Chapter 28

Lee punched the throttle and boosted, trying to maneuver to firing advantage. Almost! Come on! He tried to will the ship to pitch faster. Even the Nightcrawler’s enhanced maneuverability wasn’t enough to overcome the enemy’s turn rate at such a close engagement.

It was the third Imperial Eagle they had faced since they arrived with the Resistance fleet led by the Athos. The Eagle was still much faster and more maneuverable than the larger mass of the Nightcrawler.

He adopted a new tactic and boosted away from the Eagle. With the last of the increased maneuverability from the boost, he flipped the Nightcrawler around to wait for the Eagle’s approach.

As expected, the Eagle came straight at them. Lee pulled the trigger, lashing out with pulse laser fire. Then, he pressed the secondary trigger, timing the weapon charge with the enemy’s approach. The Eagle returned fire with a barrage of its own, pulse lasers eating away at Nightcrawler’s enhanced shields.

Lee glanced at the readout showing they were down to 24%, drained from combat in the first two engagements. The Eagle closed at a high rate of speed, revealing its intention to streak by them in a jousting run. Timing it just right, before the Eagle could blow past them, Lee let loose his charged secondary weapon. Four railgun slugs cut through the target at point-blank range, obliterating the Eagle’s remaining shields. Lee flipped the Nightcrawler about and fired another salvo. His aim was off. Still, half of the second round shredded critical systems. It set off a chain reaction causing the Eagle to erupt into an expanding cloud of debris.

“Nice shot, Lee!” Xohn crowed over the comms from his cabin below. “The heat—I’ll take care of it.”

The double railgun salvos spiked the ship’s heat to 121%, and the COVAS announced it with a warning. Xohn reenabled the ThermARC to absorb the heat and add it to the engines.

Their battle took place twenty-four klicks away from the primary engagement around Zamka Dock. Fortunately, the travel toward Zamka gave the Nightcrawler time to rebuild its shield and weapon capacitors.

They closed to within ten klicks of the station. Lee surveyed the battle zone and saw zero-G flames flashing across the superstructure of the giant station in the distance.

“Looks like they took quite a beating,” Lee exclaimed, almost breathless.

“Not quite as bad as that Imperial battleship, I think,” Xohn said.

Lee leaned over his console to see a Majestic-class Interdictor listing aimlessly. It looked disabled. Most of the lighting was out, and none of its weapon batteries were active despite the sorties still around it.

Lee grunted, “We’ve got a lot more to go.” He looked at the menacing site of two more Interdictors flanked by three fleet carriers.

“When will Sirius Navy arrive?” Xohn asked from his cabin below.

“No idea. They were pulling ships from other duties. It sounded like it was going to take a bit to mobilize and redeploy. When they get here, though, they’re going to end it. We have to hold the system until then.” Lee opened the secure comms channel, “Decimator, Para Bellum, this is Nightcrawler. We brought some friends, what’s your status?”

After a brief moment, Jackson Dekker responded, “Hey… nice of you… to join us.” His stilted speech indicated he was in the middle of combat himself.

“Sorry it took so long. What’s the story out here?”

Reeves’s voice joined the channel, “Commander Sollinger,” she acknowledged. “Good to have you and the rest of the Resistance. What’s the news from Yong-Rui?”

Lee smirked, “The Sirius Navy is on its way. They’re mobilizing a force large enough to rival the Battle of Achenar.”

“The evidence was that convincing?” Reeves asked.

“Alden Duryss has been sacked, and they’ve drawn up criminal charges for Sylus Draden,” Lee replied. “Of course, we still need to find him.”

“Our last contact from him was him directing Chelum and Sietaen forces from Zamka Dock. We lost communication with Zamka about an hour after that Interdictor engaged them.”

“So, what’s the tactical situation out here?” Lee asked.

“CB2 has been lost to Madius’s forces,” Reeves reported. “We held CB3, but the Imperials deployed their fleets to converge on CB4. The Imperial Second, Third, Fifth, and Sixth fleets have moved to take Zamka Dock. It appears this is the final showdown.”

“You’re… welcome to… join us,” Jackson said, his speech still broken between harsh maneuvers. “We’re hunting Spec Op pilots.”

“I have a small wing of pilots handling advanced Imperial units. I’m sending you targets now,” Reeves said.

“Right,” Lee replied. “We’re on our way, but our priority is Sylus Draden.”

