by Joshua James
“I’m Captain Renny LeFleur with the 78th Fleet of the Alliance of Independent Colonies. Identify yourself, yah,” ordered LeFleur. She had the halting speech and mannerisms that Ben had long identified with the AIC; the ‘yah’ in particular was a common interjection. He knew off-worlders who didn’t use it, but most did.
“My name is Ben Sanders, and this is our ship, the Swan,” Ben said.
“This is AIC space,” LeFleur said. “State your business here.”
Morgan glanced back at Ben. AIC space? This was neutral space, the last she’d heard. The Atlas wouldn’t have jumped into AIC space directly. It seemed the AIC was expanding.
Or maybe this was another game that the powers played out here on the fringes. Ben seemed to take her pronouncement in stride.
“We’re privateers,” Ben said. “On our way to Vassar-1.”
Technically it was in the ballpark of truth. Morgan’s father had always said the best lies had a sliver of truth. Then again, she had a complicated relationship with her father. Before this was all over, she was going to have to tell everyone the truth about him.
But not yet.
“Mercenaries, yah? Why are you going to Vassar-1? What business do you have there?”
“We’re looking for work. Word around the neural net is that you guys are looking for some hired hands to carry on the good fight against the Terrans.”
He’d pushed it too far. Morgan could see it instantly in the face of the woman on the other side of the conversation.
“If you were indeed looking for work, you’d know that you need to go to one of our military outposts to sign up and get assigned. Considering the fact that you don’t know that and look to be scrapers and salvagers, you are under arrest. We’ll find out the truth once you’re aboard our ship. Prepare to be boarded.”
LeFleur quickly ended the video call. Ben sat back, rubbing his chin.
“Good job, asshole,” Ace said. “Now we get see the inside of a prison. An AIC prison. I can’t believe I vouched for you.”
Ace had been petrified of going it alone with Morgan; she knew that. Under his bluster, he was frightened out of his mind. He’d grabbed hold of Ben like a security blanket.
Morgan wasn’t about to give him a free pass. “Ace, do you ever shut up?”
“Weapons,” Ace said, ignoring her and beginning to rummage around the rear cabin. “We need weapons.”
“What’s the plan?” Morgan asked Ben once Ace was in back.
Ben frowned. “Can you charge up the engines and the forward cannons without them knowing?”
“Engines, yes. We’re tiny compared to what they’re built for out here, so they won’t necessarily register it. But cannons, no. They’ll be looking for weapons systems.”
“Once engines are up, though, you can charge the cannon fast, right?”
Morgan thought about it. “Once we’re over fifty percent, I suppose that’s true,” she said. “We can fire a bolt or two while we charge the rest of the way.”
Ben nodded. “We’ll only need a bolt or two.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Get engines up as close to fifty percent as you can,” Ben said. “Do it at your discretion, but don’t wait too long. I want a surprise engine burst waiting for them when they try and link the docking tunnel.”
Morgan whistled. “It’s chancy. If we break the coupling…” She let the implication hang in the air.
Ben’s features hardened. “Those guys aren’t setting foot on this ship.”
Two
The AIC salvage ship approached the Lost from the front.
“That can’t be what that captain’s on,” Ben said, which meant there was something else out here. A dreadnought, certainly. Possibly more. Maybe lots more.
The AIC didn’t want for firepower. For all he knew, there was an armada just outside the debris field that they hadn’t even stumbled upon yet.
“Half-power,” Morgan whispered. “I don’t want to cycle much higher with them this close.”
“Is that enough?”
“Against that? Sure.”
“And against more?”
“If we start shooting, I’ll start cycling to full power without limits. From fifty percent, we can get to a hundred in a few seconds.”
Ben had a feeling there was something she wasn’t telling him, but he could live with that. She knew what she was doing with the ship far better than he did.
Ben had spent his life on destroyers. His instinct here was to shoot first and ask questions later, which meant that was the instinct of the AIC officer he’d been speaking with earlier, for sure.
“More company,” Morgan said, pointing at her instruments. “Two AIC fighters coming up from behind.”
“Flanking us,” Ben said. “That means the welcome party’s coming.”
On cue, a boarding vessel began a slow approach from behind. The boarding vessel was lightly armed on the outside; it was a glorified tin can. But what it lacked in external firepower, Ben knew, was more than made up for by what was inside. He expected that a full squadron of Marines, armed to the teeth, would come flooding into the ship the instant the dock link was secure.
“This is some bullshit,” Ace said anxiously. His search for more weapons must have come up empty, because he simply kept grabbing the handle of his pistol, then releasing and grabbing it again, over and over.
“Just wait. We need to time this right.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ace said.
After a few seconds that seemed like an eternity, Ben felt and heard the jarring sound of another ship docking with them.
Ben spun around to Morgan. Her hands were already dancing over her controls, anticipating the maneuver.
“Wait,” Ben said.
Morgan poised over her control board.
“Wait,” Ben said.
“What the hell are we waiting for?” Ace hissed.
Then Ben heard it. The inner door chamber opened.
