Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  “Meaning?” Moira, no warp engineer, demands to know.

  Odisseus, also no warp engineer, nonetheless renders his judgment. “We gotta get closer.”

  “Roger that,” Nemo confirms and pumps the clutchlever.

  Taken as much by surprise as her crew, The Unconstant Lover surges forward and, after a sporadic start, is speeding into the gulf between the two opposing lines of capital ships. Moira doesn't have a chance to offer argument or complaint before movement catches her right and left peripherals. The other ships, the hordes fleeing the Consortium's raid on Thaksu, have happened upon the same idea as the Lover and made a break for the Warp Gate.

  As a loose, uncertain crown do the scummy spaceships of Gertie's gambling empire creep into the territory contested by two of the galaxy's most impregnable navies. Without a better idea, Moira mans the Antagonist – for all the good it'll do against the Logistic or the Pincer Maneuver – and hopes they can squeeze past while both sides're still tangled in bureaucracy.

  “Holy fooking shite,” Flask keeps muttering, like a skipping hologram.

  “Shields'd be nice,” Odisseus has the presence of mind to propose. “Sure wish our shield operator could pull his head outta his bloomhole for a second.”

  Moira admits he's got a point. In all the confusion, the ray shields'd been neglected. Angled double forward to protect against orbital bombardment, they'd currently be little protection against either adversary, stretched out to either side.

  All the Ortok's plea does, however, is supremely confuse the Captain. “I'm looking at Two-Bit's head right now,” he mentions skeptically. “Doesn't look like it's up his bloomhole.”

  “Sarcasm,” Moira's only too happy to chide, “remember?”

  “And how're you proposing I do that?” Flask wonders, snapping back to reality. “I angle double starboard, they blast us from port. I angle double port, they blast us–”

  “An even spread?” Moira suggests, knowing that's not enough.

  “One layer's never gonna stand against a capital-class battery like that,” Flask shoots down, as she knew he would. “Might as well cover our heads and hide under our blooming desks.”

  “But,” Nemo starts to object, “I gotta steer the ship.”

  “And that's a very important job,” Odisseus is certain to assure him. “One we need you to keep doing, no matter what anybody says, okay?”

  “Shields, anybody?” Moira reminds them, scanning the gundecks of both Logistic and Pincer Maneuver, far too close for comfort on either side.

  “I can give you an even spread, like,” Flask tells her, seeming to wash his hands of their fate. “Your explosion,” he resolves, spreading the ray shields evenly across the hull.

  No sooner he done this, the Briza encased in protective energy, than the Logistic opens fire.

  “Evasive!” hollers Moira, the moment she sees those green winking lights. In an unbroken line, all along the crusier's starboard side, the broadside batteries ignite. Some instinct in Nemo's soaked brain registers Moira's shouted command and the Lover spins and weaves as the first fusilade streaks in.

  The closest bolt grazes the freighter's underside by inches. Two or three of her fellow freighters are not as lucky, their own ray shields meager defense against such mighty firepower. Blown to bits, shrapnel showers The Unconstant Lover again but, by some idiot chance, she manages to scrape past with only cosmetic damage and a little bruising on her ray shield.

  Moira is more amazed when she discovers that they weren't the actual target.

  The Pylon shrugs off the barrage, Moira knowing from long experience how thick those shields are. One of the Mobile Gantries lists a little, inky black smoke streaming from a support strut. It's the Chaperones that fare the worst, their shields juddering and a few giving out entirely. The unluckiest of those four takes three hits, her shields and even pieces of her hull blasted away. At a tortuously slow speed, she starts to explode from the inside.

  Sillence seems to envelop Thaksu's entire orbit, the gravity of that act of aggression sinking into everyone present.

  “Um,” Flask is the first to venture, “was that supposed to happen?”

  “They weren't aiming for us,” Moira swears, hardly able to believe it.

  “Less talking,” Odisseus growls, “more–”

  However Odisseus would've finished that sentence, no one else would ever know. There's a coruscation of red flashes, running three parallel lines down the seemingly infinite length of the Pylon's port broadside. The Imperium's opened their own fire and all the ray shielding in the galaxy couldn't protect their target.

