Straker's Breakers

by David VanDyke

  He was about to close it when his sister Mara—not only a medical doctor, but Surgeon General of the Breakers—approached, an injection gun in her hand. “Your new biotech.”

  “Dammit,” Straker said, and held out a bare arm. This was the one part of Annex Zulu he really didn’t like. Mara’s experimental biotech—supposedly proven and tested, though until now never distributed—was based on the best parts of the Hok parasite template. No distinctive ugly pebbled skin, no destruction of free will, but enhanced strength, speed, toughness and healing.

  He’d considered not taking it. What if it affected his mental processes after all? But he was going to take part in the fighting, and he’d mandated it for all the Breakers going into direct combat. He couldn’t tell others to accept it and yet refuse it himself. If it worked as Mara promised, it would increase combat effectiveness and save lives.

  Maybe his own.

  After the sting of the injection, he waited, but felt nothing. “How long will it take?”

  “Three to four hours before the initial effects. You shouldn’t feel too much difference inside your Ripper. Remember, though, when you step outside, you’ll have to use less strength, especially with delicate things. The test subjects were breaking glasses and snapping off handles for a day or two, until they got used to it.”

  “Understood.”

  Mara kissed his cheek. “Mainly, though, you’ll be more resistant to damage, just like a Hok. Combined with your genetic engineering, you’ll be the baddest thing on two legs, oh brother of mine. Don’t get a big head.”

  “Bigger head, you mean?”

  “I wasn’t gonna say that, but yeah, you jock fathead. Now go kick some ass.”

  “Consider it kicked, you brainiac pest. Hate you, sis.” Straker closed the suit up and booted up the brainlink connection.

  “Hate you too!” Mara whirled out of the cargo bay to take her seat as the lifter rose through the atmosphere.

  “You good, sir?” Sergeant Steiner, his bodyguard since the death of Redwolf, was already suited up and injected.

  “I’m fine. How about you? Feeling any effects?”

  “I was one of the test subjects. I’ve had it for months. No problems.”

  Straker grunted, not entirely reassured. The man was a crack battlesuiter, but not much of a thinker or talker. Loco had selected him from hundreds of volunteers for the position. Straker would’ve guessed Loco had picked another smartass like himself, but no. Maybe he didn’t want the competition.

  Brainlinked, Straker expanded his consciousness within the Ripper and found it nearly the equal of his Jackhammer mechsuit. He had an automatic FTL datalink with the Breaker network that should keep him in touch with everyone and everything also linked. His SAI filtered what he needed according to complex personalized protocols, preventing him from being overwhelmed with inputs.

  He selected the overall system view, barely noticing as the lifter he occupied was brought on board the ship in orbit and parked in its cargo bay. In his VR-HUD, he saw the task force and the Breaker ships, now engaged in a slow-motion dance of physics and probabilities.

  Soon the Independence flagship, fast and heavily armed, led the way at right angles to the task force. It stayed easily out of effective range, helped by the fact that if the enemy tried to target her with their spinal primary weaponry, they would have to alter their angle of maneuver, losing efficiency as they chased her. No, she was completely safe.

  Behind the flagship trailed the twenty-one transports, who lugged along under maximum civilian acceleration, plus a five percent overload. Everyone was on a right-angle course to the enemy task force, forcing their opponents to turn hard if they wanted to intercept.

  The confusion of lines and numbers on the plotting screens showed the Breaker transports wouldn’t all make it.

  The clock was running out. Whatever Steel’s fleet planned to do, they were about to do it.

  Chapter 4

  Admiral Engels, commanding the Breakers fleet

  On the bridge of the flagship Independence, Carla Engels struggled to focus on the situation. She hadn’t engaged in real fleet combat—even ship-to-ship fighting—in years. Despite plenty of brainlinked VR-simulator time, she felt rusty.

  Having her family and the rest of the civilians fleeing through space didn’t help either. She was still worried about Straker’s plan. Everything turned on the knife-edge of probability predictions and on the Breaker leadership’s belief in what the enemy would do.

