Deserter

by Mike Shepherd

  “Try them harder.”

  Kris tapped the ship’s speaker. “Jack, Abby, get ready for a hull breach. I’m backing out of here, and the pier isn’t exactly cooperating.”

  Kris took a deep breath, gave Jack about as much time as she could to secure himself inboard from the hull, and ordered the bow thrusters to 25 percent. The ship trembled under her but went nowhere. Using her fingers, she edged the power line up slowly to 50 percent. The ship bucked in place. Somewhere metal tore. Hope that’s the dock.

  At 63 percent something let go. The ship creaked and groaned as the tie-downs trundled down the pier at three times the authorized speed. As the bridge passed the end of the pier and the station spin swung the landing away, Kris got a short glimpse of twisted metal and whipping cables. It didn’t look like she was leaving much if any of her hull behind.

  “Any castoff you can walk away from is a cause for celebration,” Tom said. “Isn’t that what the old Chief said?”

  “I don’t think he had this in mind,” Kris muttered as she steadied ship, dampened her reverse headway, and looked for room to rotate ship.

  “Are you sure?” Tom grinned.

  “I’m sure I’d like to know if I’m being targeted,” Kris said.

  “None of the ranging lasers from the station are on us,” Penny said. “I have their net, and it really sounds like a Tiger and Rabbit cartoon. Five will get you fifty they haven’t had a live fire drill in years.”

  “You ready to bet your life?” Kris asked.

  “Aren’t we?”

  “I hate to interrupt this validation that you both need to attend Gamblers Anonymous, but we have company,” Tom said, pointing at the screen. Three long, thin hulls cruised slowly around the edge of the station.

  Kris hit her reaction jets, spun ship, and put headway on fast.

  “We’ve got a problem down here,” Jack said from the ship’s system.

  “Sorry about that, Jack, but we’ve got worse problems up here. Sandfire has three ships on our tail.”

  “I really think you ought to see the problem I’ve got down here.”

  “I can’t leave the pilot seat, Jack.”

  “I’ll bring it up to you.”

  “How could you have a worse problem than mine?” Kris muttered as she fed the main engines all the plasma she could afford to lose at the moment. Her hands played on the directional jets, jinking a bit up, a bit down, anything to spoil a firing solution.

  “Kris, I have a message from Sandfire,” Penny announced.

  “I’m listening,” Kris said as the elevator opened behind her.

  “Ah,” Sandfire beamed confidently, “Princess Kristine, we can do this the quick way or the slow way. Either way, I have you. I have three heavily armed cruisers in range of your little runabout. Surrender, or I will blow you out of space.”

  “Cal, you can’t fire on this ship while I’m on it,” came from behind Kris.

  She turned.

  Hank Smythe-Peterwald flashed her one if his billion-dollar smiles. “Hi, Kris. I thought you passed on joining me on my yacht.”

  Kris swallowed hard. She’d planned to hijack a ship. She didn’t plan to kidnap anyone. Definitely not Hank Peterwald.

  Hank’s smile wavered as a flash of light lit up his face. Kris whirled back to the screen. The station was blowing up.

  The first explosion came from her ten kilos of dust mites. They exploded out one side of the yard. For a moment, the station rotated on, top fine, bottom fine, the yards and docks in the middle showing one huge bite out of it. Another, larger and slower explosion roiled around inside the yard, growing as it found more to feed on, casting light out the gaping hole that went from red to yellow to white. In quiet majesty, the walls of the yard bowed, then blew out almost lazily.

  As if refreshed by that, the next round of fireworks was an expanding ball of explosives that shot through the growing cloud of wreckage with lightning speed, sending fragments of ships and station twisting and spinning into space. A big chunk clipped one of Sandfire’s ships, sending it careening into the next.

  “So that’s what a signature Longknife job looks like.” Hank breathed slowly.

  25

  “Grab anything handy,” Kris shouted as she poured more plasma into her engines than she wanted to. Now was no time to blow out her reactor by using so much plasma that when the flood of cold reaction mass she was pouring in met what little plasma was left, the critical core temperature would plummet below the fusion level. Maybe not, but I need to move now!