  Once again, The Unconstant Lover spins scrapingly away from utter oblivion. The ray shields, while only glanced, still take a grievous blow, their yammering alarm filling the ship. Once again, many ships in the gambling horde cannot avoid all that cannon fire and are reduced to their atoms. Once again, the true target is no crappy cargo freighter but rather the opposing capital cruiser and the Logistic does not take its beating well.

  Hundreds of capital-class blasts find purchase on her ray shield, flickering and fizzling the thing within an inch of its life. In the end, that shield somehow still stands, though it seizes spasmodically and is one stiff fart away from giving out entirely. The sheer force of all those impacts, however, literally pushes the enormous capital crusier back, a runty child shoved by a school yard bully.

  There's another momentary respite here, time enough for the Logistic to recover from its beating, for gunnery crews on both sides to prime another salvo and for The Unconstant Lover to find herself smack dab in the middle of the crossfire.

  “Shields?” squawks Flask meekly, right before they both open fire again.

  An imperfect net, woven of red and green ditrogen, closes around The Unconstant Lover. Some threads carve craters into three fleeing freighters in Moira's immediate line of vision. She must bring the Antagonist to bear on their shards, threatening to puncture through their useless ray shields and shear through their unprotected hull.

  Other threads, sizzingly green, buffet and bump against the Lover, rattling her bones beneath her failing ray shields. Every time the Briza is jostled this way and that, the rivet imbedded in the turret's plexishield shifts, spreading its cracks a little further.

  There's not time to contemplate her own mortality, however. Instead, a Chaperone clipper puts on a sudden burst of speed and moves to intercept them, quartet of starboard batteries firing on all cylinders.

  Nemo's flipping the Lover this way and that, Flask screaming about shield strength all the while, when their guardian angel arrives. An out-of-control freighter, her engine bank smoking, comes careering in, aimed headlong at the Chaperone's bridge. The ensuing fireball is large enough to send fingers of flame groping along Moira's topturret but not so large that Nemo can't circle around it, the two crashed spaceships passing fast on the starboard side.

  Boosters overhauling, The Unconstant Lover banks harshly starboard to avoid colliding with the actual Pylon. All the Pincer Maneuver's cityscape stretches out on the port side. Like the Exacting Counterattack all those years ago, the Briza Light Freighter strafes past stabilizing wings, control panes, command nodules and gun emplacements. Somewhere ahead, perfectly framing the rivet lodged in her plexishield, is the Warp Gate. Moira takes some strange solace in its neutrality, hanging back and offering escape to any who come within range.

  The next moment, there's a proximity alert shrieking in her ear. The Antagonist is swinging about when the Spurs, spinning together in a tight squadron, shriek all the louder overhead. Their fire rains down, scoring more hits against the Pylon's invincible ray shield than the Lover's fragile one, but it's still enough to short them out completely.

  The Unconstant Lover is completely unshielded when she banks away from the Pincer Maneuver and back into the fray, the Spurs scrambling to reassemble for another strafing run.

  By dumb luck, they time their return to the killing zone perfectly, both sides reloading batte
ries, repairing damage and rerouting power to weapons. Nemo navigates his Lover between the gunshot wrecks of Thaksu's escapees, the shadow of the squadron lurking on the corner of their sensors.

  With no shields, their unseen death could come at any moment, from any angle, scorching easily through their helpless hull. Moira wheels her Antagonist this way and that, attempting to keep up with both Nemo's evasive maneuvering and the predatory circling of that fighter squadron.

  Moments later, The Unconstant Lover emerges into a patch of open space between smoldering spaceships. The squadron shows their hand a moment before they attack, sweeping down in attack formation from a cloud of green ditrogen smoke, their weapons hot. Moira strangles her triggers to send a counterattack their way as they pass but, inevitably, some of their fire gets through.

  Moira watches the Lover's hull take the damage all along her dorsal side, shredding the sturdy teltriton to burning crisps a yard or less from her topturret. The impact seems to come a heartbeat later, shaking the freighter to her chassis. The following groan the Lover makes is life-threatening, the most terrifying sound Moira's ever heard the tough old Briza make.

