Onyx Platform
It was only a blip.
Just a little spike of power in a Dieshan power grid.
The tech on duty noticed and checked the fluctuations in that section of the grid. The spike was in reasonable bounds. He found nothing out of order, so he went on to his other work. He had done this shift for years, taking night duty at the ISC power station high in the Red Mountains West of HQ City and DMA. This grid served only a few defense installations—and the palace they guarded.
He glanced out the window. The palace stood high in the mountains, majestic and otherworldly, with walls of rose crystal. Its onion towers made silhouettes against an intense crimson sunset.
Ruby Palace.
Home of the Imperator.
Half an hour before sunrise, Althor jogged out to the airfield with the other three members of his squadron.
Their Jags waited on the tarmac.
Technically the single-pilot spacecraft were called JG-8 fighters. The name Jag came from “lightning jag,” the nickname test pilots had given the prototype, the JG-1. Althor’s adrenaline surged when he saw Redstar. His ship. Only he could fly this beauty. Its onboard Evolving Intelligence had become part of his brain and recognized no other pilot.
The four ships waited on the tarmac like alabaster works of art. On the
ground, they were elongated, with wings extended. In flight, they could change according to their purpose: spread wings for subsonic speeds; wings pulled in tight for hypersonic flight; rounded shape to minimize surface area during interstellar flight or for stealth or battle. The corrugated hull optimized airflow. Its weapons remained hidden in bays.
Secondary Steel, their squad leader, jogged at Althor’s right. An older man with a distinguished record, he had steel gray hair and regular features. This was his last year in the J-Force; soon he would retire and spend time with his grandchildren. Tertiary Belldaughter ran on Steel’s other side, strapping on her Jumbler gun. After Althor, she was the youngest member of the squad. Tertiary Wellmark was jogging to Althor’s left. She gazed out at the red line on the horizon that presaged the dawn, her chin lifted, her queue of dark hair rustling. They all wore Jagernaut blacks, with silver conduits, studs, and other equipment embedded in the leather and their gauntlets. Their boots thudded on the field and their Jumblers hung heavy and black at their hips.
Althor was the newest of the four, proud to fly with Blackstar Squadron, one of the most resourceful squads in the J-Force, though he suspected the Traders used a far less polite term than “resourceful.” Blackstar had a notorious reputation. He intended to make it more so.
His Jag was luminescent in the predawn light, pearly and white like alabaster. As he ran alongside it, he trailed his hand along its tellerene hull, a composite threaded with tubular fullerene molecules. Lightweight and fatigue resistant, tellerene retained its strength even at the extreme temperatures of hypersonic reentry. Doped with specialized nanobots, it could repair itself better than many materials, which meant the hull showed fewer of the pits, grooves, and other damage ships took on during space travel. Like their pilots, Jags were top-of-the-line.
He stopped and laid his palm against the unmarked surface. A prong clicked out. When he pressed his wrist against the prong, or psiphon, it snapped into his biomech socket.
Connection, Althor thought.
Verified. That response came from his Jag’s EI. Redstar was sentient, its brain inextricably interwoven with his.
The airlock snapped apart. With his enhanced optics, Althor could
slow the motion enough to see the outer and inner doors open together. ISC wizards were working on membranes that would act as molecular airlocks, but they hadn’t perfected the technology, so Jags used conventional airlocks with two doors.
Althor swung up into the cabin. It was small, only a few paces across, its deck tiled with white squares that shed diffuse light. Equipment filled the cabin and bulkhead compartments: a cocoon bunk, survival gear, hand weapons, waste processor, environment suit, propulsion pack, all the necessities to live—and fight—in space. Alone. Jags had to operate autonomously. A squad could spend days or even months on their own. They were the vanguard, the units that supported the behemoths of ISC, the battle cruisers, the fleets, the multitude of other spacecraft, both manned and unmanned, that made up the majority of the space forces.
The pressure of his boots on the deck activated the cockpit and it irised open like the shutter on a high-speed holocam. Althor squeezed into his pilot’s seat, and its exoskeleton folded around his body, encasing him in a silver mesh. The visor lowered over his head and data scrolled across its display. Panels moved into place around him, and their translucent surfaces produced holomaps of space and stats on the Jag. A panel to his right showed a holographic representation of the area outside, with his ship as the last in a line of four. Beyond them, the arches and magrails of the starport soared in the sky, silver, white, and cobalt in the dawn.
Althor barely even noticed as the exoskeleton plugged psiphons into sockets. Redstar linked to him by sending signals through the psiphons to threads in his body, which carried them to his spinal node. They could also use remote signals, but the prongs offered a more reliable connection.
