by Alex Kings
“Shit,” she whispered.
She recalled the distant explosion from earlier and quickly surmised what had happened. An explosion at the breaching point had blown the shuttle away from the station. The hole had been too big for the automated systems to seal, so the pressure door had shut instead to prevent a decompression.
“Yilva, how long have we got?”
“Three minutes, ten seconds,” said Yilva.
Moore stared through the window at the hole, her mind racing. There had to be some way out of this.
“We're still suited up,” she said. “We could go out through that hole … but the thrusters on the suits aren't strong enough to get us to a safe distance. If shrapnel didn't get us, radiation would. Vyren … could your effector fields help?”
“No. Once we're in space, there's nothing to push against,” he said. “But perhaps we could reach the shuttle?”
“No chance,” Agatha said. “Y'see the damage that explosion did? Half of that blast would have hit the shuttle. The engines are gonna be shot to hell.”
She was right. Moore grimaced.
Then it hit her.
“The ship!” she said.
“It's docked to the station!” said Agatha. “It won't survive the blast.”
“I know,” said Moore. “We don't have time to argue. Move! I'll explain on the way.”
She sprinted down the corridor with her team following. Her familiarity with the station's layout turned out to be useful: She knew the shortest way to docking tube.
The faint background hum of the station began to grow louder and more powerful. The sound of a ramping-up reactor.
“Two minutes, thirty seconds,” reported Yilva.
“The ship itself won't survive the explosion,” Moore said. “No question about that. Be we won't be in the ship.” She turned a corner, and ran down the final corridor that led to the docks. “We go through the ship and out into space on the far side. That puts two layers of Alliance frigate armour between us and the explosion. It might just be enough.”
Agatha laughed. “We use the entire ship as a shield! I like it.”
Thankfully, thankfully, the docking tube was open. The airlock was closed, but unlocked. Moore led them into the ship.
Inside, it was just like the Dauntless, but though the lights were on full, the corridors were empty and silent.
“This is pretty creepy, isn't it?” gasped Agatha.
They crossed the ship and reached the airlock on the other side. Yilva, her chest heaving, laughed. “Still a minute to spare!” she said.
A moment later, Moore was at the control panel. She opened the inner door.
Yilva went rigid. “Wait!” she hissed, and turned to run back into the ship.
Moore grabbed her shoulder. “What are you doing? We don't have time!”
“There is something we need in the ship's computers!” cried Yilva.
Chapter 51: Counting Seconds
Minus six seconds:
Their first time using the monopole cannon, and no time to say anything cool. Though he would never admit it to anyone, Lanik was a little disappointed by that.
He gave his orders quickly: “Dunn: Fire on the ship directly ahead with the monopole cannon. Devote all other weapons to suppressive fire. Shields to maximum, and use the effector fields to enhance them. Fermi: As soon as we fire, I want sublight engines to give us maximum acceleration directly forward. Use thrusters to give us a positive rotation along the elevation plane. Go.”
An electrical sound twanged through the CIC as the monopole cannon fired. A silvery thread lanced out from the Dauntless's nose and connected with the lead dreadnought.
The effect was immediate and gratifying. Glowing vapour – liquid metal brought up to boiling point – erupted from the front and back of the dreadnought. Its armour lit up white hot where the beam had penetrated. Thermal stresses cracked the hull.
At the same time, Lanik felt the tug of acceleration residuals through the artificial gravity. They hurtled towards the crippled dreadnought. A short kick from the thrusters set the Dauntless spinning: Her nose rose vertically and she moved.
Two seconds into the battle: The other dreadnoughts finally reacted. Together, they threw everything they had at the Dauntless. A flurry of laser beams, kinetics, and thermonuclear missiles. Some were mopped up by suppressive fire and effector fields; the rest were drained by the shields. But the combined firepower of five dreadnoughts was easily enough to overrun the Dauntless's defensive capacities. A thunderous boom echoed through the CIC as weapons fire tore into the hull.
Three seconds in: The Dauntless continued to rotate. Its nose came into line with another dreadnought.
“Fire,” Lanik said.
A silvery beam connected to two ships. The dreadnought came apart, its hull spraying vaporised metal and covered with a pattern of molten cracks.
“Two sublight engines out,” Dunn reported. “Fifteen hull breaches and counting.”
Four seconds in: The Dauntless had turned 180 degrees vertically, now upside-down relative to its previous position, with its monopole cannon aimed at the ship behind it.
“Fire.”
The third ship came apart.
“Suppressive fire at 13% capacity. Effector fields down. The hull is starting to buckle.”
*
Moore stared at Yilva for a moment. “Fine,” she snapped. “But we need to hurry!”
Yilva swung about and bounded away down the corridor. “I know! Forty-eight seconds!” her voice said over comms.
“The rest of you, get out now,” hissed Moore, then turned and ran after Yilva.
On all fours, moving like a cat, Yilva sprinted ahead. At a corner, she jumped into the air and kicked off the wall to turn. At last she skidded to halt in front of a computer terminal.
Moore came up behind her. The terminal was dead, powered down.
