Gravity Flux: Kestrel Class Saga Book 3

by Toby Neighbors

  Your surrender and subsequent cooperation will be noted and shared at the time of your trial.

  “Go!” Ben shouted as the shield came up.

  Kim slammed the throttle to the stoppers and the Modulus Echo shot forward like a bullet from a gun. Light blazed from the Infinity as its laser batteries tracked the little ship. Most missed their mark, but a few were close enough to get caught in the flux shield and whipped away.

  Ben pressed the button on his console that activated the rocket. It shot out of the spreading mass of junk and then detonated. It looked like an old weapon that had failed after being fired. The rocket blew apart in a tiny, dim explosion.

  “Fighters,” Nance announced.

  “I see them,” Kim said.

  “There are hundreds,” Jones said.

  “Filling in the gaps,” Ben said. “We have to find a way through them.”

  The Infinity continued forward, rotating slightly to bring its tractor beam to bear. It didn’t register the gravity event taking place nearby. Professor Jones was staring at his console, which showed a readout of what was happening to his experiment even as the Echo spiraled away at breakneck speed toward her jump point.

  More flashes of laser fire lit the space around them. Ben saw the beams impacting deflector shields and being absorbed by the big ships that were closest to the Echo.

  “It’s happening!” Jones bellowed. “Look!”

  Nance put the rear camera on the big display screen. Kim couldn’t look up from the plot on her console as she raced between two huge battle cruisers and into a swarm of fighters. Far behind them, the gravity event was beginning to glow red. Then the Infinity sailed over the event and blocked their view.

  Chapter 47

  Kim understood that the big battleships couldn’t hurt them, but she felt the pressure to avoid them and their weapons just the same. When the fighters came swarming toward the Echo, everything in her screamed that she was going to die. She wanted to turn around and fly back the way she’d come, but that was what the Imperium forces wanted, to box her in, to block her escape.

  “Can you see what’s happening?” Ben asked.

  “The big ship is spinning,” Magnum said.

  “It’s caught in the event,” Jones declared.

  Kim wanted to scream at them to shut up. She didn’t dare take her eyes off the trio of screens that filled up her console. The fighters weren’t firing, but there were so many of them that she knew it was only a matter of time before one hit their shield bubble. What would happen then was anyone’s guess.

  Light suddenly filled the space around the ship, as if a star had appeared behind them. Kim heard the gasps of her crewmates, but didn’t dare look away from the mass of ships in front of her.

  “It’s taking out the Infinity,” Ben declared with a shout of excitement.

  Kim slung the Echo right and left, avoiding the fighters who were crowding in, but it quickly became an impossible task. The first of the fast attack fighters to hit the gravity shield was partially crushed by the strong gravity wave swirling around the Kestrel class ship. The fighter seemed to implode before being spun away to crash into another fighter. They both exploded, but the flash of light seemed dim and weak compared to the carnage behind them.

  “The wave is expanding,” Jones said. “The big ship is giving it more energy than I dreamed of.”

  “What does that mean?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know!” Jones cried.

  Kim didn’t think it meant a damn thing to her. She was flying through so many ships it was like trying to run through the rain without getting wet. As more ships collided with the bubble of gravity, Kim had to fight the exchange of kinetic energy. When a laser beam or even a ship’s missile impacted the shield, it was slung away from the ship. But the Imperium fighters had much more mass. As often as not, when the fighters impacted her shields, it was the Echo that was spun away. Kim couldn’t feel them bouncing back and forth between the ships that surrounded them, but she could see it on her screens and did her best to keep them moving through the dense swarm of enemy ships.

  “It’s expanding,” Ben said. “See the red ring?”

  Kim wanted to ask what he was talking about but couldn’t.

  “Is that fire?” Nance asked.

  “It’s heat,” Jones said. “The gravity event is sucking everything down, crushing it into atoms and compacting them so tightly that it produces copious amounts of heat.”

  “More of the ships are getting snared,” Magnum said.

  “This is insanity,” Ben said.

  “Tell me about it,” Kim snarled.

  Sweat was streaming down her face as she fought the controls. Her legs were cramping and her shoulders burned as she slalomed between the horde of enemy fighters at top speed.

  “The shield is getting overloaded,” Nance said.

  “We can’t drop it,” Ben said. “There are too many fighters in the way. We’ll be killed.”

  Kim felt a slight sense of vindication. At least her friends were starting to see what she was contending with. But almost at the same time, space opened up between the fighters. They were no longer trying to block her way, but turning to join her flight.

  “If we don’t stop it now,” Nance said, “it’s going to rip us apart.”

  “Drop it!” Kim bellowed. “I’ve got this.”

  The truth was, she wasn’t sure what she had. There were rows of ships all around her. And not just fighters, but huge capital ships. The Imperium forces were all moving, all desperate to get away at once. They had clued into the fact that the Echo wasn’t running to escape them, but the hugely powerful vortex that was growing behind them. Still, it was like being caught in a crowd when someone yells fire.

  “Okay,” Ben said. “It’s down.”

  No room for error, Kim thought to herself. Fortunately, the fighters were giving her wide berth. They had seen what happened to the ships that got too close.

