The arc of the planet stretched wide beyond the glass, consuming her vision from end to end. That barren rock called New Betony had it’s own sort of dismal beauty, the red and brown marbling of it’s landscape lit like an underworld by an ill-tempered orange sun.
But after three days on zero-grav stakeout she was in no mood to appreciate it. The gel-fluid that kept her bodysleeve pressurized had become lousy with her own bio-filth, and she was painfully aware of how it crushed her ears against her scalp, her fur against her skin. And with her position dangling off the tip of one of PrinzRouen station’s docking arms, relief was very far away.
That and the grind of tedium were the only things that kept her distracted from the bubbling terror. The doubt that she’d never see the Old Chariot again. Nor Captain Daara, First Mate Morcair, or any of the rest. Every moment they didn’t show only further solidified doubt into certainty. For all she knew they were already dead. Watching war between man and machine play out across the planet kept that very real possibility in her mind. Every pop from the cloud layer could be her kith getting shot down. Every city-sized upswell of dust could be a Commonwealth kinetic falling on their heads. Or perhaps they had been crushed underfoot by some giant angry robot for the crime of sharing taxonomy with their oppressors. Though Ravel would put her money on the Morc for that bout.
It galled Ravel even to think of it. Corsair or not, no kellian should be collateral damage in a war humans brought upon themselves. They had plenty enough of that shite waiting for them back in the Reach.
I ought to be down there, Ravel thought. Better dead under the colours than lucky leftovers. Just had to roll an ankle days before embark. If she were in Captain Daara’s shoes she would have just assumed that their newest crewmate was trying to cower out.
Ravel shook off the thought, rustling the hood of her silvery grey poncho. Her brain was curdling again, had to do something to keep her busy. But what? Check her gear again? The seals on her mask and bodysleeve were fine. As were her oxygen tank and lines, they didn’t magically sprout leaks since last time. The straps on her rig harness wee still tight, the dials and gauges affixed on them and her bracers were all reporting normal. Her poncho had not decided to tear itself out of boredom and the colour changing tag that measured it’s rad-protection was still solid green.
That was it, time for the last resort. Her boredom had just become mission control’s problem.
“Pathfinder to Control.” She grumbled into the comm. “Time for another port-starboard check.”
No response.
“Oi, Kimber!”
Still nothing. Out of pure hunch Ravel checked her palm terminal. Indeed in the corner of the screen bounced that little white cat avatar, sporting Kimber’s mess of snowy braids. It winked and waved a sassy paw, drawing attention towards the latest message. Sent mere minutes before Ravel tried to hail her.
getting chow, back soonish! xoxoxo
“Ugh.” Fie upon the Commonwealth for not scrapping the station’s autovendors for parts. Stretched out her back, elastic vertebrae flexing and popping. She supposed she could catch some shut-eye while-
She flinched from sudden flash from the planet. “Piss, piss!” She muttered, Madrigal flashing over her mind’s eye. Green flame lancing across the sky, the mother ocean rearing up to smash her own children.
Ravel blinked the flashbacks away. Focus on facts. Fact was that a flash like that was either real powerful or way too close, if not both. First thing that came to mind was nuke. Ravel acted on instinct, years of safety drills springing out like a snake.
She whirled tether, yanked as hard as she could. She was flung towards the safety of the access hatch. But panic made her sloppy, by the time she realized her trajectory it was too late.
Crack went her elbow. Right against a bulkhead. Pain flooded her nerves, so hot and blinding that she could do nothing but curl into herself and let out a yowl of pain and self-pity.
“Oh, shit.” Buzzed a voice through her comm. “Ravel? Ravel! Are you okay?!”
Ravel forced herself to move, opening her mouth to reply. Until she realized she was spinning out of control across the observation pod, her tether coiling around her like a predatory eel. With a snarl of frustration she hit the button on her wrist to lock the spool, stopping herself.
“Pathfinder Ravellian." Kimber said, voice now firm. "Status report!”
“Status under bloody fire! Danger close off starboard!” Ravel snapped as she writhed against the tether’s grip. “Might be Bastion!”
“Scuse me?” Kimber said. “Only contacts on the local are friendly, if the Bastion was here shooting we’d be in red alert by now.”
“Well, obviously something bloody happened! Check the tac-grid!”
“Uh, okie-doke?” Acrylic nails clicked over a keys, Kimber humming as she navigated the mess of advanced Commonwealth sensor data filtered through the station’s moribund computer systems. “Ah, okay, there it is. Seeing a bogey, looks like they already winged it. Coming from… longitude forty-eight east, latitude twenty north. Just cresting the mesosphere. “You got visual?”
