That Which One Begins - Chapter Eleven

"THEY'RE TURNING!"

Every living being on the ridge froze in place to look. In the distance, the narrow bows of the great ships slowly, simultaneously, swung to point directly toward the stunned observers on the desolate ridge. The unmistakable realization that Arion warships were now advancing on them spurred everyone into frantic action, whether it was needed or not.

William jumped up from the gunpit to the high ridge of the trenches and tried desperately to calm the ad hoc force of Tetrites.

"Easy!" he called out, swaying his hands to quiet them. "Take it easy! There's time yet. Just hold your places. Stay where you are and don't fire your weapons!"

His words had the intended affect and the Tetrites uneasily settled back into the trenches. Still, they watched the approaching armada nervously and the bobbing of their fuzzy heads caused William to wave for Large Grey to approach.

"Grey, let's get someone over to the left trench to calm them down a bit, okay? And keep a close eye on these folks too. They're right on the edge."

Large Grey murmured to a small, tan Tetrite who trundled quickly toward the long trench on the far left. His thunderous voice then resonated over the trenchline before him.

"We will wait!" he called out to them all. "There is little to be gained in speculation. We will wait and respond only to proper direction."

The Tetrites quieted, mainly because what Large Grey said was valid information--it made sense. William was impressed.

"Damn, Grey," he muttered in a low voice to the giant, "those folks respond pretty well to..." Another thought interrupted William and his eyes grew larger. "Shit! The siege gun!"

William spun around and leapt toward Lillith, gripping the surprised woman by her shoulders.

"Look, Lillith, we're almost outta time here," he said rapidly with a new intensity. "You have to take out their siege weapon. Do you understand? That large pod right in the center of the bottom of the biggest ship. Nail it! Okay? Got that?"

Lillith nodded rapidly and repeatedly. William was getting too excited and even though he knew that he had to settle down before he got her worked up too, he wasn't quite able to do so before another voice gave him new reason for anxiety.

"No, Mistress," Large Grey announced calmly. "No, Mistress, ignore the great Arion weapon."

"WHAT?" shouted William, an octave higher than his normal voice. He released Lillith to jump toward Large Grey. "Are you nuts? They could fry us with that thing!"

Large Grey quickly sketched the outline of the bottom of the ship in the dirt. Down the center he drew two, closely spaced, parallel lines.

"Strike here or here, either one," he instructed unhurriedly. "Sever those and the ship will falter."

William scanned the crude outline rapidly before his left eyebrow raised in a sign of realization.

"Double keel?" he murmured to himself before glancing back up at Large Grey. "You want her to break its back? Those keel beams have to be twenty feet thick, at least. Can she do that kind of thing?"

"Perhaps," Large Grey replied with a shrug, before looking up toward the oncoming ships. "If their energy dispersion shields are not at full strength."

"Wait a minute," prompted William, pulling his rangefinder/analyzer up to his eyes to peer at the largest ship. Selecting the "Defense Acquire" mode, he looked for any outline around the ship overlayed on the display, an artificial aura designed to indicate the presence of energy fields. Different fields produced different colors. There were none.

"No shields," he thought out loud, not believing it totally. "No friggin' shields!" he finally yelled out for all to hear, his excitement throwing his words. "They're takin' a walk in the park. Beautiful!"

William tossed the rangefinder/analyzer to Phil before turning back to Lillith and Large Grey.

"What about the smaller ships, Grey?" he asked intently.

"Everything smaller than a battlecruiser has a single keel," informed the Tetrite.

William again gripped Lillith's shoulders to get her attention. His voice, though low, still had an intensity that made it impossible for him to hide his fears.

"Ok, honey, that means hit `em in the center, ok? The big ship, hit it a little off center. The smaller ones, right down the center. Do you think you can do all this?"

"Yes," she nodded, her eyes, just as nervous, just as fearful, locked into his. "Yes, I think I can. You want me to stay with the ships. Right?"

"That is correct, Mistress," instructed Large Grey. "Only you can bring them down."

