by Joshua James
Quinn’s shoulders relaxed. “I believe you.”
Yasha stiffened. “You shouldn’t. You would be making a mistake to trust me.”
“I didn’t say I trust you. I said I believe you. You couldn’t cause that … that … pulse if there wasn’t something different about you. You attacked me with some kind of psychic fugue when you were unconscious. You wouldn’t tell us to check the records if you weren’t sure we would confirm what you said.”
“Yeah, well.” Yasha spun away and marched back to the locker. She muttered over her shoulder with her back to Quinn. “You can leave me at Epsilon Outpost, ‘cuz I ain’t getting anywhere near Earth—not in this lifetime.”
Sixteen
Two hours later, the intercom in Eli’s cabin crackled to life. “We will arrive at the Epsilon Outpost in twenty minutes,” Jood announced.
“Dock us at the usual spot,” Eli said.
“One other issue,” Jood said. “The Outpost is undergoing repairs on her transport platforms and has informed us that all outbound traffic is going through the orbital docking station.”
“Okaaay,” Eli said, not sure why he cared about this information. Epsilon Outpost was sprawling and always had construction going on somewhere.
“For the purposes of our passenger,” Jood explained. “I thought—”
Eli let out a frustrated growl. “Damnit, right.” It figures. The universe did have it out for him sometimes. Rather than just kicking everybody out when they landed, now they’d have to make one last trip to orbit. “Remind me Jood, how long is that trip to the docking station?”
“Seven minutes.”
Eli rubbed his face. “OK, I guess we can survive a whole seven extra minutes with our guest.”
“One would hope so.”
Eli sighed. “I’ll stop by the galley first and tell everyone the good news.”
Truth be told, he’d had some time to think now and he had a couple more questions for their passenger.
Yasha stiffened when Eli walked in. Quinn straddled a bench across the room, peering into one of the lockers with her back to Yasha. She didn’t see Eli come in and continued with what she was saying. “I’m just saying that maybe with practice, you would be able to control it. I understand you don’t want to use it as a weapon, but maybe you could at least get it somewhat in hand so you weren’t blasting ships apart all the time.”
Yasha didn’t hear her. She stared up at Eli and her eyes sparkled. Eli halted in front of her. Those eyes hypnotized him, but he hadn’t come here to admire them.
Quinn looked up and saw him. She hopped to her feet. “Hey, Dad, I was just going to come talk to you about Yasha here. I was thinking you could...”
Eli kept his attention on Yasha. “You formed a psychic connection with me before you detonated that electromagnetic pulse that nearly destroyed this ship. You don’t remember that, do you? You transmitted some of your memories to me in a psychic link.”
Yasha opened and shut her mouth a few times before she swallowed. She didn’t break his gaze. “I…I don’t remember any of that.”
“Do you remember what happened right before you were left on the moon?”
Yasha’s eyes skated to one side before she came back to riveting Eli with her impossibly clear eyes. “No. Not really.”
“Did anything like that EMP happen to you on Earth? Is this the enhancement Admiral Wescott was developing?”
She gawped her mouth, still staring up at him. “I...I don’t know.”
He pulled himself together and remembered why he was here. “We’re landing at Epsilon Outpost shortly, but you’ll have to wait a little longer. Once we finish our business, we’ll make a short jump up to the orbital docking station. You’ll disembark there to catch transports.”
Yasha nodded. “I understand. I appreciate you bringing me this far.”
“Dad!” Quinn burst out. “Just listen to me for a second.”
Eli turned to Quinn. “Same goes for you and Tim. Orbital docking station is the end of the line. You’ll have your pick of the Earth-bound lines.”
Eli turned on his heel and headed for the cockpit. Quinn followed. “Wait a second, Dad! Don’t leave her here. I know you want me and Tim off your ship, and we’re going, but just listen to me.”
Eli slowed until she caught up. “I’m listening. Say what you have to say.”
