by T. M. Catron
The alien screeched as he lost his grip on his weapon. Rance pushed forward, determined to get another shot before they fired back.
But the alien’s partner had already spun around. Rance dove between two crates while blaster fire pinged off the crate near her foot. She was now exposed to the Streaker and hoped the crew recognized her. Without rising, Rance brought the weapon up to her shoulder, aiming at the gap between the crates, waiting to see if the Arlacken followed.
If the alien attacked her here, he would expose himself to fire from the ship. Instead, he aimed his blaster around the crate's corner and fired blindly. Rance rolled left just in time to get out of the way, saved only by the alien’s fear of being killed. She braced herself against the opposite crate and fired back at the corner. Lightning streaked past the metal crate and into the sky, hitting nothing. It left an electric charge in the air that made her hair stand on end.
Rance crouched and moved backward, exposing herself to those inside the ship. She stayed in front of the crates, away from the aliens on the other side. No one inside the Streaker had shot Rance, so they had recognized their captain. She didn’t want to be in their way, either. She moved left, taking up a protected position in between the last crate and the ship.
The captain now had a perfect view of the other crates and the ramp.
Another Arlacken screeched and went flying out into the open. Someone inside fired at the alien, peppering it with shots as it fell onto the ramp.
“Hold your fire!” Rance screamed. She didn’t want anyone to hit Solaris, who must have been the one to toss the alien out from its hiding space.
Solaris had moved to the center and was fighting the remaining two Arlackens. The air smelled of electricity, sulfur, and spent gunpowder. Smoke obscured the crates now. Rance moved around to the back again, hoping to find a shot and take it if one of the aliens made a mistake or if Solaris got into trouble.
One of the Arlackens moved sideways through the smoke. Its left arm hung uselessly at its side, and Rance guessed that was the one she had shot in the shoulder. The other Arlacken was perfectly healthy, though. Solaris battled both of them with his staff. Seeing they couldn’t maneuver their weapons in such close quarters, the aliens dropped their blasters and ejected long, thin swords from their suits. Thermite glowed, and they both attacked Solaris at once. Sparks shot out from the contact, but his staff held. Rance was amazed despite her fear for him—the staff was made of something other than metal, then, or the thermite blades would have melted it.
Solaris deflected them both again, whirling around to bring his staff onto the spine of the uninjured alien. The Arlacken pivoted, and blow didn't hit its crucial mark. It screeched and staggered from the force of the strike, but it didn’t go down. Rance propped her weapon up on a crate and aimed for the trio. As soon as one of them stepped away from Solaris, she would have him.
But the fighting was so blurred and in such close quarters that there was no way the captain could get a clean shot. She moved her finger away from the trigger. The fire from the ship also stopped as the crew realized what was happening.
Rance had trained in hand-to-hand combat, but she had never seen anyone fight as Solaris did. He maneuvered like one of the ninjas she had seen in Old Earth movies, only faster. The staff became an extension of his body, moving almost on its own as it whirled and struck.
The first alien finally went down, kicked back into the crates with a crunch. Solaris concentrated all his effort on the second. Rance, remembering that the crew inside might be injured, left her cover and moved toward the ship. When she reached it, she dropped her weapon on the ground and pounded up the ramp.
“Captain, look out!” Abel called.
Rance dropped to the floor of the ramp. She crawled to the side and spun around. At least ten shadowy figures moved between the freighter and the Arlacken ship. Several of them fired at the Streaker, and Rance dove off the ramp and onto the ground. With all the light and noise, Museum security must have found them. Rance rolled beneath the ramp to protect herself from the new fire.
With one more shriek, the last alien went silent. “Get the ship into the air!” she heard Solaris call.
Rance rolled back out. Dirt and rocks dug into her back, but she barely noticed as she sprang back onto the ramp. She sprinted inside, jumping over broken debris and ducking behind her mother’s crates.
“Captain, over here!” Abel called.
Rance maneuvered around toward his voice. In the gaps between crates, she caught a glimpse of Solaris standing between the Star Streaker and the thugs, and a blue energy shield in the middle of the field. Beyond the rippling barrier, men in armor were firing. Bright lights lit up the shield like fireworks. Solaris inched back toward the ramp.
Rance passed Harper, who was covering the door with her rifle. She gave Rance a nod and said, “Tally’s hurt.”
Rance’s heart jumped in her chest, and she hurried around until she found Abel in his armor, crouched over Tally. The Graeken lay on the floor of the hold behind one of the undamaged crates. Green blood oozed out of a hole in his stomach. An emergency medical kit lay open next to him. Abel was applying pressure and bandages.
“Why haven’t you got him into the emergency pod?” Rance asked. Anger and fear replaced the heady feeling she’d had only moments ago. If something happened to Tally—
“The crates were blown against the door by an early explosion,” Abel explained. “I couldn’t get over there to move them while they were firing into the ship.”
“Solaris is blocking all their fire!” Harper shouted.
“Where’s James?” Rance asked.
“Here, Captain.” James emerged from the other side of the hold carrying an ion rifle. His head was bleeding, and he looked dazed. He looked at Tally and sat down next to the medical kit, fishing around for something.
