In Her Name: The Last War (74 page)

“Navigation auto-lock engaged,” the computer’s synthesized female voice interjected over the ship-wide intercom. “Transpace sequence in five...four...three...two...one...Transpace sequence initiated. Sequence complete. Emergence into normal space...now.”

The main bridge display suddenly lit up with a visual of the Kronstadt system, with the shining crescent of the planet itself directly ahead.

“Navigation confirmed, Kronstadt system,” the navigator announced. “Emergence deviation negligible. We’re—“

“
Contact!
” the tactical officer shouted. “Four bogies at three-three-eight mark eight-nine relative. Distance fifty thousand kilometers.” Four yellow icons appeared on the tactical display to the left of the ship’s current heading. Several dozen other icons, all green, also appeared. 

Sato didn’t hesitate. “Maintain course, all ahead flank!” If the four unidentified ships were friendly, he would just be giving them a good show of how fast
Yura
could accelerate. And if they weren’t friendly ships,
Yura
would have the advantage of surprise. “Communications, get a positive ID on those ships.”

“All ahead flank, aye,” Lieutenant Bogdanova reported tersely as she smoothly brought the ship’s acceleration up to maximum. She could feel the deep thrum of the sublight drives vibrate through the deck beneath her feet as
Yura
leaped forward.

“Forward kinetic batteries and heavy lasers locked on and tracking all bogies, sir,” the tactical officer reported. “Recommend closing to ten thousand kilometers to engage.”

On the bridge tactical display, the green icons representing known friendly ships were clearly scattering away from the yellow icons like a school of fish fleeing from a predator.

“Sir, I’m picking up multiple mayday signals,” the communications officer reported. “Eight ships report they’ve been hit and are losing air. Three of them are Kronstadt coast guard cutters.”

The four yellow icons suddenly changed to red. 

“Hostile contacts confirmed,” the tactical officer reported. “All four appear to be Kreelan warships, destroyer category.”

Sato had to commend the Kronstadt coastguardsmen. They had incredible courage to go up against Kreelan destroyers with their lightly armed cutters.

“Request that any surviving Kronstadt coast guard vessels form on us,” Sato ordered. “And try to get the merchantmen to all turn toward us. If we can get the Kreelans to head our way, we’ll close the range more quickly.”

“Assuming they don’t jump out,” Villiers said through the vidcom terminal on Sato’s combat chair.

“They won’t,” Sato shook his head. “They’ll never run from a fight, even when they’re completely outmatched.” He knew that the actual odds in this battle were against him: four destroyers, competently handled, could take a single heavy cruiser. But not
his
heavy cruiser. Not the
Yura
.

As they watched the display, most of the green icons turned in
Yura’s
direction. The merchant captains were desperate for help, and were more than eager to get closer to the only real human warship in the entire system. They weren’t fast enough to get far enough from Kronstadt to jump, and were far too slow to run from the enemy ships in normal space. Three of the ones that had sent mayday signals suddenly vanished, destroyed.

“The enemy is just firing indiscriminately, sir,” the communications officer said, trying to hold her emotions in check. “Some of the ships are even broadcasting their surrender, but the Kreelans are just ignoring it.”

“The Kreelans don’t take prisoners,” Sato said flatly. “Take my word for it.”

* * *

Riyal-Tiyan tensed as the tactical display showed another human ship jump into the system. As the senior shipmistress of the small squadron of destroyers, her mission had been simple: wreak havoc among the human shipping lanes in this area of space. She was specifically not to attack planets or any orbital complexes, only ships. Her purpose was to test how well the humans had developed their defenses and to rekindle their respect for and fear of the Empire.

This was the second system her squadron had visited. In the first one, they had destroyed six merchant ships and three lightly armed defense vessels before the other merchantmen had jumped away. Some smaller craft, armed only with small kinetic weapons, had risen to challenge her destroyers. She had saluted their courage by allowing them to live as she took her warships on to the next target.