He waited. Quinn floundered for a moment while she chose her words. “Just listen to me, Dad. Yasha can release an EMP that knocks out electronics and shut down the Boomerang’s tenders. She could do the same thing to those things that are heading for Earth. You could take her to the horde and set off an EMP to deactivate them. You could save Earth. You could be a hero. You could...”
Eli raised one eyebrow. “How, exactly? How exactly would I release an EMP? We have no way of controlling Yasha’s power. She could set off an EMP on the way there and destroy the Boomerang. Then what? Then we would all be dead and Earth would be just as screwed. She’s dangerous. You just heard her. She’s grateful to be getting off at the Outpost. We’re not taking her anywhere. She’s on her own.”
“Please, Dad. You can’t be so far gone that you actually want Earth destroyed.”
“You take her to Earth,” Eli said over his shoulder as he headed down the gangway. “You and Tim are going back there. Take her with you.”
“We can’t, Dad.”
“Of course you can’t, because she said she isn’t going anywhere near Earth.”
“We can’t take her because there isn’t another ship in this sector as fast as the Boomerang. Those things are halfway to Earth already. Jood said we’d need a fast scout vessel built for speed to get in front of them.”
“Then I guess Earth is finished,” he said. “As it is, she won’t agree to it. She’s not a bomb you can just detonate anywhere you want. She’s a person with her own ideas about what she wants to do. Did it ever cross your mind that she probably wants a life of her own? I don’t blame her.”
Quinn halted when they reached the threshold of the cockpit. “She would listen to you, Dad. You’re the one person on board who can relate to her. You could convince her to go back.”
“Why would I want to do that? It’s a suicide mission,” he said as he ducked into the cockpit and turned around. “Look. We’re about to put in at Epsilon Outpost. I’ve got business to take care of. If all goes well, I’ll be in a position to send another message to Earth. In the meantime, I’ll have enough problems here without looking for more. Trust me. These things never go smoothly.”
Two hours later, Eli stood at the base of the Boomerang’s landing ramp in near shock.
For once, everything had gone right. No fights. No shootouts. A legit buyer and a fast transaction. Hell, he’d even contacted Jood to send another message through the Backbone to Earth. They could more than afford it now.
For all that had happened on this job, it looked like everything was finally going their way.
Eli glanced at Waylon, and he actually saw the man smiling. Granted, it looked warped and strange on his face, but there wasn’t much to be done about that.
As they entered the aft hatchway, River hurried in, followed by Jood. “Did you get it, Sarge?”
He reached inside his jacket. He pulled out a solid block wrapped in rough paper and handed it to her. “That’s yours.”
Her eyes lit up, and she pressed the parcel to her nostrils. She inhaled and shut her eyes. “Mmm! It even smells fresh, you know? God, this is good stuff!”
“Don’t spend it all in one place.” Eli handed another brick to Jood. “Here you go, Jood. You earned it.”
As he headed up to the cockpit, Eli stuck his head into the galley. Tim and Quinn were sitting at the table. Yasha was lying down by the far bulkhead. “Seven minutes and we’ll have you at the orbital docking station.”
He didn’t wait for an acknowledgement. He was in too good a mood to let them spoil it.
“Tell me Waylon did not spend his earnin
gs on more ammunition,” Jood said as Eli slipped into the command chair.
“Believe it or not, he put every cent into the bank. I almost had a hernia.”
Waylon stuck his head in. “Can we get the hell out of here now before some wayside thug decides to take our money away from us when we just got paid?”
“If we believe Eli,” Jood countered, “the wayside thug would be taking our money away from us, not yours.”
“All the same, I don’t want my head shot off now that I actually turned a profit from one of these shit jobs,” Waylon said.
“Waylon’s right. Let’s make ourselves scarce. I have a lead on a job over at Pi Squared Two. Don’t worry, River. You don’t have to leave orbit.”
“Good,” she said from the pilot’s station.
Eli checked the readouts. “Is everything ready to run?”
