Chapter 2

Lambert kept the alien ship just inside their sensor range, not really sure if they were within their range of detection. It didn’t appear so, since it had not changed course much aside from avoiding a few stray asteroids, though he kept a close watch on its huge weapons all the same.

The screen on his left displayed the camera tracking the alien craft as they pursued, the pink of the nebula contrasting against its silver and orange hull. The filter was grainy at this level of zoom, but Carl’s description of the ship had been accurate. The thing looked a bit like a stingray from Earth’s oceans, with the curved ‘mouth’, the fins on the sides, and the huge tails on the back.

It was bulbous rather than sleek, and Lambert watched the engines on its back and belly light up as it simulated banking motions as it navigated the nebula. They seemed to do nothing more than use up fuel, which surprised Lambert. He’d burned through a good portion of fuel when that laser warning had shown up earlier, and this alien ship seemed woefully inefficient by design. Maybe the aliens just missed gravity and wanted to bring a piece of it into space. He remembered how long it took him to get used to flying in zero-g compared to atmosphere.

But despite its lacklustre efficiency, the ship was surrounded by that ovaloid arrangement of polygons, a wavering forcefield like those out of old sci-fi movies. It appeared as if it was surrounded by a glittering, transparent disco ball, each pane sparkling as they angled and morphed. He wondered if the ship could fire through the shield, or if it even was a shield, or some other strange technology beyond his comprehension.

He could make out the cockpit canopy, at least what he thought was the canopy, situated high and to the front of the ship between the frontal horns. It was wide and tall, a bump in the silver hull wide enough for two pilots to see through, much larger than his own canopy.

“It is an unusual vessel,” Alice said, as if reading Lambert’s thoughts. “what do you make of it, sir?”

It only ever called Lambert sir, so he knew it was talking to him. “It’s not human, that’s for sure. Looks like a ... a bird mixed with a fish.”

“Perhaps the builders reflected this design off one of their native creatures,” Alice mused. “Just as humans do. I wonder what ecosystem they come from.”

“Are there any photos or videos of Suvelian ships on record?” he asked. “I know what Suvelians look like, but not their tech.”

“Scanning. Negative, sir. There was only a handful of instances where humans and Suvelians met, and all such occurrences have been sealed and deleted by the UEC.”

“Another coverup, why am I not surprised?” Lambert studied the alien ship, the grainy feed and the shiny shield making the view fuzzy. “I heard the Suvelians were a lot more advanced than we are, but that thing looks like its chugging down fuel. And if they’re not a fan of humans, why come this close to our space?”

“I would shrug if I had the shoulders to do so,” Alice informed him.

The alien ship vectored off, Lambert adjusting course with it.

For half an hour more they followed, keeping it as far away as possible without losing it altogether. At one point it banked off to the side, the engines on its top and bottom swivelling round to counter their inertia and bring it to a halt.

“It’s stopped,” Lambert said, flipping the corvette and likewise lowering their momentum. An asteroid passed between the great distance of the two ships, obscuring their vision for a moment before the view cleared.

“Maybe they’ve seen us?” Carl mused, but before he finished speaking the alien ship moved again, much slower now as it crawled through a curtain of gas creating an expansive wall to their Galactic north, the cloud swallowing it up as they pushed into the obscuring gas.

“Target lost,” Alice reported.

“How did they not get vaporized in all that?” Carl asked. “That shield must be protecting them,” Lambert said. “Look, they’ve left a hole behind them.”

As if a great drill had been taken to the cloud, a gap appeared where the alien ship had disappeared, the gas probably washing out of the shield’s way like liquid.

“We’ll go around,” Lambert said. “Just to be safe.”

The wall of gas stretched infinitely to the left and right, concave like the inside of a bowl, but came to a stop a couple kilometers up, like a giant cliff of grey air. Lambert set a course parallel to the gas, making a loop once they neared the top. The tactical view was going nuts, one entire half of the sphere flickering as the nearby energy overloaded their systems.

The minutes stretched on, and then Lambert made a turn, travelling over the gaseous curtain. Lambert’s eyes widened as he saw a spinning rock twirling its way passed them, proximity warnings lighting up his face as his screens flashed exclamation marks at him.

