“Understood,” Darius said, and mentally modified his countermeasure settings as ordered. He activated the 360-degree visibility system linked to cameras mounted on the Vulture’s hull. As soon as he did that, all of his control surfaces disappeared from view—as did his legs—and he had the unsettling impression of rocketing through the air as a disembodied entity. He flexed his hand on the flight stick and curled his toes in his boots to remind himself that his body was still there.
The only things still visible, besides the indicators on his heads-up display, were the glowing red brackets of incoming enemy targets—exactly twelve of them. He focused on one of the nearest ones, and that pair of brackets grew larger and brighter. A second set of brackets beside it grew larger too, along with a tag—SF76-B1—to indicate Dyara was the one targeting that fighter.
Darius armed a pair of Hornets and then fired them at his target. They shot out with a loud skrshhh, riding on bright blue thrusters that quickly receded to glinting points of light. Darius switched to the next enemy fighter in line and fired another pair of Hornets. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of Dyara’s missiles—two silvery bullets streaking by to starboard on dazzling blue tongues of flame.
Multiple double chimes sounded from Darius’s contacts panel, and he saw tiny red blips, surrounded by their own bracket pairs come streaking down from the enemy fighters.
“Missiles incoming!” Dyara warned.
“I see them,” Darius replied.
Hades’ atmosphere thinned and stars came pricking through, at which point a warning tone sounded in Darius’s ears, followed by—
“Juke!”
Darius slammed the flight stick to the left and pulled up slightly to execute a barrel roll. A split second after that, bright, electric blue laser beams came flickering down from the enemy fighters, stabbing through empty air all around Darius’s Vulture.
He mixed up his barrel roll with a few random twists of his flight stick. At nine Gs, moving the flight stick wasn’t easy, but there was an elbow pad at the back of his armrest that allowed him to brace his arm. The flight stick was also more sensitive, so that even a slight twitch had a big effect.
Range with the enemy fighters closed quickly, and Hades’ atmosphere fell away, revealing stars and space on all sides. Bright blue lasers went on snapping all around them.
“Spin up your Alckam drive and back off the throttle to four Gs” Dyara said. “It’s time for us to bug out.”
“Roger,” Darius said, and mentally throttled down. He activated the jump drive, and a blue jump arrow appeared below his cross hairs, along with a five minute countdown. Darius fed the rendezvous coordinates into his Alckam drive, and he was just about to line up with the jump arrow when Dyara said—
“Keep juking! Match trajectories at the last second. You don’t want to give those Blades a bigger target than you have to.”
“Right,” Darius said. While he waited for the jump timer to run down, he targeted another Blade and fired off another two Hornets—
Skrshhh—
Just then an orange ball of fire bloomed in the midst of the enemy formation, followed by another one.
“Whoo! That’s two!” Dyara crowed.
Darius smiled grimly and fired off his final pair of Hornets. Vultures only carried eight.
A sharp enemy missile lock warning sounded in Darius’s ears, and he spotted a group of three Cygnian missiles spiraling in toward him. His point defense turret opened fire a split second after that with a stuttering line of white laser beams. Those lasers struck home, torching first one, and then a second missile with dazzling explosions.
But then the turret overheated.
The third missile sailed on unmolested, and Darius activated his electronic countermeasures (ECM) in a last-ditch attempt to scramble the missile’s guidance systems.
But it didn’t work.
The missile lock warning screamed repetitively in his ears, and he stopped juking long enough to line up his primary laser cannons. He pulled the trigger and a blinding explosion consumed the space directly in front of him, shaking his Vulture and peppering it with debris.
He roared through the explosion and out the other side.
“Are you okay?” Dyara asked.
Darius nodded. “I’m fine, just a bit shook up.” He targeted another enemy fighter and popped off a fire-linked blast from his Vulture’s twin double laser cannons. Bright golden beams converged on one of the Cygnian Blades, and it exploded in a flash of orange fire.
Darius slammed the flight stick to one side and stomped on the left rudder pedal, going evasive once more.
