41
The Wasp was in free fall, but Kris was tightly strapped into a high-gee station chair, as was everyone else on the ship. At any moment, the Wasp might slam into high-acceleration maneuvers; but for now, it drifted in space, making like a rock.
It even looked like a rock. The defensive shield was deployed, but rather than looking like a parasol with a smooth, reflective surface, it was intentionally textured to resemble the surface of an asteroid. An asteroid that rolled gently as it drifted through space.
Nelly had added that bit of realistic artistry.
The other three corvettes of PatRon 10 drifted in a very loose formation around the Wasp, following the general orbit of the jump point. Their defenses also were deployed to make them look like rocks when observed from the nearby jump point.
In the back of Kris’s head a children’s song kept repeating itself annoyingly. “I’m just a little rock asteroid, pay no attention to me.” The words of the ditty were wrong; she didn’t remember how the melody went. But somehow it all fit the situation she found herself in.
While PatRon 10 drifted a scant twelve thousand klicks from the jump point, the eight battleships marched and countermarched in a line some eighty thousand klicks away from where they expected the alien ships to appear. That was close to maximum effective range for the 18- and 16-inch lasers of the battleships. Hopefully, whatever battle lasers the aliens had wouldn’t be all that better at that range.
With any luck, they’d be a lot worse.
In a short while, they’d know.
The Hermes was stationed at the jump point. It was just deploying the periscope. Kris adjusted her Weapons station to get that feed when it produced the first glimpse of what was taking place in the next system.
Kris’s gasp was joined by many others.
The view was of the rear end of the mother ship, so huge it had to be seen to be believed. A hundred (Nelly counted them) monstrous rocket engines blasted away, decelerating the alien ship as it finished its breaking maneuver and came to rest at the jump point. The sight of the roiling engines filled the view, leaving hardly a rim of black space around it.
The picture winked out as the visual periscope was withdrawn and an electromagnetic sensor took its place.
“Do we have an analysis of those engines?” Kris asked.
“Bigger than anything I’ve ever seen,” the chief said. “I’d give my right arm to run a spectrum analysis of what’s coming out of those engines.”
“What’s on your mind, Chief?”
“It might tell us where they got their reaction mass. Also, it might tell us how good they are at recycling. If they’re dumping all their trash and sewage in their reaction mass, then they’re going to need to plunder a planet more often than if they’re green.”
“I don’t think they really care,” Captain Drago said. “Talk to me about what you do know, Chief.”
“There’s an extra huge reactor behind each of those hundred rocket engines, feeding plasma directly into them. There are another several hundred or so reactors, just as huge, distributed along the length and breadth of that monster. What is it, four thousand kilometers long?”
“Something like that,” Kris said.
“Along the surface of that thing there are thousands and thousands of reactors. Maybe tens of thousands of reactors. Smaller, but big. Battleship-size reactors in the tens of thousands.”
“That’s the fleet of big ships Commander Taussig warned us about.”
“Is it too late for us to run away,” the chief almost whimpered.
“Yes, Chief, it’s too late. We either talk or fight. No running,” Kris said. But the feelings in her gut were no different from those the chief must be feeling.
What have I gotten us into?
The time for second thoughts was past. “Battle line. Turn toward the jump. Accelerate toward it, then, on my order flip ship,” she commanded.
The battleships had been ignoring normal orbital ballistics and instead had marched and countermarched eighty thousand klicks from the jump. Sometimes Admiral Krätz was in the lead, then they reversed course, and Admiral Kōta had the honors. Since no one complained, Kris guessed it was working.
As luck would have it, Krätz was currently in the lead. At his order, the battleships did a right turn, in column, and accelerated toward the jump.
Kris watched her board as all the information coming in from the Hermes’s probe reported on the mother ship. It seemed to be just about dead in space, several hundred klicks from the jump. Ponderously, it began to twist in space to bring its bow head on to the jump. The view that they got of its length and width was enough to make a brave man cry.
“I’ve got several of the smaller reactors jacking up power,” Chief Beni announced.
“That would be the scout ships,” Kris said. “So, she is going to send a few scouts through before she comes herself. Chief, I would dearly like to know how many of those huge scout ships we’re going to face.
“Admiral Krätz, would you please flip your battleships and begin decelerating at one-half gee toward the jump,” Kris gently ordered.
“It is done,” the Greenfeld admiral answered.
“Hermes, you may depart the jump.”
“Moving, Commodore,” Lieutenant Song answered.
The tiny courier ship jetted away from the jump, then cut all power and flipped ship, pointing her small silhouette back at the jump point. Then she did something that no courier ships had ever done before. She deployed a tiny Smart MetalTM shield and did her best imitation of a rock.
