Conqueror

by Richard Tongue

  Now she was going to take the big jump for herself, but under the worst possible conditions, in a damaged ship on the verge of total disintegration, with an uncertain fate awaiting her at the other end. She felt her stomach start to churn as the dimensional disruptors began their work, ripping and tearing the fabric of space-time itself to create a portal into netherspace, a realm where the laws of physics could be appealed, where life itself, in theory, could not exist for more than the tiniest fraction of a second before being snuffed out forever.

  “Here it comes! Hang on!” Nguyen yelled, and Bradley clutched at the nearest handhold, hanging on for life as the ship shuddered through the portal, the deck plates creaking and groaning as the hull armor ruptured for the last time, the superstructure twisted and warped almost beyond recognition. Bradley’s vision blurred, the effect of the dimensional passage assailing her senses, threatening to overwhelm her, and she felt her legs weaken underneath her, her strength sapped away. She seemed to see strange images, strange figures dancing all around, a bizarre celestial harmony playing all around, just at the outer limits of human comprehension. Her head began to swim as the microsecond stretched on and on, her senses tricking her, deceiving her, until finally, with a wrench she felt with every bone in her body, Ariadne was tossed free of netherspace, tumbling end over end through free space. She glanced at the viewscreen, watching Golgotha race past, and finally realized that it was over.

  They’d made it.

  “What the hell are you standing around for?” Bishop said, snatching a microphone. “Abandon ship! Get out of here right now! Move it!” Without waiting for the others, she sprinted out into the corridor, the desperate creak of shattered deck plating all around, the dreadful hiss that told of an atmosphere leak somewhere in the area slowly gaining in intensity, the rupture widening from the force of escaping air.

  There was a loud report, and Bradley froze for a moment, before Nguyen grabbed her, saying, “That’s the fighters launching. Probably ruptured the docking ports doing it. This ship won’t hold much longer.”

  The hissing was growing by the second, turning into an anguished whine, and Bradley could feel a dreadful wind on her cheek, air rushing past her on its race through the ship and to the hull breach that must be at the end of the corridor. Up ahead, she saw the waiting hatch, both doors wide open, the beckoning lights of the last of the shuttles beyond. She heard a cry from her right, and turned to see Bishop sprawled on the deck, her legs tangled in a coil of exposed cable, dragging across the ground.

  “Leave me!” Bishop yelled.

  “Like hell, ma’am,” Bradley replied, reaching down to tug her clear, Nguyen a second behind her, the two of them half-dragging, half-carrying her out of the twisted mess on the deck, the three of them staggering the last few steps into the waiting shuttle, the dreadful creaking and wailing of the hull growing louder with every step. One look at Bishop, a savage cut across her forehead, convinced Bradley to allow Nguyen to strap her into one of the passenger couches, while she raced for the cockpit, reaching up to throw a series of switches, the hatch slamming shut and locking behind her.

  She glanced back at the cabin, her passengers struggling to strap themselves in, then turned back to her controls. There was no time for a proper pre-flight check, no time for any of the usual preparations for launch. If the technicians had done their jobs, everything would be fine, but one look at the disintegrating ship behind them made it clear that any delay would prove a fatal mistake. Throwing a switch, she fired the explosive bolts, the shuttle floating free of the side of the ship, then reached for the throttle, firing a quick pulse of the engines to get them clear of the ship, to put them onto a safe course away.

  They had escaped just barely in time. Ariadne’s superstructure finally collapsed, and the oxygen reservoir breached, the force of erupting atmosphere tearing the ship apart, a brief flicker of flame bursting into life before the air dispersed too widely, leaving only a tangled wreck behind them, surrounded by an expanding field of shattered debris. Bradley reached for the throttle again, firing a cautious burn to get them to safely, to get them clear of the ruins of Ariadne before they became lost in the remains of the once-proud warship.

