Dark Space

by Jasper T. Scott

  It’s going to be close, the overlord thought.

  * * *

  “Gina, you don’t have a choice! I’ll fly in with you, but it’s now or never.”

  “Frek, Adan, this the worst bad idea you’ve ever had.”

  “They’re not going to expect us to land with two lone fighters. That’s suicide. But we’d better move fast if we’re going to make it before they raise the shields on the starboard hangar.”

  The overlord had dropped the Valiant’s starboard hangar shields in order to fly out in the Defiant, and as far as Ethan knew, they were still down. It was just a small piece of luck that at the time Brondi hadn’t realized he could fly his landing party around and land inside the unshielded hangar, but now that oversight would be of great use to Ethan and Gina.

  They cruised underneath the belly of the massive warship, staying as close to the hull as they dared, so that no enemy fighters would easily pick them up on scopes. So far they were clear, but Ethan had throttled back to 51% in order to keep pace with Gina’s nova and its badly damaged thrusters. At that speed they were practically sitting ducks.

  Ethan had a bad feeling as they crested the other side of the carrier that they were about to run into a whole enemy squadron just lying there waiting for them.

  He watched his scopes with anxious anticipation, but there was no sign of the enemy.

  Ethan commed Gina. “Ready? On my mark we’re going to loop back and into the hangar bay. Keep a thumb ready on your braking thrusters. We’re going in hot.”

  Ethan heard Gina sigh. “I’m ready when you are, Skidmark.” Ethan waited a few more seconds for them to get some distance from the carrier, and then he called out, “Mark!”

  They both pulled back on their flight sticks at the same time, pulling a half loop which put them upside down and heading straight for the hangar. Ethan realized a little too late that he had no way no knowing whether or not the shields were back up. If they were, his fighter would explode on the shields rather than fly into the hangar.

  Ethan gritted his teeth and triggered his braking thrusters to slow down. He and Gina reached the static shields a split second later—

  And passed straight through. Ethan breathed a deep sigh of relief as the Valiant’s grav guns seized control of their fighters and guided them down to a long strip along the side of the empty venture-class hangar.

  Ethan killed his nova’s thrusters in order to better let the carrier’s autopilot guide him down to the deck. He deployed landing struts, and watched as his and Gina’s interceptors were further slowed, rolled over, and gradually lowered to the deck until they settled down with well-synchronized thud-unks.

  Ethan popped the seals on his canopy, even before the carrier’s mag clamps seized his ship’s landing struts. He reached for his sidearm, but so far there was no sign of Brondi’s troops milling about. They obviously weren’t worried about guarding their backs. That would have been a major oversight were the battle in space not already so heavily stacked in Brondi’s favor. The Defiant would never survive to make a landing back aboard the carrier and challenge Brondi for control of the ship.

  Ethan hopped down from his nova and saw Gina’s fractured cockpit canopy rising just ahead of him. He hurried to the side of her interceptor as she stood up slowly in her cockpit. Once standing, Gina’s gaze flicked around to find and briefly watch the entrances and exits of the hangar. When she was satisfied that there were no enemies lurking about, she turned to look down at him. Ethan noted that Gina looked deathly pale, and she held a hand to the side of her black flight suit, which was slowly trickling blood out between her gloved fingers. Fortunately, unlike him, Gina had suited up before climbing into her cockpit—otherwise she would be dead rather than merely injured.

  “Oh, frek, Gina. I’m sorry.” Ethan’s brow pinched with remorse.

  “Yea, yea, you can buy me a round later to make up for it. Help me down, would you?” she managed a weak smile and then stepped over the side of the cockpit and slowly lowered herself until she was sitting on the wing of her interceptor with her feet dangling over the side.

  Ethan stepped up to the side of the interceptor and she held out her arms to wrap them around his neck.

  “Careful,” she warned, as Ethan began to lift her off the interceptor’s wing, but she let out a shrill scream as the movement pressed heavily on her broken ribs, and Ethan set her down in a hurry.

