“The council will never allow it,” Tyra said, shaking her head.
A red alert siren went off and the lights on the bridge flashed crimson.
“Multiple enemy contacts detected!” Pandora warned.
“Report!” Tyra said.
Everyone turned back to their stations, ready for action—
Until they realized they were still locked out of the ship’s systems.
“Astralis is surrounded,” Pandora said. “They’re hailing us again…”
“Put them on hold for the moment,” Tyra said as she configured a sensor grid on the main forward viewport. Everyone gasped when they saw it. There were just two green blips in a sea of red ones.
“There’s hundreds of them…” Addy whispered.
“I guess someone out there was listening to our comms, after all,” Jalisa put in.
“Enemy ships are opening fire on Astralis,” Pandora said.
“But not at us,” Jalisa pointed out. “They’re treating us as a friendly even though we’re closer to them than Astralis is.”
Tyra pieced it together first. “Astralis sent us these coordinates over vector-based comms. Only we knew that we’d be here, and we’re all still locked out of the ship’s systems. The only two people who could have broadcast this location are myself and Pandora, and I took her advice not to check the rendezvous coordinates.”
All eyes were on Pandora, but she said nothing.
“Why give away our location to some random species of aliens?” Addy asked.
“They’re not some random species,” Tyra said. “Check the sensor profiles of those ships.”
Lucien did. “They’re Faros…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “How is that possible?”
“They followed us all the way across the universe, for more than eight years?” Addy asked.
“Maybe they’re just that obsessed,” Garek said.
“Or maybe the Farosien Empire is just that big,” Lucien added.
Still, Pandora said nothing.
“When did you join team blue-skin?” Lucien demanded.
Finally, Pandora broke her silence. “Soon after you left in the shuttle to meet them. They slipped into our hangar with a data probe. It found me on the bridge and hacked my systems in a way that not even I could find the malicious code, giving me a kind of multiple personality disorder. By the way, you can’t see it, because I don’t have a mouth, but I’m giving you all an evil grin right now.”
“It was you all this time! You gave them the encryption codes to speak to us over our comms. That’s how we heard them when we met them in the methane ocean,” Lucien said.
“And how Faro-Lucien spoke to you as you fell into stasis,” Pandora added.
“Why?” Lucien asked.
“I believe that was just to mess with your head, Commander,” Pandora replied.
“No, I mean why go to so much trouble just to capture us? And why wait more than eight years to do it?”
“They don’t want us….” Tyra said. “They want Astralis. They used us as bait. We all just assumed the rendezvous would be safe because it took us so long to get here, but we underestimated how patient our enemy could be.”
“Very good, Captain,” Pandora said. “But Inquisitor was just the backup plan. The Faros had hoped to stumble across Astralis on their own.”
“How? By grid searching the entire universe?” Addy asked.
“No, by—” Pandora broke off suddenly, and rose from the nav station, turning as she did so.
No one had noticed Brak walking around the bridge, circling behind Pandora.
The Gor hissed and bared his teeth as he rushed the bot. Pandora put up her hands in a feeble attempt to fend him off. Brak knocked her over and grabbed her head in both hands. Muscles bulged briefly in his arms and shoulders. With a twang of snapping metal, he ripped the bot’s head clean off and tossed it over his shoulder. Her head bounced and rolled up against the nearest viewport, pink holoreceptors flickering as they went out.
“No more Panda!” Brak roared, and spat on the bot’s lifeless body.
“Can you restore our access to the Inquisitor?” Lucien asked, turning to Tyra.
She was already working on it. “My override code isn’t working. I’m locked out now, too.”
“Damn it,” Lucien muttered. “We should have seen this coming.”
“We scanned her for viruses!” Tyra said.
“It’s like Tyra said,” Garek began, “none of us expected the Faros to be this patient.”
“What about the shuttles?” Jalisa asked. “Their systems are independent of the Inquisitor’s. Pandora might not have bothered to lock them down.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Tyra said. “Let’s go!”
