Erik nodded, sitting upright and sipping his water bottle. “I know, that was my gig before Phoenix. Helm on UFS Firebird, station defence duty. Our marines got into more fights with each other than the tavalai, I hadn’t seen a shot fired until I came here.”
Trace nodded. “This Major’s name was Langdon. I put up with it for two months, figured it was character building… plus the guys in my platoon were okay. Then I got my first boarding credit, intercepted a smuggler, it was a good haul and the local cops were pleased.
“And so with my first commendation under my belt, I figured enough was enough and filed a formal complaint against Major Langdon.” She slid back under the bar as Erik vacated the bench. He’d heard this story before, but not from Trace herself — something about some nasty proceedings in her first station posting, not the kind of blood-and-guts tale most were accustomed to hearing about Major Thakur. In retrospect it all seemed a bit anti-climactic. “Which became a total mess, of course. He hated me, his friends hated me, and I had another two months of nasty bullshit from all sides. A few times I got death threats, you know how marines can get if you piss on their boots.”
She started lifting hard, as Erik spotted. “So what did you do?”
“Well Langdon made the mistake of going off-the-record, so he could threaten me. I told him I’d put a bullet in his head, and I didn’t care what happened to me after that because at least I’d have improved the Corp by his removal.”
“Seriously?”
Trace nodded, face strained as she pushed. “I meant it. And he saw I meant it, and that bought me a little space, because he at least realised Kulina don’t bluff. Never go off-the-record against someone who’s less scared and more violent than you.
“The point is that I could have tried to be nice. I could have kept my head down and put up with it. But I was raised to put professionalism above everything. I can forgive any number of sincere fuckups, but I won’t tolerate unprofessional behaviour, above or below my present rank.”
She heaved the bar one last time with a clang, and sat up. “I have my standards. They cause conflict with others, sometimes. That’s okay, it’s not personal, but I know myself and I know what I do well. And if I abandon those standards in order to make other people less upset with me, then I betray myself, and I betray every marine under my command who relies on my standards to help keep them alive. Out here, standards are life and death. As officers, we don’t just enforce standards. We are standards. It comes from here.” She pointed to her hard midriff, eyes firmly upon him. “Now you’re a nice guy. You’re much nicer than I am. But that means compromising with other people, because that’s what nice guys do. I’m telling you you can’t afford it.”
Erik leaned forward on the bar. The gym was too noisy for anyone to overhear, and they were close enough to keep their conversation at lower levels. But he lowered his voice a little more, just in case. “Trace. I appreciate you think I need my butt kicked to get me into shape to command this ship. I appreciate that the jump from third-in-command to first is a big one, and I appreciate that you’ve genuinely helped me make that transition. But I don’t need a personal guru. Seriously.”
She barely blinked. “Yes you do.” He shouldn’t have expected anything else, Erik thought with a sigh. “You know why?”
“Because I’m too nice, too soft, too coddled and too inexperienced, and I need you to put some steel in my belly.” Sarcastically.
“Yes,” she said, with only a hint of humour. “All of that, but mostly this — your current level is here.” She held up a hand, flat and straight. “I think you could get to here.” She raised her hand up a considerable margin. “The further you have to go, the harder the push you’ll need to get there. You’re already one of the best warship pilots in the Fleet, but there’s more to commanding a carrier than fast hands and fancy moves.”
“You’ll never know,” Erik retorted.
“Sure,” said Trace. “But if you don’t think that commanding marines through ten years of combat has taught me a little more about this than three years as LC has taught you, then I’ve got news for you.”
“Fine,” Erik conceded. He was getting much better at arguing with her without getting upset. It was all business to her, and she could say cutting, personal things and mean nothing at all by it… except what she always meant, which was one or another variation of ‘get your shit together’. “So how did you end up on Phoenix after that mess on station duty? People don’t make those complaints mostly because it leaves a black mark on their record, and people with black marks have trouble getting postings like this one.”
“Oh that was always fixed,” Trace said dismissively. “The Captain knew my Academy instructor, Colonel Timothy Khola, and got recommendations from him. I was at the top, and that Langdon bullshit didn’t put the Captain off — he asked a few questions and found that Major Langdon really was an asshole, didn’t affect my progression at all.”
