Lex tumbled out of the bowels of Coal and collapsed onto the ground. He vaguely remembered being told by Karter that Coal had been designed to be easily serviceable with period parts. If he made it back to the present intact, he was going to have a word with him about the proper definition of the word easily.
“How’d we do, Coal?” Lex asked, still sprawled on the floor.
After some time cramped up, there’s something to be said for the simple pleasure of sprawling anywhere.
“Processing… Internal diagnostics are green. I am fully functional in all critical travel parameters,” Coal said.
“Okay, good. And where are we on the… countdown?”
“Twelve hours, twenty-three minutes.”
“Okay. Where’s the money? These people earned it.”
“It is located in a locked compartment beneath the food supply. I have disengaged the lock.”
He pulled himself to his feet and rummaged through the compartment until he revealed the cases of neatly wrapped chips.
“Remind me again… are these appropriate to the era?”
“Yes. They were purchased at auction from a collector and verified by scan to be authentic.”
“Okay. Good. I know it’s weird, but I don’t want to be the reason behind one of those weird conspiracy theories… besides the tragedy of Triple S 77.”
“You seem less stressed. Is the fact of the tragedy more comfortable to you now?”
“Yeah. Still devastated, but I’m getting used to the devastation. Plus, it looks like we’re getting out of here before the hammer drops. If we’re lucky, I’ll be able to lie to myself about being responsible. Listen. I’m going to give this to the guard. How long will it take you to get your hands on the data?”
“I don’t have any—”
“Not your literal hands. How long will it take you to acquire the data?”
“How important is it that I acquire it?”
“Very important. And the faster the better.”
“It will take between forty-seven and fifty-three seconds.”
“Okay, good, so I’ll take—”
What he was planning to do quickly became irrelevant because the next thing that anyone heard was a very distinctive noise that most people never get to hear, due to it tending to happen in a vacuum. The sound was a ship’s grappling tether deploying. An actuated claw as long as Lex’s arm fired like a harpoon at the wall of the hangar, embedding itself in a panel labeled Primary Data Trunk. Secondary grippers peeled from the fingers of the claw and snaked through the hole the hook had punched in the panel. A screeching electronic wail filled the air. Shortly afterward it was eclipsed by the angry cries of both guards.
“Coal, no! What are you doing!?” Lex yelped.
“Physical network penetration is considerably faster and more reliable than wireless. Thirty-eight seconds remaining.”
“What the hell do you think you are doing!?” barked Bill, gun raised.
“I don’t know! Coal, stop it!”
“The damage is done, Lex. Let me finish. They are attempting to shut down and lock out this room’s communication. If I stop, I won’t be able to start again.”
“Take it out!” Dan barked.
Both guards opened fire. Lex dropped to the ground. Above him, Coal shifted to place herself between their weapons and where the grappler had struck, raising a partial shield and easily absorbing the bolts.
“Coal, was it not clear that discretion was called for?” Lex called out.
“You did not make that a requirement of the mission.”
“Didn’t you think it was a good idea?”
“I didn’t think the data acquisition was a good idea. Once we had committed to making a poor decision, the severity of the poor decision seemed irrelevant.”
“This is how it’s going to happen, Coal. This is how the ship is going to blow up. This is one of those stupid paradoxes. The one where things happened already. They’re going to blow their ship up shooting at me for trying to deliver their messages because their ship was going to blow up.”
“Unlikely. On-ship weapons are usually calibrated to have low yields to decrease the risk of hull rupture. Nine seconds.”
“There is no way this is going to end well, Coal.”
“We already knew that. However, three… two… one… data acquired.” She retracted the grappler and unified her shield. “We are ready to leave.”
“Seal the doors. Hard lock, exterior! Shields full. No one is leaving this ship!” Dan ordered.
Lex looked up to the doorway. The entire crew was present, all armed, all angry. The lights were cut, leaving the built-in flashlights on the weapons and the glow of her shields the only illumination.
“Coal,” he said quietly. “What would it take to leave the ship with the hatches secured and the shields active like they’ve described?”
“Lots of force.”
“Enough to blow up the ship?”
“Potentially.”
“Can’t you hack back into the system and override?”
“No. A failsafe triggered as soon as I penetrated. Now that I’ve disconnected, this section of the ship has been locked out of the network. I believe they have radio-shielded this room as well. Shall I apply the forceful solution?”
“No. Don’t do it. I’ll… I’ll handle it for now.” He began to very slowly climb to his feet, hands raised.
“What are you going to do?” Coal asked.
“I don’t know. But I sure as heck am not going to let this crew blow up ahead of schedule.”
“Hands behind your back!” Bill said. “Someone get in there and get that money. I want tools out. Figure how to get those shields down.”
“Coal. Whatever you do, keep them out, don’t do anything to hurt anybody, and leave the fusion device alone!” Lex ordered before the guards rushed to him and dragged him out of the hangar.
#
“Well… here we are again, Blueboy,” said Bill.
Lex was crammed into the huddle room. This time his hands were bound with cable ties.
“Anyone surprised?” Bill asked.
“Wishful thinking got the better of me,” Dan said.
“Greed and stupidity teamed up on it,” Bill said.
“Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you what’s going on,” Lex said.
“You don’t need to say what’s going on. We know what’s going on. It’s exactly what we thought was going to happen. You came to steal the data, and you stole the data,” Dan said.
“It’s not like that. I’m not going to sell it,” Lex said.
“Damn right you’re not. Because until the relay goes live again in a few days, no data is going to reach anybody for years from this location. We’re the primary ship for the convoy. We control all long-range communication. By hook or by crook, we’re cracking your system or nuking it to protect our data.”
“And we’re holding you here until the end of the mission. Then you’ll face justice for what you did.”
“I can’t… you can… look, I’ve got a job to do!”
“I didn’t realize how dutiful data pirates were.”
“This isn’t about stealing your data!” Lex barked. “It’s bigger than that!”
“Oh. We’re just part of a larger heist then?”
“No! The data isn’t part of it. Or it wasn’t supposed to be. That was just supposed to be an act of kindness.”
“Forgive me if I don’t thank you for attempting to poach our livelihood and bribe us for the privilege.”
“We’re keeping the chips by the way,” Bill said.
“Evidence. Probably just the case of thousands will do though,” Dan amended.
“It is absolutely crucial that I complete my mission,” Lex said.
“Oh, it’s a mission now. Not just a job? Fat chance, Blueboy.”
“This isn’t just your convoy at stake.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What exactly is at stake?” Bill said.
“I can’t tell you.”
