by Ian Douglas
Chort poberi! Damn it to hell! This mission was fast becoming what the Americans referred to as a complete clusterfuck. The prey had escaped, leaving Oreshkin with an impossible choice. He could give up, turn around, and return to Earth, but there was no way they were going to manage to thread the TRGA needle with it spinning like that. Returning to Earth using Alcubierre Drive, putt-putting along at fifteen light years per day, would take them almost three years, and that was quite unacceptable.
The alternative was to follow the Americans through the Rosette.
That choice was dangerous almost beyond belief. Moskva’s AI had navigational tables that should let them reach the N’gai galaxy in the remote past—the Americans’ presumed destination—but Oreshkin had never attempted that trick. Even the slightest error would end with the Russian carrier inextricably lost in both space and in time and quite possibly drop them out of the universe entirely and into someplace horribly other. To make matters worse, Moskva had suffered considerable damage during the fighter attack, losing several vacuum energy taps and a number of point-defense weapons.
And even if they did succeed, despite damage, despite navigational uncertainties, there was every possibility that they would find the America battlegroup waiting for them. The enemy had been caught off guard at the Thorne TRGA when the Russian destroyers had come through scattered by the gate’s rotation.
There would be no rotation of the N’gai Rosette to scatter the squadron as it emerged, and the Americans would be foolish to assume the Moskva would not come through in pursuit. No, they would be waiting.
Which meant Oreshkin had to think of a way to catch them off guard again.
A thought occurred to him. “Nal Tok,” he said, opening a comm channel with both audio and visual feeds.
At the other end of that electronic link, something stirred in darkness—large, black, powerful . . . and in no way human. “I am here, Oreshkin.”
“Nal Tok, we may be under attack by USNA forces soon. Will you and your forces fight with us against them?”
“Put us where we can fight, and we will fight.” Mouth parts moved uneasily in an unreadable expression. “We like killing humans.”
It was as positive an answer as Oreshkin could hope for.
He just wondered if he could trust the massive beings.
USNA CVS America
Admiral’s Office
N’gai Cluster
1552 hours, FST
Gray floated into his office, catching a handhold to arrest his forward movement. The office bulkheads were set to display the outside panorama. Above and on every side, the glory of the tiny galaxy’s core burned with a piercing radiance. Millions of stars, each one brighter than Venus seen at its brightest in the morning skies of Earth, were crammed into a wall surrounding the innermost core. He made his way to his seat and strapped in.
He’d already sent a call requesting that Captain Rand meet him there.
While waiting, he connected with Lieutenant Colonel McDevitt, who was down on the Number One flight deck with several hundred of his men. “Do you think your people can pull this off, Colonel?” he asked.
“Sir. C’mon, this is the Three-Deuce-Five we’re talking about. Give the order and we’ll storm the gates of hell for you.”
“I don’t think it will be quite that bad, Colonel. If the bad guys are going to come through, though, it will be pretty soon. Are you ready to launch?”
“We’re loading into capsules now, Admiral. We’ll be ready when you need us.”
“That’s good, Terry. With any luck, the bad guys won’t see you coming. We’re counting on you.”
“Hooyah, sir!”
Gray cut the link just as Captain Rand accessed the door announcer. “Enter.”
The man drifted into the office and clung to a handhold in front of Gray’s high-tech desk. “Sir! You wanted to see me.”
“Yes, Jason. We need to talk.”
“Sir.”
“I didn’t like relieving you out there. I regret the necessity.” He would not say that he was sorry.
“Command prerogative, sir.”
Gray sighed. Rand was not making this easier with his stiff, by-the-book attitude. “Command responsibility. I will not have one of my officers questioning my authority or my orders, not in front of the bridge crew, and not when we’re in action. In private, you can question me all you want, just so you remember that I am in command of this battlegroup and have a responsibility to each and every man and woman in this squadron.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind, sir.”
“Unfortunately, we now find ourselves with a bit of a problem. The captain of a ship must have the complete and undivided respect of the people under him. I damaged that respect by relieving you and placing Commander Mackey in your place. I can’t restore your command without risking confusion and divided loyalties. I can’t assign you to another ship’s department without undermining your authority no matter where I put you. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“For that reason, I am relieving you of all duty. When we get home, I will recommend you be assigned another command. I don’t want your career haunted by what happened on the bridge today.”
“Very kind of you. Sir.”
“For what it’s worth, Jason, I believe you to be a capable officer. You will have my highest recommendation for your new command.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You have anything you want to tell me? Man to man, just us guys?”
“It doesn’t really matter, does it, sir? The Navy Board is going to know you relieved me, and they’re going to want to know why. For the record, Admiral, I was not panicking on the bridge this afternoon.”
“I didn’t say that you were.”
“I felt that you were making a mistake. Sir.” He took a deep breath. “I didn’t realize that you were so . . . sensitive to criticism. Sir.”
