I put Last Chance into a viscous lateral burn directly into the dust-cloud and plunged us into the gloom and obscurity of the thick dust. The Katons came out of warp at our exact exit-point not caring that we might have dallied just long enough to shove a nuke or three up their asses. I glanced back again at Tanya to make sure she wasn’t doing just that. She smiled at me maliciously as her fingers twitched over the controls but I wasn’t too worried about her wasting those very valuable weapons- if I didn’t pretend she got under my skin sometimes that would only cause her to redouble her efforts. She was very careful when it came to her life and I knew she was as sure as I that before this was over we might very well have need of those nukes and her antics were only to antagonize.
There were numerous of them right behind us all right, however many Tanya had counted. The proximity alarm was ringing of multiple threats. I wasn’t free at that moment for such luxuries as counting though did the numbers really matter- ten or thirty of them what was the difference when they knew we only had three nukes. A deadly game of Russian-roulette for the first of the Katon Destroyers out of warp but that’s how badly they wanted to kill me and it warmed my heart to know that at least someone really cared about me that much. I was forced into immediate evasive maneuvers as they began taking pot-shots at us in the concealing stellar-dust, but that’s all they were because they were gone from our scan which meant we were gone from theirs. For the moment we had escaped.
The continuing evasive maneuvers were necessary to avoid the larger debris as we plunged farther into the asteroid-field. Katon photon-beams several times flashed closely in the darkness of the dust and debris, lighting the eerie spacescape in muted pinks and purples, but we were traveling farther into the field and soon even the random shots vanished far behind us. They had lost their prey but only for the moment. As Bren had said, we were trapped inside.
“I think Bren made a good point.” I said as I turned helm over to the auto-pilot and turned to look at Tanya. “Just how in the hell are we going to get out of here?”
“You’re the hotshot pilot.” Tanya said with another of her smiles as she rose to depart. “You figure it out.”
“I may have it figured out.” Bren said.
“Oh.” I said uninterestedly as Tanya departed and I watched the auto-pilot slowly glide Last Chance through the random movements of boulders roughly the size of Last Chance to mountain-sized chunks it took long moments to navigate around. Although if anything I was watching the rear scan screen quite a bit more closely even though with the obscuring debris there was nothing to see. Though I doubted they would try to close with Last Chance inside the field, where the real battle for the massive Destroyers would be in avoiding random accidental destruction in the close confines of the constantly changing spacescape but I just couldn’t seem to keep my eyes away from that scan screen expecting them to follow us despite the lunacy of the move. It was the Katons we were talking about, after all.
I was uninterested in Bren’s opinion because unlike his mathematical abilities- at which he is genius- his piloting skills and the reaction-time necessary to survive as a pilot simply weren’t there. I could imagine no valuable input from Bren concerning the act of piloting. It has always been my opinion that humans are all created mostly equal, Bren and I- all humans- as equally talented each in our own way and each person’s strength making up where another is weak making the whole stronger- but Bren and I were on opposite sides of the graph. No input from Bren could ever be helpful for the act of piloting.
“As a matter of fact I do believe I do.” Bren said a while later as his fingers continued to fly over his keyboard and complicated three-dimensional blueprints to form themselves on his screen. I went from watching out of the corner of my eye to finally when I could stand the suspense no more getting up and going back to see what he was doing. Bren went on as I looked over his shoulder, as if there had been no interlude; “Our machine shop is too small for large production. It was only designed for small-parts fabrication but I might be able to come up with a little something to even the odds.”
“That little something,” I said of the blueprint being built on Bren’s screen, “has the distinct look of a weapon.”
“A very powerful weapon!” Bren agreed as he looked up for a moment to smile what I would call his mad-scientist smile. Bren was now completely in his element and his nose turned immediately back to his screen. These were the times when a guy like me needed someone who was on the other side of the graph and why a guy like me would fight to the death to protect not only Bren but the entire crew. They each did their part and together we were an invincible team. At least we had been so far and I wasn’t the type to fix things that weren’t broken just because individually they may have been a little skewed. Each and every one of us unquestionably misfits- each one of us skewed in our own particular way- but together we were the crew which had never been defeated.
How could the best crew in the Universe at the same time be the most fucked-up, I wondered not for the first time ever.
Chapter 8
“You are not taking the photon cannon apart.” Tanya said as she blocked a space-suited Bren’s access to the exterior hatch. “We’re going to need that and it’s staying.”
“I’m not taking it apart.” Bren said as he obstinately went around her. “I’m going to jettison it.”
“You have got to be out of your mind.” Tanya said helplessly as the hatch closed behind Bren’s smiling face. She was talking to me and there was a decided glint in her eyes. This was Tanya at her most frustrated but she knew as well as I that she couldn’t just kill Bren because to do so would be killing all of us. I was not sympathetic. She had put us here.
