Part of his confidence also came from the nimble little ship he was flying. Even weighed down with the tunneler, the citus was the fastest thing in the Sentient fleet. Though it could respond directly to his thoughts, he kept his hands on the manual controls because he liked the supple feel. He rode in one of the two pilot spots face down with his legs hugging the seat and kept his eyes focused on the view screen in front of him. The ship streaked across the desert, keeping low to the ground and kicking up scattershot dust clouds in its wake.
They flew in and out of sand storms, but the viewer gave Raif perfect visibility regardless of the conditions. It took them nearly a slice and a half before the outer walls of Hull came into view. There was no sign of battle in or around the Wayman city, but they decided to circle around the edge just in case.
“All clear,” Von said.
The ships finished the circuit and glided to a stop, hovering just above the dunes.
“Now we just sit back and wait for the fireworks to start,” Raif said.
“I’m a little nervous,” Cade confessed from down in the tunneler. He had access to his own view screen there.
“Just remember why we’re here,” Von told him.
The faces of Nance and the other captive Sentients flashed through Raif’s thoughts.
“I’m a little nervous myself. But that’s not such a bad thing. The bravest ones are those who admit their fears. You’ll be fine.” Raif said.
“Maven, we are in position,” Von reported.
“I’ve got you on the screen, Dreamer flight. We’re in position as well, three clicks behind you,” Gavin answered from the Command Center on the praxis.
“I sure hope this works. We’re only going to get one shot at this,” Jax put in.
“We have the element of surprise,” Gavin reminded them. “And that is not a small thing.”
“We’ll give those hardwires enough juice to jump their circuits,” Raif said.
“Circuits?” asked Cade. “What’s that, Raif?”
“Aw, it’s just an expression. They used to use circuits on some of the vintage ships.”
“You sure do use strange words.”
“Picked them up from the esolace,” Raif said. “I used to spend days off-loading old ship designs. I lost a lot of my memories, but for some reason those stuck.”
“All right, enough chatter,” Von said. “We need to stay alert. The Collective could show up at any moment.”
Raif stifled a groan. Von could be such a zero sometimes. But there was no point in arguing. Keeping his eyes trained on the citus’ view screen, he shifted in his seat and tried to get comfortable. Waiting was not one of his strong suits.
Twenty lancers appeared at the edge of the citus’ sensors. Raif zoomed the view screen in on them to get a better look. They were flying in a ragged formation and at various altitudes, roughly three columns of ships in rows of six or seven, and they were coming in fast.
The Maven was too far back to detect them, so Von informed Gavin of their arrival.
“All right, then,” Gavin’s voice came in over the audio. “Fall back, until you get a visual of the Persepolis.”
Based on the lancers’ present rate of speed, they would reach Dreamer flight’s position in less than two microslices. Since Raif had boosted the scanning range of their ships at the expense of some of their weapons systems, the Collective should not have spotted them yet. Dreamer flight moved off as far south as they could while still keeping the enemy ships in range.
Two microslices later the Persepolis appeared on Raif’s sensors, coming in behind the lancers. Two hovland cruisers flanked the giant flagship. The wingspans of the hovlands were nearly a quarter the diameter of the praxis. A mix of lancers and attack skiffs, piloted by somatarchs, flew in front of them. Above those soared a formation of eight vapors.
“Flying oscillathes” was the nickname for this last set of ships, because that was the primary weapon they employed. They had one purpose and one purpose only, to take human life. As deadly as they were, Raif could not suppress a wave of admiration at seeing this last group of ships. They were flat, silvery discs with a small, rounded compartment in the center for the crew. Wide, blade-like crescents extended from a central sphere along four separate arms, one in each direction. The vapors boasted omnidirectional flight capabilities and were second only to the citus’ when it came to maneuverability and speed. What truly set the them apart, though, was their blinking capabilities. These let them perform particle shifts over short distances, usually not more than a few hundred spans, but the erratic nature of these jumps made them almost impossible to target, even with automated weapon tracking.
Hopefully they would be able to get Cade down onto the Persepolis without having to tangle with this new group of ships.
Raif whistled inside his cockpit, “Vapes. Not good. I was hoping those things got crushed in the quake.”
“Wait for the Waymen forces to engage the Persepolis,” Gavin reminded them. “We’ll rendezvous on the far side of the city at the rally point for the Welkin after you’ve freed the Sentients.”
“Hull doesn’t stand a chance against that force,” Jax said.
They watched in silence as the Collective forces closed in on the unsuspecting city. Not a single ship had lifted off from Hull. It looked like they had taken the Waymen completely by surprise. Raif hoped Dreamer flight would be able to give the Collective the same treatment. But if Hull doesn’t put up some kind of a fight, all the surprise in the world isn’t going to help.
Raif had almost died a dozen times since escaping the Collective’s rigid technocracy. Despite that, the possibility of death wasn’t something he thought all that much about. The thing he feared most was the kind of life he had lived in Oasis, that numbness to anything beyond what the Admins wanted him to think or feel, having every decision made for him to the point that he didn’t even know who he was anymore. Compared to the possibility of going back to that, not much else scared him, though the sight of the Collective fleet flying unchecked over the dunes did start his foot tapping in nervous anticipation.
