“Any reactions?”
“None. They’re still coming in.”
“PIanetside?”
“Tracking the bits, running analyses—no, they’re happy, all scanners just shut down again.”
“Good. Then I think we can leave.” Minerva didn’t need to breathe in the conventional way, but sometimes there were noises more expressive than words. Her speakers emitted the unmistakable sound of someone taking a deep breath. “Gentlemen, secure for combat maneuvers. Battle stations, battle stations. Weapons free! Shields coming up . . . now!”
“Locking on . . .”
“Positive lock confirmed.”
“Rotary one, firing! Torps away, full salvo!”
“Evasive, break right, go . . . !” The Khalia broke too, sheering away from their original line of approach as their threat receptors picked up the doppler-shift of eight torpedoes accelerating toward them at more than forty G. Three out of the four were unlucky; their helm officers picked the same evasive courses as Minerva’s fire-control predictors had anticipated. They began jinking wildly in an attempt to break the homing lock, even though their crews probably knew that the attempt was next to useless. Each torp’s guidance system had been individually preprogrammed before launch. No matter what an enemy might do with chaff or flares to change a radar image or an IR signature, the torp’s randomized tracker would always find something, if only shape or color, to associate with its original target. There was only one really certain way to avoid a Fleet-issue Mk-12b torpedo, and that was to hit it first.
They hit five of them before the remaining three gained final confirmation of their targets and struck home. Two were a correlated pair assigned to the same delta-class corvette, and their five-kiloton warheads impacted as they had been launched, within a quarter second of each other. The Khalian corvette and every Weasel on it became an incandescent globe of plasma in far less time than that.
The last torp of the salvo hit home fair and square on the center section of one of the Forger frigates. And failed to explode. It was a fault common among the last one or two warheads in a close-grouped volley; EMPs caused both by defensive fire and by the explosions of other warheads often scrambled even these hardened electronics. They didn’t mean the frigate shrugged the impact off. It had been struck amidships by a missile that weighed some thirty-four hundred kilos, and this one had achieved its terminal velocity of slightly more than forty-seven klicks per second when it punched into the Forger’s side.
With the generation of that much friction, pyrophoric ignition did the rest. The Forger’s demise wasn’t quite so ostentatious as being struck by a combat-yield thermonuclear warhead, but it flared up as brightly and as finally as any match-head ever struck.
The last Delta had fallen prey to the same disease as the last torpedo, its electronics fried by an EMP slashing out of an epicenter four hundred meters away. Its crew had fallen victim to something much simpler: the- gamma radiation from that same explosion, at an intensity far higher than their ship was shielded against. Had its hull been thick enough to protect the Weasels inside—say thirty centimeters depth of lead for every square centimeter of surface area—their atmosphere-capable vessel would have been too heavy to ever leave the ground.
And that left one.
The last Forger-B came scything through the massive cloud of irradiated chaff that was all Minerva had left of two of its consorts, and all its guns were firing in a frenzy of destruction. Its own torpedoes were expended, or forgotten, or ignored as not being intimate enough. That was something Roj and Minerva had encountered before, a Khalian captain becoming so angry that what he wanted most in all the worlds was to rend his enemies with teeth and claws, and was now forced to resort to its closest equivalent. They had nailed several Weasel ships because of that—and had come damnably close to being nailed themselves.
“Mine,” Roj heard Colonel Cully whisper almost to himself, and despite his better judgment held off the final pressure that would have launched another salvo of torpedoes.
“Roj?” he heard Minerva ask. There was apprehension in her voice.
“He wants them, he can have them. But stand by on override in case he—”
The warning didn’t need finishing. Cully had been tracking the Forger since the engagement began, apparently paying no heed to any of the fire-control inputs without which most humans wouldn’t have gone near a brainship’s weapons. Either that, or he had processed the data almost as fast as Minerva herself. When his thumbs finally crushed down on the twin triggers of the main plasma cannon they seemed to lock there in a firing frenzy almost as intense as the Weasels’ own, laying down a pattern of energy bolts along their approach that looked almost thick enough to walk on.
But then, even though they were the Bad Guys, the Weasels were doing that too.
It just wasn’t fair . . .
Especially when just in the instant that the Forger impaled itself on the point of Cully’s cone of fire and tore itself apart in a great blossom of molten metal and little squealing burning Weasels, there was a most unholy bang somewhere aft and Minerva’s’ entire structure shuddered.
“We’re hit . . . !
“I’m hurting . . . !” For all her metallic body, all of her sleek size and power, in that instant Minerva was the little crippled girl she had been before the brainship program took away her useless body and gave her one that never suffered pain. Until now . . .
“Oh, God, we’re going in . . .” said someone softly as Khalia filled the forward screens. The whole planet reeled sideways, steadied for an instant—then fell right out of the sky onto their upturned faces.
And all the lights went out.
* * *
“. . . get up, Captain. I said, you’re still alive, so get up.”
Despite the noises of encouragement from a voice that was as much like Colonel Cully’s as it was like anything else, Roj Malin was reluctant at first to open his eyes. It had been so still, so dark and quiet, so peaceful . . .
