13

Tom continued to track the missiles, acknowledging that he heard me with a flick of his hand but taking no action to helmet up and seal his suit. Elise released her harness and strode toward him, grabbed his helmet, and slid it into place. She took the time to check the clamps, then patted the top of his helmet.

“You good, Tom?” she asked.

“Yes, thanks. Impact on the first target in fifteen seconds. They are attempting evasive maneuvers, but all three missiles are tracking and accelerating many times faster than even the ultra-small fighters can manage,” Tom said.

“Good call, Elise,” I said as she returned to her chair.

“Whatever,” she said, her voice resonating through the helmet comms. “Now I guess you’re going to make us do more drills, since we messed this up.”

“If we live, sure, we’ll practice the hell out of ship-to-ship combat…and putting on helmets,” I said, not looking forward to it any more than she seemed to be.

The first missile struck, ripping its target in half. Debris, secondary explosions, and air flashed briefly into the void. The second Union fighter exploded and went dark, now invisible in the void without a sensor sweep to show us where all the tiny pieces were expanding.

The third ship spiraled neatly out of harm’s way and rounded on us for a counterattack.

“Jelly, is there a survivor of the first one we hit?” I asked.

“I am detecting a distress beacon consistent with an ejected pilot,” Jelly replied.

“Mark the lucky bastard for pick-up.” I turned my attention to the micro fighter that was about to attack. Barely larger than the person flying them, these little spacecrafts intrigued and horrified me. Apparently, this one had notified the rest of the carrier group because several squadrons of the feisty bastards were racing toward us.

“Shields up,” I ordered.

Jelly complied instantly, but I also saw that Elise monitored our defenses. She had complained about the assignment during our training but was totally focused on what she needed to do to keep the shields up. Her job was to look for things that an artificial intelligence might miss and then increase power to things that Jelly would justifiably but incorrectly deem unwise. Because sometimes humans could rely on their instincts, or more importantly, understand when the limitations of technology needed to be pushed harder than was delineated in the operator’s manual.

“I’m curious what type of ordnance these things carry,” I commented.

“We’re about to find out,” Elise promised. “The Union fighter is firing kinetic weapons.”

“Jelly, analyze the ship’s firepower,” I ordered.

 “It’s difficult to get a good reading on the attack,” Jelly said after a short pause. “Ah, there we go. The projectiles are impacting the shields and I am gathering information. One second.  It seems the micro fighter is using extremely small, extremely high velocity rounds. My analysis suggests that their intent is merely to pierce our hull and cause us to vent atmosphere. It’s a good choice of weaponry for such a small ship without energy weapons. They don’t have room for rockets or the power sources for more advanced systems.”

Elise let out a nervous laugh. “They almost look funny. Like toys in space.”

“I will endeavor to improve my digital representation of the attackers,” Jelly said, “for the sake of realism.”

“It won’t be funny when we’re losing air,” I said. “Tom, can you wing this one? I’d like to have one relatively undamaged.”

“Deploying a single rocket now,” Tom said, then touched his control screen.

I noticed that his fine motor control was much improved from when he launched the first attack. He had jabbed the screen with confident taps. The initial rush of adrenaline must have affected him. He didn’t have a limited artificial intelligence to help regulate his hormones and subsequent emotions. Now he reminded me of a professional weapons officer—calm, cool, and collected.

I normally told X-37 to stay out of it as much as he could, but there had been times when my limited artificial intelligence had pulled me back from the brink of self-destruction. There were times to fight in a murderous rage and times to be smart.

“How are you doing, Tom?” I asked.

“I think I was holding my breath there for a minute, but I’m better now,” Tom answered.

My plan wasn’t unfolding perfectly, but I thought we were going to get at least one ship and a pilot, not from the same ship, probably, and that was all I was after. I needed to study their technology and form an interrogation plan.

Right when I was starting to brainstorm my next step, the remaining pilot did something reckless to avoid being disabled.

As I watched, the icon came to a full relative stop, twisted violently on its own axis, then blasted sideways. The maneuver would have been impossible in atmosphere, but the void things were a teeny bit different during a dog fight.

I grimaced, imagining the beating the pilot was taking even with inertial dampeners. Union fighters had high-tech and low-tech ways of keeping the pilots from being smashed by the G forces of their maneuvers—state of the art inertial dampeners, flight chairs custom fitted to individual pilots, and pressure suits nearly as smart as an LAI.  But since void-capable fighters were so small, they were limited in comparison to larger ships. In one of these ultra-small combat vessels, it had to be worse.

“Use the…” I started to say, but Tom was already taking action.

With his left hand, he grabbed a control stick and fired the Jellybird’s kinetic weapons, cutting off the path of the ship and punching several holes through one of its wings. He held his finger on the trigger until he’d marched rounds across its engines and disabled them.

“Go after it, Jelly!” I shouted. “Don’t let it get away or blow up before we salvage it!”

“I’ll do what I can, Captain,” Jelly promised. “You also might want to know that I am detecting life signs. We can capture the ship and the pilot. Would you like me to disregard my tracking of the other Union fighter pilot?”

“No, we’ll try to pick him up too. Floating in a void with little real chance of rescue sucks,” I said, glancing at Elise. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy and I’m a Reaper.”

“No doubt,” she said, then shifted uncomfortably, glancing toward the door where Path still stood quietly watching the battle. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

A secondary explosion blew off one of the wings of the little fighter ship. I was guessing they had wings because they were atmosphere capable, designed for a multi-purpose vehicle used by a special operations group.

Jelly adjusted her course, opening the cargo bay and sliding the Jellybird sideways in attempt to pick it up. “This is going to be ugly, Captain.”

