This Corner of the Universe (14 page)

Thirty
minutes later, the bridge door opened and Heskan walked back to his command
chair.  Lieutenant Riedel immediately rose from it.  “Your bridge, Captain.”

“I
have the bridge,” Heskan replied. 
It may not be the greatest plan but at
least it’s a plan.  Strange how much better I feel now than when I was leaving
here.

Once
seated, Heskan reviewed the tactical plot.  He had been keeping a close eye on
it in his cabin and been particularly interested in any updates the RALF could
provide regarding what types of ships he would face but none were forthcoming. 
Now, a quick scan confirmed that nothing significant had happened in the minute
it had taken him to return to the bridge. 

Anelace
was 3
lm
from the Beta
Field.  She had about ten minutes of travel time at .3
c
before she would
have to slow down to pass through the asteroid belt.  During his planning, Heskan
had worked under the assumption that the pirate fleet ships would want the
stealth ship to coordinate its surprise attack with their own.  Fortunately for
Anelace
, the laws of physics were working against them.  When first
discovered, the pirate fleet had needed two hours and five minutes to arrive at
the inside edge of the Beta Field. 
Anelace
, due to her faster speed and
closer position, needed less than an hour to reach the outer edge.  Traversing
through the field to the inside edge would take
Anelace
another fifty
minutes.  The slower speed necessary to safely travel the 5
lm
wide
asteroid field made the corvette’s total travel time roughly one hour and fifty
minutes.  This gave Heskan approximately fifteen minutes to break clear of the
Beta Field and intercept the pirate fleet.  If the stealth ship wanted to
attack simultaneously with the fleet, it would have to do so in open space and would
likely be forced to travel at a speed much greater than her stealth
capabilities could mask.

Nope,
as far as they know, their little stealth ship can’t wait for its friends to
arrive and then ambush us while we are facing off with their fleet
, Heskan had deliberated.  Further,
attacking
Anelace
in open space with a sloop was tantamount to suicide,
so he believed it had to come while they were still inside the Beta Field.  The
next question was where in the field the attack would happen.  After careful consideration,
Heskan decided the better asked question was
when
the attack would happen. 
The obvious answer would be to time the attack to give
Anelace
as little
time as possible to recover before the pirate fleet could engage her. 

“Okay,
folks, we‘re breaking this action into two separate engagements.  First, we’re
going to surprise that stealth ship and blow it to hell.  Then we’re going to
dance with those pirate ships and show them what it’s like to tango with the
Brevic Navy.”

Heskan
sounded battle stations.  “WEPS, I want you ready to fire at a moment’s
notice.  When that stealth ship appears, don’t wait for a command from me. 
Unload everything you can into it, understood?”

Vernay
nodded, “Yes, sir, WEPS will fire at will.”

Heskan
smiled.  “Jack, when we reach here,” Heskan made a note on the tactical plot as
he spoke, “go active with sensors in a forty-five degree forward arc. 
Concentrate everything we have in front of us.  Plus, activate the nav buoy. 
It won’t give us one hundred percent coverage behind us but it will help some.”

“Aye,
aye, sir.”

“Diane,
the moment we find that ship, lay in an intercept course and close on it with
your best speed.  Forget the military regulations on speeds while travelling
through a hazard to navigation; we can’t afford to lose contact with it.  If we
don’t find the ship, stop us right at the edge of the Beta Field.  I don’t want
us in open space yet.”

“Will
do, Captain.” Selvaggio reached through the open visor of her shocksuit helmet
and pushed her dark hair away from her eyes before inputting commands into her
navigation console.

“Then
that’s that,” Heskan said to Riedel.

Seven
minutes later,
Anelace
slowed to .1
c
and entered the Beta Field.

“Captain,”
Truesworth said in a hushed tone, “do you want us to reduce our sensor
emissions?”

Heskan
shook his head. “No, Ensign.  We can’t tip them off that we suspect they have a
stealth ship.”

Anelace
glided through the Beta Field toward
the pirate fleet.  Her course would take her through the edge of the sensor
range of the navigation buoy they had placed to catch
Raptor
and
Paragon
. 
The buoy was now silent but Heskan was sure the stealth ship‘s captain was well
aware of it. 
I wonder if he’ll risk going through the detection zone of
that buoy.  There’s no reason we would reactivate it but then it would seem an
unwise risk to take if he could avoid it.

