Fire Storm

by Chris Ward

  ‘How many?’

  ‘By Barelaon standards, a small squadron.’

  ‘And how many ships is that?’

  ‘Eighty-seven. On second thoughts, make that a big problem.’

  25

  Lia

  Lia didn’t have time to feel regret for what had happened to Stomlard. The incoming Barelaon squadron appeared on the real-space visual monitor as a swarm of moving lights.

  ‘How close are they, Harlan?’

  ‘They’ll be engaging us in less than fifteen Earth-minutes. We just received a transmission ordering us to avoid hostilities and allow them to escort us into their main fleet.’

  ‘Where we’ll be boarded, you’ll be destroyed, and I’ll be assimilated.’ Lia shook her head. ‘No chance. Our options?’

  ‘We could turn and make for the wormhole, but based on their current speed, the thrust needed to outrun them would burn through our main fuel reserve before we made it. My programming suggests a rather drastic course of action.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘We stand and fight.’

  ‘Against eighty-seven ships?’

  ‘I admit, my programming is a little off-colour. I think it’s been influenced too greatly by the former pilot filling my immediate memory with swashbuckling, space pirate slang.’

  ‘Caladan. At least if he was flying this thing we’d have a chance.’

  ‘My programming also reluctantly agrees that you don’t have his flight skills, but that your skills are still far better than most.’

  ‘Thanks, I think. Other options?’

  ‘Switch off all power, try to slip past them, hope we’re mistaken for floating space junk.’

  ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘No. It would require the shutting down of all life support systems. They could detect even the smallest use of power.’

  ‘Then why did you suggest it?’

  ‘Because you asked for alternatives. My programming simply responds to your commands. While, of course, as an organic life form you would certainly perish, I, however, could likely survive for some time, considering how a vacuum would prevent the gradual onset of corrosion.’

  ‘Okay, well thanks for your suggestion.’

  Lia took a deep breath. She climbed into the pilot’s chair, feeling the way the contours of the seat felt unfamiliar, molded as they had been around Caladan’s larger frame. If only….

  She shook her head. It wasn’t worth thinking about.

  ‘Prepare our transmitters,’ she said. ‘Fire off as many messages as you can to all systems that can receive them. We have to let the Estron Quadrant know what is going on, in order that they can raise a fleet to come to Trill System’s aid. The Helix cannot be allowed to reach Feint.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘This is it, Harlan. This is where we stand and fight. We take as many of them with us as we can.’

  ‘We’ll almost certainly lose.’

  Lia stared out of the real-space visual screen at the oncoming ships, their thrusters visible now like tiny fireflies. There were so many, each larger than the Matilda, a fleet capable of taking down an entire space navy.

  ‘Full attack mode,’ Lia said. ‘Fire the thrusters, load the guns.’ She punched the dashboard. ‘Ready for some glory, old girl?’

  ‘My programming suggests that if the Matilda had a vocal-capable central computer, it would respond in the negative.’

  Lia scowled. ‘Don’t kill the moment, Harlan. What would Caladan do?’

  ‘Certainly something reckless.’

  ‘Then let’s at least make legends of ourselves. Get into that gunner’s chair if you can. I’ll pilot.’

  ‘My programming suggests I require some redemption for this current appearance,’ Harlan5 said, dragging himself to the seat beside Lia and leaning awkwardly over the armrest. One big hand pointed at the controls. ‘Which one?’

  ‘All of them.’ Lia grimaced. ‘Here they come. Engaging.’

  Just for inspiration, she pulled up an external computer-created visual of the Matilda transforming into attack mode. The sleek, pointed needle expanded into eight protruding legs—the visual having not been updated to reflect that one of the legs had been destroyed and not yet replaced—each of which curved back around into a spider’s claw loaded with heavy artillery. With a whir that made the whole ship shake, the guns began to spin around the Matilda’s central core.

  Designed as a mid-range assault ship with firepower as great as battleships many times her size, in a firefight the Matilda could be fearsome. Lia felt a thrilling tingle as the first wave of attackers rushed past them, with two near the rear exploding into nothing as the Matilda caught them in her cannon fire.

