One
She saw the incoming fire too late to save her ship. The one-man fighter was going down, and if she didn’t pop her canopy in the next five milliseconds, she was going with it.
Lisbet realized she had no choice. Hitting the CATASTROPHIC FAILURE button, she checked herself out of her ride split seconds before it blew into a million little weightless bits. Out in the nothingness of space near the galactic rim, she was in no-man’sland, where rescue was hard to come by. She had either a long wait or a slow death to look forward to in the next few hours.
The enemy Jits had won this battle, though hopefully not the war. Skirmishes on the rim had escalated in recent years as the Jit’suku empire looked for ways to gain a foothold in the Milky Way. The expansion from their home galaxy was fueled by the comparative ease of travel via an inconvenient wormhole and several jump-points – that had been created before humans had realized how the Jit’suku truly viewed the human race.
Inferior. That’s what the Jits thought of humans. Inferior in every way to their warmongering race.
Though they looked very human in appearance – if built on a bit of a larger scale than most humans – Jit’suku society was one that most humans had a hard time understanding.
They prized warriors and seemed to scoff at diplomats and anyone who wanted to negotiate. The only thing the Jits understood was conquest, it seemed.
Which was why they’d been fighting so long and so hard out here, on the rim of the Milky Way galaxy.
Lisbet was just the latest in a nearly endless rotation of human fighter pilots who had drawn the dreaded, but vital, duty of patrolling the rim.
With vast reaches of emptiness between nearly lawless stations, dangerous jump-points, and the occasional star system, rim duty was enough to drive anyone crazy. But she welcomed the emptiness of space and the loneliness of her own thoughts after this humiliation.
She’d been on this patrol for over a week with nothing to report. Then this. A Jit’suku battle cruiser had appeared as if from nowhere, and blasted her before she could even get a message out. He’d been lying in wait behind an asteroid. Lisbet had known to be cautious, but honestly, her thoughts had been elsewhere.
As soon as she had spotted the giant ship lumbering out from behind the cover of the asteroid, it had already been too late. Her signals had bounced back – jammed. A moment later, a blanket of weapons fire had appeared on her screens. She’d been blown already, and she had known it.
Popping her canopy and stranding herself in the middle of nowhere in the emergency pod had been her only choice. Not a great one, but there’d been no other way to get away from all the incoming fire. The bastard giving orders on that battle cruiser hadn’t been taking any chances that she’d get clear and report back. He’d thrown everything but the kitchen sink at her, and she hadn’t stood a chance.
“Human, this is Captain Fedroval of the battle cruiser Fedroval’s Legacy . Warrior to warrior, I give you the choice. Would you prefer the fast death of missile fire or the slow death of suffocation when your air runs out?” He spoke directly into her emergency pod.
For a moment, Lisbet thought of ignoring the short-range communication from the cruiser. He was still blocking her long-range transmitter, but he’d allowed her enough bandwidth to broadcast to his ship. Big of him. Damned Jit’suku bastard.
“How do you know I’m not the advance scout of a much larger force? Could be my battalion is on my heels and will pick me up after they blow you to kingdom come.” Oh, how she wished that were true.
She’d get a lot of satisfaction right now at seeing the Jit’suku ship blown into a million pieces.
There was a slight delay in the answer; she’d expected one right away. The captain probably knew she was bluffing. If he’d been hiding out behind that asteroid for any length of time, he had to know hers was merely a patrol craft on a regular route.
“Who is this? What is your name, rank and gender?”
He sounded mad now, for some reason she couldn’t imagine. And why would he ask her gender?
That seemed odd in the extreme. But she’d play along. She’d be on her own out here for a long while – if he let her live after this encounter – and she was going to have a lot of time, alone with her thoughts, before her air ran out. Might as well talk to someone while she had the company, even if he was a damned Jit.
“Lieutenant Lisbet Duncan of Earth. And I’m female, not that it should matter to you. I’m a qualified pilot and graduated top of my class from pilot training.”
While there had always been a lot more males drawn to military life than females, Lisbet wasn’t too much of an oddity. Many women had the natural skills needed to fly shuttles and other spacecraft. She was unique in that she’d requested fighter duty. She liked shooting at things, and would’ve tried for a gunner position on one of the big battleships if she hadn’t qualified as a pilot.
“Prepare for retrieval.” The order was brusque, and the harsh voice sounded even angrier.
“Now just wait a damn minute!”
A moment later she saw two small craft launch from the battleship and head straight for her. The bastards were going to pick up her pod. She was going to be a prisoner of war.
Dammit!
Although . . . it was probably better than dying alone in the vastness of space. At least if they picked her up, she might have a chance to do some damage to them before she died. She didn’t like the idea of being tortured, but she’d trained for it, like all the other pilots, and thought she was mostly prepared. She didn’t know much anyway. She wasn’t privy to any battle strategies or troop-deployment information. She only knew her current mission and those she’d been on previously. Not much of value to the Jit’suku empire.
Sure enough, the two craft flanked her and deployed sturdy microfilament netting that encompassed her pod. As soon as she was secure, they flew her back toward the cruiser.
The ship was even larger than she’d thought. It had the latest in Jit technology, from what she could see of its outboard arrays. This was no battered old warhorse. This ship was battle-ready and gleaming, though she could see a few spots where repairs had been made after engagements with human forces, no doubt.
The two patrol craft deposited her inside a gleaming hangar bay, bumping her only once as they set her down. The nets retracted and they parked on either side of her ship. She waited patiently inside her pod, gathering what little information she could. Her instruments told her the hangar bay was pressurized with a breathable atmosphere, and she saw big Jit’suku men working on various craft parked nearby without breathing gear.
The hangar bay had a giant force field at one end, keeping the air in. Nice. On human battleships, the hangar bays were kept at zero atmosphere. Pilots loaded into the canopies above and were dropped down and secured to the fuselages via a small chamber that was sealed and then evacuated of its precious air before opening to the hangar deck below.
The pilots who had caught her pod climbed out of their cockpits and moved closer to investigate. One made a sign for her to pop her lid and she shook her head, refusing. They went on like this for a few minutes, arguing via sign language through the window, until suddenly everyone on the flight deck jumped to attention.
At the far end of the long deck, Lisbet could see a giant of a man – even among the very large Jit’suku warriors – coming toward her at a fast pace. He looked absolutely furious. And handsome.