“I’m running on guesswork, but it’s a clear-cut picture all the same. We’re outnumbered and outgunned. If we run to the gate, we might just make it in time.”
“We might,” said Blue. “What about the Scorpions?”
TacCom shook her head and blinked her massive red compound eyes. “Not a chance.”
Venix looked Blue’s way, seeking guidance.
I need to know who’s giving the orders here, Blue said inside her head.
The Raknar must get to the Four Horsemen, Gloriana replied. That’s your priority. I pay you to give the orders to make it so.
What about you and your squads of hidden amphibians? Aren’t you a priority?
Transporting the Raknar is your primary objective now, said Gloriana. Captain, we stay hidden for a reason. I can see you struggle with this, but I assure you that our interests are aligned. I employ you because you’re resourceful and thrive under extreme pressure. I place my trust in you. Justify it.
I will. Now stay out of my way while I run my ship.
She pinged the bay where the Raknar were waiting to be shipped.
“Hangar bay, go.”
“What state are we in for Raknar transfer?”
“They’re loaded up on tugs, Captain. Ready to transport. I need at least thirty minutes to get them across to Indomitable Streak. A further ten for us to get back home.”
We don’t have thirty minutes. Blue drummed her fingers on the bulkhead. She was being trapped in a shrinking box with room for just one course of action. Soon even that would disappear.
“SigCom, get me the Streak.”
Jamie’s face reappeared. He wasn’t smiling now.
“Run for the gate,” she told him.
He shook his head. “There’s no scheduled transition. Besides, we’ve run the tactical projections. The enemy has emerged at speed and on a course almost straight for us. I don’t have anywhere near the delta-v to evade.”
“I’ll buy you time and keep them off your backs. Gloriana can wrangle you a transition, I hope. Go! Get off my screen and start running.”
Instead of fleeing, the tactical plot showed Indomitable Streak turn to face the incoming warships. “I can’t abandon you, Blue. Together we have a chance.”
“I don’t need you. Stop trying to be a hero and let me do my job. Run! We’ll get the Raknar to you via another route.”
A new image added itself to the screen. Blue’s heart jumped. It was an alien with a powerful beak like a Triceratops, set in a bulbous head, topped with an enormous bony crest.
“Gloriana, I presume,” said Sinclair.
“It is,” said the alien. “Captain Sinclair, you should be receiving a data packet.”
Sinclair’s image looked away and said something to his own deck team. “Yeah,” he then replied. “Encrypted. What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Head for our base of Kubar Park on Tau-Rietzke. Transmit the packet to the local GalNet, and it will automatically reach the ears that need to hear it. Don’t send it remotely, because we cannot trust the Information Guild. The message will summon reinforcements.”
“What are we talking about here? Two squads? A box of squid? A carrier fleet?”
“You’ll summon the tip of our spear of vengeance. I’ve called my people to war, to reclaim what was ours by right, what the Veetanho took from us.”
“Save the historic speeches for another time, squid lady. I don’t know about this. Blue, what do you say?”
“I believe Gloriana. If I can burst through the enemy formation on an opposite vector to theirs, I can keep them chasing me for weeks until reinforcements arrive to even the score.”
Sinclair nodded. “Okay, I’ll be your post boy. But get this straight, squid lady, I’m doing it for Blue, not for you. Keep alive, hen, I’ll be back for my Raknar in a couple of jumps.”
“You all heard that,” Blue said to her CIC crew when she was satisfied Streak had turned and was running for the gate. “Let’s buy them some time.”
* * * * *
Chapter 44
“Sound battle stations,” said Captain Blue, flying back to her station. “I’ll resume control, if you please, Commander.”
“You have the deck,” Venix confirmed. “Do you think those ships have the same missiles that blew out the Arashi Nova’s torch?”
Blue considered the XO’s question while she inserted herself inside her chair, which expanded to grip her tightly in its cocoon. With battle stations initiated, what had been a fancy seat moments before now resembled a family of segmented Jeha wrapping their armored carapaces around her – Jeha with enormously fat underbellies to cushion her against the crushing gee-forces of combat acceleration.
