Primary Inversion (18 page)

      
Three thoughts answered in a light speed pulse.
Engaged.

      
We vanished. Blackbody shielding turned our hulls into surfaces that reflected no light. It was minimal stealth; the Traders knew we were here, and every time we accelerated our exhaust gave us away.

      
Helda, get down as far as you can,
I thought.
We’ll cover you. Drop the EI’s in a drone.
I didn’t know if the rebels could recover it, but we no longer had choices. We had lost our advantage of surprise and used up our MIRVs. Nor could we do more inversion tricks, because if accelerated to relativistic speeds, it would leave Helda undefended while she tried to do the drop.

      
Blackstar gave me its analysis of the Solos and drones. They were coming from the remains of an underground base, the only beleaguered remains of the ground defenses. It looked as if the Trader military had overcome the rebels, and the insurgents had blown up most of the defense installations rather than let them be recaptured.

      
Prime Annihilators,
I thought. Like Jumblers and photon thrusters, these mammoths worked on pair annihilation. But Annihilators were the mammoths. They used antiprotons, with energies two hundred times greater than positrons, millions of times greater than wimpy bitons. No matter that beams were easier to avoid than smart missiles; Annihilators offered the best offense against ships in stasis. A ship with its quantum state frozen could survive immense forces—including enemy fire. They were more fragile to beams than missiles, however, because annihilating matter was easier than deforming it.

      
Blackstar,
I thought.
Do the Trader ships have inversion capability?

      
Yes.
Blackstar showed me images of four drones and five Solos.
Three of the Solos also carry MIRVs.

      
Damn.
Those Solos could try the same gambit with their MIRVs that we had used. We had warning now and could use decoy dust to confuse their missiles, but I needed no EI to tell me how slim our chances were. At least the Solos couldn’t coordinate during inversion or come out of it simultaneously, especially not with us harrying them. It meant they could hit one another instead of us when they launched their MIRVs. The question was: were they willing to kill each other to kill us?

      
I didn’t want to find out. We had to destroy them before they had a chance to try. As Redstar and Goldstar closed on two of the Solos, Blackstar showed me a drone on an intercept course.

      
Get him,
I thought.

      
Firing.

      
Mag-shields protected the drone, magnetic fields that deflected charged particles. No beam was perfectly neutral, but most of my shot reached its target. Where it hit the drone, the annihilations created pion showers, which started other devastatingly high energy processes, giving birth to particles and radiation that tore through the fusion engines, weapons bays, inversion engines, the generators powering the antimatter containment fields—

      
—and the drone disappeared in a silent burst of radiation and exploding debris. Part of it vanished with the eerie
sucked away
effect created when real matter collapsed into the complex space within a fuel containment bottle.

      
Warning:
Blackstar thought.
Greenstar detected.

      
Taas fired at a Solo bearing down on him. Blackstar highlighted his shot on my display, red for a tau missile. The miniature, volatile starship streaked out at the Solo. Jags couldn’t carry many of the bulky taus; Taas had just used a fourth of his supply—

      
—lost a fourth of his supply. The Solo caught it with an Annihilator. The tau exploded close enough to destroy the Solo, but the ship remained whole, thrown into stasis by its EI. It sped away from Taas and toward me like a rigid body in frictionless motion. Then the Solo dropped out of stasis—and I gasped as terror punctured my mind.

      
Blocking,
Blackstar thought.

      
Although the fear receded, it didn’t vanish; with my boosted concentration so focused on the Solo, I couldn’t shut out the pilot’s reaction. He was so scared, so
young,
barely more than a boy, one who had never expected combat on this simple assignment

      
…I never wanted to fly a Solo, never wanted to be near one. How could I have believed it would make my dreams reality, lift me up—I’m paying for that dream—

      
Blackstar, block!
Tears ran down my face, the tears of my enemy. The block psicon flashed futilely in my mind, over and over.

      
Firing,
Blackstar thought.

      
My Annihilator caught the Solo point-blank and detonated it into oblivion. I gasped as the boy’s death scream vibrated in my mind.

      
Blackstar.
I drew in a sobbing breath.
Disconnect my emotive centers.

      
Disconnected.

      
The part of my brain that cried in protest against the killing was suddenly locked in a glass-walled prison, its protests muted, unable to stop me from doing what had to be done. After the battle, if I survived, having used the disconnect would leave me feeling as if it had parched my soul, but without it, I couldn’t function.

      
Red and Gold have been detected.
Blackstar flashed images of Helda and Rex engaging two drones and a Solo. Another three drones were on intercept courses with us.

      
Evasive pattern two,
I thought.

      
Blackstar fired the maneuvering rockets, using “cold” thrust from the fusion engines, changing course every second or less. The cocoon protected me against lesser accelerations, and Blackstar snapped us into stasis during lethal forces.

      
My Annihilator exploded one of the drones in a violent flash of radiation. An Annihilator shot from another drone stabbed through space where I had been an instant before. Robot ships had no need of stasis to keep a pilot alive, which meant they were more maneuverable than Jags. But their EI brains limited their strategy. A mature, well developed EI came close to human reasoning power, but it wasn’t enough. Blackstar and I had worked together for over two decades, a synthesis that had evolved beyond what any EI or human could do alone.

      
My Jag hurtled past the third drone, and I caught it with an Annihilator. As the drone exploded, Blackstar showed me another Solo. It was thousands of kilometers away, running stealth, hiding in a shroud as it hurtled toward me. Even without the warning, I would have known it was there. I felt the pilot. He was a taskmaker, part Aristo, the same as Jaibriol’s guards. I couldn’t hit his ship with my Annihilator; the beam had no fuel left. A Jag could only carry so much antimatter, and a good portion of that went to our positron fuel.

