“I’ll bring you Kitzov, sir. I want to see him swing as much as anyone.”
The Resolute fired another burst, again narrowly missing.
“They are activating the mass beam,” Thresh said. “It’ll be live in five…four…”
“Mess this up, Boyd, and you’ll be right alongside him.”
“Three…”
Boyd hit the main drive.
“Two…”
The Blade leapt away. The fastest of the Union’s ships, not even the Resolute could match her for speed.
“What now?” Thresh asked. She shifted to get comfortable in the cramped cockpit. She stretched her legs forward, around Boyd’s waist. She leaned forward against his back, her head on his shoulder.
“First thing we do is we get out of the area. Head to the belt and get lost in there for a bit.” Boyd looked to his side. Thresh was here, her hair brushing his cheek. There was small abrasion on her forehead. He wanted to clean and dress the little wound. He pulled out an emergency med-pack from the cockpit supply drawer and handed it over.
“For your head,” he said.
She took it and smiled. Her smile dropped. “He left me,” she said as she ripped open the pack.
“He needed to get away. He’s important to the Faction. Without him, the whole thing could fall apart and you’d be back to being just a disparate group of criminals.”
“Isn’t that just what you want, Sergeant Boyd?”
Boyd turned as much as he could. “I don’t think I’m a sergeant anymore. I’ve just beaten up some Blue Stars, stolen a Blade, and helped a known fugitive escape. I don’t know if I’m Faction either. Guess I’m just Will now.”
“Look out, Will.” Thresh pointed forward out of the clear composite cockpit cover. A distant dark speck was highlighted on the holo-display. “What’s that?”
“That,” Boyd said, settling into the seat and placing his hands on the flight controls, “is the carrier Eminence. And she’s launching a flight of Blades.”
“They are heading right for us,” she said. She sat back in the cockpit and began familiarizing herself with the Blade’s systems.
Boyd turned his Blade and ran. All he could do now was run.
The Silence approached the Faction shipyard at full speed, slowing at the last moment. Kitzov opened a channel to the shipyard’s command center just outside the defense platform’s kill range.
“This is Kitzov. Clear a landing platform. I’m coming in.”
Kitzov waited and wondered why there was no immediate response, then Captain Gerard finally replied, “Kitzov, we heard you had been captured.”
“You heard right. You didn’t hear how I broke out and freed many of our Faction friends who were captured with me. Now, which landing pad is free, Gerard?”
“Proceed to landing pad two. Welcome back.”
“Landing pad two?” Kitzov said to himself. The Silence should have been given the primary landing pad. He received the flight plan for landing pad two on his command chair’s armrest controls and sent them to the flight console, instructing the pilot to proceed.
The Silence moved toward the shipyard, a towering structure binding several large asteroids together. The central control column was surrounded by Faction ships. Kitzov spotted old junkers retrofitted with hail cannon or high-energy lasers. Some stolen Union ships, frigates and corvettes. And there were the Faction-built raiders that had all been designed and built here at this yard.
“Why are so many ships here?” Kitzov leaned forward in his command chair and looked at the image on his main holo-stage. “They should be out, harassing the Union.”
As the Silence came closer to the central column, Kitzov saw the ships on the landing pads.
“Something’s been going on here,” Kitzov said to himself. He opened the small locker on the inside of his left armrest and pulled out the pistol. He climbed down from the command chair and tucked the weapon into his hip holster.
“Time to landing?” Kitzov asked. He turned and walked off the command deck as the pilot called out that they were only three minutes from touchdown.
Kitzov stood impatiently at the boarding ramp, and the moment he felt the ship slow and turn for landing, he opened the ramp. The door slid up and the ramp slid out. He stepped out onto the ramp with the ship still a few meters above the pad. As the landing thrusters curled in the grav field, Kitzov looked down for his welcoming committee.
No one.
The Silence was within a meter of landing when Kitzov jumped off the ramp. He moved smoothly into a striding walk toward the elevator that led to the shipyard interior.