  The ship—correction: Barbarossa, Hank’s yacht—took off with a lurch, sending Jack, Abby, and Hank to their knees. As Kris balanced reactor temperature against acceleration against a rapidly closing wall of gas and wreckage, the new arrivals crawled for seats: Hank on Kris’s right, Jack right next to him, Abby next to Tom.

  “What are you doing with my ship?” Hank asked, proprietorship showing as he strapped himself in.

  “Trying to stay ahead of that mess,” Kris answered, just remembering to change “my mess” to “that mess.” Now was no time to bring Hank in on all she’d been up to of late. Boys tended to be slow and so excitable about such things.

  “What happened?” Hank breathed as he took in the screens.

  “Some sort of industrial accident I would guess,” Kris evaded.

  “And you’re just running off in my ship.”

  Kris eyed the reactor and upped the feed from the fuel tanks. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it was available.”

  “Yes, there were only four or so guards protecting it. Father warned me you Longknifes have a very lackadaisical view of property rights when it suits you.”

  “Sorry if I disappoint you,” Kris said, cutting the main engines and rotating ship so the power plant and engines weren’t in the direct path of the fast-approaching shock wave. It did put the command deck face into it.

  “Hold on, folks,” Kris shouted. The wave front hit, slamming them against their restraints as it shoved the ship back, then sideways, trying to roll it. Gyros struggled against the forces arrayed against them. Kris added her own efforts to the battle, hitting the overrides and raising the power of the control jets, sending them more reaction mass, more electricity.

  The ship held steady . . . or close enough.

  Now came the big stuff. Chunks of station. Hunks of ships. Girders, walls . . . blessedly, Kris spotted no bodies. Now the control jets slid the ship up or right, left or down as Kris played a lethal game of dodge it.

  “Alpha, gamma, seven, seven,” Hank muttered in incantation beside Kris, “Omega, zed, epsilon, one, nine, eleven,” he finished, and the board in front of him came to life. “Extra armor to the bow.”

  Eyes on the wreckage coming her way, Kris asked, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m no Navy type like you, but I like to know enough about my ship to keep my hide in one piece when it matters. This is a smart metal ship, and I think I just thickened up the bow.”

  “Tom, I’ve got the conn. Slave your station to Hank’s and see what you can do,” Kris ordered. Tom’s assigned station on the Typhoon was defense.

  “I’m locked out,” Tom shouted.

  “I grant open access to all stations,” Hank said.

  “I’m in,” Tom said.

  “We’re going to take a hit down our right side,” Kris shouted.

  “I’m on it,” Tom said, hands dancing over his board. The ship shuddered, then groaned as the glancing blow Kris had settled for tumbled down the right side of the hull.

  “Damage?”

  “I’m fixing it,” Tom answered Kris.

  “Good man,” Hank whispered.

  “Not a bad ship. Not bad at all,” Tom said, giving high praise for a space born.

  “Cost enough it ought to be,” Hank said through gritted teeth as Kris slammed the ship sideways. A tumbling ship’s stern, laser cannons twisting at the end of cables, struck a glancing blow.

  “I’m on it,” To
m said before Kris got a word out.

  Kris took a moment to expand her collision avoidance screen. It looked clear, but she needed a bigger picture. “Anyone at a sensor suite station?” she asked and got no reply.

  “My code should have released the entire command deck,” Hank said, glancing around. “Isn’t that a sensor suite your man is seated at?” he said, waving at Jack.

  “I wouldn’t know a sensor suite from a luxury suite,” Jack grumbled.

  “I’ll slave the station next to me to that one,” Penny said. “Yep, it’s sensors. Kris, I’m sending you the overview screen.”

  A screen opened at Kris’s left elbow. It rated more space than life support at the moment, so Kris squelched them to expand the view. The area was a mess, about what she’d expected. She spared a quick glance at the station. The thick wall she’d sliced through to get her nanos in had channeled the explosion out, not up or down. The Hilton was probably well shaken, but it and the rest of the lower station still sat atop the beanstalk. The Top of Turantic was also there, now floating above a big chunk of empty space but holding on to a few tenuous connections to the lower station.

