“Yes, finding sunlight for your chickens was my primary concern too,” Alisa said, watching as the dreadnought veered away. The two cruisers moved toward her, assuming a flanking position. “Oh, goody. We get escorts.”
“Better than being shot at,” Leonidas said and headed toward the rear of the ship.
Beck pushed himself to his feet and rapped his knuckles on his breastplate. “Guess I better find my helmet.”
Yumi wandered away, too, leaving only Alejandro gazing at the planet, a mix of emotions on his face, none of them easy to read.
“What did you say to convince them to let us land?” Alisa asked.
“I simply gave them my name.”
“No mention of the specialness of your orb?” She smiled and quirked an eyebrow.
Alejandro frowned at her. “If they interview us, speak nothing of that.” The order seemed strange coming from him, a mild-mannered man in the gray robe of a disciple of the sun gods. Perhaps he realized it, because he added, “Please.”
Alisa waved an indifferent hand. “I’m just relieved they’re letting us land. Yumi’s chickens need sun, you know.”
“Is that why they’ve been complaining so much,” he murmured.
“Either that, or because Beck is stealing all of their eggs.”
Movement on the screen drew Alisa’s attention back to the controls. The two imperial cruisers were veering off. As the Star Nomad angled toward the surface of the planet, they shifted into an orbiting path again.
“I guess they decided we weren’t interesting enough to escort, after all,” Alisa said, more relieved than concerned. She hoped the imperials would not call ahead to the base and alert the locals about suspicious Alliance sympathizers en route.
Alejandro frowned but did not reply.
A couple of minutes passed, the imperial ships turning into white dots in the distance. As Alisa took them down toward the largest of Perun’s continents, something slammed into the freighter. She did not have her harness on and was hurled forward, the flight stick smashing into her stomach as her head nearly cracked the view screen.
“What in the hells?” she blurted as she hit the button for the shields.
Alejandro lay crumpled on the floor between the seats and only groaned as a response. She checked the sensors. If there had been a ship or any type of object that could hit them, the proximity alarm should have gone off.
“What’s going on up there?” Mica asked over the comm. “You’re bruising my ship.”
“As soon as I figure it out, I’ll let you know.” Alisa’s hands flew over the controls, getting damage reports and also cycling through the exterior cameras, trying to see with her eyes what the sensors had missed. “And it’s my ship. You said you were leaving me for a better job as soon as it came along.”
Something struck them again. This time, the Nomad merely shuddered slightly, the shields protecting them, and on one of the cameras, Alisa glimpsed a blast of blue energy striking them.
“E-cannon,” she growled. “Someone’s firing at us.”
She squinted into the darkness of space, trying to see where the blast had come from.
Alejandro pulled himself into the co-pilot’s seat and fastened his harness. Alisa should have done the same, but she was too busy scowling and peering.
“The imperial ships?” Alejandro asked, bewildered.
“No. Though they sure departed in a timely manner. Look. Do you see that? That dark, angular blob?”
“Angular blob?” From the way he still sounded dazed, he might have hit his head.
“Yes, there’s definitely something there.”
As if to agree with her, the sensors finally gave a tenuous beep.
“Twenty tindarks says that’s a Stealth Fang.” Alisa had fought against them during the war. They were usually imperial ships, but they were also popular with the criminal element since they did not show up on sensors until they were right on top of an enemy.
“I don’t take bets, Captain.” Alejandro had recovered enough to grip the console and peer at the screen.
“Because your religiosity forbids it?”
“Because my financial acuity forbids it.”
“What’s going on?” Leonidas asked, walking up the corridor with Beck.
Something made the ship shudder again. This time, Alisa did not see the fire from an e-cannon, but her control panel lit up in complaint.
“Beck may get to use his armor,” Alisa said, nudging the Nomad to maximum speed, hoping to escape their near-invisible pursuer.
Leonidas looked sharply at her. “Someone’s trying to board us?”
“That was a grab beam. They’re going to have to get closer to catch us, but…” Alisa eyed the sensors where their enemy now showed up as a fuzzy green blip. “They’re faster than we are, so it seems likely that could happen.”
“Can we get down to Perun first?” Alejandro asked.
She did not need the computer to run the calculations comparing the distance, their speed, and her speed. “No.”
Chapter 2
They couldn’t make atmosphere and definitely couldn’t reach Karundula Space Base before the other ship caught up. Alisa changed their course, all too aware of the agile way the Fang followed them. The angular ship was hard to see, its body all black with no running lights, and a sensor-dampening system camouflaging it until it was close enough to strike. But she knew what she was dealing with. The triangular craft was as sleek and maneuverable as a Delgottan cheetah. She knew its range for that grab beam too. Another minute or two, and it would be close enough to get the beam to stick, to capture the Nomad.
Leonidas and Beck had charged back to their quarters to fully suit up. Having a cyborg on their side should help even the odds if they were boarded, but Alisa would prefer not being captured at all. Where had those imperial ships gone?
“You doing all right, Alejandro?” she asked.
His eyebrows were pinched together, and he gripped his waist, like he might have clunked his ribs hard when he fell.
