“Sergeant Dash,” Tassalt said sharply. “Kindly refrain from distracting the pilots of other ships from their tasks. My report will show that your unwelcome interference contributed to the loss of Assault Fourteen.”
“How could it?” Dash asked angrily. He knew he should swallow his anger, but the loss of the troops on board Assault Fourteen bit deep. “They were on a straight burn insertion. Nothing I did made any difference. If they’d listened to me they might still be alive.”
“Nevertheless. You tried to interfere with a commandant’s orders. That is not acceptable.”
“Fine. Tell me then Commandant Tassalt, would you like to order our pilot to follow the same insertion pattern?”
Tassalt paused for a moment before replying.
“No. I believe our pilot has the approach under control. However, if you interfere with another commandant’s orders again I will be forced to write it up as a serious breach.”
“Yes, Sir,” Dash bit out.
Technically the Commandant didn’t outrank Dash, and in a combat situation Dash’s troopers would follow his orders, but it was a fine balancing act. Ignoring a commandant’s suggestions too often was a sure way to kill a career, and probably end up on charges.
Dash forced his attention back to the display. The rest of the assault ships were all dodging through space. None were trying to repeat Assault Fourteen’s suicidal charge. Even so, several had been damaged or destroyed. As he watched Assault Twenty-Seven’s thrusters were knocked offline, leaving it flying a straight line course. Before the crew could recover, the assault ship disappeared in a blaze of heavy fire.
Something struck Dash’s ship with a deafening crash, smashing it sideways. For a few moments he struggled to breath against the pressure, fighting to stay conscious. The pressure eased but he could see red lights across the pilot’s board and wisps of smoke rose from somewhere nearby.
“Engines good, thrusters good… thank the stars…” the co-pilot said. “Aft shield generators damaged but holding at fifty-four percent. Life support is out. Good job we’re all buttoned up already. Several fires in the main cabin. Dumping our air.”
Amber warnings flashed for several seconds, then the air was rapidly dumped from the cabin. Everything went eerily quiet for Dash. Where before there had been all the sounds of a ship in flight and under heavy load, now all he could hear was the sound of his breathing.
“Dozer, is everyone OK back there?” Dash asked over the radio.
“Pretty shaken up, but no one is hurt. Everyone is on internal air. No leaks. Glad they popped the air when they did… it was getting damn smoky back here. How’s the ship?”
“Battered, but holding together. Hang on back there.”
“Will do.”
The pilot was still throwing the ship through constant flips and turns. Dash focused on the display once more, breathing a sigh of relief at what he saw. The larger Imperial ships had reached engagement range and were slugging it out with their equivalents in the pirate fleet. The heavy pirate ships still sent the occasional heavy fusillade towards the assault ships but they were half-hearted efforts. A few Pirate fighters broke free of dogfights to harry the assault boats, but not enough to pose a serious threat.
“Nearly at the base, Sir,” the pilot called out over the radio. “We won’t be able to stay docked I’m afraid, it’s still too hot out here.”
“Just so long as you remember to come back for us,” Dash replied. “How long till we dock?”
“Sixty seconds… give or take,” the pilot answered, swinging the ship through a ninety degree turn then sending it tumbling in a roll. “I’ll give you ten seconds of smooth flight before we make contact.”
“I appreciate it.”
Dash changed channels.
“Dozer, fifty seconds to contact. Ten seconds clear at the end. Get everyone ready.”
“Aye, Sir!”
“Commandant Tassalt, are you ready?”
The commandant was, of course, hooked into the same channel. He wanted to know everything that took place, and to be able to provide suggestions when needed.
“Of course, Sergeant. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Thirty seconds…” called the pilot.
Dash retrieved his rifle from where it had been secured, clutching it close, and readied himself to move.
“Twenty seconds…”
Dash thought about chasing Dozer up, then stopped himself. He knew his second-in-command would have everything in hand.
