“Acceleration?” Henry asked.
“Two point…” Ihejirika swallowed. “Two point two KPS-squared, ser.”
“Understood.” Raven’s captain looked at the icons and wished he could change something, anything, about the situation unfolding around him. Two point two KPS2 was ten percent higher acceleration than any Vesheron or El-Vesheron starfighter the UPA had on record.
It was less than the Lancers Raven carried and that was their only hope.
He closed his eyes. With the data coming via his internal network, it made no difference to what he was seeing but it made him feel better.
“Designate Drifter contacts hostile,” he ordered. “Leave the Kozun hostile for now; there’s not much we can do either way there.”
“Understood,” Iyotake said softly. New data codes flashed across the display and Henry took a moment to take status of the entire situation.
New red icons started to glitter out by the skip line as he watched, and he simply nodded as his expectations were confirmed. There were at least a hundred laser platforms blocking the route to Battle Group Scorpius. In her current state, those mines were a threat to Raven herself.
The skip drones didn’t stand a chance.
The Drifter starfighters needed to shed their motherships’ velocity before they came after him. They carried full-size missiles and could engage at long range, though. If they wanted to chase him down, they could do so—but everything he saw said he still had missile launchers.
The real weapon against them was his own starfighters, though, and he checked their status. The line of red icons that answered his mental query was not what he expected, and he swallowed a curse.
“O’Flannagain, report,” he snapped.
“When we get back home, I am going to hunt down the ratfucker who designed the Lancer’s storage protocols, and I am going to carve their genitalia out with a rusty fucking spoon,” Raven’s CAG snarled into the radio.
“Report,” Henry repeated, though he suspected he was going to agree with her assessment.
“The SF-One-Thirty does not run its internal compensators while in storage status,” O’Flannagain ground out. “None of our starfighters do. Every other fucking fighter I’ve ever flown, however, could take a fucking hit.
“The Lancer is too fragile,” she concluded. “The GMS system is carefully aligned. An unexpected impact throws everything out of alignment. So, I have eight multi-million-dollar starfighters that can’t fly until we fully recalibrate their engines.
“Which we can’t do under subjective thrust.”
“There are sixty starfighters chasing us, O’Flannagain,” Henry said mildly. “Slowing down isn’t a great plan.”
“No shit,” she agreed. “My techs are throwing the manual out and attempting recalibrations via remote drone while under eleven pseudogravities of subjective thrust. The worst case is we write off a starfighter, and, unfortunately, I can spare one. Two of my people are in medbay. Gaunt is dead.”
Henry could have seen that, but he couldn’t look at casualty reports right now. He was keeping his grief compartmentalized, both for his crew and for Todorovich.
He couldn’t look at the lists of the dead until this was over.
“Best-case scenario?” he asked.
“Twenty minutes and I’ll have one bird,” she snapped. “If it works, we’ll have the rest ten minutes after that. At that point, ser, I’ll be looking for pilots.”
“We’ll see what we can buy, CAG, but you might only have ten minutes,” he warned her.
“It’s supposed to be a two-hour process in one gravity,” O’Flannagain replied. “Cross your fingers, ser.”
Henry’s attention turned back to tactical. The starfighters were now heading his way and he didn’t even have shields.
“Ihejirika,” he said calmly. “I read our missile launchers are online?”
“Yes, ser,” the tactical officer confirmed. “We’ve also got about sixty percent of our antimissile lasers.”
“Best news I’ve had all day,” Henry admitted grimly. “Those starfighters don’t have magazine capacity. We do. Open fire as you can range on them.”
“Yes, ser.”
He turned to Henriksson.
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes, ser?” the engineering officer replied, her voice strained.
“Tell me I have a gravity shield.”
“We rebuilt with all of those new breakers,” she said quietly. “If we flip them all and power back up, there’s a sixty percent chance we have the shield back. We have drones inspecting them all as we speak.”
