Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection (75 page)

And now she
had
to find water. Her formerly supple, carefully-moisturized skin cracked and bled. The effect of a lack of internal hydration was magnified by the fact that the air had long since been sucked dry of every drop of humidity. Simply existing in the world drained moisture from her skin and her soul.

The water in the small ponds and streams of the region, while not technically poisonous, was also not especially healthy for humans. She’d been told consuming it was akin to drinking ocean salt water. Still, she’d come dangerously close to doing it anyway when her tongue swelled and her throat became sandpaper scraping against every breath. She was rather proud of herself for resisting. Who knew she possessed such willpower?

She wished there was someone for her to brag smugly to…but everyone was dead. On a world once overflowing with life, there was only death.

She had broken down and messaged her parents on New Orient within hours of the attack to cry for help, but of course no communications were available. Why would there be? Blocking communications must be a triviality to these beasts.

So the galaxy could not hear her cries. She didn’t know if it would care if it did hear them, but it hardly mattered. She had also long since given up on speculating what sin they had committed to deserve such punishment. She didn’t even care anymore.

Her hands clawed at the dirt, and she was again crawling toward the Retreat Center. She’d tried the spaceport first, harbored the tiniest spark of hope she might locate a working shuttle…but the spaceport was gone, replaced by a smoldering crater.

A charred body lay to her left; she scurried past it. It may have been Eliza, or Ariel, she wasn’t sure. Another body among hundreds of others. Thousands, if she crawled far enough.

If she could just get her hands on a little water, she…well, she had no idea what she might do then. It didn’t matter. She would live another minute. It surprised her to realize how much she wanted that.

The shadow of the building drew her in with the promise of safety. Nearly there. The glow of burning buildings and burning trees and burning air lit the night to a terra cotta dusk. Most of the buildings on Gaiae were constructed from indigenous timber; they made for excellent kindling.

Out of the glow one of the tentacled creatures materialized in the distance. It patrolled the street, its spindly arms twisting about as though they sensed where life still dwelled. She clung to the façade and shimmied toward the door. The creature veered the other way, and she slipped in.

The air was no less dry inside, the environmental controls having shut off long ago when the power station exploded. Yet for the first time in endless days she was inside, and it felt
glorious
.

She reminded herself to stay low and below the windows as she hurried toward the kitchen area. The refrigeration system, much like the temperature and humidity controls, had ceased functioning days earlier. She didn’t care.

All thoughts of caution fled as she pulled open the formerly refrigerated drawer and yanked out several packets of water. They spilled across the floor—she scrambled after them, frantic they might vanish. She halted the closest one’s escape and greedily tilted it up.

Bliss more wondrous than even the most fantastic orgasm flooded through her as the tepid water coursed down her throat. She laughed until she choked, coughed half of it up, caught her breath and grabbed another packet.

She was giggling hysterically, water streaming over her chin and down her neck, when the beam from the tentacled ship sliced through her. She was dead before her brain had put aside the euphoria to recognize it had happened.

3

SPACE, NORTH-CENTRAL QUADRANT

D
ESNAN
S
TELLAR
S
YSTEM (
B
ORDER OF
S
ENECAN
F
EDERATION
S
PACE)

W
ERE IT ANY OTHER WORLD
, someone might have noticed when Gaiae disappeared from the grid. But the denizens of the Milky Way were preoccupied with their own problems—most notably an escalating war amongst themselves—and simply couldn’t be bothered with the well-being of a tiny planet in the middle of nowhere inhabited by pseudo-religious zealots.

Track. Drop. Invert. Lock. Fire.

“Down.”

Senecan Federation Commander Morgan Lekkas, for instance, was preoccupied with the eight—well seven now—missiles which had been launched from what was, by all appearances, a solitary Alliance ship protecting the planet of Desna.

Eight missiles normally would not have been much of a problem for her fighter squadron, but her team now constituted a ‘squadron’ only in the official military records. Already down two ships after the Arcadia mission, Commodore Pachis had taken Flight 2 from her to bolster the 1
^st
squadron for the primary offensive on the planet.

Most of the formations comprising the 3
^rd
Wing of the Senecan Federation Southern Fleet had suffered heavy losses in the earlier battle less than a parsec from here. Still, Desna was not believed to be strongly defended either in space or on the ground, so officials far above her rank decided the depleted 3
^rd
Wing possessed the necessary firepower to complete the operation on its own.

With a population of less than fifty thousand, the colony constituted little more than an outpost as the closest Alliance-controlled world to Federation space. Desna possessed a single orbital array and no ground forces. Recent intel acquired on Alliance defense protocols now enabled their electronic warfare vessels to scramble an array’s targeting mechanism, rendering it ineffective while their frigates destroyed the weaponry.

They should have been able to walk in and take it without suffering so much as a scratch.

