Rebel Fleet

by B. V. Larson

  Turning back to the thing on the screen, I forced a smile.

  “Well then,” I said brightly. “Looks like we’re going to have to become best friends.”

  Captain Behir looked at me dubiously, but he didn’t argue. I took that as a plus.

  =35=

  Captain Behir signed off after telling us to come aboard at our leisure. Unfortunately, we never got the chance to accept his invitation.

  “Chief,” Dr. Chang said. “You’d better take a look behind us.”

  I would have done as he suggested, but there was something going on directly ahead that I was more concerned about.

  What I saw was the receding fantail of the destroyer, Talon.

  “How can we dock with them when they’re running off like that?” Mia demanded.

  “It doesn’t make sense…” I said.

  “Chief, check your six—” Dr. Chang said, but he broke off.

  Just then a huge shadow flew by us. It was a ship, a starship, and it was much larger than our ship or Talon. It bore the distinctive emblem of the Imperials.

  I’d seen the symbol before. To me, it looked like a golden ribcage on a circular field of red. But I’d never seen one this close.

  As I dove Hammerhead away from the hulking enemy, Samson didn’t have to be told to engage every defensive measure we had left.

  “It’s the enemy heavy cruiser,” Gwen said, “it must have come after Talon through the rift.”

  “The commander must be crazy,” I said, staring. “The rift is almost gone.”

  “No crazier than we were trying to navigate it in a fighter,” Dr. Chang pointed out.

  “It’s got to be the same ship that was fighting Talon in the battle,” I said. “At least it’s ignoring us for now.”

  The ship shifted course in an arc to follow Talon, increasing speed. Fire leapt out, digitally enhanced by my sym for my senses, which weren’t sensitive enough to detect radiation outside the normal visible range.

  The two ships were already pounding one another. They were locked in combat. Missiles flared, shields flashed and beams of deadly radiation criss-crossed the void between them.

  “I’ll try to give us some room between Hammerhead and this new fight,” I said, turning away.

  We whirled around sickeningly and inverted. The heavy cruiser was now on the other side of our last few operating deflector shields.

  Even as I did so, it occurred to me that escaping the cruiser would be pointless. We were trapped in deep space. Without the destroyer to hitch a ride home with, we would soon die out here. No fuel, no food, no water other than emergency rations that would run out in about a week. The air might run out even before that. The carbon-scrubbers were running constantly, but they weren’t the best.

  The heavy cruiser plunged past us intent on its prey. We weren’t even worthy of notice.

  “Drop our shields,” I ordered Samson.

  He looked at me as if I was crazy, and he had a good point.

  “Now,” I ordered, “we’re only wasting power. If they fire one of those cannons at us, we’ll be blown right out of the sky anyway.”

  Reluctantly, he powered down his defenses and slumped back in his seat. “What are we going to do, Chief?”

  Instead of answering, I banked and pulled a hard U-turn. We managed it because we weren’t going very fast yet. The faster you went in space—or anywhere else—the longer it took to turn around and go the other way.

  Fortunately, Hammerhead was quick on her feet. We were zooming after the cruiser seconds later.

  “You’re going to attack?” Gwen cried out. “You’re crazy!”

  “This is the way to die!” Mia said with a display of long, white teeth. “You should have been born on Ral, Leo.”

  “He’s not crazy,” Dr. Chang informed Gwen. “Our situation is grim. If the cruiser wins this fight, we’ll die out here anyway.”

  “Mia, hold your fire until we’re inside her exhaust plume. Then, burn her engines to slow her down.”

  “Not a winning tactic,” Dr. Chang said, changing his mind. “If you do slow them down, they’ll certainly destroy us.”

  I shook my head. “I never said we were going to survive this. The least we can do is give the destroyer a chance to run. She can’t beat this behemoth—she’s outclassed.”

  It was all true, and I saw the brief flare of hope that had blossomed in their eyes fade. I wasn’t trying to save them—I was trying to die well.

