“Graeme, display the schematics for each of the salvager ships.” Mao studied each, unblinking. “Delphyne, what do you see?” Mao prided himself on his tactical ability, but he was not an overly proud man. He knew when to defer to his betters.
The XO froze, her body becoming statuesque and she stared wide-eyed at the both displays, taking in the information. “Neither packs much in the way of firepower. They weren’t built for battle. But they were built for surviving in the harshest parts of the galaxy.” Mao watched the small muscles of Delphyne’s face as they played a silent symphony of thought. “The Bucket has stolen proprietary shielding. No other ship in the systems has it, not even the Byers ships. The stuff hasn’t made it out of R&D yet.”
Mao knew where her mind was going. “Open a channel to the Bucket.” Graeme obliged. “Horus, pull your ship inside the perimeter of the Inferni Cluster and await further instructions.”
“Listen here, cappy—”
Mao cut off the channel before Horus could fully respond.
Delphyne shifted her focus wholly on the display of the Fair Wind. “Hep’s ship is highly maneuverable, but it won’t last long under fire. A few solid hits and it will crack in two.”
“A three-pronged approach,” Mao said. The image of a trident flashed in his mind. A nostalgic reminder of their distant past, the Navy. A time when they sailed what now seemed like puddles, but then were as vast an expanse of water as the Deep Black. He opened a comm channel to the Fair Wind. “Captain Montaine, here is our plan of attack.”
16
Time was limited, thankfully, as it left Hep with none with which to dwell on the dire nature of their situation. Mao relayed the orders, which was fine with Hep, though he felt compelled to put up at least a little resistance if only for the sake of saving face with his crew. He knew Mao was the far greater tactician, and he had no illusions of being a great military leader. He only ever wanted to earn his way.
He wondered now, sitting on the bridge of his salvage ship as his crew readied to battle one of the two greatest military powers in the systems, if that was true. How did one who claims to desire only a life of hard work and simple pleasures manage to find himself at the heart of blossoming galactic conflicts so regularly?
He banished the thought from his mind.
“Byrne, where are we?”
Alenna Byrne had unofficially stepped into the role of executive officer while Sig was incapacitated. “The engines are running at top capacity. Weapon systems are lit. We’re ready to go, sir.”
Whether they were ready or not did not matter because the battle arrived.
“Byers fleet coming out of jump, Captain,” Akari said. She displayed the arriving ships on screen—three frigates, a gunner, and a destroyer.
Hep swallowed hard.
Mao’s voice sounded over the comm. “Good luck, Captain Montaine.”
Hep swallowed hard again. He mentally followed the trail a bead of sweat carved from his brow to the tip of his nose. “And to you, Captain Mao. Fair winds and following seas.”
The black canvas of space erupted in flashes of white and yellow and red. The Byers frigates took point, laying into the Royal Blue with a barrage of fire. The three mid-size ships were built for maneuverability, to swarm larger ships and overwhelm them, exactly as they appeared to be doing now. The Blue’s shields would hold out against the attack, Byrne had assured. At least long enough for one of two things to happen. Either the Byers destroyer would move in amid the chaos and put a hole in the Blue’s hull with a well-placed torpedo, or Mao’s strategy would work.
Mao’s biggest advantage now was surprise. The Byers fleet had no reason to expect that a Navy ship would be sailing with two salvage ships, let alone two that would fight alongside it. The Fair Wind was visible on radar, but the Byers fleet may reasonably assume that it was just a civilian ship that came to work the area. So when the Fair Wind swooped around the side of the Royal Blue and flanked the destroyer that thought itself comfortable behind the line of frigates, the Byers plan of attack fell into disarray.
