Renegade (27 page)

“If he leaves,” Shahaim said urgently…

“He won’t pulse so close to another ship,” said Erik, mouth dry. Another channel. “Rooke! How long?”

“
Two minutes LC!”

“Two minutes on the clock?” No reply. “Rooke dammit, two minutes on the clock, call it!”

“
Aye LC, two minutes on the clock! Mark from now!”
The timer started.

“Two minutes on the clock!” Shahaim announced.

“Helm, condition red. All hands battle stations.”

“Aye condition red, all hands battle stations!”

The alarm sounded. Erik gripped the controls more firmly, and adjusted the arm braces as they pressed to his elbows. The seat actuators shifted and kicked, like an old warhorse waking up, smelling battle ahead. He opened more uplinks, and found ship systems opening across his inner vision, doubling against the screens — his own personal Head Up Display on his irises.

“LC, is it worth it?” Shahaim asked.

“We’re strategically blind out here,” said Erik. That, he hated most of all. “We don’t know what the hell is going on, but my Uncle Thani says whatever happened to the Captain was tied up with our alien allies, and now we’ve got chah'nas violating all established rules in our pursuit. Someone gave him permission to do this, and come after us, and I want to know who and why.”

Operations showed him everyone still off-ship now pouring back aboard through mid-ships, behind the rotation cylinder. They wouldn’t have time to get back to gravity, and would have to ride the next bit with the engine techs down back. Flight systems showed green, attitude control, main engines, nav, weapons, scan, com… he tried to stop his hands shaking on the controls, one false twitch and he’d hit the attitude jets and blast the techs outside tumbling into deep space. Those guys had to be sweating bullets, knowing that one false move from them or their LC could see them left behind or worse…

“Still pushing one-G, no change!” said Geish.

“Get ready in case we surprise someone,” Erik told him. “Could be someone running dark real close.”

“
We’re done!”
yelled Rooke. “
Everyone clear, get clear now!”
Erik saw the drone feed, suited figures hitting full thrust away from
Phoenix
, into the open cargo door of the waiting shuttle.

He gave it another five seconds, then hit undock and kicked them away from the rock with an attitude blast that knocked them sideways, such were the unpredictabilities of course-correction in a rotating cylinder. “PH-1,” he announced, “departure at one-G, make it fast.”

“
Copy LC,”
came Lieutenant Hausler, the shuttle pilot. “
We’ll be following.”

Erik hit thrust and kicked them back in their seats. He needed space between him and the rock before he pulsed. Fifteen seconds later and PH-1 was chasing them, and Erik lifted thrust to 2-G as the shuttle roared at 4, reeling them in. Shuttle feed showed him a brief 5-G, ETA ten seconds, then Hausler cut power and let their velocities equalise just as he crashed the shuttle into the midships grapples and locked tight. Hell of a move, it reminded him of just how good you had to be to get a spot on
Phoenix
in the first place, and his confidence surged.

“
PH-1 is onboard!
”

“
Phoenix
is leaving, jumpline startup all systems green,” said Erik, watching the powerup. If Rooke’s repairs were off by a fraction and something blew now, they were finished.

“All green, all good!” Shahaim called.

“Target locked!” Kaspowitz confirmed.

“Let’s get that fucker,” said Erik, and hit the pulse…

…and everything stretched…

…and stretched…

And snapped back to reality, and they were racing, like a stone from a slingshot. Erik hit mains hard, and pushed them at 7-G… only four seconds until the chah'nas saw him, four seconds more for him to see their move… not fast enough, and he hit the pulse again…

…and emerged truly flying, Nav projecting all kinds of alarming rocks and obstacles that now dopplered and were a struggle to see at this velocity…

“Contact!” Geish shouted. “One mark at 288 by 30 nadir! He’s seen us, he’s coming about to pursue!” That was a silent runner, one of those they hadn’t seen, and thank god it hadn’t been any closer when they’d run…

“Arms!” said Erik. “A shot past the target’s side! Do not fire at anyone else unless fired upon!” A thump as
Phoenix
fired, reaction-powered rounds that would keep accelerating at 30-Gs for another few minutes, a necessity with FTL warfare where the danger of overtaking your own ordinance was very real.

