There was a long pause while the navigator twisted the cruiser around the incoming fire as the swarm turned to ineffectually chase after them.
“Not if we want to leave,” El-Amin finally said. “Liepins?”
“We lost the pattern when we blew one of the main emitters,” the engineer said grimly. “I’ve got drones already moving out to repair it, but we only have enough parts to do that once. Blow another main emitter, and I need an asteroid and a week before we can open a portal.”
“And we need to get out of here,” Morgan replied. “Nguyen. Range?”
“Ninety seconds to three light-minutes. Do we…do we get closer before we launch?”
Morgan studied the map. The final defensive swarm was now accelerating toward her and would reach range at about ninety light-seconds from the Womb. She didn’t know what the Womb had for defenses either, though she doubted it could accurately target her ship at almost thirty million kilometers.
“Hold to one hundred light-seconds,” she ordered. “Then execute. El-Amin, I need to cut us close enough to the last defenders to draw as much of their attention as possible, but we need to be far enough out to hit the gas and get the hell out as soon as the starkillers are through.”
“Yes, sir,” the replies chorused.
Morgan leaned back in her chair and studied the display in front of her. Defiance was battered but unbroken. Her screens warned they’d fired off most of their interface-drive missiles at this point too, but her ship had made it as far as she needed to.
They could still fail. They could still die, even if they succeeded.
But no force in the universe could stop Defiance from launching her starkillers at this point.
“Initiating launch sequence. Missiles in holding pattern. Drone shuttles deploying. First wave drone shuttles in holding pattern. Second missile salvo in holding pattern.”
Icons spilled out of Defiance on the display as seconds ticked away. The announcement she was waiting for, the one that she had prayed to never hear in her entire life once she’d understood what Defiance carried, followed.
“Final Dragon authorizations processed. Final Dragon Defiance-One, deployed. First decoy wave forming up. Final Dragon Defiance-Two, deployed. Second decoy wave forming up.
“Final Dragon Defiance-Three, deployed. Holding for third wave of decoys to finish deploying.”
Nguyen’s steady sequence of reports belayed the tension in the bridge. They were back under Final Dragon lockdown, with secondary control still only getting half the information.
There was no way to hide what Morgan had just done, but the purpose of the secrecy wasn’t to protect Rogers from knowing what had happened. It was to protect Morgan’s XO from ever having to take responsibility for what had happened.
“All decoy waves ready. All Final Dragons deployed.” The bridge was so quiet, Morgan was certain everyone heard Lesser Commander Thu Nguyen swallow before she hit the last button.
“Final Dragon launch complete.”
The icons lit up with bright colors as all of them brought their interface drives online in a single moment. The shuttles’ drives had been stripped of safety systems and overloaded to allow them to run at the same eighty percent of lightspeed as the starkillers.
The missiles had always been able to be stepped down to that speed. The starkillers were just too big to be propelled by the Imperium’s latest point-eight-five missile drive.
“That’s us, people,” Morgan told them. “Whether we succeed is in the hands of God now. El-Amin, decoy course, if you please. Nguyen? Cover those missiles.”
“We can only sustain the sprint for fifteen minutes at most,” her navigator warned. “That…is unlikely to be enough to get clear.”
“It will have to be,” Morgan told him. “Take us through their formation, Commander El-Amin. Commander Liepins, keep those shields up no matter what. We’re going to live through this, people.
“And then everything is going to be so classified, you won’t even be able to tell the story for drinks!”
The laugh she got from her bridge crew was strained, probably forced in some cases, but it was there. It released at least some of the tension in the room, allowing people to focus on their roles as their plan unfolded.
“That’s it,” Nguyen said a few seconds later as the missile launchers flashed red on Morgan’s display. “That’s the last of our missiles, sir. We’re down to hyperfold cannon.”
