The Nightshade Problem: Sol Space Volume Two

by James Wilks

  “Bethany, can you get us out of the belt?” Templeton asked.

  Before the pilot could answer, Staples spoke. “The asteroids are giving us our only cover right now. If we leave the belt, that ship can take its time puling us apart one seam at a time.”

  “So we’re screwed either way,” Templeton shook his head.

  “Bethany, buy us as much time as you can, but I don’t want us going so fast that a rock does their job for them. We’re not going to outrun them. Maybe we can fight them off.” She looked over at Jang at the tactical station, and he looked all wrong there. That was Dinah’s seat. She knew that her chief of security had some training in ship-to-ship tactical situations, but he didn’t have practical experience. He was a capable and intelligent man, but she didn’t think they would be able to pull off a miracle this time.

  “Three minutes until they’re in weapon’s range, Captain,” Charis said.

  “Where are we going?” Templeton asked. “I mean, what’s the endgame here?”

  Staples wasn’t entirely sure, but she knew that she couldn’t say that. “Use the asteroids as cover, try to get off a lucky shot. Maybe the asteroid field will take care of them.” He looked over at her as if to say really? She raised her hands in a frustrated half-shrug. “It’s what we’ve got.”

  There was a loud clang as another asteroid struck the ship, and this time they all felt it in their seats despite the gel. The G-forces eased as Bethany backed off on the acceleration.

  “I don’t think we can go any faster, Captain,” she said apologetically.

  “It’s all right, Bethany,” Staples replied. “We weren’t going to get away. Try to keep them from getting a clear shot if you can.”

  The young pilot worked the controls smoothly, constantly glancing back and forth between the window in front of her and the surface to her right which displayed a rear-facing view. The Nightshade vessel was now visible intermittently, and it was closing rapidly. Bethany dipped below a medium sized rock, and their pursuer disappeared behind it only to reappear a few seconds later even closer.

  “Captain,” Charis began, but then there was the quick staccato of slugs hitting the hull. They all recognized it immediately; it was a sound they were getting used to. There was no need for the navigator to finish her sentence. They knew the other ship was in weapons range.

  Bethany dipped the ship rapidly, and Staples felt her stomach leap into her throat. It was like freefall on the world’s largest roller coaster, and she knew that if she wasn’t strapped in she would be plastered to the ceiling. Templeton groaned and gagged, and Staples prayed that he wouldn’t vomit. As a large asteroid filled the windows in front of them, Bethany leveled the ship out, then pushed it forward at nearly two Gs of acceleration again. Several small chunks of rock drifted in their path, and the ship banked and rolled to avoid them. A smattering of small shudders came to them through their seats, the result of tiny asteroids careening off the hull. The distances between the larger asteroids in the belt were actually considerable, but they were moving so fast that those distances were flitting by in a matter of seconds.

  Another burst of fire struck the hull, and Staples willed them to miss what she knew they were aiming for: the portholes. Regular slugs wouldn’t penetrate the hull, but a lucky shot like the one that had almost killed John and Gwen could be disastrous. As the large asteroid grew in their field of vision, Staples suddenly feared that they would run right into it. She began to say something, then caught herself. Bethany knew what she was doing, and she didn’t need any distractions.

  “Hang on,” Bethany’s normally reedy voice was bold. “This is going to be bad.”

  Gringolet, moving at several thousand kilometers an hour, spun on its axis one hundred and eighty degrees. Bethany pushed the nose down just enough to dodge the asteroid, then with a burst from the retro jets and a yank on the controls, she pulled the ship up hard. The asteroid filled their vision as the ship spun up and around the massive piece of rock at a distance of less than a kilometer. The turn was incredibly severe, and Staples’ blood starved brain calculated that they must be pulling close to four Gs. The vessel groaned around them; it had been designed for long, sustained straight accelerations, not maneuvers like this. The pressures strained the superstructure, but it held. Staples thought for a moment that she might pass out. She weighed well over two hundred kilograms at the moment, and she was incredibly grateful for the new chairs. She glanced over at Templeton, and he looked as if he were barely clinging to consciousness.

