"Is it still behind us?" he yelled over his shoulder. Rogan had moved the scanner hologram over to the table so that it wouldn't impede Jack's view.
"Closer than ever," she shouted back. "Try to lose it."
"Try to lose it?" Jack laughed desperately. "How? I'm flying in a straight line!"
Rogan spun the map around.
"Go up," she said.
"Up?"
"Now!"
Jack wrenched the joystick towards himself, sending the Adeona groaning upwards. Thanks to the artificial gravity inside the ship, the pressure wasn't half as bad as it would have been in a fighter jet. Only one automata fell over behind its console.
The view went from one narrow crack to another. Jack could have sworn that somewhere, far in the distance, he saw a tiny sliver of starlight… but a second later it was gone, blocked out by another roaming slab of planet. Perhaps they were close to the other side. Or perhaps it had only been the light from the Adeona's floodlights, reflecting off a cluster of Somnium crystals.
Either way, he was headed in that direction.
"Did that work?" he shouted.
"No," sighed Rogan. He hated hearing defeat in her voice. "It's still on our tail."
Jack spotted another crack on his right, and used the ship's airbrakes to drift inside it without slowing. The missile, a video feed of which was now being projected onto one of the windows, followed close behind, its fierce blue flame scorching the walls of rock as it passed.
"Goddammit," snapped Jack, taking another sharp turn. "Who fired a rocket at us this time, anyway?"
"I don't think anyone did," replied Rogan, pointing at the video. "It looks like a proximity mining torpedo."
"Maybe it detected our movement near the dig site and labelled us a loose rock that needs destroying," said Tuner.
"Nah, I don't buy it." Jack turned once more. He scraped the Adeona's hull against an unexpected outcrop and winced as sparks showered across the windows. "That rocket is designed for keeping intruders out, not clearing debris. Why else would somebody set explosives around a spot where their own machines are working?"
"I don't know, Jack! Do you want to pull over and ask?"
Jack went to reply with something unquestionably witty, only for his blood to turn so cold that his words froze in his throat. He mouth gaped open instead.
The crack they were following petered to a point too small for the Adeona to pass through. The chunks of planet had collided and locked together.
They were headed for a dead end, and the walls were closing in.
"Erm, guys?" he finally screamed. "Anywhere on that map of yours?"
"Only back the way we came," replied a distraught 11-P-53.
"I was hoping you wouldn't say that. How far behind us is the torpedo now?"
"Eighty metres and closing," said 11-P-53. "I should never have agreed to this…"
Eighty metres was only a couple of ship lengths. If he stopped now, the rocket would tear through the back of them in less than a second. He still remembered a few tricks for evading homing missiles from his time at the Academy… but they were manoeuvres to be deployed outside in the open air, not inside a collapsing planet. Did he even have the space?
He guessed he was about to find out.
Jack plunged the joystick forwards and then, just when the Adeona had begun her suicidal dive, yanked it back towards him. At the same time, he triggered almost half of the ship's air thrusters. This had much the same effect as pulling the handbrake in a speeding car – the Adeona performed a clumsy but immediate one-eighty degree turn, a move impossible through her rear thrusters alone.
This time not even the artificial gravity could counteract the pressure of such a turn. Jack's vision went grey as the blood rushed out from the vessels around his eyes. Something in his chest cracked. His head swam and he felt an urgent need to vomit.
But there wasn't time to worry about that.
The Adeona's sudden reversal in trajectory confused the torpedo's tracking software. It rocketed past the ship, missing it by mere metres. Jack rammed the accelerating lever forwards again, and the ship raced back towards the entrance of the chasm.
The mine attempted to correct its own course in the increasingly narrow space, but its turning circle was much too wide. It crashed into one of the walls and detonated. The planetary chunks to either side first cracked and then ruptured, flinging giant pieces of rock in every direction.
"Hold on," said Jack, as the Adeona was peppered with burnt earth. He made another sharp, albeit less painful turn out of the chasm's mouth just as it collapsed completely.
