Ignite (Blackout Book 1)

by Daniel Young

  “Yeah, that’s all real civil-like, but the question remains of what we’re gonna do with her.” Roy jutted his chin at Lana. “We can’t keep her around. She might try it again. She might shank us all in our sleep. We should put her off the ship.”

  “No one is putting anyone off the ship.” Liri’s low murmur cut like a knife. She didn’t look up when she said it, but that voice cast a chilly silence over the whole room.

  “We can’t put her off the ship,” Jackson told him. “We’re in the middle of open space, and if we put Lana off, we’d have to put Liri off, too. We need every gunner as it is.”

  “You can’t be thinking of keeping her!” Roy exclaimed. “She’s dangerous! If this was the Militia, she’d be out on her ass, gunner or no gunner. Shit, anyone can gun!”

  “You proved that, didn’t you?” Quort rumbled from the opposite corner.

  “As so many people keep pointing out, this isn’t the Militia,” Jackson reminded him. “We’re stuck with Lana for the time being, but it looks like we have a bigger problem right now. We have to figure out what to do about Woolzi.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He helped Lana activate the Skeeter’s bombardment stack after I told him to deactivate it. He was working for her all along.”

  Liri stopped twisting her screwdriver and looked up. “No, he wasn’t. I was the one who reactivated the Skeeter’s feed track.”

  Everyone whipped around to gape at her. “You were?”

  She nodded, and her screwdriver started rotating again. “It’s easy. I did it from inside the Skeeter.”

  Jackson frowned. “Woolzi said the cockpit overrides the Skeeter’s controls when it’s parked on the discharge ramp. He said that as long as the Skeeter was inside the ship, its controls divert to the cockpit.”

  “They do—normally. I know a way to switch the controls, though. I overrode Woolzi’s override and restarted the feed track. I even encrypted the cockpit data readings so he wouldn’t know the Skeeter was active. He never knew anything about it.”

  Roy slapped his thigh and whirled away. “Son of a bitch!”

  “You shouldn’t talk about yourself like that, Roy,” Liri drawled. “Have a little more confidence in yourself.”

  He blinked at her, trying to figure out what she meant. Jackson studied her closer, trying to figure her out. “You were in the Keter Legion, weren’t you? You couldn’t have learned all this from stealing their vessels. You were in the Legion and then you left it. Why? What happened to you and Lana?”

  She set down her screwdriver and stood up. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Before Jackson could answer, Lana groaned. Roy snatched his weapon from his belt and pointed it toward the exam table, but Lana only squirmed. Her hand drifted to her head, and she growled in pain.

  Jackson returned to her side. “Don’t sit up. You have a head injury. You need to lie still for a while until we can be sure there’s no brain damage.”

  “My only brain damage was helping you get out of that jail,” she grumbled with her eyes closed. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

  “Well, you didn’t, and now you’re stuck with us.”

  “Where’s…?” She picked up her head and looked around. She stiffened when she saw her sister standing near her. Then Lana let her head fall back on the pillow with another pained sigh. “Liri. You shot me.”

  Jackson retreated as Liri eased forward. She took her place at her sister’s bedside, and gazed down at Lana with genuine affection. “You really need to take a vacation from all this thinking, Lana. I think I understand the situation well enough that you can skip using all those big words like ‘factors’ and ‘involved’.”

  Lana blinked up at her sister, and her expression changed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Can we get back to the subject of how the holy Christ we’re gonna get home?” Roy blared. “Last I checked, we had armies surrounding us on all sides.”

  “From what I can see, our best bet is to take Quort to Urval first,” Jackson remarked. “If Woolzi is telling the truth—and I see no reason why he would lie about it—the Krakzid have been in that system the longest. They have established bases there, and hostilities in that system have been over for years. We can take Quort home and see what the Krakzid are up to.”

  “You might want to reconsider the part about taking Quort home,” Liri remarked.

  “Take yourself home,” Quort snarled. “If you want to chase your tail in space for the rest of your life, that’s your call. I haven’t been back to my homeworld in over twenty years.”

  Liri didn’t react to this. “As everyone keeps pointing out, we can’t go anywhere without one pilot and four gunners—preferably more. This ship has four ejection blocks. If we hope to go anywhere at all, we need all of them manned. We can’t drop you off without running the risk of getting shot down.”