“Now,” he snapped. They had one chance. They had to hit the boarding ship while her door was open but the Lost’s wasn’t.
Morgan goosed the thrusters. Even at half-power, they easily ripped the link to the docking ship open. Gas instantly vented out into space and the ship careened wildly away, slamming into one of the two fighters floating in tight formation with it.
“Firing,” Morgan said as she unloaded several hundred high-speed pulse rounds from the Lost’s front cannons. Even if the plasma cannons were at full charge, they’d likely not have been able to penetrate the salvage ship’s shields, but they didn’t have to. They just needed to surprise them long enough to get past them.
“Powering to full,” Morgan said. “Hang on!”
The Lost jumped forward as her thrusters exploded to life. No more half-power now; they were wide open. The remaining fighter behind them was caught in the wash and tumbled away. Morgan leaned hard on the thrusters, but there was still the loud sound of metal on metal as the gunship smashed past the salvager.
“That hurt!” Ace shouted.
“Them more than us,” Morgan said, although Ben wasn’t sure how she could know that. Running into things in space was generally bad for everyone involved.
“Full power,” Morgan said. “We’ve got company.”
The fighter that had initially been kicked away was now in pursuit. The second fighter, still further back, was also coming around.
“Can you lose them?” Ben asked.
“That’s the idea,” Morgan said. She turned the Lost and dove for the densest part of the debris field.
“Ace, get to the back of the ship and man those pulse cannons,” Ben snapped. “Clean our ass off.”
“With pleasure,” Ace said, jumping out of his seat and sounding genuinely relieved. He might have actually skipped as he ran. Even if this were life or death, just the fact that he’d be shooting at something seemed to put the man at ease.
Ben’s attention was split between the readings in front of him, w
hich reflected the data on Morgan’s screen, and the gunship’s viewing screen.
“This is thick,” Ben said. “We can’t go full speed in here.”
Morgan’s shoulders seemed to tighten. “Shouldn’t be a problem, boss,” she said.
Did she think he was making some kind of judgment about her flying? Before he could disavow her of that view, Morgan said, “This might get bumpy.”
The view through the forward viewscreen spun around so fast that Ben felt dizzy. A moment later, Morgan started a series of extreme maneuvers that Ben was sure would make even the most seasoned fighter pilot lose his lunch. She laughed the whole way.
Ben held back his nausea and held tight to the armrests of the captain’s chair. High-energy plasma rounds flew past, no doubt from the fighters that were in pursuit. In theory, they were more maneuverable than the Lost could ever hope to be, but with Morgan at the controls, Ben wasn’t so sure of that.
A chunk of debris was hit by some of the plasma fire, and exploded in front of the Lost. Morgan grunted and compensated instantly, but there was still an alarming amount of jostling as the larger pieces slammed into the hull plating.
The deeper they flew into the debris field, the more of it was disturbed in the pursuit, creating a chain reaction of debris impacts that made the going very hard. Finally it seemed even Morgan and her ego had had enough.
“As fun as this is, we can’t keep this up too much longer,” she advised. Her artificial eyes moved much more quickly than a natural pair, helping her navigate the debris field and make split-second decisions and moves. An alarm blared to life on her board, and she silenced it, but not before Ben saw that they were facing structural damage to the hull.
“HUD, call Ace,” Ben said.
“Whaddaya want? I’m kinda busy,” Ace replied.
“How’s it coming back there with putting holes in the things chasing us?”
“I’m working on it!” Ace shouted over the sound of the rear cannons firing. “These things are just a little bit nimbler than what I’m firing.”
“We need you to take at least one of those bastards out,” Ben said calmly.
“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Ace exploded. “Hold hands and sing together?”
“Stop going for kill shots and clip their engines,” Ben said. “Those are old AIC designs. Made for atmospheric and space flight.”
“So?” Ace demanded.
“So they have outboard thrusters. Clip the wings.”
Ace paused. “I knew that,” he said at last.
“Sure you did,” Ben said. “Just reminding you. End call.”
Ben returned his attention to the forward viewscreen just as Morgan said, “What the hell is that?”
Three
Morgan had seen a lot of big ships in her day. She might have been grounded on Earth for the past few years, but in her youth, on the long haulers her mother used to fly, she saw some of the biggest ships in the universe. There was a rhyme and a reason to way things were constructed on a spaceship, no matter what their make or model, home port, or final duty was.
That youthful knowledge was the only reason she was sure what she was seeing in front of her was part of a spaceship. Because otherwise, based on the sheer size, she honestly would have guessed that it was the remnants of a space station.
“What the hell are we looking at?” she asked.
Ben had stood up from the command chair and drifted forward, seemingly without realizing it until he was right in front of the viewscreen.
“That’s the Atlas,” he said, then frowned and turned to Morgan. “Or what’s left of it.”
The ship rocked. “Damn, we just took a hard impact,” Morgan said. A red light blared on her screen. “Hull breach.”
“What the hell is going on up there?” Ace shouted.