It wasn’t on a collision course, but Lambert held in a breath all the same as he maneuvered for more breathing room, memories of his first days piloting a spaceship coming to mind.

“One and a half kilometer gap, Cap, new record,” Carl said. “Was that why they nicknamed you Grazer back in the day?”

“Shut it,” he said, a camera on the flank of the ship letting him know the rock was safely behind them. He turned his attention back to the canopy, waiting for his systems to reinitialise.

He spotted the alien ship a couple dozen kilometers out, but this time, it wasn’t alone.

It was on course to intercept a ship of immense size, big enough to see through the canopy without the use of his cameras. It was shaped a little like the letter U, the frontal section branching off into two longer modules, leaving a large empty space between. It was taller than it was wider, with fish-like fins sprouting out of the sides. Pockets of antennae poked out of the roof, some of their tips flashing in random colours. Like the first alien ship, it was decorated in orange highlights, arranged like windows all throughout the silvery hull.

From the two ends trailed long, thin engines that were currently burning, coursing the ship off to the left.

There were two other, identical ships trailing behind it, one flipped over horizontally to expose its smooth belly. The cameras let Lambert see over the hundreds of kilometers like he was right there, zooming in on the angled ship. From inside the empty space between the ship branches, a smaller craft curved out from behind the hull. It was thin and sleek, with as small a radar cross-section as possible, sacrificing armour to make it as small a target as possible. Fins arranged in a tricorn sprouted out from the sides of the main engine, stretching like a limb from the rear, the vector nozzle contracting around a wide plume of orange flame.

The pilot’s canopy sat all the way at the front, giving it an excellent view as it flipped on its y-axis, and fired a stream of yellow rounds from the autocannon mounted on its bow while it moved away. Hundreds of tracer-rounds found their mark across the giant alien ship, ripping up panels and armour as the high-explosive rounds drew a line across the hull.

It was a Raptor-class fighter, and unlike the alien ships, this one Lambert recognised. It was a United Earth Confederate strike craft, its prowess on full display as it flipped again, vector nozzles puffing gas as it put distance between itself and the alien ship.

“UEC fighters!?” Carl said, half in surprise and half in question. “This nebula is gettin’ more packed by the minute.”

“It’s not alone,” Alice added. “detecting five more Raptors in vector 287, plus one corvette signature.”

Lambert adjusted one of the cameras mounted on the front, and zoomed in on a group of human ships, painted the standard black of the UEC navy. Five more Raptors were flying in a phalanx formation, along with a corvette at their rear. Since Lambert’s own corvette was originally a captured UEC ship, the two corvettes were of similar design, except the Hub painted their ships with a few dark blue stripes to help identify friendlies.

As he watched, the squad of UEC fighters broke off, moving down to assist the forward Raptor. The group fanned out into a wide formation, turning their starboard sides towards the alien ships as they began to circle.

“That big ship’s lookin’ hurt,” Carl said, noting how it appeared to be listing to the side. Perhaps the strafing run had hit a stabilizer. “Check it out, our friends are movin’ in.”

The alien scout ship they’d followed was joined by about eight more of its like, each ship wrapped in similar, protective shields that glinted in the light as they moved towards the group of human fighters. The twin cannons on their bellies lifted out from their cavity housings, rotating on gimbals as they tracked the human craft. The aliens fell into some sort of arrowhead formation, engines lighting up as they increased to high speeds.

Rather than intercept, the Raptors hung back, autocannons opening up on the approaching group of vessels, huge tracer lines connecting the two forces. At last Lambert got to see the alien shields in action. When the bullets met the barriers after a brief delay, the shield panels flared a bright white, the bullets bouncing off the transparent panels to sail off into space in all directions, the number of ricochet’s numbering in the hundreds. Lambert worried about indirect fire as the bullet-streams quadrupled when they met the shields.

The Raptors emptied at least a quarter of their ammo loads before the alien ships reacted. They seemed slow and sluggish under all that firepower, weathering it for at least a minute until their weapons finally activated as the alien group closed in to within a few dozen kilometers, a dangerously close range.

