Somnus III - Chapter 32 (Patreon)

Dorrik leaned back in their duty station, taking a long sip from their glass of gweerma, before sighing wearily.  When the Undaunted had arrived in Earth orbit and fought the Meritorious Industrial Harmony it had seemed like the backwater solar system was going to become the flashpoint in a massive war between the stallesp and the lokkel.

Then, everything just ground to a halt.  Dorrik had stopped paying attention to the internal politics of the Galactic Consensus investigation around the time that the stallesp had called for and been granted an independent fact finding committee to inquire into “potential bias and procedural missteps on the part of the blue ribbon committee responsible for determining whether there was undue interference with human development.”

After months, the two committees were finally on board a transport and en route to Earth, the status of their charters and scope of their investigatory powers finally confirmed via a vote of the Galactic Consensus.  Of course, at this point they were almost an afterthought.  The battle lines were drawn, and open conflict between the two sides was a regular occurrence.

The investigation still mattered.  Just over half of the Consensus refused to take sides in the fight between the lokkel, the stallesp and their respective allies.  The lokkel might represent some of the strongest and most well established races in the Consensus while the stallesp headed a coalition of the wealthier and more heavily industrialized civilizations, but that didn’t mean they were the only two groups.

Large swathes of the galaxy were populated with smaller nations, usually consisting of only four or five solar systems with two or three habitable bodies between them, the smaller unaligned races didn’t amount to much individually, but when combined their total numbers were impressive.  Unfortunately, it was hard to convince unaligned races to act in concert.  There were small regional bodies, trading coalitions, confederacies, and mutual aid pacts, but by and large, they represented hundreds and hundreds of civilizations that needed to be contacted, negotiated with, and wooed independently.

Even as navies burned each other into cinders across the galaxy, waves of diplomats made contact with these smaller political entities.  For now, the two sides were in a bit of stalemate, neither party willing to fully commit their forces for fear of alienating the independent races, or worse, losing everything in one climactic encounter and leaving their core worlds defenseless.

And that left the Undaunted adrift.  Awaiting the investigative teams, but capable of doing little else to halt the steady descent of civilization into madness.

Dorrik pressed the glass of gweerma against their forehead, letting the cool stimulant calm their burgeoning headache.  As much as they would like to blame Commander Tosset for the delay, it would be illogical.  The commander had been dressed down for the debacle related to their arrival, but since then he had been much more alert, treating Earth’s orbit like the potential war-zone it was.

It was just that nothing happened.  Days passed and Dorrik monitored what he could of Miss Kat’s progress through the rudimentary networks that the human’s used, but there was nothing to do but wait for the commissions to arrive from the Galactic Consensus so that they could begin their inquiry.

They took another sip of the gweerma letting the cold liquid wash over their tongue and send their nerves tingling.  Boredom was all that remained.  Boredom, training, and taking sojourns into the dreamscape with Kaleek and Miss Kat.

A red light blinked to life on the console before them, causing Dorrik to jerk forward and frown at the display.  Their claws danced over the keyboard, bringing up sensor readings from the solar system’s asteroid belt.

“Paging Commander Tosset,” they said, a smile splitting their muzzle as their crest fluttered in excitement behind them.  “The scanners have identified an engine signature from a stallesp battlecruiser.  The ship just fired its engines and it's moving toward Earth.  It looks like the moles are on the move.”

A moment later, the commander’s voice chirped from Dorrik’s earpiece, groggy from being just woken up.  “Can we confirm that the vessel in question is the Meritorious Industrial Harmony?”

“Not at this time,” Dorrik replied, shaking their head even though the officer couldn’t see them.  “They are limping though.  Their engines can’t seem to hit full power and there are power fluctuations that the computer has flagged as the result of a containment field breach in the main drive.”

“Unless you can think of a different damaged stallesp battlecruiser within a light century of this system,” they finished, shrugging theatrically, “I can’t think of anything else that it could be.”

“Shave my crest,” Tosset spat out, sounding slightly more awake than his previous message.  “I’m sounding yellow alert now.  A relief crew will be on the bridge to take over from you shortly, but if you could contact Honor, and Blade of Truth so that they can get into defensive positions, I would appreciate it.”

Even before the officer finished speaking, the deck thrummed beneath Dorrik’s feet as the Undaunted’s reactors spun up to full power.  Doing so burned a bit more fuel than the ship would normally expend in standby, but in exchange they dumped significantly more energy into the capacitors that fed the ship’s shields and plasma lance.

Dorrik simply nodded, keying in the codes on their console that would contact the two support strikers.  They were both docked to the sides of the small supply base that the lokkel task force had constructed from the remains of a number of passing comets and asteroids.  The station wasn’t anything special, basically just a small hydrogen reactor salvaged from the Undaunted’s collection of spares powering some basic hydroponics and life support.

