by B. V. Larson
“I’ve got your percentage calculation up now, Captain,” Chang said calmly.
My eyes slid to the number. It was blue, and it was fateful.
“They’ve only blown three percent of active payloads?” I demanded. “That’s all?”
“The rest are unaccounted for by our sensors.”
“They have to be—”
I’d been intending to say something like “right on top of us” when the next round of strikes began. These were chained along our wake. They came in rapid succession, each exploding a hole in space about a mile apart from the last. Each strike was rapidly closing in on our position.
“Evasive action!” I shouted to Dalton.
He swung the helm hard, diving toward the planet. If we hit the atmosphere, we’d become visible as an outline due to the released energies from our hull heating up with friction. That was if we survived striking the atmosphere at speed anyway. It was a risky play, but maybe it would be unexpected.
I didn’t argue with Dalton’s decision. I hadn’t told him where to go, just to change course.
We all watched the chained explosions, about two every second, as they bombed along the path we’d just followed. The enemy couldn’t see us, but they knew our last course heading. If they could get close enough with a warhead, they might rupture our unshielded hull.
The seconds counted down swiftly. The chain of explosions came to where we’d been—and kept going, following our old path, not Dalton’s new, diving path.
A small tremor shook the ship. Then more came afterward.
“Are we feeling the strikes?” Gwen asked fearfully.
I frowned. “No, I think that’s the upper atmosphere. Dalton, bounce off those clouds and get us back up into a stable orbit.”
He did as I asked, and we felt another wave of relief a few minutes later. I took the time to go over to Samson’s station and check all his tanks and valves personally. He looked glum, but he didn’t argue.
“Better safe than sorry,” Dalton said, giving Samson a shitty grin. “I always knew you’d screw this up.”
Samson hung his head, his thick jaw muscles bulging. I supportively thumped his shoulder once.
“Nothing to see here,” I said. “He’s just a little dazed after fighting Grefs to the death back on Killer.”
“Dazed, is it?” Dalton snickered. He’d never been a man to know when to stop kicking the injured. “Is that the latest Yank word for stupid?”
I flashed a glare at Dalton, and he finally shut up.
“All right,” I said as we got back above the planetary envelop of gases. “We lived, while two of the enemy ships have been destroyed. That’s a pretty good track record.”
Suddenly, a klaxon sounded. I looked around, trying to see everyone’s station at once.
“Proximity alarm!” Miller shouted. “Dropping phase—Samson, give me shields!”
The opaqueness of space cleared, and I could see the missile’s plume in the distance for a split second before the blast shields rolled up outside the bridge section.
“Everyone hang on!” I shouted.
My body pitched forward due to momentum, and it was more like I tackled my chair airborne—rather than flopped into it.
All around me, people were flying for cover. The confusion was anything but organized.
We were in open space now, hanging above the blue-white world that spread out below us, filling half the universe. Our shields crackled into life over the hull. Without the phasing system sucking up all the power, we could afford things like shields.
Samson had time to deploy a few decoys, but they didn’t help much. The fusion warhead went off alarmingly close to our hull.
It was as if a terrific bell had been rung. The atmosphere inside the ship carried the vibration throughout, and peoples’ ears bled.
Fortunately, my helmet was on and sealed. I felt as if I’d been hit on the skull with a rubber mallet and kicked in the balls at the same time, but I was conscious and able to hear myself talk.
“Phase out again!” I said to Miller.
I don’t know if he heard me, but less than a minute later we slipped away again.
Gwen pushed Dalton away from the helm. He was out cold. I saw him slump away and drift in free-fall.
She took his station, changed course randomly again, and we escaped further strikes.
“What the hell happened?” Gwen demanded.
“It wasn’t my fault!” Samson said, clutching at his controls. “Not this time!”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. A lucky strike, I’d guess.”
Miller shook his head. “No sir. In my opinion, the enemy spotted our trail in the atmosphere and took a shot. Either that, or one of those AI missiles was patrolling this region, looking for a target, and found us.”
I nodded thoughtfully. If Miller was right, the fault was Dalton’s—but it was hard to second guess anyone at this point.
“That’s why you took it upon yourself to order us into the clear, Miller?” I asked him.
“Yes, sorry Captain. There was no time to explain. The missile was too close by the time we detected it. I had to come out of phase in order to give Samson a chance to bring up the shields.”
“It’s all right. That missile wasn’t going to miss us. You did the right thing.”
Dalton crawled off the deck, where he’d drifted down in a collapse. He groaned and glared at Samson.
“You did that somehow, didn’t you?” he demanded. “For revenge!”
“Nope… but I wish I had,” Samson said, grinning back at him.
=41=
We had a brief respite after that. The enemy cruisers were both up and gliding along above the atmosphere with us—but they didn’t seem to have any idea where we were.
The cruiser we’d struck seemed to be functional, but she was badly hurt.
“She’s still leaking a gas trail, Captain,” Chang confirmed.
“Okay... Dalton? Are you able to man your post?”
He looked banged-up, but he gave me a confident nod. “I’m in prime condition, sir.”
