Ah, yes—I heard a blaster.
He looked around and found Tyche also prone on the deck and pressed tight against the opposite bulkhead—and for all that he hadn’t been armed a moment ago, the Infantry captain was holding a blaster as well.
The two men looked at each other. “Well,” said Bandur. “Now we know who we are. We’re the good guys.”
Tyche ignored him and switched on his comm link. “Status?”
“Under attack with small arms,” said the voice on the other end. “Maintaining.”
“Roger.” Tyche hit a second button on his comm link. “Status on Party Two?”
Another voice spoke up. “We’re pinned down in compartment two-twelveforty-lima.”
“Roger,” said Tyche. “Do you have the package?”
“Affirmative. Instructions?”
“Stand fast. Wait for relief.” The Infantry captain glanced over at Bandur. “Get us to two-twelveforty-lima please.”
Perrin’s being damned thorough, thought Bandur. I’m a bit surprised he didn’t just grab me and leave Quetaya in place for later. But if Vallant’s trying something funny in this sector, we’ll both be safer off the ship anyway. Maybe somebody slipped Galcen a warning ahead of time … .
He stood up and pointed down the corridor. “This way.”
They headed out at a quick walk. Tyche spoke again into his comm link: “I’m en route to Party Two’s location. Send a relief party as soon as tactically feasible.”
The bulkhead speaker came to life again. “Security alert, security alert. All hands stand fast.”
“One of the roving patrols must have failed to return on schedule,” Bandur guessed.
“That’s what I figure,” agreed Tyche. “It also means that whoever’s attacking doesn’t have the entire ship secured yet.” He nodded at the warrant officer’s miniature hand blaster. “You have a stun setting on that weapon?”
Bandur shook his head. “Never saw the need.”
Tyche’s eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. “I don’t know who you really are, and I’ll probably never know … doesn’t matter. In the meantime, keep in mind that right now we don’t know for certain who the friendlies are.”
“I’ll try to remember,” said Bandur. He glanced from his blaster over to Captain Tyche. “I suppose you’re a friendly?”
“Make it your working hypothesis,” Tyche said. “Those sure as hell weren’t
my
guys back in the CO’s cabin, I can promise you that much.”
“Right,” Bandur said. “Compartment two-twelveforty-lima is on the far side of this bulkhead. Two entrances: one through the docking bay and another from one level up in Operations berthing.”
Two nervous-looking crew members with Space Force standard-issue blasters came through the vacuum-tight door at the end of the corridor, blocking the route Bandur had just indicated.
“Ours or theirs?” muttered Tyche.
“Ours, I think,” said Bandur. “Security alert team.” He raised his voice enough to carry. “Yo, Raveneau!”
“Mr. Bandur,” one of the crew members replied. “What in the
hell
is going on here?”
“We’ve got hostiles dressed as Space Force on board,” Bandur replied. He kept on walking toward the vacuum-tight door, not looking back to see if Tyche followed. “I’m heading out to relieve some good guys. Either come with me or get out of my way.”
The crew member Bandur had addressed as Raveneau shifted his weight uncertainly from one foot to the other, his forehead wrinkled in a puzzled frown. “You’re not supposed to do that, sir. During a security alert you’re supposed to stand fast.”
“Then go ahead and shoot me right now,” Bandur said, “because I’m coming on through.”
“You know I can’t do that, Mr. Bandur.”
“I don’t have time to argue.” He’d reached the security alert team by now, and was relieved but not actually surprised when Raveneau and his partner stepped aside to let him pass. “Follow me.”
On the other side of the vacuum-tight door, a ladder led upward to an overhead hatch—mechanically operated, which meant it opened onto one of the emergency accessways. Bandur climbed the ladder. A quick glance downward before he started working the opening mechanism showed the warrant officer that Tyche had come on after him, along with both members of the security alert team.
Raveneau still looked worried. “You sure we won’t get into trouble, Mr. Bandur?”
“No trouble,” Bandur assured him. “You might get killed, maybe, but not into trouble.”
Raveneau’s brow cleared. “Okay.”
The hatch clicked open. Bandur pushed the hatch cover up until it locked, then scrambled through with Tyche and the two crewmen close behind him.
“This particular pair of spacers won’t get into trouble,” he commented under his breath to Tyche as the Infantry captain joined him in the darkened compartment above, “but if the skipper makes it, he’s going to wish he’d trained his troops better.”
Tyche shook his head. “Unless I miss my guess about what was going on back in his cabin,” he replied, also under his breath, “your CO isn’t wishing anything anymore. Fill me in on what you know.”
“Normal transit, normal dropout,” said Bandur. “I was at my assigned location when word came to go to the skipper’s quarters. Now
you
fill
me
in.”
