by Nathan Jones
After a while, though, there was an almost unspoken agreement among the others to take a short break; she supposed you could only strain your mind on such complex calculations for so long before needing to rest it.
Ali went and grabbed them snacks from the galley, while everyone else leaned back in their seats and rubbed their eyes. “So, Captain, just to sate my curiosity,” Barix said, glancing after the departing Caretaker. Or, more accurately, at her perfect backside. “Does you tapping your robotic resource mean you trust her again, or were you just tired of the sudden return to celibacy?”
“You know, I really treasure these little chats of ours,” Aiden replied dourly, sidestepping the question.
The slight man raised his hands. “Hey, I don't blame you. My little purebred is always dragging me into doing stupid things, too. For someone of my superior intellect, it's actually quite frustrating to be constantly having to fight those base instincts.”
Lana rolled her eyes, thinking of all the wildly inappropriate things the Ishivi had said to her since she'd come aboard, ostensibly in an effort to get in her uniform. “Yeah, you really try your best, don't you?” she said. Belix snickered.
“I'll have you know I'm outrageous to you as a personality quirk,” Barix replied with great dignity. “Not out of any biological impulse.”
“And that makes it better?” Dax asked, the slight edge to his tone suggesting it wasn't completely banter for him.
“For me? Unquestionably.” The slight man turned to Aiden. “Back to our original subject. To be fair, I can't complain about you lubricating your drive piston, if it means we get more lucrative opportunities like this one. I for one welcome our new robotic masters.”
“I'm sure you do, if it means a chance you'll get a companion of your own to serve your every whim and quietly control your every decision,” the captain muttered. “Void, if I'd given you Ali you'd be following her around like a lapdo-”
Lana jumped when Dax abruptly stiffened and leaned over his controls, his voice showing emotion in spite of the professional setting of being on duty. And that emotion was alarm. “Two ships just jumped in!”
Aiden was already steering the Last Stand into a vicious evasive maneuver, one that nearly threw Lana out of her seat in spite of the inertial dampeners. He was cursing like a, well, pirate, eyes on the main display. “Right on top of us, too. That's no coincidence.”
No, it surely wasn't.
The Dormant hastily stood, clutching the back of her portable terminal's seat for support when the captain threw them into another maneuver. “Reporting to duty station,” she yelled as she bolted for the exit, headed for the shields room. Belix was hot on her heels, making for her post in the engines room. Around them, the combat stations klaxon had activated to fill the room with blood-red light and a deafening wail.
This was it. She'd be ready to get to work the moment she was triggered, beginning her sabotage and attacking the ship from within. A pity she'd only managed to reprogram two of the new Fixes; between them all being stored together, and often busy with assigned tasks, finding a chance to get one alone for long enough to work on it had been a real pain.
No matter. Two should be enough to back her up, especially with the element of surprise. Within minutes, most likely, her mission would be complete and the Last Stand would be destroyed. All she needed was the trigger.
Which . . . should've come the moment the task force ships jumped in. Where was it?
* * * * *
Aiden pulled the Last Stand out of a modified corkscrew and tried to get some distance between him and their two unexpected arrivals. Who, suspiciously, had begun shooting pretty much the moment they emerged from their spacetime rifts, and with surprising accuracy.
The trick about trying to outdistance pursuit was it required going in a straight line, or at least consistently moving in the same direction. Which left your movements predictable and your ship awfully vulnerable to enemy fire. Another problem was that the attacking ships had emerged from their rifts at the fastest safe speed, moving directly for the Last Stand on coordinated routes.
In other words, they'd made escape as close to impossible as they could. “Ali?” he said tersely. “What's going on with these ships?”
She answered slowly, still in the midst of processing the data. “Standard heavy transports meant for carrying assault shuttles and infantry troops, primarily combat androids. This one has the typical weapons loadout for a support ship of its size, comparable to a light cruiser but with more shield layers and enhanced buffers to make up for inferior maneuverability.”
Under most circumstances, that would give the transport slightly better than even odds in a head to head fight against a normal light cruiser. With the Last Stand's improved systems, Aiden would've been confident pitting his ship against either of these hulking piles of space debris, but going up against both at the same time significantly shifted those odds.
Especially since there was the mystery of why the Deeks were sending transports after him. Was it just the best they could scrape together on short notice?
The Last Stand's fourth layer of shields winked and overloaded, leaving only two left, and he grit his teeth and focused more on evading and less on escaping. Hopefully, slow as the transports were his ship's escape would be inevitable in any case.
Aiden just needed to focus on staying alive that long. “Gunner, you making anything happen?” he demanded, although he didn't have high hopes against such sturdy targets.
The young man simply shook his head, not needing to tell him what he could already see; now that the chase was on, the pursuit paths of the two ships were converging on each other. Rather than try to evade the Last Stand's return fire, throwing off their own aim, the transports looked as if they planned shield each other if the gunner came close to knocking down the shields of either target, allowing time for them to recharge.
And of course, there was no way even the Last Stand's weapons loadout could take down the shields of both ships simultaneously. The only small silver lining was that in the brief times the targeted transport hid to recharge its shields, only one would be firing on them.
