by A. D. Bloom
"How is that going to force an engagement?" The question came from a pilot in front. Burroughs.
"They don't know if we're armed or not, so steaming past us would be tactically inadvisable. If it turned out we had some kind of big guns and Arbitrage and her railgun turned to fight, the aliens would be boxed between us. They don't want that, so they'll have to come and get us. When they do, Hardway will maneuver to lure them through this region of space." To the matchbox computer, Biko said, "Show region A."
The projection highlighted an area beginning near Jupiter's pole and extending outward from the sun along the lines of the planet's gargantuan magnetic field. "That alien ship will have to fly through this section of Jupiter's magnetic field. When it does, we're going to detonate the fusion reactor in Mohegan. She'll be hidden near the pole. Chief Terrazzi and her engineers have rigged the ship's reactor to function as a high-yield neutron cannon. We have no way to lens or focus the neutrons ourselves, but if we detonate at the right place at the right time, then the planet's magnetic field will carry our swarm of high-energy 14.1 MeV neutrons along the lines of the field, right at them, traveling at 17% the speed of light."
For a second or two, you could hear them all saying it to each other, and then Burroughs said it to Biko. "That's probably not enough to kill a warship. Not if they're hardened against radiation half as good as we are."
Chief Terrazzi said, "That's most likely the case, but high-energy neutrons will penetrate radiation shielding. It won't be enough to kill or incapacitate the occupants, but we're hoping that if their systems get hit with a focused storm of neutrons like that it'll overload a few of the vital components and leave them drifting, at least momentarily."
"At this point in the engagement," Biko said, "Junks will approach the target in tight formation, on a steady intercept course and release their ore containers. Those ore containers will be packed with fission mining charges and high-density belt iron. They'll be rigged as anti-ship mines. Lt. Commander Sellis and Chief Terrazzi have managed to make us twenty-two improvised Vernier detonators. We will sortie 22 junks armed with 22, fat, anti-ship mines."
"Back up a second," Lt. Lee said. "Go back to the first part. Mohegan. The junk you're making into a neutron generator. I know that det is going to throw a lot of energy, but the timing's critical. Can't use a remote pilot for this. Not in combat. It'll get jacked in seconds. There has to be a pilot on that junk to fly it where it needs to go and push the button at exactly the right moment."
"That's right," Biko said. "The pilot that flies Mohegan isn't coming back. It's my job now to order one of you to fly her, but I'm going to ask for volunteers."
That was Cozen's cue. He was supposed to step forward and volunteer. That's what he and Ram had agreed, but when Ram turned to look at him, he didn't move and he didn't say a word. He just stared out into the eyes of the pilots. What the hell was he waiting for?
Ling's hand went up and then Richardson's and Singh's. Macaulay and Kollowitz volunteered. Every one of the pilots' hands went up and when Ram saw it, all the emotion that he'd shoved down deep tried to rise. Yes, they believed Cozen's lie, but it wasn't just the need for revenge that made every one of them volunteer to go. He knew that. He felt it. He saw it in their eyes and no lie could have put it there. He'd never seen that in anyone's eyes but Mickey's. He wanted to cry out of sheer relief that vengeance wasn't all that was in them because it meant Cozen's lie wasn't all that drove them.
Ling laughed then. "You've got too many volunteers. You're still going to have to assign one of us, Biko." The laughter spread and Ram laughed, too, but he was only pretending. The anger, the rage had already begun to build in him. Was Cozen going to let someone else go in his place? Was he calling Ram's bluff, daring Ram to reveal his lies to them and take a chance on destroying everything?
What had just brought tears to Ram's eyes was the feeling of hope it gave him to see that these men and women didn't need Harry Cozen's lies to fight this battle. Ram raised his own shaking hand to quiet them as he steeled himself against the fear of what he had to do now. He opened his mouth, but only the first word came out: "I..."
"Commander Devlin," Cozen said, cutting him off. "I think I know what you're about to say." Cozen glared at Ram before he looked to the crowd. "I think we all know what you're going to say. You won't be flying this mission. Nor you, Lt. Commander Biko. Nor any of Hardway's pilots. I'm going to do it. I'm going to fly Mohegan myself."
