by J. N. Chaney
“Damned right, handsome,” Trixie agreed.
Mol and Thorn both watched the tactical display intently as it came out of standby mode and began to fill with data again. Had this been worth it, a good idea, or had it just let the Nyctus catch up?
“There,” Mol said. “The Nyctus ships are in a much higher orbit, way ahead of us.” She patted the bulkhead beside her. “We’re meant for atmo, they’re not. Even burning hard to decelerate, they just couldn’t slow down as fast as we did.”
“So that’s it? We’ve lost them?” Thorn asked, hopeful.
Mol shook her head. “They did just what I’d do. Instead of slowing down, they accelerated, staying in the fastest orbit they could. They’ll lap the planet in about four hours and be right back on top of us.”
“And well within weapons range, I might add,” Trixie put in.
“So we’ve got that much time. Hopefully we can gain a bit more time hiding inside that ring, but I doubt it’ll take them long to find us. What's the best possible arrival of the Hecate?”
“A few hours,” Thorn replied.
“Is a few more or less than four?”
“No idea, sorry.”
A speckled band of flickering lights was now centered in the view. It was the inner of the planet’s two rings, their destination.
“Okay, well, we’re gonna have some time to kill,” Mol said, adjusting their course slightly. “You ever play Sex or Death?”
Thorn blinked. “Have I—wait, what?”
Mol grinned. “Card game. Guys on the Apollo picked it up somewhere.”
“Oh, in that case, no,” Thorn replied, grinning back at her. “At least, not by choice.”
Mol gave a sage nod and pulled a deck of cards out of a crash-suit pocket. “Well, sir, you’re gonna learn.”
Pathetic creatures, aren’t you? Your first and only instinct is to run, and then hide, and then only after perpetrating an act of terrorism.
Thorn cut off the Nyctus shaman with a thought, hardening his mental will to iron. Just as Mol had predicted, the squid ships had lapped the planet, rising over its bulk almost exactly four hours after vanishing behind it. And, sure enough, they’d slowed and fallen into a lower orbit, one that would take them well within weapons range of the Gyrfalcon.
Thorn glanced at the nearby rocks, dark and jagged and rimed with ice that fitfully reflected both the light of the distant sun, as well as the paler light of the gas giant’s dayside. Mol’s flying had been truly superb; she’d matched the velocity and trajectory of the debris so closely that it only took a gentle puff of thrusters to bring them to a relative halt. Trixie had then rigged them for silent running, powering down everything she could.
And they waited, and played Sex or Death—which, despite its lurid name, was a surprisingly sophisticated game.
Still no sign of the Hecate, though.
“That squid still trying to rant at you?” Mol asked.
“Sure is. He knows I’m somewhere in here, but so far I’ve managed to keep him from actually getting a fix on me.”
“Small mercies,” Mol replied, staring at the tactical display. “So far, seems the squids haven’t managed to—”
“Something is happening off our port bow, high,” Trixie said.
“Can you, uh, be more specific, Trix?” Mol started, but stopped and cursed before Trixie could answer. “I see it. That rock”—she pointed at the display—“is moving.”
Thorn looked at tactical, then outside in the indicated direction. Sure enough, a chunk of rock about a third the size of the Gyrfalcon had started tumbling directly toward them.
“Shit, the squids know where we are,” he snapped, extending his awareness beyond the fighter’s hull until it touched the rock. He felt the familiar tingle of magic, with that peculiar Nyctus edge to it. With great care, Thorn drew his awareness to a point, and then let the point extend, naturally, stretching across the darkness like a tide made of raw mental will.
A shoving contest, Thorn realized, and another rock had started moving, accelerating toward them.
This wasn’t going to work. Thorn changed magical tactics and reoriented the force he was applying to push the rock aside rather than stopping it. It deflected enough that it would miss the Gyrfalcon, but he didn’t have time to be satisfied. He had to immediately turn his attention to the second rock.
And then a third. A fourth, then a fifth.
