Peter Telep - Pilgrim stars

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

"So what about these two?" Maniac asked, leering at the boy and woman.

"We don't have time to lose them."

"You bastards are lucky. That's all I can say." Maniac spun back toward the corridor and small hatchway leading to the bridge. "Two minutes. Shit. Blair? You coming or what?"

"Go strap in," Blair repeated to their new passengers, then bounded after Maniac.

Save yourself.

Maybe I don't even want to anymore.

Santyana… Paladin… they're going to lose their lives. And for what? Does Aristee really know what she's done here? So many people have died… will die. It doesn't seem real.

Back on the bridge, Blair settled in at the helm and engaged the engines. Maniac had replaced Karista in the copilot's chair, and Blair motioned that she strap in at the navigator's seat behind them.

After the usual jolt, the Diligent rose off her landing skids, and Blair brought her around. The flight deck's environmental maintenance field panned into view.

"Most of the Pilgrims on our hull are jumping off," said Merlin, now standing atop Blair's console and facing the forward viewport. "But the two near the comm array are still up there."

"Let 'em stay there," Maniac said. "The energy field will waste 'em."

Two Broadsword bombers nearly collided as they flew abreast and blasted through the curtain. Three Rapiers bucked wildly from their berths and chopped their way through the bombers' turbulence. Two of those fighters swept through the field, but the third dipped too low and crashed nose-on into the angle where curtain met deck. Fuel ignited. Orange flames balled and erupted toward the overhead, flanked by steles of swirling black smoke- even as another pair of fighters plunged through the fire and escaped.

Resigned to the fact that no other ship would yield, Blair increased thrust, steered them onto the runway, then punched the bank of afterburners for launch.

Twin streaks of durasteel stole into view as two more Rapiers fled the deck, their pilots giving Maniac some competition for reckless flying.

Fifty meters. Twenty. Ten. The energy curtain abruptly wrapped the merchantman in an opaque blanket that as rapidly yielded to the gray, rectangular launch tunnel.

"Christopher?"

"Wait, Merlin!"

They cleared the tunnel, and never in his life had Blair been more glad to see an unremarkable field of stars. He felt suddenly cradled in their light-

Until the well extended one of its gravitic tentacles and slapped it on the merchantman. The engines quaked against the force, the bulkheads broke into their creaks of protest, and the velocity gauge began racing backward.

"C'mon, honey, you've done this before," Blair muttered. He glanced at an aft camera display showing the Olympus encompassed by the black pool. Small explosions blotted her port ion engine, and still more fighters fled from her bowels.

"If we can't escape the well, can you jump it?" Maniac asked. "Can you do your Pilgrim thing?"

"I don't know."

"Christopher?" Merlin cried, this time sounding more urgent.

"For God's sake, what is it?"

"I think we're going to-"

Everyone fell forward.

"— break free of the well."

Maniac howled in triumph.

"Did we make it?" Karista asked.

"Not yet," answered Merlin. "First we have to-"

"Take down the six bandits on our ass," Maniac finished. "Bearing four-four-one by three-three-five. Didn't the old man tell 'em we surrendered?" He rechecked the radar scope. "Great. Six more riding the rear."

"Get up to the ion gun," Blair said. "Merlin? See if you can get them on the comm. And try to hail Commodore Taggart. Maybe he got out."

Even as Maniac threw off his straps and stood, neutron fire raked its way from amidships to the bow, and Blair watched the shield level indicators drop into the red.

"Well, I've hailed those Rapiers three times," Merlin reported. "No response. And it's clear that every vessel that leaves the Olympus is a target. Our registration and Confederation ID code lack validity since this ship might have been captured by Pilgrims."

"Then contact the Tiger Claw. Get us an assist."

"Christopher, you're assuming these fighters aren't from the Claw."

"Well, are they?"

"As a matter of fact they're from the Fosubius battle group. But I don't think that makes a difference now."

"Just contact the Claw."

With that, Blair seized the control wheel and drove it toward the console, diving twenty, thirty, forty-five degrees as Maniac, up in the gunner's nest, hurled back the first of their retaliatory volleys. Four of the Rapiers buzzed overhead, their thrusters flickering as they looped back to begin another strafe.

Blair knew the math, and the math sucked. The Diligent's maximum velocity peaked out at one hundred and fifty KPS, while the Rapier pilots could propel themselves up to three times as fast, and the fighters were, of course, more maneuverable and better armed.

He suddenly remembered a line Paladin was fond of, a line from a story called "The Open Boat," written six centuries ago by a fellow named Stephen Crane: "When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples."

"Request denied, Commander. Your squadron will maintain position. You will not engage. Gerald out." It's all about politics now, Angel thought.

Gerald couldn't order her to attack other Confederation fighters. Never mind the fact that those pilots were killing Pilgrims trying to surrender. Never mind the fact that those pilots had provoked the Pilgrims into battle. Never mind the fact that Paladin and Blair could be on any one of those fleeing ships…

"Got a Proxima Errant on my scope," Bishop reported. "Looks like the Diligent, Commander. She's under attack."

Sorry, Mr. Gerald. Court-martial me later. "We're out of here, ladies. Fluid four to the Diligent. Break and attack on my mark, clearing zone and falling in to escort positions."

"Uh, ma'am, are you asking us to fire upon Confederation pilots?" Cheddarboy asked.

Bishop guffawed. "No, boy, she's askin' us out to lunch."

"Commodore Taggart may very well be aboard that merchantman," Angel told Cheddarboy. "Those pilots don't seem to care about that."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Burn on my mark," she instructed. "Three, two, one. Burn!"

Hurled forward by full afterburners, Angel braced herself and skimmed each of her displays. Gerald's wonderful mug snapped on the left VDU, which she summarily snapped off, imagining his you're-abandoning-your-post-and-if-you-do-not-return-blah-blah-blah rant that meant absolutely nothing to her at the moment.

She led the other five pilots toward that merchantman, opening her mouth a little as she saw it dive and fall under the relentless cannon fire of a dozen trailing fighters. Someone manned the ion gun, swiveling in an abortive effort to track the attackers. The operator finally got off a shot that sheered off a Rapier's wing and punched it into a spiraling climb.

"Here we go, ladies," she began, then kissed her career goodbye. "Break and attack!"

Bishop and Hunter responded immediately, peeling away and booting off guided missiles.

Although Cheddarboy and Gangsta hesitated a second, they pledged themselves to Angel by showering two of the Rapiers with concentrated blasts of neutron fire.

The veteran Sinatra banked hard and came around on the Diligent's six o'clock to simultaneously launch two dumbfire missiles at nearly point-blank range. No, he hadn't directed his fire at the merchantman, but at two Rapiers whose pilots were obviously too intent on their strafe. They flew in a tight pair, just a couple of meters off each other's wings.