The image of Captain Everett Vaughn appeared on the console’s viewscreen. “What is it, Mr. Swann?”
“ ‘What is it?’ We’re under attack, you idiot!”
“I’ve detected activity on the surface, yes,” Vaughn said.
Swann blinked. “Someone is firing on the debris that is hiding us, Vaughn,” he said, making the words short and sharp. “What else can that possibly mean?”
“We have identified the ships as belonging to mercenaries,” Vaughn continued. He was unflappable. “It’s possible that this is a skirmish involving the individuals on the surface, and that we remain undetected.”
“What?” Swann’s voice climbed high into an angry yelp. “Are you nuts? We need to break cover and get out of here, fast—counterattack if we have to!”
Vaughn raised an eyebrow. “The Hyperion and the Bucephalus are battlecruisers, Mr. Swann. Formerly flagships of the Dominion. While the ships you presume to be attacking us are indeed Wraiths, they are extremely few in number and in my estimation pose little threat even if we are their target. Do you hunt, Mr. Swann?”
“Huh?” Swann boggled at the ludicrousness of the statement.
“What they are doing is called ‘flushing the quarry.’ They may not even know where we are. If we bolt now, we completely forsake our ability to hide on this world. I think you give them far too much credit.”
A vein started to throb in Swann’s forehead. Words crowded his throat so thick and so hot that he choked on them and was perforce rendered silent.
“I am sure that, in your time as a rebel,” Vaughn continued, “you have learned to be hypersensitive to the thought of discovery. Besides, I have my orders, and until I hear from Prince Valerian, I will use my own best judgment, and that judgment tells me to stay put.”
That did it. A surge of fury dislodged the barrage of words dammed up in Swann’s throat, and they came out in a flood. “You idiot! Don’t you get it even now? Most of your fleet’s been blown to pieces, you’ve lost people left and right, and you’re sitting here spouting bullshit about waiting for Prince Charming and flushing quarries! Vaughn, we’re all rebels now! And as a rebel, when I come under attack, I fight back! You can do whatever the hell you want.”
He slammed down his fist on the console so hard he nearly broke it. Vaughn’s impossibly irritating visage mercifully vanished. “Cade! Break cover and start counterattacking! And notify the commander and the captain that they’re likely in danger as well and to hightail it out of there to the emergency rendezvous point! No—patch me through to him directly.” Swann felt that only he could convey the urgency of the situation.
“Aye, sir!” Marcus and the others on the bridge looked vastly relieved.
* * *
“With all due respect,” said Narud, sounding not very respectful at all, “I don’t think you’re in any position to—”
A rough voice sounded deep inside Jim’s ear. “Jim! We’re under fire from what looks to be a bunch of mercs! Your buddy Valerian’s captain is hunkered down but we’re busting out. And if they’ve found us, they might have found you too!”
Narud was still speaking, but Jim had stopped listening the second Swann had started talking.
“Shit,” Jim said, interrupting Narud’s protesting. “Let’s get out of here.” At the curious looks he was given, he said simply, “Swann.”
“Uh-oh,” said Matt, his less colorful version of “shit.” Valerian and Narud were smart enough to simply rise, still acting casual, and start walking toward the door. The man that Horner and Valerian had identified as one of Mira’s people, Crane, rose and fell into step with them. Another emulated him.
“We’ve just been tipped off that mercs are attacking the Hyperion,” Matt said sotto voce. “Warn Mira, and—”
“Somehow,” Crane said, “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
And Jim felt the muzzle of a gun between his shoulder blades.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Valerian gasped. “But—you work for Mira Han!”
“Keep it down and keep moving toward the door,” hissed Crane, his eyes darting back and forth. “Nobody has to get hurt here.”
Jim and Matt complied, Matt grabbing an alarmed Narud by the elbow and steering him forward. Jim was scanning the room, his mind racing at light-speed, looking for the opportunity. He knew Matt was doing the same. But Valerian, the spoiled idiot, was going to get them all killed.
