by Kalina, Mark
On the whole, the two swift-ships had a good chance of dealing with a three-interceptor salvo at long range. Or a decent chance, anyway, thought Freya; it would depend on the quality of the crews, hers and theirs. But an attack by six interceptors, the likely full salvo from a lance-ship, would be far more dangerous; the swift-ships' defenses would be spread far too thin for effective defense. And it would only take one hit from a ship-killer warhead to kill or cripple her small ship.
At any rate, the lance-ship wasn't launching a long range attack, preferring to try to get them into closer, decisive range. But, meanwhile, the lance-ship was flooding them with laser energy, blinding their sensors, making it harder to notice when the lance-ship made an acceleration change.
Sooner or later, they would stray just too close, missing an enemy acceleration change because their own laser-blinded sensors did not detect it. Then they would have to deal with a powerful interceptor attack: half-a-dozen high speed suicide fighters coming in at close to ninety gees of acceleration.
"I wonder why he doesn't launch an full interceptor wave from out of range," mused Muir. "We'd still have to evade the engagement, and that would get us out of effective blinding laser range."
"Damn," Freya said. "That's a damn good question. He could launch a full wave at reduced acceleration. And we would have to get out of the way... He couldn't chase us off for long, but he could get us to back off for a few hours at least. It would cost him some interceptors, though; he'd never have a chance to recover them. Maybe he has too few aboard. If that really is a rogue or a pirate, he might not have full interceptor bays... might only have a few of them left."
She should have seen the possibility, though, Freya thought. She was pleased Muir had seen it, but she should have seen it too; she was the captain. It was the hours, she knew. With no way to tell when the ship would need six plus gees of acceleration, no one dared transfer back into their humanoid avatars. The entire crew had been in the ship's combat station neural nets for too long. It was starting to cause psychological fatigue, to wear on mental acuity. It had been less than fifty hours, but the psychological stress of being in a battle, if not actually in combat, was greater than she had expected. Every little error generated more stress, and it was adding up fast.
Forty-nine hours in the neural net of the Ice Knife, and Freya felt like she was the ship. She also felt like she was forgetting how to be human, or at least as human as she still was. This was bad. She would find that she was wasting long second of time on random musings, then have an hour or two pass where she was barely aware of her own identity. Talking to the other crew helped. Actually forming words and sending them to be "heard" by another daemon was getting to be crucial to keeping a proper mental focus.
She had spent longer than this in the ship's neural net before, but never with such high stakes. Less than a hundred minutes ago, the lance-ship had flipped over and made a short five-gee burn to decelerate, then flipped again and accelerated at almost six gees for a minute. The snap maneuver had been almost lost in the constant glare of the lance-ship's blinding lasers, and Skyrunner had missed it, matching the lance-ship's first move and not the second.
Freya had sent a frantic comm-signal to the other swift-ship, but for a crucial few minutes, Skyrunner was accelerating towards the lance-ship, which was accelerating towards the swift-ship, bringing the little ship into the edge of effective interceptor range, before an emergency eight-gee burn by Skyrunner opened the range again.
The lance-ship had not launched interceptors, but it had concentrated all of its laser power on the swift-ship, and Skyrunner's bow-shields were neither deployed nor even able to be interposed with the swift-ship thrusting away from the lance-ship. Skyrunner had suffered thermal damage from the mistake; laser energy had overloaded some of the more delicate sensors and degraded the radiators which dumped the huge waste heat of Skyrunner's drive.
In a worst case, it could have cascaded into disaster; an overheated drive might shut down, or might even affect the singularity reactor, and if Skyrunner lost power, it would be snapped up by the lance-ship. Skyrunner's captain had managed to avert disaster by running laser coolant into the system and venting it into space to control the heat buildup, then getting out of the high energy laser spot projected by the lance-ship. Even so, by the time the Skyrunner got out of danger she was streaming wisps of vapor from her hull and had been forced to deploy backup sensors. It had been too close.
