Data went to the nav computer, and Nyb Pim and Capp worked together to plot a course that would have them intercepting the enemy.
“Only eleven hours!” Tolvern said, surprised.
“So it’s us against them until Vargus shows up?” Capp said.
She sounded more resigned at this point—there had been plenty of time for Tolvern’s crew to think through the ramifications after the captains of the two battle cruisers hashed out a plan. In fact, Vargus herself had made the point for the Blackbeard crew.
“Hell of a risk,” Vargus had said. “Putting yourselves out in front like that—what if there’s a second carrier already in the system?”
“Doubtful. We haven’t reached the unexplored zone yet.”
“Drake’s red carrot.” Vargus raised an eyebrow. “But what’s to say that they won’t push their fleet out ahead of it? Like you did with Castillo and Fortaleza?”
“Nothing except a hunch.”
“So divide the fleets. You take the Fourth Wolves, I keep the First. We each get six destroyers. Like it was originally planned. Don’t go in there alone.”
“Here’s my thinking,” Tolvern had explained. “If the ghouls see Blackbeard flying solo—assuming I can hide the Singaporeans—they’ll think I’m vulnerable. If they see me with a dozen other ships and my brawler, then maybe they simply run. I want them to turn around and fight. That lets you come in from behind with the rest of the squadron.”
Staring at the situation now, it occurred to Tolvern that a million things could go wrong, and almost at once, something did.
“It’s not a star fortress,” Smythe announced. “It’s some other big ship.”
“You’re sure?” Tolvern asked.
“The engine signature is nothing like what Vargus and Wang figured out. I can check with the Singaporeans if you want, but that would mean uncloaking First Dragon again, and I thought you wanted her quiet next to the jump point.”
“No need—I trust your analysis. So if it’s not a star fortress, then what kind of ship is it?”
“Still trying to figure that out.”
“I have a course, Captain,” Nyb Pim said. “Shall we proceed or hold position?”
“Take us on intercept.” To Smythe, she said, “We’re not trying to hide anymore, so give me all active sensors. We’ll know what we’re looking at soon enough.”
There was no way to be sure that more Adjudicator ships weren’t lurking in the system, and even now moving to attack them, but she had to take the risk. Scans of the unknown vessel shortly revealed its true nature.
It was a transport, no guns. Engines powerful enough to push through a jump, but with a slow turn speed, which indicated deficiencies in antigrav. Further analysis came after Wang’s ship sent data on a cloaked channel that gave higher resolution images. From certain external structures, Smythe thought the transport was carrying stasis chambers.
“How many we talking about?” Capp asked. “A few hundred?”
“More than that,” Smythe said. “Maybe ten or fifteen thousand. Depends on what else it’s carrying.”
“So, bigger than any of Catarina Vargus’s colonizer ships,” Tolvern said. “I want that ship. Captured, if possible, but destroyed, if not.”
“Are we sure they’re ghouls, Cap’n?” Capp asked. “This is foreign territory, yeah? We don’t want to be killing humans or nothing.”
“They’re either Adjudicators or they’re flying with Adjudicator engines,” Smythe said.
“The problem is if they’re carrying mech troops,” Tolvern decided. “I don’t have enough marines on board to take it by force.”
Here was where Svensen’s raiders would have come in handy, if only she hadn’t left them with Vargus. It hadn’t been a bad call at the time, but some of her assumptions had been wrong.
“Drop cloaks,” she said. “Accelerate at full. Let’s see what the ghouls do when they know we’re coming. And prepare a message for Vargus. She’ll be coming through her own jump point shortly, and I want her to know what’s in here.”
Two hours later, at roughly the time when Vargus’s ships would be crossing into Lenin, the enemy ship spotted Blackbeard and changed course.
It didn’t move to intercept the battle cruiser, but neither did it try to return to the jump point from which it had come, which was Tolvern’s other hope. In fleeing for Moscow, the freighter/transport would have run headlong into Void Queen. So where was it going? She couldn’t see anything in that direction but the red giant.
