Maxwell Saga 5: Stoke the Flames Higher

by Peter Grant

  Bravo’s coming for us! Steve realized with a flash of dismay. The destroyer protecting Karaidi can launch missiles at her at extreme range, but she’ll have time to fire her own weapons before they reach her. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, even as his thoughts raced. She’ll be going for the four of us orbiting Vellalore. We have no counter-missiles, and only the depot ships have lasers. Edith Cavell and Pickle are unarmed, sitting ducks – and Brooks is on board Cavell! I’ve got to protect him!

  His fingers flew over his keyboard as he snapped, “Command to Communications, get me a tight-beam link to Captain Butler in person aboard Edith Cavell, quick as you can! Flash priority!”

  “Communications to Command, aye aye, sir.”

  He called up the emissions profile of the hospital ship, and fed it to the master computer. One of Pickle’s special features in her intelligence-gathering function was the ability to imitate the emissions profile of any ship in space, so that, if necessary, she could pass for them outside visual range. That meant she could pretend to be Edith Cavell, to deceive those incoming missiles. Now, if only Captain Butler would listen…

  He lunged to his feet and grabbed an emergency spacesuit from a closet behind him. “Help me, Juliette!” he snapped as he kicked off his shoes and thrust his legs into it.

  She hurried to his side. “Sir, what are you doing?” she hissed as she began to pull it over his torso, helping him feed his arms into the sleeves.

  “No time! Seal it!” He shoved his hands roughly into the gloves at the end of the sleeves, then reached for the helmet on the shelf above.

  She tugged the suit halves together across his chest, and attached them to the neck ring. “Just a moment… sealed!”

  “Thank you, Number One.” He shrugged his shoulders to settle them more comfortably, feeling his uniform rumpling up inside the spacesuit. He had no time to worry about it. He punched keys on the command panel on the right chest of the suit, beginning its built-in test sequence.

  “Communications to Command, connection established, sir!”

  Steve snatched up the handset on his console. “Captain Butler?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Lieutenant-Commander Maxwell here, sir. Remember the code word I gave you? Shut down everything that’s emitting aboard your ship, right now, sir! Gravitic drive, radar, lidar, communications systems, tractor and pressor beams, the whole lot – shut them down now! Imitate a hole in space!”

  “What the devil are you talking about? We’ve got to take evasive action!”

  “There’s no time to explain, sir! You can’t evade without endangering the patients on your operating tables. Leave it to me. Shut everything down NOW!” Steve shouted the last word.

  “I… Very well. I hope you know what you’re doing! Shutting down now.”

  Almost as soon as he heard the words, the Plot and EW consoles reported simultaneously, “Cavell is shutting down her drive, sir!”

  “Thank you, sir. Pickle out.” Steve held onto the handset as his finger stabbed at the intercom button for ship-wide broadcast. “All hands, this is the Captain. Abandon ship! Abandon ship! This is not a drill! Get to your lifeboat now! Lifeboat commanders, get everyone aboard and get clear of the ship’s gravitic drive field as fast as you can. Senior Chief Aznar, make sure the diplomats get aboard a lifeboat.”

  “What the –” The First Lieutenant was staring at him in utter astonishment, her eyebrows climbing almost into her hairline. The rest of the Bridge crew were just as startled.

  “No time! Get to the lifeboat!” He pointed to the emergency exit on the starboard side of the bridge. “Take command of her, Number One. MOVE!”

  Ingrained discipline broke through their startled surprise. Everyone jumped to their feet and ran for the exit… except Steve. His newly-gloved fingers flew over the keyboard once more, feeling clumsy and fat and slow as he slaved Pickle’s engineering systems to his console, then powered up the reactor aboard the message drone that they’d retrieved, reloaded and refueled only yesterday. He tried to ignore the sick feeling of impending doom in his stomach. Someone had to do this. No-one else was available. That made his duty clear.

  “Come on, sir!” Juliette called as she stood poised in the doorway. The others had already rushed through.

  “Not this time, Number One. Take charge and get them out of here. I’ve got to decoy those missiles away from Cavell. If I don’t make it, tell my wife and children I love them, will you, please?” He looked steadily across the room at her.

