He boosted up, letting his opponent go—the Dom’s drives flared and he broke apart a second later—and watched as Kris hit the brakes to suck in the two remaining fighters. They bit on the feint, and Kris popped her bird into a perfect cobra. They flew right by, and her missile took one in the tail cone, sending him spiraling away, out of control. A sustained burst of gunfire burned through and torched the other.
Huron nodded with deep satisfaction. A handful of seconds later, Kris caught up with him as he broke over the top of the confusion. “Very nice,” he told her.
“Thanks. So you’re not gonna gimme shit about it later?”
“Perish the thought.” The Halith fighters were milling around below them, completely disorganized. The combat zone was full of hot gas, molten debris, spiraling fighter hulks, and Kris and Huron had set their ECM suites to shrieking banshee mode, jamming almost everything, before abruptly disappearing in a sudden shocking quiet. He smiled.
“Now, see what we got down there? Ain’t it pretty?” Kris laughed out loud. “This is where the real fun begins. Drop your seekers to keep ‘em stirred up, then we’ll go in for the close work and finish this thing. Keep your last two missiles for bolters at the end. You ready?”
“Fuck yeah! . . . Sir.”
He couldn’t recall her ever sounding so happy. Even the sir she’d added as afterthought was jubilant.
“Very good, Ensign,” he said as he pushed over and his smile edged wider. “Let’s wrap this up and break for a beer.”
“Y’know how I feel about beer.”
“You name it then, Kris. I’m buying.”
“That’s damn nice of you, sir. See ya on deck.”
Z-Day +7 (0845)
LSS Ardennes, engaged center;
Wogan’s Reef, Hydra Border Zone
Admiral PrenTalien, watching CENFOR advance across half a million kilometers of battlespace, concluded that Adenauer’s reputation sold him short. The big dreadnought was in the lead—a surprisingly bold move, and one PrenTalien hadn’t been prepared for. It ran the risk of getting her mauled, but it also brought her massive firepower to the festivities much more quickly than he’d reckoned on.
“Harry, we can’t let Marshall Nedelin get alongside the monitor—not while it has its teeth. See if anyone can do something about her. By any means necessary.”
Bolton took stock of his CO’s expression. “Shall I send that out verbatim, sir?”
“By all means, Harry. Make it so.”
* * *
On the bridge of Athena Nike, Rear Admiral Sabr turned to the ship’s captain. Nike had been stationed as the strike force’s lead element, waiting to administer the coup de grâce, but Sabr himself was chafing under the enforced inactivity. Now he saw an opportunity to end it.
“Captain Watanabe, the admiral has requested that something be done about Marshall Nedelin and I think we should.”
“Yes, sir.”
“By any means necessary, were the words used.”
A gleam came into Shiro Watanabe’s eye. “Any means, sir?”
“That was the admiral’s request.” Sabr paused. “I do not intend to involve the rest of the squadron in this, Captain. I think we can handle it.”
“Understood, sir.” Watanabe turned and ordered, “Helm, lock in an interception course for Marshall Nedelin. All ahead flank!”
Sabr opened a channel to his chief of staff. “Captain Donovan, please inform the rest of the squadron they will remain at station and conform to Admiral PrenTalien movements until further orders. Please make that very firmly understood. Yes, Captain?”—seeing Watanabe looking at him.
“Sir, considering the admiral’s request, I was wondering—”
“If a certain question we once debated might now be answered? Yes, I think that a excellent notion. By all means.”
Watanabe called on the helmsman as all around the bridge, ears perked up. “Mr. Borodin, I believe you understand the maneuver to which Admiral Sabr is referring?”
WO Karl Borodin did indeed—all too well. “I do, sir.”
“It will call for some very fine work. Do you think it possible?”
The helmsman took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. I believe so, sir.”
The captain grinned and seemed to grow taller. The bridge crew looked increasingly nervous.
“Commander Flores, request engineering to start bleeding a 0.035 mix of H2O into the aft fuel cells.”
