Escape (29 page)

Jilly gaped at the long, jagged black crack which was appearing in the nebular clouds.

“Is that a ship?” she asked.

“An
arbiter
-class Leviathan, to be exact.”

It was pouring a steady rain of golden fire in all directions around it. From at least a dozen different angles, red fire was pouring back at it from scudding destroyers that looked skinny and fragile beside the looming bulk of the leviathan.

As they drew nearer, clouds of fighters, bombers, and tiny specks that could only be interceptors became visible, buzzing around the larger ship like gnats. Golden ripper fire stuttered out from the interceptors. Red neutron lasers and blue dueterium lasers fired back in much greater numbers, and Missile contrails all the colors of the rainbow arced and spiraled through the swarms of ships.

Comm transmissions on open bands began lighting up the comm display. Kieran patched them through, hoping for some insight into what was happening.

“Surrender, captain! Don’t throw any more lives away in this tragedy. We have you outnumbered and outgunned. Order your men to stand down.” Kieran recognized the voice as belonging to the regent of Da Shon.

“Allow us to leave, and I shall do so.”

“You and your crew are still under arrest. I cannot permit you to leave the system.”

“We may be destroyed, but for every one of us you kill, five of you will die. Let us leave.”

The regent's voice returned, laced with regret. “I cannot.”

“Very well.”

The comm grew silent, and Kieran shook his head. “I can't believe this.”

“Neither can I,” Ferrel said. His eyes were fixed on the gravidar display. “He wasn't joking, man. Look at those interceptors
 
.
 
.
 
.
! Shivvy! They really are taking five times their number.”

Kieran plotted a course to skirt the edges of the battle, while still flying toward Da Shon, and then diverted his attention to the gravidar. Ferrel was right, neutral yellow signatures were disappearing from the gravidar by the dozens every second, while taking only one or two white Union blips with them.

“How is that possible
 
.
 
.
 
.
?” Kieran asked, looking slowly up from the gravidar to stare wonderingly out at the battle.

“I'd say they have some keficking good pilots in the Sentinels,” Ferrel said.

“No one is that good. Those interceptors are outnumbered almost 10 to 1. They may be fast, but they have weaker shields and armaments.”

“Well, isn't this happy little reunion?”

Kieran whirled around, fighting his seat restraints to do so, and saw Dimmi and Brathus standing in the entrance of the cockpit, each with a heavy pistol trained on him.

“Surprised to see me?” Dimmi asked.

As Kieran's mouth was opening for a reply, she shot him in the chest.

Jilly screamed.

Brathus shot Ferrel in the back just as he was reaching across the aisle for the flight controls.

Chapter 13

“W
hat did you do that for?” Dimmi all but screamed. “We needed Ferrel to remove the biometric security protocols!”

Brathus cocked his head to one side. “Biometric security?”

“Ferrel locked the flight controls to Kieran's biometrics
—
you know, fingerprints, facial features, etc.”

“That's not a problem.”

“Oh, it's not, is it? What, suddenly you're a slicer?” Brathus cocked his head to the other side, regarding Dimmi silently. She shook her head disgustedly and started toward the front of the cockpit, where Kieran and Ferrel were now slumped against their flight restraints. She kept her gun trained on Jilly as she walked past.

Jilly glowered at her.

“Don't even think about it,” Dimmi said, and waved her pistol meaningfully. “She who has the neural disruptor calls the shots.” Speaking over her shoulder she said, “Keep an eye on the glit-fried blond, Brathus.”

Dimmi held her pistol at arm's length, pointed at Ferrel's chest. She pressed the button on the side and a blue fan of light shone out from the barrel and flickered down his torso.

“His vitals are good at least, so we'll be able to ask him to disable the security when he wakes up. It's just a pity that won't be for a few hours yet.” Dimmi holstered her pistol and began unclipping Ferrel's flight restraints.

“And Kieran?” Jilly asked.

“What about him?” Dimmi shot back.

“Aren't you going to check his vitals?”

“No. I'm hoping his heart stopped. It's giving me a nice fuzzy feeling inside.” Dimmi pulled Ferrel to his feet. “I'd rather not spoil that.”

“If you're not going to check, then I am,” Jilly said, starting to her feet.

“Sit down, blondie.” Dimmi's pistol was out of her holster again.

“I'm a medic.”

“I don't care what you are.”

“You want murder on your conscience?”

“He'll have company in there. Besides, what's he to you, blondie? Is he your boy toy or something?”

“He's a just friend.”

Dimmi snorted. “There's a brain-swirler. You sticking your neck out for 'just a friend.' Perhaps you'd be interested to know that your
friend
knocked me unconscious,
drugged me, and tried to rape me.”

“He what?” Jilly's eyes skipped to Kieran's limp body.

“That's right.” Dimmi was watching for Brathus's reaction to that revelation, but he was grinning like an idiot.

“What the kefick are you smiling about?” she asked. “Never mind.” She shook her head. “Get Kieran out of the pilot's chair and get your fleshies warming the cushions before we slam into an asteroid or something.”

“As you wish.”

“And you
—
” Dimmi gestured to Jilly with her pistol. “
—
move it. You're coming with me to the brig.”

Jilly reluctantly stepped into the aisle, and brushed past Brathus on her way out of the cockpit. As Dimmi was leaving the cockpit, she heard Brathus call out, “Sweet dreams!”

Dimmi frowned and was about to ask him what he meant by that, but decided it could wait until she got back. She gave Jilly directions to the brig and followed her there, laboriously dragging Ferrel with one arm around his waist.

