The flight deck rattled around them, the deck underneath her acceleration couch shuddering. They were breaking atmosphere, going straight towards the planet’s crust. Not entirely straight — that ocean looks softer than it is. Nate’s flight plan had her pointing the Tyche at the ocean. Just the ocean, no mountains, no convenient hills to weave in. Just water, and at the speed they were going, it’d be like impacting against ceramicrete. A big shock, an expansion of fire and gas and water vapor, and that would be the last memento of the good ship Tyche, her luck spent trying to outrun an angry-ass bunch of aliens.
“Nate,” she said.
“Yo,” he said. It didn’t come out that clean, because they were pushing hard Gs. Throttles still at the stops, the fusion engines roaring out into atmosphere, a contrail of fire and radiation in their wake. Rocks, unable to keep up, slowed by the atmosphere. The sound he’d made was more like yer, his head pressed back against the couch’s rest.
“Tell me you’ve got a plan,” said El. Her own teeth were gritted against the acceleration, the Tyche shuddering and bucking under her. It’s okay, girl. The ship didn’t like this; she wasn’t made for it. The Tyche hadn’t been built to go nose-first into the ocean at seven times the speed of sound. The sticks under her hands felt alive, and for the first time ever El felt the Tyche fight her, bucking against her will.
The Tyche didn’t want to die.
“Got a plan,” said Nate, panting the words out.
“Does it involve dying?” she said. Because the Tyche doesn’t want us to die, Nate. She wants us to live.
“No,” he said, and released the next set of coordinates to her.
She almost cried out in relief. The coordinates took them along the surface of the ocean. Almost cried out, because it took them back towards the fallen city where this had all started. El thought about arguing, thought about saying fuck this, you crazy asshole, but there wasn’t time.
Also, she didn’t have a better plan. She was all action, or all reaction.
El grabbed the Tyche and wrestled her into a curve. We won’t die, she promised the ship in her mind. We’ll make it through. She hoped it was true.
The ship’s bucking and shuddering increased as El pulled the Tyche out of a nosedive and into a curve. Someone behind them groaned, either Kohl or Grace, it was impossible to tell. At the kinds of G forces they were under, there was a no gender, no differentiation, just shared pain, feeling like their bones were grating against the acceleration couches. Too much of this and they’d stroke out. If there were old people on the Tyche they’d have passed out already. El wondered what Hope was thinking, alone in Engineering, watching the readouts on the reactor, seeing the stress readings in the hull. All alone. She’d know if they would fall apart before El did. Hope could see it coming.
There was another groan, and El realized she was making it herself. She was having trouble breathing as the ship pulled out flat, and El closed her eyes. Just for a second, just to let the blackness at the edges of her vision go away.
“El,” said Nate. Her eyes snapped back open. She couldn’t turn to look at him, but knew what his face would say. Something like stay with me or I can’t fly her like you can. El’s hands were still on the controls, but the blackness was fading, the steady rumble of thrust at their backs pushing them through the atmosphere.
“Piece,” she gasped, “of cake.”
“Not quite,” he said. “Lower.”
“The fuck,” she said. “We’re hypersonic.”
“Need the air,” he said. What he meant, she realized, was that they needed as much air between them and the rocks as possible. To slow them down, make it possible to alter their course. And, with a little luck, get the atmosphere to burn the rocks up, get rid of some of the smaller ones.
“You’re. The. Boss,” she said, tipping the Tyche lower.
“On the deck,” he said.
“No,” she said.
“Are you,” he said, “saying you can’t do it?”
“Fuck you,” she said. Gasped it out, really, her body still feeling the relief of not being under crazy G forces. El knew when she was being played, but let herself get played anyway. Fifteen meters above the ocean she took them, their hypersonic velocity carving a trench in the ocean they passed over, a funnel of water rising in their wake. She worked her console, bringing up a topographical chart of the planet’s surface. The ocean was easy, a flat piece of glass rushing past underneath them. When they hit land, things would get more interesting. That city would need a piece of clever flying at this speed. The mountains beyond it would put them back in a steep climb. The holo on the flight deck continued to chart the path of rocks as they came in thick and fast, the air leaving trails of fire in their wake. El could see some of it out the window, orange burning in the night sky as they sped along just above the ocean’s surface.
