Right Ascension (The Sector Fleet, Book 3) Read online

  “I don’t understand the question, Commander?” he replied in that inoffensive manner he had.

  “How else does Corvus communicate with the fleet other than the communications system?”

  He blinked at me as the ship swooped and rocked and somewhere atmosphere vented and the emergency bulkheads all slammed into place. Petrov was issuing commands in the background. Our energy cannons were slowly losing their stored power as they rained down hell on what should not have been our enemy. Bits of debris and pieces of our hull floated off into space all around us, leaving a trail of destruction in our wake for the fleet to follow.

  Saitō looked at me as if none of that was happening. As if I was the most important person in the room right then.

  And then he nodded his head and started entering commands into his console.

  “Corvus uses a different frequency to direct the fleet’s various navigation systems to fly in perfect synchrony,” he announced. “I can access that; I don’t believe it’s been corrupted yet.” I didn’t like the sound of that ‘yet’. “What would you like me to convey, Commander?”

  “Tell them to stick together,” I said. “Safety in numbers. And to follow our trail when the path looks clear.”

  I glanced at the captain who was watching us, listening in on our conversation.

  “Commander,” he said. “You have a plan?”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. “We lead Aquila away from the fleet and lose him in this asteroid belt.”

  I brought the belt in question up on the main viewscreen. Corvus had managed to scan the system we’d appeared in before the AI had been corrupted. The asteroid belt was orbiting a distant sun and was big enough to hide amongst.

  “It’ll be tight,” I said. “But Sokolov can handle it.”

  The helm officer stared at me and then slowly straightened his back and shoulders, looking surer of his abilities.

  “Lay in a course, Lieutenant Bahl,” the captain said. Petrov offered me a smile. “Well done, Commander. We might just make it out of this mess alive.”

  I hoped so. If we could convince Aquila we were destroyed or beyond repair, then maybe it would leave the rest of the fleet alone. With them separated from us, the AI might think the fleet wouldn’t know what we’d done. Where we’d gone and why. It might think that we’d abandoned them.

  But I couldn’t know for sure what the AI would do. It was an AI. And it was clearly corrupted.

  I glanced at Saitō. The chief science officer, though, might be able to provide some insight on the damn thing once we reached safety.

  “You heard the commander,” Captain Petrov said loudly. “We lead this blasted ship away from our flock, and we lose it in that field of rocks.”

  “Aye-aye,” the flight crew said as one, right when Aquila managed to hit Deck A. Somewhere near the leaseholder’s quarters. Close enough to the bridge to make consoles pop and viewscreens darken, and the captain to be thrown from his command chair and flung hard against the engineering console.

  Sparks flew, sirens blared, a fire started.

  And then the engineering console exploded, taking a chunk of Captain Petrov along with it.

  Four

  Lay It On Us

  Leo

  I stared at the charred remains of Captain Petrov; a hole in his chest displaying his pulverised chest cavity. Blood had splattered all over Commander Anderson, who’d moments earlier returned to her own console. But she’d been close enough to be hit by debris and bits and pieces of our former captain.

  She looked stunned. Collapsed on the floor, blood dribbling down her neck from her ear, scrapes and bruises forming on her right cheek. Her eyes too large for her face as she stared at the inert form of Vladimir Petrov.

  Alarms rang out around us. Lights flashed, and fire suppressant foam poured from the gel ceiling, smothering the various fires dotted about the bridge. The air filtration system sucked out the toxins and smoke, leaving the room coated in a mild haze that did nothing to adequately reflect the disaster that had happened.

  Captain Petrov was dead.

  Gāo had stopped firing his cannons; too stunned at what had transpired. Sokolov’s attempts to further evade Aquila was half-hearted at best, but the helm officer did keep us flying. Oleksiy was crying, and Bahl was sitting immobile at the navigation console.

  For a suspended moment in time, the universe paused, held its breath, and waited.

