There was bedlam on the bridge of the Concord.
Even only being present through the projections of OMNI, the feeling of panic was almost palpable. The moment they’d lost contact with the second group of CTRs—with Gabriel’s group of CTRs—fear had leeched into every single conversation. Susan felt the emotion try to gain a hold on her as well, but she fought it off. Gabriel had been in combat before, and he had always returned home. She had to trust he wouldn’t die this time.
Keeping her voice firm, Susan turned to her rig coordinator. “Has Paladin Squadron left yet?”
“Launching now, ma’am.” The coordinator hesitated. “Commander Taurus is requesting a vector to follow for recovery of the CTRs.”
A moment of uncertainty plagued her. Her first instinct was to send them after Gabriel. It wouldn’t just be a terrible blow to Wayfarer morale if they lost Gabriel. She knew her own feelings were very much at stake. During the fight against the Directorate, she’d lost him once; she had no intention of losing him a second time.
Yet she knew the Wayfarers would be watching for signs of favoritism—and even if they gave her a pass, OMNI might be observing as well. Would showing such a personal weakness be a sign she no longer needed to be obeyed?
Then another reason came to her mind, and she knew the choice was made. More important than criticisms or OMNI, she couldn’t believe Gabe would ever forgive her if she rescued him and abandoned his other pilots. No matter what the others thought, he mattered to her.
And because he mattered, she had to take the chance she’d lose him.
Irrationally calm, Susan lifted her head. “Give him the vector Angel-Seven was following before we lost contact. They’ve been missing for longer. Once that flight is recovered, we can try to reach Captain Gabriel.” Her eyes drifted, almost against her will, to where the pinpricks of light marking Gabe’s flight had vanished. “Tell them to hurry.”
The eerie silence of the space around Gabe was starting to feel oppressive. Every flicker on his sensors was an attacker in his mind, and more than once, he nearly turned and fired when he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye.
As of yet, the strangers were nowhere to be found. He wasn’t even picking up the telltale ghostly signatures at the edge of his range, like he had before. Had they grown even more cautious after their previous intervention? Someone had to be out there jamming his communications with Susan. Were they going to attack, or were they planning on merely watching until the CTRs had returned to the carrier?
After nearly an hour of silent towing, Gabe decided he’d had enough. He opened a clear channel, hoping his words would reach the unseen rigs. “This is Gabriel Miller, of the Wayfarers. I know you’re out there.”
The other rigs shifted slightly. Angel-Two hunched forward as if gathering himself for a charge, but Three and Four just drifted a bit closer together. Their heads swiveled, as if they were searching for the unknown visitors as well. Nakani’s SAR remained silent, continuing to strain against the load of the debris.
There was no answering signal, but Gabe decided to try again. “I repeat, this is Gabriel Miller, of the Wayfarer Defense Forces. Our intentions are not hostile. There is no reason to jam our communications.” He thought he caught a burst of static on one channel and paused. The strangers had always seemed to send their signals on odd, warbling frequencies, and he didn’t want to miss anything by mistake.
When the static didn’t repeat, he tried again. “We appreciate the help you’ve given us in the past.” What would his father say in this situation? “If we can, we want to open a dialogue. We can learn a lot from each other if we try. Come out, and we’ll talk.”
Still, nothing but silence answered him. Then Angel-Three shifted a bit closer to him. “Lead, it doesn’t look like they want to talk today. Maybe we should give it a rest.”
“I’ll give it a rest when they stop jamming us, Three.” Gabe grit his teeth and changed back to the open channel. “This is Gabriel Miller, of the Wayfarers. Eagro, are you out there? You know me. Cut the jamming.”
“Sir, if you keep transmitting in the clear, you might open yourself to an ambush strike.” Angel-Four’s voice was on the edge of fear, but she seemed a lot steadier than Three at the very least. “I’d recommend you stop. At the very least, try to weave a little.”
Gabe nodded and started his rig rocking back and forth in space. The motion nudged the ship fragment into a similar kind of dance, where it drifted in one direction and then the other. He cleared his throat again. “Look, we just want to learn about you. Where do you come from, and why are you here? Is there any way we can live in peace?” Then a thought crossed his mind, and Gabe smiled. “What in the world does cuidse du Atanaas mean, anyway, and why do you keep—”
“Lead, break left!”
