Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 0: Tanya (25 page)

Starfire showed no signs of recognizing Malcomb’s
Falcon
, but then there would be no reason for her to recognize it because he had purchased the ship since last
seeing Tanya. Falcon wasn’t
nearly as large as Adjudicator, but she was equipped
with an
independently tracking photon cannon and was just about as fast as any
thing riding a fusion plume. It
s most important attribute was the fact that none of their enemies knew of it. If they showed up following Tanya they were going to be getting a big surprise.

The small ship that exited a small distance out-system didn’t alarm Malcomb at first, but as he was keeping a close eye on every ship coming and going it was hard not to notice this one, now running flat out on full thrust on a tangent that Falcon’s AI immediately graphed as
intersecting with Starfire, which had come to a stable orbit while presumably awaiting landing protocols.

Malcomb quickly opened a com channel to warn Starfire but Tanya had already seen the threat, because
Starfire
suddenly exploded in brilliant fusion flame as it lit its main thruster and began a run towards the planet below.

Chapter 68

Tanya was expecting trouble to arrive shortly but she could hardly believe how quickly it had come. The ship that entered just out-system gave her no immediate concern until it lit up in full burn on a direct course for Starfire, at yet some 0.0034 Light Seconds distance but closing quickly. Closing quickly and with unmistakable intent- it was Felone.

The incoming ship would run her down long before she could gain the velocity to jump or to be able to put up a fight, and Starfire would be a sitting duck in the targets of the more rapidly moving attacking ship. She could not gain the velocity she needed to outrun the first swoop of the enemy ship without . . . Tanya acted instantly, turning Starfire’s nose towards the planet below and hitting full thrust at the same time, using the planet’s gravity to aid her acceleration but also risking the ire- and potentially the defensive might- of the planetary authorities below. If she lived she would deal with them later.

The plunge straight planet-ward was surreal and deceptive as the surface only appeared to be very slowly growing closer beneath her, but that was an illusion. Starfire was already sending sonic shock waves crashing into the city below. And this not one of the ghetto cities, this was a port city!

Starfire accelerated past Mach 5 in a screaming vertical dive straight towards the city below. At twenty-five kilometers above the surface, and just as the foll
owing ship, no question now
it was Felone, entered the atmosphere above, Tanya suddenly pulled back on the stick with every gram of strength she possessed and instantly blacked out, the darkness closing in like a thick wet blanket thrown over her mind.

Somehow, with some great inner fortitude she hadn’t known she possessed, Tanya
forced
her consciousness to awaken and accept the merest pinprick of the physical universe and the tiniest point of light at the end of her tunneled vision.

It was really no more than a pinhole, but enough to allow her to command her screaming muscles and hold the stick back. She had not known how she was going to pull Starfire out of this dive, but she had known that this was the only way she would be able to gain the velocity to either jump or fight. This had been the only option.

To let go of the stick
now
would
mean
Starfire
would
bury herself a kilometer deep in the crust, or spread
herself
across kilometers of city. Through the hardest maneuver of her entire life Tanya held on to that stick for her very life.

….................

Falcon was within photon cannon range of the little ship as it hit the atmosphere and Malcomb had already completely familiarized himself with its operation as his first order of business. The ship following Starfire reacted instantly when Malcomb charged the photon cannons, twisting onto a new course, its acquisitions program instantly detecting the photon charge and relaying that data to the pilot of the little ship, that pilot immediately recognizing the threat from the unknown ship for what it was.

The photon cannon charged in a moment and Malcomb followed the little ship carefully with the targeting hairs before depressing the manual switch. Falcon thrummed for a moment as the massive energy of the photon cannon erupted, spearing out, but the little ship had twisted again at the
very moment Malcomb’s finger settled on
the firing button and the bolt of energy went off the mark.

Dumbfounded and entirely helpless to interfere as he would have to fire directly down upon the planet itself to attack the ship now, not something Malcomb was willing to do, he watched as the attacking ship followed Tanya down into the atmosphere.

….................

The small, passive drone recorded the events as they
transpired and relayed them by Ultra-N
et to Adjudicator. Jason watched the simple real-time drama unfold with much interest, immensely enjoying the spectacle of the aerial battle between Tanya and Felone that was occurring, Felone at the moment in the process of chasing Tanya down into the atmosphere and Tanya diving recklessly t
owards the surface
to gain the acceleration Starfire needed. But Jason took especial interest in the ship that Adjudicator had tagged as
Falcon
, a newly registered
ship, only recorded in the government taxation files two days previously.

There was no doubting who this new intruder was, and Jason immediately powered up Adjudicator and moments later was accelerating towards a jump that would land nearly in Falcon’s lap.
Won’t that be a surprise for them
, he thought, as he contemplated with gleeful malice the shock that Tanya would receive when she realized the leader of her secret army had been obliterated. He would enjoy watching her suffer.

Chapter 69

The city was rushing up at her rapidly, and with her vision reduced to mere pinpricks the universe became a rushing blur that Tanya could barely comprehend, objects were moving so swiftly, yet events now seemed to unfold in slow motion as Starfire and Tanya fought for their lives.

