Auberon (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 1) (24 page)

“Enej,” she said, “please add spheres around all ships showing outer effective range of the Primaries, and then a larger sphere for safe Jumpspace.”

She took a breath to watch the various balls move around one another. It didn’t look promising. But why was he coming in so slow?

“Kigali,” she said after a moment, “come in close to
Auberon
and fly a very tight escort for now on a flank. I expect missiles to start soon, timed to get to us about the time Wachturm opens fire with his big guns.”

“Roger that,
Auberon
. Executing now.” The blond commander had a stern look about him today as he looked aside to talk to his own staff.

“Jež,” she continued, “
Auberon’s
the slowest. Can we get clear before they can hit us?”

His image shrugged. “If we red–line everything to the point we burn out the engines, sir,” he said, “we might be able to get there. I would still expect him to get in a couple of shots when we did, and there won’t be anything held back to reinforce the shields.”

“Are
St. Albertus Magnus
and
Johannesburg VI
likely to slow him down at all?” Tamara asked.

“Doubtful,” d’Maine replied with a gruff growl. “One of his frigates would be enough control both of them. The other escorts will be more than enough for us, unless we sent the entire Wing out and pulled the same kind of maneuver on them as they tried on us at
Ao–Shun
last time. Launch everything we have all at once and try to overwhelm them.”

Jessica watched the board unfold. Something didn’t feel right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

Wachturm was better than this.

“Jež,” she said, “have Ozolinsh push the engines as hard as he dares, but don’t go for broke. We’re going to need them later. I’d rather go for evasive maneuvering and hope
Amsel
doesn’t hurt us too bad. We don’t need to fight, only to escape. He has to come to us.”

Enej Zivkovic screwed up his face at her from across the table. “Then why isn’t he chasing us harder, commander? They could have been on top of us at emergency flank.”

“Because, Flag Centurion,” d’Maine replied, “that would have been a knife fight, and we’ve got a whole bunch more knives than they do. It only takes one lucky shot in a brawl like that. Even against a Battleship. He knows that, over there.”

Something about Zivkovic’s words spurred Jessica to spin the projection again, until she was looking at her own fleeing squadron from Wachturm’s point of view on his own bridge. Something in her brain clicked.

“He’s not chasing us, people,” she said with a sense of wonder to her voice, “he’s driving us.”

“Towards what?” d’Maine said. “There’s nothing over there.”

“Correction,” Jež said before she could open her mouth, “there no active transponders or scanner arrays over there. Should we launch
da Vinci
and have her look?”

“Negative, Denis,” Jessica said sharply. “If this is a trap, I have a better way to spring it. What’s missing from the fleet behind us?”

She noted the confused looks on most of the faces.

Tamara caught on fastest. “A full Task Force like that should have four frigates, a light cruiser, and a heavy cruiser or battlecruiser attached. I can’t imagine why he’d leave them behind when hunting us, unless he had them waiting for us someplace like
C’Xindo
.”

“He didn’t, Tamara. My gut tells me that they’re sitting over there, coasting in without engines, sensors, or transponders, right at the edge of safe Jumpspace.”

Jessica reached out and touched a spot inside the projection, and then a second, drawing a line from the front of Auberon to the point where their flight path would get them clear of the gravity well.

“Tamara, I would like you to fire a barn owl along this path, ballistically. Just one stealth missile. Set it to arm thirty seconds after it clears us, and have it home in on any signal it receives and run it down. There’s nobody friendly in front of us we can hit.”

She thought for a second.

“Kigali,” she said, “we’re just about out of shot missiles, but that fleet doesn’t have nearly as many launchers. Still, I’m going to need your team at the top of their game.”

She waited for him to nod.

“Jež,” she continued, “confirm that every launch rail has a missile on it, and then crash launch the Wing. Put everybody on the same side of us as
CR–264
, just like we were going to try an overload launch, similar to what they did to us at
2218 Svati Prime
. Everyone else, prepare to launch every missile you can get into the air, as fast as possible, when I do call for the fighters to blitz.”

