Starstorm (Starstorm Saga) (14 page)

Akdon stared at the enemy ships on his screen. They were waiting for him. An officer climbed up onto the platform.

“Commander, we are approaching the target. Shall I order our fighters forward?”

“No, wait until the entire fleet is in range, we all attack together. I want the entire Human fleet annihilated and I want it done with a minimum of casualties. We’ve already lost far too many ships in this campaign.”

“Shall we at least send a squad ahead and take out the human straggler.”

Akdon checked the screen. Twenty human fighters were headed back to their fleet and in their wake was a single fighter towing its crippled comrade back to safety. “Don’t bother,” said Akdon. “It’s not worth it.”

Squad Leader Brel’s entire body ached and his head was throbbing as he came to. As he looked around, all he saw was a sea of stars and below him, the enormous ringed planet around which he had been battling. All that separated him from the icy vacuum of space was his flight suit and helmet. By some twist of fate, he had successfully ejected as his ship exploded. He started to push the buttons on the control panel of the transmitter attached to his forearm.

“Krusha...this is Squad Leader Brel...come in....” There was no response. Not even static.

Trey could see the entire Space Force lined up in front of Titan base ready for battle. The twenty Star Swords ahead of him slowed and joined the over two hundred others that were in formation. Trey flew past all the Star Sword and Vostok squadrons. He knew that the enemy was right behind him but no enemy ships appeared to be closing in on him for the moment.

Trey was about to signal the Saratoga to have a service platform ready, but before he could he heard Jack start to cough.

“Jack, are you alright.”

“It looks like I’m running out of air,” said Jack as he coughed again.

“My oxygen reserves must have been damaged. I should have plenty left, but I‘m running out fast.”

“Just hold on there, Jack.” Trey then signaled Saratoga.

“Saratoga, this is Commander Knight. Lieutenant Thunder is running out of air fast. I don’t think he’ll make it to the Saratoga, I’m going to try and get him to a closer carrier.”

“Understood,” said Commander Kelley’s voice over the speaker.

The closest carrier was the Essex. Trey then switched back to Jack.

“Jack, I’m going to drop you off on the Essex.” There was no response. Trey signaled the Essex. “Essex this is Lieutenant Commander Knight of the Saratoga. My wingman is disabled and running very low on oxygen. Request permission to place him on one of your service pads.”

“That’s an affirmative, go ahead,” said a voice from the Essex. Trey towed Jack over the bow of the Essex and placed him on the service pad. He then detached his grapple cable and watched as Jack’s Star Sword was lowered into the Essex’s service hanger.

Trey came about just in time to see the fighting begin. The enemy’s forward fighters had engaged the Star Swords. Trey took a deep breath then headed at full speed to join the battle.

Jack’s lungs were burning for want of air as his ship was lowered into the repair bay of the USS Essex. Finally his cockpit was pulled open and he ripped off his helmet, and sucked in fresh oxygen. Medics unstrapped him and pulled him from the cockpit, a task made quite simple by the fact that there was no gravity.

The medics checked him over while engineers went to work on his Star Sword. Aside from being short of breath, his only injuries were a few minor burns to his hands and face from an overloaded control panel.

“Sir, we better get you to the infirmary.”

“I’m fine!” said Jack more aggressively than he had intended. He then turned to the engineers working on his ship. “I need to get back out there!”

“There’s no chance of that, sir. Your Star Sword has too much damage. It will be hours before it’s capable of space flight.”

“Then I’ll need another fighter.”

“There are no more, sir.”

Jack bit down hard to keep from yelling in frustration. He was safe on a carrier while his comrades were in the middle of a critical battle. He may have been stuck on the sidelines, but he could at least find out what was going on out there. He headed for the Essex’s bridge.

In the laboratory on the Krusha, Kaydan and his assistant were hard at work. Red was still stuck to the table moaning in agony.

“Sub Commander Kaydan, the translation matrix has successfully extracted 100% of the human language from the specimen.”

