Impulse (36 page)

The Battle

I
ran through the shattered main gallery of
Impulse
as fast as I could with my grav boots on, dodging fallen ceiling plaster and murals that had come undone from the walls. There was debris everywhere, but no bodies. I was making for the forward engineering room, where the main controls for Impulse's HD drive were.

I had been out of touch with Serosian for more than ten minutes, but in that time I'd picked up enough random com chatter to determine that the dreadnought was slowly beating down
Starbound
's defenses, forcing her into a more and more precarious position with each passing minute, blocking her retreat to the artificial jump point. One thing was clear—for
Starbound
to make it out of Altos space, it was going to have to defeat the dreadnought.

I passed out of the gallery and into officer country, the dark corridor illuminated only by my helmet LED. I passed by the Historian's chambers that had been occupied by Tralfane when I was aboard. The doors had coil rifle burns on them, as did all the surrounding walls. I was sure the yacht, and Tralfane, were gone.

I made it to the control room, and pulled myself through the broken doorway. There was no sign of power anywhere on board. My grav boots made me cling to the floor more than I wanted, but I made my way across the room and to the main HD drive console. It was a mess, but the main panel, identical to the one in the Historian's quarters, was still intact.

I tried to raise Serosian on my com. It took four minutes before I got through.

“. . . no time . . .” followed by crackles and waves of static was all that came through. Then suddenly the signal surged and I had to reduce the volume in my ear again.

“Peter! Can you hear me?” came the Historian's frantic voice.

“Yes, I can,” I responded. The signal was almost crystal clear.

“I've diverted power from the defenses—” he was cut off by static again, then continued. “. . . got the crystal?” he finished.

“I've got it. I'm in the drive master control room,” I yelled.

“Place the crystal—” static again, “. . . display panel. Do you understand?” I wasn't sure if I did, but I decided I had to act. I pulled the case out and removed the HD drive crystal, then placed it on the main console. The panel material began to swirl around the crystal and the panel began to light up with sickly yellows, oranges, and grays. I linked my com into the console to boost my signal and called out using
Impulse
's main com system.

“Serosian! I'm here! I've got the console working, do you read me?” I called.

“Prepare to receive the code,” he said.

“What code?”

“Peter, listen to me. I'm going to send you a key code. You'll have to call up the panel keyboard and enter it in exactly the order I send it. Do you understand?”

“I do. But what will happen when I enter the code?”

“If it works, we'll have access to the console and all of
Impulse
's systems, at least the ones that still work,” Serosian said.

“And if it doesn't work? If Tralfane has sabotaged the panel?” I asked. But I got no further response or explanation, only static.

The symbols started coming through to me on my EVA suit display. They were geometric in some way, and they appeared right to left. I swept my hand across the panel and a keyboard appeared with two rows of seven empty blocks each above the key display. I carefully entered the symbols in order from a menu, and each time I did a corresponding Imperial letter appeared on the panel, unscrambled, right to left:

VZVKZSK

VMBVZVK

I completed the string, then entered the code. The panel glowed orange and then went to a blank, deep blue as all the characters disappeared.

The panel seemed to turn to liquid then, absorbing the HD crystal into the console. It began glowing a bright red and then suddenly all of
Impulse
's systems were coming back online to the degree that they could, but my communication line to Serosian was cut off. I checked the service inventory; I had one coil cannon battery, no Hoagland Field, and only half power to the impellers. All of the automated attack systems were offline, permanently. I had to make a decision. I swept my hand across the panel and powered up the coil cannon and the impeller drives. With a lurch that felt like it was going to tear the ship apart,
Impulse
started forward. I pulled up the tactical display and watched as the dreadnought pursued
Starbound
relentlessly, the two ships exchanging barrages of cannon fire. But the readouts were clear:
Starbound
was losing.

“Time to change the odds,” I said aloud, then set my course and slammed the impellers to max—heading straight for the dreadnought.

The Imperial beast kept growing larger in my visual plasma display as tactical showed the distance between us closing. Soon enough I would draw its fire, but that would give
Starbound
a reprieve, and perhaps a chance.

I entered coil cannon range but the power curve was marginal. The cannon had taken hits in
Impulse
's last battle and firing it without generating major blowback was a huge risk. I needed something more.

I called to Serosian again, with no answer for several seconds before he came through on a low-frequency line. The longwave was apparently out of commission.

“What's your situation, Peter?” he asked.

