A Fiery Sunset

by Chris Kennedy

  “Kill thrust,” she finally said.

  “Shutting down the torches,” Chug said.

  “Brace for impact,” Paka said.

  Pegasus’ three immensely-powerful fusion torches were dampened, and in less than a second, all thrust was canceled. Absent that thrust, the strange physics of 2nd Level Hyperspace kicked in, and the ship slowed by half its velocity per second, and a bit more. It was as if the 80,000-ton warship slowly slid into a feather pillow. She lost more than 115,000 meters per second in that first second, and nobody aboard the ship felt a thing. In six seconds total, Pegasus was at a dead stop, just 300 miles from their destination.

  “Holy fucking shit,” Xander exclaimed in a gasping voice.

  “That was amusing,” Glick, the SitCom, said.

  The CIC broke out in a miniature release of energy akin to just having dodged death. In fact, most felt like they had. The only one who appeared perfectly calm was Alexis Cromwell, because her eyes had never left the display.

  “This is Sato to CIC?” came over the PA.

  Paka looked at her commander, then realized she wasn’t going to answer, so she did herself. “What is it, Mr. Sato?” Paka asked.

  “Can you do that again so I can take some readings?” Someone laughed out loud on the CIC.

  “Not right now. Please, we’re busy at the moment.” Paka cut the connection. “Orders, Captain?”

  “Get Long to assemble as many technicians as he can spare. Cut the crew to the bare bones. Get them over to those ships right now and begin evaluations.” In the display floated what looked like mirror-images of Pegasus. In fact, they nearly were. Just a few hundred miles away were six more Egleesius-class battlecruisers, relics of the Great Galactic War 20,000 years ago.

  * * *

  EMS Bucephalus, Sulaadar System

  “Come on kid, time to get up.” Jim’s eyes opened, and he looked at the unshaved visage of his XO, Hargrave, floating next to his hammock.

  “What do you want?” he asked and rolled away slightly. Splunk slipped away and floated across the little cabin to grab onto a storage bin. Her huge blue eyes watched the two Humans with interest.

  “For you to get back in the game.”

  “Don’t you think enough people have died?” Jim demanded.

  “Yes, I do.” Jim grunted in agreement. “That’s why you need to quit floating here feeling sorry for yourself and take command.”

  “Have you ever listened to your best friend die, and there wasn’t a fucking thing you could do about it?”

  “Yes, I have.” Jim looked back at his second in command and saw something he wasn’t expecting; understanding. “I was in a ship 250 miles above as he fought an insane delaying action so the rest of us could get off the planet. He and five troopers in Mk 6 CASPers held off at least a battalion of Besquith. Those old suits weren’t nearly as fast and well-armed as the Mk 7 you use. It was a suicide stand, and I listened to him die to save our lives.”

  “Then you understand,” Jim said. “I can’t keep doing this. All the losses at Chimsa. Leaving Murdoch there like that.”

  “You didn’t know,” Hargrave said, but Jim pushed on.

  “My own family abandoned me when I needed them. I’ve killed my own kind just to save my sorry ass. When does it all end?”

  “Never,” Hargrave snapped, and Jim lurched. “I thought after all those meetings in New Warsaw where you fought so hard to get Cromwell to come out of her hole you’d realize that as long as Earth is in danger, we can’t stop. We don’t dare! Jim, you’re a Horseman, one of the Four Horsemen. Every Human merc alive looks up to you,” he saw the skeptical look on his face and added, “whether you believe it or not. And even if they might not look up to you, they’ll follow you. Turning Cromwell around wasn’t the first time, either. Back on Earth, just a couple days after that bitch of a girlfriend turned out to be a rat, you stood up and led us all out of there, or Peepo would’ve had us in chains.” Jim was listening now. He had no choice but to listen; Hargrave poked him in the chest every few words.

  “Now you have a piece of a much greater operation. You sold the others that your god-damned Raknar can help turn the tide. Well, you and that food-thieving little fiend are the only ones who know how to operate them, and you seem to have a plan where to get more. So get to it, soldier!”

