A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe Read online

  “They’ve taken out our artificial gravity!” yelled Aisha. “Can’t maneuver!”

  A standard maneuver cranks out twenty G’s. No more hard pitching. No more spinning the belly to block shots. Straight, predictable lines only.

  Cordell snapped out of his funk long enough to swear. “Okay then. They want to play like that, we’re going to play like that. Orna, permission to engage granted. Light them up.”

  Ranger reared back, and the readout filled with thousands of orbs—a veritable star field of bullets. She filled slices of the grid with hazards, far too many to count, as each ship dove in to make a pass.

  “Ammunition at ninety percent,” said Orna. “Why did you stop your evasive maneuvers?”

  “We lost gravity in here,” responded Aisha. “Anything bigger than minor corrections might squish everyone.”

  “Understood.” Ranger’s long-barreled, back-mounted slingers pegged one of the inbound fighters, its fuselage smashing against the hull. The remains of the assault craft raked across the communications array, and a sickening static bled into the speakers.

  Gravity down. Comms down. Life support is next.

  Boots took a step forward. “I’m going out.”

  “The hell you are,” said Armin. “We’re about to lose imaging.”

  The projection in the center of the bridge distorted, then unraveled into tendrils of arcane energy.

  “Cameras up,” said Cordell, and an array of huge screens unfurled all around his feet. He guided the shields by their images, though he looked less steady than before. He hooked his feet into two special stirrups so his constant twisting wouldn’t cause him to float away.

  Boots peered over the console to see Orna wreaking havoc on the screens. As a tiny holographic projection, Ranger wasn’t that impressive. Up close, Boots could see it loping along the hull like an ancient lion. It would burst onto frame, all six guns blazing, then dart away. She never saw it for more than a split second, and she could only describe it as majestic. Apart, Orna and Ranger were destructive. When she rode inside him, the effect was devastating.

  Boots grit her teeth. “She needs support, Cordell!”

  “Captain, this is another trick,” said Armin.

  Cordell licked his lips, sweeping away part of a volley. Spells pinged the ship’s hull, eating through it like acid. He sighed. “Get out there, Boots. Armin, run alternates, and get our imaging back on line.”

  “Thank you,” she huffed.

  “Boots, remember: you’re my only wing.”

  So you’d better stay on this bird. He’d said that to her a hundred times, before every escort. She’d chased the Capricious over a half dozen skies. She’d killed at least nineteen other pilots in its service. The phrase was like a needle in her heart, with its thread tied firmly to the ship. She cursed him under her breath.

  Boots kicked off the console, gliding effortlessly toward the corridor. The door slid open before her, and she had to acclimate to the spinning sensation of no gravity. Low-grav maneuvering was a spacer’s first skill, though, and she had her bearings back in no time, bouncing off the built-in kickplates and yanking along the handholds that ejected when artificial gravity failed.

  She slung her weight around the stairwell door before diving down the central shaft, winding between railings. The ship rocked with the force of a hit, and the sudden tilt smashed her against a wall. All of her aches and bruises rang like alarm bells, but she righted herself and kept going. Any moment they were going to lose pressure, and she could only hope they had an emergency seal on the bridge.

  Once in the cargo bay, she laid eyes on the Runner, about to slip its moorings. She launched from the floor toward the central part of the scaffolding, not wanting to overshoot and bounce off the ceiling. She hoisted herself the final few meters onto the loading ramp and found the cockpit open and waiting, its glimmering charge lamps beckoning her.

  No time to suit up, and she didn’t remember the preflight checks. She pushed off to the nearby intercom and hailed the bridge.

  “Captain,” she started, but spluttered as the long-forgotten word left her mouth. “Cordell. Your comms are out, so I can’t hail you from my—your—fighter.”

  “Get him warmed up,” said Cordell, his “serious captain voice” tainted by soft laughter at her mistake. “We’re going to pop the cargo bay in thirty seconds. You’re cleared hot the second you get out.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Boots, kicking off the wall. She floated back to her craft and caught the corner of the open windscreen before throwing herself into the pilot’s seat. She looked over the controls and—

  “Oh no.”

