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Alien Pursuit (Tin Man Space Opera Adventure Book 2), page 1
ALIEN PURSUIT
TIN MAN SPACE OPERA ADVENTURE
BOOK TWO
JAMES DAVID VICTOR
Copyright © 2022 James David Victor
All Rights Reserved
Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All people, places, names, and events are products of the author’s imagination and / or used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Thank You
1
It felt like being dropped into a can of rusty nails. Everything was a ruddy color. The terrain was jagged and sharp. Shoji felt like he was being stabbed in every part of his body.
“Now?” Beck asked, her voice steady, empty of alarm despite the situation. She sat in the co-pilot chair—a chair occupied by William Kyle until recently. Though she had only flown one mission in her new position, that mission was more than enough to prove to Shoji that she was capable.
“Not yet,” Shoji answered. He stared unblinking at the radar as three blips hovered in place. Tin Man had been holding position for nearly five minutes. Considering their lives the last few weeks, that long in one place felt like an eternity.
They were crouched in the husk of a large building in what used to be Manifest’s Mars colony. Judging from the size of it, it was central to the colony, maybe living quarters. Shoji tried not to think about what that meant for the people who used to live here.
“Engine is running quiet,” Isaac said over the comms. “I’m ready to juice it up whenever you are.”
“I said not yet,” Shoji answered.
“Right, yeah,” Isaac stammered. “Just making sure you know. Because I’m ready. You know, when you are.”
Shoji groaned. He had hoped the blips would pass over them. Three Vhast starfighters. The Vhast fleet was in total disarray somewhere above them, having just suffered massive casualties and the loss of several of their large destroyers at the hands of Tin Man and the rest of the human fleet. They wouldn’t risk sending any more of their destroyers to the planet to hunt the humans down. The Vhast learned quickly that their bulky ships were outmatched by Tin Man’s mobility.
Tin Man probably could have handled three starfighters no problem, but the crew was tired and on unfamiliar ground. Shoji didn’t want to press their luck.
Unfortunately, he might not have a choice.
“I’m no mathematician,” Kinsey said, “but the longer the North Star is out there alone, the greater the chance that something terrible happens to it.”
Beck nodded. “I am a mathematician, and I concur with Kinsey’s analysis.”
Shoji groaned again. He didn’t like being forced into a decision. He’d grown to appreciate the need for prudent tactical maneuvers after the battle on Phobos. He’d lost good people then, and he had no intention of losing any more.
But he was still a fighter at heart, and the itch to be reckless was always there under the surface.
“Still no sign of the North Star?” The commandeered Vhast destroyer that was now the home of the entire human fleet had gone off the radar as soon as they landed on Mars. Commander Kyle’s last message was broken, but it also told them to leave. Shoji had no intention of obeying that order.
“None,” Beck said.
Shoji rolled his neck. “Then I guess we do it the hard way. Isaac, ready to fire the engines on my mark.” Shoji didn’t mind waiting. He didn’t mind acting. He minded being the one to make the call. He’d been forced to retire from the Air Force after an injury, though he would’ve left anyway. His last mission was still scarred into his memory. He was on track to assume a command position eventually, but he never made it there. As a test pilot after the service, all he ever had to worry about was himself and the plane. Now, every decision he made affected countless others.
The sooner they found Kyle, the sooner Shoji could hand the reins back.
“Now,” Shoji ordered.
The cockpit rumbled as Tin Man’s engines fired. The sudden force of thrust felt like a weight dropped on Shoji’s chest. He steered them straight up. Shoji used Tin Man’s wrist-mounted blade—which, along with the shoulder-mounted laser turret, was a recent modification courtesy of mechanic extraordinaire Kinsey Pilbauer—to slice through the ceiling of their crumbling refuge and pop up just underneath a Vhast starfighter.
With another flick of his wrist, Shoji used the blade to cut the starfighter in half. “Beck, we’ve got one on our six.”
“On it.” She locked the enemy ship in their sights with incredible speed and turned it into a cloud of sparks with the shoulder laser.
Shoji held position. “The last one just dropped off the radar.”
“There’s too much interference in the atmosphere. All those destroyed Vhast ships expelled a lot of unknown energy.”
“Can you sort it out?” Shoji asked.
“No,” Beck answered.
“Manual it is,” Shoji said through an exhale. “Eyes sharp.” He moved Tin Man forward as slowly as he could, staying low to use the wreckage of the colony as cover. A sudden blip on the radar indicated a ship behind them. He spun and slashed with the blade, only to hit open air. A flash of movement in the periphery caught Shoji’s eye. On instinct, he dropped Tin Man backward, like a back bend, and narrowly avoided being shot in the center of the chest as the last remaining Vhast fighter rose out of the debris. Shoji didn’t move fast enough to keep the shot from hitting Tin Man hard in the right shoulder.
