Jack of Harts 2.5: Wolfenheim Rising (11 page)

Moments later, Olivia flickered into existence, her twenty-centimeter holoform standing next to Dawn’s.  “Yes, Malcolm?” she asked, her tone betraying mixed curiosity and doubt.

Malcolm smiled.  “Dawn told you already?”

Olivia chewed her lip before answering.  “She said something crazy about getting involved in a fight with a fleet twice our size.”

Malcolm cleared his throat.  Yes.  It did seem crazy.  He sighed.  “Look, we need to help them.”

“My ships don’t have the firepower to take them,” Olivia informed him with a firm shake of her head.  Malcolm nodded in acceptance of her statement.  “And it’s our job to protect
Wolfenheim
,” she added, both eyebrows rising as if daring him to correct her.

“They’re Americans,” he returned in a calm tone.

Olivia looked uncomfortable and turned away from him.  “But they’re not our allies,” she said, her tone more firm than her body language suggested.

Malcolm smiled at her and shrugged.  “The enemy of my enemy…”

“Is only the enemy of my enemy,” Olivia cut him off, shaking her head hard.  “Malcolm.  I understand why you want to help.  And, God help me, I love that you want to.”  She smiled.  “But they outnumber us two to one, and
outmass
us by…more.  We just can’t do it.”

Malcolm sighed and looked at the display.  The eight destroyers still held on, but they weren’t going to make it to the Bosphorus forts.  They were taking too much damage.  Another salvo of missiles rolled over them, stabbing deep into their defensive grids.  They belched fresh atmosphere and wreckage into space, even as another salvo of missiles shot back towards the Shang.  The missiles died far short of the Shang inner defensive ring though.  Mere destroyers couldn’t fire enough missiles to saturate the point defense of a Shang fleet.  “They’re going to die if we don’t do something.”

“They’ll die if we try,” Olivia whispered, her tone resigned.  “All we’ll do is die with them.  Trust me, Malcolm.  We can’t help.”

“Smith wants in,” Dawn interrupted the argument.  Malcolm nodded at her, and the wing commander flickered into existence next to Olivia.

“We don’t have to send in the warships,” Smith’s holoform said the moment he appeared, confirming that he’d been listening in.  Or that his cyber had brought him up to speed very quickly.  “Our fighter wing can do the job.”

Malcolm shook his head.  Blackhawks had been the best fighters of their day, but even after the Peloran refits, they were still space superiority fighters, not attack birds.  “We can’t take on cruisers without heavy support.”

“
Blackhawks
can’t,” Smith said with a smile.  “But they can seriously bad-touch a destroyer.  And
Avengers
eat cruisers for breakfast.”  His smile turned nasty.  “Been there.  Done that.”

Malcolm blinked as the thought hit him and nodded very slowly.  He’d seen enough battle footage of Avenger squadrons ripping cruisers apart to know that Smith was right.  Still.  “You’ve only got one squadron.  There are
ten
cruisers.”

Smith shrugged.  “We’re not trying to beat them, right?  Just get their attention?  Give those destroyers time to make it to the forts?”

Malcolm glanced at the display showing the battle out there and nodded.  “Yes.  That would work.”

“Well, I can guarantee we can get their attention,” Smith promised with a wry grin.  “Move in.  Hit them hard.  Pull back out once those destroyers get out of range.  They’ll never see it coming,” he finished in a proud voice.

Olivia’s holoform shifted on the console to get their attention.  “We can grab their attention so you can sneak in,” she volunteered with a smile.

“How?” Malcolm asked, intrigued by her sudden change of mind.

Olivia shrugged.  “They already know we’re here.  It’s hard to hide a starship-sized transit, and
Wolfenheim’s
a real pig.”  She paused in disgust and shook her head.  “They see us right now.  If we burn our engines hot, they’ll think we’re running.  And that’s guaranteed to get their attention.”

“And while they’re looking at her, we sneak in from another direction,” Smith finished, his tone filled with admiration.

“Exactly,” Olivia answered with a conniving smile.

“That
would
increase the chances of it working,” Smith added.  Then his eyes flicked back to Malcolm.  “Assuming you’re decided on helping Murphy.  We could sail away and know she’s done hunting us forever.”