Lillith glanced back at the armada that grew larger every second. The rumbling of their gigantic engines grew in volume as they approached and the ground was beginning to vibrate. Her eyes turned away for a moment, perhaps in thought or perhaps merely not to look too long. She quickly glanced at Large Grey, then to William. Her lips felt dry and the tip of her tongue tried for a moment to wet them.

"When do you want me to start?" she asked with a slight quiver in her voice.

"Wait for it, honey," replied William evenly. "Just wait for us to signal you. Then give it everything you have, alright? Then just give the bastards hell."

"T'aye," the young Velorian confirmed with a newfound bravado. His words stiffened her young courage and her eyes narrowed. She felt his hand take hers just before he leaned forward to kiss her.

They held each other tightly, sharing each other's strength for, perhaps, one last time. There was no way to know. There was only this time and the growing thunder of the Arion ships. The coming threat of the sound pulled the two lovers apart. There was no more time for a kiss that should have been much longer. They parted with a deep look of the eyes and a firm squeeze of the hand before each turned away to prepare for what was about to happen.

William returned into the gunpit, patting the breach of the rail gun, looking at the ground in thought.

"Phil," he finally said firmly. "Call out the range for us, would you?"

Phil peered through the dark rangefinder instrument and read off the bright yellow numbers that he saw in the upper left corner of the display. The units of distance were vanlects, the universal standard adopted by a galactic consortium over fifty years before, superceding the old Terran metric system.

"The Arions are about three thousand, five hundred vanlects, at the moment, sir," informed Phil.

"Give the range every five hundred, would you, Phil?"

"Indeed, sir."

Phil balanced the rangefinder on the brow of the ridge and stared intently at the image through the binocular lenses. He found that he needed to call out the range louder each time to be heard over the rumble of the ships.

"Three thousand... Twenty-five hundred... Two thousand..."

Lillith watched alone on the ridge peak. Her face revealed a growing nervousness and unease at having to wait. The ships looked so big and there were so many. How was she to do anything to something so massive? She was a Velorian Protector, but maybe this was too much. She'd never done this. She'd never...

"Fifteen hundred... One thousand..."

Her doubt grew. Maybe this isn't the best tactic. Maybe they should go. Maybe if they just moved away the Arions would not harm anyone. But that's not true. The Arions don't care about any living thing except themselves, and even then they don't have much compassion. If only she'd had more time. Some practice or maybe she could have...

"Five hundred..."

The ground was shaking hard now as the ships loomed before them. Small rocks tumbled into the trenches and the sound, the deep rumble, was so loud that it pounded hard in their chests. It felt difficult to breathe.

William looked toward Large Grey, his right eyebrow raised to pose the question. Large Grey nodded once. Lillith, her frightened eyes transfixed on the horrible threat so close, took one step back.

"LILLITH!"

William's shout was just loud enough to be heard over the Arions; loud enough to shake Lillith from her fearful trance; loud enough to shock her like an electric charge. She snapped her attention toward him, her wide eyes showing every emotion tearing at her.

"LILLITH!" he called again, raising a clenched fist in front of himself. "KICK `EM IN THE ASS!"

There was steel in his words, a fire in his commanding voice that stirred the young Velorian. In an instant of hesitation, Lillith fought away her fears. Her fists closed tightly as her will to fight strained to overcome the inexperience of her youth. Her lips curled from the strain of her internal struggle, exposing her clenched teeth. Pulling her fists up from her tightening body, she gathered every ounce of her courage, her strength, and her determination. She flung her fists toward the ground with a defiant shout to explode into the air, arcing back toward the largest ship, and leaving a small crater where she had stood.

 

The manic squawk of the alarm klaxon startled the sleepy Arion manning the threat console. Expecting to find a mere fault or transient reading, he was stunned to see the displays fill with data, including a hyperbolic arc growing steadily on one screen.

"Humanoid female rising from the surface!" he shouted, still unsure of more detail as he scanned the multiple screens. The final threat analysis made his jaw drop and the officer mumbled a curse before repeating the computer's analysis out loud as rapidly as he could. "Velorian energy signature! Protector! PROTECTOR!"

