Death Drop (The D-Evolution)

by Sean Allen

  Dezmara had sat in this very spot more than two hundred times, and something was different. She had never waited this long for the countdown to begin. Had she missed some final important instruction? Did she terminate the transmission too early? Suspicion started to spread its roots in the crevices of her mind, but before the dark flower of paranoia could burst into bloom, the holodex chimed politely over the com. “Ten. Nine. Eight.” She reached down and scratched Diodojo’s ear for good luck. “Seven. Six. Five.” Her hands twitched on their controls. “Four. Three.” She inhaled. “Two.” Exhaled. “One.”

  Dezmara slammed the throttles wide open and the acceleration pinned her to her seat. A mischievous smile curled her mouth as she rolled the ship from side to side, nearly missing the myriad of asteroids that sped by in a continuous blur of muted gray and brown. The holodex announced that she was in the lead, followed closely by the Lodestar, the Argonaut, the Maelstrom, Aurellia Blue, and the Berillica bringing up the rear.

  The ships that trailed her, except for the Lodestar, were changing position rapidly. They were all in a horizontal line, spinning, whirling, and trying to gain position while dodging the lethal, crushing blows of the asteroids constantly stalking them. The ships were flutters of blue, burnt-orange, gray, silver, red, and black that vanished and then reappeared through the rocks over and over like shapes in a cosmic kaleidoscope. The holodex in the Ghost was chiming out position changes rapidly as the ships nosed ahead of one another and then twirled away to avoid being smashed. The runners were ‘slicing and dicing,’ as they say, everyone except the Lodestar—which was in its usual position—just off Dezmara’s stern and in second place.

  Rilek was pacing her—following closely and waiting to see what the stony heavens had in store for the lead ship. He was smart. Patient. Dezmara was thinking how much she admired the man and wishing she could meet him one day when her screen beeped and flashed. It showed the Argonaut swinging wide of her wake and accelerating to starboard.

  Dezmara’s surprise at the bold move had her staring at the screen longer than usual—too long. The collision alarm sounded its ear-pounding wail, and Dezmara slammed the controls forward while yanking the throttle back. The Ghost dove like a sleek, black porpoise through the fluid dark as if it lived to obey its master’s command—turning and spinning with ease, with pleasure—and for the second time today, Simon saw a dark shape cast a heavy shadow over the engineering room through the panes of the gun turret above. He didn’t want to know how close it was—he didn’t want to know that had there been atmosphere outside and had the hurtling boulder been a living thing, its monstrous breath would have steamed up the glass.

  The G-forces pressed on Dezmara again as she pulled back on the controls and throttled up. The ship ascended to its previous flight level and Dezmara’s lip turned to the side in quasi-irritation—the Argonaut was now in the lead dead ahead of her. She checked the screen and the rest of the field hadn’t changed. She reminded herself not to get lost in the burning orange glow of the Argonaut’s engines as she flicked the Ghost into an easy left-hand barrel roll and a cluster of rocks blasted through the center of the maneuver. She was gaining rapidly as her engines ate up the Straits of Trinity Major, and she twisted and turned her ship like the ace pilot she was. Time to move. Dezmara pulled the stick to the left, but before she could smile like a captain in the lead of a run, her mouth formed a different shape entirely.

  “SHIT!”

  Dezmara mashed wildly at the control panel in front of her, hoping to hit the right switch in time as two clusters of insulator charges toppled, end over end, from four rectangular hatches at the back of the Argonaut. The shiny cylinders were magnetic, and once they were attached to a ship’s hull, they would emit a pulse that would shut down the electrical system of most freighters. They weren’t all that dangerous, and any engineer worth his salt could have a space-hauler back up on reserve power in less than a minute, but setting off insulator charges in the middle of an asteroid field was almost murderous. A ship without flight controls in the middle of the Trinity Straits, moving at the speed of a run, was as good as smashed. There were only two ways to escape an insulator charge—avoid getting one stuck to your hull or shut down before it discharged.