His mind interpreted Redstar’s interaction with his node as a voice: Redstar attending.
Acknowledged, Althor thought. He needed no security checks; Redstar knew him. Some of its components had been developed from his own DNA. It was an extension of his brain just as he was of its mind. If anyone else tried to fly the ship, use its controls, or even board without permission, Redstar would lock up every system, trap the intruder within, and notify Althor, or if it couldn’t reach him, the nearest J-Force authorities. If Althor ever stopped flying, the J-Force would have to retrain Redstar from
scratch. Sometimes a Jag’s EI refused to accept a new pilot and they had to transfer a new brain into the ship.
Redstar growled in his mind. Boosting to Kyle space.
Althor submerged his mind into another universe.
Kyle space obeyed the laws of Hilbert spaces, a mathematical formalism known to the Raylicans for millennia, and to the peoples of Earth well before they achieved space flight. Just as a Fourier transform shifted signals from an energy space to a time space, so Redstar had just shifted Althor from real space into Kyle space.
When Althor had a thought, the quantum wavefunction of his brain changed according to the chemical processes produced by his neurons. In quantum terms, it meant the wave that described his brain evolved as he thought. Humans had known for centuries how to express such waves, but it had taken much longer to achieve the computing power to calculate them.
The waves that described Althor’s thoughts at any instant depended on the positions of the particles in his brain. When his mind shifted into the Kyle web, he entered a place where his thought defined his “position.” The more his thoughts matched those of another telop, the closer together they were in Kyle space. It made no difference if the other telop was near him in the real universe or halfway across the galaxy; they would be next to each other in the web. It made possible immediate communication over interstellar distances.
The Kyle web, popularly known as the psiberweb, spanned the Kyle universe. Its nodes provided gateways from the real universe into the web. Only telepaths could use those gates, and each experienced the web in their own way. To Althor it was a grid, vivid red against a deep black background. The presence of his mind distorted the grid into a peak that resembled the diffraction pattern from a circular aperture, as if his thoughts diffracted through the gateway into Kyle space. Circular ridges surrounded the peak, lower in height, like ripples in a lake when a stone dropped into the water. The peak was his central consciousness, and the ripples were satellite thoughts at the edges of his mind.
An emerald green spark appeared next to him and grew into a second peak, rising up out of the grid. A gold peak appeared next, as close to
Althor as the green. Then the blackness itself formed a dark peak, with the red, green, and gold packets arrayed around its powerful shape.
Blackstar Squadron report. That came from Steel, the squad leader, the black peak.
Goldstar up, Belldaughter thought.
Greenstar up, Wellmark thought.
Redstar up, Althor thought. All four pilots were strong psions, but the Rhon power of his mind rumbled compared to the others. In their four-way link, he had to hold back the full strength of his mind so that he didn’t overpower the others. Their exchange flashed by in a fraction of a second. They had jumped into accelerated mode and would probably remain with it until they finished this run.
A psicon blinked on Althor’s display, a blue circle, the image of a button used to activate the lock on a piece of luggage. He focused on it and a prerecorded thought from Secondary Steel came to him: The security cloak is operating. Our presence in Kyle space can’t be detected by other telops here.
Then in real time, Steel thought, Link.
Greenstar linked, Wellmark replied.
Goldstar linked, Belldaughter thought.
Redstar linked, Althor answered.
In the four months Althor had flown with Blackstar, since his graduation, he had been integrating into the mental link they formed together as a squadron. Their minds felt right: strong, intelligent, calm, rational. They had been selected for mental compatibility; otherwise they couldn’t function as a unit.
Althor knew he was sitting in his chair, but his perception of reality receded, displaced by his mindscape. He had trained at DMA to operate simultaneously in his universe and Kyle space. Most telops couldn’t manage it, which was another reason so few Jagernauts existed. The thoughts of the other squad members murmured in the background of his mindscape. Wellmark was running checks on her Jag, synchronizing Greenstar with the other three ships. Althor had Redstar parallel his systems to hers, and Blackstar and Goldstar joined them in running checks: nav, cyber, weapons, comm, hydraulics, biomech.
Pain sparked in Althor’s head and he pressed his fingertips into his
temples. Jagernauts paid a price for their four-way link; to maintain such a strong connection required concentration and resources. The more people in the link, the more it taxed their bodies, minds, and ships, and that limited the size of a squad to four Jagernauts. Nor could humans sustain that boosted connection for long. But when it worked, the squadron link was a miracle. They could communicate anywhere, under any conditions, instantaneously.