  “Incoming vidlink,” Lieutenant Tanaka said from Comms.

  There was no doubt Indy could handle most of the bridge functions, but Engels had insisted the AI let the humans do their jobs, if only to keep them in practice. She still remembered when Indy, inhabiting the Indomitable, had refused to destroy enemy ships.

  And, she vividly remembered being Vic’s prisoner inside the VR-matrix. Deep down, she couldn’t fully trust artificial intelligence.

  “It’s from the task force,” Tanaka continued, clearly surprised. “Urgent, eyes-only—the message is for you personally, Admiral Engels.”

  “Me personally?” Engels glanced around, and then made up her mind. “In the bridge ready room.”

  Once alone in the side room, the screen came to life, showing a face Engels hadn’t seen in over two years.

  Ellen Gray.

  The dark-skinned, frowning woman wore a captain’s uniform, with blue-and-red Victory Party tabs on it. The tabs were another indication of how politicized the Republic military had become. Those who bore the symbols could expect favored treatment. Those without would see their careers stalled.

  “You used to be a commodore, Ellen,” Engels said harshly, without preamble. “Things not working out as planned? Your new Party not as friendly as you thought?”

  “Shut up and listen, Carla,” Gray said in a low voice, glancing to the side. “I’ve only got a moment. They took away my squadron and my SDN when I dragged my feet about joining the Party. I’m commanding a cruiser again, but that’s only because I swallowed my pride and finally signed up—for this mission only. Because of you.”

  Engels swallowed her own pride and stopped herself from attacking Gray. The other woman had rebuffed Engels’ offer to join the Breakers, and that still stung. It seemed she’d tried to walk the line between loyalty to the Republic and the ever-growing influence of the Party. Now, she was obviously communicating clandestinely.

  “Okay,” she said, “talk to me.”

  “This task force has orders to take you all into custody,” Gray said.

  “We figured that.”

  “But what you don’t know is that Hayson Niedern’s gotten his flag back, and he’s in charge. He has orders to kill anyone rather than let them escape. Not that he needs those orders. He still hates you and Straker for what you did. He’s itching for revenge.”

  Engels licked her lips. “It’s that bad?”

  “They assigned the most fanatical Party loyalists to these ships, Carla. I only got in because I’ve distanced myself from you and the Breakers. I spouted the Party line, they needed another ship and a good captain—and I called in my last personal favors. I did it so I could warn you, and I’m risking everything. I wish I’d joined you when I had the chance.”

  Engels struggled with herself. What if this was a trick designed to get her to tell the enemy what they were planning? But no. Ellen Gray had been a friend, closer than a friend. Like a sister, despite their disagreement about how to deal with the politics. She had to trust Gray wouldn’t betray her.

  “Ellen, thanks, but listen. We already have a plan. Don’t do anything crazy, like firing on your own ships, or you might knock everything out of whack. Not until you’re sure of your actions. It all depends on Niedern believing the picture we’re presenting to him.”

  “What picture?”

  “I—I can’t tell you, Ellen. You’ll have to make your own judgments when the time comes, otherwise you might make some weird move. And—”


  “Sorry, I have to go.” Gray’s vidlink dropped suddenly.

  She must have spotted a Loyalty Officer nearby, Engels realized. The situation was just like the Mutuality all over again, with their Commissars. She’d heard the Lazarus clones had made a comeback as political watchdogs, and no good could come of that.

  “Indy, did you listen in?”

  “Not as such,” the AI replied. “The vidlink was for you only. I have, however, stored a sealed recording. Shall I review it for myself?”

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  “Interesting,” Indy said after a slight pause. “Unfortunately, in Captain Gray’s desire to help, she merely introduced another variable into an already volatile situation. I confess I’m at a loss. Does this change the plan?”

  Engels agonized, but eventually said, “No. No, it can’t. We proceed as if she and her ship will act belligerently. We can’t depend on anything else.”

  “Understood.”

  “Can you put me through to Derek?”

