Ejection Strike

Prologue

In the final moments

Chikak, head of Harbinger 1-3, stared grimly at the the screen as the sounds of battle raged outside. Although the display was blurry and flickering, it was still legible. It read, "Evidence system problem caused by vermin. Somehow infiltrated in Scout."

Chikak could already see from the other screens that the rest of their Harbingers were being destroyed in droves. There were fewer left than he had fingers on one hand, and dropping. At this rate, they would soon follow. The fleet of Strikers outside had been all but annihilated, and they weren't close enough to anything worth firing the thermetic cascade at. Indeed, trying was what had doomed many of the others. Perhaps, he thought, it was time to try inflicting a different type of damage.

Whirling around, Chikak called out to his crew. "Bring us to ground level and stabilize us. Bypass the cascade's usual workings and rewire the beam for damage output… for drilling."

Some of the others stared back in shock. "You want to try to core the planet?! Now, by ourselves?!"

Chikak nodded grimly. "Apologies to Nuconne, but yes. If we do nothing, they'll kill us too. That's clear by now. At least this way, they can't come at us from below, and we may do some damage to them in turn."

"We can't claim the energy in a Harbinger," someone muttered, but there were more vital concerns. "If this works, we could kill everyone still down here. Many of ours could still be alive."

"I know," Chikak snapped, "but at this rate, none of us will be for long. It's clear by now that there will be no Harvest. If we do this, the vermin will take the bulk of the damage, and that just may save some of ours!" He looked around fiercely. "Do it!"

There was a brief moment of hesitation, but then his crew got to work. Although he could still hear doubt from many of them, they were all committed to making this work if possible. Coring would normally be the last step in a Harvest, the final prize claimed from the planet, and for good reason: the planet would be uninhabitable once the energy was extracted. Now, he could only hope that trying to bleed that energy out would prove an effective move against the vermin that were unexpectedly destroying their people.

"Chikak, look. I may have found something." He looked over at the soft call. Ketni was still planted in front of the same monitor she'd been working at for the last sub-cycle, and he'd almost forgotten about her and her little project. He wasn't sure the results mattered anymore. He went to look anyway.

"You can see them through those devices?"

"Yes, I can use their relay drones to see them. I've been doing that. I mean, I think I've found something worth seeing." She gestured to the screen. They'd been using the vermin's orbiting machines for their own signals from the beginning, but Ketni had had the idea to use their native monitoring ability to search for information on which of the detected hot spots was the center for what they now knew to be a terrible counter-attack in the making. Now she had a view from one of them. The screen was marred with static, but it showed a single vermin producing sounds, clearly holding the attention of all the others around it. "This is from just before the trouble started, and this is clearly one of their heads, rallying or ordering the rest. I think it's the head of the whole thing."

"You may be right," Chikak told her. "Unfortunately, that doesn't help us now. It's far too late to stop anything by targeting the source. Besides, I'm guessing that there's no one left wherever that came from to do it."

"No," Ketni agreed softly. "The Harbinger that went for that nest was the first to be destroyed." She looked up. "We might still be able to learn something from this, though. Perhaps if we could find a way to interpret the sounds it's making…"

Chikak sighed. He could feel her desperation to do something useful, to salvage something, but it really was too late. "I'm sorry. I don't think that will help us now." He paused to listen as other crew members assured him that they had a drill-laser working. Indeed, he could hear it humming. After a moment, he turned back to Ketni. "Look, if you really think there's value in what you found, send it to Homeship. Maybe they can gain something from it. It's no good to us down here."

Although he tried to suppress it, Ketni heard his full meaning. "You don't expect us to survive either, do you?"

"No," Chikak admitted softly. Everyone who had come down to this world, he feared, was as good as dead. He looked up. Those back up Home would have to carry on somehow, despite this loss…

Suddenly, he and everyone else on the Harbinger staggered in shock, as a horrible wave of devastation swept through the Thoughtsea. It had come from above. Homeship, and everyone on it, had been destroyed.

"No… how?" It seemed that was the only sentiment left to them. Chikak leaned against the console in despair. Now there was truly nothing, and no one, left.

But no, he suddenly realized. That wasn't quite true. Their entire civilization had just effectively perished, but others existed, out there…

Knowing he had only a mini-cycle or less, his fingers flew over the buttons of the console. Swiftly, he keyed in the statement of their destruction, attached the recording of what Ketni had found, and sent it out into the Void, where he could only trust that another Arretchi Homeship would pick it up.

A moment later, the consoles, and the entire Harbinger interior, went dark. The sound of their makeshift drill ceased. Without the energy field from Home, they had no power to run on, and unlike smaller ships, a Harbinger didn't have back-up energy modules. At least they didn't have to worry about falling, since they'd already settled to the ground.

Chikak could feel the fear and despair that filled his crew. He wasn't immune to them himself. Taking a deep breath, he turned to them. "Our people are dead, and we're stranded here, on this hostile planet. I don't know how long we'll last. However, we are still alive. We'll stay that way, as long as we can."

"You called out to others of our kind, whoever may be out there," Ketni noted. "Do you expect help to come?"

"I don't know," Chikak admitted. "I sent the message as a warning, so others would know the danger here. I don't know if anyone will try to help us. I doubt it would come in time if they did. We're alone, and surrounded by hostile, and apparently very deadly, vermin. I don't know how long we can last."

"Then what do we do?" someone asked.

Chikak looked around grimly at his crew, all that was left of their people. "For as long as possible, we fight."