Wanderer - Echoes of the Past

by Simon Goodson

  “Because we’ve done it before,” Jess replied. “And we’ve dealt with bigger ships. Including a frigate.”

  Dash laughed at the outrageous claim, then realised that Sal’s body language clearly showed this was true… or she thought it was.

  “You destroyed a frigate?” he asked, still not truly believing.

  “Yes. I’ll admit it was a tough target, but we did it. As for those three corvettes… they won’t know what hit them.”

  Dash thought frantically. If Jess was right, if the Wanderer was that powerful, then he had to try and get his hands on it. For the moment that meant playing along.

  “All right. If you can really do what you say then all the civilian ships come with us. I don’t think it will be too hard to get the captains to see the danger they’re in. I still want to grab Sovon first though. He might try to make a run for it otherwise. His ship isn’t fast but it wouldn’t surprise me if he has a very fast fighter stashed away somewhere on board.”

  “All right, but when you capture him he comes here, not to your ship. You and some of your men can accompany him but I want him here where Sal can watch everything if she wants. We may also know some ways of breaking down any conditioning he has.”

  “You know you’re starting to worry me,” Dash said. “How do I know my men and I would be safe aboard your ship?”

  “First off, if we can destroy three corvettes then do you really think you could hold out against us? Secondly… you just can.” Suddenly the barriers were down and Dash could read the sincerity in Jess. “We won’t harm you, and we will let you return to your ship whenever you want. We may even let Sovon go with you… though that will mostly be down to Sal.”

  Dash paused for a moment before replying. Could he trust the sincerity that Jess was radiating? Or could Jess fake his tells as well as he could suppress them? But if he could, why do something as obvious as suppressing them in the first place?

  Sal’s reactions made Dash’s mind up. She clearly felt the same way as Jess seemed to. If Dash and his crew travelled to the Wanderer then they would be perfectly safe. Which, he had to admit, was more than could be said for the crew of the Wanderer if that happened. The opportunity was almost too good. A chance to get his men onto the potentially incredibly powerful ship — armed, armoured and ready to wrest control from Jess.

  “All right,” Dash said, feigning reluctance. “It’s not what I would have chosen but… OK.”

  “Good,” Jess said. “I have to admit that boarding actions like this aren’t my speciality. What’s the plan?”

  “Ideally we need a distraction so we can get closer to the Steady Light. I have an idea…”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sovon walked onto the bridge of the Steady Light, stretching out the kinks in his muscles. Tia had been more than true to her word. He'd left her sleeping contentedly in his bed.

  “All quiet?” he asked.

  “Aye Captain Sovon,” replied Dax, who was on watch.

  “Good.”

  Dax was one of the imperial agents on board, but he didn't know Sovon's real name. For that matter Sovon had no idea what Dax’s real name was. Not knowing reduced the risk of slipping up. The Empire had been running covert operations for generation upon generation and had become extremely good at them.

  Sovon had just settled down into the captain’s chair when an alarm started to ring out.

  “What’s happening?” he snapped.

  “Weapons fire, sir,” Dax replied. “One of the other merchants, the Wanderer, just opened fire on her own escort ship. The Shadow Beam. The Shadow Beam is dodging fire and making a run for the closest corvette.”

  “What the hell are they playing at?”

  Sovon carefully studied his display. Dax’s summary was accurate. What he hadn’t mentioned was that the Shadow Beam’s path would take it close to their own ship.

  “Ramp up the engines,” he ordered Dax. “I don’t want that fight getting too close to us!”

  “Aye sir.”

  Sovon watched as the small ship drew near then flew past.

  “What are they doing now?” he asked, puzzled.

  The small escort had turned and was slowing significantly, as if they planned on fighting the Wanderer. It made sense. The Wanderer was far larger, but as a merchant vessel its weapons and shields wouldn’t be much more powerful than the Shadow Beam’s, and the smaller ship was far more nimble.

