A Sword Into Darkness

by Mays, Thomas A.

  Immense maneuvering thrusters flared out in cerulean brilliance, kicking the nose of the destroyer down toward the roiling, angry surface of the Deltan drive-star. Then—checking that swing—the main drive erupted in light, thrusting the magnificent ship just to one side of their enemy, for a closest-point-of-approach of a mere 1000 km.

  Nathan grunted and tried to breathe as the air was forced from his lungs. He felt the gel pump to a higher pressure around him, focused on his extremities, much as a fighter pilot’s g-suit would do. Unfelt in the discomfort of the sudden fifteen-g acceleration, a cocktail of osmotic stimulants and anti-nausea drugs were injected into him. His vision cleared as his heart and diaphragm pumped harder, forcing the blood and oxygen back into his brain.

  Trained pilots and astronauts could withstand up to nine gravities of acceleration in a sitting position, and almost twice that lying down and augmented by modern bio-engineered support systems. Nathan and his crew were not trained to as great a degree, but they would make do. They had no other choice.

  Of course, though 15 g’s was quite high, it was nowhere near what the ship’s composite frame could handle. The hull groaned and popped as its structure was put to the test, but it was only the cracking of prize-fighter’s knuckles as he entered the fray. The Sword of Liberty welcomed the torturous thrust and begged for more, though more would surely render her crew unconscious or dead.

  The twenty missiles, left far behind her, were under no such restrictions. They had no crew to black out, only a mission to complete. After a moment’s dormancy to allow the ship to clear, each missile’s sacrificial capacitor bank broke down into a storm of free electrons, channeled into their enhanced photon drives. The missiles streaked away from one another at 450 meters per second squared, five heading for the Junkyard in front of them at five wildly divergent angles of attack, and the other fifteen headed in the opposite direction for the three ships clustered on the opposite side of the drive.

  The missiles directed at the Junkyard passed the destroyer which had borne them and closed rapidly with their quarry. The jumbled, misshapen alien vessel—reacting to this new activity—fired a pair of beams: one, the silvery beam used by the Control ship to “dust” the Promise and their sub-probes; the other, the laser utilized before with such devastating effect.

  It would not be enough.

  The laser struck missile simply vanished, shredded into plasma and glowing, high velocity shrapnel. The silvery beam, slowly eating away at the targeted missile’s body, forced the weapon’s AI to react. It transmitted a warning to its fellow missiles and the Sword of Liberty, then deployed its warheads early while it was still intact.

  The other three missiles boosted their forward acceleration to a hundred gravities, and began maneuvering wildly across the firmament even as they closed more rapidly. Their motion was lost a fraction of a second later, though, as the six warheads from the harried missile exploded, silhouetting its brethren for a brief instant before dazzling its attacker with multiple beams of coherent x-rays.

  The lasing warheads were much too far away to do any real damage, but they did succeed in momentarily blinding the alien ship to what approached. Or, at least, that was the effect as the other three missiles finished closing, unperturbed.

  The three unseen shapes suddenly blossomed into eighteen smaller objects, each twisting down in rapidly shifting corkscrews. In a coordinated dance of fire, light, and motion, the individual warheads exploded in sequence. Beams of invisible radiance stabbed into the Junkyard, vaporizing sections of hull and structure. Geysers of plasma erupted from the ship, blowing out chasms of destruction, deep into the vessel. For all its immensity, the alien vessel seemed relatively weak in construction.

  The laser warheads fired like the steps of spiral staircase, each one closer than the last. After twelve such successively closer and harsher beams, the remaining six warheads were near enough to switch modes. Two warheads exploded in maximal fusion fire immediately above the mangled surface of the Junkyard, eating deeper in and joining the canyons of carnage together into a glowing, bowl-like depression. The remaining four warheads, driving in at hypervelocity and max acceleration, pierced this softened, half-melted surface, each attempting to drive further and further into the 45 km bulk of the alien ship.

