Tova’s warbling cut through Ethan’s thoughts, followed by the translation, “I sense none of my crèche mates.”
“Good! Helm, set course for the Odaran gate—full throttle!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Engineering, give me more power to shields and engines. Reduce power to weapons. We don’t need them right now.”
“Gravidar, keep your eyes open, just in case. If they want to fire on us you can bet you’re going to see something pop up on the grid before they do.”
“Comms, make sure the Guardians are ready to launch at a moment’s notice!”
The comm officer began speaking into the intercom, and then Ethan turned to Caldin with a tight smile. “So far, so good.”
But her eyes were on Tova, standing down by the viewports in her gleaming black armor. “According to her.”
“You don’t trust Tova?” he whispered.
Caldin turned to him. “Do you?”
“Not fully, but her survival and ours are one and the same at the moment, so none of us have a choice.”
Caldin nodded and her gaze returned to absently studying the giant alien. “The Gors are on our side because they need our help, but what happens when they decide that they no longer do?”
Ethan shook his head. “We hope that their gratitude is enough to keep them from turning on us.”
“That’s a naïve hope.”
“Maybe. But it’s the only one we have.”
* * *
The atmosphere inside the pilot’s briefing room was tense. The pilots listened as Captain Adan Reese and his XO, Lieutenant Ithicus Adari, outlined possible scenarios of enemy contact which might crop up while they crossed the Forlax system. From there, they moved onto fighter tactics, dogfighting, weapon systems, and taking advantage of weaknesses in Sythian technology.
Alara listened to Adan carefully, trying to absorb everything he was saying. Gina sat beside Alara with a frown, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Remember,” Adan said. “Their shields are weak, their engines are slow, and their fighters are big targets. That gives you every possible edge in a fight, except for one—they could appear out of nowhere, right on your six, and their missiles can’t be taken down by our countermeasures. The good news, however, is that they don’t have proximity fuses, and they will set off our missile lock alarms. But don’t rely on that to keep you safe! If a shell uncloaks and fires on you at point blank range, they’ll hit you before you’ve even heard the first warning beep of a lock, so you need to keep up an evasive flight pattern whenever possible. The instant you’re caught flying in a straight, predictable line, you’re dead. Remember to use all of your flight controls to maneuver, and avoid making turns the way you’d make them in atmosphere. This is space, so slewing your ship with the rudder is faster to make a turn than the old yank’n’bank.”
Alara heard a murmur of acknowledgement sweep through the pilots, and she turned to Gina to whisper, “What’s a yank’n’bank?”
“It’s when you roll and pull up hard to make a turn.”
“Ah.”
“Does anyone still have any questions about the control systems? Or did your AIs cover those points adequately?”
Alara watched a skinny hand shoot up. It was Guardian Twelve, otherwise known as Stix.
“Yes?” Adan pointed to her.
“If the enemy fighters are slower, then wouldn’t the best evasive maneuver be for me to run away at top speed?”
Adan started to reply, but then a siren went off, and the lights dimmed to a bloody red. The intercom crackled with, “Red Alert! Enemy contact!”
“All right! This is it, people, and it’s not a drill!” Adan yelled, clapping his hands amidst the rising threat of panic as pilots stood up and began running into each other in their hurry to get to the hangar. “Orderly lines! No shoving. Soon as you get into the hangar, run as fast as you can to your novas. Find the fighter whose number matches yours! Ruh-kah!”
Alara walked quickly to the end of her row of seats and then joined the short line of pilots hurrying down the steps to the podium below. As soon as they reached the podium, pilots began running for the open doors to either side which led to the hangar.
Alara was one of the last ones down. She caught Adan’s eye as she hurried by, and he smiled and nodded to her. “You’ll be fine!”
