William Keith Renegades Honor

by Renegade's Honor

  Ventura's eyes were no longer on Kendric, or even on the gun, but on the twin ranks of armored men trotting down the shuttle's ramp and deploying across the landing bay. There was an unseemly clatter that echoed through the bay as the station Marines, caught in the tactically useless position of present arms, dropped their weapons and raised their hands.

  VLCA-R/4 was captured without the firing of a single shot, and only a single casualty when Lieutenant Prost whirled on Kendric with an outflung fist and was knocked senseless to the deck by a tap from the barrel of Kendric's pistol. Moments later, the entire station crew had been rounded up and locked in Bay Three. Meanwhile, the two ancient Verutum fighters secure in their launch tubes had been found and disabled, and so Kathy led Kendric up to the communications center. There he had helped to adjust the bearing of one of the huge dish antennae, visible through the overhead transparencies, as she had inserted a tape Kendric himself had cut for the transmission.

  On that tape, Kendric had identified himself and his squadron, explained their problem, and requested permission to approach Commonwealth space. He had named the Caracalla Cluster as a possible meeting place, specifically a star system on the cluster's fringe named Vathlin. The Gael Squadron, he explained, would arrive there between twenty-five and thirty-five days from the date of the transmission.

  Failing a rendezvous at Caracalla, he'd continued, the squadron would approach Yanulf, a Commonwealth star lying within their frontier. The squadron would initiate contact by sending a single corvette into the system to discuss matters with Commonwealth representatives.

  The tape was nearly fifteen minutes long and explained everything that Kendric could think of. Kathy lined up the antenna and sent out one long pulse of junk. A tone from her console indicated that they had a

  positive link with the distant station. Then she touched the sender key. In three microseconds, the entire message had zipsquealed through the transmitter. Moments later, a second tone signaled that this transmission, too, had reached its destination.

  "Nothing more we can do," she said. "Except hope tha' someone collects the message soon!"

  Kendric nodded. The TOG beacon was not, of course, in Commonwealth space. The directional data at VLCA Alba would have been too easy to check. Had it been discovered that the array was transmitting null data into Commonwealth space, someone might well have become suspicious. What actually happened was that any message preceded by a certain code that Kathy built in as part of the "junk" transmission was recorded and stored by the relatively mindless computer at the beacon. At some point, someone would arrive and physically remove the data storage banks, check the beacon's programming, and replace the memory storage unit.

  Though there was no telling how soon Kendric's message might be received, one thing was certain. The squadron could not afford to hang j around VLCA-R/4 waiting for a response to their message. "Let's go, Kathy. Kill the memory here." It would not do for some curious TOG investigator to pull a copy of Kendric's monologue from the VLCA's computer memory and learn what the Gael Squadron was planning to do. "I'll have Trimble assemble his people at the shuttle." Moments later, a remote relay closed and Bay One's doors swung open. The shuttle, wafted ahead on silent antigravs, moved into space.

  As a parting gift, Kendric had left behind a crate of fresh fruit in the VLCA's galley.

  They were silent on the trip back. Somehow, the view ahead was far more awesome, more fearful than the view they'd had on the trip out.

  On this leg of their trip, the Galaxy spread out before them in supernatural beauty and splendor. The spiral arms were scarcely brighter than the Milky Way arcing across the night skies of most worlds, a light, ragged dusting of stars visible as a dim blue mist against velvet. From this vantage point, 20,000 light years above the Galactic Core, they saw a clearly visible organization, a whirlpool that filled half the sky with pale light. Kendric could trace the sweep of the Cygnus-Carina-Orion Arm off to his right, could make out the branching of the Orion Spur as it straggled out into nothingness. At the base of that branching, Kendric knew, lay Sol and Terra, wellspring of Man,

  capital of the Terran Overlord Government. At this distance, Sol was completely invisible to the naked eye, and even with a telescope, would appear as but one of a million close-packed stars.

