by Kali Altsoba
“Where are we off to next, patroon?”
The casual impertinence tells her without having to look up to the vidscreen that the voice belongs to Captain Lev Tiva on Asimov.
“I’m coming to that, captain. There are five routes out of this L2. That means the enemy doesn’t have enough picket ships here to convert to scouts to search every one, plus he’s more likely to want to keep his ships together than send them in one-by-one. We might get lucky and shake the pursuit first time we bohr. If not, we’ll handle it. But we have to do it together.”
“Aye sir, that we will.”
‘Good, he’s going to keep it short and straight, for once.’
“Hang as one or we’ll hang separately. Hang together and we can hang them together.” Tiva just can’t help himself sometimes. Magda decides to ignore him.
“Full combat stations when we come out the other side. Leave active scanning on, full power. Resolve will also ping with Mr. Fontaine’s sonar. I think it’s unlikely, but there may be Kaigun pickets waiting at the new LP, where we’re going,”
“Firing protocol, ma’am?”
“Shoot immediately, hard and fast. Blast any unknown ships. Anything waiting where we’re going is sure to be hostile. So don’t wait for IFF confirmation. We don’t want to give any enemy already there the opening advantage, especially while we’re coming out of vapors.”
“Get the jump on the early jumpers!”
“Captain Tiva, not now!”
If pickets are on the farside of the quantum ‘tunnel’ there’ll be little time and no room to brake or maneuver before being engaged by hostiles. Perhaps a whole squadron waiting with pre-sited guns as Alpha’s crews struggle with ‘jump effect.’ Or they’ll pop at high speed into a sphere of plasma mines while still staggering with what sailors call ‘the vapors.’ Or they’ll ...
Then she comes to it. “Target destination for Alpha Jump One is RCW-138.”
“Ma’am?” For the briefest moment, Émile hesitates to enter that one of five sets of his calculations, uncertain if he hears his captain correctly. Then he realizes what she’s about to do.
“Yes ma’am! RCW-138 is the destination-bohr. Calculating, will lock in when ready””
“Confirm bohr-target and linkage, all ships.” Each ship in Alpha confirms its quantum-dyogram link to Resolve.
“Navigation acknowledgments coming in now.”
“RCW-138 exit confirmed.”
Émile’s clear eyes twinkle, despite the stress of impending combat and overseeing the critical quantum-drive calculations. Nor can he suppress a sly grin, approving her novel idea.
‘It’s high risk, but so is the whole mission! And so far, we’re still here. She’s very, very good. They’ll not likely follow us, not into that. Kept it secret, too, all this time and way! Her and General Constance thought this up, I’m sure of it. A binary pair, those two!’
The nav-link from Resolve’s quantum-detector is solid and green. The little flagship is already calculating the right fold to take into complementary weirdness to RCW-138. All other ships will follow at close range. If the idea of ‘range’ means anything in Minkowski spacetime, or ‘hyperspace,’ or a ‘folded singularity,’ or whatever confused cosmologists call it these days.
‘It doesn’t matter what it’s called. It only matters that it works.’
First, they must maneuver as a single unit to get the vulnerable troopships past the four older frigates. Then all five Krevan ships, or however many survive the fight, will jump ‘hot.’ Rather than a normal, powered-down ‘bohr-glide’ into the LP, their fusion drives will burn all-out, as high or higher than All Ahead Bendix, far beyond maximum recommended levels. The quantum-drive on Resolve will skim the ‘edge’ of the ‘folded singularity’ or ‘tunnel singularity,’ pulling Alpha by spooky grand-complementarity nearly instantaneously to RCW-138.
‘The slow, lightspeed part of this Exodus journey is about to come to an end, one way or the other. Or at least, the first leg of our long exodus. Who knows where we’ll go next?’
“The enemy line is almost in shooting range.”
‘The captain’s confident there won’t be anything waiting there. Given where she’s going to take us, she’s almost certainly right. Boca do Inferno! To Hell’s Mouth! What a choice!’
“If I may say so, ma’am, it’s a brilliant destination. Urrr, no pun intended ma’am.”
It’s something Tiva might say, but it draws no reaction because Magda is certain that he really didn’t mean to make a joke. Émile doesn’t make jokes. He stumbles onward, bravely.
“I mean going to Boca do Inferno. Why would the Kaigun want to put any of its ships in there? They may not even follow us there, after they figure out it’s where we’re going.”
“First things first, Mr. Fontaine. Time enough for congratulations later, I hope.”
Her tone is firm, even curt.
‘Émile is a stand-out XO, but his youth shows. He’s too in love with puzzles, like a Katowice Academy tactics professor. Just as Tiva is too much in love with his own wit. I can’t afford to indulge either. There’s still a real fight to finish out here. One we just can’t lose.’
Magda engages the Bridge-to-Bridge link, again. “Captains: we’re going to make the enemy think we’re heading right at him, that we’ll bull through to the L2. That’s what he wants. Instead, we’ll dodge late inside a tight ‘S’ turn.”
