Status Quo

by Drew Wagar

  White flickering lights signalled in the darkness.

  'A truce! They’re calling a truce!' Rebecca shouted gleefully.

  Jim collapsed back into his seat, a sense of utter relief washing over him. Some good had come of this at last.

  In the debris field a shadow lurked.

  The unmistakeable silhouette of an Imperial Courier emerged.

  'What’s he doing?' Jim slowly releasing his hold on Rebecca.

  'Huh? Maybe he’s checking to see if we survived! Hello! Yes, we’re okay!' Rebecca said, looking up at the scanner. She moved back to the pilot’s seat, her eyes narrowing in concentration. The Imperial Courier appeared to be on an intercept course with them. It was not lining up in formation with the other remaining Imperial ships beyond the burning wreckage.

  She squinted.

  There were no hull markings, no Imperial Insignia, no telltale flash markers on the forward part of the engine nacelles that were the Imperial Fleet badges of office. An anonymous ship…

  'Where the prak did he come from?… Frag! We've got to get out of here!' she yelled. 'It’s the assassin!'

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 8

  The job was defunct. Apparently priorities had changed. The Agent had already received his payment in full. There was no need to destroy the target. The orders were annulled.

  Except for one consideration, equally as important to any assassin as the lucre.

  Reputation.

  He did the job, there was nothing else but the job. The job was always completed. It was a contract, a covenant. Unshakeable. He couldn’t countenance any other outcome. The battle would be joined. Courier versus Cobra. As it should be. Only one would emerge victorious.

  Rebecca reacted instinctively. She turned the SuperCobra and accelerated towards the Courier at full power. The Courier was closing them on fast at a combined speed Jim didn’t even dare to calculate.

  She was concentrating hard on the viewer, Jim could see the whites of her knuckles showing through her clenched fists.

  Warning! Collision imminent!

  Jim looked across at her, she wasn’t flinching. The Courier was close now, looming rapidly larger on the viewer, they were seconds from impact. Jim knew the bigger, heavier Courier would survive a direct collision, the SuperCobra wouldn’t.

  'Rebecca…'

  'Wait!' she hissed.

  The Courier turned aside and there was a flash of light from its underside. Rebecca hit the ECM and laser control simultaneously. Jim saw a missile explode harmlessly and then watched as their military laser scorched the Courier’s shields. Jim counted almost a full second of impact before the Courier left their field of view.

  'How did you know…?'

  Rebecca swung the SuperCobra around, dived and came up behind the Courier, hitting it again with the laser. Jim was already dizzy with disorientation and wondered how she managed to keep track of what was going on.

  'Never use the same trick twice on the same ship,' Rebecca growled under her breath.

  The Agent was surprised. The SuperCobra pilot had anticipated his point blank missile attack and countered it, virtually removing his forward shields into the bargain. It was a trademark move of his; it had never failed before. Now the SuperCobra was behind him, attacking the rear shields. He’d underestimated the pilot again. It was time to up the stakes.

  He shut down his engines abruptly.

  Rebecca saw the engine flux cut out.

  'Prak!' she yelled.

  The SuperCobra was still accelerating and she couldn’t prevent it overshooting. She pushed the throttles forward and pulled the Cobra into a steep climb. The rear view showed the Courier relighting its engines and pursuing them. A scant second later laser fire washed out the view, the rear shields burning away beneath the fierce assault.

  Rebecca ducked and weaved, but the Courier stayed on her tail, getting the occasional burst of fire to hit. Slowly their energy banks were being drained. The shots were draining them just a little faster than they could recharge.

  Warning! Fuel Injectors Damaged!

  Warning! Cargo Scoop Damaged!

  It was a slow attrition, but a cruel and fatal one. Rebecca knew she had to change their positions. The mines were gone, and the single remaining missile was useless unless they could get a clear shot, and that meant being behind the target. The SuperCobra was being slowly pecked apart.

  Damn, this guy is good!

  She turned the SuperCobra and dove towards the moon, laser fire following her path.

