He glanced up at the nav screens. Ships Two, Three, Four, and Five were all just barely starting their abort maneuvers, struggling to break out of the wormhole’s gravity well. Koffield knew how deep and powerful the gee well was. He doubted any of them were going to escape it. And if they were doomed, Koffield knew who it was who would have killed them.
“Sir!” Sentar called out. “Three of the intruders have shifted course. No longer bearing on the wormhole.”
“Where the devil are they going?” Koffield demanded.
“Stand by. Still shifting ... Burning stars. Sir, track projections show intruders two, four, and six are on intercept courses with our ship.”
Koffield felt as if he had been kicked in the side of the head. What the devil else could happen? What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Thought. Logic. Work it through, decide what it meant. Three of the intruders had survived the original run out from the wormhole. Everything about their behavior suggested a repeat of the tactics of sacrificing expendable duplicates in order to saturate and confuse the defenses. If each carried a full copy of whatever information they had gathered, but only one intruder got through, that one would be enough. But one had to get through, or all would be for nothing.
Now three intruders were still driving for the wormhole—but three were not. The original intruders had shown little or no capacity for tracking or detection. One of them had nearly flown up the Upholder’s main thrusters, apparently by accident. But now at least three of the intruders could and were tracking the Upholder.
If the only thing that mattered was that at least one ship got through, spending three ships to attack the Upholder was a waste of effort—if the intercepting ships were capable of getting through the wormhole.
Suddenly Koffield saw it. It all made sense—if he assumed that each of the survivors had spawned or built a decoy for itself—a decoy that could track ships and run intercepts, but wasn’t capable of surviving a wormhole transit. If the duplicates could make the run, they would have been driving for the wormhole as well.
“Weapons, you have conn control. I want evasive maneuvers to avoid the intruders targeted to intercept us,” Koffield ordered. “Do not waste ammunition or laser power on the interceptors. They are meant to decoy us from our prime targets. Don’t take the bait. Fire only on the three intruders that are targeting the wormhole.”
“Aye sir,” the weapons officer replied.
Koffield checked the nav plots again. Three minutes, nine seconds until Ship One entered the timeshaft—if she made it that far. Ship Two appeared to be using full thrust, trying to break free of the singularity’s gravity well, but it was plain to see she wasn’t going to make it. He felt a cold stab of guilt deep in his gut. That dot on his display represented a multimegaton ship, a ship whose name he did not even know. She carried some unknown number of human lives, some unknown but vitally needed cargo carried at great risk and great cost—and now that dot, that ship, was going to die.
And she was not going to die alone. Ships Three and Four were making barely better progress. Five looked to be the only one of the ships to have any hope of escape.
Murder. Cold-blooded murder. And he had no choice in the matter.
He turned back to keying in his commands to the portal nexus Artlnt. He made his way through the commands for Nexus B, and watched as the nexus died. He started on C, with the Artlnt delaying more and more after each command, as the consequences of each command grew more and more significant. It was nerve-wracking* in the extreme—but he knew that it had to be far worse for those aboard Ship One, watching on their display boards as the nexi popped out of existence, one after the other. Well, they only had just under two minutes more before they hit Nexus D.
What about the intruders and the interceptors? He reluctantly expended some small fraction of the time he had carefully examining their nav plots. They had all completed their hellishly rapid deceleration, and were moving at high velocities, though no longer at impossible speeds.
Just then, his command chair slammed up into him as the Upholder jolted abruptly, making its first evasive action maneuver. He watched for the reaction, but the three intercepting intruders did not respond or shift course in any way, long after they should have been able to track the Upholder’s changed course. The other three intruders were still bearing down on the wormhole. It was going to be close. Horrifically close.
Koffield sent the last confirmation of the order to kill Nexus C, and waited for a half-minute that seemed like half a lifetime before the Artlnt accepted and executed the order. He set to work at once on E, watching on the repeaters as the last act of the drama played out around him.