She nodded back, and then ran out into the hangar with the rest of the pilots. Dead ahead and to her left the novas sat in a gleaming double row on the deck, mag clamps securely locked around their landing struts. To the other side, Alara saw open space through the fuzzy blue glow of the Defiant’s shields, while at the distant end of the hangar lay the pair of glowing red portals which were the launch tubes. Her fighter’s AI had told her the launch tubes accelerated novas out the back of the Defiant with over 50 G’s of force—more than 500 KAPS. Alara grimaced, remembering the utter terror she’d felt. This time she’d keep her IMS dialed up to 100%.
The hangar intercom buzzed, and Alara listened to it with half an ear. “We have an enemy fleet moving to intercept us. Guardians will flank the Defiant to the gate and only engage the enemy if they close to within five klicks.” Alara heard the steady whump whump whump of laser cannons firing amidst the background noise on the bridge, and she wondered if they’d already engaged the enemy. “Ruh-kah, Guardians!”
Alara’s fingertips began to tingle with adrenaline and she used it to pour on an extra burst of speed, running past novas with ever-decreasing numbers painted on the sides until she reached the one at the head of the line with a big freshly-painted two on it. She was first in line for the launch tubes.
As soon as Alara reached her nova, she bounded up the ladder and hopped into the cockpit. Pressing the raise/lower canopy button, she slid on her flight helmet and sealed the clasps at her neck.
“Welcome back, Alara,” the fighter’s AI said.
“I go by Kiddie now,” she said.
“Very well, Kiddie. Your preflight before ignition checks are already done. Are you ready for takeoff?”
Alara felt the rudder pedals under her feet and nodded. Her seat didn’t need to be adjusted, since she’d been the last pilot to fly in this particular nova. Alara found her flight restraints and strapped in; then she punched the fighter’s ignition and listened to the sound of the reactor spinning up with a rising whir.
“Dial up the IMS to 100 this time, Ethan, I don’t want to get sick out there.”
“Of course, though I should point out that—”
“Just do it!”
Ethan went silent while Alara’s displays flickered to life. She paid particular attention to the star map in the center. The grid was set to display a full orbital, and it was marked with dozens of red enemy contacts dead ahead and to the left of their position, moving on an intercept course. At the far end of the grid Alara saw the gate they were headed for. It was over 5000 klicks away, and the nearest enemy contact was at 2450 klicks.
This is going to be close, she thought as she heard the th-thunk of mag clamps releasing. Her nova’s engines began roaring in her ears as it rose off the deck. Alara saw Captain Reese’s fighter rising and turning in unison with hers, and she smiled and waved to him, but he missed the gesture. A second later she heard his voice over the comm.
“Soon as you get out the launch tubes, make a 180 degree turn. We don’t want to cancel too much of our forward momentum by flying in reverse. We need to keep up with the Defiant if we’re going to guard her. Good luck out there, Guardians.”
And with that, their fighters began rocketing toward the launch tubes. Alara braced herself as the glowing red portals grew large and menacing before them, like the glowing red eyes of an armored Gor.
* * *
Ethan stared into the glowing red eyes of Tova’s helmet, and his own eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you warn us?”
“I sense them now, but not before. I missed them.”
“Well you frekked up, Tova, because you missed a whol
e fleet!”
Tova hissed and looked away; maybe he was unworthy of her sight again. Ethan turned away with a scowl to study the captain’s table. The enemy contacts on the grid represented only a rough estimate of the number and position of the enemy forces, as best as Tova could determine anyway—which was apparently give or take a whole fleet.
“We’re not going to make it to the gate before they reach us,” Caldin said.
“No, but it remains to be seen if they can stop us.”
“So much for our early warning system,” Caldin said with a smirk.
“Clearly she’s not infallible,” Ethan replied, “so we’re going to have to use some of our own detection systems.” Looking up from the grid Ethan called down to the gunnery station. “Weapons! I need our forward batteries firing in a steady pattern to cover our trajectory. Clear a swath. If there’s anything cloaked ahead of us I want to know about it, and in case they’ve laid any mines, fire off a torpedo every fifteen seconds with a timer of the same.”
