by T. F. Grant
“Yup. Persistent buggers.”
“We’re leading them straight to Haven.”
“Yeah, not a lot else we can do. Hopefully, the Observers will see the signal rocket and scramble the gunboats.”
“The Observers?”
“A guild like the Elevator Operators. They keep watch at all times. Never know what’s going to jump into Hollow Space. Always good deals to be made for early info too.” Kina grinned. “We’re a couple of hours out; then Tai takes over, and we get on the guns. Time to light it up.”
“Why?”
“We know the junkyard around the Haven. It’s our turf. Best place to fight a damn battle.”
“And anyway,” Sara added. “We’re hoping for reinforcements.”
“Yeah, that too.” Kina did not sound convinced.
***
Tai flew the Damnfine—never a better name for a ship—through the hulk field surrounding Haven. Kina and Dylan had crawled down the access tubes to the .50-cal turrets at the tips of the wings. Tooize took the turret at the rear, with Scaroze becoming damage control and ship’s engineer.
Which left Sara in the right-hand seat, studying the symbols. She had found the switch that gave him four nose-mounted cannons slaved to the trigger on the control stick.
Sara’s astonishing spatial awareness would be invaluable with the debris and hornets creating a chaotic spacescape.
Headsets mounted in each of the turrets had activated an internal intercom system the moment Kina sat in hers.
“When the Markesians keep a deal, they keep a deal.” Tai whooped.
The ship blasted out of the hulk field, and Haven turned slowly ahead. “Ready, Scaroze?” Tai asked into the intercom.
“Ready.” Scaroze stepped into the airlock with the bulky signal rocket. “Decompressing. No air. Outer door opening.”
Tai shut off the main drives, swung the Damnfine around so the airlock pointed toward Haven, and held her there.
“God almighty,” Sara breathed. “Look at them.”
Tai glanced over her shoulder and through the viewport. Thousands of hornets surged out of the hulk field in a huge black cloud. “Fire the frecking rocket, now.” The hornets were gaining on the ship.
“Aiming,” Scaroze whistled. “On target. Launch. Rocket away. Second-stage engine ignited.”
“Hold on,” Tai snapped, spinning the Damnfine violently around and slamming the throttles forward. Tai watched the rocket blast away toward Haven, leaving a glistening wake of sparkling particles behind it, showing Haven the position from whence it came.
“How are we doing back there, Tooize?” Tai asked.
“They’re almost on us.”
“Hold your fire,” Kina snapped into the intercom. “It would be spitting into a waste tube against that lot. We have to wait for reinforcements.”
“Understood,” Tooize replied.
“Dylan?” There was a warning note in Kina’s voice.
“What?”
“Hold your fire.”
“I am.”
“Then confirm.”
“Geez, all right, understood.”
The inner airlock door opened, and Scaroze stepped back into the ship. The signal rocket exploded into a bright flash of light just above Haven. Tai squinted. “Good shot.”
“Thank you,” the kronac whistled.
“Hornets on the hull,” Kina yelled.
Sara hit the switch. Nothing happened. “What the…” She hit the switch again. “Nothing.”
“Controls are fine,” Tai said.
“Hornets getting ready to vomit acid,” Kina warned.
Tai stamped down hard, jerked the stick across, and blipped the throttle, sending the Damnfine into a barely controlled flat spin. Even through the damping field of the artificial gravity, Tai felt the force generated by the spin. Haven and the hulks spun crazily through his vision.
“Hornets gone,” Kina said.
Tai corrected the spin and hit full thrust again. “How much fuel do we have left, Scar?”
“Maybe forty minutes.”
“Gonna be tight.”
“Some of the ceramics seem broken over here,” Kina said. “I think the hornets shorted out the circuits for the shield.”
“That’s kinda smart of them,” Tai muttered.
“Might have been a coincidence,” Sara said.
“Yeah,” Dylan replied. “They just happened to coincidentally break the bit of the ship that was frying their hides. By the way, they’ve sped up, and they’re gaining on us.”
