Dark Space (9 page)
A vast backdrop of stars sparkled all around Ethan’s head, just on the other side of the nova interceptor’s thin transpiranium cockpit canopy. The stars seemed so close he could touch them, but Ethan couldn’t allow himself to be distracted by the view. He targeted the next nearest enemy fighter and brought the red brackets under his crosshairs. His ears picked up the soft click of a laser lock even before his eyes registered the crosshair turning green. He pulled the trigger and held it down, pouring another continuous stream of bright red pulse lasers into his target. Then the laser charge gauges began flashing red on his HUD, and that stream of fire diminished to a slow trickle. Ethan eased up on the trigger and switched over to missiles just as his target began jinking out of line. Enemy ripper fire sizzled off his rear shields, and Ethan broke into an evasive pattern, forgetting about his target for the moment. The sound of ripper fire hitting his shields stopped, only to start again from another angle when a second junker swooped down onto his six. Ethan craned his neck to get a visual reference on the enemy fighters. They were converging on him from completely opposite directions—a pincer maneuver that was sure to get him killed.
“Ah, a little help over here? I’m caught in a vice!”
“Roger that, Five,” Seven said.
Ethan tried to hold it together as enemy fire sizzled off his shields, turning them dark green, then yellow, and finally red. Now shells
plinked
off his hull as the shields were unable to completely dissipate the energy of those projectiles.
The streams of enemy fire on his port side ceased, followed by, “That got him!” from Guardian Seven. Now, with only one fighter attacking him, Ethan strengthened his shields on the starboard side and circled around to line up on the enemy fighter’s tail. A few moments later he poured freshly charged pulse lasers into the twin hulls of a blocky junk fighter whose starboard maneuvering jet was already flickering dimly. Unable to evade him, the junker took heavy fire. One of his shots punched through to the reactor, and the enemy fighter suddenly exploded, sending the twin hulls flaming off in opposite directions.
“I need help!” Gina screamed.
Guardian Three came on saying, “Four enemy fighters just broke off from the main group! They’re lining up for another pass on the
Defiant
! Get them before—” The comm died in static.
“Lead?” Ethan quickly checked his scopes.
A second later Ithicus came back saying, “I’m all right. Got winged by a bit of shrapnel. No major damage. Those four fired off a volley of torps at point-blank range. Dumb frekkers.”
The command channel sounded in the next instant with, “Guardians, we need a better screen than that!”
“Doing the best we can, Control,” Three shot back. “We’re down by five and there are at least two enemy squadrons out here. Where are your gunnery crews?”
“Cannons are coming online any minute.”
We don’t have a minute,
Ethan thought to himself. “Six, where are you?” he asked, remembering that she’d called for help. He spent a moment checking his scopes for Gina without any luck. A cold fist seized his heart, but then he found her on the grid, cutting an evasive pattern toward the
Valiant
. A pair of enemy interceptors chased after her pouring golden streams of ripper fire on her tail. Those two were fast for junkers, and she was having trouble shaking them.
“I’m right where you left me, you dumb kakard! I don’t suppose I still have a wingmate out there somewhere?”
Ethan grimaced. He wasn’t used to working in teams. “Sorry, on my way now.” He came about and boosted with the last of his afterburners to catch up to the enemy interceptors. Once in range, he switched to Hailfire missiles and quickly dropped one on the enemies’ tails. A second later he realized his mistake as he noted the proximity between the enemy interceptors and Gina’s own nova. “Gina, get out of there! I just fired a Hailfire on your pursuit.”
“Frek you! My afterburners are tapped out! What do you want me to do?”
Ethan thought fast, even as the blue trail of the Hailfire’s primary thrusters winked out. The enemy fighters realized their peril and broke off from Gina to go evasive, but they were still too close.
“Reverse thrust!” Ethan said.
“They might lock on to
me
if I do that!”
Frek,
Ethan thought. “Hold on!” He thumbed over to pulse lasers and targeted the distant missile, hoping he could get it before it exploded into its four smaller warheads. At this range his targeting computer refused to lock onto the missile. Desperate, Ethan raked blind laser fire over the target brackets. Nothing happened. An instant later, the Hailfire exploded in four separate directions, and Ethan felt a stab of fear. Sweat trickled into his left eye and he swiped at it with the back of one hand, blinking to clear his vision. The smaller warheads flared to life and boosted after the enemy fighters.
