The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword

by Jack Campbell

  “Yes, and to give thanks if the help comes,” Bradamont said.

  “If you know anyone to pray to, feel free. Kapitan Diaz knows how to pray, his parents taught him in secret, but I’ve never learned.” She wondered if Diaz was praying right now as he and the specialists struggled to get Manticore in motion before it was too late.

  The light from the most recent engagement had finally gotten here. On her display, she watched the Midway flotilla and the Syndicate flotilla rip past each other so fast the event itself could not be seen.

  Kapitan Seney had done a good job. Another Syndicate light cruiser had spun away helplessly from the enemy formation, maneuvering control lost, and two more Syndicate Hunter-Killers had been knocked out. In return, Midway’s light cruiser Osprey and Hunter-Killer Patrol had taken enough additional hits themselves that they broke away from what was now Seney’s formation, both ships staggering out of the fight, unfit for further combat until their damage could be repaired, but still able to maneuver.

  She could see that Seney had begun swinging about again, looping toward the star and down to set up another intercept of the Syndicate flotilla, and realized that she had to make clear to him that the remaining ships in Kraken’s formation were his to command until further notice.

  “Kapitan Seney,” Marphissa sent, “retain control of the formation and continue to hit the Syndicate flotilla. Wear them down. I will notify you when—” She had been about to say when I am able to resume command, but realized how insanely optimistic that would sound. “When the situation calls for it. Marphissa, out.”

  Several more minutes crept by, Marphissa repeatedly fighting off urges to call engineering and demand updates that would only distract and delay whatever Diaz and the others were doing.

  Diaz came back onto the bridge and sat down heavily. “I don’t know,” he said before Marphissa could ask. “I needed to get back up here, and I was really just watching, not contributing to the repair effort.”

  “Do you think there’s a chance they’ll succeed?” Marphissa asked, surprised at how calm the question sounded.

  “I have no idea, Kommodor. Neither do they. But they are trying.” He squinted at his display. “The Syndicate is still coming for us, I see. How long—? Is this figure right?” Diaz asked. “Senior watch specialist, do we have only three minutes left in which to start accelerating?”

  “Kapitan,” Czilla began with obvious reluctance, “that is probably a slightly optimistic projection. I would say it is closer to only two minutes—”

  Manticore lurched into motion with a sudden shock of acceleration so strong that some of it leaked past the inertial dampers, shoving everyone against their seat harnesses and making Bradamont hastily grab on to Marphissa’s seat for support.

  Marphissa held a hand up toward Bradamont. “Did you pray?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I believe.”

  “Kapitan?” A call came in for Diaz on the internal comms. “This is Senior Specialist Kalil. We got the main propulsion units going.”

  “I noticed!” Diaz said, as everybody else on the bridge broke into relieved gasps of laughter. “Are my controls working? I’m not seeing them active.”

  “Uh, Kapitan,” Kalil said, “you are talking to the controls. Me and Senior Specialist Sasaki. We’re opening and closing the circuits manually.”

  “Manually? By hand?”

  “Yes, Kapitan. Right now we only have two settings for the propulsion units, completely off, or fully on.”

  Diaz shook his head, looking toward Marphissa with a wondering expression. “I can live with that.”

  “You may live because of that,” Marphissa said. “Tell your specialists to keep the propulsion units on full.”

  “Did you hear, Senior Specialist Kalil? Keep the units on full.”

  “Yes, Kapitan. Uh, there is something else I should tell you. We don’t know how long this will last.”

  “What?” Diaz asked, his relieved smile fading.

  “Me and Senior Specialist Sasaki had to do some, uh, creative rewiring of circuits. You saw. She and I are not, um, entirely certain what all we rerouted. Because we were in a big rush, Kapitan, because you said—”

  “Yes, yes! I know what I said!”

  “—and so we don’t know if something might happen because we did all that changing and cross-connecting of circuits.”

  Marphissa closed her eyes and gritted her teeth.

