Defenders of the Rim: Beginnings: A Far Future SciFi Thriller

by Randal Sloan

  What Jarra didn’t voice was the likelihood of that help no longer being enough. She thought she knew what the Empire probably had following them, but that cruiser potentially pushed the odds back out of their favor. She wasn’t even counting on the help the District had intended for them, knowing they had to be days away. By the time they arrived, it would all be over.

  As Jarra pondered their fate, they had already passed the first of the moons. It spat rail gun rounds out just as they passed outside of its range. But the other two moons were still in range and they also spat rail gun rounds out that began to impact their shields. Galen shifted their course even further away from them, using those seconds they had gained to get even more distance.

  A huge number of missiles appeared to be in flight up from the planet. Gabo was already launching his defenses to confuse, decoy and destroy any missiles that got through. Sara was furiously working using her skills to do the same thing electronically.

  Suddenly the last moon fired some kind of huge beam that struck their ship, draining their shields to dangerous levels. Instinctively, Jarra jinked the ship, breaking contact with the beam, but not before they took damage. “What the hell was that?” she said. “Rotating the ship to reduce exposure to the damaged area.”

  “Damage to the starboard shield arrays. Working on it now,” Galen told her. “Keep that side of the ship away from the planet and especially that moon.”

  The beam shot out again, once more striking their ship. Jarra was quicker to move them this time and they were farther away, so the damage wasn’t as bad. Still, that was too close. One more of those quite possibly would do them in.

  “Get us further away from that thing, Galen. We can’t afford another hit even like the last one.”

  Galen quickly complied. “I’m having to move us closer to the planet, so that’s going to expose us more to the missiles, but you’re right, we have no choice.”

  The beam shot out again, but this time it either missed them or they were outside of its range. Jarra breathed a huge sigh of relief, knowing how close they had come. Later, if they survived this, they would have to try to find out about that beam. It had to be alien tech and the Empire could use it, she knew.

  Galen looked up from his systems. “The shields are back up. The starboard shields are still not one hundred percent, so try to keep them away from that moon and the planet.”

  Gabo and Sara had been working fiercely to stop the incoming missiles. But there were a lot of them and then Galen moved them closer to the planet. That lessened the time they had to respond. Missiles began to detonate closer and closer to their ship.

  Jarra found herself clasping her hands together again. This time it wasn’t a simulation. She knew that these were capital missiles and even one hit could possibly do them in. “There’s just so many of them,” she said. “Galen, you’ve got to get us out of here.”

  “I’m trying,” he told her. He had already shifted their course further away from the planet. Somehow, he managed to get a little more out of the engines. “That’s the best I can do. If it’s any consolation, I think that’s the last round of them.”

  Looking at their display, Jarra realized he was right. Nevertheless, once more the missiles began closing in on them. Sara managed to veer a few off at the last moment and Gabo was swatting aside as many as he could with his defenses. Closer and closer they came, but they were growing fewer in number at least.

  Just as it looked like they were going to get away safely, one of the missiles managed to get through all but the last efforts of Gabo, his defensive missile stopping it only meters away. A huge explosion rocked the ship, causing the lights to flicker and go out. Momentarily having lost her feed to her station, Jarra held her breath waiting for the next one to finish them, but there were no more explosions.

  “That was too close,” Gabo told them. “It’s a good thing that’s the last one, because I don’t think we could sustain another near hit. Shields are down to ten percent. Those missiles really pack a wallop.”

  Jarra knew their ship was lucky to be still alive; their shields had barely held. That was a big understatement — if even one more missile had been remaining, they couldn’t have survived it exploding anywhere near them.

  “I’ve lost twenty percent on the engines,” she warned Galen. “You’ve got to get them back or our not so friendly companions still may catch us.”

  “I’m working on it. As Gabo says, that last one almost got us. If it helps you feel better, my analysis says you still have a ten percent safety margin, especially with the performance we’re seeing out of those destroyers so far.”

  Jarra glanced at the plots he had indicated. The destroyers were already falling behind the worst case course Galen had plotted and their navigators had wasted considerable time before they moved the ships onto the most effective course. You couldn’t plan on incompetence in your enemy, but she sure wouldn’t turn it down.

  Jarra put up a projected timer for the help she desperately hoped would come. That time was still hours away. “That’s the best case for the time our help will arrive. When I thought all we had to deal with was a couple of destroyers, it didn’t seem like it would be that difficult. Now it seems like a really long time. We’ve got to stay in one piece at least that long.”

  Finally, their course began to move away from the planet and toward the next challenge. Galen’s ingenious course plunged them toward the sun instead of toward the exit of the system that the ships in the two asteroid belts guarded. With Galen’s repairs progressing, Jarra’s engines gradually edged back toward the one hundred percent she desperately wanted and the shields had begun to firm back up. They still desperately needed that help but maybe, just maybe, they would survive a little longer.

  #

  So began their race to the sun. The destroyers never managed to get any closer to their ship. In fact, their distance behind gradually increased. The cruiser fell even further behind. Just as Jarra had begun to hope their enemies would all foolishly string along behind them, they apparently realized they would never have a chance to catch them that way.

