Stardust

by Edward W. Robertson

  Crimson bolts lashed forth. Toman's pilots corkscrewed and dived. They launched missile after missile behind them, but the fighters' escorts knocked them all down. Toman lost two ships, then three. A laser blinked out to his ship—Rada would have sworn it hit him—but he flew on. He was down to eight ships, then seven.

  A second laser struck Toman's ship. Fragments scattered from his right flank, but somehow he kept going, flipping around and braking while unleashing a salvo of missiles. As if guided by the spirits of their ancestors, or by Mars, or by something even older, they penetrated the aliens' guard, knocking down two of the heavy fighters.

  Rada had been expecting he'd send out some last battle cry of courage, but the third and final shot took him without another word. It pierced the nose of his ship, touching off explosions that ran perpendicular to his centerline, puffing from his flanks like fire from a dragon's nose.

  Toman's ship dissolved in flame.

  White light glared from the explosion. And though he wouldn't know it, and neither would the unknown creatures it fell upon, the light of his death would travel forever through the void: and someday touch those other stars he'd always yearned for.

  ~

  Toman's fleet had held off the Lurkers for an impossibly long time. In the end, though, with the enemy regrouping and the wreckage of the human fighters cooling behind them, the Lurkers would still fall upon Rada's 45 ships five full minutes before Kansas could join her.

  "Big deal," Kansas said when Rada messaged her to coordinate. "Five minutes is just three hundred seconds. I've had orgasms last longer than that."

  "You absolutely have not."

  "Toman just held on for more than twenty minutes. If you can't last three hundred seconds, you don't deserve to live."

  Rada stared at her. "Is this how you run the Locker?"

  "Yep. And that's why we're still alive. If you don't like it, feel free to die and prove me wrong."

  "We'll make it. You just make sure you get here on schedule."

  Kansas grinned, eyes glinting, and closed the comm.

  The Lurkers came up behind them, inexorable. Toman's team had knocked out fifteen of their ships, but his focus had been on defense and delays and their overall numbers were hardly scratched. On tactical, they looked overwhelming.

  She switched on her comm to the fleet-wide channel. "This is Commander Rada Pence, acting admiral of the fleet. The Lurkers are approaching. Form up and prepare to execute the following strategy."

  She moved to transmit the opening ploy she'd put together during Toman's final flight, but stopped with her finger over the pad of her device. Small as the fleet now was, it included pilots from the Hive, Dark Solutions, two other corporations, Belters, and the Dashers. Would they follow her orders? Would they even listen to her at all? What if they just fought as they pleased? Or flew away, scattering like mice when you switch on the light?

  She tapped her device, transmitting the files.

  Her plans played out on screens and tactical displays across the fleet. Winters was the first to move into position. Every pilot of the Hive followed. And every other pilot followed after that.

  She let out a long breath.

  "In two minutes, we begin the last fight for our lives," Rada said, fully aware that she was addressing the largest group she had ever led but refusing to feed that awareness in any way. "But your task is simple: do your job. Do your job, and follow your wingmates, and we will hold on long enough to fight alongside Admiral Carruth—and maybe even to win."

  In response came no applause or cheers. Just the terse acknowledgements of explorers, settlers, and traders who had been forced to become soldiers. The Lurkers approached the verge of the human's effective missile engagement range, which was displayed as a larger circle than the aliens' combat zone: for the major advantage to being chased at high speeds was that it effectively extended the range of your missiles while decreasing the range of your pursuit's.

  "Launch drones," Rada said. "Begin the first barrage."

  Fifty drones deployed from the fleet and set up a screen between them and the Lurkers. Both drones and fighters began a heavy pounding of missiles that was meant to feel ragged and overdone, on the verge of panicked. The Lurkers responded with rockets and drones of their own. More than appeared to be strictly necessary to defend their front lines. The first explosions touched off.

  The enemy vanguard eased off its maxed-out acceleration. Behind them, the laser-toting heavy fighters worked their way close to the fore.