  Each MRX-20 could be quickly activated by tracing the pilot’s sigil on the glass pad that also served as the central console. Linked to a ship’s internal database, it relayed information like the pilot’s personal preferences, dashboard layout, seat firmness, weapon selection order, and other features.

  Except Boots didn’t have a sigil.

  Even if she did, what version of the database was this? She’d been added to the ADF pilots’ roster in 2871, so if it was a 2870 that had never seen action, it wouldn’t be up to date. Boots sorely wished Orna had answered her question about the parts sourcing, because if she didn’t get that cockpit sealed, this would be a very short engagement.

  She flipped up the glass pad and found the mechanical keys, an accessibility feature for pilots whose magic was too exhausted to trace another sigil. She pressed the “mn code” button, then went to punch in her old code: 280419.

  INCORRECT OR INVALID CODE. 2 TRIES REMAINING BEFORE LOCKDOWN.

  Was she not in the database, or was the code wrong? Her pulse slammed in her neck as she tried to guess which possibility caused the fault. If the code was invalid, then it didn’t matter, she’d never get the cockpit closed, and she’d die an agonizing, choking death. In light of that, she might as well keep trying.

  The code had sounded right in her head, but felt wrong when she entered it. She hovered her fingers over the keys, trying to dredge up the muscle memory of her personal key. At the lightest touch of the eight, she realized she’d transposed the first two numbers.

  82 … 04 … 1—

  Another blast rattled the ship and her finger landed on the two.

  1 TRY REMAINING BEFORE LOCKDOWN.

  She snarled and carefully began punching in her code as the bay door lights began to flash. Not long now. The whole ship began to vibrate, and she knew one of the engines had been hit because of a subtle pull to the left. The keypad shook under her fingertip, already unsteady with adrenaline.

  “Oh, for the love of—”

  She slammed her finger down on the nine as hard as she could and had to draw back her hand as the glass panel folded down with its welcome message. The canopy closed over her, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she heard it pressurize.

  All of her old settings cascaded through the cockpit, from her favorite seat height to the placement and style of her spatial reckoner. She wrapped her fingers around the flight stick at either side and tested the pedals.

  WELCOME ELIZABETH “BOOTS” ELSWORTH.

  “Hello to you, too, boy,” she breathed, eyeing the scaffolding. This wasn’t standard ADF, so there was no docking interface. How was she supposed to detach? On the deck below, Orna’s unsecured tools slid toward the closed door, drawn outward by the ship’s spin. When they opened the cargo bay, it was going to cost them more than a few argents. That’s why you always put your crap away, Miss Quartermaster.

  The Runner’s engines ignited, their dull roar reverberating through her hull. Her console informed her that the oxygen content outside the ship had dropped rapidly, so they were depressurizing the bay. With a final klaxon, the cargo bay opened and the mag locks disengaged. Boots breathed a sigh of relief, since she hadn’t wanted to tear out of the scaffolding.

  Aisha had stabilized the Capricious’s spin, so only a few of Orna’s precious toys drifted into the blackness of spac
e. An incoming fighter went for a strafing run on the open cargo bay, and Boots flinched. She wasn’t even going to get out of the ship before being blown apart.

  Cordell’s shield batted the spells out of the way, sizzling with each hit. The fighter veered off at the last second, but caught a tool chest across the canopy, flattening it and the pilot inside. Could she count that as her twentieth kill?

  Easing the throttle forward, she pushed past the dock and out into space. Once she crossed the edge of the cargo bay, she gunned the engine. Cordell’s shields were a blessing, but they could cut ships in half if they caught them just right.

  She cursed as the throttle smashed her against the back of her seat. Young Boots had tuned the inertial dampers to sport mode so she could feel the maneuvers. Old Boots didn’t appreciate that. She wasn’t going to be able to finish this fight if she blacked out, so she quickly opened her control mapping.

  Here was an honest-to-goodness space battle, and she was screwing with the settings panel. She finally found the secondary mapping and got the dampers fixed when her radio chirped: a call from Ranger.

