On the pad, no more than thirty yards away, two soldiers lay sliced in half, their bodies squirming and twitching as they bled out. A third had managed to duck under the deadly arc of fire and was scrambling back to his feet. I flicked my pistol to full auto as I pulled it from its holster and let loose a spurt of fiery beads in his direction. Unless I was lucky enough to land several shots on a joint in his armor, I knew my bead pistol could do no more than dent and scratch its plating. The fusilade did, however, cause him to duck. I sprinted up the ramp, firing another volley in his direction for good measure.
As the loading ramp closed behind me I heard a loud, disconcerting roar that silenced the railgun.
“Strumpet, what happened?” I asked as I ran across the cargo bay.
“The railgun has been disabled by a direct hit from a plasma rifle. It was fired from the hover sled.”
It was just as I feared. I cursed as I leapt onto the stairs. Scrambling to the gallery I ordered, “Strumpet, lift off now and shoot that hover sled. Ram it if you can’t!”
The ship lifted suddenly and even though I was expecting it, I tripped on the threshold to my quarters. I fell forward, face-planting halfway into the room. I climbed up on one knee as the Strumpet lurched into a clockwise spin. I rolled across the floor to starboard until a violent crunch on the port side stopped me just short of slamming into the bulkhead.
“The hover sled has been rammed,” the computer announced. “It is losing altitude.”
“Good girl, Strumpet,” I said, rising to my knees again. “Now get us out of here. Head due south at best speed until we have enough juice to reach orbit.”
The Strumpet jolted forward and for a few seconds multiple gravities pressed down on me until the ship’s drive altered the gravitational field to compensate for inertia. “Heading due South at four hundred kilometers per hour,” the computer said. “Climbing to twelve hundred feet… fifteen hundred feet… nineteen hundred feet...”
“Give me the damage report, Strumpet,” I asked, pulling a liter of water out of recessed refrigerator in my quarters. I gulped it down while I listened.
“The railgun is inoperable and beyond repair,” the computer said. “The barrel, stock and carousel are melted into the hull. The Crysteel sheathing at hull segments 23 F through I, 24 G through J and 25 H through L have been degraded by 4.72%. The fourth tyne of the tertiary power manifold cracked on impact with the hover sled. The fissure is six centimeters in length and one hundred and forty micrometers at its widest. The resulting radiation leak from the rupture was minimal and short lived. I’m rerouting power until the manifold can be repaired or replaced. All other systems are intact and operating at optimum. We will be ready to reach orbit in eight minutes and twenty-four seconds.”
“Very good, Strumpet. Get us off planet as soon as possible.”
I reattached the water bottle to its hose in the refrigerator and took my seat in the cockpit. I took the opportunity of the lull to shoot up again in the hope that the extra dose of bio-enhancers would stave off some of the post-drunk torpidity that the day’s drinking was bound to hit me with once the adrenaline rush passed. Minutes later we broached atmosphere nearly a thousand miles off the Olympus’ starboard bow. The starliner was a civilian vessel armed with no more than lasers which, by strict policy, were only to be used in defense. While I ostensibly had little cause for concern, I thought, given the circumstances, a little paranoia would be prudent. Thus I turned the Strumpet’s nose about and throttled up, breaking out of orbit and putting as much distance between us and the Olympus as quickly as I could.
I allowed myself one last and long wistful look at my erstwhile home, the beautiful cloud-marbled jade and cyan orb of Ramage, before I turned my ship’s eyes to the deeps of space ahead of us. The course I was on would eventually lead me into Hegemony space, which was not where I wanted to spend my final days. Suddenly the idea of heading towards the galaxy’s core no longer appealed as it once did. Try as I might I could not help but think of Kimili’s metaphor of ending my existence like a bug on a zapper. The temptation to go to Krestor station and confront Estrella was suddenly a strong one. I wanted her to know the extent of what her betrayal had done to me. And I wanted her to pay for it. What payment I would exact, I could not say. I was awash in a storm of conflicting emotions. Predominant among them was a bitter loathing at the idea of being pitied by her and yet… I was staring out at the infinite darkness before me, paralyzed by indecision, when a blip flashed to life on the edge of my scope.