Just in time. A flurry of blue lasers slashed through the space where he’d been a second ago, one of them slicing by so close that it momentarily blinded him.
“Watch it!” Dyara said.
“I’m okay.”
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“It worked, didn’t it?” A damage alert squawked in his ears, but he didn’t have time to check what it was about—probably superficial damage from the missile he’d intercepted at the last second.
His jump timer hit ten seconds and began flashing to remind him to line up with the exit vector.
“See you on the other side,” Dyara said.
“See you,” Darius replied. The timer hit five seconds. He broke out of his evasive maneuvers and pulled up to match vectors with the blue jump arrow.
A robotic voice said: “Three, two, one—”
And space flashed white. His thrusters automatically switched off, leaving his ribs aching with the sudden absence of pressure. The bright white circle of a warp disc appeared dead ahead and empty black space sprawled all around.
Darius felt weak and cold as he came down from the adrenaline high of combat. He sucked in a deep breath and toggled off the 360-degree visibility setting. As he did so, his real physical surroundings snapped into view. A laser-scorched hole glared at him in the front of his cockpit canopy as thick around as his thumb. Carbon scoring on the glass partially obscured the blinding glare of the warp disc, but it did nothing to hide the stream of bright red blood spurting out above his right knee.
Chapter 45
It was hard to see through the blood. Darius realized that was partly because his faceplate was splattered with it. He swiped his forearm across the faceplate to clean it, and tiny red droplets broke free, glittering like liquid rubies as they drifted away.
The utility compartment beside Darius’s left leg slid open, and he grabbed one of the suit patch kits. Ripping it open and removing the paper from the adhesive backing, he slapped the patch against the hole in his suit, and held it there, both to apply the seal and to stop the bleeding in his leg.
Blood drifted through the cockpit in snaking lines. It was everywhere; everything was smeared with it, thanks to the fact that his Vulture’s thrusters had been engaged at the time of the injury.
Darius’s head swam, and a hot, searing pain began in his leg as the last dregs of adrenaline left his body. After about a minute, he risked reaching for a red-coded nanite booster shot with his left hand. He screwed the tip of the injector pen into the reciprocal port in the leg of his flight suit and depressed the button to inject the nanites.
That done, he laid his head back and shut his eyes. He focused on taking deep, steady breaths and tried not to think about the queasy feeling in his stomach. He did not want to throw up in his helmet, especially not while his cockpit was depressurized and he couldn’t take the helmet off.
Darius remembered the canopy patch kit in the utility compartment. His eyes flew open, and he grabbed the kit and ripped it open. Removing the paper from the adhesive backing, he leaned forward to paste the transparent patch against the hole in the Vulture’s canopy. Having done that, he summoned an engineering panel from his right holo display and re-pressurized the cockpit. He activated the air filtration system and waited for it to suck out all the floating streams of his blood.
It took a while, bu
t once the air was finally clear, he unfastened the seals of his helmet and slipped it off. He pulled off his oxygen mask next and sucked in a deep breath. There was a faint, coppery smell, but otherwise the feeling of clean, filtered air blasting his sweat and grime-covered face was pure bliss.
After fully five minutes of relishing the simple pleasure of not wearing a helmet or an oxygen mask, Darius glanced at the blue-coded sedative pen in the utility compartment. He had more than twelve hours to wait before he arrived at the Deliverance. Far too long for him to be alone with his thoughts. Cassandra’s face flashed into his mind’s eye, and he winced.
He grabbed the pen and was just about to inject himself with it, when he realized he couldn’t afford to go to sleep without a helmet. If that canopy patch failed, he’d die in his sleep.
With a grimace, Darius put his sweaty oxygen mask and helmet back on, and then injected himself with the sedative. While he waited for sleep to overcome him, he grabbed the discarded paper and packaging from the patch kits, rolled them into a ball, and stowed them in the webbed compartment below his seat. Then he grabbed the empty injector pens and fed them into the slot below the others.
