Read The Dieya Chronicles - Incident on Ravar Page 16

CHAPTER 14

  The blue glow from the dimensional gateway faded and Dart Pilot Larg Keed’s breath caught in his throat. The panorama was stunning. The aptly named Rainbow Nebula was on his left, its curving colors bending into a pot of golden light blazing out from a dark cloud mass. The Olpine dwarf star spun on his right, throwing out yellow and green arms. The arms twisted together in a war of energy, with brilliant bolts of orange lightning raging between them.

  Perched in the nose of the small Avant-class starship, Keed drank in the incredible vista sprawled before him. He smiled at his own cleverness – he thought these coordinates would afford him the best view.

  The threat board blinked green and he relaxed while his sensors gathered data. Looking outward, he let the majesty of space fill him. He preferred this majestic, living canvas to staring at a painting. He never tired of the sight nor felt dwarfed by the immensity of space as did some pilots. It made him feel an integral part of the universe, as if this fantastic spectacle had been created just for him.

  He imagined what this view had looked like when first seen by the Gless. He pictured stars just beginning to form, then snorted at his over-zealous imagination. The Gless weren’t that old – just old enough to have watched the rim planets cool. He idly wondered what it was like to live in another dimension, and wondered if humans would one day follow the Gless into that undiscovered world. Shrugging aside the question, he settled for silently thanking the Gless for the dimgate engine that allowed him to cross instantly from any part of the galaxy to another.

  The Gless didn’t interact much with humans, but they had passed down technological information that forever changed the way humans lived. The gifts the Gless bestowed on the humans were certainly marvels, but he had a sneaking suspicion the Gless were just preparing humans for the Kraken war.

  He forced the sacrilegious thought from his mind as an amber light on his control panel blinked green, signaling the end of the sensor scan. He blinked up his sector chart and overlaid his ship’s scans, wondering where to go next. Rather than doing a sector-by-sector search for Kraken emissions, he liked to dim to the region that would afford him the best view.

  “How about having the Rainbow pour through the Olpine’s arms?” he said aloud and set the coordinates. Not wanting to become like some older scout pilots he’d run across, he often spoke aloud to keep in practice for furloughs. Some old-timers had been out so long they had lost the power of social communication, answering in grunts to questions about the beyond. His vocal powers needed to be kept in top form – he had been working on quite a few good lines to interest the ladies when he returned to base.

  Keed didn’t mind long scouting missions. Most times he preferred to be alone. That’s what came from being the only child of a tinkla crystal miner. Those long years being dragged from asteroid to asteroid by a crazy father had inured him to a solitary life.

  His console flashed, permitting his coordinate choice – the computer wouldn’t allow his accidental transposition of a number to put his ship into the middle of a sun. He punched the dimgate button, and a momentary blue flash surrounded him – then he was there.

  The Rainbow Nebula danced below him, a colorful curving walkway leading to the warring orange and green arms. He dove his ship through the red-yellow outer ring of the nebula to its far side. The colors streaming past his force field transformed as they flew by. It was like diving through an effervescent rainbow. Emerging from the ring, a black spot near a spiral arm spoiled the beautiful vista, like a fly on a beautiful painting.

  He focused the scanner on the dark spot but interference from the nebula didn’t allow a clear scan. He narrowed the scanner beam and raced in for a better look. The closer he got to the black irregularity, the more it resembled…

  Alarm lights flashed red, and a warning sounded in his helmet. “Gods!” he shouted, reaching for the thruster controls. Sudden fear put a ten-pound ice cube in his belly and a tug at the back of his throat. He punched in the command for full evasive maneuvers and hit his thrusters. A glance at his panel told him he needed six seconds to get out of range before becoming just a bright smear in the nebula.

  The next seconds were the longest of his life. “Two, three,” he silently counted. His counting ceased as a bright red beam encased his ship and seeped in through his tightly closed eyes.

