Rebel

by Mike Shepherd

  The gashes in Retribution’s protection got better. Would it be good enough?

  “Skipper,” said Guns, “we’re about reloaded. Do you want me to switch targets?” Apparently Fire Control could see the damage to the Empress’s Vengeance as well as sensors.

  “No, Guns. We want that bastard dead. She’s still in formation. Someone’s holding a gun at her skipper’s head.”

  “Understood, sir,” was even. Guns had offered to save thousands of men’s lives. Now their deaths would be on Captain Bolesław’s head.

  His and mine, Vicky thought, grinding her teeth.

  The lights dimmed. Again, the 18-inch lasers reached out for the second battleship in the opposing line. “Hits,” Guns reported.

  But were they the right hits? Was Retribution spending its fire burning off more armor or was it spearing through gaping holes in the ice to pierce deep into the ship’s hull? Had they burned through to gut equipment, capacitors, and lasers?

  Vicky leaned forward in her survival station to peer at the dots on the screen as if she might see more than the small circles could show.

  “She’s breaking up,” Sensors reported.

  “On screen,” the captain snapped.

  The main screen converted to a picture of one ship. Long and thin, part of its ice reflected back the distant stars. Other parts showed dark as ice spun off it into deep space.

  Sections of hull showed gouts of fire exploding out to vanish in the black of space. Well aft, one of the great engines hung at a crazy angle. The battleship began to flip in space as that engine unbalanced the rest and drove the ship where it would.

  Even as Vicky watched, mouth falling open, several of the other engines coughed and went dead. Vicky had done a tour in Engineering. The plasma in the reactors had to go somewhere. Aiming the plasma out through the engines was what the huge superconductors that controlled the demon plasma were supposed to do.

  The plasma wasn’t going out the engines. It had to go somewhere.

  Small jets of superheated plasma spouted around the aft end of the battleship. Jets that grew bigger as they opened holes in the ship’s ice armor from the inside!

  The ship began to spew life pods as crew members saw their danger and took to the cold of space to escape heat like the sun now consuming their ship. Vicky gritted her teeth. She’d said she’d offer no quarter. She hadn’t really meant it. Her eyes measured the growing number and size of the plasma jets. Even at the limited magnification of the picture before her, she could see pods rocketing into plasma and burning like moths in a flame.

  The Empress’s Vengeance ate itself, starting aft but moving forward with blinding speed. Had Vicky blinked, she’d have missed the mighty battleship’s death throes.

  It was there, in agony. Then it was gone. Just an expanding ball of superheated gas that vanished away, leaving only small, gleaming bits of hull girders and junk.

  Vicky tried to stumble to her feet. Her legs would not support her. “Comm, send to Empress’s Revenge, ‘Will you surrender, now?’”

  In answer, the lone surviving battleship fired a full broadside.

  CHAPTER 35

  “WE’RE hit,” Damage Control reported. “Three strikes, fore to aft. Working on them.”

  Captain Bolesław checked the countdown clock as it approached zero, then snapped, “Fire.”

  “Five hits,” Sensors reported. “The Revenge is executing an evasion plan of its own.”

  “Helm, go to Evasion Plan 3,” the captain ordered, and Retribution fell out from under Vicky as it did a hard, downward zig.

  Captain Bolesław turned to her with a scowl. “That redcoat bastard was on the lead battleship after all,” he growled.

  For the next half minute, Damage Control did what it could to mend the three hits. Meanwhile, the reactors reloaded the capacitors to the four twin 18-inch turrets forward and the same number aft. A glance at the screen showed the two task forces still backing toward the jump, decelerating all the way. The cruisers were still out of range of each other, and both those escorting the Empress’s Revenge and Retribution had opened up even wider intervals between themselves and the battle being fought by the big battlewagons.

  As the seconds counted down to the capacitors’ being reloaded, Captain Bolesław spoke. “Helm, prepare to go to Evasion Plan 4 on my mark. Guns, check out what the evasion plan will do to your firing solution. Use a wider dispersion for your salvos if you must.”

