"Well, thirty million miles is what they said it could do. It would appear that our radar is exactly up to spec." Sir George punched up the officer's mess on the intercom. "This is the captain. Send a steward with tea, coffee, and some sandwiches. We've got a bit of a wait yet, and there's no sense going hungry."
Reports started coming from all over the ship. There were, as expected, no survivors in Hangar One. There were one hundred fifty-seven dead there, and sick bay reported at least one hundred additional fatalities, possibly two hundred serious non-fetal casualties. Some forward compartments were still cut off from the ship's corridors by vacuum and there were certainly more dead and injured that had not been accounted for yet. Out of a normal snip's complement of one thousand one hundred, perhaps seven hundred fifty were fit, ready, and able to get to battle stations.
The damage control crews worked on. Work-arounds, backups, improvisations were plugged in, patched in, forced into place. Wreckage was cleared and either jettisoned or lashed down in Hangar Three for later salvage or use. Corridors were patched and repressurized. Main ship's weaponry was ready, too. The Imp could fly and fight. Sir George was satisfied with that. To his mind the rest of the Britannic fleet was now in graver danger than the Imp— and the greatest danger the fleet faced was the loss of its experienced commanding officers. That was a danger that a damage control team couldn't handle. It would take years, perhaps a generation, to wholly repair that catastrophe. Thank God the prime minister and the cabinet had turned down the invitation to the ball.
The poor old p.m., the whole government, in fact the whole planet, was sweating this one out. The fleet was ordered to radio silence when attacked. The Guards seemed to have a hell of an Intelligence service, and it had to be assumed that anything transmitted to the planet's surface would get back to the enemy, either through electronic taps or through plain old-fashioned agents-in-place. A civilian government, still largely geared to peacetime, and in a gossipy capital, was easy pickings for spies. The fleet didn't dare send news of how the battle was going.
They were probably more scared back home than the fleet was up here. At least the fleet had some idea what in blazes was going on.
Thirty million miles. It was a meaningless figure. Huge beyond imagining in everyday terms, but in the scale of interstellar travel, it was nothing, a distance traveled in less time than it took to say the words. Thirty million miles.
Even the measure was obscure. Only Earth's British Commonwealth and the world Britannica used "miles" anymore. Even the Americans had given up long ago and shifted to metric measure. These days, few non-British even knew that a mile was, by some vague amount, longer than a kilometer.
The Britannic fleet was learning just how real thirty million miles was.
Detection nailed down the Guard fleet's velocity: two hundred eighty-two miles a second, or just over a million miles an hour. A pretty hellish clip, but still it would take thirty hours for them to reach Britannica, even if they didn't deaccelerate at all.
The watch had changed while Flight Albert had been on Patrol. Albert Leader's approach and recovery was a lot less exciting than her departure, which suited Joslyn just fine. She willed the hangar crew to hurry up, get all the ships in, seal the hangar doors and pressurize fast. She wanted food, and rest, and sleep, and she wanted to get started on them quickly, before another alert came and put her back in her SuperWombat.
For a wonder, there weren't any foul-ups, and the hangar was buttoned up and under pressure in record time. Joslyn had the hatch undogged and was already out of the ship and on her way along the handholds when she noticed the stunned silence around her. Only then she remembered what she looked like. Her long honey-colored hair streaming every which way in zero gravity; barefoot; dressed in the ruins of the evening gown she had ripped apart so she could get into her fighter; her careful makeup job undoubtedly sweat-streaked, blurred, and muddled into a fright show; more out of than in her dress. She blushed mightily, then laughed at herself and went on her way. "Let me tell you fellows, it was rough out there," she told the hangar crew. She hurried on to the pilot's mess. Time for food and then some sleep!
She had at least gotten a sandwich and a cup or six of tea when the radar contact was made. The word was passed along ship's intercom immediately. Joslyn swore to herself, headed back to her cabin and got into flight overalls. She knew what came next, and it did.
