Sitting in the junior officer’s mess aboard the Tlemitl, Engineer Second Helsdon was acquainting himself with a fresh-baked chicken pie and a jug of Ceylon black tea. The Jaguar Knights who had dragged him before the Prince had no interest in escorting him all the way back to the Can -so they’d jobbed him off on Logistics to ferry over to the research station when convenient. This left the sandy-haired engineer at loose ends for six or seven hours, so cooling his heels in the well-appointed mess seemed the perfect answer.
But scuttlebutt from the ensigns slouching at the next table indicated the Can itself was being abandoned, with the Mirror scientists returning to their transports. Which left Helsdon with nowhere to go, but for the moment he wasn’t too concerned about finding a bunk-the chicken pie was excellent and he guessed the engineers aboard the Tlemitl would look out for their own in a pinch. He’d hot-bunked himself, more than once, when a fellow mechanic needed a place to sleep and hadn’t found an official posting yet.
A steward passed by, and Helsdon flagged her down. “Could I get another cuppa, please?”
She was pouring, the tea shedding curlicues of steam, when an alarm Klaxon sounded. The noise was harsh, shocking to the ear, and unmistakable.
“All hands to battle stations,” boomed the overhead, “all hands to battle stations.”
The decking itself suddenly shivered; every cup, saucer, and pot rattling on all of the mess tables. Aft of the cafeteria, in the engine ring, the super-dreadnaught’s maneuver engines were flash-heating to full combat power. Everyone was already up, on their feet, sealing the regulation shipsuit under their uniforms and scrambling towards the emergency lockers for helmets.
Helsdon seized hold of the edge of the table, stuffed the rest of the pie into his mouth, and then sealed his helmet. He, unlike many of the others present, was still wearing a proper z-suit and carried his full EVA helmet slung over his back on a lanyard. Surviving in the wreck of the Calexico had made him intimately familiar with every piece of survival gear Fleet provided.
“Incoming hostiles at all points,” bellowed the overhead. “Missile impacts expected in one minute, one minute. Brace for hull rupture, all hands secure compartments and brace for zero-g.”
Oh Lord of my Sainted Fathers. Helsdon bolted for the nearest damage control station. Work to do, I have work to do. I need to do my work, he chanted as he ran, fearing he’d freeze up if he faltered for even an instant.
Kosho stiffened in her shockchair as the executive threatwell displayed by her console filled with a swarm of angry red icons, each circumscribed by rapidly mutating glyphs. The ship’s threat assessment AI triggered, sounding alarms the length of the Naniwa.
“Battle stations!” Kosho barked, feeling the shockchair fold around her automatically. A helmet was already lowering over her head and she reflexively tucked her hair in. Combat readiness subsystems were kicking in at every station, discarding the patrol-specific displays and replacing them with battle configurations. The lights shaded to red, and behind her the main hatchway sealed itself. Her eyes flicked across the storm of data flowing into the main threatwell. “We are under attack by a Khaid fleet-repeat, we are under attack by a Khaid fleet.”
The Khaiden armada-or nearly so, given the usual size of their raiding squadrons-had dropped gradient directly on top of the Imperial ships loitering around the Can. The Naniwa ’s sensor suite was already flooded with the fury of beam weapons igniting, and the threatwell was filled with swarm after swarm of missiles and bomb-pods spewing into the void.
Kosho spared an instant to thank Hachiman they were in motion and a fair distance from the rest of the squadron.
“Message drone away,” Oc Chac barked reflexively. “Transit to hyper in one hundred thirty-six seconds.”
Susan’s habitual calm turned icy and everything around her narrowed down to the storm unfolding in the threatwell. She could feel Oc Chac’s attention on her, hot and wavering, an unsteady flame. The other officers were still scrambling to bring deflectors up, or confirm gun crews and missile teams were standing by. Pucatli at comm was speaking rapidly into his throatmike, confirming readiness of the interior compartments and sections.
Kosho caught the Mayan’s eyes. “ Sho-sa, this is a brawl for dreadnaughts. I’ll handle maneuver, combat targeting, and tactics; you keep us able to move, fight, and react. Do you understand? We’re going to get hit hard, and you’re going to have to put us right with all speed.”
Oc Chac stared back at her for a second, almost paralyzed with panic, and then nodded sharply. “ Hai, Chu-sa, hai! ”
“Pilot, full ahead,” Kosho grated, seeing Naniwa ’s velocity climb. They had not, luckily, been at full stop when the attack began. The initial confusion around the Can had started to stabilize and she could see every Imperial ship was trying to get underway. They’ve jumped in “orumchek” formation, she realized, watching the spiderweb attack pattern of the Khaid ships unfold. And they’ve caught almost all of us at zero-v, pants down, finger up the nose.
