Kwaide (The Ammonite Galaxy Series, Book 2)

chapter Twenty-one

Chapter 21

SIX CAME TO with a start, and then wished that he hadn’t. His head was splitting. He looked around him. He seemed to be aboard the Resistance, but he had obviously been dropped from a large height, and for some reason he was in the top galley. He scrambled painfully to his feet and reeled for a moment. He felt dizzy. He clutched at his head, and felt a severe burn right along one side. The heat of the laser had cauterized the same wound it had caused, but there was a clear cleft gouged out of his upper cheek and scalp. He shook his head in a vain attempt to clear it of befuddlement, and then set off for the control room at high speed. The Sellites! They would have pinpointed his position by now! And something had clearly gone wrong with Arcan. He pressed anxiously on the orthogel bracelet but it remained stubbornly silent.

He slithered into the control seat, just as the panel emitted a shrill and urgent warning of incoming missiles. Six jabbed at the buttons in front of him viciously. His chances of avoiding being pulverized were diminishing. Even though he knew that they wouldn’t use the nuclear weapons they were still carrying, it was four to one, and the Resistance was an obsolescent model. He tried to think clearly. He had to disappear. 

He looked at the screen in front of him, which was now flashing with ever larger red letters, warning of imminent missile attack. 

“Yes, yes, I know,” he muttered to the screen. “Tell me how to get out of it, will you?”

The screen flickered, and then delivered its verdict: evasion impossible.

Six kicked at the console. “Fat lot of use you are,” he told it. Then he settled himself more firmly in the chair and began to push more buttons. “Well, if you can’t do anything about it,” he said, “I shall just have to manage on my own!”

He disengaged the automatic function, and took control of the ship. Suddenly he remembered Grace’s story of the space station. Could he manage something similar? Was there anything he could jettison which would confuse the intelligent missiles? He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to visualize the plans of the ship from the manual he had been forced to study all that time ago, when he had been slowly orbiting Nomus.

And suddenly he had it. His fingers flashed to the screen, beginning a digital race against time. The Sellite ships carried nearly all of their fuel in two long ‘arms’, which protruded on the starboard side of the ship. He remembered reading that failsafe hatches had been placed strategically at the junction of both arms. In the case of a fire in the fuel deposit, the arms would automatically detach from the body of the spaceship, and he ought to be able to manoeuvre the spaceship to a safe distance on the contents of the smaller and individual port tank arm.

This meant that he would have to set fire to his starboard fuel deposits, risking the consequent explosion. That should create such a flaring heat source as to confuse the most intelligent of missiles. 

His fingers sped over the console. If only he had time! First he had to raise the temperature in the deposit. That meant overriding all of the security failsafes in that area. He looked back at the large red figures announcing the impending disaster. He only had five minutes before impact! Whatever happened, he was going to be horribly close to an extremely large explosion.

At last! He dared to breathe again. The temperature was creeping up in the fuel tank, but it would not be enough on its own. He needed to increase the pressure, and add a mixture of oxygen. Well, he could do both at the same time if he force-fed pure oxygen into the tank. That should bring the auto-ignition point way down.There! He slapped both hands on the console as he circumvented the last failsafe, and watched the console anxiously. The pressure was rocketing, and the temperature was still slowly crawling up. He had done a quick calculation of the kindling point, but his was a rough estimate, at best. He couldn’t afford to be more than five percent out, either way.

His heart was racing, adrenaline pumping around his body. He was ready, but couldn’t fly or fight. The build-up of tension was almost unbearable. Then, with a dull ‘oomph’ the forward tank ignited, and spurts of fire billowed out, seeping through large cracks caused by the explosive mixture igniting under the already straining hull plates. Almost immediately a second dull crump announced the ignition of the second starboard tank. 

There was a harsh grinding sound as the two starboard failsafe hatches closed firmly against the fire. Alarms were now sounding all over the ship. 

Six waited, hardly able to breathe. Not too soon, he told himself. The two starboard tanks had to detach completely before he could pile on the speed and get himself away from the sure explosion of the fuel tanks and the possible explosion of several incoming missiles. 

He exhaled shakily. It was taking an aeon to separate the fuel tanks. He glanced at the console. Less than one minute left! He would still be far too close to the explosions even if they did deviate to the new and higher heat source. Prickles of cold sweat stood out on his forehead. 

There! A green light signaled complete detachment of the two burning fuel tanks. He had little more to do now than hit the enter button and pray to Sacras that he would be in time.

The little ship shot backwards from the burning tanks. There was no time to turn her around so Six limited the movement to an increasing backward velocity. It meant that he had an excellent view of the burning tanks in front of him. 

They still looked awfully big. He was perilously close to them. His heart was racing, furious that the impulse to run faster was being ignored by the brain, trying futilely to spur him on. He found himself left gasping for breath.

Then he caught a glimmer of one of the missiles coming in. Its rotation had caught the distant Sacras, and had telegraphed its position by an instant’s gleam. It was coming straight for him, totally ignoring the burning tanks!

In front of him, through the rexelene visor covering all of the front part of the ship, he saw the blossoming of an explosion from the fuel tanks. A blue-white sheet of light burgeoned outwards.

He couldn’t see the turning of the missile, but almost immediately he heard another muffled crump, and another explosion flared angrily out, much larger this time, hurting his eyes. He cried out, and waited for the shock wave to reach his small and fragile vessel, still courageously trying to outrun the after effects of the chaos he had left behind.

Then there was another explosion, and another, and another. And then the small craft began to shake. Six wedged himself as best he could into the pilot’s seat, but still he was flung onto the floor as the ship was tossed lazily over and over in its race to escape.

Six waited for another siren to tell him of a hull breach. Then he began to breathe again, slowly, hardly daring to believe his luck. He pulled himself back onto the pilot’s seat, and shut down all systems. Now was not a good time to be visible to the Sellites.

The four dots on the screen continued on their way, apparently unconscious of the drama unfolding behind them. Would they assume he had been destroyed? Or would they break formation to come and investigate? His life depended on the answer.

He watched, and watched, and watched. Slowly the four dots began to draw away, all keeping formation, all heading straight for Kwaide. For now he was safe.

Six waited until they were out of proximity range, and then engaged the remaining forward thrust. The fuel would not last for very long, but he could get some momentum up before he ran out. That was all he could do. Point the ship towards Kwaide, and sit back to wait. Even with no fuel she would limp back in the right direction. He hoped his air supply would last out. 

He found himself shaking. Perhaps Diva was right. Naming a ship did bring good luck to the vessel. He would never dispute that again. She could call his next ship anything she liked.