This Corner of the Universe (17 page)

Heskan
looked over to Truesworth.  “Did that sound a little cranky to you?  Let this
be a lesson to you young ensigns that bad manners get you nothing.”  Heskan
looked over to Riedel.  “You record the reply… tell them the captain has
retired to his quarters with instructions not to be disturbed.  Inform him I’ll
hear the message in a little over eight hours.”

Riedel
cut short a laugh and with a big smile replied, “You’re not going to make his
Christmas card list that way, Captain.”

Several
minutes later, Heskan had placed his engagement plan up on the main screen and
was explaining it to his crew when the angry response came back.  “You think
you’re cute?  Let’s watch your captain laugh when we blow that mining base to
hell.”

The
words made Heskan grimace.  “Damn, I was hoping he’d get frustrated and charge
us but he’s playing it smart.”  Looking at the opticals
,
he saw the three-ship squadron begin turning away
from
Anelace
and toward the RALF. 
That information is two minutes
old so figure thirty seconds to turn toward the RALF, which means they’ve been
under way at point one light for ninety seconds… that makes them one hundred twenty-nine
light-seconds from us.
  His quick math was confirmed by the tactical plot,
which had projected an estimation of the squadron’s current position given the
time-late data. 
It’s time to act
.

Heskan
sounded battle stations as he barked commands, “Navigation, intercept Ketch Two,
maximum speed.  WEPS, rig your Lyles for point defense.  Engage Ketch-Two with
the main battery when in range.  Sensors, I want identification on the missiles
the second you pick them up; run ECM Suite Beta in the meantime.”

He
gripped the arms of his command chair.  “We’re going in.”

Anelace
shot from the edge of the Beta
Field under maximum acceleration.  Pulling g-forces that would crush the crew
without her inertial compensators, she hit her sprint speed of .33
c
in
just thirty seconds.  The corvette streaked across space to close the 129
ls
distance
between the ships by 22
ls
before the pirates even saw her begin to move.

Blackheart’s
captain had been expecting a
charge from the corvette when he moved against the mining station.  That
arrogant navy captain might be able to ignore his demands for surrender but he
surely couldn’t fail to defend the civilians in the RALF 13
lm
away.  It
came as no surprise when a crewman called out that the little ship had burst from
the asteroid field.  Seconds later, the watchman updated his combat plot and he
found that
Anelace’s
projected position was a mere 107
ls
from the
pirate flagship.  Slightly panicked at how fast
Anelace
was closing, the
captain hastily ordered
Blackheart
to turn her starboard broadside toward
the enemy.

The
schooner’s thrusters touched off seconds after her captain gave the command and
pushed the bow of the large ship hard to starboard as the missile doors on the
starboard side retracted.  The weapon systems, which had been energized and
placed into standby mode, went active and began their search for a target as
soon as they were unmasked.  The entire process took twenty-three seconds as
Anelace
screamed another 7
ls
closer toward her prey.  Although she was now just
slightly over 100
ls
from the schooner, her target was much closer.

“Diane,
start the turn when we’re thirty light-seconds from Ketch Two.  Just skim the
edge of mass driver range like we did with Raptor,” Heskan commanded as he
stared at the main screen.  The optics showed all three pirate ships turning to
starboard.  It looked like the schooner was stopping her turn to face her
starboard broadside toward
Anelace
while the ketches were continuing to fully
come about. 
It’s working better than I had hoped
, he thought. 
The
schooner is still drifting away from us at point one light while the ketches
are slowing down to try to close with us.  They’re already twenty-seven light-seconds
from the schooner and getting further apart.

Blackheart’s
captain was livid at the developing
situation.  The corvette had been within missile range for over two and a half
minutes and
Blackheart
still had not fired a single shot.  When finally
told they were prepared to fire, the captain screamed the command so loudly his
entire bridge crew cringed.  Two second-generation Interceptor-B-IV missiles
spit out from their starboard ports.  Although antiquated compared to current
military missiles, they were still lethal reminders of the Brevic-Hollaran
border skirmishes of twenty years past.  Once clear of their launchers, the
missile engines fully engaged their drives and shot toward
Anelace,
quickly reaching their .45
c
top speed.  Containment fields snapped over
the open missile ports and once the missile control system verified an airtight
environment, the launchers opened their rear portals to begin the thirty-second
reload sequence.