“Most likely,” she agreed. “In fact…I’m going to rely on it. Venix, you’re a genius. Helm, I want an intercept course on the Condottieri battle group. Ahead one-half gee. Once all sections report battle stations, step on the gas. I want us to smash through those ships like a sixteen-pound ball at a bowling alley.”
Although the thrust was gentle thus far, the acceleration cocoons isolated their occupants from other personnel. At high gees, deck crew couldn’t press buttons or even turn heads to look at screens or each other, and in the unconventionally equipped Midnight Sun, they used antique wearable slates in the form of wraparound Tri-V glasses that linked to their pinplants. When the deck crew wore the shades outside of acceleration stations, they looked like movie-goers from an earlier century enjoying a 3D movie, but those shades had enough processing power to run the ship.
Blue thought the shades looked good on her, but she didn’t bother wearing them in a crisis because she had something better: multithreaded cognitive auxiliaries mounted on triple-layer pinplant architecture. Her head was stuffed so full of augmentations and wiring that any more would require surgically enlarging her cranium, and – she feared – turning her into something that was no longer human. Gloriana had no qualms about that. The big boss had left money for the operation on the table. So far, Blue had never regretted leaving it there. She didn’t intend to start regrets now.
She accessed a CIC camera and assured herself that her personnel were safely cocooned.
“All divisions report their sections at battle stations,” advised the XO. “What if we’re right about their fancy ordnance? What if they snuff out our torch like a candle?”
“The Nova didn’t blow,” Blue replied after a few moments’ thought, “so it wasn’t a failure of the containment field. It wasn’t an explosion. I’m going to assume those missiles delivered an unknown form of cyber-attack that turned off the power.”
“But if the power went, the plasma containment would fail. And that would result in a huge explosion.”
“These are unknowns,” said Blue. “But that’s okay. You older Union races love to say we humans are half-evolved beasts that we must’ve had help to get to space, because our technological progress, beyond corralling a few goats and cooking them on fires, has been too rapid to be true. Let me tell you, we didn’t need help. We cheated.”
“I think the word you need is gambled.”
“Risked, Commander. It’s by taking risks that we make progress. And today I’m going to take a calculated risk by running an experiment with us as the experimental subject. My gut says the missiles turned off the reactor by initiating the shutdown procedure, and empirical evidence is compatible with that.”
“Captain, that isn’t science. That’s making it up as you go along.”
“And yet here I am, flying a starship with my head and about to win us all another fat mission bonus.”
“That’s exactly the sort of attitude that prompted the Veetanho to intervene.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, Commander Venix. I believe the Veetanho have it in for humans because they fear what we’ll become. So let’s start scaring them. Engineering, get ready to shut down Reactor Three. On my command, before we hit that line of enemy ships, I want it down and fully isolated, but be r
eady to bring the reactor back online as soon as we pass through the other side. TacCom, I need an Operation Bowling Ball. What have you got for me?”
The tactical command officer, Lieutenant Flkk’Sss, presented tactical scenarios for passing through the formation of enemy ships. All the options were risky; all of them could result in Midnight Sun being blasted into atoms. But Blue hadn’t ordered the MinSha officer to prepare a means for their own survival, she’d ordered the enemy to be scattered, and that’s what TacCom had done.
“Well done, Flkk’Sss. We’ll run with your Tactical Plan Delta. Sharpen it up – we’ll be executing it shortly. Helm, kindly open up the taps, I want to hit them hard, fast, and dirty.”
Trusting her deck crew to work out an implementation for Tactical Plan Delta, she surveyed the battlespace, looking for a course that would bring maximum disruption to the enemy formation while keeping some hope of surviving the pass.
Her focus kept diverting to the planet nearby. Rakbutu-Tereus was currently very close to the emergence point, but not close enough to offer gravity-assist maneuvers during the initial encounter.
