by Daniel Gibbs
After several moments, Felix found he had no reply to that. He thought about the state of his soul, or rather, how he felt. Jules was the faithful one. The war, and all of the terrible things he'd seen, he'd done, they’d drained away Felix's faith. The world, so to speak, seemed to be made to crush religious belief.
Any further consideration came to an end when the holotank lit up. Felix watched as one, then two, then two more signatures appeared. "Wormholes opening up around us," he said. "It looks like an ambush!" He hit the switch on the command chair that powered the ship's alert klaxons.
"I've got the drives ready," Vidia said. "Evasive power at command."
"Solid contacts," Yanik added. With a tap of a taloned finger, he put an image up on the display surface. A long ship with eight pylons extending from its central body, each terminating in one of the four pods nearly as long as the entire ship, appeared. "All ships match this silhouette."
Felix recognized them. "Tash'vakal nomads," he said, almost snarling. "Probably pirates."
The door behind them opened, and Henry stepped in. "What do we have?" he asked as his eyes went to the display. "Never mind. Nomad pirates."
"Tash'vakal. Vrekta." Yanik's use of one of the nastier Saurian curses showed his feelings. "I will prepare weapons."
Felix yielded his seat to Henry. "I'll go man a turret," he said.
"Good. Get Ms. Gaon on one too. Pieter will probably prefer Brigitte's help."
Tia came in, with Cera behind her. Vidia abandoned the helm for her, bound for another of the turrets.
"Ah, six-limbed lizard-pirates," Cera said, recognizing the ship. "I wonder which Clan?"
"They're all pretty ugly," Tia remarked.
Piper entered at that moment, replacing Yanik with a nod. "Bringing plasma cannons and auto-turrets online."
Tia's board lit up. "Signal coming in."
The image shifted to show an alien of mostly dark red scales. A mouth with wicked sharp teeth was visible, with eyes as black as coal. "I am Chief Lamat, Ship-Lord of the Vanarak and Chief of the Mek'taman. Human ship, we have you surrounded."
"So I noticed," Henry remarked. "What do you want?"
Lamat motioned a clawed hand off-screen. An image of Miri appeared beside her. "You carry this human aboard. Deliver her to us, and we will be on our way. Fail, and we will take her, and whatever else we please, from your broken ship. We give you one of your minutes to signal compliance. Attempt trickery, and I will have you served to my Clan's Ship-Lords as a victory meal." With that, the reptilian alien disappeared from the screen.
"Well," Cera sighed. "Aren't they th' cheery lot?"
23
From four different vectors, the Tash'vakal nomads closed the distance on the Shadow Wolf. Their formation was well-considered, given the range involved as the Shadow Wolf had no line of retreat that couldn’t be intercepted by at least one enemy vessel.
The most obvious tactic was to jump. Henry considered it, but held back before proposing it. "This is too coordinated," he said. "They knew where we were. How to arrange their formation optimally."
"That makes me worried." Now Piper spoke, even as she finished preparations to fire on the approaching vessels. "This isn't exactly a major waypoint system. There's a dozen others I could’ve calculated courses to. They couldn't have guessed this one."
"If they didn't, we’ve got a tracker onboard."
Everyone's mind went to the same source, but here Tia was the one to speak first. "No. It's not Gaon. Oskar would’ve found something."
"We didn't take cargo aboard," Henry stopped, mid-word. Their minute was just about up, and while he never considered handing Miri Gaon over, he had to be focused for the fight ahead. "See that ship, at bearing two-hundred mark positive eighty? Take us straight at them."
"We going to use th' toy in th' holds, sir?" Cera's question came as she adjusted the Shadow Wolf's heading and put the plasma drives to full burn. The ship's inertial compensators kept them from feeling the pull of the turn onto the new course or the acceleration.
Despite Cera's definite, enthusiastic hope for a yes, Henry shook his head. "Not yet," he said. "Let's see how they react first."
"Right."