That’s odd. Riding the deck was hard; it needed her focus and attention. But her focus and attention included the things they were flying towards. The air around them was full of falling rocks. El could weave the Tyche to avoid them, some by a significant margin, some falling in their wake but big enough to throw up huge gouts of water and steam. The Tyche was telling her that ahead was clean air.
Over the fallen city. The Ezeroc weren’t dropping rocks on the city.
Was Nate’s plan to hide them in the city? It made sense from a rocks-crushing-the-life-from-you perspective, but it wasn’t a long term plan. That city was full of Ezeroc, and their PDCs were almost dry. A couple dedicated bugs on the outside of the hull, a little bit of time, and the inside of the Tyche would be bug central. She didn’t look at Nate — she was focusing on flying too much — but she said, “Nate, please tell me we won’t land in that city.”
“Hey,” he said. “No peeking at the flight plan.” El wanted to look, because his voice sounded like he was smiling.
“Are you … are you having a good time?” she said.
“Hell no,” he said. “I’m having a great time. You know how I love to watch you work.” The city was approaching fast, the Tyche saying it would be on the horizon in moments. At their speed, visible would turn to in the past all too quickly. “Oh, hey, it’s time. Here you go.”
New coordinates filled her display. Charting a course from the middle of the city straight up. He was using the city as a kind of rock-free funnel into space again. Clever enough, except for the massive asteroid that would be waiting for them. “You know they’ll be up there when we get into the hard black, right?”
“You do your job, I’ll do mine,” he said. She spared him a glance then, because he sounded like he was having a good time. That one quick glimpse showed him craning to see out the window, like a kid having their first flight. That damn sword of his, still clasped in one hand. And yeah, he was smiling.
If the acceleration couches had allowed it, she might have shrugged. She’d always figured Nate for an idealist, a dreamer, and an overgrown child. It was nice to be shown she was right, before they all died in a fiery explosion.
El talked the Tyche into another climb, a ride back up the gravity well. The ship was tireless, nosing towards the stars like a hungry hound. Whether it was the Ravana’s heart beating in the Tyche’s chest, or the refit courtesy of the Gladiator, she was eager, keen in a way she hadn’t felt in all the years El had been the Tyche’s Helm. It’s possible that the ship was just happy to not be a thin smear of metal and carbon against the planet’s surface. Whatever it was, there was joy in the ship’s flight. That might have been what she’d seen on Nate’s face — his ship, his Tyche, riding the sky like she never had before.
“Don’t forget,” said Nate. “No gravity.” He meant the negative space generator that made Endless Jumps possible; it’s what gave them gravity when in space. The Endless Drive was fried, and wasn’t coming back online anytime soon. El checked the straps on her harness, more a habit than need, nodding to herself. All strapped in.
Ahead of them, the Ezeroc ship loomed at the ed
ge of space. It was closing on an intercept course, and all the flight plan Nate had disclosed put the Tyche on an intersecting trajectory. “Nate,” she said.
“I see it,” he said.
“Nate,” she said. “It’s a massive rock.”
“I see it,” he said. “Be cool.”
“Did you … do not tell me to be cool,” she said. “This is hard. All of this is hard. You are getting me to fly without knowing my destination. Without knowing the next point in the destination!”
“You’re doing great,” said Nate. “Don’t fuck it up now.”
If she had the energy, or the reach, she would have hit him. As it was, she seethed. “Do you,” she said after a moment, “at least have a next step for me?” She was getting nervous about that rock they were flying towards. It was getting too damn close, too damn fast. She realized she didn’t know what the maximum non-Endless speed of the thing was. Would it kind of run over the top of them, leaving the Tyche like a smear of intergalactic roadkill on the surface of the rock? Or would they be able to stay ahead, even extend a lead with the Tyche running on a full burn?
Nate’s voice jogged her free of her revere. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re gonna fly to the sun.”
