Dark Space: The Invisible War (28 page)

“I didn’t think so. Let’s go.”

Alara caught up to her just as she opened the door to their room. “How long until the orange alert is over?”

“Probably until we reach Obsidian Station.”

“What? We’re going to go days without a vaccucleanse?”

Gina chuckled. “Well, someone’s a princess, isn’t she? Yes, girlie, we’re all gonna stink together. Once you’ve been out here on enough wolf hunts, you get used to it, but I’ll tell you one thing—” Gina turned to her with a wry grin. “—you get to know who the sweaters are, and you learn to steer clear.”

Alara’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “How attractive. I might just develop some self-respect after all.”

Gina laughed and clapped her on the back. “That’s the spirit, greeny!”

They reached the pilot’s mess hall and strode in to see Guardian Twelve racing around the room with a pile of pancakes almost as tall as she was, giggling and screaming as she went, hounded by the entire squadron.

“Get her!”

“She took the whole frekkin’ lot of ‘em!”

“I’m gonna get you Stix!”

Stix. That was her call sign, so named because she was so skinny and petite that her arms and legs resembled sticks.

Captain Reese and Lt. Adari were sitting to one side of the commotion and eating, neither one of them doing anything to stop the pilots from roaring around the mess hall, knocking over tables and chairs in their hurry to get the stolen pancakes.

Alara smiled, but Gina scowled. “So much for unit discipline,” she said as they passed Captain Reese’s table.

He looked up with a frown. “Let them have their fun. There’s precious little of it to be had around here.”

“Yeah, you’re
all
about fun,” Gina said, shaking her head as she crossed over to the serving counter.

Alara followed her there, still smiling as she watched the racing pilots catch up with Stix. One of the larger men swooped her up under his arm like a grav ball and pancakes flew everywhere.

“Guess I’m going to have to eat dust and wash it down with spit!” Gina called out in a loud voice, but no one paid any attention to her. “Stupid frekkin’ greenies. . . .” she said as she stalked after them. “Gotta break ‘em in every time!”

When Gina caught up to the group of pilots she swore viciously at them, but they were having a hard time suppressing their laughter in the face of her vitriolic, so she gave up and went to pick up the lone pancake which had fallen on a table rather than the floor.

Alara watched all of that with a dreamy smile. For the first time in what seemed like forever, she felt like she was home. Something about the camaraderie and the childish antics struck a chord in her memories. Alara wasn’t sure whose memories, but it struck a chord all the same.

*  *  *

— THE YEAR 0 AE—

Destra pulled the flight yoke hard left and pushed it down. She watched the alien missiles arc slowly after her, but the reaction was delayed by several seconds. She realized that they were only tracking when she became visible on the Sythians’ scanners. That gave her hope. Destra began evasive maneuvering in earnest, pulling all the maneuvers she could think of with the strange flight controls. Whatever direction she pushed the flight yoke was the direction her ship would fly, but some directions were slower than others—such as moving vertically.

Destra pushed the yoke all the way forward for maximum thrust, tilted up, then slid and twisted it left, making a spiraling upward turn.

She heard the
tick-tick-ticking
of several overlapping missile lock warnings speed up suddenly and then slow down again as a stream of enemy missiles sailed straight by underneath her fighter. No sooner had those warnings faded than they started up again, and she heard alarms screeching out in warning as more spinning purple stars swarmed to take their place. Waves of missiles were pouring out from the approaching swarms of enemy fighters. Destra grimaced, wishing not for the first time that her husband were with her. He was a far better pilot. Destra forced her eyes to focus on the blinding barrage, trying to find a clear space between the missiles, but there were no such spaces. The enemy firing pattern was evenly spread and so thick that eventually it would have to snare her. They just had to get lucky once, and although their missiles weren’t tracking her perfectly, they were still tracking.

A few purple stars swelled in her forward view and she jerked the yoke to the opposite side, tilted it down, and began rolling her ship by twisting the flight controls in the same direction as her turn. The result was a downward spiral, and Destra was rewarded for the sudden maneuver by seeing the purple stars go sailing by her with a narrow margin.

I need to target the gate!
She thought desperately, but nothing happened. Clearly the ship didn’t always understand her thoughts. She tried again, this time focusing on the nearest of the two distant red specks which she’d identified as SLS gates on the coordinate grid.

