Farscape--Dark Side of the Sun by Andrew Dymond

Author:Andrew Dymond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER 6

Moya convulsed in pain as another blast tore into her hull. She was overwhelmed with fear and desperate to escape. Too weak to StarBurst to safety, she was a helpless target as Jansz’s gun skiffs took up position, swarming like insects around her, their gun ports wide open and belching fire.

As a child, Crichton had read science fiction. Now he was living it, and the fact was that space was a much simpler place than anyone had previously imagined. There were, though, a few basic rules of thumb.

Anything you get wrong could kill you.

Anything you forget could kill you.

When in doubt, assume anything can kill you.

Simple, and easy to remember. Especially when seated in Farscape I and facing dozens of heavily armed gun skiffs crewed by ruthless killers. He wondered if the ramshackle armaments system that he and Aeryn had hastily cobbled together and mounted on Farscape I would even survive takeoff, let alone a vicious dogfight.

“Well, I’ll soon find out,” Crichton muttered to himself. He squared his shoulders and steeled himself for battle. He was resolved to go out and give as good an account of himself as he could.

As a child, he’d read books in which interstellar war consisted of anything from two pilots marooned on a barren world, with nothing but a pocket knife and their wit with which to fight, to gargantuan fleets of glittering starships with gravity rays so powerful they could smash planets together like so many snooker balls. The reality, as with everything else in life, was much simpler.

When in doubt, assume anything can kill you. Because when anything you do may kill you, you’ve got nothing to lose. And a man with nothing to lose has a chance of winning.

At least that’s what he kept telling himself as he pushed forward on the powerboost and flew Farscape I out of Moya’s cargo bay on a tail of cold fire, with death in his eyes and a scream in his heart.

He didn’t feel like an imperiled pilot. He felt like a kid on a go-cart, shooting concrete rapids and giving fate the finger.

There were days when you needed a good scrap.

* * *

Aeryn studied the battle readouts on the heads-up display. Her Prowler was the most perfect Peacekeeper design, a marriage of technology and inspiration that had been with her since before she could walk. It listened and saw for her, projecting its prodigious observations and lightning conclusions via laser beam directly onto her retinal implants. It was her sister. Her twin. Panther-black and built for murder.

When she was in her Prowler, Aeryn Sun was in love. The universe was her mother, the cold alloy hull her father, the targeting and weapons systems her beloved family. She was complete.

Calm.

Cold.

Perfect.

Aeryn remained motionless, cupped in black alloy, held tight against the rip and shear of g-force, temperature even. She did not sweat. She existed merely as an adjunct to the whole, definable only by its blinding speed and constantly evolving angular vectors. The sum

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