Fool's Gold: Carson Lyle's War - Part One by Thomas J. Rock Page A

hear on the military comm net.
    Lyle looked ahead and could see the octagonal structure that was the jump gate hanging in space and the distant asteroid field beyond it.
    Kagan saw it too. "Head straight for it."
    The ship was suddenly rocked by two explosions in its flight path. Loud alarms sounded in the cockpit. Everyone would have been thrown to the floor if they hadn't been strapped in.
    "Dammit, Dex! Where are they?"
    Dex listened in his earpiece. "Just on the edge of weapons range."
    "I think I got 'em," Varga said. "Bearing about two-six-three, then they dropped off the scope."
    "Their next shots won't be across the bow! This bucket has got to move!"
    Lyle checked the computer. They were still sixty-five seconds out from the gate. "How long?"
    "Estimated sixty seconds, but that's a rough guess," Varga said.
    As it stood, they were not going to make it.
    The comm speaker came to life.
    "Majestic one-one-seven, you are ordered to return to the El Dorado Trans-Port, immediately. Repeat, reduce speed and change course back to El Dorado or we will fire on you again."
    Lyle thought for a second, looked to Kagan, then back to the controls. He reached for the booster throttle and pulled it back to zero percent. Then he fired the breaking thrusters for a five-second burst to reduce speed. The rapid deceleration caught the other men off guard, throwing them toward the front viewport.
    "What the hell are you doing?" Varga yelled as he drew his gun.
    Kagan and Dex also had their weapons pointed at Lyle.
    "You get this ship moving now! Hey! Are you listening?" Kagan said.
    Lyle had his hand on the throttle and was focused on the forward view port.
    Varga started to unstrap from his seat.
    Lyle held out a hand without looking back. "Stop!"
    Kagan motioned for his men to sit tight.
    Lyle continued to peer out the port.
    "What for it..." He said.
    If he'd have blinked, he would have missed it. But there it was; two dim streaks of light from the fighter exhaust ports moving forward ahead of them, then the flashes of directional thrusters that arced them upward and away. The fighter's stealth design suppressed the flashes, but not completely
    "Hang on!"
    Lyle threw the throttle up to one hundred percent. The ship protested the sudden change in momentum almost as much as its passenger's equilibrium. A button on the throttle control began to flash red. He had to strain under the high G to reach it but managed to get a finger on it.
    The roar of the booster engines got exponentially louder.
    The ship lurched again from another sudden increase in thrust.
    Twenty seconds to the jump gate...
    Lyle watched the warnings from the navigation computer. At an emergency burn of one-hundred-twenty percent on the boosters, they were approaching the gate at several hundred kilometers per second.
    Way too fast.
    "He's gonna crash us into the gate!!!" Dex yelled.
    "Shut up!" Lyle yelled back.
    The jump gate was getting very close, in the viewport, very quickly.
    Ten seconds to the gate. Lyle flipped a switch over his head that sent a signal to the gate to begin the jump cycle.
    Another alarm went off.
    "Incoming missiles! Ten seconds!" Varga yelled.
    He dialed the emergency burn up to one-twenty-five. It'll have to be enough!
    Dex and Varga clutched the armrests of their seats, looking very angry and nervous. Kagan looked calm but serious.
    Lyle had to use the manual control to help keep the ship on a virtual line the computer had projected on the forward view port. Any noticeable deviation from it would mean the ship would crash into the gate.
    Lyle called the countdown. "...six...five...four...three...this is gonna be close..."
    The Gate barely had time enough to open to jump space when the ship went in. The ship shook worse than ever as it made the transition from normal space-time to jump space. There were more alarms throughout the ship. Anything that wasn't nailed down flew about the cockpit.
    There was a loud BOOM as it exited the gate at the on