“Whadya think, Cap’n?” Capp asked. “Is it a trap?”
Lomelí and Smythe had rotated out of shift—technically, Tolvern should be in bed now, too, according to the duty roster, but she was too wired by the situation to relinquish the helm—and that left Ping in charge of the tech console.
“Any jump points out there?” Tolvern asked him.
“Nothing really,” he said. “There’s a badly decayed red jump.”
“You’re sure it’s red?”
“Two percent stability. An old one, and probably too close to the star to hold shape. In fact, it’s on the Sevastopol charts we recovered,” Ping added, “and it was already decayed in those days.”
“Aye, two percent is a bad one,” Capp said, “unless they want to commit suicide and blow up whatever is on their ship.” Nyb Pim had gone off shift, too, leaving the first mate running nav.
“They could run into the sun if suicide was their goal,” Tolvern said. “Not sure we could stop them from here.”
But Tolvern’s forces could intercept the enemy before reaching that red jump, or whatever was lurking nearby. Or, more specifically, Void Queen could. Vargus was better prepared to run it down, with Blackbeard mainly useful to them in a retreat in the opposite direction. Not exactly what they’d planned, but it would work.
An ironic result, but one that should have been welcome. Except that the enemy’s turn in a random direction had left Tolvern unsettled. If there was no escape in that direction, and it could neither run away nor jump to freedom, then the odds of an ambush rose considerably.
#
Catarina looked over Tolvern’s warning, sent via a lengthy text message. Text made a smaller data packet, and was harder to intercept than video. Void Queen was still cloaked, as were the three war junks and the star wolves and destroyers popping through from Moscow at regular intervals. The sheer mass of ships made it unlikely that they’d remain undetected for long.
The Scandian execution through the jumps had improved by light years and parsecs over their faulty discipline during Catarina’s base-building along the frontier in advance of the Apex war. No incidents, no recriminations over a ship not getting out of the way. They even managed to coordinate with the naval destroyers.
The problem was, Catarina couldn’t wait for all the ships to come through. Not if she hoped to engage the enemy freighter before it slipped out of her grasp. She’d have to set off with what she had and let the others catch up when they could. That would leave their forces unfortunately strung out in a system that might have all manner of places to hide and spring an ambush.
But as she gave Gomez free rein to plot their course in pursuit of the enemy freighter, she came to a different conclusion than the one Tolvern sent across. The enemy ship wasn’t trying to lure them into an ambush. It was trying to escape.
“Escape where?” Burris said when she voiced this aloud. The tech officer ran his fingers through his hair. “That jump is no good. About as red as you’ll find.”
“As red as Lenin’s star and that crazy hair of yours,” she agreed.
“Don’t mock the hair—I’m of Scottish descent and proud of it.”
“It’s been five hundred years since we left Earth,” Azavedo said. “We’re so mixed up by now that even I’ve got Scottish blood in me.”
“Sure you do,” Catarina said. “Descended from the famous Mac-Azavedo Clan, no doubt.”
This brought chuckles from Burris and Gomez, but her defe
nse grid specialist, Ensign Niles Winchester, only grimaced and shook his head. Winchester was one of the few traditional Royal Navy officers on the bridge, and more of a “yes, sir” type than the others. Catarina had jokingly offered Tolvern a swap of Winchester for Lomelí—get the pirates on one ship and the navy types on the other. Tolvern opined that so long as her ship was named Blackbeard, there would be no monopoly on pirate nomenclature.
“Back to my point,” Burris said. “Why would the Adjudicators destroy themselves going through a red jump point?”
“Because it’s not a red, any more than the Castillo and Persia jump points have collapsed.”
That sat there for a moment, and then Burris whistled. “It makes perfect sense. Put up a device, only don’t hide the jump entirely, just make it look unstable. Your side knows, the other side doesn’t. Dammit, why didn’t I think of that?”
“If it makes you feel better, neither did Stephen Smythe.”
He brightened. “Thanks, it does.”
