by Ken Britz
Powell was intimidated by Rogers’s mathematical expertise—Rogers taught him at the Academy, after all. “What’s the risk?” he asked, adding, “Sir,” a half second later.
Rogers leaned forward. He had Powell interested. “The probability of success is small. The decompression could rip Venger apart. It could be time-sliced. We could hop into Rigel B or be crushed the Jovian’s gravity There are other variables that only JEM can solve.”
“So, we’re going to trust an AI to do it for us?” Powell said.
“Jim, we trust it to get us between star systems. This isn’t much different. More complex, as the ends of the compression are close together. But if there’s time for the space-time fabric to reform, it might work. The loop has to be long enough.”
Powell nodded. “If the loop is too long, we won’t buy any time. Too short and the compression ripple throws too many variables.” He scrubbed his fingers through his hair, wavering. “I don’t know, skipper.”
Cowan handed him a terminal. “Review the work. Confidential.”
Powell took it from her. “Yes, I know.”
After Powell left, Cowan turned to Rogers. “Do you think it’s a good idea, sir?”
Rogers ducked the question. “The risk at Tau Ceti was that I used the compression core with no way home. This time I’m risking the whole ship. If I’m going to try something this unorthodox, this risky, I want the Astro’s buy-in. That will go a long way to winning over the crew.”
“Sir, the crew will do what you tell them to.”
Rogers frowned. “I know it’s not a democracy, but to pull this off, we need every Venger crewmember. It might be an exercise in futility anyway.” He handed his terminal to Cowan.
She read the message. “Hollis is asking for our help?”
Rogers laughed. “I’ve only been asking for his since this started. Now that we’re out of the fight, he’s decided to act. He seems to have forgotten Venger’s out of this for now.”
Cowan glowered.
“Something on your mind, Amber?”
Rogers wanted to hear her honest opinion, unfiltered by protocol. Cowan gave it. “Venger will hate it. We’ve been chasing this sub since out-system and now Hollis gets to take her on? First off, this wouldn’t be an issue if he’d just gotten underway like we asked—or begged. Second, if Hollis thinks he can take this bastard by himself, he’s mistaken. He has the gall to ask for our help? Thanks to him, we’re floating debris out here!”
“I’m certain he’s read our latest SITREP, but he’s as confident as I am in our crew getting at least one main online. The problem will be that we won’t catch her—they’re already orbiting the Jovian and we’re still days away. If that subspace commander’s smart—and we know she is—she will have dived into subspace for stealth. She’s dead set on Alexandria.”
Mitchum bounced in. “I heard the word ‘debris’ and thought I’d refute that.” He smiled at Cowan. “Sir, I heard you got something crazy up your sleeve?”
“We might try something. What do you have for me?”
“Weps got another Betta reloaded in tube three. At this point, it’s the only functional tube. Most systems are online and ready. I might be able to get one main drive online by cross-tying from port core to starboard thrust. It won’t get us to fifty percent but it’s better than zero and we can get to one gravity inertial, at least. ETA two hours. Had to clear a lot of damage to see if the thruster was good.”
Rogers nodded. He remembered his time as Chief Engineer. Since the dawn of the Fleet most ships had two redundant drives. Cross-connecting was possible if a thruster was damaged, but the complementary core was available. It took time, but was a flight routine procedure, and Venger practiced it as often as they could. Two hours was a high side estimate, Rogers wagered.
“Status of the compression core?”
Mitchum’s smile faded. “Core’s fine, sir. The problem is JEM.”
“JEM?”
“Yes, sir. It wasn’t stowed for flight and, well, it’s pretty banged up from the torpedo hit. Lot of modules are offline.”
Rogers rubbed his beard. “Damn, that’s right. What a damn fool thing for me to do. XO, never get overconfident. It’ll be your downfall.”
“No, sir.”
“Cheng, you got more for me?” Rogers guessed from Mitchum’s smile.