  Two of the destroyers stayed on their tail, but the other two and the cruiser broke off the chase, instead moving back to block their access to hyperspace. Jarra knew that was a problem and they had to find a solution, or their odds of survival would go down once again. She turned to Galen with worried eyes.

  “Galen, you told me when we first boarded this ship that you believed you could navigate it anywhere. Tell me you can find a way to get us safely into hyperspace.”

  Galen looked at her in surprise, but finally he shrugged his shoulders. “You know that was mostly wishful thinking when I said that, but if any ship can do it, this ship can. Give me a few minutes to see what I can do. I’m going to need active scanners.”

  “Go for it. It’s not like we’re going to be able to hide from them anyway. Unfortunately, they know exactly where we are now.”

  Galen furiously worked his scanners, probing the edge of hyperspace. As Gabo had warned when they first started looking at the system, hyperspace access to the system was very limited, probably at least partly a factor due to the red dwarf star and partly due to their proximity to the edge of the galaxy. He found a couple of pretty good prospects, but they each turned out to be dead-ends when he looked at them in detail. Finally, he had one prospect he thought would work.

  “I only see one possibility that looks feasible. I can’t promise you that it’s not a dead-end, but the short distance out I can see with our sensors seems to indicate it’s workable.”

  “We don’t have any choice. Plot us a course toward it after we finish our pass of the star, but don’t move us onto that course until we clear the star’s photosphere. Will we be able to reach your exit without having to face our unfriendly companions?”

  “The two destroyers furtherest out will probably be able to get us within their cone of fire. I suggest we use a slingshot out from the sun to minimize the time of
our exposure.”

  “Will you be able to navigate us into our hyperspace eddy at such a high insertion speed?”

  “With an average pilot, no! With our pilot, we should be able to pull it off.”

  “Go for it. I don’t see any other possibility with that cruiser blocking the main hyperspace entrance.”

  With their plan in place, there was nothing to do but wait. “Just how close to the star are you planning to get us?” Jarra asked Galen nervously as it began to fill their viewscreen.

  “Close enough to singe your eyebrows,” Galen told her with a laugh. “Nothing our shields can’t handle. Good thing they’re back up to one hundred percent.”

  By this time the star completely filled their viewscreen. Their ship must have looked tiny against the star to their pursuers, but they still kept their prey in sight. Jarra held them to their course, although the shields had already begun to heat up. Moments passed, but finally they reached their nearest point. They all stared in awe, not having ever expected to get this close to a star. To Jarra it seemed as if any instant the star would reach out and grab them, the solar features were that close. At least it was a relatively quiet red dwarf.

  Finally, the star began to grow more distant. They were moving pretty fast now, Galen’s new course to their hoped salvation now her designated course.

  Jarra glanced at her timer. Still too many hours until any chance of help. She hoped Galen could pull it off, because otherwise they were doomed.

  #

  As Galen had warned, the two destroyers furtherest out were able to move to partially block their path. Once again, they were slow to respond, leaving the window of engagement smaller than anticipated, giving Jarra hope that they at least might have a chance.

  “It looks like a quick brush through their cone of engagement. But this time, Sara and Gabo, I want you to go on the offensive too. I want you to target the lead destroyer and give him something to do besides shoot at us. I bet he’ll be completely surprised that we have teeth. I’m hoping we’ll be able to slow him down a little bit.”

  The moments passed quickly as the ships inevitably came closer together, the closure time lessened due to their high speed. As they entered the cone of engagement, Gabo launched multiple sets of missiles, cycling the missiles through as fast as the systems could reload. Sara targeted the lead destroyer, helping to supply the missiles with additional targeting information even after their launch.. Unfortunately, they could launch only two missiles at a time compared to the destroyers who could launch a dozen at a time and the cruiser which probably would have been approaching a hundred at a shot. Luckily, they weren’t going to come anywhere close to being in range of that cruiser.

  Their enemy was completely caught by surprise, their incompetence showing once more as they were slow to get their defenses up. Their shields barely up, they took multiple missile strikes before they finally were able to begin stopping the missiles, but it was too late. Before the last missile was finished, the destroyer was reduced to nothing but debris.

  But now it was their enemies’ turn. Multiple missiles came bearing in on them. Sara and Gabo switched their tasks to defense and they fought valiantly, Gabo launching the defensive missiles and Sara working their electronic systems. This time they were unable to get all of the missiles, their ship jarred and shaken, and beginning to take damage. A near miss off the starboard bow shook them severely.

  “I’ve lost several shields on the starboard side,“ Galen warned. “We can’t take another hit there.”

  “Rotating the ship,” Jarra told him, although other areas of the ship weren’t much better. Most of the shields were down below 50% and some were a lot worse. A second barrage of missiles came in, once again exploding around them. Luckily there weren’t as many in the second round, with the first destroyer out of action. Sara diverted more of them to false targets and Gabo managed to take them out further away. Once again, their shields held. But it was a near thing. Only their speed saved them as they began to pull clear.

  Their high separation vector pulled them out of the cone of engagement, even as Jarra lost a large portion of her engines. Looking at the plot, she knew that if the hyper boundary was not approaching quickly, they would’t have made it, the destroyer that turned to pursue them just outside of its range.

