I found a weak spot and fired our one and only bank of lasers at it. The screen went blank and the hull of the dreadnought began to blacken and peel back, curling like leaves in a flame. The dreadnought shuddered; then a huge explosion racked its innards and it stopped firing. The orbital station kept on blasting at it, and the dreadnought broke apart into molten chunks of metal and plastic and flesh.
We had killed it like a foot soldier slips his stiletto between the armor plates of a mounted warrior.
“Six o’clock high!” sang out one of the sensors as the ship shuddered from a direct hit. Our screen held, barely, as a deadly battle cruiser sailed past us, firing another salvo. We fired back, to no effect.
The battle lost all semblance of cohesion. It turned into a thousand separate fights between individual ships and the massive orbital stations. I saw one of the few Commonwealth warships capable of maneuver exchanging shots with two Skorpis dreadnoughts at the same time; it bloomed into a brilliant flare of radiance as it exploded. Then one of the dreadnoughts was caught in a crossfire from two orbital stations. The heavy laser beams carved up the Skorpis vessel and left it drifting helplessly. Another ship burst apart in a titanic explosion.
There were no sounds on the bridge except the beeping of sensors, the tight, quick breathing of my crew and the steady background hum of machinery. No one said a word, their eyes riveted to the display screens as ships fired, turned, exploded in the deathly silence of space.
I drove the Apollo through the thick of the battle, desperately trying to maneuver closer to the planet’s surface, but it seemed as if every ship in the Skorpis fleet stood in my way. I knew that we were no match for dreadnoughts, neither in firepower nor defensive shielding, yet the battle was raging all around us, whether we liked it or not.
We could try to run in the other direction, get away from the fighting and seek safety by accelerating back to superlight velocity. Then a new fear struck at me. If it appeared that the Skorpis were going to win this battle and then attack Loris itself, Aten might very well leave the planet, escape to some other point in the continuum, leaving the rest of us here. Leaving Anya weak and dying.
I had no choice. I had to stay and fight and try to help the Commonwealth win.
I dove the Apollo toward the nearest orbital station, a huge massive globular structure studded with sensors and weapons. Hoping that my ship’s automated identification signals would keep the orbital station from frying us, I maneuvered as close to the station as I dared, taking up a minutes-long orbit around it like a bee circling its own hive.
Three Skorpis warships approached, firing as they came. Two of them were battle cruisers, the third a dreadnought. While Frede and the rest of the bridge crew watched silently, I darted our ship down below the two battle cruisers and scanned their defensive shields. Just as I had expected, they were shifting power to ward off the heavy blasts coming from the orbital station’s main batteries. I located the weakest part of the first battle cruiser’s shield and poured everything we had into it. The cruiser veered away, exposing its weakened belly to the orbital station. One salvo from the station’s heavy guns blew the Skorpis warship to pieces.
But the second battle cruiser turned to engage us, jolting the Apollo with hits from its main battery. Leaving the orbital station to duel with the lone dreadnought, I raced through the swirling carnage of the battle with that determined battle cruiser on our tail, firing at us steadily. No matter how I jinked our ship back and forth that cruiser stuck to us, as if the only thing in its captain’s mind was to avenge its sister ship.
Stubbornness is not an asset to a captain. I checked the display screens and saw that the battle had concentrated on one side of Loris’s defensive belt. There were stations on the far side of the orbit that were not being attacked. This made good sense, from the Skorpis point of view. They were concentrating all their forces on a part of the Commonwealth’s defenses, intending to overwhelm them and then destroy the remainder afterward. The orbital stations could not maneuver quickly; those on the far side of the battle could never reach the attackers in time to do any good.
But I could bring at least one of the attackers to the idling stations on the far side, if the Skorpis captain did not suddenly acquire a dose of good sense.
She did not. She followed me, closing, firing, making the bridge rattle and our defensive screens buckle. But she followed me for a few seconds too long. I zoomed the Apollo into range of the quiescent orbital stations and three of them opened fire on the Skorpis warship at once. It blew up in a giant fireball, the scattered fragments like blazing meteors all across the sky.
“Battle damage,” reported Dyer, from her damage-control console. “Hull open to vacuum in starboard stern. Sections fourteen and fifteen of deck two have been automatically sealed off.”
“Anyone in there?”
“No, sir. Those are food lockers. We emptied them out to make extra message capsules.”
Frede giggled nervously. “We wanted to warn Loris that we were coming, so they wouldn’t fire on us, remember?”
It seemed like a million years ago.
“Looks like they didn’t need our warning,” I said as I turned the ship back into the battle.
I headed for one of the orbital stations, hoping to repeat my earlier tactic of gadflying one of the attacking ships to its destruction. But as we came closer to the fighting, swirling, exploding ships I saw that six Skorpis cruisers detached themselves from the battle to aim directly at us.
“Incoming message,” said Magro, the comm officer.
I tapped the comm key on my armrest board. A Skorpis commander appeared on the bridge’s main screen.
“ Apollo, I have orders to take your ship. You will surrender. You cannot escape us.”
At the velocity we were going now it would take more than an hour to build back up to superlight. The Skorpis ships could catch us and board us long before then.
“We will not surrender,” I said.
The commander bared her teeth. “My orders are to take you alive—if possible. If you will not surrender, you will die.”
Chapter 28
Six against one were impossible odds. Especially when the six were battle cruisers, twice the size and firepower of the Apollo.
I looked at the stricken faces of the bridge crew. They had been prisoners of the Skorpis once before.
“They’ll freeze us,” muttered Emon.
“And serve us for dinner,” said Jerron, trying to make a joke of it. No one laughed. They all looked grim, frightened.
“They’re not going to take us alive,” I told them.
“And that’s the good news,” Frede wisecracked. Everyone laughed, breaking the tension.
Our one chance was to make it down to the surface of Loris before the Skorpis ships could destroy us. I turned the Apollo in that direction, hoping that the orbiting battle stations could pick off some of the warships hounding us.
“Take power from the weapons batteries,” I told Jerron. “Put every bit of power we’ve got into the engines.”
Emon looked unhappy that his weapons were being drained. I started to say, “Keep the shields—”
The ship was rocked by several hits. Then a massive jolt slammed into us, knocking me against my seat harness painfully.
“Nuclear missile,” Dyer yelled out.
I looked at her screen. The engine section had been hit.
“Screens absorbed most of the energy,” Dyer reported, “but the hull’s buckled. Section eighteen, deck two is open to vacuum.”