by M. D. Cooper
REGION: Khorina System, Outer Alliance
“Oh wow!” Mira gasped as the third missile struck the Bozan ship, punching right through the hull midships to detonate inside. “That had to have crippled them.”
“I’m picking up signs of secondary explosions,” Brock announced. “Not looking good for them at all—oh shit.”
Mira’s head snapped toward the ensign. “What is it?”
“Missiles,” he said. “Dozens. I think they’re blowing their load on us.”
“Ensign Brock,” Janice’s voice crackled. “You’ll conduct yourself in a manner befitting an OASF officer.”
The man reddened and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, Commander. What I meant to say is that they must be launching their full complement.”
Mira nodded. “Then it’s a race. Emma, I want you to vary jinking patterns. We have to assume that Bozas knows the OASF’s standard maneuvers and their missiles know how to follow us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the pilot replied. “Should I plot burns using our AP drive?”
The commander shook her head. “Not yet. I want to hold onto our antimatter reserves for now.”
Emma looked uncertain, but nodded and turned back to her console.
Mira shifted her focus to Janice.
Mira couldn’t argue with either point, so she gave a small nod before turning to her console and pulling up the scan data.
The Bozan ship had launched sixty-eight warheads, more than she would have expected them to carry, even if they didn’t have a massive hole in their port side that must have ruined a number of launch tubes.
She almost wanted to hail him again and revel in her victory, but she knew that would be petty…and potentially reveal more about her strategy than his.
“They’ve cut thrust, ma’am,” Brock announced. “Their current trajectory has them headed toward Hystera—or close to it.”
“Is it wrong to hope they don’t manage to effect repairs before they drift out of the system?” Mira asked in a low voice. “Don’t answer that. I know it’s a little wrong.”
“Not totally, though,” Janice said. “If we’d had the armament to do it, we would have been entirely within our rights to finish them off.”
“We do still have eight missiles,” Mira mused. “Don’t tempt me—though I think we’ll want to hold onto those. They might be all that saves us from that inbound barrage.”
“Ma’am?” Brock asked. “What about more grapeshot? Could we take out some of the missiles with that?”
“Perhaps.” Mira placed a hand on her chin and glanced at Janice. “It would have to be close range. Could you operate the rail with enough accuracy?”
“I could try,” the AI replied. “Can’t hurt. That plus the star’s corona and our standard countermeasures just might be enough.”
“That’s encouraging,” Brock muttered.
Mira wanted to scold him, but knew too much criticism would hamper his performance. For now, she and Janice would need to play good cop, bad cop.
There was a brief pause before the dolphin replied,
A snort of amusement came from the dolphin.
Mira closed the channel with the warrant officer and connected to the engineering chief, letting her know of Lorra’s task.
The connection closed, and Mira found herself surprised at how painless the conversation had been.
“Time to missile impact, thirty minutes at our current velocity,” Brock announced, bringing the commander back to her surroundings on the bridge.
“Thank you, Ensign,” Mira replied, turning her attention back to scan. “Wait…what is that?”
She dropped a marker on an ion trail near Pellick. “Is that left over from us?”
The ensign’s brow furrowed. “I—I don’t think so. It doesn’t match our signature…or anything Bozas flies.”
“That we know of,” Emma added. “Though my money is on it being our alien ship.”
“You mean whoever dropped the not-octobot on Kyra?” Mira asked.
The pilot nodded. “I mean, our scan spotted something in Pellick’s clouds. I didn’t believe for a second it was a malfunction in our nodes. The fact that we found their probe confirms it.”
An agitated breath hissed past Mira’s lips. “Stars, just what we need—to be fighting off Bozas while an alien species slips away.”
“Might that be alright if they slip away?” Janice asked. “First contact seems like something a better equipped team should handle.”
“I don’t necessarily want to make first contact,” Mira replied, surprised that Janice would take the stance she had. “But they know about us, and they’re trying to learn more. It would be nice if we knew a bit about them, too.”
“Might not be first contact, either,” Brock added. “If Bozas has that artifact—and it looks like its makers are still around—then they might already be interacting.”
Mira pointed at Brock while nodding. “What he said.”
The AI tilted her head. “Alright…I didn’t actually consider that. In that case, we definitely want to open official channels rather than let the corporations handle it.”
“That settles it,” the commander announced. “We need to lose these missiles, then slingshot around the star and go after that ship. Hopefully, those Bozans haven’t spotted it yet.”
