And it was far more difficult for her prey to evade an attack that was speed of light and line of sight.
"One minute."
A row of nine green lights on her command panel told Xera the rest of her Star was ready for launch. Jaga- tai and Jengiz, all traditional Wolf omnifighters, each equipped as its pilot saw fit. None was as large as her Scytha, but any one of them would give a lightly armed civilian DropShip pause.
And that was all she wanted—that pause.
Much as she enjoyed combat—testing herself against the mettle of her enemies—taking civilian targets left a bitter taste. She hoped the Wasat Planetary Militia was present and ready for battle. She wanted to meet whatever forces the Alliance of Senators they'd heard rumors of could field.
But if all that faced them were civilian technicians fighting to defend their homes, she hoped they'd surrender without firing a shot.
At seven seconds she cycled her reactor up to full bore, timing it so pressure hit the red line just as the bay doors opened. She released. The blast wall caught her thrust and an invisible hand shoved her deep into her couch as the 90-ton warbird leaped free of its nest.
Arcing out and ahead of the DropShips descending on the shipyard, she took her screen position. She checked, though she knew she didn't need to. and confirmed Ramos and his 70-ton Jagatai were firmly on her wing.
Once the Star of omnifighters was in position—a convex shield preceeding the grouped DropShips—they cut their engines. Physics would carry them to their objective, pulling slightly ahead of the decelerating DropShips as they descended on the Wasat Repair Yard.
Their silent and inexorable advance could be more unnerving than a fiery descent, but its true purpose was to conserve fuel. Anything they saved on the approach prolonged their ability to fight once battle was joined.
She keyed open her comm on the universal commerce channel.
"This is Star Colonel Xera of the Steel Wolves." she announced as though the shipyard keepers didn't know who confronted them. "We come to take what we will. With what will you defend yourselves?"
Silence.
Why? After generations, why did the Spheroids still turn combat into an unnecessary waste of lives by refusing to declare their forces? Was common sense truly such an elusive concept?
"Weapons lock!" Poulin, nearly opposite her in the screen. "Faded."
"Bearing?" she asked.
"Neg," the pilot answered. "Gone before my system could lock on."
"Weap—" said another voice. "Gone."
"Xera to task force," she began and stopped. Her first suspicion was of an enemy using a stealth technology their targeting computers didn't recognize. But it was equally possible something was interfering with their sensors.
"Continue on target but scan wide," she continued. "These could be false readings—ECM noise—or a new type of stealth tech."
Switching back to the universal commercial channel, she hailed the repair yard again, offering them a second chance to either surrender or declare their defending force. For a second time they remained silent.
"Star Colonel, we read very little energy coming from the repair facility," Sardin reported.
Xera cursed under her breath. Capturing a repair yard was of little use if the repair technicians were not there. They might have to reberth the omnifighters and go after the retreating "something large" if they were going to get the Stalin back to full efficiency.
"Weapons lock!" Ramos broke in on her thoughts. •"Bearing forty-seven mark oh five relative. Gone."
"Did you get an ID?" she demanded.
"Database says targeting system used by Shiva omnifighters," Ramos said. "Don't know that one."
Xera pulled up the stats for the unfamiliar craft on her own flight computer. Five tons lighter than her Scy- tha and marginally slower, but with weapons pod space to rival a 100-ton Kirghiz. A truly formidable design.
She almost whooped. Here was an enemy worth fighting.
"Sardin, Rome, Stansel," she addressed the three DropShip captains on the command channel. "Detailed scan immediate area. We are looking for S/nVa-class omnifighters, either stealth-equipped or lying doggo."
She glanced at her chronometer. Nearly a minute had passed since the first weapons lock. A lifetime in aerospace combat.
"Sardin," she asked. "Could your large bogie have been a carrier?"
"Aff," he answered. "But it could have been almost anything. It was at extreme range and we were reading through its exhaust trail."
