He shrugged. That wasn’t going to happen. Admiral Onarina was hardly going to stop, even if the entire squadron vanished without trace. And that wasn’t going to happen either. The remainder of the squadron was going to make its own way home and report to its superiors. They’d know the counter-virus had worked and start looking for ways to make it even more effective. Thomas’s stomach churned at the thought. Like it or not, they were on the verge of committing mass murder on a planetary scale. Again. And even the certain knowledge the host-bodies were dead anyway didn’t help.
“Helm, increase speed,” he ordered. “But don’t leave the shuttles behind.”
“Aye, Captain,” Fitzgerald said.
Thomas nodded, grimly. The equation had just become brutally simple. The shuttles had legs - and an acceleration curve anything larger than a starfighter or gunboat might envy - but they had very short range. Their power cells had probably already been drained. The marines hadn’t had time to recharge, let alone anything else. Thomas’s plan was relatively simple - the shuttles could latch onto the hulls like limpets, their passengers waiting until the battlecruiser was clear before they boarded Lion - but it relied upon the shuttles reaching the battlecruiser first. And that meant there was a very real chance of the enemy hammering Lion before she could open the range again.
We can take it, he told himself, although he knew it wasn’t entirely true. They won’t have us in range for very long.
“XO, inform the gunboats that they are to continue harassing the alien ships,” he ordered. “Tactical, fire to cover the shuttles.”
“Aye, Captain,” Sibley said.
***
“The enemy battleships are tough,” Tobias said. It was frustrating, but true. “That brute just took four nukes and she’s still coming.”
He cursed as a streak of plasma shot past the gunboat. The enemy point defence was concentrating on protecting the capital ships, but they had enough firepower to divert a handful of plasma cannons to try to engage the gunboats. Tobias knew they were a very small target, yet significant enough to be worth the effort. The virus might disrupt the missile targeting if it took out the gunboats.
“Try to take out her drives,” Marigold advised. She swung the gunboat into another series of evasive manoeuvres. “Just punch out a drive node or two.”
Tobias scowled as he assumed command of another missile cluster. The range was steadily closing. The enemy was already pumping missiles towards Lion, the odds of a direct hit growing steadily higher with every passing second. Lion was firing as rapidly as she could, running the risk of shooting herself dry. There just weren’t enough laser warheads to make a real impression …
His fingers danced over the console, directing five laser warheads against the nearest battleship. Three were blown out of space before they could detonate, while the remaining two sent ravening beams of energy digging into the enemy ship’s hull. She shuddered, spewing streams of superheated plasma from the wound as her drive field started to disintegrate. Tobias watched, hoping they’d punched out enough of the nodes to slow her down. She would be harmless if she couldn’t bring her weapons to bear on Lion.
“I think you hurt her,” Marigold said. Another battleship fell out of formation as their comrades landed a handful of blows. She exploded a second later, scattering debris in all directions. “How much of her do we get to paint on the hull?”
Tobias laughed, then sobered as his display lit up. The enemy fleet carrier appeared to be breaking up, shedding debris even though she’d been largely ignored. None of the gunboats had so much as shot a single missile at her, let alone tried to take her out. She just wasn’t important. And yet … his eyes narrowed. Had she been hit? It didn’t seem likely. His sensors hadn’t tracked any missiles striking her hull …
Red icons appeared on the display. “Oh, hell!”
“Enemy starfighters,” Bagehot said. He was safely on Lion, for a given value of safe. If the battlecruiser came under heavy fire, he’d be blown away with the rest of the ship. “I say again, enemy starfighters!”
“I saw,” Tobias said. He cursed under his breath. The enemy launch tubes had been destroyed, but not the starfighters themselves. The carrier’s crew had literally burnt through their own hull to launch the starfighters. They’d put nearly three whole squadrons into space. “We need some cover …”
His eyes narrowed as the enemy starfighters zoomed into attack position, then roared past the gunboats without even trying to engage. They didn’t even snap off a handful of shots as they passed. The gunboats did, killing a pair of enemy craft before the range opened again. Tobias stared, unsure what he was seeing. The enemy starfighters were behaving oddly. Surely, they considered the gunboats priority targets … right?
