Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Captain Lisa Shaw stared at the holographic display in the middle compartment, wishing that she could find out what was going on in the alien ship that was bearing down on the helpless Pioneer. They should have received the first contact probe by now, she thought anxiously. What if they misinterpreted the message, or what if they ignored it completely? As if on cue, she heard Lieutenant Hill report, “Captain, I’ve detected a radiation spike from the alien ship. It could be weapons charging.”

It could be weapons charging, or it could be something as trivial as the waste system cycling, there was no way to know for certain. It occurred to her briefly that she had never been in combat before, but then again no Alliance captain had ever faced an alien ship. It was then very difficult to know what she should do. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she forced herself to relax and remember her training. She punched the intercom button for the Combat Information Center. “Chief, I need General York,” she said to Dumas.

“York here, Captain. I’ve been following the situation.”

“Good, because I’m going to need all of your fighters to prepare for a strike on that ship, should it become necessary. I’ll leave the details up to you, but we’ll need as much firepower as we can muster.”

“I understand, Captain. I’ll have my pilots ready to launch on your command.”

“Thank-you, General.” She turned to Ensign Patrice Ortiz, manning the weapons station. “Bring our weapons on-line and ready to fire on my command.”

Shaw’s settled back to the holographic display, a restless feeling still haunting her stomach. If it came to a battle, the Explorer would be as ready as she could make it. She hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. Maybe they’re still looking over the probe’s message, wondering what our intentions are…

Her thoughts were violently thrown into disarray when a blinding flash of red light came from the alien ship. Shaw was temporarily blinded, blinking repeatedly to clear her eyes. When she did, she saw that the Pioneer was gone. In its place was a field of debris, some of the freighter’s remnants glancing off of the Explorer’s armored hull. The alien ship was still moving forward, looking like a hungry shark that smelled blood in the water.

There was a moment of hesitation as Shaw struggled to comprehend what had happened. Granted the Pioneer did not have the armor of an Alliance warship, but it had been so utterly and completely destroyed. She couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to her own ship, but she shook the fear away, punching the intercom to the Combat Information Center. “General, I need your fighters to launch ASAP.” To Ortiz she said, “When that alien ship gets in range, hit it with everything we got.”

“Yes sir,” Ortiz replied, but his face had the look of someone who had seen a ghost. No doubt he, like her, was thinking that the Explorer would be the next course for the hungry shark. But this fish has some teeth of its own, she thought grimly.

***

“We have lost port laser batteries,” S’Segar reported.

“Lost?” S’Olonny asked testily.

“There was a power surge from the initial barrage, it appears to have overloaded the conduits providing energy to the weapons on the port side. I have dispatched repair crews to locate the problem.”

“Alter our course to compensate. Are we in range of the other ship?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then fire all available batteries.” S’Olonny turned to his second-in-command with a grim smile on his face. “This will only prolong the inevitable.”

S’Segar nodded and turned away, leaving S’Olonny to wonder if his subordinate lacked the killing instinct necessary to be a warrior. His second-in-command had been taken as a hatchling because of his ability to think strategically, not because he possessed the true spirit of a soldier. S’Segar took no joy in destroying an enemy, did not savor a victory, nor did he agonize over a defeat. For him, war was as without emotion as a mathematical equation. S’Olonny imagined that S’Segar and S’Tallen would get along much better.

***

S’Tallen shook his head, watching the Pioneer explode from his laboratory. The ship was destroyed so utterly that there was no hope to recover a survivor. There was another alien vessel, but if it too was annihilated in such a fashion then it would be impossible for S’Tallen to get a specimen for his research. He shook his head once more just as the display in front of him split, half still showing the battle from his bootlegged feed from the bridge, the other detailing the latest scans of the nearby planet.

S’Tallen nearly fell out his chair, a sense of pure joy rising within him. There were several concentrations of bio-energy readings, although it was too soon to know if they would be worthy specimens for his great project. He would have to hurry, though, before S’Olonny dispatched soldiers to the surface to capture the bio-energy. S’Tallen bolted from his laboratory, collaring the nearest of his guard. “Have my shuttle prepared for launch immediately. We are going to the surface to find a specimen.”

S’Tallen did not wait for a reply, he was already running to the hangar where his personal shuttle waited. He knew that S’Olonny would not appreciate him venturing to the planet in the middle of a battle, but it was the captain’s efficiency at killing that forced S’Tallen to do it. You can kill all you like, S’Olonny, but I will take my specimen and prove to you that I am right.

***

The alien ship continued its approach, a monstrous battleship that had annihilated the Pioneer without effort and was now closing in on its next victim. The size of the vessel alone made it intimidating, but now knowing how much firepower it truly possessed made it seem downright demonic. Shaw watched the ship close, taking note of the Eclipse fighters forming up for their run on the titanic alien craft.

“We’re in weapons range,” Ortiz announced.

“Proceed,” Shaw replied as calmly as she could. There was a noticeable vibration through the deck as every missile launcher and NEMP-6 battery hurled ordinance towards the alien ship. She waited anxiously for a few seconds before being rewarded with hundreds of small explosions blossoming along the alien vessel’s hull. However, when the explosions cleared, she saw the alien ship still coming, apparently unscathed. “Did we do any damage?”

“Nothing that I can detect, sir,” Hill reported, the fear palatable in her voice. “I’m picking up a smaller alien ship heading towards the surface.”

