Twin Stars 1: Ascension (13 page)

“Captain,” Leederman shouted excitedly. “The
Magnolia
- she’s gone!”

Sure enough, there was one less pirate ship on the display.
Magnolia
had been the largest and best shielded of the squadron, being an actual warship when she was built- and now she was a glowing cloud of swirling vapor.

“One salvo- my gods.” Leederman murmured.

“Well, I was going to ID it as the system’s control cruiser,” Justin commented from his alcove. “But I guess I don’t need to bother.”

“Ya think?” Leederman snapped, worry in his voice. “Ping An, what do we do?”

“We fight,” the pirate captain told her bridge crew. “Get all Gunrigs on that thing, have them hit it with everything they have. Take us into missile range, and fire when ready. Let’s just hope the rest of the fleet is doing the same.”

There was a moment’s delay, and then everyone was at their stations giving orders and the ship was underway. Vaela could see the Gunrig groups had all turned and were thrusting themselves at the larger newcomer. The size difference was enormous, but obviously Ping An felt they had a chance, or she wouldn’t attack…would she?

“It’s opening fire on the
Fleur-de-lys
,” Leederman commented. “She’s not going to last.”

Ping An seemed to ignore him. “Let him have it when we’re in missile range. All racks.”

“All racks, ma’am.” Betsey agreed. “Ten seconds to optimal range.”

Vaela stared at the display, seeing the size difference between cruiser and the
Belleflower
as it approached. Compared to it, they looked like the Gunrig groups looked to their mothership- a kitten attacking a lion.

“Seven seconds!”

“The
Fleur-de-Lys
is gone.” Leederman told anyone who was listening. He seemed to Vaela like he was trying to warn them off, and she didn’t blame him.

“Five seconds!”

Ping An strode forward to stand next to the navigation console. “Betsey, we need to time everything for a co-ordinated strike, our best hope is to weaken his shields enough to get in some real damage.”

“Yes ma’am. Three…Two…”

Vaela closed her eyes, feeling like her world was about to end.

She expected to hear something like “firing” or “launching” or whatever else these pirates said at times like this. What she didn’t expect, or want, to hear was a loud gasp of surprise.

When Vaela opened her eyes, she saw that everyone on the bridge was staring at the holo-display in shock. At first, she couldn’t figure out why, but then it dawned on her…

“It’s gone,” Leederman exclaimed. “The cruiser’s gone!”

“Destroyed?” Vaela asked Ping An, who had paced back to the middle of the bridge.

“No,” the Captain said unhappily. “Not destroyed. She jumped into hyperspace to avoid our attacks.”

This made Vaela feel even more confused. “But…They were beating us…” She stammered. “Weren’t they? Why would they leave?”

“Justin, signal to the other captains- ship to ship conference in twenty minutes. Betsey, bring us alongside the other ships and offer any assistance we can. Leederman, bring in the Gunrig flights, but keep two out on picket duty.”

“So…we won?” Vaela asked, hopeful. She hoped it was a victory, but by the way the Captain acted she didn’t feel that it was.

Ping An looked at her and shook her head. “No. But we didn’t lose either. He wasn’t sure he could beat us all, so he retreated. He’ll be back.”

“And what happens then?”

To her surprise, Ping An smiled.

“Then, we see who’s the better fighter.”

* * *

“What did we lose, Michaels?”

Linkspace connections generally came in two forms- light connections and deep connections. A light Linkspace connection is much like any voice connection, where both parties can hear each other’s voices and will often appear in AR windows in the other’s field of vision. The other kind of connection, a deep connection, involves complete sensory immersion in a real or virtual space that one doesn’t actually physically occupy. From a sensory point of view, the person is there in the other location or space, but in reality their body is located elsewhere.

The Linkspace conference Ping An was taking part in was in a virtual conference that looked and felt like a real place, but of course she was not actually there. From the point of view of the four pirate captains, they were standing on a semi-translucent platform in space slightly above the ships of their battle-group, each of them appearing as they did in reality to keep confusion to a minimum.

