Ad Astra by Jack Campbell

People were screaming but my head was swimming too much to understand. Then a great hand pressed on me as the lifeboat accelerated away from what was left of Lady , putting everything it had into getting away. I struggled to breathe as a couple of bodies lying partly across me tripled in weight.
    A black fringe grew around my vision as I lay there, but I kept my eyes fixed on the display screens at the front of the lifeboat. The one in front of the piloting station showed only the spinning star field, but the auxiliary screen was locked on the area where Lady was still heading.
    The big privateer was accelerating, trying to get up speed, finally realizing Lady was playing for keeps, but its own mass and inertia were holding it back. Lady came down on it, moving so much faster under her long acceleration that the old freighter seemed like an arrow. The privateer was still firing, but the shots were only chipping pieces off Lady . They couldn’t stop or divert her.
    Lady roared down from above like the angel of death and struck across the privateer at an angle. I fought back the blackness and what might have been tears as Lady ’s old hull bent around the point of contact. The privateer’s hull bent, too, curving upward on either side of the impact. I could see hulls shredding, compartments blowing open under the stress and spilling their contents into space, countless minor detonations rippling through the merged wreckage as systems and structures failed explosively. A cloud of vented gases blocked direct view of the wrecks as they spun off, locked together in their death throes.
    Off to the side, the slower-moving cargo containers and cargo drums were coming down on the smaller privateer. It was moving, too, trying to dodge the field of debris. It almost made it. Drums hit, denting the hull or punching through, but the smaller privateer managed to hold its course. Then a big container clipped its bow. The privateer shuddered and lurched off to one side under the impact, directly into the path of another container. The second one hit aft and hit hard. I watched energy flare and knew the privateer’s engines had slagged. The smaller privateer staggered into an erratic roll, taking more glancing impacts as it spun away.
    I couldn’t see the refugee ship. I couldn’t remember where it was supposed to be relative to us now. I tried to find it but my head hurt and I felt very tired and it was too hard to keep that blackness out of my eyes, so I let it fill my eyes and my head and let the pain go away.
    #
    I opened my eyes and saw light again. Smooth light, steady light. I blinked, turning my head to see what looked like a very well-appointed sick bay. I turned my head the other way and saw Halley.
    She nodded at me wordlessly, waiting for me to speak.
    “This doesn’t look like a peacekeeper prison infirmary.”
    Halley twisted her mouth into a sardonic smile. “No. The peacekeepers figured they owed you one. You’re on the Vestral ship Fenris Rising . Outbound from Fagin.”
    “Oh.” I thought about that. “ Lady …”
    “The collision totally destroyed the larger privateer. The smaller was knocked completely out of commission by the impacts of the cargo containers. The peacekeepers rounded it up a few days later.”
    “A few days later.” I lay back, feeling a lot more tired than someone who’d been asleep for at least that long ought to feel.
    “Peacekeepers picked us up. Good thing. That lifeboat of yours wasn’t in very good shape. Neither were you. Concussion, a few broken bones. That kind of thing. The refugee ship made it, by the way. They’re safe.”
    So Lady ’s sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. I nodded.
    “Captain Weskind would be very proud of you, Kilcannon.”
    “Captain Weskind -.” The question stalled as I saw the look on Halley’s face.
    “She’s dead.” Whatever Halley saw in my expression made her lean forward a bit and squeeze my hand. “You did everything you could. Her suit