"Commander Larson," the intercom called cheerfully. "Captain's compliments, and would you please come to auxiliary control?"
"Duty," she said to the empty air as she braided her hair back into a bun, "thy name is lack of sleep." She decided she had time to wash off the remains of her makeup first, but not time for a full shower, and headed down the corridor to the head.
"Ah, Commander. Welcome to our Bridge-away-from-Bridge," Sir George said. "We're a bit cramped, but managing. I want you to take a look at the tactical situation and tell me what you think your friends plan to do."
"Captain. Well, let's see." She took a long hard look at the hologram tank and frowned. "I assume that we found them on active radar pulsed from Britannica's orbit. That wouldn't give our position away. The Guards haven't kicked out any radar pulses looking for us, have they?"
"That's right."
"Then they won't have spotted us yet. Not at that range. But they have picked up the pulses sent out from Britannica's orbital stations. Presumably Britannica's radar has been hitting them for a while, but the signals have only just gotten strong enough for us to detect them on return. They know we will spot them soon, but they can't be sure we've nailed them yet. Lordy, this sort of they-know-that-we-know-that-they-know makes my head spin. But they'll assume that we'll have maneuvered since the rock throwing, they know well be hiding, and that they'll have to find us. Detection officer. If you had the best possible equipment—optical, infrared, and so on—and didn't use active radar, how far off would you detect the Imp if she was rigged for quiet running?"
Joslyn took her first real look at the ensign sitting in as detection officer as he swung around in his chair and grinned at her. Presumably, the real detect officer was dead, wounded, or trapped in a compartment. The kid on duty was a fresh-scrubbed, cheery-looking lad with apple-red cheeks, black hair and brown eyes and snaggly teeth, far too young to really understand the stakes of the game he was in. "Well, ma'am, I assume you mean in the present geometry of the situation. The Impervious has her bow pointed through their location, and so shows them a small cross section, and that helps a great deal. And we're pretty much in the sun's glare—lots of background noise. And the blips I'm getting seem to be a large number of smaller ships—they probably don't have very large or powerful detection gear aboard. I would say perhaps ten million miles. But why wouldn't they use active radar— they would have detected the radar pulse that picked them up for us—they'd know we know where they are and—"
"Spare me the details. That's what I just said: They've been hit by radar pulses for quite a while. It's just that we haven't be able to pick up the returns from that radar because the returns nave been too weak until now. They can't be sure we've spotted them yet. Maybe we can fool them. You've got enough data to plot their projected course and watch it optically, don't you?"
"Yes, ma'am. I wouldn't actually see their ships until they started maneuvering, but not seeing fusion lights would tell us they hadn't changed course. Just as good as seeing them."
Joslyn thought for a moment. "There are still rocks coming in toward Britannica, aren't there? Suppose we order all our radar to a narrow sweep of the piece of sky that the rocks are coming from. We have a ship in that area, the corvette that's supposed to track down the linear accelerator. It seems very unlikely to me that the Guards were able to track the frigate's launch. Here we go again with the we-know-they-don't-knows, but they wouldn't realize we are aware of the frigate's identity. The Guards will see us bouncing a radar reflection off that ship, and then focus our search in that area. We can act as if we had spotte
d that frigate, didn't know what it was, and were tracking it intensively. They'll think we're expecting them to come down under cover of the rocks."
"Which will make them think we haven't spotted them, and so well get them to not use their radar, so they won't find us" the ensign said with a laugh. It appealed to his sense of humor. "And once they start braking—and they have to—I'll be able to spot the plumes instantly. It'd work."
Sir George smiled. "Send the order to the radars around Britannica. And don't explain it, either. Just the bare instruction to redirect the radar. If someone is listening in, that might add to their confusion."
"I'm bloody confused enough for everyone," the comm officer muttered under his breath as he set up the transmission.