  Dezmara never liked shutting down because it gave the attacker the same result they would have achieved if its charges had actually made a direct hit—it slowed you down. When magnetized gadgets as weapons started becoming the standard, Dezmara had Simon devise a simple way to demagnetize the outside of the Ghost, and now a series of cables passed through the hull and were supplied with a constant electrical current when engaged. She managed to flip the right switch in time as she tore through the spreading field of charges, and several of the canisters bounced off of her craft with a dull clunk. She looked at her screen and hoped that everyone else had seen them in time. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case at all.

  The Lodestar, Maelstrom, and Aurellia Blue sped on, and Dezmara assumed that each ship had a similar counter-measure for magnetic devices. But Dezmara watched in dismay as the Berillica lost all power and spiraled out of control through the boulders. She kept glancing from the ship in front of her to the screen, loath to bear witness to the inevitable outcome but unable to tear herself away. She looked down one last time and, to her amazement, saw the Berillica had coasted beneath the asteroid field and was stabilizing. Now she could turn all of her attention to that bastard in the Argonaut.

  “Sy, stop messin’ with that thing and man the guns, would ya!”

  “Right, luv, saw those sully-charges—not very nice usin’ them in here like that!”

  “Not very nice at all. If that sonofabitch so much as dips his wings in a strange way, tear him apart, got it?!”

  “Right!”

  Dezmara waggled her wings several times to the left and then to the right. Almost immediately, the Lodestar and the Maelstrom swung wide of her wake and Dezmara knew that Rilek understood. “Stay clear, boys,” she said out loud, “this asshole’s goin’ down!” Dezmara prepared to maneuver into position, but the captain of the Argonaut sent a barrage of live rounds screaming at her, and she rolled away just before they slammed into the cockpit. The near misses sped past and crashed into several rock behemoths behind the Ghost; the fragments dislodged by the bullets belched from their stony hides and started little asteroid belts of their own.

  “I see your reputation has preceded you,” Simon jabbed nervously.

  “Well, how about sending over someone to kiss and make up? Sy, get Stacy ready, would ya?”

  “I’ll get her stubbornness ready for the ball—right you are, ma’rm!” Simon’s voice was bubbling with genuine excitement. “Any special instructions after she’s introduced herself?”

  “I’ve half a mind to kill him,” Dezmara said after a quick moment of introspection, “but if I wanted to do that, I’d just light him up with the guns. No, punch him straight up out of the Straits and then let ‘em dance.”

  “You’re far kinder than anyone gives you credit for!”

  “Well, you should know. You’re the only one around to give me credit.”

  “’Xactly!”

  Dezmara jerked the control stick hard left and cut across the Argonaut’s wake. His gun turrets tracked her as she disappeared behind a large, spinning rock, and they anticipated her reappearance on the other side—ready to fire.

  As soon as she was hidden by the asteroid, Dezmara continued to roll the Ghost over until they were completely upside down. She followed the bottom contour of the asteroid, skimming over its multitude of craters and rocky fissures, and raced beneath the lead ship. For an instant, as she pulled even with the rust-orange colored freighter, the Ghost looked like its phantom twin: a dark reflection in the perfect mirror of space.

  “All right, Sy, broadside left—three kisses evenly spaced after my roll and twin sister on the right, got it?”

  “I’m with ya, luv,” Simon replied eagerly as he tapped the keys in front of hi
m. The gun sights for the cannon mounted in the middle of the turret above him showed blue on his screen. “All right, Stubborn Stacy, my luv, show the chaps a good time an’ be back at a reasonable hour.”

  “On my mark, Sy. Three, two, one, mark!”

  Dezmara twisted the controls once more and appeared right-side-up along the left of the Argonaut. Simon sighted and fired three times in a rhythmic boom-boom-boom! “Three ladies aboard with plenty of space to dance,” he announced. Before the Argonaut could return fire, Dezmara barrel-rolled again, slipping sideways between two heavenly bodies destined to meet. She continued her looping arc around the underside of the target in one smooth motion and popped up on its right side. Simon fired his first salvo—a direct hit, but the second was caught by an asteroid passing between the ships. He shelled them again and scored another bull’s-eye, but they had already lingered too long. The sound of bullets clattered through the tail end of the Ghost. The impact alarm roared as red lights flickered on and off in time to the terrible sound. Luckily the rounds glanced off of the rounded contours of the ship and didn’t breach the hull.

