When Stars Fall (The Star Scout Saga Book 4)

by GARY DARBY

  The Zephyr sped just in front of the mighty ship’s bow, so close that Jadar felt as if he could step out and walk across its outer skin. He pushed the little ship into another dive and watched the Mongan cruiser come around in a crisp arc.

  “That’s right,” Jadar mumbled softly. “Keep your eye on the little birdie . . .”

  He straightened the ship out, took one look upward through the sylcron window and yelped, “Doc, they’ve got me in their sights, now would be a good time to take your shot.”

  His fingers hovered just above his controls, ready to throw the Zephyr hard over. He gave a little start when there came a yell from Stinneli. Jadar glanced back to see the doctor pumping his fist in the air.

  Jadar craned his neck to peer through the side window just in time to see their commandeered Mongan cruiser smash down into their Mongan pursuer. A massive explosion erupted from the impaled ship, and it buckled amidships.

  Within seconds, a series of gargantuan explosions ripped the two ships apart, sending massive chunks of torn and shredded metal spinning off into space.

  “Sir,” Staley called out, “those two Mongan cruisers are coming about, headed straight for us.”

  Jadar sliced the Zephyr away from the scene of destruction and headed straight for the nebula’s dark coils. He glanced at his flight controls. “I’ve got her red-lined at sublight,” he called over to Staley, “are we pulling away from them?”

  “No, sir,” she replied. “They’re gaining on us, and fast. I don’t think we can outrun them.”

  “And we’re certainly not going to do much damage to them with our cannon or torpedoes,” Jadar responded.

  Grimacing, he said, “No choice, we’ve got to go to hyperspeed. I’ll set the program for a 10-second transit. That should put us just inside the nebula.

  “If we don’t hit any g-waves, we might come out okay. Then again, if we run head-on into a grav wave, it’ll probably be over before we even know it, right?”

  He glanced over at Staley. “You know if you’ve got a bright idea or two, now would be the time to share, lieutenant.”

  She turned grave eyes to him. “No sir, I don’t.”

  Jadar sighed aloud in answer. “Too bad, I was hoping you might think of something better.” With rapid finger strokes, he inputted the program. Finished, he sat with one finger over the initiate button.

  “This—” he began but a laser blast amidships cut him off in midsentence as the ship careened to one side.

  “Where did we get hit?” Jadar yelled to Staley once he had the Zephyr back under control.

  “Starboard—the airlock!” she yelled back.

  “Are we venting atmosphere?” he called out and then barrel-rolled the little craft. His desperate maneuvers were keeping them just ahead of the laser bolts that zipped past the Zephyr like a flurry of flaming arrows.

  “Maintaining pressure,” Staley replied tensely, “inner seals are holding.”

  Jadar swung the craft around and straightened the ship out. He took one look at their pursuers and muttered, “They’ve boxed us in, got us right in their crosshairs.”

  “No choice now,” he stated fiercely. “This had better work because I don’t think they’re in the mood to take prisoners.”

  With his lips curled back in a beastlike snarl, he reached out and with a savage jab hit the n-space flight compu button.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Star date: 2443.098

  Nearing the Helix Nebula

  Sighing, Dason muttered, “I do believe we’ve seen this already and I’ve definitely crossed it off of my list for most favorite vacation spots.”

  Glancing over at Alena, he couldn’t help but notice that she stared straight ahead with a stony expression at the swirling dark clouds of stardust and gas that made up the Helix Nebula’s outer wall.

  She ran her tongue over light pink lips. “Yeah, me too. Let’s just hope things are a little better, and easier than last time.”

  “How about a lot better and easier,” he mumbled. “I don’t know about you but this place brings up some very unpleasant memories and distasteful experiences to mind.”

  “Same here,” she returned as she glanced down at the navigation controls and asked, “Do you honestly think we can find them?”

  Dason gave a little shrug. “If they’re listening, we should be able to.”

  He motioned toward the panel. “Get ready to broadcast; I don’t want to get too much closer to the cloud, just in case some Mongan warship is lurking in there and picks up our signal.”