  Bethany took the ship a full two hundred degrees around the largely spherical asteroid before leveling out and cutting the acceleration. The maneuver seemed to have bought them some time as the Nightshade vessel, unable to track them once they had put the rock between them, had slowed down and was now hunting to reacquire. The cockpit was silent for the moment, blissfully free of the sounds of hostile fire.

  “Jesus,” Don said, panting heavily. “Jesus, Bethany.”

  “Sorry,” the young woman said, but it was reflexive, not genuine, and no one blamed her for the time she had bought them.

  “Are we going to be shooting back?” Templeton asked. Staples looked over at Jang, who was sweating lightly in his EVA suit.

  “I can’t get a missile lock, and we don’t have any rear-facing guns.” His deep voice carried frustration, mostly at the situation and his inability to defend the ship.

  They were now headed roughly back towards AR-559. “Bethany, can we hold it steady for a bit so Jang can get a lock?”

  “Are we still counting on Brutus’ presence being enough to stop them from shooting us down?” Charis asked. “They’ve reacquired,” she added, almost offhandedly.

  “I think we have to,” Staples answered. “I know it’ll give them a cleaner shot at us, but now that Bethany has bought us some distance, try to get a lock, Jang.”

  “Almost there, Captain,” he replied tensely.

  “They’re closing again,” Charis warned. “Back in slug range in twenty seconds.”

  The ship gave a series of four minute shudders, different from the previous shocks of the small asteroids or slugs striking the hull. Staples knew the feeling now; Jang had just loosed missiles at the other vessel. With a few taps on the small surface in the arm of her chair, she pulled up the same rear-facing view that Bethany was using. She zoomed in, willing the missiles to disable the other vessel. The Nightshade warship was already turning to bring its broadside flak guns to bear, and there was a haze of brightness as the explosions began.

  “One missile down,” Charis reported, looking over her data. “Two… three. All four shot down. I think they’re using the fighters as a defensive screen to help their flak guns.”

  “Well, I don’t miss them drilling slugs and missiles into us, but that’s going to make it even harder to hit them,” Templeton said. He glanced over at his captain, and this time she saw not desperation on his face but a hopeless resignation. She felt it too. This enemy would never tire, never stop coming for them. Bethany could spin them around every asteroid in this belt, and Victor’s warship would always follow. The pursuing vessel could afford to miss all day; they couldn’t afford to be hit badly once. Staples had no idea what to do.

  “Wait,” Charis muttered, confusion in her voice. There was silence in the cockpit, all of them intent on her next words. “Wait,” she repeated, and Staples wanted to scream at her. “They’re drifting.”

  Staples looked down at the surface and saw that it was true. The Nightshade had not only failed to correct its turn to resume pursuit, but it was beginning to spin on its axis as well. It was no longer accelerating, and by all appearances, it had lost power altogether.

  “It’s dead in space,” Charis said in wonder.

  “Did we hit it?” Templeton asked. Charis shook her head. “Well, let’s not ask questions. Bethany, get us the hell out of here.”

  “We’ve got to destroy it, Don,” Staples objected. “Otherwise it’ll just keep chasing
us.”

  “Assuming it’s not just dead,” he replied. “What the hell happened to it?”

  “Sir?” Dinah’s unmistakable voice came through the coms channel.

  “Dinah?!” Staples shouted incredulously. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, but I’m in need of extraction, sir.”

  “It’s good to hear your voice,” Templeton said with relief. “We’re on our way back to the base to get you. Should be just a few minutes.”

  There was a moment of hesitation, then Dinah replied, “Actually, sir, I’m not on the asteroid.”

  Chapter 13

  Nineteen minutes earlier

  “Save it,” Dinah said to Overton through the coms channel. “I’m not-” she began, then cut the signal and her transponder. A bit dramatic, she thought, but she suspected that they wouldn’t leave her if they thought she was still fighting for her life. Overton in particular had a chivalrous streak that, while sweet, was mostly useless and completely unnecessary. Let them think she had just died saving them; she’d apologize later if it turned out not to be true.

