Predator (Old Ironsides Book 3) Read online

  ‘We can jump again!’ Walker hissed. ‘Get away from them!’

  ‘Where?’ Lucas challenged. ‘Where the hell would we go? We don’t have enough fuel for more than a couple of jumps! If we head further out toward the Rim we’ll never make it home and if we approach any of the colonies we’re dragging the enemy right to their doorstep. You want that on your conscience Walker, when you see them start bombing our cities from orbit?’

  ‘I want them gone from our damned stern!’

  ‘I want them gone from existence,’ Lucas growled back at him. ‘The only way we can do that is to start figuring out what their weak spot is. Now, get in line or get off my bridge.’

  Walker hesitated for a moment, his eyes locked on hers and repressed fury radiating from him like a planetary nebula. Finally, he turned and barked an order across the bridge.

  ‘Maximum pulse power, take us in!’

  Defiance surged forward, the helmsman turning sharply to port and then to starboard to spoil their enemy’s aim as the frigate accelerated toward the blackened maw of the asteroid field.

  ‘We’re leaving them behind,’ the tactical officer noted.

  Lucas saw it too on the tactical display and nodded. ‘We’re faster off the mark than they are in sub luminal,’ she observed. ‘Something to note for future engagements.’

  ‘That’s not much use if they can disable us with a single shot once we lose the shields,’ Walker pointed out.

  ‘It’s handy in avoiding that single shot,’ Lucas snapped back. ‘Tactical, forward sensors active, all shields to rear.’

  ‘Aye, cap’n,’ came the response as the frigate veered toward vast, frigid chunks of rock and ice floating invisibly in the blackened void.

  Across the bridge, Sula watched the main viewing screen with Ellen Goldberg as she saw the stars ahead blinking in and out of existence, like crystals sparkling and then vanishing at random in a black sea. She knew what she was looking at but it was hard to picture in her mind, the immense field of debris eclipsing stars in the darkness.

  ‘Helm, three quarter,’ Lucas said, her voice calmer now but terse none the less. ‘Pick us a route, Weisner.’

  ‘Aye, cap’n,’ the helmsman, a young man of perhaps thirty, replied as he gripped the controls more tightly. ‘Here goes nothing.’

  As Sula watched, the vast chunks of debris sailed past on either side of the frigate, rocks with masses of thousands of tons that were easily capable of tearing off Defiance’s hull plating. The ray shielding that protected warships against plasma blasts by absorbing and spreading the power of their impacts and torpedo projectiles by deflecting the missiles was no defense against truly massive, solid objects like asteroids.

  The XO stood forward as he watched the immense debris field before them, the distant white dwarf star gleaming beyond it. ‘It’s an orbital field,’ he said.

  Sula saw Captain Lucas nod. ‘That’s why I picked it. It still has the rotational velocity of its parent star, so we can predict the motion of much of the debris.’

  The frigate slowed as it eased into the flow of frigid, dark rocks like a vehicle joining a freeway. Sula realized that Captain Lucas was more experienced than she had at first thought, always thinking ahead of their predicament.

  And then she realized that their enemy was too.

  ‘Multiple salvos to stern!’ the tactical officer yelled. ‘They’re opening fire!’

  The viewing screen of twinkling and vanishing stars suddenly burst into light as plasma blasts smashed into the asteroid field. Huge chunks of debris burst out from impacts amid blossoming fireballs that flickered and died out, and suddenly the orderly rotation of the asteroid field was thrown into chaos as impacted asteroids lurched out of formation into each other in massive collisions.

  In the distance, Sula heard the first chunks of debris hammer the frigate’s hull with deathly, echoing blows.

  ***

  XXIII

  ‘Hull breaches on decks three, four and six!’

  Sula hung on to the command rail as she heard Captain Lucas bellow commands to the bridge crew one after another.

  ‘Close the bulkheads! All power to main shields! Helm, one eighth pulse!’

  ‘Aye cap’n!’

  Defiance shuddered as more massive chunks of debris clattered against her hull. Sula could see the concern etched into the expressions of the command crew as they focused on their instruments. The ship was in grave danger and there was nowhere for them to run for help.