"If Gaon didn't bring it aboard, and we didn't take on cargo, then somehow we've got a tracker attached to a ship," Tia remarked. "Jumping away won't help; they’ll get a signal within minutes and follow."
"That's why we give them something to think about before we try." Henry thumbed the intercom for engineering. "Pieter, what can we do for a double jump?"
"Give me some time, I might manage it, if the exotic particles don't kill us all by popping up in the wrong spot. But the drive'll need a complete overhaul when we finish, so make sure we're in an inhabited system!"
"How much time do you need?"
"At least half an hour."
Henry nodded. "Acknowledged."
"We're still three jumps from Lusitania," Piper said.
"I'm well aware of that, Miss Lopez," Henry said stiffly. "But we need to lose our tail first, or we won't live long enough to get there."
"Alright. Checking star charts."
Henry let her do so, although he already had an idea of one answer, and it was the one he was already interested in visiting.
"The Tash'vakal ships are launching fighters," Piper said. "All vectors."
Henry acknowledged that report with a nod. Given their ships were habitats as well as active spacecraft, using fighters to cripple their targets and avoid getting into direct battles made sense. "Stand by on turrets and for tight maneuvers."
Now came the worst part, the one he'd known since his CDF days: "hurry up and wait."
Jastavi took his usual curved seat in the middle of the Pahknabi with satisfaction. The command platform was the highest point in the chamber, allowing him to look down at the ship-minders' displays and work with little effort. A holotank screen showed the formation of fighters they'd just launched, now on course for the human ship.
The human ship that seemed to be challenging him directly by flying right at the Pahknabi.
Is this human captain a fool or a worthy foe? Jastavi hadn't expected this maneuver. He'd expected an attempt to jump out and had his ship's drives readied for the contingency, given the relatively low likelihood of just one extra jump causing an exotic particle-induced catastrophe. The foe charging for him before the others was not in his calculations. It gave him pause. But only somewhat. "Remember, the ship is to be taken," Jastavi insisted over the channel to his fighter wing pilots. "Do not engage to destroy without further authorization."
The response from Pilot-Lord Neshas was immediate. "Understood, my Lord. Victory for the Clan!" she pledged.
"Victory for the Clan." With that habitual exhortation done, Jastavi was free to again consider his opponents' action. Flying straight for the Pahknabi implied he did not fear the Pahknabi, an insulting thought to be sure, or at least did not fear it as much as he feared the others, which was also offensive.
Jastavi saw the idea then. The Shadow Wolf's captain was attempting to prolong the time in which he was only under threat from one foe. His course ensured that the others would not intercept until the Pahknabi had been engaged for some time. Clearly, he felt he had an advantage in such a circumstance.
But what Jastavi couldn't figure out was what the Human thought he could do. The Pahknabi could easily overwhelm his deflectors before being left behind, allowing for crippling shots. Just what was this Human thinking?
"So. The plan, Jim?"
Tia's question won Henry's attention. He glanced over from the holotank. "Hrm?"
"You have a plan," she said. "I know you have a plan, because you get this gleam in your eye that makes you look a little smug."
Henry smiled thinly. "I have a plan. It involves giving them a bloody nose."
"How big a bloody nose?" Cera asked.
"Enough to scare them. But I don't want to hurt them too badly. That'll make them mad and determined t
o kill us."
"Well, they've already threatened to eat us," Piper reminded them all in a droll voice.
"What do I have for options, Lopez?"
Piper sighed and returned her attention to her station and the starmap. "A lot of empty systems—"
"Most of space is empty anyway."
The sarcastic remark brought Piper to roll her eyes at her boss. "—and only a few workable destinations, if we double jump right away. Why are we doing that anyway? Exotic particles are usually bad for things like human bodies or reactive fuel. They make things go boom."
"Because they've already jumped once. If we do a single jump, they could potentially double-jump. If we double-jump, I'm betting they can't triple, not with the particle load threat or the state of their jump systems. And if we double-jump to the right system, somewhere they can't come safely—"
"—they won't even try," Tia finished for him.