But if Midnight Sun survived, could Rakbutu-Tereus give her options to keep them surviving?
Astrogation data had little to say on the planet. Officially it was currently uninhabited. A few decades earlier, the planet had been the target of an ambitious terraforming and colonization project set up by a Zuul cult. Shortly before the first colonists were due to set off, the cult had gone overnight from trillions of adherents – all encouraged to open their Yacks wide – to a laughing stock after the (morally perfect, of course) cult leader had been caught on drone camera sniffing and licking the wrong butt. Flatar butt at that. Kinky.
Rakbutu-Tereus was swamp, oceans, and impossible mountains. Nothing she could use on the surface, but if she altered her course now, they could slingshot around to a vector the enemy wouldn’t expect.
SigCom interrupted her thoughts, pinging her with an incoming transmission from the Condottieri. She accepted.
“What is this,” said the Condottieri colonel. “Ramming speed? Isn’t that a little melodramatic, even for you?”
Blue responded, forming the words in her mind and sending them electronically, because even at the current 4-gee acceleration, her voice would be strained, and she didn’t want to show weakness. “Here’s the thing, Dove. I have one advantage over you.”
“Don’t delude yourself. I hold all the cards, Blue. Every single one.”
“You can bluster as much as you like, old man. We both know you need those Raknar to impress your Veetanho bosses, and the mecha are on my ship. Blow us up, and you blow up the Raknar. Do that, and you won’t be Peepo’s golden boy anymore.”
“I admit,” said Dove, “I was lying. I didn’t hold all the cards, because I didn’t know which of you had the Raknar. Now I do.”
The enemy ships launched long-range missiles.
Holy crap. How could I have been so stupid? Speaking through her thoughts had been a mistake, she realized. Strong emotions leaked through. The Dove would have known she wasn’t bluffing. Sorry, James.
“Point defenses online,” Venix reported. “Readying electronic countermeasures.”
“Missiles are aimed at the Streak,” said TacCom excitedly. “Exhaust characteristics suggest they’re Jackal-class hunters.”
Jackals. Double the range, but a third the payload. Still, the missiles wouldn’t need to pack much of a punch to blast Indomitable Streak into atoms. “Can we intercept them?”
“Negative,” said TacCom. “We don’t have the delta-v to get our anti-missile defenses close enough. There’s nothing we can do to protect Streak.”
“That’s right,” said a deep male voice, “there’s nothing you can do. I’d surrender if I were you.” Blue cursed herself; she’d kept the channel online, and the Dove had heard everything.
Get a grip! Two simple errors within seconds of each other. Blue burned with humiliation, but maybe she could work that to her advantage…
While she was thinking of a taunt, TacCom reported, “Condottieri are scattering. They’re moving out of our way.”
“That’s right,” gloated the Dove. “We have plenty of time. All we need to do is disable you as you pass. Give us a day or so to match your vector, and we’ll board. We’ll show no mercy. This is your very last chance to save your crew. Power down your ship, come about to our heading, and prepare to accept boarders.”
The Dove was right. Even if she did survive the pass through the scattering warships, they would pursue her and wear her down. She was on completely the wrong vector to escape through the gate. There was only one place they could run, one variable she could work to her advantage: the planet. But how?
“I have a suggestion for you,” she told the Dove sweetly. “We’ve all seen the two Veetanho behind you on your deck, and we know you enjoy being their bitch. I bet you wear those silly goggles, too, when you romp with your alien lovers off duty. Next time you go on a private mole hunt in your rack, I suggest you make the most of it, because you’re never getting those Raknars. The only way you’re leaving the system is in disgrace in Peepo’s eyes. Or dead. And I swear to you on my mother’s life, that I will do everything in my power to make it the latter.”
After shutting down the communication, and locking any further transmissions from that channel, she looked wistfully at the orange tracks showing a flurry of missiles headed toward Streak. Gloriana had confirmed she’d brought the gate transition booking forward, but the gate wouldn’t wait for them. Streak had a one-minute window to get through, but Sinclair’s people were sitting ducks. They’d never make it that far.