Oh no, they don’t, he thought. His heart sank as he realised the truth. They’re not going for us. They’re going for the shuttles!
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Captain,” Sibley said. “The enemy carrier has force-launched its starfighters.”
Thomas nodded, sharply. He’d served on carriers. He’d commanded carriers. Hacking through the hull - and layers upon layers of ablative armour - wasn’t something to be done lightly. Hell … he kicked himself, mentally. He’d been blinded by his own service. If one of his carriers had taken so much damage, she would have lost the starfighters as well as the launch tubes. The virus must have buried its hangar decks deeper in the hull. It wasn’t something any other race would have done, but he supposed it made a certain kind of sense. There was a greater need to protect the starfighters than the pilots if the latter were considered expendable …
He dismissed the thought. “XO, recall the gunboats,” he ordered. Thirty-odd starfighters were bearing down on the shuttles. They’d be like wolves amongst sheep if they were permitted to proceed unmolested. “They’re to cover the shuttles until they reach our point defence envelope.”
“Aye, Captain,” Donker said.
Thomas felt a hot flash of anger as he calculated the vectors. The virus had timed it well, even though the brainship was gone. He couldn’t slow Lion to cover the shuttles without giving the enemy fleet a chance to catch up and shoot him to pieces. And yet, not slowing the battlecruiser would make it harder for the shuttles to evade their tormentors. He silently gave the virus credit for presenting him with a sadistic choice, one that would cost him no matter what he did. He had to save the marines, but he couldn’t risk the battlecruiser any further …
And recalling the gunboats limits my ability to hit them, he thought. Or does it?
“Communications, establish links to Unicorn,” he ordered. “If she can coordinate our missile strikes, she is to do so.”
“Aye, sir,” Cook said.
Thomas scowled. It wouldn’t be perfect. Unicorn was out of position, too far from the enemy fleet to react to tiny gaps in their defences. The time delay alone would make her efforts less useful than anyone might have hoped, even if they weren’t - quite - worse than useless. But it would have to do.
He gritted his teeth. They could make it out. They would make it out. But it wasn’t going to be cheap.
***
“Incoming enemy fighters,” the pilot warned. “If you know any good prayers, say them.”
Colin swallowed, hard. He’d forgotten every prayer he’d been taught. There might be no atheists in foxholes, an expression he’d never understood until he’d wound up in a foxhole himself, but they tended to have no time to pray. He felt awkwardly exposed, utterly helpless … unable to do anything to so much as save himself. He was just a passenger, his fate determined by the pilot and the enemy gunners and …
This must be how Tobias felt, all the fucking time, he thought. Self-disgust shaded his thoughts. Poor bastard.
He closed his eyes. One way or the other, it would all be over soon.
***
Tobias found himself with mixed feelings as the gunboats rocketed towards the shuttles and enemy starfighters. The shuttles didn’t seem to b
e evading, certainly not well enough to save themselves from round after round of plasma fire. Two shuttles died as he watched, picked off by enemy starfighters. The marines were too stupid to evade … no, he realised dully; they literally didn’t have the power to evade. They were cutting their flight very fine indeed. If their power cells died while they were in transit, there was little hope of rescue before they suffocated.
Colin’s on one of those craft, Tobias thought. He refused to believe the bully was dead. People like Colin never died. They had the luck of the devil himself, surviving things that would break or kill ordinary mortals. I wonder …
He accessed the datanet as the range closed, wondering if there was a troop manifest. The marines had thrown the evacuation plan together at great speed, improvising everything, but it was just possible … Colin’s name leapt out at him, a helpless passenger on a nameless shuttle. The enemy starfighters were already moving to attack. Tobias stared, transfixed. It would be so easy to do nothing, to let the starfighters take their shot. Colin couldn’t hope to escape an alien starfighter. His shuttle wasn’t even trying to evade.