  She blinked, then blinked again. “I – you – oh!” She whirled on her heel and fled, the door slamming shut behind her on its automatic closer.

  The master computer chimed, and a signal flashed on his display. PROFILE EXCHANGE ACCOMPLISHED. READY TO PROCEED.

  He sucked in a deep breath. He had to wait for the lifeboats to get clear of the ship. If he used the gravitic drive while they were too close, he might rip them apart with the forces that would be unleashed. He used the time to enter rapid commands to the message drone, opening its hatch in readiness. It would now wait just five seconds after he ejected it, then activate its gravitic drive at maximum power on whatever its heading happened to be, irrespective of its distance from Pickle. He’d have to shut down the ship’s drive first, of course.

  As he worked, he mentally blessed Lieutenant Chetty for providing so much information about the Devakai ships’ missiles. He knew their guidance systems, several generations behind those of current weapons, could home on gravitic drive emissions, but not necessarily isolate one particular emission pattern and target it, to the exclusion of others. If he could fool some of them into following the drone, instead of Pickle…

  He reached for the spacesuit helmet and put it on as he watched the indicator lights for each lifeboat wink out, feeling the rim of the helmet automatically lock itself to the suit. Its control panel beeped at him, and he felt the suit begin to inflate automatically. The lifeboats’ departure sent thumps through the hull as pistons thrust them clear. He knew a pilot aboard each vessel would be using reaction thrusters to move away as quickly as possible. He had to wait an agonizing, seemingly endless twenty seconds after the last one had detached itself, to be sure of not damaging them.

  The hard-charging Devakai patrol craft had covered more than a million kilometers in the time it had taken to get everybody off Pickle. She was almost within extreme missile firing range for her older weapons. The two depot ships had already started moving, turning away and going to maximum acceleration – but he knew the missiles would catch up to them. The ships would activate their laser clusters and switch on every sensor they had, to detect and shoot at incoming warheads before they could strike.

  In the place where the hospital ship’s transponder beacon had been on the plot, there was only a blank space. She’d gone to complete emissions shutdown.

  —————

  VELLALORE ORBIT – LIFEBOAT THREE

  Solveig Soldahl whimpered in pain as a spacer thrust her down into an unyielding seat, flipped a four-point harness over her shoulders and legs, slammed the buckles into their sockets, and yanked savagely at the trailing straps. The harness tightened with brutal force, crushing her down into the seat. She clutched at her vid camera, which had recorded everything that had happened on the bridge and their rushed, frantic run to the lifeboat. She panned it across the spacers as they took their seats.

  Senior Lieutenant Laforet slipped into a chair behind the abbreviated, primitive-looking control console, and stabbed at a button. With a jolt that rattled everyone’s teeth, the lifeboat jerked backwards, then all sensation of movement ceased. Solveig realized they were floating in space, moving away from Pickle, even as the officer hurriedly pulled on her own harness, then rammed a slider control all the way to the top of its range. With a muffled roar, the lifeboat’s reaction thrusters ignited, shoving her backwards.

  “Why not use the gravitic drive?” she grunted at the Petty Officer next to her, gasping for breath under
the acceleration-induced gravity pulling on her body, making her feel several times heavier than normal.

  “We’re too close to the ship. We have to get further away, out of its more powerful drive field, before we can use our own.” He was peering through a viewscreen a meter from his seat.

  “Why do I feel so heavy? Isn’t the inertial compensator supposed to absorb g-forces?”

  “It does – it bleeds them off into space’s dark matter – but only when the gravitic drive is running.”

  “What are you looking at?”

  “The ship.” He pointed suddenly. “She’s moving!” Through the viewscreen, Solveig could see LCS Pickle sliding past. Her stern appeared, then abruptly flicked out of view, leaving only the darkness of space and the glitter of a star, far in the distance.

  “Why did we abandon ship? What’s going on?” she demanded.

