“But we can still get closer to the singularity than she can,” Morgan’s boss replied. “We can still catch her. The super-battleship is moving to cover her.”
“I’m seeing the destroyer falling behind,” the Captain noted. “Let’s vector in on her, see if we can catch up and board her befo—”
The holographic plot flashed white and Morgan swallowed as she focused her screen on where the destroyer had been.
“Self-destruct,” she concluded, somewhat uselessly. “Implosion-explosion sequence.” She ran the sensor data backward and shook her head. “It’s like they compressed the entire ship into a cube about a meter across and then the antimatter reacted to the rest of the ship.”
Masters shook his head. “I don’t suppose our Mesharom passenger would know what is going on there?”
“I can ask,” Morgan offered. “I suspect they’re going to have some pointed questions about the hypermissiles.”
“That was inevitable with Black Dragon,” Vong told her. “Touch base with our guest via email; we’re going to go after that capital ship again.
“We needed the breather as much as they did, but now I think we want to pin her against the black hole and pound her into pieces. I want that ship intact enough for us to board the wreckage, people. If they’re going to blow themselves up, I don’t expect prisoners…but at this point, I’d settle for autopsies.”
Morgan couldn’t help but nod in agreement. There were too many questions still unanswered here.
Your pod has sensors, I know. Are you watching? Morgan asked. The bustle of the bridge was continuing around her, and it seemed she’d been left with control of the Charlie through Foxtrot batteries this time. That gave her the hyperfold cannons, the proton beams and the plasma lance.
Whatever bug had crawled up Commander Masters’s rear seemed to have been kicked out by the Captain.
Given that the weapons she was in charge of were the shorter-range systems, however, she had time to communicate with Coraniss.
Yes. Fascinating. My briefing was incomplete; I was not informed of hyperspace weapons in your arsenal.
Morgan concealed a chuckle, glad the Mesharom couldn’t see her. That was the advantage, she supposed, of dealing with a very junior officer. Coraniss didn’t know that the Imperium wasn’t supposed to have hyperspace missiles at all.
Of course, they’d hand their data over to their superiors once Bellerophon got them to safety. No one expected differently. Some of the Imperium’s secrets had been given away today.
They are crude things, but they work. Did you see the destroyer self-destruct? The effect was outside our experience. Do you know what happened?
Morgan would have hesitated to be so frank with a more senior Mesharom, but Coraniss, by their own admission, didn’t know what the Imperium was supposed to not know. They might well answer questions they shouldn’t.
Implosion of a singularity power core. Ugly way to die.
“Fuck me,” Morgan snapped aloud, then swallowed and looked over at her boss apologetically.
“I’ll forget I heard that if you tell me what caused it,” Masters told her.
“Coraniss says the destroyer had a singularity power core,” she replied. “Presumably backed by antimatter secondaries, given the explosion, but…”
“Well, that explains the shields,” her boss said thoughtfully. “They don’t necessarily have more advanced shield technology; they’re just pushing a lot more power through it.”
One of the reasons that Bellerophon could carry more weapons than her older Manticore-class sisters was her power supply. The Manticore class used antimatter and fusion power cores to meet their energy needs.
Bellerophon used a pair of reverse-engineered Reshmiri matter-conversion power plants, doubling the power output of the older battleship in less than a fifth of the space.
Of course, if the Rashmiri ever realized the Imperium had outright stolen one of their matter-conversion plants to dismantle and duplicate, there would be hell to pay. That particular Core Power, however, was a long way from A!Tol territory.
DragonWorks’s current holy grail was a singularity power core. These strange Kanzi apparently had them.
“It also explains why they managed to get their shields back up so quickly,” Morgan agreed. “That super-battleship has a lot more power to play with than we do.”
“I’ll brief the Captain,” Masters promised. “You see if Coraniss knows anything else.” He paused. “Once you’re done with them, check on the Hotel batteries. Quietly.”
She swallowed and nodded.
The Hotel batteries were the last offensive secret they had left, the key weapons system concealed behind the Gold Dragon clearances. If Masters thought they might end up deploying them…he was nervous.
Which was fair. Morgan herself was terrified.
“He’s trying to evade,” Hume noted aloud. “Pushing point six cee while he covers the logistics ship.”
Apparently, their enemy wasn’t completely cavalier about the lives of their fellows. They might have blown up the surviving destroyer, but they were trying to protect the remaining supply ship.
Though that, Morgan reflected, might be more of a reflection of a need for those supplies versus any concern for the lives of the ship’s crew. Certainly, if these were the Kanzi from the Centauri Incident, they had never shown concern for their people’s lives before.
“Well, let’s give our new friend a choice,” Captain Vong ordered. “Commander Hume, direct course for the logistics ship, if you please. Commander Masters—I want her intact. Casimir—can you tell if the logistics ship has a singularity power core?”
Morgan studied the screens. Bellerophon had a massive suite of sensors, but they’d never scanned a ship they knew had a singularity core before. She had the data on the destroyers and the super-battleship. How close where those to the logistics ship?
She ran the comparison and then gestured one of the NCOs over.
