Ascendant

by Jack Campbell

  Tantalus was a red dwarf star, not far from Kosatka as interstellar distances go. Which meant it was roughly twenty trillion kilometers, or two light years, from one star to the other. Just a hop, skip, and a jump in a galaxy like the Milky Way, which was about one hundred thousand light years across. Even the time spent in jump space had been relatively short, just three days.

  There were a lot of red dwarf stars in the Milky Way; which, now that Lochan Nakamura really thought about it, was an odd name for a galaxy. Red dwarfs were small, relatively dim, and relatively cool, burning their limited supplies of hydrogen at a rate that would keep them going for billions of years longer than hotter, flashier stars like Sol that warmed Old Earth. “Why did they name it Tantalus?” Lochan asked the captain of the Oarai Miho, who only shrugged in reply.

  Relieved that they’d made it safely here, and with little else to do but worry about whether Carmen was all right while the freighter chugged across the expanse of Tantalus’s star system, Lochan looked up the name. Tantalus had been a greedy individual in old myths. Tantalus the star had a lot of objects orbiting it, and a lot of those objects were pretty close in, as if the star was worried about any of them wandering off. None of the orbiting objects were particularly impressive, rocks ranging from minor planets to belts of asteroids, but there were significantly more of them than usual for a star system. There were several theories about how and why Tantalus had acquired its hoard of useless rocks, but Lochan had to admit that the name of the star seemed appropriate. As to the strangeness and uniqueness of the star system’s configuration, humanity had spent millennia learning that the galaxy was full of things and places that deviated from any norm that existed. Given enough stars (and there were hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way alone), just about anything could end up happening somewhere.

  But what should have been a curiosity, another strange thing in a galaxy filled with strange things that humans were often still trying to figure out, became something else when one of the objects orbiting Tantalus began accelerating.

  “What is it?” one of the other passengers asked the captain.

  “A ship,” she snapped in reply. “What else could it be?”

  “Why didn’t we notice it before it started accelerating?” another passenger demanded.

  “This is a freighter. We have sufficient instruments and sensors to run cargo and passengers between planets and stars. We don’t invest money in warship-grade sensors that would have scanned all those rocks in search of something that didn’t belong!”

  Lochan spoke up as the captain tried to stomp away. “What sort of course is it on? That other ship?”

  The captain paused, glaring at all of the passengers. “It appears to be accelerating on a vector to intercept us.”

  “It’s not a warship, though? It’s not accelerating like a warship.”

  “No. It looks like a freighter. Calls itself the Brian Smith. But it wasn’t going anywhere. It was lurking in rocks, and now it’s aiming to intercept us. What does that sound like?”

  “A pirate,” one of the other passengers said with a gasp.

  “That’s ridiculous,” another protested. Tall and thin, he had struck Lochan as the sort of man who was so sure of his own facts that no actual events would convince him otherwise. His next words confirmed Lochan’s assessment. “Piracy can’t work under these circumstances! It’s economically unfeasible.”

  Lochan replied before the increasingly irate captain could. “The Brian Smith was taken by supposed pirates about three years ago. At Vestri. I know because I was on the Smith. They’re not really pirates. They’re privateers. They pretend to be pirates operating on their own, but they’re working for stars like Scatha and Apulu.”

  “Oh, yes, another claim of interstellar conspiracy and aggression by someone from Kosatka!” the man scoffed.

  “You saw what was happening at Kosatka before we jumped out of that star system,” Lochan said, surprised that he could speak so calmly. But people didn’t listen when voices were raised and anger or fear was obvious so he found the strength to sound composed despite the emotions tugging at him. “Didn’t that look like aggression to you?”

  “I heard them announce that they were peacekeepers, there to oversee free and fair elections.”

  “You believed that?” another passenger asked with open incredulity.

  “It’s not a matter that concerns me,” the tall man replied. “Nor is this so-called pirate. I’ll need a lot more proof than the claims of Kosatka’s partisans before I believe that other ship is any danger to me.”

  The captain surprised Lochan with a harsh laugh. “Proof? You’ll get proof. They’ve got augmented propulsion, better than ours. We can’t outrun them, and we’re not going to waste fuel cells trying. And you can bet they mount some weapons. When they intercept us, you’ll get so much proof it just might be the death of you.”

  With that cheery last statement the captain physically shoved one of the passengers out of the way and walked off toward the freighter’s control deck.

  “We should have expected this,” a woman passenger murmured to Lochan as the small group of passengers broke up and headed back to their rooms. “They planned everything else.”

  “What do you mean?” Lochan asked.

  The woman looked around to see if anyone else was close before replying. “They must have realized that any ships at Kosatka would flee when the invasion fleet showed up and that those ships might carry people trying to get away as well as valuable cargo being shipped out before the invasion force could reach the planet.”

  Lochan nodded in understanding. “So they made sure there was a ‘pirate’ waiting here at Tantalus to catch any freighters fleeing Kosatka.”

  “Backup plans,” the woman said in a very low voice. “Have you got one?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve encountered pirates before?”

  “Yeah. At Vestri, like I said.”

  She looked him over, then nodded. “Okay.”

