Maelstrom Strand

by Rick Partlow

  The ship seemed to shoot forward, the view on the screen changing swiftly. It was a simulation, he knew. It had to be. The ship’s drive warped the fabric of spacetime around it, including photons, so the actual image from the external cameras would be something psychedelically twisted, incomprehensible to the human mind. The computers took the sensor data and combined it with a decoded and recombined reading of the incoming image to put together the simulation they saw on the screen; but the Imperial systems were so advanced, it was very difficult to tell the difference. The planet and its small, captured asteroid of a moon certainly looked real enough.

  Farsund itself was green and blue and white. Mostly white, which meant it was currently in ice age and had been since before humans entered space for the first time. He’d studied up on the world during the week-long voyage, which helped distract him from thinking of Franny, who’d stayed behind on Revelation to help refit the mercenary ships’ tactical networks and get everyone on the same combat programming. Farsund had been a civilian colony once, before the fall of the Empire, then had been briefly conquered by the Jeuta before Starkad and Modi had banded together for a brief moment in their long history of warfare to drive the genetically engineered species out of the Dominions. After Farsund had been taken back, there’d been none of its original colonists left alive and no one had wanted to resettle the place, so the Supremacy Navy had set up a military base.

  “Twenty minutes till intercept,” Tara announced, tracing lines on her touch screens with the forefingers of both hands, her motion like a conductor leading an orchestra. “No sign he’s picked us up yet.”

  Starkad undoubtedly had satellite surveillance on the jump point, but most systems would be on the lookout for the tell-tale thermal signature of a fusion drive. It was impossible to hide, and until they’d found the Shakak II, there had been no way to sneak through a jump point, which had saved their lives over and over. They couldn’t have even made it to Farsund without passing through Starkad-held jump-points, but even if anyone had noticed their passage, the drive field distorted the light around the Shakak, which prevented it from giving a clean reflection and made it very difficult to even identify it as a ship.

  Hmmm. There must be some way to use the distortion to simulate the signature of a different ship. I wonder if I can get Franny to help me run some numbers on that when we get back…

  “Oh, she’s seen us now,” Tara said, cutting into the equations he’d been spinning through his brain. “Burning this way at six gravities. Updated intercept time is seven minutes, thirty-three seconds.”

  “Too fast,” Kammy muttered, shaking his head. “Dude isn’t going to be able to do much once he reaches us.”

  Terrin knew from experience how miserable six gravities was on a conventional starship using a reaction drive. Just staying conscious was exhausting after a few minutes of the increased perceived weight, much less thinking.

  “He’s panicked,” Tara assessed, sniffing in a dismissive sort of way, as if it were someone else’s problem. “He’s looking at something batshit crazy and…” The woman squinted at the screen, then adjusted the view, zooming in on a section of the planet as if the oncoming warship wasn’t important. “Holy shit,” she murmured. “You seeing what I’m seeing coming around the terminator of the planet?”

  Terrin tried to get a look at whatever it was, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of the sensor data, though it obviously meant something to the two of them. Kammy’s grin was so wide it looked as if it would split his broad face in two. He touched a control on his console and leaned over the audio pickup.

  “Ho’onani,” he said. It was his nickname for Lyta Randell. He’d told Terrin it meant “beautiful” in some ancient language he’d learned from his great-grandmother. “We got a repair dock in orbit here and sensors say there are two Starkad destroyers being serviced there.”

  There was a long, silent pause and Terrin wondered if she’d heard his message. She was with Logan and his makeshift mech company in one of the converted cargo shuttles Bohardt’s crew used as a drop-ship, borrowed for this mission, and it was entirely possible the thing’s comm systems had gone down again.

  “I got you, Kammy,” Lyta’s voice came over speakers concealed in the fabric of the walls, sounding as if the woman were standing right beside him. “We’re going to call an audible. I’m transferring to Duane’s assault shuttle with a boarding party. After we drop Logan, you’ll take us in range.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kammy acknowledged, laughing in appreciation.

