Francescan War Chronicles 1: Space Knight Denxeiter Page 12

  “What if we stay here and cover for you while you go get reloaded?” Katashka asked. She also looked at Feln hopefully.

  “Of course,” Feln agreed.

  Achren brightened. “That would be wonderful. You can see the fighting’s starting to die down here. If we can come back and unload a barrage into the enemy, we should be able to close off this sector of combat.”

  “Sounds good. Go ahead then, we’ve got it taken care of.” Feln smiled.

  “You’re both wonderful. Thank you!” With another salute, Achren’s image disappeared and the Artemis left the battle line and blasted off toward the rear of the fleet.

  Feln quickly sent a voice signal to the light cruisers to let them know about the plan and then turned back to the fighting. Achren was right— the enemy was losing its numbers here, and with it, the force to fully press the fight.

  A few insects managed to insert themselves on the scene and made a beeline for Denxeiter and Ganxeiter. Feln deactivated Durandal and fired both Booster Punches, Denxeiter’s forearms shot off at the elbow and flew through space, zigzagging back and forth between the insects and bludgeoning though their bodies.

  Ganxeiter had something similar called the Blade Punch where instead of using brute impact to destroy the enemy, Ganxeiter’s version sliced the victim apart with blades mounted along the length of each forearm. As Katashka activated her equivalent weapon, Feln wondered what this attack must have looked like to the cruisers nearby: two giant robots standing with arms outstretched and launching the forward parts of those arms off on rockets to destroy distant enemies.

  The enemy ships and insects simply had no idea how to cope with such small maneuverable targets. To make matters worse for the enemy, Feln also launched Denxeiter’s four attack drones. Each drone carried three beam guns and at a size just barely larger than the already dangerous forearm weapons, the drones made for more enemies the aliens had a hard time coming to grips with. Feln laughed at the site of four half-arms and four drones zipping around amongst the enemy, tearing them apart.

  “It’s like a school of piranha going after an animal that wandered into the piranha’s part of the river…,” Katashka noted.

  “Yeah, I agree.”

  After another twenty minutes or so of this, the Artemis pulled back into the battle line. Achren came back on. “Thanks again so much! Okay, we’ll deliver a full barrage. Please recover your weapons.”

  Feln and Katashka obeyed, bringing back their Punch weapons and the drones. Once the weapons had all been docked, and the Artemis’ missile doors were open, Achren said, “Okay. Please cease beam fire on my mark before launch so no missiles are destroyed by friendly beams. Five…four…three…two…one…mark!” The light cruisers duly stopped firing at Achren’s signal. Moments later, “Firing!”

  As with the first time Feln saw the Artemis in action, swarms of missiles came streaming out of the ship’s hull and flew forward into space. Unlike the last time, Feln thought to himself, this time they were actually going to hit enemies. He was rewarded with the sight of countless explosions as all manner of enemies both in visible range and beyond were destroyed. The swirling colors of the gaseous clouds surrounding the area were lit up and enhanced by lots of balls of flame from missiles, ships, and insects exploding.

  As Achren predicted, no more enemies came. The missile attack slammed the door on the enemy in this sector of battle. Feln tried to see as far away as he could and was glad to be greeted with the sight of the overall battle dying away. The green enemy beams stopped appearing and soon after so did the Francescan red beams as they ran out of things to shoot.

  Feln breathed a sigh of relief as he heard some happy words being exchanged in the background on Artemis’ bridge. “Excellent shooting, Commander. My congratulations to you and your crew,” he said.

  “Great work!” Katashka enthused.

  Achren seemed to recover some of her previously missing spirit and smiled dazzlingly. “Thanks! We couldn’t have done it without you. The two of you showed up just in time. I mean, I think things were dying down anyway, but at least we managed to end it a little quicker, hopefully before any more of our people got hurt.”

  “I’m sure,” Feln said with a smile. “Now if you’ll excuse us, we should be reporting back to our ships.”

  “Of course.”

  “And Commander, please get checked out with a doctor on a medical ship as soon as possible. And be sure to stop by the Tannhauser sometime. Soon.”

