The fact that the entire insystem journey would take them only nine minutes was harrowing, to say the least. Reaction times would approach zero, and it would take every ounce of skill Vargo had to manage the approach.
“Passing forty AU,” Ashley announced aloud, though they could all see it on the screen. “I’ve picked up a big clump close to twenty-nine AU.”
“I see it,” Vargo replied, his voice sounding far calmer than Rika would have expected. “Nudging us as much as I can to give it a wide berth.”
Ninety seconds later, Ashley announced that they’d passed 30AU.
The scan system was starting to pick up small flecks of dark matter all around them, none too close to the ship, but the density was increasing.
They passed within a few hundred thousand kilometers of the lump of dark matter Ashley had flagged—at least that’s what the scan report said. Rika had no idea if measurements like ‘kilometers’ really applied in the dark layer, or if it was just an approximation that the navigation systems showed to the humans.
<He’s doing really well,> Niki commented suddenly, the utterance startling Rika out of her intense focus.
<He’s a fantastic pilot. I mean, not if you ask Ferris,> Rika replied with a laugh. <You’ve been pretty quiet since we left the Lance…. Anything up?>
<Uhhh…I’ve been thinking about something I want to tell you about.>
The AI’s mental tone held a note of uncertainty, and Rika felt a sliver of worry form at the sound of it. <Something bad?>
<No, not bad. Not bad at all, really. But a bit weighty. It’s about my past—and what I hope for the future. We’ll talk about it after all this, though, it’s nothing that should weigh you down.>
<You’re making me a bit nervous, Niki.>
The AI laughed, her tone sounding much lighter. <Sorry, I really didn’t want to bring it up now. This little jaunt is one of those ‘mortality questioning’ moments, you know?>
<Thinking about all the things left undone?> Rika asked as Ashley called out the twenty AU marker.
<A bit of that, plus some things I wish I could go back and make undone. Seriously, though, we need to be frosty. Push it from your mind.>
Rika was about to respond that such a thing was easier said than done, when suddenly, Ashley cried out.
“Impact imminent! That piece of dark matter just shifted course!”
“The fuck!?” Vargo swore, firing maneuvering thrusters to rotate the ship.
“It’s only a hundred thousand klicks away and closing fast.” Ashley’s voice wavered as she gave the update.
Rika clamped her mouth shut, as Vargo got the engines facing the approaching object and blasted negative gravitons at it. Its approach slowed, and then it seemed to remain equidistant from the Asora longer than Rika would have thought possible, before the space between the two objects suddenly began to increase faster than the thrust the ship was giving off.
“OK,” Vargo muttered as he corrected the ship’s course. “Either physics just burped, or that thing was moving under its own power.”
“There’s a lot we don’t know about the dark layer,” Chase muttered. “Especially this close to stars.”
“Orbital mechanics are orbital mechanics.” Vargo shook his head defiantly. “All the dark matter maps treat matter as matter, and they’re mostly right. If things were that wonky in here, none of our jump point math would ever work.”
Rika wondered if the blob had actually been one of the things, the Exdali. A feeling came from Niki, and Rika could read between the lines. The AI was worried.
“Three minutes to go,” Ashley said. “Looks clear from here on out.”
“So long as physics doesn’t change the rules again,” Vargo muttered as he rotated the ship to have the engines facing their direction of travel once more.
The next ten AU passed by without incident, but then the ship’s scan suite began to show the open corridor through the dark layer narrowing more than it should.
“Maybe we should dump out now,” Chase said as the gap continued to shrink.
“We’ll be too far from Malta to get there before that Nietzschean cruiser. If we don’t beat it to the planet, this whole thing is for nothing,” Vargo said while shifting the ship a little to port, pushing off a blob of matter to starboard. “Transition just takes a second. We can wait till it gets tighter.”
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.”
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.
<Is it me, or is this route narrowing at an increasing rate? It’s like the walls are rushing in, not us rushing down a narrowing passage,> Chase said privately as his hand found hers and clasped it gently.
<A bit, yeah,> 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.
<We’ve got movement down here!> Lieutenant Chris called from amidships. <Something—fuck! Don’t shoot it!>
<Chris? What do you see?>
<Something’s in the ship! It’s…I don’t know what it is! It’s eating everything!>
“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, <Already on it.>
Rika activated the maglocks on her feet and called out over the shipnet, <Everyone hold onto your britches!>
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.
