ALL NOVEL They Answered The Call-Part Two-Chapter 27-Rescue/Part 4
Rescue Hive ship
Luna became despondent as the machine animal finished informing her of the incoming arrival of two additional fleets. She had failed her Hive mother, and the animals would die here with her.
The ancient enemy was going to intercept them before they got to the gap, and a deep regret filled her. She came so close to fulfilling the promise the Hive mother had made to the animals.
The animals they rescued would not return to their Hives, and she would not be there to help her Hive mother fight when the persecutors came to destroy the Hive they had built together.
The Hive ship had less than half of its weapons still functioning, and they still could not flash out for an unknown reason no matter how many times they tried.
Luna suspected it had something to do with the enemy ships and the fact that the Insectoid null drives were based on theirs; perhaps they were able to disable copies of their drives at will.
It did not matter anymore, and she waited impatiently for her coming death. She no longer wanting to continue to feel the failure weighing heavily on her spirit as she stared at the viewer.
The animal soldier seemed to sense her emotional state and came over to her, silently sitting down on the raised platform next to her as the damage control drones continued working around them.
Luna looked at him, and he gazed back before tilting his head at her. She could not detect any signs of fear or defeat in the brown pupiled eyes, just a quiet resignation and acceptance of their fate.
She returned his gesture by tilting her upper body forward slightly, as Insectoids did not have the same ability to manipulate their head movements like the animals could with their longer necks.
He grimaced at her before turning back to look at the viewer, and she followed his gaze, grateful for his presence as they waited for the final battle that would end their lives.
The machine animal continued to work the panels, bringing repaired particle beam turrets and flak guns back online as the damage control drones worked frenetically.
It turned around and signed to her, informing her of the imminent arrival of one of the approaching fleets. She readied herself, sending thought commands for the weapons drones to prepare to fight.
She thought of all the animals inside the Hive ship. They survived great hardship, were successfully rescued from the cruiser, and now they were all going to die instead of returning to their Hives.
Luna felt sadness for the drone the animals had spared. It survived a battle and was spared by the animals, only to die now with them. At least it would be with the animal daughter it loved when the time came.
She wished there was some way for the animals to have been able to escape. The troopships would never make it; even the fast machine ships would most likely fail to make it past the guardian fleets.
Dozens of null space flashes started appearing in a ring all around them beyond the range of the enemy battleships, and it took Luna a few moments to realize what was happening.
Fourteen Hive ships and eighty-seven cruisers in total flashed out, and Luna felt a surge of happiness at the sight of them before remembering that they were ships of the guardian fleets.
They were not here to rescue them. They will destroy them when they realize that the machine ships were not just another enemy, but animal ships brought here by the envoy herself.
They will see it as a betrayal and attack them regardless of her status and the confirmation of the Hive mother supporting the envoy. The commander drones would not tolerate such an act.
The Hive ships and cruisers did nothing at first, probably experiencing shock at the sight of the ancient enemy ships after all this time, despite that being their specific purpose here.
They were also most likely confused by the presence of the unknown animal ships that were obviously protecting the heavily damaged Hive ship from the enemy approaching it.
The battleships of the persecutors on the outskirts reacted to the sudden emergence of the guardian ships behind them and started maneuvering to confront the new threats.
The forty-three battleships headed directly for them still maintained their courses. They were fully committed to their attack run and would not be able to change their momentum to face the new threat behind them.
Luna felt thoughts coming to her, and she recognized the mind immediately. It was the sister that had first stopped her and asked to be brought back to the Hives before letting her go.
A wave of shame came over her as the falsehoods she had committed were now being revealed for all to see. She opened her mind to the thoughts and braced herself for the coming accusations.
Luna hesitated, not wanting to commit anymore falsehoods but afraid to reveal the truth. As she thought of what to say, she realized that it did not matter anymore as the battleships neared them.
They were going to die, and she decided she wanted to die with a spirit unburdened by wrongness. Her sister deserved the truth, and she would not defile her last thoughts with more deceit.
She felt the confusion and anger her thoughts were causing her sister to feel, and as much as she regretted it, she also felt a great burden lifting from her spirit as she waited for her sister to respond.
