The Voyage Home

by D. J. Holmes

  While Elaijar was easy to make out, the space around the asteroid was anything but. Destiny’s sensors were detecting more than forty contacts accelerating. Most of them seemed to be fleeing from the pirate base. Yet a handful were gathering up into some kind of formation, clearly with the intention of trying to take on the Elder ships. There were so many different contacts, all on seemingly random trajectories, that it was hard to tell exactly what was going on.

  “I think they’re going to try and fight,” Divar said as he surveyed the sensor data. “Can they do it?”

  Sarah didn’t answer. Instead, she sought out the three fastest ships trying to flee Elaijar. Matching the acceleration rate of the third fastest, she made sure Destiny was on the quickest route to the system’s mass shadow. She suspected if they went too fast, the Elders would prioritize her as a target. As it was, she was hoping Destiny would be seen as just another pirate ship.

  “I do not believe so,” Alexandra said as she answered Divar’s question. “The energy screen around Elaijar is powerful. However, the asteroid base cannot dodge a hypervelocity missile nor a particle lance strike. They will not last long.”

  As the Elder warships entered weapon range, Sarah watched in silence. This was the first time she was going to be able to just observe an Elder warship in action. Almost immediately she could tell Klixar was a far better tactician than his brother. Turning as one, the three warships presented their port broadside missile tubes towards Elaijar. Together they fired sixteen hypervelocity missiles at the asteroid. Then, ignoring the asteroid, the warships turned onto an intercept course with the pirate vessels trying to defend the base.

  The pirate ships had taken up position to try and intercept any missiles fired at Elaijar. However, with the Elder warships bearing down on them they had to abandon that plan. They fired their own hypervelocity missiles at the Elders, then they too turned onto an intercept course. Clearly, they were trying to close to laser cannon range.

  That’s a mistake, Sarah thought. Though she hadn’t used Destiny’s yet, she knew just how devastating the Elder’s particle lance was. Sure enough, before the pirate ships even got into laser cannon range, three particle beams shot from the Elder warships. As soon as the beams hit their targets, three pirate ships disappeared from Destiny’s sensors. The particle lance was specifically designed to instantly take down weak energy screens and vaporize any hull material the beam came into contact with.

  Without even looking like they broke a sweat, the Elder ships opened up with their point defenses at the hypervelocity missiles trying to destroy them. The three ships had clearly drilled for just such an eventuality. Working together, they took down all the pirate missiles with ease. As soon as the last one was destroyed, they began a series of complicated evasive maneuvers. Multiple pirate laser beams zipped past the three Elder ships but none seemed to score a hit. At the same time, Sarah could see gamma laser beams firing towards the remaining six pirate ships.

  As both groups of ships came closer and closer it was harder to dodge the incoming fire. Soon, Destiny’s sensors picked up thermal blooms where energy screens had been hit. Yet the ratio of hits was at least two to one in the Elder’s favor. Right about now, Sarah thought as she finished her countdown.

  Exactly on her mark, three more particle beams shot out from the Elder warships. Two missed as the pirate ships were carrying out evasive maneuvers, however the third struck its target, taking out another defender. Soon the remaining combatants were too close to try and maintain any kind of formation. Instead, deadly one-on-one duels ensued.

  Sarah watched for a moment, fascinated by the piloting skills on display. She only took her eyes away as the Elder’s hypervelocity missiles got into range of the asteroid. A surprisingly dense amount of point defense fire reached out from Elaijar to snuff out the threatening warheads. The eighteen Elder missiles were reduced to ten and then just four. For a moment, Sarah thought the point defenses would get them as well. One and then a second missile exploded as they were hit by laser beams. Yet the final two missiles got too close. A final salvo of AM missiles proved fruitless. Both anti-matter missiles struck the asteroid’s energy screen and exploded. The fiery blue anti-matter explosion tried to knock down Elaijar’s energy screen. When it failed, its momentum forced the explosive force to spread out, encircling the asteroid. As the asteroid looked like it was covered in a thick soup of molten fire, Sarah couldn’t help thinking it was beautiful. Then, in a matter of seconds, the sight disappeared as the explosive force cooled in the void of space.

  “Elaijar’s energy screen is down,” Alexandra reported. “It held just long enough to fend off the explosion from the missiles but it is shattered now. It doesn’t look like the asteroid took any damage.”

  “It will soon,” Sarah said. Looking back to the battle, she saw the three Elder warships had destroyed all but one of the pirate ships. In seconds, it was dispatched as well. The Elder warships formed up in a new formation. Ceasing their evasive maneuvers, they turned towards Elaijar.

  “They’re going to finish the base off with their particle lances. I guess it makes sense to conserve missiles,” Divar said.

  Sarah nodded, Destiny had space for around a hundred hypervelocity missiles. Though she hadn’t been fully armed when Sarah had captured her. Even if Klixar’s ships had started their pursuit of Sarah with a full compliment. They would want to conserve them. Doubtless he could find replacements from the Elder shipyards stationed at each sector capital. Yet, if he had to make such a detour, he would give Sarah a head start on getting away. Klixar would have had to use some of his missiles at Aral and there were still thirty-two other pirate ships trying to flee the system.