  Six of the automatons would normally have been more than Dinah could handle, even in her salvaged power armor, but the rifle, the room, and a chance to prepare evened the odds considerably. She plodded across the room to the ruined door. She looked at it and shook her head. The smaller rifles that Jang and Overton had used had not been terribly powerful. The larger one she carried, a rifle designed for use only with power armor like the suit she was wearing, was fully capable of firing through the door. She took up a firing position and waited.

  She did not have to wait long. The locked door that led deeper into the base began to buckle. She took aim and fired a single shot. The high-velocity slug punched a hole through the door. She had no way to know if she was hitting them, but with six of them crowded in the hallway beyond, she figured that her chances were good. Each time a robotic fist made a dent in the door, she corrected her aim and fired a single shot. She was most of the way through the clip when the assault on the door stopped.

  She waited an extra minute to see if it would resume, then cautiously approached the door. It was entirely possible that the robots had retreated or were lying in wait. When she reached it, she saw that it had been close to giving way under the automatons’ attack. She flicked on a lamp located on the armor’s left arm and shone it through the bullet holes in an attempt to see what lay beyond. She caught glimpses of the remains of robotic forms floating about in the hallway, much as they did in the room she occupied.

  She stepped up carefully on the wall with her heavy magnetic boots. When she was situated, she leaned over and unlocked the door. Then she pulled it open rapidly and in the same motion launched herself back and away from the portal, her heavy rifle trained on the newly revealed and darkened hallway. One of the robots, badly damaged, was still moving, and it pushed off after her. She easily fired two rounds through it. The high-caliber bullets shattered it into a dozen pieces. When her momentum had carried her to the other side of the room, she reached out an arm above her like a backstroke swimmer preparing for a flip turn. She used the stabilizing hand to regain her feet.

  Instead of leaving the way she came in, she headed through the newly created robotic wreckage and deeper into the facility, her wrist light showing the way. She was headed somewhere in particular, and she didn’t think she had much time to get there. The UteV was anchored to the edge of the ruined observation room behind her, but it wouldn’t help her right now. Besides, Teller’s body was currently thawing in it, and she really didn’t want to deal with that again. Pulling him out of the armor and settling herself into it had not only been difficult and uncomfortable, but horrific and utterly freezing as well. Dinah prided herself on not letting anything get to her, but that had been one of the worst moments of her life. If it had been Njubigbo’s body, she wouldn’t have been able to bring herself to do it.

  Her original plan was just to retrieve the armor in case they needed it in the future, but when she heard Brutus warn of the approaching automatons, she knew that it was the only way to save Overton, Evelyn, and Jang. She didn’t care about the robot, and would have preferred to leave him for dead, but he was necessary to the continued survival of her crew, so she had saved him too.

  She was sailing down the hallways now, moving as fast as she dared, well aware that if she ran into another group of automatons abruptly that she would likely not be able to fight them off. She made a left, a right, another right, and sailed past the room where she had shot the woman without so much as glancing at it. Finally, she came to the door she was looking for, the one she remembered from her search of the facility nearly three years prior. A moment later, clad in a dead man’s armor and covered in his blood, she stepped into the hangar secreted in the bottom of the base.

  It took her three minutes to enter one of the two small combat fighters, though it was a tight fit in her armor. The reactor came online quickly. She didn’t know why this facility had kept these combat vessels, but she could guess. The odds of pirates or miners stumbling across AR-559 were slim but not impossible, especially if they had tracked a delivery ship from a distance. Some defense was only prudent. Why spend millions of dollars to build a secret research facility and not go the extra mile for adequate defense?