  “Looks like someone with some brains just got control of the Shadow Beam,” he told Dax. “This should be an interesting fight.”

  “Or not,” Dax replied. “The Wanderer is starting to peel away. I don’t know what that was about but they seem to be seeing some sense now.”

  “Possibly too late,” Sovon replied. “The escort ships are starting to close in. Make sure we’re well out of the way in case they start shooting.”

  “Aye sir. Though the Wanderer’s path is bringing it quite close to us.”

  “What?”

  Sovon stared at the display. Dax was right, the Wanderer was already closer to their own ship than to the Shadow Beam. Sovon felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. Something was very wrong.

  Before he could say anything the ship was rocked by weapon fire. Moments later a second wave of fire rocked the ship. Then a third. Red lights exploded into life across the bridge, indicating multiple failures. All shields on the side facing the Wanderer were down and the thrusters were only firing intermittently.

  Sovon stared at his display, struggling to take in what he was seeing. Every shot had come from the Wanderer. What had the Steady Light done to draw their fire? Or had whoever was in control of the Wanderer had some form of breakdown? First firing on their own escort, now firing on a fellow merchant.

  Nothing seemed to make sense. And then Sovon noticed that the small escort ship, the Shadow Beam, was moving again.

  Everything clicked into place. The Shadow Beam was heading straight for the Steady Light. The whole thing had been a diversion, a distraction, and it had worked. The trap had been sprung. Sovon hit a switch allowing him to broadcast to the entire ship.

  “This is Captain Sovon. We are under attack. Prepare to repel boarders!”

  *****

  Dash stared at his display, watching for any change that might signal danger. So far everything had gone smoothly. The distraction had allowed the Wanderer to draw close enough to their target to largely disable it, and the Shadow Beam had also moved into a much closer position. Now Jasper had them rushing towards the Steady Light as quickly as possible.

  The imperial ships were closing in, but the Wanderer was already moving to intercept them. It would soon be in weapons range of the first Corvette and Dash would find out if Jess was a raving lunatic or his ship really was as powerful as he claimed.

  If it was the first then Dash already had a contingency plan in place. His men would have time to withdraw from the Steady Light, with or without Sovon. Then the Shadow Beam would make its break for freedom.

  The Corvette opened fire. It was a restrained barrage, designed to damage the Wanderer rather than destroy it. The Wanderer’s shields took the assault but flickered badly. Dash sighed to himself. It looked like Jess was a lunatic after all. No matter what else the ship could do, if its shields collapsed so easily it wouldn’t last ten seconds against the three corvettes.

  Then he realised the shields hadn’t collapsed. If anything the readings showed they were stronger than before. Possibly a lot stronger, but Dash couldn’t tell. The readings were fluctuating rapidly.

  Whatever was happening on the Wanderer it seemed to have spooked the corvette which fired a second, much stronger, salvo. The Wanderer should have been destroyed, its shields shredded and the ship itself torn apart. Instead its shields soaked up all the damage with no apparent strain.

  “Bloody hell!” Hackett said. “That’s impossible. What the hell is that ship packing?”

  “I don’t know,” Dash replied. “But I damn well intend to fi
nd out.”

  The corvette, sensing that it faced something truly dangerous, gave up on volleys. Every weapon that could be brought to bear opened fire and kept firing. Several fighters had raced ahead of the corvette and opened fire on the Wanderer with their shorter ranged weapons.

  Still the Wanderer carried smoothly on, seemingly completely unaffected by the incoming fire. Then it opened up with its own weapons. Three fighters simply ceased to be, nothing but glowing gas to mark their passing.

  Dash held his breath as the Wanderer fired on the corvette. The number of weapons firing was far more than he’d expected, and the impact on the corvette’s shields was chilling.

  Dash had seen corvettes destroyed in his time, had seen them obliterated in seconds when caught in the fire from a battleship or other massive warship, but this was something else. The Wanderer was far smaller than the corvette, yet its weaponry hammered through the corvettes shields in only a few seconds.

