by M. D. Cooper
“You know,” I said through gritted teeth, “just repeating that won’t make it true. It might earn you a blow to the head, though.”
“That’s mistreatment of prisoners!” the chief exclaimed. “A violation of Delphian Rules of Combat.”
I shrugged. “I’m not Delphian, and we’re not in Delphi. Also, you’re not a prisoner, you’re a thief being kicked off our ship. This is a sovereign vessel, and you attempted to take it over. By rights, we could just execute you.”
“You’d never get away with it,” he hissed.
“Maybe not, but you friggin’ sure are making me think it might be worth risking.”
We turned down the passage that led to the airlock to see Tammy and the bot standing guard.
“The ones inside are staying out of sight,” she said. “Once we throw out the last piece of garbage, we can slam the door on their asses.”
“How do you two think you’re going to get away with this?”
The DSA chief’s question was followed by a dull thud from outside the hull.
“Hear that?” I asked. “That was one of our bots putting a limpet mine on your hull. In a moment, it’s going to shear off your comm stack, and we’ve already dumped most of your fuel. It’s going to take you a bit to get back to the Daedalus. Granted, they won’t let you dock till that little boom-boom problem gets taken care of. By then, we’ll be long gone.”
Tammy gave him a wicked grin. “So you’d better behave.”
“I demand to talk to Captain Bremen!” Aarons bellowed. “He’ll be tried for treason!”
“Too late,” I said with a nonchalant shrug. “I killed him.”
Aarons only sputtered as the cart stopped at the airlock’s entrance.
“Time for you to go,” I said.
He shot me one final scowl and hobbled off. I sealed the airlock after him and dusted off my hands.
“One problem down. I guess I should respond to Commander Petrov. He’s been blowing up our comm system for the last twenty minutes.”
Tammy laughed as she lowered her rifle, a look of relief settling on her features. “I’ve listened to a few of his messages. He is not a happy man. Are we ready to fly, or do I need to do a flip-flip to get anywhere in a straight line?”
“I’ve got one of the bots working down there—just testing seals and stuff at this point. I’ll need to give it all the once-over and reset the thrust balancing system. Ten minutes, I think.”
The pilot cocked an eyebrow. “A real ten minutes, or a Kallie ten minutes?”
I shot her a dirty look. “Real.”
“Kay, I’ll be up on the bridge. The breach team should be signaling us any moment now.”
“A few moments ago, to be precise.”
“Don’t fret,” Tammy put a hand on my shoulder. “They’ll all make it back.”
I winked back at her. “Well, I wouldn’t object if someone got left behind.”
“Answer Petrov before he blows a gasket.”
“Yeah,” I rolled my shoulders. “Let’s do this.”
Tammy nodded and walked off. I looked down at the bot, which still held the rifles aimed at the airlock, and psyched myself up. Time for one more gamble.
It only took a second for the response to come.
There was a brief pause before Petrov replied.
I was surprised at the intensity in Petrov’s voice. He seemed angrier than I would have expected—especially since his people were all alive.
Petrov’s words hit me like a planet, and I felt a wave of lightheadedness.
If he had Jax and the others…all my leverage would be gone. He’d trade lives for lives, and we’d still be out here—unless Finn had gotten the worm in place.
There might be hope.
I bit my lip, hoping that whichever pair was on the run made it to their egress. It also meant we could expect a signal for pickup soon.
While trying to decide how to respond, I slid down the ladder to the lower deck and entered the engineering room.
The bot was running pressure tests on the line, and they looked good. I sighed with relief, glad that we’d be back under full power soon.
The commander gave a cold laugh.
I killed the connection and walked along the repaired line, inspecting the work. The DSA techs had been sloppy, but it would hold well enough. The intermixer showed green, as did the thrust balancing system.
I patted the bulkhead.
The engines came to life, and I felt their pulse through my armor’s boots. It was hard to tell if it was right, so I knelt and put my hand on the deck.
