Dark Space (10 page)
“Right.”
Ethan started off at a full sprint, but when he didn’t see Gina appear beside him, he stopped and turned to find her hobbling along and clutching her ribs. She was making loud grunting noises that he could hear even through her helmet. Ethan shook his head and rushed back to her side. “Let me carry you.”
She shot him a deadly look. “I’m fine. Besides you need a hand free to shoot, and so do I,” she replied as she drew her sidearm.
Ethan nodded reluctantly. “Fine.”
They aimed for a melted hole in the transpiranium wall which separated the hangar from the concourse, and a minute later they were stepping over rubble and the still-smoking remains of the sentinels’ zephyrs. The inside of the concourse was acrid with thready veils of shifting black smoke. The giant colossus assault mech which the sentinels had managed to muster as a part of their defense lay strewn in broken piles of scorched duranium and flaming pools of reactor fuel. There were also some charred meaty bits that Ethan didn’t want to know about.
Miraculously, they reached the other venture-class hangar without encountering any resistance, but that was where the miracle ended. Ethan and Gina almost walked straight into a knot of three guards standing on the other side of the molten remains of the hangar’s transpiranium wall.
The guards were relaxed and chatting amongst themselves—not paying any attention to their surroundings. With their peripheral vision cut off by bulky hazmat suits, not one of the three noticed anything amiss, so Ethan and Gina quietly raised their plasma pistols, took aim on the distant guards, and fired off a quick half a dozen red-hot plasma bolts. Two of the troopers fell immediately with smoking holes in their backs, but the salvo missed the third one, and he quickly turned and dropped to one knee, swinging a ripper rifle into line.
Ethan dove for cover behind a pile of charred debris, and he just barely managed to dodge a thundering burst from the man’s rifle.
Gina took that split second to aim and fire once more. Her bolt hit the man dead center between the eyes, and his hazmat’s helmet exploded with a glittering red cloud of broken transpiranium and vaporized blood. The man crumpled to the deck with a
clatter
of armor and weapons, and then the hangar was silent once more.
But a second later, they heard one of the downed guard’s helmets sound out with a muffled voice. “What’s happening down there, sixty six? I heard weapons’ fire! Sixty six? Come in, sixty six!”
“Let’s go!” Gina abruptly spun around and began hobbling toward the waiting corvette and troop transport.
Ethan jumped up out of cover and ran after her, his eyes immediately drawn to the odd five or six gleaming ripper turrets which were already facing them from the prow of Brondi’s corvette and that of the larger gallant-class transport. “I sure hope those turrets aren’t manned right now. . . .”
“You and me both, Skidmark.”
But the turrets stayed grim and silent, glaring at them with impotent fury as they picked their way across a hangar deck which was littered with dozens of charred bodies and broken light assault mechs. Obviously the sentinels had put up a decent fight.
“Corvette or troop transport?” Gina asked.
“What do you suppose the chances are they left troops aboard a large
troop
transport, versus, say, a medium-sized corvette?”
“Point,” she conceded.
Besides that, Ethan had a score to settle. Brondi stole his ship, so now he would steal Brondi’s. They ran up the already-extended ramp to the corvette, keeping their eyes open and their sidearms at the ready, but something told Ethan that if they hadn’t been fired upon while they’d been running across the open deck, then there was no one aboard.
They rushed through the opulent corridors of the corvette, running straight for the bridge. As soon as they were inside, Ethan turned and slapped the door controls. The bridge doors sealed with a resounding bang, and he spent a moment trying to figure out how to lock them while Gina hobbled up to the helm. Ethan gave up trying to lock the doors and blasted the controls with his pistol.
Gina whirled from the helm to track him with her sidearm. “What the frek, Adan?” She stood panting and fuming at him. “I almost shot you!”
Ethan shrugged. “I guess we’d be even, then.”
“What did you do that for?”
“Just in case there’s anyone aboard. We didn’t have time to clear the ship.”
“I suppose we’ll figure out how to get out of here when and if we survive,” Gina grumbled. “Sit down and help me pilot this thing. I need you manning the guns.”
Ethan ran over to the weapons console and sat down. A moment later he realized that there were no autos on the turrets. “We don’t have fire control from up here, except for torpedoes and a pair of forward-facing gold dymium beams.”
“And I suppose it’s too late to ask you to go aft and hop in a gun turret,” she said, flicking a wry glance to the smoking door controls.
“You could say that.”
“Well, we’d better hope this crate has some kick ass countermeasures, then, because the minute those enemy fighters realize we’re not friendly, they’re going to drop a load of torps up our thrusters.”
“Ahh . . . right . . .” Ethan’s face screwed up in a frown, and his gaze drifted to the broken concourse lying before them with its too-low ceiling and too-narrow opening. “Have you noticed that we have another problem?”
She was too busy spinning up the corvette’s reactors to pay him much attention. “What’s that?”
“The shields are only down on the
Valiant
’s starboard hangar, not the port one where we are now, so how are we supposed to get out of here?”
