by Alex Kings
A ragged hole almost a foot across appeared suddenly and silently in the shutter-- a shot from the Varanid's weapon. Rurthk jumped out of the way. His suit had already detected the low friction of the ice, and extended a grip pattern of microscopic hairs so he could move without slipping.
They ran through the room, down a corridor on the other side, then turned into one of the labs branching off it. There, they found the cache.
It had punctured the wall and was sitting half inside, half outside. The nose of the container was crumpled, as expected, but the contents were intact.
“Let's see what we can do about that Varanid,” Rurthk said, tearing the lid off the container.
He pulled out three mines. They were shaped like small, flat boxes, matte black in colour. He ran back and threw them into the room he'd just come from, then armed them remotely using his comms.
He went back to the cache, where Eloise and Mero were already arming themselves: A vacuum-suitable assault rifle and pistol each, a collection of grenades, a couple more mines, and three jet packs.
While they were putting these on, light flared in the corridor behind them. Rurthk heard a faint, tinny-sounding thump, transmitted through the floor into his suit. Shredded particles of metal came billowing down the corridor like glitter.
Mero laughed. “Take that!”
Another giant hole opened up in the doorframe. His face fell.
“By the Ancestral frigging Abyss,” he snarled. “I hate fighting Varanids.”
“Here,” said Rurthk, handing him another mine.
While Mero set the mines up, Rurthk pushed the container back so it was no longer blocking the hole in the wall. Outside, they looked out onto an icy landscape beneath a black sky rich with stars.
They climbed out the hole onto the planetoid's frozen surface and scrambled across the ice. Everything was eerie and silent, so tranquil it was hard to feel like they were being chased. A moment later, light flared again.
“Go!” said Rurthk. “Launch!”
The Varanid came climbing out of the hole, wielding his giant gun. Even in the vacuum, he didn't need a helmet. Blood dropped from his face and froze on the planet's surface.
Rurthk levelled his rifle and fired continuously at the Varanid. Undeterred, it levelled its gun at him.
He activated his jetpack. It flared to life, easily overcoming the planet's gravity, and a second later he was pulling away from its surface.
Rurthk, Eloise and Mero soared upwards, angling sideways. The old facility dropped away, until it was a barely visible pattern above the ice. The planetoid's surface began to show its curvature. It glowed faintly in the distant star's light.
“Any sign of pursuit?” Rurthk asked.
“I can't see any,” said Mero. “Then again, it's all orbital mechanics now. If their ship can target us, we'll be radioactive vapour before we know anything's wrong.”
“Oh, good,” said Rurthk. They were using chemical rockets. With any luck, the frigate would struggle to find them, for a while at least.
“How's the interference?” said Eloise.
“Let's see,” said Rurthk. He tried putting a call through to the Outsider.
No signal.
He trawled through frequencies manually, listening in. Nothing but static.
Then his comm chimed.
The signal was weak, and kept cutting out, but he could just about make out Kaivon's voice. “Captain?”
Chapter 52: We've Failed
Rurthk sighed softly. “Oh, thank the bloodline.” He hit the send command. “We're here, Kaivon. Your plan worked!”
They had used two decoys. The first had been a drone with a transponder. The second had been a shuttle, with its monopole reactor tweaked so it would give off an engine signature similar to the Outsider. The Outsider itself had hidden in an ice canyon near the first decoy. The electromagnetic noise of the nukes had helped mask its monopole signature. In short, the frigate's first attack had helped hide them.
“As did yours,” Kaivon said. His synthesised voice was as calm as ever, but Rurthk could still hear a note of pride somehow making its way through.
Dr. Wolff's voice joined him. “Captain, how are you feeling?”
“My mouth tastes of burning metal,” said Rurthk. “But otherwise …”
“That was a spectacularly stupid thing you did,” Dr. Wolff informed him. “It could easily have killed you, and may well have scarred you permanently.”
“It hurt the other guy more,” said Rurthk.
“Hm,” said Dr. Wolff. “Well done, regardless.”
*
Zino ducked under the torn remains of the shutter. The whole corridor was depressurised now, so the air had stopped flowing. He walked slowly over weird, irregular lumps of ice, shattered and sublimed by the blast. He found the same in the lab, a little way down the corridor.
Outside, he saw the crumpled cargo container, guessed what had happened, and swore softly.
The Varanid, quite badly injured, was outside, walking back towards the hole in the wall.
“What happened?” Zino asked.
The Varanid pointed upwards. “They had personal rockets.”
“The bastards,” muttered Zino. He put a call through to the ship. “Can you make out any small rockets near my location?”
“No, Mr. Zino. We could do a deeper search, but that would take a while.”
“Do it anyway,” said Zino. “Which way were they heading?” he asked the Varanid.
The Varanid told him, and he relayed that to the ship.
“Search in a wedge pattern, half a radian, assuming constant acceleration,” he told the frigate. That was unlikely to find anything in time, but it was worth a shot. If he wasn't on the planet, he could have them launch another nuclear missile, which would certainly destroy the target, but by the time he could get to his shuttle, his prey would be out of range. “Furthermore,” he went on, “begin orbital bombardment of that entire region. High volume, low energy. Lasers, kinetics, everything.”