  “Is everybody forgetting we still got this guy coming toward us at six gees?” Terrin wondered, pointing at the tactical display, where a very large, red icon was still approaching.

  “Have faith, dude,” Kammy adjured him, frowning. Then his voice slipped back into what Terrin had come to think of as “command mode.” “Time till they’re in range of the main gun?”

  “Three minutes, twelve seconds,” Tara provided.

  “Capacitors charged?”

  “Would I take us into battle if they weren’t?” She sounded offended by the notion.

  “Target their drives.”

  “They have deflectors on full power.” It wasn’t exactly a warning, more of an observation by the Tactical officer. So far, conventional ship’s deflectors hadn’t done a whole lot against the Shakak’s particle accelerator except prolong the process. “They’re launching anti-ship missiles. Three of them. Estimated time of intercept one minute.”

  Terrin’s eyes went wide. That was overkill; one of the gigantic missiles was enough to take out a starship, and even a Starkad heavy cruiser only carried four of the behemoths.

  “They really are panicking,” he realized.

  “Yo, scientist,” Kammy said, casting a sidelong glance that might have been nervous. “You sure this thing can take a fusion blast that size? Like, if they all hit us at once?”

  “Am I sure?” Terrin repeated, a catalog of test results running through his memory. “No, I can’t be certain. The Navy never tried anything quite that powerful, probably because they didn’t want to damage the ship. Theoretically, it’s possible for the drive field to overload if you pump enough energy into it.”

  “And what the hell happens if it overloads?” Tara asked, spinning in her seat to stare at him, appalled.

  “It’d collapse,” he explained. “We’d be left sitting with no momentum right where we were when it failed.”

  “Totally naked to whatever this joker shoots at us,” Kammy surmised. He rolled his eyes and turned back to Tara. “Target the missiles and take them out.”

  “Retargeting on the closest of them,” she affirmed, finger tracing spirals on her screen. “Firing in ten seconds.”

  The beam itself was a barely-visible blue glow in a vacuum, but the computer simulated it as it did everything else it considered important, drawing a line of white fire between them and the approaching fusion flare of the missiles, each of them the size of an assault shuttle, armored with centimeters of BiPhase Carbide capable of shunting off the primary laser on a heavy cruiser for at least one or two shots. Where the white fire connected, a flare of expanding gas formed a small supernova and that was something the computer didn’t have to simulate.

  It all had a distant quality to it, though, and Terrin wondered if it was because of the artificial gravity. He’d experienced it before on the original Shakak, but the grueling agony of constant acceleration and maneuvering had given immediacy to the fight, brought home the life-and-death stakes. They were travelling at a few percentages of lightspeed now, but sitting on their butts as if it were all a simulator back on Sparta. It was easy to think it wasn’t real.

  “That’s two of them down,” Tara announced.

  “That’s enough,” Kammy decided. Retarget the cruiser and tell me when the capacitors are recharged.”

  “That last one is gonna blow in ten seconds,” Tara said, her tone matter-of-fact.

  “Yeah, I know.” A bit of Kammy�
�s native accent worked its way back into his neutral “starship captain” voice, just a hint of how nervous he was. “Carry on.”

  Terrin tried not to move his lips as he counted down the seconds inside his head. When he reached zero, he squeezed his eyes shut and… Yeah, there it is. A trembling, a vibration through the ship, not like an impact but more a wave tossing them sideways, like a rowboat on a lake hitting the wake of a ferry. He forced his eyes open and checked the readings from the field generator.

  “We had some feedback,” he reported. “It dampened the field output maybe twenty, twenty-five percent for a few seconds, but it’s back to full strength now.”

  “Yeah, let’s make a note of that,” Tara cracked. “Don’t let them shoot fusion missiles at us anymore.” She sobered at a quelling glare from Kammy. “Thirteen seconds until the capacitors are charged for another shot,” she added. “Still two minutes to intercept range.”

  “We’re back up to full acceleration analog,” Bergh said, cool and unruffled. “Everything is stable again.”

