Maelstrom Strand

by Rick Partlow

  “It’s suicide.” He hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, but he saw Kammy’s eyes flash his way. There was annoyance in them, anger, but it melted away when the big man saw where he was looking. There was pain in the captain’s eyes, but he kept his demeanor calm and firm.

  “Bergh,” Kammy ordered, “lose those missiles.”

  Another shudder, a distant hit from a laser.

  “Damn it,” Bergh muttered, uncharacteristically. “Every time they hit us, we lose ground.”

  A jolt, closer this time, from the nearer of the two Starkad ships. Terrin clenched his jaw, checking the readouts.

  “Fifty percent field propagation,” he said, feeling a tightness in his gut as the field closed in around them. “If we get hit again like that, it’s going to collapse.”

  “Get us moving, Bergh,” Kammy said. It was obvious he was trying to be calm, trying to be in what Terrin had come to think of as his “captain mode,” but he leaned forward in his chair, his fists clenched, tension pulling at the sides of his broad face.

  “The more strain we put on the drive field, the longer it takes to repropagate,” Terrin told him, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt. “We’re going as fast as the field will let us go.”

  “Which isn’t fast enough to keep ahead of those damned missiles,” Tara informed them.

  The red arrowhead icons were gaining on them, slowly but surely, as inexorable and unstoppable as death.

  “Cruisers three and four are taking a twenty-five-degree angle on us,” Tara warned. “At this rate, they’ll be in position to hit us again in thirty seconds. And those missiles will be on us faster than that.”

  “Helm control to tactical,” Kammy ordered sharply. “Tara, spin us and target the missiles. Try to keep them between us and the cruisers.”

  Terrin wanted to scream at him not to turn, not to stop accelerating away from the lasers, but there was no right answer and the missiles would kill them faster. If they could keep the missiles in the firing arc of the Starkad cruisers, the enemy wouldn’t be able to fire the lasers at them without destroying their own ship-killers. This was why he was a scientist and not a military officer.

  He forced himself to look away from the ship-killers, back at the Ambrose Light and the Avenger. The Ambrose Light was coming apart, her nose sheering off in a flash of igniting oxygen, but she was close now, so very close…

  The mines launched from her hangar bay, rigged on short-range rocket engines, tiny red fireflies swarming out into the path of the Starkad cruiser, unavoidable, far too close for countermeasures, only a hundred kilometers away. Fusion explosions in space were white globes. He’d seen them before, sometimes from far too close, but this was like nothing else he’d experienced. Dozens of white spheres sprang up so close together they were a solid wall, eating away at the hull of the Supremacy warship, stripping its armor away, each opening up holes for the next. The maneuvering rockets at the nose of the cruiser blew in yellow and red flares of solid fuel, sending bits of wreckage spinning away, leaving the ship impossible to steer.

  And the Ambrose Light was still boosting.

  She had to have been travelling at hundreds of meters per second when she struck the damaged nose of the Supremacy ship. Their forms merged, the rounded oblong of the cruiser, pragmatic and ungainly, and the iron wedge of an axe-head as big as a mountain, briefly forming something new and monstrous. Until the reactors blew and a new star shone in the system, lighting up the night side of Revelation.

  Grant Theon, that had been the man’s name, the captain of the Ambrose Light.

  There was no gasp, no exclamation on the bridge, not even from Terrin. By then, he’d known. He knew what was going to happen to all of them.

  “Firing main gun.”

  One of the ship-killers winked out of existence and the seconds began to tick away again, the others still creeping closer. They were wolves surrounding a hiker deep in the woods, a man of an old Earth who had only an ancient muzzle loader for a weapon. Except these wolves were machines who wouldn’t be scared off, wouldn’t shirk from taking the losses, trying to get him before he reloaded.

  On the tactical screen, Captain Nance’s ship, the Avenger disappeared behind a supernova flash of fusing hydrogen and all her telemetry disappeared from the IFF display.

