Raine VS The End of the World (2 page)

Carl slammed his desk. “This is terror! Give us an audience with Dr. Klahr, or anyone in your science division! I demand an explanation as to why you are invading our property, as well as a briefing on how five of our satellite probes are suddenly missing. Those probes contain sensitive data--”

“Enough. We will not waste time arguing UAA International Law with our own civilians. Your ship may disappear from this space at any second. I aim to prevent that.”

“We’re not
your
civilians! We’re free people!”

Just then, the
Belladonna
shook violently.

Lily tumbled from her stool. With a quick whirring of servos, a robotic arm extended from the floor and caught her.

“Th-thanks, Rutger,” said Lily. After righting herself, she checked the exterior cams.

The
Destroyer
had punched two large metal harpoons into the outer hull. They were being reeled in. The space station shuddered again as more lances anchored, emergent tendrils wrapping around the solar petals like some terrible beast from the depths.

Carl and Elizabeth looked on in horror.

“Captain, you’ve no authority to do this! My wife and I are world-renowned scientists! We know our inalienable freedoms under Natural Law, and you’d best respect them. Or should I have your command stripped at a tribunal?”

Black laughed.

“As a potential terrorist threat, Professor, you have the right to remain silent, and nothing more. Under the U-triple-A-PA, signed into law on December 31
st
, 2083, any objects or persons between Terra and Luna are property of the Alliance. You have five minutes, twenty seconds.”

The screen blanked.

Lily gasped at the Captain’s words, but kept her attention fixated on the cam feeds.

Mom and Dad will sort this out
, she told herself.

As soon as the call cut off, Carl and Elizabeth burst towards the docking bay.

Carl was the first to speak. “This is unbelievable. It goes against every--”

“Quick. What choices do we have?” queried Elizabeth as they turned into the corridor.

“I see only one option.”

Elizabeth breathed heavier than she should have; running in artificial gravity and inhaling recycled air would always feel unnatural to her.

“We’ve glimpsed the future,” Carl continued. “This machine has the potential to be humanity’s only hope, or its greatest downfall. I’m not going quietly without a fight.”

“Me neither. We can do this.”

Carl gave her a stern look. “No, you’re staying behind. Watch over Lily.”

“Negative,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll be on standby. We’ll cut them off and return in time for Warp Initiation.”

They gave each other a tight embrace, and a deep kiss.

It took all of five seconds, but they were worth it.

She squeezed his hand, and found that one of the most difficult things she had ever done was to let him go as he rushed out the airlock. There was no time to suit up.

From the console, Carl passed the retinal scan and activated one of their secret weapons, the
Eagle
.
It was the greatest of four stealth fighters they had reverse-engineered and enhanced from the remains of an advanced gunship scavenged from the time of the solar flare
.

Remote-controlling the fighters became impossible the moment Rutger froze the data drives. They would have to be piloted manually.

Carl stretched his muscles as Rutger rotated the flight tray.

“Slim chance, I know, but is it feasible to send a message back to warn ourselves?”

Elizabeth checked the central console.

“All messenger droids are out of range. We can’t send a safe envelope without risking temporal interference.”

“And even if we could, we can’t patch it directly.” He shook his head as the launch sequence counted down. “Any probe would have to jump to a point before we began the project, and we’d need to avoid any chance of interception. Plus, encryption--”

“Impossible. We don’t even have enough time to escape.”

“No, we don’t,” Carl replied, glancing out the cockpit at his wife as she boarded the
Falcon
, the identical fighter beside him.

“But she does,” Elizabeth finished the sentence. She brought the photo from her dash up to the face-cam. The family picture held on the
Eagle’s
comm. screen, catching Carl off guard in the middle of his pre-flight checklist. A single tear ran down Elizabeth’s face, which she carefully hid from her husband.

There wasn’t a star in the universe that shone brighter than their daughter. Lily was the loveliest thing they had ever seen, and both knew that they would do anything for her.

This was never in the plan. She was their pride and joy, their hope for a better future once the mission objectives had been reached. Now she was about to become Earth’s only hope.

“We have three minutes,” she said, taking deep breaths as the cabin pressurized. “Just three minutes.”

“Temporal Drive needs five to cool the fuel cells. Instruct the droid. I’ll input parameter data for the warp and ready the cruisers.”

Elizabeth nodded, and their radiant fusion engines roared to life.

“Captains, how may I be of service?” Rutger announced as its physical incarnation, XF-22, wheeled onto the docking bay, announcing its presence with a familiar chirp.

“We have an extra special task for you,” said Elizabeth. “Run Protocol Seven-Nine-Tango-Alpha.”

╬

Seated uncomfortably on
Destroyer 1446’s
command chair with a forced calm, Captain Black counted down the Hermes’ last few seconds. At seven left on the clock, something ejected from the
Belladonna
. It didn’t resemble an escape pod.

Before it could be identified, a series of powerful jolts shook the bridge. They’d been hit by fire from a small craft. The weapons had somehow penetrated their electromagnetic plasma shields.

“What’s going on?” the Captain yelled.

“A rogue ship! It’s taken out the docking lances!”

Captain Black stood and took in the incredulous scene outside his observation dome. Every one of their five-foot-wide titanium cables had been snapped; they were floating in dead space.

“Shoot to stun! Immobilize it!” he yelled. “Turn the heat up on the tractor beam! Their interference patterns won’t hold forever.”

Gunners drew beads on the target. The pilot nimbly, almost preternaturally, avoided all laser fire.

Within seconds, a thundering blast echoed from below.