Shaw looked into the holographic display, seeing a brown, fish-shaped craft bolting away from the alien ship and towards the surface of the planet. There was no way for the Explorer to hit it, and it would probably reach the ground before any of the Eclipses could intercept. “Have the troops on the ground ready for ground assault,” she ordered Lieutenant Sims before stabbing the intercom button to the Combat Information Center. “Chief, I want you to launch the ExoArmor transport and send it to the troops on the surface.”

“Aye, sir,” Dumas grunted.

“I’m detecting another radiation spike from the alien ship!”

“Brace for impact!” Shaw shouted over the ship-wide intercom, but it was already too late. A burst of red energy, albeit significantly less than what had destroyed the Pioneer, was blazing across the gap between the two ships. Beams of energy lanced into the Explorer’s hull, vaporizing everything they came into contact with. The bridge shook beneath Shaw’s feet, but she maintained her balance by clinging to the edge of the holographic display. The lights flickered once, twice, then finally went out completely before the orange emergency illumination came on.

Shaw looked around her, but the bridge appeared to be undamaged. “Return fire and get me a damage report!” Shaw called out loud enough so that she didn’t have to bother with the intercom to the rear compartment. She felt the deck shake again as the Explorer returned fire, with similar results as the first barrage.

“Captain, we’ve lost control of the ExoArmors,” she heard Dumas say.

“What?”

“The guidance system must have taken damage during that last barrage. We tried to control it from here, but it’s not responding. It could come down in the middle of an ocean now, but we’ll try to keep track of it from here.”

“I understand,” Shaw replied, resisting the urge to slam her fist against the holographic display. Her frustration only increased as she watched the Eclipses commence their attack run, the alien ship shrugging off the anti-ship missiles. The little fighters were forming up to come around for another pass, but Shaw knew that it would have no more effect than the first.

“They’re readying weapons!” Hill called out.

“Get the fighters out of there!” Shaw shouted to the Combat Information Center, but it was too late. Lances of red energy plucked the Eclipses from existence one-by-one, then the alien ship turned its wrath on the Explorer once more. This time it was a full barrage, a tidal wave of energy smashing into the Alliance cruiser.

The deck beneath Shaw’s feet did more than simply shake, it buckled. Shaw watched as Ensign Ortiz disintegrated in a spray of fire and jagged pieces of deck plating. The holographic display in front of her exploded, throwing her backwards into a bulkhead. She felt the back of her head, her hand returning stained with blood. Geysers of flame and shrapnel continued to rise up all over the compartment around her, she tried to get to her feet but could not. Finally, she succumbed to the embrace of darkness.

***

“We’ve got company!” Private Deivi Ramirez shouted.

“What?” Arsa Veranda asked.

“Some kind of weird alien ship,” Ramirez replied.

Veranda was about to ask for further clarification, but the object was coming into view. She watched in fascination as the alien craft became larger and larger. It was all brown, with stubby wings and a long, sweeping tailfin that made it resemble some kind of fish. Veranda felt someone tug on her arm and turned to see Rosaro pointing to a cluster of rocks at the top of a small hill. “Come on, we’ll take cover over there until we know what they’re up to,” Rosaro said.

Veranda nodded, following Rosaro and kneeling behind the smooth surface of a brown rock that was only about two feet wide. The Fifth Platoon was grabbing some of the medical equipment that had been left behind to accommodate Caustillo’s corpse. The cluster of small rocks and crates of medical supplies would not make much of a fortification, but without much in the way of trees or larger boulders nearby, it was the best that could be found on short notice.

Landing gear extended from hidden recesses of the alien ship as it came to a stop at the base of the hill. For a moment the only sound was the whine of the vehicle’s engines, but then a hatch in the middle of the ship opened, disgorging a dozen aliens clad in olive-colored body armor. With the bulky armor and round, expressionless helmets, the aliens could have passed for humans, save for the thick tails that stretched from their backsides to the ground. Each alien carried what looked like a flattened brown cylinder in their hands, whether they were weapons or some type of equipment, there was no way to be sure.

Veranda stood up slowly, putting her hands into the air on either side, palms-forward to show that she was unarmed. She could feel Rosaro’s eyes on her and explained, “I have to try and communicate with them.” She looked back towards the aliens, who were lining up in a wedge formation. “I am Commander Arsa Veranda of the United Earth Alliance. I mean you no harm.”

“Take me to your leader,” she heard someone mutter under his breath.

The aliens didn’t seem to hear Veranda, or if they did, they paid her no heed as they started to trot up the hill. Veranda repeated her message again, this time louder. She received a reaction from the aliens, the leader of the wedge aimed the flattened cylinder in his hands and a bolt of red energy sizzled just past Veranda’s outstretched left arm. The other aliens added fire from their weapons, but all went ridiculously wide of the mark. She hit the ground, taking a pistol Rosaro handed her. “So much for diplomacy,” Rosaro growled.

Veranda peeked over the rocks, her mind stretching back to the training she had received in small arms almost twenty years ago. She aimed the pistol, looking over to Rosaro, who was sighting her rifle on the lead alien. The aliens broke into a run, a terrifying scream coming from their olive helmets as they charged. “Open fire!” Rosaro shouted. The Fifth Platoon’s weapons spewed forth a storm of depleted uranium slugs, but the weapons did little more than cause the aliens to stumble for a few steps before they resumed their charge. Veranda added a pair of shots from her pistol, but they harmlessly glanced off of the lead alien’s armor.

