Here Be Dragons (24 page)

Elena was spun again, and now she could see Marco pull Vijay’s body out of her stateroom. The bleeding had stopped, but round globs of blood followed him into the corridor.

Marco reared back and spat in Vijay’s face.

“Don’t touch him!”

“But Captain. What he did to you . . .” She saw the tears in her boatswain’s eyes.

“He did what he thought was right,” Elena said. “It’s time for us to do the same.”

Hassoun gasped, and Demyan and Vladlena Lamentov crossed themselves, right to left.

“Officer Lamentov, you’re dismissed,” Ikenna said. “Take my post at forward control.”

Lamentov left so quickly, eyes locked on the pale, bloody apparition that had once been her captain, that she forgot to salute. Rivkah and Wen eased Elena into the flight station and gently strapped her in. Ikenna took Lamentov’s place at watch.

“Chief Nishtha?” Demyan asked.

“No,” Elena said, as Wen tied the plasma bag to the chair behind her head. Rivkah pulled the hypo from her neck, and ran a new peripheral line into her bicep. Elena could feel the warmth spread from her heart to the tips of her fingers and toes, and her torso was now a dull, constant ache from neck to waist. “Well, yes. Hassoun, open the personnel files. I need to know if there is anyone else on this ship with no parents, no children, no partners.”

Hassoun did as he was told, forehead creased.

“Just Chief Nishtha, Cap’n.”

Elena nodded. Her mouth hung open and she breathed deeply.

“How are the neighbors?”

“
Metatron
wants to know when we will transmit our access codes,” Hassoun said. Their computer cores were completely identical, and once
Metatron
was inside there would be no hiding from her. She’d find the evidence, and destroy it. “She’s hailing us again.”

Metatron
hovered a few kilometers away, guns trained on her sister from across the ghost ship which lay between them. Every weapon was hot, and at the tips of the missile pods a pair of radio jammers hummed with energy, ready to shatter the silence. She had deliberately taken the outside track. If
Gabriel
lit her rockets and made a hard burn, she would fly straight past her sister, and deeper into outsider territory. And if
Gabriel
attempted to somersault and make a break for home directly,
Metatron
could cut her down instantly.

“Mr. Masri, give her my answer.”

The radio pulse was so weak that
Metatron
didn’t hear it. When Elena and her crew had left
Gideon
, they had closed the hatch to the bridge. But they hadn’t closed any others. The radio wave penetrated just deep enough into the hull to reach the engine room, and the receiver that Elena had connected to her thruster pack—and the explosive bolts packed in alongside it.

They blew at once and ruptured the propellant tank inside the pack. The explosion pierced the fuel cell, and the hydrogen inside ignited. It brewed up and shattered the bridge and the fuel cells on either side, and they detonated like twin aftershocks.

Gideon
erupted before their eyes. The fireball flamed out in the vacuum, and the scorched wreckage flew apart in every direction.
Metatron
seemed shocked by the immolation, as if the outsiders had rigged their ship to self-destruct.

Demyan lit the engines and burned.
Gabriel
darted through the explosion. Waves of incandescent gas rolled from her hull like liquid fire. By the time
Metatron
had realized what happened,
Gabriel
had shot past her, and out of the torus.

“Buzzers active,” Hassoun said. “All frequencies inoperable.”

Metatron’s
radio jammers lashed the surrounding space with energy bursts, and flooded the entire band with senseless noise. Even if
Gabriel
broke the eclipse and sighted the Earth, she would be mute.

“If the outsiders didn’t know before,” Elena said. Control was only twenty light-minutes away, and the battle would be over before they hardly knew it had begun. “Where is she?”

“In pursuit,” Demyan said, “one hundred kilometers, aft port quarter.”

“Ikenna, now.”

Gabriel
dropped a single missile on the path behind her, but
Metatron
didn’t follow. She veered to port and slid into a lane that sliced across the arc that would take her sister home. The missile, now aimed in the wrong direction, blazed harmlessly into space. It was so distant that
Metatron
didn’t even bother to take a shot at it.

“Distance now one hundred fifty kay,” Demyan said.

“Can we maintain this course and speed?” Elena asked.