A sleepy haze descended on him soon after that, and Cassandra’s face swirled unbidden into his mind’s eye once more. Her eyes were wide with terror and her mouth was open in a soundless scream.
A wave of grief hit him and constricted his throat in a suffocating knot. He gasped and shook his head. She can’t be dead. This is a nightmare. It was all one long nightmare; none of it was real. I’m still in cryo. The doctors lied about cryo being a dreamless sleep.
Long minutes passed with him clinging to denial, but the pulsing echoes of pain in his leg brought him back to reality. This was all too vivid to be a dream. The grief returned, making it impossible to think about anything else. With a great effort he managed to push it back, locking it away and bottling it in. He had to focus. He’d killed a few Cygnians already, but not nearly enough. It wouldn’t be enough until their entire species was extinct.
Darius took that thought with him into the darkness as the sedatives overwhelmed him and carried him away.
The next thing he knew, an automated countdown was droning in his ears—
“Ten, nine, eight—please administer your stimulant now—four, three, two...”
He injected himself with a yellow-coded pen just as a flash of light suffused his cockpit and swept away the featureless warp disc in front of him. Black space and shining stars appeared all around, with an oblong gray speck dead ahead, surrounded by green brackets and accompanied by a label: U.S.O.S Deliverance.
Dyara’s voice bubbled in his ears, “This is Blue One to the U.S.O.S Deliverance, requesting landing clearance, over.”
“Welcome back, Blue Squadron,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Please proceed to landing on strips 1A and 2A.”
“Please identify,” Dyara replied. Apparently she didn’t recognize the voice either.
“This is Lieutenant David Neelson, comms officer for the Deliverance.”
“I see. Get me Deliverance actual, Lieutenant Neelson.”
“Dyara,” a familiar, gravelly voice said. “Where’s Captain Riker?”
“There was an incident. He didn’t make it.”
“I see. I’m sorry to hear that,” Tanik replied.
“Who is Lieutenant Neelson? You assigned a bridge crew already?” Dyara asked.
“Oh, yes. We’ve been very busy while you were gone, but thanks to judicious delegation of duties, almost all of the crew are awake now.”
“That was fast.... They’ve all agreed to join the Coalition?”
“So far,” Tanik replied. “Why?”
“No reason.”
“We’re almost ready to leave for our attack on the Crucible.”
“Already?” Dyara asked. “How do you plan to get past the Cygnian fleet guarding the Eye? They’ll tear us to pieces. Not to mention, we have no idea what will be waiting for us on the other side of the wormhole.”
“I’ll explain in due time. As soon as you’re aboard, I expect both of you to report directly to my quarters for a debriefing.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Deliverance actual out.”
Chapter 46
Darius flew his Vulture into the Deliverance’s landing bay and lined it up with the landing strip. As he raced down along the strip, the carrier’s docking clamps made contact with his fighter with a loud clu-clunk, although that sound was probably produced by the fighter’s simulated feedback system (SFS)—just like the sounds of weapons firing in space and the sight of lasers.
The carrier’s sliding docking clamps immediately applied the brakes and Darius slammed into his acceleration harness as his Vulture slowed to quick stop on landing pad 2A. The landing pad promptly flipped over, and then jets of air gusted into the vehicular airlock on the other side. As soon as the airlock was pressurized, the ceiling opened and the landing pad rose into the amidships hangar on level five.
Darius blinked in shock at the sight that greeted him in the hangar. The deck was bustling with people in black jumpsuits with red rating badges on their upper left sleeves, and USON patches marking their upper right ones. Darius glanced at the upper right sleeve of his flight suit and noticed for the first time that it had a matching patch—a red triangle with a white eye emblazoned on it, and the words United Systems of Orion Navy wrapped around the edges. Darius frowned. That patch looked almost identical to the Seal of Life.