Enej actually raised his hand to speak, a concerned look on his face. “I thought the consensus was that they would be expecting us to do that.”

“They are, Enej,” she said with a hard smile, “expecting it, that is. We shouldn’t disappoint them.”

She reached down and opened another comm channel. “Engineering. Flag. Please put Moirrey on.”

“I’m here, ma’am,” the shy voice came back almost instantly.

“Moirrey, I know we left a few surprises for people back at
2218 Svati Prime
,” Jessica said. “Do we have anything ready to go right now?”

Moirrey hummed to herself as she thought.

“We’ve go’ one ready a’go now, ma’am,” the Yeoman replied, “Could fix a second one in aboouut five minutes.”

“Please do, Moirrey. Ozolinsh, if you can hear me, pull anyone she needs except people keeping the engines running.”

A faint “Will do,” could be heard from across the room.

Jessica closed the comm and looked across at Jež. “We’ll use the crash launch to cover it. There will be lots of noise.”

“That there will be, sir,” he said.

“What about
Rajput
, sir?” d’Maine asked.

“Not a lot for you, d’Maine,” she said. “Try to ease a little ahead of us and fade away a bit from our track, like you were getting ready to turn hard and fire a wing shot backwards at them. Be ready to redline and fire everything you have forward, when and if it comes.”

“Aye, sir,” he smiled harshly. “Right hand holds the big sword.”

“Either blade kills,
Rajput
,” she replied, “as long as they’re sharp.”

“We’ll be sharp, commander, don’t you worry.”

She smiled.

Him, she wasn’t worried about.

It was the man chasing them.

Ξ

Jouster
let
Bitter Kitten
launch with
da Vinci
in the primary slot today. She had earned it. He was going out the rear bay landing doors with the two big ships and the two surprise packages. He wanted to make sure everything went off with a hitch.

It was strange launching this way, without the huge surge of acceleration behind him. Shuttles and Fleet Lords traveled this way. But Keller had specific instructions she wanted executed.

Jouster
didn’t think he had anything left to prove to her at this point, but it was good to see things done right, rather than hoping.

Darkness.

Stars.

A single, dim red dwarf in the distance.

Small, gray rock below and behind them, fading as they ran for the edge of the gravity well.

Light the engines softly, bring the nose around and let the craft slide into the middle of the formation, on the right rear wing of an arrowhead. He was the last one to the party. Even
Necromancer
and
Cayenne
were there ahead of him, but they had been needed in position first.

“Flight Wing, this is
Jouster
,” he said firmly. “In position and counting down. Estimated thirty seconds to first navigation point.”

He checked the scanners again. Nothing ahead of them, even with
da Vinci
scanning, but she couldn’t exactly paint a narrow cone to find anything without giving the game away. No, just a series of hard, omni–directional pulses.

Big, bad battleship and consorts closing from the rear. Have to make this look good.

“Flight Wing, we are at first navigation point,” he continued, talking to himself in a bored tone. Nice and easy. “I want everybody to space themselves out some, like we were about to snap around and try to jump the Blackbird. A couple of waggles, maybe some flares. Sell it people.”

He fit words to deeds and stood his little
Harpoon
on both wingtips in rapid succession, just like someone preparing to go into high–g maneuvering.

“Squadron, this is the Flag,” her voice came over the waves. Hard. Tight. But somehow soothing, like she was completely prepared for what was about to happen. That helped. “Stand by.”

There was no response. There was no need. Everyone here knew the score. They had been on the other end of that stick recently.
Jouster
focused on his scanner, letting his brain fly the craft in the background.

A flash of light appeared on the screen, right beyond the Jumpspace perimeter. Somebody had just gotten kicked in the face.

“Bingo,”
da Vinci
cried over the comm. “All craft, I have a firing lock. Launch now. Repeat. Launch now.
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war
.”

Jouster’s
thumb was already halfway to the firing stud before she spoke. His craft rocked gently as both missiles detached, ignited, and raced downrange.

