Traitor (Rebel Stars Book 2) (27 page)

"We need to act," MacAdams said. "Right now. Before that thing backs us into a corner."

Webber pounded a frantic drumbeat on the dash. "Get out the drones."

Rada laced her fingers together and pressed her knuckles over her mouth. "We'll have to send everything at once. Try to overwhelm them. Otherwise, it'll pick off the drones one by one."

"We won't send them to attack. We'll program them to make a run for it. Try to get one out of jamming range. One's all we need, right?"

"That might actually work. Meanwhile, we can outpace the drones. If the UFO depletes itself running them down, we just might be able to knock it out."

She launched the first drone, giving the
Tine
a quick, whip-like yaw to impart that much more momentum to the departing fighter. They had five in all. She sent each one in a different vector, maximizing the space the enemy would need to cross to hunt them all down.

After a moment's hesitation, the UFO made to chase the drone veering off at the most extreme angle. In response, Rada sent a simple course adjustment to the other drones, using a stream of photons that could still be sent and received despite the jamming. She didn't want to use these signals more than she had to—they were prefaced by a cycling key code, but if the enemy deciphered that, they could turn the drones against the
Tine
—but it made sense to do so at the start of the scramble, when the drones had the most time to make use of the adjustment.

The enemy closed steadily on the first drone. As it neared, it slowed, peppering the unmanned vessel with enough missiles to keep the drone honest. Fully on the defensive, the drone made minimal counterattacks. The UFO edged closer and closer. The laser arced between it and the drone. The drone vanished in a shimmer of white heat.

Rada sent a second photon burst instructing the drones to launch all missiles before the enemy drew within what appeared to be effective laser range. The
Tine
built space between itself and its foe, but the jamming remained constant.

The alien swooped upon the next drone, faster than expected. Again, as it came up on the drone's tail, it slowed. The drone launched everything it had. A garden of yellow flowers opened in the space between the two vessels. Red lines zapped at incoming missiles. Once these were toast, the UFO turned its lasers on the drone. The beam pulsed several times without effect—they were flying through the smoke and gas of the burst rockets, which appeared to be giving the laser some trouble. As soon as they cleared the debris, the laser flicked again and the drone winked off the tactical screen.

It had barely taken two minutes for the enemy to knock out the first two drones. It was moving faster than Rada had banked on. Killing quicker, too. It was already moving on the third drone. Based on its course, the
Tine
would be the logical next target. After that…

Rada powered down the main engines and diverted everything to the lateral thrusters. Fore, they fired to port. Aft, to starboard. Still careering forward, the
Tine
began to spin like a pinwheel, faster and faster.

Webber glanced across the bridge. "What are you doing? Hoping they'll get so dizzy watching us that they can't shoot straight?"

Dry-mouthed, Rada sipped water from the tube in her console. "What's the first rule of space defense?"

"Never get in a fight with the guy with the lasers?"

MacAdams' brow creased. "It's space."

"I'm betting the same rule applies on the ground, too!"

"Your first resource in space defense
is
space."

"Right," Rada said. "The more space you have between you and your opponent, the more time you have to react. To maneuver, or to put counters between his missiles and your ship. A calculated use of space is the key to winning every battle. It's no different for the Swimmers." She called up video of the UFO taking down the previous drone. "See? As space compresses between them and their target, they slow down. Even with their laser, they have to give themselves time to react to any surprises."

"So their ship's not invincible," Webber said. "Now if only we had a dreadnought or fifty."

"We're cutting down its reaction time. See?"

"By spinning around like a dog with a bee up its ass?"

On the screens, the enemy looped after the third drone. Rada sent a photon burst to the other two drones, recalling them.

"You're running down a street. You've got a rock in your hand. You drop the rock straight down. What happens?"

Webber shrugged broadly. "It falls. In an arc. Depending on how fast you're running."

She jogged from the bridge, drawing surprised looks, speaking into the microphone embedded in her suit's collar. "Now imagine you're still running forward, but you start spinning. As fast as you can. And when you release the rock, you release it behind you."