The ship was still around him. There was air to breathe, heat to keep the ultimate chill of deep space at bay, and only the artificial gravity felt strange. It took him several confused moments to realize that it was real, and no longer the simulated one-G of Earth standard.
“We got down in one piece,” he heard Minerva say. “Just. I had to pull almost twelve G at one stage so that we didn’t look like something coming in to land. I countered with the artificials as best I could, until they blew.”
It hurt to move, and now Roj knew why. If his seat harness had been cutting into him at twelve times normal gravity, it would have been doing a passable imitation of a cheesewire. He didn’t bother to look, but there would be puffy-red gouges running in nice geometric patterns all over him to mark where the restraint straps had been. At least they hadn’t chopped anything off. He had seen that, once . . .
“Minerva,” said Cully in the voice of a man with things on his mind, “we landed safely—but can we get off again?”
“I’ll let you know.” The diagnostics board was a constellation of LEDs as Minerva checked her own health, and she didn’t sound as if she wanted to discuss the matter with strangers.
“What about outside?” Roj’s attempt to get out of his acceleration chair was more a series of connected winces than the usual smooth movement, but at least he was able to do it unaided. Cully didn’t offer to help anyway. He was more interested in the readouts from a bank of instruments on one of the other bulkheads.
“Outside is a little hot,” he said enigmatically.
“Temperature? Enemy ground forces?”
“Rads. A residual of three hundred plus, dropping fast. The shielding can handle it. Looks like we brought what was left of the Forger down with us—so I suppose you were right after all.” Cully smiled the nasty smile that Roj had never come to terms with. “About the enemy ground forces. Ground—and
grilled. “
“Wonderful. Jokes. Just what I needed to make me feel better.”
“Don’t knock it, Captain. At least you’re still alive to groan.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed. “ Roj groaned some more and flinched as his flight suit chafed raw skin, then forgot all about it as Minerva’s voder came back on line with a crackle like the diffident clearing of throats.
“Diagnostics complete, gentlemen,” she said. “Do you want the good news, the bad news . . . or the worse news?”
“Are matters so serious that you have to resort to clichés?”
Cully wasn’t smiling anymore, although whether that was to give weight to his remark or because of genuine concern, his still features didn’t say.
“Clichés always begin as the simplified obvious. It’s their simplicity that leads to overuse.” Minerva sounded as stone-faced as the colonel looked. “Now do you want to hear about this or do you not?”
“Minerva,” said Roj wearily, “get it out of the way so that we can start doing something about it, will you . . . ?”
“Right.” The main screen flickered for a moment, then with seeming reluctance formed the schematics of a class-class brainship disguised as a Khalian Fencer B-4 frigate. The vessel’s outline was disfigured by leprous-looking blotches of yellow, indicating those areas where Minerva had sustained systems damage during the brief, savage dogfight three hundred klicks beyond the atmosphere. As she spoke a small blue triangle moved around the display to point out what Roj privately considered “areas of especial interest.”
“Hull integrity was breached by particulate damage here, here, and here. The fragments in these areas here and here were irradiated, so the compartments here and here are hot—that means you can forget about going back to your cabin for clean socks, Colonel. We can manage without them, and so I’m sure can you. However . . .” The pointer changed from blue to red, never a good sign. “I lost most of the modulars here and here. My com system, gentlemen, and most of my primary navigational units are now a thing of the past.”
“That was the good news?” said Cully.
“No, actually that was the bad. The good is that despite the damage I think I can still lift clear of Khalia before the CASE WHITE mud-movers arrive and turn us into a radioactive blot on a glass landscape.”
“You think?” Roj knew Minerva well enough by now to pick up on her cues, and this one was fairly definite.
“Uh, yeah. I did mention worse news. Primary navigation—like for instance, taking off. The only way we’ll get off-planet is by some creative cross-modular insertion. I’m not carrying any line-replaceable spares, but the FIREFROST systems ought to—”
“Oh no you don’t!” Cully was on his feet, face dark with anger and the sudden suspicion that he had been maneuvered slowly and subtly into this position-from the very beginning.
“You’ve suddenly become very passionate, Colonel. Now sit down again and let me finish.”
“Best do it, Colonel.” Sitting quietly in front of the com board, Roj didn’t need a brain other than his own to know that there would be no coded transmissions leaving RM-14376 for anywhere right now. Neither the orbiting drones, nor the approaching Fleet, nor even from the bridge to the vessel’s rearmost compartments. Right now, shouting was the only long-distance means of communication that they had available. The problem would be in getting this particular colonel of Marines to realize the problem. Roj sympathized a little; without FIREFROST the assault would have to go ahead regardless of on-planet resistance or off-planet support, and Cully had been at the sharp end of such operations too many times to regard the prospect calmly.
Against that was the fact that if they could lift off and rendezvous with the vanguard of the CASE WHITE units, they could at least warn them of the situation. Maybe the GK-2 bombs could be activated by someone else, somewhere else. Maybe; it had been made fairly clear before they left the orbital facility over Bull’s-Eye that the control codes for the MARV drones were as unique as Cryptography could make them, in case of accidents.
