Project Starfighter (36 page)

With that in mind, Chris turned and
sped away from Kethlan, certain that the man would follow, but not
loose any missiles. At the same time, he adjusted the power
weightings of the shield, pushing everything to the front, and
leaving the rear and the sides totally exposed.

Chris, what are you doing?!
Athena asked.

“Trust me”, Chris said. He
watched his radar, seeing the Fer-de-Lance speed after him, as
expected. The Fer-de-Lance, moving faster, would catch him soon. He
waited until Kethlan was almost on top of him before turning to face
it. Kethlan opened fire, strafing, but not slowing. Chris, however,
did not stop turning, swinging a full three hundred and sixty
degrees, making the appropriate adjustments to the shield strengths
to defend against the attacks.

Kethlan raced past him, slowing to
turn and face Chris once more to strafe the front of the Firefly. At
the same moment, Chris unleashed two of the Firefly’s rockets at
point-blank range. Kethlan was so close he had little time to evade.

The first rocket blasted down a good
chunk of the Fer-de-Lance’s shields, the next finishing what
remained and punching through to the armour beneath. The Fer-de-Lance
was knocked off course by the blows, spinning over and over. Chris
wasted no time, squeezing off cannon fire, and pumping as many plasma
bolts into the fighter as possible. Kethlan was quick to recover,
accelerating away. Even so, Chris could tell that he had scored an
unexpected victory against his opponent. The Fer-de-Lance’s shields
were not recovering as quickly as they had before, the power
generators clearly struggling. Kethlan once again began to zigzag,
his flight pattern unpredictable. The man was, however, no longer
coming for Chris, who noticed then that the power weightings to the
Firefly’s shields had been adjusted without his intervention.

I have regained control
,
Athena told him.

“Chris, the warship is pulling
away,” Sid communicated.

“Looks like we’ve scared him
off,” Chris said, watching as Kethlan’s Fer-de-Lance headed
towards the
Alchemist’s Son
.

He was proven correct a short time
later, a jump point opening up and both the warship and the
Fer-de-Lance speeding into it. What remained of the fighter
complement that had escorted the pair into the system fled along with
them. The moment every vessel was across the threshold, the point
snapped shut.

“You must have
really
upset
him, whoever he was,” Sid said.

Chris did not reply. He was looking
back to where the Wolf Pack and the Immortal League had been busying
themselves with their skirmish. There was now so much wreckage
drifting about and littering the area that he was unable to tell who
had won. Unless the battle had headed off elsewhere, it looked like
both sides had been routed for now. Chris couldn’t see Tyler, Eve,
Clayton, or Dar anywhere. Either they had been killed or they had
fled with the
A.B.C
. Mal’s fate had now, surely, been
sealed.

Not that Chris cared. Right now, he
only wanted to get out of here.

“Chris, are you okay?” Phoebe
asked him.

“Fine, fine,” Chris said.

“I’m sorry! I tried to help, but
... I don’t know, something happened and I lost control.”

“Sid,” Chris said, ignoring
Phoebe for the moment, “is the
Dodger
badly damaged?” It
didn’t appear so.

“No,” Sid confirmed. “All the
damage it sustained was superficial, almost as though intentionally.
I don’t think that warship was trying to destroy it.”

“Let’s worry about that later,”
Chris said. “We’re coming back aboard. Prepare to jump the
instant Phoebe and I have landed.”

Athena didn’t seem to need any
sort of encouragement to make the journey, taking over control of the
Firefly from Chris, and hurrying towards the
Dodger
. As she
did so, Chris looked over to where Kethlan and the
Alchemist’s
Son
had vanished, quite certain that the two of them would be
crossing paths again very soon.

“
I
’m
so sorry,” Phoebe repeated, rushing over to meet Chris as he
disembarked from the Firefly.

“There’s no need to keep
apologising,” Chris said. “It wasn’t your fault; you’ve done
nothing wrong.” Even as he spoke, Chris noticed that his hands were
shaking. That had been quite a test. How had the timeslip failed? Why
had Athena lost control over the Firefly? How had Phoebe lost control
over the fighters she was commanding? And why had they
self-destructed? So many questions.

