“Run simulations, show best point to reengage burn,” I ordered. A moment later, the ghost versions were cleared and a single, ghostly Intrepid’s engines kicked on, stopping just past the wormhole.
“Got it, Liam,” Ada said.
We watched the three sloops lazily patrol as we continued gliding toward the wormhole in silence.
“I don’t understand why Nijjar government doesn’t do something about these pirates,” Ada said. “Or Abasi, for that matter. They’d have more trade. There’s no benefit to society in allowing them to continue to operate.”
“There’s only one recognized population in Adit Pah,” Marny said, “and none past it. According to everything I can find, we’re on our own out here. There is no law.”
“Nijjar isn’t a government,” I added. “It’s a loose collective. If you think about it, that’s what the Confederation of Planets is — just trade agreements and treaties. Members share information, but don’t have centralized enforcement.”
“Other than Strix,” Tabby said. “Don’t forget those asshats.”
“Strix involvement seems erratic,” I said. “They just take advantage of the chaos.”
“All hands, hard burn in ten,” Ada announced, cutting through our nervous chatter.
For almost five seconds after Intrepid’s engines fired, the unidentified sloops continued their lazy flight, seemingly unperturbed. It made sense, they’d be expecting sensors to catch incoming ships much further out or emerging from the wormhole, not arriving at speed almost on top of them.
“It’s going to be tight,” Ada said.
The three ships streaked toward our future position, knowing full well our destination.
“We’re taking fire,” Marny said, mostly unnecessarily as we could all see a stream of blaster fire stitching through the space between us. “Armor is holding, Cap. Return fire?”
“Negative,” I said. “We’re not going to be here that long.”
I glanced nervously at the countdown timer. We were a long fifteen seconds from entering the wormhole.
A red indicator blinked on the starboard hull. A lucky shot had peeled back an armor plate and ruptured the skin. The familiar sound of instant decompression rattled through the ship. Quicker than I could respond, Jester Ripples closed off the affected section.
“Five seconds,” Ada said.
Our speed was such that we were becoming an easier target for the sloops.
“Cap, returning fire,” Marny said. Intrepid’s guns burst to life, catching one of the sloops that had been emboldened by our lack of fire by surprise. The damage, while not fatal, caused an explosion, followed by a significant plume of gasses that dissipated almost immediately. “We holed her!”
“All hands, transitioning now,” Ada reported.
My stomach lurched and for a moment, I fought for clarity as the star field on the forward display shifted to our new position.
“Multiple contacts,” Marny warned.
“All hands, combat burn,” Ada announced.
We all twisted to the side as Intrepid’s engines whined with exertion, trying to dig us out of the hole we’d entered by coming to a complete stop at the wormhole. While it’s true that speed is relative and there’s no such thing as truly being stopped. It’s mostly an academic conversation when you find yourself with zero difference in acceleration, sitting in the midst of twenty hostile ships.
“It’s Genteresk,” Tabby announced. “That’s Belvakuski’s light cruiser, Sangilak.”
“Marny, find us a hole,” I said.
Belvakuski’s ship was long and narrow, much like Intrepid, though its mass was easily seven or eight times greater. Her design was all warship. Heavy triple barrel turrets looked like they belonged on old battleships from Earth’s ancient oceanic navy. Sangilak was well out of Intrepid’s league and it occurred to me she could fight up a weight class or two. No wonder Belvakuski was so revered.
“Brace, brace, brace,” Marny repeated. A moment later, Intrepid shook as something struck forward and port. A klaxon warned of a depressurization. We were still good, so I pushed it from my mind.
“That was Sangilak’s main gun,” Marny said. “Ada, we can’t take too many of those.”
I strained to make out the battlefield as Ada turned hard twenty degrees and accelerated directly toward a thirty-meter cutter. Rockets streaked from Intrepid just as a second explosion rocked our aft section.
“Roby, how’s that armor holding?”
“Those are heavy hits,” he said. “We’re holding, but engine three has taken damage. I need to shut it down.”
