“Found one. Four hundred kilometers off the port bow.”
Conrad locked onto the target. He dropped the shields completely to force top speed out of the thrusters. The asteroid was only three times larger than the Oro. Conrad tied the ship to the asteroid using the ship’s tractor beam. The ship floated next to the asteroid, ready for flight at any moment.
“Let’s have a look at the Secace,” Conrad murmured.
The Imperial frigate entered the nebula, coasting like a shark scenting its prey. Conrad held his breath as it approached their refuge.
“They’re broadcasting,” said Balt.
“Will it give us away?” asked Conrad. The medic-mechanic shook his head, and Conrad nodded.
An image of Heik appeared on the comms screen next to Argus. The captain looked the same as ever, his angular face drawn and emotionless.
“Oro Yurei, surrender and receive clemency,” he said through the transmission. “We have received orders from the admiralty and the Imperial household itself that you are not to be harmed. Surrender, and none of you will be executed. Including any animals or half-sentients.” A strange image appeared after the transmission ended—a stylized bird of prey, its claws clutching a sword.
“Do you believe that?” Conrad said, skeptically. He remembered Heik, and he didn’t seem like the kind of man who treated a prisoner with clemency.
“The stamp of the Imperial household was appended to that transmission,” said Jira, her eyes wide. “That means the Imperial family knows about us. Heik can’t lie about something like that.”
“They shot at us,” Conrad said. “With missiles. That doesn’t seem like they’re particularly interested in being merciful.”
Jira looked at him. “It’s you they’re after,” she said.
“Me?”
“A stranger appears from a portal no one even knows about, with the bloodprint of a Satori so pure he may as well be sitting on the throne,” she said. “Steals a ship right out from under their noses. The ship appears again after a data theft and an explosion at the Imperial palace on the capital planet of the entire Empire. Of course they’d want to capture you. And dissect you,” she added.
“Something tells me they’d settle for me being less than alive,” Conrad muttered.
Jira looked at the display, tracking the Secace with hooded eyes. “Maybe they assume you’re a tool of the Federation, like me,” she said. “If they capture us, they’ll take us both apart.”
“They’re launching fighters,” Argus reported. Ten small fighters appeared at the aft of the ship.
Conrad grimaced. It was one thing to keep the Oro Yurei hidden from a ship the size of the Secace, but another to hide from one-man fighters. Still, there was nothing to do but wait until they were discovered, and pray that the Secace wasn’t near.
“We need to get out of here,” Jira said. “There’s a small Federation hideout on the moon farthest out from this system’s sun. If we can get there, they’ll give us coordinates to the main Federation Fleet.”
“I’m not waiting here any longer,” Conrad said, flexing his hands and staring at the piloting hologram. “The longer we stay here, the more we tax the engines. Argus—calculate a course for us out of this nebula, in the direction of the base. Jira, you can tell him what he needs to know.”
Jira leaned over the console, whispering to Argus. Conrad focused on the fight ahead. Not so much a fight as a flight. But the last thing they could do was surrender. He thought back to his first moments awake on the Secace. If they hadn’t stopped drilling into his brain, they would have found what they were looking for—who he was, how he’d come through the portal, and where he’d come from.
There would be no surrender. They would escape, or they would all die. There was no other choice.
Jira lifted her head and took a step back. “Done,” she said. “Argus is feeding the coordinates into the computer now. Get us out of the nebula safely and it will initiate whenever you’re ready.”
Conrad scanned their surroundings. There was only one fighter near them, and the Secace had passed them by. Conrad disengaged the tractor beam holding the Oro Yurei to the asteroid.
The ship dropped quickly, its silver nose pointed down relative to the orientation of the Secace.
So far, so good. Conrad checked their target coordinates. Hell, maybe we can get out of here without them even noticing we’re gone…
The proximity alarm began to sound.
“The fighters are turning around,” Argus grimly reported. “One of them must have seen us and told the rest.”