“Weapons Officers: Don’t, I repeat, do not shoot forward missiles. We don’t want the enemy to scatter or move from his line as we head into the first loop. Leave him where he is.”
“Tiva here, patroon. With respect ma’am, why not shoot him off his line, if he’s just standing there, blocking our way?”
This isn’t pique at being rebuked a minute earlier Nor irony or displeasure at being bypassed for the Alpha command chair in favor of a much younger captain. He’s genuinely puzzled. That’s why General Constance gave the squadron command to Magda Aklyan and why Tiva remains a frigate captain. He can handle his own ship well enough, but he can’t see tactics.
It’s important, so she takes the time to explain. Even though every second is precious and brings a hostile and waiting enemy much closer.
“If we know where they are and will be we have a better chance of going around them, protecting the troopships while we do it. Nothing else matters. It we scatter them, we could lose the transports to some buckaroo daisa who knows how to shoot and maneuver. Those frigates are old but they’re dangerous and not to be underestimated. This is not the Genèven moons.”
“Understood. Asimov will hold back torpedoes and stay in formation position, ma’am.”
‘Even Tiva is subdued. It’s sinking in now, we’re actually going to do this mad, mad thing. We’re going to make a hot run right for the bohr-zone, crammed with helpless KRA.’
“Good man.”
She means it, too.
“All officers, all ships. I want strong warship hulls between any shooting and the thin-skinned troopships. That armor we slapped on at Toruń shipyard is just a stop-gap. I’d rather not test it. Your frigate or destroyer can take far more damage than they can, and maybe survive it.”
“We’ll get them through, patroon.”
“We must, Captain Tiva.”
“See you on the other side. Tiva out.”
“All ships. Load aft missile tubes only.”
“Fish are in aft tubes, ma’am.”
“All ships. Close doors on all forward tubes.”
“Doors closed.” That’s to deny any nervous officers on her team a chance to succumb to hot temptation and fire forward tubes in error, scattering the line of waiting Kölns. Time is running out. The moment is approaching. Magda Aklyan gives rapid orders, not waiting for confirmations.
“Hold back on forward plasma fire.”
“Ready broadside guns for rotational firing.”
“Make ready all forward canister launchers.”
Ten seconds.
Twenty seconds.<
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“Ready to jig into the first ‘S’ curve, on my mark.”
“Ping ... ping ... ping ... ping ... ping ... ping ... ping.”
“Captain, new aft contacts on active sonar.”
“What is it, XO?”
“Zerstörers entering the lee-side umbra.”
“How many?”
“Seven.”
‘So, my dear friend François Archambault is dead. Au revoir, cher François.’
“All officers and crew, they’re too late. They can’t catch us now. Stay at your battle stations. Do your jobs. Stick to the plan. We’re going to jig these frigates and hot-jump away.”
“Genèvens! Prepare to defend your ships and yourselves.”
A chorus of “Ayes!” and “Yes, ma’am!” fills the Bridges of the three warships. More cheering echoes up-and-down packed interiors to each weapons station crew and every gun battery.
On the troopships the cheering from tens of thousands of KRA throats is deafening. It drowns out those other, suddenly terrified youths who are crying for their mothers.
Alpha is going into battle. Alpha is going to war.
Vacuum
The three Alpha warships shift into Formation Bodkin, an elongated tetrahedron, an imagined three-dimensional triangle of ships with no true base. A third of the way from the top, tucked tightly in behind Resolve, the lumbering transports fly recklessly close and side-by-side.
Four older frigates hold steady at one-eighth speed, daring a straight-dash by leaving no yawning space between their almost paused line and the L2 rim, Yet not moving so slowly as to be tactically “standing-still-in-the-water.” They maintain core, fighting and maneuver speed.
Alpha keeps it course, too, heading straight for the Kaigun line also at half speed. Its a bit like two wild boars readying to charge with sharp tusks, fighting for access to the waterhole.
Relative distance closes fast, but not so fast that the opposing forces are denied use of all forward weapons. A lucent image blooms suddenly on Émile Fontaine’s holomap, which tracks all objects and vectors.
A bright red dot appears in front of duller red cuboids marking position and speed of the frigates. The dot is traveling much faster than the abstract cubist images of the warships.
Three more red dots appear nearby in quick succession. A nervously high-pitched, young male voice calls out from Weapons Station.
“Fish in the sea: torpedoes! It’s missiles, running hot!”
‘Come on, settle down, Weapons Station.’ Magda thinks. ‘I need you calm.’
“Confirmed: one, two, three, four.”
“Four missiles dead ahead ma’am.”
“Incoming fast.”
Émile instinctively looks out the Main Scuttle, a wide window of transparent armor strong enough to deflect even sizeable micrometeorites. Matching the red dots moving on his holoscreen are four streaking white lights, refulgent to the eye rather than passively lambent like their pale representatives in his holo-projection. Extraocular muscles hurt just a little before the viewport rapidly darkens in response to the sudden external candescence.
“What kind?”
“Silver streaks.”