As a rule, Privateers and Staas Military contractors don't salute, but that didn't stop Hardway's pilots. They rose and delivered their own awkward imitations of what they'd seen. It started in the front rows and spread. Rigid-fingered hands rose to their heads at a dozen, odd angles. They were Cozen's now, Ram thought. They were his until death.
Chapter Eleven
Ram called out, "All hands to duty stations, exosuits and helmets are the order of the hour."
"All junks, standby," Biko said on comms, "Mohegan, prepare to launch."
"Acknowledged, Hardway AT," Cozen said from bay 6. "Mohegan is waiting for your 'go'."
Ram thumbed the squack from the command chair. "All decks, prepare to vent atmo." Internal atmospheric shock waves from a hit could be far more deadly to a crew than the blast itself.
Hardway put Jupiter's limb between her and the aliens just long enough for Cozen to launch.
"The alien ship is turning," Biko said from the AT controller's console. "It's coming off its intercept course with Arbitrage. It's turning to meet Hardway."
Four, anxious minutes later, Cozen reported, "Mohegan is in position." Over the AT console, Jupiter floated meter-wide and out of scale. Cozen and the junk were the size of a bumblebee hovering low in the shifting auroras, keeping position in a storm of solar wind and charged particles focused and funneled by the planet's giant magnetic field. "The reactor is running hot. It's taking everything this junk has to fight Jupiter's gravity."
"Can they see his IR signature against the background?"
"I don't know," Dana said, "but I sure can."
They were close enough now that the images of the alien showed plenty of detail. Ram could see Captain Horan had been right – the stacks of rings forming apertures at the top of those towers suggested magnetic vectoring, probably for particle streams. There was a stack at the top of both tower sections. "Two main guns," Biko said. "I'd call it a destroyer made for fast intercept." Whatever they were, the Squidies would pound Hardway with those guns if they got the chance. Smaller batteries of unidentified emitters studded the alien hull, probably smaller weapons meant for faster targets. Two sections of hull opened along the forward edge of the vessel.
"Those look like launch tubes," Biko said.
While Hardway gawked, the aliens must have been gawking back, looking up and down the mining carrier's length, scrutinizing her for guns. Once it got close enough, the Squidies inside must have seen how Hardway didn't have any because the line showing the destroyer's projected course began to change. It veered away and towards Arbitrage again. Bergano said, "He's turning. He's turning back on course for Arbitrage."
Biko said, "He thinks we're bluffing. How does he know we don't have our guns hidden?"
"Maybe he's seen an Staas Company carrier before. Maybe he knows we're not a warship."
"...ooks..like..th....jig...s..up....ardway..." Cozen's transmission from Mohegan came in pocked with static because of the radiation where he was.
"Dana, if the alien warship keeps going and gets back up to speed, will it still catch Arbitrage before she reaches the cover of the UNS fleet?"
"Absolutely," she said. "Without a doubt."
He could see on the air traffic display that the alien ship wasn't anywhere near region A and it wasn't ever going to be. The whole plan with Cozen and the junk and the neutron cannon wasn't worth beans now. Hardway could still intercept the alien, but they'd have to do it farther away from Jupiter, where they wouldn't have any tricks up their sleeve. If they wanted to engag
e, a straight-up slug-fest in open space was the only fight Squidy was offering now.
Ram said, "Lt. Commander Sellis, plot an intercept course with the alien." Ram thumbed the squack. "This is acting Captain Ram Devlin. The alien destroyer isn't biting. It's adjusting course again and accelerating for Arbitrage. We are now maneuvering to intercept it in open space. Arbitrage needs time and Hardway's buying. We will close as much distance between us and the alien as we possibly can before scrambling the junks. All boats, be ready to blast out of the bays hard and begin your attack run as soon as you clear the launch bays, but do not, I repeat, do not launch until AGC Biko gives the word. That is all."