“Do what you can,” Morgan ordered. Defiance had now expended nearly every resource aboard that could be expended. Every shuttle, every drone—even the expensive new stealth shuttles—was acting as a decoy for the starkillers. Every missile had been fired. She couldn’t even send her Marines to board a ship without delivering them with Defiance herself.
“Swarm is targeting the decoy groups, but they’re focusing on us,” Nguyen admitted. “We’re losing decoys, but all Final Dragon munitions remain intact.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Final Dragon units have penetrated the swarm and are moving toward the sun-eater,” the tactical officer reported. “I repeat, all Final Dragon units have penetrated the enemy defense.”
“And that, Commander El-Amin, is your cue,” Morgan said with forced brightness. “Get us the fuck out of here!”
Defiance spun in space, rotating through a seventy-degree turn in seconds as she reoriented as directly away from everything as she could and went to maximum sprint almost directly opposite the sun-eater’s vector.
“Range is opening at point-eight-six c relative,” he snapped. “Time to contact?”
“Sixty seconds,” Nguyen reported. “I have live data feeds from the probes in the decoy swarms— What the hell?”
“Commander?” Morgan demanded.
“I have three Imperial destroyers launching from the sun-eater,” the tactical officer said swiftly. “Scanners make them Unyielding Stance–class ships. Warbook says older units, pre-Taljzi Campaigns, but they have full fourth-generation Sword and Buckler.”
Sword and Buckler was the automated turret-and-drone antimissile system carried by every Imperial warship. Designed by Morgan’s father with the help of data acquired during her stepmother’s sojourn as a privateer, their installation had helped fuel the Duchy of Terra’s rise to prominence in the Imperium.
The only good news was that the fourth-generation system was still a purely laser-based system, lacking the hyperfold cannons built into the seventh-generation system that Defiance carried.
Morgan’s ship could take all three destroyers, even with her munitions expended—but to do it, she’d have to turn around and head right back through the defending swarm.
“Commander Nystrom,” she said quietly. “We’ve been sending live telemetry back to Kosha Station this entire time, correct?”
“Yes, sir,” her coms officer confirmed. “The relevant portions have been secured under Final Dragon Protocols, which I believe the Echelon Lord can access.”
“She can. More importantly, the Imperium can.”
Morgan watched in silence as the destroyers drove toward the incoming starkillers.
“There’s nothing we can do,” she finally concluded. “We can’t get there in time to cover them. El-Amin, the moment you think you can open a portal, do it. Regardless of whether the sun-eater is dead or not. We’ve outmaneuvered them enough to escape, I think.”
There were other Servants out there in a rough cloud around the Womb, but the vast majority of them had been concentrated in the barrier Defiance had punched through and around the Womb itself.
If the starkillers failed, Defiance couldn’t take the Womb or its defenders—but Morgan was sure they couldn’t catch her now, either. Too many of them had expended too much of their fuel.
“Destroyers are engaging our salvos,” Nguyen reported grimly. “They’ve deployed over a dozen Buckler drones—it appears they’re starting on the shuttles.”
“They know,” Morgan concluded. “They’
ve guessed, at least, but they have no idea what is actually carrying the starkiller.”
Every eye on the bridge was locked on two things: the desperate attempt by the destroyers—presumably Child of the Great Mother’s original escort and manned by crews of Children cultists—to stop the starkillers; and the countdown until El-Amin thought he’d be able to open a hyper portal.
Morgan hoped the time estimate was conservative. Even at point-seven lightspeed, they couldn’t outrun a blast wave traveling at point-nine-nine lightspeed for an entire day.
But that was the choice she’d made, and every second she ran from the sun-eater at full sprint was another two hundred thousand kilometers of space between them and the nova she was hoping to induce.
“Dragon Defiance-Two is down,” Nguyen reported grimly. “Most of the shuttles are gone too, and one of them nailed the starkiller. Time to impact is… It’s too late.”
“Commander?”
“It’s too late. Impact is now.”
There was nothing. The icons vanished off the display and nothing happened.
