Dark Space: The Invisible War (30 page)
And then the mauve light of Sythian lasers began tracking her from behind, and she heard a flurry of impacts sizzling off her shields.
“Aft shields critical . . . equalizing.”
Alara broke into a barrel roll, trading some of her forward acceleration for evasive maneuvering. She watched the
Defiant
flying ever-closer to the gate. They were almost there. They were going to make it!
But suddenly the gate disappeared, swallowed whole by a massive Sythian Battleship as it de-cloaked right in front of the gate.
“Frek! Where did that come from?” Ithicus asked.
“Guardians switch to torpedoes and target that motherfrekker!” Captain Reese said.
And then the side of Sythian battleship erupted with a blinding wave of missiles.
“Too late!” another pilot screamed.
Before the
Defiant
could even react, the enemy missiles slammed into it. The light from the explosions seemed to consume the cruiser, and the simulated roar which came from Alara’s sound system was deafening. As the light of the explosions faded, Alara saw a giant chunk of the
Defiant’s
nose crack away in a fiery ruin and fall gracefully toward Forlax II.
“We’re frekked!” Gina said.
“Torpedoes! On my mark!” Captain Reese said. “We’re dumb-firing.”
Alara snapped out of it and thumbed over to silverstreak torpedoes. A moment later she and a handful of novas had formed up on an attack run. They let their torpedoes fly, and the battleship reacted instantly, erupting with bright streaks of laser fire. Alara saw one pair of torpedoes go off like a supernova beside her, rocking her fighter with a pelting wave of debris.
“Starboard shields critical,” Ethan warned. “Equalizing.”
When the fiery light of the explosion cleared, Alara saw just four torpedoes out of a dozen slam into the enemy battleship. Those torpedoes punched a gaping hole in the battleship’s pristine, mirror-clear hull, and shiny, black-armored bodies began tumbling out into space. Despite the damage, the battleship kept firing, and they were too close to fire another volley. Alara pulled up hard and roared over top of the enemy ship, noticing in her peripheral vision as she did so that the
Defiant
was doing the same. With her slower engines and lesser maneuverability, the cruiser just barely cleared the Sythian battleship. As it passed over top, Alara saw it erupt with beam cannons and lasers, strafing the topside of the enemy ship. It reacted with another wave of spinning purple stars which connected in the narrow gap between the two ships with a blatant disregard for the battleship’s own proximity to the blasts. The explosions roared through Alara’s helmet speakers, and she squinted through the brightness to see flaming pieces of both ships go spinning off into space.
Alara grimaced.
At this rate, there won’t be anything left of either of them. . . .
* * *
Ethan braced himself on the railing running around the captain’s table as another wave of missiles slammed into the
Defiant
, this time along her keel. “The frek! They just hit themselves with that blast!”
Caldin grimaced.
“We can’t take much more of this!” Delayn yelled up from the engineering station. “Decks one through three are venting atmosphere, and we lost three gunners!”
Ethan whirled around. “Helm, get us clear and bring us about! We need to fire back with torpedoes, not just beams and lasers!”
“Yes, sir,” Damen Corr replied.
Ethan stared out at space, his chest rising and falling quickly, his eyes darting as he tried to come up with a plan. The top edge of the gate sailed by underneath them, and Ethan grimaced. The Sythians had blocked off their exit. Either they ran to SLS now, with their own drives, or they had to crack open the battleship which stood in their way.
“Helm, belay that last order! Delayn—will we still have enough fuel to send a corvette to Obsidian Station if we jump to Odaran without a gate to assist?”
Delayn looked up from his station with a frown. “Maybe.”
“Maybe’s not good enough! I need an answer!”
The old engineer pursed his lips. “I don’t know, sir! I need time to calculate!”
The deck rocked under their feet with another impact, and Ethan clutched the railing running around the captain’s table to keep from falling over as the IMS flickered.
“We don’t have time! Give me your best guess.”
“I think we will.”
“That’ll have to do! Helm, spool up the SLS! Set course a few million klicks from Odaran—we don’t want to be too predictable or there’ll be more Sythians waiting for us in the next system. Send the coordinates to our novas—they’ll have to meet us there.”
