William Keith Renegades Honor

by Renegade's Honor

  "Commander Fairfax!" Kendric ordered. "Program a missile barrage, hell warheads. Put them into the enemy fighter wall. I want a screen so we can launch our fighters!"

  "Yessir! Missile tubes three through eight, ready for firing."

  "Fire!"

  Missiles slid from their tubes along the Warrior's flanks, accelerating smoothly on lances of flame.

  "Ops here, Captain. Scanners show enemy missile launch. Estimate ten missiles, incoming. Data downloading to point defense batteries."

  On the main screen, moments later, arc-brilliant flares of light grew from pinpoints to five-kilometer spheres of intense, wavering light, one after another in rapid succession, all in absolute silence.

  "All fighters, immediate launch!" Kendric said. The interlocking radiation fronts of those six 10-kiloton warheads would screen the Warrior's fighters from the enemy as they launched and maneuvered into position. Fighters hurtled from their bays. Around them, the Warrior's lasers sought invisible, incoming missiles as they burned toward the Gael vessel at 15 Gs of acceleration. A few were hit and destroyed before they came near. The surviving TOG missiles struck an instant later.

  Jaime Douglass felt the high-G stress of his turn flatten him down against his seat despite the protection of his compensator fields. He had penetrated the ragged barrier provided by the Warrior's missile barrage and encountered the first of the TOG fighter squadrons, a deadly sextet of heavy Gladius fighters.

  "Gold Leader to Golds!" he shouted. "I've got six bandits here!"

  A Spiculum flashed past his starboard side, lasers stabbing. "Don't keep 'em all to yourself, Boss," he heard over his helmet phones.

  Then he was in the midst of utter chaos, as powerful Interceptors passed in tight formation, slowed into broad, sweeping turns, then realigned for a new pass. Jaime whooped his fighter on the tail of a TOG Gladius, letting the image of his target drift into his HUD sighting reticules. The image flashed rapidly and a green light signified a positive weapons lock. Jaime yelled as he squeezed the release trigger, sending a radiation-seeking missile arrowing toward the stern of its target.

  He swung his fighter onto a new course before he could verify a hit. His portside lit up with blinding radiance as an EPC blast clawed at his shields. Something struck his ship from behind. His body rebounded from its harness, bruised and sore. He twisted his ship again, cutting in the bow maneuvering gravs and cutting in his main drive for an extra kick of speed. A new target fell into his sights.

  Lock on! Fire! His second missile streaked away into the night, curving sharply to follow the sudden twisting, desperate maneuvers of its target.

  "Warrior Group!" he called out then. "Don't let them pull you into a dogfight! Our target is the VLCA ship! Keep boosting!"

  A Spiculum to starboard exploded in coruscating embers of red and gold. Jaime wasn' t sure whether it was a TOG Interceptor or one of his.

  The bridge was filling with smoke. Kendric was coughing, waving his hand in front of his face as he tried to see. Three missiles had penetrated the Warrior's shields, and one had struck the bridge tower somewhere aft. The sentry at the bridge door reported the companion-way outside filled with flames. The door to the bridge had been sealed, as standing combat orders dictated, but the blast had warped the door enough that smoke was seeping in through ruptured seals. Kendric's ears were still ringing with the violence of the blast.

  If it had been a nuke, he reasoned, my ears wouldn't be ringing. Except maybe from heavenly choruses.

  In the Well, he could see Lee Fairfax. The only weapons officer still standing, Fairfax was handling his part of the operation like the conductor of an orchestra. The Gael Warrior was fully engaged to port and starboard and straight ahead. Their maneuvers had enabled them to stay behind the enemy battleship, to fire repeated blasts from the main mass driver into the heavy ship's stern. On the bridge screen, the enemy battleship showed her combat damage. Craters gaped in the after part of her bridge tower, and one drive venturi was silent, glowing sullen red instead of belching blue-white plasma fire.

