In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) Page 23
“Must be a station defense ship,” Jase said.
The tug’s ASD flashed into space on a brilliant blue-white tail, heading straight for us. There was no way we could outrun it without going superluminal, and if it was anything like our drones, its electromagnetically charged penetrator would easily punch through our shield. A moment later, the ferry opened fire with its two beam weapons at extreme range, barely tickling our shield, but that was all they needed to do. Those beams prevented us dropping the shield to bubble, holding us for the anti-ship drone.
I woke up our drones hidden in the Silver Lining’s bow and ordered them to compute parabolic firing solutions against the two Drake ships. We had one on the launcher and three in the loader, and thanks to Lena Voss, the EIS had upgraded our old black market weapons to Earth Navy Vulcans.
“Are we fighting or running?” Jase asked when he saw our ASDs come to life.
“Both.” With a hundred Drake ships preparing to come after us, the last thing I wanted was to stick around, but we weren’t going anywhere with those beams on us.
Our first two anti-ship drones plotted best guess solutions, then launched in quick succession, planning to figure out the rest in-flight. They swung around behind the Silver Lining on high-g trajectories, one heading for the ferry, the other for the tug. I set three and four to defend rather than attack, then let them loose too. For the first few seconds, they followed the same path as our first two Vulcans, but rather than go after the ships, they angled away, going head-to-head with the Drake ASD running us down.
Jase looked surprised as he realized what three and four were targeting. “I didn’t know they could do that!”
Black market drones couldn’t, but expensive navy drones were multi-mission. He’d seen the new birds when they’d been loaded, but thanks to the EIS scrubbing them clean of any navy identifiers, didn’t realize what they were.
When the space tug saw it had one of our drones bearing down on it, it fired a second ASD then quickly turned and ran, showing no sign of preparing to bubble as the crew bet their lives on their big engine. It was a bad choice. The Vulcan had long legs and would run them down long before it ran out of power.
While Vulcan three continued to go after the first Drake ASD, number four switched targets, locking onto the tug’s second drone. Our two defenders started moving apart, each now locked in single combat with a rapidly accelerating robot opponent.
The Drake ferry suddenly decided it was time to save itself, veering away before it had even shut down its energy weapons, sweeping space with parallel beams. Seconds later, its twin beams winked out, its shield dropped and it streaked back toward Acheron Station. Our Vulcan immediately switched targets, joining the hunt for the tug.
The two Drake drones heading after us now tried to avoid our Vulcans. The first narrowly dodged an impact, but our drone detonated close for a proximity kill, catching its target in the blast, triggering a double flash as both weapons vaporized. The second Drake weapon pitched sharply one way then another, forcing the heavier Vulcan to slew off course as it tried to shut down its target’s escape vectors. Under high acceleration, two brilliant points of lights raced toward each other, then at the last moment, the Drake drone nosed up sharply. Vulcan four detonated, swallowing its target in a brilliant ball of light, then the Drake ASD burst out of the blast sphere and swung toward us.
“That’s not good!” Jase said anxiously.
“Are we clear ahead?” I asked as our distorters charged to full. If there was just one gravity mine ahead, bubbling would be suicide.
Jase focused on his console, searching for any holes in space blocking our course. “Sensors are still foggy,” he said uncertainly as the collision alert sounded, warning the Drake ASD was about to hit us. “Just a few more seconds.”
“Too late!” I declared. “Sensors in!”
Almost a hundred clicks away, Vulcan two fired its penetrator into the tug’s shield. The armored warhead punched through the Drake ship’s hull into the energy plant and detonated. An intense flash forced our screen to dim, then a brilliant white blast sphere bloomed where the tug had been, swelling rapidly. Suddenly, our screen went blank as our sensors locked inside our hull, safe from our bubble’s searing heat. I cut shield and maneuvering engines, then let the autonav take over. For a moment, we drifted naked through space, then a muted thud rang hollowly through the ship, followed immediately by telemetry filling our screen, telling us we were superluminal.