“Yeah, girl, you’re doing just fine.”
I rose and turned to the console when a tightbeam message hit the comm arrays.
A whoop of joy burst from my lungs.
“The Kor’s Light just took a hit. Hull breach reported,” Naomi announced.
“Fuck,” I muttered. That was the third civilian ship to suffer damage.
It turned out that while the majority of the objects were missiles, a smattering of attack drones had been in the mix. NSAI-powered balls of weaponry that were each dealing a good bit of damage before our ships managed to destroy them.
Combined with the missiles, the whole situation was a massive pai
n in the ass.
If the attack had been made against a fleet consisting purely of military craft, not a single shield would have been breached. But this attack wasn’t on the escorters, but rather the escortees, and the non-sentient AIs piloting the missiles and drones did their best to avoid the military craft entirely, careening around the battlespace in an effort to strike the softer targets.
Even so, a considerable amount of my attention was five light seconds behind us, back with the Daedalus and the Kerrigan. I knew it wasn’t rational, but I wanted to see Jax screw up and end up in prison. The knowledge that he’d made a deal with Intel and not suffered an iota of punishment for transporting stolen DSA cores still burned me, and I wanted to see him get his.
“Ma’am,” Naomi glanced over her shoulder. “Status report from the Daedalus. I don’t have all the details yet, but they caught sight of Jax Bremen and a criminal named Penny aboard their ship.”
I opened my mouth to blurt out an enraged reply, but the major’s expression stopped me. “What is it?” I asked instead.
“They also report that…well…the Kerrigan has disappeared from scan.”
This time, the cry of rage was unstoppable. I shouted my unbridled fury at the overhead. “Motherfuckers played us all! This…” I waved my hand at the battle displayed on the holotank, “…is just a distraction.”
38
THE DIVE
Aboard the Daedalus…
“There’s no way out!” a strident voice shouted over the 1MC. “Surrender, and you’ll be treated fairly.”
“Fairly?” I asked with a laugh as I finished mounting the rifles in the cabinets. They were wedged between tiedown brackets, and should stay in place for a few shots. After that, they stood a decent chance of firing wildly all around the room.
Which really isn’t the worst thing.
“You won’t be mistreated—so long as you don’t resist.”
There was more than a hint of implied threat in the speaker’s tone. I got the impression that ‘resistance’ might not have to be much more than a finger twitch in order to garner reprisal.
“You know…I think we’ll go down in a blaze of glory. Come and get us.”
she asked with a laugh.
Shit.
Our conversation was interrupted by a spray of plasma as cutters simultaneously began to burn through each of the bay’s doors.
Bastards are serious.
I hunkered down at the entrance to the escape passage, the cluster of consoles in the center of the room giving me cover. The holes grew larger, and when they were about ten centimeters across, I took aim and fired through one, and then the other.
The plasma flow stopped and I heard swearing. A second later, two flashbangs flew in, and I turned away, letting my armor absorb the EM and optical flash. When I turned back, a spray of bullets ricocheted around the room, and I added my own to the mix. A second later, the cutters started up again, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before the doors folded in half.
Not wanting them to think I’d gone, I fired randomly at the doors until the starboard one was kicked in.
There was a full second of silence after the steel hit the deck. Then a soldier eased into view, immediately taking fire from the rifles mounted in the cabinets. I added a few shots to the fray, and then the second door came down.
I lobbed a smoke grenade and stayed low, scampering back down the passage as the engineering room fell to chaos. When the thermite grenades detonated, the explosion was followed by swearing, then screaming.
I dashed down the passage and down a short ramp to where the lifeboat was nestled in a small bay.
The door was wide open—somewhat to my surprise, I’d half expected her to have boat locked down, leaving me to die—and I jumped in to see Penny at the piloting console.
“Seal it up!” she ordered.
I was already on it, latching the door closed, then I fell into a seat and let out a long breath.
Penny glanced back at me and shook her head. “You’re on fire.”