A one-kilometer-long carrier doesn't turn on a dime, but it must have been plainly apparent to the aliens that Hardway was coming about to give chase. Still, the alien showed Hardway the flare and glowing, rose-colored plasma of its engines. "They think they can outrun us," Biko said.
"They can," Dana said. "In another minute, the junks won't be able to catch it."
"It won't have that long." Ram was betting the alien couldn't outrun the Dingoes. "As soon as our nose is pointed at it, open bay 2 and loose the QF-111s. Loose the Dingoes. They'll get the aliens' attention."
While the bay doors opened, Ram looked down from Hardway's bridge on top of the command tower out over the 200-meter launch bay module and the 400-meters of ore containers proceeding it on the bow. The stacked ore containers took up 2/5 of the ship's total length. They came up 240 meters tall and almost as wide around the spine. They'd shield everything but the tower if Hardway faced her enemy the right way. Some of those ore containers were full of platinum and iridium ore and scores of osmium, but many were filled with simple, high-density belt-iron. As the ship came about to face the enemy and the flare of the alien destroyer's engines settled over Hardway's bow like an ugly pink comet, Ram hoped like hell those endless boxes of rocks would take some of Hardway's beating for her.
Bay 2 was close to the tower module on the topside section of the launch bays, and after the bay door fully opened below, Arbitrage's QF-111 Dingoes flew up and out of the bay, past the bridge's forward windows in a tight formation. Their flat, engine-packed backsides torrented fire and their curved hulls bristled with gun barrels long as lances. The Dingoes cleared Hardway in moments and vectored high-velocity plasma streams as they cut a fifty-gee turn together and threw themselves at the alien hull.
"It's coming about," Dana said. "Turning to cover its ass."
It still showed the carrier its flank, but the alien warship ship would turn faster and easier than Hardway. "Stay on those maneuvering thrusters and make sure to keep our nose and all those ore containers pointed at the enemy as it turns. I don't care if you have to spin us like a top to do it," Ram said. "Don't expose our flanks."
"I got it," Dana said. "I got it. Keep the bow pointed at the enemy. I got it."
Biko said, "New contacts!" He pointed to a pair of contacts on the AT controller's display that appeared next to the destroyer. "Came out the ports on the leading edge and they're moving fast. Maximally decreasing range and bearing to Hardway... looks like a collision course."
"Missiles?"
"Too fast. Signatures look like they've got their own reactors... They're torpedoes." They looked like ax heads spitting plasma out the back. As the Dingoes came for them, they blasted away from the carrier hard, but then cut a button-hook, 80-gee turn that pointed them straight at Hardway again.
"What the hell can we do?" Biko said. "We can't outrun or dodge that."
"The Dingoes will get the alien warheads," Ram said it like he believed it even if he didn't.
The bridge and everything around him blurred as it shook with an impact to the hull. The shock wave rattled up Hardway's spine and transferred through to the tower module and the bulkheads of the bridge. It happened again. This time, he saw the particle streams. The alien destroyer fired ghostly beams in bursts from the emitters on its hull as it brought its small guns into play. It raked them across Hardway's bow and the ore containers.
Dana said, "What is that? What did he hit us with?"
Bergano said, "Judging from the spikes, that was a stream of accelerated atomic nuclei – heavy ones."
"It felt like we got rammed."
"The stream was going pretty fast."
"How fast?" Ram asked.
"92% cee. Close to the limit."
"I've got red lights up and down the forward spine."
"Send damage control."
Dana leaned over her console and stared out the windows at the alien ship as she fired bow and stern maneuvering thrusters in opposite directions to keep Hardway facing into the destroyer's fire.
"That's it...Keep closing the distance between us and keep the bow facing it."
The Dingoes' 140mm autocannon tore stitching streams of burning green osmium-tungsten alloy across the paths of the two, incoming, alien warheads. The Squidies' flying bombs split and peeled over in wild corkscrew turns. The Dingoes picked one of them and chased it. Together, they laced their streams of fire so densely across its bow that only a ninety-degree turn could have saved it. Sabot burrowed in through the alien bomb's hull casing spitting molten spray until the alien weapon disappeared in a detonation flash.
