Each member of the team detached a small brick of vacuum-proof plastic explosive from his MMU, and gently touched it to the hull’s surface. The bricks held, and were quickly daisy-chained together with spiral-wound detonation cord. When the job looked complete, the team backed off, and waited for Admiral Mikton’s signal.
“Blow it,” she ordered.
Lieutenant Eolo used a small det box attached to the end of the det wire, to set off the charges. At once, there was a bright, noiseless flash, and a huge hole opened in the hull of the ship. Pieces of metal—and several people—went gushing out into space. Zuri thought she saw terrible surprise manifesting on the Nautilan faces. How many of her own people had died in a similar fashion, back at Cartarrus? She steeled herself, and ordered her team to move in.
Laser dots flashed out, and pinpointed flailing bodies. Noiseless rifle rounds thudded into skulls and ribs. Zuri was over the edge of the hole and into the module. She ignored the violence surrounding her and kept her eyes open for the code box. Ordinary ship lighting had been replaced with flashing yellow warning lights. Zuri popped on her hand lamp, and played it around the comm module’s innards, seeking the object of her desire. When Lieutenant Eolo began yelling about how the Nautilan captain had suddenly cut off communications with Hallibrand—the jig being up—Zuri switched off the tactical net, and allowed silence to fill her helmet as she kept looking.
A body floated between herself and one of the comm module’s now-vacant workstations. Zuri shoved the dead woman aside.
“Where is it, goddammit,” Zuri said through gritted teeth. They were running out of time.
Suddenly—there!
She found it. The overall design of the casing hadn’t changed much, and the little lights dancing on the code computer’s control screen indicated a unit in good electronic health. Zuri turned the tactical net back on, and hollered for Colour Sergeant Mertul’s attention.
“This is it!” Zuri announced, as Mertul and a few others drew near.
Suddenly, the ship began to move. With all of the boarding team floating free, it meant they were unceremoniously slammed into the deck. Bodies and pieces of metal fell around them.
“The destroyer’s lit her reactors!” Lieutenant Eolo said, his voice almost cracking.
Zuri struggled to her hands and knees, feeling the sudden gee.
“No,” she muttered. “Not yet, for godsakes!”
The rest of the team were fighting to reorient themselves in relation to the thrust of the ship. Fore was up, and aft was down, with the decks running perpendicular to the plane of acceleration—just like on a Constellar vessel.
Zuri only had eyes for the code box. She fought her way over to where it still blinked happily at her—its internal memory not yet destroyed. Zuri used her gloved fingers to find the little latches on the box’s side, then she forced her fingertips past the red safety tape, and pried with all the strength she could manage. The code box broke free, sending Zuri toppling backward with the box clutched to her chest. She slammed onto her back—her attached MMU sending a bloop-bloop-bloop impact alarm through her helmet speakers.
The hole into space was so near, and yet so far. With acceleration climbing toward what felt like three gees, Zuri could barely move.
Strong pairs of hands grabbed both of her shoulders.
Lieutenant Eolo and Colour Sergeant Mertul practically dragged her across the deck. How either of them could stand, under their own mass and the mass of their MMUs, was a mystery. But they hustled Zuri to the hole, and unceremoniously flung her out. At once, she kicked in her own MMU—well past its safety threshold—and clutched the code box for dear life as she rocketed perpendicular to the destroyer. Which silently roared past, and away.
Zuri didn’t even want to think about the potential radiation she was catching. She kept her back to the glare of the plasma wake, and allowed her MMU to burn up the last of its fuel before she tried to get onto the Constellar encrypted net, and ask for a status report.
But all Zuri got was the crackle of static in her ears.
The lieutenant, the colour sergeant, and the team were long gone. If any of them had tried to jump out after Zuri, she didn’t know it. Somewhere down on the comet’s surface, Urrl would be launching nukes—if he hadn’t started launching them already. Likewise, as soon as the destroyer was at minimum safe distance from the Hallibrand, the Nauties would begin launching nukes too. Though Hallibrand had doubtless fired up her own main thruster, too.
