There was a corpse at the controls of the starboard gun.
For a long moment Velasco stood frozen, taking it all in. The alien weapon had burned the gun station. The paint on the deck and bulkhead was blackened and bubbled, and the body in the gunner's seat was burned all across the chest and the front of the helmet. Velasco knew that the gun itself was remarkably sturdy, though. An attack powerful enough to damage the laser battery itself would have left nothing of the gunner but a pair of boots.
She took a deep breath, willing her stomach to remain calm. To vomit inside a vac suit would be disastrous. Then, fighting revulsion and an unreasoning fear, she stepped forward and dragged the gunner's body from the chair.
By the time she had the corpse stretched out in a corner out of the way, one of her cadets was in the seat and firing. The other cadet looked at Velasco, who gestured aft. The cadet nodded and led the way back into the corridor.
They hadn't gone more than half a dozen steps when the deck vibrated and Velasco stumbled. She steadied herself, then looked at the cadet, who had paused and glanced back. Some instinct made Velasco gesture her forward. The cadet continued on her way, and Velasco returned to the starboard gun.
The cadet who'd taken the controls just moments before was dead. A terrible energy blast had taken away the side of her helmet and much of her left shoulder. Velasco stared, horrified and sickened.
I brought her here. She took that seat because of me.
Her instincts screamed at her to flee, to run inward, to get as close as possible to the center of the ship. She could return to her cell in the brig. She could lock the door and hope for the best.
Instead, she took the cadet by her good arm and tugged. It would have been nice to be gentle, but a human body in a vac suit was a lot of mass to move, and there was no time to be delicate. She dragged the cadet out of the way and sat down in the gunner's seat.
She was immediately startled by how much she could see. The barrel of the laser was huge, thicker than her body, longer than she was tall. It was below her, only blocking a bit of the view. The hull was cut away from her on every side, angled outward, giving her almost a hundred and fifty degrees of vision. The stars were bright and sharp, beautiful enough for a person's last sight.
Then an alien ship appeared on her right, flashed past at high speed and close range, and vanished. Another ship raced past in pursuit. It was gone before she recognized the runabout.
She reached for the controls, a pair of handles with a trigger on the right-hand side. She twisted the handles and her seat moved along with the gun barrel. She was always above the barrel, looking where the gun would fire. She swivelled the barrel left and right, then up and down. It was physically difficult, requiring a couple of kilos of force at least. It was surprisingly easy, though, considering her own mass and the mass of the gun barrel. The chair and the gun had a remarkably precise balance.
Motion to one side caught her eye. Several alien ships were coming together, joining up to form a larger vessel. She hesitated, wondering if they were in range. But the range of a laser in vacuum was effectively infinite. She remembered that from her Academy days. Atmosphere reduced the effectiveness of laser weapons quite rapidly, but in space, you were only restricted by your ability to aim.
Velasco swivelled the gun around, aimed as best she could, and started shooting.
A couple of shots hit the larger ship, and she saw a red glow as her shots spread across an energy shield. Then she caught a little ship in the last instant before it connected. She blew a sizeable hole right through the little ship, and it collided with the larger craft, then bounced away without linking up. She whooped, then poured more fire into the larger ship. It jerked to the side, and she tracked it, trying to hit it again.
Suddenly a single small ship loomed in front of her, blocking most of her view. She hauled on the handles, swivelling the gun, and mashed the trigger. A dark nozzle on the near side of the alien ship glowed red, heat washed over her, and then her laser burned a long, ragged line right through the hull of the little ship. She sliced the thing in half, and it spun away in two pieces.
"Oh, my god." That was how the cadet had died, she realized. And the cadet before her. It might have even been the same ship.
If I'd been an instant slower …
Another ship loomed, she fired, and it twisted away. She thought she'd burned it at least a bit. She screamed and swore, swivelling the gun back and forth, and sent a few shots after a distant ship. Then another little ship loomed close, and she brought the gun sweeping over. She went too far, the alien weapon glowed, and she brought the gun swinging back. In a distant corner of her mind she told herself to memorize every detail. She had just one chance of coming through the aftermath of the mutiny looking good.
