Dark Space: Avilon (36 page)

Chapter 28

T
he order to launch came through the comms a split second before Atton saw his launch tube light up like the inside of a sun. His interceptor rocketed out into space, pinning him to the back of his flight chair. He’d set inertial management to 98%, so he could still feel his maneuvers. Stars burst to life as he left the launcher. The planet Firea stretched out below him, vast fields of snow shining a dazzling white in the distant light of the system’s sun.

“Form up Gold squadron! We’ve got incoming!” Chevalier Davellin ordered.

Atton studied the star map. There were thousands of enemy fighters racing toward the
Dauntless
on the far side of Firea. The Avilonian fleet sat dark and derelict in the middle of the Sythian formation.

“There’s too many of them! What the frek are we supposed to do against that?” Gold Ten said. Gina’s voice.

“Language, Pilot,” the Chevalier replied. “Orders are to engage the enemy, empty our Thunderbolts and mines, then head back and re-arm.”

Atton did the math. Sixteen Thunderbolt missiles, times 72 interceptors. Assuming all of those missiles hit their targets, and none of the interceptors succumbed to enemy fire, they would all have to go back and reload at least ten times. It was absurd.

Then the grid flashed with incoming contacts, and things got worse. They were surrounded. The contact report revealed there were more than a hundred thousand Shells within a hundred klick radius.

“Seriously?” Gold Nine said.

“They really don’t want to make this a fair fight, do they?” someone else put in.

“Cut the chatter,” the chevalier said. “New orders Golds. We’re jumping out. Transmitting jump coordinates now. Start calculating!”

The coordinates for the jump were inside the Stormcloud Nebula, at the edge of the star system. Atton shook his head, not comprehending Strategian Heston’s plan.

“I thought we were going back to Avilon,” he said.

“You thought wrong, Pilot,” Gold One replied.

The comms crackled with a new voice—mission control
.
Orders were to keep enemy fighters off the
Dauntless
while they launched their ordinance at the Sythian command ships. They were going to use the nebula as cover and take advantage of their superior sensors to hunt down any Shells that accidentally stumbled into them
.

Atton’s jump finished calculating, and he began sequencing it. An audible countdown from five began.

When it reached zero, space disappeared with a bright flash. Then came the grasping gray tendrils of the nebula. Sensors were washed clean of enemy contacts. Gold squadron reappeared all around, along with the other five squadrons of interceptors from the
Dauntless
. The battleship itself lay large and majestic above Atton’s cockpit.

In the distance giant chunks of ice swirled out of the gloom, appearing wraith-like from the nebula. The
Dauntless
opened fire with bright sheets of red pulse lasers, clearing a path. Ice shattered and exploded, vaporized by the assault.

“Now what?” Atton’s wingmate, Loba Caldin, asked.

“Boost your sensor range and follow me,” Gold One replied. “We’re going to scout ahead and screen the
Dauntless
from enemy fighters.
When they find her, they’ll have to get past us first.”

* * *

“Get us clear of the enemy formation!” Captain Picara ordered. “There’s no point in us sticking around to watch them die.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Lasers tracked toward them. Hundreds of deadly bright streaks raced after them, impacting on their shields with a steady
hiss.

“We’re going to collide with something if we don’t slow down!” the navigator warned.

“If they don’t want to die, too, they’ll get out of our way,” Picara replied. “Keep accelerating!”

Lights flickered steadily overhead as the shields drew extra power to dissipate the energy from enemy weapons’ fire. A thin veil of white smoke drifted through the bridge, bringing with it the acrid smell of burned circuitry.

Someone’s control station gave up a shower of sparks and they cried out in alarm. Endless waves of missiles spun away to all sides.

“Shields at 74%!” engineering called out.

Picara eyed the enemy formation. They’d barely crossed half of it. The deck shuddered with the distant
boom
of a stray missile finding its mark.

“They’re firing missiles across our path!” gravidar warned. “We’re running straight into them!”

Picara grimaced. “We’ll make it.”

Another
boom,
louder this time. The bridge rattled around them.

“Shields at 67%!”

There wasn’t anything to do but weather the storm. Impacts came fast and furious, one deck-shaking
boom
after another. Sythian warships raced by in a shiny, lavender-tinted blur, forming a tunnel around them.

Suddenly, whole squadrons of Shell Fighters began darting into their path, deadly glinting specks that would be no better to run into at this speed than an asteroid field.

“What are they doing?” Picara gripped the edges of the captain’s table, her nails digging painfully into the glossy black surface of the holo projection plate.

“Brace for impact!” someone called out.

Explosions roared in Picara’s ears, louder than ever. The Deck shook and shuddered and the lights flickered. Then the lights went out and all the noise became fading echos as the sound in space simulator lost power. Picara saw herself float free of the deck.