“We made it!” Jase said relieved.
“Something hit us,” I said warily. “How close was their drone?”
“Right on top of us,” Jase said, “but it must have missed. We’re still alive!”
I knew the Drake ASD had struck the hull, and it couldn’t have been a dud. Thousands of years of development had engineered misfires out of existence. Suddenly, the telemetry on screen disappeared, replaced by a flashing warning:
Bubble collapse in 30 … 29 … 28 … 27 …
Jase stared at the screen, confused. “What the hell is that?”
The message wasn’t coming from any of the Silver Lining’s systems and no signal of any kind could pass through the bubble.
“Izin, what’s our hull integrity?” I demanded, suspecting the truth.
24 … 23 … 22 … 21 …
“Within safe limits, Captain,” he replied.
“No! Exactly! What is it?”
17 … 16 … 15 … 14 …
“Ninety nine point seven percent, Captain,” Izin replied, still unaware of the danger.
“That signal’s coming from outside the ship, but inside our bubble!” Jase declared confused.
8 … 7 … 6 … 5 …
“Emergency stop!” I yelled, ordering the autonav to dump the bubble. There was no slowing down, no decrease in intensity. The bubble just vanished, subjecting the Lining to a sudden spring back of spacetime. Internal inertial fields absorbed the effect, but when the sensors locked in place, we discovered the ship was rolling and spinning out of control. The thrusters quickly stabilized the ship while the timer was frozen on screen with two seconds to spare, then a new message appeared:
Disable your weapons and shields and prepare to be boarded.
It was a message from a dead ship and a dead crew.
Jase scanned nearby space. “There’s nothing out there, Skipper.”
“It’s not out there, it’s on the hull!”
Lucky for us Drakes wanted cargoes and credits, not worthless radioactive wrecks. Not so lucky was the fact that the Drake fleet had seen the space tug’s drone hit us just before we bubbled. They knew we were either dead or trapped. We’d flown for only twenty eight seconds, but it would take ten and half hours for our energy plant’s neutrino emissions to get back to Acheron Station. They’d be there now, listening and waiting. When they picked up our emissions, all they’d have to do was jump out and grab us. There was no point having our E-plant go dark, it was already too late for that.
“Captain,” Izin’s voice sounded from the intercom, “I’ve sent a crawler out to investigate a hull breach ten meters forward of our port engine.”
“Check for an acceleration field. It would have started when the timer finished, so we can’t bubble without blowing ourselves up.”
“Did we ram a gravity mine?” Jase asked as Izin’s eight legged robotic spider scurried across the hull, sending us its optical feed.
“Not a mine,” I said, eyes glued to the screen as the round bulge of our port engine appeared above the gentle curve of the Silver Lining’s hull. The crawler ambled forward, revealing the glowing exhaust of a hypervelocity engine, then the cylindrical body of a drone embedded at an angle into our hull. Five harpoon like clamps had shot out from the drone’s body, anchoring it to the ship.
“That’s no ASD!” Jase exclaimed, surprised. “It’s got claws!”
My bionetic memory identified it as a Caliphate device, used by their security forces to prevent suspect ships from escaping p
atrol vessels, the ideal weapon for raiding Rashidun Souks. Considering the connections the Drakes had, it was no surprise they had access to weapons ideal for capturing freighters with their cargos intact.
“It’s a shackle drone,” I said, “and we’re not going anywhere while it’s out there!”
“Any progress on the drone?” I asked as I entered engineering.
Izin sat in the middle of his six screen setup viewing separate feeds from the hull crawlers he’d sent out to study the shackle drone. Without taking his eyes off the screens, he pulled on his vocalizer to reply. “Only the outer hull was penetrated. The inner pressure hull remains intact.”
“Lucky for us.” No explosive decompression.
