by Jay Allan
It was time to fight. Time to kill.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Free Trader Pegasus
60,000 Meters from Planet Aquellus
Olystra System
Year 302 AC
“Push up the thrust, Lex. Another ten percent.” Pegasus was running, trying to escape from the vastly larger Union ship, struggling to squeeze power from its damaged and depleted engines.
At least that’s what Andi Lafarge wanted her pursuers to think.
“Ten percent…coming through now.” Lex Righter still sounded a little confused. That was fine with her, as long as he did what she told him to do. Righter was a fine engineer, one of the best she’d ever seen…but he was clearly no tactician. Pegasus was the weaker combatant in the fight. For all the pure, unrestrained fury driving Andi just then, she realized she couldn’t win a head on confrontation. Being outgunned was a weakness, certainly, but maybe she could make it a strength, too. All it would take was a little bit of deceit, some delicate maneuvering, and her unstoppable determination to repay the enemy in blood for the deaths of her friends.
That, and a hold full of five hundred gigaton torpedoes.
She fed in the increased engine power slowly, haltingly, even backing off a bit before pushing up again. Just how a battered ship struggling to escape with barely functioning engines would do.
“They’re on us, Andi. Distance eighty thousand kilometers. I’m guessing that’s in range of their main gun, at least.” Barret was Pegasus’s gunner, but on the small ship with its tiny crew, he was also the scanner chief.
“I see them.” Andi’s voice was stone cold, her eyes fixed on the contact, unmoving. She had her evasive maneuvers ready, both the vast library of randomized routines she’d stored in the AI, and a few new ones she was going to throw in the mix. But that kind of maneuverability would send up a red flare, tell the enemy Pegasus wasn’t as helpless as Andi was struggling to make it appear. She had her plan, a way to destroy her much more powerful adversary. But to do it, she would have to take some risks, including offering her vessel up as a juicy target, at least for a while longer.
“They’re not going to fire at long range. They figure they’ve got us. They’ll come in closer and look to finish us quickly.” Andi’s tone was surprisingly firm as she recited what she knew very well was little more than a guess.
She tapped the controls again, feeding most of the extra power into the engines. Pegasus was blasting away at thirty percent power, and telegraphing in every way Andi could devise that even maintaining that level was a struggle.
“Lex…get ready to release on my command.” She had something else for the enemy, just the kind of thing that might push a cautious captain to the arrogance she was hoping for.
“Seventy thousand kilometers, Andi. Still no fire.” The last part of Barret’s report was pretty pointless. Andi was focused, obsessed with her quest to destroy the enemy…but she doubted she’d fail to notice when the pursuing ship opened fire.
“Ready for release, Andi.” A pause, then Lex added, “They’re getting close, aren’t they?”
Andi didn’t respond, she just frowned and stared at her screen. They’re going to get a lot closer…
“Sixty thousand.” A few seconds later: “I’m picking up energy readings. Andi, I think they’re charging their guns.”
“Understood.” It wasn’t the answer Barret was looking for, she knew that. It’s better they don’t know how close I’m going to cut this.
Her eyes were fixed on the pursuing ship’s thrust. They were accelerating hard, seeking to close the distance, to finish Pegasus.
Just what she wanted.
“Fifty thousand.”
Andi stared at the small symbol on the screen, the approaching Union vessel. She leaned forward slowly, and spoke into the comm, her voice soft, her tone frozen. “Release.”
She pushed the controls, cutting the thrust dramatically, even as she heard Vig’s acknowledgement, and an instant later saw the dim cloud appearing behind Pegasus. It was a combination of partially burned fuel and radiation, exactly what might leak from a ship with significant engine damage.
A ship whose engines were sputtering and beginning to fail entirely.
Or that appeared to be.
* * *
“We’re picking up engine residue, Commander. Partially-spent fuel, super-heated gasses…and considerable radiation.” An instant later: “They’re losing thrust as well. Down fifty percent from previous levels. No, sixty. Looks like we were right. The ship is badly damaged.”
Boucher had been about to order Phantasia’s guns to open fire. But now she saw that her prey was badly hurt, worse even than she’d expected. It was time to finish them, to crush them with a single attack.
“Maintain engine output and course. It’s time. All lasers online.” Boucher felt an instant’s hesitation, a wave of mistrust. Was it possible the ship in front of hers was trying to deceive her in some way? She was suspicious by nature, but then she put the thoughts aside. The enemy ship was allowing her to close, to bring her superior weapons to bear, and they were exposing their vulnerable rear section. If it was some kind of ploy, it was a deadly dangerous one.
And one that is going to get that ship destroyed.
“Prepare to open fire at thirty thousand kilometers.” That would be close enough to almost guarantee destruction, especially of a cripple with no real ability to evade. “And increase acceleration another ten percent. It’s time to finish this.”
“Yes, Commander…increasing thrust now.”
Boucher felt the strange sensation as the engine output rose. It wasn’t pressure, not exactly. Phantasia’s dampeners were absorbing that. But there was a definite sensation.
