by David Drake
Major Kincaid stared at his two subordinates for several seconds, then drew in a slow, deep breath. “Captain Piper, when I think about the drivel you have just spewed up I find myself wondering whether it’s really Prescott and not you, sir, who should be waiting for the medical board’s findings. Both of you are dismissed.”
The two officers saluted, about-faced smartly, and got out of the office before one or both blew up just as thoroughly as Prescott had done. “The Old Man,” said Piper disgustedly, “he doesn’t want to be,” he cleared his throat to give the mock headline its full value, “’the Squadron Commander who Destroyed the League’s Favorite Hero.’ “
“If he doesn’t do something with Johnny, that’s what he’ll be anyway.” Dave Westley shrugged. “It’s the uselessness that festers. I know Johnny Prescott well enough to see that much. Bring him back or let him go, but don’t keep him standing on the trap with the noose around his neck. “
“If he was sent up against the Gerin tomorrow, would you go with him?”
“Bloody right I would!”
“They you’re as mad as he is. Because I wouldn’t. Prescott’s a corpse looking for a funeral, and I’d as soon send flowers long-distance.”
“Very funny, Jochen. Abso-bloody-lutely hilarious.”
“Quite so. I thought you’d get the joke.” Except that neither Piper nor Westley was smiling.
* * *
Kincaid finished his mission briefing and managed to look uncomfortable rather than just unpleasant. “Deep-interdiction strike tasking is invariably hazardous, gentlemen,” he said. “Each squadron taking part will be supported during its attack by full ECM backup centered on their individual carrier cruiser, but be advised that this Gerin globeship is command-level. In order to create sufficiently divergent approach vectors to confuse the Gerin defenses, all five squadrons involved in the mission will need to field every available pilot. This therefore includes Captain Prescott.”
The subdued but definite cheer that murmured through the briefing hall was evidently something he had neither expected nor approved of, but there was little enough that Kincaid could do about it that would not make him look and sound foolish. “Sir,” said an anonymous voice from the back of the room, “does that mean Johnny’s been reinstated?”
The commander didn’t try to find out the source of the question. Instead, he simply shrugged. “Recall what I said. It means only that he qualifies as an available pilot, since no evidence has so far been received to indicate the contrary. I would remind you all that the destruction of this command globe deep within what the enemy consider inviolable space is of paramount importance, both strategically and in connection with morale. To this end I am prepared to set aside rumor and innuendo, and I trust that the members of this squadron will do the same.”
He reached down to shut off the holoprojector that had been displaying nav and target coordinates, then swept his gaze across the eager, nervous, wary faces. “217’s carrier cruiser for this mission will be LCC-1864 Frank Luke Jr. If it’s of interest to you, considering the object of the mission, I understand that Frank Luke Jr. was a famous balloon buster in the First Flying War. Preflight in eight hours, scramble in ten. Dismissed.”
They were already deep into Gerin-held space when they finally left the Luke and dispersed into attack formation alongside the fighters of the other four squadrons; space so deep and quiet that not a single threat receptor in the whole task force registered so much as a molecule of stellar hydrogen out of its supposed place. That was what Dave Westley claimed, at any rate. On a slightly less exaggerated level, there was no sign of the expected Gerin perimeter-patrol vessels, and no emission trail to even suggest that they had been through the sector before the League interdictors warped down onto station.
“Military intelligence,” said Westley, as if announcing the punch line of an old joke. “No matter when, no matter where, a contradiction in terms.” At which, on perfect cue, the proximity alert went off.
They had taken the Gerin globeship by surprise. That didn’t mean the sushi in it were presliced and needing only some wasabi; far from it. The huge command vessel launched a swarm of single-seaters that outnumbered the League fighters by at least four to one. “Hey-ho, the usual odds,” said someone on comm channel D in a voice that feigned boredom, or used it to cover a less easily admitted emotion. “Why can’t they vary it once in a while, just to be different?”
Only a matter of seconds later, the first League ship and the first Gerin fighter erupted in fire and fragments as each vessel’s plasma torpedo slammed into its opposite number in an orgy of mutual destruction. There were no stylish tactics about the first part of the combat, just a long-range slugging match with torpedoes as each side tried to obliterate the other while sides could still be seen as being different.
There were few enough tactics about the second part, at that: a frenzied whirl of ships, trying to break through or trying to prevent a breakthrough, while on the far sides of the sprawling dogfight the ominous bulk of the command globe and the carrier cruisers maneuvered for the single massive killing shot that such leviathans directed at one another.
Dave Westley had intended that he would spare at least some of his attention for Johnny, but it was a vain hope. All of his concentration and all of his time were reserved for Red Two’s defensive countermeasures: electronic, chaff, flares, and antilaser particulation. He just had to hope that Prescott was justifying the trust placed in him and in his reputation by an entire squadron. No: by an entire task force.
It seemed that he was. At least, he rather than Sanjit Singh, the co, was piloting the ship, and Red Two was still intact, against all the odds that said both the fighter and its crew should have been a drift of dust and ashes long ago. More than that, if Johnny kept flying the way he had done up to now, they looked likely to be the first, or the only, League fighter to break free of the dogfight and out into clear space. Somewhere ahead of them, beyond the Gerin defensive screen, was the command globeship, and once they got through they would have a clear shot with the battery of plasma torps that crammed the weapons bay in Red Two’s belly.
