Return of The Red Devil Read online

  Kyp giggled and made with a chirpy comeback, “Me a cripple? Oh my, I suppose your cronies may have set me up with some bad fuel controls at our last port of call. You sly dog!

  But, I have a better idea! Why don't you all just run along and tell your big bad Guildmaster that I gave you the slip again, this time? That way we all win. You and the two kids you're babysitting will get to live another day, and I can get back to my usual business!”

  “Now Ms. Epsilon, you know I can't come back empty handed again. Lets just make this easy. Just let us on board then we can dose you with a neuro-dart to the neck and it will be all over in a couple seconds.”

  “Oh, of course. And you'll just humanely space the rest of the crew I suppose, since they would just complicate things with their existence, right? Hmm?” Kyp's sarcastic tone turned a bit harder.

  “I promise we will let them off at the next available colony,” Zack replied.

  Kyp hissed back, “You know Zero. You never were very smart, even for a poor brain damaged human!”

  “Very well, Ms. Epsilon, if you want to be difficult we can do this the hard way. Green 2, close to firing range.”

  Zach was beginning to sweat now. He hoped she must be bluffing! We have the drop on her solid this time. She is in an unarmed yacht, and she can't possibly escape! Can she?

  Aboard Dragon Lady:

  Kyp turned to her firecontrol officer, “Ok, the game is hot now. Mr. Sparky, are they within two thousand klicks?”

  “Yes Ma'am, and closing.”

  “Time to even the playing field a bit, Mr. Sparky. Warm up the blinder and let's hammer 'em!” Kyp barked.

  “Aye, aye, Ma'am. Blinder is firing!”

  A ventral tail blister on the 'Lady came to life and fired out a three hundred megawatt microwave pulse that enveloped the pursuing raiders overloading their delicate tracking and targeting systems. The receivers on the raiders were swamped from the brutal amplitude of the signal and quickly burned out.

  Green Flight:

  “Green Leader, Green 2, all sensors offline. I'm blind sir.”

  “Green 1 is blind too, sir.”

  What the hell? Zach thought to himself, Only military grade Electronic Counter Measures can do that! Just what have we gotten into?

  “Alright Green 2 track with the target with IR, close to visual range and use optical targeting.”

  “Yes sir!”

  Dragon Lady:

  Kyp listened in on their chatter and mused to herself, Wow, these guys are really dumb!!

  “Nice work, Sparky. We put their lights out. Now, plot the imminent threat and sow a batch of mines in their path”

  “Aye Captain! --Mines away.”

  “Mr. Easton, stand by for some targeting solutions. I think four rounds per gun should do.”

  “Aye aye, Ma'am”

  Mal saw his annunciator panel come alive with the target solutions and he flipped the switch to slave guns to the incoming data. Quickly the guns slewed around in azimuth and layed in elevation on to an empty spot of sky. His screen timer clicked off the countdown time to fire. three...two...one...MARK!

  Mal held the trigger down for a few seconds. There was no sound in the vacuum but felt the thundering vibration through the gun mount into his seat as the guns recoiled violently into their carriages.

  “On the way!” Mal announced into his radio.

  Green Flight:

  Green 2 bored in for the kill. This will be easy money! He smirked inwardly and was just bringing the Dragon Lady into his optical gun sights.

  He never got his bead on target though, instead his ship shuddered and jolted violently! His entire annunciator panel lit up with a dozen red lights as his fighter plowed right into the cloud of mines sown for him!

  What the HELL?

  Green 2's burned out sensors never picked up the phenolic tennis ball size mines as they pummeled him viciously, blasting holes through the skin of his fighter and damaging major systems.

  There were still sixteen more cannon shells still in flight and they all arrived as calculated.

  “Green 2, I'm hit! I've...” Green 2's radio transmission ended in a burst of static.

  Each forty millimeter shell carried a new style trident warhead. The tip consisting of an armor piercing initiator, following behind that was 1.5 kg charge of high explosive with a delayed fuse set to detonate once the armor penetrator had done its work. The final and perhaps worst part of the package was the trailing incendiary package. The incendiary section was the part that was truly nightmarish. After the high-explosives went off and the blast subsided, this thing went to work. It was an all magnesium shell packed with thermite that began spraying its white hot payload all over the interior, melting steel structure and conduits like butter then incinerating everything at all flammable and even catching aluminum bulkheads on fire. The tridents were made to puncture and inflict severe internal damage to more heavily armored warships.

  But used against a smaller ship or fighter, the effect was devastating.

  Green 2 had ten of the twelve round salvo smash into his Icarus fighter and within the space of a less than one second the entire craft was immolated from the inside. One round hit the engine compartment and two more bored into the main fuel cells where they burst. At that point it was over in less than a second as Green 2 split down the middle into hundreds of burning shards and exploded into a white hot fireball.

  Dragon Lady:

  “Green Leader, Green 1, what happened to Green 2?”

