by M. D. Cooper
The AI nodded.
Silence fell on the bridge and in Mira’s mind. She went through a calming routine and then pulled up a review of engagement patterns for dealing with superior numbers and firepower.
A part of her hoped that the enemy would have smaller ships than hers, but with a find like the artifact to protect, she knew that was unlikely. Both enemy ships were corvettes as well, and though they might not be as well-equipped as the Inquiry, the OASF ship would have to divide its attention and firepower, while the enemy only had to focus on one target.
No matter how she turned the problem around, there was only one real solution. Run.
Well, run and pray that the limpets and Janice on the beams is enough to slow them down.
The main display showed two countdowns to intercept. The first showed seven minutes and fifteen seconds. That was when the enemy would be within effective firing range on the Inquiry’s original vector. The second time read nine minutes and eleven seconds, which was the time they had if the pursuers realized that their quarry had shifted onto a new course.
Her calm reverie was broken moments later by a shout from Brock.
“Oh shit!”
“What is it,” Mira demanded, annoyed that she had to ask.
“New return!” he replied, flicking the data onto the holotank. “It’s right on our tail, only seventy thousand klicks out and closing fast.”
“Missile,” Janice said. “It’s gotta be.”
Mira agreed. “Weapons hot, get ready to lase that thing. Ensign Brock, deploy countermeasures if it reaches thirty k.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Janice and Brock replied in unison.
“Emma,” Mira turned to the pilot. “The moment we open fire, spool the AP and burn. No point imitating a black cloud if we’re shooting at stuff.”
“You got it, ma’am. We’re ready to roll.”
A third countdown appeared on the main display. It read one minute and seventeen seconds until the trailing object would hit the Inquiry.
“Weapons hot, Commander,” Janice said. “I’ll fire at fifty klicks, which is…now!”
An alert blared on the bridge, marking the commencement of live fire. Mira muted the audible portion and turned her attention to the holotank, which began to show far more of the ship’s surroundings as scan switched from passively absorbing photons to sending out energy waves and processing echoes.
“Fuck,” she whispered. “They’re right on us! Brock, detonate any attached limpets.”
“Two register as latched,” the ensign replied. “Flipping their switches.”
The enemy ships—both of which were similar in mass to the Inquiry—were less than a hundred thousand kilometers away, which meant it took almost no time at all to detect the explosions on the closest pursuer’s hull.
“Yeah, bitches!” Brock thrust a fist in the air. “Take that!”
“Max burn in five,” Emma added, her voice considerably more subdued.
Mira nodded silently as she watched the data roll in on the ship they’d hit. The hull had been holed, but the vessel hadn’t lost its engines, and now that the Inquiry was lighting up the night with its beams and scan, both enemies were boosting toward them.
“Slippery thing,” Janice said. “Ready with those countermeasures, Brock.”
“Aye, ma’am. They’re locked and loaded.”
Mira found herself twisting her shipsuit’s sleeve in her opposite hand, anxious for a positive outcome, but feeling impotent with no task to carry out herself.
Is this what it’s always like for commanders? Issuing orders and then silently praying that everyone does what they’re supposed to when they’re supposed to?
It was maddening.
“Tagged it!” Janice shouted. “Missile is spinning off course.”
“They had to have fired more than one,” Mira cautioned. “Or at least, I would have.”
“Launches from the second ship,” Brock announced even as she was speaking. “Four missiles.”
“I’ve got them,” Janice said. “Don’t you worry.”
A low hum began to fill the air around them, the vibration carried forward from millions of newtons of thrust blasting out the rear of the Inquiry. The fusion engines were already at eighty percent, while the AP drive was just passing thirty percent max output. Already, the ship was accelerating at over sixty gs, and would top out at well over a hundred.
It occurred to Mira that the engines had never run concurrently at full burn before, and she found herself hoping that the graviton emitters didn’t have another calibration slip. Without those devices, the crew—and anything not welded in place—would smash against the aft bulkheads and be crushed.
A wavering sensation passed through her, and she glanced at the dampener readings, relieved to see that the feeling was from her own nerves, not a result of the ship suffering a failure.
“Got another missile,” Janice announced. “The first ship is warming up their beams, though.”
“I can’t believe they haven’t even hailed us,” Mira muttered.
“No point,” Emma said. “They know we’ll report the artifact, and we know they’ll kill us to keep it a secret. Anything we say will just be bluster.”
“I could use a bit of bluster right now.” Mira sucked in a steadying breath. “I’m going to hail them, maybe my credentials will give them pause.”
