by Peter Nealen
Rehenek frowned, searching Scalas’s face. He hadn’t made the connection.
Scalas pointed to the booms which held most of the station’s onboard firepower, then at the various defensive platforms around the outside of the ring. “All we have to do is destroy their point defenses,” he said. “The meteorites and debris will do the rest.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Rehenek admitted. He looked up at Scalas. “You Caractacans are more devious than I’d imagined.”
“Nothing devious about it,” Scalas replied, straightening. “It’s simply good tactics. You use the terrain and the environment as much as your weapons. In this case, they did half the work for us, just by picking this place to hide.”
His eyes hardened. “We’ve been looking for Ktatra for a long time. Even if we don’t entirely shut down the Unity’s proxy war operation, it will be worth it just to destroy this blight on the galaxy.”
Rehenek nodded, standing carefully. He was still getting used to the station’s spin gravity. “Then we will do it your way, my friend,” he said. “Now let us see if we can get out of here without having to fight to keep the rest of our remaining funds.”
As it turned out, there was a “departure fee,” or rather, one of the pirate patrol ships was going to try to convince them that there was, under threat of its own guns. The small, powerful orbital fighter hovered near their landing platform, its powerguns uncaged and trained on the Nemesis.
“The Boss never mentioned a departure fee,” Ravinu was saying over the comms.
“Doesn’t matter,” the velk pirate replied. “Now stand down and prepare to hand over the funds.”
Scalas watched the pirate in the holo tank. Velk facial features were fairly immobile; most of their expressions were unreadable via holo, because they were communicated in the form of scents and pheromones. Even so, he could tell that this guy was getting nervous.
“You might want to be somewhere else very soon,” he put in, looming over Ravinu’s shoulder. The captain glanced at him irritably; they were going to be under thrust soon, and everyone needed to be in their acceleration couch. But Scalas didn’t think that Ravinu was quite ready for this kind of a negotiation. “I seem to recall the Boss saying specifically to keep the robbery and violence away from the station. I don’t think she’s going to take too kindly to you breaking her truce. Something about slavery, possibly being skinned alive…”
An indicator blinked in the lower levels of the holo tank, and at the same moment, the velk looked somewhere away from his own pickup, blurted something in his own language, and winked out. The fighter abruptly started thrusting hard for the exit. Scalas started returning to his own couch. He didn’t know where the velk thought he was going to go; that ship was too small to have much in the way of legs.
The velk didn’t make it. Two needle-nosed interceptors shot up from the other end of the ring and took the fighter under pinpoint laser fire. Its drives were practically carved off its hull, glowing debris spinning away. Only the fact that the velk had already accelerated as hard as he had was going to keep that debris from striking the inside of the ring, or one of the ships docked there.
The interceptors closed in on the little ship as it coasted, tumbling slowly, out through the opening of the docking bay. Gossamer lines shot out, magnetic grapples on the ends, and latched onto the fighter’s hull. The interceptors started braking as they reeled the stricken fighter in.
“He’s in for a rough time,” Kahane commented. He sounded slightly conflicted, and Scalas understood why. The velk was a pirate, who had tried robbing them at gunpoint. But he was bound for a slow, torturous death once he was captured. There was nothing to like about any of the situation.
All the more reason to wipe out this viper’s nest.
Before the docking claws released, the holo tank flashed with a hailing indicator, and Coref appeared in a window. “You’re cleared to depart,” the houkh enforcer rumbled. “Unless you want to stay and watch what happens to Iughath. You can even take holos with you if you’d like. The Boss likes having object lessons like that circulated.”
“We have pressing business, I’m afraid,” Ravinu said. His disquiet was clear in his vaguely simpering voice, and Scalas’s eyes narrowed as he worried that the Dahuan captain might give the game away. All he needed to do was keep his mouth shut and his demeanor calm for a few more moments…
But the houkh just leered, his wide, toothy maw hanging open. Clearly, the pirates thought that Rehenek and his companions were out of their depth, and were getting a great deal of sadistic amusement from it.
Just keep thinking that. You will find out the truth soon enough.