Malcolm sighed.  “I know.  But she’s here because of us.  And her people didn’t ask to die out here like this.  If they do, it’s our fault.”

Smith nodded very slowly.  “Very well.  You stay with
Normandy
.  The rest of us will go in and teach those Shang a lesson or three.”

Malcolm shook his head.  “No.  I’m going in too.”

Smith just raised an eyebrow at him.  “No.  You’re staying here.”  His voice left exactly zero doubt who was in charge on that point.  Malcolm might
give
missions, but Smith
commanded
them.

Malcolm swallowed as the Marine’s old eyes glared at him, but he cleared his throat and met them with stubborn resolve.  “My idea.  I can’t send you into danger and just
watch
.”

Smith’s eyes narrowed.  “You don’t have any experience at this.”

Malcolm shrugged.  “And I never will if you leave me behind.”  Smith cocked his head to the side at Malcolm’s tacit admission that he could do that.  Malcolm wasn’t challenging his authority.  He was merely questioning the idea of
giving
that order.

“True.”  Smith nodded and measured Malcolm very carefully.  Malcolm sat up straight, willing the man to see that he was ready.  “Very well,” Smith finally said.  “You stay behind us.”  Malcolm opened his mouth to say that he didn’t need their protection, but Smith’s eyes flashed and he shut his mouth again.  Smith grunted.  “Good.  Captain?” he asked Olivia.

“Captain,” she returned with a respectful nod.

Smith crooked a smile at her.  “Let’s do this.”

“Agreed.” Olivia turned an approving look towards Malcolm.  “Director?”

“Olivia,” Malcolm corrected with a smile.  “You take care of the fleet.”

“Yes, Malcolm,” she returned with a smile.  Then she sucked in a breath and nodded.  “You come back,” she ordered and turned away as her holoform faded out.

“Well, I see you’re making progress,” Smith noted in an amused tone.

“Mmmm?” Malcolm asked, watching the empty spot where her holoform had been.

“She didn’t order
me
to come back,” the other pilot answered with a snort.

“True.”  Malcolm aimed a questioning glance at Dawn’s satisfied holoform.  “Well, I’m sure you coming back is implied,” he added with a smile.  But he breathed in deep, enjoying the fact that she had singled him out for that particular order.

“Yeah.  I’m sure.”  Smith snorted again and his holoform faded out, signaling an end to the conference.  Then his voice came from the speakers.  “Form on me and follow your beam,” he ordered in a voice that erased all other thoughts.

“Roger that,” Malcolm responded without hesitation as a beam appeared on their displays, and nodded towards Dawn.  She smiled back and they swung away from
Normandy
.  The eleven other Blackhawks of their squadron accelerated with them, maintaining a defensive formation.  Each one was controlled by one of Dawn’s shards, copies of her main personality residing in each of the Blackhawks’ computer systems.  The fighters could fly on their own, but she and Malcolm commanded the entire Cowboy-style squadron from their fighter.  Having tested the arrangement in simulations, he liked it.  Dawn could easily move the fighters in unison, since she was the brain of every single one and knew her own moves perfectly.

The thirty-six other Blackhawks of their fighter wing formed up into a triangular formation.  Malcolm couldn’t tell which three had pilots.  The others had cybers only, like his.  It was a good arrangement, giving them heavy firepower and limiting the possibility of losing trained pilots.  Building new fighters was easy, after all, but it took a couple decades to grow a new pilot.

Smith’s thirteen Avengers took point and accelerated towards the Shang fleet.  Malcolm idly wondered why the Cowboys had taken to flying a baker’s dozen of fighters.  It seemed counterintuitive somewhere in there, but he shook his head.  It probably made sense somewhere, even if he couldn’t think of it.  He would have to consider that.  It made interesting ideas come to mind for a planetary defense force.