Ravel followed the co-ordinates, the HUD in her mask pointing the way. Not that it was hard to find for how it still glowed like a star. A machine ship, barebones thing resembling a half-eaten fish on a stick. The machines had been kludging together such atom-breachers to probe the Commonwealth’s blockage, but never so close to the station.
This one had had it’s aft section and oversized drive cone busted wide open, exposing what must have been a serious beefcake of a fission generator in full meltdown. That would explain the intensity.
“Well I’ll be, clanks are getting sneaky.” Kimber continued in her lazy New Carthage drawl that made everything sound like a question. “Greenies must be getting slopping, another couple clicks and they might had a shot on the statio-”
Light flickered over the ship, like a drizzle of rain under a streetlight. Ravel knew particle cannons when she saw them. One moment a chain of explosions was tearing across the skeletal hull, the next the ship was a puffball of smoke and debris. Just like that, from a shot that could have come from clear across the face of the planet for all she knew.
“-Aaaand it’s gone. Clearly my eagle eye saved the day here. Hope I get a medal.”
A joke, Ravel reminded herself. Just a joke. The Commonwealth didn’t know they were there, they weren’t being used as spotters. That would be ridiculous. Kimber liked her jokes, especially the ones Ravel didn't.
But that did nothing for the upswell of dread. A more terrible and obvious lingered on her lips, she let it be heard.
“The crew couldn’t have been on that thing, could they?”
A moment of silence before Kimber replied. “Uh, no? Hell no. Did you see that thing? All engines and missile tubes. Barely even space for extra ammo, let alone passengers.”
“Daara could pull it off.” Ravel said. “Yeah, sure. She could do it.” Kimber said, mouth half full of something, chewing and smacking. “But, like, would she? It's a pretty stupid idea. And one thing the skipper ain’t is stupid.”
Ravel… agreed. But stupid was always relative. Desperate times make for desperate measures, and it was easy for cynics sitting at their computers to call it “stupid”.
And looking at the fracas going on dirtside? Desperate sounded about right.
“Fine.” Ravel yawned and stretched. Didn't really help, the sleeve and gel-layer didn’t allow her spine much stretch room. “Let’s do that lookover now.”
“Uh, when did we agree to this?”
“When you were too busy scavenging to protest.” Ravel said, that should have been the end to it, but her twitching stomach demanded answers. “What’d ye get anyway?”
Kimber let out a sly little purr, as if it were naughty secret to be shared under the covers. “Wasabi fries, extra large.”
You bitch, Ravel thought but resisted the urge to say. No need to jeopardize her chance at leftovers.
“Aye cool. Ontae business.” Ravel said as she floated towards the middle of the pod, where the wide portholes gave her a full panoramic of the planet. “Any notable change ‘round the station?”
“Well there was just a shift rotation from the battle fleet to the picket line.” Kimber said mildly. “Don’t know if you’re into Commonwealth ships…”
Ravel looked out to the starboard wing of the picket that she could actually see. Commonwealth craft came in a hundred styles for a hundred cultures, but most had an elegant, organic look to them. Swooping arches and domes and wings, many practical concerns of engineering wiped away by technology far beyond the ken of any civilization before or since. Each painted in some specific arrangement of white and soft green. Centuries in service and such ships would still outclass anything the known galaxy could throw at them. What they didn’t have was numbers and infrastructure to make more. That was how the Commonwealth were laid low by machine rebellion in the first place.
She let out a snort. “Hardly.” She said. “I like me ship design hard and proletarian, thank ye very much.”
“S’okay, different strokes.” Kimber infuriatingly replied. One of those days Ravel would find a subjective subject the other girl was actually willing to fight over. Then the fun would begin.
"Observing starboard." Ravel said. That way lay the nightside horizon, a good sized swathe alive with dancing lights. Up and down, back and forth like fireflies in the throes of kinstrife. The news that the machines had a small continent’s worth of infrastructure packed away on the wrong side of the planet had certainly been a bombshell. At the time Ravel found the ensuing plague of freakouts rather entertaining.
Less entertaining was when the ‘bots started pumping out ships and surface-to-orbit weapons by the bushel. Turning that whole chunk of the sky into a shooting gallery, any land not bunkered or ray shielded rendered incompatible with life. In the face of pure functionally unlimited volume the Commonwealth could do naught but keep them bottled up.
“Shite still blowing up.” Ravel said. “Nothing new to report.”
“Mmhmm, Acknowledged.” Kimber mumbled through a mouthful of starch and synthetic wasabi.
“Moving on to port.”
“Yeah, our dearly departed PrinzJaune. How’s the old gent doing?”
