‘Where are the fleet?’ asked Ed, quickly sliding into the navigator’s seat and scanning the holomap above his head.
‘Various locations around the Aspro system and they seem – oh shit!’ muttered Pickyrd. ‘They’re attacking unarmed civilian ships and heading for Paradeisos.’
‘Bastards,’ snapped Ed, turning, scowling and pointing at the Klatt engineer. ‘You’ll be made to pay for this outrage,’ he added.
‘You and whose navy?’ the engineer sneered. ‘The GDA navy’s on the other side of the galaxy. You going to destroy a battle fleet with an unarmed shuttle?’
‘So, invading Earth was just a ruse then?’ said Pickyrd, not even bothering to look at the man.
‘Earth?’ questioned the engineer. ‘Where’s that? Paradeisos has always been our new home, once we’ve cooled it down a bit.’
Just at that moment one of the Klatt support ships and a destroyer in one of the outlying groups exploded. Ed noticed the look of surprise on the engineer’s face. Then their attention was caught by fire suddenly erupting from a hangar of a Klatt cruiser that had earlier lasered a civilian passenger liner in half. A secondary explosion blew the side out of the ship and it began corkscrewing, then colliding with and badly damaging two other ships in its echelon.
‘That’s Andy in one of the fighters,’ said Ed. ‘It has to be, that’s his signature move. The Gabriel must be here somewhere.’
He looked over at Cleo, who smiled and nodded.
‘Jump here and head on this course,’ she said, pointing at Pickyrd.
A green line appeared on the holomap, heading straight towards Paradeisos.
‘I’ve had a conversation with myself and the Gabriel will meet us there.’
‘Oh, so you’ve got one ship against two thousand,’ the engineer chuckled. His mirth gradually tailing off as over half the fleet instantaneously and bizarrely seemed to lose all power.
His smile vanished completely as hundreds of the attacking fleet began tumbling and spinning in the direction they were travelling in. Many, because of their close proximity to each other in their attack echelons, collided and ricocheted off each other, causing untold damage.
‘Ed, are you there?’ came Phil’s voice, echoing around the small cockpit.
‘Shit,’ said Ed, glancing up. ‘Am I glad to hear your voice. Is everyone else okay?’
‘We are.’
He heard Rayl shout in the background.
‘I’m here too,’ said Pol.
Ed jerked back in his seat. Although he recognised her voice and from just those three words he knew she was in a bit of an emotional state, somehow he discerned the voice was different in some way – softer, more feminine perhaps.
‘Hello, Pol,’ he said, adding a smile to his voice. ‘I’m so sorry, did you have to go through your rebirth alone?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Don’t you worry about that. We saw the news feeds; you had your own problems at the time.’
‘Hmm, you saw that?’ he mumbled, remembering his blood-soaked clothes. ‘Is Andy out in the mini-me?’
‘He is,’ said Phil. ‘With Bache in the other one.’
‘Oh – I thought they were personalised?’
‘They are – but you know Bache.’
Ten minutes later they met up with the Gabriel. Phil turned the vessel side-on away from the Klatt fleet and momentarily opened the starboard hangar door. Pickyrd, quite familiar with cloaking technology, took the shuttle straight inside. Ed still thought it gave the impression of entering another dimension.
‘Are you able to deal with him?’ said Ed, glancing over his shoulder at Cleo and jabbing his thumb at the Klatt engineer.
‘Don’t you worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll just kick him out the nearest airlock.’
The engineer’s eyes widened.
‘You can’t do that,’ he whined. ‘It’s against GDA regulations.’
‘You’re not GDA.’
‘But you said you are.’
Cleo looked at Ed with a quizzical expression.
‘Did I?’ she asked.
‘I don’t remember that,’ he said, shrugging. ‘And anyway, who’d notice in the middle of a battle?’
The engineer began wriggling again, his face white as a sheet.
‘You murdering bastards,’ the Klatt spluttered. ‘No wonder you’re always at war.’
‘Is that what they tell you?’ said Cleo. ‘The most bloodthirsty and aggressive race in the galaxy, who spend most of their time killing each other and on the cusp of committing genocide of an entire race, accuse us of being the warmongers!’
The shuttle clunked down on the hangar floor. Pickyrd shut everything down and opened both airlock doors. As Ed stood to follow Pickyrd out of the ship, he stopped and glanced back.
‘Stick him to the hangar wall or something, Cleo,’ he said. ‘Perhaps play him the history of the GDA video or something.’
‘He’ll just think it’s propaganda,’ said Pickyrd.
Ed smiled and turned back, immediately stopping in his tracks as a tall leggy brunette sprinted past Pickyrd and slammed into him, hugging him so tightly he could hardly breathe.
Pickyrd stared and tilted his head to one side, a slightly bemused expression on his face.
‘Do your crew always greet you like this?’ he asked. ‘If so, then I’ve been doing it wrong all these years.’
‘We really thought you were dead,’ she squeaked.
