by E A Wicklund
Evading lasers simply meant moving in an erratic course and hoping that when the bolt passed, the ship wasn’t there. Humans weren’t nearly as good at randomness as they believed. Archimedes, having taken over the evasion routines from Raj, already proved effective.
“Twenty seconds to intercept,” Warwick shouted.
“Decoys, if you please. Engage EW and counter-missile batteries, Eyes.”
“Decoys away. Batteries firing.”
McCray walked over and observed from behind Warwick as the Electronic Warfare specialist manipulated the pattern of her electronic ghosts. She shifted some of them, so they appeared to cluster around the physical decoys. To a missile, it might appear as if the decoy were the originator of the EW, and thus they would attack it in error.
McCray nodded in approval. She was making the most possible out of Springbok’s relatively light defenses.
“Oh,” said Warwick
“What’s wrong, Lieutenant?” said McCray, concerned at her surprised tone.
“One vampire down, and it wasn’t us.” She grinned at the Captain. “Qalawun’s own laser took it out.”
“What luck,” crowed Zahn.
“Luck is made,” noted McCray. “Helm! Roll ship.”
Springbok rolled, and once more spoiled the aim of the fast moving missiles. The ship’s main lasers opened up, adding to the defense. Four of the weapons fell to the searing beams. Two survived the fusillade. They settled on their targets and fired.
Two ten-megaton nuclear blasts bloomed three-thousand kilometers from Springbok. Point blank range. The explosions fed enormous power into the missiles’ bomb-pumped laser heads, and four-hundred gigawatt lasers reached out to kill their target.
McCray saw the first hit perfectly, and a decoy disappeared from the universe. The last missile had locked onto Springbok, eschewing all other distractions. Its lasers lashed out like hellish claws, just as Springbok veered. The ship moved hundreds of meters after the missile targeted it. The intense heat of the weapon still caught a glancing blow. Three hundred tons of armor and structural members cooked off in an instant.
Even the inertial balancers could not completely compensate for the sudden energy of the explosion. The ship shuddered and the bridge crew rocked in their seats.
DC1 Xiang blinked into existence on the bridge. The virtual space expanded to accommodate the unusually tall woman as she sat beside Warwick. “Glancing blow on hyperdrive three,” she reported. “Minor damage. No loss of functionality. I see all green lights on the system.”
Warwick heaved a sigh.
“You’re doing great, Eyes,” encouraged McCray. A lot depended on Warwick and he intended to bolster her confidence at every opportunity. “Keep it up. Piper. How’s our shooting so far?”
The weapons officer’s eyes looked sharp. McCray knew he looked forward to trying out wolfpack mode and the man’s obvious excitement to finally fire his weapons in anger.
“Missiles should be igniting any moment now.” Piper gave McCray a lopsided grin. “They are not going to like this.”
***
The red lights of General Quarters shined across the faces of Qalawun’s bridge crew, sharing space upon their taut expressions with the blue light of data displays. To Calawun’s captain, his people reminded him of the ancient patriotic posters from a bygone age, but instead of looking noble and proud like those almost-forgotten heroes, the crew was harried, overworked. They struggled for every success.
Chahine shook his head as he looked round at his men. The pitiable volley of four attack missiles had arrived twenty minutes before, and Qalawun should have swept them aside with contemptuous ease. Instead, three of the four weapons came perilously close to attack range. The fourth actually did fire after a maneuver the captain had thought impossible. It missed narrowly, but it missed, thank the Teacher, thought Chahine. Had Precious Jade fired a larger swarm, what would have become of his ship?
Ever since that volley, only silence. As a converted merchant, the Q-ship perhaps suffered from a poor firing rate. He felt a certain duality of emotions about that. Pleasure at knowing he could overcome his opponent, but disappointment as well. He’d hoped the armed merchant would be better. Maybe the vessel could not serve the purpose he had considered. Possibly, it was not time yet—to execute his plans.
“We’re being targeted!” shouted Qalawun’s EW specialist.
