Our gun batteries had been depleted to forty percent. I was shocked to see how much we’d used in such a short period of time. I closed the distance, careful not to overshoot it too far and rolled onto our side as we passed so Marny could use all three turrets. The cutter returned fire but its smaller blasters did very little against our military grade armor. Marny attempted an aft cannon shot as we passed and unfortunately missed.
I spun around and executed a combat burn to catch the fleeing ship. We’d wounded it, but not put it down. It was a devil’s choice. If we continued to chase it, we’d come within range of the frigate’s guns. If we let it go, we’d be back to stalemate. For me, stalemate put Nick and Jake at considerable risk.
"We’re going in," I said. We’d damaged the cutter’s engines and overtook it easily. Our batteries were empty and Marny was unable to do more than plink at it with a single shot.
Maximum combat battery regeneration, I said.
The cutter pulled away toward the frigate and I pushed the throttle handle to maximum. We’d lost one engine to weapons power generation. At maximum thrust we were losing ground, but more importantly the batteries were filling back up.
The Hotspur’s guns thrummed back into life and ripped into the smaller craft that hadn’t yet escaped our reach. It didn’t explode as spectacularly as its predecessor, but we’d finished it all the same.
Restore engines to normal operation, I demanded, then pushed over the stick and accelerated hard toward the approaching frigate. I’d had enough experience with the angelfish-shaped ship to know that it had little weaponry along its center line. We were still far enough away that it had a clear lane to pound away at our armor though. By sailing directly at it I would be able to use its acceleration and our own, since they were in opposite directions, to put significant distance between us once we passed. It was down to a game of chicken again.
Marny didn’t waste any time and blasted away with the remaining energy we had in our batteries. I sure wished we had enough left to leave 'em with a taste of our aft cannon, but I’d be satisfied to just get away from the physically superior ship.
We squirted out the other side and I turned sharply to the port. I’d correctly anticipated that the frigate also had an aft cannon and would try to get a shot on us as soon as we came into range. The frigate turned to pursue but lacked the speed to run us down. Once out of range of its guns, I started turning. With our superior mobility, I believed we’d be able to circle around on its aft and pick it apart over time. It might take a few hours but I had to free up Nick and Jake.
We spent the next ten minutes lining up on the ship. Before we could move closer to attack, the captain must have figured out what I had in mind. He or she had obviously analyzed the situation the way I had and realized, at a minimum, they were in for a lot of harassment. The frigate ran. For the next two hours we chased them, staying far enough back to avoid any chance they might have with their rear cannon but close enough for them to know we were serious and there to stay.
"Marny, what do you think about sending an encoded message to Nick. If he could see where we’re at, he might be able to get rolling," I asked.
"I’ll send him the combat data streams too," she said.
I slowly allowed the frigate to pull away and move out of sensor range. If they were willing to leave the area and cease hostilities, we’d be just fine with that. I reengaged silent running and turned back toward the outpost.
"I’ve got confirmation from Nick," Marny said. "You’re going to have to decode it for us though."
"Ada, you have the helm," I said. I needed to stand and move a little.
"Roger, Captain. I have the helm," she replied formally.
I heard something odd in Ada’s voice and turned to see that she’d been crying. It was a confusing moment for me. I felt like I needed to work on this coded message, but I was also concerned about what Ada was going through. In the end, compassion won out. I reached down and unlocked the grav box where Filbert lay stretched out on his warm blanket. I extracted him with the blanket and handed the bundle to Ada.
"Want to talk about it?" I asked.
"What?" she asked.
"That was pretty stressful, are you doing okay?" I asked.
"Oh," she said and wiped her eyes. "It just makes me so mad. They take what they want and don’t care about anyone else. You and Marny handle it so easily and it doesn’t seem to get to you. I’d have never been able to do all that."
"Don’t count yourself out yet. I’ve seen you execute maneuvers that I still can’t understand. And don’t think for a minute that I wasn’t scared out of my mind. All I could think was that Nick and Jake were doomed if we couldn’t run those guys outta there."
