The Sunfire (37 page)

“Commander,” the ship interrupted them. “I have received a
response to my earlier distress signal.”

At the time Jon had forgotten completely about it, as he
knew that there was no Imperial Fleet to respond. “Oh?” he replied. “Perhaps
some out of office message? The organisation that you have tried to contact no
longer exists?” He quipped.

After a few moments the ship replied. “The message simply
states,
on our way
.”

“The Imperial Navy is on its way?” Miranda replied with a
frown.

Jon rolled his eyes. “It’s Paul on the
Sunfire
.
Obviously they received our message.”

“So what now? We have less than five kilometres of this
valley before it dead-ends.”

“Now,” Jon grinned. “We head for the
Sunfire
. Make
sure that you are strapped in tight, this ride is going to get bumpy.”

“How could it possibly get even more bumpy?” Miranda
demanded.

“I am about to bring the main engines on line.”

Miranda went still for a moment, before replying in a very
quiet voice. “You are going to engage the sub-light engines within the
atmosphere; which I should remind you is completely prohibited
—in
a canyon? Are you crazy?” She screamed.

Jon frowned. “Good point. I forgot there are fail-safes
stopping us activating the ion engines within the confines of the atmosphere.
Ship, disable all the failsafe devices surrounding the ion engines.”

“Confirmed.”

“Good. Then deploy the dorsal rail-guns and await my command
to fire.”

“Jon…” Miranda replied in a warning tone.

“Trust me,” he smiled.

Miranda just gritted her teeth in frustration. She hated it
when he said that. It usually meant really bad things were about to happen.
Suddenly Miranda’s eyes went as wide as saucers when the canyon seemed to come
to an end, opening up into a vast valley with seemingly endless, sheer cliffs
directly ahead of them.

Laughing Jon engaged the powerful twin ion engines on the
shuttle, pushing both engines straight to full power. Both pilots were
immediately pressed firmly into their seats, as the massive engines caused the
shuttle to leap forward like a stallion bolting from its stall. The ship
quickly accelerated from a relatively slow speed of three hundred kilometres
per hour, to almost one thousand in the space of a few seconds. Ignoring how
many flight regulations they were breaking, Jon pulled back sharply on the
flight control, sending the shuttle into a vertical climb only meters from the
sharp, jutting cliff face.

Miranda winced as once again the shuttle shook from a
tremendous explosion behind, this time she did not need to look back to know it
was the final fighter slamming into the escarpment. She could not imagine what
it must have been like for the fighter behind to be so close when the ion
engines ignited. The pilot was probably blinded, certainly for long enough to
fail to notice the canyon had come to an abrupt end.

Climbing vertically now at over one thousand kilometres per
hour, and still accelerating, the shuttle shot out of the valley as if it had
been fired from the barrel of a starting gun. Miranda watched mesmerised, time
seeming to slow as the shuttle climbed directly between two fighters that had
been providing cover above the valley, waiting for the shuttle to appear.
Miranda had an instant to observe the stunned expressions on the pilot’s face
as the shuttle climbed vertically between them.

“Fire!” Jon ordered, and the shuttle started to vibrate, the
dorsal rail-guns opening fire as the shuttle climbed past the two fighters.
Both fighters paused an instant too long, shocked by the sudden manoeuvre, and
in that time the shuttle’s guns cut both fighters to pieces, leaving nothing
but flaming debris to fall back to the surface.

“Miranda have you got the
Sunfire
on your sensors? I
need a vector to the ship.”

“No. Wait, yes, I’ve got her. She’s directly ahead, no up,
uh you know what I mean.”

Jon just laughed. “I know what you mean.”

But Miranda was staring at the scanners intently as
something was not quite right about the ship. It was too small; the profile was
all wrong. “Jon,” She said urgently. “That's not the
Sunfire
, and it’s
just locked its weapons onto us.”

