Edge of Redemption (A Star Too Far Book 3) (33 page)

How the hell did they know? William concentrated. “Shit! Sensors active! Anti-recon scan.”

The sensors blasted to life and immediately showed a return on a small instrument package designed to look like an asteroid. The mass driver burped once and it was gone.

William stared at the maintenance screens and watched the lines for the mass drivers. They stayed green. His heart rose and he nodded. Everything else was secondary now. A quick glance showed that his own satellite would give them some details on the next orbit. If there was a next orbit. “Get ready!” he cried out and then the mass drivers fired.

The
Gallipoli
came in close for the second pass. The sleek hull bore pits and craters but was mostly functional. The two ships were moving more parallel to each other. The quick dash and blast of the first engagement was replaced by a longer approach.

“Fucker can dance,” Shay mumbled to herself and nudged Bryce.

Mass driver slugs peppered the leading edge of the
Gallipoli
as the corvette pivoted and rolled. The two came closer, the paths nearer to converging. The
Gallipoli
poured out searing mass driver fire with the antique railgun punching into the disintegrating aggregate.

With every strike the alarms blared and sounded. Strain sensors buried deep within the hull registered changes where there should be none. The nanite binder kept the hull together like a concrete wrapped around a piece of rebar. Every shot chipped away gouges of material. Behind them a cloud of binders drifted away.

William leaned over and felt the crunch of the suit on his stomach. It adjusted and eased out. His hand itched like an ember had dropped on it. He clenched his fist tight and watched his program cycle and feed. It was learning. With every dance, the statistical package collated the data. The one flaw of a human pilot was an inevitable predictability. The
Gallipoli
was favoring certain patterns, Salamasina was making errors that only a computer could analyze.

The moment the two ships were closest the mass drivers fired. The heat alerts flared for a split second before dropping back down. Haydn alarms sounded in kind and Shay silenced them with a quick glance at William. If they were ever committed, this was the moment.

As if to accent the fact the next railgun strike from
Gallipoli
pierced the hull hard. There was no atmosphere left to vent but the ultra velocity round punched deep and sprayed molten alloy and carbon binder through the commons area.

William felt his heart drop as the biometrics for three of his crew dropped away. The butcher’s bill was rising. He pushed it away and focused on the task at hand.

The accelerometers hovered at zero and the evasive maneuvering stopped. William snapped his eyes down to the cloned console and saw that Bryce was doing nothing. The young Midshipman held his hands over the console.

“Bryce!”

His hands shook, visible even through the spacesuit.

No time. No time. William slammed his hands down onto the console and pulled control away. The
Garlic
pitched and drove a new quarter towards the
Gallipoli
. One mass driver was obscured, but the damage was pounding onto a new flank.

The statistical program tallied each strike and showed a rise in landed rounds. It was predicting, and it was predicting correctly. The
Gallipoli
continued to weave and dance, but the mass drivers came into the right spots at the right moment. A bright flash lit out from the hull followed by an incandescent white burning. One of the
Gallipoli’s
mass drivers was arcing out.

“There we go!” Shay cheered. She diverted systems and fought to keep the ship alive. On her console the maintenance feeds came in and she rerouted and changed what she could. Huron repaired what required wrench or fiber.

The
Garlic
was finally showing what a proper warship could do. The sustained duration of the contact was adding up for the little corvette. The
Garlic
, larger and heavier, was absorbing the rounds, even with the hull degrading and falling apart. While the smaller ship had less mass to absorb the heavier nickel slugs from the
Garlic
.

“I’m going into overload,” William said to Shay. He increased the rate of fire pouring from the mass drivers and rotated the ship to bring both mass drivers to bear. He could see the damage accumulating, time to push it.

“Rerouting!” Shay replied quickly.

The heat readings on the mass drivers surged higher and paused while the Haydn drive blasted alerts out. It wasn’t designed to act as a heat sink, but so far nothing had burned out.

