Chapter Nineteen
No Survivors
“Salanicus I need you to……”
“Already on it!” I said cutting Ellanara off, as I took over control of both the shield and weapons platforms, while she focused on getting extra power out of the ship in order to get us away from the arena of battle that we were suddenly ill-prepared to face. There had to be over thirty Orlandian war cruisers on our tail.
There had been no indication of so many of the enemy’s fleet so close to us. We were making headway, but only just.
“Engaging particle cloud!” Ellanara called out.
Enemy ships were still on our tail just out of weapons range. Where had the enemy ships come from and how were they moving so fast? It was only Ellanara’s extra effort that was pulling us slightly clear of them.
The answer to the clever ruse played on us by the Orlandians was there before me, but I didn’t want to recognize the bitter truth of it. The Orlandian’s had secretly made a technological breakthrough, which likely meant that they could reach the Haven Worlds for themselves now. All they needed was the destination.
“Salanicus!”
I looked up and followed Ellanara’s gaze out the forward portals to where the blue snapping haze of the bar-Trinity’s light gate glistened only to see it was surrounded by watery red hazes. The Orlandian’s were going to follow us. It was apparent that our chances of escape were diminishing.
How had they hidden such a technological breakthrough from me? It didn’t matter I had failed my people.
The bar-Trinity zoomed into the gate only to be followed moments later by the enemy ships in hot pursuit of us. They were locked on our signature and there was going to be no losing them. I left my station and found a chair and I crumbled down into it letting my head fall forward into my hands. We could not out run the enemy and we could not fight off so many. What could we do?
I felt cool hands pull at mine and I let my gaze find Ellanara’s who had come to stand before me. Her beautiful eyes were sympathetic, but somehow upbeat, which I didn’t understand at a moment like this.
I lamented aloud, “All of my people! All of them! I’ve lost them! I’ve grouped them altogether so that they can be all lost at once and save the Orlandian’s the inconvenience of having to hunt them down! I’ve failed!” I closed my eyes, but opened them at her words.
“No you haven’t. Come look.” She said reassuringly, as she grasped my hands and placed them against her head and held them there.
“See everything that I have my husband.”
She was opening her thoughts to me! The ones that she had fought so hard, even to her own peril to keep from me. My breath left me, as I scanned through her secrets, which were all laid open before me. I refocused on her and she smiled and then moved her head to kiss the palms of both of my hands.
“You know of such a place my husband? A place of abundant free particle energy?”
“Yes!” I said, as a place my father had told me of came to mind.
“Then show me and we will save your people together.”
She started to leave, but I caught a hold of her hand with the ring on it and I brought it to my lips as I corrected her, “Save our people.”
She gave me one of those smiles, which I spent a moment taking in the beauty of before rising and putting the coordinates to the spot I had remembered into the ship’s trajectory control.
It took two days to reach the nebula cloud. We dropped out of light particle wavelength travel directly into the pinkish hued nebula full of free energy and waited. Then like an unwelcome occurrence of mosquitoes on a calm summer evening one by one the enemy ships dropped out of the light wave travel and took up position around the bar-Trinity. The bar-Trinity was surrounded.
Abby glanced up from her screen, “They appear to be waiting for something. I’m detecting a communication signal.”
“Bring it up Abby.” Ellanara responded calmly.
A much painted and bedecked visage appeared on a screen and began blathering out a message, “If you wish to survive you must surrender your ship to our superior forces at once. You have no hope of escape. We……”
Ellanara and I exchanged a look and a thought.
Ellanara said, “Abby target the ship that the communication is coming from with everything we’ve got and fire when ready.”
The individual’s face on the screen briefly registered a surprised shock, as the bar-Trinity let loose with its full arsenal, in a perfectly timed deadly salvo of raw power. The Orlandian cruiser disintegrated into a fireball, as the waves of power bolts coursed through it.
“Initiate Trinity action.” Ellanara intoned. “Everyone to your stations. Damage control prepare for maximum damage.”
There was a slight grinding of metal with a corresponding hard bump, as both v-wings dislocated from the main fuselage and drifted outward from the main hull under their own power. Reaching a set distance from the main hull they both began to spin incredibly fast spewing out a green color swirl from there equally fast spinning turbines. The two wings spun in orbit around the main hall picking up more speed with each orbit.
“Geocentric orbit achieved. Light stream shield at forty percent and rising.” Abby intoned softly from the background.
