McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS (36 page)

Unfortunately, the machinery that ejected the three-meter diameter SMs from Battery One was wrecked. Spacers Jones and Kuma had worked feverishly for days in vacuum suits to cut away the scrap that blocked the launching track. Now, they and two others were poised at the breech end of the track, ready to manhandle the SMs into position and propel them out into space using raw muscle power.

“Where are they now, Costello?” Mark asked.

“I’ve lost range on the closer target, Captain. It has matched velocity and is station keeping. I estimate it to be one hundred thousand kilometers aft of us.”

“What’s the matter with them? Are they shy?”

“Probably examining us by scope and waiting for the other one to catch up,” Gwen Tasker said from where she was monitoring the images of both ships.

“Okay, I think they’re close enough,” Mark said. “Battery One. Eject two… I say again, EJECT TWO superlight missiles.”

Everyone on the bridge waited in tense silence until a voice answered, “SM Number One is clear.” Less than a minute later, the voice spoke again. “SM Two is clear.”

“It’s all yours Mr. Sotheby,” Mark said to his Exec. “Take your time and take your best shot.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was strange to watch Sotheby work. Normally, the display at missile control would have been repeated on the big screen. That capability had proved beyond Spacer Rogers’ ability to fix. One of the casualties of the explosion had been the ship’s main network controller. A molten globule of metal had burned a hole straight through it.

It must have been like this in an old wet navy battleship, Mark imagined. The captain in his conning tower, gave orders over a telephone, and then had to wait endless seconds in suspense until the guns fired and he could see the result through his binoculars.

“Ready, Captain. I’ve got the aiming circles on both targets. Range on Bogey Three is two million kilometers. Range on Bogey Two is estimated at 100,000 kilometers.”

“Fire!”

Almost instantly, there were flashes on the two screens. The flash on Screen One was directly in line with the thermal image of the bogey, but did not affect it. The flash on Screen Two was off center, exploding harmlessly to one side of the target.

“Damn!” someone said out loud. Mark wasn’t sure that it hadn’t been him.

#

“Captain,
Sasquatch
has opened fire!”

“Goddamn it! Couldn’t they have waited ten more minutes?” Ravi Sulieman cursed. “Batteries One and Two. SM launch. Preprogrammed coordinates. Let me know when you are ready.”

#

“Battery One. Eject two, I say again, EJECT TWO superlight missiles. Make it fast. I don’t think they are going to take this lying down much longer.”

Mark watched the views from the telescopes. The two approaching ships seemed not to have noticed the twin explosions near them. Perhaps they hadn’t seen them, or perhaps they were now madhouses of scurrying Broan sailors. Except, from what he knew of the Broan Navy, the sailors were likely not pseudo-simians, but various slave species.

“SM One is clear!” the battery exclaimed. “SM Two is clear.” To their credit, the two reports were separated by less than fifteen seconds.

“Mr. Sotheby. Align and shoot as soon as you are ready. Don’t wait for my order.”

“Missiles away,” came the cry less than a dozen seconds later. This time Sotheby had shortened the range for the first target and adjusted the angle for the second.

The explosion on Screen One appeared in front of the target. Simultaneously, the thermal image changed. There was a geyser to one side of the bogey and a sudden rhythmic brightening and dimming of the image.

“I think we winged him!” Sotheby exulted. “He’s tumbling.”

The second explosion on Screen Two was closer this time, but still not in line with the target. The target’s passivity ended when it changed aspect ratio. At first Mark thought they had hit him. After a few seconds, the truth became obvious. The hunter-sniffer had begun to maneuver. There was no doubt that they knew they were under attack. A counter launch would probably be on its way in seconds.

 “Battery One. Eject two more SMs. I say again, EJECT TWO more.”

The response was immediate. “SM One clear.” Fifteen seconds later, “SM Two clear.”

“Both missiles at Bogey Three, Mr. Sotheby. This is likely our last shot before he returns fire.”

“Missiles ready, Capt…”

On the screens, both bogeys blew up in total silence. Mark’s impression was that Bogey Three exploded first, followed by Bogey Two, but it could have been the other way around. It had been that close.