“I got techs working on it. We got a fresh depot pack from the refit, and we’re doing a rip and replace. Without diagnostics, I can get JEM online in a quarter of the time. Maybe three hours? Might be enough for whatever you’re thinking.”
Rogers got up and clapped Mitchum on the arm. “It might be. Good thinking.”
Mitchum grinned. “XO’s idea, sir.”
Cowan nodded. “I had Javy pull all the techs to work on getting JEM back. Thrust won’t matter for shit if we can’t get there, sir. We can help Hollis, though his caution might get the best of him.”
“Don’t count Orca out. She’s got a good crew, and I’ve known Jack for a long time. He can be bold.”
Cowan shrugged. “The question is: is he a match for that sub commander?”
“On that I cannot comment. He has our data. I still have to send my assessment of the sub commander.”
Cowan nodded and left. The life of an Executive Officer was harder than that of the Commanding Officer. She wouldn’t sleep until this sub was a debris field.
Rogers motioned to his personal coffee maker. “Coffee?”
Mitchum shook his head. “Too much stim and I’ll be useless. How crazy is this idea of yours, sir? On a scale of one to Tau Ceti Supply Depot?”
“Oh, it’s worse. In a category of its own. How much do you think Venger is up for?”
“She’s not dead, that’s for sure. I’ll fight for her hand-to-hand, if I have to.” Mitchum left.
“It might come down to that,” Rogers told himself and bent to putting an assessment of the sub commander down for Orca.
23
GLSS Marengo Orca
Rigel B Jovian Orbit
1310 U.Z.
1254.12.14 A.F.
Hollis suited up, not relishing the thought of sitting in hard vacuum for the next couple of hours. How he longed for the days before the war and then berated himself for the thought. It wasn’t the Galactic League that brought this civil disturbance. It was a pissant system based on the notion that humanity should be led rather than managed. Hollis understood the appeal. The Fleet was centralized, but it had to be. Damn those infernal bastards and their politicking! He’d retire if they let him. He was on the roster already, and there were plenty of hungry young officers eager to take the bit. He mused over the tacticals again, trying to work out what the sub commander would do. Would he turn tail and run or would he fly into Marengo Orca’s teeth?
Orca’s crew was plunged into hard vacuum, ready to take on the enemy. All comms switched automatically to the suit network. Hollis kept his suit at medium comfort. They were no longer in hard burn and he’d slowed to keep his weapons at a velocity advantage over any detection and light delay. They’d find the enemy, though she might be close when they did.
He checked the sensor summaries again. None of the observation stations on the Jovian’s outer moons had detected anything within the Jovian. Could he be wrong? Could the sub have shifted into subspace and be on its way to the shipyard? There was one minor detect, close to the Jovian troposphere… just a faint ripple. Should he calculate new projections on that? The ship’s sensorheads were running the numbers, but the data came from a single moon and the correlation level was low. But these subs were difficult to detect.
They were in the final stage of the deceleration burn, coming in to slingshot around the Jovian’s dark side. Orca still had speed, so if the sub was there, they could maneuver and outrun enemy torpedoes.
The Jovian currently dominated the astrodisplay. He scaled the image down to bring its satellites into view. His sensor display chirped.
“I got a minefield on the da
rk side,” Traynor said, highlighting the data.
“That’s the first good sign. Battle stations, XO,” Hollis said.
The alarms sounded through suit systems, though the Marengo Orca was already in nearly full ready state. The ship’s alert lights strobed, and all stations reported ready, green across the board.
The astrodisplay was peppered with drifting mines.
“They’re below the inner moons,” Traynor said. “That could mean she’s in low orbit, lying in wait.”
“Could be, but I’m not all that sure,” Hollis said. “Pilot, full braking.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
High inertial pressed them into their creches. Hollis grimaced at the vector change. But something else nagged at him. “I don’t like this.”
“Sir?” Traynor said. “Closer orbit is risky, but the sub can definitely mask her subspace trail—”
“No, it’s not that,” Hollis said.
The port proximity alarm flashed inside his helmet and on the astrodisplay.