‘Damn, a question I forgot to ask my Weapons Officer in advance. Not just how many missiles and tubes does a Köln have, but what kind and capability? I didn’t anticipate this.’
“Confirmed from speed and approach patterns. They’re cooperating.”
“So, they’re long-range hunter-seekers?”
“Yes captain. Looks like the newest models, too. Very smart.”
‘Double damn me! If we live through this …’ The streaks have small plasma chambers but long-range VASIMR drives, giving up detonation with a smaller plasma chamber to store fuel for longer burning engines. It means they’re true fire-and-forget missiles. If they miss you, they’ll circle back and try again. They’re smart, too. Real smart. Except that they really like to blow themselves apart.
“Resolve, Asimov, Tyco Brae, all on my mark, shoot canister then reposition. Empty all forward dewlaps! Shoot all the gravel you’ve got! On my mark, only. Hold nothing back. They won’t have time to reload forward missiles. Dump all gravel at the four HKs already out there.”
“Warsaw and Jutlandia, cleave to your interior positions. Do not deviate! All ships jig formation up 5˚ on my mark. Stand by.”
Ten seconds.
Twenty seconds.
Looming brilliances grow bigger in Resolve’s darkened Main Scuttle. Then one-by-one they wink out as VASIMR engines shut down when their intense, short-burst fuel is exhaled. Émile advises from his station. “Their commander’s nervous. He fired far too early, at extreme range even for hunter-killers. Trying to score first by trusting to AI-guidance from the warheads, but miscalculating thrusters. They’re on inertial guidance, heading for this position.”
“Not a bad gamble,” Magda grudgingly admits. “It might work, too. Those are brand new HK seekers, even if the frigates that fired them are old. Their AIs can still adjust course.”
Dark to naked vision as plasma plumes extinguish, vaporless weapons whizz toward the five ships of Formation Bodkin at max velocity. Steering nozzles fire minimally or not at all, holding until target is acquired and locked. Alpha has yet to engage evasives, so very intelligent targeting computers in the warheads wait for a countermove they know is coming. Wait before instructing ceramic nozzles to steer intercept corrections. And wait, and wait. Ever closer...
“All warships: shoot gravel! Empty your forward bins!”
Three expanding disks totaling more than ten million ceramic pellets each spew from the pyramid of warships forming the top of the Alpha tetrahedron. They form into widening cones as three rail gunners hold the streams for a full 30-seconds, exhausting all dewlap gravel bins.
“All ships, jig 5˚ up on my mark ... Mark!”
Five ships move as one, “up” 5˚ before leveling out on the same straight-ahead course. The quick maneuver raises Alpha to a different plane than the still hunting warheads, but keeps its momentum and direction the same: heading to pass the Kölns to find the bohr-zone rim.
Her timing is near-perfect. AIs in the warheads engage nozzles to turn sharply to match Alpha’s sudden evasion, but one tube and the plasma charge it hosts inside a compact magnetic chamber shreds as it meets the spreading edge of a wide-dispersing cone. Three dying AIs wail into nothingness as prematurely freed plasma becomes a frantic nova that wrecks them too.
“Confirmation. Four, repeat, all four missiles shredded. No secondary explosions.”
Resolve’s Weapons Officer handles timing and upcoming shooting angles, but Émile in Chart House monitors relative velocity, distance and potential tracks of all ships on both sides.
“Weapons Station, captain. “All four frigates are reloading forward tubes, but at closing speed and given the old-style tubes on the Kölns, they don’t have time to get off a second shot.”
“Keep short-range rail gun stations at the ready, nevertheless.”
“Yes ma’am.”
The voice is much calmer than before the missiles were destroyed, three still intact when caught inside the plasma burst of the first hit by Tyco Brae’s canister cone. It disintegrated outer tubes of the other three missiles but didn’t break open their magnetic containments. Little balls of blue magnetic hate go tumbling away into the dark. They’ll fly on for an eternity, until their metals corrode from cosmic rays and they give out, to blossom eons hence above some far-off world. Will a curious alien look up then and wonder at an unexplained flash in a blood red sky?
“Still 30 seconds to complete their reload.”
“We’ll pull even with them before that.”
“They’ll shoot aft tubes for sure as we turn past them.”
“The forward gravel spread is reaching the frigates now.”
It’s too diffuse as it arrives, and too slow. Almost none of the tiny balls hit and those few that do cause little damage. Prows and bridges are protected by c
arbyne-dodgers that absorb all the little pellets, vaporizing them. They were built to stop micrometeorites, not handle the much larger canister pellets. But they’re just good enough to work on canister at lower speeds. And this gravel lacks velocity to break or even much damage the heavy dodgers on the Kaigun ships.
Canister can’t be used as an offensive weapon at the low closing speeds of these two groups of opposing ships. Not like when Captain Archambault used it in a combined 0.4 light-speed mutual charge on the windward side of Genève system’s lone gas giant. Magda expected nothing more than what she got. She fired the canister defensively, to shred an incoming spread of HK missiles. Not meaning or hoping to take out the frigates that fired them.
