Wreck of the Nebula Dream (29 page)

“And we do all keep asking them, don’t we?” Mara shook her head ever so slightly. “We trust you to have the answers, save the day –”

“Yeah, well, damn flattering, but I’m operating strictly on luck and instinct here.”

Exchanging rueful smiles, they entered
The
Sigrid
single file.

Awkwardly twisted in his seat, the D’nvannae Brother was anxiously watching for their arrival. He gestured with both hands. “Put her here, next to me, and I’ll watch over her.”

“No problem.” Nick complied willingly. Twilka wasn’t exactly heavy, but he was aching and exhausted from the stint on the Shemdylann torture rack. Periodic trickles of excruciating electric pain kept working their way through his spine and peripheral nervous system. He could only imagine what kind of state he’d be in had Lady Damais not protected him so thoroughly.

Well, I’d be dead.
 

Leaving Khevan to get Twilka settled in her seat, he headed forward to the small cockpit, Mara right on his heels. Impatiently, Nick tried to direct her to a passenger seat, but her next words forestalled him.

“I have an intra system pilot’s license,” she said matter of factly. “You go deal with the shuttles and the air lock, and I’ll get this baby revving.”

He stared at her, evaluating this suggestion.

“Go on,” she urged him, impatient now herself, but good-naturedly. “You have a lot to learn about me. I tried to tell you once before, up on the Observation Deck, but you were in too big a hurry to listen. Trust me – I can pilot this class of ship, okay? We’re inside, so I won’t need your magic access code to activate the controls, right?”

“Right.” He shook his head, assimilating this unexpected piece of luck – a qualified co-pilot. “Right, yes, on a civilian vessel like this, the hatch access grants all access. Okay, I’m gone, then. She’s all yours. Get the engines hot, stay below redline.”

Glancing at her wrist chrono, Mara marked the time. “How long –?”

“Give me ten minutes, then start the outer bay doors cycling open. I’ll be here, don’t worry. And don’t delay.”

“Good luck.” She was gone, stepping confidently past him, through the hatch to the cockpit.

A
mazing how calm and no-nonsense the woman is, no matter how dire the circumstances
. Running from
The
Sigrid
, Nick headed for the nearest shuttle. Slapping the Special Forces access code into the hatch so rapidly he nearly got it wrong, he was in the ship in the blink of an eye. It took him two or three minutes to start the engines and lay in the course he wanted this doomed decoy to take. Another two minutes to program a time delay into the AI. Then he was out and running across the bay to the other shuttle, casting an anxious glance at the blast doors blocking access to the main body of the
Dream
as he sprinted. There didn’t appear to be any activity there, no one trying to gain entry.

Blinking red indicator lights gave him pause when he powered up the second shuttle. It was low on fuel, which somehow didn’t surprise him. The crew being too lazy to keep it topped off fit right in with the rest of the SMT Line’s lax approach to the fundamentals of space travel.
Probably planning to attend to refueling when they arrived at Sector Hub, never remotely envisioning an in-flight emergency, much less the need for an evacuation.

Nick spared a second to hope
The
Sigrid
was fully fuelled. He only needed this shuttle to fly a limited distance anyway, as he expected the pirates to blast it out of space in short order. But
The
Sigrid
was going to have to take them a lot farther, at high speed.

Out in the bay, he could hardly hear himself think over the whining of the three sets of engines. He was on the ramp, taking the first steps into
The
Sigrid
, when he heard the klaxons go off, signaling the imminent reopening of the outer space doors.
 

Hastily, Nick bounded up into the cutter, bringing the ramp and door to a closed position.

“Cutting it a bit fine,” he said to no one in particular, taking a deep breath as he dogged the hatch. Running down the aisle, he flashed the children a confident grin, squeezing Paolo’s shoulder as he went by, taking note of Khevan and Twilka, who both appeared to be unconscious now. The couple were slumped in their seats, eyes closed, heads together.

