Rebel Fleet (21 page)

=34=

We were far from safe. The battle was effectively over, and it had ended in defeat, despite our best efforts.

The Rebel Fleet was pulling out, retreating. We’d done well against the Imperial carriers, and there were other bright spots, but the overall battle had gone badly.

The massed Imperials had focused firepower in coordinated strikes. They’d methodically destroyed ship after ship, and their tight formations had interlocked their shields, making our weapons less effective.

From what I could gather from the chaos, the enemy phase-ships had broken our front lines first, then the concentrated fire of the highly organized fleet had done the rest. The enemy had broken us.

As we zoomed away from the drifting wreck of the carrier we’d gutted, we had the chance to see the reality of the situation. The battle was turning into a rout, and even now it was sinking into a disaster.

Instead of retreating in an organized fashion, the Rebel captains all tried to save themselves. There was no thought of covering for the wounded to escape first. As soon as any ship was able to open a stellar rip it plunged into it and vanished, leaving their comrades behind. The ever-shrinking circle of survivors was blasted to pieces by concentrated Imperial fire.

“Chief!” Gwen called to me. “Interceptors on our six!”

I used my sym to perceive what followed. After counting nineteen of the sleek little fighters, I stopped bothering. If they caught up to us, we were doomed.

Already, they were peppering us with low-powered strikes. We were inside their maximum effective range.

Fortunately, most of my fellow wingmen had enough defensive systems left to survive these pinpricks to our tails—but not
Hammerhead
. She was a good, tough little ship, but she’d taken too much abuse today.

“We’ve got two more hull breaches,” Samson said, moving around with the patches.

“Get them sealed up,” I ordered pointlessly.

“We’re out of nanite juice. We’re out of everything.”

Mia was the only happy member of my crew left aboard. She fired her cannon continuously. She was breathing hard and seemed oblivious to the fact we were doomed.

Looking ahead, I gave it everything our engine had. If we could make it back to our carriers—any carrier—I’d jump into the first hangar I found and take my chances.

But it wasn’t to be. The engine shivered, setting up a grim vibration that made my butt hurt right through my seat, the padding and my spacer’s suit.

“What’s the situation?” I demanded.

“I think we’re losing the engine,” Dr. Chang said. “Performance is down by thirty-nine percent.”

Sure enough, our acceleration arc was falling. We weren’t slowing down as there was no air-pressure to put drag on our ship, but we couldn’t push any faster. The enemy interceptors were still gaining.

  Then the ship to my side blew up. Most of the incoming fire had been targeting her. They’d all died in an instant.

Now, the enemy turned their guns on us, the next easiest target.

I was gritting my teeth, an instant from flipping around and charging into their faces. My only hope was to ram one and take him down with me—but then, I got an idea.

“Team, keep running,” I told Ra-tikh and the rest. “We’re breaking off. They’ll probably follow us, as we’re wounded.”

Ra-tikh took a moment to manifest into my mind by way of his sym-link. He nodded to me.

“You spread your scent so the predators follow,” he said. “An honorable effort. You will be remembered in our dreams.”

Before I could answer, he cut off the channel. We were alone.

Well, not quite alone. We still had a pack of angry interceptors on our tails.

My idea was a simple one, but it was very risky. Our carriers had been in the rear of our formation, so they were too far away to shield us. I had to find a closer refuge. Instead of trying to reach a carrier, I headed toward one of our damaged ships that was trying to escape.

Banking sharply and working the shivering engine to its breaking point, I streaked toward a nearby destroyer. She was running, just like the rest of them. Locked in a struggle with a larger heavy cruiser, she had no chance, and her captain had decided to open a rip in space to exit the battle.

Under my guiding hands,
Hammerhead
plunged directly toward this flux zone. It was a crazy thing to do, I knew that. Fighters weren’t built to go through hyperspace alone. The hulls hadn’t been designed for it, and we had none of the physics-stabilization systems aboard that would help us keep our form.