One of the Alliance soldiers shouldered a portable missile launcher, a tail of flame lashing out from the rear of the launcher as the missile fired and landed in the center of the alien formation. Veranda saw a couple of the aliens go down, but the rest kept going, their weapons remaining silent. The lead alien suddenly jumped into the air, springing over the rocks and medical equipment to land behind Veranda and Rosaro. Both women turned and fired their weapons, but the alien completely ignored the slugs. Instead, it reached out and grabbed Veranda by the collar, hefting her into the air.

Rosaro tackled the alien, the two humans and single alien collapsing into a pile on the ground. Veranda hit her head hard on the ground, and for a moment everything seemed to blur. In a daze, she turned to see Rosaro wrestling with the alien, but before she could help Rosaro, she felt another set of hands grab her and pull her to her feet. The olive helmet of an alien filled her vision, it growled something in its language and started dragging her down the hill. Veranda screamed, furiously struggling to free herself, but the alien’s grip was too strong.

The alien holding her shouted something, its fellow warriors suddenly throwing aside the humans they were wrestling with and hurrying to form a protective phalanx around Veranda. She saw some of the humans raise their weapons to fire, but Rosaro motioned for them to stop. “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Rosaro shouted.

“Help me!” Veranda screamed, pleading with the Fifth Platoon to rescue her, but they only watched as she was dragged back to the alien ship. She was unceremoniously thrown through the hatch, her head striking the deck. The world around her started to spin, stars appearing before her eyes. She heard guttural voices growling something, then her mind slipped into oblivion.

***

Jack Laurants laid the crewman, the man’s face was too covered in blood and grime to be recognizable, down in the corridor outside sickbay. He mumbled words of comfort, turning to see Thornton setting down a wounded man of her own. She smiled at the injured crewman, whispering some encouraging words before coming to stand beside Laurants. “CIC, this is Laurants, where to next?”

“I need you two back here ASAP!” Dumas snapped. “We’ve lost contact with the bridge, so I’ll need your help to run things from down here.”

“We’re on the way.” Laurants saw that Thornton was looking down the corridor lined with the Explorer’s wounded. Moans, screams, and cries for help echoed into infinity. Thornton’s eyes were misted over, yet Laurants could not bring himself to cry for his comrades, many of whom he had come to know during this voyage. Inside he felt sorrow for them, but it was again as though something was keeping his feelings from surfacing. He touched Thornton on the shoulder, indicating that they needed to go.

It was going to be tough just getting back to the Combat Information Center. Many of the corridors were blocked off from cave-ins, or had each gulfs where solid deck had once been. Added to the problems was that the lift system had quit working when main power went off-line, so that Laurants and Thornton had to use the handholds in the shafts to climb down the two decks to the level of the Combat Information Center. Laurants forced open the door to the deck just enough so that he and Thornton could squeeze by.

The corridor leading to the CIC was in total disarray with debris scattered all over the floor, lights hanging by mere wires, and computer terminals in smoldering ruins. “Jesus,” Laurants gasped. The whole ship was shaken once again, another barrage from the alien vessel tearing through what little remained of the Explorer’s armored hull. Laurants could hear something above him and shoved Thornton roughly against the wall just as the ceiling gave way, tons of debris cascading down to the deck. When the din from the collapse ended, screams echoed down the corridor, no doubt coming from the Combat Information Center.

Laurants bolted down the hallway, jumping over stray pieces of shrapnel and batting away curtains of wiring that hung down like Spanish moss. He reached the door to the CIC, but the door would no longer open. He tried to open it with his bare hands, but he couldn’t get any leverage on it. He frantically searched for something to pry the door open with, settling on a long, thin piece of metal that at one time had been molding along the ceiling.

He jammed the molding into the middle of the door, pushing with all his might until the door parted just enough so that he could use his hands to pry it open enough to fit through. It was too late, though, to help anyone in the Combat Information Center. Bodies lay strewn throughout the room, sometimes only arms or legs visible in the rubble of the collapsed ceiling. In the middle of the CIC lay the body of Chief Petty Officer Dumas, a support beam lying across the big man’s legs.

Laurants ran over to the veteran enlisted man, feeling for a pulse. There was a faint one, and ragged breathing, but he knew that it would not be long before Dumas died. “Chief? Chief, can you hear me?”

Dumas’s eyes opened, his head turning towards Laurants. “Jack…Laurie, you have to get out of here.” It was the first time that Laurants noticed Thornton was standing just behind him, a look of horror frozen on her face. “Everyone…must get of here.”

“We’ll get out of here, and we’ll get you to sickbay,” Laurants said.

Dumas shook his head, his voice taking on its old harsh tone, “You don’t understand! Fusion reactors…overloading. Ship is…gonna blow.”

“Oh my God,” Laurants whispered. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you to an escape pod then.”

Dumas shook his head violently, “No time! I’ll just…slow you down. Understand?”

Laurants nodded, “I’ve got it Chief.” He put an arm around Thornton’s shoulders to pull her away, but she refused to budge.

“We can’t just leave him! Come on, we’ll get this beam off of him!” Thornton broke from Laurants’s grasp and tried to lift the support beam, but it refused to move even a millimeter.

