The Prodigal Emperor (The Shadow Space Chronicles Book 3)

by Kal Spriggs

  Three minutes was more than she would have given the pirate, but it should still give them some margin for error. At seventy thousand kilometers, the enemy ships were well within missile range, but it would take them some time to get anything like accurate sensor readings to make accurate shots with their weapons, especially with the debris that surrounded the research station and the platforms that made up the facility itself.

  Three Nagri-class battlecruisers, Lauren thought as she looked over the data, which matches Nova Corp's response team for this area. That meant that something had triggered the response and that the facility administrator must have known their response time. Mason was right, she thought.

  “Missile launch!” Mendoza called out.

  Lauren brought up the sensor feed on the missiles. Behind her she heard Stavros give orders on targeting envelopes for different ships. Before he even said anything she had uploaded the parameters into the computer. Her display updated as the missiles swept closer. Montago would have his three minutes, but only just. If they'd had Kandergain with them for this run, the psychic could have plotted a course quickly enough to escape to shadow space before the missiles arrived. Instead, they had to do things with a navigation computer.

  “I'm not picking up active sensors, yet,” Mendoza said as he tapped at his controls. “Not even from probes.” He frowned. “Those ships can't have missile lock at that range on passive sensors!”

  “I need better data on those missiles,” Lauren said. The missiles weren't transmitting active sensors either, which made them very hard to see and shoot, especially at long range.

  “They're not taking any kind of sensor feed from their ships,” Mendoza said as his hands raced across his controls. “Dammit, it's like they’re on passive sensors but they can't be that accurate at this range.”

  Lauren bit her lip. As the missiles swept in, she began to engage them. The Kraken's main batteries were designed to engage capital ships, but they still had enough accuracy to engage the lighter missiles. Even so, targeting the small, barely radiating missiles was easier said than done. She felt sweat bead her brow as the eighteen missiles swept through her engagement area... and she only stopped five. Each of those detonated with sharp bursts of radiation when destroyed, a certain sign that they carried antimatter warheads.

  “They'll have to go active on final approach,” Mendoza said, his voice frantic.

  “Captain Penwaithe, engage with interceptor missiles,” Stavros snapped, “those birds are hot: one good hit is all it will take.” That wasn't an underestimation, Lauren knew. The estimated payload on one of those would hammer even the Kraken's defense screen flat and probably destroy the entire ship as well.

  Azure Squadron volleyed a flight of interceptor missiles and more of the inbound fire died. The War Dogs carried some of the best missiles that money could buy, and their wickedly fast and agile interceptors swept into the formation, yet they didn't stop them all.

  “Final protective fire, evasive maneuvers,” Stavros said and turned the various ship captains free to maneuver and engage on their own. Lauren knew that a military unit would maintain overlapping, cohesive fire, but the various ship commanders lacked that level of discipline and trust.

  Lauren's fingers roved over the controls and she overlay a mesh of fire at the missiles that came close. The two missiles she saw were damnably hard to see, even at this range and it took far too many shots for her to bring them both down. They never went active, she thought as the blazing flashes of antimatter and matter signaled their deaths.

  She widened her sensor repeater just as the last pair of missiles broke through the squadron's defensive fire and swept past, both colliding with a pair of the transports formed up to jump away.

  The three hundred megaton detonations erased both light cargo ships as if they had never been.

  “Their target priority is the transports,” Stavros said. “Close up formation to protect the loot.”

  Lauren looked over at Mendoza, a sudden thought bothering her, “They never went active, right?”

  He nodded, his face pale as he realized how close they had come to death. Mendoza had never struck her as a particularly brave individual. “Check all radio frequencies for anything out of the ordinary.” The missiles should not have been able to pick out the transports on passive sensors, not with the warships radiating much more powerfully and certainly not with the research facility platforms and debris cluttering up space.

  “There's, there's nothing!” he protested a moment later. “I've got just the civilian transponders from the base and some background radiation.”