I fixed every scanner I could in its direction. The blip became a slowly expanding, spade-shaped lucency. I checked the numbers quickly. It was a pretty sizeable plenum displacement, much denser than a ship like my Strumpet could generate. The readings indicated a whole lot of mass entering the far end of the star system.
I didn’t like the look of it.
“Strumpet, identify incoming as soon as they drop.”
A couple of minutes passed before the ships dropped to sublight speed and Strumpet’s computer was able to identify them. “Scanners indicate three Federation warships in bound.”
“Aw hell!”
“Their transponders identify them as the Destroyer Independence and the Corvettes Braxton and Sparta,” the computer continued. “They are decelerating on a course to Ramage.”
Something wasn’t right. The ships were practically directly ahead of me. Federation ships should not be approaching Ramage from that quadrant of the system.
“Strumpet, trace back their trajectory. Show me where they’ve come from.”
It took only a moment for the display to reveal that the Feds had cut through a corner of Hegemony space to enter the Open Zone. The path saved them a week of travel. It was a provocative move that could have ignited hostilities between the Federation and the Hegemony had the Feds been intercepted in Hegemony space. But they hadn’t because the Hegemony’s attention and fleets were directed coreward by the Psion Collective’s amassing of forces on their border. It was clear to me now that the Federation had committed to annexing the OZ some time ago.
I feared the Independence and her escorts were just the point of the Federation Fifth Fleet’s spear.
This was not good. If they were on my scope, then I was certainly on theirs. If they didn’t know yet that I had fired on and killed some of their ground forces, they would soon enough. Given the distance between us, I was not confident that I could outrun them.
I studied the scope looking for a way out of the predicament into which Captain Crichton’s precipitancy had propelled me. Five of the system’s eight planets were scattered across the far side of the system’s star, Vishnu. The second and the eighth planets were presently on the same side of the red dwarf as was Ramage. I didn’t need to do the math to know that I would be intercepted long before I could reach the eighth planet, Yeti. Frozen rock that it was, it couldn’t offer me any means of escape even if I managed to get there first so I dismissed the option immediately.
However, the second planet, the ringed gas giant Ganesh, provided possibilities which might just keep me out of the Federation’s clutches.
“Strumpet, if the Federation vessels launched Starwing fighters now, could we get to Ganesh before them?”
“Yes,” the computer responded. “But not before we fell into range of their weapons.”
“We’ll worry about that later,” I said. “Strumpet, plot the shortest course to Ganesh and full speed ahead!”
“Course plotted,” the computer said. “ETA for Ganesh is fifty-two minutes and fifty-one seconds.”
“Got it, Strumpet. Ignore any message from Federation vessels,” I said and sat back to await the inevitable.
I didn’t have to wait long. It was no more than ten minutes before the destroyer Independence began hailing me. After two minutes of my cold shoulder, the destroyer launched five Starwings.
9
Starwing fighters were faster and more formidable than the Empire’s Angels or the fighter dron
es of the Psion Collective. Having flown them, I knew what they were capable of and, I couldn’t help but be worried by their approach. Two minutes out of the gate they had accelerated to match my current speed of .26 C. In ten minutes they would top out at seventy-four percent of the speed of light while the Strumpet would only be pushing against thirty percent. I read my computer’s analysis of our trajectories on the monitor. The Feds would have four minutes and change to fire on the Strumpet before she could seek relative cover in the ring of the gas giant.
Four minutes is a very long time when it is spent taking a beating.
The only bright side was that the beating would be limited to laser fire and perhaps a salvo or two of torpedoes. The Starwings would have to come in closer to use their plasma cannon. By then I would be in the ring of debris. Targeting in among all that rubble would be more difficult.
In theory.