The shout triggered an instant reflex that had been ground into Gabe from the beginning of his training as a rig pilot. He threw himself to the side the moment he heard Two’s warning. His maneuver came just in time. A bright slash of energy carved through the space where he had been flying, narrowly missing Nakani and the recovered debris. Some detached part of his mind labeled it as a miniature particle cannon, a weapon that would have sliced through his CTR as if it weren’t even there.
Even though he couldn’t see the rig that had fired the blast, Gabe responded in the only way he could. “Angels, open fire!”
He turned and pulled the trigger of his plasma rifle, feeling the weapon thrum in his grip as it pulsed a chain of plasma bursts out toward the distant origin of the cannon fire. The others joined in the barrage, filling space with a volley of superheated gas and light that probably wouldn’t hit anything, but at the very least, it would keep the enemy guessing. Gabe cleared his throat while he shot. “Command, this is Angel-One. We’ve been fired on, repeat, we are taking fire. Bring the fleet to full alert immediately!”
Susan watched as Paladin Squadron swept out to where the sensor readings had last made contact with the first CTR flight. They couldn’t be much farther away, even at the low speed the CTRs were maintaining. If they’d been attacked, surely they would have dropped the debris and left it behind while they dashed for the carrier. Her fingers began to tighten on the arms of the chair, though she kept her face free of concern.
Then the sensor officer straightened up in his seat. “Admiral, I have signs of a firefight, at least two parties, near Angel-One’s last known position.”
It was as if a stone had dropped into her stomach. “Still no contact with Captain Miller?”
“Negative, Admiral.”
The decision came to her immediately. “Bring the fleet up to flank speed and sound a general alert. We are moving towards the debris field.”
“Command, this is Angel-One, please respond! We have engaged enemy contacts. We need backup now!”
Gabe dodged as another lance of particles slashed by him. The enemy was staying too far out for his sensors to track. Obviously, it was keeping them from being accurate during their attempts to snipe him and his fellow CTR pilots, but that was cold comfort when it meant Gabe and the rest of his group still hadn’t even been able to see who was shooting at them, let alone return fire.
Not that the range discouraged him from firing off a barrage of plasma bursts along the vector the attack had come from. It was bad policy to just let the enemy have it easy, after all.
“Any plans, boss?” Angel-Three’s voice was tight with frustration and fear. A particle cannon burst had brushed his rig’s left arm a moment before, and the gash it had left was still cooling.
“Working on it, Three.” Gabe twisted out of the way as yet another stream of high-energy particles went by. He didn’t know if the enemy had him marked as the leader of the flight, or if they’d just picked him out of spite, but at least half their fire had been focused on him, right from the start. “Though I’m open to ideas.”
“Not much to plan for, Lead.” Ben’s voice was rough, and he joined Gabe in returning fire. Their plasma bursts streaked into the void, to no apparent effect. “We can’t keep counting on being lucky, though. At some point they’re going to hit.”
Gabe nodded to himself. Ben was right. If he wanted to survive, he was going to have to do something a bit more active than just wait for the enemy to slip up. He had to fight them on more even terms, at a range he could fight back.
Yet his mind was still reeling from the fact that they were even under attack at all. What had led to the sudden change in attitude? The strangers had been given several chances to strike out at him before, in times when he would have been far more vulnerable to destruction or even capture. They’d always, always, chosen to speak to him instead. What had changed now?
Another burst came in at Angel-Four. She slid right, firing back along the same vector even before the stream of particles had cut off. Gabe heard her shout as the beam brushed one of her shoulders, nearly detonating the missiles stored on her CTR’s racks. “Four, reporting minor damage. Ordnance still secure.”
Nakani spoke up, her voice remarkably steady despite her lack of weaponry. “Angel-Lead, I’d recommend we start thinking about ditching the package. No point in dragging this thing any farther if it means your friends kill us for it.”
“Negative. Maintain connection to the debris.” Something occurred to Gabe, and he glanced back at Nakani’s rig. For all their hostility, the enemy had barely bothered to fire at Nakani. The few times they had targeted her had been much closer to the start of the battle. If the trigger for the ambush had been the fact that they were dragging debris, wouldn’t her rig have drawn the majority of the fire?
Before he could follow his train of thought the whole way through, his comm suddenly crackled with Ben’s voice. “Lead, watch out!”