“Commence automatic target firing selection at will, when the light stream shield reaches sixty percent. Prepare for neutron alignment with source beacon array.” Ellanara said more to let everyone know what was happening than really needing to state what she and Abby were up to.
I couldn’t get over how beautiful and poised she looked standing there completely in control of the situation. She was comfortably within her element like no other woman I had ever known, except for perhaps my mother. I noticed Nara standing in the background smiling at me benevolently, as if she was reading my mind. Maybe she was I didn’t care.
I was completely smitten with the girl that stood so commandingly before me that I had the privilege of calling wife. I loved everything there was about her and somewhat startled I realized that I loved her. Ellanara glanced my way with a smile and a sparkle in her blue eyes. Apparently everyone was reading my mind.
Ellanara gestured with a hand for me to come near and I did. As I drew near to her she pressed back against me and I became appreciably aware of her as a woman too. I felt her smile more than I saw it and not for the first time I realized how completely this special woman had me wrapped around her finger, ever since the day at the village, when she had given herself to me.
Ellanara brought my hand up to rest on a yellow flashing command key on the table before her. I knew what would happen if I engaged the yellow flashing key. I would bring her people back to my galaxy.
“Our people dear.” I heard her soft correcting thought in my head and I acknowledged it, “Yes, our people.” I pushed the key.
The enemy ships had begun a barrage upon the destruction of one of their own, but there weapon blasts were having little effect at all despite their numbers. Their barrage of energy bolts slammed into and shattered against the fast-moving maelstrom of color particle streaks left off by the faster than the eye could see spinning v-wing orbiting electrons, which were hammering away in bright arcing bolts of deadly power. Every enemy ship fell victim to the spraying firepower of the bar-Trinity’s twin spinning v-wings
At the pressing of my hand on the control key the main body of the bar-Trinity realigned in space and then its turbine began to spew sheeting out its characteristic golden color. The pinkish atmosphere of the charged nebula cloud began to be sucked into the fast spinning turbine and with that connection of limitless energy made a gigantic yellow particle beam shot out from the rear of the ship into space.
On its way out into the galaxy the particle beam passed through an enemy cruiser and completely shattered it into nothingness.
The giant supercharged particle beam sped out over the galaxies at an incredible rate fueled by the power of a failed star.
Ellanara leaned back trustingly against me, as the battle enfolded. The bar-Trinity shuddered slightly from the impact of an enemy weapon fire blast that managed to slip through the color stream shield.
“Now we wait and pray everything goes right.” Ellanara said squeezing my hands firmly.
I held her loving the comfort of her presence in my arms and mind. How long would it take for them to come?
Abby’s voice broke into my thoughts, “Long-range scanners have picked up on a lot of ship signatures. It looks like they’re sending everything.”
Of course they were the greedy vengeful little rats! They wanted to crack this color stream shield to learn all the secrets that the woman in my arms held, how I prayed that would never happen.
The particle beam coursed through the galaxy and into another, as it traced the earlier route of the bar-Trinity’s exodus. Through the atmosphere of the Vallians former homeworld it burned only to send up a great column the sizzling steam, as it plunged into the watery depths of the Sassian Ocean just off the coastline of Assoria.
For a while nothing happened, as the coursing yellow beam plowed endlessly into the distant seafloor below, but then the surface of gently white capping ocean began to stir and then boil with action, as five great works of metallic glory eased up out of the foamy froth of their former ocean home.
Like colossal titans they eased clear of the ocean blue and assembled in a staggered formation of varying heights around the central beam and then as one they moved into the beam, which coursed around their hulls in an unbroken flow of current. Stacked up on top of each other they were stationary for only a short moment before all five rocketed skyward in unison the beam dissipating behind the last ship.
I held onto the console with one hand, as I steadied Ellanara with the other hand, as the ship around us shuddered violently. The main hull of the bar-Trinity was beginning to take a lot more direct hits.
Abby’s voice was worried as she informed, “V-wing one has suffered heavy damage and is falling out of geocentric orbit. The color stream shield is down to thirty percent coverage efficiency. Permission to divert power from the particle generator to primary flex shield?”
“No!” Was all Ellanara said, but I could feel her shaking against me.
A couple more direct hits like that and the main part of the bar-Trinity would break apart into so many pieces. A full fleet of seventy-one ships had been hammering away at the bar-Trinity for the better part of half a day.
The enemy fleet outside was merciless in their bombardment of us and I began to doubt that they did want Ellanara’s secrets after all, not to mention claiming the rings and the relic of Perth. The bar-Trinity shuddered violently again and most of those standing were knocked to the floor.
