Articles
.
Staff Articles
.
Member Articles
 
 

Stories

On Site Members
..
Off Site Members
.
On Site Non- .....Members
.
Off Site Non- .....Members
 

.

        The Narwhale swam in a sea of stars and glowing gasses. Six days out from the Portifino deep space research station in the fringes of the Alpha Centauri system and bound for New Sparta, the aged freighter was doing what it did best- hauling her cargo from here to there.

        The ship's black and yellow-stripped hull (which had earned her the nickname of "the Bumblebee" on nearly sixteen worlds) sheltered one Vasudan and seven fragile human lives within its battered and pock marked enclosure. She accelerated at a constant 1G down the still shallow walls of Alpha Centauri A’s gravity well.

        Deep inside was the cave-like space of the ship’s cargo bay. The vaulted enclosure was nearly half full of boxy shipping containers, labeled with a rainbow of scientific identification stickers detailing their handling. These containers, most the size and rough proportions of groundcars were stacked carefully in balanced mounds and secured with heavy tie-down webbing.

        Athena Corneilus, the ship’s official Loadmistress sat, arms about her knees, at the base of the towering stack, and wept. Her heavy shoulders shook with racking sobs, and tears dripped from her long rudder-like nose to fall with a wet plop to the grimy metal deck. At her feet, a ribbon of computer hardcopy rustled in the recycled breeze from the compartment’s air rescrubber. The document’s lurid headline; "Earth CUT OFF From Rest of Galaxy!" peeked up at her from beneath a battered black sneaker.

        Athena had dissected the tabloid story nearly a dozen times in the past two hours, ever since it had reached the ship via subspace transmission. One of the passengers, the marine headed inbound to New Sparta for R&R, saw it first, and his mumbled curse alerted the crew that the news must be bad. But this…this was a disaster.

        Rubbing her tear-streaked face savagely, Athena snatched up the crumpled printout and read it yet again, dimly, irrationally hoping she had missed something. Some detail to change the terrible truth. She would never see her daughter again.
The Centauri system and it’s eccentric three-star grouping was located just over four light years from the Sol system. While this distance seemed a mere pittance to a culture accustomed to flitting from star system to star system through the strange jump nodes of Freespace, it was deceptively distant indeed.

        The unthinkable has happened. The Sol jump node had been destroyed, the victim of an unknown catastrophe, and Earth was officially cut off from the rest of colonized space.

        Details in the newsfax article were still sketchy and largely unconfirmed, but apparently, the Shivan mega-destroyer Lucifer had last been seen flying into the Sol jump node with a wing of fighters and bombers in hot pursuit. Minutes later, the node flared like a miniature nova and just- vanished.

        Rumors of Earth’s destruction, or alternately the destruction of the Lucifer were flying all through subspace. Nobody was sure of Earth’s fate, and nobody could find out. With the loss of the Sol/Beta Serpentis jump node communications, as well as travel, to Earth was impossible.

        The distance between Sol and its nearest neighbor star Proxima in the Alpha Centauri system was well beyond the range of subspace communication without a corresponding Freespace node. That node was gone. The only way to find out what was happening in the Sol system was by good old fashioned tight-beam laser.

        Assuming anyone was even left alive on Earth. And assuming that news had been sent immediately, that news would take just over four years to arrive, crawling at the speed of light- minimum.

        Athena thought about the vast distances separating her from her daughter, and mused bitterly about how her race, spoiled by their ease of travel with their vaunted jump nodes and sub-space drive, could now do nothing to help her. Short, inter-system hops were within the ability of any ship fitted with a sub-space drive unit capable of mangling and tearing the very fabric of space. Longer journeys, like those crossing the gulfs between the stars were possible only through special long distance jump nodes. Without them, travel between the stars themselves was still under the control of good old-fashioned Newtonian physics.

        The Narwhale had utilized her sub-space drive for the first leg of her long journey from Portifino Station orbiting dim, red Proxima Centauri to the world of New Sparta orbiting Alpha Centauri A. While Proxima and Alpha Centauri A were separated by 20 trillion or so kilometers, nearly 13,000 times the distance from old Earth to Sol, they were still considered to be in the same star system. The system’s third star, mellow orange Alpha Centauri B was only a mere billion or so kilometers from Alpha A, but because of the arcane physics dictating travel through Freespace, the ship's sub-space drive would not operate in proximity to the closer pair of the system’s stars.

