by I G Hulme
“Ryann!” Angelique’s shout of alarm made him jump, at the same instant as the squat shape of the Patroller’s landing lights suddenly flashed on. “Power surge! Get our shields up!”
Ryann’s hand was barely half-way to the console before the cockpit erupted in a shower of sparks and he was thrown back in his chair from the blast. He looked up in disbelief as two bright trails of light sped towards him while the Patroller powered away from the hull of the Ibis.
“Missiles!” he yelled, but there was no time to react. He just had time to see the Patroller loose off another volley of fire upon them before the missiles struck with a deafening explosion and the view-screen went dead, plunging them into darkness.
Alarms split the air and sparks burst out all around them, filling the air with a choking black smoke.
“Angelique!” cried Ryann as he battled with the Raven’s unresponsive systems, but she didn’t reply and he couldn’t find her in the darkness.
A vicious blast of laser-fire struck their hull once again, and Ryann hung grimly to his chair as the ship rocked. He reached out to the flight console, hitting the boosters, blindly launching the ship forwards in an attempt to evade the barrage.
There was a crash and a grinding of metal over the roar of the drive engines as the Raven must have impacted upon the hull of the Ibis. At least the engines work, thought Ryann desperately and pulled up on the flight-column, feeling the Raven dragging along the larger ship with a painful screech of tortured metal.
And then their ship shuddered and was free, accelerating away at full power.
“Angelique! I’m blind! See if you can get the scanners online! Or get the blast shields open! Anything! Just tell me where the hell I’m heading!”
He forced the flight-column to one side, pushing the Raven into a roll as another burst of fire tore into their stern. To Ryann’s relief the shots soon ceased; he seemed to be dodging the Patroller’s attacks. He urged his ship on at full-throttle, trying to put some distance between them before their pursuer could respond.
But he was still flying completely blind, and he knew that Patroller would outrun them eventually. He willed the Raven on faster, throwing the ship this way and that, just hoping that they were heading away from the Ibis, and not by some unfortunate fluke back towards it.
“Angelique?” he called again over the alarms, all the while coughing on the acrid smoke. To his great relief, he heard her weak reply up close behind him.
“What the hell have you done to our ship?” she croaked, her voice slurring.
Ryann turned around in surprise to see her standing upon the seat pylons behind him, clinging to the back of his chair. Her face was a mask of blood from a cut above one eye, and she looked around the chaos as though she were fighting to work out where she was.
“Angelique, are you okay?” shouted Ryann over the throb of the engines.
“What the hell happened?” stuttered Angelique, staring aghast at the blood on her hands. “I thought you said that you knew this old woman!”
“I somehow don’t think it’s old Jenna aboard that ship!” cursed Ryann, and a sudden burst of fire shook the Raven as though to confirm his words.
“Can you just get the screens back online Angelique!” he yelled frantically, rolling the ship this way and that, flinching as another burst of sparks shot across the cabin. “I don’t know how much more of this pounding we can take!”
“The screens are out,” mumbled Angelique, her eyes staring and vacant. “My head feels weird…” Her voice trailed off as she stumbled forwards, catching herself upon the armrest of Ryann’s chair.
“Angelique,” he said quietly but firmly. “Just get back to the nav-station and get the auxiliary screens online — I can’t do it from here — everything’s fried.”
“My head feels — I can’t Ryann, my head feels —” He just caught Angelique’s quiet words above the shrieking alarms.
“Angelique dammit!” he yelled angrily. “You’re the toughest, most stubborn person I’ve ever met — so fight it! Get me those damn auxiliary screens back online — Now!”
He swore again as the ship erupted under another barrage of fire, and then even the warning alarms went dead. All that remained was the deep throb of the Raven’s engines and the crackle of numerous small electrical fires throughout the cabin.
And then, beneath the chaos, came the beautiful whine of the displays powering up.
There was a brief flicker of light, as the red lines of the emergency screens burst into life projecting a grainy image against the hemispherical wall in front of him.
“You did it!” laughed Ryann in relief. “I knew you could do it! Angelique?” He tried to turn around but he couldn’t see clearly enough through the smoke and gloom. He thought he could make out the shape of her prone form slumped beside the navigation console.
Ryann quickly oriented himself to the stars as silent blossoms of flame burst all about, their pursuer rained fire down upon them.
“Hang in there Angelique!” he called back anxiously, wincing as another blast caught their hull. “I’ll get us out of this — just hang in there.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE GREAT DEVOURER
For almost fifteen painstaking minutes, Ryann dodged and weaved, trying everything to shake his attacker.
And all the while, the only thing he could think about was Angelique’s prone form behind him.
But eventually he spied his destination, the dull glimmer of metal that indicated the outlying borders of the wreck-field they had explored earlier. With a flicker of hope he urged their damaged ship on faster. The emergency display was blurred and indistinct, and he found it hard to make out the first pieces of twisted debris that flashed past as he raced on at full speed, but he dare not slow down. He could feel the presence of the Patroller still doggedly following on behind, and every so often a flash of laser-fire would burn past as if to spur him on.