Conrad cursed in Kazhadi. “We’ve got to go fast,” he said.
Five fighters appeared on the edges of the piloting hologram. They were flying in loose formation toward the Oro, gun ports open. The rest of the Secace’s squadron was flying toward them at a fast clip. Conrad had flown fighters for years. He knew it would be next to impossible to escape them.
The Oro Yurei was trapped.
“They’re not firing,” Argus said.
“Why not?” Conrad wondered aloud. “They’ve got us by the—”
“The Secace!”
The frigate had turned, pivoting toward their location.
Conrad switched on the shields. There was no point in speed now. He tested the fighters, making a brief attempt to dart out of the invisible net they’d formed around the Oro. But the fighters only closed in tighter.
The Secace was gliding toward them. Conrad took a deep breath.
No surrender.
He thought about Jira, Baltasar, and Argus. Argus was sworn to protect Sanctuary, same as he was. But Jira and Baltasar had made no such promises. The data Jira had put her life in danger to collect would vanish.
Conrad turned to his crew. “We can’t let them take this ship,” he said slowly. Jira and Argus looked at each other and then at him. A calm agreement seemed to pass between them.
Baltasar started to look frantic. He opened his mouth to speak when the ship shuddered hard around them, throwing him to the floor. He got up on his hands and knees.
“That’s it,” he said, shaky and wide-eyed. “They’ve got us.”
“Tractor beam,” Jira said, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the console. “The fighters herded us toward the Secace, and the Secace caught us with their tractor beam.”
“Is there anything we can do to kill the tractor beam?”
“Not from here,” she said, her expression stony.
Conrad looked through the cockpit window with a deep feeling of dread. The Oro Yurei rotated, bringing the Imperial frigate within sight. They inched closer to the Secace’s docking bay, which opened slowly, threatening to swallow them whole.
That was when Conrad saw a flicker on the corner of the piloting hologram.
“What is that?”
Chapter 25
The three ships were old. Conrad could see it in the way they flew. They weren’t built for high speed, maneuverability, or anything but the sheer brute strength needed for mining operations. They certainly weren’t designed for combat.
Argus enlarged and projected the image of the incoming ships. They had thick plating, and heavy equipment was built into their bodies. The nose of one ship was a drill the size of the Oro Yurei.
“Those are mining ships,” Baltasar said, his eyes boggling out of his head. “Maybe they were out here in the asteroid belt… but why are they flying toward us?”
Every head in the cockpit turned toward Jira. She blinked. “I suppose they got my message,” she said, looking stunned. “That means… they’re part of the Federation. They’ve come to help us.”
“Lords of the dark,” Baltasar said. “What are mining ships going to do against that?” He pointed at the frigate, growing more ominous with each passing second.
“They’re trying to contact us,” said Argus. “I’m opening the comms channel. Jira, I need your password.” She typed it in swiftly, and there was a sharp burst of static.
�
�Lady Tai,” a man’s voice slurred over the comms audio. “This is the Blackbird. My name’s Arro. The big one here’s the Warbler, captain’s name is Kee, and the Heron’s our driller. Her captain’s Qart.”
The image of the three captains finally appeared on the comms screen. Arro was a heavyset man, balding, wearing a stained brown worksuit. A short, white beard covered the lower half of his face. He looked disheveled, as if he hadn’t bathed in a week.
Captain Kee was a feathered alien. His counterpart Qart was a scaled, smooth-skinned being with a single eye.
“You got my message?” Jira asked.
“Sure did,” the captain of the Blackbird responded.
“Where’s the rest of the reinforcements?” she demanded. “If there’s a Federated base in this system—”
“We’re your reinforcements,” Qart said, with a deep-throated chuckle. “We were working in the belt when we got your transmission. The three of us were the only ones within range.”
They were simple mining ships. The crew onboard were ordinary working men and women, scraping a living out of the asteroid belt. Conrad watched as the fighters peeled toward the three ships. “Fighters incoming,” he said.