  “Frek . . .” she breathed, swaying on her feet. Ethan could see through her helmet visor that she was sweating profusely from the pain, but rather than allowing that to distract her she was back to scanning the entrances of the hangar.

  “You think anyone heard that?” she asked.

  Ethan turned to look now, too, his left hand dropping to his side arm as his gaze flicked between the broken holes leading from hangar to the concourse beyond, but when no one came boiling into the hangar, Ethan shook his head. “Doesn’t seem like it.” He nodded to the distant slice of the hangar opposite theirs, which was just visible across the broken, debris-strewn concourse. “But we’d better hurry.”

  “Right.”

  Ethan started off at a full sprint, but when he didn’t see Gina appear beside him, he stopped and turned to find her hobbling along and clutching her ribs. She was making loud grunting noises that he could hear even through her helmet. Ethan shook his head and rushed back to her side. “Let me carry you.”

  She shot him a deadly look. “I’m fine. Besides you need a hand free to shoot, and so do I,” she replied as she drew her sidearm.

  Ethan nodded reluctantly. “Fine.”

  They aimed for a melted hole in the transpiranium wall which separated the hangar from the concourse, and a minute later they were stepping over rubble and the still-smoking remains of the sentinels’ zephyrs. The inside of the concourse was acrid with thready veils of shifting black smoke. The giant colossus assault mech which the sentinels had managed to muster as a part of their defense lay strewn in broken piles of scorched duranium and flaming pools of reactor fuel. There were also some charred meaty bits that Ethan didn’t want to know about.

  Miraculously, they reached the other venture-class hangar without encountering any resistance, but that was where the miracle ended. Ethan and Gina almost walked straight into a knot of three guards standing on the other side of the molten remains of the hangar’s transpiranium wall.

  The guards were relaxed and chatting amongst themselves—not paying any attention to their surroundings. With their peripheral vision cut off by bulky hazmat suits, not one of the three noticed anything amiss, so Ethan and Gina quietly raised their plasma pistols, took aim on the distant guards, and fired off a quick half a dozen red-hot plasma bolts. Two of the troopers fell immediately with smoking holes in their backs, but the salvo missed the third one, and he quickly turned and dropped to one knee, swinging a ripper rifle into line.

  Ethan dived for cover behind a pile of charred debris, and he just barely managed to dodge a quick, thundering burst from the man’s rifle.

  Gina took that split second to aim and fire once more. Her bolt hit the man dead center between the eyes, and his hazmat’s helmet exploded with a glittering red cloud of broken transpiranium and vaporized blood. The man crumpled to the deck with a clatter of armor and weapons, and then the hangar was silent once more.

  But a second later, they heard one of the downed guard’s helmets sound out with a muffled voice. “What’s happening down there, sixty six? I heard weapons’ fire! Sixty six? Come in, sixty six!”

  “Let’s go!” Gina abruptly spun around and began hobbling toward the waiting corvette and troop transport.

  Ethan jumped up out of cover and ran after her, his eyes immediately drawn to the odd five or six gleaming ripper turrets which were already facing them from the prow of Brondi’s corvette and that of the larger gallant-class transport. “I sure hope those turrets aren’t manned right now. . . .”

  “You and me both, Skidmark.”

  But the turr
ets stayed grim and silent, glaring at them with impotent fury as they picked their way across a hangar deck which was littered with dozens of charred bodies and broken light assault mechs. Obviously the sentinels had put up a decent fight.

  “Corvette or troop transport?” Gina asked.

  “What do you suppose the chances are they left troops aboard a large troop transport, versus, say, a medium-sized corvette?”

  “Point,” she conceded.

  Besides that, Ethan had a score to settle. Brondi stole his ship, so now he would steal Brondi’s. They ran up the already-extended ramp to the corvette, keeping their eyes open and their sidearms at the ready, but something told Ethan that if they hadn’t been fired upon while they’d been running across the open deck, then there was no one aboard.

  They rushed through the opulent corridors of the corvette, running straight for the bridge. As soon as they were inside, Ethan turned and slapped the door controls. The bridge doors sealed with a resounding bang, and he spent a moment trying to figure out how to lock them while Gina hobbled up to the helm. Ethan gave up trying to lock the doors and blasted the controls with his pistol.

