Renegade (11 page)

“That’s why she’s the best,” Dale shut down the argument. “What’s the damage Major?”

“Killed a bunch of them. They tried to stitch me up too.”

“Was it necessary?” Debogande asked, still trying to get his head around it. As though still in a daze, and expecting himself to wake up at any moment. “Major, you killed all those people! Fleet people!”

“Hey asshole!” Dale snapped. “Those Fleet people just declared war on us, you get that? They declared war on
you
, on your family, on our Captain, on all of us. They murdered the Captain!”

“Are we right to go at the spaceport?” Trace asked Dale, not especially interested in the LC’s distress.

“We’re rolling,” Dale confirmed. “We’ll be there in five minutes and just hope they don’t shoot us down first.”

“Over the suburbs, I don’t think so,” said Trace.

“Hey LC,” said Tong. “You really
didn’t
kill the Captain, did you?”

“Oh that’s great Private,” said Dale. “Real useful time to ask.” Tong shrugged and handed Debogande a cloth.

The LC wiped himself down. “We won’t make the military spaceport,” he muttered. “They’ll shoot us down over the tarmac, those air defence systems can kill a fruit fly at two klicks.”

“We’re not going to the military spaceport,” said Dale.

“You’ve got a civvie ride? Up to
Phoenix
?”

“Yep.” The Shiwon skyline shone in the night to their right. They were headed north-west, past the main city, heading for Lei Quan Spaceport. Down below, the main freeway from the military port to Shiwon central, that they’d come along on the way to the parade. To their right, a circle of lights marked Memorial Hill, directly above the freeway.

“What about
Phoenix
crew?” Debogande asked, scrubbing the worst of it off his uniform. “What about Huang, is she in on this too?”

“Nope,” said Dale, searching traffic net for signs of pursuit. “She made it clear early she wasn’t interested. All marines ‘cept for us went up yesterday. Second-shift crew’s still up there, some of first and third went by civvie lift as well to Fajar Station.”

“Without telling me?”

“After you got arrested,” said Trace. “Docked at station just a few hours ago.”

“How… how do you get
Phoenix
’s crew off Homeworld on civvie transport? With HQ locking everything down?”

“Your sister helped.”

“Which one?”

“Lisbeth. Allied Transit, your local hauler. She chartered one for us. Well, two, actually.”

“And HQ didn’t try to stop you?”

“Four hours ago getting
Phoenix
crew off Homeworld probably sounded like a good idea to them. No media on
Phoenix
, no politicians, it’s quarantine. They’d thought.”

“And what is it now?” said Debogande, disbelieving.

“Well I don’t know about you,” said Trace, checking her rifle mag as the bright lights of the civvie spaceport lit the horizon ahead. “But after what we just pulled to get you out, I’d suggest we run like hell.”

“Oh great,” he said tiredly. “You needed a captain. With Huang out, I’m the only command level pilot left. That’s why you busted me out.”

“Yes,” Trace admitted. “That, and you’re our last remaining command officer, and we’ll need you if we’re ever going to get to the bottom of this.”

“And root out the fuckers who’ve planned this whole mess,” Dale growled, “and kill the fucking lot of them.”

“The way this is starting to look,” said the LC, “I think that might take a revolution. Or a civil war.”

No one in the cruiser had anything to say to that. A few days ago, they’d thought the war was over.

T
he Lei Quan Spaceport
was a huge, sprawling facility with four main terminals around a central traffic island, all joined by freeways and maglevs. It was busy tonight, traffic crowding the roads and big shuttles rolling upon the taxiways, or locked into the big, covered gates for refuel and reloading.

Dale flew them at the far perimeter where the cargo vessels waited aside from the main terminals, as the cruiser’s navcomp squawked perimeter warnings and threats of action against airspace violation. But here along a line of waiting cargo vessels was a big shuttle with running lights flashing and thrust nozzles angled down. Dale put coms on speaker and then they could all hear the ongoing shouting between Spaceport traffic control.

