Chapter Ten: Sarah Runs Away

Sarah screamed and flung herself out of bed right before the blade of roaring, focused plasma punched through bed, headboard, and a good chunk of the wall. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed the entire table, and flung it at the alien. Except she knew that it wasn’t just the alien or an alien. It was a specific alien. The race memories of every species the Claw and the Eye had consumed flared inside of her, and she knew this creature. She knew the weakness of the eyes and their overly focused vision, the way the single inner ear could be disoriented by rapid changes in pressure more quickly than a humans could be, the fact that the legs could kick through a few millimeters of steel, but the knee joints were as easily fractured as a humans if you hit them right.

She knew their name.

This was a Pro-Tass, one of the oldest civilizations the Claw had ever consumed.

“ Sorry! ” She said, in its language.

The Pro-Tass warrior charged right at her with a scream that was somewhere between furious and sorrowful. Sarah ducked as he swung one arm over her head, slashing through an art deco ornament, filling the air with sparks. She kicked out, but the warrior sprang away from her blow, evading the knife blade of her foot before she shattered the bony plates of the knee. She hooked her clawed toes and jerked backwards, catching his forearm and drawing glowing blue blood.

“Sorry!” Sarah yelped again, jerking her leg back awkwardly and holding up her hands in a gesture of apology. The Pro-Tass slammed the bony plate of his forehead into her head and Sarah sprawled on her ass. She groaned, her head ringing, as the warrior stood above her, lifting his arm up, the glowing plasma blade flickering to life. She knew, from her race memories, that it could only ‘flare’ on for a few seconds before needing to recycle and recharge. She rolled out of the way with a shove of her hand and the blade slammed into the floor behind her, then dragged upwards.

Molten, blobby metal flashed out in a wave, splashing onto her back and wringing a scream from her. She got her hands under her, but the Pro-Tass grabbed the back of her head and hauled her to her feet with a growling snarl. “ You cannot flee, hybrid! ”

“No, no, wait, I can explain!” Sarah yelped, her legs kicking.

She felt the nozzle of the projector plant against her back – heard the faint whirr as it began to refresh.

Belisarius, darting through the air like a thrown spear, crashed into the side of the Pro-Tass. His merely human body impacting into the hulking alien had the same impact as a very small, yappy dog hitting a horse.

It distracted him. Which was enough for Sarah to slash with a claw and force the alien to drop her onto the ground. The alien growled. “ She has already claimed your mind, ” he said, grabbing Belisarius by the throat. His plasma blade roared up and he lifted it, ready to thrust it through Belisarius’ head. “ I shall give you the peace you yern for, brave warrior. ”

“Don’t!” Sarah reached out, shoving.

Belisarius hit the floor, unharmed.

So did both of Sarah’s forearms.

They were less unharmed.

Smoke rose from the stumps of her arms, hissing and rising into the air. Sarah blinked a few times, not even registering pain. There was nothing in her brain but a kind of dull shock. She tried to wiggle her fingers, but her arms were on the floor, the fingers unmoving.

“Ow,” she said, meekly, as Belisarius and the Pro-Tass looked at her in mute shock.

“ You... ” The warrior looked at Belisarius, then looked back at Sarah. He lifted his hand up, again, as if he was about to threaten Belisarius. Sarah, who was still not feeling any pain, tried to spring into the way. Her arms spread wide, but her balance was all wrong. She flailed her stumps, tripped over the fragments of the table, then fell onto her ass on the floor as the warrior lowered his arm. “ You tried to save his life. ” He looked back at Belisarius. “ Are you controlled by the hybrid?”  he asked, still speaking his language.

“I don’t know what you are,” Belisarius said in English, walking around to stand between Sarah, who was still looking at her stumps in mild and growing alarm. “But-”

“ I’m...what are you playing at, hybrid?” The warrior growled.