Ravel look towards the thing, the stilled corpse of an orbital habitat. Once the identical twin of PrinzRouen, now it was nothing but cold, dead proof of the Commonwealth's shortcomings. Tardiness specifically.
The giant centrifuge of it’s body had been gutted like a fish, a debris field of it's innards glittering around it. The trio of lateral docking arms lay broken and scattered. If Ravel squinted she could see the twin of the very tip Ravel’s own pod was dangling from, a hairs breadth from falling downwell.
“Omen's still bloody grim, dunno what else to say.”
“There’s some scuttlebutt that the robots could use it as a hive. See anything suspicious?”
“Nothin’ that orbital decay cannae account for.” Ravel said. “Not our business anyway.”
Kimber made that noise that was her audible equivalent of a shrug. “Acknowledged. Just doing my due diligence. So what about the planet?”
“Way ahead of ye.” Ravel said as she zoomed into New Betony’s primary landmass. With a bit of imagination she could visualize the first days of the machine rebellion from the marks it left on the surface. The highlands in the far north was awash with grey and white scars, where the machines once blasted mountains into hills and hills into valleys in an endless search for rare metals and fissiles. Until they sprung their plan, and the great herds about-faced to turn their weapons on their masters.
Midways down the continent lay an vast swathe of craters, making the point when the local fleet figured out what was happening and laid down a hellacious orbital bombardment to stop it.
Then the south, where the grid of urban industrial fungus once hugged the hydrocarbon sea. Now most of it was blackened ruins. The Commonwealth had arrived too late to save any but a small cordon around the primary spaceport, bordered by a glowing ring of fire where the fabled troopers of the Orion Guard slagged robots by the horde. It looked like a letter slowly burning in a fire.
“Can’t be too many civvies left to evac. Then the Commonwealth pulls out.” Ravel noted. “If they’re tae exfil, it’s gotta be soon.”
“If they filtered out in small groups they could have slipped out with the civvies.” Kimber said.
“Could have, should have.” Ravel groused. “We’re not down there, we don’t know.”
“Yeah, sure. But I’m just saying there’s only couple of fast-rockets left down there, kept in reserve for stragglers. Unless the crew’s gonna hjiack a Commonweath dropship…”
Ravel’s had to smile. There was a thought, if a bad one. On account of mutual enemies the greenies had taken a see no evil, hear no evil attitude to Corsair activity. That was the only reason they’d been able to operate so close to the Commonwealth-in-Exile’s bunghole. That was one bridge they couldn’t afford to burn.
“Nay, like ye said. Daara ain’t stupid.” Ravel said.
“That makes it weird, no? That she’d let things come this close to the wire? The skip usually plans the mission around the exfil.”
Ravel bit down on her valiant if venomous defence of the Captain. Kimber wasn’t ship crew, she didn’t know any better.
"Shite happens. Down tae the wire is part of being a Corsair.”
“And where’s the Chariot?” Kimber mused, as if she wasn’t even listening.
Ravel let out an annoyed huff. "Don't worry yerself over the Old Chariot, ye never even stepped foot on her."
"I know what it looks like, enough to know it isn't here.”
"What do you mean looks like? It's a freighter, like any other. That’s the point, it blends in.”
Unless you’re part of her crew, mind. Ravel could draw the Old Chariot with her eye’s closed. She was a Haulmeister R43 Medium-Double-Extra class Slipfreighter. The blocky, front-heavy chassis made her look like a sperm whale squished down lengthwise. A noble form indeed. Her drab brown paint job was pockmarked with decades of travel, some of the older crew could point at each one and have a story to tell.
A common, almost obsolete design. The only thing that distinguished it from the millions of it’s sisters was the fact that it was the Old Chariot, and only to those who called her home.
"I checked both the docking arms and the relief flotilla.” Kimber continued. “Matched her transponder, efflux signature, the works. Nothing"
"All that shite can be changed easy."
"What about that weird mass distribution when the hold is cleared out? No, if it's in-system it's definitely not close enough to respond in time."
"Or they're hiding on a moonlet, or closer enough tae the sun where sensors cannae read." Ravel shook off Kimber's ignorance and focused on the planet, zooming out to the upper atmo. "Why don't you get on the tightbeam and take a look?"
"We're still undercover, we can't be messing with the tightbeam willy-nilly."
"Whatever, we ain't looking fer the Chariot anyway. This be an Interceptrix and Hunter-Killer job.”
Kimber let out a weary sigh. "Sure. If you say so."
Ravel was about ready to accept the surrender. But no, something about Kimber's tone stuck in her craw. "Feck if I say so. Where's this coming from? What're you getting at?"