“Yes, sir,” Damen replied.
“Sir!” Delayn called up from the engineering station. “The Guardians won’t have enough fuel to make it that far on their own.”
“They will if they go back to the gate! Damen—” Ethan turned to see the nav officer blinking up at him. “Make sure the end point of our jump is somewhere along the space lane between here and Odaran. That way the novas can just drop out of SLS early to reach us.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ethan turned to look down at the captain’s table just in time to see another wave of missiles go spinning out from the enemy battleship toward them.
“Brace for impact!” someone said.
The deck shook violently underfoot and they heard the distant rumble of the explosions.
“Aft shields critical!” Delayn called out.
“Boost power!” Ethan replied. He whirled around to address Deck Officer Grimsby. “Comms, tell the Guardians to cover us while our drives are spooling. Soon as we’re out, they can squeeze through the gate and we’ll meet them at the rendezvous.”
The deck shook with more impacts, and Ethan grimaced.
“Delayn! What’s our status?”
“Aft shields are at 32% but I had to drain power from the front and sides, so we’re exposed there.”
“It won’t matter. All the enemy contacts are behind us—”
Caldin met his gaze. “That we know of.”
Ethan acknowledged that with a quick nod. “We’ll have time to adjust the shields if something else de-cloaks. Weapons—keep firing torpedoes ahead of us, just in case. I want one every five seconds, timer set for seven.”
“Yes, sir!”
Ethan saw the battleship at the gate turning to follow them, but they’d be too slow to catch up. The
Defiant
would be out of range in just a few seconds. As for the pursuing waves of Sythian fighters, however, they were catching up fast—and there were a
lot
of them.
As if reading his thoughts, Caldin nodded to the grid. “What about those shells? There’s over two hundred in system, and at least fifty will reach us before we make the jump.”
“Let’s hope our fighter screen is enough to hold them off.”
Caldin met Ethan’s gaze over the glowing blue grid cube rising out of the captain’s table. She didn’t need to say anything. Fifty to their thirteen were horrible odds, and on top of that, their pilots were as green as grass.
“G
uardians, we’re going to SLS before we take any more damage out here. There are approximately fifty shells in pursuit. Keep them off us until we jump, and then head back to the gate to make the jump yourselves. We’ll be dropping out of SLS early to rendezvous in the neighboring solar and make repairs. Coordinates are being sent to your navs now.”
Atton shook his head.
Thirteen against fifty!
He activated his comm. “All right, Guardians, you heard the man! We’re heading back into it! Form on me, and try not to get too close to that battleship. Without the
Defiant
to focus on, their guns are going to use us for target practice.”
A stream of acknowledging clicks came over the comm, along with one pilot’s scared whimper—“We’re not going to live through this!” It was Guardian Eleven, Twelve’s wing man. Atton just barely remembered his name from the trainee roster. He was Sergeant Recks, conscripted to the squadron from a gunnery position aboard the
Defiant
. He’d had some experience flying during his early days with the fleet, until his entire squadron had been wiped out during the Sythian invasion. Immediately after that he’d joined a gunnery training program, becoming a beam cannon driver, and there he’d stayed—until now.
Atton eased off the rudder. The enemy fighter wave swung into view—a sheer wall of red bracket pairs on his HUD that was confusing to look at. He dialed down the visibility of targets to only bracket them when they came within 10 klicks rather than the default 25. In the near distance, he saw the massive bulk of the out-system space gate, and behind the translucent blue pool of the wormhole, lay the Sythian Battleship which had rained death and destruction on them just minutes ago. “Look, listen up, Guardians. We’re going to get through this!” Atton said. “Half of you have pilot ratings with a two kill per sortie average, and a third of you have ratings of three or more. I know most of you greenies have only had one or two real sorties, but we can do this. Shells have weak shields; they are big targets, slow, and not very maneuverable. Get on their tails and stay there—just watch out for mines. Shells each pack one cloaking mine a piece, and if they get the chance, they’ll use it, so don’t fly up their thrusters.”
