by A. D. Bloom
Before he flew his Bitzer into the alien beam and straight down the enormous gun's throat, he spun his fighter around on its maneuvering jets so it flew backwards. He pitched it forty degrees, pulled the handle, and ejected. The 151's coffin-shaped, vertical cockpit blew off the starboard front side before the rest of the fighter flew down into the beam and the barrel of the alien gun.
Jordo's cockpit hurtled towards the curve of the armored hull. It smashed the coffin hard like someone had thrown a little moon at him. The whole frame of his cockpit bent around him and the diamond-pane canopy actually cracked, but after that single impact, he bounced only once more before he spun off. He tumbled fast enough that he had to fight the gees to pop the cockpit latches and manually egress. Arresting his own personal spin was no cakewalk.
When he'd stabilized enough to look back on the battle, his heart skipped a beat with the raw beauty of it – of all of them – the hundreds and hundreds of nuggets, all flying down that cone of light, into death's maw, hell bent like mad suicide angels.
They all cheated death like Jordo had. They denied him and ejected, and now, hundreds of coffin-shaped cockpits tumbled in the black with him, reflecting the light off their smashed canopies.
220 fighters flew into the beam and down the barrel of the alien's new gun. The beam ripped apart the first of them before the reactors could even det, but in their brief-lived shadows, the next, tumbling craft made it further down the barrel. Even that mighty gun couldn't instantly blast away all the mass and all the energy of a speeding, 7-meter fighter. Each one that blocked the beam with its hull shielded the others in death and the next of them flew deeper down the barrel. Jordo never knew if it was the physical debris blocking the beam or if all the F-151s and their reactors damaged it, but the beam stuttered, and the gun went dark.
The remaining fighters pulled away while the six junks in the rear fed the darkened maw all the warspite torpedoes it could eat.
In the first milliseconds, the blast from the torpedoes' detonation funneled up and out the 'barrel' so that the alien craft shot a geyser of X-rays and plasma into space. After that, Jordo's helmet picked out gammas and weird gravitational emissions from an erupting, hellfire fountain of unknown, alien elements – colors human eyes had never seen.
That geyser rocketing out the barrel began to move the alien ship, but before it had gone even half a kilometer, the far side of the spherical hull gained a pregnant distention. The alien ship's thick skin bent outwards and bulged impossibly, stretching like a caul. The deformed hull radiated fantastically across the spectrum and two-tenths of a second after that, it burst.
Roughly forty percent of it remained intact and flew out into space propelled on a column of fire. The rest of it blew apart in every other direction, sending molten pieces hurtling down to join the rubble orbiting in rings around the pale dwarf star.
*****
"He's won nothing," said Matilda Witt. She stood in the middle of the tactical projection of the battle where hundreds of search and rescue beacons pinged from the ejected cockpits of the F-151 pilots. They made a cloud of blinking gnats around her. The rest of her fighter squadrons flew towards Hardway. "Harry Cozen lost this battle," Witt said without turning to face Dana.
Dana barely heard her. Unless she planned to die on Witt's command ship, then it was time to go. She rolled over and tucked her knees under her, and it was as if little microjets of molten metal had been injected into every muscle at high pressure. It made her limbs twitch and fail and betray her. She couldn't fight that level of pain and she knew it. It was like swimming against indefatigable current that promised to outlast her. It was stronger than she was, so she didn't fight it. She swam with the pain like it was a riptide or a river and let it carry her.
As she pushed off the deck, Dana swallowed her cries and let them lift her up. Besides Morrisey and a handful of officers at the consoles behind her, Witt had four guards stationed on her bridge. Two stood on either side of the main hatch at Dana's 8 o'clock. The other pair stood on her 2 and 3 o'clock, one in front of a hatch to Witt's observation deck and one in front of a hatch marked 'LIFEBOAT'.
"He's probably feeling pretty smug right now," Witt said. "Harry probably thinks this embarrassment with the command and control relay network will end my career."
It will, Dana thought. And there's only one thing now that could screw that up: me.
Dana couldn't let that happen. She looked at the guard standing in front of the lifeboat's hatch through a pink haze of pain. Even if she surprised him, even if she could overpower him, while she was busy with him, the others would be in motion.
