by J. S. Morin
The prospects for dealing away the escape pod were looking remote. What he found was that the Berring series was all but decommissioned due to fundamental systems flaws, a number of key systems up for recall, and a counterfeiting scam fifteen years back had flooded the market with substandard parts. Anyone who owned or operated one was more likely to be using the escape pods than buying replacements. It was getting damned tempting to shove Esper and Adam back in it and let someone else pick them up.
Making Adam squadron leader had been a test. Not that he expected any great strategic thinking of a ten-year-old, but for all the complexity of the subsystems, the simulator was just a fancy computer game. Kids come preprogrammed to win at those. Beating Mort at Omnithrust Racer was just proof that the kid had basic motor skills; Carl didn’t even bother playing against the old wizard at anything that required quick thinking and basic tech aptitude at the same time. The fact that the races were even close called into question Adam’s claims of prowess at the game. Then again, kids were stone-faced liars, the lot of them. He could respect that. It didn’t make sorting the mess out any easier.
On the bright side, nothing had gone terribly wrong on Delos. Sure, his crew had murdered his hopes of scavenging three jobs’ worth of cash out of one paltry haul, but that wasn’t the sort of trouble he had been worrying about. If someone else had shown up to recapture Adam, Carl would have known Harmony Bay had found some way to track him, implant or no. You just couldn’t trust galaxy-wide scientific syndicates not to come up with new ways of screwing people over. Maybe they had turned his DNA into an astral antenna, broadcasting his location; maybe they had a computer that could predict how his rescuers would behave; or maybe … just maybe … they had gotten the boy away free and clear.
Staring up through the glassed dome ceiling of the common room, he watched as Delos IX came into view. There had been no sensation of deceleration, thanks to Mort’s artificial gravity being top-notch. Mort was a bastard, a backstabber, and a weasel, but he was good with gravity. Delos IX had a green atmosphere; Carl couldn’t say what chemical made it that color, but it made the planet look sickly. The view was marred by the structural supports, and the presence of the manually operated dorsal turret dead center in the top. Maybe he could have Mort glass the steel supports one of these days. That bastard.
Any minute now, Mort would chase everyone out of the common room so he could plunge them into astral space. He could have done it hours ago, but on the off chance anyone was paying too close attention to the Mobius, Carl didn’t want them to see a ship disappear from the astral sensors that watched the standard depths. As soon as they were on the far side of Delos IX, they could sneak into astral space with no one the wiser.
The ship shook, and Carl saw the flash of the ship’s shields taking a hit. Dropping the datapad to the floor, he ran for the cockpit. The ship-wide comm crackled with Tanny’s voice, “Mriy, take the turret. We’ve got incoming!”
Carl reached the cockpit at a sprint and slammed into the back of the co-pilot’s seat to stop himself. “What’ve we got?” His eyes were already scanning the instruments.
“Hostile dropped out of astral right in front of us. Titan Nine frigate … launched four Komodo fighters and backed off.” Tanny jerked on the flight yoke, running through a basic evasive battery straight out of the marine flight manual. The ship shook with another hit.
Carl reached forward and opened a comm on an unsecured channel. “Unidentified ship … stand down. Repeat, stand down or we will return fire.”
“I just sent Mriy to return fire,” Tanny said as soon as Carl closed the comm.
“Whatever. It never stops anyone from firing, but it might get them to tell us why.”
“Mobius, this is the Viper. Power down your weapons and engines, and prepare to hand over the boy.”
“Well, that answers that,” said Carl. “Harmony Bay has it in for me personally.”
“Yeah, sounds like it,” Tanny agreed. The ship took another hit. “So what, hand him over or fight it out?”
“We give them Adam, and they’ll just dust us anyway,” said Carl. “You just slide over and let me handle the flying for this one.”
“Like hell I will, after that stunt you pulled,” Tanny replied, turning a shoulder to block Carl from getting past her to the flight yoke. The ship took two more hits, causing Carl to stumble. “If it weren’t for you rubbing those dogs’ noses in their own shit, they might not be looking to hollow us out right now.” Another impact rocked them.