Luna felt a great shame at the accusations of her sister, and her desire to unburden herself became overwhelming. Sharing thoughts was not enough. She needed to show her sister the truth.
She felt her sister’s mind entering hers, and she resisted the instinctual impulse to block out the presence. She could feel her entire life being looked at as her sister searched her memories.
The memories of the Hive mother were continually searched, from when she had saved her life in the animal system all the way to when they had communed before the rescue attempt.
She expected anger at the revelation that there were two Hive mothers and that hers became a traitor and joined the animals. Surprisingly, she did not sense any, just confusion and surprise.
Luna felt completely exposed as she bared her thoughts and her spirit; it was hard for her to allow another such access to her essence. She felt violated, but she forced herself to remain open.
She could see as her sister searched the memories of the young queen, closely inspecting them as she saw the queen interacting with Bandit-Friend and playing the animal game.
Then the memories of the Hive mother and Bandit-Friend holding claws and sharing thoughts with each other were accessed, as well as the Hive mother’s interactions with the animal queen.
She could feel the shock and confusion as her sister saw the animals willingly giving one of their worlds to the Hive mother and helping to build the Hive and Luna’s own interactions with them.
Finally, her sister withdrew from her mind and left, not sending any more thoughts to her. She now knew the truth about the two Hive mothers, the animals, and their rescue attempt.
She did not pardon me, Luna thought sadly to herself as she felt her sister leave. I do not blame her, but at least I now die unburdened by deceit and falsehoods. Think well of me, sister, if you can.
Luna returned to herself in the command chamber, feeling both sad and happy at what had happened. At least now the sister knew the truth and would remember Luna for telling it.
She looked at the animal soldier again, grateful for the experiences they had shared as they faced great danger and battled together. She returned her gaze to the viewer, her mind and spirit at peace.
The enemy battleships started making their last minor course corrections as they decelerated, and the machine ships started firing their secondary longer-ranged particle beam weapons.
The distance was far, at least four and a half planetary diameters, and just over half of the machine ship volley hit, the greatly attenuated particle beams only causing minor hull damage.
The machine ships continued firing, their hit rate and weapon damage increasing as the Hive ship and the forty-three enemy battleships continued to close with each other.
The Hive ship entered maximum weapons range, and the weapons started firing as the machine animal and the weapon drones targeted enemy ships with particle beams and a missile volley.
The particle beams hit the heavily armored bows in sustained volleys, trying to drill through the ablative armor plating of the battleships and penetrate to the weaker hull underneath.
The missiles streaked towards the enemy formations as the worker drones guided them towards their assigned targets in the cramped control spaces located behind the warheads.
The battleships were now within their own maximum weapons range, and they fired their polaron-based energy weapons at the Hive ship in a concentrated volley, still not able to target the machine ships.
The machine ship force fields intercepted the volley, flaring brightly as they blocked the beams. The enemy was now in range of the primary war beams, and the machine ships fired in groups of threes.
The enemy fired again, this time in a pulsing pattern, searching for weaknesses or gaps in the unexpected force field protecting the Hive ship. Gaps were found, and they immediately shifted their fire.
The machine ships focused their fire on the enemy ships that were now targeting through the shield gaps, their powerful war beams smashing through the armored bows and tearing open the hulls.
Ten battleships had their bow sections torn wide open, and the machine ships fired their plasma bolts in threes towards them as they shifted their war beam targeting to undamaged enemy ships.
Luna sent thought commands to the weapon drones, ordering them to target the open breaches left by the machine ships before the enemy moved their bows away to protect their exposed interiors.
The plasma bolts converted their warheads before slamming into the hull breaches, now pure balls of destructive plasma that burned hotter than a sun.
The bolts penetrated deep into the interior of the targeted ships, the successive strikes burrowing deeper as they chewed through the interiors one after another before their charges finally dissipated.
Six battleships vanished in nuclear annihilation from core overloads, and two others lost navigational control, colliding with ships besides them as their bows continued to swing around uncontrolled.
