by Greg Dragon
“What would a ghost ship want with the Rendron?” he said, confirming her assumptions.
“I don’t know, but it failed, and now it’s going to be salvaged for parts.”
“Delicious irony,” he said.
“The sweetest kind,” she replied. “Maybe this could be a third infiltrator for us. I bet Captain Sho has enough parts to make it happen.”
“A third infiltrator would be huge,” Quentin said. “It would improve Captain Sho’s position, and we would have a seat at the table deciding on the war. Man, what a difference it would make to have someone like the captain schooling them on the lizards.”
Helga smiled at his words. She was in full agreement with him. Retzo Sho was a genius to anyone privileged to serve on his ship, and they all had the same feelings: that the Alliance was run by a dozen out-of-touch old men. To have someone who knew the Geralos up close, sit amongst the Alliance council… it could win them the war, and Helga wasn’t alone in believing this.
“The lieutenant could be the commander of that third infiltrator,” Helga said, thinking of Cilas in a smart captain’s uniform. “It could be our ship, the Hawk’s Nest, or some other designation that works with our name. Can you imagine? We could have our own space to live in and train, then jump onto missions when the captain orders us.”
“You have one hell of an imagination, Ate,” Cilas said. “If we made a third infiltrator, he would give it to Jenny or Toro Hanes on the bridge. They have seen him command, and they are both some of the top ranks in their positions. They’re the future captains of an important vessel like an infiltrator.”
“Rend, you play down the commander thing whenever I bring it up,” Helga said, “but it doesn’t take away from what we know: that the captain values you, and wouldn’t hesitate to put you in command of one of his infiltrators.”
“I can see why you’d think that,” Cilas said, surprising the three Nighthawks. “That’s not to say that I would accept it. You know me, Ate, my place is in the wind, jumping to wherever he needs me to be. Captaining an infiltrator will only clip my wings, and I will be just another officer, chained to the chair of my bridge.”
“Only you would find a way to make a promotion sound like torture,” Helga grumbled, but she shut her mouth when he held up his hand and gave them the sign to be quiet.
They had come upon the tube leading to the dock where their Britz-SPZ was parked, but Cilas stood frozen, looking around. Red lights were flashing all about the compartment, and Helga filed through her memory for all the possible reasons.
“That is a blast door warning, Lieutenant,” she said. “It means that something is obstructing our egress. Well, it’s either that or we have something headed our way. More Geralos, chunks of debris, asteroids … it’s hard for me to say without being on the bridge.”
“Are you serious?” Cilas said, stepping away to touch at his wrist. He paced for a time, speaking on his comms while keeping his face hidden from them. It was what he did whenever he consulted with the captain, and while Helga knew he did it to keep things confidential, it bothered her that he had to.
“A Geralos destroyer just jumped in,” he said. “We need to get off this thing and back to the Rendron, right now.”
Helga sprinted past him, leaped, and placed her hands by her hips. The PAS suit’s rocket boots came alive, massaging her soles as she shot through the tube before landing skillfully in front of the hatch. Popping and releasing the lock, she stepped inside the dropship, looking this way and that in case anyone or anything was waiting.
When she found it clear, she made her way to the cockpit, opened the doors and stepped inside. She took a seat at the pilot’s station, locked her restraints and started the launch sequence. When she looked back and saw that her team was onboard she sealed the doors and detached from the tube.
As they left the dreadnought, Helga saw the destroyer swapping shots with the Rendron. She flew a wide arc about the ghost ship, ending with their nose pointing towards the deadly web of crossfire. The Rendron looked like a multi-armed god swatting down a lesser, overconfident upstart, her powerful cannons pulsing fire into the destroyer’s broadside.
Helga recognized the tactic. It was Geralos standard: stall for more destroyers to jump in and tilt the odds. If the Rendron didn’t flee, she could be in danger of losing her shields. The Alliance would send in backup, but it wouldn’t be fast enough to save them from being torn apart.