  “Senior Specialist Kalil,” Diaz said with great care, “when you say something might happen, are you talking about something like the freezer’s shorting out and the ice cream melting, or something like the ship’s blowing up?”

  “Uh, Kapitan, me and Senior Specialist Sasaki think it will be something between those two things. But we don’t really know. You told us—”

  “Do it as fast as possible, I know.” Diaz spread his hands toward Marphissa in a helpless gesture. “Keep the main propulsion units going, Kalil. Let me know if the ship is about to blow up.”

  “Yes, Kapitan, we will tell you if that is about to happen. If we know that is about to happen.”

  “Keep praying,” Marphissa muttered to Bradamont.

  “Already on it,” she replied. “There’s nothing we can do for Harrier?”

  “Nothing. No, wait. The Syndicate flotilla has seen that we started moving again. How far off are they? Only thirty light-seconds and still closing. But their vector is altering.” Everyone studied their displays as the Syndicate warships continued changing their paths through space. “CEO Boucher is altering course to stay on an intercept with us as we move away,” Marphissa said as the reason became apparent. “If they change track enough—”

  “They might pass by out of range of Harrier?” Diaz asked. “They might, Kommodor. Harrier is obviously out of commission. They might think they can leave her to finish off later.”

  Minutes ticked by, then dawning hope shattered as Marphissa saw that the last two Syndicate heavy cruisers had veered off slightly from their formation. “They’re going to hit Harrier, then rejoin. Damn Boucher!”

  “One and a half minutes until they get within range of Harrier,” Diaz noted, anger straining his voice.

  “Kommodor,” Bradamont said, “you’re too narrowly focused.”

  “What? What the hell are you talking—”

  Marphissa stopped speaking abruptly as Bradamont’s meaning became clear. She and the others had been watching only Harrier and the movements of the Syndicate ships. Perhaps the Syndicate ships and CEO Boucher had also been narrowly focused, locked onto both Harrier and Manticore as targets.

  All of them had forgotten about Pele.

  Kontos’s battle cruiser, still accompanied by Gryphon and Basilisk, zipped upward close by the two Syndicate heavy cruisers which had left the protection of the battleship. A battle cruiser might not be a match for a battleship, but at close range one could do an awful lot of damage to a heavy cruiser.

  One of the Syndicate heavy cruisers, the one targeted by Gryphon and Basilisk, must have seen the danger at the last moment, making a sudden evasive maneuver that threw off many of the shots by the Midway cruisers. But the other Syndicate heavy cruiser caught the full force of Pele’s armament.

  A barrage of hell lances and grapeshot slammed into the heavy cruiser, knocking down its shields and going on to smash into the hull. The heavy cruiser jerked sideways under the impacts, then broke into several pieces that tumbled away.

  The other heavy cruiser kept going, though, as Pele, Gryphon, and Basilisk went onward out of range, unable to check their velocity or turn fast enough to quickly engage the Syndicate warship again.

  But the Syndicate heavy cruiser must have been spooked by the unexpected attack and by the loss of its partner. As Harrier threw out a last volley from her remaining weaponry, the heavy cruiser twisted down and away instead of closing to hell-lance range. Instead, it pumped out two missiles, then a third, all aimed at the crippled Harrier.

  H
arrier’s two remaining hell lances hurled out shots aimed at the oncoming missiles, but the defensive fire faltered as the hell lances overheated.

  The first two missiles struck aft, detonating simultaneously and blowing apart the after half of Harrier. The third missile hit forward, and shattered on impact, cratering the surviving half of the light cruiser but leaving it still shakily intact.

  “A dud!” Diaz breathed. “I’ve never been so happy to see a warhead fail.”

  “That wasn’t a dud,” Marphissa objected. “The warhead on a dud would still have detonated on impact. That was a practice missile. Some poor fool accidentally loaded a practice missile instead of a warshot.”

  Bradamont looked around at the faces of the others on Manticore’s bridge. “What is it you all expect to happen to that person?”

