The Nightshade Problem: Sol Space Volume Two

by James Wilks

  The other vessel had also rolled, and though they could not see the flares and flak it had deployed to intercept their missiles, they could see the resulting flashes. They were near to blinding at this range, and when the explosive shells struck one of the missiles, they were all forced to close their eyes. Instinctively, Bethany rolled the ship again to put Gringolet’s belly towards the explosion, and a second later the ship rocked as a series of shockwaves struck them. They were far less powerful than they would have been in atmosphere, but the flak was detonating the missiles so close to Gringolet that Staples still felt like her ship was a piñata.

  When the shuddering stopped, Templeton bent to his console. “Doc, you there? Captain wants you getting reports on everyone on board. Need to know if everyone’s all right.”

  The ships were past one another, and the conflict had become a chase. Dinah stopped firing, having lost her broadside angle, and in the silence that followed Jabir Iqbal’s voice sounded clearly from Templeton’s console. “Already done. Everyone is accounted for except Mr. Burbank. He’s not responding. Gwen is with her father. She is quite frightened, but all right.”

  Brutus turned around to look at her. “Captain, I believe I can help. I can move around under this increased gravity, and I currently serve no purpose here. I will attempt to find Mr. Burbank.”

  Staples considered for only a second. “Go,” she said, and Brutus unstrapped himself. He rolled out of the chair, fell the three meters past Staples and Templeton down to the back of the cockpit, and began descending the ladder.

  Suddenly Dinah shouted, “Bethany, they’re firing! Slugs.”

  The pilot did not respond, but the ship pitched violently a quarter turn end-over as Bethany diminished thrust and again put the ship’s belly towards the other vessel. Staples knew that the bottom of her ship was the least vulnerable part. There were no portholes, and if there were a hull breach, it was likely to be in a non-essential area; more than half of the ventral portion of the ship was taken up by the main shuttle and cargo bay. A second later the thud of slug fire vibrated the ship. It sounded light and distant for the most part.

  “Thought it wasn’t gonna shoot at us,” Templeton said in challenge to the absent Brutus’ statement.

  Charis glanced back at him, and then went back to trying to help Bethany by regulating thrust. “They’re shooting at the engines. Bethany, we’ve got debris coming up.”

  “I see it.” She worked the controls and righted the vessel, again facing the engines towards their pursuer and resuming thrust.

  “Some of it is moving awfully fast,” Charis observed, and her eyes were drawn to the larger pieces in their path.

  “Hang on!” Bethany shouted, and Staples thought that she had never heard the pilot so loud, except once before when she had revealed the horrible details of her past to Staples.

  The next sixty seconds were full of pain and fear for everyone on the ship. Gringolet banked and ducked around large pieces of debris. Small pieces battered the hull, some of them shaking the entire ship. It wasn’t just that the destruction of Cronos station had sent them hurtling in all directions at great speed. They were also charging into a cloud of twisted and charred metal at an increasingly higher velocity. The strain on their muscles, especially their necks, was severe. It was like the most unpleasant aspects of riding a rollercoaster magnified five times over. Under their pilot’s expert steering, the ship wound its way deftly through the field of debris like a thread through a room full of needles.

  The depressurization alarm sounded suddenly, and Charis disabled it with the flip of a switch. She scanned the data in front of her. “Port side, minor breach, room C13. Doors closed and holding.” She paused as the ship lurched to starboard and groaned slightly. “Another one, port side again. D7. God I hope no one’s in there.”

  Finally, the sporadic movements slowed as they exited the other side of the cloud of debris. An occasional vibration or ringing strike marked a last few pieces colliding with the ship as it plowed forward, still at well over two gravities of thrust.

  “Christ, Bethany,” Templeton said. “Good job, but did you have to dislocate every joint in my body?” Staples too felt as if she had been beaten with a baton, and she did not doubt she would be bruised and sore for days to come, assuming they managed to escape the other ship.

  There was a tiny sound, as of a ball peen hammer striking an anvil in another room, and a high-pitched whistling began.

