Rebel Stars 1: Outlaw (19 page)

"Fine by me," Gomes said. "Buy us a few minutes, though. MacAdams, Webber, Jons! Get to the rear lock and fill it with everything that isn't bolted down. The harder and smaller, the better."

Webber grinned. "We're going to nail 'em?"

"If they're dumb enough to tail us, I'm happy to teach them a lesson."

The three men unbuckled and popped to their feet. Webber activated the magnets in his soles just in time to avoid being flung across the bridge by a sudden turn. He reeled downstairs toward the aft airlock. This abutted several cabinets of hardware for low-tech repairs. They dumped it all into the airlock, bright steel bolts and pins blanketing the floor, then closed the door.

"Locked and loaded, Captain," MacAdams said.

"Skin of our teeth," she said through the comm. "Grab a seat ASAP."

The three of them belted themselves into the uncomfortable couch at the side of the hold. The ship swayed and veered. Jons messed with his device, pulling up the feed from the tail just in time to watch the
Specter
peel away. As it did so, a tower projecting perpendicularly from its cylindrical body was shredded to raggedy bits.

Whoops filtered through the comm. The
Fourth
began to turn, firing a handful of rockets after the retreating ship.

"She's out of here like we just bit her," Lara said. "Pursue?"

"On your second alignment," Gomes' voice came through. "Don't want them to pull the same stunt on us. Webber! Get another load in the lock, then buckle back in."

"Roger." He stood, leaning against the acceleration. Helped by Jons and MacAdams, they littered the airlock with another layer of screws, scrap metal, and raw solder. Webber grew heavier and heavier. By the time they finished and returned to the couch, he thought they must be pushing four Gs. And it was only growing stronger.

"Jeez, Cap," Jons said. "Trying to give us all spinals?"

"That's one way to retire early," she chuckled. "They're rabbiting. It's going to get worse before it gets better."

"Flood them, Captain?" Lara said.

"If they're gonna show us their ass, I can't think of a better idea."

A steady trickle of missiles fired from the
Fourth
, accelerating as hard as they could, inching toward the rabbiting
Specter
. Swimming upstream as they were, the missiles made for easy pickings for the
Specter's
defenses, but Webber had played enough video games and combat sims to know it didn't matter. What mattered was that Gomes believed she had more rockets than the enemy. Thus all she had to do to prevail was to keep firing hers until the others ran out (or, if the other guy could outrun her, use them to force him to dodge, slowing him down). Explosions dotted the starfield ahead of them like the lights on an airport landing strip.

Jons made a face at the basic visuals on the screen. "Think we can get upstairs without getting crushed?"

"You first," Webber said. "If you
are
crushed, try to ooze back this way so we know not to follow."

Jons smirked, then got a face like a little kid psyching himself to leap over a wide puddle of unknown depth. Before he could convince himself to unbuckle and dash upstairs, the ship veered, rocking Webber's head against the couch's absorbent supports. The fading bloom of an explosion whisked past the screen.

Hard, steady pressure resumed. Webber's pulse muttered wetly in his ears. All the while, they'd been keeping more or less even with the
Specter
. At once, they seemed to leap forward, closing fast. The
Specter
had flipped to point its nose toward them.

"Brake!" Gomes shouted. "Brake brake brake!"

The ship flipped; Webber's head slammed forward into the restraints. If not for the straps and tuff-foam arms holding him in place, he would have flown across the hold. He grunted. They hadn't put on a burst of speed. Rather, the
Specter
was slowing down. Braking harder and faster than the
Fourth
was capable of. They should have seen it coming—the maneuver was as obvious as a mountain—yet deep in the split-second decisions of real-time combat, no one had given it a second thought.

Or maybe they had. The only alternative would have been to let the
Specter
get away. Gomes had taken the gamble. Webber had a bad feeling about the cards he was about to be dealt.

On screen, which was now a view from the
Fourth's
aft, the
Specter
loomed nearer. The
Fourth
began to swerve. The other ship dipped down the screen, then slowly climbed back toward the center.

