TERRAN REPUBLIC NAVY SHIP MISSISSIPPI
The sleek and ominously quiet Terran Republic Navy advanced reconnaissance ship, the Mississippi, hung a mere two light seconds away from the catastrophic remnants of the alien fray. There was not one unaffected soul on the bridge as they watched and listened as the Granti and Malgeir sent their best into a death charge against the Znosians.
Commander Samantha Lee, the executive officer of the ship, was the first to wipe her wet blue eyes on her jet-black uniform and clear her throat. “Holy fuck… I just can’t believe…”
Captain Chuck Harris shook his head as well. “Aye, but I can. I’ve been to recon six of these bloody battles. And this is about as good as it gets for the poor Puppers.” Chuck was a distinctive man: two meters and over a hundred kilograms of a giant, one of very few people with a Fleet Approved Māori Tā moko tattoo on his face. He normally exuded the confidence of a man who knew he could get away with murder, but even he was subdued now.
“Look at the preliminary casualty list Squadron 5 just transferred,” Samantha exclaimed. “How did they even keep their nerves up for the charge? I swear I didn’t think that Pupper admiral had it in her.” Her eyes flickered with recognition. “That Malgeir admiral… I’m sure I’ve heard her name somewhere before. What was it?”
Carla, the flag aide, spoke up. “That’s Fleet Commander Grionc of the Malgeir Sixth Fleet, identifiable with the marking on her right snout. She’s something of a legend among her crews. Our intel suggests she’s known for her ability to think on her— uh, paws, and for an unprecedented flexibility in command, especially for a Malgeir. But even she…” Carla’s voice trailed off into a sorrowful shrug, “She is not free from the abysmal standards they set for themselves…”
Samantha, her gaze still locked on the flailing Malgeir fleet, muttered, “When she attempted that disengagement, I thought for a second she’d scatter her fleet, leaving them to be mercilessly picked apart by those Bunnies.” Her eyes narrowed in reluctant admiration, “Took a lot of guts to see the trap she’s in and then face down half a dozen Bun missile volleys to get to them. Even though she completely bungled their numbers advantage at the start.”
Chuck’s voice was heavy with resigned acknowledgment. “The Malgeir have never been wanting for courage in a firefight, Sam.” He sighed, “It’s just tactical and strategic sense they lack. This— this victory is as Pyrrhic as they come.”
Samantha’s finger pointed to the battlemap, tracing the scant survivors and the ruin of what was once a mighty Malgeir fleet. “They might salvage one, maybe two, of their six heavy lift transports. The rest…” she shook her head, “Total losses. At best, they can muster enough munitions for twenty-five, perhaps thirty missile destroyers for a single engagement. To run another offensive campaign in this sector in the next few months, they’d literally need to duct tape their munitions to the hulls of their ships.” Her eyes flickered with a spark of relief. “At least they didn’t prematurely blink their orbital support ships and Marine transports into the fray; that would’ve been an unmitigated disaster.”
“What a waste,” she whispered in frustration, almost to herself. “What an absolute waste.”
Suddenly, a sharp beep on her command console jarred Samantha from her reverie. Her heart skipped a beat.
It can’t be.
She checked it. And double-checked it. The sensors unwaveringly confirmed their initial readings.
She beckoned towards the admiral’s aide, “Carla, come take a look at this.”
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MNS MOBRIUL
1 HOUR AGO
Tactical Officer Graers of the MNS Mobriul looked at the battlemap and tried to ignore the fear hormones coursing through his veins. By the excited state of the hackles on his back, he knew he was only partially successful.
There were eighty deadly Grass Eater missiles pouring down at Squadron 2. The Mobriul was among them. And the fleet had run out of counter-missiles two volleys ago.
This is it.
The bridge crew had unanimously agreed to volunteer. It was only logical. Fleet Commander Grionc’s Alpha-class flagship was vital to the war effort, and only she could lead their beloved Sixth Fleet to victory.