By now they were making their way through another vacuum-tight door into what was labeled as COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT ENLISTED BERTHING (FEMALE). Captain Tyche ignored the indignant exclamations and occasional rude comments from the occupants and said to Bandur, “My orders are to make contact with you.”
Bandur grunted. “Mind telling me who you are?”
“Natanel Tyche, Captain, SFPI.” The captain’s tone made it clear that Bandur wasn’t going to learn anything else.
They left the berthing compartment behind them, with the two crew members from the security alert team still following, and continued on forward. From around the corner ahead came the high whining sound of a blaster discharge.
“All right, people,” Tyche said. “We’re coming in from behind. Don’t fire unless fired upon.”
They rounded the corner in a rush, weapons at the ready. “All right, you sons of bitches,” said Bandur to the group on the other side. “Freeze.”
“Hey!” protested Raveneau. “Those are some of our guys!”
“Another security alert team,” said Bandur. “At least someone aboard this tub is doing their job.”
“Not that it helps us a lot,” Tyche said. “Mr. Bandur, secure their weapons.”
A voice called up the ladder from the compartment below. “Captain, is that you?”
“Yeah,” Tyche called back. “What’s the status?”
“No problems.”
“Good. Hold your fire. We’re all coming down.”
The six of them—Bandur, Tyche, the two security alert team members whom they’d caught, and the two who had joined them earlier—climbed down the ladder into 2-1240-L. CC1 Ennys Pardu was already inside, in the custody of what looked like one of Tyche’s Infantry troopers, wearing an armored p-suit with the faceplate unsealed. The trooper looked harried; Pardu looked more like somebody who’d managed to tuck the crucial datachips into her regulation undergarments, and who was now content to wait on events.
“About time you showed up, Captain,” the trooper said to Tyche. “I was beginning to get worried.”
“No need,” Tyche said. “How are things down here?”
“Confusing,” said the trooper. “I got to the lower docking bay, and I found that it was occupied by armed personnel who had the bad manners to shoot at us. So we headed back here, where
these
gentlemen had the bad manners to shoot at us.” He shook his head. “Violence in the holovids causes all this, you know.”
“Right, then,” Tyche said. “I suspect we’ll have a good deal of sorting-out to do later, but the first order of business is still to make it back to the ship. Is the lower bay on the far side of that door?”
The trooper nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.” Tyche punched one of the buttons on his comm link and spoke into it. “As soon as convenient, using the minimum amount of force required, take tactical control of the upper and lower docking bays.”
“Roger,” said the voice on the other end. “Out.”
Bandur couldn’t see or hear the rest of Tyche’s troopers, but they worked fast. Within five minutes, he heard a knock at the vacuum-tight door on the docking-bay side. The door opened to show a grinning staff sergeant.
“Captain, welcome back.”
“Good to be back,” said Tyche. “I’m going to the ship. In the meantime, at your convenience, there is a second vessel in the upper bay. Capture it.”
“Yes, sir!”
The sergeant gave Tyche a flashy salute, then turned and trotted off, making hand signals to the troopers spread out around the bay. Tyche turned to Bandur and Pardu.
“If you would come with me, please,” he said. “I’ve got some questions for both of you.”
WARHAMMER: GALCEN NEARSPACE GALCEN: THE RETREAT
A
LARMS WERE sounding all over the ’
Hammer
as Jessan ran for the dorsal gun bubble and belted himself in. He double-checked the fasteners and made sure that everything in the bubble was either strapped down or sealed tight, including the flaps on his pockets. Give the captain’s penchant for high-g, hell-on-the-engines shiphandling, the last thing her gunners needed was a lot of miscellaneous junk floating around the bubbles and getting in the way.
He picked up the earphone link to the intraship comms and put it on. “Gun One in place.”
Over the headset, he heard LeSoit coming in like an echo. “Gun Two in place.”
“All guns, stand by,” came the captain’s voice over the link from the cockpit. “Commencing high-speed realspace run. Ships are most vulnerable at dropout—they can’t have shields up in hyper. So I’m going to be a reception committee.”
In
Warhammer
’s cockpit, Beka fed more power to the realspace engines.
Good thing it was the hyperdrives that heated up on me, she thought. I wouldn’t dare push the
’Hammer
like this if the realspace engines had been the ones to go bad
.
All over the viewscreen and the sensor monitors, Mage warships were still dropping out of hyper—small raider ships, heavy cruisers and destroyers, enormous black-hulled dreadnoughts shedding fighter craft as they came. An alarm pipped: one of the hundreds of warships had fire-control up and was illuminating
Warhammer
. Beka pushed up the shield on the engaged side and hoped for the best.