“The photon cannon won’t do us much good against ten Destroyers, dear, and there are probably at least fifty out there by now. This is their big opportunity and I don’t think they plan to miss it this time. You might get one of them with the photon cannon before they cut us to slag but only if you were to be extremely lucky. It’s my opinion that our luck has run out and that scenario still leaves us dead. I prefer alive. You picked a good place to make a stand and now we’ll have to stand.” I said with my lip definitely curling upward- though I was positive at this point that we had drawn our last cards. “If nothing else we’ll have more speed and maneuverability.” I added with a laugh. It was she who had put us here and it was her order that I get us out of it, so I felt justified wearing the big grin because I was just following orders. Tanya did not seem pleased with my grin and even less so as the lock cycled and Bren stopped to grin in at her through the lock’s port one last time before he went out the exterior hatch. Maybe it was the remembrance of the many ships which that photon cannon had cut to slag under her unerring precision and ready willingness to use it, but in either case she really did not want to see that photon cannon go.
“This was not what I had in mind.” She said.
“Me neither.” I said. “I’ve got enough Old Home aboard for ten years.”
“That’s about what we figured.” Tanya said with her own smile. “The vote was a close one; I was for draining all your bottles to see how fast that would get you motivated but the rest were for more immediate action.”
“That would have gotten me motivated,” I said with my grin still in place, “to making my own. Home-mash does the job just as well. What would you have done next, jettison all the food?
“In any case,” I went on, “we’ve jumped from the frying pan into the fire. What difference would it have made if we just continued on in warp? We’re not welcome anywhere around here any longer! We have nowhere to go. Where will we go if we do escape the Katons? Back into warp and headed for where?”
“Back to these Alartaw.” Tanya said firmly as she watched my smile disappear. “They have my jewelry and on top of that we’re the Emperor and Empress.”
“I’m not sure they’re going to see it the same.” I said wondering if Tanya was finally and truly out of her mind, thi
nking of the bloodthirsty tales I and everyone else had heard Bren repeating over and over for the last year. I didn’t think the Alartaw would find it amusing that their Emperor and Empress had actually been Kievor implants and especially that in the end the Kievor had rescued us and returned us to our original lives as they had promised. I was of the opinion that we would be on trial for Treason and the evidence looked damning in the extreme. Trial would be the Commanding Officer ordering us out an airlock without our suits- if we survived we were guilty. That’s the way I imagined it, in any case.
“In fact I’m sure they won’t.” I added.
“I went through this before when I was a child,” Tanya began, “a story I’ve never told you. It was a mind-wipe and total loss of a lifetime’s memories. I didn’t get them back for a long time. It was done by an expert and I beat that so I’ll beat this. My memories are coming back again- and easier this time. I’m beginning to remember quite a bit already, and more every day. I wake with some new memory every morning. The Alartaw will take us back because they need us. They have no one else like us- for all their strengths they are short in military leadership. Left to themselves they’ll squabble the Alartaw race into extinction. Take my word for it that what they are is smart enough to recognize their weaknesses. They followed you so quickly because they recognized your leadership qualities. They need you Marc and they aren’t going to care that you’re a human.”
“You have got to be out of your mind.” The same words were spoken for the second time in only a short time, except this time I was the one saying it.
“I’ve never been clearer.” Tanya contradicted me. “We bust free of this ring of Katon scum and we find the Alartaw… and my jewelry.” She turned and marched off stiff-backed to leave me wondering. What were her true motivations? Which was more important to her; actually being the Emperor and Empress or simply that she wanted her jewels back and would destroy Empires to get them if that was what it took.
Chapter 9
Bren’s weapon took six weeks to build and we could feel the asteroid-field eroding away around us the entire time. Not really but it seemed so. I knew they would be doing more than just waiting us out. I could imagine that the number of ships now encircling us had grown considerably- and probably spending every joule of their fusion producing capabilities burning this field to ash. Their photon cannons wouldn’t be much good for the dust but these were Destroyers and each carried numerous plasma turrets along with their independently-tracking photon cannons and though I couldn’t make a guess as to how long it would take them to burn through this entire field I was under the impression the Katons meant to find out.
“Even with a super weapon I don’t like the odds.” Bren said as he wrote the last bits of code into the program after having worked twenty hours a day throughout those six weeks meticulously building the new weapon piece by piece and installing it in the same fashion. Though the weapon was much smaller than a photon cannon it had been by no means an easy task. They had been extremely lucky not to have been discovered during the process but it had been Bren's firm belief that they would not have had any chance at all without the edge the new weapon would give them. “I liked your idea better- they weren’t going to chase us forever.”
“You like any plan that doesn’t involve direct confrontation.” Tanya said as she entered the Bridge. “That’s why you weren’t asked.” She hadn’t been on the Bridge at all since Bren had jettisoned the photon cannon but now that the new weapon was nearing testing stage there would have been no keeping her away. She was gunner and for a damn good reason.
“How’d you like that simulation I wrote for the new weapon?” Bren said ignoring her comment.
“You’ll have to add some harder levels.” Tanya said at which point Bren did look up from his screen, but only for a moment and then his fingers were flying again and script was scrawling itself across his screen as his eyes returned to his work there.
“You weren’t supposed to be able to beat that.” Bren said as he worked.
“When do I get my super-computer?” I asked Bren. Since this project was nearing completion I could see no reason why Bren couldn't just jump right into the production of my new main-frame. The one that would turn Last Chance into a trans-metal dream ship!