  And then Commander Anderson dragged herself up off the floor and looked at the rest of the flight deck. I watched as she pushed her grief aside, as she hid her emotions from everyone, including herself. I watched as her face turned hard and unforgiving and her breaths evened out.

  “Keep firing those cannons, Lieutenant Gāo,” she said steadily. There wasn’t a quaver in her voice to be heard. Rocksteady. Sure. It was exactly what the flight deck needed. “Helm, get us out of here.”

  She turned to look at me.

  “Did that message get through?” she asked.

  I would have said yes just to please her right then. I would have told her anything she wanted to hear. But Sophia Anderson, the newly minted Captain of the Sector Three Fleet lead vessel Corvus, didn’t need sycophants around her. She needed officers who knew their jobs and did them unfailingly.

  In this, at least, I could help her. Because I was thinking Captain Anderson was going to need a hell of a lot of help to get us out of this nightmare.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “All seven vessels acknowledged the message and are moving themselves into an appropriate formation.”

  “How far are we from them, Lieutenant Bahl?” she asked navigation.

  “We’re increasing the distance with every parsec, Commander.”

  “Captain,” I corrected.

  Silence descended over the flight deck. Or as silent, as it could get in the middle of a space battle.

  “Captain Anderson,” I said, reinforcing the directive.

  For her part, the captain looked a little stunned. And then she hid the reaction as she hid so much of herself.

  “Captain,” Bahl repeated looking a little startled.

  I couldn’t tell if his reaction was simply because of the shock of it all or because he didn’t like the idea that Sophia Anderson was now Corvus’ commander-in-chief.

  Sophia cleared her throat and then looked at the command chair. I saw the hesitation in her eyes, even as she kept a neutral expression on her features. Perhaps I’d been watching the commander a little too often lately; I’d started to see past the hardened exterior. The impassive look. The shield she kept in place.

  Stretching her neck, she walked to Petrov’s chair and took a seat. Then proceeded to buckle herself in; something Petrov had failed to do, sadly.

  I wasn’t certain Sophia wanted this responsibility. Surely, being Simon Anderson’s only surviving relative, the sole heir to Anderson Universal Incorporated, she could have taken on any role she wanted. She could have simply been a top-tier paid passenger and travelled in luxury. But that was not the nature of Simon’s granddaughter, I believed. Sophia was a fighter. I knew that much about her.

  She fought for her place onboard this ship, in amongst its crew, every single day.

  Why? I didn’t know. Responsibility maybe. I couldn’t say. But I admired her for it. Greatly.

  “Asteroid belt three minutes and fourteen seconds away,” I announced. The room had been too silent. We needed to find our footing again, and directing the flight deck to our purpose, the last command issued by our former captain, seemed the safest way to go right then.

  “Aquila is still firing,” Gāo added. “We’ve managed to land a couple of decent shots, but I doubt we’ve done any real damage.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Lieutenant,” Sophia said. “Just keep hounding them with everything you’ve got.”

  “Energy cannons at 32%, Captain,” he added, in case she didn’t know we were running out of juice.

  “Keep firing,” she replied equably. “Aq
uila doesn’t know that, and we’ll be inside the belt before we run out of ammo.”

  “Aye-aye, ma’am.”

  “I can’t come in at full speed,” Sokolov said nervously. “It’s too tight.”

  “If you reduce speed now, they’ll be on us, Lieutenant,” Sophia offered. Steady. Sure. And in some strange way encouraging.

  Sokolov gritted his teeth but said nothing.

  “Lieutenant Bahl,” Sophia called. “Scan that belt and find us the biggest opening.”

  “Some of them are barely big enough to fit a shuttle through,” he grumbled.

  “I’ve seen your navigation training records, Lieutenant,” Sophia said levelly. “Don’t tell me you can’t find us a path through those rocks.”

  Bahl sucked in a breath and then started frantically entering commands on his console.

  “Corvus has contained the atmosphere leaks,” I advised. Any piece of news was good news right now, and the flight deck needed it.

