Majesty's Offspring

Chapter 4: Rough Waters

Two hours after arriving at the bar, Julius left the ruffian pilots and made his way back to Merciless Errands. They would be getting into their own ships and joining him in flight soon. He took the familiar umbilical worm, silently bidding the holographic dancers farewell on his way out.


As he entered Merciless Errands, Julius expected Murdock to be repairing and tuning the shuttle. Instead, he found him snoring away in the copilot chair. Julius smacked the back of the chair hard.


“Are the detonators planted?” Julius said.


Murdock shook his head, blinked a few time, and finally straightened up. “Yeah, yeah … they’re set.” He yawned. “And I got the gravitational warp generator almost fixed; there’s a new part I need, though. We’ll have to go on standard propulsion for now.”


“So that’s the best you can do?” Julius asked as he sat himself in the pilot seat.


“Unless you can pull an anti-proton modulator out of your ass—yes, that’s what you got,” Murdock said.


“Fine. Make yourself useful and start bringing the systems online.”


“Affirmative, Captain, sir,” Murdock said dryly. “How did it go with the recruits?”


“Good so far,” he said. “We’ll see for sure soon enough.”


Julius tapped a button on the communication panel. A three-dimensional image of a face began to materialize in front of him, and soon he saw Laina frowning at him.


“Let me guess,” Laina said. “You saved me the trouble of picking up the recruits … or maybe you decided they’re not worth recruiting and are headed back empty-handed?”


“Partially right,” Julius said. “I recruited them. We’re headed back with them.”


“I see,” Laina said. “Then you agree with taking them on?”


“Perhaps,” Julius said. “They’re combat pilots. I didn’t know they were combat pilots.”


“You never asked me,” Laina said. “Really though, I couldn’t care less if they were custodial workers; we need anything we can get. Are you heading to New Las Vegas now?”


“No,” Julius said. “You can send the first wave of crew on ahead. I’m going to take the pilots on some maneuvers before putting down at the Sea Wolf.”


“I see,” Laina said, rolling her eyes. “Try not to get them killed, Julius—we really do need all of them.”


“If they get killed, they shouldn’t be part of the pack in the first place. Julius out.”


Julius cut off the communication, then looked outside at the platform. Several umbilical docking rings began to snake out from the bottom of the platform and began to attach themselves to the recruits’ shuttles. The new pilots were ready to take off.


After tapping a few keys on the panel, Julius could hear the sound of the umbilical docking ring disconnecting from their own shuttle. A slight shudder reverberated as the propulsion engines engaged.


The lifted off the platform, leaving a trail of blue plasma in its wake. The other shuttles also lifted off and joined behind Merciless Errands.


Julius tapped a button on the communication panel.


“Gentlemen, are you reading me?”


“Affirmative, Captain. We read you,” Reece’s voice came back.


“Good,” Julius said. “Activating encrypted conference channel in five seconds: Five … four … three … two … one. Do you copy now?”


“Roger, we’re here,” Reece said. “Should we plot a course to Vegas?”


“No,” Julius said. “We’re not going to New Las Vegas.”


Julius could hear a grumble from the other pilots.


“Well, why not?” Reece said, sounding a bit too whiny for Julius’ liking.


“Change of plan,” Julius said. “Maintain communication silence until further notice.”


“What’s the big deal? It’s encrypted,” Reece said.


“Maybe he doesn’t want to hear your raspy-ass voice, Reece,” one of the pilots said.


Julius muted the conference channel. The pilots would present a problem for Julius. They were arrogant and undisciplined, not unlike some of the young recruits he had trained back in his days with the UEP military. But that experience taught him that in time they would learn discipline or simply fail to come home—death being the ultimate disciplinarian in all things.


Stromond’s organization was loose around the edges, Julius knew from experience. Stromond’s pilots did not have proper drilling, and the whole organization lacked any long-term strategic planning. In the end, it had been Stromond’s unchecked greed that got him.


