Rogue Starship: The Benevolency Universe (Outworld Ranger Book 1)

by David Alastair Hayden

  The impact with the hood of the car knocked the wind out of Siv, and he was pretty sure he heard a few ribs crack. But he didn’t care. He wasn’t feeling much of anything at the moment.

  They both slid down the hood onto the ground, just as the doors to a large hangar slid open in front of them. As dust and debris collapsed into the hole, the strike-fighters pulled back.

  Suddenly, the Outworld Ranger shot out from the hangar, its plasma cannons opening fire on the surprised strike-fighters. The shields of the right one collapsed, and Siv cheered wildly as a second burst of shots struck the craft’s engine, sending it spiraling out of control.

  As the damaged Dagger First crashed, the other one returned fire. The shots bounced off the Outworld Ranger's deployed shields. The Ranger closed on the strike-fighter, then with a burst of speed rammed into it. The gray-and-white cruiser was three times the size of the Dagger Fist, with far more powerful engines. The strike-fighter’s shields collapsed, the nosecone crumpled, and it flew backward. Before the craft could recover, the Outworld Ranger blew off its right wing.

  As the Dagger First crashed, the Outworld Ranger landed between it and the skimmer car.

  “That was beautiful,” Siv said, laughing. “Good shooting, Silkster!”

  ”You can thank me later, sir,” Silky said.

  “I’ll do it now. Thank you, old friend.”

  “You’re high, sir.”

  “No kidding! I’m dying too, you know.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Silky grumbled. “You know, Ana and Gav went out with a whole lot more grace.”

  The large door on the back of the Outworld Ranger opened. As the boarding ramp deployed, the others charged out from the car. Oona helped Mitsuki up and into the ship, while Kyralla half-carried Siv, who was still laughing with delight. Bishop helped Seneca out of the trunk, and together they pushed the car up the ramp.

  Octavian met them inside.

  “Now there’s a sight I never thought I’d see again! Hello, Octavian!”

  “He’s delirious,” Kyralla said, dropping him onto the deck.

  As soon as the car was all the way in, the ramp retracted, and the door snapped shut behind them.

  The insectoid cog made three urgent bleep-bloops and scurried toward Siv.

  “I’m fine,” he said, sitting up.

  Then his muscles spasmed, and he slumped, foaming at the mouth. The high vanished in an instant, and his mind and body burned. As he had feared, the Awake had taken away his peaceful death and replaced it with one of pain.

  The cog hovered over him, its arms whirring as it pulled several injectors at once from a case. He remembered now how frightening the cog was. What a terrible sight to be his last…

  Chapter Fifty

  Kyralla Vim

  While the insectoid cog stuck Siv with a sequence of injectors, Kyralla squatted down and patted Siv on the shoulder. “Hang in there.”

  Silky’s voice rang out over the comm. “Everyone to the Bridge!”

  Mitsuki limped off down the corridor. “Come on, Kyralla, we’ve got work to do.”

  Kyralla hesitated, biting her lip with worry, while Bishop rocked on his heels, probably as much in awe of the cog as he was terrified Siv would die. Oona knelt and prayed.

  “Now!” Silky yelled.

  Kyralla turned and ran after Mitsuki, with Bishop trailing behind her.

  Oona hung back. “I’ll stay with Siv.”

  “I said everyone!” Silky growled.

  Oona’s footsteps echoed behind Kyralla as they rushed through the corridor to the Bridge.

  Kyralla had only ever been on two other ships. She’d taken several trips on her father’s A14-A cutter, which was smaller but far more luxurious than the Outworld Ranger. It was also limited in armament to a single ion cannon and a flak cannon. And she’d traveled on Uncle Pashta’s B02-Z cutter, which was nearly the same as her father’s ship, except for better shields and an upgrade to a quad-ion cannon. The cutters traded cargo space and weaponry for additional crew space and comforts. And they achieved good speeds by carrying less cargo and fewer weapons.