In this system, which the humans had named Kronstadt, her ships had jumped into the midst of a small fleet of merchant vessels, which tried to run away from them like terrified steppe beasts before the claws of a
genoth
. With guns hammering and lasers singing, her ships tore at the fat merchantmen, then turned with equal ferocity on the small human warships that bravely sped into the attack. Like those Riyal-Tiyan had encountered at the first system — Andover, the humans called it — these were only lightly armed and hardly worth calling warships. They put up a spirited fight, however, and succeeded in diverting her attention long enough for the merchant ships to try and race for their jump points.

Now a new ship had appeared, and it immediately began to race directly toward her squadron. Not a merchant vessel, then.

“Ah,” she sighed with anticipation as the tactical display showed the targeting systems emanating from the human vessel. “A true warship. Ayan-Kulil,” she said to her tactical officer. “Let our ships form in pairs and flank the human warship. Ignore the merchant ships for now.”

A moment later the other three destroyers turned from hammering the defenseless merchant ships and sped to their places in the designated formation to greet their new opponent.

* * *

“They’ve formed up in pairs, sir, trying to flank us,” the tactical officer reported tensely. 

Sato eyed the display, silently calculating his options as the range rings showing the maximum effective range of his weapons quickly converged on the charging Kreelan warships. He was under very strict orders not to let
Yura
suffer heavy damage while she was operating solo: the Confederation Navy was still tiny compared to the number of systems they were tasked with defending, and every ship, particularly the new heavy cruisers like
Yura
, were precious. Each captain on solo patrol had discretion on whether to engage the enemy, but they were not to risk destruction of their ships for any reason, even if the Kreelans were mounting an invasion. In that scenario, a single ship would not be able to make a substantial difference, anyway.

His main problem was preventing the Kreelans from raking him from two sides at once, which could be lethal to
Yura
. “Tactical,” he ordered, “prepare torpedo tubes one through five for salvo fire at the left pair of targets on my mark.” Sato didn’t expect the torpedoes to hit their targets, but he hoped it would distract that pair of destroyers. “Then engage the right pair with kinetics and heavy lasers. Helm,” he turned to Bogdanova, “when I give the order, I want you to come forty degrees to starboard. Let’s try to keep them from flanking us on both sides as we pass by.”

On the tactical display,
Yura
raced toward the two pairs of Kreelan destroyers, the range rings overlapping. Sato let them close, then close further. 

“Enemy kinetics, inbound!” called the tactical officer.

“A little closer,” Sato whispered to himself. The destroyers were now close enough to be picked up on visual display, their rakish hulls unmistakable. “On my mark, people...stand by...
mark!
”

Yura
shuddered as five torpedoes leaped from their launch tubes and streaked toward the farther pair of Kreelan destroyers. In the same instant, two of the main triple-gun turrets volleyed fifteen centimeter projectiles at the nearer pair of enemy ships, while three heavy laser turrets fired, flaying tons of metal from the sides of the nearer destroyers. 

At the same time,
Yura
made a sharp turn to starboard, missing all but a few of the projectiles the Kreelan ships had fired. As the ready rounds in the first two gun turrets ran out, Bogdanova skillfully rolled
Yura
to bring the other batteries to bear. 

“Cease fire,” Sato ordered as the nearer pair of destroyers disappeared in twin balls of flame and debris, struck by a full salvo of heavy shells. One of the other pair of enemy ships disintegrated under the impact of three torpedoes.

The fourth destroyer escaped unscathed. 

“Turn and pursue,” Sato ordered, setting aside his pleasure at his ship’s performance for later. 

Bogdanova brought the ship around, even as the crew belowdecks were reloading the guns and torpedo tubes.

* * *

Riyal-Tiyan was both shocked and pleased. Shocked that the human ship’s weapons had been so effective, and pleased that the humans had apparently not been idle in the time since Keran had been taken by the Empire.

She mourned the loss of her ships and their crews, that they could no longer bring glory to the Empress. She and her own crew would have preferred to turn and charge the pursuing human ship, but Tesh-Dar’s orders and the will of the Empress had been clear: the squadrons such as Riyan-Tiyal’s were not to sacrifice themselves. In such a situation as this, any surviving ships were to return with information on what they had encountered, and how well the humans were fighting back.

