“Once our final tranche of reinforcements arrives, we will take this entire fleet and proceed to the Legatus System. We will attempt to lure the mobile forces into an open space engagement, where we will destroy them.
“Regardless of whether we can lure the mobile forces out, our destroyers will spread out to secure the system while we hold the main force near Centurion. The RIN has demonstrated that their jump drive is much less capable of jumping into and out of gravity wells than we are, and we will take advantage of that to pin them against their planets.
“Nothing will leave or enter Legatus or Centurion. We will choke them out and grind down their defenses. By removing their reinforcements from the equation, we can wait for our reinforcements to finish construction.”
Roslyn wasn’t sure what the reinforcements that Alexander was expecting to be built were, but the Mage-Admiral seemed confident that they would turn the tide.
“We will choke out the RIN and force them to withdraw from the occupied systems. They will have no choice but to relieve Legatus…and we will not let them.”
17
Getting back to Starlight proved easier than Damien had dared hope. Once they’d made it to a rest stop for tourists, they’d called a taxi and returned to Arndale, where their shuttle had returned them to orbit.
The fast packet was far from home by any stretch of the imagination, but being back among people who knew who he was made for at least something of a relief.
Damien had barely managed to shower off the sweat from their HALO jump before he was interrupted, though.
“Lord Montgomery?”
The intruder was standing just inside the door to his quarters, careful not to invade his bedroom or bathroom.
“In here,” he responded, his magic conjuring a defensive shield around himself even as he used it to wrap a bathrobe over his shoulders.
“Sir.”
He stepped out to see one of the Martian cyborgs, the Bionic Combat Regiment commandos, that Romanov had brought with them.
“What is it?”
“Sergeant Van’s regards, my lord, but there’s something going on on the bridge. Captain Maata hasn’t updated us yet, but the Sergeant suggests that your presence might be advised.”
Damien forced the grin he’d have worn before today. Sergeant Chi Van was the senior Martian cyborg on the ship, and she trusted their ex-LMID chauffeurs less than Damien did.
So, of course, she was running security on Starlight’s bridge. That both helped keep the people shuttling them around safe and made sure that the Martian contingent was fully advised of what was going on.
He glanced at his reflection in the mirror and his grin become somewhat less forced.
“And I’m guessing that, at my height, I’m not particularly intimidating soaking wet in a bathrobe?”
“Neither I nor the Sergeant would dream of saying any such thing…my lord,” the commando said levelly.
“And by ‘my lord,’ you’re self-censoring from what, again?” Damien asked.
The woman coughed delicately.
“I’m sure I’ve heard it before, trooper.”
“The BCR calls you Darth Montgomery, sir,” she admitted.
“Yup,” Damien confirmed after swallowing a moment of old frustration. Why, just why, had the latest movie version of that ancient folk tale had to come out while he was First Hand?
“I’ve heard that one before.”
“I don’t know what you’re going on about, Group Commander, but if you’re trawling for bribes, I suggest you find another tree to crawl up,” Captain Maata was telling someone as Damien stepped quietly onto the bridge.
He traded a nod with Sergeant Van, recognizing the commando’s concerned look. From the woman’s body language, the concern wasn’t directed at Captain Maata.
“No, I already told you, all of my cargo has been offloaded and I had people on the planet looking for new cargo,” Maata snapped. “Everything is registered and licensed. I don’t know or care what your problem is, but you can get the hell off my back.”
She hit a button to kill the call and turned in her seat.
“Ah, Montgomery. I don’t suppose you’re up to jumping us the hell out of this system before my new RIN friend decides he’s sick of me mouthing off?”
Damien held up his hands, once again wrapped in thin elbow-length black leather gloves.
“I don’t have jump runes anymore,” he reminded her. “And Mage Foster isn’t up for jumping out from this close in. Closer in than most, but not this close.”
Like any Navy Mage, Liara Foster could jump from closer to a gravity well than most regular Jump Mages. A true amplifier, which Starlight did not have and Damien wasn’t giving her, might have cut most of the difference.
As it was, they needed to get half a light-minute from the planet to jump safely. Standard civilian safety margin was a full light-minute—and at two to five gravities of acceleration, that could take a day.
“What do the RIN want?” Damien asked.
“They accused me of bringing spies back aboard my ship on the last round of shuttle flights,” Maata replied. “Which is technically true, but I’ll be fucked if I admit it.”
“So, what do we do?” he said.
“Well, I give it five minutes before Group Commander Ren over there demands I let them board and inspect Starlight, so I figure we get moving before that and flip him a big friendly middle finger as we run.”
“And if they shoot at us?” Damien replied. He had his own ace in the hole there, but he hesitated to commit LaMonte’s ship this close to a Republic world.
His cat was aboard Rhapsody in Purple, after all.
“I can shoot down some missiles,” Maata told him. “It will take them some time to get their thumbs out and decide to shoot us down, too. That gives us some wiggle room.”
“Enough?”