  Neither of those ships had anything near the armament, defenses, or speed the Outworld Ranger possessed. And they certainly didn’t have a bridge like this ship with its additional crew station, reinforced walls, and incredibly rare interface circlets.

  The Tekk Plague had destroyed over three quarters of all the neural interface circlets in existence. New ones were being constructed but at an incredibly slow pace, and at extreme expense. Many advanced, integrated ship AI’s had also been lost, making the interface circlets useless for common ships. But this ship, buried away for a century in its hangar, had missed the plague entirely.

  The bridge was small but functional, with plenty of room to move about. Long hours here probably wouldn’t leave anyone used to space travel feeling cramped. There were three crew stations and a command chair, all with interface circlets. A large viewport looked out straight ahead, along with two smaller ones to each side and one above. At a glance, she couldn’t tell if these were energy shielded diamondine windows or extreme definition view screens.

  The overall look of the bridge, like the rest of the ship, proclaimed function over style. Pale gray fabric covered padded seats. The walls and ceiling were white, the floor charcoal. Black consoles held screens with minimal colors and an utter lack of flair. And yet, there was a coziness to it she couldn’t put her finger on.

  “Kyralla, take the pilot’s station,” Silky ordered. “It’s the one in the center. Bishop, sensor station on the left. Mitsuki, weapons on the right. Oona, command chair.”

  Under Silky’s direction, the Outworld Ranger took off into the sky. Or maybe the ship’s AI took care of that. Kyralla had no idea.

  “Everyone put on the sexy circlet at your station and do exactly what I say.”

  They followed Silky’s hurried instructions on how to use their stations. Kyralla gripped the side-stick controller mounted on the chair arm with her right hand and the throttle on the other side with her left. She knew the ship’s AI and Silky would work with her in tandem, but she didn’t really understand how. She supposed it was just something you had to experience.

  “So what do I do?” Oona asked.

  “Meditate on positive things,” Silky replied. “You’re simply loaning brainpower to the ship.”

  “As if my mind were another computer system?”

  “Exactly. And I’m serious when I say meditate. You don’t know what you’re doing, so don’t try to influence anything, okay? You’d just make things worse.”

  “You got it, Silky.”

  “I’m still not sure how I fit into this,” Kyralla said. “What am I supposed to be doing?”

  Silky sighed. “I forget that you don’t have any experience with tech and…well…anything. The ship can fully operate itself, even in dangerous situations. But human input can take it to the next level. While it uses probability calculations and battle-tested routines, it lacks instincts and creativity. So that’s what you’re bringing to the table, along with raw brainpower. And the ability to take over a function if the ship sustains damage.”

  “That still doesn’t answer my question,” Kyralla countered, her voice strained as she tried to hold back her irritation at Silky. “Unless you mean that I should just sit here and think happy thoughts about what we want to happen.”

  “Basically, that’s what I want from you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Except when we get into danger. Then I want you to take the controls and blank your conscious mind as best as possible, as if you were meditating. You need to work in synch with the ship’s AI while maintaining your human instincts. When you do it right, your actions and those of the AI will blend such that you won’t know where your part in piloting the ship ends and its part begins. Once you experience it, you’ll understand what I mean.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Kyralla replied dubiously.

  “What are you goi
ng to do, Silky?” Oona asked.

  “Assist everyone and manage the shields. And I’ll help keep you up-to-date on what’s going on. Reading the info in the HUD while function-merged requires a lot of practice.”

  Red warning lights flared and a klaxon sounded.

  “We’ve got incoming!” Silky shouted.

  “You focus on other things,” Bishop said. “I can handle calling out information to the others. That’s the point of my station anyway.”

  “Then go,” Silky responded.

  “We’ve got two Dagger Fists blazing in!” Bishop said. “And the battle cruiser is closing on us, with an active target lock.”

  All the information Bishop called out flowed through a ship status window that had popped up in Kyralla’s HUD after she put on the circlet. But she was too busy figuring out the flight controls to read any of it, and she had Rosie focused on helping her. With even a little practice, this would all be so much easier.