  Inward across the Coreward Rift lay the tighter coil of the Sagittar-ian Arm, wound closely about the hub. There, across from So! and on the outer fringes of the Sagittarius Arm, lay the Gael Cluster, the Jewel Box, but it, too, was lost in stars. Kendric found himself instead tracing the Orion Arm around the Core to his left, to where it dwindled into the intergalactic night. That was their destination, the suns of the Commonwealth. So distant. So very far.

  The central Core lay dead ahead. The spiral pattern caught the eye, moved it around and inward. The warm, golden glow of ancient, red Population II stars contrasted strongly with the cold ice of the blue spiral arms. The VLCA seemed to hang suspended just above the gas whorls of the Core, frozen in light and golden mists. Stars there seemed packed corona to corona in the gravitationally twisted continuum of that place.

  "Shuttle! Urgent...from Gael Warrior. Come in, Shuttle!"

  That was Morganen himself. "Shuttle here. Go ahead, Warrior."

  "Skipper! Thank God! We've got problems!"

  "What problems?" Kendric barely needed to ask, however.

  "A TOG battle fleet, inbound and traveling fast! We just picked them up on T-doppler!"

  "Size?"

  "Unknown yet, sir. But their approach vector will be...God..."

  "What is it, Lenard?"

  "They just dropped into normal space. We've clocked 'em at 185 KPS, which gives them an ETA of about twenty minutes."

  "You have any types down?"

  "Not for sure, Captain, but it's a big one. We're reading four big ships...cruisers or battleships...and possibly one carrier. Lots of destroyers and small stuff."

  The magnificence of the Galaxy seemed to lose some of its beauty. The Gael Warrior was barely visible now, the silhouette of a complex toy against the golden haze of the Core beyond. The TOG fleet was invisible yet, but it lay in that direction, coming fast.

  "Fast as you can, Randy," Kendric said gently to the shuttle pilot. "Let's not get caught out in the rain."

  /' m damned if I can figure out what's going on over there. It sounds like they' re scrambling their whole fleet, massing for something really big. You think this could be their big push against us?

  —Private communique, Roger Delaney, Director, COMINT Communications, to Rannic Colby, Director COMINT, Cathandra, 26 Nov 6830

  The first wave of TOG fighters struck the squadron just as Kendric's shuttle made its final approach toward the Gael Warrior's Alpha landing bays. Fortunately, the Warrior's fighters were not being launched—at Kendric's orders—and Hays was able to maneuver the shuttle through the flare and flash of incoming beams and projectiles.

  There was a wrenching crash from somewhere aft, as something smashed through the shuttle's relatively weak shields. Red lights appeared on Hays's console. "Getting a little tight in here," the pilot said.

  The Gael Warrior loomed ahead as the shuttle closed with the battleship from astern. Alpha Bay's rear-door panels could be seen sliding open, spilling the radiance of interior lighting into space.

  "Incoming shuttle, this is Gael Warrior approach control. Stand by to synch your approach with flicker shield release!"

  "We have your signal, Warrior. Approach speed now at 50 meters per second.. .slowing...shield intersect in four...three...two...one... Now!"

  The Warrior's flicker shields dropped as the shuttle swept into the shadow of the battle cruiser's hull and slipped into the open bay. The Hicker shields, controlled by computers with reactions far swifter than those of Humans, snapped on again a fraction of a second later. The shuttle flashed into the open bay, its forward grav thrusters churning Ihe landing bay deckplates into twisted and glowing scraps of ferriplast as Hays fought to kill
the last few meters per second of speed.

  Behind them, a pair of TOG Pilum fighters raced down past the slill-open bay, passing under the Warrior's ventral hull at a speed measured in tens of kilometers per second. One of the Warrior's ventral laser batteries, whirling to track the hurtling craft, caught one in a positive target lock and fired. Armor boiled from under one Pilium's starboard wing, the reaction jerking the wing up and over. One wingtip caught the Warrior's flicker shield and hull. Fragments and a cascade of fire illuminated the Warrior's belly for an instant, then laded. The surviving fighter raced into darkness.

  Kendric hit the Alpha Bay deck at a run the moment pressure was high enough to let him crack the shuttle's lock. The whooping cant of General Quarters filled the air and rang from metal bulkheads and decks. He reached the bay elevator, and moments later, the bridge.

