Chapter 49: Pyre Eel

The Wanderer-7 came off the docking sleeve with a clean hiss of depressurized gas.

The two ships slid out along the edge of the debris field in tight parallel drift with the Black Kite holding two hundred meters off the starboard flank with its dark hull catching the cold glare of the distant sun.

Voss and Dekker had the raider’s helm with its ion wash glowing a dull muted green across the black.

Ren had stayed aboard.

"I’m here to advise."

He’d said with that easy half-smile, and now he stood at the raised rail of the command dais with his forearm draped over the stanchion, sidearm low on his hip and sleeves rolled neat to his forearms... relaxed as an older brother watching a schoolyard scrimmage.

Leo could feel him standing there like a draft on the back of his neck.

"Sensei," he murmured with his palms buried in the cradles. "Give me the vector..."

"Tracking."

The silver rings at Ms. Tachibana’s temples pulsed out in tight expanding ripples as her fingers moved across the interface.

’Gravitational wake at forty thousand kilometers,’ She calculated with her breathing steadying as her mind mapped it. ’High thermal density... sinuous non-linear acceleration, It’s weaving through the basalt cluster like a needle through silk.’

"Thermal anomaly locked," She called professionally. "Bearing zero-one-two mark four... Range thirty-eight kilometers. It’s moving fast, Leo. The mass profile matches a serpentine entity."

The canopy threw a composite overlay across the stars and the beast slid out from behind a tumbling iron asteroid.

...It was ninety meters of segmented nightmare.

[ENTITY IDENTIFIED: Pyre Eel (Level 2)]

Its long thick body was plated in overlapping scales of black volcanic basalt, jagged and rough like cooled lava slag, and between every segment ran deep glowing fissures of molten orange fire... veins pulsing with volatile pressurized plasma blood.

It corkscrewed through the vacuum in fast continuous spirals with terrifying fluid momentum, and its horned jaw was split into three separate mandible plates that dripped glowing orange embers into the dark.

"There’s our fuel," Ren said softly, smooth and warm and unbothered. "Careful on the approach, kid.. Pyre Eels have an internal pressure bladder. You want to take it from the flank with a three-quarter burn."

Leo didn’t answer as the pull in the small of his back cinched into a sharp freezing coil.

’Flank approach gives it an open spiral arc,’ He read in a split second. ’It wraps the stern and crushes the drives before the turret ever comes around...’

He ignored the advice completely and drove his palms forward.

THOOM!

The Wanderer-7 didn’t bank into a broadside.

It dove diagonally under the asteroid ridge forty-five degrees nose-up, cutting straight for the inside pocket of the eel’s spiral.

Ren let out a soft amused chuckle and gave Elena an exaggerated shrug, like a man humoring a stubborn toddler.

"Well, that’s one way to invite an attack run... Hope your shields can take a thermal strike."

"Shields are offline, Ren," Elena murmured, her fingers locked on the harpoon grips and her eyes glued to the reticle.

’Why does the stray always insist on charging straight in?’ She thought with a nervous spike of irritation tightening her shoulders. ’Ren gave him a textbook approach... Ren flies a Tier-3 raider every day while Leo just dives in like an illiterate street brawler.’

The Pyre Eel saw them.

HISSSSSSS!

A silent psychic shriek shuddered through the armor plates as its jaw flared wide...

Every orange fissure down its ninety-meter flank blazed white-hot, It whipped its tail and wound itself into a violent three-hundred-meter corkscrew, its throat clenching like a fist...

"It’s winding up!" Harper yelled. "Cap, it’s winding UP!"

...and it spat.

HURRRK... FWOOOOM!

A five-meter glob of burning pressurized plasma blood came screaming straight for the cockpit!

"Incoming thermal projectile!" Jin-Ah yelled, her fingers flying across the bus. "Four kilometers per second!"

"Roll port! Cut thrust!" Ren instructed calmly from the rail, pointing to the left quadrant. "Drop under the trajectory!"

Leo did the exact opposite.

He slammed the starboard thrusters wide open and kicked the nose violently right while dumping full power into the main drive.

PFFFFFT... BOOM!

The burning glob missed the canopy by less than three meters.

SZZZZZZZZZT!