Thankfully, Julius and Laina played the pirate card different. Yes, they were after the same thing as Stromond: money. However, they balanced greed with risk, maintaining a low profile and only striking at shipments with a large payback. That delicate balance had kept them in the game this long.


Julius entered the coordinates into the navigation system and let it pilot the shuttle. He sat back in his chair and relaxed, or at least tried to. He felt tense—a feeling that seemed to come anytime he was away from his ship. He had come to realize that he only felt at ease when he was on the bridge commanding the Sea Wolf. It had taken him years to come to the realization. Yet he could not understand why. The thought must have come to Laina as well. She had once commented to Julius that, “The only reason you like this ship so much is because it’s the only thing older than you.”


Perhaps Laina was right; or, perhaps it would take another hundred years before he would know the real answer. By then, though, he doubted he would even remember the question.


Julius stared out into the space ahead of them. His eyes searched for something to look at, an asteroid or a comet, but there was nothing except the many dots of stars to return his gaze, and they did not hold his interest. He turned to look at Murdock. He was sound asleep again. It didn’t sound like a bad idea.


They had been up for close to twenty hours now. He un-muted the conference channel. The cockpit filled with the sound of snoring from the other pilots. He quickly muted the link. Apparently they all had the same idea. A couple hours of sleep would not hurt.


 





*****





 


The room was small and crammed full of equipment. A long series of workstations filled one whole wall, each having numerous holographic displays hovering above and around the occupants. On the other wall stood a sealed door with a high-security lock. Adjacent to the door were two delivery panels, a small one big enough for envelopes and another large enough for a crate.


In the center of the room sat a large holographic projection unit. It showed a colorful display of arching waves, each highlighted with multiple points of light across their span and bits of information flashing across the hologram. The projector was called a “Waterfall”—a visual depiction of the interface between the computers in the room and the rest of the network outside of it.


The other side of the room had a few bunk beds, a food dispenser, and a large dresser, all the amenities necessary to function. It was certainly plusher than any mining prison, but the most important amenity to the inmates was access to computers.


There were three of them so far, though they knew of plans to add a fourth member to their team. Haylek, known in the hacker channels as “Waverider,” had been designated as the leader of the group, more so because nobody else was even remotely qualified for the job, rather than out of any desire of his to lead. Even so, he did not take the responsibility lightly; he was now leading a group of elite hackers with impressive credentials.


So far, being the leader was not really all that difficult. They were all so busy deciphering and cracking the network waves that nobody had time to question anything. Their aliases were the only names they knew each other by; he did not know their names, they did not know his. Hacker aliases were the only name that mattered in the virtual world anyway, carrying with it their earned reputation and status. With every conquest of a system, a hacker would brand each hacked system with their alias; an advertisement that added to their list of accomplishment and would be used for bragging rights—something hackers did a lot of.


The waves that Haylek and his crew now tapped into were part of the global and interstellar network of invisible energy known as the “Ocean.”  The Ocean’s waves spanned across the solar system to every city on every populated planet, moon and orbital station. The waves formed the vital infrastructure for all citizens, governments and corporations—becoming the backbone of data and energy delivery to civilization. Though invisible to the eye, the Ocean’s waves could be snooped and examined using the right equipment and skills.


In his day, Haylek could tap and crack every wave in the Ocean within his reach. One of his most infamous accomplishments was diverting data and power from over forty different major wave pipelines to his small apartment, providing him with free electrical power and virtually unlimited data resources that he shared with the hacker community and used to launch assaults on the corporations. He used the stolen resources as barter to trade with other hackers. Ultimately it was the heavy bartering that got him caught when he traded with a nark.


As for the other two, Freeze’s specialty was hacking—or “owning” as they called it—computer systems connected to the Ocean, putting them under his control; Coredump’s forte was developing injection programs that would be uploaded to hacked systems, where they would sit dormant until they needed them. Once activated, the programs would turn the systems into zombies that provided them information and put them under their complete control—unbeknownst to the companies that owned them, of course.


