Beyond Light

Disposable.

“160’000 kilometers, Captain!” cried Navigations Officer Hoffmann. “But they are beginning to change their trajectory. They are spreading over a conical area. They might try to pass over us and do a quick bombing!”

“I’m still sending signals to them,” said Ramirez “but they don’t respond. I don’t think they are catching them in the first place.”

“Do they use a different module on the PFSR or something?” asked Commander Star.

“No, Commander,” Jay responded. “I don’t think we are fighting the PFSR this time. Brooks, wait for them to be on an effective range of 140’000 kilometers and give them fire with the hydra cannons on the starboard side. Be quick. If you take any longer they’ll begin to spread out of reach from us.”

“Aye aye, Captain. I got this,” the black man responded and straightened his back on his seat. 

Jay wondered. Why were those ships using such a direct maneuver against a dreadnought? what were their captains thinking? they would have gotten a 2/10 score on the naval academy. Those ships looked like the equivalent of light frigates, yet they were trying to do a direct run over a heavily armored dreadnought. 

The Hydra or the Rosenkopf cannons would reduce them to dust. No matter how Jay looked at it, they were trying a dumb, suicidal tactic. They had neither the close distance, nor the surprise factor to try an ambush sweep, and for some reason, their heat and radiation inhibitors weren’t even working, as they detected them without problems.

But that was in case they counted with them. Their strange behavior only added to Jay's suspicions that they weren’t facing human foes. 

“141’000 kilometers…” announced Lieutenant Hoffmann. 

Captain Cortez looked at eight vessels now being at half the distance of Earth and Luna, adopting an oval position and spreading across. They looked brighter through the cameras compared to their 3D-generated models. 

“Captain, they haven’t opened fire to us. Should we keep trying to contact them?” requested Combat Systems Officer Kent Brooks. “maybe they aren’t trying to fight.”

“We have no shields and they don’t want to respond,” Jay responded. “We can’t risk it. Open fire at my signal.”

He stared at the screen; the actual position of the incoming fleet got marked as a counter on the top of the image, with the last numbers going down in fractions of seconds.

...140’450,22km.

...140’234,42km.

...140’013,13km.

“Fire!” Jay ordered. The sounds of metallic pulleys getting sprung thundered, and then the sounds of a giant fire roaring echoed through the ship. Through the cameras, eight pulses of hyper-heated plasma dazzling in color blue silently whistled in the vacuum of space, and faster than lightning, they spread all over the cone that the green vessels of scaled wings made.

The black of space got covered by an elongated donut of cyan light, and sparkles of green light evaporating fumed all over. Jay recognized it; that was how energy shield systems collapsed. 

But the eight vessels continued they glide in a straight vector, all of them unharmed. Jay frowned. How were such tiny ships capable of surviving the direct impact of 6100 plasma units? Any ship of similar dimensions in the Sol System would have been evaporated! Those shields were more advanced than any shielding system he had seen before.

“Goddamned f*****g aliens,” he cursed. His subordinates looked at him in confusion, but there was no better explanation for the enemy they were fighting.

“Captain! They are accelerating!” Hoffman informed.

“They have surpassed our Hydra cannon’s optimal range!” cried Brooks.

Jay looked at the screen. The eight vessels now had some sparks and rays in color green blinking around them, indicating that they had lost their shields. Their propulsors then intensified, and they accelerated, leaving fine stellae in magenta colors before them. 

“69’420 kilometers from us!” announced again Lieutenant Hoffman. 

“Brooks, light green to fire the Rosenkopfs. Fire at will!” Jay ordered. The Master Sergeant sent his orders to the gunnery decks. “Rossi, put us in a—”

The emergency lights on the breach blinked in color red as the siren wailed at high volumes. Everyone got suddenly slammed away from their seats. Some fell to the ground and hit their faces and head on the hard surfaces. Waves of repeated thunders of metallic surfaces getting struck by giant blowtorches made the hull vibrate, just as if they were under the fire of a mortar.

“Error,” informed Hydra. “We’ve been hit by multiple sources of enemy fire. Hull in sections 06, 07, 09, 10, and 11 is highly compromised. Losing pressure. Closing valves to isolate the rest of the ship from them. Making recount of—”

Something louder than the sirens or Hydra’s voice muted everything; the electrified, high-pitched noises ending in whistles coming from the Rosenkopf cannons being fired above the ship. 