“Frek, they have mines?” Guardian Nine said. “Eleven’s right! We’re dead.”
“Can that, pilot!” Atton said. “You want to know the truth? The odds
are
bad, but all of us are a bunch of lucky motherfrekkers who’ve beaten odds worse than these. We survived the Sythian invasion. We survived the virus which wiped out the rest of our crew, and we’re going to survive this! We do not have to kill all fifty shells, we just have to fly circles around them and make them chase their tails until the
Defiant
escapes, so listen up, here’s the plan. We’re going to switch over to hailfires and fire off a volley. They’ll hear the missile locks and see the missiles racing at them, and they’re going to shoot them down, which is exactly why you’re going to dumb fire a second wave behind the first. Set the proximity fuse on that one to 100 meters and have the warheads split at 250. Those kakards will shoot the decoys and get a face full of the real krak. Start lining up your targets! We fire on my mark.”
“How do I set the proximity fuse?” Guardian eight asked.
“Tell your AI to do it! Has everyone found a target?” Atton asked as he lined up the nearest enemy fighter under his sights. It was still out of range, but only for a few more seconds.
A stream of affirmative clicks came over the comm, and then the enemy fighters were in range. Atton watched his reticle flicker red and emit a solid tone. He waited another second, and then said, “Mark!” A stream of hailfires shot out from the squadron, jetting out on hot orange contrails. “All right, dumb fire the next volley! Fire, fire!” Atton yelled as he pulled the trigger again. These missiles jetted out in the shadow of the first wave, hiding in their wake. Atton watched the warheads swoop in on the enemy fighters, but then his missile lock warning began to beep, and a siren screamed through his cockpit as the enemy fighters fired off a wave of their own missiles.
“Prepare to go evasive, Guardians! Remember to wait until those missiles get close, and then jink hard!”
The enemy fighters opened up on the hailfires, and space lit up with multiple flashes of light as the missiles exploded a safe distance from the shells. Then the dumb-fired missiles broke apart, and the constituent smaller warheads spiraled off in all directions. A split second later, they reached the range of their proximity fuses and detonated in quick succession. Red bracket pairs winked off the HUD by the dozens, and Atton glanced at his star map to see the associated contacts disappearing. Fully half of the enemy fighters were replaced with expanding debris clouds.
“Ruh-kah!” Atton’s wingmate, Alara Vastra, whooped amidst a roar of cheering from the rest of the Guardians.
A spinning wave of purple stars emerged wraith-like from the fading light of those explosions, and suddenly Atton heard his missile lock alarm. “Jink hard, jink hard!” he said, firing his afterburners and pulling up to execute a wing over and head back the way he’d come. A pair of missiles spun by his nova to either side as he skidded through a tight turn at the top of his climb. Multiple explosions blossomed on the gravidar, and Atton grimaced. He didn’t have time to check who they’d lost, but they were down by another three pilots now. Atton reversed thrust and flipped his nova over to face the onrushing shells while still flying in the direction the
Defiant
was heading. The enemy fighters were so close now that Atton felt like he could reach out and touch them. He thumbed over to lasers and fired off a linked burst at the nearest shell. It exploded brilliantly and the flaming debris went roaring past him before burning out in the airless vacuum of space. Flipping back the other way once more, Atton pushed his throttle past the stops and began firing off linked bursts at the shells as they flew blithely past, their glowing red cannons focused on the
Defiant
. Atton winged one shell and sliced another in half, sending it spinning off into space with one thruster driving each piece, flickering and flaming off into the void.
Five more shells winked off the grid, and Atton smiled. The odds weren’t looking so bad anymore. Atton saw his wingmate, Alara, go roaring out after the enemy fighters with her lasers blazing in chained-fire mode, raking a continuous stream of fire over the enemy fighter wave. Even as he watched, she blew two more shells to scrap.
At this rate, all the enemy fighters will be destroyed before they get within firing range of the
Defiant
.
Then, as if they’d read his thoughts, the remaining shells flipped around, and opened up on the Guardians with stuttering streams of laser fire. A pair of shells targeted him, and he was blinded by the enemy fire before he could even react.