“You’re not going to die, are you?” she added, wishing she had a field full of asteroid debris to fly through so it might slow down their pursuers.
“Rebus-de teaches us not to fear death, that our souls live on for eternity, floating in the Dark Reaches and finding peace with the cosmic essences that were born with the universe and that shall continue on forever.”
“I think you can find cosmic essences in Yumi’s cabin, if you want to commune with them preemptively.” Alisa should not have mocked him, especially if he was quoting scripture to reassure himself, and raised an apologetic hand as soon as the words came out.
“I do not believe you,” Alejandro said.
“Pardon?”
“When you said that your Alliance superiors appreciated your wit, I do not believe that you spoke the truth.”
“You imperial folk are so mistrustful.” Alisa grinned at him, but it was a short-lived gesture. Their pursuers tried to envelop them with their grab beam again.
The ship lurched as a tenuous hold grasped them. Alisa accelerated, decelerated, and dove downward, trying to shake them. The Fang wasn’t close enough yet. That grip shouldn’t be a solid one.
There. Adding a clumsy barrel roll to her dive did the job.
“Shook them for the moment,” Alisa said. “But that slowed us down too.”
She corrected their course, heading in the direction the imperial ships had gone instead of down toward the planet. Unfortunately, she could not see those ships anymore. They had taken off quickly. It was as if they had been running from the trouble. Or intentionally leaving the Nomad to its fate.
“Should we try communicating with them?” Alejandro asked.
“The imperial ships?”
“The people chasing us.”
“I think they effectively expressed what was on their minds when they fired at us,” Alisa said.
Something they hadn’t done again, interestingly. The Fang was close eno
ugh. It could have fired numerous times by now. The Nomad had sturdy shields, but they would not hold up indefinitely. But the Fang did not want to obliterate Alisa’s ship. Clearly, it wanted to capture them. Maybe the Fang’s crew had hoped to disable the Nomad with that first surprise strike. The helmsman over there probably was not too concerned that it had failed. There was no need for concern. They had the faster ship.
Alejandro hesitated, looking at her, then pushed the comm button. Was he worried she would object? If he wanted to chat up the people chasing them, that was fine with her. She was too busy flying to care. Ah, there were those two imperial ships. The white dots that represented the cruisers had come into view.
“Unidentified ship that is attacking us, this is Dr. Alejandro Dominguez. Please explain your actions. We are a peaceful and unarmed freighter.”
Alisa thought of Beck and Leonidas. They were not entirely unarmed, though the handheld weapons would be of no use until intruders forced their way onto the ship.
Alejandro received a response by way of a red beam of energy that lanced past the starboard wing. It did not strike them, but it might have shaved some paint off the hull.
“I don’t think they want to talk,” Alisa said. “Why don’t you see if you can raise those cruisers? Tell them that you’re about to be captured or killed or tortured or worse and that we could use an ominous imperial presence to loom scarily at our backs.”
Alejandro hesitated, and she wished she had eavesdropped on his conversation with the imperials. If they were buddies, as she had suspected, he shouldn’t hesitate to ask for help now, should he? And they would gladly give it… They wouldn’t veer away and pretend he wasn’t in trouble. Such as they were doing now. Hm, he hadn’t blackmailed or otherwise coerced them, had he?
Alejandro tapped the comm, directing the signal ahead of them. “Captain Ravencraft? This is Dr. Alejandro Dominguez. There are unfriendly ships in your planet’s orbit, and we’re being attacked. We are in need of—”
The comm beeped at him, and a red warning light flashed.
Alisa cursed and thumped her fist on the console, as if that would help. “The Fang is jamming our communications.”
“Is there a way to override them?”
“Not unless you want to climb up on the roof and realign the comm dish.”
He looked at her, maybe thinking she was serious.
“It’s a joke. That wouldn’t help. Besides, you might interfere with my reception of The Fiery and the Glamorous. We’ve already missed two weeks’ worth of episodes by being way out on the edge of the system.”
“Perhaps they’ll see that we’re in trouble,” Alejandro said, ignoring her joke.
The white imperial ships had grown on the screen, their cylindrical details now visible.
“Oh, they can see.” Even if the Fang was still invisible to their sensors, the imperials would have detected those energy shots being fired, and they would see Alisa’s evasive maneuvers. “I think they’re just not interested in helping. Do people here not love you as much as I thought?”
“Politics are always complicated.”
She glanced at him. “Are you implying that the Fang is from a different faction on the same side? Another imperial ship?”
“I can’t know that. I only know that some people may not be pleased about the existence of the orb, as you call it.”
“What do you call it?”
Alejandro pressed his lips together and said nothing.
Another beam of energy shot out, this time hammering into their aft shields. An alarm flashed the percentage of shield power remaining. Apparently, the warning shots were over. Maybe the Fang had realized where they were running and worried that Alisa might get help.
“Mica,” she said over the internal comm. “Can you get any more power out of the engine? Going faster would be excellent for our health right now.”
“I gathered that.” Some clanks and a grunt followed Mica’s words.
Alejandro glanced at Alisa.
“That’s the Alliance equivalent of yes ma’am,” she explained.
“Sometimes it seems unfathomable that your side won the war.”
