by John Lumpkin
Gan Ying did not visibly respond to Edmonton’s maneuver; the cruiser’s long white fusion flame remained pointed somewhere ahead of the troopships’ vector as she decelerated to intercept them. Metcalf and his intel officer believed Qin would follow Chinese doctrine, ignore the escorts and drive for the troopships, racing to get into missile range while holding off the escorts’ attacks with her defenses.
Neil disagreed. Qin would want the escorts first, so she could wipe out the convoy at leisure. And sending the escorts off in three directions presented a risk … Neil wondered how to parlay his belief into restoring some of his standing. Damn it, why do I have to play politics? My work can help this convoy!
It was several hours before the vessels closed to fighting range. They would all leave their vulnerable cooling fins out for as long as safely possible; every second with the fins retracted was a second more that the heat sinks filled up, a second less each ship could fight.
When the Gan Ying was about fifteen thousand kilometers distant, Neil decided to make a play, to at least earn back some respect on his own ship.
“Captain, Whiskey-12 is at the point where she could maximize her engagement time with Edmonton before we can assist. I think she’s going to break shortly,” he said.
Howell interjected, “That’s not what Ajax thinks.”
Neil had to restrain himself from saying anything. The captain knows what Ajax thinks. The XO’s just playing his usual power games and trying to embarrass me in front of the CIC crew.
Captain Hernandez just nodded, his eyes on his console screen.
Neil saw the maneuver begin a few seconds before the sensor tech announced it.
“Whiskey-12 has cut off primary drive. Ship appears to be re-orienting. Primary drive re-activated,” the tech said. A pause. “Whiskey-12 now lined up to intercept Edmonton.”
The comms chief said, “Signal from Ajax. Adjust heading to intercept Whiskey-12, thrust one hundred fifty milligees.”
Now Qin had put Metcalf in a difficult position: The commodore had to accelerate to assist Edmonton before Gan Ying turned her into a hulk, but burning too much remass would leave them unable to maneuver once combat was joined. At 150 milligees, they would be in range in less than two hours, but Edmonton would be on her own until then.
Neil could feel the tension rise in the CIC as everyone became aware of the small measure of weight imparted by the acceleration. The petty officer seated next to him kept touching an image of his wife and children taped to his console screen. Howell repeatedly instructed officers and crew alike how to do jobs they already knew how to do. Hernandez was largely silent, except for occasional coughs.
Neil flipped on a small, battery-powered fan at his console station, and thought of the dead officer it once belonged to.
An hour later – still well beyond weapons range of Apache and Ajax – Gan Ying fired a salvo at Edmonton. Coilgun shells filled much of the frigate’s sky, forcing her to turn to avoid what would be a crippling blow. Gan Ying‘s primary laser burned into her exposed flank, wrecking her only gun turret and jumper bay. Flechettes from several missiles burrowed into her hull. One sliced through the CIC, killing several of the ship’s officers in a spray of plasma. Edmonton still managed to fire off a barrage of missiles, but Gan Ying shot them down.
Neil watched the beatdown playing out on the volumetric image at the front of Apache’s CIC. He let his mind defocus and watched the patterns of movement made by the vector markers – ships, missiles, drones, coilgun salvoes.
That’s odd. He focused again, watched. Saw it.
He messaged his opposite number on the Ajax, a caustic Yorkshireman named Kerr.
LTJG MERCER (APACHE): THEIR COILGUN ROUNDS ARE FLYING DUMB.
LT KERR (AJAX): CHECKING … CONFIRMED. SOMETHING MUST BE WRONG WITH THEIR LOADOUT. BAD MANEUVER FUEL OR SOFTWARE PROBLEMS, UNLESS YOU GOT INTO THEIR ELECTRONICS SOMEHOW?
LTJG MERCER (APACHE): NEGATIVE.
LT KERR (AJAX): WE DIDN’T EITHER, AND I IMAGINE THE ED IS A LITTLE BUSY TO HAVE DONE SO. I’LL INFORM THE COMMODORE. GOOD FIND.
