Last Flight of the Acheron

by Rick Partlow

  Damn it, it was supposed to work this time. That’s why they put us in charge of training, to make sure it worked without getting our pilots killed…

  “Francona, Ellerbe, on me!” I ordered the wingmen. The names were on the IFF display and I could put faces to them, barely, but I couldn’t have told you one thing about them other than that. Every spare second had been spent training. “We’re taking out that laser!”

  It spoke again before I’d finished saying the words, and another Ship-Buster flashed into vapors at the touch of the focused energy of the destroyer’s fusion reactor. He was boosting now, and we struggled to keep up, three gravities pushing us down and making it even harder for me to manually fly the boat. The remaining Ship-Busters circled patiently, their AI guidance doing their best to bring them in on vectors that avoided the laser. The destroyer spun on her axis, waving her laser like a man waving a torch at a pack of wolves to keep them at bay, desperate to keep them orbiting and prevent one from lunging into range and triggering its multi-megaton warhead.

  “Firing in three,” Burke announced over the squadron net. “Two, one…”

  The proton cannon splashed a glowing halo over the nose of the destroyer as the deflectors struggled to disperse the energy, and two more blasts followed almost simultaneously. The three shots nearly at once at the same spot overloaded the deflectors and sent a surge of energy into the laser port. I couldn’t tell how much damage it did, but the destroyer began spinning faster on her axis, her maneuvering rockets flaring wildly, and I thought the rotation was fast enough now that it had to be making them sick, if their inner ears were designed anything like ours.

  The laser fired out of one of the other ports clustered around the nose, and alarms sounded in my helmet speakers as BiPhase Carbide armor melted off the bow of the Huntress, but the spin was too fast and the weapon was being fired manually because that’s the only way Tahni were allowed to fire them. I saw damage reports scrolling across my HUD but I ignored them; the boat was still operational and we were still breathing…and two of the Ship-Busters were creeping up on the ass-end of the destroyer, and there was a red, flashing indicator across the top of the view screen that told me they were both about to blow.

  “Transition!” I yelled. “First Squadron, jump now!”

  My arm weighed about three kilograms and it seemed to take an incredible amount of effort to move it precisely enough to activate the warp unit. With a sickening jolt we were weightless, and I was grabbing for the controls again, bringing us back out. Nothingness was shredded by star-strung black and we were drifting far from where we had been; somewhere far behind us a new star shone in harsh white, just one more among the thousands and millions. It would burn itself out quickly, and what remained would drift in interplanetary space, maybe for thousands of years.

  A poetic way to go, but not the one I’d prefer.

  I looked for transponders, and almost panicked when I didn’t see them…until I shifted the field of view in my HUD and saw that they were right where they should have been, about three hundred thousand kilometers outward from the destroyer. I was not. I’d misjumped somehow. Maybe it was my fault, maybe I’d been hampered by the lack of the interface and the drag of the acceleration. Or maybe it was the damage we’d taken from the laser, a possibility I found much less comforting. I wasn’t sure of the reason, but I was sure that I was over a million kilometers on the opposite side of the destroyer from the rest of my squadron, back towards the planet.

  “Shit,” I muttered. “Chief, we’ve got a problem. Run a diagnostic on the Teller-Fox unit and the navigational systems.”

  “Yeah, I see it, ma’am,” she acknowledged, switching the display at her station and running through the maintenance subroutines.

  “First Squadron,” I called over our net. “Do you read?”

  I waited; we were a few light seconds away now, so there would be a lag. I was about to repeat the call when Burke interrupted me.

  “Our long-range antenna is fried,” she said with a sort of casual fatalism. “Laser got it. Short-range gear can’t get through the electromagnetic interference from the destroyer explosion.” A pause as she scrolled through the list of damages. “We aren’t going to be landing in an atmosphere anytime soon, either; we have major structural damage to the turbine intakes and the belly jets.”

  “What about the warp unit?” I demanded. “Is it damaged or did I just fuck up?”