  Jim still hurt, profoundly. Emotionally, he felt like he’d been beaten. Still, what Hargrave said was true. He needed to stand up, grow up, and be the commander his father had wanted him to be.

  “Jimmy,” his father had said as Jim sat in his lap. It was the same office and same chair in the merc tower where Jim had held meetings only weeks ago, “this will all be yours someday.” Jim had looked around at the plaques, Tri-V images of victorious battlefields, shelves full of unit challenge coins, and innumerable memorabilia from a thousand worlds with eyes wide in wonder. “You’ll be the commander of Cartwright’s Cavaliers.”

  “But how, daddy?” he’d asked. “How do I learn to do that?” His father laughed and gave him a little hug.

  “Jimmy, great leaders aren’t taught; they’re born.”

  “What’s it going to be?” Hargrave asked. “You gonna get this shit-show underway, or are we gonna go back to Earth and surrender to the traitorous weasel?”

  Jim unzipped his hammock. “I need a shower,” he said, “and a clean uniform.” Hargrave nodded and pushed off toward the doorway. “What’s the condition of the James Armistead Lafayette?”

  “Captain Crispin has completed repairs. To avoid notice, she’s planning on using her hyperspace shunts to slip out of here as soon as we’re underway.”

  “Okay, send my regards and condolences on their lost marines.” Jim swallowed a lump in his throat but continued. “They did a fantastic job. Then request Captain Su to proceed to the stargate for the next stage of the operation, as planned.”

  “Yes, Commander,” Hargrave said and snapped a little salute before turning to go. Jim was grabbing a towel and uniform when he thought of something.

  “Hargrave?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Who was that friend you watched die?”

  “Thaddeus Cartwright,” he said solemnly and left.

  * * *

  James Armistead Lafayette used her hyperspace shunts to leave the Sulaadar system as Bucephalus thrusted toward the stargate a third of the way around Sulaadar Prime.

  Jim pulled himself into the CIC against a half gravity of constant thrust. Captain Su glanced up, then, noticing it was Jim, nodded in acknowledgement. Most of the CIC crew saw him as well. None of them gave more reaction than that. The truth was that they’d all lost friends in combat, and most respected Jim for managing to mostly hold it together long enough to leave the CIC.

  “James Armistead Lafayette has entered hyperspace,” Captain Su informed him. They still had a three-hour run to the stargate.

  “Be nice to have some of those shunts,” he commented as he climbed into his customary chair in the CIC.

  “Bucephalus is too small to manage it,” Su explained. “We wouldn’t have room for half the troops if we put shunts on her. That’s why most of the shunt-equipped ships are battleships and dreadnoughts.”

  “Damned expensive, too,” Hargrave agreed. The older man was hanging out by the door to the CIC in a jump seat. He rated a combat chair if he’d wanted one, but he didn’t like being in the CIC during combat. “I’d rather be near a CASPer if the shit’s going to hit the fan,” he’d told Jim long ago.

  “Continue sensor sweeps,” the captain ordered. “Defenses on standby.”

  “Are you expecting trouble?” Jim asked.

  “The weapons fire here couldn’t have gone without notice,” she said. “We’re hoping the general chaos here might give us some cover. We’ll see.”

  The time ticked down as Bucephalus boosted to the halfway point, then flipped over to begin slowing for the stargate approach. The captain timed the approach to coincide with a scheduled opening of the star
gate. Getting the Cartography Guild to do an unscheduled gate activation was, to say the least, prohibitively expensive. They were only 20 minutes out when things began to change.

  “I have two ships boosting from Sulaadar Prime toward the stargate at high speed,” the sensor operator announced.

  “Can you identify them?” Su asked.

  “They appear to be Seed-class escort frigates,” the sensor operator said, “with high probability.”

  “Maki,” Captain Su said. “Good ships.” She saw Jim looking curiously. “Escort frigates that predominantly use missiles. You see them on interdiction duty because they can throw a lot of hell in a short period of time.” She looked back at the sensor tech. “Estimated time of intercept?”

  “Thirty-five minutes,” he said. Su grunted. That was well past their expected departure time. “They’ll be in missile range in twenty minutes.”

  “What if they don’t slow?” she asked.

