Twin Stars 1: Ascension (14 page)

“Hold on!” Vaela raised a hand to stop him. “If he does that, why don’t we just jump to hyperspace? You know- force him to chase after us? We don’t need to move, just not be here.”

“Well,” he scratched his chin as he considered it. “First, we’re almost blind in hyperspace. Second, we don’t know how blind he is. Third…well, there’s a big risk of us getting separated and we’ll be stuck in there for a while as our drives recharge.”

“Isn’t it better than dying here?”

Leederman shrugged. “Not up to me. Take it up with the captain.”

Vaela wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly feeling very cold despite the temperature regulating smartsuit she wore. “We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

“Well y’no, everyone’s gotta go sometime.” He said, making no attempt to reassure her. “But, I have seen Ping An get us out of worse.”

Vaela shivered, shaking her head. “I wish I’d never agreed to come on this stupid mission!”

Leederman grinned at her from across the holographic, the blue-green glow giving his face an almost demonic cast. “You shouldn’t have joined a pirate clan, we do stupid stuff like this all the time.”

* * *

Vaela found Ping An in the ship’s commissary, sipping a drink and looking thoughtfully at an image of the space outside superimposed over a wall to create the illusion of a window for a room in the middle of the ship. The
Belleflower
actually had very few real windows, but almost every room had a good view of the outside if the occupants wished it. Nearby, at a distance just barely visible, the
Castille
hung in space, it looked like a snail with three shells instead of one.

“A crown for your thoughts?”

There was a delay, then Ping An turned to look at Vaela as the latter sat down to join her Captain.

“Hmmm?” She said sleepily, then gave a faint smile. “Oh, hey.”

“You’re still in that conference link?” Vaela asked, taking a moment to put in an order for some coffee through her AR link.

Ping An shook her head. “Nah,” she said. “That ended a while ago.”

“Anything good?” Vaela asked, hopeful.

Ping An’s sour look put a quick end to that idea.

So, Vaela told her about her idea, the one about playing peek-a-boo using hyperspace to lose the cruiser. An old beat-up serving bot brought her coffee just as she was finishing.

“Leederman’s right,” the pirate captain told her. “Won’t work. Plus, only the Belleflower and one other ship have more than one hyperdrive module, so we’d lose two ships, and then be even weaker when he came to finish us off. One ship could try it, maybe sit in Hyperspace and hide for a while, but not two or more.”

“So, why don’t we just vanish, then?” Vaela asked. “Leave the rest of the fleet behind?”

“I thought about it,” Ping An said. “Especially after I heard Bella’s plan. But, we don’t know if that thing can see us in hyperspace, and it’s too risky.”

“Is Bella’s plan…that bad?”

Ping An sighed. “You want the good news, or the bad news?”

“Good news.”

“Well,” Ping An said. “The good news is that our new leader -Bella- has a plan to try catch that ship the next time it pays us a visit. Which should be really soon.”

Plans were good, Vaela was all for them. “And…the bad news?”

“The plan is…that we’re going to make it look like we’re running for the jump point beacon. Most of the ships are going to travel ahead, but two ships are going to stay behind as bait. When he comes for the slow ships, the others will turn around and attack him. This is bad, by the way, because whoever stays behind will probably die before the other ships can arrive.”

Vaela stared at her, aghast- “That’s a horrible plan!”

“Yep,” said Ping An casually, taking a sip of her drink. “I thought so too.”

“Wait,” a thought struck Vaela. “Who’s going to stay behind?”

Ping An made an upward sweeping gesture of the room around them with one hand. “We can launch our drones the moment he arrives, and they’re to keep him busy. They’d be useless otherwise, it would take them too long to get here. The
Stag Beetle
is our escort- Bella is cleaning house and Captain Andrews made the list.”

“A very horrible plan!”

Ping An shrugged. “Tell that to our new boss.”