  The explosion had blown outward as Kris intended. She hoped that didn’t exhaust her supply of luck for today. From the looks of things, she’d be needing a whole lot more.

  A cruiser was making its way through the devastation, headed her way.

  “Penny, anything new from Sandfire?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Prepare to rotate ship. Let’s get out of here.” Kris spun the ship, picked a potential jump point, checked to see how much the reactor had heated up while she was using the lateral jets, liked the temperature she had, and put it to good use. “Here comes two g’s” she told her crew.

  “And here comes Sandfire,” Penny announced.

  “Put him on main screen.”

  Sandfire didn’t look nearly as imperial strapped into an acceleration couch. It had been a rush job, two of the straps twisted, Kris saw. He’d be in for a miserable time at high g. His eyes were wide, his coloring florid. A vein on his forehead throbbed, but his words were no less demanding. “Surrender, take all acceleration off your ship and prepare to be boarded.”

  Kris shook her head. “Sorry, Sandfire, I’ve let you run me in circles long enough. I’m leaving your little trap.”

  Sandfire strained against his straps as he tried to get closer to the camera, loom larger on Kris’s screen. That vein was pounding out a wild beat. “Refuse my orders, and I will blast you out of space.”

  Hank coughed twice. “Cal, this is my yacht, and I am on it. You will not fire at me or it.”

  Sandfire took Hank’s mild words like a slap. He sat back in his seat for a moment, eyes going wild. Then he smiled, or let his lips turn into what Sandfire passed off as one. “You’re a hostage.”

  “I am not a hostage.”

  “You’re a hostage of that Longknife terrorist and Smythe-Peterwald policy is never to negotiate for hostages.”

  “I assure you, Cal, this may not be the evening I had intended to share with Miss Longknife, but I am in no way a hostage. Considering what just happened at the station, she may have saved my life.”

  “She’s the one that blew it up,” he screamed. “She’s the one that nearly killed you and did kill thousands of workers. Ask her. You ask her. Those damn Longknifes have done it again. But this will be the last time that one does anything.”

  Kris tried not to react. She’d done everything she could to get people out of her target. Everything possible. What could she answer Hank?

  But Hank was less interested in Kris than he was in his own man. “Cal, you need to calm down. I know the expansion on the station was your project. But I’m sure you insured it. You’ve been working hard on your Turantic projects. Don’t let this one setback interfere with your overall business plan. Write it off, move on. There’s more money to be made tomorrow.”

  “What would you know, you spoiled brat.” Sandfire spat the words at the screen. Kris measured the arcs the spittle made, then glanced at her board. Yep, that cruiser was accelerating at two g’s. She edged her acceleration up to two and a half.

  Hank took two breaths, leaving the words out in the open between him and his associate as he formed his perfect face into friendly concern. “Calvin, you need to get a hold of yourself. You are saying things you’ll regret in the morning. I’ll do my best to forget them, but you have got to control yourself.”

  “You stupid kid,” Sandfire shot back. “You don’t know anything about what’s going on here, do you? Longknife, you want to tell him what you just did? What I was about to do and you wrecked. You gunna tell him or shall I?”

  Kris edged the acceleration up another quarter g. Whoever was skippering that cruiser was paying more attention to Kris’s speed than Sandfire was. Now it was Kris’s turn to take a deep breath, but at least Hank would learn about things in her words, not Sandfire’s.

  “I’m afraid your Mr. Sandfire is right. I have tossed a monkey wrench into his plans . . . again.” She grinned at the screen and was rewarded with a snarl. “Sandfire here was converting every available Turantic merchant ship into a warship and outfitting them as a major battle fleet. Considering the nearly disarmed status of the surrounding planets, he would have cut quite a swath as Attila the Hun. Now his fleet is gone and what army he had President Iedinka raising has no place to go. Check and checkmate.”

  “But I’ve got you this time,” Sandfire snapped from the screen. “Captain, fire on that terrorist ship.”