Gina looked up from her control station, saw the narrow concourse between them and the unshielded hangar, and she scowled.
Then an entire regiment of Brondi’s troops came roaring into the hangar.
“Oh, frek it!” Gina said.
Chapter 20
G
ina shook her head. “We’re just going to have to blast a way out! Get ready to aim your torps at the starboard side of the hangar—not the shields.”
Ethan nodded, his expression grim. They’d be taking a big risk that the corvette’s shields would hold with torpedoes going off in such close proximity, but that couldn’t be helped. The corvette rose quickly on grav lifts, and the view out the forward viewports panned away from the milling masses of Brondi’s troops, now firing uselessly up at them with ripper rifles and pistols, to the hazy blue vista of space beyond the port hangar. Gina brought their nose into line just to one side of the hangar bay opening, and Ethan keyed his controls for manual targeting. “This had better not kill us, Gina!”
“Adan, just shoot the frekking torps!”
Ethan could barely hear her over the roar of ripper shells hissing against their shields. He stabbed the fire controls a moment later, and two torpedoes jetted out on abbreviated golden contrails before slamming into the wall of the hangar and igniting with a massive double punch explosion that blinded them with the initial flash and then turned the entire hangar into a firestorm. The shockwave hit them, sending flames roaring along the transpiranium viewport and kicking the corvette sideways into the gallant-class transport beside them. Ethan felt the world tilt around him with that impact, while his feet stayed oddly rooted by the corvette’s artificial gravity and inertial management system. Then, abruptly, the shockwave was sucked back the way it had come, and they were pelted with a rain of charred bodies—Brondi’s men. They’d been flash-cooked by the explosion, and now their charred corpses were about to freeze in deep space.
Ethan was left staring out at a now open view of space, framed with the ragged, still-glowing edges of the ship’s duranium hull. Through the hole he could see drifting chunks of debris and a nearly invisible cloud of bodies—but beyond that was nothing but wide open space. As for the original opening of the hangar, the telltale blue glow of shields was gone. They’d been knocked out by the explosion.
Ethan was tempted to breathe a sigh of relief, but then he heard someone rapping on the bridge doors behind them. They turned to look, and then heard, “Open up! Surrender now or we’ll blast the doors and vent you into space!”
“Frek!” Ethan said. “There
was
someone aboard.”
Gina shook her head. “It’s a bluff. They’ll get sucked out with us if they blow the doors open.” She turned back to her control station and jacked up the throttles. Suddenly, the ship’s engines began roaring loudly in their ears, causing the deck to vibrate underfoot, and they rocketed out the hangar and into space.
“And if they’re not that smart?” Ethan asked.
Gina shrugged. “Then we’re frekked.”
* * *
“The
Defiant
’s shields are at 24% and holding, but they won’t hold up when those novas get here!” Petty Officer Delayn said from the engineering station.
Overlord Dominic cast the man a dark look. “Get me more power to shields, then!”
By this point the enemy junkers had all but run out of missiles and torpedoes. Now they were just gnats buzzing around and ineffectually firing at the
Defiant
’s shields with their ripper cannons. More worrying, though, was the odd dozen enemy novas which were boosting out after them at a blinding 185 KAPS, and since the
Defiant
was only making 102 KAPS at full boost, those novas were sure to catch up before they reached the gate. Dominic grimaced. Nova Fighters were loaded with Silverstreak torpedoes and Hailfire missiles, and with the condition the
Defiant
’s shields were in, it would take just half a dozen of those torpedoes getting through and that would be the end.
“Where’s our fighter screen?” Dominic hissed, his eyes already searching the grid to answer his own question. There were only eight novas of the
Defiant
’s original 24 left to cover their retreat. They were doing a good job of keeping the pursuing junkers at bay, but in a matter of minutes they would come into range of the enemy novas, and then they would be quickly overwhelmed.
“Right behind us, sir,” gravidar answered.
“Have our gunnery crews figured out how to man the missile tubes yet?”
Deck Officer Gorvan at the weapons station looked up from his controls and shook his head. “We didn’t have enough officers to man all the guns, and you prioritized the point defenses and beam cannons.”
“Well, take the gunners out of the beam turrets and give them a quick course on the missile tubes.”
“Yes, sir.”
In the next instant, Overlord Dominic spotted something strange appear on the blue grid of captain’s table. An explosion ripped through the side of the
Valiant
, and hundreds of tumbling bodies vented out into space, followed by the corvette which had flown inside earlier. It was running away like a rictan on fire.
“Hail that vessel!” Dominic ordered. “I want to know who’s in there, and whether they’re friend or foe!”
* * *
Ethan heard the comm board sound at the control station directly in front of his, and Gina snapped at him to get it. He hurried over to the comm, even as the banging on the bridge doors grew louder. It sounded like now they’d found a makeshift battering ram and were using it on the doors.
Ethan punched the
receive transmission
button, and the voice of Supreme Overlord Dominic boomed over the bridge speakers. “This is the
Defiant
, please identify yourselves,
Kavarath
, or we will open fire. If friend, please reply with your most recent Imperial ID code and a full deck holo feed. You have ten seconds to comply.”