The new coordinates bloomed on her holo and she turned the Tyche in a smooth arc. Away from the Ezeroc ship, the light of dawn breaking around Absalom Delta. The systems’ star, bright for a moment in the window before the autotints corrected it down to bearable levels. As it was, she couldn’t see anything. The curve of the planet as it kissed the brightness of the star, and that was it. They were flying blind.
COLLISION WARNING said the Tyche.
“Pay her no mind,” said Nate. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Here we go, El. Don’t deviate from this course by a whisker. If you do, we’re all going to die, and it will be a horrible death.”
El realized that Nate had shut her out of the holo. She’d been so busy studying the beauty of the sun out the window — you big sap, you’re still able to be amazed at the wonder of creation — that she hadn’t noticed when he’d turned off the stage. It was dark, no visual clues about what they were about to hit. A piece of the Ezeroc ship? Some new danger?
There was a hum through the hull as their weapons deployed. The lasers, this time. They were firing ahead, lighting something up in front of them, and she couldn’t tell what. Nate’s coordinates filled her personal console, and she almost laughed. The corridor he’d given her to fly down was maybe a meter wider in every direction than the Tyche herself. Nate was trying to stuff her down a tube the size of the Tyche under full thrust, the ship’s drives roaring behind them. Her hands were already slick with moisture.
On her best day, that would be a tricky maneuver. They would die, and Nate was right: it would be a horrible death.
“El?” said Nate. “Stay with me. Just fly. Don’t think about it. Just do it.”
She gave a nervous laugh. “What’s to think about? We’re dead.”
“Hey,” he said. “I wouldn’t have asked you to do it if I didn’t think you could.”
God dammit, but that man had a knack for saying the right things at the right time. Okay, El. Okay. You can do this. She held the sticks, worked with the Tyche to keep to that flight corridor, that narrow slice of survival in the big emptiness of space.
COLLISION WARNING said the Tyche, again. Then, BRACE BRACE BRACE.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, thought El. Oh God.
The sun was masked out for a second as they rushed towards something huge, blotting out the star’s light. Just for a fraction of a second, because at their velocity it was almost too fast to see. Their hull rang like a bell, and an alarm sounded as atmosphere vented in a scream of metal. And then they were past.
The holo stage flicked back on, and a new series of coordinates came from Nate. She took in the details, almost stunned. Nate had flown them towards something huge in space, and she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The Gladiator. He’d had her run at the destroyer, using the lasers to carve a few pieces of the ship away before they passed. The Gladiator was under heavy thrust, and Nate had made her skim the surface of the other ship close enough to reach out an arm and touch. In their wake, the Gladiator still burned strong, a lance of human justice aimed at the heart of the Ezeroc ship.
The Tyche didn’t have any planet-busting nukes onboard. It didn’t matter. Nate had turned the Gladiator, with its huge reactors, into a weapon. The holo showed the impact of the Gladiator against the side of the Ezeroc ship.
“Take that, fuckers!” shouted Nate. And El’s holo bloomed with new coordinates. He was asking her to go towards the Ezeroc ship. She balked, because that seemed like suicide. But he’d got them this far, hadn’t he? They hadn’t died. So she gripped the sticks, cut the thrust, and spun the Tyche in space, facing them back towards the enemy.
The enemy. Because that’s what they were. Not just the Tyche’s enemy, but the enemy of humanity. And here, right on the brink of humanity’s influence of space, they’d met a foe that wanted to crush them. Turn them into calories to fuel an army to use against them. The Ezeroc had almost won; they’d killed the Ravana, or as close as anything mattered. They’d crushed the Gladiator, coring the hull like it was made of paper. They’d tried to take the Tyche, to make her one with them. They hadn’t, because Nate wouldn’t have the decency to lie down and die.
El smiled. Nate hadn’t wanted to lie down and die, and he’d goaded her into living as well.
The explosion of the Gladiator against the side of the Ezeroc had already happened, but the remains of nuclear fire still burned against the side of the Ezeroc. El could tell that the Ezeroc had been gaining on them in space, despite the thrust. Their ship would have been on them in a few more minutes. The asteroid looked cracked open, but the Gladiator couldn’t have done that much damage.