        So she was finishing the last billion or so kilometers with her reaction drive. Accelerating at a constant 9 meters per-second per-second imparted the ship with the same apparent gravity to be found on either New Sparta or Earth itself, and made the long journey much easier on the crew. Higher accelerations were of course possible, but put a much greater strain on both the ship and her delicate living cargo.

        For the briefest of moments, Athena toyed with the idea of going to Captain Vaquez and begging him to change course for Earth. The ship still had on board her emergency acceleration couches that would protect the crew’s fragile meat and bone bodies against acceleration factors as high as 15 G’s. But the ship could not maintain that level of thrust for long- certainly not long enough to make the trip all the way to Earth.

        Her sorrow goaded her again to tears at the thought of these vast distances, and she hugged her knees tighter still to quell the trembling in her arms and chest. She had never felt so tiny and helpless in all her life.

        As the Loadmistress of the Narwhale, Athena was assigned the backbreaking yet delicate task of loading and unloading the ship’s cargo spaces. Considering the Narwhale was capable of hauling upwards of 5,000 tons of cargo in her main hold, the task of precisely balancing and securing all this mass was crucial. A sudden shift was more than capable of sending many hundreds of tons of cargo hurtling through the freighter’s hull.

        Her assistants in this chore were a small army of robotic drones, a few semi-intelligent robot cranes, and two specialized spider-like freight loaders. Athena controlled them with an efficient precision born of long experience, but the job was still intensely physical, and her powerful body reflected the difficulty of her profession.

        Once underway, however, her job was limited to periodic inspections of the cargo restraints and the occasional atmosphere leak inspection of the hold. Athena had managed to make her way through the freighter’s entire collection of trashy novels before she had her first anniversary on-board. Within six months of that she had watched every holo tape aboard at least six times. Athena started asking around for additional things to do.

        It was quickly discovered that she lacked the mental skills to assist Perkins with his duties as Computer Primary, and Sue Beaumont, the ships Astrogator publicly called her grasp of physics "wonderfully child-like". DuFrenses banished her from the galley forever when she set fire accidentally to a pan of risotto, and Doc Shale "certainly didn’t need a ham-fisted stevedore nurse" when he had his beloved Autodoc 6000 to help him out.

        Heath Whalen, the ship’s XO tried giving her an explanation of the ship’s tac-com and maneuvering controls one long night shift. She nearly collided with an asteroid while trying to pull the ship out of an uncontrolled spin, and was summarily banished from the bridge by the Captain. And of course, Willie Hearst would let nobody but nobody within a hundred meters of his delicate subspace engines.

        Which left her for a companion with either Rodeasss’h the ships Vasudan translator and xenomorph business specialist, or Wilma Devins, Engineer Hearst’s assistant. Since the enigmatic Vasudan still gave her a faint case of the willies whenever they were in too close a proximity (aliens just seemed to do that to Athena), she turned in desperation to Wilma. As the ship’s junior engineer, Wilma was responsible for operating and maintaining the "secondary" systems such as air and waste recycling, electrical, and the sublight drive.

        When Wilma showed Athena the ship’s reaction engines a light went on in her head. She could understand this. Thrust out the back- get motion in the other direction. Vector the thrust thus and you could turn. Simple.

        Within a two months Athena had already made inroads into an official class C drive operations rating. The work was hard, and she was happy for the diversion.

        She was sitting in the ship’s lounge, happily reviewing a schematic of the starboard reaction mass injection unit she was scheduled to overhaul with Wilma, when the ship’s subspace news unit started chattering, spewing the news of Earth’s disaster over the threadbare carpeting. Nobody in the crew would ever forget the look of dumb animal hurt on Athena’s face when she read the news.

        As the days dragged on during the Narwhale’s long burn in-system, Athena became more and more despondent. She sat for meals with the rest of the crew, but would eat nothing. She showed up on time for her shifts with Wilma, but just sat and stared at the controls as Wilma attempted to guide her through operations specs and maintenance routines.

        DuFrenses came across her sitting in the fore observation blister, her face pressed against the clear window, staring unblinking into the slowly growing eye of Alpha Centauri A. His words of greeting elicited no response whatsoever, and DuFrenses went to talk to the Doc.

        "She’s had a shock Rick, " the Doc said, peering up from a surgical manual, "it’s gonna take her some time to recover is all".

        "Yeah, I know, but she seems so…well, she seems like a zombie since we got the news" the cook replied uneasily. "What if she decides to, you know…"

        "Hurt herself?" Doc replied, a small smile of perhaps anticipation playing momentarily across his monkey-like face. "Perhaps I should talk to her".

