Dark Space: The Invisible War (29 page)

“Clearly she’s not infallible,” Ethan replied, “so we’re going to have to use some of our own detection systems.”
Looking up from the grid Ethan called down to the gunnery station. “
Weapons! I need our forward batteries firing in steady pattern to cover our trajectory. Clear a swath. If there’s anything cloaked ahead of us I want to know about it, and in case they’ve laid any mines, fire off a torpedo every fifteen seconds with a timer of the same.”

“Yes, sir!” Deck Officer Gorvan replied.

“Comms, tell the Guardians before they leave the hangar that we need an escort to the gate, not a bunch of loose cannons. They are to flank us to the gate, breaking off to engage
only
when the enemy gets to within five klicks of us.”

Ethan heard the comm officer relaying his orders, and then he turned back to Caldin. Noting the frown on her face, he asked, “What now?”

“If you use up all of our torpedoes now, what are we going to do when that fleet reaches us?”

“Do the math. At current speed we’re less than ten minutes to the gate, counting time to decelerate. We’ll use no more than forty torpedoes. That’s less than a tenth of what we have in the arsenal, let alone what’s already loaded in the torp bays. We’ll be fine.”

Caldin nodded, but by her pursed lips, Ethan could tell she disagreed. That was okay. Ethan didn’t require his crew to always agree with him, just so long as they always obeyed.

*  *  *

Alara and Captain Reese shot out the back of the
Defiant
in tandem, flying out over the rocky red surface of Forlax II, a dymium-rich rock with a thick, toxic atmosphere that was swirled with white clouds. Below those clouds they could see high mountain ranges, and sparkling between them lay vast lakes of methane that caught and reflected the red light of the system’s sun.

Just visible over the moon’s horizon was Forlax itself—a rocky giant with thick red rings of asteroids, which Forlax II orbited. Both of the gates in the Forlax system were found in a low orbit around Forlax II, since the intention had always been to develop the moon for dymium mining. Alara shook her head to clear away those thoughts. She wasn’t sure which of her two sets of memories they’d come from, but they weren’t helping her now.

Tearing her eyes away from the view, Alara studied the position of enemy contacts on the grid as she followed Captain Reese in a tight turn to starboard which would bring them onto the
Defiant’s
flight path. She was comforted to see that the nearest enemy ship was more than a thousand klicks away.

But even as she watched the group of enemy contacts, their positions abruptly changed, all of them shifting by more than a thousand kilometers in an instant. Alara blinked and tapped the screen. “Ethan! What the frek? How is the enemy suddenly right on top of us? Did they jump to SLS?”

“The contacts on your gravidar appear to be cloaked, Kiddie. Their locations are being updated manually from the
Defiant
.”

“Great!”

Alara saw the red bracket pairs appearing all over her HUD as they supposedly came into range, but she tried to ignore them. If the enemy location data wasn’t up to date, it would be dangerous to trust.

A flash of light caught Alara’s eye as she swung onto the
Defiant’s
flight path, and she saw a torpedo exploding ahead of the cruiser. That explosion abruptly blossomed into a much larger starburst of light, and Alara blinked spots out of her eyes as her canopy polarized a second too late.

The
Defiant
had just hit a cloaking mine with a blind torpedo.
Lucky escape,
Alara thought.

And then the red contacts on her gravidar disappeared and reappeared all around her, but this time they were accompanied by viuals of the enemy ships. She saw swarms of enemy fighters de-cloaking all around them, followed by two Sythian battleships.

Alara’s eyes widened as a wave of purple stars began spinning toward them from the nearest battleship, and then space was alive with the streaking orange glows of shell fighters’ engines as they crisscrossed through the Guardian’s formation.

“Live contact! Break and engage, Guardians!” Captain Reese said.

Alara’s missile lock alarm squealed abruptly. “Frek!” she hissed, stomping on her right rudder. She turned straight into the
Defiant’s
flight path and soon she cruised low over the hull, watching the cruiser’s batteries swiveling. Torrents of red laser fire flashed out as those batteries found their targets and tracked passing enemy fighters. And then two sets of thick blue dymium beams shot out from the
Defiant
, one for each of the enemy battleships. Those beams sounded through her nova’s simulated sound system with a deep, reverberating
hum
.

Alara forced herself to ignore the distractions of the greater battle going on around her. She concentrated on the
beep-beep-beeping
of missile lock warnings. As the beeps sped up to nearly a solid tone, Alara activated her grav lifts and bounced her fighter straight off the
Defiant’s
hull, leaving the enemy missiles to go streaking by underneath her. They slammed into the
Defiant
with a bright flash of light, and another dozen missiles followed that one, impacting one after another on the top hull of the cruiser with a steady roar of simulated explosions.

Alara grimaced, and the next thing she heard over the comms was, “Guardians! The
Defiant’s
shields won’t take much more of that!”

Stepping on her left rudder, Alara pulled a sharp turn to get on the tail of the nearest enemy fighter and then she fired off two quick fire-linked blasts from her lasers. Both volleys hit, and the shell exploded brilliantly.