“Maki, do you see what I see?” she asked quietly. The noncom leaned over her shoulder and looked where she was pointing.
“Looks like it, sir,” Maki replied. “It might be something else, but it’s in the right place.”
“Lieutenant Commander?” Masters asked. “Would you and the PO care to share?”
“There’s a trio of unusual gravity signatures on the super-battleship, similar to a strange signature on the destroyers,” Morgan reported. “They’re muffled and shielded, so they didn’t trigger as significant on our initial scans, but I’d guess they’re the singularity cores.
“The freighter doesn’t have one. I’m reading radiation signatures to suggest antimatter and fusion cores, but no singularity.”
“Well done,” Masters allowed.
“Can we target the antimatter plants?” Vong asked. “To take that ship intact?”
“Not from any significant range,” Morgan told him. “We could program the targeting data into the missiles, but that’s a fifty-fifty chance at best. If we got within hyperfold range and…had live targeting data, we might be able to do it.”
Their sensor probes couldn’t get close enough to provide that data, though she could use them to cut the communication loop. There was an option, but it was Gold Dragon tech.
The Captain knew what she meant but shook his head.
“We’ll try for a conventional disabling pass, then,” he ordered. “What are our friends doing?”
“Logistics ship is pushing closer to the black hole,” Masters reporting. “Trying to force a tighter slingshot…I don’t know if she’ll make it. The battleship is turning back towards us.”
“I want a salvo with disabling programs loaded fired at the freighter the moment we have range,” Vong ordered. “Otherwise, we’ll fight that battleship. There’s no retreating this time, people. When this is over, we’re going to leave her falling into that black hole.
“Am I clear?”
The bridge crew’s response, including Morgan’s, was
unquestionably a growl.
Chapter Eighteen
The Kanzi super-battleship recognized the challenge implicit in their charge and came to meet them. Their course, however, showed their conflicting priorities. The battleship commander was clearly hoping to use their superior speed to keep in their missile range and outside of Bellerophon’s range.
The logistics ship, however, wasn’t fast enough to evade the Terran ship. She was diving deeper and deeper toward the black hole, and Morgan was starting to wonder if the Kanzi ship would make it under any circumstances.
“I’m not sure we’re going to be able to catch that freighter, even if we disable her,” she said aloud. “She’s cutting the line damn close as it is.”
“And the battleship is being damn clever,” Masters agreed. “Unless that freighter has another five percent of lightspeed in reserve, she’s already doomed.”
“Let’s not assume the enemy is incompetent,” Vong said. “If nothing else, the super-battleship can tow them out if she wins this fight.”
“We’ll be in their missile range in fifteen seconds. From there, it depends on what they do,” Hume reported.
“They’re going to turn,” the Captain concluded. “They’ve come in at a course that gives them that option, but they have to let us close on the logistics ship to do it.”
“Sir, I have to register my protest at getting this close to a black hole,” the navigator replied. “That logistics ship is already doomed. I’d rather not follow her in, even if I trust the Mesharom calculations to tell me how close I can get.”
A distance, Morgan knew, that was easily half again what they might have guessed earlier. Only the fact that she had confirmed the presence of singularity cores on the Kanzi ships left her figuring the enemy had the same calculations.
“I’m not counting on that ship to fall in on her own, and I’d love the chance to examine her,” Vong replied. “We’ll close with her and see what she does as we get close enough to send boarding shuttles over. Casimir, Masters—get the Bucklers out and keep those missiles away from my ship!”
Morgan was already on it. At some point soon, she was going to run out of defensive drones, but she had a full shell out between them and the Kanzi warship as they dove closer to the black hole.
“Well, Lieutenant Commander Casimir, welcome to what is probably the craziest maneuver you’ll ever see in your career,” Masters murmured to her. “If you get a clean shot with the hyperfold cannons on that freighter, take it.”
The first wave of missiles hit the outer perimeter of the defensive drones before she could reply, lasers lighting up the debris field around them as the Kanzi tried to make the most of their range and speed advantages.
Bellerophon crashed out of the accretion disk into the “open” space around the black hole. They were into space now where anything without an interface drive—or a velocity best measured in fractions of light, anyway—was already sucked into the singularity.
“Range on the transport. Firing.”
Masters’s words echoed on the bridge as the three ships danced through the terrifying “surf” of the black hole.
“Enemy salvo defeated, no leakers,” Morgan reported. The range was too long. The extra handful of seconds were more than enough for a defensive system designed to hit at least some missiles with fractions of a second’s warning.
“He has to either close or leave the transport to us,” Vong said with satisfaction. “Major Phelps—prepare your shuttles. We might actually get a chance to board this bastard.”
“His big brother is making the same call,” Masters warned. “He’s stopped playing games and he’s coming straight for us. Point six cee.”
The Captain snarled. “Major, can your shuttles make it from here?”
Morgan couldn’t hear the response from the Ducal Guard commander. She could hear Vong’s orders, though.
“Whether you’re on that transport or drifting in space, we will come for you, Major. On the honor of the Empress.”
