Suddenly, the blob of dark matter that Vargo had pushed off moved—toward them.

  “Oh damn!”

  He rotated the ship and fired negative gravitons at the approaching matter, but this time, it didn’t seem to slow it. The thing kept approaching.

  “Vargo…” Rika said as the matter closed within fifty thousand kilometers.

  “Just a bit longer,” Vargo replied. “It’s smaller than the last lump, maybe there’s some sort of graviton-to-mass ratio that isn’t being reached till it’s a bit closer.”

  Rika nervously watched the Asora’s indicator on the main display as it moved deeper down the shrinking path that led to Malta. It was only a hundred thousand kilometers wide at this point, with smaller bits of dark mater encroaching further into the funnel.

  Vargo’s thrust against the approaching blob pushed them to within ten thousand kilometers of the fringe. She was about to order a transition, when suddenly the large object that had been closing with them reversed course just as the previous one had.

  Vargo let out a long sigh of relief as Ashley announced, “Five AU.”

  “OK, shifting the ship back into the center,” he said, angling the vessel and then firing out a broad stream of positive gravitons to draw the ship toward the middle of the still-narrowing funnel.

  Chase said privately as his hand found hers and clasped it gently.

  Rika replied, about to offer a rationale, when suddenly the scan lit up with movement across the board. The small motes of dark matter began to move rapidly toward the Asora, converging on it at a rapid pace.

  “Vargo, dump us out!” Rika ordered knowing exactly what that reading meant.

  “Holy shit! Initializing transition.”

  His hands flew across the console, preparing the grav bubble protecting the ship to push them back into regular space. A three-second countdown started—and then stalled at one, as the ship shuddered, and impact alerts flared on consoles across the bridge.

  “What the hell?” Chase swore as he rushed to a console.

  Lieutenant Chris called from amidships.

 

 

  “I can’t transition!” Vargo shouted. “The bubble’s set, we should be shifting out, but it’s like we’re being held here.”

  “Negative graviton pulse,” Rika ordered. “Set every dampener and grav plate on the ship to do a max negative pulse!”

  “I—” Vargo began, when Niki announced,

  Rika activated the maglocks on her feet and called out over the shipnet,

  She barely got the warning out when gravity inside the Asora went haywire, pushing and pulling in every direction. Rika felt like she was being torn apart, ducking her head as everything that wasn’t bolted down on the bridge went flying.

  Damage indicators began to light up on consoles, and then a tendril of inky darkness ripped through the overhead and slashed down into the bridge. It swiped right through Ashley’s console and then her legs.

  Rika gaped as she watched both the console and the woman’s legs disappear in the thing’s wake.

  Suddenly it was gone, moving so fast that Rika couldn’t tell if it had disappeared, or retracted. At the same time, normal space snapped back into place on the external viewscreens.

  There was a momentary pressure decrease, then emergency grav fields activated, though they did little to diffuse the nervous feeling Rika got from looking up through a hole cut right through the ship.

  Chris called up.

  Rika ordered in response.

 

  Chase was already next to Ashley, who was gasping short breaths while the captain grabbed a canister of biofoam and sprayed it onto the stumps of her legs.

  The chief’s eyes fixed on Rika for a moment, and she moaned. “Guess I get to be a mech, now.”

  “Whatever you want, Ashley.” The woman began to fall forward, and Rika caught her. “Shit, she’s passed out.”

  “Blood loss is staunched,” Chase said. “She’s in shock, though.”

  “Dammit, Ashley,” Vargo muttered from his seat. “You’d better pull through.”

  Rika glanced up at the system map. “Shit, we’re still half an AU from Malta.”

  “Yeah,” Vargo nodded. “And our engines are out, as are the stasis shields. Oh, and that Nietzschean cruiser we were trying to beat to the planet? It’s three light seconds away.”

  Chase clenched his jaw and shook his head. “What the hell were those things?”

  Niki said quietly.

  “You didn’t think that it would be nice to let us know?” Vargo shot back.

  Niki retorted.

  “Thousands of years?” Rika asked, trying to parse that piece of incredulous information to everything else that was bombarding her at the moment.

 

  Rika said lamely, wondering if—on top of putting her crew in more danger than she’d realized—she’d damaged her relationship with Niki.