“If we’re lucky.” The covert ops captain looked grim. “More than we’re going to get if we stay in orbit. We’re booting the reactors; we’ll be under way in ninety seconds.”
She shook her head.
“I’m not sticking around to get boarded. There are enough questionable folks and gear aboard Starlight to see us all hang!”
Damien was quite confident in his people’s ability to wipe out the boarding parties that would be sent aboard a small ship like Starlight. That would only aggravate the situation, however, and wouldn’t get them any closer to jumping out of Arsenault.
“Carry on, Captain,” he told her. “I’m going to hang out right here, though. In case you need me.”
Even without being able to access an amplifier—or the jump matrix, for that matter—the simulacrum chamber was the best place for Damien to protect the ship from.
And even crippled and weakened as he was, his magic was more than a match for a few gunships.
“All hands, all hands, prepare for pod gravity transition,” Captain Maata announced. “We will cease rotation in thirty seconds and commence emergency acceleration in sixty seconds. Prepare for pseudogravity transition and then get your asses to an acceleration chair.”
Damien took a moment to strap himself into a properly equipped chair on the bridge. Since the simulacrum chamber had to be at the heart of the ship, it was in zero gravity except when the ship was accelerating.
And he’d reviewed Starlight’s specifications. Emergency acceleration was seven gravities, a number he’d never seen on a ship without magical gravity before.
Maata gave it an extra ten seconds beyond her warning, watching some report on her screens that Damien couldn’t see, before triggering the engines.
Starlight’s adjustment to thrust position hadn’t gone unnoticed, either.
“Ren is calling again, demanding to know what we’re doing,” Maata’s coms officer reported.
“Ignore him,” Maata ordered—and then hit the command to bring Starlight’s engines online. “Davies, get the RFLAM turrets live. I don’t trust Ren not to get pissy!”
There was no way he could speak clearly initially. After a moment, he regained enough breath to use magic to protect himself from the crushing force, but Maata had seemed unbothered from the beginning.
Their captain, it seemed, had some secrets of her own.
“Turrets are live,” Zach Davies finally responded. His voice, at least, was showing the strain of the seven gravities of acceleration. “I have three gunships maneuvering toward us. Do I engage?”
Maata flicked a glance over to Damien.
The Hand could see the lights of the gunship’s engines flaring around the spacecraft, but the data codes attached to them told an interesting story.
The three ships could match Starlight’s acceleration and their missiles could exceed it a thousandfold, but they weren’t pushing their drives. Their maneuvers were much more casual and he wasn’t seeing targeting radar.
“You know gunships better than I do,” he pointed out. “But this doesn’t look right to me.”
“They’re maneuvering to try to disable us, but if they miss with their lasers, we’ll evade them unless they use missiles or pile on the accel.”
“Can they disable us?” Damien asked. “I can’t stop lasers.”
“One-gigawatt beams at under two light-seconds?” Maata laughed. From her disregard of the pressure, Damien had to assume that the Captain was one of the mystery Augments they’d known were aboard Starlight.
“Nobody can stop them…but I wish them luck disabling Starlight.” Her grin continued even as the gunships continued their slow pursuit. “They’ll fire in about a minute,” she concluded. “I expect one more call to surrender.”
“And after that?” Damien asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Every second they trail along at two gravities, they lose velocity and distance they’ll never make up.”
“So, either they don’t think we’re actually a problem or they have a plan,” Damien concluded, studying the Republican sublight warships.
“And they know we have a Mage aboard,” he added.
“So, we’re a problem…and that means they have a plan,” Maata agreed. “I don’t suppose you Mages can jump us out from here?”
He looked grimly down his gloved hands.
“I could have once, but not anymore,” he admitted. “Foster definitely can’t, though she can get us out from closer in than they expect.”
“Hopefully, that’s enough,” the Captain replied. “And that my trick with the lasers works.”
Damien didn’t even have time ask what the “trick with the lasers” was before the gunships opened fire. The tiny sublight warships didn’t have the twenty-gigawatt lasers of the Republic Interstellar Navy’s capital ships.
Instead, they each carried three of the one-gigawatt Rapid-Fire Laser Anti-Missile turrets the capital ships carried as missile defenses. At a range of less than two light-seconds and firing on a civilian ship, the nine beams should have been more than enough to not only disable Starlight’s engines but to separate them from the freighter.
The flash of light around Starlight’s engines told Damien something else had happened. Without access to the displays of an actual console, he had no idea what, but the ship was still accelerating at seven gravities.
“Layers of reflective armor overtop of a series of tanks of water,” Maata told him in answer to his questioning look. “So, now the space around the usual weak points is full of water and, well, glorified glitter.”
A second salvo of lasers hit that cloud of droplets and dispersed. Knowing what to look for now, Damien picked out the bursts of vapor.
“Of course, if they keep that up, we’re in trouble,” she concluded. “I’ve only got one layer of reflective armor underneath the tanks, and we’re leaving the cloud behind.”
