Author: Endi Webb
Date: 2014-02-19T13:08:32+00:00

Darkness Defied

#2 in Prelude to Resistance,

a short story series set in the Pax Humana universe

by Endi Webb

Admiral Pritchard had a secret, and it was killing Lieutenant Jacob Mercer not to know what it was.

Earlier that morning, he’d thought that the man had simply arranged for the South American Fleet to pretend to be unable to show up to the battle in high-Earth orbit, and then to arrive in force just when the Imperial Fleet thought the Resistance was crushed.

But Pritchard’s reaction to his guess left him puzzled. “Just wait until the Mars campaign,” the man had said.

What in the world would happen at mars? Some spectacular new weapon that the Resistance was holding in reserve for when the Imperials came at them with all they had? Jake knew that the first battle had been far too easy—the Imperials were still mustering their strength, preparing to suppress the rebellion brutally, as was its wont.

Or was it a new tactic? But really, after hundreds of years of space battles, both orbital and interstellar, what new idea could the man possibly come up with that hadn’t been tried before?

Either way, Jake knew he’d have little time to think about it, and even less time to investigate. About half the Resistance fleet had broken off pursuit of the broken Imperial fleet over Earth and had begun the long, four hour flight to Mars, including the Viper Squad. Jake was sitting in his cockpit with Kit, reviewing the battle plans and enjoying a little downtime.

“Just remember Shotgun, our targets are the mines. There must be thousands of those buggers in orbit around Mars. I’ve been thinking of ways to detect them—they’ve got quite the stealth coating on them.”

Jake nodded. “Yeah, the stubborn bastards down there held out against the empire for months during the first Corsican invasion of the Terran system. I’m surprised the Imperials didn’t nuke the whole place, just like they did to Belen back in the 26th century—those Martian colonists are pretty feisty.”

Kit yawned—it had been a long twenty-four hours. “Yeah, I think the Imperials threatened to do just that unless Mars surrendered. Our boys down there laid down something like ten thousand anti-matter mines to keep the big capital ships out, but the Imperial bastards sent in a few hundred missile frigates in and locked on to all the major cities. The Martians gave up, but the Empire’s grip there has been tenuous ever since—those colonists just hate being told what to do. Hell, that’s why they’re on Mars. A shitty wasteland.”

Jake glanced at his board. Three minutes to Mars. Time to begin the deceleration. He pressed down on the thrust reversal button and eased the controls back. Even though the gravitic field acted on every cell, every molecule, even every subatomic particle in them at once, he always thought he felt the sensation of inertia change. He wondered if he had some sixth sense that could detect a change in velocity when the usual cues were absent.

Mars loomed larger in the viewport, and within a minute it had grown from a tiny, ruddy ball to an enormous red-orange orb that filled their view. Jake peered down to where he knew a few of the major enclosed cities were, but a raging dust storm had enveloped any recognizable feature on the surface.

Kit’s mouth dropped open. “What the hell is that?”

Straining his eyes to see what his friend pointed at, he tried to make out the odd shape. Odd, simply because that shape didn’t belong there. He’d seen pictures of them before, but never up this close.

An orbital siege engine. A massive, armed-to-the-teeth battlestation that could lay waste to an entire continent within hours.

And it was in low orbit around their target.

“Is that thing ours or theirs?” Jake began to suspect that Pritchard’s secret was finally laid bare to all. But how in the world had the man managed to finagle one of the massive behemoths away from the Empire? Granted, up until just yesterday, they’d all been Imperial officers, Pritchard included, and it wasn’t completely unreasonable to think he’d simply requisitioned it.

Requisitioned an orbital siege engine.

Right.

Something was up.

Kit shook his head. “No idea. I don’t know where we would have gotten one from. The empire usually uses them to conquer holdout worlds out on the frontier.”

The answer came in the form of the comm blaring to life. “All hands, this is the USS Fury.” Jake recognized the voice of the Fury’s captain. “We don’t know how it’s possible, but the Empire appears to have shifted an orbital siege engine into orbit around Mars. Standby for orders. Do not approach it. Especially not our cruisers. One blast from its Hyper-Ion-Beam cannon and you’re toast.”