Suddenly the contact she focused on grew brighter, and a red HUD indicator flashed in the air above her head. It wasn’t an arrow like she would have expected to see in a human ship, but rather a solid red circle. She followed that circle, moving in the direction it indicated, and mere seconds later she saw the gate appear in her view. The Sythian HUD bracketed it in red and displayed information about her target with a stream of unfamiliar symbols.

Good enough,
she thought. It might have been useful to know where that gate went, but at the moment anywhere else but here was good enough for her. She roared toward the gate at full throttle, keeping half an eye on the grid to make sure the enemy wasn’t too close behind her. She saw the enemy fighters belatedly reacting to her new heading and turning to follow her to the gate. Destra frowned. They’d just follow her through and she’d still have to face them on the other side.
At least they won’t be accompanied by any larger ships.

That was something.

Destra watched the gate growing rapidly larger in her forward screens, and then she remembered that she needed to slow down to enter it. She didn’t have to stop maneuvering or warm up her own SLS drive the way she would if she were travelling off the space lanes, but she still couldn’t exceed the relatively slow SLS-safe entry velocity. Destra thought about how she could relay that concern to the ship so it could slow down to an appropriate speed, and suddenly she felt the g-force of acceleration shift from pressing her against the back of her flight chair, to yanking her against her flight restraints and trying to pluck her eyeballs out of her skull.

Destra immediately heard the
tick-tick-ticking
of more missile locks, and then multiple alarms sounded inside the airy cockpit, and she went evasive while trying desperately to keep heading toward the gate. The
tick-tick-ticking
sped up, slowed down, sped up, and slowed down as her ship faded in and out of scanners. She turned to look behind her and saw four purple stars racing toward her, picking up speed.

“Frek!” She turned back to the fore and redoubled her evasive maneuvering. Destra listened intently to the tempo of the missile lock warnings to know when the missiles were getting close, and at the last minute she jinked hard to starboard.

Destra was gratified to see three purple stars go spinning by to her port side. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, but then it seized in her chest.

Three missiles . . .

She was about to turn her head to see where the other one had gone when her ship rocked violently with an explosion. A warning siren sounded inside the cockpit and she heard an ominous hissing sound. Destra’s eyes flicked nervously around the airy cockpit. She hoped that noise wasn’t the sound of her atmosphere escaping. She wasn’t even wearing a flight suit.

But there wasn’t any time to worry about it. The gate was swelling before her, and in less than a minute she’d be through. Turning to cast a quick look over her shoulder to see how many enemy ships were following her, Destra counted five silvery specks against the blackness of space. Then she saw the nearest one begin stuttering bright purple streaks of light toward her. The first few hit with sizzling sounds, and Destra went into another barrel roll, leaving the enemy pulse lasers to flash out all around her cockpit in a steady stream of light. Every tenth blast hit, eliciting an angry sizzle from her shields. After ten such hits, she began to smell an acrid smoke drifting up into the cockpit, and she grimaced, wishing she could drop a few mines behind her.

A moment later there came a bright flash of light and then the lasers stopped racing past her cockpit. Destra turned to look behind her and saw the fading light of an explosion.
 
She blinked. Apparently her fighter did have mines. Destra broke into a grin and spared a hand from the flight yoke to pat the dash. “Nice one, baby. Keep that up and we might just make it out of this.”

A few seconds later, the gate was the only thing she could see. Destra aimed for the center of it, and then let go of the flight controls, allowing her fighter to cruise through on a straight trajectory.

Space turned to star lines and then to the bright streaks of SLS, and Destra sat back with a shaky sigh. She stared out at the swirling brightness, trying to calm her racing heart. She’d made it. She’d actually made it! She’d still have to shake off whatever fighters pursued her and evade any enemy forces on the other side, but whatever lay ahead, at least she’d bought herself some time.

Now what?
she wondered. She had no way of knowing how long she’d be in SLS, and she had a feeling that her fighter couldn’t tell her in a way that she’d understand, but it had to be at least an hour. No two systems were closer together than that. So she had some time to rest and recover.

Recover . . .

Suddenly Destra’s eyes flew wide as she remembered the man she’d left on the hover gurney just inside the entrance of the fighter. He hadn’t even been strapped down when she’d taken off, which meant he’d likely been bounced all over by now.

Destra bolted out of the flight chair and hurried down the stairs from the cockpit, bracing herself for what she might find.

Chapter 19

— THE YEAR 10 AE—

E
than watched the SLS timer on the captain’s table begin counting down from 60 seconds. Tova assured them that she would be able to detect any cloaked Sythians between them and the gate to the Odaran System, but Ethan was still nervous. If there were a fleet of Sythians blocking that gate, it didn’t matter if they detected them or not, they wouldn’t be able to squeeze through the enemy blockade. The one advantage they had was that the Sythians didn’t know they were coming.

