Chapter 3
I held our position as I checked the Karaak ship’s position again. The snake-like vessel was still just on the edge of my scanner’s range, but it had definitely stopped moving. It hung there like it was frozen in time, and I glanced toward the weapons control to make sure our defenses were charged.
“Francine, can you show us an image?” I asked.
“I believe so,” the AI replied.
The HUD screen wavered as the AI adjusted the image, and then we were able to see the ship in all its glory. In the darkness of space, the ship, which had once been a living creature, looked like a glistening rock at the bottom of a murky lake. It seemed to sparkle, as though it had a moist exterior, and I wondered if it excreted the acidic substance as a kind of sweat all over its body. It would have been a great way of protecting itself from predators if it did, though I couldn’t imagine what kind of beast would consider the giant eel-like creature to be prey.
No, whatever the Karaak had managed to capture and convert into a ship had once been a monstrous and impressive being that I could imagine had been at the top of the food chain wherever it came from. But somehow, the Karaak had overpowered it. And the ship ahead of us was only the scout ship. It was multiple times the size of my ship, yet it was only sent to collect data. I dreaded to think of the haunting, enormous silhouette that the motherships might create as they appeared out of the depths of the galaxy.
For a few seconds, no one dared to move or even breathe. My hands tightened around the two joysticks that I used to drive the ship, and I felt a bead of sweat emerge from my hairline. All my muscles were tense, my mouth was dry, and my vision was locked on the HUD as I waited for the eel to do something.
And then the ship started to turn. Its tail writhed as it spun its body around, and in the light from the system’s distant star, we were all able to see what an abomination the Karaak had turned the creature into. Metal, hydraulics, and other materials jutted painfully out of the creature’s body. Parts of its skin were missing, and in its place were sheets of black and silver that reinforced its body.
I wondered how many of the Karaak were running around inside the monster’s body and if the monster was even alive anymore. As its head turned toward us, I could just about make out two eyes at the front of it, although they looked distant and lifeless. There was a lot more Karaak tech than tissue or muscle around its head, and I wondered how many wires they had plugged into the thing’s head in order to get it to do their bidding.
The only good thing about this encounter was that we were facing a scout ship, which probably wouldn’t be as well armored and or as heavily equipped as the Karaak ships that had destroyed Lilacron. Still, that didn’t mean we didn’t have a fight on our hands. Rayne and I had seen firsthand the destruction that the Karaak could cause, and the memory of the Karaak soldier we’d found was one that still haunted me.
I felt my heart tighten as though there was a vise around it, but my mind felt strangely calm and focused. I reminded myself that the Lilacrons needed me to save what was left of their civilization, and if I didn’t stop the Karaak here, Earth would soon follow. I knew it was high on the Karaak’s hit list already, and I had no doubt that once the murderers figured out I was the one causing all the problems, they’d move it up to a top priority.
“Shit and fuck,” Rayne whispered.
The strange vessel turned so slowly that it was like the big reveal scene in a horror movie. All the moment needed was a creaking door and some discordant music, and it would have put Wes Craven to shame.
For a moment, we were frozen in a stalemate.
And then I fired. It was kill or be killed, and I preferred to be the one who walked away from this.
I let off a plasma blast from the canons on the front of my ship and watched as the bright, deadly beams smashed into the shields around the Karaak ship. The plasma blasts were designed for slow-moving, or in this case unmoving, ships, and the Karaak’s shields became visible upon impact and fizzed as they struggled to block my attack. The shields were clearly top-notch, and I worried that I might’ve met my match.
But there wasn’t time to think about that as the Karaak started to charge their own weapons. I could see the flash of light that meant they were about to fire, so I spun away to the right and pressed the engines for as much speed as they could muster.The Karaak were hot on my heels, though their initial shots missed me by a mile since I’d already darted away.
“Everyone make sure their seatbelts are on,” I warned. “I have a feeling this isn’t going to be a smooth ride.”
To prove my point, the ship suddenly lurched forward as a blast from the Karaak ship clipped one of the back corners. I gritted my teeth and yanked the two joysticks to bring us up and away from the Karaak’s line of fire. I zigzagged across space in a bid to avoid any more damage, but I knew that it would be nearly impossible. At least the shields were holding fast for the time being, so I could focus on working out how to regain the upper hand.
I glanced to my right as we high-tailed our way past one of the dwarf planets and saw Rayne gnawing on the other half of the sandwich that she’d made me. Her green eyes were glued to the front window, and there were crumbs all over the suit that Francine had made for her.
“Seriously?” I chuckled despite the circumstances. “You’re eating at a time like this?”
“If I’m going out, I’m going out on a full stomach,” she said through her mouthful.
“Can’t argue with that,” I said.
“Incoming!” Occana shouted.
