by M. D. Cooper
The admiral didn’t reply for a moment, though her image kept moving, soundlessly reciting the charges they faced.
“Ah, what the hell,” Krissy finally said. “He’s my father.”
Jessica wondered what currency the AIs were exchanging as a result of their bet—and why she hadn’t been in on it. Aloud, she said, “That explains a lot.”
“He’s the one that’s out there, isn’t he?” Krissy asked. “Just like him to go on some harebrained adventure. Station can’t find him, but my fleet’s sensors picked up a ping out past the docking ring. Could be nothing, or it could be them. A man I can trust on my flagship has suppressed it from the logs, but as you know, I can’t rescue them. I’ll be damned if I’m going to turn my own father—one of the founders of the Transcend—over to the Greys to do whatever it is they do.”
Her voice paused and Cargo looked to Jessica, his face showing more emotion than she expected. She wondered what was troubling him.
“You have to get him, and get out of here,” Admiral Krissy finally said.
“How will we get out of the docking bay?” Jessica asked. “Without killing all your people, that is.”
“If you fire up your main reactor and warm up your engines, slowly, I’ll pull everyone back, and get someone to trigger an emergency release on the cradle and bay doors. Lloyd would probably do it; he’s been having kittens ever since you docked. Though he might have upgraded to elephants when you shot up the STC.”
“OK, deal,” Cargo said.
Sabrina said.
“You need to hurry,” Krissy said. “If they get too much further, they’ll pass out of the gravitational doldrums….”
She didn’t have to finish her statement. Everyone knew that beyond the doldrums lay the crosscutting gravitational fields of the black holes and the Grey Wolf Star.
“Good, you’ll—shit! Lieutenant, raise the Excelsia now! I want that ship to stand down!”
“What is it?” Jessica asked.
“It’s Bes, he’s coming around with his destroyer and they’re powering weapons.”
“Stasis shield to max!” Cargo yelled. “Widen it to protect Krissy’s people!”
Jessica dropped into the pilot’s seat. If Bes wanted a fight, they’d give him a fight. He’d find out that this little freighter had some sting in her.
“Trevor! Weapons!” Cargo called out as he took the command seat. “Power all beams, get the RMs in the tubes.”
“Yes, Captain,” Trevor replied.
Jessica brought up the bay doors on her holodisplay, praying for the cradle to release its clamps before Bes fired on them.
“Come ooooon,” she whispered, and then let out a cheer as a light flashed on her console, indicating that the cradle was opening up.
And then the bay’s exterior doors exploded.
Laser and particle beam fire tore into the space, splashing off Sabrina’s stasis shields, and melting the walls around the ship.
Jessica activated the port and starboard grav drives, directing their graviton wash along the half-melted bulkheads and trying not to shred too much of the station behind them as they pushed out against the withering fire from Bes’s ship—which floated a scant two kilometers beyond Gisha’s hub.
“I can’t believe he’s doing this!” Nance cried out. “He’s attacking his own people.”
“I’m really getting why Sera wanted Finaeus back in play,” Cargo said. “Transcend really isn’t some happy, unified utopia.”
“Keep it up, asshole,” Jessica said through gritted teeth as Sabrina cleared the station, and she fired their dorsal boosters—slowly, so that Bes would keep his weapons fire on them, and not tear a hole right through Gisha Station.
“Fire proton beams on that ship the moment we’re clear of the station,” Cargo ordered.
“All clear!” Jessica called out a moment later.
“Eat this, asshole!” Trevor yelled as Sabrina’s four proton beams, courtesy of the Intrepid’s engineers, blasted protium at the Excelsia.
Bes was firing too much too fast, which meant his shields were open to let his own continuous stream of weapons fire out. Not all the time, but enough for Sabrina’s proton beams to get through.
Unfortunately, it also meant that when Trevor cracked the shields for Sabrina’s weapons to hit, the enemy’s beams got in, as well.
“Shit!” Trevor said. “He’s throwing everything he has at us. We can’t pick up Cheeky and Fin like this!”