Then all thoughts of fighters disappeared as the fleet’s engines came to full power.  Massive plumes of blue flames reached out from the warships, bringing light to the darkness of nearby space. 
Wolfenheim’s
multiple fusion engines, each the size of a frigate, belched out the largest torches of light, beacons demanding the attention of anyone with eyes.  She was a great big clumsy excuse for a starship, and her engines barely moved her compared to what they would have done to a warship.  But what she lacked in nimbleness, she more than made up in ability to catch the attention of every single person in the entire system.

In comparison to the colony ship and her escorts, the sixty-one starfighters slunk away in almost total darkness.  Malcolm’s displays showed his gigawatt-class gravity drive running far above normal levels, dropping the fighter’s effective mass to almost nothing.  It was an incredibly wasteful way to fly, and Malcolm had to bury his inner accountant down deep to keep from wincing as he watched the fuel levels drop.  Controlling gravity itself at levels approaching full nullification was expensive, but it had advantages.

The main engines and maneuvering thrusters flared with a dull light, maintaining just enough power to hold them on the crest of the grav wave.  The total lack of drive plumes had the advantage of making them all but invisible to the standard shipboard scanners of a Shang warship, even as the grav wave propelled them directly towards the enemy fleet.  They passed one percent of lightspeed in a matter of seconds, an acceleration that no warship could ever dream of matching, and continued to accelerate for the better part of a minute.

Then the massive grav drive powered down, the main fusion drives turned off entirely, and the fighters became holes in space moving at nearly ten percent the speed of light.  Malcolm glanced at the display showing their course and the projected Shang course.  Assuming Murphy’s squadron continued to run, his little force of fighters should intercept the Shang in five minutes.  She just had to hold out that long.

Malcolm winced as the displays showed another missile strike breaking through the defense grid, and one of the
Austin
-class destroyers staggered to the side.  Wreckage flowed out of her flank, telling the tale of catastrophic damage inflicted on the tiny warship.  He looked to Dawn and she returned a worried gaze.  Then she pointed him at another display, and he nodded in understanding.

The Red Line denoting the edge of the Bosphorus jamming zone glowed behind them on the displays.  They could no longer dive into hyperspace to escape.  Once they started shooting, they would be committing to combat until they accelerated out of range the old-fashioned way.  Malcolm smiled, at peace with his decision to intervene.

He flexed his fingers on the controls, leaned back, and watched the missile engagement.  The Shang disliked moving in close against the heavy gravitic cannons that American warships used.  A well-placed, or lucky, gravitic beam could cripple a ship in seconds.  Missiles didn’t have the ability to twist gravity as powerfully as one of those brutal cannons, but in sufficient numbers they could do the same damage.

The Shang fired in those numbers, but the American defense grids attempted to stop those missiles with every weapon at their disposal.  Scores of decoy drones broadcasting the electronic signatures of destroyers sucked missiles away from the real warships.  Other drones simply sought to jam the missiles’ ability to track any targets at all.  The real warships cut their electronic emissions to make themselves look like anything
but
warships, and missiles simply wandered off target to self-destruct after their fuel ran out.  It was a complex war between Shang AIs and American cybers that no genetic human could possibly keep up with.  It was a war in which the Americans enjoyed a pronounced advantage.  Peloran cybertech was simply far more advanced than anything the Shang had, and the Peloran had shared it with the entire Western Alliance.

What the Shang had was numbers.  Scores of missiles dove in towards the destroyers, and even if the American cybers tricked scores of them into missing, there were always more missiles flying in, with their singular mission being to kill something and die trying.  As Malcolm watched, a wedge of missiles dove in towards the destroyers, ducking and weaving through the defensive fire of counter missiles sent to slay them.  Most died, but some made it through and closed with the destroyers.  Lasers lashed them, ripping more apart, but two made it through everything.

The first exploded just short of the target’s deflection grid, tearing at the destroyer’s control over gravity.  A gravitic sheer powerful enough to bend even light away from the target failed, overridden in a split second by a missile throwing every last bit of its power into that single attack.  A hole opened in the deflection grid, and the second missile flew through it without any resistance at all.  The onboard generator became a miniature black hole, sucking everything in for the barest instant.  It passed through armor, air, and anything or anyone unlucky enough to be in its path.  And then the generator reversed, pushing everything it collected back out.  The missile exploded, using fragments of the target to rip it open from the inside.