by R S Penney
“I've made the same arguments many times,” Jena said. “However, our treaty with Earth stipulates that we have to keep military presence in this system to a minimum. A few paranoid politicians can lead everybody else to disaster.”
A soft sigh passed through Jack's lips, and he looked up at Jena. “Permission to go with her?” he asked. “I'd like to be there when this all goes down.”
It warmed Anna's heart that he would ask, so much that she found herself smiling and trying to hide it. Jack wasn't a pilot; she'd taught him a few things about the shuttle's systems, but he couldn't fly. And he still wanted to be there with her.
“There's not much you can do out there, kid.”
Jack sucked on his lower lip, his face contorting with obvious frustration. “I'm aware of that,” he said. “But my best friend's going into a dangerous situation. I kinda want to be there too.”
Jena had her back turned, facing Jack on the far side of the room. “All right,” she said with a curt nod. “You can go. Be prepped and ready to leave in ten minutes. I want you both out there ASAP.”
The shuttle's instruments revealed eight distinct warp trails coming in at over 2,700 times the speed of light. Without thinking, Anna spread her hands across the console and brought up the sensor menu.
Their fleet of small shuttles surrounded the three large cruisers like a swarm of bees attacking some children who were foolish enough to disturb the hive. There was really no way to predict how these skirmishes might play out. Space was three-dimensional and vast. Their enemies might try to pass beneath them, or above. To the left or the right. Or maybe they would simply try to punch right through.
There was no way to know until the moment was upon them, and then everybody would react as best they could. She felt a nagging fear in the pit of her stomach, one that she could easily force down.
Pressing her lips into a thin line, Anna looked up to stare through the window. “Not long now,” she said. “They'll be in range of our Slip-Shield in less than five minutes.”
“You nervous?” Jack asked.
She swiveled around.
Two consoles stood side by side at the back of the cockpit, and Jack had claimed the one on the port side. He sat forward with a look of concentration on his face, scanning the readouts.
Closing her eyes, Anna let out a soft sigh. “What do you think?” she asked, turning back to her station. “I've made choices that might result in a lot of dead bodies. If I'm too quick to act…or too slow.”
“Then it's a good thing you're the one at the controls,” Jack countered. “Because there's no one in this universe I trust more to make the right decisions.”
Anna felt her face heat up. Covering her mouth with one hand, she smiled into her palm. “Thank you…” The words came out in a soft murmur. “But that won't be much comfort if things go wrong.”
“They won't.”
It was a comfort to hear Jack express such faith in her, but she couldn't help but wonder if she deserved to be comforted. Time to change the subject? She was beginning to think any other topic would be preferable. “So…You and Gabi?”
The long silence that followed made her stomach tighten up. What was she doing? She had no business asking something like that. “Yeah,” Jack said softly. “She seems to really like me.”
“Of course she does.”
Anna tapped a button on her console causing the nose of her shuttle to pitch sixty degrees downward. Stars scrolled past in the canopy window until a phoenix-class cruiser came into view.
The large ship reminded Anna of a falcon with curved wings and a pointed head that ended in a sharp beak. Leyrian frigates were designed for optimal maneuverability both in space and in an atmosphere. That was one advantage they had over their Antauran counterparts. Of course, the enemy ships were bigger and better armed.
On her display screen, those tiny red dots that indicated enemy ships were coming closer and closer. By now, the Antauran fleet had passed through the Oort Cloud. Luckily, they would not be aware of the Leyrian presence until it was too late. Ships at warp were easy to detect at great distance, ships at sub-light velocities next to impossible.
“Ready Slip-Shield,” a voice came through the comm unit.
Anna spread her hands to enlarge a window on the console, running the software that controlled her warp engines. With a few quick taps, she programmed them to emit a powerful distortion that would ripple through SlipSpace and disrupt the warp field of any passing ship. With every shuttle emitting the same field, they would knock the Antaurans right out of FTL.
“Engage.”
She triggered the distortion.
Anna looked up to blink through the window. “All right,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “Let's hope we get them all.”
Her instruments registered eight ships dropping out of warp some 50,000 kilometers away. The Antaurans had been jolted, but they were already responding. She detected tiny fighters emerging from hangar bays.
“This is the Leyrian ship Telarin,” Captain Brin Soran intoned over the comm unit. “You are in violation of protected space. Withdraw from this system now, and we will not be forced to fire on you.”
The canopy window lit up with an image that filled the smartglass. A man in a blue uniform stood on the bridge of a ship with hands clasped behind his back. “I am Captain Ayton Novado,” he said in clipped tones. “Your people have illegally taken custody of two of our citizens. We expect their immediate return.”
“Those two citizens have been granted asylum under the Belos Accords.”
Novado scowled, shaking his head. “We've seen no formal request for asylum,” he said, approaching the camera. “You have exactly ten minutes to return our citizens to us or we will open fire.”
Not good…
“Negative. We have jurisdiction here.”
A self-satisfied smile blossomed on Novado's face. “Very well then. It seems my people will get the exercise they've been craving.”
