Blue winced, interpreting the spike as her big sister receiving orders from the colonel.
Until the Raknar job, Blue’s sister had commanded the marine component of the Midnight Sun Free Company, but no longer. Now she took her orders from talking squids armored like a Bronze Age hoplite, except instead of bronze, Goltar were armored in sharp bone coral that took a terrible toll on the upholstery.
Sorry, sis. We don’t run this show anymore.
“Half speed ahead,” said Helm.
“Dock control is cursing us for reckless speed,” said SigCon, the channel for the myriad signals that often passed to and from the battlecruiser. “We’re being threatened with hefty fines.”
“Ignore dock control,” ordered Blue. “We’re on expenses for this trip.”
“We’ll attain safe maneuver zone in thirty-four seconds,” Helm reported.
“Make it twenty-four,” Blue ordered, “and that’s cutting it fine.” She switched to the ship-wide channel. “All hands, prepare for hard thrust. I hope you chose underwear with extra butt padding this morning, because you’re gonna need it. Big Gs in ten seconds.”
“Emergence point spy drones destroyed,” reported Konchill.
The bandits in the tactical display took on a shaded outline as the data on their current position became more guesswork.
“There’s no doubt what they’re doing, TacCon. Peepo’s spies reported a shiny ship in orbit around Tivarec, and now their bully squad is here to wipe our beautiful raider from their supply lines.”
Throughout the ship, acceleration stations linked to the Helmsman’s thrust plan gimbaled in anticipation of the imminent burn, angling their living cargo so they were in the most G-tolerant position. In the case of Blue and the other humanoids, that meant lying on their gel-beds with their back to the engine port that was about to light with fusion power.
Your limbs are a weakness, needled a voice in her mind. Move beyond them. All we need is your mind.
Blue ignored it, allowing herself to be distracted by the dramatic increase in weight as the fusion torch lit.
Two Gs.
She bit hard on her mouthguard in readiness. Then the real fun began. Five-G acceleration announced itself as a pair of Oogar in silk tutus landed daintily on her chest. They began ballet warm up drills with a promise of more energetic moves to come.
Midnight Sun could thrust much harder, and its crew could survive several more Gs before injury, but that wasn’t her plan today. Entropy! Even five Gs hurt enough. She didn’t like to admit to herself why she increasingly heard a voice in her head, but that voice sure spoke a lot of sense.
Through a firewalled channel to her pinplants, Signals directed a comm request from the enemy fleet.
She accepted. Bypassing her tightly shut eyes, an image formed in her mind of a Bakulu on a ship, its mollusk-like shell, painted in blue-and-yellow cross hatching, clamped onto its acceleration station. While it stared into its camera with three pseudopod-mounted eyes, Blue observed her opponent’s bridge crew and felt the edge of dismay to see only blue-and-yellow shells from which Bakulu pseudopods extruded.
Bakulu crew…That’s gonna hurt.
The enemy flotilla had emerged at high speed and was beginning gentle deceleration on approach to Tivarec, the planet Midnight Sun was orbiting. But the chase would soon be on, and Bakulu were one of the most G-tolerant species in the Union. Already, the tactical map Blue saw in another panel of her mind showed the enemy ships changing thrust vector in anticipation of a pursuit.
The alien commander was not receiving a similar view of Midnight Sun’s CIC, because Blue was currently inconvenienced by the overweight Oogar dancing on her chest. Her transmission to the Bakulu ship was displaying the company emblem of bronze coronal flares flung out from a black sun—though this particular midnight sun had a smiley face scrawled over it. Instead of groaning out words through clenched teeth, she readied her pinplants to deliver thought-to-speech configured for her voice.
“Attention, target vessel. This is Commodore Hashgesh. I identify you as Midnight Sun, commanded by Captain Sue Blue. You are declared outlaw by the authority of General Peepo and the Inner Council of the Mercenary Guild—
“As far as I’m concerned, Commodore Slime, Peepo’s got all the authority of a case of out-of-date boneless pork rectums. And you’ve got its stink.”
“Oh, is the little Human…butt hurt, I believe the expression is? Do you challenge the legitimate authority of General Peepo and the Council to determine your status?”