Anelace
continued to charge Ketch-Two,
the ship closest to her.  She was 1
lm
from the pirate ship with a
combined closure rate of .54
c
as both ships dashed toward each other. 
Unless the ships changed velocity or course,
Anelace’s
mass driver would
be in range in ninety-five seconds. 
A long time to wait
, thought
Heskan.

Blackheart’s
starboard missile port containment
fields blinked off as her computers were given the order to fire once again. 
Two more missiles raced out of the ports and accelerated within seconds to
their top speed, just thirty seconds behind the first pair.  The containment
fields re-engaged and the loading process began again.

A half-minute
later, another pair of missiles discharged from
Blackheart’s
broadside. 
A total of three pairs of missiles were now in flight, their homing computers
locked soundly on
Anelace
.  The 16
ls
interval between each pair
spanned a total distance of 32
ls
, starting from the most recently fired
missiles nearest
Blackheart
to the first pair, which was now only 52
ls
from
Anelace
.

“Eyes
sharp, Mr. Truesworth.  You know they’ve fired missiles at us; we just haven’t
seen the light yet,” Heskan cautioned his sensor officer.  “Assuming they
launched as soon as they saw us move, we should be picking them up soon.”

Heskan
knew the immense distances this fight would play out over would give time lag a
significant role in the engagement.  For the same reason that
Anelace
could initially run toward the pirate ships undetected, he knew that the
schooner had probably already fired several volleys of missiles that he could
not yet see.  The ships were 86
ls
apart and the light from
Blackheart’s
first launch still would not have crossed the distance to reach
Anelace
. 
When Truesworth finally did detect the first incoming missiles,
Anelace
would quickly compute the firing characteristics and flight times and begin to
plot lighter shaded “ghost images” of other predicted, more distant, inbound
missiles.  Truesworth’s sensor section would change the predicted ghost images
into solid symbols as they confirmed the missiles were real, or remove them
from tactical if
Anelace’s
predictions were untrue.  The solid symbols
of real missiles mixed with the ghost images of predicted missiles combined
with each ship’s vector lines and uncertainty zones made for a complicated
tactical plot that took years of training to process.

Fifteen
seconds after Heskan’s caution, the call came.  Time lag had worked against
Anelace,
allowing the first pair of missiles to cover over half the distance between
them and come within 41
ls
before her crew was even aware of their
launch.  “Vampires!” cried Truesworth, using the archaic warning for incoming
missiles. “They’re second-gen Interceptor-B types judging by the emissions and
flight characteristics.”  The stress in Truesworth’s voice was apparent.  “Ana
recommends switching to ECM Suite Delta, switching electronic countermeasures
over now.”

“Very
good, Mr. Truesworth,” Heskan said in what he hoped was a reassuring voice.

“Captain,
point defense is active.”  Vernay’s calm and confident voice was a stark
contrast to Truesworth’s.

Vernay
had recovered from the events of just a half hour ago.  The loss of her section
members still stung terribly but the grief had been set aside.  From the moment
Anelace
charged out of the Beta Field, she knew the entire ship would be
depending on her section to knock down any incoming missiles.  Unlike the railgun
rounds from
Cloak
, she knew she could actually do something about the
missiles and she was grateful she had trained her crew relentlessly on point
defense procedures.  Due to the loss of the mass driver crew, she had assumed
total control over its functions whereas normally she only locked the weapon on
target and then issued the fire order while her driver crew took care of the
rest.  Now, she had to supervise everything from temperature control to
reloading procedures in addition to the other tasks of a section commander. 
With the addition of a point defense role in the engagement, Vernay was also
the weapons director for her four Lyle GP pulse lasers.  Her function was
target management while the actual gunners would exercise control over their
individual weapons.  In essence, she would tell each laser turret what to fire
at but the crewmember controlling the specific turret was responsible for
locking on to and destroying the target without further assistance from her. 
As each side of
Anelace
had two GP turrets, Vernay had paired a petty
officer second class and a spaceman per side.  These remaining four crewmembers
comprised the surviving half of her entire weapons section’s gunners.  The last
man in the weapons section, her petty officer first class and section chief,
was currently in Auxiliary Control and while he assisted her during battle, his
primary duty was to assume command of the weapons section in the event Vernay
herself fell during the battle.

Vernay
had directed the starboard turrets to one missile and the portside turrets to
the other for each incoming volley.  That way, each missile from
Blackheart’s
twin salvos had a petty officer, who was presumably more skilled and experienced
than the accompanying spaceman, assigned to intercept it.  While the first pair
of missiles raced toward
Anelace
, she had labeled the missiles Vampire-A
and Vampire-B but the weapons section merely addressed them as “Alpha” and
“Bravo.”  As
Anelace
and the sensor section began plotting predicted
missiles based on the thirty-second launch cycle of the Interceptor-B, the next
two incoming missiles became “Charlie” and “Delta” and so on.