I squinted at him hard. “You’re relieved. Go to Medical. XO, take his station.”
He grumbled and dragged himself off the deck.
“Sir,” Miller said, “may I make a suggestion?”
I considered the request for a second, and I nodded at last. “Let’s hear it.”
“We should slip out of orbit and escape this conflict while we can.”
“Tell me why?”
He began displaying charts and numbers. “We’re still facing two heavy cruisers. One is damaged, yes, but Killer has lost a third of her fighters and we’ve got several leaks below decks.”
I checked over his data. He was right. The missile strike had done more than pop a few eardrums. We had three crewmen incapacitated, and six more who needed medical assistance. One of the oxygen-generators was out of commission, leaving us technically with no more than four days of air to breathe if we couldn’t fix it. There were a number of other damaged systems, but none that were critical.
“Go on,” I said tiredly.
“The ship is in pretty bad shape. The enemy is no longer vulnerable in the atmosphere. We’ve also lost our strategic advantage of surprise. They know we’re out here.”
“Everything you’re telling me is true, but I don’t see what we can do other than engage again.”’
He looked startled. “Do? We don’t have to do anything. We could go to the far side of this world and drop into her atmosphere to effect repairs—that’s a real option.”
“You’re forgetting something,” I said. “This fight ain’t over, and Killer isn’t invisible. She’s out there in far orbit, fighting two cruisers alone.”
“So, warn her off,” he said. “We can relay our situation when we’re out of range of the enemy, and she can retreat from the system if she wants to. We could even arrange a rendezvous, so she can take us out of the system with her.”
I shook my head. “We’re not fighting over this system,” I said. “We’re fighting for Ral. These Imperials have something to do with the Hunter at Ral, I’m convinced of that.”
“Agreed, but it doesn’t change anything. We’re going to lose this fight.”
My eyes squinted as I regarded him. “You think like an Imperial, you know that? They would retreat if the situation was reversed. The fact they’re still here indicates they agree with you. They think they can win this battle.”
Miller looked confused, as if he wasn’t sure if he’d been insulted or not.
“Look, Captain,” he said. “I’m giving you my best advice. This is Earth’s only ship, and we’re her only crew. We can’t risk this ship any longer for a bunch of fuzzy aliens.”
There it was, out in the open. He simply didn’t believe in our mission.
In some ways, I could see his point. What did we really owe to the rest of the Rebel Kher? How many would lay down their lives to save Earth, when it really came down to it? A few, I guess, but not too many. Rebel Command thought in the aggregate, viewing this as a struggle between two interstellar groups grinding against one another. One planet more or less didn’t matter much.
“Miller, your advice is sound,” I said, standing up and floating to where Gwen was operating the helm. “But I’m not going to follow it.”
“May I ask why not, Blake?” he asked.
He was slipping up on his promises by calling me Blake, but I decided to let that go until a better time. I turned my attention to my helmsman instead.
“Gwen,” I said, “take us around behind the injured ship. Put us in range of her engines if you can. Ursahn will hit that vessel, if I don’t miss my guess.”
“Sir?” Miller asked, demanding an answer to his question.
I turned to face him while Gwen began swinging Hammerhead around to a new heading.
“Miller,” I said, “morale wins many battles. Completely destroying an enemy is rare. Getting them to give up is much easier and that’s what we’re going to do.”
To emphasize my words, I tapped at our best sensor data. Screens zoomed. Tiny contacts were approaching from deep space, dropping down rapidly into the planet’s gravity-well.
They were fighters, the second wing arriving from Killer. She wasn’t giving up, and if she was willing to die for the billions of innocents on Ral, I couldn’t abandon her.
I tried not to think of Mia as we slid into position, sneaking up on the injured cruiser, but it was impossible not to.
Was she still alive out there? Did she ever think of me? It was odd to be wondering about a woman from a distant world, but we’d had a good thing going while serving together on Killer’s decks.
We waited until the fighters began their suicidal run. The two heavy cruisers hugged each other close enough to overlap shields. Their rear guns were directed aft, as if they knew they had to cover their stern.
“Miller, keep one hand on that phase-system. Gwen, steady-on.”
They focused on their tasks with the utmost concentration, perhaps none more determinedly than Samson himself. He was not going to screw up again, I could tell.
When the fighters struck, it was a slaughter. Defensive fire lanced out from both cruisers, burning the tiny ships down methodically. They were like a swarm of locusts attacking a grain field. They lit up the shields, making them glimmer yellow, then a deep orange.
“We’ve got to fire, Captain!” Samson said, swept up in the emotion of the moment.
“Hold on. Ensign Miller, take over the tactical weapons station.”
Miller did as I ordered without comment. The crewman he’d relieved stepped aside without remorse. He’d been a replacement, and I didn’t think he wanted the stress under these circumstances.
There came a moment I was waiting for. Watching our fighters die hopelessly was difficult to do, but it was necessary. The big ships had to begin to believe we weren’t here. That we weren’t a threat.