“Hard to starboard!” Hollis barked. Orca shook hard enough to make his teeth rattle. Orca slewed off course before the pilot caught it.
WHAM!
Something impacted the ship hard enough to make Hollis’s head snap forward and smash the screen in front of him.
“I’ve lost aft dorsal thruster,” the pilot reported.
“Give me a ten-thousand-kilometer reduction in altitude,” Hollis ordered.
“I have holes in port torpedo bay and the aft dorsal region. Leaks, but the hulls are intact,” Traynor said.
“Dammit, they shroud their mines. They were teasing us with a higher orbital spread. Move us closer in, pilot. Sensors, keep an eye out for close aboard mines. We should be able to pick them up with the Jovian in the background.”
“Scanning ahead of ownship, sir,” Sensors reported.
The Jovian filled the astrodisplay now, pulsing with massive electrical storms rippling through its capri blue atmosphere, cutting into ebony as they passed the terminus to the dark side. Hollis switched the display to false color spectrum. The bridge remained tense as sensors swept the giant again and again.
The enemy was intent on the shipyard, Venger was sure of it. Where was she? “Sensors, conn, ASDIN update?”
“Conn, sensors, no emissions detected at this altitude. We’re well inside the magnetosphere. Our optics are even being affected.”
“So, he could be in subspace?” Hollis asked.
“Conn, sensors, if he’s close to the planet, that’s a possibility.”
“I’m reviewing the ASDIN scans,” Traynor said. “There’s a lot of interference. I’m running pattern recognition on the tachyon data, but nothing is resolving into actionable information.”
“Let’s focus the optics and ASDIN to systemwide,” Hollis replied. “She could be more damaged than Venger realized, if she’s hiding on the dark side.” The radiation meters blinked intermittently.
Commander Jackie Traynor said, “Venger seems to think she doesn’t do sensor sweeps because she’s focused on the shipyard. She may feint toward the colony. I don’t know what to make of it, sir. I recommend widening the sensor sweep in case she alters course.”
“Concur. Widening sensor arc forward.”
Hollis couldn’t stop thinking about Venger. Rogers was a damned fine skipper, though too much of an intellectual for Hollis’ taste. The man only cared about fold-space mathematics, which made his strategies and tactics unorthodox. Tactical manuals were written for a reason. They were intelligence-based and kept current. If you knew the enemy’s tactics, you could counter them. He put himself in Rogers’s shoes and cursed. Rogers had been all alone out here and Hollis hadn’t seen fit to put Orca to space.
He brought up the tactical displays and ran the simulations again, watching the sub’s readout and probability values and comparing them against the deployed mines. A few lines converged, but no solid solution. The mines were in a decaying orbit, no longer in Orca’s path. He still found that peculiar. Why leave mines at that altitude?
The answer was staring him in the face.
“Sir, I’m keeping after weapons ring for close-in support,” Traynor said.
“Very well, Jackie,” Hollis said. Jackie Traynor was a good executive officer; she ran a tight ship and knew tacticals cold. She wasn’t as strong on engineering, having a shorter than usual Cheng tour aboard the Delphinus, a new Steppenwolf class cruiser.
“Crossing terminus in ten minutes.”
“Conn, sensors, torpedo launch bearing zero five three, declination negative three five,” Sensors barked.
“Torpedo detect?” Traynor said. “That’s star side, near atmosphere.”
“Counterfire tubes one and two,” Hollis ordered.
“Matching bearings, shooting tubes one and two,” Weps replied.
“Four inbound fish,” Sensors reported. “Point zero two AU range of detect. Ten-second light delay on launch.”
“Where’s the damn sub?” Hollis said. The astrodisplay locked optics on the incoming torpedoes. There was a flicker of black in the blue surface of the Jovian, but no sign of a vessel. “ASDIN?”
“Nothing confirmed, sir,” Traynor said. “Twenty seconds to impact. Two streakers, two heavies.”