"N... No," stammered the stunned Commander. He spent too many seconds trying to comprehend the impossibility. When he did speak, it served only to show his incomprehension of the unexpected. "That can't be," he stuttered, his eyes glancing toward every console on the bridge. "What could... That's not..."

 

Lillith had gone transonic within seconds of her departure. She was now approaching Mach Two with every ounce of strength within her pushing her acceleration. Mach Two came and went in the blink of an eye as Lillith strained to go even faster.

 

The First Officer shoved the babbling and confused Commander to the side to try to save the ship and Napoleon fell hard to the deck. The rapid-fire orders of the First Officer boomed throughout the bridge, galvanizing the men to action.

"Energy shields up! Port engines, full reverse! Starboard engines, full ahead, combat power! Helm, full to port! Turret crews to their..."

"NO!" shouted the embarrassed Commander, his offended pride overwhelming his judgment. Jumping uneasily to his feet amid subordinates too busy to notice, he pulled a GAR pistol from his belt and, at a range of less than ten centimeters, fired directly into the back of the First Officer's head.

What shattered remnants of the head that were not consumed by the energy blast blew in a wide spray across the port consoles, leaving the decapitated body to stagger once before it fell hard to the deck. Pistol in hand, the Commander shrieked at his stunned bridge crew.

"I AM IN COMMAND HERE!"

 

Lillith was flying faster than she had ever done before. Both of her fists, held by her powerful arms outstretched before her, were glowing from the friction of the air. The ship rushed at her, expanding in size almost too quickly. She kept her fists clenched tightly and aimed them just to the right of the siege weapon pod.

As she closed with the behemoth, she emitted energy beams from her eyes, heating the point of impact from a dull red to a glowing white within a few milliseconds. She yelled as loudly as she could to drive away her fear, but fought the urge to close her eyes.

William saw a brilliant flash where Lillith impacted the giant ship, a mere point of the brightest, purest light. The ship lurched, rising up in the center in reaction to her. Then, he noticed something expanding from the point of impact; something that distorted his view of the ship; something that was growing very quickly. He immediately knew what was coming.

"DOWN! DOWN! DOWN!" he shouted, diving into the gunpit just before the shock wave raked across the landscape. Billowing dust clouds swirled, spraying the Tetrites with stinging dust as the ground shook violently. With it came the explosive sound, the sharp, thunderous crack of the moment of her impact. Rolling away into the distance, the combined effects of the shock wave collapsed nests and toppled rocks for miles.

 

Lillith had vaporized the port keel of the great ship and it barely slowed her. Deck after deck was holed as she exploded through the gigantic ship. Within seconds, she had shattered all thirty-seven decks to burst through the top hull with an escort of flame and debris. Lillith slowed quickly and turned to see the effect of herself on the ship. Panting slightly to catch her breath, she only saw a slowing ship with a small, jagged hole on its top. For a moment, she wondered whether she would have to do it all again.

 

In the main gun deck, located amidships, an Arion Weapons Technician slowly regained consciousness. He found himself on the deckplates next to the down-firing siege gun. He had no idea what had just happened; all he remembered was that something impacted the ship so hard that it breached the hull in an incredible explosion. He couldn't believe that he was still alive--if they would had been out of the atmosphere, he certainly would be dead. As it was, there was a lot of wind in the gun deck, but wind was breathable.

Raising himself to his knees, the Technician heard a crackling sound overhead. Looking up, he was horrified to see the amount of damage. Something, whatever it was, had destroyed one of the keels, sheared much of the siege gun from its mounts, and damaged the matter/antimatter injection manifolds. His eyes focused on the shattered injection manifolds, but there was no time for him to cry out from what he saw. They chose that moment to fail, uniting matter with antimatter. Within a nanosecond of the failure, his world ended in a searing, white, plasma eruption.

 

Lillith was shocked to see the Arion ship explode. Boiling, white plasma seemed to come from every deck as the ship shuddered to a halt. The immense explosion vaporized the second keel and, its back broken, the ship folded in on itself. The shattered center of the ship led the way to the ground.