“General Peepo is as illegitimate as a shared litter in a Zuul whore den, but not nearly so well loved.”
“Your Human tantrum is as meaningless as it is childish, for it is the general alone who decides who is legitimate and who not. By siding with the Goltar rebels you have sealed your fate, Captain Blue. You should have left them to their thousand-year sulk. They will be destroyed, and you along with them.”
“I think you’ll find it’s your mistress who is having her furry white ass soundly spanked by the Goltar.”
Hashgesh’s eye stalks drooped. “Your reaction is typical of your species. That makes me sad.”
“Oh, really? Is this a ‘please don’t make me kill you’ ploy? Let me guess—you admire me so much that you couldn’t sleep in your shell at night if you’re forced to kill the magnificent Captain Blue.”
The Bakulu crossed its eye stalks in an obscene gesture that its mother would have scolded it for. “On the contrary, I shall glory in your deaths and expect great profit to be had from them. It is the fate of your species that I genuinely regret. You Humans show such flashes of brilliance, yet again and again you undermine yourself until it is clear to the older races in the Union that you are more trouble than you’re worth. Humans are impulsive, unorthodox, and above all, unmanageable. As the quintessence of your race’s failings, you, Captain, are the harbinger of your own species’ destruction.”
“Yeah, whatever, slug face. Where I come from, that list of traits sounds pretty awesome.”
Blue cut the link and cursed herself for letting Hashgesh get to her. There was no doubting the commodore had a point. Over the last century or so Humans had seriously pissed off the aliens who had grown accustomed to running the Union the way they liked it. It was obvious to her that it was far too late for Humanity to mumble an apology to the galaxy and pledge—pretty please—to be a good little serf race in future.
No, humanity had to go harder. Faster. Wilder! More unmanageable, not less. Until every other race in the Union got used to the idea that being pissed off by Humans was the new normal.
“Enemy flotilla slew turning,” warned TacCon. “Establishing pursuit course.”
“Let’s make it easy for them,” said Blue. “Helm, course correct. Take us directly to Gamma.”
“Changing course for Waypoint Gamma,” confirmed Helm.
The Oogar jumped off Blue’s chest and she took advantage of the temporary zero-G to suck a deep breath into her punished lungs while her acceleration station gimbaled twenty degrees.
Midnight Sun’s unique design allowed the torch generated by the three fusion reactors at her center to be channeled through any combination of eight exhaust ports through her hull. From Port-2, the torch was redirected eighty percent through Port-3 and twenty percent though Port-5.
The Oogar landed back with a thump onto Blue’s chest.
After a hundred seconds on this burn, the engines blipped again and this time they were on a one-hundred percent burn through Port-4 all the way to Waypoint Gamma.
The flotilla matched Midnight Sun’s maneuver, coming about in perfect formation as if the thirteen ships with a variety of masses and flight characteristics were locked together by steel beams. Even for Bakulu, the coordination and maneuver skills on display were exceptional.
And unimaginative.
The superficially mollusk-like aliens made excellent space farers, and their natural high-G tolerance gave them a definite edge over Humans
, but as Hashgesh had admitted, Humans had flashes of imagination that left Bakulu tactics seeming, well, snail-like in comparison.
“Estimate enemy will be in effective missile range in four minutes.”
“Thank you, TacCon. Colonel Goz-Han, Launch D-Clocks in thirty seconds.”
“D-Clocks launching in thirty seconds. Confirmed.”
Since revealing themselves openly during the Raknar job, the mysterious Goltar had provided a high-fidelity Human-Goltar translation matrix for translator pendants and pinplants. Not only did Goz-Han’s beak clicks and subsonic grumbles come across to Blue as meaningful English or Cantonese, but the translator conveyed nuance and emotion, too.
Goz-Han’s response was crisp and respectful, as it always was with Blue. But with other Humans, his words were heavy with contempt, the presence of non-Goltar a burden to be endured.
Blue had a creeping feeling that this apparent respect was because Goz-Han didn’t regard Blue as truly Human.
The voice in her mind agreed with Goz-Han.
Time to prove the Goltar colonel right.
