Forbidden Suns
Page 34
Not Lanoe. He’d been old before any of those measures were even available, and he had never bothered with the rejuvenation treatments that might have erased all those wrinkles, those deep bags under his eyes. He’d taken only the injections and procedures that kept him from dying of old age. Anyone but Candless—his oldest comrade-in-arms—might not have noticed how exhausted he looked. By modern standards, he always looked tired—frankly, he always looked like he was three days dead. But now there was definitely a look in his eyes as if something was dragging at him. Sapping his energy.
The last time they’d spoken, he’d treated her like a disobedient child. He’d been rather harsher than she thought was strictly necessary. She had plenty of reason to gloat a little if he was looking harried, she supposed. Yet she couldn’t help but feel something for him, after all they’d been through. To wonder if something was wrong. If perhaps the burden of command was weighing on him. Or perhaps something else. “I’d like to inquire as to your health,” she told him. “If you won’t take it the wrong way. Is something the matter?”
“Never better. Talk to me about what we can field in the way of cataphracts. Your Beta wing is relatively intact, right?”
Candless pursed her lips. Apparently they were no longer friends—or at least he was not going to open up to her just for her asking. Very well, then. If he wanted to be her commanding officer, she would treat him as such. “If by that you mean their ranks weren’t quite as decimated as those of Alpha wing, then, yes, you are technically correct. They can put ten fighters in theater.”
“One squadron.” Lanoe shook his head. “Not enough. Get Alpha wing ready to scramble as well. What’s that? Another eight?”
“Yes, but … that leaves us with no reserve—”
“Carrier scouts,” Lanoe said.
“—except the carrier scouts,” she finished. There was a good half second of lag in their transmission, but that didn’t excuse him from trying to talk over her before she could complete her sentence. “Which is not much of a reserve at all. If we lose too many cataphracts to the dreadnought’s plasma balls we’ll have nothing left when the interceptors do arrive.”
“You don’t win a war by avoiding risks,” Lanoe told her. “Maybe when they see the dreadnought fall, the interceptors will run away. And maybe we’ll need to fight them with just the cruiser’s guns. It doesn’t matter. We need to remove the dreadnought from play—otherwise we’ll never accomplish anything, sitting out here in the dark. Are my orders clear now? Do you have any more questions?”
Candless could think of a few dozen. The first, however, and most preeminent was one that she’d been silently asking herself since they arrived in the system.
Why in Earth’s name are we doing this at all?
What exactly did Lanoe hope to achieve? They couldn’t talk to the Blue-Blue-White, thanks to Valk’s failure to understand their language. They couldn’t make demands, or negotiate a surrender.
She couldn’t see a single military objective that they could hope to achieve—even if, against all odds, Aleister Lanoe managed to win yet another war.
She could hardly say that aloud, though.
“No,” she said. “No questions.”
“Good.” His image on the display winked out of existence.
Only then did she allow herself the long, elaborate exhalation that she’d been holding in. The silent release of breath that was the closest thing she would allow herself to an exasperated sigh.
It was quiet in the wardroom. With Valk sent off to one of the bunks, there was no one around for Lanoe to talk to, to bounce ideas off of, to listen when he grunted in frustration. Even beyond the control station there was no one around, no one in the axial corridor, no one moving around the bunks. Ehta and her marines were sealed up in the gun decks, waiting to fight. Ginger and Rain-on-Stones were locked up in the brig, feeling each other’s pain.
It was just Lanoe and his displays, and the steadily approaching dreadnought.
Waiting. But not for very long.
Hours of maneuvering and burning the cruiser’s engines had brought them to the moment of decision. In less than a minute, the battle would begin.
He kept an eye on a readout that told him how far away the dreadnought was. “Thirty seconds until the enemy is in range,” he said, his words swallowed up by static. The cruiser and the carrier were moving too fast now to use communications lasers. He was broadcasting on an open radio band. Normally that was against protocol—but the protocol had been written for battles fought against other human beings. The Blue-Blue-White might be able to hear him, but they couldn’t understand what he said.
“Twenty-five seconds. Scramble fighters.”
Finally something did change on one of his displays. He saw a camera view from one of the carrier’s cupolas, saw Yk.64s stream past as they launched from the carrier’s flight deck. He counted them as they went, knowing he would count them as they came back, too. Knowing there would be fewer of them when they returned.
The fighters moved quickly into a standard line formation, flying so close their airfoils nearly touched. Lanoe tapped a virtual control and saw the enemy’s interceptors, still half a million kilometers away, their spherical glass canopies silhouetted by the flare of their thrusters. They were still half an hour out.
Plenty of time.
Fifteen seconds. The dreadnought’s weapon pits were warming up, getting ready to throw plasma balls as soon as a target got close enough to be worth shooting at. Those plasma balls were deadly, capable of frying a pilot inside his fighter even on a near miss, but they were only useful at short range. Once the plasma ball left the weapon pit it immediately started losing heat, cooling as it radiated away its energy into space. At even just a few tens of kilometers out they were harmless, barely capable of making a pilot sweat.