“What are you doing?” Sara asked as Tai jerked the controls and headed for the hulk field.
Tai threw the ship back into the mass of dead ships, swerving around, under, and over the hulks. “I’m taking the loop,” Tai snapped. “Better than waiting for those damned critters to run us down.”
“Freck,” Kina breathed over the intercoms.
“What’s the loo—” Sara began. “Oh, my dear Christ.”
Tai tipped the nose of the ship down, spun her on edge, and slammed the throttles wide open, diving into the remains of a huge orbital wheel—a giant loop of metal and dead technology just hanging there in space among the graveyard of ships.
The Damnfine flashed through a hole ripped in the side of the wheel. Tai snapped on the lights and flew between girders and broken floors at ridiculous speeds. “Give me clutter,” he yelled.
“On it,” Kina snapped. “Conserve ammo, but make things pretty. Fire at will.”
The hornets poured into the structure, following the Damnfine at dizzying speeds. They twisted and turned through the gaps, sticking to the ship’s course.
Kina, Dylan, and Tooize opened up with their cannons. Short bursts, tightly grouped. Not at the hornets themselves but at the girders, floors, and walls that Tai was dodging through. The structure disintegrated into shards of metal, which slashed through the hornets like shrapnel, slowing their advance and cutting their numbers.
The recoil of the cannons shuddered through the ship. Tai fought to maintain control. “Cease fire,” he yelled. “Coming up to the squeeze.”
“The squeeze?” Sara asked with a tense tone to her voice.
The guns fell quiet. Tai regained control of the ship just in time to spin her through an almost complete section of floors, in a tight corkscrew. He had to get this right. Too fast a spin and he would hit the floor there. Too slow and he would crash into that girder there. Again and again, missing disaster by mere centimeters, he spun and twisted the ship through a space that should be too small for it.
The leap reared up in front of him—a solid wall of metal right at the end of the squeeze. Tai slammed on the retro-thrusters, jerked back on the stick, and prayed. “Freck me, God, freck me good, but not today, you old bastard.”
The Damnfine barely made the turn in time. She shuddered under the impact against the wall of the leap.
“Now,” Kina yelled. The cannons opened up again.
The Damnfine leapt clear of the orbital wheel and back into open space.
“Twenty minutes fuel left,” Scaroze whistled.
“I wouldn’t have thought a ship this size would fit through there,” Dylan commented.
“First time for everything,” Kina said. “Tai Cauder, you are the maddest pilot I have ever known. That’s a racer run, not a freaking ship run.”
“Testament to the Markesian’s engineering.”
Tai caught a distasteful sneer on Sara’s face and reminded himself not to rub it in, considering what they did to the Venture. Still, the adrenaline was buzzing after a crazy run, control gave way to instinct and pure frecking relief.
“Hornets still on our tail,” Tooize said. “Not so many, but they look upset.”
“Don’t they always?” Dylan said.
Tai squinted at Haven. “What is that?” A dark shape swooped toward them. “Is that… oh, great, thank you God, you could have bloody waited.”
“What is it?” Kina asked.
Sara leant forward and focused through the viewport. “It’s Jhang. And he doesn’t look happy to see us.”
***
The great dragon flew toward them. “My family.”
Sara heard the words in her mind. “They took my family from me. No! I will not return… Kill me, then. Release your toxin if you want. I will avenge my family.”
Sara remembered the biting, stinging attack on Jhang before he leapt into Hollow Space. Could it have been the hornets? And who was he arguing with? She could only hear one side of the increasingly fraught conversation.
“Revenge,” Jhang bellowed into her mind. “Revenge will be mine!” The massive beast, twice the size of the Damnfine, flashed by and dived into the mass of hornets.
“Why has he opened his wings?” Dylan said. “There’s no air out here. Oh. They’re very sharp wings. Yeesh.”
Tai snapped off the main engines and spun the Damnfine around. She stayed on her course to Haven. “This I have to see.”
