COMBAT SALVAGE 2165 (17 page)

Her ring section breached the last layers and the arcing bolts clung and crackled and stretched until she ripped free of their reach and made for low orbit.
Audacity
and
Greenstone
slipped quietly out of the atmo 50Ks on either side and let their arrays take in the stars.
 

Almost instantly after that, his flight helmet’s visor painted a patch of stars fatter and brighter than they should have been. The daemon coordinating input from the fighters' and the junks' LiDAR arrays had compared all the available views of the stars from all the friendly craft in the immediate vicinity, and those views of the surrounding stars should have been identical, but they weren’t. Some of the stars weren’t where they should have been by only a tenth of a degree, but when the images from all the friendly craft were combined, the positional discrepancies were enough to make the stars appear to grow in angular diameter in one, moving location. What Jordo and the Lancers saw projected in their helmets was a tiny patch of sky where the stars looked too fat, too bright. The shape of the region was like a walrus tooth. Without any real range data, he couldn’t swear to the size, but he was willing to bet it was 120 meters.

"
1-1, this is 1-2," Paladin said, "
Ripper
. Confirmed."
 

"
Roger that," Jordo said. "Play it cool, people. Nobody point your nose at it. Steady on vector. We all keep flying like there’s nothing there..."
 

"1-1, this is
Audacity
." Burn said, "Let’s invite him in."
 

*****

Tig said, "Looks like they’re widening the patrol."

"
Cherry, goddammit, you watch the Chief. I’ll watch the tactical display," Wambach said.
 

The bundles of control conduits feeding into Horcheese blocked the projection in a few places, but the bridge’s tactical display covered half the bridge. It was all shown out of scale, of course, and the Lancers’ fighters were the size of pigeons as they spread out around the breaching ship, pretending they couldn’t see the stealthed alien stalking them. On the tactical display, the Squidy was a blank, gray region, like a menacing, disembodied shadow. The half-meter-long, patch of dim over the deck of the bridge changed directions, heading for
Tipperary
.
 

"
It’s now closing range," Wambach said. "Coming in right in between Lancer 1-4 and 1-5. Cheeky Squidyman."
 

"
Those two Bitzers are about 2300 meters apart." Rampone said. "Looks like Squidy is confident."
 

"
Clear skies, people," Burn repeated over comms. "Act like you don’t see a thing. He’s coming for the breaching ship now and since he knows he’ll only get one shot, he won’t be using the warheads. Rampone, you get ready to hit that ECM script."
 

Tig said, "How’s that charge feeling? Reactors still good?"

"We’re good," Horcheese said. "
Audacity
, how do my reactors and engine plume look on IR?"
 

"
Nice and cool. Like you aren’t even breaking a sweat," Burn said.
 

The perspiration clung to the Chief’s face in quivering zero-gee beads. "Parker?"

"
All capacitor links are holding."
 

Horcheese said, "Mr. Meester?"

"All the CDCS command links to the particle emitters are good. It’s all yours, Chief." He glanced at Horcheese. Her eyes were now fixed on the tactical display and the tusk-shaped patch of darkness approaching her over the bridge like a stalking specter.
 

*****

It passed right between Gusher and Dirty like it was convinced it couldn’t be seen. The alien slipped underneath Jordo, too, and headed straight for the breaching ship. It passed between his fighter and the planet’s dayside clouds. "He’ll be in range any second," Paladin said.

"He’s already in range." In that moment, Jordo shot with fear, seeing it all going wrong. This whole gambit to let the Squidy sail right in was
his
idea and now, something aboard
Tipperary
had failed. It must have… It took all his nerve not to call out for the Lancers to attack now while there was still half a chance. Jordo had always thought he was a cool customer, but watching that shadow, that stain as it came, he wanted nothing but to give in to his fear. What stayed his hand wasn’t confidence in his plan. It was a realization so cold and chilling that he shivered inside his flight suit. It was too late to do anything now but go with the plan.
 

"
Greenstone
," Burn said over comms, "Let ‘em fly."
 

"Warspites away." Pardue confirmed over comms. The pair of warspite torpedoes flared out of
Greenstone’s
tubes and ripped across the black on fiery columns.
 

The Squidy knew the torpedoes couldn’t see him, and as expected, the alien kept his cool. He didn’t flinch. The Squidy vessel kept coming, maneuvering for what was sure to be a kill shot across
Tipperary’s
ring or reactors. The Squidy now drifted in front of the breaching ship and waited for the Mk3 warspites to pass. It made sense. The torps couldn't see him. In a few seconds, those torps would be too far away to matter and then, the Squidy could expose himself and open fire.
 

"Do it," Jordo whispered. "Do it." The torps had actually passed the alien’s starboard side. They were heading away from their target when
Tipperary’s
ring section crackled with charge. Then, her three emitters spat out wide and ghostly streams of heavy nuclei. The cone of fire had spread to nearly half a kilometer wide when it hit the Squidy. The particles Horcheese threw from the emitters were a garbage burst, a throat-clearing test burst of nuclei thrown across a wide area in an unfocused stream, barely accelerated beyond 1/10th lightspeed. Those particles were slow and carried almost no energy at all, but they were far from harmless.
 