“Tally,” Rance said. “We’re going to get you fixed up.”
The Graeken opened his eyes. They were a dull green instead of bright. Each breath he took seemed to cause more pain to ripple through his body.
Rance stood. The other two looked at her. James had medical glue in his hand and was looking at Tally’s wound. But the wound was too severe for glue. They needed to get Tally into the emergency medical pod soon, or he would be beyond help.
And they needed to get the ship away from Persephone.
Without waiting for another word, Rance ran up the stairs in a crouch in case stray fire made it into the hold. She caught a glimpse of Solaris standing in the doorway, his shield still projected out in front of him. Then, the captain was at the top and sprinting down the corridor. She climbed the ladder, and her injured calf protested as she pushed it to work, to move her faster. The pain had doubled in just the last five minutes, and Rance guessed that adrenaline was the only thing keeping her moving.
When she hit the cockpit, she went directly to the pilot’s seat.
“Captain,” Harper said over the comm. “Solaris is inside.”
Rance pushed the button to raise the ramp. She called up screens and grabbed the center control stick. The light turned green as the ship sealed itself.
“Hang on, everybody,” she said. Solaris’ blue shield disappeared, and bullets began pinging the viewing window in front of her.
Rance engaged the shields and took off. The Star Streaker responded instantly to her touch, and Rance felt a thrill as the thrusters shot them straight up into the air. Her stomach seemed to move into her legs, but she didn’t let up on the stick. The lights below faded, and Rance guided the ship away from the port. A red warning beeped at her, and she checked the screen to her left. A beeping red dot moved swiftly toward the ship—the thugs had launched a small surface-to-air missile at the Streaker. Rance was confident the shields could deflect it, but she didn’t want them damaged more than necessary.
She spun the ship around, evading the missile. Several voices shouted over the comm.
“Sorry!” she yelled. “Get strapped in i
f you can.”
“Everyone is secured in a crash chair, Captain,” Harper said. “Except Solaris. He’s putting a shield around us so we aren’t sliced to bits by the stuff down here.”
The Streaker cleared the atmosphere without another bump. Dark blue-green shifted to black, and the stars created a brilliant backdrop to the mass of ships around Persephone.
Rance exhaled in relief. She had just stood to run back downstairs when another ship came into view.
It looked like the Arlacken ship below, but bigger and more menacing. It took up all of the view in front of the Streaker.
Xar’s flagship.
It had already fired, and bright flares of yellow were streaking toward them.
“Hang on, everybody!” Rance yelled.
Chapter Thirteen
Rance pushed the nose of the Star Streaker down, diving back toward Persephone. Xar’s ship looked too big to land. It was a starship that was built to remain in space. If she flew back to the planet, they would be safe.
The captain wasn’t taking any chances, though.
She flipped some switches and used the Streaker’s camera to look for a visual. The Streaker continued its dive, plunging straight into an open stretch of farmland below.
The alarms went off.
The Streaker shook with a force so great that Rance’s teeth rattled. Xar’s ship had broadsided them with its guns. While she was looking for a place to hide, she’d missed the beeping red dot enter the atmosphere.
The hit had knocked the Streaker sideways. The shields had held, but now they were showing at fifty percent.
You’re on a collision course, Captain, Deliverance typed across her screen.
“Deliverance, I need a place to hide! Solaris, get up here, I need you!”
Rance pulled up hard, barely avoiding a crash into the ground. The Star Streaker kicked up a cloud of dust as it whooshed over the field. Someone yelled at her. It sounded like Solaris.
“I’m here,” Solaris said a moment later. He had just climbed the ladder and jumped into his seat. She heard him buckle in. “Took me a bit longer than usual, you know, because I was slammed into the ladder just as I was running for it. Then, the ship nosed straight up, and I had to hang onto the ladder for dear life.”
Solaris’ voice sounded muffled. Rance glanced back. He was sporting a bloody nose.
Solaris caught her look as he pulled a screen toward him. “I survived the fight with the Arlackens only to have my nose broken by my own captain.”
“How’s Tally?” Rance asked.
“Not good.”
“What about James?”
“I think he has a concussion. He’s not fit to fly.”
“No kidding.”
"I'm keeping the shield downstairs, protecting the crew from all that debris."
The ship skimmed over wheat fields farmed by giant robots that looked like a herd of four-legged metal monsters.
“Xar’s ship is closing in,” Solaris said calmly.
“We can outmaneuver it,” Rance said. It was their only chance. They couldn’t match the alien ship in firepower. But they could outrun it.
“Missile!” Solaris said.
Rance glanced at her view screen, then banked hard to port. The missile struck the field beside her, sending up a mushroom cloud of dirt, smoke, and fire. The Streaker weathered the explosion, but it had cost them another five percent to their shields.
“Where are they?” Rance yelled.
“Right on our tail.”
“How are they flying the big ship like that in atmosphere?”
“Don’t know. Do you want me to open a comm channel and ask?”
“Would you? While you’re at it, ask nicely if they’d stop shooting at us.”
