What May Come

Please see chapter 1 for author's notes.

Chapter 15: Escape

Goddard didn't bother directing any fire at the big capitol ship…nothing he had could do more than scratch the paint. Instead, everything they had he directed at the smaller ships they were currently on a collision course with, hoping to force at least a few of them to slow. From what he could tell, Radu had given them the best trajectory possible—unfortunately with a capitol ship in pursuit and half a dozen light cruisers and armed transports oncoming, "best possible" was an entirely relative term. Harlan jerked the ship abruptly to one side and a missile passed form behind so closely that its wash caused the little ship to shake.

"Now, Harlan!"

The teenager brought the engines to full power at Radu's cry, forcing the ship to turn sharply away from the approaching ships. The hull creaked alarmingly, but the ship held together and several of the light cruisers had to break pursuit to avoid collisions as their fellows cut in front of them. "How far is the asteroid belt?"

"At this speed, one minute, 13 seconds."

The commander spared a glance for the secondary screen where the transmission from Aslinn and Jacie's ship had been routed, but aside from the fact that the little ship was jerking erratically—within the shock harnesses both were being shook pretty fiercely—he couldn't tell anything about their situation and didn't have time to ask. The approaching ships had been split into two pursuing groups, three—all light cruisers—that had managed to follow them in their frantic turn, and a second, larger group that had been forced to slow and reset their course. The capitol ship had been forced to decelerate the hardest and was now at the end of the second group, but they'd be within their weapons' range long before the others. The little scout was still pulling away, but as soon as the other ships got their engines up to full power they'd start to close the gap. "Can we get any more power out of the engines?"

"I've got everything at max now," Harlan called back.

"Radu, any way to shorten the time?"

"Sorry, Commander."

He'd expected that response, but over a minute was a long time to avoid pursuers—and their weapons—in a space battle. "Suzee, can you call up the engine schematics and see if you can get us anything more?"

She frowned at the console in front of her, and then got up and moved carefully to the one on the opposite side of the helm. "Where is the translation program?"

"Red button, select the third option that comes onto the screen." Radu didn't look up from his console as he answered; still focused on the course they followed.

Goddard brought the laser cannons online as the capitol ship's first salvo of missiles reached them. They were just barely within range and weren't difficult to pick off as they approached, but as the ship closed it would be increasingly difficult to dodge. And if they were willing to fire from this extreme range…he didn't know offhand how many missiles a Spung capitol ship carried, but they obviously weren't worried about running out. "Time?"

"Forty-seven seconds. The asteroid belt is clear on sensors, I'm working on a course."

He could do the basics, Goddard knew, but the thing about asteroid belts was that they were unpredictable. Hence the reason they made good hiding places. Harlan would have to slow the ship and do the majority of the navigation on-site. The second salvo of incoming missiles were dealt with almost as easily as the first, but the third got much closer—a normal ship would have point defense lasers as well as the three dual-use cannons he was using, but this was only a scout and didn't have as much defensive armament as he'd like. And the three light cruisers who'd been able to match their turn had almost reached missile range.

"Harlan, there should be a green knob on your left," Suzee called. "According to the specs it controls some sort of experimental thruster system for traceless running."

"Might come in handy later, but they already have us—whoa!—in sight," Harlan shot back, twisting the ship to one side as a missile got closer than intended before Goddard blew it up.

"Yes, but if you fire it up now, it will give us that much more power."

"Do it, Harlan!" Goddard commanded as a second missile, this one from one of the light cruisers, nearly made it past his defenses. If any more got close they'd have to start with the more drastic evasive maneuvers they'd worked on, and while that would make it much more difficult for the Spung to track them, to get that level of maneuverability they'd have to lose some speed.

"Fifteen seconds."

He could hear Suzee tapping rapidly on the console, but couldn't spare the time to see what she was working on. It looked like several of the transports had fallen back, unable to keep up with the faster battle ships, but there was still the second group of light cruisers closing, on top of the capitol ship and the three already firing. A blast shook the tiny ship. "Evasive maneuvers delta-x-nine!"

Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth Harlan brought the ship into a tight dive, and the next set of missiles passed above them in the space they'd just occupied. The ship shot back "up", and Goddard launched several missiles at the approaching ships, almost managing to score a hit on one of the cruisers who obviously hadn't expected any offensive maneuvers Unfortunately, the scout only carried fifteen missiles total—five for each launcher—nowhere near enough to saturate the defenses of even one of the ships.

"Asteroid belt in visual range!" Radu called. "Five seconds!"

Harlan continued with the sharp swerves, intended to throw off pursuit. He had to drop speed to do it, but they'd made it far enough that it shouldn't matter—as soon as they were in the asteroid belt they'd have to slow down considerably anyway. It wouldn't do for them to make it to relative safety only to smash the ship to pieces on of the asteroids. "Suzee, cut the transmission to the Rockhopper," Goddard ordered, not taking his eyes off his readouts. "Harlan, aim for the densest part of the belt. There is a lot of metal in this debris…if we can get deep enough to remove ourselves from their visuals, we can kill the engines and wait until they've moved on."

"What if they don't move on?" Radu asked.

"I'll try and blow up something vaguely our size just before we get out of visual range…hopefully their sensors will be malfunctioning badly enough they won't recognize it's not—" He broke off suddenly as the ship shuddered. "Damn, I was afraid of that."

"What?" Suzee asked, holding her taped ribs as she picked herself up the floor where she'd fallen as she'd tried to get up from the engineering console and move to communications. This time she made it, and the scene from the Rockhopper's command post disappeared.

"It's harder for them to target us in here because of all the asteroids," Goddard explained. "But they don't have to actually hit us…hitting the asteroids and pelting us with the shards will do plenty of damage, and it's a lot harder for me to shoot down rocks."

"They're falling back," Harlan reported. "They can't maneuver as well as we can. I think I can get us out of visual range pretty soon."

All it took was a glance at his screen for Goddard to confirm that he had plenty of scout-size asteroids to choose from when it came to simulating their demise. "Give the word, Mr. Band."

"There, Harlan," Radu said, gesturing at the screen. "It looks like that's the core of one of the planets…or it was the core, anyway. Very high concentrations of heavy metals…their scanners will be blind."

"Okay," Harlan agreed, altering course slightly. "Commander?"

"As soon as we clear the edge of the cloud, dive, and I'll target an asteroid that's vaguely our size. Hopefully their sensors will just pick up the explosion and they'll draw their own conclusions. Suzee, get ready to shut the engines down entirely."

"I…all right." She stood again, unsteady on the shuddering ship, and slowly made her way back to the engineering console. "We aren't going to need to reopen communications anytime soon, right?"

"Not in there," Goddard agreed. "Radu?"

"They've fallen back pretty far," he confirmed. "Only a few seconds until we pass the edge of the cloud."

"Three…two…now, Commander!" Harlan called. The ship dove through the cloud and into the remnants of the planets core, scraping neatly between two of the larger pieces that appeared on their viewscreen.

"Find up one like that farther in and land on it," Goddard ordered. "Suzee, as soon as we touch down, kill the engines."

"There," Radu said, moving behind Harlan's shoulder to point. "Or…maybe there. Or…"

"Pick one!"

"Th-that one, definitely that one. Maybe inside that crater on the surface?"

"Right…"

"Just get us down in one piece, Mr. Band." With the heavy metals interfering with their sensors, he was flying almost exclusively by what he could see through the viewscreen, and even then the miniature particles were reflecting light and causing distortions. Goddard had managed to target one of the mid-sized asteroids with one of his remaining missiles as they dove…he'd confirmed that the thing detonated, although whether the Spung ships would be able to tell more from the energy readings than he could he wasn't sure. Hopefully not, hopefully they'd just notice that something large blew up. If they got the bright idea to send a few salvos into the cloud just on general principle though…getting hit with a random shot wouldn't make them any less dead than getting hit with a targeted one. The ship skidded slightly but Harlan kept it on the asteroid, even managing the crater Radu had indicated. Not exactly in the center, but on one of the lips at least. "Engines off, now. Power down everything except life support."