Laurants pulled her away, looking her squarely in the eyes. “We have to get to an escape pod, now.” Thornton looked ready to argue, but then nodded. Laurants pulled a compad from his pocket, keying up the locations of the nearest escape pods. There was one right here in the Combat Information Center, but it was buried under a ton of rubble. The nearest was one deck up. First, though, Laurants patched his compad into the ship-wide intercom. “All hands, abandon ship! Repeat, all hands, abandon ship!”

Laurants took off out of the Combat Information Center, tearing down the corridor, Thornton barely keeping pace. He frantically climbed the handholds up to the next deck and dashed along the deck, but the escape pods were either gone or inaccessible. It was the same on the next level and the next and the next, with time winding down before the overloading fusion reactors would blow the Explorer apart. Laurants was dripping with sweat, gasping for breath by the time he reached the last chance for he and Thornton. Dumas said contact had been lost with the bridge, but with any luck, the escape pod would still be accessible to rocket the two ensigns away from the doomed ship.

***

The warm feeling reminded Lisa Shaw of home. Not the house in Virginia she and her parents stayed at when they were on leave, nor any of the military housing she had lived in as a child, and especially not the quarters of any ships she had served on. No, the warmth reminded Shaw of her grandmother’s house in Nebraska where she had stayed when she was seven years old. Her parents were both on assignment somewhere, so for the winter Shaw had been put in the charge of her grandparents at the old farmhouse her grandparents had purchased when they retired. The house had to be almost two centuries old, it was like stepping back in time, but what Shaw remembered the most was the huge fireplace in each bedroom. There were local air quality laws that banned the use of the wood-fed fireplaces, but on some nights, when cold winter winds would come from just the right direction to leak through the carefully-preserved walls and windows, her grandparents would light the fireplaces to generate extra heat. She remembered lying in bed under a homemade quilt, feeling the warmth from the fire. It felt so warm, so cozy, so much like home.

Shaw opened her eyes not to the cozy bedroom of her grandparents’s house, but the fiery remains of the Explorer’s bridge. Still in a daze, she looked up towards the ceiling, where the firefighting equipment was supposed to be laying down foam to put out the fire, but the ceiling was little more than a series of holes and half-melted support beams. The fog in Shaw’s brain started to lift, the memory of Ortiz being shredded by shrapnel and the exploding holoprojector throwing her against the wall coming back to her.

She pushed herself to her feet, barely taking note of how hot the wall was to her touch. Flames were shooting from Ortiz’s shorted out console and the holoprojector, smoke wafting up into the ruined ceiling. Surprisingly, one safety feature still did work: the doors to the front and rear compartments were both sealed to contain the fire. Shaw, clinging to the wall to avoid the tongues of flame lashing out from the shattered equipment, ran to the door of the rear compartment. She frantically pried open the manual release cover, pulling down the lever with all of her might and praying that the door would open. The door creaked open a few inches, then stopped, Shaw straining to force the opening wide enough for her to squeeze through.

She looked around the rear compartment, hoping to see her crew had at work, or at least that they would have gone to somewhere safer, but instead all she saw were charred corpses and smoldering computers. The same wave of destruction that had knocked Shaw unconscious had not spared Lieutenants Hill or Sims. Both bodies were too badly burned to be recognizable, but she knew them nonetheless.

Frantically, she bolted to the forward compartment door, opening it to find the same result. Charred bodies lay haphazardly amid smoldering heaps of rubble, no more recognizable then the corpses in the rear compartment. But Shaw knew them, more than just their names; she had come to know them on a personal and professional level. She had worked with everyone on the bridge for at least a year, some even longer than that, but now they were all gone.

In a broken heap near Shaw’s own station, she found the decapitated form of Lieutenant Hicks. She had known Hicks for three years, she had given him his first promotion, and when the Explorer had left port, she had given him the added responsibility of being the bridge duty officer. He had been ecstatic when she told him, he had promised that she would not regret it, but looking at his blackened body, she could not help but feel responsible for his death, and all of the others as well. She had brought them out here, and when they needed her the most, she had failed them. Worse yet, she had abandoned them when she should have been finding a way to save them. It is only fitting then, she thought, that I die with them.

She brushed wreckage from her chair, which had somehow managed to stay upright in the commotion, and sat down. Most of the padding was burned away, and what remained was so brittle that it flaked off at her touch, but she did not notice. She closed her eyes, leaning back and remembering the first time she had come onto the bridge of the Explorer. The doors to the lift opened and she stepped into the rear compartment, the bustle of activity suddenly coming to a halt as the officers jumped to their feet and saluted her. She had been only thirty-two years old at the time, young and completely unprepared emotionally to have everyone focusing on her, looking at her expectantly. There was a brief moment of terror as she decided whether she should return the salutes, shake hands with the officers, or just nod and walk past. Ultimately, she decided to first return the salutes, and then shake hands with each officer on the bridge. She made her way through the rear compartment, past the holoprojector in the middle compartment, and finally to the front compartment. There, she had first settled into this very same chair and nervously saw that everyone was still looking at her for her first order. It was the first time she realized that there would no longer be anyone to provide her with guidance, to bail her out if she got into trouble. It was her ship, her crew, and her duty to have the answers when called upon. “Carry on,” was all that she could blurt out for her first order as a captain in the United Alliance Armed Forces.

“Captain?” She heard a voice ask tentatively and felt an arm shake her left shoulder. She opened her eyes and looked up to see Ensign Laurants standing over her. He was almost unrecognizable with grime and dried blood smeared on his face, she wondered if he was a ghost or just a figment of your imagination. “Captain?” Laurants tried again.