  “Good work, Commander,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she’d misspoken. Sophia was usually so very careful saying my full rank: Lieutenant Commander. The situation was stressful, so perhaps she’d slipped up.

  But a part of me wondered who’d she’d make her first officer and if she’d consider me.

  She’d need someone she could trust. Someone who would have her back. I wanted, at that moment, for that someone to be me.

  I didn’t really know Sophia Anderson personally. I knew how she’d conducted herself in training and once onboard the ship. Both of which had impressed me.

  But what I did know, outside of Anderson Universal Incorporated, was what Simon had told me of his granddaughter. And through him, I had somehow become more familiar with the woman, the young girl, that Simon had loved. And consequently, I’d become enamoured with her, too.

  Corvus rocked and rolled and spun through tight formations, as the asteroid belt quickly approached. Sweat beaded Sokolov’s face, and Bahl was still tapping away wildly on his console keyboard.

  “I need a vector!” Sokolov shouted.

  “Easy, Lieutenant,” Sophia murmured. “Bahl?”

  “Got it, Captain! Sending coordinates to helm now.”

  “Good work,” she said smiling. Bahl beamed back at her.

  The rest of the ship might not understand what we had in Sophia Anderson, but this flight crew did. It would take time to convince everyone else, but if I had my way, the whole universe would soon know it.

  Aquila fired relentlessly at our stern. Chasing us down like a rabid dog snapping at our ankles. Corvus rocked and lurched, helm becoming less and less responsive.

  “You’ve got this, Sokolov,” Sophia said at exactly the right moment. Sokolov knuckled down.

  Blue energy blasts shot past our sides, some connecting, some destroying the asteroids in front of our bow. Sokolov deftly adjusted course, following Bahl’s navigation coordinates as closely as he could manage, until we shot through a tiny gap, no bigger than Corvus itself, and swept in and around floating bits of rocks as large as trucks and high rise buildings, and in some cases, as big as Deimos; one of the moons of Mars.

  Aquila followed us in, dodging stray rocks and our trailing debris with AI precision. The deeper we went, the less I thought we’d lose them. The AI hounded us. Pounded us with its energy cannons. Alarms blared. Warning lights flashed. The whole ship shook and vibrated with every blast that connected.

  There was no way we were going to outrun it. No way we could outmanoeuvre it. No way we could outshoot it.

  And to prove that fact, Gāo said, “I’m out of power. Plasma guns only, Captain.”

  “Use them to keep him distracted, but reserve our torpedoes until the last minute.”

  Plasma and energy cannons we could replenish. Torpedoes were a one-time use type of weapon. The order was sound, but I wondered if Sophia thought we’d have to resort to the torpedoes before this battle was over.

  I know I was not alone on the flight deck right then to consider it myself.

  We needed to do something. Fast.

  I checked Corvus. The AI was still not responding, but it was working hard in the background. We hadn’t lost it completely. That was something. I studied the earlier scan of the asteroid belt. There were several possible sites. Luck was on our side, but would it hang around a little longer?

  “Captain,” I said over the alarms and creaks and groans of the vessel.

  “What have you got, Saitō?” she replied as if she was certain I did have something worthwhile to tell her.

  That’s what she did, I realised. She showed faith in each and every officer. She bolstered them with her conviction that they could contribute, could be a part of something bigger than themselves.

  Petrov had been a steady presence, an older officer who exuded experience.

  Anderson was something else. No less convincing or effective. My crush was growing by the minute.

  “We need a distraction,” I said. “A ruse to make Aquila back off.”

  “You want to trick an AI?” she asked steadily. There was no inflexion in her tone, but somehow it still sounded dry.

  “It may not think we’re completely dead in the water,” I said. “But it might think trying to find us in this mess isn’t worth its troubles if we’re perceived as severely damaged.”

  Sophia looked at me for a moment and then nodded her head.

  “All right, Commander.” There was that slip again. “Lay it on us.”