At last, I saw what I was looking for. Some of the forward planes of shielding had failed on the injured cruiser. To compensate, she lowered the power on her aft shields over her engines, shifting power forward. The aft shields dimmed in response.
“That’s it!” I said. “They’ve stopped worrying about us. Miller, take us out of phase and blast that bastard in the ass.”
We appeared, and we began immediately taking hits. Small automated turrets on the stern of each of the bigger ships had begun spraying us with fire. Samson was well prepared, putting up shields and defensive measures as fast as his fingers could engage the pre-programmed sequences.
But our big gun was tracking, locking on.
“Fire when ready, Miller.”
“Firing solution locked,” Chang announced.
“Weapon ready…” Miller said calmly. “Weapon hot…”
A gush of radiation flowed from our ship to the enemy stern. They’d just begun to react, spinning around, doubtlessly redirecting their shielding—but it was too late.
Our beam burned right through her half-strength shield and into the exhaust ports. The engine on the port side exploded. A second later—the whole cruiser went up in a chain-reaction.
=42=
We were committed now. There was no easy way to turn back. Two of the enemy cruisers were gone, but the last one was fully operational and intact.
On paper, Killer and Hammerhead were winning this fight. We’d done so by expending fighters ruthlessly and striking by surprise at critical moments with Hammerhead.
The trouble was, Killer had lost something like sixty percent of her fighters. The surviving pilots were running now, scattered in every direction and fleeing for their lives.
Beams of intense radiation, made visible by our computers, lanced out after them from the remaining cruiser. Sometimes they struck home and destroyed another tiny ship.
“That’s it,” I said, “Miller, phase out as soon as we can. That last big bastard will turn on us as soon as she can.”
“I have to admit, Captain,” he said, “I didn’t think we could pull that off. Now, all we have to do is vanish again. When the fighters come back for the final push, we’ll strike again and take the third ship down.”
Gwen and I exchanged knowing glances.
“That probably won’t happen,” Gwen said.
“What?” asked Miller. “Why not? Why not press the advantage while we can?”
“It’s not us,” I said, “it’s the fighter pilots. They’ve suffered over fifty percent losses. They won’t attack again. They’ll run back to Killer and hide.”
Miller frowned. “Sure, they’ve taken heavy losses, but victory is so close—phasing on.”
“Shields down,” Samson said.
Gwen shifted our course without being prompted. We all knew the routine now. If someone was tracking us, we had to vanish, and then make it impossible to figure out where we’d gone.
“Captain’s right,” Samson said, stretching his fingers and leaning back in his chair. “The Rebel Kher don’t think quite the way we do. They’ll attack in a wild charge, hitting very hard—once. Maybe you can get them together again for a second go. But after that, they’ll fall apart.”
“Odd…” Miller said, staring out into space. The blast shields had rolled away to reveal the twilight world that was visible only when phasing.
“It’s not really unusual,” I said. “After the last campaign, I studied warrior behavior patterns from records we have on Earth. Very often, barbaric armies would face more organized, technologically superior forces in this same manner.”
Miller gave me a strange look. “So, while I was studying your reports, you were studying the Middle Ages?”
“Further back than that. For example, when the Romans fought barbarian armies, the enemy was usually made up of a ferocious core of fighters with a lot of stragglers behind them. When that core charged, they were terrifying—even to the Romans.”
“Interesting…” Miller sai
d. “That isn’t quite the image you get from movies.”
“True, but that’s how it generally went. The barbarians would slam into the Roman lines, but if the Romans could hold, the barbarians would run off and give up. They were usually only good for one charge.”
“So, you’re saying the Rebels are like that? Barbarian-minded, despite their technological advances?”
“Yes, from what we’ve observed. Remember that the Rebels are a hodge-podge of peoples from many worlds. They’re anything but organized and united. They’d probably fight each other to the death if it weren’t for their fear of the Imperials.”
Miller nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, what’s next then? Presuming Killer won’t be able to press the fight any further?”
“We have two choices,” Gwen said, “we can return to Killer to defend her, or we can trail the cruiser looking for opportunities.”
“We’ll trail the cruiser,” I said. “If she goes after Killer, we’ll be perfectly positioned to help.”
But it soon became evident that wasn’t going to happen. The heavy cruiser built up speed during two orbits of the planet below, then broke free of the gravity well and headed out to open space.
“She’s not going for Killer,” Gwen said. “She’s not heading sunward, either.”
“Yeah… keep after her, anyway.”
We followed her for a few hundred thousand miles, then she opened a rift and plunged into it.
“She’s pulling out!” Chang said.
There was no easy way for us to tell where the stellar flux she’d left behind went to. We peered at it, and ran computer analyses, but they were fruitless.
“It looks like a yellow star in the flux,” Chang said, “but it could be any of a billion star systems.”
Ursahn contacted us then, and we responded in the clear. The system appeared to be free of enemy ships.
“Captain,” I said, “we can’t detect any other ships in the region. Can you get to our position to head into this rift?”
“Head into the enemy rift?” Ursahn asked incredulously. “You are the most bloodthirsty of primates. Do you have a death wish?”
