19

Paisen fired her suit’s forward maneuvering thrusters, and brought herself to a stop just before she touched down on the transfer station’s upper hull. Vence landed next to her, and the two women hooked on to the station using magnetic grapples attached to the suits’ harnesses. They stood, legs splayed, surveying the Jokuan fleet.

“Scan from the outside in,” Paisen said. “The Guardian’s the linchpin in this whole operation. They’ll be protecting it deep inside the formation.”

“Think I got it,” Vence replied, a moment later. She sent the location to Paisen’s heads-up display. “Smaller black ship, a cruiser on either side.”

Paisen zoomed in on the ship. “That looks like it.” She frowned.

“What?” Vence asked, sensing her hesitation.

“I don’t know. I just thought it would be harder to find.”

“Well, it is right in the heart of the formation,” Vence said. “Might not be hard to find, but we’re going to need to fly past most of the fleet to get there.”

“Yeah,” Paisen agreed.

“Once we land and emplace the mines, are you thinking dynamic entry?” Vence asked.

“Maybe,” Paisen said. “But I was hoping to make it covert. If we go in shooting and something goes wrong, they could launch all of the PKDs before we make it to the bridge.”

“What about simultaneous explosive decompression?” Vence suggested.

“The whole ship?” Paisen asked. She shook her head. “Too messy. And Rath may still be on there.”

“Well then, we’re back to dynamic entry,” Vence said. “The moment we breach the hull, they’ll know it.”

“Were they still teaching the Keppler Maneuver when you went through Group training?” Paisen asked.

Vence snorted. “Were they teaching it? Sure. But they definitely weren’t encouraging it.”

Paisen stayed silent.

“I think my training avatar called it an ‘option of last resort,’ ” Vence continued, “and then he spent a while describing all the different ways it could kill you.” She shrugged. “But in this case … if it actually works … it might do the trick.”

“Yeah,” Paisen said. She turned and faced Vence. “You up for it?”

Vence exhaled noisily. “No.”

“You have a better idea?” Paisen asked.

“No,” Vence admitted.

“Then let’s go.”

They pushed off of the hull. Paisen pointed her helmet at the distant Rampart Guardian, and they fired their thrusters, accelerating down toward it. They flew alone for nearly a minute, two tiny black dots amidst a sea of stars. Then they passed the first of the fleet’s sentry ships, and suddenly, the fleet was all around them, massive gray ships hanging in orbit on all sides. Paisen found herself holding her breath, praying that the myriad ships’ sensors would not detect them.

All it takes is one sensor array pointed at the exact right location just as we pass by.

Their path took them along the underbelly of a large destroyer, and they dodged to one side, avoiding the ship’s landing gear. Paisen saw a pair of fighter escorts pass ahead of them, patrolling through the fleet, but they continued on without spotting the two women.

“Nearly there,” Paisen noted. “Aim for the stern.”

“Roger,” Vence acknowledged.

Movement caught Paisen’s eye – off to her right, a tug pushed away from a smaller, white vessel.

Doing some repairs, probably.

She looked ahead again, at the approaching form of the Guardian, but something made her look back. The tug had disappeared from view, but there was something familiar about the white ship. She studied it for a second, and then her eyes went wide.

“Pull up!” she told Vence.

“What?”

“Do it!” Paisen fired her forward thrusters, yanking herself to a stop several hundred meters from the black ship’s hull. Vence braked to a stop a few meters ahead of her.

“What?” she repeated, as they hung, spinning slowly, in space.

“Something’s not right,” Paisen said.

She surveyed the Rampart Guardian, and then looked at the cruisers on either side of it. “Look at the cruisers’ weapon systems,” she said.

Vence looked. “They’re all pointing inward, toward the Guardian,” she said, confused. “Why?”

“Because that’s not the Rampart Guardian,” Paisen said, with growing conviction. “It’s a hologram. A neat little trap, for anyone trying to take out the drone command ship.”

“Shit. So where’s the real Guardian?” Vence asked. “I didn’t see any other black landing ships in the fleet.”

Paisen pointed up at the white ship, above them and to the right. Vence turned and looked at it.

“They just finished repainting it,” Paisen said.

“… but it’s the same ship type,” Vence finished. “Slick.”

Paisen took a final look at the decoy below them, and then lit her thrusters. She cut them off immediately, and let herself glide in toward the real Guardian, which glittered, bright white against the backdrop of space. She pulled her feet up in front of her as they approached, and then flared her thrusters one last time, and came in for a soft landing just above the ship’s aft landing ramp, below the engine nacelles. Vence joined her a second later. For a brief moment, their matte-black space-suits stood out plainly against the white hull of the Guardian, and then the photo-receptors built into the suit sensed the new backdrop, and each woman’s suit changed color, blending in seamlessly with the newly-painted ship.

Paisen and Vence tethered themselves to the hull, then attached their Forges to the hull as well via magnetic clamps. Paisen slaved the two devices together to combine their construction capabilities, and sent them a command via her neural interface; she watched as the nanobots sprung to life, starting on the base of a large device.

“Going to take them a few hours to build and assemble,” she observed.

“Then we’ve gotta install the damn thing,” Vence said. “And prep our entry equipment.”

“Mm,” Paisen grunted. “It’s going to be a long night. Well, let’s get started on emplacing the mines while we wait. I’ll work along the starboard side.”

“Roger,” Vence said. She unhooked an equipment bag from the back of her deep-space maneuvering rig, clipped it onto her chest harness, and then drew a mine out of the bag. “I’ll take the port side, meet you at the bow. Discovery procedures?”

“If you’re spotted, give me a warning if you can, get off the ship, then blow your mines,” Paisen said. “We’ll have to hope we have enough of the mines in place to take out the ship and prevent them from launching the drones.”

“At which point the entire fleet will know we’re here,” Vence pointed out.

“Yup,” Paisen agreed. “I never said it was a good plan.”

“I had hoped it would be survivable,” Vence said, but she turned away, and began pulling herself hand-over-hand along the hull.