Violent shaking knocked Hayden from his feet. He cursed as his supporting hand slipped and his head hit the access opening.
“The ship’s taking a beating,” he said as he repositioned himself and resumed his work.
“The Glenatat hull modifications are holding,” said Cora. “We can take a lot more hits before the armour fails.”
“How are the radiation readings?”
“Everything is normal. Pay attention! You don’t want to bend the stabilizer when you remove it.”
“I know, I know—”
Pavlovich’s voice replaced Cora’s in his ear jack. “What in the seven hells is going on down there?”
“Almost finished, Cap’n. The XO is doing a great job.”
“Can he do it faster?”
“Got it!” announced Kaine as he gingerly extracted the injector from the access hatch.
“Give it to Ng. I can talk him through the next step. You should get back to the bridge.”
Pavlovich was in his earpiece again. “How much longer, Engineer?”
“Two minutes, Cap’n. Then there will be plenty of power for the lasers.”
“What about getting the ship moving?”
“That will take another ten, tops.”
“Damn it, Cora!”
The abrupt silence over the ear jack told Kaine that Pavlovich had terminated the connection.
He was out of breath by the time he arrived at the command centre. He noted that Stella occupied one of the acceleration couches and was safely strapped in. Her jaw was set, and her attention locked on the tactical readout cluster. She seemed less vulnerable than he remembered her the last time they were aboard Scimitar. He wondered if her practise at shutting out the emotions around her was paying off.
“Gunney,” said Pavlovich, “Cora tells me there is ten percent power to the forward X-ray laser battery.”
“Bloody well about time,” grumbled the cyborg, “but I need a hell of a lot more than that.”
“Make use of what there is, Gunnery Officer.” He turned to Hayden. “Good work, Kaine. Now take over on the sensors and give me some options.”
The lights dimmed, and he felt a fluctuation in the gravity plating as power was drawn to fire Scimitar’s weapons. He relieved the crewman at the sensor station and took a moment to study the readout.
“Damage to the engineering section of the lead ship. They are breaking off. Two of the remaining vessels are altering course. I believe they want to flank us, Captain.”
“Cora! Where are my engines? We’re sitting ducks here. If they board us, we’re screwed.”
“Number two is now at eighty percent, Cap’n.”
“At least we can manoeuvre,” said Pavlovich. “Helm, take evasive action. Navigation, plot us a course out of here.”
“I doubt that will do us much good, Captain,” said Hayden. “Without more than one operational engine, we can’t outrun these ships and defend ourselves at the same time.”
“I’m open to suggestions, Kaine.”
He clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth. The options were limited, and even their enhanced armour couldn’t take an indefinite pounding. If the raiders didn’t intend to destroy Scimitar, it was only a matter of time before their skiffs would attempt to dock. No Rangers were aboard, and there were not enough people to fight off boarding parties at all possible access points.
Pavlovich turned to Stella, but before he could ask her anything, she glared at him. “No! Absolutely not.”
The captain turned up his lip and grumbled, “A fat lot of good having an empathic psychic aboard if she won’t use her talent on the bad guys.”
She ignored Pavlovich’s provocation. Finally, when he seemed to realize she did not plan to change her mind, he hit the comm switch at his elbow.
“Cora, how much juice is left in the Super-L engine?”
“We consumed most of our fuel on the last jump. There isn’t enough to get us all the way to Pictor Prime.”
“Well, how far can it get us?”
“About a thousand AUs from the central planet.”
“We’ll make do. Fire it up.”
There was a brief hesitation before she responded. “Aye, Cap’n. It’ll take about ten minutes.”
“I’ll give you six.” Pavlovich slammed his fist on the button.
The ship vibrated as a missile exploded on the hull.
“Maintain current heading, Helm. They don’t have much of a bite anymore.”
“They must’ve used up their big ones,” said Kaine.
“They only want to herd us in a particular direction. If they wanted to hurt us, they would be firing up their rail guns.”
“Which begs the question, why do raiders possess fleet technology? At least two of those ships are UEF corvettes.”
“Former UEF. I told you; a lot happened.”
Three more impacts in fast succession nearly knocked Hayden off his feet. He checked the readout. “They’re focusing their fire on engineering. They are trying to exploit a weakened section of our armour.”
Pavlovich snarled and hit the comm button. “Cora, the bad guys are starting to scratch the paint. Now would be a good time for us to leave.”
“We’re good to go, Cap’n, but I’m concerned about—”
“Noted, Engineer.”
He addressed the helmsman. “You heard the lady; take us superluminal, NOW!”
The air around Hayden crackled with static electricity. His skin felt like ants crawled over every inch of him. Everything blurred, and the noise of the bridge dropped to a deep, low-frequency roar.
The gravity plating seemed to fail. Though he felt himself floating, a quick glance down assured him he was still firmly connected to the deck. The contents of his stomach insisted they wanted to exit, and he fought hard to keep from vomiting. An oppressive pressure pushed down on his brain. There was no pain, but reaching for his head, he discovered no sensation in his extremities.
Then a chaotic blast of colours enveloped everything, as if a rainbow had exploded around him. Like individual strips of cloth caught in a wind, countless coloured bands flapped aimlessly. Gathered by an invisible force, they were stretched into an ever-thinning ribbon extending off to infinity before him and behind him. He had no sense of acceleration or movement, but the ribbons of light rolled by at an unimaginable speed.
Then it all ended.
Pain erupted behind Hayden’s eyeballs, and his stomach heaved. He doubled over and vomited onto the deck. His still ringing ears heard a couple of other people retching, but when he looked for who it was, he discovered his vision was still foggy.
“Oh, shit,” said Pavlovich, “I don’t think I will ever get used to that.”
Hayden sought him out with his still clearing sight. “What the hell just happened?” he asked.
The captain leaned forward in his command chair as if he was going to be ill. He massaged his temples and said, “We went superluminal. No wonder the bloody Glenatat replaced this tech. This sucks.”
“How far did we travel?”
Parker, the navigator, appeared to be in no condition to answer. Pavlovich struggled to his feet and leaned over the navigation station. “Twenty-three-point six light years.”
“That’s insane! We only travelled for a few seconds.”
“It was a lot longer than that. All I know is that I want to puke every time we do this.”
Hayden studied the front holograph, showing a small sun burning against a carpet of stars in the distance. “Where are we?”
“We are most of the way to Pictor Prime, or at least we should be. I think Cora said we could get to within a thousand AU of it, somewhere inside the Oort Cloud.”
Hayden’s eyes widened. “This is incredible! I didn’t believe you when you described the potential of this technology. This could change everything.”
“Yeah, except for one small detail: we’re out of fuel, and if we don’t find some more, this will be the last trip we ever make.”
