Far From Home: The Complete Series (6 page)

King strode onto the bridge, Commander Greene close behind.

“Do we have everyone?” King asked Chang.

“Trackers show crew making their way to the airlock, sir. I estimate a couple more minutes at least,” Chang said.

King grimaced.

Greene relieved Rayne from covering his station, and sat back in his old seat. He turned to King. “Captain, we should give them a chance to get here.”

King folded her arms across her chest. “Okay. They’ve got as long as it takes to polarize the hull plating then we’re off. We can’t sit and wait.”

Greene nodded appreciatively. “Aye.”

“Commander, ready the batteries to repel enemy fire. Try to shoot down anything targeting us,” King said. “Lieutenant Chang, go to red alert. Ensign Boi, advise all crew that we are going to be taking enemy fire.”

She gripped the side of the chair, where the leather was worn at the ends of the armrests. Then she looked at the pin on her jacket. Andrew’s pin.

The lighting changed to a deep red around her.

* * *

Chief Meryl Gunn monitored the reactor core as it reached 100% output. She walked to the nearest comm. unit and spoke into it.

“Bridge, this is the Chief. Reactor is at one hundred percent. You’re good to go.”

The entire engineering section vibrated and rattled with the amount of power being produced in the core.

“Thank you Chief,”
Captain King’s voice replied.
“What about the Jump Drive?”

“A couple of minutes. Standby.”

She closed the channel and turned to her crew who looked at her, waiting for instructions. “Come on boys and girls, what’re you waiting for? Get the Drive online!”

* * *

On the viewscreen they watched the
Inflictor
fire a stream of warheads at Station 6. The artillery guns aboard the Station stopped less than half of them before they struck. The
Defiant
was rocked by the resultant explosions.

“Chang, detach from airlocks. Equalise the pressure,” King ordered.

“Aye,” Chang reported back.

“Ensign Boi, patch me through to Admiral Grimshaw,” King said. “Banks, uncouple us from the dock. We can’t wait any longer.”

She waited as Boi made the connection. Her mind flashed to the men and women she was leaving behind on the Station. A lump of regret rose in her throat. She swallowed it down, fought it away. That was for later. Along with a lot of other things.

“You’re on Ma’am,” Boi said. “Audio only.”

“Admiral?”

There was a lot of static.

“Admiral?” she asked again. “Are you there?”

More static and then, “
Captain, get the
Defiant
away. We’re evacuating. We can’t hold up to this kind of attack.
”

“Admiral -“

There was a loud hiss of static and then the channel was closed. Ensign Boi looked baffled.

“We are equalised,” Chang reported.

There was a large jolt as the
Defiant
separated from the station.

“Uncoupled,” Banks said.

“Then get us the hell out of here,” she said.

8.

The
Defiant
pulled away from the Station. Explosions along the outer edges of Station 6 buffeted her as she veered away.

“Status on the evac of the station,” King requested, wincing from a bright fireball to their left.

“In progress,” Chang reported. “I’m monitoring it.”

“Noted. Full power, Mr. Banks. All thrusters,” King ordered.

“Aye sir,” Banks replied. The
Defiant
trembled as she reached full speed.

“Rear view,” King ordered.

The front viewscreen changed to an aft camera. The Station receded as they sped away from it. She could make out the huge Draxx ship, accompanied by several smaller ships. She watched as the
Inflictor
began to turn in their direction and move away from Station 6.

“The
Inflictor
is making pursuit,” Chang reported.

“I see it. Ensign Rayne, time on the Jump Drive?” King asked, not taking her eyes away from the front display.

“Drive currently inactive, sir,” Rayne said.

“Liaise with engineering. I want to know the minute it’s ready,” she said.

A second later she spotted the
Inflictor
fire something that spiralled away behind it in the direction of the Station. She turned to Chang to say
“What was that?”
when an immense white light filled the bridge. It lasted a full three seconds before fading, and when it did she couldn’t believe what she saw. Or didn’t see.

The Station was no longer there. It was a rapidly dissipating cloud of debris and flame.

