Inside the Nepenthe’s battlesphere, Oana clenched her jaw while opening up the ship’s throttle. “Accelerating to three-gees.”
Captain Dangard adjusted the gravity restraints on his command chair to make sure they were tight. “Can you track the number of incoming lancers?”
It was by sheer luck Oana had spotted a cluster of faint flashes of heat while glancing at the live star charts on her console. She immediately concluded they were missile thrusters, and were headed directly for them. “With Sappho’s main sensors still out, I can wing it by doing some quick calculations. So far it looks like close to nine hundred lancer missiles were just fired at us from multiple directions. I can’t tell the exact trajectories until they get close.”
Dangard remained cool and aloof, despite the tense situation. “Is there any way we could lose them in the nebula?”
“If we go full acceleration into the Mystic Mountains, they could lose track of us before the warheads are fired, but the thick gas and dust clouds will render our radiators inoperative,” Oana said. “We’ll have to shut down the fusion drive before we overheat. Our internal heatsinks won’t be able to handle the load for very long.”
“Define ‘very long.’”
Oana punched in some numbers on her console. “A few minutes at our current acceleration, and that’s it. If we keep going afterwards the interior of this ship will get hot enough to fry us all into dust.”
“We’re damned either way,” Dangard said. “We can’t evade that many missiles, and once they fire their warheads we’ll be screwed. Turn us in towards the thickest of the gas clouds and keep going until our radiators cut off, then start a shutdown sequence—but turn your heading to these coordinates first.” He forwarded a set of directions to her.
“Yes, Captain.”
Back on the bridge of the Wyvern, Tran leaned forward and frowned. “They’re crazy! Going into the Mystic Mountains like that!”
“Sir, our lancers don’t have the target in their sights anymore,” the weapons officer said. “The enemy is using a lot of decoys to screw up our sensor readings.”
Tran snorted. “Have them fire at the most probable locations then!”
“Yes, sir.”
Tran looked towards the other side of the bridge. They can’t stay inside those thick clouds forever or they’ll burn up because of the heat buildup without their radiators. “Helm, get us moving.”
The chief pilot nodded and activated the Wyvern’s throttle. “Yes, sir. Accelerating to two-gees.”
“Com officer,” Tran said. “Alert the other cruisers. Tell them to patrol the most likely avenues where the Nepenthe will reappear. Have them fire gauss cannons at will.”
“Yes, sir.”
In the Nepenthe’s battlesphere, Oana gritted her teeth the moment the new enemy contacts appeared on her tactical map. “Just detected three … no, four ships hidden along the baseline of the Mystic Mountains. They fired up their drives and radiators the moment we entered the upper peak.”
Captain Dangard studied the readings on his own console. Sappho was working intermittently, though the long-range sensors gave out the right readings this time. “Four cruisers. Unknown class, but definitely Union Star Force. They were waiting for us.”
The entire room began to shake a little before the gyros kicked in and stabilized the surroundings. It was a sure sign they had just entered the thicker part of the nebula.
Oana kept her eyes peeled on the readouts in front of her. “Magnetic fields on the radiators now starting to dissipate. We’re getting heat spikes from all over.”
“Maneuver using the coordinates I’ve given you for ten seconds, then begin to power down the drive,” Dangard said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Once they lose track of us, I’m pretty sure they’ll commit the lancers to fire and use best guesses on our projected position,” Dangard said. “Try to use the drive on minimal thrust for short bursts with evasive maneuvering, but don’t overload the heatsinks.”
“I’ll try, Captain,” Oana said. “Even with these tactics we won’t be able to travel very far.”
“We just need to make most of the enemy ordinance miss, and we can repair what hits us.”
“We can’t stay in here forever, Captain,” Oana said. “We need to reserve some of the heatsinks for a breakout.”
“I’m well aware of that,” Dangard said. “Viniimn and I discussed a theoretical solution, but we’ll need to get Sappho back up to full status.” He punched up his com-link to the hangar bay. “Lieutenant, can you hear me?”