  Jim was amazed the Courier was able to hang on to her. He’d never seen flying like this; Rebecca was flying with a level of skill he could only appreciate and admire, never obtain. Nevertheless, the Courier was equalling her every move.

  Warning! Fuel Leak!

  Warning! ECM System damaged!

  She continued to twist, trying to avoid the Courier’s fire.

  The moon loomed larger in the Courier’s display. The SuperCobra was flying well, the pilot was obviously talented after all. But the Agent prided himself that once something entered his crosshairs, it never left again. He continued firing. The SuperCobra was slowly bleeding to death.

  Jim saw the altitude warning come on. Five energy banks were drained, the forward and rear shields barely registering. They were close to the moon now, close enough to see the hydrogen processing plants once more, craters, extinct volcanoes and the threaded rills which ran across the surface like cracks in a mirror.

  The ‘moon’; another complete misnomer. It wasn’t really a moon at all, but an oversized Oort cloud fragment that had looped into the Lave system a decade before following some gravitation perturbation out in deep space. Lave and a group of similar systems had been in a gas-poor area of space when the planets formed, thus there were no gas giants: only a single rocky planet with a few asteroids and comets loitering in the darkness. A fleet of tugs had been mobilised to push the ‘moon’ into an elliptical orbit which took it out into deep space every three months. It had been a neat idea, using it as a hydrogen processing plant, but unfortunately the ‘moon’ turned out to be unstable, its orbit requiring constant monitoring. Within another decade or so it would have to be let loose once again before gravitational tides ripped it to shreds, going back to the frozen wastes whence it came.

  Why in space was he thinking about that now? Maybe the rational part of his mind was seeking a final task… was it a premonition? Were they going to die? Maybe.

  Rebecca spun the SuperCobra, diving and climbing alternatively, but the Courier still matched her course.

  She dived directly towards the surface, a vector perpendicular to the rock grey ground below. The Courier lined up behind her.

  'What are you doing?' Jim demanded.

  'The Kessel run,' Rebecca quipped back at him.

  'The what?'

  'Watch.'

  The altitude was critical. The Agent knew the SuperCobra had a slightly better turning circle than the Courier. Which way would she break, up or down? The moon filled the whole view. He saw the SuperCobra twitch. A feint? Yes, a feint! She was climbing! He pulled back on the controls.

  Rebecca feinted once, twice and then dived, the SuperCobra almost hitting the ground upside-down relative to the moon. She cut it so fine that the external wideband antennas on the SuperCobra’s top hull were ripped off as they scraped the surface.

  The SuperCobra and the Courier raced off in opposite directions.

  'Woooo!' she yelled,'Never thought I’d have to thank the boy racers!'

  The Agent had never dealt with such guile before. He spun his ship, looking for the SuperCobra. The scanner was confused by the close range of the moon and wasn’t registering properly: it showed a marker directly behind him. That couldn’t be the SuperCobra?… Laser fire confirmed the observation. His rear shields drained away and then the energy banks began to bleed. Drastic measures would be required for the first time ever. A impressive opponent, and worthy. An Elite combateer, perhaps? He’d ha
ve been honoured to meet the pilot. He felt some regret that the fight would shortly be ended.

  Rebecca had pulled a complete loop, dropping in behind the Courier as it turned to look for her, she poured shot after shot into the Courier’s shields until the SuperCobra’s laser overheated. She’d made every shot count, but the Courier was a tough ship to bring down. She followed it up away from the moon as the laser cooled.

  'I think you might have got him!' Jim said.

  'Don’t sound so surprised,' she snapped. 'And it’s not finished yet.'

  Something flickered at the back of the Courier, almost as if a hatch had opened. Jim squinted at it. It looked almost like… no it couldn’t be…

  A reversed missile launcher, set to fire aft.

  'Missile!' he shouted.

