Setting our boosters to slow burn, Haze keeps in the B79’s comms shadow as our tug drops away from the hub and leaves Hekati’s mirror ring high overhead. We’re going to be a small blip below a bigger blip.
Also, that hub contains Hekati’s AI, which should throw up enough electronic chatter to mask us from the braid in the cruiser above. At least, that is the theory.
‘Don’t need to know the detail,’ Colonel Vijay tells Haze. ‘Just need to know it’s going to work. It is going to work, isn’t it . . . ?’
Seeing me listen, the colonel blushes.
Yes, I’ve heard his father say that too.
‘Suit check,’ I say.
Everyone scans their read-outs.
We’ve all got suits this time. Old mining issue, with out-dated radiation patches on the breastplates, clumsy clasps, and out-of-date fasteners. But they’re water-lined against g-force, and all have full oxygen tanks.
The SIG’s meant to keep checking our safety status. Only it is far more interested in what’s going on above.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ I say. ‘Put her on the speakers.’
My gun does as it’s told.
‘Trooper Franc,’ says the three-braid.
‘Sir,’ she says.
Nice touch, I think.
‘Bring it up slowly . . .’
‘I’m trying.’
Another voice comes on, telling her how to feather the boosters. I’ve no idea what he means and nor does Franc, but she concentrates as he talks her through which buttons to tap.
‘So,’ says Franc. ‘Tapping up makes me go faster?’
‘Yes,’ the pilot says.
‘So I want to tap down?’
He agrees this would be good.
The B79 obviously slows, because the pilot’s next comment is to congratulate Franc and suggest she steer towards the middle of the cruiser. ‘You’re too close to the engines,’ he says.
‘Put it on screen,’ I tell Haze.
‘Sir, that might-’
‘Do it,’ says the colonel.
Haze shrugs, which is close to outright insolence for him. Our braid’s turning into someone else. I’ll deal with that later. For now, my attention is on the B79 that suddenly appears on our screen. We’re locked into one of Hekati’s own cameras.
The B79 hangs below the cruiser like a tiny fish nosing towards a floating alligator. Although it’s hard to see much more from this distance.
‘Bring the picture close.’
Haze wants to object, but he tightens the focus anyway.
The mirror hub is above us, and Hekati’s habitat is a vast circle around that. The struts that hold the habitat to its hub revolve slowly overhead. I want to be up there with Franc, but that’s absurd. This only has meaning if she does it by herself.
The sacrifice of one for the many. I can’t think of anything that Franc could do that would make me prouder to have known her.
‘Sven,’ says my gun.
‘What?’
‘She’s priming detonators.’ The SIG’s voice is flat, emotionless. Didn’t know it could run in that mode. ‘You want me to piggyback their lenz?’
‘It’ll-’
‘Sir,’ says Haze. ‘They know already.’
A jumble of shouts blares from our speakers. The pilot’s voice is replaced by that of the three-braid who sounds furious. And then he’s shouting orders at Franc, and when that fails, he starts shouting them at someone else.
Panic, you bastard.
‘Piggyback,’ I tell the SIG.
Our screens flip to their point of view.
And suddenly we’re the Silver Fist watching us. Well, watching Franc; and the B79 is closing that gap fast. We’re seeing her through a lenz hung directly under the cruiser itself. A pulse cannon fires out of shot, but Franc is too close to the cruiser for the barrels to lower far enough. The weapon is limited by its own safety routines.
A panel slides back above her.
‘Fighters,’ says Haze.
I’ve worked that out for myself. Lurching forward, the B79 disappears through the opening hatch before the first Z7x can emerge.
And then there is light.
‘Fuck,’ says Neen.
No one will be putting Franc back together again, not this time.
Shil’s crying, Rachel also, from the noise behind me. ‘Sven,’ says the SIG. ‘You might want to watch.’
The explosions begin slowly, with a ball of flame. Oxygen burns, and that is what catches fire. A high-oxygen/low-pressure atmospheric mix that we use in our ships as well.
As we watch, a side panel blows out, flame blossoming behind it. The explosions spread, fire obviously running down corridors and rising up elevator shafts to blow out panels elsewhere.
It has, as Colonel Vijay points out, a terrible beauty.
A hatch irises open, to release a fighter that is eaten by an explosion that rips out of the flight deck behind it. There are a hundred and fifty troopers on board that cruiser, three flight wings, one three-braid and eighty crew.
The figures fill my head.
‘Sven,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘Are you all right?’
My throat tastes sour.
‘Fine, sir.’
As I watch, the cruiser cracks at the stern and lights go out behind the break. Hekati’s gravity twists the dying vessel on its axis, and then an explosion rocks the engines and snaps the cruiser in two.
A fuel store? An arms depot? The engine itself?
Don’t know and don’t care, because I’m watching shrapnel. If that is the right word for spinning thousand-ton fragments of cruiser. As another explosion rips the segment, and the bridge goes up in a fountain of flame, an antenna scythes away into space like a thrown blade.
‘Shit,’ says Shil.
Vacuum is sucking at the segment’s guts to swallow dying troopers and broken fighters.
‘Wait for it,’ says my gun.
All our screens blank as the electromagnetic wave rolls over us. A Casimir coil exploding. Or perhaps it’s an ion drive. Machinery isn’t my thing. All I know is that one third of a burning Silver Fist cruiser has ceased to exist, and the other two thirds is racing into the distance.
‘Equal and opposite,’ says Colonel Vijay.
‘Sir,’ I say. ‘Permission to give chase?’
His lips twist. ‘Feel free,’ he says.
Imagine one point nine million tons (roughly what two thirds of an epsilon-class cruiser weighs), punching into a force field generated by a mother ship and then trying to keep going. It is like watching a steel post being fed to a chipper. The field blazes with cold flame that struggles to eat section after section of the cruiser. And still kinetic energy keeps the cruiser coming.
Our screens go lunatic. Waves of energy ripple like storms.
Colours clash and lightning flickers. Only that is impossible in space. What’s not impossible is the sheer power being consumed by the field, as it tries to swallow everything the cruiser feeds it.
Force fields exist to stop incoming missiles.
And then somewhere back down the line a weapon’s geek realizes if it works on incoming missiles, then it works on incoming fighters. And what works for incoming fighters can be applied to outgoing fighters as well.
Must be impressive, the first time that trap is sprung, and an enemy discovers they’re locked into a free-fire zone. But it doesn’t work for vessels much larger than a frigate. So it’s definitely not meant to deal with a cruiser. Not even a burnt-out, ripped-open two thirds of one.
‘Count me down,’ I tell the SIG.
Something whirrs behind its pistol grip. ‘Fifteen seconds,’ it says. ‘Fourteen seconds . . .’ My gun keeps counting. And we’re all counting along inside our heads. So it is my own voice I hear as the tally hits zero.
‘Do it,’ I tell Haze.
And we crash our Z-class through the crumbling force field into the emptiness of space beyond.
‘Damage report,’ I demand.
‘Significantly less than you deserve,’ the SIG replies tartly.
‘Well,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘That was interesting.’
‘As in, insanely suicidal?’ the SIG asks.
He laughs.
Iona claps, and after a second Neen does too. Haze blushes, but that’s Haze for you. A moment later, the others join in the clapping, even Shil, who stops the moment she sees I’ve noticed. So I grin at her, and that makes her scowl even more.