Theogony 3: Terra Stands Alone (2 page)

“General Quarters! General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations. Launch all alert fighters! General Quarters! General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations. Now launch all alert fighters!”
Calvin rolled out of his bed. What? Another drill? It seemed like all they’d done since they got back was drill and drill and drill. As he started throwing on his flight suit, he realized with a start that the voice hadn’t said, “This is a drill.” There were only two things that they’d call general quarters for, a loss of pressure or actual combat.

Drakuls, he thought, lacing up his boot. A shiver went down his back.
The Drakuls were the Terran’s worst nightmare, a race of 10-feet tall bloodsucking frogs that were headed toward the Earth. The Drakuls must have come through the stargate. That was the only reason they’d launch the fighters.

“Attention all hands,” said a voice over the intercom
; “make preparations to get underway. The
Vella Gulf
will lift in 10 minutes. I say again, the
Vella Gulf
will lift in 10 minutes.”

The squadron commander for the
Vella Gulf’s
12 fighters, Lieutenant Commander Shawn Hobbs, or ‘Calvin’ to his aviator friends, had the closest stateroom to the squadron’s ready room, so he was the first one there, aside from the three officers that had been watching a Tri-D movie on the ready room’s Mrowry TV.

“What’s up
, Clarisse?” he asked the duty officer, Lieutenant Clarisse Boudreau.

“Ops just called, sir
,” said the Canadian officer, “and we’ve got Drakul ships coming through Stargate #1. Two battlecruisers and a battleship so far, eh? The defenses are responding and Skywatch has asked for all available ships to get there ASAP.”

“Shit,” said Calvin, “i
t’s just us. The
Terra
hasn’t returned from Epsilon Eridani yet, and the battlecruiser is still being fixed.” The
Terra
, the Earth’s newest (and only) battleship, had just taken its first crew aboard, and they were on a short cruise to get everyone trained. The fleet’s other acquisition, a still unnamed battlecruiser that the
Vella Gulf
captured on its last mission, was also unable to lift, as maintenance crews were still repairing the graser holes that the
Terra
made through its bridge and galley.

The only Terran defenses
still in-system were the
Vella Gulf
, a 3,000 year-old cruiser, and its complement of 12 space fighters. There was another cruiser, but it was a Mrowry ship, not Terran. A race of felinoid warriors that looked like Bengal tigers, the Mrowry had been a space-faring nation since the beginning of the Neolithic age on Earth. Even if the Mrowry cruiser joined them, two cruisers versus one of the battlecruisers wasn’t a fair fight. And the battleship wouldn’t even notice as it drove over them. “Damn it,” said Calvin, shaking his head. “I can’t wait for a battle where we’re not fighting ships that are bigger than we are. Is the
Emperor’s Paw
responding?”

“Yes sir,” replied Lieutenant Boudreau
. She looked at her watch. “The Mrowry are going to be lifting in about 15 minutes.”

“Good,” said Calvin. At least they wouldn’t go to their deaths alone.

“Hi Skipper,” said Lieutenant Sasaki ‘Supidi’ Akio as he entered the ready room. “I’m ready to go when you are.” The Japanese man was the officer that normally flew with Calvin as his Weapons System Officer (WSO), the person who operated the navigation, communications and weapons systems for their space fighter. Ever since being crewed with Calvin, Supidi had exhibited an almost unnatural ability to show up whenever Calvin needed him.

“They said to start launching as soon as we’re ready,” said Clarisse. “Skipper, you’ve got
Asp 01
and Guppy, you’re in
Asp 02
.”

Calvin looked
at the two other officers that were in the ready room, Lieutenant Terry ‘Guppy’ Gupton and his WSO, Lieutenant Martyn ‘Tinman’ Sinclair. Both had just checked into the squadron the week before. Although they had both received their implants and downloaded their training, neither had actually flown in the fighters yet. Their whole experience with flying space fighters was a two-hour flight in a simulator. There was also the whole love/hate relationship, as Gupton was from Australia and Sinclair from New Zealand. Their relationship was mostly good-natured...most days.