But this time disaster was averted. The problem, Freya knew, was that the sort of error that had almost cost Skyrunner dearly would be more and more likely to occur as the crews spent more and more time in their ships' command neural nets. For the swift-ships, it was a sort of race, between the approaching intercept with the Conquering Sun, and the increasing odds of a deadly mistake.
Meanwhile, the three ships, the hostile lance-ship and the two swift-ships, were getting closer and closer to the Conquering Sun. Freya and her crew had to hold out a little more. Maybe another twenty hours, and this would be over, one way or another. The lance-ships would fall into the trap or else would realize what their "victim" actually was, and try to escape.
"Captain, there's something... I have an aspect change in the target! He's maneuvering to change his vector!" The sensor officer's "voice" was sudden and loud in Freya's "hearing."
"Give me your data feed, Sensors," said Freya, trying to keep her own "voice" calm. She felt the new data sent to her and focused her attention on it.
"Target is vectoring at sixty degrees to his base course," said the sensors officer, needlessly; Freya could "see" it just as well as he could.
"Why?" asked Freya, before she could stop herself, sounding almost petulant in her own mind. She cursed her lapse; that wasn't the way a captain was supposed to sound. But this was an unexpected move; the lance-ship had tried to get out of their laser-blinding range, or trick them into its full-salvo interceptor range, dozens of times in the last sixty hours. But this was different; the raider looked like it was changing its base vector. "Could it be aborting its intercept? Has it gotten past our blinding?"
"I'm not sure, Captain," said Muir. "But the target is burning at four gees, at sixty two degrees off his old vector... I'm adjusting our vector accordingly."
Muir had the actual control of the ship's vector, just now, letting Freya concentrate on trying to intuit the enemy's intentions.
"Good. OK," Freya said, trying to get a grip on the situation. "Signal to Skyrunner and make sure they stay with us."
Whatever the purpose of this maneuver, the swift-ships would stay with the enemy, Freya thought. If the enemy had seen the assault-ship, this was not an ideal vector to escape. If not, then this was not a good vector for an intercept, either.
And then she saw what the lance-ship was vectoring for.
"He's moving to link up with the other lance-ship," Freya exclaimed.
"Captain?" said Muir.
Freya shut down the sensors data feed; she needed her mind clear to think now, not cluttered with too many streams of information. For a moment, Freya wanted nothing to impinge into her mind.
"Get a sensor array on the other lance-ship," she said. "Is it changing its vector?"
"I need a moment, Captain, there's a three minute lag..." said Sensors.
"Understood," said Freya. The other lance-ship was still fifty-four million kilometers away from them; it would take three minutes for light from that ship to reach them, letting them see what it was doing "now."
"OK," said Freya, "get me a direct comm-link to Skyrunner, and stand by. We'll need to coordinate our maneuvers."
"Yes, Captain," came the reply from Communications.
"Captain Meryl," Freya said. Skyrunner was only a thousand kilometers away; there was no meaningful lag in communications.
"Captain Tralk," answered Demi-Captain Obin Meryl of the Hegemonic Fleet swift-ship Skyrunner. His virtual avatar was a narrow-faced man, sharp featured, with fashionable metal-silver hair. Freya knew the
se to be the same looks as his biosim avatar.
"Captain Meryl, please stand by; the enemy may be maneuvering on a new vector. As soon as we have an idea of their intentions, we'll have to react in concert."
"Of course, Captain Tralk. Please do not unduly concern yourself with the Skyrunner. My ship will be ready and capable of executing its mission."
"Of course, Captain Meryl," said Freya, wondering what the hell he meant by that.
"You were right," said Muir, a few minutes later. "They are moving to link up."
"This will make our mission easier, at least," interjected Demi-Captain Meryl. The comm-link was still open.
"Easier?" asked Muir.
"Certainly," said Meryl. "If the enemy are heading for a link-up, then we will no longer be needed to blind one of them; the Conquering Sun will be able to aim the glare of her drive at both of them together."
Freya sighed. "I don't suppose it's occurred to you, Captain Meryl, to wonder why they wish to link up at this point?"
"Why?" asked Meryl, confirming Freya's certainty that he had not given it a second of thought.
"I suspect that we did not succeed in our mission quite ideally," Freya said. "They must have seen something that makes them want to operate in a close formation."
