Lord of the Storm

by Justine Davis

  “Eos,” Shaylah whispered.

  “Verify request?” the computer asked politely.

  “Armament,” she snapped.

  “Full standard range, plus four nitron torpedo bays, one laser gun. Six Y-class fighters indicated.”

  “Great,” Shaylah muttered.

  “A laser gun,” Wolf said slowly. “Not a Coalition vessel, then.”

  “No,” Shaylah agreed, “we did away with those years—” She broke off, and her head swung around as she looked at him. “How did you know that?”

  He shrugged. “I must have heard it somewhere.”

  A nice, vague nonanswer, Shaylah thought again. He had them perfected. It irritated her, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it now. She turned back to the computer.

  “Affiliation?” she asked, although she knew it was probably a wasted effort.

  “None apparent,” the voice returned.

  “Of course not,” she muttered. There was only one answer, and the moment she raised her gaze to Wolf, she knew that they both knew it.

  “Skypirates,” he said flatly.

  “Yes,” she said grimly. “And a ship that size must have a crew of over a hundred. Even if my crew were here, we’d still be outnumbered five to one.”

  “And outgunned.”

  “Against four nitron torpedoes? That’s putting it kindly.”

  Wolf glanced out the viewport at the barren expanse of the asteroid. Then he looked at the computer’s ongoing flow of information, reporting the big cruiser’s steady, unwavering approach. Then he turned back, his gaze intently on Shaylah.

  “No course change,” he said.

  “I won’t ask where you learned to read instruments,” Shaylah said dryly.

  He shrugged, the flight suit tightening across his broad shoulders. “Do you think they’ve detected us?”

  “Probably not, at least not yet. They couldn’t be expecting anyone to be here, and our quick scan shouldn’t have registered long enough for them to be sure, if they weren’t looking for it.”

  He glanced out the viewport again. “That’s a . . . sizable rock,” he said.

  Shaylah followed his glance, then her gaze shot back to his face. He was watching her, waiting. She got it then and moved quickly to disengage the self-pilot.

  “It won’t help for long,” she warned. “They’re going to register the ion drive when they get close enough.”

  “Yes. But if we can keep the asteroid between us, maybe they won’t know we’re here until it’s too late. It takes a while to turn a ship that big around.”

  “And we’re faster,” she acknowledged. “We can make a run for it around the other side.”

  Shaylah made a delicate adjustment in the controls as they slid into the shadow of the asteroid. It would be a tricky proposition, keeping the mass of rock between them and the approaching cruiser as long as possible, but it was their only chance. She feathered the power from the port engine to the starboard, turning the ship, all the while wondering where Wolf had learned such tactics.

  “We can run,” Wolf said, watching her. “But we’d better be ready to fight, too. They may send out those fighters, and we can’t outrun them.”

  Shaylah shot him a glance. “Without a crew, I can’t fight and fly at the same time, Wolf. I’ve automated all the systems I can, but in a fight the con and the weapons station both have to be manned.”

  Wolf looked at her steadily. For a long moment he didn’t speak. Then, in an inflectionless voice, he said, “I don’t know your weapons systems.”

  Shaylah’s jaw clenched. “I know, I didn’t show you, but even if I had, there’s no way you could have learned it fast enough. It’s a full-time course in the Academy.”

  “I know. So you must handle the weapons.”

  Shaylah stared at him. He knew? How? Then the meaning implicit in his words struck her. “Wolf, holding us behind this asteroid is not something I can turn over to the self-pilot. It would take too many delicate adjustments. It can’t—”

  “I know.”

  It was flat, inflectionless again, and at last it got through to her. She gaped at him. “You mean—You don’t mean . . . ?”

  “It has been a very long time, but . . .” He shrugged. “Some things you don’t forget.”

  “You can fly? The Sunbird?”

  His steady gaze never wavered. “I can.”

  It went against every tenet that had been pounded into Shaylah’s psyche since her first day at the Academy to turn command of her ship over to an unknown, untried pilot. Yet she had no choice, and no time to dwell on the decision or to wonder when and how he had learned to fly; the steady advance of the threatening cruiser proved that. And as she looked at Wolf’s impassive, chiseled face, she suddenly had no doubts that he could do exactly as he said.

  “Who are you?” she whispered once more, bewildered anew by this man she knew so well and yet not at all.

  “Right now, the only help you have,” he said.

  Shaylah hesitated a second more, doubt warring with instinct, then reached into the console beside the con. She took out a headset for the ship’s intercom system and held it out to him. He moved to take it, his fingers brushing hers. His hand stopped, maintaining the contact. Shaylah couldn’t tear her hand away and reached with the other to activate the Sunbird’s shields.

  “She’s all yours,” Shaylah whispered.

  He moved then, just the slightest shifting of his fingers, moving over the back of her hand in a way that was oddly reassuring.

  “No, Captain,” he said, for the first time using her rank without that sour, sardonic tone. “She’s yours. But I’ll take care of her for you.”

  As she made her way to the main weapons station, all Shaylah could think about was the almost tender way he had taken over the controls, and the glow that had lit his eyes, as if he were reunited with a friend long missed.