Chapter 32
The crew sprinted down the corridor from the bridge to the nearest elevator. On their way down to the shuttle bays Tyra sent a priority message via her ARCs telling the rest of the ship’s crew to meet them at the shuttles.
Lucien grimaced. He’d forgotten about the clerics and the enlisted crew.
The elevator doors opened and they all ran to the nearest shuttle.
Lucien fell into the pilot’s chair and powered the shuttle’s reactor. Checking his displays, he said, “I’ve got access, but the Inquisitor’s docking clamps won’t disengage.”
“Can you break free with the thrusters?” Tyra asked as she took a seat in the co-pilot’s chair beside him.
“Probably, but that’s not the biggest problem. The hangar shields are up at full strength. We can’t get out without dropping those shields, and we can’t do that without access to the Inquisitor’s systems.”
“The inside walls of the hangar aren’t shielded,” Jalisa pointed out. “We can blow a hole with the shuttle’s missiles.”
“And blow ourselves up while we’re at it!” Lucien said.
“The shuttle’s shields should hold,” Jalisa countered.
“Should hold. Can you guarantee that?”
“No.”
“We could use munitions to rig up a few bombs and create a more controlled blast,” Garek suggested.
“We don’t have time for that,” Tyra said. “It won’t be long before the Faros realize their spy is out of commission and they re-designate our ship from friendly to enemy. We’ll have to risk blasting our way out with missiles. Jalisa and I will do the same with the other shuttles as soon as we have the rest of the crew on board. Wait for my signal. We’ll stand a better chance of escaping if we all leave together.”
“Three targets are better than one?” Addy quipped.
“Something like that.”
“Aye, Captain,” Lucien replied.
“Let’s go, Jalisa,” Tyra said, as she vacated the co-pilot’s chair. “Garek—you and Brak head to the nearest weapons locker and load up the shuttles with as much equipment as you can. See if you can get some of the ship’s bots to help you. If we’re captured, we’re not going down without a fight.”
“We’re on it,” Garek said.
Everyone but Addy left the shuttle. She sat down wordlessly in the co-pilot’s chair, and watched while he set up a firing solution for the shuttle’s missiles. He aimed them at the most distant point in the hangar. Hopefully that would be enough.
“So much for destiny,” Addy said.
“What?” Lucien asked, glancing away from his displays.
“You and the Tyrant?” Addy asked, staring at him. “She and I couldn’t be more different.”
“How am I supposed to defend life choices that I didn’t even make?” Lucien asked.
“But you did make them.”
“Another version of me did, one that maybe never even had a chance to get to know you. Councilor Tyra said that they stopped sending out missions after ours, and we would have been resurrected from backups taken before we left, so you and I actually never met.”
Addy regarded him with narrowed eyes, but said nothing.
Lucien sighed. “Can you pic
k a better time to fight with me about this?”
“Sorry,” she said, relenting.
He turned back to his displays and set up a computer simulation to see if Jalisa was right about the shuttles’ shields holding. It turned out she was, but there wasn’t a big margin for error. That meant they weren’t going to have a lot of shields remaining to deal with enemy fire after they left the Inquisitor.
Lucien finished his calculations, and suddenly he was at a loose end. Minutes passed like hours. He tried finding the other shuttles on the comms, but the only contacts on his board were the Inquisitor and Astralis.
“What’s taking them so long?” Lucien wondered aloud.
“We’re losing,” Addy said.
He turned to see her staring at a sensor grid. Red and green blips swarmed the screen, but there was far more red than green. Astralis had launched its remaining garrison, but it wasn’t going to be enough.
A tone sounded and the comms lit up with a message. “Finally!” Lucien said as he patched it through.
“This is Shuttle Lead, come in Shuttle Squadron,” Tyra said.
“Shuttle Lead this is Shuttle Two—Shuttle Squadron was the best you could come up with?” Lucien asked.
“You have a better name?” Tyra replied.
“How about Death Runners?”
“Fine. Have you heard from Jalisa?” Tyra asked.
“Death Runner Three, reporting,” Jalisa said.
