The Naniwa sprint missiles already launched into the void were now within seconds of a sudden new array of targets. The deadly little weapons sprang awake, autonomic targeting systems fixing on the fresh signatures of Khaiden ships, and blasted forward, exhausting the last of their fuel.
Two Khaiden destroyers staggered as the Imperial missiles streaked past their point-defense and antimatter charges detonated against shipskin. Startlingly violet blossoms of plasma erupted from their engine arrays. An assault boat tore in half. Missiles raced through the Khaiden formation, causing panic. Ships corkscrewed away wildly amid a wave of secondary explosions. A wedge of destroyers rotated towards the Naniwa, beam weapons stabbing at her through the incandescent murk.
“Weapons, fire salvo two.”
The battle-cruiser shuddered as every launch rail and missile rack triggered simultaneously.
***
The Tlemitl and her two consorts lunged toward the Barrier at maximum acceleration, clawing for room to maneuver. In FlagCom, Xochitl let the threatwell feed wash over him, his attention fixed on the maneuvering of the Khaid main elements. The arrival of their support ships had been expected, though he was surprised to see such numbers. Exo displayed comparisons of numbers of ships, types, and throw-weight between this battle and more recent encounters with the Khaid raiders.
A proper fleet, the Prince observed, almost impressed. On our model; with supply ships, a repair tender, lighter elements, some kind of troop transports…
Swiftly approaching the danger zone marked out on the threatwell in strobing crimson, Thai-sa Yoemon’s voice cut sharply across the chatter on the command ’cast. “Prepare to change vector, rotating aspect… now.”
Xochitl’s eyes slid to the display showing g-integrity deck by deck on the massive ship. Time to put everything to the test.
The constant rumble transmitted through the hull-despite a brand-new dampening system-from the maneuver drives ceased abruptly. The Tlemitl rotated aspect on tertiary thrusters. The status displays started to wink amber and yellow-one red spot flared up as a compartment lost its g-decking-and then the Firearrow was pointed on a new heading. The exchange of missile clouds and beam weapons had continued unabated throughout the evolution and the Prince was pleased to see his gun crews had kept targeting lock on the lead Khaid battleships. Battlecast was still in sync, though hostile ECM was now starting to interfere, forcing a faster encryption cycle rate.
“Main drives at full,” Yoemon snapped and the rumbling vibration kicked in again. Now three compartments flared red and Xochitl cursed, knowing any man in those areas was probably dead or seriously wounded, given the acceleration they were pulling. Still, the dreadnaught had successfully swerved away from the Barrier, the Asama keeping pace off her port. The Tokiwa, however, had failed to change vector with them. Xocoyotl’s battle-cruiser had rotated to reverse aspect, but now she was forced to a full-burn to avoid colliding with the invisible weapon.
The fire from all four Khaid battleships retargeted on the Tokiwa as she slipped out of the point-defense envelope maintained by the Tlemitl and Asama. Hundreds of shipkillers rained in, saturating the battle-cruiser’s lighter point defense network. Dozens of explosions rippled the length of her hull, stressing shipskin beyond its capacity. A bright pinpoint seared through the plasma clouds as a penetrator pierced containment on the antimatter reactor. Then everything-the Tokiwa, the debris clouds spilling from her flanks, the corona of bomb-pod lasers igniting-was washed away by a pure white flare.
«IMN BC-261 lost with all hands,» Xochitl’s exo commented, spooling off a log entry.
“Battlecast resynced.” Yoemon’s voice was harsh and flat. The Tlemitl was now turning, still building velocity, with the Asama running in tight, well inside the fire control envelope of the dreadnaught’s point-defense batteries. With the four Khaid heavies drawn off by killing the battle-cruiser, the two Imperial ships accelerated into the flank of the opposing fleet. Four Khaid cruisers swung towards them, but now the full throw-weight of the Tlemitl and Asama could focus on the approaching ships.
A storm of sprint missiles and particle beams stabbed out, while the spoofer pods flooded Khaid targeting control with thousands of phantom contacts. The first three cruisers shattered, shipskin ravaged by particle beams, missile racks torn away, and then each hull punched in by a pair of shipkillers-big Tessen -class multiphase penetrators.
