by Mark Wandrey
“The courier has been cleared through,” the comms operator confirmed.
“Any more traffic scheduled?” Yackyl asked.
“No sir,” SitCon replied.
“Very well.” Yackyl released his hold on the command station and shoved himself toward one of the CIC’s exits. “I’ll be in my wardroom. Klakys, you have command.”
“Yes sir,” his XO said. He floated over to grasp the commander’s station like his captain had. Several of the other bridge crew looked after the departed captain, then at the XO.
“Why is he so angry?” the most senior staff member asked.
“He’s upset he didn’t get overall command.”
“Still?” someone else asked. The XO shrugged. The crew worked at their duties for a while, each doing their best to make the contract successful and profitable.
A short time later a message drone arrived at high speed. They were common and since the message wasn’t for the picket fleet, it wasn’t interfered with. The sensor tech did notice its high speed, and it beamed a secure message to the stargate before shooting by into deep space. Its purpose complete, its fuel spent, it would be just another piece of space junk for eternity.
Hours passed. Watch on picket duty was tedious. The sensor tech thought he picked up a fusion torch drive plume. He directed more intense sensor readings to that quadrant of space, but only got tiny intermittent bursts. More like electromagnetic bursts from attitude motors, though far more powerful than he’d ever seen before. He watched the phenomenon and began to wonder if it could have a natural cause. It seemed to be getting closer.
The radio operator received a dispatch from fleet command. It was the scheduled update, which came through four times per solar cycle. But as the tech was scanning through the messages, he found one that was out of place. A ship had arrived in system some hours ago, a warship which had blown through the defending Bakulu squadron like they weren’t there. One frigate had been destroyed, another put out of action. The dispatch said it was a single cruiser of unknown design. Why hadn’t this message been sent flash traffic to the rest of the fleet? He activated the intercom.
“Captain?”
“What is it?”
“There is something in the hourly dispatch you should see.” The tech sent the data to his captain’s personal slate.
“More of my brother’s grandstanding?” Yackyl mumbled as he picked up his slate. He’d been reviewing communications from the company command on a possible follow-up mission, and he planned to find out what the radio operator thought was so important, reprimand him when it turned out to be nothing, and get back to important business. After reading for a few seconds, he fairly shot out of his wardroom and back into the CIC. The crew spun around in surprise. “Inform the fleet there was an incursion at the transition point almost five hours ago!”
SitCon shook his head in consternation. What idiot wouldn’t consider that important? “What happened?” he asked the captain.
“A single cruiser shot its way through the Bakulu squadron on defensive overwatch,” the captain said. “It destroyed a frigate and disabled a second.” The SitCon laughed.
“Were they incompetent? I thought the Bakulu were a good naval race.”
“Data indicates it was the Human ship Pegasus, of the mercenary company Winged Hussars.”
The SitCon stopped laughing and looked back at his board. Now it made more sense; the Winged Hussars were an elite unit. Even though they possessed no ships bigger than a battlecruiser, he’d heard stories that strained all credibility. Most of those stories were of this Pegasus, and they all ended in disaster for whoever faced her. What had seemed humorous a moment ago had quickly taken on a deadly edge.
The sensor tech turned back and looked at his board. His already wide eyes nearly bugged out of his head in shock.
“Ship in the threat box!” he barked.
“How?” the captain demanded. “Nothing was noted from the planet or any of the outlying escorts!”
“Unknown,” the tech said and fed his data to the SitCon.
“Confirmed,” SitCon said. “It’s a single ship. Entropy, it is moving fast! Heading straight toward the picket. Range one seventh of a light second!”
“How did they get so close?” the captain wondered in amazement.
“Battle stations!” Klakys, the XO yelled. “Crew to battle stations! Scramble drones, inform the fleet!”
The picket had guarded the stargate without incident for more than a week. Until now, every time they’d had an incident, the crew had had an hour or more to prepare. During that time, the commander of Ardent Grove, bored and unhappy with his assignment, never once ran any drills. Now, with the battle claxons sounding on the flag ship and the rest of the squadron, the crews mostly took their time preparing for what they thought would be another boring encounter with a defiant merchant trying to escape the embargo.