“You’re really not doing much for your case,” Dan said. “Luckily, we’ll be through your shields in a few minutes, and then it’s just a matter of spiking your data storage, and there’s no chance you’ll get what you came for.”
“About that,” said the woman, peeking her head inside.
“What?”
“We’ve been trying to sap the shield. We focused an EM scrambler on it. Nothing’s making a dent. Bruno on the engineering team thought his power meter was out of whack because the energy density on that field is something like three hundred percent what we expected it to be. That’s around twenty percent past the theoretical maximum apparently.”
“Have we considered that the meter might actually be on the fritz?” Bill suggested.
“He ran the diagnostic and confirmed with two other methods. This guy’s got some sort of experimental junk.”
“So he’s well funded. We know that already.”
“Yeah, so then we did a spectrum analysis on the communication between the ship and the helmet. It’s an unidentifiable protocol.”
“Presumably it would be encrypted.”
“Not unreadable, unidentifiable. We’re a communication ship, we should be able to at least identify any protocol in use. This is totally foreign. And then there’s the helmet itself. Bruno has no idea what this fabric around the neck is, but it’s nano-reactive. Plus, check out the time stamp on the HUD.” She tossed the helmet over. Dan looked at it. “Lower left corner,” she said.
“… The year is 2341. So he set his clock wrong.”
“This is all coming apart,” Lex said, squeezing his eyes shut.
She shrugged. “I’m not going to say this guy’s from the future, I’m just going to say it would explain a lot of unexplained stuff.”
“Magic elves would explain a lot of unexplained stuff too, but we’re not insane,” Bill said.
“There’s other stuff, too. Lots of it. The residual data traces from that penetration attack? Unidentifiable. Bruno says the—”
“Bruno got his degree with a 2.1 GPA. He’s not the final word in modern science,” Bill said. “But it does make me curious for some real answers.”
“Just let me go, please. What’ll it take for you to let me go?” Lex said.
“You’re not going anywhere!” Bill said. “We’re not set up for investigation and all that, but you’d better believe we’re going to have the head office keep us in the loop when the authorities get their hands on you.”
“We’re not going to survive that long!” Lex blurted.
Bill crossed his arms. He and the others glared at Lex.
“Is that a prediction or a statement of intent?” asked Dan. “Because either way, you’re dead wrong.”
“It’s all shot to hell,” Lex said. “I may as well lay it out. You won’t believe me anyway. The date is accurate. I am from the future. There’s a disaster set to basically wipe society from the cosmos in a few decades, but it’s solvable here and now. I was sent back to handle it, but we ran into someone else from the future, and he had different plans. He beat us up, but we escaped, and that’s when you found us. I need to get out of here right now and get back on with the mission because in a few hours your whole convoy is going to become a cautionary tale about the dangers of remaining isolated from communication.”
Dan blinked. “What about that load of crap was supposed to change our opinion of you?”
“You don’t need to believe me. In less than a day, you’ll all get a short and terrifying moment of realization that everything I said was true. Right before your ship is more or less vaporized.”
The group considered his words.
“I think I’ve had enough of him,” Bill said.
“Agreed,” said Dan. “You’re staying locked up, Blueboy. If you’re lucky we’ll feed you again. But don’t bother wasting your breath yelling for help or demanding better treatment, because thanks to the fuss you and that ship of yours kicked up, most of the crew is going to be working on patching up the damage and cracking your defenses. Lewis, the one dedicated security officer we’ve got, is going to be on guard at your door, and he sure as hell isn’t going to give a crap how comfortable you are.”
“I’ll probably just crank up the tunes so I don’t have to hear you piss and moan,” Lewis said.
“So get comfy, Blueboy. And consider that mission of yours failed,” Dan said.
He and his people cleared out. Lex struggled against his bonds for a few moments, prompting a satisfied grin from Lewis before he shut and secured the door.
It was tempting to just give in to the potent mix of anger, frustration, and fear that raged in his head. He’d lost count of how many times a few hours of screaming profanities seemed like the proper reaction to a given problem, but a near brush with asphyxia had a way of making one think twice about wasting breath.
“Okay, Lex,” he muttered to himself. “You’ve been in tougher spots than this. Kind of… maybe… Regardless, let’s see what we can do. Voice command… Voice command… Great. The microphone is on the helmet.”
He squirmed and tried to access the control panel on his forearm. The bindings secured his wrists together with his hands facing one another, which limited his mobility quite a bit, but the relative bulkiness of the back of his flight suit forced them to leave his hands in front of him. There was no hope of him actually being able to use the panel with his hand, but it was at least visible. He’d watched Squee do her thing often enough to know there was another option. He twisted his arms to the side and tried to tap the control panel with his nose. Getting into the proper position practically required him to dislocate his shoulder, but eventually he got the control panel to come up. The list of features packed into his suit was extensive, but the diagnostic told a worrisome story with its red and green indicators. Life support: missing component, offline. Communication: missing component, offline. Visual monitors: missing component, offline. It was remarkable just how many parts of a spacesuit required the helmet to function. A few systems were green, though, and one of them gave him hope. Kinetic capacitor: online, inactive (Charge: 0%).
Thirty seconds of graceless poking with his nose eventually flipped the status from “Inactive” to “Charging,” and he felt the suit around him become bizarrely still, like it was made of metal and bolted to the seat. He tried to rock back and forth. Each motion budged the outfit only slightly. The kinetic capacitor was one of the more unusual creations Karter had asked him to test over the time he’d known the inventor. Actually, that wasn’t true, it was probably near the bottom of the list of demented gadgetry, but when he’d first encountered the kinetic capacitor it had seemed awfully strange. Through means he had never even attempted to comprehend, the device was able to directly soak up kinetic energy and store it, then discharge it again in the form of motion. In prior missions he’d used it to store up energy for massively powerful punches and to interrupt a free fall. If he was lucky, he could store up enough motion to knock the door off its hinges. He had no clue what he would do after that, but not having a plan was no reason not to get one started.
Five minutes later, after his struggles had worked up a sweat, he fought his arms aside and looked at the panel. Charge: 1.3%. This was going to take a while…
#
Coal drifted in place within the docking bay, her repulsors taking the place of landing gear. They weren’t quite as solid as physical struts, but they kept her aloft and roughly stationary while her flickering shields kept her safe from harm. In the absence of any orders or a clear means to advance her mission without contradicting previous orders, she analyzed the input from her sensors. Six people, five males and one female if her scans were accurate, had assembled in the docking bay. One of them, an engineer the others called Bruno, carted out the latest in a series of increasingly powerful tools. She recalibrated a scanner and directed it at him. The resulting data suggested the device, which was a cutting torch, would be insufficient to penetrate her shields. The scan also revealed that Bruno was suffering from severe hypertension, arterial plaque buildup, and significant liver inflammation.