“What is it, Ensign?” She asked flatly.

Laurants looked at her as though she were crazy, which she probably was if she was imagining dead ensigns. He looked over at Ensign Thornton, also covered in grime and dried blood, another horrific mirage. “Sir, the ship is going to explode any minute, we have to get to the escape pod.” Laurants motioned to the escape pod tucked away in the corner.

Shaw sighed and shook her head, “If you’ve come back to life just to tell me to get in the escape pod, you’ve wasted your time. I’m staying here, where I belong.”

Laurants and Thornton exchanged confused looks once again, then it was Thornton who spoke, “Captain, we’re alive, and so are many of the others. They’ll be on the surface waiting for us. We need you.”

Shaw pointed to Hicks’s corpse, “He needed me too, but I wasn’t there for him. The least I can do is be here with him at the end.”

Laurants moved so fluidly, so quickly, that she felt his big hands squeezing her biceps before she even saw his arms move. He looked her squarely in the eyes, and from the angry spark in his hazel eyes, she knew that he was no figment of her imagination. “Sir, I know this is a terrible loss, and that you feel responsible for it, but there’s nothing we can do about that right now. You have a greater responsibility, and that is to the survivors who will look to you for guidance, for answers. Even if you don’t know it, we need you, and one way or the other you are coming with me in that escape pod.”

Shaw looked from Laurants’s fiery eyes to Thornton’s pale, horrified face. She remembered once again that first day on the bridge of the Explorer, and the lesson she had learned that day. She had a duty to her crew, to these young officers who were still alive. It was not something that she could pass on to anyone else, it was her burden to carry. Slowly, she nodded and looked back at Laurants. “Let’s go,” she said hoarsely. The pressure on her arms vanished, allowing her to stand up and make her way to the escape pod. She took one last look at the bridge of her ship before the escape pod’s hatch closed with a deafening finality. Then she strapped into her seat and felt the pod’s rockets hurl her, Laurants, and Thornton away from the Explorer forever.

***

S’Olonny stared at the battered, blackened hulk of the Explorer, a grim smile spreading on his face. Although this second enemy warship had not been defeated so easily, the battle was now clearly won. A barrage of puny projectiles pattered against the hull of his ship, but the only effect was a slight tremor beneath his feet.

“Fire another barrage, then launch escort ships and transports to begin boarding that ship. I want all resistance eliminated before collection crews arrive.”

“Yes, sir,” S’Segar replied, scurrying away to carry out the orders. S’Olonny looked once again upon his vanquished foe, feeling that familiar surge of pride and joy he always felt after a victory. This was a great day for his people, not only because of the defeat of two dangerous warships, but because it would mean a bounty of bio-energy to take back home.

“Captain, there are strange readings coming from the enemy ship,” the sensor officer reported, shaking S’Olonny from his reverie.

“Explain,” S’Olonny commanded sharply.

“Metallic objects from the enemy vessel are heading to the surface, but the potential bio-energy readings and the uniform shape of the objects suggests that it is not debris.”

S’Olonny tapped his jaw with a clawed finger, pondering the sensor officer’s report. Could they be lifeboats of some kind? He thought. S’Olonny’s ship was equipped with lifeboats for roughly half of the ship’s population, about 20,000 individual seats all together. It was entirely possible that the enemy had a similar system, and was now employing it before their ship was completely destroyed. It would mean S’Olonny would have to deploy his forces on the land, but it would only delay the inevitable outcome.

He turned to the sensor officer, “Keep track of those objects and map where they land on the surface.” S’Olonny turned back to the holoviewer, where he witnessed the final destruction of the enemy ship. Although none of his ship’s weapons touched the enemy vessel, he watched explosions blossom from its rear quarter. The ball of flame widened, swallowing the length of ship. As if in a final act of defiance, the Explorer burst apart, a wave of shrapnel slamming against S’Olonny’s ship. He nearly lost his footing, but maintained his balance by holding onto the edge of the holoviewer. “Damage report!” He shouted.

“Negligible damage to forward decks, no word on casualties,” an officer reported.

“Sir?” He heard the sensor officer begin timidly.

“What is it?” S’Olonny demanded.

“I am no longer detecting active bio-energy anywhere in the system,” the sensor officer stopped, his eyes looking terrified. “Director S’Tallen’s shuttle is also returning to Hangar Four.”

S’Olonny pounded the edge of the holoviewer and stormed from the bridge. He took the lift to Hangar Four, hoping to intercept the scientist. Indeed, S’Tallen was fussing over his latest catch, which guards had strapped to a stretcher. The guards turned with their weapons drawn, but quickly lowered them when they saw S’Olonny striding towards them angrily. The captain grabbed S’Tallen by the collar and slammed him against the shuttle. He pulled his S’Zai from its sheath and held the blade just under S’Tallen’s neck.

“I have warned you about acting without my permission,” S’Olonny growled. “I will not tolerate anyone on my ship who does not follow my orders.”

“I do not follow your orders, I have a commission from the Grand Council to conduct my research as I see fit,” S’Tallen hissed, his voice sounding braver than his eyes looked.