  She carefully fired the thrusters, stabilizing the shuttle, then belatedly looked over the status monitors, nodding in satisfaction at the green and amber lights. It wasn’t perfect, not by any means, but it would get them to wherever it was they were going. Turning back to the cabin once again, she looked at the pale-faced Bishop in her couch, Nguyen applying a bandage to her head.

  “How is she, sir,” Bradley asked.

  “About as well as you’d expect, given that she’s got a mild concussion and just watched her first command die.” Nguyen paused, sighed, and said, “I’ll keep an eye on her. How are things up front?”

  “We’ll be out of the debris field in few seconds. Sensors are clearing.” She looked at the monitor, making a series of fine adjustments to the resolution of the display, and said, “I’ve got them. The enemy. Looks like we came out about ten thousand miles further out than we’d expected. Our fighters are on an intercept course. The rest of the shuttles are scattered to hell and gone, but they don’t look as though they’ve suffered any serious damage. I think they’re trying for a spearhead formation.”

  “Can we catch them?”

  “Maybe, but…” She was interrupted by a loud report, and a wailing siren echoed through the cockpit before her nimble fingers could work the override and silence the alarm.

  “What the hell was that?” Nguyen asked.

  Bradley looked over the displays, and her eyes widened as she found the fault, replying, “Debris impact. Damn it, we’ve got a leak in our thruster fuel tank.” She quickly worked the controls, and added, “Backup systems are not responding. I guess we found where the technicians saved time on preflight. I’m going to have no helm control in less than four minutes.” She turned the ship around, burning the engines hotter towards the craters of Eusebius. “I’m going down.”

  “Are you crazy? In four minutes?” Nguyen replied. “Cut engines, let her drift…”

  “Our current course takes us right into the heart of the dogfight, sir. We do that, we’re sitting ducks for any stray missile or pulsar blast.” Looking back at the sensors, she added, “At least this way we’ll have somewhere to hide. Besides, I don’t think a SAR shuttle is going to turn up any time soon.” She paused, turned back to Nguyen, and said, “This is the only realistic chance we’ve got to live through this, sir.” She cracked a smile, then added, “Besides, I had the helm.”

  “Christ, God made two of you. You’re as bull-headed as your father.”

  “I’ll take that as a complement, sir.” She reached for the controls, throwing as much acceleration as she dared, racing ahead of the rest of the shuttles. There was no point trying to husband her energy, no point worrying about reserves. All that mattered was getting down to the surface as rapidly as possible, before she lost the ability to navigate at all. An altimeter flickered into life on her heads-up display, a smile crossing her face as the numbers raced down. The original error from their emergence was reaping benefits now. Without that ten thousand miles, she wouldn’t have a chance.

  The screen was filled with the image of the shattered surface below, an endless tangle of mountains and craters that seemed to offer no haven, no sanctuary. Lights winked onto the screen, beacons from the abandoned bases below, but those too were irrelevant now. She might just be able to get the shuttle down in one piece, but there would be no opportunity to select a landing site.

  Two minutes had gone. Warning lights were flickering on and off, alarms ringing to warn her that she was violating half a dozen safety regulations, that she was slipping too deeply into the gravity well, but she reached for the lateral thrusters, firing them repeatedly to arrest her descent, buying her as much time as she could as the mountains rose all around her. Below, the ground was smooth, dust already kicking up as she slid down to the surfa
ce.

  One minute left. The thrusters were failing, one after another, and it was all she could do to simply keep the critical boosters firing. The main engine was still working well enough, but she was too low for a safe escape at this point, the only remaining option committing to the landing. She lowered the landing legs, knowing that she’d likely wreck the shuttle on landing but hoping to cushion the impact as best she could, and fired the jets again, resisting the temptation to rush the descent more than she already had, trying to keep to a normal flight profile.

  “Come on,” she muttered. “Come on, girl, get down, get down.”