“Ship One entering the timeshaft wormhole via Nexus D in thirty seconds,” the detection officer announced, as if there were anyone on the bridge who wasn’t watching a repeater with the same data on it. “Twenty-five seconds.”
He’d leave D until last, until at least Ship One was through. Koffield typed the next command, anton
KOFFIELD COMMANDING UPHOLDER INSTRUCTS NEXUS CONTROL SYSTEM TO DEACTIVATE PORTAL NEXUS “e” PERMANENTLY.
The Artlnt took so long to reply Koffield began to think there had been a system lockup. Then came the reply. nexus control system receives and accepts instruction to deactivate portal nexus “e” permanently, please confirm command.
“Twenty seconds for Ship One. Ship Two is—oh, damn it! Ship Two off-screen. We’re getting a debris-field bloom. Debris impacting event horizon. Hell and damnation! Detecting flare-out on port main engine for Ship Three. Thrusters overloaded and blown. She’s pinwheeling. Ship Three—oh, my God, Ship Three off-screen with debris-field bloom.”
Ships Two and Three were dead. There was nothing he could do. Nothing but press on.
ANTON KOFFIELD COMMANDING UPHOLDER CONFIRMS INSTRUCTION TO NEXUS CONTROL SYSTEM TO DEACTIVATE PORTAL NEXUS “e” PERMANENTLY.
No response from the Artlnt.
“Intercepting intruders have just changed course!” Amerstad, the weapons officer, called. “All three now bearing to intercept with Upholder if all craft hold present course. Commencing new evasive.”
With response times that long, the Upholder would be able to dodge the interceptors for days. But this game was going to be over, one way or the other, in a matter of minutes.
“Ship One now ten seconds from timeshaft entrance,” Sentar called from the detection station. “Nexus D showing nominal start to portal activation.” nexus control system receives and accepts confirmation of instruction to deactivate portal nexus “e “ permanently. nexus control system advises that this will be the last chance to countermand the instruction, send second confirmation within sixty seconds, any other action or lack of action will result in cancellation of instruction.
At last. Koffield typed in the final kill command for Nexus E and waited for the Artlnt to respond.
“Ship One entering in five, four, three, two, one, zero— Ship One, nominal entry to timeshaft wormhole. All reading normal. Nexus D closing.”
“Ship One into the timeshaft,” Koffield said, half to himself. “At least one thing worked right today.” In theory, it was already safe to kill Nexus D. Ship One ought to be through already, emerging into the past and taking her chances with the downtime relief ship. But that was theory. The ship was dropping back in time. How did you measure- time while you were moving through it? Duration of transit through the wormhole could be zero or infinity, depending on how you computed it. He could not know for sure that blowing D at once could have no effect on Ship One. No one had ever blown a portal nexus shut with a ship in transit. Koffield pressed on to Nexus F.
“Ship Three’s debris bloom expanding to Ship Four’s position!” Sentar called. “I’m reading flashpoints. Impacts, multiple impacts on Ship Four. All engines stop on Four. I think she’s tumbling. Ship Four in free fall to event horizon. Impact. Oh, for the love of God, Ship Four, impact on event horizon.”
Ship Four’s symbol-logic ind
icator faded from the repeater. It was like a chess game, a monstrous chess game, where the pieces were lives, and they were being swept from the board, one after the other, no matter what move he made.
“Sir!” the weapons officer called. “I think I may have a shot on Intruder Three if we can hold position and attitude long enough.”
“Very well. Cancel evasive maneuvers until you can shoot. Keep us alive long enough to see this through.”
“Yes, sir,” weapons replied. “Coming about to firing attitude.”
The ship pivoted about as Koffield worked his way through the kill commands for Nexus F.
“Nav plot now projecting that Ship Five will break free to a parking orbit,” the detection officer announced. A halfhearted cheer went up from the bridge crew. Three convoy ships were dead, but two still survived.
“Interceptors have adjusted course once again,” detection called out, squelching the celebration. “All three now targeted to ram Upholder. First projected impact in three minutes, five seconds.”
“Weapons! How long until you have a shot on Intruder Three?”
