by M. D. Cooper
Andy said.
He checked the astrogation monitor.
Lyssa caught herself.
He grabbed the arms of his seat and lurched upright. “I’m going down to the medbay,” he told Fran.
She glanced up from her console. “We don’t have a lot of time. I’ll get Cara up here to help you.”
“She might not want to.”
“I’ll help her put her big girl pants on,” Fran said.
Andy watched the flight plan countdown until Cara appeared in the doorway. She was still wearing the headset that allowed her to listen to the ship’s communication network.
“You spying on everybody on board?” Andy asked, pointing at the headset.
Cara gave him a sour look. “I’m listening to the spectrum and checking newsfeed updates. They’re calling the TSF, Marsian and JC ships the Solar Shield. That’s a dumb name.”
“Have to call them something,” Andy said. The stabbing pains made it difficult to say anything witty. He let go of his seat and walked stiffly to the door, Cara moving alongside him without taking his hand as she had done before.
In the corridor, she said, “I don’t want to leave the ship, Dad.”
Andy touched the bulkhead as he walked. His boots felt like weights.
“I know,” he said.
“I don’t want to go with Mom. I want to stay here with you.”
“I understand.”
She fell silent, apparently giving up, and helped him around the habitat ring to the medbay. Inside, Andy leaned against the couch as he waited for the dispenser to issue painkillers in gel form. When the autodoc was finished, Andy started a second program that dispensed five of the stimulant injectors.
“What are those?” Cara asked.
“They clear my head.”
Cara eyed them dubiously as Andy poked the tubes into pockets on his shipsuit. Taking the analgesic gel pack, Andy bit its top and sucked out the slightly sweet medication.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, leaning his head back to wait for the dulling effect. “Maybe when all this is done, we’ll get that place on Mars.”
“I thought you wanted to go to Cruithne.”
Andy glanced at Cara out of the corner of his eye, seeing that she didn’t buy the change of subject.
“Mars seems more wholesome than Cruithne.”
“You’re going to categorize a whole planet as wholesome?”
“Well, where would you live, if you had the choice?”
“Sunny Skies,” Cara said. “And not just because it’s home. I don’t like being in one place. I like being able to go places like Europa or Traverna or even Cruithne whenever we want. It seems safer.”
“It’s definitely not safer,” Andy said. He couldn’t help sighing as the pain medicine took the edge of his headache.
“I think it is if you have help,” Cara said. “Sunny Skies is a good ship. It’s got a garden and a cargo bay and point defense cannons.”
“And a flight of Weapon Born,” Andy added.
“That too. I don’t think Lyssa will want to live on Mars. Or anywhere else for that matter.”
“I haven’t asked her,” Andy agreed.
“She can live wherever she wants in her expanse.”
“I wonder why they bother with reality at all,” Andy said.
“Because it’s reality, duh,” Cara said. “Nobody wants to play Pigeon Prom Simulator forever.”
Andy smiled and squeezed her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s find your brother, and then we’ll need to meet with your mom.”
“I don’t want to go, Dad,” Cara said, a forlorn note entering her voice.
Andy nodded and led the way out of the medbay. Tim and Brit were in Tim’s room, watching Em do tricks. Tim was already wearing his EV suit, his helmet sitting beside him on the floor.
“You got your helmet,” Andy said a note of pride entering his voice.
Tim just nodded and raised his hand to entice Em into a sitting position. The corgi grinned at him, then popped up on his hind legs and danced in a tight circle. Brit clapped as Tim tossed Em a treat.
Abruptly, Cara grabbed Andy around the waist, pushing her cheek against his stomach. He put his hand against the side of her head and returned the embrace until she let go, wiping an eye, and said, “I’ll get my suit and meet you.”
Brit looked at her in surprise, then nodded.
“I’m heading back to the command deck,” Andy said. “Give me a hug Tim.”
“Where are you going?” Tim asked.
“I’m not going anywhere. You and Cara are going to spend some time with your Mom in the TSF ship.”
Tim frowned. “Can Em come?”
“Yes, he can.”
Spreading his arms for a hug, Tim laughed as the dog also jumped up to press his front paws against Andy’s legs. Andy knelt to pull them both in for a hug, leaning his face away as Em licked his cheek.
“Be good,” Andy told Tim. “I’ll see you soon.”
Andy straightened. Brit gave him a half-smile as he left the room, the painkiller making it easier to hold his head straight. He only had to pause once on the trip back to the command deck.
Fran glanced up at him as he came through the doorway. Harl and May were strapped into the jumpseats along the wall, while Fugia had taken Cara’s place at the communications console.
“Ten minutes and they should be on the transport,” Andy said. “Is Yarnes ready to go?”