  “You might get shot down even with all four blocks manned,” Quort fired back. “What do you think I am—a good luck charm?”

  “Cork it,” Jackson ordered. “If it comes to that, I can gun while Woolzi flies, or Woolzi can gun while I fly. Woolzi says the Krakzid set up shop in Urval first. Then they extended to Silden territory and then into Keter. That means they flank Zenith on two sides.”

  “What good does that do us?” Roy returned. “From the picture you’re painting, it looks like Zenith is sunk.”

  “If you use the brain God gave you,” Liri told him, “you would see he’s connecting the dots into a supply line between Krakzid space—wherever that is—and Zenith. He’s following the trail of breadcrumbs. If you can cut off the supply line to Zenith, you’ll stop the invasion.”

  A powerful thump jostled the ship and cut Jackson off. Everyone staggered except Lana, who held onto the exam table to stop herself from pitching off it.

  Woolzi squealed over the speaker. “Krakzid attack! Krakzid attack!”

  Jackson lunged for the door. The others crammed in behind him. He barely remembered to point at Lana before everyone stampeded outside. “Stay there! Don’t move! I’ll call you if I need you.”

  He, Quort, Roy, and Liri charged for the cockpit. Woolzi worked furiously over the pilot’s station, squeaking like mad. “Krakzid! Krakzid attack!”

  Jackson sprang to the captain’s console and scrambled to comprehend the many readings and instruments in front of him. “How did they find us? We were moving away from them.”

  “Not attack us,” Woolzi corrected. “Attack Zenith. We cross Zenith space. Krakzid attack Zenith.”

  Somehow or other, Jackson managed to pull up a chart of the region. Woolzi was right. The course on which Jackson had directed Woolzi to fly took the Blackout to Zenith space. The moment it crossed the boundary from Keter, it flew into a mess of those black ships.

  They didn’t show up on the Blackout’s readings, either. Jackson’s console showed dozens—maybe hundreds—of ships whizzing all over the sector. They all belonged to the Zenith Militia. If he looked at his instruments, he would never know there was a single Krakzid in the neighborhood.

  They were there, all right. They loomed across the cockpit window and belted the Blackout with their lightning. It cracked out of nowhere and scorched the hull. “Extend the buffer guard!”

  “Extended,” Woolzi called back. “Three ejection blocks locked.”

  To the left and right down the wings, the three blocks came to life as Liri, Roy, and Quort stepped inside and locked into their couplings. The last one remained dark.

  Roy and Liri swung their couplings around and laid into the Krakzid with a vengeance. Pulses rocked the ship and jolted Jackson to high alert. He sprang off his station and dove into the last block.

  The red light flickered on around him as the block powered up. A transparent display materialized before his eyes, with the whole battle laid out in living color. For some reason Jackson couldn’t fathom, these ejection displays detected the Krakzid ship
s in ways the cockpit’s main sensors didn’t.

  The Krakzid vessels showed up as faint shimmers against the starry sky. Another crack of lightning forked across his view and he understood. That shimmering was the Krakzid ship powering up to fire. Besides that, they were invisible.

  Quort’s block smashed to the side as he traced an enemy vessel across the battlefield. He followed it to his weapon’s limit and hurled his coupling back the other way to acquire another target.

  To Jackson’s left and beyond the cockpit, Roy and Liri hammered as many Krakzid ships as they could hit, but Jackson held himself steady. He focused all his attention on figuring out these strange instruments.

  It took a lot longer than he liked, but in the end, he did it. He finally figured out why the blocks could pick up the Krakzid energy signature when the cockpit couldn’t. “Woolzi!” he called. “Change your substrate identifier to 87kMHz.”

  The creature’s antennae wavered in Jackson’s direction without Woolzi turning away from his station. “87kMHz—no, no! Decrease sensor effective…”

  “Do it!” Jackson ordered. “You’ll be able to detect the Krakzid ships if you lower the frequency.”

  Woolzi gave a few chirps of protest. He bowed over his instruments and then jerked back with a loud squawk. “Working! Effective sensor!”