  Having hammered through the shields the weapons started to chew their way through the corvette itself. In the space of a few heartbeats it went from being a proud warship to a fast expanding cloud of debris. Then the engines failed. A massive explosion ripped through the debris. Anyone who had somehow survived the Wanderer’s assault would have been killed instantly.

  “Holy shit!” Dash muttered.

  Hackett just shook his head, unable to take in what had happened.

  “Contact in twenty seconds,” shouted Jasper.

  Dash couldn’t take his eyes from the displays. The two surviving corvettes were heading towards the Wanderer, and the remaining fighters and gunships were strung out between the two ships — having raced ahead to help deal with any trouble.

  Dash could imagine what was going through the minds of those on the ships. Disbelief at what had happened. Anger. Fear. The question was, which would win out.

  Several fighters started to slow and turn. The rest stuck with their attack, loyalty and obedience overriding their fear. Dash knew that those breaking off would face severe punishment when they returned to base… but that they still might have made the best choice.

  Apparently the Wanderer had other ideas though. It accelerated heavily, far more heavily than it should have been able to. Soon it was moving faster than even the fleeing fighters. The closing speed with the fighters that hadn’t broken off their attack was incredible.

  Dash was suddenly thrown against his straps and a loud clang rang out through the ship.

  “We’re locked onto the airlock. Go, go, go!” shouted Jasper.

  Dash was vaguely aware of most of his men charging through the airlock and into the Steady Light. They knew what they were doing, and Hackett would oversee the operation. Two men remained guarding the airlock against any counter assault. Dash was free to focus on the nearby battle in space.

  At such high closing speeds it would be almost impossible for the Wanderer to hit the small, agile fighters and gunships. The only hope would be to lay down a lethal field of fire in the area each ship might occupy, though even that was far from guaranteed to work. The fighters had no such problem — despite its unexpected speed the Wanderer was still a much larger target.

  The first fighters streaked within range of the Wanderer… and vanished. Dash had to watch events again in slow motion to understand what had happened. The Wanderer had unleashed a small and tightly focused attack on each fighter, managing to precisely target each of the tiny vessels despite the massive closing speeds.

  Dash couldn’t help but be impressed by the targeting systems the Wanderer must have. They weren’t unprecedented, but he’d only ever seen them while he still served the Empire, and even then only on the most advanced warships.

  Within twenty seconds every fighter and gunship that hadn’t turned away had been destroyed, and the Wanderer was closing in on those that had. The two corvettes had apparently realised just how much trouble they were in and had started to turn away.

  Dash shook his head at the stupidity of their captains. Whilst not slow, corvettes couldn’t get anywhere near the speed the Wanderer was travelling at. There was no way they could run far or fast enough to escape. In their place he would have ordered the ships to close with the civilian ships, with the Shadow Beam in particular.

  Or would he? He knew the Shadow Beam couldn’t match the Wanderer’s amazing abilities, nor could the other merchant ships. The captains on the corvettes had no such knowledge. Maybe they feared closing with the other merchants only to find them as dangerous as the Wanderer.

  Dash watched the Wanderer wipe out the fleeing fighters and gunships. Only the two corvettes remained. Dash had no doubts that the Wanderer would find them easy prey.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Jess smiled grimly as the Wanderer blew away the last fighter. Killing still didn’t come easily to him, but the imperial ships were hell-bent on seeing slaves delivered into danger. Dash’s suggestion that the merchant ships would all be captured or destroyed to prevent Daspal’s secret defences being revealed also rang all too true. He didn’t enjoy the killing, didn’t revel in it, but at the same time there was a grim sense of justice being served.

  Something else made Jess want to smile. Some of the changes he’d made to the Wanderer had already proven their worth. Not only had the shields easily withstood what the corvette could dish out, the changes designed to hide their true strength seemed to be working.

  Jess didn’t fully understand how the changes worked. The simplified version was that many layers of shielding were overlapping almost on top of each other, and were rotated continuously so that when the outer shield took damage it would immediately rotate to the inside where it could recharge while another layer of shields took the next set of punishment.

