Foresight, page 23
“Frank, disable oversteer intervention,” Nicholas said. The auto-corrective functionality would make navigating the canyons difficult, if not impossible.
“Disabling oversteer intervention is not recommended,” the AI replied. “Please confirm override.”
“Override confirmed.”
“Oversteer intervention disabled.”
Nicholas didn’t sense any immediate change, but he knew he would shortly. He banked the ship hard left again as he neared the opening to the canyon with all its side gullies and gorges. He avoided another blast of plasma that chewed into the face of the canyon’s rocky northern cliff. Slowing slightly and keeping all of his fingers light on the control surface, he descended another hundred feet between the two escarpments, still a good distance apart but narrowing ahead.
“Okay, assholes, let’s see how well they teach you to fly on other planets.”
Nicholas punched the throttle again, sending Foresight racing forward. The lead alien ship dove in behind him, its next plasma blast coming up short because of Frank’s sudden acceleration. The bogey overshot the approach angle just enough for its wide wing to nearly strike the canyon wall before it corrected. It turned sideways to slip through the narrowing channel and stay on Foresight’s tail.
“Not bad,” Nicholas said, banking hard right at a fork in the cliffs, and then left at another.
The alien ship matched him on the first maneuver but overcorrected on the second, this time smashing the sharp edge of its wingtip through the limestone. Spewing rock debris, it tumbled away, slamming into the other side of the canyon.
“I take that back,” Nicholas said, smirking at the victory.
Taking two quick hits from the trailing alien ships, Foresight almost followed the alien in. Shuddering, the ship pitched and yawed wildly out of control. Fighting to regain control, Nicholas refused to panic. He made micro-movements on the stick under his thumb, easing Foresight back into level flight in the middle of the canyon.
Quickly checking the grid, he saw that four alien ships were still chasing him. The other four had vanished from his sensors. Fairly certain that wasn’t a good sign, he didn’t have time to worry about it. The alien ships still with him spread out in a wide section of the canyon and fired steady streams of plasma, hitting Foresight more often than not. The shields were holding for now, but he could tell by the increasing severity of pitching and shuddering that they were getting weaker with each strike.
He broke left, flying into another adjoining gorge and dropping low to the river. The thrusters pushed the water up in a rooster tail of vapor behind Foresight, the alien ships punching through the distraction without any indication it affected them at all. Narrowing their formation to adjust for the width of the canyon, they nearly touched wingtips as they flew in unison behind him.
“AI then,” Nicholas guessed. How else could they stick so tight to one another in this environment without crashing? With the water screen ineffective, he went for altitude, banking right at the next split.
He barely had time to react as the canyon narrowed. A winding path to the right was the only way through. With the oversteer intervention disabled, the slightest mistake would send them into the canyon wall, and at these speeds the already diminished shields wouldn’t hold for long.
As if to emphasize the point, another plasma blast hit the shields, pushing the shaking ship toward the wall. Nicholas gritted his teeth as he nudged the thumbstick and tapped the vectoring controls, Foresight’s jets kicking out loose debris as they passed almost close enough to the cliff wall to kiss it.
Slipping back and forth through the winding terrain, Nicholas watched the rear view feed as one of the alien ships got too close to the side, smacking it and careening out of control. It nearly struck a second craft before tumbling into the river.
Two down, seven to go. Nicholas still hated the odds, but at least he had managed to reduce them slightly. He rocketed out into a wider section of canyon, looking ahead for his next maneuver.
“Nick,” Yasmin said over the comm, her voice demanding his attention.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Why aren’t you shooting back at them?”
Nicholas had forgotten the others could watch the feeds at their individual stations. How much more could they do from back there? “What do you mean? The shields are active.”
“So?”
“So we can’t use the spines for offense and defense at the same time. That’s what you told me.”
“No, but with the power levels the way they are, the switch-over will happen fast. We’ll only be vulnerable for a few seconds.”
“Now you tell me?”
“I thought you knew.”
If the situation weren’t so serious, Nicholas could have laughed. Instead, he tapped the controls to deploy the spines, which spread away from the hull, carrying the web of defensive energy with them. He would need to be careful with his attack. A few seconds without shields was still plenty long enough for a lance of plasma to kill them all.
“Jennifer, mark the bogeys on the Spinal Control System,” he said, unable to handle added workload while navigating the tight confines of the canyon.
“Yes sir,” Jennifer replied, still managing to hang onto the meager contents of her stomach. A red ring appeared around each of the alien ships, marking them as targets. The ring around one of the ships turned green when the SCS settled on a firing solution.
Not yet. He wanted all three rings to switch to green before he risked dropping the shields.
The chase continued, with Nicholas managing to stay a few lengths ahead of the alien ships as they tracked him through the canyons. Occasional plasma bursts hit the rocky cliffs on either side, blowing out huge chunks of debris or striking the shields, diminishing them slightly with each hit. The rings around the targets alternated between red and green, the confines and the alien squadron’s configuration making it hard to align the solution.