“Systems ready,” Jood reported.
Eli allowed himself a smile. A quick trip to the docking station and this would all be over.
“Take us up.”
The Boomerang quivered with the engines cycling up to full power. The craft wavered off its outriggers. The wide-spreading plane of the Epsilon Outpost dropped beyond the window, and the planet began to recede.
Jood shifted his hand on the engineering panel. “Diverting power from the environmental system to the atmospheric regulators. Prepare to engage the...”
“Holy hell!” Waylon said. “Hold on!”
Seventeen
12 Hours Until Annihilation
A piercing scream streaked over their heads, and several dozen of those spherical objects rocketed into view. They burned out of the atmosphere, whizzing from behind. They zoomed over the Boomerang and onto the same plane. They unleashed their rockets at the ship. Some missed and smashed into the planet.
Five missiles slammed into the hull. The Boomerang lurched in mid-air, and its momentum stalled. The tenders coughed before the engines caught. Eli braced his arms to steady himself. “Get us out of here! Hit it hard, River!”
She snarled through bared teeth, fighting the controls. The Boomerang lunged straight up, but their path led straight into the cloud of those things swarming all over the place.
“How the hell did they find us?” Waylon boomed.
Jood sat bolt upright in his chair. His fingers flew over his instruments. “They must have followed us from the last confrontation.”
“And waited for this moment?” Eli said. “They could have hit us at any time.”
“I see no other explanation.”
They’d been out of communication for days, then they show up on the grid at Epsilon and this happens? It was too much of a coincidence for Eli. Somebody must have known—
It hit him like a punch in the gut. “Those damn Backbone messages!”
Jood cocked his cubed head. Even tasked with keeping them flying, he had the wherewithal to grasp what Eli meant. “Plausible.”
“Wescott, the bastard!”
Eli cursed himself for the second message. He should have put it together by then, but it probably didn’t matter. The damage was already done.
The weirdness with the first message made sense now. If Yasha was telling the truth about Wescott, and Eli was sure she was, then the admiral could use his top-level access to the Backbone. He must have been looking for messages just like theirs. Anything that would expose those incoming ships. When he intercepted their message and got the header data, it would identify the Boomerang as the sender. He surely had contacts on Epsilon, one of the largest stations in five sectors. A quick priority message—which unlike Eli’s low priority one could cross the Backbone in minutes—and Wescott knew right where they were before they even docked. This little surprise had to be his doing.
Eli didn’t care about Earth, but he was starting to care about killing this damn admiral. He was tired of the fight coming to him. If they lived through this, he was going to take the next fight to him.
River jerked right and left in her seat, yanking the controls. The Boomerang careened between the alien vessels, but the ship didn’t gain enough velocity to avoid them all. The left tender clipped a sphere and sent it spinning away. The tender held, but the vessel’s attitude wavered.
River cursed something inarticulate and veered the other way, only to dodge another sphere by inches. Rockets screamed past the cockpit. One of them scraped the hull and skidded off.
“Can you break through?” Eli yelled over the noise.
Jood cast a passing glance at the window before he returned to focusing on his controls. “It appears unlikely. Even if we somehow escaped this cluster, we would only encounter more of them higher up.”
“That’s looking on the bright side!” Waylon cut in.
“What about skimming along the other side of the planet?” Eli asked.
“They will surely follow us,” Jood pointed out. “Their propulsion will almost certainly...”
Before he finished speaking, another swarm of those orbs came burning over the horizon. They blockaded the Boomerang’s path. They blacked out the sky. Eli couldn’t see a single crack through which the Boomerang could squeak through.
He changed tack in a second. He shot out his arm and pointed at the window. “There, River! Down there.”
She stared at a precipitous canyon. It cut between the dusty mountains on the far side of the plane. Eli would never dream of risking his ship in a stunt like this, but extreme circumstances called for extreme measures.
