But when a hyperspatial field was formed too close to the gravity well on purpose, especially a ship as big as the Nemesis’ two-thousand foot wide mass, the results were dramatic. And more than a little violent. As the field attempted to coalesce, the planet’s far larger gravity field grabbed its unstable shell and hurled it away – past the oncoming flight of missiles, past the bulk of the Sol Invictus, past the smaller ships that trailed in its wake. Over 150,000 miles in a matter of seconds, the Nemesis flew, like a ball hit from a cricket bat. The Atonian missiles aimed at it sailed past harmlessly. The guns that were aimed at it never hit.
But that didn’t mean that Lucas and his men had escaped peril. A harshly collapsed hyperspatial field threw a lot of feedback into the Dillinghams, and while the powerful engines themselves weren’t damaged, all of the essential control mechanisms shorted out with the overload. She might not have been pummeled by guns or missiles, but the Nemesis was no longer a functioning starship. Nor was it an easy ride – the pseudograv stuttered painfully, throwing people into the decks or into the air and back again as waves of unexpended gravitational waves ricocheted within the collapsium hull of the vessel and interfered. The power systems throbbed with the strain and relays blew all over the ship. By the time the pilot was able to regain control and stop the ship from spinning like the huge shiny ball it resembled, most systems were on emergency power. And their pursuers were already changing course to intercept them.
“They’re coming about, Sire!” Mr. Roupe called out. “All four of them! They’re serious!”
“So am I! Armor up, everyone – but don’t seal your helmets just yet,” Lucas declared, a grim smile on his face as he began putting on his space armor. “Whatever missiles we have left, target and fire. Get them closer. I want them angry, and still wanting to board us to take me alive.” He glanced at the damage board. “A pity the viewscreen is out, or I could taunt that officious boob into asking for single combat. That would work with a Sword Worlder, at least. That’d buy us some time.”
“Sire, we’ve popped some bulkheads,” Lafe Vannan, the recently-promoted engineer was calling through the intercom. “We’re starting to leak. I’ve locked down the reactors, so the Dillinghams have time to reset, but it’s going to take weeks to get her spaceworthy again. She’s done for,” he said, mournfully.
“Agreed,” Lucas sighed into the microphone, regretfully.
He looked around at the interior of the ship. For ten years, he’d spent more time here than anywhere else. More than Trask House, more than Rivington, even, he’d come to call the decks and bulkheads of this ship home. She had been the instrument of his vengeance, his path to a life among the stars, and his means of employment. He wasn’t the kind of man who often anthropomorphized his equipment, but there was no denying that this ship was alive, in every meaningful way to Lucas. Or at least, she had been, until he’d sacrificed her to see his baby daughter and beautiful wife again.
“You’ve done splendidly,” He said quietly, patting the dead console in front of him. “Just give us a little more time, if you can.” Then he turned to address the bridge crew, most of whom were now in space armor. “All hands!” he called out loudly, “Abandon ship. Leave your stations and evacuate to the aft pinnaces. Let’s move, gentlemen. We have maybe eight minutes before those ships get within missile range, and twenty before they force a boarding. I wouldn’t suggest you stay here to see the show.”
The entire crew evacuated to two of the four pinnaces, as planned – the fourth had been sent back to Tanith already with a message, and the third was still somewhat damaged by the battle over Amateratsu. Equipped with their own hyperdrives, each of the 200 foot long, tadpole-shaped ships could make limited travel through hyperspace. In theory, they could travel just as far as a larger ship. In practice, the limiting factor wasn’t the Dillinghams; it was the inability for a ship that size to maintain food, water, and power supply to life-support as efficiently as a much larger ship like the Nemesis. There were no carniculture vats or hydroponic gardens aboard, just a few storage lockers stuffed with rations. Any trip over five hundred hours would dicey, without resupply. Luckily, their destination was a mere forty-five light-years away – just under two days. And luckily the smaller Dillinghams on the pinnaces had been powered-down and unaffected by the emergency kick-back maneuver.