“Fifteen…”
Dash tensed, ready to move. The ship pulled another spine crunching move then smoothed out.
“Go…” the pilot called out.
Dash had already hit the release on his webbing and was swinging his way through the rear hatch into the main cabin. He was aware of Tassalt following almost immediately after. Much as Dash disliked the political officer, he had to admit that Tassalt knew how to handle himself in a combat situation.
In the main cabin Dozer had all the troopers on their feet and ready to go. The ship lurched a final time then landed with a crunch which shook the deck. The rear door swung down and Dash’s troops charged out.
The first few dropped into a crouch as soon as they cleared the ramp, laying down suppression fire. The assault ship must have passed through an atmospheric shield because air had come rushing in when the ramp was lowered, allowing Dash to hear the rolling thunder as his men opened fire.
All the men were equipped with gunpowder based weapons. While far more advanced weapons were available, the Empire chose gunpowder based weapons for most of its troops on the grounds of reliability and cost.
The rest of the troopers charged past, taking up defensive positions. Dash and Tassalt followed them. The moment they cleared the ramp Dash felt the assault boat lifting behind them, then racing away. Dozer ordered several troopers back to cover their now exposed rear. Dash raced over and dropped into cover beside Dozer.
“Clean deployment, Sir,” Dozer reported. “Small arms fire from two locations ahead, both neutralised. Area secured.”
“Good work,” Dash replied, consulting his tactical display. He switched to the general band. “Remember, we’re here to rescue any prisoners as well as taking out the pirates. Nothing has changed from the briefing. We’re aiming for the main docking bay. We need to neutralise any resistance and take control of their automated defences. Alpha, take point. Bravo and Charlie follow Alpha with me. Delta, Echo and Foxtrot – you’re with Corporal Sánchez.”
Dozer flipped Dash an informal salute then led his three squads, each of five troopers, away in a different direction. The plan was to approach the docking bay from different directions.
“You shouldn’t have let that sloppy salute go.”
Dash gritted his teeth at Commandant Tassalt’s rebuke, and chose to ignore it.
“I take it we will have the pleasure of your company?” Dash asked.
“Yes, indeed.”
“Wonderful.”
The irony seemed to be lost on Tassalt. Dash decided it was for the best. Alpha squad were leading off already, Dash dropped into position with Beta squad. Now came the most dangerous part of the mission, rushing through the pirate stronghold trying to avoid being pinned down by superior enemy numbers. Dash grinned fiercely. This was what he lived for!
Chapter 7
The next couple of days fell into a familiar pattern. Working together to refine the final plans for the new-look Wanderer, finding and mining suitable asteroids for raw materials, prioritising the work, discussing issues or new ideas that only came to light as they progressed.
Jess held onto his secrets for almost two days. Each time the others tried to pin him down he managed to divert the conversation or needed to deal with an urgent query from the ship. As they sat finishing a meal he knew they would press him again, and was keen to hold onto his secrets a little longer. Truth be told, he was enjoying stringing them along.
“So, Jess,” Elizabeth said. “
Are you finally ready to let us in on the secret?”
Jess shrugged and grinned. Mentally he prepared himself for their attempts to wheedle the information out of him.
“For star’s sake, Jess!” shouted Sal. “Stop being so childish! These changes could be life or death for us. Just tell us what you’re adding.”
Jess’s mouth dropped open and he flushed with anger.
“I’m not being childish! I just need to… I want to…”
He stumbled to a halt. If he was honest the only reason to keep the changes secret was because he enjoyed doing so. He hadn’t thought of it that way, though. Sal’s anger forced him to.
It was an unpleasant realisation. He was intensely aware of being the youngest on the ship. Being captain, and being so closely linked to the Wanderer, went a long way to offsetting that but he wanted to show he wasn’t just a kid. Now his behaviour had only reinforced that impression. To make matters worse, he felt incredibly angry and wanted to lash out at Sal, even though he knew it wasn’t her fault.
