by David Weber
And then, without a whisper of warning, Odin had blown up. Jaeger’s brain was still reeling over that when Llyn’s freighter had also disintegrated.
Jaeger didn’t have one single clue what the hell had just happened.
“Sir, we’re picking up impeller signatures, range two-point-five million kilometers,” Loki’s tactical officer spoke up, her voice holding disbelief and sudden dread. “Directly between us and Bergen Two.”
“Numbers?”
“We make it ten, Sir.” The TO said, her dread edging toward panic. “At least one battlecruiser, probably three or four cruisers. The rest are showing as destroyers; CIC thinks one may be a frigate.”
Jaeger inhaled deeply, trying to think. With Odin and two Thu’bans gone—and Copperhead too far away to be of any use, even if it managed to escape—all he had left were Loki, Aldebaran, Fomalhaut, and Shirokawa. Loki was slow, but it had a disproportionately heavy throw weight in a missile engagement.
But if that truly was a Havenite battlecruiser out there, it was probably a Saintonge-class. Loki’s chances against that kind of modern heavyweight weren’t good. Adding that to his two-to-one numerical disadvantage…
Fine. He who fights and runs away…“All units, Execute Himmel Rakete,” he said sharply. “Signal Shirokawa to remain in company with us.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then—
“Executing Himmel Rakete,” his maneuvering officer said.
* * *
“Sir, the enemy is dispersing,” Lieutenant Ravel said.
“Scatter maneuver,” Marcello said softly, watching the plot.
Lisa nodded to herself as she gazed at the tac display. Whoever was in command over there had run the odds, come to the logical conclusion, and was wasting no time in getting the hell out. The brutally truncated Swenson One had blossomed, spreading out from a common center like the bursting of a celebration skyrocket. They were splitting up to flee on four—no, only three—headings, spaced 120° apart.
“Their accelerations are increasing,” Ravel continued. “Not uniformly. It looks like two of the cruisers—probably Aldebaran and Fomalhaut—are proceeding independently. Flag is redesignating them Swenson Two and Swenson Three. The third seems to be staying in company with the remaining battlecruiser. Flag is redesignating them Swenson Four and Swenson One. We’re still not positive whether Swenson One is Odin or Loki at this point, but Saintonge’s CIC thinks it’s Loki.”
“If it’s Loki, Swenson Four’s probably Shirokawa,” Lisa murmured to Marcello. “She’s the slowest of their cruisers.”
She checked the numbers, ran a quick plot. It would be close.
“Enemy acceleration is settling down,” Ravel said after a moment. “Swenson Two and Three are at two-point-two-niner KPS squared. Swenson One and Four are at two-point-one-six.”
Lisa winced. Or not.
“I guess that’s that,” Marcello murmured, echoing Lisa’s own conclusion. “If Two and Three are the Antares-class ships, that’s a ninety-five-percent acceleration setting.”
“And if One is Loki, that’s about the same setting for her,” Lisa agreed. “If it’s Odin, it’s only about eighty-six percent.” She scowled. “Probably settles the question of which one she is. Not that it matters a lot to us.”
“I’m afraid not,” Marcello agreed.
Swenson One’s current acceleration was eight gravities higher than Damocles’ maximum acceleration with no safety margin at all. For that matter, it was higher than either of the older Havenite destroyers could manage at zero-margin compensator settings, and no commander in his right mind could justify going to a zero margin to pursue a clearly defeated and fleeing enemy.
Lisa looked back at the slow-motion skyrocket. Yet another galling example of the RMN’s obsolescence. When the enemy’s slower battlecruiser could pull a higher acceleration than a destroyer massing less than a quarter of its tonnage, it was time to start upgrading compensators.
“Signal from Flag, Sir,” Ulvestad said.
“Put it through.”
Charnay’s face appeared on the com display.
“I’m sure you’ve seen the acceleration numbers,” the commodore said.
“Yes, Sir,” Marcello said. “Afraid we’re not quite fleet-footed enough.”