Jack brought the ship to an abrupt halt a few seconds later. Colour returned to his vision.
"Everyone all right back there?" he asked.
Rogan staggered towards his chair.
"Nothing that can't be buffed out, I hope," she replied. "That was some good flying, Jack."
"It was excellent flying," said 11-P-53, climbing to its feet. "But he burned through half our remaining fuel doing it. We'll struggle to get out of this planet, let alone all the way to Detri!"
"Better than being dead," said Tuner, shrugging.
"Tuner's right." Rogan crossed her arms. "Besides, we'll be fine so long as we can make the jump to subspace. We still have enough Somnium left for one last skip, and then we can coast the rest of the way once we're in orbit around Detri."
11-P-53 threw up its hands.
"Don't blame me if we get stranded out here," it said, marching out of the cockpit. "I told you we should have tried our luck sneaking through the station."
"It wouldn't have worked without the security codes and you know it." Rogan waved the cantankerous robot out of the room. "Don't listen to 11-P-53, Jack. It just wishes it was still sitting in the captain's chair, that's all."
Jack blushed and bowed his head. Stealing 11-P-53's sense of captaincy had never been his intention. The poor automata was welcome to take it back the moment the Adeona left the system.
"Speaking of which," said Jack, half talking to himself, "let's not hang around. I reckon that gap over there's a way out. I can see something glittery behind it. Might be stars."
Rogan looked where Jack was pointing. Her eye lenses grew wide again. She took a step back from the dashboard.
"That's not a gap," she said, shaking her head, "and those aren't stars."
"Oh." Jack shrugged and readjusted the belts of his chair. "Somnium crystals or something, then. It's worth a shot."
Rogan reached over and grabbed Jack's hand before he could push the accelerator. She tapped a button in front of him. One of the windows magnified itself three-fold.
"Does that still look like a crystal to you?" she snapped.
Jack had to concede that it did not. He was no expert, but he was pretty sure most crystals couldn't blink. Then again, he'd never believed an eye could be silver or the size of a house, either.
"Now we know who the proximity torpedo was for," said Rogan, whispering as if it might hear them. "We need to turn around very, very slowly."
"What the hell is that thing?" said Jack, his hands frozen.
Whatever the creature was, it blinked again… and then rolled its silver eye towards them.
"Big," said Tuner. "Big, and hungry."
11-P-53 ran back into the cockpit and shook Jack out of his petrified stupor.
"Screw the fuel reserves!" it yelled. "Just get us out of here!"
As soon as Jack ignited the ship's thrusters, the colossal beast lunged after them. It bulldozed through the surrounding rocks as if they were lumps of marshmallow. Jack swung the Adeona around and launched it back the way they came.
"Good grief," he screamed, glancing at a video feed from the back of the ship. "That thing's a monster!"
The darkness around them was near-absolute, but what Jack could see terrified him. Tentacles whipped across the rock faces on either side like steel cables, cutting through the stone. Rows of needle-thin teeth gnashed up and down, each as lon
g as a train carriage, glinting like knives in the brief flashes of floodlight. The rest of its body remained hidden in shadow.
There was little doubt that the creature was gigantic enough to devour the ship. The question was, could it manage it in one bite or two?
"Come on, guys. Give me some help here!"
Rogan, Tuner and 11-P-53 were back at the hologram table, swiping through maps of the planet.
"I don't know what to suggest," Rogan cried out. "The pieces of the planet are shifting around too much. It's not as if any of the maps actually match!"
The Adeona's floodlights picked up a rock formation arching between two floating chunks. Jack sent the ship gliding under it. The creature went crashing through it less than a second later.
"Just tell me which side of the planet is closest!"
"Left," shouted Tuner. "Go left!"
Jack's hands were so sweaty they almost slipped right off the joystick. He yanked it to the left, praying for an exit in that approximate direction. He found one, though not one as early as he would have liked. The Adeona clipped the edge of a rock with a painful crunch.