  The thrusters, the landing jets, all died when she was still two hundred meters from the surface. Thinking quickly, she reached for the reserve oxygen tanks, throwing an override control to dump the contents from the ship, directing them underneath her. The shuttle slid to the surface on a fountain of dust and steam, slamming hard onto the ground, the landing legs twisted and bent, but the hull intact.

  “My God, you did it,” Nguyen said, shaking his head.

  “Engines off,” she replied. “Now we wait to be picked up. I hope we’ve got some friends in this system left after the battle. It’s a good thousand miles to the nearest base.” Cracking a smile, she added, “Anyone got a deck of cards?”

  Chapter 20

  “There she goes!” Dubois yelled, as Ariadne exploded behind them, the last shuttles racing through space in a desperate struggle to escape the debris field. Winter looked with horror at the image on the display, willing the final shuttle to win free, before finally breathing a sigh of relief as he saw it racing towards the surface of Eusebius. He switched over to his medium-range sensors, focusing on the enemy fighters ahead of them.

  “Right, people,” he began. “The enemy is a little further away than we thought, but we stick with the plan. I want those bastards out of my sky.”

  Winter’s afterburners roared as he thundered into the battle, engines burning hot, heedless of the energy he was spending. The convoy of shuttles slowly reaching for the surface of Eusebius would be a too-tempting target for the Terran fighters, and he didn’t want to give them any chance of sneaking around the flank. It had to be a quick kill. He and Cohen raced ahead of the others, fastest to hit peak acceleration, and he glanced approvingly at the formation, his fighters scattered into what appeared a loose clump, but which in fact allowed them the best possible range of targets. The first phase of any dogfight was in the mind, and judging by the tight formation the enemy was holding, they were winning.

  He threw a control, bringing his pulsar cannons to full charge, the targeting reticle appearing on his heads-up display. The enemy was playing the game completely by the book, preparing to launch a massed missile salvo in a bid to finish the battle before it could begin. Under normal circumstances, that would work beautifully for them, but they were fighting a collection of seasoned veterans, all of whom had faced battle before, all knowing how to counter the enemy’s moves. He narrowed the beam of his pulsar cannons as fine as he could, ramping up the power hot enough to send amber lights flashing, warning that he was pushing his systems beyond their designed tolerances.

  “All ships, link combat computers, and switch to autonomous control. Cease evasive maneuvers and continue on trajectory until I give the signal.” His orders raced from ship to ship, connected by the invisible latticework of message lasers that tied them together, a network that could never be broken, never be cracked, was immune to any potential hacking attempt. He looked up at the sensor plot, waiting for the enemy commander to make his move. If he was going by the book, he’d fire his missiles as soon as he entered range, then pull away to allow the chaos and pandemonium to reign. The seconds ticked away, one after another, and finally, with a beaming smile, he saw a red light flash on, the signal that the enemy squadron had launched their attack.

  Twenty-four missiles, all bearing directly. If Winter had been following the same rules as his opponent, he’d be breaking off, turning to run, hoping against hope that he might be able to outpace the remorseless foes he was facing. Winter followed a different set of rules, though, one he had written for himself after years of simulator training for just such an eventuality. Instead of turning away, he powered onwards, racing towards the incoming missiles, closing the range as rapidly as he could. The rest of the fighters followed his lead as the enemy squadron turned away, still attempting to follow their moribund script.

  Winter’s squadron turned as one, locked onto automatic control, and tightly-controlled pulsar blasts pounded into the sky, each targeted at the incoming missiles, the nose of his ship weaving from side to side to take shot after shot, precisely-calculated bursts of energy filling the sky with velvet flame. The missiles attempted to evade, trying to get around the combat computers of the fighters, but it was a war of processing power now, and the fighters easily won the duel, the last of the missiles exploding far short of their target.

  Now they had the initiative. Now they could make their move. The enemy formation had frozen in place, its commander likely flicking desperately through his mental rulebook in an effort to determine what he should do next, something he should have done as soon as he’d seen what the Double-Deuce were doing. Winter threw a control, releasing his fighters from central control, knowing that it would almost certainly be the next move his opponent would make. There was a time for his fighters to operate as one harmonious whole, and a time for each pilot to have a chance to show what he could do. This was that time.