        Two hours later, Athena slumbered uneasily in a drug-induced sleep. Doc Shale had made the mistake of telling her that there was a good possibility that her daughter was alive and well, but that she had to accept the fact that she would most likely never see her again. Athena’s expression never even changed as the grabbed his wattled neck in her powerful hands and lifted him from the deck like an oversized doll.

        It took three people, including the marine to get her off of him. The marine’s jaw still ached where she had slugged him.

        It was Whalen that first saw the ship streaking towards them. His deep space active radar had just enough time to send out a few frantic warning bleeps before the ship was struck a titanic blow to the stern.

        The XO’s head snapped back and rebounded from his command couch’s padded headrest to smash painfully into the panel before him. Moments later, the freighter’s cockpit was filled with the harsh white light of the attacking ship’s engine wash, turning it’s red murkiness to day.

        As the fore observation screen polarized to compensate, Captain Vaquez saw the dark mass of the unknown ship banking, it’s sublight drive vectoring in a fiery corona as it fought against momentum to turn.

        "All crew, battle stations!" he barked into the ship’s comm, swiveling his chair to face the XO.

        Whalen mopped at the smeared blood from his broken nose and leaned forward to speak into his own ship-comm mike. "Beaumont, get up here now! I need help on navigation. All crew, man you emergency stations". A klaxon began wailing from the decks below.

        "Report", Vaquez demanded.

        Whalen scanned his tactical readouts for a moment, assessing the situation. Bands of colored light scrolled across his bloodied face as the computer brought up acceleration vectors and weapons’ firing arcs and ranges.

        "Ship is of an unknown type Captain, displaying certain Shivan design characteristics. Drive emissions are similar to Shivan catalogued output. Rough mean mass; 150 tons displacement. Jesus… she’s pulling about 12 G’s, maneuvering back around for another shot at us. Either it’s a remote piloted ship or the crew are a hell of a lot tougher than us. Weapons systems are coming online."

        Captain Vaquez brought up a copy of Whalen’s tactical display and frowned as he scanned the ship, taking in it’s boxy outline. Stubby wing-pods graced the ship’s fore section, while a crimson-glowing engine assembly dominated the rear. The ship’s catalog scrolled through a number of Shivan ship designations, attempting to find a match. It finally decided on ‘Nephilim Bomber- 76% match’.

        "What hit us?" the Captain demanded.

        "Engine readings are at 79%. Most likely a Shivan version of our Disrupter cannons. Looks like she’s trying to disable us. I have green/green status lights on both fore and aft Avenger banks, awaiting your order."

        "Fire at will Mr. Whalen. I don’t know what those bastards want, but there’s no way they're getting this ship without a fight."

        As the Shivan slewed about for another shot at the Narwhale’s rear thrusters, her linked banks of four heavy Avenger cannons lanced out, filling the silent void with amethyst tracers.

        Under Whalen’s skilled touch, the pulsed beams tracked unerringly on the attacking ship, only to be absorbed by the shimmering force bubble of the Shivan shields. They lit with a eerie luminescence as their destructive energy was reflected back as brilliant but harmless photons.

        "Whatever it is it’s heavily shielded sir" Whalen muttered. "And according to our scans, if it’s a bomber it’s got no payload. She should mass much higher with a full bomb compliment. Maybe she’s a stray?"

        "No Mr. Whalen" the captain said grimly. Whatever she’s doing out here, this was planned. No Freespace jumps this far in-system remember? She must have followed us. Plus Shivans don’t use Disrupters according to GTW briefs, and they don’t take prisoners. She wants something".

        Athena was tossed savagely to the deck as the second volley of shots raked the stern of the Narwhale. Through the aged ship’s hull, she could hear the steady thrumming of the defense weapons. The ship was fighting for its life.

        Picking herself up from the deck grating, she ran the last 30 meters into the engineering space. Devins was crouched over her console, fingers a blur as she fought to stabilize the ship’s sublight drive.

        "Jesus, they’re pounding us!" she shouted. She looked up, her eyes filled with a pleading terror. "We can’t take much more of this. Another volley and the reaction drive injector assembly will go 100% critical Captain" she said in a rush into her comm unit.

        "Who are they" Athena asked, looking warily up at the banks of warning tell-tales. Usually a cool glowing field of green, the display was peppered with a rapidly growing collection of yellow warning lights and even more ominous red total failure indicators.

