The Voyage Home

by D. J. Holmes

  “I hope so too,” Sarah said as they entered Ranack’s quarters.

  “Now,” Ranack said as he walked over to a drinks cabinet and pulled out a glass bottle of some exotic looking drink, “Let’s forget about the coming battle for a few minutes and enjoy each other’s company.”

  Chapter 23

  “I don’t quite feel right,” Sarah said two hours later as Destiny flew through subspace in formation with the rest of Ranack’s flotilla.

  “You’re intoxicated,” Alexandra said. “There were a number of chemicals in your beverage that are impacting your motor skills. Here,” she continued as a small slot opened on Sarah’s command console. “Take this.”

  “What is it? Sarah asked.

  “It should purge the chemicals from your system. I have spent few minutes analyzing and synthesizing what you need,” Alexandra explained. “You should be more careful in the future. You never know what someone is giving you to drink.”

  “I’m sure Ranack didn’t mean anything by it,” Sarah said. “He said it was a traditional drink on our homeworld.”

  “He’s likely right,” Alexandra said. “The ingredients seem to have quite the effect on your anatomy. It still pays to be careful however.”

  “Thank you,” Sarah said as she swallowed the pill. It took just moments for it to have an effect. “That’s better,” she said.

  “We’re twenty minutes away now,” Divar informed her. “Do you want to run another simulation?”

  “No,” Sarah answered. They had already run three as they approached the system. Now that her head was feeling a bit clearer, she was confident. Her reactions had felt slower in the simulations. Even so, they had won easily against the Elder frigate. Now she believed she had nothing to worry about. “Let’s just wait. I don’t want to tire ourselves out with simulations.”

  “Very well,” Divar said.

  They watched the distance to their target quickly decrease. When there were just a couple of minutes to go, Sarah ordered the interface helmet to lower. Almost immediately, subspace around Destiny seemed to come alive as she was far more aware of what was going on outside the ship. Ranack’s ships sharpened into focus. Sarah felt like she could see every detail of each ship’s hull.

  For a few moments, her gaze lingered on the ships and then she turned her focus towards the fast approaching system. As they were in subspace, she couldn’t see the star or any of the planets themselves. All that was visible was the disturbance the gravity of the system’s star caused in subspace. The disturbance prevented any ship from flying through the area in subspace. The plan was to jump out of subspace just before the disturbance pulled them out. An unplanned exit from subspace could be disastrous. Destiny used her subspace projectors to tear a hole in subspace to revert to real space. If the ship was pulled out by a gravimetric disturbance, it would likely tear the ship apart.

  Normally when exiting sub space, ships slowed down to less than a tenth of the speed of light. It was dangerous to plough into an unknown situation any faster. However, it was possible to exit subspace up to speeds of one third of light. That was what Ranack planned to do now. It would mean they could quickly close with the prison planet. The last thing they wanted was for the Elder frigate to decide to bombard the prisoners before it turned to face them.

  “Ten seconds until exit,” Divar announced.

  In her head, Sarah silently counted down. When she got to three, Ranack and the rest of his ships disappeared. What? Sarah thought as she desperately looked for them. She didn’t have time to be sure of what was going on. Instead her world shifted as Destiny exited subspace and she was flooded with sensor information from the 10045x system.

  “Those bastards!” Divar roared from his position at the tactical console.

  “What happened?” Sarah asked. Then, as she made sense of everything Destiny’s sensors were throwing at her, she realized what Divar had already figured out. He betrayed us! She groaned. There was a small drone nearby, clearly visible to Destiny’s sensors. It was pumping streams of electromagnetic energy into the system. Even an ancient freighter wouldn’t fail to detect it. Further into the system, towards the penal colony, there were two contacts charging straight for the drone and Destiny.

  “Elder frigates,” Alexandra informed her. “At our current velocity, they will enter hypervelocity missile range in five minutes. It seems Ranack and his allies have abandoned us.”

  “No kidding,” Divar said. “We have been fooled.”

  Sarah hung her head. She knew what Divar meant. She was the fool. With a sob, she dismissed Destiny’s sensors from her mind. Her emotions were out of control. She couldn’t believe it. Ranack had set them up. He must be planning to swoop in and take on whoever wins the battle, Sarah thought. Or maybe there was some kind of bounty on their heads and this was his way of collecting. I’ve been such a fool. Why did I trust him? Sarah asked herself in anguish. Why did I let him kiss me? She moaned as she remembered the taste of his lips.

  The answer to both her questions was immediately obvious. She had let her guard down. She had thought she could trust another human. Now it was going to be someone from her own species who caused her death. An overwhelming sense of betrayal threatened to send her over the edge in rage. After all I’ve been through. A slave on Burakko. Forced to help Draxler slaughter countless innocents. Chased across the galaxy by a mass murdering Elder Admiral. And now this. All I ever wanted was to go home. Everything I have done has been pointless, Sarah thought as she let out a sob. Now I’m going to die alone. Giving up any attempt to control her emotions. Sarah lost herself in self-recriminations.

