by Nick Webb
Goddammit. Jeremiah checked the seals on his suit, threw the door open, and tumbled out onto the baking ground. He pushed himself up and ran, cursing his old body, cursing every instinct that had brought him here, cursing himself for taking this shift. He cursed the reaction that was making his palms slick with sweat. He cursed the people who’d chosen Mercury as a place to build the fleet, and the Telestines who’d finally found them, and he ran as the massive ships above him blocked out the stars and swung into formation, shards of glass and metal and debris raining down as the battle was joined in earnest.
Only when he had pushed himself into the shadow of the garage did he look up properly, and his breath caught in his throat. Missiles were streaking silently through the black. The wreck of a fighter—human or Telestine, he couldn’t tell anymore—streaked toward one of the rolling cities on the horizon and hit the edge in a burst of silver and gold.
Another Telestine cruiser was orbiting just overhead, less than a a few dozen kilometers high. And it rained down mass-driver slugs heading toward him. Toward the city he’d come to call home. New Seattle, a massive rolling behemoth that specialized in steel smelting. Dozens of slugs found their mark: explosions ripped through the upper reaches of the city and stray slugs pounded the regolith all around him.
And just in time, two new Exile Fleet cruisers moved to intercept the Telestine ship, and the orbital battle was on, New Seattle now ignored and left to burn.
But it still rolled, slowly, inexorably, toward the terminator on the horizon.
And then he realized with a start that he was still alive. The Telestines hadn’t wiped them off the map yet. Someone, somehow, was finally standing their ground.
It was the sort of thing that could give an old man hope.
Chapter Fifty-One
Mercury
Bridge, Venus Fleet Ship Resurgence
“Ten minutes to Mercury orbit, ma’am. Deceleration burn almost complete.”
“Thank you.” Walker nodded over at Larsen. She raised her voice, out of habit. “We’ll be—” She broke off with a laugh as she looked around herself at the vacant bridge. Walker cleared her throat and started again, volume lowered. “Our first priority is covering her team until they get the Mercury fleet up into orbit.”
She spoke directly to Larsen. Aside from the two of them, the bridge was empty. Splitting her Exile Fleet personnel between not just one but two new fleets had stretched them thin. There were enough desks and chairs for a full crew, and Nhean had offered what people he had, but she had declined.
There was an engineer, somewhere below in the bowels of the ship, and there were two women in the gunnery chambers. Nhean had explained that reloading was still one of the things that occasionally fouled up in maneuvers, as the g forces and inertial dampening slid the ammunition slightly out of place.
Before, on the Intrepid, she was continually running into people. Each crew quarters was crammed to capacity and the mess required almost round-the-clock shifts to keep everyone fed. But now she felt alone, on a ghost ship.
She hoped that feeling wasn’t a premonition.
Larsen mumbled under his breath, fiddling with his chair. “Piece of shit … this chair actually reclines. Reclines, Laura. And swivels. That bastard Nhean spared no expense with this fleet. Makes you wonder what else he’s been holding out on.”
She gave a smile at Larsen—she could always count on him to notice the little details. “I’m glad you’re here, Scott.”
“With you to the—” Larsen broke off and cleared his throat. “Glad to be here, ma’am.”
“Oh, say it.” She was actually smiling. “We may go down with the ship. It’s the end of the world, Larsen. Any last words?”
He gave a brief look at his screens, and then actually considered the question.
“I miss Johnson Station,” he said finally. “I miss being young—”
“You’re twenty-seven!”
He shrugged. “Miss being a kid, that’s all. Carefree, and all that, not having to worry about fleets and rebellions and shit. When we were kids....” He tipped his chair back and smiled lopsidedly. “You’ll think this is crazy, but do you remember how we used to talk about going out to the stars? We’d talk about what planets there might be, or just finding an asteroid, making our own colony?”
Walker stood frozen, watching him. Her breath shortened.
“I never stopped dreaming about that,” he admitted.
Her answer was quieter than she intended. “Neither did I.”
He looked at her, and she remembered the child he’d been, white-blond hair and a curved nose from when he’d broken it playing “Hide and Retake Earth.” He was practically her little brother and annoying as hell. He’d grown into a man sometime when she wasn’t watching. He shrugged. “You? Were you thinking you’d settle down or something? You know, I always kind of thought you and Pike—”
Walker found her voice hastily. “That’s enough of that.”
“Right.” Larsen looked away. He was holding back something that might have been a smile. “Cheer up, Laura. I’d say we’ve got at least double the odds we usually have of making it out of stuff like this. This ship’s nice.”
“That it is,” Walker murmured, rubbing the soft leather armrest with relish. She brought up the holographic display and hesitated only a moment before dipping her fingers into it. She dragged the images until the shadows of the eight carriers lay broadside to the approaching Telestine fleet.
Her heart leaped as the ships glided smoothly into motion toward their assigned places. This had always been how she wanted to fight: directing ships like a composer. It was torture to shout commands and wait for the rest of the captains to bring their ships into alignment. She had dreamed of the formations she could wield and the maneuvers she could accomplish if only she could be the one responding to the whole battle by instinct alone.
