Chain of Command

by Frank Chadwick

  The good news is we can calculate their vector and if they’re planning on doing a close pass-by of K’tok, we can figure at least the corridor they’ve got to come along when they jump. It looks like they’ll break J-space almost straight above the north pole of K’tok and come right down, same way as usual. Since our two bombardment boats are in equatorial orbits, this overhead approach will give the uBakai a clear shot at both of them for most of their run in. I’m sending the numbers for their approach corridor now.

  Bitka, Wu, we’re going to revector the Lead Division to run right up that corridor, and as soon as we’re in the pipe and up to our intercept velocity I want you to poop out two missiles each right back up their expected course line. I don’t know how close those will be when they exit J space, or even if they’ll keep the same vector, but I’m willing to invest four of our missiles in maybe screwing them up right out of the gate.

  Rocky, you follow with your division, but give us some room, about a thousand klicks.

  You said that was the good news, sir, Sadie Rockaway said. Is there some bad news?

  Bonaventure paused for a moment before answering.

  Well, yes. First thing is they’re far enough away, all the way across the star system, there’s a fifteen-minute lag from the time what we’re looking at happens to when we see it here. So they could alter their vector, accelerate for fifteen minutes, and then jump, and they’d be on top of us before we saw them light off their thrusters.

  Second thing is, there aren’t four cruisers in their strike package. We knew they’d get reinforcements, but it looks like there are twelve cruiser-sized thermal signatures, and a couple great big ships accompanying them. I think they’re bringing their transports along this time.

  Oh my God!

  That was someone else whose voice he didn’t recognize, one of Rockaway’s skippers. Twelve cruisers against six beat-up destroyers. Sam felt his face flush and he felt slightly dizzy.

  An hour later, most of it spent under acceleration, the Lead Division’s orbital vector had been bent to line up with the incoming uBakai fleet and in the process had increased to fifteen kilometers per second. Now the three boats accelerated under a continuous one gee. All acceleration had been by their direct fusion drives. Detection was not a problem and each boat had to keep its power ring at full charge as long as possible. After another twenty minutes Bonaventure ordered them to cut their drives and coast at a respectable twenty-seven kilometers per second. Puebla and Petersburg then each fired two missiles.

  “Sir, the missiles we launched two days ago, the ones out looking for those uBakai Trojan horses, just went active,” Chief Burns reported.

  “Make sure Cha-cha knows,” Sam ordered. Then he loaded the missile telemetry and the live feed from the high sensor platform onto his own display and watched the first two missiles engage and hit the two uBakai ships. Twenty seconds later the second pair of missiles hit the wrecks again, but the high sensor platform made it clear both uBakai ships had been gutted the first time.

  Poor bastards, Sam thought. There’d be survivors in some of the compartments of those ships, or in escape capsules, but nobody was coming to save them. Well, actually their odds weren’t that bad, come to think of it. Their course would make a close pass-by to K’tok in a day or so, and once those twelve uBakai cruisers coming in dealt with Puebla and the other destroyers—which was the odds-on favorite outcome—they could go looking for survivors of their other cruisers.

  “Won’t the uBakai call off the attacks?” Gambara asked. “They’ll know their ships are dead when they stop reporting,”

  “They’ll know in about fifteen minutes,” Sam answered. “Or as soon as they emerge from J-space, at which point it will be too late. The sword of light-speed delay cuts both ways.”

  Privately, he wished they would call off the attack. In a few more days their own two cruisers would be here. That would make the odds a little better. He didn’t think the uBakai would blink, though, even if they knew they’d lost their big surprise. Whoever was running this show didn’t seem to care much about losses. He just kept throwing ships at them, and then more ships.

  “Multiple contacts!” Burns shouted.

  Sam turned his display to long range and saw the cluster of contacts, straight ahead. The uBakai hadn’t changed their vector! They were coming out right where Bonaventure wanted them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  13 January 2134

  (minutes later) (twenty-third day in K’tok orbit)

  “Fifteen distinct contacts,” Burns said, his voice now under control. “Bearing forty-seven degrees relative, angle on the bow five degrees, range twenty-four thousand seven hundred, closing at forty-seven klicks a second.”