“No, ma’am,” Demyan said. “We’re off by almost one hundred and eighty degrees. We run dry now, and the next stop is Saturn.”

“What if we cut the engines, rotate to home, and fire again?” Hassoun asked.

Demyan shook his head.

“It would slam the crew flat against the deck,” he said. “We’d black out.”

“Put another missile across her bow,” Elena said. “Try to force her to turn aside.”

Ikenna fired, and shook his head.

“No impact, clean splash.”
Metatron
had shot it from her path.

Rivkah hovered next to her, replacing the sodden bandages. During the burn she’d held onto the bottom of Elena’s chair to keep from being thrown against the aft bulkhead, the plasma bag gripped in one hand lest the line tear free.

“Is
Metatron
lining up a shot?”

Ikenna put the image of the enemy ship up on the holo. She was flying bow forward, ballista aimed straight ahead, and not at
Gabriel
.

“Not yet, Captain. Her rockets are still burning.”

“She fears losing us than she wants to kill us. Hassoun, keep an eye on her jammers. I want to know the moment we can burn through it.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

“Ma’am,” Demyan said, “we need to adjust our trajectory soon if ever want to see the Belt again.”

“But if we cut the engines or slide into a turn, we’ll be giving
Metatron
an easy shot,” Ikenna said.

“We can’t keep going, we can’t slow down, and we can’t turn aside,” Elena said. “So what does that leave us?”

Gabriel’s
thrusters fired, and her bow tilted—not to port or starboard, but down. She dove beneath the plane of Jupiter’s orbit.
Metatron
scrambled to restore her aim. She spun sharply and took a hopeless shot as
Gabriel
as plummeted towards the southern pole.
Metatron
took the curve with her stride for stride, now high in space above her.

“
Metatron
has matched course, one hundred twenty kay.”

Demyan breathed heavily. The g-forces had squeezed the air from his lungs.

“Now we’re only ninety degrees of target,” Elena said. And
Gabriel’s
momentum was still carrying her away from Earth—that would take more than a few burns.

Elena put a hand to hear pounding heart, and it came away dark and sticky. Rivkah lifted it gently from the bandages, and then placed two fingers beneath the shelf of Elena’s jaws. Her dark eyes were invisible in the gloom.

“Captain,
Metatron
is coming about. She’ll have a firing solution in less than thirty seconds.”

Elena decided not to wait.

“Demyan, roll to port, forty five degrees. Ikenna, rip her wings off.”

Gabriel
spun onto her side so that her sail pointed straight at
Metatron
and brought four of her guns to bear. A rain of fire leapt up and slashed
Metatron
across the belly. The first rounds chopped at the armor and cut into the sails. Streams of fluid trailed from the punctured radiators and boiled in space.
Metatron
returned fire, and
Gabriel
spun again and stood on her tail to face her.

They hacked at one another as they fell.
Metatron’s
ballista opened up, and the shell punched a round hole through
Gabriel’s
milky wake. She parried with her own shot, and watched as
Metatron
used her shield to turn aside the sword. Three guns drew down on the cannonball and shoved it off target by a degree. It missed by the hair’s width of a kilometer.

“How long does it take us to recharge after a ballista shot?” Elena asked.

“Seventy two seconds,” Ikenna asked.

“She might be faster.”

“The hell she is.”

Elena smiled, and spoke to Rivkah.

“Remember how bad that last burn was?”

“Yes.”

“This one will be worse. Get against that wall and lie flat on your back, with your shoulder against the joint. Don’t try to hold your breath. The suit will do the rest.”

“These foams are dissolving,” Rivkah said, as she patched up the wound at Elena’s clavicle. “Your heart is eroding them with every beat. I’m not leaving you.”

“You won’t even be able to move.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Rivkah said again.

Elena nodded, and tapped her console. The four bridge chairs rotated and leaned back into a supine position.

“Hassoun, up the oxygen, all compartments. All hands, brace for acceleration.”

Dozens of bullets struck
Gabriel
every second, and chunks of antenna, telescope, and solar panel tumbled behind her autumn leaves. Each of the
Archangels’
guns emptied a barrel of ammunition every sixty seconds, and their hulls were pitted and worn from the impacts. They rolled as the fired, and the gunfire twisted into coils that wrapped around their bows like flaming wreathes.