When they arrived, Dimmi dumped him on the floor of the cell where she had been locked up not even 12 hours before. Jilly sat on a lumpy sleeping pallet
—
one of two inside the boxy cell
—
and stared lifelessly out the bars of her cell.

Dimmi smiled at her. “You should be
—
” She cut herself off with a sudden yawn. Her head swam, and she had to grab the cell door to steady herself. “
—
comfortable in here
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
” Dimmi suddenly found that she couldn't see straight. She tried to blink, but her eyelids felt too heavy to move. They stayed shut. Her head was fuzzy, and her thoughts disorganized. She felt herself sliding down the bars, but it was a distant feeling, like maybe she was dreaming. That was a relief. She was so tired, she didn't want to wake up
.
 
.
 
.
 
.

Jilly stared disbelievingly at Dimmi's motionless form, now slumped against the cell door. It had to be some kind of trick. After a minute of waiting, Dimmi still hadn't moved, so Jilly started hesitantly toward her. She got down on her haunches beside the other woman.

“Are you awake?” Jilly whispered.

No response.

Confused, but not wanting to question her good fortune, Jilly snatched the neural disruptor from Dimmi's limp hand. Tucking it into her belt, she dragged Ferrel out of the cell. She hastily slid the cell door shut. Dimmi, who'd been leaning against the door, slid sideways to a fetal position on the floor. Jilly quickly locked the cell.

Dimmi hadn't stirred.

Seeing that, Jilly's medical instincts took over. What if Dimmi wasn't sleeping? Hands shaking from the adrenaline, Jilly fiddled with the pistol, looking for the button Dimmi had pressed to check Ferrel's vital signs.

A blue fan of light flickered out and ran up and down Dimmi's prostrate form. Numbers denoting pulse, respiration, blood pressure, and brainwave activity appeared on the pistol's small display. Everything looked normal. All except for
—

Her brainwaves were primarily high-frequency, low amplitude gamma waves, not at all characteristic of sleep. Not even typically characteristic of normal active states. By that measurement she should have been thoroughly awake
.
 
.
 
.
 
.
But she wasn't even moving.

One of the pistol's sensors must be defective.

Jilly ran from the brig, leaving Ferrel stunned and unconscious on the floor outside the cell. As she neared the cockpit, she quieted her footsteps and crept inside. She trained her pistol on the back of the pilot's head.

“I heard you coming,” he said without turning from the controls.

Jilly frowned. She recognized that voice, but
 
.
 
.
 
.
“What did you do with Kieran?” she asked, looking around the cockpit, and not seeing him anywhere. She knew he wasn't in the brig.

The pilot turned around, then. He was grinning broadly.

Jilly blinked. It was Kieran. “How?”
They mustn't have stunned him very well.

“They didn't stun me very well.”

Jilly shook her head. “What did you do with the other one?”

Kieran regarded her steadily, while her mind buzzed:
He couldn't have taken him to the brig. I was there. One of the cabins maybe?

“I put him in one of the cabins.”

“Okay
 
.
 
.
 
.
” Jilly's brow was pinched in a thoughtful frown as she walked down the aisle to the copilot's chair and took a seat.

“You saved me the trouble of rescuing you. How did you get the drop on the other guy?”

Kieran's attention was back on piloting the ship, his gaze dead ahead. “I got the drop on the other guy.”

“That much I managed to deduce from the circumstances,” Jilly replied dryly. She was briefly distracted by the view from the canopy.

They were rocketing past the battle between Da Shon and the Union cruiser, which was now belching flames and smoke from at least a dozen different apertures. The destroyers which had been circling it were less numerous than before. Only two or three were still circling and firing. Two or three more were spinning uselessly in broken clouds of debris. The swarms of fighters, bombers, and interceptors which had been battling around the larger ships had now thinned. Jilly estimated that they now numbered in the hundreds rather than the thousands.

“We are losing,” Kieran said simply.

“We?” Jilly parroted. “I didn’t realize we had a side.”

Kieran looked directly at her. “There are always sides.” He looked away. “And ours will be retreating to the planet soon.”

“Right
 
.
 
.
 
.
how do you know that?”

“Watch.”

Jilly did. The tiniest specks among those swarming around the Union cruiser suddenly moved as one, rocketing at top speed away from the ship. The enemy fighters reacted more slowly, coming around in long, lazy, dribbling arcs. They were too slow to catch up.

Suddenly, impossibly, the clouds of debris, fighters, and nebula closest to the doomed leviathan were sucked in toward it. Even the hull of the ship appeared to crumple inward.

The scene froze as if time had been stopped, then everything appeared to ripple like a heat wave. Already knowing from the optical illusions what was coming, Jilly’s breath hitched in her throat. A second later the cruiser exploded with terrifying force. A massive fireball rolled out with blinding speed in all directions, consuming the fleet which had destroyed it.

The rearmost of the fleeing interceptors were swallowed by the flames and added their own explosions to blossoming fireball.

The wave of fire was speeding toward them, consuming everything in its path. Jilly turned to Kieran, panic etching her features.

“Relax. We are safe at this distance.”

“How can you be sure?” Jilly looked back out the cockpit, and saw the onrushing wall of flames slow, and then begin to dissipate, leaving hurtling, still-flaming chunks of ships to careen past them. It was like flying through a meteor shower in a misty blue atmosphere, but Kieran appeared unconcerned, as though he already knew that none of the debris would hit them.