Loyalty to the Cause (TCOTU, Book 4) (This Corner of the Universe)

by Britt Ringel

  Vernay noticed Wallace’s reshuffling as well. “You know we just finished a pass on a second-rate, Captain. Do you enjoy facing these types of odds?” she asked sardonically. After a moment’s consideration, she added, “Well, at least brigs don’t carry missiles.”

  Heskan turned toward Vernay and shrugged. “One of our sections was going to be doubled-up on.”

  “Yeah, and I’m sure your comment to him had nothing to do with who he wants most,” she retorted.

  The defenders of Seshafi followed each other single file through a gentle turn designed to orient them toward their quarry. In return, Wallace’s fleet assembled and made way on a course that would slice near Heskan’s formation in approximately four minutes.

  Heskan plotted the course results and increased his fleet’s speed slightly while simultaneously angling into a higher plane. One by one, each ship behind Elathra executed his command as it was received, starting with Rindr. As the minutes counted down, Heskan ordered Truesworth to replace the fleet status display with an optical of Wallace’s lead ship, Scepter. When the fearsome brig appeared onscreen, Heskan sent a final command to his fleet. “Attention, ship captains. Maintain present course and speed until after the pass. You are free to orient to your best facing. Rindr, do not, repeat, do not match Elathra’s course or speed.” Heskan watched receipt signals flash through his fleet and finally said, “Diane, this is going to require some finesse.”

  * * *

  Lieutenant Jaynee Baldwin, Honor’s captain, sat anxiously in her command chair. Her corvette was the trailing ship in the Seshafian vanguard and had mercifully escaped most of the day’s brutality. Through luck or skill, her tiny ship had lost only a single GP laser and a small fraction of its propulsion. She understood that Honor’s luck would soon run out.

  Her section had already executed two passes, both times matched against superior foes. How the rearguard turned van was still able to function was beyond her understanding. In Line Tactics and Theory, her instructors assured the class that given the confines of corporate war, no conflict would ever require a third pass. Baldwin’s hand lightly quivered as she zoomed the focus on her chair arm tactical view. She was no coward and, more than that, was determined to ride out the battle to the bitter end, but their privateer-captain seemed hell-bent on the entire section’s destruction. She had never witnessed such ferocious resolve from a privateer before. Part of her wondered if rule under IaCom would be a fair exchange for the lives of her and her crew. Captain Heskan obviously thought it would not.

  “Ma’am, I’m getting something strange,” Sub-lieutenant Tengu reported. “I’m picking up a personal distress beacon thirty-five thousand kilometers off our bow.”

  “What?” Baldwin asked.

  “Someone’s floating in space about thirty thousand K ahead of us,” the sensorman clarified.

  The captain shuddered lightly. “It’s just remains, Casey. We’ve turned this part of space into a graveyard.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m getting life signs.”

  Baldwin knew she could never break formation in the middle of combat for a single soul. She spun toward her first officer and asked, “Recommendations?”

  She watched the officer run through possible options before blurting out, “Send our shuttle!”

  * * *

  The fleets crashed toward each other at a closure rate of .26c. On board Scepter, Captain Gael Harrist was waiting for what must be the enemy commander’s final fleet maneuver. Both Superb and Scepter had been ravaged on their starboard sides and were sailing inverted, relative to the rest of the Saden vanguard, to present a fresh and operational port-mounted dual GP laser turret toward the enemy. Wallace had given Harrist free rein to maneuver, and with the Seshafian van’s earlier speed increase, she was forced to increase her own section’s speed and accept an intercept farther out than originally planned. The extra effort was required to have any chance at bringing the Seshafian van to a final and decisive defeat. It was clear the enemy commander was attempting to skirt a lengthy engagement by speeding ahead to minimize exposure to Superb’s and Scepter’s combined weaponry. When Elathra was 34ls from Scepter, the light from the snow’s full military power burn reached Harrist’s bridge. He’s running even harder now, trying to race in front of us in a desperate attempt to avoid destruction, she thought.

