Last Flight of the Acheron

by Rick Partlow

  I manage to force enough reason into whatever part of my hindbrain that had taken over my body to fall into a crouch as the electron beams and hyper-accelerated tantalum needles from the ground troops and the wash of protons from the mecha ripped up the ground around me. God only knew why I hadn't been nailed yet---maybe it was all the burning metal fucking up their sights. Most of the battlesuits were down, but that mecha was still coming, and both weapons were running low.

  And then a searing blast of coherent light speared the Tahni machine's upper chest, blowing through its armor in an explosion of sparks and metal fragments and suddenly killing its fuel containment field. I barely had time to throw myself down before the antimatter went up, the ignition shaking the ground, the roar rattling my bones; without the implant buffers, my eardrums would have been gone. The shock knocked me back to my senses, and I was finally able to take control of my actions again. Looking back, I saw the Raven coming to a hover above the beach, the obvious source of the shot that had saved us. But I hadn't told it to come in...

  "Are you through?" I heard Deke's voice ask, and looked back to see him leaning on one arm, his left side covered with blood, the hair and skin burned off the left side of his head along with part of his hood.

  "Deke..." I numbly dropped his beamer and ran back to him. "Are you all right?"

  "Hell no, I'm not all right!" Deke yelled through clenched teeth, pulling off the tattered remnants of his face hood and angrily throwing it to the ground. He was pale and there was a lot of pain in his eyes. His biofeedback loop should have been shutting a lot of it out, and the painkillers and coagulants from his pharmacy organ would be kicking in soon, but he looked bad: the bare, silvery bone was sticking out from his knee...Oh, God...

  "My fucking leg is blown off, I'm right in the middle of a fucking Tahni ambush, and you look like you're hell-bent on getting us both killed! Any more fucking stupid questions? Or can we get the fuck out of here?"

  Nodding silently, I grabbed him around the waist, hefted him up with one arm and carried him to the Raven. Its belly ramp was down and waiting for us about a meter off the ground, its belly jets kicking up a billowing cloud of dust and loose vegetation. I fairly threw Deke up the ramp, hoping the painkillers had taken effect, then leaped on board behind him.

  Get us the hell out of here! I yelled mentally at the ship's AI, closing the ramp behind us and hauling Deke's barely-conscious form toward the cockpit. Maximum realspace speed.

  I struggled to keep myself upright as the Raven fed power to the atmospheric jets, running scooped up air through the fusion reactor and expelling it at hypersonic speeds. We exploded through the upper atmosphere at over Mach seven, and I wished it were faster.

  Deke was drifting in and out of consciousness, moaning softy, but his bleeding had stopped by the time we reached the equipment bay behind the cockpit and I pulled open the automed cabinet. I leaned him against the console and began stripping off his gear. He was all blood and burned flesh on his left side, down to the ragged stump where his left calf used to be. Gritting my teeth to fight back the nausea, I lifted him up and gently sat him inside the coffin-shaped device. I paused for just a moment to make sure I had the settings right, then I closed the lid, and headed for the cockpit.

  Any pursuit? I asked the Raven, falling into the pilot's seat. We were out of the atmosphere, running off metallic hydrogen fuel until we could get far enough out of the gravity well to use the Teller-Fox warp units.

  Sensors detect three enemy corvettes emerging from over the planet's horizon.

  Bastards. I knew they'd have more ships. It wasn't a big problem, though: we had a jump on them, and this ship was built for speed as well as stealth. We were hauling around double banks of capacitors, one kept charged to let us jump at will and the other usually left cold so we could use the warp field as a defense shield. Once we got out of orbit, I could hit the warp units and get us to a safe distance to jump to Transition space. But there was that little voice again, whispering in my ear...it was too damned easy.

  Active sensors forward! I snapped at Raven.

  Active neutrino scans were risky in this situation, but...

  Warning! Raven screamed at me. Enemy picket ship at three-six, ten thousand kilometers ahead.