<It’s gone!> Chris called up. <We’ve got some minor injuries down here, but nothing we can’t bolt on a replacement for.>
<Get a medic up here!> Rika ordered in response. <Ashley’s lost her legs.>
<On it!>
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?”
<I once heard a rumor that there were creatures in the dark layer,> Niki said quietly. <I dismissed it out of hand, and never gave it a second thought.>
“You didn’t think that it would be nice to let us know?” Vargo shot back.
<One rumor!> Niki retorted. <One over thousands of years. Would that be top of mind for you against all the other reports containing no news of anything ‘living’ in the dark layer?>
“Thousands of years?” Rika asked, trying to parse that piece of incredulous information to everything else that was bombarding her at the moment.
<Look, Rika, I just took the fall for you and gave them something to latch onto so they can deal with what just happened. Don’t put me in a position like that again. Next time you share all the intel you have in mission planning. Don’t turn into one of those ‘need to know’ assholes.>
<Well neither of us knew they would attack like that…> 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. <I’m sorry, you’re right,>
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.
<I’m on with the boys in engineering,> Niki said. <I have them focused on the stasis shields first.>
“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.
<Chris,> Chase called down to the platoon leader. <Get everyone patched up and loaded onto the dropships. We may be abandoning this poor girl—oh, but keep a team ready to get the medics and Ashley off if we need to. I’ll be there in a minute.>
<You got it, Captain. What about the colonel and Captain Klen?>
<There’s a small pinnace in the forward bay,> Rika replied. <We’ll get to that or the escape pods, if we really do have to abandon ship.>
<You’d better. I’ll be pissed if you die.>
<Me too!>
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.”
<I think that could work,> Niki said in agreement. <Do you think I should have the engineers get on that?>
Vargo glanced at Rika. “Umm…depends how close they are to getting stasis shields back up.”
<Niki?>
<Uhhh…shoot…they just got eyes on the stasis field generator. One of those things swiped through the chamber, it’s gone.>
“Fuck,” Vargo swore. “Well, I guess you have your answer.”
<OK, we’re on the trunkline transfer.>
Rika drew in a deep breath as she watched the Torrent of Fire draw closer. <Chase, get the medics prepped to move Ashley to one of the assault ships, here’s the plan….>
* * * * *
“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.
<You do know that they must suspect mechs are aboard,> Niki had said when Rika explained her logic.
<Sure, but suspecting and confirming are two different things. The Niets still aren’t really used to getting hit by our all-mech forces.>
“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.”
<He’s a really good bullshitter,> Niki commented. <I mean, everyone knows he’s bullshitting, but he honestly sounds like he believes what he’s saying.>
<I don’t know,> Rika said as she studied Captain Aleena’s expression. <I think our friend over there is wondering if there’s some new weapon she’s missing out on. I bet she feels pretty left out, being stuck in this backwater.>
<Yeah, there is some new weapon that does this sort of thing,> Niki muttered. <And it’s right on the other side of the veil that separates normal space from the dark layer.>
<I wonder if we could—>
<No.> Niki’s denial was emphatic. <Don’t even think about a way to use whatever the hell we encountered as a weapon.>
<Right, yeah. That seems like a bell that can’t be un-rung.>
<They have to know about those things,> Niki muttered. <They must suppress the knowledge.>
<Who?> Rika asked while half-listening to Captain Aleena give Vargo a ream of instructions and directives.
Niki’s voice was filled with suspicion. <The Transcend. Maybe the ISF, too. We’ll have to see what Borden has to say when we link back up.>
<We’re ready down here,> Chase reported up. <Let’s execute a patented Rika’s Marauders smash and grab.>
<OK,> Rika replied. <If it’s patented, do I get some sort of money from it?>
<Not if your people are the ones doing it,> Chase replied.
<Damn. I need to talk to our marketing department,> Rika said with a laugh before turning to Vargo. <OK, Klen, wrap things up with your girlfriend there, we need to get to our pinnace.>
<Yeah?> Vargo asked, turning to grin at Rika. <You see it, too? I thought the spark between Aleena and I was all in my head. What do you think…a girl like her and a mech like me?>
<Shut up, Vargo.> Rika tried to sound stern, but she couldn’t help but grin at the man. <And no. She’s way outta your league.>
<Burn!> Niki proclaimed. <But that’s a lie. I see the looks he gets from women. Organic girls think Vargo’s hot. I kinda like him, too.>
<Hush, we don’t need to inflate his ego more than it is.>
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?”