by Ryk Brown
“Sweet little commander?” Vladimir wondered.
“He must be talking about Cameron,” Nathan said.
“Great!” Nathan told him over the comms. “How did you take out that shuttle?”
“No time to chit-chat, Captain. I’ve gotta deal with a few snipers first. Get your people ready to move out! I’ll be down in a minute to pick you up!”
“Copy that!” Nathan answered.
“There’s another explosion at their position!” Kaylah reported.
“Who is it?” Cameron snapped. “Is it the harvester?”
“No, sir! I show the harvester still maneuvering!” Ensign Mendez reported with excitement. The son-of-a-bitch took him head on at max velocity!”
“Christ! He played chicken with them?”
“That guy is insane!” Mendez exclaimed.
Loki flinched as sniper rounds struck the nose of the harvester. “They’re shooting at us, Josh!”
“No shit, really?”
The harvester dipped down to no more than two meters above the ground as it reached the first sniper, who dove out of the way. A few seconds later Josh turned hard to starboard, smacking the next sniper with the thrust wash from his main drive and knocking him off the cliff into the sinkhole.
Vladimir looked out the window to try and determine why the snipers were no longer firing at them. He quickly realized the cause of their distraction when he saw the harvester come swinging around to line up with the opposite ridge line. “He’s buzzing the snipers!”
On the next pass, Josh flew so low that his exhaust was lighting the sparse vegetation on fire. Loki closed his eyes as they nearly slammed into the first sniper, who dove face down hoping to avoid being hit, only to find his own armor melting to his back due to the heat of the passing harvester’s exhaust. A few seconds later, there was a sickening thud.
“OH SHIT!” Josh yelled.
Loki opened his eyes again, only to see a red smear on the nose of the harvester that ran up onto the front windshield. “What happened?”
“I took off his fucking head!” Josh giggled.
Loki shook his head. “You’re a sick little dude, you know that, don’t you?”
The harvester pulled up hard until it was almost vertical, backing off on the power until it was about to stall. As it did, the ship banked over to port and dove back down, pulling up just enough to angle toward the center of the sinkhole. Within seconds they were nearly there, and Josh pulled up the nose, firing his landing thrusters at maximum burn to stop their descent. The little ship came to a hover in the middle of the compound, directly in front of the main house, spinning around to point its nose toward the front door before extending its gear and dropping the last meter to the ground.
The side hatch to the harvester popped open. Loki leaned out to wave at the landing party, signaling them to move quickly as they exited the main house and ran towards the ship. Vladimir scooped up the little girl and handed her up to Loki who pulled her into the ship. Deliza was next, followed by Jalea.
“We’ve gotta go back and look for Jessica!” Nathan shouted.
“There’s no time!” Loki objected. “There’s a warship on the way! If we’re not back in ten minutes, your ship’s leaving without you!”
“But she could still be alive!” Nathan argued.
“Nathan! We’ve got to go!” Vladimir insisted.
“No! I have to be sure!”
“Nathan! You’re the captain now! Your responsibility is to your ship!” Vladimir grabbed Nathan by the collar and shoved him up the side of the harvester. “Now get in there!” Vladimir shoved Nathan up to the hatch, climbing up behind him.
There were only two seats in the small cabin behind the cockpit of the harvester, which were taken by Jalea on one side and Deliza on the other with her little sister in her lap. Nathan and Vladimir crammed themselves onto the floor, between Jalea’s feet and the front bulkhead that separated the small cabin from the cockpit. Loki pulled the hatch closed and stepped over them, returning to the cockpit as he hollered, “Let’s go!”
Before Loki even sat down, the harvester leapt into the air, its main drive kicking in and sending it accelerating away as its landing gear retracted.
“Message from the harvester, sir,” the comm officer reported. “They’re inbound, with five passengers!”
“Yes!” Cameron said, a wave of relief washing over her. “What’s their ETA?”
“Ten minutes, sir.”