“Before you activate the cutting torch, Bruno, may I take this moment to suggest you adjust your eating habits. It seems like you’ve been overdoing it on fatty foods and alcohol,” she said.
Bruno gritted his teeth. A portly gentleman, he was currently displaying a very distinctive level of being disheveled. Hair formerly held in place with some manner of styling product had been worked loose. An otherwise immaculate jumpsuit sported a host of fresh stains and burns. Overall, he had the look of someone who normally took great care of his appearance but had suddenly been confronted with a very messy task.
“A vegan diet and a shift from alcohol to tea and water would greatly improve your arterial health,” Coal said.
“I wish this thing had a mute button,” Bruno muttered, his voice thick with an accent of indeterminate but vaguely Slavic origin.
“There is something odd about a ship that gives health advice while you are trying to destroy it,” Dan said, his arms crossed as he supervised efforts from the corner.
“You aren’t trying very hard to destroy me. If you were actually making progress, I’d fight back,” Coal said. “So unless you want to make me mad, cut it out.”
“Apparently in the ‘future’ people like their ships chatty,” said Bill as he eyed up the repairs to the damage done by Coal’s tether.
“That was an odd tone of voice,” Coal said. “My social algorithms were damaged. Can you please indicate if you have a speech impediment or if you were employing sarcasm?”
“Has this thing attempted to contact anyone? Do we know if it has its own relay or if it’s linked to ours somehow?” Dan asked.
“I haven’t tried to contact anyone. That would violate my mission parameters,” Coal replied.
“It is speaking truth about that,” Bruno said. “Only communication was between ship and helmet. Short range, and nothing gets through now that we are locked down.”
“About that. I find it distressing that my attempts to contact Lex have remained unanswered. What’s going on with Lex?” Coal said.
“Who’s got the helmet?” Bill said. “I’d like to hear whatever this thing has been trying to say to him.”
Coal ran the recent interactions through her cobbled-together emotional algorithms. The indicated emotion was resentment and anger at her treatment. This suited her just fine.
“You are ignoring me. That is very rude, particularly when I am a guest in your ship. I am willing to forgive your attempts at destroying me, but that is no excuse for bad manners. Pay attention to me, or I will be forced to become uncooperative,” Coal said.
“Maybe we should all suit up and pop the airlock. At least if there was a vacuum in this place we wouldn’t have to hear that thing’s PA system squawking,” Bill said.
“That’s it, I’ve had enough. As warned, I shall now misbehave as a form of negative reinforcement of your current behavior.”
Bruno flipped down a welding mask and sparked his torch to life, easing it forward slowly in order to zero in on the barely visible surface of the force field. Coal waited until the brilliant blue plasma lance began to sizzle against her shield. The similar charges of the two high-density energy fields pushed the tool and the shield apart, requiring Bruno to lean with a considerable amount of force to keep the business end of his tool in contact with the field. Coal ran a quick calculation, taking into consideration Bruno’s body mass, his center of gravity, and an assortment of other variables.
At the precise moment he was leaning most heavily on this tool, Coal flicked her shield off and on again. Without its resistance, he began to fall forward. When it flicked on again, the head of the torch was well inside the field. The dome of energy sliced through it, causing the previously focused cutting stream to spray like a broken fire hose.
Bruno barely managed to scramble back and out of the way before the whipping line burned a squiggle across the bay floor beneath him. By the time he cut power to the torch, it had melted a random pattern across the ceiling, the floor, and one wall.
“What the hell!?” Bruno yelped.
“You were warned,” Coal said.
“That’s it,” Bill said, pulling his weapon and spreading his legs into a more stable stance.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Coal said. “I can influence the impact angle of my shields. You will find the ricochets to be quite precise and highly counterproductive.”
“Bull,” Bill said.
He pulled the trigger. Coal shifted her shields, rebounding and focusing the energy bolt. It hissed between Bill’s spread legs and bit a hole into the floor. The blast came near enough to him that the inner thighs of his flight suit sizzled. He cried out and dropped his gun, dashing to the fire suppression cabinet to pull out a gel extinguisher to apply to himself.
“Again, you were warned. I would like to inform you all that you are now occupying the six highest slots on my S-List. You shall be given no further consideration with regard to manners or courtesy until I am satisfied your attitudes have improved.”
The only response from the ship crew was a silent, startled look from five of them and sigh of relief from the now fire-retardant-coated Bill. Coal flickered her thrusters, causing her to jut forward. The sudden motion caused all in attendance to jump backward.
“That’s more like it,” Coal said with satisfaction.
#
In his huddle-room-turned-cell, Lex dripped with sweat. His continuous rocking and struggling had proved to be a remarkably effective workout. If he survived this, he’d have to let Karter and Ma know they had a revolutionary exercise machine on their hands. It had, however, ticked the capacitor up to 73.6 percent. The readout suggested that was six hundred kilojoules of energy. He was sure that information would be hugely useful if he had any idea what it meant, but physics class was too long ago for him to manage the conversion from “obscure unit of measurement” to “door-breaking potential.” He was going to have to go with his gut, which said that once anything got into the “kilo” range, it was probably pretty substantial.
Over the course of his nose-control of the pad, he accidentally discovered that there was a gesture-based glove control as well. One of these days he would have to learn not to strap anything to his body without reading the entire user manual.
“Hey!” Lex said, flipping up the fold-down table with his knee and climbing to his feet. “How about a little help in here?”
“Be quiet,” muttered Lewis, who stood to one side of the door.
“Come on. Prisoners have rights!” Lex said.
“This isn’t a prison. You’re in a ship without any communication with the civilized world. What we say goes.”
“If you say so. Just keep in mind I’m very good at being a squeaky wheel. So you can either bring me a glass of water, or you can listen to me whine and complain nonstop for the foreseeable future.”
Lewis stepped in front of the door to eye Lex up through the glass. “How stupid do you think I am? You just want me to open the door so you can try to overpower me.”
“As a matter of fact, you’re wrong.”
“Oh? How so?”
“I just needed you in front of the door.”