Large breaches started forming on the outer hull as the battleships continued targeting gaps they found, and Luna was thankful she had ordered the drones to move to the inner ring tunnels.
If she had not done that, thousands of drones would now be in the process of being ejected through the breaches and suffering terrible deaths as their exoskeletons burst open from the pressure.
The machine animal turned and signed to her quickly before turning back and continuing to fire the weapons. Luna accessed the small viewer on the panel next to her to verify what it had just told her.
The smaller enemy cruisers had finally reached the area again, and the Hive ship was now in danger of being attacked by them from all sides. They were going to be surrounded and destroyed soon.
The three machine ships that had stopped the deadly mass driver attacks from the battleships had accelerated at incredible speeds to get back, and now they fired their bow engines to decelerate.
The deceleration they were undergoing would have killed any organics, and their momentum slowed tremendously as they fell in behind the battleship formation and targeted their aft engines.
The machine ships coordinated their attacks, the bow and aft sections of selected ships being targeted by concentrated volleys from the screening force and the pursuing machine ships.
The targeted ships could not withstand the onslaught and fell out of formation, slowly tumbling out of control as the atmosphere was vented out of the obliterated bow and aft sections.
The machine animal rotated the Hive ship, bringing functional weapons to bear in preparation for the imminent attack on their flanks by the thirty-one enemy cruisers almost in range.
Many of them had been damaged by their own missiles that the machine ships had sent against them, and there were now twenty fewer enemy cruisers attacking them now.
The missiles the Hive ship had fired now reached the battleship formations, and Luna watched with pride as the worker drones controlling them initiated evasive maneuvers to avoid point defense fire.
Forty-six missiles had been fired, and twenty-one made it through, the controlling drones refusing to lose their target locks despite the deadly anti-missile defenses and jamming attempts.
Luna sent thoughts to them, thanking them for fighting for the Hive mother and their sisters. She felt their minds change; the feelings of fear and anxiety were now replaced with peaceful contentment.
The drones, happy for the recognition she had gifted them, activated their final booster phases and penetrated the outer hulls with their hardened tips before triggering the detonation sequence.
The powerful warheads caused massive hull breaches wherever the drones had targeted, and in spite of the sadness she felt for their sacrifices, she relished the destruction they had caused.
She had only sent a small volley, unwilling to throw away worker drone lives until she could confirm that the missiles would be able to make it through the defenses and damage the enemy battleships.
She sent thought commands to the hundreds of drones that had been waiting in their missiles, and the small, armored hatches of the missile tubes slid aside to allow them to exit the ship.
All around the Hive ship, missiles came blasting out of dozens of tubes, and the controlling drones immediately started maneuvering and tracking the targets Luna had assigned to them.
Five volleys had been rapidly fired, and now there were four hundred and sixty-three missiles blasting their engines as they surged towards their targets and initiated evasive maneuvers.
The twenty-three battleships that still had functional bow engines and thrusters had been using them to decelerate, and now they were thrusting in reverse as they built up momentum.
They matched the velocity between the Hive ship and their formation, and now they were drifting backwards as they maintained the optimal combat range for their firing weapons.
The rest of the heavily damaged battleships surged past and continued behind them, their bow and aft engine thruster systems destroyed and rendered combat ineffective for the time being.
The machine ships continued firing on the battleships in front while the missiles divided themselves between the battleships and the smaller cruisers attacking on the flanks.
Luna tried to keep track of everything that was going on, but she could barely keep up with the chaos going on all around them as the Hive ship started targeting the cruisers with particle beams.
Over a hundred new null space flashes appeared five planetary diameters in distance all around them, and more enemy ships emerged with their black angular hulls.
Whatever little hope Luna still had vanished as seventeen battleships and thirty-four cruisers from among the new arrivals started swinging their bows towards the Hive ship and accelerating.
Half of the machine ship shields had failed, and the remaining ones were flaring bright red as the battleships focused on the still shielded areas with their beams and secondary weapons.
The enemy battleships were now 1.5 planetary diameters distant, and the machine ships were mercilessly targeting them as the enemy polaron beams continued to fire wide and miss them.
