by R. M. Meluch
“I’m sneering, too.”
“Difference is the tanks and the cavalry were on ground that favored the tank. I’m going to fly a Cessna under the Iron Curtain and land it in Red Square.”
“Low-tech tricks don’t win wars.”
“And all this is my last line of defense,” Farragut admitted. “This is for when I’m backed against my own bulks by a Roman boarding party carrying jammable two-stage weapons and radiation armor. I can say hello with a one-stage open-up-your-skin weapon with considerable intimidation value.” He pulled a Civil War era sword off the admiral’s wall and whistled it through the air with all Farragut’s sizable mass and strength behind it.
The admiral jerked back on reflex. Recovered, as Farragut had come to a peaceful halt. “Possibly. Do put that back. It’s quite valuable.”
Farragut did.
“Not saying I approve,” said Mishindi. “I don’t—but I’ve never put a leash on you, and I’ve never been sorry for that. Anyone else, I’d reel you in. But you are who you are, and your alarming casualty rate is on a marked down-tick. So I’m going to let you run with this, John. Don’t make me sorry.”
Farragut saluted, awaited dismissal. The admiral held up a finger to signal pause as his com burred a red chime.
Farragut waited through the yes, yes, I see, and the thank you, to the end of the transmission. Admiral Mishindi returned his attention to Captain Farragut. Asked soberly, “How much faith do you have in your ‘backup’ system?”
“We’re good to go as soon as the primaries are.”
“The primaries aren’t. But I need you now, ready or not.”
An expectant inhale. “Rome broke the cease-fire!”
Mishindi shook his head no. Rome did not. “We did. As we speak a U.S. strike force is crossing into Roman space.”
Farragut was torn between reactions. It was what he wanted. But, “They couldn’t wait for me?”
“No. Not for anything.” Mishindi folded his hands. His dark face looked rather gray. He gathered in a breath to speak the unspeakable: “Palatine has a working Shotgun.”
19
THE ROMANS CALLED IT Catapult instead of Shotgun, but it did the same thing—effected huge-scale displacement across an astronomical distance.
Its first test shot gave it away. Gravitation was a weak force, but a distortion spike of that size rocked the low band across a three hundred light-year radius and woke up the Pentagon.
Sensors on several colonies immediately zeroed in on the epicenter. Pinpointed the location of the Near Cat.
The location of the second Cat was less certain. Gravitational effects dropped off quickly with distance. The low-band monitors could only be certain that the second Cat was a good two klarcs distant in the Deep End.
No matter. The U.S. need only shut down one end of the Catapult to reduce this Roman end run to a one-handed clap.
U.S. warships stormed across the Roman territorial boundary, steering a wide path around Palatine, to the Near Cat with orders to shut the Catapult down. By any and all means. The rules of engagement in this war had changed. Undisputed Roman space was now in bounds, and any Roman ship not flying a Red Cross could be shot without provocation.
It was a reflection of the desperation of the situation that the JC cleared Merrimack for battle—and that only because Merrimack could run away if she got into trouble. This was a siege on Roman ground. The Romans must stand; Farragut had the option of running away.
“And you will call for a tow if your ship controls get overridden,” Mishindi ordered in parting. Hoped Farragut would not get a chance to ignore that order.
Captain Farragut stranded his weapons instructor Earthside, and made all speed to the Near Cat.
A space fortress surrounded the Near Cat. Rome called it a Citadel. It was a kicked hive, swarming with angry ships encased in shimmering force fields.
Force fields only shimmer like that when hit. In this beam-laced space everything shimmered with the diffuse brilliance of deflected shots.
The Fortress grid illuminated like a lightning sky. The blasts gave shape to it—a geodesic containment grid engulfing a region of space equal to the volume of the Moon. And within that, rings of armed sentinel stations guarded another grid, which housed the Near Cat itself.