Patience, he reminded himself. Wait for the shot to come to you.
He banked into another narrow chasm, still splitting his attention between the projection and the view ahead, waiting for all greens. The alien ships slowed slightly behind him, navigating the tighter space more carefully and dropping back as a result. Or maybe they were finally giving up?
He broke out of the chasm and banked to the left, into another gorge splitting off from the main canyon.
His heart jumped when his eyes landed on the four alien ships hovering in front of him at the far end of the gorge, positioned as though they had known he would cross their paths the entire time.
“Captain Shepherd!” Jennifer cried out as if he couldn’t see the enemy directly ahead of them.
He only had a split-second to make a decision. Blow through and hope the shields could withstand the concentrated fire of the entire alien squadron or trigger the spines and risk being hit in the meantime. Fight or flight.
He chose to fight.
The visual targeting system allowed him to specify the ships ahead in an instant, simply by looking at them. Frank designated the alien ships as targets, their static positions helping the SCS lock quickly onto them. All four rings turned green on the front side of the projection, two of the three doing the same behind Foresight.
Six out of seven. Good enough.
“Hang on!” Nicholas shouted, cutting the thrusters and activating the anti-gravity coils at full power at the same time he triggered the spines.
Energy beams lashed out at the alien ships in both directions. Nicholas didn’t know if the aliens had shields of their own until he saw the beams digging into the ships’ surfaces, ablating and passing through the rocklike exterior. The alien ships returned fire, a stream of plasma converging on Foresight from both ends of the canyon.
Nicholas engaged the ant-gravity coils, flinging Foresight forcefully upward. Gs shoved him down hard in his seat, Without shields, the enemy plasma bolts scraped the underbelly, singing the hull on their way past.
The alien ships didn’t get another shot as the beams from the spines did their job. Three of the ships immediately tumbled from the air, crashing into the water. The others suffered catastrophic damage that sent them reeling off course. One of them smashed into the lone undamaged target, both of them ending up as two plumes of smoke and falling debris after slamming into the canyon wall. The remaining pair attempted to continue the chase, only to lose power. One plummeted to the water, catching a wing to cartwheel into the rocky end of the gorge, the other skidding to a stop atop the northern mesa.
“Woooo-hoooo! Take that assholes!” Gills shouted from the main deck, so loud Nicholas could hear it on the flight deck.
Nicholas only allowed himself a final satisfied smirk as he reengaged the thrusters and cut the anti-gravity, sending Foresight into a new ascent toward the stars.
Chapter 38
“I always knew you were a good pilot, Nick,” Yasmin said over the comms as they climbed. “I never really understood how good. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“I got lucky,” Nicholas replied. “That’s all.” He kept his gaze glued on the threat projection. “I wish I could say we’re home free, but those smaller ships had to come from somewhere. Is everyone okay back there?”
“I changed my mind,” Macey said. “I want to go with the arkship.”
“No refunds,” Scott replied. “That was better than any roller coaster.”
“I still think I’m going to puke,” Jennifer added.
“Captain, you think there’s a bigger ship waiting for us out there?” Briar asked. “Like a mothership?”
“I don’t know,” Nicholas replied. “I hope not, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“No big deal,” Gills said. “We’ll just blast that one too. We’re unstoppable.”
“I appreciate the attitude, but let’s not get too cocky,” Nicholas said. “I never imagined there were aliens other than the trife on Earth, and I definitely never guessed they would have starships of their own. Grimmel said we have no idea of what’s out here, and he was right. We can’t assume anything.”
Nicholas’ attitude quieted the group. He hated to play the pragmatic downer, but he couldn’t afford to let any of them, himself included, be lulled into a false sense of security or superiority. While he was pleased with his ability to maneuver Foresight within the canyons, he wasn’t sure how impressed he should be for winning the battle against the alien squadron. They hadn’t proven to be anything more than average with regard to their skill, and the spines had made short work of most of the unshielded ships.
More concerning to him was the fact that they had managed to get in front of him without registering on Foresight’s sensors until it was almost too late. He didn’t know how they had done it, but he guessed it had something to do with the uneven surface of the ships and the fact they weren’t moving. Either way, it seemed almost as if the alien ships had been made to defeat Foresight’s advanced sensor technology before that technology even existed. He wondered what Yasmin would think about that.
“So what are we supposed to do now, Captain Shepherd?” Jennifer asked.
“That depends on what the enemy does,” Nicholas replied. “We have the data from Grimmel’s computer. Ideally, I’d like to give Yasmin some time to review it. I’m not sure the other side will give us that time.”
“We have the energy unit and the slip drive,” Yasmin said. “We don’t need to linger near Earth. We can go pretty much anywhere, as long as it isn’t here.”
“We may have the slip drive, but we don’t know how to use it.”
“That isn’t entirely true,” Yasmin countered. “The last patch we uploaded included a slip test, remember? We never had a chance to upload a new patch, so it’s still in Frank’s data storage. All we have to do is execute the aborted test parameters. As an added benefit, Frank has to sling us around the moon before the slip can happen. If there is an alien mothership or something out there waiting for us, it’ll have to keep up.”