S’Olonny pushed the S’Zai harder against S’Tallen’s throat, just enough to start a trickle of blood flowing down the scientist’s neck. First S’Olonny had lost a large quantity of bio-energy before it could be harvested, and now he had to contend with the rebellious S’Tallen acting against his orders once again. He wanted so very much to simply drive the S’Zai through S’Tallen’s neck, to rid himself of one problem forever, but he tried to stay calm. “The Grand Council is very far away, too far to protect you. You and your work live at my discretion, never forget that,” S’Olonny pulled the S’Zai blade from S’Tallen’s throat and left the scientist sink slowly to the deck while he stomped to his quarters.

He knelt down at the altar and stared at the picture of his family. He tried to draw strength from it, to drain the rage he felt inside. The anger started to dwindle, settling into a dull ache as he said a ritual prayer to try and obtain forgiveness for his failure. He knew on some level that he should not blame himself, there was no way to know that the enemy ship would explode and wipe out the precious bio-energy on board, but that did little to comfort him. It did not matter what he knew or did not know, he had let a great opportunity slip away. He had failed not just himself and his crew, but all of his people who were counting on him to bring back the food they desperately needed.

He looked back at the picture, wondering if his sons were still alive. They would be nearing the stage to shed their juvenile skins to become adults. In the picture they were still hatchlings, so tiny and fragile. If he did return home, would they even recognize him? Would he recognize them? Would they remember the father who had been forced to leave them less than a year after they hatched? He had missed so much of their lives, so much time that could never be replaced. There were many things he wanted to teach them: how to be a true warrior, how to wield a S’Zai, how to command a starship, but each wasted opportunity to obtain bio-energy meant another year that he would miss. By the time he returned home, his sons could be dead, or have already been conscripted to serve on a collection vessel.

S’Olonny cleaned S’Tallen’s blood from the S’Zai blade and tried to force the gloomy thoughts from his mind. All was not lost, there was still bio-energy to be had on the surface. Not enough so that he could return home, but every drop was valuable. And perhaps, if he was lucky, he would be led to an even greater supply of bio-energy. His S’Zai blade clean, and his soul lighter, S’Olonny headed for the bridge to prepare for the battle on the ground.

***

The escape pod came down with a great splash and a cloud of steam from water boiled off by its engine. The pod’s hatch blew open, bobbing to the surface about fifty feet away and floating towards the distant shore of Alligator Bay. A human head, its skin nearly the same color green as the water, poked out, looking one way and then another before disappearing inside. The head, and its accompanying body, reappeared and splashed into the water, sinking up to its waist.

Now that his aide had determined it was safe, General Wallace emerged from the escape pod and gracefully plopped into the chilly water. He looked about him at the clusters of brown weeds peeking up out of the water, the weeds more prevalent closer to the muddy shore, where a line of soldiers were loitering. Upon seeing the troops at the bank of the bay, Wallace straightened up and began marching forward. The muddy floor of the bay had the consistency of tar, making it difficult to walk. Despite the burning anguish in his legs, Wallace continued to push ahead.

He considered himself fortunate that he had not been in the Combat Information Center with York or on the bridge with Shaw during the battle. He had been discussing logistics with the company commanders in the briefing room when the red alert had been sounded, and against his first instincts, he had remained there with his commanders until the ceiling started to give way. The scent of burning vegetation in the air served a grim reminder of the fate of Wallace’s company commanders. Fire was breaking out in the briefing room, Wallace and his aide hurrying to the exit before the flames trapped them, but when they turned around they saw Captain Monroe still in the briefing room, trying to help the injured Captain Polk, the other company commander. Polk’s left leg had been severed at the knee by rubble, man was already fading fast, but Monroe took him in a fireman’s carry and tried to get out of the briefing room, but it was too late. The fire had spread to the exit, the heat and smoke becoming so intense that Wallace and his aide had to leave Monroe and Polk behind. Just as they neared the escape pod, Wallace heard Monroe’s dying scream as the fire finally consumed him.

Wallace became acutely aware that he had come to a stop in the marsh, feeling his aide touch his shoulder. “Are you all right, sir?”

“I’m fine, Major. Go up ahead and find whoever is in charge around here,” Wallace replied, trudging forward through the muck. Gradually he made his way to the shore, his legs feeling like molten lead by the time he stood on solid ground. He was immediately greeted by a young man still bearing the ravages of acne, who squeaked, “I’m Lieutenant Hornsby, commander of the Eighth Platoon, sir.”

“Good, let’s go somewhere to discuss our situation, Lieutenant.” Hornsby led Wallace to a plastic olive field shelter belonging to the lieutenant that was serving as the platoon’s headquarters. Wallace could hear his back groan as he bent down to get into the shelter before sitting down on Hornsby’s bedroll. “Now then, I want to know where your men are, and where the other platoons are at.”

Hornsby used a compad to illustrate how he had laid out his own men, and the last known positions of the other platoons. The other units were spread out all over the continent, easy pickings for the aliens. Wallace knew that he had to pool his resources, to bring all of the platoons together, but without transports, it would be a difficult overland trek. Still, what other option was there? To hide in the forests and mountains like scared rabbits, cowering until food supplies ran out? That was not an option that General Wallace would consider, even for a moment. No, he would bring his forces together and take the offensive against the aliens and show them the military might of the United Earth Alliance.

If only that idiot woman Shaw hadn’t lost our transports and orbital fire support, and if only that fool York hadn’t squandered by air cover, Wallace mused. With no ship in orbit, no fighters in the air, and no armor on the ground it would be a difficult battle against whatever the aliens would throw at them, but he would have to find a way to beat them. Wallace looked down at his boots, covered in mud and slime, a plan forming in his mind. He turned to Lieutenant Hornsby, whose protruding Adam’s apple was bobbing furiously. “Signal the other platoons to form up on our position. We’re going to take the offensive,” Wallace commanded. All his weariness suddenly faded away, leaving him only with the thrill of anticipation, when he would strike down the alien menace and become a hero to every citizen of Earth and its colonies.

