“How we coming on those schematics?” Moira inquires to anyone within earshot, the cloud of approaching adversaries materializing into specific squadrons and targets. Several telling seconds pass, in which finer details of weapons systems, wing patterns and hull plating introduce themselves on sixty separate starfighters, before Marco's voice, out of both breath and amusement, answers.
“Give me a minute, willya? I only just made it to the gundeck.”
“Oh, no rush,” Moira snarks. “Really.” With that, she wrings the life out of both her triggers to the ensuing onslaught of gunfire. Everything in her turret, the lifeless control panels, the love handles and ladylike curves of the lovely Antagonist, even Moira's own face and limbs, reflects the vibrant green afterglow of the laserfire, busy maiming, mangling and otherwise punishing the advancing flight group for every inch towards the Lover. She's able to effectively neutralize a squadron and a half before they break the threshold of their outer range and open some fire of their own. The Lover's forward ray shields absorb a grievous beating. Seconds before they shriek by, Nemo slides the freighter to the port, almost close enough to kiss bombard shields again with the Counterattack. He reprises his dance of drunken obstacle dodging, the two fighter hordes regroup and amass for another pass, the attitude fin looms and Marco interrupts the action with more frivolity.
“Captain, what did you name it?”
“What?”
“The schematics. The file they're in,” the Mruka implores, frustration more than coloring his tone. “I'm at the imager and I can't find the fucking thing. What did you name it?” Moira prepares a preemptive eye-roll for Nemo's fessing up.
“Uh, try 'My Evil Plan 4.'”
An awkward beat passes as Nemo adjusts the Lover's bearing a notch or two lower to take her cleaner beneath the looming attitude fin. “Yep. Found it.”
“Well, whatever – just buzz it up to me,” Moira orders harshly, less than confident at the sight of the innumerable hunks of more or less analogous machinery tucked neatly into the fin's capacious shadow.
“It's loading,” Marco snaps.
“Fucking sublime.”
“We ain't scanty got the edgies for a second go-round,” Two-Bit surmises.
Moira wheels the weighty Antagonist to port. “Guess I'm doing this again!” A second before she utters a prayer to the sharpshooter gods she honestly half-believes in, a blank screen to her left bursts into flagrant orange life. Moira sacrifices another second to studying the simulated projector array Marco'd gone to the trouble of highlighting in royal purple. A third second is spent correlating between screen and viewport and, literally as they roar past, Moira flakes four shots against the nearby corners of ray shield and lucks out with the fifth shot directly into the projector's exposed mainframe. The veneer of displaced energy quakes again, seemingly from impact, and returns the favor by rubbing shields together and subsequently elbowing the Lover ever so roughly outward.
“Oh, for moon's sake,” Moira invokes in agitation, as she and The Unconstant Lover careen callously to starboard. “That's two of four!”
“Don't get too snuggly,” Two-Bit alerts. “We got the big number three coming cracklin' in.” Moira relieves her left thumb and pointer finger of trigger duty to scroll, as quickly as she can, through dozens of “My Evil Plan 4”'s attendant screens and schematics in search of her next quarry. Her right hand, the Antagonist and the remainder of her attention occupy themselves by properly positioning the turret for Nemo's upcoming hair-pin turn and submitting a sampling of fresh green punishment to the Spurs flocking together some distance behind the Briza's twin boosters.
“How close you planning on cutting this one, Nemo?” she inquires.
“Pretty close,” Nemo admits in a tone one requests a haircut with.
“Excellent,” she murmurs, pinpointing the third projector array on the small screen and zooming the object to its highest possible resolution. As near as she could tell, the third projector's position, nestled tightly beneath the second row of engagement thrusters on the Counterattack's mammoth engine bank, could easily be kept in her sights during Nemo's upcoming hair-pin turn. The engine bank, that gargantuan rectangle of teltriton they'd nearly warped into what felt like hours ago, swells and swells in the viewport ahead, Moira prepares her pivot by placing a jackboot against the cupboard coincidentally containing her hidden top-shelf Gitter vintage, considers a hasty swig, thinks of Nemo, immediately decides against it and, as said boozehound tilts the ship to starboard slightly in preparation of its quite sudden pitch in the opposite direction, holds her breath.