Blue settled her awareness deeper into Midnight Sun, merging until she became the ship. Or perhaps the ship became her. The hull was her skin, and the dark void of space was now hot with charged particles and noisy with electromagnetic radiation. At her core, the fusion reactors were her three beating heats, pulsing power through her body, and blowing the hot breath of nuclear fire out the torch engine ports.
The humanoid analogies were weak—Humans didn’t breathe blood—but by now Midnight Sun’s body felt more natural to Blue than her own fleshy carcass.
She drew in a deep breath, salted it with fissile material, and then blew the hot plasma out an array of aft-facing engine ports. An intense yellow plasma cloud spread out to cover her path. She was a space squid retreating behind a squirt of ink. Into this cover, she punched with all four barrels of her main armament: magnetic cannons that ran almost the entire length of the battlecruiser. After the Raknar job, the guns had been upgraded—Midnight Sun was no longer a rich collector’s bauble that faithfully kept to its original design—but Blue kept the new “combo” fire mode in reserve. The Goltar didn’t want to destroy Hashgesh’s flagship, or its crew.
In this war, her alien boss had very specific plans for the enemies they defeated. They wanted some spared and recruited as allies. Mercenary Guild politics bored her senseless.
Blue’s last action was to pirouette her hull in readiness for Goz-Han.
The Goltar initiated the launch of his marine teams in three flights of dandelion clocks, each consisting of four docking pods. Blue felt the puffs of compressed air that launched the D-Clocks. Even to Blue the boarding pods felt unnatural: cold, dark, and with a ghostly radar image. They felt icky.
But they would get the job done.
She settled back and listened to her Altar metal. In this, the Human woman and the living ship from another epoch were aligned in their taste. Both loved this kind of noise. The guitar-wielding alien ants were tearing through a rendition of “Five Minutes Alone.” For her amusement, Blue initiated a five-minute countdown in her mind.
She’d never met a Goltar who didn’t enjoy a wager. If she wasn’t so busy, she would lay good money on this fight being over before her countdown reached zero.
One way or the other.
* * * * *
Chapter Four
Pride in Destruction, Mercenary Guild Flotilla, near Tivarec
“Target One emitting…plasma clouds, Commodore. I repeat, plasma clouds.”
Hashgesh studied the tactical plots on the main display, expecting this to be cover for a desperate maneuver from the doomed ship. “Pilot, ready to lead the formation in a tight pursuit. No matter how much that damned sphere wriggles on the hook, we will maintain formation.”
“Of course, sir,” responded the pilot, who extended additional pseudo-pods in anticipation of a flurry of activity. Down in the CIC’s lower deck, the pilot support team would be doing the same.
“Sensor Command, tell me what we’re seeing.”
“Essentially standard plasma torch ejecta, sir, but from multiple channels and laced with radioactive material that makes it difficult to see through. The ship appears to have variable thrust configurations. It’s an exotic design, but nonetheless conventional propulsion technology.”
Hashgesh felt his shell grow cold and brittle. If she had changed course as he expected, Midnight Sun should have emerged from its veil of plasma by now. It had not, which meant it was on a constant heading. There must be another trick Captain Blue was playing here. One he didn’t yet understand. Damn the entropy-cursed Humans.
“Remember Lieutenant General Pelwatho’s guidance,” chattered Commander Tizomho, the irritating Veetanho rat infesting his CIC, who shadowed his every move. “Do not underestimate the Midnighters.”
Hashgesh was a professional. He had no intention of underestimating anyone, especially not the Midnighters. Together with their Goltar allies, they had wreaked havoc on the supply of mercenaries and materiel for the occupation of Earth, and the suppression of the Four Horsemen and other Human rebels. Pelwatho had spoken darkly of being forced to strip essential assets from the front line before falling ominously silent.
Hashgesh’s shell had felt even colder during that mission briefing. What frontline? Which assets? Veetanho strategies were always multilayered and complex; they were not meant to be understood by mercenary commodores from other races. Hashgesh had quickly changed the subject, assuring Pelwatho that his flotilla would destroy this thorn in Peepo’s flesh once and for all. No mistakes this time. He had all but purged the memory of Pelwatho’s slip from his mind.