  “You’re not alone,” Alexandra said, breaking into Sarah’s thoughts. She was speaking loud enough to cause pain.

  Sarah heard Alexandra, but ignored her. She was remembering the seconds she and Ranack had held each other’s gaze before she had left his ship. Why I couldn’t have seen what he was really thinking? He has killed us.

  “You are not alone,” Alexandra repeated louder. “And we are not dead. Nothing is settled yet. Come back to us.” The artificial intelligence forced Destiny’s sensors data back into Sarah’s mind, showing her the two Elder frigates. “We are still alive. There is still a chance. There is no slave collar around your neck now. You have freedom to act.”

  “We can’t beat them both,” Sarah thought as she let out a scream of frustration. Try as she might, she couldn’t remove the image of the two frigates accelerating towards Destiny from her mind. Alexandra was forcing her to watch them.

  “Says who?” Alexandra asked. “I have already seen you do far more than any Elder I have ever served with. Ranack thinks his betrayal will be your death. It could be your salvation.”

  “How?” Sarah demanded as her frustration grew.

  “Use your anger,” Alexandra said. “Don’t let it control you. If you do, Ranack will have the last laugh. Control it, let it sharpen your mind, your reactions, and you will win out.” As Alexandra spoke, she projected another image into Sarah’s mind. It was a memory of Ranack laughing at something she had said. In her mind, it looked like he was laughing at her.

  Rage overtook Sarah. She flung the image out of her head “That traitor,” she spat.

  “Ready the weapons. I’m not going down without a fight.”

  “Already on it,” Divar answered. “We can do this.”

  “Thank you,” Sarah thought. “You are in charge of the point defenses. We’re all going to have to be at our best.”

  “I have faith in you,” Alexandra replied.

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah said out loud. “I got us into this mess. If I can, I’m going to get us out.”

  “We trust you,” Alexandra said through the bridge’s audio transmitters.

  Moving her mind out beyond her two friends, Sarah analyzed the situation. The Elder frigates were just three minutes away from hypervelocity missile range. She could try and decelerate and make a run for the system’s mass shadow. If she jumped into sub spa
ce, the Elder frigates might not try and follow her. We’d never make it, Sarah thought as she did the calculations. Turning around would mean the Elder frigates would be able to fire at least four missile salvos at Destiny. Alexandra would never be able to shoot down all the missiles.

  She powered up Destiny’s engines to full. If she couldn’t get away from the frigates. She was going to go straight through them. “Hold your fire for a moment,” she ordered Divar. “I want our second salvo of missiles to get into attack range of the frigates just before they fire their particle lances. Let’s make sure they have plenty to think about when we all get around to trying to spear each other with our lances.”

  “Good thinking,” Divar said.

  “Sixteen missiles inbound,” Alexandra reported as soon as the frigates opened fire.

  “Get as many drones as you can into the shuttle bay,” Sarah said. “If we need to, we’ll jettison them to try and confuse the missile seeker heads.”

  “Acknowledged,” Alexandra responded.

  As the Elder missiles approached, Sarah put Destiny into a series of slow corkscrew maneuvers. They were designed to cause the incoming missiles to spread out somewhat as they tried to track her. The effect was minimal, but even a few milliseconds of separation between them would give Alexandra more of an opportunity to hit them. She only paused from her maneuvers to allowed Divar to fire his missiles.

  “Here we go,” Sarah said as Alexandra opened up with Destiny’s point defenses.

  Sixteen missiles were reduced to less than ten in a matter of seconds. Alexandra had prepared her first salvo of point defensive fire well. In their simulations, Alexandra’s lightning fast reflexes gave her a big advantage over Sarah and Divar in using the point defenses. Though the Elders had never trusted her to fight the ship, Sarah was more than happy to put her to work. As she watched. Three more were destroyed as another wave of AM missiles reached out from Destiny.

  “I don’t think I’m going to get them all,” Alexandra reported as she destroyed another missile with a laser beam. “There are too many.”

  “Here, leave these two,” Sarah said after examining the remaining missiles. “I’ll handle them.”

  “Got it,” Alexandra replied.

  Taking a deep breath, Sarah steadied her nerves. She silently watched Alexandra destroy all the missiles bar the two coming in side by side directly towards Destiny. As soon as they were the only ones left, she fired Destiny’s reverse thrusters and dove down in relation to them. At the last minute, she opened the shuttle bay and released all the drones, sending an order for them to power up. Then she boosted Destiny’s main thrusters and pulled up. One of the incoming missiles turned towards the decoys as soon as they were released. The other kept tracking Destiny.

  It had been firing its own braking thrusters to try and follow Destiny’s dive. Sarah’s sudden change of course caught it by surprise. Desperately, it accelerated again. Sensing she wasn’t going to make it, Sarah redlined Destiny’s engines and powered her ECM to full. As she continued to pull up, the Elder missile just barely failed to score a direct hit. It shot under Destiny, missing by less than twenty meters. Detecting that it had missed its target, it detonated, sending a wave of anti-matter crashing into Destiny’s energy screen.

