“Heavily engaged, sir. She cannot break off and maintain defense net integrity.”
Hoffman dropped is hand, took a step back, came to attention before his friend of thirty years. “Admiral, I suggest you transfer your flag.”
“Do not be hasty, Captain.” Caneris’ tone was withering.
“Sir, the gundecks are lost. I cannot hold CIC or the portside companionways if we are to support engineering. Soon I must engage citadel, the proconsul’s orders are clear. You must transfer your flag.”
“Captain . . .” Caneris’ voice was dangerously low, his face hard, narrow-eyed; his breath coming short through his nostrils, “ I am nothing. The fleet is everything.”
“But, sir—you are the fleet.”
Caneris watched is friend’s eyes for the space of three heartbeats. Then: “Very well, Captain. May the Fates see you through to the end.”
“And you, sir. And you.”
~ ~ ~
Day 233 (1942)
LSS Polidor, engaged
Foxtrot Sector, Apollyon Gates
“How we doing, Major?” Only static for long enough Kris thought she’d lost her. God damn this useless fuckin’ waiting. The stupid sterile sitting on her ass while others fought and died. Making decisions others paid for—inventing plans tested with other people’s lives . . .
I’m not cut out for this shit.
Then Min’s face swam on Kris’s display, distorted by the interference. Her voice was thin and tinny. “CIC is isolated but we’re not home there yet. They got citadel engaged. They’ve been popping escape pods off portside, too.”
That snapped Kris of her brooding. Somebody over there didn’t like the odds.
“We have a splice on the main line but not helm control. They can still steer if they want but they can’t see where they’re going. No joy on Engineering. Sounds like they pulled the rest of their marines down there.”
Shit. She’d just started to feel a shred of hope. “Can you get anyone down there to reinforce Vasquez?”
“Not until the afterdeck is secure.”
An alert went off, jangling in her ear. “Wait one.” She switched to the new line. “What is it, Jeremy?”
“I hate to spoil the fun, ma’am, but Condorcet has broken free and is coming up hard astern.”
Shit and damn. “How long?”
“Sixteen to intercept.”
Could Min get a hold of engineering before those sixteen minutes were up? Would Condorcet take her flagship under fire while the issue was in doubt? With the keels locked, Bolimov’s shields were down. Would she do that to keep a dreadnought from falling into enemy hands?
Yes . . . she would. And then Kris remembered the escape pods.
“How long until she’s in gun range?”
“Ten minutes. Maybe eleven, with luck.”
Shit shit shit . . . She keyed back the major. Nothing but static answered. She pinged Lieutenant Simms.
“Simms, get me through to Penthesileia. Now!”
The Signal Lieutenant crouched over his console, looking pale. “Wait one, ma’am—”
“We don’t have one, Simms. Find me a goddamned channel!”
The lieutenant’s shoulders twitched and hunched. “Aye aye, um . . . Got it, ma’am!” Then, less jubilantly: “Text only though.”
“Well done, Lieutenant”—tapping her message one-handed.
Take command. Tell the Major: Sorry to have to burn the bridges. I am breaking lock in thirty seconds. Polidor out.
“Send that.”
“Sending, ma’am.” A calmer voice. Kris wondered if the kid had read it. “Message sent.”
* * *
Reading the characters scrolling across her screen, General Corhaine pressed the palms of her hands together for the briefest of moments. Recovering, she paged her Signal Lieutenant. “Jeri, can you raise Major Lewis?”
“Pings are bouncing, ma’am. I can try Colonel Easterling.”
“Do that, Jeri.”
A moment later, Lieutenant Reed reported a voice line open. The general clicked to it.
“Shannon, are you in contact with Major Lewis?”
“She’s holding the aft ladder well and main junction between Engineering and CIC. They’re got hellacious music blaring here. We’ve been using runners.”
“No joy on Engineering then?”
“First two attempts were negative. Nothing in the past ten minutes.”
“Condorcet is coming up hard. Polidor has broken lock and will attempt delaying her.”
“I’ll send runners.”