“Initiating
starboard turn, Captain,” Selvaggio said as she guided the corvette into a
starboard yaw.

Just
30
ls
from Ketch-Two,
Anelace
veered hard to her right.  As she
turned, she once again rolled on her port side to keep all four pulse lasers
unmasked at her enemies.  The ship’s momentum still carried her toward the
pirate ketch at .33
c
but her drives began to push her laterally in an effort
to ensure she would skirt by the pirate ketch within the 10
ls
mass
driver range but not drop into the knife-fighting range of lasers.

While
Anelace
was just ten degrees into her ninety-degree starboard turn,
Blackheart
belched its fourth pair of missiles at the corvette.  The schooner shuddered
with each launch as the seven-and-a-half meter long missiles touched off their
drives.  The captain’s earlier ire forgotten, he now smiled confidently at his
combat plot.  The ability to launch two missiles every thirty seconds made
Blackheart’s
throw-weight very light in military terms but in the world of pirates, she was
a queen among serfs.  He had never fired a fifth volley at the same enemy
before.  His toughest foe to date had been a Marquee class schooner that had
been used as an enforcer ship for a rival pirate faction.  Just as he had been
about to order the launch of the fifth volley against it, his first pair of
missiles had so gutted the opposing pirate ship that the last volley he had
fired that day had nothing left to maintain a weapon’s lock on.  He fully
expected a better fight against a true military vessel but the corvette was
only half of
Blackheart’s
size and without missile armament.  Her amazing
speed had come as a big shock initially but as more salvos poured from his
ship, he felt increasingly confident.  Furthermore, he had decided the corvette’s
main battery, the mass driver, was probably inoperative.  Poor
Cloak
had
never really had a chance at destroying the corvette but had served a useful
purpose with its lucky strike on
Anelace’s
bow.  The pirate captain’s
first mate had estimated that while the actual gun appeared undamaged, the
delicate computer equipment controlling the weapon was almost certainly destroyed. 
He anticipated a fine reward for salvaging such a magnificent weapon.  If they
could mount it on
Blackheart’s
bow, she would be one of the most
powerful enforcer ships in the entire sector.

“Starboard
missile tubes reloaded,” his weapons officer told him, bringing him back to the
moment.

“Fire!”

The fifth
volley left
Blackheart
.  Thirty seconds later, a sixth pair cleared the
schooner’s missile ports.

As
the engines of both missiles in the sixth volley burned to maximum, the first
two Interceptor missiles had nearly spanned the distance between
Blackheart
and
Anelace
.  One had already lost its lock on
Anelace. 
The
electronic countermeasures streaming from the tiny ship had so thoroughly
saturated the missile’s targeting sensors with hundreds of false targets that it
had effectively blinded it.  The second missile had stayed true to its course
and honed in remorselessly.  All four of
Anelace’s
GP turrets fired
within a second of each other and both missiles disintegrated underneath the
initial burst of pulse lasers 4
ls
from the corvette.  Each laser turret
on
Anelace
recycled and was ready to fire two seconds later.  As the gunners
quickly trained their weapons out toward the next pair of missiles, they
focused on their next targets assigned to them by Lieutenant Vernay.

On
the bridge, Vernay resisted the impulse to announce the successful interception
of the first two missiles.  Anyone looking at the tactical plot would see their
negation and it was nearly impossible not to fixate upon it during battle. 
Keeping her concentration on her mass driver’s target lock on the ketch, she
counted down the seconds until she could fire. 
Anelace
was just 12
ls
away and her targeting computers predicted they would be in firing range in
five seconds.

The
captain of Ketch-Two, known as
Cutthroat
to her crew, was concentrating
on his own combat plot as if his intense concentration would will his ship to
move faster. 
Cutthroat
was making .21
c
, very respectable for her
size but it wasn’t going to be enough.  He had been late anticipating the
corvette’s right turn; consequently, the damned thing was going to just briefly
pass through his railguns’ range.  He had hoped he could close to within 5
ls
and add the fire of his single B-pack laser mounted under the bow.  He knew
the corvette’s own lasers were too busy attempting to knock down incoming
missiles to turn their attention to his ship and even one hit from his laser
against a ship as small as a corvette could deliver a significant blow.