The Black Gate (The Messenger #11) - J.N. Chaney Page 0,10
on its own inertia.
Dash turned his attention to their third foe, just in time to see Leira skewer it with her dark-lance, then he watched as her missiles erupted around it, reducing it to a tumbling hulk.
“Well, that was easy,” she said.
Dash nodded. “Yeah. It was, wasn’t it.” He slowed the Archetype, instincts tweaked by the brief exchange of fire. That had been too easy.
“Leira, stay sharp. I want to take a closer look at these guys.” Dash powered the Archetype toward the nearest of the wrecks. Its power emanations were near zero—
But not actually zero.
Dash slowed the Archetype and finally came to a relative halt about ten klicks away from the spinning wreck. He checked the dark-lance and found its firing solution at nearly 100 percent. It was the same with all of the Archetype’s other weapon systems. A derelict ship, sitting squarely in the sights of some of the most destructive energy ever generated by something that wasn’t a natural phenomenon—and every nerve in Dash stayed humming with the anticipation of battle. He was a creature of instinct, so he listened.
“Sentinel, any sign of Benzel and the QRF yet?”
“No, not yet. However, Tybalt and I now have a reasonably good fix on our location.”
“And?”
“We are currently in the Scutum-Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way galaxy, between fifteen and thirty-five thousand light-years from the Forge, in the Orion Arm.”
“Oh.”
“Come again? Thirty-five thousand light-years?” Leira asked in a hiccup.
“And quite the range of possible distances, fifteen to thirty-five thousand light-years,” Dash said. “Can you narrow that down a tad?”
“We will continuously refine our location, of course, based on—”
Something slammed into the Archetype, setting off a barrage of alerts. Dash immediately spun around, looking for whatever was attacking him, his pulse spiking immediately with a massive adrenaline dump.
The mech’s surveillance scanners showed another of the sleek ships, one they must have missed. As soon as he saw it, the targeting scanners strove to lock on, but as before, their enemy proved as elusive as a trout in a pond.
“Shit! Sentinel, where the hell did he come from? Is their stealth that good?” As he said it, Dash snapped out a dark-lance shot, this time missing. The enemy ship jinked hard and fired back, a coherent x-ray beam that flared against the mech’s shield, some of the spillover ripping across its armor. Now it was Dash’s turn to bank, then he fired again.
“This does not appear to be a new combatant,” Sentinel replied. “Rather, it would appear that the first ship we disabled has re-engaged.”
Dash glared at the enemy ship, which circled the Archetype, engines flaring in brilliant blue light. “Can’t be. We tore a great big hole in that one. This one looks totally fine.”
“Nevertheless, it is the only possibility.”
Dash jerked the Archetype hard to one side, firing the distortion cannon to pull both him and the enemy vessel closer together. At the same time, he deployed the power-sword, the massive blade crackling to life with incandescent energy.
“Dash, another one of these ships is coming back online,” Leira said. “They’re somehow repairing themselves!”
“Yeah. Not just bad guys but regenerating bad guys.” He powered hard toward his target. “A new wrinkle we could have lived without.”
The enemy ship turned and started to accelerate, trying to reopen the distance. It snapped out an x-ray laser shot as it maneuvered, again striking the Archetype, the beam splashing against its shield while boiling another gouge into its armor. Metal and composite flared into nothing as the strike slid past, its lethal path dissipating into the black.
“The hell you do,” Dash muttered, ramping the distortion cannon up to full power and firing it three times. Sudden gravity slammed the Archetype and enemy together, just as Dash intended. The power-sword—an incandescent smear of pure vengeance—ripped into the alien craft, cut for nearly twenty meters, and exited in a glowing arc. Behind the blade was an open wound deep in the heart of the enemy craft.
Dash whooped—and fell silent as the cut began to knit itself closed.
“What?” Dash said, staring at the damage. The edges were reaching for each other in fits and starts, silvery filaments spanning the gap at an alarming rate.
“Dash, let’s disengage and head back to the Gate,” Leira said. “Gotta get free before these bastards—"
“No! We’re not giving up the initiative.”
“Dash, we can’t—”
A new voice cut in. “Hey, guys. Can we be of any help?”
It was Benzel. The Retribution had just emerged from the Black Gate, followed by the rest of the QRF.