"Must've really pissed them off if they're blowing two hundred and fifty thousand credits a pop to kill us," Milady replied, almost as if pleased that the Cats were expending one of the most expensive launch weapons in a ship's arsenal.
"Marilyn, three seekers, can you nail them?"
"On it!"
"Damn, they really want us," Kevin said, his voice suddenly filled with weariness. "Those damn things cost a bundle. Kruger, blow chaff, two-second intervals!"
Hans looked at the weapons board, fumbling till he found the chaff launch button, and punched it five times. All the time Kevin kept weaving the ship toward the jump point. Hans watched as Kevin activated the jump engine, which drained their power still further. Once inside the nexus, the engine would interlock with the displacement of the jump point and they'd be catapulted across a dozen light-years, hopefully to emerge on the other side of the frontier, though if the angle of acquisition wasn't quite right, or the engine wasn't fully engaged, there was no telling where they might wind up.
"It's either shields or engines," Hans announced. "We won't make it running both."
Without comment, Kevin reached over and slapped the toggle shutting the shields down. Now there was only bare metal between them and whatever the Kilrathi could throw in their direction.
"First two seekers plowing straight through the chaff!" Marilyn announced, her voice drowned out by the reverberation of the tail guns as they kicked in, sending out a spray of mass driver rounds in the desperate hope that one of the bolts might impact on a seeker and detonate it.
Topside, Igor was still at work, trading shots with the fighters as they swept back in, while up ahead the light frigate, still holding position by the jump point, began to fire as well. Space seemed to be an insane intersection of flashing lights, all of them crisscrossing around Phantom.
I'm a dead man, Hans realized, and to his utter amazement, rather than renew the fear, he suddenly felt a strange, distant detachment from all that was happening. The sensation was remarkable, as if time was distorting, each second dragging out to an eternity. For an instant he wondered if he was already dead, so calming was the sensation.
He looked over at Kevin and saw the pilot, staring wide-eyed as they approached the light frigate, which was barely visible beyond the explosion of light emanating from its forward batteries. The man's scared to death, Hans realized, and the recognition of the fact was fascinating. He had been in tight binds before, while working for the Sarn consortium, and funny, again when he killed Sara's eldest son, and that same feeling had been there. Draw your weapon, step to one side to dodge the first blast, then calmly nail him between the eyes, turning everything from the neck up into a spray of pulp.
There was an intense awareness of all that was going on around him: Kevin, white-knuckled, driving relentlessly for the jump point; Igor cursing wildly, swinging his turret back and forth in a desperate bid to fend off the fighters; Marilyn cursing as well as she fired wildly at the incoming seekers. He looked down at the plot board, all the data now standing out so remarkably clearly. The seekers were still accelerating and would close a good ten seconds before they hit the jump. The light frigate was sending out a curtain of fire, but somehow he could sense that whoever was in charge of gunnery on board was doing one hell of a rotten job. The concentrated fire was causing the two fighters to hold back when all it would take was one more close sweep, and the first mass driver bolt to hit the pressurized cabin would cause a clean breech.
A shot from the frigate sheared through the portside wing, tearing off a couple of meters. Kevin dodged the next volley and then lined back up on the jump point. Without even asking for permission Hans leaned over and slammed the hydrogen scoops off. Though it immediately cut drag, it would be impossible to maneuver now.
"What the hell?" Kevin roared.
"Their shooting sucks and it'll give us a few more clicks of speed," Hans replied calmly.
He looked back down at the plot board. The first seeker was leaping forward, and then simply disappeared as Marilyn's shooting detonated the missile.
That bought us a few seconds, Hans thought, but the second and third rounds were still boring in. The second round skidded to maneuver around the expanding cloud of debris from the first seeker. To his amazement the third seeker appeared to go straight into the shower of debris, and it detonated as well. Interesting, he thought, the cats should have programmed their missile to avoid such a stupid mistake.
"Ten seconds to jump point," Hans announced, eyes still focused on the board.