The hours crawled by, the situation largely unchanged. The Guard fleet moved closer and closer—or at least the computer's projection of its course said the enemy was still headed for them. Ensign McCrae got increasingly nervous. He knew the Guards had to be where the computer said they were, that his equipment would spot the lights of their fusion plumes the moment they maneuvered, but he didn't really believe it. McCrae decided he was going to go back to studying Zen when this was over. The philosophy seemed custom-made for detection specialists.
Joslyn remained on the bridge, laying plans with Sir George, watching the tactical display. According to the computer, the Guards were still hurtling closer. Twenty million miles. Eighteen. Fifteen. Ten. The numbers changed meaninglessly. McCrae felt bored and tired and nervous and fidgety and eager and scared all at once. He wished the devil the sodding Guards'd get on with it, They had to start braking soon or they'd never stop in time. Maybe they had malfunctioned, miscalculated—
It took a full ten seconds for him to realize what the screens were showing him. "Sir! Fusion lights! They have commenced braking."
"There we go! You won't need active radar now, Ensign. Details as you have them."
"Yes sir. I count at least fifty fusion lights. Fifty ships. A variation of sizes. We'll need readings for a few minutes before I can give you masses and accelerations. Range at engine-light: approximately six point seven million miles."
Joslyn pulled herself over to the detection station and looked over McCrae's shoulder. There they were, right in the middle of the crosshairs. The computer had kept a damn good track all this time. And the Guards had never used their radar. The gag with the frigate had worked. "Captain," she said. "At the power levels they're using, their own engine exhaust plumes will jam all their detection equipment. There's a good chance we can stay hidden for quite a while yet."
"I was hoping for as much. Ensign McCrae. Tell me, your own opinion, formed out of your own vast experience: Can they see through the plasma their exhaust plumes are putting out?"
"Sir. As long as they are decelerating, they will not be able to detect us at any distance at all," McCrae said. "Their fusion plumes will jam all their radar and visual, right through to infrared."
"What fun. Then it might be time to arrange a reception committee to greet our visitors. Communications. Get me a link to Mountbatten. If this doesn't work, they'll be on their own. Flight Boss, recall all fighters. Get them aboard and refueled and ready for sortie. Secure the ship for maneuvering and get me a secure laser link to commanders of the escorting fast frigates. Commander Larson. What are our visitors going to do next? Is there any lesson for us from the attack on New Finland?" Sir George asked.
"No, sir. This is nothing like what they did there."
"Your own thoughts, then."
"Well, sir," Joslyn said carefully, "if I were the Guardian admiral, I'd head straight for Britannica and use her gravity well to maneuver, and do my detecting while in orbit of the planet I'd knock out our radar stations there. Maybe I'd even do a very brief, token attack on the planet— that would force our side to respond, if it had gone off to hide. That's the one flaw in the tactic of not being there when they come after you—the planet must be defended. But Mountbatten and the rest of the fleet are well positioned. They could be there to interdict quickly. The Guards know the fleet will have moved, and they probably have a number of contingency plans based on where the fleet has moved to, though I can't say what those plans would be. There is one thing. How the hell are they going to get out of here? They'll have to brake in order to fight us—and then they'll have to accelerate like mad to get out of the system with us on their tails. That's a lot of fuel."
"Mmmmph. True. Very well." Sir George wanted more answers than that. "McCrae. What more have you got?"
"Quite a bit, sir. I'll be able to refine things more and more as we go on from here. We've got the target range and the temperature of the fusion lights now—those figures let us calculate the amount of power the engines are putting out. We've just gotten an optical track. That gives us a change-of-rate, and the Doppler confirms the figures. They're slowing at about one-gee. Figuring one-gee into the engine temperature tells us how much power the engines are putting out, and that tells us what we really need to know, the mass of the ships."
"You're quite right, that is the only thing of all that I want to know. Well?"
"Ah, yes sir. I beg your pardon. I now count fifty-five separate targets. Fifty seem to be the same mass—about twice the size of our fast frigates. Very crudely, that gives those ships a crew of about twenty to thirty, and potentially some pretty heavy armament."
"The other five ships?"