“It did what it was designed to do, keep us alive so we could shut down the ship, then generate a directional acceleration field that intersects our bubble seventy meters from the hull. It’s also equipped with a homing beacon that began transmitting as soon as we unbubbled.”
“As good as a gun to our head. Cut it loose. We’ll patch the hull later.”
“I can’t. It’s equipped with a self destruct device that will detonate if I remove its arms or body panels. The explosion would not destroy the ship, but it would wreck the port engine and prevent superluminal travel. To disarm the detonator, I have to cut in through the drone’s engine exhaust.”
“How long?”
“It could be done safely in two days.”
“You’ve got ten hours.”
“Ten hours, thirteen minutes,” Izin corrected, well aware how long it would take the drone’s locator signal and our energy plant’s neutrino emissions to reach Acheron Station and for them to jump out to collect us. “While you’re waiting, Captain, you may wish to check your reader. I’ve completed decrypting the Merak Star’s log.”
“Anything interesting?”
“They used seven rendezvous locations, never the same place twice in a row. After meeting the Cyclops, the Merak Star always returned to the same system to unload and pick up another cargo.”
“What system?”
“The Duranis System.”
It was the same place my brother had offered to take me to! He’d called it a transport hub, although I’d never heard of it and I’d visited almost every human port within a thousand light years. “What’s there?”
“Nothing, according to the navy’s astrographics catalogue. No colonies, no stations, only a Forum safety advisory.”
“Good work,” I said, then headed to my stateroom, eager to trace the Merak Star’s movements for myself.
My cabin’s light came on automatically as I entered, illuminating a thin metallic sliver floating above my bunk. It’s movement caught my eye as it shot toward me, forcing me to duck instinctively and dart away as it turned and came after me again. It was as long as my little finger, with no markings revealing what it was or where it came from.
Wary of firing my P-50 inside the ship, I grabbed a datapad off my desk and swatted at the sliver, but the slender device easily avoided my attacks. As it circled around, I tried striking it twice more, then it flashed toward me. I leapt sideways, but it was too fast. Cold metal latched onto my neck, instantly paralyzing me. I crumpled, dropping the datapad, then it caught me before I hit the deck, isolating me from the ship’s internal acceleration field. A moment later, I was floating face down above the deck, completely helpless.
My listener flashed a proximity warning into my mind’s eye as a large, dark form stepped into my stateroom’s doorway. I couldn’t turn my head to see who it was, but my listener pattern matched the heavy footsteps immediately.
WARNING! ALIEN CONTACT! IDENTIFIED AS GERN VRATE.
“The chase is over, human,” he said in a low voice, removing my gun from its holster and dropping it on the deck.
He touched a control surface on his forearm, then I floated face down into the corridor and along the passage toward the airlock. I tried to yell, but the paralysis prevented me speaking. Izin’s security systems should have been flashing alerts to the bridge and engineering, but Vrate’s lack of urgency told me he’d disabled them all.
We cycled through the Lining’s airlock into a narrow, cylindrical chamber. The Kesarn ship had attached itself to the port airlock without Jase receiving any warning on the bridge, and Izin was so absorbed in disarming the shackle drone, he hadn’t noticed the magnetic anomaly signaling its approach.
After passing through a high arch-shaped inner door, Vrate floated me along a short oval passage, past several sealed compartments, to a spherical chamber. Its walls were non-reflective black which instantly became transparent the moment we entered. Only the dark metal floor, the frame of the passageway and the rounded shoulders of his ship behind us diminished an otherwise uninterrupted view of space. The Silver Lining was just visible astern, mated to Vrate’s aft facing airlock, while ahead lay the blanketing darkness of the Acheron void. The spherical chamber extended from the short body of his ship like a fishbowl. In the center of the chamber was a circular platform rising a meter above the deck. On it were two hip high, silver metal poles, each crowned by a polished silver sphere.
Vrate rotated my body to the vertical, then a pressure field pushed me securely against the bulkhead beside the entry. The metal sliver then detached itself from my neck, immersing me in the ship’s gravity, and floated into Vrate’s hand. He slid it into a thin belt compartment, then strode up the short ramp to the circular platform.