Smoke poured into the bridge, and a horrible groaning screech sounded somewhere deep inside the cruiser.

Then something big and bright went racing by them. Picara blinked and squinted against the glare of it. Then she saw it for what it was—it was their ship, sliced out from under them. The bridge and the uppermost decks had been cleanly severed from the surrounding superstructure of the
Emancipator
. Picara gaped, watching as the larger part of their ship sailed on, its massive thrusters still glowing orange as it accelerated onward and slammed into another wave of Shell Fighters. Explosions peppered the ship’s outer hull, ripping molten furrows through it. An instant later the ship broke up into dozens of jagged black pieces, and the thrusters sputtered into darkness, splashing fast-freezing streams of liquid dymium into space.

After that, a poignant silence fell on the bridge, with all of them drifting in zero G. They watched out the viewports as they tumbled through space along their original trajectory, shieldless and powerless, and moving at over forty kilometers per second.

All it would take was one more collision—just one more stray Shell Fighter or missile crossing their path at the wrong moment and they would be gone.

* * *

Another Sythian command ship cracked apart. Hoff’s crew cheered, watching a rendering of its destruction on the main holo display. The interference inside the nebula had kept them from being detected so far, while their superior sensors still allowed them to fire out at the Sythians’ largest warships.

Hoff smiled. His plan was working perfectly.

“We won’t stay hidden for long,” his XO warned.

“Let them come.”

In order to find the
Dauntless,
the Sythians would have to use their hundreds of thousands of fighters to grid search the nebula. And even if that worked, they wouldn’t be able to transmit their discovery from inside the nebula.

“Gunnery mark your next target!” Hoff roared, laughing.

Beside him, Okara frowned. “This is hardly a victory, sir. We were supposed to disable the enemy and board their ships, not destroy them.”

“And we will—as soon as we’ve destroyed all of their command ships. Sythians don’t like to mingle with their slaves, so our objective remains attainable.”

“They’ll run before we can destroy all of their command ships.”

“
Run?
From just one enemy ship? You underestimate the Sythians’ pride. No, they won’t run. They’ll stand and fight until their last command ship turns into a flaming ruin beneath their feet.”

“If you say so, sir.”

“I do.”

“What are
Omnius’s
orders?” Okara said. Hoff shook his head. “You haven’t asked?” Okara’s glowing green eyes grew wide with shock.

“Omnius has been strangely silent. Knowing Him, that means he approves of my plan.”

“You
assume
he approves.”

“It is only logical. My plan will result in a successful outcome. That is what we are here for—to defeat the Sythians and rescue their human slaves.”

Hoff watched as a rendering of yet another Sythian Command ship came under fire.

Then it vanished.

“Where’d they go?” Hoff asked.

“They jumped away, sir,” the sensor operator replied.

Hoff brought up the star map on his ARC display and he found the enemy ship again, along with the rest of their command ships. All of them now lay clustered together on the far side of the system, having retreated to what the Sythians probably thought was a safe distance.

Hoff’s smile returned. “Resume firing!”

“From this range it will take longer to calculate jumps for our ordinance,” the gunnery chief warned.

“We’re not in a hurry,” Hoff said, chuckling to himself once more.

“Incoming! Enemy fighters!”

“The found us already?” Okara asked.

“That was too fast,” Hoff agreed, his brow furrowing as he panned the star map over to center on the
Dauntless
. A squadron of Shells fighters was racing in on their port side. As Hoff watched, they swerved suddenly, reacting to the appearance of the
Dauntless,
as if surprised to see it there
.
Then they opened fire with a steady stream of Pirakla missiles.

A second later the enemy was cut to shreds by X-1 interceptors.

“Brace for impact!”

Two dozen alien warheads splashed across their bow, causing the deck to shiver under them.

“Hull breach! Deck ten!”

Another drone deck. “Patch it up! That squadron was lucky to find us,” he decided.

Okara turned to him. “That, or we’re not as hard to detect as you seem to think, sir.”

As if to prove her point, three more squadrons of Shell Fighters came swirling out of the flashing gray soup of the Stormcloud Nebula. This time they targeted the
Dauntless’s
fighter escort.

“Sensors! How are they finding us so quickly?”

“I don’t know, sir! Their ships must have better sensors than we thought.”

Hoff grimaced. He supposed he should have guessed as much. The Sythians had upgraded their sensors to see through cloaking shields. That upgrade had probably come with other improvements as well.

Shell fighters winked off the grid in quick succession as Avilonian interceptors swarmed them. As Hoff watched, yet another squadron of Shells came streaking in, joining the original three. Zooming out, Hoff searched the nebula for enemy fighters. The ones their sensors could detect were flying randomly through the nebula, searching blindly for the
Dauntless
rather thank tracking toward them. That was a good sign.