"Is she all right?" asked Jack. The ship maintained her breakneck pace.
"She's fine," said Brackitt. "A bit bruised, but nothing a mining ship can't shrug off. Down to six percent fuel, by the way."
"That's not helping."
Jack glanced at the rear-view screen again. Not only was the monster still following them, it was even closer than before. He was convinced he saw one of its tentacles snap past the ship's window like a charioteer's whip.
Another chunk of planet fell and blocked the path ahead. Jack swore and swerved left, then immediately banked right to get around it. His heart pounded so hard his vision started to shake.
And then, with a little white flash of hope, he saw them.
Stars.
The way out.
The Adeona must have seen them too, because she rose to a speed faster than anything the accelerator alone would allow. Jack struggled to hold her steady, though by that point he suspected he had barely any control over her at all. He could hear the metal of her hull groaning from the strain.
And still those teeth stabbed up and down like knives behind her thrusters. Their starlit exit grew closer and closer.
"Come on, come on," he groaned. Jack could hardly keep from shutting his eyes.
And then suddenly they were free, launched clear from the cracked planet's gravity by the force of their own momentum. The creature crashed into the continent-sized chunks on the surface and flailed at the escaping ship with its long, squid-like tentacles. It gave up and slid back inside, but not before Jack caught sight of a leathery hide the size of a cruise ship.
11-P-53 picked itself up off the floor for the second time. "Never offer to do anything for us ever again, you hear me?"
"Believe me, I won't." Jack's stomach heaved but he kept his kwagua berry down. "From now on—"
He looked out of the window and – despite his nausea – broke into a smile.
"It's a clear path," he said, waving Rogan and Tuner over. His heart fluttered. "Look, everyone. There are no planets or stations in the way. We're through!"
The automata rushed over to the windows on the left side of the cockpit. The golden, flickering Ceros Gate stretched out ad infinitum behind them. The Negoti Corporation's central space station lay only a few thousand clicks away, rotating slowly on its artificial axis, half obscured by Ceros-VI. Ships were passing through its security checkpoint and skipping off into subspace. Each disappeared with the twinkle of a shooting star.
"Move!" 11-P-53 ushered Jack out of the captain's chair and took his place. "We need to leave this system before they pick up our signal again."
"Not bad, eh?" said Jack, elbowing Rogan where her ribs would have been.
"For a fleshy," she replied with a smirk.
"Okay…" 11-P-53 pressed a complicated series of buttons to get the skip drive ready. "The route to Detri's orbit is set. Making the jump in three… two…"
But 11-P-53 never made it to one. The view outside the window went from a beautiful brushstroke of red and purple stardust to a gunmetal grey wall as a scorched and battle-scarred starship punched its way into the Ceros star system.
Jack staggered backwards. Besides the Arks, he'd never seen a ship of such magnitude. He'd certainly never stood so close to one before. There seemed to be no end to its sheer, featureless hull.
"I guess we weren't as well hidden from the Negoti Corporation as we thought," he said, unable to tear his eyes away.
Rogan shook her head and pulled Tuner close.
"That's not Negoti," she said in a quiet voice. "That's Charon."
18
Charon’s Ultimatum
The video message arrived less than a minute later.
Nobody said or did much in the meantime. The automata looked defeated, like chess players who know there's no move left for them to play. Many had fled the cockpit to hide in the ship's many nooks and crannies. 11-P-53 remained slumped in the captain's chair, its head bowed low. Rogan kept patting Tuner on the back.
"We're doomed," sighed Tuner, "aren't we?"
Clearly Rogan didn't want to lie, because she didn't answer.
Jack crossed to the windows on the other side of the cockpit. A few Negoti patrol ships were coming to join the battlecruiser, though they didn't appear to be in any great hurry. He guessed they'd known of its arrival ahead of schedule. They were probably only there to keep an eye on proceedings.
Against the inordinate bulk of the battlecruiser, they looked even more pathetic than the Adeona… like flies buzzing around a wildebeest's behind.