  Straining under the oppressive weight of flank acceleration, Nathan could not cheer as the Junkyard flashed into fire and light, but he desperately wanted to. The last four warheads of the salvo exploded almost simultaneously, and every bit of their energy was expended into the structure of the alien vessel. The ship ballooned up with light and broke apart into kilometers long chunks and smaller, skyscraper-sized pieces of burning, out-gassing debris. If it had appeared unformed and purposeless before to their human eyes, its form had been highly functional art compared to what it was now.

  Nathan, unable to really move or speak under this level of acceleration, twitched his fingers in the appropriate brevity pattern, sending a text command to Weston on the Helm. Responding to the order, Weston cut the acceleration and slewed the ship bow-on toward the Junkyard’s expanding debris field.

  Nathan surged upward in response to the sudden freefall, restrained by his seat’s straps and the confining gel. His heart raced wildly and his eyes felt as if they were about to pop from his head. It took a conscious effort to slow and shallow out his rapid, gulping breaths. Counter-meds pumped into his bloodstream, slowing his heart to a calmer rate and bringing his blood pressure back to a normal range. He tried moving tentatively, fighting the confinement of the gel.

  His movements were sluggish, and every muscle and joint ached in protest, but nothing more adverse seemed to have occurred. He keyed his mike. “XO, Captain, SITREP.”

  There was a pause, and then Wright responded, his voice hoarse. “Captain, XO, the Junkyard appears to be demolished, sir. The energy sources we registered with our recon probe before are either gone or they’re lost in the haze from the warhead explosions. We aren’t picking up any purposeful signals or activity among the major pieces of debris, and we are un-attacked at the moment.”

  “That’s always nice,” Edwards said, breaking into the net.

  “I’m rather fond of that myself, COB,” Nathan answered back, smiling. “How’s the crew, XO?”

  “Strong vitals on all, sir, but it looks like Sarmiento up in Railgun control and Blake back in Main Propulsion may have been rendered unconscious. WEPS and CHENG are both trying to wake them verbally. The general net is a litany of groans and complaints, if you want to listen in.”

  Nathan frowned. “No thanks. I’m sure they’re just expressing what I feel. On Blake and Sarmiento, let me know if they can’t be woken and I’ll authorize you to shock them or give them an extra dose of ‘happy-wakey’. I don’t want anybody out of their pod, though, unless it’s a last resort.”

  “Roger that, Captain.”

  Nathan shifted his attention back to the debris field. The globe of demolished ruins began to flatten out into an irregular, concave ellipsoid, giving some measure of shape and definition to the unknown fields holding the Deltan ships in position around the drive’s equator. Some pieces of the Junkyard had achieved escape velocity and now sailed out into the infinite night. Others had been thrown down below the ship’s orbit and burned away in the upper reaches of the drive-star’s roiling plasma.

  “TAO, Captain,” Nathan said into his mike, “How are we for collision avoidance? Do we need to haul out to the north or south of the orbital band, or can we stay in this plane? We’re going to need to be close in to the drive at the equator if we’re going to only engage one ship at a time.”

  “Looking, sir. Wait one,” Simmons said. It was a quiet minute until Simmons responded. “Sir, if we close to within 300 km of the drive and stay in this plane, we’ll avoid most of the debris. The helm may need to dodge a few big chunks, and I may need to shoot some away, but we can get through from this orbit. In approximately 10 minutes, I can have us in position to engage the Cat
hedral.”

  Nathan nodded to himself. “Very well, pass your recommended course to the helm and execute.”

  The ship accelerated again, this time at a more reasonable two g’s. After experiencing seven and a half times as much, it felt almost pleasurable—just a subtle sensation of weight on their chests.

  Edwards keyed in on a private chat channel, his voice only slightly strained. “Hey, Skipper. What are the odds we’re going to find three expanding debris clouds like this one when we cross that fake horizon?”

  Nathan shook his head. “I’m not laying any. The Junkyard was the first target reached. The salvoes for the other three ships wouldn’t have hit until after this strike was complete, so chances are if they have any sort of command and control channel to the other side of the drive-star, they weren’t that surprised by what our missiles could do. And I’ll be amazed if the Control Ship proves as easy to take down as the Junkyard was.”