"It sails," MacAdams said through her suit's speaker. "Oh, Frodo's ghost. You're going to kill yourself, aren't you?"

"There's no other way to do this. Someone has to be the rock, and someone has to be the thrower."

She weaved down the cramped hallways to the much smaller port-side cockpit. On its tactical display, the UFO was making its final approach on the third drone. As crimson lasers licked between the vessels, Rada sealed off her third of the ship. What she hadn't mentioned was that a good throw required a long lever. Praying she understood the Motion Arrestors well enough for this to work, she began to separate her third from the other two parts of the
Tine
, extending to the side on a long, sturdy arm—but stopping before the separation was complete.

She was now distanced from the
Tine
's center mass by three times as much distance as when the ship had been a seamless whole. Without the MA, the strain of the acceleration would have ripped the connecting arm to splinters. The ship continued to whirl around its Y-axis, building more and more speed.

"Got the picture?" she said through the ship's internal comms. "We're going to need to dump all our missiles at them, too. Choke their lasers' firing planes with dust. And keep their missiles off me."

The third drone died soundlessly. With the
Tine
's main engines off, the Swimmers would be on them fast. Rada had tactical up, running a countdown on the UFO's ETA. When it crossed the outer boundary of a faint green sphere, she gave one last command to the two surviving drones, which were still inbound. They launched everything they had toward the estimated convergence.

Rada sealed her helmet to the neck of her suit. Her breathing was the loudest thing in her ears. On tactical, the Swimmers, the
Tine
, the missiles, and the drones all shrank on the same point in space. The console beeped as the UFO neared the
Tine
's effective engagement range.

"If this fails, you know the worst part?" Webber said through comms. "Nobody's going to know how awesome it was."

"Yeah," MacAdams said. "But if we die, what a view we'll have."

Rada pulled her eyes off tactical for a look at the view of physical space. It was spinning so fast the stars were no more than white and blue streaks, like an endless meteor shower, or rain made of light. Her breath caught in her throat.

"Launching missiles," Webber said.

Rockets whisked from the
Tine
. The Swimmer vessel unleashed a storm of its own.

"Good luck," MacAdams murmured.

"Am I doing this?" Rada said. She laughed. "I'm doing this."

With no chance in hell of getting the timing on her own, she left it to the computer. A red light flashed. At the instant she was pointed directly at the UFO, her third of the ship separated from the
Tine
. She tried to swear, but her engines kicked in at full burn; suddenly free of the MA's influence, the acceleration shoved her into her chair with brutal strength. Her ship still had a lot of forward momentum to overcome, but the
Tine
's spin flung her backwards much, much faster than should have been possible. The space between her and the aliens compressed immediately.

She wished more than anything she could hear the conversation on their bridge.

The enemy was coming on hard. The vanguard of missiles slammed into each other, exploding like dying stars. Twirling straight toward the mess, Rada's heart was going even faster than her ship.

The Swimmers vectored upward to bypass the worst of the smoke. Rada sprayed missiles to hem them in. The enemy braked, meaning to buy itself more space. She punched the thrusters. Spinning as hard as she was, they flickered on and off, engaging only when she was pointed toward the intercept. Lasers chewed through the clouds of missiles. The UFO tipped up, as if considering breaking off and giving itself more room to work with. Then it straightened out and plunged toward Rada.

Forced to pull a 180 loop like a normal ship, the other two-thirds of the
Tine
was well behind her. Chains of missiles exploded all around her, embedded in tiny dogfights of their own. She rushed toward the spike of the enemy ship. And crossed within laser range.

A flash and a klaxon—they'd hit her with the laser, but she was still spinning so fast the weapon hadn't had time to do more than scorch her hull. She fired the last of her missiles. And opened up with her kinetics.

The laser struck her a second time, then a third. Every time she revolved, her guns spat gobs of bullets, pulsing like a neutron star, a deathball buzzsaw careening toward her foe. A large flock of missiles was gathering to the enemy's port and upwards side. Rada raked fire across its starboard and lower edges, then fired at the ship itself. The UFO jerked away from the incoming rounds, moving up and to port. There, its swarming missiles—unable to communicate with it due to the jamming—exploded in a series of defensive bursts, meaning to take out the human rockets.