  “I don’t see any systemic problems…” She trailed off and then grunted. “Oh, shit, here it is. That surge that took out the interface has the manual controls buggered too. I can’t guarantee it’ll even respond if you try to jump again; and if it does, it could spit you out anywhere.” A hesitation and I saw a grim look in her eyes through her faceplate. “Or just not let us exit at all.”

  “So, we can’t call for help and we can’t Transition. We still have the fusion drive, right?” I heard a pleading note in my voice that I hadn’t intended to put there.

  “I’m not seeing any problems with the conventional drive or the reactor,” she confirmed and I sighed with the first relief I’d felt since the Ship-Busters had done their job.

  I thought about the problem for a moment.

  “There’re more of our people hitting the moon base than there are out here,” I reasoned. “The other alternative is waiting here and hoping our guys stumble across us. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to get left behind. Let’s head in.”

  “Sounds like a plan, ma’am. Not one I would have liked to have heard a few minutes ago, but as good a one as we’re going to get.”

  ***

  The planet stretched across the breadth of the view screen’s display in the colors of a living world, a classroom globe spinning on hubs of white ice caps. Jahn-Skyyiah they called it, but during planning we’d taken to calling it “Johnny.” It seemed peaceful and almost idyllic, with no trace of our brutal battle scarring the deep blue of its oceans or the lush, verdant chains of islands that dotted them.

  It was a false face, I knew. The other side of the planet was home to its largest continent and the three cities the Tahni had built there, probably glowing wastefully with artificial light open to the sky, as was their habit. The moon was on that side as well; and out of my sight, men and women and Tahni warriors were fighting and dying…Ash was fighting, and maybe dying.

  The one gravity of acceleration seemed almost restful after the severe boosts we’d endured during the battle with the destroyer, but we didn’t have an unlimited supply of fuel and I already felt beat to shit. I flexed sore fingers and wished I could get away with taking off my helmet, even for a few minutes. I looked over to where Burke should have been sitting and chewed on my lip nervously.

  I’d wanted to wait until we got help before she attempted any repair, but she’d convinced me that it would be even easier in one gravity than it would be in free fall, and she was the tech. I just flew the boat. She’d been squeezed into the maintenance tunnel back beneath the utility bay for two hours now; I’d learned quickly that asking her how she was doing was just going to distract her and piss her off, so I stewed in my juices and watched the sensors for any sign of Commonwealth ships, and worried about Ash.

  I should have been worrying about being spotted by Tahni satellites. I knew fairly quickly that was what had happened when the two Tahni dual-environment fighters rose up from the atmosphere on columns of fire, heading out of orbit at maximum acceleration, heading straight for us.

  “Chief, we have bogies inbound from the planet,” I snapped. “Get your ass up here.”

  “Ma’am,” her voice was tight but determined, “I’m minutes from having the control systems for the warp unit back up. I’ll do better for us here, if you can hold them off.”

  “Chief,” I tried to keep my voice under control despite the surge of impatience I felt, “I may have to boost hard…you can’t take that kind of acceleration in there!”

  “I’m squeezed in pretty tight, I’m
not gonna’ get thrown around,” she insisted, stubborn in that way that only a senior NCO can be. “It’ll hurt without the acceleration couch, but I’d rather take the chance.”

  I checked the sensor readout. The fighters would be within missile range---for the tiny missiles they could carry, anyway---in twenty minutes if I kept this course and this acceleration.

  “You have twenty minutes, Chief,” I told her, trying to make my tone firm and unyielding. “Then I want your old, wrinkled ass strapped into this acceleration couch and that’s a fucking order.”

  I heard her chuckle at that.

  “Aye-aye, ma’am. I’ll be there.”

  I concentrated on the fighters, calling up the specs for them on my station’s display even though I knew them by heart. They were akin to our assault shuttles, but more specialized. Assault shuttles occupied the same role on our side that both the parasite fighter and the dual-environment fighter did for the Tahni. Their DE fighter was more of a land-based, atmospheric response interceptor, and its fuel capacity for orbital operations was limited. I could outrun them if I had to, although it might mean heading away from where I wanted to go.