  Senior Lieutenant Laforet pulled the slider back down again. The roar of the thrusters ceased, and everyone took a deep, gusty breath as the weight came off their bodies. She turned to look at Solveig. “He’s going to decoy those missiles. He’s heading away from the hospital ship, trying to make them follow him. He’s sacrificing Pickle to protect Edith Cavell.”

  “But – but – how will he get away?”

  “He can’t.” There were tears in the officer’s eyes, a few escaping to run down her cheeks as she blinked, but she didn’t reach up to wipe them away. “There are no lifeboats left. He sent us away in them, so that we’d be safe. He’s going to stay with Pickle until the end, to make sure this works.”

  Solveig’s mouth hung open for a moment. She felt like she’d suddenly been punched in the stomach. At last she managed to gasp, “But – what – he won’t have a chance!”

  “He knows that. The last thing he said to me was to tell his wife and children he loved them.”

  Solveig looked around at the other spacers. Their faces were like stone. Some nodded slowly, others simply looked at her.

  Ashen-faced, she said slowly, “Where does someone find such courage? Where do you find them – the Fleet, I mean?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” the petty officer next to her replied, a catch in his voice. “All I know is, he’s the best damned officer I ever served under. He deserves better than to die like this. The patients on that hospital ship had better thank God he’s here for them today!”

  —————

  VELLALORE ORBIT – LCS PICKLE

  God bless you, Brooks, Steve thought as he reached for the auxiliary engineering control panel. I hope you make it, buddy. Twisting a pistol-grip joystick and pushing it forward, he applied power to the gravitic drive and started Pickle moving. She felt lumbering and awkward, not at all like her usual race-horse-responsive self. He frowned, puzzled, until he remembered that she was imitating Cavell’s emissions profile. The hospital ship couldn’t accelerate anywhere near as fast as a communications frigate, so Pickle’s master computer was adjusting her gravitic drive output accordingly.

  The Plot gave an urgent buzz. Glancing at it over his console, he saw missile traces launching from the Devakai patrol craft towards him. More missile traces appeared over the Bihar destroyer protecting Athi’s capital city. Their paths split. Half went towards the incoming merchant ship, much closer to Karaidi than to Vellalore. The other half headed towards the Devakai patrol craft. They won’t reach her in time, he realized with another sick jolt in the pit of his stomach. It’s all up to me.

  He slammed the joystick over to one side and pulled it back. Pickle turned to port and angled sharply upward, climbing away from Vellalore and the hospital ship, which was still imitating a hole in space as it orbited the moon. I’ve got to get as far away from her as possible. Those Devakai missiles produce only three laser beams apiece, but if one of them came in at just the right angle, it could still cause a lot of damage to Cavell. I’ve got to open the range and change the angle, to make sure that can’t happen.

  The enemy missiles bored in, accelerating rapidly, already up to twenty per cent of the speed of light. The Plot console began emitting warning beeps, growing louder and closer together as the weapons approached. “Oh, shut up!” Steve muttered, but it paid no attention – and there was no operator to silence it.

  He stared at the approaching missiles in the Plot as if hypnotized, trying to work out the correct timing by mental arithmetic alone, without the assistance of his bridge crew. When there appeared to be about fifteen seconds left until the first one arrived, he punched the release button for the message drone. With a sudden lurch, Pickle kicked the drone horizontally out of its bay, parallel to the hull, pushing it away with pressor beams.

  As soon as his console confirmed that the drone was clear, Steve stabbed his finger at the ship’s gravitic drive control. With another lurch, Pickle’s drive cut out, leaving her floating free. Another stab of his finger, and her fusion reactor began its emergency shutdown procedure.

  As he lifted his hand, the Plot sounded another warning buzzer. The ship lurched again, hard, almost as if another vessel had collided with her, and he heard a grinding noise resonating through her frames. He knew the drone’s gravitic drive had kicked on. At such close range, its field would buckle Pickle’s bottom plates, possibly tearing off a few… but the drone would now accelerate ahead of his drifting ship, hopefully drawing the more distant missiles after it. It now offered the only gravitic drive emissions their sensors could see. That wouldn’t fool the closest missiles, of course. They’d already have locked onto Pickle with their radars, and could no longer be decoyed away.

