Stardust

by Edward W. Robertson

  Tactical beeped; an enemy had lobbed a few missiles at her. Rada let the automated systems take care of it. The Lurkers were scrambling to get some ships around both carriers, but tactical showed the humans would arrive ahead of all but the closest interceptors.

  "Final measures," Alcera signaled. "Prep drones."

  Rada cleared her remaining drones for launch. As she finished, abrupt motion on tactical drew her eye. The triangles of the heavy laser-bearing fighters, which were still fleeing from the army of missiles the humans had launched at them ten seconds ago, pulled a classic buttonhook, turning back around toward the forty ships crashing toward the carrier.

  This meant immediate suicide for some: the maneuver also brought them right back into the pursuing schools of missiles, and even after firing off everything they could, six of the Lurkers were ripped apart. Without warning, Rada's comm flipped back on.

  Yet despite the immediate losses, twenty of the laser-equipped ships remained on the chase, with a screen of smaller fighters flooding in behind them.

  "Evasive maneuvers!" Alcera barked. "Break right, Pattern Gecko, on my—"

  A perfectly straight red line tethered her to the foremost of the Lurkers. Her ship flared white, explosions breaking out on both sides of the hull, consuming it.

  Third Squadron bloomed into chaotic squiggles and hard turns. Lasers flashed into and past them, knocking out three more ships. Rada fired a spread of missiles at a fighter as it lined up its shot, forcing it to break off.

  "Second Wing! We need orders!" Baker, the third wing, was outright screaming. Rada didn't fully understand why until it came to her that she was flying second wing. With Alcera dead, she was in charge of Third Squadron.

  "Give them a round of missiles," she said, buying herself a few seconds to assess the scene.

  Hemmed in by heavy fighters. In the lane of space between them and the carrier, the humans currently had the numbers, but reinforcements were coming up fast behind the laser-boats. Meanwhile, their evasive maneuvers had saved multiple ships and possibly prevented the entire formation from collapsing—but it had also given the Lurker interceptors precious time to close on the carriers. Even if Rada pushed ahead in a heedless charge, they'd be shredded by the heavy fighters only to run into a screen of defenders. What chance would they have of getting their missiles through to the carriers?

  Then again, at this point, even if they turned and ran, what chance did they have to survive? If they did survive, what chance did the Belt have, having spent its last ships in a futile attack on the carriers?

  "We keep going forward," Rada said. "Launch every drone you've got at the heavy fighters. Pattern Thunderbolt on the way to the carrier. Our target is big and it's slow. We're going to shoot at it. With bullets. Until either it, or us, is dead."

  Silence across the comm. So much so that Rada had to check to make sure it hadn't been jammed again.

  "Roger," Baker said at last. "Launching drones."

  Rada and Baker sent their remaining drones at the heavy fighters, jumping forward a little as they were freed of the extra mass. The surviving ships in Third Squadron did the same. Rada got a read on the carrier's course and fired a spurt of bullets where it would be if it was too stupid to not change that course before the bullets arrived.

  "Engage Thunderbolt," she told her system. The Silence barrel rolled, dipping madly before righting itself and then swerving to the left without warning, following a randomized set of maneuvers meant to throw off laser fire while also maximizing forward progress.

  A red bolt flew in from the otherwise-engaged heavy fighters, dashing the rearmost Second Squadron ship to pieces. The first of the Lurkers' interceptors closed on the carrier and launched an exploratory round of missiles at Rada and the ships in her vanguard.

  She let loose a spread to clear the way, then consulted with her computer before firing off two more bursts of slugs at the carrier, which had almost turned itself around. The Lurker heavy fighters were doing battle with the mini-fleet of drones and were falling further and further back, their tactics suddenly conservative again.

  A quarter or more of the enemy fleet was converging on the two carriers to prevent the human assault, but plenty more alien ships were hunting down individual Belter fighters, caught up in dogfights, or maneuvering around the fringes. Something felt off. As if the Lurkers were fully confident in their upcoming victory and were now ensuring that not only would they win, but that no human would make it out of the fight alive.