Jake squinted at the battlestation, trying to make out the armaments surely dotting its surface. “So, it’s not Pritchard’s after all.”

Kit cocked his head. “You thought Pritchard swiped one from the Corsicans?” He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“It’s just … I thought that was his secret.”

Rolling his eyes, Kit said, “Oh, you and that secret. Listen, if Pritchard’s going to tell us something, he’ll tell us when he’s good and ready. Let’s just buckle down and follow orders, ok?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

Still, if there was one thing Jake hated, it was knowing that someone had a secret, and had even told him the existence of the secret, but would not tell the actual secret itself.

Not that he was nosy. He didn’t tend to pry into people’s personal lives. But if someone advertised a secret, then by god he was going to find out what it was.

“All hands, this is the Fury. The Admiral has ordered that we stand down. The cruisers, at least. But all fighters are ordered to engage the handful of Imperial cruisers and frigates escorting the orbital siege engine. The engine won’t fire at you in such close proximity to their own ships. When you’ve disabled their fleet, focus your fire on the offensive capabilities of the engine. Target the Hyper-Ion-Beam cannon first, followed by the railgun turrets and the gigawatt laser banks. Good luck, squadrons.”

Kit turned to Jake. “They’re kidding. Five fighter squadrons against a handful of light cruisers, missile frigates, and who knows how many fighter squadrons they’ve got? In the shadow of that thing, and all without capital-ship support?”

Jake shrugged. “Sounds fun,” he said, and reached for the controls to steer them towards the siege engine.

The comm buzzed to life again. “This is Admiral Pritchard. Good day, folks. Looks pretty grim out there, doesn’t it? Just look sharp. Use your size to your advantage, and be on the lookout for asymmetrical warfare opportunities. You people are the best of the best, and I expect no less than a miracle. Pritchard out.”

Their proximity detector alerted them to the nearing presence of the small Imperial strike force.

“Shotgun, you ready? We’re nearly there,” said Kit, and Jake caught the man eyeing him. He pulled himself together. Something the Admiral had said. Asymmetrical warfare. Was that a hint? Was Pritchard trying to tell him something?

“Right. Ready, Rooster.” Stupid. It was stupid. He shook his head. Why in the world would Pritchard try and tell him to do something through some absurd coded message? Jake decided he needed more sleep, and resolved to do so the moment he returned to the Fury.

Still. If the man had some ideas about asymmetrical warfare, why had he not just come out and said so? Why the cryptic message? Maybe he was worried the Imperials were listening in. But in that case, why didn’t Pritchard just tell them before they left?

Because. Because the orbital siege engine was a surprise. Pritchard was expecting to battle the Imperial Mars Patrol fleet mano a mano, without the massive battlestation holding the Resistance fleet at bay. No secret here. No grand, brilliant tactics. Pritchard was just as surprised as they were. Surely.

And why was Jake so distracted by this? It was just a secret. A drunk man’s secret. Seriously, the man, in some drunken haze, had probably remembered his secret midget porn habit and thought he’d tell the boys in the bar for a good laugh, but then changed his mind in a moment of clarity. Something stupid like that. He really needed to stop obsessing over it.

“Jake!” Kit yelled him out of his reverie, and pointed towards the Imperial fighter bearing down on them, just dozens of meters away.

Red ion bursts erupted all around them. Jake blindly pressed hard on the Z accelerator, lifting them up and out of the fire zone before flipping the fighter around to starboard to give Kit an open shot.

“Dammit,” muttered Kit, as his shots went wide.

Letting the fighter continue its spin, Jake pulled up hard on the controls to track the other bird, but another one was already on top of them. Punching the Z accelerator again he pushed the fighter down hard and banked away to port as the red streaks zoomed past.

“Jake, get us the hell over to those cruisers. We’ll have more cover over there.”

“You mean, you’d rather have a bunch of light cruisers firing at us in addition to the fighters?” Jake shot his co-pilot a disparaging look. “With the cruisers in such a tight formation, they can cover each other. It’s suicide.”

