No, no, no!
I whipped my head around frantically, searching for something to grab on to. Something large loomed up over my shoulder. It was the curved edge of the hangar.
I flailed and tried to get my magnetized gloves on it, but just missed.
Then I twisted again and felt my boot graze the hull surface. Immediately I slammed the magtouch on my boots to full, and tried to position the soles of my feet closer to the skin of the hull.
At first, it looked like it wasn’t going to work. My boots just bumped along the surface as I continued to drift. But then, miraculously, I began to slow.
I had to force myself to relax and let my body go limp, so that I wouldn’t accidentally lose the magnetic connection with the hull.
My boots finally made solid contact, and I arched down so my gloves, kneepads, and boots all locked onto the hull’s surface. I felt like I was going to vomit in my suit, so I just sat there, trying to calm myself.
That was close. Too fucking close. And I was really stupid for taking the chance I did.
But I couldn’t dwell on it. This whole station could blow any minute. I had to get to the ship.
Fortunately, I was close. I pulled myself together and set off, running along the curved outer surface of the mushroom-shaped solar collector. All I had to do now was find an entrance.
I paused for a second to check the schematics. It looked like there was a hangar port a hundred and fifty meters away, but opposite of where I stood.
After checking that I wasn’t running right towards the Mayir jumpship, I set off.
I found the opening easily enough. It was an impressive-looking archway framed by massive girders. Although narrower than the hangar tunnel we arrived in, this port seemed plenty big enough to fly the Vostok through. It was also lower down on the dome, so the tunnel itself was only twenty-five meters long. That was a relief.
The Vostok was right where we had left it, and it didn’t appear to be tampered with. I entered through the open lower hold doors and then hit the switch to cycle atmosphere in the airlock.
Once inside, I raced up to the bridge, acutely aware that we were running out of time. While I powered up the interval engines and disengaged the mooring arm, I hailed Ana-Zhi, silently praying that the Mayir weren’t monitoring this channel.
“You guys ready? I’m coming to get you.”
Her voice crackled in my ear. “The three of us are in position, but your father is still fiddling with that thing down in the reactor.”
“I’m not fiddling!” came the Sean bot’s voice.
I keyed the thrusters and concentrated on not hitting anything.
“Whatever you’re doing, you need to stop. I’ll be there in less than two minutes. Unless the Mayir are waiting for me right outside.”
Just to be safe, I activated the point defense system and switched offensive targeting to auto/voice. It wasn’t ideal, but then again, a Lamprey-class Scout wasn’t intended to be flown by one person. Especially one person who barely knew what he was doing.
I tried to force my quivering arm to steady itself as I gripped the steering sticks on the console, and aimed the Vostok towards the exit tunnel. I could have sworn the tunnel looked a lot bigger when I was walking through it. Now as I entered the tunnel, it felt like I had less than a dozen meters clearance on the sides.
That reminded me. I needed to get the prox plates charged. They wouldn’t protect me from an exploding station, but they might buy me a little time if the jumpship got ornery. Without taking my eyes from the main viewport, I reached over and activated the defense startup sequence.
Then, all of a sudden, I was clear of the hangar tunnel, with open space all around me.
The only problem was a pair of crimson stingray attack fighters, advancing right towards me.
They weren’t expecting a craft to emerge from the station, so that element of surprise bought me maybe three seconds—which I used to verbally engage the Vostok’s weapons systems.
“Fire on the closest ships!”
The AI on a typical weapons system follows a modified OODA loop: observe, orient, decide, act. The AI would track moving objects, decide which were ships, decide which were closest, try to identify the targets’ hull profile, choose a weapon based on that profile (as well as the distance/velocity of the targets), and then fire that weapon. All that in the span of milliseconds.
In practical terms that meant blasting the hell out of the stingrays with our ion lances.
I watched as the streams of blue energy bolts pulsed out, strafing the compact fighters. Wild explosions of energy erupted on the stingrays’ wings and fuselages where the bolts hit—knocking out the fighters’ guidance systems. One careened into space, out of control. The other wasn’t as lucky. It slammed into the station’s hull, exploding into a ball of fire.
I steered the Vostok away from the wreckage, knowing full well that the Baeder would be coming for me.
“Dad, are you at the rendezvous point?”
“Not yet,” the Sean bot said.
“Well, get up there, old man! I just took out two stingrays and any second the Baeder is going to be on me.”
“None of that matters unless I can get this thing to work, so do your damn best, son!”
My jaw clenched and I slammed my fist against the side of the pilot’s chair. He was so pig-headed!
I did a quick scan of the area, and discovered that, besides the jumpship, the only other craft in the vicinity was the Baeder. It was parked about a kilometer and a half away from the station, and it wasn’t moving. Yet. The angle between us was such that the station’s big solar collector dome blocked direct line-of-sight between