A small, small silver lining. Biting back a curse, Aiden tried a few more daring maneuvers to buy them some more distance, snapping at Barix as he did. “You calculating a rift out of here for us?”
“No, I'm browsing full immersion dives to decide my next adventure,” the slight man snapped sarcastically. “You know, you should've ordered me to have a jump prepped in case something like this happened.”
Prep a jump, out in the middle of nowhere when nobody should know they were here? He'd drive his crew insane working them overtime on something like that. “If you're volunteering,” Aiden growled, yanking the ship back into evasive maneuvers as a barrage of laser bursts from the two transports took down all but the last layer of his shields.
“Receiving a message from our attackers,” Ali said, voice maddeningly calm in the chaos. She hesitated. “Or more accurately, from a communications rift located nearby.”
A sudden suspicion stirred in Aiden's gut. He'd just assumed this was the Movement, but if so it would be the captain of one of those transports contacting him. Unless of course a senior officer was coordinating the attack and wanted to call to gloat.
But suddenly, he didn't think so. “Put her on,” he said quietly.
Sure enough, moments later Elyssa's face appeared on the display, harsh and cruel in triumph. “Captain,” she said coldly.
Aiden felt his heart sink as his suspicions were confirmed. Being caught by the Deek task force would've been bad enough, but in a way this was even worse; he'd been hoping his former crew member wouldn't go this far, even considering how angry she'd been the last time they'd spoken.
That some last trace of loyalty to him, at least as a fellow Stag, remained.
“Elyssa,” he said as gently as he could. “Here to retrieve the deposit you gave us for the botched job?”
Her
face momentarily twisted in fury before becoming composed again. “With interest,” she agreed.
Barix cursed. “The transports are firing atomics.”
So much for them having a standard loadout. Aiden judged distance temporarily more important than having all six layers of shields up, and gunned his ship into a straight line with only slight evasive maneuvers. As he did so he yelled frantically. “Hey, hold on, Elyssa! We should talk this through, now that you've had a chance to cool down from our previous encounter. There's no need for this.”
“There very much is, unfortunately, and you have no one to blame but yourself,” Elyssa said, shaking her head in mock sadness. “I'd hoped the Deeks would find you before I did, save me the risk and effort of having to destroy you personally. But they're as slow as ever, and I had forces in the area. So here we are.”
Aiden gave her a reproving look. “That you'd kill me over a disagreement is disappointing enough, but the fact that you'd work with the Movement just shows how far you've fallen.”
Fury washed over the facilitator's face again, then she gave him a cruel smile. “Perhaps. Feel free to judge me as I blow you up.”
“I'd prefer to judge you as I run away,” Aiden said, then cut the communications.
Disturbingly, just before he did so he heard Elyssa laughing at him. As if she knew something he didn't.
“You can shoot down those nukes, right?” Aiden snapped at the gunner.
The facilitator's transports had launched two, then two more after a standard reload period. Normally Aiden didn't sweat too hard about atomics, since he was usually able to either keep the ship out of the full blast radius when they finally detonated, or the gunner shot them down before they got close enough. And even if they did take a full hit, assuming they still had shields he was reasonably confident in his ability to evade fire long enough for one or two layers to recharge.
At least he hoped, since even two atomics hitting in staggered succession would be enough to destroy his ship. Maybe even just one, since their shields were already pressed to the limits by the combined fire of the two transports.
Things were already looking grim, but they were about to get a whole lot worse as Ali continued her sensor analysis of the enemy ships. “On top of the concealed missile launchers, the transports appear to have been modified to have smaller bays than would be used for standard shuttles. Designed for quick launch under combat settings, and situated so closely together that only very skilled pilots or AIs could coordinate simultaneous launches without mishap. However, the modifications allow them to carry an estimated four ships of unknown design ea-” she abruptly cut off, then swore bitterly.
Aiden blinked. The beautiful woman rarely swore, usually finding more creative ways of expressing herself. Which suggested she was either showing alarm for the benefit of the humans around her, a bad sign, or her Caretaker upgrades had given her a potty mouth.
As it turned out, it was the first one: the images of the transports on the main display suddenly fragmented, four smaller shapes breaking away from each. He stared at the dispersing ships in genuine befuddlement . . . Elyssa's people couldn't be launching troop shuttles in some bizarre effort to aid in the fight, could they? He couldn't be that lucky.
It turned out he was anything but. “Transports are launching fighters,” Ali said, tone still calm but more urgent.
“They're what?” Barix demanded incredulously. “That's like a gun holding a smaller, weaker gun and shooting at us with it. What kind of idiot even carries fighters? They could've just shoved a couple extra power generators in that space, beefed up their systems, and gotten twice the value!”
While the analogy left something to be desired, the man wasn't wrong.
“It's pretty obvious,” the gunner said, his usually neutral voice sounding terse as he strained to shoot down the oncoming atomics, even as they faced this new threat. “These ships look like they're outfitted specifically for hunting ships like ours. Considering their enhanced capabilities and the fact that they outnumber us two to one, they don't need to beef up their systems to fight a light cruiser, even one like the Last Stand. The only thing they need to worry about for hunting us down is making sure we can't escape.”