  Lochan watched her go back to her cabin, wondering what all that had meant.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Captain Geary!”

  Rob struggled back to awareness. Having finally forced himself to get some rest in his stateroom, it had probably been inevitable that something demanding that he be awake would happen. “Here,” he said, fumbling for the response tab on his stateroom’s display. “What’s up?”

  “The enemy destroyer is accelerating toward us, Captain,” Lieutenant Cameron said, speaking with exaggerated clarity “It looks like an attack run. Estimated time to intercept forty-five seconds.”

  “I’m on my way to the bridge. Lock all weapons on the enemy ship.”

  It only took a few seconds to reach the bridge, drop into his command seat, and take in the sweep of the enemy destroyer’s projected path on the display before the seat. Hanging in orbit near the facility, Saber was hardly moving through space. Rob knew he needed more velocity to deal with an attack. “Accelerate to point zero one light speed.”

  “Accelerate to point zero one light speed, aye. Taking into account our acceleration, we’re now twelve seconds from intercept.”

  Rob ran his eyes across his display, confirming that Saber’s shields were at maximum strength and all of her weapons were ready.

  “He’s been sitting there in orbit just watching us for hours. Why now?” Ensign Reichert wondered in a low voice.

  “We know his fuel cells are low,” Rob said. “He can’t refuel as long as we’re a threat. He needs to try to take us out.”

  Only a few seconds left as Rob’s thoughts raced. Should he evade the enemy attack, frustrate the attempt to disable Saber? But that would leave Kosatka’s orbiting facility past Saber, and Shark still in the dock there, wide open to attack by an untouched enemy warship.

  Too lat
e anyway. In one second they’d be—

  Saber shuddered from a series of shocks as the two warships tore past each other and exchanged fire.

  “Bring us around on an intercept,” Rob ordered. “Assume the enemy will continue on to hit Shark.”

  “Shark’s shields are at maximum and all weapons ready,” Ensign Reichert reported.

  Red symbols had appeared on Rob’s display to show damage to Saber from the encounter. Saber’s shields had held, mostly, but the hull had been penetrated in two places, and one of the grapeshot launchers was out of commission.

  It felt weird to be maneuvering this close to a planet, to have that huge mass and the threat of its atmosphere hanging nearby, eager to clutch at and claw the little toys of humanity. All it would take was a miscalculation, a slight error, or damage that sent a ship plowing at extremely high velocity through rapidly thickening air until the friction vaporized the hull in a matter of seconds.

  Saber whipped up and around, coming back to hit the enemy destroyer again.

  But he could only watch as the enemy tore past Shark, space lighting up with the energy released as particle beams and grapeshot contended with shields and hulls.

  “Captain, he only used one pulse particle beam on that attack,” Lieutenant Cameron said. “We must have taken out the other.”

  “How’s Shark?” Rob demanded. “It looked like he was trying to hit Shark’s propulsion.”

  “Her shields suffered some spot failures, Captain,” Cameron said. “Shark swung something between her and the attack that absorbed anything that got through.”

  “Big plates of material from the dockyard,” Chief Quinton said. “They pushed them into place as sort of standoff armor.”

  “Smart,” Rob approved. He realized he wouldn’t have thought of that because normally the idea could never work. Ships moved too fast. Any protection moving in a fixed orbit or trajectory would be very quickly left behind, useless. But not if the ship was itself stuck in a fixed orbit while being repaired. “Did Shark do any damage to the enemy?”

  “He’s lost some thrusters,” Cameron said, grinning. “His shields didn’t have time to rebuild after the encounter with us before they engaged with Shark. He’s also lost at least one grapeshot launcher, and his amidships shields are rebuilding slowly.”

  “Captain, our fuel cells are at thirty-eight percent,” Quinton warned.

  “Adjust intercept,” Rob ordered as Saber finished the long loop above the planet and aimed to hit the enemy destroyer again. “He’s got less fuel than we do.”

  Projected paths on Rob’s display shifted, the arcs altering their curves.

  “He’s coming around to meet us head-on,” Reichert said.

  “Make this one count, Ensign,” Rob said.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied, smiling slightly, her eyes fixed on her controls.

  Another flash-quick moment of intercept, the two ships racing past each other, Saber shaking from more hits as the two ships exchanged fire.

  “No damage to Saber,” Chief Quinton said. “All shields held. He’s lost enough weapons that he can’t hurt us on one pass.”

  “His amidships shields are gone,” Lieutenant Cameron said, sounding remarkably calm. “He’s definitely lost an entire thruster group. Possibly two thruster groups.”

  “Let’s get him again,” Rob ordered. “New intercept.”

  “Sir, he’s not coming back around. He’s diving toward the enemy freighters and passenger ships.”

  Why? They couldn’t offer any protection to the stricken enemy ship. “See if we can catch him.”

  “Captain, we’re receiving a high priority call from Shark.”

  That was a distraction he didn’t need. Rob almost told the comms watch to tell Shark to call back before realizing that Commander Derian must know how busy Rob was at the moment. If he felt the need to send a high priority call anyway, he might have something very important to say. “Link me.”