“Clever bastard using the atmospherics to interfere with our ASDIN. Spin up tubes three and four. Let’s get the Bettas after her and scare her out of subspace,” Hollis said, though he was puzzled. It wasn’t unusual for an N-boat to be in subspace, but tacticals showed this to be a low probability event.
Traynor’s fingers were on the controls. “Tubes three and four ready. Bettas online and responsive.”
“Conn, weapons, have a good solution, based on launch trajectory,” Weps said from auxiliary bridge. “Search probability is low.”
“Sir, we’re still not getting tachyon detect on the ship,” Traynor said. “Recommend one Betta. We only have the two. Our bay loadout was transferred to Venger.”
“Aye. Shoot tube three,” Hollis commanded. Here we go, he thought. Gods be with us.
Marengo Orca’s hull juddered as the torpedo launched from the forward tube. The Betta cleared the ship and arced downward to the search point for the N-boat. Though relatively slow, it still accelerated at over a thousand gravities.
The four enemy torpedoes streaked toward them on hard burn, lighting up the astrodisplay. The light delay decreased as they hit point one cee velocity.
“Full inclination, hard right rudder! Flank speed!” Hollis shouted. Marengo Orca responded, going upwards in the ecliptic and away from the incoming torpedo paths. He grunted through the high gee spin and burn. The ship groaned and vibrated. His vision tunneled. Damn, he’d forgotten the engines! The ship wobbled in flight as it answered with full thrust. Maneuvering would give them everything they had regardless of engine status. The high velocity counterfire torpedoes shifted to search, arcing back and forth, nearly covering the breadth of the Jovian. The slower Betta continued its downward arc toward the planet.
“Conn, weapons, locking onto torpedoes,” Weps said.
“Ready after tubes,” Hollis said.
“No good solution, sir!” Traynor gasped. “No launch data and no source. Counterfire does not have detect.”
“Countermeasures!”
“Volley one!” she reported as Marengo Orca laid down a burst of jamming spectrum behind her. The enemy torpedoes were unaffected. That was always a possibility. “Volley two!”
The second volley was a mix of decoys and spectrum jam, looking to confuse the torpedoes. The display flickered as own ship’s sensors read the spectrum burst and filtered. One torpedo veered off on a decoy.
“Evade to port!” Hollis ordered and was slammed into his creche as the ship spun through its burn to the left, back toward the Jovian.
“Volley three,” Traynor said.
“Firing… firing… firing…” the ship’s computer droned. The after weapon ring sent pulsing vibrations in co
unterpoint to the incoming torpedoes. The close aboard alarm went off. Orca shivered and shook as an enemy torpedo exploded.
“Second torpedo detonated,” Traynor.
The close aboard alarm sounded again and the ship’s computer droned, “Firing… firing…”
The first torpedo, having taken the decoy, circled back in a long right turn, reacquired Orca and locked onto its thrust manifold. The close-in weapon systems fired, throwing heavy slugs and lasering at the weapon, but as it closed the distance, the weapons could no longer train on the torpedo. Marengo Orca screamed through Hollis’ suit as the after section of the ship exploded.
The ship’s computer droned in Traynor’s ears. “Firing… firing…” What was it shooting at? Traynor wondered. The Orca still fought, still moved in space, but spiraling. The gravity felt weird, off-balance.
“Sensors, report,” she said through her suit comm.
“Conn, sensors, after arrays destroyed. Forward sensors detect vessel behind us. Working on a solution. Two heavies incoming.”
“Volley five!” Traynor said, pumping another burst of countermeasures. The skipper took the controls and slewed the ship broad to the weapons. If Orca could get the sensor arrays and weapon rings to bear…
“Get one now, dammit,” Hollis snapped.
Traynor tasted blood. She must’ve bitten her lip in the shockwave. Ship’s systems were red everywhere. She said to the captain, “Loss of propulsion. Both mains are offline. Port thrust is firing and unresponsive. Secondaries are offline. After weapon ring is active, degraded. Forward weapon ring and torpedo bays are functional.”