I tried not to think about it. I went aft and ordered the computer to fix me a tall mug of strong coffee. While it brewed, I pulled my EVA suit out of its recessed closet and donned it, sans helmet. I then returned returned to the cockpit, helmet in one hand and coffee in the other. I sat and ordered the computer to seal the cockpit. It was habit. The cockpit could, in an emergency, be ejected from the body of the ship to serve as a lifeboat, but I couldn’t see availing myself of the option as it would be certain to land me in Federation custody. That was a fate I would sooner die than allow.
I drank my coffee and prepared myself for battle, clearing my mind while fixing a thousand lightyear stare straight ahead at the shimmering and slowly expanding red ball that was the star, Vishnu.
Thirty-five minutes into my dash towards Ganesh, the Strumpet began to decelerate. We would be slowed considerably by the time we reached the gas giant’s gravity well. I needed to be able to maneuver her through Ganesh’s ring instead of having the ship shredded by the debris which formed them. The computer diverted the extra energy to the shield, concentrating its repulsive power across the ship’s stern. The Starwings, guessing my gambit - at least its opening move - began to slow down lest they streaked past me without being able to fire a shot.
Five minutes later, the golden, starlike pinprick of Ganesh began to swell against the fiery backdrop of Vishnu. The gas giant loomed steadily into a glowing, golden orb, striated in swiftly swirling bands of red, orange and green. Ganesh’s orbit was a tight circle, just over a tenth of of an AU from Vishnu. The massive planet spun on its axis every sixteen hours and it completed its orbit around its star every four days. Ganesh’s three moons became visible a minute later when the red dwarf disappeared behind the planet. The moons offered me no tactical advantage, so I dismissed them. The ring was an orbiting, widespread field of rocks ranging in size from dust motes to kilometers-wide chunks. It grew ever more distinct with my approach.
“Strumpet, get us to the planet’s bright side as quickly as possible,” I said.
The planet and star bombarded each other with all kinds of radiation. The field of high energy currents would play havoc with the Starwings targeting computer, forcing them to rely on eyeball firing and endanger their pilots. The radioactive field would also endanger me of course, but my Strumpet was better shielded and more sheathed than the Starwings whose tactical advantages over my ship lay in their speed and maneuverability. But if I could keep one eye of each pilot on their rad counters, I might just be able to outfly them until they were forced to withdraw before exposing themselves to lethal levels of radiation.
I put on my helmet and activated its heads-up display. The lower third of its face plate would provide me with a virtual display of the data and the view that the Strumpet’s scanners would relay from her stern. The Starwings were represented by small five-pointed stars. They came at me in star formation, each fighter a point of the star. The top two thirds of the faceplate would enhance the view of what lay ahead of me and on my flanks. Satisfied that my cybernetic connection to the Strumpet was in working order, I strapped myself in, took the yoke in my hands and watched the countdown ticking off the seconds left before Federation crosshairs locked on to me.
With three seconds remaining on the clock, I gave the ship’s computer the order, “Strumpet, switch to manual now!”
A beat later, the console beeped to warn me that I was being painted by multiple targeting lasers. I rolled hard to port. Red bolts streaked ahead of me, passing harmlessly on my starboard. It was the Federation’s final warning, accompanied by yet another attempt to hail me.
I ignored it.
Targeting lasers repainted the Strumpet and I rolled to port again, extending the maneuver into a planet-ward spiral. I began taking fire immediately. I pulled out of the spiral, banked sharply to port, straightened out and then rolled to starboard, extending the latter move into another spiral. I continued the evasive maneuvers, randomly mixing moves, trying my damndest not to give up too much forward motion in the process. My heads-up display informed me that I was only dodging eighteen percent of the incoming laser fire. The green bar graph which measured the strength of my shields bobbed between ninety and ninety-two percent.
A minute into the barrage, each of the Starwings fired a torpedo. I waited several seconds until they clustered behind me and then fired a defensive flare at the group. The blast of fiery shrapnel destroyed one of the torpedos. When the remaining four closed within ten kilometers of the Strumpet, I fired off a pair of flares. A second later the heads up display showed two torpedos bursting unscathed from the fireball. I swerved to starboard and then lurched to port. One of the torpedos streaked past me under the belly of the Strumpet. I blasted it into a cloud of fiery dust as it turned back to me. The second torpedo slammed into the ship, exploding against the stern-side shields. The hit rocked the ship and took an eleven percent bite out of her shield’s power.