  “Dammit, Shelly,” Tara hissed, her voice breaking. She shook her shoulders as if she was trying to bring herself back to the job at hand. “We’ve lost the Avenger. Cruiser five is intact but showing signs of structural damage on thermal. She’s not launching drop-ships yet.”

  “Drive field strength is rising again,” Terrin said. “Sixty-three percent now. If we can keep those lasers off of us for a couple more minutes, we should be back to full strength.”

  “The missiles will kill us before that,” Kammy told him. “Bergh, cut the drive to bleed off our momentum, then take us south thirty degrees on the Y axis and lose those damn things. Bring us back up to reengage.”

  Smart. The missiles were full involved, accelerating at twenty-five gravities for the last few minutes. With the drive field weakened, the Shakak couldn’t outrun them straight ahead, but the missiles were restrained by Newtonian physics and the ship wasn’t. It would take them an hour to decelerate and then accelerate again and, by then, the battle would be over.

  The downside, of course, being…

  “Cruisers three and four are re-orienting,” Tara warned. He could see the Starkad ships maneuvering. Their captains were playing it smart, not burning after the Shakak, knowing she couldn’t move too far from Revelation, that she’d have to come back to try to keep them from landing troops. “Firing more ship-killers. Four missiles launched.”

  Damn it, how many of those things did they have?

  “Helm control to Tactical. Target cruiser four and fire.”

  Terrin knew. He knew deep inside his gut it wasn’t going to work this time. There were too many of them and they had the Shakak right where they wanted her. When the lasers hit this time, the field instability threw him against his harness so hard he nearly separated a shoulder, snapping his head forward and then back hard into the seat. Pain exploded behind his temples.

  Someone cursed aloud and the lights dimmed on the bridge. The stress snapped a power junction. Mithra knows what else it broke.

  “Damage report!” The voice was Kammy’s but Terrin’s vision was swimming and he couldn’t quite focus on the man.

  Well, I might have a concussion, he thought but kept to himself.

  Damage control was crewed by an NCO, Petty Officer Stout, one of Franny’s crew. Franny was in the auxiliary control room, the backup for him, and he wished she were here. He wanted to be able to say goodbye.

  “We have power failures to all auxiliary systems,” Stout said. “The conduits we set up when we redesigned the interior have mostly failed.”

  Terrin forced his eyes to focus on the display in front of him, knowing Kammy would be counting on him.

  “Drive field at thirty percent and falling.” It hurt to say the words, and not just because it meant they were going to die. His head and neck were one giant mass of pain and the only reason he wasn’t holding his head in his hands was because of the agony in his right shoulder.

  “Bergh, get us out of here.” Kammy’s voice was strained, beyond the limits of his ability to hide the fear or stress or whatever it was he was feeling. “Get us off the course of those missiles.”

  And then a star went supernova.

  At least that was how it seemed when the main screen whited out, when the bridge flickered and went black. Something punched Terrin in the gut and twisted him around, shaking his brain just a little more inside his skull. Feeling washed out of his body, leaving him tingling and numb, as if every nerve had shorted out and had to reboot.

  He was floating. He didn’t realize it at first, thought the falling sensation in his gut was from the concussion or the pain or maybe nausea from his injuries, but then he saw debris floating a
cross the bridge, past the flickering static of the displays they’d installed, bits of dust and small, red globules he knew from experience were blood. The main holographic screen slowly revived itself, a testament to the technological prowess of an empire long dead.

  Just like us.

  Kammy was lolling, his head limp and bobbing with his breath, blood leaking in a slow but steady stream from a cut across his forehead, his eyes shut. Bergh was shaking himself, hands gripping the sides of his console as if he thought he were about to float away despite his restraints. Tara didn’t seem outwardly injured, but her eyes were out of focus and she moaned softly, hands pressing at the sides of her head.

  “What happened?” he croaked. No one else was asking and he was honestly curious. The lasers hadn’t done this. The only thing that could have brought down the field that quickly and violently was…

  And then he knew. The Starkad bastards had set the ship-killers off all at once, right at the limits of the drive field. The focused energy had overloaded it without killing them. His displays were dead. They’d been part of the refit and hadn’t survived the stress.