Suzee began tapping at the console in front of her. "The engines are definitely off…I think I got everything else too."

"All right, nice job, people," Goddard complimented. "Now we just need to sit tight."

"For how long, Commander?" Harlan asked. "I mean, the Spung could just park a ship out there and leave them there for weeks. We can't wait that long!"

"I know, Mr. Band. We'll wait an hour, and then fly out the other side of this cloud and try and make contact with Jacie and Aslinn. Mr. Radu, and idea how far this extends?"

"I'm not sure, Commander…I couldn't get any readings past it. The planet couldn't have been that large, though…maybe an hours' flight, at most to get clear of the heavy metals? Unless the second planet's core lines up directly with this one's…"

"Why do you keep talking about planets?" Suzee asked.

"This used to be a binary system," Harlan replied. "The Spung blew them up."

"The planets? They can do that?"

"Apparently so." Goddard sighed. "Definitely not the best news we've gotten lately. Did you—when did they take you off the Christa?"

"A couple days ago, I guess," she answered with a shrug. "About six hours after a Killcruiser—an old one that seriously needed repairs, but still a Killcruiser—locked a tractor beam on us and hauled us away from the station. We tried to call for help, but they said the Spung had proof of ownership. The Spung don't own the Christa!"

"The Triiad apparently let the Spung do as they please," Goddard responded. "It took us several hours just to find out what had happened."

"Yeah, and then a couple guys attacked me and Radu and said they were going to sell us to the Spung," Harlan put in.

"What happened when you were taken from the Christa?"

"Well…at first we were just being towed. We tried to break away, but the beam was too strong and we didn't want to damage the hull. That's why we couldn't hyperjump either…it would have torn the Christa to pieces. And then we stopped moving, and a bunch of Spung boarded. Not Warlord Shank though, or any others we've seen. We sealed ourselves in command, but…" she shrugged. "There were a lot of them. Miss Davenport got hit first. We heard them trying to come through the hatch and were watching it, but a second boarding party came through the airlock and we didn't notice them until they hit her. Thelma got them all, and Bova was doing great job knocking them out as they came through on the hatch, but eventually he ran out of energy. One of them zapped Rosie when he went down, and I guess they got me too. I was backing up Thelma at the other hatch. I'm not sure what happened to her—Thelma—after that; when we woke up we—Bova, Rosie, Miss Davenport, and I—were chained up in the galley. I took over the guard and made him release us, but our timing was off and a second guard came in to relieve the other one just as I was trying to free Bova's antennae. Rosie hit him with a heat blast, but not before he called for backup. They had us pinned down pretty quickly. That's when the first guard told them what had happened, and the next thing I know I'm waking up in a Spung transport ship. Cat said they'd sent a special courier just to take me off the Christa. I tried a couple times to get away…almost managed to take over their command once…but they chained my hands and taped my eyes shut after the second time. They didn't take it off until I was back in the cell you found me in."

"Are you okay?" Radu asked.

"A little banged up, but mostly yeah. I…have you heard anything about the others?"

"No, we didn't even know about you until a friend of Aslinn's called with a rumor about an unknown type of telepath they'd captured."

"Who are they, anyway?" she asked curiously. "I mean, I saw them earlier, and they don't look any older than us…what are they doing out here?"

"The Andromedan is Jacie," Radu started. "He calls himself an Ashrach—he was a slave to the Spung when he hatched and managed to escape. Now he's part of a resistance group called the In'Tssai."

"Aslinn's his partner," Harlan continued. "His dad was a trader…they ended up out here after the war. The two of them help relay people out of Spung space who've been captured."

"How'd you meet them?"

"A man on the Triiad station gave us their names," Goddard replied, leaving out the part about getting locked in a holding cell. It wasn't something he wanted spread around, and he noticed neither of the other two looked like they were going to comment on its omission. "They offered to help when they heard what had happened."

"And they had a Spung scout ship lying around?"

Harlan made a face. "No, they have the Rockhopper. It's supposed to be a salvage ship, but it's kind of in bad shape. We stole this ship."

"What?"

"Well…"