New constructs emerged from the hulls of the battleships, and they fired rapidly, shooting hundreds of small spherical metal balls out of multiple barrels from both the bow and aft sections.
They fired towards the unshielded machine ships in front of them and the three machine ships still attacking them from behind, hundreds of metal spheres vanishing in the space around the targeted ships.
The metal spheres were fired so fast, Luna was not able to track them with her eyes. All she could see was the devastating results as three of the machine ship hulls were suddenly filled with hundreds of small breaches.
She accessed the panel again and slowed down the recording, watching the spheres explode near the machine ships and saturating the immediate area with a cloud of hyper-velocity fragments.
The thousands of fragments tore into the nearby machine ships, severely damaging the top layer of their specially created hulls and exposing the armor underneath.
This is bad. Luna thought to herself as another volley of hundreds of spheres was shot by the enemy towards undamaged machine ships. Their hulls were riddled with tens of thousands of fragments almost immediately.
The machine ship hulls were damaged, and the enemy was now able to target them with their beams. Already, four machine ships had self-destructed as they were torn apart by dozens of beams and the small spheres.
There were now twelve functional enemy battleships remaining, and the thirty-one cruisers added their weapons fire to the onslaught. A terrible solar minute passed, and now ten machine ships were gone.
Only six machine ships were still fighting; the rest had self-destructed or were destroyed by the secondary weapons of their sister machine ships to deny the enemy any wreckage to examine.
The six fought on, jinxing wildly as the few weapons they had continued to strike at the enemy. Luna looked away, not wanting to see the last of them destroyed as they fell to the enemy weapons.
Sudden thoughts came, startling her out of her sadness for the dying machine ships.
Luna was shocked that her sister had sent more thoughts, and she thought of how to reply. She decided not to correct her sister and tell her that the ships were thinking machines, not animals. It served no purpose.
A falsehood of omission was justified and not as wrong as a true falsehood. She felt the grudging respect her sister had for the fighting spirit being displayed by the "animal" ships, and she wanted to reinforce that.
She paused, watching on the viewer as the last machine ship ejected a dozen tiny objects that shimmered before disappearing as the ship reeled under the crossfire of multiple enemy battleships.
A few moments later, the ship fired its last volley of plasma bolts before disappearing in a massive burst of energy as it self-destructed.
A rapidly expanding cloud of microscopic particles and gas were all that remained of the machine intelligence that had been commanding the machine ships.
Command Unit 273. Its name was Command Unit 273. Thank you, machine-friend. I will not forget you and the others.
Luna allowed the profound grief she felt to go with the thoughts she sent to her sister, bracing herself against the sitting bench as the Hive ship shuddered from the enemy attacks.
Her sister didn’t respond right away, and Luna stared at the viewer as the missiles she had fired before boosted towards their targets, dozens of them blinking out from the enemy point defense fire.
The missiles caused the enemy to evade, and the weapons fire hitting the Hive ship lessened in intensity as they tried to get away from the missiles that were not susceptible to their jamming attempts.
Luna saw missile ports sliding open on the enemy ships, and a surge of pride passed through her spirit as she continued to watch her worker drones unerringly track their targets.
Only now were they willing to use missiles. Only after the machine ships died do they dare use them again. She sent angry thoughts to the controlling drones, telling them to target the missile ports.
She relished in the coming destruction as the missiles made course corrections, her drones now targeting the open ports of the enemy as they continued to dodge the enemy defenses.
Only one hundred and twelve missiles had survived, and her drones activated the final boost phase as they maintained their target locks on the open ports loaded with enemy missiles.
One after another, the missiles slammed into their targets, their warheads adding their destruction to the enemy missile warheads still within the hulls.
Dozens of enemy ships disappeared in blinding flashes of lights, their ruptured cores overloading as the chain reaction of the loaded missiles tore open huge gashes along the sides of the targeted ships.
Even the missiles that missed the ports because of evasive maneuvers caused catastrophic damage; the missile impact and detonations were still causing nearby loaded missile ports to explode.
The last remaining eight battleships were destroyed, as were twenty-three cruisers. The surviving cruisers were so heavily damaged that it was shocking they hadn’t suffered core overloads.