With his back to me, he stood between the two metal poles and placed his hands on the spheres. The moment he established contact with the ship, thin glowing lines marked with unfamiliar characters appeared across the fishbowl walls surrounding him. Silently, we slid away from the Silver Lining into the Acheron darkness. As the ship’s orientation changed, the lines glided across the transparent surface, suggesting they were a form of navigational aid.
I craned my neck to see the Silver Lining fall away behind us. The shackle drone was just visible forward of the port engine, surrounded by Izin’s hull crawlers, one of which was using a laser cutter to slice through the drone’s engine. Once we had moved away from the Lining, the Kesarn ship bubbled. To my surprise, the gray blur of the bubble was visible, indicating Vrate’s sensors could withstand the exterior heat. Vertical navigational lines surrounding the piloting platform slid aft across the fishbowl’s inner walls with increasing velocity. Most surprising of all was the geometry of the bubble. Unlike our spheroidal bubble, the shape surrounding Vrate’s ship was biconal, reaching forward to a distant point and even further behind to a trailing point.
A point!
It was as if we were inside a long narrow spear, racing through spacetime in a way I’d never dreamt possible. I tried to speak, but found my voice hadn’t yet recovered from Vrate’s paralyzer.
His helmeted head turned to watch me. “You should be proud, human. You’re about to be the first member of your species ever to leave this galaxy.”
Chapter Six : Solitaire
TransGalRef: 89X4-03g5-8fH3-Ui30
Red Dwarf Star, Extra-spiral Zone 0714
Galactic Halo
22,462 light years from Sol
Uninhabited
The Kesarn ship was smaller than the Silver Lining, with a narrow body designed to fit inside its biconal bubble. Throughout the flight, Vrate paid me no attention, standing like a statue with his hands on the silver spheres at his hips as the navigational lines and their symbols slid smoothly across the spherical shell surrounding us. Incredibly, he showed no sign of the injuries he’d received on Hardfall, demonstrating a miraculous healing ability.
“How come you’re not dead?” I asked when my power of speech returned.
“The healsuit regenerates me,” he said without turning.
He’d certainly suffered broken bones and massive internal injuries, yet he moved as if the bonecrusher had never attacked him. “That’s some suit.”
“Self reliance is the key to survival, when one travels alone.”
He’d been standing on the circular platform for hours, manually piloting the ship even though he could no more see through his biconal bubble than we could see through our spherical equivalent. I assumed the strange bubble geometry was an ominous sign of how fast we were travelling. It was certainly at a velocity only an artificial intelligence could control, so why hadn’t he handed flight control to the ship? On the Silver Lining, once we were underway, the autonav did all the work, turning Jase and I into passengers who did little more than watch the course simulator calculate our progress.
“I don’t suppose we can discuss this?” I asked.
“If you keep talking, human, the neural blocker goes back on.”
I fell silent, knowing if he paralyzed me again I was finished. For several minutes, I watched the circles on the inside of the fishbowl slide toward me, noticing there was one thicker circle inside the sphere that was parallel to the rear bulkhead. As it crawled slowly aft, it reminded me of a horizon line, representing a reference plane of some sort. He’d said we were leaving the galaxy, which made me suspect the horizon line was the galactic ecliptic, marking our progress out of the Milky Way’s great spiral.
After a few minutes, I tried again. “Your bubble shape should be impossible.”
“Why?”
“Propulsion geodesics are fragile. That bubble should collapse.”
“Hmph. You’ve been out here over two thousand years, and you’ve learnt nothing!”
“I wouldn’t say … nothing.”
“You continue to place limits on the unknown, unknown to you.”
Is that what I was doing? I thought I was trying to build rapport so I could talk my way out of this mess. I gave him some more silence, then asked, “How long have you been out here?”
“Two hundred and eighty thousand giran.”