  “We’ll keep it tight,” came back a moment later, then “Ready.”

  As the clock passed two seconds to reload, the skipper said, “Execute Evasion Plan 4.”

  Retribution leapt up, even as its deceleration dropped off.

  “Only one hit this time,” Damage Control reported.

  “Three hits on the Revenge,” Sensors reported.

  “Good,” Vicky growled.

  “Still, we’ve taken more hits than they have,” Captain Bolesław growled, “and now our hits are scattered. It will take us forever to peel that ship’s ice.”

  During the next minute, they exchanged two broadsides. They took out two of the Empress’s Revenge’s forward turrets with a trio of hits, but the Revenge got in a good one.

  Vicky felt the air pressure drop, and the taste of ozone filled the bridge even before Damage Control reported. “We’ve got burnthrough aft. Power cables to turrets W and X are cut.”

  “What shit-for-brains designer put two sets of power cables where one hit could take them out?” Captain Bolesław snapped. “Get a work-around to those turrets and get it now!”

  “We’re on it.”

  The captain glanced Vicky’s way and shook his head.

  “We’re just swapping damage. This could go on forever,” growled Captain Bolesław.

  “We can’t afford forever,” Vicky said. “Right now, we’re one to one, but when the cruisers get in range . . . and the destroyers.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” the skipper snapped.

  Vicky accepted the reprimand. She was wasting Bolesław’s time, telling him what he already knew. His time and his temper.

  COMPUTER, ANALYZE THE EMPRESS’S REVENGE’S EVASION PLAN. DO YOU SEE A PATTERN?

  The computer took longer than Vicky expected before answering, IT ONLY SLOWS ITS ACCELERATION. IT NEVER GOES ABOVE 1.25 GEES. ALSO, IN DODGING, IT TENDS TO GO HIGH MORE OFTEN THAN LOW.

  “Captain, I have had my computer analyze the jinking pattern of the Revenge. She reduces her deceleration but never goes above 1.25 gees. She tends to sidestep higher more often than lower.”

  “Pass that along to Guns. We’ve got seven seconds before the next broadside. Maybe that will help him.”

  Vicky had her computer talking to Guns’s fire control computers before the skipper finished his orders.

  “We can use that,” Guns said moments before he announced. “Fire.”

  A moment later, Damage Control announced, “Two hits. No burnthrough.”

  Sensors reported, “Six hits, none close together. Likely no burnthrough.”

  For the next long minute, they traded salvos. Captain Bolesław ordered his Helm to switch to Evasion Plans 1 or 2 between broadsides, then ratchet the jinking up to Evasion Plan 4 or 5 just before the clock ticked down to full capacitors. They tried Plan 6 for all of two seconds only to discover that the control jets could not handle it.

  Revenge didn’t twig to the change. Both ships fired as soon as they reloaded, and the redcoats never seemed to spot any pattern to Retribution’s wild jig.

  As Retribution landed two or three hits for every one Revenge scored, the Empress’s Revenge began to burn. The process was slow but brutally steady. Revenge shed ice, first as Retribution’s lasers slashed and hacked at the armor, then as the damaged ice gave in to the rotational force of the ship, to spin off huge chunks into space.

  Stripped of its defensive armor, Revenge began to burn as laser hit after laser hit slashed deep into its hull. Revenge was a lucky ship. No reactors g
ave up their plasma to shoot destruction through the ship at solar temperatures.

  Still, Revenge burned. Lasers slashed through girders, turning steel to flaming slag, firing electronics and anything willing to burn. Capacitors spent their charges burning around the ship rather than reaching out in laser beams.

  Survival pods began to shoot from the ship and jet away, desperately seeking to reach a range safe from the ship’s catastrophic end or incoming lasers.

  In the end, Engineering must have doused the reactors, getting rid of the plasma in a controlled dump but leaving the ship powerless, burning in space until vacuum was let in to rob the fire of oxygen, quenching it.

  No longer decelerating, the hulk of the Empress’s Revenge shot ahead of its escorts.

  “Grand Duchess?” Captain Bolesław said.