A few seconds later, new green icons speckled the charts as a dozen assault shuttles blasted clear of Bellerophon’s hull. In the chaos, Morgan slipped a probe in far closer than she should have.
For a handful of seconds, the hyperfold coms from the sensor probe gave her near-real-time targeting data on the ship. It was long range for the hyperfold cannons…but she didn’t actually want to do that much damage.
Six batteries, including the now-much-better-rested Charlie-Six, came to life and twenty-four hyperfold cannons spoke. The freighter had four antimatter cores and Morgan ripped all of them open to space in a single moment of violence with only half of Bellerophon’s guns.
“Target shields are down; interface drive is flickering,” she reported a moment later. “Antimatter pods are venting into space. She isn’t self-destructing anytime soon, folks.”
The transport was also now definitely doomed, though. Either of the capital ships fighting over her could pull the wreck out of the black hole’s gravity well. Without the more powerful ship’s engines, however, that logistics ship was only going to one place.
Hell.
The two capital ships continued to close, rushing toward each other at an incomprehensible speed. Missiles flashed across space, the Buckler drones cutting the Kanzi salvos down to a manageable size as the enemy ship continued to take most of Bellerophon’s missiles directly to their shields.
Then there was a gap in the enemy’s fire, and Morgan swallowed a curse as she realized what they’d done.
“Sir, they’ve fired on the logistics ship! Less than thirty seconds to impact.”
There was no time for using their missiles as countermeasures. No time to try and interpose the Buckler drones. Under the current rules of engagement, they couldn’t intervene…and they had over a hundred Guards already aboard the Kanzi ship.
“Go Gold Protocol,” Vong snapped. “Casimir, take those missiles down! Masters, kill that bastard.”
New options and commands appeared on Morgan’s screen, and she hit a command she’d never actually seen used outside of simulations. All of the tests of the system had taken place in buried spaces they were certain the Mesharom weren’t watching.
A new set of exotic-matter emitters, completely different from anything else aboard the battleship, came to life. Energy cycled down the arrays and converted into new particles, tachyons pulsing from the negative mass of the strange arrays in super-lightspeed streams.
Five seconds after Vong gave the order to go Gold, Morgan Casimir had a real-time image of everything within thirty light-seconds of Bellerophon. Perfect targeting data.
Five seconds after that, her hyperfold cannons opened fire. Even with live data, she wasn’t hitting with every shot, and she was trying to shoot down a hundred and sixty missiles with forty-eight guns.
The geometry gave her less than fifteen seconds, enough time to cycle the hyperfold cannons five times at minimum power.
It was enough. Two missiles made it through her fire, diving toward the logistics ship…and missing to fall into the black hole, their targeting systems fried by approaching too close to the singularity.
“Hotel batteries are live,” Chin Masters reported as the Kanzi missiles died. “Internal hyper portals open. Firing.”
The Mesharom built their hyperdrive missiles to be independent entities, capable of entering and leaving hyperspace under their own power. That required a lot of exotic matter, which was always in limited supply in the Imperium, and a lot of space and power.
Testing at DragonWorks had discovered, however, that exiting hyperspace actually took less power and exotic matter than entering it. A lot less. A missile that only needed to leave hyperspace could actually be built into a platform only three times the size of a conventional interface-drive missile.
Bellerophon had four Hotel batteries. Each contained one hyperspace-portal generator and six missile launchers—and all of them were buried deep inside her hull. There was no need for a single-porta
l hyperspace missile to be launched from the exterior of the ship.
Twenty four missiles screamed into hyperspace at point eight cee, crossing the space to the Kanzi warship in fractions of a second and plunging back into reality under their own power. The same tachyon scanners that allowed Morgan to protect the freighter also gave Masters real-time targeting data for his attack.
Sixteen of the missiles emerged next to the Kanzi super-battleship, slamming into her shields with the full force of a modern interface-drive missile loaded with a twenty-gigaton antimatter warhead. The shields flickered and collapsed…but it didn’t matter.
The last eight missiles had appeared inside the shields, punching through compressed-matter armor to deliver their deadly payloads into the enemy capital ship.
“Target destroyed,” Masters reported with grim satisfaction. “Single-portal hypermissile magazines at ninety percent.”
“Lock them back down,” Vong ordered. “Return to Green Dragon protocols.” He shook his head. “Let’s hope our Mesharom friend thinks we just had better luck with the second round of dual-portal missiles.”
The single-portal missiles were in many ways a more advanced weapon than the Mesharom used…and they were made possible by shielding technology learned from the Precursor wreck humanity had sold the Core Power.
Technology the Imperium wasn’t supposed to have access to anymore.
Chapter Nineteen
“The Kanzi are lying to me.”
The recorded communiqué from Empress A!Shall sounded tired. Harriet Tanaka felt tired, the Fleet Lord run ragged by taking her fleet outside of Jupiter for the first time in five years.
“It’s strange,” A!Shall’s recorded presence continued. “I’m not certain they’re lying to me about attacking our systems. That’s sufficiently out of character that I’m prepared to consider other possibilities, however unusual.
Darkness Beyond (Light of Terra: a Duchy of Terra series Book 1) Page 11