"Launch it!" Gomes screamed.

Lara choked on the crushing deceleration. "Launch what?"

"Everything! Until we slow down, they can fly circles around us. Tear us to shreds."

"Panhandler Protocol engaged," Lara said. "Launching now."

Missile after missile shimmered on the screen, as bright and numerous as the fireworks at the finale of Evacuation Day. The front of the
Specter
strobed as it launched an ongoing volley. The missiles met between the two ships and burst across the heavens like the formation of a new galaxy.

"We've got penetration." Lara's voice wavered. "So do they."

Bright green dots appeared beyond the galaxy of explosions. Incoming rockets. Others lanced toward the
Specter
. Both ships launched a panicked cluster of counters. Webber wriggled his hands free of the couch's foam grips and, straining with every movement, pulled his suit's emergency hood over his head. MacAdams and Jons followed suit. Over the comms, the crew on the bridge all began to talk at once, questions and orders merging into a slurry of nonsense.

Missiles and counters slaughtered each other wholesale. A lone green dot sailed through the carnage. Someone on the bridge screamed.

Webber fought his arms back into their restraints. The entire
Fourth
shuddered and rollicked like a rock kicked down a cobbled street. Webber squeezed his eyes tight. A deafening bang roared through the ship, followed by the rising, eerie klaxon of a hull breach.

The acceleration-induced gravity dropped to 2 Gs, then one, then half.

"Oh f—" Jons interrupted himself by vomiting into his hood.

On screen, all the missiles had vanished. The
Specter
was slightly closer, but the field of stars had changed. The blunt nose of the enemy vessel was burning, shedding debris into the vacuum.

"Report!" Gomes yelled through comms.

Lara's voice was ragged. "Engine banks B and D are down. As in dead. Multiple punctures on port side. Already sealed off. Missile batteries five and six are toast. Lucky they didn't go off."

"Probably because they were nearly empty. Hold, you all right down there?"

"Jons just showed his dinner to the inside of his faceplate," Webber said. "But we're intact. How about the
Fourth
?"

"Limping. Lost a few eyes. Fortunately, it looks like the
Specter's
no better off. Lara, give them another poke."

"We don't have much left," Lara said.

"After that last round, they won't, either. It's do or die."

"Confirm. Launching three."

Three new rockets left the
Fourth
, spearing toward the flagging enemy. It launched counters and swerved to draw the rockets into a trap, but the
Specter
didn't have half the zip it had shown previously. The outbound missiles winked off: one, two, three.

"Incoming," Lara said. Lights popped up from the
Specter
, first a handful, then a score. "Shit.
Shit!
"

"Give it whatever you've got left." Gomes' voice was growing resigned. "One way or another, this is the end."

A cannonade of rockets departed the
Fourth
. With both ships slowed, the missiles seemed to zip across the space with terrible speed. On each side, a subset of rockets leapt ahead, exploding in empty space to create a barrier to the others. The remainders adjusted course, struggling to track the burst-walls and the reactions of the rockets on the other side, whipping crazily through constantly shifting vectors. A wave of counters followed both sides in, darting toward any missile that grew too confused by the chaotic flocking. Explosions strung the sky.

Six of their missiles cleared the scrum, continuing toward the
Specter
. Five of the enemy's carried through.

"Full evasion," Gomes said. "Launch flares. Dump the airlock. Put everything we've got between us and those missiles."

The ship rolled and swung. On the screen, pinpricks of light blooped from the
Fourth
and expanded in spheres of white-hot light. Across the bay, the airlock rumbled, venting its debris into the darkness. Two of the incoming missiles vanished in a spray of dumb energy.

"Not how I saw this going," MacAdams said.

Jons was muttering, talking to himself. After a moment, Webber recognized it as prayers. Were they about to die? The others seemed to think so, and yet he felt oddly light. He had established a new life insurance policy, and though it was modest—spacers had outrageous rates—it should pay off the remainder of Dinah's house. That would still leave her care, of course, but their mother ought to be able to handle that much. Dinah would be okay.