Not yet, she thought to herself as she eyed her next victims.
She ordered the drones controlling still-functioning weapons to target the derelict cruisers, seeing that the machine animal was doing the same thing with the weapons directly under its control.
All the ships attacking them had been destroyed, but now the seventeen battleships and over thirty cruisers that had flashed in before were charging right at them, already firing missiles that surged towards them.
She felt thoughts coming from the command drone again, and she wearily accepted them.
Luna was not expecting this, and it was difficult for her to think properly. Her confusion as to what her sister was telling her to do, coupled with her exhaustion, prevented her from thinking quickly.
Luna nervously eyed the viewer as her sister stopped sending thoughts. The approaching ships would be in range soon, and the missiles they fired were streaking towards the Hive ship.
The missiles would reach them in less than two solar minutes, and if they somehow survived the attack, the enemy ships would arrive four minutes after the missiles.
She doubted they would survive the missile attack. They did not have enough flak guns and particle beams to shoot down two hundred missiles, even with the machine animal controlling the ship.
She had to know how many ships the persecutors were coming with. Even though she was going to die soon, she wanted to know what her Hive mother and their animal friends were going to face before her end came.
All around the Hive ship, null space flashes appeared and out of them emerged twenty Hive ships and over three hundred cruisers. They were all dangerously close at just under 1.5 planetary diameters.
They were now within a sphere formation with the Hive ship in the center. They were surrounded, and the Hive ships and cruisers were firing at the missiles that were coming to destroy them.
The animal soldier next to her gasped and started making noises to the machine animal, and Luna leapt of the bench and knocked it hard claws away from the panel to prevent it from targeting the ships encircling them.
She made panicked claw signs to it, telling it that the new ships were here to save them and not to fire on them. It stared at her with its fearsome black eyes for several moments before nodding silently.
She told it to share her thoughts with the animal soldier that had followed her. The animal was staring at her with eyes that were no longer friendly before the machine animal explained her thoughts.
Her sister had been sending thoughts, and she responded, staying where she was to ensure that neither of them fired on the new ships surrounding them. Now was not the time for deadly mistakes.
Luna became filled with anguish as the command drone withdrew from her mind, refusing further thoughts as Luna tried to thank her for saving them and giving her the pardon she asked for.
New thoughts came to her, this time from the command drone leading the ships surrounding them.
The thoughts ended abruptly, and Luna could feel the lingering suspicion within them. It did not matter. All that mattered was that they survived to warn both Hive mothers and the animals.
Luna signed to the machine animal, telling it to move and that she would control the ship. It stepped to the side, watching her intently with the black orbs that made her fearful.
She ignored it and the animal soldier as they made noises to each other, concentrating on diverting all available power to the remaining engines and the null drive capacitors.
As she was doing that, she sent thought commands to the drones in the inner tunnels, telling them to start repairing the damaged systems and outer hull as best they could for the journey back.
She also ordered the waiting drones out of the missiles that were loaded and ready to be fired, sending them to help with the repair efforts as she felt the relief within their simple minds.
Hundreds of cables had been fired from the ships in front of them, and they attached to the heavily damaged hull before going taut. The Hive ships and cruisers were now towing them to increase their speed.
The sphere formation started firing all around itself, targeting enemy ships as they surged through the center of the battlespace and headed for the perimeter.
There were six Hive ships in front of them, and they continually fired flak guns and particle beams in a concentrated volley as they cleared a path forward through both wreckage and enemy ships.
There was pure chaos all around them as dozens of null space flashes continually appeared and disappeared as more guardian vessels and enemy ships joined in the rapidly expanding battle.
The sphere formation was hit numerous times as missiles and polaron beams targeted it, destroying cruisers and damaging Hive ships as they continued heading for clear space.
Luna had been repeatedly trying to get the null space capacitors to activate as the sphere formation forced its way out of the battle and towards empty space as more ships from both sides were destroyed.
They finally passed the perimeter, and she tried again. She slammed her claw on the panel interface in frustration as she heard the same whine before the null drive powered down again.