Make that if they got through....
Dave’s head jerked up from his control board, and he slapped the side of his helmet, hoping that it would clear away whatever sound interference had begun to clutter his headset. Instead, it increased in volume, and an apprehensive chill crawled down his spine as the background mutter became recognizable as the human voice it had been all along.
Something made Dave glance at the local-area nav monitor, and what he saw there made his face turn putty-pale. Except for the erratic curves of evasive maneuvers, Buckshot Red Two was steering an almost straight course through the tangle of opposing fighters. And once beyond the dogfight, the vector projection was unmistakable. Not an attack course on the globeship, but a collision....
“Johnny,” said Dave carefully, “what goes on?” The low mumbling stopped, interrupted by a deep, sad sigh. “You’re doing bloody well, Johnny-but are you all right?”
“Fine.” There was another sigh, and a sound like a choked-off sob. “I’m all right. Everything’ll be all right soon.... “
Oh shit! thought Dave after another glance at the projection visor. His fists closed, and if he hadn’t been suited up, his nails would have dug into his palms deeply enough to draw blood. “And what about us, Johnny? What about Sanjit an’ me?”
“You’re getting all the choice I got,” said Prescott, infinitely sad. “I’m sorry, Dave, Sanjit, but it’s the only way for me.”
“Johnny, I’m scared....”
“I’ve been scared for years, but they wouldn’t let me talk about it like you just did. They wouldn’t let me say my own bloody words, Dave. I had to hide behind the medals, and I’ve been there so long I can’t come out again.”
“Then let us eject, Johnny. At least let us get out.”
; “I can’t. People would wonder. They’d talk. All I’ve got’s my rep, Dave. That’s the only thing I can leave behi—”
The sentence broke in a grunt, because all the time he had been talking Dave had been working his way forward from the nav station, and now he wrapped one forearm around Prescott’s throat and wrenched him backward with all his strength. It should have worked, and it almost did work-except that they were in deep space and zero gee; except that they were both suited so that the attack looked like teddy bears wrestling; and except that Prescott was combat-strapped into his seat. All that leverage went only into flipping Dave off his feet in the opposite direction to the one in which Johnny Prescott should have gone, and when Dave regained something like equilibrium he found himself looking at Johnny, up now and out of his seat, and at the broad razor-edged blade of an issue combat knife. Issued for the express purpose of opening up a suit, and then its occupant if hard vacuum or hostile atmosphere hadn’t done the job already.
“Captain Prescott,” said Sanjit Singh quietly, “put down the knife and fly the ship.” Prescott waved the knife at him as well.
“Look, this is your chance to be heroes as well,” he said, quite reasonably for all that his voice was trembling. “And you won’t have to be scared for anything like as long as I was....”
Sanjit didn’t grab for the knife hand; instead the Sikh copilot chopped the edge of his own hand down hard on Prescott’s wrist, and suited or not, there was enough force riding on the blow to send the weapon spinning somewhere to the rear of Red Two’s crew compartment.
Then the attack alarm screeched, and without letting him think about any of the other things that had seemed so important an instant ago, Johnny’s combat-ingrained reflexes swung him back to the control console to throw Red Two into an evasive corkscrew break. And an instant later, the degraded remnants of an off-target Gerin beamer punched through the side of the ship, and through the side of the flight deck, and through Johnny Prescott’s side as well, just as he began to grin that old grin at a fine piece of flying.
Johnny didn’t stop grinning, not for an instant. He just stopped breathing. And being scared.
Sanjit Singh rammed his open hands into the auxiliary gauntlets and took Red Two into a combat-evasive sequence that skimmed the fine line between inspiration and insanity. The damage-control boards became a single scarlet constellation of stress-violation lights before he eased up on the pressure for an instant and snapped, “Stand by on torpedoes!”
Dave suspected that the Sikh’s spatial awareness was the result of some special arrangement between crazy fighter pilots and the more violently inclined of the old North Indian gods, because without recourse to lock-ons or targeting predictors, Singh had put Red Two into a near-textbook firing position—although Johnny Prescott’s attempt at immolation had done a lot to bring them in this close. Fingers spread wide, Westley’s gloved hand came down on the fire controllers, and the fighter shuddered as she lost ten tons of weight in a ripple of fire that lasted half that many seconds.
The globeship didn’t shudder at all. It became a small, localized sun that flared and faded in the time it took Red Two to curve back toward the safety of the Frank Luke Jr.’s hull. None of the remaining Gerin tried to attack them as they went; instead, shorn of their deep-space support vessel, the sushi conserved what energy and air they had and broke off the engagement, heading for some safe haven, somewhere, anywhere, so long as it was far away from the Leaguer ship that wasn’t scared of anything....