The elevator was ready for him.
“The only thing that is ready for me,” Kitzov muttered to himself as he stepped inside. “Main command.” The doors slid shut. Kitzov saw the newly-rescued crew of the Silence walking down the boarding ramp.
The elevator moved down to the central command center. The ride was rough. The stability field was clearly out of calibration. The door slid open. Kitzov, feeling nauseous from the bumpy ride, stepped out into the busy space.
Captain Gerard was standing with a group of Faction captains. Gerard walked over to Kitzov as he stepped out.
“Kitzov. Welcome.” Gerard said, smiling rather too much for Kitzov’s liking.
“The elevator is out of calibration,” Kitzov said. “Get someone to fix it. Now.” He walked past Gerard and over to the group of captains. “Greetings, friends. News of my capture is a little out of date. I escaped the Union. Just like I freed us all from the Union.”
One captain looked Kitzov up and down. He pulled out a hand scanner and swiped it in front of Kitzov.
“No need for that. I’m back and I’m ready to lead us on our next step toward parity with the Union, and then we can free all citizens of the Scorpio System from the heavy boot of Union oppression.”
“It’s him alright,” the captain with the scanner said, hardly looking at the scan results.
Captain Bellini stepped out of the group and in front of Kitzov.
“Nice words. You have a lot of words, Kitzov. We’ve had enough words. We want action. The Union is scattered, chasing Skarak ghosts across the system. We need to be freed up from your patrol patterns and tactics. We want free rein again, to seek out juicy plunder and attack. Destroying plunder is bad business. We want things back the way they were.”
“Captain Bellini,” Kitzov said with a smile. “One of our best and most reliable captains. We wouldn’t have got where we are today without your bravery and courage. Look around you.” Kitzov swept his hand across the large transparent bulkhead to the shipyard, filled with Faction ships. “We were once a disparate group with no direction. Running from Union cruisers and hoping to avoid the noose long enough to spend some plunder. Under my leadership, we have built a nation, a community. We are building our own ships, strong enough to rival any Union cruiser–”
“And when did you last face a Union cruiser?” Bellini snarled, stepping forward.
“Some of us are better placed elsewhere in our organization. Those of us best suited to killing Union ships do that, while some of us are humble servants of the Faction.”
“Humble?” Bellini sneered. “Never thought of you as humble, Kitzov.”
“I serve the Faction. Who do you serve, Captain?”
“Myself.” Bellini squared off against Kitzov. “As do all the captains here. You have used our ships for your own purposes for too long. It’s time for a new leader.”
Kitzov smiled as he saw the nods of agreement from the group of captains at Bellini’s back. A side glance, and Kitzov saw Gerard avoiding his gaze, looking at his feet, hands fiddling nervously in front of him.
“A new leader?” Kitzov said. “You?” He looked at Bellini, his head tipping one way and another as if considering the idea. “Okay. Send out a Faction-wide call. All captains and settlement governors to have their votes back to the shipyard for collation in one week. Agreed?”
Bellin
i smirked. “No. No votes. We do this the old way, the proper way, the pirate’s way. I challenge you for leader, Kitzov. I challenge you to knucks.”
Kitzov felt his stomach drop. It might have been the result of the bumpy elevator ride. It might have been fear. Either way, he didn’t let it show. He felt the pistol on his hip. A slight twitch and he gave away his thought of grabbing for it. Bellini saw it and had his hand on his own pistol, half-drawing the weapon.
Kitzov relaxed, smiled. Bellini returned his pistol to its holster.
“Is that the decision of the captains?” Kitzov said. “Is it to be the knucks between Bellini and myself?”
The captains nodded.
“And you think this is the best way to proceed?”
Again, nods.
“It’ll be the knucks,” Bellini said. “It is the proper way. Shall we say, one week?”
Kitzov nodded. He offered Bellini his hand. Bellini stepped back and folded his arms across his chest.