“Identity confirmed,” SitCon said, turning to the captain, “it’s the Pegasus.”
* * *
“What do we have, Glick?” Alexis asked. The CIC’s massive Tri-V displays all showed forward views as Pegasus fell toward the stargate at a phenomenal speed. The SitCon replied instantly.
“Defense of the stargate is presented in a typical denial formation,” he bubbled. “There is a single Thrush-class battleship, two Petal-class battlecruisers, five Bloom-class frigates, and at least fifty interceptors. I can’t tell what models those are.”
Sections of the Tri-V showed the various classes of Maki-designed ships and capabilities. The battleship was, of course, a monster compared to Pegasus. The beast was five times their size, with 10 times the firepower. They were more than a match for any two of the battlecruisers, or even all the frigates. But as a combined squadron, especially with the interceptors, Pegasus would be no more than a passing annoyance. Alexis had known a formidable force would be on highguard, and that’s why she had elected to thread the needle.
“What’s your confidence on the stargate, Chug?”
“We’re on course,” the helmsman confirmed. We’ll pass through the center with an error of plus/minus 1,000 feet.”
“What size gate is this?” Paka asked.
“One mile across,” the Bakulu helmsman replied. They’d performed final course corrections while more than a million miles away, to avoid detection. The final hour they came in cold. “I can correct in the last 10 seconds if I have attitude control.”
“No,” Alexis said, “I want weapons and defense to have it.” She scrunched up her brow in consternation. A thousand feet either way was way too close for comfort with only five thousand feet total to deal with. This was where you trusted your crew.
“Distance to stargate is 26,000 miles,” Chug said. “Velocity stable at 217 miles per second. Eta to stargate T-minus two minutes.”
“Prepare for combat,” Alexis ordered, “battle stations.” The ship-wide claxon sounded. “Status on the picket ships, Edwards?”
“They are not maneuvering,” the small man replied, “and I show no signs of shield emissions.”
“Got them flat-footed,” Paka snarled, her teeth glinting in the red-tinged light.
“Charge the main gun,” Alexis ordered.
“Target?” Edwards asked.
“Whatever is closest to our bearing to the stargate. Avoid hitting the stargate at all costs. You may fire at will.”
Edwards’ grin became feral, while on the Tri-V, the mile-wide stargate was growing fast.
* * *
“What is taking so long?” Captain Yackyl roared. Of all the stations on the battleship Ardent Grove, only shields had responded. Of course, it was the easiest to answer the call, taking the least crew and preparation to operate. As he watched the sluggish response of not only his flagship, but the entire squadron, he suddenly realized just floating here and chewing his anger was probably not the best decision of his career.
The huge Tri-V that wrapped around the battleship’s CIC showed all the capital sh
ips in his squadron. The frigates were hundreds of miles away, arrayed in a circle around Ardent Grove. The battlecruisers were only a dozen miles away, one to either side. As luck would have it, he was glaring at the one to port when a flash of light made him blink his sensitive eyes. It had been a pencil thin beam of pure crackling energy cutting across the entire screen, and through the battlecruiser. A split second later, the warship exploded into a ball of expanding fire, debris, and gas.
“Shields full!” Yackyl screamed, “Get us maneuvering power now…now you entropy-cursed tail hangers, NOW!” He was almost in full panic mode as he cried out the last. It was only five seconds after the first battlecruiser died that another flash cut the screen. This one was moving slightly, so it didn’t score a direct center of mass hit on the second battlecruiser. Instead the 40-terawatt beam cut the battlecruiser into two almost equal halves. A split second later the crippled ship’s shields flashed to life, too late, then almost immediately went out as secondary explosions played along the scalpel-precise cut.