  There was a more accurate version but even with the Wanderer’s help Jess had quickly got lost. It seemed to involve more than the usual number of dimensions.

  The changes to the thrusters were performing even better than he’d hoped. He knew they’d make the Wanderer faster, but he hadn’t anticipated quite how much faster. They’d even managed to overhaul fast attack fighters.

  The changes to the thrusters were much simpler than those to the shields. Part of the improvement came from packing more thrusters onto the ship. The rest came from tuning them to be significantly more efficient than normal, the Wanderer making adjustments to each thruster individually many times a second.

  The hardest part had been hiding the additional thrusters — anyone looking at the ship would have guessed something was strange otherwise. Jess had solved the problem by adding retractable covers. In normal flight the Wanderer looked to have a typical amount of thrusters for her size and class. When needed, as they were now, the covers retracted to reveal almost as many thrusters again.

  There were still many experimental changes that Jess hadn’t made use of. The Wanderer’s existing weaponry had been more than enough to deal with the corvette, and as for the other changes… well, they mostly required circumstances that hadn’t arisen yet.

  Jess pulled the Wanderer around towards the two corvettes, maintaining the same exceptional speed. The Wanderer would catch them easily.

  Jess spared a few moments to check on the Shadow Beam. She was attached to the Steady Light already, which meant Dash’s men should be attempting to take control of the ship. Or at worst attempting to grab Sovon and escape.

  Jess sensed a change ahead. The two corvettes, realising they couldn’t escape, had started to turn. Jess watched as they finished up facing towards the Wanderer. It made sense. Their strongest weapons and armour faced the front, shields too from the readings he was getting.

  Do we destroy them too? Ali sent.

  Do we have a choice? Jess replied. They’ve seen what the Wanderer can do. If we let them go then that knowledge will spread throughout the Empire. Even if we change the Wanderer’s appearance you know how much effort they’ll go to to track us down.

  Yet we’re showing exactly those capabilities to Dash and
his crew, she replied.

  I know, Ali. I know. And I don’t know what to do about that yet. We have to deal with those corvettes now though, and for Sal’s sake we have to try and get Markus. If that really is Markus.

  OK. You’re right. Just don’t start enjoying the killing.

  Jess stared at the two ships ahead, reminded of just how many lives he was about to take by Ali’s words.

  I won’t, he replied firmly. This is necessary. I do feel there’s some justice in it, but I don’t enjoy it.

  Jess stared at the two corvettes as the Wanderer rapidly closed on them. Was he fooling himself? Was there actually a way to avoid the killing? Could he order the corvettes to abandon ship, to use their shuttles and escape pods to get to safety? Once the ships were destroyed there’d be no proof of what the Wanderer had been able to do.

  No. The risk was too high. Storage media was so small that anyone escaping could take all the evidence they needed with them. If the Wanderer had an empty hold then maybe he could have taken the crews on board, ensuring they carried no recordings and taking them to… well, finding something to do with them.

  But it wasn’t. The Wanderer was packed with freed prisoners, and Jess certainly wouldn’t sacrifice any of them. Still, as they closed to within weapons range Jess felt a lump in his throat. This wasn’t fighting for his and his friends lives. This wasn’t responding to an immediate threat. This was cold-blooded killing where their opponents didn’t stand a chance.

  Jess held off firing when the Corvettes first came into range, as he had with the first warship. He didn’t want to reveal more of the Wanderer’s abilities than he had to while Dash and his men were watching. He could wait to fire until they were closer.

  Both corvettes opened up with everything they had, focusing fire on a single area of the Wanderer. That made Jess feel a little better. There’d been no pleas for mercy, no offer of surrender. The corvettes would destroy the Wanderer or go down trying. And it definitely wasn’t going to be the former. Jess checked the shields. Even with both corvettes focusing their fire on a single point the shields weren’t even being strained.