  Gina whirled from the helm to track him with her sidearm. “What the frek, Ethan?” She stood panting and fuming at him. “I almost shot you!”

  Ethan shrugged. “I guess we’d be even, then.”

  “What did you do that for?”

  “Just in case there’s anyone aboard. We didn’t have time to clear the ship.”

  “I suppose we’ll figure out how to get out of here when and if we survive,” Gina grumbled. “Sit down and help me pilot this thing. I need you manning the guns.”

  Ethan ran over to the weapons console and sat down. A moment later he realized that there were no autos on the turrets. “We don’t have fire control from up here, except for torpedoes and a pair of forward-facing gold dymium beams.”

  “And I suppose it’s too late to ask you to go aft and hop in a gun turret,” she said, flicking a wry glance to the smoking door controls.

  “You could say that.”

  “Well, we’d better hope this crate has some kick ass countermeasures, then, because the minute those enemy fighters realize we’re not friendly, they’re going to drop a load of torps up our thrusters.”

  “Ahh . . . right . . .” Ethan’s face screwed up in a frown, and his gaze drifted to the broken concourse lying before them with its too-low ceiling and too-narrow opening. “Have you noticed that we have another problem?”

  She was too busy spinning up the corvette’s reactors to pay him much attention. “What’s that?”

  “The shields are only down on the Valiant’s starboard hangar, not the port one where we are now, so how are we supposed to get out of here?”

  Gina looked up from her control station, saw the narrow concourse between them and the unshielded hangar, and she scowled.

  Then an entire regiment of Brondi’s troops came roaring into the hangar.

  “Oh, frek it!” Gina said.

  Chapter 20

  Gina shook her head. “We’re just going to have to blast a way out! Get ready to aim your torps at the starboard side of the hangar—not the shields.”

  Ethan nodded, his expression grim. They’d be taking a big risk that the corvette’s shields would hold with torpedoes going off in such close proximity, but that couldn’t be helped. The corvette rose quickly on grav lifts, and the view out the forward viewports panned away from the milling masses of Brondi’s troops, now firing uselessly up at them with ripper rifles and pistols, to the hazy blue vista of space beyond the port hangar. Gina brought their nose into line just to one side of the hangar bay opening, and Ethan keyed his controls for manual targeting. “This had better not kill us, Gina!”

  “Adan, just shoot the frekking torps!”

  Ethan could barely hear her over the roar of ripper shells hissing against their shields. He stabbed the fire controls a moment later, and two torpedoes jetted out on abbreviated golden contrails before slamming into the wall of the hangar and igniting with a massive double punch explosion that blinded them with the initial flash and then turned the entire hangar into a firestorm. The shockwave hit them, sending flames roaring along the transpiranium viewport and kicking the corvette sideways into the gallant-class transport beside them. Ethan felt the world tilt around him with that impact, while his feet stayed oddly rooted by the corvette’s artifical gravity and inertial management system. Then, abruptly, the shockwave was sucked back the way it had come, and they were pelted with a rain of charred bodies—Brondi’s men. They’d been flash-cooked by the explosion, and now their charred corpses were about to freeze in deep space.

  Ethan was left staring out at a now open view of space, framed with the ragged, still-glowing edges of the ship’s duranium hull. Through the hole he could see drifting chunks of debris and a nearly invisible cloud of bodies—but beyond that was nothing but wide open space. As for the original opening of the hangar, the telltale blue glow of shields was gone. They’d been knocked out by the explosion.

  Ethan was tempted to breathe a sigh of relief, but then he heard someone rapping on the bridge doors behind them. They turned to look, and then heard, “Open up! Surrender now or we’ll blast the doors and vent you into space!”

  “Frek!” Ethan said. “There was someone aboard.”

  Gina shook her head. “It’s a bluff. They’ll get sucked out with us if they blow the doors open.” She turned back to her control station and jacked up the throttles. Suddenly, the ship’s engines began roaring loudly in their ears, causing the deck to vibrate underfoot, and they rocketed out the hangar and into space.

