by Rob Dearsley
“But if they’re heading somewhere, then why bother to attack anyone on the way?” Luc asked.
Dannage shrugged, why indeed? “Maybe they can’t help themselves.” Memories of the destruction at Gypsum flashed through his mind, bringing stabs of grief along with it. “But they’re not being as thorough as before. Only a handful of people made it out of Gypsum or Titanite.”
Dannage tapped a control on the table, and glowing lines followed the tracks of the Terran fleets. They converged on a lone system toward the middle of the otherwise empty region. Dannage didn’t recognise it.
Another tap on the controls brought the system name up.
Pyrite.
Luc eventually broke the silence. “You think that’s where they’re headed?”
Dannage nodded. It was where they were going, he was sure. It felt right. The question was, what was he going to do about it?
I will find you and I will end you.
His own words at Gypsum rolled through his mind, bringing with them white-hot anger. He’d found them. Now to stop them. Make them pay for Sam, for everything they’d taken.
He turned to go, but felt Luc’s hand on his shoulder.
“Cap’n, I want to go after them as much as anyone, but we don’t even have a ship.”
Maybe, but he had to do something.
“Someone, in the right place at the right time, could change everything. That’s what the Spooks keep saying.” He had to be there. If there was an opportunity to end this, it would be there and then.
“Cap’n?”
“I’m done running.” Dannage met Luc’s eyes for a moment, before heading downstairs.
Grabbing his coat, Dannage marched out the front door, Luc trailing behind him. He didn’t stop until he reached a bluff that overlooked the ocean.
Dannage closed his eyes, listening to the sound of waves crashing on the shore. “What about Jax?” Poor Jax would be lost without the Folly.
“Didn’t see them pull her out. She might still be on board,” Luc replied.
Something clicked in the back of Dannage’s mind, the smallest beginnings of an idea forming. “You think the Reclaimer’s still in orbit?”
“They didn’t look in a hurry. I might have heard some guys talking about shore leave.”
Dannage pulled mini ship-to-shore com from his pocket, hoping it would reach the Folly in orbit and that the Reclaimer was still in the system, and that they weren’t blocking coms – it was a long shot. “Jax, you there?”
“—here captain. Give me a… boost the signal.” There was a small pop. “That’s better. I’m still here, they’ve got the Folly on one of their flight decks.”
Dannage signed in relief. “Good, keep us posted.” He turned to Luc. “We need to find a way up there.”
“Cap’n, whatever you have in mind is going to piss them right off.”
Dannage shot his old friend a wolfish smile. “That’s the plan.”
Sixteen
- SDF Jean-Luke, on-route to Pyrite -
Arland stood in the Jean-Luke’s forward observation lounge. The lights were left low. The glow of the highway, coming through the floor to ceiling windows, painted the room in shades of blue. You’d never get a room like this on a proper battleship. But the Jean-Luke was an admiralty ship, designed for pomp over combat, form over function. She’d done her first tour on a ship like this. It had been boring as sin. All they ever did was train and clean.
Although, Arland had to give the ship its due, if nothing else, the Jean-Luke was fast. They’d be to Pyrite in three days. Hopefully, well ahead of any Terran ships.
“Excuse me ma’am?” A young officer walked over to her, holding out a flex-screen “Commander Harris asked me to give you this.” He handed her the flex and turned to go.
She thumbed the display on and the Systems News Feed popped up. The headline read ‘Terran Forces Attack Garnet.’
She scanned the article, horrified at the turn of events. The SDF had gotten their act together and hit back, hard. The whole first fleet and half the second had been brought in to engage the Terrans. Fleet Command felt confident they could hold the system and the evacuation had slowed. They’d been wrong, and the system had been wiped out, leaving only a handful of survivors.
A smaller article caught her attention. An interview with some odd-ball who called himself the Saviour and believed he’d been sent by the Stars to save humanity. He was calling people to join his convoy of Pilgrim-Ships as they set out to hide in the void between stars.