The Ezeroc ship had been opening like a clam, ready to swallow them up.
El pushed the throttles forward again, the Tyche roaring into space, and they raced towards the Ezeroc. Fire bloomed in the heart of the asteroid, pieces of rock and metal expanding away from the Gladiator’s impact point. The Tyche sprinted forward, hungry for the end.
“You ever heard you shouldn’t kick someone when they’re down?” said Nate.
“No,” said El, teeth gritted.
“Me neither,” he said. “The captain of the Gladiator sends their regards, fuckers.”
There was the cthunk cthunk cthunk cthunk of torpedoes launching, all in rapid succession, as Nate emptied their bays into the enemy ship. El spun the Tyche around and up, away from the Ezeroc, away from Absalom Delta, and into the cool dark safety of space. The holo was alight with telemetry, the bright points of light showing the torpedoes — plundered from the Gladiator’s stores — arcing towards the inside of the Ezeroc ship. Those torpedoes were worthless against the hard crust of the ship, but against the soft, vulnerable interior, they wreaked terrible damage.
The Ezeroc ship cracked like a walnut, two halves separating. Cracked, and died.
El was laughing, and crying, and punching the air. They’d done it. But better yet, they’d done it and lived.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Everything hurt.
At least Grace could hide some of it in underneath her suit. Most of the bruises couldn’t be seen — just the purple mottling of her face visible through her visor. But she still walked with a victim’s shuffle, her back catching with every step. She’d thought about taking meds, but had stopped, hand shaking as it held the hypo. Grace had thought about what she’d felt like with Kohl’s drug burning through her veins.
For now, she’d take the pain instead of a reminder of that loss of control. That moment of vulnerability. It didn’t sit well with her.
Not because Kohl had beaten her like an old carpet. Grace had plenty of situations in her life when her skill with a sword had proved … insufficient. But she’d never had a situation when her ability to understand people, to bend
them, twist them to her needs, had failed. Sure, sure: it was alien parasitic scum inside of Kohl that had been pulling the strings, but even still, she should have seen the signs. She should have known something wasn’t right.
Grace shouldn’t have gone down into the hold after her sword. It was just a sword.
Except that it wasn’t. It was a little piece of her past, and a friend had remade it — for her — after she’d been careless. The sword was a weakness, and she should throw it away.
She gripped it tighter in her hand instead. Her breath caught in her chest as some damaged nerve in her spine twinged.
“Hey,” said Hope. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” lied Grace. “I’m fine. You?” They were in the sickbay, one of the few areas of the Tyche that could still hold an atmosphere. It wasn’t currently pressurized, Kohl unconscious in front of them, stuffed inside his suit. It was a wonder any of them were alive. A piece of the Gladiator had gouged a furrow through the hull, opening the cargo bay to the hard black, venting out a bunch of their air. The emergency close had kicked in on all the airlocks, sealing them inside, safe and sound, until the battle was over. Only a pilot with great skill could have kept the Tyche flying true while all that was happening. Only an Engineer with her hands feathering the power to the drives would have made it possible. Only a captain with more bravery than brains would have tried it.
They were lucky to be alive.
Hope toed the bed Kohl was on with a booted foot, the motion causing her to make a lazy rotation in the vacuum. She moved in zero G like she was born to it. “I’m scared,” she said.
She wasn’t lying. Grace could feel fear/run/fear/run coming off her in waves. It was a wonder Hope was sitting still, but to be fair there wasn’t anywhere to go. “They aren’t on the ship anymore. Hope? They’re all gone. All of them.” It was true. Grace hadn’t been able to sense any of the hissing static that marked the Ezeroc, not on the Tyche, and not coming from the cored remains of their giant ship. When Nate had blown chunks out of the interior of it with a handful of salvaged weapons, there’d been a great hissing cry from the planet’s surface, then … silence.
Tyche's Flight (Tyche's Journey Book 1) Page 30