by Ian Cannon
Sireela. N’halo. The heroine from her youth.
Was she even real?
Tawny knelt down beside her and caressed her hair. She said, “Yes, things are quiet. Try to enjoy it while you can.”
“It’s hard,” Sireela said tucking Rae up close to her chin.
Tawny canted her head at her and asked, “Why?”
Sireela whispered, “Quiet doesn’t always mean good. Sometimes it means bad.”
Tawny smiled at her. She said, “Let’s pretend it means good.”
Sireela just looked at her for a moment. Those big child’s eyes blinked and she started twiddling her dolly’s hair. She finally said, “It’s funny to pretend, isn’t it?”
“Why do you think that?”
Still twiddling she said, “The truth never pretends.”
Tawny sighed. There was no placating this child. She was too smart, wise beyond her years. She admitted, “No it doesn’t, does it? Listen, I’m pretty good at protecting things. In fact, it’s what I do best. And I’m going to be right down the corridor protecting you—you and your friends. Do you believe me?”
The little girl nodded her head yes, as her cheek lay against her pillow. “Yeah, but …”
Tawny gazed into her. “What?”
She stopped twiddling the doll’s hair and said with sad, little words, “Some things are hard to protect. Some things are real hard.”
Tawny reached down and guided her chin up to look her in the eyes and said, “That doesn’t matter, Sireela. I’m going to protect you anyway.” Her words earned a tiny grin from her. Tawny said, “Go to sleep, okay?”
Sireela’s eyes closed with a breath and she tucked the doll into her chest. Tawny stared at her for another minute unsure if the sensation swelling up inside her was a motherly determination, or a deep, terrible fear. She felt as if she’d both comforted the little girl, and lied to her.
No! I will protect her! I will see her back to her people! I am N’halo’s deliverer—and I will do this!
REX’s proximity sensors were compromised in the asteroid field; too many electromagnetic and gravimetric currents ripping any microwave or light frequency detection signals apart. Their radar was good for maybe a few miles before it unraveled completely. They were basically blind.
And they could forget about radio sensory, too. The whole sky was nothing but big distorted objects for radio pulses to bounce off of. They’d get a collective range full of phantom echoes before they ever detected the real thing. And if they did detect oncoming danger, they’d never know it.
But there was a failsafe: Universal space charting.
The DPM satellites sprinkled across the outskirts of the Zii Band weren’t only for local and long distance comm. When triangulated en mass to piece together their sections of seeable space, they could display entire swaths of the solar system. In the Zii Band, the sat network had long established signaling conduits throughout, which minimized interference.
Ben brought up the universal space chart illuminating local space. The Zii Band showed on the 3-D holomap. It was actually two ancient asteroid belts crashing slowly together along their lengthwise strata and creating huge sections of churning space. Those areas looked like cosmic blenders swirling in huge vortices, before the asteroid belts ripped back apart trying to free themselves from each other. But the gravimetric push-and-pull only brought them back together over and over, slamming them into another spatial arena of rubbing, pounding and spiraling. Over time—billions of years—the two belts had crafted a braided series of collisions. Those areas were un-navigable. No man’s land. Suicide in space.
Winding throughout the Zii Band, where the forces of push-and-pull were at their greatest, long narrow space valleys of open vacuum formed, just before the asteroids were called back together. They were like conduits of passage for any space faring vessel … if their pilot was moronic enough to attempt entering the field at all.
And here he was.
Entering the field.
Like a moron.
Ben eyed the nearest valley. If he could get there, they might stand a chance of gaining distance between themselves and the Cabal. Then they could follow the vesicle of open space as far as it would allow before the Zii Band asteroids closed in on them. It would be like riding the eye of a storm upriver to safety. Of course, between REX’s position and that stretch of open space was a blender.
It made REX nervous.
“How long are we going to stay in this junk?” he asked.
