"Yet?"
Kansas gave her an amused look. "By the time this is over, we'll all be expendable."
Rada shuffled the now-shrunken Tine back near the middle of the javelin. They curled around, as did the Lurkers, jousting for a third pass. Again they angled toward the left side of the enemy ranks, fighting with renewed aggression now that they only had to worry about lasers from the far side. The Lurkers still had two heavy fighters among their armada, but neither fired a shot. Either they'd run out of juice or they were saving them for something special.
They cleared the third layer and flew into empty space. Kansas whooped over the fleet-wide line. "Ten kills to seven losses! That's the first time we've come out in the black. Hit them even harder this time. After this round, I want them to question every decision in their miserable lives."
They heaved about again, preparing for another pass. The Lurkers did not. Instead, the aliens made a ninety degree turn, flying laterally away from the humans. Kansas bent the fleet to follow.
"Don't tell me they're running away," she said to her officers. "I'm not done here. Not until I've used their intestines to spell my name on my windshield."
"We can't let them walk free," Mat-Nalin growled. "Not after what they've done to the Belt!"
"Do I seem like the type to let my enemy turn their back to me without sticking a blade in it?"
"We could be looking at another ploy," Rada said. "It doesn't make sense for them to retreat. In relative numbers, they outnumber us worse than they did at the start of the battle."
Mat-Nalin curled his lip. "That's just how they are, aren't they? They wouldn't accept a fair fight if you drove it to them in the trunk of a free car."
"Whatever we're doing, we can't let them get away," Rada said. "If they leave the field, they'll cloak and we won't see them again until they're blasting more stations—or dropping another round of rocks on Earth."
"If they're retreating, I'll bet my soul they still have a factory somewhere," Winters said softly. "They'll fly across the System under stealth, keeping us distracted by stoning one station after another until their new weapons are ready. Then they'll come for us again."
"Everyone, quit moaning," Kansas said. "That's a direct order. If any of you seriously think I'd let them get out of this alive, you are hereby demoted to my galley." She switched to the fleet-wide. "Immediate pursuit, boomerang formation. Full burn!"
The fleet was a motley jumble of outlaws, freebooters, corporate security, and institutions like the Hive or Dark Solutions that didn't fit neatly into any of these categories. Most of Rada's people had never flown with Kansas', either. Yet they executed the turn and reformation with a smooth discipline that could only have been rivaled by a simulation.
They raced onward, engines straining, pumping dense signatures behind them. The Lurkers kept a steady pace, neither gaining nor nearing, out of missile range and too far away to corral. Without warning, they began a thirty-degree turn, braking as they did so.
Kansas uttered a sharp, single laugh. "Looks like they're ready to fight after all."
"We'll be coming in close to parallel," Rada said. "They're done jousting. They want a dogfight."
Kansas switched over to the full fleet. "Foreplay's over. That means somebody's about to get screwed. I got the feeling this is going to be our last engagement. Fight them for freedom, if you want. Fight them for your homes. Me? I'm fighting them for vengeance. It's time to hoist the flag and start slitting throats! To war!"
She launched a symbolic missile toward the still-distant Lurkers. She was no longer flying on the Bahamut, whose size made it an obvious target in such circumstances, but on the Last Argument of Gangsters, a cruel-looking ship that was too big to be a heavy fighter but too sleek and compact for a corvette. A black rod extended from behind its bridge. With a puff of gas, the rod deployed a skull and crossbones from its tip, the flag hanging motionless in the vacuum.
The pilots' voices rose in a full-throated roar.
The Lurkers held course, allowing the humans to near. On tactical, they nudged into the green sphere of engagement range. Missiles poked back and forth. The Lurkers positioned a picket line of drones before their front line. The pirates waggled their wings and pulled barrel rolls, firing defiant bullets. Kansas laughed before ordering them to restore discipline.
As if conjured from nowhere, hundreds of missiles turned tactical into solid blocks of orange and green. The two fleets began to squirm like kicked ants as some maneuvered to avoid clusters of incoming rockets while others darted out to pressure others with missiles of their own.
