Elite

by Allen Stroud

  When I grow up I want to be a soldier to fight and protect all the children just like the Good Doctor.

  Chapter 18: The Arrival

  At the same time as both meetings convened, the Gallant lurched once more, stars appeared and the computer bleeped. Pietro sighed with relief; they were in the Lave system.

  At last!

  He glanced over at Gebrial. The girl had fallen asleep in the co-pilot’s chair. Purple hair floated around her, making him smile and wonder how long it’d been since he slept.

  If you don’t count the night chained in the cargo hold, quite a while.

  He activated the communications panel, noting the ship had managed to log into the system’s data network. Everything seemed a little slower than before, but then Kullen had repaired it with what he had to hand. They had comms. That in itself was a bonus.

  The computer displayed two possible docking options. Lave Station and the Castellan mining platform. Renner’s course ran to the mining centre, much closer and on the edge of an asteroid belt in the middle of the system. Lave Station orbited the solitary planet, also called Lave. System, planet, station? Pietro frowned. Then the scanner began to populate with ships and other objects, and he stopped thinking about names. Surprisingly, the place was very busy, busier than Solati. He didn’t expect that, this far from the Core Worlds.

  Renner’s course remained the obvious choice to follow. A trip to the planetary station was an incalculable risk, particularly with the injured pilot aboard. The mining outpost seemed relatively free of traffic by comparison. Pietro remembered the codes he’d been sent by Miranda. Perhaps that’s what they’re for? He started a system scan, seeing if the Gallant could find any of the ships they’d been with in Codorain, but no ident numbers turned up. A lot of the vessels on the scanner showed minimal velocity changes, indicating they were parked or stationary.

  Stranger and stranger.

  A slight shift in weight told him the Cobra’s autopilot was changing course. Castellan station moved into the centre of the front window and the Gallant began to increase speed. The hum of the engines returned.

  ‘We made it?’

  Pietro turned around. Gebrial had woken up. ‘Not yet,’ he said, ‘but we’re out of hyperspace. You want to see if Renner’s awake?’

  Gebrial nodded, stood up and went out, leaving Pietro alone in the cockpit of his ship. He treasured the moment. The Gallant might be a wounded bird, but he’d spent a long time with her in space. Pietro wasn’t sentimental, but he looked forward to getting her repaired. Lost a lot of my life, he thought. Don’t want to lose you too, I don’t think I—

  The scanner chirped again, he glanced at it and frowned, another hyperspace entry. A cold feeling gripped his stomach as the transponder information came in.

  Asp. Explorer-class.

  ‘No,’ Pietro muttered as he disengaged the autopilot and brought up the main controls. ‘No, no, no, no!’

  * * *

  Gebrial made her way to the cabin and found Renner struggling to sit up. She hastened to him and pushed him back to the bed. ‘You need to rest,’ she said.

  Renner leered. ‘Careful, last time a young girl told me that, she had to make me.’

  Gebrial stepped away, evading his hands. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Of course it was,’ Renner said. He started pushing himself up again, against the safety restraints. ‘Am I a prisoner?’

  ‘Pietro says no, he says we’ve arrived in the Lave system too.’

  Renner’s playful smile vanished. ‘You must help me to the cockpit.’

  Gebrial shook her head and moved back to the door. ‘I’m here to check on you, nothing more.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Renner said, ‘if you try to dock without me, they’ll kill you.’

  The ship wobbled and twisted. Gebrial put her hands on the wall to steady herself. Then she heard Pietro yell.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Renner demanded.

  ‘I’ll find out!’ Gebrial said.

  She clumped awkwardly into the corridor, leaving Renner strapped to the bed. ‘Wait! Please!’ he called after her, but she didn’t turn around. Pietro needs me, she thought.

  The cockpit door jammed like before. She forced it open to find him at the recently repaired manual controls. ‘What’s happening?’ she said.

  ‘Our friend just arrived,’ Pietro said, ‘and we’re in no shape for a rematch!’ He yanked the stick hard and a mass of rocks appeared in front of the ship. Gebrial gasped.

