Beginnings-eARC

by David Weber

  “And since we can't stop them from doing that,” Heissman said calmly, “it looks like our best-hope scenario is still to slow them down long enough for Gorgon to escape with as much data as we can collect, while inflicting the maximum damage possible.”

  “Between us and the corvettes we still have twenty missiles, plus seven practice ones,” Belokas said. “If we throw everything we've got, we should at least be able to take down one of those cruisers.”

  “We can't control nearly that many at once,” Woodburn reminded her.

  “As long as Tamerlane's ships aren't accelerating, that may not matter,” Belokas pointed out. “They'll still have to defend, and even if all we can accomplish is to drain their point defenses it'll be worth it.”

  “Or we may be able to do a bit better,” Woodburn said. “Mr. Long has an idea.”

  Travis twisted his head to look up at the other. “Sir?”

  Woodburn pointed at the simulation Travis had been running. “Tell them,” he ordered.

  Travis felt his throat tighten. Suddenly, he was back on Phoenix's bridge, offering half-baked advice to Captain Castillo.

  But Heissman wasn't Castillo. And if the trick worked . . .

  “I think the upper cruiser's ventral autocannon is having trouble,” he said. “If it is, then—”

  “How could you possibly know that?” Belokas interrupted, frowning at him. “They never even fired them.”

  “Because he was starting to turn to starboard when he shifted to rolling wedge instead,” Travis said. “That looked to me like he was getting ready to favor that side when he changed his mind.” He felt his lip twitch. “I had some experience with balky autocannon back on Phoenix, and that definitely looked like a sensor miscalibration problem.”

  “Alfred?” Heissman asked.

  “He could be right,” Woodburn said. “I just checked, and that aborted yaw is definitely there.”

  “Assume you're right,” Heissman said. “Then what?”

  “We start by assuming Tamerlane's as smart as he thinks he is,” Travis said. “If so, he'll have seen his cruiser's brief yaw and guess that we also saw it and came to the correct conclusion. If we did, he'll expect us to try to take advantage of the weakness by throwing a salvo of missiles at it.”

  “At which point he'll again have to either use an iffy point-defense system or else roll wedge,” Woodburn said, reaching over Travis's shoulder to key the simulation over to the Commodore's station. “If he does the latter, we may be able to catch him by surprise.”

  For a couple of heartbeats Heissman gazed at the display. Then, his lip twitched in a small smile. “Yes, I see. It's definitely a long shot. But long shots are where you go when you've got no other bets.”

  He gave a brisk nod. “Set up the shot.”

  * * *

  “Analysis complete, Admiral,” Imbar announced as he hovered over Tac Officer Clymes's shoulder. “Similar countermissiles as ours, with about a thirteen-hundred-klick range, and similar autocannon loads.”

  Gensonne scowled. So the Manticorans' countermissiles had a shade less range than the equipment aboard Copperhead and Adder.

  And Casey was supposedly the most advanced ship of the Manticoran fleet. If Llyn had been right about that, then the weaponry aboard the larger Bogey Two ships burning space toward him would be even more subpar.

  Yes, it could have been worse. But it could also have been a whole lot better. He'd tried like the fires of hell to talk Llyn into providing him with more cutting-edge equipment, but the damn little clerk had turned down every request. The Volsungs didn't need anything better, he'd insisted soothingly, and farthermore the Solarian League would rain down on all of them if they ever got wind of it.

  Which Gensonne knew was a bald-faced lie. The Axelrod Corporation was way too powerful to worry about offending whatever bureaucrats were in charge of enforcing such regulations. Llyn simply didn't want a bunch of free-lance mercenaries running around with really advanced equipment.

  But that would change. When Llyn saw how quickly and efficiently Gensonne delivered Manticore, Axelrod would surely want the Volsungs on board for whatever project was next on their list.

  And Llyn could bet his rear that the subject of advanced weaponry would come up again.

  “Salvo ready, Sir,” Imbar said.

