Down in the engine room, Lilliana and Galatea snapped the tenth gold bar into place. They’d sealed the stairwell entrance, now that the precious payload had been delivered and the alchemical array had the fuel it needed to power the ship’s drive.
The engine was still powered down, however, so as not to tip their hand too early.
“Right, we’ve only got one chance at this,” Lilliana said, talking over the sounds of heated battle out in the hallway. “The only reason that juggernaut hasn’t blown us out of the void is because the necromancer thinks we can’t hurt it. Our only hope is to deliver a crippling strike and zip away before they get a chance to retaliate. Once we’re outside his command range, the zombies and ghouls will be easier to mop up.”
“What precisely is his command range?” Galatea asked.
“I don’t know,” Lilliana said. “A million gabillion miles sounds like a good start.” She indicated a hexagonal button in the center of the array, beneath the upright fuel bars. “We’ve got to coordinate this just so. When I say ‘go’, that’s Dick’s cue to get into position. When Dick says ‘go’, that’s Regan’s cue to let fly. When she hollers ‘GO!’, you punch that button.”
“I’m not at all certain I have confidence in this…”
Lilliana slapped her with the back of her hand. It was hard to say which of them was more shocked by this action. Galatea was turning purple, but Lilliana was trembling and pale, her still-upraised hand shaking like a leaf.
“Regan is out there crawling on the skin of the ship, in full view of all of those kinetic energy guns,” she said. “Dick is going to have to charge through a crowd of ghouls and zombies to get to the controls. All you have to do is push a damned button in the relative safety of the engine room.”
“And what exactly are you doing, then?” Galatea asked.
“I’m manning the gravistat,” Lilliana said. “And praying.” She opened the communication line. “Are you ready, Bard?”
“I sprung full-grown from the head o’ me father ready, The Gypsy,” Regan replied from her position on the rear hump of the camel-backed ship. The improvised bomb floated weightlessly beside her, the bar not quite locked in place to complete the circuit. She periodically reached out to steady the contraption and keep the gold bar facing her. She was at once warily mindful and crazily mindless of the turrets which swiveled lazily towards her.
“Dick?”
“I’m ready,” he said.
In Lilliana’s cramped panic room, he floated upright, turned at an angle to exactly face the helm controls at the very front of the compartment above him. His eyes were closed, but in his mind was a complete three-dimensional map of command deck. This spatial sense was a skill he’d cultivated as a pilot, but it could be turned towards other purposes as well. He omitted from his mental picture anything that was free to float around… the null gravity would have moved it from its original position by this point. He’d have to adjust on the fly for the presence of the undead, anyway.
“Okay,” Lilliana said. “I’m going to do three seconds of double gravity on the bridge, then flip it back to zero. I’ll start counting down when I turn it on.”
She punched in the command, and Dick felt a sudden heaviness. His feet touched the floor even as he heard the confused cries of the ghouls and the groans of the zombies falling heavily onto the deck.
Lilliana was counting in his ear.
“…two… one… go!.”
Weightlessness returned and Dick flipped open the hatch above him, pushing off hard. He sailed up past the bodies which were flailing around near the floor, turning over to kick off the clear canopy overhead and propel himself towards the pilot’s seat. His hands were zeroing in on the steering column like they were magnetically attracted to it.
“Go!” he said as his fingers made contact.
Regan had adjusted the position of her “ball” and slung her bat over her shoulder when Lilliana started counting. At Dick’s word, she swung for the fences. The bat’s impact knocked the bar into place and sent the whole thing flying.
Last time she’d played out this scenario, both ships had been traveling at many hundred times the speed of light. This time, they were drifting… the Rebellion powerless and the pursuing ship exactly matching its speed. She could have watched the bomb traveling across the gap in real time, if they had dared to stay.
“Go!” she yelled as soon as she was done with the follow-through, when she was sure that the projectile was on target.
In the engine room, Galatea punched the button.
On the command deck, Dick punched the accelerator.
On the skin of the ship, Regan punched the air… or, the lack of it. Just before the ship made the reactionless acceleration from its sublight momentum to more than ten times the speed of light, Regan thought she saw the necromancer’s KEGS open fire… and she was pretty sure she saw the beginning of one mother of an explosion.
Dick had set the controls for maximum acceleration to maximum safe speed, as determined by the ship’s computers. It only took him a split second to do so, which was all he had before the first ghoul, shaking off the effects of the gravity shifts, barreled into him from behind.
The weave of his insignialess pilot’s uniform protected him from the initial scrabbling of the talons, and he was able to turn around and use a zero-g baritsu move to throw it and deflect a second ghoul that was coming at him.
A zombie drifted close, hands grasping. He disarmed it, then used that arm as a club on the next one.
He’d made himself some breathing space, but that was the most he could hope for. He was seriously outnumbered.
“All available hands, make for the command deck,” Lilliana’s voice said in his ear. “Repeat. Reinforcements to command deck. Watch out for stragglers on the way.”
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