In the Black

by Patrick S. Tomlinson

  “Yes, mum, we’re still looped into their tactical network. Damage reports coming in. No mission kill. Carnegie is still combat effective, but their negative matter condensers have taken critical damage. Alpha ring is dead. They can’t bubble out.”

  Susan grimaced. It was almost worse than not having hit them at all, because without any hope of escape, the Carnegie had every incentive to fight to the death.

  “Noted. Forward to Ansari. Where are those missiles Warner sent our way, Scopes?”

  “Six minutes, twenty seconds out,” the young officer seated at the Drone Integration Station said. She hadn’t come over on Susan’s shuttle. Instead, she was one of the Halcyon’s original crew, and sister of Okuda’s marine currently securing the CIC against anyone onboard who might be considering a change of heart.

  “Are we ready for the handoff, Culligan?”

  “I think so.” She grimaced. “I mean, yes, mum. I have the data links and command codes queued up. Just never done it while everything was moving so damned fast before.”

  “Don’t worry, Lieutenant, I’m not sure anyone has,” Susan assured her newest subordinate. “When the handoff comes, order those birds to go into erratic flight paths for two minutes. Make it look like our ECM jammed them up good and sent them spiraling. Then reacquire for the Paul Allen like they’re moving to their secondary target priority. Let’s try to keep our little secret just a few minutes longer.”

  “Carnegie just splashed the monocle,” Okuda called out. That was to be expected; they were basically single-use items. “Fresh round of birds pushed out the tubes.”

  “I don’t suppose we have any monocles aboard this bucket?”

  “No, mum. Nobody expects frigates to pick fights with the big boys.”

  Susan smirked. Today was as good as any to rewrite centuries of books on capital ship warfare. Her new toy only added three dozen ship-killers and a half-power laser array to the fight, but critically, everyone thought they were still pointed at Ansari. She could use the element to take one shot. It would have to count.

  “Aspect change on Allen,” Culligan shouted. “She’s blowing a bubble.”

  “She’s running?” Okuda asked incredulously.

  “I don’t think so,” Susan answered. Up to this point in the fight, Carnegie had been doing almost all the heavy lifting, while the Allen held back providing fire support and antimissile coverage and Halcyon played forward observer. But with Carnegie hurt, and Ansari making a mock attack run on Halcyon, Admiral Perez had almost certainly decided it was time to put the enormous PAC to more productive use. Putting herself between the two other ships in her task group and the enemy made the most tactical sense, but it would mean an almost impossibly short jump, far less risky just to punch her fusion rockets up to full military burn and get there in one piece.

  Which meant …

  “Get Ansari Actual on the line,” Susan barked.

  “Secure line, mum. Go ahead.”

  “Miguel!” she nearly shouted, “Allen is blowing a bubble, they’re going to jump behind you and catch you in a flank between them and Carnegie.”

  “We see it,” Miguel said through the whisker laser link after a second’s delay. “Not much we can do about it. Can’t charge up our own rings quick enough, not after purging our standby neg-mat in the beta ring. You’d better get ready to make your escape, mum. We’ll hold them off as long as we can.”

  “The hell you will. This tin can isn’t built for endurance. We can’t run to the other side of this miserable system alone. We walk out of here together or not at all.”

  “Then may I suggest you throw the missiles I loaned you at Carnegie along with anything else you might have in that rust bucket before they realize you’re not playing on their team anymore?”

  “Acknowledged. Halcyon out.” Susan turned to Okuda and Culligan, which was not hard in the little frigate’s cramped CIC. “You heard the man, hit that cruiser with everything we’ve got, reprisal be damned. It’s crowding my personal space.”

  * * *

  “Urgent from Lynz,” Hurg shouted across the mind cavern.

  “To a mouth with it!” Thuk commanded.

  Hurg nodded and pointed at the mouth nearest Thuk’s seat.

  “Derstu, it’s Attendant Lynz.”

  “I know who it is, Lynz. Sing!”

