ‘thank you’.”

  “I will, ma’am.”

  As the alien missile slowly crept up to her shuttle, she watched on the minimap display as the much bigger fast-attack human cruiser Dartmouth accelerated into position in between the missile and herself.

  “The Dartmouth is firing its ECMs and counter missile gravitrons.”

  Vier nodded. Gravitron darts had little effect against a wave of alien missiles but against one alien missile, who knew? If all the gravitron darts from a human warship concentrated onto an alien missile, just by luck the missile could be taken out.

  Just then, the missile on the minimap blinked away. It was gone.

  Suddenly, the com chatter in the cockpit rose to a new level. Despite the shuttle chief’s exaltation, Vier couldn’t help but feel something was not entirely right. Then, she heard it.

  The captain of the cruiser Dartmouth, which was 40,000 kilometers away, was shouting in the com channels, “God, throw me a bike! That EMP blast, or whatever it was, just smacked our main computer. It’s—it is doing something weird! But thank god for fail safes! Someone reboot the damn thing, reboot it and get us out of here! All our electronics are fuzzing in and out.”

  “Total damage?” Vier asked.

  “Damage to our systems was minor, admiral,” the captain responded. “We have to thank our cruiser-level grav shields for that.”

  “Thank you for everything, Captain.”

  “No problem, Admiral.” Then she heard someone speak far away from the captain’s mic. The captain responded with unkind words, then spoke directly to Vier through the net, “Admiral, you better get the hell out. One of the alien warships is heading straight for us.”

  “Confirmed,” the shuttle chief said from next to her. “One of the alien warships is altering course to intercept both of us.”

  Vier blinked for a second, then understood. The aliens, whatever they were called, must have analyzed the situation and responded appropriately. They must have seen an entire human warship diverting its course to intercept a missile heading for an anonymous shuttle. Therefore, the aliens must have believed this particular shuttle held something important. Therefore, the aliens were now diverting even more resources to take down this shuttle. “Understood.”

  “The alien warship is firing more missiles at us,” the shuttle pilot announced.

  Vier eyed the minimap. Indeed, dozens more missiles were heading her way.

  “Admiral,” the captain said on the tachyon net. “We’ll take down as many of those missiles as we can, but you should get the hell out. We’ll stay behind you.”

  No, you won’t, thought Vier. That’s what she should have said. Instead, she was silent. All she could think about was getting herself and Shenks out.

  The captain must have picked up on her silence because he said, “It’s not a matter for you to decide, Admiral. I’m the one making the decisions and I’m doing it. Just make sure everyone remembers me. Compton out!”

  The net with the Dartmouth closed.

  Vier bit her lip. All four hundred crewmembers were on the Dartmouth. The captain is sacrificing them all in a split decision to save my life.

  Her next thoughts weren’t even about gratitude, they were about making sure he succeeded. Otherwise, Captain Compton’s decision to stick behind her to ward off the missiles would be in vain. She thought about it. Even if the Dartmouth tried with all its best ability, it probably wouldn’t take out all of the missiles heading for her. It might take out some. But as human and alien technological interaction has demonstrated so far, those missiles had some type of drive that was mostly impervious to gravitron countermeasures. She calculated the trajectories and accelerations then concluded that the Dartmouth would not succeed before some of those missiles hit her shuttle. “Chief, can you accelerate faster?”

  “We’re already beyond maximum tolerance, admiral. 1200 G’s is more than the shuttle’s structural integrity and inertial compensators can hold.”

  “Push it further.”

  “Admiral, that is not recommended. The shuttle will break apart at those accelerations.”

  “That’s fine, chief. We’ll die otherwise, anyway.”

  The shuttle chief paused. Underneath that brown helmet, he seemed to pause. “Alright, jerking to 1300 G’s. Hold on.”

  Suddenly, Vier was pushed back into her seat even more. A metal groan sounded throughout the shuttle. People shouted in the passenger compartment.

  “Structural limits far exceeded, admiral. I don’t know how long we’ll be able to hold this acceleration!”

  Vier nodded. She kept her eyes on the minimap. The missiles came closer.