“I’m guessing I wouldn’t like the other forty percent in those odds?” Henry asked.
“Song says…twenty percent chance we pop a couple more breakers and nothing happens. Twenty percent chance one or more of the breakers is melted through and we permanently burn out the gravity generators.”
Henry exhaled and nodded against the viscous gel surrounding him.
“And how long until we’ve checked all those breakers?” he asked softly.
“Fifteen minutes, ser.”
He looked at the pursuing starfighters.
“You have five.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sylvia woke up to darkness. It took her a solid several seconds to realize that there was a damp cloth wrapped around her head and reach up to touch it.
“How badly is she injured?” she heard Oran Aval ask in Kem.
“She will live,” Alex Thompson replied. “And if she does not, you will not.”
She had no idea what was going on, but it didn’t sound good.
“I’m fine, Commander,” she managed to get out, trying to sit up. She could understand Kem, but speaking it felt beyond her.
“You are no such thing,” Thompson replied sharply. “You hit your head, Ambassador. You have a minor concussion and you were bleeding pretty badly.”
“What happened? How long was I out?” Sylvia demanded. She reached up to try and remove the cloth, but a firm hand intercepted her.
“Leave it for now, Em Todorovich,” the GroundDiv officer told her. “You’re still bleeding. As for what happened…” He sighed. “The Kozun opened fire. Carpenter was destroyed; we don’t know what happened to the rest of the task group.”
Her head felt fuzzy but something in that didn’t sound quite right.
“We’re aboard Carpenter,” she finally noted.
“We were,” Thompson agreed. “Now we’re in some kind of heavily armored safety capsule in the wreckage of a ship that had three hundred people aboard. People the Kozun killed.”
“Right.” Sylvia had to recalibrate her brain for Kem and fast. “I need to see, Commander. Can you move the bandage that much?”
“Give me a moment. Roi!”
Another set of hands touched her head a moment later, delicately adjusting the cloth so that it eventually lifted above her eyebrows. She still couldn’t see and she could feel the crust of dried blood now.
“Close your eyes,” the French noncom helping Thompson told her. “We need to clean them.”
Sylvia obeyed and a new warm wet cloth passed over her face, clearing away the dried blood.
“Bien,” Chief Bilal Roi said, stepping back to survey their handiwork. “It’s not perfect,” they warned her. “The wound has mostly stopped bleeding, but your internal network is working overtime to keep the concussion under control. The more you can rest, the better.”
“You’re a GroundDiv field medic, Chief,” Sylvia pointed out with what she knew was a wan smile. “When was the last time your patients actually rested?”
Roi snorted and stepped back, allowing Sylvia to look over the rest of the room. Everyone who’d been in the room when she’d blacked out was still there, but the Kozun group was now pressed back against a wall, under the guns of her third GroundDiv trooper and the La-Tar bodyguards.
“Felix?” Sylvia said quietly.
“I’m here, Ambassador,” her chief of staff replied, st
epping into her field of view.
“Thanks. Turning my head hurts,” she admitted. “Where are we at?”
“Voice Aval ordered her people to lay down their weapons as soon as we realized what had happened,” Felix Leitz told her. “They’ve been under guard since; you were only out for twenty minutes. Long enough to scare us.”
“The security pod contains the conference room and not much more,” Thompson explained. “If anyone other than the diplomatic contingents survived, we don’t know. We have life support and heat control for a little while, but I don’t know how long.”
The big GroundDiv officer shook his head.
“I don’t know fucking anything, ser,” he admitted. “We have Carpenter’s sensor data up to the last moment, but there wasn’t enough warning for anything. The Kozun opened fire and Carpenter was closest.
“If it wasn’t for this armored safety pod, we’d all be dead with the ship.”
“And everyone else probably thinks we are,” Sylvia murmured. “All right. I need to talk to Rising Principle.”
“Are you up to that?” Leitz asked.