The Byers frigates circled back to defend the destroyer, which had fixed its sights on the Blue. In doing so, they left a clear lane for Mao to attack. The Blue opened fire, launching a torpedo through the melee. It struck the destroyer and colored the battlefield in a wash of green light and orange sparks. The assault rocked the destroyer, but the damage was limited to localized cosmetic hits. The gunner took a position above the destroyer, acting like a lookout in a crow’s nest, laying suppressing fire when needed. The Fair Wind unleashed a barrage of blaster fire from its forward battery, which was little more than a pinprick to the destroyer’s heavy shields. After its pass, the Fair Wind circled back around behind the Blue, hoping to keep the Byers fleet off balance. As the Fair Wind retreated, it drew with it one of the frigates, leaving it and the destroyer more vulnerable.
The hit-and-run tactics proved successful for another minute as the Navy coalition fell into a pattern of attack and withdraw, hammering the Byers ships and keeping them on the defensive. Two of the frigates had suffered significant damage, but the captain of the destroyer recognized the tactic soon enough. The frigates ignored the Fair Wind and focused their attacks on the Royal Blue. They circled the Blue, taking potshots at the larger ship, keeping it off balance and cutting the Fair Wind off from its safe harbor.
The Fair Wind was left out in the cold, a solitary target that was easy pickings for the destroyer and the gunner.
“We’ve been targeted,” Akari shouted in an urgent yet steady tone.
Hep squeezed the arms of his chair in a white-knuckle grip. Part of the plan, he repeated to himself. Trust the plan.
“They have a lock,” Akari said, her voice growing more insistent.
Five seconds between the point of launch and impact, Hep assumed. A direct hit from either ship would decimate the Fair Wind. Tear them to pieces. Five seconds.
He counted down.
When he reached one, Hep shut his eyes.
“Greedy rats in suits!” a husky voice shouted over the inter-ship comm. It was the first and only time Hep was ever happy to hear Horus’s voice. The Bucket emerged from the cluster like an angel descending from heaven. “Damned rats!” Or a devil climbing up from hell. Piloting the heavily-shielded ship like a battering ram, Horus slammed the Bucket into the destroyer, knocking it off course and breaking its target lock on Fair Wind.
“Engage,” Hep ordered, activating the second act of Mao’s strategy. Byrne kicked the ship’s engines into gear, accelerating them fast enough that Hep felt his organs press against his back. The Fair Wind ducked below the destroyer and came up on the rear of the gunner, which still held a sniper position above it.
“Target the ship’s cannon,” Hep ordered. The Fair Wind locked onto the pulse cannon mounted on top of the gunner. The cannon was almost the entire length of the ship, and it was the gunner’s entire reason for existing. The ship was basically a tank, a means of transporting the cannon. Without it, the ship was next to useless.
The Fair Wind opened fire. In a quick burst of sparks and vented gas, the cannon was disabled.
Beneath them, the Bucket continued to ram against the hull of the destroyer, keeping its focus off the Royal Blue. The destroyer responded by unleashing a barrage of battery fire, hammering the impressive shielding covering the Bucket. The two ships were locked in a fistfight, pounding each other in the face, bloodying their knuckles and mouths, waiting for one or the other to hit the floor.
Now free from the oppressive scope of the gunner, the Fair Wind disengaged from the tangle beneath it and made for the swarm around the Blue.
“Shields are declining,” came the transmission from the Blue. “Requesting immediate assist.”
“On our way,” Hep answered. The Fair Wind raced toward the melee and opened fire without waiting to acquire a lock. The hail of blaster fire scattered the three frigates, granting Mao and his crew a quick reprieve and opportunity to refocus.
“Reroute all power from the engines to shields,” Mao ordered. Roker hesitated. That would turn the ship into dead weight, unable to maneuver in the heat of battle as it was peppered with gunfire from several ships. “Now!”
The engines went cold as the shielding on the ship hummed and burned with energy. A magnetic force surrounded the ship, an unseen bubble. The Royal Blue was now a rock. Mao hoped he did not just doom his crew to sink to the bottom of the sea.
The frigates regrouped, settling into an attack formation, and began a run toward the Blue. The Fair Wind looped around behind the Blue and took up a defensive position behind the rock.
“Say when,” Hep said.
Mao clenched his jaw, watching the frigates bear down on them. Three ships, attack maxed out, hitting him at the same time. The shields would hold, he assured himself. Just one attack was all he needed. With enough energy left to close this deal. “Begin cycling the energy cores.”