  At that thought Sarah smiled. If Klixar wanted to, he could fire hypervelocity missiles at them all. Yet that would all but deplete his reserves as some of the pirate ships would be able to fend off two or three missiles. That meant he would have to close to particle lance range to destroy his targets. Suddenly Destiny’s chances of escaping had increased.

  In a vain effort to defend itself, Elaijar opened up with their laser cannons. Though they were firing beyond their maximum range, they were obviously hoping to get a lucky hit. The Elder warships continued towards the asteroid. Sarah detected several heat blooms from the nose of each Elder ship as laser beams struck their energy screen. Yet there was no sign that they took any significant damage.

  “They’ll be in particle lance range in ten seconds,” Alexandra reported.

  A part of Sarah didn’t want to watch. Unlike Aral, Elaijar had largely been inhabited by pirates. Many of whom no doubt deserved death. Yet, she still felt terrible. No doubt many of the pirates had slaves and even children on the asteroid. And Rozella had been fair with her. There were probably other pirates on Elaijar right now who weren’t as corrupt as Draxler or the pirates who had attacked her and Divar. Nevertheless, they were all about to die because she had chosen to come to the asteroid. Gritting her teeth, Sarah reminded herself that this was not entirely her fault. The Elders were just as evil as the Tuscan fleet. If she was going to defeat them, she couldn’t shy away from what they were. Forcing herself to watch, she saw the particle beams reach across space towards Elaijar. As soon as the three beams touched the asteroid, massive fireballs erupted from its surface. Then, the entire asteroid seemed to implode and fall in on itself before an explosion ten times larger than the three previous ones shattered the asteroid into a thousand chunks of burning molten material. In the cold hard vacuum of space, the fires quickly disappeared, leaving nothing but an expanding ball of rock fragments.

  Even before the beams hit the asteroid, the Elder warships split up and accelerated after the fleeing pirate ships. For the next three hours, Sarah forced herself to watch as the Elders hunted down ship after ship. Either Klixar thought Destiny wasn’t in the system, or he thought Sarah was trying to hide as a slower freighter, for the Elder ships started with the slowest pirate ships and continued to work their way out of the sys
tem as they chased down as many as they could. By the time Destiny reached the system’s mass shadow, two other pirate ships had already jumped out. There were three more behind Destiny that looked like they would make it into subspace before the Elders caught up with them. The rest were either already destroyed or facing certain death.

  “Take us to our maximum acceleration,” Sarah ordered as soon as Destiny entered subspace. By her calculation, they had less than forty minutes before the Elder ships would be able to enter subspace. They had to open up some kind of gap.

  As soon as Destiny revealed her true identity by accelerating through subspace at rates far faster than any pirate ship could achieve, the two pirate ships ahead of her altered course. No doubt the pirates were alarmed to see an Elder warship so close behind them. They had probably thought they had more time to get away. Confusion was likely added to alarm when they saw Destiny didn’t try and pursue them.

  Five minutes before Sarah guessed the Elder warships would appear in subspace, she brought Destiny to a halt. As she wasn’t moving through subspace, she would be undetectable to the Elder’s subspace sensors unless they came to within a few light minutes of her. Two of the pirate ships trying to flee through subspace followed Destiny’s lead and soon disappeared from Destiny’s sensors. The other three vainly continued to run. As the Elder warships appeared, they chased the pirates down and their disappearance from Destiny’s subspace sensors indicated that they had been destroyed. With no more targets in view, the Elder warships began a circular search pattern. They clearly suspected more pirates were hiding somewhere in subspace.

  “Now what do we do?” Divar asked.

  “Now we wait,” Sarah replied. “We have enough anti-matter to last us months. If we have to sit here that long, we will. I don’t think we have any other choice but to wait for Klixar to give up and head off to wherever else Angrave may have told him we could be. As soon as he leaves, we’re going to Ankara. Now that we have enough anti-matter, we have a smuggler to find.

  “And then we can go to my homeworld,” Divar said. “Right?”

  “Right,” Sarah said. “Just as I promised.”

  Chapter 20

  Five weeks later.

  If it wasn’t for her uncomfortable dress, Sarah would have sworn she was experiencing a strange sense of déjà vu. Once again, she and Divar were walking through a large collection of stalls as they looked for an information broker. Divar had his plasma rifle out and was comfortably playing the role of her bodyguard. This time though, she wasn’t pretending to be a pirate. Much to Alexandra and Divar’s amusement, she was pretending to be a noblewoman from the nearby planet of Burakko.

  Burakko was a Tier Three colony, and though the majority of its population was made up of the native Burakkians, it wasn’t unheard of for other species to gain the rank of nobleman or noblewoman. What had lead Divar and Alexandra to suggest the cover, was that Sarah had grown up on Burakko. She didn’t remember the slave markets of Kashal, but she did remember Burakko. As a child, she had been sold to Noban Qureshi, a native noblewoman of Burakko. She had served there until Draxler had abducted and enslaved her. In theory at least, Divar and Alexandra insisted her experience meant Sarah could pass herself off as a noblewoman better than a pirate.

