The Mae was one of two dark spots in his awareness though. In the case of the freighter, it was out of respect for the privacy of her crew. The Excalibur's computers were more than capable of infiltrating the Mae’s internal sensors if Victor wanted to.
The only place he couldn’t look into, even if he wanted, was the Mark VII AI core stored in cargo bay A-1. That was the old man, and he had made it clear that he wouldn’t let Victor poke around inside his metaphorical head.
Despite giving the Guardian the Excalibur, the old man didn’t seem to entirely trust him. Suspicious, to say the least, but also irrelevant to the task at hand. Victor’s purpose in life at the moment was to stop another world from being destroyed.
Lysandra and Lena entered his awareness as they boarded the Excalibur, heading straight to the nearest elevator and riding it up to the bridge in the center of the ship. Gaz and Cormac made their way to the bridge at the same time.
“It looks like your friends want to get good seats for the show,” the old man said.
“The bridge is as good a place as any,” said Victor. He stood and turned to face the bridge hatch just as it opened for Lysandra and Lena.
“Princess, Captain Dryer,” Victor said, nodding at both of them.
“Guardian,” Lysandra said.
Victor nodded, silently thanking her for using his title, his new name. He looked to Lena. “Captain Dryer, I would recommend moving your crew into the Excalibur. The hangar is not the most protected part of the ship, and I’m afraid I cannot guarantee the safety of the Daisy Mae when we come under fire.”
Lena crossed her arms. “Isn’t this supposed to be some kind of badass First Civilization ship?”
“Even the Excalibur has her limits,” Victor said. As the Guardian, he knew exactly what those limits were. Even though she was far superior to any ship in the Alliance fleet, she was still one ship against thousands. He couldn’t win in a straight-up fight, so he had a different plan in mind.
Lena nodded. “In that case, I’ll tell my crew to board the Excalibur. Where should they go?”
“I recommend they move to the center of the ship, as it’s the most protected,” said Victor. “They are even welcome on the bridge.”
“The bridge? Should I warn them not to press any buttons?” Lena asked.
“That won’t be necessary. I’ve disabled all the consoles,” Victor said.
“Pardon me if I interject,” the princess said. “But my homeworld?”
Lena lay a hand on the princess’ shoulder.
Victor nodded, recalling—thanks to his access to the Excalibur’s data-memories —his homeworld along with the frightening number of other worlds that had shared the same fate. “We’ll get there in time, Princess Lysandra. The throneworld is on the far side of the system relative to the jump point, and the Imperial Home Fleet is no doubt putting up a fierce resistance.”
Lysandra pursed her lips. “Do you think you can stop Quill before the bombardment begins?”
“Yes,” Victor said. “With the Excalibur’s acceleration, I should reach the Gryphon within an hour of jumping in.”
“Oh, boy, those fuckers have no idea what’s coming,” Gaz said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.
“Remember those people were once your allies, Gaz,” Cormac said.
“Those fuckers killed Fara,” Gaz said, scowling. “They’re gettin’ off easy, considerin’ what the captain’s planning.”
“Assuming things go according to plan,” Victor said.
“What if things don’t go according to plan?” the princess asked.
Victor tried to give her a reassuring look, but that was hard to do with a static faceplate. “Then I’ll improvise. I’m pretty good at that.”
Lysandra nodded, but clearly she was still worried.
Victor sat back down in his seat. It was time to jump. There was no countdown. As soon as the Excalibur crossed into the jump point at her maximum jump-safe speed, the drive activated, and suddenly they were in the Lysander system. Along with a flotilla of Alliance warships.
The face of a harsh female officer in a Mustang Navy uniform appeared in a small window in his view.
“Unidentified vessel, this is the Free Worlds’ vessel Williamsburg. Cut your drives and—”
Victor didn’t give her the chance to finish. He activated the Excalibur’s jammers, filling every sensor and communications antenna within a light second with white noise.