  ‘You’re digging us deeper into a pit that we cannot escape from, captain,’ Walker shouted above the din.

  ‘The enemy is doing that for us,’ the captain shot back. ‘I won’t drag anybody else into this fight just to save our own skins.’

  ‘Two more salvos, astern!’

  Captain Lucas barely reacted, her eyes watching the way ahead. ‘Maintain course and speed. The deeper we go, the safer we’ll be.’

  ‘And the harder it will be to get out again!’ Walker yelled.

  Sula watched the captain for a reaction but it was as though she were in another world, her eyes fixed to the display screen and her body motionless. Combat paralysis. She had heard her late father speak of it on occasion, the moment where there is so much going on and so much stress and danger than the human mind simply shuts down and reboots, unable to cope with the demands of the moment. Her father’s fellow pilots had also called it saturation point. Sula could see that the XO was standing behind the captain and impatiently awaiting a reply, but none was forthcoming.

  ‘She’s lost her stones,’ Ellen whispered to Sula, ‘can’t think straight. If she doesn’t make the right call in the next ten seconds, we’re done for.’

  The frigate shook as the alien ship’s plasma shots smashed into asteroids all around them and the debris blasted from the explosions slammed into the frigate’s immense hull, but this time there was less violence in the impacts. Captain Lucas gestured to the screen.

  ‘The shots are starting to miss us,’ she said, coming awake as though from a dream as she looked at the helmsman. ‘Take course starboard four zero – keep that mess they’re making between them and us.’

  ‘Aye, cap’n.’

  Sula watched as the frigate turned slowly, diving to starboard beneath a truly massive asteroid that could almost have qualified as a small moon itself, smaller rocks tumbling along its flanks as they were dragged in by its gravity.

  ‘That was too close,’ Ellen uttered, watching Captain Lucas uncertainly.

  The blasts from the alien vessel diminished further as Defiance slowly navigated around to the far side of the large asteroid.

  ‘Damage report,’ Lucas asked.

  Sula listened with Ellen as the different stations reported in. Defiance had lost thirty per cent of her shield generators and her hull was badly damaged somewhere down on the lower port stern. Her engines had survived the blasts however and were fully functional, although most of the aft plasma cannons were out of action.

  Captain Lucas studied the report for a long moment and then looked up to the tactical display. As Defiance’s sensors swept the field, so they could see the debris scattered around them and a glowing red icon denoting the alien vessel far behind.

  ‘They’re not entering the asteroid field,’ Lucas observed.

  ‘That’s what people do when they haven’t lost their minds,’ Walker uttered out of the corner of his mouth.

  Lucas did not respond to her XO as she stepped forward, as though moving closer to the screen would somehow reveal something new.

  ‘They’re slower in sub luminal cruise and they’re not willing to risk their hull integrity by coming in here after us.’

  Sula spoke almost without thinking about it from where she crouched with Ellen, her voice louder than she expected. ‘They’re not leaving, either.’

  Captain Lucas turned to look down at her and Sula almost cringed away from the XO’s penetrating gaze as he marched toward her.

  ‘Since when
are you an expert on military doctrine?’ Walker demanded.

  Ellen Goldberg stood and blocked the XO’s path. ‘Since we’re fighting an enemy that none of us know anything about.’

  Captain Lucas kept her eyes fixed on Sula. ‘She’s right, there is no doctrine yet. Why do you think they’re not following?’

  Sula slowly stood up, aware that Walker was still directing an unfavorable gaze her way but willing to take the chance that Captain Lucas was taking her seriously.

  ‘They can’t let us escape,’ she offered, ‘for some reason. We’re only one ship and we’ve already seen what they’re capable of doing at Ayleea. Why would they pursue us when Endeavour has already slipped away? If I were in their shoes and planning some kind of invasion of earth, I’d have gone after Endeavour instead and stopped her from sending a warning.’

  Lucas said nothing but Walker scowled.