  “Firing,” came from the screen as Kris put her ship into a right skid and spun it around its middle. The wild gyrations threw Kris against her straps, but she kept her hand on the acceleration bar, quickly dropping it to one g, then slamming it up to three as the attack board showed lasers missing high and ahead.

  “He’s firing on me,” came from Hank. Shock and a gulp of fear told Kris this was a first for him.

  “Not his first try for me, but it’s a miss like the rest,” Kris said, trying to sound encouraging.

  “Beta, alfa, beta, Xray,” Hank spat. “I don’t know how to use the lasers on this tub, but I’m sure someone here does.”

  “Lasers!” Kris chortled in glee.

  “Twelve-inch. Full military pulse. Did you notice the size of my capacitors?”

  “I did, but some nervous nannies like them that way,” Kris said, as a whole new set of screens appeared on Hank’s station.

  “Dad said Greenfeld would be needing a fleet someday, and we might as well have the first warship.”

  “Penny, you up to defense?”

  “I’m trained. Not qualified.”

  “We’ll qualify you today. Tom, you take the conn.”

  “I have the conn, executing defensive jinking as needed,” he said.

  “I have weapons,” Kris muttered as she rearranged her board, calling up sections of sensors as well as the readouts on the two weapons she had. “Fire control computer is only taking feed from the radar and laser ranging gear.”

  “Dad said it was the best Singer AGR made.” Hank sounded a bit defensive.

  “Sorry, Hank, you get better ranges when you add in the gravimeter and atom laser.” Kris brought those two readouts up on her board. With no time to program them into the range finder, she adjusted for them in her head.

  “Missed us again,” Tom said through clenched teeth.

  “Ranging fire, one quarter pulse.” Kris mashed her firing buttons. She missed as well, both shots high and to the right.

  KRIS, I CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT, Nelly said.

  “Nelly taking over fire control,” Kris announced to the crew.

  “Merging all ranging data. Firing one-eighth pulse for ranging,” Nelly announced. Kris raised an eyebrow. The board had only offered her one-quarter power shots. This would allow more and faster ranging fire. A glance at the screen showed even Nelly would need a lot of power for ranging shots. Her first salvo was closer, but still hig
h.

  “I am analyzing their defensive jitter pattern,” Nelly said.

  “Tom, what’s our pattern?” Kris asked.

  “I’ve got four random patterns, and I’m switching between them at random times.”

  “Were the patterns in the computer here?”

  “Oops, yes.”

  “Nelly, generate new patterns for Tom.”

  “Feeding them to the system,” Nelly said. “Firing double pattern, one-eighth power.” Each laser shot out two bursts in a rapid staccato.

  “Looks like one hit,” but the cruiser danced away, leaving a trail of streaming metal.

  “No ice,” Kris snapped. “He’s got no ice to shield him from our lasers.”

  “That bad?” Hank asked.

  “We’ve at least got the smart metal to move around and thicken up our engaged quarter. He’s got nothing but bare hull between him and our lasers. Nelly, do you have his pattern down?”

  “It changed after that hit. Give me a moment to study them.” Kris checked the capacitors. A bit over half a charge was left. Rapid fire might get enough beams out there to matter.

  “Nelly, could we fire a fast four pulses, one-eighth power?”

  “I do not think so, Kris. The lasers are heating up. I really do not think they were intended for this kind of use.”

  Kris glanced at Hank. “Dad figured two shots would be enough to take out anything.”

  “Your father is an optimist,” Kris said, did a quick search inside the weapons menu, and found temperature. Yep. Those babies were warm. Not hot, but considering the shots she’d fired so far, a couple of more in quick succession just might melt them to slag.

  Time for a new approach to this battle. Run.

  “Tom, new course. Fast, low orbit to slingshot us around Turantic, get us headed in a new direction.”

  “And get our rockets anywhere but aimed right at Sandfire,” the defense manager in Tom spoke. “Course plotted. Hold on to your underwear folks. Executing.” The Barbarossa swung around under power and headed planetward. A broadside from Sandfire’s cruiser filled the space they had been in.

  “Good course change,” Kris said.

  “Right.” Tom sighed.