No. The Ravager was cooling down. How?
Right! Schneider was flushing his coolant through the main refrigeration coils of his armor, the old bastard. That was definitely not in the book. The kilometers of refrigeration coils running through the five-meter-thick armor were intended to cool that ice. Schneider was doing the reverse, using the ice of the armor to take off some of the heat now bleeding the efficiency of his offensive weapons suite. A desperate measure.
But today was a day for some truly desperate innovations.
“Lieutenant, send to all ships: ‘Flush reaction mass and other coolant through the main belt armor’s refrigeration coils to cool it. Bravo Zulu to Schneider and Ravager for the idea.’ Close your mouth, Lieutenant, and send it now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That will weaken our main armor belt, sir,” the Chief of Staff observed carefully, in his status as the Admiral’s official second-guesser.
“Have we taken a hit that threatened to penetrate our belt?”
“No, sir.”
“Can we afford to lose any more of our secondaries? Lose any more of their efficiency? Wouldn’t you like to slap down one or two of those mosquitoes buzzing toward us? I understand Princess Longknife commands one of them.”
“She was relieved of her command. Charged with actions unbecoming or something,” the future governor pointed out.
The Admiral eyed his Chief of Staff, then the incoming attack. “She is out there.”
“I would not bet against you on that one, sir.”
“Ships report they are cycling coolant through their ice, sir.” A glance at his battle board confirmed the report. The secondaries were sliding back toward the green. Particular hot spots were cooling down around the ships’ hulls, even as the entire hull took on a warm pink. Not that it would matter against patrol boats with pulse lasers.
Oops. What have we here? More missiles. Intel said nothing about the Longknife patrol boats having missiles on them. More things that didn’t make it to the talk show circuit. The Admiral suppressed his grumble and tightened his belt . . . again. It would be interesting to see how the heat seekers on these warheads reacted to the lack of warmth around his secondary batteries . . . and the raised temperature of his armor.
“For what we are about to receive, may we be truly grateful,” he muttered.
“My division has the two in the middle,” Phil said, his voice low, hard, intent. His four boats were ahead of the others now. They’d go in first. “We’ll hold our fire until 25,000 klicks,” he said. Maximum range on a pulse laser was 40,000 klicks. Twenty-five ought to punch a good-size hole.
Kris watched intently as the first four boats jitterbugged their way up to the line of battleships. Her board now showed the ships a fairly consistent pink. When the 5-inch twin lasers popped up to fire, they flared red, but when they dropped back behind their ice armor, most of that infrared signature vanished. Some of the incoming 944s were able to fix the turret position on the battleship’s hull by spotting a bump or a mast. Something like that would let them triangulate on the turret. Most only saw a smooth expanse of ice. In those cases, the sensors either went looking for another major source of heat, or switched to another seeker. But the battleships had quit radiating most other signals as well. Most warheads just dug a hole in the ice.
A hundred-kilo warhead didn’t dig much of a hole in four meters of ice. Some missiles did. Here and there, a 5-inch turret picked the wrong time to pop up and snap off a shot at one rocket . . . and drew the fatal attention of another. Or a search radar antenna stayed on too long and got slammed by a missile in terminal phase at just that moment.
And then there was the one missile that almost missed entirely . . . but clipped a rocket motor on the third battlewagon back from the flag. The warhead slammed into the huge bell-shaped rocket engine just where the electromagnetic coils were that kept the plasma demons under control. For a split second, tortured matter at 100 million degrees kelvin got loose.
It wasn’t long, but in those brief moments, jets of raw energy ripped off another engine, smashed several electric generators, and might have done further damage if good damage control hadn’t brought things under control. The battleship slowed in its deceleration, fell out of line, and quit firing.
It was at that moment that Phil’s four boats rolled past, firing paired pulsed lasers at the wallowing ship and its sister. Kris measured the results. Fifteen lasers fired. Fourteen hit. Four paired hits slashed into the damaged ship.