Ryann didn’t so much see the wave of light blossom out ahead of him, as feel its imminent arrival — a deep shockwave surging through the ship and impacting in the pit of his stomach.
At first he thought that the displays were failing, or that another missile had gone off in close proximity, such was the distortion of space all around. It was a though the fabric of reality were being sheared away.
And then suddenly, there it was before him, a Luminal warship bigger than any Ryann had ever seen.
Even the expanse of the wreck-field ahead of them appeared dwarfed in comparison to the titanic craft, and for a brief moment Ryann could do nothing but stare in awe as the monstrous lines solidified before him.
But soon enough, his fear took hold and Ryann heaved his ship aside, all thought of his pursuer momentarily forgotten. He veered away from the giant craft, but still kept a course towards the wrecks, heading even deeper towards their heart. He spied the trail of the little Patroller’s jets as it did the same, and for a moment the two craft were racing side-by-side, both fleeing for the perceived safety of the wreck-field.
They were travelling through the outskirts now, quickly covering the distance towards the main field, but Ryann could almost feel the latent power rising inside the heart of the Luminal ship behind him, the destructive power of its guns that could scorch entire planets.
But, to Ryann’s surprise, even by the time he began to weave in and out of the denser parts of the field, still no shot had arrived. He risked a glance in his rear display as he swooped around a derelict shuttle, and almost cried out loud to see the giant vessel filling the screen as it came on in silent pursuit.
He willed the Raven on deeper into the wreck-field, careering between two burned-out hulks and a tangled accretion of debris the size of a space-station. Small pieces of debris crashed upon the hull with an alarming sound now that his protective shields were depleted, but he sped on, flying in a madness towards the heart of the field.
Ryann had lost sight of the Patroller now, but he was banking everything upon his erst
while attacker saving his life. He knew that he far out-matched the skills of that pilot: if it had been the other way around, and Ryann had been in pursuit, he would have destroyed his enemy ten times over by now, he thought grimly to himself. His only hope was that he could get far enough ahead of the Patroller that the Luminal ship might concentrate on him, allowing Ryann to escape.
So he sped on, desperate to lose them in the jumble of debris.
And then, he saw his chance out of the corner of his eye: one of the star-liners at the very heart of the field that they had explored upon their previous journey.
In an instant he swooped over a tangle of floating girders, spinning as he went to slip through a gap between two small shuttles. With a final blast of engines, he powered the Raven straight into the side of the star-liner’s hull, slotting neatly through a blast hole barely large enough to accommodate them. There was a scream of protest from the afterburners as he tore the ship around and it shuddered to a halt, hidden within the liner’s wrecked innards.
They had barely come to a halt before Ryann had cut power to all non-essential systems, and the ship fell deathly silent. The only illumination came from the dull glow of the emergency display, and he peered out through the rent and into the darkness of the wreck-field.
At first, Ryann caught sight of the Patroller’s jets. The ship was some way off across the field now, struggling to navigate the tangle of debris. Ryann had indeed managed to put a considerable distance between them with his reckless flight.
But that was little consolation.
For behind them, he could see the great mass of the Luminal ship following inexorably onwards.
The vessel swept through the wreck-field as though it weren’t there. A bow-wave of hulks and debris smashed against its shields, then were pushed aside before they could impact upon its dark hull.
As the tiny Patroller darted and swerved around the obstacles, the Luminal ship came on, closer and closer, the jumble of wreckage piling up before it.
Even though the Patroller had only minutes earlier come close to destroying Ryann, he still willed the little ship on, silently urging it to evade the monster in its wake.
Ryann jumped as he heard a low moan behind him, and glanced around in a guilty realisation. For a second he had been so consumed with fear he had forgotten all about Angelique behind him. To his relief he saw her shakily pulling herself up into her chair at the navigation console.
“Jeez Ryann, how the hell are we still alive?” she mumbled, staring around the cabin in disbelief. Ryann grinned to see her awake once more, but quickly looked to viewport, mesmerised by the scene unfolding out in the wreck-field.
The Luminal ship was almost upon the Patroller now as the little ship careered madly between the debris, at full-throttle.
“Ryann, what’s going on? Where the hell are —” Angelique’s shaky voice stopped abruptly as she made sense of the image on the main display screen. “Oh my god.” A broken whisper was all that she could manage.
“Have you ever seen a Luminal ship as big as that before?” breathed Ryann in a trance.
“What the hell have you got us into Ryann?” croaked Angelique, getting painfully to her feet and limping out on to the flight-seat pylons, steadying herself on the back of Ryann’s chair. She peered at the grainy display screen in horror.
“Is it the Patroller?” she asked quietly, but Ryann didn’t reply, he was transfixed.
The bow wave of debris and burned-out vessels had almost reached the fleeing ship now, as the wreck-field was being compacted all around it. Ryann winced as the desperate craft misjudged the gap between two large hulks and in the pilot’s panic he careered straight into one of them. Even at this distance, they could see the flash of an explosion, and the little ship span off at an angle, crashing into another lump of debris.
The light from its drives faded to black and the ship slowed, spinning uncontrollably amongst the other wrecks.
