The holo updated as the Tyche kept track of the torpedo. The seconds counted down before impact, the display counting down in tenth-of-a-second increments. He paid attention when it beeped at the ten second mark. He could tell El was paying attention too, wanting to see what kind of effect that had on the Ezeroc ship.
Impact.
There was a flare in space, the nuclear warhead of the torpedo impacting the Ezeroc ship. The impact told Nate two things.
The first was that the Ezeroc didn’t have PDCs, or anything like ’em. That torpedo just walked on over and said hi. Nothing stopped it.
The second thing was that the Ezeroc didn’t need PDCs, because their little ship-to-ship nuke had about as much effect as horse-fly on a bull. Just a bright light, a little sting, and a few shards of rock. The Ezeroc asteroid was made of something hard. Which put the battle the Gladiator must have had with it in perspective.
“No effect on target,” he said. “We’re gonna need bigger guns.”
“I need a destination, Nate,” said El. “I can’t keep flying the fuck around hoping for a clear sky.”
Absalom. Formally N-973, a six-planet system on the very far part of the hard black. A toehold in space, a few rugged colonists as far away from the Republic’s muddy boot as you can get. Absalom Delta was the habitable one, but there were five other planets out there. He pulled up the navigation systems. “I’m gonna need you to take us to … let’s go there,” he said, highlighting the planet orbiting at the edge of this solar system. Sixth planet. Not terraformed; too small, no atmosphere. Just a cold rock, lots of ice. Surveys said it was mineable. Not that it mattered, not now. What mattered was a little time. A rock without air they could fly around, get some thinking room. He keyed the Endless Drive online.
“We need a little more space,” said Nate. “I can’t bring up the negative space field this close to … matter.”
“I know the math,” said El. “Let’s get a little farther out. If these fuckers would stop throwing rocks at us—”
“Probably not going to happen,” said Nate, “so let’s make our own space.”
He locked in the sixth planet into the jump system, warming up the Endless Drive for its sprint. The Ravana’s reactor fed the Tyche like it could do it all day long, all systems firing bright and loud. He pulled up the firing controls again. “El?”
“With you.”
“I’ll dump some torpedoes that way,” he said, highlighting an area of space. “I want you to fly there.”
“You want me to fly where you’re detonating nukes?” she said.
“Yeah,” said Nate.
“Why the hell?” she said.
“I’m going to make some clean air.” Nate fired torpedoes. Cthunk, cthunk, cthunk as the Tyche dropped weapons into space. El was pouring on thrust, the ship turning again and again, weaving through the debris in space, the rocks that the Ezeroc kept launching at them. They were getting clear. They were going to make it.
The Tyche’s holo lit with COLLISION WARNING BRACE BRACE BRACE. Nate’s eyes boggled. The Ezeroc ship had … jumped. No other explanation for it. One second it was a ways off, doing its thing with the rocks, and then it was there. In front of them. Huge, pock-marked surface. The crust popped, a massive rock detaching. No doubt heading their way. What Nate couldn’t wrap his mind around was how it had done it. Something that large would need a huge negative space field. A field that should have destroyed it with the planet below it.
But the Ezeroc ship was just fine, thank you very much.
The PDCs didn’t care about this, the Tyche spraying the surface of the Ezeroc ship. El was yanking on the controls, the Tyche shuddering under the hard Gs she was putting into the turn. She keyed the comm. “BRACE!”
Damn it if they were too close to that asteroid that called itself a ship. It was die as a thin spread of atoms, or it was die by arguing with the laws of physics.
Nate always did like to argue. He slammed his hands down on the console, kicking in the Endless Drive. The star field outside the cockpit pulled and stretched, lines of light drawing across his field of vision.
The sweat on his forehead, gone. Clean air in his lungs, none of the metal taint of overworked air recyclers. Wind in his face as he ran under a blue sky, both his legs whole and perfect. His ship, one with him, as she reached for the stars. He was everything. He was the universe.
They jumped.
• • •
They snapped back into the real five hundred kilometers from the surface of the icy rock that called itself the sixth planet. The star at the center of the system was dim this far out, a tiny prick of light in the sky outside their cockpit.
They floated, the gentle hum of the ship’s Endless Drive spooling down a comfort. They were alive. They were here. They were … fuck.
The Ezeroc ship floated in space, far out there, but still there. It had jumped with them.
Well, probably not with them. But humans needed time to jump; time was crucial to the human existence and you couldn’t break some rules. Nate’s guess was that the Ezeroc didn’t share this limitation; that they’d seen the Tyche jump and just … done it faster. This might have been why the Ravana broke the rules, trying to get away from a foe they couldn’t, shouldn’t outrun.
They would never escape the Ezeroc. They would have to fight them here, or die trying. The only real problem? Their foe had already killed a ship many times bigger than they were. A ship built for war. A ship of the Republic, the same Republic that had crushed an Empire filled with good people trying to do the right thing.
Nate was pretty sure they were fucked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The lights in the cargo bay flickered in a post-jump power flutter. Grace stood still, her mind still high on the coattails of jump rush.
Get your shit together.
Kohl was gone, out of her visual field. When they jumped he’d been right fucking there at the back of the hold, and now he wasn’t. There was just the collection of broken blaster pieces. If there was one thing that was going in Grace’s favor, it was that the ship wasn’t under thrust this particular second.
Worth the risk to decouple her boots and grab the sword?
She felt caught, the moment of decision before her. Post jump, all things were possible. It made her feel connected to all things, that the future wasn’t fixed, that things could go her way. It was a dangerous feeling, because nothing had changed. Kohl was still three times her size and infected with a parasite. They were still fighting an alien foe.
Hell with it.
Grace decoupled her boots from the floor and took ten quick steps to the sword.
She almost made it.
Grace was close — fingertips a handbreadth from the hilt of the sword — when a shipping crate big enough to hold an acceleration couch hit her mid-sprint. She didn’t even see it coming, felt the rush of surprise and confusion as her entire body was knocked sideways. Her teeth jarred and she bit her tongue, falling hard. No tuck-and-roll with this one, the weight of the crate having slapped her like a giant’s hand. If Kohl had thrown that, he was strong, stronger than a person should be. Stronger than a person could be.
Grace looked in the direction the crate had come from. Her vision wasn’t clear, sight blurry with the aftereffects of the jump, or being hit in the head, or both. But she saw the big shape of Kohl stomping towards her. He stood above her, breathing hard and fast.