  “Acknowledged,” Gensonne said. The question now was whether they'd wrung out every bit of data Heissman and Casey could provide. If so, it was time to end the charade and finish them off. If not, a little additional restraint might still be called for.

  “Missiles,” Clymes called into his musings. “Looks like two from each of the corvettes.”

  Gensonne swiveled toward the sensor display. Sure enough, both of the smaller ships were showing the unmistakable signs of booster flares. A waste of time; but then, what else did they have to do? “Six missiles at the cruiser,” he ordered. “Fire when ready.” On the display, the missiles cleared the corvettes' wedges and lit up their own.

  Two missiles from each corvette . . .but from Casey, nothing.

  He frowned. Could the damage his attack had inflicted on the cruiser's sidewall have bled over into its launchers or control systems? Llyn had said that Casey was Manticoran-designed. Had the builders unintentionally incorporated a fatal flaw into its architecture? “Damage report on Casey,” he ordered.

  “Their starboard sidewall is at half power,” Imbar reported, sounding puzzled. “We already went through this—”

  “More flares,” Clymes cut in. “One more from each corvette.”

  “Still nothing from Casey?”

  “No, Sir.”

  Which made no sense, unless the cruiser had genuinely lost the ability to launch its missiles. Definitely a tidbit worth knowing, especially if similar flaws had been incorporated into the Manticorans' other ship designs.

  And really, it didn't much matter which of the Manticorans were shooting and which ones weren't. What mattered was that they were trying the same saturation attack they'd tried before, and it was pretty obvious where that attack was aimed. Heissman was apparently the observant type, and von Belling's half-completed yaw turn earlier had tipped off the Manticorans as to where Copperhead's weakness lay.

  Which, again, was hardly a problem. “Order Copperhead to pitch wedge,” he instructed Imbar. “Adder will prepare countermissiles; all other ships, stand by autocannon.”

  He listened as the acknowledgments came in, his eyes on the six wedges cutting through space toward his force at thirty-five hundred gees acceleration. A minute fifteen out, with probably forty seconds before they would either tighten their angle toward Copperhead, or widen it to target both Copperhead and Adder. At that point, Heissman would show whether he'd truly observed Copperhead's weakness or was a one-trick pony who was throwing missiles at his opponent simply because that was all he knew how to do.

  Which would be pathetic, but hardly unexpected. Manticore had been at peace a long time. Far longer than was healthy for them. War was what kept men strong and smart. Peace turned them into useless drones, where the species-cleansing consequences of survival of the fittest no longer operated.

  Could that be why Llyn had chosen Manticore as his target? Could it be that Axelrod were looking for undeveloped real estate and figured that no one would notice or care if a couple of fat, lazy backwater planets underwent a sudden regime change?

  It sounded like a colossal waste of money. Still, Axelrod had money to burn. If they wanted to spend some of their spare cash to set up their own little kingdom, more power to them.

  Copperhead had finished its pitch, its roof once again presenting its impenetrable barrier to the incoming missiles. The missiles were still holding formation, with no indication as to where they were heading. Whatever Heissman's plan, though, he must surely have accepted the inevitability of his own destruction. Best guess was that his goal was to simply keep throwing missiles in hopes of draining the Volsungs of as many resources as he could . . .

&
nbsp; Gensonne looked at the sensor display, feeling his eyes narrow. The Manticorans had launched six missiles—Clymes had confirmed that. And six missile wedges were indeed showing on all of the bridge's displays.

  But according to the sensors, all six missiles were running a little hot.

  Why were they running hot?

  On the tactical, a spray of countermissiles erupted from Adder's throat, blossoming into a cone of protection that would shield both itself and the battlecruisers riding a thousand kilometers behind it. Gensonne watched as the cone stretched out toward the incoming missiles—

  And felt a sudden jolt of horrified adrenaline flood through him. One cone. Not the two cones this configuration was supposed to provide to shield the battlecruisers. Not with Copperhead turned roof-forward protecting itself from those Manticoran missiles.

  Still nothing new from the sensors. Still nothing new on the missiles' track. But Gensonne was a warrior, with the instincts a warrior needed to survive. And his gut was screaming at him now with a certainty that all the ambiguous data in the universe couldn't counter.