Hardpoints in the outer grid bristled with guns. And those were reinforced by a net of Roman battleships emplaced within the grid, becoming, themselves, hardpoints in it. Each point maintained a section of distortion wall—a modern take on an ancient Roman tortoise. The ships had locked shields, trading mobility for combined force. So long as the ships held position, they were all invulnerable, and the Citadel impregnable.
The Roman ships at the Citadel acted in either of two discrete roles—those emplaced in the grid, and those free harriers who actively engaged the U.S. attackers.
Merrimack’s approach to the hot zone met with a belligerent, fear-tinged demand for IFF. U.S. forces were touchy regarding large newcomers approaching from the direction of Palatine—which was also the direction of Earth. The guard ships confirmed Merrimack’s sig and let the battleship pass.
In the battle zone, the paths of mobile plots showed on Merrimack’s display as a tangled writhing serpents’ nest of besiegers and defenders.
Farragut found his former XO already there with her aging wolf hunter, a game, sturdy little ship with a crew of thirty, Wolfhound.
After reporting in to the siege commodore, John Farragut sent Wolfhound a greeting: “Captain Carmel!”
“Welcome to the show, John. Do you see something wrong here?”
Only just arrived he’d already noticed it. “Where’s the rest of them?”
Too few Roman vessels defended the target. Rome had vast firepower. And, for as many ships as swarmed about the titanic space Citadel, there should have been more. Many more. Where were the Legions of Rome if not here? Where were its killer bots?
“End run?” Calli spoke her worst fear.
In an end run scenario, an enormous Roman force would be vaporizing Washington D.C. even now.
The problem with that scenario—from the Roman perspective—was that an attack on U.S. soil would bring the League of Earth Nations into it, and Rome would prefer to let those dogs sleep. In fact, it would serve Rome not to retaliate; this U.S. invasion of Roman space could bring the LEN into the war on the side of Palatine.
Farragut took a different guess. “Maybe there’s a hundred Legions fixing to come blasting through the Cat.”
In that case it was imperative to shut the Catapult down quickly, now, before such a thing could happen. But how?
The Roman force field was impervious to any weapon. Stronger than a solid wall, the field wall consisted of layers within layers of phase-shifting distortion screens that pulsed in erratic time.
Calli asked her engineer, Amina Patel, if her ship Wolfhound could weave a path through the grid layers between the pulses.
Amina assented provisionally, not very happy about it. Yes, with a stutter step, pausing, advancing, and back stepping in the correct sequence of intervals, you could possibly get a small ship through. Sideways. But, Amina pointed out, Wolfhound would be vulnerable to the harriers while going in, and open to the ships in the adjacent grid points while staggering through the layers.
And once through, there were the Citadel guns. And, because those guns had no one else to shoot at, “We would be the only girl at the dance.”
“But the inside gunners have to tag us first,” said Calli. “They can’t afford to shoot and miss. Tag shots are the only safe shot they’ve got.”
Amina had to nod. This was true.
“They’re shooting in a bottle,” said Calli. “A ricochet could hit just about anything in there.”
A tag insured delivery of ordnance to its target and only to its target.
“And so they will launch all their tags at us,” said Amina.
“What’s top speed of a tag?” Captain Carmel asked. “Or more to the point�
�can we outrun a tag?”
“Ye-es.” The two syllables held reservation.
Amina’s next question was how the captain intended to get her ship out again. It required the same sideways stutter step to exit the field as it did to enter. “To avoid the tags inside, we would need to be running in circles around the Cat. We stop running to stutter step, we get tagged. And at that distance, we get tagged, we get hit.”
“Then we’ll burn the tags before they can touch us,” said Calli. “Just get us in where we can do real damage.”
“Brings us back to how to keep from getting shot while we’re stutter stepping in.” Amina was not arguing. She simply needed to know.
Calli got back on the com: “John, I need a favor.”
Told him she intended to run at the grid and tiptoe through the grid to the inner space.
Farragut did not seem surprised. Asked, “Where do you want to penetrate?”
“Next to the Gladiator.”
The mammoth Roman warship held an anchor position within the grid.
