by Taylor Smith
As she watched her missile volley’s progress on her tactical screen, Haley brought her ship onto a heading that put her directly in the path of her target and straightened her trajectory for a run at entering subspace. A trickle of sweat made its way down the back of her neck as the enemy cruiser stayed its course and headed straight for her.
Her nerves screamed at her to evade, but instead, she throttled up and felt the slight shift in gravity that pushed her further back into her seat as she followed her missiles straight toward their target.
One missile winked out of existence as Haley’s system reported that the cruiser had activated its point-defense systems. Two down. It was impressive, she thought. She’d never seen a point defense system react that quickly and from that far out. She quickly turned up her ship’s electronic counter measures in hopes to confuse the enemy enough for one or two of her weapons to hit home. Four, then six missiles met their fate as they neared the Sol ship, but she saw a marked difference in their reaction time. Haley felt herself begin to shake as she now stared into the face of her enemy, flying directly toward him at insane speeds. If neither of them flinched, they would surely collide head-on with each other.
With a last-ditch effort, the cruiser’s point defense lasers began firing wildly at the last four inbound weapons, and struck two more missiles down before the warship veered hard to its port side.
Haley’s Strix shot past the cruiser just as the remaining two missiles impacted with a brilliant splash of colors that she hadn’t expected. She glanced at her tactical analysis of the volley and discovered no damage was reported, and the computer was confused as to how to report the impact.
She brushed that off and re-checked her sensors. She’d long left the second cruiser behind when she made her run at the first, which was arcing upward to try and return to another intercept course. But they were both behind her now.
Several shots from behind her swept wide as she activated her star drive and left normal space behind.
***
Haley wiped the sweat from her eyes as she reached through the cramped crawlspace and released the last clamp from the damaged power coupling. With a grunt, it finally released and dropped to the floor with a loud clang. She relaxed her back against the bulkhead and rested her forehead against the wall in front of her. The Strix engineering section was a claustrophobic’s nightmare. If she was any larger, the repairs would be next to impossible.
She tried to shift her body into a more comfortable position in the cramped space next to the main reactor, but had no luck, so she squeezed herself downward to retrieve the replacement coupling and continued her work.
Once her ship had entered subspace, a multitude of alarms had gone off and Haley was nearly ripped from her restraints. The Sol ships had pummeled her poor Strix with light fire in an attempt to disable it. If she’d stayed any longer she would have lost power completely and been theirs for the taking.
Her escape, however, was almost a disaster. The ship had used the remainder of its already-riddled systems for subspace ingress, and half of them burned out during the transition. She was lucky she wasn’t knocked unconscious by the turbulence though, as she’d had precious minutes to stabilize the reactor before it shut down due to multiple power failures of its support systems.
Afterward, she pondered what would happen to a ship that lost all power while in subspace, and decided it was best not to know.
She clamped the last spare coupling into place, and wriggled herself out into the less cramped, yet still uncomfortable main engineering platform. Working the console there, she re-engaged the sections of power distribution she’d just repaired, and watched as several key systems of her ship came back to life. Once again, she had in-system propulsion, her advanced sensor suite and full life support; which was always a plus.
With another day and a half until they reached their destination, Haley decided to put off the rest of the repairs until she was rested. Life support and power distribution was the main concern, and with those functioning at tolerable levels, she could get cleaned up and dig into something that had been bugging her for the past four hours: the tactical analysis of the Sol ships and their brief encounter.
After cleaning up and donning a new jumpsuit, she swiped a ration bar from the ship’s stores and slumped into her command chair to take a closer look at her data. There was a lot here, mass estimates, weapon emplacement analysis, theoretical strengths and an alarming number of weaknesses. She nibbled her ration bar and scrolled through the information on possible weak spots on the battleship. As she thought, they were all centering around the open systems beneath the raised armor on its hull.
