Grabbing the flight stick in one hand, and the throttle for the grav lifts in the other, I push the throttle up slowly, and the deck shudders and vibrates as the Cloven Hammer lifts off.
I retract the skids and landing ramp, and then I’m pulling up, and rotating the main thrusters to their rear-facing take-off positions. I take a moment to line up the nose of my ship with my assigned exit corridor. A three-dimensional arrow in the center of my HUD indicates which way that is. Once the arrow is pointing dead ahead, and the nose of my ship is almost pointed straight up, I grab the throttle for the main thrusters and slowly push it to the halfway mark. As I do so, a satisfying roar comes thundering through the ship. Even with the inertial dampeners at their default setting of 99%, the acceleration pins me to the back of my seat as the Cloven Hammer rockets toward the dark ceiling of clouds overhead. The cloud deck is dimly lit with the reflected blue, green, and purple lights of Liberty City below.
A split second later, I’m plowing through, and dark cotton goes whipping past my palladium-glass cockpit, leaving freckles of moisture on the glass. And then a split second after that, the clouds give way to a glittering black dome of stars. The stars grow brighter and sharper as the atmosphere becomes progressively thinner around me.
Before I know it, I’m backing off the throttle and leveling out in a low orbit above the dark side of Terra Novus. Some of the weight leaves my body as the acceleration eases, and now the dominant force is the artificial half-G of gravity being generated by my ship.
Pushing the flight stick left, the massive, shining blue ring of the Terra Novus jump gate pans into view. Ships are streaming between it and Liberty Spaceport. The gate’s traffic is divided by the glowing, bluish membrane in the center of the jump gate. One side is coming into the system, the other side leaving. Sparing a moment to check my sensor display, I scroll through the designations of ships in the area...
Until I find the Archibold’s Legacy, a sleek white starliner glittering with lights from the passengers’ cabins. The local time is 02:14. Scheduled take-off was 02:10. That means it wasn’t delayed as it would have been if someone had stormed aboard to drag Omar and his family off before it could leave the gate.
“Safe travels,” I whisper to Omar, hoping they make it to Earth without incident. A lot that can still happen in four days. Pirates. Or even just paying one of the passengers or crew to shove them out an airlock.
But Omar seems to be fairly competent. He’s got a shot. And that’s more than he had a couple of hours ago when I was watching Rex torture him in that packing center.
Pushing the matter from my mind, I pull up a star map to select my own destination. Teranus Station in the mining belts of the Hanari System, two jumps from here. I can regroup at the Syndicate Enclave on Teranus and purchase whatever illegal hardware and software I’m going to need for my next move.
Maybe I’ll even hire some help.
But before I can lay in a course, my ship’s threat detector chirps at me. Someone is making aggressive moves toward me. I’m half-expecting to see the simulated visual of red, enemy lasers converge on the cockpit. Since lasers aren’t visible in space, visuals are simulated: red for enemy, green for friendly. But no lasers flash out toward my ship. At least not yet.
A mental query brings the ships targeting me up front and center on my HUD. Two modified SF-9’s with scrambled SID codes are coming in to my port side, at just over twenty thousand klicks out. That puts them right at the edge of the Hammer’s laser-evasion radius and well within effective laser range (ELR) of thirty thousand klicks. Their trajectory and location suggest that they jumped in the slow way from deep space. SF-9’s are long-range starfighters. All kinds of freelancers love them: raiders, smugglers, mercenaries, and bounty hunters like me. The scrambled SID codes are a clue about their business here.
Half a million credits say they’re headed my way because Mohinari figured out that Lee Corvus and Roman Arovitch are the same guy and updated his contract accordingly.
I guess I didn’t get away so clean, after all.
Chapter 14
I change the Hammer’s power distribution, maximizing shield strength, then roll the ship to present my topside and get both lateral gun turrets into play. Bringing the laser cannons online, I target the first fighter.