Neil thought for a moment. Coilgun shells had a minimum of fuel, enough to allow them to turn toward a dodging target. They weren’t nearly as maneuverable as missiles, but ships carried hundreds of them. The fuel couldn’t be removed easily for other uses. While Kerr’s suppositions seemed to fit, Qin was far too competent a captain for such a shoddy mistake. And she was pummeling Edmonton just fine without the guidance …
LTJG MERCER (APACHE): IS IT POSSIBLE THEY ARE LAUNCHING THEM DUMB ON PURPOSE?
Kerr didn’t respond.
Shortly: “Ajax signals 350 milligees,” Apache’s comm chief said.
Real weight, now, at a massive expenditure of remass. Ajax and Apache would close rapidly, threatening a high-speed pass on the Gan Ying. A tactic of the Japanese, it entailed significant risk: Even tiny masses such as coilgun rounds would do great damage at such differences in speed. But rounds that couldn’t maneuver were less of a threat, at least until they drew closer.
After a time, Kerr messaged back:
LT KERR (AJAX): SORRY, WAS CONSULTING WITH THE COMMODORE. I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY THE PRICKS WOULD SHUT OFF THE MANEUVERING CAPABILITIES OF THEIR SHELLS. THEY’RE OUT TO KILL US, YOU KNOW.
Still, Neil worried. If those shells actually work …
He took another chance: “Captain, we should be ready for those coilgun shells to suddenly start guiding themselves.”
As Ajax and Apache raced toward Gan Ying’s flanks, the cruiser’s turrets swiveled away from the hapless Edmonton.
“Warning, zombie, zombie, incoming coilgun rounds!” the CIC caller shouted. Covering kilometers in a second, they closed the distance to the oncoming frigates rapidly.
“Evasive maneuvers,” Hernandez ordered. “Bring in the cooling fins. Point defenses online.”
Neil watched the radar tracks closely … Oh no. Qin’s played us. As the frigates altered their courses to dodge, telltale bursts of gas emerged from the side of each shell, followed by a second from its tail. They were matching the frigates’ evasive maneuvers, and both Ajax and Apache would take hits unless their defenses could shoot all the incoming rounds down. Their dual charge was broken, after a fashion: Most of their velocity was still directed toward the Gan Ying, but now both frigates were turning and fighting to survive.
“Antimissiles!” Howell shouted.
As the small missiles arced away from Apache, lasers began playing across the field of incoming shells. Small explosions rewarded the laser operators: Each marked one less shell that could hit their vessel. But one forty-kilo shell kept coming …
“We’re going to catch one,” said Apache’s operations officer, a stout, choleric woman named Carruth.
In a last-minute attempt to dodge, the frigate’s anti-collision software ordered a blast from the vector thrusters on the hull, but the shell hit Apache amidships, directly on the primary gun turret. It was torn loose and tumbled away. The belt that rotated it around the ship ripped and split, and half of it began trailing alongside the ship, attached only by a thread of rent metal.
Neil felt the impact ring through the ship. The volumetric display at the front of CIC scrambled for a second, a static of blue and red, then reset itself, but it was a credit to Apache’s builders that the lights didn’t flicker and the consoles didn’t crash.
“The captain!”
Everyone in CIC looked toward his console. Hernandez was unmoving, his body limp against the straps of his seat, although there no was no blood or injury visible. The ops officer began to unstrap herself from her seat to go help him.
Howell pushed off from his own console and grabbed a handhold. “Everyone stay where you are,” he barked. “The captain’s incapacitated. Romero, take him down to sickbay. The rest of you, eyes forward; we’re in a battle, for god’s sake.” In that long moment, the CIC crew came to terms with Lieutenant Commander Howell – the one, in private moments, they called “the asshole”
– taking command of the ship. It was a blink in real time, but Neil sensed it pass. Can he get us through this?
“Next inbound salvo due in thirty seconds,” the caller announced.
“All laser power to point defenses,” Howell said. “Fire Control, launch missiles.”
“Uh, how many, sir?” the fire control officer asked.
“All of them!”
That turned a few heads. Howell was ignoring the commodore’s order to preserve missile stocks until they closed with the Gan Ying. Neil saw a couple of the older officers nod. No half measures, not now.
