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58: The Snake
Day after day passed quickly for General Lysis as he directed the construction of the "Pluto Base" as many were now calling it, as well as the oversight of the training of the Balan soldiers. He had never dreamed that this would one day be his reality. His past military experiences were been ones that he had spent too many years trying to forget. Perhaps this one would turn out better than the others, after all, the Malha had disappeared, so she at least would not play a part in this – or so he hoped.
Dommel's thoughts though preoccupied with the building of the base often turned homeward to his Elisa, with whom he spoke daily. She told him about the sessions she had with all of the Leader's advisory council members and about her varying levels of success with each person. Some were too stubborn at first to admit that they were pigheaded and rude. Others took to the training immediately and were excellent students. Some of the stories she recounted made him laugh while others troubled him.
It was clear that Leader Desslok had chosen an eclectic bunch to make up his council and it still escaped him why several of the members were there at all, but he supposed Desslok had his reasons, after all, the man had done so many seemingly senseless things in the past that had saved all of their lives on multiple occasions. It was likely that he had merely seen things that they had failed to notice.
In any case, the days were getting longer and longer the closer they came to finishing the outpost in the Erats system. The outer structure was complete and the only thing left was to put the finishing touches on the bombardment equipment. That would take a week at least, over a third of the time that he had estimated for the entire construction. But they were ahead of schedule and the General saw no need to worry that it would not be completed by his deadline. The sooner they were finished, the sooner he could return home. After all, the Leader had not said that his assignment would last into the assault on Erats. Perhaps he would be able to leave active duty after this service was complete. Then he could disappear back into the wilderness and live the rest of his life in the solitude he desperately craved.
An urgent chime broke into Dommel's thoughts and he picked up the communicator. "Yes." The word came out as a growl, filled with the tension he had been feeling for the past several days.
"General, the Ze'evim* have spotted something coming out of warp – not one of ours, sir." The crewman said.
"Get any identification on them that you can. And do it now." Dommel ordered, then muttered, "This is the last thing we need."
There was silence for a moment while the crewman ran the appropriate recognition software, then he said, "It's Cometine, Sir."
"Cometine?" Dommel said, puzzled, "What are they doing out here?"
"Don't know, Sir." The man replied, oblivious to the fact that the General was talking to himself, not his subordinate, but Dommel ignored the man's interruption. "Contact the Ze'evim. Let them know I will be in touch soon with instructions for them. I don't want this delaying our work here."
"Yes, Sir." The crewman disappeared from the communication channel.
Lysis took several minutes to think about what he would say to the unit, then, his mind made up, he called the captain of the Ze'evim.
"Wolf." Dommel said, "How many? What are we looking at?"
"Two destroyers, the rest look to be smaller – probably newer model gunships."
"What does 'the rest' constitute, Frakken?" Dommel pried.
"Fifty ships, General." Wolf replied, all jesting gone from his voice.
Dommel groaned, "Not now." He said, "Not when we're this close to being finished with the outpost.
Wolf sighed, "It's almost as though they knew we were here and how preoccupied we would be at this stage of the work. After all, over half of our forces are dedicated to the construction, especially now that the external work is done and the internal must be finished. The first stage required the use of a few ships, but this part requires a number of men from each ship, leaving us all short-handed."
Dommel nodded, knowing that, on the audio-only channel, Wolf could not see him, "Yes, indeed… now is truly the worst time to harass us."
"We'll make them wish they'd stayed in their own space." Wolf replied, "They'll be gone soon enough."
"But fifty gunships –" Dommel started to protest.
"Is nothing compared to the might of Gamilon." Wolf interrupted. "My Ze'evim will run them off like tame dogs in no time. Give the battle to us. We will give them a fight they won't forget."