“If that’s the case,” Azavedo said, “then there must be something behind that jump that they’re trying to hide. Really, really badly. We’re on the edge of Drake’s dead zone—under normal circumstances, nobody has any reason to come through here, let alone into whatever is on the other side.”
“Good point,” Catarina said. “Almost makes it sound like they’re hiding their main base of operations, doesn’t it?”
That had them excited and on edge. Too early to ramp up the adrenaline. There was still a long haul ahead of them to catch the freighter before it escaped. And then, assuming Tolvern’s assessment was right, they had to snare the blasted thing, send raiders to fight it out with decimator units, and avoid stumbling into an ambush along the way.
The Fourth Wolves were through now, along with Olafsen’s ship, Bloodaxe, from the First Wolves. She signaled Bloodaxe to hold position at the jump point, along with a pair of destroyers and the single war junk that had come through, and pulled six star wolves and two navy destroyers with her as Void Queen accelerated toward their target.
Once Catarina had them underway and gathered into a defensive formation, she put Gomez on the problem of calculating the intercept time. They’d accumulated time dilation effects from running so fast through Moscow, and the AI had to reconcile the clock first. Once that was completed, Gomez gave his assessment.
“We’ll run them down in thirty-seven hours, or roughly five hours short of the jump.”
“And if there’s an ambush, how long will we be in combat before Blackbeard arrives?” Catarina asked.
“Depends on where they hit us, but I’d say ten to twelve hours,” Gomez said.
“About the same time needed for the star wolves and the rest to reinforce from the rear. I like our odds. Burris, send Tolvern and Smythe our guess about that red jump point. Try not to gloat that we figured it out first.”
“Aye, Captain.” His freckled face looked quite earnest, but she knew he’d find a way to point it out.
“Azavedo, you have the helm.” Catarina rose to her feet. “Give Svensen a warning. He’ll need to cycle his crew and thaw his raiders so they’ll be ready to roll.”
“Where are you going?” Azavedo asked.
“Down to the barracks to pull our own marines off the ice. It’s going to take everything we’ve got to take that blasted transport.”
Chapter Ten
Ulfgar Svensen was excited when Vargus’s first mate passed him orders. For months he’d wrestled with his failed attack on Star Fortress Delta during the Battle of Castillo. His nukes had knocked Delta out of the fight, but his mission had been to capture it, not destroy it.
The raid had bogged down at once. First, the enemy carrier had tougher outer defenses than he’d expected, and a more rapid response from decimator units, each of which matched the armor and firepower of the raiders and marines facing them. The raiding parties from the various star wolves struggled to advance, struggled to unite under fire, and then struggled to extract themselves when the attack failed. The blasted aliens had even got several of their units onto his own ship.
Two wolves—Anvil and War Cry—had died in the assault without touching the enemy. Scores of marines and raiders never returned. The cries of captured, terrified men over the com still haunted Svensen’s memory.
Now Bloodaxe and the other ships of the Fourth Wolves would get a chance at redemption. He’d thought up new tactics and brought on new weapons. This time they’d hit harder, hit longer, and not pull out until they had the ship.
But then the conditions started to mount. First was from Blackbeard. Some science geek named Brockett wanted a tissue sample. Win, lose, or draw, the Scandians were to bring back a physical specimen from the raid.
Sure, no problem. Lop off the head of a ghoul, tuck it under his arm, and . . . what? He’d figure out something.
And then Vargus asked if he could withdraw three of his six wolves after ramming them home and dropping off raiders. It was more of a request than an order, and he pushed back. It wasn’t a question of retreat. For one, he had no intention of retreating. But if he left enough men on board those three wolves to crew the ships, that was all the fewer mech raiders he’d have in the assault.
What did she need them for, anyway?
“Look,” she said, “I’m not going to micromanage your raid—that’s not the point. Here’s my problem. I’ve got five hundred marines to shoot across on boarding rockets. I’ll have my brawler detached and my striker wing airborne, but I’m still vulnerable while they’re crossing. The secondary battery will be blocked completely, and the primary will give me about twenty degrees of coverage.
