The Spider and the Fly

by C.E. Stalbaum

  Chapter Eight

  “How?”

  Jenavian wasn’t sure if she’d actually spoken the word aloud or not, but her mouth hung open regardless. It didn’t make any sense. The Dowd shouldn’t have had any equipment capable of piercing the Manticore’s stealth systems, and they definitely shouldn’t have been able to detect the psionic emissions from the Damadus.

  She clamped her mouth shut and clenched her teeth. Right now the how didn’t really matter—they needed to return to the Manticore and get the hell out of here. The Argaz and the rest of the Convectorate task force would still be several hours away, and they had exactly zero chance in hell of taking on a destroyer in a straight-up fight.

  “Get back to the Manticore,” she ordered, smacking Markus on the arm with her rifle. “How fast can you spin up the drive and get us to the closest jump corridor, Thexyl?”

  “Not fast enough,” her partner replied solemnly. “Destroyers are built for speed.”

  Jenavian grimaced. “Well, do what you can. We’ll be there in a minute.”

  “I’ll be in engineering.”

  She and Markus took off in the fastest sprint they could manage while encumbered by zero-gee armor and a vac suit. She suddenly wished that she’d stripped him down to his jumpsuit when he’d lost consciousness rather than just taking off his helmet; standard vac suits were ridiculously restrictive, and it was slowing him to little more than a quick stumble. Her armor wasn’t the pinnacle of flexibility, either, but the motor servos in the joints let her move reasonably quickly when she needed to.

  She could already hear the thrum of the Manticore’s engines powering up by the time they arrived at the now fully-clamped docking rig, and one glance back at the tac-holo confirmed her worst fears: the Dowd were almost on top of them.

  “Where the hell did they come from?” Markus asked.

  “The system is littered with thermal pockets and asteroids,” Thexyl replied over the com. To an outsider his voice was probably as cool and modulated as ever, but she could hear the tension in his words. Even Kali weren’t immune to fear. “It’s quite easy to mask an approach vector, assuming they were actively trying to do so. It’s entirely possible they merely got lucky.”

  “I’m guessing they haven’t bothered hailing us,” Jenavian said as she shoved Markus down into the closest chair and then sat down at the helm. She doubted he would try to escape with the Dowd breathing down their necks, but she still didn’t feel like letting him out of her sight.

  “No,” Thexyl confirmed. “The moment they noticed us they began jamming all transmissions.”

  “As if we had anyone to call for help out here,” she muttered as she glared down at the engine status board. They definitely weren’t going to be able to get away in time; the drive needed at least another four minutes to heat up, and the closest stable jump corridor out here was almost twenty minutes away. “Any bright ideas?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Jenavian pressed her lips together as more sensor readings came back from the enemy ship. According to conventional wisdom, Dowd technology was generally a generation or two behind the Convectorate, but this particular destroyer was anything but obsolete. Three heavy disruptor cannons, a pair of Kolarn-class torpedo launchers, sensors that could evidently pierce their stealth systems…she had no idea when or how the Dowd had suddenly caught up, but this thing would easily be a match for a similarly sized Convectorate vessel. Even the Argaz, a full-blown battleship, wouldn’t be able to take it down without some wounds to show for it.

  “What about you?” Jenavian asked Markus. “Do your terrorist friends have any tricks for dealing with the Dowd?”

  He didn’t reply, and after a few seconds of silence Jenavian glanced back at him. He was completely frozen in place, his hands curled tightly around his terminal as he gaped out the forward viewport at the rapidly encroaching destroyer. In all the years she’d known him, even back when they were ten-year-old kids being screamed at by a Tarreen for the first time, she didn’t think she’d ever seen him truly afraid. But right now he looked like a man about to confront death…and surprised that it might actually claim him.

  “I’ll try and put the Damadus between us,” she said once the Manticore had fully wheeled about. “Assuming it’s their first priority, they might stop to take a few shots at it and let us escape.”

  “Wait, what?” Markus asked, blinking back into the present. “You can’t do that! There might still be other records on the ship, or some—”

  “You’d rather us get shot instead?” Jenavian growled. “It’ll slow them down, and that’s all that matters.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Thexyl’s voice came back over the intercom, though he didn’t sound particularly confident. She couldn’t blame him; as desperate as the Dowd would be to eradicate the Damadus, it wasn’t moving anytime soon. They’d surely bear down on a fleeing target first before turning around and finishing the job.

  Clenching her teeth, Jenavian diverted all the power she could into the sublight engines, and the Manticore roared away in the opposite direction. The destroyer would still overtake them long before they could jump away, but she refused to just sit here and do nothing. Unfortunately, unlike their escape from Kalifax, there were no conveniently-placed mining stations for them to use as cover. At best she might be able to dip down into the moon’s thin atmosphere, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything other than taking away their maneuverability advantage.

  No, hiding wasn’t going to be an option, and neither was running away. She needed to figure out some way to delay them…

  “Ninety seconds to weapons range,” Thexyl reported.