But the wail of the comm put an end to the discussion. “This is Viper leader, all squads to the Imperial strike group. Engage the fighters there, and see if we can’t launch a few torpedoes at those cruisers while we’re at it.”

Kit shot Jake a look that said, “I told you so,” but held his tongue, for which Jake was grateful. Otherwise he just might have turned off the gravitic accelerator and switched to conventional thrusters, complete with their stomach churning g-forces—something he knew Kit hated with a passion.

Forgetting about the enemy fighters momentarily, he pushed the throttle to full acceleration and leapt away towards the collection of ships in low orbit around Mars, and the giant, forbidding, orbital siege engine that seemed to hum with bridled energy—Jake couldn’t tell if he was imagining the sound or if it emanated from the speakers surrounding him. Either way the thing looked to be bristling with weapons: the dual Hyper-Ion-Beam cannons, of course, in addition to hundreds of railgun turrets and gigawatt laser arrays, perfect for punching a hole in the side of any ship, including the mighty USS Fury, a Centurion-class heavy cruiser.

“What are we looking at, Rooster? How many?”

Kit glanced at his sensors. Only seven light cruisers—Comet Class—and maybe three squadrons of fighters. If it weren’t for those cruisers we’d be about evenly matched. Well, and the siege engine.”

Jake peered at the behemoth, and up close he was able to appreciate the massive scale and raw power of the station. Not quite as large as Geneseo Station above Earth—the sprawling shipyards and defense complex—but deadly all the same.

And within moments they were among the cruisers, and the battle had begun.

“Crash! Pull up! We’ve got your back!” As Jake tensed his grip on the controls, he saw the other Viper squad member turn suddenly to starboard and down, leaving his two Imperial tails exposed to Kit’s guns. A few seconds later all that remained were two expanding clouds of debris, and they plunged through it, hearing the dozens of tiny collisions with the pieces that hadn’t completely vaporized.

The battle was going better than expected—at least, as far as Jake could tell. In the heat of combat, he got in the zone. His vision narrowed, his senses focused on the sights and sounds of the surrounding fighters and obstacles, and he felt like the fighter was just an extension of his body. The fighters wings were his wings. The engines were his engines, and the visual/audio system surrounding him in the cabin were his eyes and his ears.

He was born for this.

“What have we got left?”

Kit’s fingers flew across his board, slipping occasionally from the dripping sweat from his hands. Clearly the man was not born for this. But he performed competently, all things considered. “Red squad has taken out one of the cruisers, and I count only twenty or so fighters remaining. We’ve lost…” his voice fell, and he looked up. “We’ve lost ten birds, Shotgun.”

Jake surveyed the battle scene. The six remaining bulbous light cruisers provided the structure of the battle, like a skeleton, and the remaining four or five dozen fighters flitted in and out, around and between them, furiously blasting each other with red ion bursts, the friendlies avoiding the occasional shot from the cruisers though not always successfully, as Jake had witnessed one of his fellow Viper squad members explode into oblivion from one well-placed railgun slug from one of the cruisers—the NPQR Hades, if he read the nameplate right.

It was like a deadly, colorful, and almost beautiful orbital dance. A frantic dance. They were doing well, but they had to do better.

Asymmetrical warfare. What in the hell was Pritchard talking about?

And suddenly, Jake had an idea.

The original Corsican Empire consisted of only three worlds: Corsica, Bismark, and New Kyoto, three of the largest and most cosmopolitan societies in the thousand settled worlds. Centuries of technological progress, asteroid mineral extraction, and new and titillating forms of virtual reality entertainment had rendered the people lazy and content.

At least, until the pirates came along. The pirate syndicates ruined everything. They raided the shipping lanes. They murdered and tortured everyone they captured. They pillaged and raped the smaller settlements, taking what they wanted and burned the rest.

And suddenly, the Prime Minister of Corsica saw his chance. Never waste a crisis—that was his motto, and he declared a state of emergency. He disbanded the lower house of parliament and established the Corsican Empire for the safety of the people and the republic.