Garrett Strand’s voice boomed over the speakers. “There’s … a bit of a cutoff on the audio … but I can figure things out.”
“We’ve been ambushed. Lots of lancers coming our way. Deploy your team,” Dangard said.
“You got it, Captain.”
Inside the bridge of the Wyvern, the weapons officer continued to tabulate the readings of his console. “Nine hundred lancers have fired off their warheads. Commander, with your permission I would like to see if I can get the remaining fifty that didn’t to activate their secondary stage to enter the nebula. If they can detect the Nepenthe inside the cloud and then fire their warheads, they’ll have a better chance of hitting her.”
“Good idea,” Fleet Commander Tran said. “Do it.”
The com officer tapped on her keyboard while nodding. “Commander, the Griffin, Gaugemela, and Belleau Wood are beginning their maneuvers just outside of the Mystic Mountains. As per your orders, the Griffin will cover the peak of the dust cloud, while the other two ships will be below us, near the base.”
Tran clasped his hands together. His fleet of four cruisers had managed to slip into the area a few days before while using minimal power and heatsinks to drift amongst the thickest of the nearby dust clouds to hide their presence. The Nepenthe had fallen into his trap. It all felt too easy. “Very good. Have them keep running full sensor scans and coordinate fire the moment any of us gets a contact.”
Garrett Strand undid the gravity straps once the battle drone he was traveling in had accelerated out of the Nepenthe’s hangar bay. It felt good to wear a full suit of battle armor once more, but he knew it would do very little against the gargantuan shipboard weapons coming towards them. He activated the com-links and got a positive reading; each battle drone had a separate, more simple AI system, and Sappho’s malfunctions thankfully had not spread to his tiny fleet. “Okay boys and girls, listen up. The external cargo hold has been opened for a short time, so you got exactly five minutes to take out those big armored plates and position them just a few klicks away from the Nepenthe’s hull.”
Spacer Diego Rodriguez’s voice was on the com-link. Each of them manned a separate battle drone. “Quick question, LT. Once we position the plates around the Nepenthe, do we let them go or do we hang on to them? They gonna drift a bit because of the volatile gases all around.”
“Let them go once you cover up the ship from all sides,” Strand said, “but be ready to move those plates the moment we get an adjusted incoming readout per your assigned grids. Once those lancers get close, reposition the plates to block them, but be careful—once those things hits a plate, both will get vaporized. You don’t want to be caught holding on to a composite sheet when one of those things gets nailed. Y’all got it?”
All the spacers answered in unison. “Yes, sir!”
“Let’s get moving then,” Strand said. “Hurry up!”
Viniimn had managed to isolate the AI virus along two remaining nodes within the ship’s network. He still wasn’t sure how it jumped from one system to the next or where it operated from, but his confidence was growing to the point where he knew the tide had finally turned.
The chief engineer floated over to the internal com-link site near the Nepenthe’s spinal deck and extended the interface cable from his cyber-harness, scanning for any possible traces of the pesky malware worm.
A shadow drifted near the open hatch behind him. Zeno grabbed h
old along the sides of the entryway and pulled himself silently into the room. He was just about to launch his body at the nytini when Viniimn disengaged his cyber-harness from the node and turned to face him.
“We nytini had to face a multitude of predators on our homeworld during the distant past,” Viniimn said. “My harness has rear motion sensors, so I knew you were there the moment you got inside.”
Zeno said nothing as he braced his feet and pushed off towards Viniimn, but the nytini used the micro thrusters embedded in his exoskeleton to effortlessly move sideways, evading the synthetic’s lunging attack.
Viniimn fired off a retractable cable from the shoulder of his harness. The nanocarbon wire wrapped itself around Zeno’s left arm and spun it tightly against his torso. Viniimn began to orbit the stricken synthetic, expertly using his thrusters to wrap Zeno’s torso with more cabling, intending to bind him like a captured animal.