  ‘Nice shooting, Harlan!’

  ‘It was a lucky shot, Captain. I was aiming for the other button.’

  ‘Well, keep doing it. Engaging the second wave.’

  She jerked the Matilda right, angling the ship into the midst of the enemy. Automatic sensors jerked them back and forth as the Matilda’s own systems worked to avoid incoming fire, throwing Lia’s hands off the controls, and once nearly knocking her out of the pilot’s chair.

  ‘Wow, I can see why Caladan loved this so much,’ Lia shouted, leaning into the controls, pulling them so close to an incoming fighter that they blew it apart right in front of the real view visual screen, showering them with debris and plumes of dissolving fire.

  ‘That’s another one—’

  ‘Six coming in from the right,’ Harlan5 said. The Matilda shook, guns blazing, debris cascading over them, hundreds of tiny magnetic propulsion units built into the Matilda’s outer surface preventing a deadly impact.

  ‘Don’t let up,’ Lia shouted. ‘We just downed two more. Come on, Harlan!’

  ‘Captain, we’re approaching the main fleet. This is our last chance to pull back and run for a wormhole. My programming would like to point out that this is akin to suicide—’

  Lia gritted her teeth as the Matilda trembled under a direct hit. ‘It was never anything but, Harlan.’

  One of the rear-view visual screens had begun to flash.

  ‘What’s that, Harlan?’

  ‘Something coming up behind us. A large battleship.’

  ‘How’d it get back there? When did it break off from the fleet?’

  ‘Perhaps we failed to notice,’ Harlan said. ‘But if we go in close we might be able to draw that battleship’s fire onto the Barelaon fighters.’

  On the screen, six ships exploded beneath a volley of cannon fire that passed above their heads. Far distant, the Helix appeared to be turning toward them.

  ‘It’s already happening,’ Lia said. ‘They’re taking out their own.’

  Another cluster of ships exploded, disappearing in an instant as the vacuum of space dissolved their destroyed engines.

  ‘What is that thing? If it could take them out so easily, why isn’t it firing on us?’

  The Matilda shuddered again.

  ‘We just lost gun tower four,’ Harlan5 said. ‘Major systems are shutting down. We can’t resist another shot like that.’

  ‘That battleship hit us? Why’s it holding back?’

  ‘We were hit by a fighter, not by the battleship.’

  More ships were exploding, the hail of fire from the ship behind them like a sheet of colour streaking across the heavens.

  ‘We’re caught in a magnetic beam,’ Harlan said. ‘That battleship is pulling us in. I don’t think it’s one of theirs.’

  ‘Then whose is it? Can you send a communication?’

  ‘Our transmitters were hit. We’re unable to even send a distress signal.’

  As the beam pulled them around, Lia got a visual of the battleship up on the main screens. A huge silver oval with a protruding upper bridge area near the front, gun emplacements flashed from all across its surface. As she watched, its foremost cannon turned and opened fire on the Helix itself.

  ‘Whoever is piloting that is as crazy as you are
,’ Harlan5 said, then added, ‘I mean, as crazy as my programming suggests you might indeed be.’

  ‘Well, they seem to be on our side. We’ve just lost power in the main thrusters. We’re a sitting duck. We have no choice.’

  As the looming battleship drew them in, Lia watched the last ships of the vanguard fleet exploding under a massive volley of cannon fire. As they entered a lower hangar and the doors closed around them, she heard the battleship’s main thrusters engage as the ship turned away from the fight.

  Then, a few moments later, all went still.

  ‘Wait here,’ Lia said. ‘I’ll see what’s going on.’

  ‘My programming would like to point out that I’m hardly in a position to move very far, so it’s best if I stay here and guard the Matilda.’

  ‘That’s settled then.’

  Lia armed herself with a blaster, then descended through the Matilda to the lower hatch. Gauges near the doors told her the hangar outside was set up for human gravity and oxygen levels, so she left her respirator behind as she jogged down the gangway, her blaster held against her shoulder.

