by S. H. Jucha
“He’s lost it,” the navigator whispered to the new pilot. His words were unnecessary. She was still wiping specks of blood from the previous pilot off her panel.
* * *
“Black space,” Tatia muttered under her breath, echoing Alex’s favorite words of frustration, when she realized Portland was still advancing.
“Commodore,” Tatia said, sending via comm and implant simultaneously to Reiko and Franz, “I’m sure you can see by your telemetry that you’ve won the wager.”
“Much to my regret,” Reiko replied. She told Tatia and Sheila that they would have to destroy the Guardian to stop Portland himself, but the Harakens were sure he would turn around if they could strip his fleet from him, and the women had placed a small bet on their opinions.
“Portland will be within missile range of the station before our travelers can catch him from behind,” Tatia said. “My apologies, Franz and Reiko, but it’s fallen to you to stop the madman.”
“Cheer up, Admiral,” Reiko said, “I have a good feeling about the outcome of this fight. I have a dinner date, and I intend to keep it.”
“May the stars protect you,” Tatia said and closed the comm.
There was some good news for the two commanders. The Guardian was not the monster battleship, Bunaldi’s Hand of Justice, the Harakens faced at New Terra. This ship possessed three decks instead of five, and its bays were loaded with patrol ships not fighters. Built in the winged-shape of the FTL-capable battleships, its engines were traditional, but would be capable of retrofitting, in the future. Still, it possessed two tubes housing the UE’s ship-killer missiles, or, in this case, perfectly suitable missiles for destroying a station.
Five destroyers were able to join Reiko’s command before Portland arrived at Idona. Watching Portland’s remaining ships approaching, she paired her destroyers into three groups, two destroyers to target each capital ship. Reiko and a second destroyer occupied the center of her simplified wedge and targeted Portland’s battleship.
Franz spread his sixty-four travelers along the destroyer line, choosing to place his traveler off the bow of Reiko’s destroyer. This would be an open fight with no possibility of ambush. The destroyers and the Haraken fighters would interweave their fire to protect their ships. The destroyers possessed extensive antimissile defense, and the travelers were deadly accurate with their beams for shorter range contact.
“Comfortable out there, Commander?” Reiko commed to Franz. “Sure you wouldn’t like to tuck back along the rear where it will be safer?” Reiko heard more snickers from her bridge personnel, but, at this moment, she didn’t care. If she was going to die in the next hour, she wanted to feel alive, and bantering with Franz made her feel just that way.
“Just looking out for my date, Commodore,” Franz riposted.
“Let’s get this done, Commander. I’m getting hungry.”
Reiko ordered her squadron forward at one-third acceleration. Closing the gap on Portland’s capital ships and moving away from the station would gain her destroyers more room to maneuver, and proceeding slowly would prolong the engagement window. It was contrary to her tactics training, but then again she didn’t intend to allow any one of Portland’s ships past her forces.
If Reiko was worried about Franz’s fighter, hanging just meters off her bow, she needn’t have been. Each Haraken pilot programmed their controller to maintain the fighter’s position from the nearest destroyer. It was the simplest of routines for a traveler’s controller to execute no matter how fast or hard a destroyer maneuvered.
Within a half hour, the forces were closing on each other, and missiles from both sides were launched, filling the intervening space. The bigger missiles were targeting ships; the smaller ones were targeting the bigger missiles.
Despite the six-to-three ship majority that Reiko’s forces enjoyed, the armament ratio was unequal. Portland’s ships could load and launch more missiles faster than Reiko’s destroyers. It was the Harakens, who turned the odds in Reiko’s favor. More than one destroyer captain was shaken to hear their defense operator yell, “impact,” warning of a missile that had breached the destroyer’s defenses, only to see a bright flash ahead of the ship as a Haraken beam intercepted it.