“Understood,” Reeves acknowledged. “He’s in a ship called the Knight, a heavily armed Python. It has Sietaen military markings. It’ll be hard to miss.”

“Thanks for the tip, Reeves. We’re about six klicks out,” Lee cycled targets in range. “We’ll give you a hand with that Clipper.” Lee flipped to internal comms, “Get ready, Xohn!”

Lee adjusted the power balance across systems and cranked the weapons capacitors to the max. He punched the boost, closing the gap to the Imperial ship, and began unloading rounds of pulse lasers.

The Clipper was too busy focusing on the Decimator, and Lee was anxious to press the advantage. He charged the railguns as the Decimator swept before the Nightcrawler’s nose, narrowly missing them. He let off the pulse lasers until the Decimator cleared the line of fire, then resumed the pulse barrage. The railguns hit max charge and ejected with violent acceleration. The Clipper’s shields were stripped from the combined attack of the Decimator’s beam lasers and Nightcrawler’s pulse rounds. The railgun slugs pierced straight through the hull, ripping through the ship’s guts.

Lee watched the Decimator swing about and unload a substantial multi-cannon salvo that finished it off. The Clipper disappeared into a fireball right off the Nightcrawler’s bow. Fragments of debris bounced off of the recharged shields. The explosion dissipated, but the shield display still registered sustained hits. Lee checked the sensors and found two blinking red targets—the source of a new round of attacks.

“Under attack,” the Nightcrawler’s COVAS announced.

“Lee! We’ve got two more on us,” Xohn shouted from below.

Lee returned power to the shields to buy time and get his bearings. Then he cycled the targets and ID’ed an incoming Courier and Eagle attacking them.

Reeves signaled, “We’ve got the Courier, Nightcrawler.”

“Copy,” he replied, still trying to evade the incoming fire. Lee made a wild roll and pitched full, feeling G-forces build on his chest. Outside the canopy, Lee noted laser fire from other distant battles everywhere he looked. The Decimator flew past. Lee continued to pitch the Nightcrawler to put the large ship between them and their pursuers. The move paid off, cutting off the attack by flying in the Decimator’s shadow.

A glow flashed from the upper right of the canopy as the Decimator’s beam turrets glowed, unleashing an energy attack at the Courier. It scrambled from trying to re-establish a firing solution on the Nightcrawler to evading the attack.

Lee toggled a switch on his right systems panel, and he heard the dropping sound of the shield emitters powering down.

The Courier achieved a new position to re-engage them, but its pulse lasers scattered wildly.

“Silent running,” the COVAS announced.

Lee smiled at his cleverness.

“Try and hit me now, scumbag,” Lee shouted, knowing his enemy couldn’t hear him.

A stray pulse laser struck the hull, pushing them enough that the flight assist had to compensate. Lee switched targets to the Eagle and lined them up in his firing reticle. He pulled the trigger, and a swath of pulse laser fire peppered the Eagle.

As the heat began to build to a high enough threshold, Xohn called out from below, “We need the ThermARC to manage the heat. It is enabled.”

“Good call,” Lee acknowledged.

The Eagle banked and pitched into a tight arc that caught Lee off guard. He reacted too slowly and lost sight of it. He flipped the Nightcrawler over with a roll and pulled back hard on the flight stick to catch up with the Eagle. While pitching around, Zamka Dock loomed large in the canopy as the battle had moved them into a closer range.

An unmistakable high-pitched tinkling reverberated through the ship. It sounded to Lee like being caught in a metallic rainstorm. He checked that the ThermARC was still working, and it was. That led Lee to assume the Eagle pilot was using fixed cannons and found them without a computer-aided firing lock.

Okay, that’s impressive, Lee mused to himself while rolling to evade the hits. The damage was already mounting up.

The COVAS began shouting out failures, “Hull integrity compromised. Module malfunction.”

“Working on it!” Xohn snapped.

Lee focused on evading the fire.

“Nightcrawler, we’re outmatched,” Reeves shouted over the comms.

“What?” Lee said, confused.

Then he saw it in the canopy—the unmistakable shape of a large Imperial Cutter.

“Well, that’s perfect,” Lee said, still trying to focus on evading fire.

“Not quite,” Jackson’s voice burst over the comms. The Para Bellum swept past the Decimator.

“Xohn, buddy, we’re gonna need the shields back; I can’t shake this Eagle, and that Cutter will chew us up.”

“Module malfunction.”

Xohn replied, a weariness in his voice, “I am cleaning up the mess down here, but I’ll see what I can do.”