Lucas, his bridge crew, Lt. Delio and the rest of his Golden Hand bodyguards went to one of the little ships, placing most of the less experienced crew in another under Lafe Vannan’s command. That was over seventy men per ship. As each ship was large enough to hold fifty crew comfortably, they weren’t overly crowded. As the enemy fleet slowed their approach to begin a hostile boarding procedure on the wounded Nemesis, the two pinnaces launched from the stern of the ship and immediately began to make for the far edges of the solar system at top speed.
“I hate to abandon her like this,” Lucas murmured, as he watched the Nemesis fall away in the viewscreen as they launched. The pinnace’s cockpit was cramped after the spacious gallery of the Nemesis’ bridge. “It seems ignoble.”
“Don’t worry, Sire,” Delio assured him, “It’s better than seeing her destroyed and us along with it. We’ll be back for her.”
“Unless they tow her back as a prize or destroy her out of spite,” he sighed. “How close are the Atonians now?”
“About three minutes from firing range, Sire,” the young man replied, confidently, “and our hyperdrive is active, course laid in.”
“And the three prize ships on the planet?”
“They launched about six minutes ago,” Ensign Roupe, the young Signals-and-Detection officer who requested to stay with his Prince, called out. In the tiny cockpit of the pinnace he almost seemed big enough for the task. “They’re taking an obtuse course, behind the planet from the Atonian fleet – they should be able to break atmosphere and get into hyperspace without being intercepted, now.”
“Good,” Lucas sighed, leaning back in the command chair. That had been the whole point of this exercise – to distract the Atonian fleet away from noticing the three helpless ships on the ground, and give their skeleton crews a chance to lift and make orbit without being molested. “Set course and prepare to jump. And now that we have a working telecom screen, let’s call our old friend Captain Hayes. Can they see we’ve launched, yet?”
“No, Sire, they’re eclipsed on the other side of the Nemesis.” So the old girl was protecting him, one last time. No detection equipment could read through collapsium. As it was, they’d be bouncing the telecom signal around it to reach the Atonians. Lucas punched in the combination himself, and in moments the irate face of Captain Hayes was on screen.
“Trask!” the Atonian spat.
“Sorry, Captain, I had to switch screens,” Lucas said. “Took a little damage after that stunt. But it accomplished the job.”
“You’re in a pinnace!” the man said, accusingly.
“I can see that the Atonian Navy has high standards of observation for their commanders,” Lucas mocked. “Although they apparently don’t place a premium on intelligence.”
“Damn you, Trask!” the man swore, “This doesn’t change anything. You’ll still be taken into custody!”
“Not today, and not by you,” Lucas boasted. “We’ll be in hyperspace long before you’re in missile range. And I’d be careful about boarding my ship – we left some very nasty surprises behind!”
“To blazes with your ship – it’s you we want!” Hayes said, defiantly. “And it’s only a matter of time.”
“But what I can’t understand is why?” Lucas said, without thinking. “Sure, I blockaded a port – but that’s got to be the least of my crimes against the galaxy.”
“It has nothing to do with that,” conceded Hayes. “That was just an expedient charge. While I don’t pretend to understand the thoughts of the Council, I’ve heard rumors. You’re a menace, Trask. You’re dangerous, and you’re much too close to civilization for comfort. The Atonian Cou
ncil has decided that you and your little tin-pot empire need to go, and removing you from play is the easiest way to ensure its demise.”
“The League of Civilized Worlds isn’t an empire,” Lucas declared, flatly. “It’s a voluntary regional alliance. One that will survive my death, I have no doubt.”
“Well, we may be able to test that theory sooner than you think,” Hayes said, menacingly.
“Not today,” Lucas repeated, apologetically. “I have an urgent appointment elsewhere. Good luck, though, Captain Hayes. Mr. Pierce, if you will do the honors?” A moment later the pinnace faded from reality as it tumbled into hyperspace.