* * *
“All hands, this is Kennakris. I intend to lay Polidor across Condorcet’s bow and blow the bottles. If you want your molecules to remain intact, you have five minutes to leave the ship. Kennakris, out.”
In CIC, no one moved. Then Dalton said, “What about you, ma’am?”
“The bottles have to blow, Jeremy.”
“Ma’am, it’s not that we don’t appreciate the example but as stressed as the bottles are, it’s damn near certain they will blow the moment Condorcet hits.”
“If she hits, Jeremy. She still has time to evade.” Just blowing the bottles wasn’t enough: they had to blow in the right place at the right time. Trying to cripple the battleship, although possible, involved too much luck—deflecting her was the point. Done right, the explosion would knock her off course and shut her down—fifteen, twenty, twenty-five minutes. Maybe more. Maybe forever.
“Okay.” Dalton affected to look thoughtful for a moment. “In that case, better there’s two of us.”
“Even three,” piped up Cheryl Mason from the next chair. “Can’t take chances.”
“Four would be better yet,” added Tom Salsato. “Gotta be absolutely sure.”
Kris stared at the three of them, rooted to their seats and grinning through their visors.
“You’re all crazy mutinous fuckers,” Kris grumbled. “Y’know that?”
“Crazy mutinous fuckers,” Lieutenant Mason mused. “I like the sound of that. The CMFs. Can we be the CMFs after this, ma’am?”
You can be a collection of —
An alert blinked on Salsato’s console and her TAO interrupted that thought. “It’s Lieutenant Arles, ma’am. He wants to know he has permission to open fire. His gun crews are asking.”
Kris glanced at the status display. Every gun of their undamaged starboard battery was manned, except mount No.13. Another glance told her no escape pods had been armed. Not one.
You’re all a bloody batch of CMFs. Aloud, Kris said, “My compliments to Lieutenant Arles, and he may fire as soon as he range.”
Her TAO relayed the message. “He says ‘thank you, ma’am’.”
Idiots. Her eyes returned to mount 13. If everyone else was gonna be stupid . . . “Can you show me how to operate that mount, Tom?”
He followed her gaze. “Yeah. But you’ll need a loader, ma’am.”
“Fine.” She released her chair’s fighting straps. “Cheryl, go have fun in engineering. Jeremy, line us up and keep ’er there. Tom, let’s you and me go tickle a battleship.”
* * *
“Major!” the breathless marine runner called across the junction. The jamming blanketing the interior of the ship had reduced them to acousto-optic comms which were only line-of-sight. “Message from Penthesileia. Polidor’s breaking off to engage Condorcet.”
“How?” The flint overtones were clear even through the noise.
“She’s going to ram and blow the fusion bottles.”
A look passed over the Major’s face that was gone too quickly to be identified. But it was terrible.
“Let’s not waste the gift then.”
* * *
Kris squeezed into the gun-captain’s seat of mount 13, just behind and above Lieutenant Salsato in the loader’s position. The system was booted; the sight-picture and situation display were up. It was not that much different from a fighter’s layout. They had six rounds at hand, with more ready
to be delivered by the shot train from the aft locker. Salsato bought the rings to full power, tested the train and gave her a thumbs up.
“Ready to load, ma’am.”
“Load three,” Kris commanded, and as the shot racked up in the gun’s magazine, asked: “Have you ever done this before?”
“Oh sure”—with a grin. “At the Academy.”
Stellar. Kris had been through those same drills. Nothing like a little OJT.
She reported Ready to Lieutenant Arles as the other mounts registered green on the status display. Now nothing to do but wait—those grinding silent minutes before their target to came in range. When she flew, Kris had always liked to play music; usual something raucous. She and Huron even used it to synch their maneuvers. But here . . .
She pinged Dalton.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Jeremy, we got any music to put on the ’net?”
“Music?”
“Yeah. Something to get us in the mood.”
“Ah . . . what kind?”
“Something nice and loud. Y’know—appropriate.”
A pause in which Dalton appeared to be thinking. “Loud. Appropriate . . . as in Ride of the Valkyries?”