Turning toward the Alliance fleet in the distance, he fired the Excalibur’s drives at full power and charged after them.
The cruisers and destroyers surrounding the jump point didn’t react immediately, no doubt stunned by the overwhelming power of First Civilization jammers.
But the surprise was brief. The three cruisers and ten destroyers surrounding the jump point opened fire with their kinetic weapons. But, even at close range, none of them could get a good lock on the Excalibur.
The battlecruiser flew from range of the picket ships within a matter of minutes without a single kinetic round striking her hull. A missile salvo was launched after her, but none of the warheads could maintain a lock against the Excalibur’s jammers. Victor didn’t even need to fire a single PD shot to protect his ship.
“Shit, I don’t even think they got a chance to read our name plate,” Gaz said.
“Guardian, can you show me where the Alliance fleet is?” the princess asked.
Victor nodded and created a holoprojection for everyone to see. Then he saw something was wrong; the Alliance fleet was much closer to Lysander than he had expected. They had already passed the star and were on the braking burn toward the planet.
“I thought you said they wouldn’t be so close to Lysander.”
“I assumed the Home Fleet would put up more resistance,” Victor said. He created another projection, one of the planet Lysander and the protective shell of ships around it. “It appears they have gathered near the planet Lysander to make a last stand within range of the planetary defenses.”
“Uther Solari is commanding the Home Fleet,” the princess said. She said his name with particular venom.
“How do you know that?” Victor asked.
“Because that traitor always favored defensive strategies,” Lysandra said. “He won’t leave the defense of his newly acquired throneworld to someone else.”
“Well, his dubious defensive strategy will make catching the Alliance fleet harder,” Victor said. He plotted an intercept course passing well within the corona of Lysander’s star.
“You’re planning on getting awfully close to that star,” the old man said.
“Did you really have to say that out loud?” Victor asked.
“Considering I’m on this ship, yes,” the old man said.
“Wait a minute. What do you mean, you’re getting close to that star?” Lena asked.
Not turning to face her, Victor said, “In order to reach the Alliance fleet before they get in bombardment range of Lysander, I have to cut as close to the star as possible.”
“That’s not even the best part. You’ll initiate a retrograde burn when you’re near the closest approach,” the old man said. “You’ll slow down while within the star’s corona.”
“I need to utilize the star’s gravity during the braking burn to make sure I don’t overshoot the Alliance fleet,” Victor said. “And, besides, the Excalibur can take it.”
“When she was in factory-fresh condition maybe,” the old man said. “But after spending a thousand years inside a rock, I’m not so sure.”
“You should be flattered, old man,” Victor said. “I’m showing you how much faith I have in your ability to maintain this ship during all those long years of inactivity.”
The old man harrumphed and said no more.
Lena walked to his side. Even seated, Victor was taller than the small woman. She rapped twice on the side of his helmet to get his attention. “Ah, excuse me, but why are you worried about overshooting? I thought you wer
e launching hit-and-run attacks.”
Victor tilted his head toward the princess. “She didn’t tell you?”
“I…didn’t really want to worry her,” Lysandra said.
Lena faced the princess. “And what do you mean by that? Am I some shrinking violet to you? Is that it?”
Lysandra shook her head emphatically. “No, no, it’s not that!”
“Then tell me,” Lena said.
The princess walked to Lena, took hold of her hands, and explained Victor’s plan to her. The freighter captain’s gray eyes went wide. “He’s doing what?”
“Exactly,” the princess said.
“Crazy plans aren’t exactly something new with the captain,” Gaz said.
“And may I add that, this time, he has at his disposal some of the finest technology ever devised,” Cormac said.
“I think I need to sit down,” Lena said.
“Good idea,” the princess said.
Victor returned his focus to flying the Excalibur.
The yellow sun grew closer and closer with alarming speed. Everyone on the bridge was tense. Only the members of Lena’s crew relaxed; they didn't know Victor planned on grazing the edge of a star.
