He targeted the
Gryphon
and turned the battlecruiser toward the high councilor’s private battleship. Another direct hit to the
Excalibur
’s starboard hull buckled the armor, breaching the pressure hull and knocking out a cluster of maneuvering thrusters.
The Guardian ignored it and concentrated on aiming. He would only get one shot.
One hundred thousand kilometers out, Victor fired the particle cannons. Twin beams of blazing-hot ionized iron atoms shot from the
Excalibur
’s forward hull. A second later, both beams hit the
Gryphon
in her main drive section, punching clean through the ship. The drives flickered out, leaving the battleship adrift and helpless.
Victor stood and left the bridge. Time for the next part of the plan.
***
With a combination of augmented legs and the warsuit’s built-in thrusters, Victor launched himself into space.
With a puff from his suit thrusters, he turned around to look at the
Excalibur
.
The vast bladelike hull gleamed in the yellow sunlight of Lysander’s star, the dents and burns from her battle damage clearly visible.
Just a few seconds after Victor leapt into space, her main drives fired, and the vessel shot away with speeds that seemed impossible for something so big. With so many hostile ships around, she couldn’t move slowly for very long.
The battlecruiser had instructions to loiter a safe distance from the Alliance fleet and avoid any fights. Should Victor fail, she was programmed to return to the Stone on her own. If the worst happened, his friends would be safe, and the old man could find the
Excalibur
a new master.
When the
Excalibur
faded from view, Victor fired his maneuvering thrusters again to face the direction of the
Gryphon
. It was a barely visible speck just over one hundred kilometers away, and he drifted toward it at one hundred meters per second. It was practically standing still compared to the speeds he was used to, even on a slow starship, but the warsuit only had just enough fuel to slow him down to a survivable velocity.
So he drifted and drifted and drifted toward the crippled battleship. Gas and a sparse cloud of debris surrounded it. Ships around the
Gryphon
continued firing their weapons at the fleeing
Excalibur
, more intent on destroying the
Gryphon
’s assailant rather than helping the
Gryphon
. That suited Victor just fine; for his plan to work, the high councilor had to still be aboard.
A red reticle appeared on his faceplate readout, pointing out a two-centimeter chunk of the
Gryphon
’s hull on a collision course with him. A quick puff from the suit thrusters moved Victor from the path of the debris.
No long afterward a meter-wide piece appeared, and Victor had to fire the suit thrusters to dodge that too. Each time his fired the thrusters, his tension rose. Not only did firing the thrusters use up fuel that he needed to slow to a nonsuicidal velocity, but it also increased his risk of detection.
In open space, his mighty and highly advanced warsuit would make an easy target for even the most rudimentary of point-defense weapons.
Ninety seconds out, Victor fired his suit thrusters in a long braking burn. Victor almost wished he had equipped himself with one of the vastly more powerful thruster packs available on the
Excalibur
, but their engines were far brighter than the tiny maneuvering thrusters on his suit. He'd be detected for sure if he had used one of those.
Just before impact, Victor oriented his legs toward the hull, making sure not to lock his knees. The soles of his boots impacted the hull at ten meters per second. Victor sprawled out on his hands and knees against the hull to absorb the impact while smart adhesive in his gloves and boots kept him from bouncing off.
Victor allowed himself a moment to heave a sigh of relief before moving toward the nearest point of entry.
The hull of the
Gryphon
stretched around him like a metal island in a sea of stars. About one hundred meters to his right was a maintenance airlock.
Commanding the smart adhesive to let go, Victor fired his suit thrusters and drifted over the airlock, grabbing a handhold to anchor himself in front of it.
Breaking into the airlock was easy. Victor just planted his hand against the control panel and let the warsuit hack it. The airlock depressurized within seconds, and, one minute later, the outer hatch cracked open. Victor helped himself inside. He fell to the deck almost immediately. The artificial gravity was still working.
Laying his hand on the inner panel, Victor repressurized the airlock and then opened the inner hatch.
***
He barely made it ten meters past the airlock before he ran into four members of the
Gryphon
’s crew, all wearing utilitarian pressure suits with tools strapped to their harnesses.
Their eyes went wide behind their open faceplates, and they backpedaled at the sight of Victor. “What the hell is that?”
"It's a problem for the marines! Run!"
The maintenance crew retreated, shouting into their communicators.
Victor let them go; he had no plans on being stealthy.
It wasn’t long before he ran into the first resistance, a team of lightly armed and armored marines holding a junction. They fired their assault rifles as soon as they saw him, placing well-aimed bursts into Victor’s chest.
The rounds bounced harmlessly off the warsuit’s shield-reinforced armor.
Victor gave the marines a second to absorb the ineffectiveness of their weapons before he charged down the corridor. The four marines fired their weapons on full auto in a futile attempt to drive off Victor and continued firing as he ran past them. Their weapons couldn’t hurt him. No point in fighting them.
He left the marines behind, moving faster down the corridor than they could follow. He only stopped when a heavy door slammed shut in front of him. He placed his hand on the control console, letting the warsuit hack it like he did with the airlock. The door opened, and the marines waiting on the other side opened fire.
Victor simply ran past them as well, their bullets bouncing harmlessly off his armor.
Reaching a cargo elevator, he pried open the doors with his fingers and leapt into the empty shaft, landing on the elevator several decks below.
He tore the trapdoor off the top of the elevator and dropped down, then punched out a floor panel and leapt through, grabbing a metal rail and sliding down it, like a fire pole, to control his descent.