  “That would be risky. His suit’s FTL comlink is too short-ranged. Ordinary radio would probably be noticed. Tightbeam laser is not completely undetectable. We can encrypt it, but the enemy might know we’re communicating.”

  “That won’t matter. Naturally we’d be communicating. Put me through.”

  “Comlinking now via tightbeam laser. There will be over twenty seconds of lag.”

  “Okay.”

  The half-minute seemed endless, but eventually she got through.

  “Straker here.”

  “Derek, it’s me. There’s a long lag, so listen until I’m done. I’ve gotten confirmation that the approaching fleet is hostile. Ellen Gray managed to get herself assigned to command a cruiser in the task force. She called to warn me on an FTL vidlink, but she didn’t say her crew was with her, so we have to assume they’re Party loyalists. I told her we have a plan, that she shouldn’t do anything until she’s sure of the situation. That’s all I told her. I know you can’t pull any punches, but maybe... I don’t know. On the off chance you can talk to whoever tries to take down the cruisers, maybe you can pass the word. Not to go easy, I guess, but to make sure to accept a surrender as quick as possible. I’m certain she’s on our side. I don’t see her lying to me about this. That’s all. Engels, over.”

  Straker’s reply seemed to take forever to arrive. “I understand. I’ll pass the word, but like you said, we can’t go easy on anybody until they surrender. Even then, I wouldn’t put it past them to fake a surrender. We don’t know how fanatical these people are, what kind of defenses they have, or whether they have Hok with them. So, no promises. Thanks for the warning, though. Straker out.”

  Engels sat on the edge of the conference table for a few more minutes, trying to think her way out of the box she was in. No matter how much Engels wanted to help her, Gray was on her own. If she got caught in the crossfire, it would be an ironic tragedy.

  Fortunes of war.

  Engels returned to the bridge and examined the superb holotank there. Built specifically for the flagship and improved even more by the AI, it was the best piece of equipment she’d ever seen, and the biggest outside of a fortress.

  It showed Independence leading a gaggle of twenty-one transport ships toward flatspace, clearly reaching for safety in transit to sidespace FTL travel. Once transited, ships in the strange dimension of sidespace couldn’t be tracked or intercepted.

  So, the enemy had to catch their quarries in normal space—that is, in curved space, the area around the star most affected by its mass and gravity.

  And they would.

  By the numbers, according to the sensors, whether enemy or friendly, most of the transports wouldn’t escape. The Independence would easily make it out, and perhaps the first three of the transports, but not the last eighteen. If the Republic task force—call it what it was, the Party task force—didn’t know yet, they would soon.

  In fact, it would be glaringly obvious.

  She hoped Niedern would be so blinded by ambition and his desire for revenge that he wouldn’t wonder too strenuously why the flagship Independence wasn’t at the rear, covering the evacuation, instead of at the front leading it.

  He had to know of the flagship’s fantastic defensive capabilities—thousands of AI-controlled point-defense beams and over five hundred aerospace drones with which to shoot down missiles or railgun projectiles, not to mention the new shields based on Crystal tech—but would he look for deception? Or would he assume the Breakers were cowardly, gone soft after years in garrison, and were only eager to save themselves at the expense of unarmed transports obviously packed full of civilians?

  As the hours passed, the calculus of position brought the enemy inevitably closer to the tail end of the fleeing convoy. The Breakers made no effort to tighten up or protect their transports. It was every vessel for itself, each ship’s civilian-grade drive overloaded, fleeing desperately.

  Engels and the rest of the bridge crew watched with dry mouths as the trailing transport came into range of the leading destroyers, the fastest enemy ships. Would they fire, brutally burning down an undefended vessel? Or shoot carefully to disable? Or even use their superior speed and weaponry to come alongside and grapple to board?

  The lead destroyer passed from long into medium range, and then to short. They could blast the transport at any time... but they didn’t. No, Niedern would be ordering the transport to be seized intact, full of Breaker families and civilians.

  Hostages.