  More explosions happened behind them as ships caught in the growing swirl of superstrong gravity had sections ripped away, usually their main drive engines. Ben and the others had grown silent, watching the carnage behind them, and Kim pushed the Echo as fast as she could.

  “Ben, I need more power to the main drive,” Kim said.

  “You got it,” he said.

  The work of bypassing other systems and rerouting power only took Ben a few seconds. Kim didn’t feel the surge of speed, but she saw the Echo suddenly leaping past the fighters around her.

  “Nance, I’m getting close to the jump point,” Kim said.

  “Just make sure the space in front of you is clear before you go to hyperspace,” Nance warned her.

  “Or else we get pancaked. Got it,” Kim replied.

  “This is unbelievable,” Ben said.

  “I never factored in this much matter being consumed by the event,” Jones replied. “It was designed to only have a set amount of available matter to consume. You could calculate it based on the atomic weight of the matter, within reason given the delivery device and organic matter in the vicinity of the event.”

  Kim wanted to scream that it wasn’t the right time for a lecture, but she was too focused on her goal. There were still ships all around her, but the farther they moved from the gravity event, the more space they had to spread out. Her exit vector was clear for the moment, but there was a big ship moving dangerously close. If it continued on its present course, it would drift right into their way, blocking the Echo from jumping into hyperspace.

  “Give me power to the lasers,” Kim said.

  “They’re routed to the auxiliary banks,” Ben said. “You’ll have about six shots on each cannon. Is that enough?”

  “I hope so,” Kim said.

  Magnum brought the weapons online, and aiming reticles appeared on Kim’s main console screen. She was less than forty miles to the jump point and would reach it in less than a minute. But first she swerved slightly and opened up with both c
annons.

  Laser beams shot out and raked down the side of the big ship. Several were caught by the ship’s deflectors, but a few got through. They didn’t do major damage, but the helmsman altered course so that they were drifting away from Kim’s jump point.

  “Auxiliary batteries are drained,” Ben said. “If you need more, I’ll have it drawn from the power routed to the main drive.”

  “All I need is a bit of luck,” Kim said.

  But the Echo was all out of luck. A fighter had seen the Kestrel class ship firing on the Imperium cruiser. It shot back and hit the Echo’s starboard wing.

  Kim had no choice but to slow down as she fought for control.

  “Who’s shooting at us?” Kim shouted.

  “Deflectors!” Ben snapped.

  “They’re up,” Magnum replied

  Kim felt the instant drain of power to the main drive. Not that she could feel the ship slowing, but her progress to the jump point on her plot slowed significantly. She still needed twenty seconds before she could make the jump.

  “He’s still firing,” Ben said.

  “More fighters are closing,” Nance said.

  “He must have radioed that our shields were down,” Ben snarled angrily.

  Kim could feel the ship’s power dwindling. She was still flying full throttle, but the deflectors could only take so many hits before they were knocked out or the ship’s power reserve could no longer support them. With each hit from the enemy fire, the deflector screens required a boost of power to keep from failing. But there was nothing more Kim could do. It was a race, and she knew she had to win it.

  Chapter 48

  Brigadier General Alicia Pershing had watched the catastrophe from a hundred miles away. The Deception had dropped into the system a few seconds after the Echo. With her long-range cameras, the spy ship was ideally suited to watch and record the proceedings. Pershing had assumed that if everything went according to plan, the admiral general would gladly take her footage and add it to the dozens of drones recording what he considered his ultimate military triumph. And if things went wrong, which they certainly had, she would need the footage to study her enemy.

  They had watched the Infinity close on the little rebel ship. When it fled, Pershing ordered the ship’s cameras to stay on the junk floating near the admiral general’s flagship. She had seen the rocket explode, but unlike her peers, Pershing knew the rocket wasn’t a dud. She tried to warn the admiral general, but the Infinity ignored her hails. And so, from a hundred miles away, Pershing had watched the grand ship spin like a top before it was ripped apart and destroyed.

  “Move us away from the battle,” Pershing had ordered.

  The ship’s crew had sprung into action, bringing their stealth engines online and moving away from the destruction of the Infinity at top speed while keeping their cameras trained on the destruction.

  Pershing couldn’t look away, even though the destruction was horrific. The debacle in the Torrent system was nothing in comparison. A growing ring of power was gobbling up battleships and cruisers as if they were toys. Each one was ripped to pieces before explosions ripped them apart. And none of the debris went far. It wasn’t flung away like it should have been from the explosions. Instead, it swirled around in circles until it was crushed.

  Pershing had never seen such destruction. Huge capital ships were imploding. The most powerful vessels in the Royal Imperium Fleet were helpless to escape. Admiral General Volgate had been wrong to recall his fleet. He had assumed that his commanders would not repeat the mistakes of the armada in the Torrent system, and it was perhaps that striving for control that made them hold fast just a moment too long. Had they been able to dash away like the little Kestrel class ship, which Pershing had lost track of, perhaps they could have escaped unscathed. Instead, they held their ground, completely unaware of the danger.

