A Line in the Sand

by Ryk Brown

  “DEAD END!” Dylan shouted, pointing out the front windows.

  Josh glanced up, spotting the vertical face coming at them. In one smooth motion, he fired all his forward-facing docking and attitude thrusters to slow them down while jamming the grav-lift’s power lever all the way to full.

  The mountainside came at them quickly. In the blink of an eye, it filled all of the Voss’s windows with its rocky view. Then, the mountainside suddenly fell away.

  Jokay stopped firing, bracing himself as the mountaintop passed less than a meter over his head. Had his barrels not already been pointed along the hull, they would have been taken off. “A little warning next time!” he exclaimed as the threat of collision passed behind him.

  Josh killed all forward-facing thrusters and pulled the grav-lift power lever back nearly as quickly as he had shoved it forward. The Voss responded sluggishly at first, then dropped down the backside of the mountain into the next valley beyond. “Sorry about that,” he apologized to Jokay. “A little sooner next time, huh kid?” he said to Dylan.

  “Got it,” Dylan replied, his eyes glued to the terrain display.

  “Whoo-hoo!” Talisha exclaimed over comms.

  Kit’s eyes widened at the sight of two octos bouncing off the top of the mountain behind them, tumbling to their doom. “Holy crap! Nice move, Josh!” he exclaimed as he opened fire again.

  “I wish I could say it was on purpose,” Josh admitted over the intercom as the Voss began snaking through the next valley.

  “Port gun is back online!” Dylan reported.

  “I thought it was knocked out?” Nathan replied.

  “The radiation flash just caused a reboot of the gun’s control systems,” Dylan explained. “It’s back up.”

  A thought struck Nathan, and he leaned forward to look at the terrain display more closely. “Josh, turn right at the next fork, and go as low as possible.”

  “No problem,” Josh assured him.

  “Jess, move to Vlad’s gun; port side…and hurry.”

  “On my way,” Jessica replied.

  “How long until the fork?” Nathan asked.

  “One minute?” Dylan replied, uncertain.

  Come on, Cam, Nathan thought.

  The threat-alert indicator flashed, and its alarm sounded, as Talisha unleased four more missiles on various octos ahead of her. She glanced at the threat display just as the new arrivals opened fire. “Uh-oh,” she said as she pulled back hard on her flight control stick and jammed her main throttle to its stops.

  “Three more octo-fighters have just jumped in,” her AI reported. “There are now seven octos pursuing us.”

  “Yeah, I can count,” Talisha replied. “Sorry guys, I gotta shake these buggers! I’ll be right back!”

  Jessica ran through the systems bay below the common area, through the center octagonal intersection, and headed down the corridor toward the port nacelle.

  The ship rocked suddenly, swaying to one side and tossing her against the wall. Stumbling, she managed to keep going, stepping over conduits running across the floor at the end of the corridor as she ducked under the overhead ducting. She pressed the hatch controls, causing the inner hatch to slide open, then stepped into the airlock joining the port nacelle to the ship’s main central body. As soon as the inner hatch closed, the next hatch opened, and she headed into the port nacelle engineering compartment.

  “Haven’t you fixed that thing yet?” she yelled to Vladimir as she ran past.

  “I’m trying!” Vladimir exclaimed. “Gospadee!”

  “Can’t you go faster?” Nathan suggested to Josh.

  “Are you kidding?” Josh wondered, glancing back over his shoulder.

  “Nope.”

  Josh chuckled. “No problem,” he said as he eased his forward-motion throttles forward.

  “Faster?” Dylan asked. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “No,” Nathan admitted, “but it is an idea.”

  “I’m at the port gun,” Jessica reported over the intercom.

  “Port and starboard gunners, be ready to target the upper edges of the canyon walls, on my mark,” Nathan called over the intercom. “Directly abeam of us. All other gunners continue firing at targets on our six!”

  Talisha jinked her Sugali fighter from side to side, trying to avoid incoming fire as she rocketed skyward.