  “Why are we still alive?” he wondered after no one tried to answer his first question. “Why haven’t they finished us off?”

  This time, his words seemed to penetrate the fog over Tara Gerard’s mind, and she looked straight at him, a deep sadness in her eyes.

  “They know we’re helpless,” she said. “And they know this ship is full of priceless Imperial tech. They don’t want to destroy us…they’re going to board us.”

  22

  We have drop-ships inbound.” Katy heard the words over the cockpit speakers but couldn’t identify the voice. Someone from the mercenary tech crew in the operations room watching the orbital sensors. “All…” They trailed off and had to start again. “All Wholesale Slaughter ships are out of the fight. The Avenger and Ambrose Light are destroyed. Shakak is drifting outside lunar orbit.”

  Her stomach twisted, more nausea than she’d felt in years of zero gravity and crushing acceleration. Shelly Nance was dead, and Terrin and Franny and the others on the Shakak might be. Even if they weren’t, they were helpless and vulnerable.

  “Fuck,” Acosta said fervently, and she thought for a moment the man had feelings until he kept talking and ruined it. “We’ve completely lost our space cover.”

  “Two Starkad cruisers are completely destroyed.” Well, here comes the good news of the old good news-bad news joke. The voice from the base in Revelation City sounded firmer, more resolved. “One is damaged and unpowered, drifting in high orbit. We have thermal blooming from her hangar bays, and she hasn’t launched. The other three cruisers have launched drop-ships and assault shuttles. ETA is five minutes.”

  She said nothing for a moment, the cockpit silent but for the roaring of the atmospheric jets taking them higher into the atmosphere, out of daylight blue and into star-filled black, towards their fate. The wedding ring seemed to weigh down her left hand, unfamiliar but not unwelcome, reminding her of what she was fighting for.

  “All Assault elements, this is Assault One.”

  Usually, in combat with the people she knew, the people she’d trained with, none of them bothered with call signs. They were playing mercenary and mercs didn’t tend to use them, just called each other by name. But these pilots were fairly new to her and she hadn’t wanted to take the chance of calling the wrong name in the heat of battle. Besides, it didn’t do any harm to remind the guns-for-hire they were officially part of a real military force now.

  “We have nine drop-ships inbound and six assault shuttles. Assault One and Two will engage the enemy assault shuttles.” That was her and Lt. Duane, the only two real assault shuttles in their arsenal. The rest of her squadron were civilian landers upgraded with weapons and jury-rigged armor. “All other Assault elements will target the drop-ships. Do not let them get through. Every ship you take out saves lives on the ground, your friends’ lives.” She bared her teeth, putting a bit of venom into her tone. “You know what Starkad Navy crews think of mercenary gunship pilots? They say you’re the dregs, worthless, with no real air-to-air combat experience, only good for strafing ground targets. What do you say, Wholesale Slaughter, are you going to prove them wrong today?”

  “You bet your ass we are!”

  “Damned right!”

  She grinned. The targeting screen was lighting up with red icons burning down from orbit.

  “Don’t tell me, tell them. All Assault elements, break and engage.” She switched to a private frequency with Duane and her voice lost some of its bravado. “John,” she said, calling him by his first name, which she almost never did, “the goal is to keep their gunships busy. Don’t get decisively engaged if you can help it. Hit and run, you got me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lt Duane sounded ready, his voice even and unemotional, trying to imitate the combat pilot ideal. “See you on the other side.”

  She noticed Acosta’s silence, which seemed strange to her, and she let her eyes flicker away from the target displays to look sidelong at him. His face was invisible inside his helmet, the light from the displays reflecting off his visor.

  “Hey Francis,” she said. It took a moment, but he turned his head and she could just make out his dark eyes through the tinted polymer. “I never asked you, but are you a religious type?”

  “Not particularly,” he said. There was no wavering or fear in his tone, but perhaps a fatalistic acceptance. “I always figured if there was a God, it’s nothing like we think or could even imagine. I doubt any creator would give a shit about us in particular, as individuals. And the whole idea of an afterlife never made any sense to me. Why should there be anything after this one?” He shook his head, his whole helmet moving slightly with the motion. “When you die, you die. That’s it.”