“I am not,” Gray replied, his voice cold. “I do appreciate that you believed I was making a serious error in judgment. Further, I appreciate that it is your duty to point out to your senior officers instances that appear to be lapses in judgment, or things that they might not know. I don’t mind having my orders questioned. But not in combat, in front of other personnel! You understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I will only point out that my decision seems to have worked out after all. Perhaps you should work at trusting your senior officers rather than tell them what they can’t do in a tight situation in front of the bridge crew.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
He stared out at the stars for a long time. Gray knew that it was quite possible that he had wrecked the man’s career. Rand was right—the Navy Board would not overlook the fact that he’d been summarily relieved of command.
Unfortunately, the good of the ship and of the mission always came first.
“Admiral? This is Mackey.”
“Yes, Luther.”
“We have probes coming through the Rosette. Recon drones. I suspect that our friends on the other side are getting ready to come after us.”
“Launch fighters,” Gray replied. “Keep us tight behind Straggler. I’ll be up right away.”
He just hoped he’d thought of everything . . . or the N’gai Cluster of 876 million years ago would become America’s grave.
Chapter Nine
12 April, 2429
VFA-96, Black Demons
N’gai Cluster
1608 hours, FST
“Launch!”
Acceleration slammed Gregory back in his seat as his SG-420 Starblade shot from the launch tube and into open space. Orienting himself, he spun his fighter to face the underside of America’s immense shield cap and let his drift carry him out from under its shadow into the harsh glare from the Rosette. The background radiation out here was fierce, a seething torrent of high-energy particles accelerated by those black holes, but his Starblade’s hull should be able
to hold back the worst of it, at least for a while.
“America CIC, this is CSP One,” Gregory said. “Handing off from PriFly. All Demons clear of the ship and formed up.”
“Copy, Combat Space Patrol One,” a voice replied from America’s Combat Information Center. “Primary Flight Control confirms handoff to CIC. You are clear to move into position.”
“You heard the man,” Gregory told his squadron. “Tuck in snug and close.”
The twelve fighters drifted forward, clearing America’s shield cap but not moving far beyond it. The carrier hung enormous beside him and just barely astern, the wink-wink-wink of her running lights picking out her deeply shadowed shape against the starfield.
Ahead, once they were past the immense, curved rim of the shield cap, lay wonder.
Within the past several minutes, America had aligned herself behind the object designated as Straggler Alfa, a black hole two hundred kilometers across. Less than a light-minute ahead now, the tiny object was invisible to the unaided eye. High magnification, however, showed the event horizon of the object blotting out the line of sight forward; around it, space was tightly bent, the stars beyond twisted and blurred into a silver-white halo around the black hole. Around the object, spanning much of the sky, the six brilliantly shining accretion disks of the Rosette’s black holes moved in a perfect circle. Under magnification, he couldn’t see the center of the N’gai Rosette; Straggler Alfa was in the way.
Which meant that someone coming through the Rosette from elsewhere wouldn’t be able to see the Americans, either.
“Any word on the Russkies?” Lieutenant Timmons asked.
“Negative,” Gregory snapped. “Now shut your yapper. Radio silence!”
And they waited.
Even at 18 million kilometers’ distance, Straggler Alfa exerted a relentless pull on all of the Starblades, as well as on the carrier behind them. When a star exploded and became a black hole, it continued to exert the same gravitational tug on its surroundings as it had before, as if the original star remained in place. Gregory had his hands full juggling the balance of gravitic drive thrust against that relentless pull, holding his position motionless relative to the object.
“CSP One, CIC,” a voice said in Gregory’s head. “Long-range scans indicate the enemy drones are returning through the Rosette. If anything’s going to happen, it’ll go down any moment now.”
“CSP One copies.”
The minutes flowed on, the sound broken only by the rasp of Gregory’s breathing in his helmet and the hum of the Starblade’s gravs holding it back against the pull of the former giant sun.
Straggler Alfa, he’d decided, must be the remnant of that blue-white star the Sh’daar had hurled through the Rosette. Someone—the Consciousness or the Harvesters—had blocked the star from getting through, though a large amount of plasma had shotgunned past the Rosette on the other side. What was left of a giant blue star was . . . here, a shrunken remnant spitting high-energy particles from its two polar jets.
Gregory wondered how much longer the fighters would be able to hang around out here, outside the embrace of America’s protective shielding. Their prelaunch briefing had said they would remain at station-keeping for one hour before trapping and being replaced by another squadron. It had only been a few minutes since launch now, and his fighter was warning him of dangerously elevated levels of radiation.
“CIC to all fighters! Here they come!”
Picket drones adrift in the maw of the Rosette two light-minutes ahead had spotted the Russians coming through—forty-eight fighters, followed by five destroyers arrayed as a broad pentagon, and finally, by the monstrous bulk of the Moskva. The picket drones relayed the images to America, where they arrived in the Combat Information Center two minutes after they’d been transmitted.
Gregory watched Moskva moving clear of the twisted space within the Rosette. He saw damage—the result of his last Krait fired at the Russian back in Omega Centauri—and felt a small thrill of excitement surge up his spine. He’d gotten the bastard! He’d gotten him good!
“Black Demons, CIC! You may commence your run!”