“You know it’s not an awful idea.” Hale’s voice came from right behind her.
Arland started, almost dropping the flex. When had Hale slipped in?
“What?” Arland asked, not quite following.
“This Jerome fellow’s plan to hide in the void between stars. It’s not a terrible idea. Terran Hyperspace windows can only be opened within a star's gravity-well. They’d never think to look anywhere else.”
“Maybe, but it’s suicide. Say you fly out under sublight, how far are you going to get before supplies run out? And if they could break out of the highways or something, they’d be stuck there with no way to resupply.”
Hale shrugged. “Some people might find that preferable to war.”
Arland didn’t reply, instead, turning to look out at the highway. After a moment Hale followed suit and they both stood, watching the universe spin past.
◊◊
Dannage crouched between a pair of crates, trying to make himself as small as possible. He and Luc had managed to sneak onto a Recoup supply ship. He pulled his coat tighter around him as the temperature dropped. The crate to his left was marked as food supplies, so the hold should be kept above freezing. Although, judging by his fingers, not by much.
The journey only lasted a few minutes. Good, the Reclaimer was still in orbit. Dannage barely noticed the jolt as they landed; the pilot must be a good one. Of course, Recoup would have only the best.
The loading ramp dropped, giving Dannage a glimpse of the huge flight deck, its far wall open to space. Only a slight flickering showed the static field that kept the atmosphere in.
A pair of men in green overalls walked up the ramp. Dannage shrank back into the shadows. On the other side of the bay, Luc pressed himself into his own hiding place.
The workers started toward Dannage’s crates. Damn. He held his breath, not daring to move, tense and ready to spring into action. One of the men checked his flex and nodded.
Dannage silently begged them to move on.
The one with the flex pointed to a stack of creates near Dannage’s hiding place. Dannage watched them stack the supply crates onto a trolley. As they turned to go, he let out his breath, relaxing incrementally.
“Did you hear something?” The one with the flex squinted into the shadows where Dannage and his friends hid.
Crap. Dannage froze, silently begging them to move on.
“Nope. And I’m not sitting through another ‘productivity lecture’ because you got distracted.” The other, younger, worker kept pushing the trolley down the ramp. “We’ve got three more shuttles to check before the end of shift.”
Grumbling under his breath, the first worker joined his companion.
Dannage waited a moment, listening for signs of anyone coming back, then crept toward the loading ramp.
He’d thought the bay was big from his first glimpse, but he hadn’t been able to appreciate the full scale of the triple level flight deck, above them aerospace fighters hung from fast launch gantries, connected to the carrier by a network of power and fuel umbilicals. Dannage had seen space stations with smaller flight decks.
Luc grabbed Dannage, pulling him down behind a crew launch. Its engine covers were off, diagnostic tools connected to its innards.
“Look.” Luc pointed to the deck above them, where the distinctive, blunt arrowhead of the Folly hung from docking clamps.
After one last look at his ship, Dannage followed the others toward the ba
ck of the bay. Banks of service ladders were positioned along the back wall. As Luc and the doc started climbing, Dannage thumbed his com open. “Jax, I need a way to make a big mess in here.”
“Distraction, captain?” Jax asked.
“More, I need a way to really piss them off.” Dannage pulled himself on to the ladder and started up toward his ship.
“There might be something. They use the CAF920 fighters. Do you know if they’re grounding them?”
Dannage hooked his arm over the ladder rung and scanned the bay looking for the Combined Aerospace Fighters. Their sleek, aerodynamic shapes stood out among the bulkier space-only craft. Big turbines on each wing provided thrust in atmosphere.
They hung at the far end of the bay, fuel lines connected to the back end of the craft, just above the orbital thrusters, and a combined data/power connector snaked from the nose up into the gantries. But no grounding cables connected to the turbines, at least none he could see.
Dannage told Jax as much over the still open com-link.