Zuri still kept her back to the blinding light of the receding destroyer’s plasma wake. If the ship turned away from her, she’d be vaporized. Though she wouldn’t have time to know it. Her lateral motion—unimpeded by resistance—kept building distance between herself and the column of clear space where the destroyer had once been.
Still nothing on the encrypted net.
In the distance, a bright fireball strobed into existence, and then began to fade—its brilliance made gauzy by all the gas and dust between Zuri and the nuke’s point of detonation. Within moments, a few more fireballs erupted, and then faded, each at a different distance. Where either the Constellar or Nautilan ships were was impossible to tell. And Zuri didn’t have the heart to let go of the code box long enough to check her little tactical display—assuming the display still worked, since it had lost the uplink with Hallibrand’s sensors.
“Angels of space and time protect me,” Zuri whispered, as still another nuke flashed brilliantly—and much closer than any of the others. If it was too close, Zuri would be crushed by the shockwave. But nothing happened. She merely kept moving through cluttered space, unsure of whether or not she’d smack chest-first into a floating hill of ice, or get clipped by a bit of rock.
Chapter 31
Commodore Urrl shook his head and said, “I knew it.” The instant the Nautilan destroyer ignited its primary fusion reactor, it became obvious to him Admiral Mikton’s plan had gone very, very wrong. Neither she nor her team had cleared the destroyer’s communications module. They didn’t have the code box, and now they wouldn’t be able to get back to the Hallibrand either.
“All Constellar ships,” Urrl said into the microphone on his headset—wired into the tactical net, “this is the exec. Prepare to launch warheads on my command. I say again, prepare to launch warheads on my command.”
“Sir,” the captain of the Catapult said, “Hallibrand is requesting immediate instructions.”
Urrl pounded a couple of keys on his gee chair’s keyboard, then replied, “Hallibrand, the situation’s gone critical. They won’t shoot at you until you’re far enough away that their own nukes won’t hurt them at the same time they’re trying to hurt you. I’m going to get their attention here pretty quick, though. As soon as those destroyers turn their focus on us, that’ll be your chance to escape. Get back to the Waypoint. Pull as many gees as you can stand.”
The Hallibrand acknowledged—her captain’s voice filled with fear.
“We’re ready to fire,” said the officer at Catapult’s weapons station.
Urrl pounded two more keys, and switched back to his squadron.
“Launch at will,” he said, “and push your retros hard!”
On the surface of the comet, flashes of light turned into streaking missiles. At first the warheads rocketed parallel to the surface, then they turned sharply away from their points of origin, and lanced upward at the escaping destroyer. Almost immediately, the same ship deployed a flurry of antimissiles, and within a few seconds the cloud of gas and dust surrounding the comet came alive with explosions. There was no sound. Each bright flash made a noiseless pocket of superheated molecules within the cloud, followed by a shockwave like an expanding soap bubble. Bits of ice and rock, already smashed, were further pulverized to nothingness.
Urrl watched the tactical hologram suspended over the heads of the Catapult’s command module crew. Hallibrand was streaking hard away from the fight. The other destroyers—which had been hanging off earlier—were moving c
loser, and deploying nukes of their own.
“Countermissiles,” Urrl ordered, then turned his attention to Catapult’s pilot and ordered, “Thrusters to max. Lift us off this berg!”
At once, everyone in the command module flopped upward into his gee chair’s straps. Urrl groaned as he felt blood rushing to his head and arms, which flailed helplessly in front of him. The ship was pushing with her reaction-control system to thrust away from the surface of Objective Epsilon. Gee was now felt going the wrong way—if there was such a thing as a wrong way in deep space—and Urrl had to fight to keep his eyes on the tactical hologram, where the bright icons of his squadron were gradually separating themselves from the comet itself. The icy Kuiper body didn’t have enough gravity to overwhelm the thrusters, so each ship quickly pivoted on its axis until the main reactor faced toward the surface. Then, Urrl and his command module staff were slammed down into their seats as the Catapult’s reactor took over, and his entire squadron moved aggressively toward the enemy.
“Keep them off the Hallibrand,” Urrl ordered.