“Commander Nguyen?” Morgan asked.
“Defiance-One hit the sun-eater itself, I have impact data reports coming back from it and the decoys,” Nguyen said quietly. “I doubt the thing liked that, but…”
“And Defiance-Three?” Morgan demanded.
“Contact. We have coronal penetration and system activation,” the tactical officer confirmed. “And…the destroyers have taken out the last of my probes, sir. We’re down to lightspeed scanners for long-range data.
“It will be at least six minutes before we can confirm if the starkiller functioned as designed.”
“Understood.”
Patience was a virtue, but right now, Morgan was looking at a dead ship either way. A starkiller had connected. That should have been it. The star encased in the Womb was a half-eaten ragged thing, but it was still a star, a stellar furnace of unimaginable energy.
“El-Amin, watch your gravity scanners,” Morgan ordered. “I think that the detonation pulse and the nova should do something.”
“In theory, once it stops actively maneuvering and the mass starts dispersing, I should be able to more easily open a portal,” her navigator confirmed. “I think. That it’s moving away from us is also helping; we’re getting…wake instead of bow wave, if the metaphor tracks.”
“It does,” Morgan agreed. The sheer kinetic energy of the moving Womb was screwing with the hyperspatial interface, but it was causing more havoc in front of it than behind it. The Womb probably didn’t even know about the effect, but it made its pursuit terrifyingly deadly.
“I have Final Dragon impact on lightspeed scanners,” Nguyen reported. “All signs…all signs…” She swallowed.
“Nova imminent,” she reported grimly. “Standard estimate is one hundred eighty seconds from impact. That means it already blew, sir.”
“No gravity wave along the interface yet,” El-Amin reported. “A nova should show up on the interface before the shockwave gets here.”
“Keep us in sprint mode,” Morgan ordered. “It sucks for the ship and it sucks for us, but I’d rather have to treat everyone for bone cancer than get vaporized by a dying star.”
Her navigator just nodded. The distance was continuing to grow…and Nguyen had now added a probability-shaded series of expanding zones around the hopefully ex-star.
Morgan could only wait, watching as the zone of death expanded at lightspeed. Even weakened as the sun had been, her best guess was that Defiance wouldn’t survive anywhere within a light-hour of the blast.
None of Nguyen’s probability zones had them making it that far.
“Hyperspatial interface wave,” El-Amin suddenly snapped. “Nova was at least two minutes ago. Hyperspace pulses repeating.”
“Can we portal out?” Morgan demanded.
“Not yet,” he replied. “Analyzing the cycle; we might be able to manage a destructive interference pattern with the interface wave.”
Nothing smaller than the movement or death of a star would create ripples along the hyperspatial boundary. Enough starkillers had been fired over the millennia—even one by the Imperium, long before—that they knew how fast that ripple traveled: roughly three times the speed of light.
That meant the realspace shockwave was only a few minutes away.
“Cycling emitters,” El-Amin reported. “Sir…I can’t guarantee I’m going to be able to get us out of hyperspace.
“We’ll deal with that later,” Morgan told him. “Get us out of here.”
“I have the cycle,” her navigator announced. “Hold on; this is going to be rough. Portal close, portal close!”
Five light-seconds gave them a safety margin but also meant the portal had to stay open for five seconds.
Five hundred meters required no such allowances.
Chapter Fifty
“The good news, everyone, is that we’re still alive,” Morgan told the gathered officers in Defiance’s briefing room. The cruiser’s department heads were arranged around the long table in what looked like order of exhaustion.
Looking unexhausted—if terrified—Rin Dunst sat the other end of the room.
“The bad news is what everyone is in here to brief me on,” she continued. “How about we get started with the broadest. Commander Liepins? How’s Defiance?”
“We’re still here, so better than I was afraid of,” the engineer told everyone. “The emergency portal did a number on our power-distribution network, as we had to give Commander El-Amin far more power than those emitters are supposed to need.