The long, twin barrels of the alien guns flexed in unison as the strange ships seemed to come within weapons range, banking away and tilting so their guns had as much field of view as possible. The bottom half of their shields flicked off like lightbulbs, and bright lines of light lanced forth from the muzzles, the barrels rocking back into their houses in synchronicity.

“Frickin’ laser beams?!” Carl exclaimed.

Lambert had to cover his eyes from the sudden glare, seeing on the camera feed over a dozen beams of golden light streak across the void, bridging the distance between the two groups. One of the human fighters exploded in a shroud of gas and metal, pieces of the fighter twirling away into the void as the beam cut it to pieces.

Another raptor suffered major damage, a laser splitting it right down the middle, the cockpit flying one way, the engine another. The remaining Raptors broke off, pivoting to throw off the aliens aim.

The beams continued on into the void beyond, but the line of energy lost its intensity the further down the length Lambert looked, the beam fading until it was no longer visible.

With the shields deactivated, the humans could do some damage of their own. Despite being larger, the alien ships fared poorly against such bracketing fire. One by one the alien ships were cut to pieces, HE rounds churning up their hulls and blowing apart huge sections, flames and soot pluming into the void briefly before evaporating in the vacuum. Before the alien ships turned their shields back online, their laser beams shutting off, at least half of them were drifting about in pieces, Lambert watching the surviving vessels bank out of the line of fire.

“Those guys are gettin’ shredded,” Carl said. “They’re just chargin’ in all gun-hoe.”

“Missile warning from the corvette,” Alice announced. “they’re firing on that carrier-class ship!”

Lambert didn’t track his camera to see the launch, but he did spot a speck of white trailing through the backdrop of the main skirmish, leaving a white contrail in its wake as it streaked towards the damaged alien carrier. Despite its size, the huge ship appeared to have no point-defence of any kind, none of its sister ships even providing basic support to their fighters, opting to flee from the fight.

The missile closed to five kilometers, three, one, and then impacted the side of the carrier with a giant blast of fire that quickly evaporated. Like something had taken a bite out of it, a gaping hole had torn apart the aft section of one of the branching sections, its flaming decks open to space, ruined chunks of alloy blooming out from the point of impact.

“We have to help them,” Lambert said. “those ships don’t look armed, that corvette will tear them to pieces.”

“The nebula is covering our signature so far,” Alice said. “but if we engage, the chances of us being attacked by both sides is almost certain.”

“We’ll stay at maximum range,” Lambert said, bringing up his tactical map. “Carl, you said you wanted some action. All power to weapon systems, get us a lock on that corvette.”

“Aye-aye, Cap,” Carl replied. “Spinnin’ up the guns.” One of Lambert’s readouts let him know the thirty-millimeter cannons were spooling, the rotary cannons warming up as they swivelled to track the closest UEC targets.

“Keep all locks off the alien ships, I don’t want to antagonize them in case they can’t tell we’re not on these guys’ side.”

Gripping the control sticks hard, Lambert banked off, keeping well away from the battle as they circled over towards the enemy corvette. It seemed they had gone unnoticed by all sides so far, and he wanted to take advantage of that.

As they repositioned, the UEC Raptors fell back into a screen formation, speeding away from the alien attack-group while their guns kept firing. The UEC appeared much more organized, as if they knew they could outrange the alien weapons, baiting the aliens away from their larger ships so the corvette could fire unimpeded.

“Havin’ trouble lockin’ on with all this interference,” Carl reported. “Cap get us in behind its engine.”

The missile would have an easier time tracking if the heat of the engine was in view, Lambert adjusting their heading and increasing their speed. The alien ships kept their shields online as they tried to close the distance to the Raptors – the move akin to a cavalry charge of old.

After a long, tense minute, they were’ behind’ the UEC corvette, its twin engine nozzles half-closed as it moved at low speed. They were generating enough heat, however, Carl speaking over a distinct locking ping when he voxed through the crew channel.

“Got it,” he said. “Missile away!”

From the belly of their corvette, one of the missiles detached from its rack, flying forward a hundred meters in an instant before it turned forty degrees to the left, the engine on its rear flaring to life, the tracking ball on its nose swiveling to lock the UEC corvette.