"Especially if we've given them a bloody nose."
"Well, we'll be stinging them first," Piper said. "Enemy fighters entering weapons range."
"All gunners, weapons free," Henry said into the intercom.
Among the many things Miri expected to have happened in her new life as a spacer, manning a pulse gun turret had never factored in.
At Felix Rothbard's instruction, she was in the upper port turret. Getting into it had required a short ladder climb, leading into the half-sphere chamber for the gun. She secured herself into the turret seat and lowered the breathing mask over her head, ensuring she would get oxygen from the ship's air storage and protect her eyes from vacuum should the turret be exposed to space by enemy fire. A harness helped ensure a decompression couldn't suck her out either. With this done, she pushed the lever to move the seat forward half a meter, moving it up to the gun controls. They required both hands to use, with index finger triggers for the gun mount in question. There was a physical crosshair of metal built into the controls. It was a very basic, no-frills setup, nowhere near as sophisticated as the automated or semi-automated anti-fighter mount found on true military ships.
A holographic blue light formed on the periphery of a heads-up display. It increased in size as Miri guided the turret toward it. A Tash'vakal-built fighter came screaming in from that angle, looking like a shovel blade mounted with missiles and weapons and engines burning with yellow light. Ruby light lit up space before her from the fighter's attack, and the Shadow Wolf's deflectors absorbed it. Her fingers squeezed the triggers in response. Pulses of sapphire light erupted from the four barrels and streaked toward the fighter. A couple of the pulses hit before it twisted out of view. Miri doubted she'd done more than degrade the deflectors on the craft.
More lights were forming on the periphery of the holo-viewer as the ship's targeting systems determined the presence of more enemy fighters. Given the limitations on the budget of an independent trader, even that amount of connection to the ship's targeting systems was something of a luxury. Miri reached back through the decades to her early life, when she was barely an adult, for the training she'd had in using these kinds of weapons. She picked one of the growing lights and lifted the controls to "lower" the gun from her perspective, her left hand twisting to turn it as well. Even before the fighter became visible, her fingers found the firing triggers.
This maneuver served her well, as it put a stream of pulses dead on target. The full barrage caught the enemy in the rear, as it was finishing an attack run when it came into her sights, and blew through whatever deflectors the craft had. Her efforts were rewarded by the explosion of orange and red colors that consumed the heart of the fighter and blasted its exterior pieces in all directions. "Enemy fighter down," she reported into the ship intercom.
"Nice shooting, Ms. Gaon," replied Felix. "Got another one coming your way."
She saw it a moment later, coming from below the Shadow Wolf. Pulse fire from the turret below was following it as Miri tracked her gun mount to open up on it. The twin streams of pulses defeated the pilot's efforts to evade, and this fighter also exploded.
The brief rush of victory she felt was immediately dampened by the shuddering of the ship. A heavy impact, likely a missile or a mag-cannon round, was the culprit, straining the moorings of the ship's deflectors from the transferred kinetic energy. It was a good reminder that the ship was still in danger as she brought the pulse turret to bear again on another approaching enemy craft.
On the bridge, Piper checked the status display. "Direct missile hit, aft starboard quarter. Deflectors strained but intact. Two more missiles inbound… now none, auto-turrets got them."
That was good to know. The auto-turrets were the one weapon system that was basic to the ship, a purely defensive system for shooting down missiles and projectiles with magnetically-propelled interceptors. They could do some double-duty as anti-fighter weapons, but the quad turrets were far deadlier against enemy fighters, as they were proving even now as another small red dot disappeared from the holotank in front of and to the side of Henry.
He triggered the intercom. "Pieter, time to jump?"
"If you still want a double jump, I need another ten minutes!" Being rushed brought out Pieter's Afrikaans accent strongly, adding "ooo" sounds to "double" and "another." "I have to finish treating the drive for the heat spike. Remember that overhaul!"
"I will," Henry promised.