“What’s that?” Kris had never heard of it. Her dad had told her what Valkyries were though.
“My grandfather loved it. Used to play it for me at night when I was a little kid and we had these storms and I couldn’t sleep.”
“It helped you sleep?”
“Well . . . no.”
“What’s it sound like?”
He played a few bars.
“Oh.” It was nice and loud. “How long is it?”
“About five minutes.”
Kris checked the plot. Condorcet would be in range in about thirty seconds. Five minutes would be just about enough. “Yeah. Okay. That’ll do.”
* * *
“That’s another junction cleared, Major,” reported Captain Anders. “But I don’t know how long we can hold it. They’re buttoned up now, but there’s a lot of stirring behind there.”
There was stirring out here, too, though of a much different kind: a couple of squads worth of corpses floated in the open space of the junction before the hatch; mostly them, but some of hers, twisting slowly in the pink-fogged atmosphere.
At this moment, neither concerned Min all that much. They had to get to Engineering, and they had to do it two minutes ago—even at the risk of being cut off.
“Troy, we’re outta time. I’m gonna—”
“Major!”
The yell, transmitted by the acousto-optic link, reverberated in her helmet, and Min turned her head. Coming along the companionway across the junction was a squad of marines, several limp and being propelled along by their squadmates, led by Captain Gomez. Gomez—whom she’d sent to try to break through to Vasquez.
And who looked like she hadn’t made it.
“Captain?”—bellowing in spite of herself.
“Ma’am! We—”
An explosion somewhere deep in the ship blanked the rest of the sentence. Min raised a hand to her helmet and tapped it. Gomez came up to the edge of the open space, paused momentarily and boosted into the gap.
“We—”
“NO!” Out of the corner of her eye, Min caught a glimpse of a floating “corpse” suddenly spinning, the assault rifle that had been dangling aimlessly grasped in suddenly undead hands—
She shot forward, sidearm snapping out and firing, slamming into Gomez, knocking her away even as she saw a brilliant flash and at that same instant, a massive trip-hammer blow to her chest.
And then nothing.
* * *
Leaping strains of Wagner, echoing and re-echoing throughout Polidor, along her active gundeck, and most especially inside mount No.13. The shot trains ran smoothly, 8-inch rounds slotting into the loaders’ magazines on demand; the huge gun breeches cycling; waiting the ring-lights to show green; watching the pip. Pressing the firing stud—the unnerving noise, the shiver you felt in your bones . . .
Salvo after salvo, fired with cold clenched hate at the fast approaching battleship. The gun crews were a little out of hand now—Kris could hear Lieutenant Arles barking when No.5 fired with ring-lights still amber; snarling when No.9 jammed the breech in their haste—but hardly a shot went wide. They poured their fire onto the heavily armored prow, and while her forward shield defected some and slowed all, the shots had to be taking some toll. She could see the shield rippling under the constant rain—every round that hit the shield dumped an enormous amount of energy that it had to dissipate—and when it fluttered, another unimpeded shot went through. The prow armor was badly chipped and scarred now; the shield might fail in another minute, and yet Condorcet had not opened fire.
Whether that was because they had managed to damage her bow chasers or because she didn’t want to risk hitting Bolimov, Kris had no idea. Dalton was keeping Polidor on an exact line between Condorcet and the dreadnought, where any errant shot might score on the unshielded ship.
But it couldn’t last much longer. As soon as Condorcet fired, Dalton would spin the ship and bear down with everything the bottles could stand for the two minutes it would take to close. Polidor had to live for just those two minutes and against the bow chasers, she could. Kris knew she could.
Her one fear was that the battleship would turn and present a full broadside, sacrificing her approach to kill the annoying pest harassing her. And if the captain of the battleship figured out what Kris had planned, he’d do exactly that. It still meant delay, but on the balance it was worth because Polidor would not live a minute under her broadside.
God fucking dammit! He had guessed—he was turning. The big battleship was slewing and the moment her port battery came into line . . .