  “Missile range in fifteen minutes.”

  “That’ll be their plan,” she said, “take a swipe at us as they pass and hope to disable our hyperspace generators.”

  “Could they?” Jim asked.

  “If they used nukes, yes. The EMP could cause enough breakers to trip that we would risk losing our field integrity if we went into hyperspace. As we found out from Commander Cromwell, that isn’t necessarily lethal. However, it might prove impossible to locate Pegasus, if she’s even still there. Which means we’d be trapped.”

  The tactical Tri-V to one side of the CIC showed the two rapidly-approaching warships as yellow, not red. With General Peepo supposedly bringing charges against Earth mercs in general, and the Four Horsemen specifically, the last thing they needed was to fire on two ships without provocation.

  Jim looked at the representation of the distant stargate in the Tri-V, a kind of donut in space. There were at least a dozen ships already near it, waiting for the scheduled opening. One was a Behemoth, a massive spheroid transport favored by the Merchants’ Guild for interstellar commerce.

  “Wouldn’t they risk hitting that Behemoth if they fire on us?” he asked.

  Su shook her head. “Not from the angle we’re approaching,” she said. Jim locked eyes with her and smiled big. She narrowed her own eyes, then they went wide in realization. “Commander Cartwright, you’re a sneaky son of a bitch.”

  For the first time since his friend died, Jim smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You should,” she said. “Helm, prepare to skew our approach 27 degrees.” The Akaga-class merc cruiser fired her thrusters, altering her direction of travel while continuing to burn her fusion torch. The effect was to considerably alter the angle at which they were approaching the stargate. Effectively, they were arriving by swinging around to the other side of the Behemoth. Near the exit to the CIC, Hargrave nodded and smiled.

  “That did it,” the comms officer said. “We’re being hailed.” Su pointed to order a channel opened and spoke.

  “This is Captain Kim Su of EMS Bucephalus.”

  “Bucephalus, I am Captain Paskyl on Short Drift, with merc company Shaq u Estu. You’re the command ship of the Human merc company Cartwright’s Cavaliers?”

  “You know we are,” Captain Su said.

  “By order of the Galactic Mercenary Guild, you’re under arrest. You’re ordered to execute a turn and not pass through the stargate.” Su make a cutting motion across her throat, and the comms officer terminated the connection.

  “Get me Stargate Control.” A second later, a corner of the Tri-V came alive with a connection. The image of an elephantine Sumatozou looked at them. Its bifurcated trunk moved about a face covered in intricate, natural red markings.

  “This is Cronpopal, gate master of the Cartography Guild,” the Sumatozou spoke.

  “Gate master, I am Captain Kim Su commanding Bucephalus, Cartwright’s Cavaliers.”

  “We know of you,” Cronpopal said. “We also have a request from the Mercenary Guild to deny you passage through the stargate.”

  “Is the Cartography Guild now taking orders from the Mercenary Guild?” The alien’s already tiny eyes narrowed, and the trunk tips balled into little fists.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Allow me,” Jim asked. Su looked a little concerned but bowed her head. “Gate master, I’m Jim Cartwright, commander of the Cavaliers. We consider this order illegal. The merc guild has unjustly imprisoned many of our people and has taken control of our world.”

  “That’s no concern of the Cartography Guild. For more than 20,000 years we’ve operated the stargate network and stayed out of conflicts.”

  “Then all we ask is for you to stay out of the conflict and let us go through, as we’ve already contracted and paid for.”

  “Our guild is part of the checks and balances of the Union, Human,” Cronpopal said, as if he were lecturing a child on the basics of how the Union worked.

  “And don’t those balances mean you stay out of intra-guild conflicts in the other guilds?” The trunk massaged the alien’s face, and Jim knew he was making points. “All you need to do is honor our contract and let us proceed through.”

  “We’ve also agreed with the Mercenary Guild not to let you through. They’ve accused you Humans of some horrible crimes. I must side with precedent.”

  “Maneuver complete,” the helmsman reported, “we’ll be behind the Behemoth in just a couple minutes.”

