The Calling – Chapter 31: Chariots of Fire

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“Now when the attendant of the man of God had risen early and gone out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was circling the city. And his servant said to him, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” So he answered, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then Elisha prayed and said, “O LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” And the LORD opened the servant’s eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. When they came down to him, Elisha prayed to the LORD and said, “Strike this people with blindness, I pray.” So He struck them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.”

2 Kings 6:15-18

The Hunt Interrupted

The Stellar Scout F290 leapt into hyperspace, its fusion drives humming as it chased The Transapora’s course into the void. Wade Kovacs settled into the navigator’s chair, the glow of the tactical display reflecting in his eyes. Rephidim-5’s red dust and desperate settlers faded into memory, replaced by the weight of Elkiah’s warning—a rogue freighter spiriting ore to unknown ends. The crew buzzed with purpose, their faith bolstered by the fledgling church they’d left behind. Kristen’s quiet prayer lingered in the air, a steady anchor as they plunged deeper into uncharted space. Jay adjusted their course with his usual precision, while Mayumi pored over manifests, hunting for clues in the freighter’s cryptic path. Hours blurred into days, the ship’s rhythm—shifts, drills, scripture—a lifeline against the endless black. They were hunters now, tracking shadows with a higher calling. Exhaustion crept in, and Wade finally surrendered to sleep, trusting Jay’s steady hands at the helm.

The rhythmic hum of the twin engines had lulled Wade into a deep sleep. In his dreams, he was back on Earth, walking through a sun-dappled forest with Kristen by his side, the scent of pine and her laughter filling the air. Suddenly, he was back at Ranger school in a live fire with the Skravaks. He jolted awake as the ship’s warning system sliced through his subconscious like a jagged blade, ripping him from his dreams back to reality.”

Wade’s eyes snapped open, his body tensing as he reached for his data pad beside the bunk. The soft blue lighting of his individual berth had switched to a pulsing red glow, casting eerie shadows across the compact space. The clever storage solutions—recessed shelves and fold-out panels—that usually made the crew quarters feel spacious now seemed to close in around him, the walls vibrating faintly with the ship’s growing urgency.

“Warning. Skravak vessel detected. All personnel report to battle stations immediately,” the ship’s AI announced, its synthetic calm a jarring counterpoint to the chaos bleeding through the hull.

Wade’s heart thudded as he threw off his covers and grabbed his flight suit from the locker. He yanked on his boots, the Skravak name igniting a phantom ache in his titanium hand. His mind lurched back to that day—two years ago, pinned in the waste hatch of a Skravak derelict. He’d been last out, adrenaline pumping after the Argus had been ambushed. The hatch had been their escape, a rusted maw they’d pried open. He could still hear the hiss of his suit sealing, feel the cold metal brushing his glove—then the scream of hydraulics as the AI rebooted. The hatch slammed shut, shearing through flesh and bone, his arm a mangled ruin spurting crimson into the void. Jay’s hands had clamped his sleeve, Bikram’s desperate blow severing the last threads, the shuttle’s corpsmen a blur as the freighter exploded behind them. That day, vengeance had burned in him—a Ranger’s rage at the Skravaks’ cold efficiency. Now, as the destroyer closed in, fear clawed at that old wound—not for himself, but for Kristen, Jay, Mayumi. What if he lost them to this unforgiving enemy? The blare of the ship’s alarm snapped him back to the present.

Red Alert Rising

“How close?” he barked at the AI, his voice rough with sleep and adrenaline.

“Skravak vessel is approximately 50,000 kilometers and closing rapidly,” the AI replied, its tone maddeningly even.

He stumbled into the narrow corridor, nearly colliding with Kristen, who clutched her medical kit with white-knuckled hands. Her dark hair was pulled back tightly, her hazel eyes sharp despite the tension etched into her posture. “CCS?” she said, using the military shorthand for the Central Command Station. Wade nodded, and they sprinted down the passage, boots clanging against the metal deck.

The CCS door hissed open, revealing a scene of controlled pandemonium. Jay Ringler hunched over the pilot’s station, his wiry frame taut as his hands darted across the controls, adjusting thruster outputs with practiced precision. Mayumi Ringler sat in the nav/comms seat, her face illuminated by the flickering light of holographic displays, her fingers a blur as she parsed incoming data. The cockpit’s tight, two-person configuration kept everything within arm’s reach—just as Lieutenant Commander Goering had promised during their grueling training sims back at Command.

