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  SAGITTA

  StarFighter Book One

  C.M. Benamati

  Copyright Notice

  Text Copyright 2019 by Christopher M. Benamati. All rights reserved.

  Second Edition ISBN (print) 9781797505190

  First Edition Text © 2018 by Christopher Benamati. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN (print) 9781719834957

  https://starfightersf.com/

  Cover Art by Warren Design

  Acknowledgements

  This wouldn’t have been possible without lots of help. This book is dedicated to my wife Kirsten, who is always up for a fantastic story no matter how silly, and to Will and Sam (my little space cadets).

  Thanks mom and dad, for introducing me to the genres of science fiction and fantasy, and for reading and rereading the countless drafts of this book over 10 years. Your support is invaluable.

  Thank you also to those who watched endless Star Trek episodes with me all through college, and to those who provided insight, editing, criticism, and support of my writing.

  *Alpha*

  *Chris Guillory*

  *Nate Benamati*

  *Allen Daley*

  *Kirsten Benamati*

  *Jeff Turgeon*

  *Noelle Todd*

  *Critique Circle*

  *Misty*

  *Omega*

  Finally, I’d like to thank my first readers for plowing through the draft, no matter how painfully bad some parts of it were.

  Prelude

  The wind whistled through the forest, rustling leaves and carrying the crisp scent of the Ganjon Mountains down into the lowlands. Mog lay just inside the tree line. It was the perfect temperature here in the shade. A hundred marks away, the short sand beach transitioned into an endless expanse of sparkling blue and green.

  He laid his head down against the cool earth. Tired. So tired. Waves pounded against sheer cliffs further up the beach, just out of sight. Their fury shook the ground as they carried out their relentless onslaught. Thum-thum. Thum-thum.

  A familiar voice wafted on the wind from some great distance. “Brace for impact.”

  Who was that?

  “Someone get to the commander.”

  “Mog, are you alright?”

  Forget about them. They’re ghosts now, ghosts from the past. It’s all over.

  “The hull is buckling, we’re venting atmosphere.”

  “Commander Mog!”

  “Leave me alone,” he growled. May I never leave this cool forest floor. He stretched his aching body, extended a claw, and dragged it through the dirt. He paused, ears twitching, staring at the line. What was that sound? He dragged his claw some more, wincing as it screeched like a knife across a sharpening stone. He tapped the earth. Sharp reverberation shot through his hand. What’s going on?

  He tried to push himself up, but his hands slipped in something wet. Blood? The sticky, glistening trail led towards the beach. He looked up. Someone was sprawled out not even ten marks away, just at the edge of the sand. How had he not seen him? Mog crawled over and put a hand on the youth’s shoulder, rolling the body over.

  His little brother’s fur was cold and matted with blood. Gray sightless eyes stared up at Mog.

  Nam? Nam!

  Strong arms slid under him, lifting him. “Sir, you have to get up.”

  He growled. Pain flared across his back and neck. His head swam with familiar voices.

  “They’re almost on top of us.”

  “Hold one more second!”

  “Sir, your orders?”

  Mog opened his eyes and the forest of his childhood disappeared. The bridge lurched and he stumbled forward, catching the railing with his left hand. Kremp was supporting his right side. Vrail, the ship’s astrogator, lay dead at their feet.

  He jerked himself upright as the battle-scarred enemy cruiser bore down upon them. Green fire flashed across the viewscreen.

  “Return fire!” said Mog.

  Blue energy flashed from the forward batteries as Mog’s ship sprang her trap. There was no way to miss at this range. The enemy’s belly tore open, venting atmosphere into space.

  With a roar, Mog stood to his full height and pushed the engineer away. “Thrusters, hard about.”

  The Narma Kull groaned in protest. Mog slipped, his clawed feet coming to a screeching stop against a fallen structural support. Did that thing hit me? He ran a hand over the back of his head and winced. When he pulled his hand away, his fingers were dripping with blood.