“I’m sorry,” she said and turned her attention to her crew.
“This is the captain to all hands. We’re about to pass through the middle of an enemy formation. It’s gonna be rough. I won’t pretend otherwise. However, I want you to keep two thoughts clear in your heads. First, the enemy doesn’t care about us, they want our Raknar. Consequently, they cannot risk destroying Midnight Sun. Second, we have no such restrictions. As we pass, let them have it with everything we’ve got. Any we leave alive will come after us in pursuit, so we hit first, and we hit hard. That is all.”
“Tactical Fire Plan Delta ready,” reported Flkk’Sss. “Effective firing range in sixty-five seconds.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Engineering, take Reactor Three off-line. Total isolation from all ship’s systems. Shut it down and lock it up until we’re through. Helm, maximum survivable thrust.”
Even inside her acceleration coffin, she felt a crushing weight that threatened to drive all thought from her head. But Blue’s mind was bolstered by its implants, and she held on to her concentration, pushing away the rest of her body as a problem to worry about if she survived the next two minutes.
The countdown in her head showed fifty-two seconds. Just enough time to get in the right mood.
She set the “Ride of the Valkyries” playing in her head and waited.
Oh, yeah! Space combat was the most exciting thing in the galaxy.
There was a noise. Inside her station! She extended her awareness, but quickly retreated back inside her mind when she realized it was only the sound of her moaning with pleasure.
* * * * *
Chapter 45
Blue had already closed her eyes; now she had the sense of shutting them again and withdrawing into another, deeper level of awareness – away from her mortal body’s point of insertion into the physical universe.
But she wasn’t withdrawing from the fight. Hell, no! From deep within, she expanded her mental horizon awareness, but not back into her body. She became something far more than the woman who’d fled Earth, dragging her loyal sister with her to a new life on other worlds.
What she was about to do was far better than the most delicious moments of lustful insanity she’d ever relished; better still than all the triumphs, obsessions, and satisfactions of her life so far – and yet to come. She’d
trade them all for just one chance at this – the total immersion interface.
Gloriana’s hidden agendas were forgiven in an instant as Blue’s human consciousness merged with the ship.
She was the Midnight Sun.
The engines ran hot and tingling in the heart of her belly, pumped up by the trio of reactors surrounding it, though she now felt Reactor Three as a cold lump of stone in her gut.
Her outer body was pregnant with missiles, lasers, and other weapons that ached with the urgent need to be thrown at the foe. Most burning of all was her main armament, running the full diameter of her spherical form, her dragon’s mouth that would spit lethal fire. It was a quad-barrel magnetic accelerator cannon, firing five-ton armor-piercing rounds.
Throbbing with anticipation, Blue hurled herself through space which, to her enhanced senses, now felt far thicker than the emptiness mere humans perceived. The battlespace she approached was rich with electromagnetic emanations, both natural and artificial. She felt the gravity pull of the nearby planet of Rakbutu-Tereus and the distant call of its star. Her body surged with the tingling tidal flows she always felt this close to an emergence point.
Their tactical plan called for Midnight Sun to launch a quick flurry of killer blows at the weaker frigates, taking as many combatants out of the fight as she could, reducing the enemy commander’s pursuit options once they’d sped past.
Stargates were points of constriction, forcing the enemy formation to bunch so they’d emerged into normal space practically shoulder-to-shoulder. They were scattering, but they hadn’t yet had time to disperse much. That made the enemy vulnerable, but not for long. Blue had to make this attack run count.
We can do this.
The enemy mini-carrier had spun about, advancing stern-first and thrusting hard to slough away velocity, separating it a little from the smaller craft.
Suits me, sweetie, Blue thought. It’s the frigates I’m after.
With every moment she closed, her view of the enemy ships hardened and firmed in detail. She could see inside them now, more of their capabilities revealed with every passing millisecond.
The Midnight Sun (The Omega War Book 2) Page 16