Right now she imagined the captain calling for assistance, and if none were coming, he would need to jump to save his ship. A jump would require all crew members to be on board, and she and her team were barely off the dreadnought.
She increased the thrust, stealing power from her shields, then snatched up the communicator and placed it to her lips. “Rendron Prime,” she said, “This is Hellgate of the Nighthawks, seeking permission to come aboard.”
She bit her lip and chewed at it nervously. The bridge would be busy, with everyone listening for the captain’s commands. There would be a good chance that the operator in charge of the hangar could miss her tiny summons, and then they would be vulnerable to the Geralos.
“Helga, good to hear you,” said a voice that she recognized as communications officer, Genevieve Aria. “Dock when you can, and hurry,” she said, but Helga was leagues ahead of that sentiment. As soon as she heard Genevieve’s voice she maxed thrust to get them to the Rendron’s hangar, but two shots from a zip-ship sent them careening into the shields.
Luckily Genevieve confirmed and the Rendron recognized their signature, so instead of the shields rejecting them, it allowed them entry and they crashed into her hull. Damage was nullified by the little shields left on the Britz-SPZ, and Helga, angry, transferred energy into her cannons and started firing on the zip-ship.
While this was happening, one of the Rendron’s Phantom fighters concentrated its cannons on the same zip-ship. They depleted its shields and sent it spinning at the Rendron. This time it rejected the invasion, and the ship was thrown back with such violence that it slammed into another, eliminating shields, hull, and the Geralos pilots’ lives.
As the two ships became a debris field, the Phantom flew in close to the Britz-SPZ. Helga recognized the signature of Millicent Ral, one of the Revenant fighter squadron. “Thank you, Millicent,” she whispered into muted comms, as she pushed towards the hangar doors, praying that no more zip-ships would come.
A barrage of shots forced the ships apart and Millicent went into defensive maneuvers. It seemed the Geralos had a new objective: destroy the vessel attempting to dock with the Rendron. Helga wondered at this motivation, and if there was a chance they were the target of this attack.
Time was needed to plan and execute a jump, but the longer they took to get in the hangar, the higher their chances of being left behind. Reinforcements were on their way, and Retzo Sho would have to choose between saving thousands of lives or the handful who took too long to board. Now these zip-ships had them in jeopardy of not making it home, and Helga began to worry as she saw shields drop to less than 10%.
Thype the slow and steady approach, she thought, as she removed all shields and maxed the thrust. The Britz-SPZ screamed and lurched forward as if pushed, and Helga struggled to keep them inside that narrow tunnel created by the shields and the hull. One slip and they would crash into the starship or slip beyond the shields to where cannon fire homed in on their location.
Not one Nighthawk breathed as Helga growled to maintain focus, keeping the ship meters from the Rendron as they pushed for the hangar’s entrance. They were too close to make the turn required to enter the docking pylon, but Helga shunted their shields for the impact and slammed them into the far bulkhead.
The Britz-SPZ ricocheted off with her shields now eliminated, but Helga, unconcerned with the hearts of her Nighthawk comrades, performed a maneuver that barely got them into the hangar.
The beetle-shaped ship clipped the bulkhead, which sent them spinning inside the launch shaft. Helga
worked to right them but found it difficult, as they struck the overhead while the console blurted alarms. Eventually she got control of it and they flew into the hangar, smoking hot.
Over the comms, Genevieve Aria was ordering the fighters back to the Rendron, and Helga brought them in as best she could, finding an open bay. She held up a hand in front of her face and saw that it was shaking uncontrollably. “That was close,” she whispered, and then she heard shouting from the rear of the ship.
“What happened?” she said, unbuckling her restraints and climbing over the seat to see.
“The lieutenant bumped his head badly,” Raileo said. “He wasn’t restrained when we started spinning just now.”
Helga was devastated. Here was Cilas, the best of their number, hurt again, and it was because of her. She rushed to his side to see how badly he was injured. “Will he be okay, Tutt?” she said to the big Nighthawk crouched next to the lieutenant, administering aid.