“Yes, Mr. Zino.”
Zino killed the channel and told the Varanid, “We're leaving.” He turned and strode back down the corridor.
*
Rurthk and his teammates were on a ballistic trajectory, flying weightless six or seven miles up, falling on a giant arc at a little over a thousand miles an hour. They were about to give another burst of thrust to keep their position unpredictable when the fireworks started.
A tiny spot on the dark ice flashed. Then another. After a few moments, the entire surface was lit up with points, dancing randomly about.
“How likely are they to hit us?” Rurthk asked.
“Not very likely, I shouldn't think,” said Eloise.
Mero's left rocket burst open.
A triangular blade of shrapnel whizzed past Rurthk's face so quickly he registered its path only as a blurred afterimage. Mero yelped. His rocket emitted a jet of flame from the wound, kicking him off-course, before automated damage-control systems ejected the chewed-up guts of the rocket.
Already Mero seemed to be gliding away from them at a fair speed. He swore at length in his native Albascene language.
“How's your control?” said Rurthk. “Can you get back here?”
Mero's remaining rocket fired briefly, changing his course and sending him tumbling, but not bringing him any closer. “No,” he growled. “My attitude thrusters are out.”
“We're coming to get you,” said Rurthk. He and Eloise fired their rockets briefly to bring them closer to Mero.
“I blame you for this,” Mero told Eloise.
“You go right ahead,” Eloise said. “You're just lucky it was only a glancing blow.”
“Please don't say that.”
As they fell alongside Mero, they slowed to match his velocity. Rurthk fired his attitude jets carefully, closing the space between them until they were a couple of metres away.
Mero was still tumbling, head over heels. The motion didn't seem to trouble
him – Petaurs rarely got dizzy.
“I'm coming in now,” said Rurthk. He waited for the right moment, then gave another quick burst on his attitude jets.
He reached Mero when they both oriented the same way. They collided with a jarring thump, and Rurthk grabbed Mero.
Their combined angular momentum sent them both spinning, more slowly this time. The planetoid's surface, still sparkling with attacks from orbit, seemed to turn around Rurthk, briefly becoming a giant ceiling, before vanishing behind him. He connected his suit to Mero's, then fired his attitude jets again, stopping their rotation.
“Thanks,” muttered Mero.
Rurthk tapped at his suit's console, getting it to calculate a new centre of gravity for his rocket controls. “You're one of the crew,” he said by way of explanation.
“Hey, Mero,” said Eloise. “Do you want a lecture on how we're such good people for not letting you die?”
Mero said nothing.
They fired their main rockets again, getting back on course towards the Outsider.
After a minute or so, Mero spoke again. “We've failed.”
“We're still alive,” said Rurthk. “The Outsider's still here.”
“We didn't kill Sukone,” said Mero. “We didn't even kill Zino.”
“We're still flying,” said Rurthk. “We'll find a way out of it.”
“You'll keep saying that right up until the moment you die.”
“I hope so,” said Rurthk.
Chapter 53: Falling
Aboard the refurbished frigate, Zino ducked under the hatch to enter the cramped CIC. “Well?” he said.
“No luck so far,” the ship's commander said.
“They've got something else planned. “They're clever, these ones,” said Zino. He strode over to the command console, pushing the commander aside without looking at him, and looked at the displays.
A grin slowly spread across his face. “Look at that,” he said. “You might almost think they're heading towards the decoys we destroyed.”
The commander looked at the display. “Same general direction, just under 0.3 radians.”
“Take us in towards the planetoid,” Zino ordered. “Towards those decoys. Now!” He rubbed his hands together.
“Yes, Mr. Zino.”
As Zino was stepping back, he got a comm call from the medbay.
“What is it?” he said.
“Mr. Zino, sir, I'm sorry to say your second guard has just died from his injuries.”
“Damnit. Find me another Varanid, would you? Just in case I have to go down to the surface again.”
The frigate hurtled through space, accelerating steadily and curving around the planetoid and dropping towards its surface.
“They expect to escape,” said Zino to himself. “If they expect to escape, that probably means they have a ship. Something jump-capable.” His smile fell away. His brow creased. After a moment, he slammed his giant fist into the command console. “The bastards! We'll have to destroy the ship.”
“Is that a problem, sir?”
“Yes!” shouted Zino. “It's not the same. You can't watch someone die when you destroy his ship. You can't see his eyes, his body language, anything! It's just boom – and he's gone.” He stood for a moment, staring at the display while he centred himself. Then he stalked out the CIC, waving a hand dismissively. “Just find the ship and destroy it. I don't care.”
*
Rurthk, Eloise, and Mero fell towards the planet. The planetoid's horizon straightened out, and details on the surface began to reveal themselves. The facility was far behind. Giant canyons became visible as a map of tiny cracks, which continued to grow inside. To their right, a giant crater of warped and fragmented ice was visible, where the decoys had been destroyed.