  Copperhead wasn't Heissman's target. Odin was.

  “Full autocannon!” he snapped, his eyes darting to the tactical, wanting to order an emergency turn and knowing full well that it was too late. Six missiles showing . . . only his gut was telling him that wasn't the full number bearing down on them. Somehow, Casey had managed to launch its own contribution to the salvo, slipping them in behind and among the corvettes' missiles with just the right timing and geometry to keep them hidden until they could light off their wedges.

  Odin's four autocannon were hammering out their furious roar, filling the space in front of the ship with shards of metal. Gensonne watched in helpless fury as the incoming missiles swung wide of Copperhead's wedge, passed safely through the very edge of Adder's countermissile defensive zone, and dove straight through Odin's open throat—

  And with a thundering roar the ship exploded into a chaos of screaming alarms.

  * * *

  “Got him!” Rusk shouted, his voice hovering midway between triumph and disbelief. “One of them made it through.”

  “Damage?” Heissman asked.

  “Assessing now,” Woodburn said. “Lots of debris, but with something the size of a battlecruiser that could be mostly superficial.”

  “Missile trace,” Belokas called. “Six on the way.”

  “Countermissiles and autocannon standing by,” Woodburn confirmed.

  “Assessment's coming a little cleaner,” Rusk said. “Looks like they took damage to their bow, probably enough to knock out their telemetry system. If we're lucky, it'll have neutralized at least one of their launchers and maybe their forward laser.”

  “Excellent,” Heissman said. “Fire four more missiles—let's see if we can get in before the upper cruiser realizes what happened and turns back to defense position.”

  “Aye, Sir,” Travis said, checking the tracks of Tamerlane's incoming missiles and feeling a flicker of grim satisfaction. They were still almost certainly going to die, but at least they'd managed to bloody Tamerlane's nose.

  The vibration of the autocannon rumbled through the bridge. “All missiles destroyed,” Woodburn announced. “Four hard kills, two soft. Our missiles are still on target.”

  Travis was gazing at the enemy formation, trying to anticipate what Tamerlane would do next, when two new wedges flared into view at the edge of the display.

  The mysterious ships that they'd spotted earlier had arrived.

  * * *

  “Telemetry transmitters out,” a strained voice came from the bridge speaker, barely audible above a cacophony of shouts and curses. “Number one laser's offline, number two's iffy, and One and Three autocannon are fried.”

  “Record indicates there were ten missiles in that salvo,” Imbar snarled over the noise. “How the hell were there ten damn missiles?”

  “Because Casey's got a railgun launcher, that's how,” Gensonne snarled back, a red haze of fury clouding his vision. “That's how they launched an extra four missiles without our seeing them.”

  Imbar swore viciously. “That's why they looked too hot.”

  “You think?” Gensonne bit out. And that damn bloody trick had now cost Odin nearly half its forward armament.

  “Four more missiles on the way,” Clymes warned. “Copperhead is turning back . . . Copperhead's on it.”

  “About time,” Gensonne muttered under his breath. He ran his eyes over the growing damage report, then looked up at the tactical.

  Copperhead's countermissiles had just taken care of Casey's latest salvo when a pair of new wedges suddenly appeared at the edge of the tactical, leaping forward as they drove in from the battlefield's flank toward Bogey One.

  The two outriding destroyers, Umbriel and Miranda, had finally arrived.

  “Admiral?” Imbar called.

  “I see them,” Gensonne told him, his lips curling back in a snarling smile. “Order them to fire missiles. Hell, order all ships to fire.”

  He straightened his shoulders. They had enough data. They had more than enough data.

  Time for Heissman and his ships to die.

  “Target the ship at the rear first,” Gensonne said. “Then destroy the rest.”

  * * *

  And in that single, awful microsecond, everything changed.

  “Missile trace!” Rusk called out grimly. “Four from Bogey Two—look to be targeting Gorgon. Bogey Three ships are also firing with . . . missile trace ten on the way.”

