Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller Brandon Ellis (ebook reader for comics txt) 📖

“Uh...affirmative, 102. Tube opening.”

Two strokes of luck in one day? She wanted to flip her father the bird, but she wasn’t out of this mess yet.

She entered the tube and the tube door closed behind her. Amber runway lights highlighted her cockpit. The exit doors opened and displayed the stars of the universe before her, a beauty she would never get used to. She floated into her restraints, the gravity nil and she was weightless. She clicked to her Air Wing’s holographic display and pressed the launch button. Her boosters pushed her toward the exit. The tube’s lining zipped past her as she accelerated.

Mission Control hissed in her ear. “Closing tubes. You’re conducting an unauthorized launch. You’re not Dizzy. Identify yourself.”

She bared her teeth as the tube’s exit doors started to close. She zipped her finger over the holographic throttle, pushing it to the max. It made a safe launch dangerous and potentially deadly. Her craft shuttered as her wing slid across the tube, scraping off chunks of paint and shards of metal. The door was closing fast. She wasn’t going to make it.

She tensed and held her breath. She pushed her feet into the floor board. She wasn’t going to make it, so she had to risk the insane.

She clicked on her Space to Space Short Range Missiles—SSSRM-23 Slingers—and targeted the exit door, and let one loose. The Air Wing shuddered. A blue streak of fire shot out the back of the missile, propelling toward the end of the tube. A ball of bluish-white flames ignited the moment of impact. The door ripped off its hinges and spiraled into space. The flame died in the vacuum of the cosmos a moment later as Rivkah exited the tube, banking hard right. She knew the starship would fire the moment she came into their sights.

And she was right.

The Air Wing’s targeting alarm blared and her HUD indicated incoming fire. The starship’s plasma cannons spun in place and the turrets moved in position. From rear cam view, Rivkah saw approaching plasma bolts.

She pulled the control stick in one direction and then another, and zig-zagged. She shoved the stick to one side and spiraled. The bolts missed on her starboard and traveled toward the red planet in the distance.

The target lock alerts ceased. She scrunched her nose and brought up her HUD. Was there a malfunction? Had a bolt caught a sensor and warped it?

No. The starship stopped firing.

Why?

Her answer came an instant later. A Star Carrier jumped from God-knows-where to right in her flight trajectory. She pulled back on her control stick and avoided a head-on collision. A destroyer popped into existence, then a cruiser, two frigates, and a patrol ship. And one by one, more of an SSP fleet jumped into the quadrant.

She veered left, then pushed her stick forward, going into a quick dive, adjusting her throttle to sub-light .30. Once out of collision-factor, she’d adjust to sub-light 2.5 and hightail the hell out of Dodge. If her Air Wing had the Alcubierre Metric like the larger ships, a solution to Einstein’s field equations, then the Metric would allow her craft to create an artificial wormhole that lasted only seconds before closing in on itself. This would allow her to traverse enormous distances by contracting space in front of her craft and expanding space behind it, resulting in faster-than-light travel. It would place her far from here.

But her ship didn’t possess the large propulsion system. She’d have to do it the old-fashioned way and fly as far and as fast as she could.

A ship appeared on her helmet display. Another SF-13 Air Wing had exited the Starship Atlantis. It flew in her direction.

“Just one?”

She expected an entire squadron. One starfighter against her would be suicide—for the other pilot.

Another ship shot from the starship.

Yep. They were sending more. And more.

“Put up or shut up,” she said. “It’s show time.”

26

M-Quadrant, Solar System - Starship Atlantis

She left, rocketing out of the launch tube. Jaxx had saved her again and she wouldn’t care, or wouldn’t know. The alarms were blaring and the lights in the launch bay blinked red and yellow. Jaxx punched a guard one more time before he realized he’d spent too much time with this young man. He managed to spin away from an incoming soldier and put his foot out, tripping the camo-loving, taking-orders-from-the-wrong-side grunt. The guy landed face first and tumbled to his side.

Guards rushed past the launch bay doors, coming directly for Jaxx. A special agent, wearing a striated-ebb nebula titanium exo-suit, the most bad ass in the Secret Space Program—Jaxx didn’t know how he knew the specifications of the suit—limped inside the bay. The agent’s hand went to his exo-suit at where his belly button would be. Whoever was inside that suit looked in bad shape and Jaxx hadn’t even faced the man yet.

Jaxx ducked another attempt by the grunt he’d tripped and kneed the guy in the groin. The grunt dropped to the floor. He then brought every emotion to the surface, every inch of disappointment, anger, frustration—the times he was ridiculed for his work by people who hadn’t studied or took the time to read more than a few paragraphs of his massively researched articles, books, and talks…

The power coursed through his veins, stronger than before, stronger than ever. Then a calm and peace overtook him and his body relaxed. He stood straighter and focused, eyes on the target—the staggering agent in the exo-suit. The agent grabbed at a rifle magnetized to his exo-suit’s back.

Jaxx bared his teeth. He narrowed his eyes and pushed outwards with his hands, palms up, as if balls of energy would actually shoot from his hands. He watched the invisible ball smack into the titanium-wearing space marine. It then catapulted the agent into a throng of oncoming soldiers.

With his adrenaline pumping, Jaxx looked at his hands. “What in the world?”