They were on the final leg of their journey. A few minutes ago, Kaivon had given them the precise co-ordinates to find the Outsider, though at this height it was still invisible. They fired their rockets every so often, trying to minimise fuel consumption for Rurthk's pack, which was nearly empty from carrying Mero's added weight.
The frigate had given up on firing on them some time ago. Rurthk couldn't see it. And the Outsider, from its hiding place couldn't either.
They fell. They fired their rockets to slow. They fell some more. At last a single canyon yawned below them. It was a couple of miles wide, its inside coated in shadow.
They fell into the canyon. Giants walls of ice rose on either side.
“I see it!” said Mero.
Rurthk peered around. Everything was dark, even to his eyes. Eventually he switched to lidar (low energy, so as not to attract the frigate's attention). The data was piped to a display on the inside of his helmet. Suddenly the canyon appeared around him as a faint grey, ghostly image. He could see the ridges of the walls, how it narrowed further down.
And directly below them was the Outsider. It was on its side, wedged into the narrowest part of the canyon it could fit.
“How's your propellent?” said Eloise.
“Empty,” said Rurthk. “As expected.”
“Okay. Hold on.” She jetted over to them and linked her suit to theirs. After calculating the new centre of gravity, she fired her rocket.
They slowed together as the Outsider came up towards them. Ten metres away, Eloise cut her rocket and switched to attitude thrusters. They touched down with a gentle thump on the hull.
“We're here,” Rurthk said.
“Glad to have you back aboard, Captain,” said Kaivon.
Rurthk and the others moved over to the airlock and opened it. Gravity changed at a right angle as they entered, and the world seemed to lurch to the side.
While the airlock was cycling, Kaivon spoke over the comms again. “Captain, there is a problem. I've just picked up the frigate on sensors. It's directly above us.”
Chapter 54: Better than a Nuclear Weapon to the Face
Rurthk stepped into the cockpit, still wearing his suit but with his helmet folded down. “Is there any sign that they've seen us?”
“None so far,” said Kaivon. “The frigate is holding position fifty kilometres above the surface, close to where we placed the decoys.”
Mero scrambled in after Rurthk. “We're still screwed, though. The moment we fire up the jump engines, they'll detect us.”
“And they'll shoot the Outsider down before we even manage to get off the surface,” Rurthk finished.
“Alternatively, we could sit here like vegetables until they find us and kill us,” said Mero. “That could be fun?”
Rurthk gave him a look. “What else would you suggest? We don't have any shuttles left.”
They fell silent for a moment.
“Could we jump from here?” Rurthk asked.
Mero's tail tensed. He sucked in air through his teeth.
“Unlikely,” said Kaivon.
“I think I could make the calculation,” said Mero. “The gravity here isn't too high, so I might be able to control for the uncertainty.”
“Do it,” said Rurthk.
“We'll probably emerge in one piece, and not as meat paste covering the walls,” Mero warned, “but that's about it. We could come out anywhere within a hundred lightyears. But then … anywhere within a hundred lightyears is probably better than here.”
“Unless we're really unlucky and jump into to the middle of a star,” Eloise said, poking her head into the cockpit.”
“Don't say that,” muttered Mero. “Please.” He was already gesturing lightning-fast at the console. “Now let me get this done.”
“Captain,” said Kaivon as they left the cockpit. “I believe I have some ideas for allowing the jump engines to start up more quickly. It may put some strain on the ship …”
“But it's still better than a nuclear weapon to the face?” said Rurthk. “Do it. I trust your judgement.”
*
Twenty minutes passed. The frigate loomed overhead, its weapons bristling.
At last, Mero called Rurthk to t
he cockpit. He was hanging upside-down in front of the console running through standard checks. Kaivon was plugged into the console nearby.
“How are we doing?” said Rurthk.
“The calculation's as ready as it'll ever be,” said Mero.
“I have accelerated startup procedures in place, Captain,” said Kaivon.
“Good,” said Rurthk. “Assuming we survive this, well done.” He hit the comms. “This is the captain. We're about to jump. Remember to strap yourselves in.
He settled in a seat in front of the console and secured himself with acceleration webbing. Mero flipped the right way up, dropped into his seat and did the same. Kaivon remained still, but braced himself to the floor, walls, and ceiling with thick effector fields radiating from his suit like the spines of sea urchin.
“Everyone's in, Rur,” said Eloise over the comms.
“Acknowledged,” said Rurthk. “Do it,” he ordered Mero and Kaivon.
“Firing up monopole reactor now,” said Kaivon. “Monopoles injected. Internal temperature two thousand kelvin and rising.”
The ship's background hum grew in volume and pitch.
“Yeah, they've noticed us,” said Mero. His fingers drummed so the edge of the console so fast they became a blur. “Come on, come on.”
Rurthk checked the telescope feed. The frigate was directly above them. Part of the wall of the canyon shattered under the force of a laser, sending chunks of ice raining down on the Outsider.
“Jump engines are active,” said Kaivon.
“You said this would be fast,” grumbled Mero. “It's not fast enough!”
The frigate fired a missile.
“Ready to jump,” said Kaivon.
Mero said nothing. Ears flat against his head, his tail curled tightly round the back of his chair, he gestured at the console.