Heat Seeker

by Scot C Morgan

  "I'm flying through a field of exploding asteroids. I'm not sure what you want from me. Maybe, see if you can get him to the med bay."

  "No," Dewey said. "I'm okay." He turned a looked at Tiffin. "I'll be alright."

  Tiffin helped him to his feet. "What happened?"

  "Did you get one of those future visions, Dewey?" Jake said, still looking at the asteroids ahead of the ship.

  Tiffin waited for Dewey to answer and the look that came over his face frightened her.

  Dewey slowly shook his head. "I don't understand." He looked at Tiffin. "Before, I saw us together. We were okay. You remember. I told you."

  Tiffin took his hand. "I remember. What did you see this time?"

  Dewey turned to the large view screen filled with thousands of potentially explosive asteroids. "I think I saw what happened...when...when those hit the ship."

  "Jake!" Sarah sounded scared.

  "It's not going to happen," Jake said. "I can do this."

  Tiffin, still holding Dewey's hand, took a step toward Jake. "But, he saw-"

  "I don't care what he saw," Jake said. "I'm not letting one of those things take us out." Intensely focused on the field of asteroids in front of him, he mumbled, "Not when we're this close to finishing this, once and for all."

  Tiffin let go of Dewey's hand to quickly move closer to Jake, into his peripheral view. "But he-"

  "Doesn't matter," Jake said, keeping his eyes on the asteroids and making small adjustments with the controls on his chair to steer the ship. "Now, let me do this. If everyone keeps distracting me, we will end up blown to pieces."

  Tiffin stood there, but said nothing. She wasn't sure what she could say that would make a difference anyway. As far as she understood, Dewey's visions were right. If that's what he saw, she thought, then there was nothing she could do to change what happens. She didn't want to believe that, though. She stood beside Jake, racking her brain for a solution. She knew if she thought hard enough, she should be able to figure it out. After a few moments, she let out a soft whimper. I don't know what to do.

  "Both of you," Jake said sternly. "Get back to your seats. That's an order. I'll get us through."

  Chapter 33

  "I don't know how," Dewey said, "but you did it."

  Jake had successfully piloted the ship through the entire asteroid field. Only a few smaller ones had tested Sarah's shields, and the deflector fields had done their job. Swift action by Jake had kept them clear of the explosions which resulted from the deflected asteroids colliding with other larger ones nearby. Despite pleading from Tiffin, Dewey, and even Sarah for Jake to fly the ship more slowly, he had kicked the ship into the upper limits of its acceleration capacity on numerous occasions, veering considerably from the path Tiffin plotted when the erratic movements of the asteroids overwhelmed the computer's ability to adapt and recalculate the path in sufficient time.

  "I didn't think it was possible," Sarah said. "But I'm glad you proved me wrong."

  Tiffin walked over to Jake and looked at the forward display as they passed the last three asteroids to come into a small void in the field. Larger asteroids, still close by, around the perimeter seemed to have drawn the smaller ones from the now clear space. "Amazing."

  Jake eased back into his chair. "It's all in the reflexes."

  "Is that?" Tiffin pointed at the screen.

  Something was visible in the distance, near the center of the massive clearing. It seemed to glimmer.

  "His ship," Sarah said in a somber tone.

  "Okay." Jake took the controls again. "Let's get this done."

  "I still don't understand." Dewey shook his head, apparently still wrestling with his vision. "I saw..."

  Tiffin stepped more into Jake's view. "You really think he's going to accept your offer?"

  Jake turned to her and nodded. "I do."

  "I just don't see it, Jake," Sarah said. "He still claims this ship should be his, for starters. But the bad blood between you two is the real problem. I doubt anything will erase that for him."

  Tiffin leaned her head a little to catch Jake's eye again. "His ship? Bad blood? What happened?"