“If an enemy warship appears, something big, I’ll have no choice but to cut my lines and leave those marines dangling in space. The alternative is using three of your wolves to cover my vulnerable flank.”
“You want to weaken my side to support yours.”
Her voice hardened. “If you prefer to go in alone, have fun. I’ll fling over a few marines in away pods—you’ll get forty or fifty, but that’s it. You’ll probably die, of course.”
“By the gods, I thought Tolvern was blunt.”
“Do you need those marines or not? That’s my question. I’ve got five hundred of Albion’s best thawed and ready to roll.”
Sarcasm colored her tone in that final sentence. She was no more of Albion origin than he was, though they were both speaking English, not Scandian or Ladino. A product of the frontier, like he was.
A year ago he would have said screw those marines, he wasn’t going to trade them for mech raiders. But he’d seen them fight. They were tough and disciplined, and now that they carried Scandian tech they were . . . well, he wouldn’t get carried away. It wasn’t one-to-one strength, but maybe ten marines equaled six raiders. Okay, make eight raiders. Point was, he could use those marines.
“Fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’ll take your conditions.”
He called the commanders of Wasteland, Boneless, and Loki to give them the bad news. They were pissed when they heard, but he mollified them by promising they’d be the first to hit the enemy and first to land their men. Going in short handed . . . why, that was the path to maximum glory, wasn’t it?
After that, the battle developed quickly.
The Fourth Wolves ran down the alien ship and struck hard with their pummel guns. The freighter had a few deck guns and a small missile battery, but none of it opened fire on the attackers. Strange. Even if you’d decided to give up, why not try to inflict damage on your way down?
Svensen suppressed an unsettled feeling and ordered the wolves to stand down. Void Queen had launched her striker wing and they came in at an angle to fire pulse guns in a precision attack at the freighter’s engines. Knock it out without blowing the containment field, then drill through to the warp point engine to eliminate any possibility of jumping.
While Vargus did her thing, Svensen ordered a charge. Wasteland, Boneless, and Loki were first, while
Boghammer, Hellhound, and Icefall gave them cover. No need for that, apparently. He took a risk and ordered the final three ships to charge before the first three had finished disgorging their raiders.
Svensen was already suited up and strapped into his sling, but fleet com told him that Void Queen was swinging in from above to harpoon the freighter and send across her marines. Still no return fire from the enemy.
Boghammer struck the enemy ship. A shudder, a shift of gravity. He felt suddenly upside down. That was his own ship equalizing antigrav with the enemy so that he’d come into the corridors right side up. An explosion, a burst of air that came through the filters as damp and foul-smelling.
Lund unstrapped himself and pushed forward. Jörvak was next, his new helmet painted orange with a jagged mouth, like an armored jack-o’-lantern. Svensen came after them, swinging his assault rifle around as he queued to enter the enemy ship. His left hand—the cybernetic attachment to his stump—carried a hand cannon attachment, for knocking down enemy mech units. The forearm also held a plasma torch. If he grappled with the enemy, he could bring it up and melt through his opponent’s faceplate.
“Svensen, you there?”
It was Jan Helsingor, Icefall’s commander. The map on the inside of Svensen’s helmet showed the other commander and his raiders only ninety feet away, although that might include several walls and bulkheads.
“We’re breaching the hull now. Where’s the gunfire? Haven’t you been—”
Svensen didn’t finish his sentence before there was a muffled explosion on the other end. Screams, shouts. Gunfire. Helsingor came back on.
“Yeah, we’re under some kind of attack. Not decimators, though.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
Svensen’s own raiders still weren’t through. They’d hit a bombproof, hardened with tyrillium, and his men were tearing open a hole. Another thirty seconds. But for now, Svensen and the rest were clogged in the hold, waiting to break free.
“I know what you said, but don’t make me pull out my ship,” Helsingor said. “I need the rest of those raiders if I’m going to—”
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