The Dead Fleet (Juggernaut #3)

Fifty Four

Ellie looped and spun her way past an ancient gunship and settled her Valkyrie next to Malachi's.

'There it is,' said Malachi as they approached the outer edge of the fleet.

'We're going to make it,' said Ellie. Malachi heard the relief break in her voice. It was both reassuring and sad to know that despite how well she flew, she was still afraid.

They whipped their ships around another large wreck, putting it between them and the pirates. For a few seconds the laser blasts behind them ceased as visual contact was lost. The debris was thinner here and the free stars of open space were at last visible beyond the periphery. Somewhere out there, invisible from here against the endless night, was the beacon, and safety.

The Valkyries flew straight and true and left the dead fleet behind them.

'Alright!' Malachi shouted. Finally free of the labyrinth, their navigation system locked on to the Jenova beacon and they opened their throttles up to full speed. The g-force smothering them against their seats was a strange and oppressive comfort.

Ellie checked her scanner for threats. As a two-dimensional representation of three-dimensional space, the whirling display of colours and lines and shapes was hard to follow at first, but she was getting the hang of it now. There was Malachi's ship ahead and to her left. Behind and beneath their ships was the dead fleet, rendered on screen as blue wireframes. The edge of the fleet were becoming a large and unhelpful fuzz as the distance increased and resolution of the scanner inputs struggled to pick out the details of the millions of objects behind them. But so far there were no red blips. That was the important thing.

'We're safe!' said Ellie with triumph in her voice.

'Yeah, they can't catch us now! Good flying, Ellie.'

'Obviously!'

Malachi closed his eyes for a moment and gave in to the forces pressing him into his seat. They had made it! They had the data and had escaped the pirates. All they had to do now was to make the jump to Jenova and wait for Tila. She would make it out too. She had to.

An alert buzzed in his ear. He jumped and opened his eyes. They were at the beacon already? These ships really were fast!

'Mal, did you hear that?'

'Yep, checking it now.'

He checked the scanner, but the beacon was nowhere to be seen. Something didn't look right. On the top edge of his display was a vector marker indicating the distance and bearing to the jump beacon, but the beacon itself was still some way off. The scanner had alerted him to something else.

Right on the edge of scanning range a new blip had appeared. It flashed blue and white, its intention unknown. It sat directly between them and the beacon. A lone obstacle.

Then another blip appeared. Then two more. Then five.

'Mal, what are those?' asked Ellie. Fear had crept back into her voice.

'It can't be more pirate ships,' said Malachi.

'How can they be in front of us?'

'Good question.' He fiddled with the scanner. 'If only we had more time to learn what these ships can do.'

'Can we get past them?'

'I don't know. Wait! Those configurations don't match the pirates.'

'What are they? Who are they?'

'It's the backup Typhon was talking about! Those are agent fighters.'

'They're closing fast, Mal. Like really, really fast.'

Malachi searched for options. He knew their Valkyries were fast, possibly faster even than agent ships if Jayce's boasting was true. But that might count for nothing if they were unarmed. Unarmed and trapped between pirates behind them and cabal agents in front of them. He had no doubt that all those ships were definitely armed.

The agent squadron was changing formation. They were matching speed and spreading out like a wall in front of them. A wall bearing down on them at frightening speeds. It was a formation designed to prevent escape.

'We're trapped.' Malachi said helplessly.

'We can outrun them,' said Ellie. 'Go around them?'

'We can't. They're blocking us in. We can't get around them without being shot. We're not that fast.'

Ellie checked her own scanner. Malachi was right. She could see the wall forming up before them. There was no way they could go around. Even in these ships they would be intercepted. But Ellie also knew how Malachi thought. He measured options and weighed choices and eliminated the risky outcomes.

That's why she saw an option where he did not. He played it safe. Ellie played to win.

'They're not stopping us,' she said, 'not today. Not after everything we've been through. Follow me.'

'Where?!' cried Malachi.

'Back in there.' Ellie yanked her stick hard, banked and rolled into a tight turn, and turned back toward the dead fleet.

'What?!?' shouted Malachi. 'Are you crazy? You can't go back in there. The pirates are almost on top of us!'

'I know that,' Ellie called back, 'You know that. Those agents don't.'

'We don't have weapons. We can't fight them!'

Ellie's effervescent grin lit up her face for the first time in hours. 'No,' she agreed, wriggling deeper into her seat, 'but we can race them.'