  “Quad plasma cannon armed,” Mitsuki said. “Twin railguns loaded. Flak cannon ready.”

  “The battle cruiser just launched two ion missiles!” Bishop shouted.

  “Course plotted,” Silky said. “Kyralla, let the ship follow its preset course. Only deviate if you need to take evasive actions, understood?”

  “Understood, Silky.”

  Kyralla glanced back at Oona, and smiled. She wouldn’t let her sister down. She turned back to the controls, released a deep breath, and smoothed out her thoughts, focusing only on the moment. She could do this. The ship was inconsequential. It was nothing more than a weapon in her hands, and therefore, this was no different than any of the thousands of combat simulations she’d done, using a variety of weapons. All she had to do was focus then use her honed reaction speed along with her ability to peek into the future.

  As the Outworld Ranger climbed, the sky deepened from a bright, milky blue to darker and darker shades of violet. The Dagger Fists fired wildly as they fell behind, but only two stray plasma shots connected, glancing harmlessly off the Ranger’s shields. Then, as they edged into the black of space, the strike-fighters were forced to withdraw.

  As the ion missiles closed in, Kyralla gripped the control stick tighter but loosened her grip on the throttle. She had no intention of changing the ship’s speed, regardless of the evasive maneuvers they might take. Their best defense was clearly getting the hell out of here.

  She “saw” the flak cannon destroy the first ion missile. A half-second later the cannons actually opened up, and a faint thumping sound echoed through the ship as the bullets zipped silently through space.

  The ion missile exploded in a bright flare.

  The second missile survived a glancing bullet and headed straight toward them. Kyralla flicked the control stick to the right. The ship rolled in response. The missile passed beneath them then turned upward sharply. But the ship nosed downward, so that the missile couldn’t connect.

  The first maneuver, that was all her, as far as she could tell. The second one definitely wasn’t. She would never have thought to do that, and it wasn’t something she’d seen ahead. That maneuver was all the AI’s doing. She could certainly see now how a trained pilot would eventually be unable to tell the difference between his actions and the ship’s.

  As the missile banked around, the flak cannon destroyed it. Mitsuki let out a cheer while everyone else breathed a sigh of relief.

  The vibrations of the hull diminished as they exited the atmosphere, but the twin-ion engines burned just as hot. Silky had them operating in emergency mode, and according to Rosie, they were consuming more than twice as much fuel and battery power as normal, while putting enormous strain on the engine components. While the increased need for future repairs concerned Rosie, Kyralla couldn’t care less so long as they moved faster.

  “Two more ion missiles launched!” Bishop called out. “Eight starfighters deployed. Orbital defense platforms powering up.”

  Kyralla groaned. “Is that as bad as it sounds?”

  “Only if you consider starfighters and laser batteries a problem,” Silky replied. Before anyone could respond, he added, “I just realized you may not understand what you’re facing. The starfighters are bad. But the laser batteries are very, very bad.”

  “I didn’t have any doubts about either,” Kyralla replied.

  “Are we going to fight back?” Mitsuki asked.

  “These aren’t the bad guys,” Oona said. “They’re innocent soldiers, just doing their jobs. They don’t even know who or what we are.”

  “We can’t just let them kill us!” Mitsuki argued.

  “Keep your focus on defense and evasion,” Silky said. “We’re way outnumbered, so we really can’t do enough damage to anything to matter.”

  On cue, Bishop said, “Two more battlecruisers heading toward us on an intercept course. Looks like we’re going to get pinched.”

  “Lasers in twenty seconds,” Silky said. “Missiles in ten. Kyralla, you’re going to have to weave the pattern.”

  “I’m going to have to what?”

  “Ignore Silky and focus, madam,” Rosie said.

  Kyralla tried to let everything go again. The flak cannons took out two missiles. She pulled the stick back and to the right to nose away from the third, then jerked the stick hard left to dodge the second, finding the ship was already moving that way ahead of her.