He chased the pirates down and decimated their ranks—but only in the original sense of the word. In reality the syndicates hid themselves remarkably well, only losing maybe a tenth of their strength. But their continued threat gave the first emperor just the excuse he needed.

And so began the expansion.

Somehow, this all crossed Jake’s mind in a flash, and reminded him of something.

It was only the perceived threat—the fear—that enabled the empire to thrive. When a people thought their existence was threatened by the pirates, they practically begged the Empire to take over. Fear led to stupid mistakes.

He had to make the captains of the light cruisers afraid. Only then would they slip up.

Jake eyed the orbital siege engine, deadly-looking against the stark background of the red planet below. He flipped open his comm.

“Viper leader, it’s Shotgun. What’s the word on our computer hacking team? Have we taken control of the prize yet?”

The only response was the continued sounds of battle—the squeal of the gravitic drives. The staccato pulses of the ion guns bursting from the fighters. The occasional boom of a railgun and the explosion of a fighter.

But the silence from the Viper squad leader told Jake that the man may—just may—have caught his meaning.

“Shotgun, I thought we agreed not to talk about it over an open comm. Shut the fuck up.”

“Yes, sir.” He paused, wondering how far to press his luck—how much to feed the Imperial ears surely eavesdropping. “But sir, you will tell us when to pull out from the cruisers, right?”

“I said shut it, Lieutenant. Stay tuned. Viper leader out.”

Kit glanced over at him. “What in the world are you doing?” He squeezed his trigger to ward off another fighter that darted at them. Jake swung the ship around to pursue.

“Just messing with their heads. Look, if the Imperials think that we’re trying to hack into the siege engine, then they’ll break up the close formation. They’re not going to risk having all their cruisers packed in so tightly—not when one blast from the engine could take them all out at once.”

Kit snorted. “You really think they’re going to fall for—”

As if in answer to his question, the cruiser nearest them started to move relative to the others. Its rear engines flared and with a quick burst of speed it soared into a higher orbit. Jake grinned as he watched the other cruisers follow suit, each separating itself from the others.

“—it… jeez, Shotgun, it worked.” Kit turned to face him. “Did Pritchard put you up to this? That was brilliant.”

“He gave me the idea, sure,” said Jake, half wondering if the Admiral indeed had this in mind. The man was watching from a distance, so if he disapproved, they’d soon know.

The comm flared up. “All squads, this is Viper leader. Everyone on me—let’s take them out one by one … you know, while we wait for our hackers to finish their job.” It was the standard strategy for taking on a small strike force of light cruisers with a few squadrons of fighters. Concentrate on one at a time, only moving on to the next when the previous ship’s weapons were destroyed. But it only worked if the cruisers couldn’t cover each other.

Jake pushed the controls to veer towards the indicated light cruiser, dodging an enemy fighter that had swerved to flank them. The bogey careened off-course and impacted on the surface of one of the light cruisers, caught in the cross-fire of another Resistance fighter.

“Shotgun, that’s two you owe me today,” said Crash over the comm.

“Thanks, buddy. I’ll pay you in beer later. Let’s get over there and take out that cruiser.”

Like a furious swarm, the remaining twenty or so fighters descended on the singled out light cruiser, and, covering each other from the pursuing Imperial bogeys, began blasting away at it with ion pulses and torpedoes. Within minutes, debris and men streamed from the pockmarked hull. Over a football field in length, a Comet-class light cruiser is by no means small, and when one explodes, it was prudent not to be anywhere nearby—the blast front from an anti-matter engine criticality event was nothing to sniff at.

“Kit, how’re the engines on that thing? They anywhere near critical?”

The gunner nodded. “Getting there—maybe ninety percent. We’d best be moving on to the next one.” Jake noticed that all the cruiser’s guns had fallen silent, and the crackle of the comm confirmed his opinion.

“This is Viper leader. Two down, five to go, boys and girls, follow me to the next—HOLY SHIT!”

A bright flash flared against the blackness of space and Jake automatically clenched his eyes shut. When the light subsided and he opened his eyes, the exposed image of the blood vessels in his eyelids was the only thing he could see for a moment.