The detachment and distortion of time that he was experiencing seemed to stretch out even further. He found it curious that, in a perverse sort of way, he was actually enjoying himself, a complete reversal from the terror that had all but overwhelmed him when the action first started. It was something worth remembering, he thought. Once into it, there's almost a cold joy to it all. Strange that dancing at death's door appeared to be the only thing that could elicit such a feeling.
He spared a quick glance up. The Kilrathi light frigate was turning to fire broadside, but he knew it was far too late. They shot past the frigate. They were inside the edge of the jump field, the jump engine telemetry showing that it was engaging with the distortion of the field.
Yet, even with his sense of total awareness, what now unfolded seemed to be nothing but a blur. The seeker seemed to leap forward and he realized that there must be some form of afterburner on the missile's engine to boost it through any point defense systems. The missile bored in and he heard Marilyn's cry of alarm.
He could see Kevin's features shifting to a brief instant of elation with the thought that they'd hit jump. That was washed out by a flash of light astern.
There was a final cry from Marilyn, "Got the bas…" and then the blast enveloped her. Though she had nailed the seeker, a remarkable display of shooting given its final acceleration, it had detonated far too close to them, the explosion washing into the back of the ship. If full shields had been up, they might have gotten away with it, but now there was nothing but a thin layer of durasteel, and the fragments of the missile, driven forward by the detonation of its warhead, slammed into the stern of the ship, tearing it open as if it was made of nothing but paper. He started to turn to look… and then wished he hadn't as what was left of Marilyn sprayed up into the cockpit. The air inside the ship whooshed out through the ruptured stern, the back draft sucking the fragments of the woman through the jagged opening.
He looked back at Kevin but there wasn't that much to look at there. A jagged hunk of durasteel, still imbedded in the back of his seat, had decapitated him. Igor, up in the top turret, was struggling to kick himself free of the debris, the bottom half of his flight suit was frayed by the wash of fragments, shards of white bone sticking out through the orange jumpsuit, pulses of blood spraying out and freezing in the vacuum.
Hans realized that his hands felt cold and, looking down, he saw that he had not put his gloves on. They were still in the rack to his right and, reaching over, he fumbled to put the first glove on. It felt strange. The pressurized cuffs around his wrists had sealed his suit shut. His hands were now in pure vacuum, sensation in them rapidly fading away as the moisture on his skin boiled off. It was becoming difficult to move them and he knew if he didn't act quickly they'd freeze solid.
Before he had even clipped the first glove on he struggled with the second, forcing it over his hand. He slapped his hands down on his thighs, snapping the locks closed, and sighed with relief as the pressurized cuffs released, flooding warm air around his fingers.
Something bumped into him. He looked over his shoulder and saw Igor, without a helmet, his flight pants from the knees down a tangled fringe of fabric, blood and bone. At the same instant the jump engines kicked in and there was the gut-wrenching sense of falling through jump. He had always hated this part, but for once jump came as a blessed relief. Everything seemed to freeze for an instant, Igor hovering above him, floating up for a brief moment as the
jump engines overrode the artificial gravity. Behind him he could see open space where Marilyns position used to be, the star fields coalescing into a shimmering, deep red glow as the ship instantly leaped through the folded space of the jump field. An instant later they were through to the other side, star fields returning.
Igor slammed back down on the deck and then, as if he was the walking dead, came back up, his mouth open in a soundless scream, hands clawing at Hans' helmet, as if trying to pull it off. Hans did not even bother to ward off the blows, there was an almost perverse satisfaction in not even bothering to resist his old tormentor.
Igor's eyes changed color as the moisture in them boiled off, the eyeballs then freezing. Igor continued to claw, mouth open, the thin wisp of a cloud of moisture, changing instantly to floating crystals of ice, cascading out of him. The tobacco he had been chewing fell out of his mouth, a frozen mass of dirty brown. His blows weakened, his arms slowly falling to his side, hands curling up into tight balls.
