“Authorize nuclear release, commanding officer, 0437 Zulu shipboard time,” Colonel Campbell replies.
“Confirm authorization for nuclear release,” the weapons officer says. Everything we say and do in CIC gets recorded by the computer and logged in the ship’s data banks. If we live through this and the crew gets hauled in front of a court-martial tribunal, the log will undoubtedly serve as evidence.
“Two minutes and forty-five seconds to transition,” the XO says. I look at Dmitry, who watches the proceedings with his usual stoic expression, but I know him well enough by now to tell that he is as anxious as any of us.
“Ten seconds to weapons release. Five seconds. Three. Two. One. Birds away, birds away.”
On the plot, four little inverted V shapes pop into existence just ahead of the icon for the stealth fighter and shoot toward the nearest Lanky ship at an acceleration that would turn us all into pudding if Indy could pull it.
“All four birds tracking optically. Time to impact: forty-five seconds.”
The combined destructive power of two million tons of conventional explosives is hurtling toward the Lanky ship. For even our biggest warships, a two-megaton direct hit would mean catastrophic damage if not outright destruction, but after seeing an entire task force launch hundreds of megatons against a lone seed ship without effect, I have no hope of seeing the Lanky blotted from the plot by our missile fire.
“Thirty seconds to impact. One minute forty-five seconds to transition.”
“Sergeant Chistyakov,” Colonel Campbell says. “Stand by to transmit access code at the thirty-second mark.”
“Thirty-second mark,” Dmitry confirms. He walks over to the comms officer and brings up a holoscreen on the console. “Standing by for transmit.”
“Twenty seconds to missile impact.”
The gap between the two Lanky ships is close to a hundred kilometers, as wide as it will get on their predicted patrol pattern. Both are moving away from the transition point. I know that their ship-to-ship penetrators are strictly a short-range affair and that the seed ships are too massive to just turn on a dime to get into our path if they detect us at the last minute, but intentionally racing Indy between two of those monster ships is still the scariest, dumbest thing I’ve been a part of in my life. So much is riding on a second or two and the fraction of a kilometer. We are not just tickling the dragon’s tail; we are timing a flyby through its open jaws while it is yawning.
“Ten seconds to missile impact. Five seconds. Three . . . two . . . one . . . impact. We have nuclear impacts on bogey Lima-21.”
The optical feed shows the blindingly bright miniature suns of four atomic detonations in vacuum, perfect spheres of light and heat and deadly radiation. Then the Lanky seed ship bulls its way through the nuclear fire, trailing superheated particles behind it as it shrugs off the hits.
“Turn the fighter around and go active on the decoy transmitters,” Major Renner orders. “Give the son of a bitch something to chase.”
The unmanned stealth fighter makes a brutally sharp twenty-gturn under full acceleration and races back the way it came, toward the section of space where Indy started her run for the transition point. On the plot, the icon for the fighter changes in size as the electronic-warfare decoy module on the little ship pumps out megawatts of radio energy to match the ELINT signature of a frigate. To an SRA unit, the fleeing fighter would look like a much bigger ship, and hopefully the Lanky will find it worthy of pursuit.
“Lima-21 is changing course to twenty degrees starboard relative. Son of a bitch took the bait.” The tactical officer sounds almost jubilant.
“One minute to transition. Stand by, Sergeant Chistyakov.”
“Standing,” Dmitry says.
“Lima-20 is coming about! Course change for Lima-20, turning through two-seven-zero relative. He is accelerating. Ten meters per second. Thirty. Fifty.”
“Not fast enough,” Colonel Campbell says. He is staring grimly at the plot, where the second seed ship has started a ponderous 180-degree turn toward our trajectory. “Looks like size isn’t everything, huh?”
Off in the distance to our starboard, the stealth fighter is racing into the black, flashing its fake ID card, with seed ship Lima-20 in pursuit. We are racing for the doorway at top speed, sixty humans in a little alloy shell against two almost-invulnerable planet destroyers.
“Lima-20 is going for the bait, too. I don’t think he spotted us, sir.”
“Works for me,” the colonel says, jaw muscles flexing.
“Transition in thirty seconds.”
“Sergeant Chistyakov,” the XO says, just a few decibels below a shout. “Now, if you please.”
Dmitry’s fingers fly across the display in front of him. He’s using Indy’s comms suite as an amplifier for his own suit’s communications gear, sending the SRA access code with the ship’s transmitting power instead of that of his armor. Still, at this speed we will be in transmission range for only a few seconds, and if we miss our window, we’ll just coast right through the Alcubierre point and remain in local space instead of shooting off toward Fomalhaut at superluminal speed.
“Is done,” he says.
“I show positive lock on the beam,” the helmsman confirms. “Automatic transit lock enabled. Transition in fifteen seconds.”
The XO picks up the handset for the 1MC. “All hands, prepare for Alcubierre transition in minus-ten. Hang on, people.”
“Distance to Lima-20 now ninety thousand. Eighty thousand. Seventy thousand and closing.”
“Three, two, one. Engage.”
The icons on the plot wink out of existence. I feel the familiar low-level ache in my bones that sets in whenever I enter an Alcubierre transit bubble, and I’ve never welcomed the feeling until this very moment.
CHAPTER 19
NACS Indianapolis coasts back into orbit around Fomalhaut c’s moon, the colony called New Svalbard, twenty-nine days after our departure. We arrive with almost-empty deuterium tanks, 25 percent of drinking water remaining, and most of our food stores gone except for the truly unpalatable SRA rations we held back for eat-or-starve emergency chow. On the personal side of the ledger, I arrive without my fiancée, and I am missing two fingers on my left hand. I’ve also lost whatever idealism I may have had left after five years of getting fucked by the brass, and any desire to stick my neck out for anyone above the rank of colonel ever again.
“Look at this, sir,” the XO says from the holotable. Colonel Campbell walks up from the CIC hatch, where he just had a conversation with the commanding officer of the embarked SI squad, Lieutenant Shirley.
“What is it?”
Major Renner points at the plot and highlights a few of the ship icons that have popped up on our radar since we turned the bend for our orbital capture. She points out a small cluster of blue icons slightly away from the main task force.