Althor smiled, thinking of the Cheshire cat he had read about in a literary work from the Allied classics. He felt that satisfied to be a member of Blackstar. He didn’t make a big deal about it, though. Some might say that Jagernauts were notorious for their cocky self-confidence, especially Blackstar Squadron. No reason to swell the already healthy egos of his squad mates.
A psicon appeared in a corner of his mindscape, a smirking cat with Wellmark’s features. It lifted its paw and stretched out its claws: Too late, Valdoria. We know what you think. It vanished with a self-satisfied pop.
Althor laughed, his voice rolling through the cockpit. He sent his own psicon to Wellmark, an image of himself in the leather armor and disk mail of a Rillian soldier, holding a burnished sword above his head. You dare to mock the great warrior of Skyfall?
Wellmark’s answering psicon consisted solely of the cat grin. Hey, a sword and everything. That’s some metal stuff you’re wearing there.
It’s called armor, you know. A pillar of flame erupted from the sword of Althor’s psicon.
Steel’s thought reverberated in Althor’s mindscape. Engine and thrusters check. Then he added, If you two are done rattling your sabers.
Wellmark sent her grin psicon to Steel.
Althor focused on an engine psicon in a lower corner of his mindscape. In response, displays formed with data for the Jag’s thrusters, both the rockets and the photon thrusters they used in deep space. The system checked as ready to go.
Systems initialized and ready, the Goldstar El thought.
Systems initialized and ready, Redstar thought.
Systems initialized and ready, Greenstar thought.
Blackstar squad initialized and ready, Blackstar thought.
The tower cleared them for liftoff, and warning lights flared around their launch pads in the half-light that presaged the dawn. Their Jags leapt into the sky, blasting the pads, four deadly works of art streaking up and out until they reached the starred darkness of space, their voracious engines devouring fuel, their pilots protected from the immense accelerations by quasis coils.
When they were well away from the orbiting planets, Steel thought: Prepare to invert.
All set? Althor asked Redstar.
Ready, it answered.
Inversion circumvented the speed of light. They couldn’t go at light-speed because the ship’s mass would become infinite compared to slower objects and its time would stop. They were like runners whose path was blocked by an infinitely high tree. No matter how much energy they used, they could never climb over the tree. To reach the superluminal universe, the Jag added an imaginary part to its speed. Then it went around the light-speed singularity the way a runner might leave the road to go around an infinitely high tree. Humans hadn’t conquered light-speed, they had snuck around the barrier.
Invert, Steel thought.
Go, Althor told his Jag.
The universe twisted inside out and disorientation rippled through Althor. He knew space didn’t really twist, but his mind perceived it that way. The Jag left the real universe and rotated through an eerie existence where it was part real and part imaginary. Experts claimed the process could drive a person insane. Althor didn’t know, but he had no wish to spend any longer than necessary in transition. It was why Jags pushed close to light-speed before they inverted; they could “go around the tree” in a tighter circle and so spend less time in the process.
Inversion had brutally changed warfare. Ships could burst out of superluminal space anywhere, at relativistic speeds, making the concept of a front line obsolete. Unaugmented humans couldn’t cope with space combat.
Defenses developed along with offensive capabilities, so the military managed to protect the settled worlds and habitats of humanity, but no one could watch all of space. Huge volumes remained contested, regions where no clear boundaries existed for Eubian, Skolian, and Allied territory.
Blackstar Squadron was going out today as it had done every ten days for the past six months, to patrol the hinterlands of Skolia, keeping watch, guarding against incursions. Today they headed for Onyx Sector to investigate an unconfirmed sighting of an ESComm scout ship.
Inversion complete, Redstar thought.
Althor exhaled with relief as his mind and body returned to normal. Actually, “normal” was relative; compared to the sublight universe, he and the Jag now had imaginary mass. Of course, relative to his ship he wasn’t moving at all, so he didn’t notice a difference as long as his real and imaginary parts weren’t in flux.
How is my fuel? he asked Redstar.
Positron containment secure. It submerged Althor’s awareness into the strange universe within the magnetic containment bottle that held the fuel. During inversion, the bottle drew on the cosmic-ray flux in complex space, pulling in high-energy particles. It stored the contents by spreading them through complex space, varying the imaginary parts of charge and mass. As a result, the bottle could carry far more antimatter than if it were confined to real space. The situation was simpler than with people; the trauma of having both real and imaginary parts had no effect on particles. Althor doubted his fuel ever felt like throwing up.