And the battleship righted itself, started firing back, and kept right on decelerating.
“Damn,” Phil growled through gritted teeth. “Twenty-five K and we might as well have thrown snowballs at them!” There was a pause as Phil’s boat went through wild gyrations, but less fire was headed his way. “Our pulse lasers just don’t pack enough punch to dent that belt.”
“I hear you, Phil,” Kris answered. “Division 2, we’re next. We’ll go in closer. Nelly, what kind of really wild dance have you got for us?”
“Go to 6B on your mark, Kris.”
“My mark is . . . now.”
The 109 had been a mad hatter before. Now she was a crazy dervish, twisting, turning, never going in a straight line. Never going more than a few seconds before changing directions hard up, down, right, left. Forward, more missiles were mixed with Foxers as the 109 fought her way closer and closer to the second to the last ship in line.
“20,000 . . . 18,000 . . . 16,000. I’m at 15,000 klicks. Are you with me, 108?”
“Not yet, not yet. Almost. Now.”
“Fire on mark. Now.”
There was no sign that the four reasons for the 109’s existence had been expended against a battleship, either on the bridge or, when Kris turned up the visuals, along the hide of the battleship. No . . .
Yes. There was a steaming gash aft, right about where Moose said the reactors were. Two long, steaming slashes.
But . . . no burn-through. No flaming wreckage.
Forward, Kris could hear Kami firing more rockets, as they shot past their target, but as for any apparent effect . . .
Nothing.
“This is Division 2, here. We turned armor to slush at 15,000 kilometers, but we didn’t get burn-through. Repeat, 15,000 kilometers just doesn’t cut it.”
“Hear you,” Chandra said. “Babs, you and the 104 go in to 10,000 klicks. See what that does. Heather and I are three, four thousand klicks behind you. We’ll go closer if that doesn’t work.”
“You’ll be all alone,” Kris pointed out.
“I have Custer’s incoming missiles pushing up my derriere. The thugs have to be paying as much attention to them as they are to me,” Chandra said. Kris wondered if she believed it.
“Squadron 8, send some 944s back to support Division 3. All you can spare,” Kris ordered. They had a second attack to make; they would need them. Right now, Chandra needed them, too.
From the bow of the 109 came the sound of more missiles launching out of their tubes.
The 104 and 111 boats flipped and cut, turned and twisted, as they made their final approach on the flagship. Behind them, missiles came at all six battleships. Some fire went for the missiles. Most went at the boats. Main battery now concentrated on Horatio just about to come in range with their supposed 14-inchers. The part of Squadron 8 that had completed their run had mostly been ignored. Now, as missiles came back from them, the battleships took them and their missiles under fire again.
It seemed like mighty thin help, but it was help. All the help they could give Division 3.
“Fifteen . . . Thirteen. Fire when I say . . . ten. Laser’s fired . . . Nothing! Damn it! Nothing! What are these ships made of? Solid ice?”
“Maybe,” Heather said. “Let’s find out, Chandra.”
“I have nothing better to do,” the Navy mustang answered as if the wealthy debutante had invited her to go mall crawling.
“Think five thousand will do them?” Heather sounded as casual as if
that might be the price of a dress.
“Easily. Nelly, do the numbers. Assume five meters of armor against two of our pulse lasers in close proximity. Two more close by.”
“You could burn through four meters. Not five,” Nelly said.
“Maybe we ramble a bit closer. Hey folks, keep those cards and letters coming.”
“Yes, we need all the spare missiles you can afford.”
“Back them up,” Kris ordered.
“Div 2, you’ll have to do it,” Phil said. “We’re out of position. Our missiles won’t get there before it’s over.”
“Division 2 and 3, support Chandra and Heather,” Kris ordered. Beside her, Tom’s mouth was a hard line. She was depleting his boat.
“Do it, Kami,” he ordered.
“On their way,” came a cheerful voice.