  Only Mia was happy. She grinned and sighted her weapon, intent on giving the big ship a sharp jab in the butt. Live or die, all she wanted to do was fight.

  We got close, I’ll give us that much. We reached the exhaust plume and plunged into it. When the streaming radiation bathed our ship, the number of rads entering the cabin shot up, causing the dosage counters to beep in panic.

  Mia started firing. She’d already locked onto her target—but unfortunately, so had the crew of the cruiser.

  A big ship like the enemy vessel wasn’t without smaller weapons. Many of them were pointed forward as heavy cruisers were attack ships. But she had defensive armament on her stern as well.

  Red flashes impinged on my senses for a fraction of a second, and just like that, we were hit hard.

  Hammerhead went into a tumble. I lost the main engine, and since it powered everything else, the fighter went dark.

  “Emergency power!” I ordered.

  Samson battled his sudden weight. We were being spun around, thrown hard against the hull. Reaching up with trembling fingers, he strained with all his strength.

  I was impressed as I could hardly move.

  He managed to touch the proper control, and the anti-grav system came back on. We came away from the walls puking and bloody.

  Dr. Chang was unconscious. Mia had suffered broken ribs. One of Gwen’s eyes was bloodshot and half-closed. There was blood on her cheek.

  “Good job, Samson,” I gasped. “Turn off everything except for basic life-support and the anti-grav. We have to play dead now and hope for the best.”

  Spinning still, we drifted away from the ship we’d dared to attack. The cruiser roared after the destroyer, not bothering to waste any further time on our wrecked fighter.

  I used my sym to reach out and watch the uneven battle that ensued. There was nothing else to do other than nurse one another and patch holes in our leaking hull.

  When the big ships were far away, nearly an AU distant, the struggle ended. Captain Behir had run the entire time, firing what he had and using his stern defenses doggedly—but it was no good.

  Without mercy, the Imperial cruiser blasted Talon apart.

  By that time, we had everyone aboard breathing again and patched with flesh-growing bandages. We’d also managed to get the ship to stop spinning with careful squirts from our steering jets.

  “Okay,” I said, watching the destroyer break apart in the distance. “Time to play dead again.”

  “Why bother?” Gwen asked. “You said it yourself, we’ll suffocate out here.”

  “We can’t fight,” I said. “So this is about grim choices. Do you want to die now or a week from now?”

  She stared at me as if thinking it over, then she punched off her systems angrily.

  Samson killed the emergency power—everything. The tiny ship went dark, and we floated.

  Easing myself back into my chair, I looked out through Hammerhead’s walls at the patchwork of stars. Back home on Earth, they’d always fascinated me, these distant pinpoints of light. High in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, where I’d grown up, the stars were often spectacular. The heavens back then had looked the way they were supposed to look, like the playground of gods.

  But from space—open, deep space—the view was even better. A velvety black expanse with a thousand glowing lights moving slowly across it. The cold, glittering stars were perfect tiny fires, and there were literally millions of them that my eye could pick out with the help of my sym.

  “Chief?” w
hispered Samson several minutes later. “Where’s the cruiser?”

  I looked at him and smiled. I’d forgotten about our nemesis. Casting in the right direction, I spotted her.

  She was growing larger. The exhaust behind her flared. She was thrusting in our direction. She’d taken the time—and probably a lot of fuel too—just to turn around.

  Why was the captain of that ship working so hard to come back here and check on our dead little scrap of metal and flesh? Were they angry? Curious? Or only obsessively thorough?

  It hardly mattered. I chuckled aloud.

  Samson looked at me with hungry eyes. He wanted to know his fate—or at least, he thought he did.

  “They’re gone, big guy,” I said. “Take a nap.”

  He smiled at me, and I knew I’d told him the right lie. The one he wanted to hear. The one that gave him hope that this nightmare had passed.

  At least he could die now with this one last moment of peace in his memory.

