“Main screen, Colonel,” said Minerva, and flipped up not merely the incoming contacts but their course and velocity vectors. “In this area, I doubt they‘re friendly, so I reacted accordingly.”
“Mmf,” said Cully. Then he gathered himself together and seemed to push the pain from the dent in his forehead farther into the back of his mind than it had already gone. “Yes. Indeed. Well done, XR-14376. You acted correctly, of course.”
“Thank you, sir.”
If Roj hadn’t been serving with Minerva for nearly a year, the sarcasm would have slipped past him as well. As it was, he found something on the main control panel that needed his attention for long enough to get his face back under control. Whatever doubtful duties Minerva might have carried out in the past, he was willing to forgive them all just for the past five minutes.
”Commander, “Cully’s voice came rasping over his shoulder like an audible abrasive, “just what are you doing?”
“Setting up an intercept course and firing solution, sir.”
He glanced over one shoulder at the cold Marine eyes above the high Marine collar. “Just in case.”
“Forget it.”
“Sir?”
“Fleet Engineering went to a lot of trouble to make this ship look the way she does. Your ‘intercept course’ would make rather a nonsense of that, now wouldn’t it?”
“Sir . . .” It had been a precautionary measure, nothing more. Roj knew as well as Cully the importance of retaining cover, but if a breakaway was necessary, he would sooner that it was to some purpose rather than just to avoid any potential cook off of the missiles in the troop-carrier’s hulk. Besides which, he had no great love for being addressed as a father might address an erring and far-from-bright child.
“Bogies are in braking mode,” said Minerva, in that cold, emotionless voice she reserved for combat situations. “Range is: six-two-zero-zero. Course is: green-green one-one-five, closing. Their scanners are: active. We are being scanned.” A threat receptor warning chirped shrilly, confirming the announcement. “IFF/ID confirms: hostiles. Khalian, two corvettes, Delta-K, two frigates, Forger-B. No comm transmissions detected at this time. Bandits continue to close: range now five-eight-zero-niner, closing.”
Less than six thousand kilometers was too damn close. Regardless of what Colonel Cully might think or say, Roj started flipping switches on the fire-control boards, powering up the combat systems. They could always be shut down again if they weren’t needed, but if they were, Roj knew from bitter experience that the Weasels didn’t usually give you the leisure to prepare them a proper welcome. For all his feigned unconcern, he was very conscious of Cully’s eyes staring at the back of his neck. It was a bit like two intangible, hot coins pressed against the skin: all in the mind, but no less nasty for that.
Minerva ran visual confirmations for his checklist as Roj uttered the familiar sequence under his breath. “Turrets are unlocked, full and free traverse; chaff and flare dispensers are—armed; ECM and breakaway charges are—in standby mode; shields and cannons show preheat cycle complete. Programming telemetry on line, passive tracking controls are engaged, up and running. Target acquisition is ninety seconds and counting. We’re as ready as we can be.”
“We are indeed, Captain Malin,” said Colonel Cully in an emotionless voice. “But this ship is as well screened from external scanning as the Fleet could make it, and despite everything you’ve done the Khalians still can’t know we’re here. I’m afraid you’ll have to carry this mission through after all.” His right hand hovered above the fire-control board, its index finger tracing all the tabs that Roj had switched on. “After that I’m going to bring you before a field court-martial, and we’ll see what they have to say about all these . . . mock-heroics.” He stepped back and half turned toward Minerva’s main lens. “RM-14376, give me an exterior visual. Main screen.”
“Colonel . . . “Minerva began, and hesitated. Her voice had an odd edge to it, and for a moment Roj thought she was going to back up his decision. Then she continued, and he knew her concern was over more immediate matters than what might happen days hence. “Colonel, in one hundred sixty-seven seconds the bandits will be close enough for unaugmented visual spotting.” She hesitated again. “Naked-eye range.” The comment was insulting and excessive, but Roj was glad to hear it since it told him more about Minerva’s opinions right now than any number of impassioned speeches in his defense. “Shall I open a clearport iris?”