“Not your fault. For that matter, Hache de Guerre and Poignard are no fleeter of foot than you are.”
Marcello nodded—agreement, apology, or commiseration, Lisa couldn’t tell which. “Orders, Sir?”
“I don’t like to do it,” Charnay said, “but I see no alternative to breaking the squadron into divisions. Topaze, Courageux, Aigrett, and Saintonge will go after Swenson One and Swenson Four. I’m sending Jocelyne Pellian, Jean-Claude Courtois, and Intrépide after Swenson Two. Unfortunately, that means Swenson Three is very likely going to get away clean.”
“Yes, Sir, Marcello said, and Lisa could see her own frustration hidden behind the calmness of his expression.
Bringing a fleeing enemy to action short of the hyper-limit was seldom easy if the enemy in question didn’t want to fight. In this case, despite the pirates’ ability to generate velocity perpendicular to their initial vector, they couldn’t avoid interception, because their original vector would force them to overrun Charnay’s pursuing vessels whether they wanted to or not. What they could do—or at least attempt—was create enough separation to guarantee extended engagement ranges and limited engagement time. If they could stay at the three to four-hundred-thousand-kilometer long-missile range and maneuver to keep her impeller wedge interposed, it would be impossible for a single pursuer to generate a firing angle. In order to force Swenson One to turn and fight, it would be necessary to get someone into position to fire directly up her kilt, and that required multiple platforms. In fact, Charnay was spreading himself dangerously thin to go after even two of the pirates.
Still, the pursuit was beginning deep inside the hyper-sphere. That, combined with Saintonge’s higher base acceleration rate, meant Charnay could probably overhaul Loki short of the limit in a stern chase even if the other battlecruiser crossed his initial missile range undamaged.
“I’m leaving Hache de Guerre and Poignard behind with you,” Charnay continued. “You’ll be the senior captain, so command will devolve on you. I want you to begin decelerating and prepare to conduct search and rescue operations along the pirates’ original vector.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Lisa saw Marcello’s eyebrows twitch. “Of course, Sir.”
Charnay evidently saw the eyebrow thing, too. “I understand your skepticism, Captain,” Charnay said. “Frankly, I have no idea what the hell happened out there. But I’d really like to find out. And it is at least remotely possible Baird managed to get himself or at least his wife and daughters off in a life pod between the time the pirates started decelerating and when all the shooting started. It’s not likely, but if there are civilians out there who managed to not get killed, it’s our job to keep them that way.”
“Understood, Sir.”
“Then we’ll see you later, Captain,” Charnay said more formally. “Charnay, clear.”
The com display blanked, and Marcello sighed.
“You heard the Commodore, Chief Ulvestad,” he said. “Contact the other skippers and let’s set up some coordination.”
“Yes, Sir,” Ulvestad replied.
Lisa sat back in her own command couch, listening with half an ear as Ulvestad started her dual conversation, watching the icons of the hunters and the hunted accelerate steadily away from Damocles.
She checked the chrono, mentally shaking her head. After the hours and hours spent waiting, anticipating, planning, and watching Charnay’s plan proceed perfectly, it had all come apart in less than ten minutes. Indeed, only seven minutes had elapsed since the pirate battlecruiser and Banshee had blown up.
And now more hours would stretch out as the survivors fled across the star system.
Travis had had it right, she decided, trying t
o remember the exact words of his quote. War: ninety percent boredom and ten percent screaming panic. Something like that, anyway.
She exhaled a quiet sigh. Some things, apparently, never changed.
* * *
“Well, that’s that,” Llyn said, sitting in the copilot seat of the special ops shuttle.
And with the drama over, it was time to turn his mind to other things.
Such as doing something extra nice for Hester.
The obvious answer was a raise or bonus. That was his plan for Rhamas and Katura and the rest of their crews.
But Hester? What would she even do with extra money?
There was no question that he had to do something. Hester was the reason, after all, that everyone else was still alive.