  Rada touched her comm. "Laser-boats, get in position. Acquire firing solutions."

  The scrapyard Dasher vessels nudged closer to the rear. Rada clouded their semi-random movement with additional maneuvers from the Hive fighters. At that moment, every course change was precious—it slowed their rendezvous with Kansas, giving the full Lurker force that much more time alone with them—but if the Lurkers caught wind of what the laser-boats were up to, what remained of the fleet might never have the chance to join Kansas at all.

  The alien heavy fighters settled in behind the phalanx of fighters, interceptors, and drones holding the line against the incoming bombardment of human missiles. A laser shot from the nose of a Lurker craft, burning into the tail of one of the Hive's two remaining corvettes.

  No explosion came; the craft's bulk had held it together. But either its integrity was failing or its captain knew what was coming, for it dumped every drone and missile it had. A second and a third beam bored into its aft. It tumbled apart.

  The second corvette started the launch of all its weapons as well. A crimson lance struck it two seconds later. Its engine sputtered before regaining its flame. Rockets and drones poured from it like infant spiders scattered from a ruptured egg sac. Another round of lasers ripped it apart.

  "It could be they're taking out our juiciest targets," Winters said over the comm. "Or it could be they're trying to decapitate our leadership. They're gunning for you."

  "Then it's a good thing I'm on the Tine. Just another fighter."

  Even so, she increased the number of false transmissions between the ships to further obscure the fleet's communication hubs and most likely leaders. Two more lasers licked out, destroying DS' largest fighter and a squarish Belter ship.

  The wait was maddening, far worse because Rada was in command but could do nothing about it. Due to them being literally alien, the lasers weren't patched directly into the systems of the Dasher ships. The Dashers had hacked this by welding the lasers to their kinetic guns, allowing them to piggyback on the kinetics' computer-generated aim, but the slightest misalignment would be amplified the further away they were from their target.

  They had chosen an effective firing range as the distance at which they could reasonably expect to land at least two-thirds of their shots. At last, the laser-boats drew within the limit.

  Mat-Nalin's voice roared over the line. "Ready!"

  Rada's heart surged. "Open fire!"

  Lasers volleyed from twelve of the Dasher ships—ships that looked like trash glued to a larger heap of trash. Seven of the enemy's heavy fighters died in red-hued flashes. Two of the Dasher vessels exploded along with their targets; the weapons, lacking a proper support system, had destabilized, consuming their bearers.

  "Evasives!" Rada yelled.

  The ten surviving laser-boats flung themselves into wild corkscrews. They lost ground fast on the rest of the fleet, sinking toward the rear where the action would be thickest, but none of their crews had any delusions about making it out.

  Lasers sniped back and forth between the Lurkers and Dashers. To the naked eye, the light traveled instantly, appearing between ships like a solid bridge. Ships on both sides ripped apart in gusts of short-lived heat. After the second volley, there were just six laser-boats left. After the third, there were three. None made it past the fourth.

  But the Lurkers had been reduced to just two heavy fighters anywhere close to the front lines. Rada directed all outbound missiles and drones tow
ard them. The conflict zone erupted in a maelstrom of flame. When it cleared, both of the targets were gone.

  Winters' voice crackled over the comm. "We just took out more than half of their laser-carriers!"

  "And they don't have any close enough to reach us before Kansas gets here," Rada said. She switched over to the fleet-wide address. "Defensive postures. We're almost there."

  They pulled their drones closer, switching over to a low-missile spend that was strong enough to keep them safe but which rarely pressed at the enemy. The Lurkers slowed to allow their fighters to mass at the front, with multiple larger vessels—big enough, perhaps, to be true capital ships—taking position two or three ranks behind them. The formation now resembled a warped jellyfish, with a ship-dense head and various thinner "tentacles" streaming behind it.

  "Get ready for an attack," Rada said to her officers.

  "Not so sure about that," Mat-Nalin said. "Looks to me like they're battening down the hatches."

