by J. R. Mabry
“Incoming—torpedoes, bearing 294.6,” Ditka announced.
“Hold us steady,” Jo said, watching the tacticals as a barrage of torpedoes drew near—too near. Jo felt a lurch as Chi dodged and the torpedoes zipped past them into deep space.
“They’re going to clue in to this pattern before long,” Chi predicted.
“They are…” Jo agreed. “So let’s give them another target. Launch both shuttle craft, fix them in synchronous orbit around the ship at equidistant diametric poles. Do it.”
Chi’s fingers flew, making the calculations and launching the shuttles. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard…” she sang under her breath, her lips not moving.
Jo didn’t mind. It was crazy. And that was exactly why it was going to work.
“Slide us into the heat of the battle, Mr. Chi,” Jo said. She glanced up at the tactical screens and assessed the field. They were a barge—so be it. They were now a barge that was not going to sit still long enough for any Authority weaponer to lock onto. They were also moving in a tight enough pattern to give them a host of access angles relative to any ship they approached. They wouldn’t have to wait long.
Jo saw fourteen RFC ships, all of various battle castes, spread out in a random assortment against the field of stars. Dotted in between them were twelve Authority ships. Jo noted that while there were fewer of them, they were generally of higher castes, and their collective firepower was greater.
Nearest to them now was the Claw, nearly nose to nose with an Authority battle cruiser of similar caste. Just off the Claw’s portside prow was a fighter carrier, spilling out nimble fighters faster than the computer could count them. The Talon was closing in on this carrier—an excellent test of their battle readiness.
“Weaponer, I want to shut down every fighter spilling out of that carrier.”
“Can’t do it, but we’ll die trying,” Ditka said through clenched teeth. She didn’t look up, but her fingers were a blur on her console.
“Put the other half of your gunners on the cruiser. Shut those bay doors, fry them out—I don’t care what you do. Shut that motherfucker down.”
“With lilting joy, sir,” Ditka still didn’t look up, but she was smiling.
“Do we have gunners for every port?”
“No sir—we have more ports than trainees, I’m afraid. We have three unmanned guns.”
“Give me one of them,” Jo said.
A moment later a blue light pinged in her neural, and looking up, Jo saw a targeting interface—a familiar sight from her days as a cadet. Keeping one eye on the tacticals, she primed her weapon and went through her mental checklist reflexively. She was surprised at how quickly it all came back.
“Coming within range now, sir,” Ditka called, more loudly than she needed to.
“Fire at will,” Jo growled.
An explosion lit up the spinning star field, and Jo chanced the vertigo to assess it. Her fingers gripped the arms of her command chair as she leaned forward, hoping to catch view of the Authority cruiser, disintegrating into lumbering sections, but instead she saw that it was the Claw that was crippled. “Damn,” she swore, tearing her eyes away before she became dizzy.
The first of the fighters buzzed by them and lit up their starboard iconel sheeting. A volley of laser fire converged on the zipping fighter, and Jo was relieved to see it spin off, crazily trying to regain control. She thrilled inside, but reminded herself they had just swatted a gnat, nothing more. The dragons were still in front of them.
They were reaching targeting proximity to the nearest of the Authority ships—the Nathan Hale, she noted with a glance at the tactical display. Another squadron of fighters strafed their port side this time, and Jo got off at least three good shots before they passed, although she hadn’t disabled any of them. Her marksmen, however, were more successful. Of the twelve fighters in formation, five of them ended their run drifting and dark.
“That’s exactly what I want to see,” she said under her breath.
“Sir, the Authority ship is readying torpedoes,” Liebert noted.
“Mr. Chi, are those shuttlecraft in position?”
“They are, sir, orbiting us at a steady range of five kilometers.”
“Excellent. Now, Mr. Chi, as soon as they’ve fired, dodge—”
“Sir, we’re too big to dodge anything.”