That said, unlike Honor and Blade of Truth, the station could sustain itself indefinitely.  It would be defenseless in any sort of combat, their task force didn’t have any of the exotic materials needed to build proper modern technology into it, but the outpost let the crews of the two smaller ships relax outside of the cramped confines of their warships.

Unfortunately, that meant they weren’t ready for combat at a moment’s notice.   It would take them long minutes to wake up, dress themselves in combat attire and board their vessels.  Of course, barring the presence of an expensive stealth vessel relying upon warriors that mastered gold level skills in the dreamscape, it was almost guaranteed that they would have those minutes.

Many things were possible when the abilities earned in the Tower were brought into the equation, but without a spell that truly altered the fabric of reality, modern scanners could pick up the antimatter emissions from a modern drive at incredible distances.  Stealth was more a matter of using electronic and magical systems to prevent another ship from acquiring a firing solution rather than avoiding notice altogether.

Unless the stallesp tried a blind jump, both of the strikers would have plenty of time to detach from the station and get into defensive positions.

Dorrik paused.  They glanced back down at the readings, feeling the recycled air rustle through their crest as they tried to make sense of the fluctuations coming off of the stallesp ship.  Their fingers clattered over the console keys once more.

They frowned as the screen displayed its results.  The fluctuations coming off of the stallesp ship could be from a damaged containment field, but they also could be from the distant vessel charging for a jump.

The plot glared back at Dorrik.  A simple red dot, coordinates noted in an ever changing array of glyphs below it, maneuvered out of the asteroid belt, lining itself up for a straight flight toward Earth and its lokkel defenders.  Only one other person was on the bridge, but they were busy rousing the Undaunted’s ancillary gun crews.  At least until a relief crew arrived, Dorrik was the most senior officer on the bridge, and that meant that the decision was theirs.

A blind jump was a stupendeously stupid idea.  It would wreak havoc on the jumping ship’s systems, disabling its shields as well as its more advanced weapons and sensors.  The jump might give the stallesp the element of surprise, but in most cases, the defending vessel would have enough time to power up its shields and weapons before the attacker managed to overcome the interference from the jump.

In short, by all conventionally logic, even if the battlecruiser were to perform a surprise jump, statistically the Undaunted would have between fifteen and thirty seconds to pound the other ship into scrap before it could prepare its defenses.

Dorrik tapped a handful of buttons, shifting some of their ship’s power toward its plasma lance.  Another clatter of claws on keys brought up the firing program for the main cannon.

Maybe it was paranoia, but Dorrik didn’t want to risk it.  The stellasp ships might not be as powerful ton for ton as a similar lokkel vessel, but that didn’t mean the moles were dumb.  Their scientists and factories were working around the clock to try and bridge the quality gap.  It was very possible that the annoying little mammals had stumbled upon-

The stallesp battlecruiser disappeared off the plot, the impossible acceleration figures of an in system jump replacing the warship.  Without hesitating for a moment, Dorrik slammed their claw down on their console, triggering an emergency alert.

Red lights began flashing all over the bridge, followed a fraction of a second later by mental static as the ship’s on duty mages began powering the teleportation cordon.  A klaxon sounded, directing all lokkel to their duty stations even as Dorrik’s communicator chirped.

Then the Meritorious Industrial Harmony appeared.  Not just on the plot.  The ship was right in front of them, its scarred and damaged superstructure visible to the naked eye as flickers of red-violet energy crackled off of its form from the transition back into regular space.

Almost two dozen fighters launched from the damaged cruiser’s sides, large puffs of pressurized gas propelling them rather than the usual magnetic catapults.  The tiny vessels turned, more clouds of gas hissing into space as they maneuvered and accelerated away from their mothership.

Frantically, Dorrik brought up the firing solution he’d begun before the Harmony’s jump.  Those fighters must have been what gave the moles the confidence to try something as risky as a blind jump.  Already half of them were sliding through space toward the two docked support strikers, a combination of magic and pre-modern tech pushing them to almost half the speed Dorrik would expect from a state of the art vessel.

Still, as inefficient as the process was, the tiny ships were already in range.  Dorrik had no way of knowing how much the jump had disrupted their targeting computers, but it likely wasn’t as bad for them as it was for the larger listing battlecruiser that had shielded them.  All it would take was one or two torpedo locks and the stallesp fighters could devastate the defenders.  Even one hit on a vessel without its shields up could knock it out of commission long enough for the stallesp battlecruiser to regain control of its systems and open fire.

Then, Dorrik’s computer sounded the solid tone of a target lock.  The entire ship shook like a makyr-cat trying to dry itself.  At point blank range, a magnetically guided gout of brilliant white light stabbed out from the Undaunted’s bow, ripping through the last quarter of the stallesp battlecruiser.  The plasma lance continued to fire for almost a second, ripping sideways as the beam crumpled the Harmony’s armor like tissue paper, setting off a cascade of secondary explosions.

