by David Weber
"Standing by, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Cheney acknowledged.
"Message beg—"
"Incoming! Missiles in acquisition, bearing one-seven-five! Impact in one-five-zero seconds!"
Oversteegen's eyes snapped back to his tactical repeater as the fresh threat came roaring in from astern. It couldn't be from Number Three—not on that bearing! Which meant there was a fourth enemy ship in the system, and they'd missed her completely!
"Stern wall!" he barked. "Get it up now!"
Tyler's eyes clung to the tactical display as the Manty missiles sliced through his badly battered defenses. He no longer had a port decoy, and his EW emitters had taken heavy damage from the hits which had lacerated Fortune Hunter's port flank. His counter missile and point defense crews did the best they could, but it wasn't going to be good enough.
Gauntlet's missiles raced down upon their target and detonated at ranges as short as ten thousand kilometers. The powerful X-ray lasers ripped deep into Fortune Hunter, shattering bulkheads and opening compartments like knives. Energy mounts and their crews were smashed and mangled, missile tube mass-drivers arced madly as their capacitor rings shorted, and atmosphere gushed from the brutal wounds. The cruiser heaved bodily sideways, and then the last hit came slicing in, and Number One Impeller Room exploded with a cataclysmic fury that destroyed her entire forward hammerhead.
The ship tumbled madly as her wedge unbalanced, and then her inertial compensator failed.
Whether any of her crew were still alive when the savage torquing effect on her hull snapped her back scarcely mattered.
Michael Oversteegen was peripherally aware of Number One's spectacular destruction, but he had little attention to spare for it. Not with twenty-plus missiles racing straight for Gauntlet's kilt.
Behind the mask of his features, he cursed himself for not having found whatever ship had just fired. He knew, intellectually, that Blumenthal had done extraordinarily well just to spot Number Three, given the effectiveness of these "pirates' " electronic warfare capabilities. But that was no comfort at all as he watched those missiles come.
Gauntlet's acceleration dropped abruptly to zero as her stern wall snapped up. She was one of the first Edward Saganami-B–class ships which had added that passive defense, and this was the very first time any of them had tested it in actual combat. It had worked well enough for the LACs who'd first employed it during Eighth Fleet's decisive offensive, but a heavy cruiser was scarcely a LAC.
More to the point, it took time for the wall to come up, and time was in very short supply.
Samson Lamar stared in horror at the broken, lifeless wreckage which an instant before had been a heavy cruiser. The sheer, blinding speed with which Fortune Hunter had been transformed into so much splintered rubble stunned him. And it also terrified him, because he knew who the next target of the Manty's wrath had to be.
He opened his mouth to order his helmsman to turn Predator up on her side relative to the Manty, sheltering behind the impenetrable roof of her wedge. But before he could get the order out, Dongcai Maurersberger's missiles exploded dead astern of the enemy ship.
HMS Gauntlet bucked in agony as the incoming laser heads detonated. Her after point defense had knocked out twelve of them, despite the surprise of their launch from stealth. Five more were sucked off by the cruiser's decoys. But the remaining six ran straight in on their target and detonated eighteen thousand kilometers astern of her.
If not for her stern wall, she would have died then and there. Even with it, the damage was terrible. The wall was still spinning up to full power when the lasers came slashing in. It could bend and attenuate them, but it couldn't stop them, and damage alarms shrieked.
"We've lost the after ring!" Tyson barked from Damage Control Central. "Grasers Thirty-Two, Thirty-Three, and Thirty-Four are gone! We've lost at least half the after laser clusters, and I'm getting no response from Environmental Four or Boat Bay Two!"
Oversteegen's jaw tightened. Raising the stern wall had cut Gauntlet's acceleration to zero when it closed the after aspect of her wedge, but without the after impeller ring, it would be halved even after the wall came down. And with his after missile defenses so badly damaged, he dared not lower it at all until he'd wrenched his stern away from the previously unsuspected attacker.
"Can we get the wedge back?" he asked Tyson sharply.
"I can't say for certain, Sir," the engineer replied. He was hammering at his keyboard even as he spoke, eyes locked to the scrolling diagnostic reports.