  The human cruiser Dartmouth continued its acceleration behind her shuttle, staying behind her at a certain distance. Vier knew the Dartmouth had an acceleration tolerance that was significantly greater than her shuttle. It could, by itself, accelerate past her shuttle and translate into hyperspace before her, but Compton chose not to. It stayed behind to protect her.

  The man himself—she hardly knew him. He was just another captain within the food chain who’d been assigned to her system because of some higher up in the military bureaucracy.

  “Ma’am,” the shuttle chief said. “Even with this acceleration, we will not be able to escape the accelerations of the incoming alien missiles.”

  Vier nodded. “I know.”

  The minutes ticked by. Hull stresses created loud jarring noises throughout the shuttle. People within the compartment voiced trembling concerns. “Are we going to be okay?” they asked.

  Vier did not answer them. She kept watching the monitor. The missiles came closer and closer.

  Then, when they entered the counterbattery range of the Dartmouth, the bigger ship fired all its gravitron beams. One missile was taken out. Then another. But there were dozens of them.

  The Dartmouth isn’t taking out the missiles fast enough. They’re going to surpass the Dartmouth and hit us.

  She watched in a stunned silence. Then something happened that utterly surprised her. Just as the leading missile was about to pass the Dartmouth and speed toward her shuttle, that missile detonated on the Dartmouth instead. Then another, and another. Every missile within the enemy missile salvo smashed into the Dartmouth.

  Then she gasped. A sudden realization dawned upon her. The reason those missiles appeared to be targeting her shuttle was to get the Dartmouth to slow its speed to protect her—the real target of those missiles hadn’t been her at all, it was the Dartmouth!

  Our shuttle is just not that important. I am not that important.

  The enemy believed that a human warship was far more important than whatever passenger her shuttle carried, so much that it used the shuttle’s apparent importance to the warship to prevent the warship from escaping into hyperspace.

  “Open a channel to the Dartmouth,” Vier ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am…Channel open.”

  “Dartmouth, do you read? What is the status of your ship? Damage?”

  There was screaming in the other end. People cried for help. The captain yelled amidst a flurry of activity. After a long pause, Captain Compton’s voice returned, “This is Compton. We’ve suffered severe damage to our primary propulsion systems. Our hypers
pace translator is about to lose containment in its antimatter stores. We’re jettisoning it.”

  “But you won’t be able to translate into hyperspace,” Vier stated.

  “It doesn’t matter. Our gravitic drive is offline. We won’t make it to the edge of the gravity well before the enemy warship overtakes us.”

  Vier paused. “Do you have shields and weapons?”

  “Gravshield generators are all operational. The main graviton shield has been broken, but we’re regenerating it with new gravitons. Primary power is still online. The main lances are fully powered.” He paused. “Think of it this way, admiral. You’ll get to witness how well our warships do against the enemy warships in a knife fight.” Compton then yelled at someone far away. “Sorry, I must go. The ship needs me. There’s little time before that thing gets here. Look, Admiral. You and I are pragmatists. We have to be to get this far in the chain of command. View the situation this way: you get a free ticket out of here. It’s obvious by now that they aren’t focused on taking you out or they could have easily done so already. I’ll transmit all our data logs to you until we’re unable. Admiral, make sure high command makes full use of it. Make sure they pay for what they did here. Closing channel. Compton out.”

  “Goodbye, Compton.”

  “Goodbye, Admiral.” Compton yelled again to someone far away, then the transmission went quiet.

  There was silence in the cockpit as she stared at the minimap on the monitor. “Time to hyper transit?”

  “Twelve minutes, Admiral.”

  More minutes passed. Idly, she watched as the two dots came close to each other. Then, the enemy warship entered weapons range of the Dartmouth. The Dartmouth fired its main Polaron beam lance, lashing out at the alien ship like an injured dog baring its teeth. The alien ship countered using some unknown weapon that the shuttle’s sensors couldn’t analyze. A sudden bright flash of light appeared right on top the Dartmouth and it careened in a random direction. Vier knew its gravitic drive was down, so its sudden movement couldn’t be because of an evasive maneuver the captain performed.