“They’re too close!”
Ethan could hear a tremor in Gina’s voice. “Give me a second!” he said, switching fire to the warhead arcing closest to Gina. He hit it with a lucky shot, and the resultant explosion tore into the nearest enemy fighter, drawing flames and debris from its thruster pods. Gina’s fighter rocked in the shockwave. Then the other three warheads found their marks, and the remaining two enemy fighters exploded in blinding fireballs. Ethan heard Gina scream, and then her comm cut off in static. “Gina!”
The static hissed on and Ethan felt a horrible chill creeping down his spine.
Frek!
His heart pounding, Ethan checked his scopes, but they’d fuzzed out due to the proximity of the explosions. He flew through the expanding fireballs and ignored the sound of debris pelting his fighter. His forward shields quickly dropped into the red, and he feared what that meant for Gina. “Gina!” he tried again.
Then he saw her, one of her three engines still glowing, the other two flickering. Her starboard stabilizer fins had been knocked off, and he could see her cockpit canopy was striated with fractures. “Gina, for Immortals’ sake, answer me!”
A moment later her voice came back to him, but she sounded weak. “I’m alive. Took a hit through my canopy. My suit’s pissing air.”
“Krak, how badly are you injured?”
“Not much blood, but breathing hurts like a motherfrekker. Maybe a few broken ribs.”
“Fly back to the
Defiant
. I’ll cover you.”
“I’ll never make it, not on half thrust. . . . Too many enemy fighters.”
Ethan gritted his teeth. “Well, frek it! You’re just gonna give up and die?”
No answer.
Ethan watched the hull of the
Valiant
growing large before them. In his periphery he spotted the
Defiant
's beam cannons opening up as the cruiser made her first pass on the
Valiant
’s port hangar. Eight blue dymium beams shot out, drawing rippling waves from the hangar’s shields.
A few seconds later, Ethan saw nova fighters tearing out of the carrier’s launch tubes.
“Are those our novas coming from the
Valiant
?” Gina asked.
Ethan shook his head. “We don’t have anyone left on board. We took everyone except for the sentinels with us.”
“So those are
enemy
novas. Frek!”
Ethan had no reply for that. By now Brondi had overwhelmed the six sentinels in the concourse between the carrier’s ventral hangars and he was taking control of the ship—including its considerable compliment of nova fighters and interceptors.
Gina’s right. We won’t make it back to the
Defiant.
No one will.
Chapter 19
A
lec “Big Brainy” Brondi watched from the bridge of his corvette as his soldiers overwhelmed the ISSA mechs on the other side of the hangar with dozens of their own smaller, less powerful mechs. Brondi’s own mechanized forces streamed into the hangar, firing their shoulder-mounted rockets while the corvette’s and transport’s turrets laid down covering fire. In just five minutes, those six pitiful ISSA defenders were eliminated—although the concourse was left a molten, debris-strewn ruin after that.
As soon as the enemy forces were reduced to steaming slag, Brondi instructed his troops to secure the shattered concourse on the other side of the hangar, and he ordered the rough dozen pilots he’d brought aboard to go see if they could steal some novas and help defend against the pitiful resistance that the Imperial Star Systems Fleet was mustering. Near as Brondi could tell, the cruiser that had been shadowing them didn’t even have enough crew aboard to man its guns.
But even as Brondi thought that, he heard one of his bridge crew exclaim, “The
Defiant
is opening up on the hangar bay shields! Blue dymium beams. The shields won’t last long under that assault!
Brondi scowled. “Give our fighters a new target. Tell them to disengage the novas and blast the
Defiant
to scrap. Have them launch all their remaining warheads.”
“Yes, sir.”
