Sliding Void (13 page)

I know, I know
. Lana tossed all the telemetry on the attacking drone back to the engine room and prayed that the chief would be able to speed up the process of wormhole formation. Then she brought Zeno into the loop on the intercom. ‘Zeno, we’ve— ’

‘I see it, skipper. Every bot on the lot is hot to trot: preparing to give and receive fire. Damage control parties are moving into place. So, this is Rex’s parting gift to us?’

‘Guilt by association, I’d say,’ snarled Lana. She rotated the communications array back in the direction of Hesperus and trusted that Rex would receive her message before the crafty bastard was tracked down and killed by whoever had set this damn ship killer on the
Rose. Of course he’ll slide out of this mess, it’s only his friends he gets killed. Damn, I should have remembered what it was like when he was crew. I’m such an idiot
! ‘Rex, there’s a heavily weaponized drone on our tail at our jump point. That means that an equally well-armed ship dropped it off as sentry insurance before heading in for Hesperus. Tell me you don’t know about this? Tell me that you haven’t pissed off someone so badly that they’ve sent a war vessel after your ass?’ She punched the message out and leaned back in the chair, fuming, trying to work the angles. That ship killer was honing straight in on the
Rose
using the gravity signature of the artificial black hole being created. The drone had probably been lurking out in deep space when the
Gravity Rose
arrived in Hesperus space, but then, you didn’t need to create a wormhole to exit hyperspace, only to enter it. They had escaped detection reaching the system. Exiting was going to prove problematic, if not fatal. Even if Lana aborted the jump, the drone had them locked now. The old adage a fellow skipper had once shared in a bar came back to her
. They always nail you on takeoff, never on landing
.

‘Polter, can we make the jump before that drone has us lit up?’

‘My profuse apologies, revered skipper,’ said Polter. ‘Even with my best effort hyperspace translation, we will be in weapons range for at least a minute before we can jump out.’

‘Close quarter defence wall is online,’ called Skrat. Lana could feel it. Her ship implant spreading her consciousness around the ship, the
Gravity Rose
’s systems becoming an extension of her body. A line of kinetic cannons dropping out of their pods, the sensors on their rotating gun barrels scanning near space for any incoming projectiles. Lana felt the ship trying to break through the drone’s ECM field, steal a reading on what missile package the drone was packing. Their own electronic counter measures were forming around the ship, sensor jammers spinning up into life, false signature buoys rolling down into ejector tubes, hypervelocity chaff tubes frantically being loaded by Zeno’s robots.

Rex Matobo appeared on a screen floating in front of Lana’s command chair. ‘Ah, Lana. I am most sorry to see you have run into a few difficulties.’

‘I just bet you are. You didn’t warn me that I’d need to shoot my way out of the system. Who the hell is it out there closing in on the
Rose
?’

‘Hard to say,’ shrugged Rex. ‘So many people seem to have taken an irrational dislike to me over the years.’

‘Yeah, I know how they feel. Come on Rex, what the fuck am I facing here?’

‘Anticipate advanced fleet-level weaponry. That would be prudent.’

Prudent. Shit
. Rex was lying, Lana knew him well enough to know that with a steely certainty. He knew what was out there and why; he just didn’t feel like sharing. ‘Your comms signal is scanning as mobile.’

‘I am in my vessel, sliding right behind your drive wake. I will be in a position to open fire on the drone within half an hour.’

‘That’s about twenty five minutes after we’re dead in the void, Rex, if I can’t take that drone out.’

‘Do try to stay alive. You are very dear to me. And I apologise again for the rash and disproportionate actions of my enemies.’

‘You can stow your apologies up your rear hatch. Where’s the drone’s mother ship?’ demanded Lana. ‘Can I expect to be outnumbered any time soon?’

‘I don’t believe so. Besides, you and I may occasionally be outnumbered, but we are never outclassed.’

