Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex (35 page)

“No, nothing like that.”

She looked disappointed. “This
might be our last chance.”

I was momentarily tempted, then
shook my head. “No. I want you to get into the lifeboat and steer away from us
– you and Jase.”

She sobered. “And watch as you
incinerate yourself on Vintari II? I don’t think so!”

“Someone has to tell the TCs what
happened. Izin’s convinced by the time we catch the
Soberano
, it’ll be too late to save either ship.”

“You’re seriously out of your
mind if you think I’m leaving!”

“If we save the
Lining
, I’ll pick you up later. If not,
the TCs will come. They’ll find you no matter how far out of the system you’ve
drifted.”

“I’m not leaving you here,” she
whispered.

“Yes, you are. Izin and I can
handle this.”

“You really think you’re going to
get Jase off this ship?”

“Not willingly. I’m going to stun
him and put him in the lifeboat, then you’re going to pilot it away. We’re
still slow enough for you both to get clear.”

“Not going to happen, Sirius!”

“Absolutely not going to happen!”
Jase exploded behind me.

I spun around to see my tall,
blonde copilot standing in the hatchway with an angry look on his face. “I
don’t need either of you onboard for this!” I said.

“The hell you don’t!” Jase said.
“You can’t fly straight without me!”

“You’ll be throwing your lives
away if you stay.”

“We’re not throwing anything
away, Sirius,” Marie said, “because you’ll think of something.”

“Izin says it’s impossible.”

“So how are you going to save the
Codex?” she asked. “Or are you planning to die with it in your arms?”

“I’m going to replace a drone’s warhead
with the Codex and fire it into space. The drone’s acceleration is much greater
than ours. It’ll get clear and eventually the Tau Cetins will find it. If you
two get off the ship now, you can tell them where to look.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Marie
said. “You take the lifeboat and Jase and I will put the Codex in a drone and you
can explain it to the TCs.”

The thought of watching from the
lifeboat as the
Lining
crashed into Vintari
II – as she died – flashed into my mind. “I can’t do that,” I whispered.

She took my hand. “Neither can I,
so you better come up with another plan, because I’m not leaving.”

I glanced at Jase, who slowly
drew one of his pistols and began spinning it in his hand. “Don’t mind me, I’m about
to mutiny!”

“This is nuts,” I said slowly,
realizing I wasn’t going to get either of them off the ship.

“Now that we’ve got that sorted,”
Jase said, “I thought you should know we have company. There’s another ship out
there.”

“Where?” I asked, following Jase
back onto the flight deck.

“Six billion clicks above the
star,” he said as he slid back into his couch. “It’s just sitting up there
watching us.”

A grainy image of the black, stretched
teardrop shaped Mataron cruiser filled the fully zoomed view screen.

“It’s got the same energy
signature as the Mataron ship that’s been tailing us,” Jase said.

“Why don’t they do something?” Marie
asked.

“They don’t need to,” I said. “They
know if we keep going, we’re dead.” If it had been any of the other Local
Powers, they’d have already stopped the
Soberano
,
but not the Matarons. They were simply going to watch their handiwork play out.

“They might hate us,” Marie said
angrily, “but the people on Vintari II have done nothing. They’re innocent.”

“I know, that’s why we have to
save them.”

* * * *

Seventeen
hours after we began chasing the
Soberano
,
Izin summoned us to engineering.

“I have an idea,” he said as he projected
a three dimensional representation of the planet into the center of the
compartment. “This is Vintari II,” he said, then zoomed out until the
Soberano
and the
Silver Lining
could be seen as two tiny points moving in a line towards
the orbital path of the planet. “In less than four hours, both ships and all
life on Vintari II will be destroyed when we collide with the planet.”

A timer appeared beneath the
image counting down to the moment of impact. At minus twenty five minutes, the
pair of dots representing the two ships became one as the planet’s orbit
carried it into their path.

“At this point,” Izin said,
zooming in towards the two dots, “we will dock with the
Soberano
.” The dots resolved into images of the two ships, locked
together side by side. “Note the relative aspect of the two ships.” The
Silver Lining’s
stern was facing towards
the gigantic
Soberano’s
bow.

“How does docking backwards help
us?” I asked.

“The
Silver Lining
will apply three percent thrust,” Izin said, pointing
to the soft glow produced by the
Lining’s
two maneuvering engines. “It’s the maximum thrust we can use without breaking
free of the
Soberano
’s docking
system.”

The timer counted down as the
Soberano
slowly rotated until it was
travelling sideways towards the planet, its engines blazing with light, vainly
trying to push it onto a new course.

“You’re using the
Silver Lining
like an attitude thruster!”
Jase said.

“Yes,” Izin replied. “There isn’t
time to overcome the
Soberano
’s linear
momentum, but we can turn her sideways and let her engines do the rest.”

I watched the super transport’s
sixteen large engines blast away for a few seconds, achieving very little. “How
far can we move the
Soberano
off its
current trajectory?”

“One third of a degree.”

“That’s not enough!” Jase said.

“It will take time to turn the
Soberano
,” Izin said. “That leaves very
little time to change course.”

“But we’ll still hit the planet,”
Marie said.

“Not according to my
calculations,” Izin said, zooming back towards Vintari II where a small dark
sphere drifted across the face of the planet. A moment later, the
Silver Lining
and the
Soberano
struck the tiny moon,
shattering it in a brilliant flash and spraying a cloud of debris over the arid
world below. We all jumped, startled by the unexpected explosion. The timer
stopped at planetary impact minus zero point zero nine seconds.

