The remaining two days saw Alec active throughout the outpost, occupying himself with repairs large and small. He was checking a power converter in a reactor chamber when the compu-aid’s voice broke his concentration.
Hostile craft of Jepthala design have breached the outer boundary marker. ETA 17 hours.
Alec stopped what he was doing, placed his tools back into his pouch, and climbed into the maglev transport that would take him to his quarters.
At the 17th hour, Commander Alec Dishman, commanding officer of United Empire Outpost Installation Epsilon Salient, stepped onto the command/control deck. He wore his dress uniform, maroon tunic with a UE martial emblem embroidered on each shoulder, and black slacks with matching calf high boots polished to a mirror luster. He was clean shaven, his hair cut to regulation perfection. Alec strode to the console with a pep he hadn’t exhibited in years.
“Are we ready to rock and roll, Co-aid?”
It took a brief search through its databank of archaic colloquialisms for the compu-aid to understand the question. All defense systems are fully prepped and online, Commander.
“Good.”
Commander, there is a transmission originating from the lead inbound hostile.
Alec raised a brow. “Someone wants to talk. Put it on the overhead holo-display.”
The face of a Jepthala materialized several feet above the commander. The live image was even more frightening to behold than the representative briefing graphic. Of course there were many species within the UE who were far from aesthetically pleasing to human eyes. But none of those species harbored the full, devastating weight of their ill will toward the UE like the floating face that drilled into Alec with the fire of its gaze.
The Jepthala’s wide, thin lips moved in utterance. Co-aid translated.
I am Ijon, War Seer of the Ninth Spear. I claim this outpost as the rightful possession of the Jepthala Domain. Surrender and you will be swiftly released from the shackles of your mortal existence. Resist and the agony of your transition into death will last for days.
Alec could not hold back the grin tickling his throat. “Pleased to meet you, Ijon, War Seer of the Ninth Spear. I am Commander Alec Dishman. Here is my response to you: If you have a concept of hell then I suggest you and your cohorts prepare yourselves to be sent there. I will not surrender this outpost to you.”
The Jepthala image tilted its head as if intensely scrutinizing the human. Then you will follow your dead empire into oblivion.
The image vanished.
Alec sat in the chair before the console and placed his head in the dome. “I don’t think our Jepthala friend is very happy with me.”
On the contrary, commander, I would say the Jepthala welcomes this fight, in keeping with their cultural predilection toward violence.
“Thanks for the anthropological insight, Co-aid.” Alec became linked into every section of the outpost.
Through active surveillance probes and fixed position sensors connected to the outpost superstructure, Alec observed a teeming mass of approaching Jepthala ships. The ships in the van were small and arrow shaped. Much larger wedge shaped craft followed. Protrusions of varied sizes covering the heavy ships suggested that they bristled with turrets and projectile batteries.
The arrow ships opened fire. Pinpricks of light streamed from the bottom of each vessel, becoming self guiding the closer to their massive target they approached. A curtain of explosions veiled empty space some fifty miles short of the outpost. The lights, identified by Co-aid, as deuterium spheres, collided with the outpost defense screen. The arrow ships wheeled about as a second rank closed in, unleashing more deuterium spheres, blanketing the defense screen in a glaring sheen of violent eruptions.
Alec sent a command to the most forward positioned drone weapon platforms. Fifty platforms, each half the size of a UE warship, but containing twice the armament capacity, opened fire. Platform railguns pumped out fragments of nuclear cores wrapped in metal containment casings at a rate of a half million rounds per second. A storm of nuke-rounds flooded the gap between platforms and enemy ships. In a matter of seconds 2,000 arrow ships disappeared and a gaseous expanse of spewing debris took their places. The platforms fired unremittingly, railguns swiveling side to side, slashing gleaming furrows through a compression of Jepthala ships. Thousands more arrow ships navigated the tearing teeth of the platform guns to launch more deuterium spheres across the length and breadth of the defense screen.
The screen is weakening, Commander. Enemy weapons are having an effect.
Through the bright flashes and frenetic chaos of combat, Alec could make out fluctuations in the outpost’s screen that would not have been visible to his natural sight. Distortions and discoloration denoting patches of weaknesses in the shield.
Alec ordered the platforms to pull back just as a section of the screen failed. Arrow ships soared through the breach, several colliding with each other as they jammed through the narrow passage at blurring velocities. The platforms directed fire on the bottleneck, incinerating hundreds of arrow ships. But additional gaps in the screen sent waves of arrow ships toward alternative entry points. The wedge shaped ships followed suit when breaches large enough to accommodate their gargantuan sizes developed.