“Uh…” Kimber punctuated her mumbling with a quick mouthful of fries. "Look, I'm not saying-"
"That they're dead?" Ravel snapped.
"No, of course not! I'm just saying that, well... y'know, they're not here."
Ravel didn’t respond. Not that the thought hadn’t occurred to her. But somehow, in the depths of Ravel's selfish mind, it felt like the worst possibility of all. Not even worth considering.
“Think about it.” Kimber went on. “This party didn’t start until after the Chariot pushed out. And even if she decided to push the mission anyway there would be a seriously narrow window to get here ahead of the Commonwealth, so why bother?”
“We’re not some skittish smuggler crew." Ravel replied. "If there was a margin for success Daara and Morcair would have gone for it.”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“At what cost though? Like, I know you think Corsairs are bad and shit, but look at this shit. Doesn’t this scream suicide mission to you?”
“Doesn’t bloody matter. Mission come direct from Kraken command, unequivocal.” Ravel said through her teeth. “An’ we all gotta feckin’ die sometime, right?”
Madrigal did, after all. So what am I waiting for?
Kimber let out a long, tired sigh. “I guess? I dunno, just… looking for some hope out here.”
“S’fine.” That was all Ravel could say. In truth she didn’t know how to feel about it. Objectively speaking, she should be relieved that her kith weren’t down there. But not telling her…
“Look, sorry for bringing it up, okay?”
“I said it’s fine.” Ravel breathed, trying her hardest to soften her voice. Years at void and she’d forgotten how. “Don’t worry about it.”
A couple awkward moments of silence passed. The planet loomed vast before Ravel, indifferent to her worries or even the apocalyptic violence raging across it. There had to be some solace in that, even if she couldn’t find it.
Then Kimber cleared her throat. “Actually, checking the moonlets was a pretty good idea. Don’t need to use the tightbeam anyway, I’ll just key into one of the picket patrollers.“
“Aye, ten four.” Ravel murmured, just loud enough to be heard. “And thanks.”
“Yup, signing off.”
And like that Ravel was alone again, and uncertain whether she was better for it. She floated there for a time, questions and catastrophes roiling in her head. Grisly possibilities that she no evidence for but part of her already assumed were true.
No, it would do no good to fall into that whirlpool. Focus on the immediate.
The immediate was that her body felt stiff yet limp, like a busted marionette. Zero-g exercise would do well shake some of the rust off. She unhooked the tether off the small of her back so it wouldn’t interfere.
She started with some basic lateral rolls. With her arms crossed and knees folded she pitched her body sideways at the hip. That sent her into a sideways spin, stopped by the same movement in the opposite direction. A couple of lefts then the same number of rights shook the doldrums out of her brain, but did nothing for her back.
Catfall twists were the ticket there. She bent her middle then twisted her upper and lower back in opposite directions, rolling herself over facewise. Once twice, until her back no longer felt like it was going Quasimodo.
It was a tricky thing to employ the righting reflex on purpose rather than instinct, all without a twitch to her stable position in the pod. Three years of crash cage training had turned Ravel into a master of her own centre of gravity. There were veteran killers aboard the Chariot who couldn’t boast that, and would make fools of themselves trying.
She went through a couple more less interesting exercises, and whatever stretches the gel layer allowed. But eventually she decided she was done, and that she really could use a nap after all. She went into one last lateral roll and settled into a consistent spin, letting the swirl of the planet lull her into dreamless sleep.
Until the light came back.
It struck against both goggles and eyelids like a battering ram. So bright it burned without heat. Heat like when the Bastion’s hate fell open Madrigal.
Her eyes flew open, and her vision was scoured white. Last second she thrashed herself around, groping half-blind for her tether. Missed once, then twice. On the third she caught it, and yanked.
And slammed herself right into the wall. Through the blurry spots in her vision she saw the planet hurtling towards her. She was headed right for a porthole.
Too fast. No time to stop herself with the tether. She twisted right into the catfall, turning herself to take the impact boots first. The impact shook through her bones, and yet worse she felt the glass under her shift and crack. The structure of the pod was already questionable, and now an entire pane of porthole was falling downwell, taking Ravel with it.
The emergency thrusters saved her. With the shock pads in her boots pressed to the limit they activated automatically. Air flooded from her tank into her boots, and out little holes in the bottom. On rushing spouts of white she was spirited upwards, slow enough that she could get her bearings.
She looked for the source of the flash, quickly and her blood ran cold. Madrigal again flashed in her mind’s eye. The clouds burned away and the seas boiled.
"Ravel?" Wailed Kimber. "Are you okay?! RAVEL!" Ravel did not respond, stilled by the sight of aurorae fluttering across the atmosphere. A beauty forever turned to horror in her mind.
