Wing Commander: Freedom Flight

by Mercedes Lackey

  Chapter Twelve

  "Can't we talk about this some more?" Hunter asked, staring at the huge Kilrathi warrior.

  Kirha obligingly translated for him, and the big Kilrathi replied in the same language. "He says the time for talk is past, now you must prove yourself worthy to be a liege lord of Kilrah."

  "Oh, hell," Hunter said with a sigh, looking up at his opponent. "Somehow I was hoping that he'd settle for a friendly game of cards instead." Hunter glanced at Kirha, then suddenly snap-kicked the huge Kilrathi between the legs without warning. The Kilrathi stood there for a moment in shock, then collapsed. The other cats stood staring at their crumpled chief.

  "That was not very honorable, my lord," Kirha observed from the sidelines.

  "Anything's fair in… shit!" Hunter exclaimed as the fallen Kilrathi hooked his leg, claws ripping through the thick leather of his boot. Hunter kicked desperately as he fell, then the huge Kilrathi caught him up in a bear hug, slowly squeezing. Hunter gasped, then reached for the only obvious target he could see, the Kilrathi's broad nose. He drove the heel of his hand into it, then grabbed it and twisted it hard. The warrior yelled in pain and let him go. Hunter rolled away, scrambling to his feet in time to duck a sideswipe of claws from his opponent. The second time he wasn't as lucky. Hunter felt the warrior's claws rip through his jacket, tearing into his back. He jumped backward, standing with his back against the wall. He definitely felt the blood running down his back, sticky and hot. This isn't going too well…

  The Kilrathi touched his nose, which was bleeding profusely, and roared something in his own language. Then he charged.

  Hunter slammed against the wall and was pinned there by the full weight of the Kilrathi, the breath knocked right out of him. He fought to get free, but was pinned tight. "Kirha!" he gasped. "Help me!"

  "But, my lord, it is not honorable…" Kirha objected.

  To hell with honor! "Kirha, I order you to help me!" he yelled.

  A moment later, the Kilrathi's weight lifted right off of him, for no reason that Hunter could see. Then he realized why, as he began drifting away from the wall, floating in mid-air.

  The gravity! Something's happened to the gravity!

  Then Kirha, drifting close to the other Kilrathi, grabbed one of the assault rifles from a Kilrathi guard, aimed and fired. He tossed the rifle to Hunter a moment later, wading into the mass of Kilrathi with claws and teeth. Hunter froze for a half second in shock, then brought up the gun and started firing before the startled Kilrathi could react. A few seconds later, it was over.

  The face Kirha turned toward him was full of indignation. "My lord, I cannot believe that you asked for my assistance in a ritual combat! It goes against all the traditions of—"

  "I know, I know," Hunter said, and pushed himself off from the closest wall, drifting past the lifeless Kilrathi bodies to where Kirha clung to the wall. "We'll talk about it later. Can you get the door open?" he asked.

  "I think so, my lord," Kirha replied, staring at the door. He scratched against the plastic, a combination of long and short vertical lines. A moment later, the door slid open silently. Hunter pulled himself through the hatchway after Kirha, into a scene of total chaos.

  Dozens of tall, feathered Firekkans were gathered in the large room, all staring at him with large, unblinking eyes.

  Frightened, shock-filled eyes.

  "Come on, everyone, follow me! This is a jailbreak," he yelled, gesturing to them. "Come on, I'm getting you out of here!"

  No one moved.

  "Doesn't anyone speak English here?" he shouted into the milling mass of Firekkans. "Hell," he muttered. "I wasn't expecting this."

  Kirha spoke quietly. "My lord, I believe I have a solution for the problem."

  "Yeah, sure, go ahead."

  Kirha took a deep breath, and screamed a vicious snarl in his own language. A battle cry, Hunter realized a moment later. The Firekkans flapped their wings wildly, rushing into one corner of the room.

  "An inferior prey-species," Kirha commented, looking at the agitated Firekkans. He worked his way around the room, and the massed Firekkans backed away from him, until he was between them and most of the room. And they were now quite near the open door.

  "No, I think you were speaking in a universal language, mate," Hunter said with a grin. "This way, this way," he said, gesturing at the door. One of the Firekkans edged forward, then another, moving toward the door. A young-looking Firekkan said something shrill in her own language, and the rest of the Firekkans began moving toward the door as well.

