“Look at that…” Engineer Mate Howard whispered.
The bridge was silent as the visual display was buffeted by turbulence and the violence of space.
“Hold on now,” William said to the crew around him. “We’re almost clear.”
Course projections filled his screen. Anomalous readings pulsed back and forth. Range tolerances spiked far from the normal. The computer pushed back a question mark. The line where the Haydn drive would engage wavered and shook.
“Weapons? Weapons! What have we got?” William said to Seaman Mahindrahti.
She turned and replied quickly. “Half the mass drivers online, sir. Everything else primed and loaded.”
“Divert maintenance to grav shields and mass drivers.”
He scanned the display quickly. They’d be down to one side of defensive shields, no ability to roll and deflect the damage. Not acceptable.
Four hours. Four hours ‘til contact. The Sa’Ami had to burn through one gravity well and push across the gap. They had a pair of blinks. He had three blinks. Odd blinks, too steep, too short. The star was wreaking havoc and it was only getting worse.
William glanced to the door of the bridge. A single Marine snapped to attention. Private Avinash stepped onto the bridge. Major Theodore walked in behind him.
“Did it work?” Major Theodore asked. His eyes searched the displays.
“It worked.” William scanned his face. Archie was totally drained and worn beyond emotion.
The Major collapsed into a chair. Everything flowed out. Sobs and cries came in waves. Private Avinash took a step closer and stopped when William raised a hand.
“Will he live?”
“I don’t know.”
Major Theodore wiped away tears with the back of his hand. “I’m going to see him. I owe that man an apology.”
The Major stood, straightened his spine, and strutted off the bridge.
“Major?” William called behind him.
“Captain?” Major Theodore stopped in the doorway.
“I owe you an apology, too. I was going to shoot you.”
Major Theodore looked back at William with a haunted look on his face. “I prayed you would.”
*
Orders were short. Options even shorter. William focused on what could be done with what they had. A fight was out of the question. They just had to hold out long enough to reach the Haydn point.
The list of Sa’Ami ships finally stabilized. Nearly every ship he’d seen in Canaan was streaming towards him.
The station finally slid into nothingness. Pin pricks of energy displayed all that remained as the xeno devices continued to transmit energy through the Haydn field.
He scanned through the list of remaining crew. The ship had lost a majority of the naval ratings on the station. The Marines were ravaged and the soldiers even worse. They would be down to skeleton rotations.
He wanted to laugh, here he was worrying about rotations when in a matter of hours the Sa’Ami would be on him.
The Malta burned in a straight line to the next blink and one step closer to home. The computer recalibrated and shifted the Haydn point. The wall of the singularity steepened the gravity well into a ravine.
It would take more blinks to get through than he first thought. The computer showed an odd line where, once they were past it, the blinks would take them further.
He double checked the numbers. It wouldn’t matter. The Sa’Ami would be on him a few minutes before the grav point.
“Mahi,” William said to Seaman Mahindrahti. “Full data dump into the courier, full burn, send it out in ten minutes.”
She nodded. Around the bridge, faces turned to him. He’d kept the nav station display off the main screens. Now they knew that the Malta wouldn’t blink in time.
The ship wide comm system clicked on. “Ten minutes ‘til courier deployment. If you, uh, have a message to send home, get it in queue now.”
William sat back and watched as the bridge crew recorded words and typed last messages.
He felt a tug at his heart. He had no one to send a message too. No one on Earth who gave a damn. The planet of his birth was a burnt rock. For the first time in a long time he questioned why he was fighting at all.
A touch of faith. Faith that things would get better, that mankind would atone for the sins of the fathers. He feared this war was just the beginning. The split was worse than just Sa’Ami, Hun and UC. It was Them verse Us on all sides.
Everything he stood for was on the line. Tyrants on either side. Fear in the middle. Where did he stand?
“It’s off, Captain,” Mahi said.
He looked around the room and knew. He stood with those around him for a chance to make things right.
“All right. Let’s get ready for a fight. If we can keep them off for a few minutes, the courier will get through.” It almost felt like a lie, but he knew it might be true.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Precipice
The Malta passed through another wave of expanding plasma. The orbital bodies of the star system were departing to be lost in the depths of space. Vector lines showed where the planets would end up. A particularly brown planet was due to arrive in the next system in a few hundred thousand years.
Only a single barren rock, barely large enough to call a moon, had found a stable orbit. The violence that spread through the system was rippling through space as the Haydn fields expanded the barrier outwards. It was like an island in a sea of destruction.
William sat back in the chair and waited. The courier was accelerating at an exceptional pace. The drone was packed with nothing but a Haydn, a grav drive, and a data package. But in it was all that the United Colonies needed. If that blinked through it’d all be worth it. They’d know of the breach.
He scanned the program once more. The priority would be on survival, keeping the fire focused on him and away from the drone. It was small, wickedly fast, but fragile.
Von Hess popped into his head. He wished he had a truly talented pilot. The connectedness of a linked pilot was amazing. Especially as half of his ship was without any grav shields.
“Engineering, what’s the status?” William called out.