“
AT-7, you have no clearance for departure, I repeat, no clearance for departure! Turn off your engines and stand down immediately!”

“
Lei Quan control, this is AT-7, we are leaving in three minutes, either make a space for us or expect it to get very tight and crowded.
”

Erik’s heart stopped at the sound of that familiar voice. “That’s Lisbeth! What the hell is she doing here?”

“She got us the ship,” said Trace. “I told you.”

“You said she
arranged
it! You didn’t say she was
on
it!”

“She’s a grown woman LC, she can do what she wants.”

The perimeter fence flashed beneath them, the cruiser slowing even now as it came alongside the row of transports and flared toward a landing at the shuttle’s angular nose. They touched, doors open in the warm Shiwon night to let in an earsplitting howl of engines, as the marines and Erik all clambered out. Several yellow vested groundstaff ran to them, yelling and waving them off, then changed their minds at the sight of levelled rifles.

Erik ran up the ramp and into the empty shuttle hold, then into the left access and up the narrow, curving staircase that circled the forward starboard mains. Then ducked out of the low doorway and into cockpit access, finding two marines strapped into engineering posts and awaiting takeoff. Past them was the cockpit, a narrow arrangement of pilot and co-pilot one behind the other, the pilot offset so the co-pilot could squeeze past.

A slim figure squeezed out of the pilot’s chair and flung herself at him. “Oh thank god!” Lisbeth gasped. “You’re okay! The Major got you out, I knew she would!” With a young civilian’s innocence of the horror that entailed.

“Lis.” Erik hugged her back. “Okay Lis, out. We’re leaving.”

“I’m coming too!”

Erik stared. “No you’re not! Lis, we’re fugitives! We have to…”

“Yes you’re fugitives!” she exclaimed. “And they will blow you out of the sky without me! If I’m on board they won’t dare!”

“Guys, we have to go,” Thakur said urgently at their backs. “LC, Lisbeth’s our willing hostage for the moment, it’s the only way we’ll get out of here. That’s the plan.”

Erik wanted to hit something, but everything was so crazy and the time for violence was past. And hit who? Lisbeth? He’d rather hit Thakur, even though it could be his last use of that arm for a while.

He swore and pushed past her into the pilot’s seat — a fast glance over controls and systems showed the pre-flight was all done and they were ready to go. He buckled in as Lisbeth pushed past into the co-pilot’s seat up front. She was licensed on family shuttles, one of the first perks she’d insisted on to go with her engineering degree.

“When was your last launch?” Erik asked her.

“Um, I did a run with Trioli last month to Fajar Station as co-pilot, he gave me an A-minus.”

“So where the fuck is Trioli? He’s our damn pilot, why isn’t he helping?”

“I had to leave him in the dark,” said Lisbeth. “He wouldn’t have gone for it Erik, he’d have told Mother and she’d have grounded us.”

“Dammit.” Erik powered the thrusters, and watched the redlines build. “Well my shuttle flying’s so rusty we’ll be lucky I don’t put us through the control tower.” He pulled on the headset, and activated full coms. “Everyone buckle up, we’re leaving.”

Lei Quan control was still issuing terse instructions. “Lis, talk to them would you?” And now navcomp was showing him some nasty-looking traffic at high speed coming from the military spaceport. “And make it convincing, because it looks like they’ve just sent gunships after us.”

“Hello Lei Quan control,” came Lisbeth’s voice from behind him, “this is Lisbeth Debogande. I repeat, this is Lisbeth Debogande. I am a willing passenger on shuttle AT-7. Please rebroadcast this to all Fleet vessels, I repeat, I am a willing passenger on shuttle AT-7. If we are shot down, Fleet will be at war with the entire Debogande family. Tell them that.”

A perplexed silence from coms. The poor tower controllers would have no idea what was going on, only that an Allied Transit shuttle was leaving recklessly without authorisation, and Fleet were telling them to keep it grounded or else.