The Collective forces descended on Hull hard and fast. Though the hovland cruisers hung back with the Persepolis about two clicks away, the rest of the ships drove relentlessly onwards. Raif thought it strange that the hovlands didn’t open fire in advance of the attack. They certainly had the range, but their weapons were designed to take out large targets like buildings and generators. Perhaps the Collective wanted to keep the infrastructure of the city intact for some reason, though it wasn’t much to look at. Hull was the most cobbled together excuse for a city Raif could imagine. The outer wall rose and fell for no apparent reason. Half the buildings were unfinished. And the ones that were looked more like failed art projects than functional structures.
Just pitiful all the way around.
The lancer’s disruptor beams knocked out the canons mounted on the walls, striking unerringly against the stationary targets, while the skiffs carved up the guard towers, toppling them with their glowing locus beams. Around the edges of the city, the vapors hung back, blanketing the buildings with evanescence pulses. Though the attacks were invisible to the naked eye, the Maven’s targeting systems tracked them and projected shimmering facsimiles onto the view screens and targeting maps within Dreamer flight’s ships. The pulses passed straight through the walls, detonating inside and causing no damage to the structures, but disintegrating anyone within the radius of the burst, like dozens of oscillathes being fired at once.
Raif bit his lip. Char-buckets. Firing on defenseless people. He wanted so badly to see the Collective melting in a hot pot at that moment. But five ships and a tunneler wasn’t going to cut it. Come on, fight back, he silently urged the Waymen.
Collective ships were racing through every part of the city by the time Hull mustered any kind of response. The yellow locus canons from the eastern wall opened up and returned fire on the lancers and skiffs. Most of the shots missed their mark,
landing well wide of the fast moving vanguard, but even the ones that hit dissipated harmlessly into shards of fragmented light, absorbed by the Collective shields.
On the northern side of the city, the one furthest from where Raif and Von were positioned, three ballast cruisers and a dozen sovos ships took to the air in defense of Hull. They had barely risen above the walls when several lancers peeled off to engage them.
The triangular lancers focused their fire on the smaller ships, disabling two of the sand dusters before they could get in position to return fire. Meanwhile the skiffs targeted one of the thick ballast cruisers, slicing off the end of it and carving up several of its guns. The weapons that remained intact managed to return feeble fire, but again to no avail. The ships they were up against had shields and they did not, and they were outnumbered three to one; it was a losing fight from the start. More dusters came in support, but the skiffs shredded the new arrivals into shrapnel pinwheels, sending them spinning apart in all directions.
Raif’s mind churned helplessly. This is worse than I thought.
He kept waiting for the Persepolis to enter the fray, but it sat back at a comfortable distance, flanked by the motionless hovlands. Raif now realized the fatal weakness in Gavin’s plan. If Hull didn’t mount some sort of meaningful resistance, enough so that the praxis would be forced to get involved, they would never be able to pull off the rescue.
“We’ve got to do something,” Von said. “The Waymen are getting carved to pieces.”
Von’s words were met by an uncomfortable silence. Raif fingered his two control sticks anxiously, deciding if it was time to flip the script on their plan. He loved improvising and prided himself on his ability to think on his feet, but for once, he hesitated. Would the little surprise he had whipped up even work?
“All right, men. This is your time,” came Gavin’s unexpected, but heartening voice over the audio system. “Target the hovlands. The Persepolis is invulnerable to your ships’ weapons, but that might draw their attention away from Raif. The mission is a go.”
“Now you’re talking,” Raif said, grateful that no one questioned the order. “Let’s get this fire started.” He didn’t think they had any real chance of success, but he was getting sick to his stomach watching the Collective lay into this helpless city. He squeezed the control sticks tight and adrenaline rushed through him as their ships surged forward.
Von took the lead, the four lancers flying in a tight line. Raif’s citus brought up the rear. Von sent out an attack plan mentally, each ship passing it to the next in turn.
Attack from above. The hovlands have no countermeasures against overhead attacks. All they will have is their shields. The praxis will have fewer weapons to target us as well if we keep on its topside. It will take longer to bring them down, but this fight is not about winning. It’s about getting Raif and Cade the time they need to locate the prisoners and get them out.
The plan had barely been communicated when Raif spotted several ships issuing forth from the cargo bay beneath the Persepolis. Though he was flying in the back of the formation, because of the way his viewer worked, the rest of the Dreamer flight ships were nothing more than faint outlines on the screen.
Eight new ships appeared, each one a sleek, silver vapor. They did not set out to join the other ships attacking the city. Instead, they headed straight for Dreamer flight.
“They’ve spotted us,” Von said.
“Or they knew we were coming all along,” Jax said hotly. “There are too many of them. This is a trap. We need to call this off.”
“We can’t. If we flee, they’ll chase us back to the Maven and then we’ll put everyone at risk.” Von said.
“And we can’t outrun them,” Raif said. “At least you can’t.”
Jax growled derisively. “Then let’s scatter. Let them chase us half way across the Vast if they want to, but this is suicide.”