“Leyrian fleet,” Soran replied. “All ahead full.”
Jena leaned over her desk with hands pressed to its surface, shaking her head. “Come on,” she whispered hoarsely. “Give me something…An update! A status report! Anything!”
“You looked angry.”
She looked up.
Larani leaned against the doorframe with arms folded, a tight frown on her face. Whatever had brought the woman to Station Twelve, it must have been important. Her place was in the CIC.
Grinding her teeth, Jena shut her eyes. “You're damn right I'm angry!” she growled, rounding her desk and pacing across the room. “I've got two good Keepers who are about to fly into a hot mess. I should be with them, but instead I'm here.”
The other woman lifted her chin to deliver one of those frosty glares that always made everyone fall in line. “And you believe one more shuttle will make the difference?” she asked. “Turn defeat into glorious victory?”
Jena felt her lips curl, a surge of heat burning in her cheeks. “Of course not,” she said, shaking her head. “But I've never really been comfortable watching a conflict play out from behind my desk.”
“Your place is here.”
“And yours is on Station One,” Jena shot back. “So before we delve too deep into the lectures about duty, why don't you explain your purpose here?”
A grimace passed over Larani's face, one that she smothered in half a heartbeat. She turned slightly in the doorway, peering into the corridor. “I'd like to propose an idea that might not be worthy of a Justice Keeper.”
“What's that?”
There was a stiffness in Larani's posture. “The telepath,” she said. “Perhaps we should return her to her people.”
Tossing her head back, Jena winced. “Yeah,” she said, nodding to herself. “I've had the exact same thought. Problem is if we do that, Keli is going to spend the rest of her life as one very mistreated lab-rat.”
Larani blew out a deep breath, then huddled in on herself. “I know,
” she whispered. “But the question is 'do we have the resources to contain her?' She has proven herself to be a credible threat.”
“And Raynar?”
“I doubt we could give them one without the other.”
Much as it turned her stomach to do so, Jena allowed herself to consider all options. Returning the telepaths to their people would prevent a violent altercation – and possibly a war – but it would also be a major human rights violation. That didn't sit well with her. Jena was often willing to lecture her people on the need to make hard decisions, but there was only so far you could take it before you became what you hated most. In some ways, she could be as soft-hearted as Melissa.
The girl popped into her mind right then, and Jena found herself wondering how her newest protégé would handle this situation. Strange that she would put so much stock in the opinions of someone who didn't even carry a symbiont. Still, she had to wonder. What would Melissa do? The answer was simple.
Melissa would let the telepaths choose their own fate.
“Come on,” Jena said.
“Where are we going?”
“To make a decision.”
Her shuttle raced through the void, but Anna saw nothing but stars in the canopy window, tiny points of light that twinkled in the distance. At this range, it would be impossible to see even a battle cruiser with the naked eye, but her instruments knew they were there.
Alarms blared.
A blue pulse of light streaked toward her in the distance, charged plasma that would probably knock out her shields. Anna thumbed the hat-switch, and her shuttle slid downward a few meters. The plasma soared past above her.
Another came zipping toward her. A quick flick of the hat-switch and her shuttle slid a few feet to the right. The blue streak passed her on the port side. By this point, they were close enough for a red dot to appear in her window, indicating the ship.
Anna bared her teeth, leaning forward in her chair. Sweat rolled over her face and matted hair to her forehead. “Hang on!” she barked. “We're about to fly straight into the dragon's mouth!”
A heavy cruiser grew larger and larger until it filled the entire window, and then they were passing underneath it, metal hull plating scrolling past overhead. There were guns on the ship's belly firing down at enemies below.
One swiveled around to point at her.
Anna pushed forward on the flightstick, causing the shuttle's nose to drop as they swooped past underneath. She pulled up and found even more guns pointed at her shuttle. Blue streaks flashed against the flickering force-fields.
“Come on,” Anna whispered. “Just a little bit further.”
There was a dome-shaped protrusion on the ship's belly, and on its surface, she saw a dozen flickering lights. Particle beams from Leyrian cannons crashed against the enemy ship, intercepted by powerful force-fields.
“Guns pointed at our backside!” Jack bellowed.
“Deploy countermeasures.”
She didn't bother to wonder whether he'd done so; when you were flying a mission like this, you had to trust your co-pilot completely. If that trust wasn't there, you shouldn't have been flying together. The small probes Jack launched would create sensor ghosts that fooled the guns' targeting systems.
That dome was getting closer and closer. It almost felt as though she could reach out and touch it if she just opened the shuttle's window. “Give me EMP rounds!” Anna shouted. “We're ending this!”
“EMP rounds ready.”
She pulled the trigger and watched thin white tracers explode from her wings, twin lines of little sparks that converged on the dome and passed right through the force-fields that tried to protect it. There were small flashes that might indicate damage.
Her systems beeped.
Wiping sweat off her face with one hand, Anna brushed damp hair away from her forehead. “Ventral shield generator inoperative,” she said into the comm unit. “Hit 'em where it hurts, people!”