Athena’s avatar materialized, her
expression one of deep concern. She said nothing, however, and Chris
only met her eyes, exhaling a breath that he felt he had been holding
ever since the appearance of the
Alchemist’s Son
, the
squadron of fighters, and that Fer-de-Lance.

Sid came bounding into the cargo
hold. “Are you okay?” he asked Chris.

“I’m okay,” Chris said, though
he knew his tone was betraying him.

Sid nodded, turning to Athena, and
then Phoebe. “Phoebe?”

“I’m ... I’m okay,” Phoebe
answered, though now it looked as though the shock of the encounter
was starting to catch up with her. Sid awkwardly embraced her, Phoebe
reciprocating.

“Chris, who was flying that
fighter that attacked you?” Phoebe asked, once Sid released her.

“He said his name was Kline
Kethlan,” Chris said.

“Kethlan? You’re sure?” Sid
asked.

“Positive.”

“I’ve heard of him. He’s the
commander of WEAPCO’s naval forces. He’s held the position for
several years.”

“Chris,” Athena said. “I have
a feeling that Kethlan did not come here to defend the shipyard but
actually to meet you. Think about it – he passed up several
opportunities to destroy the Firefly and kill you; to kill both of
us.”

Athena was clearly referring to the
way in which Kethlan had relished chipping away the Firefly’s
shields, but not actually damaging the craft much beyond that. Chris
looked at the fighter, seeing the scorch marks on the armour from
where Kethlan’s gunfire had penetrated the shields. At any time
during the later stages of the engagement, Kethlan could have
destroyed him, but had chosen not to.

“You’re right,” Chris
admitted. “He must have been toying with me. But why?”

“Maybe he wanted to meet the man
who destroyed the
Grand Vizier
,” Sid suggested. “He wanted
to test you, and see what you were really made of.”

“And when you proved that you were
far more capable than he had originally thought, he chose to quit
while he was ahead,” Athena said.

Chris considered this for a time. He
had almost certainly proved more capable than Kethlan had been
expecting. In fact, Chris had surprised himself with his skills,
despite having nearly lost the battle. Only a few weeks ago, the
fight would have been over in just a few moments, ending in his
defeat. Even with the training he had received at New Chile, he
wouldn’t have been a match for the WEAPCO commander. But something
had given him a boost, heightening his own natural abilities. He
glanced at Athena, recalling Sid’s suggestion of how the mind
sharing could have resulted in some unexpected – but certainly very
welcome – side effects.

“Did Kethlan say anything to you
before he left?” Sid asked.

“Nothing. No taunts or anything,”
Chris said. “The more worrying thing is how he managed to disable
both my timeslip and Athena’s control over the Firefly.”

“It must have been something
aboard his Fer-de-Lance. I’ve never seen a fighter like that
before, and there are few records of it available on the
Dodger
.
It must be totally custom-built – as you might expect for a fighter
piloted by the commander of WEAPCO’s navy.”

“Perhaps. But that doesn’t
explain how he was able to defeat Phoebe’s psionics.” Chris
looked at Phoebe. “Any idea how he managed to detonate all the
ships you were commanding? It could well prove to be a serious
setback against us if he is able to do that to any vessel under your
control.”

“I’m not sure,” Phoebe said.
“But just before they all went up, I felt something force its way
into my mind.” She looked a little unsure as to how to describe it.

“I might know what you mean,”
Chris said, looking at Athena. “Whenever I’m flying the Firefly,
I can ... feel Athena there, next to me. It’s even closer whenever
we do the timeslip. Something seemed to have forced a wedge between
us when Kethlan and his group turned up.” He turned to Sid. “Sid,
can you have a dig through everything you can find on the
Fer-de-Lance, and see what you can find?”

“Sure,” Sid said. “Tell me –
you and Athena are connected while you’re flying. Are you able to
stop Athena from entering your head?”

“I don’t know,” Chris said,
“I’ve never tried it. I guess if I simply applied the right
amount of willpower ...?”

“I don’t think you would be able
to,” Athena said. “This is a passive thing; it’s not as easy as
closing a door. It would be like trying to stop breathing – sooner
or later, you’re forced to do so. The only thing you can do is take
the helmet off. You don’t possess any kind of psionic abilities
yourself, so there is no way for you to build a mental barrier.
Willpower can only go so far.”