  Rebecca saw it too and threw the SuperCobra into a spinning dive, ignoring the hull stress warning indicators. The missile hit a moment later, draining what little remained of their shield power, overloading their remaining energy banks and penetrating into the starboard lower hull plate. It came the nearest in the world to utterly destroying them, but most of its energy expended into space due to the small amount of shield power available.

  Despite that, it gashed the empty Quirium tanks, ripped through the sensitive electronics of the burnt-out ECM system before expending its final energy on the duct housing of the starboard outrigger engine. It too exploded, blowing off the wing tip hull plates and throwing the SuperCobra into a brain-jarring high-gee spin. Consoles shorted out, the lights failed and sparks showered around them. Gas hissed out from fractured lines and for a terrifying moment there was the sound of pressurised air jetting out into the vacuum of space before the auto-breach systems plugged the gap.

  Rebecca, clinging to the console, managed to hold on, but Jim was flung from his seat. The superstructure of the ship screamed in protest around them.

  She still had her finger on the laser trigger; the beam of collimated energy consuming their last vestiges of energy, lancing out into space as the SuperCobra tumbled out of control.

  The Courier was not far away.

  The beam of the laser spun out like a pulsar, stitching a line of fire down the rear-most part of the Courier’s port engine nacelle. The Courier had no shields left. Plasma and hull fragments spun like glitter in the void. The port nacelle exploded and almost completely detached from the primary hull. Deprived of one engine, the Courier also began to spin out of control.

  Rebecca managed to bring the crippled SuperCobra under control by using the emergency gyro system. Most of the controls were scrambled, the displays garbled with static, the main engines non-responsive. The forward view was working though.

  The Courier span, leaking plasma from its damaged nacelle, right in front of them, only a few kilometres away. It was running, its speed not much more than a limp.

  'Got the stard.' She cried, her eyes gleaming.

  She had one missile left. It was already locked on target.

  She hit the fire control, but nothing happened. The control circuits were gone.

  'Help me! Quick!' she shouted to Jim. 'I need a manual launch override!'

  'I’ll get it,' he replied, diving down the gravity well to the systems deck.

  Jim ran into the crew compartment and unlocked the hatch down into the ’tween hulls area. He grabbed a Remlok from the cabinet after seeing the noxious gases venting from damaged equipment. He dropped down into the section, slowly negotiating his way towards the missile pods.

  Rebecca meanwhile was watching the Courier. It was leaking plasma in a bad way. The pilot obviously had his emergency gyros on full power, offsetting the thrust from his remaining engine, trying to keep the ship stable. He could only use a minimum level of thrust to move. She had no idea what other damage the Courier had suffered, but since he was running she assumed it was pretty comprehensive.

  No! The Courier was altering course, slowly coming about. If he had another missile…

  She wanted that ship dead.

  'Hurry!' she called over the comlink. 'He’s turning!'

  Jim reached the missile pod and looked it over, staggering in the confined space. The remote circuits were damaged. It had its target lock, but not the firing orders. He’d have to hot wire it. He popped open the control circuits, and was confronted with a mass of fused optronic relays.

  He turned to the empty pod next door, one that previously held one of the bombs. He pulled an emergency patch cable between the two, linking it into the auxiliary ports.

  'Target on two and send a launch command on one!' he called, staggering back out of the hull area. Rebecca stabbed the controls.

  The missile shot out from beneath with a roar and burst of cyan flux, the SuperCobra shuddering with the recoil. It streaked towards the slowly turning Courier.

  'Faulcon, don’t let me down today,' she whispered.

  Jim crawled back up to the bridge, falling into the co-pilots seat. They watched as the missile tracked in on its target. It flew straight and true.

  'Come on…'

  The missile turned slightly, orientating itself towards the biggest part of the Courier, the primary hull. It couldn’t miss. The range marker counted down rapidly.

  There was a flash of light…

  'Yes!' Rebecca shouted triumphantly, punching the console. 'Killed the goidson! Yes!'

  But her jubilation was short lived. There was flickering blue wormhole where the Courier had been a moment before. There was a second explosion as the missile, deprived of its target, self-destructed.