She pushed forward on the flightstick and angled her shuttle in a ninety-degree turn away from the larger ship. It was hard not to think of this new direction as “down.” Down had no meaning in space, but she was flying away from the ship's belly.
As she caught her breath, she noticed one of the phoenix-class cruisers flying up toward the defenseless Antaurans. The ship's pointed nose lit up with a hellish glow just before it spat a bright orange particle beam.
“Heavy damage to the Antauran battle cruiser,” Jack confirmed. “They're pretty much dead in the water.”
Through the window, she saw nothing but a field of stars. There were ships out there somewhere – her instruments told her as much – but they were too far away to be detected with the naked eye, and-
Something slammed into the port side of her shuttle, knocking them into a fierce spin and causing the lights in the cockpit to flicker. In the window, she saw nothing but streaking stars and the occasional flash of the Antauran ship's underbelly.
She flared the gravitational drives to steady her ship, orienting herself towards the source of her trouble. A small Antauran fighter was racing toward her, spitting bright blue plasma bolts from its curved wings.
Anna thumbed the hat switch.
The plasma bolts slid past beneath her, and she reoriented her ship to point at a spot right in her enemy's flight path. She fired and watched as two streams of tiny white flecks converged on that spot just before her opponent flew through it.
The fighter jerked about as its systems were overwhelmed by the electromagnetic energy. Though instinct urged her to do otherwise, she didn't go in for the kill shot. That pilot had lost his propulsion systems; he was harmless.
“One of our heavy cruisers is badly damaged,” Jack said. “Three Antauran ships are heading for the weak point in our lines. If they escape our Slip-Shield, there's nothing standing between them and Earth.”
“There is one thing,” Anna said. “Me.”
Chapter 29
The door to Keli's cell slid open to reveal the young woman standing there with a hand pressed to her stomach, her face contorted in pain. It was almost as if she could feel the distress of their pilots.
Perhaps she could.
Jena scrubbed a hand over her face, raking fingers through her hair. “We need to have a conversation,” she said. “You're going to decide what you want me to do with you.”
The woman turned to watch her with a tight frown, her expression as cold as winter on Palisa. “So it's my decision now?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. “I thought you had decided to keep me prisoner.”
“Your people want you back.”
“Yes, that's quite the conundrum you have.”
“All right,” Jena said, nodding to the other woman. “You wanna play the stone-faced tough lady, I'll bite. Give me one good reason not to turn you over to them.”
Keli leaned one shoulder against the wall, heaving out a deep breath. “You have no good reason to protect me, Justice Keeper,” she said with more than a touch of rage in her voice. “I am a liability to you. Be rid of me.”
This was getting her nowhere. Giving Keli the option to choose was all noble and good, but it meant nothing if the woman insisted on being obstinate. Anger flared to a fierce, furious flame. “I do not have time for your little games,” Jena hissed. “I've got good people out there, and they're dying to keep you safe.”
A small smile was Keli's only response, but she bowed her head in some twisted attempt to show respect. “Then let me go,” she said. “Return me to my people, and they will leave this system.”
The anger was so fierce Jena could barely think, but somehow, through the haze of fury, she was able to take note of one very important detail. “You spent the last four days running from us because you feared what would happen when your people came looking for you, and now you want to go back?”
Well, that had an effect. The other woman seemed completely taken aback by the question. “My options have changed,” she said. “I cannot escape your dun
geon, and you lack the resources to protect me.”
Keli strode forward with cold, casual grace, pausing in the middle of the room with fists balled at her sides. “My people will destroy this station to recover me,” she added. “I will likely die when they try.”
“Better life as a lab-rat than no life at all.”
“Where there's life, there's hope.”
Hardly the most resounding declaration of intent, but she had given the woman a choice. Keli seemed to be quite willing to go back. Still…Could she let herself consign another human being to that fate?
A burst of soft laughter from Keli made the decision easier. “You're weak-willed, Justice Keeper,” she mocked. “I don't have to read your thoughts to know your heart. You pride yourself on making the difficult decisions, but when the moment comes – when the wisest course of action is clear, you balk.”
Lifting her forearm, Jena started tapping on the screen of her multi-tool. “Docking Bay, I want a shuttle prepped and ready to go in five minutes,” she said. “I'll be escorting one passenger to the hot-zone.”
When she looked up, Keli was wearing a smile that could leave a hardened soldier quaking in his boots. “Only one passenger?” the woman asked with a chuckle. “The last I heard, there were two telepaths on this station.”
“The boy's not coming,” Jena insisted. “I wouldn't condemn an innocent to a fate like that. You, however, can be taken by the Bleakness itself for all I care.”
Anna had seen the movies Jack loved, and anyone who watched them would expect mayhem: hundreds of ships flying around in all directions, particle beams crisscrossing. Total bedlam. The battle raged all around her, but she saw nothing in her window except stars. Space was vast, and most of the conflict was too far away to be viewed with the naked eye.
On her display screen, she saw three red dots converging on her ship from behind. Enemy fighters. The one in the middle was just a little bit ahead of the other two, and that made him the most vulnerable.