  “What…” Templeton began, but then Charis gasped. She was staring at Bethany. There was a tiny hole in the windshield in front of the young woman, and Bethany was staring down at her stomach. Blood began to soak her tight black shirt. Staples squinted her eyes. There was a hole in the back of Bethany’s chair, and a drop of blood appeared through it and fell quickly past the captain, barely missing her.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, Bethany!” Charis shouted, and began to undo her safety restraint.

  “Stop!” Staples commanded. At their rate and vector of acceleration, if Charis got out of her chair she would almost certainly fall several meters to the back of the cockpit, and she would likely collide with Templeton or herself on her way down. Bethany was still looking down at the spreading stain on her stomach, and she began to cry faintly. The blood from the wound in her back pooled in the chair behind her, and as Staples reached for her watch, several drops fell over the edge and landed on the captain’s chest.

  She pinged her wrist communicator. Her voice was tight and raised, almost a shout. “Brutus, I need you back up here. Bethany’s been hit by debris. I need you to take her to the doctor right now.”

  The robot’s reply was instantaneous. “But Captain, I have just found Mr. Burbank, and he is unconscious. Shouldn’t I take him to the doctor first?”

  Staples’ eyes flicked to Templeton. He gave her a look of warning, but she looked away. “No,” she said weakly. “No, strap him in and get back up here now.”

  Templeton sucked air between his teeth in an audible mingling of disgust and disapproval, but he did not contradict her.

  “Are you certain, Captain?” Brutus asked again.

  Staples looked at Templeton, and his face was clear: don’t.

  Staples tore her eyes away. “Leave him, now.”

  “Bethany, honey. Bethany, it’s going to be all right,” Charis soothed as she reached out a hand to her. Her voice was soft and comforting, but the look on her face betrayed how powerless she felt. The chairs were too far from one another for the navigator to reach the other woman. Dinah looked at Bethany for a long moment, then silently turned back to her tactical display.

  “Charis, listen to me,” Staples put on her best captain’s voice. “I need you to take over flight controls at your console. Do you hear me?”

  “But Captain, Bethany-”

  “She’s going to be all right, Charis. I need you to take over now.” She spoke quickly but clearly. “Now,” she repeated. Bethany had ceased crying and was no longer moving. Her head hung limp, and Staples prayed that she had just passed out.

  Charis turned her face reluctantly away from the pilot and began to transfer flight controls to her console.

  “How long until that thing catches us, Charis?” Templeton asked. He shifted his gaze between Charis, Bethany’s now still form, and the blood that continued to fall drop by drop onto his captain.

  “Running the numbers now,” Charis said, taking a moment to wipe tears from her eyes. Even leaning forward in the chair to look over her console was a strain under the constant pull of high G-forces. A series of metallic sounds that issued from behind them marked Brutus’ return to the room. The robotic form climbed spider-like across the back of the cockpit, towards Dinah’s console, and Charis’ beyond.

  During the conversations Staples had had with Brutus, his personality had struck her as distinctly human, but there was nothing human about the way he clambered through the cockpit now, the captain thought. The legs and arms of the robot body moved with great strength
and at seemingly impossible angles as it climbed. Staples found herself instinctively repulsed by him in that moment, and she thought that Dinah shared the sentiment as the engineer grimaced and turned her face away from him as he passed her. Finally, Brutus reached the front of the ship. He leaped to Charis’ chair, grabbed hold of its back, and swung past her over to Bethany. Charis didn’t seem to notice the movement.

  “Can’t we cut acceleration for just a minute?” Templeton asked. “Just till we get her to medical?”

  “Wouldn’t advise it, sir,” Dinah said.

  “She’s right,” Charis confirmed. “We’ve got… thirty-seven minutes until that ship matches our speed.”

  There was a stunned moment of silence broken only by Brutus’ wrenching of the safety shutter down over the punctured and still-whistling window. He then removed Bethany’s restraint, hefted her into his arms, dropped to the back of the cockpit, and landed easily on hydraulic legs. A second later he turned and dropped down the shaft that ran down the spine of Gringolet.