‘I’ll carve that on your tombstone, old
friend
,’ said Lana, killing the line.

‘That chap should sport scales as splendid as mine,’ said Skrat, ‘a human quite so slippery…’

Lana snorted. ‘You’ve heard that old human saying, Skrat: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Well, the enemy of my so-called friend is also my enemy, even if we don’t want them to be. Don’t reckon we’ve got much choice on this one.’

‘Tracking a multiple missile launch from the drone,’ said Skrat. ‘Rather too small to be nuclear warheads. Probably something to scramble our shields, then the fiend can dive in and rake us clear with kinetic projectiles.’ 

‘Botheration!’ swore Polter. The navigator began chanting a prayer as he busied himself on their hyperspace translation. ‘Lord, admit us to the vaults of heaven, Lord, admit us sinless to the dark flow.’

Sinless? Shit. Lord, if you’re out there, jump us just as we are
. Lana hovered in her ship’s cyberspace above the firing solutions being formed by granny, the close-defence guns juddering as they adjusted in their mounts. Her stomach was scrunching itself into a dense ball of dread. The icons of the incoming missiles were blinking on and off as their likely positions adjusted ever closer; colour-coded impact probabilities flickering as the salvo’s stealth measures battled it out with the ship’s sensors for battlefield supremacy.
Come on, drone, Rex is coming up behind us, weapons hot and ready for action. He’s the one you want, not us. Pull away, keep your powder dry for the real enemy. Run the threat analysis and target the more dangerous vessel
. But the drone kept on coming, as did its missiles. Another screen flicked on. It was Calder in the engine room.

‘Skipper, the chief says our vanes are spinning at maximum. Plot our exit on the current rate of singularity formation. He says he knows it won’t be nearly swift enough.’

‘Well, shit, tell me something I don’t know, your highness.’

‘I think I have a way to beat the drone…’

‘Give me a break,’ said Lana. ‘A month ago you were running around the snow in bear skins. A couple of episodes of Hell Fleet doesn’t make you a goddamn carrier commander.’

‘Actually,’ said Calder, ‘this is something I learnt back home from a very wise manservant. When you’re hunting a wolf, you bait the snow with a steak. When the wolf is hunting
you
, you must bait the snow with two steaks.’

Lana looked at him for a second, then the sheer genius of what he was suggesting struck her like a diamond blade through the skull. ‘Calder, I could fucking kiss you.’

‘Maybe take the bars on your shoulder off first, skipper.’

‘Get to it, Prince Charming, and get to it fast.’ Lana killed the feed. She was going to have trouble with that one, she could see that. But only if they lived long enough first. ‘Polter, plot the mathematics for a second singularity.’

‘But revered skipper,’ said Polter, ‘I cannot possibly keep two wormholes stable simultaneously.’

‘I don’t need you to,’ said Lana. ‘Make the second singularity a beast, a real roaring unstable giant. A big, juicy distracting steak. Shrink our original wormhole. Small as you can with it still able to pass the
Gravity Rose
. Skrat, launch a countermeasures buoy to orbit the super-sized singularity, make sure its squawking a hell of a lot more radiation than we are. ’

Skrat’s bridge chair bobbed to the side of Lana’s. ‘Done! Quite ingenious, although I must say, old girl, it’s normally myself who panders to racial stereotypes by acting quite so recklessly. The drone and its missiles should hone in on the decoy wormhole and our buoy, but only if its structure endures. I don’t believe anyone has ever attempted this before.’

‘For good reason,’ protested Polter. ‘The holy of holies preserve us! I will need to integrate the topography of both wormholes, keep each wormhole in phase with the other so the dirty singularity doesn’t destabilise the clean one. Singularity compression on the clean wormhole may prove fatal for us, oh yes… our margin of error on the jump is going to shrivel far beyond any safe thresholds.’