Jon looked around frantically, but there was nowhere to go
and nowhere to hide. They were still in a steep vertical climb, having just
passed twenty kilometres in height. Still in the atmosphere, climbing steeply.
Go where? The enemy ship was directly overhead in orbit
and
they
had a clear shot. “And we were so close,” he sighed quietly, taking Miranda’s
hand in his. At least everybody he cared about was on the shuttle and this time
there would be no lasting regrets. Staring up into the dark blue sky, which was
rapidly darkening as they passed through the stratosphere, Jon could imagine
the guns on the enemy warship turning to target them, the missiles that would
soon leap from their launch tubes.

Suddenly, something from the corner of his eye caught his
attention. A flaming ball of fire, leaving a trail of smoke hundreds of
kilometres in length. At first Jon assumed that it was a meteorite entering the
atmosphere. However, as it came closer it rapidly grew in size and Jon judged
that it must be almost a kilometre in length. Surely too large to be a
meteorite?

It was only when it altered course to intercept the shuttle
that Jon finally recognised what it was. The ship was living up to her name, as
it was completely encased in a flaming ball of fire.
The Sunfire
had
arrived. “It’s the Sunfire,” Jon breathed in astonishment.

“It can’t be,” Miranda replied in awe, finally seeing what
Jon had just seen. “They cannot take the ship into the atmosphere. It wouldn’t
survive re-entry.”

“Looks like somebody forgot to tell them that,” Jon quipped,
as finally the ball of smoke and flame came to rest on a parallel course but
slightly above the shuttle. Putting the body of the mighty warship between the
shuttle and the destroyer which was still in orbit above.

“Told you that we would be here on time,” Paul’s voice
sounded throughout the cockpit of the shuttle as he opened a communication
channel.

“I never doubted you for a second,” Jon laughed in reply.
“Captain, permission to come aboard?”

“Granted. But I suggest that you use the upper flight deck,
as according to the ships internal sensors the lower flight deck is currently
registering two hundred degrees centigrade and the computer reports it is
currently on fire.”

“Aye, aye Captain, upper flight deck it is,” Jon confirmed,
swinging the shuttle around the ball of flame, to approach it from above the
stern.

“Jon,” Miranda cautioned warningly. “You cannot seriously
tell me we are going to land on that? It’s on fire.”

“Yea of little faith,” he disagreed, angling the ship
towards the wall of fire directly ahead, increasing power to the engines to
catch up with the large warship. “The hull of the shuttle will protect us from
the flames. Probably,” he added with a laugh as the shuttle slipped into the
wall of flames.

Passing directly through into the hangar bay.

“Told you so,” he concluded, powering down the shuttle’s
engines as they came to a rest on the flight deck. Jon could see out the corner
of his eye the massive hangar bay doors starting to close. Doors which were
isolating them from the blazing inferno taking place only a few hundred meters
away.

“Make sure the shuttle is powered down and secured,” he
ordered her. “I’ll be on the bridge with Paul. I doubt our getaway will be that
easy.”

“Why not?” Miranda asked curiously.

“Never has been in the past,” were Jon’s final words as he
hurried out the cockpit.

*****

“What’s our status?” Jon called out as soon as he stepped
foot onto the bridge. The initial indications did not look promising, as nobody
even acknowledged his arrival, lost against a backdrop of noise of alarms and
sirens sounding throughout the bridge. The ship tilted at a sharp angle and
again Jon had to catch hold of something, or otherwise lose his footing. Twice
that had happened on his way to the bridge.

“Glad that you could join us,” Paul snapped, obviously under
significant strain. “So did we get him?”

Jon did not even need to ask who
him
was. “Yes we got
him, he’s in medical with the Doc now. We also picked ourselves up an Imperial
Princess in the process.”

“Sofia was also there?” Paul raised his eyebrows in
surprise. “What was she doing there? No never mind, forget I asked.”

“More importantly, you are not looking after my ship,” Jon
said disapprovingly. “I thought I told you not to scratch the paint. Last I
checked from the outside, there was no paint left, as you had burnt it all
off.”

“Feel free to leave. Were it not for us you would be
—
damn.” The ship was rocked by another explosion, interrupting
whatever Paul was going to say.

“What’s the situation?” Jon asked again, his eyes switching
between the view-screen and the various status readouts.

