“Receiving a message from our attackers,” Ali said, voice maddeningly calm in the chaos. She hesitated. “Or more accurately, from a communications rift located nearby.”
A sudden suspicion stirred in Aiden's gut. He'd just assumed this was the Movement, but if so it would be the captain of one of those transports contacting him. Unless of course a senior officer was coordinating the attack and wanted to call to gloat.
But suddenly, he didn't think so. “Put her on,” he said quietly.
Sure enough, moments later Elyssa's face appeared on the display, harsh and cruel in triumph. “Captain,” she said coldly.
Aiden felt his heart sink as his suspicions were confirmed. Being caught by the Deek task force would've been bad enough, but in a way this was even worse; he'd been hoping his former crew member wouldn't go this far, even considering how angry she'd been the last time they'd spoken.
That some last trace of loyalty to him, at least as a fellow Stag, remained.
“Elyssa,” he said as gently as he could. “Here to retrieve the deposit you gave us for the botched job?”
Her face momentarily twisted in fury before becoming composed again. “With interest,” she agreed.
Barix cursed. “The transports are firing atomics.”
So much for them having a standard loadout. Aiden judged distance temporarily more important than having all six layers of shields up, and gunned his ship into a straight line with only slight evasive maneuvers. As he did so he yelled frantically. “Hey, hold on, Elyssa! We should talk this through, now that you've had a chance to cool down from our previous encounter. There's no need for this.”
“There very much is, unfortunately, and you have no one to blame but yourself,” Elyssa said, shaking her head in mock sadness. “I'd hoped the Deeks would find you before I did, save me the risk and effort of having to destroy you personally. But they're as slow as ever, and I had forces in the area. So here we are.”
Aiden gave her a reproving look. “That you'd kill me over a disagreement is disappointing enough, but the fact that you'd work with the Movement just shows how far you've fallen.”
Fury washed over the facilitator's face again, then she gave him a cruel smile. “Perhaps. Feel free to judge me as I blow you up.”
“I'd prefer to judge you as I run away,” Aiden said, then cut the communications.
Disturbingly, just before he did so he heard Elyssa laughing at him. As if she knew something he didn't.
“You can shoot down those nukes, right?” Aiden snapped at the gunner.
The facilitator's transports had launched two, then two more after a standard reload period. Normally Aiden didn't sweat too hard about atomics, since he was usually able to either keep the ship out of the full blast radius when they finally detonated, or the gunner shot them down before they got close enough. And even if they did take a full hit, assuming they still had shields he was reasonably confident in his ability to evade fire long enough for one or two layers to recharge.
At least he hoped, since even two atomics hitting in staggered succession would be enough to destroy his ship. Maybe even just one, since their shields were already pressed to the limits by the combined fire of the two transports.
Things were already looking grim, but they were about to get a whole lot worse as Ali continued her sensor analysis of the enemy ships. “On top of the concealed missile launchers, the transports appear to have been modified to have smaller bays than would be used for standard shuttles. Designed for quick launch under combat settings, and situated so closely together that only very skilled pilots or AIs could coordinate simultaneous launches without mishap. However, the modifications allow them to carry an estimated four ships of unknown design ea-” she abruptly cut off, then swore bitterly.
Aiden blinked. The beautiful woman rarely swore, usually finding more creative ways of expressing herself. Which suggested she was either showing alarm for the benefit of the humans around her, a bad sign, or her Caretaker upgrades had given her a potty mouth.
As it turned out, it was the first one: the images of the transports on the main display suddenly fragmented, four smaller shapes breaking away from each. He stared at the dispersing ships in genuine befuddlement . . . Elyssa's people couldn't be launching troop shuttles in some bizarre effort to aid in the fight, could they? He couldn't be that lucky.
It turned out he was anything but. “Transports are launching fighters,” Ali said, tone still calm but more urgent.
“They're what?” Barix demanded incredulously. “That's like a gun holding a smaller, weaker gun and shooting at us with it. What kind of idiot even carries fighters? They could've just shoved a couple extra power generators in that space, beefed up their systems, and gotten twice the value!”
While the analogy left something to be desired, the man wasn't wrong.
“It's pretty obvious,” the gunner said, his usually neutral voice sounding terse as he strained to shoot down the oncoming atomics, even as they faced this new threat. “These ships look like they're outfitted specifically for hunting ships like ours. Considering their enhanced capabilities and the fact that they outnumber us two to one, they don't need to beef up their systems to fight a light cruiser, even one like the Last Stand. The only thing they need to worry about for hunting us down is making sure we can't escape.”
“Pirate hunters,” Aiden agreed grimly.
“Privateer, you mean?” Barix shot back snidely, although it was obvious his heart wasn't in it under the circumstances.
As such, Aiden didn't bother replying. Refitting transports for the task was a novel idea, and a ridiculous amount of effort to go to to achieve their goal. But being on the receiving end of the tactic, he was having trouble finding fault with it.
Because as usual, the gunner's analysis was spot
