Rebel Fleet (14 page)

=23=

We flew onward for two months. Every week or so, we hopped to another star system and picked up a fresh crew for another fighter.

In all that time, we’d never seen an enemy vessel. But they were out there. I could almost feel them as we got closer and closer to the Orion Spur.

The Rebel Fleet had come from far away, close to the hub of the galaxy. There, vast glowing nebulae obscured everything. The nearness of the stars in clusters, along with the hanging dust and gases, made that corner of the universe a bright one.

When they’d launched probes from these innermost star systems toward places like Earth, we’d seen bright rips in the sky because they’d come from more luminous areas of the galaxy. Now, however, as we drove onward, ever farther away from the central hub, it seemed to be growing ever darker.

Then came another a
big
jump, two thousand lightyears across an abyss that was thinly populated by either stars or life. That’s when things went badly.

At first, the stellar flux seemed like any other. We were veterans of the process by now.

“Checklist complete, Chief,” Gwen said, reporting to me.

I’d earned the title of “chief” very recently. Essentially, it allowed me to fly my fighter without onboard supervision from a higher-ranking individual.

Everyone in the chain of command labored hard to turn one member of each fighter crew into a chief, that way they could send us out on our own. Each successful chief, in turn, raised his officer’s status in the Fleet.

“Anti-grav on,” Samson said, activating the sub-system without being told to.

We were working more like a team now. We were infinitely more competent and confident. Instead of relying entirely on my earthly military training and what I’d learned from Tand, I felt my own people had become dependable. I’d steadily shelled off tasks to them after I’d mastered new techniques during training flights.

Tand and Shaw hadn’t seen fit to give me any orders in that regard. I was free to run my ship the way I wanted, as long as I accomplished the goals of my mission. That was refreshing, and unusual in any military organization I knew of.

I suspected they operated that way because each crew was so different. What might work well for a family of cats might turn into a disastrous mess for a group of hard-headed turtles. Whatever the case, I was free to operate
Hammerhead
as I liked.

So as not to be overwhelmed, I’d delegated responsibilities. I now did little other than pilot the vehicle and give coordinating commands. The others handled everything else. Dr. Chang was my navigator and support-system specialist. He’d taken plenty of mathematics in his time, and he could operate machinery like a pro.

Gwen was my computer wizard. She monitored the AI, managing the continuous incoming data-streams. Her main job was to relay a stream-lined version of key information to me.

Mia had turned out to be a good weapons operator. Our armament was sophisticated, but not terribly technical. You pretty much chose a target and ordered the ship to destroy it. Mia’s reaction time was the best on the crew, and she seemed to have a natural flair for the destruction of targets during training.

Samson had been the hardest to place. Brawn had its usefulness, but it generally didn’t apply when flying a spaceship. I’d decided to make him my co-pilot, and I’d given him direct responsibility over secondary elements such as the ship’s hatches, defenses and safety systems. If there was ever going to be a fire aboard, he was going to be critical—but until then, frankly I hoped he could stay out of the way.

“I’m seeing power-spikes from the reactors,” Gwen warned.

“Right,” I said. “I see the rip forming now. We’re going to fly into it about ninety seconds.”

“Chief?” Gwen called. “I’m picking up a strange radiation reading.”

I scanned my instruments, and used my distance perception to reach beyond the ship. I didn’t see anything dangerous.

“I’m not getting it.”

“It’s internal aboard
Killer
,” she said, “relaying it to your input.”

I could see the problem now. One of the reactor cores had gone cold. There were eight, normally, but now there were only seven operating.

“We’ve had a failure,” I said. “Everyone strap in.”

“Report it to the bridge, Leo!” Mia said in concern.

“I already did,” Gwen said, “they’re well aware of the difficulty.”

In my earpiece, I listened to the high command channel. They were trying to get the reactor online and failing.

“They have to abort—don’t they?” Gwen asked.

“I don’t know,” Dr. Chang said. As our navigator, he knew the most about jumping through space. “We’ll be behind the rest if we delay. They don’t think they can repair the reactor for hours. Worse, if we fly late, we’ll scatter for sure.”

They all looked worried, and I couldn’t blame them. It was moments like this that reminded us we were stuck in space with little control over our own fates.

What if we were separated from our adopted pack of predators?

Listening in, I soon got the directive from on-high.