An almost continuous streak of slugs poured out and danced around the
Gallipoli
. The corvette couldn’t dodge them all, even with the skills of Salamasina. Nickel impacted and flared out in green chemical gouts while nanite coatings ate away at the hull. The thermal view of the
Gallipoli
showed white pock marks where every slug landed. Every panel showed serious damage.

William gritted his teeth. So close, he thought. So close. His heart rose and he almost cried as he saw the cool blue jet of atmosphere flare out from the
Gallipoli
, but a moment later it was gone. That, he knew, was a serious wound on such a small ship.

The
Gallipoli
pulled away in its orbit and the gunfire from the corvette stopped. The two ships now spread apart, in sight, but the gap was far enough to keep the weapon fire down. A flash burst out from the
Gallipoli
and alarms sounded. Serious red icons blasted onto every screen. Power winked and flared and even the lights dimmed.

“What was that?” William asked, but he already knew. The railgun from the
Gallipoli
had landed a critical blow. His heart sunk.

“Captain!” Huron cried. “The Haydn!”

Shay’s hands flew across her console and the maintenance screens danced by. “It hit the superconductor, all the energy surged back into the drivers.”

“What do we do!” Bryce spun to face William. His eyes were red and streaked with tears. “You!” he yelled and pointed his gloved hand at William, his face broken into a sneer. “You killed us all!”

“Midshipman!” William shouted. “Take your position!” He raised his eyes from Bryce and to the display and back down again. The engagement wasn’t broken yet. He feared, more than anything else, a torpedo. If it came he’d have nothing to defend with.

Bryce spun and kneeled on his seat with his face a meter away from William. He reached out a hand and grabbed on, pulling himself closer on the confines of the bridge.

William pulled back and could hardly believe what he was seeing. He raised his leg to kick down at Bryce but the young man was already coming close and shrugged off the kick. Bryce crawled on top of William and shook him by the shoulders.

“Bryce!” Shay yelled and grabbed one leg and pulled him off balance.

It was enough of an opening and William pushed him away. Bryce rolled back over his chair and console and fell onto the floor.

“Secure him!” William ordered. His anger fired and he felt no pity for the collapsed officer. Of all moments to have a breakdown, William could hardly have picked a worse one.

Bryce jumped to his feet, eyes gone wild. One arm snapped forward and cracked Shay on the front of her faceshield. She fell back and crumbled onto the floor, a streak of blood flashed against the front. William leaned back and drove his foot out when Bryce dove for him.

The Midshipman flew back and smacked against the wall just below the viewscreens. He rose and dove forward again. “You! You killed us! You fool!”

William met him and grappled with his arms on Bryce’s. Their faceshields cracked together and he could see the agony and rage on Bryce’s face. Beneath the veneer was fear. Raw, animal fear. William punched out once, twice, and the third time connected with the side of the helmet. His own helmet was being pushed back and he felt the seams stretch and tug. An alarm blinked on the edge of his vision: the suit was beginning to fail.

The punch threw Bryce off balance but not enough. He had the advantage and pushed against Bryce’s helmet with both hands. William’s punches were landing but it wasn’t enough to knock Bryce away.

William wondered, just for a second, if this was it. Everything he’d gone through led up to this one moment, killed by a berserk crewmember. No, killed by himself for making bad decisions. No use putting blame when it all came down to him.

The seal alarm changed into a red puncture alert. Atmosphere alarms blinked across the front of William’s faceshield. Giant blinking yellow letters. BREACH BREACH. He strained with every muscle and tried to push off but Bryce was anchored with his feet against the back of a console.

William thrashed and kicked, the fear rising. His augmetic hand smashed time and time into the side of Bryce’s head.

Bryce dropped down onto William’s chest and a cry like a mewing sound came out of him. Behind him Shay pulled on his legs and drug him off of William. William clutched the throat of his suit with one hand while the other quickly patted his side for the emergency gel pack. Black dots danced on his vision with the only sounds being his own heartbeat in his ears.

