Renegade

by Joel Shepherd

  Erik swung them in a full arc around the target, giving Arms a good look, to be sure they’d got everything. “Good, now straighten him out for me!”

  “LC, we have vessels responding to our lightwave,” Geish warned. “Another few minutes and they’ll be all over us.”

  Arms fired again, proximity detonations against the target’s hull that slowed the spin. One blew a large part of the aft section off, and the spin slowed to a near stop, deprived of mass.

  “That’ll do, we are inbound… Major Thakur! Twenty seconds!”

  “Twenty seconds, copy.”

  Erik timed his run nose first, braked hard with retros and called, “Impact forward!” Combat carriers were designed for it, and they crashed forward with a heavy thud, stopping the spin entirely. Then a simple kick forward, roll to align the combat dock amidships and fix the big grapples to the enemy’s nose…

  * * *

  Trace’s ride on the combat dock ended when the charges engaged — shaped explosives affixing to the enemy’s nose with a boom! that rattled everyone inside their armour.

  “Secure those main passages!” she said tersely as grapples clanged and crashed outside. “Move fast and stop for nothing. We want officers, not crew, kill anything with red shoulders, disable anything with blue.” Not that they’d likely encounter much opposition, the chah'nas crew hadn’t been given much time to don pressure suits. But then, chah'nas often erred on the side of violence, and they may have suited up in advance of the intercept, in anticipation of human trouble. Could this whole thing have been a trick to lure Phoenix into this engagement?

  Dock irised open and she kicked off her berth and jetted in past torn debris and hull armour. She found a corridor, hit the wall and pushed off hard — with cylinder rotation gone the warship was zero-G and now zero-atmosphere. She powered up the corridor, simply scraping and bouncing off when her course drifted. Caught a corner hard and came about into the main corridor — chah'nas warships made human warships look like pleasurecraft, everything was dark steel and the glare of a few surviving lights.

  Movement ahead as a chah'nas emerged from a doorway, helmeted and suited with weapon in hands — she shot it and jetted past, then grenaded the corridor end as another took aim from cover. On coms she heard more shooting and terse calls, and she caught a doorway short of the corridor end to halt herself, then Arime came past and they covered both ways at once. Arime shot something, and Trace jetted to the doorway the Kulik Class schematics said would be ‘extra-crew’, and checked the door sensor. It showed emergency yellow — the chah'nas colour for ‘good’, or what humans would use for ‘green’, meaning the far side of the door was pressurised.

  Trace indicated to Arime, stuck a magnetic mine on it and pulled herself aside for cover. It was a shaped charge, so little shrapnel and in a vacuum explosives had no shockwave. This one blew a hole through the lock mechanism. Arime hauled the door open with powered-armour strength, a rush of escaping air, then Trace put a handball through the gap… saw several chah'nas crew thrashing and fighting for breath. And one, well covered in a six-limbed pressure suit, struggling to get his weapon to bear on the door. Trace tossed a flash-bang and went in fast after it, launched off the wall at the suited chah'nas and tackled him spinning into the wall. Behind her, Arime shot the two suffocating crew, more threat-neutralisation than mercy, as Trace clubbed the suited chah'nas repeatedly hard in the midriff to incapacitate without greatly damaging the suit. With powered-armour strength it was easy to twist two arms behind him, cuff them, then throw him at Arime.

  “Get him out!” she said — the suit had no officer’s markings, unsurprising from an emergency suit, but if you found three crew in an emergency decompression, and then chah'nas or human you could usually bet the only pressure suit went to the officer.

  She guarded Arime’s rear out the door with the prisoner, and nearly shot the next six-limbed, suited figure to erupt from a neighbouring door… but this suit was merely propelled by explosive decompression from the room. Its limbs were limp, but a glance in the bowl helmet showed it occupied… but the face was not chah'nas. Trace glimpsed fur, big, folded ears and sharp teeth… and desperate, wild eyes looking at her, shouting something Trace couldn’t hear with no coms or atmosphere between them. A kuhsi, who was safe in a pressurised room, but had now busted out and apparently desperate for rescue…

  Trace grabbed the suit, hit suit thrust and powered after Arime, calls on coms as all her marines retreated, tacnet showed them all accounted and moving fast. Trace hauled the half-empty pressure suit bouncing around a corner, rifle aimed behind in case some remaining chah'nas crewman was stupid enough to show himself, but none were.

