Hell's Razer

by S. F. Edwards

  TITLE

  Hell’s Razer

  The Spiral War Saga

  Book Five

  S.J. Schauer

  www.spiralwar.com

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialog are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 SF SJ Schauer

  All Rights Reserved

  Edited by Psymon Marshall

  Published 2019 by Noble Storm

  ISBN: 978-0-9978153-7-5

  www.spiralwar.com

  Cover Art by Roger Creus

  First Edition

  Book One thru Four in the Spiral War series, out now.

  On Dagger’s Wings

  In Death’s Shadow

  Rising Warrior/Rising Threat

  Armageddon’s Pall

  UCSB DATE: 999.109

  Shendrick System, Kendry Canyon

  The Universe accelerated into existence and so did Gavit. Always moving, never slowing, and never stopping. The singularity, the origin, his emancipation, lay behind him. That way of life, of the aerospace pilot, suited him. Yet it wasn’t enough. He accelerated even further, past the finish line and on to the next race, to the infinite skies and the future that lay ahead of him.

  Too many people couldn’t understand why he’d made the choice to leave his promising and lucrative career as a pro-aeroracer behind. He’d given the press the standard answer: “He had a destiny in space.” He had to serve just one more annura as an active duty crew chief. That, combined with his last three as a reservist, had assured him a pilot’s slot at an academy.

  His answer, however, was only partially the truth. He felt that aeroracing was holding him back, keeping him from accelerating in the same way that his parents had. If he wanted to get his hands on the controls of something truly powerful, he had no choice but to join the space forces fighter corps. Then there were the personal reasons. The annura of lying, manipulation, and rending of his hearts. For two annura he’d slowed down to pursue her, only to find out she’d just led him on.

  To the public eye, he remained a playboy. After a race, he’d take some fangirl away for a duwn of untold debauchery. However, the truth proved nowhere near as glamorous. After little more than a kiss and a drink, he’d make his goodbyes. He’d then slow down to see the woman he loved and who, he thought, loved him.

  She would always wait for him in the shop, with the man he’d once called his best friend. Her grandfather’s company had invested a great deal in the pair, their racer, and especially the experimental engine, thrusting them into the spotlight. Of course, she’d be there to check on them. They were an investment. Why would he ever question that?

  “Gavit,” his link snapped to life. “Systems show blue across the board except the third-stage gravitic compressor. Try and use it sparingly if you can.”

  Gavit sneered at the voice of his betrayer. If he could have, he would have brought in a new crew chief to monitor and repair his racer. His sponsors had refused that request. “Copy. You already briefed me on that before the race.”

  “I tried to fix it in time for this last race buddy, but…”

  “Don’t buddy me,” Gavit roared and looked across the airfield and the other aeroracers towards the repair area. “Just let me race this one old-school; no interfering telemetry, just me and my bird.”

  “Gavit… I’ll keep a low profile. I’m, I, we, never intended…”

  “We’re getting ready to start. I’ll link in if I need anything.”

  The starter signal hovered into place. Gavit tightened his harness one last time. He loved these outer colony races. They didn’t feature the level of infrastructure of competitions on one of the more developed worlds. Out here a pilot had to rely on their wits and their own map displays to keep on course instead of the holographic markers. The races out here were also raw beyond belief. They had nowhere near the level of regulations to restrict them - everything from disqualifying wing-taps to full-on ramming were common. Accidents could happen in any race, but life and death rode on the point of an arrow out here.

  Gavit sized up the competitors surrounding him. Over half the craft were old warbirds, having been retired decades ago, if not older, then demilitarized and modified into racers. The rest were generic racers of the type he’d gone against all over the sub-pro circuit. The basic airframes would always be modified to suit the whims of their crews. None of them compared to his craft, a one-off atmospheric prototype that his uncle had passed to him in his will. They never looked too closely into where the craft came from. Given Gavit’s uncle’s history with Splicer Corp, it had likely originated in their labs. Despite that, the company had staked no claim to it.

