Peter Telep - Pilgrim stars

Angel selected the squadron commander's private channel. The guy went by the moniker of "Tyrant," and if he had half a brain, he would listen. "Angel to Tyrant, copy?"

A web of scars lay over the man's cheeks and brow. He had been badly burned and probably couldn't afford a new face. At least his oxygen mask covered most of it. "Tyrant here. What do you want, Commander?"

"Break off your attack."

"Attack? We're on the defensive."

"Break off your attack!"

"You know the rules of engagement."

"I know 'em, and you broke 'em. They've surrendered."

"They had us locked on. We were targets."

"Of course they had you locked. Standard precaution. They didn't-"

"Look, lady, I don't have to justify this to you. Tyrant out."

"Son of a bitch," she whispered, then threw back her head.

"Ma'am?" Sinatra sounded over her private channel. "Gettin' hairy out there. What say we drift over and pop us a few Pilgrims?"

"Shut up," she yelled. "Just shut the hell up!"

SOL SECTOR.TERRA QUADRANT.PLANET EARTH.CS OLYMPUS.

2654.128.1045 HOURS CONFEDERATION STANDARD TIME

"It'll take a couple of minutes to get everything online," Blair said as he tapped in a code on the Diligent's ramp control panel. "But we can make it."

"In this bucket?" Maniac asked as he watched the ramp lower into place. "Where's my Rapier?" He pulled away from Karista and had retreated not more than a few steps when a half dozen Pilgrims whose sashes identified them as ordnance specialists shoved their way around him. They ignored Maniac's cursing, focusing intently on the troopships across the bay.

Blair looked past Maniac to a surreal image of blistering panic. Though many of the Pilgrims on board remained at their stations, there had to be two, maybe three hundred people screaming and crowding the ramps of those eight troopships, and Blair imagined a similar riot on the Olym-pus's forward flight deck. The frenetic atmosphere left Blair feeling as panicked as the others. Somewhere across the bay, gunfire tore holes of silence in the commotion. More screams. And the chaos returned, mounting steadily toward a crescendo.

Just clear your head. Do the job. Fly them out.

"Most of them won't make it," Karista shouted, blinking to hold back the tears. "How many can we take?"

"Ten, fifteen at the most," Blair said. "But we have to save room for Santyana, his family, and the commodore."

"If they don't get their asses here soon, I'd go without 'em," Maniac said as he surveyed the swarm of Pilgrims for a second, then shook his head and headed back for the Diligent.

"Hey!" a young woman cried, clutching a boy of two or three. "Are you getting out? Can you take us?"

"Attention," came the NAVCOM AI's disembodied voice. "Ship will reach PNR velocity in four minutes."

Blair tensed as he studied the woman. "Get in."

"Thank you, Brotur. Thank you." She hustled past him.

"What're you gonna do, Blair? Make us too heavy to escape the well?" Maniac snarled. "Give me this!" He ripped the pistol from Blair's hand, then cocked his head toward the hold. "Get this bitch pre-flighted. I'm guarding the hatch."

Realizing that an argument would only waste time, Blair staved off his anger and shifted inside. "Karista?" he called back. "I need your help."

After making sure that the woman and child had found the crew cabin jump seats, Blair nervously tripped and banged his way to the bridge, where his trembling fingers drummed on touchpads at the helm and navigation stations. He swiveled a pair of screens closer and watched data bars flood and scroll with ship's status reports. Emergency warm-up and pre-flight in progress.

"What do want me to do?" Karista said, staring at the foreign landscape of flashing displays.

"Just get in that seat," Blair said, gesturing to the copilot's chair to starboard. "Panel there marked life support. Activate, select diagnostic, vital systems only."

She sat, lifted a hand. "Uh, okay."

"Hey, Merlin. I need you, too."

The old man coalesced from the flash of his activation and paced along the top of the navigation console. " Now I know how it is, Christopher. You only call when you want me to pick locks or when you're about to be atomized. You wouldn't just like to hang out some time and, as they say, shoot the breeze? No. I'm just a tool, a holographic helot."

"A what? Forget it. We'll talk about this later. Right now I need you to link to ship's systems. Monitor diagnostics and give the commands for emergency repairs as needed."

"Why do you need me for that? You can-"

Blair sprang from his seat.

"Where are you going?" Karista asked.

"This means a lot to him," Blair said, holding up Paladin's cross. "He's not coming back."

"And neither will you if you go after him."

"I owe him."

He ducked and wound his way toward the hold, feeling a definite rumble pass through all one hundred tonnes of the old errant.

"Attention. Ship will reach PNR velocity in three minutes."

An almost deafening discord filtered in from the open hatch. Troopship turbines warbled over the cursing, the shouting, the moans. As Blair drew closer, he saw that Maniac had backed himself up to the hatchway and now waved his pistol at a wall of fifty, sixty, maybe seventy-five Pilgrims, their faces burnished an angry red. "Let me out," Blair said.

Maniac ignored him, his attention commanded by the mob. " I will shoot!"

"Let us on, you bastard!" someone clamored. "You've got more room on this errant! The troopships are full! Don't let us die here!"

A round ricocheted off the hull, missing Maniac's shoulder by a finger's length.

"That's it," Maniac said, then ducked back into the hold and slapped his hand on the interior ramp control.

Seven or eight Pilgrims jumped onto the gangway as it angled up, hydraulics groaning under the added weight.

"Get off," Blair shouted. "It'll crush you."

A teenage boy and a heavyset woman of forty or so managed to pull their arms and legs completely onto the ramp and came sliding into the ship. Three more rioters slipped off and fell back into the crowd. Another two met the same fate, but the last man, a muscular blonde of about twenty, got his hands caught in the ramp as it began to seal into the hull. Blair looked away as the Pilgrim shrieked, bones crunched, and the severed appendages thumped to the deck.

Maniac jammed his pistol into the teenage boy's head. "You're going back out." Then he aimed at the lady. "So are you."

"Captain's quarters are back there," Blair told the two Pilgrims. "Get in and strap down."

"We got no reason to save them," Maniac said, so enraged that he nearly foamed at the mouth. He turned the pistol on Blair.

And for a moment, Blair felt the same. Here they were, saving four strangers, when Santyana and his family and the commodore were still out there. But how would those two get past the mob? Maybe Paladin could escape on the captain's launch. Maybe Santyana could catch a lift on one of the troopships in the forward deck.

That won't happen. You know that. You just want to make yourself feel better about abandoning them. You are abandoning them. And maybe it was fate that these four strangers got on board. Don't question it. Just go. Do the job.

More gunfire pinged off the sealed hatch. Footsteps rattled from the overhead.

"Christopher?" Merlin called, perched on the ramp's control. "Pre-flight is complete. Diagnostics complete. Impulse engines answering to commands. We're good to go, but I count nineteen Pilgrims on our hull. Two are trying to destroy our communications array. I should also point out that there is no response from the flight control officer; therefore, there is no flight order, and I've failed to locate the deck boss."