  He looked for the leader, trying to work out where he would have positioned himself in the formation. The book called for him to be at its heart, able to respond rapidly to any calls for assistance, any change to the tactical situation, but in practice, he didn’t know a seasoned combat commander who actually made his location that obvious. That he could quickly find his Terran counterpart in the enemy formation was just more evidence for his belief that while the Terrans had the edge in numbers, in equipment, in experience they were sadly lacking. The one advantage the Double-Deuce had.

  Reaching for his throttle again, he dived forward, the others struggling to catch up, moving to intercept the enemy commander before he could turn, while he was still sluggishly racing away from his erstwhile prey. His pulsars burst, his goal not to shoot down his opponent but to guide him, to push him onto the trajectory he wanted.

  “Got one!” Dubois yelled. “Six-four, Jack!”

  Winter smiled as he saw the brief flicker of flame in the sky, first blood to the Caledonian forces as they continued to rain fire and death on their opponents. He opened up with his own cannons again, pulsar bursts racing through the sky towards his target, but the Terrans had finally decided to act, throwing themselves into a series of wild maneuvers in a bid to escape their opponents, to try and snatch back the initiative.

  “Watch out, people, they’re going to come around,” he warned, sending his fighter lurching to the left as the enemy interceptors warmed up their pulsars, ready to throw back some of the destruction his way. He fired again, wild this time, and was astonished to see a brief explosion ahead, one of the Terran interceptors torn to pieces. A lucky shot, the wildest stroke of good fortune, a one-in-a-million chance.

  He’d done it. Despite all expectations, despite all his beliefs that his time in the cockpit had passed, he’d made his fifth kill. He was an Ace.

  Now he just had to live through the experience. The enemy fighters were turning now, killing their acceleration and turning back on his squadron, pulsar bolts flying all around as the two dueling groups traded shots. The first rounds of the battle had reduced the enemy’s advantage to some degree, but they still had numerical superiority, and both Dubois and Haynes had moved too far forward in their eagerness to score kills, to bring the battle to an end. He looked at his trajectory plot, then stabbed a control.

  “Sokolov, give Dubois some cover. I’ll handle Haynes. Cohen, you lead the rest right down the middle. Burn ‘em!”

  He swung around,
firing again, looking warily at his energy levels, the battle already taking a toll on his power reserves. In a normal battle, he wouldn’t have worried about maintaining a reserve, but this time, it was a very different matter. There was no support ship, no search and rescue shuttle, just the prospect of an abandoned outpost on a forgotten moon to provide succor once the fighting was over. The enemy had the same restrictions, of course, but should they win, the chances of their comrades making the journey out to Golgotha was considerably greater.

  Throwing caution to the wind, he surged his engines again, racing to catch up with Haynes as she struggled to pull back, to retreat to the safety of the formation. Two enemy interceptors were closing the distance with her, trying to match relative speed as they hurled bolts of violet death through the sky, getting nearer with every shot. Winter retaliated, firing a quick salvo that narrowly missed Haynes and slammed into one of her enemies, Haynes herself taking the other down with her retaliatory fire.

  “That parted my hair, boss,” Haynes said.

  “Try not climbing quite so far out on the limb next time, Flight.”

  “Got a little trouble here,” Dubois said, and Winter turned to look at his sensor display, spotting his old friend under attack, three of the enemy interceptors ranging towards her. They’d broken their formation in order to launch their strike, and while the obvious strategy was to move to support her, Dubois was acting as a lightning rod that had exposed a weak spot in the enemy. Sokolov was meant to be watching her back, but he was way behind, struggling to keep up as Dubois ramped up her acceleration, pushing both her fighter and herself to the limit in a bid to get out of danger.