Dommel thought on it for a minute, then seeing the sense in his brother-in-law's words he replied, "Very well, Wolf. Take your pack and run off the interlopers – but do it quickly." Suddenly a thought occurred to him and he stopped for a moment, then began reluctantly, "No, don't run them off. Destroy them. Don't let a single one of them make it back to the Cometine homeworld – or worse, Gatlantis with news of the Ze'evim and their subspace-faring ships. If we simply run them off, they'll be back. If we obliterate them, they'll think twice before sending anything else this direction. Perhaps we can buy all of us some time."
Wolf didn't say anything for a long while, then finally he replied, "It will be done, General." And signed off.
"I don't like the idea any more than he does…" Dommel thought, "He came out of a life filled with death, and so did I. We both fought and nearly died together more than once; but now we have others to protect – others who cannot protect themselves from the sickness that permeates our world. If protecting them means that I must take lives once again…" images of Elisa, the son he'd lost, his parents now long gone from the face of his world, and the many others he had loved came to mind and he sighed and shook his head, defeated, "Then so be it…"
"All hands prepare for engagement of the enemy fleet." Wolf announced to his men on all twelve of the ships in his pack, "Do not return to normal space unless I give the order. We have no idea what kind of weapons the Cometines have developed since the last time we met them in battle."
A chorus of "Yes, Sir"s resounded from around him and through the comm system.
"And… we have orders that none of them are to leave this place." Frakken looked around at the men on his own ship and saw in their faces exactly what he had expected to see, a mix of disgust, grudging determination, and excitement. Even though the fleet was newly commissioned – one of Desslok's own personal projects that he had had pushed to completion – and he had never commanded such a group, he found that his men already had a respect for him that he had not anticipated. He had asked one of the men about it once. The reply he had gotten had been truly astonishing.
"We've all heard the stories, Cap'n; we know a lotta the things that went on durin' that rebellion. Some of us were even in it – not me a'course, I was stuck in the capitol hidin' for my life from those zealots – but I remember the day they said that Deun had been kicked out – best day a' my life, 'cept for the one they told me I was ta be workin' here on one a' these ships under your command, Sir – but anyway, ya see, you probably never got told this, but Leader Desslok himself briefed us on everything that happened durin' that rebellion. He told us about the things you did, Sir – everything from saving the life of General Talan, to helpin' out that Garen Krenshaw fellow when he went out a' his head. He told us all that just because you hadn't ever commanded a ship or anything didn't mean you weren't qualified to, and if we didn't treat you like a seasoned officer, we was to suffer the consequences."
That was when Wolf had realized that he had been given a new chance, a new family unit to protect. The Ze'evim were named for the Lone Wolf of space, but that didn't mean that he had to stay a Lone Wolf. Here and now was the beginning of the journey, their first battle as a unit.
He called all twelve engineers, their greasy faces displayed in a group before his eyes, "Everything ready?" he asked.
A series of "Yup," "Yes, Sir," and "Good to go," replies came from the dozen and he nodded his approval.
"Very well," he said, this time so that everyone on all twelve vessels could hear him, "Let us wish the Cometine fleet good-bye. We'll not be seeing them in this universe again."
"General, there's something right on our tail! It wasn't there bef –" the Cometine captain's voice was cut off as his ship exploded.
"It came out of nowhere!" another captain's voice began before being forever silenced.
General Nasca pursed his lips in frustrated concentration. "Those cursed Gamilons." He muttered to himself, "Always finding a way to make our lives that much more unbearable."
"General," Nasca's ship's captain interrupted his thoughts.
"Yes." Nasca hissed, "What?"
"Sir, the gunships are going down faster than we can react. We've no defense against whatever it is that they're using. We're losing men and ships much too quickly."
Nasca growled angrily at the man, then composed himself and said, "It doesn't matter, Captain. We're not here to fight them. As long as our message gets through to them, nothing else matters."
"Y – yes, Sir." The captain stuttered, seeing the light of rage still in Nasca's eyes and not wanting to be the subject of it.
"Make sure that, even if everyone else falls, we get through alive."