  In the last seconds, he released his harness and threw himself down in the narrow gap between his chair and the bulkhead. Hopefully, that would offer at least some protection against debris. It may not help, but it can’t hurt, he told himself. Here goes nothing!

  He recalled a line from the Gospels. “Into thy hands, I commend my spirit.” It seemed appropriate, somehow, so he repeated it mentally. He couldn’t help wondering, in the last moment of sanity, whether the Kotai in the freighter and patrol craft were praying something similar right now.

  A mental picture of Abha and their children flashed before his eyes… then chaos exploded.

  —————

  VELLALORE ORBIT – LCHS EDITH CAVELL

  The hospital ship’s OpCen team watched, transfixed, as LCS Pickle accelerated away from them. “Why isn’t she moving faster?” one of the watch-standers cried.

  “She’s imitating our flight profile,” Captain Butler said absently, his gaze never leaving the Plot display. “If she moved any faster, it would reveal to the enemy that she wasn’t us. They know how slowly we move compared to a frigate. If they realized she was a decoy, they might have time to signal their missiles to look for us instead.”

  They waited in deathlike stillness as Pickle soared upward and outward, leaving them behind even as eight enemy missiles bored in towards her. Four more headed for the patrol craft depot ship, and another four for the Bihar destroyers’ depot ship, both of which were already clear of Vellalore and maneuvering to bring all their laser clusters to bear.

  Pickle suddenly launched her message drone, then shut down her drive. “What the –” Commander Yilmaz exclaimed.

  “He must be trying to decoy some of the missiles,” Butler said, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet in agonized anticipation. “That’s his only chance of survival. Some are bound to hit Pickle, but if he can lure the rest away…”

  The communications frigate was moving towards the missiles, so they reached her first. A moan of anguish ran through the OpCen as they saw the first starburst icon of a thermonuclear explosion, followed by another, then two almost simultaneously. Pickle staggered as bomb-pumped laser beams lashed her, ripping great holes in her hull. One found her fusion reactor compartment, cleaving it in two – but it had already shut down, so there was no annihilating explosion. Another beam shattered her capacitor ring, its fragments cutting through her wiring harness and rendering
all her powered systems useless. A third sheared off the hull over her bridge, collapsing frames and hull plating into the compartment. Others bored holes right through her, from one side to the other.

  The last four missiles swerved to follow the message drone. It disappeared beneath a welter of startburst icons. Pickle’s icon was frozen, its position no longer being updated, because she was no longer emitting any signal that could be tracked. Cavell’s radar had been shut down, so there was no echo: only electromagnetic silence where the communications frigate had been. The Plot display blinked disconsolately next to her icon, CONTACT LOST… CONTACT LOST…

  “What –” one of the operators began to ask, only to be savagely hushed by his comrades as they stared at the remaining missiles, now approaching the depot ships.

  LCS Mesquite, the Tree class depot ship from Lancaster, opened fire first. Her fire control team had exercised frequently with their patrol craft. The practice stood them in good stead. She nailed the first missile at fully half a million kilometers’ range, sending it tumbling as her laser beam burned out its sensors. It searched blindly for a target for a few seconds, then blew up as its self-destruct circuits were triggered. The second missile closed to within two hundred thousand kilometers before a laser beam exploded it. The third made it to a hundred and twenty thousand kilometers, and the last to fifty thousand, but both suffered the same fate.

  BCS Maurya, the Bihar Confederation depot ship, was less fortunate. Her fire control team had not had the benefit of frequent practice. She hit the first missile aimed at her about two hundred thousand kilometers out, and the second at about seventy thousand – but the third and fourth bored in close, and exploded before they could be shot out of space. Two bomb-pumped laser beams missed her entirely, but four struck her capacious half-million-ton hull. None hit critical systems like her reactors or gravitic drive, but all penetrated crew spaces or work areas, ripping fragments of steel from her frames and plating, sending them screaming through adjacent compartments. Nine of her crew died instantly, while fourteen others suffered greater or lesser injury.