  Fuck!

  They'd had her sitting out there, powered down, trying to run me right into her guns. With a thought, I assumed active control of the ship and pulled her into a vertical climb out of the system's elliptical plane at full thrust, our fusion flare standing out like a beacon behind us.

  Enemy vessel is powering up his drives, Raven warned. Corvettes are altering course to follow.

  How long to safe jump distance?

  At present acceleration and course, five minutes and twenty-one seconds.

  Still no problem. Those corvettes couldn't keep up, and although the picket ship had the power to outrun us, she'd only just activated her drives.

  Picket ship is launching a missile. Neutrino signature is consistent with a shipkiller.

  Oh, shit.

  Why would they waste one of those on us? Those things were basically an overpowered starship with a quick-burnout antiproton drive that could shunt them up to relativistic speeds. We're talking AI guidance, twenty millimeters of bonded armor, its own defense shield and a 100-megaton fusion warhead.

  Time till intercept?

  Approximately two minutes and forty-eight seconds.

  Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!

  Launch all remaining missiles, I ordered. Spread them out along the probable avoidance courses.

  Launching.

  Not that I actually thought they'd stop it.

  And then what? If we tried to jump too close to that fucking mudball back there, the gravitational warping effect would distort our temporary wormhole and we'd wind up scattering our atoms through both dimensions like we'd never existed. And there was no way in hell we could outrun that missile in realspace.

  I searched quickly through the ship's databanks, and found out that the closest to a planetary body anyone had ever successfully Transitioned was a bit less than eight planetary diameters away. In two minutes and forty-eight seconds, we'd be exactly seven diameters away. Recommended jump distance was ten diameters.

  Our intercept missiles have detonated, Raven announced. I cannot accurately assess the damage they have done, but the shipkiller is still on course and accelerating at several hundred gravities.

  Good to know Tahni quality control was holding up. No choice anymore. We'd have to risk a Close Jump. Oh, well. At least it'd be a painless death; not a bad way to go, just fading into oblivion. I wondered, if there was an afterlife, would I see Jenna there? Or maybe this was it; maybe this life was all we got. If that was true, I'd really fucked up. The center of my adult life had been killing people---not humans, but still people.

  If my Dad was right, I was damned to Hell, and the last seven years of my life had been meaningless bullshit. If that was so, maybe it'd be better just to end it here. It was too bad Deke had to be here, though. If I knew him, he would have wanted to go out with a bang, or in bed...or both.

  Sorry, Deke.

  S'okay, Cal. I blinked. Had he really said that or was I imagining things? Maybe I didn't really want to know.

  Ten seconds till Transition, Raven announced the results of my decision. Eighteen seconds till missile intercept.

  Damn. I'd been sitting here thinking for a good two minutes. Almost missed the big moment.

  Nine...

  How'd that prayer go again? Oh, yeah. Our father who art in Heaven...

  Eight...

  Hallowed by thy name.

  Seven...

  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

  Six...

  Give us this day our daily bread...

  Five...

  And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

  Four...

  Lead us not into temptat
ion, but deliver us from evil.

  Three...

  For thine is the power and the glory...

  Two...

  Forever and ever...

  One...

  Amen.

  The very air around me seemed to swirl as the computer fed the warp unit a capacitor charge, pushing the gravimetic field to overload in a fraction of a second and creating an artificial, temporary wormhole in front of the ship. The stars twisted into a distorted rainbow ring around us and then we were swallowed up by the living nothingness of Transition Space...and safety.

  I sighed deeply, settling back in my seat and running a hand over my face. It was almost disappointing. And that was really frightening.

  What's Captain Conner’s condition? I asked the ship.

  He is stable. The automed has removed the fragments and sealed his wounds with synthskin. There should be no difficulty in cloning a replacement for his leg.

  So, Deke was safe, I was safe, everybody was safe.

  Except I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel safe at all.

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