She sighed.
“And if we shoot at them, they’ll blow us out of space with missiles,” she said aloud. Shaking her head, Maata tapped the internal coms.
“All hands, stand by for evasive maneuvers and increased acceleration. I’m pushing us to eight gees.” She paused. “If you’re not an Augment or a Mage, get your ass into an accel chair and bring up the full wrap. I may have to push harder, and I like most of you enough to want to keep you!”
She looked back at Damien.
“Your Mages can handle this, right?”
“Yes,” he said shortly. “Foster will be on her way up.”
He turned his attention back to the gunships. He could neutralize their lasers, but not without it being obvious that a Hand was aboard. A regular Mage couldn’t do that, and it wasn’t something he could do subtly. Holding a shield like that close to Starlight was more likely to wreck the ship than protect it.
Starlight tore through a series of maneuvers just as the gunships fired again. Laser beams punched through where her engines would have been, and Damien shook his head against the dizziness as the ship spun.
Despite that, Liara Foster walked into the simulacrum chamber bridge as if they were under a mere one gravity. She wasn’t looking at the screens, though, so she wasn’t worrying about vertigo.
Yet.
“You know where the simulacrum station is,” Maata told the Mage. “Anything you can do?”
“Against missiles, yes. Lasers? No.”
The small freighter twisted through another series of gyrations, but there was no laser fire to dodge.
“We are definitely still in their range,” Damien pointed out. “What are they playing at?”
“They’re not trying to wreck us.” Foster pointed out what Damien and Maata had been struggling with from the beginning.
“They’re trying to capture us…and this set doesn’t need to.”
The Jump Mage had seen what the people already on the bridge had missed. They’d been focused on the ships chasing them, but Foster’s job meant she was looking ahead to where she’d need to jump.
“Those three have enough of a velocity to keep us from getting away, but if they need to stop us hard, they have missiles—and they don’t need to be in our range to launch them.
“These three, on the other hand, we have no chance in hell of evading.”
Foster had reached her station and highlighted the three icons of the ships she meant. Like several dozen other gunships, they were flying escort to protect Arsenault’s internal shipping. Now, however, they’d broken off and were heading directly toward Starlight.
“If we follow any of our shortest-time courses to safe space to jump, the three out there will intercept us at a range where they can board us,” Maata concluded, pulling the data on the three gunships.
“If we evade dramatically, the three behind us will either catch up to us or write it off as a bad plan and blow us out of space.” She shook her head. “I can’t blow through three gunships,” she pointed out, looking over at Damien and Foster.
“Can you?”
“If necessary,” Damien said grimly. “Hopefully, we’ll get luckier than that.”
“What kind of luck are you counting on?” Maata demanded.
He didn’t answer, just looking out at the apparently empty space along their route.
All right, Kelly, he asked silently. How close did you get? Just close enough to see what’s going on?
Or close enough to pull me out of the fire again?
18
One planet.
The First Hand had needed to get in and out of one planet without bringing the Republic down on his head.
Kelly LaMonte shook her head and yanked on a currently pitch-black braid.
“How close can we get?” she asked her tactical officer.
“Are you nuts?” Conrad Milhouse asked bluntly. Despite his objection, however, he started th
rowing projections up on the screen around them. Red spheres surrounded each of the gunship groups, accompanied by dark-orange thrust cones.
Interception cones.
The ships pursuing Starlight were in missile range, and their seemingly lackadaisical acceleration was designed to keep them in missile range until the freighter could jump. In fact, from the vector cone Milhouse had projected, they were underestimating how close to the planet Liara Foster could jump the ship.
That would have given Starlight a potential opportunity to escape, except for the three gunships coming in from the outer system. Those ships weren’t in their missile range of Starlight yet, but they would get all the way into boarding range unless someone found a miracle.
Rhapsody in Purple was already pushing the limits of the heat sinks that allowed her to stay hidden. Kelly had been about to order them to move away from the planet to somewhere they could vent heat safely.
Her theory had been that if they hadn’t been caught in the first forty-eight hours, Starlight’s crew had at least two more days of relative safety. She’d clearly been wrong.
“You’re still nuts,” Milhouse finally concluded as he stared at the intricate displays on his screen. “But I think we can get to about four and a half million kilometers before the gunships detect us…”
He shook his head.
“If the data Niska gave us on those birds’ sensors is accurate,” he added. “If it is, someone cheaped out assuming they’d have motherships and defensive stations to back them. If it isn’t…”
He shrugged.
“Five million klicks is the range on our laser. It might well be the range on theirs.”
“That’s the one good piece of news we have out of Starlight getting shot up,” Kelly replied. “Those were RFLAM turrets, one-gigawatt beams.” She smiled. “Maximum effective range around ten light-seconds—against missiles and civilian ships. Against warships or Rhapsody? Half that at best.
“Now”—she held up a hand to backtrack on some of her reassurances—“their missiles can rip us to pieces quite handily. Can we take them before they launch?”
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