To Honor You Call Us (29 page)

Max counted down the seconds to the first step of the minutely calculated timetable that he, Bartoli, Garcia, and Brown had quickly put together.  “Maneuvering, EXECUTE.”

LeBlanc brought his hand down on the right shoulder of his drives man, Able Spacer 1
^st
Fleishman.  Two sharp pats.  “Go.  All ahead Emergency.”  Fleishman pushed his Main Drive Controller all the way forward to the stop, bringing the main sublight drive to 125% of its rated power.  Like an eager cavalry mount spurred by its rider,
Cumberland
leaped forward.  The range to the Battlecruiser fell rapidly as the ship accelerated:  11,000, 10,500, 10,000, 9,500, 9,000.  At that rate of acceleration, stealth went out the window so, at 8,800 kilometers, apparently having gotten a general detection of the Destroyer, the Krag vessel began to sweep the area with her powerful active sensors, instantly pinpointing the ship on its tail.

“Battlecruiser has increased her sublight drive to Emergency,” said Bartoli.  The larger ship’s top speed was slower than the Destroyer’s and she accelerated more slowly; still, the increased acceleration substantially slowed the closure rate between the two ships.  “Battlecruiser is sweeping us with targeting scanners . . . she’s initiating a lock sequence.”

“Fire the Egg Scrambler,” Max ordered.  The communications flare shot from tube three and immediately detonated, making interstellar communications impossible.  Unless they lived through the battle, any news the Krag passed on about this attack could travel no faster than the speed of light.  It would be years before anyone heard it.  “Evasive India Three.  Countermeasures.”  Immediately LeBlanc started giving a series of intricate orders to his men, jinking the highly maneuverable Destroyer erratically to slow the ability of the enemy to get a targeting lock while still continuing to close the range to the Battlecruiser.  Meanwhile, one Countermeasures officer in CIC and seven of his Back Room colleagues activated and managed second by second various scrambling pulses, confusing echoes, jamming signals, infra-red drones, chaff dispensing missiles, and other kinds of legerdemain designed to confuse, deceive, distract, divert, or otherwise discombobulate the Krag targeting systems so that the Battlecruiser’s deadly pulse cannon could not get a killing shot.

Max stabbed the comm switch.  “CIC to Mori.”

“Mori here.”

“You ready?”

“I’ve got my eye on the sun and my paddle in the water.”  Mori was born on a tiny island in the Micronesia chain on Earth.  His people, in an almost inconceivable feat of seamanship and navigation, had paddled dugout canoes across thousands of miles of the open Pacific without chart or compass to make precise landfall on tiny islands smaller than the average farm in the American Midwest.  Mori himself had spent much of his childhood in such craft before deciding at age nine to venture into an infinitely vaster ocean. 

“Go at the designated mark.”

“Affirmative.  Three.  Two.  One.  Now.”  Mori engaged the powerful sublight drive on the Cutter which, even with the extra weight, quickly began to overtake the Destroyer.  The accelerating Battlecruiser had not spotted him yet, having a more immediate threat to deal with.

As for the Destroyer, the evasive maneuvers combined with an excellent countermeasures suite were combining to defeat the Krag targeting systems, for now.  Determining that they could not get a positive lock, the Krag decided to Fire by Bearing rather than Firing by Lock, meaning that they pointed their cannon along the measured bearing of the Destroyer rather than having a co-axial lock between the targeting scanner and the weapon bore.  Brilliant pulse cannon bolts began streaking past the
Cumberland
, some passing within meters of her hull.  Space was big, but it wasn’t
that
big.  It was only a matter of time before the Krag got a hit by this method, or before the decreasing range allowed the targeting scanners to get a lock.  The
Cumberland
began firing its own, somewhat less powerful, pulse cannon, on the off chance of doing some damage or at least helping confuse the enemy targeting systems.  It was impossible to miss a non-evading target of that size at that range, so every shot scored a hit on the Battlecruiser, but her deflectors and immensely thick, armored hull protected her from receiving any major damage.  The fifth shot did, however, actually manage to destroy one of the Battlecruiser’s two aft targeting scanners.  With only one targeting scanner operating, the chances of getting a lock decreased significantly.