  Jake sighed. "It's a long story. Let's just say every man has a limit of what he can tolerate...even if he didn't know it until he was pushed across the line. A man has to stand up for what he holds dear, otherwise he might as well not be alive." Jake looked at Sarah's camera on the wall beside the large view to the General's ship. "I think it'll work, but if it doesn't this still ends here, today. The ship's more than capable."

  "I'll shift more to the forward shields," Sarah said. "And be ready, just in case he decides to do what he's always done."

  "What's that?" Tiffin asked.

  "Try to kill Jake." Sarah didn't sound like she was trying to be funny.

  Jake glanced at Tiffin. "Take a seat. I don't want him taking note of you on the visual comms."

  "Why?"

  "Just don't want to give him any leverage. If he thinks it's just me and Sarah...He...knows I don't have the taste for collateral damage that he has."

  "Oh." Tiffin seemed taken aback by what Jake was implying.

  "It would weaken my bargaining position with him," Jake said.

  "No," Tiffin said. "I get it." She returned to the station beside Dewey, out of view from the ship's main comm-link camera.

  Jake advanced the ship closer to the General's, moving at a rate of speed that would bring them into close-combat range within a few minutes. "Open the channel."

  A moment later, Sarah said, "Hailing him now."

  The still distant exterior view of the General's ship disappeared as Sarah put the feed from inside the enemy ship onto her screen. Jake recognized the General's ship as the class the man always preferred before upgrading to the one Jake subsequently commandeered to find a life that didn't involve selling his soul for credits passed through the General's hands. Unlike, Sarah, the General's ship lacked mag deflector shields, the next-gen space-fold drive, and an A.I.-integration into the ship's systems. What it did have, however, was battle-ready plating, a reasonably strong charged multi-spectrum field, and the same two weapons systems—pulse cannon and self-targeting fragmenting cluster bombs.

  If it came to it, Jake knew Sarah's mag deflector shields would keep most of the cluster bombs from scoring a direct hit, but the pulse cannon could be a problem. He'd have to rely on Sarah's maneuverability to shift the impact sites, distribute the damage across the hull to avoid a breach from repeated shots in one place. Jake knew the charging delay on the pulse cannons. It would give her time to reposition.

  By his calculation, Sarah had the edge over the General's ship, but Jake knew it wouldn't come to a firefight—not after he told the General what he had for him in the cargo hold.

  "Mudd. I never thought I'd see your face again." The general was seated in a captain's chair, similar to Jake's, but raised on foot-high platform.

  He wore a mashup military uniform, just as he did when Jake worked as a one of his rag-tag coalition of mercenaries. A few elements of the uniform had been added since Jake last saw it, at least from what he could remember. Jake remembered the shoulders of the man's uniform adorned with smaller yellow epaulettes, not the dangling red ones he saw on it now.

  Wonder whose corpse he pulled those from.

  Taking spoils from the powerful high-ranking people he defeated had always been a favorite pastime of the General. Jake had seen the General shoot a man and slice fingers from the man's hand to take his rings easier, even before the man lost consciousness.

  "General," Jake said.

  He was never a General in any real military organization. No one knew for sure the entirety of his background. A fellow merc told Jake three months into his contracted service that the General had ironically once been a captain in what years later became the Galactic Enforcers. Given the General's propensity for metting out torture to battlefield prisoners and for razing outposts and settlements to the ground on the resource raids, Jake
always had doubts the General had ever been anything but the blood-thirsty power-mad man Jake knew him to be.

  "You're a fool for coming here." The General, a hulk of a man with a face as much scars as not. He leaned forward in his chair a little, staring at Jake through the visual comm link. "How many times have you run from me over the years? And now, somehow, you found me and actually came to me. I'm surprised you had the balls to show yourself. You're making this too easy, but I'll be glad to scatter your molecules to the stars, if that's what you want."

  Jake tried not to let the General's comments get to him. "I told you when I left your operation I was done. You should've let it go."

  The General glanced past Jake. "I see you still have the ship you stole from me."

