by Ramy Vance
Where the lance met Osprey, the dull gray metal of the hull shimmered and wavered faintly, the mirage afterglow of active energy shields keeping the lance from melting straight through the hull.
It was a battle that the shields were slowly losing.
“Hull temperature in No-A rising rapidly,” Virgil noted. “At this rate of temperature rise, thermal shock will crack the hull in three minutes, thirty seconds.”
“Shields will not hold that long,” Toner warned.
“That doesn’t matter.” With her feet beneath her, Jaeger darted to the primary weapon interface and slung the harness over her shoulder. She didn’t want to get jerked around again if they lost gravity. “We’ve got to shake that lance. There are living things in that sector. They’ll cook to death long before the hull melts.”
“I might point out, Captain,” Virgil said, “That you haven’t cared enough about those three hundred sixty-seven thousand life forms enough to check on them up until this point.”
“And I might point out that you’re a psychopath, but at this point, it doesn’t matter,” Jaeger snarled. She scrambled through the various command prompts within the weapons system, heart thudding in her ears as a chorus of warning sirens wailed around her.
“Cut the sirens, Virgil!”
The sirens ceased, leaving her with an eerie silence that was somehow worse. “Keep me posted on the details,” she breathed. She wiped a bead of sweat from her brow. The reckless flight back up the column had winded her, and it was getting hotter and hotter in the control center. She had about one day’s worth of fully functioning memory, and already her life was filling up with déjà vu.
She scrolled through her weapons options. She was looking for something. She knew the Osprey had a tool for this job. Down in her guts. If she could focus, if she could just remember, she could find the right tool and use it.
“Toner,” she distractedly said as she scrolled. Rail guns? No. The alien ship was too far away, the rail guns too inaccurate. “Can you reroute any coolant to No-A? Slow down the thermal rise?”
“On it.”
The Osprey didn’t have enough power to run the plasma-ray generators. There were a few self-guided torpedoes in the manifest, but all of them showed as currently inactive.
Come on. Jaeger chewed the gash in her tongue, letting the pain sharpen her focus. Come on. Tell me what I’m looking for.
“Would you like me to hail the enemy ship?” Virgil asked mildly.
“And say what?” She snapped. This was useless. She shoved herself away from the weapon’s console and down toward the pilot’s station.
“A universal sign for surrender,” Virgil suggested. “I’m quite sure the alien AI absorbed the meaning of that when it raided my databanks.”
“Fuck you, Virgil. They have us dead to rights, and they know it. They’re not looking to take any prisoners.”
“This AI is kind of a downer,” Toner called from somewhere distant. His voice had gone up a register. He sounded high, almost giddy. Jaeger heard the distant wail of generator bay sirens coming through the speaker.
“I take no responsibility for it,” Jaeger gritted. “Virgil, hail the other human ship. See if she can offer any help.”
“Hull temperature in No-A sector rising.” Virgil sounded entirely too cheerful. “Ambient air temperature, fifty degrees Celsius and rising.”
“When I get a free minute I am going to give you an attitude adjustment with a wrench and a blowtorch,” Jaeger roared. “Hail the goddamned fighter!”
She scanned the thruster readout and compared it to the earlier approach speed of the saucer. At full power, her gut said the Osprey could outrun this flying saucer. In her current state? No hope. She might be able to lose it on a short sub-light jump if she could pull power to the engines for long enough.
And if the thing couldn't track them.
“Hailing.”
“I’m putting everything I have into protecting No-A,” Toner warned. “If they shift targets suddenly, Captain, they’re going to punch through the hull like it’s wet toilet paper.”
Jaeger stared at the status schematic. The blueprint of her beautiful, hurting ship, its lines growing red along the starboard wing where the heat kept rising. No-A. It was, relatively speaking, a small sector. Not nearly large enough for all the people Virgil claimed it held.
These aliens wanted it obliterated.
If she let them destroy the sector, maybe they would leave the rest of the ship alone.
It was a thin, bitter hope—only a hair left of Virgil’s cowardly suggestion of surrender. Everything in her screamed against it. Whatever was in that sector, it was hers. Her problem and her responsibility.
However, the generators were still recovering from earlier damage, and she didn’t have the power to bring any weapons or main engines online. She couldn’t make them pump faster. Even diverting power from grav-spin, again, would only buy another minute or two of shield generation.
She was about to give the command to divert power from grav-spin when a slowly rotating part of the status schematic caught her eye. She stared at the tumbling silo shape of the observation deck. There was something there. She could feel it.
“Ambient temperature in sector No-A, fifty-three degrees Celsius and rising,” Virgil said.
“Any response from the human ship?”
“Not yet.”
“The coolant system is buying us some time, but it’s going to fail before too long,” Toner said. “And some asshole vented all of our backup.” His tone turned nervous. “We’re losing this staring contest, Captain, and it’s getting hot in here. What’s next?”
“I’m thinking.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, the wail of sirens from the generator bay turned into the tense, rising drone of violins, the deep thrum of bass. Music, remembered and pulsing with her heartbeat. She glanced back at the schematic. The observation deck. It had amazing acoustics.
