The Star Pirate's Folly (23 page)

Truly’s five Hornet attack ships worked in tandem against
dozens of pirate fighter craft, drawing them away from
Deep Fog
and the
hidden gate. The agile Hornets dodged beyond the reach of the pirate fighters and
used their close-range lasers to slice apart droves of the pirates’ smart
missiles.

“Got most of them tied up, Myra,” Truly said, curt and
strained. “There’s your window, make it count.”

Bee asked Myra, “Is this going to hurt?”

“Depends on whether or not everything goes as planned,” Myra
said. “But the numbers say it shouldn’t.”

The shuttle stuck close to its twin Hornet escorts as they
covered the distance between the retreating
Wanderlust
and
Deep Fog
in pursuit. Crouching against the wall and locked in place by the nullsuit’s
gravity nodes, Bee resigned herself to the AI’s calculated optimism. If this
was her one shot, she’d make the best of it. She had a steel-hearted brute of a
solider beside her and a hyper-aware artificial intelligence guiding her every
movement. Considering her only previous plan had been a lone, undoubtedly
suicidal attack with a knife, this situation seemed ideal. Better than she ever
had reason to hope for.

The minimap swarmed with action.
Wanderlust
continued
its retreat, providing supportive fire against the fighters, but the shuttle
shot off toward
Deep Fog
along with the two Hornets. Four fighters
remained guarding Starhawk’s warship and the shuttle’s sudden advance stirred
them to action. The fighters streaked off to meet the Hornet escorts.

Still crouched in the back of the shuttle next to Spud, Bee
swallowed her fear and reminded herself what was at stake. She’d suffered more
than a decade at Starhawk’s hands. Her mother died filthy and foul, a rasping
vitriolic shell of a person—nothing like the woman from Bee’s cherished early
memories. Starhawk did that. Starhawk took her mother’s life. The old resolve
came roaring back.

No more searching. No more uncertainty. Just one final task.

“Ready to pull the plug on their weapons systems. Think I’ll
get started on that gate now,” Myra said. “I can see a few chinks in the armor
already. Might be able to stop them sending more ships.”

“Just get me on board.”

Deep Fog
’s four remaining fighters launched a barrage
of missiles toward the Hornets and they pulled back, again using their lasers to
slice the missiles into harmless scrap or detonate them before they got close
enough for real damage. The fighters split into two groups of two, advancing in
a pincer attack, and before Bee could blink the Hornets darted together at one
of the pairs.

The flurry of visual data was impossible to follow, but
after the lightning fast encounter the Hornets emerged unscathed. One damaged
fighter limped back to
Deep Fog
, its partner carved to pieces in the
attack, as the shuttle pressed on straight toward
Deep Fog
.

Swift in the void, the Hornets moved to intercept the final
two fighters immediately. The shuttle banked toward the protection of the
Hornets just as the fighters fired another volley of missiles—this time
followed by a scatter-shot cone of projectiles. Myra jerked the shuttle out of
harm’s way and the blast of destruction passed harmlessly by. The Hornets
swooped in to slice apart the incoming volley of self-guided missiles while
launching their own back at the pirate fighters.

Deep Fog
loomed closer with each moment.

“We in range of their weapons?” Bee asked with a nervous
tremor.

Myra sounded distracted. “Not quite. Few more seconds. Gotta
cut this close or you won’t have time to board. Almost there. Hijacking weapons
and power systems—clock’s started. They know I’m in. Less than thirty seconds
in the clear.”

On Bee’s display,
Deep Fog
unleashed a barrage of
missiles at the shuttle. The two escort Hornets spun around and headed right
for the incoming attack, the pirate fighters giving chase.

“Uh, Myra?”

“Don’t worry.”

Most of the missiles suddenly veered back toward
Deep Fog
,
detonating in a bloom of shrapnel that peppered the bow of the warship with
jagged holes. The rest slipped right past the two Hornets and found their true
targets, staccato explosions tearing through the pirate fighters. Unimpeded by
other enemies, the Hornets charged forward and concentrated their high powered
lasers at close range on the section of the hull the missiles had shredded.
Molten slag oozed from the edges of the gaping wound, a white-hot target for
the rapidly approaching shuttle.
Deep Fog
maintained its course,
paralyzed by Myra’s touch.

