No Man's Space 1: Starship Encounter (14 page)

Everything returned to normal after the protests. Port security ensured that nobody returned, and I was fairly sure that they hadn’t picked the diplomatic route. At least we wouldn’t have to fight within the port as well as outside.

Banner and I spent most days on the bridge, devoid of sleep. We should’ve relied on some of the midshipmen more often, but neither of us wanted to return to a destroyed bridge or realize that they’d eaten everything in the wardroom. We didn’t have much liquor left, but teens and alcohol don’t mix well. Midshipmen love alcohol, but alcohol hates them.

“Looks like a quiet night again.” Banner stood beside me and clasped both hands behind his back. He was awesome at the poses, but it had been part of his upbringing. Apparently, his family didn’t leave him alone unless he acted like a proper gentleman. He’d told me that his grandmother was fierce, and that she wouldn’t have tolerated that any of his grandchildren didn’t know how to stand up straight. He was a natural at posing.

My parents hadn’t talked much about manners at home. I’d had a happy childhood, at least in theory, and now I was the ugly duckling amongst acting captains. Luckily for me, I was aboard a lost spaceport and not publicly making a fool of myself. If we survived the attack, I was going to hire Banner to teach me all the poses an officer needs.

What? Can’t be so hard, can it?

“Do you think we’ll get back to Earth?” Banner said. “Because I’ll have to write to my father if we’re going back. I wouldn’t want him to give my inheritance to one of my sisters.” He grinned to himself. His sisters were unlikely to receive a cent from his father even if he burnt the Admiralty. No Banner would ever leave a cent to a woman.

I was about to reply, but the bridge shook violently and a deafening explosion sounded nearby.

“What the―?” I said.

“Sir, there’s a rogue ship flying around the port,” Engineer Gupta said. He was on the bridge and he was supposed to be controlling the new radars. “It was cloaked even for the new radars.”

Crap. I should’ve expected such a move, but they’d caught me off-guard again.

I walked to Gupta’s computers and enabled the holographic output to see a 3-D representation of the port. An unidentified ship was flying around the port and scanning our buildings and outer decks. “Does it have a flag?”

“No flag, no colors, and no nothing, sir,” Gupta replied.

“Want to go on a relaxing flight, Banner?” I asked.

“Always ready,” Banner said. “I was about to ask for permission to take a piss and instead steal a ship myself.”

Once we’d put on our artificial gravity clothes, Banner and I split the pilots in two groups and boarded the fighters. He took the faster pilots to surround the enemy ship and to stop its escape, while I protected the port in case someone else decided to attack without prior warning.

I know, I know: Banner always ended up with the more offensive missions. I was an engineer and most of my combat experience was limited to flight simulators and videogames. What did you want me to do? Lead the men into the face of danger, realize it was beyond my flight skills, and ask the enemy for a timeout? Nobody was going to give us a break in the middle of a fight. They hadn’t even replied to our attempts to contact them.

The rogue ship flew around the port, reducing its speed whenever it got near one of our key rooms in the outer decks. I have no idea of how it detected the presence of computers or weapons – they were hidden and the decks kept rotating – but it did anyway. It didn’t shoot at us, though. As soon as Banner and his men approached it from different angles, it looped around them, dodged their shots, and teased them.

Banner’s ship hit the surface of the fighter. The stealth ship quickly accelerated into outer space and disappeared. Banner’s shot hadn’t depressurized its cabin or made it explode; it was still functioning. And it had disappeared from all our screens and had turned invisible to our radars.

God, I hate it when enemies run away. They make you dress with gravitational clothes, board fighters, take everything out, burn gas, and then,
poof!
They’re gone. We’d spent a fortune just in the defensive maneuver, but we hadn’t gone anywhere with it. I’d done my duty, but the Admiralty wasn’t going to like the expense if I didn’t get any results from it.

“The ship’s fled,” Banner said through the intercom. “Vanished. We can’t see where it’s gone, but it’s definitely gone.”

“They’re a bunch of cowards, sir,” Flanagan added. “Didn’t even wait for our polite reception before running away like scared girls.”

“Take a couple of turns around the port,” I said through the intercom. “Check that we don’t have any other visitors, and go back home. We’ll stay around for a few more minutes too.”

Some of my engineers aboard the satellites quickly replied and complained that nobody had warned them about the enemy. They were unprotected aboard empty carcasses that orbited the spaceport. Most of the satellites were decoys so that the enemy didn’t hit the few cannons and explosive satellites we had left.

I would’ve hated Captain O’Keeffe for leaving me and my men unprotected aboard a satellite, but I’d forgotten about them. I hadn’t forgotten completely and I’d have eventually contacted them to ask how everything was going, but I hadn’t thought about their safety. Was I turning into a selfish career officer? Hey, if I kept forgetting about engineers and sending them on deadly missions, it might earn me a promotion!

I promised the engineers that trouble was over for now and sent several transport shuttles to pick them up and take them back home. This wasn’t about keeping the men safe and calm and avoiding hearing their complaints for the rest of the week; it was about keeping an important asset alive. If the stealth ship reappeared and started killing our engineers off, we had no chance to defend the port. Engineers fix stuff and build new weapons. Without them, nobody can even attempt to fight.

Then, an enormous ship appeared out of nowhere and approached the spaceport. She was larger than the Star, almost three times her size. I’d never seen a rounded, disc-like design for an attack ship, but it was just like a flying saucer and she blocked our views of space.

And some of our shuttles hadn’t returned the engineers to the port yet.

I tapped on the intercom in my ear. “Cease all transport immediately,” I said. “And if you’re out there aboard a satellite, keep quiet and cross your fingers. Hopefully, you won’t be attacked.”