“You’re betraying her—and selling us out, aren’t you?” the prince continued, his voice rising. It held an edge of panic, and Jim felt a wave of disgust. The boy was good enough when he was safe and sound on his ship, but he was falling apart once he actually stepped out in the muck. “Aren’t you?”
“Shut the hell up,” Jim muttered.
“Raynor’s got sense,” drawled Crane, turning to regard the legendary outlaw. “You don’t got no more sense than a—”
Whatever it was that Valerian had no more sense than would remain a mystery. Valerian’s face, facile and frightened a heartbeat earlier, grew cold. Swift as a snake he seized Crane’s wrist and twisted hard, snatching the gun as Crane cried out and released it, and followed up with a hard kick to the back of Crane’s knee. With the same fluid motion, Valerian shoved his right elbow back and into the throat of the second traitor.
Elation and shock surged through Jim. He seized the opportunity the clever prince had given him, snatching the remaining pistol from Crane’s belt and dropping him by slamming the butt of the gun against the bastard’s skull. He heard the scraping sounds of chairs being shoved back and knew that the time Valerian’s ruse had bought them was rapidly running out.
“Let’s go!” Jim shouted, and the four of them ran.
* * *
It was slow going. The Hyperion was like a beast buried alive, struggling to surface and shaking with the effort. Swann was sweating, not from fear, but from an urgent desire to be with his straining engines as they fought to lift the ship free. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, to cover themselves with tons of camouflage, but now Swann wondered how any of them had let themselves be talked into it.
“We lost two engines during the fight and still haven’t been able to effect repairs.” Annabelle’s voice was tense and sharp, and Swann knew she was suffering along with the engines as he was.
“I know, I know,” Swann said, “but we’ve got to get out from under all this!”
“Sensors indicate they’ll be blasting their way through right about—”
The ship’s consoles lit up.
“Now,” Cade finished.
Swann swore. “Come on, baby,” he said softly to the Hyperion. “You’re not going to let a few teensy pounds of debris slow you down, now, are you?”
The ship, at last, began to rock. They were getting loose! “A direct hit to our starboard side, through the debris,” Cade said. “And I detect more Wraiths incoming.” He paused for a moment, then added, “And vikings.”
“How many?”
“Brings the total up to eight Wraiths, three vikings,” Cade said.
This was not good. Not good at all. One or two Wraiths or vikings against two battlecruisers was one thing. But if you got enough of them—
“Come on, come on,” pleaded Swann. The ship rocked again, more freely this time, doing its best to shake off the tons of debris that had effectively buried it. “Any word from the Bucephalus?” asked Swann.
“Negative, sir.”
“Hail them again. Tell them we’re about to bust loose, and ask if they want to come with us or be sitting ducks.”
“I’ll, uh, rephrase slightly.”
“You do that, kiddo. But you make sure he understands that if he doesn’t get himself ‘flushed’ soon, it’s gonna be too late.”
* * *
Nearly all the shots missed them. Only one hit home—a gauss rifle spike ripped clean through Matt’s arm. Bright red blood began to spurt wildly. Horner uttered a short, sharp cry, then clapped his free
hand over the wound and kept going while Jim pivoted and returned fire. It was the Devil’s own luck, Jim realized, and it wouldn’t hold. With so much ground between the town and where they left their system runner, they’d never make it to the little ship in time. Which meant, of course, they’d never make it to the emergency coordinates he’d given Swann if anything went wrong.
Which also meant that their time in Paradise probably wasn’t going to last long.
They’d not be able to get to rescue. Rescue would have to come to them. He’d noticed that one of the buildings near the edge of town had an abandoned look to it; it would have to do.
Narud stumbled and went down hard. The fall was lucky—another spike struck the area where he would have been a fraction of a second earlier. Without breaking stride, Valerian grabbed the scientist, hauled him to his feet, and kept running.
“There!” Jim cried, pointing to the building on the left. “We make our stand there!”
Valerian shot him an appalled look, but didn’t slow down. Jim couldn’t blame him—the place looked like a good stiff breeze would collapse it. But it was their only option. To keep running out in the open was to simply invite death, and as long as Sarah lived, Jim wasn’t about to check out.