"We are reading metal," Rome reported. "Not armor and not all in one place. A debris field, perhaps. Geometric center of field is thirty-nine mark three-five-two relative. Irregular shape extends eighteen to twenty- four degrees."
Xera balanced factors. Eight minutes until planned burn to close and engage an objective that was beginning to look deserted. An unknown number of hostile omnifighters using a debris field to the right of their objective for cover. And one large something, now out of sensor range, last seen moving away to their left, no doubt on a long ellipse to Wasat itself.
It wasn't a question of whether she checked out the debris field, or occupied the shipyard, or captured the fleeing stranger, but of how much of her force and in what order she committed to each task.
Whoever was hiding in the debris field was green— overanxious—or they wouldn't be spoiling their cover with needless sensor locks. Or they might be deliberately trying to pull the Steel Wolves attention away from the apparently deserted shipyard.
They were also a significantly smaller force, or they'd have made a more open challenge. Perhaps a single point—lance to use the Spheroid term. A squadron of six craft at most.
"Rome." He had found the hiding place, he deserved to lead its investigation. Besides, his Union-C was well able to take care of itself in a firefight. "Poulin, Smith, cover."
The point of omnifighters burned plasma. Breaking from the shield, they moved to cover the DropShip's route to the debris field. The remaining points adjusted their positions to keep the shield intact.
The DropShip itself rotated twenty degrees, then pumped a three-second burn on its main drive. Just enough to change its course. Then it rotated nearly one hundred and eighty degrees, lining its bow up with its direction of flight. This orientation would make stopping when it reached the debris field impossible, but it did bring its thickest armor and major weapons arrays to bear. Within the tight confines of the engagement area, the Leland was committed to plowing through whatever it found.
Xera nodded. She appreciated an aggressive response to challenge.
Dismissing the side sortie from her immediate concern. she focused on the main objective. At this range even her targeting system should be picking up heat and energy signatures among the three-dimensional web of gantries, pylons, grapples, and platforms. Sections of the frame were as cold as space, obviously long vacant, but the habitat section . . .
"Multiple weapons lock!" Sardin barked over the command channel. Xera was glad he had not made the panicked announcement over the general band. "Fourteen— No. Twenty—twenty-six weapons locks!"
"Where are they?" Xera demanded. "What have you got?"
Without waiting for his answer, she switched to the general channel.
"All units, come right forty degrees, down seven," she ordered. "All weapons hot. Not free until ordered."
"Scanners show scattered metal, no energy signatures," Sardin was saying in her ear as she spoke. "Computer confirms Ramos' reading. Targeting scanners consistent with Shiva heavy omnifighter."
Twenty-six heavy omnifighters?
The number made no sense. If the Wasat militia—or the Alliance of Senators they'd been warned about—had assets like that in place, there should have been a raging battle at the jump point. Not the leisurely plucking of cowed prey Varnoff reported.
Kicking her throttle to max, she jumped ahead—her Scytha shoving her into her couch with over four gravities of acceleration as it closed on the debris field. The L
eland and its escorts dropped behind her right wing and—
One. Three. Six weapons locks.
Cutting main thrust, Xera toggled her attitude thrust- ers, swinging the nose of her Scytha until it bore twenty degrees down from its former plane and thirty degrees left of its line of flight. When her sensors told her she was lined up directly on the nearest targeting array, she punched her drive and lunged straight for it.
Her own targeting computer showed refined metal in unfamiliar patterns, nothing it recognized. Overriding its search for a known threat, she slaved it to the sensors, targeting her large pulse lasers on the source of the incoming signal. Good tone.
She thumbed the trigger.
The lasers fired their deadly double tap with no satisfying report or visceral thud of recoil. Just her cockpit temperature spiking to parboil and the targeting luminescence of five destructive beams lashing out ahead of her.
A flash, and a soundless explosion as something blew apart. Goosing her nose thruster she presented the Scy- tha's armored underside to the spray of freshly minted meteors. The patter of metal fragments was the only response to her attack.
