“Yes he could.”
“What?”
“You were thinking he couldn’t keep saving you forever. Yes he could. You broke it off, not him. And even though he’s with Aline now, don’t you for one second think he’ll not do everything he can to keep you out of danger.”
“Fuck that.”
“You broke it off before he could.”
I chuckled. I had indeed. We’d seen each other naked with the team in a spa a few times, as well as a few skinny dips at beaches, but I had broken it off too early for more than a few kisses. Mind you, with what happened around him, it was amazing he was with anyone.
“He’s doing better now isn’t he?”
Jane looked at me for a moment.
“He is. I think the war has finally banished all his feelings of inadequacy, and not wanting to be who he really is. Not that he’s had much time for introspection lately. I think getting things sorted with Aline helped too. The likelihood of both of them going out at the same time seems to have steadied both of them. And ironically, the Imperium leaders wanting him to lead the committee meetings has given him a solid reason for fighting a war leading from the front. And when he does that, he is solid.”
I sighed. Good for Aline. But he was never going to do the same for Chris and me. But at least he had his head on straight now.
“You and Chris both know you probably won’t work out.”
“What?”
She was grinning at me. Oh, right. Jane’s humour.
“Funny. I have no idea if we can make it work, but we both want to try.”
“And if he bites it today?”
“I’ll grieve. But my world won’t end.”
“Sure.”
“Get out of my head Jane, and do something useful.”
“What?”
“Find me a pilot who won’t mind being bored shitless driving this bus.”
“Actually, I think I know just the person.”
Five
“Oh, shit!”
Sim wasn’t the type to swear, but this time it was completely appropriate.
Pangbornd collapsed, falling completely off the chair, but I was barely aware of it.
The view screen was mainly full of a planet now. What wasn’t planet, was ship sized trees. They were firing towards the planet.
I jumped the whole way back to my seat in one bound, holstering my gun, and buckled up again.
“Can you restart us from Gorilla?”
“I’ve cargo droids running cables now. But I don’t think we have enough time.”
The tree directly in front of us was rotating to bring its guns to bear on us. Missiles could be seen launching. We were that close. The missiles were bad enough. The guns at this range were going to be worse. But neither were our main problem.
“Any chance of shields in the next minute?”
Sim shook her head. Even if she managed to get Gorilla hooked up, shields would take too long to regenerate enough to save us. But.
“Can you use Gorilla to give us any kind of shield at all?”
“Maybe. Jane has done some strange things with shield sharing. I can try. Where do you want it?”
Jane was Sim’s mother, if AI’s had a mother. And I’d been there when she’d done strange things with shields, which was why I was asking.
“We can take a few missile hits, but we’re about to have an accident. See if you can minimize our damage.”
“On it.”
There was nothing I could do. A butler droid hurried in, picked up the unconscious mage, and buckled him into his seat. I saw it hesitate. Butlers never hesitated, so I knew it was facing a choice it wasn’t programmed for. It took the closest seat, and buckled up itself. I nodded. Smart droid.
My hands hovered over the controls, but without power, I could yank them as much as I wanted to, and nothing was going to happen. Except perhaps broken controls. But in a moment, broken controls were going to be the least of our problems.
At the last second, the Trixone in charge of what looked like a cruiser, realized we were about to hit them. The ship made a valiant attempt to get out of our way, but too little, too late.
I gripped the seat arms again, and braced myself for impact.
There was a flash of light as what shield Sim had managed shorted out against the tree’s shields, and then we hit. Scimitar shuddered along her full length.
The nose and front underside had taken the brunt of the collision, and most of the nose was just gone now. Shields did that. Any solid matter hitting them just vaporized. And that included inadequately shielded ships.
I was about to suggest to Sim that wasn’t so bad, when I saw her face. Apparently I was wrong. With no HUD or pop up screens to show anything, all I could go by was what I could see down the length of the ship.
We were buried deep into the tree, with the titan turret seeming to have stopped us grinding straight through. I guess the good news was our hull was currently better than theirs. But for now, it wasn’t useful information.
“Gorilla’s shield emitters burned out.”
No surprise there.
“Any power at all?”
“Yes, but the collision moved Gorilla a long way along the maintenance deck, so the cargo droids are having to move the cables.”
I looked at her, with my eyebrows raised.
“Sorry George.”
I sighed.
Missiles hit the hull in a number of places, but I had no idea if we’d taken any damage or not. And it didn’t matter anyway.
We were going down.
The tree we’d hit had been only just in orbit. We’d been on a direct course into the atmosphere on a sure fire burn up angle. When we hit, our momentum was transferred to the other ship, and now we were both going down.
Sim started laughing.
I threw her a ‘what the hell are you laughing about’ look.
“It’s not all bad.”
“How is this in any way not bad?”
“We don’t have any shields, but we do now have a heat-shield.”