Gabriel
charged just as
Metatron
thrust. She raced into the gunfire and allowed it to rip the skin from her flesh. The ballista round passed beneath her, where she should have been. It was close enough to see from the outer hull, a streak of white light like a shooting star. Each ship salvoed a pair of missiles. But the hailstorm of bullets found them immediately and cut them down before they could even arm, and the mangled metal corpses were swept aside.

Elena’s lips peeled back from her teeth. She couldn’t have shut her eyes if she tried. The weight of the air pressed down on her lungs, and if not for the fifty parts concentration of oxygen in the bridge atmosphere she would already have been unconscious. Elena watched as drops of dark blood flattened against the ridges of her blue uniform, ran along them in rivulets, and disappeared off the edge of her body to splatter against Rivkah. The doctor hung in midair, strapped to the chair by a pair of taut safety lines, held fast against the inside of her own spacesuit.

“
Metatron’s
not burning?”

“No, Captain,” Ikenna said. “We’ll pass her by in fifteen seconds.”

She waited until the very last moment.
Metatron
swung to one side, and laid her nose across
Gabriel’s
path. Her rockets ignited and threw her forward.

A wake of white hot plasma unspooled behind
Metatron
as she cut across.
Gabriel
sailed into the exhaust and tore through it, and left ghostly vapor swirls to eddy and froth where she had cut it in two. The moment of impact had been so brief that no human mind could have perceived it. In that instant,
Gabriel
had nearly been crippled.

“Damage report!”

“Radiators inoperative, Cap’n,” Hassoun said. The cooling sails had been coated in fiery vapor, and their heat was trapped. “We’re boiling, it will take at least ten minutes to get them back online.”

“Cut the engines,” Elena said. The rocket plumes died, and
Gabriel
coasted, her acceleration lost. “Fuck.
Metatron
?”

“Three hundred kilometers and closing, ma’am,” Demyan said.

“Are we out of jammer range?”

“No,” Hassoun said. “We still have to fight through
Metatron
and Jupiter
.
I can’t a signal out.”

“Captain, we’re coasting,” Ikenna said. “
Metatron
is at hard burn and will be within range in minutes.”

“Demyan, hit the avram. Push us down and out. And keep us head on to
Metatron
at all times.”

“Cap’n, we can’t fire the ballista without radiators,” Hassoun said. The colossal magnetic coils would flood the ship with waste heat and flash boil the moisture on their skin.

“I’m aware of that, Hassoun.”

The avram activated and
Gabriel
fell from Jupiter, further into its outer orbit. She rotated and flew sideways to keep the ballista trained on
Metatron,
who
watched her go without offering a challenge. She knew that she had scorched her sister and left her feeble. There was no need to hurry. She circled warily, two hundred kilometers, one hundred, fifty. She closed for the kill.

They attacked at the same instant.
Metatron
shot her ballista at close range and broke off the pursuit. All four of
Gabriel’s
forward guns opened up, and she loosed her final four missiles, one for each point of the compass.

Metatron’s
shell lunged for
Gabriel
and hit a wall of steel as the guns brought their fire to a single point on its surface, and chewed it to pieces. The round dissolved in mid flight, and a splash of molten metal spattered against
Gabriel’s
bow and dribbled down the length of the hull. She had made no attempt to evade.

The missiles blazed and hunted
Metatron
down. The first missed cleanly, and self-destructed dozens of kilometers beneath her.
Metatron
walked her fire onto the second and smashed it in a spray of metal. The final two converged, and leapt together into the streams of fire between they and their prey. They detonated simultaneously, and hit
Metatron
like the twin blasts of a shotgun.

Hot shrapnel clawed the hull and dug long gouges down her body. Exposed telescopes and radio dishes shattered under the onslaught Bursts of vapor erupted from the hull as a half dozen compartments collapsed at once. A chunk of mail cut a sail nearly in half, and a wrecked missile body glanced into
Metatron’s
shoulder and buried itself in the armor like a meteor fallen to earth.