Outside, the first of Apache’s forty antiship missiles exited the hull, floating freely. Small jets from maneuver thrusters pivoted it to face the Gan Ying, and its main rocket fired. It carried a conventional warhead: While all the belligerents in the war employed nuclear weapons in space, they existed in finite qualities, and space navies were saving them for major fleet engagements.
More missiles followed. Ajax did not protest the launch; Metcalf relented, and the Brit issued the first of her own complement of missiles. As Apache’s defenses shot down Gan Ying’s latest salvo, the American missiles at last forced the big cruiser to respond; she pivoted her nose away from Edmonton, and began using her forward laser emitters to pick off the inbounds. Sixty-two missiles became fifty, forty, twenty. They burst into clouds of flechettes, all darting toward Gan Ying’s position.
“That’s a hit! Multiple strikes!” the sensor officer called. “Seeing streamers from the hull.”
Neil stared at the images from Apache’s telescopes. “Looks like the damage is in two clusters,” he announced. “One on the forward coilgun; the other in her remass tanks. Sir, I’ll call the forward gun disabled.”
As Neil watched, a double explosion engulfed the ship on opposite sides. He glanced at the holo: Edmonton had turned back to the fight – brave, brave, brave, Neil thought in amazement – and her main laser burned through Gan Ying just above her fusion candle, where remass tanks fed hydrogen into the drive. The cruiser shuddered, and pieces broke away as she thrust at eighty milligees on a vector away from the fight.
At last the allies’ superior numbers came into play. Lasers from all three frigates pierced Gan Ying’s hull. Counterbatteries squelched Edmonton and Ajax’s primary emitters, but the damage was done.
“Signal from the Ajax,” the comms operator announced. “Give chase.” If the cruiser made a surprise move toward any member of the convoy, staying close to her would be the best way to defend those ships. But Gan Ying was already spraying coilgun shells and missiles in her wake to delay any pursuit.
“Astrogation, where’s she headed?” Howell asked.
“Not back to the Sirius or Procyon keyholes, sir,” the astrogator replied, transmitting from the bridge, several decks above. “Checking … no destination apparent on current vector. Only vessel anywhere close is the Euro spy ship, and she’s already moving away.” The Europa Space Force “communications ship” Claudio di Cittaducale had lurked in Wolf 359 for months, shadowing and recording ships from both sides. Learning that much more about everyone’s weapons and tactics, Neil knew. It was a running joke in the fleet that in the war between Japan, China and the United States, Europa was winning.
“Wait … I see it,” the astrogator said. “Whiskey-12 will pass within three hundred thousand klicks of the asteroid Fortuna-Upsilon; she’ll have to adjust for docking, but that’s where she’s going. Sir, by the time she gets there, we’ll have Kiyokaze in range.” A fourth frigate would give the escorts the advantage against the wounded cruiser.
Neil didn’t wait for the question from Howell. “Fortuna-Upsilon is a mine operated by the Brazilian state-owned extraction company, with a mean radius of about one hundred sixty kilometers. It passes close to the Earth wormhole every few months. Probably forty people in there.”
“Neutral territory,” Howell said. “That’s the destination.”
Neil caught some reappraising looks at the XO. You find competence in the strangest places, he thought.
An exchange of fire at extreme range proved ineffectual, and the allied ships did not attempt to close the distance between themselves and the fleeing cruiser. Damage control crews on all three frigates returned them to fighting shape. Edmonton had suffered the most; Neil’s eyes lingered on images of a section of the ship that had been opened to space, exposing three decks within. He shivered. He was accustomed to viewing exterior shots of healthy hulls, and he tended to regard ships as tough and solid; this, though, was like looking at someone’s internal organs, exposed through some horrible injury. How fragile and hollow we are.
Ajax had come through in the best shape, although the gorgeous lines of her hull were marred by long furrows dug at odd angles by flechettes and a grazing blow from a coilgun round. Apache, meanwhile, had suffered one dead – a gunner’s mate from Milwaukee, blown into space when the coilgun had taken the hit – and six wounded, plus Captain Hernandez, who, the medical officer reported, had suffered a heart attack when the battle began. He was now sedated and stable.
Maybe he’ll captain a desk, Neil thought. More likely he would be medically separated. Regardless, his career on starships was over. Apache now belonged to Lieutenant Commander Nathan Howell.
