04 Dark Space (19 page)

“We’ll never get back to her before they reach us! We’re already up to speed.”

“Orders are orders, Six. The Captain’s planning to run, not fight. Look at those odds.”

The chatter quieted as the Guardians took in the seriousness of their situation.

“Roger that, Lead,” someone said.

Atton turned down the volume on the comms and studied the grid once more. No Shell Fighters had appeared yet, but he suspected they were cloaked and would remain so until they reached firing range with their targets. Then he saw the
Intrepid
de-cloak in response to the Sythian fleet, and he frowned. Why would the captain de-cloak her ship? The only reason he could think of was that she intended to stay and fight, but the
Intrepid
didn’t stand a chance by herself against such superior numbers.

A crackle of static caught Atton’s attention, followed by: “ . . . new orders. We are to . . .” He turned up the volume and heard, “. . . the
Emissary
at all costs. Repeat, protect the
Emissary
at all costs.”

Atton frowned and shook his head. That was him. And that was why the
Intrepid
was sticking around to fight. The captain was risking everything to give him a chance to get to Avilon. He was about to key his comms to tell mission control that he didn’t need an escort, when another series of sharp tones sounded from the cockpit speakers, drawing his attention back to the glowing blue grid on the main holo display. A few dozen blips had appeared between him and his SLS entry point. Shell Fighter analogs.

“Frek me,” Atton whispered. “I guess I do need an escort.” He targeted the nearest enemy fighter and checked his time to target. The nav calculated eight minutes until he reached that fighter, ten until he should reach his SLS entry waypoint. Atton adjusted his trajectory by a few degrees to keep the Sythians guessing, and then he set his throttle to full reverse. He had to start slowing down now if he were going to reach the SLS-safe entry speed limit in time for his jump. If he wasn’t flying at 999 m/s or less when he entered SLS, his ship would be torn apart by the gravitational forces.

In the next instant his comm buzzed with a direct message from Guardian One.

“Iceman, what the frek? My sensors show you slowing down.”

“I have a jump plotted at ten klicks out, Tuner,” Atton said, using Gina’s call sign.

“That’s lovely. I don’t suppose you noticed the red cloud of krak headed your way?”

“I see it.”

“So you thought you’d slow to a crawl and make it easier for them to tag you?”

“The jump is our priority. Once I’m away, you can bug out, too. Until then, we’re all stuck. Follow your orders and I’ll follow mine.”

Gina clicked her comm to acknowledge that, and Atton went back to focusing on the task at hand. She was right. It made no sense for him to slow down, but keeping his speed up would only delay his jump, and time was critical. If he delayed the
Intrepid
unnecessarily, the cruiser
would be obliterated by those enemy battleships. She couldn’t jump away until he did. So somehow he had to stick it out, dodging Sythian missiles and lasers until he could jump to SLS.
No problem,
Atton thought, eyeing the approaching wall of enemy fighters, now only six klicks away.

He thumbed over to Hailfire missiles and began lining up the nearest Shell in his targeting reticle. Suddenly a loud roar thundered through his SISS (sound in space simulator). He turned to look out the side of his canopy just in time to see a pair of Nova Fighters go rocketing past him to greet the enemy fighter wave. That pair was followed by another, and then another, and then nine more wing pairs, until both squadrons of Novas were flying out ahead of him, their triple thruster banks lighting up the space ahead of him like a string of blue festive lights.

As Atton watched, missiles began streaking out from those Novas, followed by stuttering red lines of lasers. Explosions flashed in the distance as Shell Fighters flew apart, and then Sythian Pirakla missiles streaked out from the enemy fighters—dozens of spinning purple stars tracking toward the approaching line of Novas. The Novas held their course for just a second before they broke formation, jinking and juking in a dozen different directions to get away from the enemy missiles.

A pair of purple stars collided with Nova Fighters, and space lit up with blinding starbursts of light as their dymium reactors went critical.