Thoughts came to her, and she opened her frustrated mind to them as she tried to activate the capacitors again, obsessing over getting them to turn on.
Luna became embarrassed as her sister reprimanded her for disregarding the instructions given to her, and she silently stared at the viewer as she switched to the rear-facing visual equipment.
Through the wall of guardian ships behind them, she saw a mass of enemy ships trailing them. That was why it wasn’t working, and she felt like smashing and killing something in anger.
She was so tired, and she did not want to fight anymore. She didn’t even really care if the Hive ship was destroyed at this point; at least she would be dead and could finally rest.
A large segment of the sphere wall facing the enemy detached and started accelerating, while the rest of the sphere contracted to adjust for the gap before the Hive ship was englobed once more.
Luna focused the viewer and zoomed in, seeing why the two Hive ships and dozens of cruisers had detached to engage the much larger enemy formation.
There were multiple battleships charging their mass drivers, and they were all pointed solely at the Hive ship engines, not the actual Hive ship itself. There was only one reason to do that.
Why are they trying so hard to capture us? She wondered as she started seeing a pattern in the enemy tactics and realizing that they had not been trying to destroy them all this time.
Even when the guardian ships arrived, they still focused on her heavily damaged Hive ship instead of the greater threat of the newly arrived ships. They wanted to capture the ship; it was obvious now that she was able to examine their actions after the fact.
Null space flashes appeared all around the enemy, and dozens of Hive ships emerged. They immediately started firing on the enemy formation as all eight battleships fired their mass drivers at the same time.
The detachment from the sphere was along the plane of the projectiles, and eight cruisers executed violent evasive maneuvers, placing themselves in the line of fire as the projectiles shot towards the Hive ship engines.
All eight cruisers were obliterated twelve solar seconds later as the projectiles impacted and turned itself and the cruisers into hot plasma. Luna stared in shock at the eight rapidly expanding clouds of wreckage that used to be ships filled with her sisters.
The enemy formation did not fire on them again; they were now engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the guardian ships surrounding them and blocking any escape attempts.
The two fleets rapidly fell behind as the sphere formation continued onwards into empty space, and Luna accepted the thoughts sent by the command drone some solar minutes later.
Just like the other sister, this one withdrew before she could thank it properly. She still sent the thought anyway, it would bother her for the rest of the life she had left if she did not do so.
Luna activated the null space capacitors, and this time they thrummed rapidly as they prepared for the transition, the capacitors still retaining most of the charge from when the enemy first appeared.
The sphere formation broke apart as the guardian ships protecting them accelerated to join in the the battle still raging behind them. The enemy battleships were still trying to break out and pursue the Hive ship, and more of the enemy were coming behind.
Luna turned to the machine animal and explained all that had been happening as it made noises and shared her thoughts with the animal soldier. The thrumming of the capacitors increased as they neared full power, and the worker drones waited patiently at their panels for orders from Luna.
The animal soldier made noises, and the machine animal eyes changed back to the yellow color as it asked her if she needed anything from it or the animal soldier with its claws.
Luna signed told them no, thanking them both before slowly walking slowly back to the sitting bench and laying her abdomen on it. She stared at the viewer, forcing herself to watch as thousands more of her sisters died every minute trying to contain the persecutors.
Finally, the thrumming stopped, and the control panel lit up with a blinking green light. It was time to leave this horror behind and return to the Hive.
She sent a mental map to the nearest worker drone with the coordinates for the Hive world and ordered it to take over the panel and activate the drive.
Right before they transitioned, she saw hundreds of enemy battleships flashing out and surrounding the Hive ships and cruisers that had saved them and helped them to escape.
Luna leaned her thorax down and stared at the organic deck plates, mourning for the sisters of the guardian fleets who will surely die at the hands of the ancient enemy before they came to exterminate them all.
She didn't feel the claw the animal soldier gently placed on her upper leg joint as the command chamber briefly filled with the light of the transition flash. He removed the claw and quietly moved away, joining the machine animal and giving her the space she needed.
She was too numb to feel anything but the grief crippling her, and all she could see was the dreary, gray nothingness of null space mirroring her broken spirit.