Eight seconds. The cataphracts moved into a new formation, their line curling forward at the ends to make a semicircle so they could envelop the enemy.
Lanoe wished like hell he could have been out there with them, but somebody had to fly the cruiser. Candless had volunteered to fly one of the fighters, so at least there would be one competent pilot leading them.
“Five seconds,” he said. “Four. Dreadnought is entering the battle area. Combined wing, engage at your first opportunity. And good luck.”
Three seconds. The battle area was an arbitrary designation, just a set distance away from the cruiser that Lanoe had decided was the best place for a scrap. Still, as he counted down, his blood absolutely sang. It screamed with the need for red vengeance.
His voice was as calm and cool as ever.
“Two seconds. One. Dreadnought is in the battle area.”
One of its weapon pits lit up as bright as a sun. A plasma ball shot forward, rolling toward the line of fighters like a ninepins ball. The cataphracts scattered—and swarmed, falling on the dreadnought like a cloud of gnats. He could see just how tiny they were compared to their quarry.
It didn’t matter. They had the weapons, the ships, that could do this, that could win. If they were good enough pilots, they would prevail.
If.
Time to find out—the battle had begun.
“Alpha wing, move up—there’s a gap there, exploit it!” Candless shouted, even as she threw her Yk.64 over to the side to avoid an incoming plasma ball. “Beta wing, circle around and aggress on the thrusters.” Below her the dreadnought’s enormous pitted mass looked like a heavily cratered moon. She saw a weapon pit opening before her, a dark cave so big she could have flown into it if she was feeling suicidal. She leaned on her control stick with one hand and loaded a disruptor round with the other. “What is the matter with you lot? Who taught you how to fight?”
It had been a very long time since Candless led a wing of fighters into battle. She hoped very much she remembered how.
“Uhl, Singh, Forster,” she called, picking the three pilots closest to her position, “screen my advance!”
Candle
ss could hear the sneer in Forster’s voice as he replied. “You want us to be decoys for you? Bait for those plasma balls?”
“I want you to do your damned job,” she told him, almost growling in anger.
Her fellow pilots weren’t incompetent, she knew. They had all been in the Navy once, and had received Naval training—some at one of the prestigious flight schools, like Rishi, some just getting two weeks’ instruction in the field. For various reasons, though, they’d been drummed out of Earth’s service, and then hired by Centrocor. Flying for the poly—flying for a paycheck—had made them soft, made them worry more about their personal safety than about accomplishing anything. Centrocor couldn’t give them commendations, nor did it promote them or raise their pay for superior flying. They were unmotivated and sullen long before they’d come to her.
Even worse, they lacked esprit de corps. They had no sense of camaraderie with one another—much less with her. Seasoned, disciplined pilots would throw themselves into the very teeth of the devil if it meant protecting their squaddies. This lot were just in it for themselves.
It was still possible to get real work out of pilots like that. It took, however, the application of the greatest, oldest motivator of all. Fear of one’s superior officers.
“Uhl,” she called, “Singh. You will cover my advance. Or when we get back to the carrier, you will sit through a personal multihour debriefing with me. We will go over, in excruciating detail, exactly what you did wrong and how to improve in the future.”
At least that got the two of them moving, swinging into position behind her. Well behind her, though, where they would be useless for drawing fire.
“Suckers.” Forster laughed.
“M. Forster,” she said, “you may return to the carrier. Your services are no longer required.”
“Wait—what?” Uhl asked. “You mean, if we don’t want to fight, we can just—”
“M. Forster is no longer a member of this wing. He is no longer employed. When we return, he can figure out for himself how he’s going to eat, because food is for people who work. He will also need to find a place to sleep, as we don’t have bunks for people who don’t pull their weight.”
“Come on,” Forster said. “We’re all in this together, damn you!”
Candless allowed herself a nasty grin. If he was going to quote the Centrocor corporate slogan at her, she figured she was justified in using one of the Navy’s unofficial mottos.
“Fly or die, M. Forster.”
“Devil’s sake, you pompous—”
“Fly,” she told him, “or die.”
He swung into position right behind her. Uhl and Singh closed ranks, giving her the cover she needed.
Time to strike.
Plasma balls spat in every direction as the dreadnought started to turn around, trying to run for the safety of the onrushing interceptors. Lanoe felt his lips pull back from his teeth in a painful rictus, but he couldn’t relax, couldn’t look away until it was done, until the dreadnought was obliterated.
A cataphract got too close to the big ship and was caught dead on by one of the plasma balls. He saw it pass through the fiery projectile and come out the other side as nothing but slag, as molten debris that came apart in pieces, each flying on with its own trajectory. He smashed his fist against the side of his chair. One less fighter—that made the battle just that much tougher to win.
It wasn’t the first cataphract they’d lost. Most of Centrocor’s pilots were smart enough to stay clear of the huge, slow-moving plasma balls, but occasionally one of them couldn’t roll away in time. If they didn’t take the dreadnought down soon, they could lose this battle purely by attrition—and have nothing to show for it.
At least it looked like Candless had the right idea—he could see her streaking across the surface of the dreadnought, a torpedo fish swimming fast over a bleached coral reef.