  Alexandra had fabricated the dress she was currently wearing based on Sarah’s memories of Noban. The dress was bright red with pink vertical stripes running from her chest to her feet. Supported by a light nano carbon lattice, it widened from around her waist to the point where she couldn’t see her feet. It had been two years since Sarah had set foot on Burakko and she hoped the dress was still in fashion. Though she knew it was vital for her cover, part of her wanted to rip the dress off immediately. She had become so used to the comfortable formfitting flight suit Alexandra had fabricated for her that wearing the dress felt almost as restrictive as a slave collar. She also had a colorful headdress that obscured most of her face. It fitted in with Burakkian fashion, while hiding who she really was. Even though she knew it was useful, she felt absurd. Her only comfort was that she knew Divar had to be almost as uncomfortable she was. Though it was only for show, he was currently wearing a slave collar. As far as she remembered, all Burakkian noblewoman had slaves for bodyguards. Divar had to play his part.

  The other difference that stood out from her experience on Elaijar, was that the markets of Ankara had a far more diverse range of items. Ankara was a black colony similar to Aral. However, there the similarities stopped. Draxler’s information on Ankara had been limited. The one thing he had known for sure was that the colony was over five hundred years old. It certainly looked far more impressive than Aral. The main city, also called Ankara, was massive, there were huge skyscrapers and numerous other buildings covering an area of at least ten square miles. Sarah guessed its population was in the tens of millions. She had also spotted more than five smaller settlements nearby as they had flown through the planet’s atmosphere.

  The key to Ankara’s success was its location. In order to get to the system, Destiny had spent one week flying through normal space using her Dyson bubble. Ankara was situated right in the middle of a subspace storm. There was no way to get to the system through subspace. As a result, the Elders and the Protector Worlds nearby paid no attention to this area. It was a fugitive’s dream. While the colony may have started out life as a pirate base, over the centuries, it had become home to thousands, perhaps even millions of people who had been fleeing the Elder Empire. By now Sarah imagined most of the colony’s population considered themselves natives. Certainly, there were only a handful of ships in orbit around the colony and she hadn’t seen too many ships parked at the spaceport. It seemed as if Ankara was self-sufficient. There was even something akin to a planetary government. Certainly, they were organized enough to arrange a customs inspection of their shuttle within moments of landing. The regulations transmitted to Sarah and Divar as they come in through Ankara’s atmosphere had informed them that pretty much anything was legal to bring into the colony. However, the government had set up a range of different custom taxes based on what an individual wanted to sell. It seemed smuggling and piracy were legal on Ankara, you just had to pay the right amount of tax.

  Though they hadn’t brought anything with them on the shuttle, they had still been charged a hefty fee for landing at the Ankara spaceport. Thankfully, they still had plenty of the Tuscan fleet’s gold and platinum bars. The reason why they were here was very simple. Ankara was almost right in the middle of the Elder colonies Alexandra had visited that had bounties out looking for the smuggler from Sarah’s species. According to Draxler’s data, if there was anywhere the smuggler called home, it would be Ankara.

  “This looks like a likely spot,” Divar said, nodding towards a stall slightly ahead of them.

  “Thank goodness,” Sarah replied. The main market on Ankara was at least ten times the size of Elaijar’s bazaar. Her feet were already sore from walking around in the obscene shoes that went with her dress.

  “I wonder if you will be able to help us?” Divar said as he walked up to the being manning the sparsely stocked stall.

  “I’m sure I can,” the six-legged alien said as she turned around to face them.

  As Sarah looked into her eyes she tried not to flinch. The creature was the same species as Angrave and Draxler. She had the same toothy grin that sent a shiver down Sarah’s spine. Though Sarah knew she had no reason to want to hurt them, she still felt like running away.

  “My name is Alaia. What exactly is it that you’re looking for?” the creature continued.

  “My master,” Divar began as he waved towards Sarah, “is looking for someone with a certain set of skills. She has some very valuable items on her homeworld she wishes to bring to Ankara to sell. However, the customs laws on Burakko are very restrictive. My master wishes to hire someone to assist her to bring her cargo to Ankara.”

  “I see,” Alaia said. “I’m sure for a fee I could put you in contact with such a
person.”

  “We have someone in mind already,” Divar responded. “One of my master’s friends recommended a skilled pilot to us, we just need an introduction.” Pulling a datapad out of his pocket, Divar set in front of the trader. On the data pad was the picture of the smuggler Alexandra had shown to Sarah months ago. “Do you know who we are talking about?”

  “Ah, yes,” Alaia said. “He is well known in these parts. He is hard to contact though. Putting you in touch will be difficult.”

  “My master suspected you would say that,” Divar said. This time he pulled a credit chip out of his pocket and set it in front of the trader. “I think this will reimburse you for any difficulties you encounter.”

  Alaia lifted the credit ship and tapped a few buttons to see just how many credits it stored. Looking past Divar toward Sarah, she smiled. “I’m sure I can contact Ranack for you Mistress. How will I tell him to get in contact with you?”

  Sarah didn’t respond, instead she waited for Divar to speak for her. “We are staying at the Radizt. Ranack can meet us in the lounge area of its bar.”