“Ah finally!” said Kaydan as he worked over the computer console in his laboratory. He turned to his assistant at another terminal. “Enter the entire human language into a translation chip and cross it with ours. I’m still working on the neural re-sequence program.”

The assistant placed a microchip into his console. A moment later he removed it and handed it to Kaydan.

Red lay attached to the table. His mind was throbbing in pain. Wires and electrodes were attached to his head. Red had known nothing but pain since he had awoken in the alien laboratory. Finally the pain stopped. He looked around with his eyes. The two creatures in there were talking in their incomprehensible language. One of them then walked over to him carrying a small metal chip in his hand. Red struggled with all his strength against the force holding him to the table and winced in anticipation of pain. Every time that creature had approached him in the past, it had been to cause him some torturous experience. But it was to no avail.

The creature placed the chip on his neck and it stuck there. A moment later, Red heard a searing shrieking sound like a banshee. His head soared with pain for several moments and then he heard a voice say: “Can you understand me?” Red squinted his eyes into focus and looked at the creature in a startled expression. “Can you understand me!” yelled the creature.

Red managed to croak out a “Yes...” which Kaydan heard in his own language. With that Kaydan turned and said to his assistant “Continue to work on the re-sequence program. I shall return shortly. Do not speak with the Human.”

“Yes, Sub Commander.”

Kaydan then exited through the large double doors. Red was utterly amazed by this latest development.

Chapter Twelve

A
t Doran’s order, all two-hundred-fifty fighters had surged forward. Trey had flown straight into the fray after he had dropped off Jack. Star Swords, Vostoks and Zidian fighters were all around like a swarm of insects. Trey could see the enemy fleet ships around which they were battling. Trey heard a jumble of squadron leaders on his receiver all trying to give orders to their wingmen and make the attack as orderly as possible. Trey fell behind one of the enemy fighters and opened fire. His plasma bursts passed through the alien’s useless shields as if they were not even there and impacted on the craft causing an explosion which consumed the craft in a ball of fire. Trey also noticed that the alien pilots weren’t flying quite as well as before.

Could it be that they now feel some measure of fear?

Trey hardly had time to ponder this for at that moment an enemy craft dove at him with its weapons blazing then came back up behind him and began to pursue him. Trey did a nose dive and then flew along the hull of the enormous enemy command ship, dodging the blue laser blasts being thrown at him from its gun emplacements. The Zidian fighter did not let up his pursuit. Trey headed straight for one of the large blade-like pylons jutting out of the hull, then at the last possible second, pulled up just barely missing it. The pursuing Zidian fighter was unable to pull up in time and crashed into the pylon. The resulting explosion caused a great deal of damage to the pylon.

Relieved, Trey started to go after more enemy fighters. Then surveying the damage to the alien command ship he changed his mind. He dove on the command ship and started firing his guns. The enemy gun emplacements sent far greater amounts of fire at him, now that they didn’t have one of their own on his tail. Trey skillfully evaded the enemy fire. He squeezed the triggers on his wheel, and his plasma bursts smashed into the massive hull. He alone could never do enough damage to it, but other Star Sword and Vostok pilots quickly got the idea and started to make strafing runs on the command ship and many of the other enemy fleet craft.

Red had not tried to speak with the lone alien in the room with him. For one thing he was too terrified to do so, for another, he didn’t think it would do much good. Suddenly, there was an explosion. The ship vibrated and then the lights went out. He slid off the table and hit the floor hard. The lights quickly came back on. Red jumped to his feet. The alien, who had been thrown to the floor, was starting to get up.

Red’s mind switched into a savage survival mode and he wasted no time. He grabbed a large piece of equipment that looked like a very large, advanced microscope and rushed at the alien. The alien looked up just in time to see Red bash it into his face. The Zidian fell and Red jumped on him and hit him twice more smashing his face and as far as Red could tell, killing him.