“. . . and even if there was some way to deliver the warheads,” Minerva was saying calmly, “we’ve got as little NBC protection as the Weasels.”
“What? What’s wrong with staying right here?”
“Colonel, the access hatches for those modules are all mounted on my outer casing. They’re meant to be opened by a ground crew while I’m in atmosphere drydock.” She was being just so patient with him, when Roj knew from the undertones of her voice that she would have preferred to grab Cully by the hair and shake some sort of sense into him.
“The radiation outside is going to cut things close enough as is. At present rate of decay it’ll be relatively safe in fifteen hours thirty-seven minutes. Allow an hour for modular substitution, hour and forty-five minutes for prep and preflight from cold . . . the invasion battlegroup will enter orbit in eighteen hours and predrop bombardment will commence in eighteen hours plus twenty-five minutes. By my math, we’ll have three minutes to get the hell out of here.”
“Spacesuits,” said Cully with the air of one putting forward an irrefutable argument.
“All the pressure suits I carry were in one of the hot compartments. What was it you mentioned before: catch-22? Well, meet catch-23. We wait.”
* * *
They waited; and then they waited some more; and only when Minerva judged that it was safe did they venture outside. Colonel Cully had been right in the literal sense as well as in his interpretation of the radiation readings beyond Minerva’s climate-controlled environment. Sweat was streaming down both his and Roj’s faces before they were half done with the module swap. It was small wonder the Weasels had an expansionist nature, if this place was where they had originated.
“Connections complete, standard check!” Roj yelled in the general direction of the remote pickup they had run out from the bridge, and stepped back from the access hatch as Minerva ran power into this latest unit. There had been five blowups already, when circuitry designed for the microwatts of a missile guidance system revealed it only when the gigawattage of a starship’s flight instruments ran through and fried its chips. There was still a splinter bedded somewhere in Roj’s shoulder from the last time but one, and he was well past taking any further chances.
Even if they were already running late.
There was a constant desire to keep looking at his chrono, and at the far-too-rapid countdown of its timer. Cully, protected by rank or by a sheer lack of concern, wasn’t so particular. The colonel glanced at his wrist on an average of once every minute, following it each time with a nervous glance skyward.
Roj was more concerned about the Khalia. It was impossible to believe that their landing here had gone completely unnoticed, wilderness though it might be. At the very least, they were a friendly ship, a fencer-class shot down in combat on the very fringes of the home world itself, and surely that rated a rescue. He wondered if rescue tugs on Khalia were armed, and if not, whether Minerva could smoke any intruder before it got a message off about who was and wasn’t to be rescued . . .
The spray of heavy machine-gun fire went clanging in silvery splashes across the brainship’s hull just as he closed the last-but-one inspection hatch, and he felt a half-spent ricochet slap against his shoulder in an attempt to keep the silver of ceramic company. Even though the distorted slug did not leave more than another bruise among the criss-cross laid there by his straps, it would be a spectacular affair—assuming he lived long enough for all its colors to develop. That was something that seemed less than likely, because the next burst of fire chewed up the ground between where he had dived for cover and the entrance/exit port leading to Minerva’s dark, cool, and above all armored interior. As if to prove it hadn’t been a fluke, the next two bursts chopped into exactly the same area, as if promising what awaited the first man to make a run.
And he was unarmed, on top of ever
ything else. Sidearms weren’t quite as necessary on a brainship as they might be on an MRF dropship, but there were a couple of autorifles in a secure cabinet at the back of the bridge. Right now, they were as far away as Port.
Correction, one of them was still in the cabinet. From the sound of it Colonel Cully had the other, because the weapon’s chattering in short, controlled bursts was coming from so close that it had to be the colonel firing. He hoped. He was right.
“Notice something, Captain?” shouted Cully above the crackle of gunfire. “There’s only one of them!”
“Only one Weasel?” The statement seemed to need some sort of reply, and that was the only thing that came to Roj’s mind. It was probably wrong anyway, but he was more concerned with keeping his head out of the path of an un-ricocheted slug than he was with thinking up the right answers to this most practical exam in firefight analysis.
“No, man! Only one gun! Get into the ship and—” The rest of it was lost in a shattering bellow from overhead as Minerva’s A and X turrets traversed toward the distant ridge that was the only place where the Weasels could be hiding and opened the line of fire. It wasn’t the precise placement of shot required by deep-space combat, but saturation gunnery of the old school over a range of one klick, and it transformed the rock and soil and vegetation of that ridge into a smoldering primordial sludge.
“Ready to go!” In the clanging silence after the plasma cannons shut down, Minerva’s PA sounded insignificant. Only the words were important. Already heat and vapor were beginning to flow from the vectored-thrust nozzles of her lift jets. Roj scrambled to his feet, closed the final hatch with a slap of one hand, and all but dived through the entry-port. Despite being encumbered by the awkward bulk of the big autorifle, Cully was right on his heels.
He stumbled in the doorway and the weapon went clattering across the floor of the airlock. Roj scooped it up, scorching his fingers on the hot barrel-shrouds, and turned to punch the big, red, friendly door-secure button. Then he saw the reason why Cully had dropped the gun . . .
The Fleet-Book Four Sworn Allies Page 21