They tumbled inside the prefab home and sealed the door. Jim tossed Narud a pistol and nodded to Valerian. “There’s a window on each wall. Start defending,” he said. “I gotta take care of Matt and arrange for a way out of this place.”
Narud stared at the pistol. “This against all of them?” he said, incredulous. “They’ll just drop something on the shelter and we’re all dead!”
“No, they won’t,” Jim said. He slipped a first-aid kit out, tore Matt’s sleeve off and assessed the wound. The hypersonic spike had passed through the arm cleanly, but the bright color of the pumping blood told Jim an artery had been hit. Jim sprayed a bandage on and applied pressure. “They want us alive, remember? Which means what they can do to us is limited. And that’ll buy us some time.”
“What happened, Jim?” Matt asked as his friend worked. Blood was seeping out from under the plastiscab bandage and Jim frowned. To distract Matt from what he was doing as he slipped a hand up past Matt’s bicep and gripped a pressure point, he answered.
“Got a message from Swann,” Jim said, loud enough for the other two to hear even over the firing. “The Hyperion and the Bucephalus are coming under attack. Your lapdog of a captain is refusing to leave, Valerian,” he added. “Swann’s trying to get out from under the debris and into open space where he can fight back. We’re supposed to meet at the emergency rendezvous.”
“If I wasn’t so busy firing,” said Valerian, suiting action to word as he handled the pistol with a familiarity that surprised Jim, “I’d chew out Vaughn myself.”
“If I can raise Swann, I’ll tell him you said that,” Jim said. “Matt . . . keep that arm elevated.” It would help slow the bleeding. Obediently, Matt lifted his arm. He looked like a kid raising his hand in class. “While you’re doing that, you think you can get a hold of Mira? She might be able to get help here faster than the Hyperion.”
“I can try,” Matt said. “No idea if the line is secure or not.”
“Doesn’t matter at this point,” Jim said. “They’ve got to know she’s going to be alerted one way or another. Right now, we need numbers more than we need secrecy.”
Matt nodded, taking out his fone and entering a code with his good hand. Jim rose, wiped Matt’s blood off on his shirt, and moved beside Valerian. “Tell your captain to start hauling ass.”
* * *
“Captain Vaughn for you, sir,” said Marcus, grinning a little despite the direness of the situation.
“Not so smug now, are you?” said Swann the instant Vaughn’s face appeared on the screen.
“I, uh, received new orders from my commander, if that’s what you mean,” Vaughn replied stiffly. His face, however, was showing the strain.
“Sir, three more Wraiths have arrived,” Marcus said. Vaughn had the grace to widen his eyes.
“We’re almost out,” Swann said. “We’ll provide cover for your lagging behinds. Now, get going!”
If the ship had been a beast, it would be groaning under the strain. But they were almost clear, and Swann said a silent prayer to the engines that they would hold.
The sudden lurch to freedom took everyone by surprise, but Swann and the rest of the bridge crew whooped as soon as they had recovered their bearings.
The screen had shown nearly nothing, only the vague shapes of bits and pieces of the debris. Now everyone watched as the debris tumbled away, and they rose, massive and slow and the perfect target.
And were fired upon. “Total of eleven Wraiths and six vikings now, sir,” Cade said. “Should I return fire?”
Swann stroked his mustache, thinking. He shook his head.
“Nah, not yet. Maximum power stays in the shields for now. Give us some elevation, and once the Bucephalus gets her nose out of the ground, we’ll start swatting those flies.”
The leviathan of a vessel continued to climb skyward, all the while taking fire. The shields held—mostly. The screens focused not on the attacking Wraiths and vikings, but on where the Bucephalus was struggling to emerge. “Come on,” urged Swann, watching the loose debris still covering the great battleship shifting up and down.
And then Valerian’s ship was free too, breaking out of the encasing garbage like a hatchling from its shell, lurching and struggling for a moment longer before she was airborne.