  Now Jackson could get down to business. He grabbed the coupling and searched the field for a likely target. It wasn’t as easy as all that, either. Zenith Militia craft crisscrossed his line of fire and got in the way.

  The Kelna. The Jenny Wren. The Warrington. The Fossack. These were the ships that had been guarding the convoy along with the Severance. What were they doing so close to Zenith? Had the Krakzid destroyed the convoy completely?

  A primal roar from port told Jackson that Roy was thinking the same thing. “Eat that, you bastards!”

  “The planet!” Jackson called down the stack. “They’re closing around the planet. Cut ‘em off, Woolzi! Get between the Krakzid and the planet.”

  “That will never work!” Liri yelled over the noise of countless explosions. “The Militia is already barricading the planet. We have to—”

  A scattering of Krakzid fire drowned her out. Lightning forked into the Blackout’s hull right in front of Liri’s block. Sparks sprayed in her face, and the impact ripped her out of her coupling.

  “Liri!” Jackson yelled.

  He didn’t have time to check if she was alive or dead. The Krakzid rotated around the Blackout, showering the buffer guard with fire. Jackson had all he could do just to keep up with their assault. Forget about driving them off or saving Zenith.

  Everywhere he looked, the Militia faced the same problem. Krakzid ships swarmed around the planet in a black cloud.

  Woolzi drove the Blackout to its limit. He plunged the ship between the Krakzid invaders and the Militia defenders. Roy, Quort, and Jackson matched their fire in synchronized blasts to drive the Krakzid back, but that bought the Militia only a few seconds’ grace to recover.

  Jackson’s coupling hit the anchor bolts as the Blackout hurtled past the enemy phalanx. Woolzi swooped in for another pass. Jackson hauled his coupling into position for another barrage when he noticed Liri moving.

  She picked herself up, steadied herself against the block wall, and cradled her head in one hand. Blood trickled down her wrist, but Jackson couldn’t help her right now. “Are you all right, Liri? Can you still shoot?”

  She took a second to answer. “I…I think so.”

  She staggered to her coupling and locked in. She blinked blood out of her eyes and strained to focus on her display. Woolzi soared in a tight corkscrew. The Krakzid ranks hovered right in front of the Blackout’s guns.

  “Signal the Jenny Wren,” Jackson called to Woolzi. “Alert the Militia that another flank of Krakzid are crossing the border from… They’re coming from Keter, Woolzi! They aren’t coming from Silden at all! They’re staging from Keter!”

  “No signal!” Woolzi squawked. “No signal match between Keter Legion and Zenith Militia. Militia no hear us!”

  Jackson’s scalp prickled. Son of a bitch! The Krakzid were using Keter as a launching point to conquer Zenith. This was a thousand times worse than thinking they were coming from Silden. With Krakzid in Keter, Urval, and Silden, the enemy had Zenith surrounded.

  “Cut around behind the new Krakzid flank,” Jackson ordered. “Get us out of here.”

  “You are not abandoning Zenith!” Roy bellowed from the far port block. “We are not running for the hills at a time like this.”

  Jackson ignored him. “Go, Woolzi! Break away from this and get behind the Krakzid coming from Keter. The rest of you, lock in to fire as soon as we get within range. We won’t be able to stop them, but we can at least attract the Militia’s attention to the dragnet.”

  Woolzi whipped the helm hard to starboard. The Blackout screamed in a steep curve away from the battle scene. For a second, it looked like the Krakzid planned to let the ship go.

  “This better work, man,” Roy snarled.

  “If you cross the boundary back to Keter, you may be able to draw the Legion into the fight,” Liri suggested.

  “There’s no time,” Jackson countered. “Anyway, the Krakzid are on Keter. The Legion is either under their mantle or too busy fighting them to come out and defend their own border. We saw that already.”

  “Fuel supply to 50%,” Woolzi reported. “We no stand around to fight Krakzid or we defenseless.”

  Jackson didn’t answer, but he took the point. He might want to defend Zenith to the death. That’s exactly what he would be doing if he let the Blackout’s fuel run dry. The ship would be adrift in Zenith with no way to resupply. It could only refuel on Keter.

  If the ship did run out of fuel here, the Krakzid would blow it to kingdom come. Jackson wouldn’t do Zenith any good if he let that happen.