  Jenavian nodded, mostly to herself, and then glanced over to the rear display and the derelict ship floating between them and certain doom. To Markus, she imagined, the Damadus was probably more important as a symbol than an actual object. Human slaves and refugees across the galaxy always spoke of it in revered tones, almost like it was a religious artifact rather than a starship. It was their last desperate hope that humanity’s era of glory could yet be rekindled.

  She’d always found their fascination rather pathetic. Here these people were wasting away in one rat hole or another and all they could think about was some mythical wonder cure that might one day save them. Perhaps if they’d focused more on their actual problems they’d have been able to crawl out of the sewers they lived in, but no, they would rather blame the Convectorate for their own failings.

  Now that she was actually looking at it, though—now that the Damadus was a real thing and not some delusion conjured up by a broken slave—a part of her didn’t want to see it destroyed. Certainly not by the bloody Dowd.

  “If it makes you feel any better, the Convectorate will hunt them down and destroy them for violating our space,” Jenavian said softly, turning back to face Markus.

  He’d frozen up again, and just as she started to press him on it, the proximity alert warbled.

  “It’s another ship,” she breathed, frowning at the tac-holo as the projection flashed with a new image. “And it’s almost on top of us.”

  The vessel was easily the size of a heavy cruiser, but the design was like nothing she’d ever seen. While all Convectorate ships had a vaguely aerodynamic styling about them—some because they were equipped for atmospheric flight and the rest because of the psychological impact on most sentient species—this one looked more like an aberration drawn up by a four year-old. The forward section was essentially a giant metallic ball with the superstructure still plainly visible, and the starboard “wing” looked like a bent paper airplane. At a cursory glance she could identify parts from at least six different ships stitched together into a mangled whole.

  “It’s not a Convectorate vessel,” Thexyl said unnecessarily. “The design isn’t registering in our database, but initial scans are showing a sizeable armament. It’s easily a match for that destroyer.”

  “I think it might be a match for a couple
of them,” she whispered. Even without studying the computer’s tactical analysis, she could make out at least eight separate torpedo launchers and twenty heavy plasma turrets. Two hangar bays drooped from its underside, which meant it was likely carrying a full squadron of fighters, too. She ran through a mental list of the independent groups who could possibly afford a ship with that kind of firepower, and there weren’t many options.

  In this case, however, one was enough.

  Jenavian glared at Markus as her stomach sank. “How the hell did you get the Mire a message?”

  He tilted towards her, but he wasn’t smiling smugly like she’d expected. In fact, his face was about as expressionless as she’d ever seen it. “They’ll protect us if they can,” he said.

  She ground her teeth together as his recent behavior belatedly made sense. He hadn’t been afraid—he’d just been waiting for his terrorist friends to show up…and hoping they made it before it was too late.

  “They won’t make it to the Damadus in time,” Thexyl said gravely. “And all com channels are still being jammed.”

  Jenavian glanced back over to the sensor display. The destroyer was only thirty seconds out of weapons range now, but without warning its forward torpedo launchers lit up—

  “They’ve fired torpedoes at the Damadus,” she announced in shock.

  “They’re not certain they can win,” Markus said solemnly. “So they want to make sure they destroy the ship first.”

  Jenavian pursed her lips. Most destroyers that size ran with a crew of about four hundred, but she had a feeling that if there were a million soldiers on that thing the Dowd still probably would have been willing to go down in a blaze of glory so long as they could take the Damadus with them. Their backwards religion demanded that they wipe out all traces of the Sarafan, and they were nothing if not single-minded.

  She watched helplessly as the shimmering torpedoes descended down upon the derelict ship behind them. The Mire cruiser’s batteries had started to fire in a last desperate attempt to destroy the warheads, but they were still too far out of range. A few seconds later a blinding flash lit up the rear viewscreen, and the Damadus, the last relic of a Dominion fleet that had once spanned the galaxy, was gone.

  And through the debris came the black, dagger-like shape of the destroyer barreling towards them.

  “Take us in towards the Golem,” Markus said, breaking out of his stasis and gesturing to the Mire ship on the projection. “They’ll cover us if we let them.”

  Jenavian swore. As little interest as she had in flying anywhere near a Mire vessel, they had no chance of escape otherwise. The destroyer’s cannons were fully powered, and they’d be in range in less than twenty seconds.

  “All right,” she said, grabbing the piloting stick. “Hang on.”

  She rolled the Manticore hard to starboard, and just like their escape on Kalifax she was immediately thankful that she hadn’t eaten anything recently. The destroyer wasn’t fooled for an instant, though, and the Dowd were still going to be able to get off at least one shot before they were inside the Golem’s range.

  “I’ll power up the rear cannon in case they launch torpedoes,” Markus said as he leapt over into the gunner’s chair. “I might be able to shoot enough of them down to get us free.”

  “They’re not going to bother with torpedoes,” Jenavian whispered. “I’m diverting everything into the aft shields. If they can absorb one hit, it might be enough.”

  She shunted as much extra power as she could manage into the shield grid without sacrificing speed. It probably wouldn’t make a difference, but it was worth a try. She just hoped the Mire gunners were paying attention…

  “They’re firing!” Markus warned.

  Jenavian grabbed onto the edges of her chair as a searing burst of green-white energy lit up the viewscreen—

  And then she fell into darkness.