“Weapons, all launch racks deploy, give me every sprint missile we can throw, configure for independent terminal tracking.” The stylus slashed through her copy of the threatwell, describing a second “shell” of target areas around the periphery of the combat area. “Pilot, full combat power, angle for thirty-two degrees off axis. Take us hard up along the Barrier line. Transit deflectors at maximum power.”
The Naniwa surged ahead, engines flaring sun-bright, warning lights flashing in every compartment as the crew raced to battle stations. Susan ran through a brief internal checklist, confirming all drives were showing green, no bay doors were open to space, and internal battle compartments were sealing. Already the ship shook with the vibration of the ammunition Backbone shuttling fresh shipkillers to the primary rails, while the missile racks rolled out from the hull.
“ Chu-sa, targeting solutions are locked.” Konev seemed absurdly happy. “Hardpoints are clear to launch.”
“Weapons, fire.” Kosho felt a sharp bolt of elation as dozens of missile tracks sprang into view on the threatwell, spiraling out from the Naniwa, which was now accelerating hard. Holloway was sparing nothing to hit the mark she’d set for him.
“ Kyo, salvo one away,” Konev reported, voice tight with adrenaline and fear. “Cycling launchers.”
In the center of the spiderweb, caught at a dead stop, battle-shields off-line, the surface of the Tlemitl rippled with white-hot explosions. Khaid particle-beam weapons savaged the enormous hull, chewing away at a shipskin four times the thickness of the armor encasing the Naniwa. Clouds of shipkillers rained in, flooding the point-defense network with a constant stabbing barrage of detonations. Behind them, bomb-pods stuttered, unspooling long chains of thermonuclear-pumped laser emitters. Despite being caught unawares, the Tlemitl ’s on-duty gun crews were already in action-city-block-long emitter nacelles swiveled, flaring with the sidescatter radiation from beam weapons igniting. Missile launch rails were cycling as fast as their hardware allowed, disgorging heavy shipkillers in bursts.
In Flag Command on the super-dreadnaught, Prince Xochitl-who had been caught by the attack in transit to a meeting with the senior Mirror scientists and their political officers-staggered as a pair of shipkillers detonated against the Tlemitl ’s hull. The internal g-field was fluctuating and even his coppery skin was noticeably pale as he dropped into a shockchair at the Admiral’s console. His Jaguars had been carrying the components for a full EVA suit with them, and now the Prince was locked down and encased in full armor.
The Tlemitl ’s captain, Ikaru Yoemon, was in Main Command, fifty decks and half the length of the ship away, which left the Prince with whichever duty officers were within reach of FlagCom when the first alarms sounded. Despite being shorthanded, Xochitl tapped into the battlecast directly and immediately upon establishing comm lock, the Flag threatwell sprang to life, showing the whole chaotic scene in vibrant detail.
The Fiske and Eldredge were already shattered hulks, spewing wreckage and burning with radiation fires on all decks. Two of the heavy cruisers, the Axe and the Mace, were expanding spheres of ionized metal and plasma-containment lost on their reactors, weapons cooking off in a ripple of secondary explosions. By tremendous luck, the Fleet tender Hanuman had been at the periphery of the attack area and was now only minutes from making gradient to hyperspace.
The battle cruiser Naniwa, which had just rotated out on a patrol sweep, was also out of the immediate melee.
Though his first instinct was to comm Thai-sa Yoemon for ship’s status, Xochitl knew the captain was fully occupied with damage control and fighting for his ship. Instead he confirmed the status of the other ships in the squadron and added himself to the ’cast command channel. Immediately the chatter of six or seven commanders flowed through his earbug, including the harsh bark of Chu-sho Xocoyotl on the Tokiwa.
“Battle shields coming on-line now,” Yoemon reported on a channel specific to the Tlemitl.
The overhead lights in Flag Command flickered and the constant shattering vibration of bomb-pod impacts and particle beam detonations ceased. In the threatwell, the Firearrow ’s glyph changed and Xochitl knew that outside-in the maelstrom of radiation, spinning debris, and streaking missiles-a wavering, rainbow-hued globe had sprung up around his ship. Within the second, one of the v-panes on his threatwell display was strobing, showing impact rates on the various shield cells managed by the massive Tototl-Aerospatiale generators embedded beneath the shipskin.
