She slumped back, keeping her eyes locked on her display. Why am I so tired? I feel like we’ve been fighting for hours.
Stars in the heavens. We have been.
As the Syndicate light cruisers and HuKs swung restlessly around the protective screen of Midway warships, Marphissa checked the path of the freighters, plodding along en route to the gate, where lay safety.
The transit to the gate would take another forty-one hours.
She stared at the time, disbelieving, then despairing for a moment. All they had to do was keep doing for another forty-one hours what they had been doing for the last few hours, each warship constantly alert to any motion by the Syndicate warship it was targeted on, and Marphissa watching every warship to ensure that none of the Syndicate warships threatened to make it through the defenders and none of the defenders wavered in their responsibilities. Yeah, that’s all we have to do. For another forty-one hours straight. Marphissa clenched her teeth, breathed in through them in a hiss, then spoke to the senior watch specialist on the bridge. “Contact the ship’s doctor. We need to have a good supply of up patches on the bridge.”
“Yes, Kommodor,” the specialist replied, followed a few seconds later by a question. “The doctor wants to know how many would be a good supply.”
“Enough to keep me awake and functioning for the next forty-one hours.”
“Kommodor, the doctor says—”
“I know what the regulations say! Get those damned patches onto the bridge!”
“Yes, Kommodor,” the senior watch specialist said warily several seconds later.
Bradamont went to one knee beside Marphissa’s seat, her voice a low murmur. “What do the regulations say?”
“They say,” Marphissa growled in reply, “that use of up patches for any period in excess of thirty-six hours must be authorized by the senior commander. That’s me.”
“Will you be safe? I can take over for a while if you need to rest.”
Marphissa shook her head, her eyes not leaving her display. “You said it, Honore, and you were right. They won’t let you command them now that they know what you are. I have to do this.”
“Then make sure there are enough patches for both of us.”
“Three of us,” Diaz said.
Marphissa contemplated ordering either or both of them to take rest breaks, then changed her mind. If they can’t do it, I can’t do it. So we three will do it. “Make certain that the watch specialists and other crew members cycle through their watches and get rest,” she ordered Diaz.
“We’ll have to go modified on-watch/off-watch to make that work,” Diaz said. “Eight hours on, four hours off for the duration, with individual shifts staggered. We don’t have enough specialists on board to work the ship at combat status around the clock except by doing that.”
Damned Syndicate economizing on crew sizes. Don’t worry, they would say. If anything breaks, it will be fixed the next time you’re at a dockyard. Cold comfort when you’re fighting a battle! “I understand. I’ve been through that. We have to keep as close to peak combat capability as possible for the next forty-one hours because you can be sure that the Syndicate flotilla will not give us any rest breaks.”
“Incoming message from Colonel Rogero,” the comm specialist advised.
Any message was a distraction she didn’t need, but she couldn’t blow off Rogero. “Yes, Colonel?”
Rogero was on the bridge of the freighter carrying him, wearing his armor. “Kommodor, I wanted to advise you that you need have no fear of any of the freighters acting contrary to your orders. I have soldiers posted on the bridges of each freighter. I’ll keep at least one soldier there on each ship as long as we’re still in Indras, to ensure that none of your orders are misinterpreted, misheard, or misunderstood.”
She could read between the lines on that one. At least one of the freighter executives had thought to bolt or was wavering, only to be brought up short by armed soldiers determined to enforce Marphissa’s orders. “Thank you, Colonel. That does relieve a concern of mine.”
Rogero smiled grimly. “I won’t bother you again unless it is absolutely necessary, Kommodor. For the people. Out.”
“Any problems?” Diaz asked.
“No,” Marphissa replied. “Just some reinforcement for the spines of the freighter executives.”
“Oh. You know,” Diaz added, “they’re not military. The freighter executives and crews, I mean. No weapons, no defenses, they’re just sitting ducks. That can’t be easy.”
“Do you think what we’re doing is easy?”
He flinched at her tone of voice. “No, Kommodor.”
But she thought about it, thought about all of the men and women on those freighters, most of them unable to even see a display to know what was going on, with no means of defense, and nothing they could do but sit and wait to see if hell lances would punch holes in the ships carrying them, as well as holes in the people on those ships.
At least the warships carried what were in theory enough escape pods to carry their crews to safety if the ship was too badly damaged to save. Not their entire crews, of course, because the Syndicate had carefully calculated what percentage of damage on average would render a ship helpless and what percentage of crew members on average would be killed when that damage was sustained, then budgeted for just enough escape pods to save the average surviving percentage of the crew. It was all very scientific, including the calculations that offering escape to the surviving crew members cost less than what would be required to conscript, transport, and train new crew members to replace them.
But for all that, the crews of the warships were better off than those on the freighters. The only escape pod on each of the freighters was designed to handle the crew and perhaps a few passengers. “You are right,” she commented to Kapitan Diaz, “it cannot be easy on those freighters.”
“It’s not easy on you, either, is it?” he asked.
