Fedic was going to hitch a ride on . . . he searched among the data for Oort15Ra197 . . . that one. It had already begun its headlong rush into the system, and Fedic had less than 48 hours to come up behind it. His star drive signature would be hidden in the comet’s tail, and he should be able to board the comet without coming to the attention of the Invardii.
At least I think I will be out of range, he muttered with a sigh. So much of this mission had been an educated guess.
Once he had hitched a ride on the comet it should be possible to hide under the photon deflection field he had used at Alamos, and ride the comet in past the two suns. Then he would be able to see what the Reaper ships were doing.
Fedic laughed to himself. The Mars miners had just about gone into orbit when he’d told them he needed the shield for a bit longer. A bit rich when they had stolen the device from a Rothii research site themselves. Cordez had pointed out to the miners that they wouldn’t have a mining license, or any customers, for much longer if they didn’t cooperate, and Fedic had had no trouble after that.
He wondered what sort of trips the miners were doing through the Solar System that needed to be shielded anyway. They were no more than modern-day smugglers if the truth be told.
Still, they did have some interesting gadgets gathered together in one place, and that was very convenient for Fedic. He had arranged for a couple of the miners’ other tricks to be built into the Lucky Streak, and that had cost him one helluva lot of money – well, had cost Regent Cordez a lot of money.
He looked back at Earth. It was a shining blue-white cradle, and it contained everything he held dear.
That was why he was going on this mission, he realized. Despite the odds, and even if it was against everything in his training to take on so many unknowns. He shrugged. There were things bigger than he was, things worth more than his miserable hide.
He realized with amusement that somewhere along the last ten years of extraordinary missions he had stopped being self-centered. Dammit, that probably meant he had grown up somewhere in those years too. You know what, he thought, there has to be a first time for everything, and then he tapped in his embarkation code.
Two booster tugs eased him out of his dock at the space station, and towed him on ionization couplings until the moon and the Earth looked the same size to him. Further round the curve of his home planet sunlight sparkled on a flotilla of space ships engaged in maneuvres.
They were probably the first of the new battleship group EarthGov had commissioned. The ships had been all over the news while he was preparing for his mission. Fedic smiled grimly. He had his doubts about their chances against the Reaper ships. The media beat up about the new battleship group had been unrealistic, but then media news always was.
Fedic coasted the Lucky Streak on momentum until he reached the first of the beacons in the outgoing star drive lane.
It was always a time-consuming task coming into, or leaving, Earth orbit. The dense traffic, and the safety precautions, took up so much time. Though it was understandable. Earth didn’t want a runaway star ship wiping out a city. He would have picked up the Lucky Streak from Mars, and avoided all this, except that some of the modifications he had wanted had needed to be done on Earth.
Still, it was all done now, and the ship was the best he could make it. He tilted his pilot’s chair to a more upright angle, and set gravity-sum to 1.2 times Earth standard. He liked his heart to work a bit harder when he was on a mission, just one little trick for staying alert.
He turned to the controls for the orscantium decay procedure. Safety off, safety off, containment chamber check, cooling towers on, comm check, navigation check, mark one, mark two, decay release. And the Lucky Streak stretched halfway across the Solar System for an impossible moment, and was gone.
Fedic picked up his hideaway comet two days later at the edge of binary system HK42. There was no sign of the Reaper ships in his immediate area, though his long-range scanners detected plenty of activity in the great tail of flame that joined the two suns. The energy released as one sun assimilated the other astounded him.
Sheets of flame tore loose from the younger yellow sun and snapped across space to the white-hot collapsed star. The surface of the yellow sun shuddered until a whole section of it tore loose and crossed the gap, jagged edges whipping about in the gravitational maelstrom.
Fedic knew he would not hear any sound in space, but in his imagination the collapsed sun howled its insatiable hunger. The yellow sun ripped apart with a whip-like crackle reminding him of sails in a storm. The tail between them crackled and thundered like an old-fashioned freight train.
He forced his eyes back to the comet. Its tail streamed out behind it, a perfect cover for his approach onto the comet body. Rigging the Lucky Streak to run devoid of any electromagnetic signal, Fedic eased the ship into the tail of gases. Then there was a long wait as he caught up with the comet.
Once at the edge of the comet body, he guided his ship onto the most stable area he could find. This turned out to be a rocky basin between two icy ridges. He checked the power for the photon shielding and made one last check that he was running silently, that no stray electromagnetic radiation might give him away. He was as near as he could make himself to invisible.
The bypass was going to take a few days, and it was going to be be a long, nerve-wracking wait.
CHAPTER 5
________________
Two days into the bypass of the binary system, riding piggyback on the comet Oort15Ra197, Fedic’s plans were working exactly as he had hoped. His long-range passive sensors were busy recording astonishing things in the ever-regenerating tail of flame between the collapsed sun and its younger companion.
There was something being built in the maelstrom between the suns, and there were Reaper ships everywhere. The enemy ships were avoiding the collapsed star, but they traveled freely through the surface layers of the younger one.