“Rooster, tell me that wasn’t the orbital siege engine firing at us.”

Kit examined his console and shook his head. “We lost Viper nine. Alex and Kate.” He studied the readout another moment before looking up. “Jake, that wasn’t the siege engine, or a cruiser. It was a mine. One of those anti-matter mines the Martians laid down. They’re mostly in a higher orbit, and Alex hit one—or got within a few meters of it—I think they’ve got proximity detectors.”

But then, as if to defy Kit’s explanation, a massive, bright blue beam leaped out across space from the siege engine and slammed into another one of their fighters, blasting it into a cloud of vapor. Jake’s stomach clenched.

“Who was that?” he asked, but didn’t really want to hear the answer. Another friend lost.

“Red Eleven. Now that we’re away from the cruisers we’re a wide open target for that thing.”

Asymmetrical warfare.

And suddenly, Jake had another idea.

Early on in the Empire’s expansion, the Imperial fleets targeted the Voors. A sparsely populated planet, originally colonized by Indonesian and Indian settlers, they utterly refused Imperial control, and in defiance they abandoned their towns and fled to the belt of asteroids encircling the gas giant planet their lush moon orbited.

Undeterred, the Imperials sent the cruisers in to chase the Voors out.

And paid dearly for it.

Nearly half of the Corsican heavy cruisers were lost to stray asteroids colliding with the ships, and a quarter of the light cruisers and frigates suffered a similar fate. The Empire didn’t discover until much later, after the Voors were subjugated, that the defenders had attached rudimentary thrusters onto several hundred of the asteroids and programmed them to crash into any ship larger than their own.

What if….

“Rooster, can our sensors pick up any more of those mines?”

Kit shook his head. “They’re small, Shotgun. They’re black, and I think they’re even covered in some meta-material that reflects most wavelengths.”

Jake grunted. “Give me something to work with here, buddy.” Pushing against the controls, the fighter dove down in between two flanking Imperial bogeys, narrowly avoiding the fire from one of them.

“They’re designed to be hard to detect, Jake. What good is a mine if you can just see it out the window?”

Exhaling in exasperation, he maneuvered the fighter towards the next light cruiser that Viper leader had indicated, and joined with the rest of the Resistance squadrons in pummeling it into submission, all while tangling with the remaining Imperial fighters.

“Come on, Rooster, you’re telling me that little boxes full of anti-matter are completely undetectable?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Their gamma ray signature blends right in with the background cosmic gamma rays. There’s just enough shielding on those things to muffle out the signal and make it look like—”

He trailed off.

Jake turned to look at his co-pilot. “Yeah?”

“Hang on, a second. Thinking….”

“Think faster,” said Jake, eyeing the light cruiser as it began to belch debris and puffs of air and dust. An occasional flailing body flew out one of gaping holes in the side of the ship.

It looked like the other light cruisers had caught on to their bluff. The remaining ships started to pull together, which would afford each of them more cover against the swarm of Resistance fighters. And before their squadron had worked out its next strategy, another deadly blue, shimmering beam shot out from the siege engine and slammed into another fighter.

The situation was turning dire. Kit didn’t even call out the identity of the poor souls as his hands darted over his console and his brow furrowed, lost in concentration.

“Rooster, I need you back with me,” said Jake.

“New heading. Accelerate at maximum power towards these coordinates.”

Jake glanced at the numbers scrolling down his screen. “What’s so special about these?”

“That heading should be directly perpendicular to the average orbital vector of those mines. I think if we can scan for their gamma signatures while moving at a normal vector, we can pick them out from the noise.” Kit shrugged his shoulders and turned to Jake. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Hey, it’s all I got,” said Kit.

Jake snorted, but adjusted their heading. Soon they were accelerating directly away from Mars, leaving the raging battle far behind.

“Anything?” said Jake.

Silence. Jake glanced over at Kit, whose furrowed brow finally gave way to a smile. “I got one.”