“Is that how you were able to read
my mind the first time we met?” Chris asked. Athena had said that
she had modelled her appearance on images and thoughts she had picked
up, the ones that had been at the forefront at the time.

“Those were thoughts that you were
projecting quite freely,” Athena said. “They were on the surface
of your mind, the most obvious and easily accessible ones. But even
if you had buried them deep, I would have been able to extract them
forcibly. I just chose not to. It would be an invasion of privacy.”

“But Phoebe, with her natural
abilities, could stop you from reading her mind, right?” Sid asked.

“With the right know-how, yes,”
Athena said.

“That’s something we should work
on,” Chris said to Phoebe. “If I’m understanding things right,
whatever invaded your mind severed your control over the fighters.
This time it detonated them, but we can’t run the risk that in
future it might simply take back control. We need to make sure you
can block them out completely.”

Phoebe nodded, still looking
despondent. “Where do we go from here?” she asked.

“I’m not sure that we can count
on Tyler’s further assistance,” Chris said. “He’s just
suffered a significant setback, having ended up fighting both Mal
and
WEAPCO at the same time.”

“At least we know that we can
build a force of our own,” Athena said, “one that we can command
ourselves.”

Chris nodded. “It’s clear to me
what the next move should be – find and free Ursula. WEAPCO, the
Immortal League, and Tyler will all be duking it out between
themselves for control for a little while, and so our best chance at
a jailbreak is now. We just need a little more information on the
facility where she’s kept, and we can get started.”

“What more do we need?” Phoebe
asked.

“Right now, we know where it is
and how well it is defended, but we know nothing about what’s on
the inside. We need to know how it is staffed, what internal security
measures exist, that sort of thing. It could be that there are
zero
drones and bots in there, meaning we’ll end up having to fight
people. We can’t take control of them.”

“We also need to find out what
kind of conditions your sister is being held in,” Sid added to
Phoebe. “She might simply be in a cell, or she might be wired up to
some contraption. The latter could involve a complicated extraction
process. We can’t assume we can simply unplug her from something –
it could kill her. I’m hoping that the
Dodger
has at least
some
useful information about the facility in her databases. I
just need to find it.”

“And then we can just fly over to
Murdar, right?” Phoebe asked.

Phoebe, Chris noted, remained
desperately anxious to rescue her sister. The constant delays must
have been eating her up inside. What if they arrived too late? No,
Chris thought, the Corporation was still looking for Phoebe. If they
couldn’t bring Phoebe in themselves, they would be expecting Phoebe
to come looking for Ursula.

First things first, though – the
hold here was looking decidedly empty, what with Kethlan having
destroyed all of their fighter support. It was vital to overcome that
problem before they went any further.

“Phoebe, what can we do to help
you with your ... barriers?” Chris asked.

“I can train her,” Athena
volunteered. “I can start with something simple, such as trying to
extract a number that she is thinking of. We can then move onto more
complicated things, like sentences, images, and then thought
processes.”

“Would the drone we captured
earlier be of any use?” Sid asked. “I’ve gotten all I can out
of it.”

“That would help for the more
complicated techniques, yes,” Athena said.

“Will it be hard?” Chris asked.

“That will depend entirely on
Phoebe.”

Phoebe smiled. “Ha! No pressure,
then.”

Chris nodded. “As soon as you’re
ready, we will put together a plan to rescue your sister. We’ll be
going in there silent, but need to prepare ourselves for a fight. I
don’t see WEAPCO letting us walk into the facility, free Ursula,
and simply walk back out again.”

“Okay,” Phoebe said. She turned
to Athena. “Let’s get started. Ready?”

“Ready,” Athena said. “Start
by thinking of a number, any number ...”

~

Chris
lay in his quarters, on his back, unable to sleep. How long had he
been staring up at that ceiling now? A few hours, that was for sure.
He hoped to drift off soon, and get some much needed rest. He didn’t
expect Phoebe would take too long to learn the ins and outs of the
barrier techniques that Athena was teaching her, and then they would
be springing into action. As long as Sid stopped distracting Phoebe.
There was definitely something between those two. Sid had taken an
instant shine to the woman, and sometimes suffered from a fat tongue
when he spoke to her about non-mission related things, tripping over
himself, and becoming a little confused.