“Yes, sir!” Deck Officer Gorvan replied.
“Comms, tell the Guardians before they leave the hangar that we need an escort to the gate, not a bunch of loose cannons. They are to flank us to the gate, breaking off to engage only when the enemy gets to within five klicks of us.”
Ethan heard the comm officer relaying his orders, and then he turned back to Caldin. Noting the frown on her face, he asked, “What now?”
“If you use up all of our torpedoes now, what are we going to do when that fleet reaches us?”
“Do the math. At current speed we’re less than ten minutes to the gate, counting time to decelerate. We’ll use no more than forty torpedoes. That’s less than a tenth of what we have in the arsenal, let alone what’s already loaded in the torp bays. We’ll be fine.”
Caldin nodded, but by her pursed lips, Ethan could tell she disagreed. That was okay. Ethan didn’t require his crew to always agree with him, just so long as they always obeyed.
* * *
Alara and Captain Reese shot out the back of the Defiant in tandem, flying out over the rocky red surface of Forlax II, a dymium-rich rock with a thick, toxic atmosphere that was swirled with white clouds. Below those clouds they could see high mountain ranges, and sparkling between them lay vast lakes of methane that caught and reflected the red light of the system’s sun.
Just visible over the moon’s horizon was Forlax itself—a rocky giant with thick red rings of asteroids, which Forlax II orbited. Both of the gates in the Forlax system were found in a low orbit around Forlax II, since the intention had always been to develop the moon for dymium mining. Alara shook her head to clear away those thoughts. She wasn’t sure which of her two sets of memories they’d come from, but they weren’t helping her now.
Tearing her eyes away from the view, Alara studied the position of enemy contacts on the grid as she followed Captain Reese in a tight turn to starboard which would bring them onto the Defiant’s flight path. She was comforted to see that the nearest enemy ship was more than a thousand klicks away.
But even as she watched the group of enemy contacts, their positions abruptly changed, all of them shifting by more than a thousand kilometers in an instant. Alara blinked and tapped the screen. “Ethan! What the frek? How is the enemy suddenly right on top of us? Did they jump to SLS?”
“The contacts on your gravidar appear to be cloaked, Kiddie. Their locations are being updated manually from the Defiant.”
“Great!”
Alara saw the red bracket pairs appearing all over her HUD as they supposedly came into range, but she tried to ignore them. If the enemy location data wasn’t up to date, it would be dangerous to trust.
A flash of light caught Alara’s eye as she swung onto the Defiant’s flight path, and she saw a torpedo exploding ahead of the cruiser. That explosion abruptly blossomed into a much larger starburst of light, and Alara blinked spots out of her eyes as her canopy polarized a second too late.
The Defiant had just hit a cloaking mine with a blind torpedo. Lucky escape, Alara thought.
And then the red contacts on her gravidar disappeared and reappeared all around her, but this time they were accompanied by visuals of the enemy ships. She saw swarms of enemy fighters de-cloaking all around them, followed by two Sythian battleships.
Alara’s eyes widened as a wave of purple stars began spinning toward them from the nearest battleship. Then space was alive with the streaking orange glows of shell fighters’ engines crisscrossing through the Guardian’s formation.
“Live contact! Break and engage, Guardians!” Captain Reese said.
Alara’s missile lock alarm squealed abruptly. “Frek!” she hissed, stomping on her right rudder. She turned straight into the Defiant’s flight path and soon she cruised low over the hull, watching the cruiser’s batteries swiveling. Torrents of red laser fire flashed out as those batteries found their targets and tracked passing enemy fighters. And then two sets of thick blue dymium beams shot out from the Defiant, one for each of the enemy battleships. Those beams sounded through her nova’s simulated sound system with a deep, reverberating hum.