The pattern-recognition systems on the system-nav package beeped and chittered. The comps had been working on Galcenian data ever since she’d dropped out of hyper, when she’d keyed in Prime Base and asked the comp to locate it for her. The noises from the console meant that the system had come up with a Found mark.
Beka picked up the lightspeed comm link, dialed in the Inspace frequency, and pushed the output power to max.
I hope they’re listening down there, she thought. Because this is all the warning they’re going to get.
“All stations, all stations,” she said. “This is RMV
Warhammer
. This is not a drill. Mage warships are in the system. I say again, Mage warships are in the system. Space attack Galcen.”
The lightspeed transmissions on the frequency scanner suddenly picked up. She couldn’t follow Space Force code-talk, and lots of transmissions in the particular squeak of scrambled, enciphered, and high-speed compression signals were suddenly coming from the scanners.
Jessan’s voice came over the intraship link. “Captain—targets, many, close, not transmitting any identification.”
“Take them under fire.”
A pulse weapon sent colored light cascading across space ahead of her as she turned
Warhammer
back toward the area where Mage warcraft were still dropping out of hyper. The sensor monitor on the console beeped at her: more ships were coming through outside of visual range.
How many years were the Mages putting this fleet together and we didn’t even know it? she wondered. If I ever find the guy who was passing them Space Force parts and plans, I swear I’ll kill him myself and send Dadda his head in a basket.
“Lock on,” she said aloud. “Fire at will.”
“Locked on and firing,” Jessan replied over the link. As usual in the midst of action, his voice was light and almost casual. “But as far as I can see, we’re the only good guys around. You aren’t planning to take on the entire Mage warfleet single-handed, are you?”
“That’s an idea,” Beka replied, keeping a wary eye on the readings from the other ships and spiraling to break sensor lock. There was a lot of stuff out there, and none of it friendly. “But I do want to live past the next twenty minutes—there’s somebody in the Space Force I want to track down and kill for this.”
“Sorry,” said Jessan. “That one’s mine.”
“Fair enough. Right now, though, we need something that’ll mark the Mages’ drop point for local defense forces. And firing our energy weapons will do it.”
“You do realize that’s dangerous.”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” she told him. The fire-control alarm sounded again. “Lock on.”
Energy beams darted forth from Number One Gun, firing at a Mage raiding craft coming past on the end of a dropout. A plume of gases feathered out from the contact as the hit broached at least one of the raider’s compartments to vacuum.
“Good shot,” came LeSoit’s voice from Number Two, just before the ventral gun struck the raider in turn. “But I wish we had some missiles.”
“If we live through this I’ll buy you one for a souvenir,” promised Beka. “Make do with what you’ve got back there—damage or cripple as many as you can, and keep them from getting too close.”
From one of the airless planets in the Galcen system, a pillar of fire rose up into the void, striking and shattering one of the Magebuilt dreadnoughts. A moment later, a yellow explosion flowered on the planet’s surface.
“Missile launch, friendly,” said Jessan over the link. “Looks like local defense is taking over.”
Beka checked the status boards. “Sensors show a Republic dreadnought heading this way, dropping off fighters as she comes; and there’s another one maneuvering into position between the Mages and Galcen. Only two, though. That’s not enough.”
By now the Galcenian outer defense beam-weapons were tracing across the starfield with red and yellow fire. More explosions bubbled out in the vacuum. And still the Mage warships kept dropping out of hyper in wave after wave, while the warships already in the system drove inward toward Galcen.
“I’ve marked two contacts on my screen,” commented LeSoit from the Number Two gun bubble. “You see them?”
“I have them locked on,” Beka said. “What about them?”
“They’re sure heading somewhere in a hell of a hurry.”
“I noticed that,” she said. “I’m going to follow them and see what they’re after.”
She pushed in some down vector to pass astern of a fighter crossing her path, and set the
’Hammer
’s inertial guidance system to remember the way to Prime. “Come on, baby, show me some of that speed.”
Over the intraship link, she could hear LeSoit and Jessan talking back and forth between the gun bubbles: “One crossing to your side.” … “Got him.” … “Nice work.”
The two of them sounded friendlier now than they ever had; Beka shook her head and turned her attention forward. Up ahead of the foremost Mages, there was something … a distortion, a waveriness … against the disk of Galcen in the magnified visual repeater.
Where have I seen that before? Now I remember—the Prof had his old Magebuilt scoutcraft under a some kind of cloak, back when we were sneaking into Darvell.
She clicked on the intraship link. “They’re using hidden vessels—the first wave is already inside Galcen’s local defense screen. I’m going to go check it out.”
“Do you have a probable course on them?” Jessan asked over the link.
She squinted sidelong at the navicomp; most of her attention was reserved for the shield-integrity and engine-function displays. “Wait one … Galcen Prime. They’re going to skim the atmosphere.”