  “Okay,” she replied, blowing out a sigh and letting her attention drift back to the controls. “Good talk.”

  “Katy,” he said, and this time there was something softer in his voice. “We’ll get through this. I may not believe in Mithra or Jesus, but I believe in Logan Brannigan.”

  “Damn right we will, Francis.”

  The enemy assault shuttles were visible now, running a wedge formation twenty kilometers ahead of their drop-ships. Just about in range.

  “Air to air missiles armed,” Acosta announced, running ahead of her intent. “Optimal launch range in five, four, three, two, one…”

  She’d toggled the missiles to her control yoke, and when he reached one, she pulled the trigger. The fuselage shuddered as the weapons separated and ignited, one after another streaking free of the launch bay trailing angry red sparks of light from the solid-fuel rocket engines. The white streaks of smoke wove a web between them and the Starkad assault shuttles across the black sky, missiles from her and Duane crossing only meters from incoming enemy weapons.

  Roll, climb, spin, dive, it all seemed to merge together into a ballet, the steps of a dance repeated so often they were instinctive. Flashes of motion, proximity alerts, and grunted warnings from Acosta all painted a three-dimensional picture of the world that she sensed more than saw. Gee-forces pinned her against the seat, tossed her back and forth, bruised her legs, her back and her shoulders in an abusive relationship with Isaac Newton that she couldn’t bring herself to walk away from. She didn’t think, she couldn’t think, not with so much data pouring in at her, so much pressure crushing her. She could only act on instinct.

  Her instincts guided her closer, tighter, latching onto the enemy shuttles to keep their own missiles away and hers on target. Somewhere above, below, beside her the other birds of Wholesale Slaughter’s Assault squadron tried to make their way clear of the enemy attack, tried to pierce through to the drop-ships. If the numbers had been even close to even, her duty as squadron leader would have been to hold back and direct the attack, but that was a luxury she didn’t have. Her shuttle was more valuable as a weapon than as a command and control platform.

 
; Missile warheads erupted in sprays of white, red and yellow, intercepted by the tungsten slugs of Vulcan cannons or self-destructing as they approached too close to the shuttles that had launched them, adding another level of distraction. With each layer of data, she narrowed her focus, allowing the information to wash over her in a wave, letting a bit here or there stick. Duane was in trouble, in the process of being trapped in a pincer by two Starkad assault shuttles and probably seconds from death. One of the mercenary birds had already been shot down, its burning remains tumbling back toward Revelation. Two of her missiles struck a Starkad assault shuttle in the portside wing and sheered it off, sending the aerospacecraft into an uncontrollable spin, maybe not dead but out of the fight.

  She snap-rolled away from what her gut told her would be a laser shot from a Starkad shuttle and she turned it into an attack run on one of the two birds going after Duane. They were occupied, distracted, and one of them was nice and fat and juicy inside her targeting reticle. She fired her laser, the burst of coherent light tearing into the enemy shuttle, coring it like an apple. Plasma plumes blasted away from what was left of the craft, a supernova suspended in the upper atmosphere, an aurora spreading across the sky around it.

  Another mercenary down, one of Salvaggio’s makeshift assault shuttles coming apart in a shower of debris, the wings tumbling away in opposite directions, the screams of the pilot ringing in her ears as the cockpit plunged downward. She wanted to yell at him to eject, but if he could have done it, he would have already.

  But one got through. She recognized the IFF signal of Assault Six, Bohardt’s best pilot, a woman named Crowley. The elation of seeing the blue icon penetrating the blocking formation and jet through to the drop-ships pulled Katy out of the instinctive trance into which she’d fallen for just a moment, long enough to watch Crowley fire off all four of the missiles they’d rigged to hardpoints on her wings. The missiles streaked away just as a laser blast from one of the Starkad shuttles burned through the mercenary craft mid-fuselage.