“Eight thousand,” Chandra called. “What’s our mark?
In the background, almost forgotten, the song hit its refrain: “How Many of Them Can We Make Die!”
“That does it for me,” Heather said, as cheerful as if she’d spotted a sale.
“Then we fire on die.”
“Six thousand.”
“How many of them can we make . . . die!”
“Get those last two ships!” the Admiral shouted. “They’re going to ram Ravager.”
The Duty Lieutenant repeated the order. More missiles were inbound. Would this battle never end?
Being belted in and at two g’s kept Kris in her seat. Lasers were blowing missiles out of space all around the two attacking boats, Foxers were promising course changes to right, left, up, down, and taking laser hits, but not the two boats. They rolled over the second ship in line, firing simultaneously. At Heather and Chandra’s cry of “die,” their lasers lashed out through ice and steam and wreckage to slice into the stern of the battleship right at the reactors.
Heather aimed her two forward lasers for the same spot, her two aft ones for a different spot. And Chandra did the same. Four pulse lasers cut into one spot of ice. Four more cut into another spot just aft of that.
And nothing happened.
For a moment, that was how it looked.
Then one of the 5-inch lasers caught Heather’s boat and pinned it, a second sliced through it and cut it in half. As the two ends fell apart, a missile from Custer impacted on the stern of Chandra’s 105 boat.
“Oh no,” went as a groan through the 109.
The 105 spun, but now she spun too slowly, too much to a pattern. Five lasers caught her at once. She imploded like a star among them.
“No.”
“Something’s happening on the battlewagon,” Moose said.
Kris tore her eyes away from the vanishing remains of her friends. The battleship leaked plasma from a new hole that was not an engine. Slowly, like an rhino trapped on ice, it accelerated into a spin. The main engines swiveled to correct the spin, but one of them was hanging off at an angle . . . and blowing plasma in fits and bursts. Then a second hole opened up further forward. A jet of hot plasma shot out, slicing chunks of ice off, hurling them into space. The huge ship spun and rolled and began to come apart.
Pieces flew in all directions. One, easily twice the size of the 109, shot across space to slam into the nose of the flagship. Others blew out toward the line of ships behind it.
“Her reactors are going unstable. She’s going to blow,” Moose said. First one reactor did, gouging a huge hole in the long stern of the warship, then another did, then, in a blinding flash, the two remaining ones went, flashing the entire ship into a radiant white ball of fire that quickly dissipated to sparkles and then darkness.
“Good God . . . have mercy,” Tom prayed.
“On them,” Penny added.
“And on us if we don’t pay attention. Nelly, is the squadron still in full evasion?”
“Yes, Kris.”
The ten surviving boats sped away from the battle line. The energy they’d put on the boats during their attack run in was already decelerating them quickly toward Wardhaven. They’d have to make major corrections to get themselves into a proper orbit, but those would wait until they were well out of 18-inch laser range. The battleships didn’t seem interested in them, now. The incoming wave of missiles from Custer held their full attention. Most were being shot out of space. Many of the rest were just hitting ice. A few did damage on secondary batteries. There was another spectacular hit on an engine of the last ship in line, but damage control kept it from being anything but highly visual.
The attack of Squadron 8 was spent.
Worse, Kris felt wasted.
She’d given it everything she had. Everything her shipmates had. They’d tried everything.
Only two boats had succeeded.
It had cost Heather and Chandra their lives. For a moment the sight of Goran and the kids waiting on the pier for Mom to come home came at Kris. She willed it away.
Kris had ten more boats. The enemy had five more battleships. What price could she ask her shipmates to pay?
Could they destroy those monstrous battleships at any less cost?
The bridge was quiet as the enemy ships receded on the aft screen and Wardhaven grew on the forward one.
“I did it,” the Admiral chortled, standing to tower over his battle board. “I beat them,” he said, stabbing at the blips of the rapidly retreating patrol boats.