Jhang carved his way through the first wave of hornets, his wings scything through their bodies. His jaws ripped them apart, biting their bodies in two with each crunch of his fangs. His talons slashed—a whirling vortex of destruction tearing through the center of the mass. But there were too many hornets. He would surely die out there as they overwhelmed him, clinging to his body with their pincers and clawed feet.
“We have to do something,” Sara said. “He’ll die.”
“So,” Tai said. “Let them kill each other.”
“Please,” Sara begged, knowing the true character of the dragon. “He’s helping us.”
Tai and Sara locked eyes. She could see he just wanted to leave Jhang to it, and she could understand why, but Tai had never heard or saw what she did. “Please,” she said.
“Oh, fine,” Tai said, rolling his eyes. He snapped up the targeting reticule. “Let the bastards have it, and watch your aim, the dragon must live.” He opened the throttle, and the main drives lit up, starting to slow the Damnfine’s flight toward Haven.
“Targeting,” Kina said.
“On it,” Dylan replied.
The wing turrets and the bow guns of the Damnfine opened up, shuddering the ship with each blast of the cannons.
“Oh no, we’ve got company,” Tooize said.
“Support?” Tai asked as he blasted a dozen more hornets aiming for Jhang’s back. The Damnfine was starting to accelerate back toward the mass of hornets. He aimed the nose cannons by changing the ship’s orientation.
“I don’t know. It’s the…”
“Who? Tell me it’s Haven gunboats,” Tai demanded, shouting over the increasing din inside the ship.
“No, it’s the Markesians, four of them, in combat formation. And headed straight for us.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Tai pulled the control stick to the right, banking the ship in a wide, graceful arc as the cannons roared a strafing line of fire, cutting down yet more of the hornets from beneath Jhang’s position. The dragon kept up his furious onslaught, flapping his wings and using them like great blades to slice through the waves of giant insects. Their black chitin, illuminated by the sun, made them appear like a moving blanket of void darkness—hence their name.
Yet despite the thinning of their numbers, there were still hundreds grouped into dozens of squads. Each grouping took their turn diving toward Jhang, their acidic projectile creating a cloud of particles around him, making him constantly shift his location.
The damned things were herding Jhang into place.
As the battle continued, Tai asked for an update on the Markesians. It concerned him that the gunboats hadn’t come out. What were the aliens up to? Had they heeded the signal, or did they see this as an opportunity to take Tai and the others out of the picture?
He guessed Aleatra was none too pleased about the lack of Crown numbers once the pods were opened and they discovered none of the poor bastards had made it, and considering his influence with the Markesian hierarchy—perhaps this was an opportunity neither of them could pass up.
“A minute away,” Tooize whistled.
“Want us to open fire on them, take a preventative measure?” Kina asked.
“No,” Tai said. He looked over to Sara, who was watching the battle through the viewport with intense concentration. There was something about that damned dragon that really caught her attention. “I’m circling under Jhang. Hold your fire. We’ll try to lure some of these bugs away, give the big guy a chance.”
“What of the other bugs?” Sara said, referring to the Markesians and staring at Tai with a demanding look.
“We do nothing until we know their motivations. It would be suicide to attack them now.”
“And what if they attack us first?”
“They haven’t so far,” Tai said. “Now hang on and co-navigate for me. I need your help to avoid the main cluster of hornets. Let’s just concentrate on helping your dragon friend before worrying about the Markesians.”
Sara pursed her lips and then tightened them into a grimace before dragging her attention to focus on the battle ahead.
“Going in,” Tai said, slamming the throttle fully forward and dipping the nose to send the Damnfine buzzing beneath Jhang.
“Pitch down two degrees, bank left five, three groups on port, two on starboard,” Sara said as she read the battlefield, feeding Tai information on both position and threat. Working together as a team, the crew on the Damnfine entered a kind of synchronized hypnotic state where Tai didn’t have to issue orders. They fired at the right time, dodged when appropriate, and created an almost beautiful ballet of hornet destruction, with Jhang as their willing dance partner.
