Rebel Fleet (27 page)

After a moment, I snapped my fingers in the air. Ursahn recoiled sharply, as if the unexpected sound heralded some kind of personal attack.

“Listen,” I said, “Why the hell would I—or the Imperials—come up with a convoluted story like this? Why not something simple?”

“Because they want to trick us into a foolish attack that can’t possibly succeed,” she said. “You want us to expose our fleet. To face the enemy in a large battle with a great trick to play—only, the trick will be on us.”

It was my turn to sigh and shake my head.

“What do you take me for?” I asked. “The worst traitor that ever lived? These Imperials might come and destroy Earth, you know.”

She leaned closer.

“They might indeed have that intention,” she said, “and that might be the very reason you’re cooperating with them. Did they threaten your home world, Blake? Did they promise not to harm your people in return for planting this mad story?”

I leaned toward her.

“Look,” I said, “aren’t you tired of being pushed around out here by the Imperials? Don’t you want a little slice of revenge?”

“Of course I do.”

“Well then, listen-up. I’m going to tell you how it works, and how we can
prove
it works without endangering more than one warship.”

I had her listening at last as I laid out my plans. Before I finished, she contacted Admiral Fex. He came to our ship via shuttle, and he listened to me as well.

Neither of the officers was thrilled with my plan. They were intrigued, but they weren’t yet total believers.

It was my job to change their minds.

=44=

With Admiral Fex backing us, we were quickly granted permission to fly
Killer
off on a private mission. I think it was his personal greed for glory points that made it all possible. He was still stinging from losing a rank. He wanted his points back, and he was willing to take risks to regain them.

The next day,
Killer
performed a stellar-jump from Rigel to a location that was about six hundred lightyears closer to Orion. Sadly, our front lines had been pressed back that far. Our forces had been driven deep into friendly territory by the loss at Cygnus Minor.

“This is it, Blake,” Captain Ursahn told me. “We can’t go any farther without running into enemy patrols.”

I turned to the admiral, who’d been watching me with sidelong suspicion the entire time.

“Admiral Fex,” I said, “do you believe me?”

“To a point,” he said. “I
do
believe that you had an unusual experience out here.”

I rolled my eyes, but fortunately the others didn’t know enough about human gestures to be insulted.

“Do you at least trust me, sir?”

“Not at all.”

“Then we might as well turn back now,” I said, crossing my arms. “I’m sorry the captain and I wasted your time.”

The captain looked alarmed. She’d been enjoying the admiral’s reluctance, but she didn’t like the idea of being blamed for wasting the admiral’s time.

“What?” she asked. “Blake, I order you to proceed. Perform your test!”

“Can’t do it. We must have an enemy patrol—preferably a small one—to test my theories.”

The captain sputtered then turned to the admiral. “Well? What should we do, sir?”

The admiral looked at me with hooded eyes. He smirked then nodded.

“All right, Blake,” he said. “We’ll try it your way. By the way, I admire the size of your genitals.”

This last statement made me blink for a second before I figured out the translator was probably struggling with an idiom. I nodded to him, and the captain sighed as she gave the order.

We jumped again, a short hop this time, which led directly into enemy territory.

There were three ships in the system. There were planets as well, but they were dark and dead.

“They’ve bombed them out,” the captain said. “Monsters. They deserve to die. If you can kill these Imperials, Blake, I’ll hold your tail myself!”

Grimly, I accepted her statement without comment. She’d apparently forgotten I possessed no tail, but I still understood the heartfelt nature of her emotions.

“We have to get closer,” I said. “Under a million miles. Then we have to knock down one of the ship’s shields.”

They both looked at me in surprise.

“This is a carrier Blake,” Admiral Fex said. “We have only fighters to perform attacks at range.”

“That’s right sir. I think you should release them all and have the mothership hang back. Let me lead the squadrons… or—” I said quickly as I saw their expressions, “—or have Shaw command, with orders for him to get me in close. We must take down one shield of one ship.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, that will do it. Their computers will be able to receive our transmissions with a shield down. If
Hammerhead
isn’t destroyed before we can get in close—”

“
Hammerhead
?” the admiral asked.

“The name of Blake’s fighter, sir,” the captain filled in.

“Oh, I see... All right. Have your CAG fly out a squadron in a tight formation, Captain. Immediately.”

She blinked a few times, but she didn’t argue. She gave the orders. As I turned to leave, I heard Admiral Fex say to her quietly: “If he fails, at least we’ll be rid of him.”

With my stomach churning, I took the lift back down to the hangar deck and climbed aboard
Hammerhead
. She’d been left revving and floating above the deck in the hangar.

My crew was full of questions, but I waved them into silence. Flying down the closest chute, we were fired out of a cannon and into open space.

“Orders, Chief?” Samson asked.

“Deflectors angled forward. Accelerate to attack speed and start praying.”

“I don’t know how, Chief,” he complained.

“Then start learning fast.”

We crossed the star system with alarming speed. About two hundred similar small craft cruised nearby. We were all within a zone that was no more than a hundred miles in diameter.

At about a million miles out, the Imperials finally took notice of our approach. Up until then, they’d ignored us. Maybe they’d calculated that our suicidal launch was too weak to be anything other than a show of force.

But as we closed in deadly earnest, they left orbit from around the dead planet they circled and came directly toward us. Big bolts of energy came driving out through space, sweeping away a fighter every now and then. We were all bobbing and weaving like mad, but they were still scoring hits.