The two sides swept together like arms of a tsunami converging over a ridge. Rada dumped her third and fourth drones to watch her flanks. The visual display strobed with so many bursts it was almost worthless. Rada had intended to hang back and provide higher-level tactics, but a pair of Lurker interceptors pounced on her.
Missiles flashed behind her, close enough that she would have sworn it was making the temperature on the bridge rise. She broke down and to right, letting Winters slide in behind her pursuit. She slung missiles behind her. One of the interceptors broke off. The other waggled, as if confused, then died to Winters' missiles.
Rada checked tactical for a formation to rejoin, but there was no more semblance of lines and order, just knots of wheeling ships and squalling missiles, pitched dogfights breaking apart only for the combatants to get sucked into neighboring tussles before they had the chance to reorient themselves.
"Stick to my wing," she told Winters. "If we get isolated, we might as well flip our guns on ourselves."
He maneuvered closer as she winged toward a corvette that was currently bludgeoning its way into a pack of carnival-painted pirate craft. Rada held until she was nearly on top of it, brushing off the warning missiles it lobbed her way, then doused it with rockets. It countered with a fusillade that might have overwhelmed her if not for Winters' two drones pumping out defensive missiles.
Her rockets pressed closer and closer until the final bursts were right on top of the corvette, crumpling its side. Its engine faltered as scraps of hull sloughed from its gaping wound. Rada and Winters were already swooping past it, too hemmed in by the interceptors coming to the corvette's aid to finish it off. But the pirates turned on it like jewel-painted jackals, rending it apart.
Winters and Rada found themselves locked in a dogfight congealing from the short-lived skirmish around the corvette. New ships joined and dropped out as secondary fights emerged and unstable boundaries fell apart. Rada flew with a heightened yet instinctual awareness of her own ship and the targets and dangers around her, as if she was surfing on her own nerves, veering away from missile traps as soon as they started to unfold, anticipating the Lurkers' maneuvers so well that it sometimes felt like she began to make a turn before the ships she was pursuing did.
It was the same oneness of combat that she'd seen in Toman and his pilots as they'd made their last stand. She had felt something like it before, but never anything so complete. It felt like being a note in a song that had been playing since the dawn of time.
Without warning, she and Winters found themselves in a pocket of calm. Rada took a long look at tactical, a luxury she hadn't had since the start of the dogfight. They had entered the latest phase of the battle with close to 150 ships and had just crossed below one hundred; the Lurkers had dropped from two hundred to 145. An orange triangle blinked off, lowering it to 144.
It was the most savage ship-to-ship combat she'd ever seen. Yet neither side showed any sign of backing down.
"This is madness," Winters said. "It's a miracle that we're gaining ground at all. Yet we're still not catching up nearly fast enough."
"I was just thinking the same thing." Rada added Kansas to the loop. "Kansas, I'm out of drones. So is half my crew. Our missile stocks are about to dip under forty percent."
"Thanks for the update," Kansas said. "But I can read a tactical screen."
"No drones means we'll burn
through our stocks even faster. If we don't turn things around quick, we'll be out of missiles before—"
"So pop on down to the missile store! What do you want me to do here?"
"I wish I had an answer."
"Then get out there and kill them already, you son of a bitch!"
The comm dropped. Winters cleared his throat. "Decisive, isn't she?"
Rada took another look at tactical, hoping to augur an exploitable pattern from the stew of missiles and death. But if there was anything there, she wasn't wise enough to see it.
"We're wasting time with this," she said. "Our friends need all the guns they can get."
She sized up the closest dogfight and angled the Tine to come in behind a satellite dish-shaped alien fighter. She'd only been out of the action for a minute, but she'd already dropped out of the song of battle she'd been lost in before. Missiles surrounded her so densely it felt like one of them could strike her at any moment. Her nerves, so steady before, felt frayed to the point of snapping.