But there wasn’t anything else I could do. We had no better chance to live.

When we got close to the big ships, it seemed like we shrank. Our fighter was tiny in comparison. We were like a gnat zipping between battling titans.

Any of them could have fired upon us, destroying us, but they were all too busy hacking away on a bigger prize.

Mia had stopped firing her cannon. She was out of missiles, and her main gun was either damaged or overheated. She climbed to my seat and wrapped an arm around my neck. I let her do it, as we were probably all dead anyway.

In the last moments before we plunged into the plasma-edged rift, I had the opportunity to look down at the inhabited planet we’d been protecting.

The world had joined the Rebel cause and provided us with fresh crews. Now, they were paying a gruesome price. As I watched, gravity-bombs fell and their bright, flat cities were sucked up, drawing all the local mass into a conical shape. New dark mountains appeared at every population center.

When we hit the rift, I let out a roar of defiance—but I didn’t hear any sound. I couldn’t see much, either. Then there was a dim glow around me, coming from beyond our thin hull. I could hear and see again, but it seemed like every subsystem on our ship had been switched off.

“Dr. Chang…” I said, my voice sounding loud in the sudden, eerie silence. “Are we dead?”

“Probably,” he replied calmly. “We can’t hear our ship, that much I know. Does that mean it doesn’t exist, or that it has ceased to operate? I have no idea.”

“I’m getting some instrument readings,” Gwen said. “The central computer appears to be rebooting. There’s no output from the engine. No emissions at all. Nothing is exiting our central mass.”

I looked around at our instruments. We appeared to be drifting. Outside the transparent parts of
Hammerhead
’s hull, there were no more stars. There weren’t any bright lights either though.

There was nothing but a faint, variegated grayness. It was as if we’d been becalmed in an endless underground river, encapsulated by fog.

Before I could open my mouth to ask another question, the journey was over. We’d leapt a great distance. One lightyear or a thousand—I had no idea which, and I wasn’t sure that it mattered.

When we came out of the rift on the far side, the sudden reappearance of stars took me by surprise. It shouldn’t have, but it did. I chalked it up to a lack of experience on my part.

When we reappeared in normal space, we were thrown into a spin. Possibly, part of our propulsion system had been operating while we were transiting the rift. Or maybe we’d come out with our engines thrusting unevenly. Whatever the case, I fought the controls.

“Chief!” Gwen called out. “We’re going to ram the destroyer!”

I envisioned it the second she spoke. My sym cast to my mind the location of the starship, and it was a good thing my sym was on the ball. We were still spinning, and evasive action on my part was desperate.

Accelerating out of the spin,
Hammerhead
did a sickening double-backflip before I could level her off. We slid by the destroyer’s belly. It was so close the big ship’s shields flickered and sparked.

With a sick sigh of relief, I leaned back from the controls.

“We’re clear,” I said. “Hail the captain of that ship.”

A moment later, an amused alien-looking face regarded me. I had him pegged as some kind of desert-dwelling reptile the moment I saw him.

“Captain Behir of
Talon
here,” he said. “You’re a crazy pilot, even for a primate.”

“Thanks. Have you got a fix on the location of
Killer
?” I asked him. “We’re part of her 2
nd
squadron.”

Behir made an odd, huffing sound. Laughter, maybe?

“We don’t have a fix on anything, Chief,” he said. “Take a look around—we’ve scattered.”

For the first time, I cast my perception far and wide in this new system.

I saw an F-class star, hot and white—but it was a long way off. There were no planets nearby and no other starships. Nothing, not even dust.

His words sank in, and I began to worry.

Scattered
, I thought to myself. It was the whispered doom-word of everyone in the Fleet. Always, there was the possibility a given ship might miss a jump, lose its fellows and end up somewhere in deep space, alone.