  Background radiation... she thought, the cargo manifests listed radioactive hazards for some of the cargo. “Scan the cargo ships for any radioactive components that stand out,” she snapped.

  Mendoza looked back at Stavros, “Sir, they're launching again, what's your priority?”

  “Do as she says,” Stavros snapped.

  Mendoza worked quickly and a moment later, he looked up, “I'm picking up matching radiation signatures from the Trangor, the Wolf Mother, and the War Dog's transport. It's got to be some kind of radioactive isotope.”

  “They tagged the cargo,” Stavros snapped. “Damn them. Open me a channel to them.” A moment later, his voice was harsh, “Trangor, Wolf Mother, and Star Dog, the enemy has tagged your cargoes, you need to jettison them, now.”

  ***

  “...the enemy has tagged your cargoes, you need to jettison them, now.” Stavros's voice was angry, as well he should be, Garret knew. The loss of those cargoes would basically mean they had wasted their time here.

  Worse was that they couldn't jettison the cargo off of the Hammer's carrier. It was secured in a supply locker deep inside the Star Dog. It would take at least thirty minutes to access it in the ship's tight corridors.

  And we've got inbound missiles in thirty seconds, he thought. He keyed his radio to Stavros's channel, “Commodore,” he said, “that's a negative on jettisoning our cargo, we haven't the time.”

  “And we're not dumping ours either,” Captain Jack of the Wolf Mother snarled. “That's fifteen million per box in rare isotopes.”

  “Wolf Mother, you'll dump your cargo or I'll shoot you down myself,” Stavros snarled. “Captain Penwaithe, we'll provide as much support as we can, but the navigation computer will take another ten minutes, at least.”

  “Acknowledged,” Garret said. While the destruction of the Star Dog would leave his two squadrons of Hammers intact, it would also strand them in the system. Given the fuel requirements of his ships, they'd be sitting ducks within six hours, even if the enemy didn't want to use the missiles to kill them quickly.

  For that matter, he thought, the bastards might just sic the system security on us.

  They could evacuate the Star Dog, ditch their Hammers, and get picked up by one of the other ships in the privateer squadron. But that would be a deathblow to the War Dogs participation with Halcyon. Replacing twelve of the Hammers, even as surplus, would cost more than Commodore Pierce could afford. It would save Garret's pilots and support crew, but it would leave his homeworld at the mercy of pirates like Lucretta Mannetti, without any allies they could trust.

  “Azure Flight,” Garret said, “Let's disrupt the enemy a bit.” The range was very long for their main guns. Even with the smart rounds for their mass drivers, the enemy's maneuvers would likely take them out of pocket for their rounds. “We'll fire brackets, on my mark.” he said. The eleven Hammers would fire in boxes around the enemy ships in a pattern designed to allow at least a few of the rounds an eligible target despite the maneuvers. He brought the nose of his Hammer into line with his target and spoke as soon as his board flashed green to show the rest of his flight was ready, “Engage.” The gut-shaking hammer of the mass driver's fire slammed him into his seat restraints. That comforting feeling hit him four more times before his magazine went dry. Even one or two hits might distract them enough to make a difference, he thought.


  It would have to be a big difference, though. Even with his Hammers blasting active sensors, those missiles were damnably hard to see. Combined with the fact that they were probably the best missiles that money could buy and that they didn't need to go active to find their targets, and that made them very hard to see.

  There has to be some way to save the ships, he thought. He positioned his squadron to screen their transport and then positioned Caela in Nine with its damaged weapon mount near the rear of their formation. He pondered the problem as he listened to Heller's pounding music blasting through her earbuds. “You got any ideas, Heller?”

  “Doesn't make sense,” she said.

  “What doesn't make sense?” Garret asked, even as he monitored the inbound flight of missiles.

  “Radiation homing, at that range,” Heller said. “Radiation sensors, they are good, yes, but not that good. They would need a repeater at close range.”

  “We took out all of the sensor platforms here at the station,” Garret said.