  The starter signal lit and Gavit swung his eyes ahead. “Time to show these outers what a real pilot can do.” Anticipation building, he flexed his hands on the controls, the signal counting down while shifting through the spectrum from red to blue. He scanned his instruments - everything was in the blue, except for that third-stage gravitic compressor, as Dorik had warned him. The indicator shone green, with a hint of yellow. Not the best way to start a race, but then he was good enough to compensate and shut the ring down. For now.

  He turned his attention to the signal. There were scant cents left. He let out a calming breath. The light shifted to blue; he slammed his throttle forward. He spurred the racer on down the runway, outpacing the pack with ease. His particle duct engine gave him unprecedented power and acceleration compared to the others.

  Gavit lifted from the surface before the others were even halfway to take-off speed. He continued to surge down the runway. Ever the showman, he waggled his wings at the assembled crowds, his velocity mounting by the cent. Their cheers felt so loud they appeared to penetrate the cockpit. That brought a bigger smile to his face than the rising number of viewers watching from his over-the-shoulder camera-feed. He decided the viewers deserved a thanks for that, so he snapped off a quick aileron roll. That cost him a little speed and focus, allowing another racer to pull up alongside, his plasma torch already lit.

  Gavit shook his head. Plasma torches were meant for short bursts of speed and racers were only afforded three bursts per race. To use one at the start was wasteful. Gavit would just have to show him. He nudged his throttle forward as they approached the first turn. He glanced at the delta-winged racer and grinned.

  That crate had good inline speed. Without the canard or thrust vectoring packages, it would never match him in a turn. Gavit rolled under the other racer. He cut him off from making a quick, momentum-killing snap turn. Gavit stayed with the other craft until the last moment, pulling hard into the turn. The G-forces crushed him. The other racer began his turn a cent later. Gavit’s maneuver forced them to swing wide and fall back behind the next racer to enter the turn.

  Gavit maintained a commanding lead through the first two laps. Apart from that first leg, he never once pressed the engine beyond eighty-five percent. He’d hoped for more of a challenge than this, his last race. He wished that the officials hadn’t insisted that he start at the head of the pack. He had insisted that it would have been more exciting to watch him fight his way through the other racers. He was, after all, the prime attraction.

  He checked his rear-view camera. There was plenty of action behind him, with three racers jockeying for second place. Gavit watched one racer execute an expert wing flip, slipping his wingtip under the other racer’s and rolling hard to flip him. The move would have disqualified him on any civilized world.

  Gavit couldn’t help but smile, before he caught the glint of a racer coming up fast behind him. The speed was like nothing he’d seen this race. His finger hovered over his link switch, contemplating as
king Dorik what the story was. Had he not found the pair in each other's arms the way he had, he might have. He almost wished he’d maintained his blissful ignorance of it all. Another few cycles and he would not have seen them for tridecs at least. Instead, he’d to come face to face with the two of them entwined in the shadow of his racer.

  Teeth gritted, he sneered at the next turn, took it faster than he should have, resulting in his speed bleeding away. He cursed the mistake and pushed the throttle open. Easy win or not, he’d take it and rub it in the pair’s faces. He had bigger and better places to run ahead to now.

  An alert he didn’t recognize sounded through his helmet. He checked his caution panel: nothing. A race official came over the link. “Attention racers! Clear the course immediately! Unknown forces are attacking the area.”

  Gavit scanned around for any of the attackers, but the skies remained empty. Instinct drove thoughts of betrayal aside. He keyed his link. “Dorik! What’s the situation?”

  The first sound that came back was an explosion. The sound slowed him. Even if he hated what Dorik and Ilange had done, he wasn’t about to let someone kill them.

  “The stands are under fire here,” Dorik called back. “No idea what in Sheol is going on. Just get clear!”