"I don't like t' rush my officers," Oversteegen said, "but it would be most helpful if you could expedite that estimate."
"I'm on it, Sir," Tyson promised, and Oversteegen looked up from his com screen.
"Helm, reaction thrusters. Bring us ten degrees to starboard and pitch us up fifteen degrees."
"Ten degrees starboard, pitch up fifteen degrees, aye, Sir!"
"Tactical, we need t' find this gentleman astern of us," Oversteegen continued, swiveling his eyes to Blumenthal's section.
"We're on it, Sir," Blumenthal replied. "We've got a good fix on the missiles' launch locus, and these bastards' EW isn't good enough to hide from us when we know where to look for them!"
"Good. Astro," Oversteegen turned towards Lieutenant Commander Atkins, "recompute our course t' the wall t' reflect my last helm orders. Then generate a random course change as soon as we cross the wall. With our after ring down, these people are goin' t' be able t' stay with us after all."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
"Guns," Oversteegen turned back to Blumenthal, "forget about Number Two for now. She's goin' t' slide past us whatever she does; it's Number Three and this Number Four we have t' worry about right now."
"Aye, aye, Sir. I'm recomputing now."
"And as for you, Commander Cheney," Oversteegen said, returning his attention to the communications officer with a thin smile, "I believe we were about t' record a transmission for Ms. Hearns."
" . . . so things are gettin' just a little tight up here, Ms. Hearns." Abigail stared at Captain Oversteegen's impossibly composed face on the pinnace's tiny com screen in something that wasn't disbelief simply because her shock was too deep for her to feel anything yet. She could hear combat chatter and the beeping of priority alarms behind him, but that irritating, aristocratic accent was as calm as ever.
"We've destroyed one hostile, but at least two are in position t' follow us into hyper," he continued. "If they're foolish enough t' come through separated, we should be able t' take them easily. If they stay concentrated, it's goin' t' be a little dicier, of course. Either way, we'll be back t' pick you and your people up as soon as possible.
"In the meantime, however, be advised that at least one enemy heavy cruiser is goin' t' be unable t' follow us. Since they chose t' engage us when they didn't have to, I'm assumin' that they feel they have somethin' here in Tiberian which they have t' conceal at all costs. If that's true, I anticipate that the cruiser which can't follow us will come lookin' for you. I can't advise you from here, Ms. Hearns. You're on your own until we can get back here. Evade any way you can, but avoid contact with the Refugians at all costs. It's our job t' protect people like them; not t' set them up t' draw fire.
"Good luck, Ms. Hearns. Oversteegen, clear."
The screen blanked, and Abigail inhaled deeply. As the oxygen filled her lungs, it seemed as if it were the first breath she'd taken in at least an hour.
She stood up in Chief Palmer's compartment, and her brain began to work after a fashion again.
The captain's transmission was over fifteen minutes old, because the pinnace had no ability to receive FTL transmissions. Which meant it was entirely possible that Captain Oversteegen and Gauntlet's entire company were already dead.
No. She put that thought firmly aside. If it was true, then nothing she and her people could do to evade the enemy would succeed in the end. But if it wasn't true, and she allowed the possibility to paralyze her, then whatever slim chance of sur
vival they had would disappear.
She squared her shoulders and stepped onto the flight deck.
"You heard, PO Hoskins?" she asked the pilot.
"Yes, Ma'am." The petty officer looked back over her shoulder at Abigail, her face taut. "Can't say I like the sound of it very much, though."
"I don't much care for it, myself," Abigail assured her. "But it looks like we're stuck with it."
"As you say, Ma'am." Hoskins paused a moment, then continued. "What are we going to do, Ma'am?"
"Well, one thing we're not going to do is try to evade a heavy cruiser in space, PO," Abigail said, and surprised herself with a smile which held a hint of true humor. "Any proper warship could run us down without too much trouble, and it's not as if we could hide from her sensors. Not to mention the fact that she's probably got at least a dozen or so small craft of her own she could deploy to come after us."