“Sir?” his executive officer asked, her face alarmed, for she’d just grasped what Sabr and the captain had in mind. “Is that a request or an order?”
“I should not like to have to make it an order, Commander.”
“Yes, sir.” Veronnika Flores swallowed and conveyed the request. A minute later, she relayed, “Commander Kyle reports the bleed is set to go, but he feels it is his responsibility to inform you that this will push the drives forty-five percent past their design limits. He’s—ah—not entirely sure about the hull either.”
“Duly noted, Ronn.” Watanabe’s smile was approaching the divine. “Tell him to commence the bleed and not to worry—we’ll all be sure to hold onto something.”
* * *
“What the hell is Lo Gai doing?” Harry Bolton looked up, stunned. “You don’t think . . .”
PrenTalien turned to look at the plot as Athena Nike rocketed out of formation like the proverbial bat out of hell. He replied, “I think he did. Watanabe was always hot to give a go.”
Bolton shook his head. “Well, you did say ‘by any means necessary’.”
“So I did, didn’t I?” An odd smile quirked PrenTalien’s lips. “Suppose I oughta be more careful ‘bout that.”
* * *
On the bridge of Marshall Nedelin, the conning officer, Lieutenant Commander Sikhander Komorov, received a report from the CIC sensor section with a rueful shake of his head. It was impossible, but adrenaline spiking in the heat of combat made men see impossible things.
He requested confirmation.
* * *
G-Helmsman Luke Panetta had his full attention rigidly fixed on the plot displayed on Nike’s nav console. The range numbers were spooling off at a truly hellacious rate, but what really worried him was that Nike was actually closing faster than the display indicated. The navigation system’s designers had never conceived that a battlecruiser could accelerate like this and he could feel the latency building.
Without taking his eyes off the display, he muttered to the helmsman through clenched teeth, “What the fuck have you got us into here, Karl? The skipper’s gone barking. How the hell are we gonna do this?”
Karl Borodin’s attention was every bit as firmly focused and all his senses were even more finely attuned to his ship. Yet, he could still spare his friend the edge of a smirk. “We’re gonna use the Force, Luke—use the fuckin’ Force.”
* * *
Marshall Nedelin’ sensor lead responded to the conning officer’s request with a testy affirmative and linked over the raw sensor data. Komorov stared at it in horrified fascination. Watering the drives of a battlecruiser? Someone over there was manifestly insane—in fact, the whole lot of them. Putting the data up on the main screen, he reported to the executive officer in a voice so unnaturally calm it shocked his own ears.
“Battlecruiser coming up hard a-port, sir. Closing on a collision course.”
His report was mere form: the exec already knew that. At such a closing rate, their missiles would never get a clean lock. They would have to engage with guns. He flashed his proposed maneuver to the captain in CIC, who would be receiving a fire plan from the weapons control officer at this moment. It would a be close-run business putting enough fire on target at this aspect once he sheered off, which he would certainly do in the next minute of so.
“What ship is that?” the exec asked the conning officer.
The water molecules mixing in the fusion chambers were playing havoc with their attempts to get a read on the approaching ship’s energy profile. But now the em
ission’s signature was coming through clear and the sensor lead linked him a preliminary ID.
“I believe that’s Athena Nike, sir.”
The exec’s head jerked sharply in his direction. “Sabr’s flagship?”
“Yes, sir. That is correct.”
Komorov had never seen a senior officer’s face go so white before.
“Full evasive!” the exec yelled. “Hard roll left! Interpose the keel! NOW!”
* * *
“He rolling, sir,” called out Nike’s helmsman.
“Excellent, Helm,” answered Captain Watanabe, thoroughly unruffled. “Keep her thus—steady as she goes.”
* * *
Deep in CIC, everyone felt it as Marshall Nedelin came to full flank acceleration and began her frantic roll. Captain DuPlessis turned to his fleet commander and announced in a stiff formal voice, “Admiral, we have Athena Nike engaging—I believe he means to ram, sir. I’m taking emergency evasive action and sounding collision.”