  The battleship’s magnetic beam had put them down on a maintenance landing pad suspended by a walkway from a side wall. Spread out below her was a massive, silent fleet of fighters, personal transports, and other craft. Everything was spotless, as though the whole battleship had just rolled off a production line.

  There was no sign of anyone. Lia was about to head back into the Matilda when a door opened in the wall and a figure strode out, dressed in the uniform of the Phevian Imperial Navy. The man marched to within a few steps of her, then stopped. Meeting her astonished stare, he snapped a sharp military salute with his only hand.

  ‘Admiral Caladan of the Phevian Navy, and captain of this cavernous monstrosity, welcomes you aboard, Miss Jansen, irresponsible space trader and unrequited love of my roguish life.’

  Lia felt tears streaming down her face. She tried to rush forward into a hug, but her knees buckled, and she found herself collapsing in a heap at his feet.

  26

  Caladan

  ‘You’ve made a real mess of my ship.’

  ‘It’s my ship!’

  Caladan stepped over a heap of junk blocking the door to the Matilda’s bridge, and stared at the chaos inside. A dead Karpali lay behind the rear passenger seats, while two junked droids had dribbled parts everywhere. One was slumped in a corner, the other leaned over the gunner’s chair on a single leg while sparks still burst from the ragged stump of the other.

  ‘I see you upgraded the droid,’ he said. ‘Did he run his mouth one too many times?’

  ‘I’ll have you know I’m still here,’ came a scratchy voice out of the one-legged garbage droid.

  Caladan turned to Lia. ‘Is that Harlan?’

  ‘We ran into some problems.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  She glared at him. ‘You took your time showing up. Another half an Earth-hour and we were spare parts.’

  ‘I was busy.’

  ‘Drinking and gambling in some cesspit somewhere?’

  ‘I’ll have you know I was freeing an entire race from slavery.’

  Lia rolled her eyes. ‘Sure. And I guess that’s where you stole this battleship?’

  Caladan grinned. ‘Something like that. I found this cool uniform, too.’

  Lia gave an exasperated shake of her head. ‘When I saw you all dressed up like that, I thought Buck Sanders had come to life.’

  ‘Who’s Buck Sanders?’

  Lia’s cheeks reddened, and she slapped her mouth with her fingers as though to punish a betrayal. ‘He was, um, the character from the training manuals at the GMP academy on Feint.’

  ‘Have I stumbled upon a first crush?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’d prefer it if you took that stupid uniform off, though.’

  Caladan gave her a wink which made Lia scowl. ‘It’s a size too small anyway.’

  The trash compactor droid lifted a hand. ‘Um, is there anywhere on this battleship that can replace my missing leg?’

  Caladan nodded. ‘It has fully automated maintenance bays. We can give the Matilda a full overhaul during the stasis-ultraspace jump back to Feint. You got any information on that monstrosity out there? I picked up some transmissions between it and the Trill System Government, but they were scrambled.’

  ‘It’s a Barelaon Helix.’

  ‘Judging by what I saw, it can eat worlds. I’ve pulled us out of range of its fighters, but let’s get up to this thing’s bridge and take a better look. Um, robot, I’ll send some maintenance droids to sort you out, and a couple of others to clean up the Matilda.’

  Lia put a hand on his arm as he turned to go. ‘Have them be gentle with the Karpali. For a while, he was a good friend.’

  ‘Another crush?’

  ‘That whole pleased-to-see-you feeling is beginning to wear thin. Don’t push it. I needed someone to repair and help pilot this ship after you abandoned us. Unfortunately Stomlard got infected by a Barelaon virus.’

  Caladan saw the sincerity in her eyes, and nodded. ‘Sure. I’ll make sure he’s given a proper sendoff. For what it’s worth, I didn’t abandon you—’

  ‘We’ll argue that on the way up to the bridge.’

  ‘All right. Follow me.’