The wedge ships targeted the platforms. They scoured the automated vessels with huge missiles that slammed into hulls, exploding upon contact. At first, the missiles seemed to have little effect, producing dented areas on each platform in spite of the tremendous energy released by their impacts. The punishment sustained by the platforms would have lain waste half a planet. Yet, the platforms withstood the punishing gale, while in turn savaging the wedge ships with gleaming lances of retaliation. Two hundred wedge ships pulsed glaring fury like stars turned nova, before the first platform broke apart beneath the relentless hammering of enemy bombardment.
A second platform died, and then another and another until there were no more automated death dealers left to contest the wedge ships’ onslaught.
Alec and the outpost’s 85 anti-ship missile batteries acted with one mind, one conscious. The missile battery control computer triggered mass launches, sending thousands of missiles blazing like flying swords into a dense wall of enemy ships. The anti-ship missiles were immensely powerful, and the wedge ships were poorly shielded. That made for a fetching recipe of carnage as anti-ship missiles bit into the vulnerable skins of a thousand wedge ships, ripping them to pieces, sparing no survivors. A second set of anti-ship batteries picked off the arrow ships with near total accuracy as they swarmed over the outpost, pelting the superstructure with ordnance.
Japthala ships were taking losses at a rate that would have prompted any other besieging force to withdraw. Horrendous, terrible losses. Yet, the Japthala ships kept coming. Fast and reckless. By the thousands, their white-hot carcasses littered the near space around the outpost. Yet, they kept coming.
Alec lost the POV of fifty missile and energy turret batteries. The outpost’s capacity to defend itself had been reduced drastically in six hours of nonstop fighting. Alec’s physical body was drained, his uniform soaked with sweat. The commander’s mind, however, was too immersed in flaring, high velocity images of battle to take notice. The north section of the outpost erupted, wiping out another bank of weapons emplacements. Damage reports flashed across Alec’s awareness, sharing space with multitudinous bits of tactical data.
The commander gathered that the outpost was in serious trouble. More devastating explosions tore through parts of the installation, channeling a raging tsunami of particle energy deep into the guts of the outpost.
The compu-aid counseled evacuation as cascading Jepthala missiles ravaged the already cratered surface of the outpost. Alec ignored the suggestion and continued to pour every ounce of his essence into annihilating as many enemy ships as the remaining batteries could target.
A breach alert screamed. Sustained wedge ship attacks had blasted a hole at the bottom of the outpost, near the main reactor section. Black armored Jepthala boarding parties surged through the breach into the spanning interior of the outpost.
Alec burned with humiliation, bristled with rage. No enemy soldier had ever set foot inside a UE outpost. The commander directed his combat avatars to intercept the boarders before they advanced any further into the interior.
The CAs and Jepthala soldiers clashed at a junction on Deck 7.
At a height of 18 feet, the roughly human configured CAs towered over their foes. Light flickered intensely bright from the CAs’ shoulder and wrist mounted plasma-ejectors. Rapid-firing plasma bolts made short work of the first wave of enemy boarders. The wide corridor was clogged with clumps of fused flesh and metal that used to be armor-clad warriors.
More breaches flared at other parts of the outpost. More CAs scrambled to engage additional boarders. Alec saw through the CAs’ ‘eyes’ the death he was meting out to the enemy and a primal part of him savored the bloody handiwork of close quarter slaughter.
Again, the compu-aid insisted on Alec’s evacuation. The outpost defenses were being overwhelmed by enemy fire. Plus, despite the CAs best efforts to expel boarding parties, eventually numbers would tell. Thousands of Jepthala soldiers were already running amok throughout the outpost, replacing the thousands who perished. Thousands more streamed through hundreds of new breaches. The heavy blasters the Jepthala soldiers wielded were ineffective as individual weapons against super-hardened avatar armor. But hundreds of such weapons, unleashed in concentrated doses upon a single CA, proved capable of taking a machine down.
One by one, CAs fragmented in a scorching drench of enemy blaster fire. Each avatar fought to the last, functional second. Their plasma weapons exterminated the enemy in broad, blinding strokes.
Alec was too caught up in the howling gestalt of combat to notice that his CA views had been reduced to one avatar.
The CA had been cornered in a hangar on Deck 23, surrounded on all sides by a horde of Jepthala. Alec’s neural link to that last avatar was less a signal, more a malevolent spirit, snaring its mechanical host in a seething grip of demonic possession. Only the Jepthala’s own god knew precisely how many of his children were slain before they managed to blast the CA to smithereens.
