Our warship shook violently
with metallic clangs as status indicators flashed on and off erratically from
the last missile strike.
Lieutenant Hendrick shouted
above the rattling with a strain,
“Starboard’s in a bad way Sir!
We can’t hold them off for much longer.” His hair dripped beads of sweat that
ran in rivulets under his Flightsuit. I ran to the centre of the bridge, smoke
curling through vents as part of the ship died away on my control map, first
glowing red, then greying out.
“Shit!” I smacked the metal
table with a dull thud, “We just lost them Hendrick.” I spoke in hurried
stammers to the rest of the crew via Network:
“Keep them at bay! Portside
Defences Alpha, Beta and Delta engage targets of opportunity! All non-combatant
units commence rescue operations for Starboard Section A; bring them to Evac.
Bunker Two! I can’t-“ A deafening blast erupted from someplace; my voice was
drowned out: “Communications with Starboard are down. I repeat, Starboard
communications are down!” I spat the sentence out before I could be interrupted
again.
More volleys struck us in
quick succession; the world shimmered in my eyes. The ship groaned like a large
metal door and shook uncontrollably as officers were thrown to their feet in
panicked cries, inaudible over the ship’s scream of agony.
Hendrick grabbed the support
rail, “Damage report!” he shouted to the other officers.
“We’ve lost the whole Starboard
sir; it’s gone!” A young officer, barely
into his mid-twenties stared horrified at the holoscreen as he read his status
updates.
“Shit!” I thumped the desk
again.
“What should we do?” He
shouted over to me, everyone followed his gaze. I took a deep breath, my bones
rattling still long after the last strike had subsided:
“Get everybody off while we
still can!” Another missile, I hit my head, I was dazed.
“What the hell was that?” I
shouted, getting back to my feet, soothing the bruise.
“Strike on Portside Section
C. But there should be enough evacuation chambers left for the whole ship
though, or what’s left of it.” The same officer sounded ecstatic now, but knew
that what was left was very little at this point.
I activated the Network
again, hoping my message reached everybody, but I knew in the darkest recesses
of my mind that there was a good chance that it wouldn’t; we lost too many that
day:
I spat the command out,
anguished, “All fleet members on-board Olympus,
make your way to the nearest Evacuation Points, set target for Level 3 of the Eros
Elliptical.”
Hendrick muttered something
under his breath as he turned away to tend to his subordinates, but I couldn’t
hear what it was. We gathered up and ran from the bridge, falling deeper into
the more concealed areas of the labyrinth that was my ship, the Eros flagship Olympus.
The black smoke grew thick
around us as we passed through ravaged corridors and ran urgently like a pack
of wild animals, shaken every few seconds as the battering continued. I could
imagine the depth of space around us as a tang of burnt metal filled the air
and cries of despondency erupted everywhere, people in uniform running
frightened for any last means of solace as the last of our weapons systems were
either finally abandoned in lost hope, or were knocked offline by the
continuing barrage of strikes from the Light Crawlers. A beam-leister ripped
through the level above us as people screamed, the metal lining the corridor
above wobbled like jelly, melted from the heat. I imagined steam cascading from
the molten substance as I prayed that the rest of the crew had heard my last
command, but knowing that I would never know; that was what really pissed me
off. If anyone was up there, they’d be vaporized by now, (I kept telling myself
that;) the harsh realities of war bit into me as I rushed, staggered and
stumbled, all the while hoping that any escape pods remaining weren’t damaged or
lost; we weren’t going to lose anymore, I was determined. I lead the way as Hendrick
displayed a calm demeanour alongside me, his eyes constantly looking to the
floor as we made our way to the kilometre-thick security-door at the end of a
blackened hall, the smoke now obscuring our sight. We resorted to infrared
vision, turning the world bloody and bleak.
I swiped a hand over the
lock as it clicked open, the air lock depressurizing like a sight of relief,
which I mimicked, my fear subsiding slightly. No commander wants to be faced
with the burden of knowing that you cost people their lives needlessly. But we
weren’t in absolute defeat today, for I knew we’d snatch back victory, the slow
closing of the tall door like a great canyon of metal, impervious to all
threats and in such a moment my stone face offered a thin smile and the sounds
of destruction faded. The indeterminably long row of escape pods stretched out
for miles, sitting like small metal ball-bearings with a large window that
would slide over the front and airlock immediately, activating a supply of
oxygen and other necessities as it sent its occupant into a stasis as it
travelled towards a habitable environment, whereupon the passenger would be
awoken again, and ejected soon after. We were still thousands of kilometres
away from the Elliptical; I pointed to the young officer I’d spoken to earlier.
He seemed rather shocked to still be alive as he saluted comradely, his spine
stiff and his fingers locked above his brow with precision and discipline:
“How far out from the third
level are we? We can’t let them land.”