Captain Michaels from the
Clockwork God
, a tall imposing man with dark, leathery skin and small eyes, gestured toward the ships around them- “Take a look for yourself, Bella. We’ve got seven ships left, all of them damaged except the
Belleflower
and the
Stag Beetle
.”

The hawk-faced woman with the short black spiky hair cursed, “We might as well be dead already.”

“Hold on!” Protested Captain Andrews of the
Stag Beetle
, “I got the escort carrier!”

“For all the good it does you,” Bella St. James, Captain of the
Castille
sneered. “With all its systems locked down- it’s just more dead weight!”

“My men are working on it now,” the skinny ginger haired man whined. “They…just need more time.”

Michaels shook his head. “She’s right, Andrews. We don’t have time for salvage; we have to get out of here.”

“I thought,” Ping An cut in. “We were going to fight?”

“What?” Michaels held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “And, get cut to pieces by that cruiser? No thanks!”

“So we run?” Ping An said, pressing her point. Between the group, a map of the star system appeared with glowing points representing the major elements. “The nearest jump point is two days away, and that’s at speed we don’t have. I say we head for the base.” She made a green halo appear around the location of the system supply base that had been the reason for the raid, and a dotted line course appear between them and it. A time of 36 hours, 14 minutes appeared as a transit time.

“And then what?” Michaels asked. “Knock and ask them to let us in? You think it’s going to be that simple?”

Ping An smiled sweetly, “Maybe it is.”

Bella made a dismissive gesture and the course Ping An had plotted on the map disappeared. “Cut the crap, Zhang. We’re in a bad spot here.” A new course appeared, this one aimed at the nearest system jump point. “We’re going to make for the jump point. And, for the record, Lam and Veloski already said they’d vote with me, and Foss is in his sick bay.”

“Oh, I see.” Ping An said, shaking her head. “How convenient for you.”

That got an angry reaction from the other woman- “Are you challenging my word, Zhang?” She said icily.

“Me?” Ping An said, laying a hand on her chest in mock innocence. “I’d never think of such a thing.” Then she snorted in derision. “I gotta hand it to you, Bella. You work fast.”

“Hey!” Captain Andrews stepped in, “Don’t the rest of us a get a say?”

“Captains who lose their ships don’t get a say.” Michaels commented, crossing his arms.

“I found a new ship,” Whined Andrews, looking to each of the other Captains.

“If you can call it that.” Michaels joked. “I wouldn’t.”

“Enough!” Bella ordered. “I’m in charge, and that’s final. What we need to discuss is how we’re going to deal with that cruiser, and luckily for all of you, I have a plan.”

Ping An shook her head. “This should be good.”

Hearing the remark, Bella looked at her and smiled a wicked grin. “Well Zhang, since you’re so quick to jump in, I’m going to give you the starring role.”

* * *

“Hand me that joiner, will ya?”

Vaela Smith had come to the ship’s bridge looking for Ping An, and had been about to leave when a hand had appeared from behind one of the consoles and waved to get her attention.

Following the direction the hand indicated, Vaela stepped over to the railing that ran around the command section of the bridge and found three oddly shaped tools magnetically clipped to the red metal railing.

“Ahh, which one is the joiner?”

There was a sigh, and Leederman’s head popped up from behind the control panel to look at her. She cringed inwardly, he was one of the people she’d hoped to avoid.

“Oh, hey Vaela.” He said, and pointed to the last one. “The one with the green handle, could you bring it here?”

Vaela inwardly sighed, but nodded and did as she was told, hoping to make this a short encounter lest Leederman begin trying to chat her up again.

“Yeah, that’s it.” He took it, and offered his thanks. “We lost a few conduits when that missile went off near the ship. I’m trying to get them all back online before trouble comes calling.”