“Not a good time for that,” Ada said, tension evident in her voice. She tipped her control yolk down and the shoulder straps bit into my skin.
“Oofa,” Roby transmitted. “Frak, I’m not tied in very well down here. We’re burning through the plating. We have to shut her down.”
“Hold tight. We’re in a bit of a pickle,” I said.
Intrepid’s guns found no shortage of targets and I watched in awe as Ada wove her way through the confused fleet. There was method in her mad flight as she was deftly keeping ships between Sangilak and Intrepid.
“Making a break,” Ada said. “I need everything you have, Roby.”
An explosion rocked Intrepid and once again I felt the telltale thump of atmosphere venting and hatches slamming down, sealing us off.
“Forward hold breached,” Tabby announced.
“You’re going to blow that engine,” Roby complained. “She’s about to blow the mid-coupling. It’ll be like a bomb if she does.”
“Get out of there, Roby,” I said. “Do it, Ada.”
I watched the holo as Ada took her opportunity, freeing Intrepid from the Genteresk swarm. A few smaller ships gave chase, lighting up our aft armor, but after several shots from our heavy tail cannons, they gave up the chase.
Ada rode the engines hard for several minutes and finally, we were rocked by a final explosion as engine three’s status changed from red to black. Inoperable.
“Roby? Can you get her back online?” I asked.
“There’s a fire,” he said. “I’m trying to staunch fuel flow, but it broke the line.”
I pulled up the systems displays and my heart sank. Engine three’s explosion had ruptured the main fuel line. We were hemorrhaging fuel. “Go dark, Ada.” I jumped from my seat and raced off the bridge.
“Liam, are you crazy?” Ada asked. “They have a line on us. We’re not far enough away.”
“Get creative.” I leaned over and careened through the hallway with my grav-suit keeping me aloft. “We’re dumping fuel like it’s on sale.”
I slammed into the aft bulkhead as Intrepid’s engines cut off. Only slightly dazed, I recovered and pulled open the hatch to the upper engine room which joined engines three and four. The walls were black with soot and I found Roby crumpled at the bottom of a ramp. He’d stayed too long and gotten caught in the explosion. I checked bio signs. He was up, but unconscious.
It was a hard decision. He desperately needed medical attention, but if I didn’t staunch the fuel loss, we’d all soon need more than that. I pulled him so he lay straight on the deck and raced up to the main portion of the room.
My ears popped as I cleared a pressure barrier at the top of the ramp. My heart nearly stopped. The engine room was open to space. Worse yet, engine three wasn’t just irreparable, it was gone, only the thick strut that held it to the ship and two meters of housing remained.
“Locate fuel line,” I instructed my AI.
A blinking outline drew my attention.
“Liam, they’re catching up,” Ada warned. “I need engines.”
“Buy me some time.” I rummaged through a cabinet, grabbing an armor repair kit and a cutting/welding rig.
“You have thirty seconds before the first ship is here,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. It would take me half that time just to get to the problem area. “Do what you have to, but no engines
until you get word.”
Any movement from the ship would drop me into space. My grav-suit was good, but I couldn’t come close to staying up with even an injured ship.
I wasn’t looking for a great patch; I just needed to stop our precious fuel from dumping into space. The hole was ragged and the patch material I’d brought along was too small. I stitched the panel in place and rushed back to the engine bay to search for more patch material. The explosion had caused chaos, but my AI was more than capable of keeping up with my needs and outlined the dislodged items.
“Taking fire,” Ada said. “We’re a sitting duck, Liam.”
“Copy,” I grunted.
Bright flashes were all I could make out as one or more of the faster Genteresk fleet arrived on our position. I pushed it out of my head and tacked more pieces over the breach, weighing my need to do a solid job against the amount of time we were giving the pursuing fleet.
“Atmosphere lost in main hallway,” Ada announced. “They’re making strafing runs.”
I dropped the welding rig and leaned back toward the ship. “Ada, go in three seconds.”