They weren’t headed directly for Tanith – not yet. With as much Atonian activity in the region as there was, Lucas had a duty to warn his allies before making for home. The other pinnace was headed back to Amateratsu, to warn the forces there, while Lucas had set his ship’s course for Beowulf, the other strong partner in the alliance.
For two days the men dealt with the over-crowded conditions with as much grace as possible—sleeping in shifts, crowding into the tiny ‘recreation lounge’, and launching the ubiquitous eternal card game that ran on every ship in the galaxy during hyperspace. Lucas mostly kept to his closet-sized “stateroom” and composed messages to his subordinates and discussed the situation with Lt. Delio and Lt. Jameson, two of the four Golden Hand guards who had remained with him. Both were cautiously optimistic about their chances of arriving home, but both were clearly disturbed by the sudden and aggressive appearance of so many ‘civilized’ warships in Tanith’s neighborhood.
“I don’t like it one bit, Sire,” Jameson confided. “What did he mean, ‘dangerous’?”
“I agree – you could have laid waste to Shamash,” nodded Delio, the evening before they arrived at Beowulf. “Two, maybe three nukes, and you could have ruled that planet. But you showed admirable restraint.”
“Perhaps, gentlemen, that’s why they want me so badly,” reasoned Lucas. “Consider: had I merely devastated the planet, then they could have chalked it up to one more nasty Space Viking raid, even used it in propaganda. After all, that’s a long way from our usual raiding grounds.
“But I didn’t. I very clearly was after one thing, and by the time I left Shamash nearly everyone on the planet knew what that one thing was. And why. And that had to attract the attention of the other Great Powers. Why was Aton so interested in undermining my rule on Tanith by sponsoring an insurgency, through proxies?”
“To undermine Marduk’s new-found strength,” Jameson answered, immediately. “They saw how you suddenly appeared out of the ether with a battle fleet and rescued the Mardukan monarchy. More, you inspired Prince-Regent Simon to suspend Parliament and take direct control of the government. This means that all of their sneaky lobbyists and spies suddenly didn’t have access anymore.”
“You know, Sire, I often wonder if Aton wasn’t complicit in the rise of Zaspar Makann,” Delio mentioned thoughtfully, naming the would-be usurper who had used parliamentary tricks, thuggery and election fraud to force his way into power. “There were hints that they were at least friendly to the idea of a Makann regime.”
“Friendly? Makann’s party apparatus was a carbon copy of the Aton Planetary Nationalist Party,” agreed Lucas. “There’s already been the suggestion that they aided and encouraged Makann. I think they wanted a puppet regime on Marduk, which would let them essentially double the size of their trade empire overnight.” Marduk, of all the civilized Great Powers who split up the ruins of the Old Federation, had the smallest sphere of influence. Known as the Sick Man of the Old Federation, its once-magnificent trade empire was greatly reduced, and the recent internal troubles had reduced it further. “It would make sense: with Marduk out of the way, Isis already in alignment with them, and Baldur willing – nay, begging – to be bribed into an alliance, that would just leave Odin and maybe a few of the smaller alliances to challenge them. And in a few years, Odin would get worn down, or end up capitulating, and Aton would be the hub of a new galactic empire.”
“Interesting speculation, Sire,” nodded Delio. “And it wouldn’t be the first time that sort of thing happened. Look how Napoleon created his pre-Atomic empire: half blunt force, brilliantly deployed, and half behind-the-scenes skullduggery. Napoleon hid behind the rhetoric of anti-aristocratic republicanism, too,” he added.
“Yet it didn’t stop him from claiming the title of Emperor,” noted Jameson.
“Exactly. Aton is scheming to increase its power base, and when Tanith interfered in that, we became a threat,” Lucas concluded.
“But why didn’t they just go bomb Tanith? Why invest in the expense of using an entire fleet to search and capture you?”