He jerked up and to the left without thinking. An incandescent stream of particles tore past him, just barely missing his right knee. As he looked toward the source of the first shot, a second beam stretched out from another angle. Time seemed to slow as he watched it reach out for him. There wasn’t enough time to dodge. His armor wouldn’t deflect it; particle beams could eat their way through ship plating. The chestplate of his CTR wouldn’t have a chance.
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Just as he’d started to close his eyes and commend himself to the Lord, something slammed into his rig with all the force of a battering ram. He grunted as his universe spun madly for a moment, and then his CTR stabilized, beaten but whole. The fading light of the particle streams still flickered in the space where he had been before, and all three of his flight-mates unleashed a barrage of plasma in response. Gabe brought his own rifle in line and started a salvo of his own.
When he felt reasonably certain more shots weren’t immediately incoming, Gabe cleared his throat. “Lead to flight. Thanks for the push.”
“That’s two you owe me, Angel Boy.” Nakani’s confident tone came through the comm circuit without any problem at all. “I’ll have to think of something really painful to make you pay me back.”
Gabe grimaced. “Very charitable of you, Hope-Three.”
“Charity isn’t my strong suit, Angel Lead—and if you really want to stop racking up the debt, you’d start paying attention to where you’re going.” Nakani’s voice turned more serious. “All the same, I’d really like it if both of us survived long enough for you to pay me back. You die, and I lose my investment.”
Angel-Three spoke up, his voice full of grim humor. “So if I owe you money, you’ll give me a push too?”
“Depends, Angel-Three. You any good at brewing liquor?”
Gabe’s breath started to slow, and his mind turned back to the problem at hand. Whatever the motivation for the attack, he had to get his people out of the trap. The CTR was an excellent rig, but it just couldn’t have any hope of matching the acceleration he’d seen the alien rigs put out. There had to be some way to outmaneuver them, despite their mobility. Some way he could take them off guard, push them off balance…
When he glanced back at Nakani’s rig again, an idea occurred to him. Gabe smiled. Susan would kill him for suggesting it, but she didn’t think like a rig pilot. Sometimes, you had to take risks. “Listen up, flight. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
Susan watched as the dots representing Paladin Squadron closed in on the last known position for Angel-Seven.
It was hard for her not to look away from the dots representing Captain Derek Taurus and his pilots. The scout rigs had continued to pick up plasma fire and particle streams where Gabe’s flight had last made contact. At the very least, those traces suggested he was still alive and was getting closer to home. She had tried to ignore how much further Gabe had to fly and focused on the other missing rigs.
As Paladin Squadron closed in on the projected position for Angel-Seven and the other rigs, Susan felt the tension on the bridge increase. They hadn’t received any transmissions from them, and there hadn’t been any signs of combat either. Had they already been destroyed in some other way?
Suddenly, a transmission icon appeared over Captain Taurus’ icon. She tapped on it. “This is Admiral Delacourt.”
“Paladin One-Five. I’m not seeing signs of the CTRs we were missing. We found the debris piece they were towing, but they aren’t here.”
Susan blinked. An icy certainty wormed its way through her that the pilots would never be seen again, but she ignored it and spoke again, anyway. “Is there any sign of where they went? Battle debris, or signs they were ambushed?”
“Negative, Admiral. Just the debris from the strangers’ ship.” Derek paused, and then his voice grew hard. “Cancel that, Paladin One-Three is saying they are picking up armor fragments. Not enough for a whole CTR, but they are definitely ours.”
It was enough. Susan’s eyes went to the ongoing firefight that marked where Gabriel had to be struggling for his life. “Confirmed, Paladin Lead. I want you to make best time to Captain Gabriel’s position and join up with him. Do not allow yourselves to get separated.”
“Confirmed, Admiral. Paladin is moving to assist Angel Lead. Estimated time to contact is ten minutes.”
Susan closed the connection, her eyes still fixed on the plasma discharges. There hadn’t been any sign of rigs exploding, but then again the other CTR flight hadn’t shown any sign of it when they had disappeared. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to stand neutrally, not giving any sign of the tension she was feeling inside. Paladin Squadron would reach Gabriel in time. They had to.
