by Nick Webb
“Captain!”
The sensor officer on duty had nearly leapt out of his chair. “Captain, I’m reading a massive gravitic shift signature.”
“Scan all orbits of Destiny,” Jake said, watching as the results scrolled down his screen.
“Scanning,” said the Ensign at sensors, his fingertips flying over his console. After a moment, his face went white, and he looked up. “Sir, it’s the Caligula, and she brought company.”
Jake stood up and faced the screen, which had readjusted to zoom in on the approaching ships, which still only appeared as distant specks of light set against the shimmering purple blue atmosphere of Destiny, rotating obliviously below.
“How many?”
“I’m reading the Imperator, the Bolgia, the Thessalonika, and …” he gulped.
Jake turned to the tactical octagon. “Yes? Any more?”
“And, I can’t believe it, sir, but the fifth ship is the Roc.”
***
Jake slammed down on the comm switch. “Bernoulli, I need those engines now!”
The Roc.
One of the Nine. Jake had been sure the rest were destroyed.
And he suddenly realized why he had fallen back into his chair.
The Roc was Crash’s ship. Crash Jackson. His old friend. And now, the ship had probably been cleared of all Resistance personnel, and restaffed by Imperial loyalists. Who knows what happened to the original crew members.
Alessandro’s harried voice sounded over the speakers. “Friend, not yet! The crystal matrix has been infused with the neodymium, but we still have to wait for diffusion to—“
“No time! Alessandro, we’re out of time. We’ve got no fewer than five Corsican capital ships bearing down on us, and if we don’t get the hell outta here, we’re fucked!”
Alessandro’s voice said something garbled and inaudible, then asked, “can’t we just do a few short range shifts to evade them for half an hour or so? Like Commander Megan did while we were on Destiny?”
Unbelievable. Jake swore under his breath. “Bernoulli, are you telling me we have short range shift capabilities? Because that fucking better be what you’re telling me!”
Commander Po announced from the rear of the bridge. “Two minutes to intercept, Captain.”
Bernoulli spluttered through the comm. “Yes! Jake, yes! I can give you five, maybe six shifts! We just need to make sure we conserve enough juice for the long shift to … well, wherever it is you’re taking us. But don’t do more than six.”
Jake clicked the comm off and jumped up, racing over to the navigation station. He rested a hand on Ensign Roshenko’s shoulder. “Ensign, shift us to the other side of the planet.” He pointed down at her display, tapping some coordinates roughly halfway around Destiny, but at a much lower orbit.
He heard Po’s voice call out, “All hands to battle stations. Repeat, all hands to battle stations. Five Imperial cruisers on an intercept vector. All hands to battle stations.”
The bright spots on the screen had finally resolved into the dreaded figures of five battleships. Three Centurion-Class, like the Caligula and the Fury. A fourth was an older Dreadnaught-Class cruiser. But the fifth—the Roc was identical to the Phoenix, from the vaguely dagger-like shape, down to the next generation gravitic drives that enabled the short range shifts the Phoenix was about to initiate.
“Ready, Ensign?”
“Coordinates locked in, grav computer finished with the calcs,” she said.
“Get us out of here.”
Roshenko tapped a button, and immediately the view of the five ships set against the purple-blue atmosphere disappeared, replaced by the sandy brown color of Destiny’s surface as they shifted to a much lower orbit. Soon the view changed to Destiny’s tiny equatorial ocean, shallow blue waters dotted by hundreds of tropical desert islands, just barely discernible from their height.
“Shift complete, and successful, sir,” said Ensign Roshenko.
Jake spun around to the tactical octagon. “Sensors? What are they up to?”
Ensign Ayala burst through the sliding door to the bridge just as the sensor officer reported. “Imperial ships are breaking formation, sir. Four are changing course, all spread out from each other. But the Roc is holding steady.”
Ayala slid into her chair at the octagon, relieving the yeoman who had filled in for her. Jake nodded a greeting.