They launched the last of their drones. These died in short order. Without a screen of expendable vehicles to keep between them and the enemy, the humans were forced to draw closer, shrinking the field of battle. The Lurker drones soon ran out as well. In the blink of an eye, ten percent of the remaining ships on both sides were lost from tactical.
It felt like only a few seconds had passed before Rada's computer flashed a light purple warning at her.
She braced herself and opened a line to Kansas. "My team's missiles just dipped below 25%. We need to disengage before we run completely dry."
"Disengage?" Kansas laughed. "Weren't you the one saying this is our only chance to stop them? That if we don't destroy them here and now, they'll escape to conquer the System?"
"If we run out of missiles, what are we going to fight them with? Our fists? Pirate curses? They'll slaughter us all in under three minutes. Even if I think a loss hands them the System, there's no point in committing suicide here."
"If we're dead either way, then I choose to die in glory."
"That's idiotic! If we can make it out of here alive, there's always a chance to win later!"
"I think we know perfectly well what will happen." Kansas' eyes didn't waver. "This is the last of humanity's fleets. If we turn tail, the Lurkers will finish their genocide of the Belt. They'll stick up new factories. And that's game over. We're not running away, Admiral Rada."
"But if we don't get out—"
"Then the Lurkers will use their limbs like straws to drink up our blood. I know. So we're not going to run. Instead, we're going to make a run at them."
"A final charge? What are the chances we'll actually destroy them? One in a million?"
"If we sell it hard enough, we can make these cowards run instead. Or at least knock them back hard enough to give us space to make a break for it."
Rada searched the space between her ears for another idea, but her brain had given its all. "Let me know your orders."
Kansas delivered the plan across the combined fleet. The human vessels began a slow and subtle withdrawal, rippling back from the main action while those at the point of engagement switched over to heavily defensive missile fire. As if suspecting a trap, the Lurkers were slow to move into the abandoned space.
"Collapse!" Kansas barked. "And make it look like you mean it!"
The human front lines sprayed a frantic wad of missiles, swirling away from the enemy like water down a drain. Still the Lurkers hesitated—if they'd been a dog, their nose would be lifted to the wind—before boosting in pursuit.
"Hold course," Kansas said. "Those in back, don't so much as twitch until I say so!"
The humans scrambled away, firing haphazardly behind them. Less than half the size that it once was, the Lurker fleet followed, nailing a lagging pirate. Rada wasn't sure if he'd simply fallen behind or been left out as bait. Missiles popped back and forth.
The Lurkers at the front matched their acceleration to the humans, allowing those behind them to catch up and reinforce their numbers. Just then, the humans would have an advantage over the extended alien lines, but in another minute—
"Steady." Kansas' voice was an eager rasp. "Steady. Ready yourselves—and charge!"
The ships in the middle flipped about, pointing their noses at the enemy and opening up their missile batteries. The ships on either flank swung about in a globular formation intended to pincer the Lurkers' extended lines from all sides. Missiles flowed from them in glowing rivers.
Rada flew near the front of the advancing edge of the globe, Winters at her side. Just sixteen other ships flew with them. It was all that was left of the Hive and Belter combined force. Just as troublingly, it made up nearly a quarter of the entire remaining fleet.
Missiles tore into the aliens, blowing apart six of them before they'd gotten up a line of counters. The enemy turned hard, every ship in their fleet sweeping up and to the right.
"Kill as many as you can!" Kansas yelled. "Here is where we break them!"
Rada rattled off another surge of rockets. Her munition count dropped from 18% to 17, the purple warning around the number glowing slightly brighter. Just seeing the color made Rada's skin hot. If it came on your display and you weren't already withdrawing from the battle, chances were your family was about to receive a very sad Needle.
Rada's edge of the globe came up against the bending Lurker formation. Her people picked off two interceptors, weaving through the wreckage. The closest bunch of Lurkers bent away from them, giving up all offensive missiles to hold off the tsunami the humans were shooting at them. The sudden maneuver threatened to tear the group of twenty alien craft apart from the rest of their fleet.