Under the best of conditions, scattering could happen to any starship on any jump. In this case, it was far more likely. We’d horned into a rift built by
Talon
, a risky move at best. But because the starship had opened the rift in a panic, without communicating with her sister ships, she’d been almost bound to scatter. Hell, Captain Behir might not have known where to jump to in the first place. I wouldn’t put it past the Rebel admirals to have no contingency plan in case disaster struck.

Turning back to the thing on the screen, I forced a smile.

“Well then,” I said brightly. “Looks like we’re going to have to become best friends.”

Captain Behir looked at me dubiously, but he didn’t argue. I took that as a plus.

=35=

Captain Behir signed off after telling us to come aboard at our leisure. Unfortunately, we never got the chance to accept his invitation.

“Chief,” Dr. Chang said. “You’d better take a look behind us.”

I would have done as he suggested, but there was something going on directly ahead that I was more concerned about.

What I saw was the receding fantail of the destroyer,
Talon
.

“How can we dock with them when they’re running off like that?” Mia demanded.

“It doesn’t make sense…” I said.

“Chief, check your six—” Dr. Chang said, but he broke off.

Just then a huge shadow flew by us. It was a ship, a starship, and it was much larger than our ship or
Talon
. It bore the distinctive emblem of the Imperials.

I’d seen the symbol before. To me, it looked like a golden ribcage on a circular field of red. But I’d never seen one this close.

As I dove
Hammerhead
away from the hulking enemy, Samson didn’t have to be told to engage every defensive measure we had left.

“It’s the enemy heavy cruiser,” Gwen said, “it must have come after
Talon
through the rift.”

“The commander must be crazy,” I said, staring. “The rift is almost gone.”

“No crazier than we were trying to navigate it in a fighter,” Dr. Chang pointed out.

“It’s got to be the same ship that was fighting
Talon
in the battle,” I said. “At least it’s ignoring us for now.”

The ship shifted course in an arc to follow
Talon
, increasing speed. Fire leapt out, digitally enhanced by my sym for my senses, which weren’t sensitive enough to detect radiation outside the normal visible range.

The two ships were already pounding one another. They were locked in combat. Missiles flared, shields flashed and beams of deadly radiation criss-crossed the void between them.

“I’ll try to give us some room between
Hammerhead
and this new fight,” I said, turning away.

We whirled around sickeningly and inverted. The heavy cruiser was now on the other side of our last few operating deflector shields.

Even as I did so, it occurred to me that escaping the cruiser would be pointless. We were trapped in deep space. Without the destroyer to hitch a ride home with, we would soon die out here. No fuel, no food, no water other than emergency rations that would run out in about a week. The air might run out even before that. The carbon-scrubbers were running constantly, but they weren’t the best.

The heavy cruiser plunged past us intent on its prey. We weren’t even worthy of notice.

“Drop our shields,” I ordered Samson.

He looked at me as if I was crazy, and he had a good point.

“Now,” I ordered, “we’re only wasting power. If they fire one of those cannons at us, we’ll be blown right out of the sky anyway.”

Reluctantly, he powered down his defenses and slumped back in his seat. “What are we going to do, Chief?”

Instead of answering, I banked and pulled a hard U-turn. We managed it because we weren’t going very fast yet. The faster you went in space—or anywhere else—the longer it took to turn around and go the other way.

Fortunately,
Hammerhead
was quick on her feet. We were zooming after the cruiser seconds later.

“You’re going to attack?” Gwen cried out. “You’re crazy!”

“
This
is the way to die!” Mia said with a display of long, white teeth. “You should have been born on Ral, Leo.”

“He’s not crazy,” Dr. Chang informed Gwen. “Our situation is grim. If the cruiser wins this fight, we’ll die out here anyway.”

“Mia, hold your fire until we’re inside her exhaust plume. Then, burn her engines to slow her down.”

“Not a winning tactic,” Dr. Chang said, changing his mind. “If you do slow them down, they’ll certainly destroy us.”

I shook my head. “I never said we were going to survive this. The least we can do is give the destroyer a chance to run. She can’t beat this behemoth—she’s outclassed.”