“Calm yourself, man,” Chahine said. “We’ve been targeted by that ship for thirty minutes now..”
“From close aboard. Two light seconds out. Sixteen sources; all around us.” The specialist stared at him in shock.
“What? Sixteen?” Chahine’s gaze snapped towards the tank. Impossible. He felt his gut tying into knots as targeting radar sources suddenly appeared, englobing Qalawun. “Weapons, defensive clusters free!” he called, hurriedly. “Take them down.”
“Automatic defenses firing.”
Chahine murmured a quick prayer to Madkhal the Teacher. If we so deserve it, bring us salvation.
“What devilry is this?” demanded Marcus, hovering over the tank, nearly sticking his head into the holo display.
“It’s the Elysians’ twice-be-damned Wolfpack missiles,” Chahine growled. “I’ve heard stories about them, but what MSS intelligence claimed had seemed like pure fantasy.”
Chahine felt sick as he recalled the performance parameters MSS had warned of. The missiles of both the Madkhal and Elysium nations required a Terminal Attack Phase, where their onboard radars lit off to acquire their target. Targeting data from the launching ship was usually so out of date, missiles had to do this to have any hope of hitting. But this radar acquisition signal alone gave defensive systems another way to track and engage the attacking missile.
In Wolfpack mode, a cloud of Elysium missiles used passive strata wake and ripple detection methods. All ships detected each other by the disturbances they created in the strata. Generally considered useless for weapons targeting, Wolfpack used it to great effect. A single missile using passive strata detection would likely lose the target and streak past, but a cloud of them would allow one at least to find it. They shared datalinks with target location data. Then all the missiles could approach very close to the victim before lighting their targeting radars, catching their quarry by surprise.
Chahine felt his guts tighten as he watched the tank in horror. Precious Jade’s missiles cruised in a wide formation 200,000 kilometers across as they approached Qalawun. They closed in from all sides, carefully timing their attack for a simultaneous assault.
Before, the battlecruiser’s defensive lasers, twenty positions in all, struggled against four missiles they saw coming in advance, but now the game took on a terrifying aspect. Adding to the big ship’s woes, the defenses had little time to develop a solid track of the twice-be-damned Elysian weapons.
Automatic systems fired anyway, incapable of knowing despair. The main guns ceased attacking the Q-ship and added their incredible power to the defense.
Chahine’s teeth ground in frustration as the far more advanced missiles burned through Qalawun’s low-tech EW. Eleven of them correctly identified their foe and streaked towards it. Though the volley was twice the size of Qalawun’s, Chahine’s big ship enjoyed three times the defense.
Missiles began dying.
Five missiles disintegrated, quickly followed by three more. Defensive lasers now outnumbered the attackers. More attackers disappeared in brilliant flashes of light until one remained.
Chahine gripped the tank frame, knuckles turning white as the last weapon unleashed nuclear fire, driving 310 gigawatt bomb-pumped laser beams. It fired through the thick of Qalawun’s dark paddles. The propulsive sweeps passed through the laser blast hundreds of times before it struck the hull. Each sweep affected little, but many sweeps achieved a lot. Diminished, the Elysian laser struck with a paltry eighteen gigawatts of power. Qalawun’s strong particle shield deflected still more energy. It struck the thickest part of the battlecruiser’s
armor, shearing away four-hundred tons of material. The warship’s heart was safe, but a paddle emitter, shield emitters, and one counter-missile laser boiled away.
Qalawun shook hard and alarms began blaring. Marcus staggered, squealing with dismay. “Do something, ChaCha,” he shouted. “They’re killing us.”
“That wasn’t even a solid hit.” Chahine said, turning away dismissively. He focused on the blocks of text scrolling through the tank, describing the results of the attack. Only Qalawun’s extensive defenses had saved her. “Main guns back on that ship,” he ordered. “Continue firing.”
Marcus slammed his fist down on the frame of the tank, clearly unused to underlings treating him like a child. “Do something, you insolent dog!” He leaned into the holo display of the tank, snarling at Precious Jade’s radar return, and completely blocking Chahine’s view.