  “Yes, soon,” Katashka agreed.

  Achren’s smile grew slightly devilish and Feln felt his heart skip a beat. “You have my word. I look forward to a…debriefing with you both.” Without another word, her screen went black.

  “What a saucy little thing,” Katashka remarked. “I’m in love.”

  “You and me both,” Feln said as they pulled away from the Artemis. “So how do you feel about having a relationship involving three people?”

  “Oh, I’m game. You?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Excellent. But explaining things to that Companion of yours is gonna be even harder.”

  “Ugh, don’t remind me.” He remembered his last conversation with Aaltskog and his stomach lurched.

  What the hell am I doing? he thought. Katashka’s right. Aaltskog loves me and really, I love her. Why am I still trying to play the field? Even prepping for a three-way with Katashka and Achren. Is it because I know Aaltskog won’t leave me and will always be there as a backup? Dammit, she can’t leave me even if she wanted. Or is it that I’m embarrassed by her appearance and afraid of what others would think? I really shouldn’t care what strangers think if I truly love her. Ugh, I’m a real bastard either way.

  He knew what he should do. But even then, he couldn’t bring himself to cut things off with Katashka and hungrily looked forward to being close with her again. And with Achren, too. Yeah, a real bastard.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Don’t worry, sir, we can get him patched up,” the service crew chief said. “There’re a decent amount of beam penetrations, but it doesn’t look like anything vital got damaged. You also almost lost your navigation deflector, but it looks like it survived…barely. Just leave it to us.”

  “Certainly,” Feln said. “Where’s Aaltskog?”

  “Haven’t seen her.”

  “That’s odd. She’s always here after a fight.”

  “Yeah. But don’t worry, I’m sure she’ll be here soon enough. If anything else, her being a Companion, she’ll be compelled to show up.”

  “That’s true…” Feln looked around expecting her to suddenly appear thanks to that compulsion. When she didn’t he said, “Alright, thanks chief. If you need anything, I’ll be on the bridge reporting to the admiral.” By “anything”, I mean if Aaltskog starts acting up was what went unspoken.

  The chief nodded, catching Feln’s meaning. “You got it sir.” He saluted and got to work.

  Feln stopped off at his quarters, hoping that maybe Aaltskog was there. It was just the way he left it before the battle, which meant the bed was unmade and the remnants of his time with Katashka was still there. Great. He hoped that Aaltskog simply hadn’t come back to the quarters, but he couldn’t be sure. He tapped on her door and when he didn’t get an answer, he opened it and looked in on her little connecting room. It was as messy as always with clothes strewn across the bed and floor. Hmm.

  He quickly changed the sheets on his bed and stuffed the old ones in the laundry chute. He tidied up the place and tried to make sure there was no evidence of the time spent with Katashka. Obviously, Aaltskog knew what was going on— she actually saw them go in together. But there was no need to rub her face in it with evidence after the fact.

  After sitting on his bed for a few nervous minutes, hoping she’d show up, he jumped up and went out the door. He almost collided with Captain Larkin.

  “Ah, Captain, there you are.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry, I was just on my way to t
he bridge.”

  “Good, we need you there.”

  “Yes, I’ll be giving my verbal report with the written one to be submitted within the hour.”

  “Good. But that’s not why I’m here.”

  “It’s Aaltskog, isn’t it?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I just did.” He realized that his already brisk walk had started to turn into a jog.

  Larkin tried to keep up at first, but eventually realized it was useless trying to run with a Space Knight and called after him, “I’ll meet you there.”

  Dammit, what’s happened to her? Cold fear ran through him. He hoped she didn’t hurt herself in a fit of depression. This is what it’s like to have a Maass creation as my companion… One small part of him wished he could have just had a normal Companion like most other Space Knights. But the rest of him didn't want to change a thing about her. For all her quirks, he loved her just as she was.

  He burst on to the Tannhauser’s bridge. “Aaltskog!” Everyone on the bridge turned his way. He didn’t mean to shout so loudly.

