Christopher Nuttall - Invasion

“And summon the Inquisitors,” the High Priest added. He had a final order to give. “Those who converted to the Truth must face the ultimate test.”

Brent had been nervous about combat in zero-gravity, but the handful of aliens who had come to meet the shuttle hadn’t suspected a thing, not until they popped open the hatch and came face-to-face with silenced gun barrels. Brent disliked silencers — he’d yet to meet one that didn’t screw up his aiming — but they had to be used… and the heavy ammunition punched through the alien skins like a knife through butter. Blood, dark alien blood, bubbled off the bodies and floated in the air, slowly falling towards the rear of the ship as the drive started to push them away from the planet.

“You two, stay and guard the shuttle,” Brent said. “The rest of you, follow me.”

The aliens clearly had their own problems in zero-gravity and had thoughtfully rigged up a series of hoops and railings to help their people manoeuvre around the ship. Gary had been right, Brent decided, after five minutes of swarming through the tunnels and corridors down into the heart of the ship; the aliens had designed the battle section to have gravity, at least some part of the time. It wasn’t shaped like the interior of the International Space Station, but rather more like the Starship Enterprise , although a decidedly less advanced one. They passed — and killed — groups of surprised aliens, wondering how long they would have before the alarm was sounded. If they could take out something vital… they might survive this crazy mission after all.

“We’ve been boarded!”

The High Priest couldn’t believe his ears. No one had ever boarded a Takaina starship before, not since the Unification Wars… and even then, the boarding actions had been minimal and designed to hamper operations. They had never even anticipated the possibility! The human prisoners they’d taken and held onboard, before returning them to Earth, had been watched carefully… but naked and unarmed, what could they do?

But the display was clear. The internal security system was reporting humans, real armed humans, moving unerringly down into the vitals of Guiding Star , right towards the main drive shaft. If they started to wreck havoc down there, their very success of their holy mission would be in peril. They would be crippled, at the very least, their plans to defeat the human race shelved until they could rebuild the starship. The High Priest’s hindsight was nagging at him now, reminding him of all the things that could go wrong, and his mind snapped under the pressure.

“Send the warriors,” he screamed. If nothing else, they couldn’t know about the security system, or that they were being monitored all the way; the sterile bitch had never known about that! They knew where they were going, all right, but they didn’t know to knock out the system as they moved, and even if they did… they would mark out a clear pathway for the warriors to follow. “ Destroy them !”

“Shit, we’re hopelessly lost,” Jack called. The corridors all looked the same to the humans. If they’d had a chance to navigate, they’d blown it somewhere once they left the hanger deck. “Captain, you got any idea of where we are?”

“No,” Brent said. He looked over at Luke, but the alien was coming apart at the seams. The sight of one of his priests blown apart by a spray of bullets seemed to have unhinged him slightly. He wouldn’t be any use at all and it was damn lucky that they’d never given him a weapon. “We just keep heading into the ship and…”

A spray of bullets cut off his words. The aliens had, somehow, managed to get a blocking force in ahead of them… and, he suspected, another in back of them. The space engineers had suggested that the aliens would be reluctant to use heavy weapons on their mothership, but clearly no one had bothered to tell them that; they were firing heavy machine guns right into the confined space. The small unit split up and threw a pair of grenades back down the corridor, hearing an explosion and screams of pain, but Brent knew that they were trapped. They might punch their way through the blocking force, but by now the aliens would be sealing them into a trap and sending warriors to cut off all the escape routes. They’d be expecting a surrender; they knew that most trapped human units tried to surrender, but not now.

“Cover me,” he ordered, and pulled his backpack off. It was the work of a moment to open the covering and reach the control panel and then, taking a breath, to enter his code. The red lights lit up, revealing a countdown, but he cancelled it impatiently. The aliens would break through at any moment… and, he realised now, they had been foolish to think that there was even a chance to get away. He thought, briefly, of the remainder of SF34 and allowed himself a moment of relief that they hadn’t come with him, and then held his finger over the button. It was a moment for last words, but he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to say, even though he’d known it would come down to this one day.

“I’m sorry, Luke,” he said, and pushed down on the button.

It made a single ominous click under his finger.

The world went white.

We’re going to lose this , Gary thought, grimly. A cold sense of hopeless came over him, a feeling that it had all been for nothing. Guiding Star was picking up speed now, its massive drive starting to push it out of orbit, contemptuously outrunning the pitifully feeble human opposition behind it. The massive ship should move like a whale, he thought, but it still had the legs to outrun them. They’d barely have a chance to light it up with their lasers, let alone the rail guns, and it was large enough to shrug off a hit from one of those. It would be difficult to hit at such speeds, let alone damage enough to…

Guiding Star exploded. He stared at the twinkle of light on the display, the cameras showing the starship literally ripping itself apart, the full fury of a nuclear blast, inside the ship, shattering it like paper. The weapons and ammunition onboard the ship only added to the catastrophe tearing the ship apart… and there was no way that it could shrug that off. It might have been able to survive a nuclear blast close to the hull — and the Russians claimed that it had done just that — but the detonation had occurred inside the hull. They would have some precautions against accidental detonations, but nothing that could stop a nuke. Offhand, he couldn’t even think of anything that would stop a nuke from vaporising the ship.

Simon was laughing. “Sir,” he said, delightedly. “Didn’t I promise you fireworks?”

“Shut up,” Gary said, unable to keep a smile from his face. Even the thought of the commandos who had sacrificed themselves to take out the battle section couldn’t put a dampener on his mood. “What the hell are they going to do now?”

His thoughts turned pensive. The briefcase nuke onboard the shuttle had been the most powerful small nuclear warhead ever built, capable of levelling a major city… or at least inflicting serious damage on it. In space, where there were no rescue services, it had proven devastating… but there were still the remaining parasite ships. He did a quick count and was relieved to see that there were only fifteen of them left, most of them out of position for a quick engagement. They appeared to be trying to concentrate their forces…