“Whoa… let’s just calm it down a bit,” Elizabeth said firmly. “Sal, I understand your frustration, but you’re tired and stressed. Take a few deep breaths.”
Jess stared at Sal. She did look tired, far more tired than he had realised. She had bags under her eyes and her skin looked pale. For a moment she looked ready to lash out at Elizabeth, then she took a deep breath and nodded sharply.
“Jess,” Elizabeth said calmly. “Sal put it a bit harshly, but she’s right. This isn’t the time to be playing games. Can you please tell us what changes you’ve made?”
Jess fought the urge to say no. He’d wanted to present all the ideas in his own way, to impress the others. Instead, he was being forced to reveal the details under far less than ideal circumstances.
Ali put a hand on his arm, and met his eyes.
“Please, Jess. This is important,” she said.
Looking into Ali’s eyes, feeling the warmth of her hand on his arm, calmed Jess down. As the anger flowed out he was left grinning nervously, sheepishly.
“Right… well… so…” He stopped, cleared his throat, then started again. “I was thinking about some of the sticky positions we’ve been in, literally in the case of the tar pit we encountered. I tried to think of ways we could deal with them if they occurred again. And I came up with a few ideas.
“The first is to increase the engines’ output, because the other ideas are going to lead to an increased power drain. Quite a chunk of the extra space I set aside is just for those.
“The next really important bit was the thrusters. When we were stuck near the tar pit, unable to jump, the ships chasing us were faster. We couldn’t get far enough away from the tar pit to jump before they could overwhelm us with firepower. I don’t want us to be in that situation again, so I’ve greatly increased the thrusters. The Wanderer will really be able to move now. Then there’s a lot of structural reinforcement to allow for that.”
“Doesn’t matter how many engines you add, there’s still plenty out there that will catch her,” Elizabeth said. “Even if you made the whole ship nothing but engines and thrusters that’d still be the case.”
“I know. We won’t be able to outrun everything, but we should be able to outrun anything that we can’t outgun.”
“Hmm… OK… yes, I can see that. If you’ve added enough speed.”
“I have.”
“Anything else you’ve changed?”
“I’ve increased the internal defences a lot. When we first picked up the robots we were nearly overwhelmed. Now the ship can generate much stronger shields internally, and within our section of the ship the doors have been reinforced, too. There are some defensive weapons at key points as well.”
“Who controls those?” Ali asked, clearly concerned.
“We do. You, Sal and I. We control them through our implants. The shields and doors can be controlled by the Wanderer as well as us, but not the weapons.”
“Good. Any more additions we need to know about?”
“I’ve tweaked the ship's shields a bit, making them a little more efficient, and added some more weapons, but neither of those are significant changes.”
“It’ll all help,” replied Elizabeth. “Now, is there anything else you’ve added?”
“No, that’s it.”
“Well, that’ll do for me. Good work, though you should have told us about it sooner.”
“Pretty impressive,” Ali said, leaning over and giving Jess a peck on his cheek. Hidden by the table, her hand squeezed the top of his leg, promising more than a kiss later.
“Good work,” Sal said.
She almost seemed to bite the words off. She was clearly still upset about something, but Jess couldn’t understand why. Was his avoiding telling them the details of the changes really that big a problem? Or was there something else he’d done?
The sudden distance hurt him more than he would have expected. Sal and he shared common ground, both having been raised as prisoners and kept that way until only a few weeks before. Ali and Elizabeth could never truly understand that world. While he was glad to be away from it, and didn’t need any reminders, his life as a prisoner still defined who he was in so many ways. Sal could understand that.
The others started to discuss something else but Jess wasn’t listening. It wasn’t just Sal’s anger that distracted him, it was also the things he hadn’t told the others. Technically, he’d told the truth. There weren’t any other changes that had been made. Yet. However, he was working closely with the ship on other ideas, and if he and the Wanderer could iron out the details then they would quickly be incorporated into the ship.
