Space Fighters

Captain Mryshar restrained herself from pacing across the bridge of the Resolution, tail twitching behind her in agitation. At the very edge of scanner range sailed a ship, a million-ton merchantman laden with everything from quadranite to tritanium- vital to the functioning of a modern military. It hailed from the neutral system of Ilion, but its destination was the Master-Minds of Madrigal- who they had been at war with for years. Several previous shipments had been intercepted and captured without issue. But this shipment was escorted. The spindly trusswork bulk of an Invariant command carrier was rendered tiny by distance in the scanner-image, but it loomed large in Mryshar’s thoughts.

 

On the one hand it was a political problem. Attacking it would be an escalation, potentially opening a new front in what was already an annoyingly long war. That wasn’t her concern; her orders were clear and specific. Intercept all shipments from Ilion to Madrigal, escorted or not. More relevant was the other hand- the military problem. That command carrier would beat the Resolution in a straight fight. It was less nimble, it lacked protective force fields, but its cathode lances outranged the Resolution’s plasma carronades by over an order of magnitude, and its escorts were likely laden with city-killer bombs. She would almost certainly be cut to pieces in a straight fight. Fortunately she had other options.

 

“Launch all fighters,” she commanded. “Priority target is the merchant, caracole pattern. And tell the special asset to get ready.”

 

Time to see if those options would be enough.

 

…

 

Lieutenant Dan screamed towards his target at a thousand miles a second, the frame of his space fighter humming with the force of the hyper-turbines. They had taken a roundabout course to evade the carrier’s guns, literally flying circles around the Invariant’s Newtonian rocket. Now just one barrier remained between the strike wing and the vulnerable freighter- the enemy’s own parasite fighters.

 

Calling them ‘fighters’ seemed grotesque to Dan. Each one was thousands of tons, the size of a sixth-rate frigate. But they were carried by carriers, so they were fighters. He could see the twinkle of their pulse-rockets as they drove to intercept, driving them at accelerations surely fatal to any organic crew. Robot warships.

 

Dan took a deep breath to steady himself. They’d be in the thick of it soon enough.

 

“We’ll be in pulse-ray range in one minute,” the squadron lead said. “Remember, you won’t see them coming. Don’t bother trying to dodge, focus on getting in range and route all excess power to your frontal screens. Go to WEP, and Godspeed.”

 

Dan flicked EMERGENCY POWER to ON, and felt power surge through the fighter as the hyper-turbines were flooded with ultra-dense promethium fuel. Engine and shield power spiked to 150%.

 

Then those gargantuan ‘fighters’ opened fire, and Lieutenant Dan’s comrades began to die. One by one the invisible death-rays battered down shields and blew apart ships. Few managed to eject. Only blind chance and the whims of an alien targeting computer determined who lived and who died. With every explosion Dan felt the icy grip of death tightening around his throat, totally helpless to change his fate.

 

Then- range. He squeezed the trigger, gunpods spitting incandescent death at the still-distant enemy. He watched it twist and turn, trying to avoid the fire of a dozen fighters, and fail. It tried to interpose its shield- a physical armor plate suspended on magnetics- and failed. Each bolt punched through tinfoil-thin hull and flayed it apart. The monstrous machine reduced to semi-molten slag. He could see a second and third ‘fighter’ suffering similar fates under the guns of other squadrons.

 

Lieutenant Dan laughed. He had won! He had lived! He

 

Didn’t see it coming.

 

He regained consciousness a few seconds later. He was in his cockpit, but the rest of his fighter was gone. An automatic ejection. In the distance he could see the engine-glow of the squadron’s survivors, receding. Retreating.

 

He slumped in his chair, and hoped that rescue would come before the air ran out.

 

…

 

The *Belladonna* surveyed the battlefield and found it… acceptable. That fighter attack had been hairier than the System Control Vehicle had expected, using their superior maneuverability to try and punch a hole through her thinly-spread screen. Equipped with longer range weapons than usual, too. She had lost two Orion drones, and a third was crippled. But a well-placed spread of Kirklin mines across their path had ripped them apart, and now the survivors were running back to the League battlecarrier with tails between their legs. They’d lost half their fighters, and she still had fifteen drones. They wouldn’t be trying that again.

