Flight of the Outcast (21 page)

   
What's the point? Asteria knew how good she was—and knew
, too, that no matter how hard she tried, there would always be someone like Kayser in her way. With the money on deposit for her, she could find something to do. Commercial piloting, maybe, or even farming. She knew farming. Despised it but knew it.

   Her father had never intended her for the Academy. He had wanted to send her cousin instead.

   He must have known. Any child of Carlson Locke would be marked. Aristos who knew the truth would have it in for her.

   Kayser had said that the new governor of Theron was an old family friend. And his uncle, Admiral Vodros, was close to the new governor's father.

   No wonder Vodros had tried to get her thrown out of the Academy. Asteria began to feel as though she were caught in a web. And the spiders were Aristos.

   She pondered for far too long, got far too little sleep, and the next watch found her groggy and inattentive. Skarne took her aside and asked, "Are you sick?"

   "No," she said. "Just tired."

   "Take off, then," he said. "It's just ion running, and there's nothing much to it. Get some rest. That's an order."

   She shambled away, still feeling disoriented and off-kilter, and found herself wandering to the nav center, where she studied the display. The
Pax
had penetrated the Theron system, and now the outer gas giant showed clearly as a planet, its pale yellow disk streaked with red and orange lines. A few more days and then they would be at the High Docks. As soon as she got shore leave, she would arrange the final transfer of the credits she had inherited, and then if she chose, she could announce her resignation from the Academy and set about finding some place for herself.

   But she wouldn't. It didn't matter if the whole Aristocracy stood against her. She had something to do, something to prove, if only to herself.

   Asteria entered her room and instantly felt a jolt of energy.

   The belt pulsed, shocked her into heightened awareness.

   There—on her bunk—

   It swooped into the air and dived toward her, a machine, a little maintenance bot—

   She sidestepped and ducked, and it crashed into the bulkhead just behind her, hard enough to have fractured her skull if it had hit. It whirred angrily and rebounded from the wall. No room to fight, too tight in here—

   She elbowed the door control, but the door remained solid. The bot, the size of her head, sizzled toward her again.

   She raised her arms in an X block, knowing she'd probably suffer cracked bones—

   The belt somehow had flowed upward, had coated both of her arms in metal—she saw her silver hands—

   In slow motion, the bot hurtled toward her—

   She locked her hands and brought them down hard in a double-hammer blow.

   
This is crazy, I'll break every bone—

   She struck the bot, and it smashed to the floor, dented and disabled. Smoke curled out of it.

   Asteria dropped to the floor, grasped the bot along a seam, and ripped. Her silvered fingers had enormous strength. She peeled back the metal cover, reached in, and smashed the activator circuitry. The bot died.

   Breathing hard, Asteria stood on shaky legs. The bot, now just a small chunk of wreckage, sent a last wisp of smoke into the air.

   The door vanished, responding late.

   Asteria raised her communicator and said, "Security!"

   No response. The flowing metal from the belt had coated the communicator—

   The bot crumpled in on itself and fumed away to nothing.

   
No evidence.

   Asteria quickly inspected her room. No other surprises.

   But someone had programmed a repair-and-welding unit to attack her. Someone wanted her dead.

Kayser?

Who else could it be?

   Asteria closed and sealed the door and then sank onto her bunk. The silver ebbed from her fingers as the belt reabsorbed the coating of metal.

   So, she thought. The Tetras weren't the only enemy. Or the Raiders.

   And who could she tell? Not Security—she had no proof that anything had happened. The bot had not even dented the tough bulkhead. Not Command—the captain was under the direct supervision of Princeps Kyseros, a high-ranking Aristo. Not even—not even Dai.

   Because if he knew, he could be a target too.

   She would have to go it alone, trust only herself, and be vigilant, if she wanted to graduate, if she wanted to become a pilot.

   If she wanted to live.

T
he
Pax
could not raise the High Docks on communica

     tions. Nor could it reach any transmitter on the surface of Theron. "Something's interfering," Asteria heard a communications officer say in the mess room. "Maybe it's solar activity, but I've never known any this bad."

   The engine crew seemed worried. Following the captain's orders, they dropped into unusually high orbit, fifty kilometers from the docks. Under visual magnification, everything looked intact—but there was no space traffic at all, unusual for a docking station. No ships orbited near, no large craft were visible in the three big docks.

   In Engineering, Skarne said to Asteria, "The princeps wants to be ferried down to the surface in a lander. I don't think that's wise myself—not without communications. But he wants to assume his post. The captain wants him to have an honor guard, so we're sending six fighters to accompany him." He tilted his head. "Want to be the seventh?"

   "Me? Pilot a fighter?"

   "I thought you'd like to try a real ship after those trainers," Skarne said with a grin. "If you'll promise not to accidentally discharge your weapons, you can fly as the rear guard. You are not to land on the surface, though; once the others have safely landed, you are to return to post. Clear?"

   Asteria felt her heart pumping hard at the thought of flying again. Skarne was smiling at her. She thought,
he has all the
skills to reprogram a repair bot—but he's a Commoner.

   
Commoners could be bribed.

   "How about it?" Skarne asked.

   "Sure," Asteria told him. "Thanks. But why did you pick me?"

   "Because you're a good pilot," Skarne said. "Because the fighter controls are almost identical to the trainers you did so well on. And because you're a Commoner. We don't get many chances."

   Still wondering if Skarne was her friend, Asteria reported to the fighter bay and paused to admire the sleek craft. Like the Cybots, they looked almost like liquid mercury, teardrops of shining metal just large enough to accommodate a pilot. They were reliable, responsive vessels.