  "Let's go, let's go!" Hunter shouted, chivvying the mass of Firekkans through the hatch.

  Hunter discovered a trait of the Firekkans that no one had warned him about; when stressed, they moulted.

  Stray plumes floated in the wake of the fleeing flock, leaving a trail anyone could follow, and making him sneeze. Kirha batted puffs of down away from his face as he moved beside Hunter, pushing off from the walls to gain momentum in the null gravity. Every few seconds, he screamed another battle-cry whenever it looked as if the Firekkans might be slowing down.

  At this point it was probably fair to assume that the escape wasn't exactly covert anymore. Hunter hoped that their very disorganization was going to work in their favor; what the Kilrathi couldn't predict, they couldn't deal with.

  But he didn't even know whether they were all in the right corridor. Hell of a note, if their headlong stampede ran them into a dead end, or a docking bay that contained, say, a ship full of Kilrathi ground-troops.

  "There!" Kirha shouted, pointing past the bobbing crests of the fleeing Firekkans. "Look! Is that not—"

  It was—the docks, the right docks too, and there were K'Kai and Paladin, K'Kai screeching something in Firekkan and Paladin faced away from them, presumably watching for more Kilrathi fighters. Now the Firekkans slowed, confused—

  All but one, who shot out of the flock like a bullet, heading straight for K'Kai.

  A little Firekkan, half the size of the others. As this one began a bob-and-weave dance around K'Kai, Hunter realized this must be the niece, Rikik.

  K'Kai spread her wings and Rikik huddled under them; K'Kai cuddled her close, like a mother hen with a chick. At this point there was too much noise from the rest of the Firekkans for Hunter to hear anything, as they figured out that they were not being herded into a slaughter, they were being rescued.

  And, characteristically, they had to stop and discuss it.

  Hunter swore. "K'Kai!" he shouted. "Front and center—"

  K'Kai looked up, and took in the situation in a glance. She uttered a shriek in Firekkan, and shoved her niece away, towards the flock, then ran back towards Hunter, still shrieking.

  The rest of the Firekkans jumped in startlement, but began moving again. K'Kai came in from the side, her faster niece from the rear, both of them shrieking alarm calls and shooing the other Firekkans towards the ramp, getting them up and through the airlock as fast as they could squeeze.

  Hunter took a deep breath of relief—just as the squadron of Kilrathi ground-troops came around the bend of the docking-corridor and hit the floor in firing position.

  * * *

  K'Kai had used up her entire vocabulary of curse words and was starting over. Most of these gently reared flock-leaders had probably never heard anything like it in their lives, but Rikik had already picked up a half-dozen of the choicest bits of invective and was swearing like a stevedore. K'Kai was proud of her, though Rikik's mother (her memory be forever cherished) was probably spinning on her funeral-tree like a navigational gyroscope.

  But she was paying far more attention to the disorderly flock than she was to anything behind her, so the first shots took her as much by surprise as the rest of them. Instinctively, she hit the floor, as two of the flock shrieked and fell.

  Rikik kept right on shooing the rest into the ship; Hunter beside her. K'Kai took a quick look around; Paladin was nowhere in sight, but the subsonic rumble of a ship's engines warming up t
old her he had squirmed in among the Firekkans and was at the helm.

  That left her and Kirha to play rear-guard.

  And for the first time in months, she was facing Kilrathi as an equal—equally armed, and ready to collect some blood-debts.

  "Eat fire, featherless scum!" she screamed, and opened up. Beside her, Kirha was firing too, but she noticed that he was trying to keep his shots aimed just above the Kilrathi ears.

  For a moment, she was outraged. How dared he spare the enemy!

  Then she realized what they were to him. His people, his species. Maybe even cats he knew.

  Her rage cooled just a little, and out of consideration for his feelings, she tried to follow his lead, in keeping her shots from actually hitting the targets. No, she couldn't blame him—and when one of the cats noticed what they were doing and tried to charge, Kirha's shot hit him in the chest a fraction of a second before hers did. But his heart plainly wasn't in this—

  She glanced back for a moment, as Kirha's volley gave her a free second. The last Firekkan plume cleared the airlock even as she turned, and Hunter was gesturing wildly at her for her to run.