It wasn’t very thick, but it did cover all her nose . . . and gave her the look of just another asteroid, only this one was clearly headed harmlessly away from the jump.
To give the Hermes even that small a shield, they’d scrounged all the scraps of Smart MetalTM in the fleet. They’d pinched a kilogram off each of the corvettes’ shields. But a large chunk of that shield came from Kris’s new shoes.
Abby had groaned as she plopped the new pair of sparkling high heels down on the wardroom table two mornings back. “You paid a pretty penny for those shoes, Your Highness.”
“And that’s important just now why?” Kris asked.
“You’re all the time complaining about how your ball shoes hurt and why can’t someone come up with a stylish shoe that isn’t torture.”
“I think every woman who’s lived for the last five hundred years has made that complaint,” Penny said.
“Well, these shoes are Smart MetalTM,” Abby crowed. “If you’re dancing or showing off, they’re stylish. You sitting down, or maybe running for your life, and they’re sensible pumps. Just tell Nelly, and it’s done.”
“Why didn’t you get me a pair of these earlier?” Kris yelped.
“These very shoes are the first sale ever made by the new company, woman. I get them just for you, and what do I get, you giving me lip and demanding to know why I didn’t get them for you yesterday.”
“I don’t think we’ll be going to many dances in the next week,” Penny pointed out.
“But the Hermes does need a shield to hide behind,” Kris agreed. “Turn them in. We need to hide the Hermes a whole lot more than my feet need to be comfortable at the next dance.”
“Assuming they throw a victory ball for us,” Abby said dryly.
So the Hermes now drifted away from the jump. She hid behind her shield’s camouflage and closed down every electronic device on board, making like a hole in space just like the other ships of PatRon 10.
For what seemed like forever, nothing happened. The battleships closed to sixty thousand klicks from the jump and continued breaking. Kris didn’t want them much closer.
But she very much wanted them to look like they were breaking toward the jump when they encountered the hostile aliens.
Kris wanted a lot of things. It didn’t look like the gods of war were going to give her any of them.
“What’s taking those aliens so long?” she muttered.
“Well, we did get here before them,” Captain Drago noted. “They don’t seem to be all that well organized.”
Then an alien ship popped into existence smack dead ahead.
Admiral Krätz’s ships were ranging the jump point, so their lasers and radar hit the ship and bounced off it. The backscatter was picked up by the passive sensors on the Wasp and the other corvettes. It told them a whole lot about the alien ship without them having to make so much as an electronic peep.
The alien ship was ten kilometers long. Its hull was elliptical, some five kilometers around at its widest point. Its skin was marked irregularly by lumps and bumps that did not proclaim their usage.
Admiral Krätz played his part superbly.
“Who are you?” he announced on the radio, pumping plenty of surprise into his voice. “And what are you doing here? Unknown ship that just jumped into this system, identify yourself,” he demanded in perfect admiral mode.
His battle line also poured on the coal and went from decelerating at half a gee toward the jump point to accelerating at three gees away from the newly arrived alien ship. There was very little way on the ships, so they started opening the range between them and the alien ship in a matter of seconds. The impact on the crew must have been brutal, but they were battleship sailors and supposed to have hair on their chests.
And they’d been warned to prepare for just that.
The corvette crews weren’t the only ones waiting in their high-gee stations for the fight to start.
The alien ship said nothing. It sent no signal at all. It did goose its engines enough to push it away from the immediate area of the jump. A half minute later, Kris saw why.
A second ship, just as huge, popped into view.
It also gave itself a bit of a power boost and was joined thirty seconds later by a third ship. While there had been utter silence from the alien ships so far, now the first ship fired off a ten-second message.
At that, the newest-arrived ship did a 180-degree flip. Which left Kris wondering again what it must be like to be crowded into one of those huge ships while it did maneuvers that knocked around the crew of ships as small as the Wasp.
Nose to the jump, the ship accelerated and disappeared back into the jump.
For the long minute while all this happened, the battle line did its best to make contact. The Greenfeld ships continued to demand communications with the stranger. The Musashi flagship sent a sequence of dots signifying the numbers from one to ten, as well as tonal sounds built around middle C. The Helvetica ships sent pi.
The aliens returned them all a disdainful silence.
Meanwhile, the battleships increased the distance between them and the aliens. They also spread out to give themselves plenty of room to maneuver if it came to a fight. The Greenfeld ships, now in the rear, began to stream ice particles and flakes of aluminum. These defensive measures were meant to throw off ranging lasers and radars as well as cause main battery lasers to bloom and weaken.
