The door to the heart of the Union was now wide open. The Krag would walk through it any second.
“Maneuvering,” Max almost shouted, adrenalin getting the better of him, “head straight for the jump point, bring us to one thousand kills. I want to see the whites of their eyes. Weapons, disable warhead safeties in missiles one and two. Prepare to target designated ships emerging from jump. Pulse cannons one, two, and three to Prefire. Same with the Stinger.”
Weapons confirmed the order.
“Skipper, the cutter is hailing and requesting instructions.”
“Signal that it appears he won’t need to board that freighter and that I need him to close to within five thousand kills of the jump point, then go to station keeping and stand by.” Max turned to his sensor officer.
“Okay, Kasparov, when the Krag come through, I’m going to need IDs fast, so we know who to target first. Quick and dirty—just give me types.”
Then, to everyone. “When they come out of jump, remember that they’ll be blind, deaf, paralyzed, and stupid for a few seconds. They aren’t expecting anyone to be here ready to shoot. We’ve got to get our licks in fast. Kasparov?”
“Aye, sir, ID by types only, quick and dirty.”
So, in about a minute a whole Krag task force was going to come through the jump point, with nothing but a Khyber class destroyer and a Type 16 cutter to stand in its way. Max thought of the three hundred defiant Spartans at Thermopylae. Persians who outnumbered them over a hundred to one demanded that the Spartans lay down their weapons. Leonidas, the Spartan king, responded, “Come and take them.”
Today, there was no chance to hurl defiant words at the Krag. There was nothing to do now but stand and fight.
“Reading a polarization shift at the jump point,” Kasparov announced. “Flux differential increasing. Estimating transposition in seven seconds from”—pause—“MARK.” Everyone counted the seven seconds silently. “Transposition. Contacts! Six vessels.”
Damn the Krag for that trick of being able to push more than one ship through a jump point at a time.
“One vessel just jumped back,” Kasparov said.
“That would be the scout,” Max said. “He went back to let the Krag know that the battery was destroyed. More will be coming in a few minutes, once the metaspacial boundary becomes stable enough for penetration in this direction again.”
“All targets classified as hostile—classification is circumstantial only.” Kasparov was, quite properly, jumping to the conclusion that the ships were Krag because they jumped in where and when Krag vessels were expected to jump in, rather than based on any evaluation of the targets’ characteristics.
“Based on mass signatures only, five remaining targets are as follows: Hotel One is classified as corvette; Hotel Two is classified as destroyer; Hotel Three is classified as… light cruiser; Hotel Four is classified as heavy destroyer—maybe a very light cruiser; Hotel Five is classified as destroyer.”
The Krag didn’t send their heavies through with the scout ship, in case the battery was not destroyed.
“Weapons, target missile one on Hotel Three. Target missile two on Hotel Four. Open missile doors on tubes one and two.”
“Targeting missile one on Hotel Three and two on Hotel Four, opening missile doors one and two.”
“This is a Nuclear Weapons Firing Order. Fire one and two.” The small ship shuddered as the launch tubes ejected the missiles at nearly two-thirds of the speed of light.
“One and two away.”
At such close range, the flight time was short. The two Krag ships flashed and were gone, transformed into disassociated atomic nuclei and electrons by the ignition of two 1.5-megaton thermonuclear weapons, miniature suns flaring and dying as hundreds of intelligent beings suddenly were no more.
“Weapons, reload with Talons. Maneuvering, execute a flapjack. Weapons, abbreviated firing procedure, rear tube only. Make missile in tube three ready to fire in all respects, target on Hotel Five and open tube door.”
“Yield, sir?”
“Maximum.”
Again, both men acknowledged the orders simultaneously, while Maneuvering gave the orders to execute the “flapjack,” the maneuver in which the ship pitched end over end, rapidly swapping bow for stern. Now the stern tube was pointed at the jump point.
“Fire when ready.”
“Firing.”