  “Summary execution, if they’re lucky,” Diaz said, his voice harsh, “which would have been already carried out, or if they’re not lucky, prolonged interrogation by the snakes on that unit to determine if that person deliberately sabotaged the attack. Once they get the confession, and snakes always get a confession regardless of whether or not their victim did anything, the person’s family will be punished as well.”

  “Hell of a price for a mistake,” Bradamont muttered.

  “High-profile mistakes are often lethal in the Syndicate,” Marphissa said. She pointed to her display. “Thanks to that failed missile hit, the forward portion of Harrier is still intact. Some of her crew may still be alive.”

  “They’ll fort up in any remaining escape pods until the fight is over,” Diaz speculated. “Not launching, because that would make them targets again, but using the life support in the pods.”

  “It’s not like we can go back for them now, so I hope you’re right,” Marphissa said with a scowl. She started to say something else, then paused. There was an odd stutter in Manticore as the heavy cruiser roared at full acceleration. “Something’s off,” she said. “Feel that?”

  “Now that you mention it, yes, I feel it, too,” Diaz said, studying his readouts. “Engineering watch specialist, do you know the cause?”

  The specialist, an older woman who looked near retirement age, was squinting at her own display. “Kapitan, it appears that number two main propulsion unit was damaged. Its output is fluctuating.”

  “Is there danger?”

  “No, Kapitan. Stress and temperature readings are within safe parameters. But that unit is not putting out full thrust. Its output is varying from fifty to eighty percent of maximum.”

  “Let’s hope that’s enough,” Marphissa said, her eyes locked on her display. The Syndicate flotilla was flattening out from its turn, charging toward the fleeing Manticore as the surviving Syndicate heavy cruiser scrambled to rejoin its companions before Pele could return. The rate of closure of the Syndicate flotilla on Manticore was dropping fast as the heavy cruiser strained to pull away and escape intercept. But that rate had to hit zero, then hopefully turn negative as the range began widening again, or else Manticore would still be doomed.

  Kontos had brought Pele back again, too late to catch the heavy cruiser alone, swinging in from above to strike the rear of the Syndicate formation. The remaining Syndicate light cruiser blew apart as it tried to evade fire from the battle cruiser as well as Gryphon and Basilisk. The rest of the Midway flotilla, still in a separate formation under Kapitan Seney on Kraken, had bent down and back, and was coming in a flat curve at the Syndicate formation from behind and below.

  But CEO Boucher plowed on, closing the distance to Manticore with increasing slowness as the heavy cruiser kept increasing speed. “She knows this is the flagship,” Marphissa said. “CEO Boucher has been analyzing our comm patterns, and she knows I’m aboard Manticore.”

  Diaz nodded. “And she wants to make an example of you. Kill the leader, and the rest will submit. Snakes always try that even though it rarely works. There’s always another leader.”

  “I don’t think her intentions matter any longer,” Bradamont said, eyeing the display. “I think we’re clear. We’re going fast enough that the battleship will take about a week to catch us at this rate.”

  The words had barely cleared her throat before Manticore shuddered throughout her length.

  The lights went out, the life-support fans stopped, and the displays vanished.

  Marphissa waited in the hushed darkness for the second it took for the emergency lighting to come on. “Something happened,” she observed to Diaz, who was fruitlessly pounding the internal comm controls on the arm of his seat.

  “Engineering watch specialist!” Diaz said, his voice reverberating in the strange silence on the bridge. He lowered his voice before speaking again. “Get down to engineering and find out what’s going on. We need power back. We need everything back.”

  Marphissa was gazing at where her display had been. Now, nothing but the blank, armored forward bulkhead of the bridge could be seen. The entire compartment felt strangely smaller with the equipment offline and life support not offering the constant, reassuring background noise of fans and ducts and circulating fluids. The bridge was buried deep in the ship, as safe as possible from enemy fire or other threats, which normally brought a sense of reassurance. At the moment, it was creating a feeling of literally being buried.