«Resource utilization is higher than recommended per target,» exo commented, but the Prince shook his head. “The weapons officer is showing admirable restraint, given his desire to be sure of the mark. Yoemon has noticed we’ve no resupply now that the Hanuman has fled. Very wise.”
’Cast relay beeped cheerfully, showing a fresh Imperial fire-snake glyph boosting towards the protective shell of the Tlemitl ’s point defense.
«IMN CA-1042 Gladius has synched to battlecast,» exo announced. «All other cruisers have been lost.»
***
Her field of view filled with an intricate schematic of potential Barrier threads, racing ship glyphs, and the still-present necklace of science probes arrayed beyond the radiation cloud which had been the Can, Gretchen tried to concentrate on the results from her models. The first pass she’d taken had been discarded and while searching for more computational resources Anderssen had found-to her wary delight-that node 3^3 3 also boasted well over nineteen thousand processing nodes. Many of them were inactive, or inaccessible to her, but enough remained to offload model calculations for three alternate schemas.
The constant fluctuations in the g-decking field made her work very difficult and Gretchen had resorted to taping down the comps and her other gear.
“Crow, we’d better get tied down, this is getting rough.”
The old Mexica did not bother to look over his shoulder. His displays had reconfigured again and the Swedish woman frowned, not recognizing any of the interfaces he was now navigating. Somehow it seemed freshly minted and new, though still recognizably Mexica in origin. “Hummingbird, are we going to get out of this?”
“I have,” he said in a musing voice, “a great faith in Chu-sa Kosho’s ability to survive.”
Then everything lurched violently and Gretchen lost her seat, flying into the nearest wall with a bone-jarring crunch. Hummingbird’s consoles tore free of the tape, one of them shattering against the wall beside her. Despite this, his attention remained fixed on flipping through the Tlemitl ’s internal systems as fast as possible.
“Holy Blessed Mary, Bride of Jesus, that hurts!” Anderssen slid to the floor as the g-decking reasserted itself, landing painfully. “ Crow! ”
***
Six decks away, Kosho watched calmly as the Naniwa ’s abrupt course change sent the battle-cruiser careening into a pack of six oncoming Khaiden destroyers. The battle-cruiser’s deflectors rippled with millions of tiny impacts as irradiated dust and battle debris hammered at the electromagnetic veil. Missiles punched straight through, while particle beam traces speared past as the Khaid gunners lost lock on the elusive Imperial ship. In turn, she was designating priority in her ’well, the stylus stabbing like a dagger into the heart of the enemy.
“Weapons, target number four, give me a tight grouping!”
The Naniwa shuddered as the starboard missile launchers went to rapid-fire, spitting a cloud of smaller interceptors around a single big Tessen shipkiller. The destroyers had broken ranks, each burning maneuver mass to break away from the oncoming Imperial. The Naniwa ’s beam nacelles strobed, capacitors discharging with a high shrieking whine that carried through the shipframe like the lament of the damned. Secondary launchers spat out a handful of spoofer pods. Target five flared with a brilliant violet-hued detonation and the ensigns on the lower tier of Command shouted, “ Seikou! ”
Susan nodded to Konev, whose beam gunners had gotten in a choice hit.
To starboard, target four had gone into a corkscrew pattern, trying to shake the outbound munitions package-but the interceptors fragmented o
n final approach, separating into dozens of smaller missiles, each radiating as hot as the parent chassis. Point defense lasers and ballistic munitions tore through them, causing a sparking cascade of smaller explosions. Serenely, the Tessen sailed through the weak ECM spewing from the destroyer’s emitters and slammed into the smaller ship’s hull at a hundred g. At the instant before impact, the multiphase warhead ignited, spearing a needle-sized plasma jet into the Khaiden shipskin.
A seven-meter-wide hole blew through the side of the destroyer before the Tessen blew up inside the hull proper. The destroyer convulsed, filling with superheated plasma, and then shattered into a cloud of molten debris.
The other Khaid lightweights scattered, dumping a cloud of missiles and bomb-pods behind them.