“Ruh-kah!” she whooped as she sailed through the explosion. Debris pelted her canopy, hissing off her shields. She targeted the next nearest enemy fighter and pulled up hard to find it in her sights. A quick look at the gravidar showed tiny green nova fighters splintering off in all directions to follow the enemy fighters, leaving the
Defiant
to race away from the engagement at top speed. Alara frowned at that, and then the comm crackled.

“Guardians, you are
not
to abandon the
Defiant’s
flight path!” Captain Reese said. “Stick with your wingmates and keep up with our objective
.
Swat away any shells that get too close!”

Alara heard a few affirmative clicks and saw the green icons of their fighters flashing on the grid to indicate they were the ones who’d activated their comms. All of the novas turned back to follow the
Defiant
—except for one. Alara focused on the straggler and tapped the icon with her finger for more information. It was Guardian Twelve—
Stix
.

Abruptly, that icon shone a brighter green to indicate Stix had activated her comms, and Alara heard her say, “I’m cut off! They’re all over me!”

Alara stepped on her rudder. “Hold on, Stix, I’m coming!” She lined up on the nearest enemy fighter chasing Twelve, but quickly saw that Stix was right. There were no less than a dozen shells on her tail, and like a total greeny she was running in a straight line away from them as fast as she could.

“Go evasive, Twelve!” Alara said.

“They’re locking on!” Stix screamed.

“I said break!”

Alara thumbed over to her own missiles and tried for a lock at extreme range, but before she could even line up her target, the enemy fighters fired as one, and an entire wave of shining purple stars shot out after Twelve.

“Frek! Wait for them to get close, Twelve, and then go evasive! They can’t track sudden changes in direction.”

“I’m going to try to outrun them!” Twelve said, sounding panicked.

“You can’t outrun missiles, Stix!” Alara saw the missiles drawing dangerously close to Twelve and she shook her head. She fired off a hailfire with a weak target lock and saw her target break out of the enemy formation to evade. Alara gritted her teeth and thumbed back over to lasers to fire at the next nearest enemy, but the enemy fighter was out of range, and her shot went wide.

Now the missiles were seconds from reaching Twelve and she was still flying straight. “Break, Stix!”

“I’m gonna run! Don’t worry! Meet you back at the transfer station.”

Alara’s brow furrowed, and that was when she realized that Stix had lost it. She’d suffered a mental break. The missiles drew within a hundred meters of her, and Alara screamed into the comm. “Eject, Stix! Eject!”

Abruptly the space where Guardian Twelve had been flashed with the light of multiple explosions, and her icon winked off the grid.

Alara screamed incoherently and began pouring laser fire after the enemy fighters who’d shot her down. They began coming about to meet her head on, but Alara didn’t care, she just stabbed the trigger over and over again, strafing the enemy formation. Alara winged two shells and sliced a third one into two pieces before her comms crackled with. “It’s too late to help her, Two.” That was Captain Reese speaking. “Get back here before they cut you off, too!”

“Frek you!” Alara muttered under her breath.

Guardian One went on, “Stick together, Guardians! You want to go blazing off on your own? That’s what happens!”

“Frek you, Reese!” Alara said again, but this time she said it over the comms. “I didn’t see you breaking off to help her!”

“Get back in formation, Cadet, or you’re going to be left behind.”

Alara studied the gravidar, noticing now that the
Defiant
was getting very close to the exit gate. Pulling back hard on the stick for a loop over, Alara pushed her throttle past the stops into full overdrive. There came a resultant roar from the engines, and she watched the nova’s acceleration jump from 145 to 185 KAPS. At that speed it wouldn’t take long to catch up to the
Defiant
and its novas, since they were all decelerating in preparation to enter SLS.

But that also made it easy for the enemy ships to catch up with them and make another pass. Alara saw fighters and battleships alike racing up behind the
Defiant,
and she grimaced. “They’re coming around for another pass!”

Alara saw streams of red laser fire erupting from the
Defiant’s
turrets, blasting pursuing shell fighters by the dozens. The accompanying explosions lit up the star map and Alara peered down on Forlax II to see the space above the planet peppered with the flashing light of explosions, making the swirling clouds appear fraught with lightning.

Yet for every dozen shells that winked off the grid, another dozen swarmed out of empty space to take their place. Alara eyed the spot where the enemy fighters were appearing, thinking that there must have been a cloaked Sythian carrier there.

 
“Guardians, disengage your thrusters and show them your teeth!” Captain Reese said.

“Our teeth?” one pilot asked.

“Flip your fighters 180 degrees and shoot those frekkers down!” Guardian One clarified.

Alara saw the nova fighters ahead of her do as they were told, disengaging their thrusters to maintain their current heading while firing bright red streams of fire-linked lasers at the waves of pursuing shells. Alara was about to turn her fighter around to join them when she noticed friendly fire flashing close by her cockpit. “Hoi! Watch your aim! I’m still out here!”