Cameron turned to Ensign Mendez at the tactical station directly behind her.
Mendez shook his head, a dour look on his face. “Eight minutes and we’ll be toe-to-toe with that warship.”
Cameron took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I don’t suppose we got the torpedoes working yet?” Another look from Mendez confirmed what she already knew. “Battle stations everyone. Deploy the rail guns, point-defense mode.”
“We’ve got company!” Loki reported as he buckled himself back into his seat. “Ta’Akar fighters on an intercept course. They’ll be on us in two.”
“Hang on, ladies and gentlemen!” Josh yelled over his shoulder toward the back cabin. “It’s gonna get interesting!”
Vladimir raised his feet and planted them firmly against the bulkhead opposite him, on either side of Nathan to brace himself. With his left hand, he grabbed the edge of the arm rest of the seat next to him where Deliza sat holding her younger sister in her lap. “Excuse me.”
Nathan copied Vladimir’s preparations, bracing himself in similar fashion as the small ship bounced and vibrated on its wild ascent.
“Enemy vessel is breaking the horizon,” Mendez reported from tactical. “She’ll have guns on us in thirty seconds.”
Cameron looked at her flight and navigation displays. If they broke orbit now and accelerated away from the planet at maximum sub-light speeds, she could jump away without taking any fire from the incoming warship. But that would condemn the entire landing party, which she wasn’t ready to do just yet. On the other hand, if she waited too long, by the time the harvester caught up to them, there was a good chance there would be little left of them to catch up to.
“Abby?” Cameron hailed. “I don’t suppose we could jump from orbit?”
“I would not advise it,” she warned.
“Yeah, why is that again?”
“The effect of the moon’s gravity well could cause our arrival point to be considerably off target. Who knows where we could come out-”
“Yeah, in the middle of a sun. I got that. But how far off might Haven’s gravity well make us?”
“I’m not really sure. It took us days to calculate the effects of Jupiter’s gravity well on our first jump.”
“Well, if you had to guess.”
“I’m not sure I could. There are so many variables-like the distance of the jump, for example. And there are two gravity wells here. Both the moon’s and the planet’s.”
“But if the jump were short? Say, a few million kilometers?”
Abby was suddenly deep in thought. “Give me a minute,” she said as she began furiously making calculations.
“We’re hit!” Loki cried out. The back of Nathan’s head slammed against the wall as the aft end of the harvester suddenly shifted violently to starboard.
“It’s okay! It’s okay!” Josh reported. “We’re still good!” Josh pulled the control stick hard over and gave it a twist with his right hand as he manipulated the main thrust throttles with his left. The harvester suddenly rolled to starboard, going into a spiraling maneuver that caused them to drop significantly below their original glide path, forcing their pursuers to adjust their attack. The maneuver was just another of a series of bizarre attempts to avoid the incoming fire from the two Ta’Akar fighters that had intercepted them shortly after takeoff.
So violently had Josh twisted the little harvester around that Nathan had completely lost track of their course and attitude in relation to Haven. During his flight training back at the academy
, he had spent several months qualifying in small tactical craft, including the Tactical Space Fighter used by the Fleet. That training had included an array of evasive tactics and maneuvers, but none of that had prepared him for what they were currently experiencing. It was all that Nathan could do to keep from dry heaving.
He opened his eyes. The cabin was darker than before, lit only by the flashes of energy blasts as they streaked by them. The internal lighting had been shut down to save power for use by the harvester’s limited shielding. He looked at Vladimir, who also looked a little shaken.
A grin suddenly spread across Vladimir’s face. “This pilot! He is either very good, or he is very drunk!”
Nathan looked at Tug’s daughters. Deliza held her little sister tightly on her lap. The child had her face buried in her sister’s chest, not wanting to see any of what was going on around them.
Jalea appeared nearly as shaken as the rest of them, but continued to stare straight ahead out the front windshield, as if trying to keep track of the events transpiring outside in the vacuum of space.