Roker knew the plan going into the battle, but she did not agree with it. Mao relied on her professionalism as an officer to follow his orders without hesitation. Hesitation now meant death. She spun up the energy cores, cycling the power through the shields. It was as risky a maneuver as she’d ever attempted, something hardly documented in any tactics journal save for some secondhand accounts of Deep Black campaigns against warlord raiders. It was not employed by Navy ships because of the inherent risk.
“On my mark,” Mao said.
Hep resented the exhilaration that spiked in his blood. It proved something that he had long been trying to deny: that he liked this. The game. Building a strategy. Positioning the pieces on the board. Watching it all fall into place. And then executing. Savoring the unmatched beauty of victory through intelligent design. He bit his lip.
The frigates closed in. They were in short-fire range. Their forward batteries spun up.
“Now,” Mao said.
Despite herself, Roker pressed the button that executed the command. The energy pulsing through the shields spiked. The Blue’s internal systems screamed as they grew suddenly overtaxed, trying to accommodate an amount of energy that they were not built to hold. If they tried to hold onto it any longer, the systems would melt down, the engine core would go critical, and the ship would explode.
With nowhere else to put it, the Blue expelled the energy in a shockwave of radiant and destructive energy.
At the same time, Hep put the Fair Wind into a nosedive. The estimated radius was one klick from the Blue. The hull rattled. Instrumentation went wild, readings off the charts, monitors turning to static.
The wave smacked the approaching frigates like a wall. They suddenly turned listless, drifting like rudderless ships, their noses falling away from their targets.
The bridge of the Fair Wind sparked back to life, having avoided the brunt of the pulse. “Take us up!” Hep ordered. The ship pulled into a steep incline and arced behind the frigates. One after another, they targeted the core systems and opened fire. The frigates exploded.
Mao congratulated his crew, Roker especially, before commanding them to re-task all systems and target the destroyer.
The Bucket was bloodied, looking like a boxer after bareknuckle round in the ring. Horus fell back, and all three ships targeted the massive ship. With a concentrated blast of fire, the destroyer was dead.
The collective sigh was almost enough to fill the void with atmosphere.
“Well done, everyone,” Mao said over the inter-ship comm. He felt no hesitation in commending the salvagers. But the celebration was short-lived.
“Sir, we have incoming,” Graeme said.
Hep’s head was hazy with victory. “The Navy arrives just in time to miss everything. Typical.”
“Commander Calibor’s fleet is coming out of jump,” Graeme said. “But so is a second Byers fleet.”
17
The rattle of the ship made it impossible for Wilco to enjoy his nap. The unmistakable collision of blaster fire against shielding, the creak of the hull giving way to the pressure. The screams of crew not yet used to the attack.
He imagined Mao on the bridge, trying to soothe them with his calm demeanor, his calculated approach to conflict a way of taming the chaos. He imagined Mao’s mind, swirling under the façade, cracking under the pressure. The thought allowed Wilco to lay back and close his eyes, to rest with a smile.
The lock disengaged. The door whined as it swung outward.
“Is it time?” Wilco didn’t bother to open his eyes. He knew who had sprung him. There was no answer. “Then let’s get the others and get off this rig. It’s bringing back unpleasant memories.”
He still wasn’t used to the weight of his left leg. It wasn’t wholly cybernetic, but the metal components made it weigh significantly more than the other, throwing off his balance. He was agile enough to still be deadly in a fight. It was the small motions that proved the most troublesome, the slow moments that allowed him too much time to think about the gears and circuits that replaced his muscles’ neurons. The tiny flare of pain whenever he went from stationary to motion.
His left foot hit the floor with a thud. He waited for the pain to stop. Then he stood and walked out of his cell. By that time, all the others were free. Kurda towered over the others, her arms folded across her chest and an impatient scowl on her face. Trapper Mayne flashed his broken smile. Cloak did nothing, just stood like a shadow.