“Out of the way,” roared Chahine, shoving the Senator aside.
Marcus’s bodyguards closed in around him, raising their automatic weapons. “No one touches the Esteemed Senator,” growled the leader.
Horror rushed through him in a wave. Chahine realized he’d made a grave error. Touching an Elite, even casually, could be punished with immediate execution. Shoving Marcus in anger, might easily prove his last act in life. The politician’s guards, little better than psychopathic killers, pushed towards him, clearly relishing an opportunity to murder again.
Chahine raised his hands in supplication. It was time to beg for his life. “A thousand apologies, Esteemed Senator. I only wished to see the tank clearly so that I may follow your wise command to destroy the enemy—”.
“Enough,” bellowed Marcus. He raised a finger as if it were a weapon. “My patience is great, vast as the skies, but your impertinence tests even this grand force of nature. It is because of impertinence like this, that Namam, your patron, paid with his life! The cost of challenging me is great, Chahine. I suppose those were your parents who were collateral damage of cleansing that palace, were they not?”
Chahine felt a shudder cracking through his body. He had never known who ordered the death of the kindly Elite who raised him out of the pits of despair, but now he did. The shudder quickly escalated into a raging earthquake, shaking him to the core of his being. Fire boiled in his blood and his fingers turned into spasming claws, as if they screamed to murder the Elite.
Laser blasts screamed past, like demonic screams echoing across the bridge, their ship adding the sound effects. Crewmembers chattered excitedly.
“They bracketed us!” called Sensors. “That was too close.”
Chahine’s eyes flitted to the station. He fought a battle on two fronts now. One was the surprisingly powerful ship out there, the other an internal struggle within his soul. Heart pounding in his chest, the captain struggled against his own body, willing it not to move. The slightest motion might sound his own death knell. He had plans, huge plans, and all them depended on his self-control in this moment of rage and the howling call for revenge.
Chahine’s mouth opened, but no words escaped. His throat had gone dry as a desert.
“I see you understand me now, ChaCha.” He pointed into the tank. “Now bedevil me no more, and destroy that accursed ship!”
“As the Teacher’s Minister speaks, so I am guided.” Chahine recited the ritual words from the Ceremony of Supplication—a response sure to appease the self-absorbed Elite—and he carefully turned away to consult the tank for a moment, gathering his thoughts.
The time was now. Madkhal had spoken to him unequivocally. The Teacher guided him with the actions of those around him, making His Will clear.
There would be no further delay. The grand moment had arrived.
Chahine moved to several stations, loudly giving orders, then whispered to a tech, “Tell the Master at Arms to get three Marine squads up here on the double.”
“He’ll ask why, sir.”
“Yes. Tell him, Beelzebub.”
“Sir?”
“He’ll understand. And bring up Commander Akinjide from Auxiliary Control. He and I have things to discuss.”
***
Springbok zig-zagged and porpoised through space, hoping to avoid the 330 gigawatt laser blasts of Qalawun. The bridge crew no longer attempted to dodge the beams displayed on the screens, but McCray could tell the sight and sound of them kept the crew on their toes, constantly reminded that they fought a life and death battle.
The volleys always arrived in threes every nineteen seconds, just like clockwork. Missing perhaps, but slowly searing away at the psyche of the crew. It was bad enough when the blasts appeared thousands of yards to port or starboard, but several times they bracketed the ship, slashing past on both sides. Proof of a very near miss. Though the bridge crew put on a brave face, the tension from the long-running battle began to show in damp skin, twitchy muscles, and clipped speech.
“We are now pulling away from Qalawun,” said Raj. He spoke just a little too loud, his preternatural calm starting to slip. “We have an acceleration advantage of thirty-two gravities and climbing.”
“Thank you, Raj,” McCray said. “Switch to evasion pattern Papa-Juliett-19.”
“Papa-Juliett-19, aye.”