“You saw how those other ships accelerated. I have a feeling anything they have can pace us.”
“In atmosphere, maybe. Those ships were aerodynamic as hell. Foresight is more like a flying almond. It has no right staying airborne against air friction and gravity. But it does. That’s our play, Nick. Run the test; let Frank handle the slip drive. Get somewhere safe where we can regroup and figure out our next steps.”
“What if we end up stuck in the middle of nowhere? Space is really, really big.”
“It’s a risk we need to take. These aliens went through a lot of trouble to keep us from getting away from Earth. That tells me that whatever they’re up to, we have the potential to stop it. Please. Trust me.”
Nicholas closed his eyes. The last time she had asked him to trust her he hadn’t gone far enough with his faith. If he had taken the risk to complete the original test parameters then, Luke might still be alive now.
Or not. There was no way to know that for sure. The trife were already on their way from the Invenergy array by then. Would they have evacuated the base in time if the mission had been a success?
He couldn’t simply go back to change his decision, but Grimmel had suggested that somehow he could go back. All he had to do was discover how.
All he had to do was put his complete trust in his wife. Why was that so hard?
It wasn’t.
“Okay,” he said, opening his eyes. “Let’s do this. Frank, reinitialize mission upload sixty-three delta for retest.”
“Yes, Captain,” the AI replied. “Mission upload sixty-three delta reinitialized.”
Nicholas paused again. “Yazz, I do trust you. But last time Frank wanted to make some pretty hard maneuvers.”
“You made some hard maneuvers yourself down in the canyon,” she countered.
“Only for a few seconds at a time. This could lead to sustained high-G maneuvers. It might be dangerous.”
“No pain, no gain, Cap,” Gills said.
“Let’s do this, Captain,” Briar added. “For Luke.”
“Yeah, for Luke,” Scott agreed.
“I’ve got my barf bag ready, Captain,” Jennifer said. “For Luke.”
Nicholas couldn’t hold back his smile. “All right then. Frank, execute.”
Chapter 39
With the neural network handling Foresight’s climb through the troposphere for a second time and into orbit, Nicholas quickly briefed the rest of the passengers on proper technique for handling lengthy high-G maneuvers. He couldn’t be certain Frank would set a course that would make the training necessary until it actually created the navigational dataset, but it was definitely better to be prepared.
Watching Earth shrink in the rear camera feeds, Macey couldn’t quite wait for Nicholas to finish his instructions before launching into a whirlwind of animated chatter. “Blimey!” she howled. “Look at that, will ya? We’re in space, mates! Oh...” Her excitement faded into a frown when she identified the damage they had done to their own planet in the futile effort to destroy the trife, but her somber mood didn’t last long. “Brilliant!” she shouted, “We’re bonafide space cadets!”
Scott burst out laughing, and Nicholas closed his mouth, one corner twitching in amusement despite his best effort to dredge up a good chastisement to quiet her.
“Space cadets?” Gills gave her a sour look. “Do you looney Limeys know what that means?”
“I ain’t looney,” Macey argued.
“You are if you’re a space cadet.”
“I don’t think it means the same to her as it does to us,” Briar offered.
“Outlaws,” Scott said. “We’re outlaws. But good outlaws. Like the A-team.”
“Who?” Briar asked.
“The A-team. It’s an old television show. I caught it on Netflix Classics.” Scott deepened his voice. “In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them....maybe you can hire The A-Team.”
Nicholas finally grinned and shook his head, letting his makeshift crew have their banter. After all they had been through, they needed a chance to detox a little while Frank achieved orbit and shifted to the next phase of the test run.
“I don’t think we’re like the A-team,” Gills said. “I’m the only crack commando among you.”
“You’re the only one with a swelled head among us,” Macey quipped, laughing at her slight.
“Maybe we’re more like the Dukes of Hazzard.” Gills offered, and he started singing... “Just some good old boys. Didn’t mean any harm.”
“We aren’t all boys,” Briar said.
“Neither were the Dukes of Hazzard. There was Daisy Duke.”
“Try again.”
“We aren’t outlaws,” Jennifer said. “We’re more like rebels.”
“Rebels without a clue,” Scott said, smirking.
“Just don’t make this into a Star Wars thing,” Briar told him.
“Okay, then maybe we’re cowboys.”
“Cow...boys? More than half of us are female,” Briar pointed out again.
“Cowfolk? Cowpeeps? Spacecows?” Scott laughed. “Whatever.”
They continued their joking while Nicholas returned his gaze to the sensor projection. They had cleared the thermosphere, and the AI had cut the thrusters, the ship coasting into position. For the moment, they were alone, but his instincts insisted that wasn’t going to last. The alien ships that had carried out the running battle with him in the Grand Canyon had dropped in from orbit. They hadn’t just come out of thin air; they had originated somewhere. And Yasmin was right. The enemy clearly didn’t want them to escape.
“Exo-atmospheric launch complete,” Frank said.