With the speed of a lightning bolt, Zeno used his free hand to grab onto the loose cable, and with his incredible strength, pulled the surprised Viniimn closer towards him. The moment they got close, Zeno punched the back of the nytini’s cyber-harness, damaging the device’s main battery.
Viniimn tried to pull away, disengaging his cable and desperately activating his thrusters to try and gain some distance, but Zeno had already grabbed hold of the nytini’s harness, and he wasn’t letting go. Viniimn let out a hoarse cry as the synthetic pinned him to the side of the room and began kicking repeatedly at him, inflicting heavy bruises on the nytini’s exposed underside.
The intense pain was proving too much, and Viniimn began to black out. His cyber-harness continued to grapple with the synthetic and tried to defend against Zeno’s hand attacks, but the synthetic man’s leveraged kicks were proving to be just as devastating.
Zeno partially got his left hand free from the bundles of cable wound around it, and he finally had both hands around the nytini’s thick neck. Viniimn’s cyber-harness had now been severely damaged, and his fragile body was no match against a synthetic.
A sudden burst of electricity surged into Zeno’s body, momentarily confusing him. Viniimn had rigged up a feedback loop in his cyber-harness and activated it. The nytini used his remaining thruster power to drift away from the dazed synthetic, even though he knew it was merely a temporary reprieve.
Zeno shook his head slowly while his core processor recovered from the disorienting shock. Refocusing on the task ahead, he braced his feet along the walls to launch himself at the nytini once more. Just as he thrust himself across the room, something black and furry collided with his side, sending him tumbling sideways.
Creull bit into the synthetic man’s shoulder as they began struggling, tearing past the plastic-like skin and damaging the joint actuator. Globs of fluid and coolant began to spray out of Zeno’s torn collarbone. The inside of Creull’s mouth was burning from the volatile chemicals, but she ignored the pain and continued to bite and claw at the synthetic man, hoping to disable him quickly.
Zeno was able to get hold of her thick right arm and twist it, breaking the muscle and cartilage around her elbow joint. Creull roared in pain as she bit into his face, once again tearing through the synthetic skin and ripping out one of his artificial eyes. Since Zeno didn’t feel any pain, he ignored the damage and grabbed the riwwr’s other arm and fractured it as well.
Creull realized she couldn’t keep fighting him this way. Both her arms were disabled, and the synthetic could now strike at her vulnerable head. Planting her right cybernetic leg on his chest, she kicked out towards his abdomen using maximum power while keeping her jaws clamped on his face for leverage. The force of the attack nearly tore her sharpened teeth out from her mouth, but it was enough.
Zeno’s neck was nearly ripped loose from his body as the damaged command links failed to communicate with his central thought processor. The synthetic man’s arms and legs flailed out wildly as Creull kept pulling at his head with her mouth, and after a few seconds managed to disable his command link entirely, rendering him helpless.
Viniimn got closer and activated the built-in plasma torch on his harness, thrusting the welder against the synthetic man’s damaged neck region, completely severing it from the nanocarbon spine. Zeno’s head began to float away, along with loose strands of internal cabling and droplets of coolant and other fluids.
Creull caught her breath. The mind-numbing pain was driving her crazy, but she remained analytical. “I know this sounds silly, but I believe he fought to lose. There’s still a part of him in there.”
Viniimn stared blankly at the synthetic debris and floating globules of liquid. “From now on I’m going to add more weapons to this exoskeleton of mine.”
30 Skirmishers
An hour had passed, and Garrett Strand knew the incoming lancers would arrive at any moment. He positioned his battle drone at the outer edge of the Nepenthe’s defensive field, acting as forward observer and sweeper in case of any surprises.
His battle armor was linked with the drone’s sensors, and the warning tones began cascading over the audio speakers in his helmet. Glancing at the tactical map in his visor, he relayed the updated trajectories of the incoming warheads to the other drones. “Okay, y’all know the drill. Make your adjustments now.”
His small team of five battle drones began to drag the drifting armored plates to make sure they were in the way of the incoming ordinance.
“Hurry up,” Strand said. “Go, go, go. You’ve got less than two minutes, so make it count.”