“Seven minutes to missile intercept,” Warwick said, wiping sweat from her brow. As Springbok pulled away, missile volleys arrived later and later, but they were no less stressful when they assaulted the defenses.
McCray called up a command overlay that displayed the weapons officer’s health status. It showed that her muscles were tired from the stress of a long combat, but even as he watched, medical nanos reported rushing water and sugars to her exhausted muscles. Excess stress hormones were being cleared from her blood, allowing her to retain focus without falling into anxiousness. He saw Warwick’s pursed lips slowly loosen. Satisfied his key player on the bridge was well attended to, he dropped the overlay.
“We’re through the worst of it, it seems,” Aja said, standing with McCray at the tank. “We’re pulling away and will soon be out of range, right?”
McCray consulted the clock hovering in the lower corner of the tank. In another fifty minutes they would reach the heliopause. Only then could they truly escape, lost in the many levels of hyperspace. Until then, he would not relax. He couldn’t; not when all the lives of the crew were at stake. “Those are big lasers that bastard is firing. It’ll take thirty more minutes of running before we’re out of effective range. It’s takes a lot of distance for such big weapons to lose coherence.”
Certainly the odds of their survival were no longer insurmountable. They had successfully navigated through the gauntlet of a close approach with Qalawun. Still, the battle raged on, and a single lucky hit from the battlecruiser might cripple their ability to fight. They were far from out of the woods.
“We should see the effect of our latest shots shortly, Captain,” said Piper.
“Copy that.”
“Another hit!” Piper yelled. “I see random energy fluctuations, escaping atmosphere—we’ve destroyed a laser.”
“Excellent work, Guns!” McCray darted across the bridge to Piper’s position. He clapped the weapons officer’s shoulder as he watched the weapons control displays. “Keep it up, Piper. Give ‘em hell.”
“We’ll have another wolfpack volley completed in sixteen seconds.”
This time, only two lasers streaked past them.
“We’re getting away, right?” said Aja, clearly pressuring to have good news. “The chances of them hitting us are getting smaller, if I understand correctly.”
McCray paused to look at her. The cool and confident expression she always carried had evaporated. Lines creased her brow and her eyes stretched a little wider than normal. This must be hard for her, imagined McCray. This wasn’t her kind of fight. The assassin was used to facing death, but always with her own incredible abilities to rely upon. Here, she remained a mere passenger, unable to affect the outcome.
“You’re right on all counts,” McCray replied.
The violence of the explosion nearly hurled him off his feet.
In horror, McCray read through the damage text scrolling through the tank. It seemed Qalawun’s main gun finally found Springbok. Her armor had cooked off and structural members exploded. Seventy-five thousand tons of shattered hull, the size of a half-kilometer building, drifted aft into the cold blackness of space.
“My ship,” he gasped, feeling his arms weaken and his vision waver as the text scrolled by. Damages continued to mount. Overloads in power conduits were rerouted, causing overloads elsewhere. A cascade effect rippled through the ship, and damaged areas expanded in a red wave. The VR bridge flickered and the view of his crew, working feverishly, began to pixelize. They moved jerkily, in grotesque stop-motion as the VR datastream lost coherence.
The bridge flickered once more, then went black, dropping McCray into oblivion.
Chapter 27
Darkness surrounded McCray. There were no voices, no signals, no lights to complete his reality. The stygian black closed in on him, gripping him remorselessly, like a disembodied hand. His heart began to pound and he reached out, feeling cold surfaces close by; too close. He began to pound at the walls of the tight space as his breathing labored and a cold sweat poured from his skin. Relax, you’re in your sarco, he told himself, his rational mind attempting to control his instinctive natural reaction. He began deep breathing exercises, slowly overcoming the panic. Getting hold of himself, he began analyzing his situation.
This would only happen if the ship were critically damaged. In such an instance, his sarco served as an emergency backup life-pod. If cut off from ship’s power for any reason it could keep him alive for nearly a week. So then what happened? Was Springbok shattered? Did it explode, leaving him floating through the vacuum of space?