by B. V. Larson
“Yes. Local defense forces are not as fanatical. Generally speaking, the smaller and shorter-ranged the ship, the less they are true believers. The Committee wisely ensures its capital units remain the most loyal. All ships have Hok, but Hok follow orders of the political officers first, the line officers second.”
“Interesting.” She rubbed her neck. “Back to tactics. We let them take one shot at Freiheit. We then advance to our long range, firing at them while using evasive maneuvers. Remember, our goal is to buy time. Do not press the attack. When Straker gets within coordination range, I’ll discuss our timing with him and we’ll back off, try to get them to feel safe.”
“And then Captain Straker does… what?”
Engels realized that Polzin didn’t know much about the technology. Gray had guessed, but had pledged not to tell anyone. “That’s classified,” she said. “If it works, you’ll see for yourself. If not, it won’t matter.”
Polzin’s face turned sour. “Then we are pawns indeed.”
“Do you want to defect to the Breakers? If so, I’ll brief you.”
“I will follow Captain Gray’s lead. Keep your secrets. I hope they do not kill us.”
“I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”
“That’s what all tyrants say.”
“And military commanders once the operation starts. Fall back now. Let Liberator take the lead. Engels out.” Damn these argumentative Unmutuals. Can’t they see we are on the same side?
At least for now.
“Lorton, send a recording of that conversation back to Straker and Gray, along with updated sensor data.” She drummed her fingers on the arm of her padded pilot’s chair. “Then sound battle stations. Everyone suit up and prep for damage control. It won’t be long now.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
Engels retrieved her suit from the nearby cubbyhole and drew it on, leaving her faceplate open and plugging in the integrated comlink. Wireless was standard, but so was triple redundancy. Then she plugged in her brainlink. It was one advantage the Hundred Worlds had over others, and fortunately this was a captured Hundred Worlds ship. However, as she was piloting a crewed vessel, the link did not immerse her like it did with a single-pilot craft. It merely improved her performance.
Chief Gurung reported the ship ready. Engels watched as the chrono and the integrated tactical plot showed the destroyer reach potential firing position. A close examination of the enemy revealed all her weapons run—out and ready.
“What’s she aiming her big railgun at?” asked Engels.
“At Freiheit, ma’am. But her beams are locked on us. We are within extreme range.”
“Ops, give me ten percent reinforcement to the forward armor. Raise the percentage as we approach, your judgment.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
“Is she reinforcing her armor?” Engels asked.
“Not yet, ma’am,” said Lorton.
“Weapons, can we tickle her with lasers yet?”
“Not at this range.”
“How about our railgun?”
“Within range, but hit probability well below point-one percent, assuming they evade.”
Engels nodded. “We want to make them evade, when the time comes. Keep them locked in our sights.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
Engels wished she could fire, but her simulations had showed it was best to let the enemy fire first. It’s a chess match, not a slugfest, she reminded herself. She raised her impeller braking, reducing the rate of closure with the enemy. Soon, she would come to relative rest and actually begin to back up as the destroyer came onward. Polzin would follow her maneuvers.
More than half an hour she waited, aware that every moment brought Straker closer in Revenge and reduced the time available for bombardment. But it also meant the enemy would gain in accuracy. Presumably that’s what they were waiting for: some threshold of precision to fire.
“Energy surge. Railgun firing,” said Lorton. “Target is Freiheit.”
“Notify Captain Gray of incoming in case they missed it. Add sensor data and send.” Of course, the transmission would beat the railgun bullet by minutes at this range, allowing Gray time to prepare.
“They are recharging for another railgun shot.”
“Weapons, you are free to engage.”
“Firing our railgun.”
Liberator shuddered and the lights dimmed with the power drain from her capital weapon. As with her enemy, the alloy penetrator was accelerated down the centerline of the ship and spat out of her nose with brutal velocity.
In response, the destroyer began rolling in a randomized evasive pattern, impossible to predict. Engels expected that. Nobody took one in the face if they could help it. However, the enemy’s combination of movement and extra energy for reinforcement would degrade both her accuracy and her recharge time.
Engels input a random evasion pattern of her own and initiated it at low level, reducing the chance of a lucky hit on Liberator.
An alarm’s wheep-wheep prompted Lorton to report, “They’re targeting us with the railgun.”
“As expected. Maximum forward reinforcement to coincide with potential impact,” Engels snapped, raising the rate of evasive maneuvers instinctively. She was one of two snipers taking pot shots at each other. Unfortunately, though, she had a smaller gun and thinner armor. The enemy could take many hits from her weapon; her own ship, only a couple.
“Incoming.” The four on the bridge held their breaths. “No impact.”
“Excellent.”
Her comlink pinged in her ear. “Polzin to Engels.”
“Engels.”
“When do you want to advance the pawns?”
“Don’t stretch the metaphor. We want to buy time. We’ll keep up this dance as long as we can. Chess game, remember?”
“Understood. Polzin out.”
Attack pilots. She knew the type, hyper-aggressive and prone to derring-do. She’d unleash them when the time came, but not until.
“Enemy accelerating toward us, flank speed.”