“No choice,” she told him. She leaned on Roi to get up to her feet, nodding to the noncom before carefully crossing the conference room to where the Enteni was standing.
They still had artificial gravity. Of all the things they could be wasting power on, that seemed ridiculous to her—but very few people in the concealed escape pod had zero-gee experience.
“Ambassador Rising Principle,” she greeted them in careful Kem. She was certain she was speaking noticeably slower, but she didn’t have much of a choice.
“Ambassador Todorovich. I am-was grateful you survived,” the Enteni told her. She couldn’t read them well, but she had a sudden overwhelming sense of youth from the La-Tar diplomat. Rising Principle was young for their job, and this was outside their experience.
“The Voice?”
“Is-was detained after her people attacked,” Rising Principle said. “She surrendered. If you had-was died, she would-should have-were joined you.”
That wasn’t diplomatic at all, though Sylvia could understand it.
“This module,” she said. “How much power and life support do we have?”
Principle gestured a familiar Ashall officer over to them.
“Trosh, how much fate-time do we have-has?”
The dark-green-skinned officer grimaced.
“Life support, eight La-Tar days,” he told them. “Power, about the same. The problem is that we did not expect to need to see what was going on outside. My people are trying to rig up some eyes, but we do not know what happened after the Kozun attacked.
“We might need to consider reducing our power consumption to conceal our presence. For the moment, Carpenter’s wreckage is covering us…we hope.”
Sylvia nodded, then winced against the dizziness that followed. Her network let her ignore the concussion to a point…but only to a point.
“We need those eyes,” she agreed. “Eight days…should be enough.”
“Enough for what?” Trosh asked. “If we cannot hide, we are doomed. If we can hide—”
“We will be rescued,” Sylvia interrupted. “There was a plan for this. There is a relief force hidden nearby. Once they do not hear from us, they will come.”
She shook her head and glanced over at where the Kozun Voice was standing against the wall, the woman waiting calmly for some sign of what was going on.
“There will be a war over this,” she told them. “The UPA will have to act, to show that their ambassadors are untouchable.”
Even if she died here, the UPA would act. The only way the Initiative could ever work was if everyone knew the UPSF would crush anyone who stepped too far out of line when dealing with the forces the Peacekeepers could deploy.
Civis romanus sum had been deadly words to conjure with during the Roman Empire, even beyond its borders. “I am a citizen of Rome.” Fear and respect were the real weapons the United Planets Alliance needed to keep their people safe beyond their borders. The death of an accredited ambassador at formal peace negotiations could not be tolerated.
“We are-were-will appreciate the aid of the UPA,” Rising Principle told her. “Fate-time will see us to safety. If-when we live.”
“We will,” Sylvia assured them. “Now, I think I need to speak to the Voice. I have questions.”
Oran Aval’s bodyguards tried to step in front of her as Sylvia approached, even in the face of the leveled guns of the La-Tar soldiers.
“Peace, children,” Aval told them. A second phrase followed in a language Sylvia didn’t even recognize. The bodyguards hesitated for a moment, and Aval spoke again, more sharply, in a third language. This one was the Kozun main language, and the young men finally retreated.
Sylvia knew that calling the language Kozun was as accurate as calling English Terran—which, to be fair, she suspected more than a few people in the former Kenmiri Empire did.
“They are tasked to protect me,” Aval said in Kem. “The situation makes them uncomfortable, regardless of my choices or commands.”
“Someone’s choices and commands led you here,” Sylvia agreed. “It appears your people believe you expendable, Oran Aval.”
Aval said something in that strange language the UPA ambassador didn’t recognize, then sighed.
“I am a Voice of the Seven,” she said in Kem. “I Speak for those who cannot be heard but who control all. If it is Their will that I fall, it shall come to pass…but no mortal hand of the Kozun would betray me.”
“Really,” Sylvia said. “So, Mal Dakis did not order the murder of our fleet despite the fact that you would be aboard?”