The radiant heat washed over the quartz and boiled the emergency resin into a brief haze of white smoke, and Camila screamed as the bridge lit up blinding orange... and then the shot was gone, sailing harmlessly off into the black behind them.

If he’d rolled port like Ren said, it would’ve hit them dead center on the damaged starboard belt...

’Does this guy know how to fly a ship?’

Ren didn’t blink, he just tilted his head with unfazed patience.

"Lucky roll, kid... Bit erratic on the thrusters, but you made it."

Leo didn’t waste a single breath on him.

’Come on, you overgrown candle... Come to me.’

"Turret!"

CLANK... WHIRRR!

The S-Rank Mag-Rail Turret pivoted ninety degrees on the dorsal spine and locked onto the glowing seams between the serpent’s third and fourth segments.

Lock! THUMP-THUMP!

Two tungsten penetrators tore through the dark at eighteen kilometers per second!

KRA-KOOM!

One ricocheted off a jagged horn in an explosion of orange sparks... but the second drilled clean through a seam and shattered a four-meter plate of cooled slag clean off its body.

KRRRSSSHHH!

A fountain of boiling fiery orange blood erupted into the vacuum and froze into floating smoking amber crystals as the beast writhed in sudden agony.

"Target damaged!" Harper called from the damage console with her knuckles white on her wrench.

’He read that corkscrew perfectly,’ she thought, eyes flicking to the command chair with that familiar grudging awe. ’Nobody flies an intercept like Leo... at least nobody I’ve seen.’

The Pyre Eel turned.

Maddened by the burning wound in its side, the ninety-meter monster looped back on itself in a tight violent reverse spiral, its three-plated jaw snapping open wide enough to swallow the canopy whole, and it came straight down over the bow like an iron vise!

The whole canopy filled with teeth and fire.

"Elena, NOW!" Leo barked. "Belly mount! Pin the bastard!"

"The angle is too steep, Miss Sterling!" Ren called out, sharp and authoritative and perfectly timed. "Hold your fire! Let it clear the nose or the cable will foul on the thrusters...!"

Elena froze.

Just for a fraction of a second, her breath stopped and her eyes jerked from Ren’s calm commanding posture down to the flashing red reticle on her screen.

’Listen to who?! Ren has the experience... but Leo...’

The jaws were thirty meters away... Twenty-five...

"ELENA!"

Leo’s voice thundered through the bridge, hard and absolute.

"PULL IT!"

Her hands moved before her brain did.

KA-THOOOOOOM!

The staging locks on the belly blew open and the four-meter Graventhal spike blasted off the rail at seven kilometers per second, trailing the glowing tether behind it!

SHCK... CRUNCH!

It punched straight through the shattered basalt seam in the eel’s third segment, and the hydraulic teeth blew open inside its flesh and locked the spike deep in its burning muscle.

SCREEEEEEEEEEECH!

The winch whined as the piezoelectric brake clamped down!

The ninety-meter serpent bucked like a hooked marlin with its whole body thrashing so hard the cable sang...

TWANNNNG!

The Wanderer-7 lurched ten meters sideways on the end of the line with everybody slamming against their straps.

"HOLD!" Elena screamed at her own console. "Hold, hold, HOLD!"

The tether held but the eel wasn’t done.

Its tail came around in a long whipping arc, forty meters of burning basalt swinging straight at the stern like a giant’s club!

"TAIL!" Ms. Tachibana screamed. "Port quarter! Three seconds!"

’I expected that...’

Leo felt it coming through the small of his back and cut the main drive, fired the belly thrusters and dropped the whole ship twelve meters straight down on the end of its own cable.

PFFFFFFFT! WHOOOOOSH!

The tail swept over the dorsal spine so close it scraped the turret housing...

SKREEEEK!

It showered the hull in burning embers that skittered and hissed across the armor like hot coals on a grill.

"Turret housing is scorched but intact!" Jin-Ah yelled. "Thermal load at seventy percent and climbing...!"

"Then let’s not give it a second swing!" Leo snarled.

He fired the bow thrusters in one hard burst and hauled backward on the line, and the cable snapped taut again...

TWANNNNG!

That successfully dragged the eel’s thrashing head around like a dog on a leash.

"Elena, reel it in! Shorten the line!"

"Reeling!" Elena slammed the winch control forward. "Six hundred meters... four hundred... two hundred!"

WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

The winch screamed.