What Moira hadn't anticipated was quite how disastrously Nemo would mistime his turn. He banks to port drastically too early, a mistake even laughable pilot Moira recognizes the idiocy of at a glance. On top of which, he attempts the turn at such a rapid speed that, should the Lover even so much as clip the side of the Pylon's engine bank, the force of impact would not only power their own bombard shield into nothing, but also peel the Briza open on her portside like a CryoChew Extinct Jerky carton.
Nemo's habitual avarice meant his turn of course hadn't taken velocity, torsion or any other mathematical factor into account. The six and a half bottles of alcohol so recently ingested meant none of his seven some years of practical flying experience could realistically be relied upon. All things considered, Moira's honestly surprised that his first major tactical error had come so late in the game; had she any more time before collision or any more space within her cramped topturret, she'd kick herself.
She kicks instead off the compartment in tune with Nemo's calamitously-timed turn, reasoning that if she's about to be sucked into open space and die a horrifying, asphyxiating death, she's at least going to bring one more projector array down with her. The Antagonist grinds around, triple-chambers ablaze toward the last supposed location of the Counterattack's bombard shield projector. By some miracle almost certainly unintentional on Nemo's part, like a boozy hiccup or a twitch of the yoke, The Unconstant Lover skirts inches past the engine bank's corner. Their contradictory bombard shields butt heads for the third time, shoving the freighter outward on its curving trajectory and straight into the path of the Counterattack's titanic blue engine wash.
A three-part harmony of patched screaming erupts from any of the Lover's crew close enough to a window to see their instant doom-by-incineration coming. Moira herself, attention still focused on the finally bull's-eyed projector array, doesn't notice this specific doom until Nemo's practically dismembered the yoke from the helm in his frenzied attempt to pull up. Her Captain again blessed by some evasive godsend, the Lover's ray shields receive the brunt of the blistering blow, scorching them entirely into oblivion and only Garrigan's continued scream of fright indicating the narrowness of his survival. Unharmed save for their dearly departed ray shielding and the undoubtedly extensive scorch marks all along her underside, The Unconstant Lover scampers, wounded, away from the rank and file of thrusters and into the relative safety of the Exacting Counterattack's starboard broadside once more.
“Would you fucking quit that?” Garrigan protests in a decidedly “outdoor” voice. “I almost got flambéed back there!”
“Whoops,” is all Nemo can offer as an apology.
“Did Moira at least tag that edgie projector?” Two-Bit attempts to confirm.
“You all owe me a drink,” she informs by way of confirmation.
“What about me? Who owes me a drink?” Nemo huffily objects.
“Nobody. That's who,” Odisseus is quick to deny.
“Maybe we'd best hink about the after-party beanos later,” Two-Bit recommends nervously. “We got the terming projector to hink about just now.”
For the first time since her hasty conscription into Brondi's vacated job, Moira marvels they've lasted three shields projectors at all. Only in that small crevice of her animal brain where Moira enjoys gunfights, pistol-whips and riding topturret did she even half-expect they'd somehow claw a victory from the covetous gras
p of overwhelming defeat. On one hand, they're opposed by superior firepower, approximately twenty-two squadrons of enemy starfighters, the Lover's general state of advanced disrepair and a Captain hammered completely out of his gourd. On the other hand, their foe boasts nothing but a single working bombard shield projector between themselves and relative helplessness.
Weighing both possibilities as they race toward their next target, Moira logically can't pick a side.
Chapter 23
Belton Grange graduated with valedictorian honors from the Imperial Naval Academy on Mezzr with a primary scholastic focus on Practical Astrocommunications and his first love and personal hobby, Theoretical Warp Engineering, relegated to an auxiliary focus. He'd shipped out, the day after graduation, as Thirteenth Deck's Second Chief Warrant Communications Officer aboard the newly christened flagship, the Exacting Counterattack, under the command of Campaign Admiral Dreffek, bound for Baz and the Galactic Menace. Subsequently, he never looked back.