  “My team is in the lockout. The coil is back in sequence, but I’m still not comfortable—”

  “If it fails, will anyone be around to discipline you?”

  “Ah, no, Derstu. Our brains will be atoms before the first nerve impulses reach them.”

  “Excellent! Good work. Hold onto something.” Thuk cut the link.

  “We’re leaving?” Kivits implored.

  “We’re going somewhere, that’s for sure.”

  “Where, exactly?”

  Thuk angrily stabbed a blood-claw at a crowded little spot in the star system’s map.

  “There. Get the weapon ready.”

  * * *

  “Hits on Carnegie!” Mattu pumped a fist. “Multiple breaches. They’re venting atmosphere. EM is dropping off. Looks like a mission kill. Yes, Halcyon confirms, Carnegie is out of the fight. They’re running up the white flag and requesting recovery teams.”

  “Afraid we’re a tad busy at the moment,” Miguel said absently as he considered the plot. The Paul Allen had done exactly as Kamala had predicted and bubbled to their far side, completely opposite of Carnegie’s position in a classic pincer move. What she hadn’t expected was for Perez to make the trip in four short legs, each at a right angle to the last, alternating between the PAC’s fully redundant paired set of Alcubierre rings until her heading and momentum had come completely about to bring her on an intercept course with her prey instead of merely matching velocities. They were closing now, less than twenty thousand klicks apart, and it would be a lot closer by the time Ansari could kill her momentum and use her superior acceleration to start growing the gap again. All the while fighting off wave after wave of missiles and hundred-megawatt-range laser pulses.

  It was a brilliant maneuver. If Perez had been just a little bolder, she’d have executed the jump a half an hour ago before they were in a position to knock out her escort cruiser. Not that it mattered in the final equation.

  “Halcyon Actual reports they’ve been cut out of the enemy’s tactical network. We’re running blind again.”

  “Only surprise is it took them so long to figure it out. What’s our magazine status?” Miguel demanded from his borrowed chair.

  “Sixty-eight ship-killers still in their tubes. Twenty-seven percent on counter-missiles,” Warner replied, trying to sound upbeat, but …

  “Decoys?”

  “Fuel expended,” Mattu said. “They still have power for another hundred minutes or so, but they can’t maneuver.”

  “Get them pumping out as much EM clutter as possible. And ready the retro-reflector cloud.”

  “Pump up the boomboxes and ready the RRC, aye, sir.”

  “Allen is launching birds,” Warner said. “Seven-five, wait, nine-zero ship-killers inbound. Twenty-three minutes to impact.”

  Ninety missiles. Miguel rubbed a hand on his brow, surprised to find sweat accumulating there. Almost a fifth of the PAC’s full complement in one go. They didn’t have the data links to control that many birds, but they didn’t need to. The point was saturation. Warner’s opposite would slave them together in groups of two or three, randomly trading individuals between groups to keep Ansari’s CiWS and counter-missiles guessing about their movement and behavior. Out of that flock, only one or two needed to connect to finish the job.

  The battle had entered its third hour, and the laws of attrition were taking an awful toll. It was a credit to everyone aboard that they’d lasted so long against such vastly superior firepower, but the end was in sight.

  “Options?”

  Mattu was first to answer. “Kill the engines, go EM dark, reel out our towed sensor buoy and crank it to fu
ll active, turn our broadside into the attack to give us our best sensor coverage and bring the most CiWS batteries and counter-missile tubes to bear, deploy the RRC, then pray to Brahma.”

  “No,” Warner cut in. “Turn away from the attack, go to emergency burn, antimatter be damned. Gives us another couple minutes to engage them and forces the missiles to waste more time and fuel maneuvering to hit us on our flanks or be burned up in our fusion plume. We can still dangle the towed array to see through our own exhaust, and if any missiles try to go up our skirt, we’ll see it coming and can vector thrust to roast them.” She thought for a moment. “But I do agree with praying.”

  “To Brahma?” Miguel asked.