Kris hoped the signal was clear: We want to talk. But we’re not defenseless.
Nothing continued to be the main thing happening.
The lead alien ship emitted a single radio signal.
And all hell broke loose.
Scores of lasers reached out from the nodes on the alien ships. Other bumps launched wave after wave of rockets.
Krätz’s flag had been leading the squadron toward the jump. Now it was the last in line and closest to the alien ship. Scores of lasers reached out for it, found it, and slashed into it.
The Fury never had a chance. It exploded in a ball of fire that quickly vanished into the void of space.
LAUNCH TORPEDOES, Kris ordered Nelly, even as she also began to fire the Wasp’s lasers.
Faster than Kris could think, Nelly did what the two of them had planned. Eight antimatter torpedoes launched, accelerating at ten gees. Fast as they were, Nelly had taught them to jink, adjusting their spin and speed just enough to throw off a defensive-fire computer that wasn’t as smart as Nelly.
It also helped that the Wasp lay in ambush only twelve thousand klicks from the vulnerable engines of the aliens.
Nelly also brought the Wasp’s four 24-inch pulse lasers to bear on the aliens’ weapons nodes. After the laser and missile fire from the outpost, Kris had expected a dual attack, lasers and missiles. Nelly now aimed the lasers at ten-percent power, first at a laser node, then at a missile bay. Two lasers for one ship, the other two for the other.
At ten-percent power, the lasers could do a lot of destruction before their charge gave out. If the hostile ships were armored, Nelly was prepared to up the power.
They weren’t protected. Nelly’s shots wreaked havoc.
The hostiles were still fixated on the battleships. Their lasers reached out even as the surviving seven began to dodge and weave, making radical adjustments to their acceleration. Decoys and more ice, as well as the wreckage of the Fury made it harder for the aliens to aim their lasers.
Still, they were firing a lot of them. Several of the battleships took hits, but their ice armor did its job.
And the battleships were shooting back. Their 16- and 18-inch lasers slashed into the alien ships, doing their own slaughter against unarmored hulls.
Kris and Nelly had aimed four antimatter torpedoes at each of the aliens. Two each for the engines, and two others along the length of the hulls.
The aliens got one. The other seven slammed home almost in the exact same microsecond.
The alien ships blew apart like ripe melons slammed by kids with baseball bats.
One second they were there. The next moment there was little more than hot gas where they had been.
“What just happened?” Captain Drago said, his mouth hanging open.
“They can dish it out, but they can’t take it,” Kris said cautiously.
“That was just two of them. There are a lot more where they came from,” Sulwan said, and got grunts of agreement from around the bridge.
“PatRon 10, you did good, staying to your cover,” Kris said. The three ships with the Hellburners were in reserve for the mother ship. They’d sat out the fight per their orders. Still, Kris knew the temptation must have been great.
As she expected, Navy discipline held.
“Battle line, report,” Kris said next.
“Kōta here. We got some of our tail feathers singed, but we’re ready for the mother ship.”
“Feel free to select your range,” Kris told Kōta. “When the mother ship comes through, there will be no effort to establish communications. For the record, they fired first and without provocation. We will attack them immediately. PatRon 10 will launch Hellburners on sight. Expect no further orders. Longknife out.”
Again, Kris spoke to ghosts.
Now they waited.
The clock ticked off minute after minute while nothing happened.
“Does it take longer to run a four- or five-thousandkilometer-long ship through a jump point than it does to run a battleship?” the chief asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Sulwan said. “What we don’t know about jump points would fill an encyclopedia. What we do know you could write on the head of a pin.”
“Maybe they’re waiting for one of their victorious ships to come back and tell them everything is fine here,” Jack suggested on net.
“They’ll be waiting a long time for that,” Penny said.
“Stay sharp, folks,” Captain Drago announced to all hands. “This boredom could end any second now.”
The Weapons Division reported that eight more antimatter torpedoes had been loaded. “These are the ones with four times the usual charge. Use them well, Commodore,” reported the leading chief of the division.
Admiral Kōta reported a strange thing about one of the rockets launched at the battle line.
“One of them seems to have been a fusion bomb,” he said. “We’re getting reports of radiation from the Terror. The captain thinks some of his men may be coming down with radiation poisoning.”
“We knew they had them,” Kris said. “Alert your secondary laser batteries that the rocket they shoot down could save the ship.”
“Already did so, Commodore. You be careful, too.”
“We’re doing our best,” Kris said.
The dull and boring lasted for not quite four more minutes.
Suddenly, in less than a blink, there was a five-thousandkilometer-long ship looming before them.