A different warning beep made him glance at the secondary map. It showed a dozen new contacts coming in at extreme range, and their heat signatures were different. Strand tapped the battle drone’s AI system and went to full acceleration. Did the enemy also deploy drones? I need to get a closer look and identify them.
Diego Rodriguez’s voice came over his com-link circuit. “LT, we just had an impact on starboard. One of the lancers got taken out by the shield.”
“Good,” Strand said while keeping his eye on the new contacts. “Keep sounding off, I got my hands full with something else over here.”
“You got it, LT,” Diego said. “Oh, two more impacts to starboard and more than a dozen near misses. We’re doing good so far.”
Strand frowned. The new contacts were still missiles, only they didn’t detonate their warheads yet. Those lancers must be actively searching for the ship and will fire only when they get an exact fix.
Spacer Ratana’s voice came online. “LT, I’m on the port side. Lots of incoming, but they’re too far away to get any hits. I think we’re good.”
“No, we’re not,” Strand said tersely while the drone he was riding in went to four-gee acceleration. A number of missiles were actively searching for the Nepenthe within the dust cloud, and he had to get within weapons range before they fired.
He found a long line of two dozen missiles moving just ahead of him. Strand toggled the auto-targeting systems and the drone began shooting gauss rounds in a stream just ahead of the enemy missiles. Several lancers were immediately disabled, while a few more continued on their way, ignoring his battle drone’s tiny blip on their sensors. They wanted the big one.
Another dozen or so missiles were coming in from the other side of the haze, but Strand’s drone estimated they didn’t have enough range to attack the Nepenthe, and would run out of fuel before they found her signal.
Four missiles coming from the lower part of the thick nebula detected a number of their own being disabled and altered their course to investigate. Strand had just finished off the last of the dozen lancers in his area when the drone alerted him to the other four.
Strand cursed as he altered the battle drone’s course. His weapon pod was out of gauss ammunition, and all he had left were the lasers, which were only effective up close. The thick haze of dust and gas all around him made the beam weapons next to useless. “We got four more incoming; they’re going to wait and adjust their aim before firing the warheads. Be ready b
y my signal!”
“I see your blip, LT,” Ratana said. “Diego and I will be set.”
Strand grimaced while pushing the battle drone to maximum acceleration. The dense soup of ionized elements was slowing him down, and a sinking feeling told him he couldn’t help, all he could do was command. “Listen up … You got thirty seconds to adjust the shields when they fire. I can’t get to them in time.”
“My drone’s trailing two sheets of metal,” Diego said. “I can get two of them.”
Strand could see the last missile of the group just ahead of him. At six-gees of acceleration he was slowly gaining on it, since the lancer was almost out of fuel, but he could tell he was too late. “I see one. They’re closing in at two hundred thousand klicks.”
His drone began to fire its lasers, but Strand could see most of the damage was mitigated by the missile’s plasma exhaust. His weapons needed just enough penetration on the ordinance to knock it off course before it fired, since lancer warheads detonated straight ahead. A few seconds later, the laser fire finally did have an effect as the missile ahead of him began tumbling sideways. One down, three to go.
“I’ve detected incoming lancer fire,” Ratana said. “Moving into position now.”
“Me too,” Diego said.
Strand sighed as he saw the three remaining missiles had managed to find the Nepenthe and fired off their warheads, sending metal projectiles at hyper accelerations towards the ship. “You got twenty seconds, make ’em count!”
He could see Ratana had angled the shield her drone was dragging into the proper place, and it successfully countered the first attack. Diego’s first shield was also in line, and the youth was doing his best to put the last armored sheet into the right position. The second incoming shell impacted harmlessly on the next barrier, vaporizing both.
“Come on, Diego,” Strand whispered. “You’re almost there.”
Diego had managed to place the armored plate at the last second, just as the final incoming attack had gotten there. Strand yelled out as all the blips connected on his virtual map, indicating the young spacer’s drone was caught in the blast. “Diego, come in!”
Nepenthe Rising Page 32