Now Atton was alone, flying at the enemy fighter wave. Streams of bright purple pulse lasers flickered out toward him, scoring a few hits on his shields and provoking sharp hissing noises from the SISS.

Atton passed his targeting reticle over the nearest enemy fighter, waiting until the
beeping
tones of an acquiring target lock became a solid tone and the reticle flickered red. He pulled the trigger twice in quick succession and two Hailfire missiles roared out on hot orange contrails. Then the Sythians replied with six warheads of their own. Missile lock alarms screamed in Atton’s ears. He used his command control implant to turn down the volume with a thought. As he watched the approaching missiles, he noted that these missiles didn’t look like spinning purple stars, they looked like glowing blue orbs.
Some new weapons tech?
He wondered. He hoped the strategy for dealing with them was still the same. Holding the flight yoke steady, he hovered his feet over the rudder pedals, waiting until the last minute to juke away. The missiles reached 500 meters, and Atton depressed the right rudder pedal fully and rolled to the left. Three of the six missiles sailed by overhead, only narrowly missing him.

The next three slammed into the topside of his ship. The
Emissary
shuddered with the impacts. Deafening booms sounded across the SISS, followed by a warning from his ship’s computer: “Shields depleted.”

Frek!
Atton thought.

Then the threat detection system screamed a warning and out of nowhere a pair of glowing blue orbs appeared on his six. Atton tried to evade but the controls felt sluggish, as if the maneuvering jets and thrust control nozzles had jammed. This time all of the missiles stayed on target. They arced straight in toward him. . . .

Atton winced and then came a deafening roar from the SISS. Abruptly that sound ceased as all the lights and displays in the cockpit flickered out, leaving him in utter darkness. He tried moving the stick, but nothing happened. He tried flicking the ignition switch to re-initiate the transport’s reactor, but still nothing.

The
Emissary
was derelict. He should have been dead. His shields had been depleted and then they’d hit him with yet another wave of missiles, but instead of his ship being atomized, it had simply lost power. Atton frowned and shook his head. It must have something to do with the new weapons they’d fired at him. Somehow those missiles had disabled his ship without causing severe damage. But why? And why had no one ever seen that technology before?

Then, suddenly, he had the answer. The Sythians were trying to capture him, not kill him. No one had ever seen such technology from the Sythians before because they’d never been interested in capturing humans—until now.
Until they began making slaves of us for their fleets.
Atton shuddered at the thought. They’d come all this way just to suffer the same fate as the refugees in the Enclave.

No one was going to get to Avilon now.

*   *   *

Why isn’t he moving?
Caldin wondered, her heart beating frenetically in her chest. The
Emissary
had stopped cold, which of course was relative, because the ship’s momentum remained the same. The difference was, the ship wasn’t maneuvering, nor was it accelerating or decelerating, and its icon had gone dark on the grid.

“Gravidar! Get me a pulse scan on the
Emissary.
I want to know what’s wrong with it.”

“Already ahead of you, ma’am. She’s drifting without power.”

“Not even emergency backups?”

“Not even that.”

“The frek . . . ?” Caldin wondered aloud.

“We registered a strange spike from her reactor just before she shut down, ma’am. If I had to guess it must have had something to do with those new weapons we saw.”

New tech was the last thing anyone wanted to see from the Sythians. “Okay, so they disabled it. Why?”

Master Commander Donali shrugged and offered a suggestion. “Perhaps because the Sythians are now using human slaves to crew their ships?”

A few gasps rose from the crew, and Caldin turned to her XO with a frown. “That’s not common knowledge, Donali, and I’d appreciate if you kept it to yourself.”

“Yes, ma’am. What I meant to say is that they must be trying to capture more of us to turn into crew for their fleets.”

“Again, classified information, but . . .” Caldin considered that for a moment; then her eyes narrowed and she shook her head. “No, that’s not it. They’ve killed three Nova pilots so far,” she said, pointing to the grid where the
Intrepid’s
Nova squadrons were embroiled in a dogfight with at least twice as many Shell Fighters.