Erratic and uncontrolled, the battleship’s engines lit and she began to maneuver. Her shields began to come on, but not in any coordinated manner. The captain kept up a constant litany of chittering curses, certain his ship would be the victim of the powerful energy weapon any second. What cursed right did a cruiser, a cruiser, have to possess such a powerful weapon? The biggest guns he had were a pair of bay mounted 20-terawatt particle cannons designed for use against battleships.
“Enemy cruiser entering point blank range!” the SitCon barked. “Point defenses are coming on line.”
“Array all defenses against potential missile-” The sensor tech cut him off.
“Incoming missile storm!”
“Engage the missiles,” the captain yelled, “where are my main guns?”
“One main gunnery station has reported,” the SitCon said. “However, it’s on the port side, opposite the incoming enemy.”
“Shoot something at that ship! Fire the turrets on automatic if necessary, but fire!”
“The stargate has been activated,” the navigator said, confused. “Who ordered it?”
“That message drone,” the SitCon moaned.
“What message drone?!” the captain bellowed, nearly incoherent with rage. The SitCon grasped his station with a death’s grip and shook in fear and anger, then saw something new.
“We can’t engage the missiles,” he reported.
“Why?” the captain demanded.
“Because we’re not the target.”
* * *
The frigates were barely under power, but at least they were maneuvering. It didn’t help as a storm of 48 ship-killers in two waves of 24 flashed down on them at hundreds of miles per second. Their defensive lasers engaged, but thanks to the incoming speed of the missiles, it was at a much closer range than normal. Nuclear fire flashed in a rippling wave of destruction across the entire squadron. Many of the missiles in the second wave had no target because all the frigates were severely damaged, or simply gone. As they’d been programmed, the second wave of missiles sought alternate targets. Fifteen of the unshielded interceptors were annihilated by nuclear explosions in a display of epic overkill. In just seconds, Pegasus had swept all the Maki frigates from the black.
Pegasus flashed into the midst of the shattered remains of the once proud squadron of Guardian Forest merc warships, which was now reduced to a single battleship and 35 terrified and scattering interceptors.
The SitCon on the Ardent Grove saw a green light appear on the starboard particle pulse-battery. Without waiting to inform the nearly apoplectic captain, he transferred fire control to the TacCom who’d been plotting the inbound enemy ship helplessly. The battery of five two-terawatt particle guns blazed fire at the streaking Pegasus.
Broadsides just didn’t happen in space combat. It wasn’t like old sailing ships, because you never knew what side would be facing the enemy. Weapons emplacements were uniformly distributed on larger warships to allow them to fight in any direction. Only smaller ships and specialized capital ships had weapons which faced just one direction. Even the ancient designers of the Winged Hussars flagship had given her formidable omnidirectional weapons, as well as her main forward-facing punch. But this battle, brief as it was, wasn’t normal.
As the Pegasus flashed by, the two capital ships were within a dozen miles of each other, and side by side, as well. Pegasus had been waiting for the pass and unleashed all her lasers and missiles as she went by. The Ardent Grove had only partially succeeded in getting her shields up. Fifteen of Pegasus’ 24 laser turrets pulsed 100-megawatt bursts of energy into the battleship in a strobing line as they passed. Even at a 20-millisecond pulse, each turret only got two shots on target before the ship flashed past.
Twenty-one laser pulses passed through the battleship’s inactive shields. Eleven splashed against armor or were deflected off more reflective points. The remaining 10 penetrated Ardent Grove’s primary hull. Three tore through non-essential spaces. Four punched through the battleship’s number two reaction mass tank, causing multiple geysers of fluid to flow into space. The remaining three hit a sensor array, a shield generator, and a hyperspace node. The latter caused a chain reaction which disabled all the nodes on that quadrant of the ship and overloaded the computer which controlled them.
Ardent Grove’s fire was much less timed, or coordinated. Her particle cannon only pulsed four times a second, which meant each of the five cannons with a bearing on Pegasus only got one chance to hit the target before the cruiser flashed by. Of the five, two hit the ship. One went almost squarely through Deck 10, only missing the ship’s all-important spine by feet. The two-foot-wide energy beam destroyed a dozen enlisted quarters and killed one young rating who was in bed recovering from an illness. He and his quarters were destroyed, and it would take days for anyone to realize he was vaporized with the room. The last took a chunk out of Deck Two, wrecking one of the forward missile tubes.