She’d started by cracking the Volsungs’ com encryption, which was the task Llyn had first set for her. But that hadn’t been the end of it. She’d next tackled the software of the bomb Gensonne had surreptitiously placed on Banshee’s hull, the Volsung’s rather ham-handed insurance policy.
He’d never decided whether Gensonne had expected the bomb to go undetected, or whether he’d expected Llyn to spot it and thus recognize the sword hanging over his head. The deadman protocol Gensonne had built into it rather argued for the latter idea, since Llyn would know that messing with the bomb or running out of range of the reset signal would mean his death.
Sadly for Gensonne, he hadn’t known about Hester. Nor would it ever have entered his petty little mind that Llyn’s eccentric genius would give him access to the bomb’s programming long before they reached Danak. The system had continued to respond properly to each of Gensonne’s reset signals, but unbeknownst to the admiral he’d been locked out of the actual detonation command and sequence.
Llyn could have removed it anytime he wished after that, but it had been a handy way to get rid of Banshee. He had no doubt that Captain Jaeger and Loki would react by blowing the freighter out of space seconds after her concealed energy torpedoes took down Odin and sent Gensonne’s inconvenient secrets into eternity. But the bomb had guaranteed the freighter’s complete destruction.
And that was almost as important as ensuring Gensonne’s silence. He couldn’t very well let anyone discover Banshee’s unique capabilities, or to query her computers about who’d built her and where she’d been over the last few years.
Now, given the timing, Haven and Danak would have little choice but to conclude that the shadowy mastermind behind the Volsungs’ most recent operations had been killed by the vengeful Gensonne when he realized he’d been betrayed.
Meanwhile, he, Rhamas, and Rhamas’ crew had an appointment to keep.
Llyn, like most Axelrod operatives, liked to keep a few aces up his sleeve. Banshee’s second shuttle, tucked away out of sight and out of paperwork in the Number Two cargo hold, was one such ace. Even someone who’d examined its normal radar signature might not have realized just how stealthy the design actually was, since it incorporated strategically placed radar reflectors to strengthen its return when Llyn wanted to appear more or less normal.
In full stealth mode, however, those reflectors disappeared under sliding panels of radar-absorbent synthetic. On top of that, the shuttle used a special version of cold thrust—far more expensive than conventional thrusters, and with a significantly lower maximum acceleration, but with a thermal signature that was so low as to be virtually undetectable.
The only downside was that the extra equipment meant the living space was somewhat restricted. Still, it was large enough to accommodate all of Banshee’s small crew, certainly for the short length of time they would be penned up inside.
For the first five minutes after separation from Banshee, they’d simply drifted while Gensonne and his ships continued accelerating away from them toward Bergen 2. Then, with the Volsungs a safe seven million kilometers away, Rhamas had fired up the cold-thrust engine, expending virtually all of the shuttle’s reaction mass on a fifty-minute, eight-gravity burn. The end result had been a paltry 235 KPS of velocity, but a more than satisfactory 350,000 kilometers of distance from its original vector.
Gensonne’s turnover and deceleration towards his zero-zero with Bergen 2 had reversed the original process, with the ballistic shuttle now starting to catch up with the slowing Volsung fleet. But the additional side vector, along with the shuttle’s inherently stealthy design, had meant little danger it would stray into Gensonne’s detection range. By the time the velocities equalized once again, sixty-six minutes after separation and thirty-three minutes after the beginning of Gensonne’s deceleration, Llyn was over half a million kilometers off the Volsungs’ course.
Easy range for passive sensors against a starship. Against the shuttle, those same passive sensors were well-nigh useless, and they were well beyond the range at which any active sensors might have found such a stealthy target.
By the time Banshee executed her final instructions, it would be just thirty-six minutes until the shuttle once again crossed the hyper-limit.
Where Pacemaker would find it, rendezvous with it, take its passengers on board, and shake the dust of Danak from its sandals forever.
Llyn smiled out at the stars. No, not money. Not for Hester. Maybe a nice new chess program, something she couldn’t take nine falls out of ten.
