Sullivan Saga 3: Sullivan's Watch (6 page)

The hatchway in front of Commander Pickett slid open, and as the countdown clock on his instrument panel reached zero, his fighter was accelerated along the rail below the ship. He cleared the hatchway and turned to his right, aiming his fighter toward the alien vessel as the rest of his squadron fell into position beside him.

“Let’s keep it tight,” he radioed to the other pilots. “We’re going to try to bust through then swing around and hit them from the rear.”

As the twelve approached the enemy fighters, an indicator on Pickett’s panel started flashing. The enemy fighters were now in range. “Fire!” he ordered.

Two dozen missiles sped away from the F-66s and toward the alien fighters in front of them. A few of the enemy ships exploded; unlike the larger alien ship, they didn’t seem to be shielded, and Pickett breathed a sigh of relief as he saw that they could be destroyed. Even so, they were highly maneuverable, and of the eight enemy fighters directly opposite Pickett’s squadron, only three were hit.

Pickett didn’t have time to issue another command, but he knew the other pilots would know what to do. The F-66s sped past the enemy ships and, executing a maneuver they had all practiced many times before, tilted the noses of their fighters up and rotated one hundred and eighty degrees. They fired their thrusters to counter their momentum in the opposite direction and, as the alien fighters were beginning to arc around to face them again, fired another salvo of missiles.

The rest of the alien fighters were destroyed, but Pickett didn’t have time to celebrate. His sensors indicated that another wave was on an intercept course. Fortunately, a second squadron of F-66s had joined the battle.

Pickett knew this second group of alien fighters probably wouldn’t fall for the same trick. “Engage at your discretion,” he radioed. “Stay safe, nothing fancy.”

He glanced at his proximity display. There were two enemy fighters closing on him, one directly ahead and one from behind. Pickett fired a missile at the ship behind him. Even if it didn’t hit, it would slow it down as it was forced to take evasive action. He fingered the trigger for his thirty-millimeter cannons and lined up the other ship in his crosshairs. An alarm began beeping, and he spotted a missile heading his way. He quickly dipped his ship’s nose down while also turning to the left. Through the cockpit canopy he saw the missile streak by to his right. It began correcting to target him again, but he was now behind it and fired his cannons, detonating it as it turned.

The F-66 shuddered slightly from the explosion, but there was no damage done.

Pickett scanned his instruments. His own missile had missed the other alien ship, and now both of them were closing on him again. He made a wide arc and brought his ship around to face them.

He sighted one of the ships and fired his cannons. The explosive rounds left the barrels at a rate of thirty per second. Even if they missed, they would explode as close to the target as possible and hopefully cause some damage.

The first alien fighter took a direct hit and was torn in half as it exploded. One half went spinning off into space and the other was blown toward the planet. The second fighter seemed to have been affected by the explosion of the first as well as the hundreds of rounds detonating around it. It looked to be having trouble firing its thrusters—or whatever it was they used to propel themselves. Pickett took careful aim and let out another short burst from his cannons. The alien ship exploded, and Pickett quickly dove to avoid the debris.

Even so, his cockpit canopy was pockmarked by a few dozen fragments that he’d hit in the course of the fight.

Commander Pickett sighted another alien fighter heading in his direction. His canopy would hold if he was careful, but then he’d have to get back to the
Vigilant
to have his ship inspected. There were no warnings sounding, but the craters in the canopy concerned him.

Pickett fired a few short bursts at the oncoming enemy fighter but missed. The fighter sped past him, and he had to maneuver quickly to avoid his own exploding shells.

Another alarm sounded, and Pickett saw an incoming missile, fired from the ship he’d just jousted with. It was too close for him to swing around and fire at.

Pickett began weaving his ship erratically, and the missile fell back as it tried to match his movements. He rolled his ship nose to tail again and fired his thrusters. The missile was heading straight for him, and he dove out of its way, but not quickly enough. The missile exploded as it scraped the side of his ship, and Pickett was sent spiraling away. The F-66’s autopilot tried to correct the ship’s course, but there was too much damage. His port thruster was gone, and so was his canopy.