  "Fleet Captain on the bridge!" the sentry snapped out. On the main v iewer, the tactical display showed a wall of fighters approaching, and beyond, the colored beacons of capital ships.

  "Helm, bring us around. Pipe our maneuvers through to the other ships, and have them close in! Fleet status?"

  "All ships report battle stations," Munro reported from the communications console. "No major damage yet, but heavy casualties reported among attacking fighters."

  "Good. Keep your eye on them. Anyone lags behind, call him by name and tell him to press in."

  "Good to have you back, Skipper," Morganen said in Kendric's ear us he inserted his earpiece and opened his intraship channel. "All stations report ready for battle."

  "We're not going to have much of a battle if we can help it," Kendric said. We have to live to reach Caracalla now! "Helm! Come to one-seven-zero. Accelerate maximum consistent for station-keeping by the rest of the fleet."

  "Helm, one-seven-zero and accelerate, aye, sir!"

  "Keep me posted on speed. We'll try a short-range jump as soon as we can make it worthwhile."

  "Sir, we're heading directly toward the TOG capitals!" Morganen said.

  "No choice, Lenard. We can't outrun them. We'll try to slip past

  them."

  The squadron's speed slowly began to build under the silently pounding plasma thunder of each ship's I-K drives. Kendric had caught the enemy commander in what could well be a serious miscalculation. In order to make the better than 20,000-light-year jump from the Galactic plane to VLCA-R/4, a squadron had to build up considerable speed in order to make the passage in the shortest possible time. The TOG squadron had made their transition at something in excess of 185 kilometers per second. A ship's velocity did not magically vanish when it entered T-space, however. Even if T-space transport violated the apparent physics of so-called rational space, such traditional laws as conservation of momentum still applied. A fleet that entered T-space at a high speed re-entered normal space at that same speed, and that velocity had to be countered by burning reaction mass in deceleration.

  It had taken the Gael Squadron hours to slow their speed relative to the VLCA. Now the TOG squadron found itself too close to an unexpected enemy, their speed too high for more than a single combat pass. To compound the problem, the Gaeffleet was accelerating against the TOG ships' vector. When the two squadrons passed, their relative speeds would be the TOG squadron's speed plus the Gael Squadron's speed. Even with computer fire control, the two fleets would have time for only a single exchange of shots.

  "This one will be by computer, Lee," Kendric said.

  The Fire Control Officer nodded from his station down in the Well. "Targets are plotted and locked, Captain. We are synchronizing our fire with the rest of the fleet. Time to firing...forty-five seconds."

  It was hard to imagine that they were in the midst of a desperate battle. With the tactical display up, there were no realistic images of battle to remind them of the attack. All they saw were colored symbols crawling across the board, interspersed with computer-generated data on mass, vector, and firepower. The Gael Squadron was strung out in a long spindle shape, with the Gael Warrior and the two fat transports in the van. Behind a loosely strung-out grouping of three destroyers and two corvettes, the Reannruadh trailed far astern.

  In space combat, all weapons systems are controlled to some extent by computers that can analyze and respond to a target's actions within nanoseconds. Such speed is necessary when the relative speed between firer and target might be measured in tens or hundreds of kilometers per second. The sole purpose of having a Human in the circuit at all is to add some measure of Human judgement to the equation—that, plus the intangibles of intuition and the "feel" for what an enemy is about to do.

  In the tactical situation developing on the screen now, however, the exchange was dominated completely by the electronic senses of targeting and fire control computers. The two squadrons were on opposite vectors that would have them enter firing range, pass, and then travel out of range within a space of microseconds too brief to be even comprehensible to the Human mind.

  Kendric sat in his command seat, watching the tactical screen. TOG fighters continued to harry the squadron from the rear and flanks. The Reannruadh reported a missile hit on her starboard ventral side, but no damage to power systems or drives. Once, the Warrior lurched si ightly as a Hell warhead went off in near space, close enough that the pressure wave along the rim of the fireball brushed the Warrior's shields. Nuclear damping fields and flicker shields blocked the worst of the radiation, and no major damage was reported.