Tanya was not at all sure they were going to make it even though the stick had never wavered in her hands, the city rushing up at her far too fast, her instincts screaming at her at first to
bail out, bail out!
, and then,
too late, you’re going to
die!
Starfire couldn’t possibly pull out in time, and then she finally began to level out into stable flight, the airspeed indicator flashing wildly past Mach seven with the city whipping by only meters below. The little ship’s fusion thrust wash
ing
across the tops of the outlying districts of the city as Starfire left a
shattered wake of sonic destruction with the city no more than a blur beneath her.

The downtown area of the city was now rushing
toward
Tanya faster than she could comprehend, and Tanya realized Starfire would not gain the altitude to rise above the hundreds of skyscrapers looming ahead like a wall built just to thwart her. But her vision was clearing as the terrible inertia of her desperate attempt to pull them out of the straight vertical dive dissipated under their normal horizontal flight, and Tanya was quickly looking for a way out.

There
was
no way out. Starfire could neither turn nor rise fast enough to avoid disaster. There was only through them. Tanya only had moments before they would reach the first skyscrapers, but it was enough time to consider, just an amusing little scenario flashing through her mind, that if she managed to live through this, she was going to be in a lot of trouble with the local authorities!

Her ship was traveling so rapidly that the skyscrapers were little more than blurs, and Tanya barely made the maneuver between the first two, coming so close to the skyscraper on her port side that she wasn't sure she was going to clear it until she was already past, the buildin
g ripping by at a blazing speed and
Starfire somehow slipping into a thoroughfare between the buildings!

The strange reflective haze that blossomed on her rear feed,
just seen peripherally on her screen as she fought for her life
, was the eruption
of
the e
ntire dia-glass faces of the
buildings she
was flashing through
as the windows were sucked into the vacuum left by Starfire’s supersonic passage between them. Tanya had no time to appreciate this as she battled against the laws of physics in her fight to
gain altitude.

Somehow she managed
and after screaming down it like a tornado for twenty blocks, Tanya finally rose above the tallest of the build
ings and had the time to glance
at her displays. She was flying out of the frying pan, but into the fire as Starfire now rose above the concealing f
orest of skyscrapers around her
and the targeting acquisitions screen suddenly lit up with an incoming bogey.

“Son of a fucking bitch!”
Tanya screamed, unbelieving as she flipped Starfire on her side into a port roll and away from the incoming bogey that was attacking from starboard and above, diving on her in a swooping curve and closing at a reckless speed.

If Felone fired on her and missed, each bolt of the plasma cannon would devastate half a block or more of real estate, but Tanya didn’t think Felone would hesitate to fire for a moment. Neither did she have any doubt that Felone’s new ship wouldn’t be traceable back to her or the Organization. Felone surely would be hoping, at that moment, that Tanya felt herself safe as long as the city was below. But Tanya didn’t fall for it, and in full burn she decided to find out what Felone and her new
ship were
capable of.

In any case, she would not be legally responsible for the people that Felone would murder on the ground below if she turned to give battle now. Again Tanya pulled her stick all the way back, but
with her already reckless
velocity the inertia was hardly noticeable, a drop in the bucket compared to what she had just survived, and she thought again of the old maxim- whatever didn’t kill her would just make her stronger. She was sure that Felone would make her a great deal stronger before this was finished. Of that Tanya had no doubt.

Chapter 70

Falcon was in full burn, racing around the curvature of the planet to join the combat between the two little ships, both in vertical climbs, rising up through the atmosphere towar
ds space, Starfire in the lead,
the second ship glued to her wash without any sign of inferior propulsion.

The two ships seemed to be similar in every respect. Malcomb clicked on the tags Falcon had created for the two ships and side by side technical details scrolled down the screen and nearly dumbfounding Malcomb for the second time in only short moments. Felone’s new ship was exactly the same ship as Starfire! It was the same manufacturer, the same specs, same everything. It was the clone of Tanya’s ship.

“That’s crazy! What does that mean?” Kerin asked from the co-pilot’s seat as he watched what Malcomb was doing.

“It seems too unlikely to be a happenstance.” Malcomb mused. “I don’t think it was coincidence.”

“This Felone wants to beat Tanya on equal terms.” Kerin said. “I can’t imagine what else it could be.”

“That does seem to be the case . . .” Malcomb began but the beep of an incoming jump signature forestalled further comment as they waited for Fal
con’s AI to tag the ship. It
cost more for the AI than for the ship itself, but Malcomb was perfectly willing to accept his limitations and flying a spaceship was definitely one of them. He had never even been in a spaceship until they had taken the liner to the Kievor Trade Station
and Falcon was the first ship whose controls he had ever sat in front of, though he hadn’t actually piloted Falcon either. She piloted herself.

Falcon had nearly reached jump velocity as they burned around the curve of the planet in an attempt to cut off Tanya’s pursuer, but it had become obvious they weren’t going to get there in time. Malcomb watched Falcon’s jump velocity indicator intently as the incoming ship slid into real space, well within photon cannon range.

Falcon tagged it as Adjudica
tor before the newcomer had
finished its exit and then blasted a warning siren throughout the ship, rolling viciously to port just as the blaze of a thick ruby beam flashed to starboard, right where they had just been. Then Falcon was charging her own photon cannon and coming around to do battle.

“Jump velocity not attainable while performing evasive maneuvers; permission to engage Adjudicator?” Falcon asked.

“Granted!”
Malcomb said, though he was sure Falcon was only being polite. One advantage of paying the extra million and a half credits for the AI was that it could and would defend itself without needing orders. It was sentient, and therefore it had as much desire to live as any other being.