“You’re doing great,” said Nate. “Don’t fuck it up now.”
If she had the energy, or the reach, she would have hit him. As it was, she seethed. “Do you,” she said after a moment, “at least have a next step for me?” She was getting nervous about that rock they were flying towards. It was getting too damn close, too damn fast. She realized she didn’t know what the maximum non-Endless speed of the thing was. Would it kind of run over the top of them, leaving the Tyche like a smear of intergalactic roadkill on the surface of the rock? Or would they be able to stay ahead, even extend a lead with the Tyche running on a full burn?
Nate’s voice jogged her free of her revere. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re gonna fly to the sun.”
The new coordinates bloomed on her holo and she turned the Tyche in a smooth arc. Away from the Ezeroc ship, the light of dawn breaking around Absalom Delta. The systems’ star, bright for a moment in the window before the autotints corrected it down to bearable levels. As it was, she couldn’t see anything. The curve of the planet as it kissed the brightness of the star, and that was it. They were flying blind.
COLLISION WARNING said the Tyche.
“Pay her no mind,” said Nate. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Here we go, El. Don’t deviate from this course by a whisker. If you do, we’re all going to die, and it will be a horrible death.”
El realized that Nate had shut her out of the holo. She’d been so busy studying the beauty of the sun out the window — you big sap, you’re still able to be amazed at the wonder of creation — that she hadn’t noticed when he’d turned off the stage. It was dark, no visual clues about what they were about to hit. A piece of the Ezeroc ship? Some new danger?
There was a hum through the hull as their weapons deployed. The lasers, this time. They were firing ahead, lighting something up in front of them, and she couldn’t tell what. Nate’s coordinates filled her personal console, and she almost laughed. The corridor he’d given her to fly down was maybe a meter wider in every direction than the Tyche herself. Nate was trying to stuff her down a tube the size of the Tyche under full thrust, the ship’s drives roaring behind them. Her hands were already slick with moisture.
On her best day, that would be a tricky maneuver. They would die, and Nate was right: it would be a horrible death.
“El?” said Nate. “Stay with me. Just fly. Don’t think about it. Just do it.”
She gave a nervous laugh. “What’s to think about? We’re dead.”
“Hey,” he said. “I wouldn’t have asked you to do it if I didn’t think you could.”
God dammit, but that man had a knack for saying the right things at the right time. Okay, El. Okay. You can do this. She held the sticks, worked with the Tyche to keep to that flight corridor, that narrow slice of survival in the big emptiness of space.
COLLISION WARNING said the Tyche, again. Then, BRACE BRACE BRACE.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, thought El. Oh God.
The sun was masked out for a second as they rushed towards something huge, blotting out the star’s light. Just for a fraction of a second, because at their velocity it was almost too fast to see. Their hull rang like a bell, and an alarm sounded as atmosphere vented in a scream of metal. And then they were past.
The holo stage flicked back on, and a new series of coordinates came from Nate. She took in the details, almost stunned. Nate had flown them towards something huge in space, and she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The Gladiator. He’d had her run at the destroyer, using the lasers to carve a few pieces of the ship away before they passed. The Gladiator was under heavy thrust, and Nate had made her skim the surface of the other ship close enough to reach out an arm and touch. In their wake, the Gladiator still burned strong, a lance of human justice aimed at the heart of the Ezeroc ship.
The Tyche didn’t have any planet-busting nukes onboard. It didn’t matter. Nate had turned the Gladiator, with its huge reactors, into a weapon. The holo showed the impact of the Gladiator against the side of the Ezeroc ship.
“Take that, fuckers!” shouted Nate. And El’s holo bloomed with new coordinates. He was asking her to go towards the Ezeroc ship. She balked, because that seemed like suicide. But he’d got them this far, hadn’t he? They hadn’t died. So she gripped the sticks, cut the thrust, and spun the Tyche in space, facing them back towards the enemy.
The enemy. Because that’s what they were. Not just the Tyche’s enemy, but the enemy of humanity. And here, right on the brink of humanity’s influence of space, they’d met a foe that wanted to crush them. Turn them into calories to fuel an army to use against them. The Ezeroc had almost won; they’d killed the Ravana, or as close as anything mattered. They’d crushed the Gladiator, coring the hull like it was made of paper. They’d tried to take the Tyche, to make her one with them. They hadn’t, because Nate wouldn’t have the decency to lie down and die.
El smiled. Nate hadn’t wanted to lie down and die, and he’d goaded her into living as well.
The explosion of the Gladiator against the side of the Ezeroc had already happened, but the remains of nuclear fire still burned against the side of the Ezeroc. El could tell that the Ezeroc had been gaining on them in space, despite the thrust. Their ship would have been on them in a few more minutes. The asteroid looked cracked open, but the Gladiator couldn’t have done that much damage.
The Ezeroc ship had been opening like a clam, ready to swallow them up.
El pushed the throttles forward again, the Tyche roaring into space, and they raced towards the Ezeroc. Fire bloomed in the heart of the asteroid, pieces of rock and metal expanding away from the Gladiator’s impact point. The Tyche sprinted forward, hungry for the end.
“You ever heard you shouldn’t kick someone when they’re down?” said Nate.
“No,” said El, teeth gritted.
“Me neither,” he said. “The captain of the Gladiator sends their regards, fuckers.”
There was the cthunk cthunk cthunk cthunk of torpedoes launching, all in rapid succession, as Nate emptied their bays into the enemy ship. El spun the Tyche around and up, away from the Ezeroc, away from Absalom Delta, and into the cool dark safety of space. The holo was alight with telemetry, the bright points of light showing the torpedoes — plundered from the Gladiator’s stores — arcing towards the inside of the Ezeroc ship. Those torpedoes were worthless against the hard crust of the ship, but against the soft, vulnerable interior, they wreaked terrible damage.
The Ezeroc ship cracked like a walnut, two halves separating. Cracked, and died.
El was laughing, and crying, and punching the air. They’d done it. But better yet, they’d done it and lived.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Everything hurt.
At least Grace could hide some of it in underneath her suit. Most of the bruises couldn’t be seen — just the purple mottling of her face visible through her visor. But she still walked with a victim’s shuffle, her back catching with every step. She’d thought about taking meds, but had stopped, hand shaking as it held the hypo. Grace had thought about what she’d felt like with Kohl’s drug burning through her veins.