“Ha,” Erik teased. “And people accuse us Debogandes of nepotism.”
Trace frowned. “Is it nepotism when the best people get promoted?”
“My point exactly. What happened to Langdon?”
“Retired a year after I got the Liberty Star. Went into business, used to throw my name about to improve his contacts. Said he used to be my commander, was like a father to me, taught me everything I knew.”
Erik smiled broadly. “Aren’t people great?”
“When I found out I put out a statement saying Langdon was the biggest prick I’d ever served with and the exemplar of everything a marine shouldn’t be. He threatened to sue. A visit from a Kulina rep with a JAG lawyer dissuaded him.”
“Friends in high places, Major,” Erik said with dismay. “Where would you be without friends in high places?”
Trace fought back a smile. “Come on, stop yapping and lift. I’ve seen old ladies who take less time between reps than you.”
10
Phoenix crashed out of jump in Chonki, a sparsely inhabited red dwarf system whose elliptical ring contained more rubble than planets. The astronomers said a major planetary collision billions of years ago had wiped out a few of Chonki’s main worlds, which had in turn pulverised the remainder with debris that had failed to re-coalesce into new worlds. System entry from zenith or nadir was safe enough, Kaspowitz insisted, but anything faster than a mild push along the elliptic would run you headlong into a rock.
“Scan, report!” Erik demanded as they dumped velocity, his forward visual filled with the dull red light of Chonki’s star.
“Feed looks clean,” said Second Lieutenant Geish at Scan. “I’m getting rocks, nothing too close, standby.”
“Nav-buoy signal is coming in clear,” said Shilu from Coms, routing that through to Nav.
“Yeah I got that Coms,” said Kaspowitz, watching navcomp compile a growing picture of their position. “Looks like we’re in the slot, give me thirty seconds to lock it down.”
“Everyone keep their eyes open,” said Erik. “Lots of rocks means a good ambush…”
“Pulse up!” said Geish, and Erik’s heart skipped a beat. Navcomp showed him a position, but couldn’t fix the distance…
“Range?” he demanded.
“I can’t get a clear reading! It’s close, heading 310 plus 68!”
Too close, Erik thought. “Evasive!” and he kicked the attitude thrusters sideways, then slammed on the mains at 6-Gs building to 8 as scan searched for a clearer read. And switched to uplink vocals as the massive weight of Gs made breathing hard and speaking impossible. “Orange alert! Someone tell me who just pulsed and where he is!”
When you came out of jump, and someone was cycling their jump engines right next to your position, that was generally bad news. It was possibly a fluke, and they’d emerged right next to some bewildered freighter… but commanding a combat carrier meant taking no chances.
“Second pulse!” Second Lieutenant Jiri announced from Scan Two. “Heading 100 by minus 170!” All over
the place. Like Phoenix had come out of hyperspace right in the middle of them.
“Red alert! Arms, full lock and prepare to fire!”
“Arms has nothing!” Second Lieutenant Karle retorted. “Come on Scan, get me a feed!”
“Incoming fire!” Geish replied. “Heading…” Erik didn’t hang around to find out, killed thrust, swung them back in the direction of travel, and pulsed hard. Phoenix emerged travelling a significant fraction of light faster than she had been. No doubt their pursuers would now do the same.
“Arms, full engage!” he told Karle in a brief moment of zero-G, as the crew cylinder ceased rotation for combat.
“Full engage aye!” Thud thud thud as Phoenix’s cannons opened up, armscomp laying down its best statistical guess on where that pursuit might be following them. At this heightened speed, Chonki’s rocks were suddenly the same threat that ordinance was. Scan showed Erik a whole field of rocks, big and small ahead… currently none were intersecting with their course, but any one of them could be hiding a new ambush, and he swung them sideways and burned hard to give them more room.
He could see three red dots on scan now, as Geish finally got a feed on who had ambushed them — warships of some kind by the way they were thrusting hard to pursue, pulsing even now to match their racing velocity. If they were smart, they wouldn’t come out of a pulse too close, or their excess velocity would bring them right into Phoenix’s killzone before they could correct.