        "Shivans I think I heard Heath say" Wilma replied. "Oh, crap…" Wilma’s expression turned to one of raw terror as the pounding of the Shivan Disrupters resumed from the stern.

        "Get OUT of here, she’s gonna blow!" she had time to shout before the entire drive assembly behind her exploded in a shower of crimson sparks. Pieces of the main injection manifold were sprayed in a lethal shower throughout the compartment. Athena, whirling instinctively away from the blast was caught in the back of the leg with a numbing blow as something heavy and sharp slammed into her.

        The Narwhale’s reaction drive now crippled, the artificial gravity imparted to her by it’s thrust suddenly stopped. With a sickening sense of falling, Athena abruptly found herself weightless, spinning from the blow to her leg. The compartment’s lights flickered and died.

        "All hands, Zero-G procedures are now in effect" the Captain’s voice came over the speakers. "Devins, what’s the status of the engines?"

        Athena caught a hold of a ceiling strut and awkwardly stopped her tumbling. Her leg felt as if a hot coal had been pressed to the calf, and she whimpered in pain at the sudden jerk. She pulled herself laboriously over to the engine console as the dim emergency lights came on, filling the bay with crimson light.

        In the thick smoke, Wilma’s crumpled form was mercifully obscured from view. It was apparent even to Athena that she was dead. A three-foot thick slab of the manifold was planted into the engine panel, with what was left of Wilma’s upper body sandwiched in between.

        Athena choked back a scream of revulsion and pulled herself hastily away from the body. In the corridor outside engineering, she located a squawk box and mashed the call button with her thumb.

        "She’s dead Captain. She’s dead. The engines are gone, along with the main systems power plant. Her head… Oh God…" she faltered to a stop.

        There was a pause, then the Captain’s voice floated out of the wall speakers "Dr. Shale, get down to Engineering. See if there’s anything you can do. Athena, sit tight. I’m sending Hearst down to see if the drive can be repaired

        "As for the rest of the ship, attention all passengers. We have come under attack by an unknown Shivan ship. She has disabled our reaction drive, and all we can do is try to ward her off.

        "I know we have at least one member of the armed forces aboard. As the Captain of the Narwhale, I’m officially authorizing you to use firearms aboard my ship in her defense. Meet Ms. Corneilus in the cargo bay, and she will uncrate your weapons from custody. We may have to repel borders. Captain out."

        Athena stared dumbly at the speaker for a moment. Repel borders? Shivan borders? At the thought her mouth tightened into a grim line and her eyes hardened. Glancing back to the open door to the ruined engineering bay one final time, she grabbed an overhead cleat and pushed herself down the corridor towards the cargo bay.

        "Give me a gun, I want to help".

        Lt. Hawkings glanced up from the armored case magnetically attached to the deck in front of him. He was busy fastening the clamps on his body armor, and his look was full of annoyance at the interruption. At the look on the stocky cargo handler’s face however, he paused.

        She was obviously in pain from a jagged gash on her calf, and her face was blackened and misted with blood, but he has seen far worse in his three years in the GTW Allied Forces. It was the look of flat murder in her eyes that gave him pause. He remembered how she had caught him by surprise with her roundhouse during her scuffle with the Doc and gave a nod of understanding. But to give a civilian a gun…

        "Ah… I don’t know" he murmured.

        "I can use a gun marine. My dad taught me to shoot back on Earth. On Earth get it? My daughter is still there. My best friend was in the engine room just now. She was crushed like a bug OK? Just…please give me a gun."

        He considered their situation for a moment, then grimly pulled the sidearm at his hip from it’s holster.

        "It’s loaded, so be careful. Military intel says the Shivans are armored, like big bugs, so aim for the eyes, joints, whatever. And they can move with ease in zero-G, like jacked-up cockroaches.

        "And be careful of recoil. In zero-G shooting that thing will slam you pretty hard backwards if you ain’t braced against something OK?"

        He gripped the gun tightly as Athena moved to take it from him, causing her to pause. She looked into his grizzled face. When he spoke, his voice had a trace of a Southern lilt, despite its flinty hardness. "But if you got to resort to that, you’re in big trouble, got it? Find a dark place and hide. Leave the fighting to the pros."

        Spinning away from Athena with a practiced flick of his wrist against the anchored crate, he floated back towards the cargo bay doors. The warning klaxons were suddenly silenced, but the rotating amber warning lights still played across the stacked forest of crates lashed all about her.

        "All hands, your attention please" the Captain said over the comm. "The Shivan has matched trajectories with us and is vectoring in for a rendezvous. Our laser batteries are out of power, and we were unable to damage her through her shields.