“Shit.” Engels spun the corvette around and lit her fusion engine, waggling her joysticks slightly to create random jinking. “Wish this baby was equipped with stealth mines. I’d drop a few in our wake.”
Polzin came back on the comlink. “Captain Engels, are you sure you don’t want some support?”
“No! Stay back. I can handle this. If we get hit bad, you can come in hot and we’ll try to slip a shipkiller missile into the mix.”
“As you wish, Kapitana.”
“At least we’re faster than they are,” she muttered. She examined her board, noting the enemy’s speed and rate of acceleration. “I’m going to spin us around again. Weapons, be ready to target and fire.”
“Weapons ready, ma’am.”
Engels dropped acceleration to zero and whipped the corvette around in place. Now she flew tail-first through space, nose pointed backward. “Fire when you have a lock.”
“Firing.”
She didn’t wait to see the result, spinning the ship again through one hundred eighty degrees and accelerating to stay ahead of the enemy, out of effective laser range.
“No impact.”
“No surprise,” she said. “Just as long as we keep them busy.”
This dance continued for more than an hour. In that time, the destroyer fired at least forty shots, some aimed at Liberator, others aimed at Freiheit.
None hit Liberator. This was normal for warfare in open space. With nothing to defend, nothing to pin anyone in place, faster ships could remain at extreme range as long as they wished, and Liberator, being smaller, was quicker.
Of those shots fired at Freiheit, only four had struck the asteroid, and only one had come close enough to the sidespace engine to need intercepting by Carson’s reinforced hull.
But the destroyer was now only five hours from Freiheit. The hab was the anchor of this battle. Fortunately, Revenge was only an hour away from engagement.
Engels wondered what the enemy thought of the weird ship approaching, assuming they even spotted Revenge. She wasn’t sure how much time they were spending in underspace.
Instead of a slim cylinder like most warships, the ship looked more like an orbital station, a donut with a baton thrust through its center, tentacles on each end. Would they have its design in their database? Would they think to turn on their underspace detectors? As a Marksman pilot, she’d never spent a lot of time on Fleet ship operations.
Or would they even notice Straker’s ship? Revenge had long since ceased using her fusion engines, cruising on impellers only. Impellers were far more efficient, less wasteful of fuel and power, and were impossible to detect at any range. Perhaps the destroyer had lost track of Revenge.
“Lorton, any word from Freiheit or Gray?”
“Last update says they are holding. One shot hit Carson, but they blocked any damage to the sidespace engine.”
Engels examined her tactical display. “And is Revenge’s position confirmed, or only predicted?”
Lorton tapped his board. “Predicted, ma’am. I don’t have anything on passives, and I didn’t want to aim an active sensor at Revenge for fear of highlighting her.”
“Good decision. So we actually have no idea where she is?”
“Only a rough estimate. We know they’re heading for an intercept in about an hour.”
Engels rubbed her eyes. “Then we’ll have to keep this up for that long.”
* * *
“Insert the ship,” Straker ordered again.
This was the sixth time he’d ordered Revenge dipped into underspace on the way to the intercept. Every time he did so, he wondered whether he would set off some kind of detector on the destroyer. But he was balancing that unknown and unpredictable possibility with the much stronger probability of being tracked by sensors in normal space.
He wished he could coordinate with Engels, but given the fact that Revenge’s course lined her up with both Liberator and the destroyer, any transmission, even a laser comlink, might be detected by the enemy, who would no doubt be trying to localize that odd contact if they detected it. They had to still be wondering about the destruction of their sister ship.
The longer he kept them in the dark, the better.
This would be the next-to-last disappearing act before the actual attack. Although the destroyer was evading with random slight heading changes, she remained on a consistent general course for Freiheit. Straker had to pop up from underspace early enough to get a good reading on the enemy and update his data, but late enough to give the enemy minimum warning, and as little time to think as possible.
Straker also had to make one hundred percent sure he emerged ahead of his target, because at the speeds they were approaching each other, he would get only one pass to drop float mines. Reversing course to catch it from behind would be futile.
In fact, the Ruxin ship was a piece of shit as a warship design. She wasn’t slim to present the smallest target to the enemy. She wasn’t maneuverable for her size. She wasn’t armored. She had one laser and one missile tube for a conventional fight, barely enough to intimidate a noncombatant. She couldn’t even reinforce her nonexistent armor. All her excess power and mass went for underspace engines and the field to protect herself from the deep freeze.
She was a one-trick pony. Well today, Straker was going to see if her one trick was good enough. He hoped Engels could capitalize on his attack.
Slowly, so slowly, the positions of Revenge and the destroyer approached each other. In underspace, Revenge flew past Liberator and the attack squadron, possibly passing literally through one of the ships, or perhaps “below” was a better term. He’d never know for sure.
Finally, the time came. “Emerge.”
“Emerging.”
“Update our sensor data.” Really, there was no need for Straker to give the order; he’d gone over this sequence a dozen times in the past hour. His officers were following a meticulously timed plan.
“Updating… Completed.”
“Insert again! Helm, put us in their path!”