  Sarah gritted her teeth as she felt some of the anti-matter break through part of the screen and eat into Destiny’s hull. Sending her mind towards the sections that had been hit, she assessed the damage. Her jaw relaxed when she saw nothing serious had been taken out. The worst damage was to a couple of the projectors used to maintain Destiny’s energy screen. They were no longer functioning, possibly they were no longer even there. That area of Destiny’s hull would be vulnerable to another missile hit or a laser beam.

  Switching her mind back to the battle, she saw another sixteen missiles approaching. She brought up the data on their closing velocity. A smile crept across her lips. The Elder frigates were heading straight for her at a velocity of 0.42c. Their missiles had already accelerated up to 0.8c. Destiny was heading in the opposite direction at 0.31c. That meant the closing speed was greater than the speed of light. From her simulations with Alexandra, she would bet on herself against the missile’s seeker heads any day. Calculating an interception trajectory was far harder than taking evasive maneuvers. With a thought, Sarah turned Destiny directly towards the salvo of incoming missiles and gunned her engines.

  “What are you doing?” Divar asked as soon as she accelerated. Her turn had reduced the number of point defenses able to target the missiles.

  “You’ll see,” Sarah said. Divar hadn’t been privy to all the simulations she had been practicing with.

  They fell silent as their first salvo of missiles reached the two Elder frigates. It took them less than ten seconds to take them all out. “I guess they are more practiced than my previous Captain was,” Alexandra said.

  “A pity,” Sarah commented.

  “I’m ready,” Divar informed her.

  Sarah turned Destiny to bring all of her missile tubes to bear on the frigates. As soon as Divar fired his second missile salvo, she turned back and continued to accelerate in after the missiles.

  Once the Elder missiles came into range, Alexandra opened up with the point defenses. Sarah tried to plot the evasive course she intended to take so Alexandra could predict what point defenses she would be able to bring to bear. When she saw an opportunity to force the Elder missiles to spread out, she diverted from her course. It caused Alexandra’s fire to miss wildly, but spreading out the Elder missiles gave her a better chance to dodge them. Even so, Alexandra managed to destroy four of the missiles before they got into attack range.

  As soon as they did, Sarah gave up all pretense of relying on the point defenses. Her vision focused on the first trio of missiles. For three seconds a deadly duel ensued. Sarah dodged and dived and then reversed her course at the last minute. All three missiles flew past, exploding too far away from Destiny to do any damage.

  Sarah didn’t even notice their explosions. She was already dueling with the next six missiles that were close together. The first three were easily confused when Sarah powered up Destiny’s ECM to full. She dodged the fourth, but as she sought out the fifth she immediately saw it was going to score a direct hit. In a last-ditch effort, she threw Destiny into a corkscrew. She succeeded in avoiding the fifth missile but her maneuver allowed the sixth to get a proximity hit. More antimatter crashed into Destiny.

  Sarah pushed the screams of her ship to the back of her mind. She had three more missiles to worry about. Thankfully, her maneuvers had given her a couple of seconds breathing space. Gathering herself, she ploughed straight into the final three missiles. Twisting and turning, she managed to bring Destiny out the other side in one piece. Anti-matter from two of the missiles exploding nearby washed over Destiny’s energy screen though the explosions were too far away to break through.

  “Unbelievable,” Divar said. “You took us through twelve missiles with barely a scratch.”

  “I told you, you’d see,” Sarah replied after taking a moment to check the damage reports. The last proximity hit had caused minimal hull damage.

  “We’ll be entering particle lance range in forty seconds and laser range twenty after that,” Alexandra said.

  “We’ll go with plan theta,” Sarah said.

  “Ok,” Divar acknowledged.

  Trusting her instincts, Sarah steadied Destiny on a direct course for the two Elder frigates. The particle lance fired a stream of supercharged neutrons at almost the speed of light. Almost was the key term. With all of her mental strength Sarah concentrated on Destiny’s sensor feed of the two frigates. Alexandra had told her even the best random evasive maneuvers weren’t truly random. They could be predicted. So, she waited. As soon as she saw what she was looking for, Sarah flung Destiny into a wild spin.

  A fraction of a second after she had detected the stream of supercharged neutrons, the full force of two particle lance beams filled space r
ight where Destiny had just been. Sarah let out a whoop. Then she turned her attention back to the Elder frigates. Just as they had planned, Divar’s second wave of missiles was entering attack range. Rather than worrying about Destiny’s particle lance, they were focused on shooting down the hypervelocity missiles.

  “Fire,” Sarah ordered as she lined up Destiny’s nose with one of the frigates.

  In response, Divar shot a beam out of Destiny’s particle lance. The frigate it was targeted at managed to partially dodge it. The beam still broke through a section of its energy screen and grazed the hull. It left a long burn line that traced its way along the width of the frigate. As far as Sarah could see, the damage appeared to be mainly superficial.

  “Damn,” Divar said.

  Sarah had already moved on. Laser beams were beginning to rain in on Destiny. As she tried to weave her way through them, one, and then two, struck Destiny’s energy screen, reducing its efficiency.