by M. D. Cooper
“I can’t believe he’s doing this!” Nance cried out. “He’s attacking his own people.”
“I’m really getting why Sera wanted Finaeus back in play,” Cargo said. “Transcend is really not some happy unified utopia.”
“Keep it up, asshole,” Jessica said through gritted teeth as Sabrina cleared the station and she fired their dorsal boosters—slowly, so that Bes would keep his weapons fire on them and not tear a hole right through Gisha Station.
“Fire proton beams on that ship the moment we’re clear of the station,” Cargo ordered.
“All clear!” Jessica called out a moment later.
“Eat this, asshole!” Trevor yelled as Sabrina’s four proton beams, courtesy of the Intrepid’s engineers, blasted protium at the Excelsia.
Bes was firing too much, too fast, which meant his shields were open to let his own continuous stream of weapons fire out. Not all the time, but enough for Sabrina’s proton beams to get through.
Unfortunately, it also meant that when Trevor cracked the shields for Sabrina’s weapons to shit, the enemy’s beams got in as well.
“Shit!” Trevor said. “He’s throwing everything he has at us. We can’t pick up Cheeky and Fin like this!”
“We’ll give him the AP nozzle,” Cargo said. “Trevor, time the beams with it, and when he’s blind, kick out a pair of limpets.”
“Spinning out the nozzle,” Jessica responded.
The antimatter pion drive’s nozzle was a hard target to hit. It only protruded a centimeter beyond the shields, and was just a few centimeters across. However, it emitted a concentrated stream of gamma rays. Combined with the beams, it would do some serious damage to the Excelsia, and hopefully take out the vessel’s forward shields allowing the limpet mines to attach.
Hopefully.
“Any activity from the station or Krissy’s fleet?” Cargo asked.
“Station took damage to fire control systems when Bes shot them up,” Krissy said. “And I’m delaying things with my fleet, you have maybe three minutes.”
“Shit! Didn’t realize you were still with us,” Cargo replied.
“Gotta go now, keeping this channel open any longer will look suspicious. Oh, thanks for saving my people and my ass in here.”
“No problem,” Cargo replied.
“Ready to boost,” Jessica announced. “Going to fire attitudes and line up in three, two, one!”
Though she gave the count aloud, she also passed it to Trevor over the link. Once the gamma rays lanced out and hammered the Excelia’s shields, Trevor fired the dorsal proton beams, and the x-ray lasers.
Bes’s ship returned fire and an explosion shook Sabrina.
“But so are their forward shields,” Nance called out. “Bet you didn’t think we had bite like that, suckas!”
“Fuck yeah!” Trevor added.
Jessica smiled, but kept her focus on her boost. The AP drive was still running, and she was jinking side-to-side, making them a hard target to hit as they flew past Gisha’s outer docking ring and looped behind one of the heavy-matter haulers.
“Nance, any pings from our wanderers?” Cargo asked? “We need to find them before Jessica has to kill the drive.”
“I’ve been working with the girls. We have it narrowed down to a cone that’s about a half-million square klicks,” Cheeky said.
Jessica coughed. “Shit, Nance, I’m going to need something more precise than that.”
“Head down the probability curve I drew out,” Nance replied.
Jessica brought up the data on her console and saw the path she needed to follow.
“Are you kidding me? That has me boosting straight at one of the black holes!”
“When did you become such a thrill-seeker?” Jessica retorted as she adjusted the ship’s vector down the center of the cone.”
“Excelsia is coming about,” Trevor replied. “I think one of the limpet’s attached, not sure about the other.”
“Fucker’s gonna have a bad day,” Cargo said.
“One of us is,” Jessica muttered as Sabrina continued to pick up speed. On the forward holo, the Grey Wolf Star and its dark ring housing the forty spinning black holes grew in size.
THE NOT SO BLACK HOLE
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Between Gisha Station and the DSM Ring
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
Cheeky said, barely keeping her mental tone from wavering.
By her calculations, they were about five-thousand klicks from the edge of the doldrums. Once they passed out of the calm space around Gisha Station, punishing gravitational waves would sweep over them—probably killing them long before they reached the ring anyway.
<’Kay,> was all Cheeky managed to get out.
She knew she was supposed to be tougher. Hard as steel like Sera and Tanis, but she just couldn’t do it. Fear kept tearing at the edges of her sanity and she shifted nervously as Finaeus climbed over the bot, setting it spinning.
He wrapped his arms around the bot’s legs and hooked a leg around her as well.
Cheeky didn’t reply as she steadied her trembling limbs and managed to get her arms and back in the right positions. She cross checked her thrust estimates with Piya, and fired the jets, and slowing their spin, and then finally stabilizing them.
Then she carefully resumed her prior position, her back to the bot—and the terrible sight beyond it—instead staring up at Gisha Station, praying that someone up there would rescue them, but terrified if she sent a signal it would be the wrong someones.
Cheeky bit her lip and shook her head, but did hook an elbow around one of the bot’s limbs. Then Finaeus moved closer, wrapping an arm around her and laying a leg over hers.
Cheeky didn’t know why he bothered. They were going to die. He knew it. She knew it. There was no point in sugar-coating the truth.
She wished she could close her eyes, but her armor fed a continuous view into her mind, highlighting the safety of Gisha Station that was so far beyond their reach.
Ships swarmed around the station, likely searching for them—though none had ventured beyond the outer docking ring. There was little chance any would reach the pair clinging to the bot, even if they did send out a signal
.
Then an explosion flared on the side of the station’s central hub, and she saw beamfire lance out and hit one of the ships.