“Prepare to jump,” she ordered her navigator, failing to mask her disappointment. They would rendezvous with the fleet heading toward the human world of Saint Petersburg.

* * *

“They jumped, sir!” the tactical officer said incredulously.

For a moment, Sato didn’t believe it. He simply couldn’t accept that the Kreelans would run away from a fight. But there was no denying that the surviving Kreelan destroyer had escaped.
Could it be a trick?
 

That didn’t fit any better, he decided. While he couldn’t deny what the tactical display showed him, he knew deep in his soul that the Kreelan hadn’t run because the captain was afraid of challenging his ship. It was something else, some other reason he didn’t understand, and it gave him a bad feeling in his gut.

“Very well,” he said finally. “Helm, bring us around toward Kronstadt. XO,” he told Villiers through the vidcom, “prepare the cutters for launch: let’s see if we can’t help the coast guard with search and rescue.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Villiers said before he disappeared to carry out his orders.

Sato continued to stare at the place on the tactical display where the Kreelan destroyer had disappeared, wondering where she had gone. And why she had run.

* * *

After helping to rescue the surviving crew members of the merchant ships and turning them over to the Kronstadt coast guard ships, Sato had placed
Yura
in a high defensive orbit over the planet. Before this battle, he would have been sure that the Kreelans would return in force, but the Kreelan destroyer’s sudden departure had shaken his confidence in his assessments of their actions. He knew there must have been a reason other than just “running away to fight another day.” That would have been a very reasonable action were it a human destroyer facing off against a heavy cruiser, but was totally out of line with all he knew, or thought he knew, about the enemy.

His decision now was whether to proceed on schedule to the next leg of his patrol, or delay here in Kronstadt in case the Kreelans returned. He knew that, unless the enemy returned only with a token force, his single ship would hardly be able to hold off an invasion fleet. Yet showing the Confederation flag to new signatories like Kronstadt was vitally important.
Yura
had already made a lasting impression, but he was worried about leaving the colony if there was a chance the Kreelans might return soon.

He set that matter aside for the moment. They still had seven hours left before they would have to jump out on their next leg to stay on their patrol schedule. Commodore Hanson had built some time into the navigation exercise for her ships to actually patrol, rather than just jumping from system to system. With the other responsibilities, particularly repairs to the light damage the ship had suffered, taken over by the XO for now, Sato had some time to relax.

Sitting on the side of his bunk, he pulled out a shiny black lacquer box that Steph had given him just before they’d parted at Africa Station. She hadn’t told him what was in it, and made him promise not to look until after his first jump. He smiled as he opened it. 

Letters. She had written him three dozen letters, each lightly scented with perfume. He had only read three so far, and it had almost been enough to make him want to turn the ship around and head for Earth. Neither of them were terribly good at expressing their emotions face to face. They could talk about things, certainly, but there seemed to be a limit to those conversations, something that held them back. Steph’s letters broke through that barrier, cast it aside. The words on those slips of stationery were really
her
. He had read the first one at least a dozen times, then sat down and wrote his own. He had grinned to himself at writing his words of love on ship’s letterhead, but that was the only real paper (even if it wasn’t actually made out of wood pulp) he had aboard ship. In a way, though, it was fitting: his ship, the Navy, was part of him. And even though it kept them apart much of the time, she had made it clear that it was a part of him that she loved.

He had just begun to read the fourth letter when his alert chime sounded. “Yes?” He tried to conceal his irritation.

“My apologies, captain,” the communications officer said, “but a courier just jumped in, broadcasting a coded message for us.”

“What does it say?” he asked, knowing she would have already decoded it. 

“It’s a recall from headquarters, sir,” she said. “The entire squadron is ordered to rendezvous at an assembly point for a possible assault on Saint Petersburg.”

“Damn,” Sato spat as he carefully folded Steph’s letter and put it back in the box. “Have the navigator plot us a least-time course, then ask the department heads, Marine commander, and the senior NCOs to meet in my ready room in five minutes.”