  =36=

  When the heavy cruiser loomed near, I wondered what they were waiting for. We were running on nothing but suit power. Surely, we had to be in easy range now. We were sitting ducks.

  Like a lion prodding prey that plays dead, the big ship circled around. They were scanning us. My sym showed me lavender waves crisscrossing our hull.

  I thought of various plans. Perhaps we could get close enough and magnetically adhere to her hull. Then, her crew would have a choice. If they came out to pry us out of the fighter, we could blow up the ship in a final act of defiance.

  On the other hand, there was a remote chance that they’d ignore us and simply create a new rift. We’d tag along, and take our chances wherever we ended up.

  Impatiently, I waited for an opportunity to make such a maneuver. But the enemy pilot was cagey, and he never got close enough for me to try it.

  Finally, I grew irritated. “Samson, turn on our com system,” I ordered.

  “You’re going to talk shit to them, aren’t you?” Mia purred.

  She loved it when I spat at defeat. No wonder we’d gotten along so well. She’d never heard of the concept of diplomacy. It wasn’t in her genes.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Something like that.”

  Samson lit up the com system, and a funny thing happened. A repeating message came booming over the speakers.

  “…trying our patience, pilot,” said a voice. It was a commanding feminine voice. “This is your last opportunity to—”

  “Hello?” I said. “This is Ensign Leo Blake, Earth crew.”

  “Blake…” she said. “I don’t know you. A pity. I thought I knew all the brave ones that remained. You disappoint me greatly. This kill will bring no honor.”

  My mind raced. This had to be an Imperial. What would they be like? I’d talked to the officers aboard Killer, and my impression was that they were quite similar in mindset to Wild Kher. Except that they were infinitely more arrogant.

  But I’d learned how the status-based civilization of the Rebels worked. If the Imperials worked the same way, I had at least an inkling as to how to proceed.

  “Not so,” I said. “Your kill has brought you great honor. My ship personally destroyed one of your carriers.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Your claims are incredible,” she said. “But I’ve checked, and according to reports that came in during the… ‘battle’, if you wish to call it that, a few carriers were destroyed.”

  “Exactly. By heavy fighters. My heavy fighter in fact, supported by my squadron, did the deed.”

  “Hmmm…” she said. “This does change matters. If you are truly—”

  “I am,” I snapped. “I would have destroyed your vessel, if I’d had a dozen wingmen to help.”

  She laughed then. “Such boasting! I like it. You will be fun to destroy and not as worthless to my records as I’d thought. Thank you for this—”

  “Thanks are not good enough,” I interrupted. “Neither is your limited understanding of your own interests.”

  “What? Insults now? On top of—?”

  “Hardly. I’m trying to help. I’ll speak slowly, so as to make sure you understand. I’ve been told Imperials are slow to grasp unfamiliar concepts.”

  I was getting urgent cautioning gestures from my crew by now, except for Dr. Chang, who watched with thoughtfulness, and Mia, who watched with glee.

  Turning away from them so I couldn’t see their frantic waving, I stared at the big ship that stood off at a safe distance, watching us.

  “You will pay for your insults,” the voice warned dangerously. “Enjoy your final moments—”

  “How can I pay further?” I laughed. “You’re going to blast me out of space, right? How unimaginative. How wasteful. I hadn’t believed my officers, but now you’re proving their points one after another.”

  “What points?” the voice demanded loudly. “What might be gained by doing anything other than destroying you instantly, you insect?”

  “First off,” I said calmly, a grin spreading over my face. I knew when a mark was taking the bait. This captain was mean, but she reminded me of petty bureaucrats everywhere. “You’re missing a grand opportunity. I’m not just a fighter pilot, I’m a Rebel hero. You could capture me and parade me at your base. You could—”

  “Ah!” the voice said suddenly. “I get it. Public dismemberment! The acid baths! The genital mutilation! You crave treatment beyond your station, insect.”

  For just a second, I was at a loss as to what to say. I’d been envisioning the life of a beaten hero. A prize to be shown off in a sumptuously appointed prison cell, perhaps.