Ethan’s mouth opened to offer the appropriate code, but suddenly he realized he didn’t know what it was. He shook his head and turned to Gina. “Give me the code!”
“You know the frekking code, Adan!”
“If I knew the code, I wouldn’t be asking!” he shot back. “They put me in stasis before the outbreak, and since then my memory has been skriffy.”
“57-E7-43-QR-2S-QD,” Gina rattled off, and Ethan just barely managed to type it all into the comm before he lost track of what she’d said.
“Transmitting feed now,
Defiant
,” Ethan said back over the comm as he enabled a full deck holo feed. A moment later, the bridge of the
Defiant
appeared as a 3D holo popping out of the corvette’s slanting upper viewport. Ethan saw the overlord gazing down on him in larger-than-life size. His bushy white eyebrows were drawn together, and his lips were pursed in a grave frown. “Adan? Is that you?”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Still alive somehow.”
The overlord looked immensely relieved, and for a moment Ethan was afraid that the old man might cry, but his blue eyes just grew moist and stopped there. “I don’t suppose you could help us out with a small problem we have? There’s a squadron of enemy novas on our tail, and they’ll be within torpedo range in a few minutes.”
“Let me see what we can do. No promises. Our fire control is limited from the bridge, and we have some company on board, so we can’t get to the gun turrets.” Ethan jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the persistent banging noise which was coming from the doors behind them.
“I see, well do your best—and one more thing: if you can make it, we’re retreating to the other side of the Dark Space gate. We’ll be dropping detlor mines behind us when we leave to keep Brondi from following, so you need to catch up to us and fast.”
“Roger that. We don’t seem to be attracting any attention for the moment, so I think we can pour a little extra energy into the thrusters.”
The overlord nodded. “Good. We can’t afford to wait for you. If you don’t make it in time, you’ll have to make a blind jump.”
Ethan grimaced. “Understood, sir.”
“
Defiant
out.”
Ethan watched the viewport become transparent once more, and he took a quick look around to find the engineering control station. Locating it just to the right of the comm where he was standing, Ethan headed over there. “I’m going to try to give us a little boost,” he said to Gina.
“Just don’t sacrifice the shields. I’m not confident that our ruse is going to last much longer.”
Even as Gina said that, a missile lock alarm sounded across the bridge.
“Go evasive!” Ethan said.
“What do you think I’m doing?”
The alarm became suddenly shrill and then an explosion rocked the deck. The inertial management system flickered, and Ethan felt a sudden, sickening lurch in his stomach before his feet left the deck. He went flying at high speed toward the ceiling as the forces of Gina’s maneuvers at the helm were suddenly fully felt. Ethan had a moment of déjà vu where he remembered dying exactly like this during the Rokan Defense simulator run, and he watched his life flash before his eyes.
But then he felt something strong grab hold of him and arrest his momentum. The emergency grav guns had fired at the last second, and when his back hit the ceiling, he felt only a mild spike of pain. The IMS flickered back on, and the grav guns slowly lowered him back to the deck. “Frek!” Ethan said, recovering gradually from his shock. “What was that?”
Gina shook her head as she settled back into the helm. This time she remembered to strap herself in. “We’re in trouble.”
Ethan hurried to equalize shields at the engineering station—the port shields had taken a nasty hit and they were in the red at 21%. After equalizing, shields on all sides were back in the green at 73%. Ethan set the shields to auto-equalize in future, so he wouldn’t have to stay at the engineering station to manage them, and then he changed the balance of energy so that it was in favor of shields and engines, bleeding energy from the guns and secondary systems in order to do so. That done, he hurried back to the gunnery control station and switched to the missile launchers to see what he could do about those enemy novas. Scopes showed a few dozen junk fighters off their port side, taking ineffectual potshots at them with ripper cannons as they flew past. Ethan guessed that one of those junkers must have launched the missile that had shaken them so badly. Hoping they didn’t have any more warheads, Ethan ignored them and bracketed the closest of the rough dozen nova fighters flying in the distance ahead of them. That fighter immediately broke formation and began jinking.
“Frek!” Ethan said. “The novas have missile lock warning systems!”
“You
know
that, Adan. You really are skriffy! You’ll have to dumb-fire with a proximity fuse and pray they don’t change their heading before it reaches them, or you’ll miss. Torpedoes are your best bet for that.”
Ethan followed Gina’s advice and switched back to torpedoes—Brondi’s corvette was loaded with “Cardinal” torpedoes, a far cry from Silverstreaks, but still better than nothing. With that, he disengaged the targeting computer and set the proximity fuse for 100 meters. At that range, the explosion should still be lethal to the novas. Ethan fired off six torpedoes in quick succession in a rough circle around the enemy novas. The torpedoes disappeared into the distance on bright gold contrails, and then Ethan ran back to the comm station and hailed the
Defiant
. “Don’t change your flight path for the next few minutes,
Defiant
. I have a ring of dumb-fired torpedoes closing in on your pursuit.”