The timer reached 10 seconds and it became an audible countdown in a computerized voice. When it reached one, Ethan looked up to see the streaks and star lines of SLS fade to the bright points of stars.

“Tova! Tell me what you see out there!” he called out.

“Wait . . .” she hissed. The bridge crew seemed to collectively hold their breath as they waited to hear what she had to say.

Ethan turned to admire the view while he waited. The second moon of Forlax lay close below them, stretching out to the horizon with high wisps of white cirrus clouds, sparkling orange oceans, and rocky, red terrain. The color of the world gave the impression that it was hot, but it was in fact very cold, and the atmospheric pressure was so high that the methane in the air rained out as a liquid, forming the sparkling orange oceans. The gravity was also high and the atmosphere toxic, making the moon even more uninhabitable, but despite all that, there was a mother lode of dymium trapped beneath the surface. When Ethan had been exiled to Dark Space, the Imperium had been discussing ways to get at the dymium for the war effort, but they’d never had the time to act on that. Just visible over the horizon of the world was Forlax, the rocky, ringed giant for which the system was named. Peeking feebly between the rings and the planet was the distant red eye of the system’s primary, now giving a brief light to the surface of Forlax II before its larger cousin eclipsed the sun. Forlax was even more uninhabitable than its moons, but it was also fuel-rich.

Tova’s warbling cut through Ethan’s thoughts, followed by the translation, “I sense none of my crèche mates.”

“Good! Helm, set course for the Odaran gate—full throttle!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Engineering, give me more power to shields and engines. Reduce power to weapons. We don’t need them right now.”

“Gravidar, keep your eyes open, just in case. If they want to fire on us you can bet you’re going to see something pop up on the grid before they do.”

“Comms, make sure the Guardians are ready to launch at a moment’s notice!”

The comm officer began speaking into the intercom, and then Ethan turned to Caldin with a tight smile. “So far, so good.”

But her eyes were on Tova, standing down by the viewports in her gleaming black armor. “According to
her
.”

“You don’t trust Tova?” he whispered.

Caldin turned to him. “Do you?”

“Not fully, but her survival and ours are one and the same at the moment, so none of us have a choice.”

Caldin nodded and her gaze returned to absently studying the giant alien. “The Gors are on our side because they need our help, but what happens when they decide that they no longer do?”

Ethan shook his head. “We hope that their gratitude is enough to keep them from turning on us.”

“That’s a naïve hope.”

“Maybe. But it’s the only one we have.”

*  *  *

The atmosphere inside the pilot’s briefing room was tense. The pilots listened as Captain Adan Reese and his XO, Lieutenant Ithicus Adari, outlined possible scenarios of enemy contact which might crop up while they crossed the Forlax system. From there, they moved onto fighter tactics, dogfighting, weapon systems, and taking advantage of weaknesses in Sythian technology.

Alara listened to Adan carefully, trying to absorb everything he was saying. Gina sat beside Alara with a frown, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Remember,” Adan said. “Their shields are weak, their engines are slow, and their fighters are big targets. That gives you every possible edge in a fight, except for one—they could appear out of nowhere, right on your six. Their missiles can’t be taken down by our countermeasures. The good news, however, is that they don’t have proximity fuses, and they
will
set off our missile lock alarms. But don’t rely on that to keep you safe! If a shell uncloaks and fires on you at point blank range, they’ll hit you before you’ve even heard the first warning beep of a lock, so you need to keep up an evasive flight pattern whenever possible. The instant you’re caught flying in a straight, predictable line, you’re dead. Remember to use all of your flight controls to maneuver, and avoid making turns the way you’d make them in atmosphere. This is space, so slewing your ship with the rudder is faster to make a turn than the old yank’n’bank.”

Alara heard a murmur of acknowledgement sweep through the pilots, and she turned to Gina to whisper, “What’s a yank’n’bank?”

“It’s when you roll and pull up hard to make a turn.”

“Ah.”

“Does anyone still have any questions about the control systems? Or did your AIs cover those points adequately?”

Alara watched a skinny hand shoot up. It was Guardian Twelve, otherwise known as
Stix
.

“Yes?” Adan pointed to her.

“If the enemy fighters are slower, then wouldn’t the best evasive maneuver be for me to run away at top speed?”