One corner of the threatwell spiked as an irregular sphere of plasma suddenly occluded the Can.
So much for the Mirror’s sensor platform, Xochitl thought, shunting the flood of data flowing over him to his exocortex. Battlecast is up and synchronized… Xocoyotl had better get-ah, good, here they come.
The secondary beam weapons on the Tlemitl were now firing in staccato, sweeping the area ahead of the massive ship free of bomb-pods and penetrators. The Khaid were fond of strewing clouds of one-off mines when they engaged the enemy, then working to drive their prey into the shoals which resulted.
Four Khaiden battleships-Xochitl had never encountered the class before and his exocortex could find no references to them in the Fleet briefings and intelligence estimates-were now closing on the dreadnaught, seeking to bring particle weapons to bear behind three speeding waves of shipkillers.
An answering salvo of penetrators was already belching from the Tlemitl. Xochitl fought down a fierce desire to override Yoemon and take direct command of the dreadnaught, but the Thai-sa was doing an able job. Initial damage was already being attacked by Engineering damage control parties. Shields were up, the ship was building velocity, and the Tokiwa and Asama were closing vector with all speed.
We need to get point-defense interlock engaged. The Prince scowled, watching the intercept projections update in his ’well. The Khaid were forming up, their main body of battleships-falling somewhere in size and throw-weight between the Tlemitl and her battle cruisers-screened from immediate attack by this lead group of four.
The two Imperial battle-cruisers swung in moments later, having reached interlock range on point defense. Both were spewing ECM pods and the new remote point-defense platforms as fast as their launchers could recycle.
“Combat interlock confirmed,” Thai-sa Yoemon and Chu-so Xocoyotl’s voices overlapped in each ear. The Prince had already seen his secondary status displays shade green. The Tlemitl ’s spoofer pods now began to flood nearspace with a hurricane of false data. Subsystems on all three ships had been drinking in the Khaid ECM signatures for almost ten minutes now, and with interlock allowing each ship to differentiate their countermeasures, the attacking ships were suddenly moving in an electronic fog.
«Now?» suggested his exocortex. «Battlecast synch time is within parameters to implement override.»
Xochitl shook his head, though no one else could see, or hear, the exo. “No, not yet. The commanders of the other ships haven’t been briefed-” Even Yoemon, who had seen the new control overrides in action during trials, wasn’t ready to let the Tlemitl fight herself. Well, under my direction, thought the Prince.
«Our direction,» countered his exo. «We are one.»
“-they’ll panic.”
The interior airlock opening onto boat-bay nine wheezed, locking motor complaining as it attempted to seal the hatch. A fallen stanchion twisted with a squeal, crushed by the door, but refused to break free. Helsdon, face streaming with sweat, looped a magnetic block ring around the twisted battle-steel, snugged it tight, and stepped back. Behind him, a good dozen cooks, stewards, stray officers, and off-duty ratings leaned into the rope, hauling for all they were worth.
Someone shouted “Heave!” and the stanchion squealed, trying to slide free of the hatch. At the airlock controls, the Engineer Second wrenched aside the panel covering with a pry bar and shorted the mechanism. The hatch tried to cycle open and the stanchion popped loose. Almost immediately the environmental circuits triggered an alarm-the boat-bay had lost its exterior doors and was open to the void-and only the inner airlock hatch, luckily still intact, prevented the entire corridor from venting into space.
Helsdon had his hand-comp clipped in and now he thumbed a counteroverride, letting the little unit drop into a blindingly fast response cycle as the hatch requested permission to close, was told no , then requested it again… The damage control party dragged the stanchion free with a grinding scrape.
The Engineer Second unclipped the comp-the hatch ground closed, spitting out metal shavings-and he pitched the plastic control cover away.
“Let’s go,” he broadcast, drawing everyone’s attention. “There’s a hull puncture two halls leeward and we’re venting atmosphere. We’ve got an emergency repair closet there and one on the way, so get ready to carry what we’ll need.”
Their faces were blank with incomprehension, or stiff with incipient fear, but Helsdon pushed them along-using the pry bar if necessary. If they stopped, he would stop, and then he knew he’d break down. The specter of another endless time trapped in a broken, disabled ship, waiting for the cold or hunger or radiation to take him was ever-present.
The Naniwa sped towards rendezvous with the flagship, steadily building velocity. In Kosho’s mind, the invisible, undetectable Barrier seemed only a hands-breadth from her flank. All sections had finally reported in, ready for battle. Damage control crews were standing by, the launchers had recycled, and transit deflectors were at full strength. In her executive ’well, she could see that the Tlemitl had brought the new battle-shields on line and Susan was pained by jealousy. Curse the Prince, he has all the new toys… while we fight with flint and wicker!
