Starkillers

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. The void is the unknown. The darkest of secrets, quite literally. Relic neutrinos make up the background radiation of the universe. Dust from ancient astroids circle Saturn. Ice from aeon comets melt in the burning rays of the Sun. A giant object comes into the orbit of the earth. We don’t know what it is or where it came from. Yet, it was there, out of nowhere.

Sometime in the distant future time stops and it starts all over again. Across distant stars, through some swirly mass that was once called the Milky Way there is a black hole.

At light speed there is no sound barrier to break. Your ship feels like its going to rattle itself apart.

There are a billion stars, no a zillion, more than can be counted. The nebula where we were looking startled the edge of the Milky Way. The giant cloudy thing before me was a hatchery for a quadrillion stars. A place where matter coalesced and forms. Energy colliding at high speeds. A force we barely have come to understand over a millennia ensnares it from escaping, some it if may.

We see all this from our ship: A Medusa Class Rail Ship called The Reaper V. A ship that is nothing but a giant-ass rail cannon strapped to a light speed drive.

I hear him coming, the Ensign named Jimmy. I already know what he is gonna ask do you want a cup of coffee sir?

“Do you want a cup of coffee sir? are you enjoying the nebula sir? Cream and Sugar sir?” he asks.

I say “yes, yes, and no.”

He stops and looks up at me. “I heard a lot about you at the academy sir. Is it true what they say about the war in the Daemon system?"

I answer him with a cold dead stare—the whip.

He is a nosey little bastard. I hate nosey little shits. People get bored out here (there is only three needed to pilot a rail ship).

Ignoring him works. He is gone.

I get it. They start with little things like the war in the Daemon system and soon they are asking about your family back on your home world.

People usually gasp and run away when they get the sharp end of the stick. But not the Ensign. He was jovial, happy beyond means, and he didn’t care what I told him. He always said “yes sir,” even when I told him to go to hell.

I made captain not too long ago. People mess with you less when your a higher rank. But I wasn’t like everyone else.

“Here you go sir,” said Jimmy. He was quick about getting my coffee. He was a good soldier.

The coffee smelled good, but he put cream in it.

“I didn’t ask for cream?” I lied. Yet, my words fell empty against a blast that rocked the forward shields and the whole of the ship.

I often wondered it would be like, to get sucked out into the vacuum of space if the hull was ever breached. I could picture the rail cannon from another ship aimed right at my location, burning a giant whole in The Reaper V.

I used to spacewalk a lot, when I was a lower rank, when I wasn’t shit, when it was ok to be left out in the void, never to be heard from again. Literally… I wonder how long I could stand the void, before it consumed me.

I went to sip my coffee but there was none in there. I looked down and it was all at over my boots. The blast had knocked all my coffee out. I wanted that coffee bad, and it seemed like the gods were always against me, first the creamer and now we were under attack. I dropped the mug on the floor and went to the bridge.

“Anything,” I asked the Nav Tech Deborah as I entered.

“The blast came from the ort cloud, we have no visuals.”

The pirates had raided a way-station on Genosha III in the Centari system. They wouldn’t have dared raided Genosha Prime, yet their foolishness got a Medusa Class ship on their tails. Not to mention me, the captain of said deadly ship.

We were assigned the mission from Navlik One in the neighboring Navlik system. Our ship originally came from Caldan where I was commissioned as its captain.

“Shoot into that cloud there,” I pointed at the bridges main screen.

The Nav Tech pulled us slightly starboard at forty-five degrees. The ensign flicked up a switch, arming the weapons.

“Weapons armed,” he said.

“Fire.”

The ship rumbled around us. It was the cannon powering up. The ships most potent weapon let loose a stream of energy. It collided with something inside the cloud. I could see the pirate ship floating out of the clouds. It was a small vessel. A Taurian tug frigate. Damn fools, I thought. Those things don’t have anything for shields.

“Fire two,” I commanded.

The Reaper V unleashed another blast. It ripped through the hull of the pirate ship. I could imagine the pirates getting sucked out into the vacuum. Tumbling down the inside of their own craft until they were consumed by sheer physical force of a pressurized ship and the void. Their faces would make a soundless scream.

“Fire three.”

The ensign turned to me, “but the ship is already gone sir.”

“Fire three goddamnit!” I slammed my fist down hard on the console. The cannon let loose one last time. The pirates ship was nothing more than splinters.

“Close in on it at a quarter speed.”

“Yes captain.” Deborah set us into a slow guide towards the ship. I watched the view screen intently as we floated closer.

“Zoom on screen.”

“Yes sir.”

The Nav Tech enlarged the picture on the screen. Bodies floated in open space—silhouettes against the nebulas grace.

“Fire one more into them.”

“But their might be survivors,” he said.

“Your a step away from mutiny.”

But, we didn’t fire again. The bridge had exploded right before my eyes and I was thrown hard against a steal rail causing me to temporarily blackout. I should have seen it coming, but it was too late. I pulled myself up in the red light that the emergency flashers emitted. I couldn’t hear anything, the siren was nothing but an echo.

“Sir,” I felt a hand. “Sir.” I turned and it was Deborah.

“Jimmy?” I asked.

“Dead.”

I turned around to look at the bridge an there he was. He had been thrown hard. His neck was bent awkwardly on a control panel. His tongue hung out of his mouth. What a waste I thought. He made shitty coffee, but he took orders, that is what counted.

Deborah pulled me to my feet and. I looked at her. She had blood all over her.

“It’s your blood sir, we have to get to the pod.”

I looked up at the screen that flickered off and on. Floating right above the Taurian tug frigate was a Daemon Juggernaut Class Destroyer. It was a monster of a thing. It could fit fighters and other Medusa Class fleet inside its belly with a host of soldiers. Who knew what was in there.

“Sl’ythpalyl,” I said in Daemonish. A word that most didn’t use. It meant Ancient Enemy.

“I put all the shields forward. We may be able to sustain one more hit, I don’t know though,” she said.

She pulled me along down the hull of the craft. The emergency lights flashed all around us. We were just a giant rail cannon. The Medusa Class were purely offensive, there was no defensive battery. But, it was a highly maneuverable ship. The Juggernaut lucked out.

We passed our living quarters, only bedding and some personal effects. The Nav Tech ignored the pictures of her family that she brought. They stared at us as we bolted down the corridor towards the only white light—the pod.

She slung me over her shoulder and pulled me along. I poured more blood. Drip, drip, drip down the grating it went.

BOOM!

The whole ship rattled around us from the blast.

“It won’t hold another one,” she said.

We made it to the little white light at the end of the tunnel. I poured red all over the white seats and the white wall. She sat me down and strapped me in. Too bad that dumbshit Ensign isn’t here, I thought. I heard the door make that hissing sound of pressurization and we released from The Reaper V.

I felt hands on me, “hold still captain.”

I felt the medi-foam fill the wound on my head. It burned at first then cooled quickly. Then I felt a prick in my arm.

“Morphinal,” is the last thing she said.

Before my eyes went dark, the last thing I saw was my ship exploding out the viewing window.