  Sam punched the general quarters alarm, although he imagined that every key position was already manned. Every bridge position was.

  “Where are our missiles?”

  “Seventeen thousand from target and closing,” Burns answered. “They will hit the detonation envelope in two hundred seconds.”

  “Incoming text from Cha-cha, sir,” Chief Gambara said, her voice tense. “Text reads, ‘Launch sunflowers at mark plus twenty seconds . . . Mark.’”

  Sam started his countdown timer.

  “Captain, Sunflower One is hot,” Filipenko reported. “Sunflower Two is in the ready rack.”

  “Very well, fire when the time expires. Then follow with a second sunflower and switch to standard Block Fours, four missiles in succession as fast as we can load them. Then check firing.”

  “Two sunflowers followed by Four Block fours. Aye aye, sir. “

  Sam’s commlink vibrated and he heard the ID tag for Larry Goldjune.

  Captain, all battle stations are manned and ready.

  “Thank you, Mister Goldjune.”

  Sam cut the connection and then felt the shudder as Puebla fired its first sunflower. He looked at his hand and was surprised it did not tremble. He felt calm, almost detached, but his mind was fully engaged. He worked through the numbers of the closing problem in his head and then turned to Gambara.

  “Give me all-boat.”

  When she gave him the thumbs up he took a breath and then started.

  “All hands, this is the captain. You just felt us firing our first sunflower and you’ll feel more pretty soon. Here’s the situation.

  “The uBakai decided to emerge from J-space further from K’tok than they have before and at a lower velocity, so they’d have an hour or so of gliding in to get ready. The commodore figured out what they were up to, and he has us on a reciprocal course. We’re about a quarter as far away from them as they planned and are closing two and a half times as fast as they anticipated, so there are probably some pretty excited leatherheads over there right now.

  “We have four birds out there in the lead and we’re coming up on the two-minute mark before they get to detonation range. We’re not counting on a lot from them, but we might get lucky.

  “We’re about three to five minutes from our first sunflowers being in range of their missiles. It depends on when they actually fire them, which they haven’t done yet. They may still be trying to man their battle stations—”

  “New contacts,” Burns called from Tac Two. “Small, hot, and lots of them, accelerating from the bandits.”

  Finally the uBakai were reacting. Sam felt the shudder as their second Block Four left the coil gun. With Petersburg firing as well, that made four sunflowers and Four Block fours on the way. He muted the all-boat channel.

  “Lieutenant Filipenko, iris valves open and guns up. Chief Burns, what’s the count?”

  “It’s a raggedy-ass salvo, sir. Some of their ships are still firing, but I’ve got forty-three birds so far.”

  Forty-three and more coming! That meant at least two salvo cruisers, possibly more. He triggered all-boat again.

  “Okay, the uBakai are awake: over forty missiles coming our way. Things are going to get pretty busy up here, and everything will happen v
ery fast, but we all knew this was coming. This is what we planned for, and what we trained for.

  “I know two things for certain. First, we’re all going to die some day and no power in the universe can prevent that. But second, no power in the universe says we have to die today.

  “So everyone do your jobs and remember the wrecks still orbiting K’tok. This is where we even the score. I’ll talk to you again in about ten minutes. Good luck to us all. Captain out.”

  Yeah, he thought, I’ll talk to you in ten minutes if we’re still alive. At this closing velocity, ten minutes would decide everything.

  Sam cut the connection and looked at the swarm of tiny luminous dots on his display gaining clarity as the active sensors formed a better picture of their sizes and trajectories. He was again surprised at how calm he felt—alert, concentrated, but without any sensation of anxiety.

  “Captain, they’ve got so many point defense lasers out there, our four initial missiles aren’t going to do anything,” Marina Filipenko said from the seat to his right. “We’re about one minute from our missiles being in detonation range, so the uBakai will open up on them any second. Let me fire one of them now, use the heat flare and radiation to shield the others until maybe they can get in closer.”

