Broken Halo (Wayfarers)

by Debenham, Kindal

  And that someone was Captain Wong.

  “All units in Formation Papa, continue to fall back along the recommended route. Fisher King, Achilles, Ajax, prepare to launch torpedoes in the support of Formation Papa.” He checked his main plot again, judging the closure times of the enemy rigs. “SSS squadron, you are free to engage the enemy as soon as you are able. Target enemy heavy units. We want them destroyed before they can reach our cruisers. The WGC units will buy you time.”

  Acknowledgements echoed back to him, but Wong set his gaze on the left flank. Nevlin had been almost rabid about the need to destroy those Wayfarer ships—especially the supposed mercenary craft—but none of them had fired a weapon. In fact, they were only falling back from the task force at a pace that might defy the cruisers’ ability to chase them. A lure, but not a real target. “Formation Sierra, fire another brace of missiles at your targets, then disengage and fall back to the center. Move in support of Formation Oscar at best possible speed.”

  Then he speared the distant signal of the Concord, faint enough to defy missile launch but still shining like a deceptive beacon, drawing his ships into the catastrophic situation which now ensnared them. He could sense Delacourt there, guiding this ruinous engagement from afar, but they were not yet beaten. Wong smiled, his expression hard as stone. “Formation Oscar and Formation Sierra, when you have linked up, move to engage the Concord. Destroy or disable that ship at all costs.”

  As those ships were set in motion, Wong brought his gaze back to where Formation Papa was fighting for its life, still outnumbered and outflanked. The Phorcys’s screens failed even as he watched, and the Patroclus suffered a severe hit that disabled two of its plasma cannon. He exchanged a quick nod with Commander Hummel, whose eyes were shining with admiration. Then he readied himself to give the order. “Formation India, all units, prepare for missile barrage. Fire in four, three, two, one …”

  Missiles launched from the ships around the Imperious. They were targeting the enemy cruisers around Formation Papa, using the targeting data supplied by the embattled cruisers themselves. Wong smiled. The Directorate was still going to win this day.

  Then he saw Hummel stiffen, and he turned to see what had happened. He saw Admiral Nevlin, pale and sweating, standing on the command deck. A thread of fear ran through him; had the Admiral decided to retain command after all? Regardless, Wong straightened to attention, his eyes forward and fists clenched at his sides. “Admiral.”

  “Captain.” Nevlin looked at the main plot and then jerked his eyes away. “I am leaving you in command of the Imperious and the rest of the task force. I will be … supervising … from the deck of the Fisher King. I will transfer my flag there immediately, though you will retain oversight of the task force here.”

  Wong blinked. The man was close to babbling, but the intent of this move was clear. Unlike the rest of the task force, the Fisher King had been outfitted to serve as a scout craft if the need would arise … which meant that the Special Operations cruiser had its own cascade drive. It couldn’t carry any other ships with it, nor would it be able to use the drive as frequently as the Imperious, but it would be able to escape the battle if things went badly.

  Admiral Nevlin, Hero of Riaskat and officer in command of task force Ninety-Seven, was arranging things so he could run. He was very nearly abandoning his post.

  Wong restrained his initial response, and paused to try to wipe any trace of scorn or contempt from his voice. “I … understand, sir.” He bowed very, very shallowly. “Do you have any other orders, sir?”

  Nevlin shook his head. “No, Captain. Just do your best.” Then he turned and motioned to a man Wong had not noticed before. He was a middle-aged gentleman, with the blank uniform and unadorned rank badge of someone who served with Special Operations. “Mr. Grey will stay aboard as an observer. He will be in my cabin, where he can relay any further instructions that I might have for you.”

  His eyes narrowed, Wong studied the newcomer. Despite the SpecOps uniform, he strongly suspected the man Nevlin was leaving behind belonged to the Political Office, not the Directorate at all. What was some spy of the Council doing with Nevlin, and why would the Admiral choose to leave him here? “Yes, sir. I wish you a safe trip, sir.”

  Some of his true feelings must have leaked through because Nevlin’s face darkened slightly with shame and rage. Then Nevlin glanced at Mr. Grey and paused. He shook his head and left, not bothering to say farewell to the men and women he was leaving behind to fight—and die.