Neil’s handheld buzzed, waking him, and continued buzzing as he blinked through his disorientation. The clock told him he had only been asleep for about two hours. He reached for the device to respond to the caller: It was Jorgensen, the duty sensor tech, a nervous young astronaut whom Howell had berated publicly for some trivial mistake in the weeks before Neil had come on board. Now she checked with Neil on almost everything; although he had gently tried to rebuild some independence and initiative in her, her fear of error remained intense. He rolled his eyes but checked the message anyway. Highest priority, of course.
SIR, WE HAVE DECODED AND TRANSLATED SOME INTERCEPTS OF COMMS TRAFFIC BETWEEN WHISKEY-12 AND COMMAND GROUP OF CHINESE TASK FORCE AT PROCYON KH EVENT. RECOMMEND YOU REVIEW.
That was worth a wake-up call. Neil started to pull himself upright on a handhold but slipped, sending himself floating toward the ceiling; he pushed off and settled back to the floor. He dressed and headed up to the tiny intel office: Information that sensitive would only be viewable on a few special hardwired consoles on board.
When he arrived, he learned the intercepts had been captured through a traditional microwave receiver, which made them suspect. Long-range communications lasers were the most secure means for warships to communicate; you could realistically only steal such communications by having a tap on either the transmitter or the receiver. Microwaves, meanwhile, were far easier to listen in on.
But … if Gan Ying’s comm laser was damaged in the battle, then a radio might be the only way for Qin to talk with her commanders. Qin, you’ve fooled us once. Are you trying it again? The encryption on the messages was a code the Japanese had cracked a month ago – even money whether the Chinese had figured that out by now.
The contents were fascinating. He summoned Howell.
“Sir,” he told the acting captain, “Qin told the task force one of the hits Gan Ying took is causing her antimatter trap to deteriorate. She’s losing it a few atoms at a time, so she’s not facing a catastrophic failure, but she won’t be able to maintain fusion much longer unless it is fixed.”
Howell rubbed a hand across his shaved head, made a scratching motion once it reached the back of his neck.
“This another trick?”
“If it’s scripted subterfuge, it’s some extremely detailed play-acting.”
“What makes you say that?”
“This. Here’s a message from Admiral Liyang at the Procyon keyhole, ordering Qin to ignore the damage and hurt us as much as possible. And here’s Qin’s response, an apology that she would be unable to do so until after she docked with Fortuna-Upsilon.”
“Why?”
“I’m speculating here, sir, but Qin may be trying to save her crew,” Neil sai
d. “Her history suggests she would have trouble, ethically, I mean, sacrificing them needlessly.”
“Very good. How can we use that to our advantage?” Howell said. I’ve got Howell’s ear, at least, Neil thought. Maybe calling it right on the coilgun ruse earned me back a few points. But it might have been better if I hadn’t noticed it at all.
“Well, we know the convoy is safe,” Neil said. “And unless the Brazilians want to abandon their neutrality, they have to eject Gan Ying within seventy-two hours. If the cruiser’s drives are anything like ours, she needs six weeks at a shipyard before she can be fixed. If we delay rejoining the convoy, we’ll have an opportunity, sir, to go for the kill.” He edged his voice to sound eager. Why did I do that?
“I like that aggressiveness, Intel,” Howell smiled. “I’ll confide something in you. I didn’t think this crew had it in them. Captain Hernandez wasn’t running a very sharp ship, as I’m sure you’ve recognized. But the kids really pulled it together. I’ll make the case to Commodore Metcalf that we finish off the Han.”
The lumpy gray potato that was the asteroid Fortuna-Upsilon loomed ahead. Arrayed in a semicircle around it were the four frigates, spaced at forty-five-degree intervals, each about three hundred kilometers from the asteroid. It was very close range, and Commodore Metcalf intended to shred Gan Ying as soon as she cleared the asteroid’s safety zone. She had to depart soon; otherwise the frigates would be in the legal right in attacking her at the neutral harbor. The Brazilians knew it, yet the seventy-two-hour deadline expired with no action. Commodore Metcalf had Ajax fire a series of coilgun rounds within a few dozen kilometers of the station.