“He’s running!” Geish called. “He’s running hard! Heading nadir, 10G thrust!” And here was where the trap worked —
Phoenix
had been outer-system of
Tek-to-thi,
meaning the chah'nas couldn’t run directly away from
Phoenix
, or he’d be heading straight into the star. To jump away, he had to head nadir or zenith — and starships didn’t turn corners easily, jump engines could gain or lose you instant velocity, but course correction took time. “He’s pulsing!”

“He’s only three degrees off our course!” Kaspowitz announced. “He can’t jump like that, he’ll pass gravitational inversion…”

“Incoming fire!” called Jiri. “He’s shooting at us!”

“Arms,” Erik replied, “let him have it.” More thuds, and the rapid whine-and-rattle of reloads.

“Defensive is outgoing,” Harris announced as
Phoenix
’s defensive fire pumped rounds into the path of the chah'nas’ incoming.

“Course correction!” Erik swung them full sideways and hit the full 10-Gs as everything thundered and shook. He could barely move the hand controls at these Gs, but with uplinks and finger buttons it didn’t matter. Their course shifted a fraction of a degree, then another. Something blew up in their path in a mass of blurred static, then flashing past — incoming ordinance hitting
Phoenix
’s defensive fire and detonating. No way the chah'nas had enough defensive weaponry to do the same to what
Phoenix
was pumping in his direction…

“
He’s pulsing again!
” Geish announced on uplinks, unable to use his voice in this thrust. “
He’s dodging our fire!”

That was a mistake.
Tek-to-thi
shot away from them once more, giving Erik an opportunity to straighten out briefly and… “
Arms! Target all to dorsal, we’re gonna come out right on top of him!”

All weapons swung that way, and Erik hit the pulse even harder than the chah'nas… and tore after him, closing with deadly speed as Arms put down a spread of preemptive defence… then dumped velocity right on top of him, spinning to put him in the dorsal arc as all weapons fired…

Multiple flashes on scan, fireballs from which
Tek-to-thi
emerged pinwheeling like a thrown stick, shedding pieces as it went. “Got him!” Karle announced between fear and excitement. “Got him hard, he’s spinning!”

“Disable!” Erik shouted. “Proximity disable! Get his guns!” More thuds as
Phoenix
’s close range cannon opened up on the spinning vessel… they were real close now, full visual, no more than a few kilometres and Armscomp could calculate that like shelling peas. More flashes across the ship’s nose and flanks, then a big flash as proximity warheads from a missile battery shredded the chah'nas’s dorsal emplacements.

Erik swung them in a full arc around the target, giving Arms a good look, to be sure they’d got everything. “Good, now straighten him out for me!”

“LC, we have vessels responding to our lightwave,” Geish warned. “Another few minutes and they’ll be all over us.”

Arms fired again, proximity detonations against the target’s hull that slowed the spin. One blew a large part of the aft section off, and the spin slowed to a near stop, deprived of mass.

“That’ll do, we are inbound… Major Thakur! Twenty seconds!”

“
Twenty seconds, copy.”

Erik timed his run nose first, braked hard with retros and called, “Impact forward!” Combat carriers were designed for it, and they crashed forward with a heavy thud, stopping the spin entirely. Then a simple kick forward, roll to align the combat dock amidships and fix the big grapples to the enemy’s nose…

T
race’s ride
on the combat dock ended when the charges engaged — shaped explosives affixing to the enemy’s nose with a boom! that rattled everyone inside their armour.

“Secure those main passages!” she said tersely as grapples clanged and crashed outside. “Move fast and stop for nothing. We want officers, not crew, kill anything with red shoulders, disable anything with blue.” Not that they’d likely encounter much opposition, the chah'nas crew hadn’t been given much time to don pressure suits. But then, chah'nas often erred on the side of violence, and they may have suited up in advance of the intercept, in anticipation of human trouble. Could this whole thing have been a trick to lure
Phoenix
into this engagement?

Dock irised open and she kicked off her berth and jetted in past torn debris and hull armour. She found a corridor, hit the wall and pushed off hard — with cylinder rotation gone the warship was zero-G and now zero-atmosphere. She powered up the corridor, simply scraping and bouncing off when her course drifted. Caught a corner hard and came about into the main corridor — chah'nas warships made human warships look like pleasurecraft, everything was dark steel and the glare of a few surviving lights.