The space between the destroyers and Urrl’s Task Group erupted with missiles and antimissiles annihilating each other. The total tactical picture remained muddled—that much ice and rock played hell with Constellar sensors, to the same degree it played hell with Nautilan sensors—but there were so many rockets being launched, they couldn’t help but find each other.
“The Laborer’s been hit,” reported the tactical officer. “They say it was a grazing explosion. They’re now…wait, sir. No. Laborer is gone. Two more detonations on her hull, directly amidships.”
The icon for the security craft flared in the hologram above Urrl’s head, and winked out.
Then, a second security ship was gone.
“Talk to me, Tarinock,” Urrl commanded through his headset.
The captain of the long-range scout reported that she was having a problem with one of her antimissile clusters, which had been damaged by debris during liftoff from the comet’s surface.
Hallibrand was still going like a bat out of hell, but two of the Nautilan destroyers, which had been standing off at first contact, now appeared to be angling for an intercept.
“Weapons,” Urrl said, “dump everything you have on those specific destroyers.”
Urrl used a cursor to highlight the ships in question.
Catapult, now pulling close to four gees, spat nuclear missiles into space. They leapt ahead of the ship, pushed at gee rates far beyond anything a living person could withstand. And though some of them were picked off by the destroyer’s antimissile system, two of Catapult’s shots successfully got within lethal distance, and proximity detonated. The icons for the destroyers flared brightly, then died.
“A double kill, sir!” the tactical officer shouted.
A cheer erupted across the command module, with the entire staff smiling and pumping their fists in the air, despite the gees weighing them down.
Even Urrl allowed himself a small moment of celebration—clapping his hands together enthusiastically. It had been a long time since he’d managed to draw Nautilan blood. He had too many friends with names on the memorial at the Constellar capital who had waited too long for payback. And though Urrl would no doubt be putting Admiral Mikton’s name on that wall eventually too, he was glad to have at least hurt the enemy who’d done Mikton in.
The remaining Nautilan destroyer focused its attacks on Catapult now. Urrl watched the status bar for his antimissile magazines drop lower and lower. Catapult was burning antimissiles at a catastrophic rate. But what else could they do? Engaging the enemy at this close range didn’t leave Catapult or the other ships much choice.
“Tarinock’s been damaged,” reported the tactical officer.
“How serious?” Urrl asked.
“They’ve taken casualties, and are losing atmosphere. The captain…sir, Tarinock is aligning for a ramming maneuver.”
Urrl could see it in the hologram. The Tarinock’s icon was almost directly between two of the Nautilan ships now. She veered sharply—pulling entirely too many gees—and suddenly both Tarinock’s icon and the Nautilan destroyer she’d been nearest to flared, and went out.
Like Captain Hebrides before her, the commander of the Tarinock had chosen to make the ultimate sacrifice.
There was no cheering in the command module of the Catapult this time. Just silent respect. Especially on the part of Chaplain Ortteo, who’d entered unannounced—per his habit—and taken a seat in the gee chair ordinarily occupied by Admiral Mikton.
Hallibrand continued to put distance between herself and the battle. Though she wasn’t out of danger yet. If even one Nautilan destroyer remained operational, the little civilian yacht would be in peril all the way back to the Waypoint.
The status bar for Catapult’s antimissile magazines had dropped so low, it flashed critically red.
“The Forager just went up,” reported the tactical officer.
Urrl was out of security ships, which were built to overwhelm an enemy en masse—like hornets attacking somebody who’s stumbled into their nest. But they were not true capital ships, any more than Catapult was a battlecruiser. Gun to gun, the Nautilan destroyers bested them all.
Urrl exchanged a long glance with the chaplain. “Any good words for us?”
The religious officer merely looked hard at Urrl, and said, “Be worthy.”
Urrl stared at the man for a few more seconds, then reluctantly ordered, “Pilot, put us on an intercept course. Then take us up to five gees.”
All eyes and heads turned to face the boss.
“You heard me!” Urrl said forcefully. “And dump the last of our nukes, along with what’s left of the antimissiles. We won’t be needing either of them in a few more moments.”