  Vicky stood. “I once more offer you a chance to surrender. We have destroyed both of your battleships and killed the Butcher of Dresden. Surrender and live.”

  The redcoat’s face appeared on the screen, none the worse for the fight. “It will take more than you’ve got to kill me, you little bitch.”

  On the portion of the screen always dedicated to the tactical situation, the two cruisers veered sixty degrees from their course and went to 1.78 gees, opening the range from Retribution. The two destroyers followed suit, trailing them.

  “Damn it,” Lieutenant Blue snapped. “The Butcher was always on the lead cruiser.”

  “Get me a target,” Captain Bolesław ordered.

  “Both cruisers evading madly,” the lieutenant answered. “They are also swapping out the lead. The destroyers are now trailing chaff. I can’t track which ship is which.”

  “Guns.”

  “The way they’re dancing around, I’m not sure either. Targeting is a crapshoot.”

  “Shoot,” Captain Bolesław ordered.

  “Ranging with our forward battery. It’s only five strong.”

  The lasers reached out, but the four ships were dancing wildly.

  “No hits, Skipper,” Guns reported. “Reloading forward. I’m holding aft to see if they settle down.”

  Vicky joined Captain Bolesław watching the jinking dots on the screen. They’d been opening the distance by steering a good thirty degrees off Retribution’s course. That had protected their engines and reactors from a straight-up-the-kilt shot. Now they came around full perpendicular to Captain Bolesław’s course, opening the range as fast as they could.

  “Fire the aft battery,” Captain Bolesław ordered. “Aim for the closest heavy cruiser.”

  “Closest cruiser targeted. Fire.”

  The aft battery was reduced from eight to four lasers. Retribution reached out with what she had. Three were clean misses. The cruiser might be presenting its bare tail, but it was still doing a jig. The one hit was only a graze.

  “Guns, follow that one and target it for the forward battery when you can.”

  “Will do.”

  The reload clock for the forward battery reached zero. Again, five lasers blasted away at the trailing heavy cruiser.

  A split second before they fired, the cruiser jigged up and veered back to the sixty-degree course that made it a bigger target but gave more protection to the critical reactors and engines.

  It also slowed to one-gee deceleration.

  “We overshot,” Guns reported. “Damn.”

  “The destroyers are popping chaff all over the place. The two cruisers are swapping the lead back and forth behind all that gunk. Skipper, I’m not sure which is which.”

  “They’re getting out of range,” Guns added. “I’ve got a shot from our aft battery, then maybe the forward guns.”

  “Do it,” Captain Bolesław snapped. “Pick the one you think it is and nail it.”

  Vicky shook her head. The cruiser was a smaller target. It was bouncing madly around and again going hell for leather at close to 1.75 gees deceleration, opening the distance not only by course but also speed.

  Twice Retribution fired half a broadside. Twice it missed hitting any of the Butcher’s ships.

  The pair of cruisers and destroyers pulled out of maximum range. Vicky knew they could continue shooting at them, but the lasers at that range could hardly do any damage.

  They were also approaching the jump. They’d be going through it at close to fifty thousand klicks an hour as made no difference.

  “Slinger,” Captain Bolesław ordered, “lead the convoy through the jump.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  In single line ahead, Slinger, Sovereign of the Stars, and eighteen freighters shot through the jump, each ship holding steady as a rock to avoid turning this into a horribly wrong jump from which they might never return. The jumps orbited more than one sun, some as many as five or six. Treat the jump with disrespect, and you might end up at any of them.

  Taking a jump fast was disrespectful. The skippers compensated by being very steady.

  Retribution was about to rocket through the jump, backward as it continued decelerating, when Mr. Smith, seated next to Lieutenant Blue, let out a low whistle.

  “The Butcher of Dresden has reinforcements,” the spy said.

  “Reinforcements?” Vicky whispered softly.

  “Battleships are jumping into the system,” the lieutenant said, “and they’re squawking. The Empress’s Fury, Empress’s Rage, Empress’s Wrath, Empress’s Reprisal, Empress’s Avenger, Empress’s Punisher, Empress’s Vindication.”