 

But there were hours to go before she could hand the shipment off to the Master-Minds. Plenty of time to try something else. But what? If they had a better plan then that fighter strike, they would have used it first. They probably weren't going to charge in with their heavy ship. Reinforcements might arrive, but-

 

But one of her subselves had just noticed something. A brief occlusion of a distant star, consistent with something dark, fast, and close. She rolled, directed the main scopes for a close look- yes, there was something there. A stealth ship? Ah. Trying to sneak in close, while their fighter attack punched a hole in the drone’s sensor net. Bring the UREBs to bear. Teleport signature, right on her skin. Fire. The stealth ship crumpled, raked from stem to stern, and her attention was already shifting with the urgency of near panic.

 

What was that- a person?

 

…

 

For an endless millisecond, Bob the Dragonslayer was everywhere and nowhere. Then he was floating but a cubit from the hull of the enemy star-ship. He drew his magic sword Roland and drove him into the hull as an anchor. Diamond composite armor parted like the wind before his vorpal edge. The star-ship’s torch lit and space gained a down, the hull becoming a cliff-face racing past him. He gripped the rent, grunting with the effort. A lesser man might have dislocated their shoulder, but Bob the Dragonslayer was not a lesser man.

 

He could see gun turrets rotating towards him. Time to go. A few more swift strokes made a gap large enough to slip through. He was in.

 

The interior was clearly not made for humans. The corridors were cramped, dark, airless, and lined with humming machinery. When he cut through the walls and doors, guided to the ship’s heart by his magic compass, they bled iridescent oil. Between his spacesuit and Amulet of Vacuum Breathing the environment posed little hazard, but it was still a bit unnerving.

 

“Creepy place,” Roland commented. “Let’s get out of here as soon as possible.”

 

“You’ve been unusually squirrelly today. What gives?” Bob asked.

 

“Last time my wielder died in a stupid place, I was trapped at the bottom of a dragon’s hoard for 200 years. That wasn’t fun. You die here, and I might be stuck drifting through space for millennia, and that’ll be even less fun. Forgive me for being apprehensive,” Roland replied. He shivered in his wielder’s hand.

 

“Don’t worry; if I die, I’ll haunt the shit out of whoever I can find until they come pick you up,” Bob said.

 

“Gee, thanks,” Roland drawled.

 

They came to an intersection, half a dozen twisted routes converging. Bob paused. He could sense something, feel something, the faintest vibration through the decking. Something was approaching.

 

Gunspiders burst in from every direction, coilguns spitting hypersonic flechettes. Perfect crossfire, no way out. None of it harmed him. He was protected by a ring of Protection from Normal Missiles, by a personal shielding belt, by his enchanted dragonscale plate. Then, with Roland in one hand and a rocket-pistol with an enchanted bottomless magazine in the other, he charged.

 

It was a brutal fight. When guns didn’t work the spiders tried lasers, then anti-tank missiles. Then they tried grappling him, pinning him down, and tearing him limb from limb. Random spins and accelerations denied him any firm footing, even with his boots of Spider Climb. Doors tried to slam shut on him as he passed through, corridors flooded themselves with caustic chemicals.

 

None of it was enough. Bob the Dragonslayer had plumbed the depths of ancient dungeons and cut his way through armies. He had fought his way through worse. He was wounded, his health potions depleted. He ignored his grievous wounds, his broken bones and pulped muscles, with practiced ease. For he had learned well the riddle of steel, and knew that the body was the puppet of the soul. And his soul was a mighty thing, glutted on uncounted victories and years of accumulated legend. Only death would even slow him down- and he took a lot of killing.

 

Now he stood before the last barrier between himself and the star-ship’s core- a small, nondescript hatch. Surely whatever lay beyond would be an incredible threat, the most potent defenses reserved for this innermost sanctum-

 

Then he stepped through, and there was nothing of the sort. Only a tiny chamber, with a translucent pod built into one wall. Floating within was a naked cat-woman, tubes and wires running in and out of her spine, her skull, a dozen other points on her body, staring right at him. The living mind of the star-ship.

 

He lightly ran Roland’s tip across the surface of the pod, watching as the cut bled amniotic fluid for a few seconds before it healed.

 

“It seems I have you at my mercy,” he said idly, as if commenting on the weather. “Shall you yield?”

 

She sighed, the sound coming from all around the chamber. “I surrender.”

 

“Excellent! Then my job here is done.” Bob looked around the chamber, then back at Belladonna. “So… where’s all the treasure?”

 

“I’m a warship. Why would I be carrying treasure?” she replied.

 

Bob groaned. “You’re telling me I went to all this effort for nothing!?”