Cully looked from brain to brawn and smiled thinly at some thought that had amused only him. He sat down carefully in the command chair at the center of Minerva’s primary consoles, scanned the control tabs studding its arms, and tapped one with his finger. Nothing happened, except that his smile became a fraction wider. “By all means, RM-14376. Open them all, if you like. But first—extinguish all interior lights and put the system onto manual override. Do you understand me?”
There was a long- second of hissing static that had no place coming from Minerva’s acoustically perfect speakers. “Yes, I understand you. Sir.” The bridge illumination dimmed to combat-red, then beyond to total-darkness. “Done. You have control. Sir.”
“Good.”
Roj had never noticed it before—because the ship had never been blacked out before—but in this most absolute of midnights Colonel Cully seemed much more at home. As if darkness was more his natural element than light. Sitting there, staring at nothing, knowing that he shared this ship with canisters of a lethal nerve-gas compound and a still more lethal officer, it all seemed to make some kind of crooked sense.
After a few seconds; the main viewport’s shutters opened. The old usage “iris” wasn’t an accurate description, for all that it was a stubborn holdover from the days when circular shutters covered Circular ports. These armored leaves folded back into their slots more like the closing of a fan, revealing a broad expanse of transparent glasteel. Roj had never realized before just how much light the stars produced. On all the other occasions when he had looked out naked-eye through the clearports, there had always been some sort of shipboard lighting at his back and that, no matter how dim, must always have taken the razor edge away from the crystalline beauty he saw now.
Except that not all the brilliant points of light were stars. Four of them were moving, growing larger, coming closer . . . taking on a shape that he could recognize. Khalian warships, heading his way.
Speed is dropping,” said Minerva. “Course is holding constant. They’ll overfly us in seventy seconds.”
Already the Khalian ships were close enough for Roj to see the actinic flaring of reversed thrust as they dumped velocity for maneuverability. He hadn’t realized before just how big Weasel warships were—or how mean-looking. That seventy seconds felt more like an eyeblink before they whipped past in a ragged formation that was far too tight, far too close, and far too fast for heavy-traffic safety, filling the viewport from frame to frame for just an instant before hurtling out again at something over half a klick per second.
“They’re curious about us,” said Roj, for Cully’s benefit. “What happens, Colonel, if they decide this wreck’s a danger to local space lanes and decide to remove the threat with a couple of plasma bolts? Or has Fleet thought of that one too . . . ?”
“Markers are more probable.” The colonel’s face was invisible in the darkness, but his voice was totally calm. “They’ll not blow up something with such considerable salvage value.”
“I wish I shared your confidence, Colonel,” said Minerva. “Because I’m the one they’ll be shooting at.” She paused, considering a new stream of data as the now-distant Khalians reduced their speed still further and began to swing back. “More to the point, I’ve never heard of Khalians marking salvage before. Taking what they can carry and destroying the rest is more their style. And whatever it is they’ve got in mind, it’s likely to happen fairly soon now.”
The viewport
shutters closed. “I have control, Colonel,” Minerva told him sweetly, rubbing in the fact. “Except of course for the internal lighting. If you’d like to cancel manual, we’re going over to silent-state battle stations . . . Now.”
Cully might have canceled the override—or Minerva might have simply taken over, as she was quite capable of doing. Either way, the bridge lights snapped straight to the deep crimson of Condition: One red alert and all the weapons systems came back to life.
“Passive tracking only, Colonel,” Minerva continued in the same soothing voice. “Of course, you’d know that already. I don’t want to put anything onto active status unless there’s no other choice.”
“We’ve got a lock,” said Roj suddenly. “Positive guidance lock on targets one and three, data patched through and repeating on all torp homing heads. Two and four are corning on, coming on and . . . locked! We got ‘em cold. If”—and he sat back from fire-control with his hands folded behind his head—“we need to fire, that is. To preserve the mission, Colonel.” Cully’s needless threat of a court-martial had stung more than Roj realized at the time, and it was satisfying to be able to turn the tables, even just a little. He wondered what the colonel had done to earn his promotions, because combat plainly hadn’t played much of a part in it.