If any of the staff had objections to Urrl’s decision, none of them showed it. Though there was definitely fear in their eyes.
A chorus of yessirs went around the command module, then Urrl felt himself being crushed into his gee chair as the pilot opened up the throttle.
“Unnnnngggggggggrrrrrrrrr,” Urrl growled through clenched teeth, as Catapult shot like a firebolt toward the final enemy destroyer—missiles and antimissiles eliminating each other all along the way. Until the two ships were so close their point-defense railguns engaged, and suddenly the staff started hollering about secondary damage from packets of electromagnetically hyper-accelerated metal pellets, shredding their way through different modules on Catapult’s spine. Armored as she was, the frigate wasn’t designed to go toe-to-toe with bigger, more robust ships. And though Catapult’s railguns might be causing damage too, the real coup de grace was yet to come.
A proximity countdown on Urrl’s gee chair flatscreen showed the kilometers vanishing between himself and his intended target. When the number hit zero, he didn’t even have time to blink. Catapult’s shield dome—already damaged during the rapid burn away from Objective Epsilon—bashed its way through the destroyer’s point-defense network like a cowbell through a swarm of horseflies, making contact with the destroyer’s spaceframe itself.
The two distinct ships suddenly exploded into fragments. Splintered steel, cracked insulation, and the bodies of men and women went spinning into the void. Rather than going critical, the two fusion reactors simply choked off, having been robbed of fuel. Hydrogen tanks—now hopelessly ruptured—spewed massive quantities of sublimating slush into the darkness of space.
The two ships’ Keys were the only objects to survive the ramming unscathed.
Chapter 32
The flashes of nuclear explosions receded. Then stopped. Zuri, her head becoming light with fatigue—or lack of oxygen, she hadn’t checked—could barely keep her thoughts composed. She had enough sense to use a grappler from the side of her MMU to attach herself to the code box, its little control panel still showing flashing lights, then she allowed herself to zone out. With the MMU’s fuel reservoir depleted, she couldn’t do much more than wait. If there were any Const
ellar ships still capable of searching for her, she’d have to let her MMU’s encrypted distress beacon do the talking.
Admiral Mikton closed her eyes.
Some indeterminate time later, Zuri fluttered them open, to see a zipsuited and armored soldier peering at her through a helmet’s face bowl.
The woman’s mouth was making sounds, but Zuri couldn’t hear anything. Her head felt far too light for comfort, and there was a nasty tingling in her extremities. Oxygen starvation did strange things to a person. Her zipsuit’s atmosphere processor could go until literally every last drop of liquid oxygen in its cryo tank had been used up. But it wouldn’t be a hard stop. More a petering out over time, as the carbon dioxide scrubber kept the nitrogen clean, but less and less oxygen flowed from the regulator.
How long had Zuri been out? Her helmet speakers continued to crackle with static while the other woman spoke. Zuri wondered—perhaps deliriously—if maybe her zipsuit’s communications had been damaged? It would explain why she’d had no luck reaching the tac net. Maybe passing so near the plasma exhaust of the destroyer had damaged some of the suit’s more delicate electronics? She still had no idea how much radiation she’d taken, between the fusion exhaust and the nukes. Zipsuits were radiologically resistant, but not proofed against an unlimited amount.
The woman grabbed hold of Zuri’s arm, and Zuri saw herself being guided through an open bay door in the side of a different ship. Her peripheral vision caught what seemed to be a Constellar symbol on the side of a gee crate, then Zuri was laid flat on her back, and people were using the emergency releases on her helmet to pry the thing off.
Fresh air—with plenty of oxygen—flooded into her nostrils.
Zuri began to cough spastically, and rolled over, almost vomiting. Then she crouched on her knees, savoring the cool feeling of the deck on her damp cheek.
“Ma’am?” asked a stranger’s voice. “Ma’am??”
Zuri wanted to say something, but didn’t yet have the strength to speak.
“Admiral?!” asked the voice a third time. “Are you all right?”
A Star Wheeled Sky Page 25
