“Get the forward lasartillery online. I can't get any response from the guns. You, Liottey, do something besides suck on your thumb. That's unbecoming to an officer of the emperor!”
“Captain, break off. Return to base. We need protection. There are thousands of them!”
“Then our victory will be all the sweeter. What good is it when you defeat a weakling opponent? Only when you triumph over a stronger one is there any honor in it.”
“The radiation cannon is hooked into primary and secondary power circuits,” Barse said in a low voice. “Both circuits have to be activated for it to work. The recharging cycle will drain us for several minutes if we use it, though. It damned near blacked us out permanently the last time.”
The Preceptor hummed as missiles launched. Norlin shook his head, trying to clear the buzzing in his ears. Strain mounted too quickly for him to bear. Firing missiles at this range was ridiculous. The Death Fleet had shifted into the system almost a light-hour ahead. The missiles could never reach the enemy; their drive engines lacked the range by a huge margin.
“He might be mining this cubic of space,” said Barse, seeing Norlin's confusion.
“We'll need all the firepower we can muster when we get closer to them,” Norlin pointed out. “We're driving hard into the center of their fleet!”
“Let's get ready. I don't want to die without the fixtures being polished,” said Barse. “And Neutron might want to eat again, too. I ought to feed the damned cat a tank of methane and see if it changes any before it comes out his rear. Yeah, that's what I want to do before I die.”
“Tia,” he said, his hand stopping her.
“Mutiny?” she mouthed. Her colorless eyes danced. She took a deep breath and then shook her head. Aloud, she said, “What difference does it make how we die? I'd rather do it with all tubes firing and the radiation cannon draining my power than to have our own ships finish us off. Makes me think I died for something worthwhile.” She snorted at Norlin's expression. “What's wrong, Cap'n? Didn't think I could be ironic?”
She left to do what she could to keep the cruiser under maximum power. Norlin nervously paced, not sure what he could do. The command visor still gave him a complete readout of the ship's status. They had improved their battleworthiness in the past few hours, but they could never take on even a small alien craft. They had faced a mere scoutship and had been lucky to escape. Against the main body of the Death Fleet they had no chance at all.
“We're doing well. They're coming for us. They're falling into my trap,” Pensky said from the command chair. He worked on his console and cut off Sarov. The tactical officer complained and was ignored. Sarov glared at Norlin, as if he were responsible for the captain's suicidal behavior.
“Do you intend to take on the entire alien fleet?” Norlin asked.
“Only those we can kill. For the moment, though, there is something more important to do.” Pensky smiled, and Norlin saw no craziness in his eyes.
“What?”
“More tea. I had a delightful time with the ship's engineer. I must get to know my observer, also, and what better way than a properly served cup of green tea?”
Norlin looked past the captain to Miza and Sarov. They were lost.
“Very well, Captain Pensky. It would be my honor to join you.”
“Spoken like a true officer and gentleman. This way. To the captain's quarters.” Pensky marched off as if he were in full dress parade before the emperor himself. Norlin followed, gesturing to the other two officers to return to post. Without a pilot at the helm, there was now a chance they could change the Preceptor's course.
The table in the captain's quarters was already set with fine porcelain cups. An autochef prepared the tea.
“It's not the same as having it done by a human, but it will do. Primitive conditions on the frontier, you know. You do know, don't you, Sublieutenant?”
“Yes, sir, I suppose so. I was brought up on Sutton.”
“Do tell me more.” Pensky gestured to the chair opposite his. Norlin perched on the edge, rigidly at attention as if the academy commandant had summoned him. It was the only experience he had speaking with such high-ranked commanding officers alone.
“What do you want to know, sir?”
“Your life, Sublieutenant. How did you come to the academy?”
Norlin waited for Pensky to sip his tea before sampling his own. The bitter taste made his lips pucker slightly. He carefully replaced the cup on the saucer as he composed his thoughts.
“My parents were colonists from Earth.”
