The Wrath sat helpless as the Ruveran battleships closed the gap. Stretching from one side of their viewing screen to the other, the Breakers stood, like monoliths at a full stop. They stared their ship down as though they were hungry leviathans that had stumbled upon a weary traveler. Now their only escape was the field of asteroids slamming into each other at their backs.
Having trailed through hundreds of solar systems, spaceports, life-sustaining moon worlds, and the like, Nathan and Trevor had never seen a Breaker in person. They had been built after the destruction of their world, and what they saw was much more than they had heard.
One Breaker was the length of a continent. Its width and height were the size of the ancient state of Texas. They were mostly rectangular in shape; some angles appeared cylindrical, due to slightly rounded corners. Somewhere near the bottom rested the most dangerous weapon in the universe, the planet-destroying rift cannon.
“What are they waiting for?” Trevor asked. He expected the fighter ports to burst open and overwhelm them or some supercannon to blast them into oblivion. Instead, they waited.
“I don’t know.” Nathan was just as confused and uneasy. There was no comfort in a situation one didn’t understand and had no training for.
Button 6 was blinking on their radios. Nathan hit it and opened the common frequency.
A woman’s voice came over the radio spoken with a thick Ruveran accent. “We have your vitals and know who you are. If you enter the docking bay voluntarily, we will let you go on your way after we have the alien you retrieved. Until then, your force drive has been disabled.”
Trevor did have to admit the offer seemed reasonable for Ruvera, even if it was true. But for some reason, trusting the very empire that had destroyed one’s planet didn’t come easily.
“Where are we? Do we have an out?” Nathan asked. He fiddled with the force drive trying to get something out of it, but the Ruverans were telling the truth. They had disabled it.
Trevor smiled. His uncle had fought the hardest against the Ruverans in the fight for Earth and would never let them dictate the terms of any agreement, no matter how dire the situation. Trev brought up the star map for the sector and scanned for anything that could aid them. The only plausible route at the moment was through the asteroid belt.
“Breaker IX, this is Commander Jeggas,” the radio crackled. The man sounded angry. “We have your data on those people on board. The rift of Aquaria removed a secret base of the enemies of the empire. According to your systems, we have identified an additional agent that escaped the event. Our orders are to terminate everyone on board.”
Nathan and Trevor exchanged confused looks. Were they talking about one of them? They had been careful for the last eight years since Earth’s destruction. What Aquarian secret base?
“Breaker VI, this is Commander Argum, we have our order to capture and detain an alien as part of an unrelated mission. It is clear we must sort this out. Stand down until we—” She droned on.
“What are they fighting about? Are they after the same person?”
“No,” Nathan answered plainly and then added. “Screw this.” He punched off the radio. “What do we got?”
Trevor pointed to the energy ribbon beyond the belt. “The Endari Ribbon runs through this system.” But he wasn’t sure how it could help them.
“We’d be torn apart by it,” Nathan grumbled, though it was an option and they didn’t have many others. The stream of energy could be used for separation, but it was an unpredictable mass of energy that ran across the universe. The width fluctuated, but on average, it was larger than most suns. It was an event in space pilots actively avoided. No one actually flew into it.
“Your answer?” the woman broadcast.
Nathan disengaged autopilot, throttled up, and pulled the controls down into a 180-degree turn. The ship entered the asteroid belt.
“That was mistake,” the perturbed male commander came again. Thousands of little red blips appeared on the radar as the battleship released its fleet.
Trevor punched out a load of countermissiles. The little projectiles stayed in formation as they reached their intended targets. When the enemy fighters shot them down, the trick ejecta set off an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. The front batch of fighters went offline.
The Wrath tore through the cosmic dust first. Gray pebbles flicked across the view screen. Temporarily blinded by the chalk, Nathan relied on his terrain-detection screen. He barrel-rolled around the first boulder.
Never taking his eyes from the viewers, Nathan guided the ship down and around the great space rocks.
Their pursuers gave chase.
“Boost, buy us five minutes,” Nathan barked.
“Aye, Captain.” Boost had crawled up to the cockpit at some point. His little robotic figure popped from his seat and ran through the ship. He climbed back up to the defensive turret. The bionic creature brought the laser sights up and aimed at the offensive volley ripping toward them. Laser fire tore through the sky behind them as Boost went at it.
Nathan continued to dodge the floating stones—up, over, around, and then through a hollow one. When Trevor stole a glance over and saw his uncle’s expression, he could have sworn he was enjoying this. Chunks of moons clashed all around them as they passed by.
Then they hit the outer wall running between the two moons. It was blocked in all directions.
Nathan pulled up his mic. “Forward, Boost. Forward!”
The screen erupted with green laser fire. The larger asteroid before them exploded into harmless chunks. Boost kept on them.
Trevor glanced at the radar and saw the little fighters had disengaged and were going the long way to reengage them when they came through. They were somewhere outside the radius of the moons.
“Uncle.”
“I know.”
A batch of massive rocks spun before them, threatening to smash their ship. The oblong asteroids reached for them. Nathan throttled forward just as they all connected.
They both held a collective breath.
The Wrathshot through. They had cleared the asteroid belt.
“The force drive is still offline.” Trevor kept trying to reset it, but whatever the Ruverans had done to it continued to prevent it from firing up. Without light-speed travel, they were just killing time until the inevitable.
Outside the belt, Nathan pushed his ship to its highest threshold speed. He flew around another moon and put a massive red gas planet between them and their enemy.
The radio crackled again with a deep, commanding voice, “Jeggas, do not destroy that ship. We have orders.”
The answer crackled back, “Argum, your radio is coming in broken and unreadable.”
The fighters were back on them and firing. From Boost’s position, he saw a good two thousand ships chasing them. It was like an angry nest of ants coming to kill their queen.
The Endari Ribbon grew in their viewport.
Nathan could hear Boost getting off as many shots as he could from the back. The radar was filled with little blips coming around at them. They now appeared as a mass of color instead of individual crafts. Nathan continued to juke and spin his ship away from them.
“Electromagnetic pulse detected,” the computer announced.
Nathan reacted out of instinct and hit the emergency shutdown. All their electronics went offline. The powerless craft continued flying forward without systems.
The pulse burst out, and the subsequent shock wave blew past them.
Nathan hit the quick start and fired the ship’s systems back up. All the screens and lights blinked back on. This wasn’t the first time someone had tried to EMP him.
They were almost on top of the ribbon. It stretched its energy toward them, flicking its lightning fingers out to destroy them. Drenched in sweat, they saw the dangerous space phenomenon reach out to take them in.
“Are we really doing this?” Trevor called over.
“We don’t have a choice.” Nathan pushed the controls down, an
d they went at it.
“Here we go!” Trev called over PA. “Brace yourselves.”
Downstairs, Kaida looked over at Daphkalian. Neither of them had any idea what was going on.
Behind them, the fighters ejected every weapon they could as they closed in on their prey. Then the Wrath entered the ribbon, and everything went stark white.
Chapter 4