Fall of Icarus

Revolution. Rombard’s stern leadership, McLaughlin’s carefree attitude, and even Keeling’s overbearing confidence; all the memories burned in Keryn’s chest and brought stinging tears to her eyes.

“This is for all of them,” she whispered into the quiet cockpit. “Burn in hell, you bastard!”

Pushing the firing button, four plasma rockets launched from underneath the wings of the Cair Ilmun. Streaking through the empty space, the smoky trails locked on to the fleeing ship. Though it tried to dodge the missiles, it was futile. The rockets struck the back of the ship nearly in unison. The small transport, laden with extra fuel cells, erupted into flames which consumed the entire ship. As the flames died away, scorched sections of the ship drifted free, filling the view before the Cair Ilmun with a sea of debris. Sobbing with relief, Keryn sagged in the pilot’s chair.

The silence in the cockpit seemed stifling as Keryn laid back in her chair. Aches that she had ignored all day suddenly assaulted her senses. Her neck tightened to where she wasn’t sure she would be able to turn her neck from side to side. Along her shoulders and arms, Keryn felt a tight burning from overuse. Exhaustion seemed to infuse every cell of her body. At the same time, she began to feel immediate regret. Their team had been sent on a specific mission: to capture Cardax and learn anything they could about Deplitoxide. Instead, she had let her emotions overwhelm her common sense. In an act of retribution, she had destroyed the one lead the Alliance had on stopping the latest threat. Resolved to her fate, Keryn reminded herself that with Cardax gone, there was a slim chance that the Terran Empire would ever find a resupply of the dangerous chemical. Though Deplitoxide would be a threat in the immediate future, the Terran stores would eventually run dry. Satisfied in her attempt at justification, Keryn allowed herself a thin smile.

Opening her eyes, she noticed a blinking light on the console. She had an incoming transmission, though the source was unknown. Could the High Council already know that she had failed her mission? Keryn had heard of the seemingly omnipotent power of the Council, but doubted that even they could have learned that she killed the smuggler instead of capturing him as she had been ordered. Still, her hand shook as she reached out and pressed the blinking button.

“And I was starting to worry that you weren’t going to answer,” a familiar Oterian mocked as his full visage appeared in the console’s monitor.

Keryn’s anger surged back to the surface. Cardax was still alive. She scrambled to read the radar and noted the second ship rapidly approaching the outer gravitational pull of the sun. As it grew closer, its speed increased exponentially. The second ship was never trying to hide on the back side of the sun. All along, Cardax intended to use the sun’s gravity as a slingshot in order to escape. And Keryn, blinded by emotion, had fallen right into his trap.

“Oh, don’t look surprised, little girl. You won’t catch me now, I can save you the trouble of trying to do the math. But you did great; better than I would have ever expected. But like I guessed, your best just wasn’t good enough.”

“You bastard!” Keryn yelled into the monitor. “I’m going to find you! I don’t care how long it takes, I will find you and I will kill you!”

“Such attitude,” Cardax said condescendingly. “I have no doubt that you’ll chase me. In fact, I’m counting on it. But last time I underestimated you. It won’t happen again. Next time we meet, I’ll make sure you’re good and dead before I leave the planet.”

“I swear that you will never get away from me.”

Cardax looked at something below the monitor screen. “I’m sorry, little girl. It seems that I’m losing the transmission. Apparently I was too busy escaping to keep you within range.” The Oterian shrugged. “Oh well, until next time. Bye now.”

With his parting words, the screen went black. Keryn howled in rage as she slammed her fist into the console until her hand was raw and bloodied. Collapsing in emotional turmoil, Keryn fell back into her chair and cried loudly into the lonely cockpit.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

“There are so many of them!” Alpha Two bemoaned over the radio.

“Forget about them and just keep flying,” Iana ordered as she sped away from Earth. “If we don’t draw them away, the ground forces won’t stand a chance.”

Though Iana sounded confident on the radio, she felt the same fear that was evident in her Avalon counterpart’s voice. The radar showed hundreds of Terran launches, as wave after wave of fighters and impromptu vessels joined in the chase of the fleeing Squadron. What she originally assumed was twenty to one odds was quickly growing, and not in her favor. She had heard the cries of her fellow pilots as they were struck by machine gun fire and plasma rocket explosions, the Alliance ships being destroyed in the dead of space and left as little more than obstacles for the rest of the Terran ships to bypass as they hunted down the rest of the Squadron.

Pressing her accelerator to the maximum, Iana’s Duun fighter launched from Earth’s orbit and sped through the dark void of space. Her fighter fought against her and the controls threatened to be pulled from her grip, as she sped through the darkness. The damaged wing, the one that had been pierced repeatedly by Terran machine gun fire, wobbled unsteadily under the increased gravitational pressures. Closing her eyes momentarily, Iana prayed to whatever God would listen that her fighter would stay together just a while longer.

Iana wished she had a better plan than she did. She had left orbit around Earth under the assumption that she could lure the Terrans away, but once she was free of the satellite ring, she realized that she was flying blindly in a solar system that she didn’t know. Leading the rest of the ships, Iana dove into an asteroid belt. Weaving through the chaotically drifting boulders, Iana tried to buy both her and her team time to devise a plan. Typing hastily on her console, she brought up a display of the planets, hoping to find another inhabitable planet nearby. The reports she scanned were incomplete and unhelpful. The Empire had settled on a nearby red planet, but the current orbit took it to the far side of their sun. The Terran sun was too hot to fly to the closer planets and beyond the inhabited red planet, it became little more than gas giants. Still, seeing little other option, she turned and sped at full speed toward the closest of the gas giants and the largest planet in the system.

Sweat beaded on Iana’s brow. The gas giant was still some ways off, though she could make out the distinct white and brown strata of the planet’s gaseous exterior. A number of small moons orbited the planet, but offered little assistance or escape for the fleeing Alliance force. For now, Iana was forced to fly through unobstructed empty space while hundreds of enemy ships pursued and continued a steady rate of fire on her small Duun ships. Flying at top speed, the improvised ships were lagging behind but the Terran fighters were still keeping pace. Their haphazardly fired plasma missiles streaked by, filling the space in front of Iana’s ship with choking grey smoke. It obscured her view of the planet but, simultaneously, gave her cover as the Terrans were now unable to lock onto her position. Dipping her wings, she spun lazily lower, hoping the change in position would further complicate the enemies’ weapons fire.

Concealed within the smoke, Iana turned back to her console, eager to search for any hint that might give her the edge she needed to survive this battle. The gas giant’s moons offered little reprieve, being little more than empty rocks. The planet itself, however, offered quite a few more possibilities. It seemed to be radiating a significant amount of both heat and radiation. Though they were far from the amounts present near the sun, the levels of radiation were still high enough that they might be used as a blanket that would scatter radar signals. If that were the case, the Terrans would have to fire manually without computer-aided targeting arrays. Since most pilots were unused to that style of fighting, it gave yet another boost to the Alliance forces.

Aside from the radiation, Iana also intended to use the intense gravitational forces being emitted by the gas giant. Much like the Alliance Cruisers had done before in order to hurry from one destination to another, a fighter could sling shot around the planet and open a significant gap between itself and any pursuing enemy.

Switching on her radio, Iana spoke over the Squadron-wide channel. “All Squadron elements, head toward the gas giant. Getting close to the planet should diffuse the Terran radars and buy us some more time.”

“I think I’m already ahead of you on that, ma’am,” Alpha Two called back.

Iana checked her radar and was surprised to find that the Avalon was right. While Iana was diving in order to avoid the Terran rockets, Alpha Two had passed her by and was now on her way toward the gas giant, quite a few