  Kyp provided a snarky answer over the Guild radio frequency, “Ida know, sweetie! Maybe he was flying with the wrong joystick or dropped his blaster down his own shorts. Very sloppy flying!”

  Anything you can do to unnerve your opponent and jangle their nerves is to your advantage. The next best thing to striking terror into their hearts, she mused to herself.

  Switching to ship's intercom, Kyp advised her gunner-first officer, “Mr. Easton, you have manual gun control now. I'll see if I can throw some more shots your way. Feel free to fire at will for the opportunity.”

  Mal smiled behind his helmet visor, “Aye aye, Ma'am. With pleasure!”

  Green 1 and Green Leader must have conversed on another frequency because Green 1 began to bore in and fired a salvo of missiles at the Dragon Lady.

  Kyp saw the threat on the display and dumped chaff mixed with flares along with some fullers earth to spoof the missiles, then she snapped Dragon Lady into a hard right turn and kicked in full impulse thrust hurling her ship well out of the line of fire.

  The missiles went for the decoys and detonated harmlessly in the debris cloud with dazzling flashes.

  After the two fighters passed through the exploded missile debris the Guild pilots scanned around their horizon for Dragon Lady, wondering where she had vanished.

  Kyp had already swung around in a tight arc and was closing in behind them to cannon range on Green 1's tail, who was loosely formed up with Zero's and trailing slightly.

  Kyp's mind ticked over the basics, Always go for the tail-end-Charlie in the formation. It lends better to the element of surprise.

  Kyp barked into the ships com again, “Bandit, twelve o'clock high, Mr. Easton!”

  She had formed up five hundred meters behind and below Green 1, well within Green 1's blind spot.

  Mal spun his turret around and had the guns laid in. He loosed another short burst causing Green 1 to disintegrate in another spectacular blast.

  Seeing his wingman get blown to bits, Zach executed a hard break to his left but Kyp had anticipated that move and was peppering his hind quarters with her cheek mounted twenty millimeter guns. One of his engines burst open and caught on fire.

  “Ok crew, now it gets interesting. We have a wounded quarry and he is desperate. Stay sharp!” Kyp purred into the intercom.

  Zach tightened his hard turn to the left which pulled him out of Kyp's hail of cannon fire.

  How in holy hell is she doing that with such a large ship?!? Th
at thing is as nimble as a Tiberian Swallow! She must have some advanced tech! Zach thought to himself.

  He was hoping to sucker her into a turning contest which she could not possibly win allowing him to set up a good shot into her stern section once his turning radius brought him inside her wider turn that she could not begin to match in her larger ship.

  Kyp was well aware of this old trick so she countered with hard pull up around her pitch axis then rolling hard over to the right in a wide corkscrew maneuver this brought her nose and formidable dorsal guns into a line up with Zach's unarmed backside again!

  Zach saw her in his rear view monitor, disappear off his right rear quarter and figured she had broken off her attack to run away. He continued his turn in hopes of coming up on her tail again as she was attempting to flee. That was a mistake, The twenty millimeter guns and forty millimeter auto cannons spoke again from Dragon Lady and the combined firepower with explosive shells blasted the entire tail off Zach's fighter. Zach's Icarus fighter began tumbling out of control.

  Zach was thrown violently against his seat straps and was almost knocked senseless from the impact.

  “Yield! And I'll haul you in, Zero, then you'll get to stay alive another day!” Kyp hailed him on the Guild frequencies.

  Damn her to Hell! The woman is some kind of a devil! Zach thought through flickering consciousness.

  “Piss off, Epsilon! You God damned furred mutant!”

  Kyp lost sight of him for just a second as his fighter crazily tumbled beneath her nose, but Zachary had one more card to play. Dragon Lady shuddered as Zach locked a tractor beam onto the underside of her hull.

  Shit! If he latches on to us he'll kill us all! Kyp knew that once Zach was able to grapple his ship to hers it would be a simple matter to leisurely pump Dragon Lady full of nerve gas killing the crew off so he could drive home with a new ship as a nice bonus and collect the entire bounty fee all for himself too!

  “Mr. Sparky, what does his energy signature look like? Does he still have full APU energy?” she asked her ECM officer.

  “Negative Captain. He's hurt bad. I'm showing him as all electrical generation is gone. Probably shot out. He must be running everything on emergency batteries.”

  “Thanks, Sparky. I'll bet running that tractor beam is drawing a lot of power too.”

  “Yes Ma'am. I'd think he can't maintain that for too much longer.”

  Kyp keyed up the radio again with a more patronizing tone, “Zero, honey. Be a dear and shut down that silly old tractor beam. You have lost. Give yourself up and we can all go home.”

  The radio crackled back with his response, “Not a chance! I'm going to take you down once and for all!”

  “Ok, Zero, I can see now that I'll have to be more firm with you. Have you ever had a good old fashioned Nantucket Sleigh ride?”

  “A what??!!?” Zach had no idea what a Sleigh was much less a Nantucket.

