Raven's Course (Peacekeepers of Sol Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

“Thank you, Colonels,” Henry told them both. “I expect I’ll be talking to you both before this is over, but…before we’re down to the wire…it has been an honor to command you both. Thank you.”

  There was no response from either of his senior subordinates. There was no point. They knew as well as he did what the odds were looking like.

  “Ser!” Ihejirika’s voice suddenly echoed in all of their minds on the main command channel. “Bandit Three!”

  Between the Drifters vaporizing three of the largest meteors to destroy the decoy shuttles and the dozen ice floes Henry’s people had blown to pieces with fusion bombs, the meteor swarm was a far more active and confusing place than it had been when they’d first arrived.

  Bandit Three had been sweeping just past the debris front from one of the Charlie explosions, ignoring the harmless debris field while they searched for signs of Raven, and missed the intact meteor that had been caught up in the pattern.

  The Guardian was a modular ship, built of a dozen smaller sections and over a kilometer long all told. Her energy shields were more powerful than anything else in space, capable of standing off the full firepower of a Kenmiri dreadnought.

  They were not capable of stopping a five-hundred-meter spike of ice traveling at several hundred kilometers per second.

  Henry’s attention was on the ship in response to Ihejirika’s report, in time to watch the shield slowly cave in and collapse under the impact. The meteor was slowed by the defensive bubble, but it was still traveling with enough force to collide with the Drifter capital ship.

  For a moment, Henry even dared to hope that the confusion and chaos they’d created in the meteor swarm might have managed to destroy the Guardian by pure fluke. Then plasma flared as Bandit Three’s engines flung her away from the meteor.

  She left a trail of atmosphere and debris as she moved, her shields flickering back up after a few moments, while several plasma cannon blew the meteor apart in illogical revenge.

  “Three is bleeding atmosphere but appears to be functional,” Ihejirika reported. “I had a moment of hope there.”

  “I think we all did,” Henry said. “Looks like she might be down a few turrets, too. Nature was definitely feeling helpful.”

  “She’s adjusting course and burning for open space,” Ihejirika said. “Bandit One is maneuvering to support. In case we were feeling aggressive, I suppose.”

  “I’m feeling very meek at the moment, in fact,” the captain replied. “They’re leaving?”

  “Vector is for open space,” his tactical officer confirmed. “Unsure of when they’ll turn over, but they’re headed in the direction of the original summit location.”

  Henry nodded grimly. They might be planning to sweep for escape pods to make up for time, but their main concern was clearly getting Three out of the meat grinder Raven had accidentally assembled.

  “Don’t hold your breath, people,” he told the command channel, “but fate may have just handed us a few hours I wasn’t expecting to have.”

  “Maybe not as many as it might have been, ser,” Iyotake told him, back on their private channel. “Bandit Two is still headed our way…and I make her most likely vector practically right for us.”

  Henry closed everything and exhaled a long sigh as he closed both his physical and virtual eyes. Then he opened the tactical feed to confirm Iyotake’s assessment.

  Bandit Two could still change their vector, but if they didn’t, the largest meteor on their course and their likely destination was Epsilon, Raven’s hiding place.

  The asteroid had taken two of the Guardians out of the immediate situation, but it was only four more hours until Bandit Two arrived right on top of them.

  “Well,” Henry said quietly, “then I guess it will shortly be time for O’Flannagain and I to demonstrate the UPSF’s latest starfighter technology.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “The tunnel is going to be a nightmare for everyone,” O’Flannagain said bluntly as she looked around her pilots.

  Henry sat slightly off to one side from the four regular members of the squadron. He was senior to O’Flannagain, but he wasn’t so arrogant as to assume he was better at commanding a fighter wing than she was.

  If nothing else, he’d never actually done it. After the initial Kenmiri invasion and the Red Wings campaign had wiped out ninety-five-plus percent of FighterDiv, he’d done one tour as a training officer and then transferred into the tactical track of SpaceDiv.

  He’d seen too many pilot friends die to stay in the cockpit then.