"That's true enough, Ma'am," Hoskins acknowledged, though her tone was dubious. "But if we can't evade them in space, how well can we hope to evade them dirtside?"
"Refuge's got some pretty rough terrain, PO," Abigail replied. "And we've got all of Sergeant Gutierrez's well-trained Marines aboard to help us hide in it. Of course, it would be best of all if we could convince them to not even look for us, wouldn't it?"
"Oh, yes, Ma'am," Hoskins said fervently.
"Well, in that case, let's just see what we can do about that."
"Are you sure about this, Ma'am?" Sergeant Gutierrez asked quietly, and Abigail smiled sourly. At least the towering noncom was asking the question as privately as the pinnace's cramped confines allowed. That, unfortunately, didn't change the fact that he appeared to be less than overwhelmed with her plan.
Such as it was, and what there was of it.
"If you're asking if I'm sure it will work, Sergeant," she said coolly, "the answer is 'no.' But if you're asking if I'm confident this is what will give us our best chance, than the answer is 'yes.' Why?"
"It's just– Well, Ma'am, no offense, but what you're talking about doing would be hard enough if we were all trained Marines."
"I'm aware that Navy personnel aren't trained in planetary evasion and concealment tactics the way Marines are, Sergeant. And if I had another choice, believe me, I'd take it. But you'll just have to take my word for it that there's no way this pinnace could possibly avoid detection, interception, and destruction if we try to stay in space. That's an area where we Navy types have a certain degree of expertise of our own." She gave him a thin smile. "So, the way I see it, that only leaves us the planet. Understood?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Gutierrez said. He remained clearly unhappy, and she suspected he also remained somewhat short of total confidence in her leadership ability, but he couldn't avoid the force of her argument, either.
"Well," she told him with a more natural smile, "at least we already had our survival supplies ready to go, didn't we?"
"Yes, Ma'am, we did." Gutierrez surprised her with a chuckle which acknowledged that he knew she'd given him the initial assignment just to yank his chain. She grinned back wryly, but then their moment of shared humor faded, and she nodded to him.
"All right, Sergeant. Once we're down, I'm going to be relying very heavily on your expertise. Don't hesitate to offer any suggestion that occurs to you. I know what I want to do, but this isn't an area in which I'm trained to know how to do it."
"Don't worry, Ms. Hearns," he told her. "You know the Corps motto: Can do! We'll get through it when we have to."
"Thank you, Sergeant," she said, and she was genuinely grateful for his attempt to bolster her confidence, even though she was just as aware as he was of how slender their chances actually were against any determined orbital and aerial search for them. She smiled briefly at him, then returned to the flight deck.
"How are we coming, PO?" she asked.
"Almost there, Ma'am," Hoskins replied. Her co-pilot had the controls while Hoskins and Chief Palmer put their heads together over the autopilot programming panel. The petty officer looked up at the midshipwoman with an expression that was half-smile and half-grimace. "Too bad we didn't have any canned routines on file for this."
"I know. But Sir Horace didn't have one either when he set it up," Abigail pointed out. "And at least you and Chief Palmer get to work with our own software instead of the Peeps'."
"True, Ma'am," Hoskins agreed, and Abigail smiled encouragingly and returned to the passenger compartment.
"We should hit Refuge orbit in about twelve minutes," Commander Thrush said, and Samson Lamar nodded in acknowledgment of his astrogator's announcement just as if he didn't think this hunt for the Manty pinnace was ridiculous. And pointless.
He doubted very much that the cruiser had taken the time to squeal any sort of detailed download to the pinnace's crew. Certainly it must have had other things on its mind once it realized Cutthroat and Morder were both behind it. Despite what the Manty had done to Fortune Hunter, the chances of its successfully defeating two more heavy cruisers had to be low, especially in light of the way Morder's fire had smashed its after impeller ring. And if the cruiser was destroyed, then there was certainly no rush in hunting down its orphaned pinnace! If, on the other hand, the cruiser succeeded in escaping destruction by some unlucky chance, then there was no point in destroying the pinnace, either.