  He eased himself back into his command chair and regarded the viewscreen. Mauria was still there: a small blueberry, ripe and ready to be squashed. All that stood between his homeworld and the destroyers was a motley assemblage of half-functional ships. If we fail…

  “Helm, make us a target. Do whatever it takes to draw their fire away from the evacuation transports. Tactical, disable the charge limiters and fire at will. Watch the gun temps, don’t let them melt.”

  As his officers made their acknowledgements, a small civilian transport burst onto the screen followed by a pair of enemy fighters, which were firing madly. The transport danced this way and that, desperately trying to evade.

  It collided with a plasma bolt and went into a spin, its thin unarmored skin burning away. When the fuel tanks blew, the explosion bathed the bridge of the Narma Kull in golden light.

  So much death. Had this been an earlier battle, maybe he would have felt something. Now he suffered no emotions. His soul was darker and colder than space itself. He had seen entire cities—entire worlds—sent into the black. Now Mauria, the seat of the empire, stood on the brink. Surely I must feel something. Surely I should weep?

  The deck fell out from under them as the ship reeled from a torpedo.

  “Dorsal shields collapsing,” said Nali. The tactical officer was hunched over her console, ignoring the stream of freezing coolant running down her back from a fractured conduit.

  “Fleet status?” said Mog.

  “Twelve percent.” Laleg’s face was impassive as he studied the communications display, but his quivering voice betrayed his fear. “The sub-admiral’s ship has been destroyed and the Ta’Krell have broken through the planetary defenses. There are reports of heavy casualties in the cities. Arkara, Baraque, and Tenabria are gone. The Naval Command office has been obliterated.”

  The Supreme Commander is dead. We’re on our own up here.

  “Another report just in,” said Laleg. He hesitated.

  “Spit it out.”

  “I’m sorry Mog, but the Ganjon coast and much of the southern forest has taken fire from orbit. Casualties are estimated at sixty percent.”

  Mog stiffened. Nam. Mom. Dad. My home, destroyed? It cannot be.

  “Ramas, help us,” whispered a crewman.

  Around the bridge people muttered similar prayers. Mog bared his teeth; this wasn’t the time for foolishness. “Ramas be damned! If he were real this wouldn’t be happening. We must do this ourselves.”

  The praying stopped.

  Mog pushed aside thoughts of burning jungles and screaming children. “Helm, bring us about. Engage those command ships and take the pressure off the transports. Nali, divert power from the aft shields to the weapons. We won’t be running.”

  There was a pause as that sank in before the officers carried out their orders. This is it, one way or another.

  His ship was turning. Stars trails and plasma bolts streaked across the viewscreen until an immense object blotted out the view: a Ta’Krell dreadnaught. The recessed weapons ports in its rectangular hull belched green fire. Two Maurian frigates exploded. A third went into a slow spiral as its port engine was shredded.

  “Fire all banks!”

  Five deadly streams lanced out, striking the target in a fraction of a second. Each
bolt sent blue-white ripples coursing through the dreadnaught’s shields. Come on, come on! It was like the soap bubbles that children used to blow in the streets before the war. Only this bubble won’t break.

  “Nazpah,” he spat. “Keep firing on that forward shield face. Standby torpedoes. As soon as—”

  The massive ship retaliated, shaking the Narma Kull so violently that Vrail’s body tipped over the edge of the command platform. It landed face-down on the lower level with a wet thump.

  “Evasive maneuvers, pull the bow up!”

  The viewscreen went black as the burning transplasma melted the sensor array. Thunderous rumblings coursed through the hull. The bridge pitched downward, sending officers tumbling from the upper deck.

  “Helm not responding,” said Meela.

  “Shield burn-through confirmed,” said Kremp. “Hull breech, deck two, section four on the starboard dorsal wing. Commander, we’re in trouble. That blast took out the PCMs and fried the vital bus. Engines are cold, we’re not going anywhere.”