  “Well, I’m going to do a little positive thinking along those lines. Maybe I can skew fate our way if I wish for it hard enough.”

  Nathan smiled. “That ever work for you?”

  “Not since I was eight years old.” Edwards chuckled roughly.

  The private channel closed, and Nathan turned his attention back to his three-dimensional battlespace VR. The Junkyard’s debris tracks all had false color velocity and acceleration leaders overlaid upon them, with ghostly traces showing where the pieces would be at their closest point of approach. It was a mess, but the layout of the display clearly pointed out the hard spots. The helm’s path input showed the course Weston threaded through the swarm of debris, and it appeared as if his maneuvers would neatly avoid any damaging collisions. Nathan grunted his approval and moved on from that immediate problem to the tactical one that still lay before him.

  Three ships to go, and to take them one at a time, the Sword of Liberty would have to stay as close to the “deck” as possible, that deck in this case being the fiery surface of the drive. That would create a horizon they could peek around, and which they could interpose should they need to beat a hasty retreat. However, it would also further expose them to the heat and radiation pouring out from the miniature sun, cripple their radiator efficiency, not to mention cutting the tactical reaction time even more, and, unfortunately, closing off an entire direction to free maneuver.

  In this case, the goods slightly edged out the bads, but too narrowly for Nathan’s liking. If he could distract the Cathedral when they made their emergence, though, the odds might improve a great deal.

  He keyed his mike. “TAO, Captain, I want to flush another 10 missiles. We know the general location of the Cathedral, right?”

  Simmons sounded uncertain. “Yes sir, assuming they haven’t shifted their orbit.”

  “We’ll have to chance it. I don’t want them watching for us at the equator. Send two flights of five Excaliburs each to the north. Have them cut in along two different longitudinal paths to intercept the Cathedral, and along a higher arc than the one we’re making.”

  “Captain, there’s a hell of a strong magnetic field at the north pole, opposite the thrust axis. I can’t get the birds too close to it without frying their electronics.”

  “Understood. Do the best you can. I just don’t want them looking to the east when we pop up. Time the intercept so the warheads are lasing when we come into visual range.”

  “Aye aye, sir. And what if we’ve lucked out and the Cathedral’s already gone?”

  Nathan smiled to himself. “Then, by all means, program our bloodthirsty little birds to go for the Control Ship. It’s the next one on my target list anyway.”

  “Yes, sir!” Simmons dropped out of the connection to pass Nathan’s orders on to his watchstanders in CIC.

  Nathan, in turn, looked at his overall status. Blake and Sarmiento appeared to be awake, and the railgun and lasers fired intermittently, clearing the way in front of them from pieces too small for Weston to maneuver around. It seemed to be working. Their small, impossible endeavor might actually have a chance.

  Nathan allowed hope to rise in his heart. Scrolling through the crew status icons, he lingered over Kris’s, burning brightly green. For a moment, he nearly keyed her icon to open a private channel, to exchange a small measure of the optimism and pride he felt with the woman he loved, but he pulled back at the last. There was still too much to be done for now. Besides she knew how he felt.

  And there would always be time to tell her afterward.

  “Launching polar salvoes, Captain,” Simmons said, breaking into his reverie.

  “Very well,” Nathan responded. Again, unheard and unfelt, ten missiles launched from out of the port and starboard cells. In a pair of phalanxes, the missiles streaked away to disappear past the arcing, flaring horizon, each group going at diverging angles to the north.

  A private comm channel blinked in the corner of his vision. Nathan keyed it and Wright spoke in his ear. “Captain, radiator loading is at 87% and climbing, but we’re operating at a lower capacity than before. We just aren’t shedding the heat.”

  Nathan took a look at the radiator’s status bar, confirming the XO’s warning. “Roger that, Christopher. This was to be expected for this phase of the attack. Once we get a visual on the Cathedral, we can break for a higher orbit and get away from the drive’s heat.”

  “Yes, sir, but when that happens, we’ll be producing a lot more of our own heat as well. We won’t be back to a balanced discharge rate until we get out in the black and shut down some of the hotter systems. We have to cool.”