Graers’ thoughts strayed to his family: his mate and two playful cubs. Their potential future without him in it clouded his thoughts momentarily. With the way the war was going, he hoped that they would be able to get on one of those evacuation flights out of Malgeiru. Surely his personal sacrifice would entitle them to that much from the Defense Ministry—
Captain Nispio, with her characteristic sharpness, sliced through his somber reverie. “Tactical Officer Graers!”
“Yes, Captain?” he asked, straightening, his discipline unforgotten even on the precipice of death.
“Can we dump anything else? Our blink fuel? It’s not like we’re going to need it where we’re going. Let’s make ourselves as nimble a target as we can against those missiles. The longer we survive, the more of them will have to come for us,” the captain proposed hurriedly. “There must be something we can dump.”
Graers shook his ears. “We’ve already dumped all the blink fuel and we’re running on fumes for the subspace engines, ma’am. We have just enough to last through the engagement window.”
“Fine. What about our main reactor? We can jettison that in an emergency, right?”
His eyes widened momentarily. “The— uh— the reactor, ma’am?” he said, scarcely believing his ears. “We need that to power our defenses.”
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“But we have the auxiliary power unit. That should be enough without reactor power for a few seconds, right?”
Paws dancing across his tactical console, Graers calculated rapidly and blinked in surprise at the results. “Yes, Captain. We can maintain power to our systems for approximately ten seconds without the reactor.”
“Do it. Eject it ten seconds before the enemy missiles begin their terminal maneuvers,” Nispio said, pointing at the approaching missiles on the console.
Eject the reactor. Voluntarily.
Of all the strange orders he’d ever followed, this one was up there. But this had been a strange day indeed.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, his paws nimbly programming the commands into his console.
“Intercept in thirty seconds!” a panicked voice echoed across the bridge. “Brace for impact!”
Bypassing the safety overrides as quickly as he could, Graers set the commands. Affirmative beeps from the console punctuated his actions.
“Twenty seconds! Brace! Brace! Brace!”
He reclined slightly, paws gripping his bridge chair, claws involuntarily extending into the plush material.
“Ten seconds!”
Barely a heartbeat after the count, a monstrous, metallic screech emanated from the Mobriul’s rear. Explosives blew a gaping hole amidst two of the eight still-roaring engines, forcefully evicting the reactor room into the unforgiving void of space. Graers’ console lit up like a festive display: each light, each flashing indicator, screamed warnings or pleaded for corrective action in urgent yellow.
All non-essential systems went offline almost at once. The lights on the bridge blinked off, replaced by the eerily dim orange emergency overhead lighting powered by internal batteries.
Graers looked out the bridge window. He knew he shouldn’t be able to see the difference with his naked eyes, but perhaps absurdly, the ship did seem to be accelerating faster than it had been without the final piece of dead weight they’d just shed.
The sounds of the Mobriul’s point defense guns resonated through the hull, aiming to pluck enemy missiles out of the vacuum with their computer reflexes. A triumphant cheer from the gunnery section punctuated the noise.
They must have gotten one.
“Incoming!” The warning shattered the brief celebration.
Graers’ eyes darted instinctively towards the source of the sound, and then his world plunged into darkness.
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“Tactical Officer! Tactical Officer! Graers!”
The world was a blur of smells, sounds, and pain. The murky symphony jolted Graers as he sluggishly wrangled with consciousness. The first sensation Graers registered was the icy cold, metallic deck against his whiskers. As he opened his eyes, the dimmed emergency lighting painted the room in a faint orange glow.
A raw cough splintered from his lung, stinging with the sharp tang of burnt electronics, sharp enough to snap him into awareness.
“You’re alive!” It was Captain Nispio’s rough voice. He craned his neck upward to see her sprawled a couple of body lengths away, her face covered almost entirely in soot.
Trying to move, Graers felt a weight on his right paw. His tactical console had collapsed onto him. Summoning a surge of energy, he gave the equipment a hard shove, and it gave just enough for him to wriggle free.