  “Frag that!” Gavit snapped. Hauling back on his stick, he opened up the throttle to full and shot skyward. He spun the racer around and looked back towards the grandstands over the repair pits. Fighter-sized craft strafed the area with plaser and mass-driver rounds. Under any other circumstance he’d never dare take on armed fighters in his racer. It was, after all, unarmed; carrying only a targeting laser for combat courses. Despite that, he could cause enough of a distraction to save lives. Then he remembered his plasma torch. Though intended for quick bursts of speed it could be tuned into a rear-firing weapon.

  One of the attacking craft pulled away from the stands giving, Gavit a near perfect planform view of it. He grimaced: Thorn Raiders! Originally designed as interceptors for colonial militias, Thorn Raiders could out-accelerate most smugglers and rogue haulers, in space at least. Powerful plasma engines made up the rear of the skeletal spaceborne craft with their forward cockpit spheres. As the craft were phased out of service however, rogue groups had refitted and skinned them with basic aerodynamic control surfaces so they could land planet-side. Gavit could dance around them with ease, but there was no way he could hope to outrun them. “Nothing to it, but to do it!”

  Gavit slammed his throttle forward and raced back towards the emptied grandstands. Spectators had already fled the arena as a raider began to set up for its attack run. It didn’t matter to Gavit what the raider’s goals were. They were killing innocents and he couldn’t allow that. “Dorik, are you and the crew clear?”

  “No. We’re down in the rescue shelter. Place is filling up fast. Are you clear?”

  “No. I’m coming to you. Can you retune the plasma torch? Narrow-stream?”

  “Uh, yeah. You won’t get much thrust out of it, and it’ll eat your power fast. Are you sure?”

  “Just do it!” Gavit ordered. The raider had peaked in its climb, and was now rolling about to attack. Gavit checked his speed; he was accelerating, but not fast enough to reach the stands in time to force the craft to break off. He looked down at his display. The third-stage gravitic compressor remained cold. Activating it would give him the acceleration he needed. If it burned out it was sure to trash the entire engine. Seeing no other choice, he activated the ring.

  The racer lunged ahead, slamming Gavit back into his seat. He contemplated lighting up his plasma torch. A look at his display however revealed that Dorik was already in the process to reconfigure it as a weapon. The distance dwindled with each passing moment. It was clear Gavit would have only one chance to force the attacker off. At their closing speed he had less than a pulse to decide - dive in front or come down from above.

  The stands surrounding the runway forced his hand. He angled towards a point just above the raider’s intended flight path. The flash of mass-drivers lit up the underside of the raider’s wings. Gavit flipped up the safety cover on his plasma torch. The raider had to know he was closing. Arrogance and the knowledge that Gavit was ‘just a racer’ kept him from attacking. After all, what harm could a racer do? Gavit intended to answer that question in the way only he could.

  Almost atop the raider, Gavit hauled back on the stick. When nothing blue filled his vision, he keyed the plasma torch. The additional thrust, as small as it was, forced him even deeper into his seat. He glanced at his rear-view camera. The beam lanced out. It scorched the ground. The raider appeared and it had sliced a furrow across the front of the craft and through the cockpit. A splotch of dark red burst onto the canopy of the raider and Gavit released the button. What remained of the raider tumbled out of control into the ground.

  “Dorik, status?”

  “What in the Sheol was that? Are they bombing us?”

  Gavit scanned the skies. He had no sensors by which to guide him towards the other raiders. “Negative. Shot one down, but I can’t find the others. Where are they?”

  The line was silent for a moment. “Picking up some noise on the emergency links - it looks like we were just the diversion. The main force is at the spaceport.”

  “How many?”

  “Count’s fuzzy, less than ten. Messiah! There’s a big transport coming down. Local militia units are inbound, but were out on maneuvers on the other side of the planet.”

  “Anything closer?” Gavit asked, keying the spaceport’s ident code into his navcomp.