Lee performed another roll-pitch maneuver, putting them on a heading toward the damaged hulk of Zamka Dock. There we go, Lee thought. He dumped energy into the engines and hit the boost while aiming below the main superstructure of the Dock. Sporadic tinkling continued as his evasive rolls avoided some of the assault, the Dock’s spin visible in the canopy.

Lee brought the Nightcrawler under the main structure of the Dock and around it, putting it between them and their attacker to cut off the pursuit. Then he boosted again toward the habitat ring while following closely along the station’s main body.

“Where’s my bleeding shields, Xohn?” He snapped urgently.

“I’m trying!”

The Nightcrawler flew dangerously close to the rotating station. As it spun, the structural beams supporting the habitat ring turned into a position directly in their flight line.

“Lee!” Xohn said with drawn-out nervousness.

“I got it, I got it!” Lee held the stick, keeping the Nightcrawler low and tight along the structure. The tinkling resumed, confirming their attacker was still behind them. The station’s remaining defensive batteries came to life, aiming at their pursuer. That’s it, stay with me now, Lee clenched his jaw. He popped chaff not to disrupt the enemy fire but to distract his pursuer’s attention.

“Are you insane!” Xohn shouted in a panic.

Lee hit the boost again, barely clearing between the habitat ring support struts. With the remaining maneuverability from the boost, he flipped the ship around in time to see a cloud of debris at the base of the support strut. The Eagle was gone.

“You’re crazy!” Xohn shouted with a laugh.

“Alright, let’s take a minute to reset these systems,” Lee said while holding position in front of the mail slot of Zamka Dock. He watched the systems panel showing Xohn working frantically to reinitialize the ship’s sub-systems.

The ThermARC and silent running mode were disabled, and the shields began recharging slowly. Xohn rerouted power into ship systems to help speed it along.

Movement out of the corner of Lee’s eye came from the direction of the Zamka Dock entrance. He turned his head and watched a Python with a distinctly Sietaen paint scheme emerge.

“That’s Draden!” He shouted, then flipped to the secure comms. “Para Bellum, Decimator, I have Draden! I’m going after him.”

The targeting sensors confirmed the ship as the Knight registered to the Sietae Corporation. His instincts told him Sylus Draden had to be on board.

“Nightcrawler, we’re still tied up with this Cutter,” Reeves replied. The sound of multiple hits came across the channel.

“Para Bellum, where are you?”

“Busy kicking centuries of slavery out of these Imps,” Jackson almost laughed.

Lee couldn’t believe his luck—Sylus Draden was right there, in front of him, but he knew he was outmatched against a Python. Without help, he wasn’t going to bring it down, but he wasn’t about to let that stop him from trying.

Lee pulled back on the throttle to back away from the station. With a multi-axis flip-roll, the Nightcrawler came about to follow the Python. It accelerated from the station, forcing Lee to boost the engines to stay in range. No, you don’t; you’re not getting away.

Keeping the engines maxed, he rebalanced power from the shield systems to the weapons, then targeted the Knight’s FSD. After closing the gap to within six hundred meters, he took a deep breath and pulled the trigger. The Nightcrawler showered pulse lasers across the Knight’s shields.

The diamond ship reacted with a violent, evasive roll and dive. Lee managed to follow with the Nightcrawler’s enhanced maneuverability. The Nightcrawler stuck tightly with their every move and began making progress, draining the shields. Evasion, failing to avoid Lee’s attacks, the Knight boosted away, came about, and unloaded its large pulse lasers and a large beam laser.

Nightcrawler’s shields drained quickly under the blistering attack. Lee made use of the chaff to throw off their targeting sensors. He boosted past them to gain the firing advantage, but the pilot of the Python managed to keep trained on them, maintaining their attack.

Lee discharged several railgun salvos against the Knight’s FSD. He narrowly missed at first but adjusted to score a few meaningful partial hits. The internal damage to the Knight piled up despite the shields.

When the Knight’s shields were stripped to critical levels, it boosted past them, changing the head-on fight into a space joust. Both ships boosted past each other, came about, unloaded weapons, and boosted again as if an invisible rubber band tethered them together.

Lee fought to keep his weapons trained on the Python. He gritted his teeth, channeling his anger into the fight. His wrath was unleashed through the railguns over and over. The man on that ship took the life he could have had—twice. First his mother, then the only father he’d ever known.