Gabe jerked out of the way as another stream of particles streaked in. He triggered another pair of shots in return and cleared his throat. “Angel-Lead to flight. Are we ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be, you psycho.” Ben’s voice had, for the moment, lost some of its brooding darkness and acquired something like grudging respect instead. His wingman had started to weave back and forth across Gabe’s course. It was a weak, probably futile, attempt to mask Gabe’s maneuvers. Maybe the strangers would fall for it; maybe they would adjust to try to get a better picture of what he was doing. It was even possible that they would just assume that his rig had taken critical damage as a matter of course.
Whatever they guessed, Gabe doubted they could anticipate what he was planning on doing next.
“You know he’s right.” Nakani’s voice came to him over a private channel, one that the rest of the flight couldn’t hear. “This is crazy.”
“Just keep to your part of the plan. It’ll be fine.” Gabe smiled. “Besides, it’s not like I’m asking you to do it. You should be happy.”
He could almost see Nakani rolling her eyes. “Yeah, and when you buy the farm, who’s going to pay me back on all the debt you have been gathering? The Admiral?”
“I…wouldn’t suggest trying to collect from her, now that you mention it. She can get a little testy about that kind of thing.”
“So you see why I’m worried, then.”
Another couple of shots nearly caught Angel-Three, this time biting into the CTR’s right foot. Three cried out for a moment, and his rig wobbled. His voice was shaking when it came over the flight channel. “Still in the game. Starting to pick up system failure messages though. Might need to limit maneuvers until it gets locked down.”
“Acknowledged.” Gabe switched back to Nakani’s personal channel. No more time for games. It would be now or never. “Nakani, just keep it together until we get through this. We can do it. Trust me.”
“You, I trust. If you get killed, who’s going to keep these other three from taking off without me?” Nakani sighed. “Fine. Let’s do this. Don’t die.”
“Well, now that you ask so nicely, I’ll do my best not to.” Gabe began to weave as well, moving back and forth behind Ben’s rig. The two of them passed each other a little to Nakani’s left on each rotation. For that instant, it would be just a small amount more difficult for the aliens to track him, especially if they were at the edge of their sensor range.
On the third pass through that weave, Gabe cut his velocity. “Everyone, chop your speed. I want them leaning in for this.”
As the rest of the flight adjusted their speed, he glanced back at Nakani. If she was following the plan, she’d already dropped some of the gravitic tethers between her rig and the fragment of the alien ship. She’d need all the tetherdrive power she could get if they were going to make the plan work.
With each pass, Gabe slowed just a little more. He waited, hoping the aliens would hold their fire for just one more moment, a handful more heartbeats. Slower, slower, slower…
Then, just as he passed Ben again and started back toward the middle, Gabe felt his pulse quicken. It thundered in his ears, and he knew, knew, it was time. He held it until the instant just before he crossed in front of Nakani again. Then he cleared his throat and shouted. “Angels, now!”
In that moment, he cut in every ounce of acceleration he had. Every spare bit of power from his tetherdrive was directed straight back at Nakani’s rig, just at the same time that she hit his rig with everything her modified MSSR could spare.
The effect was immediate. Simulated wind howled in Gabe’s ears as his CTR hurtled forward. There was a second, smaller jerk of acceleration as the other three CTRs added their own spare tetherdrive power to the push. For one brief moment, Gabe thought he could even feel the force of it pushing down on his chest—something that didn’t bode well given that his real body shouldn’t be feeling any of the acceleration changes the rig underwent. He shoved that worry out of his head and focused on the scene ahead of him.
For a moment, it seemed like the slingshot had failed, that the acceleration and maneuverability of the aliens had still won out. Then contacts appeared on his screen, four of them, and Gabe smiled. Relief filled him. He’d reached them.
His happiness vanished a moment later.
The rigs he saw did not resemble the strangers at all. When they hadn’t just been sensor ghosts, the newcomers’ rigs had been slender, even graceful in a way. They hadn’t been shaped like any combat rig he’d seen before, with little that seemed like armor, and impossible ratios of thrust to mass. Going back over those memories, it had been easy to see why the IntCent section aboard the Concord had consistently refused to believe him. If he hadn’t seen Eagro and the others, he probably wouldn’t have believed it, either.
