Alarms split the air and sparks burst out all around them, filling the air with a choking black smoke.
“Angelique!” cried Ryann as he battled with the Raven’s unresponsive systems, but she didn’t reply and he couldn’t find her in the darkness.
A vicious blast of laser-fire struck their hull once again, and Ryann hung grimly to his chair as the ship rocked. He reached out to the flight console, hitting the boosters, blindly launching the ship forwards in an attempt to evade the barrage.
There was a crash and a grinding of metal over the roar of the drive engines as the Raven must have impacted upon the hull of the Ibis. At least the engines work, thought Ryann desperately and pulled up on the flight-column, feeling the Raven dragging along the larger ship with a painful screech of tortured metal.
And then their ship shuddered and was free, accelerating away at full power.
“Angelique! I’m blind! See if you can get the scanners online! Or get the blast shields open! Anything! Just tell me where the hell I’m heading!”
He forced the flight-column to one side, pushing the Raven into a roll as another burst of fire tore into their stern. To Ryann’s relief the shots soon ceased; he seemed to be dodging the Patroller’s attacks. He urged his ship on at full-throttle, trying to put some distance between them before their pursuer could respond.
But he was still flying completely blind, and he knew that Patroller would outrun them eventually. He willed the Raven on faster, throwing the ship this way and that, just hoping that they were heading away from the Ibis, and not by some unfortunate fluke back towards it.
“Angelique?” he called again over the alarms, all the while coughing on the acrid smoke. To his great relief, he heard her weak reply up close behind him.
“What the hell have you done to our ship?” she croaked, her voice slurring.
Ryann turned around in surprise to see her standing upon the seat pylons behind him, clinging to the back of his chair. Her face was a mask of blood from a cut above one eye, and she looked around the chaos as though she were fighting to work out where she was.
“Angelique, are you okay?” shouted Ryann over the throb of the engines.
“What the hell happened?” stuttered Angelique, staring aghast at the blood on her hands. “I thought you said that you knew this old woman!”
“I somehow don’t think it’s old Jenna aboard that ship!” cursed Ryann, and a sudden burst of fire shook the Raven as though to confirm his words.
“Can you just get the screens back online Angelique!” he yelled frantically, rolling the ship this way and that, flinching as another burst of sparks shot across the cabin. “I don’t know how much more of this pounding we can take!”
“The screens are out,” mumbled Angelique, her eyes staring and vacant. “My head feels weird…” Her voice trailed off as she stumbled forwards, catching herself upon the armrest of Ryann’s chair.
“Angelique,” he said quietly but firmly. “Just get back to the nav-station and get the auxiliary screens online — I can’t do it from here — everything’s fried.”
“My head feels — I can’t Ryann, my head feels —” He just caught Angelique’s quiet words above the shrieking alarms.
“Angelique dammit!” he yelled angrily. “You’re the toughest, most stubborn person I’ve ever met — so fight it! Get me those damn auxiliary screens back online — Now!”
He swore again as the ship erupted under another barrage of fire, and then even the warning alarms went dead. All that remained was the deep throb of the Raven’s engines and the crackle of numerous small electrical fires throughout the cabin.
And then, beneath the chaos, came the beautiful whine of the displays powering up.
There was a brief flicker of light, as the red lines of the emergency screens burst into life projecting a grainy image against the hemispherical wall in front of him.
“You did it!” laughed Ryann in relief. “I knew you could do it! Angelique?” He tried to turn around but he couldn’t see clearly enough through the smoke and gloom. He thought he could make out the shape of her prone form slumped beside the navigation console.
Ryann quickly oriented himself to the stars as silent blossoms of flame burst all about, their pursuer rained fire down upon them.
“Hang in there Angelique!” he called back anxiously, wincing as another blast caught their hull. “I’ll get us out of this — just hang in there.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE GREAT DEVOURER
For almost fifteen painstaking minutes, Ryann dodged and weaved, trying everything to shake his attacker.
And all the while, the only thing he could think about was Angelique’s prone form behind him.
But eventually he spied his destination, the dull glimmer of metal that indicated the outlying borders of the wreck-field they had explored earlier. With a flicker of hope he urged their damaged ship on faster. The emergency display was blurred and indistinct, and he found it hard to make out the first pieces of twisted debris that flashed past as he raced on at full speed, but he dare not slow down. He could feel the presence of the Patroller still doggedly following on behind, and every so often a flash of laser-fire would burn past as if to spur him on.
Ryann didn’t so much see the wave of light blossom out ahead of him, as feel its imminent arrival — a deep shockwave surging through the ship and impacting in the pit of his stomach.
At first he thought that the displays were failing, or that another missile had gone off in close proximity, such was the distortion of space all around. It was a though the fabric of reality were being sheared away.
And then suddenly, there it was before him, a Luminal warship bigger than any Ryann had ever seen.
Even the expanse of the wreck-field ahead of them appeared dwarfed in comparison to the titanic craft, and for a brief moment