  And then they were back at the shattered entry hole that carved through decks melted like butter, and the glare of Phoenix spotlights that her visor blackened to keep dim amidst the cluster of armoured bodies. Then a fast rush inside, the iris sealing behind as grapples crashed and thrust powered them away once more… and then acceleration slings amid the cold steel walls, throwing the prisoners and rescues in and finding some for themselves because Phoenix was about to move…

  “This is the Major,” Trace said as she hit her own sling and sealed herself in. A fast glance around showed others doing the same, like insects in cocoons all up the combat dock. “All aboard and sealed, go go go.”

  * * *

  Erik did not need to be told twice, cut the grapples and blasted them clear. Mains punched them back into their seats, as he loaded Kaspowitz’s Nav settings and saw the solution track ahead of him. They were still moving fast, and scan showed ships racing after them, ships pulsing, ships at considerable portions of light though apparently refraining from fire least they hit the chah'nas ship. But they couldn’t change trajectory in the way Kaspowitz’s course required at this speed, so he dumped velocity hard and let the crippled alien ship go shooting off ahead — with any luck any other chah'nas in system would chase it down to rescue its remaining crew rather than chase Phoenix.

  Another hard dump, then he swung the ship sideways and powered into an 11-G thrust. “Three minutes!” he told them all on uplinks, blinking to stop his vision becoming a giant blur, fighting hard for air. “Arms, auto-fire, lay down cover!” He couldn’t hear or feel the thump of outgoing fire, the rocking and roaring vibration of the mains drowned it out. Course changing made them slow, while around them intercepting ships were gaining at an alarming rate.

  “We’re going to get incoming before we’ve finished the course change!” Geish warned.

  “Can’t help it. Arms, full defensive!”

  “Aye LC!” There was nothing for it but to hope that Arms would intercept anything that would hit them before it did. Engineering gave him an overheat warning on the mains, but it was the jumplines that bothered him, not the well tested and relatively undamaged main engines.

  At two minutes, incoming arrived, continually accelerating rounds detonating on proximity fuse, thirty klicks, five klicks, two klicks, a bright flash as defensive intercepted one a klick short. Too many and too close… Erik re-primed the mains, abruptly cut thrust to the collective gasp of everyone on the bridge, waited for the reactor to re-boot, then slammed it on again. And suddenly all the rounds were detonating ahead, where Phoenix would have been, as Nav scrambled to recalculate based on that last move. Then the rounds were detonating behind as enemy Armscomps over-adjusted.

  “That cruiser at red-three is gonna get real close to our mark!” said Karle, toggling fire and threat assessment as Erik held the roll to keep the guns in line. Red-three marked the third-closest enemy threat, but the fastest closing… Erik didn’t want to hit anyone, just defend their escape, but if they left him no choice, Phoenix weaponry was more than a match for anything chasing them.

  “Arms, lock red-three with everything and fire!”

  “Aye LC, he’s still too far out…”

  “I know just hit him!”

  Karle did that… and Erik felt a disorientation as dizzines
s hit him, then a jolt as uplink augments hit him with a stim jolt to keep him blacking out. Mark arrived, and Erik rolled without cutting thrust, and let Nav line them up for first pulse… wham! as something blew just to one side, intercepted or near-miss he couldn’t tell, then a flash as something hit red-three, and he pulsed hard…

  …and came out racing, suddenly far too fast for incoming ordinance, but the jumplines had a red light, flashing on the perimeter of his overcrowded vision. Any other time he would have bailed out, but there was simply no choice, and grav readings dropped below critical as velocity piled up, and suddenly all the lines on the jump Nav were matching.

