by Rick Partlow
Minishimi suppressed an urge to chew at her lip as the minutes dragged by…space battles required patience and steady nerves. She had the latter and could fake the former.
It’s just like a war game exercise, she told herself. Except for the part where there were three shiploads of Russians trying to kill them.
“Shipbusters are approaching countermeasures,” Gianeto finally reported. “It looks like the missile AIs are attempting evasive maneuvers, but I don’t think they’re gonna’ have enough time…no, the first of them just detonated. Jesus, that’s a big blast! Gotta’ be twenty megatons!”
“Commander,” she admonished quietly.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he apologized, abashed. “There’s the second detonation, though…now the third. Sensors are pretty much blinded by the flash, it’s gonna’ be a second…” He hesitated, then shook his head, frowning with disappointment. “Damn it, I was afraid of that. The first wave of Shipbusters are slag, ma’am. The second flight is still on target. The bogie heading for the planet has launched two countermeasures…that may be all she has. The other two bogies are still heading our way…no further launches from either of them. Orders, ma’am?”
“No use wasting any more Shipbusters,” she reasoned, “or time. Helm, intercept course…get us to weapons range so we can get this over with.”
“Aye, ma’am,” Witten said, “initializing one g acceleration.”
“Estimate five minutes to effective Gauss gun range,” Gianeto announced after a quick calculation. “Ten minutes, thirty five seconds to effective laser range.”
“Tactical, plot me a targeting package and charge capacitors,” she instructed.
“Charging capacitors, aye.” Gianeto worked the holotank controls, plotting firing solutions for the approaching Protectorate ships. “Ma’am, the larger of the two ships is moving into a blocking position for the other.”
“Target the leader first, then…we can deal with the trailing ship afterward.” She wasn’t worried. That tactic might have meant trouble for a conventional spacecraft, but with the Eysselink drive, they were maneuverable enough to target both ships.
“Ships are within extreme visual range, ma’am,” the communications officer informed her.
“On screen,” she ordered. The sensor display that had been projected on the main holographic viewscreen disappeared, to be replaced by a computer-enhanced visual of the Protectorate starships. The lead ship was some sort of converted in-system cargo hauler, likely pirated, its utilitarian lines obscured behind makeshift armor, the flare of fusion pulse engines lighting up like a star at its aft drive bell. Partially obscured behind it was a smaller ship, wedge-shaped and unrecognizable.
“Lead ship is coming into range,” Gianeto announced a few minutes later. “Targeting operations center and weapons.”
“Helm,” Minishimi snapped, “prepare to deactivate drive field.”
“Ready to drop field,” Witten confirmed.
“Deactivate drive field now.”
“Deactivating drive field.” More zero gravity and her stomach lurched.
“Open fire,” Minishimi snapped, trying to keep the satisfaction out of her voice.
“Gauss guns firing,” Gianeto confirmed, palming the control. The ship vibrated as tungsten slugs that weighed tons each were ejected from the port and starboard coilguns at thousands of meters per second. “He’s firing too, Captain…Gauss guns and lasers. Gauss gun rounds are a minute out, lasers starting to melt armor on the bow.” He bit back a curse. “Losing sensors on the bow, too…”
“Are our capacitors charged?” Captain Minishimi asked.
“Aye, Captain, lasers ready to fire.”
“Target their lasers and fire all batteries!”
“Firing lasers.”
Four huge capacitors in the twin weapons pods, fed by the ship’s fusion reactor, pulsed through semiconductor rods and were focused by gravimetic lenses using the ship’s drive field generator. The pulses were invisible in the vacuum of space, but the ship’s computer simulated them with crimson threads that speared out to strike the enemy ship in its weapons ports. Vaporizing metal flashed and escaping atmosphere ignited with incandescent clouds as the weapons ports blew apart.
“Gauss guns cease fire,” Minishimi ordered. “Reinitialize drive fields.”
“Drive fields engaged,” Witten sighed, relieved…the enemy Gauss rounds were getting close.