He fought the urge to curse in frustration. Volume could kill them just as easily as a single impact, because each rock required effort—bleeding him dry of magical will. He’d only sensed one shaman, but there must be more of them aboard the Nyctus ships.
Then the stones began to come alive in waves.
Thorn was targeting multiple rocks at once, pushing, pulling, and using the stony missiles against each other as they hit together hard enough to shatter. It was a tide of rocks, not a stream, and in moments, their scans were filled with tiny ghostly outlines, each coming toward their ship at blazing speeds.
“Uh, sir, hate to pile on bad news, but the squids have lit us up with targeting scanners,” Mol said. “And they’re firing actual missiles.”
Thorn’s head began to pound. “Mol, get us out of here. I can’t do—” He stopped and began to rapidly shift his attention from one rock to another, sending both on different but converging trajectories. They crashed together less than fifty meters away from the fighter, showering them with fragments that rattled against the hull.
“I can’t dilute my power any further,” Thorn growled. “Too many targets.”
“Understood. Trixie, bring everything back online,” Mol said, her fingers tapping at the flight management system as systems came back to life. “Where are we going, sir?”
“Anywhere. Doesn’t—” Thorn groaned as he deflected an especially big rock; it cast a deep shadow over them as it sailed past less than ten meters away.
“—matter!”
Mol said nothing, but lit the drive and accelerated the Gyrfalcon back into open space.
Where the Nyctus were waiting for them.
12
The Gyrfalcon powered out of the gas-giant’s ring, accelerating hard away from the Nyctus ships. It wasn’t going to be enough. The same clever maneuvers that had let them take up residence in the ring had left them with far less velocity than the Nyctus ships and the missiles now racing after them.
“How the hell did they find us?” Mol snapped, switching the Gyrfalcon’s single point defense system, a rapid-fire cannon, to active mode and powering up the reactive armor.
“Something new,” Thorn replied, giving himself a respite as they left the rocks behind. He had no doubt he’d be doing more frantic ’casting in just a few minutes and needed to catch his mental breath. “Just like we’re learning, so are they. Shoulda seen this coming. There was no way they were going to let us fight back and win without trying something else.”
“We’ve been wrong about the squids a lot, lately,” Mol said.
“Doing our best, Mol,” Thorn said, trying to keep any bitterness out of his voice—not because he was angry at Mol herself, but she was right. Every time he’d thought they had the Nyctus figured out, they came up with something new and unexpected. They adapted quickly, which meant they had to build that fact into their future assessments of them. In other words, they kept underestimating the enigmatic aliens, which was something they had to stop.
If the Nyctus could change, so could Thorn.
He turned. “Mol, let’s stop running away.”
“And, instead—” She glanced at him. “Fight?”
“Yeah.”
“Gonna be kind of one-sided.”
“If this is going to happen anyway, then I’d rather doing it facing the squids, not giving them a shot at our exhaust. We fight.”
Mol glanced at him again, then grinned, tapped the flight controls, and spun the Gyrfalcon around. A deep thrum buzzed through her structural bones as the drive lit, slowing her down and reversing her course.<
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“We’ll get one pass, I figure, if we can dodge those missiles,” Mol said, tightening her harness. “I’m pretty sure our rail gun will take out one of the squid ships for sure. The other two are up to you.” She inhaled sharply, triple tapping a screen. “If we can dodge those missiles, and that’s one hell of an if.”
Thorn glanced at the tracks of the onrushing missiles and concluded they would be meeting the Gyrfalcon sooner than later.
“Stop accelerating for a minute or so, Mol,” he said. “Keep us on this side of the ring.”
Mol shrugged, punched a control, and killed the drive. “I’ll bite. Over to you, sir.”
Thorn went still as a grave, his eyes closed as a cloud of gathering magic began to grow around him. Even Mol could feel it; a sensation like someone waving at her periphery, coupled with soft sounds and a presence.
The presence of magic, not science, although maybe the two were on in the same at that point, there in the humming cabin. Mol watched, fascinated by the contact of nothing and everything flickering around Thorn, and then his fingers began to move, like he was touching something distant and unseen. Onscreen, Mol called up true color and saw something flash in the distance; a light not quite like the dawn, but warm, then cooling to a deep, radiant blue. The light broke apart as Thorn lifted his hands like a director of some delicate process, which he was—
-- And a cloud of debris suddenly spalled away from the ring, rising into the path of the missiles.
