by JP Raymond
Taking a deep breath, Gwen plotted a course out of the Belt and then opened the throttle.
With a roar from the main engine, her ship shot out of the asteroid field in firing range of Cataan’s Claw. Gwen pulled the stick and brought her about. Five seconds later, she had a clear line of fire with her main forward guns. The freighter’s shields were still down.
“Now, you get yours, JaQuan,” she said.
Gwen tapped the firing keys on her board. Green plasma rays roared from her cannon towards Cataan’s Claw’s hyperdrive.
But just before they hit, the freighter lurched into motion. It rumbled away from Gwen, causing her shot to miss the mark.
“Shit!”
She mastered her frustration quickly. The plasma beams may have missed the hyperdrive, but they slammed into Cataan’s Claw’s hull, cutting holes in her aft topside. Her shields were still down. Her crew had been unaware. Gwen still had the advantage.
And she planned to use it.
Alarms screamed across the bridge as the Space Ranger’s beamer cannon sliced into the hull. JaQuan tapped commands into his board, begging the engines to come fully online so they could escape.
“Hull breach, Captain!” Cooressa shouted. “Cargo hold.”
“Tell Rischa to seal it off,” Kitekh barked. “We can’t go to hyperspace with a hole in our hull!”
“The enemy ship is firing again,” Cooressa said.
“Hang on!” JaQuan said.
He opened the throttle and pulled the stick sharply right. Cataan’s Claw shot forward and then banked starboard. The G-force threatened to rip him to pieces.
A second later, the ship jarred back in the other direction as the roar of another hit echoed through the bulkheads.
“Glancing blow,” Cooressa reported. “No breaches.”
“Kitekh, I can’t outmaneuver her,” JaQuan said. “We’re too big. We need the deflector screens up!”
“I’m trying, God damn it!” she roared.
Rorgun appeared in the hatch.
“What the hell is going on?” he said.
“JaQuan’s girlfriend is trying to kill us,” Kitekh said.
“Ex-girlfriend,” JaQuan said as he tried to bring the ship about to protect her damaged cargo hold.
“Get to your station!” Kitekh ordered.
Rorgun was already moving.
“Enemy vessel is firing again,” Cooressa reported as Rorgun made it to his seat.
JaQuan checked their bearing and the position of Gwen’s ship. She was directly above them. There was no way to maneuver to safety.
Gwen smiled in grim satisfaction.
“I’ve got you now, JaQuan,” she said. “No amount of fancy flying can evade this.”
She fired a third time. Green plasma rocketed across the vacuum, bound for Cataan’s Claw. JaQuan might have been a good pilot, but he was overmatched. That big boat he was trying to drive couldn’t escape her smaller, more maneuverable scout ship.
But just before the beams ripped into the freighter’s hyperdrive, her deflector screens came to life. The rays bounced away harmlessly, dissipating into the void.
“Fuck!” Gwen shouted.
She fired several more times, hoping to overload the shields and cause them to collapse. But every beam glanced off the energy field, unable to penetrate to the hull. Gwen was forced to break off her attack to avoid a collision.
God damn JaQuan and his talented friends. She’d caught Cataan’s Claw with her pants down, but she’d managed to survive her initial attack. Her advantage was lost.
But Gwen was still faster and more maneuverable. And she had other weapons.
In addition to her beamers, she had a top- and a bottom-mounted particle cannon. The particle rays would ignore deflector screens, but they were a favorite weapon of pirates. Virtually every commercial transport in the galaxy was outfitted with particle sinks to defend against them. Gwen was sure she could eventually overwhelm Cataan’s Claw’s sinks, but time was not on her side. She needed to disable the ship before she could go to hyperspace.
That left torpedoes. That was a dangerous option though. If she hit the engines, she could cause an explosion that would kill everyone, including the hostage.
Damn it. How did she disable the ship before it could escape and without harming Haneeta Mol?
Cataan’s Claw finally returned fire. The shots were wide and desperate. Her crew was still in chaos. That wouldn’t last, though. Soon, they would have everyone at battle stations, and this would turn into a real fight. The advantage of surprise was rapidly dwindling.
Gwen couldn’t take out all their cannon before they could plot a hyperspace jump and make their escape. She needed some way to shut them down quickly. But how could she disable all their weapons and shields at once? She’d have to kill practically everyone on the bridge at once to do that.
The bridge! No matter how many deflector screens and particle sinks Cataan’s Claw had, torpedoes would ignore them. If she targeted the bridge, she could conceivably destroy their operations center, rendering the ship dead in space.
Of course, that would likely kill everyone occupying the bridge, including JaQuan. Gwen hesitated. JaQuan needed to pay for what he’d done – both as a terrorist and to her heart. But killing him seemed extreme. And the directive from Grand Marshal Hoorn had stipulated that capture was preferable to killing.
But there were nine or ten people crewing that ship. Even if she could disable Cataan’s Claw, how would she board it and get Haneeta Mol off safely?
There just wasn’t a choice. If JaQuan didn’t want to her to launch torpedoes straight between his eyes, he shouldn’t have signed on with Manifest Destiny. Haneeta was unlikely to be on the bridge. This was Gwen’s best chance to disable Cataan’s Claw and rescue the senator’s daughter.