And now, in what might well be her final battle, she would at last have that chance.
“Decel burn complete. Entering high Mercury orbit.”
She nodded acknowledgement. “Tell me what you see, Larsen.” Nothing had appeared on the screens yet.
“You have what I’m guessing is an incoming scout force: two destroyers and what’s reading as a small contingent of fighters. We barely beat them here. And a larger Telestine force incoming behind them. Twelve ships.”
“That’s all?” She frowned over at him.
“I’ve been thinking about that.” Larsen swiveled in his chair. “I’m pretty sure there’d be more if they had the Dawning. I don’t think he built a whole fleet. I’m sure his new fleet is big and all—Tel’rabim doesn’t seem like a bloke who does half-measures—but I think he was counting on being able to use her to control the usual military ships remotely.”
Walker glanced over in surprise. “Hadn’t thought of that.”
“Yeah. Just a guess, but—” His voice changed. “Heads up, you should be seeing them on your screen in three, two ... one.”
They flickered into existence on the holograph, moving low and fast to cut around them and down onto Mercury itself.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Walker muttered. She reached out to drag two of the carriers into a dive and zoomed in to start maneuvering the fighters.
Nhean had been reluctant to let her use his fleet, that much was obvious, and she could see why. If this was her ship, her program, she would never give it up. A ship, once moved, would scout its surroundings and choose its targets based on a calculation of the velocity, structural read, and assumed firepower of enemy forces, all automatically, only requiring direct intervention by a live crew member if something went wrong. Even the pilot-less fighter groups would change formation as they were picked off, and the targeting systems automatically guided ships out of one another’s line of fire. It was a thing of beauty.
The two carriers plunged on her instructions.
Larsen whistled. “They move quick.”
“Us or the Telestines?”
“Both. I tell you, I’m glad we have Nhean on our side. He’s like ... what do you call someone who’s the same, but different?”
“You’ve always had a way with words, Scott.”
“A foil. Didn’t you pay attention in English class?
“No. Focus.”
He tapped at the screen and one of the Telestine fighters blipped out of existence. He gave a self-satisfied smile. “I am focusing.”
“Show-off,” Walker muttered. She opened her mouth to ask what he’d meant by foils, and then lost the question as the fighters engaged in earnest.
They danced. There was no other word for it. They moved together as if held by some invisible force, as if each formation was one being. They slipped between the Telestine fighters and curved around in tight arcs that manned ships would never be able to hold.
No limits. It was ship against ship now, and Walker allowed herself a small smile. Had Tel’rabim ever thought humans would make something like this—or had he thought they would roll over and die quietly as he sent his ships through the solar system?
It was time for payback. She dragged the other carriers forward to form a wall and gestured for all of them to advance.
She was pleased to see the Telestine destroyers adjust course within seconds. They were banking to avoid the wall of death moving toward them. Unfortunately for them, Telestine ships had their guns on the front, not the sides, and they had just presented a very appealing target.
“All batteries fire.” Walker could not hold back her smile now.
“All batteries firing, ma’am.” Larsen jerked his head at the window. “Why don’t you go look?”
She turned her head away from the window and shuddered. “Because it is unnatural to have windows on the bridge, that’s why.”
But it was impossible to resist now that he’d said it. She indicated to the two outermost ships to begin flanking the Telestines, cutting off their retreat, and then she went to the window to watch the battle unfold.
Mercury shone below them. She could barely make out the glitter of the newly-built shipyards attached to a handful of the rolling cities far below, and she gave a quick glance at the clock. Would King have launched yet?
The cannons captured her attention. Rail guns fired a steady stream of slugs that streaked away into the night, detectable to the naked eye but marked by the computer. And the ion cannons—tech Nhean had stolen from the Telestines, no doubt—fired glowing orbs that traveled just slow enough for the eye to follow. Nhean’s artillery systems, it turned out, were just as excellent as his ships.
“Ma’am—look.” Larsen’s voice was hushed.
Walker caught her breath. She had seen ships blink out of existence on the displays, and she had seen the destruction of her own fighters, but she had never watched such large-scale destruction with her own eyes. A Telestine destroyer blew apart. One was caught, and then the other. The first tumbled away and the furthest carrier turned its weapons accordingly. By the time Walker looked back, the second was gone as well in a little cloud of debris that began to fall toward Mercury.
“Just fighter cleanup now, ma’am.”
She let out her breath slowly. “And then the main fleet.”
“And then the main fleet,” Larsen agreed.
“You know....” Walker looked over at him. “I’m beginning to think we actually have a chance.”
He looked grim. “I can’t help but wonder though, if that wasn’t just a probe. A test. Tel’rabim’s way of seeing what our shiny new fleet is capable of before he engages it directly with his main force.”
She shrugged, and motioned the ships forward with a quick gesture of her hand. “I suppose we’re about to find out.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Halfway between Earth and Venus
Freighter Agamemnon
“So how do we get out of this mess?” Pike leaned back against one of the cargo crates and looked over at Rychenkov. “You got any bright ideas?”