  ‘We split up, standard operating procedure when under attack from a superior force. Divide assets in the hopes that one or the other will be able to get help. Endeavour slipped away and concealed her path, we escaped but did not conceal ours.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Captain Lucas remarked wryly as she glanced at the XO.

  Sula kept her nerve.

  ‘That only works if invading earth is the plan,’ she replied as she looked at the captain. ‘What if they let Endeavour go because they knew she’d run for home? What if they’re planning something else?’

  Captain Lucas was watching Sula now with an appraising expression but the XO was having none of it.

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ he snapped. ‘They’ve utterly destroyed Ayleea and murdered millions of the people there. The Ayleeans are extinct and you’re telling us they’re sparing us for some other reason that you can’t even define?’

  The XO’s words made Sula shrivel in shame, but then they revealed something to her that nobody else had mentioned. She lifted her chin defiantly.

  ‘You said it yourselves, we don’t know what their doctrine is. And since when do we know that they’ve murdered millions of Ayleeans?’

  Lieutenant Goldberg turned and raised an eyebrow at her. ‘What more evidence did you want? Their planet is in ruins, their cities aflame and their fleet destroyed.’

  Sula nodded in agreement. ‘But I saw nothing on the displays to suggest that they’d murdered a single person. The cities were empty, so were the jungles. I didn’t see any life readings on the displays when you scanned the planet. There was no life because it was gone, not because it was dead.’

  The frigate’s bridge fell into a deep silence as the command crew stared at Sula and she cringed again, fearful that she had been in error. Captain Lucas watched her blankly for a moment and then she whirled.

  ‘Son of a bi… Tactical, replay the original scans of Ayleea again!’

  ‘Aye, cap’n!’

  Sula watched as the holo screens displayed a stream of data recording the life patterns on Ayleea as recorded via measurements of gases in the atmosphere, technological indicators and the presence of recognizable ID chips of a similar design to those used in the Sol System.

  The tactical officer looked up at the captain.

  ‘There’s nothing,’ he said in amazement. ‘The planet is virtually devoid of biological signatures larger than a cat except in a few isolated areas.’

  Captain Lucas frowned. ‘You mean there was nothing alive down there?’

  The tactical officer shook his head.

  ‘The jungles are still there, the forests and everything, but fauna is virtually zero. Historical scans of the planet showed massive life readings at least on a par with earth. If there’s anything left now, it wasn’t enough to show up on our scopes.’

  Captain Lucas turned to look at Sula. ‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’

  Sula blushed as she realized the importance of the things she had noticed.

  ‘You were a bit preoccupied with trying to stop us from being blown up.’

  The captain folded her arms and leaned against one of the command consoles. ‘Come out here, young lady.’

  Sula, somewhat embarrassed, stood up and stepped onto the command platform. Lucas glanced at the XO.

  ‘This is what happens when people use their eyes and ears and minds even when they’re in grave danger,’ she said.

  Sula shrivelled again under the gaze of the command crew. ‘I had no duties so I had enough time to look,’ she said quickly to the captain. ‘Everybody else here was busy trying to stay alive.’

  Captain Lucas smiled and rested one hand on her shoulder.

  ‘A born diplomat too. And you’re barely out of high school and in a high stress situation. What are you doing here?’

  Sula took a moment to recall her life before this moment, her heart thumping in her chest like a war drum.

  ‘Scholarship,’ she blurted. ‘My father was a fighter pilot.’

  Lucas’s appraising expression turned cloudy. ‘Was?’

  Sula’s lip trembled and pain pinched at the corners of her eyes but she managed to keep her voice even. ‘He died at the Battle of Proxima Centauri.’

  If there had been any festering hostility toward her among the command crew it blustered away and died in that moment. She saw the XO close his eyes briefly and step back, all pretense of contempt vanished.

  ‘You didn’t tell me that,’ Ellen said to her.

  ‘Didn’t seem like the time or the place,’ Sula replied with a shrug.

  ‘That’s why you wanted the Eighty Fourth,’ Ellen said. ‘Your father flew with them.’

  Sula said nothing in reply. Captain Lucas squeezed Sula’s shoulder briefly and then let her arm drop away.

