Tactical Error (9 page)

“We are holding our own against the boarding parties at all six of the
targeted airlocks,” Valthyrra reported. “We have the time we need.
Our people on the outside have planted their explosives and are coming
in.”

“Keep an eye on them,” Velmeran said. “I would not want to
leave anyone outside when we make our break. How much longer?”

The main viewscreen remained obstinately blank, although Velmeran found
himself staring at it out of old habit. He was not used to having the fighting
at such close quarters that he could not watch its progress either visually or
through the scanner’s schematic presentations.

“The repairs should be done any time now, certainly no more than
another two minutes,” the ship answered.

Velmeran frowned. What did he do now? This attack had obviously been aimed
at capturing the Methryn, taking advantage of the admittedly ingenious
abilities of the little automaton that had been used to rob the carrier of her
main power. He doubted that the Methryn was in any shape to fight these three
Fortresses even when she did break free, yet he could not leave Kanis at the
mercy of this attack force.

“Do not bring main power up until we need it,” he directed at
last. “When we break free, we will accelerate straight ahead at high
speed. Have two quartzite detonator missiles ready for launch.”

“Understood,” Valthyrra agreed. “Main power will be ready
when you need it. Our people are now all inside and accounted for.”

Velmeran nodded. “Secure the airlocks as soon as the packs can have
them clear, even if you can close only one set of doors.”

He turned to Consherra, who had stepped up behind him. “Well, this has
been a close one. They catch us by surprise every now and then, but it only
works once.”

“From now on, we have to scan all boarding ships for
hitchhikers,” she agreed. “I hope that we do not have to fight. I
have a very good idea what they must be doing to replace that main switching
core, and it might not hold under any real stress.”

“The airlocks are all secure,” Valthyrra announced. “We
can get out of here any time you want. Main power is definitely
available.”

“No matter what, do not stress yourself beyond three-quarters of your
normal full capacity,” Velmeran told her. “Go ahead and power up
for flight. Turn over the main generators.”

The entire ship shifted back from emergency support to main power, her
environmental systems returning to normal levels and her full interior lighting
coming back up. On the bridge, banks of consoles that had been sitting idle
returned to life. The main viewscreen came up last of all, showing an
unmagnified forward view. The bulk of the Fortress loomed vast and threatening
overhead.

“Blow the grapples,” he ordered.

Valthyrra triggered the explosive devices that had been planted on the
joints of the grappling probes. A series of powerful blasts shook both ships as
the Methryn all but disappeared within a cloud of flames and debris. Only three
of the grapples were ripped away by the explosions themselves, but the rest
were all so weakened that they failed immediately when the carrier began to
pull away, dropping down away from the Fortress to clear the depression in the
underside of her hull.

The Methryn engaged her main drives an instant later. Riding the double
glare of her flaring engines, she shot out from beneath the vast nose of the
Fortress and away into open space. She accelerated rapidly, putting distance
between herself and the three Union ships before they could recover from this
unexpected move and open fire. Then, even as she ran, the Methryn fired both of
her missiles simultaneously, emerging from the small, hidden bays under her
nose.

Propelled by powerful drives, the missiles were visible only by the fierce
glare of their engines. They hurtled ahead of the Methryn until they were well
clear of the carrier, then looped around tightly, each one turning across the
path of the Methryn, reversing their course completely to pass just to either
side of the ship. As massive as they were, the Fortresses could not begin to
evade impact in time. They were committed to a collision course at more than
half the speed of light.

Unshielded, that impact alone would have probably vaporized a sizeable
portion of one of the Fortresses. Even so, quartzite shielding at full power
could have survived even that with only minor damage. The missiles struck the
middle Fortress with the force of small nuclear explosions, shattering the
quartzite shielding over an area of little more than a square meter. But that
was all that was needed for the wave of plasma energy created by the detonation
of the missile to penetrate those cracks and begin spreading like a circular
wave over the hull of the ship just under the surface of the shielding,
shattering the quartzite and lifting it away from the skin of the ship like the
shell of an egg.

By that time, the Methryn was already circling back well out of range of the
thousands of powerful cannons of the three Fortresses, the middle one was still
losing it’s quartzite shielding. The Starwolves had never had a chance to
use this weapon before, or even to test it on a large subject. They had no idea
just how much of the ship would be stripped by the plasma wave, and they were
interested in finding out. The Fortress was not being damaged in any other way,
but she was suddenly very vulnerable to attack. The other two Fortresses were
already moving to position themselves between their stricken sister ship and
the carrier, but they had not changed course or opened fire. The
Methryn’s rather aggressive response, circling around as if ready to
attack again, no doubt left their captains wondering if there were missiles
ready for launch at their own vessels.

The answer was a definite yes, although Velmeran did not care to continue
this battle except in defense of Kanis. He had to chase these three ships out
of system before the Methryn could respond to her own summons home. He was
saving that second set of missiles to accomplish that goal. He certainly did
not expect this group to try to take the planet now, and he doubted very much
that that had ever been their intent. Considering the planning that must have
gone into getting that automaton on board, the capture or destruction of the
Methryn had been their primary ambition. Hard work, fast action, and a certain
amount of quick thinking had saved his ship this time.

“What did this cost us?” he asked, turning to Valthyrra’s
camera pod.

“No losses or severe injuries,” she reported. Her continual
contact with the suits of her pilots allowed her to keep easy track of such
things. “Very little damage to the ship itself, except for the main
switching core. Should I begin to synthesize a new unit, or do we wait until we
get home?”