  So shaken by all the danger and destruction, Moira doesn't know whether her return fire hit anything or not. The Spur squadron is banking, some part of her brain knows, ready to swoop back down and finish the job with a second barrage.

  For the very first time in that topturret, fear utterly paralyzes Moira. Everywhere she looks is flame and ditrogen and pieces of ships. For once, The Unconstant Lover was simply another one of them, with no special reputation or luck or magic to keep her safe from the thousand deaths all around her.

  Something else impacts the Lover, something other than that fatal laser blast. When this new danger rears its head, Moira is jostled back into action. She's already spinning the topturret around, searching for this new attacker, when Flask's warning crackles in over the comm.

  “Graviton lock, Cap'n!” he announces, various alerts and alarms blazing behind him. “Logistic's reeling us in!”

  In her searching, Moira's eyes land on the Consortium cruiser, that great shadowed bulk far – and getting nearer and nearer, Moira notes – to the Lover's starboard. The freighter is juddered this way and that as she's drawn closer to the Logistic's side, plucked from the fray by some crackshot with a graviton projector.

  “Hey,” remarks an annoyed Nemo. By the sound of the boosters straining at the leash, it's not hard to imagine the Captain jerking the yoke around. “It's not working.”

  “How bad?” demands a harried Odisseus.

  “Er,” stammers Flask, searching across the dozen instruments. “This thing says 39% rigidity. And climbing.”

  “Two-Bit?” Nemo casts about, searching for someone to take him seriously. “How come it's not working?”

  “That,” is all Flask has to say, “does not help.”

  “Topturret,” implores Odisseus, the Captain in the absence of the Captain, “can you get a bead on the projector? You gotta cut us loose, if you can.”

  “Aye aye,” she chants back by rote, setting her scattered mind to hunting across the Logistic's broadside for the graviton projector that's snagged them.

  Her ray shields a distant memory, the GCF Logistic has not fared especially well in this unexpected fleet action. Her hull is blackened and pockmarked, its worst wounds exposing empty corridors and vital ship systems to open space. Many of her batteries are inoperable and it's not hard for Moira to zero the projector in question. Its two prongs pointed straight at the thrashing Unconstant Lover, it's as sleek and streamlined in design as everything else aboard the Logistic and especially notable for remaining in one piece.

  Once she's got a clean shot, Moira opens up with the Antagonist, pounding as much ammunition at that projector as she can. To her horror, she finds her aim is somehow wildly askew. Her shots keep flying wide, despite the straight line between her and her target, instead of peppering the hull to either side of the projector.

  Then the Antagonist's chamber is clicking empty, ready for another string of shells. For all that they're drawing closer, Moira still hasn't planted a single bolt into that projector.

  “63% rigidity,” reports Flask, terror starting to grip him too.

  “Window's kinda closing here, topturret,” Odisseus informs her.

  Moira can find no adequate words to explain why she's flinching. “I can't–”

  She's fumbling for more ammunition when the Pincer Maneuver intervenes on their behalf. On either side of The Unconstant Lover, red laserfire, bigger than death, comes streaking in to explode against the GCF Logistic. Her ray shields gone, the shots strike true, devastating the cruiser's burnt and broken broadside. The Logistic rocks away from the blast, spouting smoke and shrapnel, its once unbreakable grip on the Lover giving abruptly away.

  “Oh, hey,” notices Nemo, when the yoke starts to respond, “it's working again.” A throttling boost of speed zooms the Lover away from the growing explosion to starboard. “Thanks, Two-Bit!”

  Moira spares one glance towards the GCF Logistic, explosions rocking its deeper interiors and whole sections of hull blasting away from severe internal damage. The Lover hasn't cleared fifteen dottibles before its entire rear quarter is gone, dissolved into ditrogen and debris.

  Free from the Consortium's clutches, the Briza puts on speed and then puts on more speed, accompanied by the tiny minority of other tramp freighters that actually escaped. Together, they break into open space, beyond the immediate reach of the Pincer Maneuver or the exploding Logistic, with only the threat of starfighters somewhere on their trail.

