The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (37 page)

“Stand by to divert power to shields,” Deyi ordered. All the destroyers were equipped with powerful electromagnetic shielding that would disrupt or divert any attacking missile it did not simply rip apart. But the shields sucked power, stealing it from the engines.

Worse, they blinded any ship that used them at full power, cutting it off from all outside sensor data—and the shields made it very clear which were the decoys and which were the real ships. No decoy ever made could fire up a convincing shield. Furthermore, it was impossible to fire the ship’s engines through the shields on a
Chieftain
class destroyer.

Well, not quite impossible. It
could
be done, if you didn’t mind the ship turning into a ball of melted slag.

Deyi knew all that, and like any good naval commander, he hated the shields. Unlike most, he knew when and how to use them. “Weapons Officer, activate shields at your discretion—but I don’t want to see them on for more than ten seconds. Throttle down for power diversion and activate defenses only at need.”

A countermissile found its target and lit up the sky for a brief moment, destroying itself along with its attacker. The tactical display made two other incoming attackers vanish. Apparently, the tactics officer had decided the birds were too far off to pose a threat. Or maybe the computers had goofed in the first place while interpreting the sensor data—easy to do when the projection was based on nothing more than a brief wink of light tracked from thousands of klicks away and a guess at probabilities.

Unless of course the tactics officer had just guessed wrong about which traces were false. In which case she had also just made ghosts of everyone on board the
Banquo.

Spencer blinked, struggling to see clearly through the tunnel vision caused by massive acceleration. There was one more incoming missile left, and this one was no ghost in the simulation—it was real, being tracked by the
Banquo’s
own radar and optical systems.

“Weapons—” Tallen said warningly, some note of concern appearing in his voice for the first time.

“We’re on it, Sir. Examining threat po-
tent-
ial.
I show
high
confidence of
direct
impact with
Banquo,”
the young lieutenant said, splendidly unaware of the incongruities in her military terminology. She spoke in a strange sing-song chant, giving the perfect rote responses pounded into her during training. It kept her voice calm, detached, clear and understandable.

Perhaps the rhythmic sound of her voice had a calming effect on her.
Anything that works,
Spencer thought. If this young looie freaked out and got it wrong, they were all dead. “I show
no
countermissile capable of intercept. We are
too
close for a new missile launch. Propulsion,
stand
by for fusion power transfer to shield generator. Commence kay-
rash
throttle-down
now.”

The unbearable weight of six-G boost snapped off, as if someone had thrown a switch—and that was close enough. A crash throttle-down did violence to the whole fabric of the ship, not just the engines. It was a dangerous maneuver. On the other hand, it would be straight-ahead suicide to fire the engines while they and the rest of the ship were bottled up by the shields . . .

“Full power to
spherical
shield generator,” the phlegmatic weapons officer announced. Spencer looked up at the tactical plot in time to see the universe vanish.

The tactical computer, denied all its realtime sensors, scrambled to produce a plot based on last positions and velocities. The solid tracer lines blurred and faded into expanding color cones that faded toward the edges. The brighter the color, the higher the probability for that trajectory—and there was a blood-red sword of color pointed straight at the dot that represented the
Banquo.

“Shields up
and
operational. One decoy is inside shield perimeter, the other
is
outside and compromised,” the weapons officer announced. “Missile impact
with
shield in
ten
seconds, barring evasive action. Deploying additional decoy under cover of shield.
Stand
by for missile impact.”

Spencer felt his breath come in short, gasping wheezes as his lungs tried to catch up with his oxygen-starved body. It was impossible to keep breathing properly for long under six Gs, and he was glad of the relief.

But there was the taste of fear in his mouth as well. If the missile was smart enough, and quick enough, it would know that
Banquo
would have to come out from her shield sooner or later. A smart missile would maneuver into a station-keeping position with the ship, just outside the shield—and then rocket
inside
the shield perimeter just as the electromagnetic screens came down. That would leave
Banquo
like the proverbial fish in the barrel, with no escape possible.