“Your loss,” Coref said. “Clear skies.” There was just enough sarcasm dripping from his tone to make it clear that he wouldn’t care less if they were blown out of the sky as soon as they got clear of the station.
The docking clamps clanked open, and they were clear. Using only maneuvering thrusters, Ravinu managed to get the Nemesis to a relative standstill in the middle of the cylindrical bay, pointing the ship’s shark-like nose out one end before pulsing the thrusters again to start them moving out of the cavernous interior of the station.
Ravinu was a good pilot, Scalas had to admit, despite his grindingly superior manner and effete, foppish demeanor. He was clearly the product of a sheltered, affluent existence, but he knew his job, at least.
They glided out of Ktatra’s hold, the great boom housing the defensive weapons platforms sliding past just outside the hull. Dust began to rasp against the ship’s skin, and Ravinu cut in the Bergenholm as soon as they were a few dozen kilometers from the station. Then, rotating the ship to point up, out of the accretion disc, he lit the main drives and sent them arrowing away from Ktatra and its violently congealing companion.
Scalas was watching the holo tank’s plot as they rose out of the accretion disc. A few red triangles appeared on parallel vectors. There were ships following them out.
They might be pirates out to finish what the velk had started. Scalas found himself involuntarily tensing in his acceleration couch. If there was a fight coming up, there was nothing he could do about it but sit there and ride it out. He hated that; he always had, and he always would. But there was nothing to do about it, so he prayed for patience and that Ravinu was as good in a fight as he was at flying.
But after a moment, three of the four triangles blinked yellow, and a comms window opened in the holo tank. Captain Randle of Stirling’s Regiment appeared, lantern-jawed, white haired, and somehow looking slightly less beaten down and weary than he had during their meeting on the station.
“Nemesis, this is the Shrike,” Randle called. “I have the Goshawk with me as well.” He paused. “I’m afraid that this is all we have.”
“It is better than nothing, Captain,” Rehenek said, before Ravinu could reply. “Welcome to the Alliance. Are you tracking the other two ships behind you?”
The Shrike and the Goshawk had both turned blue on the plot as the Nemesis’s tactical officer identified them. But the other two, the flanged teardrop shape of a Ulessii blockade runner and the angular flying wing of a ship that Scalas couldn’t identify, were still unknown.
The Ulessii blockade runner flashed yellow, and another comms window opened. This time Scalas didn’t recognize the houkh who appeared, his fur a deep, iridescent green.
“This is the Vendav, formerly of Poryag’s Company,” the houkh said slowly. He was clearly uncomfortable with Trade Cant. “We are coming with you.”
Scalas remembered now. Poryag’s Company had been another mercenary outfit that had signed on. They’d been of rather more dubious provenance than Stirling’s Regiment; the ekuz they’d met with had been extremely evasive when some of their operations had come up in the conversation, and had been generally defensive and eager to justify what little they could pry out of him concerning the Company’s previous jobs. But they’d signed on, and that was good enough for Rehenek.
He wondered if they’d stay loyal, or do what many similar units did, and either run when the going got tough, or start shopping around for a better offer. They seemed like the types to shop around.
The flying wing didn’t hail them. It gave no sign that it was even aware of them. Like pretty much all the ships around Ktatra, it wasn’t broadcasting any sort of ID signal. As it continued to move along with them, Scalas started to tense again, forcing himself to try to relax.
But the big ship simply went tachyonic a few moments later, flashing away from the system, leaving a ghostly, electric-blue trail of ionized particles behind it as it plowed through the gas and dust of the nebula at many times the speed of light.
“I’m transmitting our vector,” Ravinu said. “Do be sure to follow it precisely. We will rendezvous at the end of it, then proceed to our final destination.” Randle glanced down to one side and nodded, and after a moment, the houkh did as well. Then both comms windows winked out.
“Here we go,” the Nemesis’s captain said, to no one in particular, and flipped the Bergenholm to tachyonic. The starship’s mass turned negative, and a moment later, the Ktatra system had vanished in the deep dark behind them, as the ship outran any light that wasn’t coming from directly ahead.