“I’m only counting three,” Erik told his crew, already calculating ahead for the course needed to hit Kaspowitz’s next jump to Kazak, and escape. “If they know where we’re going they’ll be blocking our next move.”
“I’m getting more ahead!” said Jiri. “Two marks 350 plus 20!”
Their spacing was too wide, Erik saw. Against a less powerful ship the trap would have caught them in a crossfire that increased the statistical likelihood of a hit to near-certainty. But Phoenix accelerated faster than nearly anything else in space, and could string jump pulses together tight, without risk of overload.
“Course shift, hold on,” he announced, and dumped velocity with a massive pulse, flashes on scan as pursuing ordinance overshot. A massive 10-G burn to change course three degrees, then realign and pulse up once more as pursuing warships closed the gap fast. “Arms, target Mark Five, we’re going fast and hard.”
“Aye LC, Mark Five targeted!” Mark Five was what Armscomp was calling that blocking ship ahead, nearly close enough now to be on max visual, a tiny racing dot against the starfield, tail aflame as it burned hard for position.
“Pulse up in five, Helm feed the course.” As Shahaim put that projection into Navcomp, which in turn told Arms where the shot was going to be… and Phoenix shook from a near detonation, defensive arms intercepting something too close for comfort.
“Mark Four is pulsing, tangential intercept!”
“Fire field is red!” Shahaim yelled, as Navcomp calculated all the converging fire from five ships, and suggested they were about to get slammed.
Erik powered them at 11-G, main engines protesting red from overheat, then hit the pulse once more… and threw them forward at huge acceleration…
“We can’t pulse again on this tangential to solar mass!” Kaspowitz yelled at him as they raced toward the target Mark Five.
“Arms acquire starboard!” Erik instructed.
“Arms acquire starboard aye!” said Karle, as Erik turned them side-on for evasive burn, all Phoenix’s weapons blazing. Huge flashes as incoming fire was intercepted, then outgoing fire simply overwhelmed the opposing ship’s defences and it vanished. “Mark Five destroyed!”
“Copy Mark Five destroyed,” Erik said calmly as he swung them again to miss a rock looming ahead, and throw off pursuing fire. The ship designated Mark One pulsed hard to chase… and came out a little closer than was wise, trajectory curling outward on the solar gravity slope. Scan showed its fire cutting across Phoenix from that angle, aiming to intercept somewhere ahead of them, and Erik swung them evasive once more with a thundering roar from the mains, blurring vision and a gasp for more oxygen. “Mark One predictive,” he formulated, and tumbled them abruptly end-over-end to brake hard in their direction of travel, as Mark One was suddenly paralleling them to one side.
Weapons thudded as rounds went outgoing on a pattern spread ahead of Mark One, acceleration 20-Gs with self-correcting guidance, the warheads would hit just about anything they were fired at within their cone of vision, so long as nothing intercepted them, or the target didn’t abruptly move elsewhere… which in FTL combat it almost always did.
“Marks Three and Four just pulsed up!” came Geish’s formulation in his ear. “Parallel course heading…”
“I see them,” said Erik. Getting into a one-on-one shooting match with Phoenix was a very bad idea — Phoenix simply had too much firepower and would intercept or dodge nearly anything a single lesser warship could throw at them. But if he let three warships bracket them on parallel course simultaneously… Jump lines read green and he dumped velocity abruptly as the chasing ships raced by, and once-distant ordinance came racing up real fast. But once he hit the 11-G corrective burn, as everything shook and crew gasped and hissed upon the edge of unconsciousness, none of the other vessels could change direction as fast. Two-degrees course change and he pulsed once more, racing up on the far side of Mark One as his two friends struggled to swing across and cover.
Having dumped velocity as well, Mark One realised the mistake and pulsed up, but not as hard and lacking traction upon the solar gravity slope, and now found himself isolated and without friends in the kill-zone of a warship that outgunned him by four-to-one.
“Get him now!” Second Lieutenant Harris was shouting, but Karle was already firing as scan showed the jump field attempting to reestablish about Mark One, but too many pulses too close together and a smaller warship would find the jumplines struggling to recharge in time.