“Even though you say things like that, I’ll still offer to buy you a drink after we land.” Another energy beam slammed into the back of the Nomad, this time with enough force that the ship bucked, even with the shields up. “If we land.”
The shield power dropped below fifty percent.
Alejandro clasped the three-suns pendant that dangled down the front of his robe and closed his eyes.
A little more juice filtered into the power display next to the flight stick. Alisa did not hesitate to boost their expenditure and push them into the red. The deck plating rattled under her feet, and the ship’s voice promised dire consequences if she did not ease back, but the imperial ships grew closer, their white and gray hulls filling the screen.
As soon as she was close enough, Alisa zipped past one’s thrusters, slowing enough to maneuver. She weaved between them, as if claiming them for dance partners at the Tri-Eclipse Ball.
“What are you doing?” Alejandro asked. “Trying to annoy them?”
“Not exactly.”
The Fang did not follow her, instead slowing down at the edge of the cruisers’ firing distance. Good. If Alisa had to, she would hide between the two ships until their pursuer got bored and left, or she would go with them all the way down to the planet if that was where the imperials were headed.
Unfortunately, the Fang did not hesitate for long. The sleek ship swooped into the view of her rear cameras again, and she could tell it was trying to target her without bothering the cruisers. The other captain’s audaciousness floored Alisa, and she thought Alejandro might be right, that these ships were all on the same side. The Fang certainly did not seem worried that the imperials would see it and fire.
Alisa guided them in close to one of the cruisers, almost bumping wings as she kicked up the acceleration. The cruisers raised their shields, and the Nomad shivered as her own energy field bumped against theirs. Giving them a little more room, Alisa piloted her craft in front of one cruiser’s nose an instant before the Fang fired. A red energy beam streaked through the air between the imperial ships. Had she remained where she had been, it would have struck them, but it zipped past without hitting its target.
As she took the Nomad under the belly of the same cruiser, the comm panel flashed.
“How much do you want to bet that’s the imperials, whining about us using them as asteroids in a Seek and Find game?” Alisa asked.
“I told you, I don’t gamble. But if I did, I wouldn’t take that bet.” Alejandro tapped the comm button. “Captain Ravencraft, are you now interested in coming to our assistance?”
“Who in the hells are you?” a man’s voice snarled.
“As I informed you previously,” Alejandro said calmly as Alisa continued diving and weaving, “I am Dr.—”
“Admiral Benton said we can’t fire on you, but if you don’t get your loathsome tick of a ship off my belly, I’m going to knock you into the farthest sun.”
“Loathsome?” Alisa snarled, almost missing another attack from the Fang. She danced toward the belly of the other ship to avoid it. “The Nomad isn’t loathsome.”
“If you would simply deter the Fang from attacking us further, we would be delighted to leave,” Alejandro said.
“More than delighted,” Alisa grumbled.
A new plan jumped into her head. Maybe the imperials needed more of an incentive to attack the Fang.
So far, she had been using the other ships to stay out of their attacker’s line of sight, but now she swooped out from underneath one and drew closer than wise to its thrusters. Making sure the Fang could see them, she pretended to get too close to one of the big housings. As if they had clipped the hull of the ship, or perhaps the shield, she threw the Nomad into an artful roll. The view spun, but in her mind, she kept precise tabs on where the cruiser was and where the Fang
was. For a moment, their attacker had an easy shot.
“Captain?” Alejandro asked, gripping the console with both hands.
She couldn’t tell when the Fang was about to fire, so she had to guess. Where was the perfect spot? Her belly would be most vulnerable, so when it was exposed to them, she reached for the thruster controls. She waited, trying to time it just right, to judge when the weapons person over there would shoot. The ruse would only be good for one shot.
“Now,” she whispered and summoned full power.
The Nomad surged forward, losing the roll as she streaked into space. Alisa decelerated almost immediately, not wanting to be too far from cover if this failed.
The rear cameras caught the red beam lancing out and striking just where she had wanted—one of the thruster casings of an imperial ship.
“Hah,” she said.
The shields were up on the cruisers, and that shot would not do any damage, but she hoped…
A fiery ball of orange shot out from the cruiser’s rear e-cannon. It slammed into the side of the Fang, briefly lighting up all of its black contours.
Alisa grinned. The Fang would have shields, but those cruisers were big, powerful ships with big, powerful weapons. At that close of range, that cannon blast should have made quite a dent. To her delight, second and third shots followed after the first.
The Fang veered away, its tail between its legs. With that sensor-dampening camouflage, it soon disappeared from sight—and from the sensors—but in her imagination, Alisa pictured plumes of smoke wafting from its scorched hull.
“All right,” she said, adjusting their course, “I’m taking us down to dock before any more trouble finds us.” Such as if the irritated captains of the cruisers turned their cannons on the Nomad.
“A good idea.” Alejandro tapped the comm. “We thank you for your gracious assistance, Captain Ravencraft.”
“Get your tick off our belly,” came the less than gracious response.
Alisa sneered at the comm, remembering the days when she had flown a combat ship and could have sent a few torpedoes up his nose for saying such snide things about her vessel. Alejandro closed the comm channel without comment.