It had been a month since the curious set of events that led them here. They were all serving time for committing their acts of “cyber-terrorism,” as authorities called it. Then came the strange transfer from the in-house mechanical labor at Thyle Prison to the Martian mining facility in the Tharsis region—followed by the meeting shortly thereafter with their new employer.


Then when they were delivered the deal, it felt like they were handed a treasure chest; how could they say no? They received unlimited funds to get whatever they needed to hack the waves again, had been encouraged to hack and own as many corporate systems as they could, and also had been promised they would never see a prison again. It was like a dream.


The dream, though, did have its potential nightmare side.


Haylek felt a throbbing pain in his head. He had been trying to lower his intake of Elation—and headaches were the side-effect. He knew he would have to take it for the rest of his life, even if in small doses. There was no known cure for Elation addiction, except to replace it with other drugs that helped lessen the symptoms—trading one addiction for another.


Haylek stood from his workstation and walked around to look at the other two. He stood behind Freeze, looking at his holographic screens. He had been hacking away at a particular wave for the past few days with no sleep. No doubt, the Elation helped.


“Still on that wave?” Haylek said.


Freeze kept at it—his fingers moving and merging the interface shapes and symbols of his surfaceboard. “Yeah. I’m not going to be happy until I own this.”


“Have you traced out the endpoints yet?” Haylek said.


“Almost,” he said. “They branch out and disperse across the Oceanic Spectrum. But I have the source beam coming from somewhere nearby in a business complex. There’s only a few corpers it could be, and one of them is Omega Research. I hope it’s them; I want to own them.”


“Hmm,” Haylek said. “That would be a nice hack. Our employers would probably like that too. I’m sure they have info worth stealing.”


“Uh, yeah, I guess,” Freeze said. “I just want to own them. I don’t think I have much of a problem tracing the waves; the problem is the polymorphic encryption.”


“Yeah, I know,” Haylek said. “We need an elite decrypter. The best one I knew got caught.”


“Who was it?” Freeze said.


“He called himself The Doc,” Haylek said.


“Oh yeah, I heard of him. He was in that guild Transient Wave,” he said. “Let me see what I can find out about him.”


One of the holographic screens changed to show the top menu of what looked like a record inquiry system.


“What’s that?” Haylek said.


“UEP Enforcement database,” he said. “I’ve owned it for three days straight so far—nice hole in their session setup. Coredump gave me a smooth exploit to run against it—got level-one security in one pass. Okay, let me see … The Doc.”


The inquiry screen changed to display information on The Doc. It showed he had recently been released and was staying somewhere in New York, but gave no specific address.


“Hmm, he got out,” Haylek said.


“Yeah,” Freeze said. “No address, though. You don’t think he’d be out on the hacker channels would he?”


“If I was him, I would be,” Haylek said. “Let me go look; maybe we’ll get lucky.”


Haylek walked back to his terminal and began touching the symbols on the surfaceboard. The holographic screens lit up around him, displaying many pages of encrypted information. Haylek ran his decryption chat client against the code and the pages of information changed into legible text. He scrolled through the list of chat channels and picked a channel titled “3l33t 3ncryption.” He entered the virtual room with an alternate alias.


The holograms around him changed to show countless avatars of the hackers that were in the room with him. His own avatar, a cartoon-like image of a surfer on a wave, popped up to represent him in the chat room.


Halyek scanned through the list of names, doing a search for The Doc. Out of the hundreds in the room, the list filtered down to three variations: D0ch0liday, D0ckt3r, and The Doc. He tried the last one, inviting him into a private room. The Doc’s avatar, a portly cartoon with thick-rimmed glasses and a large scalpel in one hand, gave a raised eyebrow to the request.


“Who and why?” was his response to Waverider.


“Waverider,” Haylek tapped back.


“I know you. Why?” The Doc wrote.


“I’m in an elite group with a lot of toys. We need someone that is elite.”


“I am an 3lit3 d3crypt0r,” The Doc wrote.