  “Do it,” Sam ordered. He saw the flare on his display instantly. The signatures of the uBakai cruisers blurred and the three other leading block four missiles disappeared into the cloud.

  “Incoming text from Commodore Bonaventure,” Gambara said. “‘Interogatory what happened.’”

  “Send: Tac Boss had brilliant idea will explain later.”

  If there is a later.

  “What else, Filipenko? What else have you been thinking but were too shy to say?”

  She threw him a quick look, eyes wide with surprise.

  “Well . . . I think we should let our first pair of sunflowers coast past the firing point and take out their first wave of missiles with our second pair. Set the first pair to auto-engage but after a time delay.”

  “Why?”

  “So when they fire, they’ll be further along and their debris cloud will get us that much closer before the uBakai can engage.”

  “Gambara, comm the commodore and patch him through to Filipenko. Marina, you’ve got about twenty seconds to sell your idea.”

  As Filipenko frantically explained her idea to the commodore, Sam saw the flare of one of their leading missiles firing after passing through the debris cloud. The uBakai must have taken out the other two with lasers before they detonated, but one made it.

  “That had to hit somebody,” Burns said. “Coming up on the firing threshold for the first sunflowers.”

  “Filipenko?” Sam asked. She held up one finger for a moment, clearly listening to her commlink, and then grinned and nodded.

  “Aye aye, Commodore!” She began typing new instructions into her workstation and spoke to Sam without taking her eyes from her display. “We’re going to try it.”

  We have to go for every edge we can find, Sam thought. There are too many of them to play it safe. There is no safe.

  Things began happening very quickly. The second pair of sunflowers fired, blanking everyone’s sensors, which was the signal for all three lead boats to go to full acceleration with both drives. Rockaway’s Trailing Division just used its fusion thrusters, which meant the other three started pulling ahead, adding an extra five meters per second per second to their velocities. For thirty seconds all conversation stopped as every crewperson on all three lead boats was forced back into their acceleration racks with a force of two gees. Then the MPD thrusters cut out to save juice for the lasers, but the direct fusion drives maintained a steady one and a half gee acceleration.

  “Guns up, small targets. Coil gun, commence firing block fours, cyclic rate,” Sam ordered.

  “Small targets, breaking through debris field!” Burns reported, and then the bridge became a bedlam of voices.

  “ATITEP engaging. That’s a kill!”

  “Who’s got the one at three thirty?

  “Lead sunflowers fired, plowing the road.”

  “Cha-cha’s been hit!”

  “Penetrating first debris field,” Sam added to the cacophony. “Switch ATITEP to large target profile.”

  “There’s a cruiser! Burn him!”

  Sam saw a larger image take shape on his display, emerging from the background clutter and heat, and then it grew suddenly bright—a heat spike from some sort of explosion.

  “Hit!

  “Another hit. Another! Take that, you sons of bitches!”

  “Incoming laser fire. Mount five is off-line.”

  “Hit on Petersburg. Lost her tag!”

  The tactical display on his workstation, even at one more zoom of resolution, made little sense. There were too many nuclear weapons detonating in too small a space, too many metallic objects reflecting radar beams, too much electromagnetic noise. Puebla’s deadly lasers blowing holes in uBakai ships, as the range dropped to less than four thousand kilometers, showed as bright thin lines with targeting tags floating nearby, but none of the enemy laser shots, or those from the other friendly boats, showed. Even without them, it was hard for Sam to imagine any boat or ship passing through this region of fire and surviving unscathed. As he watched, one of the uBakai ships flared and then became two smaller targets, drifting slowly apart.

  “We cut that bastard in two!” someone yelled.

  Puebla lurched hard to the side and the bridge suddenly went dark. He felt his heart race and panic close his throat, choking off his breath. Someone screamed.

  This is it! Sam thought. This is how I die, terrified and in the dark.

