There wasn’t much of a fight after that. It sounded to Sam as if, in all the confusion, the uBakai cruisers never realized there were orbital mines attacking them. Within another fifteen minutes two of the transports had been damaged and surrendered while the third one accelerated away.
By any standard it was a remarkable victory: two damaged destroyers had broken the ground invasion component. Two uBakai cruisers were destroyed, two transports and all their troops captured, and all at the cost of “only” one destroyer, already crippled and manned by a skeleton crew of volunteers.
Only.
What did the uBakai admiral think about that, Sam wondered? Well, one transport had escaped. Perhaps after the balance of their fleet crushed the remaining destroyers here, they would return to K’tok and swat USS Arleux. Even without the other transport, just removing the orbital bombardment munitions would probably be enough. But whatever the admiral’s plans for K’tok, he did not turn away from the destroyers.
The two hours had given Puebla’s crew time to assess their damage and put the least serious of it right. Casualties had been heavy: twelve dead including Lieutenant Carlos Sung and over half of his damage control parties from the auxiliary division—the A-gang. Chief Tanaka had taken over the survivors, and had gotten the worst atmosphere and fuel leaks under control. They’d also lost all three crewpeople from the starboard missile room. Seven more were seriously injured, several from low temperature frost burns when liquid hydrogen had poured into several work spaces. They’d lost a lot of reaction mass. Well, that would make them more nimble, he supposed.
The lull had also given time to receive the routine data dump from the newly arrived Earth task force and for the surviving boats to update their data nets. Much of it was admin chatter, but it included the latest round of mail from home.
“Crew has a lot of work to handle, sir,” Larry Goldjune had said when Sam pinged him about distributing it. “I’m not sure they need the distraction right now.”
“Maybe not, but I’ve got the feeling that for a lot of us—maybe all of us—this might be our last words from home. Distribute the mail, Mr. Goldjune.”
Almost immediately Sam’s own commlink vibrated. He slipped on a pair of viewer glasses and scanned the list of mail, and he was ready to blink them back into storage when one return address caught his eye. He opened the document.
Hey Sam Bitka!
As part of Dynamic Paradigms LLC’s “We Value Our Deployed Service Personnel” program, we are happy to inform you that your time in uniform will count as time and a quarter toward employment seniority and vesting in the RewardShareTM program. In addition, after reviewing your employment service and qualification folder, the Advancement Selection Panel has chosen you for transfer from the Line Management to Executive Service employment track, effective upon your return from service, and successful completion of your Doctor of Financial Management (DFM) degree.
Sam Bitka, I am delighted to be the first to welcome you to the executive family of Dynamic Paradigms LLC.
Nora Kawaguchi, Junior Vice President of Communications
Personnel Enhancement Department, Dynamic Paradigms LLC
“Huh,” Sam said.
“What’s that, sir?” Filipenko asked from the Tac One chair beside him.
He hesitated for a moment, looking at the letter, and then squinted to delete it.
“Just junk mail.”
“Tight beam from Vimy Ridge, voice for you, sir,” Kramer reported.
“Bitka here,” he said as soon as he opened the channel. “Are you up and running?”
It took a bit more fiddling than we figured, Sadie Rockaway answered through his commlink, but we’ve got the reactor back on line. Canal du Nord’s finished, though. Most of the stern of the boat’s just gone. It’s a wonder their reactor shut down instead of just torching them. We’re splitting the survivors up between Oaxaca and us. How are our friends back there doing?
“They’ve turned around and are starting to close the vector. They’re making about three quarters of a gee so if they keep it up I figure three more hours. They’re going to need reaction mass to get turned around again and headed back to K’tok, though, so I bet they’re looking at their fuel numbers and starting to think hard. If they’re coming up on bingo fuel, they’ll cut the acceleration and coast. That’d give us a couple more hours.”
We can start accelerating, she answered, but with Oaxaca down to one radiator they can’t make much more than two or three tenths of a gee. That’ll at least make the uBakai burn more reaction mass coming after us, and take them that much further from K’tok. What do you think?
“Beats the hell out of my plan. All I’ve come up with is find a hill, shoot the horses, and save the last bullet for yourself. What does Lieutenant Commander Chen on Oaxaca say?”
Not much. Between you and me, I think he’s overwhelmed by the situation. He’s following orders, but he’s having a hard time contributing to the solution. I’ll order him to conform to whatever we decide and I don’t think he’ll object; I think he just wants someone to tell him what to do.
“I hear that. So tell me what to do.”
Oaxaca is our lame duck. They’ve got fifty-six survivors from Petersburg and Canal du Nord onboard as well. I’m going to have them start accelerating now. You and I will stick around here for a while, see what happens.
“Okay.”
We can catch up with Oaxaca later.
“Sure.”
She didn’t say anything for a while.
You know, if it makes sense to.
“I understand.”