Eight weapons locks.
Kicking her attitude thrusters until the Scytha was pointing nearly ninety degrees up relative to its direction of travel, she punched the main thrust again, bearing down on the next nearest targeting array.
Again the good tone, again the five beam traces ghostly against the void, again the parching wave of heat, and again the impotent hail of gravel in response.
Five weapons locks.
Xera laughed, throwing her comm open so her command could hear her. She knew that would inspire questions, but she didn't bother to illuminate.
Skew flipping one hundred and eighty degrees, she fired the main thrusters. Not wasting fuel on high-gee she brought her Scytha slowly to zero relative to the "debris" field.
Four weapons locks. Three. One weapons lock. By the time she was motionless in space no targeting system was locked on her.
"Technical question," she broadcast over the main channel. "If a targeting system is active but not connected to a firing computer, what is its default program?"
The silence lasted only a few seconds before it was broken by a mixed chorus of laughter and curses.
"Lock on to the nearest moving object," someone answered at last.
"I am floating in the middle of what looks like a field of storage containers," Xera reported. "My thought is some of them have been fitted out with batteries and targeting systems that were on their way to wherever Shivas are built."
"Why?" asked Sardin.
"Our reputation." As terrorists she almost added. "They abandoned their shipyard to avoid capture and set this diversion to cover their escape."
"They didn't have time to evacuate and set the targeting systems," Rome pointed out. "Someone stayed behind."
"Aff," Xera agreed, calculating. Whoever had stayed needed to be piloting something big enough to deploy the targeting systems and fast enough to deactivate whatever broadcast markers the storage containers used to prevent collision.
"The shipyard isn't going anywhere," she said. "We are looking for a doggo DropShip."
"Probably gave themselves enough boost to be moving away, then rotated to cover residual heat in their main tubes to coast dark," Rome said. "Not in the direction of the retreat, not toward Wasat, not toward the debris—container—field."
"Plot a search pattern," Xera ordered. She had her own ideas on where to look, but Rome's thinking was close to her own. And he had shown the initiative.
Thirty minutes later the second point had refueled aboard the Carrier—with the thirsty Scytha depleted after the assault on the container field, hers had been first—and she had ordered the third in when hard contact with the Wasat DropShip was made.
Rome, of course. In part because his LelandCs sensors were finely honed and in part because he had taken the most promising third of the search area as his due for devising the plan.
As fortune would have it, Xera and Ramos were closest when the DropShip fired its main drives, charging toward the oncoming Union-C. A maneuver that made little sense until Xera realized the Wasati was forcing the Steel Wolf DropShip to reverse course, overcoming its forward inertia to pursue. With the other two DropShips out of position, occupied with their own areas of search, the apparently foolish charge offered the best chance of escape.
Except for the omnifighters.
"Wasati DropShip," Xera broadcast on the commercial channel as she and Ramos vectored to match course and speed. "Power down or be fired on."
The DropShip continued to power ahead, passing within a kilometer of the slowing Union-C. Xera blinked as its thrust curve climbed past four gravities.
That could only be an—
Her databoard came to life as the Wasati activated his transponder.
—Octopus.
"This is Anson Monteith, master of the Diligence," said a firm voice in her headphones. No trace of laboring under four gravities of pressure. "If you're familiar with the weapons load out on an Octopus, you might want to rethink that threat."
Xera grinned. This was the man behind the Shiva bluff.
"Anson Monteith, you are master of a civilian vessel registered as a rescue tug in the Republic of the Sphere," she said. "The Diligence was declawed long ago."
On the other hand, an Octopus, properly rearmed, would be an extremely useful addition to the Steel Wolves. To her Cluster.
On her situation screen she could see her Havik had come about on a vector that would bring it within weapons range of the Octopus. Though the smaller vessel would eventually pull away, it would be under the Carrier-class DropShip's large lasers and gauss rifles too long to hope to escape.