"Yes, Sir." The captain repeated, then scurried back to his seat and began giving a string of orders.
The ship jolted.
"What was that, captain?" Nasca demanded.
"Enemy fire, Sir." He replied, not looking at Nasca, "It glanced off the shield we just put in place. We suffered no damage."
An explosion off to his right caught Nasca's attention. The enemy fire might have left them untouched, but the captain's shield had caused the round to bounce off of them and hit one of their escort ships. He rolled his eyes and shook his head, "What a pack of idiots!"
"They've got shields, Cap'n." Wolf's gunnery chief announced. Just saw one of our torpedoes bounce right off one a' them destroyers."
"Is there any way around them?" Wolf asked, "Some weakness we can exploit?"
"Not as what I can see, Sir." The man replied, "But usually with somethin' like that, once they've taken so many hits, they have to rest for a while before they can work again."
"Can we overload the shield then?" Frakken asked.
"I'm sure we could, Cap'n, but that might require us ta surface. Torpedoes're great, but unless we can get ourselves a good laser salvo goin' on we don't have much of a hope of getting' that shield down."
Wolf narrowed his eyes at the destroyer he was staring at through the ship's periscope; it was such a handy thing, allowing the miniscule piece to surface into normal space without endangering the entire ship. "We're going up." He finally announced to the fleet, "But only us. Everyone else is to continue pursuing the gunships. Leave the destroyers to us. We'll get their shields down. Once that's done, we'll concentrate our fire on them."
"Sounds good 'ta me, Sir." The gunner said.
Frakken turned to look at all the other men occupying the cramped bridge. He saw the same agreement and nods of approval on all of their faces.
"Got it?" he asked over the comm channel.
Every ship captain replied with a resolute "Yes."
"What's going on, now?!" the captain of Nasca's destroyer, Captain Rudan, asked in a panic when the radar operator announced that there was an enemy directly behind them.
"Send out fighters!" the captain had just finished saying when the ship began to shake again.
"They're hitting the weakest part of our shield, Captain." One of the other crewmembers said in alarm. "They're trying to bring it down!"
"Where are those fighters?" the captain bellowed, his fear written clearly in his eyes.
"Sir, the launch bay doors have been hit. We can't get anything out of them. They're folded shut."
"Then cut them off!" the captain shouted, "I'm not going to die here just for some message!"
There was a stunned silence on the bridge for a fraction of a second, then everyone scurried to do the captain's bidding.
"General Nasca," the captain turned to where the other man had been standing moments ago. The green skin of his face turned nearly white when he realized that the General was no longer there.
"There's an escape pod launching from the destroyer, Sir." The radar chief announced to Frakken, "Shall we target it?"
"No, leave it to the others." Wolf replied, "We've got to bring down this destroyer first."
"If we don't finish this fast the other ship will have fighters on us." The crewman said.
"I know." Frakken replied coolly. "Leave that to me."
"The shield is almost down." Another man said, "One more hit should do it."
"Fire at will." Wolf ordered.
A wave of laser fire came from the ship and engulfed the entire back section of the destroyer. The first few beams did nothing, then there was a gigantic flare of light.
"The shield's gone!" one of Frakken's men exclaimed as the rest of the crew expressed their happiness over the partial victory.
Brilliant explosions began to blossom in the destroyer's underbelly.
"We've hit somethin' important." The gunnery chief said.
"Submerge now." Frakken ordered.
The men hurried to do his bidding and sped away from the area as quickly as they could, descending into subspace as they went.
"We're out of range of the explosion, Captain." A crewman announced. "But it looks like a good chunk of their gunships didn't get so lucky."
"What're the odds now?" Frakken asked.
"They're down to twenty gunships and that other destroyer. We've suffered nary a scratch. And the other ship didn't send anything out after us." The crewman replied. "Not too shabby I'd say."