“Rider,” Coredump said. “Someone’s triggered our perimeter sensors.”


Haylek turned away from the surfaceboard to look at Coredump. “What is it?”


“Someone’s backtracking your connection,” he said. “They’re cracking our outermost owned system.”


Haylek looked back at the avatar of The Doc and noticed it was animating a slicing motion with the scalpel and pointing at him. Definitely him, Haylek thought.


“How’s he doing?” Haylek said.


“Damn,” Coredump said. “He’s good. He hacked the outer system already, and he’s working on the next system inward.”


“How many systems we got between us?” Haylek said.


“Twelve more,” Freeze answered for him.


“All right, Coredump—go into mind-link and try and slow him down.”


The mind-link interface would allow Coredump to interact with the Ocean using his thoughts, giving him nanosecond response time—it was the only way he would be able to keep up with The Doc’s hack attempts.


“If you get too close, I have to cut you off,” Haylek said, trying to keep the conversation going. He knew that the interaction would break him out of the mind-link intermittently and slow him down.


“If you cut me off, how can I trust you?” The Doc asked.


Haylek thought a moment. He could not allow him to trace his location, but he needed to gain his trust somehow. He leaned back from his chair and looked at Freeze.


“Freeze, give me the authentication info for that UEP system,” he said.


“Why?” Freeze said.


“Just give it to me; trust me,” he said.


Freeze grumbled as he tapped the surfaceboard. The authentication keys were now on Haylek’s terminal.


“I have a gift for you, so you can trust me,” Haylek said.


He uploaded the authentication key to The Doc.


The Doc’s avatar smiled. “I like gifts,” he said.


“He just cracked two more of our systems,” Coredump’s message came up. “We have ten left.”


“Can you slow him down, Freeze?” Haylek said. “Try cutting off his waves.”


“That’s your specialty. I don’t know how to do that,” Freeze said.


Haylek sighed. He would have to make this quick.


“If you like the gift,” he tapped out, “then you can trust me enough to meet again. Meet me same time tomorrow in this channel.”


The Doc’s avatar rubbed its chin.


“Damn! He just knocked down five systems,” Coredump said.


“You better cut him off; he’s really close,” Freeze said.


“Decide fast,” Haylek tapped.


He glanced at the topological map of their network. Twelve dots representing each system they owned marked the path between the Ocean and their location; all but the five dots closest to their location were marked red, the inner five were green. Suddenly two of the green dots went red.


Freeze gasped. “He just—”


“I know,” Haylek said.


“The Big Apple,” The Doc said. “You’re close to me, you know.”


“That’s as far as I can let you in. Hope you show tomorrow,” Haylek tapped in.


He quickly triggered the backtracking program and unloaded the code from the three remaining systems; he then disconnected his wave. The Waterfall went blank as their connection into the Ocean was severed.


“That was close,” Freeze said.


“I know,” Haylek said. “Let’s stay off the waves for an hour. Then create a new line of owned systems into it; I don’t want to use the same ones again.”


Freeze grumbled. “That will take most of the night,” he said.


“Would you rather sleep? I can have Coredump do it instead,” Haylek said.


Freeze reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device. He pressed it against his neck and smiled.


“You know I don’t need sleep,” Freeze said. He pointed the device at Haylek. “Want some?”


Haylek shook his head and turned away. It was a difficult decision to shun the Elation. He knew the others did not understand why. Both Freeze and Coredump were delving deeply into the supply they were provided, both severely addicted. Haylek was not sure why he chose to slow down; something inside just clicked and he felt he had to.


He looked at the other two. Even though they were great hackers, that was all they could do or think about. For all their hacking talent, they had the mentality of adolescents. He had to be more of a thinker than they were. There was a bright light somewhere at the end of his long wave and he would find his way to it. The headache throbbed again, so he went to his bunk and tried to sleep it off.