  She felt a few sideways slips of the ship as she went, but she knew it would be the same with any pilot the first few moments with a new craft. The movements stopped as she settled down in the weapons seat, and she knew he had already gotten the feel of the controls. It didn’t surprise her to see that they were holding steady in the shadow of the asteroid; she was learning rapidly not to underestimate the man called Wolf.

  She put on her own headset and tuned in to the con frequency.

  “Wolf?”

  “Here.”

  “Any change?”

  “Still closing. No sign of a scan yet.”

  “How long?”

  There was a pause. “It appears they’ll be close enough to pick up the ion reading in . . . five minutes.”

  “You have a course laid in to take us on the far side as they go by?”

  Another pause; Shaylah could almost see his wry smile. “Yes, Captain.” The bite was back in the word, but it seemed more amused than acid. Shaylah armed her weapons: short-range cannon, laser tracers, and the torpedoes for the Sunbird’s single nitron gun. She activated her targeting computer, loaded the first rounds in each of the weapons, and fastened her harness. Then she took a deep breath.

  “Wolf?”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “I . . . I’m sorry I got you into this.”

  She heard him expel a compressed breath. “No, Shaylah. I would rather die fighting than locked up in a cage. Besides,” he added, and she could virtually hear his smile in his voice, “don’t be in such a hurry to wipe us from the history disk.”

  She wondered at his generosity in not pointing out that if she hadn’t brought them to this sector, they would probably not be facing the pirates who traversed it regularly. Yet she hadn’t really had much choice; this was the only place she had been able to think of not routinely patrolled by Coalition vessels who would
find the presence of one of their own far too interesting to pass up without a thorough investigation.

  It struck her then, the oddity of it, of hiding in the shadow of a barren piece of space debris to avoid not only the raiders that were approaching, but her own kind, her colleagues, the people she’d fought for and with, the coalition of colonies she had sworn to lay down her life for, if necessary.

  How had she come to this? She had broken enough Coalition regulations to get her cashiered and sent to a labor colony. Not even her record could get her out of this one. For the first time she truly realized that she had done something irrevocable and that if she was found out, her career, if not her life, was as good as over.

  She searched within herself, looking for some sign of panic, of sun-shattering remorse. She couldn’t find it. Regret, yes, deep and yawning as she thought of never flying free through the far reaches again, but not enough to make her wish she hadn’t done it. Even had she known she would never fly again, she couldn’t have left Wolf in that place.

  The knowledge frightened her; never in her life had anything outside her family been more important to her than flying. Even when she began to see that the Coalition wasn’t quite the spotless bastion of glory she’d been taught, she remained because it gave her the chance to fly. She’d known of the slaves and had still tried to walk away, to go on as before so that she could fly.

  Then she’d met Wolf. And risked it all—in fact, perhaps thrown it all away—because she couldn’t bear to see him chained and beaten. Why had he affected her this way? Why had she been able, despite her aversion to the system, to walk away from the countless others she’d encountered throughout the Coalition colonies? Why this one man? Had she become a slave herself, to her own unexpected needs, played on so sweetly by this scarred yet oddly noble man? Had she—

  Her tangled musing was interrupted by Wolf’s voice in her headset.

  “Computer registering a scan. They’ve picked up a read on the ion drive.”

  This is it, she thought. “Copy. I turned off the identifier, so they can’t know who we are yet. Hold position until we’re certain they’ve decided to come after us. Then hit the—” She broke off. “Never mind. You know what to do then.”

  “Yes, Captain.” The smile came through again, and she was seized with the wish to be able to see it. “An ancient Triotian phrase about bats out of Hades comes to mind.”

  He was loving this, Shaylah thought. And she couldn’t blame him for savoring the freedom after years of hellish captivity. Yes, Wolf would rather die young, free, and fighting than live to old age in servitude.

  “They’re slowing.”

  The ominousness of the words did nothing to mask the exuberance of his tone. He was ready to fight, free to fight, and sounded alive as she’d never heard him before. This, at least, she had given him; she tried to take some small comfort from that.

  She felt the acceleration as the Sunbird began the arc that would take them around the far side of the asteroid, keeping the barren mass of rock between them and the pirates. She wondered if the raiders would continue if they discovered their bogey was a Coalition ship, but knew as soon as she thought it that it was a moot point; the Sunbird couldn’t wait to find out.

  “Starting their turn.”

  He was keeping her posted as well as the best-trained of her crew, and holding the ship’s course better than most. Had he flown in the service of Trios, in the small force they had maintained? She spared a brief, wondering thought about what kind of pilot he must have been before, if he was this good now, after years away from a con. Then she settled herself further in the seat, rechecking her weapons.

  The waiting was always the worst, she thought. When the fight was on, things were generally happening too fast to think about things like the possibility of incineration. It was afterward that the shock always hit her, made her tremble with the knowledge of another near-miss collision with death. She’d learned to conceal the reaction that would be viewed as unacceptable in a Coalition officer.

  Wolf’s voice again, sharp and quick. “Getting a reading. They’ve launched a small craft . . . no, two. Stand by for a quick scan . . .” She waited, holding her breath. “Fighters, Captain. Short-range but heavily armed. Nitron guns, midsize cannon.”

