The Renegat

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  She signed off. He wanted to clutch the air around him, grab onto her and her words and shake her.

  “Pay up?” Erika asked, with a smile on her face. “What did you promise?”

  He was about to answer her when something at the edge of the Scrapheap caught his eye.

  “What’s that brightness?” he asked Maida.

  She saw it too, then augmented the screen and the holographic projection.

  “I think it’s an explosion,” Omar said. He wasn’t looking at the visuals. He was looking at the console in front of him. “And—shit—it’s moving, like—I don’t know—an infection.”

  It was moving, seemingly from ship to ship or piece to piece. It was far enough away from the Explorer-Class vessel that it hadn’t hit them yet, but it would.

  “Adil,” Crowe said, “can you hail her again?”

  “I’m trying.” Adil sounded terrified.

  Crowe swore again. He jabbed at his holographic console, trying to see if there was something stronger than a grappler on this ship.

  The Brazza Two had a limited mechanism, a way of pulling nearby ships into the Brazza Two if need be. Most ships didn’t have it—it was dangerous tech—but school ships did because they did so much training.

  And maybe this Scout ship had something too, but he couldn’t find anything like that, and he had no idea how to get through the force field, even if he did.

  At that moment, the force field shimmered right in front of the Explorer-Class ship. The Explorer zoomed out of the Scrapheap, white and golden explosions lighting up the area behind it.

  For a moment, the ship seemed to be free of the Scrapheap, and maybe everything would have worked out if the force field had closed behind the Explorer-Class vessel, but it didn’t, and the light, looking almost like it was burning (not possible—there was no oxygen in space, not possible at all), traveled along lines straight for the Explorer-Class vessel.

  “Put up your shields, put up your shields, put up your shields,” Crowe said to Tessa, even though she couldn’t hear him. And then he realized what he was saying. He found the controls for the Br2 Scout3’s shields, and activated them on full.

  The fire lines—or whatever the hell that was—reached the Explorer-Class vessel, and outlined it for a half second. Crowe imagined he could see every deck and every person inside the vessel, the way that he had seen a human skeleton once, illuminated through someone’s skin underneath some kind of irradiated light.

  The Explorer-Class vessel seemed frozen—and then it exploded, bits of the ship flying everywhere.

  “We need to get out of here,” Sera said, reaching for her console. “That stuff is going to get us.”

  “I vote we try the anacapa drive,” Maida said, sounding even more panicked than she had before. “I think we should—”

  “No,” Crowe said.

  The explosions were continuing inside the Scrapheap, moving away from the force field deeper into the Scrapheap itself. The remaining parts of the force field were bowing from some kind of pressure, and Crowe thought he could see ships, stretching on into infinity.

  “The Brazza Two is moving,” Sera said.

  He looked down at his controls. Sure enough, the Brazza Two was moving away from the Scrapheap at a rapid clip.

  “Match their speed,” he said to Igasho, who had been the one who tested best on the navigational controls. “Get us out of here.”

  And he hoped Igasho could.

  The Br2 Scout3

  The BR2 Scout3 wasn’t moving. But the Brazza Two was, leaving them—and the Scrapheap—behind at a rapid clip. The Scrapheap looked like it was on fire. The fire kept moving, into and out of the Scrapheap, consuming everything in its path.

  They were in its path. The Br2 Scout3. With his friends. Whom he had brought on board.

  Just like he had gotten Tessa involved.

  “Really, Crowe,” Maida said, “the anacapa.”

  She wanted him to use the drive, just like Tessa had. Tessa, who had laughed and said Stop worrying in that chiding tone of hers.

  “This is already a disaster,” he snapped at Maida. “Let’s not make it worse.”

  Although it was getting worse by the second. Through that opening in the force field, parts of ships were spiraling outward, some of them glowing just like the Explorer-Class vessel had glowed just before it exploded.

  And sure enough, one of the ships that had spun out the farthest just exploded, followed by another, and another.

  Crowe took over the navigation of the Br2 Scout3. Screw Igasho. Screw the testing. What mattered was the way everyone behaved in the field.

  Crowe had just figured out it was easier to do things on his own than it was to give commands.

  “I got this now,” he said to Igasho.

  Then Crowe changed the trajectory of his ship. He wasn’t chasing the Brazza Two any longer. He plotted a course as far from the Scrapheap as he could possible go.

  He needed the Br2 Scout3 to go faster, as fast as it could go. He revved up the speed, ignoring the ship’s warnings that flashed all over his screen.

  This speed is not recommended, it said right near the execute button.

  “Screw you,” he said to the screen, and punched execute with all of his strength.

  The ship yanked forward so hard that he could feel it inside the bridge despite the attitude controls. Something squealed, probably the engines.

  “Our shields are getting pelted,” someone said. “I don’t know if they’ll hold.”

  Crowe glanced at the holographic three-dimensional image that Maida had created. Debris was flying out of the Scrapheap in all directions and at all kinds of speeds. The explosions were still traveling inward at what seemed like an even more rapid clip.

  And the Brazza Two was getting slammed as well. Its shields looked fragile. The entire ship seemed to be in the middle of the debris instead of getting away from it.