Or else, of course, the damn missile could simply be big enough, fast enough, well-armored enough to punch through the shield and be done with it.

Spencer watched the chronometer. Only five seconds had passed. If the missiles were unable to maneuver in time, if it could not dodge the deadly scything blades of intersecting magnetic fields that made up the shield—then they were safe.

But a Pact missile could have dodged the field at that range, Spencer thought. Why not this one? The tactical computers seemed to be thinking the same way. It abruptly snapped the brightest, highest-probability course projection away from the shields, diving away on a tight tangent, then braking to hover in space a few kilometers away.

It’s only a guess,
Spencer told himself.
A computer with its sensors jammed playing guessing games. That trace of light has no concrete reality.
The thought was neither convincing nor reassuring.

And then the ship lurched hard to one side. Every sensor screen on the bridge flared into blinding brightness and went dead. The lights faded, dimmed down to nothingness, and then recovered slightly. Spencer’s safety harness held him down, but two or three crew members were thrown about.

But we should be dead,
Spencer thought, numb with fear, shock, exhaustion.
It hit us. We should be dead.
Then he noticed the cheering around him. The naval veterans around him were wild with relief. They understood and he did not. Some part of him told Spencer to keep silent, retain his dignity, not look stupid by asking—but he could not stand not knowing. “What happened?” he asked the grinning Tallen Deyi. “That thing hit us! How did we survive the impact?”

Tallen’s broad face creased in laughter. “Never got near us.”

“But the whole ship tumbled!”

“Newton’s third law at your service,” Tallen said. “Or whatever the physicists are using instead this week. The missile slammed into our magnetic shield, deformed it, knocked it around. We’re magnetically linked to the shield by the generators. When the field got kicked, it dragged the ship along with it. The generators are still drawing surplus power to rebuild the magnetic fields.”

“And the missile?”

“Smashed like a bug on a windshield. That light flash was the shield absorbing and dumping the impact energy.”

Spencer looked around the bridge. Sensor screens, dazzled by the energy overload of recording a missile smearing itself across the inside of the shield, began to reset themselves.

“Shields to stand-by power,” the weapons officer announced.

Spencer checked the main viewscreen and then the tactical plot. At standby, the shields allowed some light energy to come through, enough for the tactics computers to work with—and you could even fire the main engines at low power, in a pinch.

They were getting a good tactical plot again. Spencer scanned the display carefully, and let out a sigh of weary relief. Space ahead was clear now. All three destroyers had left the freighters behind. None of the enemy craft stood any hope of catching the Pact’s ships.

###

“Shields down to zero, throttle-up to previous acceleration, adjust previous course for deviation,” Tallen Deyi ordered. The oppressive weight slammed down on them again, and the destroyers accelerated anew.

And Spencer knew they had won this fight, by running fast enough. They had broken out of the attempted blockade. It was not a question of distance anymore, it was velocity. The Pact Navy ships were racing away from the freighters at such a ferocious speed that the enemy could never dream of catching them.

At least, that would be true if the destroyers simply kept accelerating forever. Spencer knew that was not going to happen, and presumably so did the parasite minds controlling the freighters. The destroyers were going somewhere—to the command asteroid—and it would do them no good at all to arrive there at this sort of speed. The Pact ships would have to shut down their engines and coast, and then turn over, bring their engines to bear in their direction of travel and fire their engines in a braking maneuver.

The parasite minds
would
know that the destroyers would have to slow down, know the Pact ships must either come to a full stop in space relative to the asteroid, or at least brake enough to make a worthwhile attack pass.

Presumably, the freighters would want to do something about that. Unless they got interested in revenge on the
Dancing Bear
instead.
But no, there would be no point to that. Think like a robot,
he told himself.
How would they play this one?

“Weapons, maximum range, get the best data you can get on the command asteroid coordinates and throw it on the screen,” Spencer ordered. “And keep an eye sternward on our friends behind.”