“So, you are Earth stock? I thought so!”
“I hardly remember Earth. In fact, not at all. My father was a farmer and my mother a weather tech. Both were needed vocations on Sutton.”
“Feed the masses and keep them happy with sunny weather,” Pensky said. Norlin thought a hint of distaste entered the captain's tone, but he could not be sure.
“From as young as I can remember, I wanted to be an officer in the Empire Service. Education was hard to come by since my father was a farmer and it would be hard for me to break caste. My mother, though, got me a technical education. For several years I was in training to be a weather tech, but when I tested well, I got into the academy.”
“Your parents? Still on Sutton?”
“Both dead, sir. My father died when a robot tiller malfunctioned. My mother, well, she never adjusted to being without him. They were the only family I had.”
“No siblings? A pity. I grew up surrounded by hundreds of relatives. Emperor Arian is quite prolific, you know.”
“I've heard,” Norlin said. He tried to keep from grinning. From what the rumors said, Arian had sired more than a thousand children, all from artificial wombs. The emperor was too involved in the rule of the empire to spend time with a woman. Norlin had always imagined the man on the Crystal Throne with tubes attached to all his orifices, sucking and draining constantly.
“That's not too far wrong,” Pensky said, startling Norlin by apparently reading his thoughts. “Arian seldom leaves the throne. It is a wearying life for him, but he has been gengineered for it.”
“You're his third cousin?”
“Something like that. The imperial genealogists could tell you right away. Such family trees bore me. I enjoy being with people like Arian, whether they are relatives or not.”
“Are you really...?”
“Telepathic? So I have been told,” Pensky said, sampling his tea and peering over the rim at Norlin. “Does that bother you?”
“I had never thought it was possible.”
“At the court of my cousin, anything is possible. We really are supermen, you know. Genhanced to the limits of human ability. My first cousin Leandra is immensely strong. She nearly crushed me to death the first time we...”
Norlin waited for Pensky to finish the sentence. Then he realized he did not want him to. Sexual relations between close relatives was illegal on the colony worlds but commonplace on Earth. Or so he had always heard.
“Lightning calculators. Physical abilities. My sister Peony combines both. She is a rarity.”
“Your tactical ability is remarkable, sir,” Norlin said. “Do you use telepathic powers to read the minds of your opponents?”
“Not at all. I have no telepathic power.”
“But you said...” Norlin was confused now. He saw that this pleased Pensky. The genhanced officer was toying with him.
“It's a game I never tired of at court,” Pensky explained. “We would try to confound one another. Only the cleverest among us ever figured out the truth.”
“I'm not all that clever, sir.”
“No, Sublieutenant, you are not. But you have interesting abilities to offset your rather low intelligence.”
Norlin bristled but held his anger in check. “Is this more of your courtly word play, sir?”
“Just an observation. It has been good having tea with you, Sublieutenant. I doubt we will do it again.” Pensky rose. Norlin
had the impression of a man about to vanish into higher dimensions. Pavel Pensky was as thin as a silk strand, with ungainly arms. From the way the rest of his uniform flapped around his body, he might have been emaciated.
“To the bridge. You may watch, if it pleases you.”
“Those are my orders, sir,” Norlin said, but he spoke to the captain's back. Pensky was already on his way back to the command chair.
Norlin ran to catch up. As he entered the bridge, he saw that Pensky had already made a quick circuit of Miza and Sarov's stations and hopped up into the command chair, staring at the vidscreen. Without looking down, Pensky began working the controls in the arm of the chair.
Norlin watched the preparations made by the genhanced officer as they popped onto the vidscreen. After putting on the HUD, he got a better sense of the captain's reasoning and marvelled at it. Pensky had a true talent for tactics but no common sense. Norlin worried he might even have crossed the thin dividing line between sanity and the parti-colored wonderland of his own genius.
“They're locked on,” came Miza's warning.