“I...am not playing at anything!” Sarah snarled in English. She focused on her arms and, with a tiny wrench of power, began to grow new arms. They flowed out of her stumps like liquid, dripping and hissing as heat glowed from her body, the endothermic reaction of her enhanced metabolism combined with a fierce, ripping, chainsaw growl from her stomach. She was hungry . She needed meat. She grabbed onto her severed arm with her still half liquid new arm, then started to bite her own fingers off.

Belisarius and the alien watched, both of their faces clearly showing their mounting horror.

Sarah pushed the last bit into her mouth, chewed, swallowed, then burped. “Ah, that’s better.”

She paused.

“ Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! ”

She sprang to her feet, slamming her back against the wall. “I just ate my own fucking arm!”

The door would have burst inwards at that moment, as Tex and Aiden both came running in. Tex held a heavy bore revolver in his hand. Aiden held a chair. They both stopped short seeing the alien. “Whoa!” Aiden dropped the chair on the ground, scrambling backwards, while Tex snapped the revolver up, aiming it at the warrior. Sarah stepped between the two, throwing out her arms.

“Don’t shoot!” She said.

A long pause filled the air.

“Well, well, well!” Hailee’s voice cut into the conversation, coming from the PA. “Looks like we got ourselves a Mexican standoff. And we don’t have any Mexicans.”

“I’m part Brazilian,” Sarah said. “Also, no!” She grabbed onto the barrel of Tex’s revolver, shoving it down. When she released the gun, she saw she had accidentally crushed the composite barrel shut. “No shooting, no plasma swording, no chairing. No more anything. We’re going to sit down and we’re going to talk about what the fuck is going on like goddamn adults .” She turned to face the alien, then rattled the same speech off in his language.

“...you can speak alien?” Aiden asked.

“Yes,” Sarah said, then closed her eyes. “And he’s not just an alien. He’s a Pro-Tass.”

“The big one?” Aiden asked, clearly thinking of the galactic map she had shown them. The Pro-Tass had had the largest of the spheres of light, the spheres of habitation that the Claw had consumed. Sarah nodded, mutely, while the Pro-Tass warrior slowly held up his arm, vertically. He touched several controls on the back of his wrist and a glowing blue sphere popped out of the smooth, golden paneled bangle that served as his wrist brace. The sphere floated near his head, then spoke in clear, British accented English.

“I have learned your words,” the Pro-Tass warrior said. “By listening to your radio communications. Your entire race is in grave danger. The Eye has-”

“Yes, we know,” Sarah said. “I escaped from the Eye while it was converting me. I have all the race memories.”

“Oh...” the Pro-Tass was silent for a moment, his translation sphere orbiting slowly around him. “Well, then, you, specifically, are in peril. My race was consumed and devoured by the Eye and the Claw – but the destruction of a civilization the size of ours, even by a race as advanced and terrible as the Claw, takes many generations. There was time enough for us to desperately seek after technologies to save us. When our final world was falling, we discovered the secret of traveling faster than the speed of light. Since then, I have traveled the universe, seeking other races. I have...always been too late...” He shook his head. “But I have managed to, at least, salvage one grim victory. I have always been able to find the same secret laboratories, the same hidden places, and convinced the races facing their own extinction to destroy their notes, their technologies. To deny the Eye and the Claw the ability to travel the stars.”

Sarah stood perfectly still.

“Even now, a Claw fleet gathers in distant space. I have scouted them,” the warrior said, his voice grim. “They will seek to claim this world – to steal your technology. We cannot, we must not allow them to gain access to the secret of traveling faster than the speed of light. Or else...”

Sarah gulped.

“So...” she said, her voice very meek. She touched her pointer fingers, the half-regrown claws clicking quietly in the room as everyone turned to look at her. “Let’s say. Hypothetically. Uh...”