  Admiral Kesh was standing next to his chair at the center of the bridge. “She’s here, Captain,” he said gently.

  As Feln walked over, Aaltskog appeared from behind Kesh, sitting in Kesh’s chair huddled under a blanket. Feln kneeled down in front of her. “Hey, darling. I’m here.”

  He could tell she’d been crying. Even now she was making small sniffling sounds. Suddenly she sat up straight, then broke out into a wail and collapsed into Feln’s arms. He looked up at Kesh apologetically. “I’m sorry, admiral. I’m afraid this is my fault.”

  Kesh shook his head. “No, I don’t believe it is.” He indicated the blanket wrapped around Aaltskog’s body. “She was found walking naked through the halls with tears streaming down her face. She was in some kind of trance mouthing out words, but not making a sound. I didn’t want to let her out of my sight, but since the battle was still going on, I brought her here and gave her the blanket. It’s only just now in your arms that she’s apparently come out of it.”

  Larkin, who had come in while Kesh was talking, looked at Aaltskog’s sobbing form crumpled in Feln’s arms. “It’s odd to say, but I never thought I’d be so happy to see her crying like that. She really had us scared when we couldn't reach her. It was like her mind was somewhere else.”

  Feln looked down at the top of Aaltskog’s head under the blanket; only her face was exposed. He touched her cheek and was horrified when her skin felt ice cold. Like death. “Darling, can you talk?” he prodded gently.

  In a tiny voice buried in his chest she said, “I’m scared. This is a horrible place.” She lifted her face, her hair only covering one eye. The fact that she didn’t seem to care that one of her eyes was visible to a crowd spoke volumes.

  She looked at Kesh, who also kneeled down to her at eye level on his seat. Her voice seemed to draw strength from Feln’s close proximity and perhaps Kesh’s friendly manner. “Admiral, please. We have to leave this place. Something terrible is going to happen. These things aren’t just any other species. They’re evil. And I’m not just saying that because they’re our enemy. They. Are. Evil. I can’t be sure, but I think they may be minions of the Ancient Enemy.”

  A couple of the people who overheard her, audibly gasped. Larkin’s hand instinctively went to her sidearm. The Ancient Enemy had driven humanity from its original home planet to Wystra long ago in pre-history, and since the founding of the Francescan Star Empire, the hope was to one day not only find that home, but recapture it from the Enemy. Feln squeezed Aaltskog close and to his everlasting credit, Kesh remained absolutely calm. “What makes you say that?” he asked. “Did you see something while you were in the trance?”

  “The trance? No, that was them trying to take over my body! They’ve been trying to get to me since we got here. I just never realized that those bad feelings were actual attempts by them to invade my mind.” She suddenly said a quick prayer, “Lord Jesus in Heaven, please protect me and our people!”

  Feln knew that Companions were often deeply religious, but they rarely if ever gave voice to that. In fact, this was the first time since Aaltskog became his Companion that he’d ever heard her say even one religious thing, much less go into prayer.

  She continued, “Denxeiter feels it too. He knows. And I think he was trying to tell me before.”

  “What did they want with your body?” Feln asked.

  “I think they wanted to use me as some kind of spy, to be able to see what we have and how we do things. And then maybe to sabotage something.”

  “Are you at risk? Do we need to keep an eye on you?”

  “No, I think they got what they wanted, whatever it was. I managed to fight them off, but I got the feeling that they kinda decided it wasn’t worth the struggle anymore and left me alone.”

  Feln thought about what Katashka had said about the feelings she picked up from the enemy before they detected her. That they were in the middle of going through with some kind of plan. “Admiral, I think this battle we just fought was a ruse to keep our attention focused elsewhere while they tried to invade Aaltskog.”

  “We must have destroyed a few hundred of them in that battle between the ships and insects,” Larkin said. “And you’re saying they sacrificed all of that just to get to Aaltskog?”

  “Yes ma’am. I think Space Knight Nonn would agree with me.”