Rance zigzagged over the field, then spun into the air, hoping the change in direction threw the other pilots off her scent.
“More fire coming our way.”
Ten streaks of light shot toward the Streaker. Rance spun away again, but one of them clipped her tail. The shields held, but the displaced energy sent the Streaker spinning end over end. The horizon spun around as well, making Rance feel like they had been caught in a hamster wheel with the sky and ground rotating over their heads. They spun so fast that she struggled to right the ship while not getting sick all over the console.
Deliverance kicked in, telling Rance when to thrust. She watched the screen. Just as the horizon turned upside down again, she engaged the landing thrusters. By the time the world righted itself, they were firing in the correct direction to push the ship away from the ground.
“Incoming!” Solaris shouted. “Hard to starboard.”
Rance obeyed, trusting that he could see what she could not.
The farming bots were up ahead, busy even at night. They did look like a herd, and they were so big that it gave Rance an idea. She turned toward them and flew close to the ground. The ship shuddered as it scraped between two bots. The shields were at thirty percent now.
Rance weaved among them like they were trees. “Must be a hundred of these things,” she said.
Xar wasn’t giving up. The Arlacken ship had maneuvered in front of them over the bots. It shot missiles at the metal behemoths in front, causing them to explode in a chain reaction. The resulting fire whooshed toward the Star Streaker. Rance pulled up hard, exposing the ship’s belly to more of their attacks. The ship shuddered with the hits.
“We can’t take another hit like that, Captain,” Solaris said.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Pretty drained already.”
She heard Solaris get up anyway, heard the soft snap of his staff as he extended it.
“Wait, Solaris, I have an idea. See that ravine? It’s too small for Xar’s ship.”
“I see it,” he said, sounding relieved.
Rance headed straight for it. By now, the smoke from the field hovered over everything. She dove back into it, relying on her mapping systems to get them where they needed to be. Another bot lay up ahead with smoke pouring out of its side. It appeared out of the smoke like a hulking monster, and Rance barely avoided it in time.
“I don’t see the Arlackens,” she said. Panic was setting in. She did not want to lose sight of their enemies unless it meant they were going to another star system.
“Me, either. The smoke is interfering with our sensors. Fortunately, it’s probably interfering with theirs, too.”
“Where is Unity?” Rance asked. “They should be engaging Xar’s ship by now.”
“Maybe they would like Xar to shoot us down.”
“I’d like to know how the Arlackens found us.”
“Seems everybody has spies these days.”
The ground dropped away below them and then reappeared. Rance had missed the ravine. She turned back and dove into it, flying under the smoke in the opposite direction from where she had seen the other starship. It was a deep gorge with a small but powerful current of water snaking through the bottom. At least, that’s what Deliverance told her. Rance couldn’t see the bottom at all. The smoke had made the night darker, and Rance was relying exclusively on the Star Streaker’s systems to keep her from bouncing off the rock walls. “Any sign of them?”
“Not yet.”
“Such confidence.”
“Do you think an alien warlord who travels halfway across this sector to avenge an imagined slight is going to give up so easily?”
The shadow of a stone arch moved over the top of the Streaker. Rance gritted her teeth, hoping it didn’t narrow further. The shields registered a few more hits, and Rance tightened her grip on the stick.
The smoke dissipated, and the gorge finally widened. Stars shone in the narrow strip of sky above them. Even though Rance could see, she became even more nervous. The rock walls were terrifyingly close. And it wouldn’t take long for Xar to figure out what they had done. “Deliverance, where does this gorge end?”
“You are heading upstream, Captain,” Solaris answ
ered, reading Deliverance’s response so Rance could concentrate on flying. “In less than a kilometer, the Star Streaker will be too big for the walls.”
“Plan?”
“Get ready.”
“Are you going to use one of your wormhole things?”
“Can’t do that in atmosphere. I could tear the planet apart.”
Rance gaped at Solaris and almost turned to look at him. Instead, she had to concentrate on not crashing.
“Rance,” he said. “I’m kidding. You must think I’m powerful, huh?”
“Sounds like you’re feeling better. Get us out of here.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Before Solaris had a moment to gather himself, the first small fighters appeared. They zipped behind the Star Streaker, taking up positions and firing immediately.
“Solaris! Don’t do anything yet. I need your eyes on this!”
“Three enemy fighters. Triton’s beard, they’re fast. I want to know what kind of tech Xar—”
“Just keep your eyes on them!”
Rance swept around a curve in the gorge and then up. The Star Streaker left the canyon, and Rance punched it. They just needed a few seconds, then they could enter space and make the jump to hyperspace.
A few, precious seconds.
The fighters followed with ease. Now that they were in the open, everyone had more room to maneuver. Realizing she had been holding her breath, Rance let it out. Her sweaty palms wouldn’t grip the stick, and she had never before been so appreciative that James was the regular pilot and not her. She wasn’t quite brave enough to attempt an in-atmosphere jump as he would.
They headed back toward the city. Rance wanted to use the other launch activity for hiding. If anything, Unity would be there if Xar was bold enough to fire on her so close to a large population. She flew upward in erratic circles, dipping and diving to shake the fighters off her tail.