The sky above Wolf-359 B exploded with a million pinpricks of light. Plane shifts, crackling open. Even without augmented eyes, the stars began to go out – blotted out by the sight of an endless wave of bioships, ravening from the depths of space. The sky began to gain new lights – new flares. New sparks. The defense grid of the planet, opening fire on the biological attackers, lasing them. But even as hundreds, thousands of ships burst into the brilliant white spark of a laserfire death, hundreds of thousands more took their place. An air raid siren began to wail throughout the base.

Sarah’s smile was very weak.

“Oopse?” she asked.

***

As the Sarah Gang – now including the Pro-Tass and Belisarius – sprinted through the base, Sarah explained. “When I was being converted, the Eye went through my memories!”

“You know the secrets of faster than light travel!?” The Pro-Tass asked.

“Well, uh, most of us do!” Sarah said, sounding defensive. “It’s not a big secret or anything. It’s just hard to build, but the basic physics, we all know it.”

“You all know it!?” The Pro-Tass asked as they came out into the open courtyard that the Excalibur had landed before. The sky overhead was filled with traceries of laserfire and falling spore-bombs. They looked like huge eggs, trailing tentacles that twitched and wriggled behind them as they plunged downwards. The automated defenses targeted them first. Hails of flechettes and bursts of lasers and plasma projectiles slammed into them, and for now, none of them had reached the ground.

“Yeah!” Sarah shouted over the din, her hands clapped half over her ears as a red flare bloomed overhead – one of the bigger bioships, ripping apart as a trio of STS missiles plunged into its belly and ripped it from stem to stern. Floating overhead, in what passed for Wolf-359 B’s atmosphere, a million tons of organs and muscle tissue were beginning to deorbit. She continued to shout: “We invented the HPS Drive in the 22 nd  century to colonize other solar systems!”

“But why!?” The Pro-Tass asked. “Your world cannot possibly have been exhausted after only such a short time span.”

“Uhhhhhhhhhh!” Sarah said. “We...made stuff.”

“Mostly video game consoles and cars!” Hailee said, her voice coming through the translation orb – which made Sarah seriously start to reconsider the abilities of a beta-level intelligence.

“You what ?” the Pro-Tass asked.

“Discuss economics later!” Tex shouted. “Ship now!”

The Exaclibur welcomed them onboard with a faint chime and Sarah immediately started to give orders. The Spitters and the Bombardiers she had packed onboard began to surge off, as did the blobbies. She figured that the bladelings, though, might come in handy in case any of the Claw attackers tried to board. Once the ship was lightened, she sprang into the command throne and thrust her finger at Tex. “Punch it, Texas!” She said – excitement buzzing through her as the Excalibur’s engines roared to life and they flew upwards in a haze of AA fire. Missiles streaked past them and the white-hot flare of half a dozen nuclear weapons detonating above them made Sarah wince.

Belisarius, who had taken one of the consoles that Hailee had extruded for the rest of the crew, punched a few more buttons. “Focusing my nuclear capacities above us to punch us a hole.”

“Goodie, we’re flying through nuclear explosions!” Hailee said.

“Do we have FTL capacity?” Sarah asked.

“I fabricated the part the instant you started riding my dick,” Belisarius said. “It should have been delivered.”

“You what on what?” Tasha, who was clinging to the back of her chair.

“Nice,” Synth leaned forward for a fist bump.

“Install it, you two!” Sarah said, bumping her fist against Synth. Synth and Tasha hurried away, Aiden jogging after them – clearly planning to help as best as he could. Kellen and Sexy Napoleon had both taken consoles as well. Sexy was grinning, her fingers spreading across the chart as she tapped on a screen – and as Sarah watched, the forward screen switched to show a view of the ship, as if she was standing on the very base and could look down the two kilometer long sweep of the immense, sword shaped craft. The forward torpedo bays opened and Sexy Napoleon began to sing.

“Ah, the 1812 Overture!” Hailee said.

