William Keith Renegades Honor

by Renegade's Honor

  Of course, the real commander of the small space armada was Commander Frank Jardine, the IFCO—the Interceptor Flight Control Officer—on the Gael Warrior's bridge.

  The arrangement looked great displayed on a neatly boxed and lettered tactical organization chart. When it came time for actual combat, though, tactical organization was rarely a vital factor. Typical Interceptor combat covered too large a volume of space for tight group control or strategies. Each individual Flight Officer would be most concerned with his own ship and his own tactics, no matter what his title or rank.

  One by one, the five other pilots in his squadron checked in, each reporting his Pilum armed and ready, his tactical communications links working. Next, Jaime checked in with the other three Squadron Leaders of Beta Flight, receiving their readiness-for-launch reports. Moments later, when Group Leader Haldane came on the line and asked for a status report, Jaime Douglass was able to report all twenty-four ships of Beta Flight ready for launch.

  Jaime and the other Beta Flight pilots were still uncomfortable with this new posting. The change from patrol duty in Vanur space to a shipboard squadron had been as abrupt as it had been unexpected. They knew none of the other pilots yet, even after three weeks in T-space. Even the bay crew were strangers now, for the fifty-one men of the Flight's maintenance crew had been left behind at the base on Vanur's moon in the hurry of the transfer insystem.

  Friendships would form after the inevitable bonding of men thrown into combat side by side. Until that happened, though, the newcomers felt isolated from the others. No doubt, Jaime thought, the men of Alpha and Gamma Flights felt the same way about them. There was a reluctance to trust strangers until they had proven themselves in the ultimate test of any man's skill and courage. And that test came in combat against the enemy.

  "All Flights, this is Group Leader." Haldane's voice came across on the general tactical frequency. "The Bridge reports extensive fighting throughout the system. I don't know what they expected, but it looks as though the Trothan rebels were able to put up more in the way of space defenses than our side expected. Captain Fraser just passed the word down to me: stand by for a short-count launch. He say s he'll carry us in as far as he can, but when the Warrior draws fire, out we go."

  "Aren't we launching an IS?" someone else asked over the open line. An Interceptor Screen was a battleship's usual first line of defense against incoming, hostile fighters.

  "Negative," Haldane replied.

  "Great," someone else added. "We get to protect the flight bay... from the inside!"

  No fighter pilot liked that idea. The thought that he might have to remain here, strapped into his fighter, as hostiles used the vast battleship as a huge, slow-moving target made Jaime distinctly uncomfortable.

  "Cut the commentary," Haldane said. "We wait for a short count and a hot launch. Meanwhile, stay off the damned line."

  Jaime felt his stomach knot. Haldane's announcement meant more time—an unknown period of time—spent waiting and doing nothing as the battleship closed with the enemy. A short count meant launch virtually at a moment's notice. That moment could come within the next few seconds.. .or it might be hours. Or never.

  It was the waiting, the not knowing, that made it so hard.

  On the Gael Warrior's bridge, Kendric was slowly beginning to make sense of the crawling symbols on the main viewer. Kelly MacCandless and his plot team down in Ops were tagging each target through the ship's main computer and relaying the information to the bridge crew as quickly as they could. The problem was that the information had to be updated constantly. The Warrior had appeared some ninety million kilometers from the center of the battle that was unfolding on her screens, a distance that it took light nearly five minutes to cross. As the Warrior steadily approached the scene of the battle, the electromagnetic radiation—light, transponder signals, shield spillage, and radar reflections—that marked the position of each of the combatants became "younger," more recent. Ships were also dying yonder, their passing marked by silent flares of light or the sudden failing of the steady, coded pulse of an ID transponder. Hundreds of ships tangled and fought in an action ranging across the Trothas system, and more were arriving with every passing moment.

  It was still far too early as yet to tell who was winning.