In the trenches, William and the Tetrites watched in horror as burning Arions, many of them still alive, rained from the open decks. The two halves of the ship seemed to hesitate, fighting against descending for a last time. But the men and women of the crew had no such ability and they littered the Tetra desert below.

Some of the Arion ships turned away from the wreck while others continued on course. William counted four collisions from his vantage point, three of which did not appear to be serious. But one collision, on the far right of the line, left a light cruiser's bow embedded in the side of a fast attack ship and they too went down.

The land shuddered as the Arion battlecruiser impacted. It took many seconds for a ship so large to completely crash and the ground continued to quake as the ship dissolved into a single mass of fire, torn steel, and bodies--many, many bodies.

"Grey," William barely managed to ask, "how many crewed on that ship?"

Large Grey found the information requested, but had no pleasure in providing it.

"Three thousand..." Large Grey hesitated for a moment when he saw William's eyes close. "Three thousand, seven hundred, and forty-eight, nearly all Betas."

Before William could respond, a dark Arion Destroyer arced down toward the trench from the left, settling rapidly just above the ground about a hundred meters in front of the main trench. It's droning engine lowered in pitch as it slowed. Everyone instinctively ducked down into the trench, including Large Grey, Phil, and William.

"Down! Stay down!" William encouraged with a whispered shout. He watched the Destroyer swing its bow along the trench and waited. As long as the Destroyer's bow was pointed at them, the Arions could fire their main weapons. So, William waited a few more seconds for the ship's bow to drift.

"They're checking us out," whispered William to Large Grey, "trying to see where Lillith came from; looking for another threat or something. Nobody better fire or we're all dead." Large Grey nodded.

The Arion Destroyer slowly turned a bit, just enough to expose its broadside.

"Get ready, Grey," William said sternly. "We're about to get involved."

William quickly stood by the Traynor and flipped open the side cover of the weapon's breach. Pulling down a red switch guard, he toggled the weapon to life. The hydraulics of the weapon stabilized, quickly raising the rail to firing position with a loud whine as William swung the rail toward the target by hand.

The Arions on the Destroyer immediately detected the presence of the activated Traynor and, in response, the ship heeled hard over as it tried to evade the threat. But, with his hand on the firing mechanism, William charged the breach and manually fired the weapon before the heavy ship could overcome inertia to move.

The breach of the Traynor drew energy from the pak, creating a highly charged particle in the breach--a particle that barely existed. But when the tiny particle was magnetically accelerated and guided down the rail, it reached velocities approaching the speed of light, giving it unbelievable energy--physics in action.

A Traynor shot could not only destroy targets by penetrating them, it would sometimes initiate a chain reaction of the target mass, obliterating the target completely. The Arions knew too well about the Traynor rail gun having experienced them in battle with the Terrans.

The particle left the gun with an explosive burst of blue flame. The painfully loud discharge was so powerful that all surface dust within fifty meters of the weapon was churned from the force. William momentarily lost his hearing and nearby Tetrites were concussed upside down. Having only fired the weapon previously in the quiet, near vacuum of Space, William hadn't expected such an awesome effect.

The Arion ship was impacted amidships, the hull shattering in a chain reaction that vaporized the center two-thirds of the ship. The tips of the stern and bow spun crazily away to shred more metal along the ground. No one survived.

"My goodness, sir!" exclaimed Phil. "That is a most formidable weapon."

"Glad you like it, Phil," William shouted above the sounds of Arion ships maneuvering away from the new threat. "Would you like to see another shot?"

Phil looked behind William, rotating his head slightly before one leg raised to point.

"Would those serve the purpose of your demonstration, sir?"

William looked behind himself and his eyes grew large.

"HOLY SHIT!" he shouted, spinning the Traynor around on its mount to face six fast attack ships screaming down at them from altitude. The ships were attacking six abeam, ready to saturated the trench with their weapons. There was no time to manually aim and fire the Traynor, so William slapped the fire control switch to AUTOFIRE, left the rail pointing in the general direction of the oncoming Arions, and pulled the trigger just before diving into the trench with Phil.