  It was inexcusable but understandable. As a privateer herself, she knew that ship survival was paramount and the enemy snow had already been thoroughly wrecked in previous passes. Its only armament was a scant dual GP laser turret and single, damnable particle cannon. When compared to Scepter’s and Superb’s dorsal tri-laser emplacements and side-mounted dual turrets, the snow was clearly living on borrowed time. She hated the notion of destroying another privateer’s ship but the deed would have to be done. He had his chance to retire. This is what happens when privateers forget they are privateers.

  She looked at the estimated time until contact with a heady smile. There were still two full minutes to make the required correction. He tipped his hand too early. In his panic to escape us, he’s given me just enough time to close the jaws of the trap. She leered at the tactical plot as the enemy’s van formation began to stretch apart. The Seshafian lieutenants behind the privateer captain were not matching their leader’s disgraceful flight. The result was the privateer’s snow racing farther ahead, abandoning his section. “Increase our speed to point one-eight-C,” Harrist ordered. She knew that increasing speed would also increase the closure rate, especially relative to the brave ships of the Seshafian van not attempting to escape, but she no longer cared about them. “Wallace said, ‘Kill their leader and it’s over,’” she justified to her bridge.

  * * *

  Thirty-three seconds later, Heskan watched Scepter’s vector lines on the tactical plot increase, followed closely by the rest of Saden’s vanguard. The enemy ships were moving in from Elathra’s port side, increasing the closure speed to .28c. Heskan’s snow and the enemy van were now 12ls apart.

  “He’s taken the bait,” Vernay said exultantly.

  Heskan’s brow furrowed. “Diane, hard to port and make your course three-zero-three, negative plane five then rotate to face the enemy.”

  “But not for long,” Selvaggio reminded herself.

  * * *

  “Course change!” Scepter’s sensorman called out.

  “You mean speed change,” Harrist corrected. Run all you want, you can’t escape us now.

  “No,” the lieutenant insisted. “Course change.”

  The captain stared at the tactical plot dumbfounded. He can’t skip over or under us, we’re too close for that. The vector line on Elathra remained the same, but the ship’s bearing was changing. He must be trying to thrust directly away from us! Harrist sat at the edge of her seat in excitement. We’ll run him down like an animal. As she watched Elathra settle on a final trajectory, the captain’s eyes grew wide. “What’s his new course?”

  The sensorman gulped before answering, “Us.”

  * * *

  Elathra dashed to 6ls from Scepter in the dozen seconds after the brig’s captain had first seen the light from its radical course change. Bow facing the larger brig, Elathra’s lone particle cannon blasted its deadly beam from maximum range.

  On the bridge, Vernay cried out the moment Pruette’s cannon pulsed, spurring Selvaggio into action. Elathra’s thrusters activated again and spun the agile ship quickly to port. The rotation would have negligible effect on the snow’s course and speed, but when the five-second maneuver was completed the ship’s entire starboard broadside would bear for action.

  Two heartbeats into the bearing change, Scepter and Elathra ranged 5ls. Scepter’s gunners, though surprised at the snow’s suicidal turn, were still prepared to fire. Five separate lenses on the brig gushed powerful bursts of charged energy at the snow. In return, Elathra could muster but twin streams of light from Thomas’ forward GP turret. This lop-sided process seemed destined to repeat itself every two secon
ds as the ships blazed toward each other.

  The ships breached the 4ls barrier while issuing violence a second time. A moment later, Elathra completed her thirty-degree turn away from Scepter. An instant after that, the range between the ships reduced again to a mere 3ls. Elathra’s third salvo was augmented this time by her starboard carronades. The hyper-cycling lasers spit forth their fury in a relentless tirade of annihilation. Though underpowered and short of range, the tiny lenses of the blister turrets streamed forth destruction with every passing second. To a human eye, the rush of fire appeared almost continuous.

  Just eight seconds had elapsed since Elathra’s opening particle cannon shot initiated the skirmish. The flashing indicators of weapons fire on Lieutenant Hall’s console complemented the clipped chirping of automated damage reports flowing from Elathra’s ship-wide sensors.