“W-we’ve lost the tractor beams, sir!”

The protective debris shield surrounding the
Belladonna
glowed bright blue. A blinding energy pulse blasted the space junk in waves; bolts lashed out as forked webs of lightning.

“The fools!” Captain Black barked as his
Destroyer
jolted again. Now there were two fighters zipping like stray flies, peppering the
1446
with searing blasts.

“Captain, weapons are of unknown origin! Beam conduit sensors scrambled. Outer plasma defenses failing, fast!”

“Prioritize shield reinforcement. How long until we reach critical condition?”

The engineering officer leapt from his seat. “Rear thrusters in danger! We can’t take much more, sir!”

“Sit your ass back down, God damn it!”

Alternately eyeing the bridge’s exit and the Captain’s hand twitching against his holster, the officer sunk back into his seat. You could have heard a pin drop.

“Weapons division, terminate the targets. Charge every beam, arm the missiles, and what the hell is taking the interceptors so long?”

His second in command looked at him quizzically.

“Docking bay shields are offline, sir. Our men are sitting ducks. ETA for reinforcements is two minutes. I advise that we fall back--”

“Idiot! The reactor in there could go off any second now! We may not have two minutes. Gun targets down at all costs!”

◙

Lillian Hermes banged on the thick doors and screamed at the top of her lungs, ignoring Rutger’s attempts to comfort her.

She didn’t want to listen to some stupid computer.

She wanted her Mommy and Daddy, and nothing was going to stop her. The girl searched her memory banks: she once had to memorize the layout of the
Belladonna
, inside and out. There should be at least three ways to escape this dungeon.

Picking up a stool, she desperately searched for the vent to the food forest’s water supply, which linked up with the engine coolant system. It wouldn’t budge. There was no use. Her parents were risking their lives, and she was trapped like a pathetic little thing in a metal cage.

XF-22 whirred into the chamber. The doors locked shut behind its bodily frame, which opened its humanoid arms to Lily just in case she needed a hug. She cautiously approached the android.

“Miss Lily, please understand,” Rutger began. “I am under strict orders to protect you.”

“And I have the key! I’m the boss, and they need me! I can pilot the
Phoenix
!
Let me out of here!”

“There is nothing I can do. I am sorry.”

Lily fell into tears. XF-22 wrapped a blanket around her shivering frame, then handed the young Captain her favorite stuffed elephant, which she held tightly. She gazed at the digital clock on the console, barely able to look at the video coming in from the two ships. Each second seemed an eternity to the poor girl, a dreadful countdown.

They’ll make it back in time. They’re invincible,
she thought.

The PA chimes rang in Rutger’s friendly warning.

“SpaceTime Warp Initiation in two minutes.”

□

Dozens of missile turrets emerged to thwart the
Eagle
even as Carl blasted away the last of the starboard lasers taking aim at the
Belladonna’s
navigational beacons.

Coming from the opposite direction, Elizabeth eliminated the guided rockets, but missed one by a hair as she pulled her ship away, while Carl barreled into a corkscrew turn.

Sweat coated his palms as the impact connected. He had thought he could out-maneuver it. The
Eagle
was hit, and hit badly. The lasers fried his primary engine, and shields were giving way. One more direct hit and he’d be done for.

“How much more time do we need to buy?”

Both husband and wife had accepted that there would be no return from this.

“Two minutes should do it,” Elizabeth replied. “The interceptors are packing mini-nukes. We can’t let them get any closer.”

“I love you,” Carl said.

“I love you, too.”

They doubled back towards the fray and crippled the engines of the armed personnel ships advancing towards the
Belladonna
’s dock.

Returning from their first pass, a squadron of unmanned interceptors rushed the duo like bees escaping a drowned hive. Elizabeth squeezed her triggers, shifting against the recoil of her overheated guns. Zooming past the remains of her targets, she winced from the debris that clunked against her right turbine. Her heart sank into the back of her chest. She turned to look at where Carl was flying by her side as they cleared the wave.

As a scientist she tried to rationalize the silent fireball, there and gone in a second, as just another transmutation of particles, a collision of alloy on alloy. There was no point in spending her last moments in mourning. She gave herself a final engine burst at maximum power, sending an enormous amount of G-force through her body. Her
Falcon
soared towards the bridge, jets at full power and guns blazing.

∩

Silence struck the bridge of
Destroyer 1446
. Every eye was on Captain Black, as his finger hovered precipitously over the self-destruct button. He calmly studied the visual data as the enemy veered ever closer, weighing his orders to eliminate the station against the lives of his crew of one thousand. It was the slim chance that his onboard hackers may yet uncover the
Belladonna’s
blueprints that stayed the Captain’s hand at the last second. Black pulled out his machine pistol instead. His subordinates fled in terror.

With his sidearm raised against the glass, the Captain caught a singular glimpse of the darkness in Elizabeth Hermes’ eyes, lit with the fury of a dying warrior making one final effort to save her home. She came from port side, pursued by their own guided missiles, her damaged craft careening straight for the bridge. He took aim at her head and feathered the trigger.

Well played, Professors
, Black mused, closing his eyes as the vacuum burst around him.

▬

Thanks to the unbearably sharp and sudden pains in her chest, it took all of Elizabeth’s strength to pull the
Falcon
up at the last second, leading
Destroyer 1446’s
missiles into its command dome. Her regenerative
cockpit glass patched itself in a second, but Elizabeth felt the bullet wounds in her torso and knew the end was near. She clutched at her racing heart. Her lung was collapsing. She pressed the comm. switch.