"I suppose. It’s just such a waste." Filbert sprang from her arms and fell none too gently on the floor. He dodged my clumsy attempts to catch him, sprinting down the stairs onto the bridge.
I looked at Ada who smiled at his antics. "I guess he didn’t like being cooped up." I said.
"I’m okay, Liam. And I don’t want you to think I’m weak. It’s just hard," she said.
"It is hard and it’s important to talk through it. Marny has to talk me off the ledge all the time," I said.
"Cap, you coming?" Marny called from below. "I think you might have an escapee down here."
"I’m coming," I said. I patted Ada on the arm and tried to smile reassuringly.
When I got to Marny she was holding the tiny, squirming Filbert. "He’s sure got a lot of piss and vinegar in him for having such a rough start in life."
I laughed. "What’s the message?"
"It just says East Bound and Down plus one sixty," Marny explained.
"Oh, that’s easy."
Look up navigation path that Sterra’s Gift took from Colony 40 to Baru Manush. Plot course to the point where Sterra’s Gift was at one hundred sixty hours.
"How’d you figure that out?" Marny asked.
I gave her a wicked grin.
Play East Bound and Down over ship’s public address.
Once again Jerry Reed’s twangy voice started singing… East Bound and Down…
INVASION
"I’m going to grab some coffee and a meal bar. Either of you want anything?" I asked. Marny and Ada were both within earshot.
"Hold on, Cap. I’m starving and was thinking about making something more substantial. Can you make it for a few minutes?" Marny asked.
"Sure. I’m game." Marny handed me the still squirming Filbert. I didn’t see any reason not to let him roam, so I put him on the floor. I was amused to see that he followed me to the stairs leading up to the cockpit. I gave him a lift up and over the obstacle.
"I’ve got some work to do," I said to Ada. "How about I take the first shift. Can you rest?"
"What? Now you think I’m weak?" she asked.
I wasn’t prepared for the question and didn’t know how to answer it. "Uh, no. I really have work to do."
"Just because I cried doesn’t mean I can’t handle it, Liam. Don’t treat me like I’m fragile."
I had no idea where this was coming from. Worse yet, I had even less of an idea how to diffuse the situation. "Would you like to take the first shift?" I asked.
"You bet I would," she answered.
"Okay, the helm is yours." I skipped the normal watch change procedure, in a hurry to get out of there.
I caught up with Marny on the lift and followed her into the galley. "Can I help?" I asked.
Marny didn't turn around, but she said, "I’ll talk to her."
"About what?"
"Well, she opened up to you about how the pirates made her feel and you didn’t respond. The next time you talked to her, you suggested she needed to rest. I’m guessing she doesn’t have a lot of experience around men."
"I didn’t mean…"
Marny cut me off. "No. You didn’t and she’ll figure that out. It’s just post combat stress. Give her space for a couple of hours and she’ll work through it. You ha
ve to be careful not to make decisions based on her showing vulnerability."
"You think I would?" I asked.
"Aye. That you would, Cap. You’re a decent person and want to protect your friends, but there’s a balance to find."
"What could I have done differently?" I asked.
"If you’d given her the option to take this watch or the next then you’d have avoided the entire thing, instead of just assuming that she’d like the first break. Don’t let it mess with you too much, you can take it too far. Welcome to leadership."
Marny handed me a plate with a good looking sandwich on it. I was both starved and exhausted. I wolfed down the sandwich and retired to my quarters, setting my alarm for three hours. That was a good length for a nap and I woke easily to the alarm. I changed suit liners, took a shower and felt about a hundred times better.
"How’s it going up here?" I asked, noticing too late that Filbert was asleep in Ada’s lap.
"All’s quiet. Would you mind putting him in his box?"
I accepted the small bundle and placed him in the grav-box behind my chair.