It exhilarated him to be part of his ship. He checked various systems: the gamma-ray shields and superconducting grids prevented waste heat from destroying the Jag; the selector culled electrons out of space and funneled them into the interaction area; the fuel bottle leaked positrons into the interaction area; the electrons and positrons annihilated in magnificent bursts of energy, producing thrust for the Jag.
Quasis drop, Redstar thought.
Althor blinked. He hadn’t even felt the Jag go into quantum stasis, more commonly called quasis. It protected him against the accelerations of relativistic travel. A quasis field fixed the quantum wavefunction of the ship, including him. They didn’t literally freeze; their atoms continued to
vibrate, rotate, and otherwise behave as they had in the instant the quasis began, and the atomic clock in his biomech web continued to work. But none of the atoms could alter their quantum state. It meant the ship and everything within it became rigid even to immense forces. Without that protection, the g-forces would have smashed him flat. Apparently Redstar had jumped him in and out of quasis without his even noticing, as they continued to accelerate.
Steel’s thought reverberated in Althor’s mindscape. Quaternary Valdoria, check your time. You’re future shifting.
That didn’t sound auspicious. Redstar, check my temporal position relative to the rest of the squad. Am I going into their future?
Checking, Redstar thought. Stats reeled off in Althor’s mind, processed by his node faster than he could think. Yes , you are drifting forward about three seconds relative to them per each minute of travel.
Compensate for temporal drift, Althor thought.
New course plotted, Redstar answered.
The EI displayed its calculations as graphs in his mindscape. If he stayed on his current trajectory, he would drop out of inversion several hours later than the rest of the squad. The problem was due to his Jag having traveled a bit faster than the other ships just before they inverted. When they accelerated close to light speed, their time dilated, or passed more slowly on the Jags than on Diesha. It had only taken a few minutes to invert, but by then the dilation had jumped them about a month into Diesha’s future. His speed had been enough to put him a few minutes farther ahead than the others.
However, at superluminal speeds he could plot a path backward in time. He wished they could reach Onyx Station before they left Diesha, but no one had ever succeeded in thwarting cause and effect. What happened in their reference frame had to be consistent with events in every frame. It might not be the same event; an electron traveling into the past from A to B would appear to a sublight observer as a positron going forward in time from B to A. Different events, but consistent. Theorists hypothesized that if a ship came out of inversion before it entered, it would end up in another
universe. Unfortunately, no one who had tried had returned to tell the story. For now, the best they could do was leave inversion with no more time passing in the real universe than on their ships. It usually took longer, as errors accumulated; the farther they traveled, the bigger the discrepancy.
If someone on Diesha could have recorded their progress, they would have observed some truly bizarre effects. During inversion, Blackstar Squadron would go into the past for a time to compensate for their jump forward due to the time dilation when they inverted. Sometime before they turned pastward, four Jags had appeared in Onyx Sector. Those ships existed right now. They were Blackstar Squadron.
At the same time, four antimatter Jags had appeared, pair-produced from photon annihilations. While the normal ships continued on to Onyx, the antimatter squad flew backward in a time-reversed path, gaining fuel, like a movie run in reverse. The antimatter Jags and the original Jags headed toward each other, meeting in the instant when the originals turned pastward. Then they annihilated, the energy of their mutual destruction balancing the energy used to create the antimatter ships. After that, the four ships already at Onyx would be the only version of Blackstar Squadron left.
The process disconcerted Althor. He was at rest relative to his Jag, so he experienced no strange creations or destructions. He simply traveled to Onyx in an uninterrupted journey, going forward in time and space as he knew it. Yet others would observe Redstar annihilated during inversion and recreated elsewhere—which meant he was annihilated and re-created as well.
The result, however, was consistent for everyone: Blackstar arrived at Onyx Station. They managed it all with an advantage ESComm could never match. Conventional signals traveled no faster than light speed, so inverted ships could communicate only with tachyons, or superluminal particles. Although ISC and ESComm were developing such technologies, neither could yet make tachyons carry reliable information. Too much uncertainty existed in when and where the signals arrived. As a result, ships couldn’t coordinate well at superluminal speeds; the squad suffered both temporal and spatial drift. When they left inversion, the ships would be spread out in space and time. The longer they traveled at superluminal speed, the greater the spread.
But not Jags.
Steel, Belldaughter, Wellmark, and Althor linked through Kyle space. Their Jags were nodes on the Kyle web. It gave them immediate communication among themselves and with any node in the star-spanning ISC network, allowing them to coordinate with a precision that thumbed its nose at light speed itself.