The ship shuddered in a slightly different manner as the stern tube fired. Again, the flight time was short, and the 150-kiloton warhead dispatched the Krag destroyer, its point defense systems not yet recovered from the jump.
“Maneuvering, another flapjack, close the remaining targets at flank. Weapons, bring pulse cannon to ready.”
“Sir,” Kasparov talked over the other men acknowledging their orders, “it’s hard to read through the hash from the three nukes, but it appears that Hotel One and Hotel Two have their drives working and are clearing the datum. They also appear to be arming weapons. Signal strength is fading. Sir, I’ve lost Hotels One and Two. They’ve engaged their stealth systems and with the radiation and debris from the nukes, I can’t get a fix on them. And sir, before I lost them, I think I got a hint of a gamma signature.”
That meant that they were carrying more antimatter weapons. Could this day get any worse? “Tactical, what’s the status on our friends’ defense fleet?”
“Skipper, the group that was trying to interdict us is closing the jump point at flank, but since they are limited to subluminal velocities in-system they are well over an hour away. By the time they get here, the Krag will have jumped in enough heavies to cut them to pieces. As for the perimeter fleet, they were in four groups in a rough arc facing Krag space about ninety AU out. They are burning back at high sublight, but the first ones won’t be back here for nearly fifteen hours. That’s enough time for the whole Krag navy to get jumped in. The Pfelung won’t have a chance.”
Yes, it could get worse. “Any other forces in system?”
“There are several system patrol vessels converging on this location, but none are close and none of them would last three minutes against that Krag destroyer.” Tactical was back to a bad-news-only diet.
Max stood at his station, talking to CIC at large. “Okay, people, we need to find those two ships. They are probably carrying antimatter warheads. That will be genocide for the Pfelung and the end of their fleet as a fighting force. Kasparov, active sensor sweeps and optimize for stealthed Krag vessels. Maneuvering, lay in a search pattern; cover the area between here and our friends’ homeworld, because if the Krag have AM bombs, that’s where they’re going. Comms, see if any of the Pfelung will talk to us now. Fill them in on what is going on and see if they can activate their system defense sensor grid. Try to get them to blanket the system with sensor sweeps. Remember, people, stealth is never 100 percent effective. Hit a target with a high enough signal level and put a sensitive enough detector close enough to it, and you will pick it up.”
The doctor was shaking his head as the skipper’s orders were acknowledged. “Genocide? How? How can two small ships with bombs, no matter how powerful, destroy a race, or even most of a race, and destroy their fleet as a fighting force? It is not as though they can actually destroy the planet, can they?”
“No, but they can basically destroy the species and wipe out their navy.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Basic Pfelung biology, Doctor. You really should read your briefing materials. The capital ships in the Pfelung navy are crewed entirely with sexually mature, fully adult, already pair-mated, males—they are the only ones believed to be stable and mature enough. The adolescents are allowed only to fly the fighters. An adult pair-mated male must return to the river in which he first mated, and only that river, and couple with his mate, and only his mate, every thirty-one and three-quarter standard days—that’s a Pfelung lunar month—or he dies.
“That’s why every one of their ships has two crews that swap out every four weeks, like
the old Blue-Gold system for United States strategic missile submarines. Anyway, all the mating takes place in the fifteen or so suitable rivers. All the Krag have to do is blow up the critical portions of those rivers… hell, they don’t even have to do that. They just need to detonate the damn warheads in the upper atmosphere, and the gamma rays will kill everything within the line of sight. With the plants and fish in the river killed, the water chemistry will change, and the Pfelungs’ bodies won’t know they’re in the right river. The proper chemical receptors won’t be triggered. Even if they know intellectually that they are in the right location, the females won’t ovulate, and the males won’t be able to inseminate the eggs. Practically every adult male on the planet and most of the males in their fleet, since most of their navy crews come from the homeworld, will die. Billions. Worst genocide in history. Makes Hitler, Stalin, and Xang Cho look like half-assed amateurs.”