“I have your usual accommodation ready for you, Kitzov,” Captain Gerard said, stepping up alongside. “I can escort you.”
“I’ll find my way,” Kitzov said. “I built this shipyard. I can find my rooms.”
Kitzov walked away, back to the elevator. Knucks was an outmoded system of leadership selection and it had held the Faction back. He had built it up into the coherent organization it was today. Kitzov was not about to let it all slip away because some thug wanted power. He stepped into the lift and turned to face the group in the command center.
“In one week then,” he said, and the elevator door closed.
15
Boyd threw the fighter into a tight turn and blasted off in the heading that would take it as swiftly away from the Eminence as possible.
“The Blades from that carrier sure are closing in fast,” Thresh said. “I think I can find a bit more power in these systems.” She pulled a panel off the side of the cockpit and started digging through the tangle of conduits and fibers hidden behind.
Boyd had the Blade at top speed and all he could do was watch the small holo-stage as it showed him the fighters closing in.
“We are too heavy,” Boyd said.
“Heavy?” Thresh said. “What are you saying?”
Thresh moved the loose panel out of the way of the tangle of fibers and bashed Boyd on the head.
“Oww, watch it.”
“Shut it, Union scum,” Thresh said and began pulling out handfuls of micro conduits.
“We’ll be in range of their spitz guns any moment.”
The fighters were formed in a tight diamond. The Blade in the top position was only a hundred meters from the Blade at the bottom.
Their spitz guns fired.
“Countermeasures,” Boyd said. He activated the Blade’s defense systems. A series of micro drone decoys and target scramble flare fields erupted from the rear of the craft. The barrage of spitz rounds flashed over the cockpit cover, but they were just out of range.
“Why don’t they ask us to surrender?” Thresh said. She pulled a conduit and cut it with an electron blade.
“Careful with that! You’ll slash through the cockpit cover with that thing.”
The Blade rocked as another round of countermeasures was launched. A fresh barrage of spitz gun fire from the perusing formation burst around the fighter. Boyd looked up and saw the rounds burst only meters from the cockpit.
“They are still not in effective range. They are trying to force us into a turn so they can get a clean kill.”
“They are not going to have to make us turn to get a clean kill if I can’t get some more power.” Thresh cut a second conduit and started binding the two different conduits together. “But I think I can give us a boost.” She grabbed a third and held it near the spliced pair. “Hold on to something.”
Boyd was pinned into the cockpit with Thresh’s legs wrapped around him. He was packed in like a ration block in its shrink-wrap. It was impossible for him not to hold on to something.
Thresh touched the conduits, and the Blade jumped forward. The stability field fluctuated and Boyd felt his body being tugged in a hundred directions. He started to feel dizzy and on the edge of vomiting. His vision blurred.
When the Blade settled down and his vision returned to normal, he saw they had leapt away from the perusing formation by a thousand kilometers.
“Good work,” Boyd said. “What was that?”
“I took power from the weapons and threw it into the drive.”
“Are you insane?! You could have blown us to bits!”
“Maybe I did.” She wrapped her arms around Boyd and squeezed with her legs. “Maybe this is the afterlife.”
A flash of energy ran through his body as he felt Thresh press against him, but he forced himself to concentrate.
“Faction nonsense,” Boyd said. He checked the position of the pursuing Blades on the holo-stage. “You’ve only bought us a few minutes, ten minutes at most. Those Blades are still closing in. And we’ve actually lost a bit of our top speed.”
Boyd opened the sensor range to maximum reach, low resolution, and looked for anywhere he could hide. The Eminence had cut him off from running to the belt. The next planet on his sunward journey was Supra. A renegade Blue Star and a Faction fugitive? They would be in danger anywhere around the gas giant Supra or on any of her moons.
“Just take us back to the belt,” Thresh said. She laid her chin on Boyd’s shoulder and he felt the flash of energy again as her breath moved past his ear.
“Good plan, with only one major drawback. The Eminence and the flight Blades are between us and the belt.”
“What if I could make us disappear?”