And then, a beam of light shone out from the monstrous Luminal ship as a slit in its hull opened up like the mouth of some great beast.
“What’s it doing?” breathed Angelique at Ryann’s side, her injuries temporarily forgotten, consumed with the scene playing out before them.
“It’s taking them onboard,” croaked Ryann. And indeed, as they watched, the Luminal ship slipped silently over the helpless Patroller. The little craft disappeared into the open slit, along with the surrounding debris. And then the door slid shut and the light was cut off.
Ryann could barely breathe as he watched the Luminal craft for its next move.
To his horror, he saw it adjust course, turning straight towards them, wrecks and debris being pushed lazily aside as it came on.
“Ryann,” croaked Angelique in fear. “What do we do Ryann?”
“It doesn’t know we’re here,” he whispered, transfixed upon the display-screen as the towering ship came on, filling their view.
“You can’t know that — we need to make a run for it!” cursed Angelique, grabbing Ryann’s shoulder. He span around, staring wildly into her eyes.
“It doesn’t know where we are!” he spat, a look of madness twisting his face before he turned back to the screen.
It was like watching the inevitable approach of a tidal wave, as entire ships were piled up against the bows of the Luminal ship and then tossed aside like children’s toys.
It was almost upon them now, a moving mountain.
“If we power up our systems to run, they’ll find us — trust me.” Ryann’s hand gripped tightly on to Angelique where she held his shoulder. “Trust me,” he repeated, and together they watched in horror as the wave of wrecks finally broke upon them.
Like some slow-motion catastrophe, the first hulks crashed into the side of the star-liner in which they hid.
Ryann held tightly on to Angelique as their ship lurched violently, and a series of booms and crashes echoed throughout the hull. He had a brief view of the towering mass of the Luminal ship bearing down upon them, before his viewport was filled with a tangle of grinding metal.
They span over and over, tossed about in the wreckage of the star-liner until they thought they could bear no more. Deafening booms echoed throughout the hull as the ship threatened to break apart.
“Angelique!” cried out Ryann as she lost her footing and slipped down into the open space in front of his chair. Ryann clutched at her arm as she hung over the edge, pulled this way and that amid a hail of flying debris.
Crash after crash threatened to drive them to madness.
And then nothing.
For a moment, all Ryann could do was focus upon the ringing in his ears; the silence seemed deafening.
He heaved Angelique back up to his side and she collapsed against him gasping.
Together they watched through the viewport as the mass of debris began to drift apart, spinning slowly off into space to reveal the Luminal warship moving ponderously away from them, continuing its slow, destructive journey through the wreck-field.
Neither of them spoke as they watched the vast ship recede into the distance, debris still spiralling out behind in its wake.
It seemed to take an age for it to reach the outskirts of the field, and still neither of them dared to move, gripped by a fear that the craft would turn around and continue its search for them.
But slowly, it came to a halt, and stayed there, hanging upon the edge of the wreck-field like some ominous bird of prey.
CHAPTER FOUR
DEAD IN SPACE
“How are you feeling?” asked Ryann in concern as he placed the dressing pack over Angelique’s cut forehead.
“Sick to my stomach; and with the worst hangover imaginable — after having none of the fun.” She winced as Ryann wiped the dried blood from her face.
“It’s okay, I’m fine now,” she muttered, pushing him away.
“The painkillers should kick in soon,” replied Ryann, self-consciously packing away the first-aid kit. “Though you might be a bit
concussed, so just take things easy for a while.”
“Is that an attempt at a joke?” sighed Angelique as she pulled herself unsteadily to her feet. She looked around again in disbelief at the chaos of the cabin; the Raven didn’t look much different to the rest of the wreck-field now.
“It’s no surprise that Luminal didn’t spot us,” she muttered; she could scarcely believe that they were still alive. “Oh well, come on, we need to get started.”
They spent the next hours trying to stabilise what they could of their beloved ship. The hull had been breached in numerous places by the pounding that they had taken from the Patroller, but being tossed about in the wake of the Luminal battleship had been the final straw.
They had managed to section off the cabin and patch all its leaks, but the rest of the ship had depressurised and they’d lost their primary and reserve air tanks. They had worked for eight hours straight, trying to get their drives back online, all to no avail. Main power was out, and auxiliary batteries wouldn’t last now that the solar arrays had been destroyed. Life-support was fried, and they estimated they had about another two hours air left in the cabin. They were dead in the water.
“How are the comms looking?” asked Ryann awkwardly. Out of sheer desperation they were beginning to think that trying to raise a distress signal was their only hope now. But they knew in their hearts it would be suicide to risk any transmission with that Luminal ship still hovering upon the edge of the wreck-field, an ominous sentry, watching, waiting.
“Angelique? I said how are the comms looking?”
“I heard you! Fried like the rest of the damn ship!” she snapped without looking around. She lay on her back, half-hidden inside an open panel beside the navigation-station, her arms buried in a tangle of disgorged wires.
Ryann stood looking on impotently. He had done everything that he could think of, but beyond blocking up air-leaks and putting out electrical fires, he was out of his depth.