The blood in his lungs must be boiling, Hans realized, the bubbles filling his heart chambers. He knew that the stories about people exploding in vacuum were nothing but old wives' tales. Death was far more subtle, with surface moisture, the eyes, and the lining of the lungs giving up their moisture and then freezing. In a way, the victim simply suffocated, long before all the liquid inside their body was sucked out by the vacuum, leaving the corpse a shriveled mummy. Igor clutched at his throat, even as he slowly crumpled to his knees. Hans still watched him, not sure if, in a final malevolent act, he might not draw his blaster to insure company on the other side.
And then he did something that startled Hans. Igor seemed to smile and gave Hans a thumbs up gesture. He wavered for several seconds, then fell to the deck. Hans looked at him in amazement. It was almost as if, at the very end, his foe had indicated that Hans was accepted, that he was part of the club.
Hans looked back at the plot board. There was no pursuit and space around where he had emerged was empty. He keyed up the nav screen and sighed with relief to see that they had successfully made their jump back into the demilitarized zone dividing the Kilrathi Empire and the outer reaches of the frontier. He popped the hydrogen scoops open. Fuel was at absolute zero. It'd be a couple of days at the speed Phantom was running at to pull in enough stray hydrogen atoms to fire the engines up. It was the frustrating equation of space flight. There was fuel aplenty in deep space. Have a big enough scoop field and you could not only maneuver but could always pull in more and yet more fuel. The faster you were going the more you got. But when you needed it the most, when you were down to bone dry, you might drift for days, weeks, even months before you had pulled in enough to pulse the engines up to a speed where you could gather in energy quickly. He knew that if the Cats pulled a hot pursuit it'd be over in another minute… but they never came through.
He chuckled softly. They must have seen the seeker blow, the blast engulfing the ship, and assumed that it had been a direct hit. Since you only got so many hops out of a jump engine before a very expensive overhaul, the frigate captain must have assumed it was a writeoff and not worth the effort of going through to check. Heaven help that Cat, Hans realized, when someone finally checked the high-speed film and saw that Phantom had hit the jump point still intact. Well, more or less intact. He could only hope that they didn't get around to that for awhile.
Hans stood up and realized that his knees felt slightly weak. The moment of hyperawareness was drifting away and he wanted to reach out, to embrace it and wrap it into his soul. Never had he felt so alive, so clear in his thoughts, as he had in those final seconds. He knew now that, like a lotus addict, he'd willingly seek the moment out, again and again, no matter what the risk. He knew as well that something inside of himself had changed forever. He had glimpsed it when he killed the Sarn, a calm detachment, but that moment had been so brief, and the fear of what the Sarn family would do to him so strong, that he had never really taken the time to fully embrace and analyze what had happened. A line of challenge had been crossed, and the crossing had been remarkably easy. Hans realized that Kevin, whom he had secretly admired even as he feared him, never had that sense of control. He could see that in the pilots eyes in those last seconds. He looked back over at the corpse. The blood that had been pulsing out of his severed jugular had stopped, the sticky liquid evaporating in the vacuum.
He looked around the ship and weaved his way through the flame-scorched rubble to the stern access hatch. An inflatable collar might be able to seal that off, he thought. He'd have to go outside, look for punctures and fill them with plasti-seal. Fortunately the blow had taken them directly astern. There was no way Phantom could go into an atmosphere, but at least the forward cockpit, with its precious control systems, had escaped damage.
He looked back around the cabin. Burial would be easy enough, just drag them to the ruptured stern and out they go. They wouldn't be the first consigned to the eternity of darkness. And besides, he was no longer considering a one fiftieth share of the profit from the illegal shipment of Kilrathi durasteel down in the hull. This was, after all, a salvage job he reasoned, and by the rules of admiralty courts half the salvage was his, the other half divided between the government and the original owners. He chuckled. Hell no, this wasn't a salvage job. The captain and owner was dead-long live the new owner of the Phantom.