  "Kirha," she shouted, "They are clear! Get in the ship, I will cover you!"

  He glanced back, saw that she was right, and turned to run; she gave him a volley of covering fire and half-rose for her own sprint—

  Pain!

  Her leg buckled and she fell to the floor; as if in slow-motion, she saw Hunter tense, tried to stand and felt her leg give again, and knew she wasn't going to make it to the airlock—

  Then, something grabbed her. She squawked in mingled surprise and pain as she was hoisted into the air; her breath exploded from her in a whuff as her chest hit a furry shoulder. She looked up, seeing the Kilrathi rising to their feet and running towards them—

  But Kirha put on a burst of speed that would have been impossible even for a Firekkan, ducked under the oncoming shots as if he knew where they were, and dashed up the ramp just as the airlock door closed behind them.

  He dropped her on the floor; growled "Brace yourself," as he dropped down beside her. That was all the time they had; she slid sideways into the rear corner as Paladin blew the docking hatch and accelerated out of the station at max. K'Kai grabbed onto whatever she could, as the ship pulled gees and made some evasive maneuvers that threw both of them all over the lock.

  That didn't matter; the pain of her leg didn't matter. Whether or not they survived this escape was out of their hands and in Paladin's. Only one thing did matter at the moment; a Kilrathi had stopped in making his own escape to save her.

  She caught Kirha's eye where he hung on grimly to handholds on the bulkhead. "Why?" she mouthed.

  He stared at her for a moment with round, unblinking eyes, then hunched his head, as if he wasn't sure either. Then he shouted, over the roar of the overstressed engines.

  "Perhaps because you are a friend of my liege lord. Perhaps because you are a comrade-in-arms, and an honorable warrior."

  Then he twitched his lips in what she had come to recognize as a gesture of feral amusement. "Or, just perhaps, because I wanted to save you for my lunch."

  Well, through the haze of pain that was coming between her and the rest of the world, that seemed perfectly logical.

  "Oh," she replied vaguely. "Of course."

  And she ungracefully passed out, still clinging to the handholds.

  Hunter slid into the co-pilot's seat next to Paladin, who was already working fast to bring the freighter up to launch speed. He glanced around curiously. "Where's Gwen? I didn't see her—" He stopped in mid-sentence at the look on Paladin's face. "Oh, no…"

  "I shouldn't hae let her come on this misadventure," Paladin said, quickly working the controls to lift the freighter off the deck. "I shouldna done it. I could hae stopped this before it began, but I didn't…"

  "Don't go into a funk on me now, mate," Hunter said. "We can still end up dead, despite our luck so far. What's on the sensors?"

  "Several fighters out there, no larger ships yet. We've got a chance of getting out. Maybe. But there'll be more ships along shortly," Paladin said. "We've had the luck of the angels with us so far, but I dinna know how long that'll continue. The Heather is a fine ship, but she's only a freighter, not very fast. And we have a long way to go to the jump point."

  "What kind of guns does this ship have?" Hunter asked, looking around the cockpit.

  "Not much," Paladin admitted. "But there are two Rapiers in the hold, fully fueled and armed."

  "K'Kai can fly this ship, no problem," Hunter said. "James, I think we'd better get outside in those Rapiers."

  "Agreed. K'Kai!" Paladin called.

  The Firekkan woman limped into the cockpit, assisted—and that looked odd!—by Kirha. "Yes?"

  "You've got the helm, lady. Course is set for the jump point. Hunter and I are going out there to fly interception. Warn us when you're nearly ready to jump, we'll get back onboard. If we can't, jump without us."

  K'Kai's alien eyes were emotionless as she listened intently. "Understood."

  Hunter and Paladin ran through the huddled groups of Firekkans in the hallway, down to the cargo hold. Paladin tossed a flight suit and helmet to Hunter, who quickly donned the suit. A few seconds later, Hunter was in the cockpit of the Rapier.