  The AI didn’t respond, and Rika drew a deep breath.

  Pull yourself together, Rika, there’s work to be done.

  “Ma’am?” a voice said from behind her, and Rika realized that the medics were trying to get past. She shifted out of the way while still holding Ashley upright.

  “We got her,” the other medic said.

  “Watch the hole in the deck,” Chase said as he relinquished his position as well.

  One of the medics placed a medscanner on Ashley’s forehead. “OK, her heart rate is stabilizing, but blood’s leaking behind the biofoam and into her body.”

  “Let’s move,” the other man said, and they carefully lifted the woman and set her on the hoverskiff behind them.

  “Keep me informed,” Vargo said, his voice croaking at the end of the statement.

  “Of course, sir.”

  Rika shook her head and stepped to an auxiliary console, trying to force everything from her mind but what they were going to do about the Nietzschean ship.

  Niki said.

  “Right,” Vargo nodded. “We’re gonna need them, because that Nietzschean fucker is headed straight for us.”

  “Think they know we’re not really a Nietzschean ship?” Chase asked. “Not a lot of ships would have made it here from Blue Ridge before us.”

  “Uhh…yeah,” Vargo muttered. “They’re hailing us as ‘Marauder Pirates’, and ordering us to stand down—not sure what they expect us to do. We have no shields or engines. We’ll just keep on standing as we are.”

  “Well, we have weapons, and mechs,” Rika replied with a grin.

  “So long as they don’t just blow us to atoms,” Vargo added.

  Chase called down to the platoon leader.

 

  Rika replied.

 

 

  Chase gave Rika a quick embrace and his lips brushed hers, whispering encouragement before he was gone, rushing from the bridge to prepare his company. Rika watched him go before biting back a sigh and turning to gaze at the forward display once more.

  “You know,” Rika said as she watched the Nietzschean cruiser, bearing the name Torrent of Fire, close with them. “At least we drew them away from Malta. Do you see the destroyer Borden’s peo—oh, there it is, just came around the planet.”

  “Even at max burn, it would take them hours to get here,” Vargo said as he flipped through auxiliary systems, checking their status. “I wonder…I bet we could get the starboard grav shields back online if we disabled internal gravity and routed the secondary trunkline to their emitters.”

  Niki said in agreement.

  Vargo glanced at Rika. “Umm…depends how close they are to getting stasis shields back up.”

 

 

  “Fuck,” Vargo swore. “Well, I guess you have your answer.”

 

  Rika drew in a deep breath as she watched the Torrent of Fire draw closer.

  * * * * *

  “We’re holding course,” Vargo Klen said to the captain of the Torrent of Fire, a rather stern looking woman named Aleena.

  Rika had stayed off the comms, not wanting to let the Nietzscheans know that there were mechs aboard the ship, and especially not her. Of course, Vargo was a mech, too, but with his armor and the standard limbs he used for piloting, it wasn’t easy to tell.

  Niki had said when Rika explained her logic.

 

  “I see that,” Aleena said, her lips drawn into a line so thin, Rika wondered how she could form words properly. “We’re pulling up to your starboard side, as you’ve requested.”

  Vargo shrugged. “Well, you can come around to port if you want, but those bays are all inoperative. We took some damage recently, then we got stuck in the dark layer too long—”

  “Yes, so you keep saying,” Aleena cut him off. “Coming down the same route that smugglers have been known to use in this system. Surprise, surprise.”

  “Hey, I’m just glad we’re alive,” Vargo said, and Rika could tell he wasn’t faking that gratitude. “The maps had this clear spot, and we did our best to stay in it.”

  “And that damage? How did you get it? Parts of your ship look…twisted.”

  Vargo shrugged. “Beats me. It was Nietzscheans that attacked us. Some sort of gravity field distortion weapon. You must not be in the loop.”

  Niki commented.

  Rika said as she studied Captain Aleena’s expression.

  Niki muttered.

 

  Niki’s denial was emphatic.

 

  Niki muttered.

  Rika asked while half-listening to Captain Aleena give Vargo a ream of instructions and directives.

  Niki’s voice was filled with suspicion.

  Chase reported up.

  Rika replied.

  Chase replied.

  Rika said with a laugh before turning to Vargo.

  Vargo asked, turning to grin at Rika.