“Fuck!” I looked down at my leg where a blob of thermite was burning through my armor. I grabbed the ablative plate, twisted and pulled it free. “Shit, where do I put this?”
“Toss it back out, that shit could burn through the hull!”
Heart in my throat, I unlatched the door and threw the piece of armor out into the passage and pulled it shut just as a vibration hit the ship.
“Dropping!” Penny shouted.
Only the a-grav system in my armor kept me from slamming into the overhead as the lifeboat rocketed down the shaft and out of the Daedalus. Debris struck the hull, and the craft began to spin uncontrollably. I hit a bulkhead, then the deck. I managed to grab a seat’s harness and pull myself toward it, dimly aware of some sort of shrieking sound.
I passed the frequency and signal pattern to her while clipping the seat harness onto my armor.
A laugh came from the engineer.
I’d seen it too. Another twenty minutes, and we’d be in the thick of them. Not the sort of situation I wanted to navigate a lifeboat through.
“Shit,” Penny muttered. “Jax, we have a problem.”
“What?”
“Daedalus is bringing weapons online. I think they plan to spray and pray.”
I blinked. “Does that mean fire wildly?”
“Yeah. Sure doesn’t mean piss while drunk.”
Penny had slowed the lifeboat’s spin, and I saw the Kerrigan through the small forward window. There was a glint of light below the engines that looked like the main bay doors closing, then the burners came to life.
The ship boosted away from the Daedalus just as the cruiser’s beams began to sweep all around us. They were the point defense DEW weapons, short-range, but more than enough power to do damage.
One tagged the Kerrigan’s shields, and I watched the ship quickly change course. Concentrated fire came from the cruiser, slicing through empty space where my ship had been a moment before.
“Clever way around the worm, looking for weapons impacts, not ships,” Penny muttered. “Petrov didn’t strike me as being that smart. Must have a good bridge crew.”
“We should move, too.”
“Yeah,” Penny nodded and brought the lifeboat about, firing its small engines to put distance between us and the Daedalus.
I kept my eyes on the Kerrigan, watching as it pulled further and further away from the cruiser. Twice more, it took beamfire on its shields and quickly jinked to avoid further strikes.
Then the unthinkable happened. The port side engine exploded.
I watched the ship spin out of control, one of the external fuel tanks pulling free and slamming into what remained of the engine’s thrust control
bell.
A dozen beams from the Daedalus struck the tank, and it exploded in a fiery blast.
“Did they make it?” I demanded of no one. “Did they get free?”
“I can’t tell,” Penny said, sounding almost as desperate as I. “I think so?”
Seconds later, a hole appeared in the hull next to my head, burning through the seat across from me and out the other side of the lifeboat.
I didn’t even have time to utter a curse before the lifeboat’s engines died, and all systems shut down.
VI
Answon
39
IRON LANCE
Aboard the Victorious Strike…
Naomi turned to me, her eyes betraying the same weariness I felt. “Daedalus is boosting back toward the formation.”
“Good. I don’t want to slow down. We have four more days till we’re clear of the occlusion. I don’t want to spend a second more than we have to in this place.”
“No argument from me, ma’am,” the major replied. “The civilian craft are all reporting repairs as nearly complete, so we can resume full boost.”
I nodded silently, glad of the news. I wasn’t looking forward to filing the report regarding the damage we’d suffered in the attack, nor was I happy about the total loss of the Kerrigan. The idea of seeing Jax Bremen and his crew in my brig had occupied a great deal of my thoughts over the past few weeks.
You have to put that from your mind, Sinclair.
In two weeks, the convoy would reach its destination, and then the real work would begin: establishing a solid beachhead in Chal. A defensible position from which the DSA would begin to exert control over the system, finally bringing it to order.
If all went to plan, in a few years, there would be no place in the L for scum like Jax. The nebula would come to order, and then Paragon would have no choice but to return to the fold.
Granted, if there’s a bit of a war first, I wouldn’t object to that.