A staircase rose up beside Darius’s cockpit, snapping him out of his momentary distraction. He hit the canopy open/close button, and then released his acceleration harness and disconnected his air hose. By the time he stood up, three members of the deck crew were already bustling around outside his fighter to refuel and rearm it. A fourth one came bounding up the staircase to help him out of the cockpit. She wore a medic’s rating badge.
“Are you in need of medical assistance?” she asked, her gaze flicking over his blood-covered flight suit, and then darting around the blood-stained cockpit.
Darius shook his head. “No.”
The medic gave him a dubious frown and took a medical scanner off her belt. She passed it over him with a flickering blue fan of light.
“You’re severely dehydrated, and your iron levels are low.” She clipped the scanner to her belt and helped him down the stairs, even though his injured leg felt just fine.
Dyara walked into view and waited for him at the bottom of the stairs. Her arms were crossed and a deep frown marred her pretty features. She’d taken her helmet off already.
“Are you satisfied?” she demanded as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
He cracked the seals on his own helmet and slipped it off. One of the deck crew came and took it from him.
“Satisfied?” he croaked as he peeled off his breathing mask. His tongue felt like sandpaper in his mouth. Before he could ask for water, the medic standing beside him handed him a bottle, along with a fat red pill. He took the bottle and gulped greedily from the straw; then he swallowed the pill.
Dyara nodded to the laser-blackened glass of his cockpit. “You’re lucky to be alive. We both are.”
Darius shrugged.
Dyara blew out a breath and shook her head. “Yeah, all right hotshot, come on, we have to report to Tanik for debriefing.”
Darius’s stomach grumbled loudly and he realized he hadn’t eaten a thing in the past twenty-four hours. “I could use something to eat first.”
Dyara zipped open a pocket in her flight suit and withdrew a ration bar. “You can eat and walk. Let’s go.”
Darius took the ration bar and peeled it open. He took a big bite and chewed endlessly on the rubbery bar. Looking around, he marveled once more at the number of people in the hangar. “Tanik’s been busy.”
“Yeah,” Dyara said. “I wonder how he convinced them all to sign up—put a gun to their heads? Or maybe it was a gas mask.”
“Does it matter?” Darius asked.
Dyara regarded him with a frown. “What happened to your plan of voting for new leadership?”
“Tanik has the experience we need to fight the Phantoms. We’re not going to do better by electing some random idiot from the 21st Century.”
“We don’t have to fight....” Dyara trailed off as she caught dark looks from a pair of passing crewmen.
She went on, but in a softer voice this time: “I tracked Gatticus’s jump vector before he left. It didn’t intersect with any USO worlds—not for hundreds of light years, and an Osprey has a maximum FTL range of only fifty.”
Darius glanced at her. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, whoever plotted that Osprey’s jump, it wasn’t Gatticus. I think it was Tanik, and I think Gatticus is dead.”
“That’s speculation.”
“Reasonable speculation,” Dyara replied.
They walked on in silence to the nearest access chute. Along the way, Darius noted that all of the previously ruined doors were now fixed. They reached the access chute and Dyara led the way up to level eighteen. The hatch was labeled L18 Command Deck. Darius asked about it as they climbed out of the chute, and Dyara explained that this was where the bridge, the wardroom, and the officers’ quarters were all located.
Dyara led the way down the corridor outside the access chute to a door near the bridge labeled Captain’s Quarters. She knocked twice, and the door slid open to reveal a spacious room with a table for dining, just like the ones in the ship’s mess hall. Tanik was floating there in front of the table with his legs and arms crossed and his eyes shut, as if meditating.
“Sir?” Dyara said.
His eyes snapped open and he uncrossed his legs. As soon as he did that, his mag boots drew him back down to the deck with an echoing clunk.
He nodded to them. “Please come in.”
They walked through the door and it slid shut behind them.
“What did you find on Hades?” Tanik asked.
“No survivors,” Dyara said, shaking her head.
With that admission, Darius’s throat closed up and his eyes began to burn, but he forced his feelings back down.
Broken Worlds: The Awakening (A Sci-Fi Mystery) Page 26