“We’ll give him the AP nozzle,” Cargo said. “Trevor, time the beams with it, and when he’s blind, kick out a pair of limpets.”
“Spinning out the nozzle,” Jessica responded.
The antimatter pion drive’s nozzle was a hard target to hit. It only protruded a centimeter beyond the shields, and was just a few centimeters across; however, it emitted a concentrated stream of gamma rays. Combined with the beams, it would do some serious damage to the Excelsia, and hopefully take out the vessel’s forward shields, allowing the limpet mines to attach.
Hopefully.
“Any activity from the station, or Krissy’s fleet?” Cargo asked.
“Station took damage to fire control systems when Bes shot them up,” Krissy said. “And I’m delaying things with my fleet. You have maybe three minutes.”
“Shit! Didn’t realize you were still with us,” Cargo replied.
“Gotta go now; keeping this channel open any longer will look suspicious. Oh, thanks for saving my people, and my ass, in here.”
“No problem,” Cargo replied.
“Ready to boost,” Jessica announced. “Going to fire attitudes and line up in three, two, one!”
Though she gave the count aloud, she also passed it to Trevor over the link. Once the gamma rays lanced out and hammered the Excelia’s shields, Trevor fired the dorsal proton beams and the x-ray lasers.
Bes’s ship returned fire, and an explosion shook Sabrina.
“But so are their forward shields!” Nance called out. “Bet you didn’t think we had bite like that, suckas!”
“Fuck yeah!” Trevor added.
Jessica smiled, but kept her focus on the boost. The AP drive was still running, and she was jinking side to side, making them a hard target to hit as they flew past Gisha’s outer docking ring, and looped behind one of the heavy-matter haulers.
“Nance, any pings from our wanderers?” Cargo asked. “We need to find them before Jessica has to kill the drive.”
“I’ve been working with the girls. We have it narrowed down to a cone that’s about a half million square klicks,” Cheeky said.
Jessica coughed. “Shit, Nance, I’m going to need something more precise than that.”
“Head down the probability curve I drew out,” Nance replied.
Jessica brought up the data on her console, and saw the path she needed to follow.
“Are you kidding me? That has me boosting straight at one of the black holes!”
“When did you become such a thrill-seeker?” Jessica retorted as she adjusted the ship’s vector down the center of the cone.”
“Excelsia is coming about,” Trevor replied. “I think one of the limpets attached; not sure about the other.”
“Fucker’s gonna have a bad day,” Cargo said.
“One of us is,” Jessica muttered as Sabrina continued to pick up speed. On
the forward holo, the Grey Wolf Star and its dark ring, housing the forty spinning black holes, grew in size.
THE NOT SO BLACK HOLE
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Between Gisha Station and the DSM Ring
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
Cheeky said, barely keeping her mental tone from wavering.
By her calculations, they were about five thousand klicks from the edge of the doldrums. Once they passed out of the calm space around Gisha Station, punishing gravitational waves would sweep over them—probably killing them long before they reached the ring, anyway.
<’Kay,> was all Cheeky managed to get out.
She knew she was supposed to be tougher—hard as steel, like Sera and Tanis—but she just couldn’t do it. Fear kept tearing at the edges of her sanity, and she shifted nervously as Finaeus climbed over the bot, setting it spinning.
He wrapped his arms around the bot’s legs and hooked a leg around her as well.
Cheeky didn’t reply as she steadied her trembling limbs, and managed to get her arms and back in the right positions. She cross checked her thrust estimates with Piya, and fired the jets, slowing their spin and finally stabilizing them.
Then she carefully resumed her prior position: her back to the bot—and the terrible sight beyond it—staring up at Gisha Station, praying that someone up there would rescue them; but terrified that if she sent a signal, it would be the wrong someones.
Cheeky bit her lip and shook her head, but did hook an elbow around one of the bot’s limbs. Then Finaeus moved closer, wrapping an arm around her and laying a leg over hers.
Cheeky didn’t know why he bothered. They were going to die. He knew it. She knew it. There was no point in sugarcoating the truth.
