by David Adams
On the radar, Liao could see the white streak curve as it adjusted its course then winked out again.
“I lost it again,” Cole said.
Jiang swore softly. “How do we attack it if it keeps disappearing?”
“Evasive manouvers,” Iraj said. “Change course. Hard to starboard. Launch chaff and decoys. We’re going to have to swing around New Evarel’s polar ice caps in order to escape.”
“Captain, that will expose us to fire,” Yosef cautioned. “The remnants of the Toralii fleet will be able to strike us.”
“Not if we cut it close.”
“Roger. Executing.” The ship lurched as it changed course. The lingering strands of New Evarel’s gravity played havoc with their inertia and the artificial gravity of the Beijing.
Liao’s stomach churned, but as usual, everyone else seemed less affected.
“Chaff out, decoys deployed. Kill track, spinning up countermeasures.”
“Vampire contact,” Cole said. “Missile has reappeared at six thousand kilometres.”
Jiang moved over to where Cole was sitting. “Missiles one through three, load nuclear warheads and target that vampire.”
“Confirmed,” Yosef said, “killing with birds. Missiles away.”
The white streak on Cole’s radar disappeared.
“And… it’s gone.” Cole worked on his keyboard. “Our missiles are continuing to the interpolated course.”
All attention fell on Yosef, the tactical officer. “Three, two, one… all missiles detonated.”
The Beijing’s missiles had a fairly large blast radius. If the missile was within the bursts, it would be destroyed.
“Contact,” Cole said, his disappointment palpable. “Vampire is back, five thousand kilometres distant and accelerating.”
Appear, disappear. Appear, disappear… suddenly Liao knew exactly what the bastard thing was. “It’s a sea-skimmer,” she said, drawing upon knowledge she hadn’t used in twenty years. “We used to pack similar things on the Type 94 submarines. We’d launch from below the surface, and the missiles would use nap-of-the-Earth navigation to find their targets. They cruise real low, right on the water, to avoid being shot down. But they need information, spotting, to track their targets. So they occasionally pop up, check their target, then dip back down just to make sure they’re on the right course.” She made her way over to Saara’s console, despite the lack of protocol. “That’s basically what this missile is doing, I bet. Same idea, new technology. Cloak, adjust. Cloak, adjust. Just like that.”
“It’s hiding,” Iraj said, understanding dawning in his voice, “not disappearing.”
[“Yes,”] Saara said, [“but gravitational lensing is a double-blind situation. It is the same technology Zar’krun used.”]
“Right,” Liao said. “Of course. Just like a missile hiding behind a wave, this thing has to occasionally jump up and see. And that’s when they’re vulnerable.”
Saara didn’t seem quite as convinced, shrinking slightly away from Liao, looking to the thick bulkhead. [“It’s more than that. Even when exposed, the missiles are clad in advanced stealth material and carry a special coolant so that it isn’t emitting any kind of detectable energy. Now that the launch system has put it out of the atmosphere, it will be cooling rapidly, and hiding even when it’s active. We’ll only have a few seconds of lock.”]
All of those factors would make it look like cold, unreflective nothing on their sensors, except for when it deactivated its active camouflage and emitted a sensor pulse to make sure that it was on the right course. That was its weakness…
She glanced at Cole. “Is the Washington having better luck with finding it?”
“No, Captain. Their systems are just as blind as ours.”
True enough, she figured, but the Washington’s radar was a generation ahead. The Beijing had only a few seconds per radar pulse. The Washington might have more. “Get them to link our fire control computers,” she said. “If we cross-link our fire-control systems, we might be able to track it for long enough to get a lock the next time it appears.”
“We are linked, Captain,” Yosef said. “Rowe is coordinating our egress.”
Liao took a headset off one of their ensigns and jammed it onto her head. “Summer? Are you there?”
The voice that came back was strangely ghostly, and it lacked an indeterminate quality Liao could not place. “Yep, Captain! Right here. Kind of. I’m one of her copies.”