“Kraken Agent Pizarro-Rackham!” Kimber snarled in as much fear as anger, clawing fiercely at Ravel’s attention. “What's your fuckin’ status?! Respond now!”
“I’m here!” Ravel finally replied, voice creaking like a rusty hinge.”Status... I-I don’t know!”
"Yeah, I don't know either! The whole system went dark, just came back on now! What can you tell me? Got a visual?”
Ravel squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her teeth, shoved the death of her motherworld out of mind before daring to look down again.
Five nuclear detonations just at tip top of atmo, arranged in neat hexagon. The flash had come and gone in a moment, but the glow lingered, white vapor rippling out from each spot.
"Devilled eggs." She murmured in sudden, mad humour. At the same time a great shadow began to rise through the atomic fog. Long and cylindrical, with a sharp atmo-piercing top.
“What? Rav, I didn’t catch that. What do you see?”
She raised her voice to a shout. “Atomics! They’re using atomics!”
“Holy fuck. Ravel, you gotta get out of there.”
“A bloody second!” There was something else. Another shadow attached to the rocket's side like a parasite. A shape like a clawless lobster, clinging to the rocket’s hull with six spindly legs.
“God-damn it, Rav! I can see the readings from your gear. Radiation's spiking!”
"Got a rocket coming upwell, smaller ship piggybacking off the sidewall!" Ravel said, words spilling out, reporting everything she saw. "And... uh, pod's compromised!"
“Goddammit Rav! Go now! Allez, vamos!”
With Kimber’s cracking at her like a whip Ravel scrambled up the tether and boosted up through the access hatch. The access crawlway stretched before her, dead and dark save for whatever little light filtered in through holes and gashes from battles past. At the opposite end lay the automated lifts that allowed transit between the stationary docking arms and the rotating hab cylinder. A simple path, but one too far to cross without assistance.
She clicked the claws of her gauntlets together, and her grabber rig fell upon her like some deep sea monster. The two metal-scaled tentacles slithered under the hem of her poncho, dragging the central rigging up with them. She locked the straps in tight, then splayed out her limbs so the muscle analog cords could slither around them of their own accord. They pulsed and tightened around the contours of her arms, legs and torso as a second layer of muscle. Essential to prevent the next step from breaking her like a twig.
Ravel snapped her fingers. The grabbers snaked out to grab both ends of the crawlway with their three pronged beaks, then slingshotted her down the crawlway at blistering speed.
She allowed herself to enjoy the moment. The rush of motion and the thrill of potential death. The adrenaline washed her mind clean of worries and doubt. It was like she was the Seafoam Prince himself, surging into battle on a chariot pulled by the waves themselves. Until Kimber spoke up, heralded by a flood of data from her console to Ravel’s mask HUD. She also brought up the video feeds from the cameras she had set up on previous scouting missions, giving her full view of the station’s three docking arms. Though some of the rips in the walls were big enough that she could look right out to vaccuum.
“Okay, first things first.” She said. “That ain’t one of the our rockets. I don’t even know where that thing even came from. It sure as hell didn’t launch from the evac cordon.”
“See? Nowhere near the greenies.” Ravel said as she looked over whatever data could be gleaned from cursory scans. It looked simultaneously leaner and bulkier than the civilian rockets, like a flying VIP bunker. By the bright blue efflux it was sporting a full fledged fusion drive. Brought it from high atmo to an intercept path with the station in no time flat.
“Second, I can’t get a signal in that thing. I don’t know since I haven’t used the full spectrum, but I’m pretty sure it’s sensor blocked.”
“Try hailing the piggyback.”
Kimber hesitated, Ravel could hear the faint sound of one acrylic nail tapping on a key.
“Are you sure? Once we shoot a tightbeam at an unidentified vessel it’ll be red-flagged in the system. Only matter of time before someone checks it, then the jig is up.”
Ravel hummed as she watched the rocket cut it’s primary drive and flare it’s forward attitude thrusters, entering the embrace the docking arms at such a reasonable speed that part of Ravel said they couldn’t possibly be Corsair.
From the outside the ‘piggyback’ looked like it could just be a big bulge from some internal explosion. Until Ravel flipped on the Corsair ID filter, showing what lay past the active camo.
It was shaped roughly like a clawless lobster, clinging to the sidewall of the rocket with six spindly legs extended from the belly. Rather than a continuous hull, it was covered in an array of segmented plates like scales, and articulated frame underneath.
Ravel tamped down on the flush of excitement. That was kellian design, but nothing was confirmed until she saw markings.