Alexis held on as the ship shuddered from the impacts. The final moments of their flight had passed in what felt like two quick heartbeats. The weapons fired automatically, as Edwards had programmed. One moment the stargate was a spot on the Tri-V, the next it grew like a stone thrown at her face. She unconsciously gritted her teeth and fought to keep from flinching. If the stargate didn’t activate as she’d requested via that message drone…
The timing was insane. If they’d requested the stargate to open a minute sooner it would have cycled and shut down before they got there. A minute later and they’d have already flashed through its aperture without going anywhere. As it was, Alexis saw space distort five second before they reached the ring of asteroids which held the massive hyperspace shunts. She knew her ship was firing at the battleship as it went by, hoping for a lucky shot, but all she could do was watch the approaching stargate. Death loomed. Quick, final, and brutal death. Then in the blink of an eye they were annihilated, and recreated in hyperspace.
“We’re through,” Chug confirmed. He examined a readout. “Cleared the stargate with 322 feet to spare.”
“We have damage,” Guylan, the DCC said.
“Report,” Paka said.
“Two impacts,” he said and described the results. “The shields blunted them, a little.”
“Two terawatts packs quite a punch,” Edwards remarked.
“Tell that to those Maki battlecruisers!” Flipper bubbled. Everyone looked at each other, and the bridge erupted in laughter and a few cheers. It had worked spectacularly.
“What’s the kill count?” Alexis asked Flipper who was playing the final seconds repeatedly on a series of small Tri-V monitors, his sharp eyes looking for details.
“Both battlecruisers were hit. The first exploded; the second was cut in half. They might be able to salvage that one; I don’t know. The missile waves took out all five frigates and a handful of interceptors. We also strafed the battleship with laser fire on the way by, as planned.” An image froze on his Tri-V. The battles
hip’s side, the image blurred by their velocity, despite the high-speed, high-resolution camera. It was hard to get a good picture when passing at several hundred miles per second, especially when the camera only had the ship in frame for 0.002 seconds. Despite this, the picture showed several clear penetrations of the battleship’s shields and hull. “I can’t believe they were that unprepared.”
Alexis shook her head in amazement. It was one of the most one-sided battles she’d ever commanded. The Maki were much better than that, and they’d just gotten their asses handed to them. If she’d known they were that ineffective, she didn’t think she would have hit them quite that hard. There could be some blowback.
“Dispatch damage control teams,” she ordered Guylan. “Stand down from battle stations.” The damage control coordinator hissed his ascent and went to work.
“Chug, try to find a way to slow our velocity after emergence.”
“Will do, Captain.” Alexis looked up at the clock, 169:58:12 remained.
“At least we don’t have to worry about trouble in Karma,” Paka quipped.
“Why is that?” Alexis asked.
“Because if there’s fighting in a guild hub like that, we’re all dead, anyway.”
* * *
“Can we maneuver or not?” Captain Yackyl demanded.
The harried DCC was sweeping his hand back and forth, trying to make sense out of some of the mixed signals his system was sending. It looked like they’d taken nine hits from the Earth ship’s lasers as it went by. The targeting accuracy had to be insane to get off that many shots as they went by. A fraction of a second was all they had, and dozens of laser beams stuck home. Luckily, most were absorbed by Ardent Grove’s powerful shields…except that some of those shields hadn’t been up at the time.
“I’m still checking, sir,” he said to his increasingly erratic and impatient commander. He could tell several of the lasers only hit work spaces or other non-essential internal structures. One of the reaction mass tanks was hulled and leaking. Space was freezing the escaping water, though it wasn’t an effective solution so he’d begun transferring as much as he could to the other two tanks. The loss of reaction mass was a potential problem because it was becoming obvious the captain meant to pursue the entropy-cursed Humans into hyperspace!