The display inside Pickett’s helmet didn’t indicate any damage to his suit, but the ship could still explode or tear apart. The damage would force him to eject.

Pickett braced his head against the headrest as his seat was launched from the F-66. He rocketed away from the battlefield, deeper into space, but the small thrusters on the chair would eventually slow him enough so he could be rescued.

From a distance, Pickett finally got a good look at how the battle was progressing. What he saw made his heart skip. The
Artemis
was completely destroyed, and the
Europa
looked to be badly damaged. His ship, the
Vigilant
, was in better shape, but gas and material were escaping from her in several places.

Between the ships and the alien vessel, fighters and missiles danced in an almost beautiful display of light and motion. Finally, Commander Pickett let his gaze shift to the large alien ship. It did not look damaged, but as he watched, he saw a sortie of F-66s approach. They fired their missiles, but the expected explosion against the enemy ship’s shield didn’t occur. The missiles passed beyond that invisible barrier and struck the hull.

The squadron of F-66s circled around for another pass, staying in the space between the alien ship and where the shield should have been. A few of them broke off to engage alien fighters that had just been launched, but the rest fired their missiles again. Even at this distance, Pickett could tell they had opened up and fired all the missiles they had available.

The second salvo exploded against the enemy’s hull. They had targeted the front of the ship, where the port had opened to release its own missiles. A second after the impact, a stunningly bright explosion lit up the battlefield. The entire front half of the alien ship was consumed by the explosion, along with almost half the fighters—alien or otherwise—engaged in the dogfight between the two opposing sides.

After a few more minutes, Pickett was too far away to see much detail, but the flashes of explosions were growing less and less frequent. The battle was over. As far as he could tell, his side had been victorious, but it was a shallow victory.

The
Artemis
was gone. It was doubtful many survivors would be found among the wreckage. All large ships were equipped with escape pods, but when a ship like that exploded, the force of the explosion was often enough to consume any pods in the vicinity.

The
Europa
was crippled beyond repair. Pickett had seen that before he’d moved too far away from the battle. She hadn’t exploded, though, so many of the crew might still be alive.

The
Vigilant
was bloodied but not quite out of commission. He’d have to wait to learn the full extent of the damage. He knew that even now, the systems aboard the ship would be deploying repair robots. They, with guidance from the maintenance crews, would seal the breaches and repair any other critical damage.

Commander Pickett checked that his locator beacon was working. The silence the past several minutes told him that his radio was out, so the beacon would be the only way anyone would find him. His chair had now come to almost a complete stop, the small rockets having done their work. His suit had survived the explosion and ejection without damage. He still had several hours’ worth of oxygen, and this information, along with his vital signs, would be embedded in his locator signal. The rescue teams would first rescue those who were in the most need.

Uninjured and with a decent oxygen supply, Pickett guessed he would be among the last to be rescued. That suited him. He didn’t mind the silence.

FRANK ALLEN COULDN’T really say
how
he was different, but he was different. He still had the same thoughts and feelings, but they came to him through a filter, as though in a dream. The place he was now—its original inhabitants had never seen the need to name it the way humans had obsessed over naming every hill and stream they came across—did not exist in time or in space. Hyperspace was between universes, between space, and also between time.

If asked, he knew he wouldn’t be able to explain it to a human mind, but Allen realized that things did not occur one after the other. He simply had a sense of things happening, but unless he focused, he could not tell which event preceded another or if what he perceived had even happened yet. To add to the confusion, future events were constantly in flux, warping and shifting as he tried to focus on them. Even so, the part of him that was still human longed for temporal organization, and because of that, he had not been completely lost in hyperspace the way the entities had thought he would be.

He had proven to be quite a bit more resilient than they had expected. The entity that had taken the form of Liz Wagner knew she had made a mistake. She should have simply killed Allen and Sullivan. But, in spite of herself, she had grown fond of Frank Allen. Her feelings were not like anything a human would recognize, but she felt all the same. She had formed an attachment. This alone had saved the two men.