There. On the side of the nose. One a snarling kellian skull, a scimitar crossed with a plasma missile underneath, framed as like a wreath by the many tentacles by the clan namesake.
“It’s the Interceptrix!” Ravel cried aloud, fogging up her mask. “Kraken clan confirmed.”
Kimber let out a breath. “Ten four.” She hit a key and her voice became warped and shrill as she shifted up to a higher frequency signal.
“Interceptrix, this is Pathfinder Control! What is your status?”
No response. Ravel swallowed down on the brief panic. The conclusion her mind jumped to was that they were all dead on their decks, struck down by the radiation. But it was equally likely they were keeping silence on the suspicion that Kimber was an automated message to trick them.
Kimber kept hailing, switching up her wording at Ravel’s suggestion. For her part Ravel was coming upon her midpoint landmark, and had her grabbers start pinching and pulling at the walls to slow her down.
A ring of torn and twisted metal rose from the floor like a volcano. Made by a railgun shot. A lone mag-boot still clung to the side a ragged strip of vac-suit flying from it like a pennant. Too little space between the roof and the jagged metal teeth to safety zip by, she slowed right down to a drift. Grabbed the reserve oxygen tank she had left there on her way. She didn’t think she’d need it, but it was only a couple hours ago that she thought she wouldn’t need her boot thrusters either.
While she had downtime Ravel perused the video feeds to get her bearings. Neither the Commonwealth fleet nor the volunteer flotilla were reacting to the rocket’s presence. On the station arms repair tugs were going about their business, flitting around docked ships like flies, repairing those that were spaceworthy and cannibalizing those that weren’t.
“Interceptrix, I say again, what is your status? Do you copy?”
Only suspicious thing was four ships cruising in from above the station. Small frigates, their hulls long and flat, characteristic of belly sitters unfit for higher-g flight. Iris hatches for shuttles lined their sides. Looked recently repainted in glossy grey, but not thoroughly enough to cover up the grooves and welts of old battle damage.
“Oi Kim.” She said. “Got a contact for ye, sending coordinates.”
“Hmmm? What’s wrong?”
“Four ships coming in, dipping into an intercept with the rocket right now. Can ye gimme an ID?”
“Okay, let’s see…” Keys tapped, didn’t take long for her to answer. “Tac-grid’s saying those are search and rescue tugs. Maybe they’re coming in to help?”
“Got right prominent hardpoints for rescue tugs. In a point-defense layout to boot.”
“I dunno, probably mag-harpoons?”
Ravel let out a mean chuckle. “Harpoons my feckin’ eye.”
“What do you want me to say?” Kimber whined. “I’m just reading what the schema says, I don’t know what you-”
Her kvetching was interrupted by a peal of static over their comms. For a moment Ravel thought their signals were being intercepted and was prepared to shut her system down, until a familiar creak of a voice emerged from the noise.
“Pathfinder control, this is the Interceptrix.” They said, nonchalant as anything. “We read and acknowledge, what’s your bother?”
“Uh.. hi!” Kimber fumbled, taken aback. “Just checking in!”
Ravel suppressed a groan, settling for a roll of her eyes. “Ahoy helmskith.” She spoke up. “Pathfinder speaking!”
“Ravellian?! You little shit, just when we thought we were rid of you!” She smiled wide, knowing that nothing was meant by it. Ravel was young and insolent, the helm crew was old and crotchety almost to a kith. It was a destined enmity as old as the stars.
“Listen,” Ravel continued. “We got a transmitter chain encrypted and ready, along with a load of data for you. If there’s anything you gotta send to us, nows the time!”
“Got plenty data for ye too.” The helmskith replied. “But we can’t transmit yet, not until the Captain signs off.”
“Captain’s not on deck?”
“Negatory, just us on the Interceptrix. Everyone else is engage below in the escape craft.”
“Engaged?” Ravel’s heart quickened. “They’re in combat?”
“Aye, it be a real mess down there. Fetchers were waiting for us, in the rocket and the lab both, the Captain-“
He was interrupted by a shout from starboard, just as aged as his own.
“What?” He snapped back. “Yes I’m watching the sensors and I’m talking on the comm!… Of course it’s not a social call, ye daft bugger! It’s the pathfinder!”
That leavened Ravel’s heart a tad. If the helmskith were bickering that meant things couldn’t be that bad. It’s dead silence that would have made her blood run cold.
“I’ll focus on getting the data-chain set-up.” Kimber said, having regained some semblance of game face. “Keep your hands off your antenna settings until I’m done, will ya?”
An alarm started chirping on the helm end of the line, their contact chattering over it.
“Pike it all, what is- no I don’t see weapons signatures, that’s Doris’ bloody station! Doris! Wot’s Gledda caterwauling about? What? Port uplane? You mean those civvie ships?”
