“What do you want from me?” Bren demanded after taking a decisive step away from her, making sure he was completely out of her reach before he spoke. Not that it would make any difference. If Tanya wanted to harm him, there would be absolutely nothing he would be able to do to stop her. It was that simple and understandable though Bren could not seem to do so. He could compute and understand vast concepts, but he couldn’t comprehend just how quickly the deadly Tanya could move.
As I have indicated, Tanya is by far the most dangerous human being I have ever encountered. Part of that danger was her complete innocuousness. You did not expect a slip of a girl to possess the ferocity, speed and strength of a Tarnian Bola Raptor. I did not say that she was as mean as a Tarnian Bola Raptor just because it sounds slick, she really is just that mean and capable. Truly dangerous.
Besides her meanness and capability, I have always suspected that she was somehow bio-molecular enhanced, which as a trend is becoming quite popular these days. I don’t know where she could have gotten such enhancements, but I can only surmise that it was in some way government sponsored. I do not believe that the level of enhancements she possesses is available to the general public. A government weapon gone rogue, may-hap, I really do not know, and Tanya is not telling. Since she does not particularly invite such personal questions, it has gone unanswered in all the time that I have known her. Suffice it to say, she is as capable as any organic organism I have ever heard of. More so, probably. She has been enhanced, it is my firm belief, in every way imaginable. She is a deadly killing machine.
“What if we take evasive maneuvers?” I said as I strapped myself back into my Captain’s chair, where of course I was now wishing I had stayed in the first place.
“How have you survived this long?” Bren asked conversationally. “Evasive maneuvers will only shorten the time it takes the Katons to catch us. Do you have any more bright ideas, now that you’ve gotten us into yet one more untenable situation. Maybe you think we should turn and give them a fight. I bet we can take them!”
I’m sure my face turned red but somehow I held my tongue. I have never been good at holding back what I think and this was no exception, yet somehow I did it. I would make him pay when this was all over. If we survived, that is.
Carefully Bren moved back to stand near enough to Tanya that he could see the scanner again. She wasn’t emanating quite as much hostility since he’d stuck me with such a quality barb and they were like co-conspirators on the quest to emasculate and completely rob me of my self-esteem. Let them have their moment, if it would in any way go towards getting us out of this mess I had somehow gotten us into. Just let them have their moment, I grated under my breath.
“Evasive maneuvers in open space, huh?” Tanya said directly in my ear the moment I looked in another direction. She would not show her speed openly, but in small ways that still let you know just how quickly she could move when required. Bren was hunched over the scan and hadn’t noticed a thing.
I was pretty sure I didn’t jump even though she had definitely startled me. As usual I had not heard her move nor had I any inclination that she intended to. Her remark and the reason she brought it to my attention was that it was similar in essence to an incident where once we had been followed by an irate gentleman who was interested in my clearing up the small matter of a rather sizable gambling debt I had incurred but had left unpaid before departing his gambling establishment. The gentleman was as crooked and dishonest as the day was long and so should not have been quite so irate over having done to him what he did to others on a daily basis. At least that was how I figured it. He figured it otherwise.
We had jumped to the area of a globular cluster whose fusion emissions chatter I had hoped might confuse our trail, but which had not, and when the gentleman actually followed us there, where we couldn’t transition back into warp (such massive bodies interfered with our ability to enter warp space, having already affected space with their massive gravitational pulls), I had had no choice but to attempt to evade him. Despite the warnings of crew and common sense I had attempted to use evasive maneuvers to elude him and it had done just what I had been warned it would. He caught us and we had had to fight our way out.
Actually catching us had been the gentleman’s downfall, however. Whatever else I might be, I am a master of close space combat. I am a master pilot par excellence. We cut him to slag and salvaged what was left. I am not ordinarily such a ruthless fellow, but when you play with fire, you must be careful lest you be burned in turn. That was the ruthless nature of the Universe and no less than he had intended for us.