  “Combat, yes, but research sensors?” she asked. “Those can be calibrated, yes? Transmit data to the enemy?”

  Garret swore, “Check the civilian platforms, see if any of them are broadcasting.”

  “They have their transponders up,” Heller said. “I'm not seeing any data transmission.”

  Garret brought up her data on his own display. He stared at it, even as he watched the count-down timer out of the corner of his eye. He had arranged his gunboats to interdict as much of the inbound missiles as he could and, if possible, to physically block direct flight paths to the Star Dog with their own defense screens. It was a tactic that worked well enough for the Chxor, so it might do the trick here. Even if it cost him several of his Hammers, it might save the rest of them if they could get out on their carrier craft.

  The empty bunks at the end of the day would haunt him, but he would face that if it meant he could save most of them.

  He didn't see anything that Heller hadn't. The civilian transponders were all as they should be, even on the platforms that had taken light damage during the initial attack. He had to hand it to the repair mechanics at the base, they had even managed to keep the transponder from the energy weapon platform online despite the looting done by Captain Montago's crew. He saw that transponder flicker again, pulsing on and off.

  “Son of a bitch!” he said. A moment later he noticed a flicker from a different platform, there and gone again so fast that the computer barely noted it. “Commodore Stavros, the enemy is using their civilian transponders to provide targeting data to the enemy ships. I'm forwarding you my sensor data now, but I recommend we take out any unoccupied platforms.”

  “We'll take out all of them,” Stavros snarled in reply. “And the rest of their damned facility too. Let them explain that to their penny-pinching accountants.”

  Garret opened his mouth to protest, but there wasn't time. He knew that most of the civilians on the station hadn't played any part in the betrayal, but their boss had. Stavros wasn't the type to take that kind of thing well. Garret would have argued, but the second flight of missiles was almost upon them.

  Over the net, he heard Stavros's voice, “Attention all Nova Corp personnel. Your administrator has violated the terms of our agreement and is transmitting targeting data using your station transponders. Therefore, I've just given orders for my squadron to engage all civilian platforms here at the research station. You have thirty seconds before their fire shifts from unmanned to manned platforms. I suggest you use that time to evacuate.”

  Garret's eyes widened in surprise at the warning. It was a surprisingly decent thing to do, especially from a pirate with as... colorful a history as Stavros. Then again, Garret thought, maybe he just wants to watch them all scurry around in panic.

  He maintained his Hammer's position, the laser targeting still lighting up the battlecruiser at seventy thousand kilometers. The flight time of his rounds would be less than that of the missiles, so any moment now he should see something...

  Heller gave a snarl as the rounds from Azure Flight went active. Their corrective drives blasted them on course to track in on the laser designators projected by Azure Flight. Right off, he could see that almost three quarters of the rounds were out of range, their short drives burned out before they could correct them onto their targets.

  Of the fifty-five rounds fired, only fifteen were 'in pocket' and able to adjust their flight paths for intercepts. The battlecruisers had only a few seconds to realize that the kinetic rounds were correcting their courses before the rounds impacted. The mass drivers of the hammers launched their projectiles at a significant fraction of the speed of light, so when the heavy tungsten tipped rounds struck the defense screens of the battlecruisers, they bled off some energy, but they weren't significantly deflected.

  Three struck the battlecruiser at the lead and Heller gave a whoop behind Garret as detonations exploded around the bow of the battlecruiser.

  “I'm reading three hits on Battlecruiser One, one on Two, and one on Three,” Heller said with a purr of pleasure. Her sharp accent on the words punctuated the pinpricks of light and damage icons that suddenly haloed the three big ships.

  “Looks like a solid hit on Three,” Garret said. He noticed a shift in the inbound missiles, almost half of the inbound flight shifted erratically, as if they had lost telemetry. They shifted back, though, quickly enough that it was clear that the redundant systems aboard those battlecruisers had taken over.

  “Thirty seconds,” Heller said, her accented voice tight.