Ben stabilized their flight allowing their slow tumble to match the surrounding rock. He said, “If I know the Cabal, they’ll scan up and down the Zii bank until they have proof positive that we’re either here, or we’re not. When they don’t find anything, they’ll move on.”
“And if they do find us?”
Ben gave him a smug look. “That’s why we got you, buddy.”
Tawny stepped in and slid into the co-seat. She took in the view through the viewport. Movement was limited out here. Big swirling asteroids invaded their personal space. Everything moved and tumbled. It would be easy to get claustrophobic.
They looked at each other. Ben could see it in her eyes. There were strange new thoughts going on inside her. Those kids were having an effect. He smiled, said, “We’re going to get them home.”
She nodded to him, gave him a doleful grin.
REX made a sudden low noise, very humanoid—whoa, hey.
Ben leaned up, concerned. “What is it?”
“You see this?” REX gave the 3-D proximity map a quick pulse, gaining their attention. Tawny and Ben looked at it. The image shimmered and distorted, but the rocks within a few mile radius were still visible. “There’s something coming,” REX muttered, “and it doesn’t behave like a tumbler. I’ll highlight it the next time I—there! See that?”
A quiver of motion flowered yellow to the objective west. The asteroids were all displayed in a thin blue tint with their edges shimmering in and out of registry. But it was clear to see that they were each marching to the same tune, slowly shoving along under a common current. But one of them—that tiny blip highlighted yellow—was coursing through them with a mind of its own. And it was nearing.
“What is that?” Tawny asked.
Ben shook his head, hesitant to point out his hunch. It was a probe swimming through the asteroid field hunting them. He merely said, “Tawny, I think you might want to get below.”
She nodded her head, affirmatively. It was time for her to man the bubble gun. She climbed down through the hatch.
Ben flipped the retrogrades switch bringing up the drive system.
“What’re you doing?” REX said.
“If that’s what I think it is, I’m not going to wait around for it to find us.”
REX’s tumble slowed, stabilized. He started to ascend, moving with the curvature of the nearest asteroid. It was a big one, several times REX’s size, and it curved outward as they banked toward its upper end.
On the holopad, the 3-D image choked and spumed as their signals broke. They’d reacquire once they moved around the top of the asteroid. For now, they were blind.
“Coming around.” Ben said as they gyrated around to face that approaching … whatever it was. The top of the asteroid vexed like a near horizon showing an excruciating depth of field, all shattered by more circling tonnage. Ben said, “I don’t see any—”
“Look out!” REX yelled.
The yellow blip showed suddenly on the display. Ben shot a look through the viewport. The thing dropped straight into view and landed on the asteroid’s surface. It’s legs clutched onto the stone surface carrying a big barrel-shaped body with a brightly glowing eye. It looked right at them.
“Crap, a jumper drone!” Ben called. “Shoot it!”
Down below, Tawny opened up on her trigger control. Twin streamers of condensed light fired off, pocking the asteroid’s surface in huge divots. The drone tried to leap away, but Tawny adjusted, fired. It exploded. The blas
t faded leaving them staring forward, waiting.
“Uh oh,” Tawny said over the headset. “What does that mean?”
“It means they’re here,” Ben said. The drone had spotted them for a blink in time, but at a few hundred thousand processes a second it might as well have been an eternity. It had showered the area with local band signals calling all its buddies. They’d relay signals back to the fleet until one got through the asteroids. It was just a matter of time before the Cabal honed in on them. “We gotta go, baby. Hang on.”
REX wheeled around facing the deep center of the Zii Band.
“Here goes,” Ben said and thrusted into the big twirling world of asteroids.
Tawny reacted in kind pivoting her bubble turret around to one-eighty, observing that big fat rock fall away behind them. Her targeting engine couldn’t read anything beyond her firing range. “I don’t see anything,” she said.
“If we’re lucky we’ll lose them again in the—”
“Too late!” REX said.
Ben shot a glance at the proximity display. Three of them, coming in fast, one of them peeling directly after them. “Tawny!”