Shoji tried to slash at the fighter as it approached, but the right arm was unresponsive. “Kinsey, I’ve got a problem.”
“I’m reading it,” she answered. “Right arm is down. I’m reading a hull breach in the shoulder. Heading there now.”
Shoji made a fist with the left arm and punched at the Vhast fighter, but the nimbler ship rolled easily away. “Beck, you have a shot?”
“Negative. The starfighter is too close to get a lock. We need some space.”
“I can do that.” Shoji pulled up on the controls and Tin Man shot upward and away from the colony. Staying in the open made them an easier target, and Tin Man was beat up. If they lingered too long, the Vhast ship would cut them apart. He spun, trying to keep the starfighter in front of them, but the Vhast pilot was learning Shoji’s patterns and adapting quickly. “Anytime now.”
“Almost,” Beck said.
The Vhast starfighter lined up for their final run. It took aim at Tin Man’s head. And then it exploded as Beck cut it down the middle. It crashed to the surface, caving in the roof of another abandoned colony building.
“Nice shot,” Shoji said. “How we looking, Kinsey?”
The comm sparked to life with a series of grunts and curse words. “Just made it to the right shoulder. In my professional opinion, it’s a real goddamn mess in here.”
“Can you fix it?”
“I might be able to patch it enough to keep the arm from falling off. I’ve sealed off the breach. I can work on getting some motion back as we’re moving if you keep it slow, but it’ll be basic. We won’t be combat-ready until I can get the big bastard to a proper garage.”
The weight of leadership crushed Shoji’s throat. Beck stared at him with her unblinking laser eyes, prompting him from his silence. “Okay,” he said. “Do what you can. I’ll keep low and slow.”
Tin Man dropped back to the surface. He hovered just over the ground as he resumed the search that was interrupted by the arrival of the Vhast recon force.
“I’m fine, by the way,” Isaac said. “Thanks for asking. It’s not like I’m stranded on the other side of the galaxy, having been conscripted into a war against a race of aliens I didn’t even know existed until just a few weeks ago.”
“Why don’t you take a nap, Isaac?” Shoji grunted.
Isaac responded with hopeful reserve. “Was that a joke? Because I would very much like to do that.”
“Not a joke,” Shoji answered. “I’m very serious.”
“Okay. Wake me if we’re about to die.” The comm cut off, and then came back on. “No, wait, don’t. Just let me die in my sleep.” The comm cut off again.
Shoji waited to see if he’d be cut off. When the silence stretched on, he said to Beck, “We still heading in the right direction?”
Beck studied her monitor. “Yes. The location of the North Star’s broken transmission was roughly fifty kilometers straight ahead.”
Commander Kyle’s transmission played in Shoji’s mind.
“—in Man, do you read? This is—rth Star! Get the hell out of here! Get off Mars now! We are—”
In the time Shoji had known Commander William Kyle, he had never heard the man sound afraid. But that was wild fear in Kyle’s voice. The kind t hat comes when all hope is lost, when there is no end in sight.
The quiet was unsettling. Nothing had been quiet for so long. Ever since they left Earth, they’d been jumping from one crisis to the next, barely outracing catastrophe. Shoji thought he’d be able to relish this just a little bit. If a victory against the Vhast on Mars was possible, they had just achieved it. Grossly outnumbered and outgunned, the humans had decimated the Vhast fleet and kept them from reaching Earth.
A sharp pain lanced Shoji’s side. They’d kept the Vhast from Earth by destroying the jump-gate, their only way home. He shook the lingering thoughts of Earth from his head. He needed to focus on the problem in front of them, and that problem was finding the North Star and not dying on Mars.
“Approaching the target destination,” Beck said. “Half a kilometer away.”
“How’s it going over there, Kinsey?” Shoji asked. “I might need it soon, so what are the chances you’ll have that arm up and running in the next two minutes?”
“Not a one,” Kinsey said. “Though I do believe I’ve patched it enough, so it’ll stay attached. You’ll have to be happy with that.”
Shoji grumbled. “All right. Get back to your station then. We’re coming up on the North Star’s last-known location. I want us ready for anything.”
Kinsey responded with a curt, “Yup.”
It was those little things that reminded Shoji he was leading a team of civilian contractors and not Earth Defense Initiative soldiers. The absence of a “Yes, sir!” was like pulling curtains open one morning and finding it still nighttime.
Visibility was impeded by a thick dust cloud. Shoji could only see a few meters ahead and felt like he was walking into the open mouth of a giant creature.
“This is it,” Beck said. “Scans aren’t picking anything up.”
They’d left the colony. There were outposts scattered about the planet, but those weren’t reading. The interference in the atmosphere had blinded them almost completely. It was like squinting through the cracks in your fingers.
“Are you scanning for Vhast and Manifest signatures?” Shoji asked.
Beck sounded as insulted as he’d ever heard. “I am.”