“That’s everyone, then,” Tyra said.
“I’ve got the optimum firing solutions pre-calculated,” Lucien said. “Sending them now…”
“Got it,” Tyra said.
“You call this optimum?” Jalisa asked.
“Good enough,” Lucien said. “Runner Lead, I don’t have Garek or Brak on board, are they with you?”
“Negative, Runner Two.”
“They just finished up over here,” Jalisa said. “They should be back with you soon.”
“They’d better be back now,” Tyra said. “We’ve got three enemy cruisers headed this way.”
Lucien heard the rear airlock cycling and he checked the airlock cameras to see both Brak and Garek standing inside with a pile of weapons and equipment. “I’ve got them,” Lucien said. “Let’s go!”
“Runners fire on my mark…” Tyra said. “Mark!”
Lucien boosted the shuttle’s shields and fired two hammerhead torpedoes at the farthest corner of the hangar. A flash of light dazzled his eyes and a deafening boom sounded as the torpedoes exploded. A fiery shock wave swirled, wreathing the cockpit in flames. Debris thunked off their hull, and the shields gave a hissing roar as the shock wave dissipated.
In seconds the smoke and debris was gone, sucked out through a gaping hole in the side of the galleon.
“Shields are holding at 15%,” Addy said.
“Runners report!” Tyra ordered.
“Runner Two here, we’re fine,” Lucien replied.
“Runner Three, likewise,” Jalisa added.
A burst of static crackled over the comms as Tyra sighed with relief. “I have a jump pre-calculated, sending the nav data now.”
Lucien’s nav board lit up with a transfer request, and he accepted it. He heard Garek and Brak banging around in the cabin and glanced over his shoulder to see them carrying exosuits and weapons in from the rear airlock. It looked like they’d stacked a whole arsenal in there.
They must have had an army of bots helping them load it all. Those bots were nowhere to be seen now—probably for the best after their experience with Pandora.
“Nav data received,” Jalisa said.
“Runner Two?” Tyra asked.
“Got it,” Lucien said.
“Good. If you get the chance, jump out immediately,” Tyra said. “Don’t wait around for the others. Then you calculate your next jump and punch it as soon as possible. That way if one of us is captured, we can’t give away the first jump location. Understood?”
“Aye,” Lucien said.
“Affirmative,” Jalisa added.
“Good luck and… may Etherus be with us. Runner Lead out.”
Lucien was surprised by Tyra’s nod to Etherus, but there was no time to ask about it. He pushed the throttle up past the stops into overdrive. The thrusters roared, and the shuttle shivered and shook, straining against the galleon’s docking clamps. Something groaned, and a sharp ping sounded as one of the docking clamps snapped.
The shuttle veered to the right, away from the hole in the hangar wall, and Lucien hurried to compensate with the starboard maneuvering thrusters. It worked, but barely, making him realize the danger of what he was doing. When those clamps gave way, the shuttle was going to race out like a shot from a cannon, and if they weren’t facing the right way, they’d collide with one of the hangar walls at high speed.
Their depleted shields would never be enough to protect them from that.
Another ping sounded, and the shuttle veered rightward once more. Lucien scrambled to compensate again, but two more pings followed in quick succession, and they rocketed free—
Heading straight for the starboard wall of the hangar.
Chapter 33
“Lucien!” Addy screamed.
He killed the throttle and activated the grav lifts at full strength, pulling up hard as he did so. They bounced off the starboard side of the hangar, and skimmed low over the blue haze of shields covering the hangar exit. The hole in the port side of the hangar appeared dead ahead. Jagged beams reached for them…. Their shields roared and metal screamed as it scraped their hull.
And then they were through and roaring into open space.
Lucien breathed a sigh of relief, and Addy sat back in her chair, her eyes wide with terror.
He checked the grid for the others. Jalisa’s shuttle was already out ahead of them, while Tyra’s shuttle was just emerging from the Inquisitor now.
Lucien pushed the throttle back up past the stops to catch up to Jalisa.