  “Counter fire,” Garret said, even as he launched his remaining interceptor missiles. His, like the others, took telemetry data from the rest of the squadron, part of Stavros's overlapping defense they had trained on. Right now, Garret just hoped it would be enough.

  If we had the rest of my wing online, he thought, maybe. Azure Flight, when the rest of it reached full strength, would be six squadrons of twelve Hammers. Commodore Pierce, commander of the War Dogs, hadn't yet selected the last of the flight crews and personnel yet. For that matter, Garret didn't know if they had the money to get that many of the old gunboats operational.

  As the interceptor missiles shot out and inbound missiles began to die, Garret bit his lip. His squadron's fate was at the mercy of the rest of Stavros's squadron, at this point. If they could stop enough of those missiles...

  They can't, he thought as he watched the missiles sweep through the defensive fire, there were fifty missiles targeting five ships and two got through, now there's fifty of them coming at just one.

  This would be Stavros's perfect chance to make his grudge good against the War Dogs, yet Garret somehow knew that the flamboyant pirate wouldn't do so.

  “Azure Command, this is Seven,” Abigail's voice spoke over Azure's net, “I'm intercepting some tight-band radio traffic from Platform Gamma. I think that it is the one transferring data to the others.” A glance at his display showed that Azure Seven hung near that platform, possibly near enough that she could pick up some scatter from a tight beam transmission

  Fifteen seconds, Garret thought, not enough time to get Stavros to make that platform the priority target. They had seen it too late for someone else to take action, and Azure Flight had expended all of their Hammer rounds on the enemy ships and their missile loads on the inbound missiles.

  All but Nine, he thought, just as Caela spoke up on the net.

  “Command, Nine, I'm engaging Platform Gamma,” Caela's voice was calm, almost bored.

  “Dammit, Nine,” Garret snapped, “That's a negative, your bird has structural issues...”

  He trailed off though, because he could see that she had already begun to fire. Three rounds went out and at the close range, Platform Gamma disintegrated before the third round even struck. But Nine's icon flashed yellow and then crimson. Hanging in formation, he was too distant to see Nine disintegrate with the naked eye, but Heller had brought it up on his display.

  It was immediately clear
that Nine's weapon mount had failed mid-shot. The recoil had ripped the mass driver free, starting to cut the vessel in half, but the round itself had then tumbled and shed it's kinetic energy through the hull of the gunboat. Nine's hammer had come apart like a party favor and debris, most of it smaller than the palm of Garret's hand, rocketed outwards in a cascade of shredded metal and composites.

  “Azure,” Stavros said, “Whatever you did, good job. Those inbound missiles lost telemetry at the last minute. They're launching another flight, but we'll be jumping to shadow space before they can hit us.”

  Garret's hands clenched hard enough that he heard his knuckles pop. He let out a ragged breath, but then just keyed his microphone, “Acknowledged.” He took a deep breath, “Azure Flight, initiate docking procedure. We're leaving.”

  He knew there wasn't time to conduct search and rescue... but that didn't matter. Caela and her targeting officer, Clint, were both dead, probably shredded into pieces before they even realized what had happened. They had died because they saw what needed to be done and they'd done it... even knowing that it would probably kill them.

  Garret was furious with them for doing it... but only because he wished they hadn't had to do it. If only he had been smarter, faster, or more capable, he might have saved them all.

  ***

  Chapter IV

  Halcyon Colony, Garris Major System

  Contested

  January 5th, 2404

  “I nearly lost all of my ships and did lose a good portion of the valuable loot from this raid,” Mason said with some of Stavros's hyperbole, “and we still have no idea just how Nova Corporation knew to target that cargo?”

  Counselor Jessica Penwaithe's expression was pained. Admiral Duncan Moore, on the other hand, just gave a wave of his hand. “We think that they merely stumbled into a lucky tactic. We know that our raiding of their facilities has had an impact upon their profits. It was only a matter of time before they took action to mitigate that impact.”