“Blessings, Captain. Just tell me when to blast the bastards out of orbit,” she said, without taking her eyes off the screen. Her response nearly made Jake grin.
He stepped over to the octagon. “What courses did the other four change to?”
The Ensign manning the sensor station bit his lip. “Looks like they’re radiating out over four different orbits…” he trailed off, studying the vectors. “Sir, if we hold our course, we’ll run into the Thessalonika in about ten minutes. In fact, if we change our course to just about anything else, the most time we buy is maybe five, ten more minutes.”
Jake spun back around to navigation. “Roshenko, change course to give us the most time until intercept with an Imperial.” He turned back to octagon. “Which one is the Dreadnaught?”
The Ensign peered at his display, and Jake used the time to glance at the man’s name tag hanging lopsidedly off his uniform.
Ensign Minkowski. Sounded Russian, or Eastern European. Jake had thought he could detect a slight accent to the man’s voice.
“It’s the Imperator, sir,” said Ensign Minkowski.
“Good. Patch those coordinates through to Roshenko.” He turned back to the nav station. “Ensign, adjust course to avoid them as long as possible, but make the Imperator the one we meet first.”
Po stepped up to the octagon next to him. “Good. Now we just have to hope that they haven’t yet figured out how to—“
Minkowski shouted, but the flicker on the screen made his announcement unnecessary. “Sir! Gravitic signature! Sensor contact with the Roc at twelve mark zero!”
Flashes lit up the screen as the other ship began firing its ion-beam cannons and railguns.
“Open fire! Target their gravitic drive. The sooner that thing’s out of commission, the sooner we can hide elsewhere.”
Jake sat back down in the captain’s chair and buckled himself in, right as the ship began rumbling with the collisions from the railgun slugs—an all-too-familiar feeling.
“Ensign Roshenko, maneuver us so our gravitic drive is not exposed to their fire. We lose that, we lose our lives.”
The rumbling continued, as the occasional railgun slug found its way through the projectile screen thrown up by the defense crew and impacted the already pockmarked hull. Jake wondered just how much more punishment his ship could take.
And at just that moment, someone burst onto the bridge shouting.
“ONE MORE! ONE MORE!”
Jake spun around, just in time to see the two marines stationed at the door tackle Jeremiah, the boy he’d brought back from the uranium mine on Destiny, and the three went down in a struggle of arms, fists, legs, and curses.
“Ah, shit,” said Jake as released his restraint and sprung out of his seat towards the door. “Jeremiah! Settle down, son. Get a hold of yourself!”
But his words had no apparent effect, and one of the marines flew sprawling away, nose broken.
He reached down to the remaining marine. “Get off. Let me take care of it.”
The marine looked at him in dismay, but let go of Jeremiah’s flailing arms and ducked away.
“Jeremiah, listen to me. You can’t be here right now. We’re under attack. Understand? You’ve got to go back to your quarters.”
“One more,” the youth said defiantly. But he had stopped struggling and appeared more calm.
“Listen. This is an emergency. Just—”
“No.” The boy glanced down momentarily at himself and then to Jake as if to suggest that he was intending on protecting the Captain. “One more.”
Another large explosion rocked th
e ship. “I don’t have time for this.” He turned back to his seat before glancing back at the skin-and-bones teen sitting on the floor. “Just stay there and shut up, then.”
“Just one more,” the boy repeated, even more defiantly.
“Fine.” Jake sat down and strapped in, and glanced at his console. “Po, what’s our weapons status? Are we out of railgun slugs yet?”
Po looked up from her station. “Almost. Maybe five minutes left, at this rate. Then we’re down to our ion-beam cannons, and gigawatt lasers. And of course there’s the—“
“Sir! Gravitic signature! It’s the Thessalonika!”
Jake’s head snapped up to the wall display, and indeed, the second ship soared towards them, and opened up a second front on their port flank.