“Did you hear what Raif said?” Von replied. “We can’t outrun—”
“I want to save them as much as anybody, but I know when I’m outmatched,” Jax shouted back.
Raif listened in stunned silence. For a while no one said anything. But the vapors kept coming. Then Gavin’s voice came in over the audio.
“Abort the mission, Dreamer flight. I repeat, abort,” he said breathlessly. “Return to the Maven. The mission is off. ”
Twenty
The Mendax Generator
The ships from Dreamer flight scattered, swiveling in place and jetting off in the opposite direction. In the time it took for Gavin to relay his order and for Raif’s group to work their way back up to maximum velocity, the vapors had already closed a quarter of the distance between them.
“Gavin, are you sure about this? If we head back, they’ll follow us right to you.” Von said.
“That is a risk I’m willing to take,” Gavin responded from the Command Center. “I am not going to lose another five Sentients today if I don’t have to.”
“But there might not be another day,” Raif was not on board with Gavin’s decision. It seemed rash for someone who was usually so level headed. Then again, military decisions weren’t exactly his thing.
“It doesn’t matter either way,” Jax said. “There’s no way we can outrun them.”
“We stick to the plan, even when the plan changes,” Von said. “We all heard Gavin’s order. End of discussion.”
In the ensuing silence, the vapors continued gaining on them. Despite Von’s fine words, Gavin’s order still didn’t sit right with Raif. They were going to get caught by these ships. Gavin had to know that. And though the Maven could probably handle the vapors, once its location was discovered that would put everyone at risk.
Raif swerved his ship back around, nearly swiping Von’s lancer as he zoomed by. He respected Gavin, but following orders wasn’t really his forte. It hadn’t worked out all that well when he was part of the Collective and he didn’t see it turning out much better this time around.
“Raif—what in the Vast are you doing?” Von exclaimed. “Is your ship malfunctioning?”
“Just the opposite,” Raif said as the citus streaked towards the oncoming vapors. “She’s humming right along.”
“Well then, do you mind telling me what’s going on?”
Raif checked the vapor’s position on the view screen, getting ready to time his jump. “Jax is right. We can’t outrun these ships. So I’m heading for the Persepolis on my own. There’s still a chance to salvage this mission.”
“Raif, your ship doesn’t even have any weapons,” Von fired back.
“Who needs weapons when you can fly like I do?” Raif chuckled with false bravado.
“Hey, Raif, care to fill us in down here?” Cade piped up from below.
“I’m heading back, Cade. I can take the tunneler in myself if you don’t want to do this. I’ll drop you off in the desert and you can hunker down in the dunes until everything blows over.”
“Like that would work,” Cade’s comment was followed by low chatter from the rest of the team in the tunneler.
Cade was right. The idea had sounded a lot better in Raif’s head.
“We discussed it and we’re all in down here,” Cade came back. “We knew what we were signing up for when we got on board. We’re with you.”
“Raif,” Gavin called in from the Maven, “Turn the citus back around and scatter. You cannot take on the Persepolis alone.”
“Gavin, in case you’ve forgotten, if Sierra hadn’t pulled off something like this, you’d still be gurgling blue soup. Trust me. I know what I’m doing. The Persepolis is as blind as a beta-tester when it’s got ships up close.”
“The Persepolis may lack close range weapons, but it’s surrounded by ships that don’t. And this time there won’t be any collapsing cave to keep them off you,” Gavin warned.
“You may be right and I may be crazy, but I’ve got to do this,” Raif said. He checked the view screen again. The vapors were almost within firing range. There was
no more time for debate. “Raif out,” he said, killing the in-ship audio. He didn’t need the distraction.
“I trust you,” Cade’s thoughts came into Raif’s mind from the tunneler. “But I’d trust you even more if I knew what you had in mind.”
“Hold on. First I’ve got a little jape for these vapes.”
Raif reached inside a pouch at his waist. Once he had what he was hunting for, he opened the window on his left with a mental command.
I sure hope this works, he thought as he flicked one of several small metal spheres out the window. The tiny bead buried itself in the desert sand below. The little device was a mendax generator. He had come up with the idea for them back when he was in Oasis, but he’d never thought it would work until he got hold of the chronotrace. Studying the way Gavin’s invention could project events had opened up all sorts of new possibilities, but this was the only one he’d had time to implement. He threw it in with his gear on a whim and it looked like now was as good a time as any for that field test he’d been planning.
He engaged the citus’ after-burst and shot above the vapor formation almost as fast as blinking. The Persepolis came up on the view screen like a giant rock hurtling straight at him. He checked the citus’ energy well as the ship slowed back down to normal flight speed. After what happened in Manx Core, he wanted to make sure that the ship would have enough fuel for two after-bursts. Looking at the levels, it still had plenty left.
Raif timed the burst so that he came out hovering just above the Persepolis, but he the little present he’d left for the vapors in the form of an exact duplicate of his ship was still flying back behind him, on a course straight for Hull. He held his breath, waiting for it to flicker out or give itself away, but the projection held together, gliding above the dunes as if it were a real ship with a real pilot. It even left sand sprays in its wake.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 84