  “Simon, what the hell’s taking so long, we’re taking fire!”

  “One more round, luv. Roll over top of ‘em and I’ll do the rest! Three, two, one. Mark!” As the Ghost looped, Simon was typing at his keyboard and feathering the gun controls—adjusting the cannon. The timing had to be perfect. Simon was raising the barrel to stay on target as Dezmara turned the ship up and over. Just as the Ghost was perfectly perpendicular to her prey, the cannon was standing on end in the turret and locked on. Boom! Kiss number three on the Argonaut’s starboard side—six total—and time for the show to begin.

  Simon had designed Stubborn Stacy, and it was one of his favorites. It consisted of a round shot with a flared skirt protruding from one end. The ball end was originally designed to be magnetic, but most ships have active defenses for magnetized devices, so Simon rigged something much more effective. The top of each ball carried a packet of adhesive that Simon had cooked up himself and which he claimed couldn’t be scraped, chiseled, or burned off. The only way to remove it was to cut it out and weld a new patch over the resulting hole in the hull. The packet was designed to rupture on contact and weld the ball end to the target. Once attached, the conical skirt would swivel on the round end and direct the force of a compact, but powerful, engine inside the sphere. The ingenious part is the programming. Each ‘Stubborn Stacy’ could recognize the current acceleration of the vessel and swivel to direct its own force the opposite way. Enough ‘Stacys’ would render a ship unable to fly in any direction, and it would be forced to hover until the fuel in the rounds ran dry. Dezmara never actually hung around long enough to administer enough of the handy little devices to stop a star freighter; the point was to slow them down, and one Stacy on each side of a ship would do the job nicely.

  At the moment, however, the six Stacys engaged by Simon’s keystroke aimed their conical skirts downward and erupted on either side of the Argonaut. The rig lurched upward at an angle, and Dezmara could see frantic movement in the cockpit. She cringed slightly when a medium-sized planetoid rammed just aft of the bridge, but her small pangs of guilt passed quickly as it skittered along the fuselage, leaving only a few minor scratches, and careened off into the distance. She laughed out loud and Diodojo gave a short burst of a roar as they watched the wayward ship glide helplessly up and out of the Trinity Straits.

  Now that the Argonaut was clear of the asteroid field, the real fun would begin as they tried to maneuver and each Stubborn Stacy round fired in the opposite direction. Dezmara found herself wishing for the first time that she could tune in to the shared frequency and poke a little fun at the captain and crew. They wouldn’t place this run, but they would live to collect a standard fee for delivering all of their cargo, thanks to Dezmara’s good will. She wouldn’t have been so gracious if their insulator charges had downed one of the other runners or damaged the Ghost.

  “Two down, three left,” she thought to herself, and then the flight controls announced the approach of Trinity Medar and escape from the cursed Straits. She broke into the clearing first. The Lodestar and Maelstrom had stretched ahead of the field and commanded second and third place—just as Dezmara knew they would—and they would clear the asteroid field in just a few seconds. She eased the stick over and the Ghost banked around the jagged crumble of a once beautiful planet, headed for open space and the port of Chuudagar with the throttle wide open.

  Chapter 33: Doubt, No Doubt

  Rilek loved the Maelstrom. If he had to choose a ship other than the Lodestar to be his command vessel, it would be the one. To him it was like a craft from another place and time altogether—sucked through some rift in space from another dimension.

  Its bulbous nose had six port windows surrounding a seventh directly at its pointed center. The front of the ship flared and then tapered back to a large vertical stabilizer bisected horizontally by ailerons. Looking like a streamlined creature from an ancient sea, the sides of the ship were lined with several clusters of gun turrets with additional port windows standing watch over the perforated, black barrels like giant eyes. The conning tower sat squat on the Maelstrom’s back and lay just off center, favoring the bow slightly. In each quadrant, formed by the intersection of the tail pieces, sat a powerful engine, and small green flames burned placidly inside their conical shells as she hovered with the rest of the runners and waited for final instructions from Trillis.

