“If you’re going to beat Aleister Lanoe at his own game, you need to think, Lieutenant. You need to think like …” He didn’t finish the thought. His eyes were suddenly glowing with inner fire.
“Damn you, you rotten old bastard! Can’t you see it’s over? Can’t you see we’re all dead?” the IO shouted.
Shulkin laid the torn piece of armrest carefully in his lap. Then he pulled up a display and started tapping at virtual keys. “That injured pilot. Give him what he wants. Remote recall.”
“Sir?” the navigator asked.
“He can’t see where he’s going, so we need to fly his cataphract for him. Do you not understand the concept?”
“Sir, you want us to bring him back … here? To the carrier?”
“I want you to send a general recall signal for all of our fighters. As for that man, the one we’ve been listening to, I want you to take remote control of his ship and fly it back here. Along this trajectory.” He tapped a final key and his display vanished, as he sent the information to the navigator’s position.
Her display lit up with the projected course. “That’s not a minimum energy course,” she said. “It’ll take longer than necessary. I’m not sure I understand why you would—why. Oh,” she said. “Sir, I don’t know if I can do that.”
“If you want to live, you will,” Shulkin told her.
Whatever moral quandary she was wrestling with—and Bullam had no idea what it might be—the navigator didn’t spend long making up her mind.
“Yes, sir,” she said, and did as she’d been told.
Lanoe threw an arm across his face, just as a reflex, as the gun fired and space all around him filled with dust and smoke. So much energy was released when the gun fired that the projectile would have been vaporized, if it hadn’t been contained inside an ablative sabot—a shield of heat-resistant borosilicate aerogel. The sabot wasn’t designed to survive the discharge, only to keep the projectile cool. It disintegrated inside the barrel of the coilgun, and what was left of it came out of the barrel as a long plume of aerosolized debris—the smoke Lanoe saw. It filled space all around the cruiser, swirling violently enough to take the paint off the side of Lanoe’s already damaged fighter. It played havoc with his sensors—and made it almost impossible to see anything.
When he pulled his arm back he could barely make out the lights of Candless’s fighter off to his side, or the rotating beacon lamps over the closed doors of the cruiser’s vehicle bay.
He pulled up his tactical display to fill most of his forward view and squinted at all the dots and rectangles and the dashed line of the gun’s trajectory. The carrier had turned and begun a fast retreat but it was still in range, and the gun’s projectile could travel a lot faster than the giant, lumbering ship.
It would take nearly twenty seconds for the projectile to reach the carrier, but even if the Centrocor ship tried to evade, the projectile had its own thrusters and was more than capable of matching their maneuvers. It was only a matter of time.
“We’ve got ’em,” he said.
He’d been talking to himself but Candless replied. “That does appear to be the case. Tell me, do you see that blip moving fast away from us?”
Lanoe had seen it—a yellow dot indicating an enemy fighter, not very far away. The one he’d crippled just before its squadmate hit the cruiser with its disruptor. He’d assumed the pilot was dead, that the ship was out of the fight. Clearly it still had power to its thrusters.
“Looks like they’re withdrawing,” he said. And it wasn’t the only one. Out in the middle distance, where Bury and Ginger were still pulling evasive loops around the enemy, the Sixty-Fours seemed to have lost their interest in the fight. One by one the Centrocor fighters were pulling away, burning out on long, shallow trajectories that would take them home. Even if the carrier was already doomed.
“They’re running away,” Candless said. “Do you have orders for us, Commander? We might catch some of them if we hurried.”
“You think that’s worth it? Hunt down the survivors?”
“Personally?” Candless asked. “No, I do not.”
Lanoe nodded to himself. Poor bastards were hurrying home to a carrier that would be a twisted hulk by the time they arrived. He didn’t see the need to ruin their day any further. He’d already got his win. “Bury, Ginger, Maggs. This is the return signal. Battle’s over.”
Of course, his work wasn’t done. He needed to start thinking about damage control, about how their mission would go forward when their ship was missing a bridge. He had promised to give the ensigns a briefing, and—
“That guy’s really moving,” Bury said.