“I see it,” she barked as the jumper drone sliced around the big asteroid, now falling into the distance, and honed in. Her targeting beeped. “Firing!”
Lasers in the dark. An explosion. Direct hit. Easy.
REX swung around a cluster of rocks with his long mag spires drawing out below. Ben had to make allowances in his flight control for two-hundred feet of frame hanging below his fuselage. That might get tricky. He spun around and initiated a break neck reverse flight, backing away.
Tawny adjusted, scanned the vicinity. Nothing. The other two were fading off. REX came to all-stop. They waited without breath. Ben said, “They were confirming the first drone’s sighting.”
“What now?” Tawny said.
“We wait, see what they do.”
“If they want us bad enough, they’ll wait us out.”
“We’re the ones that need a plan. The longer they wait, the better.”
“Uh,” REX said, “I don’t think they’re waiting.”
Ben looked down, half frantic. More blips registered. They were moving in from the edge of the Zii Band. Ten in all. They were in formation given the congestion of asteroids—two single file lines, each blip following its leader through and around the asteroids.
“Those aren’t drones,” Ben said. He shot a look through the viewport. “Those are craft.”
“They’re going to try to flush us out.”
“Tawny, you got anything on targeting?”
“Not yet.”
He pulled away, spun around and boosted off. The asteroid field adjusted through the viewport. Passage looked harrowing at best, impossible at worst.
“REX, bring up twelve o’clock from this position.”
The holomap rotated showing the Zii Band field at their twelve o’clock. They were going to have to move deeper in. But there was one problem. REX was an enormous ship compared to single-man fighter craft. Navigating an asteroid field would be impossible.
But REX was also a beast in comparison. A few small collisions would hardly slow him down. But fighter craft? They’d be toast.
“There!” Ben cried pointing out a portion of the map. No man’s land. “Yeah …”
Conjoining stretches of the Zii Band came together creating a massive collision of debris—a distributive latticework of ore and tonnage swirling together like a big vortex. It would be like flying into that big cosmic blender.
And beyond that was a river of clear sky.
“Targeting!” Tawny yelled. From her position she could see them through her bubble— sleek pontoon designs with rear-set cockpits and snub wings, single boosters flaring aft—veering over rock and stone at high speed. She knew this vessel type. Condor type 1 single-pilot fast attack combat fighters, the most dangerous fighters the Cabal had in their arsenal for close quarters dog fighting. Very fast. Highly maneuverable. All deadly.
From the cockpit, Ben yelled, “Firing retros!”
REX boomed forward through the debris field, picking up speed.
Tawny gyrated around, firing away. Laser strikes made visible by the micro-particulate soup in the vacuum pulverized smaller stone into expanding pebbles. She swung back the other way creating a fluctuating tail of fire through the tumbling rock. One fighter got clipped, spun out of control, slammed a rock, blew apart. Others juked around, continued their pursuit. Streams of single-file laser strikes returned causing Tawny to duck back and forth in her bubble turret.
Ben clenched his teeth swinging REX’s mag-spires way out, like a lever on a fulcrum. A cluster of rock zinged by below, barely missing. The ship’s rotation continued, slicing narrowly between two other tumbling asteroids and came back to its original flight position—a close call. The fighters squirreled through the asteroids continuing the chase.
The bucking fuselage sent Tawny’s fire askew, throwing trails at the lower plain causing her to miss her mark. Attacking laser fire crisscrossed her canopy sending heat burns across REX’s underbelly. She growled, correcting and leaned into her trigger device. Their pursuers split apart avoiding her fire and picked their own course through the rocks. One of them jerked upward, glanced off stone and spiraled away. Tawny followed it with a quick glance just long enough to watch it explode overhead.
Two down.
Still too many to go.
“Benji, you got any ideas, babe?” she yelled up through the gunner’s tube.
“Yeah—just a sec!” he yelled, swinging REX into a hard turn. Everything rotated in a dizzying blur. As their motion settled, the point of conversion between the two belts opened before them like a combat arena. The asteroids of the Zii Band thickened creating a dangerous stew of flipping rock. There was no section of the viewport that showed so much as a remotely passable road.
