Free The Last Horizon by Anthony Hartig Page A

Moria to zero-in on us, if I time it right, maybe we can get the drones to go after Seinz’s ship and we can slip through.”
       “Risky.” Scott sighed as he rubbed his brow.
       “It’s our only chance. We need to disable the Moria or we’ll never make it to the Pipe.”
       “Okay, Nikki, I trust your judgment.”
       “One more thing, Scotty.”
       “What’s that?”
       “ Seinz doesn’t know you’re here, as far as he’s concerned, I’m the only one on board. If this doesn’t work and he boards us,” I looked over at Scotty grimly, “there’s an epod in the cargo hold, I want you to get in and eject. I’ll keep them distracted while you get away. The auto-pilot is enabled by default and should get you to the lanes. You should get picked up by a freighter.”
       “And what are you going to do?”
       “ I’ve got the shuttle,” I lied, “I’ll get out  when I get the chance.”
       “If not?”
       “Captain goes down with the ship. It’s an old, unspoken code of honor. Once Seinz is on board I’ll blow-up the Zephyr and take him with me into the afterlife in a blaze of glory.”
       “Nikki…”
       “It’s not as bad as it sounds, one thing that will come out of this is that smugglers will be telling this story for years to come.” I smiled.
       “You’re crazed.”
       “Hang on to your ass!” I bellowed as I flipped on the toggle switches and fired the thrusters. The Zephyr punched forward with the added power surge as the rockets flared to life and gave the ship a bright heat signature as we hit 4.8 HsD.
       “It’s working, t he Seekers are moving toward us!” I laughed maniacally as I looked at the VDU. “Damn! We’re hauling ass!” I hooted as I checked our speed.
       “Zephyr ,” Seinz’s voice boomed over the intercom, “ramp down and surrender!”
       “Eat carbon, you asshat !” I spit back into the intercom knowing he could track us by infra-red now.
       The Moria was less than twenty miles away when they fired several missiles. The first one detonated three hundred feet in front of us, and large superheated shrapnel smashed into our fuselage as we hurled through the daggers of particle lite and fire…
       “Goddamn it!” I screamed as I banked a hard left and nosed down thirty-five degrees in an evasive maneuver; that pitched the gyroscope wildly in the opposite direction and the drives screamed…
       … the second warhead exploded less than a hundred feet on our left and almost threw us into a spin. The heat from the blast scathed the hull and shredded a main RAM panel. Scotty was jolted hard in his seat and I could barely hear him cussing as the detonation engulfed us with a thunderous boom and bright flash of light…
       … the Zephyr rocked sideways and the instrument panels and overhead console lit-up in red as alarms sounded…the third missile blew up and ripped a portion of the left vertical rudder to pieces and punctured one of the main cryogen pipes feeding the right hypersonic drive…
         I throttled the drives back and ramped down to exit hypersonic. I kept the thrusters on and drove forward as the whine of the drives began to recede. I could see the image of the Moria Balá on the VDU…they had caught up to us and matched our speed.
         Seinz brought the ship two hundred feet above the Zephyr. It was a lot larger than I thought; the Moria was a dark, steely grey with reactive armor and a series of probes grouped at the front of her hull. From what I could see up close, the craft was at least three times larger than the Zephyr and looked like a Serenian deep space battle cruiser.
    I looked at Scotty and nodded, “Get to the pod.” I said calmly as I looked at the vector scanner. “When you see the door of the decon chamber open, eject.”
    Scotty stood up steadily, grabbed his flight helmet, and walked to the bulkhead door to the pressure-lock that led back to the