Yes. That would make the dear, crazy, frustrating, indispensable genius happy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Com request from Bergen Two, Sir,” Chief Ulvestad said.
“Put it up,” Marcello ordered.
The image of Floyd Koski, the Jerriais Consortium’s manager for Bergen 2, appeared upon the main com display.
The Danakan looked less than delighted. Lisa could hardly blame him.
The stream of follow-up reports from the debacle at Bergen 3 were getting worse and worse. The casualty totals were horrendous and continued to climb, and at least two of Bergen 3’s platforms were total losses.
And Brigadier Massingill was among the seriously wounded. That was the one that dug most deeply into Lisa’s gut.
It could have been worse. Bergen 3 had been chosen as the ambush site because any damage to it would risk far fewer lives and be a far lighter blow to the Jerriais development plan than either of the other two platforms. But that was little more than the coldest of comforts.
“Captain Marcello,” Koski said as Marcello’s face appeared on his own display. His voice was taut, and it was clear he was struggling to remain civil.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Koski,” Marcello greeted him in turn. “What can I do for you?”
“I’ve been asked to relay a report to you,” Koski said after the half second time lag. “DTC appears to be having some difficulty maintaining communications with Pacemaker.”
“Excuse me?”
“Traffic Control is unable to get a response from Pacemaker,” Koski said with strained patience. “They wondered if you or Commodore Charnay might have some idea what she’s up to.”
“As far as I know, she’s not up to anything,” Marcello replied. “May I ask why DTC is worried?”
“Because she’s accelerating across the inner system at just over two KPS squared,” Koski said. “She didn’t alert DTC to any change in flight plan, and she’s not responding to their hails. They’re wondering if Captain Katura is proceeding under orders from Commodore Charnay.”
“To the best of my knowledge, Captain Katura’s sole concern was to recover Master Baird and his family,” Marcello said. “My understanding was that Pacemaker would return to Danak Alpha orbit and wait out the engagement.”
“That was our understanding, as well,” Koski said, his civility starting to sound even more strained. “Are you saying Commodore Charnay hasn’t given Katura new instructions?”
“Not as far as I’m aware,” Marcello said. “Do we know where she’s headed?”
Koski looked somewhere off screen.
“You should have it now.”
“XO?” Marcello prompted.
> “I’ve got it, Sir,” Lisa said, keying the incoming vector data onto Damocles’ navigation plot.
She frowned. Pacemaker’s projected vector cut a chord across the Danak system that would take her at least fourteen light-minutes clear of Damocles or any of the surviving Volsungs and their Havenite pursuers.
What was Katura up to?
“So?” Koski prompted.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any idea what he’s doing,” Marcello said. “It looks like he’s running.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Koski said darkly. “I find that highly suspicious. Under the circumstances, my government would very much like another conversation with him.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Marcello said. “I’m sorry I don’t have any further information for you.”
“I rather doubted you would,” Koski said with a touch of acid. “Let us know if the SAR effort bears any fruit. Koski, clear.”
His image disappeared.
“I don’t think President Nelson’s going to get that chat, Sir,” Lisa said. “Did you note where Pacemaker’s vector crosses the hyper-limit?”
Marcello frowned at the plot. “Well,” he said, his face clearing just a little. “Damn.”
Lisa nodded, feeling her lips compress. On Pacemaker’s currently projected heading, she would cross the hyper-limit less than four light-seconds from the point at which Banshee would have crossed had she survived and maintained her own heading.
“You think Katura’s on his way to pick up a survivor from Swenson One?” Marcello asked.
“I don’t see any other reason why he’d pick that particular spot,” Lisa said. “It’s certainly not the closest route to the hyper limit from his original position.
For a moment Marcello was silent.
“I suppose we could be generous and assume he’s simply playing backstop for any life pods from Banshee that we missed,” he said. “But I doubt you believe that any more than I do.”
“No, Sir.” Lisa shook her head. “This whole thing stinks to high heaven. Katura spun a good story, and for a while everything seemed to be going exactly as anticipated. But after what happened to Odin and Banshee…”