“We’re going to fly,” I said. “Half the Fleet has already shipped out. If we don’t go now, we’ll scatter anyway. Hang on, everyone.”

We winked out, plunging into the iris of the rip that had been spiraling in front of us. We tumbled through hyperspace into the unknown.

When we came into being again, we were in a spin.

No one else could feel this as the internals of
Hammerhead
were shielded from external physics such as centrifugal force.

But I could
see
it. I could reach out with my sym’s eyes, beyond Killer’s hull, to see the universe swirling around. I had to pull my focus back aboard my own ship quickly in order to keep from becoming nauseous.

“Hang on, everyone,” I said. “We’re in a spin.”

“What do we do?” Gwen asked.

“We wait for orders.”

“Shouldn’t we try to get out?” Mia asked.

I glanced at her, then pointed out the see-through walls of
Hammerhead
. “Where do we go? The hangar deck is sealed.”

“We’re trapped in here!” she said in a frightened voice that cracked high.

“Relax, crew,” I said. “I doubt things are that bad—”

“Abandon ship!” came a booming voice penetrating everyone’s skull via our syms. “All crews, we’re opening the aft doors. Abandon ship!”

I looked at Samson. “Release the clamps,” I said.

“Releasing, Chief!” he boomed. “It’s done!”

We drifted off the deck, and the hangar deck began to spin around us.

“Matching spin.”

Some of the crews around us had attempted to climb out of the ship, possibly to head for the lifeboats. I could have told them that it was suicide, but I didn’t have the clearance to make announcements or even the time to do it.

By lifting off from the deck, I was able to get our ship above the rest. The other fighters were beginning to slide and smash into one another. We were above them, looking down at the chaos.

A few other ships followed my lead. I couldn’t identify them—there wasn’t time, and it was all I could do to keep my craft from crashing into others.

The big doors at the far end of the hangar began to yawn open. People, fighters and equipment were sucked out into the void. They smashed into one another and died with gushes of flame and blood as they were jettisoned out the opening.

“Look,” Mia said, “that fighter is tangled up.”

I barely had time to glance in that direction. It took all my focus to keep
Hammerhead
heading in a more or less straight direction toward the exit. As the entire hangar depressurized, this grew easier. Then I only had to match the external ship’s spin to get her under a steady keel.

“Leo,” Mia said to me. “Let me help them. I can shoot a tow cable out there and pull them after us.”

“I can’t risk that,” I said. “We’ll be fouled up.”

“It won’t help. They’re hung up on cables anyway,” Samson said.

We glided out after a half-dozen others. The black velvet of space had never looked so good to me.

“We’re clear!” Mia shouted. “Let me give it a try!”

I glanced at her. “Okay. But we have to get farther away from
Killer
in case she blows up. Gwen, are the reactors critical yet?”

“No, but they’re shutting down. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the carrier had been hit.”

Those words ran a thrill of worry through me. I’d yet to consider the possibility we were in battle. I’d assumed some kind of technical glitch was at the root of this disaster.

“Mia, take your shot. Samson, be ready to reel them in.”

The two worked together for once. I felt a tremble and heard a whoosh. The tow cable fired out, lanced the fighter with a magnetic harpoon-head, and the line went taut.

“Lighting up the engines,” I said, goosing the throttle gently.

The tiny ship roared, then shook. At last, we broke free. I wasn’t sure if the cable had snapped, or if we’d been successful. I was too busy dodging debris to check.

Two furry arms came up and wrapped themselves around me.

“We got them,” she said. “We saved them. You’re the best!”

I frowned, wondering why she cared so damned much. It wasn’t like her to be the rescuing type. Then I noticed the insignia on the fighter that was drifting and bucking behind us.

“That’s Ra-tikh’s ship?” I asked, incredulous.

“That’s right, Chief,” Samson said with a laugh. “You just saved Ra-tikh, Dalton and their three cat-ladies. I wonder if you’ll live to regret it.”

I had to wonder the same, but with Mia nuzzling me, I didn’t worry about it.

“Back to your station, Mia,” I said. “Pouring on more power. We have to get clear. Gwen, tell me what’s going on out there.”

“Running sensor scans, but they don’t make any sense.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I’m picking up a lot of large ships—too many, in fact. Do you think we’ve merged up our group with another group from the main fleet?”