Brondi smiled and walked back from the bridge viewports to the captain’s table. He swiveled the command view to see the
Defiant
running in a slow, looping attack run on the hangar. The enemy’s fighter screen was now just 10 novas strong—down 14—while Brondi’s forces had lost no more than two squadrons. That was a reasonable kill-to-death ratio. Brondi’s fighters now outnumbered the enemy by more than 10 to one—and that was soon to increase with the addition of stolen imperial novas. Brondi smiled a big, gaping smile. “So this is what it feels like to be supreme! Thank you, Dominic, for stepping aside so graciously. I think it’s time to take command of my new ship.” Brondi turned to address his bridge crew. “Shall we, then?”
* * *
“We’re making headway,” the gunnery chief said. “The hangar bay shields should be down in just another minute.”
Supreme Overlord Dominic watched out the viewports as the
Valiant
’s port hangar shields glowed bright blue with sustained fire from the
Defiant
’s beam cannons. It was a pity his command chip implant didn’t work to control the
Valiant
at this range. If he were able to take remote control of the
Valiant
’s systems, he could simply lower the shields.
Dominic frowned and turned away from the viewports to study the holographic overview of the battle at the captain’s table. His XO, Deck Commander Loba Caldin, stood beside him, shaking her head. “We’re down to just 10 fighters. We should recall them now, before they all die.”
Dominic gritted his teeth. “Another minute. We’re almost through the shields.”
Caldin turned to him with a scathing look that he wasn’t used to getting from anyone. No one dared to look at him like that. “Sir, most of the enemy troops are already aboard. We can’t do anything to further our cause by staying here, whether we bring down the shields and destroy their transports or not.”
Dominic looked up with a hollow-eyed expression. “We have to do
something!
”
She shook her head. “We need to retreat, or we’re all going to die.”
“Hoi!”
Dominic recognized the voice of the gravidar operator, Corpsman Goldrim, and he turned to face the man.
Goldrim was working furiously at his station. “We have enemy novas launching from the
Valiant
!” he said.
That decided it for Dominic. He took one look at the captain’s table, and then sighed meaningfully. “Helm, bring us about. Set a course which will take us close to the Dark Space gate, but not directly there. We don’t want the enemy to guess our intentions. When we get close, we’re going to head for the gate at the last minute.”
“Yes, sir,” the officer at the helm, Petty Sergeant Damen Corr replied.
The deck commander turned to him, her eyes wide. “Sir, we don’t have a cloaking device aboard the
Defiant
. If we encounter Sythians—”
“Then we’ll die, the same as if we’d stayed here to make a run for the more distant Chorlis gate.”
“We could make a blind jump deeper into Dark Space.”
“With the Firebelt Nebula between us and Chorlis?” Dominic shook his head. “You know as well as I do that’s suicide. There’s a reason the route through the nebula is seeded with SLS interrupter buoys.”
Caldin looked away, and she nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Dominic watched on the captain’s table as his ship came about. It lost its firing angle on the
Valiant
’s hangar, and stopped shooting. “Deck Officer Gorvan, tell your gunnery crews to focus on shooting down missiles and fighters and cover our retreat.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Helm, bring us up to full speed and fire the afterburners.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Engineering, give me more power to shields and engines! Rob energy from the comms, sensors, weapons, and nonessential shipboard functions, but keep pulse lasers strong enough for missile defense.”
The glow panels on the bridge abruptly darkened as the engineering officer complied, setting the ship’s systems to a low power mode.
“Comms, tell our fighters to cover us to the gate and then get aboard in a hurry.”
The comm officer nodded.
“You made the right choice, sir,” Caldin said.
“Hmmm,” Dominic rubbed his chin. “Then why does it feel like the wrong one?”
“You’re abandoning your ship. That never feels right.”
“ETA to the gate, 18 minutes,” the helm reported.
“Good,” Dominic replied. “Let’s hope we make it.”
As if to punctuate his words, an ominous rumble sounded through the ship as a lone enemy torpedo escaped the
Defiant
’s pulse lasers and slammed into her starboard maneuvering thruster.
It’s going to be close,
the overlord thought.
* * *
“Gina, you don’t have a choice! I’ll fly in with you, but it’s now or never.”
“Frek, Adan, this is the worst bad idea you’ve ever had.”
“They’re not going to expect us to land with two lone fighters. That’s suicide. But we’d better move fast if we’re going to make it before they raise the shields on the starboard hangar.”