  With a few snapped switches and struck keys, the Antagonist's targeting protocols go dark and the weapon is suddenly lifeless in her grip. “That's all the weapons power I got,” Moira announces over the comm. “Anyone wanna re-route to shields?”

  “Happily,” agrees an eager Flask before Odisseus makes another case.

  “I'mana say warp drive, actually,” attests the Ortok.

  “We're in range?” wonders Moira.

  “As of...” Odisseus delays, everyone aboard The Unconstant Lover, save one, holding their breath, “now.” There is nothing to indicate this, neither on Moira's consoles nor on the Warp Gate, grown all the larger through the topturret's plexishield. “Soon as I get a heading, we can put this clusterfuck the bloom behind us.”

  “What's nearby?” Flask demands to know. “What can we calculate the fastest?”

  There's silence as Odisseus scans the options. A glance at her proximity sensor, one of the few instruments still running up here, tells Moira that their window of deliberation is shrinking fast; a squadron of Spurs is closing quickly. “Frankly, there ain't much,” Odisseus is sad to report. “There's Pyonek Minor, the closest and the most obvious and certainly where these bloomholes came from. There's Kagno, which's a little further–”

  “And pretty much one big fooking electromag storm, ain't it?”

  “And then there's Pok.”

  The mere mention of this word shakes the Captain instantly from his soaked state. “No.”

  Odisseus doesn't pause a moment to allow the Captain to make any more objections. “It's the farthest, it's the toughest jump from here and it's the biggest leap, both logically and in terms of distanc–”

  “No.”

  “The rest of these bloomholes,” Odisseus continues, “are headed to Pyonek, most like, or maybe Kagno, for the stupi–”

  “No. No. No! No!”

  “The fook's wrong with Pok?” Flask, the crew's newest member, demands to know.

  “Well,” Moira starts to mediate,” all we need's a jump point, right? Somewhere we can start the idler's course? Can we not do Kagno, just for the distance, and then jump–”

  “You wanna know the truth?” Odisseus starts to explain. “The truth is–”

  “I will fly this ship into a sun,” announces Nemo in all seriousness, “before I would fly this ship to–”

  “Fighters!” Fla
sk shrieks, the exact moment Moira's proximity alert is beeping at her. “We got ten seconds, tops, before we're blown to very small pieces!”

  “The truth is,” Odisseus endeavors over his squabbling crewmates and the squealing alarms, “we need someplace to set down. The hull's absolutely gotta get looked at. I'd be blooming surprised,” he adds, a little reluctantly, “if she's even gonna warp, how rough she's–”

  A shower of laserfire, blistering red hatred, burns past The Unconstant Lover. Some preternatural instinct of the Captain ducks the Briza down and away. The frustrated Spur squadron jets past, reforming for a second pass and adjusting their aim. The Lover may avoid another strafing run or two but the number of tricks up Nemo's sleeve is certainly dwindling.

  “I ain't touching down on that planet,” Nemo snarls and Moira imagines little flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth. “Not if you blew me a thousa–”

  “Nobody on this ship,” Odisseus snarls right back, teeth bared and bestial, “gives a good moons-damn what you–”

  “Can a fooking decision,” pleads Flask, “be reached here?”

  “If it's gotta be Pok, then I say Pok,” supposes Moira. “Our feelings be bloomed.”

  “Sure,” Flask immediately agrees. “Where-blooming-ever. Set the heading.”

  “I just did,” Odisseus admits. Even as he does, Moira hears the sweet sounds of The Unconstant Lover's warp drive spinning into operation, somewhere in the ship's undercarriage. All the while, this near-unanimous decision is met with howling derision from the Captain.

  “I'll hang you all for mutineers,” he bellows, loud enough that Moira must peel her earpiece off lest she be deafened. “I'm gonna go down to the galley and I'm gonna find that stupid melon baller that Odi bought for no fucking reason and I'm gonna scoop out your fucking intestines and I'm gonna wrap them around your neck and I'm gonna hang you all for motherfucking mutin–”