Forward to Death

Peter ducked as he entered the cramped state-room turned into an improvised laboratory. Jinx sat at a table, and pulled a plastic card bearing a printed circuit from a lime-green apparatus with a set of various-sized slots and a few indicator lights. She turned to face Peter as he came into the room.

"We're going to be joining the fleet soon." Peter looked around. "What are you doing?"

"Setting up a remote detonator for the bombs they're using." Jinx examined the card carefully.

"A remote detonator? How's that going to work?" Peter was curious.

"Getting the bombs was easy. The hard part was figuring out how to detonate them." Jinx played with the card.

"Right. You need an arming request that the warhead is willing to trust. So, how did you do that?" Peter crossed his arms in front of him.

"The bombs have a hard-wired set of trusted signers for arming requests. Fortunately for us bad guys, many of these signers have been compromised. This card contains a delegated signer signed by one of them."

"I think I understand. Using the signer on the card -- which you control -- you can send a request that references a trusted signer in the warhead."

"Right. This card looks like a delegate of a trusted signer as far as the warhead is concerned. The arming system is a modified commerce terminal that can use the card to construct the arming request. All they have to do is enter a PIN to arm their bombs." Jinx smiled with some satisfaction. "Come on, let's head to the bridge. I'm going to need to do some course adjustments to fit in with the fleet."

Jinx's ship tumbled through hyperspace. It was a heavily modified freighter, with surplus engines and guns retrofitted onto the ends of two wing-like spars. The bridge, in a forward-facing module, was covered by an improvised carapace painted with a fanged skull pattern. A dorsal fin bore M-Seven's ligature, the letter M with a lightning bolt for its right descender.

As space became less twisted and warped, and slowly transitioned to its more familiar pseudo-Euclidean geometry, the bubble of space surrounding the vessel began to merge with the cloud of home brew fighters, escorted and re-fueled by a score of Reyll battleships.

The bridge of the pirate ship was dark. Peter looked up at the monitor and saw that a new async message had been pushed to the makeshift fleet. He looked at the M-Seven logo dancing on his screen with some distaste.

"Mail from Number Two."

Jinx sat at the helm. Her body was tense, but her face was calm and concentrated. She adjusted her trim hyper-thrusters to join the cloud of attacking fighters. There was a long pause before she could answer Peter.

"Oh, joy. Demonslayer wants to inspire the troops. Put it on, we're gonna need a laugh."

Peter brought up the video stream on a secondary monitor. Demonslayer was no longer wearing her mask, and he could not help noticing how sad and worn her eyes looked.

"Comrades! Our moment has come. Now we join to excise the alien cancer. But do not be fooled -- it will be hard and bloody work. I shall not lie to you. Almost none of the first wave will survive the initial assault."

Jinx muttered, "Yeah, no shit," under her breath.

Demonslayer continued. "Cleave to the plan. The first wave will be of the unmarried and the orphaned. Only those whose death will not cause pain to the living. Their sacrifice will enable our victory. Our battleships will draw away any defenders in the system -- we shall then signal all wave leaders to begin the assault. Remain attentive, our time has come!"

Peter raised his eyebrows as the message suddenly ended. "I still can't believe the plan is to fly straight into Sedgewick Station's defensive batteries. Demonslayer's right -- they'll all be wiped out!" He watched a nearby battleship leave hyperspace.

Jinx thought for a moment. "Yeah. Hope your force-field powers are still working."

"Oh yes." Peter smiled, and noticed a new incoming communication, this one a live transmission. "They've sent the beacon for the first wave. Ready?"

Jinx's eye narrowed and she hunkered down in her pilot's chair. "Ready!"

They rematerialized in orbit around their species' former home world. Even from the distance, it was clear that the skies of Fe Arra were still choked with ash from fires that had been burning for over two hundred years. Sedgewick Station was on the opposite side of the planet.

Peter and Jinx followed the thousand fighters of the first wave as they dove down the gravity well. Much of the simulation they had studied had been practice scenarios for this run, an eccentric orbit that would take them down the gravity well to the edge of the home world's exosphere, and then back up, twisting upwards to Sedgewick Station.

They watched the planet turn from a disk to a horizon, with a cloud of fighters in front of them. Jinx turned to Peter. "Force screen?"

Peter nodded. "Way ahead of you." He looked at the comms console. "Message from the leader -- putting it on."

The leader of the first wave was an old man who was missing a good chunk out of his left ear. "All right, girls. Here we go. Close to 1500 klicks and let 'em eat both rockets. Spread out, don't bunch up or we're all dead. Full burn.... now!"

They watched the huge space station slowly rise over the curved horizon. It was far enough away that it still looked like a disk.

It took a second or two for the first bolts to reach the oncoming fighters. The tiny, lop-sided disk, slowly rising in the sky, pulsated with energy discharges. Peter watched as the defense batteries picked off the oncoming fighters. The casualties seemed to fall back -- the rest of the group were accelerating towards the station.

The fire from the station became more intense as the vessels approached. The station, in its current form, was dominated by two asteroids captured a century and a half ago. Silvery strips of superstructure bound the two round rocks together into a structure that resembled a cantaloupe duct-taped to a bowling ball.

Sensors on the surface of the station worked together to coordinate the fire of the defense batteries. The explosions from struck fighters became more frequent; now, dozens of fighters were dropping away from the wave each second, many burning or breaking up.

The old man would had led the charge was long dead, but another pilot crossed the 1500 klick line. He hurriedly punched in a four-digit code into a keyboard, and watched the "armed" indicators come on. He fired. Within seconds, more missiles joined his own, leaving behind steam-like trails of coolant as they approached the surface of the station.

Peter flinched as he watched a ragged cloud of a few hundred warheads approach Sedgewick Station.

The surface of the station was covered with tiny pin-pricks of light that kicked up plumes of debris. Suddenly, the fire from the station's defense batteries seemed to slow a little.

Jinx noticed Peter's discomfort. "There are hundreds of meters of rock between the surface and any residents. The point of the exercise is to gum up the sensor grids with radioactive cobalt long enough for the second and third waves to attempt a landing."

"Yeah." Peter still looked worried.

They came closer to the space station. The silvery bands holding the rocks together became complex structures of pipes and ducts. Jinx guided the ship into the dockyards, nestled between the two captured asteroids. With a few quick moves, she adjusted her ship's vector to match with the station's, and slowly maneuvered towards the disembarking area.

"Looks like Jolt told them about us." Peter seemed to relax a little as they entered the area between two huge artifical gravity plates. The pirate ship jerked, and began to gently fall. Jinx compensated with thrusters, and set down on an empty parking space.

Peter stood up, almost bumping his head on the low ceiling. He turned to Jinx, who seemed to shrink a little into her pilot's chair.

"Come on!"

"I can't believe I'm doing this." Jinx was shaking a little.

Peter took her hand. "But you are. It's time to be a hero. Let's go!"