“It doesn’t have to be far or fast, just move so that one of those shuttles is in the direct line of fire and will draw the targeting system of that torpedo. Better an unmanned shuttle than us.”
“Aye sir.”
Jo had no idea if that would work—it was a labor-intensive way to fight. It was also defensive. That’s all right, she told herself, we’ve got plenty of offense going.
Jo ignored the next wave of fighters as she watched her tacticals. Her fingers tightened on her command chair as the lines that represented the torpedoes grew closer. The main viewer exploded with light.
“Direct hit, sir,” Ditka noted. “We have lost shuttlecraft B.”
Jo saw that the other torpedo had gone wide of its mark and was executing a wide turn. It would be back, and soon.
“Mr. Ditka, I want you to target that torpedo and make sure it explodes before it gets another shot at us.”
“Aye, sir,” Ditka glanced up at the tactical display, then down at her console.
“Sir, I’ve got an explosion off our starboard stern—the Nathan Hale has been hit.”
“On screen.”
The main viewer switched to a view from their stern camera. A fireball erupted on the Nathan Hale’s port side, amidships.
Jo looked up to see the Claw drawing closer to the Nathan Hale—too close.
“He’s ramming it,” she said aloud. “That crazy motherfucker. Mr. Ditka, get every gun you’ve got on the Hale. Don’t worry about saving it, target everything that could possibly go ‘boom.’ If the Claw is going down, let’s make sure those bastards go down with them.”
No one said, “Aye”—no one had the time. Jo wiped the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve and watched as her own gunners pounded at the Nathan Hale’s shields.
“Their shields are at 20%, Captain,” Liebert said.
“Keep at it, boys,” Jo said.
“Sir, that torpedo is headed back, and we have not hit it,” Ditka informed her.
That was not good news. She glanced up at the tactical to gauge its trajectory.
“Impact in five…” Liebert’s voice from behind her began to count it off.
“Dodge, Mr. Chi.”
“Diving, sir.”
Jo scowled to see that their remaining shuttlecraft was not aligned to draw the torpedo’s fire. She cursed under her breath. “Brace for impact!” she shouted just before the torpedo hit.
The motion hit before the sound did. With a great heaving lurch the bridge seemed to tumble in free space before the motion dampers caught up with it. The hull screamed as it was torqued out of true. Mr. Ditka’s console sparked and caught fire, and several ceiling panels crashed to the floor. Explosions echoed up from the lift chamber.
Jo realized that had she not been strapped in, she would have been plastered against the port wall. Ditka lost no time in racing to a spare station and transferring her controls.
Jo punched at the comm button on her command chair. “Engineering, give me the damage!”
“Shields down to 40%,” a voice came back. “Major structural damage starboard amidships, levels C through F.”
“Casualties?”
“I don’t know that, Captain.” Of course he didn’t, and she was stupid to ask. They weren’t going to have a body count until this whole shindig was over. Focus, she told herself.
“Captain!”
She looked up just in time to see the Claw ram the Nathan Hale. The impact created an explosion that made the entire view screen fade to white.
“Get us out of here, Mr. Chi,” Jo said. “Captain Felix is toast, so until whoever assumes command
gives us orders to the contrary, we’re going back to our previous strategy of picking off the outliers as we work our way inward.”
“Strafe coming on our port side, Captain,” Liebert called.
“Motherfuckers,” Jo said, raising her eyes to her targeting display and firing a volley of laser bolts at the oncoming spray of fighters. This time she set three of them adrift before they pulled even with the Talon. I’m good when I’m mad, she thought, turning and catching two of them in the tailpipe as they buzzed past.
Turning back to tactical, she saw that they’d moved away from the thick of the battle, and she was grateful that the Möbius pattern had ended. She suspected it was responsible for the headache she felt at the back of her eyeballs.
“Enemy ship in our direct path, Captain, distance 4,200 kilometers.”
Jo looked up and located it on the tactical display—it was engaged in battle with the Fang, a short-snouted battle puncher favored by the brass recently. They were quick, deadly, and ugly as sin.