“He’s wearing his helmet, so it’s probably just a mild concussion,” he said. “I’m going to recommend the tank. The lieutenant’s had a string of missions that battered him up, and he hasn’t taken the time to heal. So I think that treatment, psych, and then the tank will fix him up. I will need your permission to do so, ma’am, since you’re now officially in charge.”
“Anything it takes,” Helga said. “We can keep things together until he is ready to come back.”
“Thank you,” Quentin said, and went back to examining Cilas’s head.
Helga felt helpless. She had done this, but it was all for the sake of getting them back alive. It was strange; she wanted to blame herself, but what was the alternative? Letting the zip-ships destroy them? She went back into the cockpit and put the computer on standby, then opened the hatch and dropped the ramp so they could get Cilas to medbay.
Just then, a Geralos zip-ship flew into the hangar, crashing into the bulkhead where it exploded, taking out several Phantoms and a handful of dockworkers. Never before had Helga seen such a thing, and it should have been impossible, considering the Rendron’s shields and defenses.
The pilot of this vessel had crashed into a Phantom and the Rendron’s computer, confused, permitted them entry to cause the devastation that they did. Now the hangar was in chaos as spacers rushed to put out the flames and dig out any survivors from the wreckage.
All the carnage sent a chill down Helga’s spine as she recalled Millicent saving her earlier, despite being in the crosshairs of two ships. To think that she and the Revenants were now stuck outside, unable to dock due to the pressure from the Geralos. Helga wouldn’t be able to live with herself if they were left behind, and she glanced back at her Vestalian Classic, debating whether or not she should join them.
“The captain won’t jump until everyone’s on board,” Raileo said, and it was all she needed to hear to commit.
“They need my help,” Helga said, then crouched and jumped, activating her rockets before pulling on her helmet and landing on the wing of her Classic. She gained the cockpit, did a quick diagnostics check, and then scrolled through the interface to find Lieutenant Joy Valance, flight leader of the Revenants.
“Lieutenant, this is Ate, what’s the situation out there?” she said, and when Joy Valance didn’t reply she pulled the landing gear and started the Classic forward, steering it past the wreckage towards the launch shaft. “Please be alive, girl,” she whispered into the comms, then slammed the thrust forward as she took a breath, missing Quentin in her ear, wishing her luck.
Helga’s hands moved on instinct and reflex, balancing power between her thrust and cannons, leaving a sliver for shields. The metal bulkhead of the hangar became a blur of grey, then black, as she shot out into space. When she broke past the Rendron she saw the problem: hundreds of zip-ships at the entrance, keeping the Revenants from getting in.
It was like flying into a cloud of gnats, trying to avoid them to preserve her shields. Helga slipped through their laser fire by staying close to the hull, and since the Classic was a third the Britz-SPZ’s size, it was much easier to do.
She baited an overzealous pilot to fly amongst the batteries, but he recognized the danger and pulled away to chase a less talented fighter. Helga came about and bore down on him, blasting past several enemy ships. The Geralos ace grew wise and broke off to force a chase. Two more zip-ships fell on her flank, completing the pattern of bait and destroy.
Had they known that she was relying on this, they would have broken off immediately and left her alone. Helga flew towards their destroyer, shunting everything to shields, pulsing shots from her weakened cannons to keep the marked one running.
One of the Revenants that was dominating several Geralos left the maelstrom of laser fire to bail Helga out. She tried to wave him off by waggling her wings and yelling on the open comms, but the pilot didn’t listen, and when they grew close, Helga saw that it was her good friend, Joy Valance.
“Ate, what are you doing?” she said.
“Getting those things away from mother,” Helga shouted. She was getting close to the destroyer, which forced a number of its cannons to focus on her ship. “A zip got into our hangar, Lieutenant. Luckily it crashed, but it killed a lot of people. If you command your squadron to draw them away from Rendron, we can buy some time to possibly charge up a torpedo.”