That was still a mystery to her. She accessed the missile strike data from the engagement and found the anomalous readings she’d briefly caught during her escape. The system indicated minor power fluctuations while the cruiser fired its point defense lasers in hopes of catching Haley’s missiles in time, but two had made contact.
No damage recorded, but massive power spikes were obvious at the moment of impact. Haley did a double-take at the timestamp. “Not an impact,” she mumbled as she read that the missiles relayed the impact codes point-two seconds before actually hitting the hull.
She leaned back in her seat and thought about that. Perhaps it was simply a close-range point defense system? The computer registered a remarkable increase in power output, and Haley found that the power readings spiked at the exact same time her weapons registered their impacts. No preparedness of a power ramp-up could mean some sort of energy barrier protecting the ship.
“No way,” she whispered and found herself grinning. If she was seeing what she thought she was seeing, it was very cool. To be able to project an energy-based screen of protection around a ship was entering the realm of science-fiction.
Her smile dropped abruptly as the implications hit her. Sol Fleet, wherever they’ve been, has some new toys. It also explained the exposed bridge and the seemingly open-air feel of the Sol battleship.
She activated the surveillance equipment in the holding cell to find Saundi sitting on the floor with her back against the wall. As she reached for the intercom to ask her prisoner about what she just witnessed, she paused. The charade had gone on long enough. There were bigger problems than anonymity now, and Saundi had answers; answers that she wouldn’t get with subterfuge and shadows.
With one final check of her systems to ensure that she and her beloved Strix were far from being vaporized by more failing systems, she left the bridge and made her way to the holding cell. For several minutes she simply stood there and breathed deeply to relax her thoughts. She couldn’t help but feel her stomach churning in nervousness and anticipation. She made a snap decision and grabbed her helmet from the armory and slipped it over her head.
She was more comfortable now, and before she knew it, her hand was on the door lock release, the door was open, and she was staring at the woman who had destroyed her life.
For several long moments they held each other’s gaze. Saundi finally broke the silence with an indignant sniff and said, “You know what sucks? Sitting in a tiny room with no windows, being thrown around and listening to the ship being torn apart and having no idea what’s going on or how long I have left until I’m trying to breathe space.”
“Unexpected,” Haley replied, her helmet disguising her voice. She was still nervous about confronting Saundi. The longer she stood before her, the more she was leaning toward a generic interrogation.
“Whatever, creepy voice person,” Saundi said and leaned her head back against the wall. But her eyes twitched back toward Haley as if noticing something. Her head slowly followed along with a grin as she said, “Forget something?”
Haley cocked her head. Then she suddenly realized that she was unarmed. She rolled her eyes at her blunder, constantly shocked at her errors around these people. She didn’t need a weapon to keep Saundi in line, but she didn’t need to explain that. A memory cropped up, however. Interrogation training taught her se
veral ways to question people. One of those methods was to let the prisoner do the talking as you fed simple key words to them. She decided to try that tactic, and squatted slowly down to come face to face with her captive. “Adair.”
Saundi looked at her sideways, her expression slowly becoming a mix of curiosity and annoyance. “Creep.”
“Neese.”
Saundi looked away from her, and Haley got her first taste of victory. She was indeed a Neese. “Clew,” Haley continued, not moving a muscle from where she sat, eye-level to Saundi.
Saundi closed her eyes and said, “I can kung-fu chop you in the neck from this distance. You may want to get out of my face.”
“Earth.”
Saundi frowned at that, and then struck Haley in the visor. The jab was quick and light. It didn’t have much force behind it, but it caught Haley off-guard, and she almost fell backward. Saundi took advantage of that and leapt on top of her abductor, knocking Haley the rest of the way backward.
Haley regained her composure quickly, and smashed her fist into Saundi’s left cheek. She felt her old friend shudder and fall aside. Haley followed to regain the upper hand and pinned Saundi beneath her. Frustrated, she ripped her helmet off and threw it aside.
Saundi squirmed angrily for a moment before freezing in place, her eyes wide in shock.