Shay reached forward and slammed Bryce’s head off of the console. Again. Again. Three times. Her face was serious, professional, without a hint of anger. The fourth strike buckled in the side of the faceshield. Bryce thrashed and flailed as if on fire. Shay grasped one arm and pushed him off of the bridge.

William squeezed the gel pack in his hands and felt the seal pop. A slick coolness on his throat told him that the nanite gel had seeped into the right spot. He let out a sigh as the pressure alarm stabilized. The blinking BREACH dropped away and his view was normal. “Shay?”

Shay stood with one arm on the bulkhead and looked out of the bridge. “He’s dead.” She stumbled back and fell into her seat. One side of her faceshield was streaked and red with blood from the inside. “Can’t wipe the damn thing,” she muttered.

“Take nav,” William said.

“Got it,” her voice replied without any emotion.

William stared down at his display. “Huron? Options?”

Huron replied a moment later with his breathing tight. “Uh, I’m trying to seal the conduit. Then maybe?”

William scrolled down the maintenance alarms and noticed one was missing. The missile loader alarm disappeared. A single green icon showed his launcher was ready to fire.

“Shay! We’ve got missiles!” he said excitedly and leaned over his console and called up the next plot. The dropship was coming in, his feed bounced back from his satellite and saw that the
Gallipoli
would arc in close.

“Get us right on top of ‘em, Shay,” William said.

“Sir?” Shay replied with a glance through the red of her face shield.

“We’ve got one chance. They won’t be dodging a barrage of missiles. We need to hit them before they can hit the dropship.”

Shay nodded.

The course appeared on the screen and the ship slid into a new orbit. William laid out a simple weapons program. All he had to do was get close and the barrage would do the rest. The thought of the torpedo tickled on the back of his mind. Would they shoot at him or take out the dropship?

Governor Myint seethed a fiery rage. His shoulders trembled while his hands flexed into fists of white hate. His gaze never left the viewscreen above him.

Behind him the staff labored on comms equipment and over consoles. No one walked near the Governor and everyone ignored Natyasha. She stood in the corner of the command room and breathed in the stale air.

Natyasha watched the Governor and ignored everyone else. She knew he was it, the key. She felt a touch of remorse for herself and shut it out quickly. This wasn’t a time for remorse, it was a time of action. “Governor,” she called above the noise of the room.

The room went nearly silent as hands hovered over keys and no one dared to look up. Yet everyone listened and watched without rising an eye to either.

Governor Myint cocked his head. His hands stopped flexing.

“Let me speak,” Natyasha said, and wondered if she should have kept silent. She’d tossed in her lot with them and still saw it as the best way to survive. Her gut said it was time to double down.

“To who?” Myint spat.

“To all of them.”

Myint licked his lips. “Your intentions?”

“Reinforce the legal government,” Natyasha said.

“That better be this government.”

“There’s only one government, and it’s here.”

A pair of officers cleared out a console and hurriedly attached a slender microphone. A technician snaked a cable across the room and lay on his back underneath. The console chirped twice and a new set of data rolled across as the technician stood and set it up.

Myint walked over to a weary eyed officer and pulled a pistol from his holster. His bony fingers plucked at the slide and released it with a snap, seating a caseless round. He rested the pistol against his hip and bored his eyes into Natyasha.

Natyasha stepped close to the console and felt the weight of her future on her shoulders. She saw the truth before her, the binary decision to be made. Before she could always dodge, weave, lie, and bribe her way out of difficult places. She could see the console like a lectern where she would speak her own fate. Her face felt warm and she nodded to Governor Myint.

“I wouldn’t mince words,” Governor Myint said with a glance at the pistol. “This is not a time for subtlety.”

She looked at the pistol and knew that nothing but truth would come out of it if she spoke wrong. “I understand.” Her eyes went to the technician.

The technician nodded. “Is ready.”

She didn’t need anyone to tell her it was ready. She’d seen the view a thousand times before. A blinking blue icon that made the adrenaline rise. The ability to speak to everyone with a cell. Normally it only went to those on her political list, but the emergency notification opened it to everyone.
Everyone.