“I don’t recall that anyone else had any Universe shaking ideas.” I replied without looking back at her. The incident in question had occurred before Last Chance had been retro-fitted with her new engine and there had been no chance of outrunning the irate gambler. “Nor are you helping the situation now by picking at old wounds.” The behemoth behind us had all the thrust it needed to catch us, and catch us it would, if we couldn’t think of some way out of this. We would not be able to fight our way out again, no matter how great a pilot I thought I was. We didn’t stand a snowballs chance in hell, and that was the positive outlook. I didn’t want to contemplate the negative. If we didn’t think of something, Last Chance had burned up her last chance.
If this were one of those inane big screen movies always being produced and we were the heroic space heroes fighting galactic tyrants, then in the nick of time, and that would be right about now, we would be finding some vast rubble field to maneuver through or hide within, or a sun or huge planet to use to slingshot us to safety, or some enemy of the Katons would show themselves and the two mortal enemies would fight to the death while we escaped, or some such other nonsense.
The real Universe seldom worked that way, however. None of those things happened. That damn Katon Battleship just kept getting bigger and bigger behind us. Crawling up our fusion wash like some irresistible monstrous spider upon its silken web, and we the prey. Well we were certainly the prey.
Tanya doesn’t really seem any happier when she gets everything her way than when she is getting nothing her way. She never really seems to be happy, but that is just Tanya. She stood behind me a time, contemplating some new verbal abuse (and possibly a physical one as well, if I think I know her only half as well as I think I do) but she couldn’t avoid the simple fact that she had no Universe shaking plan to offer either. Without another word and an elusive smile I felt rather than saw, she moved back to her own station, sat, and buckled herself in.
“We’re falling into effective photon cannon range.” Bren warned. Effective photon range, I knew, was about 40,000 clicks for a boat of the Katon Battleships fusion power producing capacity. They were catching up to us quickly, and we were in the worst possible position to be taking that photon fire.
The Katon Battleship did not have to line up on us to strike us with its photon cannon, as Last Chance must. It was more than large enough to hold independently tracking turrets. It would have a dozen or so, though not all would be able to target us at once. It didn’t need to target us with all of them, though. One was more than sufficient. One strike and we would be finished.
I bumped my stick to slightly alter our course just as the first of the Katon Battleships ruby red photon beams began to slice around us. They were like thousand kilometer long red filaments whose mere touch would destroy us on contact. They burned the vacuum around us where we had been only moments ago and I immediately reacted by bumping us on a new tangent. The only good thing was that a photon cannon could not be fired continuously, it had to be recharged before it could be fired again, or I am certain we would have been finished there and then right in the beginning of falling into their effective range.
“Did you see the size of that photon beam?” Bren exclaimed. Neither I nor Tanya nor anyone else who would have heard him over the open ship’s com said a word in response. What exactly was there to say! Yep they were big, thick photon beams. Yep,
they’d take us in half with the merest touch. Yep, we were certainly finished. No. No one said a word. Everyone was busy thinking their own thoughts. Making their prayers to whichever God they worshiped, if they worshiped a God at all.
Janice and Melanie opened up on the Battleship with the rear plasma guns. They created a solid stream of the green fire linking us to the Katon Battleship. With the size of the target and the way the plasma spread as it traveled it found its mark unerringly on the nose of the onrushing Capitol ship. Now we were one, tied together by glowing chains of green fire.
Melanie and Janice continued to keep the Katon Battleship pinned with the plasma cannons while I maneuvered us through the rain of thick ruby photon beams. The plasma we were pouring back upon them with would do little or nothing to the armored hide of the monstrous Battleship. Its nose would be hardened armor thicker than Last Chance was long. The only point to the exercise was that the constant stream of plasma would serve to partially blind their sensors and possibly damage their warp capability. If there was any chance we could escape into warp ourselves the effort might be more than futile, but the hope that it might actually do something really damaging was far too much to ask. A Battleship was designed to take such a beating. It would ride it out like a catamaran on a calm sea.