He pulled himself up, ignoring the fresh pain in his… everywhere: it hurt everywhere. He gingerly got up and limped over to the captain on the floor.
“Captain Nispio, can you walk?” his voice, a feeble croak.
“Not at all, my walking paws are in bad shape,” she said, pointing at her useless rear limbs bent in an unnatural position.
“I’m going to try to get us out of here.”
“Then you better do it quick,” she replied. “Before the emergency power cut out, I saw there was a fire near the munitions storage. So…”
“Ship’s about to go boom, got it,” Graers said as he assisted the captain upright, trying his best to ignore her winces and her sharp claws digging into his shoulders. “Where is the rest of the bridge crew?”
Recovering from the pain, she nodded reluctantly toward the remaining stations on the bridge. He could barely make them out in the dark, each with an officer sprawling over a console or the floor in unnatural stillness. “No other survivors on the bridge. Just you and me, Tactical Officer. The hit must have been somewhere close.”
“The rest of the crew?”
“Abandoned ship. I heard at least a dozen pods eject successfully,” she asserted, a semblance of confidence returning to her voice. “Someone back there— they must have initiated the abandon ship protocol.”
Graers guided the captain towards the bridge escape pod while she leaned heavily on him. He might not be able to see as well in the dark, but his years on the ship bridge came in handy: he could navigate it in his sleep. Careful not to trip around a couple new piles of unexpected debris, they made it to the pod with practiced ease.
He settled her into one of the escape pod’s dozen seats, strapped her in, and then seated himself, activating the battery-powered console with his less-injured paw.
The screen didn’t respond. That wasn’t uncommon in the Navy. The stupid electronics… they broke all the time. Luckily, there was a physical backup. He stood back up, made his way over to the pod door, forced it close, and pulled on the lever that was labelled “pull to undock”.
To his relief, the rusty lever gave and activated with only a mild exertion of effort. The pod jolted, separating from the dying ship. An unfamiliar lurch of acceleration knocked Graers off his paws, an odd feeling for a career spacer who’d been used to the comforts of inertial compensators. He hastily climbed back into his seat and secured the restraints right as the pod thrusters began to burn.
Minutes later, a brilliant flash momentarily eclipsed the star field through the window. The Mobriul. A swelling wave of debris passed over them, and for a second, Graers could see bits of metal debris flash by the pod windows. He closed his eyes, waiting for them to pass or—
Either by luck or because of the vastness of space, nothing struck the pod.
“Are we clear?” Nispio asked, her voice now a bare whimper.
“Yes, Captain,” he affirmed, getting back up to activate the transponder interface of the escape pod. That screen didn’t respond either.
Not completely unexpected. There was a backup.
He flipped the physical switch on the wall for activating the transponder… and nothing happened. The signal that was supposed to go on refused to light up. He did the logical thing: he switched it off and then on again. Again, nothing. “I can’t seem to get a signal up though.”
Nispio thought for a moment, then murmured, “Might be the EMP.”
“The electromagnetic pulse?” Graers asked.
“We took four solid missile hits, Graers. It’s a small miracle we’re still here to talk about it. After we got hit, we still had emergency communication to the battle network,” she explained. “Then, our own reactor exploded not too far from us, maybe a few hundred kilometers to our rear. Maybe a missile hit it. Maybe it just did that on its own.”
“And you think the reactor explosion generated a big enough EMP to cut out our communications?”
“There wasn’t any more chatter after that,” she said. “Then again, the Mobriul wasn’t exactly in good shape after the hits. The last missile hit towards the rear — near where the reactor core was — ejecting it probably saved our lives.”
Graers panted in dread. “Maybe. For now. But if that EMP also took out the communications on the rest of the Mobriul’s escape pods…”
The blood drained from Nispio’s face, the unspoken implication dawning with a chilling certainty.
“…the fleet might not even know to look for us.”