Having a hostage would help, but the only life of value to Witt was her own. Since Dana couldn't exactly snap her neck like a twig, she'd need a weapon to be a credible threat.
But Witt's guards didn't know that.
Matilda Witt finally turned to face Dana. "It's a very good thing I have you, my dear, Dana Sellis. When you confess to how Harry put you up to this, the Board will most certainly see things my way. I win, Harry. I win. Not you; me. I win."
Dana turned her head towards Matilda Witt and twisted her body and pushed off the deck. She got her feet under her, and the pain was a cacophony of fifty loud notes at once like a pipe organ gone mad in her head. She screamed that sound out her open mouth and let it propel her.
She pointed her head at Witt and dug in and pushed and charged. Witt's guard came off the lifeboat hatch to intercept her like she'd expected him to. He was fast. He got between Dana and Matilda Witt before Dana was even halfway to her. That was good. That was perfect.
Dana heard her own banshee wail as she rolled away from him and threw herself at the wide panel on the right side of the lifeboat hatch. It was really two hatches – the bridge's external hatch and the lifeboat's main entry hatch and they both shot open so fast when Dana's palm slapped the emergency open button that she barely slowed down as she ran through and into the lifeboat. She slapped the 20cm-wide, blinking green button on the panel she saw next to the hatch inside marked 'SEAL' and the red one marked 'LOCK'. Both hatches slid shut in the blink of an eye, cutting her off completely from the bridge and the guards who now pounded impotently on the hatch. Matilda Witt stood behind them, furiously gesticulating and shouting soundlessly for them to, 'Open that goddamn hatch and get her out of there!'
Before they could freeze the lifeboats and cut the hatches out, Dana hit an even larger glowing button marked 'LIFEBOAT LAUNCH'. It blinked a warning about occupants not being strapped in, and she slammed the button again and again. A hatch opened in front of the lifeboat's canopy and Dana saw stars.
There wasn't much inertial negation. The instant the lifeboat's thrusters kicked in, she flew backwards across the cabin. The rear hatch threw itself at her. Through the rear hatch's porthole, the guards and Matilda Witt and the bridge and Taipan all receded so quickly as the lifeboat blasted out of its berth that a half-second later, Dana was stunned to look out the lifeboat's canopy and see the black vacuum and the stars all around her.
Taipan was kilometers behind and the engines were still firing. But it wasn't over yet. Witt had kept at least 150 fighters around to protect her command ship and her breaching ship. Her patrols would be coming for Dana very soon.
The engines stopped, and she floated in zero-gee. Pain colored her vision red as she searched for the one thing she needed now. This was a medium-sized lifeboat, meant for the bridge crew, she thought. There would be standard Staas Company exosuits stashed in the lifeboat somewhere. More importantly, there would be helmets. Her own exo-suit would still keep her alive, but her helmet was lost somewhere back on Taipan.
Dana tore into the hold and tried to figure out how long she had – how long it would take Witt to send her dogs out after the lifeboat and how long it would take them to get in position to dust it with a quick burst of 140mm autocannon shells.
She found 4 complete exosuits in the forward hold. She tore the wrapper off one of the gold-painted helmets
, put in on without testing it, fixed the latches, and pushed off the bulkhead towards the port-side escape hatch. Dana turned two switches and flipped a covered safety before depressing a pair of recessed buttons. The hatch opened almost instantly, and the escaping, pressurized atmo blew Dana out into the black.
As she tumbled and spun, a fast-moving constellation of angry, bluish stars veered towards her...F-151 interceptors still loyal to Matilda Witt. Dana's agonized fingers gestured through the menus she saw inside her new helmet until she could hear them on comms.
"Taipan control, this is Kodiak 3-6... Uh...we have a visual on lifeboat 01B. Can you repeat that order, Taipan? Kodiak squadron cannot confirm we copy correctly. Please repeat."
"Destroy it," Morrisey's voice said. "Destroy lifeboat 01B. It has been commandeered by an alien saboteur. Engage and destroy."
The interceptors were on the lifeboat in less than fifteen seconds. That didn't give her much of a chance to run. By the time they came, she'd only flown a couple hundred meters away.