  “Uh… right,” I said. “Perhaps not that, although—”

  “You’ve convinced me,” she said. “Stand-to as we lock onto your vessel. If you attempt to escape the gravity beams, or even power up your ship, you’ll be instantly destroyed.”

  The channel fell silent, and a liquid-looking beam of sickly green reached out, enveloping our tiny ship. Only I could see it with the aid of my improved perception.

  “This was your plan?” Gwen demanded. “Genital mutilation?”

  “She’s just trying to scare us,” I assured her.

  “Well, it’s working.”

  I looked around the group. “Who votes we blow ourselves up when we’re sucked into their hull?” I asked.

  They looked trapped and indecisive.

  “I do,” Mia said, going first.

  Gwen shook her head, breathing hard.

  “No,” she said. “Let’s take our chances. Perhaps imprisonment won’t be as awful as she said. Maybe we’ll get lucky. We’ve come so far…”

  “Yeah,” Samson said. “Maybe they’ll only mutilate Leo.”

  “You really want to surrender?” I asked him.

  He looked at me for a second and shook his head. “Nah, I’m with Mia. Blow us up. Blow this ship’s guts out.”

  Already, beyond our thin hull, I could see the yawning portal we were being drawn into. It looked small from where we were, but it was rapidly growing in size.

  “Dr. Chang?” I asked.

  He squinted at me thoughtfully. “I’ll go with your instincts, Leo,” he said. “So far, they’ve been exceptional. Besides, you’ll do whatever you want in the final instant, anyway.”’

  I smiled at him. Perhaps, in the end, he knew me better than the rest of them.

  “We’ll die then,” I said, “the moment they suck us up inside their ship.”

  Samson and I worked on rigging it up. The plan was to power up the core briefly, overload it, and set it off. The process would take no more than a millisecond. We wouldn’t feel a thing.

  With one finger on a pressure-switch, I watched as we drifted closer and closer. The moment was almost upon us.

  I discovered then that blowing yourself up is much harder to do than it sounds. Your mind fights against it. You come up with a thousand excuses to avoid going through with it.

  I’d always wondered, when watch
ing vids of people wait for their executions, why they weren’t struggling, howling, fighting to the last.

  Now, I knew. It was a sense of unreality. A moment of futile hope that wouldn’t recede. I was mesmerized, trading obedience for one last second of life, one final lungful of air…

  =37=

  When we passed through the shimmering shields and into the armored hull, I pressed the self-destruct button—then I did it again.

  Nothing happened. I sat back, defeated.

  “They drained our power somehow,” Samson said. “The core is empty. There isn’t enough left to light a candle.”

  Nodding, I knew the truth of his words. It made perfect sense. The Imperials weren’t stupid, no matter what I’d implied. They would never snuggle with a viper without being certain its fangs had been pulled first.

  “Assault weapons,” I said, “get your thumpers out!”

  My crew looked startled for a moment. Then they scrambled to obey. We pulled out the graviton thumpers we’d won back aboard our carrier and checked them. They were loaded and ready to go.

  The sickly green beam pulled us into the guts of the cruiser and set us on the deck. We had gravity again—it was artificial, but it felt good to be on steady feet.

  Everyone was locked and loaded. We aimed at the hatch.

  Outside Hammerhead, we saw a delegation approach. Six hulking brutes in body armor clanked in the lead. Behind them walked a very different figure.

  She was tall, fine-boned, and lovely. Her clothing was spare, but what she wore was regal and flowing. There was a hard cast to her features, however. A stern, unsmiling look that I knew instantly was capable of evil deeds. To me, she looked like a devilish queen.

  Could this be the captain?

  “Do we fight?” Samson said, gripping and regripping his thumper.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Might as well. Take out the tin cans in front. If we can capture the captain, maybe we can—”

  The hatch blew off and clanged down onto the deck at that moment. One of the metal-encased guards had done it.