“You do not need to be here,” Yilva said, working at the panel. Her fingers scrabbled at the edges without success, while with her tail and one foot she pulled out a tablet and some gear from a pouch in her suit.
“The hell I don't,” said Moore. “You're on my team, and you're my responsibility. Besides …” She moved Yilva's hand away from the panel, and brought her heel down hard. The panel popped out.
“Oh, uh, thanks,” said Yilva, already leaping back to work.
“A few things you learn on the job.”
“Yes, yes. Good!” Yilva said. She had her tablet connected to the clear columns inside the terminal. “Thirty seconds. Hurry up, hurry up!” she hissed at the tablet.
Moore counted down the time in her own head. She and Yilva both had the sense to avoid wasting time on conversation.
Twenty seconds.
Fifteen.
“Done!” shouted Yilva. She pulled the wires away from the terminal's inside and hastily shoved tablet and cables together back into her suit.
Without speaking, they both turned and ran back the way they came.
Ten seconds.
They reached the airlock. Moore gestured at the control console. The inner door slid open.
Five seconds.
There was no time to cycle the air. That left one alternative. Moore called up the emergency release option, grabbed Yilva's arm, then activated it.
The outer door opened immediately. Moore started to run. The rushing air dragged both of them forwards, and out into space.
Gravity and sound fell away. Up and down lost all meaning. They tumbled. The last three seconds seem to drag with agonising slowness and they drifted away from the ship.
Zero.
They were facing back the way they'd come, upside-down, when the explosion hit.
A silent shock of white flashed from behind the ship. It was bright enough to hurt her eyes. The expanding shockwave of vaporised hull from the explosion.
Simultaneously, the ship crumpled in the middle under the forced of some invisible fist. It was like the hull was made of foil. For all
her training and composure, something inside Moore quailed at the sheer size and nearness of it. She felt for a moment like a mouse a couple of inches away from an industrial digger.
It tore open under the force of the impact, but it didn't vaporise. It had already soaked up most of the heat and radiation.
Over the comms, she heard Yilva gasp.
“What is it?” Moore asked, using her thrusters to stabilise their rotation. She turned to see Yilva, right foot clamped over her left leg, doubled up in pain. Droplets of blood floated in a trail a few centimetres long either side of the wound.
A tiny piece of shrapnel kicked away from the ship, travelling at a few hundred kph. Easily enough to penetrate a suit, flesh, bone – and come out the other side.
Yilva shuddered. Over the comms, Moore could hear her laboured breathing. And in the background, a faint hissing.
The suit's auto-repair systems must have been knocked out.
“Are you okay?” came Vyren's voice.
The glowing effector field's of Vyren's bubble made him east to find, and the rest of the team were with him.
“Hurts a bit …” Yilva hissed. “And, uh, I am losing pressure. Quite quickly.”
“Comms should work now,” said Moore. “I'l contact the Dauntless.”
Only then did the glowing wreckage of other ships catch her eye. “Oh … god.”
Chapter 52: Defenceless
Three minutes earlier:
The CIC shuddered and rattled under the onslaught. Distant sounds of groaning, buckling bulkheads echoed through the walls.
“We've lost shields,” Dunn called. “Effector fields re still active at 10% capacity.”
Lanik's gaze was locked on the tactical map. The Dauntless had done a full vertical turn, killing four ships. Two remained, those to left and right
“Positive azimuthal rotation now!” he said. “Full power.”
They swung round to meet the seconds dreadnought and fired. The silvery thread linked the two ships for a moment, and the last dreadnought came apart, its hull erupting glowing debris.
The Dauntless shook again.
“Effector fields just collapsed,” Dunn said. “Suppressive fire capabilities are gone. We're defenceless.”
The ship groaned around them, but there was no sound of a new attack on the hull.
“They … they've stopped firing,” said Dunn. “They're jumping!”
The Dauntless continued to turn.
“Prepare to fire,” Lanik said.
A wormhole expanded in front of the dreadnought, engulfed it, and vanished as the Dauntless finally came to face the point where it had once been.
Lanik let his shoulders slump a fraction of an inch as the tension drained out of him. They were through. For the moment, at least.
Two of the screens above the command console had gone dead. One flickered on and off fitfully.
“Get me a damage report,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Are comms functioning?”
“I believe so.”
“Call Sergeant Moore. Let's see what she's found.”
“Yes, sir,” said Miller. “No connection. The station is emitting a jamming field.”
“Any way around it?”
“I'll try.”
“And take us closer to the station.”
“Sublight engines aren't responding.”
“Thrusters?” Lanik asked.
With a tiny acceleration they began to move forwards. Damage reports came back: The shield generators were out. The lasers had been scoured from the hull, though they were slowly growing back. Control of the sublight engines had been lost, though three of the four engines were still intact. The hull was torn to shreds – volatile tanks and storage were empty. Several sections had undergone decompression.
Early casualty report came back at eleven – plus three Petaurs.
Lanik sighed.
They crawled onwards.
And then the station exploded. Radiation and high-speed debris washed against the already-damaged hull.
“What happened?” snapped Lanik.
Dunn scrabbled at his console. “I don't know, sir. No weapons fire.”