As the comet came closer to the Eyes of Ra, Fedic could see a vast structure in the stream of fusing hydrogen that ripped across the gap between the two suns. Why it wasn’t pulled into the enormous gravitational field of the collapsed sun, he did not know. But more importantly, what was it? An enormous space station? An Invardii city?
Then his sensors let him know that a group of four Reaper ships, ones that had been patrolling the edges of the great tail of flame, had changed direction. Now they were headed for him. Dammit, he thought, what have they got against comets?
He waited as long as he dared, hoping they would move on and take an interest in something else, but as they came closer he prepared to leave his hiding place. There was a fair amount of swearing going on as well. He was disappointed in himself, but there was so much here he didn’t have control over.
The orbit of the comet would be well clear of the structure the Reaper ships were building, throughout its journey around the two suns. What were they so concerned about? The swearing didn’t seem to deter the approaching enemy ships.
Unwilling to trust to his hiding place any longer, Fedic detached the Lucky Streak from the rocky floor of the basin, and prepared to drift away. Once free of the comet, he had only to wait for the outgassing of the comet body to gently sweep him backward, until his ship tumbled into the turbulent tail of the comet and was left behind.
The operation went smoothly, and then his home for the last two days swept on through the system without him.
The Reaper ships kept coming. Fedic was still vulnerably close to the comet body when one of them fired a bright spot of light that streaked for the comet like a seeker missile. It looked like an immense spear of volcanic magma as it struck. Trailing a white-hot tail, it closed quickly on the comet and disappeared into the middle of it.
Seconds passed, and nothing happened. Fedic could only guess what was going on inside the comet. Then it was destroyed from the inside out. A blue and violet flare overloaded the Lucky Streak’s sensors, and Fedic was flying blind.
The shoc
k wave of super-heated steam and expanding gases hit hard while he was still blind. His ship was shaken violently, and then whirled away in a new direction. Moments later the sensors came back on line.
Fedic was now headed for one of the two suns. He checked the navs calculations and threw his course up onto the main screen to get a better understanding of it.
He was going to pass uncomfortably close to the billowing yellow surface of the younger sun, and very close indeed to the tail of fire between the two suns. That gave him another set of problems to deal with. There would be the heat and radiation storms of the yellow sun, and the constant surveillance by the Invardii.
Fedic knew he couldn’t outrun the Reaper ships. He also wasn’t carrying any firepower, and anything of Earth design would be useless against them anyway. The photon shield appeared to be working as it was designed though. None of the enemy ships had changed course to intercept him.
He decided he would settle in and wait. He already had valuable records of the Invardii activities at HK42, and they would be a great help to Cordez if Fedic could get them back to Earth.
Twelve hours later he was much closer to the yellow sun, and he knew he would have to try something soon. The heat on the outside of the Lucky Streak was close to the maximum the hull could stand.
Fedic had pushed hulls well past their safety limits before, but that was not the problem here. The photon deflection shield was beginning to degrade under the storm of particles from the surface of the yellow sun. If he didn’t do something, the Reaper ships would be able to see him before much longer. Fedic looked at his options, and tried to make a decision.
In the end he fired the ship’s star drive just long enough to add some extra speed in the direction he was already traveling. It would push him past the yellow sun on a shallower course, and he would be heading out of the HK42 system before the photon field suffered any permanent damage.
He had no doubts the Invardii could track him if he shifted into continuous star drive, and track his overheated engines if he tried to outrun them. No, stealth remained his best course of action.
Fedic burned the orscantium rods for a little more than a second in the containment chamber, but not before he activated a little device the Mars miners had fitted to his ship. It had proved itself on any number of ships wanting to make a quick getaway around the Solar System, and he hoped it would work here.
The Lucky Streak appeared to make a break off its present course in several different directions at once. The miners’ device ejected a telltale decay signature in each of these directions. Running the device reduced power to his ship, but it disguised the trajectory of his flight. The decay signatures looked like a number of ships heading off in different directions, if anyone was scanning his ship.
Fedic coasted along his new orbit around the yellow sun, hoping for the best. The Reaper ships would have picked up the star drive activity, but had they got a lock on him? As long as the deflection shield was holding, and they couldn’t see him, there was a chance he might make it out of the binary system in one piece.
Then the first explosion burst like a star shell a long way behind him. The second one burst off to one side. Fedic’s mind went into overdrive. What were the Reaper ships tracking? Was there any way they could know where he was?
He could see the bulk of the enemy ships now, close to a hundred of them, drifting out from the long tail of flame between the suns. They were forming a widening curtain around it, some sort of defensive system perhaps.
Then a starburst detonated ahead of him, and the Lucky Streak registered a shock wave of ionized particles. The next burst was directly along his line of flight. Was that a coincidence, or did they now have his trajectory, and were they ranging along it looking for him?
Fedic thought for a moment. The explosions radiated ionized particles. If his ship was stopping some of them with its mass, he might appear as a shadow on their scanners. Two bursts, close enough for him to leave a shadow, and they could calculate his speed and his trajectory.