The missile had a flight time of nine seconds, travelling across the expansive void until it was but a distant speck. Lambert watched on his tactical map as the missile’s signature closed the distance, Lambert waiting for the corvette to activate its point-defence.

It never did. The missile smashed into the main engines, its blip on the map disappearing along with the corvette’s IFF tag. He looked at the camera feed tracking the Confederate ship, seeing the vessel vanish in a great bloom of white, the explosion almost peaceful in the silence of the vacuum.

When the flash cleared, half of the ship had been disintegrated, the intact pilot’s canopy twirling away into the nearest blanket of gas at hundreds of kilometers per second, the nebula gobbling the pieces up.

“Kill confirmed,” Carl reported, his voice a little distorted through the channel.

“They know we’re here,” Alice said. “Two Raptors breaking off and heading towards our position.”

Lambert switched to the battle feed, seeing two of the human fighters bank from the fight, and move their way. Behind them, the remaining pair of fighters continued to hammer the alien shields, which had come down while Carl had targeted the corvette, exposing their vulnerable hulls. The alien ships twisted and turned, pulling high-g maneuvers, their laser barrels remaining paradoxically level even as they flipped and changed angles.

“Going to burn,” Lambert said, pressing the control sticks all the way forward. With no air resistance, the corvette gained speed rapidly, a knot in Lambert’s stomach growing as he watched the speed indicator rise.

“They’re opening up,” Alice reported. Lambert glanced at the camera feed, seeing that the Raptors were sending yellow streams of rounds their way.

He turned the thrusters off, flipped the corvette on its x-axis, then turned them back on, speeding violently out of the line of fire. The twin trails passed through where they would have been a second later, the Raptors changing course as their guns realigned to track their new heading.

“Returnin’ fire!” Carl yelled. The corvette’s cannons rotated in their housings, targeting computers calculating the required lead. After spooling for a moment, they opened up with their own volleys, each spewing forth a thousand rounds per minute as they filled the void with ordinance.

The streams of tracers met at around the midpoint between the ships, each trail curving as the turrets readjusted and the ships set new headings. Lambert had no time to see whether they scored any hits, keeping an eye on their overloading readout as he set a new heading, their speed rising. Each time he made a new turn in direction, the cannons had to pause as they corrected their aim, sometimes idling as the Raptors left their field of fire.

Proximity warnings on the incoming rounds bathed his face in a red light, Lambert grimacing as he upped their speed again. The Raptors were getting closer, and thus he had to change vectors more frequently, pins and needles shooting up his arms as they continued to twist and turn. Breathing through his mouth was hard, but through his nose was worse, the ship around him beginning to tremble.

Six g’s, seven. Lambert could almost see the fine line between death by collision and death by bullets. Eight g’s. The Raptors didn’t let up, forcing Lambert to change vector again and again before they cut their corvette out of the void.

He could hear Carl trying not to puke over the channel. The alien ships were long forgotten, the Raptors all they cared about now. The edges of Lambert’s vision began to darken as they bordered on nine g’s. His implants helped keep Lambert from blacking out, but it was his comrade’s voice keeping him conscious as Carl growled through the channel: “Target destroyed!”

One of the Raptor tags had disappeared, a hail of fire from the top PDC cutting it from bow to stern with a lucky volley. The ruined fighter spun away, the pilot still trying to shoot them down regardless, but its targeting gimbal must have jammed, the tracer rounds spinning wildly as the ruined fighter twirled away into the clouds of gas.

Both their PDC’s focused on the remaining fighter, which had turned to flee after its wingman perished. The void around it became choked with streaks of bullets, Lambert plotting a box-shaped course to turn them around and get on their tail, angling back to keep the fighter in range. Now the chase was in reverse. It took several seconds for their bursts of fire to reach the Raptor, the steams crisscrossing to give the fighter less room to escape.

“Fuel thirty percent,” Alice said, its voice calm even as

Lambert’s body felt like it was being crushed beneath the weight of an elephant. With all the high-g turns they were pulling and bottoming out their speed, they’d burned through more fuel in the fight than they’d used to even get here.