  The destroyer put a shot across the transport’s bow and broadcast a stand-down order on all channels. The transport ignored the warning, and a second one, but didn’t evade. Eventually, the destroyer used a secondary laser to disable her fusion drive. Without it, she coasted, still accelerating slightly on impellers, but functionally helpless.

  How clever would Niedern be? He was a competent, if unimaginative, fleet commander. She expected him to do the smart thing. Instead of his destroyers taking immediate possession of the ships they caught and disabled, they raced ahead to catch more ships. That way, his fleet could follow and snatch up prizes at their leisure after the coming battle—if there was to be one.

  Engels dared to smile. All of this was according to the rebel plan.

  “Can we tell if the Ruxins cleared the recon drones yet?” she asked.

  “We’ve had indications of transits and weapons fire,” the sensors officer replied, “but it’s all very faint. If we weren’t looking, we’d never see them. The enemy shouldn’t—especially as until recently their own drives were blinding them to everything behind them.”

  “Understood.”

  The first, most important mission of the Ruxin stealth-skimmers Zaxby brought was to ensure no word of what transpired here returned to the far-flung Republic interstellar comms network. The skimmers should have transited in exactly where the enemy task force had first appeared and immediately identified all the waiting spy and courier drones they’d dropped. Those robot drones, seeing “Republic” ships squawking proper IFF codes, would allow the skimmers to approach—and destroy them.

  Once they took care of that problem, the stealthy skimmers, undetectable at a distance, would sneak up on the enemy task force, aiming to intercept any other courier drones they managed to launch or drop in their wake. If necessary, they could attack from ambush.

  The hours stretched by as the destroyers climbed up the trail of fleeing ships one by one, eventually disabling eighteen. The first three transports managed to get into sidespace, as expected. The Independence, lurked out of range in flatspace, apparently impotent. She could jump any time now, but stuck around. The enemy would hopefully calculate that the Breakers were unwilling to risk their flagship, but were remaining in the area to see what happened, frustrated and helpless.

  It should all make sense to Niedern.

  As the enemy destroyers did the hard work, Niedern’s larger warships matched speeds to the fleeing transports, sidling up to them one by one and grappling
them with magnetics. The dreadnoughts grabbed four transports each, positioning them opposite each other against their hulls at the four points of an imaginary compass, so the drive loads would be balanced. Engels was reminded of four smokesticks glued to a cigar.

  She checked the chrono. 2240 hours, Culloden time, which was what the Breakers were all using. Twenty minutes to wait.

  Twenty minutes to bite her nails.

  Twenty minutes of calm before the storm.

  The cruisers took charge of two transports each while the destroyers remained on guard. There’d been no way to predict how the enemy would distribute the load, and this wasn’t the best result for the Breakers. It meant the six destroyers would be unencumbered. If handled well by their captains, they could screw up the plan badly, inflicting heavy casualties. They had to be dealt with.

  “FTL comlink to Zaxby,” Engels said.

  It took a few moments, but eventually the comtech responded. “Comlink established.”

  “Grand Marshal Zaxby here, Admiral Engels. How may I be of service?”

  “The drones are cleared?”

  “Yes, and we’ve been following the enemy to sweep up any more they’ve dropped. So far, we’ve found none.”

  “The destroyers aren’t grappling with any transports. Can you deal with them?”

  “Is that a euphemism, Carla Engels? Please be clear.”

  Engels sighed. “Attack them at 2300 hours. Destroy them if necessary.”

  “It will be necessary. They will not stand down.”

  “I know. Destroy them.”

  “Destroy the destroyers. That’s pleasantly clear—and nice wordplay, too. My warriors will not fail.”

  “Good. Engels out.” She really didn’t feel like talking further about it. Killing didn’t excite her. If there was an alternative, she’d take it—but those ships couldn’t be allowed free rein.

  Ironically, she felt helpless and cowardly out here on the Independence, playing her role in the plan. She wanted to get in and fight... but she had to sit out here like a big fat decoy. Keep them wondering, keep them guessing, keep them looking at her instead of where the real danger lay.