  They were armed with lidar-guided missiles and a spinal-mounted electron beamer, and neither were a huge worry for me, though if I let them swarm the missiles even the computer might not be able to shoot them down in time. If I’d been armed with conventional anti-spacecraft missiles, they’d already be vapors; but it would be nearly a half hour before they came into gun range.

  How the hell did I wind up in a job where I always have to be so damned patient?

  I guess I was lucky though; the fighters were probably all they had in reserve after they launched everything to protect the moon base.

  I was still thinking that at the moment the tactical display began flashing and I saw the warp signature of the Tahni corvette coming out of T-space just outside the planet’s gravity well, only ten thousand kilometers away, then another alarm as the enemy ship immediately launched a spread of missiles. Where she’d come from I had zero clue. Maybe she was on the run from a missile and had heard the warning call from the fighters, or maybe she’d been kept in orbit as part of a patrol to guard the cities.

  “Chief! We have a Tahni corvette danger-close! She’s launched! Get out now!” There was more panic in my voice than authority this time.

  I didn’t wait for a response, just slaved the Gatling to the targeting computer and used the thrusters to line up a shot from the proton cannon. I took out one of the missiles with my first shot, and I could see the tactical display’s simulation of the Gatling laser-fire slashing outward in streaks of incandescent red that wouldn’t actually be visible in a vacuum.

  Why don’t they provide some nice pew-pew sounds too? I wondered inanely. Then it’d be just like a bad war movie.

  The corvette wasn’t sporting about this at all; while I was engaging his missiles, he opened fire on us with his laser. Our nose armor started to melt and I cursed and hit the maneuvering thrusters, putting the boat into a spin that kept the laser from focusing on one target point.

  “Chief!” I yelled again. “We have to jump!”

  “No!” The older woman’s voice was louder than the ship’s warning klaxons. “You Transition now, with the navigation off-line, we could wind up just about anywhere! Give me two minutes!”

  “I’ll give you all the time in the fucking world,” I shot back at her verbally as I shot back at the corvette with the proton cannon. “The enemy may have other plans!”

  The blast from the main gun took the Tahni ship dead in the nose and, from this range, their deflectors couldn’t disperse all the energy. The spinal laser emitter took a direct hit and ceased firing and I felt a relieved breath hiss out of me. But there were still four missiles heading our way. I goosed the Huntress, bringing her up to three gravities despite the pained squawk in my headphones from Chief Burke, heading straight at the missiles instead of away from them. They had limited range; if I could get past them fast enough, they’d never be able to decelerate in time to maneuver around and chase me.

  Unless they managed to get in range to kill me before I got past them. That was the downside. And we weren’t as maneuverable without the belly jets…

  The Gatling took out another missile, but the other three were so close and the corvette was near enough that I could see her without the computer simulation, a dull, grey silhouette lit from behind by her own drive flare. I couldn’t line her up for another shot, though, not without cutting my acceleration, which would have been suicide with the missiles closing in.

  “Ma’am,” Burke’s voice was choked and strained by the acceleration, but she sounded happy. “I think I’ve got…”

  I never found out what she thought she had. Apparently, my shot had not taken out the corvette’s laser for good, because he fired it again as I boosted past him, exposing the Huntress’ belly for just a fraction of a second. I had a heartbeat’s warning from the tactical computer, just another warning flash among so many I couldn’t keep them all separate in my vision, just enough to make my stomach cramp in anticipation of what was to come.

  There was a wash of heat that felt like standing on the black tarmac at the landing field on Inferno in the middle of the afternoon during the Dog Days of summer, and a scream of vaporizing metal and plastic and then the ship’s acceleration cut out and I was floating against my harness. The holographic displays at my station and on the main viewscreen flickered and died along with the cockpit lights, leaving only the chemical ghostlights along the bulkhead corners to give any illumination.

