Battle For The Blue Planet Chapter 5: Broken Hearts

“Captain, the Exterminator…” Sunny started to repeat herself.

“I heard you, Sunny. I heard you… Please, just give me a moment… I… I need time to think,” Bonnie murmured as she stared at her paws, grief evident in her voice.

She looked at the clock running at the bottom of the bridge viewscreen. 3:41:12 and counting. They had almost made it. Only a few more minutes and the fleet would have arrived. Now Earth was open, and the Zenti seemed to be relishing in the victory, their admiral wanting to get one last dig at the Red Spark’s captain before sending her to the void.

After nearly a minute of silence in which the bridge crew watched the Exterminator creep toward low Earth orbit and their firing position, Bonnie Red finally spoke up. “Do it Sunny. Put him up, maybe I can convince him to spare a few of them,” Bonnie said, defeated.

The screen flickered and flashed before the pixels began coalescing, displaying the Zenti admiral. Shockingly his uniform was not in the pristine condition the crew had last seen it in. Instead, it was ruffled and splattered with the deep green of Zenti blood. He looked haggard and weary, but still, he maintained an air of superiority.

“Good, you're still alive. For a brief moment, I was worried you’d died, and I’d be looking into the eyes of some junior officer,” The Zenti spoke while clicking in amusement, before suddenly becoming serious. “Dlamisa, to say you fought hard would do you no credit. You fought like, as your precious humans would say, lions. You killed several of my carriers, dozens of escorts, and four cruisers, alone. You tore my fleet apart…” The Zenti admiral paused to take a breath, “For that, you deserve a reward. A reward no Zenti has ever delivered. To you, I gift the opportunity to witness the destruction of your world.” The Zenti admiral finished, looking smug.

Swallowing a feeling of white-hot rage boiling inside her, Bonnie Red looked into the viewscreen, locking eyes with the Zenti admiral before her. Slowly standing out of her chair she did something she never thought herself able to do. Bonnie Red bent her knees, lowered her eyes, and crouched down, begging.

Memories flashed in front of her eyes as she knelt. The first time she and Bailey made love, the day she found out she was pregnant, the moment she held their pups in her arms, the joy in her children’s eyes as they held ice cream cones in their paws. Those memories and more flowed over her like waves breaking on a beach.

Bonnie broke her stare with the deck below, intending to make her thoughts heard by the Zenti admiral, “If my fight truly means something to you, then please, spare the planet… spare my friends,” Bonnie said, sending pleading eyes at the admiral on her viewscreen.

The Zenti admiral basked in the glory of having his opponent grovel before him, “I will spare nothing Dlamisa. This planet will burn. Though for you, I will do a favor… I will let you pick who burns first.”

While Bonnie stared dumbfounded at the brutality of the Zenti admiral, he began to speak again, “I could start with New Shanghai. Lots of life forms there. Maybe I could save them the apprehension of their future.”

“Then again, I could wipe out Kraków and the history of humanity in one fell swoop if you prefer,” The Zenti admiral was now clicking in what was later to be determined as deranged giggling.

“Or I could begin where it makes the most sense and go straight for the capital, Louisville Kentucky. Cut off the head of the snake as the humans say,” The Zenti admiral finished, staring straight at Bonnie.

As he went through his list Bonnie stayed stoic. She didn’t so much as twitch when she thought of the deaths in New Shanghai. Not a piece of fur went out of place at the mention of wiping out Kraków. But when he spoke about Louisville, her body betrayed her. Bonnie’s fur stood up and she let loose a low growl at the thought of the destruction of her home. That growl should’ve frightened any sane being. Unfortunately, the admiral was anything but sane and took that growl as an indication he’d found something personal.

“Got something special in that city? Or maybe someone special? A family perhaps?” The admiral clicked in amusement as Bonnie’s growl deepened at the mention of family.

“Perfect! I’ll start there. You just sit back and watch. Your time will come when this planet is ash,” The Zenti admiral said while turning away from the camera, motioning offscreen to someone as he began to cut the feed.

Bonnie had to keep him talking. She needed to buy time, and maybe here she could do it. The admiral had been talking for several minutes already. All she needed was a few more. So before the feed was cut Bonnie barked out a single word. “WHY?”

The admiral turned back and faced the pirate captain. He stood there silently and just stared at her. Bonnie began to shake with rage at his apparent refusal to answer. He’d put the crew of the Red Spark in a position where they would watch their world burn and it seemed like he wouldn’t even tell them why he’d done it. So she decided to make her feelings known.

“**WHY WON’T YOU KILL US? WHY ARE YOU BURNING OUR HOME? TELL ME DAMNIT! YOU LEAVE US HERE AND MAKE US WATCH AS YOU SLAUGHTER INNOCENTS, AND YOU WON’T EVEN TELL ME WHY!**” Bonnie yelled at the admiral.