Still, t
hey flew well together in the simulator; when things got ugly, they melded into a good team. “He’s not half bad...for an Aussie,” Sinclair was heard to have said afterward. Still, if there were Drakuls coming through the gate, the time for Earth-borne conflicts was well past. “Man up
02
,” Calvin said. “We’ll try and take it slow at first, but we’ve got to get out there.”

“Yes sir!” they chorused, and the four men left to get into their fighters.

Captain
Bullig hated most of the things about his life. He especially hated his ship, which had been built by one of the conquered alien races. The Overlord had given him command of it as punishment; the nine feet high ceiling was far too low for his 10 feet height. He had to walk around the ship stooped, which made it uncomfortable to go anywhere. While a new bed had been installed in his cabin, the room itself was only nine feet long, so he was unable to stretch out. He hated the race of giant caterpillars that had built the ship. The only thing they were good for was dinner.

He hated this star system.
The star known as Ross 154 was a red dwarf that had two planets in its habitable zone (the distance from the star where it was warm enough to have liquid water, but not so hot as to boil it off). Unfortunately, both of the planets were barren, as Ross 154 was also a flare star. The star would flare up every few decades, reaching out to cook off anything growing on the two planets. This occurred across the star’s spectrum, from x-rays to radio waves, sterilizing the planets at an unpredictable rate before the star subsided again to its normal luminosity. It was a waste of prime real estate that could have been used to support a civilization worthy of conquering. He hated being stationed here.

“The battle group is proceeding to the stargate,” said his
communicator.

“Good,” said
Bullig. “I hope they all die miserably.” He had petitioned to be included in the Drakul exploratory force, but had been denied. He hated all of the crews that had been picked to go, while he stayed behind on this side of the stargate. The
Mangler
was the system’s picket. Its crew’s mission was to wait behind and, if an enemy came through the gate, to run back to the High Command and warn them.

“Why is that?” asked
Commander Chark, the
Mangler’s
executive officer (XO). “Don’t you want them to go and find new planets to pillage and plunder?”

“No,” said
Bullig, “I want
me
to go and find new planets for
me
to pillage and plunder. Waiting here on the chance that we’ll need to run back to the High Command is not a worthy task for a warrior. I want to
KILL!
”

The ship’s steward brought
Bullig a punch bowl full of one week-old hatchlings. When he was in this kind of a fury, the crew had learned that it was better to give him something to take his anger out on, rather than the bridge crew. They were already starting to run short-handed, and they’d only been in the Ross 154 system for three weeks.

“How will the battle group dying miserably help you?” asked the XO as
Bullig pulled a struggling hatchling out of the bowl by one of its hind feet. It screamed as he let it dangle. He let it sway in front of his face for a couple of seconds so that the hatchling could see what was coming.

Born self-aware, the hatchling knew it was about to die
, and it screamed harder, eliciting a smile from Bullig. He threw it into his mouth and bit down, sucking its blood through his hollow incisors. One week was about the right age, Bullig thought. Any older and they had a tendency to bite you back. He chewed up the husk and swallowed it.

“If they die miserably,”
Bullig said, “that will mean that not only did they find us a new race to conquer, but they also found one that would put up a fight. The race that built this ship surrendered every time we came into a system where they were. Where is the fun in that?”

“
It isn’t much fun fighting a race that won’t fight back,” agreed the XO. “They were, however, quite tasty.”

“Indeed, they were,” said a calmer
Bullig as he sucked on a second hatchling.

“The battle group is entering the stargate,” said the
communicator. “They passed on a message for you sir, but I don’t think you want to hear it.”

“No, I probably don’t,” said
Bullig. The commanding officer of the
Destroyer
had been a hatchling with Bullig. He never missed a chance to let Bullig know that he was ‘going places’ while Bullig sat behind watching the stargate. “Tell him that I said to find a new wife and kids while he’s on patrol,” ordered Bullig, “because I’m going to kill and eat the ones he left back home.”

“Sorry, sir, his ship has already gone through the stargate,” said the
communicator.

“It does
n’t matter,” replied Bullig. He smiled at the XO. “I’ll still do it, of course.”

“I hope they find some more of those short humanoids,” said the XO
, looking at the tactical display. “You know, the ones that opened the gateway for us to come into this universe. They didn’t fight very well, either, but they also tasted good.”