  All I could hear was my own breath inside my helmet, not a damn thing outside it, and my HUD was warning me that the rest of the ship was in a vacuum, but I had a more immediate worry. Fighting to make my mind work, I remembered the brief, almost throw-away lesson we’d had about emergency procedures in case of main power trunk failure. I found the recessed button on the bulkhead by the dead holoprojector at my station and jammed my thumb into it. A two-dimensional flat-screen display folded upward from the console and snapped to life, running on internal batteries and connected to the optical and thermal sensors.

  I could see the corvette in the view from the rear cameras, turning and boosting after us; it would be a hard burn, but she’d be back in laser range in less than half an hour, and then we’d be dead. There was a small control panel built into the recess for the screen and I tested it out. There was no response from any of the ship’s propulsion systems, not even the maneuvering thrusters, but I still had the Gatling laser.

  My mouth twisted in something less than a smile. At least I could shoot back at him before I died.

  I had a half an hour. I unstrapped and wormed my way out of the cockpit, heading back to the utility bay. The Huntress had seemed like a living thing to me once, but now it was unmistakably dead. There was no sound, no warmth, no motion.

  “Chief,” I said. “Where are you?”

  I thought she might be unconscious; the 3g boost might have kicked her around pretty hard back here. I stopped thinking that when I saw the hole burned through the utility bay. It was almost three meters across and cauterized like a wound, the edges charred and blackened. It had spent itself in the overhead, melting away the interior bulkhead but not penetrating the upper hull above it. Nothing inside the utility bay had survived the hit: lockers were blown apart or melted, vacuum suits vaporized or twisted into uselessness with the intense heat. I could still feel the heat radiating off the metal of the hull, off the bubbling and scorched bulkhead as I floated forward, coming up against the far end of the bay.

  Through the hole in the deck I could see open space. A small cloud of debris orbited the ship like a ring, but there was nothing left of Chief Petty Officer Burke, not so much as a scrap of a flight suit.

  The breath went out of me in a low moan and I squeezed my eyes shut. I don’t know if I would have called us friends; she was an NCO with a twenty-year career and I was an officer fresh out of the Aca
demy. But we’d shared the same ship and fought the same battles and I knew I could count on her. There hadn’t been many people I could say that about my whole life, and now there was one less.

  She’d had a family; she’d told me about them once. Her parents lived on Hermes, and she had a brother there too, with a couple kids. She’d showed me their pictures once, and I remembered the broad smile on her face when she’d talked about them. They were young teenagers now, but they still loved hearing from their Aunt CiCi.

  I couldn’t stop it. I was crying, the sobs wracking my body hard enough that I nearly floated away from the bulkhead. I hadn’t cried for my mother, not then, but I did now. I cried for her and for Burke and for all the men and women who’d died beside me in…Jesus, how long had it been since Mars? It felt like a lifetime. I had to fasten the sticky-plate on the sole of my ship boot to the bulkhead and the practicality of the action broke me out of the paroxysm of grief that had gripped me. The tears beaded away from my eyes and were sucked in by the vents of my helmet.

  I pushed away from the wall purposefully. One last thing I had to do. I wasn’t going to dishonor Chief Burke’s memory by not going down shooting. The ship was dark and lifeless, the cockpit a tomb, but I was going to wring one last fight out of her. I strapped into my seat loosely, just tight enough to keep myself from floating away, and settled in on the controls for the Gatling laser.

  Five more minutes until the corvette was in range. Out of curiosity, I checked the position of the two dual-environment fighters; they were hopelessly distant now, a half hour from gun range, maybe half that from missile range. It would all be over before they got here.

  I glanced at the range counter and had the thought that two minutes could stretch out into forever; but forever, as it turned out, would have to wait. The corvette abruptly converted into a ball of incandescent gas, ceasing to exist just as suddenly as it had popped into being on my scope minutes ago. I stared at the expanding ball of ionized gas, not quite sure what I was looking at. Had I hit something vital when I shot it earlier?