Chang looked up from her readouts, horror etched onto her face. “Station 6, sir … it’s
gone
.”

Again King put everything to the back of her mind. She’d process it all later. Everything. She gripped the sides of the chair and looked dead ahead at the Draxx behemoth closing the gap behind them, her jaw set, her lips a thin white line.

9.

The first warhead that got through the battery fire brushed past their starboard engine mount and detonated just aft of the ship. Everyone was knocked forward.

“Where’s that Drive Chief?” King shouted into the comm.

“Give me a few minutes. We just need to -“

“We don’t have a few minutes Chief. I need it working
now
!”

Chief Gunn said, “Aye sir,” and closed the channel.

Another warhead blew itself out, this time much closer. Banks swerved the
Defiant
as best he could to avoid the shockwave. His face a tight fist of concentration as he battled to keep them alive.

“Banks, on my order I want you to brake, tip the nose, take us up and over the
Inflictor
. We’ll dip beneath them from behind, then make the Jump,” King said.

Banks turned around, surprised at her request. “Are you serious?”

“Can’t you pull off a Corellian turn, Lieutenant?” King said.

Banks broke into a grin. “Of course I can. I’ve just never done it in a ship of this size before.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” King said.

“Sir, we have an incoming transmission,” Ensign Boi reported.

King grew serious again. “Put it on.”

The reptilian face of Prince Sepix filled the viewscreen once more.

“Greetings,” Sepix said. “Once again, you run from us human.”

“We’re not on the run. We’re making you chase us for sport,” King hit back. “
Our
sport.”

Sepix chuckled, happy as a lizard stumbling upon a nest of bird eggs. “And what happens when I catch you, human?” he asked her.

“You realise we don’t taste that good?” King said with a cocky shrug.

She looked to the left. Rayne was conversing with engineering.
Please hurry up,
she thought.
Come on Chief …

“I’ll tell you, Commander, I have sampled human flesh before and I must say, I found it quite appealing,” Sepix said with relish. “I look forward to a second helping.”

“I’m pleased for you,” King said.

Rayne turned to face her, both thumbs up.

King broke into a smirk. “
Now Banks! Hit it!
”

Sepix looked away in confusion, then disappeared from the viewscreen. Lieutenant Banks broke hard, then sent the
Defiant
up and over the
Inflictor
in a big loop. He arced back around to the ship’s rear, then took the
Defiant
under.

“Ensign Rayne,
Jump!”

“But sir I don’t have co-ordinates set yet -” Rayne started to say.

King snapped her fingers. “
Now!
”

Rayne did as he was told. The
Defiant
shot out from under the
Inflictor
. The Draxx ship brought its weapons to bear. It fired. Space shrank back from the
Defiant
for a split second before it entered the Jump and blasted away.

* * *

Prince Sepix looked at the patch of space where the
Defiant
had been only seconds before. He turned to his crew.

“Follow their last trajectory, then pursue. And I warn you, don’t lose them if you all want to live past today,” he growled.

Two minutes later, the
Inflictor
made the Jump after the
Defiant.

10.

She relaxed, but for only a breath.

“This is a risky move,” Commander Greene said anxiously. “We could be heading anywhere. Or into anything …”

King felt suddenly weary. “You’re right. Miss Rayne, exit the Jump
now
.”

Ensign Rayne eased a lever back slowly but with some relief, and the
Defiant
slowed before it slipped out of the Jump.

In her naivety, King had imagined they would emerge into empty space. She’d taken a gamble in making the Jump without having coordinates to actually Jump
to
. But the gamble was all they had. The
Defiant
would have been destroyed otherwise.

When they broke free from the Star Jump, the crew found themselves staring directly into the gaping maw of something horrifying; a system-wide maelstrom of gas, particles, planetary matter, debris, and energy swirling toward a central point like water in a bath rushing down a plug hole.

Making an unscheduled Jump, with no predetermined course was virtual suicide. You could tear right through the heart of a sun, or worse … you could find yourself in the iron grip of one of the strongest black holes ever recorded.