“No,” Marphissa admitted. “There’s a comfort in having someone higher in authority to turn to, having someone else who must make the decisions. Having been frustrated all of my time in the mobile forces by superiors who handled that role badly, I now have the freedom to make the decisions, to make the mistakes, all on my own. Hold on.”
The Syndicate warships had all swung in again simultaneously, veering onto vectors aiming for the freighters. Marphissa watched the entire situation with all of her concentration, trying to spot any place where any of her warships were being outmaneuvered by the Syndicate attackers. She was barely aware of Diaz maneuvering Manticore to engage the light cruiser that was Manticore’s designated target, but Marphissa was fully alert to Manticore’s track on her display, alert to any indication that Diaz might let the light cruiser get past him. She took in every one of her ships’ maneuvers that way, hoping that neither she nor one of her ship commanders would miss something.
One by one, the Syndicate warships, facing intercepts by superior firepower, broke off their runs against the freighters. They went back to positions hovering in front of and to all sides of the Midway Flotilla, roaming restlessly like wolves seeking openings to get at sheep guarded by alert watchdogs.
Over the next several hours, the Syndicate warships tried again and again at irregular intervals, sometimes all at once, other times in staggered rushes, and many times only one or two ships testing the defenders. “Sub-CEO Qui is trying to wear you down,” Bradamont said. “He’s hoping that if he keeps the pressure on, sooner or later, you or one of your ship commanders will get tired enough to make a serious mistake.”
“I can do this longer than he can,” Marphissa retorted. The up patch on her arm was trickling drugs that kept her alert into her body. There would be a price to pay for that as time went on, but, for now, she felt fine.
As the hours and the Syndicate probing attacks went on and on, the Syndicate warships spread wider around the Midway ships, so that eventually they completely surrounded Marphissa’s warships and freighters. The M
idway warships were now defending an elongated bubble stretching along the vector that the freighters were traveling to the hypernet gate. In space, any ship could build up velocity if given time. Freighters usually didn’t move too fast, because accelerating and braking cost fuel cells, and transport companies liked to minimize costs, but this time Marphissa had told them to get up to point one light speed and hold it there.
It would have been nice to get the freighters going even faster, but she had to worry about their using up too much of their fuel cells. For that matter, the frequent attacks and counterattacks under way had been a serious drain on the fuel cells of her warships. The Syndicate warships have to be using up their fuel cells as well. How close to maximum were they when this started?
Sixteen hours into the running battle, a Syndicate light cruiser and two HuKs lunged toward the freighters along vectors that invited interception by multiple defending warships. Sub-CEO Qui was finally trying the trick that Bradamont had warned of.
“All units, maintain focus on your designated target. Do not attempt intercepts of any other Syndicate warships unless I order it.”
The light cruiser and HuKs held their approaches until the Midway warships targeting them were nearly within weapons range, then slewed around as fast as they could turn and darted out of range.
At twenty-five hours after the fight had started, every Syndicate warship again attacked at once. Two of Marphissa’s ships, the light cruiser Harrier and the HuK Vanguard, reacted slowly this time. The other Midway HuK, Scout, watching that particular Syndicate HuK tore after its target so ferociously that the Syndicate vessel broke off.
But the Syndicate HuK that should have been stopped by Harrier kept coming.
Marphissa’s eyes flew across her display, too little time available to run intercept calculations, her instincts feeling the next right move in the second she had to decide. “Kite, alter course to intercept new target. Maximum acceleration authorized.”
Had she chosen right? No one was close to the Syndicate HuK, but the light cruiser Kite had the best chance. Kite’s commander will have to push her past the red lines on hull stress to manage an intercept. I might lose Kite to hull breakup and have that Syndicate HuK get through anyway.
Kite was located above and about even with the freighters. The Syndicate HuK was climbing in from partly below and behind the two columns of freighters. If not for the velocity of the freighters themselves, forcing the Syndicate HuK onto a longer approach to catch up, there would have been no chance of stopping the attack at all.
A single tap by Marphissa produced detailed status information on Kite from the light cruiser’s data feed. Her thrusters firing, Kite was angling over and down, her main propulsion lighting off at maximum, hull-stress readings climbing.
An alert appeared next to Kite’s symbol on Marphissa’s display. Excessive hull stress imminent. Reduce acceleration.
She negated the warning, only to have it pop up again. Action required.
Marphissa punched the negate command this time. It appeared once more. “I thought we killed this function in the software,” she complained.
Diaz motioned to the senior watch specialist, who went to work on that.
The vector for the Syndicate HuK formed a flattened curve aiming to pass between the top and bottom columns of freighters. The arc of Kite’s vector was swinging over, sweeping steadily toward an intersection with that of the Syndicate HuK’s projected path.
Another alert appeared over Kite’s symbol, this one blinking in red. Excessive hull stress. Reduce acceleration immediately.
Bradamont had knelt by Marphissa’s seat again. “Can Kite do this?”
“It’s up to her commander,” Marphissa replied without looking away from her display. “Only he can judge whether Kite’s hull can take it.”
Excessive hull stress. Structural failure imminent. Reduce acceleration immediately.