“That’s awful. Well good for us. We can use the residual charge to trigger an EMP.”
Dannage started climbing again. “By ‘we’, you mean me?”
“I can talk you through it,” Jax replied, the quip going completely over her head.
Dannage stepped off the ladder onto the catwalk that connected to the CAF’s gantry.
Luc looked down, frowning. “Cap’n?”
Dannage let out a thin-lipped, cold smile. “Get to the Folly, and make sure all the electrics are shut down.”
Luc’s eyes widened. “You’re going to use an EMP?”
“That’s the plan.” Dannage turned to go. “Jax, how big is the blast going to be?”
“If we do it right and there’s a decent amount of charge? Maybe half the bay.”
That would really hack them off. Even to Dannage's mind, it sounded a bit much. Keeping his head down, he crept down the gantry. “Luc and the doc are coming in.”
As he approached the docked CAFs, a young looking deckhand in pristine overalls stepped into Dannage’s path.
Dannage didn’t stop, looking up to the meet the deckhand’s eyes. Confidence was the key to any good bluff. He just had to sell it.
“Shift commander needs you to help with supplies down on the deck.” Dannage nodded toward the shuttle he had come up in.
“I need to monitor the refuelling of the fighters.”
Dannage forces his hands to relax. “Do you want to attend a—” He searched for the phrase the kid unloading the supply shuttle had used. “a productivity lecture?”
The deckhand swallowed audibly, and hurried past Dannage to the ladders.
Dannage blew out his breath, relaxing, and started toward the fighters. “Okay, Jax. What do I do?”
“See the access panel on the underside of the turbine module?”
Dannage crouched down to peer under the metre-wide cylinder. There it was, a hatch just over double his hand-span, and held closed with a Trox security bolt. Damn.
“Got it?” Jax asked. “It should just click open.”
“Jax, the bloody thing’s bolted shut.” Dannage crawled out from under the fighter’s wing and started hunting around for a toolkit.
“Cap’n.” Luc’s voice through the com made Dannage start, banging his head against a shelf. “We’re back on the Folly shutting everything down now.”
Dannage’s muttered epithets cut off as he spotted a bright orange nylon tool roll. With a furtive glance around, he snapped the toolkit open and unrolled it across the worktop.
There it was, the star-shaped spanner head had been left in the ratchet arm by the last user. Dannage was glad of all the time Crund had put him on maintenance detail back on the Curie. He climbed back under the fighter’s wing and unlocked the maintenance hatch.
There was a compact touchpad and a small rainbow of cables.
“What now, Jax?”
“You’re going to need to reverse the polarity. Reverse the green and blue cables.”
He reached up to unplug the wires. Leaving one end in, he stretched the blue wire toward the red connector—
“Reverse, don’t swap!”
He paused, the wire bushing against the connector. “What’s the difference?”
“Turn the cables around, blue still goes to blue. Got it?”
He reversed the cables. “Got it.”
“Okay, now we need to spool up the engine. But it’s going to make a racket. So after that, you need to disconnect the internal compensator, the red wire. Once that's done, the EMP will go off in around ten seconds, the longer you can leave the turbine spooling the bigger the EMP. Got it?”
He brought up the pre-flight on the touch console. “Got it.”
A pair of combat boots clomped along the catwalk. “Hey! What are you doing under there?”
No time left. Dannage tapped the control and the engine spooled up. “Sorry, say again?” he yelled over the rising wine of the engine.
“Turn that off and come out!” The combat boots stopped by Dannage’s feet.
“I can’t hear you.”
The boots shifted as though the man was about to crouch down. “Turn. It. Off.”
Dannage’s gaze slipped past the boots to the static field. The only thing between him and hard vacuum. Would the EMP reach the field generators? Would it damage them? He wished he’d asked Jax before they’d shut down the com. Damn it. They were one of the most important systems on the ship. They had to be hardened, right?
Combat boots knelt down.
“Stars damn it,” Dannage muttered and pulled the red wire.