  Kammy turned back toward Terrin, frowning massively.

  “Dude, can you stop with the damned tapping?”

  Terrin looked down, realized he was tapping his toe against the deck unconsciously, the nervous energy working its way out of him. He planted his foot firmly against the deck, then offered an apologetic shrug to Kammy.

  “He’s firing his primary laser battery at us,” Tara said, pointing at the screen.

  The Starkad cruiser was close enough for the computer to give it physical features instead of a generic red delta threat icon. It shone bright silver in the reflection of the starlight, a wedge-shaped monster against the white and blue circle of Farsund. A line of scintillating red shot out from its dorsal laser batteries, again a computer-generated convenience, since there was nothing to refract the beam of photons in the depths of space. The crimson light splashed in surreal spirals around the periphery of the Shakak, distorted away by the drive field, but again, Terrin noticed a slight dip in field efficiency.

  “About a five percent drop in stability,” he said. “He’s at extreme range though. That laser could bring us down maybe thirty percent up close.”

  “Also good to know for future reference,” Kammy allowed, grudgingly. Terrin thought he looked disappointed that his shiny new ship wasn’t quite as invulnerable as he’d hoped.

  It’s science, not magic.

  “Let’s not give him the chance for another shot. Tactical, are we within maximum range for the main gun?”

  “Not optimal range,” she equivocated with something of a scowl, “but yeah, we’ll put a hitch in the bitch’s step if we hit her from here.”

  “Target her laser emitter and fire.”

  Mithra alone knew what the particle cannon fired, because the Spartan Navy’s best researchers hadn’t been able to figure it out. Terrin suspected it was antihydrogen, but Dr. Kovalev insisted it couldn’t be, due to the output from the test bed, though he had no real suggestions as to what else it could be. Whatever it used for ammunition, it splashed into the nose of the Starkad cruiser with a devastating flare of vaporized metal, a halo of burning gas surrounding the bow of the starship. The cruiser sailed through the cloud, still in one piece, but the sensors told the real story.

  “I’m reading a huge thermal bloom all down their dorsal weapons mount,” Tara said, her teeth showing in a smile that wouldn’t have been out of place on a stalking wolf. “That laser focusing is so much junk now.”

  The star-bright fusion fire expanding from the cruiser’s drive bell abruptly winked out, leaving behind a glowing after-image in Terrin’s vision.

  “Did we disable him?” Terrin blurted, knowing it wasn’t likely but hoping they’d been lucky.

  The words had barely made it out of his mouth when he saw the white jet of flame surging from one of the ring of maneuvering thrusters circling the aft end of the cruiser just fore of the drive bell.

  “She’s pulling a skew-flip,” Kammy judged. “She’s making a run back for the planet, hoping to use their orbital defenses against us.”

  “Gonna take her forever to decelerate after that high-gee burn,” Bergh said.

  They sounded so calm, Terrin thought. As if this were just another day, just a drill back at the proving grounds, or a computer simulation. A year or two ago, he might have thought they actually weren’t nervous, weren’t afraid of dying. He knew better now and he envied them their ability to hide their fear.

  “Hit them before they restart the main drive, Tara,” Kammy told the Tactical officer. There was a tinge of regret in the order, a hint of wistfulness.

  “Capacitors will be recharged in ten seconds.” Tara’s hand hovered over the firing control, watching the power reading travel up the scale from red toward green.

  On the main screen, the cruiser was still traveling toward them on its momentum from the boost, its aft end swinging slowly around even under the full thrust of the steering jets.

  They’re trying to move a hell of a lot of mass. Physics doesn’t change just because you’re desperate.

  “In range,” Tara droned, her attention fixed on the readouts. “Capacitors fully charged. Firing now.”

  The shot was perfectly placed, striking the cruiser at the juncture of the drive bell and the radiation shield, spearing through to the fuel tanks for the maneuvering thrusters. The particle beam burned through the thinner armor there, undeterred by the electromagnetic deflector screens, and the propellant for the steering jets detonated in a rocket blast opposite the thruster already firing. Bereft of its fuel feed, the controlled thrust ended and the entire load of propellant burned off in a giant torch from the starboard aft of the cruiser, a signal flare begging for help when none would come.