"Why haven't they blown us up yet?" he asked.
"They're not going to," said Rogan. "Probably. They'll want to capture us and put us back to work. The ship, especially."
"Not me," said Tuner, fidgeting. "I stole their plans. They'll root around inside my head and then throw me into a crusher."
Jack didn't know which made him feel worse – that poor Tuner spoke so resignedly of his punishment, or that nobody in the cockpit tried to correct him.
His eyes were drawn back to the expressionless battlecruiser blocking their path. He couldn't help but imagine the alien horrors waiting for him inside. That Gaskan creep needed the automata – at least until he had the blueprints back in his possession. But what would they do when they discovered a random human on board, too?
Put him to work on this mysterious superstructure the automata kept banging on about?
Toss him out of an airlock without a helmet?
Chop him up and turn him into Raklett rations?
He opened his mouth to give a rousing speech about the merits of making a run for it, but it was at that moment the message turned up. Scores of video screens exploded across the windows of the Adeona, replicating over one another like the galaxy's most irritating computer virus.
From each one glared the same face.
Jack recoiled, shuddering as if with a fever. The creature before him was grotesque. The entire surface of its glossy, red head was disfigured with thick and violent scratches. From behind sprouted a pair of large, twisted horns, not unlike a ram's.
Then Jack's panic abated, and he saw the truth – the creature hid its true appearance behind a mask. The horns had been soldered onto what must have once been a sleek ruby helmet. Jack suspected the creature was no less hideous underneath, however – the crimson armour it wore over its slim torso was painfully mangled and warped.
"I'm guessing that's Charon," whispered Jack, inching away from the dashboard. "He can't see us, can he?"
Rogan shook her head. "It's a recording. I don't even think he's in the same system as us."
The ship's comm speakers crackled into life.
"To all those aboard the Adeona," said Charon, "heed my warning well. This will be your only one."
The mask amplified the warlord's voice. His words were perfectly clear. Calculated menace dripped
off every sharp syllable. Yet the voice surprised Jack. It carried not the rage and arrogance of youth that he expected, but rather the laboured tones of an older, perhaps even wiser man.
"Your crew is the sole property of the Iris project," said Charon, tilting his head to the side. "You are mine. You belong to me. You are fugitives in a stolen ship, also mine. I would be completely in my right to have my battleship torch you all to ash."
"Get everyone to the airlock," 11-P-53 said to Brackitt. "Be ready to jump out if they open fire on us."
"What about me?" hissed Jack, as Brackitt ran from the cockpit. "I'm not an automata. I can't survive in a vacuum, remember?"
"Then it sounds like you're screwed either way." 11-P-53 shrugged. "Don't worry. If they launch their rockets, we all are."
"Yet for the sake of brevity, I am willing to make a deal," Charon continued. "None of you are of any consequence. You are all expendable, your positions on the project already filled. But one of you stole something important from me. I cannot let that pass. Hand the offending automata over to my associate, and the rest of you shall be free to leave unharmed."
Charon leaned towards the camera so that his mask filled most of the frame.
"You have three minutes to comply."
Every video screen around the Adeona shut down at once. Nobody said anything. Everyone turned to look at Tuner.
"Please don't," he said, cowering.
"Of course we won't hand you over," said Rogan, giving him a sorry look. "We're in this together. Besides, he's lying. The second they have you on board that battlecruiser, he'll send the order to obliterate us."
"And they'll obliterate us if we don't," said 11-P-53, pacing back and forth. He paused. "Not that I'm saying we should send IL-6-88 over to them, of course. But if there's even the tiniest chance…"
"There isn't," snapped Rogan. "He's not going."
11-P-53 raised its hands in surrender and continued pacing up and down the cockpit.
"He's bluffing," said Jack, waggling a finger at the battlecruiser in front of them. "They won't blow us up if we refuse to give them Tuner. If anything, they're more likely to blow us up if we do."
The Final Dawn Page 15