The braking thrusters fired just after the Excalibur crossed into the corona. Victor rotated the battlecruiser to keep the Excalibur’s hull facing edge-on, minimizing the surface area exposed to the star’s wrath. Even so, the hull’s temperature rose at an alarming rate. Countless charged particles hit the ship, adding even more energy to the heat building up inside the hull. It was more than the Excalibur’s radiators could handle, and the starship’s millennia-old heat sinks filled with waste-heat.
“Just to let you know,” the old man said, “if you melt this ship, you’re fired.”
“We’ll make it,” Victor said. He started to understand why the AI liked to be referred to as the old man. He was certainly grumpy enough.
The Excalibur blazed through the closest approach of the star, and the radiation hitting the hull subsided. The star’s gravity pulled on the ship as she flew away, aiding the thrusters in slowing her down, enough that she would not overshoot the Alliance fleet millions of kilometers ahead.
The fleet collectively stopped their acceleration and turned to face the Excalibur.
“It looks like they’ve noticed us,” the old man said.
“Yes, they have. Now for the hard part,” Victor said.
A cloud of missiles erupted from the Alliance fleet. A heavy-handed reaction to one ship coming up from behind, but Victor couldn’t blame them. He would do the same if he saw an unidentified ship flying from the sun.
The missiles converged around the Excalibur in a wave of warheads and washed right past without a single one coming within ten kilometers of the ship. Victor imagined some shock spreading among the officers of the Alliance fleet at that moment.
The Alliance fleet fired another massive missile volley, which proved as ineffective as the first. Free Worlder missiles were no match for First Civilization countermeasures.
As Victor got closer to his target, the Alliance fleet changed tactics with lighter ships moving out of the way to give the battleships a clear line of fire. Every capital-class gun in the Alliance fleet was trained on him, including those of his target, the Gryphon.
An immense, punishing barrage of hot metal greeted the Excalibur as it crossed within a million kilometers of the fleet.
The ship automatically started an evasive pattern, and, at first, it proved easy to avoid taking hits. But, as the Excalibur got closer, the Free Worlder fire got more accurate.
The Excalibur took a glancing hit from a battleship’s main gun five hundred thousand kilometers out. The shields spread out the impact, and the armor held fast. But it was just the first of many hits.
The range shrank, and the frequency of hits increased exponentially. Victor got his first damage alert two hundred thousand kilometers out after a direct hit jammed one of the Excalibur’s dorsal gun turrets.
Victor ignored the alert and began charging the Excalibur’s main weapons, a pair of particle cannons that ran parallel to the battlecruiser’s keel.
Instead of solid metal, like the kinetic weapons Victor was used to, the particle cannons fired a beam of charged particles at relativistic velocities. A devastating, if somewhat short-range, weapon. He was only just now within effective range.
He targeted the Gryphon and turned the battlecruiser toward the high councilor’s private battleship. Another direct hit to the Excalibur’s starboard hull buckled the armor, breaching the pressure hull and knocking out a cluster of maneuvering thrusters.
The Guardian ignored it and concentrated on aiming. He would only get one shot.
One hundred thousand kilometers out, Victor fired the particle cannons. Twin beams of blazing-hot ionized iron atoms shot from the Excalibur’s forward hull. A second later, both beams hit the Gryphon in her main drive section, punching clean through the ship. The drives flickered out, leaving the battleship adrift and helpless.
Victor stood and left the bridge. Time for the next part of the plan.
***
With a combination of augmented legs and the warsuit’s built-in thrusters, Victor launched himself into space.
With a puff from his suit thrusters, he turned around to look at the Excalibur.
The vast bladelike hull gleamed in the yellow sunlight of Lysander’s star, the dents and burns from her battle damage clearly visible.
Just a few seconds after Victor leapt into space, her main drives fired, and the vessel shot away with speeds that seemed impossible for something so big. With so many hostile ships around, she couldn’t move slowly for very long.