The Raptor continued to shoot even as it fled, Lambert growling as his vision began to darken when he pivoted out of the firing line.

They were closing in on the fighter now, the Confederate pilot unwilling to go to higher speeds, and that meant both ships would have an easier time hitting the other with less leading time. But being the bigger target, Lambert’s corvette didn’t have the edge.

“Come on, lock on,” Carl grumbled. “Lock on him...”

“Fuel twenty percent!” Alice reported.

The ships danced around each other, the kilometers closing to single digits. Out of the canopy Lambert could see the origin point of the fighter’s ordinance, flinching when they streaked past, dangerously close to the glass.

“Ten percent!” Alice said, almost sounding worried for a moment.

The fighter was in visual range now, appearing to Lambert like it was flying in reverse as its cannons opened up, the view spinning as Lambert banked away.

“Locked!” Carl said. “Missile away!”

The missile launched from its hardpoint, visible only for a moment out of the canopy before it vanished, its travel time instant, ending its short journey by the Raptor’s side, the explosion close enough to blow the nimble target into a slowly expanding sphere of debris.

“Slow us down, sir!” the computer warned.

Lambert was all too glad to comply, flipping and engaging their thrusters to counter their inertia. Soon the corvette was brought to idle, Lambert realising that he’d been holding his breath, and letting it out as he relaxed into his chair.

“F-Fuck me rigid,” Lambert said, the adrenaline bleeding out of him with a sigh.

“You said it, Cap.” Carl made a noise like he couldn’t quite decide whether to laugh or cry, clearing his throat as he checked the ship’s status. “Took a few scratches to the hull, but we’re fine, integrity wise. Check it out,” he added. “our friends wiped out the rest.”

Lambert blinked, switching feeds to the other skirmish like he’d forgotten all about it. The remaining Raptors had been destroyed, reduced to tumbling pieces by laser fire. Only three of the alien ships remained, their beams flicking off as the void went still. The larger, carrier-class ships idled way behind them, the one that had been hit by the missile listing to the side, Lambert unsure if it was critically damaged or not.

The alien attack ships realigned into formation, slowing to crawling speeds as the three, larger ships moved in towards them, the damaged one cruising a little slower than the others. Lambert’s brow furrowed when he saw their tags on the tactical map close in to barely a few kilometers of each other.

They hung there as a group for a few moments, then as one, they banked their ships in unison, turning their bulbous canopies towards the corvette’s direction, Lambert’s chest tensing as he could look right down their laser barrels.

“Think we should skedaddle?” Carl asked. “I’m gettin’ laser warnin’s.”

“There’s a problem with that,” Alice said. “You burned through most of our fuel, sir. My predictions suggest we may not make it through the nebula without activating our distress beacon.”

“What else was I supposed to do?” Lambert replied. “This is the first time anyone’s battled in space since ... since ever.” Spaceships had been armed for warfare since before Lambert was born, but the concept of fighting with them had only been experienced through simulations, there had been no major space conflicts, at least until now.

“I did not mean to sound rude,” Alice replied, its tone apologetic.

Before Lambert could reply, the alien group started moving, their IFF tags moving closer, until Lambert could make them out through the canopy. The laser targeting warnings flicked off after another moment, Lambert’s hands clutching the flight sticks tightly as they came closer and closer.

“They’re gonna hit us,” Carl said, Lambert shaking his head.

“They’re not stupid. Put the PDC’s back into their housings, Carl, and keep your hands off the missiles.”

“Are we surrenderin’, Cap?”

“Look at their guns, they’re lowering them. We’re just returning the courtesy.”

Carl grumbled something incoherent, then complied, the rotary guns twisting into their default positions. The alien weapons had likewise done the same, sinking back into their recesses, so Lambert wasn’t worried about retaliation, though his gut was still twisted with apprehension. They were coming in very close now, enough that Lambert could make out the small lines of where each individual panels of the hull met on their strange fish-like ships.

The alien convoy came to a halt a few kilometres out, the trio of huge ships practically filling up the canopy view with their silver and orange bulks. The attack ships idled in front of the big ones, the little engines on their sides shooting out wisps of flame as they stabilised the crafts.