Rada hung close, ready to pounce. A similar disintegration of the Lurker formation was taking place a third of the way across the field, where a pack of Locker ships was hounding the aliens hard, pounding them with so many missiles their only option was to skirt further and further from the body of their armada.
"On my mark," Rada said to her people, edging nearer to the group of twenty. "Get ready to cut them off and wipe them out. Don't hold back. This is our last chance to get out of here."
The group of Lurkers wavered, wedged away from their fleet by a constant influx of missiles. Rada held tight to the control sticks. As coordinated as dancers, the twenty alien ships rotated ninety degrees, turning hard.
And so did every other ship in their fleet.
"Damn," Kansas sounded no more upset than if it had started to rain just as she'd planned to go for a walk. "They pulled one last trick on us."
Rada understood at once. The Lurkers hadn't truly been running. Not after their initial response, at least. Instead, they'd been stringing the humans out. Letting Rada and the others thin their own lines and break formation, then turning on them. Doing exactly what the humans had intended to do to them.
"Tighten up!" Rada yelled at her people. "Defensive postures, Pangolin formation. Make every missile count!"
Her fleet—which was now a misnomer, as it was no larger than many squads—pulled together into an unusually close disk, concave on the side facing the Lurkers. A gnat-like cloud of missiles hung behind it, depleting quickly as the turning Lurkers began to pummel them. Kansas roared maneuvers, doing her best to keep cohesion.
Behind and down, a squadron of pirates was under heavy fire from a team of Lurkers. Rada swerved toward them. "We're bailing them out. As soon as we've pried the Lurkers off them, get back to Kansas."
She angled her people at the enemy's flank, peppering them with missiles. The Lurkers, temporarily outnumbered, peeled off to rejoin the main force. The pirates waggled their wings at her. Rada ignored the temptation to chase after the Tubes, guiding her people back toward the ragged ball of ships that was Kansas.
"It was a good try," Kansas said, seeing her approach. "But it wasn't enough."
Rada wasn't sure if she was talking about the charge or the entire war. Throat tight, she said, "What now?"
"Then what are we doing to prevent that?"
"Got a time machine in your pocket? A second fleet?"
"What I've got is an admiral who's suddenly become a sulking nineteen-year-old when her people need her most."
"We don't have the missiles left to try anything else. That was our last shot. Didn't work. Well, life's a bitch." Kansas lowered her eyes. "We can't win. We can't run. The only thing that makes sense is to turn around and fight them so viciously and so fearlessly that they'll still tell stories about us a thousand years from now."
Rada's throat felt like she was trying to swallow her own skull. "Run away. Go defensive."
"We both know they'll never let us out of here."
"I know. But you can give us one last chance to come up with a miracle."
Kansas looked tired enough to order them all into the Lurkers just to get it over with. She sighed. "We'll make a run for it. But if it doesn't work, in about three minutes, I'm turning around to fight. I won't die with my back turned."
As they'd been speaking, the battered fleet had pulled into a single column. Kansas ordered it onward at full speed. The Lurkers were still reassembling after their about-face, but they were already gaining ground. The trickle of missiles flying from them grew into a stream and then into a river.
Rada's weapons display turned purple-white as her missiles dropped below ten percent. She called up Winters. "We've only got a few minutes left until we're down to defending ourselves with flares and fizz. Got any bright ideas? Any last-second alien apocalypse aversion techniques you've been saving for a rainy day?"
"I'm afraid not." Winters remained as calm as ever; for a fleeting moment, Rada wondered if he was an android prototype ginned up by DS—or a Lurker infiltrator. "We could attempt to split up. But they would still run down most of us, if not all."
"Then the question is whether it's worth it to try to save a few of our ships. Even if it's just five or ten."
Once the Lurkers were well within combat range, they maintained distance. Smart move. No need to risk getting closer when it was clear the humans would run short on missiles in another few minutes. Rada watched her missiles drop to eight percent, then seven.
Stardust Page 30