  But the pursuer backed off as the hyperspace boundary came into sight.

  #

  Hyperspace navigation is both a science and an art. Most ships only traveled in the main shipping lanes, those areas having been mapped and studied to the point even an AI could navigate through them. Imperial ships and particularly ships of the Rim Patrol often would traverse the lesser traveled lanes when it became expedient. But no one who was sane would attempt what Jarra had directed Galen to do.

  Hyperspace was a strange phenomenon. Sometimes, it behaved like a flowing river, made up of waves, swirls, and eddies. Sometimes, it behaved more like a strong wind, pulling a ship along much like an old earth sailing ship. Quick decisions were required if the navigator didn’t have a map showing him the path to travel, and a good navigator had to follow his intuition at times, which was why AI’s didn’t do very well outside the main space lanes.

  When mankind first discovered hyperspace and learned how to travel in it to give him the ability to travel the distance between stars, the ships had crude hyperspace engines and traveled rather slowly. Survey ships went out, mapping the way to the stars and looking for habitable planets. Many of the explorers were lost, never to return. But the ones that did succeed found those planets and gradually mapped the folds and swirls of hyperspace around them, especially the paths that man frequently traveled. Of course, many of the planets out on the rim were minimally mapped, since no one had a good reason to go there.

  Hyper-capable ships generated a specially shaped field to allow them to fly through the realm of hyperspace. The fields generated by modern ships were much more refined and powerful. Of course, the more powerful the field, the deeper into hyperspace the ship could go. The Aeres was designed for exploring and so they were able to generate a very powerful field. This allowed them to go where other ships, including the pursuing destroyers, couldn’t go. Plus, their smaller size aided them. They could fit in a much smaller size flow than the destroyers.

  A ship’s speed in the real physical universe didn’t correlate exactly to their speed in hyperspace, but it carried a component of that speed with it at the transition to hyperspace. When the Aeres initiated their hyperspace field and plunged into the realm of hyperspace, they were still moving very fast due to their slingshot around the sun. That meant they were thrust into the unmapped hyperspace at a considerable hyper velocity and Galen had to react extremely fast to keep them in one piece, sending course corrections directly to the ship’s AI with his implants. Even so, their ship was shaken and battered in those first moments and their small crew began to wonder if they would survive it.

  But they made it through that critical time period, Jarra slapping them into emergency deceleration and the side effect of the friction of the ship against the hyper walls also slowing them down. The strength of their hyper field helped them too. No way a ship of any significantly larger size would have made it and a less powerful hyper field would have failed, destroying the ship in the process.

  Finally, they slowed to a much more normal speed and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. They were safely out of the reach of their enemies for the moment. The only question was if they would be able to continue and escape until their help could arrive. That was looking less and less likely based on the transition they had just endured. Everyone turned to look at Galen.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Survival

  Galen was too busy to do anything to acknowledge his responsibility. Jarra had slowed their ship to a more normal speed, but that still barely gave him enough time to plot their course. Galen had to worry about two major risks. One, they could get into a dead-end branch in hyperspace and be forced to retrace
their path. As long as they moved in an unpredictable path, the destroyer sitting just outside hyperspace couldn’t do anything to attack them. But if their course suddenly became predictable, he could easily overwhelm them with missiles. Galen’s other worry was that they could take a branch that exited them from hyperspace and at the same time leaving them unable to reenter, again making them a sitting duck for their attacker.

  Working as much by instinct as by his scanner input, Galen eased them through hyperspace. Finally, he looked up at his team. “We should be out of their missile range. I recommend that we search for an eddy to do our equivalent of dropping anchor and wait for help. Hopefully our ‘friends’ out there will give up.” He didn’t mention his worry about what else the destroyers might be able to do; hopefully, that wouldn’t be an option.

  “You’re right. What about the one ahead and to the right?” Jarra asked as she slowed their speed to a crawl. She too knew the possibility Galen left unsaid. She hoped he was right but she couldn’t help but worry. After everything else they had seen, it wouldn’t be a surprise. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do about it.

  No longer forced to make snap decisions, Galen studied it with his full scanner suite. “I’m bringing us in now. Dropping anchor in five.”

  Hyperspace anchors were obviously not a physical object that the ship dropped. Instead, they shaped the fields generated by the hyperspace generators to prevent movement in all directions. That worked as long as the hyperspace current wasn’t too strong, which is why they anchored inside the eddy.

  “Ship anchored and secure,” Galen told the team. “All sensors at passive only. Now all we can do is wait.”

  “Everyone take five,” Jarra told them. “Just make sure you keep an eye on your station with your implants.”

  #

  Sitting in the galley, Jarra sipped her coffee. Her thoughts were running all over the place. Will our help arrive, the help I’m so sure is out there? Will they even have enough firepower to help? But also just as prominent in her thoughts was what would happen if they survived the next couple of hours. She would have to keep her promise and tell her team the truth about her identity. Will they accept me, or will they run screaming away from me? I wouldn’t blame them if they did run away. I always seem to find trouble.