He wondered if any who’d attained it found themselves missing the old days. He was stuck outside of the minefield entrance in Bastard Blade, the newest corvette that he’d kept for himself.
The Mouse conveyed a certain prestige in Quailu society – heavy cruisers usually went to senior captains – but it didn’t fit in with the nature of the growing Human force.
For one thing, it was inefficient, at least as Eth saw it. For the firepower it delivered, which wasn’t negligible, it soaked up a ton of labor.
And it was a huge, easily spotted target. The Quailu might be honor bound to stand toe to toe and slug it out, but Humans didn’t care about gaining face from antiquated ideals.
Crushing your foe was a far better way to burnish a reputation and the stealthy corvettes and scout-ships let his Humans get in close. Added to this, the new missile tech gave his smaller ships punch that was way above their weight limit.
But he couldn’t take them inside the minefield until the debris had been blown. There were just too many large hull fragments in the approach corridor for his corvettes to slip in unnoticed. They’d be eclipsing the debris, giving their position away to the enemy every time their hulls came between wreckage and enemy sensors.
The scoutships had managed it, but they were smaller and nimbler. That left Eth sitting outside the approach corridor, trying to look calm while his subordinates were taking all the risks.
And having all the fun…
There were seventy-five ships in Memnon’s fleet and Mishak had only forty-two. Eth’s job was to clear the approach corridor and neutralize as many bridge crews as possible before Mishak could bring his fleet into action.
And here Eth sat. He couldn’t go bridge-hopping with the others because his place was aboard the Bastard Blade. Someone had to be in charge and that someone happened to be him.
“Could be worse,” Abdu’s voice said and Eth nodded to himself.
“Demo’s blowing!” the sensor officer exclaimed.
Finally! “Helm, take us in, full pitch!” Eth commanded. “Comms, bring the signal pair online.”
They’d have to use the signal pair to report in to Mishak or the main fleet would never arrive in time for the fight. Light from the explosions would take hours to reach sensors on the Dibbarra. Conventional signals would take roughly as long.
Fleet-Captain Rimush shimmered into view.
“The approach is clear,” Eth told him.
“Acknowledged,” Rimush nodded in confirmation then faded from sight. He understood how much energy the signal pair consumed; how much heat it generated.
Eth stood still for a second. Head tilted to the side. Rimush just nodded?
“We’re inside the minefield,” the helm officer confirmed. “Moving away from the approach zone.”
There was no time to waste. The fleet would be hammering through there any minute now and they’d be coming in on path-drives. If you got in the way of a bow-wave of spatial compression, you’d destroy both ships in spectacular fashion.
The enemy were arrayed around the entry corridor this time. No clever tricks that only served to separate their forces. They’d opted for a simpler plan.
“Deploying missiles,” Ops announced.
They would spread their weapons around and then leave them dark for now. Once the fight started, they’d see which ships still posed a threat and task the missiles accordingly.
“Comms drones?” Eth turned to the communications suite.
“Three active so far,” the officer replied, sounding a little distracted. “Ejecting number four… now!”
How many ships will still be operational? He wondered. How many bridge-crews can six of our people kill off in the time they had? He shook his head. No sense wondering – they’d know soon enough and the plan was as solid as they could make it.
“Path alert! Our fleet is arriving!”
“Send the recall!” Eth ordered urgently.
“Sending the recall,” Coms confirmed.
A narrow beam signal lanced out to one of the message drones. The drone immediately sent out two omnidirectional messages, one to query the enemy ships for a lockout command and the other to tell the six Humans to jump back to friendly ships immediately.
Gleb raised an involuntary hand to his right ear as his scout-ship docked with the Stiletto. He’d dropped Memnon on the Bastard Blade along with the Humans he’d brought from the Deathstalker.
He was still looking for a live bridge crew in Memnon’s fleet when the recall order came through.
He closed his eyes and found a clear spot on his own bridge.
“Lockout query shows twenty-six enemy ships still active,” the ops officer blurted when she suddenly realized he was standing in front of her station. “Our main fleet has just arrived.”
The battle had begun. Hundreds of missile traces made the space between the two fleets look like an ancient weaving loom. Most of those traces were outbound from Memnon’s remaining ships.
“I don’t know what you magic Humans have done to my fleet,” Memnon said from the entry-hatch of the Bastard Blade’s bridge, voice dripping with irony, “but it looks like my ships are still putting out more fire…”
He stopped at Eth’s raised hand, not understanding the gesture itself but clearly understanding the imperative projected into his own mind. It shook him to have this lowly native inside his mind.
Then his ship icons began showing heavy damages, even though there had been no traces visible. He remembered the ‘demonstration’ he’d been subjected to. There had been no evidence of the weapons used then either.
They can’t even trace their own missiles? he wondered.
Mishak knew he was winning but it wasn’t without cost. Four of his ships, two cruisers and two frigates, had taken multiple hits. There was only so much you could do to avoid a swarm of the fast-moving missiles, and the small part of his brother’s fleet that remained in action seemed to be coordinating their fire.
He reached into the holo and designated a handful of priority targets, all cruisers. He set them to allocate by division.