Lambert was almost afraid of moving his hands, the alien ships just sitting there, probably running scans over the corvette by the way the systems were giving off signal warnings. After a long minute, the leading attack craft moved forward, Lambert recognizing its tag as the same ship they’d followed in earlier.

The other alien ships remained idle, Lambert’s heart racing as it closed in to two kilometres, one, then a few hundred meters before the alien ship stopped. It was pretty much right beside them at this point, Lambert leaning forward on his console to peer over at the large glass dome situated on the alien ships nose. It was coated in a smokey shade of orange, but he could just make out movement behind the glass, the shadowy outline of ... something.

The strange vessel tilted in a three-sixty spin, its canopy rotating in place as the rest of its ship twirled round. It ended the spin the right way up after a few moments, paused, then did the spin again, this time going the other way.

“The hell are they doin’?” Carl whispered, as if afraid they’d be overheard.

“I don’t know,” Lambert replied, shifting in his seat when the alien ship came to a stop, as if waiting for Lambert to do something. He thought for a moment, then grabbed the left joystick, tilting it to the side with a mechanical whir. The corvette turned on just the one axis, Lambert’s perception becoming a mess as the alien ship appeared to turn, when in fact it was the corvette that was technically spinning.

The corvette did a full spin, then Lambert turned it the other way, copying the alien ship’s gesture. He even added a slight tilt to the left and right, the way jet pilots would flap their wings in salute to nearby planes.

The aliens copied the gesture, Lambert grinning as the fish-like fins on its flanks tilted to and fro.

“I think this is going well,” Alice said. “Keep copying them sir.”

“What are we, parrots?” Carl mumbled.

The alien craft stopped mimicking for a couple minutes, Lambert doing the same. Then, flipping so that its rear faced the corvette, the alien ship inched forward a few hundred meters, then stopped. It flipped again, its canopy facing Lambert. It flapped its fins in greeting again, turned around once more, and moved another hundred meters. It repeated the whole dance twice more. Lambert would have scratched his head if his helmet was off.

“Any ideas what this all means?” he asked no one in particular. “The most likely intention I can predict is that they want us to follow,” Alice said.

Lambert watched the ship move further away, then stretched one of his shoulders as he gripped the sticks.

“Here goes nothing,” he said, inching the craft forwards, keeping their thrust to an absolute minimal. His heart raced as they fell in behind the alien ship, passing between its two cohorts idling up and off to the sides. From this angle they got a clean view of their laser guns. Each turret had two individual barrels, one above the other, the lengths flaring out near the middle and end, where a square muzzle capped the barrel. They were connected to the hull by blocky housings, what appeared to be wiring wrapped messily over the bulks. Each turret had to be fifteen or twenty meters long from muzzle to base, about two thirds the size of the alien ships themselves.

The alien craft matched their crawling speed, heading for one of the carrier ships, leading them right between its two main branches, where a few kilometers of empty space divided the two sections of the ship.

They cruised in closer and closer to the carrier ship, the pink void replaced by great swathes of metal hull trimmed with orange bands of light. It felt a little like sailing between two horizontal skyscrapers, football fields worth of metal stretching out in all directions except for directly down and up.

Silver decks jutted out of the thick branches of the alien carrier at random intervals, huge tubes snaking out of the great slips between them. Humans would cover up internal wiring, but these creatures appeared to not have bothered. The way the internal lining of the ship boxed in huge shafts of space gave off the impression of giant, empty bookcases, the shelves shadowed by the decks that covered them from the distant sun.

“This thing has no weapons, barely any armour, and is as big as a prison ship,” Carl mused. “It sorta looks ... I dunno. Primitive.”

“I know what you mean,” Lambert replied. The very first spacefaring ships that left Earth were just as blocky and oversized. And yet these aliens had somehow invented shields for their smaller ships, it was quite jarring.

The ship they were following suddenly switched off its own protective barrier, the arrangement of polygons simply fading out of existence. It slowed down to a halt, then banked on the spot so that it faced the left branch. Lambert copied the maneuver, his canopy facing the great wall of metal.