I could see her point. There was fire blooming around the ship we were now wearing. It didn’t have shields either, and a flash of light later, I could see they’d tried to put one around both ships, and failed.
“Can you launch Gorilla?”
She shook her head.
“What about bracing for impact?”
“I’m trying.”
She didn’t sound very hopeful. At this point, our only hope of ever getting home rested on how well Gorilla or the Lightning survived what was about to happen. There was nothing but fire in front of us now, and my suit shifted into protection mode so my eyes wouldn’t get burned out, since the usual view adjustments the ship made were non-functional along with everything else.
I sighed one more time. This was something I’d hoped I’d never have to test.
“Collision protocol.”
“Seriously? What about him?”
The mage was still out cold. In fact, I wasn’t even sure he was alive. It was possible the jump had killed him, from what I understood about mage limitations.
“Can you get enough suits to him before we crash?”
There was the C word. The one no ship captain ever wanted to deal with.
She shook her head. We had spares, but they were decks away.
“Transfer yourself to my combat suit, and try to save it.”
She nodded. We might need its help getting out of here, assuming we survived the crash.
The fire show outside ended. Now was the part we were not going to enjoy, not that we’d enjoyed any part of this already, but the next part was really going to suck. All I could see ahead was alien ship, and clouds.
We plunged into the clouds, and came out the other side.
And of course, there was a mountain ahead of us.
I felt all of my suits shift into collision mode at the same time.
There was a few seconds to wonder if this was finally it.
Six
Instead of getting a rift to Orion’s Belt as I’d expected, Jane knocked on a door in one of Haven’s space scrapers.
Fearless was docked to Redoubt, and we’d walked through the rift to Haven, along with the rest of the alpha team and all the troops on board. They were off for some R&R, although Amanda had made me promise to keep her in the loop. I had no illusions about the team. If I managed a decent ship, they’d make sure they were on it.
First things first though. I needed a replacement for me.
The door was opened by an older woman, dressed in what passed for Haven trendy for the older. Not that I could really tell you what current trends were, considering I’d been wearing a uniform for more than eighteen months now.
“Yes?”
“I’m looking for Commander Lowell,” said Jane.
The woman looked at her stars, across to my bars, and sighed.
“He’s in the zone.”
Jane’s smile widened.
“I’m sorry, but it’s important.”
“You better come in then. But be warned, he won’t take being interrupted very well.”
“We’ll risk it.”
The woman nodded, pulled the door all the way open, and we entered the lobby of their suite. It was a really good one, towards the top of one of the civilian accommodation space scrapers, and of a size which only people with money had used to be able to afford, before the station was evacuated. Come to think of it, I had no idea why this couple were still here. They should have gone to Gaia with the millions who had.
On the other side she ushered us into a living room, and motioned towards lounge chairs. We sat, while she went through a door, and we heard her knocking on another one.
“WHAT?”
“Sorry dear, but you have guests.”
“I didn’t order any guests, and especially not right now. I’m in the zone. You know I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“I’m sorry dear, but they’re here anyway.”
There was a pause. Jane’s grin was even bigger.
“Are they wearing uniforms?”
“Yes dear.”
“FUCK!”
Jane started quietly laughing. I think she secretly likes upsetting people. I was beginning to think coming here had been a bad idea.
The woman emerged, trying to keep a straight face, and not quite succeeding.
“He’ll be out in a moment. But I think you just killed someone.”
“Killed someone?” I asked, now very confused.
Both of them laughed.
“You’ll see. Coffee?”
“Not for me,” said Jane, and I also declined.
The door opened in the other room, and a man came out. He looked about John Slice’s age, as in old, with a balding head, and long grey beard. Not Gandalf long, but much longer than Jon’s. He stood in the doorway looking first at me, and then Jane.
“I might have known,” he said, with a sigh. “I’ve been expecting you for weeks now. You should have known better than to come right in the middle of my session. Now I’ve got a dead man who can’t save the day anymore. I mean, shit. He’s trying to escape through an asteroid field, and you interrupt me just as I’m writing him trying to thread the bloody needle. Bam. I’m out of the zone, and he smashes into a rock. Gone. Now what the hell am I going to do?”
He must have seen the look on my face, because he suddenly grinned.
“Lieutenant Commander Grace Tapping,” said Jane, “meet Commander Nathan Lowell.”
“Retired,” he added hastily.
“Not anymore,” said Jane.
He sank into a chair, but didn’t look as upset as I thought he should have been.
“I figured. Serves me right for staying here.”
“We didn’t stay here, dear,” said his wife. “When they evacuated Haven, you were in the zone for three days straight, and by the time you paid any attention to the outside galaxy, everyone was gone.”
“It has been a lot quieter lately.”
“Millions of people going somewhere else has that effect dear. You should know, you’ve written it more than once yourself.”