Nick had no time to check on them further, not to mention nothing he could do for them, so he hoped they were still breathing and entered the cockpit.

“About time!” Mara greeted him from the co-pilot’s seat. “You’re not leaving much margin for error.”

“Better this way,” Nick said, sliding into the pilot’s chair and shoving the throttle up past redline in the same motion. Working together, he and Mara held the small vessel steady, as it strained against the controls.

“How are we for fuel?” He held his breath for her answer.

“Fine. They must have refueled right after she came aboard from Glideon.” Mara eyed him, head tilted. “Why?”

Checking gauges, laying in some instructions for the AI, Nick explained. “The port shuttle is running on fumes. I was hoping we weren’t going to be in the same state.”
 

“The first shuttle is moving out.” Pointing at the vid screen in front of them, Mara frowned and shifted in the co-pilot’s seat. “Are the outer bay doors open wide enough yet?”

“Better be, or we’re not going anywhere either.” Nick let out his breath in a whoosh as the first shuttle cleared the still-opening access panels. The second shuttle was already moving, as he had programmed its AI to do.

 
“Now or never, Mara, let’s do it!” Unleashing the power of the straining engines, he allowed
The
Sigrid
to shoot across the shuttle bay, arrowing out into free space before blasting along a trajectory away and down from the
Nebula Dream
.

Hardly had they emerged from the shuttle bay, when an explosion in near space rocked the ship, as the first shuttle succumbed to a savage assault from three Shemdylann kite fighters. Nick concentrated on flying the cutter, going for speed versus evasive action at the moment. Mara monitored the action on the vid screen. There was another brilliant flash of light.

“The pirates got the second shuttle, maybe a lifeboat, too.” Mara recoiled, hands clenching in her lap. “Those poor people.”

Nick wrenched
The
Sigrid
into a violent change of course, zigzagging off toward a cluster of irregular asteroids. “Damn, I tried to program the shuttles as far away from the LB pod as I could, but there was only so much I could do about it. No room for maneuvers. Pursuit?”

“Not yet.” Peering closely at the screens, Mara fiddled with the display to show the rapidly receding
Dream
more clearly.

Threading a course through the asteroids, so keyed up with adrenaline his reflexes were hair trigger, Nick never reduced speed, which was their best ally at this point, going up, over, around and between them.
The
Sigrid
burst past the last fringe of jagged asteroids and accelerated even further under Nick’s firm control. Mara cast an anxious eye at the engine readouts, bit her lip, but said nothing. She scrutinized the rearview screen. “Lords of Space!”

“What?” Nick didn’t take his eyes off the course he was running. “Let me guess – the pirate ship is coming?”

“Oh yeah,” Mara confirmed, her voice a bit awed. “Didn’t you tell me it was a small ship?”

Sparing one split second to check out the image, Nick put total concentration on navigating. “It
is
a small ship, for a pirate, but fast. Pray we got enough of a head start and they don’t want us that badly.” He sent the cutter off on a tangent and then came to his main heading again, holding steady for a second before jinking the opposite direction.

A concentrated blast of energy lanced past the portside.

“Seven Hells, they have the range already. Gunner’s damn good, for a pirate,” Nick paid reluctant tribute, even as he sent
The
Sigrid
into a violent upward spiral.
 

The enemy’s next two shots missed by a wide margin.

Reverting to the straight course, Nick coaxed a fraction more speed from the straining engines. “Can you operate the com?”

“You want to talk to them?” Mara was astounded.

“No, I’m hoping maybe the freighter’s in range by now. I want to warn her about the Shemdylann.”

“Good idea.” Mara made a grab for the com, almost thrown from her seat by Nick’s next set of evasive maneuvers. “What was the incoming freighter’s name?”

“
Space Dragon
, Captain Rafferty.” Dredging the names from his memory required conscious effort. Making the fastlink connection from the observatory seemed amazingly long ago.