Jake reached over and slapped his friend on the shoulder before flipping the ship around to intercept the signal Kit had transferred to his console.

“And just what are you planning on doing with it?” asked the gunner.

Jake glanced out the viewport, scanning the area around them for the mine that the sensors claimed should be there. And, almost imperceptibly, something blocked out the light from a particularly bright star to his right.

There it was. Black as night, and nearly impossible to see, just fifty meters away.

“Shotgun? Answer me.”

Jake smiled.

“Asymmetrical warfare.”

Kit’s nostrils flared. “What the hell do you mean, asymmetrical warfare?”

“You know, just like Pritchard said. We’ve got to take out that siege engine somehow, otherwise our strike forces will never be able to land. Our people down there will be crushed—the Empire has a garrison down there almost as numerous as the population.”

Jake pushed against he controls and eased the ship a little closer to the innocuous little black sphere, now hovering just twenty meters away. Set against the red backdrop of Mars it was a whole lot easier to see.

“Shotgun if you get any closer to that thing it’ll blow. STOP!” Kit roared.

Jake eased up on the controls, and settled the ship just ten meters away from the mine. Tapping ever so lightly against his gravitic controls and holding his breath—as if even the slightest stray move would trigger the thing—he ramped up a localized gravitic field immediately ahead of them, and another right behind, between them and the mine.

“Are you going to even tell me what you’re doing?”

Jake nodded. “We’re going to give the package a little push.”

“How?”

“With the gravitics. Look, if I simulate a standard Earth mass right between us and the mine, what’ll happen?” Jake asked, quizzing his co-pilot.

“Easy. Both bodies will accelerate towards the virtual mass at one gee, and we’re dead in a tenth of a second. What are you, batshit crazy?”

Jake nodded again. “Maybe. But what if I project two standard Earth masses directly ahead of us at the same time? Both us and the mine will then accelerate forward at about one gee, right?”

“About one gee? About? You’re going to gamble our lives on about?”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Keep your panties on, Rooster. Watch.”

And, hoping against hope that his stupid idea was slightly less stupid than it sounded when he explained it loud, he initiated the gravitic fields.

“You keep a close eye on our proximity, Rooster. Tell me if it’s getting any—”

“IT’S GETTING CLOSER, YOU ASSHOLE!”

As fast as he could, Jake adjusted the field strengths, ramping the trailing field down and the forward field up. “What about now?”

Kit bit his lip, and nodded. “Fine. It’s holding steady eighteen meters off our stern.” He turned to glare at Jake. “What next, genius?”

“Now, we fly towards the siege engine and tear that bitch up.”

To Jake’s ears, his co-pilot could barely contain his anger. “That’s your plan?” said Kit.

“You got a better one?” he retorted.

Silence.

“That’s what I thou—” Jake began.

“They’ll never let us get close. We’re dead before we get to within a klick of that thing,” said Kit, peering out the viewport at the slowly rotating behemoth of a battlestation.

“Yeah, well,” Jake eased his hands into the controls. “That’s where my super-fancy flying comes in,” he said with a lopsided smile. He locked his eyes on the siege engine. “You just let me know the second you detect a power buildup from that thing.”

“Which? The mine or the station?”

“Both,” Jake said with a grin—the only expression he could manage that would suppress the rising tension and dread in his chest.

This was incredibly stupid, and he knew it.

But barring Admiral Pritchard pulling through with some unforeseen brilliant plan, it was all they had.

“Massive power surge ahead!” Kit yelled.

And in an instant, Jake swerved to starboard, only narrowly avoiding the blinding blue beam leaping out from the siege engine, which loomed ever larger in the viewport.

“We still got it? The mine?” Jake said, without taking his eyes off the station.

Kit peered back. “Yeah, I think I see it.”

“Almost there….” Jake muttered. He hadn’t appreciated the true scale of the orbital siege engine until that moment. Now just two klicks away, it nearly blocked out the view of the red planet far below, still swirling with silent dust storms.

“Jake! Again!”

His reflexes on a hair trigger, he yanked the controls down and to starboard, swearing as he accidentally looked straight at the shimmering blue beam, which temporarily blinded him.