“True. But now I’m regretting writing one of my other characters being drafted, since it seems to have been prescient.”
Jane took pity on me.
“Nathan here is a writer. He was XO on one of the American Actor class cruisers, but retired long before the Midgard War. His family have a history of writing novels, mainly life in space, and with his background, he found he had the knack for what is basically his family business. His line goes back as far as Jon’s does.”
“How did you get here?” I asked Nathan.
“Tax.”
“Sorry?”
“When the Duchy of Hunter’s Run came into being, it was too good an opportunity to avoid American sector taxes. We took the opportunity to emigrate, and we’ve been here from very early on. And it was great too, until suddenly the world has shrunk to only fifteen thousand people, most of whom don’t read space opera. Still, I’ve a series to finish, and it does keep me occupied.”
“I have a proposal for you,” said Jane.
“Yeah, I know. You want me back in the saddle. I’m too old for that shit.”
“Grace here is captain of Fearless.”
“The troopship? Wasn’t that George Murdock’s ride?”
“It was, until he was given Scimitar.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot. I do try to keep up, but when I’m in the zone, I tend to lose track.”
“He vanished this morning,” I said.
“Sorry, what?”
“Scimitar was testing the new jump drive. It jumped out, but didn’t jump in again anywhere we know about.”
He gave Jane a long look, and then looked at me.
“And you want to go look for him, but you can’t in Fearless.” He laughed at my expression. “I’m old, not senile. I can see which way the wind blows. You want me for Fearless, so you can go gallivanting around in something more dangerous.”
“Yep,” said Jane. “As I said, I have an offer for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Full reinstatement as a Commander, and appointed captain of Fearless. Effective immediately. But as Grace will tell you, Fearless, while she has teeth, is not a combat ship anymore, so you’ll be spending a lot of time sitting above planets while the troops are on the ground.”
She paused, and I saw his face look hopeful. He opened his mouth.
“Yes,” said Jane. “Except when you actually need to drive the ship, or co-ordinate with the Marine officer commanding the troops, you can write away to your heart’s content. Only proviso is if you’re in the zone and the shit hits the fan, you need to react better than you did today when I interrupt you.”
“You’re the AI on Fearless?”
Interesting he knew that.
“Yes. And I have another offer for you.”
“Yes?”
“I know you have the rights to all the novels written by your ancestors still, but with few people to read them now, your income is tanking. I can help with that.”
“How?” asked his wife before he could.
“All the publishers and book platform operators went to Gaia. Jon is letting me create a new publishing platform for the Imperium. I’ll help you translate your entire family catalogue for the other members of the Imperium. There’s no guarantees of course, but I know the Democratic Union read a lot, and given the recruitment into the space forces, new and different space stories might well appeal to the population. The market is still smaller than the hundred and twenty billion population we used to have, but I’ve seen Lufafluf soldiers reading novels in their off time, so as the Imperium grows, so too will the market for novels potentially grow again.”
“You can do that?” he asked.
“Jon has already given me permission to release works we know are no longer copyrighted. Lot of the classics, for exam
ple, became public domain before copyright was extended, but once the laws changed, as long as descendants of the original author kept the books listed for sale, they kept the rights while they did. Hence you still owning your families rights.”
“That’s a difficult task, since the time line change could have done anything to books. Half of them might have vanished, never written for all we know.”
“True. For now, I’ll stick to the ones I know don’t have rights holders, and if one day we re-establish contact with humans along the arm, I’ll see what survived and what didn’t. For now though, we can use your books as a test. Are you in?”
He looked at his wife. She nodded.
“I guess I’m in.”
Seven
“Come in m’dear.”
Bob Derr was a rotund man in well worn civvies, with a big grin on his face.
“I’m told you want to do a Jon,” he went on.
I stopped in mid step on my way into his office.
“A jon? Sounds like it requires a bathroom.”
He put his head back and roared with laughter, while waving me to a seat. I continued the rest of the way, and sat, thinking it hadn't been that funny. He got a grip.
“Jon is the only one I know who bucks every accepted principle of shipbuilding, and still manages to ask for something that can be delivered. I take it you want to try and do the same?”
“I have some ideas.”
“That’s what Jon said.”
“And?”
“His were good.”
“And mine won’t be?”
“Whatever gives you that idea, m’dear. I love good ideas. I love bad ideas. I love making bad ideas into good ideas. Tell me what yours are.”
“I hear you have an almost completed Scimitar hull.”
“Several in fact.”
“I want to make a dreadnaught version starting with Claymore’s current design.”
“There’s not a lot of scope for that. Claymore’s new front end pushed the envelope about as far as it would go.”
“I know. Chris told me. But there will be. Can you show me the specs?”
Imperium Knight Chaos Rising (The Hunter Imperium Book 6) Page 3