“Hydra, turn that off!” screamed Jay as he got up. 

The sirens went silent, and the emergency red lights died, returning the bridge to its relative normal white. Everyone got up as they could. Some grunted in pain, while others like Commander Star, or Kent Brooks bleed through their noses or foreheads. 

Jay rushed back to his position and saw through the cameras the Rosenkopf missiles impacting the alien ships; five of them exploded in a lilac dazzle of burning clouds. Another one survived the impact of a missile, but it left a smoke trail as it accelerated with the other two left, which didn’t appear to have suffered any damage.

“Fire the Hydra’s on Portside, Brooks!” Jay screamed. “Don’t let them escape!”

The Combat Systems Officer obeyed, and Jay saw more concentrated beams of cyan plasma bursting through space, but the three ships remaining intensified the brightness of their propulsors and got lost amidst the black of space. 

“They escaped!” yelled Commander Star. 

“Goddamnit!” Jay slammed his fist against the armrest of his seat. So, that’s what they tried to accomplish with their tactic. They lost five of their ships, but thanks to their superior shielding technology and speed they managed to inflict a good number on the Eternity of Return. If they had caught them off guard, the results would have been catastrophic. 

“Hydra, what’s the damage?” asked Captain Cortez.

“We have at least 8 major breaches over the hull from section 05 to 13. Type of damage: likely ionized projectiles.”

“Those sections are on the middle part of the ship,” noticed Flight Officer Rossi.

“Estimated number of casualties,” Hydra recounted. “1215 in total. 443 Navy, 438 Army, 282 Civilian, 34 ISI, and 18 SolOps.” 

“Motherfucking sons of bitches,” cursed Jay. 

He looked around. Everyone was agitated and sweating. They had pessimistic stares of anger and impotence. What was supposed to be one of the best days of their lives ended being one where they almost got killed, and they all knew they were lucky because people had died. It was a m******e, and they likely didn’t count on the resources aboard to repair the damage. 

Jay understood it: They had been disposable. The INSU’s high command and the INIS had already awarded themselves before the general public as saviors of space progress. They fulfilled their goal: to put people on Hawking-616a, not to bring them alive. 

“Captain Cortez,” the technician from the Control Center spoke again on his ear. Jay craved to yell at him the worst insults. “please give us a more detailed—” he suddenly stopped speaking. Static rumbled through the earcom. Jay violently pulsed the button on the device to turn it off.

“Captain,” Com. Technician Alberto Ramirez spoke. “the connection with Control Center has been lost. All Com. Systems are dead!” 

“What?” Jay got up from his seat and went to his position. “what’s happening now?” 

“Yeah! Take a look at this!” Ramirez scrolled his fingers and typed on his keyboard all over the layouts sparsed on the holographic screen, but they could not stop popping error messages.

“Damn. Those alien bastards must have fried our systems,” Jay cursed. “Hydra, can you make sure about that?” 

“Captain Cortez,” responded Hydra’s monotone voice. “there are minimal damages to the communication systems. I am detecting a high electromagnetic force interfering with our devices and connections.”

“So, they are jamming us…" Ramirez said. "Wait. Captain, did you say... aliens?” 

“Who?” Flight Officer Dante Rossi turned around and frowned. “W-what do you mean? Those bastards...” 

“Captain!” interrupted Lieutenant Hoffmann, drawing everyone’s attention. “I am detecting something. It’s approaching us. And… oh no...” 

“What’s it, Lieutenant?” barked Jay. He was about to lose it. “Speak up!” he rushed to her position.

“It is… It is huge!” she responded.

Jay looked at her screen; there was an object on the radar near the Eternity of Return. He touched it on the screen, and a square displaying extended information popped. The numbers he saw made his mind get petrified, and his jaw fall like a hangman. 

‘Type of object: Artificial Origin, possibly a vessel; no matches found under database. Approximate length: 100,809 kilometers. Approximate distance: 240’000 kilometers.’

The last number quickly descended as a countdown.