Deciding we were safe enough to take a look at the big picture, I used my perception of space around us to look deeply in random directions. I saw a cluster of large vessels, and I zoomed in on it.

They weren’t carrier ships. Or if they were, they weren’t our own Rebel ships.

“I think we’ve found the Imperial Kher,” I said. “If I don’t miss my guess, I’m looking at enemy cruisers.”

“But we still haven’t reached enemy territory,” Gwen objected.

“Maybe not, but this is technically the Orion Front zone. Maybe they’ve invaded farther into our space. You can take a look for yourselves.”

There were gasps as I relayed my visuals to the rest of the crew. They watched in astonishment.

“What do we do?” Mia asked, voicing the question on everyone’s mind.

I took a moment to assess
Killer
before I answered her. The big carrier was slowing down, but she was still spinning. She clearly wasn’t in any state for battle. The CAG wasn’t online, and even the automated traffic control systems were dead.

It left me with an odd, hollow feeling. These people had stolen me from Earth. They’d pressed me into service and forced me to fight like a dog in a pit. But, they’d also trained me and shown me they had their own code of honor. Seeing
Killer
in her death-throes behind me didn’t make me happy, and that wasn’t just because without her I’d be stranded in an unknown hostile star system.

“We can’t run to Earth,” I said at last. “We can’t run anywhere. I say it’s time to find out if
Hammerhead
can fight or not.”

No one answered me for a stunned moment, but then Samson grinned.

“Good thinking,” he said. “I wanted to kill something anyway. It’s been months!”

“That’s the spirit!” I told him, and I meant it.

What the hell else could we do?

=24=

We cut Ra-tikh’s fighter loose and accelerated. There was a battle ahead, well within our flight range.

Using my perception to its limits, I reached out to see what we were up against. It didn’t look good. A dozen of our ships were embroiled with a row of enemy vessels.

The enemy cruisers were ugly. They were angular things with a wide flange dipping low—or high, depending on your perspective. The ships reminded me of hump-backed fish. Misshapen and so lacking in aerodynamic lines you could tell they were never meant to enter an atmosphere.

“Kher cruisers,” I said. “Heavies, if I don’t miss my guess.”

“No enemy fighter-cover then?” Samson asked me.

“None that I can see. Doc, give me a fuel charge calculation given this distance.”

I passed my equipment’s range guesstimate back to him, and he began crunching numbers.

“I’d hoped there would be fighters,” Samson said.

“Why?”

He shrugged. “You can’t become an ace crew without kills.”

“We’ll just have to kill cruisers instead of fighters,” Mia said.

This set off a round of excited exclamations. My crew had no idea what they were whooping about. Samson had seen action before in war, but air battles were different. Speaking historically, a fighter in the middle of this mess was like a rowboat caught up in a pitched battle between two fleets of large ships.

This fight might be different, but I had no reason to assume it would be after all my training. Losses would be high for everyone when fighting the Imperial Kher.

“Chief,” Gwen said in sudden concern. “There’s a ship pulling up on our tail. A heavy fighter—looks like one of ours.”

“Identify and contact him.”

“It’s—it’s Ra-tikh’s ship. He must have gotten it under control and chased us down.”

“Ra-tikh?” I called on a close-range beam. “What are you doing?”

“I’m not going to allow it, Blake,” Ra-tikh’s words rang in my aural nerves via my sym.

“Allow what?”

“You will not humiliate me again. You should have left me to die aboard
Killer
.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, “but I don’t see the rest of the squadron. You wanna be my wingman?”

“Blake?” asked a new voice, overriding Ra-tikh’s. “This is Shaw. Switch on your friend-or-foe transponder.”

Cursing, I ordered Samson to get his ass in gear. We were supposed to turn on our transponder as soon as we left
Killer’s
hold. That had been Samson’s job.

“Sorry Chief,” he said, activating the unit.

“There you are,” Shaw said. “I’m now acting squadron commander. Tand is dead.
Killer
has been disabled. I’m taking tactical command until someone higher up the chain takes over from me.”

“Got it, sir. What are my orders?”

“Circle back toward
Killer
. What are you doing so far out, anyway?”

“We saw those cruisers out there and we thought we’d go for them, sir.”

He was quiet for a second.

“Brave to a fault,” he said. “For a primate, you show unusually intense predatory instincts.”

“Uh… thank you, sir.”