Thorn felt the sudden surge of resistance, as the Nyctus shamans tried to block his mastery of the whirling debris, their power homing in on his like a beacon.
“Let them come,” he muttered, and Mol sat up, alarmed as his eyes became even more animated under closed lids.
The debris split into groups, some fast, some slowed by the Nyctus shamans, their uneven power at war across a front some ten klicks across. There were many rocks, and Thorn’s magic was something new for them—a power that spanned schools, or houses, or whatever the Nytus called their sorcery.
All that mattered was Thorn—muscles straining, breath coming shorter gasps- was winning. His tank was going dry but with a force of will wholly new to the Nyctus, he peeled their influence away in layers, stripping their minds away to reveal weaknesses that left them ripe for invasion.
The rocks flew on, and Thorn split his spell, reaching to the mind of a shaman, where he wrested control of her eyes, her pulse, her concentration. She faltered, and Thorn’s rocks accelerated, leaping into the path of the enemy missiles in a blur.
Seconds later, the missiles began to scatter, uncertain, their seekers suddenly confronted by a multitude of targets. In an instant, explosions rippled through the debris as warheads detonated, their concussive effects sending shards of debris in an arc that made chaos from the orderly flight.
Only two of the Nyctus projectiles managed to slip through. As they rushed toward the Gyrfalcon, the point-defense cannon opened up, spitting out a stream of slugs that shredded one, then the other. Their remnants pattered against the hull, a hard rain that had no effect.
Thorn let the Earther effect dissipate and slumped back into his seat, gasping. Whatever he had left, he had to save for the final act.
Mol lit the drive again, and the ship streaked through the cloud of debris, and then through the debris cloud, pulling hard at the stick to dodge the remaining rocks, their shapes glinting with malevolent shadows as they slid past, forgotten. When they emerged from the other side, the Nyctus ships were square in the middle of the view.
Just where they were needed. If you were cheering for the Nyctus.
“Hey, Trixie?” Mol said. “Do whatever you have to to keep us together for as long as you can. And it’s been nice working with you.” She glanced at Thorn. “You too, sir.”
He returned a tired smile. “So the AI gets higher billing than I do, huh?”
“Well, sir, all due respect, Trixie’s crew. You’re just a passenger.”
“I’m hurt.”
Mol’s grin faded. “Not for long, you won’t be. Got a firing solution for the rail gun and missiles. And... .go.”
Panels opened on the Gyrfalcon’s flanks, exposing missiles that leapt off their rails and streaked away. At the same time, Mol tapped at the controls, opening up with the rail gun. Thorn saw one projectile slam into a corvette, blowing off chunks of debris. A second later, the Gyrfalcon’s reactive armor erupted, blasting an incoming shot hard enough that it struck only a glancing blow. The impact still slewed the fighter hard to one side, throwing them both against their harnesses.
More missiles came powering in. The Gyrfalcon vibrated as the point-defense cannon opened up, glittering streams of tracers arcing across the star field.
Thorn decided to ignore the missiles and concentrate on the enemy ships. The damaged corvette was his target, its crew distracted by the hit and now immersed in damage control. It gave him a brief window that the shaman would otherwise have blocked; he used it to insinuate himself into the mind of the squid at the helm. A male, of middling experience but high confidence, he was just the kind of mind that Thorn needed. Slipping into the Nyctus awareness as an uninvited guest, Thorn left him a gift.
The alien suddenly saw a barrage of missiles racing in from a flank. On instinct, the creature applied a hard lateral thrust, which shoved the ship directly into the path of its fellow corvette. A few seconds later, they collided, the impact sending the already damaged ship out of control and knocking the other one out of the fight—for the moment, anyway. The ghost missiles—a construct of Thorn’s Joining, faded away, their job complete.