* * *
Major Nakashima sat for a long time, very still and very silent, lost in his own thoughts. Somebody broke into the silence, a soft voice, unsure that what it was saying was right, or wrong, or even if the valuations made sense any more. “Sir, Prescott was a coward. He killed himself, near enough, and tried to take his ship and his whole crew with him. The old man doesn’t know. Maybe he should be told.”
“Why? What good would it do now?”
“Because it’s the truth, sir.”
“Have you any idea of how far the truth can go in wartime?” Nakashima held up both his hands, index fingers out and separated by the thickness of a mapping stylus. Then he pressed them tightly together and said... “Not that much. Maybe his father should be told. Maybe everybody should be told. So somebody should tell them. But that somebody will not be me. What about you?”
The pilots and crewmen of 217 Squadron looked abashed, and neither spoke nor met their commander’s eyes.
“Good,” said Yevgeny Nakashima after a few uneasy seconds. “Even after so short a time, I know my squadron—and I’m glad my guess is right.” The major looked up, then stood up. “Gentlemen, our guest is back. Entertain him. And—” his hand sketched the briefest of salutes, then removed his cap as he came back off duty—”thank you. All of you. I have been ... honored.”
* * *
He left the fleet field at Skandurby on a gray winter’s day when the rain was slanting down from a sky the color of ancient lead, but he walked toward the waiting shuttle with his head held high, as if the chill of the falling rain were a benediction. He was just a little man, with thinning hair, and proud eyes, and a dead son.
But a son who had died a hero.
THE NEXT months were a period of outright terror on most of the worlds in the Far Stars region. Slowly, the planets began to band together for mutual defense. There was little thought of revenge, much less of liberating those planets enslaved by the Gerin. Even then, jealousies and man’s stubborn independence interfered constantly with those more altruistic motives. Chu Lee MacDonald found himself a revered hero, the only man to have “defeated” the Gerin. The “admiral” quickly found that politics took precedence over even military decisions as he warned of the Gerin threat. The films taken by the survivors tended to guarantee a near-total effort.
With all the zeal of a prophet, Mac preached his gospel of unity and revenge. On other levels he fought to gather the diverse defense forces of every world into an effective human fleet. Since this meant the defenders of each planet had to leave their homeworlds virtually defenseless, few would consent to his plan. Still each world bowed to his fervor and contributed a few ships, until Mac commanded a force of over a hundred ships and twice that number of fighters based on converted freighters.
The first resurgence of the Gerin offensive came at Gemini. Here the home fleet was able to stop the first attack, even allowing time for the evacuation of the planet’s main satellite. This also bought time for Mac to lead his ships to the system. When he arrived, Mac observed that the attack on the planet had been renewed. Over three hundred Gerin ships had pressed the eighty remaining Gemini ships back to the fringes of their planet’s atmosphere. In an effort to trap the remaining defenders, the attacking fleet was formed into half of a globe. The open end faced the planet, and this allowed every ship in the Gerin fleet to concentrate its fire on the shields of the defenders.
Without hesitation the Castleman’s commander threw his forces at high acceleration against the rear of the Gerin formation. Passing along the outside of the globe, the human ships themselves formed a much thinner half globe. Suddenly the Gerin found themselves trapped between the planet and Mac’s fleet. Minutes later, Gemini launched every planet-based missile, and her fleet counterattacked. The Gerin broke, their formation splintering with all command control lost. Nearly half were blasted before they could find escape in FTL space.
Following this victory the entire Gemini fleet placed itself under Mac’s command. With his newfound prestige and credibility, Admiral MacDonald began uniting the human worlds. Everywhere, men began to find new ways to slow or even defeat the numerous Gerin fleets menacing their systems.
THE YEOMAN entered Commander Darfur’s office, stood to attention, saluted. He had a yellow flimsy in his hand.
“Is that what I think it is?” Commander Malang Darfur asked.
The yeoman hesitated.
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“Go ahead and tell me. I know you’ve read it.”
“Evacuation order, sir,” the yeoman said. “Back to Point Brave.” The relief was evident on the yeoman’s face as he handed Darfur the paper.
Commander Darfur read the evacuation order with mixed feelings. On the one hand, he was relieved that his small group of people and their solitary cruiser Cochise were being withdrawn from their lonely duty on Alicia. They were dangerously exposed on this worthless little world of mixed human and alien peoples. Despite the fact that they were technically allies of earth, the Alicians had not been especially friendly to Darfur and his men. Earth was growing unsure of the value of its alliances with the worlds on the periphery of the great struggle.
Darfur was the youngest man in the Point Bravo sector to command a cruiser. He had been merely one more fighter pilot when the war began. The little ships had needed a lot of officers to man them. They were often Earth’s first line of defense. Darfur had gotten his break when he had been on picket duty out past Lohengrin’s Star. After a long and unexciting tour of duty, he had been ready to turn for home when he got a signal on his warning system. He looked down at the controls. Yep, enemy action taking place nearby. He could run home and get reinforcements. Or he could try to do something about it now.
Then a globeship appeared, popping down from FTL space. Almost instinctively, Darfur had put his ship in a position that left the sun of the local system behind him. From here he had a moment to look over the enemy. The mother ship, a huge globe, had released two little fighters, short stubby affairs equipped with plasma torpedoes.