“Ra-tikh will be your wingman for the duration of this action. Your orders are to locate the enemy ship that ambushed
Killer
.”

In confusion, I scanned local space. “I don’t see anything out here, sir.”

“No, you wouldn’t. They hit us the moment we jumped into this star system and disappeared. It’s a phase-ship, it’s got to be. They’re small and slow, but they can hide in a pocket of hyperspace. The enemy will look like a sensor-ripple unless you’re very close.”

“Can they see us, sir?” I asked, scanning the surrounding space

“Not as well as a cruiser could, but they can passively detect local objects in normal space. Your mission is to do a sensor-sweep starting with sector 8-2-6. Check the transmitted regional mapping. Make sure the enemy phase-ship isn’t in that sector.”

Hammerhead
was already banking, fighting against inertia. Dumping grav waves and spinning around, we were heading back toward the damaged mess that was
Killer
. The maneuver caused the little ship to shake violently, but otherwise we didn’t feel the physics as we were inside our anti-grav bubble.

Ra-tikh shadowed our movements without comment. He’d heard Shaw’s commands, and although he probably wasn’t happy about them, he followed orders.

When we were close to the sector he’d assigned me to, I plunged
Hammerhead
into it.

“Turn on every active pinging sensor we have,” I told Gwen.

“We’ll be lit up like a Christmas tree, Chief,” she complained.

“I know that, but we’ve got to find something called a ‘phase-ship’. It’s hidden out here, and we’ve got to find it.”

“A
what
, Chief?”

I explained to the crew what we were looking for, as best I understood it. In our training missions, we’d learned about a broad number of topics, but we hadn’t studied enemy ship classes much yet. The cruisers had been easy to spot and identify, but a phase-ship? I’d never even heard of one.

“Ra-tikh wants to talk,” Gwen told me.

“Mia, free up your weapons. We might not get a lock on this thing. Look for anything strange on the sensor feed. If you see something, blast it.”

“Excellent…” she purred with excitement. Her eyes were wide open, wider than a human girl’s eyes could go. Her hands flexed and stretched on the controls. I could tell the hunt was thrilling her. In comparison, the rest of my crew looked stressed and nervous.

“What is it, Wingman?” I asked as I opened up a channel to Ra-tikh’s ship.

He made a coughing sound. I’d heard that noise before. The cat-people made that sound when they were building up a rage.

“What is Shaw doing?” Ra-tikh demanded. “This is insane. Two ships against an enemy vessel of size? Every sector patrolled separately? Why not hunt in strength with the whole squadron?”

“I don’t know exactly what Shaw’s thinking,” I admitted, “but we’ve never fought a phase-ship. I would guess he wants to find this thing before it can come out of hiding and hit
Killer
again.”

“Why did it stop attacking? What is this game?”

“I told you, Ra-tikh, I don’t know. Contact Shaw with your questions. Until then, follow orders.”

“I am sticking to your side. Dalton is my pilot. He smells like a rodent and insults my females, but he can fly a fighter.”

I smiled at that. I’d seen Dalton in flight training, which everyone had gone through in case the pilot was disabled. Dalton had been wild and unprofessional, but he’d definitely shown promise.

Ra-tikh disconnected, and I went back to scanning the feeds with the rest of my crew. We spent several minutes moving around sector 8-2-6 before giving up. We were given another sector to scan that was adjacent, and we moved onward.

In the meantime, I occasionally turned my long-range perception in the direction of the primary battle. The carriers had gotten the upper hand. We’d lost seven of the big ships, by my count, along with another half-dozen that had been disabled and sent to the back of the line.

The enemy cruisers were taking a beating, however. Without fighter-cover, they were getting melted to slag by thousands of small stinging hits. When half of them were destroyed, they pulled out, abandoning the ambush.

“They broke off,” Gwen said.

“I know that. Look for the phase-ship.”

“I doubt anything else is out here,” Gwen said. “Wouldn’t it have phased out, or whatever, and retreated to safety?”

“Maybe,” I said, “but that’s speculation, Gwen. We’re here to destroy the ship that nailed
Killer
. We have to protect our carrier.”

She shut up, and we kept scanning. There were other fighters out here doing the same.  About a hundred of them. They were all patrolling sectors around the carrier one at a time, working their way farther out when each sector was cleared.

“I’ve got something!” Mia said suddenly.