She had to fight like a hero.
The laser burned a hole in the alien ship. A red glow engulfed her, and she sawed the gun frantically back and forth, trying to disable the weapon. The ship jerked to one side and disappeared, but the red glow persisted. Too late she realized there was another alien firing on her. She screamed from a mix of agony and battle fever, feeling her fingers burn inside her gloves as she twisted the handles and brought the laser swinging left. A fat beam of amplified light burned into the side of the alien ship, an instant too late.
Velasco's last thought was a blend of rage and frustration as she realized she would never get to see the alien ship destroyed. Her body jerked back in the seat, her hands releasing the gun controls as the universe turned to fire around her and faded into merciful blackness.
The
Falcon
's cockpit windows glowed red, and the fabric of Kasim's vac suit was suddenly hot against his skin. His hands moved across the control panel, frantically activating thrusters, and the
Falcon
whipped forward and to one side. He nearly hit the
Alexander
, correcting at the last instant and whipping along so close to the hull that just rotating the
Falcon
would have caused a collision. He hadn't had much room to maneuver in this entire battle. Staying close to the
Alexander
and her guns was the only thing that gave him a chance.
Half the steelglass window in front of him was warped now and bubbled from the heat of the alien weapon. It distorted his view, and he leaned to one side to look through the undamaged part of the window. He saw a red glow on the skin of the
Alexander
straight ahead, which told him he had enemy craft on his tail, firing. He twisted the
Falcon
on her axis, flying close along the hull of the
Alexander
, following the curve of the larger ship as he cut underneath her and raced up along the starboard side.
A trio of enemy ships made a lucky guess and came around the
Alexander
to pop out directly in front of him. He swore, braking and firing, and discovered that the last skirmish had cost him a couple more drones. He was down to two lasers, and he was missing one of the drones he'd used for reverse thrust. Instead of slowing the
Falcon
slewed sideways, and he felt a jar of impact as he struck the
Alexander
a glancing blow.
Then he was racing along the spine of the starship, little alien craft surrounding him in a cloud. He jerked and twisted, but he could feel the
Falcon
growing hot around him as alien weapons played across her hull.
The destruction of the
Falcon
was seconds away, and he reached for the maneuvering controls, thinking to bring the ship sharply up and crash it into one of his tormentors. As his hand closed over a thruster control, though, another ship suddenly loomed directly ahead. It was the remaining shuttle, three lasers blazing as it raced toward him. It flashed past above him, so close that he ducked, and he brought the
Falcon
sweeping up in a curve that took him fifty meters from the
Alexander
.
The shuttle twisted and dove in a swarm of enemy craft. The glow of enemy weapons caught the shuttle, then lost it as the shuttle made frantic evasions. A barrage of laser fire took down an alien ship, and a shot from the
Alexander
took down another. Then a drone on the side of the shuttle exploded, and the shuttle spun sideways, out of control.
Kasim snarled and headed into the thick of the fight. The shuttle pilot was back in control, fleeing Earthward, a couple of dozen enemy ships in pursuit. Kasim brought up the rear, cursing as his two lasers seemed to take forever to disable one enemy ship, then another.
Another drone failed on the shuttle, and smoke billowed out from several holes in the hull. The shuttle seemed to lose control, spiraling toward the distant Earth, and the aliens broke off pursuit.
They turned on the
Falcon
instead.
Kasim craned his neck, peering through the ruined window, trying to orient himself. His pursuit of the beleaguered shuttle had taken him far from the
Alexander
. He looped around, trying to spot the ship. The glitter of sunlight reflecting on hulls and the flash of weapons fire caught his eye. He turned toward the battle, but it wasn't the
Alexander
he saw before him. It was a corvette.
He cursed, looking around for the
Alexander
, then hesitated. Alien ships swarmed around the corvette, at least a dozen of them. Why were they bothering?
If the enemy saw this corvette as a threat, then perhaps he should interfere. He remembered a mangled quote from
The Art of War
, which had been popular during his days at the Academy. Don't attack your enemy's forces. Attack your enemy's strategy.
