Edge of Redemption (A Star Too Far Book 3) (22 page)

“Course?” William asked.

“Back from where they came.”

William felt the grin growing on his face. “Kyong, you’ve got thirty minutes.” He slapped Huron’s arm. “Finish it up and get everyone aboard. We’ve got a target.”

*

W
illiam switched the screen back and watched as the mining tender pulled away. The thought that he’d been betrayed was behind him. The man who betrayed him, the man he’d thought closer than a brother, was dead and gone. That moment was gone, now just the flux for what lay ahead. The bead of the weld was rolling down, cementing the actions before him.

“Kyong says one more burst,” Shay said quietly.

“After that, it’s secure,” William replied and called up the nav plot. He watched the planned arcs as they spread through the system. With a tender tap he brought up the backup plot just in case the mining tender didn’t blink.

“Acceleration rising,” Bryce said. “It’ll blink in thirty minutes.”

Grgur stood at the edge of the room with both hands firmly planted in a set of white mitts. His eyes spoke of violence and his face was set in a grin.

“Don’t get too excited,” William said. “We don’t know if they’ll take the bait.”

Grgur straightened himself up.

William watched as the systems—once destroyed—came online. He looked up from the screen and scanned the walls of the bridge. The once shimmering nanite layer had solidified. He felt better, but only a little. The ship was more fragile than before and he knew it. “Kyong?”

Shay spoke quietly and nodded to William. “She’s ready.”

The system view showed the slender mining tender slowly gaining velocity. The projected arc changed to a course that sent it out of the system.

The icons for the two hostiles glowed a halo of question marks. The last known data came from reflected light. They wouldn’t really know anything until they blinked.

William watched the two ships and replayed the course on his console. His eyes darted across the screen. It could work.

“Shay, sound it.”

The tone of the
Garlic
changed as the crew shifted into combat stances. The lights dimmed while bulkheads were sealed. The reactor danced up to a higher level and the Haydn began to sing. The ship, baptized in fire, was being born again.

The bridge crew watched the icons move in silence. The mining tender, bracketed in green, continued to pull away at a steep angle from the
Garlic
. The course would send it towards Earth: a location that, even if it wasn’t destroyed, it would never reach.

Grgur turned and squinted up at the screen.

“
If
they take the bait,” William said, “then the
Gallipoli
won’t be able to turn around and hit us. If we try to take ‘em both on, then we’ll get stomped.”

Bryce nodded without taking his eyes off his display.

“Ain’t that right, Bryce?” Shay said, nudging him with an elbow.

“Blink coming up,” Bryce said, ignoring the jibe.

“Here we go, people. Kyong, is it ready?” William asked.

“It’s ready,” Kyong’s voice replied.

Then the icon was gone. The visual display showed nothing in the space where the mining tender was.

“Projected blink should register with the hostiles in eighteen minutes,” Bryce said.

The ripple of the Haydn drive flowed through real space like a pebble in a pond. As a beacon, it was the one thing that identified a ship and its position. No one could hide a blink.

Everyone watched the screen for the initial signature. William felt the itching rise in the palm of his left hand. His eyes drifted down and he felt his augmetic fingers scratch it. But it wasn’t the same, he could never quite sooth it.

“Got it!” Bryce yelled. Above the Midshipman, the screen showed the signature of the blink flaring. Now just to wait and watch to see what the
Gallipoli
would do.

William thought of Mustafa and wondered what sort of Captain he was. Would he pursue? It would be a hard thing to watch a target slip away a second time. He knew if it was him, he’d strike out and fight. That was what made him nervous. If Mustafa and the
Gallipoli
didn’t strike out after him, he’d have an out, a way to make it back to Earth.

Part of him wanted to get away, to return to duty, to pay his dues. But he really wanted to stay, to pick a fight, to do the right thing. There was the Covenant, that simple agreement that he’d sworn to upheld. A Bill of Rights for all in the stars—or, at least, those who chose to obey it. With the distances so wide between colonies, control became an issue. Rules would vary widely. Not everyone would be like Earth.