I was tossed into the aft bulkhead of the engine room as Intrepid roared to life. The inertial system wasn’t operating well and I slid toward the rent in Intrepid’s hull. Scrabbling around, I grabbed for any handhold I could find. Engine three’s explosion had caused the hull plating to be forced into the engine room and I was fortunate to catch myself on the jagged remains. For some reason, however, fortunate wasn’t the first word that popped to mind.
Ada leveled out flight and I strained to move, knowing that at any moment, she could juke and I’d be dropped into space if I wasn’t careful. I took a gamble and jumped across the opening, finding good handholds forward. The risk was rewarded in that I now found myself within Intrepid’s functional gravity field.
I looked up and to the right, my eyes dwelled momentarily on an amber medical status display for Roby. I blinked, activating the display. He was still unconscious and bleeding internally. The explosion had concussed his body and his brain was swelling. He needed medical attention immediately.
I glanced at the hatch that would bring me into the hallway leading down to Intrepid’s main deck. My HUD overlaid the hatch with a pressure warning. Roby sat within a well of atmosphere created by the pressure barrier above and the hatch at the bottom of the short ramp.
I looked up to the right again. Combat status was also amber. I dwelled and blinked. The AI showed that we were two kilometers from our nearest enemy and were separating at thirty meters per second.
Roby’s helmet had not deployed correctly as he’d neglected to raise it when we entered combat. I’d have a talk later with him about that. He was lucky to have found one of the few, pressurized locations within Intrepid. I worked his helmet back on and watched in satisfaction as it sealed over his face. The kid could be a pain in the ass, but despite his often goofy social behavior, he was good in a pinch and had a heart the size of Mars beating inside that chest.
I half carried, half dragged him to our medical bay, which was the second best armored section of the ship after the bridge. I struggled to lift Roby’s body onto a table after I depressurized and repressurized the entryway. While under combat burn, the gravity in the ship was turned up to 2.0g to help balance the inertial systems. Lifting Roby was like lifting a hundred-fifty-kilogram man onto the table. After securing him with straps, I placed a med scanner on his forehead and started applying appropriate patches.
Getting back to the bridge wasn’t going to be possible as we’d lost pressure in the main hallway. We’d been holed in three places: the engine room which couldn’t be fixed immediately, the bilge compartment that Jester Ripples had sealed off and a third, port side. It was this third that rendered Intrepid unable to hold atmo, so I loped around, happy to be free of Roby’s additional weight.
The scoring on the inside bulkhead of the port passageway was immediately obvious. Opposite the scoring, a head sized, oval tear was open to space. Intrepid was equipped with vac-stop canisters in both hallways and with the AI’s help, I located the nearest one, aimed the nozzle at the edge of the opening and depressed the trigger. Foam that expanded in vacuum and would stick to anything shot out and adhered to the edge. It set almost instantly, was as hard as cement, and required a special chemical agent to remove it once a more permanent patch was in place.
With atmosphere building back in the passageway, I checked the inside bulkhead. In the center of the carbonized finish, I found a second hole, very similar to the first. It was the wall into Ada’s bunk. I overrode security and slid her hatch open. It was as if a bomb had gone off. The forward and aft bulkheads had been blown out by shrapnel. A sphere twice the size of my fist was embedded in the interior wall, which I knew to be the bridge.
I breathed out and placed my hands on my knees. Somehow the armor around the bridge had stopped what the armor around the ship had not. I could not imagine what damage might have been done if the projectile had also made it through the bridge armor.
“Liam, you’re being hailed,” Ada called.
“Accept,” I said. “Calling to gloat, Belvakuski? That’s not really your style, is it?”
“Greetings, my old friend,” Belvakuski said. “You are wily, like the furry peraflop from my home world. How did you like your first taste of my iron?”
“Nothing a little foam and some imaginative welding won’t fix up,” I said.