“Shulkin,” Lanoe called, because he’d seen something out of the corner of his eye, a blip on a tactical board. “Move back—you’re in danger of straying into the battle area.” The carrier itself could do no good in there, now that it had loosed its cargo of fighters. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but not if it costs me one of my ships.”
“Understood,” Shulkin called back. He left the channel open and Lanoe could hear him shouting at his pilot, but didn’t bother paying attention. He was too invested in watching Candless edge closer and closer to one of the dreadnought’s giant canopies. There would be a jellyfish in there, he thought, an adult Blue-Blue-White. When the disruptor went in, when it exploded inside that crew space, it would—
A green pearl rotated in the corner of Lanoe’s eye. He thought it might be Ehta, calling to tell him her people were ready to fire. He absentmindedly flicked his eyes across the pearl.
“Sir,” Bury said, “I know this is a bad time—”
“Bury? Damn you, kid, I have a battle to run here! Why are you calling me?”
“I just thought … that …”
“Spit it out or clear this channel.”
“I’ve been watching the battle on my wrist display, and I saw you’ve lost some pilots, and you didn’t have very many to start with, and—”
“You want to fly?” Lanoe asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Lanoe shook his head. He didn’t have time for this. “You’re on the medical list, last time I checked. Anyway—I have every cataphract we’ve got out there right now. There’s no ship for you to take.”
“There are the carrier scouts, sir,” Bury pointed out.
Lanoe almost laughed at that. Yes, it was true. There were ten carrier scouts still nestled inside the carrier’s flight deck. Tiny ships, fast but lacking in firepower—they didn’t carry any disruptors, just PBW cannons, and those were useless against the dreadnought’s homogeneous hull.
He had to respect Bury’s willingness to fly one of those crates. Though not enough to actually let it happen. “Sorry, Bury. It’s not happening.”
“Sir,” Bury said, and Lanoe could hear the pitch of his voice rising. The kid didn’t like what he’d heard. “Sir—I have four confirmed kills to my name. If we lose this battle, I might die without ever getting my blue star. As a pilot yourself, surely—”
Lanoe cut him off.
He reached for a squeeze tube of water. Bit off the plastic end and spat it out. Took a deep drink, while calling up a new display with his free hand—a highly magnified view of Candless’s fighter. The view shook and wavered in and out of focus as the adaptive telescope lens tried to stay centered on her. She was moving fast enough even the cruiser’s imaging algorithms couldn’t keep up.
“Do it,” he muttered. “Do it. Get that shot.”
The dreadnought below her was just a blur. Candless flew as fast as she dared—too slow and she risked making herself a prime target for one of those plasma balls. Too fast and she wouldn’t be able to aim properly when she reached the blister. “We’re going to do this strictly by the book,” she told her wingmates. “Uhl, you’re up first. On my mark, break formation and get the hell out of here. Accelerate hard and you’ll be all right. Fall back and rejoin the main formation. Singh, you’ll be next—but don’t move until I give the word. Forster, you’ll have the signal honor of staying with me until I’m ready to make my run. If you three stick precisely to my orders, there’s a very good chance all of us come out of this alive. Have I made myself understood?”
All three of them replied in the affirmative. If there was a deep grumble hidden in Forster’s answer, she pretended not to hear it.
The blister was dead ahead, an extrusion of thin white pylons like the frame of a greenhouse. Glass, or whatever the Blue-Blue-White used in place of glass, filled the interstices, dark enough she could only see shadows moving within.
Her disruptor was primed and ready. She kept one eye on a display showing an infrared sensor sweep, a scan measuring the temperature of the three nearest weapon pits. The second one of them started warming up, she—
“Uhl, break!” she shouted.
The Yk.64 to her left peeled off, rolling on its positioning jets as Uhl punched his throttle. He twisted upward into open space, and just as Candless had predicted, the plasma ball shot after him, so hot, so bright her display flared with light that forced her to turn her head. The plasma ball was fast. A cataphract could move faster, if the pilot didn’t care about damaging his engine. She watched Uhl on a tactical board, as a blue dot being chased by a red blur. For a second it looked like he wasn’t going to make it, as if the plasma ball was going to catch him, but then he shot forward with renewed speed, even as he banked off to the side. The plasma ball shot past his new position, cooling as it rocketed through the emptiness, shrinking and fizzing out as the ionized gas lost its heat.
“Yes!” Singh shouted over the open channel.
“No chatter,” she told him. She needed to focus. The blister was so close now, close enough she could make out shapes behind the dark glass. Something big and round in there. A damned jellyfish, certainly. But already a second weapon pit was heating up. “Singh, break!” she called.
Singh, perhaps excited by seeing Uhl survive the foolhardy maneuver, tried to get fancy with his flying. He pulled up in a sharp loop, the positioning jets in his undercarriage flaring as he curved high up over the dreadnought’s back. As the plasma ball coalesced inside its pit, growing bright as a magnesium flare, he crested at the top of his loop—then rolled over on his side and shot off at an angle. The plasma ball blasted past him at high speed, close enough she was worried he might have been cooked alive inside his cockpit.