It was all true, and I saw the brief flare of hope that had blossomed in their eyes fade. I wasn’t trying to save them—I was trying to die well.

Only Mia was happy. She grinned and sighted her weapon, intent on giving the big ship a sharp jab in the butt. Live or die, all she wanted to do was fight.

We got close, I’ll give us that much. We reached the exhaust plume and plunged into it. When the streaming radiation bathed our ship, the number of rads entering the cabin shot up, causing the dosage counters to beep in panic.

Mia started firing. She’d already locked onto her target—but unfortunately, so had the crew of the cruiser.

A big ship like the enemy vessel wasn’t without smaller weapons. Many of them were pointed forward as heavy cruisers were attack ships. But
she had defensive armament on her stern as well.

Red flashes impinged on my senses for a fraction of a second, and just like that, we were hit hard.

Hammerhead
went into a tumble. I lost the main engine, and since it powered everything else, the fighter went dark.

“Emergency power!” I ordered.

Samson battled his sudden weight. We were being spun around, thrown hard against the hull. Reaching up with trembling fingers, he strained with all his strength.

I was impressed as I could hardly move.

He managed to touch the proper control, and the anti-grav system came back on. We came away from the walls puking and bloody.

Dr. Chang was unconscious. Mia had suffered broken ribs. One of Gwen’s eyes was bloodshot and half-closed. There was blood on her cheek.

“Good job, Samson,” I gasped. “Turn off everything except for basic life-support and the anti-grav. We have to play dead now and hope for the best.”

Spinning still, we drifted away from the ship we’d dared to attack. The cruiser roared after the destroyer, not bothering to waste any further time on our wrecked fighter.

I used my sym to reach out and watch the uneven battle that ensued. There was nothing else to do other than nurse one another and patch holes in our leaking hull.

When the big ships were far away, nearly an AU distant, the struggle ended. Captain Behir had run the entire time, firing what he had and using his stern defenses doggedly—but it was no good.

Without mercy, the Imperial cruiser blasted
Talon
apart.

By that time, we had everyone aboard breathing again and patched with flesh-growing bandages. We’d also managed to get the ship to stop spinning with careful squirts from our steering jets.

“Okay,” I said, watching the destroyer break apart in the distance. “Time to play dead again.”

“Why bother?” Gwen asked. “You said it yourself, we’ll suffocate out here.”

“We can’t fight,” I said. “So this is about grim choices. Do you want to die now or a week from now?”

She stared at me as if thinking it over, then she punched off her systems angrily.

Samson killed the emergency power—everything. The tiny ship went dark, and we floated.

Easing myself back into my chair, I looked out through
Hammerhead
’s walls at the patchwork of stars. Back home on Earth, they’d always fascinated me, these distant pinpoints of light. High in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, where I’d grown up, the stars were often spectacular. The heavens back then had looked the way they were supposed to look, like the playground of gods.

But from space—open, deep space—the view was even better. A velvety black expanse with a thousand glowing lights moving slowly across it. The cold, glittering stars were perfect tiny fires, and there were literally millions of them that my eye could pick out with the help of my sym.

“Chief?” whispered Samson several minutes later. “Where’s the cruiser?”

I looked at him and smiled. I’d forgotten about our nemesis. Casting in the right direction, I spotted her.

She was growing larger. The exhaust behind her flared. She was thrusting in our direction. She’d taken the time—and probably a lot of fuel too—just to turn around.

Why was the captain of that ship working so hard to come back here and check on our dead little scrap of metal and flesh? Were they angry? Curious? Or only obsessively thorough?

It hardly mattered. I chuckled aloud.

Samson looked at me with hungry eyes. He wanted to know his fate—or at least, he thought he did.

“They’re gone, big guy,” I said. “Take a nap.”

He smiled at me, and I knew I’d told him the right lie. The one he wanted to hear. The one that gave him hope that this nightmare had passed.

At least he could die now with this one last moment of peace in his memory.