  The interceptors screening them off from the carrier began to launch drones, the crescent-shaped vehicles filling up the tactical display. Third Squadron had spent every last one of its own drones to gum up the heavy fighters and give themselves a shot at reaching the carrier.

  "Commander Pence," Baker said. "Do we engage the drones?"

  Typically, the answer would be an unequivocal yes: they were easier targets than any ship capable of launching them, but their missiles could kill you just as easily as those of a high-end fighter, meaning the obvious tactical choice was to mop them up before turning to the harder-to-bring-down ships.

  But that was under the standard rules of engagement. You only followed the standard rules when your primary goal was to survive the encounter.

  "We're going to punch our way through," Rada said.

  "Commander Pence, if we try to punch through that many missile-capable craft, we'll be completely shredded."

  "No we won't. Because we're going to hit them with the Tornado."

  Baker gave her a puzzled look. "The Tornado? This is a Dark Solutions secret weapon?"

  "Nope. It's a formation. One I've been working on as a way to deal with bigger fleets. We pack ourselves tight in a narrow cone like a tornado. Wide side of the funnel faces the enemy. This leaves everyone with a firing lane on the carrier. More importantly, we'll be flying so close together that each one of our missiles can defend multiple ships at once."

  "If we're flying tight enough to do that, then we'll also be flying so close together that a single missile barrage could decimate us!"

  "Obviously. But this is the only way we can fulfill our objective. These are my orders. Follow them, or take over yourself."

  Baker blinked. "Understood, Commander Pence."

  She relayed the order to both the Third and Second Squadron—and then, for good measure, sent it to Admiral Vance as well. She had no idea if the Second would give a damn for her orders, but the man who was first wing of Second Squadron was either very scared or very quick to assimilate new information, because he immediately commanded his people to fall in line.

  The two squads formed a single cone, as narrow as they could make it, each ship flying within two hundred yards of each other. In the cavernous distances of space, the proximity was claustrophobic, on the brink of horrifying.

  "Full speed," Rada said. "And whatever you do, don't stop juking."

  The ships darted and swerved like maddened hornets, their evasive maneuvers bringing themselves so close together that their green dots merged on tactical, churning toward the Lurker drones like a hellish drill bit. Entering range, the crescent-shaped drones pumped out missile after missile. The human ships coordinated, countering with such a meager supply of rockets that Rada had to convince herself she hadn't just condemned them all to suicide.

  The missiles streaked forth like knights making a doomed final charge. Yet each defensive blast provided cover for nearly half of the front end of the formation, chain-exploding the Lurker missiles jockeying for a path through.

  "Commander," Baker said. "I think it's working."

  Rada snorted. "You almost sound disappointed."

  "I am surprised that I'm alive to say anything at all."

  "Start taking shots at the carrier. But have our people conserve ammunition. I'm afraid we're going to need to get a lot closer to pull this off."

  A laser flashed from the rear, narrowly missing two different fighters. The Lurker heavy fighters had finally battled their way
past the drones and were now giving chase, lining up shots from directly behind them. The next shot took down an Earth vessel, the shrapnel from the dying ship ripping into the hull of the fighter flying behind it. The second ship held together, but it was shedding pieces of itself in a steady stream.

  And directly into the path of the heavy fighters.

  "Start dumping oxygen," Rada said. "Water, too. Dump everything you've got in your holds. Anything that can slow down their lasers!"

  Her fighters jetted gas, water, and cargo, the matter streaming behind them like the tail of a disintegrating comet. The next laser crackled into the chunky cloud and passed through, reaching out and touching the tail of a Dasher construct, but it had burned up too much energy passing through the comet to do more than warm up the Dasher's cabin.