Only on four separate occasions during the past seventeen months aboard had he been summoned personally to the second command bridge of the Pylon, a ship so extensive it required three individual control centers to operate with any degree of efficiency. Only on this most recent sojourn from his regular posting in the midship's engineering deck, this fifth such summons, did he actually bother to hustle.
Specific details were more than a little nebulous at present, particularly for a link so low on the chain of command it was practically dragging on the floor. However, the “engagement stations” alarm flooding each of the Exacting Counterattack's fifteen decks had persisted approximately seven minutes too long to indicate another blockade run from one of Boss Ott's numerous vassals and approximately three minutes too long to indicate a second ill-conceived frontal assault against the Pylon by those same powers. Therefore, Belton Grange or Bel8, as standard military shorthand for the alphabetically eighth “B-E-L” non-combat personnel aboard had dubbed him, deemed it unwise to keep his commanding officers waiting.
For all his haste, it's an exceedingly brief voyage from his technician's nook to the centrally located Bridge Two, though over a considerable distance. A short jog to the nearest lift tube, a bogglingly fast flight past Decks Twelve through Seven and, before he's even fully registered the transition, he's standing at attention in Bridge Two, the official heart and brain of the Exacting Counterattack, before Second Captain Jeldine and Campaign Admiral Dreffek.
Jeldine, outfitted somewhat unnecessarily in full dress uniform and leaning possessively over the shoulders and instruments of the hapless crewman before her, opens her mouth to acknowledge Belton's arrival, when the siren blaring overhead suddenly switches to an unrecognizable pitch and the screen before her bursts into fresh alerts and warnings. “And that's the last projector. Bombard shields are officially deactivated.”
Dreffek stands some distance officiously apart from the proceedings, garbed in a mildly more casual version of the High Commander's uniform, woven a specialized silk no one beside top military brass and perhaps the Emperor himself are even permitted to wear. The Admiral remains the only Sybolo Belton has ever laid eyes on; complete with methane processor masking the majority of his face and minute pink cilium dotting his exposed pink ectoplasm. “And the auxiliaries?”
“Won't go online for another three or four minutes,” Jeldine reports gravely. “If they're going to have a shot at whatever it is they're planning, it's going to be now, Admiral.” Dreffek's expression remains inscrutable beneath his mask and Jeldine, stymied, returns her attention for a beat to the technician seated before her. “Inform the Valdega and request top speed. Warrant Officer Bel8,” she addresses abruptly, adjusting her focus to Belton, “we have a situation.”
“I've gathered as much, Captain.” He extends due platitudes to Dreffek. “Campaign Admiral.”
The Sybolo nods politely. “Sailor.”
“A rogue vessel, lightly armed and lightly armored freighter-class with only circumstantial ties to the Menace's network, emerged out of an illegal warp transaction within blockade airspace thirteen and one half minutes ago,” Jeldine hastily briefs. “In those thirteen and one half minutes, they've somehow managed to incapacitate all four of our primary bombard shield projector arrays. For the moment, the ray shields remain intact, we've deployed almost a fourth of our starfighter reserves and manned every battery on board but, to put it commonly, we simply can't find the bastards.”
“Captain,” Dreffek chides.
“Apologies, Admiral.” Jeldine inches toward the console, as if to prove her point. “Whether they've somehow obtained a cloaking device–”
“For the last time, Captain, they don't have a cloaking device,” Dreffek again counters. “That technology is years beyond even our own field testing.”
“Well,” Jeldine, further stymied, straightens her posture. “Whatever the case may be, all our shipborne sensory systems – gunnery targeting, your own astrocommunications, even the individual computers aboard the deployed squadrons, have utterly failed to even register their presence. Only via old-fashioned eye-sight targeting have the fighters been able to engage and even there, only limitedly.”
“Any ideas?” Dreffek proposes.
Belton shrugs. “They're blindfolding.”