He fell for several decks until he reached his destination, the command level.
He climbed to the door and pried it open. On the other side was a Mustanger—a marine in a suit of full-power armor, the rearing horse symbol of his planet etched on his chestplate. He leveled a long-barreled cannon at Victor.
“Oh, sh—”
The cannon fired, and a shell detonated against his chest, throwing Victor into the elevator shaft.
He flipped in midair and grabbed the ledge of the deck below to stop his fall. His shields and armor stopped the shell from doing real damage, but Victor felt like he had just been hit in the chest with a sledge hammer.
Above him, the grim visor of the power-armored marine peeked over the lip of the open elevator door.
“He’s still alive!” The marine tried to again level the long barrel of his cannon at Victor.
Hanging by one hand, Victor leapt up and across to the other side of the shaft just as the cannon fired.
A concussive blast and shrapnel hit Victor in the back as he flew to the opposite wall of the shaft. He kicked off the wall with all the strength he could summon from the warsuit and launched himself right into the midsection of the power-armored marine, tackling him to the deck.
The marine grabbed Victor by the shoulder with his huge gauntlet and tossed Victor, warsuit and all, over his head.
Landing down the corridor on his feet, Victor turned to face the man, who was already on his feet, despite the bulk of the power armor, swinging his cannon toward Victor.
Victor charged, getting inside the radius of the cannon, and drove his shoulder into the midsection of the marine’s power armor, driving him toward the elevator shaft.
A heavy fist hammered Victor’s back, almost driving him to his knees, but he got under the marine’s center of gravity and used the strength of the warsuit to lift the armored marine up and throw him down the elevator shaft.
The power-armored marine slammed into the opposite side of the elevator shaft and went tumbling down. Victor didn’t wait to see him hit bottom. Victor turned and headed for the war room.
None of the opulence Victor had seen on other parts of the
Gryphon
were present on the command level. No gilding on the bulkheads, just antispall liner. No carpet on the deck, just a matte gray coating of high-traction polymer.
The heavy security doors were similarly bare of decoration. Just brushed metal. Guarding the doors were a team of marines Victor quickly subdued with fists covered in First Civilization armor.
While the marines guarding the door moaned from broken limbs and cracked ribs, Victor hacked the security door.
They parted, and the high councilor rose from his seat at the projection table, along with Alliance representatives and officers.
Those who had sidearms trained them on Victor as he walked into the room.
“If the Lysandrans wanted to kill me, there are more efficient ways to go about it,” Holace Quill said.
“I’m not Lysandran,” Victor said.
Quill’s eyes narrowed. “Really now. What are you then?”
“I am the Guardian, a soldier of the Interstellar Union,” Victor said, realizing that Quill simply did not recognize the voice emanating from the suit.
“Guardian? Interstellar Union? What is this nonsense?” Quill said. “You cripple my ship and then fight your way through my crew to tell me that you’re from the First Civilization? A bit much just to tell a joke.”
“This is no joke,” Victor said, taking a step forward.
A staccato of pistol shots bounced off Victor's chest. People in the war room dived for cover as ricochets struck walls and took out monitors. It was a minor miracle no one was hit by the time the shooters ran out of ammo.
“Put those down!” Holace Quill yelled from the console he crouched behind.
Officers and crew, many in the midst of reloading their weapons, paused.
"I said, put those down. You're more likely to kill yourselves!" Quill said.
Pistols returned to holsters, and Quill rose from behind his console to approach Victor.
“Okay, I’ll humor you," Quill said. "If you are, indeed, from the First Civilization, like you claim, then why have you decided to make war against the Free Worlds?”
“I’m not here to make war with the Free Worlds,” Victor said. “I’m here to stop you, all of you, from destroying any more worlds.”
“‘Any more’?” Quill asked. “What are you talking about?”
“This,” Victor said. He hacked into the war room’s holoprojectors and the burned husk of Savannah appeared overhead.
Quill chuckled. “Savannah? Your information seems a bit flawed, Guardian. It was the Lysandrans who destroyed Savannah.”
“I’m not finished,” Victor said. Another dead world appeared and then another. He showed them the same worlds the old man had showed him when first trying to recruit him. “Ever since the gates collapsed and Earth was cut off, her daughter worlds have been slowly killing off each other. Savannah was just the latest, and, if I have anything to say about it, the last.”
Quill scoffed. “How can we know this is true?”
“You can verify the information yourselves,” Victor said. “I’ve uploaded the coordinates. You’re free to send ships to investigate my claims.”
“I’ll do that, after we deal with Lysander,” Quill said.
“You will leave Lysander unharmed,” Victor said.
“And how will you stop us?” Quill asked. “You have just one ship against thousands.”
“What I have is a First Civilization battlecruiser that is more than capable of wiping out you and your entire fleet,” Victor said. It was a bluff of course; the
Excalibur
had been badly battered just getting him to the
Gryphon
. But none of the Free Worlders knew that. “The only reason why I’m not doing that right now is the hope I can make you see reason.”
“You could’ve just called,” Quill said.
“I needed a show of force in order to get your attention,” Victor said, “and to demonstrate the futility of fighting me.”
“Even if your ship can destroy this fleet, I doubt you can do it before we devastate Lysander,” Quill said.
“Really? Is destroying Lysander so important to you that you’d risk every Alliance starship and their crews to do it?” Victor asked.