"Sorry about before. I just don’t want you thinking I can’t pull my weight. My dad still treats me like a little girl," she said.
"I’ll get better at this, Ada," I said. "Anything to report?"
"All systems are green. No sign of any hostiles - or friendlies, for that matter. We’re three hours from our destination."
"You are relieved," I said.
"I stand relieved," she answered.
"I’ll wake you if we have any contact. I’m hoping that we’ll beat the Adela Chen to the rendezvous by a few hours. I’d like to scout it out."
"That shouldn’t be a problem. Nick would have to push it pretty hard to get there in front of us given the burn you’ve set," she said.
"That’s what I’m hoping."
Ada leaned over on the way out of the cockpit and gave me a quick hug. I knew it was her way of letting me know that we were okay. It wasn’t exactly military protocol, but it worked for me.
Two hours into my watch I switched to silent running. Nick and Jake would have a harder time seeing us, but if I was going to scout out the area, I might as well not announce our presence. Fortunately, I found nothing as I made a nice wide sweep.
Meeting up with someone in the deep dark of space is a pretty good trick. The concept of speed out in space is really just a relationship between two different objects, because everything’s moving. I had to make a guess that when Nick indicated one hundred sixty hours from Colony 40, he meant that we should expect to be at that point, with a zero relative speed to Colony 40, neither moving toward or away from the colony. You might think that sitting still would put us in a defenseless position, and it would if someone were able to somehow guess our exact location. That was the genius of a random spot in space. I turned off our silent running to make us more visible to the Adela Chen. I wasn’t sure when they’d be arriving and didn’t want to miss them.
On the outside, we could have been as many as ten hours ahead of the Adela Chen, although four or five hours was more likely. Marny and Ada were on the couch in the bridge, chatting, when I got a sensor contact. Something big was coming through our space at a high Delta-V - that is, we weren’t even close in relative speed and direction.
"Marny, Ada, you might want to look at this." I tossed the sensor tracking onto both the bridge and the forward cockpit holo. At the extreme range of our sensors we couldn’t yet tell what it was, other than to see that it was very large, likely multiple ships, and that they were still accelerating.
Calculate trajectory for new ships. I directed
Colony 40 in one hundred thirty hours, the ship’s AI calculated.
"Cap. That looks like a big fleet," Marny said. As we watched the signature of the ships grew larger and larger.
"And they’re moving fast," I said. Understanding hit me like a brick.
Send sensor data stream to Lieutenant Belcose, Pete Hoffen, and Wendy James. Send message to Pete Hoffen, Wendy James: large fleet of unknown intent one hundred thirty hours from your location, take precaution.
"Cap. They’ve seen us," Marny said.
"How do you know?"
"They dropped a comm disrupter," Marny said with a sigh. "I don’t know if your message got out or not."
"What's that?" I asked.
"It’s bad news Cap. We’re done talking to the rest of the solar system and it confirms they’re hostiles. A comm disrupter like that is highly illegal for civilian use."
"Can we shoot it down?" I asked. We had to get word out to our family.
"Not possible, it’s not a single thing. Think of it as a spray they’re releasing. It fouls the area for hundreds of thousands of kilometers with a disruptive radiation. It’s not much different from what happens when we’re on hard burn - the same sort of interference."
Calculate minimum arrival time at max burn to Colony 40. I instructed. If I could beat them there, I'd tell them myself.
One hundred fifty hours on combat burn, the AI informed. Frak. We were starting from zero relative speed. The fleet had thirty plus hours of acceleration on us. We couldn’t overtake them. I hoped my message had gotten through, it was their only hope. I couldn’t very well leave without communicating with Nick and with those frakking comm disrupters, I wouldn’t be able to tell him what was going on.
"Are they sending anything else our way?" Ada asked.
"I don’t see anything. With their current speed I’m not sure what they could do." I knew I was right, but frustration caused me to spit out my words. Even with the short period of time we’d seen them, they were almost out of our sensor range. There was no chance they’d slow down and come after us as it would take days of deceleration to zero out our Delta-V.