“Psi-something, I think they called themselves,” said
Bullig, who had been given one of them as a present. As it was one of the last ones the Drakuls had, he had played with it for a while before finally eating it. “Psilons or Psiclants or something like that. You are right; it would be nice to find a few more of them.”

Bullig
reflected on his civilization’s progress in this universe and wondered if they’d find any more of the...Psiclopes...that’s what they were. The gods definitely had a sense of humor. The Drakul race in this universe had been wiped out, but a Psiclopes scientist trying to link collapsed black holes into stargates had opened up a dimensional doorway to the Drakuls’ home world in a parallel universe. As luck would have it, the doorway opened at a Drakul military base and over 2,000 soldiers and sailors came through the gate before it closed. The Drakuls captured a nearby spaceport and the two cruisers that were there...and then feasted on the sailors that previously crewed them.

He
was only a new recruit then. After they found out their race had been annihilated in this universe, the High Command decided to go slowly. They flew the two captured cruisers to a nearby navy yard of a felinoid race and captured the battleship there. They had then taken the battleship and the navy base’s Class 6 replicator and had run to the end of civilized space, where they began building up their power.

2
0 years ago, the High Command finally decided it was ready to go on the offensive. The first three systems were easy. Two were inhabited by the caterpillar race and easily subdued; the other was inhabited by the Psiclopes. No challenge to any of them. Although the Psiclopes were technologically advanced, their defenses were minimal, and there were barely eight million of them on the planet. The XO was right; at least they tasted good.

The fourth planet
they attacked was inhabited by a race of winged humanoids. Three easy conquests made the Drakuls overconfident, and the High Command only sent a battle group made up of four battlecruisers, because that was all it had taken to subdue the first three systems.

When t
he battlecruisers didn’t return, the High Command sent a full squadron of eight battlecruisers. Those ships also didn’t return, so the High Command sent a fleet of eight battleships, accompanied by two squadrons of battlecruisers and two squadrons of cruisers. This fleet successfully captured the system; however, it was like putting a stick into an anthill, and the winged humanoids returned in force with a fleet of their own. The Drakuls were forced to withdraw from the system, and each race heavily reinforced its side of the stargate. The two fleets probed each other, but neither side was able to fight its way back through the stargate. A long stalemate followed.

Having grown tired of the standstill, the
Overlord had recently killed the High Command and promoted a new one. Rather than follow the failed policies of their predecessors, they came up with a new plan; they decided to open up a second theater of war. By sending ships through a different stargate, they hoped to find another way around that would let them come from behind the winged humans and take them by surprise.

While they built the ships required to fight a two-front war, the High Command
sent a destroyer down this stargate chain to explore it, but the destroyer hadn’t returned. The battle group that just left was supposed to scout down the chain of stargates and find out where it went.

“I’ve got gate activation,” called the
defensive systems technician, or defender. “Based on mass, it looks like one of the battlecruisers is back already.”

“Which battlecruiser is it?” asked
Bullig. If it was the
Destroyer
, it would be his classmate, coming back to let him know that they found and enslaved a new civilization. He hoped it was the
Destroyer
...even though he hoped it wasn’t.

“It’s the...
no, it’s not either of the battlecruisers,” said the defender, “although it has about the same mass as one of them. It’s weird sir. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that the radar image looked like the back half of the battleship. It only appears to have one engine working and that one is at full power. The ship is spinning around in circles and is in danger of running back into the stargate again.”

The
defender paused. “It
is
the
Slayer
sir,” he said finally. “Or, at least it’s what’s left of her. I’m getting emergency beacons that identify the ship as the
Slayer
.”

“Communications!” called Captain
Bullig, “are you able to reach anyone aboard the ship?”

“No sir,” said the
communicator, “I have not been able to reach anyone.”

“Nor will you,” said the
defender. “Its artificial gravity is out, and it’s making a 30 G turn. Anyone that’s still on that ship is probably plastered onto one of the walls.”

“What about the
artificial intelligence (AI) onboard?” asked Bullig. “Can you reach it?”

“He won’t be able to,” replied the
defender. “The part that came through the stargate is from aft of the bridge. All of the processors for the ship’s AI are in the front half of the ship, wherever that is.”

“It looks like you got your wish,” noted the XO.

“Yes,” said Bullig with a smile, “it looks like I did.”

* * * * *