Althor checked his connection to the other squad members. They were all monitoring their systems but otherwise relaxing. Travel during inversion was actually rather boring.
Open gate to Kyle space, Althor thought.
Gate open, Redstar answered.
His mindscape reformed into the red grid with the circular peak circled by concentric ripples. Three similar peaks surrounded him, black, gold, and green, the rest of Blackstar Squadron, their ripples overlapping and blending with his. As he cast his thoughts through Kyle space, the peak of his mind changed, decreasing in height here and growing elsewhere. He thought of Onyx Platform and his consciousness shifted through the grid. It reformed near a cluster of nodes that signified several outposts of the platform.
Clock, Althor thought.
An antique timepiece appeared in his mindscape, matching the decor of his home on Lyshriol. It showed him data about the passage of time far more sophisticated than a real timepiece that old could have managed. He was about six minutes ahead of the rest of the squadron.
Commander Steel, he thought. Request permission to contact Onyx in my future timeline. If he could link with Kyle nodes on the Onyx mesh, he would be at least six minutes ahead of when they expected to drop out of inversion.
Give it a try, Steel answered. But be careful, If you’re still in that timeline when we leave inversion, you won’t come out with us.
Understood, sir. At the moment, Althor had some probability of being in the future relative to the squad and some of being in their time. To contact Onyx six minutes ahead, he had to collapse his wavefunction into that future timeline, severing his link with his squad. It was a risky proposition; he might not be able to rejoin his own timeline. He might just drop
out of space six minutes ahead of his squad, but that was by no means guaranteed. The farther into the future he ventured, the more he risked. Ships that played too much with spacetime could lose contact with their own universe. At least, that was what ISC believed. No one knew for certain, since those ships disappeared.
To Redstar, he thought, Drop the Blackstar link and submerge into the Onyx timeline.
Disassociating with Blackstar, it answered.
Althor’s link with the other Jags faded. He was still under the security cloak, so he was hidden from all telops except those rare few with a clearance high enough to contact a J-Force unit. Althor had an even higher clearance, enough to make contact with just about any ISC base. He sent his ID codes to one of the Onyx outposts, which showed as a blurry peak in his grid. Then he thought, Requesting time check.
Static came from the Onyx Station. In his mindscape, it manifested as ragged, indistinct peaks. Time ch**) …—lete?
Repeat, Althor thought. I’m having trouble focusing your timeline.
Time check *** incomplete, the Onyx telop answered.
That came through better.
How fa—** futureward?
I’m from about six minutes in your past, Althor answered.
Six minute** … ooner?**
Can you repeat? He was growing uneasy. The longer he spent in this link, the greater the danger he would lose his squad.
***—sooner? The Onyx telop repeated.
You want us to arrive sooner than scheduled?
Yes!
Warning, Redstar thought. I’m losing coherence with your previous timeline.
Damn! Onyx, I’ll see what we can do. To Redstar, he thought, Drop me back to Blackstar.
Synchronizing with previous timeline. Then: I can’t find them.
Althor gritted his teeth. Can you extrapolate from where
they were in space and time and calculate their probable position?
Yes. But I can’t guarantee you will be in the same universe.
Perspiration gathered on his forehead. Do your best.
Working. Then: Temporal correction complete.
And?
I find no trace of Blackstar Squadron.
A bead of sweat ran down Althor’s temple. Are you Sure about your calculations?
Some uncertainty exists in them.
Is it possible that—
Contact !
Althor’s pulse surged. He wondered if the Jag had simulated its own excitement.
Steel’s thought came into his mind. Althor? Is that you?
Althor sent him an image of his warrior in armor and disk mail. Greetings, sir.
Steel sent back his psicon, a steel girder. You all right?
Fine. At least now that he had regained his place in spacetime. I contacted a telop at Onyx.
Anything interesting?
He badly wants us to arrive early.
Think they’re in trouble?
It’s possible. Althor thought back to the exchange. Very possible.
Steel directed his thought to the rest of the link. Jags, recalculate our route so we drop out of inversion closer in to Onyx.
Won’t it be risky to reinvert so close to space habitats? Belldaughter asked.
Do what you can to minimize the danger, Steel thought. But get in as close as you can. The shorter our sublight travel, the sooner we reach Onyx.
Preparing to reinvert, Redstar thought.
Engage shrouds, Steel thought.
Engaged. The responses came from all four Jags in a light speed pulse of thought. They were in the most accelerated mode possible for the human brain now.