She cycled her vision and saw the familiar shape of Sabrina emerge from the station, its stasis shields flaring brighter than the grey star’s light as it took blow after blow from one of the Transcend ships.
Finaeus replied.
Finaeus replied.
Finaeus gave a rueful chuckle in response.
Cheeky didn’t, and wondered how Finaeus could have been so sure. Still, none of the TSF ships were moving toward their position, so maybe Finaeus did have some sort of special bond with Krissy.
She watched as Sabrina shot back at their attacker, then fired its engines, cutting into the enemy ship in a brilliant display of energy.
Cheeky was about to signal Sabrina when she suddenly felt very heavy and her back slammed hard into the bot. The armor took the brunt of the blow, but she was unable to breathe—her diaphragm couldn’t move enough to draw air into her lungs.
In a breath the weight was gone, but then, just as suddenly it pushed the other way, and she clung desperately to the bot’s limbs.
A strong arm wrapped around her, and Cheeky was glad for the augmented strength the armor gave them as they were pushed and pulled, slammed into the spider bot, and then pulled away, shearing forces tearing through their bodies.
Then a crushing gravity wave washed over Cheeky. The limb of the spider-bot that she was clinging to tore free and she spun away into space.
Piya beat her to it, and the armor sent out its beacon, a tiny radio spec in the blinding noise surrounding the Grey Wolf Star and the black holes that raced around it, tearing it apart, atom by atom.
Cheeky began to hyperventilate, and thought she might pass out from the fear, pain, and increasing heat, when Piya stepped in and forcibly regulated her breathing.
Cheeky cried out in response.
Panic tore its way into her mind and she spun about, searching for something to grab on to. She couldn’t see Finaeus and the spider-bot anywhere and began to sob into her helmet’s breathing apparatus, her throat starting to blister from the stifling air she was drawing in.
A detached part of her mind noted that just as Finaeus had predicted, she began to drift above the ring. The light of the Grey Wolf Star growing brighter as the ring occluded less of it.
More and more heavy gravitational waves slammed into her and she began to periodically lose consciousness as her body fluctuated between weightlessness and dozens of g’s. She knew that if it hadn’t been for the rigidity of the armor, death would have come long ago.
Cheeky began to feel calm, surprised at the change in her mental state…she would have expected the panic to worsen, but as she crossed over the edge of the ring all she could do was marvel at the beauty of what lay before her.
Cheeky replied as she saw the black holes racing around the inside of the ring, glowing with beautiful colors as they consumed small clouds of atoms smeared around their event horizon.
Cheeky mumbled.
RACE AGAINST GRAVITY
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, between Gisha Station and the DSM Ring
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
“I got a signal!” Nance cried out. “Passing it over, Jess. It’s just on this side of the mining ring.”
“Got it, adjusting…shit they’re moving fast.”
“I’m going to have to brake hard and then swoop down. Someone get in a suit and get down to the bay,” Jessica replied.
“I have it,” Cargo said as he raced off the bridge.
Jessica clenched her teeth as she spun the ship and fired the AP drive at max burn, careful not to send the gamma rays anywhere near the two signals that they were trying to reach.
Sabrina passed out of the doldrums and began to buck and heave as the gravitational waves washed over them.
“Are the dampeners broken?” Trevor asked as he frantically adjusted his seat’s straps so he could buckle in.
Jessica realized that the temperature in the bridge had been increasing and that her brow was slick with sweat.
<’Kay, ‘kay!> Cargo shouted back.
Jessica knew not to pester him further, but she couldn’t stop biting her lip as the ship shook and rattled around them. If they were taking this much abuse in the ship, what were Cheeky and Finaeus going through out in the black.
She held her breath and a rivulet of sweat ran into her eye. She swiped it way with an angry gesture.
“She slipped over the rim,” Nance gasped.
“Gonna slingshot around,” Jessica said.
Metaphorically and physically.
Jessica spun the ship and fired the drives, heading high over rim of the ring, Sabrina describing a tight parabola as it peaked and came back down—straight toward one of the black holes that was racing past.
“Nance! I need a lock, NOW!”
“Fuck, Jess…so much noise, we can’t pick up anything!”
Iris highlighted the most likely path Cheeky would have taken, and Jessica aimed the ship as best she could as the waves of gravity and stellar matter threw the vessel about.
Her readout showed that it was over fifty-six-degrees on the bridge. She didn’t even want to look at the temperature in the cargo bay, but her eye still darted to the panel above the main holo and saw that it was four-hundred-degrees.
“C’mon…I need a lock!” she shrieke
d.
“There! There! There!” Nance yelled back and Sabrina passed the coordinates to Jessica. She altered course and spun the ship once more, aiming the cargo bay door at the infinitesimal spec in the distance.
Jessica looked back to Nance.
Jessica turned her attention back to the drifting form of Cheeky as another gravitational wave from the black holes washed over the ship, pushing it off course once more.
She found herself working faster and faster, leveraging computational power from Iris, until at the last moment, she fired the lateral thrusters and waited for Cargo’s confirmation.
One…two…three, she counted in her mind, trying not to scream from anticipation. Either Cheeky was safely in the cargo bay, or she had burned up in the port engine.
Jessica swore softly. It sure would be nice if Krissy could extend her help to taking out that asshole.
Jessica glanced at the main holo tank and saw two explosions register on scan.
Jessica barely heard Sabrina as relief over Cheeky’s rescue and the mines taking out Bes’s ship flooded her mind—but just for a second. She still had to dance around the black hole ahead of them.