  Like Sokolov and Bahl before me, I puffed out my chest and laid out my plan, all the while wanting nothing more than my captain to smile encouragingly at me.

  An emerging part of me wondered if ‘encouraging’ would be the only type of smiles I’d want from Sophia. Or if I’d one day want for more.

  Five

  The Thought Was Macabre And Disquieting

  Sophia

  I wasn’t entirely sure if the asteroid belt had been a good idea, but we couldn’t have stayed out in the open a moment longer. Systems were failing across the board, the ship had holes in its sides that the containment fields were having trouble sealing, and our power usage had increased a hundredfold, making the main boost thrust spool beyond its normal capacity.

  If we kept this up, we wouldn’t need Aquila to destroy us. We’d do it all by ourselves.

  But the asteroid field was slowing Aquila down. Even though it was the same size as us, and the vessel was being flown by an AI, there were some things a human could do better.

  Like, take risks that had a slim chance of survival.

  “I’m not sure if I can keep this up,” Lieutenant Sokolov gritted. Sweat dribbled down his neck and into his uniform collar.

  “You’re doing great,” I said steadily, leaning forward in my seat as if I could help him. “You’re almost there. Gāo, have you got a lock on that asteroid?”

  “Negative, Captain. The calculations are too complex to compute a firing solution. I’ll have to fire manually.”

  I breathed through my nose and tried not to panic.

  “Everyone buckled in?” I asked. A room full of “aye-ayes” followed. “Any way we can warn the rest of the ship, Saitō?” I added, already knowing what the answer would be, but remaining resolutely hopeful.

  If anyone could reach Corvus, it was Leo Saitō.

  “Negative, Captain. But I should think by now they’d be holding onto something.”

  It was an extremely dry thing to say, and I couldn’t be sure if I’d heard Saitō make a comment like that before. He was a very unassuming officer. He kept his head down and did his job. He’d never once failed to salute me.

  But I kind of liked that in the middle of a space battle his sense of humour peeked out even if only slightly.

  I grinned at him and arched my brow. Then Aquila managed to hit us again in the port nacelle.

  “Lost main boost thrust on the port side!” Sokolov shouted.

  “Steady, Lieutenant. You can do this.” I wasn’t sure if my words of enc
ouragement were getting through anymore, he was gripping the helm control with an iron fist, the whites of his knuckles standing out against his darker skin.

  His hands shook. His eyes were wide. We had to end this.

  “Do it now, Gāo; we’re close enough,” I ordered.

  “Firing,” the tactical officer announced. His face was set, and his eyes were steady. He’d been under a certain amount of pressure as well, but nothing compared to Lieutenant Sokolov. The pressure, though, was building.

  We watched the main viewscreen as asteroids flashed past and the blue of Aquila’s energy blasts shot into space all around us. And then a torpedo released, and we watched it flare to life in front of us, and then speed towards its destination.

  “Bring us in close, Sokolov,” I ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he managed to squeak. It would have gone against everything he’d been trained to do. And had Corvus been paying attention, the AI might have stepped in and stopped him. But Corvus was AWOL, and Sokolov knew the plan, and even if this might kill us, if we did nothing, we’d certainly die at Aquila’s hand.

  The ship swooped around an asteroid the size of a small house, chasing the torpedo down. We held our breaths as the missile’s tail obscured our vision, and then at the last second before detonation, Sokolov pulled hard to starboard, bearing our belly to the beast for a split second.

  The asteroid the torpedo hit exploded, rock and space debris belted into our underside. Corvus rocked. Alarms blared. The straps of my seatbelt dug into my chest and sides, stealing all breath. And then the force of the blast pushed us up and away, making the ship collide with more asteroids, and all of our systems to fail.

  Shit.

  “Saitō,” I said as levelly as I could manage.

  “Rebooting,” he shot back. “Stand by, Captain.”

  “Make it count, Commander,” I murmured, gripping the armrests of my chair with aching fingers. I hadn’t realised I’d been clutching the damn thing for so long. My knuckles had all gone white, too.