 





*****








Julius awoke from his slumber to the sound of beeping. He rubbed his eyes and retracted the seat from its prone position. He saw Murdock stir awake in the other seat. Julius reached over and acknowledged the alarm on the navigation computer.


He’d half expected to experience another dream, perhaps something from his days at CSOW. But his sleep was not invaded with any such dreams this time. Ahead of them on the forward display, he could see the beginning of the junk field approach. He opened the conference channel.


“Wake up, pilots,” he said. “It’s time to earn your pay. Everyone report in.”


He waited for the groggy bunch to acknowledge.


“Ahead is a debris field that we must navigate. It is not an ordinary debris field. Inside this field is a gravitational anomaly that will wreak havoc on your navigation controls. You will not be able to navigate through it unless you do exactly as I say. What lies beyond is our home base. There is no turning back now.”


“We’re with you, Captain,” Reece said.


“Good,” Julius said. “Because, like I said, there is no turning back. If you do not survive this, it will be because of one of two reasons: you did not follow my orders precisely or you attempted to turn back. The gravitational anomaly inside the field is composed of complex gravity streams.


“These streams will propel you deeper into the chasm. Once we penetrate the field, the only navigation you do will be the jumps onto the adjoining gravity streams that I instruct you to take. If you do not follow my instructions exactly, you will lose control of your ship and become a permanent part of the debris.


“If you attempt to turn back and flee, you will be blown apart. I want you to divert your attention to the aft section of your ships. Attached to each of you are explosives that I can detonate remotely.”


“Damn it, Julius,” Reece growled. “We gave our word! This is bullshit!”


“Nevertheless,” Julius said. “You have seen our home base. Nobody gets to fly home with that secret.”


Julius closed the link and turned to Murdock.


“Is the link-up ready?” he asked.


Murdock nodded.


Julius reopened the conference channel.


“Your navigation computer is now linked up with ours and sharing telemetry. My ship will give you advance notice of the jumps so that you can prepare. It will also give you guidance on proper thrust velocity and course vectors for changing streams. Follow my lead; we will be hitting the outer ring of debris in thirty seconds.”


The group of ships followed Merciless Errands as it headed into the anomaly. As they approached it, they could see the debris seemingly rattle against an invisible barrier.


“The insertion is relatively easy,” Julius said. “Just follow my lead and match my moves precisely, no matter how unusual they may seem.”


Julius grabbed the controls firmly and prepared himself.


“Don’t worry,” Reece said. “Just don’t fly backwards and we’ll be shadowing your six.”


“Five seconds,” Murdock said.


“Get ready, pilots,” Julius said.


Merciless Errands shot ahead, leaving a hazy trail of blue plasma in its wake. The ship maneuvered into an open area in between larger pieces of debris. The others followed closely behind, in a straight-line formation.


The lead ship, without slowing, made a sudden climb, traversing closely against a stationary debris wall; the other ships followed, accurately matching his maneuver. The group hugged the debris wall while simultaneously pitching and banking to avoid other transient pieces of debris in their path.


Julius timed the next maneuver in his mind—he was so well-practiced in it that he did not even need the computer’s guidance anymore. He made a sudden, aggressive bank to the right—just missing a collision with another debris wall in their path. The other ships appeared to have made it—well, at least no explosions registered on his tactical.


“How are they?” Julius asked Murdock.


“Good so far,” he said. “They’re matching your moves accurately. Not bad considering they’re probably hungover.”


“How did you know they were drunk?”


“I can smell the alcohol on you from here. Figured that’s why you were gone so long.”


“Sorry I couldn’t bring you along. Next time.”


“Yeah, the least you could have done is bring me some fresh alcohol. The stuff that comes out of the dispenser on the Sea Wolf tastes like it was filtered through someone’s ass.”


Julius smiled. “You’re not getting top shelf on a pirate ship.”


“Ha! I bet Laina has top shelf,” Murdock said with a snort. “Coming up on the first stream.”


The squadron slowed, their thrusters breaking their inertia until they came to a halt in front of another debris barrier. This time, the debris was moving rapidly in a straight, uniform line across their horizon.