  He hit pulse, and Argitori system stretched in white sound and noise…

  17

  And arrived, somewhere else, and a long, long way away from Argitori. That red light was still flashing, and speeds were about thirty percent too high, but that was normal for crazy combat jumps… only this was Rikishikti, which had retained its old krim name by virtue of being too insignificant for anyone to be bothered changing it.

  Nav details crossed his eyes, blinking more easily in the lack of thrust but blurred as always from hyperspace time-dilation. It was the physiological equivalent of not sleeping for three days, and staring at a screen for most of them. Rikishikti, small red dwarf, a big, hot gas giant in a close orbit that was slowly melting it, a few rocky outer worlds and some very old, tumbling bits of ice. A dull and boring system frequented by no one, but providing enough mass to pull a speeding ship out of hyperspace.

  Nav finally got its bearings and gave him a position — forty percent further down the gravity slope than they were supposed to be. But the dwarf’s mass was low enough that it wouldn’t mess them up particularly.

  “Engineering, this is the LC. Rooke, I’ve got a red light on the jumplines, give me a yes or no on the next jump.” He dumped velocity while he waited for Kaspowitz to recalc the jump. The warning light remained unchanged, the dump hadn’t broken anything else. It could just be a bad sensor.

  “Nothing here,” said Geish. “Navigation buoy says seven transits in the last week, that’s it.”

  “Don’t believe those fucking things,” said Kaspowitz. “They lie. LC, give me another few minutes to recalc.”

  “That’s okay, we’ve got time.” The nice thing about being in one of the Fleet’s most powerful ships was that they always arrived well before anyone else. “All posts report.”

  “Arms green LC.”

  “Coms green LC.”

  “Scan green.”

  “Nav needs a drink LC.” Erik fought back a smile, sipping water from the seat pouch. He couldn’t quite believe they were still alive. Surely something had fucked up somewhere.

  “Engineering is green LC. Still checking that jumpline but it’s just that one light, nothing else, could be nothing. Mains are fine, I’m not getting any readings of damage.”

  “Operations is green LC. PH-1 is locked and secure, both other shuttles are secure, all Engineering crew accounted for.” Well thank god for that. Now for the one he was dreading.

  “Major Thakur? You guys okay down there?”

  “We’re good LC. Zero casualties, one chah'nas prisoner, two rescued kuhsi prisoners. I thought it was just one, but turns out there was a kid squashed into the suit as well. We had two chah’nas prisoners, but one went for a gun just now and… well, now there’s one.”

  Erik couldn’t quite believe his ears. “Outstanding Major. Just outstanding, you’ve excelled yourself. My appreciation to you all.”

  “And ours to you. Incredible bit of flying, the Captain couldn’t have done better.”

  “Amen,” Kaspowitz echoed as he worked, and some others echoed it again. Erik still didn’t believe it, he could think of at least five things in that last passage he could have done better or faster. And it was one thing to say you were as good as Captain Pantillo, quite another to actually know what that meant, as he did.

  “She took two minutes fifty-six on the dot,” said Jiri with a half-grin of disbelief. “And didn’t lose a man. That’s ridiculous.”

  “That’s ‘cause we’re Phoenix,” Shahaim said loudly. “And don’t let these fuckers forget it.”

  “LC,” came Kaspowitz. “Nav is locked in, got you a course.”

  “Good.” He flipped coms to shipwide. “Phoenix, this is the LC. Two jumps to go, just hold tight. Let’s see if we can do this in one go.”

  “LC this is Rooke. I think we’re okay. Closer interrogation reveals nothing, I think it’s just the light… it’s the mag oscillation sensor, but I think it might just be reading disruption from mains.”

  “Green it is. Two dumps and a course correction, stand by.” First and second dump passed without any further protest from the light. Erik held them at a 5-G burn for twelve minutes, seeing no reason to push it harder in this deserted system without immediate navigation hazards, then burned at 8-G for another ten to improve position and starting velocity upon the gravity slope, considering their deep entry.