  “Aft shields are down to eighteen percent,” Talisha’s AI warned. “I strongly recommend you execute an escape jump.”

  “You may be right,” Talisha agreed as she pressed her jump button.

  A subdued blue-white flash filled her projection canopy and cockpit, and she suddenly found herself back in space, high above Volon. Again, her threat warning indicator began flashing, only this time the threat was not from octos, but from gunships…four of them.

  A series of energy blasts slammed into her starboard side, lighting up her shields. Several more followed aft, causing her back end to pitch wildly to port. More warning lights began turning red all over her console as additional alarms sounded.

  “Aft shields have failed,” Leta warned. “Starboard shields are at twenty percent. Port shields, thirty-seven percent…”

  “I know, I know!” Talisha exclaimed, pressing her jump button again. Nothing happened.

  “Jump drive is offline,” Leta continued as the ship was struck several more times in rapid succession. “Four Dusahn gunships are closing from all sides. Main propulsion has failed. Reactor core destabilization alert. Imminent failure in thirty seconds. Initiating auto-rescue ejection sequence…”

  “Not yet!” Talisha insisted. “I can still…”

  All of her displays suddenly went dead, and her canopy projection system switched off, her canopy becoming transparent again. Along the sides of the outside of her cockpit, small doors opened, and the clamps holding her cockpit module released.

  “Ejecting,” Leta announced.

  Eight Dusahn octo-fighters dropped in behind the Voss, firing away as they closed. The Voss’s guns returned fire, but the octo-fighters’ forward shields kept the bolts of energy away.

  Red bolts slammed into the Voss’s aft shields at the rate of a dozen impacts per second, causing the weakening shield to glow constantly.

  “Now!” Nathan called over the intercom speaker in Marcus’s gun turret. “Blast the walls!”

  Marcus spun his turret, tilting his controller to its maximum to bring the pairs of barrels on each side of him upward. He immediately opened fire, holding the triggers down tightly as his guns tore into the upper edge of the canyon walls passing by, blowing them apart and sending chunks of the mountainside flying inward behind them.

  The incoming fire waned, then abruptly stopped, allowing the shields in front of Kit to stop glowing. Kit watched as the octos chasing them suddenly found themselves being pounded by rocks, some larger than the octos themselves.

  The Voss shook as debris found the trailing edges of her nacelles, causing the deck below to pitch unpredictably. Despite the unsteady ride, Kit could not take his eyes off the sight before him, as the Dusahn octo-fighters that had been on the verge of getting through their aft shields began falling from the sky, tumbling to the uneven terrain below. When the rocky shower ended, only two octos still pursued them, albeit from a greater distance than before.

  “Now we’re talking!” Kit exclaimed, taking aim and opening fire again.

  “Oh my God!” Dylan exclaimed excitedly. “I can’t believe that worked!”

  “Sometimes you get lucky,” Nathan stated, breathing a sigh of relief.

  “Uh, guys?” Josh called, pointing at the sensor display.

  Dylan looked at the display, his expression turning grim. “Razor Three is gone!”

  “She jumped?” Nathan asked.

  “No, I mean gone, as in destroyed!” Something els
e appeared on the sensor screen a moment later. “Wait! I’m getting a rescue transponder! She ejected!”

  “Into space?” Josh wondered as he continued snaking through the winding canyon.

  “The cockpits of Sugali fighters act as escape pods,” Dylan explained. “Her AI probably sensed imminent destruction and automatically ejected her.”

  “It can do that?” Josh asked, surprised.

  “The point is, she’s still alive!”

  Nathan reached for the comms panel. “Talisha! Come in! Talisha!”

  Talisha was stunned by the sudden ejection and subsequent jump. As she shook off the effects, she looked around. Everything around her was shut down except for comms and life support, both of which were running on battery power.

  “Talisha! Come in! Talisha!” Nathan called over comms.