We’d lost about ten percent of our fighters before we could throw our first shot back at them. The big cruisers shrugged off our bolts with disdain.

“Blake,” Shaw said in my ear via my sym, “you’d better be right about this, or we’re all dead. In fact, we might all be dead anyway.”

“Lieutenant,” I told him, “you have to get them to stop firing. We must be in close enough to drop a shield. Otherwise, we’re wasting our time.”

He sighed, but passed along the order. The group’s formation was becoming ragged by the time we were within a hundred thousand miles of the enemy. We’d taken losses, and some were hanging back. No one seemed interested in charging forward.

I was with one of the groups hanging back. I felt bad about doing it, but it was necessary. If we were shot down, this whole exercise would have been for nothing.

I’ll say one thing about Rebel fighter pilots, they might be disorganized and feisty, but when push came to shove they were almost all individually brave. Even the beetles were pulling their weight today, zooming along with the rest. Maybe it was the dead planet that had them angry enough to fight.

“It’s down, Chief!” Gwen shouted from the back. “Shield four, topside.”

“Let’s do this before they get smart,” I said, reaching out with my sym.

By this time, I’d taught the rest of my crew how to do my tricks. I hadn’t had time to show anyone else, not that they’d get it anyway without this demonstration.

We let our syms go. That was most of it. Mine had trained the others, and with a burst of what looked like simple RF on any scope, we managed to penetrate the network aboard the Imperial vessel we’d targeted.

In less than a minute, the central vessel had stopped firing. We all whooped excitedly.

“Good,” I said, “we’ve disabled her weapons. But that’s not good enough.”

“Let’s drop her shields, Chief,” Mia said. “We could tear her up if she had no shields.”

She was gripping and re-gripping her gun mount excitedly, like any predator that smelled blood. But I shook my head.

“We stick to the plan. Gain helm control. Everyone, together now.”

This time, the task was harder. Our syms were into the Imperial ship’s network, but shutting down a system was much easier than assuming control of it.

Worse, her shield was flickering on again.

“Dammit!” I yelled, “Shaw! They have to keep that shield down!”

“The middle ship is no longer firing, Blake. The wings have switched targets.”

“No, no, no!” I growled. “You’ll kill us all.”

“I don’t like your tone, Ensign.”

I closed my eyes in intense frustration. “Keep one shield down,
please
, sir.”

“All right.”

They resumed pelting the middle ship, and the flickering shield died. Our syms were in control again a moment later.

Then, like magic, the big ship started to change course. She swung around ponderously at first, engines flaring blue.

“She’s going to do it,” Samson said in awe. “She’s really going to do it.”

The rest of us said nothing. We just stared until the ship we’d hacked slammed into her nearest partner.

The ramming effort was a spectacular success. I could only imagine how the Imperials aboard must have been howling, fighting their controls in disbelief.

The second victim tried to dodge out of the way initially, but she’d been too busy shooting down incoming fighters to worry much about a sister ship that was getting overly friendly. They were utterly taken by surprise, that much was clear.

Both ships went up in a conjoining sheet of flame and released gases. It was both spectacular and grim. Thousands of lives had been snuffed out. Not a soul got away as far as I could tell.

The last ship finally realized something was horribly wrong. She fired up her engines and zoomed right through our lines. At first, I thought she was rushing
Killer
—but she had other plans.

“The last ship is shaping a rift,” Shaw said in my ear. My sym projected his voice into my ear as though he had been aboard
Hammerhead
with me. “She’s running for her life. A job well done, Blake. I have to say, I wouldn’t have believed—”

“We have to kill the last cruiser, Lieutenant,” I said quickly.

Already, I’d flipped
Hammerhead
around and zoomed in pursuit. Others were following, but they were doing so at a lackadaisical pace. As far as they were concerned, the battle had been won.

“Such blood-thirst, Blake! I do admire that in a pilot, but this time—”

“Listen,” I told him, “we’ve got to stop that ship. If she gets away and reports on what happened here, our surprise will be lost the next time. We can’t let that ship escape.”

“How can we stop her? She’ll be gone in a few minutes.”

“Knock out her aft shield. That’s all you have to do. Take down her stern shielding and keep
Hammerhead
alive. We’ll do the rest.”

He grumbled, but he relayed the order. The fighter wing swung around and formed up into a loose mass. We began firing at the escaping ship. Already, the telltale signs of a growing rip in space-time were beginning to manifest.

It was a close thing in the end. We barely managed to knock out her shield, and then it was only for thirty seconds or so.

But that was long enough. Our syms were primed. They had done this before and were ready to go again.  Their collective assault on the ship’s networks was soon effective.

The ship turned then, reluctantly. It was almost like watching a sailing vessel fighting a powerful wind.

But she did turn. She missed the rift that now hung open before her. She locked onto a new target, and she plunged toward it with single-minded determination.

In the end, she outran us. We couldn’t follow her safely to her final destination.

I thought I saw the Imperials regain control of their ship right at the end, but by that time, they’d already entered the smoky atmosphere of the planet they’d bombed into oblivion.

They vanished for a brief moment into the dark clouds, then a white flash lit up the surface of a dead world.

“It was a fitting end for those arrogant assholes,” Samson said with feeling.

The rest of us said nothing in return, but we all felt the same.

Down on the planet, the atmosphere boiled and rippled like a disturbed pond for several minutes.