“Okay, then,” said Swann. “Target those damned vikings and Wraiths and blast ’em from the sky. Marcus, send Vaughn the coordinates for the rescue site just in case he messed that up too. And tell him we’re bolting, and unless I miss my guess, we will be encountering a welcoming committee once we leave atmosphere.”
Almost faster than a thought, the Hyperion, so lumbering when trapped beneath the garbage of the surface, shot upward, firing as she went, climbing toward the openness of space. Swann had been right. More Wraiths awaited them—and a single battleship. The vessel had seen better days, and looked like it belonged on the junk heap that had concealed the Hyperion and the Bucephalus rather than battling the former flagships. But Swann knew enough about mercs to know that they put their credits where it counted, not in cosmetic care. He was not about to underestimate what the apparently dilapidated battlecruiser was capable of.
“Activate our Yamato cannon. Target the battlecruiser and give it all we got!” he cried. The Wraiths were inflicting the most damage, but without the battlecruiser, they were stuck—they had no ability to make warp jumps. Nor could they dock for repairs.
And Wraiths didn’t have Yamato cannons.
Cade lined up the battlecruiser in his sights, and fired. He got in a good solid hit, but the ship was still functional. The Wraiths descended in revenge, diving like maddened hornets.
“Sir, they’re targeting the gravity accelerators,” Cade said.
“Strengthen the shields,” snapped Swann.
“Already done, sir, but with that kind of concentrated fire—Sir! It’s the Bucephalus!”
Sure enough, the mighty ship had finally broken free of the planet and was now coming to the rescue. Its own cannon was targeting the mercs’ battlecruiser, and there were now newer, shinier, top-of-the-line vikings engaged in one-on-one combat with the Wraiths and the mercs’ vikings.
Vaughn had come through.
They just might make that rendezvous with the captain and the commander after all.
* * *
“Oh yes,” Mira’s perky voice was saying. “I am already aware of the . . . situation and I am sending people to you now. And dear James can put his mind at ease about his friend. She is already on her way to the Bucephalus. But, darling, you have got to get away from town! I cannot send in ships for you otherwise!”
“We can’t,” shouted Matt, screaming to hear his own voice over the firing. He still kept his arm elevated, and the bleeding was sl
owing, but he knew he had lost a lot of blood. “We’re trapped here. We took shelter in one of the abandoned buildings at the edge of town. There was no way we could cross so much open space. Jim says they want us alive, but you know what the odds would be.”
“Hmmm,” said Mira. Matt was both impressed and frustrated by the fact that she sounded as concerned as if she were deciding which color to dye her hair rather than how to get four people out of a shootout alive. He could picture her, frowning, tapping her chin thoughtfully with a finger.
“Mira, please, you need to hurry—”
“Matthew, you worry too much. Which building are you in?”
“The one on the northwest corner of town. Not too far from the drug den you cleaned up. Same side.”
“Is it the very last one on that row of buildings?”
“Yeah, I think so.” There was a crash through what was left of the already-broken windows, and something came through. It was small, round, and was starting to emit a pale green gas.
“Shit!” shouted Jim. He covered his mouth with one arm, dove for the small object and threw it back out. Then he bent over and began to cough violently.
“Mira,” Matt said, fighting back a cough himself and blinking his tearing eyes, “they just lobbed a gas grenade inside. I’m sure it’s just the first. They’re trying to render us—” The rest was lost in coughing.
“Matthew, dear one, you must listen. A long time ago I had some escape tunnels put into the four buildings at the farthest end of town. You are in one of those buildings. Start looking for a hatch beneath the flooring!”
Elation flooded Matt, followed by the plummeting sensation of despair. He took a breath to speak, coughed for about fifteen seconds, and resumed in a wheezing voice. “Some of these men firing on us used to be yours,” he said. “They’ll know about the tunnels!”
“Silly, silly Matthew,” she said, her voice warm with amusement. “You think I tell everyone everything?”
Matt started to grin. “Mira, you’re amazing!” He turned to his companions. “There’s an escape tunnel under the flooring!”
“Mira, darlin’, I love you!” shouted Jim, and Matt heard Mira’s laughter.
Flashpoint Page 15