   Unless one had been reprogrammed to be a death trap.

   With her nerves fluttering, she suited up, put on the helmet, and fell into the adopted habit of not breathing as the suit fed her oxygen. The six real pilots didn't even acknowledge her—all Aristos, she thought, though she could not see cheek tattoos through the visors and did not ask. They stood at attention while Captain Talan, her face unusually grim, escorted the slender, darkhaired Princeps Corinth Kyseros—he didn't look old enough to be given command of a planet—and his entourage to a lander, a shuttle capable of ferrying fifteen people to the surface.

   The pilots manned their craft, and Asteria felt the familiar tingle of anticipation as the ship merged with and enhanced her senses. Quickly, she did an especially thorough check of all systems, then ran three sets of diagnostics. All seemed to be in order.

   The flight deck was cleared. The huge air lock was opened, and the first two fighters moved out under grav drive, followed by the shuttle, then two more fighters, two more, and finally Asteria's ship.

   Her heart swelled as she sailed into the silence of space. Theron hung in the velvet blackness, glowing blue, shining white, beautiful. Stars gleamed unblinking. The High Docks sailed ahead, a complicated and intricate structure that looked as though it had been put together haphazardly.

   The commlink cut in: "Guard seven, when you're within range, close with the docking station and give it a visual inspection."

   "Aye," Asteria subvocalized. She made a face. Now she knew why she had been given the chance to accompany the new governor. There was a job to do that no Aristo wanted! Typical.

   Guard one gave the command to switch to ion propulsion, and the shuttle and its escorts began to move rapidly away from the
Pax. Their trajectory would take them within a kilomete
r or so of the High Docks. It did not need to be a long detour, Asteria decided.

   She peeled off as the flight made its nearest approach to the docks. She reported in: "The station's lights are on. I see no activity in the docks at all. I see six, eight small craft moored." She scanned the station as her fighter moved within mere meters of its outer hull. "I read power activity in the normal range. I don't see any—"

   Ahead the hull of the Docks' main repair bay exploded silently, a blast of orange flame and gas. Before Asteria could react, she felt the belt beneath her pressure suit expand, and then she dropped into the strange slow-motion perception. Amid the boiling vapors from the ragged hole in the station's hull, she saw darting shapes: a cloud of deadly silver craft shaped like broad arrowheads. "Raider ships!" she transmitted. "Twenty or more, fighter-class!"

   She received no acknowledgment. Something was jamming communications.

   Three of the silvery Raider fighters had angled away from the cloud of ships that had erupted from the Docks. They peeled off toward her. She saw the sudden gleam of plasma cannon, rolled, half-looped, and turned, pulling high G forces as she fled toward the governor's flight—still in formation, apparently unaware of danger. "Alert!" she transmitted, forgetting to subvocalize, actually yelling the word. She regained control: "Alert! We're under attack!"

   No response. She was barely ahead of the enemy fighters. Why weren't they firing?

   Of course—plasma bolts would get the attention of the Empyrean pilots!

   And she fired a warning shot. Saw it sizzle past the portside escorts. Saw them suddenly break formation.

   She whipped her fighter around and closed with an enemy craft. Her targeting sensors went out.

   
They're jamming our tech!

   She had targeted visually before, in the War Games back at the Academy. The enemy ship fired a plasma bolt at the same instant she fired her laser cannon at it. She rolled the fighter, and the shot missed her by a matter of half a meter or less.

   But she scored a direct hit. The enemy fighter blossomed into gas and debris.

   She had no time to think, no time to plan. Now she could see the
Pax,
far away—and she could see the glowing green trace lines of ion exhaust from dozens of fighters closing in.
Wake up!
Fight back!

   A spear of white leaped from the
Pax
. One of the fighters closest to it exploded. The flight deck hatch dissolved, and she could just make out a swarm of Empyrean fighters exiting the
Pax
. Then her 360-degree vision caught an enemy ship sailing into position to fire at her, and she reversed thrust just as its laser flared. The laser beam passed through the space she had been occupying a half-heartbeat before.

   
They took the High Docks! The Raiders took the High Docks
and are using it as their base!

   She saw impacts and explosions as the enemy fighters concentrated their fire on the
Pax
. A cruiser had good shielding, and a fighter couldn't hope to penetrate it—not one fighter alone.

   Twenty-five or thirty was a different matter. But what Raider would attack an Empyrean ship? That was madness—the government might overlook a random raid on a Fringe World, but a direct attack was different.

   
Asteria Locke.

   The comm was working again! "Here! A flight of thirty to fifty Regus-class fighters—"

   
They are not piloted by humans.

   "Who's this?"

   
I do not remember my name.

   The Cybot!

   "Alert the Captain!"

   
Already done. I cannot communicate with our fighters.
Only with you. Seek out a faceted orb. That will be the Tetra
command vessel. Destroy the orb.

Tetras! Here, in the Theron system!

   An enormous explosion planetside. Asteria's throat tightened. The shuttle had been destroyed. She closed with an enemy fighter, fired, did some damage, whisked past it. Then she was in the midst of a swarm of them. Her mind buzzed with a cross-chatter of bizarre, inhuman voices, overlapping each other—

   
Move to seize the main craft. Take the main craft.

   
Acknowledged.

   
Acknowledged.

   
The small craft is an easy target.

   
No, follow the Admiral's orders and concentrate on seizing
the main craft.

   
Acknowledged.

   Asteria gasped. The communications were not coming through her commlink—nor were they expressed in words. It was more like a direct flow of thought, so intense that for a moment she felt a fierce urge to join the enemy fighters, to attack the
Pax.

   
Seize the main craft.

   
The Admiral's orders.