Kosho nodded thoughtfully, then tapped an execute glyph Pucatli had prepped for her.
Each of the fleeing destroyers had acquired a spoofer pod running passive when the Naniwa had interpenetrated the formation. Now they each lit off with the battle-cruiser’s signature and sped off, keeping pace with the Khaid ships, each now followed by a swiftly closing pack of missiles.
“Pilot, vector to join the Flag,” Kosho snapped, letting her attention return to the larger battle. “Get us into their envelope and synched up on point-defense.”
She did not have time to give Tloc, his holds full of chocolatl, or the lamentable Chu-sho Xocoyotl even the brief parting Muldoon had received.
***
«Enemy battlecast pattern is adapting,» exo announced.
Prince Xochitl had sunk back in his chair, expression thunderous as he realized how heavily the odds had turned against him. The Tlemitl outweighed any single enemy ship by three or six to one, but now his battle-group was stripped down to only three supporting cruisers. Even the two Scout frigates had disappeared.
As he watched, the Khaid battleships coalesced-showing admirable skill, one part of his mind commented-into a tight pack. Now they veered towards the Tlemitl, their point-defense overlapping, with a stormfront of shipkillers, penetrators, and bomb-pods hurtling towards the Imperial ships. Behind their munitions screen, the heavy beam weapons on the Khaiden battlewagons were sparking, searching for a weakness in the battle-shields surrounding the Firearrow.
The shield-generator status display was a patchwork of green, amber, and red. Some of the nodes had already failed, having shorted on backfeed from the shields themselves, or failing under the massive stress. Xochitl’s teeth bared, gleaming white and sharp, and he cursed the pochtecas who had sold his father such junk.
«Projected failure rate of the shield nodes, from field trials, is almost thirty percent. Current failure rate is thirty-four percent.»
“Unacceptable.” Xochitl straightened in his chair, attention drawn to the emergence of a second pack of Khaiden heavies which had been screened from the Tlemitl ’s sensors by the oncoming wave of attackers. This formation was accelerating off at an angle and redeploying on the move, smoothly shifting from their initial wedge into an unfolding “flower-box.”
«Secondary elements are targeting the Gladius,» exo reported, and the threatwell shifted, focusing in on the heavy cruiser, which was trying to match course with the Tlemitl and Asama. «Missile storm intercept in sixteen seconds.»
The particle beam nacelles covering that quadrant of the envelope began igniting. Yoemon’s gunnery team had reached the same conclusion. Khaid shipkillers began to wink out, obliterated by anion impacts. The Gladius’ point-defense guns were spinning hot, filling the intervening space with ballistic rounds, and her short-range launchers were discharging as fast as the robotic loaders could clear the launch rails. Better than half of the incoming missiles were obliterated, but the remainder detonated in a staggered wave of plasma flares, washing from one end of the ship to the other.
Xochitl jerked back, his face dark, ruddy bronze as the heavy cruiser’s glyph vanished from the threatwell plot.
«Three friendly effectives remain,» exo stated, highlighting the glyphs of the dreadnaught and two remaining battle-cruisers. «Hostile numbers are now sixteen combatants, twelve noncombatants. Point-defense network is suboptimal, ECM cloud is suboptimal, launcher recycle time is suboptimal, munitions expenditure-all weapon systems-is excessive, and maneuver drive efficiency is-»
“Enough!” Xochitl felt hot inside his armor and now he heard the whine of the air circulation system trying to shed waste heat like the buzz of a thousand mosquitoes. “Enough.”
His head was throbbing violently and he groped for the medband override.
***
The Naniwa ’s hull shook with repeated explosions as a wave of sprint missiles and penetrators crashed through her point-defense. In Command, Oc Chac was speaking rapidly into his throatmike, his status displays a sea of red and amber indicators. Kosho snarled, seeing three Khaid light cruisers and a pair of destroyers interpose themselves between her and the Tlemitl. The enemy ships were formed up tight, and their point-defense interlock had stopped the last salvo of shipkillers Konev and his gunners had spun into them.
“Pilot, time to ’cast interlock with the Flag?”