  “Do you understand, Captain?” Rilek’s voice sounded over the com in the Maelstrom.

  “Yes, Admiral,” a bold voice answered firmly. “Follow The Ghost to Thulabane, where our man will plant the tracking device—then follow the beacon from there and confirm his identity.” Captain Saraunt was a Welku: a race of slight creatures with the stoutest of hearts and sharp wits. Their tactical minds and unrelenting fighting spirit made Welku warriors fearsome opponents, and although they had ultimately been defeated by the Durax, the Welku army inflicted heavy losses in the drawn-out battle for their home world. It is said the Welku have a small spark of the mysterious powers that make the Mewlatai immune to Duraxian mind control. They aren’t completely inured, but they have a higher tolerance than most, a barrier that requires more power and increased concentration from the murderous beasts—a task that is beyond some of the less skilled Durax soldiers.

  A military man from the time he was old enough to stand on the deck of a ship, Saraunt had escaped his devastated planet in the Maelstrom with a precious handful of his people. “Admiral?” Saraunt said. “The Ghost is the best runner in the universe—don’t you think he’ll sweep his ship for bugs after he unloads in Thulabane?” Otto, now securely fastened to an auxiliary gunner’s chair in the conning tower of the Lodestar, perked up immediately. He, too, had questioned the wisdom of Rilek’s plan before their arrival in the Straits, but his concerns were glanced over by the enigmatic admiral as if he were nothing but a lowly deckhand.

  “Ah, yes,” Rilek said as he glanced at Otto with a slight smile, “I suppose an explanation is in order. Kreigel has designed a rather simple, but effective, tracer for our friend The Ghost. The bug has a delay mechanism that starts when a scan is detected and activates the device only when the scan ends. Now, I have flown many runs with The Ghost, and judging by his cautious nature, I’m taking a gamble on how many times he’ll sweep his ship. We’re planting two bugs—one will have an early delay and one a much longer delay.”

  “A decoy!” Otto said.

  “Precisely,” Rilek continued. “I think he’ll sweep twice. He’s cautious but efficient, and three sweeps seems like it’ll take too long for our fast-moving friend. We’re counting on him finding the first one, but not the second. Now, this is a big risk—alerting him to the fact that someone wants to track him—but given the nature of the business of runners and ringers, I don’t think it’ll be the first time he’s discovered a bug aboard his ship. In any event, we might get lucky if it forces him
into the city to investigate. We must be certain The Ghost is, in fact, the Mewlatai who attacked Lieutenant Schunkari before we proceed.” Rilek’s eye flickered for a moment when he said this and Otto noticed the small trace of apprehension.

  “Admiral, is everything all right?” Otto hoped his vague implication wouldn’t need to be clarified.

  “Major,” Rilek answered, “as I said before, The Ghost has the skills of a Mewlatai pilot, but I haven’t seen even the smallest trace of the murderous nature you have hinted at—I am doubtful.” He couldn’t be sure amid the steady grumbling of the engines and the beeps of the con, but Otto thought he heard the admiral whisper a parting word under his breath—and it sounded like ‘hopeful.’

  “You admire him, don’t you?” Otto said with a hint of disapproval to which Malo added an outright snort of disgust. But Rilek was as cool as they came and he stood firm, squaring his shoulders to address the skeptics.

  “Make no mistake, gentlemen,” he said, tilting his head in his eerie way from one Dissenter to the other as his gold-ringed pupils burned into them, “I will fulfill my duty even if it takes my life and the lives of my crew and my beloved ship.” He paused and waited for the weight of his words to settle on them. “But honor is a rare trait at any time, let alone the worst of times, and until we have indisputable proof that The Ghost is the very Mewlatai that killed your man, I will not betray my heart. I have doubts.”