“Pirate hunters,” Aiden agreed grimly.
“Privateer, you mean?” Barix shot back snidely, although it was obvious his heart wasn't in it under the circumstances.
As such, Aiden didn't bother replying. Refitting transports for the task was a novel idea, and a ridiculous amount of effort to go to to achieve their goal. But being on the receiving end of the tactic, he was having trouble finding fault with it.
Because as usual, the gunner's analysis was spot on.
The only edge fighters had on pretty much any larger ship was acceleration and max speed. Neither of which was useful enough in a fight to make up for sacrificing power and room for proper shields and other vital systems. But if the smaller ships' only goal was to hem the Last Stand in, preventing them from escape, then they didn't need anything else.
Well, that and guns.
To his dismay, it turned out Elyssa had thought of that, too. “Initial analysis of enemy fighters' operational systems suggests railgun armaments and engines.” Ali said, still soothingly calm even though the situation certainly didn't warrant it. “No other systems detected, including life support. Fighters must be drones operated by Pilot AIs.”
Pilots. Void, he hated those things; first they tried to take his job, now they were trying to kill him.
“So wait,” Barix snapped. “You're saying they shoved Pilots into ships that are pretty much just an engine with guns, then sent them after us for the sole purpose of keeping us from making a rift jump?”
“That's exactly what she's saying,” Aiden replied grimly, watching the jaws of Elyssa's trap close around his ship. He was so distracted by the approaching fighters that he almost forgot to keep up evasive maneuvers against the transports' fire and the swiftly approaching atomics.
He was apparently the only one who'd forgotten the nukes, though. “Fighters are swinging wide around to cut us off,” Ali reported. “Keeping out of range of the atomics, which are still inbound.”
Yeah no kidding; it was taking every trick up his sleeve to keep ahead of the blasted missiles, eating one shot after another from the transports and stray railgun slugs from the passing fighters. All to buy the gunner a bit more time to deal with just the most immediate of threats.
A bead of sweat trickled down Aiden's forehead, forcing him to cant his head slightly to the side to avoid it going into his eye. He didn't know when he'd clenched his jaw, but now he was practically grinding his teeth as he focused everything he had on his controls, his ship, and the numerous ways his enemies were trying to kill him.
Was this it, then? Everything he'd fought for, everything he'd accomplished, and he wouldn't even get the satisfaction of going out in a blaze of glory battling Deek ships? He was just going to get snuffed out in the middle of nowhere by a former colleague, quietly disappear along with his ship and crew, as a final proof that no good deed went unpunished in this miserable sewage tank of a universe?
That was about the time when Elyssa hacked into their comms system to gloat.
Thankfully, she couldn't get onto the main display since comms were isolated, but Aiden jumped when her harsh voice spoke in his ears through his headset. “Still think you did the right thing, Thorne?”
“Locking her out,” Ali said, sounding irked. As well she should be, since her Caretaker upgrades should've made her more than a match for this sort of intrusion.
“Don't bother, if talking is the extent of her cyber attack,” Aiden snapped. “If she gets too distracting just mute her, but focus on more important things.”
“Got two of the nukes,” the gunner abruptly said, sounding strained in spite of his usual rigid discipline; Lana was a bad influence on his professionalism. “But one of the remaining ones is-”
Aiden saw it and gunned the
engines full out in a wild spin, and to the void with inertial dampeners and the gunner's aim. Everyone on the bridge cursed as they were thrown back and to the side by the violent maneuver, Barix loudest of all. Then there was a flicker in the lighting and displays as an EM pulse from the detonating atomic rattled the ship, momentarily disrupting the systems, and a warning klaxon joined the others as their shields went down.
“Let me guess, we're about to get hit by mini rifts bringing combat android boarders,” Belix snapped over the comms. “This just keeps getting better and better.”
Surprisingly, or maybe not, it was Elyssa who answered. “No, that's one of the few things my pirate hunters don't have. Not that they need them.”
The elfin woman didn't react gracefully to the taunt. “This attack seems more personal than just a deal gone bad, caused mostly by your own misjudgment about what we were willing to do,” she said with a venom in her tone. “I think our erstwhile business partner might be harboring the resentment of a girl with a crush that never got a second look.”
Aiden made an irritated noise and toggled the sound down on his receiver, struggling to focus on keeping his ship ahead of the shots coming their way from seemingly everywhere. As well as the final atomic, which would blow them to subatomic particles without the protection of their shields.
“My love, there's a possible alternative,” Ali said.
He certainly would've loved to hear one, if he could spare more than a fraction of his attention from keeping them all alive. He simply growled in reply.
Almost at the edge of hearing, he heard Elyssa's reply to Belix. “Believe it or not, Ishivi, not every woman in the universe wants to get pricked by the Thorne.” She laughed bitterly. “No, I fell into an even more insidious trap than infatuation . . . hero worship.”
