“Thank you, Lisa.” The camera moved to Lisa’s male counterpart. “According to our source, investigation is moving along smoothly. We’ll follow the events closely and we’ll bring them to you, dear viewer, as they develop. Stay tuned to Alwinter News for more unbiased reporting; in our next segment, a monkey of Al-Zoo learned to fire a spaceship’s weapon systems, and it’s the cutest—”
Lotti cut the holo.
Now laughter had really died in the warehouse. An eerie silence replaced it. Gangers looked at each other, stunned, as if they’d been flash-banged.
“It can’t be true,” Lotti muttered. “They’re insane, they have to be. I’m not a proper space princess, damn it.”
Hirsen shrugged. “They believe you are. You saw how they’re playing their hand. They’ll find you, they’ll capture you, they’ll execute you. Lotti, you’ve hidden from law enforcement for years. I know a thing or two about that. Let me say, there’s no way you can hide from the entire Alwinter security forces now that they have your full attention. You know I am saying the truth.”
He saw her reach the same conclusion. Her survivor instincts kicked in. She glanced around, eyes wide, like a cornered animal. Hirsen knew she was running escape strategies in her head, half-formed plans and tricks, trying to find anything good enough to escape Vortex’s sight.
She scowled at him, her face constricted in fury. “You did this.”
Damn right I did. Only way I could make you follow me.
He raised his hands in surrender. “Think about it, Isabella. It’s my name they’re saying next to yours. Why should I bring those assholes down on my hide, too?”
“I don’t know, you twisted, prim asshole, but once I figure it out…” she didn’t finish that sentence. “And don’t call me that.”
“Boss.” Nerd placed a careful hand on her shoulder. “We need to go. Our lookouts say there’s a hell of a lot of security capsules riding the dome’s rails in our direction.”
“Don’t you understand, Nerd?” Lotti said so suddenly it made Nerd take a step back. “There’s nowhere to go! Where are we supposed to hide? Alwinter’s a single city, what are we going to do, try to survive outside, in Dione’s surface?”
Nerd stumbled over his words. The rest of the gangers seemed as scared as he was. Hirsen could bet they had never seen Lotti lose control like this.
It was his chance.
“You could leave the planet. All of you,” Hirsen said. “I have a spaceship waiting for us. We’ll need to fight our way through, but it’s nothing you bad hombres can’t handle, am I right? The ship will bring us to the EIF force waiting for us in orbit. The EIF believes Lotti’s Isabella Reiner. They’ll treat you like heroes, bring you to the Backwater Worlds, and throw you a parade. You’ll be rich. You’ll be famous. You’ll be alive.”
That perked some ears. It even caught Lotti’s attention. She bit her lip, passed a hand across the shaved part of her candy-colored hair. She shot a questioning look at Nerd. Nerd looked as bewildered as she did.
Some day, Hirsen thought, all my lies are going to catch up to me. All the people I’ve cheated and manipulated, all the men and women I’ve talked into walking into their deaths, there will come the day I meet them again.
“How can we trust you?” Lotti finally said.
But today’s not that day.
“Lotti. Doll. You don’t have any other choice,” Hirsen said.
29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CLARKE
When Clarke asked for two volunteers among the other destroyers of Task Force Sierra, the four commanders stepped forward. Some did so reluctantly, perhaps to save face among their crew and fellow commanders, but they volunteered anyway. Clarke’s chest puffed with pride. As it turned out, the EIF may have been many things, but they weren’t cowards.
It took little time to make a program that selected two ships at random, so Clarke wouldn’t have to offend the two remaining ones. The program selected Eagle and Falcon to follow Hawk against Vortex, leaving Dove and Crow to reach Dione and extract Reiner.
Clarke examined the results and informed the ships’ commanders, Captain Rehman and Commander Mather.
“Of course,” said Captain Rehman, in the tone another person may have used to complain about the weather. “Let’s get to it, then.”
“I can’t wait to give Vortex a piece of our mind,” said Commander Mather. “The Defense Fleet has had a good ass-kicking overdue for a while.”
“Noted, Commander,” Clarke said, flashing her a brief smile. “Wait until Hawk sends you the updated course coordinates.”
“Eagle will be ready for combat, sir,” Mather said.
Clarke left that channel and opened one with Dove and Crow. “Good luck, Sierra-2. Remember, you’re headed for minimal military resistance. The rest are civilians. Our people.” So stay your hand.
He didn’t say anything else. Dove and Crow had experienced commanders who lacked Pascari’s blood thirst. The software had made a good choice.
Then, to Alicante, Clarke said:
“Commander, set engagement course to Vortex.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Alicante said. He relayed the appropriate orders to Navigation and then left the channel to receive a full report on Hawk’s weapon systems. Torpedoes, kinetic projectiles, cannons, and turrets, all ready to encourage Erickson away from taking aim against Dione.
Engines were functional, Alcubierre Drive purred nicely. Hawk traveled at .08 light. Adjusting course to Vortex took three hours, gaining back the lost speed took another one. Eight hours left until Sierra-2 made contact with Dione.
In the VCD, Vortex and its two destroyers (the three now marked as Vortex-1 in the map) made contact and united in a simple formation, the three of them in a diagonal line to Sierra-1’s approach. The escort ships formed along the edges of the line, with Vortex personal escorts underneath the destroyer’s belly. It was a risky position for escorts to be, which told Clarke that Erickson planned to sacrifice them. For all Clarke knew, maybe those ships were unmanned as well.
A chill went down his spine when he considered this. The enemy employed ghosts.
Good thing that very fast projectiles kill ghosts just as dead as anyone, he thought.
He had Sierra-1’s formation mirror Vortex-1, but he placed the escorts more conservatively, which allowed him to spread the destroyers farther out than Erickson’s closely knit placement. Clarke hoped the extra distance would give him more time to maneuver and react to enemy decisions.
Sierra-1 and Vortex-1 were eighteen million kilometers away from each other. At that distance, even light took a minute to get from one end to another. In space combat doctrine, a light minute was considered “stare-down distance,” and combat was imminent. Usually, ships’ commanders used the calm before the storm to exchange pleasantries and demand that the enemy’s surrender.
“Captain, Vortex is hailing us,” Commander Alicante announced.
Right on cue. “Patch it through.”
Captain Erickson’s face materialized in front of Clarke, who made an effort to control the burning hatred the sight of the other captain awoke in him. “Captain Clarke, I presume. You’ve done well since the last time we met. Remember? Free Trader Beowulf. I still have the video of you begging for your terrorist crew’ lives. It was quite touching, the captain of the drowning rats trying to negotiate with the water.”