I saw him peering over my shoulder from the back of the cockpit. One of the sensors had detected something dropping down from above. I swerved sharply, and we bounced around in our seats as I tried to straighten out the ship. I turned just in time to see a smaller version of one of the boulders that the Karaak dropped on Lilacron. This one was the perfect size to crush a spaceship rather than an entire town.
“Shit!” I grunted as I got us steady and then hauled ass away from them again.
“I think that’s the literal term for it,” Rayne said with a grimace. “It’s organic material isn’t it?”
“I don’t want to think about that right now,” I replied.
I checked the scanner to see where the Karaak were, and I could see that they were still above us. I had managed to put a little bit of distance between us, but I pushed the ship harder as I tried to get out of poop range. At least we had an unlimited source of power, because it would have sucked if we’d run out of gas in the middle of the fight.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have fired at them,” Rayne said. “Maybe they’d have been open to talking.”
The Karaak hit us with another blast, and the cockpit was filled with the sound of the shields fizzing as they tried to repel the acidic substance that the snake had thrown at us.
“Really?” I asked as I turned to Rayne.
“You’re right,” she sighed. “They don’t appear to be striving for peace. I guess that was just some wishful thinking.”
“You think?” I replied as another blast narrowly missed us.
The laser turret on top of my ship was ready, so I spun it around and started to fire at the ship behind us as soon as I had a good shot. However, as I watched the scanner to judge the shots, I realized that the Karaak ship was dropping further and further backward. I fired a couple of shots that made contact but didn’t do much damage, and then the ship was nearly out of range.
“Francine, what the hell are they up to?” I asked as my brows furrowed into a frown.
“I have scanned the ship as best I can,” the AI replied. “I can only detect a few beings on board.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said. “It’s only a scout ship.”
“Yes,” she replied. “But perhaps they realize that the two ships are evenly matched.”
“So, what, they’re giving up?” I asked.
“I do not think they see it that way,” the AI replied.
Suddenly, the Karaak stopped firing at us completely. I watched as the ship made another slow turn and then resumed their original course.
“Damn it!” I growled as I brought my ship around. “They think they’ve put enough distance between us that they can reach the motherships before we can destroy them, and if they manage that, then we’re as good as dead.”
“And so are my people,” Occana said.
“We have to get to them before they get back to the other Karaak,” I said. “They’ll keep trying to put more distance between us, because if we damage the ship, it will slow them down, and then they’ll have to turn and fight.”
“So we slow them down,” Rayne said.
The sandwich was gone now, and the only hunger that remained was in her eyes. She wanted to take out the Karaak scout ship before it could reach the mothership just as much as I did. The energy inside the cockpit prickled with anticipation, and even Francine seemed excited.
I was just glad that I had so much to do to keep my ship on track, as otherwise, I would have been going crazy as I sat and waited for a chance to act. I hated not being in control of a situation, and I could tell by the way Rayne and Occana were leaning forward impatiently in their seats that they felt the same way.
But the Karaak were in full flight mode now. There were a few more blasts from their weapons, but the shots weren’t well aimed. Most missed, though a couple grazed the shields.
The Karaak shields weren’t holding up as well, though. I kept firing everything I could, and I was definitely hitting my targets. The Karaak’s shields were starting to flicker, and I felt a grim satisfaction as we bore down on the strange vessel.
The Karaak seemed to realize that they were in danger of losing their shields, though, and so the ship started to use evasive maneuvers to avoid my weapons fire. It was suddenly a lot harder to hit the target, and more than one blast soared past their ship without leaving a mark.
“In another world, I would’ve liked to have met the pilot,” I said, to which Rayne snorted a laugh.
I had to give credit where it was due. Whoever was behind the wheel, or brain, of the Karaak ship was pulling out all of the stops. The ship took full advantage of space, though the pilot still managed to keep the ship heading in the correct direction overall.
And bit by bit, the scout ship drew closer to the mothership.
I knew that the larger Karaak fleet was about a day’s flight away from the colony, since Hemphy the analyst had explained that these smaller ships were only intended for short hops. But there was no way that I would be able to keep up the chase for twenty-four hours straight. Francine might have enhanced my body with nanobots and provided me with the best tech for the job, but that didn’t make me a machine. Even though I hated to admit it, at some point, I was gonna get tired, so I had to get to the scout ship before that happened. I had a lot of people depending on me, and I wasn’t about to let them all down. Not when their lives were literally in my hands.
I noticed an asteroid up ahead of the Karaak ship and decided I would use whatever I could to slow the ship. So I let off a plasma blast from one of the canons and watched the beam plow through the rocky surface. The asteroid exploded a moment later, and pieces of the rock went careering in all directions. More importantly, some of the larger pieces smashed into the Karaak ship. Of course, the shields took the brunt of the hits, but as the asteroid was such a large object, its death did manage to knock the Karaak ship off course and do a bit of damage in the process.
“Good shot, Will,” General Occana said. “That impact seems to have done more damage than the plasma cannons did. If only there were more asteroids.”