There was no similarity between the strange, delicate design of the strangers’ rigs and the ones he now faced. Where Eagro’s people had curves and slender grace, these contacts were overbuilt and heavy. In fact, they reminded him more of the SSS rigs that the Directorate had deployed, right down to the dark, sensor-dampening coat of paint, but any similarities there vanished at the surface level.
Everything about the rigs’ configuration made Gabe’s shoulders itch. Rigs had been chosen as a model for neural interface because they mimicked human proportions. These rigs seemed close to discarding that idea, with hunched backs and odd, multi-jointed limbs that reminded him of a four-legged spider of some kind. The heads were shaped differently as well, with an irregular pattern of sensors that Gabe couldn’t imagine lined up with a normal human’s thought patterns very well. His sensors were picking up indications of heavy tetherdrives, but it was hard to pick out where the devices were located.
Their weapons were much more recognizable, though. One arm had been mounted with a long, heavy tube—obviously the particle cannon he’d been dodging for the last few minutes. It stretched from the shoulder all along the full length of the rig’s arm, apparently sacrificing the ability to bend the arm for extra firepower. The other arm was much shorter, ending at the elbow, and had some kind of EW mount where rig’s forearm should have been. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how the pilots could adjust to not having actual hands to feel through the BCI. Just the idea was enough to turn his stomach.
The closest rig was still turning to face Gabe when he dropped his aiming reticle on its spiked, irregularly shaped chest. This close, there was no way they could risk firing their particle cannon, not if they wanted to avoid friendly fire. He cleared his throat for a clear comm channel and spoke. “Angel-Lead to unknown rigs, cease fire!”
In response, the dark rigs pivoted to face him. To his shock, a second set of arms unfolded from their torso, both carrying small plasma carbines. A heartbeat later, every one of them opened fire.
The sensor screen suddenly lit up in the region of space where Gabe’s flight had vanished, and Susan felt her heart seize. Had that been an explosion of some kind? Had one of the CTRs been destroyed?
Then a mangled comm transmission arrived, so clogged with static that she couldn’t make out the voice. A flicker of sensor contact blinked in and out of existence, followed by another burst of static. Then the contact abruptly came back, burning strong, and Gabe’s voice filled her ears.
“This is Angel-Lead, to all friendly units. My flight is still under attack. Repeat, we are under attack. We need assistance.” A burst of static hissed at the end of the transmission, but Susan ignored it as her heart soared. She gestured to open a channel to respond, and then shook her head when nothing happened. Slightly embarrassed, she physically punched the button on her console.
“Angel-Lead, this is Command. We have you on screen. Paladin Squadron is closing on your position.” She paused, struggling for a moment to keep her voice cool and calm. “Please report on your situation.”
“We’ve been under fire from unknown forces. It’s a new rig type, a different configuration.” Gabriel paused. “Enemy units are retreating. Repeat, they are beginning to withdraw. I guess I ruined their party.”
“Has the rest of your flight been destroyed? I’m still not reading them.”
“Negative. They should be clearing the jamming in just a few…” A group of sensor contacts snapped into focus, some distance from Gabe’s position. “There, are you reading them?”
“We are.” Susan let some measure of disapproval leak into her voice. How had Gabriel managed to let himself become so isolated? “Have you taken damage?”
“We’ve all been nicked a little. It got a little rough at the end.” A sort of grim satisfaction crept into Gabriel’s voice as he continued. “They aren’t quite as sturdy as our rigs are up close, though. I got into engagement range, and I sent a few missiles chasing them. Don’t think I actually got any. Have we recovered the second flight?”
The reminder of the other flight soured Susan’s rising spirits. “Negative, Angel-Lead. They are assessed as being destroyed by an ambush. We’ve had no contact with them at all.”
There was a long silence. When Gabe responded, his voice was clearly full of restrained fury. “Confirmed, Admiral. Returning to the fleet.”
Susan terminated the connection. Her eyes remained on the dots that represented Gabriel’s flight, soon to be joined by those representing Paladin Squadron. She’d almost lost him again. This time, she might never have known what had happened—just as those other pilots’ loved ones might never know.
A sudden rush of frustration and anger came over her, and Susan clenched her jaw. She didn’t know if it had been the strangers, or some other faction. Once Gabriel returned, they would know more, but she knew one thing for certain. Whoever was out there had just killed some of her people, and they would pay for it if it was the last thing she did.