  “No. They hit the local hangars first. Shreg! You’ve got two headed your way fast, vectoring in on your right!”

  Gavit glanced over. Sure enough, two raiders had vectored straight for him. They’d be on him in no time. “Sloppy formation,” he chuckled. If these crews had learned to fly combat in the Confederation then they were well out of practice. A three-fighter formation had one fighter on the attack, while the other two provided cover. They never should have allowed him to get close. They were doing their jobs, but it was too late for their cohort. He could still outmaneuver them. But two on one, with only a rear-firing plasma beam, he knew his chances were slim. “Dorik, where’s the big ship?”

  “Entry profile will bring it over us. That must be why they wanted the stands cleared so they could limit the number of witnesses who could identify it. Its transponder’s off.”

  “Keep me in the loop on what it’s doing - I’ve currently got a pair of dance partners.”

  Gavit rocketed towards the nearest raider and dove cents before the flash of its mass-drivers would have perforated his racer. Accelerating towards the ground, he whipped his racer about as the first raider slogged through its turn to pursue. The other one however had anticipated his move and mass-driver rounds gashed the nose of his craft.

  The impact threatened to send his craft flipping towards the ground. Cursing, Gavit rolled aside, heading towards his attacker, jinking and rolling to stay out of his line of fire. Sweat poured into his eyes but he dared not attempt to wipe it away. As he merged with the attacker, Gavit keyed his plasma torch again. He pulled back hard on the stick. In the rear-view, he caught the flash as the beam gouged the raider’s wing before it cut out.

  Red alert lights lit up his board and his screen flashed with the image of the plasma torch at the core of his engine. It strobed an angry red back at him. Lines of text pointed to various accelerator coils that had burnt out towards the rear. He’d scragged it.

  “Gavit. I’ve got a red board here on your telemetry. Are you okay?”

  “Cooked the plasma torch,” Gavit sneered, vectoring towards the raiders. If he could just stick close enough to one to hold to its wing then the other couldn’t attack without risking hitting their wingman. The raider he moved in on attempted to pull away, but Gavit was on him. He rolled his racer over the craft, blocking its path as the other swung wide for another attack run. Gavit’s new friend attempted to evade again,
but he stuck close. Nothing the fighter tried could shake Gavit.

  I’m on you harder than your boyfriend and his crotch warts. Gavit rolled his eyes at that; a sudden itch reminded him of when he’d been less than careful a few tridecs back. At least he was worth it. The momentary distraction allowed the raider to pull away, leaving Gavit in open air. “Shreg!” he rolled the racer about and dove for the deck. Mass-driver rounds traced his path as he tore through an inverted loop. Sky filled his canopy with less than a hundred metra to spare. Acceleration pressed hard against his red line as the raiders assumed positions overhead.

  “Gavit, that transport’s less than a pulse from the airstrip.”

  Gavit looked up. Sure enough, there it was, on a parallel course towards the spaceport a little over a hundred kimets away. He had a decision to make - either continue to play with his two dance partners or try to engage the transport. The latter choice meant flying into a buzzer nest of even more raiders. Unarmed as he was, neither option was ideal. Realization washed over him, bringing a wry smile to his lips. He had weapons - they just weren’t on his racer. A smug smirk on his face, he put himself on an intercept course with the transport and slammed his throttle full open.

  He rocketed upwards at his racer’s aerodynamic limit, every stress gauge pegging. There was no way he could keep this up for more than a few pulses before the craft would tear itself apart. With any luck, he wouldn’t need that long. A flash of mass-driver rounds lit his canopy. His dance accompaniment had arrived. Flashes of light in the distance signaled that the other raiders would soon join as well.

  Gavit swallowed, forcing his stomach back down. This was no time to panic, and he had committed himself. Maybe I should be committed - this is insane! A groan ran through his craft as the transport grew above and ahead of him. A peek at his display revealed why. The third-stage accelerator shifted into the orange, and the structural members around it yellow.