The Dead Fleet (Juggernaut #3)

Sixty

Malachi pulled out of his dive and returned to level flight. At least, level flight as indicated by the system plane. Without the comforting reassurance of a planetary body there was no absolute up or down to cling to and make sense of the chaos. Instead, all around him was the fleet, dead ships clawing at his Valkyrie from across the years.

'Ellie? El? Can you hear me?'

Nothing.

He released the transmit button. Comms had been reliable up till now, but up till now they had largely been travelling together and heading in the same direction. The re-entry into the fleet, and the sudden appearance of fleeing pirates and attacking Cabal, had separated them. Now they were heading away from each other.

Malachi only hoped Ellie wasn't being followed.

His scanner lit up. The sphere his ship centered scaled up, the ship sensors pulling in more detail from the ruined ships all around, and highlighted two red blips closing in on his position from above and to the rear.

Malachi changed his mind. He hoped he wasn't being followed either.

Malachi quickly looked up and scanned the area around him. The Valkyrie was in unknown waters here. It knew there was a way out behind him and helpfully suggested reversing course as an option by drawing a line through the three-dimensional display. The line was orange - possible danger.

An alarm sounded and Cabal blasters lit up the fleet around him.

The line changed from orange to red.

'Yeah, thanks,' Malachi muttered to the ship.

He twisted and turned left into a tight roll, gunning the engines as he entered the turn. He was satisfied to see laser blasts drifting right. The guns stopped firing. The Cabal fighters followed his turn.

Malachi coasted out of the turn, reversed thrust for a quarter second, just enough to throw off any pursuit, and pulled up and right. More laser fire passed underneath. Malachi thanked someone - anyone - that the Cabal ships only seemed to have fixed weapons, and planned his next move.

'You'd think we could have invented forcefields by now,' he snapped at the Valkyrie.

He pulled up and to the right again, repeating his previous manoeuvre and hoping it was something they wouldn't expect.

More shots zipped past. They had missed again, but they were getting closer, and Malachi was running out of ideas.

It all seemed so much easier when he could feed instructions to Ellie over a headset mic while safe (relatively speaking) on board the Juggernaut. She would be taking the risks and looking for the edge to win the race. She was good at it. Malachi knew he wasn't in Ellie's league. She had more hours in the chair and more natural talent than anyone he had seen race. In the cockpit she had less fear than anyone in their right mind should have.

Malachi had experience talking her through problems, discussing strategy, and thinking ahead.

Another volley scraped past his ship. The blips in the sphere were diverging.

They're trying to catch me from two directions.

A cloud of smaller debris caught his eye and his strategic brain saw the possibilities at once. He turned toward it.

His scared human brain hoped he could get there in time before the Cabal could get their positional advantage.

His heart hoped that no one had followed Ellie.

She'll be ok, he told himself. No one catches Ellie.