“Status report,” Wade demanded, bracing himself against the bulkhead as the ship shuddered faintly—likely Jay tweaking their course.

“Skravak destroyer on an intercept course,” Jay said, eyes locked on his screen, his voice clipped but steady. “It’s taken a beating already—sensor array’s partially fried, probably from a recent scrap. Closing fast, though.”

Wade leaned over the tactical display, its 3D projection between Jay and Mayumi painting the enemy ship in stark reds and oranges—a hulking, predatory silhouette bristling with weapon ports. “How bad’s the damage?”

“Their long-range active scans are crippled,” Mayumi said, her Japanese accent sharpening as she focused. Her fingers danced over the interface, pulling up a diagnostic overlay. “They’re leaning hard on passive sensors and visuals—closing in to compensate for the blind spots.”

Wade’s mind raced, snagging on a memory from high school history class—old submarine tactics, vessels lurking silent on the ocean floor while destroyers rained depth charges from above. A flicker of an idea took root. “Jay, how’s our EMP capacitor?”

Jay glanced up, a spark of realization in his hazel eyes. “Fully charged—been sitting at max since our last resupply. You thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

Wade’s lips curled into a grim smile. “We hit them with an EMP, drop to that planet’s surface”—he jabbed a finger at a rocky, storm-lashed world spinning slowly on the display—”deploy decoys, and go dark. Like subs in the old wars, waiting out the hunters.”

Faith vs Flight

“EMP, decoys, and hide?” Jay spun in his seat, hazel eyes narrowing. “We’ve got hyperspace juice—why not jump now, outrun them?” His fingers hovered over the controls, itching to act.

“Submarines?” Kristen asked, arching an eyebrow as she slung her med kit over her shoulder.

“Read about it in school.” Wade said, the memory sharpening. “They’d sink to the bottom, kill all systems but the bare minimum, and sit tight while the enemy pounded the water. If the Skravaks think we’re slag, they might leave—or better yet, lead us somewhere useful.”

Mayumi’s head snapped up from her console. “Their intercept speed’s too high—43,000 klicks and closing. They’d catch us mid-jump, shred us before we’re gone.”

Kristen frowned, slinging her med kit tighter. “What about a distress call? Command could scramble backup—we’re not equipped for this.”

Wade’s jaw tightened, Elkiah’s datapad flashing in his mind—rogue ore shipments, shadows in the void. “No signal,” he said. “We’re too deep, and this ties to The Transapora. We run, we lose the lead. We fight smart instead.” He tapped the display, the planet’s storms swirling below. “EMP blinds them and then we drop, go dark. Old sub tactics and we’ll outlast the hunter.”

Jay scoffed, tension cracking his bravado. “Your history hunch better pan out, boss. One pulse misfire, we’re toast.”

“More are with us than with them,” Wade shot back, voice steady, echoing 2 Kings 6:16. “We’ve got the edge—faith and tech. They’re crippled already.”

Mayumi nodded, numbers aligning in her head. “Their sensors are shaky—an EMP could finish them.”

Kristen exhaled. “Risky, but I’m in. Let’s move.”

Wade met their eyes—doubt lingered, but trust won. “Then let’s hit it.”

Mayumi nodded, her analytical mind already running the numbers. “They’d have to get close to confirm a kill—real close.”

“And if we tail them after,” Jay added, his hands hovering over the controls, “we might track them to a repair base. That destroyer’s too busted to limp far without a dock. We turn this into a recon goldmine.”

“Exactly,” Wade said, adrenaline surging. “What’ve we got for decoys?”

Mayumi tapped her console, pulling up the cargo manifest. “Spare parts—engine coils, hull plating—plus empty specimen containers and that busted sensor buoy we were hauling back to base. I can rig them to mimic our EM and heat signatures.”

“Do it,” Wade ordered. “Jay, plot a descent to the planet—low and fast, use the terrain. Kristen, prep the EMP burst—wide dispersal, max yield. Mayumi, get those decoys into the launch bay. We’ve got one shot before they’re on us.”