“Just in time,” Gianeto echoed the Helmsman’s unspoken concern. “Incoming Gauss rounds being shunted by the drive field. Our rounds should start impacting…now.”
Even as he spoke, Minishimi could see the tungsten darts slam into the bow armor of the Protectorate warship, ripping through it and sending a cloud of vaporized and splintered armor into an orbit around the accelerating ship. The huge projectiles kept impacting, one after another, until finally the armor was gone and they penetrated deep into the heart of the ship, coring through its nuclear reactor and killing its fusion pulse drive. Unpowered and helpless, the dead hull lost its acceleration but kept its course, the proverbial object in motion.
“Gauss rounds effective,” Gianeto reported with a touch of savage joy. “She’s a rock now…current course will take her out of the system. The trailing ship is still accelerating, should be past the derelict in a couple minutes.”
“Helm,” Minishimi ordered, “flip us end for end…I want our weapons pods on him as we pass. Tactical, are capacitors recharged?”
“Capacitors at full, ma’am,” Gianeto reported. “We’ll be ready to hit her with all laser batteries…” He clipped off his sentence, staring at the sensor display. “She’s adjusting course, ma’am…it looks like he’s trying for a collision course!”
“What?” Minishimi frowned. That was monumentally stupid, even for a Protectorate captain. The Eysselink field warped the space-time around the starship…the same effect that had shunted aside the Gauss gun rounds would rip an enemy ship to pieces if it got that close. “Well, never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake,” she shrugged. “Maintain course, prepare for high-g decal…we want to do maximum damage when the drive field hits him.”
“Preparing for high-g deceleration, aye,” Helm responded, sounding the alarm klaxon.
“What the fuck?” Gianeto blurted, staring at the sensor display. “Captain, I’m reading an Eysselink drive signature on the trailing ship!”
Joyce Minishimi felt her stomach drop away from her in a manner not unlike transitioning to zero g, as a hundred thoughts overlaid themselves on her brain at once, coalescing into a stunning realization in less than a second: the Protectorates had a stardrive, but not enough antimatter to use it for propulsion, so they were going to make a suicide run with it, ramming the fields into each other in an effort to make them collapse.
“Helm!” Minishimi shouted, instinctively trying to rise from her chair but restrained by the safety straps. “Emergency burn, 30 degrees at seven g’s, now!”
There was no time for acknowledgements, no time to sound another warning. Witten followed the command as if he’d been thinking it himself and everyone on the ship felt their body crushed by the sudden, brutal acceleration…but only for a moment, because it wasn’t quite enough…
There was a wavering uncertainty on the main viewscreen as the two Eysselink fields touched and then Joyce Minishimi felt as if she had been turned inside out. She knew she was screaming in agony, but she couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel her body.
Is this what it feels like to die? She wondered.
Then reality snapped back like a rubber band that had been stretched too far and she was back in her acceleration couch, back in zero gravity and hurting everywhere. She heard a quiet, agonized moan coming from somewhere on the bridge and finally realized it was coming from her. The holographic displays were all dark, the only illumination coming from emergency chemical ghostlights that threw the bridge into a sharp, shadowed relief. The bridge crew were float
ing limp against their restraints, only one or two showing signs of consciousness.
“Eng…” She tried to talk but it came out a barely audible rasp. She coughed and shook her head, both of which caused far more pain than she’d imagined. “Engineering!” She called as loud as she could. Nothing. The engineering bridge officer was a slender, fragile-looking young Lt. Commander named Mehta, and from what she could see in the gloom, he was unconscious, his head lolling.
Forcing her hands to work, she touched the button on her ‘link’s ear bud. “Captain to Engineering.” Nothing. “Captain to Engineering, is anyone there?”
“Cap…captain,” a voice rasped in answer. She barely recognized it as belonging to Commander Prieta, the Chief Engineering Officer. “What happened?”
“They had an Eysselink drive,” Minishimi told him. “We touched fields.”