“We see ’em,” Kee replied. “It’ll take more than the guns they’ve got on those pieces of junk to get to us.” It nodded its head, its feathers fanning out.
“We’ve got fifteen minutes until we reach the Secace,” Argus reported.
“Then we’d best get to work, eh?” the captain responded. “You’re carrying precious cargo, I hear. We’ll do what we can to get you out of here. There’ll be a ship waiting for you on the opposite side of the belt,” he explained. “That’s where you need to go, to get to the base. They’ll take you the rest of the way. We’ll join you if we can.”
“Understood, Blackbird,” Conrad said. “We’re waiting on you.” He turned off visual and muted the comm audio. “Those aren’t soldiers,” he said to Jira. “What are they thinking?”
Jira shook her head slightly. “They believe in the cause,” she said. “That’s the kind of men they are. The Federation is built on people like that. You can say what you want to them but they’re not going to change their minds now. They’re men of principle, even if they’re not soldiers. Besides,” she continued, “we can’t do a single thing to stop them now.”
Conrad watched as the fighters flew toward the mining ships. His hands itched, longing to do something. Anything. But they were trapped.
The fighters flew in formation toward the ships, as if warning them not to engage. Suddenly, they spun away.
A missile from the Secace shot toward the miners, ripping into the lead ship. Conrad watched in horror as the ship exploded, the other two mining ships struggling to evade the debris from the detonation.
“They got the Warbler,” Arro said over the comms, darkly. “But we’re still here, milady. We’ll get you home.” His voice hardened with determination.
“Arro, Qart, disengage,” Jira blurted despite herself. “You’re no match for an Imperial ship of that size. Get out of here now.”
There was no response from the Blackbird, the Heron, or their captains.
“You said it yourself,” Conrad said. “We can’t do a damn thing.”
It was an uneven battle and the miners knew it. They kept their shields up, ignoring the strafing runs from the fighters as if they were mosquitos. The Secace fired two more missiles, but missed the Heron and the Blackbird.
“Seven minutes,” Argus intoned.
It was strange how slowly time seemed to go by in the heat of battle, Conrad thought. Only a few minutes ago the Warbler was intact and its crew was alive. Now they were nothing but dust, ice, and scrap metal. He watched the Heron and the Blackbird push on. They had only their conscience to drive them forward.
“Where are they going?” Baltasar asked. “Those old buckets have no weapons on board. All they’ve got going is that armor, but that can’t hold out forever.”
He’s right. Conrad watched as the miners’ hulls began to show scorch marks, the telltale signs of damage.
“They’ll never get out alive,” Baltasar said in disbelief.
“Maybe they don’t plan to,” Jira returned.
Conrad glanced at her. She refused to look away from the uneven battle unfolding in front of them.
The Blackbird trailed the smaller ship with the drill. At first, it seemed as if the Blackbird and the Heron were hesitating and slowing down. They seemed to waver in their determination while under attack by the fighter squadron.
“Good,” he muttered under his breath. “Go on home…”
And then the Heron suddenly began to pick up speed.
All Conrad could do was to witness what happened next.
The Heron angled itself toward the Secace and glided toward the frigate with a shocking burst of speed. The fighters scrambled to attack it, but the Blackbird flanked it, absorbing the fire intended for the Heron.
“No,” Baltasar said. “They’re not that stupid. Are they really—”
“They are,” Conrad said, his pulse racing.
“Brace yourselves,” Conrad warned. He held his hands above the hologram of the Oro Yurei, prepared to move at a minute’s notice.
Argus placed his paws on the console. Jira and Baltasar plastered themselves against the cockpit walls, waiting for impact.
The Heron raced toward the Secace, the Blackbird following behind. They were now too close for the Secace to target with missiles.
“Three minutes,” Argus said.
Increasingly frantic, the fighters swung in front of the Heron, but the driller simply pushed on, the damage to its hulls darkening. It twisted its disintegrating body toward the Secace and powered on its drill.
“Lords of the dark,” Baltasar repeated.