As much couldn’t be said for ourselves. We were playing the game of Russian roulette waiting for the hammer to fall on the cylinder containing the accurate targeting data needed to pinpoint our immediate location. I was altering our course every couple moments but as the pursuing ship drew ever closer its targeting systems would begin to paint us with ever growing accuracy. This was a game that could not go on forever under present circumstances. It would end sooner rather than later and the end meant our end. Unless something changed we could count the remainder of our lives in moments, and not long moments either. It would soon be over.
“How much velocity do we have to attain before their photon beam falls back on themselves?” I asked Bren for something to do other than think about the onrushing Katon Battleship behind us.
“It doesn’t work that way.” Bren answered. “It will only exist as long as there is energy to push the photons, but after that it will dissipate. It won’t fall back.”
“Figures.” Tanya said.
“Why don’t you use your superpowers to get us out of this.” Bren told Tanya sarcastically. “Somehow I don’t think the Katons care that you’re a super hero.”
“I don’t have superpowers!” Tanya said dangerously, turning a venomous look on Bren.
“It’s your story.” Bren said. “Tell it how you want.”
“Shut up! Both of you.” I yelled, and for a brief, peaceful moment, they did. Then all of a sudden everyone was talking at once.
“Micro-meteor field ahead!” Bren yelped like a frightened child, as the ship’s proximity alarms began to ring and everyone was talking.
I studied the scan at my own station and could see little. A smudge of haze here or there but nothing distinct. Why we hadn’t seen it from further and one of the very real reasons space travel at these velocities was a truly reckless endeavor. Why it was so much safer to travel in warp. When your ship functioned properly, I amended. There were no debris fields in warp. Inside the fabric of space.
“The Katons are pulling off.” Melanie said over com. I could see that for myself but the dangers of the micro-meteor field seemed insubstantial compared to the certainty of the outcome of the Katons catching us and we were all relieved. At least for the moment. Melanie and Janice continued to pour plasma fire back at them, more or less just for something to do. I didn’t begrudge them that. Pour it on!
There was no time to wait or waste. I cut the main engine and spun us on our auxiliary thrusters until we were pointing back the way we had come. Then hit the main thrust again and was thrown back in my seat until environmental gravity could adjust. The Katons were doing the same thing only more slowly. They had a lot more mass to compensate for and couldn’t turn on the dime as we could. The bastard was now a sitting duck and nothing he could do about it. It was either face our one gun or the sure destruction the meteor field represented. No ship could survive that meteor field at these velocities.
“Fire!” I screamed but I was late. Tanya had already acted. Last Chance’s ruby red photon beam had already spanned the vacuum between us and transfixed the mammoth fighting ship. It speared out and connected us for a moment, and then was gone as it expended its charge. Last Chance was a small ship with a small fusion reactor. Thus her capacity was minimal, but we had hit her and hurt her. Just how badly was the question.
Though I would have loved to have stayed right where we were for the chance to put another photon beam right up that Katon pig’s arsehole, I recognized that we were slowing down a lot more rapidly than they and if we maintained our trajectory then they were going to run right over us. In essence we would decelerate right into them. Right into their fusion flame. I bumped my stick to port and began to put a little tangent between us and the approaching giant, but there would be nothing we could do if they suddenly opened up on us with her photon cannons. We could only hope their concentration would be elsewhere, as it should be, on saving their own lives.
It was less than ten minutes later that the behemoth went sliding past. I had put a thousand kilometers between us but it still seemed much too close, the ship still huge as real life, the size and mass of some small moons. Atmosphere was issuing from a huge gash in the side of her hull, where we had hit her. The damage was substantial but minimal at the same time. A deep scratch, no more. The Katons left us alone. Their guns were firing into the debris field, but they had such a hole to open I did not know what their chances might be.