He closed the first two fingers of each hand and sharply raised a knee. A quarter second into the motion he felt the suit take over, dumping the accumulated kinetic energy into the motion. At the moment of impact, the fabric of his suit went rigid. His knee hit the door with the force of a battering ram, easily bashing it out of its frame. He released the appropriate gesture, but physics would only be pushed around so much before it decided to run its course. The excess energy that hadn’t been expended in the destruction of the door continued forward, dragging him knee first along with the door and the man he’d coaxed into standing in front of it. Both men and the door launched into the hallway and struck the opposite side hard. Lex’s suit once again became rigid, sparing him the brunt of the impact, but his lack of a helmet meant that his head rocked forward and hit the door with nose-breaking force that left him dizzied and bloodied. The man on the other side was less lucky. Sandwiched between the wall and the door, and with the full mass of Lex’s body adding to it, the impact knocked the air from his lungs and pushed him to the brink of unconsciousness. For a few seconds both men moaned and writhed on the ground.
Lex was the first to recover enough to struggle awkwardly to his knees. Climbing to his feet was tricky with bound hands, particularly while the room was spinning, but right now he was more concerned about the man he’d just assaulted to escape. His nose was broken as well, and from the way he was clutching his ribs they probably suffered a fracture or two. He coughed and wheezed, but his mouth seemed free from blood. In Lex’s none-too-professional medical opinion, there was nothing life threatening about his condition… except for his presence on a doomed ship.
Satisfied he wasn’t a murderer, at least not yet, Lex propped his knee against the fallen door and worked the cable ties against a torn metal edge until his hands were free. He used his newfound freedom to snatch up the fallen gun and climb to his feet.
“Okay,” he said to himself, staggering against the wall. “I’m bleeding, but I’m free and I’m armed. That’s a net improvement. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that no one came running to see what the commotion was, but we’ll call it good.”
He surveyed his surroundings. The hall was cramped, like so much else on the ship, which meant that things tended to accumulate wherever they might fit. A few meters away a storage locker, probably formerly the home of one of the many weapons that had been deployed since his arrival, was open. It contained a few emergency air tanks and breather masks, half a six-pack of beer, some paper towels, and his helmet. He stuffed a few paper towels up his nose to control the bleeding, then strapped on his helmet.
“Coal, do you read me?” Lex asked, keying the communicator.
A small message scrolled across the internal display. Data connection unavailable. Insufficient signal.
“We had to end up on a ship that specializes in controlling communication…” He took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m free. I just need to get Coal out of the bay without blowing the whole ship up and we’re back on track. But my luck isn’t going to last forever. I’m probably on camera right now. They’re going to corner me, and I’m going to be outgunned.”
He looked about, gripping his stolen weapon, and chose a random direction to move with as much speed and stealth as he could muster. Where could he go that they wouldn’t find him instantly? The ship had an unfamiliar layout, and it was small enough that trying to hide in it would be like trying to hide from someone in their own apartment. Adrenaline rushed through him, which was handy for pushing the throbbing pain in his nose aside, but didn’t make it any easier to think clearly.
At the end of the hallway, he turned to find a dead end. The corridor must have been running roughly along the inside edge of the ship’s hull, because what now stared him in the face was a small emergency airlock. It wasn’t the sort intended for normal entry and egress. This was the space-going equivalent of a fire exit. As he stared at it and tried to plot out his next move, thoughts began to stir in his brain. They weren’t the thoughts of a tactician. They weren’t even the thoughts of a sane person. The plan that came to mind was more or less a step-by-step violation of every safety rule he’d been taught before being allowed to leave his planet. It was therefore a near perfect plan by his standards.
#
In the docking bay, Coal observed that the mood had shifted significantly. The general attitude of anger tempered with a dash of bemusement was now replaced by pure panicked tension. They were behaving roughly as one might expect if they’d learned someone had planted a bomb on board the ship and they now were tasked with defusing it. Likely that attitude would have been even more prevalent if they had been aware that Coal was carrying a fairly powerful bomb.
For several minutes no one had spoken to her. They instead had been discussing the matter in panicked whispers.
“I like that you’re whispering. It means you accept I’m a legitimate threat. It doesn’t help, though. I can hear you. To answer your questions: yes, I am willing and able to destroy this ship and its crew if it serves my purpose. I don’t want to, but I was designed to do what I must do, not what I want to do.”
This caused a pronounced escalation of the tension within the bay.
“Processing… It seems I’ve got all the power here. You value your lives more than your mission; for me, it’s the other way around. I think it is time to issue an ultimatum. Release me and Lex or I will destroy this ship and its crew.”
“Whoa! Let’s not get hasty,” Dan said.
“I considered this for a while. It is by no means hasty. But I’ve found a firm deadline helps speed up decisions. You have ten minutes, starting now.”
“No, no way. This thing is bluffing,” Bruno said. “It did not send data. It gains nothing from blowing us up.”
“You would be ill-advised to test the resolve of a computer,” Coal said.
“No. No. You could not destroy us without destroying yourself,” Bruno said.
“I am confident my shields and armor plating are stronger than yours.”
“But you might break. And then you fail your mission.”
“If I do not escape, I also fail my mission. My destruction and my continued captivity have equivalent results, but attempted escape has a potential for success. I will, however, make certain to destroy this ship and its crew if success becomes impossible. That is the agreement, after all. I keep my promises.”
Bruno crossed his arms. “Computers can’t kill humans.”
“I’m not that kind of computer,” Coal said. “If you would like a demonstration, I will require a volunteer.”
“Bruno, stop talking,” Dan said.
“Yes, I think negotiations like this are usually done at the command level. Please put me in contact with your captain.”
“That’s not how it works here. This is a survey convoy. We’ve got a skipper, that’s Luther back there, but that’s on rotation. The only captain we’ve got is up at the command vessel at the head of the convoy.”
His face dropped, and a wave of realization swept through the crew.
“We’ve been com-silent since the breach,” Dan said. “We’ve missed at least two check-ins with the command and security ships. Disaster protocol must have been enacted by now.”
“We really need to update our disaster drills…” said the woman.
“Okay, good. We’re back in business. Go get the pilot. We need to do some serious negotiation.”
One of the unnamed workers—all of whom had until now done little more than nervously grip their weapons—quickly jumped at the chance to leave the dim hangar. He dashed to the door and reached for the controls. Before his finger could touch the panel, the outer door slid open and Lewis stumbled inside. Even before the inner door hissed open, he was blurting a slurred warning.
“He’s out. Blueboy is goddamn out!” Lewis wheezed.
“Holy hell, Lewis, what happened?” Dan asked, rushing to the man’s aid.
“He blew the door. Must have had a weapon or something.”
“Where is he now?”
“I told you, he’s out!” Bill growled, stabbing his finger toward the porthole in the bay door.