The ship rocked again as another blast stuck them on the starboard side, super-heating the bulkhead that Vladimir was leaning against, drawing a Russian curse as he leaned forward abruptly to avoid serious burns to his back. Luckily, the cold of space quickly cooled the exterior, and within seconds the bulkhead was only warm to the touch.
“Bozhe Moi,” he exclaimed. “The hull must not be very thick.” His eyes were wide with the realization of how little material was between them and the weapons that were being repeatedly fired at them.
“There she is!” Loki announced, pointing to the right.
“She’s taking fire!” Josh added.
Despite the shaking and the sparks showering down from an overhead circuit panel, Nathan somehow managed to get to his knees and crawl forward enough to peer out the forward windshield of the harvester. A few hundred kilometers in front of them was the Aurora-his ship-and it was taking fire as it waited for them to reach the relative safety of her hangar bay. It was nothing more than a speck. If it hadn’t been for the explosions of energy weapons against her hull, he might not have been able to pick it out against the stars.
“Two minutes!” Mendez called over the noise of battle. He watched his tactical display as the harvester darted about, jerking to and fro as he tried to shake the fighters on his tail. “He can’t evade them forever! Nobody’s that lucky!”
Explosions otherwise silent in the dead of space, reverberated through the ship. Alarms warning of stressed systems played from nearly every console on the bridge. The constant din of the bridge staff as they communicated with the rest of the crew throughout the ship during battle was almost overwhelming.
“How’s it look, Abby?” Cameron asked from the helm.
“I think it’ll work,”
“You think?”
“It will work,” she insisted. “How far do you want to jump?”
“How long does it take to calculate a normal jump, say something at least a few light years?”
“Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes?”
“How long will it take you to calculate a jump thirty light minutes away from here?”
“A few minutes at the most,” Abby said.
“So quick?”
“The shorter the jump, the easier it is to calculate.”
“Do it,” Cameron ordered.
The ship rocked as another missile got through their weakened point-defense field.
“Damn it! I wish I could take evasive maneuvers!” But she knew she had to hold a steady course until the harvester made it safely to their flight deck.
“We just lost another turret!” Mendez reported. “We’re down to eight!”
Cameron knew that there was no way they could maintain an effective point defense field with only eight functioning rail gun turrets.
“Shit! There’s a third one!” Loki announced. “Four o’clock, farther back!”
“Son-of-bitch!” Josh declared. “Who are you people?” Josh shouted over his shoulder. He was beginning to wonder who it was he and Loki had gotten mixed up with, and why the Ta’Akar wanted them so badly.
It was the first time since they had been rescued that Nathan heard any desperation in the crazy pilot’s voice. Nathan looked at Vladimir, whose own expression was as serious as he had ever seen.
“Na…an…you…py?” The voice over his comm-set was broken and barely understandable. But it was familiar. He instinctively cupped his hands over his ears, trying to isolate the voice from all the noise in the bouncing ship.
“…than, this is…ssica! D…copy?”
“Oh my God!” Nathan mumbled. “Jess! Is that you?” he called back over the comm-set. “Where are you?”
“In…ighter…hind you!”
“It’s Jessica!” Nathan hollered.
“What?” Vladimir couldn’t believe it.
“Chan…ourse! Hard… ight!”
“What? You’re breaking up? Can you repeat?”
“Change…rse! Co…ard…right! Do…t…now!”
Nathan suddenly realized what was happening. “Change course! Come hard to starboard now!”
“What?” Josh asked, wondering if Nathan had lost his mind.
“DO IT!”
Josh got the message, and immediately put the little ship into a tight right turn. “How long do you want me to hold this turn?”
“The third fighter is firing on the first one!” Mendez reported, a bit confused by what he was witnessing.
“What?” Cameron was also shocked.
“Holy shit! He’s gone! The first fighter is gone! The second one is breaking off their pursuit! He’s trying to evade the third one!”