“I’m closing the range,” Marigold said. She didn’t know what he was thinking. How could she? “Hit them as soon as you can. Make them jump and scatter.”
Tobias nodded, his thoughts elsewhere as he opened fire. It would be so easy to aim to miss. Hitting a starfighter was never easy. The craft were tiny, even when they weren’t dancing from side to side randomly to make their course impossible to predict. It would be so easy … a cold glee ran through him as he realised he could fire the fatal shot himself. He was already shooting burst after burst of plasma fire towards the starfighters, forcing them to abandon their attack formations and scatter. They were in the middle of a dogfight. It would look like an accident … a terrible accident, to be sure, but an accident. He could snap off a shot that hit the shuttle and blew Colin to atoms …
Time seemed to slow as he stared at the targeting console. Temptation howled through his mind. He could do it. Colin wouldn’t stand a chance. No one would ever know. Others would be killed, but … they’d accepted Colin as one of them. They didn’t deserve to live. Thugs and bullies … he could kill them too. His thoughts ran in circles. Colin’s life was in his hand. This time, he knew he had a weapon. It would look like an accident. All he had to do was fire. The entire world would cheer.
And yet, his thoughts mocked, you’re not a child any longer.
He drew back from the brink, then opened fire on the alien starfighters. Colin would never know it, perhaps, but Tobias would know - would always know - that he’d had the chance to kill Colin without consequences, and he’d let it go. He could have shot Colin in the back and … he’d made the choice, the very deliberate choice, to let it go. He’d always wonder if he’d made a mistake, he admitted as he scattered the remaining enemy starfighters, but at least he knew himself a little better now. He wasn’t a murderer.
And, perhaps, someone would have figured it out, he thought. He had a life now, a girlfriend and a career and a future that - perhaps - was bright. He didn’t want to throw it away for a worthless piece of shit like Colin. Who knows what would have happened if I killed him and someone studied the battle extensively enough to realise what I’d done?
He put the thought out of his head. Colin scared him - Colin would always scare him - but it was no longer the sheer terror the bully had once evoked. Now … Tobias knew he could have killed Colin, if he’d been willing to risk going down, too. He’d never be so scared again.
His lips quirked as the last of the enemy starfighters died under their fire. Colin had survived. In a sense, he even owed his life to Tobias. Tobias was tempted to tell him that, if nothing else. What would Colin make of a world where Tobias could have killed him, or simply sat back and watched him die? There’d been times, hundreds of times, when he’d fantasised about having the chance to kill Colin, either by killing him deliberately or simply turning his back and walking away. And now …
“We’re being recalled,” Marigold said. “We’re to hold station with Lion until she gets out of enemy range.”
Tobias nodded, resetting the targeting console as the gunboats escorted the shuttles to the battlecruiser. Had he done the right thing? He didn’t know. And he feared, deep inside, that he never would.
***
“The shuttles are latching on now,” Donker reported. “The gunboats are holding station behind us.”
“Ramp up the drives as far as they’ll go,” Thomas ordered. He studied the enemy fleet for a long cold moment. It had taken a beating, one hell of a beating, but it was still formidable - and dangerous. He’d completed the mission; he’d sneaked in, recovered the marines and given the enemy a bloody nose into the bargain. “I think we’ve outstayed our welcome.”
He leaned forward, studying the displays as the battlecruiser started to open the range. The enemy fleet was still firing, but they were growing increasingly short of missiles. They just weren’t firing enough to wear down his defences, let alone get past the gunboats. He was almost tempted to circle around and try to kill the remaining ships, but they’d pushed their luck too far. Besides, they might need their remaining missiles to fight their way back to New Washington.
“Captain,” Cook said. “Captain Campbell is requesting a conference.”
Thomas’s eyes narrowed. Captain Campbell was supposed to break contact, slip back into cloak, evade the enemy fleet and link up with Lion once both ships had jumped through the tramline. He wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the battlecruiser, certainly not close enough to request a realtime conference. Thomas frowned, then keyed his console. He had a feeling he knew what Captain Campbell was going to say.