“Earth!” Haley shouted as she held Saundi down.
Saundi’s mouth worked but nothing came out at first. “Haley?” The question came out weak and shaky.
Haley took a deep breath and shoved Saundi into the floor before rising. She backed away several paces, her scowl glued to the woman she used to call friend. “Tell me why there was a Sol Fleet battleship docked with Clew Station!”
Saundi rose from the floor slowly. Her eyes never left Haley, and she seemed to have turned several shades paler than she was before. “You’re alive?” she asked in awe.
She should have expected this. The woman was too shocked to answer any questions now, and knowing she was still alive simply placed Saundi on the short list of people who needed to die. But before she could respond, Saundi took several steps toward her. Haley took a tentative step back and prepared for another attack, but Saundi’s posture was wrong. “Stop,” Haley ordered, and closed her fists in preparation for a fight. Then she realized that Saundi’s eyes were wet with tears. Haley narrowed her eyes in confusion. That was enough to allow her prisoner to close the distance.
To breathe was all Haley could do as Saundi held her old friend tightly and cried on her shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” Saundi said between sobs. “I’m so sorry. We tried to get to you but… I’m so sorry,” she repeated over and over.
Somewhere inside Haley, the twisted mass of training and conditioning that held her emotions captive, twitched and loosened. She found herself embracing her friend while confused, hot tears rolled down her cheeks unchecked. It was only a momentary lapse in control, however, and as her conditioning tightened its grasp once again, she began formulating a new tactic.
Haley gripped Saundi by the shoulders and pulled her away. “Come on,” she said in almost a whisper, and led the woman to the small galley only yards away. She motioned to one of two chairs, and pulled a bottle and two glasses out of the galley’s stores.
“Not the real stuff, unfortunately,” Haley said as she poured the amber liquid and placed a glass in front of Saundi. As she sat, she could tell Saundi was still in shock. “Yes, I’m alive.”
Saundi stared at her for another moment, tears still streaking down her face. She shook her head and took a drink. “Oh, that’s bad,” she said with a grimace.
Haley knew it was horrible, so she just let the glass sit untouched in front of her.
“What happened, Haley?” Saundi asked, but then suddenly sat straighter in her chair and looked around. “It was you? You’ve kept me locked up for days?”
Haley looked down to her glass and decided to down it. The burn of synthetic alcohol was nothing like the real thing, and the faux taste of whiskey was nowhere close to the mark. “Yeah,” she said and took a deep breath. “When I saw you with Cade and Andy, I…” she felt her control slipping again. The emotions of that moment rushed back and hit her.
“What the hell, girl!” Saundi suddenly exclaimed, half rising from her chair. “You knock me out and keep me cooped up like that for days with only that creeped-out voice to keep me company? What’s wrong with you?”
“Hey! You were dead first!” Haley shot back. “What was I supposed to think when I saw you? The woman who destroyed my life, alive and well after years of thinking you’d died in the fight against the Deshi!”
“Haley! We tried to find you!”
“Saundi! You failed!”
Saundi’s mouth clamped shut and she fell back to her chair. Her eyes dropped to her glass again and she said, “We failed.” She looked back to Haley and said, “But he was so close, in the same sector of Adara City even. And then you jumped from that building… but you didn’t jump?”
Haley’s anger lifted slightly at Saundi’s words. “Who was close?”
“Cade,” Saundi replied.
She felt her throat tighten. “What do you mean, Cade was there? How could he have been on Adara? They would have caught him before he even docked.”
Saundi pushed the glass over to Haley for another drink. “You’re kidding, right? The moment he heard you’d been drummed out of the fleet, he had them rip his implant out and ran after you. The guy could barely see, with all the migranes.”
Haley stared in shock at Saundi for a few moments, and then refilled both glasses. “Tell me everything.”
Chapter 15
Cade opened his eyes and discovered a feeling of clarity and alertness he never knew existed. He slowly sat up, unsure that anything had happened, and was greeted by a young woman dressed in white, carrying a small datapad.