  ‘You’re going in?’

  ‘Asteroid field’s our only chance,’ Pietro said. As the power crept up, the engines started their whine. ‘We have to get there and out of sight, before he completes his scan and targets us.’

  ‘What about Renner’s friends?’

  ‘No sign of them out here. If we’re lucky, we’ll dock at the mining station and meet them, but not till the Asp is long gone.’

  Gebrial sat back in the co-pilots chair and noticed all the different dots on the scanner. ‘Maybe he won’t see us?’ she said.

  Pietro let out a bitter laugh. ‘Flying through space is a dangerous business. A spec of dust travelling fast enough can knock a three-foot hole in your hull. Scanning equipment needs to be good to make sure you pick up everything. We can’t go cold out here. He’ll see us if we do. That’s why we’re going for the asteroid belt and silent running in there. If we can’t hide, we can make it difficult. Who knows? He might fly into a rock?’

  ‘Or we might.’

  ‘Let’s hope we don’t.’

  * * *

  A gigantic asteroid hurtled at the Gallant. Moments before collision, the Cobra rolled to the left skimming the rock’s surface before diving headlong towards a dozen more.

  In the cockpit, Pietro’s teeth were clenched and his hands, slick with sweat. Beside him, he heard Gebrial stifle a scream as pebble-sized stones dashed against the shields. ‘Has he seen us?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pietro managed to reply, his eyes on the screen. Flying in an asteroid field was a common pilot’s practice when mining and something he’d done many times as part of his cover, but it involved careful manoeuvres, the plotting of orbits by computer and sparing use of fuel to match the different velocities of the rocks. No one he knew tried to fly straight through in a ship with no flight assist and damaged controls; that was suicide.

  He glanced to his right. The shields remained at seventy percent and would continue to charge from the engine as they moved into the belt, but if they hit anything large the energy barrier wouldn’t cope. I need to make sure we don’t hit anything large. The only way was to use the Gallant’s tiny positional thrusters, keep an eye on the computer’s velocity readings for the ship and the objects around them, listen to the proximity alarm and stare into the viewscreen to spot possible collisions before they could arise; a complex process and nothing like the holo-vids.

  ‘Can’t we send a message to the authorities?’ Gebrial asked. ‘They can’t want murder committed out here.’

  ‘Most security patrols stick to the inner system,’ Pietro replied. ‘Besides, we’ve no idea what these people would do with us.’

  ‘Has to be better than dying.’

  ‘We’re not dead yet!’

  He turned the ship again, spinning across an asteroid more than a mile wide, then left and right, fighting the jets, correction, correction, correction! The proximity alarm went off and a laser blast detonated another rock right in front of them.

  ‘Wasn’t us,’ Pietro said and pulled at the yoke again. The Gallant twisted and rolled, the engine whine louder now than before. ‘He’s on our tail!’

  The Cobra rocked and another shower of pebbles hit the shields. Pietro checked the scanner. ‘We’re still a half hour from the mining station,’ he said. ‘That ship is faster than us and better armed. I can’t get enough rock between us to go silent. We’re not going to make it, if we’re left out here alone.’

  ‘That’s
why you need me.’

  Pietro stole a look. Renner was in the doorway, his face sweaty and feverish. ‘You should be resting!’ he replied, tweaking the ship past another asteroid.

  The other man didn’t answer, but hauled himself to the comms panel. Out of the corner of his eye, Pietro saw him key in a sequence and activate the transmitter. ‘I’ve already scanned the region, your friends aren’t here.’

  ‘You aren’t the only one who can go cold.’

  Another dot appeared on the scanner and ident information streamed across the viewscreen, one of the Kraits from before. Pietro clenched his teeth, but his shoulders loosened a touch. ‘Will they help?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Renner replied, ‘but we shouldn’t leave them to it, never fight fair eh?’

  ‘No indeed,’ Pietro pushed the ship forward and the mass of rocks and stones streamed passed them as the Gallant dropped in a loop. Beam lasers crackled against the shield and then the Asp came into view, pulling hard to their left to evade cannon fire from the Krait and soaring out of the asteroids.