When the Damnfine struck forward to attack the heart of a group, the dragon would flank them, creating space and clearing their way. Likewise, when the hornets regrouped and swarmed Jhang, Tai’s crew buzzed close, frying and shooting the bugs clear, enabling Jhang’s great wings to continue their decimation of the ranks, despite the tears and rips in the beast’s hide.
Throughout an intense few minutes of battle, the Markesians finally joined in the fun. The four scuttlers separated into pairs. The first pair, presumably led by the alien leaders, darted forward and flanked the Damnfine either side.
“Hold your fire,” Tai warned. He and Sara watched out the viewports, waiting for something, some sign of their intentions. It became clear when from above them a group of fifty or more hornets struck down.
“We’re surrounded; they’re on the roof,” Dylan screamed. Tai could hear the grating noises as the bugs tried to open the ship like a prized can of bowma fish. The two Markesian ships broke away, with one going on top, the other bottom, so they were now flying in a three-stacked formation.
“What the hell are they doing?” Sara said.
A bright flash of blue answered her almost immediately. The Damnfine’s systems dimmed. The smell of ozone filled the cabin as their own malfunctioning shield picked up the discharge, and through the viewport they saw the bugs, dead and unmoving, floating away into open space. The two craft barrel-rolled away and, joining the other pair, descended into combat alongside Jhang, whose movements were beginning to slow.
His wounds were growing in number. His right wing had torn away at its tip, losing almost a quarter of its surface area. Using the same kind of electrical discharge method, the four scuttlers surrounded the dragon, protecting it in a shield of destruction.
“We’ll back them up,” Tai said. “Cannons at the ready. Fire at any stragglers that try to go for Jhang—he ain’t looking so good.”
“Got it,” Kina said.
“On it,” Dylan replied.
Sara continued her constant stream of information, feeding Tai the coordinates and directions of all the players in the battle and the likely number of hornets left. They were down to no more than fifty.
The Markesians worked with drilled practice and precision. One craft would dart out and gather a swarm of hornets while the other three would surround
it and dump a charge of energy, creating a blanket of electricity arcing across the poles of the ship that fried the hornets.
When the last were destroyed, Tai and the others yelled a victory roar. The scuttlers rejoined into a flat line formation and arced back toward Haven. They flashed their approach lights at Tai, presumably indicating for them to follow.
“We don’t have enough fuel,” Tooize said.
“Guess we’ll grab a lift.”
Flying directly toward the Markesian formation, and with a smile on his face, he pulled up on the flight stick at the last possible moment, flipping over the alien craft and then firing the last few dregs of orientation jets, sending the Damnfine down on top of the other craft with a hard shudder.
“Oh,” Kina said. “Nice work. The big bugs are going to love you for that.”
“It’s a thank you kiss,” Tai said as they continued to head toward Haven.
Jhang looked in bad shape ahead. Oddly, though, he didn’t turn to go toward the station with the others; instead he headed for the Out-of-Sight zone, where a massive scrap yard existed. So dense with ships already stripped of resources, it almost resembled a planetary body in its own right.
“What’s he doing?” Tai asked Sara.
She shrugged. “I truly don’t know. I know he’s hurt, but…” A faraway look came to her. She bent her head and massaged her temples. When she looked up, she stared out the viewport, watching the dragon, its wings limp and close by its body as it continued to fly toward the scrap yard. “He’ll be all right,” she said. “For now at least.”
“Wait,” Tai said, easing himself out of the seat and stretching his back. “How do you—oh, you know what, I don’t want to know. I don’t know about you lot, but I’m gonna go catch five before we dock. I want to be sharp when we cash in our reward and I get to tell my mother where she can stick her debt.”
“Great idea,” Dylan said. “That was all quite tiring.”
“But bloody good fun,” Kina added from the intercom in her turret. “I think I’ll get to like this ship.”
“And its company,” Sara added.