They sat in silence for a time, Vaela weighing her options. She could ask for a transfer to one of the other ships, but how would Ping An take it? She hadn’t signed on for this, and she deserved as much.

Ping An must have seen it on her face, because when the Captain finally spoke she said- “The plan’s chances of success are pretty good, if we can disable her drive sections. On the other hand, the chances of us surviving…not so much.” Then she looked at Vaela directly, “If you want off, just give the word. Nobody will think less of you for it.”

It was her attitude that surprised Vaela- “How can you be so calm about this?!?” Vaela said, fighting to keep her feelings in check, and losing. “You’re going to die!”

Again, Ping An made a nonchalant motion. “Been there, done that a few times. Still here.”

“I don’t know how you can do it,” Vaela said, feeling the hot tears start. “How can you be so casual with your life?”

Ping An took another sip from her drink, “Did I ever tell you I used to be a first officer in my colony’s defense fleet?”

Vaela sniffed, “But, you’re so young?”

“I was younger,” she said thoughtfully. “The Tester Auxiliary Home Defense Fleet was made up of volunteers from the different asteroid mining colonies in my home system. Just a bunch of kids and old people ferrying folks around and rescuing stray satellites.”

“I joined up when I was fifteen to get out of my grandparent’s place, and by the time I was seventeen I was officer on one of their ships- the
Naiad’s Kiss
.” To Vaela’s surprise, Ping An smiled and she could see the happy memories expressed on her friend’s face. “Sure, she was old, but she was a great ship, and we were like family. Sophie, Solantro, Nan, Captain Weeks- we did it all. Nan used to be a real navy man, so he kept us kids in line. Never wanted to be an officer, though, so the Captain gave me the job.”

Vaela, calming down, couldn’t help but be swept along in the story. “I bet you were pretty good at it.”

“Yep,” Ping An said, still staring out at the stars. “I’d like to think so.”

“So…What happened?” Vaela said, curiosity getting the better of her. “How did you go from there to…here?”

The smile on Ping An’s face faded, she took another sip and then looked at Vaela sadly. “Taxes.”

“Taxes?” Vaela parroted.

“Some fool in the colonial government decided he didn’t want to pay the new Imperial System Taxes,” Ping An let her gaze drift back to the stars, she must have seen the effect her anger was having on Vaela when the young woman pulled away. “He got all the people behind him- told them stories about how we just needed to stand up to them, declare our independence and they’d back off. Stupid.” She said the last word like a curse.

“We sent word to the Empire telling them that we were through. We were so convinced they’d let us go. After all, we were just a small mining colony without any planets in the system. Nothing of value except a few rocks, and even those weren’t worth that much.”

“But, they didn’t.” Vaela continued, knowing where this was going.

“No,” Ping An took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They didn’t. The government assembled us at the jump point, ready to fight. We knew we were going to die if they came through, but we’d heard the speeches and listened to the plans the admirals made. Admirals.” She laughed bitterly at that word. “Just a bunch of old men playing soldier like the rest of us.”

“I was afraid, we all were, but none of us showed it. They were like a bunch of real fleet people, and I was so proud of them. I was sure we could win if we only tried. All they had to do was give us the chance, let us fight…”

She looked at Vaela again, all traces of anger gone, and a deep, haunted look in her eyes. “The Imperial ships didn’t use the beacon, though, they just appeared right over our colonies and let them have it. They didn’t even offer surrender, they just destroyed half the colonies and then told the rest to get in line and smarten up.

“It took us three days to get home from the jump point, and by the time we did it was all over. We listened, though. We listened and heard the whole thing as we rushed home. We could still contact our families- get the news from them, find out what was happening. But, one at a time, they just...stopped....answering....our links.”

“Ping An,” Vaela reached out to touch her friend’s arm. “I’m so sorry.”