“Warning: taking heat damage,” COVAS announced.

He ignored it, sending round after round. He couldn’t see anything but his target. There was no sound. Reality dissolved around him. It was the same sensory deprivation of a tank on Arber. He found himself held captive by an insatiable desire for vengeance.

Don’t get even, get ahead, Vic’s words echoed in his mind. He shoved them off thinking, This is how I get ahead.

Then he felt something, a pain searing through him.

“Stop, Lee! You have to stop! We’re burning up!” He finally heard Xohn’s voice.

The repeated railgun attack had superheated the Nightcrawler so much that the flight stick melted his suit glove. He reactively yanked his hand off the flight controls. When he fully came to, systems were sparking across the ship, the shields were down, and warnings were blaring in his ears.

The burning in his hand went deep. He yelled at the pain.

Off the bow, the Knight’s frameshift drive systems were destroyed. Its thrusters were offline. It had no escape. Both ships were slowly floating at a near standstill, facing each other.

Looking over the ship systems panel on his right, he saw that Xohn had activated the ThermARC. It was quickly cooling the ship. The heat still registered over 210%. Half the ship’s systems were offline. They had thrusters but no FSD. The chaff was gone. Weapons still worked, but the railguns were dry.

“Lee, are you okay?” Xohn crawled up to his cabin.

“Yeah, I’m–” He blinked. “I’m sorry, Xohn.”

“I understand,” Xohn replied.

“I think we’re going to need help.”

Xohn put a hand over Lee’s shoulder, “I’ll go work on some of the damage.”

Lee nodded and flipped on the comms, “Decimator, Para Bellum, the Knight is out of commission, but so are we.”

“We can get there in a few minutes,” Reeves acknowledged.

“Let me… finish this…” Jackson said with his in-combat broken speech.

“No problem, I don’t think anyone’s going anywhere; take your time.”

As soon as the words left his lips, a new contact appeared on the sensor display, dancing outside sensor range a few degrees off-center in front of them.

“Come on, who are you? Friend or foe,” Lee said to no one in particular. The blip solidified, and Lee trained the targeting sensors on it. As Lee began to make out a blurry form emerging from the deep abyss, the sensors updated—an Imperial Cutter.

“Okay, I take it back. We’re gonna need that help right now. Cutter incoming! We’re sitting ducks out here. We have pulse lasers, but the railguns are dry. The shields are offline. I don’t think they’re coming back, and–”

The realization hit him. We still have silent running! He flipped it on as the Cutter closed; its menacing shape became discernible.

The large ship took a course above the Knight and Nightcrawler, then delivered a massive assault on the Knight. Explosions rocked the ship, and Lee could make out escape pods ejecting from the ship.

“No!” Lee shouted. “He can’t get away!” Lee put his hand to the controls but hesitated, then grabbed the flight stick through his pain and fired at the Cutter. The Cutter broke off its attack from the Knight, and although it couldn’t lock on to them, several lucky cannon rounds tore through the ship. More systems blew, the canopy began cracking, silent running failed, and the HUD fluctuated. The sounds through the ship were deafening.

The COVAS spewed a stream of failures.

“Module malfunction.”

“Power plant capacity exceeded.”

“Thrusters offline.”

“Thrusters online.”

“Canopy critical.”

“Power plant capacity exceeded.”

“Thrusters offline.”

“Module malfunction…”

The Cutter flew past them in an arc that told Lee they were circling for another pass. There was nothing he could do; the ship controls weren’t responding.

“We won’t be around much longer if you guys don’t get here now!”

Reeves’s voice responded, “We’re on our way, Nightcrawler. Hang in there, just a few more megameters…” The transmission was interrupted as if muted. “Sorry, Nightcrawler, we’re being interdicted, we’re not going to make it…” The comm systems failed, cutting off the signal.

The Cutter turned about with a menacing profile, lining up for a final attack run. It grew larger as it approached, and three large laser beams converged on them. The light engulfed the Nightcrawler canopy in a painfully bright flash that blinded Lee. He crossed his arms over his head, waiting to be ejected.

But the attack abruptly stopped.

Lee peered up through his arms to see a new ship that swept into the path of the Cutter’s beams—the Para Bellum. It engaged the significantly larger Cutter with a tight orbital attack. The Cutter overpowered Jackson’s ship, but he had superior maneuverability.

Lee sighed in relief. It bought him the time he needed. He turned to reboot systems to see what he could get functional. “Come on, baby, don’t give up on me now.”