As if to confirm she was right, the outlaw freighter fired on her again. Gwen banked away to avoid the three plasma beams roaring towards her. One of them hit her starboard flank, but her deflector screens easily dismissed it.
She tapped commands into her board to call up the schematics of a Lankwin-class freighter as she brought her ship about. Seconds later, the computer gave her the location of the enemy ship’s bridge. Gwen fed the information to her tactical program as she armed her torpedo array.
Cataan’s Claw fired again. Gwen weaved between the shots, then put herself on a collision course with the freighter’s bridge. Opening the throttle, she bore down on her ex-boyfriend, preparing to blow him out of the stars.
“I’m sorry, JaQuan,” she said. “You should have surrendered back on The Outpost. You shouldn’t have become involved with these people.”
JaQuan struggled to give Rorgun a good firing solution. This was his first combat against a smaller ship. Against the giant Imperial battlecruisers, they’d had the advantage in maneuverability. But they were no match for Gwen’s scout ship, and she was showing herself to be a hell of a pilot.
“Damn it, JaQuan!” Rorgun said as he missed again. “I need better!”
“Hold her steady,” Kitekh ordered. “You can’t outmaneuver her. Let Rorgun do the work. We have beamers on every facing.”
Right. Of course. He was playing to Gwen’s advantage instead of letting Rorgun press theirs. Cataan’s Claw had more guns than a Space Ranger scout.
Don’ let the other man dictate how the fight goes, Lucky used to say. You fight your fight. You fight his fight, he wins.
“Captain, the enemy vessel has come about and is in a dive for us,” Cooressa reported.
“I see that, Cooressa,” Kitekh snapped, no doubt reading her board.
“Yes, but, Captain, the Space Ranger is diving for our bridge.”
“What?” JaQuan said.
Why would she do that?
“She’s trying to destroy our command center,” Kitekh said. “If she can knock out the bridge, we’ll be dead in space.”
“And she’ll be able to board and rescue Mr. Brody’s hostage,” Rorgun ad
ded.
“Rorgun,” Kitekh said, “angle the deflector screens and the particle sinks for maximum defense of the bridge. Then get a firing solution on that ship.”
“Captain!” Cooressa shouted before Rorgun could obey Kitekh’s order. “She’s armed torpedoes!”
JaQuan’s heart stopped. Shields and sinks were useless against torpedoes. Gwen was trying to killing them!
“Torpedo launched!” Cooressa cried.
Klaxons screamed. JaQuan examined his board. The deadly missile roared straight for them.
“Second torpedo launched!” Cooressa reported.
“JaQuan, Rorgun, do something!” Kitekh screamed.
JaQuan checked the range and speed of the torpedoes against Cataan’s Claw’s position. There was nothing to be done. They were all dead.
H umiliation eviscerates reason. When someone is deeply humiliated, when they feel they have nothing to lose, they stop thinking logically. It’s all about inflicting pain on anyone they perceive has hurt them.
And that gets people killed. When you don’t care what happens next, you hurt innocent people. You’re like a bomb going off in a crowd. The damage is widespread and irrevocable.
You can blame the people who humiliated you all you want. You can say it’s their fault you got to this point. Maybe that’s true.
But you’re the one who pulled the trigger. You deserve all the damnation you get.
Will Cataan’s Claw escape certain doom?
Or has Gwen gotten her revenge on JaQuan?
How far will Idrib Mol go to pass his legislation?
Those answers and more in the next, pulse-pounding episode of Empire’s End, “Forbidden Magic”!
Available March 9, 2018 –
Tap here to preorder and have it autodelivered wirelessly to your Kindle!
Author’s Note
Hey, y’all! Thanks for picking up Episode 4 of Empire’s End. I told you last time Gwen was gonna be pissed when she got out of that closet. So how does JaQuan get out of this one? The answer in Episode 5. . . .
Shout out to all the people who’ve written reviews of the first three episodes. I appreciate your time and effort.
If you’re digging the series and you haven’t yet left a review, I’d love for you to take a moment to do it. Books with lots of positive reviews sell more copies, because Amazon recommends them to readers and the best advertisers only take books with a minimum number. I know I’m asking a favor, but it’s so easy to do. Just tap the link, give a number of stars you think it deserves, and write a few words about why you think it rocks. Thanks.
Tap here to review Empire’s End Episode 4.
Don’t forget, if you want to know more about Empire’s End, check out my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/empiresendserial. It has bonus material, release dates, sci-fi trivia, and other cool stuff.
See you in Episode 5!
-JP
Empire’s End
A Science Fiction Serial by:
JP Raymond
Episode 4:
The Real Sin
Copyright 2018 JP Raymond
All Rights Reserved
Cover Design by:
Fleur Camacho
About the Author
JP Raymond was totally blown away by Star Wars in 1977. He spent the rest of his youth in love with Princess Leia, obsessed with all things science fiction, and railing against the identity of a certain Jedi Knight’s father.
He eventually went to college, where he studied literature and got all sorts of ideas about writing about the human condition and penning the Great American Novel into his head.
These days, he’s finally managed to author his own space opera saga. Empire’s End is his first foray into traditional science fiction, and he’s having a blast with it. He credits George Lucas for lighting the fire that got him here, but he refuses to accept Darth Vader as Luke’s father.
Send JP a subspace communication at [email protected] and tell him what you think of Empire’s End. He’ll reply.