  The ship rocked again. “Casualties on all decks,” said Laleg. “Gravity’s out on the lower levels. Med teams report all access routes to sickbay are blocked. Mog, there’s a new report from Mauria. The capital city is on fire.”

  Cold hands seemed to squeeze his hearts as Mog pivoted to view the tactical station. Nali was still standing. One of her triangular ears was torn, and dark blood stained her tawny fur.

  “Do we have weapons?” he said.

  Her ears drooped as she met his gaze. Her wide yellow eyes betrayed her terror.

  “Nazpah,” said Mog. He turned to the engineer. “Kremp, how long to connect the guns to the non-vital bus?”

  “There’s no way to do it before that beast blasts us to atoms. Decks two and three in the starboard dorsal are a disaster, and my teams can’t get to the damage.”

  “Can you give me anything?”

  “I’ve got the screen back. That’s about it.”

  Mog gripped his chair. Sickbay was on deck two. His first officer was there, barely clinging to life. Was he dead now? Doesn’t matter. We’ll all be dead soon.

  The enemy ship filled the screen. It was an ungainly brute with a rectangular hull and wedge-shaped nose. Its only outstanding feature was an annular engine assembly that encircled its hull. Mog counted the glowing weapons ports. There were sixteen cannons on the bow, each emitting a dull emerald light.

  He surveyed his bridge. Data cables dangled from the ceiling, and heavy smoke from burned-out consoles blanketed the deck. Air hissed from a slow leak. His crew gazed at him with the sunken eyes of corpses. Somebody was praying again.

  Curse you Ramas, you make-believe bastard. There must be another way! We’re out of fighter craft. Perhaps the shuttles? No, they’d be swatted like flies. Collision course? No, the engines are out. Manually launch torpedoes? No, they’d shoot them down before they got halfway there.

  All was lost.

  He turned back to face the screen, expecting to be blasted into dust.

  It didn’t happen. Thrusters fired, and the prodigious vessel pitched upwards, the plasma trail from its engine ring intensifying. Mog stared, stupefied, as it passed overhead. It was so close that the alien glyphs on its airlock doors were visible.

  The screen switched to aft cameras. The enemy flagship was heading towards Mauria. The planet was encircled by a broad band that had never been there before—a slowly spiraling debris field of twisted metal and broken hulls.

  A small missile launched from the dreadnaught’s nose and sped towards the planet. Then another, and another. They began to glow as they traced their way through the atmosphere.

  A flash. Two flashes. Three flashes.

  Make it stop!

  Flash, flash, flash.

  The continents were on fire, but the Ta’Krell didn’t stop.

  Flash, flash, flash.

  The oceans boiled. White steam mixed with black soot and fire as the planet died.

  Mog sat back and watched it burn. He closed his eyes, but the crimson brightness of the fireball burned through his eyelids. The crew wailed.

  “Ramas, how could you let this happen?” sobbed Meela.

  “There are no gods,” said Mog, his voice barely a whisper. “And if there ever were, they are long dead.”

  ∆∆∆

  Someone pulled something sticky from the back of his head.

  I still exist.

  What a cruel thought. He pushed it away, as the drowning man with lungs full of water pushes away the buoy. It was easier to simply die.

  “Open your eyes.”

  No.

  Someone grasped the fur of his chest and shook him. “Open!”

  He was in a chair. In front of him was that accursed doctor, holding that damned scanner. He snarled. “Why do you deny me death?”

  “I am helping you remember,” said the doctor.

  “Remember what?”

  “You tell me. You were there.”

  “Where? When, when was this? How long ago?”

  “Nearly two months.”

  Months! How could that be? He started to rise, but something cold pressed against the back of his neck.

  “So you can rest for a little while,” said the doctor. “One more treatment and I think things will be clearer.”

  “My crew,” he said. “Where are they? My ship. I need to get back.” Dimly, he became aware of the slurred sound of his own voice. He took a breath to steady himself. “Where are my…when…what?”

  It was no use. The lights blended into a blazing ball of fire that would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life.