Reiko’s bridge crew watched Franz’s fighter flip from one side of the bow to another, almost faster than the eye could follow, and, an instant later, two flashes from closing missiles lit up Reiko’s bridge screen. Her navigator, a burly, middle-aged first lieutenant said breathlessly to his fellow officers, “That man must really want his date.”
The battle continued to rage. With the defensive capabilities of the two sides fairly matched, little damage was being inflicted on either force. But the traveler controllers weren’t just tracking UE missiles. These SADE-built tools were running analyses programs and had detected a weakness in the enemy’s tactics. Once Portland ordered the initial missile launch, the capital ships continued in lock step, loading and launching further salvos at the same time.
Franz’s controller updated him on the missile launch pattern and the relevant interval. Soon after, a harried Reiko contacted him.
“Small problem, Commander,” Reiko sent. “We’re running low on missiles, all types.”
“By ‘we’ do you mean you or all the destroyers?” Franz asked.
“I shared our armament stores evenly before we left the station, Commander. We’re all running low.”
Franz glanced at the enemy’s missile cycle in his helmet display. His hope was that the capital ships that had been throwing more missiles, faster than the destroyers, might be running low on reserves as well.
“Commodore, Captains,” Franz sent on open comm to the destroyers, halt your missile launches for a count of five on my mark. Immediately, he connected with his pilots and readied them for the attack.
“All destroyers ‘mark,’” Franz sent. It was the same signal for the Haraken fighters, which launched at the capital ships at full acceleration, eliminating the latest salvos of judiciary missiles to be launched at the destroyers.
Franz’s sub-wing’s orders were different from the other commanders — protect the station — but he didn’t want a prolonged fight for his pilots either. The Harakens’ single-pass technique was proving devastating to Portland’s ships. The judiciary crews had no time to target the fighters at their incredible velocities. So Franz ordered his sub-wing to make a single pass and target not the engines of the capital ships but their bridges.
The fighters closed on the enemy ships. Franz expected their next missile launch at any moment, but it didn’t happen. By the time it did, twenty-one travelers had struck each of the capital ships, targeting the bridge. The first half of the travelers to strike the cruisers’ bridges eliminated the entire ship’s command structure, and the remaining fighters burned deeper into the cruisers’ main bodies.
The massive size of Portland’s battleship withstood the attack much better. The Guardian’s gunnery defensives destroyed five travelers at the front of the Haraken vanguard just after the fighters fired on the bow. Two travelers ran afoul of their compatriots’ debris and were demolished. Seven more travelers were struck by gunnery fire and debris, losing power and veering off course to be rescued later. The devastation of the fighters immediately in front of the remaining travelers targeting the battleship caused the controllers of the last seven fighters to seek secondary targets, veering off to cross over and under the battleship’s wings, swiveling the travelers around and firing on the ship’s four pairs of engines.
Then, as quick as they had launched, the travelers were past the capital ships, leaving behind two destroyed cruisers, one battleship without primary engine power, and a single traveler. Franz remained floating off Reiko’s bow.
* * *
Admiral Theodore Portland finished closing his helmet’s face plate and checking the seals of his environment suit, before he stepped from his emergency cabinet. When the fleet’s commander screamed his warning of the fighters’ attack,
Portland dived for the small, protected unit at the rear of the bridge just before the first fighters fired on his bridge. The explosions shook his bolt hole, but the triple-layered, reinforced cabinet held.
Portland stepped into a view of the deep dark. The majority of his bridge was gone. Looking down, he could see stars through the multiple decks. Creeping along the side of the cabinet, Portland reached an emergency comm unit on the wall. Its green light told him he was still connected to functioning crew locations.
“Engineering, this is Admiral Portland. Give me a status.”
“Admiral, this is Ensign Torres. We have no primary engines … auxiliary power only. Most of engineering is dead.”
Portland clicked off the connection, swearing to himself. As he stared at the stars through the mass of twisted and chopped bulkheads, a familiar image resolved — the twinkling lights of Idona Station — and an ugly grin could be seen through the admiral’s faceplate.