Ben jumped back into his seat. “Keep firing,” he said. “We’re going to try and get some cover.”
Morgan glanced back at him. “We are?”
“Dive for her,” Ben said. “Straight for the heart of that … remnant.”
Morgan spun around and calculated a path—or at least the best path she could find for the moment—then began shifting the pathway as new explosions of debris around them ripped open.
She had to be careful now, with the damage to the hull, but there was some sense in trying to run close to the giant chunk of spaceship. It would act as an artificial block against the largest of the debris. They could almost make the ship a part of their own damaged hull.
“This is going to be a tight one,” Morgan said as she angled the gunship right under the front of the huge chunk of starship in front of her.
Ben stared up at it as they passed. “Where’s the front of her?”
It was a strange enough question that Morgan, busy trying not to smash into the side of it, thought for a moment that Ben might be losing his mind. Being this close to his father’s ship might be affecting him.
But then she saw what he was talking about. Unlike most of the other debris they were flying around out here, this enormous mass of starship might be dead in space and riddled with damage, but the front section hadn’t been sheared off. It hadn’t been blown in half or suffered some other catastrophic damage. Clearly, the ship had separated along some designed seam.
“That’s … strange,” was all Morgan could muster.
Ben pursed his lips. “They left it behind,” he said.
“What?”
“If the front portion is missing, and it clearly disconnected, then where did it go?”
“Can it do that?” she asked.
Ben nodded. He knew the ship better than she did. He’d trained for months to serve on it. So if it he said it was possible, however unlikely it seemed to Morgan, it must be so.
Morgan flipped the Lost around and hugged as close to the floating, spinning section of what she now saw as the Atlas as well. There was plenty of hull damage. Some of that was surely from the debris field, but there had been a firefight here as well. She wanted to take a closer look at the seam—
An explosion sent a huge chunk of the Atlas debris drifting down right in front of them.
Morgan spun the Lost in a corkscrew, desperately aiming to fit in between the debris chunks. Only the fact that the remnants were still tightly clustered to the impact zone kept them alive. If anything large had hit their hull, they’d have been done for.
“What the hell was that?” Ben asked.
“One of those bastards has missiles,” Ace said from behind, as if he was seeing what they were seeing. “Missed us by inches.”
“It must have detonated on the base of the ship,” Morgan said. “It must have been stealth. I got nothing up here.” She shook her head at the pure dumb luck of it.
“A missile did that?” Ben asked.
“I’m guessing.”
“Don’t we have missiles, too?”
Morgan frowned. “Well, yes, but they’re dumb missiles. We’ll never be able to hit those fighters with them.”
“I don’t want to hit the fighters,” Ben said.
Morgan felt a little smile crossing her lips. She reduced flight thrust to almost zero. “Yeah, I think we can do that.”
“What the hell are we doing?” Ace shouted. “These things are practically on top of us.”
Morgan spun the gunship around like a top. “Hang on, Ace,” she said. “This is going to get messy.”
She fired off all four missiles at the far edge of the Atlas chunk, then shot off right after them. She waited until the moment they were going to hit and then dove hard over, dropping the z-reading as fast as possible.
The explosion of debris directly above the ship spread radially, like a slow-blooming flower of destruction.
But the fighters were just too maneuverable. The first fighter stayed right with the Lost, able to skim below the debris field right along with her, while the rear fighter was able to see the debris in time and break off his chase.
“At least
it bought us a few seconds,” Ben said bitterly.
But even that wasn’t exactly true, Morgan now saw. By forcing the nearest fighter to hug tighter to them, it was now right on their tail. Morgan waited for the inevitable missile impact.
Instead, the fighter flipped sideways, its starboard wing and thruster exploding, and slammed upside down into the base of the Atlas, sending a fresh shower of debris separating into space.
“Yeaaaaaah,” shouted Ace. “Serves the asshole right for getting so close.”
“You hit one?” Morgan said incredulously.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Ace answered.
“There’s still one out there,” Ben said.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Ace said. “Where the hell is he?”
Morgan’s head snapped down to her instruments. Where was he? “I lost him after the missile barrage.”
“Well, I don’t—”
The Lost shook hard. Morgan was thrown forward against her restraints.
Ben, who wasn’t in his, went sprawling across the floor, and was lucky not to get hurt. “You know, the captain’s chair has restraints,” Morgan offered through gritted teeth.
Ben dragged himself up. “Learning new things all the time,” he said. “What was that?”
“She’s flying sluggish,” Morgan said. “I think we have structural damage.”
Ace came stumbling back into the cockpit, covered in soot. His left arm looked badly lacerated below the elbow.
“That bastard took out the rear cannon assembly and half the lower deck,” Ace said, pulling a patch kit out from under the jump seat in the back of the cabin.
“Are you going to live?” Morgan said. “Okay, good,” she continued, without waiting for an answer.
“We might be in serious trouble,” said Ben.
“Captain Understatement strikes again.”
Morgan shot out from behind the Atlas debris just as a shadow materialized above them. Two more joined it.