“You mean who you are will give them pause?” Janice asked. “I thought you didn’t want to play the family card.”
“I’ll play any card I have if it means we survive.”
The AI shot her a quick smile. “Well, this I like to hear. I prefer survival.”
“Me too,” Brock added. “All about survival. Speaking of which, you want me to hit the chaff, Janice?”
The AI sighed and nodded. “Yeah, blow it to port. I don’t think I can get all three of these missiles.”
“We can take a hit no problem,” Brock said. “These shields are as strong as a destroyer’s.”
Mira nodded in agreement, and though no one mentioned their twitchy graviton emitters, she could see that each and every person on the bridge was silently hoping the shields didn’t malfunction at just the wrong time.
The first round of enemy beams hit the Inquiry a few seconds later, and though the focused streams of energetic photons struck the shields from only twenty thousand kilometers away, the OASF corvette’s invisible shell of gravitons bent them around the craft and back into space.
Mira had been considering the best use of the Inquiry’s projectile weapons.
The engineer chuckled.
Mira pulled up the bot’s vector and breathed a sigh of relief.
The commander took a deep breath, wishing that Aqua could be unreservedly optimistic for once, but als
o knowing that the woman was right. It was too much to hope that whoever was controlling the artifact only had two ships watching it.
As if to answer her question, a response finally came to her hails. It was from the ship the limpets had hit, and when the visual appeared above the holotank, Mira was greeted by the sight of a rather perturbed-looking man in a uniform she didn’t recognize.
Not wanting to give a centimeter lest he took a kilometer, she rose from her seat and crossed her arms. “I am Commander Mira of the OASS Inquiry. I demand to know why you are attacking an Outer Alliance military vessel. Cease fire at once.”
“Commander Mira, this is a privately controlled region of the Regina System, duly registered with the OA. You have no authority here, and we will require you to cease your burn and prepare to be boarded.”
Mira paused her feed and glanced at the two ensigns and then Lieutenant Janice. “OK, first off, what uniform is dickweed there wearing, and secondly why don’t we have any record of this being private space?”
“Probably because it isn’t registered,” Janice replied. “Or if it is, it’s registered in such a fashion that no one will find the data until they need to use it to protect themselves.”
“That can’t matter,” Emma said. “There’s no way that registering an empty piece of space and then laying claim to an alien space station will hold.”
“OK,” Mira held up a hand. “Doesn’t matter. They’re not interested in fair play and letting us go, and we’re not going to let them board us.”
“Third missile down!” Janice announced. “I shouldn’t have doubted myself.”
“What if we let them think we’ll comply?” Brock asked. “They’ll have to match vector, and by the time they realize we’ve played them, we’ll be beyond the dark layer bubble, and we can just transition.”
Mira shook her head. “Won’t work. They’ll make us lower shields, and we’ll have sacrificed maneuverability.”
“Can at least keep them talking,” Janice replied. “Might keep them from lobbing more missiles at us.”
The commander nodded, then resumed her feed. “Yeah, that’s not going to work for us. How’re those holes in your ship treating you? We could add a few more, if you’d like. Oh, and we also dropped a fair number of limpets as we flew past the alien station. Have fun docking there for a while.”
The man’s mouth pulled into a thin line. “You’re messing with things you don’t understand. If you won’t agree to be boarded, we’re going to destroy you.”
Mira glanced at the forward display, which read four minutes to dark layer transition. She was certain the enemy captain was just as aware of how long they had as she, and would do something to ensure they couldn’t make it to the safety of the dark layer.
But what?
“What if we destroy you first?” she asked, a laugh on her lips. “Also, do you know whose daughter I am? Surely, you’ve figured that out by now. I’m tightbeaming this conversation to our drone, so even if you get us, my father will know who pulled the trigger. You’re going to have to fly all the way back to Sol to escape him.”
The enemy captain visibly paled before he regained his composure. “The drone? Oh! You mean the one that’s fifteen seconds away from being destroyed.”
“Brock!” Mira hissed as she paused the stream again. “Active scan on our drone.”
A view of the drone appeared on the forward display, accompanied by a wide-angle tactical visual showing the time until the robot could safely transition.
She left the feed paused as the fifteen seconds counted down, sucking in a startled breath as beams lanced out from two separate locations, obliterating the drone before it could transition.
“Oh fuck,” she whispered before reactivating the feed, making a show of wiping the back of her hand across her brow. “Stars, you had me worried for a moment there. I thought you’d found our actual drone, not a decoy!”