“Let’s give the Fang every assist we can,” Jo said. “Come up behind the—” she glanced at the tactical readout for the enemy ship, “—the Douglas MacArthur and let’s deposit two torpedoes in its exhaust chute before they know we’re here.”
“Having trouble—” Ditka’s fingers kept punching at her borrowed console. “Ah! Got it. Firing now, Captain.”
The Douglas MacArthur saw them and dodged—or as close to a dodge as a ship of her weight and size could manage—but their torpedoes corrected. Ditka had spaced them once again so that the first disrupted their shields and the second broke through to slide up its ass. The screen erupted with green flame and Jo watched with satisfaction as the great beast of a ship began to break up.
“We need more like that.”
“I thought we were wounding,” Ditka called without looking up.
“Wound where you can, kill where you have to. That kill was a must,” she said with a note of finality, to which Ditka responded with a smile—but she still didn’t look up.
Jo checked to see where their trajectory would take them, and saw that Chi had plotted a spiral course that would take them in a direct line to seven battles already underway in quick succession. “Let’s pick the motherfuckers off,” Jo said. She leaned forward in her seat and began to study the tacticals, already making plans for their next attack.
“Uh…Captain?” Mr. Liebert’s voice was hesitant.
“What is it, Mr. Liebert?” Jo didn’t look away. She already had an idea and she was teasing it out in her imagination.
“I think I found your sleeper.”
Chapter Seven
Jeff set his jaw and headed for the corridor. Emma jumped up. “Don’t think I’m not coming with you.”
“You weren’t summoned.”
“I don’t care. We’re in this together.”
Jeff grunted but he didn’t complain. He’d begun to chafe recently at how closely she stuck to him. He caught himself stealing odd moments alone and savoring them. As much as he cared for her, there was a part of him that craved the isolation he’d spent the last twenty years pursuing. It wasn’t an exile, he was discovering, but a hunger. Not an aberration, but a fulfillment. That would take some sorting out. There were times when he could see how a ship’s counselor might be helpful. Those times were fleeting and few, but he had them.
“Any hint in your summons?”
“As to what this is about?” Jeff rubbed at his jaw. “Danny said he would speak to Tal about the crew—”
“About their being in jail?”
“We call it ‘the brig,’ but yeah.”
“Sorry. ‘The brig.’ Do you think he’s going to release them?”
“Or put me in it.”
“Great. It was really that vague?”
“It was just a summons. Here look at it yourself.” He looked up and blinked, forwarding it to her.
She was silent for several paces, obviously reading. “That…is pretty minimalist.”
“Like I said.”
“It’s…ominous.”
“Now you’re just reading into it.”
“Maybe. Jeff, I don’t think you should worry. They know you have a…talent. They’re not going to want to alienate you. They will want to exploit this. They’re the military, after all.”
He scowled at her. “I’m the military,” he said.
“So you know exactly how they think,” she affirmed. “It’s going to be fine.”
Her forced optimism was beginning to annoy him. He once again felt the urge toward solitude. I may get more of that than I want in the brig, he thought to himself.
“Captain!” A voice came out of nowhere. Jeff stopped. It was Danny’s voice, he was sure of it. But he saw no one. Emma rushed ahead a few paces before she realized he’d frozen in place. She turned to look back at Jeff, a confused look on her face. Then she brightened, walking back and snagging Jeff’s sleeve. “C’mon, it’s Danny.”
Jeff turned and saw Danny standing at the corner of a side corridor intersection looking tense. Jeff looked up and down the main corridor, at the hundreds of people coming and going. Something wasn’t right, here. Why was Danny hiding? Who was he hiding from? Security cameras? Danny has a neural, he thought. It doesn’t make any sense.
He followed Emma over to his friend nevertheless. “Captain,” he said cautiously.
“This way,” Danny said, looking around. He strode into the side corridor, and they followed.