As soon as he finished speaking, the ship rocked hard. "Missile impact, port side. Deflectors are degrading." Piper shook her head. "The auto-turrets can't keep up with them."
"Distance to the ship ahead?"
"Still closing. Eight minutes to maximum cannon range."
Henry nodded while his attention was on the holotank. The fighters from the other Tash'vakal ships were closing rapidly. He guessed five minutes, maybe a little less before they were in combat range. We can't jump out before then, at least not if we want to be ready for a double jump. Taking that into account, Henry ordered, "Prep for fusion drive burn, time four minutes."
"Pieter's not going to be pleased," Tia noted as she implemented the order.
"That's why it's a good thing he's got Brigitte helping," Henry said. "And also why we automated the changeover so much."
Tia accepted the point and raised another. "If we make range with that Tash'vakal ship before we can jump, it's going to hammer us."
"That's why we're not giving them a chance."
The enemy ship continued its steady burn toward the Pahknabi. Ship-Lord Jastavi watched his display as his fighters continued their struggle against the Human ship. "The anti-fighter defense for a ship like that is most impressive," he admitted. He turned toward a male manning his ship's weapon station. "Weaponeer, time to weapons range?"
"Missiles are in range, but the enemy has demonstrated intercept capability," the weaponeer answered. "Magnetic cannon will gain accurate range in four tekams. Five tekams for particle cannon range."
"Very well." Jastavi's upper and middle limbs clasped under his chin. "If these Humans wish a challenge, they shall get one indeed."
As the four-minute mark approached, the Shadow Wolf shook again, more violently this time. "Starboard hit, deflectors are failing," Tia warned. Another shake. "Aft hit, deflectors still failing."
"Their second fighter wing is engaging," Piper said. "The auto-turrets are being overwhelmed."
While it was a bit earlier than he'd wanted, Henry recognized they had to start now. "Cera, full burn on fusion drives, now!"
"Aye!"
With several key presses, Cera brought the Shadow Wolf's hidden advantage to life. Within the two aft holds, usually kept without atmosphere and sealed off as if damaged, tanks of deuterium and helium-3 started pumping their contents into a conventional reactor vessel. The two elements, given the right conditions, started fusing together at the atomic level, producing energy and other byproducts. The plasma generated by the reactor was drawn by electromagnetic fields into reinforced lines linked to the ship's rear-engine nozzles.
The ultimat
e result of this process was thrust. regular
The Shadow Wolf's acceleration caught the attacking fighters by surprise. The shift in the hauler's delta-vee was such their targeting systems were completely thrown off, and with it, their fire. Many of the fighters altered their courses to avoid shooting at their own side or in a vain effort to adjust.
Aboard the ship, everyone felt the increased pressure as the vastly-increased thrust overwhelmed the hauler's inertial compensators. "We're at 2Gs now, compensators are still struggling," Tia said. "Make that 2.1Gs!"
"At this rate, we'll be in firing range in less than a minute," Piper added.
"Fire when you've got the range," Henry answered.
On the Pahknabi bridge, Ship-Lord Jastavi was surprised despite himself. He'd known, instinctively, that the human ship was hiding something. But he'd expected something like heavy guns, not a more powerful engine system.
"The fighters are beginning pursuit," his tactical expert commented. "But it will take them some time to get back into range."
"I can see that," Jastavi hissed in reply. The nimble fighters were indeed capable of high speed, but it would take time for the acceleration curve to overtake their foe's trajectory. The Pahknabi would be in engagement range long before that. "Put us on their course, astrogator. Weaponeer, shoot to disable! Their speed prevents them from breaking away from us!"
He was answered in the affirmative as the distance to the Shadow Wolf melted away.
Henry eyed the distance and considered the gamble he was taking. It was a necessity; the fighters would overwhelm them if they caught up, but the Tash'vakal ship had a position where flying around them without coming into effective weapons range was unlikely. Added to that was the likelihood they were tracking his vessel. He wanted to give them a reason to be wary of trying this again.