“He just transmitted their flight plan,” Fran said. “Once Lyssa starts her movement, they’ll separate and fall back to an overwatch position. If necessary, they’ll burn.”
“All right,” Andy said, sliding into the captain’s seat. “We ready to start this show?”
Once Brit had verified they were through the airlock into the TSF transport, Fran activated the main engine for the braking burn. In three hours, they would reach the covering asteroid.
PART 4 – PSION
CHAPTER Thirty-NINE
STELLAR DATE: 01.24.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSF Fast Transport K8-712-AA0
REGION: Outer edge of Main Asteroid Belt, InnerSol
The TSF ship was barely larger than a shuttle, its body made up of a long tube lined with seats and no separation between the flight deck and main cabin. There were latrines at the aft section of the craft, and after that the remaining third of the ship’s body was all engine.
Soldiers Cara hadn’t seen before now floated among the seats, checking bags and weapons. Colonel Yarnes was at the fore section, talking to the pilot, while Jirl Gallagher sat in a seat with her hands in her lap, looking lost in her Link.
One of the soldiers didn’t like the idea of having Em on the ship, and it took Colonel Yarnes to tell him to shut up and sit down. After that, Cara had to help her mom get Tim and Em arranged in a seat, with Tim strapped into a harness and two straps holding Em against his lap. It wouldn’t accommodate serious g-forces but would keep the squat-bodied dog from flailing around the cabin. Em seemed to think everything was hilarious and grinned as usual. The soldiers were all so focused on Em that no one said anything about Cara’s headset or the pistol on her hip.
Watching everything moving around her, Cara waited until her mom was strapped into her seat, with her bag stowed, then leaned past Ti
m and said, “I have to go to the head. I’ll be back.”
Without waiting for a response, Cara unclipped her harness and pulled herself to the rear of the cabin. Few of the soldiers paid any attention to her. They all seemed happy not to be going into combat as they’d been told.
When she was a few meters away from her mom, Cara slipped her headset on, and pressed the button on its side. The headset automatically scanned the ship’s channels and went to work on the encryption tokens, using Fugia’s suite of tools. The scripts didn’t have to crack anything, it turned out, and Cara was able to cycle through the various conversations on the ship’s channels. Right now, the only people talking were Colonel Yarnes and the pilot, who seemed to be waiting for Fran to give the launch command.
Cara passed the airlock. The internal doors were still open. She paused, glancing over her shoulder at the soldiers nearby, and then back at her mom and Tim. Floating in the middle of the cabin, Cara used the toe of her boot to push herself diagonally toward the open airlock, watching her mom the whole time.
In the space of two breaths, she was inside the alcove. She rotated, studying the control panel, her heart hammering in her chest. As soon as her mom noticed she was gone, her plan would be foiled.
With a trembling glove, she reached for the control panel. She stopped herself. She’d almost forgotten the second step in her plan.
Sorry, Em.
Cara activated a script in her headset that sent a high-pitched tone out over the ship’s overhead speakers.
Though she couldn’t see him, she heard the Corgi react immediately. He yelped twice, then filled the cabin with staccato barks and growling that brought on angry shouting.
Centering herself on the control panel, Cara listened in on a new conversation between Fran and the pilot. Fran had just verified their time to burn. Cara had less than two minutes until the transport disconnected from Sunny Skies.
The panel blinked on, showing her a security logon. Cara stared at it. She hadn’t expected any kind of security on the interior airlock control. She nearly burst into tears at the sight, then calmed herself with two long breaths, thinking about her options.
If she activated an emergency override, she’d stop the entire launch process. Wracking her brain for options, she used what Petral had taught her to drop from the security login to the panel’s maintenance interface.
With Em’s high-pitched barking and yelping in the background, Cara navigated through maintenance check screens until she had a pared-down version of the general control screen used by techs to test the airlock. She thumbed the open request button and nearly screamed in relief when the airlock doors slid open, revealing the access tube.
Without hesitation, Cara kicked into the space between the two ships, closing the door behind her. It had been open less than five seconds, which she hoped the pilot would consider a glitch if they noticed it at all. On Sunny Skies’ side, she entered the manual security token and pulled herself through the space between the doors once they opened. As soon as she was through, she closed the doors and activated the emergency lockout. Through the access window, she saw the umbilical tube pull back into Sunny Skies’ external airlock assembly.
She was inside, and it would take a manual override to use the airlock again.
Before Cara forgot, she killed the dog tone script, which she hoped would bring peace to Em, and pulled herself up the corridor. There was a fold-down jump seat near the ladder into the habitat transition tube. She needed to reach it to strap in before Fran started her burn, or she’d get slammed into a wall down in engineering when the ship braked.
