by B. V. Larson
What about moving the engine out of the way, or shielding it somehow? Those were vague ideas, but she had no others, and the chrono was ticking. She ran a quick calculation and said to Lorton, “If we have to sortie to meet the destroyer, we’ll need to launch within six hours, preferably sooner. Pass the word to Gurung that’s all the time they have to get Carson in some kind of fighting shape. Tell Captain Gray to meet me back at the gig. Also, hunt down that attack squadron commander. Dmitri somebody—”
“Polzin,” supplied Lorton.
“That’s the one. And that freighter captain, Gibson. And Loco and Murdock. Tell them all to meet me at the southern docking port. We’re holding a council of war.”
* * *
In the docking port’s operations room, Engels swept her eyes around the table at those she’d ordered to attend.
“Will this take long?” said Murdock. “I have work to do.”
“None of your work will matter if that destroyer wipes out our sidespace capability,” Engels said.
Murdock flapped his hands in the air and waggled his head, shaking his stringy blonde hair to fall half over his face. “That’s your problem. I need to go.”
He began to stand, but Loco put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him back into his seat. “Sit your ass down. You’re just worried Zaxby will show you up.”
“Or implement one of his crazy ideas without my approval, and I’ll have to waste double the time to undo everything,” Murdock replied.
Engels rapped on the table with her knuckles. “We need crazy ideas right now—crazy ideas that will help and actually work. Maybe I should have asked Zaxby here instead of you, Murdock, if you’re not up to it.”
He crossed his arms petulantly and stared at Engels. “Fine. What do you want me to do?”
“I need you—or someone—to come up with a way to preserve our sidespace capability against a bombardment. If we can’t, then all of our ships will have to sortie out to fight that destroyer, and I don’t much like the odds. Without Straker’s ship to help, it could to get really bloody. Our enemy is twice the size of Carson and is fresh and undamaged. I’ll lead us into battle and we’ll fight because that’s the only way to get Freiheit out, but if I do, some of us will die. I don’t feel like dying just yet. Come on, people, let’s have some ideas.”
“Can we move the southern sidespace engine? Or at least the main components?” asked Loco. “Restore it after we deal with this destroyer?”
“No,” said Murdock. “We just got that damn thing repaired and it’s jury-rigged to hell and back. If we tried to dismantle it, it might never work again. It might not even work now.”
“And I presume we can’t reorient Freiheit,” said Engels. “Fly sideways?”
Murdock snorted. “Give me a week to ten days and I could, but that means taking the spin off. These civilians couldn’t handle being weightless for that long. How would they cook food or use toilets? What would happen to the lake and all the fresh water? This thing is made to rotate. It’s a habitat, not a ship.”
“How about getting the laser defenses working?” said Loco.
“What laser defenses?” asked Murdock. “Carson wiped out the big beams in our original surprise attack when we took Freiheit. We don’t have anything to replace them. Nothing heavy enough to shoot down railgun slugs, anyway.”
“Could we deflect or block the projectiles?” asked Major Polzin.
Murdock’s eyes blanked with thought. “Possible… possible… but with what? Any loose rock on Freiheit gets flung outward by our spin. We don’t have time to capture an asteroid big enough to park it in the way as a shield.”
“Could we cut something loose?” asked Loco. “Freiheit’s two kilometers long. There has to be some chunk we could chop off and shove into the way.”
“The outside’s pretty smooth right now,” Captain Gray said. Her dark eyes were piercing and serious. “All raised peaks and like projections were shaved down before the first trip through space.”
“And besides,” Murdock said, “anything we cut will weaken the structure itself. We’re already at minimum spin for things to work properly—air circulation, liquid flows and so on. I mentioned the lake: that’s a million tons of fresh water. If it isn’t held in its bed by spin-gravity, it could unbalance us and tear us apart anyway. I’ll say this again: Freiheit isn’t a warship. It’s fragile. It’s not even designed to fly around this much. It could come apart under any severe strain.”