***

Rosaro stared up into the gray sky, but the alien transport was long gone with Commander Veranda. She could still hear Veranda’s scream for help as she was being dragged away, and Rosaro tried to comfort herself by saying that she couldn’t risk hitting Veranda, but it did little to reduce her feelings of helplessness. She had simply stood by and watched a fellow human being be taken prisoner, not even lifting a finger to help. Rosaro kicked the ground, a small gray cloud rising into the air.

She turned to the Fifth Platoon, forcing down her own worries and concerns. “We have to get out of here before they decide to come back to finish what they started. Take their weapons and any other supplies that you think will come in handy.” She threw one of the alien rifles to Cromwell, then dragged the body a short distance away.

Davis came up beside her, asking quietly, “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to take off its armor and see what we’re up against,” Rosaro replied, groping the alien body for a catch to unlatch the armor around its chest. There was a seam along the ride side with a latch concealed in the right armpit. The armor was fairly light, whether it was made of a metal or plastic she could not be sure of, but she would have to take a sample to study with a compad later. She found the latches for the armor around the legs and arms, then finally cast the helmet aside, the alien now completely naked before her.

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Davis. Reaching back to some long-ago religious training, he crossed himself twice.

Rosaro could share his surprise as she stared at the enemy for the first time. Most shocking to her was that it shared many of the same features as humans. It had two legs, with three large, clawed toes that had a webbing between them. Its two arms ended in four-fingered hands with shorter claws than the feet, and no webbing. The alien’s head resembled a cobra with a flaring hood, two orange eyes, a hole near the base of the neck on each side for ears, and twin nostrils barely noticeable at the tip of its small snout. Rosaro pried open the mouth open and was surprised to see no teeth, just a forked tongue resting against a gooey membrane at the roof of its mouth. The most alien features of the body was the long tail that ended just below a thin, glossy shell that ran the length of its back. The creature was, Rosaro thought, like an amalgamation of Earth reptiles.

“Sure is ugly,” Davis commented.

Rosaro nodded, poking the alien’s scaly green flesh in the abdomen. “Yeah, but they’re flesh and blood, just like us. Make sure the men get ready to move out, I want to take a few readings for later.” Davis nodded, leaving Rosaro to kneel over the corpse with a compad. She was no biology student, but it would not hurt to have a little more knowledge about the enemy she would have to battle.

She finished her readings and returned to her troops to find them gathered around Private Deivi Ramirez, who was listening intently to his comm set. After a minute of uneasy silence he announced, “General Wallace has joined up with the Eighth Platoon and is ordering all units to join him there at Alligator Bay for a counteroffensive.”

“What? That guy is fucking nuts!” Doug Flanders shouted.

Rosaro let the commotion go on for a few more seconds, then cleared her throat. “We are Alliance soldiers, and we will follow the orders we’re given, no matter how stupid they are. Now, let’s get moving.”

Grudgingly, the Fifth Platoon set out across the gray wasteland, but Rosaro could not help but agree with her men. A counteroffensive would probably be suicide, but there were few better options available at the moment. Besides, as she had said, they were Alliance soldiers. She felt someone lightly nudge her in the ribs and saw Davis point up in the sky. Twin trails of black smoke were cutting across the sky, a whistling sound like a shell being fired ripped through the air. There was a distant rumble, then only silence, a thin column of smoke rising into the distance, about five kilometers away from the Fifth.

“You think those were escape pods?” Davis asked.

As if on cue, Cromwell called out, “I’m picking up human lifesigns from the impact point.”

Rosaro nodded, then looked back at her men. “We’ll go see if there are any survivors, and then go to Alligator Bay. We will still obey our orders, but we have a humanitarian duty to the survivors. Everyone understand?” Twenty-two heads nodded agreement. “Good, keep your eyes peeled in case it’s a trap.”

The platoon changed direction, heading towards the smoke rising into the gray sky. Rosaro knew that she was technically disobeying orders, but anyone still alive in those escape pods would need protection. Besides, it was the least she could do for the memory of Commander Veranda. She just hoped that she wouldn’t find two escape pods full of burnt corpses.

***

Despite being thrown violently against her harness, Lisa Shaw barely noticed that the escape pod had come to a stop. She raised her head and turned just enough to see Laurants and Thornton taking off their harnesses. Shaw numbly followed suit, grabbing the handle overhead to lever herself to her feet. Laurants blew the hatch open, then peeked outside before stepping out into the dim gray sky.

Shaw exited the pod last, looking around at miles and miles of empty gray plains, dull brown vegetation the only signs of life. She could see purple-gray mountains rising into the distance, the tops obscured by clouds or fog. “Any signs of life, human or alien, nearby?” She asked Laurants.

The ensign swept his compad’s scanner module around the area and shook his head, “I’ve got something coming from near the mountains, but it’s hard to determine if it’s human at this range.”

“All right then, our next priority is to try and locate the ExoArmors. Try to reestablish the guidance link with the transport’s computer,” Shaw ordered.