The audio system all around them announced the booms of dozens of railguns blazing on the surface of the siege engine, and a swarm of high-pitched whines indicated the dozens of near misses of the high-speed slugs. Jake swerved the fighter to and fro, randomly, in what he hoped was not a vain attempt to avoid their fate. Either a collision with a railgun slug, or a direct hit by the Hyper-Ion-Beam cannon, or drifting too close to that mine—at the moment it seemed absurd that they’d pull through without one of them happening.

But they made it. One klick to the station, and the mine’s trajectory and inertia should handle the rest. “That should do it. Disengaging gravitics,” said Jake.

Sweat dripped down his face as he listened with dread to the whizzing slugs flying past. He dropped the ship down, and could just barely make out the black sphere careen past them, straight towards the siege engine.

The comm flared to life. “Lieutenant Mercer, Admiral Pritchard. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Jake grinned as he answered. “Just clearing the way for you, sir. Feel free to thank me later.” And as the words left his mouth he had to shield his eyes from the blinding explosion enveloping the station. Even through his eyelids and hands, the light glowed red. The internal speakers seemed to get confused with the magnitude of the blast, as they only puffed out a little whimper of a sound, high pitched and tinny.

They’d done it. He’d done it. Somehow, he’d read the Admiral’s mind, channeled the man’s brilliance, and singlehandedly destroyed one of the most awesomely destructive tools of the empire. It almost seemed unreal as he watched the flare from the blast fade away, leaving a sputtering wreck in its wake.

Glancing back at the disintegrating station, he felt a little letdown as he realized the mine didn’t even come close to taking out the whole thing. Less than a quarter of it was gone. But that didn’t matter. It was out of commission for a long, long time.

“Lieutenant,” continued Admiral Pritchard, slowly, and in a tone that Jake had not heard the man use before. A cold, icy tone. “In the future, do not presume to think for me. We might very well have used that siege engine.”

Jake’s heart stopped in his throat. “Sir?”

“No, I’m not saying we expected it to be here. I had no idea the Empire had brought it to Mars. But there were ways we could have commandeered it. It would have been a valuable asset.” He muttered something else inaudible, out of range of his comm. “Oh, bother. Very well,” his voice assumed his more gregarious tone. “Get back to that battle and help mop up. We’ll be joining you shortly—“

An explosion interrupted the Admiral’s instructions. An explosion that would have sounded more appropriate coming from the siege engine when it blew, and not the tinny whimper the speakers had suggested. This explosion was real, and it was close.

And the flames and acrid smoke accompanying it were even worse.

An Imperial bogey soared overhead and shot away, its job done. Jake glanced out the viewport and saw their left wing completely gone, and several holes punched in the main cabin, which spewed their precious air supply out into space.

He checked his helmet, and satisfied he was protected against the vacuum he scrambled to get the ship under control and out of the spiral. A spiral whose path ended on the stark surface below.

The red planet loomed ahead, filling the viewscreen. He could just barely make out the thin outline of the rarified atmosphere clinging to the surface of Mars as they began their plunge to the surface.

Kit turned to him, and, anger gone from his voice, he assumed a deadpan, fatalistic tone. “Any more bright ideas, Shotgun?”

The edges of the fighter began to glow a faint red as they plunged through the thin atmosphere.

Jake held up his hands. “Sorry, I’m fresh out.”

And perhaps worst of all, and not even sure why he was even thinking about it as they careened towards the surface, he realized he’d never discovered Pritchard’s secret. Again.

Dammit.

Thank you for reading this short story series set in the Pax Humana universe! Just so you know, I give all my mailing list subscribers FREE copies of all my short stories, so if you'd like the next installment of this short story series for free, subscribe here:_http://eepurl.com/vW2tj

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Coming soon in the Pax Humana Universe:

Full novels:

The Terran Gambit (March 2014)

Chains of Destiny (April 2014)

Into the Void (May-June 2014)

And three more novels later in 2014

Short stories:

To the End of the World (Prelude to Resistance #3) (February 2014)

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