But it turned out the space above Desna was not entirely undefended. A single stealthed ship using the shadow of Desna’s moon for additional camouflage had launched four missiles before they knew it was there. It had then accelerated fully behind the moon and launched four additional missiles while peeking out the other side.

If she could get to this ship she could take it out, even hampered by a mere five fighters at her side. But before she could do so they needed to take out the missiles which sped on trajectories leading to each of the Senecan frigates, by now spread over megameters as they worked to neutralize the array weapons.

Her left iris shifted a millimeter, and the second of four whispers splayed in her virtual vision sharpened into focus. Five missiles now remained, two of which were approaching dangerously close to the
SFS Preveza
.

Commander Lekkas (Alpha):  Charlie—5. Beta—1. Delta—2. Epsilon, Foxtrot, on me.
Preveza
, two missiles free on your port flank. Recommend evasive maneuvers bearing N 7° to 16°.

Preveza
:  Acknowledged, Commander.              

If the
Preveza
managed to put some distance between itself and the missiles, she would arrive in time. She arced down to drop into the center of a tight v-formation with Epsilon and Foxtrot. The light of Desna’s sun danced off the lustrous bronze hulls of the fighters as they accelerated at full impulse speed into an intercept course.

Earth Alliance Lieutenant Colonel Malcolm Jenner, on the other hand, was preoccupied with the fact that his current circumstances were more than likely the last circumstances he would ever find himself in.

He grasped the railing above the navigation pit and kept his gaze fixed on the tactical map slightly to his left. His knuckles had long since gone white from the fierceness of the grip; he had long since stopped noticing.

He should retreat. 

The
Juno
was out of missiles and too far away for plasma weapons. If he exposed himself and closed the distance enough to use the plasma weapons then he was dead and everyone under his command with him.

He should retreat.

There was no backup. No support. The
Juno
was the sole Alliance vessel for parsecs, sent to Desna as the most token of guards against an offensive.

Even if the missiles he had fired took out all three Senecan frigates—a best-case scenario which had already failed—once the missiles were no longer a threat the fighters were coming for him, and he would not be able to outmaneuver them. He stood a decent chance of taking out one or two, but no more.

He should retreat.

He had advised Rear Admiral Tarone to retreat when they found themselves outnumbered and outgunned at Orellan, and surely the same logic applied here. He was
quite clearly
outnumbered and outgunned.

But he couldn’t abandon an undefended planet and call himself a Marine the next day. His ship was fully functional and wielded unlimited plasma weapons to fire. It was his duty to defend this Alliance world, tiny though it was, until he was no longer capable of doing so.

The 2
^nd
Regiment had been decimated in the ambush at the Orellan asteroid field; only the carrier
EAS Sao Paulo
, his ship and a single fighter survived the encounter. The
Sao Paulo
remained at Fionava, since with no fighter squadrons to transport it had minimal purpose for the moment.

He didn’t know who had decided the
Juno
should be dispatched to ‘guard’ Desna. Tarone had given the order, but it was as likely to have originated from General Foster, if not Strategic Command. Whoever made the decision was an imbecile masquerading in an officer’s uniform. The Senecans had demonstrated the capability to take out orbital arrays in short order at Arcadia. Without the array to provide cover or distract the attackers for a while, there was simply no way for a single frigate to defend a
planet
. It was impossible.

But he had kept his mouth shut, accepted the assignment and frankly hoped the Senecans wouldn’t come for Desna.

He should retreat.

Instead he would do what he could.

“Flight Lieutenant Billoughy, you ready to earn your pay?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Excellent. Navigation: make sure the impulse engine is primed and receiving full power. Weapons: your targets are expected to be Senecan fighter craft. Track them as they approach, and the second one breaches the moon’s profile, you lock and fire. Billoughy: the instant Weapons has fired, you fly us back into the moon’s cover while we acquire a new target.”

“Yes, sir. It’s just….”

“It’s alright, Flight Lieutenant. Speak your mind.”

“Well, if we move around the moon won’t we be exposed to the
rest
of the Senecan ships?”

“Eventually, yes. We will. I need you to use every maneuver you know or have ever heard of to delay that event as long as you can.”

“Understood, sir.”

On the tactical map the final two missiles vanished short of their targets. He swallowed hard and lifted his chin. “Get ready. Here they come.”

Morgan pivoted hard to reverse direction and left the bright plume of the missile’s explosion behind her.

Alpha:  Spread on me. Breach lunar profile 45° breadth. Target is Alliance frigate currently at S 78.29°z-8.05 E
.
Expect hostile fire.

Once locked on a target, plasma weapons tracked it through any evasive maneuvers and speeds up to 0.6 light speed, but the tracking did require line of sight from the weapon system to the target. She knew researchers were developing experimental ‘bending’ weaponry, but until the tech was approved and rolled out, she could not hit the frigate—and it could not hit her—through the physical barrier of the moon’s profile.