“Ah,” he sounded analytical, as if it were some fascinating experiment he’d been performing in the lab. “That makes sense. Our drive field projectors…as near as I can tell, every single relay is slagged, ma’am. The antimatter stores automatically ejected and our reactor flushed and shut down. All we have is the emergency batteries right now…and the automatic switches are burned out. Hold on for a minute, ma’am.” A long pause. “There you go.”
The bridge lights returned, and so did some of the sensor displays.
“Tactical,” Minishimi said. She saw Gianeto shaking his head, hands going to his forehead. “Commander Gianeto, I need a tactical report right now.”
“Ma’am, aye, ma’am,” he stuttered, trying to force his eyes into focus. “About half our active sensors are inoperable…we’re getting nothing from the gravimetic scans.”
“The drives are down and the reactor is offline. What can you see?”
“Ummm…yeah, there she is. The bogey with the Eysselink drive is still intact, as far as I can tell. I’m getting reactor signatures here…I think he has a fission power plant running. And he’s activated his fusion pulse drive. He’s heading towards us, ma’am.”
“Damn,” Witten swore. “How is that thing under weigh already? We’re trashed…I’ve got nothing but maneuvering thrusters right now.”
“Because he was built for that attack, Mr. Witten,” Minishimi said with grim admiration, shaking her head. “Antonov suckered us good. Put it onscreen Lt. Higgs.” The main display tank flickered fitfully and then the image of the strange, wedge-shaped enemy spacecraft solidified, with the green and blue of Peboan behind it. “Tactical, have we got anything to shoot at him?”
“No Gauss guns without the reactor, no lasers without the Eysselink field to focus them,” he shook his head. “I’m not even sure we have enough power to energize the EM launchers for the missiles, ma’am. We can launch some countermeasures, but that’s about it.”
“Engineering,” Minishimi called into her ‘link. “Any chance of getting the auxiliary drive back online?”
“I’m working on it, ma’am,” Prieta reported, still unflappable. “We have to build up a charge in the capacitors though, and it’s slow on batteries. I can get the fusion reactor online in another…” He hesitated, checking his figures. “…call it seventeen minutes. Then another few minutes before the plasma drive coils are charged. Less than half an hour.”
“Oh, I don’t think we have quite that long to live, Commander,” Captain Minishimi told him. “I am sure we’d all appreciate whatever you could do to expedite matters.”
“I’ll do what I can, Captain,” he assured her cheerfully.
“I don’t think the bogey has Gauss guns, Captain,” Gianeto said thoughtfully. “She might not have the room for weapons pods with the gear for the Eysselink drive and antimatter storage crammed in there. I’m not seeing anything that looks like Gauss guns or lasers on her hull. She might have missiles, or…” He looked back at her. “She might be intending to ram us.”
“Time?” She snapped, staring at the display.
“Not much,” He shook his head. “She should be well past us and heading the opposite direction, but when our fields touched, I think it absorbed all of our momentum and fed it into the gravito-inertial spectrum as gravity-analog stress. That’s what knocked us for a loop. It left us both drifting pretty slow in the same long orbit around the primary star. She should be able to match velocities with us in less than twenty minutes.”
“That’ll be suicide for all the crew,” Witten protested weakly.
“Not if their Eysselink generator is still working,” Minishimi corrected him. “Then it’s just us that gets crushed.” And didn’t it feel shitty to be on the other side of that equation. Well, no use letting the clock run out with time outs still on the board. “Helm, full maneuvering thrusters…whatever we have left. Aim us for a lower energy orbit. Maybe we can buy some time.”
“Aye, ma’am,” Witten replied without enthusiasm. They could barely feel the gentle jolt as the maneuvering thrusters-solid-fuel rockets powered by small, isotope reactors-began nudging them slowly out of the way of the enemy ship. It was pointless, but it was all she could do…
“What the hell…” Gianeto breathed, staring at the sensor readout in disbelief. Minishimi opened her mouth to chide him for cursing when she saw the monolithic shape of a Republic starship appear on the main viewscreen, its image distorted by an Eysselink drive field as it brushed within a hundred kilometers of the Protectorate vessel.