Even if she'd be left in the lurch, returned to the road to the poorhouse, he would have been satisfied by the fact he had tried. Given his all. More than most could say. His dad would have been proud.

More important than his concrete effort to make Dinah's life less of an ongoing hell, he was proud of himself in the abstract. He had taken a shot. Lived outside of rules. Outside of law. Tasted freedom and potential and what it felt like when you left worry behind.

His only regret was that he hadn't lived long enough to see what more he could have become.

The counters knocked out one of the two remaining missiles. The other headed straight toward the
Fourth
.

The ship jolted to the side, ringing like a gong. Webber gasped.

Everything became nothing.

He was less than six hours from rendezvous with the
Specter
when the message came in. He knew at once that it was an emergency, and not only because of the wrapper the message came inside. Rather, if it hadn't been an emergency, he would never have gotten a message at all.

As expected, it was from Finn. A video message along with attached files. Yon called up the message.

Thor Finn's young, confident face materialized on the device. "Heyo. I think you can guess what this is about, so I'll cut right to it: the
Specter
has been attacked. Single vessel. No definite ID, but our initial searches indicate it isn't one of the heavy hitters. In fact, judging by the sloppiness of its look—not to mention its methods—we're guessing pirates. C'est la vie, right? You do everything right, and then some idiot bumbles in and smashes it to pieces.

"We lost comms during the brouhaha. At this moment, we can't be certain the
Specter
continues to exist. Your mission is to extract it at all costs. If that proves impossible, to destroy it. And, if you have the opportunity, to negate any witnesses."

Finn grimaced, raising his eyebrows in sympathy. "There's no getting around it: this is a mess. One that I could have avoided, if I hadn't been so damn sure our office was leak-proof. Needless to say, while you're cleaning up this mess, I'll be cleaning up the one on my end. Oh—and this may be my fault. I'm aware of that.

"But I'm also self-aware enough to know that, if you can't handle this, I'll blame you as much as myself. As always, Yon, your value to me is beyond my ability to express."

That was the end. Yon called up the attached videos and reports. It was even sloppier than Finn had implied. Yon knew he should be giving his ship new orders, but hot, terrible panic shot through his limbs, followed by the pure and senseless wrath that was the chief reason he traveled alone.

As if aware of his mood, the rat in the clear plastic box to the left of the dash began to scrabble at its walls.

Yon stared at it with raw hate. Of its own accord, his arm lifted. His hand pushed the red button on the top of the box. With a whoosh, the atmosphere was sucked from the box. The rat's mouth fell open. It clawed harder and harder at the wall, eyes bulging, reddening with popped capillaries. It dashed across the box and slammed into the opposite wall. It hopped, frenzied, then crashed to a corner and stayed there, limbs twitching. Very soon, it was at rest.

Yon's pulse slowed, as did his breathing. He punched the second button. The box of the floor collapsed, sucking the carcass away. Nothing brought more clarity than witnessing the death of another being. You couldn't help but understand your own fragility, how brittle the tether that connected you to the universe of physical things.

He closed his eyes and gestured the ship to maximum acceleration. It didn't seem to move at all. In fact, during his first trip out with it, he had assumed that it
wasn't
moving—that it was, perhaps, an elaborate practical joke played on him by Finn, hoping to see him rattled. The instruments had confirmed his motion, however, as had the view of the station receding behind him. It was true: it was real. It was a miracle. The dawn of a new day of human history.

He loved the ship as much as he'd loved anything. As befitting an object of its stature, it had held many names in its brief existence. When it had been nothing more than a dream, Finn had called it the
Amelia
. When it had been a prototype, they had called it the
Protean
, as much for its versatility as for its ability to change its profile. After it passed to active duty, a few called it by its official designation of C4R-898, but most referred to it as the
Ghost in the Machine
or simply the
Ghost
. Some, to his deep confusion and deeper anger, called it
Tim
.

To Yon, however, it had a single name:
Mine
.