‘Shave an inch of steel off our hull if you have to, but jump as just the same,’ ordered Lana. ‘You’re the best in the business, Polter, and damned if you’re able to kill us twice. You can do this!’

Lana tried not to bite down on her tongue. Rex Matobo was quite capable of killing everyone all on his lonesome, it seemed. She felt the second wormhole forming out in the void, raw and wild, a screaming whirlpool distorting the normal order of space-time, the ship’s sensors protesting at the extra pressure being exerted on them. Off to their starboard, the second singularity was shrinking, slowly, methodically, the architecture of spin and form that might safely admit them screeching as it was bullied smaller, exotic particles bursting into existence all around the ship. Beyond, their decoy buoy was dancing around the wild second wormhole opening up.
Here I am
, it screamed.
Here. Here
! But the drone and its opening salvo had yet to buy into the ruse. Accelerating closer and closer on the
Gravity Rose
. The drone was going to pass them like a Samurai from some damn historical sim, a brief flash of its blade, and Lana’s precious ship would be decapitated.
This is all I have, please, please
. She felt the ship’s point defences lighting up the kill area around the vessel. Granny plotting firing solutions, planning where she needed to spread her storm of fire to try and kill the first volley. The processing speed of the
Gravity Rose
’s computer systems matched against the deadly intelligence of the missiles.

‘Impact imminent,’ announced granny. ‘Hardening command armour.’ There was a clash outside the vessel as thick plating enclosed the bridge, cutting off all sight of the stars, a sandwich of self healing materials that could, theoretically, absorb an acre of hell and still soak up deadly radiations.

Lana felt a sudden burst of energy through the sensors as their clean wormhole malformed for a second, before Polter brought it under control. He was moaning inside his chair, drumming nervously on his carapace with his two largely superfluous and vestigial combat claws. The navigator only did that when he was praying real hard. Maybe somebody was listening to his devotions, as the drone and its missiles suddenly altered their trajectory, vectoring in on their massive singularity and the hyperactive countermeasures buoy orbiting it.
Shit, have we done it? Have we really done it
?

‘Singularity seed is transformed. Event horizon on our clean wormhole is formed and stable,’ announced Polter, the carapace above his face nodding in eager anticipation of his joining with God. Lana could feel the
Gravity Rose
manoeuvring into position, responding to the commands from her implant. Lana had never ridden a horse before, but she had a feeling that it would be a lot like this.
Gently, that’s it, gently does it. Nothing to indicate we’re here. Nothing to look at. Just a tiny little starship jumping clean. And… fuck
! Two of the drone’s missile salvo had suddenly peeled off, accelerating back towards them. Detected her engine burn? She threw stealth to the wind, and the antimatter reaction drive roared into life at her command. Lana felt the surge in the artificial gravity field around the ship, cancelling the Gees that would otherwise have flattened the crew.

Polter was talking calmly, pacified by the act of navigation; Lana was anything but. ‘Vane control is optimal. Dark matter envelope is now modelled.’

Outside the
Gravity Rose
, her near space envelope was suddenly filled with a thousand bullets of molten metal streaming towards the missiles, the
Rose
’s guns juddering and spinning all along her hull. While the void was silent, the air inside the ship’s passages chattered with the clamour of war, chains of shells jangling, barrel coolant systems squealing. Lana’s sensors went mad with alert icons. The twin missile strike had split into a dozen sub-components, independent warheads flowering out and tracking in on them from every direction.

‘Tidal eye is targeted and locked. Transit entry and pre-translation dive into dark flow will commence in four, three, two…’

Lana sat bolt upright in her chair, even as their emergency environment seals triggered, her chair transforming and flowing around her, converting into a lightly armoured space pod.
And still the missiles came
.

***

The world of Hesperus. Six months later.

Noak’s wife came back from the entrance hall of their small house looking worried. He didn’t think it was just because the ice drifts outside had made getting to the market on the far side of town difficult. ‘There are two men at the door. They say they have business with you.’