“Let’s not give him any reasons to think otherwise,” Nathan added. And remember, no finesse,” he added as he turned to go to tactical.
“So, just fly like you then?” she said to herself.
“Comms, any luck with the shuttle?”
“Not yet, sir. But there’s a lot of traffic coming from Corinair.”
“He’s right, sir,” Kaylah agreed. “There are at least twenty large transports in orbit, and I’m seeing at least a hundred shuttles coming from the surface of Corinair. And that’s not counting the ones that are still in the lower atmosphere, which we can’t see from here without going active.”
“What, are they evacuating?” Nathan wondered aloud as he stepped up next to the tactical console.
“Could be,” Jessica said, “if they know about that warship. After what was showing on their news the other night, wouldn’t you?”
Marcus looked out over the top of his makeshift gun emplacement along its double barrels. He could feel the humming of the power cells as he watched and waited for the rear hatch to lower enough to give him a clear line of sight on his target. But as the door nearly reached its platform position, the small police interceptor was nowhere to be seen. Before Tug could react, the interceptor suddenly jumped back up into sight from below them, and Marcus let go a double-shot of bright red balls of destructive energy that leapt from the ends of his barrels out toward the interceptor. “Surprise!”
The interceptor dropped back down slightly, avoiding Marcus’s first shot. The interceptor changed its angle to return fire, but as he did so, the rear hatch dropped down into its boarding ramp position, putting its trailing edge into the shuttle’s airflow.
The sudden disruption of the airflow under the shuttle’s tail caused its back end jump sharply upward, causing the interceptor’s volley to pass just under their tail.
“What the hell!” Josh cried out as he fought to compensate for the sudden change in the shuttle’s flight characteristics.
Josh’s over compensation for the sudden upward movement of the shuttle’s tail caused it to dip back down sharply and below their flight path. Fortunately, the motion put the little police interceptor right in the middle of Marcus’s view. Marcus again squeezed the trigger, letting out another pair of red balls of energy.
The police interceptor snap-rolled to try and avoid the incoming fire, but one of the red balls of energy caught its wing, clipping off its outer half. The little interceptor immediately began to yaw to the right. A few seconds later, the canopy shot up off the interceptor and the pilot’s rocket-powered ejection seat fired, sending the pilot well above his now tumbling ship.
“Oh yeah!” Marcus screamed as he watched the pilot’s chute open. He reached over and started cycling the hatch closed again. “Get us the fuck outta here!”
“You got it, pops!” Josh declared as he started to climb again.
Marcus looked over at Tug and Jalea, both of whom were still in disbelief. “Not bad, huh?”
The bridge rumbled as the ship decelerated sharply on its approach to Corinair.
“Captain, I’m getting multiple hails from Corinair’s militia demanding identification and intent.”
“Ignore them,” Nathan ordered. “I doubt they can spare anyone to deal with us right now, considering the chaos on the world right now. Besides, once they see us change course and veer away, they’ll likely lose interest.”
“If not, then they surely will when that Ta’Akar warship unloads on them,” Jessica said under her breath.
“You don’t think he was bluffing?” Nathan asked.
“You saw the video,” Jessica reminded him.
“Yeah, but we still don’t know for sure who was responsible for that, the Ta’Akar or the Karuzari.”
Jessica looked up from her console to look Nathan in the eyes. “Nathan, at some point you’re gonna have to decide once and for all who you can trust.”
Her words hung in the air for what might have been an eternity, had his thoughts not been immediately interrupted a moment later.
“Captain, I have the shuttle,” the comm-officer reported.
“Loki!” Nathan called over his comm-set. “Did you pick them up? Are you on your way?”
“Yes, but we almost didn’t make it, Captain. It’s a mad house down there. The entire spaceport is locked down. We had to bust our way out!”
“Cam, can you send them an intercept heading and speed?”
“Heading, yes. Speed? Tell them to go as fast as possible.”
“Jessica, how are we looking?”
“It’s going to be close,” she admitted. “If I had a more exact idea of their weapons range-”
“Abby, adjust your plot to start from a few hundred thousand kilometers downrange of the intercept point that Cam is calculating.”
“Got it,” Cam announced. “Sending course data to Abby and the shuttle.”
“Loki. We’re sending you a course heading. Taking that heading at full speed.”
“Uh, okay.”
“You’re going to have to land at full speed. We’ll try to slow down to match you as best we can. But we’ve got bad guys on our tail.”
“Yeah. I’m starting to notice that you guys kind of attract them.”
“We’re three minutes from intercept,” Cameron announced.
“Jess?”
“Four, maybe five until they can get missiles on us.”
“Holy crap, I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Loki exclaimed as he stared out the forward view ports. They were approaching the Aurora at full speed, more than ten times their usual landing speed. Loki knew that it was all relative; all that was important was the difference in velocity between the two ships. But still, both ships were traveling incredibly fast. And the fact that they only had a minute or two to land before the warship that was chasing them both got close enough to fire didn’t help calm his nerves.
“Relax, Loki, I’ve got this,” Josh assured him.
“Incoming!” Jessica announced from the tactical station. “She’s launched four missiles. Impact in two minutes.”
“Prepare to fire all rail guns, point-defense mode, aft,” Nathan ordered.
“The shuttle is still in the line of fire,” Jessica warned.
Nathan snapped his fingers at the comm-officer. “Get me the shuttle.” A moment later the comm-officer turned his head back toward the captain and nodded. “Josh, I need you on the deck now. We’ve got incoming and you guys are blocking my point-defense systems.”
“Working on it.”
“How long?”
“One minute, max.”
Nathan looked at Jessica.
“It takes at least thirty seconds to spin up a point-defense field.”
“Damn!”
The shuttle drifted over the Aurora’s main propulsion section as it continued on its way forward toward the flight deck.
“Can’t you move this thing any faster?” Loki begged.
“A minute ago you were complaining that we were going too fast. Now we’re too slow?”
“Just get us down.”
The shuttle finally cleared the propulsion section and began rapidly descending toward the flight deck.
“Our firing solution is clear,” Jessica announced.
“Fire all rail guns,” Nathan ordered.
Having already been deployed and aimed, the rail guns immediately began to open fire, just as the shuttle touched down gently on the flight deck.
“We’re down!” Loki announced.
“Abby,” Nathan asked. “How quickly can you plot a jump to just out of their weapons range?”
“How far?”
“I don’t care. Whatever is quickest. Just get us out of the range of those missiles!”
“Give me a minute. Cameron, send me your new course.”
Cameron stood slightly and stretched over to her left to reach the middle of the unmanned navigator’s station on the other side of the center pedestal that separated the helm and the navigation consoles in order to transfer the course data to Abby.
“Oh shit,” Jessica exclaimed suddenly. “One got through. Brace for impact!”