And now he must purge Midnight Sun from the galaxy or face Peepo’s wrath.
“I don’t like it,” he told his deck crew. “Signals, alert the flotilla to expect the unexpected when we pass through that cloud. Shield Command, angle deflectors to face forward fire. Colonel Changwah, ready Victory Scent Company to repel a potential boarding action. You too, Major Zhiflwt.”
“We are always ready, Commodore,” rasped the commander of his Goka marines.
“It shall be done,” confirmed the colonel of the Zuul mercenary company they were carrying. “But I will need to strip my troopers from our boarding pods.”
“Do it, Colonel.”
The battlespace display flashed, registering new threats.
“Incoming fire,” reported the threat coordinator. “A narrow fan of four projectiles targeting our nose. Assessed as kinetic projectiles from a super-heavy magnetic cannon.”
Hashgesh made a split-second decision. To maneuver would expose more lightly armored and now less shielded flanks. It was too late anyway. Railguns were not main armaments, not in the modern era. He’d heard rumors that Midnight Sun was a relic from an earlier age, far older even than the Dusman-Kahraman war that had ended the First Republic. Military tech had moved on a long way since that polished relic was built.
Still, firing your main armament through your plasma exhaust while under heavy thrust. That was unheard of.
It was fortunate, indeed, that Pride in Destruction was a pursuit ship with correspondingly heavy front armor.
And fortunate, too, that the ship was commanded by himself, and that he had already ordered power optimization to front shields.
“All personnel,” he announced shipwide, “brace for impact.” He added for his deck team, “They’re desperate. They want us to expose our beams, but we can take these hits and come through to victory. Do not deviate from the tactical plan.”
Despite his words, the deck fell silent as the moments ticked past until the shots hit. Impact velocity was estimated as one one-thousandth lightspeed. Projectile mass was uncertain, but median estimate was eight hundred kilos apiece.
He ran a quick calculation in his pinplants. Impact energy for each shot would be approximately 32 terajoules. Combined, they would hit with the equivalent of a 120-terawatt particle cannon playi
ng over his ship for an entire second!
The shields might not be enough.
“Pilot. Engage port maneuver engines. Full lateral thrust.”
“Sir, that will move us out of formation.”
“Do it!”
“Full lateral thrust, aye. Engaging now.”
Hashgesh ran fresh numbers. Each round would impact with the power of an 8-kiloton nuclear warhead. That sounded far more survivable. He’d never heard of such a powerful mag cannon and it was making him nervous, that was all. Now they would enjoy some field research into the effect of antique weapon systems.
He extended as much of his body out of his shell as was seemly and sent silent prayers to the primordial slime lord, begging that their sideways dodge would be enough, that they would never need to learn whether the shields would be enough.
Here they come…
Two cannon rounds hit.
At such high-impact speeds, the projectiles flashed instantly into hot plasma. It washed over the overlapping forward shields and deflected around Pride in Destruction’s beams, briefly wreathing the ship in a brilliant white cocoon.
If that energy had been focused into the tight point of a beam weapon, the ship would have been gutted. If they had been nuclear warheads, the nose would be badly damaged, the forward compartments irradiated.
But it wasn’t. The plasma spread over the shields like hot oil over water.
Still, the estimated 64-terajoule impact energy could not entirely be brushed aside.
“Damage reports incoming,” reported Lausquoo, usually the ship’s captain, but acting as Hashgesh’s XO after the commodore had taken personal command of his flagship. “Shields one and two down to ten percent effective. Capacitor recharge in 200 seconds. Shields three and four offline. Shield three restart in approximately five minutes. Shield four damage severe. Minor damage to forward armor. Sensor array two destroyed. No injuries reported.”
“Divert all reserve power to forward shield array capacitor recharge,” announced the commodore. “Take forward shields offline long enough for our forward point defense railguns to fire a wide minesweeping arc. Then get those shields up before we pass through that plasma cloud. I’m betting the Humans have sown mines on the far side. Our railguns will defeat their little trick.”
Endless Night (The Guild Wars Book 3) Page 4