  “He's learned everything he can and decided it's time to end it,” Heissman commented. “Time for us to do the same.”

  He hit his com key. “Hercules, Gemini: split tail. Repeat, split tail. Good luck.”

  Travis winced. The split tail was the officially designated last-ditch maneuver for this kind of situation. The two corvettes were to pitch wedges toward Tamerlane's main force and accelerate away in different directions, with each ship's resulting vector taking it above or beneath the enemy force, hopefully before any of the opposing ships could rotate fast enough and far enough to fire a last shot up the escapee's kilt.

  It was a risky tactic at best, given the range of modern missiles and lasers. But with a second threat now on Janus's flank, it was even worse. The geometry made it impossible for the ships to position their wedges in such a way as to block against missiles coming from both directions at once.

  Worse, for Casey at least, the sidewall facing Bogey Two was the one already running on a single generator. Another solid hit there and the barrier could go completely, leaving that entire flank open to unprotected attack.

  On the tactical, Hercules and Gemini were pitching in opposite directions, the first corvette aiming to go over Tamerlane's force, the second aiming to go under it. Far to their rear, Travis saw that Gorgon was rolling her wedge toward the two ships of Bogey Two, her kilt still open to Tamerlane's main force.

  Leaving Casey to face the enemy alone.

  “Commodore?” Belokas prompted tautly.

  “Hold vector,” Heissman said, his eyes shifting back and forth between the two sets of missiles converging on his force. “I want to fire off one last salvo of countermissiles, see if we can clear a couple of Bogey Three's missiles off Gorgon's tail.”

  “We've also got two missiles coming in on our starboard flank,” Woodburn warned. “If we cut things too fine, we could lose it all.”

  “Understood,” Heissman said. “Stand by countermissiles . . . fire. Pitch ninety degrees negative and kill acceleration.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Travis saw all heads turn. “Pitch ninety degrees negative and kill acceleration, aye,” the helmsman said. “Pitching ninety degrees negative; acceleration at zero.”

  “Kill acceleration?” Belokas asked quietly.

  “Kill acceleration,” Heissman confirmed. “We're going to go straight through the center of their formation.” His lip twitched. “The distraction may give the corvettes a better ch
ance of escape.”

  There was a moment of silence, and Travis heard Woodburn murmur something under his breath. “Understood, Sir,” Belokas said briskly.

  “Starboard missiles coming in hot,” Rusk warned. “Not sure the sidewall can take them.”

  “So let's try something crazy,” Heissman said. “As soon as the missiles reach energy torpedo range, flicker the sidewall and fire two bursts along the missiles' vectors, then raise the sidewall again. Maybe we can take out at least one of them before it hits.”

  Travis felt his stomach tighten. Energy torpedoes, bursts of contained plasma bled straight off the reactor, were devastating at short ranges. But they hadn't exactly been designed as missile killers.

  Woodburn knew that, too. “It's a long shot,” he warned. “Especially since we might not get the sidewall up in time. We could miss completely and end up with both missiles coming right in on us.”

  “Granted,” Heissman agreed. “But the option is to trust a half-power sidewall to keep them out on its own.” He smiled faintly. “And so far, our long shots have been paying out pretty well.”

  “True,” Woodburn said, returning the commodore's smile. “Very good, Sir. Energy torpedoes standing by.”

  On the tactical, the image that was Gorgon suddenly flared and vanished. “Gorgon's gone, Sir,” Rusk said grimly. “Lower enemy cruiser swiveling to target Gemini.”

  “Computer standing ready to flicker sidewall and fire energy torpedoes,” Woodburn added.

  “Acknowledged,” Heissman said. “Hand off to computer.”

  “Hand off to computer, aye,” Woodburn confirmed. “Here we go . . .”

  Travis felt the slight vibration of distant heavy relays as Casey blasted a barrage of torpedoes into space. They were amazingly fast weapons, nearly as fast as the beams from shipboard X-ray lasers. There was a second vibration as the second salvo followed the first—

  “Sidewall back up,” Woodburn called. Travis held his breath . . .