Ravinu was cautious. They didn’t proceed directly to the young star that they had designated RV-1 after reaching their rendezvous with the other three ships. Instead, he led them on a meandering course through the nebula, only reaching RV-1 after covering nearly fifty light-years. If anyone was trying to follow them, they would have lost them quickly.
RV-1 was slightly older than the Ktatra system, and most of the matter in the system seemed to have been drawn into the star itself. Most of the protoplanetary disc was gone, little more than a faint, gossamer ring around a massive star, already blazing white. It was hot enough that the fleet was orbiting a good fifty-six light-minutes away from the star, just to avoid overheating.
They floated just above the ring, both ships and ring particles lit starkly white, despite the eerie colors of the nebula around them. The ships were in a roughly spherical formation, even the Caractacan starships integrated around the massive cylinder of the Pride of Valdek in the center.
“Nemesis, this is Pride of Valdek,” a familiar, feminine voice called over the comms. “May I speak with General-Regent Rehenek?”
“I am here, Major General Horvaset,” Rehenek called.
“All is in readiness, General-Regent,” Kateryna Horvaset reported. There was noticeable relief in her voice at hearing from Rehenek. “Was the mission successful?”
Scalas glanced at the younger man. Rehenek was keeping his face as studiously impassive as possible, but there was something around his eyes, almost a softening, at hearing Horvaset’s voice. Interesting. Not surprising, I suppose. They’ve been working closely together, and they’ve both been through hell. Their homeworld is in the enemy’s clutches. It stands to reason that they’d get close. He studied the Valdekan ruler in exile. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.
“It was,” Rehenek said, and that time there was no disguising the warmth in his voice. There was definitely something going on between Rehenek and his fleet commander. “We have new allies, and we have located Ktatra. We will integrate the ships from Stirling’s Regiment and Porvag’s Company into the fleet, conduct planning, and then move on Ktatra.”
He glanced over at Scalas, then visibly composed himself. When he spoke again, his voice was cooler, more professional. “Within the next hundred hours, we will either shut down the Unity’s proxy war campaign in this part of the Carina Arm, or die trying.”
Scalas looked away. It would have been a stirring call to arms, if delivered before a combined force. As it was, it seemed to simply be Rehenek falling back on rhetoric when he didn’t know what else to say.
It made him wonder about this “Galactic Alliance.” Rehenek was an effective combat leader, but would he be able to keep the kind of wide coalition he had in mind together, when his skills tended more toward the battlefield than the conference room?
Scalas didn’t know. He wasn’t a politician himself, nor a diplomat. And there was a fight ahead of them, so he put the thought aside. Time enough to worry about diplomacy after Ktatra was destroyed.
Chapter Eleven
The fleet came out of tachyonic flight just above the Ktatra system’s ecliptic and immediately began to deploy.
The curious effect of the Bergenholm field meant that a ship had to be under continuous thrust to continue moving while the field was active. Having zero inertia, a ship with its Bergenholm activated would simply stop dead when no longer being acted upon by an outside force. So, when they turned the Bergenholms from negative mass to zero mass and cut thrust, they simply stopped, just above the ecliptic. They soon started their drives again, if only to stay relatively stationary above Ktatra’s orbit. A ship with its Bergenholm on couldn’t even orbit a star; it had no mass for the star’s gravity to capture.
They hadn’t swooped directly in on Ktatra, though it had been considered. Overwhelming force and surprise could have worked, but given the sheer numbers of pirates docked at the station, the combined commanders had elected to follow a more cautious course. So, they had entered the system one hundred eighty degrees around the far side of the star from Ktatra’s current position. The sheer amount of debris, radiation, and radio noise was going to make it extremely difficult to detect them.
At least, provided that the pirates didn’t have lookouts scattered throughout the accretion disc. There hadn’t been time to determine that during the Nemesis’s reconnaissance.
“Dauntless, ready,” Mor reported. It was almost redundant; he knew that the crews and fighting Centuries of the four Caractacan Brotherhood starships had been ready even before they’d left RV-1. But last-minute coordination had to be done, especially with a force of this size, composed of such different ships from such different worlds.