When Kodiak Squadron flew in, the 87th made a close pass that took them only fifty meters from where Dana floated in her exosuit. They must have seen the open escape hatch and there was no way they could miss her personal infrared signature that close.
"Uh, Taipan Control, this is Kodiak 3-6... IR shows the passenger is a human female. Please advise."
Matilda Witt almost screamed it over comms: "It's a sensor trick! There's a bloody alien inside that lifeboat! Destroy it or god help me, when you land, I'll shoot you my bloody self!"
"Uh... Roger, Taipan. Kodiak 3-6 will comply."
The flight of Bitzers spun 'round on their jets, blasted themselves sideways, and then curved back at the lifeboat. Each of them opened up with the autocannon less than a kilometer out. They stitched the vacuum bright with shells and shredded the unarmored hull.
Dana hoped they'd leave after that, but the patrol from Kodiak Squadron veered in her direction next. They zoomed right at her before they hit their maneuvering jets and came to a stop. Kodiak 3-6 parked ten meters in front of her, close enough for her to look into the starboard-mounted, vertical cockpit and make solid eye contact.
She didn't want to risk using comms so she pointed at Hardway, now approaching in the distance. Then, she hooked her thumb to ask for a ride.
Kodiak 3-6 eased the fighter towards her at less than a meter a second. He caught her between the F-151's cannon barrels and the cockpit and turned towards the attack carrier. Kodiak 3-6 accelerated towards Hardway for only the briefest moment before he pulsed his maneuvering jets forward so that he came to a stop and Dana kept going.
Dana used the NAV comp in her helmet to see if she was really on an intercept course with the carrier. When she saw she was, when she saw she'd done everything she could do, she finally passed out from the pain.
Chapter Eighteen
Once the battered carrier came within a few thousand Ks of the command ship, Taipan's signal cut through the jamming. "Taipan to Hardway, you are ordered to respond." It was Morrisey.
"Send search and rescue junks ahead of us," Ram said. "Tell them to look for Dana."
"We can't spare them, Mr. Devlin. They're busy recovering 200 pilots."
"Then send out longboats."
"Taipan to Hardway, respond."
Harry Cozen leaned back in his chair and finally thumbed the comms. "Hardway here."
Matilda Witt spoke next. "Harry, we need to talk. Report to Taipan immediately."
Cozen smiled at Taipan on the tactical display. "I agree. We need to talk, but I think you should come to me, Matilda."
"Fine, Harry, fine. We can do this by holo-prescence," she said. "Even though it'll be all the more embarrassing for you."
"Agreed," he said. "Mr. Bergano, feed her signal through." Behind Cozen, on the Ops console, Bergano patched her signal through the imagers. Matilda Witt's ghost appeared at the front of Hardway's bridge, looking like a bull about to charge. Cozen said, "You lost complete control of your squadrons, Matilda. It could have been an utter disaster. Luckily, Hardway was here to save the day when your command and control relay network failed. I'd say it was your weak link, but I think the staggering scale of your command failure shows conclusively that it wasn't the only weakness at play."
"Sabotage. You're guilty of sabotage. And conspiracy."
"I won't tell the Board of Directors you said that. I'll just tell them if they give me control of the F-151 program and the pilots, like they originally planned, then they can expect more victories like the one they've just seen. I think they'll like that. It reaffirms how they were always right."
Witt shook her head and smiled without mirth. "Credit where it's due: you made me look bad today, Harry. No doubt about it. But the Board of Directors won't take anything away from me. Not after you write your report and tell them how you were following my orders all along and how this victory is mine." She grinned. "You're going to do that for me, Harry. Because I've got a trump card."
"Are you sure, Matilda?"
"Quite, sure Harry. You don't want me to play this card."
"But I do."
Witt hadn't expected that. It showed in how her mouth hung open for the briefest fraction of a second. "You asked for it, Harry. I was going to save this for the Board, but it won't matter if your bridge crew hears this. Most of them were actually there."
She didn't explain what she'd meant by that. The projection of Matilda Witt simply reached into the pocket of her business suit and pulled out a matchbox computer. She held it up and gestured through menus they couldn't see until she found what she was looking for. She stabbed at the air with her finger and began playback of the recording.