Alara forced herself to ignore the distractions of the greater battle going on around her. She concentrated on the beep-beep-beeping of missile lock warnings. As the beeps sped up to nearly a solid tone, Alara activated her grav lifts and bounced her fighter straight off the Defiant’s hull, leaving the enemy missiles to go streaking by underneath her. They slammed into the Defiant with a bright flash of light, and another dozen missiles followed that one, impacting one after another on the top hull of the cruiser with a steady roar of simulated explosions.
Alara grimaced, and the next thing she heard over the comms was, “Guardians! The Defiant’s shields won’t take much more of that!”
Stepping on her left rudder, Alara pulled a sharp turn to get on the tail of the nearest enemy fighter and then she fired off two quick fire-linked blasts from her lasers. Both volleys hit, and the shell exploded brilliantly.
“Ruh-kah!” she whooped as she sailed through the explosion. Debris pelted her canopy, hissing off her shields. She targeted the next nearest enemy fighter and pulled up hard to find it in her sights. A quick look at the gravidar showed tiny green nova fighters splintering off in all directions to follow the enemy fighters, leaving the Defiant to race away from the engagement at top speed. Alara frowned at that, and then the comm crackled.
“Guardians, you are not to abandon the Defiant’s flight path!” Captain Reese said. “Stick with your wingmates and keep up with our objective. Swat away any shells that get too close!”
Alara heard a few affirmative clicks and saw the green icons of their fighters flashing on the grid to indicate they were the ones who’d activated their comms. All of the novas turned back to follow the Defiant—except for one. Alara focused on the straggler and tapped the icon with her finger for more information. It was Guardian Twelve—Stix.
Abruptly, that icon shone a brighter green to indicate Stix had activated her comms, and Alara heard her say, “I’m cut off! They’re all over me!”
Alara stepped on her rudder. “Hold on, Stix, I’m coming!” She lined up on the nearest enemy fighter chasing Twelve, but quickly saw that Stix was right. There were no less than a dozen shells on her tail, and like a total greeny she was running in a straight line away from them as fast as she could.
“Go evasive, Twelve!” Alara said.
“They’re locking on!” Stix screamed.
“I said break!”
Alara thumbed over to her own missiles and tried for a lock at extreme range, but before she could even line up her target, the enemy fighters fired as one, and an entire wave of shining purple stars shot out after Twelve.
“Frek! Wait for them to get close, Twelve, and then go evasive! They can’t track sudden changes in direction.”
“I’m going to try to outrun them!” Twelve said, sounding panicked.
“You can’t outrun missiles, Stix!” Alara saw th
e missiles drawing dangerously close to Twelve and she shook her head. She fired off a Hailfire with a weak target lock and saw her target break out of the enemy formation to evade. Alara gritted her teeth and thumbed back over to lasers to fire at the next nearest enemy, but the enemy fighter was out of range, and her shot went wide.
Now the missiles were seconds from reaching Twelve and she was still flying straight. “Break, Stix!”
“I’m gonna run! Don’t worry! Meet you back at the transfer station.”
Alara’s brow furrowed, and that was when she realized that Stix had lost it. She’d suffered a mental break. The missiles drew within a hundred meters of her, and Alara screamed into the comm. “Eject, Stix! Eject!”
Abruptly the space where Guardian Twelve had been flashed with the light of multiple explosions, and her icon winked off the grid.
Alara screamed incoherently and began pouring laser fire after the enemy fighters who’d shot Twelve down. They began coming about to meet her head on, but Alara didn’t care, she just stabbed the trigger over and over again, strafing the enemy formation. Alara winged two shells and sliced a third one into two pieces before her comms crackled with. “It’s too late to help her, Two.” That was Captain Reese speaking. “Get back here before they cut you off, too!”
“Frek you!” Alara muttered under her breath.
Guardian One went on, “Stick together, Guardians! You want to go blazing off on your own? That’s what happens!”
Dark Space- The Complete Series Page 39