  The Br2 Scout3 on the other hand had moved away from the bulk of the debris, but a lot of it was still coming in their direction.

  Crowe wasn’t going to be able to outrun this. They were all going to die. Everyone, all of his friends, dead because he decided to do something stupid. Tessa…

  He wouldn’t let himself think about her. He had to get a grip on himself, think of this as a simulation.

  He called up the Br2 Scout3’s weapons system. It wasn’t online, but he knew how to get at least part of it to work.

  “What’re you doing?” Omar asked.

  “Weapons,” Crowe said.

  “Got it,” Adil said, as if that were a command.

  “Can you bolster the shields?” Crowe asked Maida.

  “I don’t know, I—”

  “Bolster them,” he snapped. He hadn’t expected her to be a panicker when he had given her the task of being his number one. She was great technically, but everything was a crisis for her, not that it wasn’t a crisis, it was, but he didn’t need her reacting like that.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, as if he were an actual captain. He wanted to look at her in surprise, but he didn’t, because he didn’t have time.

  The weapons array appeared. Targets? It asked him.

  Simulation, he reminded himself.

  And then he programmed in all of the debris that was heading their way.

  He didn’t have the skill to run the weapons system himself, so he set it on automatic.

  “Crowe,” Erika said, “For God’s sake, rule out the Brazza Two.”

  He hadn’t even thought of that. Part of him wondered why she hadn’t done it, and then he realized, he hadn’t given anyone else permission to run the weapons system—within the system itself.

  He protected the Brazza Two, and the actual Scrapheap, and then entered his entire team into the command structure for the weapons system.

  After he did that, he realized with a start that the system had already targeted and destroyed the bigger pieces of debris. The smaller bits of debris were hitting the shield a
nd—at the moment—bouncing off.

  The Br2 Scout3 was getting farther and farther from the Scrapheap, but he kept monitoring it. The Brazza Two was moving parallel to the Scrapheap, for reasons he did not understand. It was taking a lot of damage.

  One large piece was spiraling toward the Brazza Two, and it looked like it was going to directly hit one entire side of the ship. If it hit, then the entire ship might be opened to space, and then everyone would die, because he had wanted to stage a competition—

  “Simulation,” he whispered. “Simulation.”

  Maida was staring at everything, not moving, and in that moment, he realized he wasn’t the only one having trouble with all the events around them.

  “You guys!” he yelled. “This is just a damn simulation!”

  Yes, he was lying, but they didn’t know that.

  “It looks real,” Maida said.

  “All simulations look real,” he said. “Now get to work.”

  And miraculously, she did. She started using her skills to boost the shields. He went back to the weapons system, because he couldn’t control whatever it was that the Brazza Two was doing.

  The debris was thinning, although he didn’t know if that was because his weapons kept targeting it, or because the Br2 Scout3 had moved beyond much of it, or because the explosions inside the Scrapheap were slowing down.

  He couldn’t do anything except continue to run. And as he had that thought, he paused for what seemed like forever, but really only had to be a half second.

  Run. Because this was an unmitigated disaster.

  Run. Because his life was over even if he went back to the Brazza Two.

  Run—and never find out what caused this.

  Run—and lose the only home he had ever known.

  He wiped at his face—it was wet—and then made himself study the Scrapheap.

  The explosions were continuing, but the force field was knitting itself back together.

  It took him a moment to realize that something was being sent from the Brazza Two to the Scrapheap, some kind of beam or light or ray or something that seemed to be inspiring the Scrapheap force field rebuild.

  And then he realized what that was.

  The Brazza Two had taken the energy from its shields and was using that to encourage the force field on the Scrapheap to rebuild.

  The Brazza Two was putting the entire ship in danger to stop whatever was cascading inside and around the Scrapheap.

  The entire ship, from the officer cadets to the little-littles.

  Who cried near the mural because they had been sent away from home.

  The little-littles. If they died, it would be his fault.

  It was all his fault.

  The Br2 Scout3

  Crowe’s breath hitched. He couldn’t think about the little-littles or the risks he had forced everyone to take. He couldn’t think about what could go wrong as the Brazza Two tried to rebuild the Scrapheap’s force field.

  He had to act.

  He programmed a hard about into the Br2 Scout3. The Brazza Two needed reinforcements and they weren’t going to come from any ship nearby.

  He still had full shields.

  “What are you doing?” Now Omar sounded panicked.

  Crowe wasn’t going to answer him. Crowe didn’t dare answer him, because Crowe didn’t want to get talked out of this.

  “Maintain the speed,” he said to Igasho, “no matter what.”

  The debris continued to zoom past, but the weapons seemed to catch most of it. Amazingly, the Br2 Scout3 had very little damage—so far.

  He programmed coordinates into the navigational system so that the Br2 Scout3 would arrive on the far side of the Brazza Two, the opposite side from the Scrapheap.

  “We can’t go back to the Brazza Two,” someone cried from the back. “Not now.”

  In his own head, Crowe deliberately did not identify the speaker. He didn’t want to know who had given voice to his very thought from before. He would not get talked into running away.

  Not now.

  Not yet.

  Maybe not ever.