  Three seconds later, he was in the dark. He opened his eyes but wouldn’t trust his senses. He let out the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding and inhaled sharply. How had he survived a Kraken Mol-ray? He checked the ship’s functions and saw everything in the green, with his defwarp shields holding at eighty-five percent. “Let me check the scan,” he said aloud. “Maybe I was wrong about it being a Kraken Cross.” He checked the scanner info – it was definitely a Kraken Cross. “All right… how come I’m not dead?”

  Cruising safely beyond the beam’s range, he blinked up Kraken Cross data. Their main armament was a moleculizer beam capable of destroying anything up to an Alliance battle cruiser. A scout ship like his wouldn’t stand a chance. He blinked the file closed and took a breath. His whole body was buzzing from his brush with death. He was alive and exuberance filled him. Life was good. He breathed deep.

  “Okay,” he said, taking another breath. “Calm down.”

  While waiting for his defwarp shields to come back to full strength, he input the flight vector and thought-blinked a report on the Cross to HQ.

  The Kraken had handed humanity some heavy losses. The Human Alliance League would never know how many undiscovered planets and populations these merciless bastards had destroyed. The deaths they did know about were staggering. His eyes narrowed and anger pushed aside the fear in his belly. He hit his thrusters.

  The Kraken ship resembled a three-mile wide and three-mile long, thick black cross with beveled edges. The top leg narrowed to a point and curved up then bent down halfway toward the center of the cross. At the tip of that leg was a gleaming red crystal – the fire control center. He had heard old-timers telling tales of swarming flight groups knocking out a Cross by putting pressure on its shields and targeting computers until some lucky shot took out the fire control center. The losses in this maneuver were so high it was done only in extreme circumstances.

  Randomly jinking his ship, he dove on the black monster and was once again bathed in red glow. With one eye firmly on his defwarp shield indicator he flew in for a closer look. His shields were holding as he came within range and opened fire with his lasers.

  Surprise flashed through him as his lasers blew holes in the Cross’s surface. “No shields!” he yelled. He armed his missile and looped to line up with the red crystal. “Come on, come on, you slow piece of crsylak!” The guidance system took a lifetime to lock on and he watched his defwarp shields fall to forty-five percent. When the lock went red, he fired his missile.

  Hitting his thrusters, he raced out of range of the Kraken Mol-ray. The red glow ended as he plunged into the deep black of normal space. He glanced at his shield gauge. “Twenty-two percent left, you lucky dog! Yeee-ha!” He put his ship into a tight turn toward the Cross as a white flash of light announced the missile’s impact.

  “Hoo Hoo! Got you, you bastard!” His scanners showed the crystal broken open to the vacuum of space, its red inner glow darkened. “Beautiful, just beautiful!” His elation at surviving combat and knocking out a Kraken Cross made him dizzy. “Gotta calm down! Deep breaths. Deep breaths.”

  He drifted in space until he came down off his giant buzz. He studied the Cross for any activity and saw none. “Let’s just make sure.” He eased his ship into a gentle spiral down to the black cross. No red glow greeted him. He did a slower and ever narrowing circle around the Cross. Each pass left him feeling that it was just a dead mass, hanging in space. He matched its vector and stopped near the shattered crystal.

  Everything was dark.

 
An uncontrollable grin popped out on his face. He carefully composed a message to Comfleet HQ and thought-blinked it off. A Kraken Cross, taken intact, single-handedly.

  Taken by him.

  “Oh, baby! This is great!” He allowed himself the fantasy of seeing promotions, medals, parades, men buying him drinks and scantly-clad females throwing him their cube cards. An incoming message asking for confirmation interrupted his fantasy. He had expected it. His elation got the better of him as he thought-blinked his reply. “Yes, I’ve knocked out a Kraken Cross single-handedly. Come and get it. It’s in my way.” He felt very smug while he waited for the next response.

  A yellow light flashed. “Ah, here it comes.” With a quick blink, the message glowed on the back of his eye.

  “REMAIN IN PLACE. AUXILIARIES ETA THREE HOURS.”

  Auxiliaries? I hope some of them are women, he thought and settled back to wait.