  The clock ticked down to two minutes, then one. The Lurkers made only small adjustments to their alignment. The missile fire between the two sides had dwindled to a trickle and was now no more threatening than distant thunder.

  A mass of green triangles sped onto the short-range tactical display.

  Rather than meeting with Rada in a dovetail, Kansas had angled her fleet to slash across the face of the Lurker formation. The Lurkers had apparently decided this action was not a bluff—either their conservativeness in the face of uncertainty was at play, or they knew a thing or two about Kansas.

  "Match course," Rada commanded. Her fleet, now a scant thirty ships, veered to the right. This brought them closer to the enemy, but as Rada had guessed, the aliens showed no interest in pressing the temporary advantage. "Prepare for supporting fire."

  The green blade of friendly fighters scythed toward the shield-like orange formation.

  "I've been waiting for this since these bastards stepped foot in the System." Kansas' voice rang across the comm, electric with anger. "Outlaws of humanity, this is the destiny that all of your strife has trained you for. No mercy! No quarter! No fear! Kill at will!"

  The edge of her formation fuzzed as drones and missiles spewed forth by the hundreds. The Lurkers did the same. Clouds of weapons raked into each other, touching off ten explosions, then fifty, then so many that they bled together into contorting ribbons of fire.

  "Supporting fire!" Rada called. "Get everything you can between Kansas and the enemy!"

  A ripple went through her lines as the reef of defenses they'd placed in front of themselves raced toward Kansas' much larger force, slipping between her ships to buttress them against the nonstop barrage of the Lurkers. A laser blinked on, followed by a second, the red beams lost within the flames and debris.

  Kansas and the Lurkers clashed into each other like permeable blades. Green and orange triangles blinked off the tactical display with such frightening speed that for a moment it looked like the battle would be decided then and there.

  Yet as the two sides' divergent vectors pulled them apart, the violence of the attack decreased as manically as it had begun. The Lurkers could have steered into Kansas' course to extend the period of contact, but they swung away instead.

  "Lousy cowards," Kansas said. "I haven't drank my fill of blood!"

  Space opened up between them, the last of the expended missiles and drones slugging it out to the end. The bursts of war faded. Both fleets moved on, leaving the battlefield a dark nebula of gas and detritus.

  "I just saved your lives," Kansas said to Rada. "That means that after we win, you have to be my servants."

  "Then it sounds like you're going to be tragically and mysteriously shot in the back just before the end." Rada grinned. "Good to be flying with you again. What took you so long?"

  "After what happened at Earth, flying with Toman was suicide. You were deluding yourself if you couldn't see that. But then he went and found his spirit. Only a coward wouldn't join him then. If I hadn't flown out here, I would have been a traitor to you all."

  Rada brought her people about to match course with Kansas. Both humans and aliens were braking now, preparing for the lower-speed, higher-maneuverability combat that pilots preferred unless they were able to come into an encounter with a significant speed advantage over the opponent. Rada considered and rejected the idea of giving the Lurkers one last chance to surrender. Even if the Lurkers took it, it was more likely the aliens would twist it into an ambush. Kansas wouldn't go for it in a million years, either. It would only cause the young warlord to lose faith in Rada.

  The Lurkers seemed happy to take their time reassembling themselves, but Kansas heaved about at once, heading back for a second round. The Lurkers curved about to face her, the two fleets speeding toward each other like jousting knights.

  "Knowing the enemy, they'll try to separate your ship from the pack like a sick antelope," Rada said to the combined fleet. "Do not let yourself get sucked into a dogfight just yet."

  The Lurkers launched their drones, wasp-like little vessels that shot missiles from their arched backs. Kansas deployed hers and sent them into battle. Rada ordered her pilots to put forth a conservative screen: both sides were burning through their resources at a heavy clip.

