by Zen DiPietro
And if none of that brought back her stubborn memories? Should she just keep trying to sleep, to see if her mind would offer up its own help? She was too keyed up at the moment. She couldn’t sleep now if she tried, and she wasn’t about to drug herself into slumber.
Her patience for head games had worn thin. She couldn’t sit around forever while whoever was at Blackout’s controls continued with their plans.
Time was running out. If she didn’t get those memories very soon, then they’d just have to storm the castle without them and let the debris land where it would.
“Yes, I know it sounds like some sort of psychosis. But it’s not.” Fallon studied her teammates. After getting a handle on her objectives, she’d called Peregrine down for a team meeting.
Her partners wore expressions of doubt. Raptor seemed mostly puzzled, while Peregrine frowned deeply. Hawk leaned against the bulkhead of the small mess room, picking at his index finger.
“It’s just hard to know how seriously to take this dream, or memory, or whatever it was.” Raptor spoke carefully, clearly not wanting to insult her.
“It was a memory, but framed within a dream. I’m not certain which parts were literal and which weren’t, but I’m certain it’s all based on a real event. Something that marked the point in time everything started going wrong for us. Whatever happened under those moons led to us being split up, and to someone at Blackout eventually deciding they were better off having us killed.”
Peregrine perched on a blocky stool, nibbling on the pad of her thumb. “We need more to go on. A planet name or something.”
“I’m hoping Raptor can glean that from the data we stole from the base in Tokyo.”
Raptor asked, “Should that be the priority now? I’d have to stop searching for the implant tech, and I think the tech is the better bet. That’s a much bigger target with more pieces. I’m more likely to find something there than searching for some probably undocumented occurrence on a two-mooned planet.”
She wished they could look for both, but Raptor was only one person and he had to sleep sometime. “No, you’re right. The tech has to come first.”
Too bad she couldn’t get her father’s input. Maybe he could have turned up something for her about that mysterious planet. But even if she could get a secure message to him, if he started looking around, he might trigger some alarms that would get him in deep, deep trouble. She’d be helpless to protect him from so far away.
“All right. I’ll get to work then, since everything seems to be resting on me.” Raptor didn’t look happy about the fact as he pushed back from the table and started to stand.
A hard impact made him lose his balance, landing back on the stool and almost toppling off. He made a grab for the tabletop to keep himself upright.
The rest of them managed to keep their balance. No one bothered with inane questions like “What was that?” They just ran for the bridge.
“Pirates,” Fallon announced as soon as she threw herself into the pilot’s chair. Hawk took the other seat at ops while Raptor and Peregrine glued themselves to the auxiliary panels.
“Attacking a ship like this? They must be nuts,” Hawk muttered.
“Maybe not,” Fallon countered. “There’s only one right now, but I see three more coming in fast.” Her suspicious nature made her wonder if the ships might have a connection to Blackout, but if they did, she’d be looking at something with bigger engines and more firepower. No. Just ridiculously damn stupid luck.
Hawk cursed. Something to the effect of what those ships could do to one another, as well as what he’d do with the people inside them if he got his hands on them. Mostly anatomically impossible things, though Fallon had no doubt that Hawk would make a dedicated effort, if given the opportunity.
She ignored his inventive threats, focusing on the data readouts. “They hit us with a shaker charge. Apparently they want to know if they have a good chance of taking us before they get serious.” A shaker wouldn’t cause damage, but it would pull a lot of data. They were designed to attach to the hull, then bore into a ship’s systems to sift out details about defenses.
She located the shaker and tried to cut off power to that portion of the hull, but no luck. The shaker had prevented that, and now she had no way of getting it off her ship.
“All right, in about a minute they’re going to know exactly how valuable this ship is. Hawk, heat up the cannons. Peregrine, open the torpedo bay. Raptor, you’re on energy charges.”
They wordlessly set to work.
Fallon didn’t have shaker charges, but she had something better. An extensive memory of ship schematics and specs. She could tell by examining close-ups of the pirate ship that it didn’t have the speed or the firepower of the Nefarious, although it was remarkably well kitted for a pirate vessel in unregulated space. Normally the ships out here were rough jobs, looking to pick off cargo ships or personal cruisers traveling through established routes. The Nefarious must have stumbled across one of those.
Her team needed to wipe this ship off the playing field before the other three arrived. She wouldn’t have a chance of defending against all four at once.
“Peregrine?”
“Ready.”
Fallon readied for a quick acceleration. “On my mark.” She lit the engines, causing g-forces to slam them before the ship’s systems could compensate. Definitely not standard operating procedure. It would have been fun, if she hadn’t been concerned with the little things, such as survival.
The pirates, anticipating her attempt to flee, kept close.
“Three.” Fallon prepared a quick deceleration, which would bring the ship right on top of them.
“Two.” She entered another sequence of commands, which would accelerate them again as soon as she hit the program.
“One.”