“The Weasels are running a close scan over the whole ship,” said Minerva. “Me, the drones, the carrier. All of us. I hope, Colonel, that Fleet has done as good a job as you think, otherwise . . .” The rest of the sentence wasn’t needed.
Colonel Cully hadn’t moved a muscle, but as the glowing traces of targeting systems lit up the repeater screens to one side of his immobile face, Roj could see the merest gleam of moisture on his skin. So the iron man was human enough to sweat at the prospect of imminent action. Roj watched him for a moment, noting various other almost invisible signs of tension, and revised his opinion of Cully’s service record at once. He was no longer the Intelligence operative sent along to make sure that mere soldiers didn’t let some pangs of conscience get in the way of megadeath, but someone whose expressionless expression a much younger Sublieutenant Malin had seen before, on the face of a Marine he had watched climbing into a dropship, the same cold determination that hid the same all-too-human fear of dying. It was the sort of expression that led to men being impossibly brave—and impossibly brutal.
Cully was the right man to send on this mission after all, Intelligence or not, because he above anyone else would know what the invasion would be like if Operation FIREFROST failed.
“The Khalia are holding station two klicks out,” Minerva reported. “They are continuing to scan. Surveillance only, no target illumination. At least, not yet. If necessary, Colonel, I can take out all four of them before they can react. Opinion?”
Cully thought about it for only a matter of seconds, even though to Roj—and still more so to Minerva—it felt like an age before he spoke. “Hold fire.” The flinty relaying-of-orders rasp was gone from his voice, at least for this. “Retain your cover . . . but if their firing scanners come on, hit them. On my command, and on my responsibility. Let that be so noted.”
“Done, sir,” said Roj quietly, and for the first time he really meant the honorific. “Duly noted and logged.” Cully glanced at him and nodded, a fractional inclination of the head that was probably as much as this cold man was able to produce. A bit different from sitting in the dropship, Colonel. You’re starting to know how it feels on the other side of the bulkhead, to be the one who clears the way before the drop goes in. Not as easy as you thought, eh . . . ?
It was going to be a question of reflexes; whether a brainship could neutralize a first-strike situation just as the missiles and plasma cannons of that strike were opening fire. If the question had been theoretical, put to him over drinks in some peaceful wardroom back on Port, Roj would have put his money on the brainship every time. The situation was rather different out here, where a magnified scan—had they dared to use one—would have revealed the open torp tubes and the leveled cannons, glaring with the IR overflow that would be spilling from both primed sources of heat. He still had his money—and everything else as well—riding on the brainship’s speed of reaction. It wasn’t as if he had a lot of choice . . .
“They’re powering up again,” said Minerva. Her voice was deadly calm. A series of active/standby lights went green on the weapons board; even though the Khalians wouldn’t be able to detect that slight change in the “derelict’s” ready status, the standby backup gave Minerva that millisecond’s additional edge in a quick-draw situation. Because the increase in the Weasels’ power-output could mean many things, including preparation to blast a traffic hazard to atoms, or . . .
All of Minerva’s fire-controls went dead.
Roj had an instant of horrible shock, and then that same calm voice, threaded now with more relief than he had ever heard before, announced: “Their main drives are back on line. It looks like they’re leaving . . .” For all the brain’s apparent serenity, her brawn was needing to work hard to attain the same state. His fingers had clenched far too tight around the firing grips of the main plasma-cannon batteries, and as he slowly released them Roj noticed wryly just how slippery the checkered plastic had become.
Amazing, he thought, how we’ve managed FTL drive, but still no cure for sweaty hands . . .
He shifted the onboard systems from full passive into a semi-active tracking mode and put both visual projection and a graphic telemetry overlay up on the main screen. It made for a very pretty picture. The range was increasing at a very satisfying rate, three klicks, five, twelve—the separation distance jumping right up as all four Khalian vessels accelerated back to their maximum sub-light velocity. And this time they were heading out and away.