  The forest of missile-bursts grew denser and denser. As they came upon the drones, the confused pilotless vessels broke away to a more appropriate range. Rada led her team right through the hole in their guard.

  "Let's give them a flood!" she yelled at a volume that was possibly a little too loud for standard Earthside naval decorum.

  Missiles roared from every point of the Tornado, chasing after the weapons-depleted drones. Rada could have destroyed them all if she'd diverted the squads for just a minute, but she pressed on, firing another barrage of kinetics at the carrier.

  The carrier had completed its turn some time ago and was now flying directly away from them. Their regular salvos of bullets forced it to change course every few seconds, yet even with the losses of forward progress this induced, they were barely gaining any ground on it.

  The Lurker interceptors zipped forward to meet them. As far as Rada knew, they weren't equipped with lasers—they were half engine by mass and the laser systems were apparently too heavy for the quick-reaction role the smaller ships were meant to fill—but they were already launching a plague of rockets at the human fighters.

  The interceptors had been flying toward them in a loose net. Now, each ship turned inward. The formation contracted like a jellyfish. The Lurkers continued their turn, converging and realigning in a wide funnel shape, the mouth pointed at the humans. And they were now traveling the same direction as the humans as well, albeit slower.

  "Break formation," Rada said. "Get ready to engage."

  On the screen, Baker stiffened. "Commander?"

  "We can't break through like we did with the drones. They've matched our vector, they'll have too long to hammer at us. We'll have to dogfight them."

  "A dogfight will expose us to the heavy fighters coming at us from behind."

  "Then you'd better hope your people are better pilots than the Lurkers. Let's go!"

  She sent the order to switch to the inverted chevron she had discovered she favored for aggressive action. The short-lived Tornado broke apart as if the formation had been hit by its namesake.

  "Overwhelming display of force," Rada said. "Use every missile you have if that's what it takes to break through. We'll bring down the carrier with kinetics alone if we have to."

  The first missiles were already crashing into each other in the empty space between the two formations of fighters. Both sides launched their second wave. As more and more missiles entered the field, the formations cracked into smaller dogfights angling for supremacy.

  A ship from Second Squadron vanished from tactical. It was followed by a Lurker, a Belter, and then another Lurker, as if they were taking turns dying to each other. Rada homed in on interceptor as it broke to pepper Baker with rockets. They had a speed advantage on the enemy fighter screen and she closed quickly, chasing it with missiles while leading it with bullets.

  The interceptor broke downward, looking to shake her. This would take it away from its squadron, though. Rada didn't buy it. With missiles exploding between them, Rada raked the space above the interceptor with kinetics—which it ran right into as it attempted a hairpin turn to rejoin its team.

  With Baker cleared, she stole a look at tactical. Her people were holding their own. If they'd been left undisturbed, she thought they might be able to run the interceptors off with another five minutes.

  But they didn't have five minutes. With each passing moment, the carrier was getting further away and the heavy fighters were getting closer to their rear. They were trapped. Another ninety seconds, and they would be caught between the hammer and the anvil. Across the field of battle, the human ships pursuing the other carrier were caught in a similar predicament. Oddly similar, in fact.

  She couldn't tell anyone, but they were done. This left her with one last choice to make. Spend everything they had to break past the interceptors and chase after the one-in-a-thousand chance that one of them would get close enough to the carrier to take it out? Or change strategy and take out as many interceptors and fighters as they could to give Toman and Kansas slightly better odds of victory when they rallied against the Lurkers?

  She wasn't sure the latter was a "when," though. She was afraid it was an "if."

  "It's now or never," Rada said. "Give them everything you've got and try to break through."

  A torrent of missiles poured from the two squadrons. The Lurkers responded in kind. Tactical screamed a warning. Rada froze, eyes darting to it to find the missile that was about to plow into her.

  But there were no missiles. None in imminent threat range, at least. What she saw instead was much too fast and much too big to be a missile. It was coming in from dead ahead, racing at the rear of the Lurker fleet like a runaway meteor.