Ed, who’d been a little confused for a moment, suddenly cottoned on.
‘Pol, is that you?’ he said, pulling back and trying to get a look at her. He could also see the confusion on Pickyrd’s face, at why he wasn’t recognising a member of his own crew. ‘You look amazing,’ he managed to get out before Rayl called from the bridge.
‘If you two have quite finished, we do have a war on up here,’ she said, a little cantankerously.
‘Sorry,’ said Ed, raising his palm in the air, as Pol wiped tears from her eyes and, holding his hand, began leading him past a damaged military ship and towards the hangar door.
The three of them arrived on the crowded bridge to find a very busy holomap. Pol reluctantly released Ed’s hand and slid into her couch. Both Rayl and Phil opened their eyes just long enough to nod at Ed and then resume their stations. He got a scowl from Groxl and a smile from Xutan, the others sitting around the back wall he didn’t recognise, but he presumed, as they were wearing military uniforms, they were from the damaged ship down in the hangar.
‘Good to see you’re safe,’ said Xutan.
‘Likewise,’ said Ed, slipping into his couch and assessing the state of play around Paradeisos. ‘Why are all those Klatt ships dead but seemingly undamaged?’ he asked.
‘That’s my doing,’ said Cleo, her voice echoing around the bridge. ‘I blew them up a little bit.’
‘Riiight,’ he said slowly, realising she wasn’t kidding. ‘And where’s that big blue bastard?’
‘Here,’ said Rayl, as a cluster of ships telescoped up into focus. ‘They’re protecting it well; it loses its shields when it fires that climate-changing thing. The boys are trying to get us a shot at it just before it fires.’
‘You’re relying on one shot?’
‘There’s only three of us against hundreds,’ she said, opening her eyes again and nodding at Pickyrd. ‘Unless the Captain here can call in his cruiser in the next few minutes, it’s all we’ve got.’
‘Oh shit,’ said Phil, carefully manoeuvring the Gabriel though a clutch of dead tumbling and spinning vessels. ‘The octaship’s turning around.’
‘I thought it had to be in orbit before it fired,’ said Pol. ‘Perhaps not.’
As she spoke, hundreds of fighters began pouring out of the hangars dotted down the length of each of the huge ship’s eight sides.
‘Oh bollocks,’ said Rayl. ‘More bloody ships – that’s just all we need!’
Ed looked at the planet for a moment.
‘Has anyone tried to contact the planet?’ he asked, turning to scan the faces in the room.
A bunch of blank faces was his reply. As his gaze lingered on Pol for a second, she smiled across at him and his heart missed a beat.
‘Those fighters are surrounding the octaship,’ shouted Phil, snapping Ed back to reality.
‘Pol,’ he said. ‘Can you open a channel to the surface, calling either President Klai or Prota? Bounce the signal around a bit to disguise the source.’
A few moments later a blurred hologram appeared in the centre of the bridge. A white-bearded man in a grey robe stood phasing in and out of focus.
‘Edward…that you? …the hell…going on...? Why…attacked? …are they?’
‘Prota, it’s the Klatt and they want your planet. Get the cities’ defensive domes back up and defend with everything you have. Do not let them get a foothold on the surface.’
‘Domes…coming…line. Not able…life…kill.’
Ed glanced at Phil and raised his eyebrows.
‘I think he’s saying the domes are coming online but an Exy Theo can’t condone any killing,’ Phil said, grimacing.
‘Does he not realise…?’
‘Naturally born Theos can fight back,’ said Rayl, interrupting Ed.
‘Is Klai there?’ Ed called.
‘President…underground…days.’
‘The fighters have joined all their shields together,’ said Pol. ‘They’re replacing the big ship’s shielding. It must be about to fire.’
‘We can’t let this happen,’ shrieked Phil. ‘It’ll put the planet into an ice age for thousands of years.’
Ed suddenly sat up straighter on his couch.
‘Jump us between the ship and the planet, then maximise the shields between us,’ he said. ‘Hurry.’
As Phil got busy tapping icons, everyone else on the bridge stared at Ed.
‘Can this ship’s shields take that beam?’ said Xutan, asking the question everyone was thinking.
‘Can anyone think of anything else?’ Ed replied, as the Gabriel jumped in ten kilometres directly behind the octaship.
Everyone in the room knew from that reply what that meant and sat back against their seats. Zero gravity handles popped out of the walls, floor and ceiling, which did nothing to allay people’s fears.
‘Good luck, everyone,’ said Ed, as the octaship’s shields dropped and it began glowing from within.
The eight pure-white flames of light flashed out of the octaship’s arms, hitting the lenses at the rear of the ship. The beams arrowed out behind the ship and inwards, colliding and becoming one huge purple-tinged column of light, plunging towards the surface. That was the last thing anyone on the Gabriel witnessed. They were immediately blinded, felt the ship shudder beneath them, and a cacophony of alarms shrieked their displeasure before everything went black.