River hesitated. “I don’t know, Sarge. I don’t think I can—”
“Do it!” he thundered as he sprang across the cockpit and punched the throttle hard, as far as it would go. The Boomerang took off like a shot. The nose titled at a sickening angle and the vessel plunged straight down.
River caught the helm just in time. She wrenched the Boomerang to run parallel to the ground. The ship streaked over hundreds of miles and all those curious spheres dropped down to hang on her tail.
Eli took a firm grip on his insides. This was it. The Boomerang was built for this kind of pursuit. It was time to find out if these things really could outrun her or outmaneuver her. She might not be big or imposing, but damn, she could run when she got a bee in her bonnet.
He retreated to the command console and bumped into Jood getting out of the chair. Eli lowered himself into it, but he kept his attention on the horizon. The gorge rushed at the window faster than he expected. The walls yawned to welcome the Boomerang into shadow.
The spheres buzzed behind her. They launched their rockets at the Boomerang, but River wavered the engines and the projectiles smashed into the rock. Go on, you bastards, Eli thought. Waste all your ammo. You won’t last ten seconds once we get inside.
River lurched wide to her right. The Boomerang leaned at a wild angle. The ship rolled all the way over at a ninety-degree angle and screamed down the canyon. The swarm tried to follow. They zipped into a tight wedge, but they couldn’t keep up with the Boomerang. Eli savored the unmistakable concussion of them crashing into the walls.
River straightened up, but within seconds, the walls narrowed. She lost control, squeaking through a narrow channel. The right tender clipped a stone arch hanging overhead.
Quinn and Yasha appeared in the entrance. Quinn leaned against the bulkhead, sliding toward the helm. She touched River’s shoulder. “Let me handle this.”
River nodded, but before she could slide out of the seat, a blinding supernova of sunshine blasted through the window. It blinded everyone, but only for a second. The next instant, the Boomerang exploded into open space over another rugged plane. It stretched to infinity, dotted here and there with more rock features. Eli couldn’t make out a single sign of habitation.
River tried one more time to get up and hand over the controls to Quinn. Of the spheres that had followed them into the gorge, three emerged behind them. “Get us out of here,” Eli ordered.
River’s shoulders relaxed. She pivoted the pilot’s seat around to let her large body
out from behind the console when, out of the empty sky, a hundred of those spheres descended into view. They held a patterned formation and turned their rockets toward the Boomerang.
Eli turned his head without taking his eyes off those things. “Fire at will!” he thundered.
Eighteen
Jood unloaded the Boomerang’s weapons on the enemy. River darted out of the way, and Quinn jumped into the seat. She grabbed the controls and the Boomerang launched straight into the cloud.
Eli braced himself for a losing fight, but what the hell, right? At least he wasn’t dying a pauper. Jood released one shot after another, targeting the spheres, but there were just too many of them. They closed around the Boomerang.
Quinn proved her skill as a pilot the way she had hundreds of times before. She steered in a crazy, looping, random course, dodging and diving every which way. She hurdled over them and slithered under clusters of them before they could spin around to aim.
A rocket struck the hull from somewhere. Eli didn’t check where it came from. He trained all his attention on a spot far up in the atmosphere. The stars hovered through the thin gas up there. The black reaches of space called to him. He could live with damage to his ship, as long as they made it out of here.
A rapid drumming of impacts rattled the vessel. The Boomerang shuddered in mid-air. Quinn attacked the controls twice as hard. “They got the port tender!” she called. “We’re running on momentum. We’ll be lucky to hold our own out here.”
Jood’s voice cut the noise from Eli’s right side. “Turn us around, Lieutenant.”
A hush fell over the cockpit when he said it. Eli didn’t know what the Xynnar had in mind. He didn’t want to know. He heard the cold determination in Jood’s tone, and he took a fresh grip on his seat’s armrests.
Quinn responded in an instant. She fired the starboard tender. The Boomerang kept rising through the atmosphere, but on a port-curving trajectory. The vessel wouldn’t be able to break orbit at this rate.