  “Is your emergency boost-out program set?” she asked.

  He gave her a quick nod. “Locked in and ready to go. If a Mongan ship so much as shows a rivet, all it’ll see is where we’ve been.”

  Dason scanned his controls and then slowed the Zephyr to a complete standstill. “This is close enough, start sending.”

  Alena pressed on the inset to her ship-to-ship communicator and began intoning, “Marrel strike force, this is Team Thorne, do you read me?”

  Waiting for several second without a response, Alena repeated her call, “Marrel strike force, this is Team Thorne, please respond.”

  No answer.

  She turned to Dason with a questioning expression. “Record it,” he ordered, “and put it on auto. We’ll sit here and wait.”

  “Are you sure we’re in the right spot?” Shanon asked from behind. “They could have tried to come back out in a thousand different ways, you know.”

  Dason turned to her and acknowledged, “True, but what I’m banking on is that my uncle will choose the shortest straight-line course between the planet and Imperium space, and that’s exactly where we’re sitting.”

  “That’s one big assumption, Dason,” Alena observed.

  “I know,” he replied. “But it’s the best I can come up with unless you have a better idea.”

  “No, I don’t,” she admitted. “And, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for rescuing scouts but I was sure surprised that Colonel Tuul let your uncle take that Mongan cruiser. Seems to me that it would have made for a grand prize in the Imperium’s hands.”

  “That’s true enough,” Dason replied. “But from what I understand, it wasn’t just to rescue those scouts. If they got in, the plan was to hit the Mongan’s Kolomite complex, too.”

  “Two-for-one deal,” Shanon observed.

  “Uh huh,” Dason replied, staring straight ahead. “But not such a good deal for any of the scouts. Brant told me that they had a decent chance of getting in, but once they hit the Kolomite site, it was pretty doubtful they would get out in one piece.”

  Alena turned and fully faced Dason. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be inconsiderate, but if that’s the case, why are we sitting here? We could be broadcasting to empty space, you know.”

  Dason met her steady stare with his own. “I’m acutely aware of that, Alena. There is just the chance that they might have pulled it off, too, you know.”

  “Maybe,” Alena began, “But I—”

  “Shhh!” Shanon exclaimed from behind. “Listen!”

  Through the communicator in faint tones came, “Marr . . . Thor . . . do you . . .”

  Alena slapped at the communicator. “This is Team Thorne, say again, repeat, say again.”

  Several seconds later they heard, “need . . . main engines . . .”

  “What’s the signal readout?” Dason quickly asked. “They’re breaking up too bad. We’ve got to get closer.”

  “Mark one two four point five, down three. The Doppler is tight, so the signal source is ahead of us, in the nebula.”

  Alena glanced over at Dason in open admiration. “Good call, scout.”

  “Thanks,” he replied. “We’re going in, go to weapons free. I don’t know what you got out of that but to me it sounds as if they’re in trouble.

  “Shanon, get everyone back there strapped in, I don’t want anyone bouncing around, especially Doctor Baier.”

  “On it,” Shanon answ
ered and hustled away.

  Dason powered up the Zephyr, locked in the course, and accelerated toward the nebula’s rampartlike gas walls.

  “Tell them to broadcast every minute or so that we can track their signal,” he instructed Alena. “And once you have good communications, make sure you verify, I don’t want to walk into a Faction trap.”

  “Got it,” she answered with a grimace at Dason’s reference to a trap set Out Here. Unknowingly, he had shot a barb into a tender spot in her heart. A place that was still healing, still trying to reconcile past behaviors that now caused her extreme distress and tears in the night.

  In a tight voice, she swiftly relayed Dason’s instructions over the communicator. Both listened for several seconds, and Alena was about to repeat her message when they heard, “Mongan . . . careful . . .”

  Alena sucked in a breath. “I think they’re warning us that there are Mongan warships in the area.”

  Dason nodded in answer. “I agree, and that’s not good.”