“Gentlemen, you have done well,” Julius said.


“Yeah, for a bunch of rookies,” Murdock chided.


Julius shot him a silencing look—Murdock could get away with a lot more than most, but even he would back down from that stare. Julius needed the pilots focused, and angering them would be a distraction.


“What you went through so far was the easy part, now comes the real challenge,” Julius said. “This place has several thousand different gravity streams, each carrying debris in unique patterns. It has taken me years to map them—and I have only been able to learn a mere fraction of what is out here. Fortunately, you will only need to learn how to navigate three streams to get to where we’re going. What you see before you now is what we call Stream One; beyond it are Streams Two and Three. Each stream has two polarities operating in tandem. One part of the stream flows in one direction, the other in the exact opposite direction—essentially, two-way traffic. We will insert ourselves into Stream One and cut power. The gravity anomaly will take us to the next stream, along with the rest of the junk. You cannot maneuver inside the stream. Do not attempt to fly it, it will fly you.”


Julius heard one of the pilots snort.


“Sounds easy you think?” Julius said. “I will tell you that the only thing that’s easy out here is a date with the Milky Way Farm. Look around pilots, some of what floats out here was once a hotshot pilot like you. They decided not to listen to their captain, so now when Wolf Squadron flies out here, they wave at the rookie remains. So go ahead and wave now, pay your respects to the former members of Wolf Squadron. Do it now while you are still the one doing the waving, instead of the one being waved at.”


They stayed silent for a moment.


Murdock turned to him. “I think they must have shit themselves, boss.”


“Just follow my direction and instruction,” he continued. “We do this one at a time. I will go first.”


Julius activated his propulsion and aimed the ship toward the debris stream. He put the ship under an empty patch of the stream, matching its speed with the debris flying overhead.


He cut off power, his inertia kept him moving. The influence of the gravity stream pulled him in gradually and merged Merciless Errands into the empty patch within the debris, dragged along it like a leaf floating on water.


“Reece, you’re next,” Julius said.


“Okay, mates,” Reece said. “I’ll see you all in hell.”


Reece’s ship shot out toward the stream. He carefully maneuvered himself under the debris stream, following the speed and course of the debris. Before cutting his engines off, he shot off an upward burst of propulsion, causing his ship to insert itself quicker than Julius’ did.


“Beat that mates,” Reece said. “I’m still the best pilot of the bunch, even when my ship has the maneuverability of a space tug.”


“We’ll see about that,” one of the pilots said. “I’m next right?”


“Yes,” Julius said. “But do not try to show off in here. This is more dangerous than it looks.”


“Yeah, listen to the man, Tash,” Reece said. “Besides, you can’t top my flying anyway, so don’t bother trying.”


“Can that!” Julius said. “You will have plenty of other opportunity to prove yourselves.”


“We’ll see about that one, Reece,” Tash said, ignoring Julius.


Tash’s ship darted forward toward the debris field. He maneuvered his ship recklessly under the debris field and darted upward into the field, beating the time it took Reece.


“See?” Tash said. “I can out fly you any day, Reece. I should be commanding this group.”


“Turn your propulsion off!” Julius growled.


Tash’s ship began to spin and bounce inside the debris field uncontrollably.


“It’s… I can’t control it,” Tash said, his voice rising.


The ship began to wobble wildly, drifting close to the surrounding rock debris.


“Do not fight it!” Julius said. “If you try to control the ship, you will plunge into the debris. Shut off your engines and let the gravity take over!”


“Do what he said, mate!” Reece said.


Tash’s engines winked out and the ship began to stabilize. The influence of the gravity stream took his ship in with the rest of the debris and pushed it along.


“I hope that wreckless act of stupidity illustrates my point,” Julius said. “I trust I don’t have to repeat myself now.”


A grunt of acknowledgement answered him back. The rest of the pilots carefully inserted themselves into the stream without problems. The gravity stream carried the whole group through the immense field safely.


