The warped and twisting stars sped past Jordo’s canopy on either side in a way that made him think they were flying underwater. The region of ‘other dimensional’ space that manifested between star systems as a hypermass transit was always narrow. The one they’d opened was narrower than usual. The passage the Lancers and the breaching ship and the junks had to traverse was less than 650 meters wide and constantly changing shape. With the junks and Tipperary and all the Lancers hurtling faster than light towards the Mizar system, it almost seemed for a moment as if they’d made it, as if they’d got away clean, but Jordo had been flying his fighter backwards for at least ten seconds now, staring at the transit’s opening onto the Algol system as it receded. It was still open.
"How long is it going to take that thing to close?" Paladin said.
"Too long."
All the Lancers had spun on their thrusters then to fly backwards, and Dirty was the first to spot them. "Squidyman, Squidyman, comin’ down the pipe. I count three, six…. Hell, it's an even dozen."
There were more. As they entered the transit, the plasma caught and trailed off the spikes on their three-dozen red hulls.
There was no room for evasion in there. "What’s our ETA to the terminus? Will they catch up before we make it?"
"I don’t know. But if they follow us out of here, they will."
"Lancers, listen up," Burn said. "I am ordering you ahead. You are to accelerate as hard as you can for the terminus and leave us here. Your priority is to warn Hardway."
"What?"
"You’re faster than Tipperary and the junks. If anyone can make it out and transmit a warning it’s you and the Bitzers."
"But we don’t all have to go."
"Yes, you do. There’s thirty-six red bandits back there just licking their alien chops. You really think you can stop them? I’m ordering you to fly ahead and warn Hardway. The battlegroup and the convoy are the priority here. That’s the end of it."
"Burn…."
"Don’t get mushy on me, Lancer 1-1. Do I sound like a woman who’s about to die?"
"What are you going to do?"
"Just make sure you let me know the second you’re clear of the transit."
*****
The terminus grew over Tig’s head like the end of a tunnel. The pinprick flares from the Lancers’ engines centered themselves briefly in it. He saw them against the foreign stars before they veered to port in formation and were suddenly lost from view. Their pale blue constellation flew across the terminus again and held station there, waiting for the breaching ship and the junks. "Lancers are clear of the transit," Jordo said. His voice didn’t change pitch or tone at all when he said, "We have Hardway and the battlegroup in sight. They're 471 million Ks out and still crossing the system."
"Roger that," Burn said from Audacity. "We’ll see you soon."
*****
The cockpit of a junk is a surprisingly spacious place if there’s only the pilot and co-pilot in the module. Once Burn added Phipps, the Crew Chief, the reactor specialist, Nysciz, Wrigley, and the gunner, Bubba, the cockpit module of Audacity felt more like a crowded lifeboat.
"You load the NAV script and give it priority downstairs?"
Wrigley nodded. "She’ll fly just fine without us. Until we say so."
The reactor specialist told her what he told her before. "You know that’s not the kind of det that’s going to take out 36 enemy fighters. When the reactor cooks off, it won’t even be the yield of one warspite torpedo."
She nodded. "I’m not gunning for the fighters," she said. "Not directly."
"What then?"
Burn turned to Ernie and said, "Blow the cockpit."
"Seal green," the co-pilot said. "Circuit good. Bingo on your mark."
"Bingo."
When they blasted the cockpit off the junk without any inertial negation, Burn thought the rockets might just turn them to spam. The acceleration gees flattened the junk’s crew against the rear bulkhead. Burn and her co-pilot couldn’t do much under those gees, but except for one remaining task, their job was done.
Burn got confirmation in her flight helmet a few seconds later that headless Audacity had obeyed her autopilot script and come to a stop behind them. The junk drifted close to the twisting stars and the waving wall of the transit.
The cockpit module tumbled slowly next to Greenstone and Tipperary on her way to the terminus. 63 seconds later, the cockpit module ripped out the hellmouth and entered regular space in the Mizar system along with the breaching ship and the junk.
*****
"Squidy will exit the transit in… thirty-three seconds," Jordo said.
"Negative, Lancer 1-1." Burn voice came over comms cold and even. "Nothing is coming out of that transit."
He could see deep down in where the Squidies now approached the drifting junk. They were wary of a detonation. They tried to fly past without opening fire as the junk’s reactor cooked off like a low-yield bomb.
Whatever dimensional membrane made up the walls of the transit echoed with the detonation, rippling with waves so violent, the walls of that great vein seemed to reverberate against each other before they tore. The membrane ripped and came apart in a hundred places at once and receded from all points simultaneously. The walls of the interstellar transit tore away everywhere, seemingly rushing at the still open terminus of the transit in a fiery wave. The three squadrons of alien aces vanished from sight, presumably lost somewhere in interstellar space or incinerated when some sizable portion of the energy that went into the transit's opening hurled itself out into the Mizar system in a fountain of high energy particles, microwaves, and infrared.
"I’ve got incoming LiDAR beams. Multiple sets. Radar too. We’re being painted." Dirty said, "Multiple contacts."
"IFF?"
"They’re friendly!" Forward recon patrols from SCS Araby’s 19th fighter squadron ripped past the Lancers.
"Lancer 1-1, this is Cuckoo 3-1. Is that SCS Tipperary with you? What the hell you people doing out here?"
Burn answered that one. "Cuckoo, 3-1. This is Lt. Commander Burn Steinmetz," she said. "Patch me through to Hardway on your Q-linked comms. I’ve got an urgent message for Harry Cozen."