  “Thirty-seven minutes?” Templeton asked incredulously. “That’s it? All that work and they’ll be on us in half an hour? Can we speed up?”

  “Wouldn’t advise it, sir,” Dinah repeated. “We’re low on fuel and there’s no one in the engine room. If the engines continue to run unattended like this for thirty-seven minutes, I’ll be surprised.” Under normal conditions, the ship’s engines could run most of the day unattended, but the kind of strain Bethany was putting them through required human monitoring and adjustment. The computers on a commuter vessel simply weren’t programmed to deal with combat maneuvers.

  “Would only buy us a few minutes anyway,” Charis added. “That ship’s accelerating at five Gs.”

  “Then we fight,” Templeton said. “Thirty-seven minutes, hell. We’re twelve days from Mars. If we can’t get away, we fight.”

  “I don’t like our chances, sir,” Dinah said.

  “What’s to like?” Templeton asked rhetorically, glaring at her.

  “We don’t need to make it to Mars. We need to get to Titan Prime.” Staples spoke for the first time since she had redirected Charis’ attention. “How far to Titan Prime?”

  “Checking.” Charis bent over her console again. “It’s on the other side of the planet, I think.”

  “If you think that thing will hesitate to-”

  “It will, Don,” the captain interrupted him. “Destroying a mining station is one thing, but destroying a colony of over five thousand people? I don’t think Victor’s ready for that. The mining station makes sense. It might not even have been about us.” Templeton scoffed and began to object, but she pressed on. “Think about it. The whole plan behind our last trip out here was to get Ducard to take over from Laplace so that Ducard would recommend replacing human workers with robots. That would require legalizing AI. If Libom put pressure in the right places, and you know they have pull with politicians, then it might have happened. It still might.”

  Templeton nodded. “And this works too, because nothing says ‘space is dangerous’ like a destroyed mining facility. Yeah, I see what you’re saying. But are you sure that means Victor won’t chase us right to Titan Prime?”

  “Well, Titan Prime has its own ships. They might be able to muster a defense. But no, I’m not sure. I’m just hoping I’m right.”

  Templeton nodded and faced forward, his breathing labored under the thrust. “Guess it’s what we got.”

  Once her calculations were finished, Charis informed them, “Seventy-three minutes to Titan Prime, Captain, assuming we burn the whole way. Of course, we’ll shoot right past it, but once we clear the planet and get line of sight, we can at least warn them.”

  “That’s… almost forty minutes of crossover.” Templeton looked at Dinah, then Charis and finally at Staples. “Clea, we’re not gonna make it.”

  “Maybe not.” She raised her voice. “Charis, how long until we have line of sight on Titan Prime?”

  “Um… forty-one minutes.”

  “Increase acceleration until that number is less than the intercept time on that other ship,” Staples ordered.

  “Captain…” Dinah warned.

  “I know, Dinah. If we had Bethany up here, we could count on her fancy flying to buy us a few extra minutes, but we don’t. We need every second.”

  “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that they don’t need to be on us to fire at us, sir. They’ll likely try to disable our engines again.”

  “I know, but that’ll be tough from behind.” The amount of heat Gringolet’s engines were currently producing was enough to melt slugs at a distance of a hundred meters.

  “Okay,” Charis replied. “We need to push to 2.8 Gs.”

  As she finished speaking, Staples’ watch pinged and Jabir’s voice issued forth. “I have Ms. Miller here, Captain. She’s alive but in critical condition. I need to operate immediately. Can you assure me that we’ll have no more violent toss-abouts?”

  Staples stared through the rightmost forward facing window at the yellow and muddy brown planet that stood between them and their only chance for safety. She could feel Jabir and Charis waiting on her reply.

  “Do it.”

  Chapter 2

  “They’ll be in weapons range in another three minutes, sir,” Dinah reported to her captain. She turned to Charis. “Try to keep our engines pointing right at them. The slugs can damage them if they get an angle, but the heat and thrust should protect them straight on.”