  A handful of ratings moved among the clusters of men passing out helmets on the bridge. In situations where battle was likely, each man wore a lightweight gray coverall that completely enclosed his body, except for wrists and neck openings. At battle stations, ratings passed out transparent carplexy helmets. Should a ship's pressure hull be breached during battle, it was the work of a moment to seal the helmet to the collar of the garment, and don and seal gloves clipped to the coverall's belt. The recirculator pack built low into the back of the suit would recycle the air in the suit for two hours, and it could be recharged from a kit stored in emergency lockers throughout the ship. The suit itself would hold pressure and maintain temperature for days.

  Kendric fingered his own helmet where it rested on the arm of his command seat and wondered at the economy of the idea. The goal, of course, was not the preservation of lives, but the preservation of the ship as a fighting unit for as long as possible. The Metus Magnus had lost pressure on her bridge explosively early in the clash at Tallifiero, her Captain incapacitated by the trauma of being blown across the bridge deck and into an instrument console. Kendric had not been on the bridge at the time. During combat, the place of the Exec was in the Combat Center, a second bridge buried deep in the warship's innards, safe from a crippling strike to the main bridge. He wondered how long the Magnus would have been able to keep fighting with her bridge crew, many of them injured, swaddled in pressurized coveralls. He had worn one in vacuum during training, years before. They were clumsy when they ballooned in a sudden pressure drop, and far from comfortable. Yet, if the suits shaved anything at all from the odds arrayed against them, they were worth it.

  "Captain?" Morganen's voice sounded tense in his earpiece. "I'm in the Combat Center. All stations report ready for combat."

  "Very well, Number One. I make it...three more minutes at this speed until we're in the middle of things, but someone could decide to take a shot at us any time now. We'll wait on the word from the Commodore. Keep your line to the main bridge open, and I'll keep you informed."

  "Aye, Captain."

  Commodore Severno was in yet another part of the ship. The flag bridge was a smaller control center, set on Deck 06 above and aft the main bridge, well-sheltered within the heavily armored mountain of the Gael Warrior's deck tower. From there, Severno and his staff could monitor communications from all the ships of the squadron, and pass on their commands.

  "Captain?" Another voice sounded in Kendric's ear. "MacCan-dless here, in Ops."

  "Go ahead, Ops."

  "We've just plotted what looks like two squadrons of fighters, Captain, vectored dead on us." As the Operations Officer spoke, a cluster of yellow sparks on the lower right of the main viewer began flashing on and off, illustrating his words.

  "I see them, Ops. ID?"

  The flashing stopped. There appeared to be ten to fifteen targets in llie group, though it was hard to tell. They were so distant that the images overlapped on the screen. "Not certain yet, sir, but I'd bet hostile from their vector and initial acceleration. I'll be able to confirm in a moment."

  "ETA?"

  "If they maintain their current course and speed, two minutes."

  "Thanks, Ops. Keep an eye on them for us."

  "Affirmative, Captain. "

  Kendric keyed a different channel. "Commodore? This is Captain Fraser. We are tracking incoming fighters—two squadrons, probably hostile. Request permission to launch Interceptors."

  "Denied." The reply was sharp and curt, but expressed nothing that Kendric could identify as emotion.

  "Targets' ETA is two..."

  "Maintain course and speed, Fraser. You have my permission to fire when they close to within range,
but the fighters stay aboard until my order."

  And that, without doubt, was that.

  Kendric eyed the yellow sparks warily, wondering what they might be, what weapons they might carry. The Commodore no doubt wanted to maintain the fighting punch of the battleship until they were closer to the center of fighting. For Kendric, approaching unknown fighters without an interceptor screen made Kendric's throat and mouth go dry and his palms a little moist. A lucky hit on one of the fighter flight bays could eliminate one-third of the Gael Warrior's Interceptor strength in one flaming instant. Certainly, he knew, individual fighter pilots preferred taking their chances in open space where they could fight back.

  Abruptly, the sparks flashed into red. Course and speed data printed out in streams of white numerals next to the target images. They were still too distant to identify, but a computer analysis of their mass, coupled with their acceleration and drive characteristics, suggested that they were heavy fighters massing in the 200-ton range.

  "Fire Control Officer," he said. "Target the seven point fives that'll bear on those hostiles that Ops just plotted. They're coming for us."

  "Got 'em locked in, Captain. We'll have range in.. .sixty seconds."

