But the control pad on the far side of the compartment was flashing insistently. He didn’t know what was at the end of this quest, but it was getting cooler and cooler.
Either that or he was having a very interesting dream as he was being eaten. He was still trying to decide.
“Holy Grapp!” Spectre shouted, grateful that his commo was off. The last blast from the Dreen dreadnought had shaken the ship from stem to stern. The defenses of the ship were ten times more powerful than those of either the destroyers or the carrier. If it hadn’t been for the Hexosehr patches, the Blade would have been cut in half long before.
Looking over his shoulder, though, he would tell that had been a serious hit. Tactical was…
“Conn, Damage Control,” the XO said wearily. “We’re down. We barely made it back into warp. Tactical is gone, half the interfaces are blown. All external cameras and sensors are destroyed. We can’t see, can’t hear and can barely maneuver.”
“Get me a forward view,” Spectre said. “I don’t care how you do it. And get me in touch with Lurca. It’s time to end this fight.”
The final compartment was surprisingly small compared to the “auditoriums” of the tactical and navigation rooms, but it was cool. The main viewscreen had been tuned to give a view of a world with cool, crisp mountains beside a crashing sea. It wasn’t anywhere on Earth that Berg recognized and the color of the sky wasn’t quite right unless he was much mistaken. Other than that, it looked sort of like someplace in Scotland or Ireland.
It took him a moment to spot the massive pile of Dreen fungus built up around a central dais. There was a big chair, apparently for the commander, on top of the dais. From his position, all he could see was the pile of fungus and a bunch of tubes running out of it, wrapping around the chair towards…
An occupant. Lurching forward he could see that something was in the seat and as he approached the forward viewscreen and turned he could see that the occupant was small, the size of a human child. An emaciated cat.
A Mreee.
Humans had thought the Mreee wiped out. It was the world of the felinoids that Weaver and Miller had shoved the ardune bomb on top of, shutting the Dreen gates to Earth. The six-hundred-megaton bomb should have wiped the low-tech culture from the face of their planet. Even the few surviving captured Mreee, who despite heroic attempts to keep them alive had all eventually died, thought their race had been wiped out. But here was one commanding a Dreen task force.
“Welcome, human,” the Mreee gasped, the voice labored. “Welcome to hell.”
“How can you talk?” Berg asked.
“I must command this battle, but parts of me remain, to a degree, free,” the Mreee gasped. “What good a voice that none can hear? What good eyes that can only look forward? The Dreen care nought for such. But you must hurry. Your friends are about to die and your ship is sore pressed. When it attacks again, I will destroy it and my security is about to destroy the remaining Marines. Unless you act.”
“What do I have to do?” Berg asked.
“Kill me,” the Mreee replied. “But first I must give you orders. On the right side of this room as I sit is a panel with purple symbols like one of your L’s. When I am dead, press each of these three times. That will open up all of the airlocks and doors on the ship. It is a firefighting measure. The ship will be unscathed; it can handle vacuum quite well; its Karchava builders were thorough. But the Dreen and their fungus cannot survive vacuum. You must empty all the air and that will destroy the Dreen. The two destroyers will remain but your ship should be able to survive then and triumph. But you must empty the air. Now, kill me and be about your orders.”
“Can’t I just pull…”
“That would kill me, more painfully,” the Mreee hissed. “Your pistol, Two-Gun. Use it. Free me from this hell. Please. Be aware, security is coming. You must act quickly. There are other survivors. If you meet any of my people…”
“I will tell them of your sacrifice,” Berg said, lifting the pistol. “Go with God.”
“And you, Two-Gun.”
“Okay, this is going to be all manual control,” Spectre said. “The objective is to get close enough to the battlewagon that when the engine goes we’ll take it out.”
The casualties had been moved to the collier as had all nonessential personnel. That included Miss Moon who had, to everyone’s surprise, survived.
“We’ll warp in as close as possible, then go in the rest of the way on manual control of the normal space drive,” Spectre continued. “Most of our armor is oriented upwards, so we’ll try to maintain that relativity. We only have about three minutes until the battlewagon reaches engagement range. Everyone take your positions. And I have to say I’m proud of all of you. No crew in history has fought so hard and so long with such success. I love you all. Now, let’s go kill ourselves.”
“As a battlecry that leaves something to be desired,” Bill said as the crew resumed their positions.
“There’s no need for you to be here, Commander Weaver,” the CO said. “You know as well as I do when the drive detonates it’s just going to be sitting there in space. The Hexosehr have promised to make a new ship from scratch if necessary so the survivors can get back to Earth.”
“Might be sumpin I kin do t’ git us all kilt,” the astrogator said, for once letting his full Southern accent slip free. “Gonna be funner than skinnin’ a lahv coon.”
“Ayup,” Spectre replied. “Pilot?”
“Conn, Commo.”
“Go, Commo,” the CO replied. “We’ve got commo?”
“Retrans through the Hexosehr collier. Lurca. Voice only.”
“Go.”
“Ship Master Blankemeier, Fleet Master Lurca. Hold your run.”
“You’re about to get taken out, Lurca,” Spectre replied. “We don’t have time to…”
“The Dreen dreadnought has ceased acceleration,” the fleet master replied. “It has opened all its hatches and is blasting air and water into the ether. I do not know the significance of this, but…”
“What the hell?” Spectre said. “What about the destroyers?”
“They continue forward,” Lurca admitted. “If anything, they are accelerating. But they will require an hour to get in range with plasma weapons and the dreadnought is open to space and has ceased fire. We have time—”
“XO!” Spectre snapped. “I want the combat engagement system back up in twenty minutes! Get to it!”
“Grapp, grapp, grapp…” Miller muttered, trying to move the beast on his back.
“If we all lift at once…” Powell suggested.
“Got it,” Miller said. “Ready, one, two…”
There was a blast of sound in the background, like a tornado, and the Wyverns could feel a rumble transmitted through the deck. Thumps resounded along the corridor as hatches flew open.
“What the grapp?” Lyle asked. “My external air pressure sensor is dropping like a rock.”
A dog-demon scrabbled around the corner, coming into Miller’s view. But it was clearly struggling. Its beak opened and closed, gasping for air as it collapsed a foot from him. He watched it continue to gasp its last then slowly boil as the external air turned to vacuum. It wasn’t a fast process, there was a lot of air in the massive ship, so he got to watch it in slow motion.
“Okay,” Miller said as the thing in front of him started to freeze-dry. “We don’t have to worry about Dreen, but we’ve still got this mother on our back. So. A one and a two…”