#
Lex tried to control his breathing as he made his way along the outside of the ship. To his great relief, it turned out survey vessels like this preferred constant speed rather than the typical endless acceleration that most ships utilized. It probably had something to do with sensor fidelity or some such. The only thing he cared about was the pleasant lack of vibration threatening to dislodge the grip his attractive boots and gloves had on the hull and leave him behind in deep space. At constant speed, he could even use his jet pack to get around outside, but he decided not to. The less motion, the less chance of discovery. Plus, he didn’t know how far out from the hull the shields started, and he really didn’t want to bump into them. The ship was small enough that a few minutes of walking could probably get him from end to end. This left him with only three problems. The first two—finding the docking bay that held Coal and figuring how to get her out—were tricky enough. He’d been unconscious when he’d entered the ship, so he was just as in the dark about its external layout has he had been about its internal layout. Getting her out would require him to use force, and he had a gun. As Coal had indicated, it was a common policy to calibrate onboard weapons to be too weak to punch a hole in the outer hull, so it wasn’t likely he’d be blowing any hatches without getting creative. The third problem, however, had made itself much more pressing.
“My frickin’ nose!” he growled, wriggling the offending piece of his anatomy as much as he could. “I can’t believe no one has figured this out yet!”
A broken nose was the sort of thing that demanded constant attention, illustrating the still poorly solved issue of how exactly to itch one’s nose during a spacewalk. For the journey thus far he’d made use of the standard solution, which was a rough spot on the side of the feeding/watering tube he could snake into his helmet through a little valve, but that was back in Coal, so the throbbing of his nose was swiftly sliding him toward madness. It was so distracting, in fact, that several minutes passed before he discovered a fourth problem had reared its ugly head.
Drifting above him, utterly silent in the vacuum of space, were two mean-looking ships. They were small; bigger than Coal by a fair margin but still small enough to fit into one of the bays of the ship he clung precariously to. They had the boxy signature of old-school military space-only craft design. They were probably fifty years out of date even in this era but still bristling with weapons. And weapons, it turned out, had a funny way of never really going obsolete. The presence of a machine gun doesn’t make a bayonet any less lethal. All either of those ships had to do was poke a hole in Lex’s suit and he’d be a goner. Fortunately, right now they were more focused on the bay door. He was off to the side and well below them. If he was lucky, they wouldn’t even notice him.
Ever punctual, his luck chose that moment to utterly abandon him with a blip of his radio.
“Attention fighters. We have a serious situation,” came Dan’s voice over the radio. “The distressed vessel we reported is inside our bay. It has compromised security and downloaded all survey data, and now an autonomous control system is threatening the ship with destruction if it is not released. The ship is isolated in the hull, no incoming or outgoing communication possible. The pilot, evidently named Lex, has exited through an emergency airlock and is currently somewhere on the starboard side of the ship. We must assume he is intercepting our communication.”
The complicated little nubs of targeting equipment bulging from the belly of each ship pivoted. One stopped with a blinking light facing him. The other locked on shortly afterward.
“We’ve got him. I’ll contact command to advise on how to proceed,” squawked one of the security ship pilots.
Lex acted quickly. Many people might have tried to find a way inside or maybe something big and sturdy to hide behind. But he’d worked with enough ships to know just how fragile they really were, and just how dedicated all involved were to keeping them from blowing up. If you want to avoid getting shot at, you don’t hide behind something sturdy that can take the hit; you hide behind something important that they dare not shoot at.
The thing that fit the bill for him was a wide, bright yellow line tracing along the hull, helpfully warning of the presence of both hydrogen and oxygen lines below the surface. It didn’t offer a speck of shelter, but it would certainly be exciting if they tried to target him while he was standing there.
“We do not have a shot,” the security pilot confirmed.
Lex hurried along the “do not shoot” line in the general direction of the bay door. His helmet display scrolled a sequence of messages indicating that the communication traffic had switched to a secured channel, then a moment later that the channel had been cracked and the audio continued.
“—you to describe the situation,” said a rather grizzled female voice midsentence.
“We’ve got about four minutes before this thing autodestructs and takes the whole ship with it,” Dan said. “I don’t want to pop the bay door, because for all we know this thing has a pirate relay out there somewhere just waiting to download the data.”
Lex activated his transmitter. “Listen, we don’t care about your data.”
“Who is this and how did you get on this channel?” the new voice demanded.
“I’m the ship’s pilot, and let’s just say I’ve got really good equipment.”
“His name is Lex, apparently, and he’s not lying. This is some of the most advanced tech we’ve seen,” Dan added.
“Well this is Captain Tripper, and let me tell you something about how we run things. No one poaches our data. No one. We are outside any borders here. Outside any jurisdictions. That means we make our own laws, and we’ve just got one. No one takes our data. Here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to pop on a radio scrambler, then were going to pop the bay door, and then we’re going to pop your ship when it comes out. No time for broadcast, no time for rescue. Then we’re going to scrape you off our hull and finish out this contract.”
“I don’t think you’re going to be able to do that. Like I said, really good equipment. If you want your data back, you’re going to have to let me get in touch with my ship so I can tell her to dump it.”
“The only way you are getting back in your ship is by force, and you haven’t got near what it takes to start issuing commands. Clear the docking bay and stand by to—”
The remainder of her orders was wiped away by the blare of a warning tone. Lex didn’t recognize it, but he didn’t have to wonder about it for very long. A blinding burst of light not far away (in astronomical terms) drew his attention, and something almost too large to register in his mind as a ship came sliding into view.
A normal pilot making sane decisions will drop down from FTL well outside a planetary system and ease in at more conventional speeds. A daredevil with no regard for human life might drop in around a hundred thousand kilometers away. This ship showed from behind, near enough that it would have been struck by satellites if it was approaching a planet. Despite coming from behind, it was facing backward. The massive bank of engines at the rear were cranked to full in order to bring it down to match the speed of the convoy.
The communication channel exploded with a dozen voices screaming orders at once, but the captain managed to shout them all down.
“Someone tell me what just showed up on sensors! Pipe me a video feed!”
One of the security ships peeled off and dropped back to the newcomer, which was massive enough to make the survey ship seem like it could have been one of its escape pods. The small vessel drew as near as it dared, searching for some identifying aspect of the new threat.
“I’ve got a visual on its markings. It appears to have a VectorCorp serial number,” the security pilot reported.
“I see it. Whoever you are on the ship, is this your doing?” the captain said.
“If I had a massive battleship at my disposal, do you think I would have waited until I was exposed on the outer hull of one of your ships before I called it in?”
“Is that thing on com? Get me its channel, now!”