Meanwhile, the accelerating Cutter came up behind the
Cumberland
matching its speed at .60 c.  The two ships exchanged quick digital signals verifying that each was prepared for the next step and starting a five second countdown clock on each vessel.  When his clock reached zero, Mori nudged his drive controller forward and pulled around the
Cumberland
on its port side.  Just as the Cutter drew even with the Cumberland’s missile tubes and reached a speed of .61c, the Cumberland fired a Raven heavy anti-ship missile from each of its two forward missile tubes.

At that same moment, four explosive bolts on the port side of the Cutter and four on the starboard detonated, each set releasing a hastily-fashioned bracket that had held a Raven to the hull of the Cutter.  Following their recently-altered flight software, these two ravens yawed away from the cutter for two seconds at low power before their drives went to full stage and rapidly accelerated the missiles to attack speed, matching that of their two brethren just fired from the
Cumberland
.

“Maneuvering, breakaway,” Max nearly shouted.  “Missile rooms, reload with Talons.”  LeBlanc gave the pre-planned orders to his men veering the Destroyer ninety degrees away from its previous course while continuing to accelerate at Emergency so that the Krag gunners would have to try to follow the fastest possible change in bearing.  As the range opened up and the
Cumberland
continued to accelerate, the pulse cannon bolts trailed hopelessly behind.

Meanwhile, the four Raven missiles steered toward their target.  Communicating with one another in microsecond long coded bursts, their sophisticated on board computers coordinated their attack second by second, working together like a pack of wolves to confuse and penetrate the enemy defenses.  After flying together in a rough box formation for a few seconds, the missiles separated from one another, each approaching the huge vessel from amidships as though each was approaching from a different cardinal point of the compass.  Within its designated target zone, each missile scanned its quarry, selecting a particularly vulnerable point—a hatch, a junction between two hull plates, a cluster of waste gas vents.  Three missiles slowed slightly and one speeded up so that they would impact and detonate at exactly the same microsecond, placing the maximum stress on the structure, shielding, integrity fields, and blast suppression systems of the Krag vessel.  Finally, at 99.28 percent of the speed of light, all four streaked past the Krag defenses and detonated as one. 

Four 1.5 megaton fusion warheads ignited and did their deadly work—four suns born around the Krag’s hull, growing and merging into a gigantic four-lobed fireball consuming the Battlecruiser in less than a second.  The orb of destruction assimilated metal and plastic, bone and flesh alike, taking atoms forged by nucleosynthesis billions of years ago in the cores of now long-dead supernovae and hurling them back into the void.  Perhaps, after more billions of years have passed, those atoms would once again coalesce into the rock and air and water of another fertile world be evolved and dug up and refined and manufactured into the bodies of thinking beings and their intricate machines of war.   

Max watched the expanding globe of light as it filled his screen.  He had never seen four of the big warheads used on a target all at once and he was taken aback by the enormous destruction that could be unleashed at his order.  And, by how powerful the bombs were in comparison to the puny men who made them. 

The fireball faded.  There was still work to do.  “Tactical, what are our remaining friends doing?

“The Ore carrier’s course and speed are unchanged—he’s still headed for the jump point, ETA six hours, thirty-seven minutes.  A reasonable hypothesis is that the vessel is automated.  And the Corvettes are running for it—drives are redlined.  Heading is two-two-five mark zero-one-five.  That’s a course for the nearest edge of the zone messed up by the Egg Scrambler.”  Not only did the Egg Scrambler prevent FTL communications, it also kept compression drives from being able to form a propulsive field.   

“Can we get within pulse cannon range before they get there?”

Someone in Tactical’s Back Room who was paying close enough attention, either watching the overall situation or listening to the conversation in CIC or both, decided that just such a calculation would be needed, and had put it up on one of Tactical’s screens.  “Affirmative, sir.  With the main sublight at ‘Full,’ we can still catch them with about six minutes to spare.  And, even if they get there, sir,
Corpuscles
have a top speed on Compression of only about twelve hundred c.  We could overtake them pretty quickly.”