The claxon went off in a wild cacophony at that moment and Jakob Adenauer uttered a string of words his Amelia would never have approved of.
* * *
With her keel interposed, as Marshall Nedelin was safe from serious harm on this vector—even ramming would do no more than shake her up severely, while Nike would never survive. But the dreadnought’s guns could not be brought to bear and her sensors would be blind as soon as Nike entered her drive cone, and—most critically—no ship the size of Marshall Nedelin could be described as nimble. In spite of her emergency maneuvers, for the next few minutes, her trajectory would be utterly predictable.
“Helm, start shaving the vector,” Captain Watanabe said in the rapt, unnatural silence that now filled his bridge. “Prepare to roll. We need the outer edge of our keel zone to pass within fifty meters of his drive nodes for this to work. Look sharp.”
Karl Borodin had no time or attention to waste wiping away the sweat that was beading on his forehead. “Aye aye, sir.”
Eyes locked absolutely on the roll indicator, he started nudging the thruster control, watching the counterclockwise rate grow steadily as the battlecruiser responded. He needed a revolution and a half to build the requisite angular velocity. He pushed the control further. The rate built faster as Nike swung her keel through ninety degrees, then one-eighty. Approaching a full turn, he held his breath, the control now at seventy-five percent. The ship completed her revolution—he shut both eyes and jammed the control hard over.
* * *
Nike’s hyper-keel swung with swift, inexorable majesty, reaching the critical angular velocity of seventy-six radians per second as the edge its shear field swept past Marshall Nedelin’s drive nodes at a distance of forty-nine meters. The immense local energies bottled in the keel produced a massive power spike that lasted a millisecond and vaporized the control lines. The dreadnought’s drive locked down at once and emergency shunts snapped open while atomic iron flooded the chambers to damp the reaction, but not before the reaction chambers’ lining (their magnetic buffers hopelessly shorted) cracked and began to boil. The venting plasma surrounded the dreadnought like the corona of a sun, and for thirty seconds all on board prayed that it would be enough.
It wasn’t. The fatally weakened chambers gave way, and the drive nodes exploded. Impelled by the blast, the huge ship lurched forward and began to tumble helplessly, a mere projectile hurtling straight into the reef at ninety-two kilometers per second.
Up ahead, lying cold and dark in a spur of the reef, dozens of robotic sensors, slumbering for decades and shaken from their torpor by the shock wave, awoke. They detected the fast-approaching mass, weighed and measured and calculated, and beeped their electronic conclusions to hundreds more of their kind.
Within minutes, the spur was alive with movement as the mine field stirred, and focused. Thrusters engaged and the mines began to swarm toward the crippled dreadnought: at first by ones and twos, then by fives and tens, then more—like primordial predators scenting blood.
* * *
“Any report from Captain Lewis?” PrenTalien’s voice was harsh. His plot showed Marshall Nedelin careening to her death—a slow death—as the mines gnawed through her meters of armor. Once they latched on, it could take hours the break the dreadnought down. He took no pleasure in the thought and he had no time to spare on it, in any case. The loss of Marshall Nedelin had certainly blunted the sortie, but those ships following on were closing fast. If they got there before Lewis could disable it . . .
“No, sir.”
The monitor had been more badly damaged than he could have expected by Bellerophon’s attack. Watching the little carrier hang on the huge vessel’s flank and hammer it savagely until that monstrous salvo drove her off had filled him with a fierce elation—and more to the purpose, it had silenced half its port-side armament. But was it enough? The ponderous vessel could still bring its main and aft-port turrets to bear—it still had it’s missiles.
And yet, if he could interpose Ardennes between the monitor’s damaged port side and the Halith fleet he might still destroy it, smashing the enemy’s linchpin and leaving Bannermans unsupported. With the Doms’ left flank in shambles, taking the monitor out of action and cutting off the Bannermans would turn the tide of battle. Between the monitor and what remained of Adenauer’s Center Force, Ardennes would take a terrible beating, but she wouldn’t die easy.