“If they don’t, they’ll surely spot us going after it,” Emma said.
Mira shrugged. “One problem at a time.”
She tapped into the munitions room feeds, glad to see that Lorra was over halfway done with the next round of grapeshot.
Note to self, Mira. Never again leave port without grapeshot.
The next ten minutes passed without anyone on the bridge speaking, each person focused on their tasks, doing everything in their power to ensure that when the missiles came into range, the Inquiry stood the best chance of surviving unscathed.
Or only a little scathed.
At the ten-minute mark, with Khorina’s star filling far more of the forward display than Mira was comfortable with, she nodded to the pilot and said, “Spool it out. I want as much time as possible when our speeds are almost matched with those weapons.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Emma replied.
The main display indicated AP drive deployment, highlighting that the thin, thirty-meter-long cone was protruding a meter from the rear shields. The cone’s purpose was to funnel the decaying antimatter pions into a needle-thin directional stream before they became gamma rays. The thrust granted by the relativistic engine was far greater than that of the ship’s fusion engines, but their antimatter fuel was limited, so they could only maintain the burn for a short period of time.
“Releasing antimatter flow in three…two…one…” Emma almost crowed with delight as she said, “zero!”
The Inquiry surged forward, now only two light minutes from the star’s corona. Not t
rusting her prior calculations, Mira ran through the shield strength and proximity, ensuring that the humans inside the ship wouldn’t cook as it passed through the star’s ten-thousand-degree atmosphere.
The tone of the engineer’s reply was innocent enough, but the words made her intent clear.
Mira wanted to remind the woman that she wasn’t required to ask each member of the crew for their thoughts on a given issue. If they had ideas or problems, it was their job to bring those to her.
Stars…how has she made it this far?
She drew a deep breath, schooling her thoughts before saying,
The sign-off was entirely pleasant, setting Mira’s nerves further on edge.
Once we get back to Bysmark, you’re gone, lady.
“Burn half-finished,” Emma announced a moment later. “Delta-v between us and the missiles is approaching thirty kilometers per second.”
“They’re within a hundred thousand kilometers,” Janice added. “Targeting the leading edge.”
“Fire when ready,” Mira replied. “Take those things down.”
Beamfire lanced out from the Inquiry, streaking through the black and grazing several of the weapons before they jinked, settling on new courses.
“Oh shit!” Emma shouted a moment later. “We got a plasma arc right in our path.”
Mira pulled up the view, cursing softly at the stream of plasma streaking from one starspot to another, tracing the lines of the star’s magnetic fields.
“That’s not an ‘oh shit’,” the commander replied. “How often does space give you a surprise obstacle? Go under it, and maybe we can lose some of them in the plasma storms.”
“At the least, I might get better angles on some of them,” Janice added. “They’re really slippery.”
“Alright, two minutes from the arc,” Emma said, her mouth drawn so tight, her lips were all but invisible.
Mira nodded silently, her eyes on the holotank, watching the red markers move closer and closer to the Inquiry while a wall of red grew closer on the left side of the display.
She’d never made such a close approach to a star, and according to their service records, no one else aboard the ship had, either. It was either going to go down as a brilliant maneuver, or no one would ever know what they’d attempted—the Bozans certainly weren’t going to tell anyone.
For a moment, she put herself in the Bozan commander’s chair. He had to be smarting after being slapped by the little corvette twice in a row. He had a serious hull breach, and had—to use Brock’s term—‘blown his load’ on them.
But should it become apparent that the Inquiry was going to escape, what would he do?
Mira checked the Bozan ship’s vector and saw that they were making small course adjustments—likely with their a-grav drives.
They’re going to meet us when we come around. The bastards.
The doe sent back an affirmative feeling.
Mira snorted a laugh.
The commander shook her head.
Dolphins, especially those in Lorra’s line, had such cheerful, angelic faces that it was sometimes easy to forget that they were every bit as much the violent predator as humans. She’d rather be up against nearly any opponent rather than a pack of angry dolphins in mech armor.
The countdown to Emma’s maneuver was drawing close to zero, and Mira saw that in a rather daring move, the pilot was on a vector that would appear to pass over the plasma arc, but her plotted course still had them going under.
Hope it works.
“Brace yourselves!” Emma called out as the pre-programmed flight pattern initialized, her hands on the controls, ready to make any last-minute adjustments if the plasma arc shifted.
Granted, the navcomps would handle any emergency maneuvers, but a good pilot took a hands-on approach.