Kosho stiffened, agonized to see the Falchion -hammered by dozens of bomb-pods-shiver and begin to break apart. A cloud of evac capsules spewed away from the mortally wounded cruiser, but Susan knew her commander would not be aboard one of them.
Muldoon. May Mor-Rioghain convey you to the West with all good speed.
The battle-cruiser held fire, munitions racks rolled out with the full weight of her shipkillers and suppression pods ready to launch. Seconds ticked past, and then “ Chu-sa, transit spike!” Holloway’s voice was flat and sharp. “Multiple spikes! Incoming transit across the board-estimating thirty contacts inbound.”
“Launchers ready for salvo two, kyo,” Konev barked, running through his readiness checklist one more time.
A wide arc of space shimmered, twisting aside as dozens more Khaiden ships-a swarm of destroyers, light cruisers, Fleet tenders, and assault boats-dropped out of hyperspace. Susan grinned mirthlessly. Months spent far beyond the rim of Imperial space, hunting the Khaid and Megair and being hunted in return, had gained her a hard-won familiarity with their tactics.
The Naniwa sprint missiles already launched into the void were now within seconds of a sudden new array of targets. The deadly little weapons sprang awake, autonomic targeting systems fixing on the fresh signatures of Khaiden ships, and blasted forward, exhausting the last of their fuel.
Two Khaiden destroyers staggered as the Imperial missiles streaked past their point-defense and antimatter charges detonated against shipskin. Startlingly violet blossoms of plasma erupted from their engine arrays. An assault boat tore in half. Missiles raced through the Khaiden formation, causing panic. Ships corkscrewed away wildly amid a wave of secondary explosions. A wedge of destroyers rotated towards the Naniwa, beam weapons stabbing at her through the incandescent murk.
“Weapons, fire salvo two.”
The battle-cruiser shuddered as every launch rail and missile rack triggered simultaneously.
The Tlemitl and her two consorts lunged toward the Barrier at maximum acceleration, clawing for room to maneuver. In FlagCom, Xochitl let the threatwell feed wash over him, his attention fixed on the maneuvering of the Khaid main elements. The arrival of their support ships had been expected, though he was surprised to see such numbers. Exo displayed comparisons of numbers of ships, types, and throw-weight between this battle and more recent encounters with the Khaid raiders.
A proper fleet, the Prince observed, almost impressed. On our model; with supply ships, a repair tender, lighter elements, some kind of troop transports…
Swiftly approaching the danger zone marked out on the threatwell in strobing crimson, Thai-sa Yoemon’s voice cut sharply across the chatter on the command ’cast. “Prepare to change vector, rotating aspect… now.”
Xochitl’s eyes slid to the display showing g-integrity deck by deck on the massive ship. Time to put everything to the test.
The constant rumble transmitted through the hull-despite a brand-new dampening system-from the maneuver drives ceased abruptly. The Tlemitl rotated aspect on tertiary thrusters. The status displays started to wink amber and yellow-one red spot flared up as a compartment lost its g-decking-and then the Firearrow was pointed on a new heading. The exchange of missile clouds and beam weapons had continued unabated throughout the evolution and the Prince was pleased to see his gun crews had kept targeting lock on the lead Khaid battleships. Battlecast was still in sync, though hostile ECM was now starting to interfere, forcing a faster encryption cycle rate.
“Main drives at full,” Yoemon snapped and the rumbling vibration kicked in again. Now three compartments flared red and Xochitl cursed, knowing any man in those areas was probably dead or seriously wounded, given the acceleration they were pulling. Still, the dreadnaught had successfully swerved away from the Barrier, the Asama keeping pace off her port. The Tokiwa, however, had failed to change vector with them. Xocoyotl’s battle-cruiser had rotated to reverse aspect, but now she was forced to a full-burn to avoid colliding with the invisible weapon.
The fire from all four Khaid battleships retargeted on the Tokiwa as she slipped out of the point-defense envelope maintained by the Tlemitl and Asama. Hundreds of shipkillers rained in, saturating the battle-cruiser’s lighter point defense network. Dozens of explosions rippled the length of her hull, stressing shipskin beyond its capacity. A bright pinpoint seared through the plasma clouds as a penetrator pierced containment on the antimatter reactor. Then everything-the Tokiwa, the debris clouds spilling from her flanks, the corona of bomb-pod lasers igniting-was washed away by a pure white flare.