Lanoe frowned. He looked at the tactical display again and saw what the Hellion meant. The crippled Sixty-Four, the one he’d let get away, was accelerating at an incredible rate. Burning hard toward a rendezvous with the carrier. Hard enough to burn up its engines. Hard enough, maybe, to kill the pilot if he wasn’t already dead.
“Why’s he in such a rush?” Lanoe asked. He tapped a few virtual keys, rotated the display. “Is he just afraid we’ll chase him? But we haven’t moved …” He shook his head, looked at the display from yet another angle. Then he saw it.
“Hellfire,” he swore. “Those bastards!”
The blind pilot kept shouting, right up until the end. The navigator piloted his ship remotely along the course and acceleration profile that Shulkin had given her. Even when the pilot screamed that he was accelerating too fast, that his inertial sink couldn’t compensate—even when he cried out that his bones were breaking, that he was being crushed, the navigator didn’t ease up on his throttle.
It was the only chance the carrier had. Bullam knew that.
She tried very hard not to be sick.
“We’ll be out of effective range of the Hoplite’s gun in sixteen seconds,” the pilot said, very softly. “The projectile is nine seconds away from impact.”
“They’ve only fired the one projectile,” the IO said. He’d explained earlier that the coilgun could fire hundreds of rounds a minute, at its full capacity. It seemed Lanoe had been unwilling to order another shot. Why shoot the carrier a hundred times, when a single projectile would be enough to destroy them?
Shulkin had been banking on that. Because the trick he’d pulled would only work once.
“Please,” the blind pilot begged, wheezing and choking as the acceleration crushed his lungs and his windpipe. “Please, there’s something wrong. There’s something … There’s something … wrong—”
His voice cut out abruptly.
There was no bang, no sound of an explosion, no squeal of static. The audio just cut out.
On the IO’s display, a blue dot had touched a yellow dot, and both of them vanished, that was all. A different display near the navigator’s station showed a quick burst of gray light, beams scintillating as they cut through a cloud of debris.
Bullam cleared her throat.
Three faces looked expectantly up at her, their eyes searching for something. The pilot, the navigator, the IO. Shulkin kept his eyes on the displays.
She addressed the bridge crew because she knew Shulkin never would. “It was him or us,” she said. “It had to be done.”
On a purely cerebral level, she could admire Shulkin’s clever play. He’d had a bullet streaking toward his head. He had a remotely controlled fighter that was capable of moving even faster than the bullet. He’d steered the blind pilot right into the path of the coilgun’s projectile, and thereby removed a hazard from the battlefield.
All it cost was one human life. One of the pilots under his command.
A chime sounded from the IO’s position. He swiveled around to check his boards and told them, “I’ve got new infrared signatures—lots of them. The Hoplite is warming up for a second shot. Their guns will be online in twelve seconds.”
Shulkin pointed a finger at the pilot.
“We’ll be out of range in ten,” she said.
Shulkin nodded at
her. Acknowledging a fact. Then he turned and looked at Bullam. “I’m afraid we won’t be capturing Aleister Lanoe today,” he said. “My decision as commander of this ship is that we should retreat with all due haste. Do you wish to countermand my decision?”
If his eyes had been glassy, once, now they were finely cut lenses. Their focus made her want to turn her face away. She forced herself to meet that piercing gaze. “No,” she said. “I agree with it.”
Shulkin nodded.
“Navigator,” he said, “set a course for Avernus. As fast as we can get there.” He rose from his chair—there was significant gravity under their feet now, as the carrier burned hard to accelerate away from the battle. “If anyone needs me, I’m going to go take a nap.”
He walked off the bridge looking a little stiff, maybe. His head held high.
When he was gone the bridge crew looked back at Bullam again. Wanting something.
“He just saved our lives,” she told them. “But no. I don’t like him much, either.”
Chapter Eighteen
Bury arrived back in the vehicle bay and jumped out of his fighter before its maneuvering jets had even cooled. He hurried over to Ginger’s ship and nearly pulled her out of her canopy.