  The two battleships were quite close now, separated by only a few tens of kilometers. The Regnum Class was trying to turn in order to present a full broadside to her foe. The Warrior was accelerating slightly, moving to keep pace with the TOG ship's stern as it swung away. The dance could not be kept up forever, but Kendric was determined to hold his position here as long as he could. The enemy mounted numerous batteries along her stern ramparts. That was nothing compared to what the TOG ship could hurl at the Warrior if she were able to present a full broadside or, far worse, if she faced the Warrior bow-on and hurled the combined weight of her broadside and her main gun at the Gael ship.

  Four ships withstood a storm of fire now. The Gaidheal was limping, one of her drives out. The Iolaire had taken heavy damage across her bow. The Reannruadh was close astern of the Warrior now, firing salvo after salvo into the TOG battleship, but every salvo she took in return sent clouds of metallic fragments spinning and glittering away into space. TOG fighters were everywhere. Some had been drawn off, pursuing the Warrior s fighters in toward Vathlin, but the majority swarmed around the battleship and cruiser like angry insects.

  "Incoming fighters, zulu-eight-three plus ten! Hitthem! Hitthem!"

  Noise tore at the bridge, tore at Kendric's ears. He was lying on the deck, with no clear idea of how he had gotten there. Somewhere, an alarm was whooping, and the monotone pronouncements of a computer voice intoned warnings of air loss, of fire, of damage to vital control systems.

  He struggled to his feet, clinging to the balcony rail. "Helm!" he shouted. "Watch the helm!" But Kirkpatrick was dead, ripped open from throat to crotch by a jagged piece of steel that had spilled off the bridge's armor shell and rocketed down at an angle through the deck. Half a dozen fires burned in the Well, as damage control personnel struggled to contain them. Somewhere down in the Well, someone was shrieking in agony.

  Commander Campbell was at the helm station now, programming a new course. The last hit had skewed the Warrior around. She was still under acceleration but drifting sideways, closing ponderously on the TOG battleship.

  The enemy battleship filled the screen. Kendric could see her name painted in blocky, Galatin capitals across her flank: Caesar Regnus. She was turning sharply now, her battered stern swinging out from under the Warrior's arc of fire, her portside heaving into view like a convoluted, metal cliff. Then the screen lit with a volley of fire.

  Kendric was on his knees, blood dripping from a gash on his forehead. The bridge was so smoky, he could barely see the main screen. Where was the Reannruadh? Astern, someplace. He reached up, fumbling at his console controls. "Communications! Open a channel to Reannruadhl Communications!"

  He looked across the bridge through the smoke. The communications section had been smashed, as though by a giant hammer. Unrecognizable shreds of uniform and bloody flesh littered the deck for meters around the spot where Alec Munro had been working an instant before.

  Commander Fairfax was still on his feet, still giving orders, oblivious to the carnage around him. "Main batteries, keep firing!" He heard over the intraship. "Main weapon, report status! Recharge! Fire!"

  He opened another intraship channel. "Mr. Fairfax! Can you place some DFMs in the target?"

  He saw Fairfax look up toward the balcony, and signal assent with a wave. DFMs—dead fire missile clusters—were more like shotgun shells than true missiles, tube-launched projectiles that released hundreds of high-density projectiles in a deadly, high-velocity cloud.

  The bridge rocked again, and Kendric felt his weight flutter as the ship's artificial gravity fluttered. He heard Fairfax give the order to fire a volley of DFMs at point-blank range. Then the bridge seemed to open up around him, and Kendric found himself in darkness. Around him, the air burst into a frenzy, a hurricane blast howling and boiling on its way out into space.

  Caesar is not pleased...

  —Fragment of Transmission Intercepted by COMINT
Communications Probe, Deep Space, Vicinity of Caracalla Cluster, 28 December, 6830

  T.C. clung to a bulkhead support strut as the battleship jumped and thundered around her. She had come to take a battle station on the Warrior's, main computer deck, hoping to be of some help, but it looked as though she couldn't do much at this point. So long as the ship's computers and database remained intact, requests for calculations, for information on ship types or weaponry, mass or maneuvering capability, access to communications or transponder codes, and all of the thousands of other demands placed on the Warrior's electronic memory would be handled without mere Human intervention.