“What the hell? Did they port over the new gravitic tech from the Roc?”
Ensign Minkowski examined his console, and shook his head. “No, sir, it looks like their cap banks are completely depleted. They used everything they had in that shift, just like a conventional drive would have done.”
The rumbling from the railgun slug impacts grew more intense, and the lights flickered off and on as the effects of the assault began to trickle to all the subsystems.
“Hull breach on deck four! Decompression detected!” Po barked orders into her comm to organize the emergency response.
Jake shouted over to the nav station. “Ensign, shift us the hell out of here. Take us to a position furthest away from the other ships.”
Roshenko’s fingers fluttered across her board, and moments later, the rumblings stopped, and the front viewscreen displayed the placid brown planet below, devoid of attacking Imperial cruisers. Jake scanned the damage reports coming in on his console. “Status?” he said.
“Three dead on deck six,” said Po, grimly. “Two missing. Injuries reported in engineering and a few of the weapons installations.”
Jake punched his comm button. “Bernoulli, what’s the situation? Can we get out of here?”
Silence, except for the creaks and groans of the ship as it adjusted to the strains the enemy fire had put upon it.
“Alessandro, you there?”
Jake felt his stomach give way as a new voice answered him.
“Captain, this is Lieutenant Caraway. Commander Bernoulli is in sickbay. He’s injured.”
Jake forced himself not to jump out of his chair. The whole bridge crew was watching him, and they needed to see him be cool under fire. Even when a friend was down. Especially when a friend was down.
“Very well. What’s our engine status, Caraway?”
“We need twenty more minutes, sir, before I can give you long-range shift capabilities.”
Which, judging by the clock and Bernoulli’s last estimate, was exactly the answer he was expecting.
“Fine. Just let us know when—“
“Sir!” yelled Ensign Minkowski, “Gravitic signature! The Roc is on us again!”
No sooner had the Ensign finished than the rumbling started again, and the viewscreen adjusted to show their twin ship, the Roc, blast away at them with shimmering bursts of blue ion bursts and lightning-fast streaks of railgun slugs soaring across the space between them.
“Open fire! Ayala, have we done anything to their grav drive yet?”
“No, sir,” came her response. “Their engines are as heavily shielded as ours.”
“Naturally,” replied Jake, with a wry grin.
Po yelled out. “Dammit! Decompression on decks seven and eight! Forward ion-beam cannons are out!”
Jake examined his display, and saw that their rear flank might offer them better protection. “Roshenko, turn us around. Head us east, and ramp up our speed to achieve orbital velocity, just in case our drive goes out.”
The viewscreen changed to split-screen, as half kept its view of the Roc blasting away at them, and the other half swiveled to match the view from the front of the ship. The planet appeared to rotate a little faster underneath them as they picked up speed.
But a flicker on that half of the screen presaged Minkowski’s next blurted announcement. “Sir! It’s the Caligula!”
The dreaded sight of Admiral Trajan’s ship just made Jake mad. He’d seen enough of that vessel, the cause of too many cries of too many crew members in engineering, of too many bodies stacked up in the temporary morgue. His first impulse was to order a full spread of every single quantum-field torpedo they had left at her.
“They’re opening fire, sir!” called Minkowski.
Jake glanced over at Po. “Not even a hello, the bastards.”
She was too busy with damage control to acknowledge his quip.
“Roshenko, plot our next shift and get us the hell out of here,” said Jake.
“Aye, sir. Calculating grav shift coordinates now.”
To Jake, it seemed that the Caligula knew they were about to shift away, and were throwing everything they had at them in a desperate effort to prevent their escape. Wave upon wave of railgun slugs and ion bursts pounded their battered hull, and the ship lurched violently.
“Shifting now!” called Roshenko.
The viewscreen changed, and replacing the split view of the Caligula and the Roc firing at them came the placid brown planet once more. From experience, Jake knew they had about one minute before the Roc caught up with them, and likely soon after that, the Imperator.