Several small flashes from interceptions, then a big one, and Mark One’s signal broke apart to become several.
“Burning on intercept,” Erik announced, swinging them once more and roaring the thrust as he set off toward Marks Three and Four. Mark Two was now well behind, and the third and fourth warships saw the human battle carrier thundering toward them with more blood on its mind, and fired up their jump fields.
“They’re leaving!” Geish announced as he saw it first, and then Mark Three dumped hard and went evasive, attempting to correct course toward some preset escape route. Mark Four followed, then a pulse arrived from far behind as Mark Two jumped, having already set off on an escape run up the gravity slope.
For a brief moment, Erik considered pursuing. But there were large pieces of their second victim still roughly parallel to their present course, and a reasonable chance some of the crew quarters would still be intact, and perhaps even a few live crew left to question.
“Helm, lay me an intercept course on Mark One,” he announced, swinging them once more and laying on the thrust. “We’re going to go and see if anyone’s still alive over there.”
“Aye LC,” said Shahaim. “I’ll get you a final course just as soon as we’re close enough to see which is the crew quarters.” If the crew quarters still existed at all — they’d hit it pretty hard, and Phoenix ordinance was not merciful.
“Major Thakur, I have an intelligence mop-up for you,” said Erik, watching the course indicator projected onto his irises edge around by fractions of a degree with every few seconds of thrust. “Give me status and a boarding plan as soon as we have a visual, if you please.”
“Copy LC,” came Trace’s voice from midships, where she typically rode out combat jumps in full armour with the rest of her marines, strapped into an acceleration sling. “Delta Platoon is on standby, Lieutenant Crozier will handle this one directly, Echo and Command are reserve.” Meaning Trace was not going to take this one herself for once. About damn time, Erik thought.
“I copy that Major, give me an a
ssessment ASAP.” Marines were the experts on how to get aboard wrecked ships, and in guessing how long it would take, and what the dangers were. “Scan, keep your eyes peeled for more contacts, lots of rocks about and places to hide.”
“Aye LC.”
Three minutes’ hard burn brought them up behind the tumbling wreckage, then Erik flipped them end-over-end for a slightly softer decelerating burn, as scan finally identified which part of the ruined steel had been the crew quarters.
“Scancomp says it’s likely a dekanur-class, probably an X-5,” Geish announced, as Erik eased the thrust back to a gentle 4-Gs on approach.
“That would match their performance,” Shahaim affirmed. “Mains reading within parameters, systems flush in progress.” After a huge series of burns, the engines needed to take a gasp and refresh themselves, and the boarding would be their chance.
The remains came clear on Erik’s screen for the first time — about thirty large pieces and countless small ones, a cloud of independently moving debris, with some big, further-flung bits tumbling in the distance. Less than half the original ship, and clearly this bit had been the crew cylinder, though one side was largely stripped away, exposing inner corridors all mashed together like tin foil.
“Yeah, his ammo blew,” Geish observed the obvious. His voice was grim, and not at all triumphant. It was always a sobering reminder, to see the mess that modern weapons could make of a warship. Phoenix was more than a weapon to its crew — it was a home, a fortress, a place of life and character, and had perhaps even a soul. No doubt this ship had seemed the same to its crew, also. And in the blink of an eye, had been turned into this.
“Helm, get me a docking angle,” said Erik, easing thrust back further. “We’re going to have to give it a nudge. Major, you looking at this?”
“I see it. I figure there’s probably survivors on the far side of that crew cylinder. Are we on full recovery, or intelligence gathering only?” Anyone they left on this wreck was going to die, and slowly. Its transponder was dead, the only possible rescuers were those who had seen the fight, and knew where to look. Anyone else, entering blind into a vast solar system of any scale with no idea what had happened, had as much chance of spotting a single moving shipwreck as a golfer had of hitting a hundred holes-in-one in a row. Spacer code typically dictated that randomly encountered vessels in distress must be rendered every assistance, regardless of species or politics. When that vessel had just tried to kill you, discretion was allowed.
Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) Page 12