The enemy vessel was engulfed in flames.

Rada pumped rounds ahead of the explosion. The UFO rushed free, trailing smoke behind it. A laser flashed, stymied by the clouds of gas. Bullets shredded the cup-like aft of the ship. It turned away, boosting sluggishly. The laser pulsed again, little more than a diffuse glow. An incoming missile slammed into the side of the Swimmer ship.

A spherical cloud of flame consumed it whole. Rada threw her hands up and whooped. Cheers rang through the comm.

"Webber?" she said. "MacAdams?"

"Rada?" Webber sounded highly surprised. "Hey, Rada! The comms are back up!"

"Quit wasting bandwidth on me and send out a Needle!"

A moment of silence. "Done. Video of the entire fight is on its way to Toman." Webber broke into adrenaline-fueled giggles. "Holy shit! Why didn't they break off?"

"Came at them too fast." Rada pulled off her helmet, sucking down the relatively fresh air of the cockpit. "Cut down their space before they knew what was happening. For all I know, they
wanted
me to get close enough for them to turn their lasers on me. But if any of their friends saw that, it won't work a second time."

"You hurt?" MacAdams said. "Looked like they landed a few shots on your hide."

"Toman's paint shop is going to be busy, but the hull seems fine. Let's link back up and bring in the surviving drones. We have to get out of here."

She thrust against the spin of her ship, slowly coming about sunward. After weeks of flying with the MA, working without it felt sluggish, punishing. It seemed to take forever to get on course, match pace with the
Tine
, and wait for the computer to guide the two pieces back together. They combined with a series of heavy metal clunks. Rada unbuckled and opened the door to the main section.

She bumped right into Webber. He grabbed her shoulders, shaking her, grinning like a loon. "Do you understand what just happened? You're probably the first human to kill a Swimmer since Walt Lawson!"

"I have no idea how to feel about that."

"Okay, then I'll feel it for you." He flung his hands above his head. "Woo! I'm the greatest!"

MacAdams appeared in the hall, his grin so sharky he looked ready to swallow a seal. He swept her up in a hug, lifting her feet from the ground. He smelled like fresh sweat.

"You're still here," he said. "Okay,
now
I believe."

"Mmf," Rada said into his collarbone. Her feet touched the floor. He stepped back, knuckling the corner of his eye. She stuttered with laughter. "MacAdams, are you crying?"

"That would only be about the tenth-most unbelievable thing to happen today." He ran his hand down his face, sniffing. "We did it, people! Full footage of an unprovoked Swimmer attack. Let's see what the govs think about FinnTech being in bed with a species that's conspired to stop us from ever leaving our own star."

"You really think it'll make a difference?" Webber said. "The return of the Swimmers should have been the biggest news since…well, the first time they crashed the party. But everyone just shrugged."

"They didn't want to face what the Swimmers' return could mean for us," Rada said. "But now that we have hard proof of hostile intent—"

A klaxon blared through the ship—the alert, stressed warble of an unidentified vessel. Rada flinched. "Incoming!"

She bolted for the bridge. Behind her, Webber said, "Please tell me this one's human. If that's another Swimmer, I'm registering a complaint with the Department of Totally Unfair Shit."

Rada hit the bridge. She ordered a defensive posture into the computer, then flicked her gaze across the screens. The vessel was a ways out of combat range, but it was moving on an inbound course. A string of profanity rattled through her mind. They were down to two drones and had expended all but 12% of their munitions. Even if it was a human ship, their only chance would be to outrun it. If it was another Swimmer fighter, they'd have a better chance of surviving by ejecting themselves from the airlock and backstroking toward Neptune.

Visual cohered on the main screen. The ship they'd destroyed had been a long spike protruding from a bowl rimmed with other spikes, like the flower of a desert plant. This new ship was far sturdier, oblong and segmented like a squat caterpillar.