She had hoped to use Allen to keep Sullivan out of the way, but by the time she realized Allen was playing by a different set of rules, it was too late to get rid of Sullivan. He was now under Allen’s protection. And perhaps because he had once been of that world, Allen was more powerful there than she or the other entities were. They could still pull him back if they exerted enough energy, but if they tried to engage him in Sullivan’s universe, he would win. And if they tried to harm Sullivan, Allen would be able to stop them.

Of course, Sullivan had been vulnerable during his hyperspace journey from Faris to Earth. Fortunately for him, the entities had been busy directing the actions of the aliens who had attacked Earth, and Sullivan had slipped through unnoticed. But Sullivan had a guardian angel. Allen didn’t realize it yet, but he was casting a net of protection over Sullivan even when he wasn’t actively engaged in watching over him. His energy extended around Sullivan, hiding him from the gaze of the other entities.

When the Liz entity finally did discover that Sullivan had arrived at Earth, she was furious. “
You
did this!”

Allen smiled—or rather sent her an impression of a smile. “I told him to go to Earth, yes. But you already knew that.”

Liz shook her head. “But you saw him safely there, Frank.”

“I can’t protect him when he’s in hyperspace. That’s your domain. If he made it through, it’s your fault.”

Liz’s energy surrounded Allen, sending a jolt of pain through him. “It doesn’t matter. He can’t do anything to stop this.”

“Can’t he?”

“No. Unless… you know something, don’t you, Frank?”

“What could I know? You’ve been watching me. I can’t make a move without you knowing about it.”

“Perhaps. Even so, you know something. But as I said, it doesn’t matter. You saw how that battle went. Three of Earth’s ships against one.”

“And they won.”

“Yes, but just barely. Another will be on its way. Earth will fall, Frank. Sullivan will die along with everyone else. Then all the other colonized planets will fall. This is the end for humanity. In this universe, at least.”

Allen sent a wave of amusement toward Liz. “Maybe. But you were right. I
do
know something.”

Liz softened her energy. “Frank… why did it come to this? Why did you turn against me?”

“I turned against you? You lied to me! You lied about everything!”

“But you feel it, too, Frank. Every time a wormhole cuts through hyperspace, every time a ship rips its way through it… you feel the pain. What else can we do? This is self-preservation! We couldn’t have allowed Benjamin Alexander’s hyper-hyperspace technology to be developed. We had to redirect the aliens from that other, more primitive Earth because there was no other way. Humanity must be destroyed.”

“And the aliens? Once they finish your dirty work, how will you deal with them? Their wormholes are far more destructive to hyperspace than our ships ever were.”

“The battle for their home planet isn’t going well. Their aggressive and expansive nature earned them many enemies in their part of the galaxy. Their home world will soon fall, and any of them left there will be killed.”

“Yes, I’ve seen it.”

“I will admit the humans are proving more resilient than they had expected. But they have decided—under our influence, of course—to abandon their home and make a new start on Earth. They’ll be sending the mothership soon. Once it’s away from their planet, it will never return. The planet will fall to their enemies, and we will see to it that at the brink of victory over Earth, the mothership will be destroyed and, hopefully, the wormhole technology will be lost.”

“And you tell me all this because you really believe I can’t stop you, don’t you?”

Liz shook her head. “You cannot stop us, Frank. You may think you have a trick or two, you may think Richard Sullivan can do something, but even with your protection, he is one man. A man made of flesh. And you know how weak flesh can be. You saw how easily Liz died. And Benjamin Alexander. And John Takemitsu. And you.” She laughed. “All I had to do was reach out and you were dead. Your energy was ours.”

Allen pushed Liz’s energy back. “But that’s where you were wrong. I’m not yours. You can’t control me the way you thought you could.”

“You’re right. Your… connection… to your physical universe is strong, and it gives you strength. But once that connection is severed, once Sullivan and Kate Alexander are dead, once everyone you ever knew and loved is dead, there will be nothing left for you to grasp onto. Then you’ll come around, Frank. Then you’ll see why we had to do this. Then maybe we’ll be together the way you wanted to be… the way I still want to be.”