  “I’m here!” Talisha replied. “I’m good!” She looked around outside, not recognizing anything. Her cockpit was slowly tumbling, yawing to the right at about the same rate. All she could see outside were stars. “I have no idea where I’m at, but I’m okay for now.”

  Nathan breathed a sigh of relief, then looked down at the sensor screen on the center of the forward console. “Do we have her location?”

  “She’s in high orbit over Volon,” Dylan reported. “Her ejection system must have been damaged as well. It’s designed to jump her completely out of the combat area.”

  “Talisha, you’re still in high orbit above Volon,” Nathan called over comms.

  “That can’t be right.”

  “We’re coming to get you,” Nathan continued.

  “You can’t do that, Captain!” Talisha objected. “You have to hold out until help arrives! I’ll be fine!”

  “The hell she will,” Josh disagreed. “She’s already losing altitude. She doesn’t have half the speed she needs to maintain a low orbit, let alone a high one.”

  “Talisha, can you survive reentry?” Nathan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Talisha replied. “Everything is dead. All I’ve got are comms and life support.”

  “Then we’re coming to get you.”

  “Captain…”

  “I wasn’t asking permission, Talisha,” Nathan said, cutting her off. “Josh, let’s go get her.”

  “You got it!” Josh replied, pulling back on his flight control stick and pushing the throttles for his main engines forward.

  The Voss pitched upward and accelerated sharply, pushing them back in their seats. Nathan held on tightly to the railing behind him to maintain his balance as they climbed.

  “That’s not how you’re supposed…” Dylan sighed. “Never mind.”

  “Eyes open, people,” Nathan warned his crew over the intercom. “We’re going to rescue Talisha. Marcus, I’m going to need you back in the utility bay to help Kit with the rescue.”

  “Would you make up your mind!” Marcus complained as he unbuckled his restraints and clumsily maneuvered his oversized body out of the tiny gunner’s chair.

  “Stop whining,” Nathan scolded jokingly.

  “We need a bigger crew,” Marcus grumbled as he made his way through the narrow hatch. “And a bigger ship!”

  “You too, Jess,” Nathan called.

  “Me too what?”

  “Go help Marcus and Kit with the rescue.”

  “What about my gun?” she asked as she unbuckled her restraints and slipped out of the gunner’s chair.

  “We’ll have to make do with two guns for now,” Nathan replied.

  “Talk to me, Vlad,” Nathan called over the intercom.

  Vladimir stared at the shorted-out control boards before him, shaking his head. “I cannot fix this,” he told Nathan. “Not without a new control board and four new power buffers.”

  “Can you reroute the energy in the jump cells to feed our shields?”

  “That I can do,” Vladimir replied, dropping the burnt control board.

  “Can you extend our aft shield bubble a bit?”

  Vladimir’s brow furrowed. “How much is a bit?”

  “We’ll be in high orbit in twenty seconds,” Dylan announced as the Voss rocketed out of Volon’s atmosphere.

  “How long until we reach Talisha?” Nathan asked.

  “About thirty-five seconds,” Dylan replied. “You’re going to have to slow down, though, or we’ll shoot right past her.”

  “Not my first rodeo, kid,” Josh said as he adjusted his flight controls to intercept Talisha’s escape pod.

  “And that’s another one for the guidebook,” Dylan concluded, having no clue what Josh was talking about. “New contacts,” he reported as the threat alarm beeped. “Four gunships just jumped in ahead of us. Looks like they’re headed for her as well.” Dylan looked over his shoulder at Nathan, uncertain. “Why would they do that?”

  “Uh, because we’re going there,” Josh commented.

  “They want to capture her,” Nathan realized. “We need to hurry.”

  Vladimir pulled the power cable through the airlock connecting the Voss’s port nacelle to the rest of the ship. Once back inside the main section, he pulled the cable just enough to reach the power junction box on the side wall of the corridor. After opening the panel’s cover, he took the plug on the end of the cable and pushed it into the mating receptacle, giving it a twist to activate the connection. There was a loud pop, accompanied by a few sparks, causing Vladimir’s hand to instantly go numb. “I hate this ship!” he exclaimed, shaking his tingling hand.