And a lovely view of the stars, afforded by a rare semi-conductive alloy with unique light-bending properties.
She threw herself back to the pilot’s station with a yell of triumph. “Toner! Do you have fine control over all of the shield generators on the hull?”
“I—Hang on.” There was a brief blurt of static. “Yeah, I do, but I don’t have enough power to activate any more of them.”
“Listen closely.” She activated fore and aft thruster controls. Her head spun, but that was fine. The adrenaline was kicking in, and she could live on that if she needed to.
If she had the breath to spare, she’d tell Virgil to play music.
“I only need you to keep three shield generators running,” she breathed. She scanned Virgil’s analysis of the energy lance composition. “I’m going to bring the ship around and turn her into the beam. The enemy lance can only move in a straight line. I need you to keep the shield generators running so that they’re moving with enemy fire as it’s landing across the hull.”
“You want to force them to re-target?”
“Yes. I need to get that lance pointed at our nose. The light-bending properties of the observation deck will scatter the energy lance. It’s, um—with the right conductive charge, the hull there is basically a giant deflector dish. It will shield us from the lance.” She hoped. “As long as we keep it within that line of fire, their weapon will be functionally useless. The disruption might buy us time to get out of here. Do you understand?”
There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line. “Yes, and I wish I didn’t. Christ. That’s a tall order.”
“I’ll do my best to keep it steady, but if we take this maneuver too slowly, they’ll have too much time to compensate and redirect weapons fire.”
“Jaeger, I can only run shields over about two percent of the hull surface. There is no margin for error. If you slip with the thrusters, boom, their lance pierces the ship. If I can’t transition smoothly across the generators, boom, toast. If any one of the generators in t
he path is glitchy, boom—”
“Do you have a better idea, Toner?”
“If they redirect weapons fire without warning, boom, dead—”
“Toner, I am open to better ideas.”
There was a beat of silence punctuated only by the wail of distant sirens.
“Ambient temperature in sector No-A, fifty-seven degrees Celsius,” Virgil said. Jaeger could swear the AI was jeering at her. “It will rapidly become incompatible with human life.”
“Maybe it will cook the monster,” Toner said wistfully. “I’ve never had roasted rhinoceros. Sorry. Yeah, Captain, you’re right. I got nothing. Preparing to shift generators now.”
Jaeger let out a breath. “Good. I’m going to turn this bird around. Be prepared to activate and deactivate all of the shield generators along the exterior starboard wing, then the ones across the crew quarters and command center. On my mark.”
“Blow winds and crack your cheeks!” Toner boomed. “Rage, blow, you cataracts and hurricanes!”
Chapter Fourteen
Seeker folded his hands over his chest and contemplated the new ship on the tactical display. His computer did not recognize it. He did. It was a big-ass frying pan with a lid, and its handle cut off. It was firing a focused laser ray at the raptor’s starboard wing.
After almost an hour of eerie stillness between the raptor and the distant saucer, the alien ship had suddenly roared to life and fired up what appeared to Seeker like a mining laser. According to his readouts, it wasn’t a powerful laser—at least, not yet. As he studied the screen, he saw the energy profile increasing. Sooner or later, it would start poking holes in the raptor.
Seeker fiddled with his comm. He remembered nothing in particular of his life before waking up in this cockpit, but his guts told him that indecision was a new sensation—one that gave him heartburn. The raptor with Tribe Six emblazoned on her hull was behaving strangely. She should have answered Seeker’s hails. She hadn’t, and that smelled like conspiracy and crime.
Then again, he had some vague idea of what she was. She was a human ship, and she was under attack by unknown hostiles.
As he watched, the injured raptor’s thrusters began to glow. Slowly, so slowly that at first, it appeared to be only an illusion, the bird began to rotate.
“What the…” Seeker muttered.
Tribe Six was not turning away from the hostile, as she would if she were preparing for a sub-light jump the hell out of a bad situation. She was turning into enemy fire. The energy lance flared brilliantly against the shifting planes of the ship. Seeker threw up a big hand, squinting to protect his vision from the light. He blinked spots for several seconds before noticing the urgent message flashing on his comm screen.
Incoming message. Receive?
“Oh, now you want to talk?” Seeker poked the Y. “Tribe Six?” He grunted as the speakers around him crackled to life. Static flared over the comms channel as the raptor outside continued to turn. “Is that you? What in the hell are you doing?”
“This is the Osprey.” The voice that came through his speakers was soft, clipped, and a touch nasal, with some fussy European accent. Seeker felt his fist clench. The urge to punch the face that produced such a voice—it was instinct. “We are requesting aid. We have encountered a hostile alien entity.”
“Yes, I would say you have.” Seeker squinted at the screen, watching the achingly slow rotation of the Osprey as she turned to face the alien vessel. Waves of light flashed and danced as the steady pulse of the energy lance danced over her hull. “So what, you’re gonna run in and kamikaze the bastard?”
There was a moment of silence as if the voice was surprised to hear a response. “The captain is attempting to deflect the energy lance in an experimental maneuver with a very slim chance of success. We will know if it is successful momentarily. If not, the weapon will likely destroy the Osprey as it punctures our command core.”
