“One minute,” Caspar said. There was no time for sympathy.
“Copy that, one minute,” Alex replied, then switched channels over to Bobbie. “Cap, we’re go in sixty seconds. Your team ready?”
“Kids are belted in and ready for a roller-coaster ride,” she replied.
“Copy that,” Alex said, then watched the countdown timer on his screen drop toward zero. “Three . . . two . . . one . . . mark.”
“Mark,” Caspar said, and the Storm flared to life around them. The screens switched to active sensors and telescope shots of their target: a fat Transport Union freighter, escorted by two Laconian frigates. Behind the freighter lay Jupiter’s vast bulk.
And that was, according to Bobbie’s pre-mission brief, the reason for all the secrecy beforehand. Whether or not they could make their attack run depended on the resistance partisans on the freighter’s crew getting the signal out on the ship’s course and date of entry into the Sol system, all while working around a Laconian political officer who had been stashed on board. Because for the attack to work, it had to all happen while Jupiter blocked line of sight to Earth and the Magnetar-class battleship parked there.
It was a lot of moving parts, any one of which could have failed out at a moment’s notice, and launching the attack meant burning some spies in the union. If things hadn’t panned out, the Storm would have just climbed back into her berth on the Pendulum and flown away, her crew none the wiser and the spies on the freighter undiscovered.
But the prize was worth the risk. A ship directly from Laconia with highly sensitive cargo attached to some secret Laconian project and replacement parts for the Tempest itself. Hopefully also some of the weird fuel pellets the Laconian ships used that couldn’t be manufactured anywhere else, and which the Storm was getting dangerously low on. Ammunition for the Storm’s weapons and for the power armor suits Bobbie’s team wore. Taking the freighter meant keeping the underground’s best weapon armed and operational, possibly for years.
And—best of all—the political officer. Taking them alive would be a huge intelligence win.
If Alex could take care of two escort frigates and deliver Bobbie’s dropship to the freighter.
“They’ve spotted us,” Caspar said. No surprise there. With the Storm pinging away with active radar, she was lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Jammers on,” Alex said, and the Storm drowned the little fleet in static, cutting them off from each other and from any outside help. The three ships didn’t change course, apparently deciding the smartest move was to try to get around Jupiter. It was their best strategy. Alex would have done the same.
Which was why he’d prepared for it.
“Cap, launching you now. Make sure you come back,” Alex said, and hit the button that hurled the strike team’s high-speed breaching pod at the freighter. Bobbie and her boarding party throwing themselves at the enemy ship like pirates. While the pod burned hard toward the Transport Union ship, Alex fired two precisely angled shots from the rail gun past it and through the freighter’s drive cone. The shots covered the thousands of kilometers separating the ships in a handful of seconds, and the freighter’s drive winked out.
“Get ready, they’ll be coming for us now,” Alex told Caspar, and almost as if on cue the Storm buzzed an angry target lock warning at them.
“PDCs hot,” Caspar said. Alex was surprised at how calm his tone was. For all the sadness and fear the kid had expressed in the moments before the fight, now that the battle was on, he’d become almost machine-like. “Ready for incoming. Tubes two and four are locked.”
“We should close a bit, cut off their options,” Alex said. The two frigates were not a trivial threat, but the Storm massively outclassed them in tonnage and firepower, and he didn’t worry too much about flying straight at them fangs out and trying to end the fight quickly.
“Copy that, one and three loaded and locked if we need them.”
Acceleration pressed Alex back into his couch as he closed the gap. In the distance, Bobbie’s pod had reached the crippled freighter and was firing grapples to lock the two ships together. The frigates couldn’t talk to each other, but their crews had some emergency plans already on the books, because they split up and flew away from the freighter in opposite directions as if they’d coordinated the maneuver.
“They’re trying to get on both sides of us,” Alex said, but Caspar was already on it. He was tasking half their PDCs with one ship and half with the other. Didn’t matter if they came from both directions at once, the Storm’s flak screen could handle it.
Down at the freighter, Bobbie’s pod suddenly flared to life in a massive deceleration burn. Alex had crippled the freighter’s drive, but the ship was still hurtling along with whatever velocity it’d had before the engine went out. Bobbie’s pod was programmed to push back against that speed on a vector that would keep the freighter safely hidden behind Jupiter. Part boarding pod, part secondary, aftermarket temporary braking thruster.
“We’re on board,” Bobbie said, her voice phase shifted into a robotic screech as it cut through the static from their jamming.
“We have fast movers,” Caspar said at the same moment the alerts showed up on Alex’s threat board. The two frigates unloaded their tubes. Alex ignored them, waiting for the missiles to get into PDC range so the Storm could chew them up.
“Let’s go ahead and start shooting back,” Alex said, and a moment later the Storm shuddered as if with pleasure as she fired four torpedoes of her own.
Before the rapidly closing missiles could even pass each other, two of the incoming torpedoes veered off in a wide turn.
“Worry about the two that are still coming at us,” Alex said to Caspar, and then stopped thinking about that. The other two Laconian torpedoes were now winging in a wide arc toward the freighter. And the two frigates had also flipped and started a hard burn back toward their former charge.
They hadn’t been able to draw the Storm away or shoot it down. Their plan B appeared to be scuttling the freighter. Bloodthirsty, but not unexpected. Alex threw the throttle down to catch the swiftly slowing freighter as quickly as possible, shifting from attacking their prey to protecting it. For a moment, everything was falling toward a central point in space defined by the crippled ship. The Storm, eight torpedoes on wide looping courses to find their targets, the two frigates burning back. On the threat board, it looked like the freighter had turned into a black hole, and its gravity was sucking everything, large and small, into its event horizon. In its way, it was beautiful.
Then everyone was shooting.
Caspar’s PDCs cut down all four of the Laconian torpedoes in an instant, even as two of the Storm’s impacted on the nose of one of the frigates and the plasma warheads turned the front half of the ship into glowing slag. The other frigate spun and slewed sideways and shot down the torpedoes chasing it, then continued its rotation and gave the freighter and Bobbie’s attached breaching pod a full broadside from its PDC array. The freighter was riddled with holes, and plumes of escaping atmosphere jetted out, looking a bloody pink in the reddish light coming off Jupiter. Or maybe there was some actual blood mixed in there. As many holes as the freighter had taken, it defied belief that no one on board had been hit.
“Splash that one,” Alex ordered, but Caspar was already saying, “I got that motherfucker.”
The frigate killed its rotation with a massive blast from its maneuvering thrusters, then kicked on its drive. Even though it only slowed down, it seemed to leap straight at the approaching Storm. The two ships passed at high speed, every PDC blazing.
The much smaller frigate was hit by half a dozen of the Storm’s cannons all at once, and seemed to just come apart into a cloud of chaff as it passed by. But it unleashed a barrage of its own before it died that cut along the Storm’s flank.
Suddenly the ship was a cacophony of alarms, sirens, and alerts from the control panel.
“Damage!” Alex yelled over the din. The noise was getting gradually quieter, which meant at least the flight deck was in the process of losing its atmosphere. He grabbed his helmet from under his couch and locked it into place. He could see Caspar doing the same.
“Damage!” he yelled again, but heard only static on his suit’s speakers. He banged his fist on the side of the helmet in frustration, then spun around. Caspar was pointing at his mouth and ears, signaling that his suit radio seemed not to be working either.