  Chapter 1

  Early morning sunlight brushed over the peaks of the Rincon Mountains, revealing the desert’s harsh beauty. Hardy mesquite and paloverde glistened with dew from last night’s unexpected rain. A red-tailed hawk circled above, far out of reach of the uplifted arms of the saguaro cacti that dotted the landscape.

  A cactus’ shadow stretched across the sand, ending just shy of a strange looking car. The doors, hinged at the roof like wings on a bird, were both up. A pair of boots stuck out from the open passenger side.

  Morgan lay on his back, his lanky form contorted under the Scorpion’s dashboard. The seat position lever was stabbing into his ribs, and judging from the tingling in his toes the door sill was cutting off circulation to his feet.

  “This sucks,” he grumbled to himself, as he wiped the sweat from his eyes. “All-time, major-league suckage.” He resumed tapping commands into the computer interface that some brain-dead engineer had brilliantly hid in the most inaccessible place. The fuel controller couldn’t have picked a worse time to go on the fritz.

  “Good luck Morgan,” said a familiar voice from outside.

  Morgan nodded without looking up. “You too, Ralph.” It’s weird. They never talk to me at school, but out here on the track things are different.

  His watch beeped—the race would start in ten minutes. Must work faster.

  The stylus slipped, and his metal watch struck an exposed power relay. He yelped as a spark shot up his arm. The fuel controller beeped and rebooted. He threw the stylus against the floorboard.

  “Why does the universe hate me?” he cried.

  He checked his watch to make sure it still worked, then picked the stylus back up. This is taking way too long.

  After two agonizing minutes, the injector pulse table finally made sense. He tossed the stylus under the driver’s seat, not caring if it got lost in the nest of tools that resided there. Then, after a few seconds of awkward wiggling, he stuck his head out of the driver-side door.

  About a hundred local bumpkins were roaming the makeshift bleachers, juggling plates of hot dogs and fries. Along with the snacks, several people held palm-sized display screens, each one linked to one of the camera copters that were buzzing around in the air above the starting line. He recognized a few classmates from Blairsford’s tiny high school. He knew one or two of them, but most of their names
escaped him. They knew who he was of course. Everyone did.

  He scowled at the thought, then tilted his head to the side. The starting spot next to him was still empty. According to the roster, there were two new racers competing today. The one staged next to Morgan, some L. Fowler, still hadn’t shown up. He’d better hurry up or he’ll miss the race.

  “So, how do you expect to beat anyone in that…thing?”

  Morgan jerked upright, only to slam his head against the underside of the steering wheel. He clenched his teeth together, stifling the reflex to curse. He forced himself around the wheel and into an awkward sitting position between the steering wheel and the driver’s seat. The sunlight streaming in from the passenger-side was blinding. He squinted at a young man’s smirking face.

  The stranger was tall and bony, with sharp eyebrows and a protruding chin. He had a scraggly beard, and his shoulder-length black hair begged for a good wash. He looked a little older, probably around eighteen, and had the usual bioware implants – retinal projectors, a subvocalizer pickup, and holographic transceivers at the temples. He was wearing a black leather jacket, black jeans, and black gloves.

  “This area’s for drivers only,” said Morgan. “You’re gonna get in trouble.”

  The guy laughed, and pulled something from his pocket. It was a driver’s pass. V. Marris. So this is the other newbie. Someone call Darwin, we’ve got a winner. Desert racing wasn’t something you did wearing clothes like that. Even with air conditioning, this guy was begging for heat stroke. Morgan’s racing suit might not be fashionable, but the thin outer shell was fire-proof and the refrigerated inner layer kept him at a manageable temperature. Since he’d taken up the sport last year, the suit had been his best investment, despite the 20k price tag.

  The stranger’s hawkish eyes scanned the Scorpion with contempt. “Answer the question.” His voice was just as pinched as his face. “Do you actually think you’ve got a chance with a car like that?”

  “Why else would I be here?” muttered Morgan, sliding back under the dash. He didn’t have time to chat with this scumbag.