“Then I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” Caldin said. “They want the
Emissary
alive and to the netherworld with the rest of us. Whatever the reason for that, we can’t let them have what they want. Helm, set course for that transport; bring us alongside. Comms—tell the hangar bay operators to stand by for a grav lock on her.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they chorused.

“What’s our ETA to the
Emissary
?”

“Two minutes, ma’am.”

“Good. Start spooling for a jump.”

“Coordinates?”

“Dead ahead, two light years. That should give us a good lead on any pursuit.”

“Dead ahead, ma’am? We don’t know what’s out there . . .”

“No, we don’t, but we can’t stay here, and we don’t have time to turn around and head for known space, so we stay the course and hope we don’t run into anything.”

“Yes, ma’am . . .”

“Gravidar! How close are those battleships?”

“We’ve got three angling for a flank attack, port and starboard. The nearest will be in firing range in three and a half minutes.”

“And the other two?”

“Approximately five and six minutes, ma’am.”

Caldin grimaced. By her estimation they would have to survive a barrage from at least one Sythian battleship for two full minutes—and that was just the time it would take for their SLS drives to spool. “Comms, have our Novas get back on board, ASAP. Renegades first, then Guardians. They have until the
Emissary
is on board. If they don’t make it in that time, we can’t wait.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Her XO sent her a worried glance from the captain’s table. “Those battleships are much stronger than us. We should leave the
Emissary
and get out now while we still can.”

Caldin’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “And let the Sythians have what they want?”

He shrugged. “It seems the better option.”

“How much did the admiral tell you about Commander Ortane’s mission?”

“Enough to know it is important.”

“Critical to our survival as a species, is what he told me,” Caldin replied. “Knowing that, how can we forfeit that which is critical to our survival in order to survive? The logic runs back on itself.”

“Ma’am . . .”

“I’ve made my decision, Commander. Let’s hope that if they’re so desperate to have the
Emissary
intact, then they won’t risk firing on us with live weapons when we’re right alongside her.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Chapter 13

C
old and still—trapped in the dark—Atton’s transport drifted on without power, direction or purpose. The infinite sprawl of stars shone like a million tiny flecks of quartz glinting in the sun against a blacktop as dark as death. Atton tried to make sense of the patterns woven by those pinpricks of light, just as a more distant part of his brain tried to make sense of what was happening.

Sythians had been waiting for them at the reversion point, meaning that either they were extraordinarily lucky, or they’d known the
Intrepid
was coming. The latter possibility made the most sense given the vastness of space, but even if there was some type of Sythian agent in their midst, when would he or she have had the chance to send a message to the Sythians? And how?

Human comms were limited to the speed of light unless there was a jump gate with an open wormhole nearby. The Gors they had on board couldn’t have sent the message telepathically, since even they couldn’t send a message when a ship was travelling through SLS, and the
Intrepid
had been travelling through SLS for the past week.

Except
. . .

About three hours ago the
Intrepid
had stopped to navigate around a pulsar. At the time, however, they had still been more than 10 light years away from their reversion point, and it was widely known that the Gors’ telepathy had a limited range of just under 10 light years. That meant their spy wasn’t a Gor.

Just then a pair of Novas raced by Atton’s cockpit, their triple thrusters burning up the void with bright blue tongues of fire as they chased a quartet of Shell Fighters. The Novas spat blinding streams of red dymium lasers at one of the Shells, scoring a few dozen hits in quick succession. Then a sudden flash of light ripped the enemy fighter apart.

Atton’s hands flexed into fists on the transport’s lifeless flight yoke. He was itching to join his squadron in the battle, but powerless to do so. The stars winked at him, dragging slowly by his cockpit with maddening serenity. Frustrated, he flicked the transport’s ignition switch back and forth a few times, just in case the
Emissary
still had a spark of life in her.

Nothing.

“Frek it!” Atton released the flight yoke and pounded it with a fist.

Unable to do anything useful, he returned to wondering who was responsible for this mess. If they had a traitor on board, and that traitor wasn’t a Gor, then who was it?