  Derian’s image popped into view before Rob. Shark’s captain appeared to be simultaneously worried and elated. “Be careful! The freighter that we encountered had a hidden grapeshot launcher. Those ships might also have some armament that they’ve kept concealed until now. And don’t forget that they sacrificed a ship to try to destroy Shark. If any of the freighters are empty . . .”

  “Damn.” Rob realized that he had said that out loud. “Thank you, Commander.”

  Maybe those other freighters and the passenger ship weren’t armed. They hadn’t fired earlier when Piranha and Saber were attacking. But if Saber came close now, concentrating on the enemy destroyer, and got hit by grapeshot from several launchers, it could do a lot of damage.

  And if one of the freighters overloaded its power core at the right moment to catch Saber with the shock wave, it could even the odds, or worse, again.

  The enemy destroyer was braking velocity to match orbit with the invasion fleet. He’d be an easy target for an attack run by Saber.

  Too easy a target.

  “It’s another setup,” Rob told his bridge team. “They want us to dive into the middle of their formation to hit that destroyer again as soon as possible. Give me a vector change at the last possible moment to bring us along the outside of their formation instead of going straight through it.”

  “Are we targeting one of the freighters, Captain?” Ensign Reichert asked.

  “If we can swing a vector past one of them that wouldn’t have expected us to come close to it,” Rob said. He saw their reactions, trying to hide their puzzlement. “Remember what happened to Shark. These guys will sacrifice a freighter to take us out if they know what our trajectory is going to be.”

  “We have a recommended vector change, Captain,” Cameron said. “In one minute, thirty seconds. We’ll be able to hit one of the freighters with particle beams as we pass the enemy formation.”

  “Target that freighter and enter the maneuver in the system. I want it to occur automatically at the right moment.”

  “Yes, sir. Maneuver entered. Request confirm.”

  The confirmation command appeared on Rob’s display. He tapped it, uncertain whether he was being spooked by fears of what the enemy could do. Was he passing up a chance to finish off that destroyer for no better reason than what the enemy might do?

  “Freighter targeted,” Reichert said.

  “How’re repairs coming on number two grapeshot launcher?” Rob asked.

  “Under way, Captain. No estimated time to repair as of yet.”

  He focused on his display, watching Saber’s shields rebuilding.

  Out in space, up and down were concepts that existed only because humans defined them in terms of the plane within which a star system’s planets orbited. But, close to a planet, down was always toward it, and up was always away. Saber was diving toward the enemy formation, angling down, the bulk of the planet offering an odd background to the space engagement.

  The seconds counted down. Saber jerked as her thrusters fired, pushing her onto the new vector that would skim the outside of the enemy formation instead of diving through it. But the move had come so late that the enemy would have already had to react as if Saber were coming through. Any trap would’ve had to have been put into motion already, impossible to stop by the time the enemy realized that Saber was taking another path.

  “Something’s launching from two of the freighters!” Lieutenant Cameron yelled as new threat symbols appeared on Rob’s display. “One . . . three . . . six . . . eight. Eight aerospace craft!”

  Eight warbirds. Rob did some quick mental estimates, realizing that if Saber had held her course those warbirds would have popped out right on top of the destroyer as it plunged into the enemy formation.

  Why hadn’t he expected that? How had he forgotten such a threat when Saber was close to the mother ships the enemy warbirds were using? The warbird act
ivity had been screened from Saber’s view for the last couple of days by the bulk of enemy shipping, and in any event aside from one warbird that had covered the landing on the orbital facility, all other aerospace craft activity had been inside the planet’s atmosphere, and his attention had been focused on both the enemy destroyer and the fighting aboard the orbital facility, but none of those things were an excuse for his not remembering that the additional threat existed.

  Though from the expressions on the rest of the bridge crew he wasn’t the only one who’d forgotten about those warbirds.

  “Sir,” Cameron said in a calmer but worried voice, “eight warbirds exceed safe engagement parameters for a single Founders Class destroyer.”

  “I’d already guessed that,” Rob said. Warbirds were useless in deep space, carrying too little fuel to go far or outaccelerate warships. But this close to a planet, with Saber at a relatively slow velocity, the conditions for aerospace craft to engage a warship were nearly ideal.

  “Earth Fleet guidance in such a situation,” Cameron continued, “is to avoid engagement.”

  “Run away?” Rob asked. “What will they do if we run? They were desperate enough to attack us with their sole destroyer. If we run, and leave that orbital facility unprotected, will they go after Shark?”

  Ensign Reichert was already running the simulation but didn’t wait for it to finish. “Estimate they’d lose about half of their warbirds, but with Shark a sitting duck they’d inflict critical damage on her.”

  Which meant Saber would have to fight, Rob realized. The enemy warbirds were already adjusting vector, angling up and out to intercept Saber’s new path through space. “Get me an optimum engagement vector. We need to keep those warbirds busy and take out as many as we can.”

  “Sir,” Lieutenant Cameron said, visibly worried. “Yes, sir. But I feel obligated to warn the Captain that our chances in an engagement against eight warbirds are less than fifty percent.”

  “Forty-two percent,” Ensign Reichert said. “If we get number two grapeshot launcher back online. If we don’t, the odds are—”