“Send: Close Engagement—close the Bannermans.” Masers beamed the order to his commanders. “My complements to Captain Quartermain and ask him to lay us alongside that monitor—the port side, please—at long biscuit toss.”
As Lieutenant Reynolds conveyed the request to the Ardennes’s captain, PrenTalien saw Bolton looking over at him. “Do we recover the marines, sir?” A pause. “Bellerophon is asking.”
PrenTalien stared hard at the icon that was the monitor; an icon that now represented over two hundred extraordinarily brave men and women under his command—men and women who would certainly die if he did not intercede in time. But he was too far away to intercede—Bellerophon might make it but only just—and with those ships bearing down and much of the monitor’s armament still active, taking the marines off—assuming they were still alive—would be a desperate undertaking. He had no doubt McKenzie would attempt it, but she was already damaged and he could not afford to lose another carrier . . .
“Negative. Press the attack on the Bannerman fleet.” But . . . “Detach DESRON 9. Order them to engage those Halith ships.” With the dreadnought out of the fight and their defense net disrupted, the destroyers had good chance of getting through and slowing them down—probably not enough for Ardennes to close, but that was not out of the question. He owed Captain Lewis at least that much.
As the fleet accelerated, plot lines and intercept envelopes arced, converging and dividing, in the omnisynth’s display. He felt the change in vibration as Ardennes surged forward, bearing down on the monitor at flank acceleration, her massive batteries already selecting their victims even as the many missiles and torpedoes she owned warmed up and armed their warheads.
After a minute, the Bannermans noted the movement and he saw them contract towards the monitor, clawing free of Admiral Belvoir’s units who let them go to reform according to his approach vector, while the surviving elements of Adenauer’s left-flank force, led by Jena, started a pivot towards his own flank and rear.
His destroyers were sprinting ahead to make the slashing attack for which they were designed, disrupting the enemy’s vital center and carving out victims for the cruisers following behind to reduce to glowing slag and gas. To the other side, DESRON 9 drove hard for the leading CENFOR ships that were strung out now as they raced for the monitor. A mixed group of Halith light cruisers and destroyers broke off to intercept them. And behind all came Ardennes, holding the vast hand of her area-defense shield over the group and aching to get in range of that wounded leviathan over there.
Then from Bolton, a sharp intake of breath—almost a gasp. Pr
enTalien looked over and saw the Fleet Captain staring hard at one of the large bulkhead screens and his flag lieutenant’s face white.
“Oh dear God,” Bolton whispered. “She’s going to blow the fusion bottles!”
PrenTalien turned and saw it too: the howling all-frequency warning from the monitor that its containment was compromised—would soon rupture. The massive fusion bottles, many times the power of the largest dreadnaught, were cooking off and when they did . . .
The Halith and the Bannermans had seen it too. The Halith ships who, a moment before, had been boosting hard for the monitor were veering wildly, their destroyer screen scattering. The force following Jena was slowing in its pivot, but it was the Bannermans who broke in utter dissolution.
“How long to detonation?”
“Seven minutes—tops.”
Long enough for those fleets to get clear, and long enough to engage.
“Signal to all forces: General Chase—Max Boost Absolute.” His powerful hands tightened into fists as he leaned over the omnisynth’s display, watching the tracks of frantic ships scatter through the holographic volume. He turned to the Captain of the Fleet, pale eyes bright and terrible.
“Pound them, Harry!”—actually striking the edge of the display with his fist. “Pound them!”
Chapter Five: “The Only Thing Sadder than a Battle Lost”
Z-Day +7 (0911)
LSS Trafalgar, forward deployed;
Gamma Hydras, Hydra Border Zone
Two fighters swung into their final approach with a single missile between them, their guns dry, and not enough molecules left in Huron’s fuel tanks to form a quorum. The private argument they were having about who should go first—both insisted on deferring to the other and it was threatening to get heated—was ended by a hail from Trafalgar’s landing services officer in which the commodore could be heard over the open mic saying emphatically, “Tell the wing commander to get his ass on deck now!”
Asylum (Loralynn Kennakris Book 3) Page 31