  Wong watched him leave the bridge, Mr. Grey close behind him, and then turned back to the main plot. He had a battle to win; Admiral Nevlin could wait until later.

  Gabe dodged to the side as a WGC made a run at him. Its plasma rifle flashed, sending a wave of bursts toward him, but Gabe’s new wingman targeted the Directorate rig with her missiles. Both projectiles hit, and the WGC vanished in a tremendous explosion. He keyed his transmitter. “Good shot, Angel-Two.”

  “Angel-One, this is Eyes-Two. We have SSS contacts moving in on your position from nine-nine-four. Repeat, triple S contacts closing on your position.”

  Gabe felt his mouth go dry, and he looked back in the direction the RSR had indicated. He found them easily—their jet-black armor blocked out the stars as they came forward, rushing with tremendous speed into the fight. They had rearmed, he was certain, and this time they would be prepared for the tricks he’d used. All the same, the AWORs had to get through before the enemy escorts reached them. Otherwise, the cruisers would be finished.

  He readied his plasma rifle and raced toward the edge of the battle. His squadron, those who were still alive, gathered around him, blasting the few remaining WGCs that tried to interfere. Gabe set his sights on the first target, watching it jerk and twist as it closed with him. His heart beat faster as it brought its own rifle up to bear on him, and he prayed that the Lord was truly with them.

  Then a sudden broadcast filled the communications net. Static shrouded the words, but the deep, reverberating voice was unmistakable. It posed no questions, showed no hesitation. The only thing Gabe could associate it with was a war cry, one transmitted from a flickering contact on the very edge of his sensors.

  “Laes Zerecedo!”

  Before Gabe could react, the slender rigs were there. They flashed in at the SSS squadrons, moving at a speed Gabe could hardly believe. He jerked, his crosshairs losing their target, and immediately triggered a transmission to the rest of the squadron. “Angel-One to CTRs, hold your fire! Repeat, don’t fire on the newcomers!”

  His orders caught them just in time, stopping the pilots as they trained their weapons on the new, unexpected arrivals. The SSS squadron had no such hesitation. Their plasma rifles moved upward and started to pour sharp blasts of light at the strangers. Gabe saw one or two of the shots make contact, and the slender rigs died in brief bursts of light.

  Then it was the strangers’ turn, and as they slashed in at the SSS squadron, their weapons came around with a vicious sort of grace. They fired in brief, slicing motions, bringing streams of particles sweeping across the paths of the heavier triple S’s. The Directorate pilots had no time to respond. Despite their impressive agility, they plowed into the blasts. Armor glowed and fragmented, and their weapons shattered. The slender rigs kept their particle guns trained on the SSS, and one after another, the elite rigs died. Explosions speckled the space ahead of Gabriel as he watched the threat to his pilots vanish.

  The sight broke the will of the remaining WGCs; they turned and fled, scattering away from the strange rigs that had butchered their reinforcements. The slender rigs did not seem to care. They’d made one terrible strike, and now they were already vanishing into the void. All except for one.

  One rig had paused, using its tetherdrive to swing up into a loop. Gabe stared at it as it raised its weapon in the strange, flourishing salute. He aped the motion, sending a transmission along with it. “Thank you, stranger.”

  “Naes bemos, Waeferer. Cu
idse du Atanaas.”

  With that, the rig vanished, and Gabe turned back to the rest of the Wayfarer rigs. “Angel-One to CTRs and AWORs. We have our opening. Get to attack positions!”

  As the rigs flooded forward, no longer opposed by enemy units, Gabriel took a moment to stare in the direction where the strangers had vanished. Where had they come from? How long had they been watching? Would they choose to help or hurt the Wayfarers if they ever met again?

  Then he shoved such reflections aside and charged. The Directorate counter-fire was waiting.

  Susan had been watching the missiles soaring through space toward the Wayfarer cruisers of Strike Group. She dreaded the power of that salvo, knowing that at least one of her ships would not survive it whole, but she could not order them to fall back or focus on intercepting the missiles unless she allowed the Directorate craft on that flank to escape. Gabe’s CTRs were engaged, the RSRs lacked the electronic warfare power to compensate for the missile’s guidance systems, and no other units were in range. She had no choice but to watch the attack hit home and hope for the best.