Both of his superior officers bristle a moment. “Your ploy with the inverted sensors?”
“This isn't some manner of tampering?” Jeldine suggests.
Advancing toward the nearest of the command disk's four terminals, Belton begins to unbutton the restrictive cuffs of his operating uniform. “Not if they disappeared from the fighter's sensors as well. A scramble feed wouldn't have that kind of precision. No,” he resolves, pushing and clasping the sleeve in place above his elbow, “this sort of thing is always something internal, something they've done to themselves.” He glances back once toward the Second Captain and the Campaign Admiral, freezing in his actions. “Beg your pardon, Admiral.”
Dreffek waves him off as Jeldine questions, “But you claimed this 'blindfolding' technique was extremely taxing to maintain, even while stationary. A ship like that–”
“Is vastly smaller than a Pylon, Captain. Sure, their sensors might be more primitive, but they've got much less ground to cover. Even in motion, a talented enough technician could, with some effort, achieve these sorts of results.”
Dreffek raises his approximation of an eyebrow. “Could you?”
“With time.”
“We need to be able to target them, Bel8,” Jeldine confesses. “With our bombard shields offline, we–”
“Have they targeted our ray shields?” Belton attempts to clarify, reaching for the opposite sleeve.
“No, though–”
“With all due respect, Captain, what do you imagine they're attempting to do?”
The Admiral and the Captain exchange looks. “Captain Jeldine,” Dreffek summarizes, “fears the worst. Can you find a way to target them?”
“Affirmative, Admiral. I'll need a direct connection to the main sensory computer, override clearance and any industrial information you have on the ship in question.” Finishing fastening his second sleeve, he shoots a glance to the adjacent technician. “Probably that chair as well.”
At signal from the Captain, the crewman scurries aside and Belton usurps his position, requiring less than half a minute to familiarize himself with the relatively extrinsic controls he'd only once before personally operated; when he'd established the Exacting Counterattack's recently discarded blindfolding procedure. By the end of that minute, a digital dossier pops onto screen, introducing Belton Grange to the engineering nightmare that was The Unconstant Lover.
“Briza Light Freighter, Model IZ36. Legally registered under the name “Osprey,” quite clearly an alias. Current captain's one Morel, typical pirate scum. Substantial posting throughout the Ring. This number's been a fairly visible thorn in our sides lately. Tangled with Insurgent Company, destroyed the Indurna a number of months ago.”
Belton blinks. “Is that...?”
“Obviously,” Jeldine allows, words catching in her throat. “some modifications are present.”
“They removed the...” Belton reasons. “And instead there's a...”
“Is there a problem, Bel8?”
Belton banishes the bewilderment with a shake of his head. “No, no, Captain. That just, uh, never occurred to me.” He dials a few establishing commands to the Counterattack's sensory package as he makes his hypothesis. “Normally, blindfolding leaves a sensory shadow, if you understand me, a void or a lacuna, where there should at least be empty space. But here, with these, um...” he clears his throat, “engines, I suppose, there'll be exhaust.”
“Exhaust?” Jeldine struggles to comprehend.
“These outmoded Yeltain models were embarrassingly poor at waste recirculation. Needless to say, with not one, but two of these accelerator jetboosters, there'll be a substantial exhaust trail. An exhaust trail we can trace.”
Dreffek shifts his weight. “How?”
“With an algorithm.” Belton deposits one hand to the keypad, the other to the control wheel and launches into operation.
Abstruse work such as this granted Belton as decent an excuse as any to phase out the protocol, the doctrine and the dogma of his stratified life in the Imperium Navy and devote his considerable mental energy to unraveling a problem worthy of actual consideration. Jeldine, Dreffek, even Bridge Two's scores of display screens and buzzing population of crewmen, fade into tableau as Belton knuckles down. With all the Counterattack's sensors employed to detect traces of the chemical residue, a few computational prerequisites extrapolated and the resulting formula beamed to every targeting and communications matrix aboard, this Unconstant Lover is rendered visible on all external scopes within a matter of seconds from the final keystroke of input.
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