  And then when everyone down to the implacable Major Thakur herself was surely cursing him and muttering that he should just jump already, he hit two pulses in succession, watched the lines match, and once more flung them out into the void…

  * * *

  …and back in. Everything was shaking, and he just knew something wasn’t right. The red light had made several friends, and the escape lines kept trying to rejoin and fling them back out into hyperspace, despite the great mass racing up at them in the stellar distance. Sounds and vision came at him oddly, as though doplering, colours shifting into realms where they did not belong. Were they actually out of hyperspace? You weren’t supposed to be able to experience hyperspace, the human brain was structurally incapable of processing what it found there, and the sensors the scientists took across the gulf in research ships never recorded much more than static…

  Erik tried to flex a hand on the left axis control, tried to find the jumpline toggle. That reach of his hand seemed to take a lifetime, fingers flexing out into the infinite distance…

  …and back in fully with a crash of reality, alarms blaring, attitude reading a sideways slide and everyone shouting at once. “Dumping!” he shouted, recharging the lines to do that, and watched with helpless dread as the indicators barely moved, then slowly crawled as the power flowed. Come on, come on…

  “That’s not good!” Shahaim yelled from his side, watching the same thing he was. “That’s not good at all!” If they couldn’t charge, they couldn’t slow down. If they couldn’t slow down they’d cross this entire system in a few days and fling into deep space where no one travelled sub-light, and no one would find them, and they’d all die a very slow death from starvation or suffocation, depending on how long they could keep the ship running…

  “Engineering!” Erik called. “Get me a charge!”

  “I’m on it!” A pause. “Try it now!”

  The lines moved, and finally a full charge. Erik hit the pulse, and everything blurred out of phase once more… then snapped back hard. This time the charge came quickly, and he hit it again. And found them at a much more sensible velocity. Heading was a little off — they were nadir on the new star, heading ‘beneath’ it, out of the plane of planets and moons which they’d be astronomically unlikely to hit, and the associated debris which was much more likely.

  “Nav?” he called.

  “Looks good to me LC,” said Kaspowitz, relief plain in his voice. “Good job.”

  “Helm?”

  “Systems look good. We can coast here, take a look at whatever went wrong.”

  “Okay everyone, this is the LC, looks like only two jumps this time. We’ll have to do the third jump later. All posts call in.”

  They did, and all were unchanged save for a very anxious Second Lieutenant Rooke in Engineering. When everything was finally cleared, Erik gave them freedom to move around, and called Draper up to command.

  He almost fell when getting from the chair, whether fro
m nerves or the accumulated stiffness of two jumps straight. He braced himself with effort, and found the two marine guards ready by his quarters, having used the paired acceleration slings in there to avoid abandoning their post. They accompanied him around to back-quarter, along the central marine corridor and into Assembly, in time to catch Trace and some of her marines sliding down the access ladders from the core transit that everyone had to use to move from midships to the crew cylinder while rotation was operational.

  There were plenty of other marines about, some armoured for simple protection as marines often would when riding a jump run, many checking the rows and rows of stacked armour and weapons as was procedure after every big move. The unarmoured others gathered also, and there were shouts and yells as the returning marines pulled off their helmets and handed off weapons.

  “PHOENIX! PHOENIX! PHOENIX MARINES! ECHO PLATOON, FUCK YEAH!” They yelled louder when they saw Erik, moving aside for him. None touching him, just shouting, not wildly, but with purpose. “LC! HELL YEAH LC!”

  Trace gave him a wry smile as he approached, sweaty with wet hair stuck to her forehead. She held out her hand, and he smacked it hard, and clasped, and ruffled her wet hair. “Best fucking marine commander in the Fleet,” he said loudly, and they roared.

  “Best fucking carrier pilot in the Fleet,” she retorted, and they roared again.

  “LC! LC! LC!” And Erik found himself smiling, and covered in goosebumps. Never mind that they’d all almost died in that last reentry, and might have broke the damn jumpline again. This was something he’d never truly believed he’d get, from these people. And never truly realised how badly he’d wanted until now.

  Trace yanked his head down to speak in his ear above the noise. “And if you tell me differently, I’ll kick your ass.”