  “Watch out!” commanded Orna. “You just pulled one on your phase!”

  Right. Phase. One hundred eighty degrees. Boots instinctively dove and dumped the throttle, forcing her ship to tumble. The enemy craft came into view, sleek and sinister, lightning pops from its high-cal slingers. Boots clicked the triggers, and her twin cannons blazed, pumping round after round at the weaving target. A single enemy round pinged her pristine hull, but no alarms sounded. It’d still leave a mark.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” shouted Boots, blasting after him as he broke from his path, whirling off to the side.

  He made full-speed away from the combat zone, ducking and weaving, the flashes of fire receding behind the pair. Just a bit more, and she’d have him.

  You’re my only wing.

  “Get back here,” said Orna.

  Boots swore and broke away to return to the battle. The little twit had tried to lead her away, and out of practice as she was, she’d almost fallen for it. She laid into the throttle and raced toward the Capricious, where two more fighters remained. That guy would be back soon enough, and she’d be ready for him.

  The radio chirped. “You scratched my Runner’s paint!”

  “Deal with it. No seekers on this bird?” asked Boots, dodging stray fire from the fight.

  “No,” huffed Orna. “Couldn’t afford them. Just dispersers and cannons.”

  Boots’s breath hitched as she spun and dove after the nearest fighter. The maneuver nearly put her in red-out, and she felt an upward pull on her jowls that hadn’t been there last time she flew. The enemy pilot dropped incinerator charges, little suns that would fry anything that got too close. Boots flipped the Runner so she passed over them with its belly, shielding her from the radiation. She hit two more with her dispersers and laid into the craft with her slingers.

  She landed a solid shot in his power plant, and his eidolon core went up, spraying the entire craft across the stars in a sparkling crimson haze. She veered off; eidolon debris was nothing to play with.

  “That makes twenty,” said Boots. “You tell Cordell if I die today, I die an ace.”

  “You die today, there won’t be anyone to tell. Make a low pass by the resonance tower. This bastard won’t come in range.”

  “Why the tower?”

  “Because I said so, old-timer.”

  “Salty little …” Boots circled the Capricious, staying just out of range of Cordell’s shields before dipping under the half-mangled tower. Out of nowhere, Ranger bounded up and leapt onto Boots’s maneuvering thrusters, riding her like a horse.

  Boots winced as the armor’s claws raked across the hull, digging in. “What was that about scratching the paint?”

  “Shut up. It’s my ship and this is awesome.”

  Together, they swept after the enemy fighter. Ranger’s mass considerably altered the flight dynamics, but Boots could compensate if she concentrated. The sluggishness actually helped, since Boots still wasn’t up to speed on the thrusters. The MRX-20 was so much more violent than she remembered.

  When Ranger’s guns thundered, the whole hull shook with their fury. Up close to their target, Orna switched to homing fire, her monstrous sigil canister rotating out with the spent one. The enemy fighter popped a disperser field, destroying the spells on contact, and Boots climbed to avoid the inert shells.

  “Ammunition at five percent,” said Orna.

  “I’ve still got guns.”

  “Then show me what you can do.”

  Boots rolled the fighter so her canopy faced the bandit and yanked back on the flight stick, dipping toward him. Ranger lost its footing, but quickly scrabbled back into place and leveled its cannons. Both women opened up on the fighter, their craft rolling past disperser fields and incinerators. Boots neutralized all the countermeasures that she could, though Ranger had to swing down out of the way of an incinerator, pulling them off course. Boots quickly corrected, but not before Ranger had found its place atop her again.

  Orna’s homing fire rounds penetrated farther into the disperser clouds as the enemy ship began to lose power. Countermeasures exhausted, Boots tore the fighter to pieces with her guns.

  Ranger banged its canisters with a metal fist. “I’m dry.”

  “That makes twenty-one kills.”

  “No dice,” said Orna. “That was mine.”

  “Twenty-point-five?”

  “Twenty and a quarter, and there’s another one behind us.”