“It truly would be a shame to destroy such a fine specimen as yourself. Your witty lies alone are worth five of my best,” Belvakuski chortled. “I find your ability to evade me both maddening and stimulating. You should give up this madness and join my fleet. I would make room for you as my number two.”
“I’m going to have to say no, just now,” I said. “Better luck next time?”
“Until next time, dear boy. I suspect it will be sooner than you expect.”
“That was too easy,” Marny said. We’d successfully separated from Belvakuski’s fleet and had restored pressure to most of the ship. I glanced over to see Marny reviewing the combat data-streams from our last encounter. “Twenty ships? Even accounting for Ada’s skills and Intrepid’s agility, she let us go.”
“Are you sure?”
“Look at these.” Marny highlighted four sloop class vessels, each of which had clear shots on Intrepid as we worked our way free of Belvakuski’s fleet.
“She’s softening us up,” Tabby said. “Extending the hunt.”
“I’ll take whatever we can get,” I said. “I’m just glad Roby made it.” Roby was recovering in the medical bay and we’d repaired much of the damage to Intrepid - if only temporarily.
“Time to make the call,” I said.
We were forty hours into a class-D burn that would take us to the position Jester Ripples had uncovered in the picture I’d obtained from Thuga. I’d agreed to wait until this appointed time to attempt contact with the Koosha scout ship I hoped was still in Adit Pah.
“You are understood, Intrepid.” A slender, hard-faced Pogona appeared on the vid screen.
“Are you still tracking the Kroerak vessel?”
“I am transmitting our location to you now,” he said. “Provide time estimate on your arrival.”
“Ada?”
“Thirty-six hours.”
I relayed the information.
“We look forward to taking possession of the ship you refer to as George.”
Thirty-six hours was not enough time with the amount of damage Intrepid had taken, but with staggered shifts, we kept up a constant repair effort. Roby had spent the minimum time in the tank - twelve hours – before we had him up and assisting with the repairs.
We were as ready as we were ever going to get.
“Have you given any thought to what we’re going to do once we find the Kroerak? I think it’s a safe bet the Kroerak have destroyed every ship that’s approached it,” Tabby said.
“You mean, other than this Koosha s
cout,” Ada said.
The coordinates provided were in orbit above Deshi, a solo moon above Kameldeep, one of Adit Pah’s uninhabited worlds. The moon was a barren rock and the planet a mix of beautiful browns, oranges and reds along with a murky green ocean that covered over half the surface. According to the latest surveys, Kameldeep’s surface, while a reasonable mix of oxygen and nitrogen, was unstable and given to frequent volcanic eruptions.
“Cap, something feels off,” Marny said.
“I know. I feel it too,” I said.
The Koosha scout ship was puttering along, holding tight to the moon.
“Intrepid to Koosha scout ship,” I kicked up communications again.
“You are understood, Intrepid.” It was the same Pogona who’d answered my previous call.
“This is when you show me where the Kroerak ship is,” I said.
Almost immediately a location on the planet’s surface was transmitted. Intrepid’s sensors weren’t sufficient to penetrate most atmospheres, but Kameldeep’s was thin enough that we had no trouble locating the Kroerak ship’s signature.
“What’s it doing down there?” I asked.
“Uninteresting,” the Pogona replied. “You will transmit codes and location for ship named George.”
I transmitted the codes.
“What is that?” Tabby asked, pointing at the moon’s horizon.
“Liam, we have multiple contacts,” Ada said.
“It’s Belvakuski’s fleet,” Marny added. “Koosha sold us out.”
Chapter 27
Enemy of my Enemy
Koosha’s scout ship fired its engines and zipped away from our location as if someone had lit its tail on fire.
“Put that ship down,” I ordered.
“Aye, aye, Cap.”
Three turrets locked on the small cutter and it exploded moments later. I might regret the decision later, but I wasn’t about to have that ship join Belvakuski’s fleet in the chaos that was headed our way.
“We’re being hailed,” Ada announced.
Corsair Menace (Privateer Tales Book 12) Page 32