Heskan
knew that the sloop had all the time it would have needed to position itself
for its ambush, as
Anelace
had been holding her intercept course for the
pirate fleet now for over an hour.  The small corvette continued to lazily slip
through the dense radiation of the asteroid field at a fraction of her
potential speed and as expected,
Anelace
lost contact with the pirate
fleet due to the field’s distortion. 

On
the bridge, the tactical plot began blinking the red symbols of the three
pirate ships with an ever-expanding uncertainty circle growing from them. 
Heskan realized there was a good chance that the stealth sloop had awaited
Anelace
at the edge of the field and was now shadowing them through the Beta Field, all
the time relaying contact information to the fleet.  Initially, he had been
tempted to try a surprise maneuver once inside the Beta Field and emerge from
an unexpected position to throw off the tactics of the pirates.  However, when
he realized the stealth sloop might be tracking him, he had decided to play it
as “dumb” as possible. 
Let them get overconfident; let them think I’m just
some dumb lieutenant with his first command.  And let’s hope they’re only half-right.
 

Anelace
continued her crawl through the
field and the uncertainty zones of the pirate fleet’s position widened. 
The
waiting is maddening.  How do other ship captains deal with it?  Is the tension
on the bridge crazy high or is it just me?  Should I try to lighten the mood or
let my people concentrate?  When you put it like that, Heskan, the question
kind of answers itself. 
He remained silent.

*  *  *

During
the next forty-five minutes, Heskan tried to walk the fine line between constantly
monitoring the situation and re-evaluating his plan but not modifying it
unnecessarily.  His last time in the Beta Field had taught him that if there
were no significant benefits to changing things, then staying with what had been
established was the better alternative.  By the time
Anelace
had finally
approached her trigger point within 5
ls
of the inside edge of the Beta
Field, he had managed to refrain from changing anything.  At her current speed,
she was just five minutes from exiting the asteroid field.

“Almost
there, folks.” Heskan’s voice shattered the tense silence.  Heskan watched the
countdown on tactical diminish to zero as his bridge crew sprang into action.

Anelace’s
APG-85B BigEye Array, silent
during the Beta Field transit, awoke and sent bursts of active sensor emissions
ahead of her, powerful enough to literally fry an unprotected person out to a
distance of 5
ls
.  Heskan watched the tactical plot, waiting, hoping for
the inevitable sensor hit on the sloop that would reveal its location.  From
the corner of his eye, he saw Vernay’s hands twitching in anticipation.

Seconds
passed as the potent sensor emissions continued to fill space in front of
Anelace
. 
Ten seconds later and still nothing.  Heskan’s heart sank as he realized he had
guessed wrong, followed by a tiny rush of panic. 
Damn, nothing on the
sensor buoy either.  Okay, follow through with the steps in your plan; don’t
let things fall apart because the sloop wasn’t exactly where you predicted it would
be.

“Diane,”
Heskan commanded, “slow us down, keep us inside the field.  Jack, sweep the
BigEye in a full counterclockwise circle.  Let’s either find her or keep her
away from us.”

Anelace
spun gracefully, her bow starting
its one hundred eighty degree swing so her drives could reduce her speed.  At
the same time, the BigEye array swiveled independently of the ship’s turn to begin
its search for the elusive craft.   More seconds elapsed and Heskan’s
concentration was broken by the sensation of a cold drop of sweat running down the
left side of his face. 

A
loud ping from tactical shattered the bridge’s preternatural silence as a new
contact was updated onto the plot.

“Contact!”
Truesworth exclaimed.  “Civilian sloop bearing three two zero at eight light-seconds!” 
The tactical plot placed the new ship just forty degrees port of
Anelace’s
bow.  Due to the corvette’s maneuver to reduce speed, she was actually already
turning toward the new contact.  “Blue shift projectiles!  Incoming fire from
that ship, Captain!” Truesworth warned an instant later.