She looked at the display, watching as the range ticked down to forty thousand. Phantasia’s velocity was over a thousand kilometers per second and increasing. They would be at the firing point in seconds.
Boucher was trying not to think about the disaster the mission had become, or the near certainty that all of her landing parties, and any artifacts they’d found, had been lost in the cataclysmic explosion her scanners had detected. She dreaded reporting what had happened, and she figured she had maybe even money of coming out of it alive. But she would worry about that, and decide what to do, after she’d repaid whoever was in that ship.
Whoever had caused her so much trouble.
“Prepare to fire…”
* * *
“Thirty thousand kilometers, Andi.”
Barret’s tense report was accompanied almost immediately by a bright flash on the display. Andi hadn’t been looking at the screen, but her eyes darted back immediately. The AI could have replayed the image for her, but there was no need. She knew what it had been.
The enemy had opened fire.
“That shot came within sixty kilometers, Andi.”
She just nodded, but she didn’t reply. That was closer than she’d hoped for the first shot. Pegasus was conducting some evasive maneuvering, disguises ad random bursts and materials releases affecting the ship’s vector, but if that’s all she did, Andi was begging the enemy to score a hit.
And if she did more, if she fired up the engines, and initiated real evasive maneuvering, the enemy would know Pegasus was fully functional.
Worse, they would know Andi had been suckering them.
And it was still too soon. She needed another ten thousand kilometers…maybe fifteen seconds.
“Lex, be ready down there.”
“We’re all set, Andi. Vig’s suited up and in place. The hold’s evacuated. We’re as ready as we can be.”
She nodded, a pointless enough gesture since Lex couldn’t see her. She flipped her comm channel, and brought Vig onto the line. “You ready for this, Vig?”
“I’m good, Andi. Everything’s set.”
Andi struggled to accept the dangers of her plan, to Pegasus and all its crew, but especially to Vig Merrick. Vig was Sy’s brother, and she had to
push away images of herself telling her friend she’d gotten her brother killed.
She had managed to push aside images of Gregor and Jackal, and focus on the battle at hand. But she knew her friends would be there, when she closed her eyes, in quiet moments, when she was alone, when the ghosts could approach her.
“Twenty-five thousand.”
Andi felt the urge to give the order, to set her plan in motion immediately, before the enemy could fire again. It could work at twenty-five. There was a good chance that was close enough. But she’d already decided on twenty, and there was no point in revisiting that. If she jumped the gun, if she moved too early and the enemy managed to evade her trap, Pegasus was as good as finished. She valued her ship, and the vessel and its crew were all that mattered to her in the universe. But Pegasus was no match for the Union ship, not in a straight up fight.
No, her plan either worked…or they all died.
That meant gutting it out, sticking to what she’d decided. She winced as another shot ripped by…and then a second later, she felt her hope slip away as Pegasus shook hard, and a whole series of relays on the far side of the bridge erupted into a shower of sparks.
One of the enemy lasers had hit.
Her hands were on the comm immediately, but Lex Righter spoke even before she could.
“It’s not as bad as it looks, Andi. I’m still checking systems, but we’ve got at least ninety percent on the reactor, and the lasers are intact.
“Do what you can, Lex.” She turned and looked over at the display. Twenty-two thousand kilometers. That would have to do. She couldn’t wait any longer. The enemy had honed their targeting. One more shot, one hit, and it would be over.
“Vig…now! Let ’em go.”
Andi braced for the series of vibrations she expected. But there was nothing.
“Vig…”
“I’m working on it, Andi. The bay door won’t open. I think it’s jammed shut.”
Vig’s words hit Andi hard. She could understand a reactor shutdown or a blasted laser turret. But the idea that her people were going to die because the cargo bay door was jammed was too much to bear.
“Do what you have to, Vig. Just get that thing open!” It was probably the least helpful thing she’d ever said. But she didn’t know what else to do.
“I’m on my way, Vig.” It was Lex Righter.
“No.” Vig’s voice was hard, decisive. “We need you in engineering. I’ll get this done.”
Andi felt a coldness when she heard his words. “Vig, what are you…” She saw the pressure gauge begin to move. Vig was repressurizing the hold.
She was confused for a moment…and then she realized what he was going to do. “Vig…no. It’s too dangerous.”
“There’s no other way, Andi. I’m suited up, and there’s a good chance it will work, especially if I over-pressurize.”
“Over-pressurize? Vig, it will be suicide. We can blast the engines, engage the evasive maneuvers. You don’t have to…”
“Yes, Andi…I do.” The comm line went dead.
Andi tapped at it again. “Vig…Vig?” No response.
She knew what he was about to do. She couldn’t stop him, not in time, at least not directly. She looked down at the controls. But she could fire up the thrusters to full, blast away from the Union ship’s approach. That would warn the enemy…and make what Vig was about to do pointless.
But it would also almost guarantee Pegasus would lose the battle…and Vig would die along with the rest of them if that happened.
She could see the hold was at one hundred forty percent of normal pressure. She wasn’t sure how high it could go. She’d never tried to bring it above normal levels before.