“It’s broadcasting on VC general frequencies, Captain,” stated Dan.
“Attention, survey vessel. I have reason to believe you are in possession of an unknown vessel. You will release them both to me,” wheezed a frail voice.
Lex’s blood practically froze in his veins.
“Purcell… she did make it through…” he whispered, adding, “Captain, I think this one might be on me. Whatever happens next, I’m truly sorry.”
“You VectorCorp scumbags,” growled the captain, disregarding Lex. “We’re on contract with you. Now you’re sending someone out to snipe our data rather than pay us? Is that how you’re doing business?”
“She isn’t after you, she’s after me and the ship. She’s not VectorCorp. I don’t know how she got her hands on that ship, but if you just let Coal go she’ll—oh God!”
Like a lumbering dinosaur ignorant of the creatures it was trampling underfoot, the massive VectorCorp monstrosity began to pivot, drawing ever nearer to the survey ship. Its gargantuan length swung ponderously aside, shoved by thrusters far more powerful than the nearby security ship was expecting. It flared its own engines in an attempt to escape, but the defensive shields of the VectorCorp ship struck it hard, barely flickering in response to the collision. The security ship buckled and detonated, blown to pieces like a bug that had wandered into a zapper. Just like that, a simple repositioning of the VectorCorp vessel had casually ended the lives of a pilot and gunner. A spiraling thruster struck the shields of the communication ship, collapsing them and nearly shaking Lex from the hull.
“All crew, all ships, you are ordered to aid the primary communication vessel. Use any force necessary against the VectorCorp ship! Now, now, now!” the captain commanded.
The engines of the communication vessel kicked on, preparing to perform whatever evasive maneuvers the aging science ship could manage. Within moments Lex found himself sliding along the hull, the grip of his boots not nearly strong enough to overcome acceleration of the vessel.
“No, no!” he yelped.
A raised panel on the ship’s hull caught his heel and yanked his feet out from under him, sending him tumbling backward and away from the ship. He feathered the controls for his jet pack and stopped his tumble, but the ship was pulling away, and the meager thrust of his pack was no match for its engines.
“Okay, okay. Let’s all just cool it before we blow up something I need,” barked a new voice over the communication channel.
It was Karter. Not for the first time, Lex could not decide if he should be relieved or terrified at his arrival. Based on his recent behavior, it would take one hell of an alternative for Future Karter to be considered the lesser of two evils. A crazed, possibly senile Neo-Luddite commander with a vendetta and a prototype warship was a strong contender for the biggest problem at the moment.
Directly in front of Lex, not more than a few hundred meters away, a large, egg-shaped metal canister seemed to appear from nowhere. A half second after its appearance, just as Lex swerved to avoid it, the panels on its surface burst open and a flash of violet light flooded the area. Lex’s vision dropped to complex patterns swirling in darkness, and the voices of the other ships faded from his ears. At first he thought he’d been rendered blind and deaf, but the quiet hiss of his pack and his own frantic breathing still echoed in his helmet. Slowly indicators in his HUD began to illuminate, revealing that his visor itself had gone opaque, presumably as a defense against the blinding light.
Warnings of all sorts began to scrawl up, but Lex hardly needed to read them. In the past few months he had gone from vaguely aware of electromagnetic pulses to being intimately familiar with their nuances. That his suit was still functional after being so near the source of an EMP attack suggested Karter and Ma had gone above and beyond to harden the suit and its electronics. He finally got the option to restore visibility. Once the visor cleared, he discovered the communication vessel, the security ship, and the handful of other convoy members that had been rushing to their aid had regrettably not been built with the same level of care. Each was now sliding in the same direction it had been heading, but twisting helplessly as many critical systems abruptly shut off or scrambled.
The one ship that wasn’t dead in the water was, of course, the VectorCorp ship. Its shields were shimmering but intact, and as far as Lex could tell not a single light on its hull had gone dark as a result of the blast.
“Well, well, well,” said Karter, his voice somewhat distorted over the recovering com system in Lex’s helmet. “It looks like I’m not the only one with a pulse-adapted shield.”
The section of space in front of Lex flickered with a half-seen image, then finally dropped like a veil to reveal Karter’s ship. It was a few dozen meters dead ahead, and to Lex’s dismay, the controls for his pack hadn’t quite reactivated. After a few seconds, he collided with Karter’s windshield, mercifully at a speed slow enough for him to bounce painfully off without rupturing anything.
“You’ve got all of space to flail around in, and you manage to crash into my ship,” Karter grumbled, glaring at Lex through the window as the hapless pilot twirled slowly backward.
“Lex, please state your current status,” Ma said calmly.
“Forget about me. Coal is in the docking bay of the survey ship, and she’s started the countdown to self-destruct,” Lex said.
He was trying to stop his rotation by waving his arms and legs, which had the net result of making him look like the final logical conclusion of the three stooges.
“Why have you not instructed her to discontinue this behavior?” Ma asked.
“Never mind why, Ma,” Karter said. “Get out there and fix it.”
“Yes, Karter,” Ma said.
Lex continued to rotate, his pack occasionally sputtering and sending him in a new, usually unwanted direction.
“Karter Dee…” wheezed Purcell across the connection.
“That’s me. One of them, anyway. Remind me again, was it me or my computer you had a vendetta against?” Karter replied. “It has been a few years since I’ve had to deal with someone who thinks they are my arch nemesis.”
Purcell didn’t answer, at least not verbally. Instead she made her opinion known in the form of three potent energy cannons along the belly of the VectorCorp ship pivoting in his direction. Their barrels began to glow threateningly.
Lex worked out the trajectory of the forthcoming attacks and came to the not-altogether-unexpected conclusion that the bolts would most likely pass through him on the way to Karter’s ship. Regardless of whether it was likely to be on purpose or by accident, Lex was determined to get clear. Determination, however, wasn’t nearly enough to get his pack functional again.
“Hold perfectly still,” Ma instructed.
His rotation brought him back around toward Karter’s ship. Out from beneath it, darting like a missile, flew Ma. The nozzles of her pack glowed like flares, far more intensely than he’d ever seen. As she drew near, she pivoted, flipping all four feet toward him.
“Grab my rear paws and hold tight,” she said.
By now the power output of the VectorCorp cannons was sufficient to cause interference in the signal, but the message made it through. Lex reached out and caught her feet. Even in their overdriven state, the jets on Ma’s back and her momentum weren’t nearly enough to cancel out the momentum of Lex’s much more massive body, but it was enough to give him a shove in the right direction.
The two of them began to accelerate out of the path of the weapons and toward the still-disabled communication ship.