Howard whistled and looked back. “About the same, Captain, the additive cell is cranking but it’ll be some time. The shield generators were slagged, they gots to make new ones. I think we’ll run out of rhenium by then too.”
William nodded. He’d seen the inventory and rhenium, the critical base for all the grav systems, was running thin. “Keep them at it, even partial shields is better than none.”
“Mass drivers are almost in place, they’ll be ready.”
Around him the faces looked scared. Hell, he felt scared. A sense of duty hung on him like a cloak of old. But a cloak wouldn’t keep the vacuum out.
He keyed up a full transmit. “Malta.” He paused and looked around. They were watching. “We have passed through the forges of hell. First to escape certain doom, and then to try and destroy the Sa’Ami wall. Now the wall stands, but a hole has wedged it open.”
He cleared his throat and continued. “Our courier drone holds that information. If we can keep it from being destroyed our fleets can use this and punch right through where the Sa’Ami least expect it.”
The crew was silent.
“We’ll not spend our lives cheaply, the Sa’Ami will pay dearly.”
Heads nodded around the bridge. He wished he could walk through the ship and see his crew, reassure them, inspire them. Instead he sat back and watched the Sa’Ami come closer.
Lebeau limped back onto the bridge with Abraham grasping an elbow. She sat down at an auxiliary console. “Captain.”
William nodded. “Ms. Lebeau, you up to this?”
“Be damned if I’m going out in the medbay.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Uh, Captain?” Abraham asked in a voice that was soft for one so large.
“Yes, Abraham?” .
�
�Where does that line go?”
William looked back the nav console and plotted out the line that ran from the binary. He hadn’t paid much attention beyond the current system. The nav console pulled back to show neighboring stars. The red line of the barrier snapped past Canaan. The colony was on the Sa’Ami side.
Abraham squinted and leaned forward. “I’m, uh, I don’t know how to read that.”
William felt for the young man. “Canaan is on the Sa’Ami side of the barrier, Abraham.”
Faces turned around the bridge and looked at Abraham. He raised his chin and swallowed hard. “I’ll be in Engineering, Captain.”
William nodded.
“Here we go. Seal it up, start defensive maneuvers.” William stretched his hands before him and smoothed out his shirt. With a quick tap he called up the medbay, Huron was listed as stable.
“Ms. Lebeau, send a barrage of railgun slugs at the big one please. Let ‘em know we’ve got some fight in us yet.”
Lebeau smiled and nodded.
Railgun slugs burst away from the Malta and pinged onto the grav shields of the nearest Sa’Ami cruiser. The forward velocities were too high for much maneuvering. Only the smaller ships could dodge them, though the railgun slugs couldn’t do much to the larger ships.
“They’ve launched!” Mahi reported.
A blossom of missiles expanded from the nearest Sa’Ami ships. They formed into a tight pattern and burned hard towards the Malta. Icons winked into patterns with projected impact times just behind.
The mass drivers opened up in a steady rapid pulse. Slugs passed through the cloud, some impacted, others didn’t. The efficiency of the strikes rose higher, a number that made William feel a bit better. A number that would only get worse as the Sa’Ami came closer.
“Save the missiles for any strider capsules. I do not want any of those bastards on us.”
Thoughts of surrender came suddenly. Would they even acknowledge it? They hadn’t taken prisoners, or even requested terms. He doubted he had anything that would make a difference, only the courier drone and that was already gone. But if he could confuse them a bit…
“Open a channel, emergency band, quick!” William snapped.
“On it,” Howard replied quickly. “On keybind zeta.”
William pushed it down and flashed a grin across the bridge. “Sa’Ami forces, I’d like to propose a deal. We’ll send out Commandant Nefoussi if you cease hostilities.”
His heart rate cranked up and he continued the bluff. “We’ll place the Commandant into a lifepod and drop it off at the transition point.”
His eyes lit up and he found the smile growing wider. Subterfuge was a naval trick that was old when the ships had steel hulls.
“They’ve paused,” Mahi said with a laugh. “They’re still coming in, but no weapons have fired.”
Seconds passed, crucial seconds. William watched as the courier drone burned closer to that imaginary line. And then it was gone.
“Malta, this is the Djelba,” A heavy voice with a thick Tunisian accent called. “We need to verify that you have the Commandant.”
“Djelba, he is unable to speak. He suffered grievous wounds in the assault.”
“They’re getting close, Captain, too close,” Mahi said.
The leading group of Sa’Ami droneships, like the one they’d faced before, were close enough to end him in a single barrage.
“Malta. You will be considered legal prisoners of war. Your ship will be secured,” the voice from the Djelba said.
“Striders, coming in!” Mahi said. The display above her followed the hazy track of the incoming orbs.
“Shit. Missiles loaded. We’re going to launch when they’re one kilometer out,” William said as he shifted the weapons program to engage the incoming striders.
“That’s cutting it close, Captain,” Lebeau said.
“Yes, but we need to buy some time, we’re almost there.” William panned the screen and showed the line where the courier drone had blinked.
He felt triumphant but also detached. They’d make it, but even if they did the Sa’Ami droneships would blink too. And then what? He did the only thing he could and kept moving forward.