“Would you stop letting them hit us?” Carl asked.
“We have plenty of shield reserves, and Mriy needs to aim,” said Tanny. “And I’m not letting them hit anything. Those are Komodos. They’re twice as maneuverable as we are.”
“Leave that to me,” said Carl. “You go back there and kick Mriy off the turret controls. You’re the better shot.”
“Carl, just—”
“That’s an order!” Carl snapped. “This is my ship, and I’m not ready to go down with it over a few upset stomachs.”
Tanny snarled at him and slipped out of the harness. “Fine!” She shouldered past Carl and headed toward the common room and the turret. “If you get us killed, I’m coming to Hell to personally torment you,” she called back.
The pilot’s chair was still warm from Tanny’s occupation. Sharing the warmth of a seat was about as close as they got to one another these days, but it was still comforting. As soon as Carl’s hand gripped the yoke, it hit him: everyone’s lives were riding on him. His palms began to sweat as he pulled them into a twisting climb. He hit the selector for the maneuvering thrusters, just as he’d done in the simulator, but nothing happened. He flipped it to the off position and back on—still nothing.
He jabbed a finger to the ship-wide comm button. “Oh, Roddy, dear,” Carl singsonged through gritted teeth. “Please come up to the cockpit and fix my goddamn ship!”
Carl maneuvered as best he could with the computer flight assist active. They took a few more hits, with Carl juggling power to the aft shields as he kept the Komodos behind him. “Not so smart now, tough guy?” a voice came over the ship-to-ship comm. It was the squad leader from Duster’s—possibly the sorest loser Carl had ever encountered. He felt an urge to snark back, but it was hard to come up with something clever to say when you were losing a fight.
“What’s wrong?” Roddy asked, vaulting into the co-pilot’s chair as soon as he entered the cockpit.
Carl’s attention snapped back to the cockpit. “Manual thruster control’s gone,” Carl said. He saw bolts of high-energy plasma lance past the cockpit as he dodged fire.
“Yeah,” said Roddy, “Safety feature at these speeds. Tanny had me upgrade it to military code.”
“That’s bullshit,” Carl replied. “Tear out those safeties.”
Roddy opened his mouth, but Carl glared plasma bolts of his own. “Sure thing, boss.” The laaku stuck his head under the control console and removed a panel. Carl lost sight of him down there, but could hear the mechanic at work. He felt like a shuttle bus pilot with the way Mobius was handling.
“I cobble-jobbed a quick bypass,” Roddy’s voice echoed from inside the console. “Try now.”
Carl flicked the switch for manual control, and suddenly the Mobius leapt at his command. He felt the rise in his stomach as the ship’s movement fought against the dampening effects of Mort’s gravity enchantment and snuck some force through to the crew.
Roddy moaned from below. “I’m not going to enjoy this, am I?”
“Nope, probably not,” said Carl. He was panting for breath, his heart racing. “Just head for the engine room and get ready to fix anything that breaks.”
As soon as Roddy was gone, Carl squeezed his eyes shut, fighting down a wave of panic. It had been a long time since he’d flown in a live dogfight. He opened his eyes. That was it: dogfight. Keeping one hand on the flight yoke and twisting the ship through maneuvers by muscle memory, he opened file clusters on the Mob
ius’ computer. Carl opened an archive and scanned through sub-clusters, burrowing down until he found what he was looking for.
The cluster title was “Dogfight 7” and it dated back to his navy days. He selected “play” and slid the volume indicator to maximum. In seconds, the growl of distorted guitars thundered through the cockpit. By the time the snarling vocals came in, Carl’s hands had stopped shaking. He seethed out a deep breath and opened the ship-wide comm. “This is your pilot speaking. Please strap in and prepare to kick some ass. That is all.”
Even with the maneuvering thrusters at his disposal, the Mobius was a hulking brute compared to the Komodos. It handled like the diplomatic shuttle it had been born as. In combat, it was the snapping turtle of vessels—all shell, with just enough bite to make someone wary of getting too close. Four medium-weight fighter craft were the perfect foil to use against it. Carl couldn’t outrun them, and Mort couldn’t take them astral while they were under fire. It was time for a new plan.