An alarm screamed when Helga was struck by several shots from her pursuers, and the ship she was chasing became emboldened and tried her trick of flying between the cannons. They flew into the dark wall that was the hull of the Geralos warship, pulling up at the last minute where Helga put more fire on the zip-ship’s thrusters.
Although this was a destroyer, with cannons pumping out energy blasts, Helga followed the zip-ship with little concern for her life. She rolled one way and then the other, dodging the big guns as she gained his flank. He maxed his shields, which were all but depleted by Helga’s energy cannons, and she slipped power to her thrusters, reducing her defenses to nothing.
“Have you lost your thyping mind?” Joy screamed into the comms. “What are you doing, Ate? You need to break off!”
Helga was too in the moment to hear her friend, and time seemed to slow as she focused on her enemy. The foolish ace overestimated his ability to dodge the payload coming from its destroyer, and one blast clipped it, and then another, causing it to crash into one of the cannons.
Since the shields allowed the crash, several more cannons malfunctioned from the collision. The remaining zip-ships were called back to defend, and the Rendron pilots seized the advantage and went back on the offense. Millicent Ral was in rare form in her Phantom, taking down plenty as she weaved in and out. Joy and Helga stayed close to the destroyer’s hull, where they flew to its dead side to avoid the incoming fighters.
“Rendron pilots,” said a deep voice over the comms. “Break off immediately and return home.”
“Sounds like we’re about to jump,” Helga said when she caught her breath.
“Good, because I need to kick your ass,” Joy said. “We’re supposed to be distracting these things, but here you go playing at suicide.”
“Hangar’s clear,” Helga said, smiling at her accomplishment, but Joy didn’t reply and flew away to collect her squadron. I guess I’ll have to explain later, Helga thought, before making a wide arc away from the destroyer.
3
The hangar was a flurry of activity as the fighters barely made it inside the blast doors. As expected, two more destroyers appeared, intent on finishing off the Rendron, but when word came that all vessels were onboard, their captain started the countdown for the jump to light speed.
Surprisingly, the enemy ships did not try to pursue as the Rendron moved into position, shooting past the first attacker to point her nose away from Meluvia. The desperate Geralos, seeing what was about to happen, focused fire on the area of the FTL drive. It was as futile as trying to chase them, since the shields held up long enough for the Rendron to get clear
Once thrusters w
ere primed and a course was plotted, the Rendron made the jump to deep space. This was uncharted territory, the realm of the most nefarious pirates and worse, but like the Alliance, the Geralos avoided it, which was precisely why it was chosen as a refuge. No one came to deep space unless they were running from something, and it served as a reliable way to escape the Geralos.
“Well, that stinks,” Helga said into her comms. “All that work we did on the dreadnought, only to leave it for the lizards to reclaim.” In the rush to escape, the Rendron’s tether had been severed, and they were forced to leave the derelict dreadnought behind.
“They won’t have time, I guarantee it,” Quentin said. “If I know our captain, he would have contacted the Alliance and another ship will be along to recover the salvage. We’re still in recovery from the first battle, so we couldn’t risk taking on three destroyers.”
“I do hope you’re right,” Helga said, pushing open the cockpit to exit, using her PAS rockets to glide down to the deck. “The lieutenant was wounded because we boarded that junker, and it would have been worth the trouble if we now had the salvage to aid our repairs. But now we’re running, and we’re still wounded from all the fighting, which means that we’ll be in deep space for several cycles.”
“Is that so bad? The lieutenant is hurt,” Raileo said. “This guarantees him a proper recovery, since we won’t be deployed while we’re repairing.”
“Ate, you had us worried,” Quentin said. “I doubt the lieutenant would have approved of your actions just now.”
“You’re right,” Helga said, “but it shows that you don’t know me. I take my piloting seriously, Tutt, and if the Rendron needs me, I answer. There was no way that I was going to just sit on my hands after a thyping lizard broke past our shields. Do you know what it could have done to us had it not crashed? None of us would be here to question each other’s actions. We can argue about this later, but I’m filling in for the lieutenant, and I need to get out of this suit and give a report to the captain.”