“Oh,” I said as I had my lightbulb moment.
I turned to Occana, who gave me a questioning look, and smiled.
“What?” he said. “Did I say something wrong?”
“On the contrary,” I replied. “You just gave me an idea.”
“Well, that’s good,” he said as he glanced at Rayne.
I ignored their inquisitive glances as I checked my sensors. There weren’t any more asteroids nearby, but there was a small clump of dwarf planets locked together in orbit that would do just as well.
“You’re one hundred percent sure that the dwarf planets in this system are uninhabited, right, Frankie?” I asked.
“Yes,” the AI replied. “We are too far from the system’s star to support life.”
“Good,” I replied. “Because I’m about to make a big mess, and I don’t want anyone else getting caught up in it.”
“What are you going to do?” Rayne asked.
“Well, if it goes as planned, then you both need to hang on tight,” I replied. “I hope you don’t get motion sickness.”
Rayne frowned, puzzled, but she heeded my warning and gripped the arms of her chair.
I was in full sheepdog mode as I used my shots to redirect the Karaak ship toward the dwarf planets. It was a lot like my first delivery job in space, when I’d had to pass through an asteroid field and ended up in the clutches of a pirate ship. I’d learned how to navigate in and around the rocks on that trip, but more importantly, I’d claimed a tractor beam that could grab onto either a ship or a chunk of rock, if I could just get close enough.
Someone on the Karaak ship must have realized what I was doing because the ship tried to veer away from the planetoid a couple of times. But some well-placed shots forced them back toward the oversized rocks, and when the ship finally flew into the middle of the clump, we were right behind them.
The snake ship started to weave its way between the slowly rotating orbs, and once again, the pilot proved his worth as he managed to keep the ship out of direct range of my weapons. But I’d already learned how to handle that, and when the chance presented itself, I lined up the plasma guns on one of the tiny planets and started to fire. The Karaak ship was too close to the dwarf planet to avoid the debris, and the other ship took several hard hits from flying rocks.
I heard some more fizzing from our own shields as smaller pieces of rubble and debris bounced off our ship, and I saw that Rayne’s face had gone pale out of nervousness. She had confidence in me, and I knew that, but I couldn’t blame her for wondering if I’d finally gone too far.
“Almost there,” I said in a reassuring voice.
The Karaak were finding it harder to avoid my shots, and after another chunk of rock exploded almost on top of them, their ship slowed to a crawl. We took a few more hits as well, but we were finally close enough to use the tractor beam on the other ship.
“Here we go!” I said as I fired the tractor beam.
The Karaak scout ship was only just within reach. I saw the beam shoot out toward it and latch onto the very rear end of the ship. The ship ground to a halt, but the tail whipped back and forth as the ship tried to yank itself free. The beam held fast for the moment, but I could see that the ship was slowly edging out of its grasp.
The only thing I could do was get closer, but that meant that the Karaak would have an easier target.
Yellow blasts started to soar toward us like snow on the motorway, only this snow was highly acidic and began to burn through my shields. I didn’t like the fact I was putting the ship at risk, but I had no other option if this was going to work. I just had to hope that the shields held out for long enough for us to get onboard the ship and deal with the crew.
“What now?” Rayne asked. “The shields can’t hold out forever, Will.”
“Now for the hard part,” I replied.
“This was the easy part?” she asked incredulously.
The Karaak ship was still trying to pull away even while it fired off another round. A warning flashed on the HUD about the shield strength, and I knew we were in trouble without even checking just how low our shields were. But there was no way in hell I could let this ship escape.
So what could I do? My own ship was starting to spin as the snake writhed in the tractor beam’s grasp. I managed to hold the ship steady, but then I realized I didn’t need to. I could use that spin to knock out the other ship.
I started to ease up on the controls, just to be sure that the beam would still keep the Karaak ship locked onto mine. When I saw that the beam would hold, I let the ship spin faster. I was now the sun, and the Karaak ship was the unwilling planet orbiting around me.
Soon, I was fighting to keep my ship from spinning out uncontrollably, but this was exactly the momentum that I needed.
“Hold on!” I shouted.
It was hard to keep track of the planets as we spun, but I found a large one that I could focus on so I wouldn’t pass out before I’d finished my maneuver. When the Karaak ship was lined up in the planet’s path, I turned off the tractor beam and sent the other ship spinning toward the planet.
We watched in awe as the snake ship raced toward the planet. The vessel jerked a few times like the pilot was trying to regain control of the ship, but there wasn’t enough time to make the adjustments before the ship smashed into the planet. Dust and rubble erupted into a cloud around the ship as it rolled across the dwarf planet’s surface.
“It worked,” I said out of a combination of both happiness and relief. “Thank God.”
“I do not know who this ‘God’ is,” Occana said. “But you’re the one I will be thanking.”
“Thanks, Occana,” I said with a grin. “Now, let’s make sure those bastards are dead.”