  Several minutes later he said, “Wall cloud coming up, I’m slowing us down. Keep tight on that scope, the nebula plays havoc with sensors.”

  Like a dart, the little ship punctured the nebula’s boiling gray-green cloud wall. Dason reached over and turned off all interior and exterior lighting except for the flight and weapon control panel.

  In the semidarkness, his fingers played across the controls, slowing the craft down even more. “Are they still broadcasting?” he asked.

  Alena shook her head in reply. “Nothing’s come across for several minutes. Not since that message about the Mongans.”

  Dason ran a hand over his chin several times, trying to make sense of the sudden communications silence. He turned to Alena. “What do you think?”

  Hesitating for a few seconds, Alena answered, “Are you asking me if I think the Mongans captured or destroyed their ship? I don’t know. They could have gone to silent running because the Mongans are too close for them to risk transmitting and giving their position away.”

  Dason considered her answer for several seconds before saying slowly, “If we maintain this course, we could run smack into that Mongan ship—”

  “Not only that,” Alena replied. “If we change course and they don’t transmit, we’ll never find them in this soup.”

  Their eyes met, and Alena murmured, “It’s your call, team leader.”

  “My call,” Dason breathed out.

  He stared at the churning russet-colored clouds that swept up and over the Zephyr. For an instant, his thoughts mirrored the swirling gasses.

  Then he recalled a lesson from Scoutmaster Tarracas. “In moments of indecision, your first inclination is usually the correct one. Playing the devil’s advocate with yourself will get you nothing but having to pay the devil.”

  A calmness swept over Dason and he pointed at the sensor board. His first thought had been to stay on the current route. “Keep your eyes glued to the scope, we’re staying on this course.”

  He ran his fingers over the navigation panel and powered down the vessel’s main engines to the barest minimum to maintain their velocity.

  After a bit, muttering to Alena out of the corner of his mouth, Dason said, “One part of me wants to gun this thing and rush forward. You know, the cavalry-to-the-rescue thing—another part is urging me to take it real slow.”

  Without taking her eyes off the sensors, Alena answered, “Understandable, but listen to your slow side, it’s giving you the best advice.”

  She gestured toward the cloud. “There’s danger out there, you feel it, and I feel it, so slow is good.”

  Several minutes later Alena sucked in her breath. “What?” Dason asked.

  “Four ships,” she answered tightly. “Size and shape correspond to Mongan battle cruisers. If my sensors aren’t lying, they’re spread out in a broken line, three off to starboard, and one to port.”

  Dason reached out and shut down the Zephyr’s engines, letting the little ship coast forward under its own momentum. “Do you think they’ve spotted us?”

  After peering at the scope for several seconds, Alena replied, “If they have, they’re not changing to an intercept course.”

  Dason turned and gestured for Shanon to come forward.

  “Four Mongan cruisers dead ahead,” he remarked quietly. “Tell everyone, no electronic signatures of any sort back there. Don’t even vaporize body waste. Hold it or use a pee bag.”

  Shanon gave a quick nod and padded away to alert the rest of the team.

  “Since those Mongan ships are still in the area,” Dason whispered, “that tells me that they haven’t found the other Zephyr. I take it that it’s not showing on the scope?”

  Alena shook her head. “No. Could be the nebula’s electromagnetic field is dissipating small signatures similar to ours, but not the cruisers, which may be why the Mongans don’t see either of us.”

  She glanced over at him. “So, what do we do? Sit and wait?”

  Dason nodded in response. “We do exactly the same as the other Zephyr, pretend we’re just another dark cloud, and hope the Mongans give up and go home.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “We go to plan B.”

  “Which is?”

  “Whatever you come up with because I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.”

  The two sat in the soft glow from the control panel for several minutes until Alena muttered, “Now, that’s interesting.”

  Dason sat up. “What?”

  “The Mongan ships have stopped. They’re just sitting there, not moving.”

  Dason licked dry lips. “Not good. Could mean they know we’re here, but they just can’t quite locate us.”