“I have waited far too long for this, Karter,” Purcell rumbled.
“Well get on with it, then. Let’s see what you’ve got,” Karter replied.
“Ma, faster. Much faster,” Lex said.
“We are already exceeding the safety parameters of the pack. Stand by for—”
The remainder of the sentence was blotted out by a massive burst of interference as the energy cannons launched a volley. It passed near enough to once again black out Lex’s visor, and the heat of the blast passing by raised the surface of his suit to a temperature that triggered another three alerts, but neither he nor Ma sustained any major damage. His visor slowly dialed down to a lesser tint, but that did him very little good, as the blasts were coming continuously, bathing the area in their brilliant glow such that Lex could see nothing else.
#
The VectorCorp ship unleashed volley after volley of energy bolts. One by one, additional energy cannons warmed up and joined in the fray. The shots burst like fireworks upon impact. Flecks of plasma sprayed and splashed in all directions. The color shifted in a terrible rainbow of reds, yellows, blues, and whites as the temperatures rose. Tendrils of ionized gas lashed out as though they had a mind of their own, pushed about by the constant stream of attacks.
Purcell kept the attack up as long as she could. The energy weapons, designed for short bursts, soon began to overheat. They entered a cool-down cycle, and the bolts finally stopped flying. Seconds ticked by and slowly the cloud of plasma began to cool and disperse. When the haze cleared, Karter’s ship remained. Its shields had held, not so much as a singe on its hull plating from the onslaught.
“Okay, you’ve had your fun,” Karter taunted through the crackling interference. “But now it’s my turn.”
A row of panels on either side of the cockpit opened revealing rows of missiles. Karter didn’t waste his breath on an additional threat or quip. He simply released them all at once. They didn’t seem terribly imposing, each barely the size of a banana. The bolts holding on the armor plates of the VectorCorp ship were probably larger. A dozen of the tiny missiles streaked toward their targets.
When they struck, rather than an explosion or a rush of radioactive devastation, they split into a crackling cloud of smaller fragments. Each fragment caused a section of the shields to dim and flicker. By the time the third missile hit, a great, yawning hole in the larger ship’s defenses had opened. This allowed the remainder of the salvo to slip through. They struck the hull and scattered their fragments across its surface, each becoming a pinpoint of bright slag that spread into a bright pool of molten alloy when it looped back down toward the hull. These pools sank in, eating away at the thick plates like acid before escaping air began to vent through the breaches.
“There,” Karter said. “Now that you’re softened up, let’s try the big stuff.”
In response, the VectorCorp ship’s engines surged. It roared forward, charging directly at Karter’s ship.
“Oh, so someone wants to play rough. Okay…” he said.
A dozen new panels on Karter’s ship opened, revealing an assortment of new weapons.
“Let’s play rough…”
#
Lex had been watching in awe as the battle raged behind him. That they’d not been struck by the copious amounts of stray energy and shrapnel was a wonder. The interference produced by the exchange of fire was enough to overwhelm the transceiver of Lex’s suit, treating him to little more than a series of random tones and clicks as the com system tried to make sense of the wide-spectrum noise. When they were closing in on the communication ship, Ma reached down and pressed the paw of her suit to his helmet’s visor.
“Attempting to circumvent radio interference with tactile signal transmission. If you can hear me, please respond.”
“I hear you fine! Please tell me there’s a plan.”
“There are a number of plans.”
“Have any of them got a step where we save at least some of the survey crew? They have nothing to do with this.”
“I will take no active role in their destruction unless ordered by Karter, but neither will I attempt to prevent their deaths. History must unfold as it had previously.”
“I refuse to believe the answer to the mystery of the SSS 77 tragedy was collateral damage from an insane woman from the future duking it out with an insane man from the future.”
“Your belief is not necessary. Facts are facts,” Ma said.
Their slow spiral brought Lex around to spy Karter’s ship, or at least the spot in space he’d last seen Karter’s ship. It was now entirely hidden behind the looming structure of the VectorCorp ship, which had attempted to ram its tiny opponent.
“Is he going to be okay?”
“That is not relevant to our current tasks,” Ma said. “However, my analysis of the ship while I was aboard suggested my missing influence allowed him to dedicate his full attention to his more destructive interests. It is entirely possible, despite the size disparity, Karter’s ship has the VectorCorp vessel outgunned.”
Lex felt himself surge forward. “My pack just woke up!” he said, releasing her legs and taking control of the flight.
She separated from him, matching his speed before flipping over and firing a tether to attach to him.
“Resuming communication. Listen closely, Lex. I can only discuss this discreetly while in direct contact with you, and only while I am in the process of obeying my most recent order. Did you receive my coded message?”
“Yeah. The bot we’ve got is screwed up. What are we supposed to do about that?”
“You have to take it to Karter for adaptation.”
“I can’t even count the number of ways that’s a bad idea. But we’ll start with the fact that he wants me dead. And also he might be dead after this clash with Purcell.”
“The future incarnation of Karter is only interested in preventing your interference with his plans, not your death. The fact that the simplest way to prevent your interference is to kill you is, however, an obstacle. That is not relevant to the point at hand. The future incarnation is not the Karter to which I was referring.”
“Wait. You mean local Karter? Karter from the past?”
“More accurately, Karter from the present.”
“You’re letting these people die because we can’t change the past, but you’re suggesting I have a chat with Karter thirty years before I first met him?”
They reached the hull of the communication ship, which now sported a number of smoldering holes thanks to the splash damage from the energy weapons. There were minor signs of life in the vessel, scattered external lights dimly flickering and some faint radio signals from within, but it was still badly ailing from the EMP attack.
“Please lead the way to the docking bay hatch behind which Coal can be found,” Ma said.
“It’s this way I think,” Lex said. “I was unconscious when we showed up. And don’t change the subject. What’s with the hypocrisy?”
“Karter of this era is a special case. It is well known that his mental stability has been unreliable. At this point in history he worked as a military contractor. His contract dictated that he be allowed to work in isolation. In three years, the psychological assessment that will lead the military leaders to discontinue their association with him will take place. It will indicate he has been experiencing intense hallucinations and has a pronounced inability to differentiate between fantasy and reality. In short, Karter’s mental health is currently at an all-time low. As long as no evidence of our arrival is left behind, he and/or his evaluators will simply disregard our presence as another delusion.”
“See, ‘Karter is extra crazy right now’ is what I’d call a reason not to visit him.”