Captain Gibson raised his hand slowly while staring at the table. “What about blocking with a ship?”
“Better,” said Murdock. “Ships are designed to take a pummeling. They can be reinforced with structural and defensive fields and they can be maneuvered when an impact knocks them out of position.”
“A freighter isn’t designed for that,” Gibson went on, still not meeting anyone’s eyes, until he slowly lifted them toward Captain Gray.
“Oh, wait just a damn minute,” said Gray. “Carson’s already suffered enough. Now you want to turn her into a… a…” She sputtered to a halt.
“A shield. A hulk,” said Engels gently. “Ellen, it makes sense. Carson’s our largest warship. With full reinforcement, her hull and armor can stand multiple railgun strikes. A minimum crew can keep her in place to block any bombardment.”
“I’d much rather sortie into battle with a full crew than stand there like some idiotic ring fighter taking a pummeling,” Gray snapped.
“And if we do all sortie, and even one missile slips past us?” said Engels.
“Straker’s going to be late to the party anyway. He can stay back and intercept it.”
“His ship isn’t made for missile defense. It has one laser and one missile tube, and no armor.”
“Then we can set up a defense in depth! Create a gauntlet to kill any missiles. Come on, Carla, we’re just talking tactics now. Don’t make me sacrifice my ship.”
Engels shook her head slowly. “Any defense in depth against missiles leaking through would reduce our attack. And if even one missile or one heavy railgun shot made it past us, it will all be for nothing.”
Polzin stood. “Actually, Captains… With due respect, I believe we must take both paths.” He nodded to Gray. “Captain Gray should play goalkeeper in Carson. The rest of us must sortie to engage the enemy.”
“We can’t beat that destroyer,” said Engels.
“It’s unlikely, but we can keep her off balance. We want to force her to deal with us instead of launching high-precision shots at the station. Bombarding Freiheit while under attack herself will be far less effective. At extreme range, she may not even be able to target the sidespace engine. She will have to move in closer, and that means she will have to fight us.”
“How long will we have to keep this up, Frank?” asked Gray as she turned to Murdock. “How much time do we have to buy?”
Murdock squirmed. “From extreme engagement range? Two more days, plus. Call it fifty-six hours from now. And we’ll only get one chance at transit. This habitat runs mostly on solar power. The farther out we go from the primary, the less we have. I’m keeping the batteries full, but attempting sidespace insertion will drain them, succeed or fail. So I can’t push the button early. I have to be sure we’re going to make it.”
Engels turned to Gray. “Captain Gray, Major Polzin’s right. We have to do both, whatever the cost. We’ll sortie and keep the enemy busy, maybe so busy you won’t even get hit. Straker will follow up and join the battle when he can. Maybe he will be able to sneak up on the destroyer and take it out if we give him the time. Meanwhile, you’ll have to prep Carson for goalkeeper duty. Murdock, I need you to pull some people off Freiheit and help Captain Gray turn Carson into a defensive monster.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” he asked.
“You’re the brainiac!” Engels replied. “You figure it out. Put Zaxby and his Ruxins on it. That will get them out of your greasy hair. Maybe one of his crazy ideas will do the trick.” She c
lapped her hands. “Get working, everyone.”
“What can I do?” said Gibson.
Engels considered. What was the freighter good for? Carrying things… or people. “How many civilians can you pack in for evacuation?”
“About six hundred, but only for three days. After that, environmental systems will be overwhelmed. Fewer aboard, longer time.”
“I’ll send the nav data you’ll need to reach our hidden base. Figure out how many you can actually take given the time in transit. Work with Mayor Weinberg to prep an evacuation plan for children, nursing mothers and so on. Let her choose who goes. If worse comes to worst… you have to get them away. There are friendly Ruxins at the other end. They should give you asylum.” Engels shrugged. “It’s better than dying or getting enslaved by the Mutuality.”