Rychenkov didn’t reply for so long that Pike constructed the answer in his head. It was the answer he’d been waiting to hear, in truth, since they came on the Aggy two days ago: that this wasn’t Rychenkov’s problem. That they’d gotten exactly what they deserved for poking the bear. Pike had heard Rychenkov say that before. Granted, that had been while scraping Howie off the floor of a backwater Kuiper Belt bar, but the principle was the same. You didn’t pick fights you couldn’t win.
Rychenkov was tossing the locator beacon up in the air and catching it without looking. He was always moving. Never liked being still. His eyes were distant now. And then he tossed the beacon to Pike, who barely caught it.
“There’s your answer.”
“What is?”
“They’re homing in on to the beacon, right?”
“They were. We … I mean … she, took care of that first scout ship. The other pursuing ships won’t catch up to us for at least twenty minutes….”
“The fleet’s assembling at Mercury,” Nhean reminded them both. “As soon as our fleet shows up there, they’ll know that’s where we’re taking her—they’ll know our trajectory.”
The girl said nothing. She hadn’t spoken since she’d killed Charlie, and she had curled into a little ball on top of one of the cargo crates with one foot dangling. Pike looked up at her now and she managed a small smile.
Her eyes kept going back to the dark spot on the floor, though. What the hell are you, Dawn, he thought.
The body was wrapped in a tarp at the edge of the room, but they hadn’t been able to get all the blood up.
Pike turned the locator beacon over in his hands while Rychenkov considered. “I thought you said she only worked on the feathers. The silver Telestine ships. At Earth.”
“She does.”
“So … you might take her there.”
“I told you.” Nhean’s voice was impatient. “I need her to help me deploy the virus at Mercury—that’s where Tel’rabim’s fleet is headed. She needs to be—”
“Yeah, but you might take her to Earth. I mean, if I were a Telestine, and I saw you taking her to Earth, I might think that you were planning on infiltrating their system that way….” Rychenkov looked at Nhean.
“Ah,” Nhean said softly.
There was a significant pause, and Pike looked between the two of them. “Someone tell me what’s going on.”
The girl’s finger rose, pointing at Rychenkov.
“Yep, she’s got the right of it.” Rychenkov sounded annoyed. “Hell.”
“What?”
Rychenkov stood wearily. He jerked his head at the crew, pointing at Howie, Gabriela, and James. “You all go with him.”
Gabriela swore. “Hijo de puta….”
“Now listen here, cowboy—” James began, but Rychenkov cut him off with a flick of his hand across his own neck.
Pike swallowed hard. He could not possibly be hearing what he thought he was hearing. “Pyotr Nikolai Rychenkov, what the hell are you doing?”
“You know what I’m doing.” Rychenkov’s smile was sad. “You need to get to Mercury to do … whatever it is she does.” His hands waved at the girl, and he bobbed his head. “No disrespect ma’am, mind you. It’s a hell of a thing.”
She managed a smile. Pike got the sense that she rather liked Rychenkov.
That only made him feel worse.
Howie was scratching at the tattoo of Earth on his temple, as he always did when he was weighing his words. “There’s got to be another way….” But he had no alternative to offer.
Pike shook his head. “Ry, I can’t let you do this.”
“Of course you can.” Rychenkov smiled, and under the habitual bitterness, there was real humor. “I’m expendable, aren’t I? I can lead them on a grand chase, and then, while their sensors are confused, you can flit away with them none the wiser.” He waved his fingers, as if performing a magic trick.
“Set the ship to go on autopilot.”
“Autopilot’s easy t
o detect and you know it. They’ll see right through that. You need someone flying some corkscrews and shit if they’re going to believe that she’s with me.”
“What if they don’t believe?”
“At least there’s a chance—better than no chance at all. Look, if they aren’t following me, it’s not like I’ll pop on over to Earth and land. I’ll come after you and chase them down and take ‘em out if they try to shoot you down. Right?”
“The Aggy’s got no weapons—s”
“So I’ll ram them. Geez.”
“Right.” Pike swallowed hard.
Rychenkov rubbed the back of his neck. “Didn’t think I’d be going out like a revolutionary, but everyone’s gotta go sometime. And hey—maybe I’ll make it.”
He wouldn’t, and they both knew it.
“Maybe you will.” Pike clasped the man’s hand for the last time.
“If I don’t, I’ll take some fuggers with me, eh? Revolutionary’s promise.” The man made a mock salute. He plucked the beacon out of Pike’s hand and switched it on, then looked around at all of them. “Get going. Go save the world.”
“Come on.” Howie ushered the rest of the crew toward the door.
Nhean held up a hand to help the girl down from the cargo crate. Pike watched them disappear, and watched Rychenkov make his way toward the cockpit. The man was murmuring to himself in a mix of Russian and English as he tossed and caught the locator beacon over and over again.
He knew Pike was still there. He turned in the doorway and gave a rueful smile. “Look at me, huh?” he said. He chest shook with a silent laugh. “Dying for something. Son of a bitch, right?”
And then he was gone.
Chapter Fifty-Three