  Rika tried to sound stern, but she couldn’t help but grin at the man.

  Niki proclaimed.

 

  Vargo signed off with Aleena and rose from his seat. “When I was a governor, no one talked to me like that.”

  “Oh?” Rika’s eyebrows rose. “And where were you a governor?”

  “Some place that was too damn polite. That’s why I joined up with the Marauders: so I could get my daily dose of abuse.”

  Rika laughed and led the way down to the pinnace, which they found ready to depart with Corporal Yig standing at the bottom of the ramp.

  “Colonel, Captain,” he said with a nod. “Your chariot awaits.”

  “You yahoos coming with us?” Vargo asked as he slapped Yig on the shoulder.

  “Yeah, Captain Chase sent us to make sure you two didn’t get all blowed up. Goob’s up front, and Fiona and Cole are in the back. They’ve got spare ammo, if you need any.”

  Rika gestured for Yig to precede her up the ramp. “I’m ready for bear. Vargo?”

  “Get them to bring me some,” Vargo said with a worried look. “I don’t trust Goob in the cockpit. Dork always messes with my seat.”

  Yig chuckled and retreated to the small bay at the rear of the pinnace while Rika followed Vargo to the cockpit. To his credit, Goob was sitting in one of the rear seats, looking perfectly innocent.

  A little too innocent.

  Vargo gave the private a sidelong glance as he looked over his seat—which looked to Rika like it was situated properly.

  “We don’t have all day,” she commented as she settled into the copilot’s chair.

  “Right.” Vargo turned and sat, only to have a feminine voice emanate from the forward console.

  “Hey, big boy, I love it when you sit there. You can pilot me any day.”

  “Goob!” Vargo shouted as he turned to glare at the AM-4, only to have Niki laugh in their minds.

  “What?” Goob lifted his hands. “I didn’t do a thing.”

 

  “And here I thought we were friends, Niki,” Vargo muttered as he ran through a quick preflight check.

  Rika only shook her head as she brought up the exterior scan view of the two ships.

  The Torrent of Fire was drawing close to the Asora, far closer than Rika would have approached, were their positions reversed. Based on their vector, she suspected that the Nietzscheans planned to perform a shield breach.

  It was a maneuver that required getting within roughly a hundred kilometers of an enemy vessel before launching assault craft, while at the same boosting toward the target and extending forward shields.

  The idea was to protect the assault craft as long as possible, but never push your shields past the hull of the enemy ship, or it could fire directly on your vessel.

  What Captain Aleena didn’t suspect—at least Rika hoped she didn’t—was that the Marauder ship was going to perform the same maneuver. With a twist.

  “They’ve launched six assault craft,” Vargo commented as the Torrent of Fire continued to close with the Asora, its shields extending before the approaching craft exactly as Rika expected them to. “I have the Asora slaved to my console. You OK with flying this bird out of the bay?” he asked Rika.

  “I’ve never flown a dropshop other than in sims, but I can fly a Skyscream in vacuum, so I think I can do this.”

  “I’m brimming with confidence,” Vargo muttered.

  Niki said in comforting tones.

  “No,” Vargo blew out a long sigh. “If anyone’s sending my girl to her grave, it’s me.”

  Niki added quietly.

  The Torrent of Fire’s assault ships passed the five-hundred-kilometer mark, turning to slow as they approached the Asora.

  With one eye on the scan, Vargo peered out into the small bay and whispered. “You’ve been a good ship.”

  Then he hit a control on the console, executing his pre-programmed routine. A second later, the deck lurched beneath them as the Asora fired its maneuvering thrusters and rotated on its axis, turning so the ship’s port side faced the Torrent of Fire.

  “Here goes nothing,” Vargo muttered, and hit the command for the destroyer’s shields to activate.

  There was a moment where nothing happened, and then the Asora’s grav shield umbrellas kicked on, eliciting a cry of delight from Goob.

  “Sorry, I was worried for a second,” he said meekly when Vargo glanced back at him.

  His dirty look delivered, Vargo turned back toward his console and hit the boost sequence. With the internal a-grav and dampening systems now completely offline, the deck shuddered again as the Asora’s starboard grav drives activated, pushing the ship toward the Torrent of Fire while also advancing its own shields.

 

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