Kris felt Polidor turning, too. Dalton was bringing her prow on; the deck shuddered as the cruiser accelerated and Kris felt nothing but cold—so fucking cold—welded to her seat, not breathing—no thought of breathing—each slow strange heartbeat a painful thump in her hollow chest and—
Condorcet rolled. Slewing around, she rolled, interposing her keel.
That won’t work—that’s fuck’n insane . . . They could still blow the bottles to lock her down, and now Condorcet’s heading was nowhere near . . .
Vivid red lines streaking through her situation display suddenly explained it all. Behind them, Bolimov was firing.
* * *
“God damn!” exclaimed Robert Tomb from the far depths of the loader’s well in Bolimov’s upper-deck No.6 gun. “This fuckin’ thing’s awesome! I gotta get me one ’a these!”
Vin Foster swiveled around in his chair and spread his arms wide. “Ya believe this? There’s enough room to hold a g’damned barbeque in here!”
Tomb, twisting his neck around towards Bates, snug in the gun-captain’s chair, asked, “So what’dya think, sir? Will they let us keep it?”
Bates reached out to put the warm 18-inch mount into hot-standby mode. “I think there’s a better chance of fairies flying out my ass.”
~ ~ ~
Day 233 (1959)
Stealth Cutter BX-1, in transit
Foxtrot Sector, Apollyon Gates
Caneris took his breaths deliberately, slow and deep. His vision was starting to clear at last but it was still red about the edges and spangled with pinprick flashes of light. The pricking in his extremities and his cheeks would start to fade soon—the boost headache would last longer. The pilot was alert and already active, his movements sure, though his face still slightly flushed. But he was young.
The cutter was running dark, its heavily stealthed hull a mere ghost as it streaked towards the light cruiser Karaburan, still many minutes distant. How many? Everything depended on that answer.
“Pilot—” Caneris did not know the man’s name; in the dimness of the cockpit light he could not even make out his rank. “—I must communicate with Admiral Moreau. He must abandon his position and come in support of Condorcet. Imme
diately!”
The pilot turned in his chair—Caneris now saw he was a senior lieutenant and young for that rank—and shook his head. “I beg pardon, sir, but that is not possible. We are systems-down at the moment—reboot has failed once already.” Then, apologetically: “It was EMP from Bolimov’s broadside, sir.”
“Bolimov fired?” Caneris’ hands clenched convulsively.
“Yes sir. I believe she—the ship—fired on Condorcet.”
Caneris sagged back into the acceleration couch. “To what effect?”
“I cannot tell, sir.”
Of course, he couldn’t. The EMP from a dreadnought’s full broadside at such close range would be devastating to the cutter’s electronics. He must get a better grip on himself.
“Please say when comms will be reestablished.”
“Yes sir. Certainly.”
Time resumed its dogged march; his headache screamed. Seconds to minutes, and more minutes gone before the pilot again. “There is a report, sir. Just received.”
“Read it, Lieutenant.” His eyes still refused to focus properly.
“Condorcet is disengaging, having suffered damage—no other details, sir. Another harbor has been destroyed. Admiral Moreau reports phase wakes—a large fleet inbound to AG-I. Expected translation within the hour. He desires to fall back on AG-XI. Requests orders. Message ends, sir.”
Requests orders. Bolimov taken and another harbor lost, but all hope for the invasion? He still had Condorcet, somewhat clawed but still powerful, and if he consolidated his all forces now and made a concerted attack . . . It would be a desperate stroke . . . They could not hope to fully man the dreadnought . . .
“What details on this new fleet?”
The pilot displayed the data. His heart died within him. The approaching fleet was indeed large: he saw four signatures that could only be battleships, and another—even heavier—that was probably a fleet carrier. A force he could not attempt to oppose, and if he allowed it to get between him and AG-XI, his entire command would be in peril of its existence. And he had things yet to do . . .
“General order to the fleet: recall all units and withdraw at once via AG-XI.”
“Yes, sir,” said the pilot, keying in the message. “How shall I encrypt it?” The cutter’s comms system supported only the most basic encryption.
Loralynn Kennakris 4: Apollyon's Gambit Page 60