The young man checked his
status watch and replied in no more than 3 seconds eagerly:
“Approximately 24,597
kilometres Sir. We should be able to land on Plain 97 of Level 3 with ease. The
Interstellar Artillery will be only ten miles away from where we would be
expected to land.” His face lit up but was shaken constantly as the roar of war
seeped through the thickened walls of the evacuation bunker.
I replied immediately,
braving the shakes, “Yes, Officer, I know. I plan on us using them once we
arrive.”
“Using them?” Hendrick
overheard, his face disbelieving.
I pivoted and stared,
hard-eyed, “Yes, we need to stop them landing here or they’ll take the 97th
plain from us Hendrick. I won’t stand by and watch the Eros Elliptical be
annihilated beyond repair.” I turned away again and muttered: “There’s billions of sentients here Hendrick and
I’ll defend them to the death.” A groan of metal yawned again as the very
foundations of the sentinel walls buckled under pressure. Officers stared in
horror.
The disarrayed ship
shuddered and bumped and buckled like a mere tin can while everyone piled into
escape pods frantically, priming them to be shot off at unfathomable speeds,
some having left several minutes ago, no doubt. The floor of the trench over which
they sat lay open to the void of space, the blackness frighteningly calm when
you saw it stare at you; that nothingness, that depth of zero. The mesosphere
of the elliptical’s stacked rings glowed out of vision, a cyan aura radiant,
like rings of dry ice against an unlit coal fire surrounding the star in
precise distances, the centrifugal force of the centre ring channelled up and
down to the others by a layer of invisible matter stacked inside of the
structure and enclosing the Eros star.
Hendrick got into one of the
pods, the one next to him I marked as my own internally. Before I left I
hesitated and said to the ship solemnly:
“Olympus, you’ve served me well over the last five years but you’re
too badly damaged to continue.”
She (her sentient AI) piped
up invisibly, “I’m well aware of that Sir: my propulsion units are all offline
as are all offensive capabilities, the Network is down both internally and
externally, and the Starboard has all but been destroyed at this point.”
“Yes, but I want to ask you
a final favour: Can you self-destruct your Power-HUB? I want to ensure that as many
enemy ships die as possible. We need time.” The words pained me as they passed
my lips.
She paused then replied, a
lag in the failing system, “Yes, of course Commander. I’d like nothing more
than to die in your and your crew’s honour. And there are numerous targeted
opportunities in range you’ll be glad to know, so my sacrifice will not be in
vain I assure you. You must prevent the invasion of the militarised plain, the
star must not go nova and I am sure that you will do your duty Commander. Good
luck Sir.”
I looked to the ceiling and
said in my most gracious voice, “Thank you.”
If I could have seen a face
to match her voice, I was sure it would have looked happy, overjoyed even at dying as she did. But the ship herself continued
to blow apart as I spoke, the portside also nearly destroyed by that point, the
echoes of battle growing nearer as steam cascaded and filled the chamber from a
splintered wall into the bunker, corridors razed and floors dusted with debris.
Before I left the ship spoke
once more, “Before you go Sir, I have a final request.”
“Anything you want.” I
smiled towards the ceiling, itching to get off the wreckage.
“Will you tell Intel. Corps
that I fully enjoyed serving with them, upon your glorious return?”
“I would like nothing more Olympus; I’ll ensure that you are treated
with the utmost respect by our comrades in Intel. Corps, and I am sure that
they would be delighted to honour your sacrifice, in the utmost enthusiasm.”
“Thank you again Sir, I’ve
enjoyed serving under you.”
“As have I Olympus, as have I.” The ship seemed to
sigh in satisfaction, which I enjoyed hearing; it was the last we spoke before
she blew as I made for my escape pod.
The ship was now rattling
and whining as alarms started whirring horribly; a new, ugly voice called out
an emergency warning to evacuate immediately as the emergency light strips
activated, glowing yellow against the red deck in my vision. I was one of the
last to leave, the pod glowing blue from within the cockpit as I felt my eyes
begin to fall in a drunken descent after the hatch closed, the pod’s mechanisms
sending me into a dreamless sleep as the airlocks sealed, breathing in and holding
the air hostage for the next few days. The pod was spat from the floating
wreckage of Olympus, the AI doubtless
sending out its last communication that would be at the end of its file on the
Intel. Corps database: Death by
self-induced core-overload in 2797 SE: Eros System; Commander Ritzen, Command.
As our fleet of escape pods
travelled peacefully yet speedily towards the gargantuan elliptical, I dreamt
of the ship’s destruction above and the havoc it no doubt created for our
enemy, the blinding punch of light from the overload to be seen unknown amounts
of time after on some distant world I thought, possibly long after my own life
had ended, like a star gone supernova. We survived in our thousands thanks to Olympus, and I’m still grateful to this
day. But the hardship for us didn’t end there. We realised our biggest fears on
the forest-laden surface of the third level, the nameless plain marked simply
as a military outpost that glowed somewhere in the maze of matter beneath us,
testament to our long stalemate of a war; a war that in the end outlived all of
us and it is here that I will ask you:
Don’t they all?