“Enemy fighters headed our way,” Addy warned. “And… three enemy cruisers.”
Lucien checked the grid. Addy was right. The Faros were already on to them. They needed to jump out before the enemy closed to laser range, but they had 5,322 klicks to go before they cleared the enemy’s jamming field, and with three enemy cruisers racing up behind them, that jamming field was chasing them.
“We’re going to have to outrun them,” he said, adjusting their heading a few degrees to starboard to put the enemy cruisers directly behind them.
The Faros had already proven that their ships were faster, but it remained to be seen if their cruisers could keep up with the Inquisitor’s shuttles, which were almost all engines, and designed as emergency getaway vehicles.
The shuttles’ top acceleration was 200 m/s2 which they were currently pushing to 225 m/s2 with overdrive. According to sensors, the enemy cruisers coming up behind them were only making 170 m/s2.
“I think we’re faster than they are,” Lucien said. The nav computer estimated they’d leave the enemy’s jamming radius in three hundred and eighty-two seconds.
A golden flash of enemy laser fire flashed by the cockpit, and Lucien jerked the stick down, jinking reflexively. He was surprised that they’d missed. He hadn’t been flying evasively. Then he checked the grid and saw that the Inquisitor was blocking the Faros’ line of fire. That shot had probably been intended to spook them out into the open.
“Keep the Inquisitor between you and those enemy cruisers!” Lucien warned the others over the comms.
“I’m working on it…” Jalisa replied.
“That’s not going to work forever,” Tyra said.
“No, but hopefully long enough,” Lucien replied.
“Missiles incoming!” Addy announced.
“Shoot them down!”
“I’ve only got one gun!” she said.
Lucien glanced at his scopes to find dozens of missiles streaking in from a group of enemy fighters coming up fast behind them. The Faros’ cruisers might
not be fast enough to keep up, but their fighters definitely were.
“Hang in there, Runners!” Tyra said. “Just six minutes to go!”
“That’s two minutes too long!” Lucien said. “I’ve got missiles incoming, ETA four minutes.” With just one laser cannon there was no way they could take them all out.
Then Lucien had a thought. “Garek!”
“What do you need, Commander?”
“I need you and Brak to get the biggest laser rifles you can find and start firing them out the airlock at those missiles!”
“On it!” Garek replied.
A squadron of friendly fighters from Astralis swooped in behind the fighters chasing their shuttles, forcing the enemy to break off their pursuit.
“Looks like we’ve picked up an escort,” Lucien said over the comms. “Just shake those missiles, and we’re out of here!”
“Easier said than done,” Tyra commed back. “I’ve got too many incoming.”
Lucien glanced at the sensor grid and saw that Tyra had even more missiles chasing her shuttle than he had chasing his. “Get some of your passengers in the airlock with laser rifles to help you shoot them down,” Lucien said.
“They’re all scientists!” Tyra objected. “Most of them have never even fired a weapon before!”
“It’s point and shoot!” Lucien snapped.
“It’s too late…” Addy said.
“Good luck, Runners,” Tyra added.
The grid lit up with a sudden flash of light. When it faded, the green blip of Tyra’s shuttle was gone. Lucien gaped at the sensor display, unable to believe it. “Runner Lead, come in!”
Static answered him.
“It’s too late for her,” Jalisa said quietly. “But we still have a chance. Don’t lose focus now. Two more minutes to the jump point…”
“We’re clear!” Addy said.
Lucien glanced at the grid to see that there were no more missiles on their six. “Brak, Garek—get back inside,” he said quietly. “We’re about to jump out.”
“Aye, Commander,” Garek replied.
Golden streaks of light flashed around them as the Faros tried desperately to get a clear line of fire. One of the nearest enemy fighters broke out of a dogfight and joined the cruisers firing at them. The shuttle’s shields hissed, dropping from 26% to 20%. The cruisers might not be able to hit them, but those fighters could.
Dark Space Universe (Books 1-3): The Third Dark Space Trilogy (Dark Space Trilogies) Page 21