  Jake shook his head. "You destroyed mine and then refused to pay me what I was due for the last job." Jake shrugged. "I decided to balance the account. I would've stayed around to negotiate something, but I seem to remember you sending about twenty ships to destroy the entire outpost where I was taking some needed time to deal with what you did to me...to her."

  Jake took a deep breath, trying to stay calm despite reliving the feelings he'd spent years trying to bury in the back of his mind. "This ship was the only option you left me. She'll be with me until I die...at least in the way she can now." He glanced at Sarah's camera, but forced himself not to dwell anymore on the memory of what once had been. "But I am here to give you something."

  The General chuckled. "If you're keeping the ship, the only thing you have left that I want is your life. But I don't need you to give that to me." The General slid his hand across the arm of his captain's chair, reaching for the controls. "I'd much rather take it from you."

  Jake knew the General was about to fire on Sarah. He cut to the chase. "You remember what we found on Alpha Nine?"

  The General looked surprised and pulled his hand back from the controls on his chair. "That was lost when the gravity wells tore that planet apart, which was your doing, if I remember correctly. All that to keep me from getting what I came there for."

  "The planet was uninhabited. Yeah, I sabotage the wells, but what you were going to do with that..." Jake shook his head. "I couldn't let that happen."

  "And yet we took out the colony on the sister planet anyway."

  "Not me. I had no part in that. And thankfully many had the chance to leave before you and your men got there."

  "Just another reason I should kill you." The General reached for the weapon controls on his chair again.

  "I have it." Jake felt his stomach knot at the fact that he was about to willingly give over something so precious to the General.

  The General's hand froze, his fingertip touching a single lever. "Impossible."

  Jake shook his head. "No." He knew the General would accept his offer. "You thought it got destroyed along with that planet, but it didn't. I went back and retrieved it just before...just before it all went to hell." Jake tipped his head back slightly for a moment. "It's here, in the cargo hold."

  The General squinted, seemingly weighing the truth of Jake's claim.

  "Ive come to bargain," Jake said.

  The General shook his head slowly. "Even if you did have it, its lethal capabilities were lost when you destroyed Alpha Nine. That was the only source of the core material in the galaxy. It's useless to me."

  Jake grinned, knowing the General was lying about how much he wanted the device. "You and I both know that's not true. The only thing you ever wanted more than power and credits was what?"

  The General kept his poker face.

  "To get back to the pocket space again." Jake never believed the General's story about having once traveled to some sort of pocket dimension near the center of the galaxy, but Jake reconsidered based on what he heard from a scientist in one of the groups he transported from Beta Nine to escape the attack by the General's mercenary forces. The pocket dimension, Jake learned, was real, and the device which now sat in his cargo hold could, used in the right place, open a portal to get there.

  The General's poker face slipped. Jake could see he was thinking about the offer.

  "That's where she is, isn't it?" Jake said.

  The General scowled. "How dare you!"

  Jake was surprised at the General's reaction. He knew the General, long before he rose to the position of wealth and power he now held, had once met a woman, and—though it was impossibly hard for Jake to imagine—had loved that woman and was inexplicably loved by her in return. It was a side of the General Jake had long thought a fiction, but when he learned from the fleeing scientist that the pocket dimension really existed, he accepted at least the possibility that the General had spoke the truth that rare time he opened up to Jake and some of the other men.

  "I'm willing to give it to you," Jake said. "All I ask in return is we end this thing between us...that you leave me and Sarah in peace to live our lives without looking over our shoulder." Jake sighed, daring to hope the years of being hunted would now finally come to an end. He waited for the General to reply, expecting him to accept the offer.

  The General said nothing at first, but Jake gave him more time, knowing how overwhelming it must feel to know he could finally be reunited with the woman he loved—something he had taken from Jake. The bargain put a bitter taste in Jake's mouth, but he knew it was his best option. At least he and Sarah could carry on without the ambushes, sabotage, and blasters targeting them.