The battlecruiser had instructions to loiter a safe distance from the Alliance fleet and avoid any fights. Should Victor fail, she was programmed to return to the Stone on her own. If the worst happened, his friends would be safe, and the old man could find the Excalibur a new master.
When the Excalibur faded from view, Victor fired his maneuvering thrusters again to face the direction of the Gryphon. It was a barely visible speck just over one hundred kilometers away, and he drifted toward it at one hundred meters per second. It was practically standing still compared to the speeds he was used to, even on a slow starship, but the warsuit only had just enough fuel to slow him down to a survivable velocity.
So he drifted and drifted and drifted toward the crippled battleship. Gas and a sparse cloud of debris surrounded it. Ships around the Gryphon continued firing their weapons at the fleeing Excalibur, more intent on destroying the Gryphon’s assailant rather than helping the Gryphon. That suited Victor just fine; for his plan to work, the high councilor had to still be aboard.
A red reticle appeared on his faceplate readout, pointing out a two-centimeter chunk of the Gryphon’s hull on a collision course with him. A quick puff from the suit thrusters moved Victor from the path of the debris.
No long afterward a meter-wide piece appeared, and Victor had to fire the suit thrusters to dodge that too. Each time his fired the thrusters, his tension rose. Not only did firing the thrusters use up fuel that he needed to slow to a nonsuicidal velocity, but it also increased his risk of detection.
In open space, his mighty and highly advanced warsuit would make an easy target for even the most rudimentary of point-defense weapons.
Ninety seconds out, Victor fired his suit thrusters in a long braking burn. Victor almost wished he had equipped himself with one of the vastly more powerful thruster packs available on the Excalibur, but their engines were far brighter than the tiny maneuvering thrusters on his suit. He'd be detected for sure if he had used one of those.
Just before impact, Victor oriented his legs toward the hull, making sure not to lock his knees. The soles of his boots impacted the hull at ten meters per second. Victor sprawled out on his hands and knees against the hull to absorb the impact while smart adhesive in his gloves and boots kept him from bouncing off.
Victor allo
wed himself a moment to heave a sigh of relief before moving toward the nearest point of entry.
The hull of the Gryphon stretched around him like a metal island in a sea of stars. About one hundred meters to his right was a maintenance airlock.
Commanding the smart adhesive to let go, Victor fired his suit thrusters and drifted over the airlock, grabbing a handhold to anchor himself in front of it.
Breaking into the airlock was easy. Victor just planted his hand against the control panel and let the warsuit hack it. The airlock depressurized within seconds, and, one minute later, the outer hatch cracked open. Victor helped himself inside. He fell to the deck almost immediately. The artificial gravity was still working.
Laying his hand on the inner panel, Victor repressurized the airlock and then opened the inner hatch.
***
He barely made it ten meters past the airlock before he ran into four members of the Gryphon’s crew, all wearing utilitarian pressure suits with tools strapped to their harnesses.
Their eyes went wide behind their open faceplates, and they backpedaled at the sight of Victor. “What the hell is that?”
"It's a problem for the marines! Run!"
The maintenance crew retreated, shouting into their communicators.
Victor let them go; he had no plans on being stealthy.
It wasn’t long before he ran into the first resistance, a team of lightly armed and armored marines holding a junction. They fired their assault rifles as soon as they saw him, placing well-aimed bursts into Victor’s chest.
The rounds bounced harmlessly off the warsuit’s shield-reinforced armor.
Victor gave the marines a second to absorb the ineffectiveness of their weapons before he charged down the corridor. The four marines fired their weapons on full auto in a futile attempt to drive off Victor and continued firing as he ran past them. Their weapons couldn’t hurt him. No point in fighting them.
He left the marines behind, moving faster down the corridor than they could follow. He only stopped when a heavy door slammed shut in front of him. He placed his hand on the control console, letting the warsuit hack it like he did with the airlock. The door opened, and the marines waiting on the other side opened fire.
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