The
Defiant
groaned as if every bulkhead and structural support was a muscle being stretched in all directions at once.

“Full reverse! Lock in auxiliary and emergency power!” King yelled.

Banks worked the controls. “No effect!”

Chang clutched the edge of her console. There was a distinct sense of something trying to pull them all free from their seats, a huge well of gravity from directly ahead independent from the artificial forces keeping their feet to the deck.

King jabbed a button. “Engineering. Chief, how far can you stretch the reactor?”

“I can take her to one fifty, but it’s pushing it,”
Gunn said.

“Take her to one sixty.”

“Captain, I don’t think she’ll -“
Gunn started to protest.

“Do it, Chief. That’s an order,” King snapped, closing the channel. “Banks, when you have that extra power, pump it into the engines. Try and get us away from this thing.”

A cloud of debris, islands of rock and ice hurtled past the
Defiant
on their way toward the centre of the black hole, as if the singularity plucked them from the cosmos to devour.

Ensign Rayne frowned at her monitor. “I think we’ve come out in the Koenig-Prime system …”

“The what? Koenig-Prime? But that’s half-way across the sector …” King said in disbelief.

The Koenig-Prime singularity was a huge black hole, and King was even more aware of the grievous error in judgement she’d made. But it was either that or let them be destroyed. She’d rolled the dice, and somehow they were still alive. For the minute.

“We shouldn’t have jumped … we shouldn’t have jumped,” Rayne said over and over, slipping into panic.

Commander Greene turned around and fixed her with a stare. “Now is not the time, Ensign. Get a grip.”

“I’m diverting the additional power from the reactor to the engines,” Banks said.

“Conduits struggling to cope with the additional charge,” Chang reported. “But holding.”

King tensed. The
Defiant
showed no change in its journey toward the black hole.

Banks shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Okay. Cut power. There’s no point in wasting precious energy in fighting what we can’t fight,” King said. “We need to think of something.”

“This shouldn’t have happened …” Rayne muttered.

Commander Greene fixed her with a stare. “Stop! Put a lid on it, you understand me? This stops now,” Greene said, the vein at the side of his neck pulsing. “She’s your Captain. Don’t you forget it.”

Rayne looked suddenly ashamed. Her face was red. “Yeah, yeah, sorry,” she stuttered as she came to her senses.

“It’s okay to feel the panic, Ensign,” King said. “But you have to control it.”

“I know sir. Sorry sir,” Rayne said.

“Okay …” King said. “We need to figure this out. Rayne, how long until we hit the event horizon?”

Rayne looked flustered. She quickly studied her readouts. “Minutes, sir. Minutes,” she said.

King nodded. “Right. And from there, how long until we hit the centre?”

She knew that it meant certain death. Not even light could escape the dead void at the centre of a black hole. The ship would be crushed like a tin can.

“Again, a matter of minutes. We arrived at such a velocity; the singularity is only accelerating that. We won’t have long,” Rayne said, seeming to calm down now that the inevitable implications of their current situation were making themselves clear.

“Thank you Ensign. And for the record? I am sorry I made the decision to Jump. We all make mistakes. But I was trying to keep us alive. Given the choice of killing the whole crew or putting a gun to my own head, it would be the latter any day,” she said, then looked from one to the other. “I would give my life over and over again to save you all.”

“We know sir,” Chang said, her eyes wet with tears.

“Thank you Lieutenant. Now, is there any way -“

She was cut off by the sound of the proximity alert. Chang spun in her chair, quickly checked her display.

“Enemy vessel directly behind us,” she said. “It’s the Draxx.”

11.

“What?” Prince Sepix snapped.

The helmsman studied his readouts then stared in disbelief at the forward viewscreen.

“As I said my Lord, we are caught in the pull of a black hole,” he said.

Sepix scowled. “Unacceptable! Reverse engines!”

The
Inflictor
screamed from the forces at work, one pulling it forward the other pulling it back as the mighty engines produced as much thrust as the engineering crew could draw from them.