  As the carronades dispensed death, Scepter’s third GP salvo pierced Elathra’s abused AIPS. Twin laser pulses struck near the heart of the snow, vaporizing duralloy and penetrating through an enlisted berth, past an engineering substation and into the main shuttle bay. Fortune smiled upon the Hollaran Class-2 shuttle. Spared a direct hit, the hurricane winds of decompression did little more than buffet the tiny craft. Moments before the last of the bay’s air could escape, a containment field sealed the four-centimeter gap in the bulkhead.

  Additional fire from Scepter’s tri-mount laser splashed over Elathra’s exposed starboard wing. The pulses easily gored the thick structure, destroying seven of the ten radiators connected to Pruette’s particle cannon.

  Elathra passed a bare 2ls “under” Scepter before the range began to increase. Seven light-seconds behind her sister brig, Superb bore down on an enemy that was already escaping.

  Chief Brown’s board had barely registered the damage to the wing radiators before the next assault from Scepter arrived. This time, only twin streams from the brig’s dual GP mount swatted at the ship. The AIPS screen, rebuilt to a pitiful seventeen percent, absorbed the first shot but its companion struck sixteen meters behind the bridge, lancing through an outer storage compartment and into the core of the C-DAC. Sub-lieutenant Curray escaped death by less than a meter but the pulses of energy drilled into his AIPS control panel and through the bulkhead toward the primary water filtration plant.

  Elathra spun delicately to maintain her broadside as Scepter’s final GP shots reached their mark. Due to the lightning quick pass, the angle of the snow, and extreme close range, Elathra’s stern was briefly vulnerable. Laser fire lashed the snow’s rear quarter, unfettered by a defensive screen. Both streams gored through her armor to melt the delicate machinery inside her tunnel drive system, vaporized the duralloy protecting the opposite side of the ship and proceeded deeper into space.

  All through the turmoil, Hall’s gunners unleashed their revenge, and Heskan’s concentration on Scepter’s optical was total. Beginning with the opening particle cannon hit, ugly craters and gashes appeared on the brig in two-second intervals. When the carronades were released upon her, Scepter’s cracks and rents arrived so frequently that the expulsion of debris threatened to obscure the warship. Heskan raised a fist in triumph and Vernay cheered when a large piece of the crippled brig broke free.

  “Got her,” Hall celebrated.

  “Diane, rotate to face the trailing brig,” Heskan barked after quickly confirming Scepter was out of the fight.

  “Target Superb, Mark,” Vernay added.

  Elathra increased her rate of spin, pushing her bow through the in-plane compass points to face the brig waning from her. As ordered, Lieutenant Hall designated Superb as Elathra’s new target but he was unsure if his gunners would have the opportunity to fire. They had already passed through the 5ls laser range and Pruette’s extreme cannon shot would be rushed. On the wall screen, the last of Elathra’s GP and carronade shots were reaching Scepter. Hall had never seen a ship as mangled as the brig on the optical before him. As he stole a peek at the unimaginable sight of devastation, he saw a large flash of white light and the expanding debris field of their former adversary.

  He blinked several times to readjust his eyes. On his console, Pruette’s particle cannon had just fired. Remarkably, the gunner’s mate had achieved target lock in the two seconds provided to him. Hall was monitoring the impressive heat levels his carronades had achieved when Elathra received her first volley from Superb.

  Elathra’s course blitzed the front of the Saden vanguard, leaving Superb with nothing more than a single firing opportunity as her enemy skimmed 5ls. All five of Superb’s lenses had flashed death and then, an instant later, the ships were outside effective GP laser range. Elathra had rotated fully to face her new enemy, and the snow took the first hit on her chin.

  No AIPS screen functioned to shelter Elathra from the blows. The laser fire from Superb’s dual mounts tore savage gashes over the flat surface of the snow’s bow. The beams burned past her armor and burrowed deeply into her hide. After piercing dozens of nonessential compartments, the energy burned itself out destroying the alternate core coolant system and the starboard Junkkers control room.

  The pulses from the brig’s triple laser emplacement finished off most of Elathra’s port wing. Already stripped of a third of its mass, the triumvirate of destruction cleaved the wing to its axillary. The battered structure failed at its second frame, just aft of the Number-3 Carronade Blister Turret, causing the entire wing to break free of the snow. Decompression events all along the width of the shattered wing pushed the wreckage gently away from Elathra in a slow-motion dissection of the ship.