Rimush grunted, a wave of approval washing over Mishak. “Looks like someone over there is calling the shots for his brethren.”
“And he’s probably on a cruiser,” Mishak said. “There’s the added benefit of taking out ships with larger missile magazines as well…”
“Aye, lord,” Rimush agreed but with a mildly dubious feeling to it. “Assuming they haven’t fired everything off already. That was one hells of a missile storm for only twenty-six hostiles.”
Missiles lanced out from Mishak’s fleet, punching spears of plasma out through the far sides of their targets. The targets allocated to the scouting division hit from multiple angles simultaneously, looking like the poisonous urchins that inhabited the seas of Kish.
Gillbad leaned over his petty officer’s shoulder, gazing at one of the holo-screens. “What am I supposed to see?”
“Here, sir,” the NCO pointed. “See how the stars are occluded?”
“Sensor glitch?”
“Perhaps, sir, but the mines are being occluded as well…”
“Nergal’s taint! An invisible ship?” Gillbad reared back in denial. “Where’s the honor in that?”
“None, sir,” the petty officer said patiently, “but they can invent all the honor they want, after we’re all dead, can’t they?”
“Move,” Gillbad ordered, already moving his own posterior into the chair. He set up a target designation, based on occlusion history and projected paths.
His shock escaped before he could control it. The trace didn’t just give him the invisible ship. It gave him a small flotilla of ships, at least two different sizes. “Captain!”
“Make it quick,” Captain Geshmal said curtly. “I’m trying to coordinate what’s left of our fleet.”
“Invisible ships, Captain!” Gillbad put the results up on the central holo.
“Yes,” the captain said impatiently, already turning back to his
holo. “Memnon told us they had something with a special coating.”
Gillbad raised his head a fraction. “You knew about them? Sir, we could have been tracking them before this…”
“Let them skulk about like cowards,” Geshmal retorted. “What does hiding do for a warrior when there’s a battle to be fought?”
“Two thirds of our fleet sits idle, Captain. It may have much to do with these stealth-ships. At least let us validate our tracking. Let me direct fire on…”
“Use one point-defense gun,” Geshmal allowed grudgingly. “I need the rest of them to keep enemy missiles off us, assuming we ever see the incoming weapons in the first place…” he trailed off, turning back to face Gillbad.
“Test it,” he ordered but with a sudden enthusiasm that hadn’t been there before. “If it works, we’ll package your tracking parameters for what’s left of the fleet.”
“Heat-bloom!” Tactical said, just loud enough to make Gleb jump a little. “Picking up debris as well on visible spectra – one-sided debris in line with point-defense fire from a cruiser. It looks like a scoutship, sir.”
“Lucky shot?” Gleb asked, more to himself than to the tactical officer. He activated the cruiser’s icon. “Helm, bring us bow-on to that target, I want to minimize our cross-section to that ship.”
He turned to the tactical officer. “What if…”
He flinched as she disintegrated before his eyes, not two paces away. Then he noticed the shrapnel spraying past, pattering off his armor with inappropriately small sounds, considering the devastation wrought by the blurred path of point-defense rounds.
The incoming rounds seared into the decking a mere step from his feet. The itch in his feet and legs told him his skin was burning from the plasma-spall of the nearby impact.
Definitely not lucky, he thought stupidly as the red haze that had been one of his crewmen spattered accusingly across the remains of the aft bridge bulkhead.
Alarms blared in his helmet, bringing him back to the moment. “Helm, evasive maneuvering! Engineering, damage report!” Some clever bastard on that cruiser has figured something out. He opened a new telemetry output on his HUD, watching the cruiser’s signal energy.
The helm officer was first to reply. “Captain, she’s not answering to the helm! The pitch drives are green across the board but the fields aren’t budging her off the current course.”
Gleb turned to look at the back of the helmsman’s helmet. “Why the hells…”
“Bridge, Engineering,” the sudden voice cut Gleb off. “Pitch drives are all active but the path-drive is smashed beyond repair and it gave off an electro-mag wave when it failed. The wave has triggered the MA units in all of our warheads. Those osmium inserts now weigh more than our lord’s entire fleet.
“I strongly recommend against any course changes. We’re more likely to tear the pitch drives off their mounts than change our heading.”
Gleb cursed quietly. “Helm, what’s our course?”
“We’re headed straight for that cruiser, sir.”
Damn your efficiency! He’d been hoping they hadn’t managed to execute his earlier order to aim the ship at that cruiser. “Time to impact?”
“Eighty five seconds!”
“All hands, abandon ship!” he shouted. Good thing these ships are so small! “Everyone into the scout-ship! She’ll auto-separate in seventy seconds!”
He entered a command, cursing at the error message. That EM pulse had done more than turn on the mass augment fields. It had also broken the command link to the warheads.
Evac drills ran in the sixty second range, so he knew they’d all make it. It surprised him to realize what a comfort that was. He would need more than sixty seconds to accomplish his next task but he’d just have to use whatever time he had and hope it was worth it.
He ran aft, heading for the magazine. Siri bumped into him in the central companionway.
“Where are you headed?” she demanded.
“Go!” he shoved her in the direction of the docking hatch. “I’ll be right behind you!”