«IMN BC-261 lost with all hands,» Xochitl’s exo commented, spooling off a log entry.
“Battlecast resynced.” Yoemon’s voice was harsh and flat. The Tlemitl was now turning, still building velocity, with the Asama running in tight, well inside the fire control envelope of the dreadnaught’s point-defense batteries. With the four Khaid heavies drawn off by killing the battle-cruiser, the two Imperial ships accelerated into the flank of the opposing fleet. Four Khaid cruisers swung towards them, but now the full throw-weight of the Tlemitl and Asama could focus on the approaching ships.
A storm of sprint missiles and particle beams stabbed out, while the spoofer pods flooded Khaid targeting control with thousands of phantom contacts. The first three cruisers shattered, shipskin ravaged by particle beams, missile racks torn away, and then each hull punched in by a pair of shipkillers-big Tessen -class multiphase penetrators.
«Resource utilization is higher than recommended per target,» exo commented, but the Prince shook his head. “The weapons officer is showing admirable restraint, given his desire to be sure of the mark. Yoemon has noticed we’ve no resupply now that the Hanuman has fled. Very wise.”
’Cast relay beeped cheerfully, showing a fresh Imperial fire-snake glyph boosting towards the protective shell of the Tlemitl ’s point defense.
«IMN CA-1042 Gladius has synched to battlecast,» exo announced. «All other cruisers have been lost.»
Her field of view filled with an intricate schematic of potential Barrier threads, racing ship glyphs, and the still-present necklace of science probes arrayed beyond the radiation cloud which had been the Can, Gretchen tried to concentrate on the results from her models. The first pass she’d taken had been discarded and while searching for more computational resources Anderssen had found-to her wary delight-that node 3^3 3 also boasted well over nineteen thousand processing nodes. Many of them were inactive, or inaccessible to her, but enough remained to offload model calculations for three alternate schemas.
The constant fluctuations in the g-decking field made her work very difficult and Gretchen had resorted to taping down the comps and her other gear.
“Crow, we’d better get tied down, this is getting rough.”
The old Mexica did not bother to look over his shoulder. His displays had reconfigured again and the Swedish woman frowned, not recognizing any of the interfaces he was now navigating. Somehow it seemed freshly minted and new, though still recognizably Mexica in origin. “Hummingbird, are we going to get out of this?”
“I have,” he said in a musing voice, “a great faith in Chu-sa Kosho’s ability to survive.”
Then everything lurched violently and Gretchen lost her seat, flying into the nearest wall with a bone-jarring crunch. Hummingbird’s consoles tore free of the tape, one of them shattering against the wall beside her. Despite this, his attention remained fixed on flipping through the Tlemitl ’s internal systems as fast as possible.
“Holy Blessed Mary, Bride of Jesus, that hurts!” Anderssen slid to the floor as the g-decking reasserted itself, landing painfully. “ Crow! ”
Six decks away, Kosho watched calmly as the Naniwa ’s abrupt course change sent the battle-cruiser careening into a pack of six oncoming Khaiden destroyers. The battle-cruiser’s deflectors rippled with millions of tiny impacts as irradiated dust and battle debris hammered at the electromagnetic veil. Missiles punched straight through, while particle beam traces speared past as the Khaid gunners lost lock on the elusive Imperial ship. In turn, she was designating priority in her ’well, the stylus stabbing like a dagger into the heart of the enemy.
“Weapons, target number four, give me a tight grouping!”
The Naniwa shuddered as the starboard missile launchers went to rapid-fire, spitting a cloud of smaller interceptors around a single big Tessen shipkiller. The destroyers had broken ranks, each burning maneuver mass to break away from the oncoming Imperial. The Naniwa ’s beam nacelles strobed, capacitors discharging with a high shrieking whine that carried through the shipframe like the lament of the damned. Secondary launchers spat out a handful of spoofer pods. Target five flared with a brilliant violet-hued detonation and the ensigns on the lower tier of Command shouted, “ Seikou! ”
Susan nodded to Konev, whose beam gunners had gotten in a choice hit.
To starboard, target four had gone into a corkscrew pattern, trying to shake the outbound munitions package-but the interceptors fragmented on final approach, separating into dozens of smaller missiles, each radiating as hot as the parent chassis. Point defense lasers and ballistic munitions tore through them, causing a sparking cascade of smaller explosions. Serenely, the Tessen sailed through the weak ECM spewing from the destroyer’s emitters and slammed into the smaller ship’s hull at a hundred g. At the instant before impact, the multiphase warhead ignited, spearing a needle-sized plasma jet into the Khaiden shipskin.