As they dwindled, becoming no more than glowing arrowheads on a long-range tactical plot in the few moments before the traces winked out altogether, Colonel Cully made a noise that could only have come from a man who had been holding his breath for an uncomfortably long time. Roj didn’t turn to smile at him and didn’t say anything aloud—but he looked Minerva full in the main receptor lens and gave her the ghost of a conspiratorial wink. “I think,” he said obliquely, “that everything’s going to be all right . . .”
* * *
It was all right, but only for as long as it took the disguised hulk to lumber into the immediate vicinity of the planet known to the Fleet as Khalia. And after that nothing was right at all.
It was well known to Fleet Intelligence that a large number of the Weasels had escaped from Bull’s-Eye before the final surface assault by elements of the Marine Reaction Force, and well known too that their escape had included literally hundreds of ships. They had scattered in all directions, panicked and routed by superior forces, and had become more a threat as individual or small-group raiders than as a large military unit.
Except here, where they were gathered en masse to defend their home world.
The presence of multiple contacts crowding the passive-scan screen was a confirmation to those on RM-14376 that this was indeed their target. Certainly far more so than the Intelligence reports that had fallen so far short of accuracy where planetary defenses were concerned.
Even Colonel Cully made savage comments concerning how much else they might have gotten wrong. “Catch-22,” he said grimly, swiveling slowly around in the number two command chair. “Major Murphy’s Maxim. Nobody thought about orbital delivery strategic weapons over Bull’s-Eye, and this lot”—indicated with a vicious jerk of his thumb at the blip-crammed screens—“got away with whole pelts. And now that somebody has thought about them, the Weasels we missed last time are here to stop us. At least, that’s what the Weasels think . . .” A nasty smile tugged at the corner of his rat-trap mouth. “What do you think, Captain?”
Roj Malin glanced sidelong at the colonel and couldn’t really answer at first; that he could only think how apt that “rattrap” description
had become. “I think, Colonel, that you’re still not addressing enough of these questions to Minerva.”
Cully shrugged, a little gesture that was more unconcern than apology. “Sorry,” he said, and despite the evidence of the shrug even tried to sound as if he meant it. “In the Marines, when we have to deal with artificial intelligences, that’s all they are. Artificial. RM-14376, Minerva that is, takes some getting used to.”
“Never mind, Colonel,” said Minerva, “when humans were first put aboard brainships it took a while before we got used to them, too. Using a proper title helped . . .” Roj smiled inwardly; she always managed the delicate art of being patronizing without the more obvious forms of insult that, like her sarcasm, it slipped by most of the people who weren’t familiar with it. “But my brawn’s quite right about who to ask this time.” An iris dilated with amusement way down among the elements of her main lens; as with her use of the “proper title,” Cully realized what she had meant and went slightly pink about the ears.
“Then I’m asking.” It was too late to compound the error; getting angry about the gentle teasing would only confirm how slow he had been to catch the joke. “What does your tactical programming have to say about this present situation . . . ?”
“This.” Two of the screens blanked, then began to fill with layered schematics. “Roj and I have one advantage over any other brainship team in the Fleet: we’ve been in a situation like this before. When we found Bull’s-Eye.” Data and graphics flickered across both screens, too fast for close study. She was giving what amounted to a short lecture illustrated with sketches; the detailed briefing would follow. “Standard procedure: as we approach orbit the MARV warheads aboard each drone will be receiving constant area-correlation guidance updates right up to the point when I and they achieve breakaway. Once we’re clear the preset charges and the ECM units in the troopship’s hulk will detonate, not merely jamming the Weasels’ scanners with standard multi-wavelength chaff, but creating upward of a thousand fragments large enough to provide long-persistence echo returns. I, of course, both visually and electronically ID as a Khalian ship, so I can make my exit more leisurely than would otherwise be possible. Satisfied, Colonel?”
The Fleet-Book Four Sworn Allies Page 19