The Barfleur By Richard L. Rubin

The battle at the edge of the Orion Nebula had been long and costly, and it wasn’t over yet, not even after six days of fighting. On the beginning of the seventh day, Captain Ian Wexler, sitting in his command chair, gazed over the scorched, battered bridge of his starship. The Barfleur had taken its share of punishment, but it was still a good ship with a good crew, the best damn destroyer in the fleet.

“Hope today brings some good hunting,” Wexler said, nodding to his first officer, Lieutenant Lisa Ramirez, who sat a few meters to his right, leaning over a bank of gauges and screens monitoring the ship’s internal status.

At this point, hundreds of Earth Fleet and Arcturian space vessels had been destroyed, but Wexler was sure there were more enemy ships still in play that needed to be dealt with. Maintaining one-quarter impulse speed, he maneuvered the Barfleur cautiously through the graveyard of broken and twisted warships of every class, scanning his instrument panel and main viewscreen for surviving Arcturian vessels to engage.

The war had begun with a dispute over rights to a cluster of ore-rich asteroids in the nearby Alnilam star system. The Arcturians needed to be taught that the citizens of Earth weren’t about to be meekly driven out of this highly lucrative sector of the galaxy.

The Barfleur slowly negotiated its way through a maze of demolished warships. Then he spotted it. There, in the center of the carnage, lay the remains of the Colossus, the Earth Fleet flagship commanded by Admiral Luis Vieira. The gargantuan battleship had been blown apart into three jagged pieces, its decks and plasma engine exposed to the cold vacuum of space. Wexler choked down a sob. The “Old Bull” was dead—no one on board that ship could have survived. Admiral Vieira hadn’t been a brilliant strategist or tactician, but he had been a crusty old warrior who personally led his troops from the front, sharing their danger. And the men and women under his command loved him for it.

As the Barfleur drew away from the charred ruin of the Colossus, a red flame of pulsar fire flashed out, striking the Barfleur’s heavy forward hull plating. The ship rocked with the impact, but sustained no real damage.

Wexler identified the attacking vessel on his large viewing screen, and hit his comm button to send out a ship-wide alert. “Look alive folks, we’re engaging an Arcturian gunboat on our port side! This one’s for the Admiral!”

Wexler flipped another comm switch and directed a message to the engine room. “Wong, Smith, give me full power to weapons and port side shields. We’re gonna take out that son of a bitch.”

The enemy ship fired a second pulsar blast. Wexler, employing his finely honed piloting skills, ducked and dodged his ship, eluding the red-hot blast by mere meters. The enemy gunship closed in, aiming its forward torpedo cannons at the Barfleur’s midship engine compartment.

Wexler anticipated his foe’s move, avoiding the speeding atomic torpedoes that shot out a moment later. He quickly countered, circling about and firing directly at the Arcturian’s rear plasma conduits. A direct hit—the twin conduits exploded! The hapless gunship shuddered, then spun about helplessly as Wexler drilled two more plasma bursts into the Arcturian’s command bridge. The gunboat erupted into a brilliant fireball. It was over.

“Well done, Ramirez!” Wexler pumped his right fist in the air triumphantly. “We got those Arcturian bastards!”

But Ramirez didn’t answer. Instead, the Captain watched her collapse to the floor in a limp heap. Then Wexler remembered. Ramirez was dead. In fact they all were—Smith, Wong, every one of them. Twelve of the Barfleur’s original complement of forty crew members had been killed on the first day of battle in a duel to the death against an Arcturian frigate. Twenty-six of the Barfleur survivors had died three days later when a volley of close-range plasma bursts had sliced through the lower part of the hull, venting precious atmosphere and collapsing two deck plates. The bridge had been immediately sealed off, and, by some miracle, propulsion and weapons systems remained operational by way of bridge controls. Ramirez was killed three hours later by a flying shard of metal that pieced her temple when the ship was struck by an Arcturian torpedo. She had been the last of Wexler’s crew. The battle at the edge of the nebula had been one bloody, unrelenting horror.

Captain Wexler sat quietly for a few minutes. Then he leaned over his comm, and called out, “Wong, Smith, check engines and weapons for any damage from that last dustup. We need everything shipshape and ready for action.”

As he maneuvered the Barfleur through the graveyard of drifting, shattered hulks, searching for another enemy ship to engage, Captain Ian Wexler released a crazed, cackling laugh.

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Richard L. Rubin has been writing science fiction and fantasy since 2008. His flash fiction story To Soar like a Bird was selected as the February 2018 Dark Fiction selection at Eastern Iowa Review. His short story sci-fi thriller Robbery on Antares VI is available on Amazon. Science fiction stories written by him also appear in the Aurora Wolf journal of science fiction and fantasy, and Broadswords and Blasters magazine. In a previous life he worked as an appellate lawyer, defending several clients facing the death penalty in California. Richard is an Associate Member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Susanne. Richard’s website is at: richardlrubin.com.