  ‘Well, you’re in the thick of it now,’ she said softly, before looking up at the crew. ‘We need a way out of this asteroid field without getting our backsides handed to us by that ship out there.’

  Walker stepped forward again.

  ‘It’s quite possible that CSS knows what’s happening out here. Endeavour must have made it back to the Sol System by now or at least one of the outposts, and Captain Harper would have made it his priority to warn the senate of the situation on Ayleea.’

  Captain Lucas nodded, Walker’s prior arguments apparently already forgotten.

  ‘We can’t be sure that they’ll send help,’ she replied. ‘They’ll know that Ayleea is lost but not why, and thanks to Sula here we now know more than they do. We need to know what happened to the fauna on Ayleea and especially the Ayleeans themselves.’

  Sula was staring into space as her brain processed a memory and she blurted out a name.

  ‘Tyrone.’

  ‘What about him?’ Walker asked her.

  ‘He’s still back there.’

  Walker sighed.

  ‘It is highly regrettable but Tyrone was likely either captured or killed by the enemy,’ he replied. ‘There’s not much that we can do for him and we don’t even know where he might have been taken even if he is alive.’

  ‘The enemy ship followed us,’ Sula pointed out. ‘It might not have noticed a lone fighter among all that debris around Ayleea.’

  ‘That’s unlikely,’ Walker replied. ‘Their scanners showed tremendous power, easily strong enough to detect a Phantom fighter at those ranges. They would have picked him up in moments, or utterly destroyed him with a single shot. Even if he survived, he’ll have suffered the same fate as the Ayleeans and we have no idea what happened to them.’

  Sula stepped closer to the captain.

  ‘That’s true, but unlike the Ayleeans Tyrone has a CSS ID chip, right? They have a tracker that has a longer range than standard civilian chips. If we could get back into Ayleean orbit we could do a search for his ID implant. If he has been captured, and if we can find him…’

  ‘We might find the rest of Ayleea’s people,’ Captain Lucas finished the sentence for her. ‘And that means reinforcements.’

  Sula felt a flush of pride at her idea as well as an overwhelming sense of doub
t over whether it was the right course of action. The XO was quick to share those concerns in his usual manner.

  ‘Heading back to Ayleea is the worst idea I’ve ever heard.’

  Captain Lucas nodded thoughtfully. ‘That’s why I like it.’

  ‘Somehow, I knew you were going to say that.’

  ‘We’re the only ship to evade the enemy so far,’ Lucas said to him, ‘and right now they’re mysteriously sitting out there waiting for us. Sula’s right, there’s got to be a reason for that mystery and if there is, the solution to it is probably back at Ayleea. Plus it takes us closer to home and not further away. If we can locate Tyrone, we might figure out what’s going on here and it also means we didn’t leave a good pilot to whatever horrible fate consumed the Ayleeans without at least trying to bring him home again.’

  The XO’s shoulders sank.

  ‘You know damned well that I wouldn’t oppose a mission to rescue a downed pilot, but right now it’s us that needs rescuing. How the hell do we get out of here without being blasted into a billion pieces?’

  Captain Lucas re took her seat and eyed the viewing panel for a moment.

  ‘We sneak out,’ she replied. ‘Helm, I want one third pulse power and then I want you to shut the engines down.’

  ‘Seriously?’ the helmsman asked in a strangely high pitched voice.

  ‘And I want you to aim directly at the largest asteroid you can see.’

  Sula baulked, as did the rest of the crew.

  ‘You’re insane,’ Walker uttered.

  The bridge crew fell deathly silent as they heard the insult, and Captain Lucas slowly turned to look at her XO.

  ‘Probably,’ she replied. ‘And that’s the only thing that’s going to save us. Helm, one third impulse and then shut us down! I want every system switched off, cold and dark except for one stern plasma cannon, understood?’

  ‘We’ll have no steerage, no shields, no internal support!’ Walker wailed. ‘We’ll be sitting ducks!’

  Captain Lucas glared at the officers on the deck around her and they leaped to carry out their orders as Sula stared at the captain, torn between horror and fascination.