Senior Engineer Amina Patel politely asked her captain if she were out of her mind. But Wolfhound’s XO, Lieutenant Egypt (Gypsy) Dent, was nodding as Farragut replied over the com: “Good choice.”
Gypsy spoke aside to Amina, “Didn’t you hear the Roman chatter when we first got here?”
Amina had heard the insults. The Romans had called Wolfhound “that henhouse,” their term for a ship whose captain, exec, and engineer were all women.
That made Wolfhound a target beneath notice of the Triumphalis Numa Pompeii and his great battleship Gladiator.
“He never pays attention to me,” said Calli. “He’s too proud to shoot at us. He’ll leave us to the Citadel’s inner guns.”
Farragut asked, “What are you fixin’ to do in there, Cal?”
“Don’t dare tell you, John.” She didn’t quite have that much faith in the security of her com link. “Can you get me in?”
“Yeah, I can pick a fight with Numa.”
“He’ll cut our flank,” said Amina.
“No, he won’t,” said Calli Carmel. “He’s going to watch John Farragut.”
“I can get you in,” Farragut repeated. “I can’t get you out.”
“That’s all I want, John.”
Calli outlined the plan to her crew. And only because it was somewhat suicidal did she ask them if they would have trouble following her orders.
No. They came here to kill Romans. Even Amina said, “Tell us where to punch it.” Insulted that the captain supposed they might balk.
Touched at their faith, their willingness to follow, Calli wanted to cry. And Farragut, an expressive man, would have, but she did not.
Merrimack opened up a hammering barrage of solid ordnance at Gladiator. Gladiator picked off the projectiles with gamesmanlike ease, as Wolfhound began her run at the grid.
Run was too strong a word. Calli with her Wolfhound staggered, sidestepped, and lurched through the pulsing layers of the defensive field.
And hoped Numa Pompeii was even half as arrogant as Calli thought he was.
Pompous bastard, don’t fail me now.
True to form, Gladiator, engaged in its shooting match with Merrimack, gave no indication of noticing Calli’s ship.
But angry eyes opened in the imperial ship Trajan, the ship emplaced next to Gladiator in the grid. Trajan’s side ports opened, showed guns.
And hesitated.
Perhaps because Wolfhound lay in a direct line with Gladiator. Or perhaps Wolfhound’s very near proximity to Gladiator posed the problem.
Or maybe Trajan was unsure of the consequences of firing between layers of the force field.
The imperial ship did not fire.
But Trajan’s ports were not closing, and Farragut did not like those angry eyes following Calli.
Farragut hailed the U.S. cruiser Edmonton, asked a favor. “Norris, punch Trajan’s headlights out for me?”
“I can hit him,” said Captain Norris, with no questions, even though he saw no apparent point to the exercise. Edmonton launched a load of crap at Trajan’s face.
Trajan lost interest in its side game. Turned its sights on Edmonton. Let the Citadel guns carve up the foolish little wolf hunter passing alongside.
Farragut heard Trajan’s commander speaking on an open channel, meant to be overheard: “Target practice for you, Citadel. Don’t hit me in the ass.”
And Wolfhound was through! Leaping instantly to speed.
Wolfhound’s visuals were useless, nonexistent, at this speed. The ship’s readouts had to translate an FTL propeller blade’s view of the battle. The image on the tactical display looked something like a simple model of a hydrogen atom—the computer’s interpretation of Wolfhound’s whirling path inside the grid, orbiting the Citadel several times a second.
Tags launched from the Citadel’s sentinels, clouds of them. Made the sentinels look like milkweed pods bursting open.
A tag’s only function was to catch a target, latch on, and give homing ordnance an exact mate against which to detonate. Tags hadn’t the Wolfhound’s acceleration. And despite the tags’ tiny mass, they made wider turns. On an ever-turning course, in which every meter demands a course correction, the tags quickly spent their very small fuel supply, and died.
Wolfhound deployed a flurry of her own tags, targeting the stationary sentinels and the sensor stations that made the Catapult work.