      
Switch to Impactor,
I thought.

      
The Solo came at me like a knight in a stealth jousting tournament. As we hurtled past each other, I fired the Impactor, a stream of clusters that fused on impact like little H-bombs. The Solo was veering in its own evasion pattern, however, and releasing clouds of smart dust that confused my tracking systems. My shot missed, stabbing uselessly into space. The Solo winged my mag-shields with his Annihilator, and particles spiraled madly off into space. Stats said I had been in stasis several times. Mercifully, so far my Jag hadn’t sustained damage.

      
Meanwhile, the unrelenting clusters from my Impactor shot came around and went after the Solo. His decoy dust countered, some of it igniting the bomblets. As we hurtled away, my Jag released its own cloud of decoy dust that spread behind us in a cone, leaving a wake of explosions.

      
Gold hit,
Blackstar thought.

      
Gold, report,
I thought.

      
Lost mag-shields and Annihilators,
Helda answered.

      
I needed only one look at her display. It was lit up with alarms like a holiday decoration.
Helda, get out of here. Go back to headquarters and report. Rex, cover her.

      
Got it,
Rex thought.

      
Green hit,
Blackstar thought.

      
Taas?
It looked like he had taken less damage than Helda had taken.

      
I’m fine,
he thought—and punctuated it with a hit on a drone. In one flashing detonation, it became a note in the history files.

      
Solo approaching to port,
Blackstar warned.

      
I snapped my attention to the Solo.
Impactor, firing pattern K. Release decoy dust.

      
This new Solo evaded my shot. Its pilot fired his Impactor, but instead of targeting my Jag, he aimed to my port side—and nearly hit us as my ship jumped to almost that exact position.

      
Damn! This pilot was
good.
Evasive pattern Q!

      
Die, sweet Jagernaut.

      
The thought from the Solo’s pilot hit me like a weapon. No telepath sent it, no one remotely resembling a telepath. But it formed with such single-minded intensity, I had no choice but receive it in my boosted state. It blanketed me with suffocating, choking scorn, and a lust so intense I reeled.

      
Die, sweet Jagernaut. Die. Slowly. In terrible pain.

      
The masters had come. This pilot was an Aristo warrior.

      
Fire Impactor!
I struggled to free myself from the Aristo’s concentration. I couldn’t do it. The only way would be to disengage my brain from Blackstar, which was suicide.

      
The Solo veered in his evasive pattern, and I only winged his ship. Several of my Impactor clusters exploded on impact, but the Solo remained secure in stasis.

      
A second Solo suddenly registered on my detectors, matching velocity with my Jag as adeptly as the first. Its pilot’s “voice” came to me:
Die, Jagernaut.

      
—I was falling, falling, falling into a cavity, a dark hole, caught, trapped—

      
Blocking,
Blackstar thought.

      
I gasped as my sense of falling receded.
Fire, Impac—

      
As I came out of stasis, the Jag bucked, ramming my shoulder into the cushioned exoskeleton. Alarms blared in the cockpit and flashed on my mindscape.

      
We took a hit from the first Solo,
Blackstar thought.
It destroyed our starboard Impactor.

      
Sweet Jagernaut.
The thought slid across my mind like an oily caress.
You’re mine.

      
The second Aristo him, hungering:
Mine.

      
And then, gods almighty, a
third
thought penetrated:
Die, little Jagernaut—
and a third Solo materialized, firing out of a stealth approach even Blackstar hadn’t detected.

      
I shouted a desperate thought at Blackstar.
Evade!

      
The Jag shuddered violently as alarms blared.

      
Hit to starboard,
Blackstar thought.
Annihilators no longer functional.

      
Fire taus,
I thought.

      
My taus surged out of their cannon maws, jumping in and out of stasis as they streaked toward the Aristo ships. The first Solo destroyed the tau I sent after it. The second Solo took off with the tau in pursuit. My third tau found its target—and the Solo detonated in a fierce blast.

      
Anger from one of the first Solo pilot blasted my mind.
Die, Jagernaut! In agony.

      
—and the second Solo jumped out of inversion, blasting the area with high energy exhaust that could demolish my Jag—

      
—and that second Solo exploded in a flash of radiation.

      
Got him!
Rex thought.
I’ll—

      
Red hit,
Blackstar thought.

      
REX!
Stats for his Jag reeled through my mind:
shields down to 8 percent, hull cohesion 4 percent.
His antimatter containment fields teetered on the brink of collapse.

      
Fury at the Aristos burst over me, cold and icy.
Fire tau,
I thought.
Get the bastard.

      
But even as my last cannon discharged, the Solo that had hit Rex also fired a tau. It matched velocity with my tau, caught it—and inverted. The two missiles reappeared to starboard and detonated together, their explosion blanked from my mind as Blackstar threw me into stasis.

      
Drones to port,
Blackstar thought—and I was fleeing two drones, their Impactor fire crossing in space where I had been a second earlier. They hit each other instead and both exploded. I was nauseous from being clapped in and out of stasis. My node was trying to compensate by spurring my traumatized brain to release endorphins, but it wasn’t enough.

      
Warning.
Blackstar showed me a Solo accelerating toward the sun, up to relativistic speeds.

      
Catch it,
I thought, and we leapt desperately after the Solo. I had no taus, no Annihilators, nothing. If I had to, I would ram the Jag down its—