“Blast it!” I ordered.

You didn’t have to give that order to Mia twice. Her hand twitched, and twin wasps flew out of the undercarriage of our tiny ship.

Wasps were small ship-to-ship seeker missiles. They were only good for short-range battles, but they were fast and had excellent onboard AI. During training, I’d found them very effective.

The wasps darted from my ship at an angle, and I spun us around to follow them. What happened next was something of a shock. The hull of a vessel appeared, almost like a wall, and it completely blotted out my view of
Killer
in the distance.

My crew cried out or growled, depending on their vocal chords. Slamming the controls into a dive, I reversed our thrust and tried to go under the ship, rather than smashing into it.

I wanted to warn Dalton, but there wasn’t time. If he hadn’t seen what was right in front of us, he was doomed.

It turned out that a phase-ship wasn’t as small of an affair as I’d been visualizing. It was about three hundred yards long, if I didn’t miss my guess, and a quarter of that in girth. Looking like a pipe with various appendages, it was cylindrical in shape.

My wasps splashed against the hull harmlessly. They’d served to flush the ship out of hiding, but they hadn’t done any serious damage. I had a moment to wish Shaw had clued me in concerning what we were going up against.

We made the plunge, and I was gratified to see Ra-tikh was still on my tail. Dalton was a good pilot, Ra-tikh hadn’t been bragging emptily about that.

“Use our main cannon, Mia,” I ordered. “Tear this ship up before she kills us!”

She was already on it. Her sym had her in a VR environment with the enemy phase-ship.

Streaks of radiation were visible outside our ship, connecting the fighter with the larger target. I knew these were the equivalent of virtual tracers, as the radiation wasn’t actually visible to the naked eye. For purposes of aiding in our aiming efforts and to better illustrate the tactical situation, computers displayed the radiation in this manner.

It looked like we were having a paint-fight with glowing pigment. Gushes of bright blue tore into the enemy hull as we circled her at extremely close range.

Rather than breaking away and making a new pass, I hugged the enemy vessel.
Hammerhead
spiraled around that long armored tube from prow to stern.

The situation was potentially deadly in a dozen ways. Our vessel could strike the enemy hull, or some protuberance I couldn’t avoid. We might be nailed by any of the defensive fire turrets that now swung and attempted to lock onto our tiny ship. Even if we were successful, a killing strike on the enemy might blow all of us up in the final release of gas, shrapnel and energy.

I could feel a presence probing for communication through my sym-link, but I couldn’t compromise my focus to respond.

“Gwen!” I called out between clenched teeth, “alert Shaw, tell him we found the phase-ship.”

“He knows, Chief. He wants to know what the hell we’re doing spinning around it!”

“Tell him we’re killing the damned thing!”

“Hull breach on enemy ship detected,” Dr. Chang said calmly.

I glanced over at him. He had his eyes shut down to slits, only taking occasional glances at his screens. Maybe the wild show outside our walls was making him sick.

“Breaking off!” I shouted.

Without further warning, I threw us into a loop and swung
Hammerhead
away toward open space. We moved to the aft of the phase-ship, then she was gone to our stern.

“They’ve got a lock on us!” Gwen shouted.

“Cover our stern, Samson. Mia, kill your guns. We need the power.”

She hissed in disappointment, but she didn’t argue.

Radiation bolts flew past us. They seemed shockingly close. I ducked reflexively, even though I knew it couldn’t possibly help. A direct hit on our stern would knock us out. We wouldn’t even know what hit us.

“Chief…” Samson said. “The phase-ship isn’t coming after us. It’s going for
Killer
.”

He was right. The long, tube-shaped vessel wasn’t bothering to hide any longer. She’d been spotted and damaged. A long trail of plasma and gasses, made visible by software on
Hammerhead
’s walls, showed she was hurt—perhaps too hurt to run.

“They’re going to try to finish off
Killer
,” I said with certainty. “Where’s the rest of the squadron?”

“They’ll be here in one minute, tops,” Dr. Chang answered.

“Chief,” Gwen said, “I’m getting a reading from the prow of that ship. There’s an energy surge. We have to assume it’s some kind of heavy gun.”

I nodded. “Yeah… I agree. Maybe we knocked out her phasing system. Or maybe she’s dying. In any case, they’re going to try to finish the carrier before they’re destroyed by the rest of the squadron.”