        "Lt. Hawkings of the GTA Marines is aboard and has volunteered to lead the resistance party if the Shivans attempt to board us. All crewmembers, remain at your posts. Athena, get down to engineering and see if you can help out Hearst with the repairs.

        "The rest of you remain in your state rooms until ordered otherwise. Captain out".

        Athena looked at the gun, and considered Hawkings’ words, a plan forming in her mind. Suddenly, a wolf-like smile tugged at her lips. She tucked the chill hunk of metal into the thigh pocket of her jumpsuit and floated back towards Engineering.

        When she arrived, Hearst was swearing at the tangled spaghetti of the shattered drive console. Doc Shale floated, his foot hooked behind a strut, near the console chair, zipping Wilma’s remains into a shiny black body bag. Tiny bits of metal and a few perfectly spherical drops of blood drifted in a gentle spiral through the ruined compartment. Athena shuddered as a droplet brushed her hand, leaving a wet streak.

        "It’s bloody useless I tell you. This drive is gonna need a month in dry-dock to ever get operational again."

        Doc Shale murmured something neutral in reply. Seeing Athena, he scooted across the compartment towards her.

        "That’s a pretty nasty looking cut on your leg Athena. Want me to take a look?"

        She glared coldly back. "Not right now. I have work to do". She turned her flinty gaze towards the drifting body bag. "Take care of Wilma will you Doc? She deserved better than this."

        "Whatever, suit yourself" Shale replied, grabbing the bag’s handle and propelling it out into the corridor.

        Athens rummaged beneath the console for a moment then withdrew, lugging a yellow-painted box after her. The box had no weight in free-fall, but it’s considerable mass made her grunt as she wrestled it from the storage locker. Without a word to Hearst, she moved towards the door.

        "Where the hell do you think you’re going?" Hearst demanded. The attack had made him jumpy, his eyes red-rimmed and twitchy. He jumped at every sound from the desiccated compartment.

        "Got work to do" she said sullenly, tugging the toolbox after her.

        "But the Captain said…"

        "The captain can go space himself. I gotta do something".

        "But the engines…"

        "The engines are wrecked. The console is busted. But I don’t need the console, not for this." She floated out of the bay.

        Athena wedged herself in the tiny maintenance gangway. It was just wide enough to accommodate her large frame. She braced her legs against the dusty walls of the shaft and took her notebook computer out of a pocket.

        Plugging it into the maintenance console, she ran a quick diagnostic, just like Wilma had taught her. The news was grim, but not fatal. With a few quick stabs of her finger she initiated the secondary drive shunt procedures which would hopefully restore a margin of power to the Narwhale’s shattered engines.

        Without the main drive console the engines would never function at peak efficiency, but as long as the back-up unit was still functioning she should be able to give the ship at least .5 G acceleration.

        More importantly, it would allow her to strike back at the aliens that had ruined her life. Or so she hoped.

        While the computer began the task of bringing the ancient secondary injectors on-line, she ran a quick scan of the ships tac-com frequencies, patching her into the chatter from the bridge. She fished a headphone from the toolbox drifting near her head and plugged it into the notebook’s speaker-out port.

        "…ecurity detail in place captain" she heard in her ear. The marine was talking quietly into his comm-set. "We are located in the junction of Able and Baker corridors, and have a free field of fire to both primary airlocks. I’ve also disabled the main cargo bay doors.

        "I have Perkins, Beaumont, DuFrenses and Rodeasss’h with me, along with passenger Dewitt. We are armed with hand weapons and a few knives from the galley. I gave Perkins my spare assault shotgun, and am fully armed."

        Athena continued to redirect ship power to the maintenance sub-routine, sweating in the musty closeness of the crawlspace. There was a muffled thud against the hull, followed by a flurry of small pattering clicks.

        "We have borders on the hull" Whalen’s voice said from the headset. His cool tone disintegrated into horror, "Oh my God. They’re walking on the hull. They don’t appear to be wearing environment suits of any kind… Clinging to the hull like spiders. I count one…no correction two Shivans outside. They are moving amidships. Lieutenant, get ready."

        "We’re in place" came the marine’s tight reply.

        Athena fumbled with the access sub-routines, trying to patch into one of the external cameras. She wanted to see them. Needed to see them.

        There was a sound, like a giant ripping a tree from the ground, and suddenly the ship’s decompression alarm started wailing.