“There you are,” the doctor said with a smile. “You were out for almost ten minutes. We were starting to get worried.”
Surprisingly, the brightness of the room didn’t hurt his eyes, and his headache was gone. “Ten minutes? That’s it?” He felt the back of his head, but the familiar scar of his implant site was gone.
The doctor nodded. “We usually see a five minute downtime with surgeries of this category, but then we usually don’t see patients with stress markers as elevated as yours. You need sleep,” she said with the practiced look of a doctor trying to get a point across, “and a way to decrease your stress levels.”
He felt a sarcastic grunt of a laugh slip out. “Yeah… that’ll happen. So what’s –“
“How’s our patient?”
Cade turned to see Adrianna Nyest enter the room, but without the air of superiority he’d come to expect. She almost seemed worried.
“Never felt better,” Cade responded, truly feeling better than he had in a long time. “When do we leave to go after Saundi?” he asked, feeling more and more anxious about the Sol cruisers failure to catch that ship.
Adrianna stopped next to his bed and laid a hand on his shoulder. “There’s still time, Dorian,” she said in a gentle voice. “The Reaper is being retro-fit with enhanced drives and anything else my techs can slam in before our window closes. We know its destination is the Lordell System, thanks to the intelligence that Amanda… Jerry was able to gather before she disappeared, and the tracers my ships landed on its hull. You can beat it there as long as you leave before oh-four-hundred tomorrow.”
“Six hours,” Cade muttered. “It’s already been four since they got away. Your drives are that much faster than ours?”
Adrianna smiled and nodded. “We’re cutting the Reaper’s transit time in half, along with an extra miniature reactor to compensate for the power requirements. When you return with my daughter, we’ll be able to fully update it, and the rest of your ships, to current Sol Fleet standards.” Her grip on his shoulder tightened slightly, and her face suddenly reflected a deep concern. “The doctor tells me that
if they’d activated your implant, it would have killed you.”
His brow rose at that, and he looked back to the doctor.
“Instantly,” the doctor said with a smile. “The damage done to your implant site was catastrophic,” she said with several taps to her datapad, “and the original had re-seated itself incorrectly. We’ve removed it, repaired the damage and installed a new one. I was about to activate it for calibration.”
Adrianna nodded as the doctor worked her datapad. “Just relax, Dorian.”
There was no pain, but Cade’s field of view suddenly went dark. Before he could flinch, it brightened again to a comfortable level, and then exploded with a cascade of information and animated graphs. He quickly found it futile to try and focus on any of the information that was presented, so he quit trying. After only a few seconds, the cascade stopped and presented him with a detailed interface he’d never seen before. “What is this?”
“Well,” Adrianna replied with a proud smile. “Mallian thought of you as a son, Andrew and Asaundria think of you as their brother, so why not let me pamper you as such. The implant is Sol Fleet, military grade. Nothing like the backwater contraptions they’re passing off as implants in these sectors. Start slow with it. It will learn about you as fast as you learn about it. Over time, it will gradually open its full functionality to you.”
Cade narrowed his eyes at her explanation, and then turned his attention back to the interface. A faint outline framed his peripheral with dim markers suggesting hidden items along the edge. As he focused on the markers, data would be presented to him. It was odd at first, but he quickly got the gist of it; concentrating at the lower left would suddenly display general information like time, location and ambient temperature. As he moved his focus upward, the aforementioned data would disappear just to be replaced with communications, vitals and file system options.
He looked to Adrianna with a grin and said, “I like this. What –“ he was cut off when an animated overlay suddenly appeared over Adrianna’s face. It flashed twice, and then disappeared. Beneath her, in Cade’s field of view, was displayed ‘Adrianna Nyest: Admiral’. “Whoa,” he whispered. He glanced at the doctor to be rewarded with the same function, and read: ‘Mara Hunter: Doctor’. “Face recognition?”