  She had been examining herself closely since the squadron had left the Galactic Core. For so long, T.C. had been living on a kind of edge, unable or unwilling to look much beyond the present into the future. For a time, after their arrival at Caracalla, she had permitted herself the dizzying thought that perhaps they had made it, that perhaps they were almost safe. And if they made it to the Commonwealth, she could try to find Carl.. .she could...Whatever lay in store for the future, T.C. was sure of one thing. Ever since the Core, she knew that she wanted to share any future—no matter how uncertain—with Kendric Fraser.

  Commander Grierson looked up from the console where he sat, monitoring the course of the battle. "That's bad," he said.

  Gravity surged, and T.C. steadied herself against the strut to keep from falling. Never, in any of the battles of previous weeks, had the Warrior taken such a pounding.

  "What's happening?"T.C. asked. It was surprising that she was not afraid, though she wished she could to see out. Rather, she was terrified for Ken...

  Grierson looked at her. "I'm sorry..." he said.

  "What? What is it?"

  "They've switched command over to the Combat Center. Commander Morganen has taken over."

  "Oh, God..."

  "Looks like something big hit the bridge. There's a damage report here.. .Atmosphere is gone," he said, but T.C. was already fumbling for her gloves and helmet.

  "T.C., you can't go up there now..."

  "Like hell I can't."

  She hit the passageway outside the computer center at a dead run, fastening her helmet as she went. She was still running when the gravity failed, and the lights flickered and dimmed, threatening to plunge her into total darkness.

  Jaime had not been able to shake the Gladius that clung to his tail. He had boosted his Spiculum to its maximum acceleration as he flashed low across the fringes of Vathlin's upper atmosphere, with the world laid out in vast sweeps and swirling cloud patterns dazzling against jungle and sea. Warning lights flashed on his console. Missile launch!

  Sensors reported on mass and radiation readings. Damn! he muttered under his breath. The deadly package closing on his tail was a radiation-seeker with a Hell warhead. Just when his aft shields were down, having failed when that last mass driver projectile had slammed into his aft fuselage.

  More acceleration! More! Jaime twisted his fighter into a flat sideslip across atmosphere. The ship snapped, bucked, and shuddered as the atmosphere thickened around it, then wrenched violently as it skipped across air like a rock skimming the surface of a pond. The missile twisted and followed. Jaime knew he had to find some way to take that hit on his flicker shield. If he could turn into it at the last moment...

  Now, that was better! His instruments had identified something large and moving low across the curve of the planet.

  The VLCA ship had remained in orbit when the TOG flagship had moved off to engage the incoming battleship squadron. It had not remained alone for long, however. The Warrior's fighters had descended on it like hungry birds of prey. TOG Spiculums had risen to defend the ship, been overwhelmed by the incoming renegade Spiculums and Pilums, and then missiles had arced through space into the communications ship itself.

  Now it was accelerating, its huge, delicate transmission antennae folded like paper fans and stowed for high-G maneuvering. Its captain was evidently preparing to move elsewhere. The ship's hull was cratered in places, trailing wreckage, and help was far away.

  Jaime shifted his damaged fighter's course, aiming for the limping VLCA ship dead-on. Its massive, complex shape filled his target reticules. One missile left.. .Fire! Now, lasers! Fire! Fire!

  Fire washed across the VLCA's starboard flank. Armor plate spun lazily across Vathlin's sky. Jaime glanced at his instruments. The TOG missile was close behind, sixty kilometers away and gaining rapidly. He reached out and slapped down the field overrides, cut out his power shunt couplings, and increased the feed to his gravitic fusor. By pushing his power plant to the limit and beyond, he might squeeze a bit more power out of it for another few Gs of boost.

  There! The Spiculum's power plant shrieked protest, but he kicked in his main drive and accelerated. The missile closed...30 kilometers now, a point of light centered on the console display set to display an aft view.

  The VLCA ship expanded so rapidly that Jaime could not follow its motion with his eyes. Suddenly, his Spiculum was passing under the huge ship's belly. He glanced up, and saw a limitless wall of gray armor plate behind the faint, amber shimmer of its flicker shield. He hauled back on his control stick, cutting in maneuvering gravs to twist him up and around the massive ship.