Carl dove for the planet.
Tanny’s voice crackled from the turret comm. “What the hell are you doing? I can’t get a track on these things with the ship jerking around, and you’re going to crush us hitting atmo’ at this speed.”
“When was the last time they hit us?” Carl asked. “Just keep shooting. A couple lucky shots is all it’ll take.”
“Atmo,” Tanny reiterated.
“Leave that to me.”
Carl preferred to do most of his navigating by feel while under fire, but one task he always left to the computer was reentry vectors. The navigation computer blinked red with the words “No Valid Trajectory.” Carl feathered back the throttle until it relented and plotted him a safe reentry angle. Just before the Mobius hit the atmosphere of Delos IX, Carl reached for a set of switches he had hardly ever needed. The shields were washed in flame as the gasses that swirled around the planet ignited, setting off beeping alarms that temporarily interrupted the music blaring through the cockpit.
He hit the switches, and the shields reshaped. Instead of an egg-shaped blob around the ship, they stretched, sharpened, and took on an aerodynamic profile, tied into the flight yoke. Roddy had given him a barrel of grief over installing it, but Carl had wanted it for just this sort of emergency. The Mobius bled speed as it forced its way through the clouds of the uninhabited world. The beeping alarms stopped as the ship’s momentum was no longer enough to burn the atmosphere around them, and the next song came on. This time it was a heavy instrumental piece with a hammering bass line and primitive synthesizer.
On the radar, the four Komodo ships were slowing down and entering the atmosphere well behind him. Mobius’s shields were sturdy enough to allow them to come in with more speed without burning up. Carl continued his dive, watching through the murky green haze for signs of terrain. He pulled up when he saw a mountain range, which might have been eerily beautiful had he stopped to enjoy it. Rocky spires shot into the emerald heavens, larger than the greatest peaks of Earth or Mars.
He keyed the comm to the turret. “I’ll try to string ‘em out through the mountains. Atmosphere should slow them down more than us.”
“How much of our shield power did you just throw away?” Tanny asked.
Carl shrugged, even though he knew she couldn’t see him. “Some. Just keep those guns warm.”
He banked as he pulled the Mobius through a valley between two enormous peaks. He saw flashes of plasma slam into the mountainsides to the starboard side of the ship. The Komodos were behind him and trying to close in, thrusters plowing their semi-aerodynamic hulls through the atmosphere. The Mobius took three hits in rapid succession; Carl crested one peak and dove down one behind them.
One of the Komodos disappeared from radar. “Got one,” Tanny shouted over the comm. Another shot hit the shields, causing the aerodynamic shape to fluctuate. A momentary panic came over Carl as the ship lurched toward the ground, but the shields reformed and he was able to pull up.
Another blip vanished from the radar. Carl opened the ship-to-ship. “Not so fancy now, huh, you burger-hustling sim-jockeys? Stick to the restaurant circuit; the ocean’s too deep for you boys.”
The last two fighters broke off pursuit, but Carl was past the bygones point. There came a time in any battle when letting the other guy go just sat wrong in a pilot’s stomach—when the fight got too personal, the ramifications too complicated to think of in the heat of the moment. Maybe the other guy would never want to think about the incident again; maybe it would turn into a vendetta. With those angry red blips still flashing in the radar screen, the solution seemed obvious. Caution demanded fiery wreckage, and mercy seemed like a fool’s plan.
Carl pulled up, rolled, and twisted the Mobius around to give chase. The cockpit shuddered as the shields took the brunt of the high G-force maneuvering, straining the generators to maintain the shields’ shape. Ignoring the warning lights of impending shield overload, Carl hammered the throttle open, blood still pumping in time with the rhythm of the bass. For once, he took Tanny’s need to aim into account and held a steady course, taking a gentle hand to the yoke as he kept on the tails of the two remaining Komodos.