No man’s land welcomed them with a thousand-eyed grin.
REX screamed, “Oh, hells no, Cap!”
“Sorry, pal!”
They flew into the storm, bum-rushing into the smaller particles that greeted them first—a sea of meteorite-sized stone dinging and pining off the hull. “Auto cannons, fire twelve o’clock, zero plain!” Ben yelled.
The topside auto cannon spun around and opened up, plowing a trail of lasers into the vortex. Explosions sprinkled right off the bow. They were pounding directly into the webwork, an impossible space to navigate.
Up ahead, two primary worldlets were locked together in a single massive overture that had them spinning in a huge, lateral dance. The energy of their embrace drove each world toward the other’s core, breaking them bodily apart. Their upper mantles pealed away in quakes and crags. Hemispheres ripped into mountain jags that pulled away creating the wide spiraling arms of death-by-rock REX now flew into. The whole area was a collision inside a collision inside a collision.
They veered left, veered right, each maneuver bringing more hard tonnage scraping in ear-piercing screams along REX’s fuselage. All Ben could do was take the path of least resistance, mind spinning, calculating which cluster of rocks was the safest to charge through. Buzzers sounded. An alarm started wailing out from down in the cargo bay. A possible breach.
In the bubble gun, Tawny had a clear view of their six o’clock. The fighters maintained their pursuit—persistent bastards, probably hopped up on floxa-roids and combat uppers. Tawny’s targeting was completely down. Nevertheless, she laid into her quad laser barrels filling space with deadly bolts. One fighter exploded. Then another, turning into frags of red heat.
The fighters pelted REX with return fire. Tiny flak explosions popped around Tawny’s bubble turret in a blinding foray. She sneered and flinched against the flares. The fighters didn’t last long, though.
REX’s wake through the forest of stone sent stony fragments glancing and flipping at unexpected angles behind him. One fighter slammed head-on into a big slab. Two others rubbed each other bounced away at tangent
angles. They both shattered into balls of fire. Another one ping-ponged back and forth between stone killers, deteriorating into pieces as it did.
But one stayed with them lock-and-step with a blue stripe decal from its nose to its cockpit. It rolled left and right, juked up and down, found impossible spaces between jags of stone, keeping pace. Tawny angled her cannons at him, but lost sight. The asteroid field enclosed around her making her heart freeze up. This was getting too dangerous.
And the children.
The children.
She screamed up through the gunner’s tube, “BENJI!”
The scraps reeving off those planetoids were too big, too mountainous. They closer they approached, the more space filled with enormous things to break apart on. They’d have to find another path. Ben had an idea.
He peeled away, sliding between two jagged slivers of world as they crunched together behind and burst into fountains of rock. Looking up, Ben saw a new cluster of asteroids loom up at them. They were big. And they were tumbling right past each other, about to hit. Ben barked fearfully and jerked on the guidance controls. REX’s long, vertical frame rolled into a sideways loop batting rocks out of its way and coming over the top of the asteroids. He yelled, “REX, drop containers one through four, now!”
Outside, the cargo units slipped free and began tumbling away.
“Tawny, blast them!”
Tawny didn’t hesitate. She angled her guns, fired away. The big containers erupted into a series of explosions that sprinkled immediate space with a blinding show of white light. Their frayed debris scattered into space.
Ben corrected Rex’s roll and headed away, fast. The next second, he looked up through the cockpit canopy.
Clear skies.
“Stabilize,” Ben said.
Everything stilled, leveled out.
He’d found the vein. To the port was a wall of asteroid debris spinning lazily, and to the starboard was the same. They were in the space valley, the narrow river of open vacuum between asteroid belts. They were clear of the blender.
He wilted into his pilot’s seat laying his head back on the headrest.
Tawny emerged from the floor hatch looking frazzled. Ben glanced over, said, “You okay?”