  Nathan grimaced. “We can’t, not yet. Listen, your warning is duly noted, but we do have additional radiator capacity, and if worse comes to worse, we can use the internal heat sinks.”

  “That’s going to cut things pretty tight, Nathan.”

  “Hey, we’re out here beyond the ass end of the solar system, by ourselves, in a still-technically-stolen ship, fighting implacable, mysterious aliens nobody even really believed in till a month or so before we left. Things have been cut tight for a long damn time.”

  Wright paused, then answered, “Yes, sir. Roger that. I’ll keep an eye on it.”

  “Thanks, Christopher.” The private channel icon closed and Wright was gone. Nathan focused again upon the slowly rolling sphere of plasma that filled the lower half of his view. It would be any moment now … .

  There.

  Explosions began to ripple across the horizon to the north of the equator. Whatever the beams they spawned were aimed at was still hidden by the fiery limn of the drive. Nathan keyed his mike back into the tactical net. “Heads up, people. Our distractions are underway. The Cathedral should be rolling into view any moment. Let’s go ahead and launch a few more while we’re still hidden. TAO, designate four more salvoes, two north, two south, five missiles each, targeting the Control Ship and the Polyp. Let’s keep them involved in their own affairs while we’re finishing off the Cathedral.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” Simmons said.

  “All right. Helm, as soon as we come into view, I want to start evasive maneuvers. They aren’t going to be as effective this close in, but every little bit will help. And be prepared to roll the hull if we get targeted by lasers. We’ll do better if we don’t allow them to concentrate energy in any one spot.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Weston answered. As he did so, 20 missile icons sprang forth from their ship and disappeared around the drive to the north and the south.

  Explosions continued to light up the horizon, each one higher up and closer in, as the warheads maneuvered closer to their objective. Now that the detonations were well above the blazing horizon, though, Nathan could see that not all of them were the brilliant white eruptions of lasing fusion. Some of them exploded more dimly and haphazardly, ignited by counterfire from the alien ships.

  He frowned. “Shit.”

  Magnified by the Sword of Liberty’s sensors, the Cathedral rose into view. Her gothic arches and ornately carved, stone-like halls wer
e gouged and broken, venting fluids and bright gasses into the vacuum. It was not demolished as they had hoped, but it had not escaped unscathed either. As he watched, another set of warheads flashed into fusion brilliance, and their unseen x-ray lasers lanced deeply into the distant alien vessel.

  The Cathedral responded in kind, casting out beams of red light made visible from the gasses and vapors pouring from her hull. Nathan glanced over to see if they intended to take out any warheads, but he lost them as Weston began the maneuvers he had ordered.

  Fifteen gravities of acceleration again squeezed him down, but this time they were accompanied by violent jerks from side to side, back and forth. Anti-nausea meds and stimulants flooded his system, allowing Nathan to push the sheer physical torture to the back of his mind, and to still concentrate on the battle.

  His fingers jerked as much as they were able under the crushing thrust, sending coded texts to his crew. Four more missiles blasted out from the sides of the destroyer. Nathan did the count in his head. He only had 32 more, but it had been a worthwhile expense, both to cause the damage they had thus far achieved and to test their effectiveness against the Deltan ships’ defenses. Should they fail here, that data would be of paramount importance to the ships being built back home.

  Determined to give the missiles the best chance he could, but reluctant to expend any more of his dwindling supply, Nathan’s fingers twitched again, sending new commands out. Simmons and Weston received the order and took action. The violent jerks the hull underwent smoothed out somewhat and the Cathedral steadied up, directly ahead of them. The railgun locked on and went into continuous fire, sending shot after shot screaming through the narrowing void. The damage imparted by their kinetic and chemical energy might be no more than a nuisance to be endured by the immense ship, but he hoped it would be enough of a distraction that the missiles would have a greater effect.

  Now aware of the new threat just risen over the drive’s horizon, the Cathedral turned its wounded attention toward the Sword of Liberty. Twin beams of laser light flashed out from the ornate arches of the spherical alien ship. Slag erupted from the destroyer’s bow, her first wounds in the battle.