  “The area around Raven herself gives us a bit of room to maneuver,” the CAG continued. “There’s about fifteen meters of space above the cruiser. Not a lot of leeway, but more than enough for one of the Lancers, if we’re careful.

  “The problem is that we had a nice neat battlecruiser-shaped hole through the ice crust…fifteen hours ago. Scans suggest it’s refrozen down to less than five meters across at the tightest point,” she said. “That should be plenty of room, but we absolutely cannot open up the path. At minimal acceleration, the GMS drives are almost invisible.

  “Our lasers are not.”

  “Two meters of spare leeway,” Turrigan announced with a broad grin that Henry easily recognized as forced. “What’s the problem?”

  “Less than five meters,” O’Flannagain repeated. “Educate me, Turrigan, what’s the minimum bubble size for your grav-shield? The grav-shield we can’t turn off if we want GMS drives?”

  “Five meters… Oh.”

  “Gravity is almost nonexistent here,” Henry noted. “We go up the chimney on thrusters. Even now it’s only ninety meters high. We go up at one meter per second or less. We don’t need the GMS drive till we’re in space.”

  “Got it in one, skipper,” the CAG agreed. “It is going to suck. But if the job was easy, anyone could do it, and then we wouldn’t need battlecruisers.”

  Henry had to join in the shared chuckle at the joke.

  “We’re under a time limit, people,” she continued. “We go up one at a time. Colonel Wong first, myself last. Once we’re out of the meteor, we have a bit more flexibility, but we need to get the planes into space, intact, with missiles.

  “Anyone who has a problem with doing that on emergency thrusters is welcome to tell the rest of the crew they’re going to die because you lack fortitude.”

  Memories flooded back in as Henry stepped into the cockpit of the Lancer. It was entirely different, of course. The last time he’d flown a fighter, he’d been immersed in an acceleration tank at the heart of the spacecraft.

  And yet.

  The controls were still the same. The screens and internal-interface datafeeds were the same. He’d trained in a virtual simulator for each of the generations of starfighters since he’d left FighterDiv, and spent time in each starfighter on training flights, but somehow, stepping into one intending to go to war was very different.

  He strapped himself carefully into the seat, its acceleration-cushioning gel molding to his body. It was the same style of chair used on starship bridges—probably exactly the same and drawn from the same manufacturer. They hadn’t needed fighter cockpit chairs in a few generations, after all.

  More displays slid in around him as he brought the Lancer to life. Energy levels, missile status, shield status…the heat-radiation level that would betray him if it got too high.

  The engine status was missing, merged into the display for the shield. The gravity shield and the gravity maneuvering system were inextricably linked.

  He checked everything over one last time, running down a literal checklist, and then nodded silently and activated the squadron channel.

  “Raven-Eight, confirming green.”

  Status reports for the rest of the fighters rippled in over the network as his command codes gave him the same data O’Flannagain had. He was, unsurprisingly, the last pilot to check in—but only by about five seconds. That was better than he expected.

  “All right, Eight, you
’ve got the lead,” O’Flannagain’s voice told him. “I’m in Seven. Two, you go second, followed by Three, Four and Six. I’ll bring up the rear.

  “Let’s keep it nice and steady, people.”

  “Eight, this is Deck Control,” Chief Anja, the cruiser’s deck officer, said in his ear. “Are you good to go?”

  “I’m clear, Control,” Henry replied, years-old habits waking in answer to the old challenge and response. “You have the bouncing ball.”

  “I have the ball,” Anja replied. “On the bounce, Eight…and…bounce.”

  Normally, the deck’s systems would have flung him into space with a significant starting velocity. Today, he was gently tossed out the end of the deck, and he already had his thrusters firing to reduce the minuscule velocity Raven had given him.

  There was almost no space around the cruiser, and he inhaled sharply as he carefully tucked the saucer-shaped starfighter up and around his girl. From there, he could actually see the damage the hits had done.