  Then the dim blue emergency lighting came on and the tactical displays began rebooting. Sam looked around at the men and women on the bridge, some trying to regain their composure and reassume their battle mask of blank unemotional concentration which had vanished in the darkness, others already focused on their work stations. Sam took a deep, shuddering breath and triggered his commlink.

  “Goldjune, have you still got power in aux?”

  Yes, sir. We have control. You want to take it back?

  “Not ready yet. Carry on for now. Continue engaging the enemy,” Sam said and cut the commlink. He scanned the bridge. “Everyone, get your stations up and running. What’s the damage?”

  “Sir, multiple small laser hits and one major hit aft of frame seventy,” the engineering petty officer at the boat status chair said. “Aft power coil is dead. MatCon Alpha-Zulu: we’re leaking lots of hydrogen and atmosphere. Starboard missile room is MatCon Victor. PDL mounts three and five not responding. Active radar and HRVS optics down. Oh shit! We lost radiators two and three.”

  That was bad news. The boat had two emergency sodium heat sinks which could absorb some of the excess, but Sam would have to cut back to half power shortly or convert the stern half of the boat to glowing, molten metal.

  Sam looked at his tactical display as it came back online. Puebla’s marker stood clear in the center of it but everything around it was blurred and indistinct, reduced almost entirely to passive infrared detection in an environment choked with hot wreckage, accelerating ships, and cooling plasma.

  “Have we got a coil gun?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Sir we are passing the enemy squadron,” Burns reported. “Range one thousand one hundred, now opening. Look there! Three large contacts, bearing two-eight-four, angle on the bow one five six and dropping fast.”

  Sam pinged Goldjune.

  “Lieutenant, kill our thrust. Turn the boat one-eighty and give them one last Block Four missile. I think we’re about to pass their transports. Rake them with the lasers until they pass out of range and hit them with whatever block fours you can. You’ve got about a minute to get it off before they’re down the road and see you later. And get us a sensor probe out there with an active radar on it as soon as the Block Fours detonates.”

  Aye aye, sir.

&nb
sp; Sam drew another long breath. He heard the single klaxon for lateral acceleration and in moments the boat started rotating. Most of the bridge stations were back up and running but he decided to let Goldjune run the boat, at least for the moment. With the two forces having passed in opposite directions, there was little they could do to each other until they had modified their vectors. For a few minutes Sam could take stock and find out the condition of his boat and the task group.

  “Trailing Division is engaging sir,” Chief Burns reported. “Can’t make out—damn! Somebody just blew up.”

  Sam saw the flare on his own screen, even through the clutter of hot wreckage and detonating nuclear warheads.

  “Gambara, make to pennant: We are operational. Advise next maneuver. Signed Bitka.

  “Engineering, get me as detailed a damage report as you can manage. Weapons, power, maneuvering, and life support, in that order. Somebody get me a crew casualty count.

  “Burns, who’s still alive out there? Can you tell?”

  “Cha-Cha, and us, and a shitload of leatherheads, plus whoeveer’s still alive from the Trailing Division.Can’t tell yet. Petersburg is gone. At least one of the leatherheads is too.”

  “Ought to be,” Sam said. “Somebody cut him in half.”

  “Captain,” Gambara broke in, “Cha-cha text signals to us and Vimy Ridge: Commodore Bonaventure killed in action. Interrogatory who in command. Signed, Chen, Lieutenant Commander.”

  Shit! Bonaventure dead?

  “Trailing Division’s emerging from the clutter, sir,” Burns reported. “I’ve got transponder tags for Vimy Ridge and Canal du Nord. Looks like Toro didn’t make it.”

  “Gambara, give me a tight beam to Commander Rockaway on Vimy Ridge.”

  When she nodded he opened the channel.

  That you, Bitka?

  “Affirmative, ma’am. Looks like you’re in charge. I’m down two radiators, so I can’t make much acceleration, but I’ve got power, atmosphere, and at least some weapons. What shape are you in?”