But that pain in the ass Ringstorff had insisted, and Lamar had been unable to come up with any logical reason why he shouldn't just as well do what Ringstorff wanted. On the one hand, there'd been no way to decelerate in time for Predator to join Cutthroat and Morder's pursuit of the Manty, and, on the other, Predator's base course had already been almost directly towards the planet.
So here she was, a fully armed heavy cruiser hunting for a single pinnace. It was rather like sending a sabertooth tiger to hunt down a particularly vicious mouse.
"Anything yet?" he asked his tac officer.
"Not yet. Of course, if they're lying doggo, they're going to be a pretty small target."
"I know. But Ringstorff says the remote platforms tracked them back to the planet, so they have to be around here somewhere."
"Maybe so, but if I were a pinnace that figured a heavy cruiser might be hunting for me, damned if I'd park myself in orbit where it could find me!"
"Yeah? Where would you hide?"
"The planet's got two moons," the tac officer pointed out. "Well, one and a fraction. Me, I'd probably look for a nice crater somewhere and hide in a ring wall's shadow. Either that, or find myself a nice deep valley down on the planet, somewhere. Damned sure I wouldn't hang around in space!"
"Makes sense to me," Lamar acknowledged after moment. "But we have to start somewhere, so let's get on with it. If they're not in orbit, Ringstorff is just going to make us look somewhere else until we find them, after all."
"What a pain in the ass," the tac officer muttered, unaware that he was paralleling Lamar's own opinion of Ringstorff. Lamar smiled at the thought, and returned to his own console.
Fifteen minutes passed. Predator slowed, killing the last of her motion relative to Refuge as she slid into a high orbit, and her active sensors began a systematic search for any other artificial object in orbit around the planet.
It didn't take them long to find one.
"There she goes," PO Hoskins said softly, staring down at the palm-sized display of the portable com. The unit's transmit key was locked out to prevent any accidental transmission which might give away their position, but the signal from the orbiting pinnace came in just fine.
Not that it was much of a signal. Just a single, omnidirectional burst transmission which would give away nothing about its intended recipients' location even if it was picked up. But it was enough to let them know what was happening.
High overhead, the pinnace which had returned to parking orbit under the preprogrammed control of its autopilot recognized the lash of radar when it felt it. And when it did, it activated the other programs Hoskins and Palmer had stored in its computers.<
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Its impellers kicked to life, and the small craft slammed instantly forward at its maximum acceleration, darting directly away from the planet in an obvious, panicky bid to escape.
It was futile, of course. It had scarcely begun to move when Predator's fire control locked it up. The pirate cruiser didn't even bother to call upon the pinnace to surrender. It simply tracked the wildly evading little vessel with a single graser mount . . . then fired.
There was no wreckage.
"Well, that seems straightforward enough," Lamar said with an air of satisfaction.
"Yeah," his tac officer agreed. "Still seems pretty stupid of them, though."
"I think Al may have a point, Sam." It was Tim St. Claire, Predator's improbably named executive officer, and Lamar frowned at him.
"Hey, don't blame me," St. Claire said mildly. "All I'm saying is that Al's right—only a frigging idiot would have sat here in orbit waiting for us to kill him. Now, personally, I figure there's a damned good chance that anyone who's just seen his ship haul ass out of the system with the bad guys in hot pursuit is gonna act like a frigging idiot. Panic does that. But if hedidn't panic, then this was way too easy. And if we don't go ahead and look for him some more on our own now, Ringstorff is just gonna send us back here and make us do it later. Besides, it'd give the crew something to do while we wait for Morakis and Maurersberger."
"All right," Sampson sighed. "Break out the assault shuttles and let's get to it, then."
"They didn't buy it, Ma'am," Palmer announced quietly, watching the display as the small tactical remote they'd deployed on a high peak several kilometers from their present position tracked the impeller signatures far above the surface of Refuge. The remote was too simpleminded to give them very detailed information, but it was obvious that the single pirate cruiser was deploying small craft.
"Not entirely, anyway," Hoskins put in, and Abigail nodded, even though she suspected that the pinnace pilot had only said it in an effort to make her feel better. But then another, deeper voice rumbled up in agreement.