“What’s going on, Captain?” spoke Commander Star after a moment of awkward silence. Everyone looked with desperate anxiety at Jay.

Captain Cortez didn’t respond. He immediately returned to his seat to see what Lieutenant Hoffman had detected. He didn’t even need to wait for the generation of a 3D model; an object of such a colossal size would have been visible from the naked eye through a window.

He connected to the telescopic cameras, and the possible vessel made his heart skip a beat. It made the alien ships they barely defeated seem like tiny ants. 

Big as a whole city, the colossal had the shape of a hexagonal tuna can, shining in dark grey. On the top, a smaller prismatic hexagon stood, covered by multiple rows of slits and hexagonal holes. In the middle face pointing at them, an elongated hexagon had eight circles shining in the color red, giving it the look of the eyes of a spider. Jay could swear they stared at his soul. 

A circular platform slightly smaller than the main body of the gigantic object was at the bottom, with three flat elongated cubes lowering from it, which were all perforated by three holes that shined in a darker shade of red.

“Captain? what’s going on?” asked Dante Rossi. 

“...You are better off seeing it by yourselves,” murmured Jay. He shared the screen with everyone on the bridge.

The images from the telescopic cameras bloated their screens, and everyone looked at it with paralyzing awe. “...What-the-hell-is-that-thing?” stuttered Officer Brooks, breaking the murdering silence. “H-How big is that?!” 

“...It has an approximate diameter of 100,8 kilometers,” Lieutenant Hoffman gulped her own saliva. “and it is coming for us.”

Everyone traded defeatist and anxious looks. They had almost made it out from those advanced ships that killed one-third of the crew aboard the Eternity of Return, and they weren’t logistically, nor morally ready for another combat. And now that enormous beast? what were they supposed to do? Flight Officer Dante Rossi covered his face with both hands, and tears and sobs came from Lieutenant Hoffmann's position. Was it the end? 

Jay shook his head, bringing himself back to reality. How could he let his crew down in such a moment? It might have been his fault to have fought those ships, but there was no option,  and they still didn’t count with any either. They had to give one more shot. If they could not win, they would fall standing.

“Hydra,” Jay raised his voice with determination. Everyone looked at him with glowing eyes. “order Chief Adams to redirect as much power as he can to the Godmelter.”

“Captain Cortez?” hesitated Hydra. “But the levels of heat and decay are still too—”

“Just do it, Hydra,” affirmed Jay. He looked once again at his screen. Whatever that monster was, it was now as double as big as the last time he dared to look at the image.

“Captain Cortez,” Engineering Chief Adam’s appeared on the corner of his interface. “Terrabringer is highly unstable. If we redirect that energy, we’ll have fewer decay conducts and cooling systems working. We’ll be at high risk of suffering a collapse from overheating.”

“Chief, I’m pretty sure you’ve already seen that thing that’s approaching us. You and I know what needs to be done.”

Engineer Adams took a small second before responding. He looked down, squeezed his lips, and then slowly nodded. “Alright. It’s been an honor, sir,” he closed the com. channel.

“So… This s it…” whispered Commander Star.

“What the hell is happening to you all?” Jay yelled. He would not let them down as their Captain. “Look at yourselves. All down and demoralized in a moment where we need to hit our enemy where it hurts the most. C’mon! Give me a loud grunt and get back to work! We are going to kick the ass of whatever that motherfuckin' thing is!” 

They all grinned, recovering themselves for a moment and straightening back to their seats, letting a hum out. They understood what was happening; but they all —even Captain Cortez—  learned on the academy since their first day in boot camp that if you gave up, you had already lost. 

They needed to keep going. It didn’t matter if their ship was perforated all over, the energy shields were dead, or the engine was about to explode and doom them all. They needed to give one last punch.

“Brooks,” Jay raised his voice. The dark colossal got dangerously close at about 140’000 kilometers. “it’s all up to you. Give that motherfucker a good sip of hyper-heated tungsten traveling at 20% the speed of light!” 

“Aye aye, sir!” the black man yelled. He straightened up and looked at the screen like aiming a TR6 rifle in target practice. 

“Captain, I am receiving an incoming signal,” announced Com. technician Ramirez. “I think it comes from that ship. It’s an audio record!”