  Kendric swallowed and resisted the impulse to wipe his palms on his gray coveralls.

  "Stand by," he said over the intraship. "All hands, this is Captain Fraser. We have incoming hostiles. Stand by your stations.. .and give

  'em hell. Let's show the Empire what fighting Gaels can do, eh?"

  Fighting Gaels. There was tradition and pride in the words. The Gaels considered themselves a warrior people, legacy of thousands of years of darkness. For all the awe with which most Gaels regarded the TOG Imperials, there were few who had not felt resentment, at one time or another, at the superior and haughty attitude most Imperials took toward "provincials."

  The tension that had been building through the ship moment by moment was shattered by the roar of cheers. Fraser felt a momentary flush of shame. Hypocrite! You don't even think of yourself as a Gael anymore! Such a simple trick.. .cheap words to cheer them on...

  Trick or no, the cheering continued as the Gael Warrior bore forward toward her first battle.

  KessRith and Ssora: What rational Human fails to feel the stirrings of misoxenic righteousness when he hears those names ? The KessRith, especially, are impediments to Man's ultimate destiny throughout the Galaxy. Though both races have fallen far since the days when they challenged the Empire for galactic dominance, the Ssora have assumed their rightful place as inferior beings within Humankind's train.

  The KessRith, however—powerful, ruthlessly ambitious, uncompromisingly and implacably hostile to the legitimate designs of an inherently superior Humanity—maintain at least a shred of their former imperial holdings. Though most KessRith families have been incorporated at an appropriately subservient level within Imperial Galactic culture, a few remain at large within the heart of their ancient realm...

  —From The Seventh Millennium, by Gaeaphilos the Philosopher, University of New Rome Press, New Rome, Terra, 6801 A.I.

  "ID coming up," Kelly MacCandless said. A computer-generated schematic drew plan, elevation, and bow-on views of the approaching fighters on Kendric's console display, and he felt a thrill of recognition before the three-view was complete. The flat, gracefully arched body, the down-curving wings and delicate appearance—he had seen that design before, had faced it in combat many times. Named Na'Ctka Moquka by its non-Human designers, it was more popularly known throughout the Galaxy by the name's rough translation: Fluttering Petal.

  "ID confidence is 92 percent," MacCandless continued. "They will be in range in thirty seconds."

  Ever since the fighters had been spotted, the Ops crew had been feeding data on scanner return, maneuvering, and drive characteristics to the Warrior's main computers. The computer had been discarding those ships known to TOG that did not fit this vessel's performance characteristics and had at last eliminated enough to make identity a virtual certainty. Of course, those fourteen incoming ships could be something new, something no TOG ship had ever encountered, but Kelly had fought enough Fluttering Petals to know intuitively and without a doubt that the computer was right.

  But what was a KessRith ship doing here?

  The KessRith were one of the old, alien enemies of Humanity. In times long past, they had conquered large parts of the Galaxy, and much of the territory now dominated by TOG had once belonged to them. There were KessRith enclaves on many Imperial worlds, enclaves that the TOG sometimes tolerated, but always carefully monitored. The free warrior clans of the KessRith still dominated a large section of the Galaxy on the far side of the Core from Terra. Here, the KessRith War continued, as it had, off and on, for centuries. The Trothas system, however, was nearly thirty thousand light years—one-third of the Galaxy's span—from the nearest KessRith outpost. The action on Trothas V was supposed to be rebellion suppression. How did the KessRith figure in that?

  "Forward shields to one-twenty," MacCandless ordered. The first strike would be there. "Hold the rest steady at ninety."

  The Warrior's Shield Control Officer pressed his earpiece against his head, requesting additional power from Engineering. Kendric felt the gravity on the bridge flutter slightly as auxiliary power systems kicked in to take some of the strain. The ship's shields, a carefully marshaled and directed by-product of gravity control, could be set to cycle on and off very quickly—the so-called "flicker rate." At 120 cycles per second, the Warrior would deflect much of what came at her from ahead, but only at a fearful cost in available power.

  "Targets in range!" Kendric heard panic edge FCO Fairfax's voice. "They're bypassing the other ships of the squadron.. .heading toward us!"