Norlin did not have to see the summary off the com officer's console to know she meant the aliens, not the pursuing Empire Service sub-fleet. Once more the Preceptor was going into battle against the aliens. As before, Norlin had no feeling that they would emerge victorious, even with Pensky's obvious confidence in his own abilities.
“Let us lead our forces into battle glorious and admirable,” said Pensky with true satisfaction. He worked furiously at the controls on his chair arm. Sarov moved toward the command chair to protest. Norlin waved him off. Their position was untenable. The only hope they had for survival measured longer than in minutes lay in Pensky's skeletal hands.
“Chikako, contact the other ships. Warn them of the Death Fleet. They might have missed the indicators we picked up. Send a lasercom back to Sutton II informing them of the situation.” Norlin's pulse pounded as he issued the orders. Miza didn't have to obey him, but she did. Someone on the bridge had finally shown a spark of judgment, even if it wrote their obituaries.
Norlin pointed to the jury-rigged panel where they had rewired the radiation cannon. Sarov went to it and waited, hand resting on the toggle that would send the prodigious beam of radiation into the center of the Death Fleet. It might be a suicidal one-shot weapon but Norlin vowed to take a few of the mysterious aliens along with him if they had to die.
“Missiles away. Oh, yes, we strike at their vile black heart. War is the highest perfection of human knowledge.” Pensky began cackling to himself and rubbing his hands together as if trying to wipe away dirt.
Norlin checked the displays and saw that the missile placement was precise and deadly. Forty-eight missiles launched. Six alien warships were destroyed or damaged. The tactic of accelerating through the middle of the alien fleet had taken their opponents by surprise. By the time they realized the Preceptor was not vectoring away, it was too late to commit.
Even in the vastness of space, the aliens could not fire at the surging, crazily spinning cruiser without endangering the tight cluster of their own ships.
“They're parting ahead to give one subfleet a shot at us,” warned Norlin. The aliens were quick to adjust to the unexpected.
“All ES ships behind us have been destroyed,” reported Miza. “I got the last microburst from the battleship. It didn't stand a chance against one of the alien's heavy planet-beams.”
The Preceptor lurched as the aliens began finding ways around damaging their own ships. Missiles popped up in front. Pensky's genius for defensive techniques stood them in good stead. He chuckled to himself as he worked Sarov's station.
The tac officer stood to one side and watched, his face bright red with anger. His finger tapped repeatedly against the toggle that fired the radiation cannon. Norlin had to keep Sarov calm. Using the captured alien weapon required precise timing. If they fired too soon, they wasted their single most potent weapon. If they waited too long, the Preceptor would be space debris.
“This is tiresome. They keep firing. Why don't they stop? It's time for tea. Does anyone wish to join me?”
Norlin stared in dismay as Captain Pensky jumped from the command chair and walked away.
“Sarov, get back to your station. Now!” Norlin shoved Pensky away and dived into the command chair. He tried to absorb all the information flooding in. Wearing the command visor had prepared him, but the suddenness of knowing his orders would be carried out caused him to hesitate for a few seconds.
The aliens concentrated their radiation cannon fire on the Preceptor.
Explosions deep within the cruiser echoed in Norlin's ears as he let Sarov fire their missiles at will. He checked with Miza, saw the opportunity appear and reached for the toggle for the radiation cannon. He crushed it with his hand.
The ship bucked hard, and inky blackness de-scended. The radiation cannon had once more sucked every last joule of energy from the Preceptor's engines.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
“We're dead,” moaned Gowan Liottey. “We're all dead!” The emergency lights flickered and came on, giving everyone on the bridge a jaundiced appearance.
“No,” said Miza, kneeling beside Pavel Pensky. “Only one of us.” She pressed her fingers into the genhanced officer's throat and shook her head. “He's dead, and I don't know why. There's not a scratch on him that I see.”
“What difference does it make?” asked Liottey. “He's the lucky one. He's already dead. We'll follow in seconds. I know it. We're in the middle of the entire Death Fleet!”