The tip of the drill pierced the bottom of the Secace’s docking bay. The fighters closed in on the Heron, the Blackbird struggling in vain to deflect their fire from the driller.
Conrad open the comms. “Pull away, Blackbird,” he called. “You can’t save her now. Get away now. We need your help to get out of the nebula.”
“That’s an order, Blackbird,” Jira added urgently. “And I outrank you.”
There was dead silence over the comms. As the Heron drove its drill deeper into the Secace, the Blackbird finally dropped back, the fighters swarming over the crumbling body of the Heron.
Conrad heard Jira exhale sharply, relieved and anguished at the same time.
The Oro Yurei trembled. The tractor beam seemed to flicker—and then vanished. The Oro lurched down, the thrusters groaning as they came online after being held in place by the tractor.
They were free.
“Full power to thrusters,” Conrad ordered. “Argus—keep an eye on the Blackbird.”
“She’s on our tail,” Argus reported.
Conrad gave the Secace a final glance as they raced away from the injured frigate. He caught a glimpse of fire in the docking bay, and the Heron’s paralyzed body wedged into the Secace.
Qart’s sacrifice hadn’t been enough to destroy the ship, but it was enough to give them a fighting chance.
“Godspeed, Heron,” he said to the darkness.
Chapter 26
The Oro Yurei rested in the depths of the deep space trawler. As Arro had promised, it had swallowed them up as soon as they’d flown to the opposite side of the asteroid belt. It also took in the Blackbird. The two smaller ships sat in the enormous cargo bay within the trawler, directly across from one another.
It had been twelve hours since they’d escaped the nebula and the Secace. Jira had spoken with Arro first, with Conrad at a distance. Secret Federation business, he’d assumed. She tried to reassure him as much as she could, based on her body language and her soft words, but Arro still had the look of man who’d aged a hundred years in a day.
Now they waited. The trawler was taking them to the hidden Federation base. It traveled slowly within its designated shippin
g route so as to draw no attention from Imperial authorities. But despite the relative safety within the massive ship, Conrad still found it hard to rest. He’d slept five hours before rising up to walk around the cavernous bay. His body was aching but his feet were restless.
The rest of his crew was sleeping. His crew. They’d come together so quickly out of necessity, but now it was hard to imagine being anywhere without them. When he left the Oro Yurei, Jira had curled up with Argus on the floor of the main cabin while Baltasar lay snoozing on the bunk above them.
He paused when he saw Arro sitting in front of a small, rectangular viewport on the opposite side of the bay. He walked toward him.
“You should be sleeping,” the old captain said. “After what you’ve been through, son, no one could blame you if you slept through the next five days. That’s how long it’ll take us to get to Baro.”
“Baro?”
“Baro II, to be exact,” he explained. “The gathering place for Federated ships in this part of the Empire. Always wanted to see it for myself, since I joined up with the Federation twenty years ago. I’m a quiet member, y’see. Had a family then so I couldn’t very well go runnin’ off to blow things up, so I signed on to offer support when I could, wherever I was. I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“Did you know them well?” Conrad asked.
“Who, Kee and Qart?” Arro rubbed his face as if he hadn’t slept for days. “Worked with ’em for thirty years. It was them who made me want to join up with the Federation. Couldn’t imagine them gettin’ hunted down for fun and games, y’see. Never had liked the Empire much but it was them who pushed me over the edge.” He kicked at the viewport. “They were my friends, you could say.”
“We’ll bring them down,” he said. The words felt hollow, but he felt compelled to say them anyway. “Jira says there’s a way.”
“There’s too many people who’ve settled for what the Empire offers. It’s true they bring down the Vehn, keep ’em away. And there’s peace, if peace comes at the edge of a knife. But they pay for it with the death of everything that matters. Our cultures, our languages, everything. My daughter grew up speakin’ Canonic in her school, never learned Brasileiro.”
Sanctuary's Soldier: The Darkspace Saga Book 1 Page 16