The display above counted down as the striders zipped in closer. The orbs decelerated as rapidly as they could. The Malta shook as all the batteries opened fire. Missiles coursed out and away.
The striders maneuvered weakly but they spent all there energy stopping and didn’t have enough velocity left to do any good. The missiles impacted vaporizing the striders.
“Roll!” William called out.
The Malta pivoted on the centerline showing the toughest quarter she had. A second after railgun rounds began to splatter against the shield in clouds of green plasma. The nickel ablatives were coming hard and fast from the closest drone ships.
“Energy spike from the big bastard!” Howard called out.
The forward prow battery of the Sa’Ami battleship glowed briefly followed by a wave of particles.
Alarms fired and the entire mass of the Malta shifted. Maintenance screens flickered red. Power winked and faded before kicking back in.
“The hell was that?” William cried out. “Hudson?”
Hudson fumbled with the console and seemed to be at a loss for words. “The uh, a chunk of the ship is gone.”
“Can we blink? Do we have power?” William asked. He squeezed his augmetic hand tight to silence the itching.
Displays showed contradictory readings. The only thing clear was the fact that the Malta was faltering.
“We have the power,” Hudson said.
“All powers to the grav shields. Can we blink?” William yelled.
“I, uh, I think so, Captain,” Abraham said slowly over the comms.
“He’s gonna have to go manual with it, we’ve lost the connection. The nav profile will be loaded, we just need to tell him when,” Hudson said.
“You get that, Abe?”
“I think so, Captain.”
The next barrage of railgun rounds stung with pinpoint accuracy. Vacuum alarms sounded throughout the Malta. Requests for assistance appeared throughout the ship.
William snapped his eyes from one display to the next. More missiles were inbound. The Sa’Ami droneships were closing. The line for the Haydn drive seemed to hover close, but not close enough.
“Thirty seconds till impact,” Lebeau said.
Mass drivers fired sporadically before halting completely. The thermal damage was too much. The missiles were coming and they had nothing to stop them.
“Contacts, contacts!” Mahi cried out.
At the boundary of the Haydn line a pair of Aleutian class light frigates appeared. Each blinked within ten kilometers of the Malta. They hung for a moment. Then flared with mass drivers.
The bridge erupted in celebration. The wall of incoming Sa’Ami missiles were struck by nickel slugs from each of the frigates. Names appeared on the display: the Cape and the Dover.
“Get me a link!” William ordered.
The newcomers pushed forward towards the Sa’Ami ships. Each of the light frigates was half the size of the Malta. The leading edges of the pair was already glowing with the impact of railgun rounds and nickel slugs.
Tactical data streamed in.
“What are they doing?” Lebeau asked. The course for both took them directly through the Sa’Ami fleet.
William shook his head slowly. The two light frigates bore the brunt of the entire Sa’Ami fleet. The leading edge of the Sa’Ami passed the Malta.
“Get ready!” William called to Abraham. The line for the blink approached. Gravity flickered.
Four more ships blinked in. A line of heavy assault cruisers, sister ships of the Erebus. The Terror, the Franklin, the Shackleton, and the Perry. The four bore a line on the edge to the side of the Sa’Ami fleet.
William looked from screen to screen. Did he stay or go? The light frigates seemed crazy, and even with the heavies they were still outg
unned. The Sa’Ami continued closer to the grav point.
“Captain?” Lebeau said excitedly. “Grace?”
“Not yet!” He snapped out of it. “Railguns open fire. Ping tactical, coordinate fire with the heavies.”
“Uh, Captain?” Abraham called from Engineering.
“Hold on, Abe! Stay ready!”
The Sa’Ami were committed. Either they continued on, blinked through, or burned to a stop and gave chase. The accumulated velocity was too much to stop in a reasonable time.
Railgun fire thrashed across space as the light frigates continued to bear the onslaught. Fire ebbed away from the Malta.
In a flash the Sa’Ami battleship battered the Terror with the unknown weapon. The nose of the Terror disintegrated into shards of glowing armor and magnetized alloy. The other three broke course and aimed for the battleship.
“Sweet fucking Jesus,” Lebeau said.
William squeezed the armrests. His weapons program shifted and coordinated with the cruisers. All weapons fire focused on the battleship.
“What is it?” Mahi asked as the strike on the Terror replayed.
“Incoming missiles,” Hudson said quickly.
“Mass drivers functional?” William asked. He knew the answer but hoped Hudson would have better news.
Hudson turned and shook his head quickly.
Mass drivers fired from the cruisers but the angle was odd. They were firing behind at the droneships that had passed the Malta.
“Blink?” Lebeau asked.
“Not yet,” William said. “Wait ‘til we see how those slugs do. We’re not running out of this fight. Not while we’ve got a chance to make a difference.”
Missiles, nickel slugs, and railguns punctured the vacuum in a silent dance. Starships spread and moved, slaves to acceleration and momentum. Shields flared, armor reacted, and nanites sealed what they could.
The Malta rolled gently and showed her better side to the incoming Sa’Ami missiles. William watched the screen and pegged his eyes to the shield strength. Every few seconds it would ping up and down as mass driver slugs impacted it.
Edge of Solace (A Star Too Far) Page 29