  The Runner lurched as Ranger leapt from her engines. Boots righted herself, gliding backward just in time to see Orna land atop the enemy fighter, punch through the canopy, and rip out the pilot. Boots winced as her comrade hurled the lifeless body out into the stars.

  “That all of them?” asked Orna.

  “I think so. They didn’t show up on resonance, though, so they’ve got some kind of stealth.”

  “Can’t hide life force. Let’s get back to the ship, and I can ask Didier.”

  “How’s your life support?” asked Boots.

  “Holding steady. I’ve got five more hours out here.”

  They were a few klicks from the Capricious. Orna stood perched on the dead fighter; its engines automatically slowed and shut off without the presence of a pilot, leaving it to drift toward infinity. Boots took a look at her fuel reserves—more than enough to get back to Gantry Station.

  “Well,” said Boots, stretching her arms, “I hate to be the first to leave the party, but I think I have an engagement elsewhere.”

  “What?”

  She spun her craft to put some distance between them. “I’m sure they’ll come rescue you. Oh, and sorry about your tools, but that’s what happens when you don’t clean up your mess.”

  Boots was about to throttle up when her glass went black. A white, cartoonish version of Ranger’s head hovered over the console, followed by the words: RANGER AUTOMATIC PILOT TECHNOLOGIES.

  Boots flipped up the glass and punched in her override. “Oh no.”

  The craft spun to reveal Ranger atop the other fighter, its metal arms conducting Boots’s ship like a symphony. “Oh yes.”

  “Look, kid, I was playing with you. It’s a joke.”

  “The joke’s on you.”

  Flight controls unresponsive. Weapons offline. “You said you didn’t modify this thing!”

  “I didn’t. You’ve got an out-of-date defense system and I’m a mechanist. All I had to do was touch you and cast my spell.”

  “So that’s why—”

  “I rode your ship into battle? Yes.” The Runner came alongside the downed craft, and Ranger climbed aboard. “Let’s get back to the Capricious, shall we?”

  Chapter Six

  Pit Stop

  Nilah’s day hadn’t gone as well as she’d hoped.

  She should’ve been standing on a podium back on Gantry Station, waving before throngs of adoring fans. She imagined hoisting th
e Awala GP trophy aloft, the spray of alcoholic bubbles from sparkling wine scintillating in the artificial sun. Then she’d be back on Lang’s private yacht, bound for a week of rest on Taitu. She could dream of lilac fields, then awaken to walk outside the Brio family estate, the soft petals of her custom-designed flowers sweet in her nose and creamy on her fingertips. There’d be a fireworks spectacular, a personal concert, and too many men and women to count in her bed.

  Instead, she found herself terrified, plastered to one wall of a holding cell on a strange ship, its engines violently out of control. The lights browned out, leaving her in the purple glow of her dermaluxes.

  She traced her glyph, placed her hand to the deck, and felt for a connection with the Capricious. Connecting to a small system like the Hyper 8 was one thing, but the size and scale of the Capricious took a toll on her already worn muscles. She’d been careless before, trying to directly deactivate the force field, but perhaps she could get a status report. Anything was better than sitting in the shadows, waiting to die.

  Main drive two-seventy damaged: no power. Communications error. Artificial gravity intermittent. She sensed the ship’s damage like scabs, and she bit her lip. The Capricious had three engines: two on the sides and one on the back, and one of the side engines was out. If she could route power to it, she might be able to get it back online.

  The link to primary engine control was tenuous, and scorched conduits pockmarked its path. She spotted an auxiliary routing, but she feared the ship’s defense system. It was one thing to observe damage. Reaching out and touching it might cause another violent reaction like the one from the force field. Some defense programs could even fry mechanists by connecting them directly to the main power grid.

  Nilah hesitated. She’d taken quite a beating. Every cool breath stung her nostrils, like the lining of her sinuses had been stripped away. Her eyes were a pair of boiled eggs, slow and swollen. Bruises pooled in her joints from neck to toes. If she got any worse, there wouldn’t be enough recovery time before the next race.