“No,” Aval said simply. “I do not deny the evidence of your sensors and my own eyes, Ambassador Todorovich. But I can assure you that we did not plan this. This was not the order of the Voices of the Seven. This was not the order of Star Voice Kalad.
“Kozun hands may have betrayed us all, yes,” the priestess conceded, “but this was not the order of the Voices.”
“How can you be so certain?” Sylvia asked. “Your ships fired on us.”
“Because the Kozun can no longer afford this war,” Oran Aval said flatly. “Or any of our wars. In a mix of arrogance, desire to help and desire to rule, we overextended ourselves and made enemies of too many of our neighbors.”
Sylvia studied Aval. It was possible the other woman was lying. Both of them had been trained to read microexpressions and to at least partially control their own. It was possible.
But it didn’t seem like it.
“You expect me to believe this?” she asked.
“It does not matter now, does it?” Aval said. “We realized our mistake, Todorovich, far too late to change our course. Now we have no choice but to solidify our borders and sign treaties and spend a generation rebuilding the trust we threw away.”
“You only stopped because you were stopped,” Sylvia noted. “If you expect sympathy from me…”
“You are correct,” the Kozun agreed. “But our course must now change. This peace was to be the first step. I do not desire your sympathy or pity for my people, Ambassador. I desire your understanding that we would not have done this.”
“Mal Dakis is no stranger to the concept of secret orders, Voice Aval,” Sylvia said. “Henry Wong has told me much of him.”
“There is a reason Star Voice Kalad commands my escort,” Oran Aval replied. “Mal Dakis knows that she and Henry Wong were once lovers. We were relying on that bond to buy us every fragment of trust we could find.
“But the only secret orders were mine,” she concluded. “And they were that I was to get a peace treaty. At almost any price La-Tar and the UPA could demand, we needed to end this war. Not expand it. Not enrage the United Planets Alliance and test just how far they could project power without the Drifters.”
“And yet your ships fired on us,” Sylvia pointed out, surprised by the flash of jealousy that Aval’s description of Kal
ad triggered. She let that drive her anger and chill her words. “You can tell me a thousand reasons why you did not want this—but your people opened fire.”
Aval bowed her head.
“I know,” she admitted. “And I do not know why, Ambassador Todorovich. I do not know what happened or how to fix it. All I know is that you and I and Rising Principle are all supposed to be dead—and if there is to a be a chance of peace between our peoples, we must survive.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?” Sylvia asked.
“I do not know yet,” Aval told her. “But any skill or tool I have is at your disposal. We live or die together now, Sylvia Todorovich. And while I hope for Star Voice Kalad…I fear our fate rides on Colonel Henry Wong.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“I’ve got good news, bad news and we’re-fucked news,” Song told Henry when Henriksson connected her.
“I’m hoping one of those is that I have a gravity shield,” Henry replied grimly. “Those fighters are going to be in range far more quickly than I like.”
“That’s the good news, yes,” Song replied. “The good news is that we’ve checked all of the breakers, they’re all fine despite the power surge that blew them out, and that means that not only do you have a grav-shield, you’re going to keep having a grav-shield. If the switches keep holding up, we’re looking at a thirty-second reset if they take the shield down again.”
“They can still kill us in thirty seconds, but that’s better than I dared hope,” Henry admitted. “What’s the rest of the news?”
“The bad news is that the keel is completely irreparable,” his chief engineer told him. “She’s done, ser. Short of a complete rebuild of the core hull, Raven’s main batteries are history. You’ve got missiles and what’s left of the defensive lasers; that’s it.”
That at least made the age-old game of power-balancing much easier, Henry supposed. Without the ability to fire the main guns, Raven had more than enough power to run all of her systems simultaneously.
“If that’s the bad news, what’s the we’re-fucked news?” he asked.
Raven's Course (Peacekeepers of Sol Book 3) Page 19