  “And if they’re not that smart?” Ethan asked.

  Gina shrugged. “Then we’re frekked.”

  * * *

  “The Defiant’s shields are at 24% and holding, but they won’t hold up when those Novas get here!” Petty Officer Delayn said from the engineering station.

  Overlord Dominic cast the man a dark look. “Get me more power to shields, then!”

  By this point the enemy junkers had all but run out of missiles and torpedoes. Now they were just gnats buzzing around and ineffectually firing at the Defiant’s shields with their ripper cannons. More worrying, though, was the odd dozen enemy novas which were boosting out after them at a blinding 186 KAPS, and since the Defiant was only making 102 KAPS at full boost, those novas were sure to catch up before they reached the gate. Dominic grimaced. Nova Fighters were loaded with Silverstreak torpedoes and Hailfire missiles, and with the condition the Defiant’s shields were in, it would take just one of those torpedoes, or a handful of missiles getting through and that would be the end. It would be a narrow escape, if they made it at all.

  “Where’s our fighter screen?” Dominic dropped his gaze to study the captain’s table in order to answer his own question. There were only eight novas of the Defiant’s original 24 left to cover their retreat. They were doing a good job of keeping the pursuing junkers at bay, but in a matter of minutes they would come into range of the enemy novas, and then they would be quickly overwhelmed.

  “Right behind us, sir,” gravidar answered.

  “Have the gunnery crews figured out how to man the missile tubes yet?”

  Deck Officer Gorvan at the weapons station looked up from his controls and shook his head. “We didn’t have enough officers to man all the guns, and you prioritized the point defenses and beam cannons.”

  “Well, take the gunners out of the beam turrets and give them a quick course on the missile tubes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In the next instant, Overlord Dominic spotted something strange appear on the blue grid of captain’s table. An explosion ripped through the side of the Valiant, and hundreds of tumbling bodies vented out into space, followed by the corvette which had flown inside earlier. It was rocketing away at breakneck speed.

  “Hail that vessel!” Dominic ordered. “I want to know who’s in there, and whether they’re friend or f
oe.”

  * * *

  Ethan heard the comm board sound at the control station directly in front of his, and Gina snapped at him to get it. He hurried over to the comm, even as the banging on the bridge doors grew louder. It sounded like now they’d found a makeshift battering ram and were using it on the doors.

  Ethan punched the receive transmission button, and the voice of Supreme Overlord Dominic boomed over the bridge speakers. “This is the Defiant, please identify yourselves, Kavarath, or we will open fire. If friend, please reply with your most recent Imperial ID code and a full deck holo feed. You have ten seconds to comply.”

  Ethan’s mouth opened to offer the appropriate code, but suddenly he realized he didn’t know what it was. He shook his head and turned to Gina. “Give me the code!”

  “You know the frekking code, Adan!”

  “If I knew the code, I wouldn’t be asking!” he shot back. “They put me in stasis before the outbreak, and since then my memory has been skriffy.”

  “57-E7-43-QR-2S-QD,” Gina rattled off, and Ethan just barely managed to type it all into the comm before he lost track of what she’d said.

  “Transmitting feed now, Defiant,” Ethan said back over the comm as he enabled a full deck holo feed. A moment later, the bridge of the Defiant appeared as a 3D holo popping out of the corvette’s slanting upper viewport. Ethan saw the overlord gazing down on him in larger-than-life size, his bushy white eyebrows were drawn together, and his lips were pursed in a grave frown. “Adan? Is that you?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Still alive somehow.”

  The overlord looked immensely relieved, and for a moment Ethan was afraid that the old man might cry, but his blue eyes just grew moist and stopped there. “I don’t suppose you could help us out with a small problem we have? There’s a squadron of enemy novas on our tail, and they’ll be within torpedo range in a few minutes. I’m trying to get my crews ready to fire missiles back at them, but they’ll likely shoot the warheads down before they even get close.”