Another rough hyperspace transition wrenched the ship about as we descended. This one wasn’t nearly as bad, since the potential barrier between the Gamma and Beta layers isn’t as high as the one you have to breach to get into the Delta layer. But even so, I heard a lot of ominous groaning from the ship.
“Akio, have your people evacuated the center of the ship?” I asked.
“Mostly. Why?”
“Because I need to take that self-destruct bomb out of play before Yamashida realizes he’s lost, or he might use it. I’m not sure how much damage my demo charge is going to do to the ship, but all things considered I’d rather play it safe.”
“Fair point. Everyone critical is already at a safe distance, but I’ll see if we can get the rest of the techs out. They’re starting to open the hangar doors now, so he’s probably gotten to the pinnace.”
“No problem. They’ll need at least a couple of minutes to get ready to launch.”
Sure enough, there was a sealed hatch with a lit vacuum warning not far from the lift. I threw a deflector barrier across the corridor, and hit the override so I could open it. My team slipped through, with the barrier preventing any air from escaping, and Emla closed the hatch behind us. From there it was a matter of moments to find our way through the broken wreckage of the turret and out onto the hull.
It was kind of eerie out there. Long radiator panels glowed cherry red as they struggled to dump the heat of battle, their light casting long shadows across the hull. Another secondary battery loomed up beyond a long row of point defense lasers, its armored bulk as big as a house. Overhead a sprinkling of stars lit the sky, looking deceptively normal.
But this was the Beta Layer. Those stars were made of antimatter, just like everything else here. The ship was still leaking streamers of air and fuel from its many wounds, and I could see the harsh glare of radiation as the leakage touched the tenuous antimatter gas that made up the interstellar medium here. If the ship encountered a dust mote while we were out here that glow would instantly turn into a flash of gamma rays hot enough to flash-fry me.
Better not waste time, then.
I pushed off, and sent myself drifting along a meter or so above the ship’s hull. In easy range of my field if I needed to change course, but it would be better if I didn’t. Yamashida’s people would be watching for trouble, and my manipulator field might show up on a sensor somewhere.
Emla pushed off behind me, dragging the gunbot along with her. We drifted lazily past the secondary turret, and up a long armored slope to the base of one of the main mass driver turrets. There we changed course, circling the massive bulk of the turret and heading off towards the bow of the ship.
Two hundred meters away, a giant hatch finished sliding open. Bright light shone out of the chasm beneath it. Were we too late? Were they going to launch before we could get there?
Finally we reached the edge of the opening. I touched the hull with one hand, and brought myself to a stop. Then I eased forward, and peeked over the edge.
There was the ship I was looking for. Seventy meters long, with easily six times the volume of the Speedy Exit. We were at the aft end of the escape ship, with a clear view of its main drive and most of its belly.
Sure enough, my sensors confirmed what I’d guessed from the pictures. It was built for speed and stealth rather than combat, and despite its size it didn’t have more than a couple of cems of armor. Not only that, the only weapon that could bear on me from this angle was a lone point defense laser mounted in a lightweight turret that was designed for fast rotation instead of durability.
By the time Emla and the gunbot arrived next to me I had my fire plan all worked out. A single bolt from the gunbot’s particle beam reduced that laser turret to an expanding cloud of wreckage. Then I was zipping across the intervening space with my hammer in my hands.
I brought it town on the remains of the turret once, twice, three times, tripping the rocket for a burst of power with each blow. The massive hammer head sank deep into the broken machinery, smashing the thin armor around the edges and punching a hole half a meter deep into the guts of the shuttle. I dropped a plasma grenade into the hole, and backed off.
The detonation blew a much bigger hole in the shuttle’s belly. A gout of plasma washed over me, but with the endless vacuum of space all around it dissipated too fast to cause me any harm. I darted back in to lob a second plasma grenade into the crater, and then took another look. Was that the insides of a hyperspace converter I was looking at? It sure was.
I carved a deep hole into the machinery with my laser, and dropped my last plasma grenade into it. This time there was a secondary explosion, and a concussion that ripped a massive hole in the side of the ship.
Emla and the gunbot hadn’t been idle while I was playing. They’d shot up all three of the ship’s fusion rockets with their particle beam cannons, blowing holes in the rocket nozzles and wrecking the emitters for the deflector fields that protected them from superheated exhaust during operation. I rejoined them with a wide grin on my face.
“So much for that escape plan,” I said.
“Yeah, he’s not going anywhere in that,” Emla giggled. “Now what?”
“Well, just to make sure he doesn’t take out his frustrations on everyone else…”
I sent a message to my counterparts guarding the demo charge. They all unloaded from their bots, merging back into me in a dizzying rush of data integration. Then my little bomb went off, and the whole middle of the ship blew apart in an enormous ball of fire.
I cycled my shields to full overload just as the wave front hit, and held us to the hull as the whole frigate bucked and shook. Then it was over. The fireball dissipated into the depths of space, and I saw that the frigate had broken in half. Well, what was left of it. About fifty or sixty meters of the middle of the ship was completely gone.
“That. Was. Awesome!” Emla enthused. “Can we do it again?”
“That was my last bomb, silly. Come on, we’re done with fighting for now.”
I wasn’t sure if Yamashida had survived getting his escape ship wrecked or not, but it didn’t really matter. He was out of options. Sleeping Dragon’s warships would catch up with us soon, and what was left of his frigate was in no condition to fight. They’d be boarding him in half an hour.
Maybe Kavin would be with them?
A guy who didn’t come with a family of backstabbing schemers eager to drag me into their problems. Yeah, and he’d have his own army with him, so I wouldn’t have to do all the fighting. That sounded pretty good right now.
Epilogue
Being safely back in my own cabin was heaven.