  The General began chuckling. Jake didn't expect that reaction, but decided the man must be completely overtaken with the emotion of the news he'd just received. He would get the one thing he wanted, the one thing every man wants...the one thing Jake wanted, even though it was no longer possible, at least not as her full real self. Jake's sworn enemy would return to his love.

  But he will leave me in peace. And he will be gone. Far from here, probably never to return.

  The General's chuckles turned to full-on laughter. Jake knew something was wrong. The laughter sounded more maniacal than joyous.

  Dewey whispered to Tiffin, "That's not a good sign, is it?"

  Jake heard Tiffin shush Dewey.

  The General settled himself down and stared at Jake again with a sinister look Jake had seen before. It was the look the General alway had just before he would shoot a man dead, or, if he wasn't in a hurry, inflict as much pain on a man as possible without killing him...at least for a while.

  "Now." The General lifted a finger from a button on the arm of his chair, which Jake hadn't seen him pressing before, and reached for a switch.

  Shit. Jake knew the bargain had failed. Maybe it was madness. Maybe the love from the pocket dimension had been a lie. It didn't matter. Jake knew the fight was on, and one of them was going to die in the next few minutes.

  "Sarah!" Jake said. "Shields!"

  "Oh, no!" Tiffin couldn't keep quiet in light of what was happening.

  "Already up," Sarah said, but there's a bigger problem.

  "We can take the fire," Jake said. "And we're going to give it back to him. We've got this!"

  "I sure hope so," Dewey said.

  "Jake." Sarah sounded scared, which Jake understood, but was surprised by, given that she was more than a match for the General's ship. "Five more ships are heading our way. He called them in. It was scrambled, but I picked up the signal. He must've had this planned. It's a trap!"

  Chapter 34

  Jake was right, Sarah's deflector shields withstood the first attack by the General, but that didn't matter. With five more ships moving to surround them, Jake and his crew knew they'd made a grave error in coming there. The jolting impact of the General's initial assault was nothing compared to what was about to happen.

  Despite no possibility of taking out all of the ships, Jake hit the controls on his chair to return fire. Sarah's pulse cannon bled through the spread-spectrum barrier around the General's ship, destroying the first sheet of the ship's heavy plating. But it wasn't enough. Several more layers remained beneath the
first. Jake realized the General had improved the ship's defenses.

  "Jake!" Tiffin's voice sounded insistent more than panicked. "We need to do something!"

  "Working on it." Jake engaged a few more of the controls on his chair, launching the ship's cluster bombs in a wide arc. He knew the odds were overwhelming, but he hoped by striking first against the other ships he could take out some of them before they fired.

  A moment later, the screen—now reverted to the exterior view to show what it could of the battle—lit up with white flashes cascading across the arc of cluster bombs.

  "You got them," Dewey said.

  "No." Jake peered through the explosive chain reactions. The General's mercenary ships hadn't been hit by the cluster bombs. They'd used their weapons to trigger explosions in the scattershot, causing enough of the bombs to prematurely trigger and set off most of the others. He saw a few impact each of the ships, but not enough to take them out...or even significantly impair them. "The cluster bombs could handle a single ship, but with them all working together they..."

  "We need to move!" Sarah shouted, then the ship banked hard to the left. Jake, Tiffin, and Dewey didn't expect the sudden move Sarah made. They each toppled from their chair, only Jake catching himself before hitting the floor. He struggled to keep his hand on the edge of his chair as an explosion somewhere on the right side of the ship shook the three of them again.

  Jake pulled himself back into his seat. "What'd they get?"

  "We can still move," Sarah said. "And the shields and weapons are up...for now."

  Jake didn't have time to care what else on the ship might've been damaged or destroyed. Sarah was right to keep it to what mattered at the moment.

  "I saw it," Dewey said despondently. "I knew we shouldn't have come."

  "This can't be it," Tiffin said. "Jake?"

  "We can't fold out of here, can we?" Jake knew the answer already. They'd used the jump engine to get to the edge of the asteroid field, and it took several hours to build capacity again for another jump.