“What’s up there?”
“Could be planning to take out the planetary-defense satellites.”
As she spoke, a dozen or more lights on the cockpit console flashed orange. The fire-control alarm started pipping again, followed a second later by the wail of another, louder alarm.
“Lock on,” said Beka. “Homers inbound.”
She hit a switch on the console. “Commence active jamming. Nyls, Ignac’—fire on homers, but
only
on homers, and only if it looks like they’re going to hit us. I don’t want those guys in the cloaks to see me coming up on them.”
“Fire on homers, aye,” said Jessan, and LeSoit echoed him, “Fire on homers.”
Beka fed more power to the realspace engines. She could hear LeSoit and Jessan talking back and forth in the gun bubbles: “Watch out!” … “I hope that was a homer, because I just shot it.” … “If it wasn’t a homer it was too damned close anyway. Don’t worry about it.”
She laughed under her breath—
Idiots, the both of them!
—and kept her eye on the sensor data. Soon enough, the target of the cloaked ships made itself clear, and she cursed aloud.
“What’s up, Captain?” asked Jessan.
“Somebody on the Mages’ side really thinks ahead,” she told him. “Prime and South Polar just launched courier vessels—every one they’ve got, from the looks of it. The Republic’s heavy ships are going to have to stay and fight, but the couriers can run for hyper and get away to spread the word. If those cloaked ships don’t hit them first.”
Beka fed coordinates from the navicomps into the gun tracking system. “All right, people, I have a target for you. Range long. Marked on your scopes.”
“I don’t see anything,” LeSoit said.
“It’s cloaked,” she said. “But it’s heading for the jump points from Galcen, same as all those couriers. They don’t have any guns, but we do. So it’s time to fly some cover for them.”
The alarm wailed again.
“Damn!” she said. “More homers. Let the shields take them from now on—save your fire for the Mages.”
She cut in the overrides.
I can’t push the ship much faster, she thought. Not without screwing things up for Nyls and Ignac’ at the guns. But I can throw power to the shields and keep those homers from blowing up my engines.
“Stand by,” she said. “Fire at will.”
Up ahead, a sleek dark-hulled ship suddenly winked into view. A double trace of energy shot out from it to intercept one of the courier ships.
“Bastard,” she said. “Nyls, Ignac’—take him.”
“Number One Gun, firing,” came the reply as energy beams flashed out; and the echo, “Number Two Gun, firing.”
In the next moment Beka felt a series of rapid explosions hammering at the skin of her ship as missiles from one of the Mage ships made contact. LeSoit’s voice came over the link.
“Captain, request permission to target incoming missiles.”
“Denied. Keep on firing at that ship!”
She hit the controls to turn
Warhammer
on her side so that both the dorsal and ventral guns would have a direct line at the target, and checked the status boards. “Damage control reports we’re open to vacuum in the outer holds, but the shields over the engines are up. We’ll do.”
Ahead of her she saw four couriers in formation, heading for a jump point. Beka put their course and speed into her own navicomps. “Heading for Gyffer, are you?” she muttered under her breath when the data came up. “Nice place, Gyffer. Good shipyards. Don’t worry; I’ll see that you get away.”
The
’Hammer
pushed on closer. Yet another alarm added its note to the cacophony as the
’Hammer
shuddered suddenly and then pulled forward again.
“What was that?” she heard LeSoit calling to Jessan over the link between from the guns.
“Defense satellites don’t know we’re friendly.”
“Never mind the defense satellites!” Beka snapped over the link. “Let the shields take it. Keep on firing at the Mage warships.”
One of the couriers blew up; the others began changing course, to take evasive steering. Beka shook her head.
“They’ll never get away like that—that’s what the Mages want, to keep them from making a run to jump. I’m going to get ahead of them and clear the way.”
“Can you do that?” LeSoit asked. “Those damned things are all engine.”
“So am I. Keep them safe.” She picked up the exterior comm link and keyed it on. “Space Force couriers—this is
Warhammer
, Rosselin-Metadi commanding. I am your cover. Maintain course and speed. Run to jump. Do it now.”
Warhammer
’s guns took another of the suddenly uncloaked Mage ships under fire. The warships were matching speeds with the couriers as the Republic vessels straightened their course and began another run-to-jump Beka threw the
’Hammer
into a spiral to put herself between the remaining couriers and the Mages. The guns of the black ships spat out fire, the energy pulses tracing across the darkness and dimming the stars with their brilliance, and the
’Hammer
’s guns cut lines of dazzling light through space in reply.
One of the couriers winked out, space distorting around the vessel as it made the transition to hyperspace. Another exploded as a homer took it. Then the third one jumped and was gone.