  Using the VLCA ship as cover, Jaime whipped within a few hundred meters of the vessel as the missile corrected its own course to follow his white-hot drive Venturis. Jaime's ship climbed behind the VLCA ship. The missile, simple-minded to the point of electronic idiocy, compensated for the change in its target course before it reached the TOG ship.

  The missile smashed into the VLCA's flicker shields at over 30 kps and detonated. The hell fireball bathed nearby space in blue-white star fire. The flicker shield, cycling at nearly 200 times per second, blocked the vast majority of the heat and radiation. Enough hell's fury came boiling through to vaporize a 100-meter chunk of armor along the ship's flank and to burn through to electronic circuits and conduits

  underneath.

  Power feeds and circuits failed. Maneuvering gravs failed. Main drives failed. Flicker shields failed, first along the port side, and then, as system after system overloaded, every shield on the installation wavered and fell. The VLCA staggered under the blow as huge chunks of hull armor whirled off into space with the radiant storm of the dissipating fireball. The huge ship dipped under the blow, lurching into thickening atmosphere. Hull plates began to glow from friction, as burning gases and molten fragments trailed out behind the wreckage in a cascade of fire. One of the antenna mounts broke free, tumbling, splintering in white heat.

  The sky filled with fire as Jaime fought his Spiculum for control. The explosion's thermal flash had lit space around him, but his ship was tucked safely into the narrow cone of shadow extending out from the VLCA ship's portside. Now his ship was tumbling violently as it fell away from the fast-swelling vortex of heat and light behind him. He cut his main drives and cut in his auxiliary gravs. His power plant was down to quarter-power, he noticed, burned out by overload and his efforts to boost its output. Checking his other circuits and readings, he saw that his weapons were gone, their controls shorted out. Life support was functioning, however, and he had a minimum of power for maneuvering.

  He would be able to make it back to his ship if only he could avoid TOG fighters along the way.

  On Vathlin's surface, a hundred kilometers below, the Chief Priest of Ral watched the starburst glory fill the sky with fire. There were mutters, then panicked shouts from the Assembly at its back. God was on fire, and falling! No, God was angry, was casting the spirits of the People back to Vathlin in Its Wrath. God was about to devour the world...

  Then, as the winking fragments faded from view, the Chief Priest noted with quiet satisfaction that God remained in the sky, unchanged, undimmed, unhurt. Those strange, earlier flashes of light among the Spirits had subsided now, and Heaven was in harmony once more.

  The Chief Priest would retire to its chambers to fast and meditate on
the vision, but it already felt certain it knew what its pronouncement would be when next it appeared to its people. There had been war in heaven, but those who would cast down God from its place of glory in summersky had been utterly defeated and been themselves cast down from Heaven. With peace in Heaven, the river would flood again, and the sesni crops would be bountiful. Perhaps the strangely shaped demons that had lately appeared from time to time would return to their abodes in wintersky, leaving the servants of Ral in peace.

  Then, indeed, all would be well and as it should be once more.

  Kendric came to as an emergency-suited figure levered him around to get a pressure helmet clamped down over his head. Air still boiled and roared about him, and ice was forming on the deck close by his face.

  The bridge was losing atmosphere! He moved his body clumsily, looking about. He felt strangely light, buoyant, then realized that he was weightless! The ship's gravity must have gone in that last hit.

  What was the damage? The leak had created a gale-force wind, but the damage was otherwise not too severe. The rest of the bridge crew had on their emergency helmets, he saw, and were continuing to man their stations.

  His throat burned, his chest hurt. His ears were ringing with the effects of partial decompression. Blinking blood and sweat from his eyes, he saw Morganen's face through the helmet visor opposite his. Over his helmet phones, he heard Morganen's urgent voice: "Skipper, are you O.K.?"

  "What are you doing down here?" Kendric demanded.

  "Combat Center has had it, Skipper. We lost control circuits to the rest of the ship. Power down in most sections, except for life support. Our weapons are out...drives out. We're dead in space. Captain."

  Kendric closed his eyes. Then it's over. At last, it's over...

  Morganen continued. "I came down here and found the bridge cut off by a fire. I was rounding up a fire party when that last round hit. That put out the fire real quick."