“So, the bad news is that we don’t have exotic-matter emitters anymore—well, technically, we still have one. We need eight to create a portal to realspace,” Liepins concluded. “The other bad news, which I really hope doesn’t become relevant, is that our power distribution is probably not up to combat demands at this point.
“I’m reasonably sure I can maintain the shields at navigational levels, but I’m not sure I can take them back up to combat levels, and I am absolutely certain I can’t bring the shields up to combat levels and provide enough power to fire the hyperfold cannons.”
“What about the plasma lances?” Morgan asked. “Hyperfold cannons aren’t much use in hyperspace and, well, you already established we’re not leaving hyperspace.”
Liepins laughed bitterly.
“You might get one shot,” he told her. “If you’re okay with not having shields afterwards. Or, quite possibly, engines.”
“Well, that answers that, doesn’t it?” Morgan said. “The only place we’re going is back to base. El-Amin?”
The headscarfed navigator bowed his head and sighed.
“I think I’ve got enough of a bearing to get us back to Kosha Station,” he told her. “But I’m not certain. We could end up flying around in circles, praying we find someone.”
“The good news is that Kosha Station has a permanent hyperspace installation,” Morgan replied. “It’s set up to detect anybody coming in, but it will also give us an idea of whether we’re in the right place.
“We can’t take Defiance back out on her own, but any other hyper-capable ship can open a portal for us. We’re also capable of using the hyperspace launcher’s portals to send messages into realspace, though we no longer have any shuttles to send through them.”
At this point, Morgan had briefed at least everyone in this room on just what those shuttles had been sacrificed for. She suspected a lot more people knew than had been officially cleared on Final Dragon, which was a problem.
Conveniently, it was Speaker Murtas’s problem more than hers right now.
“If Commander El-Amin can get us even close to the Kosha System, we can send a message through a launcher portal for Echelon Lord Davor to send someone for us,” Morgan concluded. “That’s better than I was afraid of.”
“We still have sixty-five people in med bay,” Rogers told her. “No deaths, somehow, but med bay is still feeling overwhelmed
.”
“The sooner we’re back to Kosha Station, the better for everyone. Does anyone see any reason why we shouldn’t be on our way? Liepins? She can take the trip?”
If Defiance couldn’t take the trip back to the Navy base, they were in a lot of trouble.
“She can’t do much else, but she can do that,” Liepins confirmed. “We’re going to be tied up for a while with repairs, sir.”
“I know. I’m even pretty sure it was worth it,” Morgan told them. “We did good, people. There was a very real chance the Womb was going to build itself a hyperdrive at some point in the next few years. At that point, it would have just shown up in Kosha—and we would never have been able to predict when.”
“I have bad news on that front,” Dunst said from the other end of the table.
He was mostly there to keep him in the loop on what had happened. He’d earned that much respect by making the connections that Morgan couldn’t in the middle of the battle.
“I’m not busy checking on repairs and making sure the cruiser can fly,” he reminded everyone. “That gave me a chance to go through our data from the battle. I had one of Commander Nguyen’s NCOs double-check me, because I didn’t even think what I was looking at was possible.”
Dunst laid a projector on the table and opened up the standard tactical plot. The time stamps showed that it was literally in the final seconds before Defiance had opened her portal and fled into hyperspace.
“Here,” he said quietly, pointing to a specific point on the plot. “Lesser Blade Pinheiro and I went over it several times. That’s a hyperspace portal.”
The briefing room was very quiet.
“It could have been one of the Children destroyers, matching up with the gravity pulses like we did,” Nguyen suggested.
“I would guess the destroyers went through the portal, but it wasn’t generated by them,” Rin continued, his voice still soft. “They wouldn’t generate a portal over a thousand kilometers wide.”
“At least we know the sun-eater didn’t make it out,” Rogers said grimly. “But that sounds like it had built its own hyperdrive.”
Relics of Eternity (Duchy of Terra Book 7) Page 30