The comm crackled in his ear. “This is Lieutenant Caraway in engineering. Sir, that last wave hit our cap banks. We lost some capacity.”
Jake pounded his armrest, before catching himself. He eyed the men and women around the bridge watching him—those that weren’t too absorbed with their own displays. “What have we got left, Lieutenant?”
“We’re at half capacity now, sir. We have enough for the long range shift in about ten minutes, but that’s it. No more short range shifting for us.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Bridge out.” He glanced at the clock.
Ten minutes.
They had to survive for ten minutes.
***
The Plan.
Senator Galba was used to being the one in charge. His staff answered to his beck and call. Lobbyists and regional governors from all across the Thousand Worlds begged for just a few minutes of his time, allowing him to amass quite a sizable campaign war chest—not that he ever had to fear losing re-election—his father had always seen to that early on, and the Emperor had his back in his later years, but all the same, he was a man of consequence, dammit.
But when Trajan and the Emperor had revealed The Plan to him, it was life-changing. It opened his eyes. Not only to the necessity of the Taboo—and the necessity of breaking it—but to mankind’s place in the galaxy. It would truly be the Pax Humana, but only if The Plan succeeded.
Humanity depended on them.
But the Earth Resistance had thrown them for a loop. Old Earth was the key. The lynchpin. The most important world in The Plan. But with the Resistance mucking things up it had set them back.
Hence the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Not only was the position one of prestige for him, but it allowed him first and foremost to push forward The Plan.
But Old Earth was perhaps a hundred lightyears away. He had to get back. To finish his mission.
I have to get off this damn ship.
He sighed—he knew the answer. The only way to get off the Phoenix was through Ayala. His favorite Belenite.
He stood outside her quarters, hand poised over the door chime. She’d wonder where he’d gone. Why he’d hidden from her.
Why had he hidden from her?
Something about the way she looked at him, when they were having sex. He’d ride her like he was twenty-five again, and all the while she’d stare him in the eye, serenely cool, present with him in the moment—making all the right noises and movements—but something was off.
It was like she was inside of him, rather than the other way around. Inside his head.
He touched the chime.
She poked her head into the hallway, looking each way before seizing his shirt and yanking him into the room.
“Where have you been, Harrison? I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
She was staring into his eyes, this time not calmly penetrating, but with palpable fury. He’d rarely seen a Belenite get so worked up. They usually displayed such a serene aura that they were known as people that first and foremost kept their cool.
“Just trying to find a way off the ship, thank you very much. I can’t stay cooped up in your quarters here. I just can’t do it, my love.”
He paced her small quarters, walking the three or four meters of space between the bed and the bathroom.
“I told you, I’ll find you a way off the ship, but not with you sneaking around like you’ve been doing. Just think what’ll happen to you if you get caught?” She blew a puff of frustrated air through her lips and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I should just turn you in right now. Let Mercer deal with you. Send you out the airlock or something.”
He knew she didn’t mean it, but the suggestion chilled his blood. “Fine. I’ll stay here. Just promise me I can get out soon? I’ve got obligations back on Old Earth, and Corsica.”
She smirked. “Of course. You’ve got big plans you need to get back to.”
His head snapped towards her. Did she know? How could she know? “What did you say?”
“Big plans. At least, I assume you’ve got big plans for your career what with your sweet committee job. I’m sure the Truth and Reconciliation commission was a real stressful assignment. Getting sent back to Old Earth to lounge around on Mediterranean beaches while your staff goes to a few meetings. Rough life, Senator.”
Good. She didn’t know. As far as he knew he didn’t talk in his sleep, and unless she had suddenly developed magical telepathic powers his secret was safe. “Where are we headed to, anyway? What’s next?”
Ayala shrugged. “I overheard them talking about Oberon when I was on the bridge. Something about going into the Void—a sector of space that’s inaccessible to large capital ships and therefore mostly off-limits to the Empire.”