“Get to work on it right away. We have a long journey home ahead of
us, and that patch could fail at any time.” He turned to lean on the
console of the central bridge, where Consherra remained at the helm station.
“What are they doing?”

“They seem to be waiting, no change in course or speed,” she
answered. “They probably want to see what our little weapons are doing to
their ship. If the process continues to completion, it could take half an hour
to strip that ship.”

He nodded. “We will continue to circle like a scavenger until they
decide what to do. I do expect that they have had quite enough and are entirely
on the defensive just now, but we have to watch them until we know that they
have had enough.”

The Vinthra Commercial Complex was surely the largest, most sprawling
orbital station Keflyn had ever seen. Since she had visited here on several
occasions in the past, she was not particularly impressed. Under the present
circumstances, she was far from thrilled to be here. This place represented the
lion’s mouth, and she was about to stick her head in all the way up to
her shapely Starwolf derriere.

Following the orders of station control, the
Karabyn
had spent the
better part of an hour working her way into system as a part of the small fleet
of incoming and departing ships with the precision of a stately dance.
After having done it the hard way, she was beginning to have some understanding
of the havoc that the sudden, menacing arrival of a Starwolf carrier must have
upon a station like this. Keflyn had been taking advantage of her esteemed
reputation with the crew of this ship to observe the docking from the small and
rather crowded bridge, hiding her alarm at watching two-handed humans trying to
dock a ship that was not smart enough to begin to dock itself.

Since the
Karabyn
was a regular courier for the Union rebels, she had
been scrupulous in following the protocol of asking no one their names and they
did not ask for hers. She knew the name of the ship itself only because it was
listed, along with her recognition code, on either side of the hull. She had
been told that the crew was changed every few weeks, and that the ship herself
was given a new name, code, and registration papers twice a year.

An aging independent freighter of less than 140 meters, the
Karabyn
obviously did not rate very highly with the port authorities. She was nuzzling
into a simple docking sleeve in one very remote corner of the station, hardly
more than a large cargo airlock for her nose and a pair of braces that was
ready to catch her. Even if it had been allowed for such a humble ship, they
had no interest in bringing the
Karabyn
down to the surface as she had
at Kanis. Although she had no atmospheric control or lift surfaces at all, the
Karabyn
was perfectly capable of landing.

The ship shuddered slightly as she slipped her docking probe into the main
airlock. The braces closed against the hull a moment later, locking her in. The
bridge crew hurried to secure the ship, powering down all systems except
environmental and maintenance.

“Well, here we are,” the captain said, turning to her.
“I’ll go find out if the
Thermopylae
is in port and where
she is located. You won’t have to leave the ship until everything is
ready.”

“Will she be on schedule?” Keflyn asked, knowing that their
arrival had been timed perfectly.

“She’s a ship hired out for a regular run,” he explained.
“They have to keep their schedule within a reasonable tolerance or they
risk losing their contract. Barring accident or major emergency, they’ll
be here.”

The captain left in the company of a junior officer, leaving the
ship’s regular business in the hands of the first officer and cargo
master. Keflyn spent the time as best she could, getting herself into costume
and preparing her bags for travel. As far as she was concerned, this was the
most dangerous part of the operation. The captain of the
Thermopylae
could turn them all in for a very sizeable reward, if it included her as the
main prize, and she would never know until they came to take her away. And even
if that part went well, she still had to reach the other ship, which could be
kilometers away through a very crowded station. Although she knew to look for
the tell-tale signs that gave her away, she still thought that she looked very
much like a Starwolf pretending to be human. She was never entirely sure if she
had been teased when she recalled her father’s story of how he had once
fooled all of Port Kallenes for a couple of days, including the redoubtable
Lenna Makayen.

The junior officer came to collect her several hours later, helping her to
place her bags into a shipping container that would be transferred over to the
Thermopylae
.
One of her bags contained an achronic transceiver that weighed half as much as
herself. It seemed that the negotiations with the captain of the
Thermopylae
had gone extremely well, and that he was completely willing to accept the risk
of transporting her to the colony on Alameda, which the Union called Charadal.
But they would have to hurry, since the
Thermopylae
was on the Port
Schedule to depart in only a few hours.

The shipping crate was put on a cart which the officer from the
Karabyn
proceeded to navigate through the crowd. Keflyn was obliged to follow him at a
discreet distance, with just one of her bags over her shoulder, playing the
part of a passenger looking for her ship. She had to wear the cape to hide her
lower set of arms, and that prevented her from wearing a uniform that would
have allowed her to pretend to be the member of a ship’s crew.

Having lived all her life in the monotonous uniformity of the same ship, she
was in fact too busy enjoying herself during her walk through the station to be
frightened. The corridors of the station were nearly overflowing with the press
of aliens of every type, mostly human. She was so busy looking about, in fact,
that she had a hard time keeping within sight of her guide. They arrived in
time at an airlock essentially identical to the one they had just left.
Following the instructions she had been given, she loitered at the observation
port while her crate was loaded onto the ship.

That gave her a chance for her first look at the ship that would take her to
her destination. The
Thermopylae
was a moderately large ship by Free
Trader standards, some 300 meters or more in length, but old and generally
decrepit. On the whole – and largely because of Starwolf intervention
– the Free Traders led a fairly profitable existence. For one to be in
this state meant that they had been down on their luck for some time, perhaps
impoverished from the debt of unexpected repairs. She had heard tales of
Traders reduced to smuggling or other illicit schemes in their desperation to
pay their port fees and keep their ships in space. This lot had apparently
swallowed their pride and accepted a long-term contract for a run that would
not have paid for the larger ships of the Companies.