He got to the magazine and ran down the row of warheads, opening their individual holo-menus and setting up a manual link to his own wrist projection.
“Sir, all aboard the scout-ship,” Siri called. “Where are you?”
Gleb didn’t waste breath on an answer that he knew would be ignored. He simply activated the scout’s auto-separate protocol and went back to work, attempting to arm the missiles.
“Shit!” he screamed, suddenly finding himself at the far end of the magazine. How long had he been out this time? There was no chance of… He frowned.
The warheads were all armed.
Good job, other Gleb! He chuckled, confirming that the enemy ship still hadn’t sent any priority messages on anything other than their fire-control net.
Of course, now he couldn’t transpose himself off the ship. He let out a sharp breath, fogging his visor.
He could have escaped if not for the sudden appearance of his mental roommate. Then again, he’d been thinking only in terms of sacrificing himself to stop that cruiser passing on what it had learned.
Probably wouldn’t have even occurred to me if not for the sudden mind-twitch.
And now it was impossible…
A flash of surprise came from Rimush. “There goes Sargina’s cruiser!” he said. “Perhaps some old student of his is coordinating the enemy forces.”
“One who didn’t agree with his grades?”
“Could be. Might even…”
“Holy underworld!” Rimush cut him off. “Something big just impacted that cruiser! Too big for a missile!”
“It must have been one of our corvettes,” Mishak fought the dread that threatened to overflow and spread throughout the bridge. Rimush would definitely not approve, he thought grimly.
Still, who had he just lost?
“My lord!” the ops officer called out. “They’re striking their colors!”
“So they are!” Mishak stared dully at the holo. Inbound missiles were self-destructing in the void between the two fleets. “All ships ceasefire!”
“Hard to keep fighting if two-thirds of your force is sitting quiet,” Rimush offered with a mental shrug. He gestured to a blinking icon. “Call from the Bastard Blade. They wouldn’t risk giving away their location unless they had him…”
Mishak took a moment, stared at the icon while he got his thoughts in order. He’d already run through this conversation a few times in his head but now it was time for the real thing.
He reached out and touched the icon.
Memnon watched his brother shimmer into view. He realized, now, that he’d been played like a zithera. His brother had known how to wind him up and where to point him. He hated him for it but he also had to admit a certain…
Admiration?
“Oddly enough, brother,” Mishak’s said, “I understand how you must be feeling right now.”
Did he just call me brother?
“Nothing I did was ever good enough for the old goat,” Mishak continued. “It was pure chance that got me out from under his control.”
The hologram leaned in toward Memnon. “What would you do if such a chance ever came your way?”
Why does that sound more like an offer than a question?
“Path alert! Multiple inbounds!”
Mishak turned his head fractionally at this news but he kept his eyes on his brother. “We only need to worry about one of those ships, don’t we?” He leaned in toward the holographic Memnon.
“Shall we see how he reacts when we hand him a defeat? A very one-sided defeat that the empire will remember for a very long time?”
“Should have known the old bastard would stay clear of the approach corridor!” Hela grumbled. “Vel, plot us a direct course but one that brings us in a kilometer aft of Sandrak’s flagship.”
“Just so we’re clear,” the pilot answered, “you’re asking me to take us through the minefield?”
“That’s right,” she confirmed. “I’d take it as a kindness if you could avoid flying us straight into any mines along the way.”
She couldn’t see her crew’s faces with helmets locked up but she didn’t have to in order to know that some reassurance was in order. “The mines lock onto anything that isn’t another mine, right? How are they supposed to lock onto a ship with no emissions?”
“S’long as we get through without bleeding off any heat,” Hill amended. “I’d been hoping to let off a little as we came out the corridor. Not enough to show at a distance but just to get us a little leeway.”
He shrugged when Hela turned to face him. “We can reach him undetected but, after that, I don’t know how far we’ll get before the EM system overloads and we start radiating like an Enibulan bath-house.”
He cocked his head to the side. “You gonna be a while on Sandrak’s bridge; killing crew and such?”
“Most likely.”
He nodded, the movement lessened by the helmet. “Might be I can rig a way to dump some heat while you’re in there. Just make sure you keep your eyes open once you have His Exaltedness under control. I’ll have a heat vent running into their ship and I’d hate to melt your suits off.”
“Taking us in,” Vel announced, a faint hint of reproach in her tone. “Velocity at half-pitch.”
“Hill, what’s our EM profile looking like if we go in at full?” Hela asked.
“Full!” he blurted in surprise. “We’d never make it out of the mines!” He paused for a moment, consulting calculations on his HUD. “At three-quarters, we’d make it there, but we’d be lucky to go half a kilometer before we’re lit up like a hearth fire.”
“But you’ve got an idea on how to dump some of that heat, right?”
“Course I do!” The grin wasn’t visible but it was definitely audible. “I wouldn’t seem nearly as heroic if I just went around telling captains ‘no problem’. Gotta make sure they understand just how clever their engineers are being!”
“Three-quarters, Vel,” Hela ordered. “Hill, whatever bit of clever you’re cooking up better have a short gestation time, cause we’re going to be docking very soon!”
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