The target detects the weapons lock, and pops off a shot of its own first. A simulated visual of two bright red lasers converges on my cockpit and splashes brightly off my shields. They’re trying to punch a hole in the glass canopy. Maybe trying to hit me directly, or at least make my ship spring a leak. I’m not wearing a pressure suit, so that’s actually a good strategy.
But lasers are notoriously weak against vehicular shields. Since we’re still far enough from each other for evasive flying to make lasers miss, I push the throttle up and execute a random series of maneuvers. My own cannons thump with deep, cracking pulses that send strobes of green light washing through the cockpit. Two sets of reciprocal, red laser beams flicker by on all sides, missing consistently.
I’m cursing steadily as I push the flight stick around, making a random duck-and-weave maneuver. My other hand varies acceleration up and down to make the enemy’s tracking systems miss. At 20,000 klicks, the time-delay between what a tracking system sees and what I do is just enough that the Hammer’s engines can get me out of the way before a laser beam arrives.
But the range between me and my attackers is dropping steadily. And SF-9’s are heavily shielded fighters, so my lasers aren’t making a dent any more than theirs are.
These long-ranged salvos are just the beginning. Soon they’ll be opening up on me with railguns and missiles. They have me out-gunned, but the Hammer is heavily armored—to say nothing of its shields. I won’t have enough time to wade through traffic to reach the system’s jump gate, but I could turn my nose spaceward and execute a blind FTL jump into deep space. Blind jumps are almost impossible to track, but the trouble is, I need to get outside the radius of the planet’s FTL inhibitors to be able to execute that jump.
Switching my focus to the nav display, I set the ship’s AI to take over for me with the evasive maneuvers while I study the bright red line that runs around Terra Novus. That’s the jump line. It indicates the size of the planet’s inhibition field. In this case, it extends to a radius of 28,000 klicks from the planet. In a straight line, that’s 19,802 klicks from me. Which is exactly where my attackers are coming from. The shortest path out of the inhibition field is to fly straight up their noses.
They were waiting for me. This was an ambush designed to catch someone just as they were leaving Rikard Spaceport, and the timing of it was impeccable, which means they were tipped off as soon as I got clearance from the spaceport.
But for them to have already been in position when they got word of me leaving means that Mohinari figured out the Lee Corvus angle a long time ago.
Was my entire cover a sham? Did he know from the moment he hired me that I was using a fake ID to get close to him?
Shit. This guy is more dangerous than I thought.
I’m not sure I’d survive a head-on assault with these two fighters. The alternative is to fly the other way and head for the edge of the inhibition field on other end of the planet. That’s more than two thousand klicks farther out, but still safer than flying directly toward my attackers.
I turn the Hammer in that direction, hearing my shields hiss with impacts as the maneuver presents a larger cross section to my enemy.
A glance at the nav display tells me that none of the Alliance interceptors guarding traffic around the gate are peeling off to intervene in this scuffle. They’ve been ordered not to intervene, but it’s hard to buy off the military, so I suspect the usual reasons: I’m not broadcasting a corporate or military SID code. My ship’s registered to Lee Corvus, an independent trader. I’m the little guy that no one is going to stick their neck out for. Worse yet, most freelancers are into illegal business, so those system patrollers are probably smirking in t
heir cockpits as they watch my ship getting its tail blasted off by a pair of anonymous mercenaries.
My laser cannons are firing backward now, raining steady torrents of green fire at the invisible specks on my tail. They’ve closed to just 18,000 klicks now, and it’s getting harder to dodge their shots.
My shields are holding steady at 98%. Lasers aren’t going to do it. They need to break out the heavy artillery, which is why they’re trying to get closer, and my old Corvette is a lot slower than those shiny new starfighters.
I’m redlining my engines and they’re still gaining on me by 56 meters per second per second (MPSS). That’s nearly an extra six Gs of acceleration that they’re pulling over the Hammer’s max of 121 MPSS.