“That’s good to know, Tactical, but I prefer not to engage a superluminal target if I can help it.  Maneuvering, reduce to Full and shape course to intercept the Corvettes.”

“Ahead Full, course to intercept Corvettes, aye.”  LeBlanc implemented the drive setting change, spent a few moments with his console computing the new course, and then gave the course change orders.   

Max’s Tactical Overview display showed that Destroyer was rapidly overtaking the two smaller ships and that the fleeing vessels were nearly in pulse cannon range.  “Weapons, bring pulse cannon one and pulse cannon three to Prefire.  Target cannon one on hotel two and cannon three on Hotel three.  Hold pulse cannon two on Standby.”

“Aye, sir, Pulse one and three to Prefire, two remaining on Standby.”  Weapons acknowledged.  Eleven seconds passed as the systems that diverted plasma from the ship’s main reactor in measured amounts and routed it through shielded conduits into the cannons’ firing chambers were energized, their cooling systems powered up and engaged, and the cannon aiming systems enabled,  Two green lights on the Weapons console came on.  “Pulse one and pulse three at Prefire.  Targeting now.”  The huge magnetic coils that guided the pulse blasts came to life, drew aiming data from the targeting computer, and synched with the targeting scanner which had already locked on to the targets.  Two more green lights came on.  Each cannon’s target appeared on one of Tactical’s screens, along with the target’s ID, course, speed, and range.  “Pulse one locked on Hotel two.  Pulse three locked on Hotel three.”

“Pulse one and pulse three to Ready.”

Weapons stabbed two orange buttons, one for each cannon to be fired, that caused plasma to flow from the reactor into the firing chambers, building up sufficient quantity to fire the weapons.  This took four seconds, after which two more green lights at Tactical winked on.  “Pulse one and pulse three Ready.”

“Set for maximum power, synchronized firing.”

“Max power, synch firing, aye.”

“Range to targets?”

“Niner three five five kills to Hotel two, niner three five seven kills to Hotel three.”  Maximum effective range was 10,500 kilometers.

“Confirm targets.”

“Pulse one is targeted on Krag Corvette designated Hotel two off our bow, range niner three five five kills.  Pulse two is targeted on Krag Corvette designated Hotel three off our bow, range niner three five seven kills.”

“Captain, I think we are missing something important here,” Garcia interjected.

“Like what?”  Max was not entirely successful in concealing his irritation at being interrupted just as he was about to kill these two targets. 

“Why aren’t they evading?  Corvettes are very maneuverable.  I mean, as soon as we got in range these guys should have started jinking all over the place, right?”

Good question.  Why the hell not?  What could they possibly have to gain by not zig zagging?  Max could think of only one thing:  if the Corvettes maintained a constant course, then the
Cumberland
was more likely to maintain a constant course as well.  Therefore, the Krag must want his ship to stay in a constant position relative to theirs.  Why would they want that?  Oh.  Crap.  “Forward deflectors to maximum—tune for metallic object about two meters in diameter with extremely low relative velocity.  Point defense batteries, zone firing.  Blanket thirty degree cone forward.  Spaceframe reinforcement to maximum.  All hands brace for impact.”

CIC held its breath for two and a half seconds, at which point the console screens showing output from the forward optical scanners flared white and then went dark, their receptors burned out.  A split second later, the ship trembled mildly as the shock wave from the explosion, almost vanishingly tenuous in the vacuum of outer space, struck the hull.

“All right, now that we’ve got that settled, let’s fry the bastards.  Weapons, fire pulse one and two.”  Weapons pressed both Fire buttons and two glowing balls of compressed plasma about two meters in diameter streaked through space, each striking its target dead center and exploding as its containment field—generated by a tiny liquid helium cooled emitter inserted in the plasma pulse as it left the gun tube—shattered with the explosive force of about half a kiloton.  It wasn’t much compared to a missile, but the blast equivalent of five hundred tons of TNT, not to mention the thermal and structural stress of being struck at an appreciable fraction of lightspeed by a ball of compressed, ionized gas as hot as the interior of the sun, was enough to spell the end of two superannuated Corvettes.  Both ships tore themselves apart in twin orgies of glaring explosions and shredding metal.