  “Copy.”

  “Coming in bearing three-five. Weapons armed.”

  “Copy,” Shaylah repeated.

  She knew they would probably make a pass first, trying to identify the Sunbird, and she had little time to decide whether to fire first. There was always the chance they might cut and run when they saw the Coalition insignia, a chance Shaylah didn’t dare pass up. She kept her weapons at the ready in case they were coming on with orders to shoot, but set herself to hold unless they fired first.

  She saw them then, two small Y-wing fighters of the type the Coalition had discarded in favor of the predecessor of the Sunbird. Shaylah had flown one at the Academy and remembered it well. The three-man ship was small, solid, and fast, but what it gained in speed it lost in maneuverability; she would never forget the instant in training when she feared she hadn’t compensated enough for the lack of agility and they were going to crater into a cliff.

  They were coming at her head-on now, clearly visible from the viewport here at the top of the ship. It was time to level out the Sunbird’s arc, to give her a steady platform from which to fire if she had to. She opened her mouth to tell Wolf, then shut it when the ship slowed and stabilized; he’d beaten her to it.

  The two fighters zipped overhead, so close she could see the blotches where their original insignia had been removed. As if they knew she wasn’t going to fire on this pass, they came in at perfect target angle, then disappeared on the other side of the ship.

  Shaylah started to speak, to tell Wolf to track them and tell her if they turned back toward the Sunbird. Then she stopped. He would tell her. He knew what he was doing. And again she wondered how.

  It came as soon as she expected. “Banking,” he said crisply. “Both coming in for another pass. Bearing . . . two-ten.”

  “Copy.”

  “They’re splitting. I’d say they’re serious this time.”

  She swiveled around to face the new approach. She dialed in the targeting computer to track the pair. Her finger tensed on the trigger release of the cannon. She saw the sudden flash from the lead fighter just as she heard Wolf’s warning.

  “Incoming!”

  Shaylah saw the approaching blast, a fiery nimbus in the darkness of space. Then another, from the second fighter, from slightly above. They had fired early, she thought, giving her too much time; she’d make sure they regretted it. She knew the shields would hold; the trick was in timing her return fire before the Sunbird took the impact, ruining her shot. She was cool and impassive now, doing the mental countdown she’d done so many times before.

  Beat . . . beat . . . beat . . . fire.

  The cannon hurled out its pulse of pure thermal energy. A fraction of a second later, as the first fighter’s blast hit, the Sunbird shuddered, then steadied. Light and debris erupted above as Shaylah’s shot hit home. The blast from the second fighter hit, but again the shields held.

  “Nice shooting, Captain.”

  Wolf’s tone warmed her; it told her he had expected nothing else. “Find me that second one again,” she said, swiveling around again to prepare.

  “I’m sure he’ll find us,” Wolf drawled. Shaylah couldn’t help but smile; this was a Wolf she wanted more of. Then, briskly: “Coming around, bearing two-two-three.”

  “Copy.”

  He was waiting this time, no doubt knowing that a closer shot would weaken their shields. Shaylah zeroed in the computer.

  “Another launch from the mother ship,” Wolf warned. “Four this time. Bearing four-eight.”

  “Copy,” Shaylah said. Her gaze
was still riveted on the second fighter; she knew she had a few precious seconds before the second wave hit. The moment she was sure of him, she fired. In that moment she saw the burst from the other vessel and knew what was going to happen. Instantly she adjusted the aim on the cannon and fired another round.

  The Sunbird rocked from the concussion as her first shot and the fighter’s round collided. Wolf steadied her instantly. The oncoming fighter veered out of the way of the fireball . . . and right into her second shot.

  “My compliments, Captain.”

  “Thank you.” She knew she was grinning at his praise, but she couldn’t help it.

  “But there are those other little problems,” he said casually.

  “I don’t see them yet.”

  “They should be coming around the rim of the asteroid right . . . about . . . now.”

  “Got them,” Shaylah announced as the four fighters popped into view. They divided, two heading sharply to the Sunbird’s stern, the others coming straight on.

  “They’re splitting up,” Wolf observed. “This could get interesting. Take the head-ons, I’ll see if I can amuse the other two for a bit.”

  “Copy.”

  The attackers were playing it safer this time, she realized as the two fighters set up for their run. They were both coming in at the same time, from different angles. With a full crew of four weapons officers, it would have been a snap to take all four of them at once; now she’d be lucky to get them one at a time—if she lasted that long.

  She armed a second cannon swiftly, watching the fighters close on the Sunbird. She risked a quick shot on the lead craft. It hit, but the craft only wobbled for an instant. Too far, she thought, and reloaded. She waited, that mental pacing echoing in her head again.

  Beat . . . beat . . . beat . . . fire.

  She was right on. The computer chirped the hit. And the fighter kept coming.

  A dud, she realized in consternation. The Sunbird bucked as she took hits from both fighters. Shaylah heard the damage alarms sound and swore softly, fervently. Damn that last load of ammunition! Every fifth round was useless—had been through the whole batch—and it was going to get somebody killed. She just hoped that somebody wasn’t them.