At the very least the corvette might distract some of the horde that swarmed around the
Falcon
.
As he closed in on the corvette he saw an alien craft break apart. The corvette had its laser batteries working, then. Kasim brought the
Falcon
in close, taking a small ship by surprise and crippling it with a barrage of laser fire. He looped around the corvette again and again, adding his fire to that of the warship.
What had been a coordinated attack on the corvette quickly deteriorated into chaos. Ships wheeled and spun in every direction, and he saw a couple of enemy craft collide with each other. He was firing almost constantly, rarely destroying a ship but doing bits of damage here and there and adding to the general confusion.
Lines of fire played across the hull of the
Falcon
, and he watched scorch marks appear on the nose of the ship. He screamed his fury and defiance at the enemy horde, then screamed at the corvette. "I'm giving you a bloody breather. You'd better be doing something with it!"
As if in response, the corvette's main thrusters fired. It raced away, and Kasim cursed. "You're abandoning me, you rotten bastards?"
As he watched, though, the corvette turned in a graceful arc and flew toward the
Alexander
. Kasim whooped and followed.
The corvette looked magnificent as it charged in to the rescue, but the crew had only minimal control. They couldn't aim the lasers, Kasim realized. They could only shoot and hope for the best. The ship could barely maneuver, and it couldn't brake. It was closing on the
Alexander
at high velocity, and it was going to go flying on past.
Well, I can still maneuver.
He raced after the corvette, then overtook it, and a persistent cloud of alien ships swarmed around the
Falcon
. He was taking damage with every passing second. How long before he lost his last thruster, or lost his life? He sensed that, for him, the battle would be over in moments, and he scanned the battlefield for a good way to end it.
Ships were starting to coalesce into a lethal cluster just below the nose of the
Alexander
. The forward laser batteries were no longer firing, and the aliens were gathering to exploit that weakness. Kasim aimed the
Falcon
at the cluster and accelerated hard. He screamed, knowing he was about to die, and fought the urge to squeeze his eyes shut. He wanted to see that last, glorious moment of impact.
He was seconds away from the cluster when it started to break up. He just had time to scream, "No!" before a missile flashed past him. One side of the cluster exploded, shrapnel tore into the other ships, and he rammed one of the small ships straight-on. He slammed into the underside of the
Alexander
, crushing the little alien ship like an acorn between a hammer and an anvil.
The impact slammed him against his seat straps. He saw starbursts, and when they cleared he saw the hull of the
Alexander
a few meters away. He hit the braking thrusters to back away, and nothing happened.
The
Alexander
rotated, and for a moment he was looking down the barrel of a rail gun. Then the nose of the ship loomed in front of him. He could see a steelglass window, and the shape of a figure in a vac suit staring out at him. The crewman swung a heavy wrench, hammering out some sort of signal on the bulkhead beside him.
The
Falcon
continued to drift backward, turning as it drifted, and he saw alien ships flying to pieces around him. The
Alexander
was firing its rail guns into the swarm that had hounded him.
Then, beyond the swarm, the corvette arrived at last.
If the aliens had kept their nerve for an instant longer, Kasim was sure the ploy would have failed. For an instant the corvette seemed to fill the sky, powerful lasers firing in every direction, and in that instant the attack broke. Alien ships fled in every direction.
The corvette was past in moments, its velocity taking it beyond the battle and into empty space. The ship began to rotate, the tail swinging around so it could begin the laborious process of returning.
It vanished from sight as the
Falcon
, completely crippled, continued to turn. Kasim watched the stars sweep past through the bubbled and blackened cockpit window. Then he saw the
Alexander
again. The warship was a mess, nearly as badly shot up as the
Falcon
. Great tears showed in the skin of the ship, and he saw nothing but smoke through the port lounge windows. Still, the ship lived.
Bright points of light shone from enemy ships as they hurried away. At first they fled blindly, but he saw them joining together into clusters before continuing their retreat.
Closer in, he saw debris and burned wreckage. No other trace of the alien fleet remained.
The last of the fleeing alien ships faded into the distance and disappeared. The battle was over. Earth was saved.