To all appearances we were racing back the way we had come, with Last Chance pulling out into the lead, but that was only appearance. We were still racing backwards with our kilometer long fusion flame leading the way, as if all the laws of nature had been turned topsy-turvy and our fusion flame actually pulled us along rather than propelling us.
“Bren?” I said. “Are we going to be able to stop before we hit that asteroid field?”
“You don’t want to know.” Bren said.
“You see what the Katons are doing?” I asked then. I had already been fairly certain we were not going to be able to stop. It takes exactly the same amount of thrust to decelerate as it does to accelerate, and we had been accelerating too long to now stop.
“I see them.” He said.
“I need a targeting program that will bracket our exact vector into the micro-meteor field. Then we’ll follow our own guns right into the eye of the storm. You understand what I’m asking for?” I demanded.
“I understand.” Bren said, already busy calculating, typing commands into his keyboard. I did not know if he had the time to give me what I asked, and Last Chance had no overriding AI program, like most ships these days, which could have made the calculation in a nan o-second An AI would relinquish command of the ship to authorities when ordered to do so. It came in all of their basic programming, and in my line of work, that would mean a short ride to a fast death.
“Janice. Melanie.” I said. “Do you girls have the asteroid field on your screens?”
“Kind of hard to miss.” Janice said immediately.
“It ain’t goin nowhere.” Melanie said.
“We gotta burn us a path through it. Bren’s gonna be uploading a vector analysis and I need you girls to burn us a nice, big, wide open path. Are you with me on this, my dears?”
“Now we’re dears?” Melanie asked, a strange tone in her voice I couldn’t say I recognized.
“When he wants something, we are.” Janice said. “When he’s through with us he’ll cast us to the dogs.”
“Now say here . . .” I began, but Janice cut me off.
“Just shut your mouth and let us do our jobs. Here’s that targeting data now!” Both girls were instantly pouring green fire back behind/ahead of us, clearing that path. Our
lives were now dependent on Bren's calculations and the girl's marksmanship. It wasn’t the first, or hopefully the last time, that we had been in such circumstances, morbid as it may seem to wish to live just to find oneself once more beset by terrible odds. That was a mercenary’s life and all a mercenary could hope to ask for was to live to fight one more day.
Our chances weren’t good but I daren’t put a gloomy face on the endeavor. Rock wouldn’t melt the way metal would but I was hoping this micro-meteor field was as much frozen water vapor as it was rock. If so the super-heated plasma would melt us a path and we would sail right on through. If not, well . . . the end would come quickly. It would be like running Last Chance into the blast of a gigantic bird gun. We’d be holed in a million places nearly the moment we hit the field. We’d live long enough to know we were dying but that was about all.
It wouldn’t hurt that we were riding Last Chance’s fusion flame into the debris. It might sweep away some small percentage but not all. We had to clear the path we intended to travel and nothing else was going to be acceptable.
“Empires have been built on less.” I said aloud to incredulous looks from my two best fans, but I gave it back as I got it because if anyone here was truly crazy it wasn’t me. Either Bren or Tanya could find a berth on almost any space going vessel if they wanted. Only the truly insane would choose to crew with Marc Deveroux.
Bren could find a post anywhere. It wouldn’t need to be a space going vessel. His kind is rare and in high demand in our society so his choice to crew with me was a mystery I wasn’t trying to solve. Tanya was if anything even more of a mystery. She had enough stolen goods stashed in her on-board safe (not to mention what she wore around her neck) to retire for eternity. Buy her own planet. An undeveloped one, in any case. You would think that after ninety-one years of life she would have gotten her youthful boisterousness out of the way and settled down to the business of enjoying what she had worked so hard to attain. She truly seemed to enjoy the excitement of this life, however, possibly even more so than I myself, as hard as that is to imagine.
Chronicles of a Space Mercenary Page 3