“When are you going to slip these Katons?” Bren replied. I could only glower but he wasn’t looking at me. Then suddenly the proximity alarm went off and I was leaping for my pilot’s seat and grabbing for my harness. Everyone aboard ship would be doing the same, knowing what a proximity alert at this time and this place would mean. After buckling in I left the auto-pilot flying us for the moment while I studied the fuzzy scan image for whatever it was which had triggered the proximity alarm. Then I saw it, or them I should say. There were dozens of them and they were on a direct intersect-course with us and now coming into clear scan range in the cloying dust. That meant they were very close.
“Fighters!” Tanya said as she buckled herself into the gunner’s station. “That weapon ready?” She asked Bren as I unengaged the auto-pilot and shoved the yoke forward. We had not traveled far into the cloud but I had put a lot of distance between us and where we had originally entered. They must have hundreds or thousands of those fighters hunting us throughout the asteroid-field. Now they had found us. I was thinking then at that moment that I had finally bought it, Bren’s super-weapon or not, it was over. We would never fight our way past all those fighters and then somehow fight our way past all those Destroyers and whatever else had gathered to wait for the luckless Last Chance to show her bow on the outskirts of the dust cloud as she was driven from it by the pack of baying fighters. One way or another they were going to flush us from our hiding place and it was going to be right into the guns of the waiting Katons. They would drive us like common animals into the snare and I cursed the ignominy of it. It would be one brilliant moment of hundreds of flashing photon beams and then it would be over. If we could slip the fighters.
Still in no hurry to die before the appointed hour- though I was sure I knew when the appointed hour would arrive- I went to work doing what I do best while Melanie, Janice and Manuel went to work sending clouds of plasma back at the approaching fighters. Plasma was a deadly weapon against the smaller ships and Last Chance could put out a cloud of it. They did just that as I increased velocity to a very reckless pace. Last Chance seemed to leap under me as the oversized engine threw the newly lightened ship forward at an unaccustomed velocity. I could feel Last Chance groaning under the stresses as I wove her through the changing kaleidoscope of flying rocks and debris, boulders and mountains but she was a solid ship and took the new stresses just as I had been sure she would.
“Is that weapon ready yet?” Tanya asked again as she sat there with nothing to do. Tanya did not like to be idle and was never so even when she seemed to be so. Right now she wanted her weapon back and it had better work as well as the late photon cannon or Bren would be retrieving it from wherever it was he had jettisoned it and putting it back on the ship where it belonged.
“It is now.” Bren said as he finished what he was doing and pressed enter.
Tanya’s screen immediately lit up in front of her, just like in the simulations. “Is this weapon as powerful as the one in the simulations?” She asked as she familiarized herself with its operation, making sure it was the same as the simulation Bren had written and which she had easily defeated. If so…!
“Find out for yourself.” Bren said.
Tanya brought the weapon to life and swung the turret through her field of fire, which was everything level with or above Last Chance. The tiny turret’s very small size was reminiscent of Kievor technology and in no way looked like the main armament of a human ship of war. It was mounted where the old photon cannon used to be to take advantage of the power feeds and would have an open field of fire on almost anything around them. If there was an enemy below the ship it would be Marc’s job to put the enemy within her field of fire, a much easier job now wi
th the swivel turret, the screen in front of her following the course of the turret as she manipulated it and a second screen to the left giving her an overall scan-feed of space around Last Chance. If she hadn’t run out of levels to beat on Bren’s simulation she might even have come to like the game, but thought this would be infinitely better. Did she think they would survive? Not for a second and not that she would have shared that thought with the rest when she talked them into it but any action was better than inaction and if she had to go out it would be with a burst of glory the Katons would never forget- if this weapon had even a fraction of the power of the weapon in the simulation. Tanya hadn’t forgotten how the Katons had crossed them, especially after Marc had insisted on seeing their contract through when if it had been up to her she would have taken the supplies and few credits they were given and immediately abdicated the scene. A cold-blooded killer on the one hand, but if he gave you his word come hell or high water he was going to try to live up to it.
Tanya’s fingers settled on her fire control board as she targeted a fighter off in the dust that was no more than a red blip on her screen. It was far out of visual range and probably would have been out of photon cannon range in the cloying dust but this wasn’t a photon cannon. Tanya’s finger descended.
Chapter 10
The brilliant flash as the weapon fired caused the visual display feeds to go instantly black and to be automatically replaced by the radar scan image even though the weapon was mounted on top of Last Chance and was being fired to our stern. When the late jettisoned photon cannon had been fired there was the usual dimming of the lights, computer screens and everything else consuming electricity as Last Chance’s fusion producing capabilities were pushed to their max output. The thrumming of all that energy pouring through circuitry, the vibration felt all throughout Last Chance when the photon cannon actually fired, but there was none of that with this. The new cannon used much less power and was entirely inertia-less like any other technology you might expect to find on a Kievor Station and my immediate thought was that Bren had done it again. There was no physical way to tell the weapon was being fired other than the continued blackout of all visual feeds but I was expecting big results. I wasn’t to be disappointed.
Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 3: Vengeance Page 3