◊◊
Hale sat opposite Captain Arland and Commander Harris. A pair of Marines stood off to either side. The men had that look of attentive disinterest that guards cultivated. It had been the same back in the Imperium. Despite the setting, the familiarity was comforting.
“So, Miss Hale.” Harris leaned forward over his clasped hands. “You say, your ships turned against you. Can you explain why?”
Hale had spent the last hour recounting the final mission of the Heimdall. Focusing on the analytical details helped. She didn't bring Matt up, didn't dare think about him, for fear she would break down. “I only got fragments and impressions when the X-ships connected to my ship-link. It was the emotion, the anger that came over. They hated us and wanted us to suffer.”
“The universe must return to fire?” Harris said, his eyes going distant.
Hale stopped. It was something she’d heard before. But more than words, the intonation, the way it was said, felt familiar.
“You recognise the phrase.” Captain Arland was as sharp as they came.
“The X-minds keep saying it, or variations on it,” Hale replied. “Back on the Heimdall, and now. I hear it through the ship-link whenever the X-ships are in proximity.”
“Can you get any other information through this ship-link?” captain Arland asked.
Hale shook her head. “Some positioning information. But the conscious thoughts crowd out everything else, and only at closer ranges.”
Captain Arland glanced at Harris. “Maybe we could use that.”
“I doubt it.” Hale leaned forward. “The range is so limited, I wouldn’t be able to offer anything your ships scanners couldn’t pick up.”
The captain turned back to Hale. “Thank you for your help. The guard will take you back to your friends. We’ll be at Pyrite in tomorrow morning.”
◊◊
Dannage climbed out from under the CAF’s wing counting down in his head.
Eight.
“Who are you?” the combat boots guy demanded. He was a big guy, sleeves rolled up to expose the corded muscles of his forearms.
“Me? I’m no one important.”
Six.
Hard decompression was going to hurt, a lot. But being thrown from the railing to the deck ten metres below would hurt more. Dannage moved over to the railing and sat with his back to it, pulling his
knees up against his chest.
“What are you doing?” Combat boots frowned his beady eyes at Dannage. “You got some problem?”
Three.
Dannage shook his head, bracing himself. “One, zero.”
Nothing happened. Damn it, Jax. Of all the times for her be wrong. Why now? She’d always been right in the past. Combat boots took a menacing step toward Dannage.
Lightning arced across the engine, flicking out toward combat boots. Half a second later, there was a dull whumping and an almost perceptible ripple expanded from the craft.
The lights and gravity went out. Thank the Stars, the static field held.
The thought had hardly left Dannage’s mind when the decompression hit him. It was like slamming into a wall, the force pressing him back into the railings.
Swearing inwardly and begging every star in the heavens for his life, Dannage curled himself tighter, trying to protect his face as the air was ripped from his lungs. A fuzzing, bubbling sensation ran painfully over his tongue as saliva boiled in his mouth. Tears leaked from his eyes only to be whisked away. Stars, it hurt.
He felt lightheaded, almost euphoric, and focused on pulling himself into a tighter ball. It was his only chance.
Dannage felt a hand on his arm and fought the urge to look up and expose his face to hard vacuum.
Someone pressed a rebreather mask against his face. Dannage groped for the activation switch. The seal wasn’t great, but it gave him precious seconds to— to what?
Luc grabbed Dannage and shoved him up and into the Folly’s hold.
Within seconds, the crippling pressure across his chest eased as the hold repressurised. Dannage pulled the mask off and sucked in the slightly metallic tasting air of the Folly. His lungs burned, but he relished the sensation. Simply breathing was bliss.
“I’ve got him. Get us out of here.” Luc’s voice seemed to come from the end of a long tunnel. “He was only exposed for a few seconds.”
Seconds? Stars, it had felt like an eternity.
“Can you sit up?”
Dannage’s hearing was coming back to normal. He complied, pushing himself up and toward the bridge.
