The Dead Fleet (Juggernaut #3)

Fifty Eight

When Ellie and Malachi had first entered the Praxis graveyard, the perimeter of the dead fleet drew a simple line between inside and outside. The danger was inside.

Open space, beacons, and the rest of the commonwealth was outside. Safety was outside.

Now nothing was safe.

Ellie threw her Valkyrie into the maze a second ahead of Malachi. A dozen configurations of pirate ships fleeing the Cabal attack on the Solar Forge whipped past them, heading the other way. The pirates who had made already outside the fleet were already panicking, turning back, or being destroyed.

The disciplined Cabal squadron held its formation and advanced on the fleet like the point of a knife into rotten fruit. The few laser blasts that had missed the pirates exploded against the outer shell of wreckage. The relentless attacks had the same effect outside the fleet as the pirate attacks had inside. The fleet was moving, and any path the Valkyries had mapped out was slowly being erased.

'Mal! Pull up!' Ellie shrieked. She pushed hard on her own stick and pulled to the right. Her Valkyrie dived into a spiral so tight it almost spun. Ellie felt the blackness creep into her head but held on and stayed awake.

Malachi pulled up at once without thinking or checking if it was the right thing to do. They were flying on instinct now, into the unknown. If Ellie said pull up, you pull up.

He gripped the controls with both hands and pulled as hard as he could. His biceps burned under the pressure. The Valkyrie reacted at once, almost anticipating his commands, and he went vertical.

Between them flew a ship bigger than any they had seen operational so far. It must have crewed at least eight and mounted cannons on each side. It stormed forward, missing their Valkyries by only metres, and plowed on in search of the narrowing window of the exit.

But through that exit came the Cabal. The pirate ship opened fire at once, slow but powerful blasts alternating from the left and right cannons.

It hit nothing.

Lead Cabal fighters rolled out the way and spun aside. Encrypted comms passed the warning through the squadron at once. The second wave were already firing when they entered the fleet. Sharp points of rapid fire energy from Cabal blasters ripped into and through the pirate ship from three directions. The explosive shockwave rocked the Valkyries as they fled.

The Cabal kept coming.

Ellie levelled out of her spin and for a moment flew clear of danger.

'Mal, where are you? What do we do? Do we go back and warn Tila or try to get out?'

Malachi's reply was broken. Digital static corrupted their comms. High energy weapons fire, the old shielding of ancient warships and radiation leaks from dead reactors each sabotaged the data stream in their own way, killing the message until only ghosts of data remained.

'-- up.-- out. You're faster. — distract—go!'

'Mal!? Don't leave me!'

'Ellie, you have to— out.' More static. '-- sooner one of — here --we can get help for Tila.'

'Mal, can you hear me? Where are you?'

The speaker broadcast white noise, then said 'Can you-- me?'

'Mal' More static. Then one last broken line.

'Just — what you do best.'

'Malachi?'

The ghosts howled in the void.

'Mal?'