“This is almost like public transportation,” Reece said. “It’s remarkable.”


They soon reached the juncture for the next stream. Stream Two looked far larger than Stream One. The stream curved outside of Stream One’s path, looking almost like an exit ramp of a highway.


“Stream Two’s coming up,” Murdock said.


“We’re coming up onto the next stream,” Julius said to the pilots. “Insertion for this one is dangerous. You have to time it so that your engines only come on at the intersecting point, which is where the gravity is the weakest. At the same time, you need to plan your trajectory into an empty pocket of the debris. There is no room for error.”


Julius held the controls firmly in his hand. He looked at the curving stream ahead, focusing his attention on the area where he would insert. The stream was upon them in moments; he activated the plasma propulsion engines and shot Merciless Errands up into the trajectory of the second stream. He cut the engines off quickly, letting Stream Two’s gravity influence take over.


“Now, no showing off,” Julius said. “You are not being graded for it. Just do it safely; there will be plenty of opportunities for you show off, but this is not one of them.”


The other pilots followed Julius’ maneuvers, inserting themselves into the second stream without incident. The ships floated along the stream of junk, carrying them deeper into the heart of the debris field.


“All right,” Julius said. “At the end of this stream, we will need to make an aggressive maneuver. Stream Two and Three plunge directly into each other, so if we stay on it we’ll be showered by debris from Stream Three—and you will be destroyed in seconds.


“The gravity in this stream is powerful; the slightest resistance to it will cause you to bounce madly. We cannot maneuver in the field until the moment that we begin to intersect with the opposing stream; that is where the gravity is its weakest.


“When we reach the end of the stream, follow my moves as closely as possible. Once we clear the stream, we will be away from the debris fields and the influence of the gravity fields.”


“Wait a second,” Reece said. “Can we use our propulsion to adjust our trajectory now? We might not even be facing the debris in the right direction when we get there.”


“No,” Julius said. “You can’t. Use your instruments to adjust your trajectory when we hit the end of the stream. If you try to now, you will spin out of control.”


“Understood,” Reece said.


“Use dynamic imaging,” Julius said. “That way you can see the image your trajectory is facing.”


“Oh, uh, yeah,” Reece said.


Julius frowned at their apparent inexperience. They should have been using a self-correcting image so that they could always look at their trajectory no matter what their rotation.


Looking ahead, Julius saw that they neared the end of their stream. Beyond it, the opposing stream’s debris showered into their stream. The boulders of rock from the conflicting streams smashed into each other at full force. Particle fragments bloomed out from the constant collisions, spewing variable amounts of debris outward in all directions.


Any ejected matter that drifted under Stream Two would be grabbed by a reversed gravity influence, taking it back along the stream’s path to its insertion point.


Julius watched the devastation with some amusement. To anyone else, it probably would have been a frightful scene.


“Get ready, pilots,” Julius said.


Merciless Errands reached the end of the stream, and Julius powered on his propulsion engines. A blue stream of plasma propulsion shot out from behind the ship, rotating it away from the oncoming debris. The ship made an aggressive bank just as the opposing debris field shot its payload of rocks at it.


Julius banked and rotated the ship at the same time, using the dynamic imaging in his cockpit to adjust his course out of the field. He soon broke free from the deadly debris and was out of the gravitational anomaly’s influence. The ship sped out into the emptier space ahead.


“How are they doing?” Julius said to Murdock.


“They’re managing,” Murdock said. He paused. “Not bad. They’re out.”


“Congratulations, pilots,” Julius said. “You made it.”


The other ships took up positions flanking Merciless Errands on both sides. They flew gracefully in a delta formation, following the lead ship into the darkness ahead.


“What the?” Reece said. “I’m seeing something big and nasty ahead. It looks like a capital ship—be ready to pull out of here!”


Julius looked ahead and smiled. The only thing on the horizon was the Sea Wolf. He only hoped that he could get the same reaction from his enemies.