  /' 11 have to watch him, Kendric told himself coolly. Panic could be

  contagious. "Steady, Lee. Commence fire."

  "Starboard bays ...Fire!"

  Bolts from the Gael Warrior's starboard laser bays reached out, invisible in space, but etched in glittering lines of light on the ship's computer-imaged screens. The flashes were almost instantaneous, timed by the ship's fire control computers to pulse between the flickers of the shields, but they left ragged after-images hanging against the screen, reaching toward the red glowing targets.

  The KessRith ships were no longer there.

  The Fluttering Petal was not a maneuverable fighter. Its non-Human designers had chosen to sacrifice maneuverability and speed for massive armor and heavy laser weaponry. The enemy commander had anticipated the Warrior'' s opening volley and redeployed his flight instants before the battleship had fired. Kendric heard Lee Fairfax's voice over the still-open commline. "Retarget! Retarget! Lock! Fire!"

  "All secondaries, Mr. Fairfax," Kendric said. "Commence fire!"

  Secondary turret batteries along the battleship's starboard forward quarter swung wildly as the KessRith formation closed within an instant to point-blank range. Even Fluttering Petals moved too fast for the battleship's ponderous main bays to target them at such close range. Those massive turrets and their megatons of concentrated firepower were reserved for other capital ships. It was the battleship's secondary turrets that were her principal anti-Interceptor weapons, Laser bolts flared across the ship's hull, seeking tiny, hurtling targets. Fighter shields flared in dazzling reflections. Arc-brilliant flashes marked the death of ships and crews.

  At the last moment, the cloud of fighters broke and scattered, each arcing on a different path low across the battleship's hull. Lasers slung from drooping wings and under the alien fighters' snouts flashed and stabbed, their traceries brilliant on the Warrior's bridge screens. The battleship's rapidly cycling shields could handle some—even most— of the enemy fire, but not all. Some shots were bound to get through.

  Green light flared into space as laser beams intersected shield planes in spectacular displays of high-energy fury. Four KessRithian beams slipped past the Warrior's forward shield and smashed into hull armor. Flash-heated metal vaporize
d into space, but the Gael Warrior's armor was massive and deeply layered. No shots penetrated. The aft lookout shifted the battleship's main screen to an aft view, where the KessRithians were already dwindling into the distance. Green fire reached out toward them from the Reannruadh, in line almost twenty kilometers aft of the Warrior.

  The battleship's secondary batteries locked onto the rapidly receding targets and fired. More of the swarming fighters died, flashing into oblivion, or crumpling into themselves as ultra-dense slivers of mass driver projectiles penetrated screens and shattered armor.

  Then, as if miraculously, there was a lull after uncounted seconds of raging, silent fury. It would not last. Survivors of the first pass were moving too fast in the wrong direction to regroup and catch up with the Gael Warrior any time soon, but a second fighter wave was already on the way in.

  With a mild, almost detached interest, Kendric noted that the tension blanketing the bridge before the attack was largely gone now. At each station, the bridge officers were going about their individual duties. Within the next handful of minutes, the low murmur of commands and requests for information continued without interruption as the Warrior's secondary batteries continued to track and destroy incoming fighters. Damage mounted on the Gael Warrior's hull, but nowhere was it serious enough to cause alarm.

  The squadron continued to accelerate insystem, plunging toward the battle that was swirling through an area of space centered on the growing, blue-white sphere of Trothas V. The navigational computer kept a steady stream of information scrolling alongside the bright, marble-sized disk up on the screen. The planet, also called Trothas, was still six million kilometers distant, but the squadron was closing on it at nearly 800 kps. It would take another two hours to close the distance. Close by, a trio of smaller, paler disks marked Trothas's three moons, two small ones and a rugged, distant, 5,000-kilometer-wide giant.

  "Captain, this is Ops."

  "Go ahead, Ops."

  "We're reading capital ships, now, close in to the planet. Looks like an enemy carrier squadron in orbit around Trothas' large moon. Transponder signals show our fleet is pressing toward them, but is being held up by fighters from that carrier.. .and by large numbers of rebel light capitals, destroyers and such."