“Way to motivate the crew, sir,” Flanagan said through one of the private channels. “Want to make them order their own coffins while they wait? They sure won’t mind. They don’t have anything better to do in the meantime, do they?”

“Shut up, Flanagan,” I said.

Banner’s chuckles sounded on the other end of the line, but he quickly fell silent.

We had an unidentified ship approaching us, and it was larger than anything we’d seen and unlike any of the standard designs. None of our enemies made flying saucers… unless they’d secretly worked on new and advanced designs. We were screwed.

We flew outside to protect the satellites. We tried to contact the saucer, but she simply shot at us in response. We fought back and shot with the land cannons, with the few weapons we’d carried to the satellites and with the corrosive foam, and we saved the bombs on the satellites in case they killed off some of our own.

We only managed to tickle the enormous flying saucer. The foam didn’t damage her. She continued shooting and destroying everything slowly, enjoying every step and indulging in our defenselessness.

If she started shooting at our ships, we were dead. It was only a matter of time. And then she’d shoot at the spaceport, and we had nothing to fight her with.

“Want to supervise the battle from the bridge, sir?” Banner asked through the intercom. “We’re doing fine out here, and there’s no need to lose all officers in one fight.”

We hadn’t chosen to fight; the fight had chosen us. I hate violence and risking my neck, but there was nothing I could do. Once danger knocks on your door, you need to fight back and hope that it doesn’t come back in a long time.

“I’m fine, thanks,” I said. “Don’t want you to get all credit for the fight.”

Flanagan’s coarse laugh sounded on the other side of the line.

“We need an officer on the port.” Banner’s voice was as serious as in a funeral; fairly appropriate for the likeliest outcome of our fight. “To lead the fight once we’re down. And I want to die a hero. It was my idea; don’t be a copycat.”

The saucer didn’t wait for us to decide. Instead, she shot at the satellites. Her attacks were so explosive that space junk hit some of the manned satellites. She was magnifying the explosive reaction.

“Fall back!” I shouted through the intercom. “Bridge, destroy the satellites before she hits any other bombs, and get rid of everything she can use to fight. Don’t touch the nuclear bombs unless she’s close to them; I’d rather keep a card up my sleeve.”

“Do we keep shooting at her?” one of the engineers replied.

“Forget it,” I said. “Our weapons are useless against her. Try to save some of our men by exploding the bombs before she hits them.”

We fell back and headed to a second row of defenses, ready to crash onto the enemy ship if the time came. Banner and Flanagan helped to destroy some of the debris before it hit other satellites, and my men and I mirrored them. We weren’t stopping the enemy, but at least we delayed the unavoidable.

“What does this mean?” Lady Elizabeth shrieked through the intercom. Her holographic image forcibly appeared on my HUD, blocking part of my sight. She was on the bridge without permission and during a fight. No civilian, aristocrat or not, was ever allowed to enter the bridge during military operations, much less in battle.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Stuart, one of the engineers, quickly said through the intercom. “She wouldn’t let us work without contacting you.”

“What do you think you’re doing on the bridge?” I asked.

“What is that tone for?” she replied, outraged. “This is my father’s port and this is his bridge. I can enter wherever I want and whenever I like.”

My men were dying and we were about to be crushed. I wasn’t in the mood for Lady Elizabeth.

“I demand that you detonate everything we have,” she insisted. “You must not let it get any closer to us.”

That’s exactly what I was trying to do, but blowing everything up wasn’t going to give us any advantages.

“No woman is allowed on the bridge,” I said flatly through the intercom. “Stuart, call port security and tell them to escort her back to her home and guard the entrance.
For her safety
. If she resists, drag her to the brig and leave her there until further notice.”

“Aye, sir,” Stuart replied.

Banner opened another private channel. “Do you think it’s wise?”

It wasn’t. I already knew it wasn’t. I didn’t need anyone to tell me,
I told you so
.

And desperate times required desperate measures. If we couldn’t fight the enemy, we could at least show that we were ready to die to avoid capture.

“Go back to the port, Banner,” I told him. The port needed an officer, and Banner was finally going to get command.

“What do you mean?” His voice was tense. He knew my plans.

“It’s an order, Banner,” I said.

He headed back down, with Flanagan cursing and complaining because he always missed the action. In the meantime, the remaining fighters made a triangle formation to head straight to the saucer. If we ran out of options, we were going to turn into kamikaze fighters.

I told the men to follow me. I wasn’t ready to die, but we’d hopefully bluff our way to victory.

The enemy ship reacted to our formation and retreated to avoid us. Her speed accelerated and she quickly disappeared. Gone. Just like the stealth ship. She’d been playing with us.

“Lucky she’s gone,” I broadcasted through all the intercom channels, “because we were running out of weapons and we’d end up having to throw lightbulbs at her.”

Once she’d left, a long metallic piece, at least the size of a man, headed straight to our fighter. I pulled the joystick to dodge it, but it wasn’t quick enough. We were going to crash onto it, and the glass was going to break. I braced myself for the impact.

Nothing.

Then, a piercing pain stung my neck. The cabin remained intact, but blood gurgled out of a wound on the side of my neck. A small metallic stick stuck out of my neck, just the shape of the space debris, but much smaller.

I had no idea of how the metal had crossed the cabin or shrunk. I didn’t care either. I was losing blood, and I needed someone to stitch me up before bleeding out.

“Mind taking the joystick for a while?” I told my copilot. My voice barely made any noise. Talking set my neck and torso on fire. The pain was spreading.

“Sir!” The copilot noticed the blood on my hands and tried to leave his seat to help me out.

I didn’t need his compassion. I’d been wounded, yes, but I didn’t need anyone to help me realize I was in trouble.

“Just a scratch,” I managed to say. “Take me to sick bay.”

My mind faded into darkness before he even reacted.