In superluminal space, they didn’t need shrouds, but in subluminal space, the squad would partially disappear. Blackbody shielding shrouded the hulls and they stopped reflecting light. Holographic surfacing on the ship projected images of the stars as if nothing occupied that space. Other systems hid them from radio waves, microwaves, and ultraviolet probes. They even created false echoes to fool neutrinos, which passed through just about anything.
Invert, Steel thought.
Althor fired the photon thrusters. The only way he knew Redstar went in and out of quasis was by the discontinuous change in speed on his displays. The Jag decelerated in a series of jumps he perceived as a continuous process. The stars jerked forward, converging on a point in front of the ship. Their colors shifted into ultraviolet and disappeared. Blackstar Squadron roared out of inversion in perfect formation—
Straight into a swarm of ESComm warships.
Their shrouds provided a disguise, but every time the Jags accelerated, their exhaust gave away their position. The Traders knew they had arrived. The attack chilled Althor; Onyx was a major Skolian complex, eight space habitats with millions of people. This was no minor skirmish.
It was an act of war.
Redstar identified the attacking ships: three Wasp corvettes and eight Solos. Although Solos were the closest ESComm equivalent to a Jag, they had no access to Kyle space because they carried no psions. The Traders had only one use for empaths and telepaths: as providers. They used the pain of such slaves to transcend. They considered psions unstable and found the concept of their serving on war craft ludicrous. Even if they had been willing to put them on the ships, they had too few psions to risk any significant number of them that way.
Althor readily admitted psions had a disadvantage; they felt the emotions of their enemies and compatriots alike. Applicants to the academy underwent extensive analysis in their entrance exams to see if they could endure that empathic onslaught. Even so, the suicide rate of Jagernauts was the highest of any ISC personnel. But every loss the J-Force suffered only hardened the resolve of its remaining Jagernauts to protect their people from the Aristos.
Taus incoming, Redstar thought.
Evade! Althor answered. Release dust. Tau missiles carried inversion drives, which made them notoriously hard to catch or destroy. If another missile came too close, the tau jumped out of spacetime. Redstar’s dust consisted of microscopic bomblets that could protect Redstar and beleaguer the taus enough to slow them down.
Quasis jump, Redstar thought.
Nausea surged in Althor from the Jag throwing him into quasis too fast. A tau had detonated against their hull. The ship couldn’t change state during quasis, so nothing could blow it up, but no quasis was perfect. The explosion weakened the Jag. A few more hits and the quasis would fail, leaving him defenseless.
Fire MIRVS, Althor thought. MIRVs, or multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles, were small ships as well as bombs. They used only conventional rockets, so they couldn’t invert, but that made them smaller and lighter. He could carry many more MIRVs than taus.
Hurtling through space at relativistic speeds, Redstar released a swarm of MIRVs. They spread outward in a cone at 92 percent of light speed, giving them the energy equivalent of megaton bombs. Stats poured into Althor’s node far faster than his unaugmented brain could have absorbed. ESComm taus were catching Blackstar MIRVs. The taus inverted with their captured missiles, reinverted as they closed on the Jags—and exploded both themselves and their MIRV captives in violent bursts of energy.
It could have done serious damage to the squad. However, the jump through superluminal space had thrown off the taus. If ESComm could have controlled their taus while the missiles were going through inversion, the evasive tactics of the Jags might have failed. But the taus came out a fraction of a second too late, after the Jags had shot through that volume of space.
Quasis jump, Redstar thought.
Althor swallowed the bile in his throat. Redstar had veered into such an abrupt course change to evade a tau, the quasis had kicked in to protect him from the lethal acceleration.
ESComm tau detonated to port, Redstar thought.
It missed! He had another few seconds of life. They had already shot
past the Onyx stations. Althor brought Redstar around for another go at the ESComm ships. Fighting in space was like jousting in three dimensions, with beams and smart missiles. He hurtled past a Solo at almost the speed of light, their times dilated relative to each other. The Solo registered as a rotating, flattened coin on Althor’s holoscreens. It released a tau—
His stomach wrenched as Redstar jumped into superluminal space. He thought, This is for you. Father, and dropped out of inversion, his MIRVs blasting ahead of his Jag.
Althor felt his opponent die.
The pilot’s terror blasted Althor’s mind—and cut off with chilling finality.
Solo destroyed, Redstar thought.
Althor groaned and lost his grasp on his mindscape. In a rush of memory, he was sixteen again, above the Plains of Tyroll, that day he had slaughtered an army with one carbine. He had suffered every shattering death. He had been so frightened, so desperate. His father’s cousin, Avaril Valdoria, would never give up until he killed his enemy, the Dalvador Bard, Althor’s father. So Althor had ended it all. He had ensured that neither his father nor his brothers would ever have to ride in that barbaric war again.