"Are a puzzler. The engine temperatures are all different, much hotter, which means the engines are running much closer to their maximum power ratings. As if much smaller engines were being used to power the larger ships— and what I can pull off the spectroscopic scanners show a lot of impurities, as if the engines are old and worn and bits of the throat nozzles are vaporizing into the fusion flame. And those five ships must have ten times the mass the others do."
Joslyn looked sharply at McCrae. "Let me have a look at those figures, Ensign."
Sir George let his younger officers fuss with the technical issues. He had some thinking of his own to do. He intended to launch the Imp straight at the oncoming fleet, hidden from their view by the glare and the jamming effects of their own braking thrust. It was something of a risky proposition. He could not think of any detection system that could see through the fusion glare—the League had been trying to develop just such equipment for years. And a similar maneuver had worked against the Guards in New Finland. But they might have come up with something. And they might shut off their engines for a bit, just to do a bit of searching, right at a very awkward moment. And there was the risk of plowing the Imp right into the flame of an oncoming ship's thrust. But that wasn't a great danger with a steady hand at the helm. He shrugged. They didn't pay warship commanders to be overcautious.
The real danger was that the Guards knew perfectly well they were coming in blind, and would be prepared for such an attack. He had to assume they were so prepared. Very well, they would expect it. That was simply one more thing to take into account. They would not know where, or when, he would strike, or with how many ships. How many he had already decided, hours ago—the Imp, her fighters, and the frigates would go it alone.
When was the issue, then. There were arguments for making a strike further out, and counter-arguments for waiting until the enemy was almost in orbit of Britannica. Sir George was inclined to strike as soon as possible, if for no other reason than to give his sailors a psychological boost, a chance to hit back. They had been waiting, sweating it out, feeling helpless and scared long enough. The sooner they were busy, the better. He turned his attention to the flag plot tank and started playing with the variables—looking for the advantages of one course over another, intercept points, closing rates, fuel usage, thrust levels. . . .
"Sir George, excuse me."
"Commander Larson," the old captain said with a start. "You have something for me?"
"Maybe, sir. I've got an idea that the five largest targets are fuel ships, expendable and possibly unmanned. We've just
gotten an optical reading, light reflected off the fusion flames, and the five larger targets are huge, even for their mass—which suggests that they are carrying a lot of something that isn't very dense."
"Such as liquid hydrogen to top off the tanks of the rest of the fleet so everyone can make their getaways" Sir George said. "Splendid. It makes a great deal of sense. The ships come in, run their raid, refuel, and run like hell. We have nine frigates with us. We'll assign two to the attack on each tanker, and I want you to get Flight Albert out there alongside the last frigate to hit one tanker."
"Sir, there's one other thing: The tankers' engines appear to be running nearly at maximum temperature, and their spectra suggest they are old and worn. It's what I'd do. No sense using new engines on expendable ships."
"What are you suggesting?"
"That we fire the Imp's laser cannon at the tankers from long range. With a bit of luck we'll overheat the engines and blow them—"
"Leaving the tankers with no way to slow down, so they zip across the star system never to be seen again, leaving the rest of the attack fleet with no fuel to get home. Joslyn, you are a true member of the clan. Only someone with a drop of Thomas blood in her would have dreamed up something that nasty. We'll do it your way, and then play shoot-'em-up with the Guards."
The Impervious maneuvered for the second time, fifteen hours after the rock attack. Sir George selected a fairly sedate five-meter-per-second acceleration, a two-hour burn, and ordered a course that kept the Imp out of the Guardian fleet's projected flight path for as long as possible. Sir George checked his tactical display. The Imp would intercept the Guard fleet six hundred thousand miles out from Britannica. Assuming the buggers didn't spot them and run.
"Detection, I want to hear the moment you think they might have spotted us. Any course change, any maneuver." The Imp had one great advantage. She had hours to track her foes, lick her wounds, carefully plan her counterattack. The Guards would be expecting some sort of move, but they would have only seconds to analyze the Imp's attack and respond.
Rogue Powers Page 18