She wished she could close her eyes, but her armor fed a continuous view into her mind, highlighting the safety of Gisha Station that was so far beyond their reach.
Ships swarmed around the station, likely searching for them—though none had ventured beyond the outer docking ring. There was little chance any would reach the pair clinging to the bot, even if they did send out a signal.
Then an explosion flared on the side of the station’s central hub, and she saw beamfire lance out and hit one of the ships.
She cycled her vision, and saw the familiar shape of Sabrina emerge from the station; her stasis shields flaring brighter than the grey star’s light as she took blow after blow from one of the Transcend ships.
Finaeus replied.
Finaeus replied.
Finaeus gave a rueful chuckle in response.
Cheeky didn’t, and wondered how Finaeus could have been so sure. Still, none of the TSF ships were moving toward their position, so maybe Finaeus did have some sort of special bond with Krissy.
She watched as Sabrina shot back at their attacker, and then fired her engines, cutting into the enemy ship with a brilliant display of energy.
Cheeky was about to signal Sabrina, when she suddenly felt very heavy and her back slammed hard into the bot. The armor took the brunt of the blow, but she was unable to breathe—her diaphragm couldn’t move enough to draw air into her lungs.
In a breath, the weight was gone; but then, just as suddenly it pushed the other way, and she clung desperately to the bot’s limbs.
A strong arm wrapped around her, and Cheeky was glad for the augmented strength the armor gave them as they were pushed and pulled, slammed into the spider bot, and then ripped away, shearing forces tearing through their bodies.
Then a crushing gravity wave washed over Cheeky. The limb of the spider-bot that she was clinging to tore free, and she spun away into space.
Piya beat her to it, and the armor sent out its beacon—a tiny radio spec in the blinding noise surrounding the Grey Wolf Star and the black holes that raced around it, tearing it apart atom by atom.
Cheeky began to hyperventilate, and thought she might pass out from the fear, pain, and increasing heat, when Piya stepped in and forcibly regulated her breathing.
Cheeky cried out in response.
Panic tore its way into her mind, and she spun about, searching for something to grab on to. She couldn’t see Finaeus and the spider-bot anywhere, and she began to sob into her helmet’s breathing apparatus, her throat starting to blister from the stifling air she was drawing in.
A detached part of her mind noted that, just as Finaeus had predicted, she began to drift above the ring—the light of the Grey Wolf Star growing brighter as the ring occluded less of it.
More and more heavy gravitational waves slammed into her, and she began to periodically lose consciousness as her body fluctuated between weightlessness and dozens of gs. She knew that if it hadn’t been for the rigidity of the armor, death would have come long ago.
Cheeky began to feel calm, and was surprised at the change in her mental state…she would have expected the panic to worsen; but as she crossed over the edge of the ring, all she could do was marvel at the beauty of what lay before her.
Cheeky replied as she saw the black holes racing around the inside of the ring, glowing with beautiful colors as they consumed small clouds of atoms smeared around their event horizon.
Cheeky mumbled.
RACE AGAINST GRAVITY
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, between Gisha Station and the DSM Ring
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
“I got a signal!” Nance cried out. “Passing it over, Jess. It’s just on this side of the mining ring.”
“Got it, adjusting…shit, they’re moving fast.”
“I’m going to have to brake hard and then swoop down. Someone get in a suit, and get down to the bay,” Jessica replied.
“I have it,” Cargo said as he raced off the bridge.
Jessica clenched her teeth as she spun the ship and fired the AP drive at max burn, careful not to send the gamma rays anywhere near the two signals that they were trying to reach.
Sabrina passed out of the doldrums and began to buck and heave as the gravitational waves washed over them.
“Are the dampeners broken?” Trevor asked as he frantically adjusted his seat’s straps so he could buckle in.
Jessica realized that the temperature in the bridge had been increasing, and that her brow was slick with sweat.
<’Kay, ‘kay!> Cargo shouted back.
Jessica knew not to pester him further, but she couldn’t stop biting her lip as the ship shook and rattled around them. If they were taking this much abuse inside the ship, what were Cheeky and Finaeus going through out in the black?