“Here we go,” Myra warned. “They’re about to lock me out.
Keep your helmet on, I vented most of their oxygen. Internal defenses are fried
and I’ve got their crew tagged for you. The Hornets burned you a tunnel so
you’ll punch through near their bridge. When you get inside, you won’t be able
to use the airlock. Spud’s going to have to slice through the shuttle wall to
get you out. Stay with him. Get in, kill Starhawk, and get to their hangar bay
to escape. I’m with you every step of the way, Bee. Brace yourself.”

“I’m ready,” she said as the suit tightened around her, the
gravity nodes rooting her in place against the wall in the shuttle’s cargo
area.

Kill him
, Mother whispered.

“I’m ready,” Bee repeated.

The shuttle speared itself into the opening the Hornets had
burned in
Deep Fog
’s hull, metal shrieking against metal until the
craft’s whole front section crumpled inward and it came to a bone-jarring stop.
Even with the suit holding her steady, the impact knocked her around. She
tasted coppery blood in her mouth—must have bit herself.

“They’re going to try and turn back,” Myra said. “I mucked
with their maneuvering before they shut me out but you should have enough time
to get out of there before they get back to the gate with you on board.”

Spud shoved a beam rifle into Bee’s hands before she could
respond, then yanked a much larger gun from the weapons bag for himself. No
time for thought. The suit took charge, guiding her hands as she primed the
weapon. She’d never fired one at a person, just the hardlight targets from her
training sessions with Truly in the nullroom. Still, with the suit’s guidance
the movements felt natural, as if she’d done the same thing every day of her
life. It just showed her the way things should be done.

The map on her display shifted to show a blueprint of
Deep
Fog
’s interior. At least a dozen silhouettes appeared in the distance, all
but one outlined in yellow. One glowed red. Starhawk.

“He’s running back to the gate already,” Myra said. “I’m
still inside the gate’s systems but I don’t think I can stop them from—”

Myra’s channel went dead.

Spud aimed his gun—no, a laser drill, Bee realized, the kind
they used for mining—at the shuttle’s wall. Her display showed yellow shadows
gathering in the hallway on the other side, approaching cautiously with weapons
drawn. Spud made a happy gurgle over the comms as the drill whined with power.
A three-inch wide beam sliced one pirate from left hip to right shoulder as
Spud made them a hole and the others scrambled for safety. A chunk of melting
wall crashed to the floor on top of the armored body and the giant dropped the
drill.

From the weapons bag he pulled two fist-sized spherical
drones studded with gravity nodes and laser lenses. He tossed both out the
opening and they buzzed to life in midair, darting after the three pirates.
Spud shouldered a beam rifle from the bag, picked the drill up again, and
ducked through the wall. Bee fell into step behind him without a thought,
giving in entirely to the urges of the suit. She felt the way it wanted to
move, crouching behind Spud for cover.

The drones riddled two pirates hidden around the corner with
laser fire. In a desperate attack the last of the trio flung himself at them
and Spud caught him in the chest with a short blast from the laser drill. He
shouldered the armored corpse out of the way when it drifted into him. They
moved quickly, hunting the red shadow on the bridge ahead. Six guarding
Starhawk, eight or ten more on other levels, closing fast.

Spud pointed the drill at the thick door and the beam seared
through, sending the pirates inside diving for cover. The armored gargantuan
carved a new door for them, but before he finished the hole the drill’s beam
faded and sputtered out. Its energy spent, Spud tossed it aside and swapped it
for the rifle slung across his back. He raised a boot and smashed the chunk of metal
into the rest of the door and it bent inward far enough for them to fit
through. The hovering drones zipped inside the gap, dodging lasers and firing
at the pirates inside. Spud followed without hesitation, Bee shadowing him.