They’d come out off-center, inevitable after almost an hour in underspace with only educated guesses for positioning.
“Inserting.”
“Maneuvering,” said the octopoid at helm.
As Revenge slid again into the safety of underspace, Straker’s eyes roamed hungrily over the tactical display. It had updated to a much larger scale, and the destroyer seemed to charge toward him like a mechsuiter at a dead run. He imagined himself a tank commander, dug into a hull-down position, with only one shot at taking down a Foehammer. That’s how he felt.
The icon that represented the hidden ship moved directly into the destroyer’s path, just in time. Straker hoped Engels had backed off in her harassment in order to lull the enemy into believing evasive maneuvers were unnecessary.
“Deploy float mines.”
“Mine one away,” said the weapons officer.
“Accelerating,” the helm reported. The icon representing Revenge leapt toward the enemy, as if ramming.
“Mine two away.” A pause. “Mine three away.”
Then the two icons merged.
The ship shook with the spillover from the fusion explosions. Water misted up from the sludge in which Straker stood as the vibration came through his feet and rattled his teeth. Lights flickered and went out.
“Damage from spillover. We have lost the underspace engine. Involuntary emergence,” said the operations officer.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Straker, eyes on the displays. “Sensors, as soon as we’re up, go active. Get me an update! And get me a comlink to Liberator!”
The main visiplate fuzzed and dimmed, then brightened and changed as the computer processed the updated sensor data. Behind him, Straker could see the destroyer, apparently cruising serenely onward.
“Helm, all reverse flank. Chase that destroyer with every erg we have.”
“Aye aye, sir.” The ship thrummed and water sloshed over to one side as acceleration leaked through overtasked compensators.
“What damage did we do? I need a detailed scan of that ship,” Straker snapped.
“Scanning. Details will take several minutes.”
“Do the best you can. Give me an optical in the meantime.”
“I will make the attempt,” said his sensors officer.
A shaky, receding image appeared on the screen. There was no way to tell the state of the enemy.
“Where’s my damned comlink?” Straker demanded.
Chapter 43
Battling the Mutuality destroyer.
“Captain Straker on the comlink,” Lorton said to Engels.
“Tell him we’re busy,” she snapped as she shoved the corvette’s throttles forward. “Tell him he damaged the destroyer, but she’s not out, and we have to hit her while she’s trying to recover from the blasts.”
“I heard you, Carla,” Straker said, his image appearing on a small auxiliary screen. His voice was full of frustration and concern. “Our underspace engine is down. We’re reversing course, but it will take a while to get back to the battle.”
“Thanks, Derek. You shook them, but none of the mines came close enough to crack their armor. If we’re going to finish them off, we have to attack now.”
“Keep the comlink open, please,” Straker replied. “I can’t stand not to…”
“To see me die?” She spread her lips in a wolfish grin. “Not gonna happen today. Don’t worry about me, Derek. This isn’t like with Carson, shooting at people we know. This is war, they’re the enemy, and I’m not pulling any punches. Now shut up and let me do my job.”
“Aye aye, Captain Carla. Good hunting.”
The corvette rumbled and shook with flank acceleration, the fusion engine at the rear pushed to the redline and the impeller gulping power. Her best chance right now was to close in to short range as quickly as possible and kick the Mutuality destroyer while she was down.
Hands white-knuckled on the controls, Engels kept one eye on the tactical plot and the other on her forward view. She curved the course of the corvette slightly outward and then inward to stay off the destroyer’s centerline, away from a sudden railgun strike. “Are they maneuvering?”
“No, ma’am. They seem to be on a ballistic course only.”
She lined up her own centerline reticle and stabilized for a full second. “Railgun: lock, track and fire.”
“Locked,” the gunner called back. “Tracking and leading… solution computed, firing.”
The corvette bucked with the powerful kick of the projectile launch.
“Laser range?” Engels asked.
“Long, but feasible.”
“Begin engagement, distributed fire.”
Distributed fire, rather than concentrated fire, would pound a steady barrage of shots against the destroyer. She wanted to keep them off balance and in pain. “Pass this to Major Polzin: attack the queen.”
“Passed. Looks like the attack squadron is already on its way.” Lorton made the cluster of icons behind the corvette flash. Engels could see they’d begun accelerating as well, and were already overtaking her in their fast craft.
“We are taking beam fire,” said Lorton. “One heavy laser in action—now two.”
“Reinforce forward armor.”
“Already at maximum,” ops said. She could hear the nervous twitch in the voice. “We’re depleting our reserves. Down to forty percent. At this rate we’ll be out of battery power in eight minutes.”
Engels considered. Battery power was the only way to keep reinforcement up and weapons firing at the same time. No ship ever had all the energy it needed for every system.
“Reduce rate of laser fire to half for now.” She also backed off a bit on the impeller, letting the fusion engine carry the load. “Maintain railgun fire.”
The weapons officer spoke up. “Our railgun salvo impact in three… two… one…” The destroyer’s image showed a brief flare as the heavy duralloy bullet struck armor near the nose. “Hit on her prow—no discernible effect.”