Laurants furiously hit buttons on the compad’s slim surface, then shook his head once again. “The transport won’t acknowledge my commands.” He pointed towards the mountains, “I triangulated the position of the ExoArmors to those mountains, but I can’t get fix the position any better than that right now. Maybe if we were closer.”

“I guess we head for the mountains then. First, let’s inventory the supplies and see what we have.” They dumped the contents of the escape pod onto the ground, sorting out what was absolutely essential and trying not to overload themselves with equipment. Unfortunately, the only real weapons were a pair of pistols that carried only thirteen shots each, there was not even any extra ammunition for the guns. There were also hunting knives, flares, and a folding hatchet that could be used in a pinch, but none of them had much experience with hand-to-hand combat. After packing up the equipment they would take, they set out for the mountains.

Thornton walked beside Shaw, while Laurants lagged behind a step. Shaw moved with her head down, trying to just focus on one step at a time, anything to avoid thinking about the dead. They walked in silence for nearly an hour before Thornton finally asked, “What about the others? Shouldn’t we try and find them?”

“We don’t know where any of the other pods landed,” Shaw replied gruffly.

“But if the aliens find them first…”

Shaw turned on Thornton, screaming, “What do you want from me? You want me to have all the answers? Because it should be pretty obvious from what happened up there that I don’t!” Thornton looked horrified, Shaw’s hands turning into fists, poised to strike the young ensign. Shaw stood there for a moment, her entire body quivering with anger, but the fists gradually came down. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I just…I need a minute alone.”

Without saying another word, Shaw turned and ran. She wasn’t sure how far she ran, or for how long, she simply collapsed to the ground when her legs finally gave out. She lay on the ground for a long time, her tears turning the gritty gray soil into mud. Sobs wracked her body, but she made no attempt to compose herself.

She wept not for herself, but for the dead, and those about to die. The grief and guilt she had tried to bottle up since the escape pod blasted her away from the Explorer came out in a torrent of tears. She had been trained to deal with the death of those under her command, to remain in command of her emotions at all times, but all that training was for faceless strangers. The crew of the Explorer was her crew, she had hand-picked them for the mission, and she had come to know them as people. In classes, books, and films it was easy to think of the ship’s crew as tools, no more valuable than the holoprojector, but it was not so simple in practice. The members of her crew had become valuable to her, more like her family than her own parents, and so she let the tears fall until she was spent.

She finally sat up, wiping the dirty wet stains from her face, and pushed herself to her feet. She brushed the dust from her uniform, straightening out the wrinkles. The tears had been shed for the dead, it was now time to worry about the living, to be the leader they needed. The grief and guilt would always be with her, but for now she had made her peace with her fallen comrades.

***

Laurants and Thornton sat on the ground, waiting for Shaw to return. Thornton still looked stricken by the experience, but she managed to ask, “Do you think she’s coming back?”

“I don’t know, she took losing the Explorer pretty hard,” Laurants replied.

Thornton’s face flushed red with anger, “We all lost friends, but that doesn’t mean we should just quit!”

Laurants shook his head, “It’s different for her, she feels…responsible.” It was hard for him to put what he was thinking into words that Thornton would understand. He knew that Shaw was feeling the same pain that he had gone through after his mother’s suicide, that unshakable feeling that you had caused the deaths of those you cared about. “She thinks that it’s her fault, that maybe if she had done something differently, the Explorer wouldn’t have been destroyed.”

“That’s stupid! There was no way to know what the aliens were up to, or what kind of weapons they had. She shouldn’t blame herself for what she had no control over.”

Laurants nodded, but to himself he thought, you can tell yourself that over and over, but it never changes anything. How many times had he told himself, staring up at the ceiling, that he couldn’t have done anything to prevent his mother’s death, that he hadn’t known what she was planning? Logic and reason could never quell the shadowy emotions that kept whispering, “If only…”

“Still…” Thornton’s voice trailed off and she rose to her feet. A lone figure was slowly making its way towards them, it became clear after another minute of waiting that Shaw was indeed coming back for them. The closer she got, the more Laurants could see that something had changed in her. She looked much older, as though someone had sucked the life out of her. The slump in her shoulders, the slowness of her gate, the blank expression on her face, it all made Laurants wonder if Lisa Shaw had actually died on the bridge of the Explorer.

“Let’s get moving,” she said without preamble. They walked in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. It was only a few minutes, though, before they spotted the column of smoke rising into the air.

“I’m picking up two escape pods, but I’m not sure if anyone is alive in them,” Laurants said.

The sight seemed to energize the trio, they started to move much faster, until they reached the site where two escape pods had come to rest. Laurants thought he heard Shaw sigh with relief when they saw a handful of Explorer crewmembers milling about the pods. He recognized Ensign Jerry Klein and Lieutenant Susan Sanders as part of his shift on the bridge. Upon seeing Laurants, Thornton, and Shaw, Klein burst out, “Thank God! I thought we were the only ones left!”

Everyone exchanged brief pleasantries, but before things could go much farther, Laurants detected a much larger group of humans approaching. As they came into view, he thought he recognized a couple of the helmeted faces, but he couldn’t be sure. From their armor and weapons, it was obvious they were not part of the stranded Explorer crew. The soldier in the lead took off her helmet and announced, “I’m Lieutenant Amanda Rosaro of the Fifth Platoon. We came to investigate the crash.”

Shaw smiled, although to Laurants it seemed forced and without real emotion behind it. “Well, Lieutenant, it looks like you’re just in time.”