She plugged a line from her headset directly into the ship's comm net. “Can you pick up traffic?”
[The signal is weak from here and it's heavily encrypted.]
“So that's a 'no'?”
[No, that's a “give me a minute or two.”]
<The herd is nervous,>Turquoise added.
“As long as they don't scatter, we're okay.” Bari had engaged the craft's engines on minimum thrust and moved further into the herd, the ever- shifting rainbow of a Rooan's belly above her like the landing lights of an insane, upside‑down, psychedelic runway. Cardin's translating machine would have choked on this much incoming data. She was surprised to realize she felt a tiny pang of guilt for having so thoroughly derailed his project. If the man hadn't been such a puckered‑up old assvalve, she might have considered leaving a few of his data‑collectors on.
[Got it. You want a live feed?]
“Absolutely.”
…an ambush? See it now, on the far side of the stupid squids… Can't believe anyone got the drop on Mejef and Beck. Kirbenz, though… Is that Tonker, hiding in the middle? Tonker, is that you?
“Modulate my voice to middle‑young adult human male, Auroran accent, add ten percent static when you encrypt,” she said.
[Ready.]
“Shut up, you idiots! Maintain silence,” she said, and heard it go over the comm network after a moment's delay passing through Omi. It didn't sound like her at all. Good.
The three incoming ships fell silent, and pulled more tightly together as they came in. They're going for point‑to‑point, she realized. Direct light‑based comms wouldn't be able to be intercepted by any normal tech. It also meant they wouldn't bother to encrypt it.
Luckily for me, I have some abnormal tech indeed, she thought.
<They are discussing the best approach, through or around the herd, and whether to stay in formation or come from multiple directions,>Turquoise provided.
That meant they most likely believed her to be Tonker, among other things. “I'm going to need an exit.”
[Passing it on.]
cThey've split their approach,>Turquoise said.<I'm working on nudging the herd a little so you can come out behind one and above a second. The third will pass in front of the herd, so you will have to find your own strategy for that one.>
“Got it. Thanks,” Bari said. She watched as the Auroran fighters split just as predicted, and moments later saw a small shift in the herd nearby: Turquoise's handiwork. “I'm glad I brought you along.”
[He's laughing,] Omi said.
She edged her stolen craft toward the growing gap, and emerged just after one of the three Aurorans passed. A quick check showed another moving along the underside of the herd where it had cover from the decoy, but in her own clear sights.
Do it, she told herself, and powered up the weapons systems. She fell in behind the first fighter, and then, carefully sighting on it — she wouldn't get any extra chances here — fired. The ship flared and died.
She sighted on the fighter below, which was just beginning an evasive maneuver away from her, and took it down too.
“Tonker! What the fuck?!” This from the remaining ship.
“Omi, jam him!”
[Doing what I can.]
She banked up and around, resisting the urge to use the Rooan as shielding. The fighter broke off and fled. They raced away from the herd, Bari on his tail as he wove a pattern through space, staying always one tic and jump just out of her sights. “Oh, Hell,” she swore. Her hands flew over the console, overriding the safeties and dumping energy from life support, gravity‑gen, and radiation shielding into the engines. She was suddenly light in her seat, held in place only by inertia, seat straps, and her safety tether. The burst of extra speed was less than she'd expected, but she began to close.
[Bari…]
“I know,” she said. She could already feel it, the cabin growing colder. She closed her eyes for a second, let long practice at mind‑body control kick in, and slowed her heart rate and her breathing. Then she opened calm eyes on the enemy, closer now, and brought him down with a fast double‑hit. She hadn't even reached the debris halo before she was already diverting the ship's systems back to normal.
[That was dangerous.]
“So would be letting him get away.”
Outpost One lay dead ahead. It sat in space like some giant's toy, the sunlight of Beserai's distant star gleaming off it only adding to the impression of a scaled‑up, metal wasp's nest. Around it floated smaller objects: waste processors, chemical weapons storage, trash. As she watched, four more ships appeared, heading her way at full burn.
She got out of her seat, careful to keep the safety tether clipped, and pulled another small device out of her pack. It took her a long minute to wire it into the console, while the ship closed the distance to the outpost's remaining defenders. “Omi, did you get a good look at that last fighter's evasion patterns?”
[I did.]
“Then I'm putting you in charge of the helm,” she said, clicking the device on. “You should have remote now.”
A pause. [Got it. Any change in plans?]
“No, we're going in the hard way. Get as close as you can. If you can, blow the escape pod just before they take us out.”
Bari pulled her face shield back down, checked her suit seals by reflexive gesture, then disengaged the safety tether and cycled herself back out the airlock. Pulling herself along the ship's hull, she reached one of the purely aesthetic wings and clambered out until she was perched comfortably about halfway down its length. Here, she was well out of the way of the furiously burning engines slung on the underside. She traced her fingers along the thin ribbon of silver laid into the black wing, the very familiar starburst pattern, and let an old anticipation, and a newfound guilt, wash over her.
<The herd front is nearing closest proximity to the outpost.>
“You should be safe. I think Aurora is going to be too busy dealing with me to think about anything else for a while.” At the moment, the stolen fighter beneath her feet was heading straight for the outpost. “Omi, course change in five,” she said. “Four, three, two, one…”
She let go of the ship even as it banked away underneath her, now on a collision course for the chemical weapons bunker. In her suit she was invisible to the intercepting ships; by eye they might spot her, but now they all changed course as well, pursuing the visible threat. She put her arms out from her sides in a parody of a swan dive as she fell/flew toward the outpost. Sailing through space in nothing but the Dzenni suit gave her a sense of being both infinitely powerful and infinitely insignificant at the same time. Which is exactly as it should be, her teachers would have told her.
Far away from her now, the Auroran fighters drew close enough to her stolen ship to obliterate it; she caught the small flash of the escape pod ejecting, but the fighters closed in on that, too, and turned it into just so much more space debris. “Sorry, Tonker,” she murmured.
From there the fighters spread out, cautiously edging forward away from the base and each other, looking for the next threat. She was already well inside their slowly expanding perimeter, the outpost looming large dead ahead. She smiled; she was on target, no need to risk a burst from her pack to change course.
She curled herself up and around until she was foot‑first, trying not to think about how long she'd had to practice the maneuver to keep from sending herself into a hopeless spin, and hit the side of the station near the pinnacle well above the central mass. It was a hard landing, but she'd prepared for that as well, and turned it into a short tumble up the sloped surface before she managed to catch a grip and stop. Then she activated the light mag fields in her boots, stood up in what felt, even absent any meaningful input from her inner ear, like a cartoonishly horizontal direction, and ran down and across the surface of the station.