The homogenization that had taken place on Earth was reversing in the stars. Fractures rose, differences, cultures, but the Covenant was what kept everyone together. An agreement to treat humans decently and fairly. It was the one and only thing that bound them all.

He looked over at his bridge crew. Shay sat with her shoulders tight and her head askew. Bryce was rigid, tight, with the bruising and missing teeth totally changing his look. The once handsome beach bum from Haven had changed to look like an actual veteran. Though William still didn’t know if he trusted Bryce under fire. He wanted to, but not yet.

A new Haydn signature flashed on the screen. The mass resolved slowly as the ripples were measured and compared. A moment later the indicator flipped from a gray unknown to that of the
Gallipoli
.

“Course is showing they will intercept the mining tender in two more blinks,” Shay said, studying her console.

The projected path for the decoy merged with the
Gallipoli
. William glanced down at his console and smiled to himself. The
Gallipoli
was traversing across the gravity well, the blinks would be inefficient. The
Garlic
was crossing it at a right angle. What would take Mustafa three blinks would only take the
Garlic
two.

“Very well, Shay,” William said, pleased. “Continue with the nav profile as is—once they get on the same plane as the decoy, we blink. Ms. Kyong, well done.”

Shay nodded and kicked back in her chair. “You got it, Captain.”

They moved along the edge of the shallow gravity well and prepared to blink. The gap was set, the blink would take them across the majority of the system where they’d arc around a barren ball of dirt. The same ball that they’d torn apart the Hun cruiser at.

Farther out came the most extreme orbits. The fields of ice and planets warped out of round. It was a zone of extremes, of resources too far stretched apart to be worth chasing. The very farthest edges where the interstellar currents lapped against the farthest bits of the gravity well. It was also on the edge of what had been officially charted.

William flipped the nav screen aside and pulled up the survey report. He had time to kill and couldn’t watch icons crawl around on the screen any longer. The closest stars were all bits of rock and ice that were visited decades before, just enough to find nothing of interest. He slid the screen and peered at those places where the details were blank. A fresh start, something totally new, a truly unexplored thing. His heart stirred in his chest and he felt a desire to leave it all and explore. He sighed and pushed it away.

“Next blink coming up, Captain,” Bryce said.

William nodded and stretched back in his chair. He took one more glance at the system displays and double checked the weapon status. The grav fields were mostly offline, they’d used the last of the heavy metals to fashion the decoy Haydn. But he felt better with three mass drivers, the sustained fire each slammed out would be more than enough to perforate the troopship. “Mr. Huron, updates on the launcher?”

“One barrage. After that, the loader will probably jam,” Huron replied. The sound of servos and hissing nanites sounded behind him.

William changed his weapon program to work with a single barrage. “Thank you, Mr. Huron.”

He watched and felt the excitement grow. It was a dance, a dance where he needed his partner to step perfectly. Though he knew it was too late now for the troopship. Was anyone on it? He wondered. Then he decided he didn’t care one way or the other. He wanted to say it was about clearing the space of hostiles and gaining another layer of superiority, but he really wanted to get revenge.

“And there it goes,” Bryce said. He turned and looked at William with a smile crossing his bruised face.

“All right, sound the general alert, Bryce. Shay, time to blink.”

The starscape shifted before the words were even off the bridge. New ripples propagated through the system towards both the troopship and the
Gallipoli
. William wondered what the bridges of either ship were like once that new, unexpected blink registered. A giddy feeling ran through him as he pictured it.

*

The
G
arlic
pushed through space to the next blink. Before it lay a gap where the Haydn couldn’t transit. On the other side of that gravity peak was a long blink. A blink that took it into the shadow of the barren planet and almost on top of the troopship.

“Shay, active scan after this blink,” William said. “Shut it down once we’re clear.”

Shay nodded and leaned over her console.

The bridge tensed as the anticipation was finally coming to a head. William notified the crew of the status and told them to get ready. It was coming, it was happening, and fast. The starfield shifted once more and the dull sensor overlay lit up with colors and spectrums across every band. The
Garlic
was active and hunting.