The point where Kite’s vector crossed that of the Syndicate HuK had crept just ahead of where the HuK would catch up with the freighters. The HuK was also accelerating for all it was worth, trying to steal the march on Kite, but wasn’t able to equal a light cruiser’s maximum effort. That’s enough, damn you! Marphissa thought, reaching for her comm controls.
But before she could touch them Kite’s data feed changed. “He’s throttled back a little.”
Had it been enough? The warnings continued to blink their crimson message, and now Kite’s data feed rippled as damage reports came in. “Asima,” Bradamont cautioned, sounding horrified. “If any of those stress points completely blow, that ship will disintegrate.”
This time, Marphissa reached for her override. All ships designed to Syndicate standards contained overrides that allowed a flotilla commander to take over control of that ship directly. She had once vowed that she would never do such a thing.
But it might already be too late.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BRADAMONT’S gasp halted Marphissa’s motion.
Kite had throttled back again, this time significantly. The damage to her structure was still there, but the red-line warnings of hull stress were sliding downward toward safer territory.
Kite whipped past the stern quarter of the last freighter in the upper column and bore down on the lone Syndicate HuK, pounding it with hell lances and the metal ball bearings known as grapeshot that became incredibly dangerous projectiles when they struck something at thousands of kilometers per second.
The Syndicate HuK, which had been pushing his own acceleration to the maximum, took those blows on a hull already under the most stress it could handle.
The HuK exploded into fragments, some large, some small, fountaining outward and forward along the vector the warship had still been accelerating upon when the vessel came apart. In an instant, the track of a single oncoming warship turned into hundreds of pieces of wreckage, racing toward the freighters as if the HuK’s remnants were still trying to get in a blow even after the warship’s destruction.
But because the HuK had been aiming to pass between the upper and lower lines of freighters, most of the debris went through that open area as well, passing onward harmlessly.
Some fragments did impact the last freighters, bringing to life new warnings on Marphissa’s display as the damage reports flowed in automatically. The thing she feared most to see, a major hull breach on one of the freighters, did not appear in the first wave of damage reports. A scattering of new reports came in, minor hull damage and some minor systems damage, then the wave of wreckage was past.
Kite was swinging back up and around in a vast parabola that was not nearly as stressful on her hull as the previous maneuvers had been. “Target destroyed,” Kite reported rather smugly. “Reverting to previous assigned target.”
Bradamont clapped Marphissa on the shoulder. “Only sixteen more hours to go.”
“Is that all?” Marphissa got control of her voice, then called Kite. “Very good job. Let’s all ensure no one else gets through.”
She shook her head, gazing at Kite’s damage status. “She’s going to be limited in maneuvers until we can get her into a dockyard. And she burned a lot of fuel doing that. Only sixteen hours, you said?”
“Yes,” Bradamont replied. “Are you good?”
“I’m great.” At lying. Her heart pumping from stress that had burned through drugs quicker than usual, Marphissa checked the status of her up patch, pulled it off, and slapped on another.
The next six hours were a nightmare of repeated lunges by the Syndicate ships and parries by Marphissa’s warships. Fire was actually exchanged again twice; once when Manticore fired missiles at the Syndicate light cruiser that was her target, causing the light cruiser to flee, and once when two Midway HuKs maneuvered a Syndicate HuK into a sandwich, where they could get in a few hits before the Syndicate HuK twisted away.
After a pause, the attacks resumed. Lunge. Intercept. Reposition. Attack. Defend. Re-form. Despite the drugs in her, Marphissa felt the strain of n
early constant concentration on the movements of multiple ships as two, then three more hours went by inconclusively.
An entire hour passed without more attempted attacks, the Syndicate warships positioned all around the Midway Flotilla continuing to stalk their prey but making no moves to strike.
“What’s he doing?” Marphissa asked Bradamont, shocked to hear how her voice cracked when she spoke.
A watch specialist approached Marphissa, Bradamont, and Diaz with a ration bar and water for each of them. Marphissa barely looked at him, not able to risk taking her focus from her display, but nodded her thanks and tried briefly to remember how many times the watch specialists had been relieved and replaced while she, Diaz, and Marphissa had remained on duty.
She popped open the gray ration-bar wrapper with the big, block letters that shouted “Fresh! Tasty! Nutritious!” as if font size could somehow make the claims reflect the reality of a ration bar. Marphissa chewed the ration bar mechanically, discovering that probably thanks to the up patches, she couldn’t sense the usual bitter aftertaste, or the usual moldy, musty flavor that was actually preferable to the aftertaste.
Bradamont finished swallowing a bite before answering, her own voice hoarse. “We always wondered if these Syndic ration bars tasted any better when they were less stale. Now I know that they don’t. I don’t know what Sub-CEO Qui is doing. But he’s got to be getting desperate. You are less than five hours’ travel time from the hypernet gate. If he’s going to stop you or hurt you, he has to do it within that time.”
Marphissa nodded again. “If we can use the hypernet gate,” she whispered, putting into words what they both feared.
“He’s trying awfully hard to hammer us,” Bradamont whispered back hoarsely. “If Qui knew we couldn’t leave via the hypernet, he would know he had a lot more time to wear us down.”
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