“Why leave you? The answer is simple Dlamisan. It’s not just your life I’m interested in taking,” The admiral paused and pointed toward Earth. “There is a quote I read in an old book from that planet of yours. I think it embodies exactly what I’m after.”

‘Killing a man; such a rush but a life alone is not worth taking.’

‘To take his hard-earned weapon, his embattled armor, his past victories, his eyes so that he may never see his love again. Aye, that's worth everything.’

“I’m going to take everything you love from right under your nose,” The admiral stated coldly.

Never before had Bonnie Red felt so helpless. Despair welled up in her chest and flowed into the rest of her body. But she didn’t show it. There was one last thing she needed to know before giving up. One last hope for vengeance.

“Zenti, what is your name?” Bonnie asked.

“You may call me Ezeldore Dlamisa. Why must you know?” The now named admiral replied confused.

“Because Ezeldore, if there is an afterlife, I will spend eternity hunting you. There will be nowhere in the vastness of infinity for you to hide. I will find you, and you will pay,” Bonnie spoke. Her words were like a winter storm, instantly chilling the bridge of both the Red Spark and the Exterminator. Even Ezeldore looked uncertain for a moment before coming back for the last word.

“We’ll see,” He said before suddenly cutting the feed.

Bonnie Red looked at the clock, 3:54:44. Close, so close, but not close enough. The despair seemed to flow from Bonnie into the rest of the bridge crew. Ears drooped, tails fell like lead weights and a lone howl rose up. The mourning and loss in that single howl expressed more emotion than all the choirs of the Earth combined. It was a fitting song for the last moments of a beautiful life extinguished too soon.

The howl crescendoed as the Exterminator found its target. Hanging menacingly over the city of Louisville like a vengeful god, the ship began charging its main cannon. Crackles of energy emanated from the spinally mounted gun as power flowed into it. The howl died as the gun began to glow, ready to fire.

Suddenly a ship blinked out of warp right in the path of the cannon of the Exterminator. Then another, and another, and another. The trickle turned into a flood as ships poured out of warp right in front of the goliath, forming a wall of steel between its cannon and the city below. The Home Fleet had arrived.

Bonnie looked at her clock, 3:58:32. They had made it early. But it seems it wasn’t without a dreadful cost. Ships came out of warp close to the Zenti flotilla, too close. There were explosions as ships collided, sending flaming shrapnel down into the atmosphere and onto the very city they were trying so hard to protect.

The Exterminator was not deterred by the mass of steel and guns in front of it and made to fire through them. That was until the flagship of the Home Fleet, RNV Hollow Words, a titanic battle cruiser that embodied humanity’s ideology of more boom is best, slammed into the Exterminator forcing its shot to go wide. Instead of wiping out the city, the beam burned some of the surrounding suburbs before being pointed into the void as the ships tumbled.

Once the Exterminator’s beam was fired the Home Fleet pounced. Every ship in the steel wall drove into the Zenti formation firing their weapons with a fury unseen in large-scale naval combat. The human-designed rail guns shone like stars as they fired, ripping the shield-reliant Zenti vessels to shreds. It was a massacre. Zenti hulls fragmented and burned in the atmosphere raining pieces of hull across the globe.

Over the course of 30 minutes, the Zenti flotilla was reduced to scrap. Every ship was absolutely destroyed and all escape vessels were torn to shreds. No surrender was accepted that day. The Zenti paid dearly for the attempted murder of the human homeworld. Years later the event would be named, ‘The End of the Beginning,’ in reference to the Republic Zenti war that was now raging.

The Exterminator itself had a special fate. After being rammed by the Hollow Words, the ship was dead adrift in the void. It was then pushed into a terminal orbit of the Sun by the remaining tugs of the Ceres mining core. The Zenti left alive inside burned slowly as their orbit decayed.

Back on the Red Spark, there wasn’t a thing that could be heard over the howls of victory. Dlamisa quite literally jumped for joy in some cases. Even the bridge crew was losing it. Jess was howling until she was blue in the nose. Sunny bounced and huffed in laughter as her tail whacked into every object around her. Charlie’s tail was doing the same as he leaped from his chair and joined in Jess’ howling. Everyone was celebrating, everyone except for Bonnie Red.

Bonnie Red sat back in the bloody captain's chair and pulled out her datapad. She gently held it as the image of her family came up. The joy on the faces of her mate and pups brought up so many happy memories. But instead of focusing on the memories, she thought of the future. A future that she and her crew had helped secure. Suddenly, on the screen, drops of water appeared. Confused, Bonnie wiped them away only for more to take their place. She looked up, expecting to see a pipe has broken only for her vision to become blurry. Panicking she reached up and touched her muzzle and immediately discovered what was happening.

Bonnie Red learned what it takes to make a Dlamisan cry.