Daring (33 page)

By now, the three fast-moving ships of PatRon 10 were reaching extreme laser range. A long two minutes passed while nothing happened.

Three more ships popped out of the jump point in rapid succession. The
Fearless
lasered the first one's engines. It blew.

The second one got the same treatment.

The third one immediately began to rotate ship and fired its lasers into the area behind it.

Fearless
's shields took the first hit, which gave it time enough to fire two full laser blasts at the smart skipper and his deadly ship. Torpedoes arrived at the same time. Of four launched, two hit the rotating ship and it blew to gas.

But the
Fearless
's shields were gone, and one of the enemy ships had clipped the
Fearless
good.

Kris wanted to turn the sensors off, give the
Fearless
the privacy to die in peace, but she couldn't. She owed the ship and its captain and crew. The coin she would use to pay that debt would be to bear witness to their courage.

Bear witness before all humanity. All intelligent species of the galaxy.

That, Kris's tiny fleet deserved.

The next enemy ship backed through the jump point. He flipped ship on the other side of the jump after putting acceleration on. He also came through with lasers blazing.

His wild shooting got the
Fearless
with three hits. The shattered corvette hung there, drifting in space for a moment, then blew herself to gas.

“Somebody shut down the reactor's containment field,” Drago whispered. “They won't get anything from examining that wreckage. May I have the courage to do the same when my time comes.”

But the
Fearless
hadn't just rolled over and died. She'd hit the alien with at least one laser blast . . . and a final torpedo salvo that smashed into it even as the
Fearless
was blowing herself to hot vapor.

The alien wasn't destroyed, but it wasn't under control, either. It careened into a chunk of damaged hull from one of the earlier arrivals at the brawl. It drifted there, surrounded by the wreckage of a battle won at a terrible cost.

And when the next ship came shooting out of the jump point, it plowed into that wreckage. The collision ended with both of them in a slowly growing explosion.

The next ship came through slowly and tiptoed through the mess before it put two gees on and gave chase to the survivors of PatRon 10.

There were over fifty ships strung out in pursuit of them by the time the
Wasp
approached the closest jump.

“What are your intentions, Commodore?” Captain Drago asked Kris.

“To get as far away from here as possible,” she quickly answered him. “Preferably in the opposite direction from Earth.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Drago said. The
Wasp
was doing over two hundred thousand klicks an hour. Much more than it had for any of the jumps during their voyage of discovery.

“Sulwan, put twenty clockwise rpms on the ship and let's see where this jump takes us,” the skipper ordered.

“ Aye, aye, sir. Hell, here we come,” the navigator answered.

44

All three of the surviving corvettes of PatRon 10 made it through the jump. Under Kris's orders, they fled for the nearest jump point, watched by a blood red sun.

Once Chief Beni located them on the star charts, he estimated they'd jumped close to fifteen hundred light-years. They were on the far outer rim of the Milky Way. And as best as either the chief or Nelly could tell, the system should not have had a jump point into it at all.

That they were very likely lost ranked as the least of their problems.

They were a third of the way to the next jump when the aliens began pouring through the jump behind them. Most of them held to a solid two-gee acceleration. A few tried to put on three gees, but most of those soon fell back to something less stressful on engines and hulls.

Sulwan held the
Wasp
at 3.75. They expanded their lead over their pursuers.

Then the
Intrepid
began to fall out of formation.

“Commodore, we have a problem here,”
Intrepid
reported.

“Battle damage?” Kris asked.

“Engineering thinks it's just an old-fashioned material failure,” he said, not that the difference between them made either any less deadly.

“Can you fix it?”

“Not without banking down the reactors for a couple of hours,” he said. “We can hold two gees, which should keep us ahead of the thundering herd. At least for a while,” he added sardonically.

“You want us to fall back and pick up your crew?” Kris offered.

“No. One of us has to get back. You keep going hell for leather. We'll keep up as best we can.”

The
Wasp
and
Hornet
gradually stretched out their lead.

“How are we going to take this next jump?” Kris asked Sulwan and Captain Drago. Before that last jump of theirs, no one had ever taken a jump at much over fifty thousand klicks per hour, and they were rapidly edging up toward four hundred thousand klicks.

“We were thinking of hitting this next one at what we're doing now,” Captain Drago said, thoughtfully. “Keep accelerating for another third of the trip, then decelerate for the last third.”

“Will our next system be in this galaxy?” Kris asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Sulwan said. “But if the aliens continue to hold to only two-gee acceleration, we might jump farther than them.”

“I guess it's worth the risk,” Kris agreed.

Captain Drago hunched over his board for a moment, eyeing it like he might a potential traitor. “We won't be able to keep this speed up for too much longer. We'll need enough reaction mass to slow us down. Otherwise, we'll end our days drifting around real fast, going nowhere.”

“I hadn't thought of that,” Kris admitted.

“That's what they pay me for,” Captain Drago said with just the hint of a smile.

“How long do you think those alien ships can keep up this chase?” Kris asked.

“The reading I got on them is that they are pretty dense,” Chief Beni put in.

“There didn't seem to be a lot of tankage for reaction mass on that one we shot up,” Captain Drago noted. “It's just possible they may have to break off their chase for lack of fuel if we can keep this up a bit longer.”

“What are the chances they want to see us dead so much that they will chase us until their tanks are dry? What if the fellow doing all the talking on those videos doesn't give a fig about his minions so long an anyone different from him does not live in this galaxy?” Penny asked over the net, ever the speculating intelligence officer.

That brought the conversation to a roaring halt for a while.

“I imagine if I'd just seen a third to half of Earth blasted to hot gas, maybe a third to half of all my race blown to bits, I might not be all that interested in giving up the chase for them what done the deed,” Abby drawled.