“We’ve got a destroyer in low orbit above us, that is trying
to pound the shit out of us. The only thing that is saving us is this ball of
fire and smoke surrounding us. The thermal radiation we are emitting is
destroying any missiles before they can impact us. Additionally the smoke and
flames are throwing off their targeting scanners. Unfortunately none of that is
going to last long after we break atmosphere.”

Almost as if having spoken too soon, the Helm Officer called
out. “Captain we have just exited the exosphere and are currently climbing into
a low orbit.”

A massive explosion nearby shook the ship to its very
foundations.

“Well there goes our shield,” Paul shook his head. “Any
ideas?” This last question was directed at Jon.

“Yeah, we need to go faster,” Jon urged.

“Helm!” Jon and Paul shouted simultaneously.

“We cannot go faster, sirs,” the Officer replied. “We are
still fighting the gravitational pull of the planet and have not made a stable
orbit yet. The ships engines are already in danger of overheating and melting.”

“Damn,” Jon replied. “Weapons?”

It was Paul’s turn to shake his head this time. “We lost our
aft missile battery a couple of engagements back. I don’t dare to try any of
the rail-guns at the moment, as they are all overheating from having passed
through the atmosphere.”

“You know,” Jon said in a reproving tone of voice. “I’m
fairly sure that the plan called for you to take out all their fleet assets
before
you came and rescued us?”

“It was on my to-do list,” Paul snapped back angrily. “Right
after saving your asses from that destroyer which was just about to start
taking pot shots at you.”

Jon laughed, hitting Paul on the back in appreciation.
“Thanks for that by the way. I owe you a beer.”

“That's assuming that we live long enough for you to buy me
one.” Paul winced as another explosion went off, closer than the last. “So any
bright ideas, oh tactical genius?”

“I don’t know. What weapons do we have remaining that I have
to work with?”

“We have one remaining bow particle cannon and the bow
missile battery. I wouldn’t trust any of the rail-guns until they have had a
chance to cool further.”

“Ops,” Jon called out. “What is the location of the enemy
destroyer?”

“Twenty kilometres astern and gaining Commander. We will
soon be in range of their guns,” he added helpfully.

“Hmm,” Jon thought aloud. “Enemy warship to the rear. Only
weapons that we have available are front facing. Not good. What is that?” Jon
exclaimed, as a massive, dark object suddenly became visible on the view
screen, directly ahead.

“Titan defence station,” Paul replied distractedly, checking
on the latest damage report from the last near miss.

“I thought that you were meant to have destroyed all those
as well? Seriously what have you been doing all this time? Sightseeing?”

“It’s already been disabled alright?” Paul replied
irritably. “It would have taken too much effort to completely destroy it and I
didn’t want to waste the ammunition.”

“Hmm,” Jon replied thoughtfully. “Helm. Set a course for
that station. Flank speed.”

At a quick glance at Paul, who nodded after a moment’s
hesitation, the Helm Officer quickly went about carrying out the order. “What
are you planning?” He asked hesitantly.

“Have you ever played eightball?” Jon inquired.

“Never heard of it. What is it?”

“A game that was popular on Old Earth many years ago. We had
an ancient version of the game in one of the recreation rooms on my first
posting. The idea was to knock small balls around a table with a wooden stick
to try and push the balls into holes around the table.”

“Seriously?” Paul replied, looking at Jon in astonishment.

“Seriously.”

“Sounds like a complete waste of time to me,” Paul groused.
“And what has that got to do with our current predicament?”

“Because we are going to aim to put the black eight ball in
the back pocket,” Jon replied with a gleam in his eye. “Tactical,” he called
out, tapping on the view-screen at the point where one of the massive kilometre
long docking arms was attached to the hub of the Titan station. “I want a
thirty second focused beam from the remaining particle cannon targeted at this
section of the station.”

“But Jon, the station has already been disabled, it’s no
threat to us. You are just wasting energy. We need to come around and disable
the destroyer before its guns get within range.”

“I have no intention of trying to disable the station, we
just need to bring the eight ball into play. Tactical have you a weapons lock?”

“Yes Commander.”

“Then fire.”