  Kansas had ordered her people into a very fat javelin while the Lurkers had arranged themselves into three successive rectangles arranged like the slices of bread in a double-decker sandwich. The point of the javelin penetrated the first layer of ships, a ring of fire blossoming around it as missiles found each other and mated in flame. A group of alien interceptors cut toward the fighting and were met by a sudden fist of drones. The interceptors fell back, ready to be routed.

  "It's a ploy!" Rada yelled. "Do not follow them!"

  A few of her pilots lobbed missiles at the interceptors, but no one broke formation. The interceptors wobbled. Behind them, three missile barges disgorged a great volley toward the humans, the formation bending inward on its flank as they fought off the coming attack. Even though they hadn't fallen for the trap, two of their ships fell to the assault.

  "Good eye," Kansas said. "That would have taken a lion-sized bite out of us."

  "They're getting predictable," Rada said. "At this point, the only way for them to catch us off-guard would be to play it straight."

  The forward tip of the javelin reached the second layer of Lurkers just as the rearward tip disengaged from the first layer. A new ring of missile bursts formed around them, punctuated by the occasional larger blast of a dying ship.

  Lasers flew from the right and left edges that were furthest from the action, piercing into Kansas' vanguard and spraying three fighters into rubble. Those following behind them juked madly to avoid the shrapnel. The heavy fighters got off a second blast at the end of the formation, knocking out another trio of ships.

  They passed through the third and final layer with just two more losses in exchange for two kills. Yet Kansas opened up her private line to Rada with a string of obscenities.

  "Those heavy fighters are tearing us to pieces. I thought they were running out of lasers!"

  "They could have been keeping some fresh ones in reserve," Rada said. "Or they manufactured new ones on Earth."

  "We would have come out ahead of that exchange if not for those fucking lasers. We've already lost a quarter of our ships. If we don't start closing the gap on them, we're just flying coffins."

  Rada nodded, then looked up. "I have a way. On our next pass, put me at the point and give me a route to their heavy fighters."

  "That sounds like suicide. Is that your way of getting out of having to figure out a solution?"

  "If it works for me, you're free to try it next."

  Both fleets heaved about, aligning themselves for another pass. Kansas sent orders across the lines, reforming the javelin so that Rada and eleven of her pilots were on the left side and just a few ships back from the tip of the spear. They approached the Lurkers; again, a spume of drones went forth t
o slaughter each other and keep the human-piloted ships safe.

  As they passed through the first layer of aliens, Kansas pushed the fleet left, as if they were shrinking from a threat on the other side. She continued the drift as they neared engagement with the second layer.

  "In five." Kansas began to count down. "Two. One. Zero."

  The entire cone of the javelin swerved hard left, plunging toward the end of the line where the heavy fighters were holed up. A swarm of interceptors zipped forward to snarl their path. The ships ahead of Rada broke off to engage, scattering the light enemy craft. Rada dived toward the heavy fighters. Her fore cameras, trained at high zoom on the Lurkers' noses, showed a long tube beneath the closest fighter swiveling toward her.

  She jerked the Tine as hard to the right as she could. At the same time, she separated the left-hand third of the ship—for the ship was designed to split apart into three separate craft, though that hadn't gotten much use since their very first encounter with the Lurkers—and flung it directly at the heavy fighter.

  The lasers hit it an instant later, dashing it apart. Pieces of her own ship pinged and clanged against her hull. She blew through the wreckage, catching the heavy fighters completely off guard as she ripped into them with missiles and kinetics.

  Two of the three fighters went up in flaming gouts. She swerved toward the third heavy fighter, which launched missiles at her madly, forcing her to pull away. She screamed and punched the dash.

  Winters swung in from the side, opening up with all three of his chainguns. They tore through the fighter with such ferocity the entire ship seemed to jump sideways as it disintegrated.

  "That was very rude," Winters said. "I believe it was trying to kill you."

  They rejoined the main formation just as it flew through the third and final layer of Lurkers. Missiles wreathed the void around them.

  Kansas flipped on her comm as soon as they'd passed through the storm. "Nice killing back there. Now get your ass back in the middle of the formation. We can't afford to lose you yet."