Daring

43

The system was blessedly empty, Chief Beni reported immediately.

“Keep up the acceleration,” Captain Drago ordered his navigator. “Aim us for the nearest jump point. I don’t care what our speed is when we hit it.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Chief, tell me who makes it through after us,” Kris said.

“The Hornet just got here. She’s doing 2.75 gees and still accelerating,” he replied.

“Sulwan, let’s give him plenty of room,” the skipper ordered.

“I’m taking her up to 3.75 gees, sir.”

“Good girl.”

“The Intrepid just arrived, sir. She’s also accelerating like a bat out of hell with its tail on fire.”

“Fine, Chief. We’ve all got our tails singed,” Kris said.

“The Fearless just came through, sir. She’s decelerating!”

“Fearless, state your condition and intent,” Kris snapped.

“We’re here. We can fight, but we can’t run, Commodore,” Fearless said evenly.

Kris found herself struggling for words. “How fast can you run?”

“Not fast enough,” she said. “That first hit clobbered my hull integrity. Anything above two gees, and she’ll fold like a house of cards.”

“We can come back for you.”

“And all get killed,” she said. “Bad idea, Commodore. Besides, I’ve always wanted to see what it was like to be Horatio at the bridge. Here’s my chance.”

What do you say to that kind of courage? “Thank you, Fearless.”

“Godspeed to the rest of you. Be sure one of you gets home to let them know what we did here,” Fearless said as she swung her corvette around to behind the jump point.

“We will,” Kris said. She had no right to believe that any of them would make it home. Not now. But at that moment, she swore to any listening god that one of them would.

The first enemy ship came through at that moment, lasers firing wildly. The Wasp’s shield got nipped by a near miss before the Fearless put two torpedoes into the rear of the ship and it blew to pieces.

There was a minute pause before the next ship shot through the jump point. It withheld fire for a moment until it could establish situational awareness.

Bad idea. The Fearless hit one of its engines with a laser burst. It was already exploding when two torpedoes finished it off.

By now, the three fast-moving ships of PatRon 10 were reaching extreme laser range. A long two minutes passed while nothing happened.

Three more ships popped out of the jump point in rapid succession. The Fearless lasered the first one’s engines. It blew.

The second one got the same treatment.

The third one immediately began to rotate ship and fired its lasers into the area behind it.

Fearless’s shields took the first hit, which gave it time enough to fire two full laser blasts at the smart skipper and his deadly ship. Torpedoes arrived at the same time. Of four launched, two hit the rotating ship and it blew to gas.

But the Fearless’s shields were gone, and one of the enemy ships had clipped the Fearless good.

Kris wanted to turn the sensors off, give the Fearless the privacy to die in peace, but she couldn’t. She owed the ship and its captain and crew. The coin she would use to pay that debt would be to bear witness to their courage.

Bear witness before all humanity. All intelligent species of the galaxy.

That, Kris’s tiny fleet deserved.

The next enemy ship backed through the jump point. He flipped ship on the other side of the jump after putting acceleration on. He also came through with lasers blazing.

His wild shooting got the Fearless with three hits. The shattered corvette hung there, drifting in space for a moment, then blew herself to gas.

“Somebody shut down the reactor’s containment field,” Drago whispered. “They won’t get anything from examining that wreckage. May I have the courage to do the same when my time comes.”

But the Fearless hadn’t just rolled over and died. She’d hit the alien with at least one laser blast . . . and a final torpedo salvo that smashed into it even as the Fearless was blowing herself to hot vapor.

The alien wasn’t destroyed, but it wasn’t under control, either. It careened into a chunk of damaged hull from one of the earlier arrivals at the brawl. It drifted there, surrounded by the wreckage of a battle won at a terrible cost.

And when the next ship came shooting out of the jump point, it plowed into that wreckage. The collision ended with both of them in a slowly growing explosion.

The next ship came through slowly and tiptoed through the mess before it put two gees on and gave chase to the survivors of PatRon 10.

There were over fifty ships strung out in pursuit of them by the time the Wasp approached the closest jump.

“What are your intentions, Commodore?” Captain Drago asked Kris.

“To get as far away from here as possible,” she quickly answered him. “Preferably in the opposite direction from Earth.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Drago said. The Wasp was doing over two hundred thousand klicks an hour. Much more than it had for any of the jumps during their voyage of discovery.

“Sulwan, put twenty clockwise rpms on the ship and let’s see where this jump takes us,” the skipper ordered.

“ Aye, aye, sir. Hell, here we come,” the navigator answered.