  Even after the Infinity was destroyed, many of the ships didn’t move. Perhaps the ship commanders feared colliding with the ships around them. Or maybe they just couldn’t believe what was happening, but it cost them their lives and those of every living soul aboard their ships. That thought prompted Pershing to action.

  “Captain, have the helm plot a microjump,” Pershing said. “And drop a recon buoy.”

  “General, we’re over a hundred miles from the bomb,” Captain Derringer said.

  “And we have no idea how far it will go,” the General said. “Or how fast.”

  The captain gave the orders to plot a microjump and drop the drone that would continue recording. Pershing knew the ship’s cameras could still zoom close enough to get decent details from ten thousand miles out, but she wanted as much information as possible. The rebel ship had lived up to her worst fears. It was not only untouchable, it was also armed with weapons they had no answer for.

  “Ready to make the jump,” the helmsmen said.

  “As we bear,” the captain said.

  The jump to hyperspace was initiated and ended by computer, to make sure the Deception didn’t jump too far. The split second it took to travel ten thousand miles seemed to stretch out and made everything around General Pershing feel helpless. Suddenly they were back in real space, and before Pershing could give the order, the surveillance officer was zooming in with the ship’s powerful cameras.

  The images on the screen were even worse than Pershing feared. Half of the fleet was gone already. And more than half of what remained was being pulled in toward the gaping void. Pershing could see a strange red light glowing in the empty space. It was as if she were looking at a black hole using infrared technology.

  “Let’s rotate through the camera settings,” Pershing said. “Show me thermal.”

  The picture changed to strange blobs of color. The ships were visible as bright orange blooms of heat that propelled the ships forward. But where the red light had been, the image was white-hot and growing.

  “Show it in infrared,” Pershing snapped, her anger and fear making her gruff with the ship’s crew.

  “Aye, General,” the surveillance officer said.

  The image changed again. This time they could see even more detail. The infrared light shone on the clouds of debris. The exploding ships had littered the area with space dust that glittered in the mass of ships trying to escape the strange weapon. And in the center of the void, debris was swirling.

  “It looks like a black hole,” Captain Derringer said.

  “They have a gravity-powered weapon,” Pershing said. “We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t devour the entire system.”

  “But the royal family is on Gershwin,” Captain Derringer said.

  “Coms, get us a line to the capital,” Pershing said. “We have to warn them to flee the planet while they still can.”

  Chapter 49

  “Shields are down,” Nance said.

  They were still ten seconds out from the jump point. Ben was terrified, but there was nothing he could do. Kim put the ship into a sudden dive, spiraling down and out of the line of fire. The rear cameras showed bright laser blasts flashing like lightning past the ship.

  Ben grabbed hold of his console, then shut down the power to the artificial gravity generator, rerouting it to the engines. Kim twisted the joystick, bringing the ship around in a spin before shooting back toward the jump point.

  “Those fighters are lining up to take another shot,” Nance said.

  “Almost there,” Kim declared.

  The last second to the jump point stretched even longer than entering hyperspace. Ben never knew what kept the fighters from shooting them down. But when the Echo made the jump to hyperspace, he shouted. His voice sounded odd in the stretched-out fraction of a second during the microjump.

  They were back in regular space, far away from the gravity event. Ben looked at his console to see what was wrong with the wing engine.

  “Looks like the engine is ruined,” Ben said. “There’s no power. It’s slagged.”

  “No ships on short-range radar,” Nance said. “
Bringing up the overall plot now.”

  The display screen showed an image from the exterior cameras. There were flashes of light in the distance as more Imperium ships exploded. Between their position and the gravity event, another ship was listed. Ben couldn’t see the vessel. It had no running lights and was painted black. The information on the plot showed it as the RIF Deception.

  “What now?” Kim asked.

  “We wait and watch,” Ben said.

  “How big is the singularity going to get?” Nance asked.

  “That is unknowable,” Jones said in a shaky voice. “I never imagined any reason for triggering the event in a populated zone. The Imperium ships are so large and there were so many. It’s impossible to estimate how big the event horizon will be.”

  “Or where it will reach,” Ben said. “The wormhole could stretch across the universe for all we know.”

  “At least it works,” Kim said.

  “And I shall go down in history as the man who created the most terrible weapon of all time,” Jones said.

  “It may not be the way you wanted it,” Ben said. “But don’t forget that’s the Imperium Fleet out there. How many people have they murdered and enslaved? How many planets have they slagged in the name of the royal family?”

  “I won’t lose sleep over it,” Kim said.

  “Guys,” Nance said, her voice trembling slightly, “look at this. It’s pulling the military space station toward the event.”

  “That’s the Royal Imperium Military Headquarters,” Magnum said. “The central command of the entire government military.”

  “Will it be destroyed?” Kim asked.

  “If it is in the event’s gravitational pull, nothing can stop it,” Jones said. “My God, it’s worse than I feared.”

  “Or better,” Kim said. “Without the central command structure, the Royal Imperium won’t be able to coordinate their efforts.”

  “Meaning what?” Nance asked. “Every battleship will be on its own? Will the galaxy break down into ten thousand planetary governments all at odds with one another?”