But the Captain just shook her head, clearly forcing the memories away. “There was nothing left when I returned. Tester Colony 80 was an empty shell, and everyone I knew was gone. I just couldn’t stay there any longer, so I hopped the first transport out and headed for the frontier.” She said. “The rest, I think you can guess.”

Vaela nodded slowly. It was a tale not unlike her own, she reflected, she too had fallen on the wrong side of Imperial Law and been forced to flee. In her case, it was a group of student radicals who had used her talents for breaking into computer systems to gain access to university databases and try to expose corruption. She’d been in love; she’d been stupid; and when the whole thing came down around them, she’d been the one left to be caught. Now she understood why she felt such a kinship to this woman who sat across from her, she’d felt it almost from the moment they’d met. Both of them were victims of circumstance, who’d been betrayed by the people they believed in. It left them distant from others in some ways- alone.

She wasn’t going to give up on Ping An so easily, Vaela decided.

“You’ll do it, won’t you?” She asked, searching for the answer in Ping An’s face. “You’ll get through this.”

Ping An looked at her curiously, then smiled. “Yeah, I will.”

“Then I’ve made up my mind,” Vaela said with new determination. “I’m staying.”

“Oh?” the lady pirate asked, clearly somewhat amused. “Feeling brave, are we?”

“No, not at all.” Vaela answered, “I just want to be where the luckiest person in the fleet is.” She looked Ping An in the eye. “And that, is right here.”

* * *

“What’ve you got for us, Betsey?”

The morphic woman pivoted around, looking up as Vaela and Ping An entered the bridge.

“Everything’s quiet, Captain. We’re trailing about a hundred thousand km behind the rest of the fleet, ten kilometers off from the
Stag Beetle
. It’s been like this for hours, and there’s no sign of trouble yet.” She shrugged, “At this rate, we’ll get to the jump point without any trouble.”

Ping An looked at the monitors and nodded- “Keep up the wishful thinking.”

“Maybe they were damaged,” Vaela said, feeling a bit hopeful. “They could have given up, you know?”

Ping An killed that idea with a curt shake of her head. “No, they’re coming back. Leederman, got anything?”

When there was a pause instead of an answer, Ping An turned to look at her operations man- “Well?”

Leederman seemed to Vaela like he was trying to decide what to say, and then finally he said- “Boss, I think there’s something going on out there.”

“Show me.”

Between the command station and where Leederman sat a holodisplay suddenly appeared showing icons representing the two ships in the middle. Then it expanded to also show the fleet ahead of them, and then zoomed out again until all the ships were just small blue dots with notations. At that point, a yellow dot appeared as well, far ahead of the fleet’s course and to the left about forty-five degrees.

“I’ve been seeing that sensor contact there for the past couple hours. First it was here.” The yellow spot shifted to a location directly ahead of their course, but still far away. “Then it was here.” It moved to forty-five degrees to the right of their course. “Then over here to the left, where it is now. It’s way ahead of us, on the edge of our sensor range.”

“I see,” Ping An looked at the display carefully. “Did you confirm it with the other ships?”

Leederman shrugged. “I tried, but their sensors aren’t as good as ours. This system is made to track small objects like fighters and missiles at extreme range, but theirs are meant for larger things. By the time I told them where to refocus and find it, the target had moved.”

“So, it’s small?” Vaela asked, not sure what all this meant.

“Not small,” Ping An corrected. “Just far away.”

“From the way it’s moving around, it’s gotta be the cruiser,” Leederman said. “But why would it just dance around in front of us like that? Why not just come right in?”

“Could he be sizing us up?” Betsey offered.

“Maybe…” Ping An said thoughtfully. “Leederman, get me Bella.”

A moment later, the hawkish face of the new Squadron Leader appeared on a holo-window in front of Ping An. She looked tired to Vaela, like she’d just been woken up.

“What is it, Zhang?” The woman asked, clearly not happy.

“Bella, we need to regroup.” Ping An told her directly. “We’re going to add a few gees of speed and join you- there’s something going on.”