The next fifteen minutes dissolved into a frantic symphony of motion. Kristen knelt at the panel, hands steady as she rerouted power to the EMP capacitor. She wasn’t just the Scout’s medic anymore—necessity had forged her into its engineer too, a prodigy’s mind bending to the ship’s demands. Back on New Annapolis, her photographic memory had stunned Psych-school profs; she’d recite textbooks verbatim, diagnose rare conditions in seconds. The Scout’s cramped reality—four souls, no dedicated technician—had forced her to evolve. Kristen had devoured the ship’s manuals in a night, every schematic etched in her brain. She’d rewired shorted consoles during a meteor storm, patched a breached hull with scavenged plating, all while stitching up Jay’s gashed arm. Now, tying the EMP into the comm array, she visualized each circuit—blueprints unrolling in her mind’s eye. Her fingers danced, splicing lines with surgical precision, a medic’s calm fused with an engineer’s grit. “Max yield, wide spread,” she muttered, the stakes as familiar as a patient’s pulse. Wade’s nod anchored her; she’d become the ship’s lifeline, one crisis at a time.

In the cargo bay, Mayumi and Jay tore into the decoy drones—sleek, expendable pods the size of a man. They stripped out non-essentials, stuffing them with hull fragments, scorched wiring, and the sensor buoy’s radioactive core. “Boosting their emitters,” Mayumi said, soldering a connection. “They’ll scream our signature loud enough to wake the dead.”

Jay hefted a chunk of engine shielding into place. “Mass distribution’s key—they’ve got to scatter like a real wreck, or the Skravaks’ll smell the ruse.”

Pulse of Survival

Back in the CCS, Wade tracked the destroyer’s approach on passive sensors—its sleek, obsidian hull glinting as it closed the gap, plasma weapon ports glowing faintly violet. “Forty thousand klicks,” he muttered. “They’re not slowing down.”

“EMP’s primed,” Kristen called, sliding back into her seat. “Say the word.”

“Decoys loaded,” Mayumi reported over the intercom, her voice taut. “Spread pattern’s set—2-kilometer dispersal on launch.”

“Descent locked,” Jay said, hands gripping the yoke. “We’ll skim at 500 meters—canyons and dust storms’ll give us cover.”

Wade took a steadying breath, the weight of command settling on his shoulders. “Hit it.”

Kristen slammed the trigger. A silent pulse erupted from the Scout, an invisible shockwave rippling outward. The Skravak destroyer faltered mid-flight, its running lights stuttering as the EMP slammed into its crippled systems. Wade pictured their bridge crew scrambling…if they had a crew… long-range sensors dissolving into a haze of static.

“Now, Jay—drop us!” he shouted.

The Scout plunged toward the planet, engines howling as Jay threaded through swirling dust clouds and jagged, rust-red peaks. The hull groaned, G-forces pinning the crew to their seats, loose gear rattling in the compartments. At 500 meters, Mayumi punched the launch command. A dozen decoys streaked from the bay, fanning out across a 12-kilometer arc, their emitters blaring the Scout’s heat, EM, and transponder signals like desperate ghosts.

Jay nosed the ship into a shadowed ravine—a deep, wind-carved gash in the planet’s surface—and settled it amid a cluster of boulders. “Powering down,” he said, flipping switches in rapid succession. The engines’ hum faded to silence, the lights dimmed to a faint emergency glow, and the CCS went still save for the soft hiss of life support. Only passive sensors stayed live, feeding a grainy, monochrome view of the sky above.

Wade lowered his voice to a whisper. “Here they come.”

The Skravak destroyer loomed into low orbit, its plasma weapons igniting like miniature suns. Violet beams lanced downward, striking the decoys with surgical precision. Each hit erupted in a molten plume, vaporizing metal and kicking up geysers of dust. Then the bombardment widened—random, furious salvos of plasma raining across the surface, gouging craters and shaking the ground beneath the Scout. The hull trembled with each distant impact, the air thick with the crew’s held breaths.

“They’re buying it,” Mayumi murmured, her eyes glued to the sensor feed. “Targeting’s locked on the decoy spread—erratic, though. They’re madder than a wet hen.”

Wade clenched his prosthetic hand, the submarine analogy anchoring him. “Stay quiet. We wait them out—just like those old crews under the sea.”

Kristen shot him a sidelong glance. “You really think this’ll work?”

“Worked for them,” Wade said softly. “Depth charges or plasma bolts, same game. They’ll tire out and move on.”

