The Defiant
Chapter Eleven

We gathered on the bridge shortly after lunch on our seventh day of travel.

“That’s Kryllian space?” Three said skeptically, gesturing out the viewscreen at a blank expanse of stars, just like every other patch of space we’d crossed through in the last week.

“This is where the coordinates say it begins. Now,” Four said, tapping on the keyboard and pulling up a map on the screen. “This is where we are.” She pointed to a red dot drawn next to a remote boundary of an irregularly shaped blue splotch. She clicked something else, and a straight black line appeared, stretching between the first red dot and a second, which appeared on the other side of the blue.

“That line is our flight plan. We’re passing through one of the thinnest sections of their space. We should be on the other side in just over five hours, if all goes according to plan.”

“And if all doesn’t go according to plan? What if the Kryllians catch us when we’re in their space?” I asked.

“We run like hell and hope our ship is faster than theirs.”

“Comforting.”

“Honestly, passing through Kryllian space is dangerous, but their technology is decades behind ours. Their scanners are half as accurate as ours and have three-quarters the range. We’ll be able to see them long before they can see us. And if they do see us before we can get away, their weapons aren’t very sophisticated. Still deadly, but we still have a chance of surviving an attack.

“Plus, we have the shuttle. Worst comes to worst, we can get in that and fly to safety. Remember that base I told you about, just on the other side of Kryllian space?” A small green dot appeared next to the second red one. “We can stop there for repairs if needed. We shouldn’t have a problem. Unless… Nah. We won’t have a problem.”

“Unless what?” Seven asked.

“Well, in the last hundred years, humans have had a handful of contacts with the Kryllians, all conflicts, all with single life-form ships, equipped with minimal weapons, just there to discourage trespassing. But in recent years, more and more people have come into contact with what appear to be command ships, larger, more dangerous vessels that arrive seemingly out of nowhere.

“The single ships are probably just patrollers, with engines similar to our own sub-light speed ones, but the command ships have a faster technology, similar to our own standard D17 engines, capable of speeds faster than light. The only people who’ve survived attacks by the command ships escaped in pods and shuttles. Their ships were totally obliterated.”

Four observed us with her wide emerald eyes. “But with any luck, we won’t meet anyone at all in there, much less a command ship.”

“Since when has our luck been any good?” I muttered.

Four either didn’t hear me or didn’t deign to reply. “I’m starting the engines again. We’re entering Kryllian space.”

At the pilot’s console, she sat down and commenced the start-up procedure, pushing buttons and pulling levers.

“I need people up here with me, watching the scanner screens for any unexpected guests. You guys can take shifts. One?”

“Yeah?”

“I need you to order the ship to start the engines.”

“Oh, right. Let’s go, Computer!”

The computer’s answering beep was lost in the thrum of the engines as they roared to life and propelled us forward into Kryllian territory.

The first four hours passed uneventfully. Each of the crew members cycled through in half-hour shifts, watching the scanners for Kryllian ships.

I’d already finished my shift and was sitting in my room, trying to replace music in the ship’s computer.

The thing was, I was starting over with absolutely no frame of reference. I had no idea what kind of music I used to like to listen to, so I told the computer to play me a bit of everything, and I’d see what sounded good.

Country was no good. Neither was jazz. I was halfway through a soulful late-twentieth century love ballad when the comm came in.

“Computer, pause music. What is it?”

Two’s voice came through the speaker. “I saw a little blip on the scanner screen. Four thinks it was just an asteroid or something, but we think it would be good to get everybody up to the bridge, just in case.”

“Okay,” I said, standing up. I heard the others confirming through the comm channel as I left my room and rode up to Deck One.

The anxiety in the bridge was almost tangible, like a thick dark cloud settling over everything. No one seemed to want to speak.

“Guys, calm down. It was just an asteroid,” Four said from the back of the room, where she and Two stood over a small screen. We crowded in around them. A recording started, the fanlike wave of the sensors extending out from a small representation of our Defiant. After a few cycles, a tiny something was visible, for a split second, off the starboard bow, just inside the range of the sensors.

“You called us up here for that?” Three smirked. “That’s nothing. I’m going to go take a nap.” She sashayed off toward the lift doors.

Three things happened at once: The lift doors whooshed open, Four made a tiny noise of surprise as something much larger than our ship’s pictogram appeared on the scanners, and the Defiant gave a great jolt, knocking everyone to the floor.

A flashing red warning light switched on in the bridge, coating the scene in an intermittent scarlet haze. Six scrambled to his feet, running toward Three, who had cracked her head on something when she had fallen, and was now unconscious, lying half in the lift, the doors of which kept trying to close on her.

Four raced for the pilot’s console and strapped herself into the seat, fingers flying across controls as the ship jolted again, flinging the few of us who’d been able to stand up back to the floor.

Clutching the computer console, I regained my footing and looked at the scanner, where an outline of an enormous ship was pictured to port, easily four times the size of the Defiant.

“They’re shooting at us! Everybody get down or into a seat!” Four yelled over the shrieking alarm that had started with the flashing light.

I vaulted into the captain’s chair and locked the seatbelt. The ship jumped again. Sparks exploded overhead, and the bridge was plunged into darkness except for the computer consoles and the emergency light.

Four and Five swore at the same time.

“The power cell’s blown!” Four shouted. “We’ve got five hours emergency power, max!”

“Get us out of here!” I called.

The ship jerked, but this time Four’s shout was triumphant.

“They’re using torpedoes! We can dodge them! One, tell the computer to allow evasive maneuvers!”

“Computer, allow evasive maneuvers!”

Four slapped buttons, and the ship jumped upward, sending my stomach down to my feet. A streak of light passed the viewscreen, but it didn’t hit us.

I felt the shift to D17, but the ship seemed different, off balance.