The only way to get Jordo and Pooch back from her had been for Ram to deliver everything she wanted. With Cozen's help, he did just that. The recording he and Cozen made and then played back for her surveillance device told the story of how the Squidies came seeking peace and how Cozen struck first and how the war was all of his making.
Matilda Witt's thin lips rose at the corners as the recording played. Cozen let her go on until he got impatient. He shouted over it even though it wasn't loud. "Have you checked that for authenticity? It could be a fake, you know."
She said, "It's not, Harry."
"But have you checked?" he said. Of course she hadn't. Ram didn't blame her for not having checked the recording's authenticity. Since she'd recorded it herself, how could it possibly be a fake? "Indulge me," Cozen said. "For the benefit of all the witnesses. Mr. Morrisey is there on Taipan. I suspect he possesses the technical expertise to verify the quantum integrity of the recording. Quantum-linked audio-gravure recordings can't be faked. That's the very reason they're employed."
Witt nodded to that. "Mr. Morrisey, if you please, put the final nails in Harry's coffin."
Morrisey's ghost stepped next to Matilda Witt's and withdrew his own matchbox computer. "Please play the recording again." She did, and seconds later, Morrisey spoke over the audio. He said, "There must be something wrong."
"Nothing's wrong," she said.
Morrisey leaned forward to whisper in her ear, and Ram knew just what he said that made her go white. He said, "It's a fake."
"That's utter nonsense," Witt nearly shouted at her aide. "I recorded it myself."
Morrisey said. "This recording hasn't been tampered with. The metaphysical layer is intact. The quantum integrity remains, but the original...the original audio stream that was recorded..."
"What about it?"
"It's a collage of computer-generated audio segments. It's a fake. And a poor one."
"That's impossible!" She snatched his computer from his hand.
Harry Cozen said, "Metaphysical integrity is the first thing one looks for when trying to spot a fraud. Looks like someone's been telling you exactly what you want to hear."
Her jaw hung open. Ram thought he saw her projection sway ever so slightly.
Cozen saw it was a good time to push. He delivered h
is orders to her. "Matilda, you will hand over to me the remaining pilots, the fighters, the four carriers, and direction of the F-151 training program and the flight school."
"Why would I give anything up?"
"Make it easy for me and my report to the Board of Directors will be kind. It won't include any mention of Lt. Commander Dana Sellis' compelling analysis of your combat air patrols and how they enabled an alien special forces unit to board Hardway. It won't mention your secret negotiations with the enemy and that fact that you tried to serve me up on a platter for them to further your negotiations."
Witt went a full degree paler than she'd been. "That's rubbish and you'll never prove it."
He shrugged as if it didn't matter.
"All in the name of peace, Harry. I'm just trying to undo the interstellar mess you've made. You've sent us all down the road to doom. You had no right to do that. I bet you actually believed that if we picked a fight with the Squidies and won, then the rest of them would leave us be. But it's not going to be like that. You should have taken their deal when they offered it."
"Don't underestimate Humanity, Matilda. We don't need anyone's protection."
Matilda Witt's projection turned to Ram. She said, "Big people and little people, Mr. Devlin. Remember what I told you. Gods almost never fall, but mortals...they fall like cherry-blossoms."
The bottom dropped out of Ram's gut when he realized that was her way of telling him Dana Sellis was dead. Matilda Witt watched him closely as if she was trying her best to discern every detail of the pain evidenced on his face. She nodded as if she understood something before her ghost vanished from Hardway's bridge.
"Taipan and Malibu are both breaking away from the rest of the battlegroup," Biko said. To starboard, the command ship and the breaching ship turned slowly and made for the transit back to Groomsbridge, leaving the 4 box carriers behind with Hardway and Tipperary.
Ram watched the flare of Taipan's engines until he spied a nearby object silhouetted against their glare. It passed between the departing ships and Hardway's bridge. It was a human-shaped shadow hiding in the black, coming closer fast. Zoomed in, Ram could see her clearly. She wore a Hardway exosuit and a gold-plated helmet from Taipan.