“I’ve been summoned,” Jeff said.
“I know,” Danny answered. “You can’t go to Tal’s office.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s a security detail there waiting to take you into custody.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” Jeff deadpanned.
“I can’t let that happen.”
“Why not?”
Danny didn’t answer. As they approached another intersection, he held his hand up. Jeff and Emma froze. Danny looked around the corner, then waved them on. Apparently it was clear.
“I’m not liking this,” Jeff said.
“You’ll like what Tal has in mind for you a lot less.”
“It’s what you have in mind that worries me.”
“Shut up and follow me.”
Jeff clenched his jaw and did just that. Even Emma got quiet. They followed Danny through a series of service corridors, then through a crawlspace onto a catwalk over a hangar. Looking down, Jeff saw the Kepler. His Kepler, although he noted that the seal of the Colonial Science Corps had been covered over with a generic merchant ID.
“Danny, what’s going on here?”
Danny had begun to descend a ladder set into the far wall of the hangar. He didn’t answer. Jeff climbed down after him. Looking up, he saw that Emma was following.
Once at floor level, Danny waited for them both to finish their descent. Once on the floor, Jeff turned to Danny. “I want to know what’s going on, right now.”
“What’s going on is that you’re getting out of here.”
“I’m not leaving without my crew.”
“Your crew are on board,” Danny said, waving them over to the ship. He continued to look around nervously, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the hangar.
“Are you offline?” Jeff asked.
Danny didn’t answer. Jeff sent him a message. Danny didn’t answer, and there was no acknowledgment of receipt. Jeff scowled.
When they reached the ship, Danny handed Emma a data chip holder shaped like a koala bear.
“Cute,” Emma said.
“Those are launch codes for a class F merchant vessel, the Silver Goose. If anyone asks, you specialize in smoked waterfowl.”
“Smoked duck, got it.” Jeff said. “Where are we going?”
“Anywhere that isn’t Authority space.”
“When will they come looking for us?”
“As soon as they discover you’re gone.”
“We can’t outrun a cruiser,” Jeff
said.
“We’ve got bigger fish to fry,” Danny said. “I’ve just been deployed to neutral space myself—every Authority ship with guns is being dredged up for this one.”
“Battle?”
Danny nodded. “A big one. The rebels are putting everything they’ve got in it. It looks like we’re doing the same.”
“Looks like you’re not happy about that.”
“I’d prefer something a little more...strategic. As it is, we’re simply throwing every gun we’ve got into the fight and…” Danny shifted to his left leg, looking down. “I guess we’ll see who’s left.”
“You’re taking a huge chance, here, buddy,” Jeff gripped his friend’s arm. He didn’t understand everything that was going on, but he understood enough. Danny was putting his career on the line to keep him out of the brig.
“Look, I let you down once,” Danny looked at his feet. “You didn’t survive it. Now that I’ve got another shot…I’m not going to let it happen again.” Then he looked into Jeff’s eyes, and Jeff saw his friend’s sincerity. For the moment, it was enough.
“It was an honor to serve with you, Captain,” Danny saluted him.
Jeff saluted back. Then with the crisp, jerky movements the military loved so well, Danny turned and strode from the hangar.
“Send me the coordinates,” Jo said, feeling the hair rise on the back of her neck. She suddenly felt thirsty, and she felt her pulse rate jump. The thrill of the hunt was upon her, and she crouched in her command chair like a cat on the prowl.
Jo checked the coordinates against the tactical display—saw where they were, and where they needed to go. Liebert was right—there she was: a small ship, barely noticeable amid the fighting, just hovering in space like a drifting asteroid. “I see you,” she said under her breath. “And I am going to eat you for lunch.”
“Sir?” Mr. Chi looked over her shoulder. Jo wasn’t sure whether she was questioning her sanity or asking for their next destination. She discovered she enjoyed that ambiguity.
Jo punched at the comm button on the arm of her chair. “Engineering, this is the captain.”