  “That had to have jacked up the fuel feed for their main drive.” Tara leaned back in her seat, smacking a palm against her console in triumph. “They can’t maneuver and they can’t boost and that thing’s gonna drift right out of the system unless they hit the gravity well for the gas giant sometime next year.”

  “It’s worse than that,” Kammy said, not sounding near as happy about it as his Tactical officer. “With the velocity they built up, even if they do try to evacuate in their shuttles, they’ll never have enough fuel to get back to Farsund.”

  “Damn,” Terrin whispered, the realization hitting him. “As long as the reactor holds out, they’ll have heat and oxygen, and they can get water from their recycling plant, but…”

  “They’re going to run out of food,” Kammy finished the thought for him. “That’s why in a war, there are trans-Dominion treaties about aiding stranded vessels. And if we were in a war, and we were fighting for the Spartan Navy, which we technically used to be, I’d be forced to stop and help them. But since Starkad didn’t bother to declare war, and since we’re not working for the official Spartan government anymore, and don’t have the time, or energy, or personnel, or supplies to deal with a shitload of enemy prisoners…” The big man hissed out a breath. “Well, the poor bastards are on their own. Bergh, take us into orbit. Tara, get ready to target their orbital weapons platforms.”

  Kammy hit the intercom control. “Colonel,” he transmitted, “the Starkad ship is neutralized. Tell your pilots to get ready. You are cleared for launch in fifteen minutes.” He shot a grin at Terrin, though it didn’t seem to reach all the way to his eyes. “Now the fun really starts.”

  12

  Stardrives were nice for a ship, but Kathren Margolis enjoyed the gut-level thrill of the boost. It pushed at you like a bully on a schoolyard, trying to find out just how much you could take. She reveled in it as it slammed her back into her acceleration couch, an insistent detractor trying to tell her no, she couldn’t fly that fast, but she did it anyway, to spite him.

  Farsund screamed toward her, closer with every second, the abstract lines of white and blue and green acquiring texture and depth with proximity. Mountain ranges capped with trackless glaciers split the primary conti
nent in two, the ice growing thicker near the poles until it squeezed everything else out, turning what would have been an ocean in a warmer climate into chains of saltwater lakes. It was starkly beautiful, a place she could have seen herself visiting for a cross-country skiing vacation, though she wouldn’t have wanted to live there.

  Their target was as close to the equator as it could be without setting it afloat in the middle of the narrow ocean ringing the planet’s center, one of the small, isolated strips of green amidst all the white. She couldn’t see the missile batteries or the coilgun turrets from the upper atmosphere, but she knew they were down there, ringing the Starkad base like spines on a hedgehog. These weren’t pirates or second-rate bandits, ripe for the picking. If she didn’t take out their air defenses, the drop-ship was as good as dead.

  Drop-ship my ass. It’s a beat-up old cargo shuttle, the best the mercs could afford, with some armor and a chin cannon slapped onto it.

  The Supremacy troops below weren’t just going to wait for her to come to them, though…they were coming to her. A squadron of dual-environment fighters was climbing to meet them, already rising above the towering mountains, wicked, silver darts on roaring turbojet engines. If she’d waited in the almost thinner reaches of the upper atmosphere, she would have had a greater advantage. The fighters were powered by small fusion plants, but their turbines were smaller, more fragile and more prone to overheating. In the near-vacuum at the edge of space, there was nowhere to bleed off that heat.

  They knew that, too, though, and they’d be very happy just to sit down in the soup and wait for her.

  Nothing’s ever easy.

  “Have you ever taken on fighters before?” Acosta asked her from the right-hand seat. At least he didn’t sound like a nervous mother this time. Maybe I’ve killed all his fear instincts after so long flying with me.

  “In training,” she told him, biting down on the mischievous smile that wanted so badly to break through. “Simulators and shit.”