“We’ll close to within maximum range for laser fire in mark, sixty-eight seconds, railgun fire in mark, ninety-one,” the weapons officer answered, her voice smooth and calm. “I’d like to fire the railgun first, though, so that any evasive action from the target would force it toward the laser. If we hold until mark, one hundred eight seconds, the firing aspect will shift enough for Intruder One to be almost precisely in line with my fire. There would at least be a chance that misses or debris from Three would strike One.”
“Do it,” Koffield ordered as he watched Nexus F die and fade from his displays. They would have at least a minute after the weapons officer got her shots off to worry about evading the interceptors. Plenty of time. Plenty of time. He started on the commands for Nexus G as the ship pivoted hard about to a new attitude that would bring the main weaponry to bear.
Again, he typed the same commands into the system and sent them to the Artlnt and waited for endless seconds for the Artlnt to acknowledge. It took a full minute for the Artlnt to grind through them all. Koffield watched Nexus G die just as the weapons officer came up on her firing sequence.
“Intruder Three targeted,” she called. “Railgun fire in ten seconds.”
Koffield had no time to listen. He started the kill commands on Nexus D, the last surviving nexus. If the Artlnt had hesitated long and hard before killing the others, it would take halfway to forever to approve the death of Nexus D. He sent the first command and settled in to wait. There was certainly enough else going on to occupy his mind.
“Rail fire in five. Four. Three. Two. One. Fire.”
The Upholder thrummed and buzzed with the vibration of the railgun’s rapid-fire mode, as the electromagnets accelerated thousands of steel pellets up to near-relativistic velocity and launched them out toward their targets.
“Railgun fire pattern away. Time to target twenty seconds. No evasive maneuver detected. Stand by for laser volley-fire pattern. Laser fire in five. Four. Three. Two. One. Fire.” Even at the speed of light, the laser blasts would take long seconds to reach their targets. If the targeting computers had done their jobs right, the Upholder would have moved enough between rail and laser fire to keep the two shots from interfering with each other. The laser fire ought to strike first, with the rail pellets sweeping in right behind it.
The bridge lights flickered, almost imperceptibly, as the last of the laser-cannon volley drained the main power systems. That there was any noticeable power dropoff at all was a warning to Koffield as to how close to depleted their systems were. If the power levels dropped too low, there wouldn’t even be enough to start the regeneration systems and reenergize the power cells.
But none of that mattered. What they had to do now was stay alive through the next few minutes.
“Interceptors closing, projecting three-way simultaneous impact on Upholder,” detection called.
“Weapons!” Koffield called. “Confirm. Are all shots away?”
“Aye sir!” .
“Very well. Evasive! Random heading, max acceleration. Now, now, now.”
The ship surged again, heeling over to bear almost directly toward the singularity. Koffield swore. He should have known not to call for a random heading, given the sort of luck they had been having. They would have to break off acceleration very soon indeed if they wanted to avoid following the example that Ships Two, Three, and Four had set. “Conn! New heading, any heading that’s minimum ninety degrees away from the singularity!”
The ship lurched drunkenly and swung about again.
“Interceptors still closing on where we were!” the detection officer announced. “No changes in course or velocity. Mutual impact in ten seconds.”
That impact was going to throw a hell of a lot of debris around. Maybe that was the plan, to kill Upholder with the shrapnel from a three-way impact. But there was damned little he could do about it. He didn’t have enough power to spend it on the shields, even if they had been functional.
“Detection!” Koffield called. “Time-on-target info!”
“Interceptor impact in five seconds. Laser fire to primary target in eight, rail to prime in nine.”
“Interceptors impact!” the weapons officer called, though there was no need to do so. Every screen on the bridge lit up with the violence of the three-pronged crash. If much of the blast debris caught the Upholder, and caught her just right, it would be the end of things, and no doubt.
But there was nothing he could do about it, so he did what he could instead and slammed down the send key on the first confirm command to kill Nexus D.
“Laser-fire shots, rail-fire shots, clean miss on primary target!”