“Sir,” Tactical interrupted, “but what about the jump point? The next wave of Krag will be coming through in about ten minutes. They’ll put through the maximum number this time—eight ships. If they adhere to their tactical doctrine, they’ll be mostly heavies—battleships, battlecruisers, and cruisers.”
What about the jump point, indeed? Damn. Max was getting to that. It had never been far from his mind. Ever since last night, Max had been afraid he would have to give the order he was about to have to give.
“Comm, give me a secure voice link to the cutter. My headset only.”
“Aye, sir.”
Max put on his headset. “Channel open.”
“Cutter, Garcia here.”
“XO, this is the captain. I’m going to have to give you a difficult order.”
The voice channel communicated a pause—ever so brief—an even briefer sigh, then a sharp intake of breath as Garcia made a decision. “No, sir. You aren’t. I know what has to be done. I’ll see it through.”
“I knew I could count on you. Thank you.”
“Good luck to you, Captain. We will meet again.”
“Yes, we will, my friend. In that place where warriors go to take their rest.” He closed the channel.
On the cutter, Garcia heard the destroyer’s carrier signal cut off. He looked over at the ordinary spacer second at Maneuvering, a truly brilliant auxiliary craft pilot, but barely seventeen years old. That would not do at all. He took off the headset, stood, and scanned the men in the bench seats that lined the sides of the vessel. His eyes settled on the craggy face of the oldest man present. “Mother Goose, front and center.”
Chief Amborsky stood and went to where the XO was standing, near the cutter’s one-man Maneuvering Station. “Yes, sir?”
“Chief, you think you remember how to pilot a cutter, or am I going to have to take away your Comet and use it as a Christmas tree ornament?” Officers had been threatening to use enlisted men’s Comets as Christmas tree ornaments for well over a century.
“I expect that I can get her to go where you need her to go, sir.”
The lieutenant lowered his voice. “Amborsky, I need you to execute a synchronous jump point infarction maneuver with the incoming Krag ships. Can you do that?”
He started to repeat the order reflexively. “Execute a synchronous jump point infarction—” and then it hit him. He paled ever so slightly. “Sir? You want… you want me to rendezvous with the Texas?”
“Yes, Chief.” Garcia allowed himself a rueful smile at the chief’s poetic rephrasing of his technically couched order. “If we don’t, the whole fucking Krag navy is going to come through that jump point in about eight minutes, with nothing between it and the Core Systems but the Cumberland and a couple of worn-out Reserve Battle Groups. So, Mother Goose, we are called upon to ‘rendezvous with the Texas.’ Can you do that?”
The older man’s face saddened for a moment, then hardened into determination. He nodded slowly. “Yes, sir. I reckon I can do that.”
“I thought so. Take Maneuvering.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Amborsky stepped purposefully to the Maneuvering Station.
“I’m your relief, son,” he said, placing his hand on the shoulder of the man at the controls. Not expecting to be relieved, the spacer looked back at the XO, who nodded. He relinquished the controls to the chief, who settled into the seat and made a few small adjustments to the course, regaining the feel of controls he had not held in his hands for years, but that were still as familiar as old shoes.
The XO took the main sensor console, pulled up the data channel for the metaspacial flux at the jump point, and configured the system to read the flux polarization and flux differential, which would warn him of a ship on the other side of the jump point powering up its drive and preparing to jump.
“Maneuvering, bring us to within ten thousand meters of the jump point, and then go to station keeping. Program an acceleration profile to bring us through the point five seconds after my mark.”
“Sir, if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to do it manually. With my own hands.”
“Are you sure you can time it right?”
“Been a Navy man for thirty-six years, Lieutenant. I’ve never missed my mark or my tick yet.”
A sharp nod. “Manual it is.”
“Thank you, sir.”
A murmur went through the men seated in the personnel area. The tactical displays and the course plot were right there on the screens for everyone to see. Someone had figured out what was happening and told the others. The XO, hearing their voices, turned to meet the eyes of each of the nine men. Each met his gaze without flinching. They needed no words.