The great burning serpent fought every meter of it, its body coiling and uncoiling, orange blood spraying from the harpoon wound in long glittering arcs... but it came.

...Meter by meter.

"I’ve got you," Elena breathed, her eyes locked on the tension readout and her lips peeled back from her teeth. "I’ve got you, you ugly worm. You’re MINE..."

Its head was yanked taut right into the forward firing arc of the dorsal turret!

"Harpoon is LOCKED!" Elena cried, her chest heaving as a fierce flush of pride climbed her neck.

"Jin-Ah, eighty percent to the dorsal rails!"

"Capacitors charged! Rails clear!"

"Harper, keep the heat sinks vented!"

"Vents open, Cap! Dump the fire!" Harper yelled.

The Pyre Eel hung thirty meters off the bow on the end of the cable, its jaws snapping at empty vacuum, its glowing orange throat wide open to the turret.

It was the textbook kill window.

Leo lined up the twin barrels... The reticle locked solid brilliant gold right over the base of its skull and his breath went still in his throat.

’Gotcha.’

Lock!

Fire...

CRACK... BOOOOOOOOOOOM!

A deafening concussive discharge ripped through the vacuum from behind their starboard flank!

A massive fifty-millimeter heavy rail-slug from the Black Kite’s main cannon screamed past the Wanderer-7’s cockpit by less than ten meters... so close the shockwave rattled the cracked canopy in its frame and it hit the Pyre Eel dead at the base of its skull.

SPLAT... SHATTER!

The upper third of the ninety-meter serpent detonated into a blinding cloud of pulverized black stone, shattered bone plates and thousands of liters of boiling vaporized orange blood.

Its body went limp instantly and hung dead on the end of the tether.

Out through the canopy, the Black Kite slid smoothly into the gap with its dark prow cutting between the corvette and the corpse.

Massive hydraulic clamps unfolded from its belly and drove two heavy titanium suction lances deep into the torn carcass, and the dull thrum of industrial pumps started siphoning the glowing orange blood into its cryogenic vats.

WHUM... WHUM... WHUM...

Leo sat motionless in the throne.

His hands were still buried in the cradles. On his HUD, the gold reticle had gone empty grey.

[Target Lost...]

He waited.

One second... Two... Three...

However there was no golden chime and no Survival Points either... The counter in his ledger sat frozen at 1,032.

’Ah.’

The kill wasn’t his, the final blow belonged to the Black Kite and the silence that followed on the bridge was thick and suffocating, broken only by the hum of the cooling vents.

Ren stood at the rail.

He watched the drifting harvested corpse with a calm satisfied nod... then turned slowly to face the command dais with a gentle sympathetic smile.

"Good effort, kid," he said, loud enough to carry clearly to every station on the bridge without a trace of malice. "Really. You flew the approach with plenty of heart but your angle on that final lock was off by about three degrees... If Voss hadn’t taken the shot when he did, the recoil from your burst would’ve slackened the tether, and that eel would’ve wrapped its tail straight around your cockpit glass."

Leo slowly pulled his hands out of the cradles.

The angle had been perfect... The reticle had been dead center on the creature’s brain stem, and there’d been zero risk of recoil slack so it was a lie.

A complete calculated lie, delivered with the easy assurance of a seasoned veteran correcting an amateur.

Elena let out a long theatrical sigh and rolled her eyes at the ceiling.

"Of course. He almost got our canopy crushed again because he refused to listen to a professional..."

Camila looked down at the floor, relieved and convinced while Sensei gave her brother a small grateful nod.

Harper shot up from the damage console with her face flushed red.

"Wait a minute, Leo had that shot dead center! The reticle was—"

Ren just looked at her with patient older-brother kindness and gave a tiny gentle shake of his head, and the words withered in her throat.

Her knuckles went white on the wrench as she sat back down.

Ren walked smoothly up the three steps of the dais and stopped beside the throne, towering over him with his neat hair and his breath smelling faintly of mint and cedar and his smile fixed in place like polished marble.

He reached out his right hand.

CLAP!

His palm came down on Leo’s shoulder in a solid friendly clap and squeezed, pushing Leo a centimeter deeper into the leather.

"Good effort," Ren said warmly, looking down into Leo’s hollow unblinking eyes. "Leave the heavy lifting to the big boys, alright?"