“Sir, there’s no way they could catch us now.” the youthful officer protested. “Not even their missiles could catch us.”

“Just give me the plot,” Spencer said edgily. “Navigation, how much longer at six Gs?”

“Eight minutes, twenty seconds. Then a long run at zero G, then the braking run into the asteroid’s vicinity.”

“How long a run?” Spencer asked.

“Just under 200 hours, Sir. A shade over eight standard days.”

Spencer was not surprised. At the end of this burn, they would be going hellishly fast, over 250,000 kilometers per hour—but on the other hand, the command asteroid was nearly fifty million klicks away. They might get there a trifle faster by boosting harder or longer—but it would cost them dear in fuel and kill the crew.

Eight days. A lot could happen in eight days. Arid the next move was up to the parasites. They could pursue the destroyers, shaping their orbits to catch up with them either at the command asteroid, or some point close behind. If the freighters accelerated at only one G, and kept it up for six hours, they’d be moving faster than the destroyers.

But no intrasystem freighters could carry that much fuel, or have engines capable of that kind of sustained boost. Not without the engines wrecking themselves. Maybe the freighters could rendezvous, and have some ships transfer their fuel loads to the others—maybe even strip engines from one hull and pack them as spares aboard another. Would the parasites be good enough ship handlers, have the kind of manipulators aboard their ships, to do that land of job? It seemed like a long shot, at best.

Besides, once the souped-up freighters arrived, they still would be overmatched in a fight with Pact destroyers. The only hope for the parasites would be in overwhelming numbers, swamping the destroyers with too many targets, too many missiles to counter. Stripping their surviving fleet of seventeen craft just to get four or five craft close enough for the Pact to vaporize wasn’t very smart.

Think like a robot,
Spencer told himself.
Think with the absolute ruthless logic of a machine. Think—

And his mind went back to the way the marines had thrown him off the
Bremerton.
Not because they were angry with him, not because the Pact was angry at him, not because the Pact even cared. But because it was necessary as a matter of cold, mechanical calculation, that he be out of the way. He wondered how much difference it would really make if the parasites, and not the Pact, were running the universe.

He shook himself. That was the wrong thing to think about now. Probably that was the wrong thing to think about, any time.

“Very well,” he said at last. “Order all ships to stand by for further maneuvering orders, but now steady as she goes and let’s watch the screens. They should tell us a great deal in the next few minutes.”

Chapter Twenty-One
Jump

In his mind’s eye, Ensign Peever could see the two ships, the
Fleance
and the
Dancing Bear,
docked together, a big bright obvious target in enemy radar. The enemy knew where they were, knew that the
Bear
had given up her secrets. The parasites would have their revenge. There could be no question of that. Feebly, pointlessly, Peever willed the two ships to make themselves invisible.

“They have us if they want us,” Wellingham announced in a stage whisper, a strange sort of gallows glee in his voice. He sat over the
Flea
’s compact detection screen, watching the images of the enemy fleet. “There’s no question of that. But will they want us?”

Peever felt ready to scream. Didn’t any of these maniacs have enough sanity left to panic? There was no time for such level-headed cool. They had to get ready to fight. Somehow, he kept his own voice calm and asked “Ah, shouldn’t we, ah, ready our weapons, Chief? Get ready for them?”

“No need,” the chief replied quietly. “If it comes to that, we can cast off from the
Bear
and be ready for battle in thirty seconds. Right now they must be wondering if we’re worth the bother. Or maybe machines don’t think that way—oh my God in the stars.”

The chief’s body stiffened over the detection screen, and the others all looked at him in alarm. “Wha—what is it, Chief?” Destin asked at last. “Are they gonna—”

“Shut down,” Wellingham replied. “Total, absolute shutdown. They’ve all cut engines. None of them turning, none of them accelerating any further. When they shut down, all of them were more or less moving toward their home base. If they don’t maneuver again, the last of them will pass us by in about six hours’ time. I think we’re going to make it.”