  No. Not like a runaway meteor.

  "Break hard!" she yelled into the comm. "Now now now!"

  She was already wrestling the Silence into a hard left, every booster firing to maximize her lateral momentum. Most of her ships followed her lead, but others were hemmed in by enemy ships and had to take whatever route was open to them. The asteroid had been on a direct collision course with the carrier, but the massive Lurker vessel was already coming about. Rada's heart sank as tactical showed that it would be a near miss.

  The asteroid glowed with light. As if it was plunging through a dense atmosphere. It shredded apart in a gigantic blast. Not from some Lurker super-missile—but from what could only be a package of high-powered mining explosives planted at its core.

  A thousand tumbling shards carried forward at immense speed. The cannonball had become a shotgun blast. This time, there was no way for the carrier to dodge as the shrapnel ripped right through its hull.

  10

  Something stung his arm. He tried to slap at it, but his hand felt too heavy to lift.

  Tingling heat pumped through his veins. He gasped and threw open his eyes. He'd been out of it, out deep, and whatever they'd injected him with had his heart pounding like he'd just outswam a shark.

  He was in a chair in a gray room, not too big and not too small. His wrists and ankles were locked down. He didn't know how he'd gotten there. His last memory was of the craft touching down on the snow-coated hill, and then he'd set down his gun, and then…nothing.

  It came to him that a man in a black suit was standing across from him. The suit looked expensive and the man looked happy about it. His perfect black hair was combed back from his forehead. He was smiling and this put very fine crinkles around his eyes, but the eyes themselves were so flat MacAdams didn't think there was anything behind them at all.

  "Who are you working for?" The man's smile didn't lose a speck of its luster.

  MacAdams blinked. "Your mother."

  "I very much doubt that. For the second time, who are you working for?"

  "You're right, I quit. She didn't pay me enough."

  "For the third time, after which you learn better, who—"

  "Your father's much more generous."

  The man shook his head, still smiling, and touched the inside of MacAdams' left forearm with a little gray wand. Pain fired up his arm with such white heat he yanked his arm back hard enough to almost sprain his wrist against its restraint.

  The
stab of the wand faded a little with each heartbeat. MacAdams took a deep breath. "You're wasting your time. You should just shoot me."

  "There are many flaws in this suggestion. First, that is not what we are here to do. And second, it is a deep piece of human nature to overestimate how much you can achieve and how much you can withstand."

  The man tucked his hands behind his back. "I will tell you my name, because that will help you to focus in concrete terms exactly how much power I have over you. My name is Enspach. I am here, quite obviously, to retrieve information from you. This will involve treating you in such a manner that your pain eventually becomes fear—and, if necessary, that your fear eventually becomes panic or despair. Once you understand that telling the truth is your only hope of relief, I will have my information, and you will have peace."

  "You talk too much."

  "Does that annoy you? Then tell me who you work for."

  "Frankie's Pizza. And the boss is going to be pissed when he hears you made me late on my delivery."

  The man smiled, eyes crinkling like sphincters, and touched the wand to MacAdams again. He convulsed so hard he shook the chair, spittle spritzing from the corners of his mouth.

  MacAdams slumped forward, breathing in and out. "What is wrong with you?"

  "A lack of answers, that's all. Once I have them, I will be complete, and you will have nothing more to fear."

  "What kind of corpse-eating maggot sells out his own species?"

  "Oh, you want to know why I'm working with them! I'm sorry, I thought you had asked what is wrong with me. For there is nothing wrong with taking an unflinching look at the threat that is coming for you and coming to the understanding that there is no fighting it." Enspach tilted his face forward, eyebrows raised. "That kind of honesty takes the greatest strength of all, wouldn't you think?"

  "Maybe so. But you got one thing wrong. We are fighting back. You didn't go running to the Lurkers because of the moral strength of your character. You kneeled down to them so you could free yourself of the responsibility of standing up to them."