He returned his attention to his console. A minute. Then two. Then a few more. There. The scope showed clearly a rotation in the plane of the flux polarization, meaning that someone on the other side had engaged a jump drive that was tuning itself to the correct superstring harmonics. There. The polarization was locked in place. Now, the flux differential would start to change in amplitude, indicating that the ships on the other side were storing the energy that would tear through the fabric of space-time and deposit them at a spot ten thousand meters right in front of him. He waited for the amplitude to increase to just the right level.
“Coming through in seven seconds, six, FIVE.”
On “Five,” Mother Goose nudged the drive to just the right point, a hair past the third notch on the scale, and felt the acceleration kick in.
One spacer began to recite the Twenty-Third Psalm. In the moment’s overwhelming emotional tumult, all the XO heard were the words “green pastures” and “still waters.” He liked that. Suddenly, the internal cacophony quieted, leaving peace. And resolve.
Garcia looked at the chief. The chief looked at him. Lips compressed to a thin, gray line, knuckles white from his grip on the hand railing in front of him, Garcia turned back to his console, his eyes locked on the trajectory plot, making sure Mother Goose was steering the tiny ship true. At three seconds, he said, “To glory we steer.”
At one, the chief answered, “Steady, boys, steady.”
Right on his mark and on his tick, the chief piloted the cutter into the precise location in four-dimensional space-time at which an aperture opened from n-dimensional space and spat out eight Krag warships. As one of the Krag ships and the cutter suddenly occupied the same place at the same time, right down to the subatomic level, and as this fundamental violation of the laws of physics of both spatial domains took place precisely at the boundary between them, all the vessels occupying the boundary were instantaneously converted into pure energy, disrupting the boundary between the two kinds of space so radically that the jump point was rendered useless for at least sixty days.
The massive explosion showered the Pfelung system with a powerful flux of gamma rays, white light, tachyons, radio waves, ultraviolet, infrared, X-rays, and Cherenkov-Heaviside radiation. It flooded so much radiation, of so many types, at so many frequencies and polarizations and phases, that even the most heavily stealthed vessel could not help but catch and reflect so
me of it back in the direction of the sensitive detectors on board the USS Cumberland, which had its electronic eyes peeled for just such an event.
“Contact,” said Kasparov. “Consistent with previous contacts Hotel One and Hotel Two, bearings two-eight-two mark one-zero-four and two-eight-two mark one-zero-three, both heading two-seven-eight mark one-one-zero, straight for Pfelung, range 12,529 kills, speed 18,757 meters per second. Repeat meters per second—that’s maneuvering thrusters only; they’re trying to creep away, sir.”
“Get every active sensor beam we’ve got focused on them, Kasparov. Narrowest possible beam, maximum intensity. Light the bastards up.”
Kasparov keyed in the commands with speed and proficiency that seemed almost double what they had been just three weeks ago. “Target illuminated, sir. Any kid with an Ensign Sensor from the Navy Play Set within ten parsecs is picking them up right now.”
Not exactly standard CIC protocol, but given what this crew had been through, Max would let it pass for now. “Comms, hail the Pfelung. Ask them if they have any system defense batteries left, and if so, do they want the honor of vaporizing the rat-faced, shit-eating bastards who tried to commit genocide on them.” He paused a moment to consider exactly what he had said and added, “But try to word it diplomatically.”
“Sir, you might not need to send that message,” said Bartoli. “One of their secondary missile platforms just went active and launched four large antiship missiles, two at each Krag vessel. Missiles have just gone superluminal.” Almost inaudibly, he said, “Man, I wish we had some of those.” Then, to the CIC at large, “Missiles are seeking.” Short pause. “Missiles have acquired targets and are homing. Closing on targets. They’ve just gone to Terminal Intercept Mode.” Two bright spots flared on several visual monitors around CIC. “Got ’em.”
To Honor You Call Us (Man of War) Page 35