The Inquiry’s a-grav systems dampened the sudden shift in inertia as the vessel shifted vector to fly under the plasma arc. Though Mira couldn’t actually feel the directional shift, her stomach dropped in sympathy as they screamed beneath the stream of superheated gas that outmassed most terrestrial planets.
The forward display was filled with just one thing: the brilliant white light of the system’s star. Mira attenuated it enough to see the hazy atmosphere and roiling surface of the massive fusion engine.
It was a sea of plasma, and above it, the superheated coronasphere—which the Inquiry would be skirting as it performed the slingshot.
“A few didn’t make it,” Janice said, a note of cold satisfaction in her voice. “I managed to tag a few others that flew overtop. We’re down to fifty-one.”
“Hard to be excited about that,” Mira said. “But I’ll do my best.”
“I’m deploying the first wave of countermeasures,” the AI said by way of response. “They have to be running low on fuel. If we can make it around the star, we should be safe.”
Mira nodded silently.
‘Should’ was a tall order when it came to escaping this many warheads.
“Initializing the gravity assist burns.” Emma’s tone was almost devoid of emotion, though Mira could make out a small tremor.
The holotank switched to show a view of the star with a small red marker moving around it, the plotted vector a green line that would see them break away not too far from the plasma arc they’d just avoided.
But by then, they’d be traveling at over 0.07c.
In order to maintain such a tight orbit, the ship’s bow shifted until it was pointed at the star, the angle from the surface only seventy degrees, engines thrusting at maximum. Despite it being one of the most effective ways to pick up velocity, the close approach—burning hard while facing toward the star—felt all kinds of wrong.
“Down to forty-three missiles,” Janice announced as they crossed the halfway mark. “I’m having targetting issues with the aft beams, though. I’m not sure if it’s the star’s magnetic field or something else.”
“Confident you can hit the rest?” Mira leant forward in her seat, eyes glued on the holotank showing the missiles chasing them around the star.
Janice shook her head. “Low, however the remaining warheads are almost in range for grapeshot.”
“You’re going to have to wait,” Emma said through gritted teeth. “The rail can only fire over the bow, and I’m not spinning this ship until we’re through the other side.”
Janice glanced at Mira, and the commander asked, “Will they reach us before we come out the other side?”
The AI twisted her lips, then shook her head. “Within a few hundred kilometers, but no, not yet.”
“Emma, as soon as we are on our breakaway vector, spin the ship so Janice can get her shots off.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Mira turned her gaze back to the holotank, zooming the view in on the remaining hundred thousand kilometers they had to cover—which
would take only ten seconds.
During that time, Janice managed to tag six more missiles with the ship’s beams, and several more fell behind, either because they’d run out of fuel or been damaged from traveling so long through the star’s atmosphere.
“Twenty-one remaining,” Janice said a second before they broke away.
Emma completed a short series of burns to get the ship on a vector to follow the alien craft, and then cut forward thrust and spun the ship one hundred and eighty degrees, the bow now pointed at the remains of the Bozan barrage.
“Firing!” Janice called out, her tone filled with a savage optimism.
The rail lobbed three of the canisters, each one detonating a second after leaving the weapon’s barrel, filling a hundred-kilometer segment of space with high-v shrapnel. Six of the missiles hit the debris and were torn to shreds, the remaining fifteen jinking out of the way to avoid the deadly hail.
“Bozan frigate on scan!” Brock warned. “They’re only three light seconds out.”
The Inquiry had accelerated to 0.07c, which meant they’d cover twenty light seconds in forty-two seconds.
Janice fired three more canisters. Before they even detonated, Mira called out to Emma.
“Come about, facing the enemy. Extend the AP nozzle.”
“Commander?” Emma asked.
“Just do it.”
The canisters detonated, knocking out all but three of the remaining missiles as the pilot complied with her orders.
Once they were complete, she argued, “But the nozzle, it’s past the shield. Those last missiles will go right for it.”
“Then fire the AP drive at the last second,” Mira said with a wink. “With what those missiles have just been through, the gammas should be enough to push them over the edge and fry their electronics.”
The pilot’s eyes widened, and she nodded enthusiastically. “Of course!”
“And the Bozans?” Janice asked. “They must have beams online. Should we just avoid them?”
“No.” Mira shook her head, eyes fixed on the enemy frigate. “Our last eight missiles are in the forward tubes. Take that ship out, Lieutenant.”
She half expected the AI to balk at the order, but Janice all but growled her response.