  He had intellectually believed Song when she told him Raven was dead, but it was something else to see it. His ship was a wreck, her spine visibly bent around the impact points. A battlecruiser’s spine was supposed to be a straight line, not have a fifteen-degree turn in the middle.

  More important right now was the gap above the cruiser, the remains of the hole Raven had cut to get this deep into the meteor. The heat radiators had kept the ship sinking deeper into the block of ice, but there’d been nothing to keep that cut open.

  “Exit is eleven meters at the entry point,” he said on the squadron channel, feeding his sensor data back to the other five pilots. “Easy to get in, but we’ll see how narrow it gets.”

  The maneuver thrusters answered his commands easily, aligning the Lancer with the bottom of the chasm leading toward the surface. Half-consciously holding his breath, Henry tucked his ship into the opening.

  Slow and steady, he began his ascent. His proximity alarms blared warnings at him, but he was using the same sensors to guide his course.

  “Channel is down to seven meters,” he reported. “Continuing to shrink as I approach the surface.” He checked. “Sensors show a clear path still. But…five meters was definitely overstating it.”

  The opening at the top of the chimney wasn’t the narrowest part, if only because most of the melted material there had escaped into space. The narrowest part was ten meters below the surface, and he watched the scans carefully.

  “Narrowest part of the tunnel is three point two two meters,” he said calmly. “Watch your scanners and your alignment. This is…”

  He exhaled.

  “This is a tight fit,” he concluded. “I’m through; exiting the surface now. Bringing up the GMS and holding position.”

  Shield icons flicked from black to orange to green as he waited, his primary defense and engine coming online at the same time. Motionless, the small bubble around his starfighter would diffuse the tiny amount of heat he was giving off. Raven might be able to see the Lancer, but nothing else would.

  Grav-shielded fighters were the closest thing he’d ever seen to invisible in space. That invisibility traditionally disappeared as soon as they fired their engines, but it had still allowed the UPSF to pull off some nasty tricks in the war.

  And now the GMS let them keep that invisibility while they moved. Only at low acceleration, but that was going to be enough.

  “This is Raven-Two; I’m clear,” Lieutenant Commander Turrigan reported. “That was a snugger fit than I like, ser.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” Henry asked. “It’s fine.”

  Four more fighters rose up out of the ice after Turrigan, each of them drifting clear of the shaft and bringing up their GMS.

  “Everyone clear?” O’Flannagain finally asked. “Did we lose any sensor dishes or critical components on the way up?”

  “I think I might have frozen off some critical body parts,” one of the Lieutenants quipped.

  “Shut it, Raven-Three,” O’Flannagain ordered. “All right. We have the last location of Bandit Three from Raven’s sensors. We take it nice and easy, point three KPS-squared, people.”

  “Be vewwy, vewwy quiet,” Turrigan quipped. “We’s huntin’ Guardians.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The clouds of icy debris that Henry’s plan had left filling most of the empty space in the meteor swarm were both a blessing and a curse. They’d cover the starfighters’ movements at a distance, but as his people approached their enemy, the trails the spacecraft left in the dust would give them away.

  Assuming the Drifters looked for them. Even Henry was surprised by how small the heat signatures the other Lancers left on his sensors were. The six of them combined were putting off less heat than a single old-style fighter at the same low acceleration.

  “We are on our own for sensors now,” O’Flannagain reminded them all. “We have a loose contact on Bandit Two. Computers mark her at forty-five minutes from the edge of the meteor cluster and ninety from close contact with Raven.”

  The CAG paused for a moment.

  “If the Guardian finds Raven, she’ll kill her,” she said bluntly. “We are carrying almost all that’s left of Raven’s missiles. If we don’t take down that Guardian in the next ninety minutes, your bunks are history, folks.”

  And so was Henry’s crew. He doubted he was much more motivated than his pilots—they were good people and he trusted O’Flannagain completely—but he remained responsible for all of this.

  He was so very, very angry. A quick run-through of his screens confirmed O’Flannagain’s assessment.