Four confirmed, “One of the D17 engines is out! We’re pulling out of here on sub-light!”

The ship lurched to the left, narrowly avoiding another torpedo.

“Don’t we have weapons?” Five shouted from the scanner screen.

“Defiants aren’t equipped with them!” I yelled back.

My stomach shot from my feet to my throat as the ship dove.

And then, nothing. The Kryllians were just—gone.

The red light flashed, the sirens screamed, but the ship didn’t move any more.

“Where did it go?” Seven asked. She and Five pored over the screen, but the ship was gone, disappearing as suddenly as it had appeared. “Where did it go!”

Six made a flurry of motions with his hands, but Three was still out cold.

“We’ve got to get her to the med bay,” Two said.

“Yes, good, do that. I need to get down to the engine room. Our first priority is getting the D17 engines back online before the emergency power runs out. It would take two months to get to the base on sub-light, and we’ve got five hours of power at most.”

“So what? We go without power for a few hours. What’s the worst that could happen?” Seven asked.

“We go more than half an hour without power, we lose artificial gravity, oxygen, and heat. We’d freeze to death if we didn’t suffocate first.”

“Okay. Power important. Noted.”

“I’m going down to the engine room. I need an assistant. Somebody strong,” Four said. In the intermittent flashes of light, I watched her pull her mass of red curls into a ponytail.

Six went to join her at the lift.

“We’re taking Three to the med bay,” Two said, gesturing to himself and Seven. Seven took her feet while Two held her shoulders, and they maneuvered her into the lift. The doors closed.

No sooner had the doors closed than another jolt rocked the ship, the biggest one yet. My head was whipped forward, then backward. I looked dizzily out the viewscreen.

The Kryllian ship was back, and it had brought friends.

No fewer than four huge Kryllian ships were in view just outside. Fighting through a haze of horror, I unbuckled my seatbelt and propelled myself toward the pilot console, only to replace someone else there. Eight.

“Can you fly this thing?”

“I hope so!” She tapped out a complicated-looking sequence of commands, and the Defiant put on a burst of speed.

Aimed directly at two of the Kryllian ships.

“Wrong way!” I shrieked as we hurtled toward the ships, pressed backward by the force of acceleration. We must have broken a stabilizer.

“Trust me!” she called back. We sped between the two ships, turning slightly to fit. The one on the port side turned to face its torpedo bays at us. At the critical moment, Eight let the ship hang.

“What are you doing?” Five bellowed.

“Let them think we’re out of fuel—” The torpedo bays lit up, and Eight wrenched on a lever with all her strength. The Defiant shot upward, a cork out of a champagne bottle, and the torpedoes collided with the other ship.

An explosion blossomed on the side of the Kryllian ship, and Eight forced the Defiant into a series of dives and spins that managed to avoid shrapnel, but left me feeling like a washcloth that had been sent through the spin cycle.

The damaged ship vanished, just like that—like someone had just wrapped a cloak of stars around it to shield it from view. The other three turned their torpedoes on us. Eight punched controls. We avoided two, but one hit the starboard side. Sparks exploded above one of the computer console, and the bridge filled with smoke. I saw Five tumble across the room and land, crumpled like a rag doll, on the floor by the wall.

Struck by sudden inspiration, I slapped my comm.

“Four! Can you get me some D17?”

“About four seconds, and I can’t guarantee the navigation will be sound. Only having one engine will make it hard to stabilize!” I heard the sound of two metal things colliding as the ship rolled again, and Four shouted a word so foul it would make a sailor blush.

“That’s perfect. Stay on the comm, and wait for me!

“Eight. Can you get in front of that ship? The one to aft?”

“Yeah, hold on.”

“Two, can you get down to the shuttle bay?” I called through the comm.

“Sure, why?”

“Just an idea. Get down there fast!”

“One, we’re in front of the ship!” Eight yelled.

“Okay! Four. I need you to power the D17s, full speed, on my mark.”

I watched the torpedo bays power up on the ship opposite us. If I timed this wrong…

“Now!”

The D17 engines roared to life for one last hurrah. We wrenched out of the path of the torpedo fast enough to send waves of vertigo racing through me.

The ship opposite us, fooled by the sensor ghost I’d created by the jump to D17, shot at what they believed was the Defiant, but was actually their fellow ship.

I didn’t look to see what had happened to the damaged ship.

“Four, how long until you can get those engines up?”

“I don’t know! The energy pack is totally fried but I think I can transfer some wiring from the undamaged one.”

“And the shuttles are magnetized to the floor of the shuttle bay?”

“What? I think so—what are you going to do?”

I didn’t have time to answer. I slapped the comm again, switching to the channel I shared with Two.

“Two, when I tell you, you need to void the atmosphere inside the shuttle bay. Open the exterior doors, got it?”

“Yeah!”

“Okay, Eight, pull an about face in three seconds!” I watched the Kryllian ships approach. I was out of moves. If this didn’t work, we were dead in the water.

Eight turned the ship in a perfect one eighty.

“Two, now! Eight, full sub-light engines!”

One second we were there, the next we were gone. The combined velocity from voiding the shuttle bay atmosphere and jumping to sub-light bought us enough speed to get away from the Kryllians.

“Eight, move as erratically as possible. It’ll be harder for them to get coordinates on us!”

The ship spun drunkenly back and forth, but my plan seemed to have worked. The Kryllians had been disoriented by the quick escape and would now have a hard time establishing our position.

“I’ve got D17!” Four yelled triumphantly. “It won’t last more than an hour, but it’ll get us out of here!”

“Computer, power up D17! Eight, get us on course to the base.”

The D17s started up, their roar a welcome respite from the squealing alarm. I fell back into my chair and relaxed. We were safe.

For now.