The Black Gate (The Messenger #11) - J.N. Chaney Page 0,104

themselves into a direct collision course with it. If they didn’t do anything otherwise, all three would slam head-on into the moon in just over five minutes. Sentinel calculated a trajectory that had the mechs accelerate at the last possible instant, sweep around the moon and right into the face of the Deeper ship. It brought them gut-wrenchingly close to crashing on the rocky surface, all three mechs in a perfect line.

“You sure there’s enough of a safety margin here, Sentinel?” Dash said. “We don’t seem to have any room for error.”

“You asked for the last possible course change. That’s what I’ve given you.”

“Well, sure, but this doesn’t leave any wiggle room at all.”

“Interesting.”

“What?”

“When you first Melded with the Archetype, and for a considerable time thereafter, you had no qualms about engaging in maneuvers that were down to split-second timing and extremely narrow error margins. In a few cases, nonexistent ones.”

“I’m sensing this has changed?” Dash asked. “How?”

“You seem to have developed a degree of wariness since you became the Messenger. I wonder if this is a natural consequence of human aging.”

“Sentinel, it’s only been a few years. People don’t change that much in that short a time—”

“Objective observation would seem to suggest otherwise.”

Dash felt his brows lift at that. He did have to admit that razor-thin error margins and last-second timing didn’t have the same rush as before.

Or they did, but not in a good way.

Dash shook his thoughts on mortality away. “Really not the time for deep self-reflection, Sawyer,” he muttered, then watched as the chrono counted down to their upcoming course change.

“Dash, we have a problem,” Sentinel said.

“A problem? You’ll really have to be more specific.”

“The moon we’re approaching is the largest of a large number of rocky fragments. Scanners are now resolving a growing multitude of smaller ones.”

Dash examined the tactical display. Sure enough, small fragments, mostly in the fist-sized range, accompanied the jagged moon on its swings around the gas giant. They would have to pass through them in order to approach the Deeper ship now occluded by the ragged little body. Fist-sized wasn’t a problem, but there were bigger fragments that could be.

“I would speculate that this moon was recently captured by this gas giant, and now tidal forces are pulling it apart,” Sentinel said.

“Hell of a time for an astronomy lesson,” Leira said. “Tybalt just filled me in.”

“What do you want to do, Dash?” Jexin asked.

He chewed at the inside of his cheek, thinking. If they maneuvered to avoid the fragmenting moon’s cloud of debris, it would force them onto a wider course change, meaning they’d have to start accelerating much sooner. So, instead of minutes to react to the mech’s appearing, the Deeper ship would have probably been closer to fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. If it bugged out immediately, that could end up in a long stern chase. They’d then be forced to try and disable the Deeper ship to get close enough to deploy the inoculator. That was fine, but they’d wanted to employ the virus against an intact Deeper vessel that could maneuver, and fight back.

“Not much we can do,” Dash finally said. “We’ll cut it as close as we can, but we’re still—”

“Dash, I have an idea,” Jexin said.

Dash checked the chrono. If they were going to do this, they’d need to start their course change in about forty-five seconds. Otherwise, they’d be committed to the original plan, or else they’d have to decelerate like mad to avoid slamming into the moon.

“Go ahead, Jex. You’ve got about twenty seconds.”

“Let me take the lead, fly ahead of you, and take the hits from those rocks.”

“Woah, Jex. Some of those fragments you might hit are pretty big. The Polaris stands to get pretty beaten up.”

“I know. I’ve talked it over with Horax, and we’re in agreement. We can do this.”

“I can, anyway. She’s just riding,” Horax said.

“Shuddup,” Jexin muttered.

Dash looked back at tactical. Most of the fragments would likely be deflected by the Polaris’s shield, but some were big enough that they posed a threat of impact. If Jexin could pull this off—

“Do it, Jex. I’ll follow you. Leira, you bring up the rear and get ready to help Jex out if the Polaris gets damaged or disabled. Oh, and Jex? Thank you.”

“Eh, I had nothing else planned.”

Dash had to grin. The little Kosan had, even more than the AIs, started taking on the ways and mannerisms of her human compatriots in a big way. Which wasn’t surprising, Dash thought, since