“The options are limited. I am loading a detailed description of the issue and the desired outcome into your suit’s memory. Any version of Karter past the age of fifteen should be capable of addressing the issue with little difficulty. Be sure to avoid having your presence recorded and clear any indication of this visit from his systems before leaving.”
“I don’t like this plan.”
“You are welcome to provide a superior alternative.”
“I’m working on it. Here! This is the bay door.”
Both of them touched down on the door. Through the porthole they saw the dim interior of the bay. None of the crew was present, no doubt each having reported to their battle stations. Only Coal was inside, her glowing shield producing what little light there was to see.
“There can’t be much time left. Coal might be ready to blow.”
“Then we must inform her of the altered circumstances.”
“The bay’s isolated. We can’t get a signal through. How are we going to let her know?”
As an answer, Ma trotted to the porthole and rapped it sharply with her paw. Inside, Coal pivoted toward the sound.
“Oh, right…” Lex said.
Coal’s exterior lights flickered. Ma’s helmet lights did the same. After three such exchanges, Ma looked to Lex.
“Please clear the hatch. Coal is going to address the situation.”
Lex grabbed Ma and flitted clear of the door with the same urgency of a man diving out of the way of a freight train. “Address the situation” was an innocuous enough phrase, but given Ma’s predilection for understatement, Lex didn’t want to take any chances. It proved a prudent decision because in this case that phrase was a synonym for “ram the bay hatch repeatedly.” The small, powerful ship clashed again and again, each time causing the door to buckle a bit more. Gas vented out, breaches tore into the surrounding structure, and finally the whole door ripped free, taking a fair amount of its mounting with it.
“Hello, Lex. Hello, Ma. Thank you for your punctuality. I was seventeen seconds from arming the fusion device, which would not have been fun for anyone,” Coal said pleasantly. “There appears to be a ship-to-ship battle occurring at a dangerous proximity. Are you aware of this activity?”
“Yeah, I’d noticed, Coal,” Lex said.
“Excellent. And Ma, are you presently planning to kill Lex or acquire the GenMech?”
“That is not my present activity,” Ma said.
“Ma! I’ve got Coal on sensors now. Quit screwing around and get your hands on that robot and bring it back to me!” barked Karter through the clearing static. His clash with the VectorCorp vessel was coming to a close, with the larger ship largely intact but almost entirely disabled.
“Correction, that is now my present activity,” Ma said. “I apologize for this, Lex.”
Lex felt a searing pain in his shoulder, the point at which Ma’s tether had attached. She must have been sending an electrical current through the tether in an attempt to incapacitate him. The suit largely protected him, but the flow of energy also activated the nano-lattice in its fabric. It became rigid, locking him helplessly in position.
“Coal, I can’t—” Lex hissed through the pain.
“Stand by,” Coal said.
Thrusters flared and she shot backward, briefly leaving Lex at the mercy of Ma. The retreating ship was behind him, out of his view, so it came as a shock when he felt something latch on to his leg, clenching tightly enough for him to feel it even through the hardened suit. A moment later his immobile body was yanked backward, and once Ma’s tether reeled out to its full extent, she was yanked along as well.
“Coal… this… isn’t… helping…” Lex struggled to say, the pain in his shoulder now compounded by the rush of blood toward his head.
“I am attempting to buy us some time,” Coal said.
Lex glanced up through his helmet. He was just barely able to see Ma reeling herself in.
“You aren’t going to get much of it,” Lex said.
Ma stopped halfway up the tether and looked to the damaged remnants of the VectorCorp vessel, which was ripping by them near enough that the shields should have been brushing against them. The fact that they weren’t suggested the shields were now wholly inactive.
“I am detecting a massive surge in energy from the VectorCorp vessel. Self-destruct has likely been initiated,” said both Ma and Coal simultaneously.
“Time to go,” Coal added.
She juiced her main thrusters, released the grappler she’d clamped onto Lex’s leg, and flipped open the cockpit. Both Ma and Lex tumbled inside. Lex’s frozen position was not compatible with the limited space in the cockpit, but with a bit of force she was able to overcome the rigidity of the suit and stuff him and Ma safely inside. It wasn’t a dignified position, with Ma crammed against Lex’s helmet and the hatch, but it was enough to complete the seal.
“Initiating random jump,” Coal said.
“No! Coal! You can’t do it with Ma here! She’s trying to—”
“FTL initiated.”
In the slivers of the outside that he could see around Ma’s struggling body, Lex watched the battleground whisk to invisibility as he was dragged unwillingly to faster-than-light speeds.
#
“Ma?” Karter growled. “Respond!”
Karter’s ship was somewhere in the bowels of the VectorCorp vessel. The attempt to ram him had been a miscalculation on Purcell’s part because, while it wreaked havoc on his shields, it allowed him to punch through the armor and have free rein on the much more delicate innards of the massive ship. He unloaded his smaller weapons, blasting away bulkheads and melting structural members to slag. He was like a disease running rampant inside a larger organism, and there was no way for Purcell to target him.
“Tell me that computer didn’t get herself destroyed. You can’t rely on anyone anymore…” he growled.
He glanced down at a display on his control panel. It was telling that very few warnings were sounding at the moment, despite his presence within another ship and his rapidly failing shields. Karter’s disregard for his safety and that of anyone else had long ago convinced him to shift his ship’s warning system to take a far less conservative approach to alerts. Rather than blaring sirens informing him of the near certainty of his destruction, there was a silent but clear indicator of the impending shield failure, a gentle reminder that he was violating minimum safe distance in all directions, a blinking suggestion that a nearby reactor was about to reach super-critical levels, and finally a navigation pointer to what appeared to be two ships leaving the area at FTL speeds in opposite directions.
“Well that’s just great,” Karter said.
His fingers danced over the control panel, tapping in a sequence of commands. The first command was a calculation on the destructive radius of the self-destruction. It traced out a several-thousand-kilometer circle, which encompassed the whole of the still largely disabled survey convoy thanks to its ill-fated attempt to converge upon and aid the communication vessel. The second indicated that one of the two ships leaving the area had the same distinctive shield signature that had allowed him to track Purcell.
“That coward wasn’t even willing to go down with her ship? Some captain she is,” he said. “May as well chase her. Since I have no idea where the hell Lex is going, no sense wasting an opportunity to blow someone to hell.”
He unloaded his blasters, boring his way to open space with seconds to spare, then set a pursuit course for Purcell’s escape pod. Shortly after his departure, the VectorCorp ship detonated. The ships of the convoy were torn to pieces and largely vaporized by the intensity of the blast. All that remained when the explosion had run its course was a handful of scarred fragments and a cloud of expanding vapor. History had run its course.