Carl clucked his tongue. “Not even splitting up?” he muttered, not even able to hear his own voice. He was tempted to open fire with the Mobius’s forward guns, but he could see Tanny’s shots tracking them, now that the battle was taking place in front of him. She had everything under control. First one, then the other Komodo burst into a cloud of shrapnel and plume of ignited oxygen.
Carl shut down the music and let out a whoop. When he caught his breath, he keyed the ship-wide comm. “All clear everyone. Roddy, run a quick check, make sure we’re not leaking anything important. Mort, get ready to drop us astral as soon as I bring us back to our departure point.”
He climbed out of the atmosphere, disengaging the aerodynamic shielding effect. As he did so, he took his first close look at the shield status readout: five percent. It was closer than he had meant to cut things, but the engines seemed intact, and they would power back up while the Mobius traveled between systems.
“Carl!” Tanny shouted over the comm. “You forgot the carrier!”
His eyes first widened, then shot over to the radar. Around the far side of the planet came the Viper on an intercept course. The Mobius was only a third of the Viper’s displacement, and outgunned, but they had speed on their side. Carl fired the maneuvering thrusters and swung them full about, aiming out to the deep ocean between stars. The safety harness bit into his shoulder as the inertia tried to throw him across the cockpit despite the ship’s gravity spell. Once more, Carl opened up the throttle to full, thinking to get far enough ahead that they could escape astrally. Even if the Viper had scanners that could sweep between standard astral depths, he doubted they could go deep enough to keep up. The Mobius would just need to—
The ship shook, and Carl’s neck whipped forward. Spots swam before his eyes. When he blinked his vision back to working order, they were adrift. The shield indicator read zero. Main thrusters had gone out. The Viper hailed them.
“Mobius, stand down and prepare to be boarded. Resistance will be met with deadly force. Turn the boy over unharmed, or you’re all as good as dead.”
# # #
The floor bucked under Carl’s feet as he ran for his quarters. The Viper had latched on with capture claws. “They’re coming for us!” he shouted on the way. Realizing that not everyone could hear him, he hit the common room ship-wide comm. “Arm yourselves and prepare to repel boarders.”
In his quarters, he dug through the hastily stored weapons that had been unearthed as if from an ancient tomb during the Tally-ho’s inspection. He belted on a holster with the blaster already in. He drew the weapon, popped the power pack out, checked that it was full, and snapped it back into the grip. Three more power packs slipped into his pockets. Turning to leave, he had a stray thought and returned for his runed graphite sword. If the power packs ran out, he didn’t want to go unarme
d.
A klaxon blared, letting everyone aboard know that there was a hull breach. Carl was only marginally worried about losing pressure. They wanted Adam alive, and that meant cutting through the hull someplace where the Viper’s people had life support latched onto the far side. He brushed aside the idea of grabbing his EV helmet and rushed to the cargo hold.
He got as far as the doorway.
The Viper had cut through the cargo bay door near the center, and invaders were firing up at the walkway, where Mriy and Tanny were already armed and returning fire. The corner of the common room by the refrigerator had become their bunker. Carl ducked as splats of low-energy plasma whizzed through the open door. He bent in half as he slunk up beside Tanny to get a status.
“How’s it looking?” he asked.
Tanny was armed with a blaster rifle, and was poking it around with a blind scope to lay down suppression fire. “Oh, just peachy. Ship that size, they’ve probably got us outnumbered four to one. The only grace we’ve gotten is that they’re trying not to vent the ship to space; otherwise, they’d have shot right through the walls.”
“I cannot reach them,” Mriy said. “Perhaps we let them advance?”
“That’s the backup plan,” Tanny replied. “For now we keep firing and hope we hit a few. They’re here for the money; they might not like their payout if they see a few buddies die.”
Carl tried to think as the klaxon blared, but all he could come up with was to join Tanny and Mriy in firing back at the boarders. Standing above Tanny’s crouch, he reached his blaster around and squeezed off three shots. He pulled his hand back before someone took a shot and blew it off.
Tanny checked in her scope. “You barely hit the wall they breached.”
“Where’s Roddy?” Carl asked. “Maybe he can rig up something to power those disintegrator rifles from the power packs we’ve got.”