The music began to blare from the PA – loud and percussive and timed with the shuddering that rocked through the ship as the nuclear torpedoes launched upwards, arced outwards, then bifurcated from six rockets to two hundred and sixteen micro-warheads, each one stuffed with a miniaturized fusion bomb. The sky turned white and Napoleon cackled. “Boom boom boom boom!”

“You are absolutely insane,” Kellen whispered. “Gravitic shields to max!”

The front of the Excalibur flared with the gravitational flux of the hardened shields, and wriggling projectiles – each fired by a bioship – began to hammer into the shields. They stopped short, squashing and splattering into bloody glop that was whisked away from the ship by its movement through the upper atmosphere. Like a breaching whale from the old vids, the Excalibur bust from the clouds of nuclear fire and the hail of biological weaponry into a sky rich with writhing, squid-like ships. Most of them were quite a bit smaller than the Excalibur  and moved with darting, erratic patterns.

Sarah stood, then held out her hand.

“Fire!”

“Aye aye, Commander!” Sexy Napoleon plunged her fingers down, like a pianist.

Bulky, rectangular turrets emerged from the ship, transforming the flush, sleek hull into a jagged cityscape.

“I thought you said we had one antiproton beam,” Sarah whispered.

“You were pointing at one button at the time,” Tex said, dryly.

Every turret flared with blue-white light, lancing outwards and sweeping through space. Bioship after bioship combusted, ripping apart as trumpets blared from the PA. It was like a fireworks display crossed with the greatest rock concert that Sarah had ever seen and Sexy was cackling her head off, her hat cocked madly by her flailing as she plunged fingers down, alternating weapon fire, choosing targets with eye motions and spoken commands. “That one! That one! That one! That one!”

Tex, his hands on the controls, shoved the Excalibur forward – rising out of orbit, out of the massed pack of the fleet that thronged around them.

“Uh, guys!” Tasha’s voice came over the PA. “It’s gonna take us a bit to get the drive in!”

A flight of sleek, fast fighters swept overhead. They rained plasma projectiles onto the shields, which flared and strobed – but several of the projectiles got through, impacting into the armor of the Excalibur . The bright blue explosions hurt Sarah’s eyes and Hailee’s voice, cheerful as ever, said: “Hull at ninety eight percent! Shields at twenty five percent.”

“Right,” Sarah whispered. “Right right, right, uh, uh, uh, Hailee...shut the shields off and shunt as much power into the shield capacitors. I have an idea.”

The entire bridge crew gaped at her.

“Do it!” Sarah barked, her mind whirling. The idea had formed – and she realized it was the only hope they had. The bioships were beginning to move around, to come at them from each flank. They were drawing closer and closer – and the saw that the antiproton beams were slowing in their fire, Sexy biting her lip as she limited her rate. Sarah could see the red indicators on the firing console, showing where the turrets were beginning to overheat or run low on power. Sarah nodded to herself – her jaw tightening as Kellen shrugged.

“Adjusting shields,” he said.

“Full speed ahead. Where too, Commander?” Tex asked.

“Wolf-359,” Sarah said.

“...we’re in Wol-” Tex started.

“The frigging sun!” Sarah shouted, sitting back on the throne.

The Excalibur leaped forward, Sexy fingering a few buttons with a grin. Kill-Drones leaped from the sides of the ship, detaching their mass and jetting towards incoming bioships. They detonated themselves, like intelligent shotgun shells, and the shrapnel gutted ship after ship after ship. But there were so many. The entire, swarming fleet, flew forward – and they began to fire their projectiles. Wriggling, acid filled animals, gestated within the guts of the bioships, they slammed into the hull, piercing the armor plating with narwhal-like horns, then injected the gushing acid. Self defense and repair systems began to mobilize, directed by Hailee, and the bladelings began to scramble – not inside of the ship, but outside of it. Their claws clung to the hull and they began to spring out, to intercept the incoming projectiles with their own bodies.