  'No!' she cried, then screamed. 'No! NO! You fraggin’ stard, you goid-prakkin’ crazy frog! Come back and fight, you cowardly goid! I own your iron ass!'

  'Rebecca, he’s gone!'

  'No! No! I’m going to kill him. Get those engines back online, we can stop him! There’s time, the wormhole! We can follow him!'

  Jim didn’t move. She was crazy: the SuperCobra was a wreck, would never fly again. He could see via the starboard view that a quarter of the ship was completely buckled; it was amazing that it hadn’t come apart around them. How could she even consider it? There was no telling where the Courier had gone and where that wormhole would take them. They had no fuel to return.

  'It’s not possible!'

  Rebecca pushed him aside, jabbing commands into the computers, trying to get the engines back on line.

  'Out of my way! Move, you stupid hunk of junk, move!' she shouted, pounding the console with clenched fists.

  'Rebecca, it’s over!'

  'Never!'

  Jim grabbed her hands. 'We’re dead in space! Stop it! There is nothing we can do!'

  Rebecca wriggled and freed herself, drawing back and punching him viciously. He was thrown back, stunned with both the force of the blow and the expression of hatred on her face. He fell to the floor and lay there, reeling.

  The wormhole shrank, flickered, collapsed and disappeared.

  'No!' She sank into the pilot’s chair.

  'Rebecca…'

  She didn’t answer for a moment, but then her head snapped around. Her expression was as cold as witchspace, a hard metallic glint in her eyes.

  'I could have got him! I could have rid the universe of that stard! You stopped me! Why did you stop me? Nobody tells me what to do! You stupid harmless goid…'

  Her voice faltered and her head dropped, her hair hiding her face. She was shuddering with emotion, too furiously upset even to cry.

  He slowly got to his feet and moved across to her. He laid a hand on her shoulder. She trembled at his touch, but didn’t flinch.

  'I could have got him.' Her voice was a thin whisper. 'I should have got him…'

  'Rebecca, there was nothing you could have done. You beat him, but we’re crippled. Give it up.'

  'He killed my family …' her eyes were glazed, she was staring into the void, into the blackness, past the vanished wormhole, to wherever the Courier had fled. 'I’ll find you! I swear I’ll find you!'

  The Super
Cobra rocked slightly. Both of them looked up at the main viewer. There were ships, lots of ships.

  'To the pilot of the SuperCobra prototype! Stand down and prepare to be boarded, or be destroyed!' a harsh call sounded over the tightband comlink.

  There were eight military Asps surrounding them, one for every point of the compass. Rebecca quickly flipped around the forward, aft, port and starboard views. There was no escape. She looked around at the remains of the SuperCobra console. It was totally fragged; the SuperCobra had fought its last battle. So they stood the ship down.

  There was nothing else to do.

  They stood together in the empty cargo bay, side by side. There was nowhere to run, nowhere at all. The crippled SuperCobra had been towed towards the flagship Anaconda of the Galcop fleet. It had taken the Asps an hour or so to lock on, stabilise and rig for towing, but they had eventually been dumped near the big ship. It slowly drew alongside them.

  A metallic screech was followed by the sound of heavy machinery clamping their ship to the hull of the Anaconda. They exchanged a look of trepidation.

  'Always figured I’d go out in a blaze of glory somehow,' Rebecca said. 'I’d rather be atomised than imprisoned any day of the week. I wanted to be a big news story.'

  'Be careful what you wish for,' Jim muttered sardonically.

  He watched as the SuperCobra’s docking bay doors were wrenched open in a bright burst of sparks.

  Heavily armed marines burst into the bay, rifles at the ready, all trained on them both. Jim had only a moment to notice their body armour, blast-shielded helmets and military precision before a voice bellowed out.

  'Lie on the floor with your arms outstretched! Do it! Now!'

  They complied. Within seconds they were secured with binders, and wrenched unceremoniously to their feet and pushed together, side by side once more.