  Pietro knew the fight still wasn’t even. Both Krait and Cobra were outgunned, but by keeping the pilot distracted, between them, they had a chance. ‘Anymore of your people out here?’

  ‘Get closer to Castellan Station and we’ll find out,’ Renner said.

  The Gallant cut speed and angled towards the mining facility. Another alert, missile lock! Pietro turned back, but too late. The projectile hit the shields and wiped them out.

  ‘We can’t fly in an asteroid field like this!’ he yelled.

  ‘Turn and attack,’ Renner urged.

  ‘What with?’ Pietro said. ‘The laser’s no match for him and the missile targeter is down.’

  Renner pointed at the view outside. ‘A mining laser works for breaking rocks, aim for one!’

  Pietro keyed up all the weapons and fired. Four bolts of energy arrowed into the floating object in the centre of their screen, splitting it in half. Pietro yanked the control stick and the Gallant ducked beneath the asteroid fragments. He cut engine speed and rolled the ship.

  The Asp dropped into view. Pietro centred it in the targeter. ‘Missiles on manual fire!’ he said.

  ‘How many?’ Gebrial said.

  ‘All of them!’

  Three streaks of flame flashed towards the target, unguided and blind, they were easily avoided as the ship rolled and pulled away left. The familiar vibration of electronic counter-measures glitched the internal systems and three flash fire explosions confirmed their end.

  Pietro glanced at the shield charge; thirty two percent. Might be enough ...

  He turned the Cobra again and set the engine. The Gallant lurched and leapt forwards, heading for the mining platform. Another dot appeared on the scanner and a Sidewinder flashed past, its lasers blazing at a target behind them.

  Three against one.

  Ahead, was the mining dock. The engines were screaming and the distance gauge spiralling down.

  ‘Wait look out!’ Gebrial said. The proximity alarm went off and—

  Black.

  * * *

  The compartment of the transfer shuttle to Lave Station was empty and quiet, with every chair but two, unoccupied. Berturm had little wish to share his trip with others, so booked out the entire space. Other passengers might have seats elsewhere, but they would not bother him.

  He closed his eyes and treasured the moment. No viewscreens and no gentle murmur of Walden’s voice from the wall. The law required all planetary spaces to broadcast the feed, but did not require them on ships. The quiet was a luxury, augmented by the lack of urgent requests demanding his attention. If this trip brings nothing else, I will treasure this moment of peace.

  ‘Sir, I’m afraid we have a problem.’

  Bertrum opened his eyes and found himself looking at his aide, the nervous girl from before. ‘What sort of problem,’ he asked.

  ‘A delay I believe sir, apparently a few minutes ago, an unauthorised craft entered the upper atmosphere on a flight path that intersects ours. LaveSec suspended all launch traffic. I’m sure it’s only temporary—’

  ‘Why wake me?’

  ‘I thought it best, in case we need to leave the ship.’

  In other words, don’t get too comfortable. Bertrum pulled out a dataslate and keyed into the military feed. Live camera shots of the craft appeared instantly, showing a flaming streak in the sky, along with an information uplink. ‘A Cobra Mark III that’s come from mid system? Why didn’t they board and divert?’

  ‘They tried sir, but nothing could match speed and dock. According to the report, it was hyperskipping, through the system, some sort of drive malfunction.’

  ‘Then why not shoot it down?’

  ‘According to the reports, three life signs onboard, no response on comms.’

  Bertrum manipulated the image and zoomed in. ‘Their entrance vector is too shallow, the ship won’t survive,’ he observed. ‘How long do they expect us to wait?’

  ‘Several hours I think,’ the girl replied.

  A light pulsed on the corner of the dataslate and the scene disappeared to be replaced with text. Prefect to report to Administration office, priority one message.

  Bertrum sighed. ‘Tell the pilot to unload our baggage, looks like the trip is over.’

  * * *

  Geographic Information: The Castellan Belt

  The Castellan Belt is an iron-rich cluster of asteroids in the far reaches of the Lave system. Owing to most hyperspace arrival calculations being calibrated to avoid them, most travellers remained unaware of its existence.