  But the last dodge wasn’t fast enough.

  The ion missile exploded against the bridge. Or it would have if not for the shields. A wash of white energy sparked along the ship’s force field.

  “Shields down to sixty-three,” Bishop said. “Sensors temporarily offline. Missile coming round.”

  Before Kyralla could take evasive maneuvers, the flak cannon nailed the turning ion missile.

  Silky’s voice piped into Kyralla’s mind. “Do you know the Fibonacci sequence?”

  “Not really.”

  “It’s my favorite, but we’ll keep it easy since you’re new to it. Repeat after me silently. One, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen…”

  Kyralla did as he asked, finding the addition annoyingly difficult to keep track of as the numbers kept climbing.

  “Now start over and keep counting, open your mind, see what’s ahead.”

  She did as he asked.

  “Evade.”

  The laser batteries from two different orbital platforms opened up, catching the Outworld Ranger in a crossfire. Luckily, the beams would be at minimal strength, since their intention was only to damage the ship and not destroy it. Only the fact that the Federation wanted to capture Oona had kept them alive so far.

  Firing at a target this close, the second-long, speed-of-light bursts hardly even needed to lead the ship. But Kyralla could see them a half-moment early, allowing her to respond more effectively than the ship AI’s evasion pattern, which Rosie said had been programmed in by someone named Tal Tonis.

  Kyralla ducked the Ranger below the first burst, rolled around the second, climbed the third, then yawed to avoid the fourth. She darted the ship in and out through a net of laser beams as if… Kyralla smiled. She was weaving the pattern.

  And that thought distracted her.

  A beam sliced along the bottom of the ship, reducing the shields to thirty-nine percent. She refocused, but the beams stopped.

  She breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the sweat from her brow. She was surprised to find herself smiling. “Why have they stopped?”

  “Their window of opportunity has closed for a few moments,” Silky said. “They can’t risk collateral damage on civilian ships and satellites.”

  “Eight ion missiles in route,” Bishop announced.

  “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me!” Mitsuki shouted. “We’re never going to make it out of here!”

  “Focus on the flak cannon,” Kyralla said. “I’ve got this.”

  “Don’t get too cocky, madam,” Rosie cautioned.

  “It’s not overconfidence, Rosie. It’s…it’s fai
th.”

  “I don’t understand, madam.”

  “I’ve discovered something today.”

  “What’s that, madam?”

  “I love flying, and I’m damned good at it. I think I was born just for this.”

  “I thought the purpose of your guardian awakening was to protect your sister.”

  “And what exactly am I doing right now?”

  “Point taken, madam.”

  Silky’s voice popped in again. She had thought Rosie was granting him access before, but now she could see through her HUD that he was using a channel provided by the interface circlet.

  “Good work weaving the pattern.”

  “Thanks, Silky. The Fibonacci thing… It’s weird.”

  “It helped, though, didn’t it?”

  “I hate to admit that it did.”

  “I learned it from my best friend.”

  “Siv?”

  Silky laughed. “Her name was Eyana. She was a talented Empathic Services agent. We served together forty-seven years.”

  “Wow. I guess you and Sir haven't been together long at all compared to that.”

  “Very true, madam. Plus I basically raised him. Those early teenage years…so awkward.”

  Kyralla smiled. Silky was annoying, but he did have a way of lightening the mood. “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s stable, madam. Get ready, you’ve got missiles on your tail.”

  The next few minutes passed in a blur as Kyralla gave herself over to flying the ship. She dodged the five missiles Mitsuki couldn’t stop on the way in. And one she had to dodge three times before the flak cannon got it.

  “No others in route?” she asked.

  “Not currently,” Bishop responded. “Maybe they’ve fired all they’ve got.”

  “That’s good,” Mitsuki said, “because the flak cannon’s ammo is at fifteen percent.”

  “Good thing they don’t know that,” Oona said.

  “They’re taking a different approach now,” Silky said. “Probably because they’ve never seen flying like this before.”