Copies? That was something Liao didn’t have time or energy to process. Whatever that insane woman was talking about would have to be dealt with at a later stage. “We have a situation here,” she said, trying to keep the distractions to a minimum. “We gotta do something about this missile.”
“Yep, I’m working on it. Don’t worry.”
“Summer, whenever you say don’t worry, it just makes me worry a lot more.”
“It’s fine. It’s fine—”
A familiar alarm sounded. “Radar contact,” Cole said. “Vampire has reappeared. Two thousand kilometres distant.” He paused, consulting his systems. “Scratch that. The missile is at one thousand kilometres distant, and appears to be heading for the Washington.”
Instinct took over. Liao couldn’t just stand there and watch them all die. “Lieutenant Cole, extrapolate the vampire’s position based on the time of impact on the Tehran. Dial up the yield to maximum—I want those things in flames.”
“Confirmed, missiles away. Killing with birds.”
She touched her headset, pressing the interfleet channel. “Washington, this is Beijing. Scramble strike craft; tell them to engage that missile. Use their guns if they have to. Fire flares, chaff, decoys—everything you have. Melt the autocannons if you have to.”
Wolfe came back to her, his voice exasperated. “Negative on the strike craft, Beijing. Countermeasures enabled. We’re moving too fast.” He called orders, radio still open. “Point defence engaged, fire at will! Kill with CIWS—I say again, take that bastard down! Damage control teams to action stations. All hands brace for impact!”
Grey streaks leapt out from the Washington as eight streams of high-velocity autocannon fire swatted at the missile. Would it be enough?
The missile vanished again. The streaks continued firing, searching, spraying space with high explosives that all failed to find anything.
If they didn’t do something… Liao’s mind churned. What could they do? There had to be a solution. Some way they could defeat that thing…
“It’s back,” Cole said. “Five hundred, three hundred…” His voice wavered. “Impact.”
Silence. On Cole’s screen, she saw a growing spread of grey blobs—debris—spreading out from the green dot labelled Washington. So many pieces… whatever the missile had done to them, it had penetrated to their core. The hull was fracturing from overpressure, bursting like an overripe melon.
“I’m reading secondary explosions on the Washington’s hull,” Jiang said, her voice cracking. “There’s fire on multiple decks, and the ship is… broken.”
“Broken?” Liao asked, dreading the answer.
“In half,” Jiang said, her eyes fixed on her console. She tapped a key, and a high-resolution FLIR image of the ship flicked up on several monitors. Liao could see what Jiang meant. A huge piece of debris, almost a hundred metres long, had broken off from the rear of the ship, spinning end over end as it slowly descended towards the atmosphere of New Evarel. The Washington itself tilted back, like a rearing horse, its underside riddled with radar reflections as it spat, almost defiantly, pieces of its hull out towards the surface. One by one, its point defence cannons stopped firing, and the ship tilted, beginning a slow roll that Liao doubted they would ever pull out of.
“The ship isn’t responding to hails,” Jiang said. “Their strike craft are auto-launching.”
Liao touched her headset fearfully. “Washington, Beijing. Report status.”
Nothing but static.
Slowly, almost mockin
gly, the Washington rolled over and over, flipping vertically, and it broke again. The three major pieces of debris began to catch the upper dregs of New Evarel’s atmosphere, and flame licked hungrily at them.
They were gone.
Maybe escape pods would save some of them. Maybe they had launched their strike craft. Liao had no time to think of those things.
“Vampire, vampire, vampire,” Cole said, a new energy in his voice. “Another vrak missile has been launched.” He paused, consulting his instruments. “Scratch that. We have two… no. Three missiles in the air.”
Liao swore darkly. The Toralii had seen that the missiles worked. “Track the surface battery,” she said. “Ready missiles. Full spread, high yield. Take them out.”
The crew hesitated. Liao wasn’t supposed to give orders.
“Do it,” Jiang said.
“Missiles away,” Yosef said. “ETA, thirty seconds.”
Missiles dropped a lot faster than they climbed. That would, hopefully, discourage further launches.