Koffield hadn’t had enough faith in the shots to feel much disappointment. “Any chance of hits on the secondary?” he asked.
“We’ll know in twenty seconds, sir.”
“Do you have anything left for a second shot?”
“Insufficient power stored for a laser shot. We have rail pellets and maybe enough accumulator power for one more volley. And we’ve got a marginal firing solution in thirty seconds on previous primary target.”
“Then let’s not waste it. Shoot when you can,”
“Aye sir.”
What the devil was taking the nexus control Artlnt so long? Maybe the damn thing finally had up and quit on him this—
“Sir! Detecting impacts on secondary target! Four, five, strikes. She’s tumbling off course!”
A cheer went up from the bridge.
“Good shooting, Weapons! Now.do it again!”
“Aye sir. Setting up for final firing pass, sir. Stand by.”
Final firing pass. That was true enough, and sobering enough. Even if they scored another hit, and thus managed to kill or cripple two of the intruders, there was still one out there.
Koffield studied the repeater boards, and spotted something the detection officer hadn’t noticed yet. Ship Five, the last ship of the convoy, wasn’t just sliding into a parking orbit. She was still accelerating at maximum, thrusting away from the singularity. She was, in plain fact, getting the hell out, escaping the chaos and destruction that swirled about the Circum Central Timeshaft. Koffield could not blame her. No matter what the outcome, there would be precious little reason for Ship Five to remain anywhere near the wormhole.
“Ship Five on emergency departure track,” Koffield announced, and then forgot about her. Another piece swept off the chessboard. Later, if he survived, would be time enough to think about her, and about all else that had been lost and destroyed this day.
“Confirmed,” the detection officer replied.
“Coming up on firing pass,” the weapons officer called. “Stand by. Firing in twenty seconds.”
“I’ve been tracking some sort of erratic venting from previous secondary target, and her tumble is getting worse,” the detection officer said. “I think she’s out of the game!
Koffield checked his repeaters and pulled up the full navigation data on Intruder Five—^the Intruder they hadn’t shot at yet. Even if their last blast of railgun fire took out Intruder Three, Five would still be there, barreling down toward the wormhole.
“Firing in ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three.Two. One. Zero.” Once again, and for the last time, the fabric of the Upholder thrummed and thrilled with the rush of the railgun’s fire. “Firing complete. All railgun pellets expended. Time-on-target, mark, thirty-two seconds.”
Projecting their courses forward, Three would reach the wormhole portal in ten minutes, twenty-five seconds, and Five in twenty-three minutes, eighteen seconds. If they got lucky on this firing pass— nexus control system receives and accepts instruction to deactivate portal nexus “d” permanently, please confirm command.
Koffield was sufficiently surprised to see the Artlnt’s response that he nearly forgot to act on it. But then he blinked, nodded, and typed in the first confirmation command.
ANTON KOFFIELD COMMANDING UPHOLDER SENDS CONFIRMATION OF INSTRUCTION TO NEXUS CONTROL SYSTEM TO DEACTIVATE PORTAL NEXUS “d” PERMANENTLY.
“Sir! I’m tracking on the debris cloud from the interceptor. Some of it is going to catch us—estimate about twenty seconds.”
“Howbad?”
“Not very. Just small stuff, which is why it took so long to detect.”
But even that small stuff could kill them if it hit just right. Koffield checked his displays. “Conn, all engines, full stop and emergency reorient. Ship to attitude three-two-zero, one-one-zero.” That ship’s attitude would point the nose of the craft straight at the debris cloud, presenting the smallest possible cross section to the oncoming shrapnel. Normal doctrine would be to aim the better-shielded aft end, rather than the bow, at the debris, but the Upholder’s main engines had absorbed a great deal of punishment already, and it had taken all they had to patch them up. Another round of hits on the propulsion system could wreck the engines for good and leave them stranded in orbit of the wormhole. Better to risk the weapons and detection gear in the nose. They had nothing left to shoot with anyway, and, for that matter, there was not that much left to see.
The Depths of Time Page 8