“Yeah, yeah, I see that,” Seeker grunted. “What do you want me to do?”
“I will connect you with the captain.”
There was another pause and a blare of static as the comms channel opened. A new voice echoed through his cockpit, this one tense and distinctly feminine. There was a faint slur to her words as if she were speaking through a dislocated jaw.
“We need an escape route,” she growled. No hello, no demands to identify himself. Straight to business.
Seeker could respect that.
“Once we get the deflector aligned, I hope the feedback will buy us a little time to retreat,” she said. “Our generators are damaged. Weapons offline, and we can only run our sub-light engines for brief periods. Our navigation computers are offline. We are effectively blind. Ideas?”
Seeker looked around his cockpit. The stupid vape pen offered no solutions. He leaned back in his seat and gnawed on the last strip of jerky as he studied his tactical display. He felt no particular sense of urgency. Pants-on-fire hysteria never did anybody any good.
“There’s a big-ass anomaly right behind you,” he suggested. “I’m not sure what it is, but it’s something.”
The woman at the other end of the speaker barked a laugh. “We’re not prepared to pass through the wormhole. We wouldn’t survive the jump.”
Seeker eyed the uncanny white orb hanging on one of his display screens. A big white dead pixel between the stars. A wormhole? It would explain why his navigation computers hadn’t been able to find any familiar point of reference in the starfields around him. They’d jumped, abruptly and without ceremony, to fuck-knows-where.
“So don’t go through it.” Seeker flicked the switch on his pen and sucked the nozzle. He felt his lips curl into a sneer. The damn thing was cold. It had no soul. He bit into the nozzle until his jaw ached. “It’s spewing out all kinds of weird radiation that's fucking up my sensors. It might fuck up theirs, too. Go hide behind it.”
A bright flare from the display screen washed his cockpit in another wave of blinding light, and he cursed, dropping the pen. A new wave of spots washed over his vision. The speakers spilled a deafening roar of static.
Seeker wondered, idly, if the Osprey had exploded. He pondered whether this was his very last instant of life before the shock wave hit his fighter and turned him to hamburger, then into a smear of radioactive dust.
It had been a short, confusing second life since waking up on this side of a wormhole without memory or purpose. He would have liked to have fulfilled his mission, but he didn’t feel he had failed. How could he? He had no fucking clue what his mission was supposed to be.
His only real regret was spending these last few hours with a god damned vape pen.
Then his vision cleared and the static faded into a ringing silence. The speakers blared again.
“Fighter, do you copy? Human fighter! Do you copy?”
“I’m still here.” Seeker sighed.
“We just got a hole punched through a storage bay. Watch out for shrapnel.”
“Yep.” Seeker watched as a spray of debris scattered across his radar screen. A new, black scar had formed across one of the modules that made up the raptor’s central column. A glittering mist of detritus sprayed out from her breached hull as the abrupt pressure change sucked the contents of that bay out into the void.
Amazingly, the raptor continued her slow, steady spin as the energy lance continued its path across her hull. Seeker activated his thrusters, drawing him closer to the ship. The scattering debris should help hide him from enemy radar if the saucer decided to come after him. “I’m all cl…is that a pool table?”
A new, reedy voice came on the speaker. Less punchable than the first but still annoying. “Aw, man. They got the crew lounge! Sorry, Captain—like I said, not all of the shield generators are running perfectly.”
“They’ll get the command center next if you don’t stay focused, Toner,” the woman snapped. “We’re almost there.”
“Aye, Captain.” The man sounded giddy, like a teenager who’d had one too ma
ny of those awful moose-piss turbo-stimulant sodas.
“Virgil, prepare for a sub-light jump on my mark,” the woman said. “Input coordinates to the opposite side of the wormhole.” The woman paused, before adding, “Just to be clear, not through it, but around the edge of it. We’re going to hide in her shadow. In about thirty seconds, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of feedback in all directions as the energy lance scatters. If you can get to my port wing fighter bay doors, we’ll shelter you.”
It took Seeker a beat to realize she was talking to him again. He considered his options, then shook his head. Piloting into a fighter bay at speed was tricky. Yeah, he thought he could thread that needle, but it would probably fuck up his ship, and right now, it was the only thing he had that he actually liked.
“Negative,” he said. “Get out of here. I’ll cut power and drift with the wreckage until they go away. I’ll just look like a big piece of debris to them.”
There was a split second of silence on the other end of the line. On screen, the energy lance drew perilously close to the tiny spinning module of the observation deck.
“Got it,” the woman—captain—said finally, her voice turning as flat as the calm waters ahead of a hurricane. “Once the coast is clear, rendezvous with us on the other side of the wormhole. I’ll buy you a drink. Over and out.”
The comm channel went dead.
Ahead, the energy lance touched the observation deck.
Seeker’s world turned white.
Chapter Fifteen
The sirens had ceased. The danger wasn’t over; it had just gone quiet. Toner found Jaeger in the access corridor outside of the general crew quarters. She sat leaning against the bulkhead, eyes closed, her lips stained red with drying blood. Sweat stuck her short, dark hair to her scalp and the pale swath of foam over her forehead. The door beside her blinked red.