That put an end to speculation.

For the next nine hours, the
Wasp
and
Hornet
shot across space at ever-increasing speed. While the ships raced and the enemy ships chased, there was little to do, and the high-gee stations gave little encouragement to doing it.

Kris slept at her battle post in her high-gee station for maybe three hours. It gave her some respite from the nagging doubts that ate at her.

Against them she had a simple defense. It was done, and the only thing they could possibly do was run. Whether they would succeed or fail at running depended on matters she had no control over.

They hit the next jump at slightly over 450,000 klicks per hour, with forty revolutions per minute on the boat. The jump left Kris dizzy.

Nelly reported while the crew was recovering, “We're still in the Milky Way, folks. But I have no idea where we are yet. I sure miss all that gear the boffins brought with them, Captain.”

“Yes, Nelly. Thank you, Nelly. Now save your lip for your princess. Remember, I'm the skipper. I can space you.”

“I thought Kris was the skipper now.”

“Wrong, Nelly,” Kris said. “When it comes to spacing unruly people and computers, Drago is still the man.”

“You humans never do anything rationally. But while you were jabbering about who is in charge of this madhouse,
I
have located our place in space. Kris, if you want to be as far from Earth as you possibly can be, we are there. If you look off to the right, you will see the void of intergalactic space.”

“Are there any jump points?” Drago asked.

“Three. Two of the old-fashioned ones and one of my new fuzzy ones. May I suggest that we head for that one?”

“If we disappear into a jump point that isn't there, it's bound to make the neighbors talk,” Kris said.

“If we get there fast, maybe they won't be here when we do that disappearing thing,” Nelly said.

“Folks, Engineering asks if we can please take it down to 3.5 gees,” Sulwan said. “The engines were never meant to hold this acceleration for this long.”

“The
Hornet
has joined us,” Chief Beni announced.

“Now we wait to see if the
Intrepid
and the aliens make the jump,” Captain Drago said. “And yes, Sulwan, take us down to 3.5 gees and make for the fuzzy jump.”

A few moments later, Lieutenant Commander Phil Taussig came on-screen. “I see you also need to slow down. Engineering tells me that if I don't want to end up drifting in space, I've got to cut back to three gees.”

“We can still make 3.5,” Captain Drago said.

“You do that. I notice you're headed for the fuzzy jump. We'll head for the closest normal one.”

“You don't have to,” Kris said.

“I think it's time and past time for us to separate if there's going to be any chance of one of us making it back home. If I were a betting man, I'd bet the
Intrepid
will try to repeat what the
Fearless
did at the first jump. I know that I would. They might just buy us enough time to escape.”

Kris knew that as a combat commander and as one of those damn Longknifes, she should be accepting these gifts, even ordering her subordinates to make these sacrifices. She found that, deep in her gut, she didn't want to do it.

Maybe she had chosen the wrong profession. Maybe she wasn't fit for anything better than planting the garden around Nuu House each spring.

Maybe she'd hide in the garden next year, but now she would do what she had to do. That was what Longknifes did.

“That sounds like a plan,” she said. “Sulwan, keep all the acceleration you can on the
Wasp
, no flipping ship. We'll go through this jump with all the speed and rotations we can put on the boat.”

“I'll have to start decelerating as soon as we get through,” Captain Drago said.

“We'll burn that bridge when we come to it,” Kris said.

The
Wasp
was over halfway to the fuzzy jump when the
Intrepid
shot out of the jump, spinning. To no one's surprise, she immediately began braking.

“I'm glad we could make the party,”
Intrepid
's skipper said on net.

“Glad you're here. What can you tell us about the aliens?”

“About half the fleet has given up the chase. Fifty-four are still chasing us. They accelerated the whole time at two gees, which was about all I could do, so I suspect they'll be coming through here in a couple of hours. If they do, the
Intrepid
will be waiting for them. Is the
Wasp
headed for the weird jump point?”

“Yes. We're splitting up.”

“Good idea. With any luck, you should be able to duck out of the system with none of them the wiser about where you went.”

“That's what we're hoping.”

“Good luck and Godspeed. By the way, Commodore, it's been an honor to serve with a Longknife. At least this particular one.”

Kris found a catch in her throat. “Thank you,
Intrepid
. Good luck to you all.”

The
Wasp
fled for the new-type jump point. Sulwan had to cut her acceleration down to 3.4. An hour later, she reduced to 3.3 gees. Kris had Nelly do her own check on the reactors and engines.

KRIS, THE ENGINES AND REACTORS ARE WAY IN THE RED. THE CHIEF ENGINEER IS DOING SOME VERY STRANGE THINGS TO HOLD HIS TEAKETTLE TOGETHER.

The chief engineer was performing miracles, doing first this and then that to cool them. He ended up bleeding water around the edge of the ion stream between it and the jets. Not only did he cool the jets, but he seemed to be getting extra speed as the expanding water tightened the throat of the jet and forced the ion stream to even higher speeds. That, in turn, let him take more pressure off his reactors.

It also used up reaction mass at a blinding rate.

They were rapidly closing in on the fuzzy jump point when the first alien ship shot into the system.

The
Intrepid
had slowed down and swung around to return to the jump. She just managed to get behind the jump as the alien shot through. She hit the alien with two lasers to the engines and backed that up with a torpedo.

The alien blew into fine particles of gas before she ever got her forty rotations off the ship.

The next alien ship came through alone and came through shooting. She nipped the
Intrepid
's shield but still took two laser hits and a pair of torpedoes. Like the first, she went to pieces. Very little ones.

There was a pause, and Kris was starting to hold out hopes that the other ships had hit the jump too slow to make the long passage, but then three ships came through in rapid succession.