A second after that, the alien ship's smaller guns ignored Hardway and began to target the Dingoes with stabbing particle streams. Two of the QF-111s got run through with the beams. They flared up and then veered off from the others and spun away into the black. Another exploded soundlessly after Ram saw a stream of nuclei spear it clean through the reactor.
That's when the alien destroyer reached out for Hardway's bow with its tower-mounted main guns. A pair of two-second streams of atomic nuclei moving close to the speed of light slammed into Hardway's bow and Ram couldn't see the site of the impact itself, but the flash lit up the alien ship's oddly rough hull and hurled whole and half and melted ore containers in all directions. 400 meters of stacked, 20m containers rippled high on all sides with the shock wave. Enough of the force that hit the bow transferred through the spine to the launch bay module that it blurred and diffused before Ram's eyes.
The tower module and the bridge was over half a kilometer from where the alien weapons had hit them, but when the shock wave hit the command tower, the force that came up through the deck under Ram's feet nearly shook his brain out of his ears. The alien's smaller guns scored direct hits on the command tower below the spine, but they were just pecks compared to the kinetic hell the aliens' main guns dished out.
That first blast from the Squidies' main particle streams knocked Hardway's front end a few degrees – enough that the next shot raked down the starboard side of the ore containers. The particle stream drew its ghostly line and where it touched, the belt-iron containers ripped themselves apart spewing molten ejecta and their shredded metal skins into space. The shock of that blow was worse than the first.
"That one turned us even more," Dana said. "And bow thrusters are gone. Using forward midships and stern thrusters, but they're not going to be enough. I can't rotate this carrier fast enough."
Ram wanted to be closer before they scrambled the junks so they could avoid fire, but if the Squidies' main guns tore down any side of the launch bays, then the carrier could lose a quarter of its junks in seconds. "Biko," Ram said, "launch them. Launch them now."
"Hardway AGC to all mining junks: launch now, scramble, scramble! Go!"
Below, on the topside of the launch bay module, five of the six bays opened and the junks inside blasted up and out hard so they filled the insides of the bays with a flash-burning plasma storm. As they shot out of the flames and up past the bridge, the rest of them came out of the bays on the port and starboard sides and up from keel-side, from the launch bays underneath.
That's when Biko pointed to the last two Dingo 111s still desperately chasing the second, alien warhead, now at Hardway's 3 o'clock low. The drones spiraled and spun to keep up with the bomb's wild flightpath. The Dingoes' stor
m of burning sabot found their target a hundred meters from Hardway's bays, but the warhead still cooked off.
There's no atmosphere to make a shock wave in space, but the alien warhead's casing turned to plasma in the explosion, and it kept moving and hurled itself down into the open launch bays with enough speed and force to blow out the airlock doors on the starboard-side.
The next particle beams from the Squidies' destroyer cut into the midships Hab module at its lowest point and took a slice of the crew quarters. That shot could have crippled the engineering section.
While Hardway shook and tried to absorb the tremendous energy being thrown at it, Biko barked at the junk squadron, trying to bring them in on a vector that would let them trap the alien and leave it nowhere to run.
Each of the 22 junks carried a pair of ore containers filled with a mining nuke, high-density iron ore, and a proximity-fused detonator – a simple mine to hurl at the alien ship. As they closed the distance to the Squidies' vessel, they came under fire. Cockpits flared and burned where the streams ripped across them and tore junks in half. On comms the sound of the dying, cut-off cries burned away any remaining romance the crew might have harbored in their hearts for war.
Ram could see the horror on Asa Biko's face too. This was the first time any of them had seen people die in combat and up on the bridge, they were the ones that had sent them. "We're loosing them too fast!" Bergano shouted. "Pull them out of formation! Send then in on different vectors so they'll have a chance!"
"No! They'll get picked off! This is the only way!" It should be us dying out there. That's what Biko's face said he was thinking, but now, there was only time to focus on the living and do what they could to keep them alive. Ram said, "Help them, Mr. Biko."