“Thrusters online,” COVAS announced.

“There’s not much else I can do here,” Xohn reported from somewhere in the ship. “It’s a cascade of failures. I can’t stop it. The power plant can’t generate enough for the ship to stay alive. She’s… she’s dying, Lee.”

Lee looked around the cabin. Wires hung exposed. Smoke hung in the cabin, causing him to cough. Steam emanated from the wiring and pipes exposed above his head. The HUD flickered intermittently. There wasn’t much left of the Nightcrawler to salvage. He caught sight of the ‘coward’s way out’ in the case at his feet. The glass of the container had cracked earlier from the heat. Figures that would survive, he thought.

He saw the Knight and a cluster of a few escape pods through the canopy. Panic struck him at the idea that Draden might escape and be rescued. “Come on, girl,” he encouraged the failing vessel. “You’ve got one more trick in you, right?”

He grabbed the flight stick and began maneuvering the Nightcrawler with the remaining thrusters closer to the Knight. Knowing what he was about to do, a sick feeling came over him. He pulled back on the throttle, backing the Nightcrawler to the rear of the Knight.

“Xohn, get up here. We’re going after Draden.”

“What do you mean we’re going after… Wait, what are you planning?”

*“*Suit up. We’re going for a walk.”

“A walk? You mean… spacewalk?”

*“*You’re a smart guy, Xohn. Anyone ever tell you that before?”

“Smart enough to know you use sarcasm often.”

Lee parked what was left of the Nightcrawler and unstrapped from his flight chair. He got to the door and stopped, turning around to look at the flight deck. The smoking consoles, open panels, and floating bits of random debris from the ship’s innards seemed to disappear. All he could see was the memories built in this cramped space. It gave him a nostalgic feeling that the moment’s urgency forced him to push aside. He continued back through the wrecked corridors to the rear airlock. Xohn stood by the airlock door, fully suited and waiting for him.

“I stabilized the power plant, but its output is minimal. It’s barely enough to keep the lights on. I had to fix silent running to generate enough heat for the ThermARC to run.”

Lee put a hand on Xohn’s shoulder, “You’ve done great, Xohn. Thank you. Thank you for everything, my friend,” He pursed his lips in a more emotional smile than he’d intended.

Torn metal fragments hung from the bulkheads of the rear airlock access, floating and bouncing with the air currents inside the ship. Thankfully, his harness was still intact. He swung it over his suit, fumbling with the fasteners, then grabbed a new pair of gloves to replace the half-melted set. He was so focused on the pain of putting the new gloves on he didn’t have time to worry about the walk. He brushed aside some fragments floating over the airlock panel. They staged themselves in the airlock, depressurized it, and opened the outer door. Lee signaled Xohn to follow him, holding the guide rails outside the doors.

The Knight was listing behind them, its outer running lights flickering. He locked his magboots to the outer hull of the Nightcrawler, looking over to make sure Xohn was securing himself the same.

Then he peered over the top of the Nightcrawler and saw the extent of the damage. Craters from large cannon rounds in the hull plating and severe scoring from lasers covered most of the outer hull.

“Lee!” Xohn shouted.

“What?” He looked back at Xohn.

“Lee! Look out!” Xohn pointed out in the direction of space above them and watched the huge Cutter making an attack run at the Knight. Jackson hadn’t been able to bring the Cutter down.

They were too close; if the Knight was destroyed, they were all gone. Adrenaline surged through Lee’s body. Attuned to every moment, time appeared to slow down.

The enormous white beast bore down on them.

A sleek silvery form entered Lee’s heightened peripheral vision. The wedge shape of the Para Bellum attacked the Cutter. Cannon rounds blasted pieces off the unshielded Imperials.

In a maneuver, Lee didn’t think Jackson capable of, the Para Bellum cut in front of the Cutter’s flight path while pitching to maintain the attack.

The two ships raced toward each other.

At point-blank range, an explosion erupted from the Para Bellum’s nose.

The Cutter erupted into a fireball on top of the Para Bellum, engulfing it. An enormous secondary explosion burst from within the Cutter’s cloud of debris.

When it dissipated, both ships were gone.

Obliterated.

On pure instinct, Lee shouted, “Xohn, get under the ship! Move! Now!”

Xohn scrambled, and Lee swung around the edge to hide behind the ship just before the debris wave.

Lee took heaving breaths. It was the only thing he could hear while watching the millions of death shards rain by in silence.