“V-wing two has been destroyed, we are bare to the enemy’s strikes. We must send power to the shields!” Abby’s voice insisted.
“No, besides the shield wouldn’t last long anyway. If we are to die so be it then!” Ellanara said savagely, but I could tell that she was at her strength’s end.
“They’ve stopped firing on us. Prepare to defend the ship against borders.” I said calmly.
Loric and the rest of the men headed off into the ship. Ellanara turned in my arms and pushed her head against my chest for a moment and then looked up at me, as tears tracked down her face.
“How are you still so calm?” She whispered out.
I leaned down to her and kissed her. Drawing back I looked deeply into her eyes and said, “I have to believe that knowing what I do of my God that he wouldn’t lead me so far only to forsake me in my hour of greatest need.”
She nodded slightly and let her head fall forward to rest against my chest.
The smaller Orlandian cruisers closed in to finish off the kill. One latched onto the drifting wreckage of v-wing one, as the others closed in on the main hull of the bar-Trinity. As they approached they suddenly burst into flame and debris, as monolithic creations of elemental design shot through them completely unscathed by the fiery carnage they wrecked behind them.
What cruisers that didn’t fall prey to the juggernauts approach soon dissolved in the concentrated bursts of hellish fury that emanated from the great beasts, as they took a protective formation around the injured bar-Trinity. The last survivors of the Vallians had arrived with a vengeance.
The screens came alive within the control room as the five newcomers to the fight checked in. Ellanara dashed away her tears, as she regained control of her console. The others rushed back from the main body of the ship no longer needed there to repel boarders.
“Captain Nadalarkin of the bar-Tannin reporting.”
“Captain Roth of the bar-Thunder reporting.”
“Captain Zalok of the bar-Seth II reporting.”
“Captain Tega of the bar-Leviathan reporting.”
The last screen flashed up and revealed a handsome older man who was smiling, “Hello little sister. It looks like you ran into some trouble. The bar-Kregridor is ready to assist.”
Ellanara smiled back warmly in reply, “Can you make my troubles go away Zevin?”
“Indeed I can. All ships commence firing!” Zevin said commandingly.
The five great ships hadn’t been built for speed or any talent maneuverability show. They had a simpler purpose, which was to survive. To survive often meant the use of extreme firepower, of which they had no lack of. Multiple primary beam weapons per ships shot off simultaneously, only to moments later rip through the enemy’s largest consorts with comparable ease, as smaller armaments took aim and fired on everything that was an enemy ship under power.
The stunned Orlandian fleet had no time to think, as they tried to react to the sudden incursion of the strangers that were taking them out left and right. Ten minutes into the fight it was a rout, as the surviving smaller class ships tried to escape the arena of war they had but mastered completely not fifteen minutes before.
As the red hazy escape gates of the routing smaller class ships lit up all five Vallian ships ceased fire and together they pulsed brightly with color in unison. A shockwave of streaming color radiated out from them and overwhelmed the shields of the smaller Orlandian vessels in an instant, which exposed the crew of the smaller ships immediately to the harmful atmosphere of space. The escaping Orlandian cruisers came to a halt, as their crews suffocated or died from harmful radioactive exposure.
The nebula field was strewn with the wreckage of the mightiest ships the Orlandian’s had been able to muster. This time it had been the Orlandian’s that had been drawn and baited into a trap of devastating magnitude.
Zevin came back onto the screen, “Where to now Ellanara?”
She grasped my hand tightly and said, “To pick up the rest of our people. I’ll relay the coordinates over to you.”
“You’re a little banged up more than I think you know sister. We’ll come to you. You can ride with us.”
The bar-Kregridor rose massively up beside the injured bar-Trinity and attached grappling hooks that began to pull the smaller ship into the opening hangar bay of the bar-Kregridor.
The five great ships represented the work of generations of effort. Under Zevin’s commanding leadership the vast underground chamber of the tannin had been converted into a giant shipyard and aided by Ellanara’s wisdom through a direct feed from Thunder Ridge the great project had begun.
It had taken over two hundred years to complete the five ships that now housed over three hundred thousand people. Most of them were native born Assorians, but there were also the descendants of many survivors from all over the larger continent that had fled to Assoria that made up the complement of human cargo. Together as one people they had worked hard in the depths of Lanoria to make this day possible. The day that they seized back their freedom for forever.