“I wish my crew and I could do more,” said Gibson. “We’re not warriors, though.”
“We all have to play our parts. Yours is to save lives. I think we’ll all feel better knowing our most vulnerable are out of harm’s way. Dismissed.” Engels grabbed Loco’s elbow before he departed. “How’s everything going here?”
Loco gave her a bleak look. “Could be better. The locals are scared shitless. There’s lots of rumors. They also keep demanding we hang the rest of the Unmutual personnel. I’ve had to keep all of the Breaker infantry camped around the brig. That kid Karst wants to defect and join us, by the way. Can we trust him?”
Engels shrugged. “I don’t know. He said he was being blackmailed to pilot the mechsuit, but he did attack our infantry. Probably killed several of them before Derek took him out.”
Loco shrugged. “I’ll handle things here. You go out and kill that destroyer. Do some of that fancy pilot shit you always brag about. Wish I could help, but me and my one functioning mechsuit are better on site, keeping order.”
“Damn, Loco, you’re sounding almost responsible for once in your life.”
“Tell you what, Carly. I’ll act more responsible if you act more fun. Deal?” He held out his hand.
“Deal.” She reached for Loco’s hand, and then retargeted to tweak his nose. “Gotcha.”
A smile spread over his face. “You’re learning. See you later, Carly-car.”
“Get your ass out of here, Lieutenant Paloco.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
Engels watched him swagger off and felt her spirits lifted in spite of herself. Maybe there was more to the little clown than met the eye. They used to say at Academy that good leaders rose to the challenges they had to face. Perhaps Loco had simply never been challenged before.
Captain Gray broke that reverie by clearing her throat from somewhere behind. “Let’s go, Carla. I have a lot of work to do and you’re my ride.”
Engels nodded and began to stride toward the docking port hangar. “Too bad nobody ever came up with some kind of personal teleportation, like on the showvids.”
“Lots of fictional concepts have turned out to be impossible,” said Gray as they walked. “No sensors from sidespace, no faster-than-light communications, no self-aware AI…”
Engels nodded. “And no force fields. At least, none that don’t have to be conducted through a material, like armor.”
“Maybe not all of it’s impossible. The Ruxins came up with underspace ships when nobody else did.”
“True. Maybe they’ll think of something else, now that…” Engels caught herself again before she spoke more about operational details of the Starfish Nebula base. She had to remind herself that Ellen Gray might not be her ally forever.
“What?”
“Never mind. Classified.”
They boarded the gig and soon returned to Liberator, Carson still attached. Gray immediately resumed work on repairing her ship.
A few minutes later, Zaxby comlinked in to ask that Carson dock with Freiheit, the better to work on fortifying her as a shield. Engels decided to detach Liberator. The idea of having no warship ready in space made her nervous.
With Carson docked and most of Liberator’s crew helping to repair her, Engels left the bridge in the care of a watch officer and forced herself to catch a couple hours of rack time.
She’d need to be sharp for the upcoming battle.
Chapter 42
Aboard Liberator, preparing for battle.
“Engels to Polzin,” Engels comlinked when she returned to Liberator’s bridge.
“Polzin here.”
“Major, we’re less than an hour from sortie launch. I need you and your squadron to mount up.”
“Understood. We’ll join you shortly.”
Next, she ordered Gurung and the absent crew to rejoin Liberator. To save time, she brought the ship in to dock and took them directly off. Fifteen minutes later she was back in space, ready to go.
Five minutes after, the dozen ships of the attack squadron rounded Freiheit from their docking at the northern port. The slim vessels resembled four-bladed arrowheads. If they were smaller, they might have been called fighters, but at longer than fifty meters and massing less than a hundred tons, they were actually the smallest ship where a pilot was needed. Any tinier craft were normally unmanned, short-range drones needing a mothership and a combination of remote and semi-AI control.