The Traynor hammered the senses of everyone around it as it emptied itself at the Arions. Discharge after discharge exploded off the rail, filling the air with intense blue streaks. Whether simply out of the volume of fire or sheer luck, one fast attack ship was obliterated and a second damaged severely, spinning wildly into the ground nearby to explode in a cascading shower of flames. The remaining four ships evaded the Traynor shots but were thrown off their attack without returning fire. They roared overhead to reform.

"Come on, Phil!" shouted William as he sprinted from the trench back to the gun. "Bring that pak! Come on!"

Phil scampered wildly toward him, dragging the needed replacement pak.

"Here, sir!" the shaken Tetrite gasped.

William removed the empty pak quickly, but struggled to mount the new pak. For some reason, it would not click into place.

"Phil! Are they coming around?" He still couldn't get the pak to seat.

"They are definitely turning, sir."

"Yeah, but are they coming around?" The pak still refused.

"They are still turning, sir."

"Shit, this damn' thing won't latch! Where are they?"

"They appear to be coming back to us, sir. Shall we shoot at them once more?"

"I'd love to Phil, but this damn thing is jammed!"

To the right, two more cruisers were shattered and afire on the ground. Lillith was still in action. In front of William and Phil, four angry Arion fast attack vessels were after vengeance.

"Sir?" asked a very nervous, yet always polite, Phil. "May I suggest that we perform a temporary retreat to the trench?"

William glanced up to see the Arion ships much too close. There was no time to get another pak.

"GOOD IDEA!" he shouted. They both lunged for the relative safety of the trench just as the Arions opened fire. A wall of explosive flame burst from the ground ahead of the trench and advanced at the speed of the Arion ships toward the trench. The Arions were holding their triggers down, intent on killing everything on the ground.

 

The sky was filling with more black smoke from the two Cruisers she had destroyed. Those were the last of the larger ships, but there were plenty of new targets for the Protector to deal with. Still angry and filled with adrenaline, Lillith posed a very serious threat to what was left of the fleet. She paused in midair to search for her next target. To her right she saw a large ship maneuvering away, but then she saw something move very quickly on her left.

 

William huddled with Phil in the trench and they both closed their eyes. He could hear and feel the advancing death of the Arion weapons and he knew it was only a moment away from blowing the entire trench away. A single moment of life was left to them and all they could do was close their eyes and wait.

Four loud thuds ended the din of the Arion fire before flaming wreckage rained over the trench. This was not what he had expected and William blinked his eyes open to take a look. Rising in a sweeping arc into the sky was Lillith. All that was left of the four fast attack ships was smoke hanging in the sky and debris burning on the ground. A small fuzzy head joined William to peer over the top.

"She is our Protector," Phil said thankfully.

"She sure is, Phil," William agreed, a new reverence in his voice. "She sure as hell is."

 

The Arions had taken severe losses and had yet to form any cohesive response to the combined attack of Lillith and William. With the loss of their flagship, their head had been cut off. Without a central command and without the initiative to act separately, the last orders issued stood.

No one ordered that the shields to be raised, so no shields came up. No one ordered that the fleet disperse, so what ships remained struggled to maintain some semblance of formation. The only latitude given an Arion ship commander was in the use of his guns, but in the confusion over Tetra that day, no one was sure what to shoot at.

The Arion fire was random and misdirected. They relied completely on their technology to determine targets, a technology designed to handle large battle formations, not a flying girl and one gun on the ground.

Lillith moved too fast, almost frantic in her attacks, and the Arion targeting computers spent all their time updating without aiming the guns. The single gun fired by William was almost below the threshold to be considered a threat. The computers would alternate between identifying him as merely a nuisance and identifying him as a threat.

If someone had only peered out a window, they would have dealt better with the Terran gun. As it was, it would have mattered little. There was soon not one fighting ship left to bother with it.