A seven-meter-wide hole blew through the side of the destroyer before the Tessen blew up inside the hull proper. The destroyer convulsed, filling with superheated plasma, and then shattered into a cloud of molten debris.
The other Khaid lightweights scattered, dumping a cloud of missiles and bomb-pods behind them.
Kosho nodded thoughtfully, then tapped an execute glyph Pucatli had prepped for her.
Each of the fleeing destroyers had acquired a spoofer pod running passive when the Naniwa had interpenetrated the formation. Now they each lit off with the battle-cruiser’s signature and sped off, keeping pace with the Khaid ships, each now followed by a swiftly closing pack of missiles.
“Pilot, vector to join the Flag,” Kosho snapped, letting her attention return to the larger battle. “Get us into their envelope and synched up on point-defense.”
She did not have time to give Tloc, his holds full of chocolatl, or the lamentable Chu-sho Xocoyotl even the brief parting Muldoon had received.
«Enemy battlecast pattern is adapting,» exo announced.
Prince Xochitl had sunk back in his chair, expression thunderous as he realized how heavily the odds had turned against him. The Tlemitl outweighed any single enemy ship by three or six to one, but now his battle-group was stripped down to only three supporting cruisers. Even the two Scout frigates had disappeared.
As he watched, the Khaid battleships coalesced-showing admirable skill, one part of his mind commented-into a tight pack. Now they veered towards the Tlemitl, their point-defense overlapping, with a stormfront of shipkillers, penetrators, and bomb-pods hurtling towards the Imperial ships. Behind their munitions screen, the heavy beam weapons on the Khaiden battlewagons were sparking, searching for a weakness in the battle-shields surrounding the Firearrow.
The shield-generator status display was a patchwork of green, amber, and red. Some of the nodes had already failed, having shorted on backfeed from the shields themselves, or failing under the massive stress. Xochitl’s teeth bared, gleaming white and sharp, and he cursed the pochtecas who had sold his father such junk.
«Projected failure rate of the shield nodes, from field trials, is almost thirty percent. Current failure rate is thirty-four percent.»
“Unacceptable.” Xochitl straightened in his chair, attention drawn to the emergence of a second pack of Khaiden heavies which had been screened from the Tlemitl ’s sensors by the oncoming wave of attackers. This formation was accelerating off at an angle and redeploying on the move, smoothly shifting from their initial wedge into an unfolding “flower-box.”
«Secondary elements are targeting the Gladius,» exo reported, and the threatwell shifted, focusing in on the heavy cruiser, which was trying to match course with the Tlemitl and Asama. «Missile storm intercept in sixteen seconds.»
The particle beam nacelles covering that quadrant of the envelope began igniting. Yoemon’s gunnery team had reached the same conclusion. Khaid shipkillers began to wink out, obliterated by anion impacts. The Gladius’ point-defense guns were spinning hot, filling the intervening space with ballistic rounds, and her short-range launchers were discharging as fast as the robotic loaders could clear the launch rails. Better than half of the incoming missiles were obliterated, but the remainder detonated in a staggered wave of plasma flares, washing from one end of the ship to the other.
Xochitl jerked back, his face dark, ruddy bronze as the heavy cruiser’s glyph vanished from the threatwell plot.
«Three friendly effectives remain,» exo stated, highlighting the glyphs of the dreadnaught and two remaining battle-cruisers. «Hostile numbers are now sixteen combatants, twelve noncombatants. Point-defense network is suboptimal, ECM cloud is suboptimal, launcher recycle time is suboptimal, munitions expenditure-all weapon systems-is excessive, and maneuver drive efficiency is-»
“Enough!” Xochitl felt hot inside his armor and now he heard the whine of the air circulation system trying to shed waste heat like the buzz of a thousand mosquitoes. “Enough.”
His head was throbbing violently and he groped for the medband override.
The Naniwa ’s hull shook with repeated explosions as a wave of sprint missiles and penetrators crashed through her point-defense. In Command, Oc Chac was speaking rapidly into his throatmike, his status displays a sea of red and amber indicators. Kosho snarled, seeing three Khaid light cruisers and a pair of destroyers interpose themselves between her and the Tlemitl. The enemy ships were formed up tight, and their point-defense interlock had stopped the last salvo of shipkillers Konev and his gunners had spun into them.
“Pilot, time to ’cast interlock with the Flag?”
“Too long, kyo.” Holloway looked up, wild-eyed, and shook his head. “We’d have to bull right through them to reach interlock range.”