"Quite so." Frakken replied, a small smile on his face, "But we're not finished yet. Let the other eleven take down the twenty smaller ships. We're going after that other destroyer. Set course for her."
"Aye, Sir." The navigator affirmed.
Within half a minute they were tailing the gigantic ship as it lumbered on towards Pluto space.
"Prepare to return to normal space." Wolf said to his men. "And be ready to open fire on my command."
The men excitedly began their preparations and the ascension began.
"Sir, an enemy ship just appeared. They're right behind us." The remaining destroyer's radar operator informed his captain of the development.
The captain gritted his teeth, "We're right in the middle of a bloodbath. Captain Rudan's ship was blown away right after the General left it. I'll not have us suffer that same fate." The captain paused, aware that General Nasca had just stepped foot onto his bridge.
"Captain." Nasca greeted, "Having some trouble?"
"Perhaps a bit… Sir." The captain grudgingly admitted. "Enemy fire appears from nowhere, and one ship keeps appearing and disappearing on our radar. Our ships are firing blind. There is no pattern to the attacks, no indication as to where the enemy fire is being transported from. We have no idea what we're fighting, only that it is indeed Gamilon forces that have been wiping up out."
"Confusion is their greatest weapon right now, Captain. We could be facing two hundred ships – or two." Nasca smirked. "No matter though, we were sent to deliver a message. Opposition was expected."
"Yes, but this?" the captain protested. "Surely we are not expected to fight to the last man simply for a message…"
Nasca's eyes bored into the captain's. "We are here to serve our ruler. If dying is what it takes to do that, then so be it."
Then the captain knew that he had greatly underestimated the loyalty and commitment of the man he and his fellows had been tasked with transporting. "If he has to see us all die, he'll do it." the captain thought, feeling sick as he realized that his own life meant next to nothing to the General.
"Perhaps… we should warp out of here." The captain suggested. "The enemy won't know where we've gone – at least, not right away. We could have time to find –"
Nasca's guffaw cut the man off, "You sorry coward." The General's right hand was suddenly holding his weapon, and the gun was pointing straight at the captain whose eyes were wide with fear.
"No – no, I didn't mean –"
The sentence ended abruptly in a scream of terror when Nasca shot him.
"Now, gentlemen," Nasca said, stepping over the captain's body, "Set course for the planet. We've some business to attend to."
"But Sir, the enemy ship." the second in command protested as the destroyer rocked under fire from the other vessel.
"Ignore them." Nasca waved a dismissive hand, "Give it all the speed you have. We'll outstrip them. They cannot be as fast as our ships."
"Yes, Sir." The XO replied and relayed the command to the appropriate parties.
"Their speed is increasing. Significantly." Frakken's radar operator announced, "At this rate, we'll lose them in four minutes."
Frakken cursed the Cometine ship. "Follow her. And once the rest of the gunships are down, summon the eleven as well."
Both the navigator and communications men nodded and set about their business.
The Ze'evim followed the last destroyed in hot pursuit, but it was soon evident that they would never be able to match the Cometine ship's speed.
"They're entering the Pluto orbit, Sir." The radar man said as they neared the planet. "We're too late."
Dommel's communicator chimed and an unfamiliar contact code appeared on the screen.
The General accepted the call, curious. He hid his astonishment when General Nasca's face appeared before him, his Cometine green skin looking just as sickly as Dommel remembered it.
"Ah, Dommel Lysis. It is good to see you again, old enemy." The Cometine said a strange grin on his face.
"What business do you have here, Nachash?"
"Oh, now Dommel, is that any way to treat an old acquaintance?"
"It is when that acquaintance is set on killing you." Lysis quipped.
"Oh, then you'll be relieved to know that I do not intend to do that – this time." Nasca grinned, "For now all I wish to do is bring you a message."
"From whom?" Lysis asked, eyes narrowing suspiciously.
"Why, from Prince Zordar of course."
* Ze'evim – wolves