“They’ll know,” said Erik. “Fleet will be patched in and listening to everything whether control want it or not.” His eyes flashed across mains indicators, control systems, nav, coms, all on the display before the forward windshield. Nothing like as advanced as Fleet shuttles, his eye had to move a lot more between dash and HUD to find the relevant data… but everything checked green and they had to move.

He powered thrust and they lifted with a shuddering roar, any groundcrew not yet clear now scampering to become so as massive jet-wash blasted the apron. He wondered if they should kill running lights, but decided no — with this traffic around they might need it. A slow pivot atop their axis of thrust, you couldn’t rush anything when hovering three hundred tonnes atop a column of hot air. Then facing out toward the suburbs, he violated every rule traffic control had and swung thrust forward.

More alarms on the nav screen, and squawks in his ears from the tower, but they accelerated fast enough that as they passed over the perimeter fence the thrust was already angling behind them, and cars and houses were spared the low altitude blast, though not by much. “Lis, get me
Phoenix
position, where the hell are we?”

The gunships were curling around to target them — whether they were locked or not he couldn’t tell, the civvie shuttle had no military systems, nor any form of countermeasures. If the gunships fired, they’d know about it when the missiles hit. Though bringing down a three hundred tonne shuttle over suburbia didn’t seem likely.

A course-plot came up on nav as Erik poured on power and altitude. “Well crap,” he said conversationally. “
Phoenix
is on the other side of the damn planet. Good timing Major.”

“
Stop whining,
” came her reply from the back.

“Lis, orbit will be variable, I’m going to shave as much time off as possible but it’ll be hard and nasty, we’ll break every orbital lane code there is.”

Lisbeth’s projected trajectory began out over the ocean, but if staying over populated areas was going to give Fleet another reason not to shoot at them, Erik would use it. He powered up full as they passed a thousand meters and thrust locked into full forward, and the shuttle thundered and shook. The speed wasn’t actually so great, the very earliest chemical rockets in human spaceflight’s infancy accelerated faster and were a lot more aerodynamic. But mobile fusion meant you didn’t run out of fuel for nearly a full day’s burn if necessary… and you could get to orbit at walking acceleration if you had unlimited gas. Soon they were climbing hard, cloud layers flashing by and falling behind, acceleration increasing as atmospheric pressure dropped.

“Lis, you got that orbital feed?” It came up, a display of all the orbital traffic across their path… and good lord it was tight. Most of the long-term stuff was parked in higher orbit, he’d have to keep it low. Nearly everything orbited spinward, by long tradition even now that propulsion technology made it no longer necessary, but with
Phoenix
currently on the planet’s far side he was going to do a polar route that was going to cross an awful lot of higher orbits. “Well that looks interesting.”

He rolled them onto their backs in the upper atmosphere, heading north along their plotted course as their velocity passed mach four. “
LC, status?
” asked Thakur. On a civvie shuttle without her familiar uplinks, she was blind back there.

“Quiet,” Erik told her, to see how she liked it. “Lis, that thrust alignment seems a little off, run the diagnostic please.”

“I see it,” she said. “I think it’s the number three gimbal hasn’t locked out entirely, just watch it.”

They left the atmosphere completely, and now the acceleration truly started. In a few minutes they were passing mach 24, orbital velocity on Homeworld. Erik kept the thrust maxed, and they began building plus-orbital speed, which would throw them out on an elliptical orbit if he didn’t correct. He did, pushing the nose down at ever-increasing increments as the thrust continued, sliding them around the planet sideways like a teenager drifting a car on a gravel road. The acceleration remained a constant 4Gs, and in minutes they were speeding far beyond safety requirements for heavily trafficked orbits.

“We’ve got company,” said Lisbeth in a strained voice as they approached Homeworld’s north pole, and the first sunlight glinted upon white icecaps along the horizon rim. “Combat shuttle on high-G approach behind.” As navcomp identified it for Erik to see — sure enough, while everything else was whizzing by on previous orbit, this one was trailing them, and apparently burning much harder than the civvie shuttle could.