“Try contacting Moore again.”
For some time, the residual radiation of the explosion scrambled their signal. It was a faint hope, but –
“Moore here,” said a weary voice over the comms.
“You gave us quite a shock there, Sergeant.” said Lanik. “Where are you?”
“Far side of the docked ship,” said Moore. “Or what's left of it. How soon can you pick us up?”
“We just have thrusters for the moment.” Lanik paused to check their trajectory on the command console. “We're looking at fifteen minutes.”
“Yilva's losing air,” said Moore. “She has less than half that. And she needs medical attention.”
“Very well,” said Lanik. “I'll send a shuttle. Dauntless out.”
Chapter 53: Awake
The shuttle picked them up soon after, and on the ride back Moore was glad to finally get a chance to remove her helmet.
Yilva sat with her injured leg wrapped in a tissue-regen bandage, filled with the Petaur-suitable painkiller Hanson had picked up when she joined the crew properly. Pupils dilated, she stared at the window at the wreckage – now the only other thing in the system apart from the Dauntless itself.
“That happens a lot when we go to places,” she murmured.
Moore smiled to herself. “Yeah, it does.” She turned and pointed to the tablet half sticking out of Yilva's suit. “There wasn't any time to ask. What was in the ship?”
Yilva shrugged. “I do not know.”
“You don't know!?”
Still looking out the window, Yilva said. “The ship's computer was inaccessible from the station. Why would they do that unless they had something to hide? I am thinking that they had a new station, but then had to use an old ship because of limited resources. They wiped the ship's computers and hoped we would explode before we could find or download it.”
Moore sat back. “Huh,” she said. “Good thinking.”
“It was a very well-designed trap,” Yilva murmured, as much to herself as to Moore. “Brand new station so it could not be read. The hull-sealing system rigged with explosives that would accumulate when we breached the station. And the central computer rigged to disable reactor safety and then send a pulse through all the terminals so it could not be stopped. They planned for many contingencies but overlooked some things. But we survived it. That is why we are cooler!” She nodded, satisfied with this chain of reasoning, then fell asleep.
Agatha looked at Moore and raised her eyebrows.
As they approached, Moore caught sight of the Dauntless through the window. Its hull was battered, chewed up and charred. One of the sublight engines had been torn open. Through giant tears in the hull she could see the ship's innards: Volatile tanks, supply storage. According to Lanik, the ship had managed to kill five dreadnoughts – the better part of IL's fleet – but in that time IL had exacted a terrible price.
Direct access to the shuttlebays had been damaged, so the shuttle just floated up through one of the holes in the hull and docked directly with an adjacent corridor.
Lanik was there to meet them. Moore told him what Yilva might have discovered, and so they walked with the med-team as they took Yilva to sickbay.
Moore looked around the damaged corridor. “If only the captain were here to see this,” she said. “It's starting to become a pattern with you, Commander.” She gave Lanik a faint smile. For all the damage and injuries they'd accumulated, they were still alive, and they finally had access to some proper intel.
“Yes,” said Lanik, sounding unamused. “I'm starting to think it is.”
In the sickbay, the med team set Yilva down on a bed beside Hanson's. Awake again now, she took out her tablet and gestured at it a few times, then nearly dropped it.
“Not while I'm working, please,”
grumbled Sorrel as he set to work looking on her leg.
“Here,” said Vyren. “It can wait.” He gently took the tablet from her, and finally unplugged the cable.
“Thanks,” murmured Yilva. She blinked a few times in rapid succession, waking herself further. “You can look through it. I don't mind.”
“This doesn't look too serious,” said Sorrel. “The muscle's damaged, but that's all.” He put a thread of tissue-regen in and bandaged the wound again. “Twenty-four hours and you'll be fine.”
“Oh, good,” said Yilva.
Lanik stepped up to her. “There's something you should know,” he said gently. “During the battle, we lost three of our passengers. I'm sorry.”
Yilva stared at him. “Oh,” said said after a moment. “I …” Her ears fell flat against her head and she stared at the ceiling. “I understand. It couldn't be helped.”
Moore caught sight of Lanik's momentary pained expression. He hid it immediately after, of course, returning to his usual composure, but she'd seen it. He must have been aware, she realised, that it was on his orders that they hadn't dropped the Petaurs off earlier because they were in a hurry – and that since the trap had been waiting for them, the hurry had been for nothing.
Before she could go further on this route, there was motion behind them. She turned to see Hanson, eyes open, trying to sit up.
Chapter 54: Constellations
Pierce stood at the window beside his bookcase, looking out at the stars. When he was a child, he'd looked through astrography books and tried his hand at coming up with and naming new constellations. When he was able to travel between stars, he got to do it for real. Even after he became CEO of Interstellar Liners, it remained an idle hobby. It was, he thought sometimes, his one link to his childhood.
But now, he could come up with nothing.
Some wellspring of innocent imagination and creativity within him seemed to have dried up. There was no-one he could talk to about how troubled he was by this. Millicent perhaps. She was the only one he'd consider telling. But if he did, she'd worry – and he didn't want her to worry.