“Understood, Thai-i.” Susan’s attention snapped back to the threatwell, where a second pack of Khaid lightweights was barreling in on her flank, trying to get into the shadow of her drive plume. We need to shed some of these dogs, she thought, juggling distance, velocity, and time in a heartbeat. Her stylus slashed through the executive ’well at her console.
“Pilot, new heading. Don’t spare the horses.”
Naniwa responded, still agile despite the burning craters littering her hull and the cloud of vented atmosphere, splintered radiating fins, and other flotsam she was shedding. The battle cruiser shifted course, angling away from the Tlemitl and Asama, which were at the center of their own hot, constantly strobing cloud of detonations, and headed dead-on to the Barrier coordinates loaded into Susan’s threatwell.
“Course correction burn complete, kyo,” Holloway reported. “Nine hostiles now in pursuit.”
“Incoming spread-one-hundred-six contacts,” Konev barked. “Point-defense engaging.”
Susan hissed, feeling her ship’s pain deep down in her gut. “ Sho-sa, prepare to roll mines.”
Oc Chac nodded, attention wrenched away from damage control. He stared at her blankly for a heartbeat, then caught himself and nodded abruptly. “ Hai, Chu-sa! Preparing to roll mines.”
Gretchen picked herself up warily and groped from bunk to desk. Gravity wobbled again, the ship groaning around them, but this time she was ready and held on. Hummingbird had wedged himself into a corner of the room, a comp still in his hand-face tight with some tremendous effort of concentration-and she saw his fingers were a blur on the interfaces. All of his equipment, even scattered under the bunks, was still in operation. Gritting her teeth against a series of bad bruises, Anderssen found her own field comp and flipped it open. Her models were still running, and now they had resolved themselves down to only two alternatives.
“Where are we, Crow?” she gasped, fumbling at the control pad. “We’ve got to get all of this gear secured before we lose g-deck integrity entirely.”
All of her equipment shoveled into the backpack without a problem. A roll of stickytape secured the pack to the bunk, which was in turn welded to the wall of the cabin. Her hand-comp stayed with her, though its interface was tiny in comparison to the bigger units. Hummingbird’s setup was harder to deal with, particularly when her shoulders were itching at the prospect of the next abrupt maneuver. But in a few moments, all of it was stowed save the t-relay, which was a Yule tree of status lights. Grasping the main unit, she cast around for something to secure the device to.
“Leave be!” Hummingbird spared a dark, furious glance for her. “I’ve almost broken into the Khaid battlecast and we’ll need that to survive the next hour. Pin it to the floor, if you must, but don’t move it or disassemble the mechanism.”
You’ll sing a different tune, carrion bird, if this thing cracks you in the head…
She strapped it down as best she could, feeling the metal radiating hot enough to scorch her fingertips. Then Anderssen crawled back to the other corner, wedged herself into place, and thumbed up the display on her hand-comp. Plot position, she ordered the little machine. On the sidebar, Gretchen was heartened to see that node 3^3 3 was still in synch and processing data at a blistering rate. Excellent, but Her latest modeling pass had discarded the data preprocessed by the Mirror scientists and culled from the Korkunov ’s initial telemetry. Something nagged at her, saying it was too old to be accurate. Instead, drawing on the sheer processing power and storage offered by node 3^3 3, she’d asked the comps to sweep through the most basic data flowing back from the Imperial science probes and break it down, looking for gravitational anomalies at a sub-Planck scale. The descriptions of the damage inflicted on the Calexico hinted at a mechanism capable of dissecting battle-steel, which implied the weapon was able to break down the interlocking matrix of the armor without diffusing its impact energy across the enormous, mutually supporting weave of the material.
Her comps now revealed a new “map” of the surrounding space, one far different in detail than the Imperial data they’d received-or stolen. Anderssen cursed, her body jolted with fear. Tearing free of the restraints, she was at Hummingbird’s side in the blink of an eye. She seized hold of the old man’s ear, drawing a bright crimson pinpoint of blood with the corner of one nail.
“Crow! Come back to me. Captain Kosho is trying to use the Barrier as a weapon, and the Imperial data we have is no good for this sector. Break me into the command circuit, right now!”
“Rack eight away,” Oc Chac announced, as a fresh cluster of plasma mine icons popped up on the threatwell. “We’re done, kyo.” The Mayan looked back at Susan, his chiseled face questioning.