“Good shooting, Mr. Sotheby!”

“I haven’t fired yet, Captain.”

“What the hell is going on?” Mark demanded. “Mr. Costello, put a scope on Bogey One!”

Screen One blurred and then stabilized. For the first time in four hours, they were looking at their old friend, the Broan avenger rising from Karap-Vas.

“I’ll bet he’s pissed,” Mark exulted. “Mr. Sotheby, change of target. Both missiles on the avenger. I doubt we can hit him from this range, but we can make him mess his underwear!”

Mark had no idea what had happened to the two enemy ships, but he knew that he had achieved the situation he’d schemed for. Whoever was in command of the avenger had just seen his supposedly inert quarry open fire and destroy two ships of the Broan Navy.

The pseudo-simians were the lords of all they surveyed, and had been so for the whole of their recorded history. No one stood up to them. Individual slaves who did so were killed outright; planets that revolted were destroyed and seeded with radioactives. The Masters brooked no resistance from their slaves.

 He had bet everything on that aspect of their culture, judging that if they were faced with resistance, they would react violently and without thinking.

Even now the avenger was probably loading a long-range nuclear-tipped missile to wipe away the blot on the honor of their species. They were about to execute General Order Seven as thoroughly as if the ship’s self-destruct were still intact.

To his surprise, Mark felt neither fear nor sadness at the prospect of dying. He felt exultant. It had to be the adrenaline flowing in his veins.

“Captain, look!”

On the screen, Bogey One exploded.  One instant the ship he’d expected to end his life was the same white blur it had been for four days. The next, the blur blossomed, its center so hot that the protective circuits in the IR detector shut down the affected pixels. The expanding white ball had a jagged black hole in its belly.

No one spoke for a long time. They just sat and watched in amazement as the white circle began to dissipate and fade, and the black spot disappeared as the radiance died.

 “Captain, incoming message from
Yeovil
on the emergency circuit,” Spacer Collins reported from his station at the comm center.

“Switch him over.”

There was a soft click and then radio static. It took a few seconds for Mark to get control of his vocal apparatus. For the first time since he’d asked Penny Martin to the school dance, he was tongue tied.

Finally, he said, “This is Captain Rykand of
Sasquatch,
calling
Yeovil
.”

 “Hello,
Sasquatch.
Captain Sulieman
.
We found ourselves in the vicinity and wondered if you could use some assistance.”

“You are a lifesaver, Captain,” Mark replied. “And I mean that literally. How the hell did you get here?”

“Five backbreaking days at max gee. We found we were going to be late for the party, so we coasted the last little bit. As a result, we are carrying too much velocity at the moment and will be passing your location in about ten minutes. We’ll return in 24 hours to take you off. Over.”

“Understood,
Yeovil
. Watch out for the planet. We’re getting close. They may have fixed weaponry that can reach out this far.”

“Not to worry,
Sasquatch
. If they lob anything our way, we’ve still got a magazine full of missiles. We’ll see how they react to a rain of hypervelocity meteors. See you tomorrow.”

“We’ll be waiting. And
Yeovil
, if you have any beer onboard, my crew would like to buy your crew a cool one.”

“We’ll see what can be arranged.”

#

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The last twenty hours had been hell on Lisa Rykand. Ever since
Yeovil
reported that
Sasquatch
was being stalked by two Broan ships, she had been virtually useless. She couldn’t eat, sleep, or do her job. No matter what she attempted, she ended up staring at the nearest bulkhead, brooding.

Galahad
’s
tactical officer calculated the moment when the first ship would likely reach the cruiser. He set that as Zero Hour.

It was now forty minutes past Zero Hour and
still
no word. Of course, there couldn’t be. Communications delay at
Galahad
’s distance was 55 minutes. Whatever Mark’s fate and that of his ship, the wave front carrying the news was still fifteen minutes out. Lisa felt like a patient seated in a doctor’s anteroom, waiting to hear the diagnosis. Whatever was to come had already been decided. All that remained was for her to learn the verdict.

As the moment of truth approached, she returned to her duty station and tried to make the time pass more quickly by submerging herself in work. If anything, listening to Broan space traffic control only heightened her anxieties. For, despite the rosy scenarios that cluttered her brain, deep inside, she knew the news would likely be bad.