  He fired the Rapier's engines as the atmospheric gauge showed the air levels decreasing in the Heather's hold. I've never launched from a cargo hold before, he thought, glancing across the deck to where Paladin's fighter was waiting, engines already ignited. But I've been doing a lot of things lately that I've never done before… like falling for a lovely lady who's dead before I even had a chance to tell her what I felt about her…

  Paladin signaled him with a thumbs-up, and the cargo bay door slid open silently a moment later. Hunter shoved the throttle and was out of the hold a moment later, pulling back to spin up and over the bulk of the freighter, turning back toward the station and the five Jalthi fighters that were pursuing them. Far beyond the station, he could see three Kilrathi Kamekh corvettes and a huge cruiser slowly starting in their direction. We'd better be out of here before they're in range, Hunter thought.

  "Five Jalthi coming in fast, Paladin," he called. "And in a tight formation."

  "We don't want to fight those Jalthi head-on," the Scotsman observed. "I'll take the… Hunter! What are you doing?"

  "Cover me, mate!" Hunter hit the afterburner, heading straight for the Jalthi fighters. He switched to dumb-fire missiles, flying toward the wing of Kilrathi on a collision course with full afterburners, too fast for their missiles or guns to track. The Kilrathi broke formation in a panic at the last moment just as Hunter fired the first of his two dumb-fires. He was past them a split-second later, his Rapier rattling from the proximity of the massive explosions. He punched the reverse brakes and brought the fighter around, and was pleased to see that there were only three Jalthis reconverging on the Heather. Debris was scattering from the remains of two of the fighters.

  "Now we only have three to fight," he said with a grin. "Keep them busy for a moment, all right, mate?"

  "You idiot!" Paladin shouted over the vid. "You could have been killed!"

  "I'm going to make sure they can't launch any other fighters," Hunter said, ignoring Paladin's outburst. "Hold them off me for a minute, okay?"

  He only had one dumb-fire missile left, but it was enough. Skimming the surface of the huge station, he fired it directly into the station's Flight Deck aperture, turning away a moment before the brilliant explosion.

  Hunter banked over the station and back into the dogfight, just in time to see a full gun burst from Paladin's fighter blast into one of the Jalthis, sending it spinning out of control. The other two fighters were maneuvering to get onto Paladin for the kill. Paladin's fighter was rocking from the repeated bursts of cannon fire from the heavily armed Jalthis.

  "Get them off your tail, James!" Hunter called, punching the afterburners to close the distance between him
self and the dogfight.

  "I'm trying, lad!" Paladin's voice was strained. "Get over here and help me!"

  "Bring 'em closer to me, mate!" Hunter said, switching to Friend-or-Foe missiles. The targeting computer began to beep in an increasing rhythm, searching for a missile lock. "Come on, come on," he whispered, as Paladin banked hard, the Jalthis struggling to stay on their target.

  The targeting computer suddenly wailed with a solid missile lock tone. "Got you, bastard!" Hunter shouted, and fired the missile. The lead Jalthi exploded on the missile's impact, and the second Kilrathi fighter veered sharply to avoid the debris. Hunter was on the Jalthi a moment later, firing all cannons at point-blank range. The Jalthi disintegrated, and Hunter pulled up hard. He brought his speed back down, circling around to spot Paladin.

  There was no sign of the other Rapier. Hunter scanned the area desperately, carefully flying to avoid the scattering debris.

  No! Not James, too…

  Then he saw the other Rapier a short distance away, lifeless and adrift, "James! Are you all right?"

  The vid was silent for a long moment, then Paladin's wavering image appeared. "I'm still here, lad, but this Rapier's in bad shape. I'm trying to get the engines restarted." Hunter watched as the Rapier lurched, then accelerated unevenly.

  "Get back to the Heather as fast as you can, James," Hunter said. "Those big ships are getting too damn close for comfort. I think it's time we hit the road from here." He glanced at his sensor screen to confirm that, and reacted instantly, punching full afterburners a split-second later. The burst of Jalthi cannon fire raked where his Rapier had just been, close enough to rock the fighter as Hunter desperately dodged the deadly attack.

  The last Jalthi, which he'd thought had been incapacitated, came after him at top speed, trying to stay on Hunter's tail for a killing shot. "James! Get out of here, I'll handle this guy!" Hunter called.

  The other Rapier accelerated toward the distant freighter, and Hunter followed, the Jalthi close on him. And those other ships aren't far behind him, Hunter thought, glancing back. Hell, I always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. This could be my big chance.