  Then a new series of contacts caught her gaze. Susan’s jaw dropped as specks of light streaked in at the SSS squadron, and the way the Directorate units vanished told her a story of speed and lethality that stunned her.

  Yet even as Gabriel called his charge and the AWORs swept into their attack runs, another swarm of lights appeared. This time, they dove in on the Imperious herself, and they were not going to be content with a simple hit-and-run. The specks were not nearly as fast, and as she brought up the images captured by the Imperious’ own sensors, she gasped. Some of them were the slender rigs from Gabriel’s encounters, but they accompanied a second kind of rig, one built thicker and rounder, with a large launcher of some kind along its back and a massive weapon in its arms. A heavy-attack rig, she thought numbly even as they began to fire.

  At first, the projectiles those rigs launched seemed far too slow to be a credible threat. Susan wondered for an instant if the unknowns lacked the technology for accurate railgun weaponry. Then the missiles struck home, unleashing some kind of gravitic distortion along with a wash of electromagnetic pulses that raged along the length of the Imperious’ defense screens. The carrier’s defenses faltered, her sensors failed, and for a moment the mighty warship was vulnerable.

  In that moment, the attackers sprayed particle lances into her armor, raking her with fire that melted holes straight through the layered alloy. Missiles, this time with more energetic payloads, detonated with terrible precision in spots where the lances had penetrated, and secondary explosions began to wrack the ship. The damage was not enough to cripple the gigantic warship, but it would still leave a collection of memorable wounds.

  Then Susan gaped as another new contact appeared, this time a bright, shining beacon that dwarfed the smaller specks that had preceded it. It looked all too much like the jagged claw of some leviathan, ready to rend and tear. With a kind of grace that she would have expected from a luxury craft or a precision flyer, the unknown craft glided to close range and unleashed a brutal, sudden spike of energy. It punched through the unshielded Imperious and out the opposite side. Atmosphere vented, flaming and brilliant against the void.

  Without hesitation, the terrible intruder turned at an impossibly sharp angle. Plasma cannon fire from the Imperious’ escorts vanished against its shields without effect, and the entire armada of strange craft vanished into the depths of space without further exchange of word or weapon.

  Susan looked back to the Imperious, crippled in the wake of the assault. Her eyes darted to the missile barrage and saw that it had lost cohesion; apparently the shock of the attack had disrupted the guidance systems. Gabe’s rigs were starting their runs on the northern enemy formation, and the others to the east and west were all now in full, panicked retreat.

  Meanwhile, almost unnoticed amidst the chaos of war, the Special Operations cruiser vanished into cascade, escaping the disaster.

  Susan’s eyes narrowed. It did not take a genius to know where Admiral Nevlin had been when the cruiser left, which meant that his flag captain would likely take the blame for the defeat—if the man survived. It was an increasingly unlikely prospect, despite the casualties that he would cause her. His competence was too obvious for her to ignore that fact.

  Then another possibility occurred to her, and Susan reached out mentally for OMNI. There was more than one way to end a battle.

  Wong pulled himself upright, dazed by the pain in his side. The impacts had thrown him into his command console, and he could feel a broken rib or two stabbing pain into his torso. All around him, the rest of the bridge officers tried to rise.

  He staggered toward the main plot, still stunned by the abrupt reversal of fortune. The blazing speed of the attack, and the ferocity of the assault, had come without warning. There had been only one transmission, delivered in that haunting, alien voice, and then destruction had rained down on him and his ship. A ship, Wong knew, which could no longer fight, let alone lead.

  The Fisher King was gone. Wong shook his head in disgust and turned his attention to the rest of the battle. All across the area, his forces were being driven and scattered. There were no more cohesive rig units left, and his forward units had been battered harshly. Without support, Formation Papa was beginning to lose the discipline he had instilled, and Formation Sierra was following suit. They had all seen the Admiral run, and the damage the Imperious had suffered. Attempting to rally them now would be next to impossible.