  Her fighter was a small ship, about twice the size of the UteV she had left behind, but it was built for a far different purpose. It was atmosphere-capable and had deployable wings. As such, it was aerodynamic, needlelike in shape, and featured a cockpit blister on the top and a set of four engines in the rear. The ship was overpowered and overgunned, and it was capable of enough thrust to render the pilot unconscious. Unfortunately, while it was not difficult to get the ship moving, she had no way to get the hangar doors to open, at least not traditionally.

  She maneuvered the ship up the far end of the hangar and trained its sharp nose on the closed doors. The fighter carried a compliment of only four missiles, but that was all right. What she had in mind would not require all of them. She fired two at the doors.

  The detonations ruptured the hangar doors and shook the entire facility. She pushed the ship forward, and it leapt at her command. The hole she had created was not quite big enough, but she had enough speed to force her way through. The felt the squeal of scraping metal, and she doubted she had done the ship any favors, but it was free and she was now in outer space.

  Immediately she began a scan for the other vessels. Gringolet had been under thrust for only six minutes, and though the signal was intermittent as Bethany threaded the ship through the field, it helped greatly that Dinah knew what she was looking for. She aligned the ship and thrust forward violently at over thirty meters per second per second.

  Even at the stressfully high level of acceleration, she knew that she might be too late to help much. Gringolet and the Nightshade vessel had a significant head start. Even so, she was determined to try. There was of course the danger of running into one of the smaller asteroids, but her fighter was smaller and sleeker than Gringolet, and also more responsive to attitude changes. As long as she could see them, she felt confident that she could dodge the asteroids. She wasn’t as good a pilot as Bethany, but she wasn’t maneuvering several thousand tons of starship, so she didn’t really need to be.

  After several minutes of pain inducing thrust, she was finally approaching the other ships. She cut the acceleration for a moment, swerved around a small asteroid, and finally caught sight of them. Gringolet was intact as far as she could tell, and he was now headed roughly in her direction. The other ship, smaller and sleeker, was just appearing from behind a large asteroid. It was further away from her crew than Dinah would have thought at this point in the chase; she attributed that to Bethany’s piloting skills.

  At her present speed, any changes in vector were decidedly uncomfortable; despite this, she swung the small ship wide, wanting to stay off their radar if at all possible. She ducked behind a rock that Bethany had previousl
y used as a shield, then did an end over and pushed the engines up to a grueling five and a half Gs of thrust. She needed to match the speed and acceleration of the other vessel, and she was going much too fast. Her vision dimmed as the blood pooled at the back of her brain and chest cavity, and a riotous headache spread through her skull. She had pulled worse than this before, but that was for brief stretches. By her calculations she needed to spend just over two minutes decelerating, and she quickly set the controls to sound an alarm when the time was up in case she passed out.

  She didn’t, but she came close. When the alarm sounded, she flipped the ship again, completed her turn, and fell in behind the Nightshade. Dinah didn’t know what sort of radar suite the ship had, but she had yet to see a vessel that could detect other ships right behind it when it was thrusting. The engines made for a perfect blind spot, provided one didn’t get too close. The Doris Day had used the same trick to tail them from Mars to Cronos Station.

  As she approached the engines of the other ship, the cockpit began to heat up. The shielding and her power armor helped to protect her somewhat, but generally speaking the armor was designed primarily to keep out cold, not heat. It had its own heating system, but not air conditioning. She began to sweat. Closer and closer she pushed the small vessel towards the torch of the enemy engines. Their blue flame filled the windscreen, and she had to lower the reflective visor on her helmet or risk damaging her eyes.

  Just as the sharp nose of her fighter began to glow orange from the heat, she pushed it down and under the other vessel. They would see her now, but it was far too late for them to do anything. She was less than a kilometer from the underside of the Nightshade, frighteningly close in space terms. Her eyes flicked over the hull until she found what she was looking for: an airlock door. An OS might run the ship, but humans had built it with human needs in mind.

  At almost point blank range, she fired her remaining missiles directly into the vulnerable airlock on the belly of the ship. The explosions tore a ragged hole in the hull, and she gunned the engine and drove her small ship right into it.