Journey of the Alacritous Regress Volume 1: The Dead Canary

Installment 4: Self Destruct, Every Ship Has One

"Your weapons have been subdued, your crew captured, and your communications blocked. You have no choice but to surrender." Before me stood an Avlicin, an alien race allied with Australia. He has two sets of arms, one with small dexterous fingers, the other with massive sets of claws. His face is a featureless flat plane of skin pulled over a plate of bone, only broken by two eyes set into it near the top. He's wearing a uniform denoting his rank of captain.

"Never!" The captain shouts, followed by something in his native language. He starts frantically flipping switches on the ship's control panel.

The names Shooting Star, although everyone either calls me Shooting or Sir. I'm the captain of the Alacritous Regress, fastest intersystem ship in the NASA armada. I'm currently standing aboard the Avlicin ship Kl'kul'kik Flú'k, or Storm Runner. I'm decked out in body armor, several plates of printed plastic all strung together on a reenforced nano laced jumpsuit. My helmet rests lightly on my head with the face plate retracted to the side, allowing me a full range of vision. In my hand rests a katana, magnetic guard deactivated and held at the ready. To my right stands Arron, to my left Brian.

The two of them seem to have prepared for combat in complete opposite ways. Arron has every centimeter of his body covered in thick power armor. His arms end in solid holographic hands and have several sets of energy weapons attached to the side. His legs end in magnetic sockets containing spheres, each one rests with a flattened face flush to the deck. His face is completely obscured by a massive helmet.

Brian on the other hand is dressed in a robe of armor nanos. Underneath that is a suit of iron chainmail, and underneath that he is wearing a skin tight compression spacesuit. Instead of a helmet he has an inflatable hood that he could activate at a moments notice to finish space proofing himself. In his hands he carries nothing other than his stave.

"Arron, stop him." I bark out the order. Arron reacts instantly. Adjusting his right arm, a smaller set of weapons mounted right above the hand projector flash as they fire twin arcs of energy. The bolts hit the captain square in the back and he slumps across the controls, unconscious.

Beside me Brian speaks, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

"What'd you say, Brian? My ears are still ringing from that shot."

"I was just asking what he was doing?'

I move towards the console he had been working at. "I have no idea, all the labels are in Avlicin." A sudden string of alien words over the intercom ring out across the ship. I'm not fluent in any alien languages, but back at command school they teach you a few important words in every alien language. Self-destruct is one of those words. "I've figured it out! RUN!!"

The three of us turn and sprint out of the bridge and towards the demolecularization chamber.

<<>>

Tail was on the bridge running a diagnostic on the warp drive. Nothing had gone wrong or acted up, but she was worried about her brother, and doing work distracted her from the imminent danger. She looked up out the window for the hundredth time. There the Storm Runner floated about 20 meters away.

Tail let out a sigh, this wasn't the first time that the crew of the Alacritous Regress had boarded an enemy vessel, but it was their first time going up against the Avlicin. Tail was thinking contently that her mate, Rivan, was lying sick in their quarters instead of with the others, storming the ship, when it happened.

The shield indicators flashed as they were all stressed to their limit. The light reduction auto-adjust in the windows shorted out and suddenly the cockpit was filled with blinding light. The ship started to shake violently as the tremors that had racked the shields finally found a way in.