Ravel’s attention snapped right back to the descending frigates, just in time to see those hardpoints unfold like blooming metal flowers to reveal point defense guns. Rotary barrels spun, then flared bright. Bright tracers streaked through the black, peppering the rocket in the vague vicinity of the Interceptrix. Until they got lucky, the PD round thumped against the plates, scouring away a patch of active camo to reveal the dark dun plating beneath.
“Shots fired! PD rounds!” Ravel cried out.
“Aye Ravellian, we noticed.” The helmskith chided her back. “Gotta sign off now, we’ll the get you a line to the captain as soon as we can!”
“Aye, aye. Happy hunting, Interceptrix.”
“Happy? Aboard this bloody ship? Pfah!”
The commline clicked off, and the static abated. Ravel dearly hoped he’d get better last words than that.
With the Interceptrix exposed the frigates began to focus their fire, but the rocket was already burning it’s sub-thrusters to rotate, slowly orienting the Interceptrix downwards. Two of the frigates descended in pursuit, shooting bursts at the Interceptrix at every slight opportunity. Their shots began flying away from the rocket, straying perilously close to the arms.
And lucky Ravel, the first stray shot was for her. By the time she spotted the tracer coming in it had already hit with a flash down the crawlway behind her. A visible tremor ran through the walls. Didn’t take long for Kimber to notice.
“Shit! Got an impact alert on Beta arm, you okay?”
“Not if I stick around.” Said Ravel, watching a deadly storm of hot dust and sharp debris boiling down the crawlway, headed for her. “Moving on to exfil.”
“Bueno. Die and I’ll beat your ass even more red. Over and out.”
Ravel spared a quick salute to the boot and pennant. Least she could do for a poor doomed sailor, their life snatched away by blind luck and cold physics. She could be soon to join them, after all.
She then kicked off the metal rise and over the other side, then had her grabbers repeat the slingshot maneuver. This time she could feel the metal tremble and shift in their jaws, and pieces broke away behind as she was flung into the black.
The stability of the arms had been questionable since their mauling by the machines. Really it was the mass of the ships docked on them keeping things together more than the superstructure itself, and said ships were beginning to fly away like frightened birds.
Tick tock, Ravel. Tick tock croc.
Not that the potential for utter disaster meant anything to the enemy. Two ships were buzzing underneath the rocket on both flanks, taking potshots at every opportunity. Most likely trying to the bully the Interceptrix into exposing itself to the two other ships cruising above.
Almost looked like pod-hunting tactics, which the crew would be intimately familiar with. They were doing a good job of rolling the rocket back and forth, dancing in and out of the enemy sightlines almost tauntingly. But that wasn’t sustainable, the enemy would close in to force the matter eventually. They had to. They were quickly approaching the body of the station proper, towards the interior hollow. Soon their space to maneuver would be cut in half.
The helmskith had their own idea. Thrusters flared hard, abruptly rotating the Interceptrix to expose it’s flank to the starboard rocket. Point guns opened fire, but the Interceptrix’s plates had already shifted to present a sloped target. Rounds glanced off, and the second the frigate began maneuvering for a better shot plates shifted aside. A dozen or so glowing red darts swarmed out of the Interceptrix. Ravel recognized their flight pattern immediately. Most of the rockets split off to the sides while a couple screamed right for the frigate.
Naturally the point guns blasted the leaders first, and the rockets popped. But physics being what it was that did not stop the rocket’s contents. Ribbons of red hot plasma washed over the frigate. Had it been a military ship it would have been proofed against such interference. Instead the guns went haywire, and could do nothing but fire randomly as the rest of the rockets swooped in for the kill.
A ripple of red explosions occured, bits of hull came away as molten blobs. The frigate’s entire flank was turned red hot, the guns slagged. Nothing for them to do but frantically boost out of the way with whatever thrusters they had left. Glorious.
That was why one does not bugger around with Corsairs on their own scale and distance. Bring bigger ships or guns or go home.
With a lightened heart Ravel closed in on her exfil point, an empty lift shaft going up at an obtuse angle from the crawlway. She breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing her other tether still tied off there. No time to waste, she cut in loose and swung out into the shaft, slipping her feet into the stirrups like on a riding orca.
She hit the button to activate the spool high above. Took a couple uncomfortable seconds for the tether to overcome microgravity and draw taught, then she was spirited up into the darkness.
Through the scaffold walls she got a full view as the rocket pulled into the station’s hollow. The two overwatch frigates had to hurry a descent to follow, and quickly found themselves too close to maneuver without buffeting eachother with their attitude thrusters. One of them flickered it’s main drive to boost ahead, trying to overtake the rocket.