 I winced as we slammed against the little ship. The other wing was shorn in half by the edge of our cargo bay and the nose of the ship was bent backward like a giant had punched it. This caused the pilot’s canopy to crack and vent atmosphere. There was little chance that such an extremely talented pilot wasn’t sealed up in his flight suit—so he would probably live until I got down there to punch his lights out.

“Not bad, Jelly,” I said, unstrapping from my captain’s chair. “Path, come with me. We have a guest.”

Not waiting for Jelly’s reply, we sprinted through the narrow hallways with low ceilings until we reached the bay. Both of us had our helmets and jumpsuits sealed to operate on internal air. Unlike our unfortunate episode in the void when our bottles ran out, this time, we could stop at each bulkhead and replenish our air supply if needed. That didn’t mean it was convenient, but it was better than dying.

Even though I knew I could plug a hose into the back of my helmet, I kept my respiration under control without X-37’s help. If this turned into a fight, I wanted to have enough air left in my jumpsuit to get it done.

Path and I emerged into the bay, immediately separating and approaching the damaged ship from two angles. If the pilot came out with some sort of survival weapon and opened fire, he would only be able to hit one of us.

Everything seemed to unfold in slow motion. I wished I was wearing my mask. Not long ago, I had been afraid to use it and felt uncomfortable with it most of the time. Now, since Elise had pushed me so hard to integrate it into my fighting style, I felt naked without it.

“I’ll approach,” I said to Path. “Stay close enough to help but out of reach. We don’t know what kind of hand-to-hand combat skills or weapons this guy is going to have.”

 The pilot shoved against the canopy several times, forcing the hinge against its broken gears. When I was about two steps away, the pilot tumbled out, falling all the way to the deck without a ladder to slow his descent.

I snatched him up by the front of his flight suit and slammed him back against his own ship, then realized he was a she. “Surrender before you get killed!”

She grabbed my hands with her hands and held them in place while she attempted to knee me in the groin. My arms were longer than hers, so I responded by holding her away as I thrust back my hips to make room between us and twisted to one side to avoid getting ball-kicked.

She shouted at me, but I couldn’t hear her. Our helmets’ comms weren’t on the same frequency and all I could see was her mouth working through a series of threats and curse words.

We struggled for almost a full minute. Path hung back, serene as a person could imagine in a lonely space quadrant far beyond a planetary system. If he had been Grady, he might have cracked a joke at my expense or rushed in prematurely to help. But Path was Path, hard to read and harder to upset.

The Union pilot started kicking me like some sort of desperate animal, eventually resorting to dozens of angry attacks instead of the skilled options I knew she had in her repertoire. When this didn’t work, she returned to her training. Still holding my hands in place, she threw up both legs to try and catch my left arm in flying armbar—a gutsy move, very high-level jiu-jitsu.

I pulled her toward me and head-butted her hard. A crack formed on her visor—and mine, unfortunately. She went still, realizing the bay still didn’t have atmosphere.

 “X, find her radio frequency and link to her communications module, then tell Jelly to close the bay door,” I said, lifting the woman off her feet, hip tossing her into the air, and then slamming her onto her back. She was small, even in her gear, and easy to manhandle.

“That was ungallant,” X-37 observed.

“Whatever,” I grunted.

“She’s the enemy, but you don’t have to be a dick, as Elise would say.” X-37 paused. “Jelly advises she is shutting the door, but there may be some imperfections in the seal due to the rough acquisition of the Union vessel.”

“Good enough,” I said, staring imaginary blades into the woman’s eyes.  She had quit struggling but that didn’t mean she liked me.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded when X-37 patched our comms together.

“Don’t worry about who I am, worry about what I am,” I answered.

She hesitated, realization hitting her like a hammer. “You’re the last Reaper.”

“Yeah, and he’s a sword saint,” I said with a nod toward Path.

“The admiral’s people know him,” the woman said. “They know all of you. You’re all on his shit list.”

“Don’t try anything stupid,” I warned. “You have zero chances of escape. Every member of my crew is deadly.”

“If I was still flying, you would have a real problem,” the woman pilot spat, fogging the inside of her visor for a second. “Your shields are weak and your crew flies like a crew still in the academy.”

“What’s your name?” I demanded—changing the subject that was all too true.

“First Lieutenant Amii Novasdaughter, UFS Nightmare,” she said. “I’m a Union citizen and a military officer participating in a lawful mission. You are detaining me illegally. I demand you release me immediately.”

“I could do that,” I said, turning her so that she could get a good look at her wrecked ship and the bay door beyond it.

“You’re not going to throw me into the void,” she said, sounding less than confident now.

“I might,” I said, turning her to face me, then giving her a smile that normally rendered my victim speechless.

“I dare you,” she said, her stare hard as ice.

I felt her twist against my grip. She wasn’t resisting—wasn’t fighting again—but she was getting ready to do something stupid, I thought.

“Do you want to know what your mistake is?” I asked.

“Getting shot down by a traitor is the only mistake I’ve made,” she said.

 “Yeah, that’s a pretty big fuck-up on your part. But right now, you’re thinking I’m a Reaper, when I’m really an ex-Reaper. Without the Union to control me, I’ve got my own set of rules and may or may not be insane from what they did to me,” I said.

Color drained from her face.

I allowed her to imagine her fate for a few seconds, then gave her something new to consider. “I only wanted your ship. You’re just another mouth to feed and we’re not exactly close to a resupply port.”

Lifting her into the air as I stood up, I faced her toward the bay door, which was still closed, thanks to Jelly’s prompt response to X’s request.

“I always knew Reapers were honorless,” she said, voice tight.

“Relax, Novasdaughter,” I said. “You’re going in the brig.”

“This class of ship doesn’t have a brig,” she countered.

“We’ve rigged something up just for you. It’s real nice.” I handed her off to Path, who bound her hands behind her back with slip ties.

OceanofPDF.com