The assault craft kept accelerating in the direction of Lansen’s rotation. Dorian-2 had rebooted the flight assist; the faults were cleared and the system was back online.
If my calculations were right, we would intercept the Hope again in ninety-six minutes. It had a second advantage, too: it would confuse Phantom Forge. It would assume our goal was escape.
When we came back around, we’d give it a surprise it wouldn’t enjoy.
The radar kept pinging unidentified objects. After a few false alarms we realized they were just wrecks – ancient ship hulks and dead satellites, age unknown.
On the surface, debris was everywhere. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find the orbit littered as well. Phantom Forge and Julian had been at war for a long time, and they’d been burning this sky for just as long.
All those alerts were coming from ahead. Behind us, it stayed eerily quiet. Phantom Forge seemed to have abandoned the chase.
It didn’t feel normal.
Phantom Forge wasn’t inexperienced. It wasn’t stupid. It knew about gravity slingshots. And it had plenty of fighters faster than an assault craft.
So why wasn’t it coming?
We’d turned the Hope’s hangar into a battlefield. We’d embarrassed it. And it was just letting us go?
The more I thought about it, the worse it felt.
“Dorian. Swap seats. You fly,” I said, already standing.
“Okay.” He didn’t understand, but he moved without hesitation.
I pulled the holographic rig down and began a meticulous scan of the space behind us.
The starfield was breathtaking – the deep dark studded with points of light, each with its own faint color and temperature. It was far more magnificent than anything I’d seen from the Twin Towers base.
I didn’t have time to appreciate it.
I used the rig’s focus controls to comb every slice of space behind us.
It didn’t take long.
A “star” warped, just slightly – like a ripple on a perfectly still pond. Then it snapped back into place.
I test-fired. The twin cannons spat a bright line into that spot.
Sparks erupted in empty space, and a fighter detonated while still cloaked. It had been less than two hundred meters from our stern.
“Enemy fighters,” I shouted to Dorian-2. “Watch for missiles!”
“Copy!”
He snapped the craft into full combat mode.
The situation had gone critical in an instant. Somehow, without us noticing, the enemy had tailed us to point-blank range.
I didn’t have time for finesse. I raked the rear cone with suppressive fire.
More than a dozen Nightmare fighters shimmered into view, slipping through my scattered pattern. Their belly-mounted missile racks unfolded.
The lock alarm shrieked immediately.
“They’re too close!” Dorian-2 yelled. “I can’t dodge!”
“Wait for my command,” I said, and pushed my processors to the limit.
The next second they launched.
More than ten missiles came at us from different angles at once.
I fired.
Rounds poured from both cannons, sweeping the incoming missiles in order of distance. One after another burst into sparks.
But the angles were too wide. I couldn’t catch them all.
More than half the missiles were still closing, seconds from impact.
“Nose up!” I roared. “Reverse thrust!”
Dorian-2 executed instantly.
Invisible force slammed me into the seat frame. Through the holographic feed I watched several missiles skim under our belly. Two even clipped each other and detonated into brief flares.
At this speed, missile tracking degraded badly. Hard evasive maneuvers worked. And once a missile missed, it was ten kilometers behind us in the next heartbeat.
We swung through a wide arc and kept flying.
But the delay had cost us. The fighters had closed again. Some were already sliding to our flanks and even our forward angles.
The crisis hadn’t changed at all.
I found myself muttering as I rotated the cannons, dumping everything into the nearest fighter off our side. The bullet stream braided into a burning whip.
“What are you saying?” Dorian-2 demanded, tense. “What command?”
The enemy fighter had just lined up on us. The whip punched through its guns and the craft exploded.
I kept muttering, swinging the cannons. The whip cracked onto a second fighter.
Less than ten seconds later, it was terminated too.
“Say it again!” Dorian-2 shouted. “I didn’t catch it!”
“Steady mind. Steady hands!” I shouted the phrase back at him and kept firing at a third fighter.
Two quick terminations didn’t change the reality: more fighters had already locked their weapons on us. Before I could finish the third, they opened fire.
“Spiral roll!” I finally bellowed the command.
“Copy!” Dorian-2 yelled back.
White orbs from their particle cannons fell like a meteor storm, swallowing the assault craft in a curtain of impacts.
The roll let us slip past most of it, but we still took several hits before we cleared the barrage.
The lock alarm sounded again without even a breath between.
Missiles launched immediately.
“Missiles!” Dorian-2 screamed.
“Roll left! Half thrust!”
“Copy!”
The assault craft canted and snapped into a hard left. I tried to intercept the missile stream.
Then I realized the problem.
These were not the same missiles as before. They were smaller – almost micro-missiles – faster, and far more numerous. Their size made them difficult targets for our cannons.
Rounds stitched the void.
It didn’t matter.
“It’s over!” Dorian-2 howled.
Sometimes the difference between success and failure is one breath.
Impact noises began to stack – a brutal, rapid sequence. In Dorian-2’s desperate scream, at least half the missiles struck us.
So this was it.
I shut my optics.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and waited to be terminated.
One second.
Two.
The explosion I expected never came.
Dorian-2 and I stared at each other.
The radar showed the fighters surrounding us, yet they weren’t firing.
“What are they doing?” Dorian-2 asked. “Are they trying to capture us?”
“I don’t know,” I said, equally lost.
The cabin went dead quiet. Only the aft section hissed with a thin, continuous sound – like metal being cut, or a pressure line leaking.
I released the safety frame and slid toward the rear crew bay to investigate.
I found it quickly.
A red, glowing ring was forming on the ceiling plating, sparks spraying as something cut from the outside.
Boarding?
That seemed pointless. And the ring was only about as wide as an arm. What kind of unit could even fit through that?
Before I could answer my own question, more hissing started around the cabin. The cut points weren’t just one – they were everywhere. A dozen at least.
Pop.
A circular steel plug finished cutting free and drifted down. A black hole gaped behind it.
I drew both pistols and held them on the opening.
Nothing emerged.
Pop.
Another cut finished on a different bulkhead. I turned without thinking.
That’s when it happened.
A black blur shot out of one of the holes, snapping toward my head like lightning.
I was ready. I fired two beams. The blur took both hits, slammed the wall, bounced once – and then hung in the air, motionless.
Now I could see it.
A spider-shaped machine, only palm-sized. At the rear was a curled data needle, making it look less like a spider and more like a scorpion – minus the head and pincers.
I’d never seen anything like it.
“What happened?!” Dorian-2 shouted from the cockpit, reacting to the gunfire.
“Scorpions,” I called back. “There are scorpions on board.”
“What?!”
Pop.
I moved to the choke point between the cockpit and the crew bay, making sure every cut hole stayed inside my firing lanes.
As each hole was drilled through, more of the mechanical scorpions poured out. They crawled across the ceiling, walls, and deck, then launched themselves at me – and died to my twin pistols one after another.
Fast, yes.
But they didn’t feel unstoppable.
Then, while I was focused on the swarm, Dorian-2 screamed from the cockpit.
“Jesus, what IS that?!”
No.
My core spiked. I spun and sprinted forward.
In the cockpit, a mechanical scorpion had wrapped its eight razor claws around Dorian-2’s head. He fought to tear it off, but it held on like a parasite.
And directly above his seat, another perfect circular hole had been cut through the ceiling.