The engines of the Nefarious screamed and the ship shuddered as they instantly lost just enough acceleration to put the nose of the pirate ship right up their aft. Peregrine loosed the torpedo, far too close for the other ship to avoid. Fallon had aimed it right for the least reinforced part of the ship’s hull structure. Every ship had a weak point.
One second before the torpedo impacted, Fallon initiated the re-acceleration, holding her breath against the g-force to keep the air in her lungs and hoping she could outrun the explosion.
She couldn’t, completely, but it was brief and the hull of the Nefarious handled the heat, and all four members of Avian Unit gasped when the pressure eased enough to allow them to breathe again.
On the panel, Fallon watched the destruction of the pirate ship. It hovered momentarily, as if it didn’t know it was already dead. The front end yawned open into space. Then the entire thing shuddered. Some sections imploded under loss of containment while others exploded, only to almost instantaneously be extinguished by cold, empty space.
The other three ships were moving in fast, each from a different direction. There’d be no avoiding all of them. The first to catch up to them would pin them down until the other pirates arrived, so that the three of them would be able to work in concert. None of those ships could begin to measure up to the Nefarious, but working together they’d be more than a match. Especially if they were good at their job.
So she picked the closest ship and set an intercept course. Her advantage was that those ships wanted hers intact, but she had the completely opposite viewpoint on their vessels.
A laser cannon blasted under their belly, rocking the Nefarious hard. It was a nice hit, she had to admit, aimed for the ship’s life support systems. That was the best course of action, for pirates. Kill the people inside, keep the ship mostly intact.
She rotated the ship, angling its belly up and away. She had to fight to maneuver in that unwieldy attitude. Her acceleration reduced dramatically, but she held steady, hurtling the Nefarious toward the other ship backward and at a forty-five degree angle.
“Quit smiling. It freaks me out,” Hawk muttered.
Fallon didn’t lo
ok over at him, keeping her focus on her screens. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
Whatever. All of them had thrill issues. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be on this ship to begin with.
“Shut up,” she answered instead. Not brilliant, but succinct. “All hands, target critical systems. Lay in everything we’ve got and obliterate that slag.”
She brought them into range, flying full bore right toward the ship. If they didn’t blast it out of their way, they’d crash straight into it. The trajectory would put her in an excellent position to face the remaining two ships at once, since they were just beginning to warm up the ass end of the Nefarious with a few potshots.
“Now!” As soon as they were in range, Peregrine loosed a volley of torpedoes at the engines. Hawk had to wait a moment for his shot, then opened up the laser cannons, while Raptor joined in last, shooting precise energy charges directly into volatile areas filled with compressed gases, where he’d get the biggest boom factor.
And boom it did. The hull of the ship cracked open like a crustacean she’d once eaten. Once the breach in the center opened, the rest of the ship fell away in smaller, imploding pieces.
But they didn’t drift away fast enough. At this speed, any of those pieces would take out the Nefarious. Hawk and Raptor kept firing, breaking up the pieces and giving them additional propulsion to push them out of the way.
They scraped through the center of the wreck. With all of the volatile gases vented, the remaining pieces of the ship went cold and dark, demonstrating how thin the margin between life and death was in space.
“Two hostiles closing in,” Peregrine intoned.
Fallon rolled the Nefarious, taking a position below the other ships and angling the bow downward to protect its belly. The pirates no doubt still had hopes of taking the ship, or they’d have fled instead of advancing. But they’d be much more wary now, and more likely to shoot to destroy.
Which made the fight a little trickier for Fallon. Plus she still had two ships to contend with, instead of one. Fortunately, her Nefarious outmatched them in both design and power.
Ship B threw an energy discharge at them but she dodged it, only to get hit with one from Ship A. The blast knocked her off her trajectory and she had to abort her attempt to get past them. She looped around and launched her ship up, giving them an enticing shot at her belly.
“Peregrine, torpedoes.”
The Nefarious shook under two energy charges and Fallon began getting readouts of impending systems failures. But she’d provided enough of a distraction to drop those bombs on them, which neither ship managed to dodge.
Ship A lost its attitude control, but not navigation. It kept coming after her, listing to one side and blasting out wild energy shots, along with cannon fire.
Ship A was in desperate condition, which was good because that meant it was hurt, but bad because a desperate foe is an unpredictable one.
Ship B did nothing. She suspected the crew had been distracted with saving containment, or possibly life support.
Fallon decided to ignore Ship B. She’d have liked to finish it off while it was vulnerable, but she didn’t have the time. She’d lost a little maneuvering precision due to some damage to the auxiliary thrusters, but her engines were at full power.
She moved back, putting Ship B between her and Ship A. Hopefully it would choose not to take out its own ally.
“They’re venting dry plasma,” Peregrine reported. “Off their port nacelle.”
Definite containment problems, then. Perfect. “Raptor, target it. On my mark.”
She threw them into an acceleration, pointing the belly of the Nefarious away from the ships and fighting the protesting engines into a tight arc. Engine two kept trying to shut down but she boosted it with emergency releases of coolant to keep it alive long enough to finish their business here.
As soon as she got them into range, she barked, “Now!”