The overlord had dropped the
Valiant
’s starboard hangar shields in order to fly out in the
Defiant
, and as far as Ethan knew, they were still down. It was just a small piece of luck that at the time Brondi hadn’t realized he could fly his landing party around and land inside the unshielded hangar, but now that oversight would be of great use to Ethan and Gina.
They cruised underneath the belly of the massive warship, staying as close to the hull as they dared, so that no enemy fighters would easily pick them up on scopes. So far they were clear, but Ethan had throttled back to 51% in order to keep pace with Gina’s nova and its badly damaged thrusters. At that speed they were practically sitting ducks.
Ethan had a bad feeling as they crested the other side of the carrier that they were about to run into a whole enemy squadron just lying there waiting for them.
He watched his scopes with anxious anticipation, but there was no sign of the enemy.
Ethan commed Gina. “Ready? On my mark we’re going to loop back and into the hangar bay. Keep a thumb ready on your braking thrusters. We’re going in hot.”
Ethan heard Gina sigh. “I’m ready when you are, Skidmark.” Ethan waited a few more seconds for them to get some distance from the carrier, and then he called out, “Mark!”
They both pulled back on their flight sticks at the same time, pulling a half loop which put them upside down and heading straight for the hangar. Ethan realized a little too late that he hadn’t had a chance to check whether or not the shields were back up. If they were, his fighter would explode on the shields rather than fly into the hangar.
Ethan gritted his teeth and triggered his braking thrusters to slow down. He and Gina reached the static shields a split second later—
And passed straight through. Ethan breathed a deep sigh of relief as the
Valiant
’s grav guns seized control of their fighters and guided them down to a long strip along the side of the empty venture-class hangar.
Ethan killed his nova’s thrusters and waited for the carrier’s autopilot guide him down to the deck. He deployed landing struts and watched as his and Gina’s interceptors were further slowed, rolled over, and gradually lowered to the deck until they settled down with well-synchronized
thud-unks.
Ethan popped the seals on his canopy, even before the carrier’s mag clamps seized his ship’s landing struts. He reached for his sidearm, but so far there was no sign of Brondi’s troops milling about. They obviously weren’t worried about guarding their backs. That would have been a major oversight were the battle in space not already so heavily stacked in Brondi’s favor. The
Defiant
would never survive to make a landing back aboard the carrier and challenge Brondi for control of the ship.
Ethan hopped down from his nova and saw Gina’s fractured cockpit canopy rising just ahead of him. He hurried to the side of her interceptor as she stood up slowly in her cockpit. Once standing, Gina’s gaze flicked around to find and briefly watch the entrances and exits of the hangar. When she was satisfied that there were no enemies lurking about, she turned to look down at him. Ethan noted that Gina looked deathly pale, and she held a hand to the side of her black flight suit, which was slowly trickling blood out between her gloved fingers. Fortunately, unlike him, Gina had suited up before climbing into her cockpit—otherwise she would be dead rather than merely injured.
“Oh, frek, Gina. I’m sorry.” Ethan’s brow pinched with remorse.
“Yea, yea, you can buy me a round later to make up for it. Help me down, would you?” she managed a weak smile and then stepped over the side of the cockpit and slowly lowered herself until she was sitting on the wing of her interceptor with her feet dangling over the side.
Ethan stepped up to the side of the interceptor and she held out her arms to wrap them around his neck.
“Careful,” she warned, as Ethan began to lift her off the interceptor’s wing, but she let out a shrill scream as the movement pressed heavily on her broken ribs, and Ethan set her down in a hurry.
“Frek . . .” she breathed, swaying on her feet. Ethan could see through her helmet visor that she was sweating profusely from the pain, but rather than allowing that to distract her she was back to scanning the entrances of the hangar.
“You think anyone heard that?” she asked.
Ethan turned to look now, too, his left hand dropping to his sidearm as his gaze flicked between the broken holes leading from hangar to the concourse beyond, but when no one came boiling into the hangar, Ethan shook his head. “Doesn’t seem like it.” He nodded to the distant slice of the hangar opposite theirs, which was just visible across the broken, debris-strewn concourse. “But we’d better hurry.”