Her heart stopped when she saw Starhawk across the room in
his feather-etched golden armor. If not for her nullsuit’s constant guidance
she might have stopped in her tracks. She dove left as a drone took the first
hit, spiraling out of control and smashing into the ceiling. Bee felt the suit
guide her rifle to fire, felt her finger pull the trigger, and saw a beam of
light lance forward and boil through nullsteel plating on an armored chest.
Spud finished him with a shot through the visor and the suit of armor mimicked
the death throes of the man inside.

The rest opened fire on both her and Spud, causing the last
drone to fly wild as a distraction, unloading its energy to cover Bee and Spud.
Two more pirates thrashed around clutching their helmets. Spud popped another
with three shots to the gut. No telling how close
Deep Fog
was to the
gate. Maybe they already went through. Maybe even if she and Spud managed to
take Starhawk out they’d get killed anyway by the carriers on the other side.
Smashed up from far away like Bill did to that asteroid. Boom.

In that moment it became clear to Bee there wasn’t enough
time for all of her old promises to Mother, but there could be enough time to
right at least one wrong in the universe. She ignored the suit’s demands and
broke from cover. Starhawk pointed his gun right at her, standing tall in his
golden suit, Myra’s red outline glowing bright. Bee leaped at him, twisting in
the air, feeling the suit’s pressure as it corrected her aim—and then in an
instant half the room vanished, replaced with a view of vast empty space. Like
the rest of the ship suddenly turned invisible. The floor surged up, knocking
her into the ceiling. Everything shook and roared and she blacked out.

Chin up, Buttercup
, Mother said.

Bee woke with a pounding headache. Around her stretched an
endless field of shimmering stars. Finally out in the void, she thought. The
great empty dark. Zee. When she craned her neck around she saw the surface of
an asteroid, and strewn across it what remained of Starhawk’s warship. The bow
of
Deep Fog
looked like it had been sliced clean off from the rest of
the ship, right through the bridge—but the rest of it was nowhere to be seen.

“What happened?”

Myra’s clone said, “
Deep Fog
suffered mid-transit
deactivation. Only the bow of the ship made it through the gate. It crashed
into the asteroid after entry, causing your brief incapacitation. You and he
are the only survivors on this side.”

Through a cloud of swirling dust near the crash site she saw
the glinting of what must have been the gate they came through, still partially
hidden beneath the surface.

“Where are we?”

Myra’s clone took a moment to reply. “An unnamed asteroid in
the Lethe Belt at the edge of the Luxar System, approximately forty-nine
astronomical units from Lux.”

“That’s impossible,” Bee whispered. That was past Ymir,
even—almost fifty times the distance between Lux and Surface. No gate she knew
of had range like that.

“Correct,” the clone replied. “We appear to have traveled
far beyond currently settled territory.”

Find him.

Mother’s words jolted her back to her mission.

“Where’s Starhawk!” Bee demanded, suddenly wild-eyed behind
the suit’s visor. A red glow traced around Starhawk’s armor in the partially
intact bow and relief washed over her.

“Infirmary,” the fake Myra said, outlining the room for Bee.

“Alive?”

“Unconscious. Scans suggest severe trauma to the lower
body.”

Kill him slow.

“Take me to him.”

A thread of light appeared in front of her, plotting a path
to follow into
Deep Fog’s
bowels. Bee reached out toward the asteroid
and pulsed her palm nodes, falling to the surface along the thread’s
trajectory. She let the suit take over and glided to the guts of the ship where
it had been cut in two. Bee touched down on a mid-level deck near the
infirmary.

Wasn’t quick for me.

That was more than luck, for both of them to make it through
together. She must have been thrown from the ship after it got sliced apart.
Myra probably had a hand in it—she was in the gate’s systems when it happened.

Suffer he has to suffer—

“Thank you, Myra,” Bee said.

She realized she’d probably never see Myra or any of the
crew again and tried her best to bury the terror bubbling up in her chest as
she made her way to the infirmary. She focused on what must be done, locked her
eyes on Starhawk’s silhouette.