  Aaltskog made a small growl and Feln was actually glad to hear it since it showed she was becoming herself again. Feln squeezed her gently before continuing, “Just before the fighting started, Lieutenant Nonn used Ganxeiter’s cloaking ability to insert herself among the enemy fleet. She reported that while she was there, one of her Blessed abilities allowed her to feel what the enemy was feeling and that they were planning something. They detected her and attacked before she could ascertain what it was.” He looked down at Aaltskog. “But with the attack on Aaltskog, I think it’s a safe guess.”

  “I agree,” said Kesh.

  “Now we just need to figure out what they were intending to use Aaltskog for if they’d been able to take her over,” said Larkin.

  “We should report this to Admiral Lenz and—”

  Kesh was cut off by one of the bridge personnel. “Sir, it looks like a fleet is approaching.”

  “Another attack already?” Feln asked. “I’m still catching my breath from the last one.”

  “How big is the fleet? Composition?” Kesh asked.

  “It’s odd, sir,” the crewman said. “It’s a fairly small fleet, but it seems to be made up of our own ships. We’re still confirming through the interference.”

  “We did lose a bunch of ships in the first battle,” Larkin said. “The Captain here found a few and sent them back. These could have been a similar group that are finally reconnecting with the main fleet.”

  “Sir, we’re getting a visual,” reported the crewman. “It’s being bounced to us through the communications booster network.”

  A grainy image came on screen of a group of three destroyers, a light cruiser, and two corvettes. The cruiser was towing something.

  “What is that?” Kesh asked. “Magnify that.”

  “I’ll try, but the debris is pretty bad, especially after the recent battle.”

  A section of the image grew larger to reveal the shape of a giant insect. Unlike the insects they had fought so far that were about one-third the size of Denxeiter, this one was almost twice the size of Denxeiter based on how it compared to the ships towing it.

  Valisia had just come on to the bridge and stopped in her tracks looking at the thing on screen that everybody was studying.

  “What in the world… Are all the ones we’ve been fighting that thing’s children?” Feln asked.

  “It looks dead now,” Larkin said. “Maybe that bunch killed it while they were looking for us and are bringing it back to study.”

  “Sir,” another crewman spoke up, “we have visual confirmation that those are shi
ps that went missing during the first battle.”

  Feln studied the ships. They all had battle damage, but seemed to be in usable shape. Good, we’ll need to bolster the fleet for what we lost recently.

  Valisia pointed at some robots that were also coming into view, “Look, there are Aldens too.”

  They all turned to look at her; apparently nobody noticed her come in. She took a step back from the sudden intense gaze.

  “Oh! Sorry!” She saluted. “I was coming to report on losses from the battle.”

  “Why isn’t Lieutenant Hoff making the report?” Kesh asked.

  Valisia’s eyes cast down before saying, “I’m sorry sir, Lieutenant Hoff was lost in the battle. Although we can’t confirm if he was destroyed or not. We’re holding out hope we can still find him since the battle was still fairly recent. Even so, I volunteered to report to you since I’m new to the squadron and wanted to give the lieutenant’s friends some…time….”

  Valisia’s eyes drifted from Kesh to the screen. Then her demeanor brightened and she smiled, “Wait…there!” She pointed to an Alden on the screen. “There he is. The red stripe on the chest.” She made a sigh of relief. “I guess he must have gotten lost during the battle and hooked up with those ships as they were arriving. The others will be so happy.”

  Kesh nodded as he looked at the screen. “Yes, that is very good news. Dismissed, Lieutenant, to tell your fellows in the flight wing.”

  Valisia saluted happily and left the bridge. “Yes sir!”

  “Sir, we’re getting a signal from the fleet on screen. Sound only, though,” the communications officer said.

  “Put it on,” said Kesh.

  Through the static a man’s voice could be heard. “…returning to the fleet with an enemy. I repeat, this is Lieutenant Commander Zhund Kendle of the Francescan spaceship called Bohcroo. We—”

  Before Kesh could respond, Lenz’s face appeared in a window onscreen, “This is Admiral Lenz on the Uhlinder go ahead Lieutenant Commander.”

  “Hello Admiral Lenz. Our ship is the only one able to communicate but no visual capability,” the voice of Kendle said.