  “Not yet anyway,” Alena answered. “Do you think they’re picking something up from the other Zephyr or us? We’re in an electronic blackout but maybe the other Zephyr is hurt and can’t do the same.”

  “I don’t know,” Dason replied. “Maybe they’ve got a way to ping us, analogous to active sonar in water, but the cloud is distorting the return signal so bad that they can’t get a solid lock.”

  “Hold on,” Alena called out as she bent forward over her sensor display. “They’re moving, spreading apart, away from each other.”

  She peered at the scope for several more minutes. “They’ve stopped, no, they’re moving again, very slowly, in a rough diamond formation.”

  Dason let out a breath. “They’re triangulating. Using their source signals to intersect where they think they’ve got a target.”

  “Maybe so, but they’re not heading our way,” Alena observed. “They’ve turned ninety degrees. They’ll cross our ‘t’ in about ten minutes, give or take.”

  “Has to be the other Zephyr,” Dason stated.

  “If the Mongans are bisecting our course at this distance, then she must be somewhere close.” He rubbed at his forehead, his fingers kneading the tight skin as if trying to lessen the strain.

  “We can’t transmit,” he murmured, “and we can’t rev up the engines to do a visual search. We could be right on top of them and still not see their ship.”

  “Too bad they don’t have a fog horn,” Alena replied, “similar to old-style Earth ocean-going ships. We could follow its sound back to the source.”

  He snapped his head around at her comment. “Wait, what did you just say?”

  “I was making a poor joke,” Alena answered. “I didn’t mean it literally.”

  “Maybe not, but you may have hit upon something.” He waved a hand at the cloud eddies. “This medium is thick enough to carry sound, right?”

  “Maybe,” Alena answered in a dubious tone. “There’s enough molecular gasses to carry a sound wave, but not far or well.”

  “But maybe just far enough,” Dason said and slipped in an earpiece. “Tie me into the outside microphone,” he instructed.

  Alena reached over and opened the channel for exterior audio. Dason bent over, and closed his eyes, trying to drown out a whole range of
noises, from static to deep rumblings, to high-pitched squeals that emanated from within the nebula cloud.

  After a few minutes of intense listening, he jerked upright. “Put in an earpiece and listen,” he directed Alena.

  “What am I listening for?”

  “Scout code.”

  Alena’s eyes went wide, and she inserted the tiny audio device into her ear. She stared straight ahead for several long seconds, holding her body rigid. “It is scout code,” she whispered, “very faint but I hear it.”

  She nodded as if to herself. “Marrel to Thorne—”

  “Then a long break,” Dason remarked, “and then it repeats itself.”

  “Dason,” Alena breathed, “for us to hear this, they must be awfully close.”

  He leaned toward her and asked, “Are the Mongans still closing?”

  She nodded in reply. “Slow and steady. From the way they’re moving, I’m pretty sure they’re still hunting and don’t have a lock on either of us yet.”

  “Good,” Dason replied. “How far away are the Mongans and what’s the angle to them?”

  She studied her sensors intently. “I can’t be certain, the data are pretty erratic, but the closest is ten kilometers and right at ninety degrees straight off our port side.”

  Dason reached over and using scout code began to tap on the exterior audio microphone. Thorne to Marrel, we hear you. Is your ship damaged?

  Dason’s heart thudded in his chest, and his palms had grown moist and cold. Waiting for a reply, the seconds ticked away. When the answer came, he knew they were in trouble.

  Yes. No engines. Auxiliary power and thrusters only. Minimal life support. Do you see Mongan ships?

  Yes, Dason replied. We’re running silent. From your first transmission to us, did you change course?

  No.

  At your current location, Dason asked, give distance and angle to Mongan ships.

  There was a long wait until the answer arrived. Spotty readings. Estimate one zero kilometers distant, three degrees off our aft port beam, and two kilometers down.

  Dason sat back and eyed Alena. She met his stare. “I know what you’re thinking,” she murmured. “Are we both looking at the same ship, or a different one?”