  Lieutenant Blue quit reporting as Retribution ducked through the jump into the St. Petersburg system.

  CHAPTER 36

  NO sooner had they shot through the jump than the Augsburg appeared behind them.

  “One more battleship showed up after you left,” its skipper reported. The Empress’s Chastiser, if you will.”

  “Any more after that?” Captain Bolesław asked.

  “Hey, we were the only friendly in that system with a whole lot of overeager, unfriendly types. We jumped.”

  Vicky gnawed her lower lip as Captain Bolesław seemed to meditate on that answer. “For a St. Petersburg paper mark, I’ve half a mind to reverse course, jump back in, and keep an eye on that bunch,” he finally said. “As soon as I can work the energy off the ship.”

  They had jumped at forty-five thousand klicks an hour. That return might take a bit. What might happen in that system while they were doing that?

  “Are we in any shape to fight if they want to?” Vicky asked.

  He shook his head. “No. Comm, send to convoy, set course for St. Petersburg. One-gee acceleration if you can make it.”

  The convoy took off for St. Petersburg.

  “Your Grace, you should tell them we’re coming and what’s following us home,” Captain Bolesław said.

  Vicky winced but stood, composed herself, and spoke, “St. Petersburg, we are safely returned from Brunswick with a load of requested cargo and more, as you can no doubt see. Unfortunately, we were intercepted by a battle squadron from the Empress and had to fight our way through the last jump. Some of our ships will require repair. At last count, there were nine battleships in the next system and enough attack transports for a division-sized invasion force,” she said, carefully vague about her own ships’ battle damage on an open net. No need to be vague about the size of the Empress’s fleet.

  With a sigh, she sat down, message sent. Around her, the crew set about repairing what damage they could while under way. While she waited for any response, she and Captain Bolesław caught a quick bite to eat in his wardroom. They returned just in time for an incoming message from Admiral von Mittleburg.

  “Glad to see you back. We will have space docks waiting for you as soon as you arrive. Can you tell us more about the Empress’s forces in the next system? Better yet, can you maintain any observation presence on that side of the jump?”

  Vicky’s brows formed a questioning V. Captain Bolesław shook his head firmly.

  Vicky stood and faced the screen where the final frame of Admiral von Mitt
leburg’s message still held primacy of place.

  “Thank you for holding the docks for us. The Empress’s forces are jamming any assessment of their ships, so we can’t tell what size they are until we get within visual range, unless, of course, she wants to intimidate us with the number of battleships she has. Even that must be viewed with some doubt. We had to fight them to discover they had 18-inch lasers as large as Retribution’s. There are at least one battleship and several heavy cruisers picketing their side of the jump. Captain Bolesław strongly, repeat, strongly suggests that we not go back there with anything less than a battle fleet.”

  Vicky surreptitiously ticked off on her fingers the three main issues the admiral had raised. She’d answered all of them. She nodded, and the message was sent.

  The time for a reply came and went that evening. Apparently, Admiral von Mittleburg had no more interest in gabbing with his Grand Duchess. Since she had nothing to say, she was just as happy to let matters rest.

  Better yet, behind them, the jump stayed quiet, coughing up no Empress’s Nasty This or Mean That.

  The end of the journey was blessedly uneventful. The freighters were directed immediately to unloading piers. They were not the only ships unloading at the station. Apparently, the Grand Duchess had indeed inspired trade to begin again.

  Retribution and Slinger were pointed directly to vacant space docks that hadn’t been there when they left. St. Petersburg was doing well by its Navy.

  What was more important for Vicky and her revolution now aborning were the number of battleships and cruisers occupying the Navy piers.

  The Empress would not get this station without a fight.

  CHAPTER 37

  VICKY returned to her quarters to check on her two assassins. They’d done a perfect job of packing. Mr. Smith was also waiting patiently to be her shadow as she left Retribution.

  Commander Boch appeared before Vicky could leave to pay her respects to Admiral von Mittleburg. “The admiral is headed over here to meet with you. He asks that you wait for him.”