The words galvanized Norlin who had stood staring at the fallen captain. He adjusted the command visor and circled the control room, checking each console against his heads-up display summary. The important readouts matched. Lesser systems deviated markedly, but he did not need them to keep the Preceptor alive.
He took a deep breath and resumed his position in the command chair. He hadn't liked giving up command to Pensky; now, he was likely to be the cruiser's last captain.
The readings from Miza's sensors told a sorry tale. They had driven squarely into the center of the alien war vessels. The enemy had responded quickly. When the radiation cannon fired, it had left the Preceptor a drained husk, but oddly, they were still alive.
“Ships everywhere,” Miza reported. “No direction outward not filled with them.”
“Weapons systems down. The radiation cannon took everything out. I'm going to back-up on the missile launchers.” Sarov worked with a desperation Norlin had never seen before.
“Don't bother with that. There's not much chance we'd get to launch missiles powerful enough to do any damage. The ships around us are heavy.” He marveled at their sheer mass. They were the planet-beamers, heavily armored and protected to withstand ground-based weaponry. To believe they had a chance of doing more than scratching a hull with their missiles was a fantasy beyond his wildest imagining.
“They think we're dead. They're sending a scoutship to board us,” reported Miza.
“Can you intercept their communication?”
“No, Captain. Can't find anything anywhere, though they're too well coordinated not to be in constant contact.”
“Telepathy. That's the only explanation,” whined Liottey. “They can speak mind-to-mind. How can we defeat an enemy that knows what we're thinking?”
Norlin turned and glared at the XO. Legally, Liottey was next in the chain of command. Not turning the cruiser over to him would be a criminal act; it would be an even greater act of folly.
“Gowan,” he said softly, “give me a full report on all life support systems. Do a complete sweep of every command circuit. Let me know how to best use the RRUs.”
“The RRUs, yes, we need to repair quickly. Yes, aye, Captain. Right away.” Liottey left for his post amidships, muttering to himself.
“You handled him well,” complimented Barse. “Now do some fancy work and tell me how to ha
ndle the engines. We're power-drained, and it's beyond me how to get this bucket of bolts running again.”
“You'll find a way,” he assured her. “You're the best damned engineer in the Empire Service.”
“That works with Liottey,” she said. “Not me. But don't stop. I like hearing it.”
“Especially when it'll be the last thing she'll hear,” said Miza. “The enemy ship is closing. What do we do?”
Norlin leaned back, his attention on Pensky's corpse. His mind raced. “What else can we do? Prepare for boarding. We'll have to greet our guests.”
“We're not equipped for it, Captain. All we have are a couple laserifles and pistols.”
Norlin shrugged it off. They had at least some weapons. “We'll have to make do, won't we?”
He tried to formulate a plan he knew would work. His mind refused to come up with anything brilliant.
“Tracking the ship,” came Sarov's anxious voice. “Should I take it out?”
“No. Let the fleet go past.” He hated the idea of letting the Death Fleet go unimpeded toward Sutton II, but there was only so much a single cruiser—and one damaged beyond simple repair—could do. His duty lay in staying alive.
“They're putting out grapples,” reported Miza. “There are robotic crews on their hull. They're sending over ERUs to examine the ship.”
“Barse, Liottey, take laserifles to the airlock and blast them after they're inside.”
“Captain, they're going to drill through the hull. They don't care if they spill our air.”
“Why should they care? They think we're dead. They certainly aren't interested in taking prisoners.”
“Why enter at all?”
“The radiation cannon up front. They want it back—or they might think we've developed one on our own. No planet has used it against them. Why should an insignificant ship in the middle of the Sutton II system pop up with it?”
“We took out five of their heavy craft,” reported Sarov.
“Energy levels are coming back,” said Barse. “We need a more efficient generating system to supply that cannon.”
Alien Death Fleet [Star Frontiers 1] Page 12