They fired off another volley of torpedoes even as they continued to rain laser fire down on me. I sped on towards Ganesh’s ring and waited until the torpedoes got real close before I fired off two triplet sets of flares. Again, two of the torpedoes survived the bursts of shrapnel. Try as I might, I couldn’t shake either of them. After their jolting double strike, the display’s shield bar turned red, alerting me to the dire fact that the defensive field’s power had dipped beneath fifty percent.
I had three flares left. Each Starwing still had three torpedoes. And worse yet, the fighters were two minutes from closing into plasma cannon range.
The Starwings fired another five torpedoes. The Strumpet and I plunged forward. I feared that I would be entering the debris field a little too fast, but I feared the torpedoes in hot pursuit a little more.
I entered the gas giant’s ring. I weaved through the debris, seeking out the larger chunks of rock to place between the Starwings, their missiles and the Strumpet. I managed to force one of the torpedoes to strike a small island half a kilometer wide when I banked clear of it at the last possible moment.
When I finally reached the bright side of Ganesh the rate of incoming fire lessened considerably as did the percentage of strikes. My shield’s power bar began to inch upwards. Before long it was green again. Two of the fighters broke formation and streaked away along the ring’s periphery while the other three Starwings entered the ring after me. I would soon be squeezed between the two groups of fighters, exposed to fire on all sides. My best chance lay in penetrating deeper into Ganesh’s ring, where the debris was packed tighter.
I sped up, flying at the very limits of my abilities, threading my way through the rubble. Along the way I shed two more torpedoes off my tail as they smacked into flying hills. The Starwings behind me were much nimbler than their torpedoes or I. I knew their pilots were jacked, receiving a steady trickle of bio-nite enhancers straight into their brain stems. I remembered the effect of being jacked up with a pang of envy. I recalled the hair-trigger reflexes, the lightning-quick thinking, the bright light that seemed to pour from one’s eyes illuminating the world so brightly that its every detail was brought into razor-s
harp focus. And the rush! So potent it was as to render the body’s natural adrenaline a weak tea by comparison.
Up ahead I spotted a floating island six kilometers wide and nearly twice as long. I made straight for it as fast as I could. Flying as close to its ragged surface as I dared, I circumnavigated its width, coming out of the maneuver facing my three pursuers. I fired my two duds and sprayed laser fire after them. One of the three fighters over compensated when he swung out of the way of my incoming fire. He narrowly avoided crashing into a nearby, house-sized chunk of rock.
He might be a newbie, I figured. Or maybe he was an old hand turned Nervous Nellie. It was the downside of being jacked up for some. Long term use of enhancement could, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, heighten natural fear, amplifying its effects on the nervous system, generating even more fear in a vicious loop. These Nervous Nellies were rare, developing out of the blue and retired from the Starwing Corps immediately on returning from the flights that exposed them. Whatever the case before me, I resolved to make the Nervous Nelly the recipient of my every offensive capability. I hoped to at least take one of them with me if my gambit failed.
The other two fighters blasted my duds into shrapnel with laser fire and then both scored direct hits on me with plasma cannon as I streaked past them. The Strumpet shook violently. The shield bar turned red again. The remaining two Fed torpedoes continued to close in; they were seconds from striking my stern. I pulled hard on the yoke, turning the Strumpet nose over tail in a tight circle, rolled starboard, straightened and charged lil’ Nelly, my lasers blazing away ahead of one of my own live torpedoes. He could not pull away fast enough. When I closed to within ten kilometers, I fired off another torpedo and banked hard to port. One of my two pursuing missiles streaked past me and on towards lil’ Nelly. I fired a flare at the remaining one, destroying it at point-blank range.
One Last Flight: Book One Of The Holy Terran Empire Page 8