“Because they think I’m the ‘essential man’,” Lucas shrugged. “Look at it that way: Valerie’s throne is barely warm, she’s an outsider, and the rest of the high nobles are bloodthirsty Space Vikings. You take my influence away, and they figure that in twenty years Tanith will look more like Hoth or Nergal. A Space Viking port planet that doesn’t care a bit about anything but raiding.”
“You would think that would be the last thing that they would want,” Jameson said, shaking his head.
“Hoth and Nergal don’t interfere in the affairs of the Great Powers,” Delio pointed out. “They can be tolerated. Encouraged, even, as an excuse for maintaining a robust military. But Hoth and Nergal are just base planets. They aren’t trying to civilize anyone, even themselves. Tanith has arisen out of nowhere, and pushed two decivilized worlds into positions of power – not to mention created a strong regional power where there just wasn’t one a decade ago. That must scare the Atonians.”
“I don’t know,” sighed Lucas. “There’s still far too much we don’t know. And being at war with Gram, and nearly so with Xochitl, somehow I think we’re going to be too busy to get to the bottom of this any time soon.”
The pinnace finally erupted into existence at a pre-designated entry point into Beowulf’s solar system, out in the Oort cloud. The moment they were clear, they signaled the Beowulfers by radio of their arrival, and requested a set of coordinates for microjumps that would keep them clear of the system’s robust defenses.
The Beowulfers were justly afraid of Space Viking raids, in large part due to Lucas, himself. It was among the first of Tanith’s neighboring planets that he’d raided when he’d first come out to the Old Federation. That had been a hard-fought battle with plenty of damage inflicted on both sides – unlike so many worlds in the Old Federation, Beowulf had retained or regained most of its technology and civilization, barring only star travel. That had included nuclear weapons – indeed, the rich uranium deposits on the world had made allowed them to develop and maintain all sorts of advanced technologies that depended on good radioactives. Several of those nukes had landed near to the Nemesis during that battle, a decade ago.
Now the Beowulfers were firm allies of the Princedom he ruled, once Lucas had made certain that they didn’t hold any grudges for the initial battle. He had gifted them with the designs for Dillingham hyperdrives, and provided the first fifty pounds of gadolinium needed to build the thing. The result had been the first two-thousand foot Beowulf ship, Viking’s Gift. Not everyone had been thrilled to see a potentially valuable raiding target increase its ability to defend itself, but Lucas hadn’t regretted the decision: the Beowulfers were valiant space fighters, and they excelled at nuclear weaponry.
But the paranoia inspired by his raid lingered. Among its fruits were the complex Beowulf defenses against surprise incursions into their system. That included a full range of sensors and detection equipment, heavily guarded routes and inspection stations, regular normal-space patrols of outlying planets in the system . . . and a huge atomic minefield in orbital approach to the planet. Hundreds of fifteen and twenty kiloton devices floated around the world ready to entrap any ship with the temerity to challenge their defenses.
In the Nemesis, Lucas might have risked the damage to del
iver his urgent message. In a pinnace, however, a twenty-kiloton nuke could possibly destroy the ship outright. Lucas elected to stick to the defense protocols he’d been given. If that meant waiting twenty minutes while the radio waves traveled to Beowulf and another twenty for them to return with instructions, he’d just have to wait.
That didn’t keep him from transmitting the warning about the Atonians to Beowulfers. The League needed to know about the danger, and he’d prepared a coded briefing for their government that he did not hesitate to send.
Something odd happened in the middle of the transmission, however. The young Signals-and-Detection officer, Ensign Roupe, reported the problem.
“Sire, something is jamming our signal!”
“What is it?” Lucas asked, curiously, as he peered at the display over Roupe’s shoulder.
“I think . . . Sire, I think that we’re being shadowed by another ship! Yes, I’m sure of it!”
Princess Valerie's War Page 2