  “The engines are in really bad shape,” Erika said. “They’re not made to sustain this speed. The system wants me to use the anacapa drive.”

  “The system can screw itself,” Crowe said, even though the system was the only thing keeping them alive right now.

  He was keeping his eye on the Brazza Two. Maybe he was crazy, taking the Br2 Scout3 to the Brazza Two—if the Brazza Two exploded, then everyone would die.

  He had no idea what was causing the explosions nor did he know what was going on with the Scrapheap. Judging by the Brazza Two’s reaction, someone on board there knew exactly what was going on and they had done a calculation—the lives of everyone on board (including the little-littles) were less important than keeping whatever was coming out of the Scrapheap contained.

  That whole idea just made him shiver.

  He wiped at his face again—dammit—and let out a small ragged sigh as the Br2 Scout3 reached the Brazza Two.

  “Get closer,” he said to Maida. He needed to try something, and he couldn’t be bothered with micromaneuvering the Br2 Scout3.

  “Closer to what?” she asked.

  “Sera,” he said, deciding to ignore Maida. “Get this ship as close as you can on this side of the Brazza Two. Keep us away from the Scrapheap.”

  “Got it.” Sera sounded almost chirpy. He glanced at her. She wasn’t quite smiling—more like a grimace—but she was concentrating hard on what she was doing.

  Unlike Maida, who was still not focusing very well.

  “Simulation, simulation, simulation,” he whispered, thinking of the challenge before him as one that required accuracy in a short period of time.

  He had no idea how to use all the permutations of these shields, but he was going to try. He had to assume they worked like standard shields on all of the Fleet’s larger vessels.

  If he was wrong, it probably wouldn’t matter, since everyone was going to die anyway, but he had to give it a try.

  “Need help?” Adil asked.

  “No.” Crowe sounded a bit curt, but he couldn’t help it. He had to concentrate.

  And—breakthrough—the shields were just like he expected. He took their power and moved it, just like the shield specs said he could. He poured that power at the Brazza Two, augmenting their shields.

  For a moment, those shields grew stronger, repelling what he was doing. Then someone on board the Brazza Two must have realized what Crowe was about, because the Brazza Two started sucking shield power from the Br2 Scout3.

  The Br2 Scout3 command console warned him that the power output was too high, that it might have to pull from important systems.

  He circumvented that. He guided the ship to pull from engines. Then he shut off the automated weapons response, and had the ship pull from that too.

  If something came at them now, they were undefended completely. The Br2 Scout3 would get damaged at best, blown up at worst.

  But he didn’t tell the others. He didn’t dare. He didn’t want them to question what he was doing. They might try to reverse it.

  The Brazza Two glowed orange as the energy moved from the Br2 Scout3’s shields to Brazza Two’s shields to that ray-beam-light whatever that was funneling power to the Scrapheap.

  Crowe clenched one fist, watching. He could only monitor now; he didn’t dare do anything else.

  “This ship is shuddering,” Erika said. “Is a ship this size supposed to shudder?”

  No one answered her. They were all working on something or looking at the scene playing out on the screens.

  Crowe was watching the Brazza Two. It looked different somehow, maybe just because he had never seen it from this vantage.

  The explosions continued, worming their way deeper into the Scrapheap. He could see spots of color, but they were harder and harder to read as the force field closed up.

  Then something in the very middle of the Scrapheap l
it up the entire area around it. That something looked huge. It was rectangular, with actual right angles and corners, which led him to believe it was human-made, not some layout caused by various ships.

  The power coming off the Brazza Two intensified.

  The force field was nearly closed.

  And then that rectangle exploded.

  Ships spun out of it, bright red and orange and yellow, surrounded with that light that he had seen before.

  The force field was nearly closed, but something small whipped its way out of the remaining opening.

  And then he realized that the something wasn’t small. It was the size of a small ship, an orbiter or a runabout. And it was heading directly for the Brazza Two.

  He couldn’t do anything, and neither could the Brazza Two. Its entire power was being focused on that beam-ray-light that was closing the force field. It never wavered.

  He wanted the beam-ray-light to shut off, weapons to appear, something to happen to that runabout-orbiter.

  Instead, the small ship slammed into the side of the Brazza Two, sending it toward the Br2 Scout3 at an amazing rate of speed.

  “Stop linking us to them!” Maida shouted.

  She was right. That would ease some of the pressure, give the Br2 Scout3 some maneuverability, but she didn’t realize that their futures were over anyway, and—

  The Brazza Two grazed them, scraping over the top, damaging the stupid porthole that he had thought was so special.

  He activated some emergency controls, or maybe they were already activating as the porthole cracked.

  “Bring your hoods up,” he said. “Activate your environmental suits.”

  Everyone did, just like they’d been trained to do in every single class they had ever taken. The hoods went up, the suits were sealed, the environment kicked in—cooler than the air on the bridge, and, at least in his case, staler.

  This suit hadn’t been worn in a long, long time.

  The ceiling closed above them, but it wasn’t going to matter. The ship was losing environment.

  But only the bridge was populated. The rest of the ship was empty. And this ship was designed to preserve the environment everywhere.