"They don't seem to be vectoring to avoid an engagement," said Muir.
"No," said Freya. "They're still going for an intercept with the Conquering Sun, but now, they will do so in close formation."
"I don't see how this constitutes a failure of our mission, Captain Tralk," said Meryl.
"Not a failure, Captain Meryl," Freya said. "I suppose it might have been useless to begin with. Even if they couldn't see the Conquering Sun clearly, they must have wondered why two swift-ships were taking such pains to sensor blind one of them. I think, maybe, they suspect that the Conquering Sun is a warship, but I think they don't suspect that she's an assault-ship. Perhaps they think she's a heavy transport-cruiser, a Q-ship of ours, and they want numerical superiority for the engagement."
"If that's so, Captain Tralk," said Meryl, "then we've perfectly executed our mission. We were supposed to facilitate an engagement between the Conquering Sun and those ships. I think we can agree that we've done that."
"Yes," said Freya. "You're right, Captain Meryl. But we haven't finished the job. Let's spread out to three thousand kilometers and accelerate to keep position with the raider. This maneuver of his means we will no longer be able to point our drives at the raider, so we'll need to close in to increase laser energy density. I want us to close in to three hundred thousand kilometers."
"That's close to the edge of their full salvo interceptor range," said Meryl.
"True, but I think we can gamble on them not launching any. If they were going to, they'd have done it already. The only thing I can think of, is that they actually are pirates, and have a limited supply of interceptors. And we'll come in behind angled bow-shields. I don't want either ship to get singed again. "
"Very well, Captain Tralk," said Meryl. "I will maneuver Skyrunner to the parameters you've set."
...
"Why do you think they want to engage?" asked Jessa.
Zandy shrugged. The two women were sitting in one of the crew lounges aboard Conquering Sun. It was a pleasant place to relax, decorated with living plants and carefully arranged tables and couches. The assault-ship was large enough to have several lounges of this sort, serving as off-duty meeting places for the crew, as well as acting as dining facilities and gardens. At half a gee of acceleration, there was actually food service available from several automated delivery units that stood tucked into the walls. Of course, the food they dispensed was the usual bland nutrient paste, even if it was formed into somewhat more attractive shapes. Jessa was eating a bowl of noodles and Zandy had a plate with a rainbow pattern of "fruit flavored" gels.
Zandy sat back into the couch and let her eyes rest for a moment on the rows of variable-gee tolerant plants. They were small leaved, brightly flowering plants of some sort; genetically engineered, no doubt. The smell of the blossoms was nice, though. She looked at Jessa with a smile. This really was relaxing, or at least as relaxing as anything could be with the hot part of a battle coming up.
"Hey, Zandy, wake up! I asked you a question," said Jessa. "Did you forget your brain in another avatar?" she asked, smiling.
"That must be it, Pixie. I'm not really here. I'm stuck forever in that damn back-up interceptor. Seriously, I have no idea. I suppose they fell for it. They think we're a civilian ship, or an armed transport, or something.
"And I bet you've had fun flying a 'freight super-liner' these last few days, huh?" Zandy continued, with a smile of her own.
"Fuck you, darling. Yeah, it's not that much fun. It's not really boring, though; we have to keep a tight sensors fix on the raiders and make sure the axis of thrust is aimed right at them; make sure they can't actually see the ship. All they have is our drive plume, and that's colder and less energetic than normal," Jessa said.
Zandy's smile grew a bit. "I don't know how you can notice the difference; half a gee... three gees. It's all so slow..."
"Well, it isn't that fast... Some things are better slow, Zandy," said Jessa, smiling again. "Seriously, there's an elegance to maneuvering the 'Sun. She's so massive... I mean the power it takes to boost at three gees is fucking huge. It's a rush, commanding all that power. And it's fun to have to think it out. You can't just plow thought a maneuver like a swift-ship; there's always a most efficient way of getting any maneuver to happen, and you have to really fly the 'Sun to get it. I love it."
"Well, it looks like you get to do it for real, in about ten hours," said Zandy.