  Woolzi left Zenith far behind. The battle dwindled to a speck in the distance. Lightning sizzled toward the planet, with the Militia returning fire as best it could. From this vantage point, Jackson could clearly make out the new Krakzid ships closing for the kill.

  Woolzi angled the ship in a tight path between the enemy ranks and the Keter boundary. He hauled the helm hard to starboard and tipped the ship onto the starboard wing. Jackson and Quort were lying horizontal to the cockpit. Woolzi leaned sideways as he fought the ship’s efforts to return to normal attitude.

  “Lock to fire!” Woolzi squeaked.

  In a split second, he peeled hard to port so the whole bombardment stack faced the Krakzid invaders from behind.

  All four ejection blocks opened up at once. Jackson slammed his coupling from side to side, pulverizing every ship in sight. With the Krakzid crowded around Zenith, he didn’t have to worry about hitting anyone from the Militia. So many pulses came from the Blackout that they forced the Krakzid deeper into Zenith space.

  “It’s working!” Roy yelled. “Keep it up! Don’t stop!”

  The others peppered their enemies so fast the Krakzid had no chance to retaliate. Some of the Krakzid ships started to wheel around to face the Blackout. Then they changed their minds and shot forward on an intercept course for Zenith.

  “Get after ‘em, Woolzi!” Roy called. “They’re running scared.”

  “No!” Jackson interrupted. “It’s a trap!”

  Woolzi pulled up short, but their ruse worked. The Zenith Militia saw the assault. A bunch of ships split away from the planet. They copied the Blackout’s ploy and whizzed far out in space to get away from the battle. Then, when they reached safety, they came pelting back to join the Blackout’s efforts.

  The Tungsten hurtled across the Blackout’s nose, battering the Krakzid with devastating fire. The Pern whistled in from directly behind the Krakzid fleet. The ship rocketed into the enemy, raining hellfire everywhere. Once the Zenith vessels got near enough to see their enemy in the flesh, they could hit them just fine.

  The Krakzid tried to correct. They rotated t
o head for Zenith again, but as soon as they started to draw away from the Militia attackers, the Chesterfield, the Moonshine, and the Edenborough plowed into them from that side. The Blackout joined its fire with the Tungsten and the Pern, driving the Krakzid into the Militia’s guns.

  “Ha ha!” Roy cheered. “Give it to ‘em, boys! Give it all to ‘em!”

  Another fifteen ships careened into the battle from Zenith. They spread out to surround the intruders and block them from reaching the planet. Woolzi smashed the helm forward, and the Blackout plunged into the melee.

  Jackson’s heart soared as the Krakzid invaders broke apart. Their signatures scattered across his display. It wasn’t so easy to hit them now, but watching their tight formation dissolve made it all worth it.

  The Kelna and the Fossack materialized to starboard. The Fossack wheeled to cut off the Krakzid’s escape. A crushing bombardment swept the Krakzid even farther afield.

  “That’s my boy!” Roy crowed to Liri in the block next to him. “My little brother is a gunner on that ship! Ha ha! Look at ‘em shoot!”

  “Yeah,” Liri returned. “Congratulations.”

  Jackson hardly dared believe what he was seeing. The Militia ships punched a hole in the Krakzid flank and split them up. Militia ships surrounded each enemy vessel and stopped the Krakzid from firing at all.

  Jackson glanced toward the planet. The Krakzid still surrounded Zenith in droves, but the Militia seemed to be holding them off. A dome of combined fire ringed the planet, but the Krakzid didn’t seem to be making any headway toward landing, thank God.

  “Look out!” Quort roared.

  Roy, Liri, and Jackson spun around just in time to see the Krakzid zoom away from the defensive line. They skidded sideways, and extended their already scattered formation even further.

  In a split second, Jackson realized. The Krakzid had only pretended to scatter to lure the Militia into another trap. Before anyone could react, the Krakzid’s port line swooped behind the Blackout, the Tungsten, and the Pern. The starboard line curved to flank the Fossak, the Kelna, and the others.

  Jackson blinked and found himself surrounded. “Turn!” he yelled to Woolzi. “Turn back to back with the other—”