“You defeated them, sir,” Saris agreed, also standing. “We took the best they had, and it just wasn’t good enough.”
“But what about that gun line?” the future governor said, keeping his seat but waving at the rest of the Wardhaven ships now retreating back out of laser range. “Aren’t they a threat? Don’t you have to blow them up?”
“They are nothing,” the Admiral said, dismissing them with a wave of his hand. “The freighters throwing missiles aren’t throwing any more, are they, Chief?”
“None behind this last wave, sir.”
“Want to bet me the freighters have shot themselves dry? These last missiles are just there to draw our fire away from the patrol boats’ attack,” the Admiral said. “And these other boats, the ones that are trying to look like fast patrol boats. I’ll bet you a month’s pay they are Al Longknife’s yacht, and a few of his wealthy friends’ toys as well. Maybe some have 12-inch pulse lasers. What can they hope to do to us after those 18-inchers on the patrol boats failed? As for those ‘battleships. ’ Chief, talk to me about how the reactors on those so-called battleships are fuzzy. You don’t really have to. If they had real lasers on them, they’d have ducked in range while the patrol boats were charging in at us, got some shots off. No matter how old they were, how lousy they were, I’d have tried some shots then.
“They didn’t shoot. They don’t have anything to shoot. King Ray Longknife has spent too much time at masquerade balls if he thinks he can fool us with a few masks, some fancy feathers. Well, Longknife, sooner or later, the masks have to come off, the feathers, too, and then you’re just left naked.”
The Admiral stabbed a finger at the blips of the ships hurrying back out of range. “Those are nothing but feathers and glitter. The destroyers should have taken their chance to get in a shot when they had it. Cowards all,” he spat.
“Lieutenant, order the ships to shoot down the last of the incoming missiles, then set a course for High Wardhaven. We will arrive right on schedule. Oh, and order all ships to stream their radiators. Let’s get this heat off my ships. I want to be fully cooled when we make orbit. We are going to make things very hot on Wardhaven, and I don’t want anything on my ships to delay us serving it up steaming and fast.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Admiral grinned at his Chief of Staff. It was good to know he could do the job he had promised his political masters he would do.
18
“PF-109, this is Tug 1040. Hold steady, now; I’ll match with you.”
“We have to hold steady, Tug 1040. Our tanks are dry,” Tom admitted with a rueful shake of his head. They’
d put whatever vector and energy on the boat it took to fight their way past the battleships. Only after they were out of laser range did they even start trying to reach for orbit. And it had taken all they had to get them close enough for a salvage tug to match.
But the tanks weren’t all that was dry. Around Kris the crew sat at their stations in exhausted funks. They’d thrown everything in them at those battleships . . . and the battleships had thrown it back in their face.
Except for Heather and Chandra. They’d gotten their battlewagon. And they’d paid the full price.
Kris surveyed the 109’s bridge crew; they were spent. They’d poured everything they had into that last charge. Their shipsuits were dripping, their faces were drawn from being slammed around at three times their normal weight. Kris saw eyes dull with fatigue. Shoulders slumped. Did they have anything more to give?
Sometime during the reach for orbit, Tom had switched off the battle net and gone local, one loaded with a medley of traditional Irish tunes. They were quiet, kind of like Kris felt. One, about a minstrel boy, she liked. She was listening to it for the third time before she realized he died in the war. It wasn’t just the rest of the crew. Her brain was mush!
“PF-109, Tug 1040 is matched to you. I’ve got salvage specialists, courtesy of Johanson Brothers Salvagers, ready to run a power line to you, so hold real steady now.”
“We’re holding steady, Tug 1040. Like we said, we couldn’t change course if we had to.”
“Understand, 109. We have reaction mass to transfer to you along with antimatter. We also picked up some more Foxers and, in case you’re running low, twelve more of those 944 missiles you were tossing around back there.”
Kris Longknife: Defiant: Defiant Page 35