CHAPTER FOUR
In orbit above Kilrah.Confederation date 2634.155
"We are now at X day minus eighty," the Crown Prince announced, grinning with delight as he looked around the room at the eight clan leaders, and behind them the commanders of the Second, Fifth, and Sixth Claw Fleets.
There was a stir in the room as the Crown Prince gestured towards the holo display field and stepped away from it as the simulation started.
"This is the main Confederation base at McAuliffe, the primary strike target of the Second Fleet of the Claw, which I shall personally lead."
A scorched orange ball of a planet floated in the middle of the field, first appearing as a small dot and then quickly magnifying in size so it appeared to fill half the room.
"Their main orbital docking facility has the capacity to handle nearly half of their Seventh Fleet in hard dock around the skyhook tower that connects down to the planets surface."
The image focused in on the vast orbital yards of enclosed docks, each capable of holding a heavy battlewagon inside a pressurized container so that repair crews could work in an atmosphere, storage facilities for the supplies, open dock stations and a terminal hub for handling half a hundred smaller transport ships. There was a vast interlacing of pressurized access tunnels spreading out from the central hub of the skyhook tower. It gave the base the appearance of an elaborate spiderweb hanging in space, with each of the ships docked into the system looking like a silver-and-black cocoon.
"Remarkable that you have this," Admiral Nargth, who was in direct command of Second Fleet under the Crown Prince, stated.
The heir shook his head. "Intercepted from one of their news links, broadcast on an open carrier," he said, and the assembly laughed along with him over the stupidity of their foe.
"And the latest defensive reports?" Nargth asked. "After all, these images might be a trick, a fabrication meant to deceive us."
"No, it's not a trick. These humans who dominate the Confederation are prey who believe that there are no hunters and thus gather in the open. We've seen these images countless times in the months we've been preparing. They are supported as well by a download from a computer on that world we seized. As for what we believe their current defense to be, it is fairly substantial."
As he spoke the vid image changed to standard battle schematics, positions of threat highlighted in orange.
"There're more than forty batteries arrayed in a defensive perimeter around the orbital base. Standard weapons-mass drivers, laser and plasma. At least a dozen batteries are hard-linked to the ground through the skyhook tower and thus are connected to secured heavy fusion r
eactors so they have limitless energy to draw on. There're at least fifteen missile launch batteries as well, half of them multiple mounts that can launch at least sixty missiles in as many heartbeats. Add to that the weapons on board the ships and it's a formidable system to puncture. On the ground, at what they call Johnson Island, there are six fusion reactors supplying energy for the batteries in space and, more importantly, the shielding which completely encompasses the base, both in orbit and on the ground. The ground facilities, as well, are covered by an interlocking field of heavy batteries."
Holding a laser pointer, the Crown Prince outlined the six reactors while photo images of each appeared in the field.
"It still sounds impossible," Nargth replied.
The Crown Prince chuckled, looking around at the clan leaders, and especially at Vakka, who sat in silence.
"But easy enough now to break," Gilkarg continued.
"Sire, would you please explain?" Nargth interjected nervously. "We jump through and, by the time we close from the jump point to the base, they'll be fully aroused, shields up, and ships preparing to undock and engage. If they stay within range of those defenses we'll be slaughtered."
"Our new weapon will solve that simply enough," Gilkarg announced.
"Sire, it hasn't even completed its tests," Vakka replied, "let alone gone into production."
"We have eighty days to complete that," the Crown Prince said dismissively. "Have you made it clear to those who are involved in the testing and making of this weapon that it is their heads and those of their families at stake?"
Vakka nodded. Such methods might be approved of by the Emperor and the other clan leaders, but he could not help but find it somewhat distasteful. Granted, most of those engaged in doing the research and building of the latest weapons were not of the blood of Kilrah, but rather were slaves of other races whom they had had subjugated in their great leap outward across the universe. For those of the blood, there was but one calling, and that was to fight and win honor to their name. And yet, it was upon the toil of those not of the blood upon which the Empire rested. If such individuals, even if they were soulless, were not offered some hope, some semblance of life without fear, he knew that they would not work well.
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