Three huge white streaks on their radar. The vrak missile’s heat signatures were so much higher when they were in atmosphere, probably due to their speed. “Engage the vampires,” Liao said. “Fire as many nukes as we can spare. Get them before they get out of the atmosphere.”
“Missiles away,” Yosef said. “All tubes dry. Reloading.”
Reloading would take a long time. It felt strange to her that she had just been inside the launch tube. Had they checked they’d gotten everyone out? Hopefully they had; otherwise, they’d just flushed that poor bastard into space.
“Vampires one and two are cloaking,” Cole said. “Vampire three is still climbing. Impact in five, four, three…”
“Impact,” Yosef called. “Vampire three destroyed.”
The ship rocked, and a low klaxon sounded throughout Operations.
“Captain,” Cole said, “the remnants of the Toralii fleet are firing on us.”
Shit. That was bad. They needed to manoeuvre, to evade the missiles that had taken down the Washington. They could ill afford the distraction that tackling tow targets presented.
Iraj turned to her. “Captain, suggestions?”
She realised, somewhat with a start, that she had been giving all of the orders. The ship was Iraj’s command… not hers. James was right—she needed to take a step back. She had just been in prison. Kest had tried to kill her with a sword only a few hours ago. This was… not right. But the ship needed her.
“Yes,” Liao said. “Fire railguns at the Toralii ships. We might not be able to hit them very well, but we can keep them ducking. It will mean positioning our broadside to the incoming missiles, but it looks like our hull plating doesn’t stop them anyway, so there’s no loss there. Might as well risk it.”
“Risk it for the biscuit,” Rowe said in her ear. Damn that woman.
“As she says,” Iraj said. “Make it happen.”
“Aye aye,” Yosef said. “Our missiles have impacted on the surface. Vrak missile batteries silenced. Railguns charging. Targets acquired.”
“Radar contact,” Cole said. “Vampires one and two are still active and closing fast. Distance eight thousand metres and closing.”
If she didn’t do something, they were going to be as dead as the Washington. The debris from their sister ship had fallen into the atmosphere, heated up to thousands of glowing red lights falling over New Evarel. Their computers had circled a dozen escape pods, and more were being launched every second… some of the crew would survive. Some. They would be prisoners, surely, and treated poorly… even worse than her, maybe… but they would survive.
Unless the Beijing stopped and picked them up, but there was no time for that. No time… plus, the Toralii tended to make sport of shooting up escape pods, so they had learnt with the TFR Sydney.
But they also couldn’t lose that many crew. It was too many. They needed an option.
“Vampire, vampire, vampire,” Cole said, a thick layer of dread coating his words. “Captain, we have multiple batteries opening up. I count a dozen vrak missiles or more, all targeting us.”
They couldn’t possibly defeat so many.
“We should move to Plan B,” Liao said.
James looked at her. “How can you have a Plan B when you don't have a Plan A?”
“Improvise.” She tapped her headset. “Summer, you said you flew the Tehran, right?”
“Yep!” Rowe’s excited voice chirped in her ear. “It was fucking awesome.”
“Can you fly the Beijing?”
The briefest pause. “Yup. Why?”
Liao took a deep breath. It was crazy… but it had to work. “Change course. Duck back behind the planet’s surface. All hands, abandon ship.”
Stunned silence filled the room.
“You can’t be serious,” Iraj said. “Those missiles—”
“Are going to kill us,” Liao said flatly. “We need to get off this ship. Broadswords are jump capable; we need to pile as many of our crew in them as possible and get them to spread out, heading for whatever jump point they can find. Everyone else gets in the escape pods and evacuates.”
“We can’t,” Iraj said. “The Toralii fleet will—”
“Will be too busy trying to destroy this ship and make sure they kill me to worry about everyone else.” It was a shitty plan, but it was all they had. “We need to launch our Wasps to provide cover while the Knight and the Rubens collect as many of the escape pods, and then get the hell away from here and don’t come back.”
Cole took off his headset, grimly. “Captain, five more launches.”