  “I’m willing to audition new gods for miracle duty at this point.”

  Miguel grimaced. He wanted to run simulations on both ideas and see which came out better, but by the time he had, any advantage gained would likely be lost courtesy of the delay anyway. He made a snap judgment, pure instinct.

  “Charts, turn and burn. Emergency flank speed away from the Allen. Tell Halcyon to get ahead of us and stay there. Scopes, deploy our tethered array once we’re on our new course. Be ready to disperse the RRC in a halo around us once the birds are five thousand klicks out. I want them to see nothing but our fusion torches and their own radar reflections.”

  It had the advantage of simplicity. The retro-reflector cloud was about as last-ditch as countermeasures got. Nothing more than a constellation of hundreds of thousands of tiny Mylar origami cubes that snapped open as soon as they were clear of their containers, the reflectors’ unique geometry returned any light or radiation back to its point of origin, no matter the angle of incoming vector. The more energy they pumped into active sensors trying to get a lock, the more they’d blind themselves in the glare.

  Trouble was, they blinded defender’s and attacker’s active scans alike. They also blew any hope of stealth and basically acted like flipping on a giant searchlight for any ship inside active sensor range, no matter how primitive. Launching them was the naval combat equivalent of going all in and hoping to get a flush draw on the river card. Which, if Miguel was honest, was probably better odds than what they were really facing.

  The floor swayed subtly as the great ship spun around on its own center of gravity to point its cluster of fusion rockets at the approaching nuclear maelstrom. The flip complete, Broadchurch put the throttle through the bulkhead. Miguel gained a few kilos until the grav generator adjusted to the acceleration.

  “We’re burning,” Broadchurch said. “One hundred percent, antimatter reserve going down like a bride on her wedding night.” Despite their anxiety, or perhaps because of it, everyone in the CIC turned to give Broadchurch the side eye. “Or so I’ve heard,” they said.

  “Towed array free of its cradle and spooling out, eleven kilometers a minute,” Mattu said. “It’s going to be a couple minutes before it’s far enough away from the fusion rockets to get any meaningful data. RRC primed and ready for launch.”

  “It’s going to be hell aiming our counter-missiles in that soup,” Warner said.

  “It’s going to be hell aiming their birds, too,” Miguel answered.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mattu glanced down and queried an alert on her station. “Halcyon has acknowledged and is moving ahead into our sensor shadow.”

  Miguel actually sighed in relief. He’d expected Susan to argue the point. If she was any less stubborn, she’d blow a bubble and get clear of this mess, but at least she wasn’t insisting on remaining exposed to enemy fire. Apparently, an utter deluge of nuclear missiles while sitting inside a jumped-up yacht was enough to contain even her indignation.

  Miguel smiled at the thought, then noticed their CL still hunched over in a corner of the CIC, quiet as a mouse.

  “Mr. Nesbit, I’d almost forgotten you were here. I’m not used to you being so discreet.”

  “Just cherishing in my last few minutes of living, Commander.”

  “If you’d prefer to spend them in your quarters with a good book and a stiff contraband drink, no one would think the lesser of you.”

  Nesbit stood and faced the room, back straight. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stand my watch.”

  Miguel huffed through his nose and smirked with genuine surprise. “As you were, CL.” Feeling a moment of sentimentality creep in, he keyed the 1MC and linked it to the mic in his chair.

  “Attention, crew of the Ansari, this is Acting-Captain Azevedo. As you’re all keenly aware, several hundred megatons of wrath are about to come knocking at our hatch. We’re going to do everything we can not to let them in, but I just wanted you to know, no matter the outcome of the next twenty minutes, I’ve never been prouder about anything than I am right now to call every last one of you shipmates. One way or another, our captain is safe, she will survive, and our story will be told down through the ages. Hold fast to your stations, maintain vigilance, and we might just get to tell the story ourselves over shots and beers. Don’t give up the ship. Azevedo out.”

  A cheer went up around the CIC as Miguel cut the link.