  “What’s the plan, ser?” Turrigan asked. With Gaunt dead and Phạm in the medbay, Turrigan was the only Lieutenant Commander left in the squadron. He was the official second-in-command, since no one was quite sure how Henry fit into the chain of command.

  “Bandit Two is reentering the swarm through the debris cloud from the Alpha-Two charges,” O’Flannagain replied. “We’re thirty minutes from there if we’re careful. We’ll cut our accel at five hundred KPS and coast into the cloud.

  “The grav-shields will draw attention eventually, but we’ll get as close as we can.”

  “How close are you planning, CAG?” Henry asked. It wasn’t a challenge. He was out of practice at this.

  “What’s the skip range on the penetrator busses?” she asked drily.

  “It’s a half-second skip, and without a gravity line, they only carry their regular three-dimensional velocity in,” he said. He knew she knew the answer, but the other pilots might not. The old-style fighter missiles couldn’t fit shield-penetrator missiles.

  “With just the launch velocity from the disposable cells, five hundred klicks,” he concluded. “We’re not getting that close.”

  “No, we’re not,” O’Flannagain agreed. “But we’re getting as close as we can. Into laser range if they let us, people—and awful as a Guardian’s armor is, that’s still only ten thousand klicks with our onboard beamers.”

  A stunned silence filled the squadron channel, but Henry simply nodded. This wasn’t a normal operation, where the Lancers would be primarily missile platforms extending the range and firepower of their mothership.

  “This is do-or-die, people,” he reminded them. “Either we take out that Guardian or we and every member of Raven’s crew dies…and these assholes get away with blowing up the peace conference and our ambassador.

  “They don’t get away,” he said flatly. “And if that means we fly right into that Guardian’s guts and rip it apart with our lasers, that’s what we do. The missiles should cripple her. If it’s down to the knives, we’re just finishing her off.”

  He hoped. Because if it came down to trying to kill a capital ship with the lasers of six Lancers, they were doomed.

  “Target is at one hundred thousand kilometers and continuing on course,” Turrigan said calmly. “Velocity is five hundred KPS relative to the swarm, one thousand relative to us.”

  �
�Watch all threat sensors, stand by anti-radiation systems and prepare to fire,” O’Flannagain ordered.

  ARAD systems in this case were counter-targeting systems, sensors that would detect incoming sensor beams and temporarily jam them. They’d also alert the fighters when they were detected.

  They were well within missile range, and Henry could only hold his breath as the big Drifter capital ship continued on, seemingly oblivious to the six starfighters lurking amidst the chaotic debris field.

  “Passive locks suck,” Turrigan muttered. “Even at this range, we could lose missiles.”

  “No, we won’t,” O’Flannagain said with a chuckle. “Seconds count, but my sensors are ready to pulse the radar. We’ll have active targeting data.”

  Henry was silent, his focus entirely on the hostile capital ship. The other two Guardians were now at least three hours’ flight away. If they took out this Guardian, that bought them time.

  It wasn’t going to be enough—Battle Group Scorpius was still twenty-one hours away. It would be another ten hours before Rear Admiral Cheung Jian Chin even declared them overdue.

  But every trick, every victory, every game, bought them another handful of hours. One of the Guardians was damaged—probably not as much as he hoped, as the collision had almost certainly spooked the Drifter crew more than it deserved—and if they took out another, maybe…just maybe, the remaining intact ship would leave them alone.

  He didn’t buy that, though. They needed Raven to die, to cover any evidence that they had destroyed the peace conference. The Drifters hadn’t even been prepared to accept the chance that he’d doubt the Kozun had betrayed him.

  Just like, it seemed, they hadn’t been prepared to accept the chance that the UPA would become competitors or enemies. Or that the Kozun and the UPA would come to an agreement. All of this had been done to protect the Convoys—but not from a real threat. From a potential threat.

  “Sixty thousand kilometers,” Turrigan reported. “Velocity thousand-twenty-four KPS. Missile flight time twenty-five seconds.”