Chronicles of a Space Mercenary 3: Vengeance Read Online Free Page B

remainder of the Universe. It entirely dwarfed us and there didn’t seem to be any end to it- the dust-cloud on one side and the rest of the Universe on the other. A growing Cosmic monster already of immense proportion.
    I put Last Chance into a viscous lateral burn directly into the dust-cloud and plunged us into the gloom and obscurity of the thick dust. The Katons came out of warp at our exact exit-point not caring that we might have dallied just long enough to shove a nuke or three up their asses. I glanced back again at Tanya to make sure she wasn’t doing just that. She smiled at me maliciously as her fingers twitched over the controls but I wasn’t too worried about her wasting those very valuable weapons- if I didn’t pretend she got under my skin sometimes that would only cause her to redouble her efforts. She was very careful when it came to her life and I knew she was as sure as I that before this was over we might very well have need of those nukes and her antics were only to antagonize.
    There were numerous of them right behind us all right, however many Tanya had counted. The proximity alarm was ringing of multiple threats. I wasn’t free at that moment for such luxuries as counting though did the numbers really matter- ten or thirty of them what was the difference when they knew we only had three nukes. A deadly game of Russian-roulette for the first of the Katon Destroyers out of warp but that’s how badly they wanted to kill me and it warmed my heart to know that at least someone really cared about me that much. I was forced into immediate evasive maneuvers as they began taking pot-shots at us in the concealing stellar-dust, but that’s all they were because they were gone from our scan which meant we were gone from theirs. For the moment we had escaped.
    The continuing evasive maneuvers were necessary to avoid the larger debris as we plunged farth er into the asteroid-field. Katon photon-beams several times flashed closely in the darkness of the dust and debris, lighting the eerie spacescape in muted pinks and purples, but we were traveling farther into the field and soon even the random shots vanished far behind us. They had lost their prey but only for the moment. As Bren had said, we were trapped inside.
    “I think Bren made a goo d point.” I said as I turned helm over to the auto-pilot and turned to look at Tanya. “Just how in the hell are we going to get out of here?”
    “You’re the hotshot pilot.” Tanya said with another of her smiles as she rose to depart. “You figure it out.”
    “I may have it figured out.” Bren said.
    “Oh.” I said uninterestedly as Tanya departed and I watched the auto-pilot slowly glide Last Chance through the random movements of boulders roughly the size of Last Chance to mountain-siz ed chunks it took long moments to navigate around. Although if anything I was watching the rear scan screen quite a bit more closely even though with the obscuring debris there was nothing to see. Though I doubted they would try to close with Last Chance inside the field, where the real battle for the massive Destroyers would be in avoiding random accidental destruction in the close confines of the constantly changing spacescape but I just couldn’t seem to keep my eyes away from that scan screen expecting them to follow us despite the lunacy of the move. It was the Katons we were talking about, after all.
    I was uninterested in Bren’s opinion because unlike his mathematical abilities- at which he is genius- his piloting skills and the reaction-time necessary to survive as a pilot simply weren’t there. I could imagine no valuable input from Bren concerning the act of piloting. It has always been my opinion that humans are all created mostly equal, Bren and I- all humans- as equally talented each in our own way and each person’s strength making up where another is weak making the whole stronger- but Bren and I were on opposite sides of the graph. No input from Bren