  “Great speech, XO,” Warner said. “You scared off three missiles with words alone.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Susan obsessed over the tactical plot, desperately searching for something, anything she might have overlooked that could give them an extra sliver of hope against what was coming down on her and her friends and crew a thousand kilometers behind her.

  Ansari would take the brunt of it, but Halcyon had to be ready for any strays that got through and reverted to targets of opportunity, and it had a much less robust CiWS system and no counter-missiles for the task. In all likelihood, Ansari was about to fall to the swarm of predators coming their way and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. Then, exposed and alone, she’d have to order her little hijacked frigate, never designed or intended for extended operations in deep space, to bubble out to God-only-knew where as a fugitive, without hope of support or resupply, onboard a ship where her allies numbered less than a dozen and the original crew was sure to try and retake their home.

  If she’d ever been in a more precarious situation, it didn’t spring immediately to mind.

  “Ansari just deployed their reflector cloud,” Okuda said. “Our sensors are blind to anything happening on the other side of it. We’re tied into the feed from their towed array and surviving recon platforms, for as long as they last.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. Culligan, get our countermeasures ready for launch. Charts, charge our rings and be prepared to bubble out at a moment’s notice.”

  “Course, mum?” her pilot from the assault shuttle asked. Like all marine aviators, he’d been cross-trained in handling capital ships, because in combat, you just never knew who the next man up would have to be. Not that his instructors had ever guessed they were training a pirate. No, not a pirate, Susan reprimanded herself. Perez had resigned her commission the moment she ordered the shuttle she believed Susan on destroyed, whether she realized it or not, making Susan the rightful, legal ranking officer in the combat area. Her people were not pirates. They were in the right. They’d liberated the Halcyon from mutineers.

  Whether a court-martial inquiry would agree was a question for a later date. Right now, she’d be grateful just to live long enough to see one.

  “Our antimatter stores are down by a third. Make course for the AM factory in Grendel orbit. We can probably top off before Allen realizes where we’ve bubbled to. Maybe even offload our potential troublemakers.”

  “Aye, mum.”

  Unspoken was the fact off-loading their “troublemakers” would leave them below a skeleton crew for even such a small ship, but it was important to prioritize existential crises and tackle them one at a time instead of all at once.

  “First contact with the missile wave in T-minus five minutes, four-three seconds,” Culligan said. “Ansari main laser array is engaging the leading missiles.”

  Susan fought the ur
ge to order the Halcyon out of line to try and pick off a few birds with her own laser, but the Zephyr-class fast frigate didn’t have emitters in the rear forty-five degrees of her aspect, and its thrust vectoring was limited to fifteen degrees off-bore, so she couldn’t crab-walk the ship enough to get a firing solution with one of her lateral emitters, which would mean cutting thrust, turning to face the threat, shrinking the distance between them and the Ansari protecting them, and reducing their response time for any missiles that did get past.

  No go. All there was left to do now was run for their lives.

  “Bubble burst! Bubble burst!” Culligan shouted. “Bearing ahead two-one-eight by zero-zero-seven. Range, seventeen thousand kilometers. Four-hundred-thousand-ton range.”

  Susan’s heart sank through the deck plating. So, Perez had a reserve in hiding and called it up, and they were running straight into the teeth of it. They had twelve missiles left onboard after the surprise attack on Carnegie, in addition to their laser array. A paltry sum for dealing with anything bigger than a corsair’s cobbled-together defenses. But if she was going to die, it would be with empty magazines.

  “Okuda. Get our remaining birds in space and warm up the primary—”

  “What the hell?” Culligan abruptly cut Susan off.

  “You have something to share, Lieutenant?”

  “Sorry, mum. The ship, it’s not CCDF. It’s … it’s a Xre. Unknown configuration.”

  Susan jumped out of her chair, pulse racing as a glimmer of hope punched through the despair, and looked at the raw data coming in from their sensors. Of course it registered as unknown. The fleet recognition database hadn’t had time to go through an update yet.