Jess wondered if he should tell the others, but decided against it. The ideas he had might come to nothing, in fact probably would come to nothing in most cases. He didn’t want to look stupid by suggesting things which proved to be unworkable. He’d tell everyone when, or if, any of the ideas worked out.
* * *
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Elizabeth’s voice jerked Sal from her thoughts. She’d been sitting in a chair on the flight deck staring into space.
“What?” Sal replied, flustered.
“Whatever has you coiled up like a spring,” Elizabeth said, voice gentle but firm. “Jess needed to be shaken up a bit, but you nearly tore his head off.”
Emotions raged within Sal. Part of her desperately wanted to talk, while another part wanted to just bury the worries and pain. Elizabeth waited patiently while the conflicting urges fought. Finally, the desire to speak won out.
“Markus,” she replied. “It’s Markus. I keep dreaming about him. Then he’s on my mind all the time I’m awake. I want to try and find him, but there’s just no way to do it. I don’t know where we were when we met, where he was taken to or anything else we could use to track him down.
“Chasing off after the Wanderer’s home will make things even worse. Once we cross the Quarantine Zone that’s as good as saying I’ll never try to find him. Going there is Jess’s idea, or his and the ship’s, so I started to blame him. That all came to a head when I lost my temper.
“I know that finding Markus is impossible and I should give up on the idea, but then I feel guilty for not at least trying. I’ll spend the rest of my life feeling guilty and wondering if maybe, just maybe, we could have tracked him down and saved him.”
“That kind of regret can stay with you for a lifetime,” Elizabeth said softly. Her face clouded for a few moments, then she pulled herself together. “OK, I can understand the way you’re feeling. This is going to eat away at you forever if you don’t tackle it. So you need to start looking for him.”
“What?” Sal asked in surprise.
“Start looking. But don’t expect to track him down, in fact you need to harden your heart to the fact that it’s almost certain you won’t find him. You can at least start looking for him, though.”
“I’m not sure the others will…”
“
Of course they will!” Elizabeth interrupted. “You’ve all already gone chasing off to rescue people for Ali, and agreed to Jess’s plan to fly to the edges of known space. They’ll help you. I know they will.”
“Even if they do… where do we start?”
“Good question. Let’s bring the others into this. They’ll probably have some ideas too.”
“What, now?”
“Yep. No time like the present.”
Chapter 8
Twenty years earlier…
“Cover!” shouted Diego, the point man for squad Alpha.
Dash threw himself behind a large cargo crate as gunfire roared from ahead. They were partway across a large storage area littered with goods and rubbish.
Dash heard a scream to his right. One of the troopers was down, most of their head missing. Dash couldn’t tell who it was, just that they were from squad Charlie.
“Alpha, lay down suppressive fire,” he barked out. “Bravo, flank to the left. Charlie to the right. And for star’s sake, keep your heads down!”
As Alpha started laying down suppressive fire, the rest of Dash’s troopers started moving to the sides. Dash fought the urge to look himself, to add his own fire to the suppression. As commander it was important that he keep himself safe. There were times to risk himself, but this wasn’t one of them.
Instead, he pulled up the view from Diego’s helmet camera. Pirates were dug in at seven or eight positions. Their positioning was good, giving wide fields of fire while retaining decent cover. Dash knew they’d be able to delay his force easily, and doing so would mean more pirates could join them. Pretty soon Dash’s force would be pinned down and overwhelmed.
“Alpha, Bravo, Charlie… go heavy.”
“Alpha preparing to go heavy.”
“Bravo ready to go heavy.”
No reply came from Charlie, which told Dash who had died. Antón, known as sugar lips because he was always dating someone new. Now he’d be dating no one else.
Dash cursed. They needed Antón’s gear. He knew he should send someone else to collect it, but he was in the best position by far. Crouching tensely, he chose his moment.
Wanderer's Odyssey - Books 1 to 3: The Epic Space Opera Series Begins Page 29