—doria, respond! Are you all right? Steel’s voice echoed through the psilink.
Althor swallowed. Fine, sir.
Relief came from Steel’s mind. Good work.
Not good enough, though. Stats about the battle flowed through his mindscape: ESComm had done great damage to Onyx, neutralizing its defenses. To stop the destruction of the stations, Blackstar still had to take on seven Solos and three Wasps.
Redstar had exhausted its supply of MIRVs. Time to joust.
Prime Annihilators, Althor thought. They accelerated antiprotons, focusing the beam through foils where it picked up positrons. Beams were easier to evade than missiles, since they couldn’t chase their target, but they offered a better offense against quasis shields; annihilating matter in quasis was easier than deforming it with missile strikes. Althor headed toward a Solo like a knight with his lance ready.
Warning. Redstar highlighted part of his mindscape to show an unmanned drone on intercept course.
Fire, Althor thought.
His Annihilator blasted the drone. Its mag-shields deflected some of the antiprotons, but many hit their target. The resulting annihilations created brutally energetic photons, pion showers, and high-energy processes. Particles and radiation tore through the drone. They hit the antimatter fuel bottles, and the drone detonated in a burst of plasma. Part of it vanished with the eerie sucked away effect created when real matter collapsed into the complex space within a Klein fuel bottle.
Warning! Blackstar’s EI thought. Greenstar has been detected.
No problem, Wellmark answered. As a Wasp raced toward her Jag, she saturated the volume of space around Greenstar with smart dust. Although a Wasp was small compared to most ships, it dwarfed a Jag. Its crew rode in the head and thorax. A stalk separated those compartments from its detachable abdomen, which carried antimatter plasma. Usually a Wasp attacked planets or other large bodies. When jettisoned, its abdomen plunged into its target, drilling its “stinger” in to bury itself. Then it released its plasma and blew its target into smithereens. It could obliterate a Jag a hundred times over, but ESComm wouldn’t waste an entire Wasp on one ship. They probably intended these for the Onyx stations.
Solos on approach, Redstar thought. Three ESComm fighters were moving in to defend the Wasp.
Althor and Belldaughter, cover Wellmark, Steel thought.
I’m on the Beta Solo, Belldaughter thought. One of the Solos turned gold.
On Gamma, Althor thought. His Solo turned red.
On Alpha, Steel thought. The third Solo turned black.
As Althor went at the Solo, it changed course, cutting him off from the Wasp. Another section of his mindscape registered Wellmark’s tau hurtling toward the Wasp.
Fire Annihilator, Althor thought. He and the Solo hurtled by each
other, appearing to flip over as they passed, their time dilated relative to each other. They fired at the same instant, their Els compensating for the relativistic effects that became so dramatic at these speeds.
Quasis jump, Redstar thought.
Althor’s head swam from the jumps. The Solo had hit him dead-on and Redstar’s quasis system was weakening. The Jag could take only one or two more hits.
One of Steel’s taus exploded a Solo, and its pilot’s death reverberated in Althor’s mind, though less violently than when one of his shots succeeded. He wasn’t as focused on Steel’s target.
The Wasp caught Wellmark’s tau with an Annihilator shot. As her missile exploded, the Wasp went into quasis and remained whole, speeding onward, a rigid body in motion. Althor waited until it dropped out of quasis—and fired both his taus into its abdomen.
Wasp in quasis, Redstar said.
Damn! He had just wasted his only taus.
Then, suddenly, the Wasp’s quasis collapsed. Antimatter plasma spewed outward and its abdomen exploded in a swath of destruction that wiped out the head and thorax as well. Althor went rigid as he felt the crew of the Wasp die—
Blackstar exploded.
Wellmark’s mental scream ripped through their link, Althor’s mindscape went dark, and Belldaughter’s cry reverberated over his comm. Althor reeled, his link with the squad shattered. His mindscape tried to reform, sparking with erratic lights, jagged and unstable. Stats poured through it too raggedly for him to absorb. In real space, alarms blared in the cockpit and emergency lights flashed on his controls.
Wellmark’s thought cut through the chaos. Squadron, regroup! Orient to Greenstar.
Althor’s Jag answered when he couldn’t. Redstar reoriented.
Goldstar reoriented.
Invert! Wellmark thought.