“Forward shields critical. Equalizing,” his AI said, and Atton went evasive.
“O frek, I—ahhhrrrkkk—” someone’s screams cut off abruptly as their fighter winked off the grid. A quick look at the numbered designation beside the gravidar icon showed that it was Eleven—Recks—who’d just been blown to scrap.
Atton gritted his teeth and looked up to see Ithicus and his wingmate go roaring past him with pulse lasers screaming. They shot down four more shells between the two of them in just a few seconds. “Take that you bug-eyed kakards!” Ithicus roared as his interceptor sailed through the explosions.
The remaining thirteen shells flipped back the other way, as if to run—
And then they disappeared.
“Frek! Where’d they go?” Guardian Five demanded.
“Guess they knew they were losing so they cloaked. Poor little kakards had to run and hide. I think we scared them off,” Guardian Nine, Tenrik Fanton, said. Besides Alara, he was the next-highest scoring pilot among the trainees.
Atton frowned. “I don’t think they’re running because their scared . . .”
“Good job, Guardians,” the
Defiant
said, cutting into their comms. “Our scopes are clear. We’re thirty seconds to jump. Soon as we leave, head to the gate and meet us at the rendezvous.”
“
Defiant,
be advised,” Atton began, “The last squadron of shells cloaked on us. We’re not sure where they are at the moment . . .”
“Acknowledged. We’ll be careful.”
But even as the
Defiant
said that, the remaining shells de-cloaked and dropped a wave of missiles on the cruiser’s tail. Atton saw them fly into the
Defiant’s
thrusters before he could even call out a warning. Multiple explosions flashed, obscuring their view of the
Defiant,
and then the light began to fade, and Atton saw the damage. All of the
Defiant’s
four main thrusters flickered and went dark—except one, but the one still burning gushed flames not ions.
Before Atton could comm the cruiser to ask if they were okay, the
Defiant
jumped to SLS with a flash of light, and Atton was left watching the shells coming about for a head-to-head with the Guardians.
He shook himself out of his shock and keyed the comm. “All right the
Defiant
is safely away! Form on me and boost to the gate,” Atton was already coming about and pushing his throttle up past the stops. “We’re not engaging any more fighters, but fly evasively—this is no time to relax.”
“What happened to the
Defiant
? I saw her get hit just before she jumped,” Guardian Four said.
“She got blown to frek,” Guardian Five, Gina Giord replied.
“You think she’s going to make it to the rendezvous?”
“Cut the chatter, Guardians! All the speculation in the galaxy is moot. We fly to the rendezvous either way. We can’t stay here. If they get late, we’ll be waiting, is that clear?”
“Clear,” Four replied.
Atton watched the gate growing larger in his forward screen and eyed the range to target as it dropped. He saw his velocity rise to over two klicks per second and he grimaced. “Guardians, don’t forget to decelerate for SLS. Max entry speed is 999 meters per second. Do not exceed that, or you’ll get dropped out a few klicks from the gate and you’ll be all alone out here.”
“If we decelerate now, those shells are going to tag us!”
“Get your AI to coordinate the timing of your decel for the last possible second, but yes, they’ll catch up, so we’re going to have to rely on evasive maneuvering, not speed, to evade enemy fire.”
Atton followed his own advice, and ordered his AI to calculate the best possible time to begin decelerating while still keeping his speed up. They would need to almost reverse their heading when they reached the gate in order to head through it from the right side, so their speed had to stay low enough to make the turn without too much delay. Factoring that in, the AI began decelerating his nova instantly and highlighted a glowing green flight path for him to follow on the HUD. Atton glanced at his rear scope and saw the enemy fighters closing with him. A quick look at his forward scope showed the same thing, but there the danger was more acute, with more than a hundred shells racing toward them. Atton saw Ithicus Adari and his wingmate roar by overhead in their faster interceptors and he frowned. “Adari, stay in formation!”
But he didn’t reply. Atton watched with rising fury as he and Guardian Four appeared to make a break for it, using their greater speed to be the first ones through the gate. “Guardians Three and Four, I repeat, stay in formation!”