 

Keeping to their original timetable, the Arion troopships began shuttling troops to the surface. Unfortunately for them, they chose to do so between the ridge and the wreckage of their capital ships. Outlined clearly against the dark opaque wall of boiling smoke, William had plenty of targets. The Traynor fired repeatedly into the transports and shuttles, destroying one after another, but the Arions were coming in massive waves, the shuttles filling the sky like fireflies, and William couldn't shoot fast enough.

"TROOPS!" he shouted. "Get `em awake over there, Grey! We got troops coming up!"

Large Grey trundled down the main trenchline, preparing the nervous Tetrites for what was coming and reminding them not to fire until ordered. He sent a runner to the left trench with the same reminder. Their plan was to let the Arions come straight on, then use the fire from both trenches to deal with them.

Slowly, the scattered Arions collected into ad hoc units and began moving up the long slope to the ridgeline. With nothing left in the air above to support them, they were on their own against whatever was already on that high ground. Without orders to do anything else, they could only advance against an obvious threat: the Traynor.

On the ridge, William and Large Grey watched the approaching Arion units scattered in the valley. They estimated that there was a few thousand, but more were landing in spite of the way William was destroying their shuttles with the Traynor. He kept up a high rate of fire, destroying shuttle after shuttle, littering the ground with paks, knowing that it would make him the first target for the ground troops.

 

Lillith was exhausted. Settling to the ground amid the burning wreckage of the ships she had destroyed, she sought to rest for a moment, only a moment. Then, she thought, she would again see what she could do to help fight the Arions.

But her exhaustion was deeper than she thought and she fell to her hands and knees, her shoulders sagging from fatigue.

How many ships had she holed? Must be dozens, at least it felt that way. Someone had fired at her from a Grouper and she had answered with a blast of energy from her eyes. The resulting explosion somewhere inside the big ship surprised her almost as much as it had probably surprised the soldiers who died in it. But now, it was time to rest, simply to regroup before returning to the battle.

She closed her eyes for a moment. The heat and smoke from the fires all around her was intense. The Terrans had a word for places like this. She almost couldn't remember the Terran name, but then recalled that it was "Hell". Her sister had told her about the Terran concept. Perhaps this is what they had in mind. Or, perhaps, this was simply a day in the life of a Protector.

Is this all she had been created to do? Was this all that... There was no time to think about such things like that now. She would rest and return to the fighting. She would think about everything another time.

Lillith sat back on her thighs, still resting forward on her hands. Her long hair, now matted and twisted, hid the horror of her surroundings from her eyes, letting her stare at a small piece of ground before her. She was lost in her thoughts until she sensed movement on her left.

The fires behind the smoke created an eerie light through the translucent air. Lillith raised her head to look and a deep feeling of dread built quickly within her at the sight of shadows in the smoke. The orange and yellow glow of the fires formed an unworldly patina on the smoke and the shadows became silhouettes as they emerged from it. Lillith's eyes grew large as her mind whirled. Were they ghosts? The undead?

She hesitated, frightened at the possibility that the spirits of the Arions she had killed today were to haunt her like this. She backed away, sliding along the ground, to keep the ghosts at a distance.

A shadow darkened the ground next to her and a chill shot through her. Jerking away from the shadow, Lillith looked back to see a pair of heavy boots. The frightened Velorian raised her head to look into the cold hatred of an Arion Prime's eyes. He was huge, nearly seven feet tall, dressed in a torn, scorched uniform. His face was covered in soot, smeared with his sweat. He didn't move or speak, just stared down at her with eyes dead with loathing.

The crunch of boots over the ground made Lillith look back at the approaching ghosts. Now she could see, now she could clearly see the "spirits". A cold shot of adrenaline shook her and she glanced to her right to see two more. Those weren't ghosts; they were Arion Primes. She was in the middle of six Arion Primes with a deep desire to kill her--a very dangerous place for any Velorian on her own. Lillith trembled slightly as the whispered word "Skietra" formed on her lips. She leapt from the ground to escape, with a loud grunt.

One of the Primes was quick enough to grip her ankle as she flashed up into the air and swung her, using her own momentum, through an arc to impact the ground.

They beat her mercilessly.


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That Which One Begins, Copyright © 2001 by S.T.MAC