Those tags that touched the vital sensors of the Catapult died on contact. Those tags that nested on the sentinels sang out their bull’s-eyes, only briefly. Wolfhound launched a salvo of homers after her tags. But her missiles met with intercept, or else lost their way as their tags were erased. Only one of Wolfound’s missiles tagged up and detonated—to no effect—against a well-shielded emplacement.
Numa’s scorn for Calli’s intrusion appeared entirely justified. She could not have supposed taking down the Near Cat could be as simple as squeezing one small ship inside the Roman first line of defense.
In her tight, whirling flight, Wolfhound lapped some of the tags that were chasing her. Ran into the rear of a swarm of them. Most bounced off her forward shield. One stuck.
And a Roman missile was there, mated with its tag. It detonated on Wolfhound’s bow.
From outside the grid, Farragut tried to keep an eye on Calli, though there was nothing he could do for her out here except pound at Numa and keep his own hide free of stickers. He just had to wait and see what Calli thought she could do inside the grid.
It was beginning to look like she’d flown herself into a kill jar.
He watched for Calli’s ship to emerge from the blast that landed on her bow.
She should have been able to take that hit, especially taking it straight on the nose like that. But maybe the tightness of her turns had distorted her forward screens, because Merrimack’s sensors clearly showed the speeding Wolfhound putting out all her lifeboats.
20
LOSING SPEED, WOLFHOUND TRAILED steam and smoke. The tags, which she had been eluding, gained on her stern.
Her lifeboats were not properly boats. They were very basic, very temporary, survival pods; flimsy tissue-foil sacks equipped with minimal air, a rebreather, and an uncomfortable heater.
Calli kept the life pods close to the ship, inside Wolfhound ’s shield, instead of launching them clear of her ship, until Wolfhound bubbled all over with foil blisters, wearing the lot of them outboard like a mama spider carrying its young.
A Citadel gunner sent an inquiry to General Pompeii: “Cease fire?”
“No,” Numa returned, emphatic. “If Mister Carmel thinks Rome won’t take out her life pods, she is sadly mistaken. Until she surrenders, or her ship is destroyed, those pods are targets. If she’s going to hide behind her lifeboats, then tag them. Tag them all and shoot them.”
On board Merrimack, Marcander Vincent reported from his tactical station: “Sir. Roman gunners are launching tags at Captain Carmel’s lifeboats. She’s
losing speed. They’ll make contact in another minute.”
Farragut nodded. “I think she’s counting on it.”
The command crew looked to Captain Farragut in surprise.
“Sir?” Lieutenant Glenn Hamilton asked.
“I just hope Numa doesn’t see what I’m seeing,” said Farragut.
Numa Pompeii refused to know Calli. Still, he must see what she was up to, if he was looking.
“Launch a planet killer at Numa.”
Lieutenant Hamilton ordered up the planet killer, then said, “It won’t do anything, sir.”
The planet killer would create a huge, expensive light show, and momentarily blank out everyone’s clear-screens. It would have no effect on the grid.
“It’ll make him look,” said Farragut. “At me.”
Instead of?
Hamster took another look at Calli’s fleeing Wolfhound wearing its coat of lifeboats.
The life pods were tissue thin, opaque, but so filmy they concealed little. Normally you could make out the shapes of people inside, like larvae in a cocoon. Hamster did not see anything at all pushing at the foil sides.
Where were the elbows? The knees? The hands? The butts?
Calli’s life pods were neat sausage balloons.
Someone was going to notice that oddity in a moment and warn Numa.
“Planet killer armed and ready, Captain!” Hamster reported.
“Fire.”
“Fire planet killer!”
The planet killer smashed into the grid, lit it up like a white dwarf star. Filled the com channels with curses and Roman scoffing.
Another spume of smoke belched from Wolfhound’s stern.
Wolfhound’s shields flickered out. The ship lost more speed, and a whole flock of tags caught up and latched on to every available surface.
Because the wolf hunter was entirely encased in life sacks, the tags latched onto the life sacks.
