Stepping Stones of Starlight

Could a bio-duelist cross a hundred and fifty meters of vacuum on the backs of iron torpedoes before his lungs collapsed? Standing on the curved dorsal hull of The Scharlaken Vos as the prototype skimmed three meters above the roaring Goudswaard catapult-rail, Daane Vroomen locked his boots to the magnetic tread and kept his rapier pointed straight at Commander Lodewijk van Haelen’s observation bridge. The dreadnought The IJzeren Klauw hung overhead like a severed mountain of dark basalt, its flank batteries humming with lethal charge. Daane needed the master transit cyphers locked in van Haelen’s helm pedestal, and with his own cruiser's propellant tanks drained dry, the warlord's impending broadside was the only bridge across the void.

Steam vented in jagged rings from the dreadnought’s ventral tubes. Four heavy torpedoes, each an eight-meter casing of forged nickel-iron, slammed out of the launch racks on plumes of compressed nitrogen. They fired without thermal burn, relying on cold inertia to clear the dreadnought’s hull before solid-fuel boosters kicked them to intercept speed.

Daane did not wait for the igniters. He bent his knees, timed the rising cadence of the first casing, and leaped into the void.

The leap severed his contact with the hull. Weightlessness seized his limbs, but his gaze never left the lead missile. His optic nerves flared with the familiar burn of psychokinetic polarization as he matched vectors with the incoming mass. Two meters out, Daane swung the tip of his monofilament rapier across the missile’s conductive nose-cone.

The torpedo’s forty tons of forward momentum collapsed, pivoted on an acute geometric hinge, and redirected straight downward beneath his boots.

Daane’s pressurized soles struck the steel casing like a dancer striking a springboard. The kinetic rebound launched him twenty meters higher into the vacuum, while the diverted missile plunged helplessly toward the superconducting ring below, shattering against the induction field in a shower of emerald sparks.

A second torpedo surged past his shoulder, its rocket motor roaring to life. Daane spun in microgravity, caught the aft exhaust ring with a backhand tap of his foil, and wrenched its linear thrust forty degrees port. The sudden pivot shoved him upward in another violent acceleration arc. Behind his bronze visor, sweat stung his lash-line, the neural strain pounding behind his temples like a hydraulic hammer. His lungs tightened within the dueling harness. Yet his trajectory remained flawless.

He tapped the third casing with his boot-heel, reversing its vector into the fourth. The two heavy weapons collided in mid-flight with a soundless flare of orange fire that cast his shadow across the dreadnought’s armored prow. The resulting concussive shockwave struck his polarized harness, flinging him across the final thirty meters of open space directly toward the observation bridge.

Van Haelen stood behind three inches of reinforced quartz, jaw rigid as he shouted into his deck comms. The warlord’s eyes widened when Daane’s boots struck the quartz frame.

Daane did not allow the impact to shatter his shins. He polarized the fifty-kilometer-per-hour collision vector into the brittle molecular grid of the observation glass. With a crisp whip of his rapier, the crystalline sheet fractured into a spiderweb of hairline faults and blew inward under the bridge’s internal atmospheric pressure.

The outward rush of escaping air lasted three seconds before emergency blast baffles slammed down to seal the lower decks. Daane rode the depressurization currents straight onto the polished decking, landing on the balls of his boots with his rapier leveled at the warlord's throat.

"Your gunners lead with their shoulders, Commander," Daane said, his voice carrying through the suit's vocal grill with crisp, rhythmic clarity. "A fatal flaw in any reputable salon."

Van Haelen did not waste air on debate. The massive warlord tore his six-foot hyper-frequency broadsword from its magnetic back-scabbard. Powered servos throughout his gilded armor screamed at twenty thousand cycles as he swung the vibrating blade horizontally, aiming to shear Daane through his velvet doublet.

Daane dropped his weight two inches. The vibrating edge howled over his helmet crest, ionizing the thin air and raising a stench of hot ozone. Before van Haelen could reverse the heavy two-handed stroke, Daane lunged inside the warlord’s guard.