“All Caractacan and Fortunian ships, you are cleared to proceed,” Horvaset said, her voice clear and calm and professional. The brief display of emotion at Rehenek’s return had been buried. Mor had picked up on that, just as Scalas had. He hadn’t mentioned it; his friend wasn’t the type to talk about such things, though Mor knew him well enough to know that he’d noticed. As stoic and grim as Erekan Scalas always was, Brecan Mor had known him long enough to know some of the depths hidden by his friend’s inscrutable black eyes and often stony expression.
“The Herald of Justice has lead,” Maruks growled. “Breaking off in three, two, one.” The big Angelos-class ship’s drives lit brightly, and she arrowed away from the fleet, toward the infant star. The Vindicator, Dauntless, and Challenger followed, forming a triangular pyramid formation with the Herald at the point. The five maulers, little more than small hab modules built onto a cluster of particle beam cannons atop massive drives, spread out to the flanks, flying alongside the two Spear-class ships.
Skimming the surface of the accretion disc, they sped toward Ktatra and battle.
The attack force of Caractacan Brotherhood cruisers and Fortunian maulers did not actually head straight for Ktatra itself, but aimed for a point on the protoplanet’s orbit twenty degrees behind it. They would come at the pirate station in a massive pincer, descending on the protoplanet and the massive, spinning cylinder from five directions.
The ships were moving at a third of the speed of light; in open space, their emissions would have reached Ktatra hours ahead of the ships themselves. But in that morass of dust, ice, and rock, not to mention the constant roar of background radiation, their detection range would be measured in light-seconds.
While there was little sensation of movement with the Bergenholms active, Mor found he was sweating as they hurtled past the glowing, dust-obscured ember of the young star. He was a good pilot, he knew that. He was one of the best in the Brotherhood, and that wasn’t pride speaking, that was just honest assessment. But this was the hairiest flight he’d ever undertaken. He’d
never taken a starship into space that was so crowded before.
The young star receded behind them, and at five light-minutes out, they dove into the accretion disc itself.
While the disc’s density was such that the distances between larger asteroids could often be measured in light-seconds, they were still moving fast enough that they had to weave carefully through the field of rock and ice. Dust hissed against the hull, even as the ionizing lasers worked overtime to keep as much of their flight path clear as possible, and the starship’s internal temperature mounted.
There was a faint bang that reverberated through the Dauntless’s hull. “Damage report?” Mor snapped, realizing that his teeth were clenched as his hands danced over the controls built into the acceleration couch’s armrests.
“Micrometeorite strike, roughly amidships,” the damage control officer reported. “No penetration, but the heat was enough to create a stress fracture in some of the outer plating.” He studied his display impassively. Brother Cadwalla was almost inhumanly calm, even during harrowing flights like this, or the descent into Valdek’s atmosphere under fire. “No serious damage,” he concluded.
He had hardly finished speaking when the holo tank flashed an amber alert icon. “Drives lighting up, ten light-seconds, bearing three twenty-seven, minus four,” Fry reported.
“So, they do have picket ships out,” Mor muttered, even as he sent the Dauntless swooping around an asteroid the size of a hab module. “Do we have a shot, Fry?”
“Not much of one,” the tactical officer replied. “Particularly not while we’re still inertialess. There’s a lot of debris between us and that ship, and they’re burning hard for Ktatra.”
“Probably can’t get a clear signal through all of this,” Mor mused. “Uncage the lasers. We’ve got to try to take them out before they can warn the rest that we’re coming.”
There are few weapons that can reliably harm a ship with an active Bergenholm. Anything that relies on kinetic energy won’t work; it will simply shove the target away like a pinball. Furthermore, the really heavy stuff—missiles and X-ray lasers—needed to be deployed outside the hull. Well outside the hull, in the case of the thermonuclear bomb-pumped X-ray laser pods. Which meant that they would be outside of the Bergenholm field, and therefore on an entirely different vector than the ship at the time of deployment, likely as not. That was why most space combat was conducted while inert.