Wilco bent forward and reached for his toes. Fire shot up his leg but died away quickly. He needed to move to keep his body limber. It seized up quickly with inactivity, and it was a real pain getting it moving again. “Well,” he said, looking around at his recent accommodations, and then back to his people. “Let’s get to it, then.”
He led the others out of the brig. They disabled the lone guard with ease. Kurda smashed his head against the wall without exerting herself. Wilco felt insulted that Mao would leave them so weakly guarded. But the ship was under attack and his crew faced painful annihilation, so Wilco took some solace in that. They reclaimed their weapons before leaving the detention area behind them.
Trapper Mayne looped the sling over his shoulder and tightened it until his skin puckered around it, securing his staff on his back. He followed the ways of a monastic order from some backwater moon Wilco had never heard of. They were strict adherents to a philosophy disturbingly akin to self-flagellation. Though, according to Trapper, it wasn’t meant as a means of atonement, but rather to cause just enough constant discomfort that one is always aware of his mortal vessel. Or some such nonsense. As long as he could swing his staff when it mattered, Wilco didn’t care.
Kurda slid her gauntlets onto her massive fists. Each one contained its own tiny power source, the same structure as the engine cores that powered a ship, scaled down enough that it didn’t atomize her arms every time she used them. They emitted a blast upon impact powerful enough to dent the hull of a ship or turn a man’s insides to paste.
Cloak carried no weapons.
Wilco picked up the black blade, Malevolence, with reverence. He was never one to put that kind of value on material things, to idolize them, seeing how he usually never had any material things. But this sword was more than a thing. He strapped the sword to his back, the dagger and blaster to his hip.
They moved through the ship with ease, the layout coming back to him as he progressed. They encountered little resistance. Some crew even ran past them without stopping, so frantic from the battle. “Rabbits,” Wilco muttered with contempt.
The only place they faced resistance, as Wilco knew they would, was the hangar bay. The crew was massed there, prepping shuttles in case of evacuation, readying boarding parties, whatever the soldier types thought they needed to do in order to survive the battle. The only thing they needed to do to survive was step aside, but Wilco knew they would do no such thing. Slaves to protocol and orders.
“Try not to kill them,” Wilco said. “We’ll need Mao to keep an open mind later.”
At that, his
team went to work. Wilco had not picked them, they had been picked for him, but they had solidified more as a unit than any other crew of which Wilco had been a part. They were united by a common purpose, bonded by a shared experience. A shared anger. A shared hopelessness and hope.
Kurda knocked a row of sailors off their feet before they noticed her approach. Trapper flipped over them, drawing his staff with all the grace of a hummingbird approaching a flower. He was an ugly thing but moved with untold beauty. He swiped his staff in a wide horizontal arc as he landed, smacking two deck guards across their faces.
Wilco wielded his still-sheathed black blade, clubbing sailors as he moved through the bay toward an already prepped shuttle. He used his cybernetics to his advantage, long ago learning to lean into them rather than consider them a handicap. A thrust-kick with his cybernetic leg was powerful enough to send a sailor soaring ten meters back. A flick of his cybernetic wrist was enough to snap the trigger finger of an attacker.
Cloak drifted along like a wraith in their wake.
Within seconds, they had cut a swathe through the Navy forces and reached a shuttle that was ready to launch. Kurda dragged the crew from the cockpit. Wilco took the yoke. The rest of the team filed inside. The sailors in the shuttlebay were left in such shock and disarray that they barely attempted to halt the shuttle’s launch. The Royal Blue didn’t even attempt a target lock. Those on the bridge probably didn’t even register the shuttle disembarking as an oddity.
Wilco weaved the shuttle, just a ten-person craft, through the chaos of the battlefield unmolested. Mao’s alliance registered it as an ally ship. The Byers fleet registered it as a non-threat. Both were wrong. After sending an automated docking request, the Fair Wind replied by opening its airlock. Wilco couldn’t help but be impressed with the look of the ship. Hep had done well for himself. He had found himself a cozy little warren to huddle inside, waiting for the sun to rise and push away the dark so he wouldn’t have to face it.
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 47