“What the hell?” Cameron mumbled.
“Oh yeah!” Jessica cheered from the back seat of the old fighter.
Tug yanked the stick back to the left and added power to his engines. “The other one’s breaking off. I’m going after him.”
“What the hell for?” Jessica argued. “Let’s just get the hell outta here, shall we?”
“He’s faking retreat,” Tug insisted. “He’ll try to come around and get behind us.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s what I would do,” Tug answered calmly.
“Okay.”
“Jess! Where did you come from?” Nathan asked over the comm-set “Is Tug with you?”
“Who do you think is flying this thing?” she laughed.
“Commander! The third fighter is a friendly!” the communications officer reported.
“How do you know?” Cameron challenged.
“I’m picking up traffic between it and the harvester,” he told her as he transferred the signal to the loudspeakers.
“Long story, skipper,” Jessica’s voice said over the comms. “I’ll fill you in later. Now head for the ship while we take out the other punk. And tell Cam not to leave without us!”
“What the hell happened down there?” Cameron wondered aloud.
“They’re flying into the warship’s firing solution,” Mendez warned. “They won’t survive a hit from their big guns.”
“Then let’s give them some cover,” Cameron said, as she cut the main engines and pulled back on the controls.
The Aurora’s nose pitched up, stopping at a ninety-degree angle to her flight path. Unable to maintain a firing solution for a point-defense field, the rail guns automatically stopped firing. The enemy warship, however, did not, and continued its relentless barrage.
“What the hell is she doing?” Loki asked as they watched the Aurora pitch up.
“That lady’s as crazy as I am,” Josh laughed.
Nathan also laughed. “She’s showing them her belly,” he explained. “It’s the toughest part of the ship.”
With no point-defense field to at least partially protect them, the Aurora was taking every shot at full force into her undersides, but it had been designed to be used for emergency aero-braking and atmosphe
ric entry in the event of a crash landing. With three times as many layers as the rest of the ship, and much heavier structural support, Cameron hoped that the Aurora’s bottom side would protect them all long enough to recover the two smaller ships and jump away. It wasn’t exactly a textbook maneuver, but it was working.
The second fighter was now only fifty meters in front of them, as they chased him through a tight turn to port. The enemy pilot kept varying his turn rate in a desperate effort to trick Tug into losing his target lock. However, it was to no avail, as this wasn’t Tug’s first dog-fight.
A small puff of maneuvering thrust squirted out of the nose of the second fighter, just as it had numerous times over the last few seconds during the turn. This time… it was a bit more thrust than usual.
“You can’t be that stupid,” Tug mumbled.
The enemy fighter suddenly began to rapidly pitch back as it tried to do an end over to bring its own guns to bear on Tug and Jessica. For a brief moment, the enemy’s profile became considerably larger, giving Tug a splendid target and an easy kill. A single squeeze of the trigger on his control stick, and a red bolt of energy leapt from his cannon striking the enemy dead center, rupturing his fuel tanks and igniting a blinding explosion.
“What happened?” Jessica asked as the debris from the exploding enemy ship struck them like rain falling from the sky.
“Caius was always more interested in quantity than quality,” Tug mumbled.
“What?” Jessica asked from behind.
“Nothing. Let’s rejoin the others.”
“Hang on, people!” Josh yelled from the cockpit. “This ain’t gonna be pretty!”
“What’s wrong?” Nathan asked. After the Aurora had pitched up and started blocking the incoming fire, their ride had been comparatively smooth.
“We’ve got a lot of damage, and a nose dive ain’t exactly an ideal angle for a landing!”
Nathan looked forward between the partitions. Through the forward windshield of the cockpit, he could see the Aurora, not more than a hundred meters away and coming up fast. But since she had pitched up, their approach was now perpendicular to her length. There was no way they could change course fast enough to avoid smashing head-first into her flight deck. “Oh my God.”