  He led Lia away. Despite being battered and bruised, she marveled at the technological wonder around them as they buzzed up ultra-speed elevators and jogged along moving walkways.

  ‘This thing is amazing,’ Caladan said. ‘Just wait until you see the bridge. It’s massive, with full surround visuals. They’re all clean, none are cracked, and they all work. It’s like you’re standing outside.’

  ‘How did you find us?’

  Caladan smiled. ‘The distress call. Never forget it. You owe me an arm.’

  ‘I’ll get you one somehow.’ She grinned. ‘One day.’

  ‘And then we’ll sleep together, right?’

  Lia glared at him. ‘It would take much more than an arm. Keep dreaming.’

  ‘I’m a god, don’t you know?’

  ‘I’m sure you are.’

  The elevator slid to a stop and the doors opened onto the bridge. Lia immediately began exclaiming her surprise, but Caladan frowned at the visual screens. All around, a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panorama of space shone back at them like a glittering sheet, to the untrained eye entirely uniform.

  ‘What is it?’

  Caladan stared. ‘That Helix thing. It’s gone.’

  On Caladan’s insistence, Lia climbed into one of the battleship’s state-of-the-art recuperation tanks while he ran some diagnostics tests. Moving the battleship forward into the region recently vacated by the Barelaon Helix and its fleet, he found only the scattered remains of what had once been an outlying moon. From the rest of Yool-4 System, all he picked up was an overload of distress calls and emergency transmissions, but when he tentatively answered a few, he received nothing in return. A system that had once had multiple inhabited planets now appeared dead and empty.

  He sent the battleship’s tracking instruments to try to figure out where the Helix had gone, and soon emissions sensors far more powerful than anything on the Matilda were indicating that the entire fleet had jumped through a wormhole that had then been destroyed from the other side, making it impossible to follow.

  It made sense, if the transmissions Lia had intercepted were genuine, that the Helix had gone to Trill System.

  He ran a scan of nearby wormhole coordinates, weighing up his options. While the reckless temptation was to head for Phevius System, blow the hell out of as much of its navy as possible as retribution for the enslavement of the Luminosi, Lia would certainly want to return to Trill. Her mother lived on Cable, the second most populated planet, and to see it destroyed by the Helix would destroy what was left of Lia’s resolve.

  One certain thing was that no matter how fast the battleship, they would never get there ahead of the Barelaon fleet. Their only hope wa
s to warn the system in time that the government might organise some form of defense.

  The Matilda had already sent a series of warning transmissions prior to its transmitters being destroyed in the firefight, but they could do more if they returned to the system itself. Unfortunately, there were no wormholes nearby that would take them close to the more populated planets.

  Caladan changed his search, looking for possible multi-stop hops to get them back faster. He remembered the freighter they had found loaded with weapons, before their capture by the rogue GMP outpost. There was a space station that deserved a few rounds from his cannons. He refined the search again and found it, a looping route back through Frail System to Trill’s deep space on the other side of its sun, closer to Feint. A large deployment of the Trill System Starfleet was often stationed around a smaller fire planet called Timbus-2, which it sourced for its fuel. Their path could bring them right out into its orbit.

  Setting the coordinates, Caladan sat back in the plush leather captain’s chair and waited. As the battleship performed its necessarily maneuvers on full automation, Caladan found himself missing the awkward, often frustrating controls of the Matilda.

  A little unpredictability was so much more fun.

  27

  Kyle

  ‘Right, now get away with you.’

  Kyle waved a hand to dismiss the maintenance droid’s spindly arms. A door opened on the droid’s front casing and the arms folded up and disappeared inside. Kyle kicked the droid in the chassis to get it to leave, then turned to face the main doors, hands behind his back, the layer of ice-oil sprayed on his skin already beginning to chill and harden. He hoped it would do the job; it was never advisable to sweat in the lord’s presence.

  The doors flew open, and a figure strode in, flanked on either side by black-clad guards. Kyle, as always, found the warlord’s diminutive height distracting, and in particular the way the guards walked in specifically measured steps to maintain a level pace.