The main hold door was jammed, but there were two smaller hatches. Vig had never said what he was planning, but Andi knew with stone-cold certainty. He was going to blow the smaller hatches, and bank on explosive decompression forcing the main doors open. It might work or it might not, and even if it did, if it damaged the sensitive setup Vig and Lex had built, it would all be for naught.
But she knew it was the only way.
It had been the proudest moment of her life when she’d discovered that Captain Lorillard had left the ship to her, left her in command of the family they had all become. But sometimes she detested being the leader, and she longed for someone else to take charge, to make the hard decisions.
Like letting Vig carry out his plan.
His nearly insane plan.
“Go, Vig…and good luck…” She wasn’t sure if he had cut off the comm, or if he could hear her and he’d just stopped replying.
She watched as the pressure gauge moved up. One sixty…one seventy.
Then, without warning, Pegasus shuddered hard, and she reached for the controls, desperately trying to stabilize the ship, as the vacuum of space sucked out the dense atmosphere—and anything else not securely fastened—from the hold.
She took a deep, ragged breath and hoped Vig Merrick was not one of those things.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Free Trader Pegasus
155,000 Meters from Planet Aquellus
Olystra System
Year 302 AC
Vig Merrick clung to the handholds, desperately trying to hang on as the high-pressure air inside the hold raced out into space, taking everything not bolted in place with it. For an instant, he thought his plan hadn’t worked, but then, the immense force ripped the door free from whatever jam had held it in place, and the entire back of the hold was open to space.
Vig could feel his gloves slipping, and his body flew away, toward the open door, toward space. He sailed two-thirds of the way across the hold, and then he came to an abrupt stop, his tether line taut, straining…but somehow holding.
He floated about two meters from the deck for a few seconds, as the last of the air in the hold blasted out in a wild torrent. Then, he swung to the side, slamming into the wall. The only force affecting him now was Pegasus’s thrust, and along with whatever systems his stunt had damaged, the dampeners were no longer working. He felt the air driven from his lungs on the impact, and he floated there in his suit, still alive—miraculously—but barely clinging to consciousness.
He’d done it. His crazy scheme had worked, albeit at the cost of considerable damage to the ship. But he wasn’t done. He still had one more thing to do. He reached around, checking to make sure the controller was still on his belt. For a few seconds, he felt cold panic, and he was sure it had come loose, that it was gone, out in the depths of space along with all the other debris.
Then he felt it. He was woozy, and he fumbled with it twice. Careful, you fool…if you lose that thing…
He knew he should check with Andi, synchronize the drop. But there was no time. He wasn’t even sure his comm was still working.
He held the controllers tightly in his hand, and he brought his finger down. He could feel the blackness taking him, but he fought it off. He had to be sure it was working.
There was no sound, not across the vacuum of the shattered cargo hold, but he managed to turn his head just enough to see.
The device resembled a catapult, and even as his vision slowly blurred, he could see it doing what it had been built to do.
Hurling the remaining torpedoes out of the gaping hole that had been the cargo door…all along different trajectories, carefully defined vectors that would create something very much like a minefield right behind Pegasus.
A minefield directly in the path of the ship even then closing to finish them off.
* * *
“Commander! Multiple contacts ahead.”
Boucher was already staring at the display. The data was still coming in, but there was no doubt something was out there.
Her first thought had been debris from the ship she was pursuing. There had been an explosion, or something of the kind, and there’d been some debris from that. But the eight contacts on the screen now were identical…and they were spread out in a pattern too regul
ar to be random.
“Engine room, vector change, full power. Away from those contacts.” Boucher’s mind went back to the explosion that had cost her Phantasia’s two bombers. That had been a torpedo of some kind.
And the mass for the contacts up ahead was just about right…
She could feel the thrust shifting, hitting her in the second or two before the dampeners adjusted. Phantasia’s engines were firing at full…but the ship was moving at a high velocity, and it would take time to alter its vector enough…
She looked at the display again, and then down to her workstation. The AI was reworking the ship’s prospective path, and that of the contacts up ahead. Phantasia would evade most of them, but it was going to be close with the two on the far end.
“More power,” she screamed into the comm, even as the scanners finally confirmed what she already knew. The contacts were torpedoes. And they had activated their own drives. They were closing on Phantasia, vectoring in on the ship’s course. That was going to make it even harder to evade them.
“Engine room, we need more power. Overload the reactor, do whatever you have to do…but get us away from those torpedoes.”
The ship was rattling all around her, shaking wildly as her people pushed the reactor and engines to their limits and beyond. The thrust was considerable, and the ship’s vector was changing…but the torpedoes were reacting, even as Phantasia made its desperate run.
Boucher gasped for breath, struggling to maintain some level of calm as she waited.
Waited to see if her ship could escape the net of death her adversary had lain for her.
The trap…the trap I walked right into.
She checked the screen again, reran the calculations. It was going to be close.
* * *
“Vig? Vig…can you hear me?” Andi was hunched over the comm unit, screaming loudly as she tried to cling to some hope Vig had made it. He’d saved them all, or at least he’d given them a chance. It remained to be seen if their sparse and makeshift minefield snared its prey.