Althor vomited when Redstar inverted. His Jag hurtled through superluminal space, following a trajectory downloaded by Greenstar to
Redstar. His exoskeleton whirred as tiny scrubber bots embedded in its mesh cleaned him up.
Wellmark’s thought came raggedly. Report.
Althor clenched the arms of his pilot’s chair. I’m here.
And I. Belldaughter’s thought shook.
We have to go back, Wellmark’s struggle to project confidence felt tangible in their link. We only put out one Wasp. If we don’t destroy the other two, they will demolish Onyx.
Althor took a deep breath. Six Solos remained and two wasps. Their chances of taking out all those ships were slim to none, and they all knew it. But they had to try.
Do either of you have any taus left? Wellmark asked.
I’ve both mine, Belldaughter thought.
None here, Althor answered. MIRVs gone, too. I’ve Annihilators.
I’ve two. Wellmark paused for a fraction of a second. Belldaughter and I will release our remaining MIRVs as we come out of inversion. Althor, cover us with your Annihilators while we go after the Wasps. She took a breath he sensed rather than heard. If that doesn’t work, we’ll all try Annihilators.
Understood, Althor thought. Belldaughter echoed his reply. None of them could risk thinking about what the loss of Steel meant to their squad. If they survived this battle, they could mourn him properly.
Go, Wellmark thought.
They blasted out of inversion preceded by their last MIRVs. The Onyx stations were firing Annihilators at the Wasps and Solos, but the ESComm ships had disabled most of their defenses.
Wellmark and Belldaughter each went after a Wasp and Althor blasted the Solos that dogged their progress. Redstar hurtled through a complicated evasion pattern with killer accelerations. The quasis jumps made him so ill he could barely think. The ESComm ships followed just as bizarre evasion patterns against his shots.
Quasis jump, Redstar thought. Then: Solo quasis failed.
Althor’s beam stabbed the Solo dead on. His forward holomap lit with a flash of light—but it was too much for one Solo—
Got it! Wellmark shouted mentally. One Wasp down—
Greenstar exploded.
Althor screamed as his map lit with a burst of light.
Althor! Belldaughter’s frantic thought exploded. Answer!
Ah—no. The thought tore out of him.
Wellmark!
She’s gone. His mind reeled.
We have to keep going.
Yes. He struggled to focus. Five Solos and one Wasp. The stations can deal with the Solos if we get that Wasp. The thought ripped out from a torn place in his mind left by the deaths of Steel and Wellmark.
I still have both taus, Belldaughter thought. Cover me?
Yes. He hung on to the arms of his chair.
Althor went after the Solos with manic intensity, knowing they surely had pilots more experienced than himself. He was so ill from the quasis jumps that he gave up trying to think and acted on instinct. Redstar backed him up with every evasive maneuver in its memory. Belldaughter hit the Wasp with her first tau, but it went into quasis and survived the blast.
Quasis jump, Redstar thought. Annihilator strike on my starboard hull. It is unlikely I can withstand another hit.
Weapons? Althor asked.
You have enough Annihilator fuel for one more shot.
One shot. Gods. Belldaughter only had one tau left. One more chance with the Wasp. That was it.
Belldaughter. His thought came in jagged bursts. I’m going to hit the Wasp with my last Annihilator shot. He couldn’t be the only one losing quasis. I’ll weaken its shields. Then you fire your tau.
If you use your last shot on the Wasp, the Solos will obliterate you.
Doesn’t matter. He gripped the arms of his seat. Redstar, get the damn Wasp.
Engaging inversion engine.
What the hell? He no longer had the coherence to question why Redstar threw him back into inversion. They dropped out almost immediately—practically
on the Wasp. Redstar fired and caught the ESComm spacecraft dead on, simultaneously blasting it with relativistic exhaust as they hurtled past.
Wasp in quasis, Redstar told him. Then: Althor, I took another hit …
Althor groaned. Alarms were blaring all over the cockpit, red lights flashing, displays melting. But even as his mental grid unraveled, an explosion ripped through its fabric.
I got it! Belldaughter shouted. I got the Wasp.
Thank the saints. Althor’s response barely registered.
Gods almighty, Althor invert! Those Solos are coming at you!
Tell my family I love them.
Download, Redstar thought.
What? Althor had no idea what it meant. Download what?
His spinal node answered. Download commenced.
What the blazes?
Damn it! Belldaughter shouted. You CAN invert. You have one engine left. Her thought was like hands gripping his shoulders, shaking him. Invert!
Redstar’s response came dimly. Inverting … But it was too late.
Althor drew in one final, strangled breath—and passed from life into death.