The Zidian’s blood had splattered all over Red and everywhere else. The blood was a bright reddish orange color. Red took a moment to calm down. He wiped most of the blood off of himself and then pulled on the metal chip attached to his neck. It was attached securely and hurt when he tried to pull it off so he decided to leave it for the time being. He then headed for the large double doors. There was no trace of his clothes in the room but at that moment he didn’t care. There was an odd shaped button on the wall next to the doors. Red hit it hard and the doors sprung open.

He stepped out into a large corridor that went as far as he could see in both directions. He saw some aliens down the corridor to his left, so he went down the corridor the other way. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to accomplish by this, but he was sure of one thing, nothing good could come of staying in that laboratory. As he ran he heard the voices of the aliens behind him.

“It’s loose! It’s loose!”

It?
, thought Red reproachfully and he continued to run.

Akdon was nearly knocked off of his feet when one of his own fighters in close pursuit of a human ship had crashed into one of the Krusha’s four pylons. The resulting explosion had caused power outages and massive amounts of damage. The angry Commander surveyed his control room. Many of his crewmen hadn’t kept their footing and were nursing bloodied fore heads and getting back to their stations.

Damage reports were coming in from all over the ship. The upper pylon had lost all life support and the human fighters were now concentrating most of their attacks on the Krusha and the battle cruisers. Akdon was very frustrated. In all other battles his flagship would have been protected by shields virtually impossible for the weapons of the humans to penetrate. Here his force fields were all but useless and he was taking much more damage than he had ever imagined.

While engineers and technicians struggled to repair the damage and restore life support to the upper pylon, one of his officer’s reported that the human fleet craft were now on approach. This actually pleased Akdon. It meant that he would now be able to use his primary beam weapons. They were useless against the tiny fighters but against the human fleet ships they would wreak havoc just as they had before.

Just then, Kaydan entered the control room and ascended the platform. He had a slight limp so Akdon presumed he had not gotten through the explosion unharmed. “Commander, I have the completed human language downloaded into our computer system and have successfully attached a translation chip to the human specimen. We are now capable of communicating with it.”

“Excellent, Kaydan. What about the neural re-sequencing to suppress his loyalty and enhance his negative feelings toward his own kind?”

“One of my assistants is making the final preparations as we speak.”

“Good.”

Kaydan glanced at the screen that showed the approaching human fleet ships. “The humans have apparently not learned their lesson from last time. Our beam weapons will cut their fleet craft to pieces,” said Kaydan.

“Address the fleet. All cruisers prepare to open fire!”

“Commander Akdon sir!” yelled one of the bridge officers. “The human has escaped the laboratory and is loose!”

“What!” yelled Akdon. His angry outburst was underscored by another explosion. It was not nearly as big as the other one had been, but still sounded as if it had caused some serious damage.

“Commander!” came a voice over the intercom. “All the strafing runs are causing too much damage. There has just been an explosion in the reactor room. The reactor is still on line but we’ve got to repair the damage quickly!”

“All available repair crews are on their way,” roared Akdon. He rounded on Kaydan. “I must attend to this battle. You find that human. I want it alive and undamaged.”

Kaydan nodded and left the control room taking the security officer and two burly guards with him. Akdon started issuing more orders.

“Tell our interceptors to get those fighters! Draw their fire away from our fleet ships!”

Jack entered the bridge of the Essex. It was virtually identical to the bridge of the Saratoga except for a few very minor differences. He was greeted by Captain Hudson who was very near Doran’s age, but taller, and thinner.

“Welcome aboard Lieutenant…?” 

“Thunder, sir. Jack Thunder.” Hudson shook his hand. Over the Captain’s shoulder’s Jack could see the forward view ports and the massive battle. It was in the distance for now, but it was drawing ever nearer by the moment. “What’s going on, sir?”

“Doran has just ordered all fleet craft to attack. We’re going in.”

“I should be out there,” said Jack.

Just then a voice came over the intercom for Hudson. “Sir, the Marines are getting ready.”

“Very well,” 

“Marines?” asked Jack. The Space Force Marine Corps kept a garrison on every ship in the fleet as well as all of America‘s bases and Colonies in space. They were used for security, boarding hostile vessels, and ground assaults.