  “Missiles in the black!” the tactical controller yelled. “Tracking a total of six vampires from both Maki ships.” On the Tri-V, the Sumatozou’s face went from calm to agitation. It leaned out of view, no doubt receiving the same news they’d just gotten.

  “ECM!” Su snapped. “Fire full countermeasures. Close-in defense, prepare to take those missiles out.” She stopped, massaging her chin for a second. “Belay that last, no active defense.”

  “Sir,” the tactical controller said, “those missiles will be wild, and there are a bunch of ships all around us.”

  “Around us, and the stargate,” Su said. “Carry out the orders.”

  At the electronic warfare stations, technicians attacked the inbound missiles with powerful radar beams, lasers, and energized titanium filaments ejected into space. The missiles, faced with a dizzying array of conflicting information, began to pick their targets. Each one chose poorly.

  The communication board exploded with panicked calls from the ships around the stargate. None of them were warships, and most had little or no defenses. Cronpopal gestured and yelled.

  “Those missiles are going wild; they’re targeting the other ships.” Someone off camera said something the translators didn’t catch. “Two are targeting the stargate! Do something.”

  “Why?” Jim asked, understanding the captain’s brilliant gambit. “They’re no threat to us anymore.”

  “Innocent ships will be hit. The stargate will be damaged! It’s against Union law to damage a stargate. You must do something.”

  “Ten seconds to first impact,” the tactical controller said. Su nodded as Jim spoke.

  “We didn’t do that; the Maki ships did. You have to ask yourself, why are they so desperate to stop us that they’d break Union law to catch us, when we’re supposedly guilty of breaking Union law.” Jim shook his head and spread his hands. “I’m afraid it might be a breach of law to do anything.”

  “You must…”

  “Must I?” Jim asked. The gate master appeared on the verge of panic.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Just let us through.”

  “Five seconds,” the controller said.

  “Better act fast,” Jim said. Another second passed before Cronpopal screamed.

  “Do it, you can pass!”

  “Fire close-in defense lasers,” Su ordered. Dozens of small laser batteries opened up, throwing a web of coherent light into the streaking missiles’ path. Jim crossed his fingers that Bucephalus’ defenses were as good as advertised. He’d known Su was
about to order the missiles shot down just before the gate master gave in. They’d had no intention of endangering innocents, even to save themselves. Besides, if the stargate had been hit, it would have stranded Bucephalus in the Sulaadar system and forced them to fight.

  “Splash all vampires,” the tactical controller said.

  “Give me a spread of ten missiles,” Su ordered, “five on each enemy ship. HE only, please.”

  “Missiles away!”

  “The Maki ships are altering course wildly,” the sensor tech said.

  “They don’t know those missiles aren’t nukes,” Su said to Jim, and gave him a wink. Jim smiled. He missed Captain Winslow, but he liked Su. She had panache.

  “Matching approach velocity,” the helmsman said. Bucephalus switched to ion drive to avoid damaging any of the other ships, which were all now moving toward the ring of hyperspace shunts which made up the stargate.

  This was the hard part, Jim knew. If the slippery Cartography Guild master didn’t hold up his end of the bargain, they’d have to slug it out with the two Maki ships. Who knew what came after that?

  The seconds ticked down on the clock to zero, and space began to shimmer and twist inside the ring of the stargate, creating a quantum discontinuity that ships started to touch, and disappear.

  “My thanks,” Jim said to the gate master. The Sumatozou spat some untranslatable curse and cut the connection a split second before Bucephalus was unmade, then reappeared in hyperspace. “I wonder what that was at the end there?” Jim wondered aloud.

  “Who cares?” Su asked. “No doubt the elephant will have fun explaining all this to the Merc Guild.”

  “You think the Maki will be in trouble for endangering the gate?” Hargrave asked.

  “I doubt it,” she said, “but who knows?” The pure whiteness of 1st Level Hyperspace surrounded them. They were safe. Jim unlatched from his chair and stretched. His back was stiff after the standoff. “That was quick thinking on your part,” she added. “Well done, Commander.”

  “And you as well, Captain,” he said, and gave her a little zero-gravity bow. She smiled and returned it. “If you’ll excuse me, I better see to my men and begin planning for the next step of the operation.”