It jerked in the night sky, explosions triggering another mini jump.  One moment it was in front of the Undaunted, armor melting as the lokkel vessel unleashed the fire of an angry sun on it, and the next it blinked out of existence, reappearing just above Earth itself.   One or two of the more alert mass driver gun crews managed to slam a shell into the warship before it began falling into the nearby planet, but there was only a moment to acquire the target and fire before the risk of accidentally hitting the inhabited world was too great.

Dorrik’s eyes tracked the ship after it reappeared in Earth’s upper atmosphere.  For a second their claws strayed toward the engine controls, but a quick glance at the plot showed the swarm of fighters converging on the helpless support strikers as their crews rushed frantically to activate their immobile warships.

With one final glance at the departing battlecruiser, Dorrik keyed in a series of commands.  Just as the door to the bridge hissed open, the Undaunted jolted forward, automatic turrets decimating the slowly moving fighters before they could acquire firing solutions with their half disabled computers.

Commander Tosset stalked onto the bridge, a helmet under his top right arm and his eyes locked on the sensor reports.  He frowned, crest flattening as he took stock of the situation.

“Ahn, report,” He said, nodding in Dorrik’s direction as a point defense autocannon chewed through the armor on a stallesp fighter, detonating it in a flash of blueish white light visible to the naked eye.

“Sir,”  Dorrik replied, stepping away from the control panel to let the officer pass.  “Just as the Meritorious Industrial Harmony was powering up, I noticed antimatter fluctuations from a potential jump so I rerouted power to charging the plasma lance just in time to catch them unprepared.”

Tosset nodded, the older lokkel’s lower arms tapping over the computer as their upper limbs fidgeted with the helmet.  On the sensor display, four of the remaining fighters managed to launch their torpedoes, all of them targeting the supply and recreation station.  The Undaunted redirected its fire, plucking the weapons from space before they could reach anything approaching attack speed before finishing off the last of the fighters themselves.

Finally, Commander Tosset looked up, setting his helmet on the computer as the last of the enemy vessels disappeared off the plot.

“You did the right thing Ahn,” he said, smiling weakly at Dorrik.  “It looks like they were still damaged from our previous fight, but you saved us from a bit of a disaster there.  I’ll have to let high command know that the stallesp can field pre-modern fighters that are more or less immune to jump interference.  If you hadn’t been ready, they would have finished off both the Honor and the Blade of Truth before we managed to get our systems active.”

“Honestly.”  Tosset grimaced, his crest flush against the back of his head.  “That might be the best case scenario.  The warheads on those fighters were pretty high yield.  It looks like they scooped out their electronics and maneuvering thrusters, just counting on the power of surprise to guarantee a hit.  Even if our shields were up, four of those would probably be enough to knock our power grid offline for a couple of seconds.  Certainly long enough for them to return their systems to some semblance of working order.”

“Still.”  Dorrik trailed off, their eyes following the image of the Meritorious Industrial Harmony as it began to glow from its descent into Earth’s atmosphere.  It obviously still had some power, a weak connection of anti-gravity generators were slowing its descent, but they were far from enough to save the ship.  The plasma lance had done too much damage for that.

“Don’t clip your crest over it,”  Tossed said reassuringly, lower hands resuming their work on the computer as the rest of the bridge crew shuffled in, moments too late to be of impact in the fight.  “Without the cover of our point defense batteries, we would have lost both of the support strikers.  I know you could have pursued the stallesp ship and broken it up before it hit the planet’s orbit, but not doing so saved dozens of lives.”

“But what about the humans?  Dorrik asked bleakly, motioning at the plume of white light that surrounded the plummeting battlecruiser.  “I may have saved dozens of lokkel, but in doing so, I can’t help but worry that I have doomed millions when their vessel actually crashes.”

“It won’t be cataclysmic,” Tosset responded, tapping out another round of commands.  A moment later a close up image of the burning battlecruiser appeared on the viewscreen, detailed numbers and glyphs below it showing the power output of its struggling anti gravity in comparison to its steadily climbing rate of descent.  “The Harmony’s emergency systems are active.  According to the computer, it’s going to hit hard enough to kill most of the crew, but it won’t quite be bad enough to start an ice age.”

“For most humans, it’s only going to look like a massive meteor,” the commander continued.  “Like a star falling from the heavens.”

“Unless a human is near,” Tosset stopped speaking for a half second, squinting at the computer display as his mouth worked silently, calculating the Harmony’s descent, “Big River?  What kind of name is Big River, New Mexico?”

“Isn’t that just to the South of the stallesp antimatter reactor we located earlier?”  Dorrik asked, their stomachs sinking.

“Yes!”  The commander answered, slamming the fist of their upper right hand into the open palm of its lower counterpart.  “Unless someone is right near there, they should be completely fine.  For everyone else, it’ll just be a flash of light in the night sky.”