I use my combat computer to calculate an ETA until they’re breathing down my neck with just a few klicks between us. Effective range for RK-108 railguns is about one and a third klicks. And RK-108’s are the biggest (and fastest-firing) kinetic weapons I’ve ever seen mounted on a fighter-class ship. These guys are probably rocking RK-88s instead, but I like to have a margin for error.
The ETA comes back:
Thirteen minutes and eight seconds.
ETA to the edge of the inhibition field is ten minutes and twelve seconds.
A sigh bubbles from my lips.
I’ll make it.
A few seconds after that breath has rolled out of me, the next one catches in my chest as a triple-flash of light streaks across my field of view, peppering the stars ahead of me with shrinking white jump flares.
Three more targets appear dead ahead on my sensor grid. More SF-9’s with scrambled SID codes. Now I’m caught in a pincer.
Bright red lasers come streaming toward me in a blinding torrent, hissing against my shields with simulated effects.
I dial down the simulated visuals and sounds to a more manageable level, and dial up the inertial dampeners to 100%. I need to think. The flashing lights and the random jostling from the G-forces of my ship’s evasive maneuvering are making that damned hard.
This might be a good time to hop in the Vera and cut my losses. She’s much faster than either the Hammer or these SF-9’s.
But the Hammer would be a hell of an expensive loss. She’s worth a couple of million credits on a good day, to say nothing of all the gear in the hold...
But better that than losing both my ship and my life at the hands of these amateurs.
I push out of my seat and dash through the open cockpit door. Bending down, I grab a recessed handle in the deck and yank open the hatch to the cockpit of my IF-17 interceptor. The Vera.
A narrow access chute opens up below me with exactly fifteen ladder rungs leading to the circular-ejection port in the bottom of the interceptor’s cockpit.
My whole body is shaking with rage as I put feet and hands to those rungs.
I’m going to kill Mohinari for this.
But at this point, that’s starting to sound like an empty threat.
Chapter 15
I climb into the Vera’s gleaming cockpit. It’s docked upside down, so I’m already facing the right way to fold down the bottom of the pilot’s seat and mentally shut the iris hatch beneath it. The hatch seals with a muted thump. My hands are already flying over the interceptor’s controls, powering it on. Priming the engines. Checking systems. I set the inertial dampeners to 99%, and divide power distribution from the ship’s reactor equally between engines and shields.
Everything’s green and ready to go. Fastening my flight restraints, I detach the docking clamps and push away from the Hammer with a burst from the maneuvering jets.
Then push the throttle past the stops and into overdrive.
The Vera leaps out ahead of the Hammer, accelerating at a blinding 305 MPSS.
Let’s see those SF-9’s catch me now.
Their aim shifts almost immediately, but with my higher speed and smaller size, they’ll never score more than a handful of hits. Lasers are no good against an interceptor at this range. As if to prove that fact, red enemy lasers flicker and flash through space on all sides, missing by wide margins. I’m bucking, twisting, and weaving in an evasive pattern that puts even the best automated maneuvers to shame. If the Hammer is a shuffling old elephant, the Vera is a bat out of hell.
And I’m the Ghost riding it.
An exhilarated grin peels my lips back from the scowl that’s been etched on my face since the moment I realized I had to leave the Hammer.
My heart’s heavy, but a ray of hope still shines. I’ve left a much bigger payday in my wake than the one that Mohinari put on my head. These hunters aren’t stupid, they’ll board my ship and take it for themselves, which means all I have to do to get it back is track them down.
But on my terms. When I have the element of surprise, not them. Maybe they’ll die, maybe they won’t. That’s up to them.
None of this is personal; they’re just hunters like me. If they’re smart, they won’t resist when I find them.
I’m racing toward the edge of the inhibition field, just a few minutes out at this acceleration. I’ve picked a new angle that’s perpendicular to the two groups of fighters on my tail. They make a half-hearted attempt to chase me, their lasers still flashing around my cockpit, but then they peel off, heading the other way to steal my ship. It’s worth more than I am, and by the look of it, they’re splitting their pay in five parts. They’ll catch up with me later.