  Three seconds after Elathra’s amputation, neutron particles from her starboard cannon dotted deep pockmarks into her opponent. The remainder of the vans flashed past each other, spewing limited death due to the Sadens’ speed increase.

  Heskan took a final look at the optical of Superb. The damage appeared superficial. “Jack, put the fleet status display up again, please.” The remainder of his vanguard would be clear in moments. Thirty-five seconds behind, his main would engage the enemy, but fortunately at an agreeably fast closure rate. Heskan smiled with a deep satisfaction. Scepter’s captain had gambled her own ship’s vector on Elathra’s destruction, which sacrificed the quality of her entire fleet’s attack pass. To his left, Vernay rose from her chair.

  “Chief,” she said, “how bad is it?”

  “Not good, Commander,” he replied matter-of-factly. “We’ve lost every connection with the whole port wing. Last time somethin’ like that happened, it was the bow with Ana.” He pointed at his console screen. “Don’t know how but the starboard batteries are still intact. However, that particle cannon won’t be firin’ more than once because of the damage to the wing radiators.” He shook his head in revulsion and muttered to himself, “What genius thought it was a good idea to place these heat hogs on a ship this small?”

  “Leave it to a Hollie,” Vernay muttered. “Ship systems?”

  “Tunnel drive is gone fer sure. I’m waitin’ on a report from Engineerin’ but you’ll know when I do.”

  Vernay started to walk away but Brown reached out for her arm and said, “Oh, I think we lost another shuttle. Whole bay decompressed so it’s probably damaged.” The man grinned. “Don’t understand what you an’ the capt’n have against the poor things.” Brown threw the woman a wink.

  Vernay snorted but then regained her serious demeanor. “Chief, I want a casualty report soonest. Our wounded have absolute priority over any repairs.”

  “Hold on, Stacy,” Heskan interrupted.

  All eyes turned toward the captain.

  Heskan looked soberly at his friend. “Commander, this battle might not be over.”

  Chapter 31

  The survivors of the third pass receded from each other and Heskan took the natural pause in the battle to assess the gruesome condition of his fleet. Elathra’s charge into the enemy’s vanguard had minimized the time the balance of the Seshafian ships had spent in the danger zone. Nevertheless, Rindr had
suffered horrendously. Even before her captain had struck her lights, the ship’s inability to follow the vanguard’s turn to port and reassemble on her flagship foreshadowed her submission. The ships behind Rindr fared little better. Anakim was mangled and sailed with lights dim, and even though Covington averred Ravana was still up for battle, his ship had been thoroughly wrecked. Ironically, it was the section’s only corvette, Honor, sailing proudly at the rear that was most functional. Further, she had even given as much punishment as she received during the last pass.

  In return for Rindr’s and Anakim’s surrenders, the enemy van paid a heavy price. Scepter was debris, leaving only Superb as the final brig in the contest. Anakim had also taken her counterpart, Bold, with her into retirement and Ravana had nearly destroyed a Saden snow still afire at her aft. Heskan realized, as he watched the optical of the burning ship, that if the raging flames spewing from the snow were not extinguished soon, her captain would have no choice but to abandon her.

  Heskan’s fortunes had reversed in his main. Fame had survived the contest but Fly was missing, except for her ELTI. Dart was also drifting serenely out of formation, lights extinguished. The price paid by the Sadens was their brig, Renown, whose captain had decided to withdraw his shattered brig from the conflict.

  Elathra’s plight was worse than even Ravana’s. Not only stripped of half her armament, she had been stripped nearly of half her hull. The once graceful appearance of her raptor-like form was now a mockery to symmetry as the snow limped forward. Lieutenant Ayala in Engineering informed Heskan that any additional damage to the power systems would certainly lead to a core overload. She explained that Elathra’s imminent demise was unavoidable in her current state, and the only question was whether the snow would give them warning before her core folded. The engineer fretted over the loss of a Junkkers drive but the destruction of the alternate core cooling system was of grave concern. With the loss of the redundant system, a single blow could set Elathra onto the path of annihilation in milliseconds.