But they made the critical mistake of not off-angling their aft from the enemy. The Interceptrix exploited the opportunity, quick and ruthless. A gun barrel emerged from between the plates and started shooting. Bursts shredded into the drive cone and it’s efflux light flared. Cracks burst and panels popped off down the frigate’s after section, and moments later it’s engine went dead.
“Ravel? Where are you relative to the rocket?” Kimber piped up just then.
“About aboard board to board with it.” She replied. “Front row seat to the greatest show in the galaxy.”
“Yeah, no. You need to get above and into cover. Right fucking now.”
“What? Why?”
Kimber let out an exasperated huff. “Because I’m detecting some serious thermal signatures from the inside. Don’t know what they’re doing in there but I don’t like it!”
Ravel let out a snort of laughter. “Giving sapes the heave-ho is what. Crew knows what they doing, don’t be gettin’ skittish on me now!”
That was when it happened. One second a red crack had crawled across the rocket’s sidewall, the next a dozen. Then before Ravel could so much as curse the hull erupted into a wall of explosion. The fire took the Interceptrix’s portside legs with it, and the craft broke off.
As fire blossomed forth, death came for Ravel in the form of white hit shrapnel. With a hiss of panic Ravel pushed the spool speed to the max, but knew immediately it wouldn’t be enough. She hit her boot thrusters hard, dragging the tether up with her into a U-shape. A moment later shrapnel shredded into the lift, taking the bottom of the tether with it. Ravel grabbed the still rising portion and clung for dear life, an upswell of hot metal death nipping at her heels, Kimber’s voice whipping at her ear.
“Rav?! Ravel! Holy shit are you okay?! RAVEL!”
“Stop saying me name!” Ravel cried, spitting out the terror as rage. “Over and over, you’re like a bloody parrot!”
“Venus wept, I thought that was it!” She said, before pausing. “What about the rocket, what’s happening?”
Ravel dared to look, and her heart leapt into her throat. The entire side of the rocket had been split open, venting fire and gas like innards. Stupidly her brain grasped for an answer, not recognizing what she was looking at.
Death, idiot. They’re all gone.
Kimber must have heard the hitch in her breath, she started hailing again.
“Interceptrix! Kraken clan! This is port control, what is your status. Please res-”
The comm snarled into static again, and a new voice crested it’s waves. Deep and guttural, like some fell beast from the deepest, darkest cave.
“All Kraken units, all who can hear! We are coming in for hot landing, enemies at our heels! The battle is upon us, give no quarter!”
“Morcair! It’s bloody Morcair.” Ravel said, her voice cracking from her sheer excitement. “I knew it, fucking war god he is!”
“Focus Ravel!” Kimber snapped. “You get in that lift pod!”
Ravel steadied herself, breathing in and out. She was coming right upon the lift bay, the bottom hatch on one of them lay open. Paying no heed to her air supply she boosted up towards it.
The last two frigates moved in for the kill, pouring into the rocket’s wound with their guns. But the Interceptrix was waiting for them. It tumbled up and over the opposite side of the rocket. It’s nose flickered, and a red beam shined bright through the veil of gas and smoke. Under pulse laser assault the target frigate’s fate played as if in stop motion. A spot on it’s hull turned red, then began to swell list a blister. More and more until it burst, blasting the ship in twain.
The last ship pulled back, and the rocket began to veer to the side.
“This is not good!” Some cried over the comm, struggling to be heard over the background racket of gunfire that Morcair had easily overpowered. “High chance of catastrophic landing. Very, very problematic!”
“Hrnn.” Grunted the First Mate of the Old Chariot. “We shall see.” One of the most dangerous creatures ever to fly under the black. He had been in a hundred crash landings ever since Daara plucked him with the ashes of the Galatian darkwood, and he was not one to be easily impressed.
In hindsight, merely five nukes was downright insulting.
But that did nothing for Ravel.“Shiver me timbers, shiver me soul.” She breathed, the old lyrics helping regulate her panic as she flew into the chute, scrambling up the ladder until she found an auxiliary control panel. The timbers were made of metal, at a scale far beyond any ship of wood. Yet shiver they did, until the arms came undone.
Her finger hovered over the interface, too late she realized she had no idea what sector of the station they’d be ‘landing’ in. Thankfully Kimber answered the question before the asking.
“Sector C, they’re headed for Sector C! Brace yourself, they’re gonna hit any sec-”
The tremors spiked, until the whole world felt like it was being shook asunder. After a couple of tries, Ravel manage to hit the right buttons. The hatch under her slammed shut, shutting her in the dark.