If I don’t catch up with them first.
A few minutes later, I’m watching from the edge of the inhibition field as one of the SF-9’s docks to the access chute beneath the chin of the Hammer.
My eyes cinch into slits with that violation. Cold fury rattles through me with each breath.
Then I’m plotting a blind, emergency jump into the middle of nowhere. No ships on my tail anymore, but I can’t afford to have these hunters track me down by following my jump vector to its logical end point.
Deep space isn’t a logical destination, and if not even I know my end point, then neither can they. Pushing the jump lever forward to engage the FTL drive, a bright flash rips through my cockpit canopy, and the stars turn to streaks and swirls of multicolored light.
After just a few seconds, I pull the jump lever back to drop out of FTL, and the stars re-appear as fixed points of light.
Then I push the flight stick around randomly to point the Vera in some other direction, wait exactly two minutes and twenty seconds for the drive to cool down, and then pull the jump lever again for another blind jump.
This time I count to ten, using the time to calm my racing heart and to purge the anger from my system.
But I should have stopped the count at nine. Before I can drop my interceptor out of FTL, a planet does it for me, and suddenly I’m hurtling toward the dawning edge of an uncharted world.
And my ship is already shuddering violently from the friction with its atmosphere. I’m going too fast to pull up without ripping off my interceptor’s wings, so I pull the throttle all the way down below the 0 mark to negative 50 MPSS to fire the braking thrusters as hard as I dare. I lurch into my restraints, but not too hard. The inertial dampeners are still doing their job.
A glance at my nav tells me this planet is not on any star maps. When I try to zoom out and get a fix on where I am in relation to everywhere else, the nav freezes up and says:
Calculating...
But I only flew for ten seconds through FTL. That isn’t even enough time to get to another star. I should still be in the Eden System, maybe a couple planets over from Terra Novus. Unless I jumped through an FTL rift. Oh, Deus, I hope not.
I can’t imagine any other explanation. The nav should have located me instantly if this planet were in charted space.
My airspeed is flashing. A reasonable-sounding female voice says: “Warning, warning. Reduce speed. Warning, warning. Reduce speed.”
I silence the alert, and pull the throttle down to negative 100 to slow down faster. My interceptor starts shuddering in earnest, threate
ning to rip itself apart.
Despite the inertial dampeners, I’m starting to feel the blood pool behind my eyes, tinging my vision red.
My airspeed is still too high to pull up. Like it or not, I’m going in for a landing. The planet is growing rapidly larger. A sunswept carpet of clouds races up beneath me. Tufts of pink and peach. Is this the sunrise or sunset?
I can see the wrinkled black-green ridges of lush mountains peeking through the clouds. Shining specks of water in the valleys. At least it looks habitable.
And then I see it. Something I should have noticed right away, but I was too busy trying to slow down and figure out what the hell just happened.
A pair of giant arcs hang in the sky, faded with distance and gleaming pinkish with the sun. From their massive size and shape, I have no question about what those structures could be, or where I’ve ended up.
I’ve accidentally jumped to one of the lost Ring Worlds of the Priors. This day just keeps getting better...
Chapter 16
Alien trees race up. Branches crash and snap, shrieking against the hull. A sharply jutting mountain peak appears. I pull up hard and activate the grav lifts.
The ridge scrapes the underside of the Vera and then I’m bouncing up and over a cliff, sailing on over a valley. A gleaming ribbon of water snakes through the jungles far below, reflecting clouds pink with the dawn. Or sunset.
Wind whistles around the Vera as she falls. I push the throttle for the grav lifts higher, but they’re not responding anymore. Must have overloaded them bouncing off that mountain top. But between the braking thrusters, grav lifts, and my run-in with that mountain, I’ve slowed down nicely.
Now I’m falling like a rock.
The Bounty Hunter (Cade Korbin Chronicles Book 1) Page 7