The Battle for Eden. Mark E. Burgess
of destroyers, hoping to provide cover and join any remaining members of his squadron. But before he could close with them, a proximity alarm sounded and his display flashed an angry red icon closing behind him. Damn! He resisted the absurd impulse to turn and look over his shoulder. How had he let that Crab get so close? Well, nuts. There was nothing for it but to cut and run, and run he did.
His ship served him proud, responding to his touch like a fine musical instrument to a maestro. He was known among his peers as an expert pilot, and he used every trick he knew to shake his pursuer, banking hard to port and starboard, rolling and reversing mid-turn, looping up and over in a high-g climb, abruptly braking with reverse thrusters in hopes the Crab would overshoot him. No matter what he tried, the Knacker fighter stayed on his heels, never quite lined up for a kill shot, but not losing contact with him. He pushed the limits of his ship and his own endurance, exceeding the recommended maximum g-forces for the hull. Several times he neared blackout, despite the inertial dampeners cushioning his fragile body from energies that would surely have crushed him to a pulp against the cabin walls.
In a dogfight between closely matched opponents, the pursuer always has the advantage over the pursued. In the end it really was just a matter of time before the alien ship caught him in its sights. When it did, Simon’s day ended as quickly as it had started. It felt like a giant hand violently slammed him into his harness. A blinding flash, a deafening explosion—the sound of battle had reached him at last—and his controls went dead, the heads-up display flickering in and out of existence as he stared at it stunned. He was drifting powerless, an easy target.
As he shook his head to clear it, he waited for the ax to fall...but it never came. Instead he saw the Knacker fighter blur past him as it accelerated off in the direction of the human destroyers. He sat there bemused, too shaken to celebrate being alive. A human adversary would have finished off his opponent, firing an extra salvo for insurance. But the Crabs were truly alien creatures. Once his ship was no longer an active threat, they completely ignored it. This behavior had been noted in prior skirmishes as well. Knackers seemingly considered it more efficient to focus their efforts on the human ships still fighting, even if it meant leaving combatants alive. Of course, there was also the darker explanation, that the aliens were loath to destroy a potential food item that they could pick up at their leisure later.
Whatever the reason, Simon was still breathing, and he set about assessing his disabled ship’s status. His main engines were junk, not a spark of life left in their controls. Likewise for his plasma guns. The hit must have knocked out the main power relays from the reactor. He could see damage to his left delta wing, but it appeared to be superficial, no major structural loss. The explosion had kicked his ship into a slow roll, and as he looked out the bubble canopy, the glowing sphere of the planet Eden rose on his left, floated over his head, and dropped out of sight to his right, leaving the endless void of star-filled space above him before reappearing a moment later to repeat the cycle.
The effect was dizzying and he dropped his eyes. As he scanned the instrument panel, a small green light caught his eye and he felt a stab of hope. Auxiliary power from the storage batteries appeared to be intact. This was insufficient to energize the weapons or main propulsion, but the batteries could fire the ship’s positioning thrusters, plus operate the sensors and com unit. He stabbed the controls that shifted power from main reactor to batteries, and let out a sigh of relief as the heads-up display reappeared. Next he hailed the Xerxes, then cursed when his helmet speaker returned nothing but silence. The antenna array must be fried. Ah well, there was nothing he could do about it. He’d best figure his options, if he wanted to live through this.
He had dropped low toward the planet’s atmosphere during the dogfight, had even contemplated entering it at one point, as the human fighters had better handling characteristics in air than Knacker egg ships. Now his sensors told him that he was falling into Eden’s gravity well, slowly losing altitude as he was pulled inexorably toward the surface. He had no way of powering free of the planet, and no means of calling for rescue. That left only one option. If he was going down, then best to not do it as a flaming meteor.
A frown of concentration knit his brows as he quickly worked calculations on the navicomputer. Yes, it was feasible—if he could avoid drawing the attention of the Crabs. The Avenger’s conformation would allow a non-powered glide to the ground. But first he had to counter the spin of his ship, and level it out for approach to the planet’s outer atmosphere. He hit the starboard vertical thrusters once, twice, and then lightly a third time, and brought the ship to a standstill. The planet was now steady under him, while the battle raged on above. The ship was aimed slightly nose-down toward Eden, and another judicious nudge of the thrusters pushed it forward. He nodded with satisfaction as he checked his sensors; at his increased rate of fall he would soon enter the thin outer reaches of the atmosphere. After that it was all downhill, so to speak.
Until then Simon had time on his hands, and he used it to check on the course of the battle playing out far above his canopy. His sensors painted a dreary picture. The humans had put up a good fight, in particular the newer fighters, but they were badly outnumbered. The Knackers were an ancient space-faring race, and over the course of millennia had plundered countless planets for materials to build their armada. They could attack anywhere, and often hit several star systems simultaneously. SpaceForce was spread too thin trying to defend the Federation.
Optimists argued that humanity appeared to be the younger, more vigorous, and more innovative species at this stage in their evolution. Whether this proved correct or not, the numbers currently favored the aliens, and true to form, the smaller human force over Eden was slowly being decimated. The defenders were down to about two squadrons of fighters, and the enemy had at least twice that many still in action. Two human destroyers were flaming ruins, one had disappeared altogether—hopefully into hyperspace—and the remaining three were fighting for their lives. It looked like two Knacker destroyers had also been damaged badly enough to render them ineffective, but that left eight ships still waging war on the human fleet. Simon cursed vehemently, beating his fists on his thighs in frustration at his impotence. The outlook was grave, and he could do absolutely nothing to help.
As he looked on, all three of the remaining human destroyers fired simultaneously on one of the Knacker ships. The combined energy impacts sheared a deep glowing gash into the starboard side of the alien vessel. Nothing vital was hit, however, and the ship returned fire, scoring direct hits with two plasma salvos on the lead human destroyer. Simon thought that it was the Xerxes, and he cringed as he saw flame gout from the stricken ship. It began to list sideways and its weapons went silent.
Simon hung his head, unable to watch further. A few moments later he yanked it up again as the onboard display flashed an alarm for local hyperspace activity. Something was coming out of warp very near the battle zone.
What eventually emerged into normal space was so large, and so unfamiliar, that at first Simon thought it must be an alien construct. To his surprise the ID tag on the heads-up display identified it as human: “SFS Titan, Lamprey Class super-dreadnaught.”
Simon sat back and shook his head in wonder. A Lamprey! Those were still in development, had been for over five years! This must be one of the first to see service. No wonder it had been late to the fight; there could not be enough of them to cover all the Federation planets. This ship must have responded to an urgent summons. Just how fast did that thing move in hyperspace?
He stared in awe as the interloper moved closer and its dimensions became fully evident. Simon knew the ship’s basic specs, had read them in SpaceForce briefs. The Lamprey was over a half-kilometer in length, long and slender, a flattened cylinder capped at the front by a bulbous knob resembling the head of some primitive life form. Simon had heard that the class designation derived from a legendary sea creature, which the ship’s conformation vaguely resembled.
Its imposing size notwithstanding, the Lamprey represented a major advance in human weapons technology. Besides heavy plasma energy guns to fore and aft, and lateral weapons nearly as powerful, the super-dreadnaught possessed a single main gun unlike anything that humans—and hopefully Knackers—had ever seen. Ironically it was based on very old technology, something which predated even humanity’s journey to the stars.
At the Lamprey’s core, and running