  In 3254, Lave began tapping what available resources it could from the Castellan Belt. A mining station was built and the area began shipping resources to several off-world companies, mostly from Leesti and Riedquat. Arms shipments are also trafficked here.

  Prior to 3265, Walden's laws were still enforced, but there is ample opportunity to hide from the authorities and avoid tax and permit agreements.

  * * *

  Chapter 19: The Landing

  The first time Pietro opened his eyes, he knew something was wrong.

  He was lying on his side and staring at an orange blur. Things moved in front of him, but he was exhausted; the tiredness, leadening everything and couldn’t make out what they were. Gradually his eyelids drooped and closed.

  The second time he opened his eyes, he felt confused and disconnected, like he’d woken from a dream. He recalled being on a spaceship, his spaceship, at the controls, but nothing looked like a spaceship. Then things came into focus and made more sense.

  They were parts of a spaceship.

  He struggled to sit up. Something held him down. His right foot, still in a magboot, was caught and twisted in the wreckage. A stabbing pain ran up his leg and for a moment he feared it was broken, but then his toes moved. He ignored the pain and probed down to the knee. The joint was pulled around at an unnatural angle, dislocated.

  The sensation of weight and gravity made everything strange. He’d been more than three days in space and his muscles struggled to remember what they should do.

  Can’t stay like this.

  Fumbling fingers unlocked the boots and freed his legs. Gritting his teeth, he dragged himself out and turned back to the twisted knee; a hand either side and with a deep breath, he tried to straighten the leg ...

  ... and blacked out.

  * * *

  ‘Pietro!’

  Rough hands on his shoulders; he opened his eyes to find Gebrial leaning over him, her purple hair, matted with blood. ‘Are you okay? What happened? I woke up here.’

  Pietro sat up again, rubbing his face. Mud, rocks and brush, a flat arid landscape tinged with the orange light of the star. His own hands came back stained red. ‘We crashed,’ he said, ‘but I don’t know where. Last thing I remember is the asteroid belt.’

  ‘The alarm went off and something hit us,’ Gebrial said. She glanced around. ‘Where’s Renner?’

&nbs
p; ‘Help me up,’ Pietro said. Gebrial offered her hand and he got to his feet. The right leg would take some weight, but not if they had to walk far. ‘We need supplies, anything we can salvage from the recycler.’

  Wreckage littered the earth in a great trench running for miles into the distance. They’d hit hard and the Gallant shattered on the ground. Small fires dotted amongst remains as the last stored chemicals burned away. ‘We gather up whatever’s usable and find shelter.’ He shivered involuntarily. ‘No idea how cold this planet gets at night.’

  Pietro hobbled over the uneven ground, trying to keep his bare feet from twisted metal and shattered glass. In amongst the destruction, he picked up Gebrial’s damaged dataslate and handed it to her.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been anywhere like this.’

  ‘Remember when you first arrived at Solati Station and you were alone?’ Pietro said. ‘This is the same, only down here, no temperature controls and no obvious places to find food. That’s why we need the recycler. All organics go in there. If we’re lucky and find a power source, we can eat.’

  ‘What happens if we can’t?’

  ‘Not worth thinking about right now, the battery in the slate might last a few hours and that’ll give us an idea of where we are.’ Pietro frowned. ‘We must have been unconscious for a long time; the planet’s a fair distance from that asteroid belt.’

  ‘Maybe we hyperspaced and we’re not on Lave?’ Gebrial said.

  Pietro squinted and pointed at the sun. ‘No, that’s the right star, we’re in the same system, spent long enough with that orange glow. I doubt the ship would have managed a jump anyhow.’ He turned around and stared at Gebrial. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Just a bump on the head,’ she replied.

  An hour of searching brought up no sign of Renner, but Gebrial did find the remains of the ship’s recycler. An exhausted Pietro sat, working with slivers of metal to prize open the ingester. Any hope of powering the device was gone. The grey paste inside was particularly unappetising, but would be nutritious and had been processed. With rationing, Pietro thought they might make it last three days.