Data gushed in as the sensor packages processed the new data. The initial burst of energy went out in every direction, but once the nearest contacts were pinged it focused and drilled it down to the necessities.

“Here we go!” William leaned over his console and felt the warmth on his arms. The taste of metal was in his mouth and there was a tightness in his stomach. A touch of hunger reminded him that he would eat when this was done.

The troopship was fleeing, moving with an intensity that was only surpassed by the inevitability of the fight. Ripples of gravity shuddered away from the aft of the blocky Hun ship. Grav shields flickered along the edges while the meager armaments powered up and focused behind.

William cast a glance to the visual spectrum and saw the barren planet gliding by. The
Garlic
seemed to hang in space over the mocha grittiness below. He wondered for a second what it was like on the planet.

“Locking in,” he said, and engaged the weapons program.

Displays above shifted from general maintenance screens to the weapons layout. One quarter of the screens showed red and yellow warnings about the poor state of the mass drivers and the lack of railgun capacity. They drifted away moments later showing a black slice that reminded William what they were lacking.

He felt almost helpless, a slave to gravity and physics. The fight was inevitable now. Even if he wanted to run, his velocity was high enough that with a full sideways burn he’d still slide by within weapons’ range of the Hun ship. But he didn’t want to run, he wanted to puncture the Hun ship and make them pay for the damage they’d done.

The distance closed rapidly as the bulk of the Hun troopship couldn’t accelerate away. One grav drive cracked apart and winked out in a green arc flash. The ship pivoted and turned slightly on its axis, not from a defensive maneuver but because the thrust was unbalanced. The internals couldn’t keep it on course.

The mass drivers opened fire. The shudder of the new mass drivers was richer, heavier, and louder than the original units. The first slugs punctured the rear of the troopship with streams of frost and air bellowing out from the perfectly round holes. Grav shields stopped some of the rounds, but most skittered through the wide gaps and slammed into the lightly armored ship.

“Spin-break and evasive maneuvers,” William said to Bryce.

The
Garlic’s
grav shield indicators burned brightly into the red. The meager barrage from the troopship was enough to overwhelm what few cells remained. Rods of accelerated nickel impacted into the
Garlic
with crackling thuds sounding through the hull.

William listened and hoped that whatever aggregate Huron used would be strong enough to keep the slugs out. The deep wounds in the hull were barely scarred over.

Tracers of green nickel danced between the two ships. The
Garlic
closed and braked at the same time while the troopship continued to fight with a hull that was pocked with holes. In a flash of white, one of the Huns mass driver batteries disintegrated. The singe remaining battery spat out nickel at irregular intervals.

William swapped the visual to thermal. The hull was a uniform blue with each puncture point highlighted in red where the life was bleeding out. The barrel of the remaining mass driver was a blank white. The heat reading was off the scale. A deep red reading grew from the aft of the ship.

Fire?
William knew there was nothing more terrible on a starship then when it burned.

The acceleration numbers on the damaged troopship dropped to zero. The remaining grav drives paused, emitted an odd frequency pulse and went cold. Thermal imaging showed the red in the aft growing and spreading. The last mass driver slumped and stopped firing.

“Shall we continue?” Shay asked.

William glanced up and saw the
Gallipoli
was still crossing the gap to the next blink. Plenty of time. “No,” he said, and tapped his console.

A massive
ka-chunk
sounded and the entire contents of the
Garlic’s
missile launcher burst apart. Each missile accelerated out, paused, and dove in towards the mauled troopship. There was a momentary halt as the pinprick fires of the missiles tails disappeared into the hull.

The superalloy tips of the missiles bored through decks, bulkheads and machinery before finally coming to a stop. A millisecond later the internal nanite explosives cascaded into heat and pressure. Shockwaves rippled through the hull followed by an incessant white heat of nanite consumption. From the outside the troopship flared and seemed to relax, as if each of the seams let loose.