“They don’t need to be tailing us to shoot us down,” Erik replied. “A long range missile would do it.” Sunlight grew to a glare as they passed the pole, the forward view polarising to shield their eyes. At the turnover point Erik kicked the shuttle’s tail around and over, still thrusting to slow them while skidding them around onto a new orbit, chasing Fajar Station and
Phoenix
. Barely fifteen minutes at these velocities, approaching at plus twenty thousand kilometres an hour.

Five minutes later,
Phoenix
called, in the form of Lieutenant Shilu, second-shift coms officer. “This is LC Debogande,” Erik replied. The signal was bounced off various remote coms in orbit, there were so many up here that Fleet couldn’t jam them all without shutting down all orbital coms — a dangerous proposition in a system this crowded. “How is everything with you,
Phoenix
?”

“
Full complement of marines aboard,”
came the reply. “
Elements of first and third are coming aboard now, they’re commandeering various vehicles from Fajar Station to do it.
” Erik wondered if that meant they were doing it at gunpoint. There were other uniformed and armed personnel on Fajar Station, it didn’t seem a safe situation. “
Sir we’re locked in standoff with several nearby armed vessels, we’ve got full weapons lock and engines active. We could come and get you if you liked.
”

“No, you need to stay close to station to pick up our crew and gain protection in their shadow. We’ll be there in ten. What’s the situation with our crew on station?”

“
Sir, anyone stopping them will be committing an aggressive act against Phoenix. We’ve told them.”
So
Phoenix
was threatening to fire on station. Dear lord. Firing on a crowded civvie station was what the bad guys did in the movies. If HQ didn’t have enough to demonise them before, they sure would after this. “
We’ve got a shuttle at the hub, it’s getting the last of them. Sir, a lot didn’t come up. We’re short about a hundred crew, even if we get everyone aboard.
”

It was actually more than Erik had thought. They were being asked to go renegade. Most probably just wanted to go home to their families, and now to sacrifice everything on the say-so of Major Thakur and LC Debogande… Well the marines would go. Thakur said all her marines were aboard and that wasn’t surprising, they’d charge into a star if she told them to. But while spacers respected her, Thakur was still a marine, and spacers didn’t take orders from marines unless bullets were flying. Most of third-shift would probably do it for LC Debogande, he thought — but third-shift was just twenty people, all bridge crew and reserves, compared to about three hundred each for first and second-shift. Third-shift commanders were often teased as ‘Captain Appendix’, because compared to the vital bodily organs of first and second-shift, that was what third-shift was.

But all shifts had loved the Captain. And now Major Thakur was telling them the Captain had been murdered by HQ — unthinkable if anyone else had said it, but Kulina never lied about their age, let alone anything serious. Lots of them would have been asking themselves which loyalty was superior — the loyalty to Fleet, or to the Captain. Most would decide the latter, but even then, to throw one’s life away just on the brink of peacetime, for a cause that had nothing to do with them and everything to do with the powerful, connected officers who commanded them…

Damn right they were short a hundred. And Commander Huang’s second-shift had been posted to
Phoenix
for docking duty, before any of this mess had happened. If they were given the option, probably a third of them would get off right now if they could. Which raised the question — should he let them?

They approached Fajar Station tail first with thrust blazing, and now station traffic control was squealing at them that this was most unsafe, and legal action would follow. Erik wondered exactly who they thought they’d prosecute — his corpse? Or his mother’s still very-living body, with her army of powerful lawyers and pockets so deep they accessed alternative dimensions?

Fajar Station was quite a sight — five kilometres wide with its rim docking gantries full of weight-supported ships, nestled up to station in a nose-first ring as the station spun. But all traffic was now halted, save for a few runners and shuttles, because here parked barely a kilometre off the enormous spinning twin-wheel was
Phoenix
— four times the size of any standard freighter, two-thirds engines and jump-lines, the remainder a cage-like shell for a rotating crew cylinder, while the shell itself bristled with weapons, external pods and combat grapples for attached shuttles and aggressive interceptions. Even at zero-V that armament could shred a big station in minutes, and ships in seconds. Thus no one in the general vicinity so much as twitching.