More to the point, her omnifighters were closing on the Diligence from all sides.
Firing on an unarmed vessel didn't appeal to her. But letting this potentially valuable prey escape appealed less.
"I am taking your vessel," she announced formally. "How will you defend your claim to it?"
The Octopus adjusted course slightly, a little toward her and the Carrier. The gripping arms of the Octopus deployed, unfolding from the hull to form an eight-pointed star.
"Arm wrestle."
Xera laughed.
"Anson Monteith," she said. "For that answer I am taking you as my bondsman."
"Slavery doesn't appeal to me," the Wasati said. "And my people deserve better than vacuum."
He expects us to space his crew?
"Star Colonel," Sardin's voice cut in on the command channel. "He's spiraling to ram. Twelve minutes to impact current vectors."
Xera cursed. The curving course of the Octopus had concealed its terminus. The Wasati wasn't trying to escape, he was trying to take as many Steel Wolves out as he could. He'd bypassed the Union because destroying the Carrier could strand the omnifighters. And he'd used humor to distract her from his death run.
"Anson Monteith, we are Steel Wolves," she said, mentally cursing Varnoff and his notions of psychological warfare. "We do not murder civilians.
"To be a bondsman is not slavery," she added. Explaining dezgra and bondsref did not seem wise— besides, neither applied to civilians. "A bondsman is more than a prisoner. It is a first step in earning honorable release or being adopted into the Steel Wolves. Right now your alternative to being a bondsman is having your DropShip destroyed and all your people killed."
"Will my crew be bondsmen with me?"
No change in the DropShip's course and speed.
Xera squelched the commercial channel.
"Target drive systems," Xera told her onmifighters. Then, on the command frequency: "Sardin, prepare to lay down a focused spread of missiles on its present course. As soon as we hit the drives, move against the curve of its spiral. Present bow-on to reduce aspect and follow up with large lasers."
With reasonable accuracy the Octopus would be a lifeless hulk before it was close enough for the Havik to use it
s autocannon.
"To comply, physics requires I begin full thrust in four minutes," Sardin answered.
"Understood."
She reopened the commercial channel.
"How many in your crew?" she asked.
"Twelve."
The normal crew of an Octopus was forty, but this was not a normal DropShip. It had no weapons, thus no gunners. And it had operated as a shipyard tug, which meant any specialized technicians needed for boarding or repairing vessels came aboard only when needed. If she reequipped this Diligence, all combat and boarding personnel would be Steel Wolves.
Could those Steel Wolves work with the bondsmen crew?
If she commanded it.
"Bargained well and done," she said over the commercial, command, and main channels. "The Diligence is isorla, the crew and officers my bondsmen. Stand down weapons."
The last was a gesture—all weapons systems could be brought to bear in seconds—but the Wasati had to see some tangible response.
For a long five count the tableau held. Then the Diligence abruptly cut its drives and tumbled end for end. Xera would have expected the arms to retract before any maneuvers, but realized they were constructed to take much more brutal stresses in stride. Once reversed, the DropShip's drives poured flame in a two-gravity braking burn that brought it to a relative halt a kilometer from the Havik.
The omnifighters formed up around it. In the time it took Xera to dock her Scytha and transfer to a shuttle for boarding her new DropShip, the Mule and Union-C had arrived. All three DropShip captains joined her for the inspection. DropShips were their area of expertise; decisions about the nature and extent of refits depended on their assessments.
Also, the Diligence would be crewed by people assigned from their vessels—as well as the Hibou and the Roofvogel. She doubted there would be Trials of Position for duty aboard the Octopus.
Anson Monteith was much younger than Xera had expected and—at over two meters tall—clearly not of aerospace stock, though his lithe build and otterlike grace in zero gravity bespoke a lifetime in space. His coarse black hair was oddly braided into long strands that were bound together into a clublike ponytail.
Wolf Hunters Page 29