A look of concern flashed across the man’s face before his eyes narrowed. “Nice try. We would have seen if you sent out a second drone.”
“Just like you saw our limpets?”
The man didn’t reply at first, and Mira couldn’t help needling him a little more.
“How are those holes in your hull treating you, by the way? Adding a bit more airflow?”
He set his jaw, brow lowering. “We’re going to board you and find out if you sent a second drone. If you did, and it gets away…well, let’s just say things won’t go well for you.”
Mira ran a finger along her jaw. “Is there a scenario where things do go well for us?”
The AI sent a sardonic laugh.
While they spoke, the enemy captain replied. “Like I said. Surrender without a fight and cooperate. That’s your best bet at this point.”
“I really feel like that’s not going to do it,” Mira said. “I think that what we’ll do instead is punch more holes in your ships and then go on our merry way.” She killed the transmission and glanced around the bridge. “Where do we stand?”
“They’re not hitting us hard with their beams,” Brock said. “I’m guessing they want us alive.”
“I’m keeping them both at arm’s length with our own weapons,” Janice said. “They can’t close with us while they’re jinking around, trying to avoid getting holed.”
Mira nodded, realizing she was stroking her chin again, and pulled her hand down. “I want four missiles dropped behind us. Inert, not fired.”
“You got it,” Janice said. “I’ll coordinate with Greg. We can use the grav-lifters to nudge them out of the tubes.”
“What’s your plan?” Emma asked. “Hit them in the ass?”
“Exactly,” the commander replied. “Specifically, I want to nail Captain Poopy Pants. His ship is already half dead. We can finish him off with three of them while sending one at the other ship. That should make them think twice about closing with us.”
A minute later, the missiles were out of the tubes, the two enemy ships closer now, but still jinking wildly to avoid Janice’s shots. The countdown on the forward display crossed over two minutes until safe transition, and Mira was tempted to order Emma to drop them into the dark layer early, but the warnings that had been drilled into her about colliding with clumps of dark matter in subspace came to mind, and she withheld the order.
“They’re increasing their rate of fire,” Brock warned. “Our batteries are running dry. Shields will be on reactor power in eighty seconds.”
“Janice, are the missiles in position?”
“Give me thirty seconds and they’ll be ready to roll.”
Mira rose from her chair and stalked to the holotank, glaring at the three-dimensional representation of the battlespace. “They won’t be right behind the enemy, though.”
“No.” Janice shook her head. “Best we can do, given the time we have.”
“Alright. Send them in.”
“Yes, ma—”
“Contacts!” Brock called out. “A dozen fast movers.”
True to the ensign’s word, twelve red markers appeared on in the battlespace, four coming from behind and eight ahead.
“Fuck,” Mira hissed. “They’re going to hit us….”
“Forty seconds before it’s safe to transition,” Janice announced. “Our shields can’t defect that much force.”
“Can you take them out with beams?”
“Sure, but then our friends out there won’t have to jink to avoid my shots, and they’ll be up our ass in th
irty seconds.”
A moment of silence swept over the bridge, the tension they’d all been laboring under threatening to turn into panic.
There’s nothing for it.
“Ensign Emma. Five seconds before the first missile hits…transition.”
“Ma’am? We’ll still be three light seconds from the edge of the dark matter region.”
“You know those maps,” Mira forced herself to keep her voice calm. “They always overestimate the spread to be on the safe side.”
“There’s a reason they do that,” Janice warned. “Are you sure?”
“We have three choices. We surrender, see how many missiles it takes to end us, or take our chances in the dark layer.” She looked around the bridge. “Unless someone has a fourth option, we’re taking our chances in the DL.”
Brock swallowed loudly, but no one spoke otherwise.
After a few seconds, Mira glanced at Janice. “Time to impact on our missiles?”
“Seventeen seconds. So far, they’re all still intact.”
The commander mapped out all the vectors and velocities in play, glad to see that they’d witness their own missile strikes before dumping into the dark layer.
“Ten seconds,” Janice announced.
Mira nodded, watching on the holotank as the enemy ships jinked wildly in an attempt to throw off the missiles, each time stepping into Janice’s beamfire. It was clear that if it wasn’t for the enemy missiles, they’d win the engagement—something that rankled more than she cared to admit.
“We’re going to be alright,” she assured the bridge crew, then realized that the other three below deserved an update as well. She switched to the general shipnet.
Something in the chief’s tone made Mira think that the woman didn’t exactly mean what she’d said—or if she did, there was a less complimentary interpretation to be made.