“Yes, well done, sir!” Mol shouted, jinking hard. “Don’t suppose you can take care of the big one, huh? That frigate?”
Thorn took a deep breath, drew his awareness to the frigate—and crashed headlong into a magical barrier of rare depth and power
“Multiples,” Thorn said, grunting with effort.
“Sir?” Mol asked.
“More than one. They’ve got a wall. Walls, maybe. Can’t get through.” Thorn began discarding plans as fast as they formed. His tank was low, his teeth ached, and the shamans weren’t second-rate crew. They were skilled, rested, and angry.
If he hadn’t exerted himself so much as they sought to escape, he might have been able to bludgeon his way through with brute force, but—
He couldn’t do that either.
He slumped a bit, then gave Mol a rueful smile. “I’m about out of juice. And ideas.”
Mol nodded and turned back to her controls, then glanced back at him. Thorn saw she was about to say something, but then seemed to think the better of it, her mouth closing with an audible click.
“I know,” he said.
She cut her eyes at him, brows lifted. “Reading my mind?”
“Don’t need to. Not sure I can, um, change the rules of the universe again, but the thought did cross my mind. It’s us or the fleet, maybe.” He shrugged in resignation, then reached out and patted the console. “Trixie, it’s been a pleasure.”
“Same to you, handsome. I’ve got some rounds in the chamber, for what it’s worth,” Trixie said.
“I defer to the captain. I’m just a magician along for the ride.”
Mol smiled as she wrenched the stick hard, the distant frigate coming closer. “Been good working with you.”
Thorn nodded. “Same, Mol.” He looked at the frigate. “Okay, blaze of glory and all that, if we’ve still got some pop left?
Mol nodded. “Trixie, if I lose control, stay on collision course with that frigate as long as you can.”
“Understood,” was all the AI said.
Thorn settled back, bracing himself as they raced toward the frigate. Mol’s amazing flying kept them clear of fire from the Nyctus ship; no matter how fast they tracked the Gyrfalcon, Mol was a little faster; a wizard in her own right.
Thorn touched his temple. “Trying to break through. I can feel their fear. They think they’re going to win, but they st
ill fear us. Or the mass of the ship, anyway.” The shamans hammered at Thorn in a straightforward attack, free of subtlety or guile. They fought, but he was—resigned. Settled.
Peaceful, if not a little pissed.
In the last seconds, Thorn thought of Kira. He’d never managed to speak to her, even to say goodbye. On impulse, he reached out.
Kira?
—and sat up, gasping, as he heard that scream again.
“Kira!”
Mol shot him a glance, which caused her to miss a move. The Gyrfalcon shuddered and slewed hard to one side as a Nyctus railgun shot smashed into the little ship, shredding a lower panel that began streaming gases behind them, the purple flakes visible in their rear cams.
Thorn gathered himself, and Kira screamed again. He bucked against the harness, each strap cutting into his muscles, their touch hot on his skin. She was out there. And the Gyrfalcon was coming apart. The frigate adjusted course, aiming with practiced ease.
A missile, silent and silver, slammed into the frigate, cracking the ship open in a catastrophic outgassing of light and debris. Before Mol could react, a second missile hammered home, shattering the forward half of the frigate in a blinding radiance.
Mol cursed and jammed the starboard thrusters to full power. The Gyrfalcon began to tumble, the starscape spinning wildly. The unbalanced accelerations flung Thorn from side-to-side, alternately hurling him against his seat or harness in a violence that made his teeth crack together like a railer shot. The shattered wreckage of the frigate swept past, seemingly close enough to touch.
“Gyrfalcon, this is Hecate. Can you regain control, or do you need some help?”
It was Captain Tanner, his voice its usual smooth, calm baritone. He could have been asking if they’d like a cup of coffee.
Mol tapped at the thrusters, deftly bringing the Gyrfalcon back under control, despite her damage. “We got this, Hecate, thanks. Permission to come aboard, then get the hell out of here?”
“Concur, and the sooner the better, if you please. We’ve got a half-dozen more squid ships inbound, including a battlecruiser. Rather not be here when they show up.”