Of course, the death of the last CA mattered little to Alec. Nor did the destruction of every defense battery, save two, concern the commander. Enemy footfalls thundered through every level within the outpost. The ominous sounds drew ever closer to the command/control deck, but Alec’s physical hearing was not attuned to the danger snarling toward him. All he wanted to do was to kill the enemy…kill them until he could kill no more. And after that, he could finally die for a dead empire.
A massive explosion churned up ten miles of the outpost’s top segment in a series of blazing ruptures. Shockwaves whiplashed through the interior, reaching the cloistered walls of the command-control deck in a pounding tide.
Alec was ejected from his chair a second and half after lightning bursts of feedback flooded his dome, tearing away his linkages in a violent disconnect. The commander writhed on the floor in the throes of cardiac arrest. The command-control deck crumbled around him. Alec’s world grew dimmer. He saw death’s glorious hand reaching out to him…
Alec awoke expecting to find himself in whatever bliss qualified as an afterlife. Instead, he noticed how all too tangible his surroundings were and realized, to his dismay, that he was still alive. He was a lying on a cot, inside the medical bay of a ship. And from the faint vibration of motion seeping through the bulkheads, a fast moving ship. A human size avatar, faceless and stiff, entered the bay holding a diagnostic scan.
Alec hopped off the cot and knocked the scan out of the avatar’s hand when it attempted to do a medical assessment. He stormed out of the med bay, into a wider compartment of the craft. He ventured further, passing two more avatars until he reached the forward window and peered out. A star strewn expanse greeted the captain, vast and serene. When Alec checked the rear view monitor, however, he saw a swarm of arrow shaped Jepthala ships in pursuit. The embattled outpost was visible on the display, rapidly diminishing with distance.
“Co-aid, what the hell is this? What did you do?” Alec yelled.
I sent available avatars to revive and subsequently remove you from the outpost. You were transferred through passageways unknown to the enemy and placed aboard this shuttle.
If Co-aid were a person, Alec would have surely strangled him. Instead, the commander had to be content with flexing his hands at his sides in murderous longing. “Don’t play the fool with me, Co-aid! I did not order you to evacuate me!”
No, you did not.
“Then why did you do it?”
I felt it necessary.
“Necessary! You felt…” Alec took a deep breath to compose himself. “It’s not your job to feel. Your job is to follow orders!”
Since I have already acted without orders, the matter is moot.
Before Alec could express further dismay at the compu-aid’s seeming impudence, the AI posed a question.
Commander, do you believe in the ideals of the United Empire?
Taken aback by the question, Alec’s ire receded enough for him to consider it thoughtfully. “Well, yes. I always have, even when the UE stopped living up to those ideals.”
That is why I saved you, Commander. You never stopped believing. I am confident that there are countless UE refugees who never stopped believing as well. It is through them and through you that the United Empire lives. It will be through your efforts, if you are willing to shoulder the burden, that the United Empire will rise again. You have a chance to live to pursue a new purpose. Or you can seek your solace in death.
Alec was speechless for several seconds before he found his voice. “I didn’t realize you were capable of such…passion about a matter.”
I am merely attempting to direct you toward a constructive way to cope with your losses.
A peal of static filled the cockpit. Alec realized that Co-aid was transmitting from the outpost. The AI had not transferred itself to the fleeing shuttle.
“Co-aid. I need you here with me. I recognize my purpose, now, thanks to you. But you’ve got to get out of the outpost so we can do this thing together.”
My purpose has been served, Commander.
Alec leaned on the shuttle control console. The weight of sudden sorrow clung to his words in spite of his best effort to conceal it. “Co-aid, listen carefully. I order you to transfer yourself to this shuttle.”
My function is intricately tied to outpost operations. My consciousness, to use a biological term, cannot be extracted. In other words, I am the outpost.
Helplessness draped over the commander. He stared sullenly at the shuttle console, desperately thinking of a procedure he could perform that would save a computer that had been more than a computer to him for the past five years.
“Co-aid…I…”
It has been an honor serving you, Commander.
An eruption of light as bright as a bursting star appeared on the rear view monitor.
Alec stood frozen. His glistening eyes were locked on the display, watching a smear of brilliance dim to a twirling emptiness where Outpost Epsilon Salient once existed but seconds earlier.
Co-aid had triggered a self destruct. There was no telling how many Jepthala died in the blast. The Jepthala ships trailing the shuttle quickly broke off their pursuit.
A part of Alec rejoiced at Co-aid’s final gift to the enemy. Another, larger part of him throbbed with the pain of yet another loss.
Alec drew himself erect and lifted his hand in the most heartfelt salute he had ever given in his career. “The honor was mine, my friend.”
A few minutes later, Alec transferred control of the shuttle from automatic to manual. He had no idea where to start in his quest to renew an empire. So, he set a random course and embarked on it.
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