Three-Twenty-One has experienced a radiator failure. Two-Ninety has a reactor shutdown,” the asset chief reported to Admiral e-Lapeela and the rest of his staff. “Both are falling out of formation.”
e-Lapeela turned from the sensor display and took several quick steps away, then stood studying the smart wall which showed the star display forward. Nuvaash and the other members of the staff exchanged apprehensive glances.
“All ships terminate acceleration,” e-Lapeela said at last, and Nuvaash felt a surge of hope. Perhaps the admiral had come to his senses and would turn back to K’tok.
“We will coast while the two damaged ships conduct repairs. The fleet must remain concentrated. Speaker For The Enemy, has the Human fleet altered its status?”
“No, Admiral,” Nuvaash said, and he sighed. “One continues to accelerate away at low energy. The other two coast.”
“The two cover the retreat of the damaged ship,” e-Lapeela said. “They will fight to protect it.”
Nuvaash wondered why they would do so, given the admiral’s previous conviction that Human morale could not withstand the sort of losses they had already inflicted on them, but he did not ask that question. Instead he turned to the Master of the Lance, which Humans called the Tactical Boss.
“How long to overtake them at our current speed?”
The Lance spoke directly to the admiral instead of to Nuvaash.
“Two and one half hours.”
e-Lapeela nodded.
“How are we to deal with the new Human tactics? There is no question of our victory, but we must also minimize damage to our forces.”
Nuvaash exchanged a look with the Speaker for the Future, but the Lance spoke.
“Admiral, the Human missile-killing missiles can engage and destroy up to thirty missile-sized targets at a time. They are clearly adapted to deal with our salvo cruisers, although we received no report that they were even aware of that class of ships.”
At that he paused and looked down but glanced in the direction of Nuvaash, the Speaker for the Enemy, his meaning clear.
What a low creature, Nuvaash thought. What low creatures surround me. Only the Lance had a first-rate mind, but he had no character. Asset had character, but a head only for lists and sums. Speaker for the Future had neither.
“Our mistake was delivering dense salvos of missiles,” Lance continued, “which maxi
mized the effectiveness of their tactics. I propose we modify the missiles in our lead cruisers to engage small targets—the targeting parameters are easy to adjust. We will launch these singly, well in advance, and then fire them one at a time, taking out the enemy missiles they have launched and also providing sensor cover for the main missile salvo which follows.
“But our main anti-ship salvo must not come in a single wave. It must be staggered, many waves, each of only four missiles. As they emerge from the interference, the Humans must either expend one of their remaining missile killers to take out those four, or attempt to do so with their point-defense lasers.
“With the waves following in quick succession, and any actual detonations providing an additional layer of sensor interference, the computer model predicts over an eighty percent chance of success by the third wave.”
e-Lapeela nodded, his expression grim. “Yes. Make the modifications to the missiles in the lead cruisers. Brief the ship captains on the tactics. Rest the tactical crews while engineering continues repair work. If the enemy does not accelerate, we will be within thirty thousand kilometers of them in one hour. Then we will call the tactical crews to their stations and accelerate with every ship capable of doing so. We will close the gap and execute our attack plan. Triumph or perish!”
CHAPTER FORTY
13 January 2134
(thirty minutes later) (twenty-third day in K’tok orbit)
The range between the uBakai and Puebla had dropped to slightly under forty thousand kilometers when Sam ordered the boat to Readiness Condition Two, which enabled them to rotate half the crew at a time for a meal, sanitary break, and a little private time. Sam turned the boat over to Larry Goldjune in the auxiliary bridge and went back to the wardroom, now serving as the boat’s medical recovery area, to check on the wounded. He talked with each of the seven, ending with Chief Joyce Menzies, both of whose hands were encased in thick protective mittens with tubes connected to an autodoc unit.
“What happened to you, Chief?”
Menzies held her hands up. “Liquid hydrogen, sir. Tried to open a frozen exhaust duct manually. Fucked me up pretty good.”
“You’re still going to be able to play in your band, though, right?”
“Unless they mess up the reconstructive surgery I’ll be okay for the stuff we play. Tamblinson says I gotta stay hooked up to this gizmo or I’ll lose some mobility. That’d make the third movement in Prokofiev’s Seventh Piano Sonata pretty tough. Course, it always was, but I was finally getting the hang of the crisse de calice thing.”
“I didn’t know that was your kind of music.”
“It’s all my kind of music, sir. Well, maybe not Gregorian chants or that Tuvan throat singing stuff. And I’m not big on hillbilly music, neither, ‘less you count zydeco.” After she said this she looked away and sighed.
“We’re going to have another fight, aren’t we?”
“Looks that way.”
She turned and faced him. “You gotta get Tamblinson to unplug me, sir. Let me head back up to my missile room. I gotta be with my monkies.”
Sam looked and he was surprised to see a tears detach from the corner of her eyes and float lightly away.
“But you said it’ll mess your hands up. And besides, what can you do with them all wrapped up, anyway?”
“I can tell them what to do next, be there with them. I mean, what’s a chief supposed to do if not that? Let me worry about my hands.”
She stopped and rubbed her eyes awkwardly with her mittens.