“Captain,” he said. “You’re meant to be a lot further away.”
“I thought it would be wise to shadow the enemy from a distance,” Captain Campbell said, curtly. “Captain, we can take them. We can finish the job.”
Thomas would have smiled, if the situation hadn’t been so serious. He’d been right. Captain Campbell did want to press the offensive … Thomas considered it, again, but he knew they’d taken the engagement as far as they reasonably could. They might be withdrawing under fire, yet the range was growing wider with every passing second. It was just a matter of time until the enemy fleet gave up or Lion managed to break contact, recall her gunboats and slip into cloak herself. And then they could sneak back to New Washington at leisure.
“No,” he said, bluntly. He had a sense of déjà vu. “We’ve completed our mission. We’ve proven the BioBombs work, if not as well as we might have hoped. We recovered the marines and hammered their fleet. There’s nothing to be gained by continuing the attack.”
He smiled. “Haven’t we had this discussion before?”
Captain Campbell looked thoroughly displeased. “There are three enemy battleships and one carrier within weapons range,” he said. “We could take them out, now.”
Thomas kept his voice calm. It wasn’t easy. “We have nearly shot ourselves dry,” he said. “We stripped every last missile out of the freighters, just to take out the brainship. We simply do not have the firepower to win, while giving the enemy a chance to take us out instead. In short, we are going to quit while we’re ahead.”
He understood. He’d admit that much, at least in the privacy of his own mind. It took upwards of eighteen months to churn out a battleship, even if the shipyard crews cut every corner they could. Taking out the remainder of the enemy fleet would make life harder for the virus, although they had no way to know how much harder. The fleet chasing them might represent ten percent of the virus’s deployable forces, or one percent, or even less … he shook his head. It was academic. His ship was in no state to continue the engagement.
“Break off, as ordered, and link up with us at the RV point,” he said, coldly. He was tempted to offer to issue the orders in writing, even though that would put them on the record for the rest of their careers. “I’ll see you there.”
“Yes, sir.” Captain Campbell’s tone was also cold, barely one step short of insubordination. “Be seeing you.”
The connection broke. Thomas stared at the empty screen for a long moment, then turned his attention back to the display. He understood the urge to win, but not at all costs. There was no hope of winning the engagement, not without risking everything. And they’d won. The virus had been forced on the defensive for the first time since the war had begun.
Next time, we’ll hit a major world, he thought. And the counter-virus might spread onto the enemy fleet.
***
Mitch scowled at the display. Captain Hammond just didn’t have what it took. It was blatantly obvious, from the steady reduction in enemy fire, that the enemy fleet was shooting itself dry. Lion had been designed to hammer enemy ships from beyond their own range, certainly beyond energy weapons range. The combination of speed, agility and gunboats would be more than enough to tip the odds in her favour, particularly if the enemy couldn’t shoot back. Mitch had no qualms about blasting an enemy ship to atoms from a safe distance. Experience had taught him the virus would happily do the same to him.
He felt his mood worsen as the range continued to increase. Three battleships and a carrier, the latter so badly damaged she was effectively a sitting duck. They’d thought that before, he conceded, but if the carrier had been able to launch more starfighters she would have done so when her craft were engaging the shuttles. No, she was no longer combat-effective …
Mitch forced himself to think. If he’d been in command, he would have held the range open and shot the enemy fleet to pieces. At best, total victory; at worst, he could have retreated once he’d run out of missiles. Captain Hammond might fret about encountering something nasty between Brasilia and New Washington, but they’d already encountered something nasty behind them. His thoughts ran in bitter circles. Captain Hammond simply didn’t have the aggression to handle his ship properly.
He studied the display, looking for options. The enemy fleet was too alert for tiny Unicorn to do any real damage. He considered a ballistic missile strike, but … the odds of slipping even one missile through the defences were very low. Unicorn didn’t mount a shipkiller plasma cannon, either … he conceded, angrily, that there was no hope of prolonging the engagement any further. Captain Hammond wanted to quit while they were ahead.
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