Shoji rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to imply—”
“As commanding officer, you are not required to apologize.” Beck turned back to her console.
“I know.” Shoji remembered all the officers he’d served under. He couldn’t picture himself standing shoulder to shoulder with them.
“There.” Beck pointed out the main viewport.
Shoji tried to follow her finger, but all he saw was dust. Suddenly, the cloud parted, only for an instant, but that was all he needed to see the mouth of a cave. “Kinsey, do me a favor and wake Isaac.”
Once the crew was awake and in their positions, Shoji eased Tin Man toward the cave. “Keep an eye on the radar, Beck.”
“I am, Captain. But nothing has changed. I don’t anticipate anything will with all the interference.”
“Yeah, just…I have a feeling. Like an itch on the back of my neck.”
Beck blinked at him. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means I feel like I’m being watched.”
Tin Man crested the mouth of the cave.
“That is a highly subjective sentiment. Perhaps your neck itches because you haven’t been able to properly bathe in several weeks. Or maybe—” Beck’s voice froze in the air. Her radar monitor lit up like a fireworks display. “Multiple contacts!”
Shoji spun, but he saw only rock and shadows.
“We’re surrounded!” Beck yelled.
Shoji tried to raise the wrist-blade, forgetting that the right arm was not functional. Shadows danced across the surface, cast by the light from the mouth of the cave. But when Shoji turned to face the cause of them, he saw nothing. He felt like a rabbit in a snare, wolves circling him at the edge of the forest.
The darkness crept closer to them, swallowing Tin Man until all light was extinguished. The mouth of the cave was gone, replaced by a slab of metal that slid down from the ceiling. They weren’t in a cave. They were in a mine shaft.
And now they were sealed in with an enemy they could not see.
2
Shoji switched the viewport to night vision and raced further into the mineshaft. He moved as quickly as he could, relying on his reflexes to avoid rock formations or take sharp turns as they arose. He was out of his mind, letting his body pilot on instinct.
“Still no visual,” Beck said. “But I’m reading multiple contacts on radar. They are pursuing.”
“They shut us in and now they’re pushing us further into the shaft,” Shoji said. “They’re herding us, but if I can’t see them, I can’t fight them. I’m open to suggestions.” He hoped Beck would be quick with them. Her silence dashed those hopes.
Shoji refocused on not slamming into a rock wall. The further into the mine, the more obvious they were in a mine. Manmade structures rushed by. Mining equipment that had been dropped in a hurry and left where it was. But nothing appeared damaged in Shoji’s very brief assessment. Not like the colony.
“How we looking?” he asked desperately.
Beck stumbled over her words, which was immediately disheartening. “The same, I think. Radar is lit, but I can’t see anything. Wait.” That single word brightened Shoji’s spirits. It was pregnant with possibility. Beck modified the rear cameras—small video units mounted on the back of Tin Man to aid in close-quarters work, back when it was intended to be a grunt working construction in deep space. They had yet to prove useful in combat as radar and the other sensor equipment provided a much fuller view of their surroundings. But now, they might be what saved them.
The video feed illuminated her monitor. The cave rushed by in shades of green as Beck studied the night vision scene. Flashes of movement along the periphery caught her attention. “There! I see them.”
Small vessels weaved in and out of sight. From the brief glimpses Beck caught, they appeared to be single-pilot fighters. If they could even be called fighters. They were narrow with limited shielding. They looked more like transports than anything else.
Shoji banked hard to the left to follow the sudden turn of the shaft. “How many?”
“It’s hard to tell. They’re weaving in and out of sight. And radar is as unreliable in here as it was outside.”
As Tin Man delved further into the ground, Shoji felt the growing weight on top of him. He felt the desperation of a child lost in a department store, frantically searching for his parents through clearance racks of last year’s sweaters. The idea of continuing on was suddenly a terrifying thought. “I’m going to try something. Everyone, brace for impact.”
Isaac cursed over comms. Kinsey tried to warn Shoji that Tin Man couldn’t handle any more impact, but her concerns were abbreviated. Shoji slammed on the reverse thrusters, immediately and violently halting Tin Man’s forward momentum. Four of the pursuing ships rocketed past.
“Any more behind us?” he asked.
Beck studied the rear video feed. Several more of the ships skid to a halt. One disappeared from view as it stopped between Tin Man’s legs. “Yes, but it’s still unclear how many. I see five. There may be more.” Beck leaned in closer to the monitor, her face just inches from it. “I don’t think these ships—”
Tin Man’s working arm raised above his head and slammed a fist into the ground. The enemy ships scattered before they could be crushed. Small chunks of rock fell from the cave ceiling. Shoji raised the fist again.
“Wait!” Beck yelled. “They have no weapons.”
“So what?” Shoji swiped at them, again missing the much nimbler ships.
“They aren’t attacking. They can’t attack.”
“They trapped us in here. They’re pushing us further into the mine. They mean to do something to us.”