Adan started to reply, but then a siren went off, and the lights dimmed to a bloody red. The intercom crackled with, “Red Alert! Enemy contact!”

“All right! This is it, people, and it’s not a drill!” Adan yelled, clapping his hands amidst the rising threat of panic as pilots stood up and began running into each other in their hurry to get to the hangar. “Orderly lines! No shoving. Soon as you get into the hangar, run
as fast as you can to your novas. Find the fighter whose number matches yours! Ruh-kah!”

Alara walked quickly to the end of her row of seats and then joined the short line of pilots hurrying down the steps to the podium below. As soon as they reached the podium, pilots began running for the open doors to either side which led to the hangar.

Alara was one of the last ones down. She caught Adan’s eye as she hurried by, and he smiled and nodded to her. “You’ll be fine!”

She nodded back, and then ran out into the hangar with the rest of the pilots. Dead ahead and to her left the novas sat in a gleaming double row on the deck, mag clamps securely locked around their landing struts. To the other side, Alara saw open space through the fuzzy blue glow of the
Defiant’s
shields, while at the distant end of the hangar lay the pair of glowing red portals which were the launch tubes. Her fighter’ AI had told her the launch tubes accelerated novas out the back of the
Defiant
with over 50 g’s of force—more than 500 KAPS. Alara grimaced, remembering the utter terror she’d felt. This time she’d keep her IMS dialed up to 100%.

The hangar intercom buzzed, and Alara listened to it with half an ear. “We have an enemy fleet moving to intercept us. Guardians will flank the
Defiant
to the gate and only engage the enemy if they close to within five klicks.” Alara heard the steady
whump whump whump
of laser cannons firing amidst the background noise on the bridge, and she wondered if they’d already engaged the enemy. “Ruh-kah, Guardians.”

Alara’s fingertips began to tingle with adrenaline and she used it to pour on an extra burst of speed, running past novas with ever-decreasing numbers painted on the sides until she reached the one at the head of the line with a big freshly-painted two on it. She was first in line for the launch tubes.

As soon as Alara reached her nova, she bounded up the ladder and hopped into the cockpit. Pressing the raise/lower canopy button, she slid on her flight helmet and sealed the clasps at her neck.

“Welcome back, Alara,” the fighter’s AI said.

“I go by Kiddie now,” she said.

“Very well, Kiddie. Your preflight
before ignition
checks are already done. Are you ready for take off?”

Alara felt the rudder pedals under her feet and nodded. Her seat didn’t need to be adjusted, since she’d been the last pilot to fly in this particular nova. Alara found her flight restraints and strapped in; then she punched the fighter’s ignition and listened to the sound of the reactor spinning up with a rising
whir
.

“Dial up the IMS to 100 this time, Ethan, I don’t want to get sick out there.”

“Of course, though I should point out that—”

“Just do it!”

Ethan went silent while Alara’s displays flickered to life. She paid particular attention to the star map in the center. The grid was set to display a full orbital, and it was marked with dozens of red enemy contacts dead ahead and to the left of their position, moving on an intercept course. At the far end of the grid Alara saw the gate they were headed for. It was over 5000 klicks away, and the nearest enemy contact was at 2450 klicks.

This is going to be close,
she thought as she heard the
th-thunk
of mag clamps releasing. Her nova’s engines began roaring in her ears as it rose off the deck. Alara saw Captain Reese’s fighter rising and turning in unison with hers, and she smiled and waved to him, but he missed the gesture. A second later she heard his voice over the comm.

“Soon as you get out the launch tubes, make a 180 degree turn. We don’t want to cancel too much of our forward momentum by flying in reverse. We need to keep up with the
Defiant
if we’re going to guard her. Good luck out there, Guardians.”

And with that, their fighters began rocketing toward the launch tubes. Alara braced herself as the glowing red portals grew large and menacing before them, like the glowing red eyes of an armored Gor.

*  *  *

Ethan stared into the glowing red eyes of Tova’s helmet, and his own eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you warn us?”

“I sense them now, but not before. I missed them.”

“Well you frekked up, Tova, because you missed a whole fleet!”

Tova hissed and looked away; maybe he was unworthy of her sight again. Ethan turned away with a scowl to study the captain’s table. The enemy contacts on the grid represented only a rough estimate of the number and position of the enemy forces, as best as Tova could determine anyway—which was apparently give or take a whole fleet.

“We’re not going to make it to the gate before they reach us,” Caldin said.

“No, but it remains to be seen if they can stop us.”

“So much for our early warning system,” Caldin said with a smirk.