Once again, the viewscreen was focused on the region of space where Mark’s ship was located, and once again, there was nothing to see but stars. The chronometer display in the corner of her screen seemed to be moving ever more slowly.

Finally, Zero Hour plus Fifty-five arrived and… nothing.

Five minutes passed, then ten.

The tension of not knowing was becoming unbearable when two small sparks of appeared in the center of the screen. Simultaneously, the comm link from
Yeovil
came alive:
“
Sasquatch
has opened fire!”

Then, nothing for more than a minute, followed by two more sparks. A second pause ensued, and for the third time in the center of the screen, two small stars burst into view. They were followed by a third star, this one near the edge.

Then, silence.

For an eternity, no one said anything. It was all Lisa could do to remember to breathe. She was about to emit a short, potent curse when the ship’s intercom came alive and the voice of Captain Cavendish reverberated through the compartment.

“Attention, All Hands. This is the Captain speaking. I have a communication from
Yeovil
, which I will read in its entirety:

“From Sulieman to Cavendish: It is my duty to report three enemy ships destroyed.
Sasquatch
is safe. I repeat. The cruiser is unharmed. Captain Rykand reports no further casualties aboard his ship. We are resuming deceleration and will rendezvous with
Sasquatch
in twenty-four hours. Sulieman out!”

Lisa did not hear the last part of the announcement.

She had fainted.

#

Two human starships fell toward Karap-Vas in tandem, their airlocks connected by a snakelike docking tube. One was battered nearly beyond recognition, the other as fresh as the day it had come out of the yard. Only an expert could tell they were sisters, and in fact, possessed consecutive registration numbers.

The evacuation proceeded in an orderly fashion, but slowly. It took an hour for first the wounded to be transported in their makeshift stretchers, and then the ambulatory survivors. Most entered the docking tube towing their vacuum suits and nothing else. A few had a few meager possessions in kit bags slung over their shoulders. Almost all were bandaged. As required by tradition, Mark was the last man to abandon ship. He, too, towed his vacuum suit and halted for a moment at
Sasquatch
’s airlock to take a last look around.

“Permission to come aboard, sir,” Mark said as he exited the tube and floated through the open airlock into
Yeovil
.

“Permission granted, Captain,” Ravi Sulieman replied. Anchored in the suiting room just inside the starboard airlock, he rendered an exaggerated salute, then floated forward to pump Mark’s hand. “Welcome aboard.”

“It’s good to be aboard.”

“All clear behind you?”

Mark nodded. “I’m the last. Only the dead remain.”

“Then, with your permission, I have a work crew standing by. They will install our self-destruct in your vessel and we’ll all get the hell out of here.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Mark agreed.

The two captains cleared the way for four spacers in vacsuits who were towing a small cylindrical object. They disappeared into the lock and reappeared ten minutes later, minus the cylinder.

“Ready, Captain,” the leader reported to Sulieman over his suit speaker. “We set the timer for one hour from right now.”

“Very well, Mr. Grayson.”

Sulieman turned to Mark. “Leave the suit. My people will store it in a locker for you. If you will accompany me to the bridge, we’ll see what we can do about putting some space between us and the coming explosion.”

Once on the bridge, Sulieman took the command chair, shooed a lieutenant who looked too young to shave out of Tactical, and offered his place to Mark.

 “Are you sure I won’t be in the way?”

“Mr. Vladis can use the break. He’s been on duty for the last eighteen hours. Besides, this is the best seat in the house.”

“Won’t you need your tactical officer?”

“None of our pursuers are even close to weapons range. Relax.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Mark had spent much of the last day aboard
Sasquatch
preparing for the evacuation. However, he’d left Bob Costello and Susan Ahrendt on the bridge to monitor the wide angle thermal scanners in shifts. There had been a great deal to monitor.

The loss of the three Broan ships had not gone unnoticed. In fact, it had stirred up a hornet’s nest. Over the past twenty hours, the sensors detected two dozen ships departing orbit or rising directly from the surface of Karap-Vas. All were headed outbound toward the pair of alien intruders.