“Missile Command, this is Admiral Portland. Status on our inferno missiles!”
“Admiral, Lieutenant Hawkins here. Both infernos are secure, and we have power to launch them.”
“Excellent, Lieutenant. Target the station, and launch when ready.”
“Yes, Sir,” Hawkins enthused. The lieutenant was a believer, and the thought of delivering a blow against the Harakens appealed to the stoked anger he harbored for the aliens.
Portland stood staring into the dark void when it was suddenly lit by the bright burning exhausts of the twin launches of his battleship’s inferno missiles. At that moment, surrounded by his devastated ship, he was a happy man.
* * *
“Missile launches … two infernos,” was announced by bridge officers across the destroyer squadron.
“Three starboard destroyers, you have the missile on the right. Three port destroyers, we have the left missile. Empty your magazines until you light them up. Now!” Reiko ordered.
The destroyer captains began expending their meager missile reserves at the giant ship-killers, but these weren’t ordinary missiles. They carried sophisticated spoofing mechanisms, tricking many of the destroyer’s defensive missiles into targeting false images and echoes of their locations.
When the left missile came within range of Franz’s beam, he fired, destroying the warhead, which left tons of shrapnel racing toward Reiko’s destroyer. His traveler dodged the mass of debris, but her ship suffered damage to its rear third when the pilot tried to turn the destroyer out of the way.
The right inferno missile was exploded by the destroyers’ defensive missiles but only just in front of the ship on Reiko’s wing. Huge chunks of metal ripped through the bow and side of the ship, igniting explosions that tore the destroyer apart.
“Navigator, get me a close view of that battleship,” Reiko ordered after she absorbed her squadron’s damage reports. Her engineering reported that the destroyer’s engines were offline, and they weren’t repairable without a station’s dock.
Reiko studied the ugly monster coming toward her. The initial strikes by the lost travelers cut heavily into the battleship’s bow and central fuselage, and their subsequent impacts ignited local explosions, which continued to damage the central support structure. The lights from the battleship’s engines were gone. The judiciary capital ship was dead and toothless, but it was still moving. “Navigation, I need a vector on the Guardian. Where’s it headed?”
“Directly for the station, Commodore,” the navigation officer reported.
“Of all the luck,” Reiko groused. “Destroyers, target the central fuselage of that battleship. I want it cut in half. Maybe that will nudge the wings off course enough to pass the station.”
Reiko listened to the reports coming in from her four remaining captains. Like her ship, they hadn’t a single missile left among them. She stared at the image of the destroyer, hating the admiral more than she had hated anyone in her life.
“Captains, make for the station. Standby there to be of aid in any manner the president requires,” Reiko ordered. “Pilot, do we have maneuvering power?”
“Yes, Commodore. We have docking jets.”
“Push us around until we are directly on target for what’s left of that battleship’s central section,” Reiko ordered, and then hit the emergency evacuation icon on her panel. The warbling sound of electronic klaxons sounded throughout the destroyer, and Reiko’s bridge crew looked at her in confusion. “Since when do you not know how to perform an emergency evacuation, people?” When no one responded, she yelled, “Jump!” and the officers and noncoms fled the bridge.
“You okay in there, Commodore?” Franz asked, watching the four destroyers on Reiko’s flanks swing out of formation and head for the station.
“That hulk is headed for the station, and not one of us has a missile left. Worse, my engines are offline.”
“So what’s the plan, Reiko?” Franz asked in a husky voice. He was watching the emergency pods jettison from the front half of Reiko’s ship, while he was still talking to her on the bridge.
Reiko liked the sound of her name on the commander’s lips. Franz had a way of saying it that felt more like a touch than a sound. In a voice that told Franz that Reiko was reminiscing, she said, “My grandfather hated the digital games but loved anything that was physical, especially if it involved subtle hand skill and strategy. One of the principles he taught me in his games was to employ your ball’s velocity to separate two of your opponent’s balls when they are close together.”