Horcheese bathed the alien with the emitters so it sparkled up and down the its hull. The projection in Jordo’s flight helmet now showed the actual location of the enemy, some 300 meters away from where they’d thought he was.

The mk3 warspite torpedoes saw the Squidy now, too. They were only a couple thousand Ks out from the revealed enemy warship, and they cut a 96 gee turn to flip on their maneuvering thrusters and put their noses on target.

Less than two seconds later, both torpedoes found their mark and detonated together against the aft end of the Squidy’s hull. Like UNS
Duer
, the Squidy was blown forward. Jordo imagined the vaporization fireball breaching the aliens’ armor, reaching the inner decks and filling them with firestorms. The dying alien’s camouflage failed as it spun towards
Tipperary’s
ring, threatening to take the breaching ship to Squidy-hell with it.
 

*****

The rent and burning alien hull spun down on top of their heads and Tig wanted more than anything else to run, but there was nowhere to go.

"
Evasive! NAV! Give me that ECM script!"
 

"
No engine power for thirty seconds! Can’t maneuver!"
 

It spun at them, and as Tig watched the dying alien ship falling on them like a terrible illustration of inevitability, the fear left him like a rat jumping ship. There was a clarity that came after the panic, a flash of insight that happened more quickly and landed more solidly than any thought he’d ever had. He glanced at Parker at the same time she looked to him. Her face was still full of fear and a smile was all he could manage then before her face washed out in the glare from the alien reactor’s detonation.

It took whole seconds for that light to fade, and when it did, there was nothing falling on top of the bridge’s dome anymore. There was nothing in front of the breaching ship but a cloud of rapidly expanding gas and small debris. The Chief's head slumped forward.

17

Tipperary
steamed for the Algol-Mizar transit at her best speed with the two junks and five Lancers flying just ahead of them. All Tig could see of the fighters with his naked eyes was the pinpoints of their exhaust flares. They looked like a constellation gone squirly as they rolled around each other and switched up their formation up every few seconds.
 

He didn’t notice the Chief had woken up until she spoke. "The hell you do to me, Meester..."

"
Welcome back," Parker said.
 

"
The Chief is back!" Rampone left his console and flew over the web of control leads and concatenators.
 

Wambach almost pulled out the leads from her shoulder socket yanking on them to get to the Chief faster. "You alright, Chief?"

"Do I
look
alright?"
 

"
You had an overload," Tig said. "Like a seizure."
 

"What about the Squidy task force gunning for
Hardway…
. is it still in place or have they already hit the transit."
 

"They already left to lay their trap ahead of
Hardway
and the battlegroup."
 

"They’re gone, then?" Horcheese sounded as if she doubted it. "They know what a breaching ship is. They know we could warn
Hardway
. I’m surprised they didn’t send more ships than the one we killed."
 

"
Oh, they didn’t forget us," Rampone said, "They dispatched a trio of destroyers to come after us, but we’ll beat them to the Mizar transit by almost four minutes."
 

"And
Hardway
will be there?" Timms said from the NAV console. "If we open the transit and jump to the Mizar system, then
Hardway
and the convoy and the battlegroup will all be there?"
 

"That was the plan..." She looked at the bundles of control conduits like jungle vines where her limbs should have been. "When we get there, you’re all transferring off
Tipperary
. Even you, Timms. You already did the math for us. I know where to collide the streams to open the transit."
 

"
Thanks," Timms said.
 

The Chief said, "Meester, you know there’s a real chance that even if you rigged all this up right and it works, we could still die. You and Parker should ride in the junk. All of you."

"
No, no, no. He can’t go," Raleigh said. "You said Cozen said he was lucky. So he’s got to stay."
 

"
If he stays then I get to stay, too." Parker said.
 

"If the cherries get to stay... Hell
," Rampone said. "Me an Wambach. We rebuilt this ship as much as anyone."
 

"
Send Parker back," Tig said.
 

"
Screw you, too, Tig!"
 

Horcheese actually chuckled. "You saying ESys Specialist Parker isn’t up to her job?"

"
No."
 

"She stays, too," Rampone said. "I’ve seen you lookin’ all moon-eyed at Parker. I bet you’ll be luckier if she stays."
 

*****

Burn insisted on charging the capacitors in flight. While an already crackling
Tipperary
settled in position just 2Ks from the point in the vacuum where she would breach space, Jordo zoomed in with his flight helmet and interrogated the closing alien warships one more time. He’d seen their images painted in millimeter radar returns, grainy and monochrome. He thought maybe it was the angle they flew at that hid the gun towers, but now, they’d come closer and changed their angle of approach and he still thought they looked under-gunned. "Lancer 1-2, zoom in with your flight helmet and tell me how many gun towers you see on those incoming alien destroyers."
 

"
Not enough," Paladin said. "One, maybe. Small-bore. Near the top."
 

"
They're too fat. Those are pocket carriers," Dirty said. "Three of ‘em."
 

"
Twelve red bandits flyin’ off each one. More than I’d like to tango with."
 

"
They must have figured out our game. They don’t want us transiting out of here and warning
Hardway
about the ambush."
 

"
Audacity
, this is Lancer 1-1. We’re going to have company sooner than we thought."
 

"
I see ‘em now, 1-1. They’re going to launch those fighters any second."