With any luck, we killed another good soldier today, Clarke observed somberly. It was easy to think of it as Tal-Kader’s fault. But until when could he hide behind that excuse? At some point, when his hands bathed in enough innocent blood, it would drown him.
“Congratulations, Eagle, excellent shot,” he said aloud, pushing those thoughts out of his mind. Later, if he lived, he’d have to face himself in the privacy of his quarters.
“Thank you, Captain. Shall we press the advantage?” said Mather.
Pascari entered the conversation. “Let’s kill these bastards, people. No mercy.”
Clarke wanted to yell at the man. Instead, he focused on the VCD. Vortex and Vortex-1-3 were pulling away from Vortex-1-2, leaving the crippled vessel to fend for itself. The destroyer hadn’t used escape capsules yet, or announced its surrender, so as far as the rules of war were concerned, it was still a combatant.
“Eagle, do us the honor,” Clarke said. He hoped the other commander would order the evacuation when he saw the torpedoes coming and realized there was no way their ship could stop them all.
If he’s still alive.
“Understood. Two minutes until we get our torpedo bays ready for another launch,” said Mather.
Meanwhile, the other two members of Vortex-1 continued pulling away from the third destroyer.
Some younger crewmen in the bridge started cheering, interpreting Vortex-1’s movements as a retreat. It sure looked like one. Something had to be wrong. Erickson wouldn’t give up that easily, not with Sentinel watching all this take place from its far away position at the edge of the Star System.
Admiral Ernest U. Wentraub was watching, and Erickson still had escorts and another destroyer to throw away. So he wasn’t running.
What are you doing? Clarke thought. Without their point defenses, Vortex-1-2 was a sitting duck. He imagined himself as a sailor inside that ship, wondering why the rest of his force was abandoning him, hoping against hope it was some genius ploy from Captain Erickson while watching Eagle’s targeting lasers prepare a firing solution for the incoming torpedoes.
Vortex-1 prepared for a cannon flyby, still maneuvering under hard gs. It wouldn’t be an accurate shot, Clarke knew. Accuracy and acceleration were hard matches against moving targets.
Oh. Shit. Clarke’s heart skipped a beat when realization struck him.
Vortex-1 opened fire seconds before Eagle’s torpedoes bypassed Vortex-1-2’s defenders and reduced the ship to a radioactive dust cloud. Several escorts died in the blast. Neither those nor the destroyer deployed escape capsules.
“Eagle, that cannon salvo headed in your direction,” Alicante informed the blind ship. “I suggest you begin evasive maneuvers.”
“Agreed,” said Rehman, who watched all this unfold from Falcon’s safe position at the opposite side of Eagle. “You don’t want to try to deflect those, you won’t get another lucky shot like that in your entire life.”
“Those aren’t cannon projectiles,” said Clarke. His eyes and instinct beat Hawk’s computers by a second. “And Erickson isn’t aiming at Eagle.”
During Eagle’s blind maneuvering, fed by Hawk’s computers, it had failed to take into account its position relative to Dione. Clarke watched the planet, at the corner of the tactical map, far enough away that it shouldn’t have been involved in the battle. He traced an imaginary straight line that connected the planet to Eagle, and Eagle to Vortex-1 and its incoming projectiles.
“What do you mean—?” started Pascari, but then Alicante read Navigation’s urgent report:
“Correction, Vortex-1 has fired kinetics, not cannons,” he said, dismay cracking his voice as he spoke. “Their kinetics have direct course toward Dione…damage projections estimate a total loss of human life when—if—they make contact.”
“Oh, my God…” someone said.
A decades-old phantom flashed through Clarke’s eyes, almost an afterimage burned in his mind’s eye. The sight of the Appleseed’s bridge collapsing, with Captain Yin dying in his arms. So much death, with him in the middle of it.
This was going to be much, much worse. Concerns about Isabella Reiner’s extraction fled Clarke’s mind as the sheer horror of the situation engulfed him.
Tal-Kader had crossed a line from which there was no coming back.
Whatever the cost, Clarke had to stop those kinetics.
30
CHAPTER THIRTY
HIRSEN
Hirsen’s hair smacked across his forehead as the hovercycle dodged the static traffic of Alwinter’s congested avenues. Above, it was as if the entire colony’s security forces chased the gangers to the landing pad, with the occasional enforcer’s black uniform visible among security’s white in the dome rail capsules. Every time he looked, the capsules closed in.
The butt of Lotti’s rifle jerked when she made a tight turn and hit Hirsen in the ribs. He muttered a distracted curse and grabbed the ganger’s waist a bit harder. It would be a sad end for him to die splattered against a food truck.
Lotti glanced back for a second and chuckled. “Weren’t you a big, mean monk ninja, Deli? This must seem like nothing compared to your adventures.”
“Shut up and drive,” Hirsen advised. He wanted to tell her the death-ratio of hovercycles were well beyond any other civilian transportation method in the Edge, but she’d have only laughed harder at that.
Youth. Some things never changed.
Next to them, Nerd almost crashed against a security drone that flew a bit too low in its attempts to herd them to a nearby blockade. The kid’s vehicle sent a shower of sparks flying in every direction as he drifted sideways to avoid the magnetic tacks the drone spread.
“Haven’t they run out of those prim tacks?” Lotti muttered as she shot Nerd a worried glance. Nerd maneuvered next to her hovercycle and resumed formation with the other gangers, but his own craft sagged a bit.
“Yes,” Hirsen said, yelling to make himself heard over the noise of the engine. “But new capsules keep joining the chase.”
“Spectacular,” Lotti said.
A holo next to the control panel showed the optimal route to the landing pad, but Hirsen and Lotti ignored it. The optimal route was the one AlSec hoped they’d take. The gangers had to blaze their own path without the assistance of Dione’s GPS systems.
Lotti spearheaded a mad dash through a crowded mall plaza.
“Fuck no!” Hirsen barely had time to brace himself when the ganger queen, laughing like a maniac, drove the hovercycle through a clothing store’s front window. The glass exploded in a million pieces, all over his reg-suit and hair. Specks of blood hit his face, coming from Lotti’s exposed arms, now covered in scratches.
The ganger drove the hovercycle through Women’s Winter Season department and used her vehicle’s exhaust port to burn the cloned seal coats to a crisp.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” Lotti announced. A nearby flock of makeup-caked ladies shrieked and ran as the gangers stampeded through the sacred domain—now desecrated.
“The Edge’s fucking doomed,” Hirsen whispered.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing! Dear Reiner, careful with that Pomerania!”
Lotti dodged the terrified dog, which was recovered by its equally terrified owner seconds after the gangers’ passing.
“So that’s what they’re called. You know, I’ve always thought dog reg-suits looked saccharine. Fucking rich people, am I right?”