“Automated attack systems are out. I've only got a single coil cannon and I probably won't even dent the hull with that, assuming I can fire it without destroying
Impulse
,” I said. I hesitated before asking the next question. “You have to give me something else to use, some other weapon,” I pleaded, the dreadnought looming huge in my plasma viewer.

The line stayed silent for several seconds, then Serosian's deep baritone came through, crackling with static.

“Your only other alternative,” he said, speaking slowly, “is to remove the Hoagland Field keeping the singularity contained.”

I wasn't sure I knew what he meant. He couldn't possibly be saying what I thought he was . . .

“Are you telling me to use the singularity in the HD drive as a weapon?” I said.

The line buzzed and cracked, then Serosian's voice came through in fractured sentences.

“Peter . . . must open the hyperdimensional channel . . .” The buzzing from the ongoing mortal struggle between
Starbound
and the dreadnought blocked out the rest of the message. I was desperate with fear.

“Serosian, please repeat! You must repeat your last message!” I called into the com. His message came through in bits and pieces.

“Opening . . . drive will open the energy . . . singularity will grow. It will reach a critical level . . . will expel everything it cannot contain, then implode . . . close the channel between . . . otherwise . . . HD realm could consume everything . . . our dimension.”

I pieced it together. I had to activate the HD drive without the protection of a Hoagland Field to contain it. The singularity would grow until it ejected the hyperdimensional energy uncontrolled into our universe, then nature's desire for balance between the two realms would hopefully collapse the singularity back in on itself.

An explosion of unbelievable force followed by an implosion of unknown dimensions.

“Will it be enough?” I asked rhetorically. To my surprise he responded directly and clearly over the com. I assumed he must have boosted the longwave signal again.

“Unknown,” he said. “It depends on how large the singularity grows before the implosion, and how close you get it to the dreadnought.”

“Oh, I'll get close,” I said, determined now to avenge the crew of
Impulse
. “Have I ever told you the story of MacEachern's Run?”

“Peter, you can't sacrifice yourself,” he said. He knew the story.

“I have no intention of sacrificing myself,” I said. “If I did I couldn't enjoy my revenge.”

A few seconds passed by, and I feared he wouldn't help me. Then his voice came cracking over the com again, bright and clear.

“I'm sending you the code to remove the field,” he said. The code came across seconds later. I called up the keypad again on the console and typed in the characters.

“Peter—” another static burst cut him off. It was useless trying to recover his signal at this point. My decision was made and my path was set. I shut down the com channel and hit the enter key.

I felt the hair on my neck stand up as the enveloping Hoagland Field deactivated. A surge of power swept through the ship as
Impulse
started drawing on the unregulated hyperdimensional energy flowing through her. I realized as I took one last scan of
Impulse
's displays that I was standing mere inches away from an opening to another dimension. The thought sent a chill down my spine. I shuddered, then returned to my task.

I set
Impulse
on a collision course for the dreadnought and locked in its tracking. It would follow the dreadnought if the Imperial ship tried evasive maneuvers, but so far the beast still seemed fixated only on
Starbound
. I looked to the chronometer display one last time. Six minutes until impact, an unknown time to the explosion. Time to go.

“Goodbye, grand lady,” I said aloud, then made for the galleria as fast as I could.

I ran through the galleria, but it wasn't fast enough. I disengaged my grav boots and jumped, spread-eagled. I flew half the length of the ship in seconds. I was never as thankful for my zero-G training at the Academy as I was right then.

I activated my boots again from my wrist display and came crashing to the floor with a thud, but managed to keep my feet. I headed quickly for a utility lifter and found the shaft empty. I disengaged my boots again and with a blast from my cone jets I dove headfirst down the shaft three full decks, kicking up my speed with another pulse halfway down. I did a midair tumble spin as the bottom of the shaft approached, swimming through the shaft opening onto the missile deck, and hit the cone jets in reverse to decelerate as I approached the floor.

I arrived at the aft missile room and reactivated my grav boots, then went to the controls. The firing key was still in the launch panel and the missile ports were all wide open. The crew of
Impulse
had fired every missile they had in their arsenal. Whatever had happened, they hadn't given up without a fight.

I wondered for a brief moment about the rest of
Impulse
's crew as I called up the launch sequence. Perhaps they were on the dreadnought, imprisoned where we couldn't detect their life signs, or even trapped here on
Impulse
. In either case I would be killing them all in a few minutes.

I put that out of my mind because I had to and focused on the firing sequence. I had participated in test firing a missile once during my Academy training. I hoped that experience would help me now.