The Republic cruiser was gone in an eyeblink and the Protectorate vessel was quite abruptly ripped to shreds, consumed in a savage explosion of fused hydrogen, fissile uranium and matter/antimatter. But many of those shreds were still headed their way…
“Tactical, are we going to clear this orbit before what’s left of the ship hits us?” She demanded quickly, snapping Gianeto out of his amazed speechlessness.
“Umm…yes, ma’am,” he stuttered. “It’s still got the same heading more or less, but it’s not accelerating anymore. It’ll take over an hour to get here.”
“Who the hell was that?” Witten asked what the rest of them were thinking.
Minishimi relaxed against her seat restraints, smiling the smile of someone who’s had a death sentence commuted. “That was an old friend,” she said, “with a wonderful sense of timing.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I don’t like this,” Ari said between panted breaths, sweat running off his brow to sting his eyes.
“You don’t like what?” Alida asked, her voice and breathing maddeningly even, despite their pace. “The fact that it’s twenty-seven degrees and eighty percent humidity and it’s not even dawn, or the fact that I’m running your ass into the ground?” They were on their daily-at least daily while they were in garrison rather than the field-run around the same perimeter path where Ari had been attacked weeks before, but Ari couldn’t shut his mind down and run the way he usually did. He was worried and stressed and the dark trees around them seemed to him to be filled with concealed menace.
. “I’m running right next to you,” he reminded her a bit peevishly. “And I am used to the heat. I don’t like how long this is taking. It’s been over two weeks since I told them you were an investigator and your ass is still hanging in the wind.”
“Always thinking about my ass, aren’t you?” She laughed.
He shot her a baleful glare. “It is charming that you retain your sense of humor, my dear, but I am not quite so sanguine. I have not received any further instructions from my command since my last communication and I should have. There is no point in stringing this along any further…we have nothing else that we can learn from Lee that he has not already revealed. We should take them down now and kill as much of this plot as we can.”
“Ours is not to question why, kedves,” she shrugged.
“I don’t like the other half of that quote,” he grumbled. “It involves something about us dying, if I recall right. Another thing that bothers me is that we still don’t know who hired those guys that tried to kill me.”
Before she c
ould reply, they both slowed to a jog, staring at a dark figure standing at the edge of the trees, just out of the reach of the illumination of the chemical light poles that lined the path. Ari automatically began scanning the woods around them, searching for other threats, trusting Alida to watch the one they already knew about. She was already opening her waist pack, her hand wrapping around the compact pistol there…
“Relax, Inspector,” the man said, emerging from the shadows to reveal himself as General Kage.
“Sir,” she said, coming to a halt. “I am…surprised to see you out here.”
“It is the only way I could speak to the two of you without raising suspicions,” he told her, stepping up to the two officers. He seemed out of place dressed in dark sweats and running shoes, his bearing casual.
“General,” Ari said with a cautious nod.
“Nice to meet you formally, Captain Shamir,” Kage smiled thinly. “By the way, let me assure you that, had I not known who you were in advance, I would never have suspected you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ari replied. “Let me assure you, I was serious about what I said in our meeting.”
“And they were very intelligent suggestions, Captain. But we don’t have much time, and we have more pressing matters to discuss.”
“Did something happen, sir?” Alida asked.
“No, Inspector, and that is the problem. Given what Captain Shamir was able to discover about the scope of this conspiracy, I have decided that the scope of our investigation needs to expand as well. I need you to take the next step up this ladder: Lee has a contact with whomever in the Fleet or the corporations or the government recruited him into this plot. You need to meet with this person.”
“How do we get that information from Lee?” Ari wanted to know.
“I have further decided,” Kage went on as if he hadn’t heard the question, “that since we know nearly everything that Lee knows, there is no sense leaving him and Captain Ali out there as potential wildcards.” He spared Alida a meaningful glance. “You will clean this mess up, Inspector, and then you will use whatever means necessary to find out who Colonel Lee’s contact is. Do you understand what I am saying, Inspector?”