“Turning the
Soberano
,” Izin explained, “will provide sufficient lateral thrust to
redirect both ships into Vintari II’s smallest moon. The moon will be vaporized,
but it will shield the planet from a direct impact. Granular debris will strike
Vintari II and burn up harmlessly in its atmosphere.” Izin turned to us,
waiting patiently as we absorbed his plan.

“That’s not a solution!” Jase declared.

 
“The Captain asked me to find a way to save
the planet. This is the only idea I could come up with.”

Jase gave him an exasperated
look. “But . . . we’re still dead!”

Izin seemed puzzled by Jase’s
response. “I didn’t say it was a good idea.”

“We’ll do it,” I said. If all
else failed, at least the planet’s population would be saved. “Now I’ve got
another job for you, Izin. I want you to run a simulation for me.”

“A simulation, Captain?”

“I want to see how big a curveball
we can throw, a spacetime curveball.”

Izin and the others listened with
rising anxiety as I outlined my plan.

* * * *

The flight deck’s view screen filtered down
the glow of the
Soberano’s
engines as
we came up behind her. Keeping to starboard of her engine blast, we glided up
to and around the spherical bulge of her stern, bringing the long straight wall
formed by her cargo holds into view. The number three starboard cargo door was
open, revealing a dark rectangular cavity, although at that extreme angle, not
what lay within. If the cargo hold housed a naval gun, we were safely out of
its field of fire while we hugged the super transport’s stern.

“That’s not the same cargo door
she fired from on Deadwood,” Marie said.

“I’m taking no chances,” I said, nudging
us up and over the
Soberano
, giving
the open cargo door a wide berth.

Once clear of her weapons, we
glided above the vast hull towards the smaller elongated sphere at her bow,
watching for any sign of the super transport rolling to bring her big guns to bear.
She remained rock steady, considering us no threat. No doubt, the Mataron’s had
calculated at that speed, we couldn’t escape the
Soberano
’s fate. Once we reached the bow section, I followed the gentle
curve of her hull around to her starboard airlock.

“Their auto-
docker
isn’t responding,” Jase announced.

“They’re just playing hard to
get,” I said, switching our docking system from partner to the emergency solo mode.
The big screen reset to the view from our port airlock, looking straight across
to the
Soberano
. Vertical and
horizontal calibration scales appeared over the center of the big freighter’s
docking ring, guiding me towards a perfect alignment. Even though we were both
moving through flat space at a small percentage of the speed of light, with our
velocities matched we appeared to be floating motionless, side by side, making
docking a simple procedure. We slid up against the
Soberano
, lightly kissed her hull and clamped onto her docking ring.

“She isn’t locking onto us from her
side,” Jase warned.

“Our clamps will be enough.” I
cut our engines and activated the intercom. “Izin, send a crawler back along the
Soberano
’s hull. Find out what’s in
that open cargo hold.”

“It’ll take the crawler a few
minutes to get back there,” Izin replied.

“How’s the drone coming along?”

“I’m removing the warhead now,
Captain. I’ll have the distress beacon installed by the time you get back.”

The beacon would ensure that when
the Tau Cetins came to investigate the destruction of Vintari II’s smaller
moon, they’d find the drone. Izin had calculated if we launched it ninety
seconds before impact, its high acceleration would allow it to avoid colliding
with the planet’s atmosphere. The drone would be going too fast for any human
ship to catch, but the TCs would have no trouble running it down. Once they
took it apart, the Matarons would have a lot of explaining to do and mankind would
be off the hook.

I threw a timer up onto the view
screen, counting down from twenty four minutes, the time we had until both
ships vaporized Vintari II’s smaller moon. Izin needed four minutes to seal the
Codex into the drone and then we’d need a minute to prep it for launch. Once
the hypervelocity drone was away, I wanted to give it a full two minutes to clear
the planet, just to be safe.

“Keep reading the timer out to
me,” I said. “I want to be back on board with seven minutes to spare.”

“You got it,” Jase said, glancing
at the sandy colored world now beginning to fill the view screen.

“She’s all yours,” I said as I
climbed out of my acceleration couch. “Spin her nice and easy.”

We were still facing in the same
direction as the
Soberano
because we’d
had to keep accelerating until we docked, to stay matched to the larger ship.
Now that we were locked together, the super transport was towing us. Jase now
had to rotate the
Lining
one hundred
and eighty degrees around her port docking ring to point our bow towards the
Soberano’s
stern. Only then could he apply
a trickle of thrust to pull the super transport around so its sixteen engines
could nudge her sideways.

“It’ll be the slowest maneuver I
ever pulled,” Jase said as he tapped his personal console, resetting it to helm
control.

Marie followed me to the airlock.
When I gave her a puzzled look, she said, “It’ll be faster if we do this
together.”

“The Mataron SI has control of
the
Soberano
,” I said, not wanting to
worry about her while I was searching for the Codex.

“I’ll be careful,” she said,
tapping the twin needle guns holstered at her hips. “The
Soberano
’s a big ship and you don’t even know where to look.”

She was right. It would be faster
with two of us. “OK, but this is a grab and run. No delays no matter what else we
find over there.”

“Hey, you know I’m a grab and run
kind of girl,” she said with a beguiling smile, reminding me she’d already successfully
stolen the Codex out from under my nose.

We reached the locker compartment
adjoining the airlock and quickly changed into our pressure-suits, strapping
our guns on over the top.