The barrage stretched on, minutes bleeding into an hour. Dust plumes clogged the atmosphere, veiling the Scout’s position in a hazy shroud. The crew sat rigid, the silence broken only by the occasional thud of a stray bolt or the creak of settling metal. Finally, the plasma fire tapered off. The destroyer lingered, deploying a trio of sleek probes to sift through the wreckage—charred debris and melted alloys passing for the Scout’s corpse.

“They’re scanning,” Mayumi whispered, her voice barely audible. “Standard salvage pattern—looking for proof.”

Wade’s jaw tightened. “Let them look. We’re a ghost.”

Kristen prayed out loud in a whisper, “Father, blind them like You blinded the enemies of Elisha. Protect us and turn this to our advantage, in Jesus’ name.”

Ghosts of Recon

The probes circled for agonizing minutes, their faint hum detectable through the hull’s audio pickups. At last, the destroyer recalled them, emitting a short, encrypted burst. Mayumi’s eyes narrowed. “Victory signal—Skravak ‘target neutralized’ protocol. We’ve cracked enough of those to know the pattern.”

“Good,” Wade said, exhaling. “Now the fun part. Jay, they moving?”

Jay studied the feed. “Climbing out—slowly. Vector’s shifting toward sector seven-nine-three. They’re limping—engines at half output.”

“The EMP softened them up,” Wade said. “Mayumi, their sensors?”

“Long-range are toast,” she confirmed. “That pulse overloaded what was left—they’ll need a dock to fix it.”

Wade leaned forward, a predatory glint in his eye. “Then we follow. Jay, ease us up—five percent thrust, shadow their course. Mayumi, engage the hull’s stealth coating. Kristen, cycle our heat through the specimen sinks. We’re hunting now.”

“What’s the play?” Kristen asked, her hands already on the controls.

“We tail them to their base,” Wade said. “A destroyer that size doesn’t crawl home without repairs. We map it, study it, bring the intel back to Command. The Scout’s built for sneaking—let’s prove it.”

The next ten hours tested their skill and patience. Jay nursed the Scout upward, using the planet’s storms as cover, nudging the ship with minimal thruster bursts to avoid detection. Mayumi tuned the hull’s metamaterials—military-grade coatings that bent light and absorbed scans—until their signature vanished into the background noise. Kristen rerouted engine heat into the lab’s cryogenic storage, the near-absolute-zero chambers swallowing their thermal trail.

“They’re adjusting course,” Jay reported, his voice hoarse from focus. “Turning toward a dense debris field—looks artificial.”

Mayumi magnified the feed, excitement creeping into her tone. “Not natural—too uniform. Spectral spikes suggest a camouflage screen. Probably a repair outpost.”

Wade nodded, his mind racing. “Take us in slow, Jay. Find a spot to park among the junk—power down to life support and passives. We watch, we learn, we gather intel.”

The Scout glided into the debris field—a sprawling graveyard of twisted hulls, shattered satellites, and faint interference waves pulsing from hidden emitters. Jay wove through the chaos, settling the ship behind a jagged hulk—a derelict freighter’s gutted frame. Systems winked out one by one, the CCS plunging into near-darkness as the crew shifted to minimal power.

The Skravak destroyer maneuvered deeper into the field, its plasma-scarred hull vanishing behind a curtain of debris. Mayumi recorded its every move, her console logging entry patterns and signal bursts. “Complex approach,” she murmured. “They’re hiding something big.”

“Look at this,” Kristen said, pointing to a sensor spike. “The debris is generating a jamming field—broad-spectrum, low intensity. No wonder we’ve never pinged this place.”

Wade’s prosthetic hand flexed unconsciously, the stakes sinking in. They’d turned a desperate escape into a recon coup—penetrating a Skravak stronghold no human had ever glimpsed. “Settle in, friends,” he said, voice low but firm. “We’re here for the long haul. Map their defenses, analyze their ships, log everything. This could change the war.”

Jay cracked a tired grin. “Beats getting plasma-fried.”

“You got that right,” Mayumi said, already tweaking the passive arrays for better resolution.

Kristen leaned back, exhaling. “Guess your submarine trick paid off, Wade.”

He smirked faintly. “Old wars, new tricks. Now let’s make it count.”

As the Scout went dark, pride surged in Wade’s chest. The F290 had outfoxed a destroyer—and now it would peel back the Skravaks’ secrets, one silent scan at a time. The real mission had just begun.

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