Ahead of him, he watched the glare as forty–four missiles launched, almost simultaneously.

It was star–bright

What was it Leonidas had said that day?
Fine, then we shall fight in the shade
.

There was a wall of giant, gray arrows falling on the newly–revealed battlecruiser. Truly, enough to shadow the sun. Hopefully, this was going to be more like Crecy than Thermopylae.

Ahead and on the outer wing of the formation,
Rajput
suddenly swiveled in. Two bright lances of energy licked out.

Keller had been right about the Imperials.

But the Republic had come prepared.

Ξ

Jessica really had hoped she was wrong. That maybe Wachturm was playing it safe and just wanted to chase her away, taking potshots instead of getting into a melee. Possibly, he hadn’t heard about the second run at
2218 Svati Prime
yet.

Not even that kind of news traveled very fast across space.

In her heart, she didn’t believe it for a moment.

The flash of light on her projection was vindication, of a sort. She had guessed right about the man. He was still a genius.

Now, she had to find out if she was better.

“Giroux,” she called to the Science Officer. “Fastest readout, please.”

“Roger that, sir,” he replied, face down on a screen. “We have an Imperial Battlecruiser playing possum over there, plus a frigate. Cruiser’s shields are coming up now, along with his engines. Expect incoming fire shortly. Transponder identifies her as
IFV Muscva
, Capital–class Battlecruiser.”

“What about the frigate?” Jež’s voice entered the conversation across the open command channel.

“Looks like we scored a direct hit with the stealth missile, sir,” he replied. “Caught her with her shields down. She may be off–line. I’m not detecting shields yet.”

“Make sure all missiles are tracking the Battlecruiser,” Jessica said.

“Aye, sir,” somebody replied. It was hard to tell in the noise. Not that it mattered who, as long as it was done.

“Tactical,” Jež called, “all available power evenly split fore and aft to the shields, now.”

Jessica focused her attention on Wachturm, and the Battleship
Amsel
.

It would take them a few moments to redline the engines even if they had been prepared, but she expected it. She had just called their bluff a little early.

That was still a Battleship.

“Damage Control, stand by,” someone called over the general comm. “Incoming fire.”

Auberon
rocked as if she had just been sideswiped. The very metal of the hull rang like a bell. Even the air turned hazy as dust was vibrated out of cracks.

That was what it felt like when a Primary beam hit you, even with shields.

“Tactical,” Jessica said calmly, “who fired that round?”

“That was the cruiser,
Muscva
,” Tamara responded. “Battleship is still a little outside of range, unless he gets very lucky.”

“Expect him to try, Strnad. There’s trouble brewing up here.”

“Roger that. Vanek is on her guns.”

Jessica watched the projection with trepidation. There wasn’t much she could do at this point except count the seconds until the big ship brought her cannon battery to bear. And then, how long they would have to endure it to escape.

If they could.

Muscva
fired a second salvo of Primaries while Jessica watched. Three shots missed completely. Two grazed low as
Auberon
had already begun to flare up and away from her previous track.

The last one caught the carrier right in the teeth. She bucked like a wild stallion trying to throw a rider, twisting, rolling, and bucking.

Jessica felt light as the gravplates went down. The entire Flag Bridge went dark, except for the big projector.

She thanked whatever benevolent gods watched over them that they had that much power left.

In slow motion, Jessica watched the Imperial Battlecruiser let loose every Secondary she had at the wall of incoming missiles. Missiles that would have been targeted at the big ships were suddenly fired at incoming missiles, like bullets meeting in mid–flight. The carnage
Muscva
wrought was terrible, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

At least a dozen missiles got through and ran home as Jessica watched.

The Imperial Battlecruiser simply disappeared under a wall of flame, explosives detonating and mixing with oxygen and metal from the ship itself.

Jessica frantically pushed comm buttons, but nothing responded.

“Commander,” she heard Enej Zivkovic say, groggy or in pain, “I have the Emergency Bridge on the line.”