“Calling the
Space Dragon
,
Nebula Dream
survivors calling the
Dragon
, please respond,” Mara repeated the message, reeling it off without drawing breath, bracing herself against the gyrations of
The
Sigrid
. After a few sets of repetitions, she clicked the circuit closed and threw Nick a despairing look. “There’s no answer.”

“Keep trying. These bastards are getting close. I may not be able to evade them much longer,” he said. “No weapons, no shields – all we have is speed on our side, which isn’t too comforting. The pirates cleared the
Dream
a lot faster than I’d estimated they could.”

“Wait,” Mara said. “What’s this? On the screen?”

“What now?”

Leaning closer to the readout, Mara bit her lip, squinting at the odd message. “Some kind of symbols. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“Read it to me.” Nick couldn’t spare the time to even glance at it, as intensely as the pirates were pursuing them.

“It’s just symbols. I told you – nonsense. Interference, maybe?”

“Or military code.” Striving for patience with his civilian co-pilot, Nick took a deep breath as he threw the ship into another wild spiral. “Can you describe the symbols?”

The
Sigrid
bucked wildly, crabbing sideways in space for a heartbeat. A violent flash of light glared, nearly blinding them.

“Damn, too close!” Nick pointed the bow into the direction the last shot had come from, trying to outguess the pirate gunner. The next volley blazed wide to starboard, and then Nick zigzagged along a new heading. “They’re trying to keep us from making headway to Sector Sixteen.”

“Not trying to blow us up?” Mara asked in disbelief.

“That, too, probably.” Nick gritted his teeth as the ship rocked badly. “But I think they’d rather recapture us, if possible. I have to stay out of tractor beam range. The symbols?”

“For what it’s worth, I think they’re repeating.” Slowly, Mara announced the gibberish words and symbols crawling across the com screens, repeating in sluggish green pulses every few seconds.

“Yes!” Nick was triumphant. “Special Forces recognition code! Respond with this –” and he reeled off a string of syllables Mara tapped into the panel to her left.

“
Space Dragon
calling
Sigrid
,” came a deep voice a minute later, “glad to hear from you. Sitrep?”

Nick keyed the com link. “Majorly fucked. We have a Shemdylann mother ship in hot pursuit here, firing on all guns. Suggest you abandon attempt to rescue us. Get yourselves to safety.”

“Not to worry. Not a problem, the
Dragon
can handle one undersized ship full of those saurian bastards. Stand by!”

He heard the com link click closed.

“Stand by?” Mara was bewildered. “Is he crazy? How can a freighter take on a pirate ship?”

“I think we’re about to find out.” Nick nodded at the forward vid screen. “The
Dragon
has arrived.”

He continued to fly his desperate, random zigzag pattern at top speed for another two or three tense minutes, dodging blasts from the Shemdylann cannon, while the mysterious freighter drew nearer, coming on with amazing speed. “Unusual configuration for a freighter,” Nick said. “I wonder –

Multiple streams of intense blaster fire streaked by
The
Sigrid
, blazing from the
Dragon
to the pirate ship. The cutter rocked and swayed, Nick fighting the controls to keep the small ship from veering into the path of the friendly fire. More blasts followed in close succession.

There was a gigantic explosion.

The cutter tore itself out of Nick’s control, thrown about by the blast wave of the pirate’s demise, sweeping over them from behind. The outcome of the pursuit had been close indeed.

Flinging out one hand instinctively to prevent Mara from being ejected from the co-pilot’s chair, Nick fought the controls. They were both wearing safety harnesses, but the civilian ship’s systems weren’t designed with combat conditions in mind.

“You okay?” he said.

She nodded, rubbing her elbow, which had come in violent contact with the vid screen. “Yes, thanks.”

“
Sigrid
, your pirate problems are solved,” said the deep voice of the
Dragon
’s captain, on the com.

“Thanks,” Nick responded, exchanging glances with Mara. “Can you take us aboard?””Engaging tractor beams in ten. You might want to cut off those engines now.”