        "Emergency!" shouted Captain Vaquez. "Hull breach sector nine, amidships. Passenger compartment 9-F compromised. Sealing bulkheads."

        The tearing sound was repeated, closer this time Athena thought grimly, still struggling with the cameras.

        "Hull breach, sector nine and ten. Compartment 10-C compromised. Lieutenant, they’re tearing holes in my ship! Get over there!"

        "Moving… bulkheads in place. I’m looking through the door window now. Don’t see anything."

        "Lieutenant, the hull's auto-sealing process is working, but we have to assume they're in here with us. Be careful." The captain’s voice had the thready tension of a guitar string overtightened and ready to snap.

        "Roger that Captain I… one second. Thought I heard something. Jesus Christ!"

        Athena heard the whining stutter of the marine’s rifle as he fired at an unseen enemy. Something screamed.

        "DuFrenses, behind you! Get out of the way!"

        The firing continued. Someone, probably Beaumont gave a high-pitched scream, momentarily deafening Athena. She heard the awful shredding sound once more, this time through the headset. The marine had time for a last soul-wrenching shriek before the line went dead. The Shivans were aboard.

        Athena finally managed to get patched into the ships external cameras. She flicked between views until she located the Shivan ship, hovering motionless a few hundred meters to starboard. She flicked between views until she was looking directly astern.

        She racked her memory for how to access the maneuvering system Wilma had shown her several weeks before, eventually finding the menu by trial and error. Through the headset, she could still hear the frantic chatter from the rest of the crew. They talked back and forth in a panicked buzz. She heard the shredding sound again, and the captain screamed, then was abruptly silent.

        She fought to block out their screams as she experimented gingerly with the ship’s thrusters. When she last tried this she had spun the ship nearly out of control. She could afford no errors now.

        Slowly, with several corrections, she started the ship in a gentle rotation around her axis. She kept a rapt eye on the gauges as the ship ponderously swung about. The Shivan ship slowly appeared, like a malignant rising moon in the aft camera view. Athena’s smile could have frozen water.

        Suddenly the familiar sound of anti-personnel fire filled her headset, and she heard a strange sound, like a tea kettle whistling down when taken from the fire.

        "Hawkings here. The bridge… secure… all borders are repelled. The Captain and XO are dead. I’m in real bad shape. If the Doc is still alive I can really use…use some…" His voice faded out. Moments later he groaned weakly into the mike.
Ignoring her sudden desire to run and help, she calmly canceled most of the ship’s rotation with reverse thrust. Her blackened engine ports pointed like gun muzzles at the Shivan ship. Athena sweated in her dark hole, and waited for the engine secondary systems to finish coming on-line.

        One more minute you alien buggers, she said to herself. Just don’t figure out what I’m up to. One more minute, then it’s payback time.

        The Shivan ship, without warning, suddenly began to swing about, bringing its nose mounted cannon to bear on the Narwhale’s aft section. Athena saw a glimmer of crimson run along the guns as they powered up to fire. At the same time, her notebook screen lit up with green telltales from the secondary engine systems. "Take this…" she muttered, and stabbed her finger against the "Enable" button.

        Nothing happened.

        She looked with mute rage at the Shivan ship hanging in her sights and howled her frustration. So close…so close. A part of her had wondered if she would have time to feel pain when they fired.

        Athena was slammed against the wall of the crawlspace as gravity suddenly re-appeared. The world was filled with the sweet roaring of the drive engines as the secondary injectors came to searing life. The tool chest, once more subject to gravity, caromed off the crawlspace wall, and smacked into Athena’s temple, filling her world with darkness.

        The Shivan, caught in the backwash from the Narwhale’s engines, was tossed away, her shields flickering with coruscating sheets of artificial lightning as they vainly attempted to re-direct the hellish energies bathing the ship.

        With a final flicker, the Shivan’s shields collapsed, subjecting the ship’s thin hull to the ravening blast. The void was filled with a silent detonation as the hull shattered, then melted, then re-froze in the eternal chill. The Narwhale limped away from the shattered hulk.

        She came to in the warm closeness of the Autodoc. Her head throbbed like a bass drum of pain, but she was alive.

        She turned her head creakily and glanced out the thick window of the patient compartment. Hawkings lay nearby in the sickbay’s only other bed, swathed in bandages. The telltales above his head danced in response to his heartbeat and EKG.

        Doc Shale looked up at her, his arm in a sling, and managed a sickly smile. They were alive. Athena’s revenge had just begun.

---

000000000000000000