He needed to do something fast!
The Lucky Streak accelerated away at thirty degrees to its previous course. Two more starbursts appeared along his previous line of flight, one of them right on top of where he would have been.
The next few explosions were well away from the Lucky Streak. If only his luck would hold, he thought. He slipped inside the slowly expanding ring of Reaper ships. They seemed to think he was still in close orbit around the yellow sun, at least for now.
Then he was right over the immense length of the squat structure the Reaper ships were building. It was all struts and spars, with very little in the way of enclosed areas. He noticed several gigantic wheels, spokes radiating out to individual platforms. When he increased the magnification, he saw what was cradled on the platforms below him.
Star ships! It was a shipyard, a construction zone. Below him Reaper ships at every stage of their development lay spread out, like a series of diagrams from a builder’s manual. Cordez would want to see this! Fedic set the sensor arrays to the task of recording in earnest, all the way from radio to infrared.
Another sheet of fusing hydrogen ripped across from the yellow sun, obscuring the shipyard. God’s death, he was close to the tail of flame! The interference scrambled the sensors for a long minute, and then they recommenced recording.
A Reaper ship cruised lazily out of the firestorm and into position in the veil of Reaper ships circling like moths around the monstrous tail of flame. The Lucky Streak flew through its path moments later, and the Reaper ship immediately turned about.
Dammit, thought Fedic. Somehow the passage of his ship had disrupted the trail the Reaper ships must leave behind, and this one had detected it. Now they would all have a good idea of where he was. As if to confirm the fact, dozens of starbursts began to range around him.
He disengaged the miners’ device, to improve his straight line speed, and fired the Lucky Streak straight at the collapsed sun. It was a suicidal move, so it would be the last thing his enemies expected.
He slid along beside the tail of flame, gathering speed, and finally cut through the last of the Reaper ships. He was still, apparently, undetected. The starbursts faded away from where he had been, and began to range far and wide behind him.
The Lucky Streak began to accelerate as it fell into the immense gravitational field of the collapsed sun. Fedic hunched over the navs console, trying to calculate the speed he would pick up curving around the star’s gravitational field. He had to balance that against the chance he would be sucked into the star, and crushed in its depths. In the end he took his best shot at a safe trajectory, and fired the star drive at maximum immersion of the orscantium rods.
The Reaper ships behind him turned about and began to give chase. While his ship’s star drive was in operation they knew exactly where Fedic was. He watched as his speed increased, and the curved line that showed his trajectory on the navs screen slowly lifted clear of the surface of the collapsed sun.
A starburst exploded right in front of him, but he was through it before it had properly formed. The Lucky Streak seemed to suffer no ill effects. Then he noticed that the Reaper ships were dropping behind.
“Not so good at playing ‘chicken’, huh, boys,” muttered Fedic as the tidal forces on the ship grew. The gravity-sum reading showed he was already subject to a 0.8 gee sideways force, due to his extreme acceleration around the sun. He set gravity-sum to compensate, but it was only so powerful.
Finally the line on the navs console chart lifted enough for his trajectory to clear the collapsed sun. Struggling under the growing sideways pull, Fedic shut the star drive off. He was committed now, and the enormous gravitational forces on the Lucky Streak continued to increase. His ship skimmed closer to the point of no return in the sun’s immense gravitational field.
Fedic struggled against his increasing weight to lay the navs chair back to the horizontal. Knowing that he didn’t have long before he passed out, he progra
mmed the ship’s alarms to sound when the ship had made it out the other side and the gravitational effects had decreased. If he made it out the other side. And then he felt himself slide into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 6
________________
The first thing Fedic noticed when he came round was the taste of blood in the back of his throat. He choked, and managed to roll to one side before he coughed up a mixture of mucous and watery blood. Then he heard the piercing squeal of the alarm. How long had it been on? How far from the other side of the collapsed sun was he?
There could be Reaper ships lining him up in their sights right now. As long as he followed the same trajectory, even though he was now on the other side of the collapsed sun, the Reaper ships would be able to calculate where he was.
He tried to sit up, but he still weighed a ton, and he felt strangely weak. Then he noticed his left arm wouldn’t move. He looked down and noticed the broad red stain across the front of his tunic. He felt up his chest and onto his face. He was a mess. The blood appeared to have come mostly from his nose. Blind seeds of chaos, how many gees had he pulled around the edge of the sun?
Fedic levered himself up onto his side. His left arm was swollen and lifeless. It was bent at an awkward angle, and had fallen off the side of the navs chair. Dammit, the acceleration must have crushed an artery against the chair, or maybe the blood had pooled and bled into the tissue. Clotting would be his worst problem now. If he dislodged a clot and it traveled up into his heart or lungs, he would be in real trouble.
He eyed the medical console next to the navs station. At least it wasn’t far away. He had to take something to dissolve any blood clots, and something to replace blood loss. And he definitely needed some painkillers!
Invardii Box Set 2 Page 3