“So you’re the ball?” Franz asked, inputting a query to his controller, which responded that, factoring in the recharge time, the beam of his fighter would require more time than was available to cut through the remaining sections of the battleship. Worse, the controller estimated that the neatly slicing beams would impart insignificant forces to move the wings aside.
“That’s the idea,” Reiko replied. “If I hit that weakened central structure of the Guardian just right, I should be able to separate the wings and impart enough inertia to shift them onto trajectories that will miss the station.”
Reiko was waiting for Franz’s response when his traveler disappeared from her bow view. It bothered her that Franz wouldn’t be staying around for the end, but, in a small way, she understood. Reiko eyed her telemetry data every few moments. Her young pilot was excellent, and she had placed the destroyer dead on target.
* * *
Franz slipped his traveler into the destroyer’s open bay. A shuttle was closing its hatch and preparing to launch, and he edged his fighter to the far side of the bay and settled it to the deck. One more shuttle remained inside.
After checking his environment suit, Franz cycled through his airlock, an upgrade to the travelers by Mickey’s engineering team, three years ago. Exiting the traveler, Franz hurried across the bay to an airlock, which more of the crew was cycling through. It dawned on him that the damage to the rear third of the destroyer had taken out a good number of emergency pods, and the crew was using the shuttles to evacuate the ship.
When the officers and crew piled out of the airlock, Franz’s arm was yanked on by a female officer, who was struggling to pull him inside the airlock. He barely cleared the airlock’s doors, when the officer smacked the actuator to close the bayside doors and cycle the airlock. When the corridor-side doors flashed green and opened, the officer snapped up her faceplate, revealing a youthful face.
“The commodore’s this way, Sir. I’ll lead,” she yelled and took off at a run.
Franz pounded after her, grateful for the guide. With the twists, turns, and level changes, he would have been still searching for the bridge about the time the two ships impacted each other.
The bridge door opened as the pilot neared it, triggered by her ID implanted under her shoulder’s skin.
“I said evacuate, Lieutenant —” Reiko yelled, but the next words died on her lips when she saw Franz run in behind her pilot. “You … you can’t be here,” Reiko said in a whisper, tears beginning to blur
her eyes.
“Are you on course?” Franz demanded, his chest heaving from the exertion.
When Reiko failed to answer, the pilot leaned over her panel. “Dead on course, Commander,” she replied with a grin, proud of her work.
“Time to go,” Franz announced. He didn’t have to tell the youthful lieutenant twice. She bounded off the bridge, intent on making the bay and an exodus before the impending crash. Reiko drew breath to say something, and Franz never gave her the opportunity. He slung the diminutive commodore over his shoulder and chased after the lieutenant, who was getting too far ahead for eye contact, so Franz concentrated on her footfalls.
“What if there’s no one to correct our trajectory?” Reiko yelled from Franz’s back. Her mind was racing to decide whether to fight to go back or stay across Franz’s shoulder and possibly live. In an odd tangent, the thought crossed her mind that the commander could move extremely fast for such a huge man.
“You’ve been underway for about half the distance you have to close. You like your trajectory; your pilot likes your trajectory. I don’t think another asteroid storm is expected any time soon that might throw you off course, Commodore,” Franz yelled through ragged breaths.
At the airlock, the lieutenant was holding out the lower half of an environment suit, and Franz neatly dropped Reiko’s feet into the suit’s legs. After that, Reiko was all business, strapping into the suit as fast as she could. The three of them closed faceplates, cycled the airlock, and dashed across the bay toward Franz’s traveler.
Reiko was out of the airlock first, but both Franz and the pilot beat her to the traveler. The lieutenant scrambled up the short, steep stairway into the ship’s tiny airlock. When Reiko arrived, Franz grabbed her and launched her up to the lieutenant, whose grin he could see through her faceplate.