Then he ducked back down behind the panel and began to work again, leaving Vaela at first a bit relieved, but then she felt annoyed. Didn’t he consider her worth talking to anymore? Or, as she’d started to feel when she’d came on board, had she been declared the captain’s pet- to be surreptitiously ignored.

She stood there for a time, trying to decide whether to stay or go, then suddenly his head popped back up and he looked at her curiously. “Was there…something I could help you with?”

“Oh ah…” Vaela thought quickly, trying to come up with something to talk about. If she asked about Ping An, that would be the end of it, so she asked about the first thing that came into her head. “I was wondering…about that cruiser. Howcome it can just go where it wants, and we can’t? I thought you needed a jump point beacon to travel into hyperspace.”

“Oh yeah, that.” He looked at her quizzically. “Didn’t you pay attention during your ship orientation classes?”

“Umm…no…” She leaned back against the rail. “I didn’t take any.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Well, the clan wanted me to start work as soon as I’d joined.” She said, feeling a little uncomfortable at talking about her past but deciding it was necessary. “I guess…they don’t get many cryptographers joining up.”

Now that really had Leederman’s attention. “Cryptographer, eh?” He stood up, using a cloth to wipe sealant from his hands. “So, what kinda stuff do they have you doing?”

“Leederman,” she said, and shook her head.

“Oh!” He smiled sheepishly. “Right, you probably can’t talk about it. All secret and stuff. Well…Look, uh, it’s pretty simple.”

Between them, he made a simple translucent 3D graphic of a solar system appear, then it shrunk down and another similar system appeared a short distance away from it. “Space between solar systems is too big to cross, right? So we duck into hyperspace instead and that lets us go fast enough it’s not a problem. Got it?”

“Okay, yeah.”

A little dotted line had appeared between the two solar systems, with a tiny green cylindrical starship icon sitting at one end. “Now, the only problem is, you can’t navigate in hyperspace- it’s an empty void with nothing to see, right? Plus there’s plasma currents and eddys, and even a little distance off course can be a big deal the farther you go.” Two bright blue dots had appeared at either end of the dotted line, and the little ship moved up to one of them and then became semi-translucent as it began to follow the line between systems. “That’s what the jump points beacons are, they’re like a string we follow to get us from A to B. You jump next to a jump point at the system edge, follow it to the other end, and then bang! You’re where you wanna be.”

Vaela watched the little green ship icon reach the end of the line and then become bright again as it popped back into realspace. “Huh. So…if that’s true, why doesn’t that ship need a “string” to follow?”

This got her a shrug. He didn’t know.

“Imperial ships are different than the rest of ours. They have some system that lets them navigate in hyperspace without needing to follow a jump line. They can even make short jumps, y’no- like in-system? This lets them go wherever they want really fast while the rest of us have to chug it across space. Sure, gravitic drives are fast, but it still takes a couple days to get in-system most of the time.”

She nodded, suddenly actually interested. “So, it’s like a mystery then?”

“Yep, some big secret.” He agreed. “That’s how they stay on top. If everyone had their navigation system then they’d lose their edge. Sure, lots of people have tried to reverse engineer it, but so far no one I know’s done it.”

A new holo-graphic appeared between them, this one showing a tiny image of their fleet hanging in space.

“’Course, not every Imperial ship has this system, so that’s why the smaller ships we ambushed today didn’t just jump out. Also, it takes jump drives a while to recharge between jumps since they take so much power. Big ships usually have more than one jump drive, but because they’re so big it’s rarely more than two. It can jump in, and jump out, but it can’t just keep doing it nonstop.”

Vaela nodded, understanding. “So that’s why he didn’t come back yet.”

“Right, he’s probably out there recharging somewhere.” A little red ship icon appeared, circling the fleet like a shark. “Waiting for his chance to jump in and pick a few of us off before he jumps out again. We’re days away from a jump point, and he can pretty much come and go as he likes.”