  “The Voss is approaching,” Talisha’s AI reported.

  “How long until we hit the atmosphere?”

  “Eleven minutes and thirty-seven seconds. I would not worry, Talisha. There should be sufficient time for the Voss to affect rescue.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk,” Talisha replied.

  “We just got a huge surge in shield strength,” Dylan announced.

  “Vlad,” Nathan called over the intercom. “Whatever you did, it worked.”

  “Why do you sound so surprised?” Vladimir wondered. “I can fix anything, remember?”

  “You couldn’t fix the jump drive,” Nathan reminded him.

  “Very funny,” Vladimir replied. “For the record, I can fix it; I just can’t fix it right now.”

  “All shields are back up to nearly full strength,” Dylan added, shocked.

  “Can you extend aft shields around Talisha’s cockpit module?”

  “I’m working on it,” Vladimir assured him. “But the closer we are to her, the better. Extending our shields weakens them in the area of extension.”

  “You heard him,” Nathan told Josh. “Get us in close.”

  “That was the plan,” Josh replied. “Pitching over to fly ass-backwards.”

  “Can you just speak normally?” Dylan complained.

  “What fun would that be?” Josh replied, initiating the maneuver.

  Talisha peered out the left side of her canopy as her pod rolled over, spotting the Voss flying toward her, backwards.

  Several flashes of light caught her eye. They were to the right of the Voss and at a far lower altitude, but before she could identify them, her rolling motion caused her to lose sight of them. “Leta, can you ID the contacts?”

  “I am sorry, but I only have proximity sensors. I have no way to sense anything beyond a five-kilometer range.”

  “Voss,” Talisha called over comms. “Jump flashes! I saw jump flashes below and downrange of you!”

  Jessica entered the utility bay only moments after Marcus. She spotted the slowly tumbling cockpit rescue pod in the distance as it rose from below the ramp. The Voss stopped its pitching motion abruptly, continuing to close on the pod. “This is going to be fun,” she commented, realizing the challenge before them. “Kit, you’re the only one suited up. You’re going to have to grab her and pu
ll her in.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Kit could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t. “Let’s do this,” he declared, his visor dropping back down to seal up his helmet again.

  “Three octo-fighters,” Dylan announced. “They’re on an intercept course.”

  “This may be a hot rescue,” Nathan warned over comms. “Gunners, we have incoming octos. Below and down range.”

  “I don’t have an angle,” Mori reported.

  “Josh, roll us ninety degrees so that both gunners can engage the incoming octos.”

  “Got it,” Josh replied, initiating a slow roll.

  “One hundred meters,” Dylan reported. “Closing at three meters per second.”

  “You’re going to need to slow down a lot more if you expect me to grab that thing,” Kit warned over comms.

  “Not until we get closer,” Josh insisted as he ended the roll.

  “Maybe we should start slowing now,” Dylan suggested.

  “Targets are in range,” Jokay announced, the screech of his plasma cannons in the background.

  “It’ll take too long,” Josh argued.

  “He’s right,” Nathan agreed. “Approach fast, brake hard, grab quick.”

  “Sixty-five meters,” Dylan updated. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

  “Just like catching rocks,” Josh commented.

  “How close do we have to be to extend shields around her, Vlad?” Nathan asked over the intercom.

  “Twenty meters,” Vladimir replied. “Any further and we might blow the emitters.”

  “Forty meters,” Dylan updated. “We have to decelerate.”

  “I am, I am,” Josh assured him, applying aft thrusters. The ship rocked and their shields flashed as the approaching octo-fighters opened fire. “That’s not helping!”

  Kit moved past the pale-blue shield that was keeping the Voss’s utility bay properly pressurized, despite the aft end of the bay being open to space. “You might want to retract that gun,” he warned Marcus as he moved out onto the ramp one step at a time, using his mag boots to keep him attached to the deck.