Cara set the headset to cycle through Sunny Skies’ internal communication nets, noting that Fran was still running countdown checks with the transport pilot. The pilot had just told her that Em had bitten the crotch of one of the soldiers, and Tim had cracked the faceplate of another soldier who’d tried to unhook the dog’s safety harness.
Fran laughed, then said, “All right. I’ve got burn in five, four, three, two—”
It sounded like the TSF pilot had started to shout, “Wait!” but the channel was flooded with static as the engines lit and progressed to full output. The bulkhead around Cara groaned, vibrating, and Cara gripped her seat harness as acceleration pushed her back into the jumpseat.
There was no going back now.
CHAPTER FORTY
STELLAR DATE: 01.24.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies, approaching Hedge
REGION: Outer edge of Main Asteroid Belt, InnerSol
“You’ve got a stowaway,” the TSF pilot informed her.
“What?” Fran demanded.
“The teenage girl. She just hacked the airlock and went back on your ship. It looked like a maintenance blip and that damn dog was going nuts. She’s not on my ship anymore.”
Lyssa quickly checked the lower sections of the ship and found Cara through the environmental sensors.
she told Andy and Fran.
Andy rubbed the side of his face, a move that hurt under the increased g-forces from the burn. He let his hand drop.
“Cara,” he said over the shipnet. “Cara, I know you’re on this channel. Answer me.”
There was no answer for several seconds, until Cara finally said, “Yes?”
“You stay there. You understand me?”
“I understand,” Cara said in a small voice.
“I’ll be down there when we’re done with this burn and I’m taking away your next birthday and I’m taking a year off your life.”
Fran gave him a sideways glance. “I don’t make threats I can’t keep,” she said.
“I can’t think of anything right now,” Andy said, head pressed against the back of his seat. “I’m going to need another pain shot soon.”
Fran nodded. “She’s fine for now. We’ll get her up here as soon as we reach the target.”
Andy gave a weak nod, closing his eyes. Lyssa could see the storm-like headaches arcing across his vision, like burning metal in the dark.
With final thrust adjustments, Fran matched Sunny Skies’ velocity with the asteroid she had dubbed, ‘the Hedge’. Three times the size of the ship, with a roughly rectangular shape, the Hedge had a light side facing Sol, and a dark side that provided enough shadow to hide Sunny Skies silhouette from any active scanning from the Psion fleet.
As soon as Fran verified parity, Lyssa gave Ino, Card, and Kylan the command to launch. Nearly a hundred and fifty Weapon Born attack craft fell away from the surface of Sunny Skies, fanning out in a loose wing before activating their engines. The craft were small enough that they resembled thousands of other tiny asteroids or other debris reflecting heat in space.
The Psion armada was 0.3 AU from the Hedge, on a vector that would have them intercept Ceres in a day.
As they flew, the Weapon Born called out between each other, verifying systems and shouting their unit mottos, making corrections and generally enjoying themselves. Lyssa grinned just listening to them.
Kylan had the lead element. He would be the first to reach the Psion perimeter if everything went to plan. They were ready to adjust in the event that Psion had flanking units hiding in the dark.
As the kilometers counted down, Lyssa practiced jumping among the relay craft, skipping ahead as far as she could, spreading her awareness out with Kylan, then pulling back, checking for data delays as each relay propelled her forward.
As the Weapon Born grew closer to the Psion fleet, the model in the holodisplay gained more detail. Soon statistics flowed across Fran’s console, showing engine sizes, mass ratings and other astrogation info. Combined with the profile the TSF had provided, Lyssa had an image of the fleet’s deployment that seemed fairly accurate.
Arrayed in a wedge formation, there were exactly a thousand of the Psion Fishbone cruisers. Clust
ers of mass between the ships were most likely escort craft but she couldn’t verify without an active scan, which would give Kylan’s position away. The data from the Sol Shield ships only updated every thirty minutes, but she matched what she had to the passive information Kylan sent.
Andy said.
The wait was the worst part. Lyssa continued sending back updates and soon every ship in the fleet was mapped.
Lyssa immediately jumped to Kylan’s fighter. A combat drone had appeared immediately behind him, dark until Kylan passed. A quick scan showed the other ship was armed with point defense cannons and x-ray emitters. It was close-in support.
Another Weapon Born targeted the new enemy and destroyed it in a hail of projectile fire. Lyssa scraped the ship’s EM signature as it died, quickly analyzing what she could from the transmissions.
A mess of information came back, appearing to show the ship communicating not with the Psion fleet but with another ship closer to their position.
Lyssa sent out a general warning.