  Then she was there, striding across the wreckage of his bridge, untouched by the devastation around her. Her face showed only a trace of compassion for the staggering crew, and her eyes were cold and dark when she met his gaze. Wong shivered, though he did not know if it was from fear or hatred. She knew, as well as he did, that the task force was finished. Had she come to taunt him before the end?

  “Captain Wong.” Delacourt did not explain how she had gained access to his name, but Wong did not care to ask. He simply straightened to face her, knowing his sidearm was useless.

  “Admiral Delacourt.”

  She inclined her head, as if acknowledging the fact that he’d used her title, and then looked around her. When she looked back to him, her tone was no less formal, no less distant. “I assume that you are now the man in charge of this task force, Captain Wong.”

  “I am.” Wong dared her to make some comment, to mock the cowardice of the man who had led them here and left them to die, but she did not. Another trace of compassion touched her gaze, banished quickly beneath her professional expression, and then she spoke again.

  “Your ships are wounded, Captain. The members of your task force have suffered heavy casualties, and your flagship is crippled. The Imperious will not be able to generate a resonance cascade, and even if you somehow rally your ships, you will be stranded here.” Delacourt paused, as if inviting disagreement, but Wong remained silent. She continued.

  “It will not even be necessary for us to conduct a direct engagement to destroy you. Without substantial reinforcements, especially in terms of rigs, we would be able to target you from long range and wear down your defenses with successive strikes. Even if the remainder of your command manages to disengage from the combat in which they are trapped, you will not have enough to stop us.”

  Wong felt his expression harden. “The Fisher King may bring reinforcements for us. They have already entered cascade.”

  “And they will not come back.” Delacourt’s tone was iron hard and her voice left no doubt of that fact—even if Wong hadn’t already known it himself. She kept his gaze until Wong dropped his own. “Regardless, they would not return quickly enough. All they would find would be the wreckage and the corpses.”

  He smiled, a bitter baring of the teeth that hid none of his defiance. “And so you finally win, traitor. You have beaten your former comrades and proven yourself. Well done.”

  Delacourt’s expression sharpened. “Do not assume so much,
Captain. It was you who came to kill me.” The reminder made Wong blink, and she did not give him the chance to respond. “You came hunting me, and the millions of civilians I chose to protect. Do not be bitter now that your hero led you astray and tossed you aside. Do not complain to me when you came to murder innocents and did not enjoy the experience.”

  Wong growled low under his breath. “I followed orders, Delacourt. Now what do you want? Or is it a simple debate you wish before you kill me?”

  “No, Captain.” She shook her head, and her eyes never left his face. “I want your surrender. Stop fighting, and you and your men will be spared.”

  “Surrender?” Wong laughed, unbelieving. “You think a Directorate task force will surrender to a bunch of treacherous Wayfarers?”

  “I think a force at my mercy will do what I wish, Captain Wong.” Delacourt’s smile held no humor. “And I do not wish you to die. Yet.”

  Wong stared at her. The very idea was absurd. To surrender was the shameful nightmare of any commanding officer in the Directorate, and yet …

  He turned to look at the main plot. The Mentes was crippled now, and both the Antiphus and the Sarpedon were dying hulks. The Antenor was about to join them in death, and the Leonteus was nearly gone as well. The escorts were dead or scattered, the rigs were nearly entirely gone. The Imperious had no chance to escape at all … and if she died, she doomed every last ship and crew in the task force. Delacourt was not lying; they were at her mercy.

  It was not a question of victory, or even one of duty and honor. The Directorate—and Admiral Nevlin—had cast them aside. They were alone here, and the only honor he had left was in the eyes of his crew. The only responsibility he could fulfill was to them.

  Without turning to face Delacourt, Wong spoke. “Signal to all ships. Cease fire and conduct no aggressive moves. All cruisers, rig units, and escorts will power down their tetherdrives until directed to do otherwise.” A gasp rose from one of the watchstanders, but they were quickly silenced by another officer. Wong did not look at them—he kept his face turned to the battle. “Instruct all crews to focus on medical, recovery, and repair operations. Task Force Ninety-Seven will surrender.”