Goss’s pilot, Morag, hit the controls with frustration. “I can’t. Where’s the manual override? It should be here, right here, dammit, but the controls are reconfigured. It’s as if Frue messed with it. I’ve got minimal thrust.”
Yul knew Lander, being a short range craft engineered for planet-to-ship hops, was not designed for excessive speeds, and pushing the ship’s capacity to dangerous levels wasted too much power. The override sequence was buried under layers of interfaces that perhaps only Frue knew about.
Lander had no weapons. Whoever had built that ‘feature’ into the ship’s design ought to be shot and pissed on.
A massive form appeared out of nowhere, a spiked scout Orb shimmering into existence via its advance stealth tech. To the crew’s horror, it reared up behind them like a predatory hawk.
Goss’s pilot dodged Orb fire, but one blast sent it tailspinning, klaxons shrilling and Yul heard the hiss of leaking air. “Bloody hell! Where’s your backup, Goss?”
Goss roared into his headpiece. “What’s going on up there, Salvest? Albatross’s love bug is breached, losing air. Lander is going down!” He pushed up on sliders, trying to max out Lander’s power to her shields. The move bought them precious seconds.
Frue, gasping out some monosyllables, twitched a finger, somewhat cognizant of what was going on. Yul saw through his faceplate that he was trying to say something.
Yul clawed his way forward to reach for Frue’s helmet.
“Back, you!” Goss lifted his weapon in his good hand. “I don’t trust you one bit.”
Yul snarled. “Do you want to die, Goss?” Yul crouched before Frue. Without hesitation, he tore off Frue’s helmet.
Goss motioned his weapon at his man who was ready to knee Yul in the groin. “Let him be.”
The ship rocked to a spray of a scatter bomb. Frue wheezed out some words. “Override sequence...A287....left monitor.”
“Enter it!” roared Goss.
Goss’s pilot punched the code into the monitor as another blast hit the ship.
Yul’s guard hitched forward, muttering, “Minimal shields, Goss. Another hit and we’re done for.”
“Thanks for the observation,” growled Goss. “Get back there and watch those two monkeys.”
The pilot pushed the thrust lever and the ship lurched into the planet’s upper atmosphere.
Yul saw Orb fire go wide through the viewport, but one uro blast caught Lander’s rear and the ship’s thrusters died.
The world spun dizzily around Yul as they whirled out of control. All were buffeted around the bridge.
Goss’s backup flagship, the Lesior, came roaring in on a sharp tangent, its landing bay port opening wide. Shots came from its lateral rear cannon to strike the invading Orb dead centre. Morag desperately struggled with the top-spinning ship. While it rolled and buffeted, clamps from Lesior rocketed out to latch onto the smoking hull.
Lander reeled and the cables wound them in and the hatch closed. Goss screamed into his helm: “Lesior, finish off that shitball Orb!”
The captain of Lesior acknowledged. Zikri shields had saved it from the last blast, but it was flaring red. Lesior, with her superior impulse manoeuvrability, drove toward the Orb, arched up and over it and sent two ion-cloud missiles firing from port.
The projectiles connected dead right, knocking out all transmission towers. A gigantic explosion filled the sky. The Lesior flew through the flames and wreckage; super-charged debris shuddered off its electro-shields.
Yul squinted in the glare of Lander’s viewscreen. Several tiny blips registered on the horizon, as the Lesior lifted past Phebis’s exosphere.
Then his vision clouded. A Zikri armada was out there. A wave of dread seized him: an ungovernable fear that the Zikri would make them lab specimens in their tanks. And yet some consolation that the cursed samples would be lost forever under threat of such a force.
“Engage hyperthrust,” growled Goss. “Salvest, get us the fuck out of here!”
“Aye, Commander.”
Salvest took the ship into a wash of trans-light haze; it disappeared in a flash of blue, just as the vanguard fleet of Orbs came pulsing out of light drive like digital wasps, uro bombs loosed like fireflies, only milliseconds from impact.
Goss banged his fist on the console. “They’ll never catch us.”
“You’d better hope they don’t,” Yul said.
* * *
An hour later Yul stood in the Lesior’s detention room, stripped and sullen. Frue hunched beside him, shivering, his face a ghostly mask, weak as a lamb.
“Search their persons.”
While one of the guards covered them with blasters, the other hastened to comply.
Goss examined the blackened, grime-faced men with distaste.
He levelled a look at Yul that would take down a building. Walking over, he knuckled him across the face with his good fist.
Yul stared defiantly back at him, his lip bleeding, wiping the trail of crimson away.
“Let’s see. Destruction of an SC 34-6. Jeopardizing an important salvage and rescue operation. Failing to protect and the wilful bombing of a state-of-the-art Vegas-U6 explorer, making unwise decisions leading to its ultimate loss. Up to your neck, I’d say.” He nursed his stub of a forearm, hissing breath through his teeth.
Goss’s communicator sounded and he snatched at it impatiently. “Yeah, Goss, here.”
“Any indigenous life forms recovered?”
“Nada,” replied Goss.
“Bring them in,” growled the voice which Yul recognized as Mathias’s. “They have much to answer for.”
“Roger that.” Goss scowled. “We have only this bulb we found cached in Vrean’s suit. Think he was concealing it. Might be one of the pods of the creatures that attacked us on the bridge.
A pregnant silence pervaded the room. “Bring it to me with all possible speed.” The connection went dead.
Yul ground his teeth. God help