All twelve of the attack ships put together massed less than her corvette, which was two ship-classes smaller than the enemy destroyer. At best, they had a quarter of their opponent’s combat power. Of course, the fact that she had a shipkiller missile launcher made Liberator a genuine threat to any ship—even though big missiles seldom reached their targets. Just forcing those targets to run from them, or to shoot the missiles down was plenty of leverage in the thick of battle.
That’s what makes the Archer so dangerous, Engels mused. The ability to get a nuclear warhead inside a target’s defensive suite was key. The trick, as always, was not in the concept, but in the execution.
Her comlink beeped with an incoming transmission. “Attack One here. Major Polzin, commanding First Attack Squadron, reports as ordered.”
Engels set course and eased her throttles forward. “Spread out and follow me.”
It would take more than five hours to reach the intercept position, which was only a guess at the destroyer’s maximum likely range. In reality, the enemy could lob railgun bullets at any time, but the odds of hitting even a stationary target shrank to near zero beyond a certain distance.
And this guesstimated location was far too imprecise to vector Straker toward it in his ship. If there were to be any chance of Revenge making an underspace run, the destroyer would have to remain on course and not maneuver.
Engels had only a vague idea of how to accomplish this feat. The problem was, Straker was three hours’ travel time behind her. That meant keeping the destroyer busy for three hours.
But as soon as Engels stopped harassing the enemy and let them cease their according evasive maneuvers, the destroyer would be free to lob shots at Freiheit. She had about four hours to play with the corvette’s battle simulation to see if she could come up with a solution.
* * *
Four hours later, Engels brought Polzin and the rest of the attack squadron pilots into her comlink and recorded the discussion for repeat transmission back to Straker for his information. The lag back to him was down to less than ten minutes, but that still precluded true conversation.
“I’ve run a bunch of battle simulations,” she said. “We’re going to have to let them fire the first shot. Then we engage.”
“Why?” asked Polzin.
“We don’t really know how far away they intend to start shooting. We also don’t know how accurate they are. It’s to our advantage to let them come as close as possible, because every kilometer and every second brings Revenge nearer to arriving, and that’s what’s likely to win this battle.”
“So we hang back.”
“Yes, we wait until they feel they are close enough to take a shot. Carson can absorb at least one round, probably more like seven or eight, befor
e she’s wrecked.”
“I don’t like waiting,” said Polzin. “We’re attack ships, not sitting-on-our-asses ships.”
“You’ll do as I say. This is a chess match, not a brawl.”
“Ah. Very well. We Russians understand chess.”
She vaguely remembered the name from history classes. “Russians? What’s a Russian? Any similarity to a Ruxin?”
“No. I am Russian. Russians are my ancestors. From Old Earth. Yours were likely Germanic, with a name like Engels. It means angel, something like that.”
“Angel. I like that. Warrior angels have wings and swords.”
Engels wondered what it might be like to have ancestors, some kind of tribe or ethnic group or family. The only equivalent she’d ever experienced was the camaraderie of Academy, and later the Fleet. She’d left all that behind now.
Now she had only the Breakers. She envied Polzin his Russians.
“So, we let them play the white pieces,” continued Polzin.
“White pieces?”
“You said it was a chess match. White makes the first move.”
“Ah.” Engels smiled. “Yes. You’re the pawns, I’m sorry to say, and I’m a bishop at best. Straker is a knight, able only to make short-range but off-center attacks. Carson is our rook, protecting our king, which is Freiheit.”
“That would make the destroyer a queen, powerful and long-ranged.”
“But unlike chess, one attack does not necessarily equal one kill. Except, perhaps, for our knight, or a shipkiller missile.”
Polzin laughed. “That is true. The situation is complex. Yet the pawns must play their role.”
“As must the bishop.” Engels thought for a moment. “I wish I could talk to the enemy. Persuade them to run.”
“They are Mutuality Fleet regulars, which means they are crewed by loyalists and by Hok. They will not turn.”
Engels’ ears pricked up. “Are there ships not crewed by Hok and regulars?”