Chapter Twenty-Six: Dangerous Flight

Andy presented his book to the local leader of the Realist cell, Grinder's wife Victoria. She took care of the distribution among the local realists. It was not more than a day or two before the reactions to the book started to come in from the Realists around Port Orpheus and surrounding towns and cities. There was even one man who owned a printing company and was willing to risk printing limited run of the book in hard copy during the night.
Overall, the book was a sucess, it was what the movement needed to really challange the Idealists. They could articulate and spread the message easily, and they had a common source with which to be able to describe the ideas.
It took a few days, but eventually a number of copies were delivered to Marcelle, Joanthan, Grinder and Andy. They could not stay where they were after that. The had a new weapon against the idealists, and they had to use it.
They took the box of books and once again returned to the Angel of Redemption. Grinder once again tried to smooth talk their way out of port, but his efforts were not as successful as they were when landing.
"I'm afraid we can't let you take off sir," the voice on the com said. "We've been instructed to impound your ship."
Grinder looked at his three companions. They were not in a good position. If the ship was to be impounded, but there were no security gaurds there yet, it could only mean that they were on their way. Blasting out of the spaceport garunteed pursuit by the local authorities and quite possibly the Spaceing Commission. Waiting, however, would ensure them of capture. The copies of the book would be found and would be traced back to their origin. "It's too dangerous to stay." Grinder said to the ground.
Marcelle nodded. Jonathan took the controlls in his hands. "This could get a bit serious," He warned the group. "I suggest you belt yourselves in."
Jonathan turned on the engines and put the ship throught a fast warm up proceedure. The man on the com came back on with a warning. "Set down immediately or we will be forced to take action against your vessel. I repeate, set down or we will take action."
Grinder looked at Jonathan and said "I'll look after the weapons. You fly this beast away from this rock."
Jonathan set to the controlls and pulled up hard, throwing the ship into the air. The com continued to speak warnings, but they paid no heed to them. The Angel of Redemption and her crew were focused on escaping from Port Orpheus.
They broke atmosphere without any trouble, but there were four Port Orpheus port control patol ships waiting for them in orbit. There was also no doubt that there would be more ships launching from the surface.
Jonathan kicked the Angel into high speed. The ships had actually almost managed to surround him. There were three in a trilangle around him and one in a higher orbit than the angel. Turning around to escape out the bottom of the trianlge would have lost too much time, so Jonathan increased the forward velocity of the ship; durectly towards one of the port authority vessels. There was one obvious way Jonathan saw out of the situation that the port authorities must not have considered. He began a shallow dive back towards the atmosphere. The port authority ship began to dive as well, but on a much steeper angle, attampting to cut off Jonathan's path of descent. It was a judgement call, but Jonathan got lucky. At the right moment, the wide and flat body of the Angel skipped off the upper atmosphere like a stone on a smooth lake. Jonathan used the ships engines to provide extra energy into the jump and managed to pass over the port Authority vessle.
That ship would take time to turn around and break orbit or travel around the planet and break orbit on the other side. There were still three more ships in hot pursuit, however.
As soon as they saw that their trap that had been most likely an attempt to force them down to the Port Orpheu's surface had failed, the three ships increased their speed and began to use weapons. Solid fuel rockets began to streak from the front of the lead ship. Grinder deftly activate the missile defence systems and managed to destroy the rockets as they came in, but he was too busy to return fire. "Andy! Take over the missile defence," he shouted when there was a slight break oncoming barrage of missiles.
Grinder switched his panel over to the weapons. The Angel was equiped as an attack vessel, it wasn't really meant to be running. The designers had not made it weak, however. The aft section of the ship had two rear-facing chain guns. Grinder wasn't certain about what kind of ammunition they carried or how effective it would be against the port authority ships, but he took aim anyway.
The lead port authority ship was slowly catching up on them. Soon the missiles stopped coming and the ship behind them lurched into gear, throwing itself towards the Angel.
Jonathan was trying his best to get a clear course down towards the dueal red suns, but there was an asteroid belt in the way. They would have to break above the plain on which the planets orbited the stars and dive in from a different angle. Relative to the system, he pulled up. The change in trajectory gave teh ships behind a chance to change their course and catch up even more. It was an unfrotunate reality, but it was a necessity.
It wasn't long before the lead port authority ship was in range of Grinder's guns. He opened on on the ship. His initial volley went wide, but he swept the guns to the left and was surprised to see a line of small explosions trace across the port Authority ship. Apparently the ammunition was equiped with exploding tips. The ship behind them continued forward, but did not accelerate anymore and began to rotate of a strange angle. It was dead in space for whatever reason.
As he fired, Grinder watched a number couting down from twenty thousand for each trigger. It had to be an ammunition count. he was limited to how much he could fire. Grinder knew that this would not be their last battle, and thus descided to conserve as many rounds of amunition as he could.
Jonathan knew that to try and take any sort of evasive maneouvers while the other two port authority ships were still out of range would be counter productive to his purpose. They would only slow him down. He pressed forward in what was essentially a straigt line, trying to outrun the ships behind him that were not really much faster than his ship.
Marcelle was busy plotting the destination into the ship's computers. She had programed the computer to tell Jonathan when he could safely dive towards the sun and activate the faster than light travel engines.
Before the other ships could catch up enough, Jonathan nosed the ship into a down angle and hit a few buttons. It provided the ships behind them with an opportunity to once again cut off the angle, but it was not a sufficient advantage. The Angel of Redemption dove towards the two suns of the Port Orpheus system and, soon enough, blinked out of space and time.