“Okay, boys and girls,” Gregory said, his heart pounding. “Let’s get them!”
In a sense, the twelve fighters of VFA-96 were being held in place by their grav drives like the shot of an immense catapult. By cutting their drives, they began falling toward Straggler Alfa, accelerating rapidly in its intense gravitational field. Tightly knotted gravitational singularities winked on just ahead of each fighter, dragging it forward as the singularity flickered in and out of existence at thousands of times per second, accelerations building rapidly as the America began dwindling astern.
Accelerating, then, their gravitic drives boosted their velocity even more; moments later, they flashed past the Straggler at a significant fraction of the speed of light, their courses meticulously guided by their onboard AIs. Space was bent by the nearby black hole; their AIs used that warp in spacetime to adjust precisely the course of the Starblades, aiming them straight at the gathering Russian fleet.
They passed the Straggler moving far too swiftly for Gregory to even glimpse the thing, so great was his speed. A flare of brilliant light from the accretion disk, lasting an instant, and then he was past and hurtling toward the emerging Russian squadron.
Under his AI’s guidance, his Starblade began to decelerate, bleeding off the incredible speed generated by slingshotting past a 200-kilometer black hole.
The brass, Gregory decided, had really scoped this one out. By remaining behind the Straggler, they’d at least delayed the moment when the Russians would pick them up. By using the Straggler’s intense gravitational field for a slingshot effect, they picked up a lot of free energy, and that translated as speed.
They were on the Russians before they even knew the Americans were there.
Each Starblade carried two Kraits, but their primary armament for this pass were bundles of AS-78 AMSO. A cloud of sand, moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light, did astonishing damage to enemy fighters, to the most massive capital ships, and even to entire planetary hemispheres.
He let his AI select a destroyer as his first target, and he gave the warning that meant an AMSO round had been loosed. “Fox Two!”
Gregory continued to decelerate as his AMSO rounds flashed toward the enemy.
And battle was joined . . .
Strike Force Reaper
Marine Battalion 3/25
N’gai Cluster
1612 hours, FST
Lieutenant Colonel McDevitt leaned over the backrest of the pilot’s seat, studying the main screen. Images relayed from battlespace drones were showing the play of battle just ten light-seconds away: flashes and silent flares bright as lightning as the combatant squadrons merged.
“That looks like our cue,” he told the pilot. “Goose it.”
“Aye, aye, Colonel. Goosing it . . .”
The Headquarters Company of the Three-Deuce-Five was crowded into a VBSS-Mk. 87 Lamprey, a recent addition to the USNA Marine Corps’ arsenal. The VBSS craft—the acronym stood for Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure—was an ugly, snub-nosed spacecraft that could carry a company of 120 Marines, fully suited and armed, crammed into its troop bay like heavily armored sardines. Normally, McDevitt would have stayed behind in a CIC command center, overseeing the op from there, but this time around he would not be relegated to running things from the safety of the rear.
For one thing, in space combat there was no “safety in the rear.”
So McDevitt floated inside the crowded flight deck of the transport pod, watching the action unfold.
“They see us yet?” he asked the pilot.
“Not sure, Colonel. We’re in stealth mode, but sooner or later they’ll tag us. We just need to hope to God that happens later rather than sooner.”
Accelerating, the Marine troop pod fell toward the battle now unfolding ahead.
VFA-96, Black Demons
N’gai
Cluster
1614 hours, FST
“Fox Two!”
“Fox Two!”
Space was fast becoming filled now with drifting clouds of sand. The Russians had fired their own AMSO rounds, volley upon volley of them, attempting to scrape the incoming fighters out of the sky and to partially block the American sandcaster volleys. Where sand clouds met at high velocity, searing flashes of heat and light and X-rays smeared across space. One of the Russian destroyers had taken a full load of sand amidships at something approaching 0.5 c, and the impact had scoured hull metal and surface matrix from the ship, revealing a ravaged internal structure glowing white-hot from the friction. The American fighters were past the remaining destroyers now and closing on the Moskva, the Russian carrier looming huge at point-blank range.
Too close for AMSO rounds now. The target was so close the missiles wouldn’t have time to accelerate to a useful velocity. Gregory switched to guns, engaging his Starblade’s Gatling RFK-90 KK cannon and loosing a stream of magnetic-ceramic-jacketed slugs at a cyclic rate of twelve per second. Each round, with a depleted uranium core massing half a kilo and traveling at 175 meters per second, carried a savage kinetic-kill punch that rivaled that of a small tactical nuke, powerful enough to shred hull metal and defensive shielding.
He was tempted to target the damaged expanse of the enemy carrier’s flank—he wanted to see that monster die—but the squadron’s orders were to focus on the enemy’s point-defense weapons.
It was imperative that the fighters take out those guns.
His velocity was very close now to the Moskva’s. It was as though he was drifting just above the vast and intricate terrain of the enemy’s hull, a landscape of towers and cliffs, of plains and domes, of canyons and beam turrets . . .
His fighter lurched to one side, a savage jolt.