I had no choice. I had to stay and fight and try to help the Commonwealth win.
I dove the Apollo toward the nearest orbital station, a huge massive globular structure studded with sensors and weapons. Hoping that my ship’s automated identification signals would keep the orbital station from frying us, I maneuvered as close to the station as I dared, taking up a minutes-long orbit around it like a bee circling its own hive.
Three Skorpis warships approached, firing as they came. Two of them were battle cruisers, the third a dreadnought. While Frede and the rest of the bridge crew watched silently, I darted our ship down below the two battle cruisers and scanned their defensive shields. Just as I had expected, they were shifting power to ward off the heavy blasts coming from the orbital station’s main batteries. I located the weakest part of the first battle cruiser’s shield and poured everything we had into it. The cruiser veered away, exposing its weakened belly to the orbital station. One salvo from the station’s heavy guns blew the Skorpis warship to pieces.
But the second battle cruiser turned to engage us, jolting the Apollo with hits from its main battery. Leaving the orbital station to duel with the lone dreadnought, I raced through the swirling carnage of the battle with that determined battle cruiser on our tail, firing at us steadily. No matter how I jinked our ship back and forth that cruiser stuck to us, as if the only thing in its captain’s mind was to avenge its sister ship.
Stubbornness is not an asset to a captain. I checked the display screens and saw that the battle had concentrated on one side of Loris’s defensive belt. There were stations on the far side of the orbit that were not being attacked. This made good sense, from the Skorpis point of view. They were concentrating all their forces on a part of the Commonwealth’s defenses, intending to overwhelm them and then destroy the remainder afterward. The orbital stations could not maneuver quickly; those on the far side of the battle could never reach the attackers in time to do any good.
But I could bring at least one of the attackers to the idling stations on the far side, if the Skorpis captain did not suddenly acquire a dose of good sense.
She did not. She followed me, closing, firing, making the bridge rattle and our defensive screens buckle. But she followed me for a few seconds too long. I zoomed the Apollo into range of the quiescent orbital stations and three of them opened fire on the Skorpis warship at once. It blew up in a giant fireball, the scattered fragments like blazing meteors all across the sky.
“Battle damage,” reported Dyer, from her damage-control console. “Hull open to vacuum in starboard stern. Sections fourteen and fifteen of deck two have been automatically sealed off.”
“Anyone in there?”
“No, sir. Those are food lockers. We emptied them out to make extra message capsules.”
Frede giggled nervously. “We wanted to warn Loris that we were coming, so they wouldn’t fire on us, remember?”
It seemed like a million years ago.
“Looks like they didn’t need our warning,” I said as I turned the ship back into the battle.
I headed for one of the orbital stations, hoping to repeat my earlier tactic of gadflying one of the attacking ships to its destruction. But as we came closer to the fighting, swirling, exploding ships I saw that six Skorpis cruisers detached themselves from the battle to aim directly at us.
“Incoming message,” said Magro, the comm officer.
I tapped the comm key on my armrest board. A Skorpis commander appeared on the bridge’s main screen.
“Apollo, I have orders to take your ship. You will surrender. You cannot escape us.”
At the velocity we were going now it would take more than an hour to build back up to superlight. The Skorpis ships could catch us and board us long before then.
“We will not surrender,” I said.
The commander bared her teeth. “My orders are to take you alive—if possible. If you will not surrender, you will die.”