“Did you see that? Did you see me take that fighter down?” he asked. He was smiling until the plastinated skin around his mouth felt like it was going to crack. He felt good, so good—for the first time in years, he wasn’t angry, didn’t feel like he was being crushed down by life. The freedom of it, the unmitigated joy of flying—and the rush of the fight, the wheeling and darting, the feints and countermaneuvers. He’d never felt so good before.
“I saw it, I saw—” Ginger tried to say.
He grabbed her into a tight hug. “You got one, too! You shot down a cataphract—I saw it!” he said. He knew he was nearly incoherent in his joy. He didn’t care. “A couple more battles like that and we’ll be aces,” he told her. “We’ll have our blue stars!”
She nodded but she was looking over his shoulder. Lieutenant Ehta, the marine, had just come through the bay’s hatch. She floated back there, clutching a railing with one hand.
“Move aside,” she said. “Make room for the others.” She gave them a look that could have frozen engine coolant. Didn’t she understand? Didn’t she get how exciting this was, how good he felt?
Ginger grabbed his arm and they moved over to the railing, next to Ehta. They watched as Lieutenant Maggs came in, his advanced Z.XIX model gleaming as he settled it into its berth. He gave Bury a cheery wave, then headed inside without a word. Commander Lanoe arrived next, his fighter torn near to pieces. Bury wondered what had happened there—maybe the old man couldn’t live up to his reputation anymore. Maybe he wasn’t as good a pilot as everyone said. Lanoe didn’t even look at them, just headed inside. Finally Lieutenant Candless arrived. Everybody home, everybody still alive. Bury felt a funny surge of camaraderie. He was honestly glad to see them all come home in one piece. A weather field shimmered into existence across the vehicle bay’s hangar doors and air flooded into the chamber. Their helmets automatically released, flowing back down into their collar rings. All in the time it took Candless to emerge from her cockpit.
“Lieutenant,” he said. “Lieutenant! Did you see? Ginger and I both got a kill. You trained us well, ma’am. We did—”
“That,” Candless said, “was an unmitigated disaster.”
Bury’s face fell. “But—we won.”
“We did not.” Candless scowled at him. “The enemy chose to retreat. One can only be considered to be winning a battle when the enemy has no options remaining but to surrender. They wreaked great damage on our vehicle and then they withdrew. They will almost certainly try to attack us again, and next time we won’t have the element of surprise. Under what parameters would you consider that a success, young man?”
“Hey,” Ehta said. “Hey, come on. Cut the kid some slack.”
“Should I?” Candless said. “Ensign Bury is my pupil. His actions reflect on my reputation. He had to be reprimanded on the field of battle for excessive radio chatter.”
“Oh, come on,” Ehta said.
“And as for you,” Candless went on. “I’m your XO. So your failures come back to me as well. Can you tell me, Lieutenant, how many marines it takes to operate a Mark II coilgun? Hmm?”
“Now, you just—”
“I’m waiting for an answer.”
Bury watched Ehta’s face. He wouldn’t have blameed her for hauling off and striking Candless, just then. The marine definitely looked like she wanted to. Instead, though, she just gripped the railing until her gloves squeaked.
“All of them,” she said.
Candless raised an eyebrow.
“It takes every marine I have, when none of them have ever worked a ship’s gun before. But damnation, we figured it out. We got off a perfect shot. The enemy had to throw away one of their own pilots to—”
“During the battle,” Candless interrupted, “did you not hear a request we submitted for marines to crew the defensive guns? And yet we received minimal support. Because your marines were too busy learning how to do their job. If we ever find ourselves in another such engagement, I will expect more.”
Candless turned and looked at them.
“That goes for all of you.”
Then she headed through the hatch, deeper into the cruiser.
Bury couldn’t believe it. He’d felt so good, just minutes before, but now—
Lieutenant Ehta snorted, building up a good head of mucus, and then she spat it at the hatch Candless had just passed through.