Movement ahead as a chah'nas emerged from a doorway, helmeted and suited with weapon in hands — she shot it and jetted past, then grenaded the corridor end as another took aim from cover. On coms she heard more shooting and terse calls, and she caught a doorway short of the corridor end to halt herself, then Arime came past and they covered both ways at once. Arime shot something, and Trace jetted to the doorway the Kulik Class schematics said would be ‘extra-crew’, and checked the door sensor. It showed emergency yellow — the chah'nas colour for ‘good’, or what humans would use for ‘green’, meaning the far side of the door was pressurised.

Trace indicated to Arime, stuck a magnetic mine on it and pulled herself aside for cover. It was a shaped charge, so little shrapnel and in a vacuum explosives had no shockwave. This one blew a hole through the lock mechanism. Arime hauled the door open with powered-armour strength, a rush of escaping air, then Trace put a handball through the gap… saw several chah'nas crew thrashing and fighting for breath. And one, well covered in a six-limbed pressure suit, struggling to get his weapon to bear on the door. Trace tossed a flash-bang and went in fast after it, launched off the wall at the suited chah'nas and tackled him spinning into the wall. Behind her, Arime shot the two suffocating crew, more threat-neutralisation than mercy, as Trace clubbed the suited chah'nas repeatedly hard in the midriff to incapacitate without greatly damaging the suit. With powered-armour strength it was easy to twist two arms behind him, cuff them, then throw him at Arime.

“Get him out!” she said — the suit had no officer’s markings, unsurprising from an emergency suit, but if you found three crew in an emergency decompression, and then chah'nas or human you could usually bet the only pressure suit went to the officer.

She guarded Arime’s rear out the door with the prisoner, and nearly shot the next six-limbed, suited figure to erupt from a neighbouring door… but this suit was merely propelled by explosive decompression from the room. Its limbs were limp, but a glance in the bowl helmet showed it occupied… but the face was not chah'nas. Trace glimpsed fur, big, folded ears and sharp teeth… and desperate, wild eyes looking at her, shouting something Trace couldn’t hear with no coms or atmosphere between them. A kuhsi, who was safe in a pressurised room, but had now busted out and apparently desperate for rescue…

Trace grabbed the suit, hit suit thrust and powered after Arime, calls on coms as all her marines retreated, tacnet showed them all accounted and moving fast. Trace hauled the half-empty pressure suit bouncing around a corner, rifle aimed behind in case some remaining chah'nas crewman was stupid enough to show himself, but none were.

And then they were back at the shattered entry hole that carved through decks melted like butter, and the glare of
Phoenix
spotlights that her visor blackened to keep dim amidst the cluster of armoured bodies. Then a fast rush inside, the iris sealing behind as grapples crashed and thrust powered them away once more… and then acceleration slings amid the cold steel walls, throwing the prisoners and rescues in and finding some for themselves because
Phoenix
was about to move…

“This is the Major,” Trace said as she hit her own sling and sealed herself in. A fast glance around showed others doing the same, like insects in cocoons all up the combat dock. “All aboard and sealed, go go go.”

E
rik did not need
to be told twice, cut the grapples and blasted them clear. Mains punched them back into their seats, as he loaded Kaspowitz’s Nav settings and saw the solution track ahead of him. They were still moving fast, and scan showed ships racing after them, ships pulsing, ships at considerable portions of light though apparently refraining from fire least they hit the chah'nas ship. But they couldn’t change trajectory in the way Kaspowitz’s course required at this speed, so he dumped velocity hard and let the crippled alien ship go shooting off ahead — with any luck any other chah'nas in system would chase it down to rescue its remaining crew rather than chase
Phoenix
.

Another hard dump, then he swung the ship sideways and powered into an 11-G thrust. “
Three minutes!”
he told them all on uplinks, blinking to stop his vision becoming a giant blur, fighting hard for air. “
Arms, auto-fire, lay down cover!”
He couldn’t hear or feel the thump of outgoing fire, the rocking and roaring vibration of the mains drowned it out. Course changing made them slow, while around them intercepting ships were gaining at an alarming rate.