Sarah smacked herself for being a fool.

She sent the order.

And the entire flank of the Claw armada was smashed into, almost at once, by her own fleet. Wingers, their wings glowing with gravitational energies, their mouths spitting out their own anti-ship formatted weaponry, started to swarm the bioships. For a few moments, a wild confusion filled space, the targeting indicators on her internal HUD writhing and whirling with green dots as her wingers and the ships and fighters of the Claw dueled with one another. But in the end, the Claw’s sheer numbers and their larger ships began to tell.

It still gave them just enough time.

The primary star of Wolf-359 swelled before them – impressing upon Sarah that just because a star was the smallest it could be before it ceased being counted as a stellar object, that didn’t mean it was actually small . The hull began to groan and pop and she saw several of her bladelings tumbling away, their bodies blackening. “Radiation flux beginning to approach critical levels,” Hailee said. “The crew now has mild cancer. Do you want to turn on shields?”

“I can cure cancer! Closer! Tex, start accelerating slower , let them get closer!”

“Closer?” Tex asked.

“I’m more worried about the cancer!” Kellen muttered.

The sun swelled. Larger and larger. The bioships showed no sign of fear – their hulls glistened hideously in the brilliant, ruby red light. It was like being chased by an armada of the damned. She swore she could see them opening fanged maws, their writhing tentacles flexing and flaring as they drew closer and closer and closer. Sarah’s heart hammered.

“The radiation flux has surpassed lethal limits,” Hailee sang out. “The crew’s organs will begin to liquefy in fifteen minutes. Oh, and the diarrhea will start way before that.”

Sexy Napleon looked green. Kellen’s eyes were closed. Sarah’s fingers dug into the armrests of her command throne. Her eyes were not on the hideous, burning sun – the surface looked as if it was covered in boils, the thick clouds of complex chemicals that could form in the nearly subfusion temperatures that swirled across it. A huge archway of roiling plasma flung itself into the air, the size of several planets, arcing before them like a temptingly close archway. It looked almost like they would soar right through it. Sarah ignored it. Her eyes were entirely on the massive blob of red in her minimap. The bioships were arrowing towards her – and the ship’s rear cameras showed their projectiles beginning to zip at the thrusters, burning up before they could touch it.

Sarah licked her lips.

Now .

Sarah stood. “Focus the shields down. Tex! Jump! Now! ”

Tex slapped the plane shift button.

In the guts of the ship, Tasha and Synth sprang away from the hypertropic plane shift drive they had just put together – yelping as the whirring rings began to whisk around, generating the hyperdimensional object that would rip space time a new one. Along the belly of the ship, the gravitational shields created a gravity flux – the same flux they used to rob incoming projectiles of their momentum. But Hailee had understood Sarah’s plan. Understood and prepared for it.

The shield suppressed all gravitational pressures on a chunk of Wolf-359’s surface the size of a small continent. It was a single, massive spray of energy, and it burned out every single emitter on the belly of the ship, melted half the power conduits, and only lasted a fragment of a second. In that needle thin stretch of time, the crushing weight of Wolf-359’s primary ceased to be.

A torrential wave of roiling stellar plasma at nearly three thousand kelvin burst from the star’s surface.

The Claw had basic flight or fight instincts, deeply coded into their bodies. Even those of them that had been twisted by the selective engineering and careful tweaking of the Eye into biological starships. Every single one of them stopped at once, backwinging on gravitational eddies. Black eyes widened in the guts of almost a hundred thousand ships. In a single voice, carried through the radio-frequencies of their stellar language, the entire Claw fleet spoke but three words.

“Oh fuck  me!”

The  Excalibur folded through space.

And the wave struck.

When the light had faded, there was not a single ship left in the solar system.

Back on Wolf-359 B, a message sent by a prudent Hailee, opened a valve in the guts of the antimatter depot.

Briefly, Wolf-359 was a binary star system.

Very briefly.