Display makeup of hostile fleet on forward holo, I instructed.
"Cap, I’ve got it down here already," Marny said.
"Can you take the helm, Ada?"
"Got it."
I didn’t think we’d be getting into any immediate trouble, but I also wanted someone ready to move the ship if there was.
"What do we have?" I asked, standing behind Marny’s shoulder.
"Not good, Cap. They’re rolling two destroyers, four frigates and I’m not sure of the count on the cutters. We counted ten, but I think there might be more. No doubt they’ve got a handful of darts in there too," she said.
"What, no corvettes?" I quipped. My heart sank. We could barely hold our own against a frigate, which out massed us by forty percent. My mind raced back to the first time I’d seen a destroyer sidle up to us on our way to the Valhalla Platform. A single destroyer out massed us by ten or twenty times and was a hundred forty meters longer.
"I didn’t see any," Marny answered.
"How long before we're clear of the comm disrupters?"
"Ten hours, but believe it or not, we’ve already helped. The Navy will become aware of the comm disrupters at least within that time frame and they’ll put two and two together," she answered.
"We could burn hard and send a warning," I was desperate to come up with any plan that might help.
"I think it’s a better than good guess that comms are being disrupted on Colony 40 too. Although with the firepower they’re rolling in with, they’ll just roll over the top of whatever defenses are there."
"Even the stationary guns?" I asked. I already knew the answer but I had to hope.
"Stationary guns will ding up a destroyer, but they aren’t going to stop one, much less two."
"Ada, can you join us?" She’d overheard the entire conversation, but I needed her to be part of the next decision.
"The way I see it, we have a decision to make. That fleet is headed toward Colony 40, which can’t possibly defend itself against so much firepower. We can’t do anything to stop that. What we can do is get clear of this communication disruption and get a message to the Mars Protectorate Navy," I started.
"I’m not sure what the decision
is," Ada said.
"If we’re not here when Nick and Jake arrive, they could decide to keep going to Colony 40," Marny filled in.
"They’d sail right into the fight if we did that. They’d never survive," Ada said.
"Right. The flip side of that is, the sooner we tell the Navy, the sooner they’ll arrive and that could save people’s lives." I was sick to my stomach at the idea of leaving Nick and Jake behind, the danger to them was outrageous, but the moral dilemma made my head spin.
"If the Adela Chen were here right now, what would you do?" Marny asked.
That was an easy decision. "Send the tug back to Mars and I’d go to Colony 40."
Ada was horrified, tears once again forming in her eyes. "You can’t, Liam. Red Houzi would most certainly murder you."
"It’s my family, Ada. I can’t just leave them," I answered.
She nodded her head, understanding. "I’ll go with you," she said quietly and reached over to hold my hand. The touching move exemplified what I loved about her.
"That’s right, Cap," Marny said. "There’s nothing we can do that will stop that fleet from busting up your home, but if we take off right now, we’ll lose ten hours on our trip to Colony 40. Sometimes holding tight is the right thing to do, even though it sucks. We need to wait for Nick and Jake, then we can split up."
It took an excruciating ninety minutes for the Adela Chen to finally show up on our sensors.
"Ada, can you line up on them while I talk to Nick?"
"Will do."
Hail Adela Chen, I said.
"What’s the sit-rep, Liam," Nick asked. The communication disruption weapon caused his face to blink in and out on my HUD, but we were close enough to overcome full communication lockdown.
"I’ll come alongside. We need both you and Jake onboard to talk this through. Ninety minutes ago a large fleet passed within ten thousand kilometers of our current location, headed to Colony 40," I said.
"Understood," Nick answered. Ada hadn’t wasted any time and was neatly pulling us up parallel to the Adela Chen. He closed the comm and within a few minutes we were all seated around the table on the bridge.
"Did you get any communications off to Colony 40?" Nick asked.
Smuggler's Dilemma Page 13