  Senior Watch Specialist Czilla propped open a device pulled out of the emergency locker near his station. It lit, showing a series of readings. “We are still all right for oxygen and CO2 concentration, Kommodor. Estimated time to dangerous reduction in O2 and dangerous density of CO2 is twenty-five minutes.”

  “We’ll hold off sealing our survival suits to conserve their life support for when we need it,” Marphissa said. “Damn! What is going on outside?”

  “We’re still moving,” Diaz said. “We’ve stopped accelerating, but the Syndicate flotilla is still in a long stern chase. Those surviving Hunter-Killers with the battleship have been burning a lot of their fuel cells. Unless CEO Boucher provides new cells from the battleship’s stockpile, those Hunter-Killers will be in trouble before the Syndicate ships can catch us.”

  “At the moment,” Marphissa grumbled in a very low voice, “I’m worried about our own people catching us. We had made it back up past point one five light speed when the power cut out, and now we’re racing outward at that velocity. If we get too far out before they can send someone to intercept us . . .”

  “We could open some exterior fittings to vent atmosphere,” Diaz said. “Pivot the ship using that method, then figure out how to light off main propulsion without power—”

  “That’s impossible. It would just blow up if the regulators didn’t have power.” Marphissa breathed a sigh of relief as the displays flickered to life again. “Progress. Maybe there is still hope.” She peered at the display, which continued to waver in intensity from bright to dim. “There’s nothing on it except a static view of what was last known. This is useless.”

  “Kapitan?” someone called.

  Diaz hit his comm controls. “Yes! Senior Specialist Sasaki?”

  “Yes, Kapitan. The power core did an emergency shutdown. We’re not sure why, so we’ve isolated it and will do a restart.”

  “I need comms and sensors back online fast!”

  “I understand and will comply, Kapitan. Two minutes.”

  But two minutes, then four minutes, then ten went past. Diaz’s attempts to call engineering again failed as the comm circuit went dead once more.

  The engineering watch specialist dashed back onto the bridge, gasping for breath. “Kapitan, the power core—”

  “I know,” Diaz growled.

  “They are rewiring again, Kapitan. They found that just doing a restart would probably trigger another threatened overload and shutdown, so they’ve been pulling things out and redoing them.”

  “Why did I lose comms with engineering?” Diaz demanded.

  The woman looked off to one side, groping for words. “They . . . needed a certain black box . . . Junction
Model 74A5F Mod 12 . . . and the only one available was in the internal comms, so . . .”

  “My ship is being torn apart from the inside out,” Diaz said. “Those senior specialists are doing as much damage to my ship as the Syndicate did!”

  Marphissa nodded. “If we survive, Manticore is going to need some extensive internal repairs. And we’ll have to reward those senior specialists who are tearing your ship apart because otherwise we’d already be dead.”

  The displays vanished again, then reappeared before anyone could even curse their disappearance. “Kommodor, we have updated external information! External comm links and sensors are active again,” Senior Watch Specialist Czilla reported.

  Marphissa had been able to deaden her worries a bit when she literally could not see anything about events outside of Manticore, but now they sprang to full life again as Marphissa bent close to study her display.

  The Syndicate flotilla was still in pursuit, still slowly closing the gap to Manticore, but the battleship now was accompanied by only the single heavy cruiser and three surviving Hunter-Killers. Kontos and Seney must have hit CEO Boucher’s formation again. Both the Pele formation and the one now centered on Kraken were coming around for two more attacks.

  “Look at that!” Diaz said in amazement. “Midway! The battleship, I mean.”

  Marphissa tore her attention away from the nearest ships, trying to figure out what Diaz was talking about. Then she saw it. The battleship Midway, light-hours away, had come around, accelerating at full capacity on a route that would place her between the Syndicate formation and the hypernet gate. “What is Kapitan Mercia doing? She’s revealed for everyone to see that the Midway actually has full propulsion capability!”

  Bradamont was staring, too, but suddenly gave out a burst of laughter. “She’s a genius!”