  “Copy that,” Charis replied.

  There had been nothing to do for the past ten minutes but wait under the crushing effects of nearly three Earth gravities while both ships accelerated, the Nightshade vessel steadily gaining on them.

  “How long until we can see Titan Prime?” Templeton asked the navigator.

  “A little over eighteen minutes,” Charis replied, despair in her voice.

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t look good.”

  Staples’ watch pinged, and she quickly tapped it. The doctor’s voice came through the tiny speaker. “Captain, I wanted you to know that our robotic companion has just delivered Mr. Declan to me. I have requested that he be secured to one of the beds in Medical. He is unconscious and seems somewhat knocked about, but a cursory examination suggests that he will recover.”

  Templeton blew out a sigh. “Thank God for that.” He seemed relieved, but he threw Staples a glance that indicated that he would have much more to say about the Captain’s decision when they could speak privately.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Staples said, and she really was, but she couldn’t help adding, “Doctor, I want you to take care of Bethany first.”

  “While I appreciate your medical advice, Captain, I’m afraid that triage decisions rest with me, not you. Fortunately, in this case at least, I agree with you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work.” Jabir cut the line without waiting for his employer’s reply.

  “One minute, Captain,” Charis said. The tension in the cockpit was palpable. A half minute later Charis interrupted the silence again. “I think… attitude change, Captain! They’re going end-over… they’re turning around!” She couldn’t help but shout the news.

  Templeton whooped and Staples allowed a laugh of relief to escape her.

  “They’re launching, sir,” Dinah broke in from the tactical console. “Fast movers, fighters like the last time.”

  “They were no problem for you last time,” Templeton replied, clearly unwilling to let go of the idea that they had escaped.

  “I had Bethany maneuvering the ship then, sir.” She turned to Charis. “No offense, but without a pilot to bring the cannons to bear on the fighters, they can sit in our blind spots and fire missiles at us until they run dry.”

  Charis’ reply was indignant. “I know I’m not Bethany,” she glanced at the bloody chair next to her and grimaced, “but I can fly.”

  Dinah was unperturbed by her anger. “All right then, navigator. Just making su
re.”

  “Why the hell did they turn around?” Templeton asked. “They had us.”

  “We’ll have Charis run the numbers later when she’s not quite so busy, but I’m guessing that they just passed their red line. Any further and they wouldn’t be able to stop before we cleared the planet enough to get a line of sight on Titan Prime,” Staples replied. “Victor’s getting desperate, but he still has limits. He’ll kill us if he can. He’ll even wipe out a mining station. But he’s not ready for the whole solar system to know there are automated warships flying around and shooting at commuter vessels.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Templeton looked through the unshuttered front window at the gas giant. “Good thing for us.”

  “I wonder how long we’ve got before that fear of discovery won’t stop him.” Before her first mate could answer her, she addressed the chief engineer. “How long until those fighters are on us?”

  “Just over a minute, sir.” She addressed Charis again. “Are you ready?”

  “I think so. Captain, can I cut thrust now? We should save the fuel and the engines as much as we can, and it will be easier to maneuver if we’re not accelerating.”

  “Yes, please.”

  Templeton leaned to his coms and spoke. “Prep for zero-G, then combat maneuvers.” His voice echoed throughout the ship. He then switched over to personal communications. “Doc, you’d better strap in. I know we promised you we were done, but it can’t be helped.”

  “Your timing is less than opportune, Mr. Templeton, but we’ll manage.” The doctor’s reply was terse and frustrated.

  When the engines stopped, the transition was jarring. For the past twelve minutes the crew had felt as though they weighed nearly three times their normal weight. It was especially painful for Templeton, who had been pushed to nearly three hundred kilos. Suddenly, all of that was gone, and despite the safety restraints, they all felt as though they were going to float away from their chairs. Like an overstressed muscle, their bodies had tensed and strained against the weight, and they would have to adjust to their new condition.