“Hey,” Bury said. “Hey, that’s not right.”
Lieutenant Ehta lifted one eyebrow. “You gonna stick up for her, kid? After the way she just chewed out your six?”
“She’s a pilot,” Bury said. He could feel heat building up behind the polymerized skin of his cheeks. This woman might be a marine, she might be trained in unarmed combat, but if she wanted a fight he was going to make her hurt, if—
“Would both of you please be quiet?” Ginger asked.
They turned to look at her.
Ehta snarled. “She’s a rules-quoting, chain-yanking bastard, and she’s been riding me too long. I’m surprised you don’t agree with me, girl.”
“She was my teacher. Still is my teacher,” Ginger said. “I’m not going to pick a fight with you. But I won’t listen to you badmouth her again.”
Ehta rolled her eyes and then kicked through the hatch, away from them.
When she was gone, Bury tore off his gloves and threw them across the room. “They’re never going to respect us,” he said. “We did great today, Ginj. We fought and we won. And still they won’t—”
He stopped because he saw her face. Ginger was turning all shades of green, like she was about to be sick.
“Ginj,” he said. “Ginj—what’s wrong? Are you—is it what Candless said? Did she get under your skin?”
Ginger shook her head. “No. She’s always been tough on us. I’m used to that. It’s not—that’s not what’s got me—oh, damnation.”
She grabbed the railing hard and pulled herself against it, as if she desperately needed to hold on to something stable. Bury rushed toward her to help, but she looked him right in the eye and he saw the existential horror there. “That was my first confirmed kill,” she said, sounding haunted. “It’s the first time I ever … oh, hellfire. I just killed a human being,” she said. She pushed away from him, headed for the hatch. “Just—leave me alone!”
She shoved her way through the hatch, kicking it closed behind her.
Leaving Bury all alone in the vehicle bay, feeling like he had no idea what had happened to everybody. Hadn’t they won?
Half of the axial corridor was shut off, emergency hatches having clamped down to prevent all the Hoplite’s air from leaking out of the massive wound in the nose of the ship. Valk had to override a safety interlock just to get through a hatch that once had led to the
captain’s cabin—the same room where Lanoe had brought him back from the dead. Now one whole wall was gone, with nothing but ghostlight shimmering beyond. He crawled over twisted metal and pulled himself along with his hands, squeezing himself through places where panels and displays used to be, edging around the stubs of old pipes and conduits that had been sheared off so cleanly they stuck up like spear points. Occasionally his boots or his gloves would touch something unstable and a spar that had been barely holding on would shatter, sending new debris whirling off into the dark. He couldn’t recognize half the things he saw—all these veins and arteries and nerves of the cruiser, its air ducts and water reclamation pipes and endless bundles of electrical cable, once hidden behind panels and walls, now torn free and exposed to hard vacuum.
Up ahead, where the bridge had been, Lanoe stood on a girder that stuck out from the torn edge of the wreckage. The metal beam pointed forward like the bowsprit of an ancient sailing vessel, with Lanoe as its painted figurehead.
“The damage is pretty bad,” Valk said, as he clambered up to where Lanoe could see him. A bundle of emitters from a broken display, hanging loose now on their cables, flapped against his arm. Valk grasped the tangle of cords and tried to stuff them back inside their housing, but it was so warped they wouldn’t fit anymore. “You think it can be repaired?”
“Sure,” Lanoe said. He sounded tired. “These old birds—they’re built from modular components. Designed to be rebuilt from the ground up. I flew on vessels a lot more beat-up than this during the Century War. We can print most of the parts we’ll need, and for the more complicated stuff we have spares in the cargo holds.” Lanoe was staring forward, down the wormhole. Valk couldn’t see his face. “Some things we can’t fix in the field, of course. The damage is just too extensive. But Paniet tells me if we stopped at Avernus, spent a couple days at the Navy dockyard there, he could have us as good as new.”
Valk knew the tone in Lanoe’s voice. “That’s not going to happen, is it?” he asked. “We’re not going to Avernus.”
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