One beautiful, glowing energy charge streaked out between them and the enemy ship. Lit the dry plasma. Crackled for a moment, like fireworks. Then turned the ship into a fireball, ever so briefly. But quite satisfyingly.
Fallon turned her attention to the remaining ship. She couldn’t just leave it. Crippled or not, it could point others toward them, or make repairs and follow on its own. She didn’t relish firing on a crippled ship, but when mercy came at the price of risking her team, no mercy was possible.
“Peregrine. Take it out.”
Three torpedoes and the last ship fell away in glittery bits, which went dark within seconds.
Fallon allowed herself a moment to appreciate the victory, then began taking stock of their most critical systems.
“We’ve lost engine two. Engine one will burn out fast on its own.” She pulled up another screen. “Containment is stable, life support should hold.” Another screen. “Weapons nominal. We won’t make it through another fight.”
She switched her attention to Hawk. “Who’s the closest person you know who can do repairs for us?”
From the way he rubbed at his beard, she suspected she wouldn’t like his answer.
13
Fragments Chapter 8
“This is one of those times that really makes me wish we had a mech on the team.” Fallon wasn’t happy about their repair options, but they were lucky to be only a few days out from a place that Hawk assured her could fix them up.
Engine one could get them to his proposed destination, if she was careful. But Hawk’s suggestion of landing on a planet entrenched in a civil war rubbed her all kinds of the wrong ways. All of them, in fact. All the wrong ways.
“Atalus is not someplace a person goes on purpose, unless you’re a humanitarian worker or a price-gouging trader. Or maybe a smuggler. The planet’s own people are literally dying to get off the planet.” Beyond Fallon’s doubts about their safety, she had deep ethical concerns about contracting the services of someone who perpetuated the war by dealing arms to the opposing factions.
“I know what you’re going to say.” Hawk faced off with her in the mess room. Up on the bridge, Raptor and Peregrine stayed on alert, making sure they couldn’t get hit again by pirate ships equipped with devices to thwart their sensors. Which had been a completely bogus tactic, and the kind of PAC-outlawed tech only a real piece of scrap would use.
She really needed to get some of those.
“Let’s hear it then.” Fallon crossed her arms and leaned against the bulkhead.
Hawk held his palms up in a beseeching gesture. “I get it. We’re trained to measure up the greater good, to help the needy, to protect the weak. It’s what the PAC is about. But here’s the thing.”
He rapped on his skull with his knuckles. “You don’t remember the things we learned from firsthand experience after training. Right and wrong aren’t two different roads. They’re just different addresses on the same road, and sometimes, those numbers get swapped without warning. Reality is messier than ideals, and I work in those in-between places. And you know what I’ve learned there?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
Hawk pushed a stool out of his way with his foot and slid down the wall into a knees-up position. “Here’s the thing, Fallon. I’ve met weapons merchants I trust more than some captains and admirals. A person’s means of making a living doesn’t tell the whole story.”
“Criminals with hearts of gold, you mean?” She wasn’t buying it. The universe was full of opportunities. Legit opportunities.
“Come on, don’t be so closed-minded. Take your friend Kellis. She was born on Atalus, right? Didn’t have a choice.”
Fallon nodded, and Hawk continued. “So imagine the only way she had to protect her family was to sell illegal goods. Would you blame her for that?”
Fallon rolled her eyes. “Lame. You’re going to do the old, ‘Is it wrong to steal bread for your family if they’re starving’ thing. But we’re not talking about helpless victims. That’s something else entirely.
Your associates have enough money to get out but they choose to stay in the game. If they were upstanding people, they’d leave as soon as they had enough cubics to buy their way off the planet.”
Hawk shook his head. “Says someone who grew up viewing the PAC as a benevolent parent entity. Someone who never saw her world get sold off as a bargaining chip in a treaty. Someone who was never at risk of becoming a casualty of peace just because she grew up on the wrong planet. Open your eyes, Fallon.”
“I’m listening. You just haven’t convinced me.”
He laughed. A helpless, humorless laugh. “Okay, I’ll put it this way. My friend Arcy grew up on Davidia Three. Deals in weapons, illegal services, counterfeit papers. You know why he does that?”
“No.”
“Because on Davidia Three, nearly everyone’s born into slavery. They don’t call it that, but if you aren’t the right kind of person, from the right place, you’re expected to stay in your neighborhood and toil away until you die way too young. Effective slavery. So Arcy decided to help others like him. He keeps people alive, gets them off planet if they want. Helps them carve out a future that doesn’t involve slavery.”
She dropped her arms to her sides and shifted so that her back was against the bulkhead. “Dirty deeds for a good cause.”
“Not always. I won’t pretend he’s a saint or an altruist. He’s a realist. He’ll shoot you in the face if he thinks you’re a threat. But he also makes sure all the kids in his old neighborhood get enough to eat and have shoes on their feet. And when those kids are old enough to make choices, he can help them. He helps to counteract unfortunate circumstances. He didn’t plan those circumstances. The people at the top did.”