  Seconds ticked off on the tactical screen. The TOG vessels were clearly identified now—a battleship of approximately the Warrior's mass and weaponry and three heavy cruisers, accompanied by numerous destroyers and lesser craft—a heavy battleship squadron. They were presenting their sterns to the Warrior, using their main I-K drives to decelerate as they hurtled stern-first toward the VLCA relay outpost.

  Five...four...three...two...one...There was a lurch felt through the deck, and a moment's dimming of the lights. The TOG squadron was astern and dwindling away, already long out of range.

  "All weapons fired according to program," Fairfax reported. "No estimate of damage to the enemy."

  "Damage control reports are coming in," Morganen added over the mtraship. "We took a hit, portside forward. Casualties are reported and loss of power to turrets 20 through 27..."

  Damage control reports continued to come in, from the Warrior's lower decks, and from the other ships of the squadron. All told, they had suffered little in the exchange, and none of the ships had taken damage severe enough to have trouble making the next T-space transition.

  A cold-blooded way to fight a war, Kendric thought. How many did nr kill in that pass? We'll never even know for sure what we did to lhcm..Me leaned back, rubbing his eyes. He was tired...so tired...

  Kendric summoned a staff meeting five hours after their passage through the TOG fleet. Their pursuers lay five million kilometers behind them, their course reversed now, their following speed slowly iiu teasing. Kendric had managed to catch some sleep, but had awakened after two hours feeling loggy. The accumulated exhaustion of the past days was catching up with him.

  How long could he stand it? How long could the squadron's crews continue to hold up? He sat back in the lounge chair behind the conference room table and studied the faces of the Bridge Officers as they filed in. They all looked tired, worn down to the bone. Kendric wondered if it was exhaustion or something more.

  He wondered whether it was Gael's Bane, here far beyond the Galactic Plane, that was further eroding their morale.

  Kendric opened the staff meeting with a positive note. Their raid on VLCA-R/4 had been a complete success, and the prepared message had been transmitted toward the Commonwealth as planned. The way should now be clear for an approach to the Commonwealth Frontier, without fear of being attacked and destroyed by ships assuming that they were part of a TOG invasion force. The news did not lighten the atmosphere, however. Everyone in the conference room had heard the news hours ago, and its official pronouncement did nothing t
o alleviate the feeling of sluggish doom that seemed to grip them. Other department heads began to report on the status of their systems and personnel until it was Commander MacCandless's turn. "It's the latest computer predictions from Ops " he said. "We've calculated that we can build up enough speed to escape into T-space at a reasonable transit velocity long before the TOG squadron can close with us."

  "That's splendid," Kendric said, attempting to put some feeling into the words, but the gloom remained as heavy as before.

  "We have a real problem, though," he continued after a moment's hesitation. "We have to assume that the TOG fleet will be watching us on T-doppler. The predictions show that even if we make two or three quick shuffles in and out of T-space, changing vectors each time, they'll be close enough behind us to track our final course."

  "In other words," Morganen said, "we can't lose them. They'll be able to follow us."

  "That's about it. Not only that, the-communications facilities at the VLCA are undamaged. As soon as they have a probable course plot, they'll be able to alert other units along our predicted flight path. No matter where we come out, there's a good chance that there'll be TOG ships somewhere nearby. Maybe close enough to pick us up on their own T-dopplers."

  "Damn!" someone said, putting all of the reverence of a heartfelt prayer into that single epithet.

  "We've come so far," Fairfax added.

  Kendric rubbed at his eyes. His leg was throbbing again, making him wonder if he should see Hutchison again. Later. When there's time.

  "And we're going farther still," he said. Heads around the table turned to face him. "Damn it, people, we're not beaten. Not yet! We're going to stop the gloom-and-doom routine, right here, right now!"

  Morganen spread his hands. "Captain, if we can't escape the TOG squadron, sooner or later they'll run us down when we have to emerge from T-space because of plus tau or because we need to take on reaction mass. If not before. When they do—" he shrugged helplessly—"we can't even think about fighting them!"