His monofilament rapier found the secondary hydraulic conduit running beneath van Haelen’s right pauldron. The monomolecular edge slipped through braided copper and pressurized fluid like parchment.

Hydraulic oil sprayed in a black plume across the deck. Van Haelen’s broadsword arm went limp, trapped beneath the dead weight of unpowered armor.

"Insolent jester," van Haelen snarled, spitting blood against his lower lip as he tried to pivot his armored bulk.

Daane flicked the rapier with a sharp twist of his wrist. The point severed the clasps of van Haelen’s gilded breastplate, sending twenty pounds of engraved gold-leaf armor crashing to the deck. With the warlord off-balance and pinned by his own ruined harness, Daane stepped past him toward the central navigation pedestal.

Resting in the brass cradle was a foot-long cylinder of spun brass and cryptographic quartz: the sector master transit cyphers. Without them, no vessel could command the Goudswaard catapult-spire to open an exit vector into the interstellar corridors.

Daane lifted the cylinder from its locking clamps with his left hand. With his right, he drove the point of his rapier straight into the primary helm cortex beneath the console.

A flurry of electrical arcs crackled across the instruments. The dreadnought’s steering thrusters sputtered, automatically locking into emergency inertial braking. The IJzeren Klauw began to fall behind, its massive bulk sliding backward along the transit trench as its automated systems struggled to clear the ruined controls.

"A souvenir of your hospitality," Daane said, bowing low toward the immobilized warlord. He used van Haelen's severed silk sash to buff a streak of hydraulic soot from his monofilament blade before sheathing it at his hip. "And a practical lesson in posture."

Sirens wailed behind the bulkheads as secondary security squads cut through the bridge doors with plasma torches. Daane did not wait for the honor guard. He turned, sprinted toward the breached viewport, and vaulted back out into the silent vacuum.

Fifty meters below, The Scharlaken Vos held station along the superconducting rail, keeping precise pace with the dreadnought’s decaying momentum. Through the cruiser's open dorsal airlock, Lysbet van Steenwijck signaled with a green docking flare.

Daane calculated the descent angle, aligned his mass with the cruiser's hull, and dropped through the void. He hit the receiving gantry with a cushioned bend of his knees, caught the hatch rim, and pulled himself inside. The outer blast doors sealed shut with a heavy, pneumatic thud.

The airlock pressurized with a hiss of fresh nitrogen. Daane stripped off the bronze dueling mask and unclasped his pressurized harness, smoothing the crimson velvet of his lapels as he stepped onto the bridge.

Lysbet looked up from the navigation pit, her astrolabe clattering against the slate table. "You have them?"

Daane held up the brass cypher cylinder and set it neatly into the console socket between her vector-slates. "The sector master keys, Surveyor. Delivered without a single crease along my shoulders."

From the lower deck hatch, Wouter van Schoonhoven poked his soot-smeared face into the compartment, gripping his vanadium spire-wrench. "The big pig fell behind! Hull pressure is holding at ninety bar, but we're out of runway in four kilometers. If we don't catch the catapult pulse, we smash into the orbital buffer at Mach twelve!"

"Insert the codes, Lysbet," Daane said.

Lysbet’s fingers moved across the brass interface. She twisted the cypher cylinder ninety degrees. A chime rang through the deck plating, followed by a low, planetary vibration that rose through the soles of their boots.

Beneath the deck, the Zuiderzee Core erupted into a brilliance of electric violet. The bio-psychic coral pulsed with wild, ecstatic resonance, feeding on the audacious momentum of the boarding run. Ahead of their prow, the massive magnetic guide-rings of the Goudswaard catapult-spire began to align, opening a spiral conduit of raw gravitational acceleration toward the stars.

The cruiser surged forward, swept up in the spire's relativistic launch corridor, leaving The IJzeren Klauw and the smoking wreckage of van Haelen’s pursuit drifting harmlessly in their wake.

Daane walked to the forward panoramic screen, withdrew a lace handkerchief from his breast pocket, and delicately wiped a speck of dust from his right cuff.

"Fifteen star systems, Surveyor," Daane said, watching the stars stretch into silver ribbons before them. "And we have just arrived at the opening measure."