  “You'd best hold on to your dentures then!” Kyp replied with a snippy tone.

  On the Dragon Lady's PA, Kyp announced firmly, “Everyone tighten your straps I'm going to play an old game of 'Crack the Whip' with our opponent!”

  “Yes Ma'am! Crack the Whip, Ma'am?”, came an inquiry from Cleco in engineering.

  “Right. He has a tractor beam locked on us and we can't get a clear shot at him because he is behind and below us. But we have full maneuvering and I can sure make him wish he was dead back there. Bring up the inertia dampers to full power, if you please.” Kyp smirked beneath her suit visor.

  “Aye-aye, Cap'n!” came the reply.

  A couple seconds later Kyp advanced the impulse engines throttles from her quadrant by her left hand. Then with her right handed stick, she gently pulled up the nose and added some left pressure with coordinated pressure to left rudder. Dragon Lady answered crisply with a smart barrel roll to the left. Riding out on the end of his tractor beam tether all of the Dragon Lady's motions were magnified greatly by several magnitudes.

  The G forces began to pile up on Zachary's body, pressing him down into his seat with increased force, since his inertia dampers were not working well anymore.

  Kyp allowed Zach a moment to fall into trail out on the end of his gravitometric tether then she slowly began to tighten the radius of her roll.

  This had the effect of causing Zach to helplessly follow along an increasingly faster corkscrew path.

  The G's piled up on him ,seven gees, eight, nine. He was breathing in short gasps and straining hard to keep from blacking out.

  His smaller fighter had no room to accommodate for the power generators needed for larger inertia dampeners so he just had to take what was being dealt out.

  “Come on, Zero. Kill the tractor or it gets worse from here on.”

  “Never!!” Zachary hissed out between his clenched teeth.

  “Oooo-KAY! You asked for it!”

  Kyp deftly used drastic control of differential thrust with her left hand. Then coordinated inputs with her feet and right hand on the armrest mounted stick. Dragon Lady responded again nimbly with a crispness that was astounding for a ship her size.

  Zachary watched in horror through his canopy as the Dragon Lady stopped the tight left roll and executed a quick snap roll to the right.

  OH, GOOD LORD, NO!! The near instantaneous velocity reversal whipped down the length of his tractor beam and the G-forces came crashing down on Zach like a truck load of anvils.

  Thirty five times the force of gravity slammed into him like a pile driver, cracking ribs and bruising internal organs. Mercifully he blacked out.

  After a minute he came to again and Kyp now had him in a tightening barrel roll to the right this time.

  With his last bit of strength Zach noted the range and fired grappling hooks with cables into Dragon Lady's underside. They penetrated the skin and set themselves fast.

  Sparky blurted out, “Captain! The enemy has set grappling hooks into us! What are your orders?”

  “Thank you, Sparky.” Kyp replied with a somber tone.

  Dammit Zero! Why couldn't you just give up, like an intelligent moron? Now I'll have to kill you.

  Kyp was running out of options, with her having to apply thrust constantly to throw off her attacker she could not send a crew member out to simply cut the cables free.

  But there was one last thing that would prevent her enemy from boarding and killing them all.

  She steeled herself and gave one last order, “Engineering! Power up the Mobius Engine.”

  After a short pause, “Aye Captain! She's ready. And it's been an honor serving with you, Ma'am!” came the sober reply.

  Mobius drive was a last ditch escape device designed to encase the ship in a hyperspace bubble then distribute the ships atoms across space in such a way that all the time-space points in the universe were an equal distance, then, using quantum manipulations, the drive was supposed to reassemble the ships molecular structure somewhere else. It is thought that some ships got powdered up and scattered across the galaxy by accident, no one knows for sure though since those craft were never heard from again.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you all! It has been an honor working with all of you. You've been an outstanding crew!” Kyp countered over intercom.

  Kyp sent a special message to Malcolm, alone in the gun turret, “Mal, --you too. Specially. May the Valkyries welcome you with open arms!”

  Malcolm knew it was bad when the captain addressed him in the familiar like that,“Thank you, Ma'am. See you in the next dimension!”

  Mal knew she had played out her cards and there were no aces left.

  Then Kyp firewalled the impulse throttles causing the 'Lady to lunge ahead dragging the hapless fighter along behind. That would buy Dragon Lady a few more critical seconds needed.

  Mal gulped. He knew this was finally the end of the line.

  Kyp flipped open the yellow and black safety covers and pulled the handle underneath. “Mobius engaged!”

  The ships lights dimmed a
nd flickered, then the stars winked out as Dragon Lady hurtled into the rift of unnatural space time.

  Mobius was not designed to handle the situation with a ship in tow so the hyperspace rift opened pulling in Dragon Lady and then in closed again cutting Zach's crippled fighter in half.

  The two remaining halves of the Icarus fighter exploded from that indignity with half the debris left behind in N-space. The other half of the Icarus imparted its blast into the hyperspace bubble with Dragon Lady.