“Too long, kyo.” Holloway looked up, wild-eyed, and shook his head. “We’d have to bull right through them to reach interlock range.”
“Understood, Thai-i.” Susan’s attention snapped back to the threatwell, where a second pack of Khaid lightweights was barreling in on her flank, trying to get into the shadow of her drive plume. We need to shed some of these dogs, she thought, juggling distance, velocity, and time in a heartbeat. Her stylus slashed through the executive ’well at her console.
“Pilot, new heading. Don’t spare the horses.”
Naniwa responded, still agile despite the burning craters littering her hull and the cloud of vented atmosphere, splintered radiating fins, and other flotsam she was shedding. The battle cruiser shifted course, angling away from the Tlemitl and Asama, which were at the center of their own hot, constantly strobing cloud of detonations, and headed dead-on to the Barrier coordinates loaded into Susan’s threatwell.
“Course correction burn complete, kyo,” Holloway reported. “Nine hostiles now in pursuit.”
“Incoming spread-one-hundred-six contacts,” Konev barked. “Point-defense engaging.”
Susan hissed, feeling her ship’s pain deep down in her gut. “ Sho-sa, prepare to roll mines.”
Oc Chac nodded, attention wrenched away from damage control. He stared at her blankly for a heartbeat, then caught himself and nodded abruptly. “ Hai, Chu-sa! Preparing to roll mines.”
***
Gretchen picked herself up warily and groped from bunk to desk. Gravity wobbled again, the ship groaning around them, but this time she was ready and held on. Hummingbird had wedged himself into a corner of the room, a comp still in his hand-face tight with some tremendous effort of concentration-and she saw his fingers were a blur on the interfaces. All of his equipment, even scattered under the bunks, was still in operation. Gritting her teeth against a series of bad bruises, Anderssen found her own field comp and flipped it open. Her models were still running, and now they had resolved themselves down to only two alternatives.
“Where are we, Crow?” she gasped, fumbling at the control pad. “We’ve got to get all of this gear secured before we lose g-deck integrity entirely.”
All of her equipment shoveled into the backpack without a problem. A roll of stickytape secured the pack to the bunk, which was in turn welded to the wall of the cabin. Her hand-comp stayed with her, though its interface was tiny in comparison to the bigger units. Hummingbird’s setup was harder to deal with, particularly when her shoulders were itching at the prospect of the next abrupt maneuver. But in a few moments, all of it was stowed save the t-relay, which was a Yule tree of status lights. Grasping the main unit, she cast around for something to secure the device to.
“Leave be!” Hummingbird spared a dark, furious glance for her. “I’ve almost broken into the Khaid battlecast and we’ll need that to surviv
e the next hour. Pin it to the floor, if you must, but don’t move it or disassemble the mechanism.”
You’ll sing a different tune, carrion bird, if this thing cracks you in the head…
She strapped it down as best she could, feeling the metal radiating hot enough to scorch her fingertips. Then Anderssen crawled back to the other corner, wedged herself into place, and thumbed up the display on her hand-comp. Plot position, she ordered the little machine. On the sidebar, Gretchen was heartened to see that node 3^3 3 was still in synch and processing data at a blistering rate. Excellent, but Her latest modeling pass had discarded the data preprocessed by the Mirror scientists and culled from the Korkunov ’s initial telemetry. Something nagged at her, saying it was too old to be accurate. Instead, drawing on the sheer processing power and storage offered by node 3^3 3, she’d asked the comps to sweep through the most basic data flowing back from the Imperial science probes and break it down, looking for gravitational anomalies at a sub-Planck scale. The descriptions of the damage inflicted on the Calexico hinted at a mechanism capable of dissecting battle-steel, which implied the weapon was able to break down the interlocking matrix of the armor without diffusing its impact energy across the enormous, mutually supporting weave of the material.
Her comps now revealed a new “map” of the surrounding space, one far different in detail than the Imperial data they’d received-or stolen. Anderssen cursed, her body jolted with fear. Tearing free of the restraints, she was at Hummingbird’s side in the blink of an eye. She seized hold of the old man’s ear, drawing a bright crimson pinpoint of blood with the corner of one nail.
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