It was Iraj’s call. She looked at him. He looked at her. The whole Operations crew did. Nobody wanted to be the first to speak out and object, but nobody wanted to condone her crazy plan, either.
Slowly, Iraj touched his headset. He fiddled with the buttons, signalling the rest of their ships. “All hands, this is Commander Kamal Iraj. We have encountered a situation where we face an insurmountable tactical deficiency and must withdraw. All crew are instructed to make their way to the escape pods, or Broadsword gunships, and evacuate as soon as their craft are full. Retrieval will be conducted by the Knight and Rubens. I say again: all hands, abandon ship.” Iraj closed the link.
“Have a Broadsword crew collect Rowe’s datacore from Engineering,” Jiang said. “Make sure she gets away. She can pilot the ship remotely.”
More silence. Everyone stood around like fish who’d been hit with a hammer.
“Lead vampire is at seven thousand kilometres,” Cole said, his tone more than enough warning.
“Move,” Liao said, making a shooing motion to everyone in Operations. “Go! Go! Escape pods!”
Everyone filed out of Operations in a surprisingly orderly fashion, leaving behind the wailing alarms.
The Operations Room was the centre of the ship, its armoured core. Escape pods, by necessity, had to be stationed on the outer hull. They all jogged down the corridor, forming up with crewmen on the way, who ran along with them. Officers and enlisted personnel moved together, wordless and silent, apart from the pounding feet on the deck.
Her eyes briefly met O’Hill’s, a face in a sea of faces, and she smiled her appreciation before he was swept away in the crowd.
They came to a fork. One way went to the port escape pods, and the other, to the hangar bay.
“Saara”—Liao pointed towards the hangar bay—“get the senior staff to a Broadsword. James and I will get out on in the escape pods.”
[“Captain?”] Saara’s confusion was plain. [“You… aren’t coming with us?”]
“There’s likely to be more room on the Broadswords. I was the CO for years here. I owe it to the crew to make sure they’re evacuated. I’ll be on the last one; don’t worry.”
Saara was clearly about to argue, but Liao cut her off with a strong hug.
[“Yes, Captain,”] Saara said then let her go.
Liao turned to the others. “Iraj, Jiang, the Beijing is your
ship now. You two sure you’re okay with this?”
Iraj had a smile on his face, but he looked tired. “It was never our ship. We were just taking care of him until you got back.”
“I’ll sail with you any day,” Jiang said. “See you on the other side.”
“See you on the other side,” Liao said, giving each of them—Iraj, Saara, Jiang, Cole, Yosef—a firm nod. Half the group went one way, and James and Liao went the other.
They ran. Liao’s legs hadn’t seen exercise like it in months; they ached after even a few minutes, but she pushed on, adrenaline giving her strength. She couldn’t die an ungainly death, falling down and breaking her hip like a grandmother. She had to push on…
Liao slowed down as she approached the escape pods, row after row of metal doors, each with a round porthole. Some of the doors were closed, and she could see space beyond. Each pod had a fist-sized red button beside it, covered in thin, breakable glass. A label was painted above each one, its intent clear.
LAUNCH 发射
A crowd of people were filing in. Some crewmen carried boxes and piles of crap. They didn’t have time for that.
“Don’t take anything with you,” Liao said, swatting a bundle out of a crewman’s hand. “Every kilo of space is room for people. Go!”
James stepped in alongside her. “What’s the harm? People might want to save things.”
Liao scowled. “That person’s stuff wasn’t theirs.”
“So? This ship’s about to be blown up.”
She couldn’t help but laugh, almost pushing one of the crewmen into the pod. “It’s from my submarine days,” she said, shepherding in people, picking out pods for them. Her words came out between puffs of breath. She shouldn’t have run so much. “The worst thing on a submarine is a thief. You need to be able to trust everyone with your life. How can you do that if there’s someone on-board who can’t even respect what little personal space and what few belongings you have?”
“I guess.” James closed the hatch of one of the pods and, moving over to another, grabbed someone and practically shoved him inside.