“Sir, everybody took losses, but nobody’s had it worse than Weapons Division. We started with eight people. Jules—I mean Lieutenant Washington—she got killed in that first attack.”
For a moment Sam had a flash of memory, seven grey body bags floating in this same compartment. He blinked and the ghostly image disappeared.
“Chief Burns got moved up to Bull Tac,” Menzies went on, “and we had three of my people killed when they took out the starboard missile room. There’s only Joe Guerrero—a Machinist Third—and Mariner Cheri Wilcox left up there in the port missile room. Without me, that’s your whole fuckin’ Weapons Division, sir!”
She paused and wiped her eyes again, and Sam had to stop himself from taking her in his arms and holding her. But he did stop himself. She wasn’t a little girl; she was a chief petty officer with a great big heart.
“You’re right, we need you up there, Chief. You want me to have Rose Hennessey send you one of her techs to help? Maybe another mariner/striker, too?”
She shook her head. “We’ve only got six missiles left. We can handle it, sir. Ms Hennessey is shorthanded too. Sorry I got all girly on you there. Can you unplug me from the autodoc? And help unclip my tether? I can’t really manage it the way my hands are.”
Sam got her unplugged and unclipped just as his embedded commlink sounded the urgent tone.
“Captain here.”
Captain, it’s Chief Gambara. You better get back to the bridge quick. Something’s happening!
Sam yelled to Tamblinson to help Menzies aft to the missile room, and then he kicked through the hatch into the central communication trunk and pushed himself forward.
“I’m coming,” he told Gambara through his commlink. “Put the OOD on.”
That would be Ensign Lee back in the auxiliary bridge. Patching you through now.
“Lee, what’s happening?”
Sir, we’ve got jump emergence signatures, two of them, bearing two eight five degrees relative, angle on the bow seventeen degrees, range forty-eight thousand and closing fast.
“Punch general quarters!”
The gongs began sounding instantly. Sam had intended to return to the bridge, but the auxiliary bridge was right forward of the wardroom. He grabbed a handhold, arrested his forward motion, and scrambled through the hatch and into the slightly smaller version of the main bridge.
“Where’s Goldjune? I left him in command.”
“Sir, Lieutenant Goldjune ordered me to come aft and take the watch. I’m qualified.”
“Not the point, Barb, but that’ll wait.” Sam nodded to Chief Patel in the Tac One chair as he pulled himself into the command chair, turned on the tactical display, and began strapping himself into the harness. Lee had already moved to Maneuvering One.
“Barb, I’ve got the boat. Alert engineering: any minute now I may need as much thrust as they can give me without killing us.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Captain, I’ve got multiple drive flares ahead of us,” Patel said. “The uBakai are accelerating again!”
Sam checked the tactical display. The two new contacts were crossing at a slant, intersecting the uBakai course, and they were coming fast: forty kilometers a second at least. If they were more hostiles, Puebla was going to have a hard time outrunning them with two busted radiators.
“Bogeys are squawking, sir,” Patel said. “Hey . . . is that some kind of uBakai trick?”
No, it wasn’t a trick. The two new contacts had just lit up with identity tags: HMS Exeter and NNS Aradu, coming in from behind the uBakai, and fast. The uBakai had rotated to accelerate toward the new threat, turning their sterns to Puebla.
Captain, I’m getting a broad beam transmission from one of the two new contacts, Gambara told him by commlink. I think it’s from HMS Exeter.
“What’s the message?”
Not exactly a message, sir. It’s just . . . some weird music.
“Weird music? Pipe it back so I can hear.”
The auxiliary bridge suddenly filled with the sound of a lively, exuberant song.
A hunting we will go!
A hunting we will go!
Heigh ho the dairy-o,
A hunting we will go!
Sam laughed. “Okay. Helm, sound the acceleration warning, and then give me every ton of thrust you can wring out of this tub—MPDs too, everything. Who’s got their nuts in a vice now?”
In less than twenty minutes it was all over, and Nu
vaash had been well-positioned to watch the disaster unfold.
At first the admiral had turned the fleet to face the new enemy ships, but when the Human destroyers began to accelerate toward the fleet’s rear, e-Lapeela ordered three ships to turn back and face them. The complicated maneuver orders following one after another, combined with the different procedures of three different nationalities, had produced confusion at first, and then something which might look, to the unsympathetic eye, very much like panic.
e-Lapeela intended to take the three other ships with the flagship to face the new, more powerful threat. After less than a minute of acceleration, one of the uSokan cruisers experienced a massive power failure and not only stopped accelerating, it broadcast its surrender code. The uKa-Maat salvo cruiser—in concert with the flagship and the one other ship—had continued to accelerate for a minute or two after that but had then initiated jump and blinked away. Less than a minute later the one cruiser remaining with the flag, another uSokan ship, had done the same. The flagship, however, did not have a functioning jump drive, nor did it have any missiles remaining, and so was left to face the two Human cruisers by itself, with nothing but low-powered point-defense lasers. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, but e-Lapeela refused the ship captain’s request to broadcast the surrender code.
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