"Yeah. I've never flown the 'Sun in a fight before," said Jessa.
"I think it's cool that the intercept will happen on your shift, Pixie. I think you've earned the chance a couple of times over."
"I'm not complaining. I am qualified, and we do have to keep the shifts running to keep psychological fatigue down. A ship-to-ship fight is a bad place to start making stress-induced errors. And yeah, it's an honor that Captain Ari-Kani wants me in the navigation neural net when we engage."
"I smell some rank points for you..."
"I'm getting pretty senior in grade... I guess I could live with a promotion. I hope it's not vectoring me for a transfer to another ship, though."
"You can't stay on the 'Sun forever, Pixie. A few more rank points and you'll be senior enough for Chief Pilot on a lance-ship or something. That's a big step up."
"I don't want to leave the 'Sun. I like it here, and I like working under Ari-Kani... And I don't want to leave you."
"Oh, hell, Pixie. You know you can't think like that. We go where we're sent. And yeah, I'd miss you... Though I might like the chance to go back to being heterosexual," Zandy said.
Jessa snorted, and Zandy went on, "Anyway, it's not like you're being reassigned right now, or even all that soon. It might be another thousand hours or more before you'd get a chance to jump ship."
"Well, anyway," said Jessa, "I'm not the one I'm worried about. I'm going to be safe in an assault-ship. You're going to be in the fucking first salvo."
"Yeah," said Zandy.
"Shit. You could at least not sound like you want it so bad."
"It's what I do, Pixie. This is my chance to do it. I mean, it's a perfect setup. Even with both lance-ships flying together, we outgun them. If we let them get in close, we could put four full waves, twenty-four interceptors, out in one salvo. They can manage maybe six each, twelve all together. If we launch at long range and double up on the PLAs... keep some cold so that we can lase for a longer flight... even then we can still put two whole waves on them, twelve 'ceptors. Then they have to either hold back and try to stop us with their twelve at close range, which is still one to one odds... that's not so bad for us. Or they can put just together a combined salvo of just one wave to meet us head on. Any way you slice it, we either outgun them two to one, or they h
ave to launch their defensive salvo late and fight us one-to-one with no time to launch a second defensive salvo. And if they launch late then they're giving up any chance of actually getting a strike through to the 'Sun. And even if it is one-to-one, we can take them. There is no way they can stop two waves of ours, cold, at one-to-one odds.
"So yeah, I want to be out there. Every 'ceptor pilot wants to have combat time, wants to be part of a winning engagement. Not to mention, it's orders.
"Besides, this is my chance to get noticed, Pixie. I'm not saying it's going to be safe, or that every 'ceptor pilot is going to make it back. But this my big chance. And it's a good setup."
"Unless they get really close," said Jessa. "They've got a big acceleration advantage. They're going to control where the point of closest approach is, no matter what we do. If they come in within fifty thousand kilometers, they could try to swarm us with stand-off warheads."
"Only if they happen to have a bunch of stand-off warheads aboard. That's not a common weapons load for a lance-ship. They usually rely on their interceptors, and try to stay the hell away from an assault-ship," said Zandy.
"Yeah. But they didn't launch interceptors at the swift-ships. Maybe that's why."
"Maybe, I guess. But if that's so, then they have no fucking chance to stop a four-wave attack from Conquering Sun. We'll kill them out at a hundred thousand klicks, way before they can launch stand-off missiles."
"OK, deal. You do that."
"Looking forward to it," said Zandy.
In fact she was looking forward to it, she thought with a bit of surprise. The facade of confidence and fearlessness was just part of being an interceptor pilot. None of the pilots would admit to doubts. You couldn't afford doubts in an interceptor; there was no time for them. But it was a surprise to realize that she really was eager for the fight. It was a chance to prove that she was good enough to be where she was, Zandy thought, and to prove that she was good enough to move ahead too.
"OK," Jessa said. "Just make sure to survive, Zandy. Don't get all caught up trying to be a hero and forget to transfer back to the 'Sun, or get vaped, or something." Jessa's tone was light, but her large eyes were intense. "It's not going to be much of a victory party without you, OK?"