Boyd turned and looked at Thresh. She was so close he could feel her warm breath on his face.
“Invisibility?” Boyd said.
Thresh laughed. “I am good, but I am not quite that good. Maybe I can send us to the next life, or at least make them think that’s what we did.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“Turn us around and attack.” Thresh unwound her arms and legs from Boyd and turned toward the back of the cockpit, kicking and nudging Boyd as she moved. She began pulling at the bulkhead.
“Attack? We won’t last five minutes against a flight of Blades. I am a great pilot, but I’m not that good.”
Thresh was pulling conduits. “Oh, Will,” she said. “You are not a great pilot. But maybe you are just good enough. Now put us on a collision course with those Blades and I’ll get to work on the escape plan.”
Boyd shook his head. “I don’t know what you are doing, but I’ve got to tell you, I thought we were becoming friends. If you get me killed, I am going to be very angry with you.”
Boyd turned the Blade and headed straight for the center of the pursuing fighters.
“They have already seen us customize this ship to get away. Now I’m going to make them think I’ve boosted the weapons.”
“I thought the weapons were offline,” Boyd said, watching the range to the Blades race down.
“The weapons are offline, but they don’t know that. If we move in and activate the spitz gun, they will angle their deflectors in a group deflection shield. Then…” She hesitated, pulled a final conduit, and studied it to check it was the right one.
“Then what?” Boyd said.
“We explode.” Thresh cut the conduit. She reached into the hardware and pulled out a small device with short conduit cable where she’d cut it free.
“Explode? Is that really your plan?”
“They will think we are dead.”
“We will be dead.”
“Not if we can use this.” She held the device forward in front of Boyd.
“Is that a deflector shield generator? So now we have no deflector?”
“We can use it to make a bubble around us. We set an overload in the power governors and we blow up. The deflection bubble will keep us safe from the blast. They will never spot us in the explosion,
and they will race past and their deflection shield will throw us off to the side. They’ll think we’re goners.”
“So, you want us to abandon ship, no environment suits, just a deflection shield bubble.”
“Yes.” Thresh slumped back into the seat behind Boyd. “But when you say it like that, it sounds like a bad idea.”
“It is a bad idea.” Boyd watched the holo-stage range counter. Fifteen seconds to spitz gun range.
Boyd pulled open the Blade’s emergency bailout kit. It had one pulse pistol. One emergency ration block, one respirator, and one communicator set to transmit to the nearest Union ship.
“Well, I’ve found us dinner,” Boyd said, holding up the ration block, “and an atmosphere.” He held up the respirator. “We won’t have long.”
“Longer than if we stayed here. Ready?”
“No.”
The Blade controls began to glow. Thresh tightly squeezed her arms and legs around Boyd. She pressed her head into his neck.
The spitz gun fire from the fighters peppered the noise of the Blade and then all around was suddenly white. Boyd clenched his eyes shut. Fierce white fire raged around him just a few centimeters from his face. He felt no heat and heard no sound. He just felt Thresh gripping him tight.
This was danger. This was great.
Then Boyd was in blackness and tumbling wildly. He looked at the spinning view and tried to steady his mind, Thresh riding piggyback as they tumbled through the void. The drive flares of the flight of Blades slowed and surrounded the shrinking ball of plasma.
Thresh shrieked in joy. “I did it!” she said. She held Boyd tight and climbed around to be face to face with him. She wore the deflection field generator around her neck like a pendant.
Boyd was releasing air from the respirator, filling their invisible bubble with atmosphere.
“Don’t talk,” Boyd said. “We’ll waste air. We don’t have long. I can rig the pulse pistol to give us some thrust. Maybe we can make it to the belt.”
The massive carrier was approaching fast as Boyd and Thresh flew forward, carrying the speed from the Blade before it detonated. They were floating almost naked in space. Only the deflection field bubble and the atmosphere from the single respirator preventing them from dying in the void.
Blue Star Marine Boxed Set Page 48