Lieutenant
Vernay had already depressed the mass driver fire key that, when executed by
activating the command-accept-execute button, would initiate the first shot
from
Anelace’s
most fearsome weapon.  When Truesworth had called out the
contact, she was disgusted that she would have to waste precious seconds
turning the turret nearly sixty degrees to face the sloop.  She had kept it
pointed toward the edge of the asteroid field, thinking that portion of space was
the most likely place the ship would appear.  As the weapon slewed to port, she
became equally appalled that the ship was outside the range of the two portside
lasers that could have fired immediately.  Behind her, she heard her captain
issuing orders to Diane to belay the speed reduction and close with the enemy. 
As she waited the longest four seconds of her career, she reaffirmed her
weapons lock on the target and then stabbed the command-accept-execute button
the instant the mass driver trained out to the sloop.  The iridium round left
the barrel less than a second later.  Two more would follow in five-second
intervals.

The
first round raced along at .66
c
, like its successors, five and then ten seconds
behind it.  As the 0.762 meter projectile hurtled on its collision course with
the tiny pirate sloop, the shot passed within fifty kilometers of the dozens of
fist-sized railgun rounds travelling on a reciprocal course.

Railguns,
like mass drivers, operated on the same principle but pushed projectiles of far
less mass.  Consequently, the push pulse could be generated with much less heat,
allowing for a greatly increased rate of fire. 

Despite
this, the gunner on board the pirate sloop was pushing his railgun’s tolerances
beyond their limits.  The sloop captain had just been completing his turn away
from the corvette and was about to open fire when the military ship had done
the unthinkable and began searching for them with its sensors.  He had been
sure the sloop had not been detected as they stalked the ship through the
asteroid field and had been momentarily dumbfounded as
Anelace
blasted
the empty space in front of her with active search emissions.  His astonishment
turned to horror when the corvette began to turn toward his ship.  At that
point, there was no doubt; that damned ‘vette knew where he was and shortly its
sensors would illuminate him.  His “hit and run” plan to fire from extreme railgun
range while moving at the fastest speed possible away from the corvette to
ensure it could not return fire before his ship could break contact had been
ruined.

He
now faced the terrifying prospect of a real battle as the corvette ominously turned
to face his own ship. 
Cloak
was not designed for this.  Sure, the
pirate captain thought, she was perfect for ambushing freighters or ore
extractors; she even excelled at that.  In fact,
Cloak
had been so
successful during the last year the captain had gone to great lengths to ensure
the optics of each kill were recorded and he proudly displayed them in
holo-frames on his cabin walls.  He had even gone so far as to order the
painting of victory tallies for each of his kills onto the side of
Cloak’s
hull but that had been countermanded by the operation’s higher authorities. 
Still, when docked at “Haven” inside the Alpha Field, he swaggered around the tiny
asteroid base like the ancient pirate Blackbeard reincarnated.  There were ships
that were far more powerful in the organization, even in this system, but his
was the ship with the most kills and his skill and daring in each encounter was
the driving force behind each of those victories.  As the captain’s heart now raced
faster than the railgun’s rhythmic burst of bullet after bullet, he realized no
amount of skill or daring could compensate for or alter the inevitable result
of his first real space engagement against an armed foe.

The
gunner had set the
Cloak’s
weapons computer to automatic fire.  All he
had to do was maintain the weapon’s lock on the corvette and the computer would
cycle the railgun as fast as possible.  When originally installed, the gun’s
loading mechanism had been altered to allow for nearly twice the rate of fire as
the railgun’s design allowed.  This was not normally a problem as only short
bursts were used against frail targets like civilian freighters.  However, the gunner’s
sustained, rapid-fire stream of shots against his first shielded and armored
target quickly heated the inside of the barrel well past acceptable limits.  Further,
the gunner, in his panic, had disengaged the safeties designed to detect the
gun’s temperatures and automatically slow its rate of fire.  The corvette would
soon be firing at him and the urge to kill it before the shark-like vessel finished
its turn was overwhelming.  As he watched his railgun’s projectiles move toward
the corvette, the gunner grimly realized the corvette would fire its opening salvo
well before his first shots reached it and started to reactivate the safety
protocols.  While the gunner was midway through the process, the railgun
successfully pulsed fourteen additional times after the temperature had already
reached a dangerous 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  By the fifteenth pulse, the main
barrel had warped sufficiently to no longer allow a bullet to travel through
it.  It punched out of the side of the barrel, causing fragments from the main
barrel to tear into the surrounding trio of pulse barrels.  On the sixteenth
pulse, the electromagnetic effect distorted as the pulse rode along the tangled
mess and the railgun system exploded.