“Not enough,” the Nisei woman said, watching the last of her area denial munitions spin away behind the Naniwa. The battle-cruiser was pushing hard at maximum-v for the level of particulates in this area of space, and there were still nine Khaiden cruisers and destroyers racing after her. “Weapons, start dumping delayed-fuse bomb-pods into our wake. I want them on a timer and dark until they tick over on intercept.”
Then she swiveled around, considering the threatwell. Naniwa was now closing fast on the forbidden area indicated by the Mirror scientists. Stabbing flares started to pop up behind them, catching one of the Khaiden cruisers with a direct hit. The enemy ship staggered, losing way, and then plowed through three more plasma mines. Atmosphere began to vent from dozens of punctures, but the other Khaid ships dodged past, their captains and crews alert enough to realize the danger and begin laying down a sweeping pattern of computer-controlled ballistic rounds.
“Pilot, prepare to rotate ship,” Kosho announced, glaring at Holloway. “Rotate in one minute, sixteen-”
Stop, you’ve got to stop!
She jerked, hearing an unfamiliar voice shouting in her earbug.
“Belay that order,” Susan snarled, “who is this?”
Gretchen Anderssen, Captain Kosho. Your charts are out of date-I’m updating your display-now!
“ Jigoku-e ochiro! ” The Chu-sa’s shouted curse startled everyone on the bridge, and Oc Chac turned to stare at her in surprise. Susan’s complexion shaded almost porcelain. The threatwell display mutated wildly, the Mirror coordinates for the invisible Barrier wiped away and replaced by a series of veil-like patterns, overlapping on one another and filled with pockets and eddies.
“Forty seconds to intersection, kyo,” Holloway yelped, his console throwing a dozen alarms.
“Pilot, hard over!” Kosho snarled, punching the collision alarm glyph on her console. Then her stylus stabbed out, marking a new course in the ’well.
“Thirty-nine seconds!”
Naniwa groaned from stem to stern, engines cutting out as the ship rotated, and then flaring as they slewed around into a new heading. Shedding velocity to make the turn, the battle-cruiser was suddenly seconds “behind” where the constant stream of Khaiden missiles expected her to be. Penetrators rained onto her newly exposed “roof,” their onboard comps triggering detonation. Hammerblows boomed across the shipskin, shredding tiles and overloading the thermocouples. Radiating fins splintered all across the Naniwa ’s hull. Secondary plasma charges pierced the shipskin itself, blowing enormous gaps through to the secondary hull. Behind the plasma charge, the penetrator rounds themselves collided with the inner armor at tremendous speed. The triple layer of armor mesh convulsed, trying to shed impact energy across the whole shipframe, but dozens of tiny ruptures punched through, spewing thermonuclear plasma into two compartments just fore of Engineering. Atmosphere vented, blowing out a chaff-cloud of debris.
“Multiple punctures,” Oc Chac bawled, “we’ve lost environment on decks nineteen and twenty. Four compartments compromised. I have a radiation fire in compartment eighty-one.”
“ Sho-sa, get your teams in,” Susan barked, “Pilot-get me some headway!”
Her engines intact, the Naniwa accelerated away on a sharply different vector. Kosho held her breath, watching her ship veer hideously close to the shimmering veils plotted on her ’well.
In their cabin on six, Gretchen and Hummingbird were torn through their restraints and slammed hard against the wall. Gravity fluctuated violently for a microsecond and the comps ripped free as well, smashing into the walls, displays splintering into ruin. Bloody, one arm stabbing with terrible, blinding pain, Gretchen found herself pinned against the ceiling. Alarm Klaxons screamed and the bitter smell of burning insulation flooded the air. Crushed by a giant hand, Anderssen struggled to breathe. “Crow! Crow!”
Hummingbird was pinned as well, though his head lolled limply to one side.
Four hundred thousand kilometers behind the Naniwa, the pack of Khaiden ships reacted as well, shedding velocity to make an equally abrupt course change. Three of them managed this quite smartly, matching the battle-cruiser’s relative angle. They continued to spit missiles at the Imperial ship, though their rate of fire slacked off sharply. The other five also made the turn, but too slowly. Their icons interpenetrated with the first of the veils plotted on Susan’s display and abruptly winked out.
“Score on goal,” Kosho breathed, only too aware of how close she’d come to blundering into the same fate. “Pilot, get me a new intercept to the Tlemitl!”
Aboard the Firearrow, Xochitl grimaced as one of his Jaguars cut away the mangled wreckage of his shockchair. Flag Command was filled with smoke and guttering flames from a shipkiller impact which had torn through the secondary hull. Able to move once more, the Prince crawled free, shaking off bits of burning metal and fabric. Two of his bodyguards were down, along with most of the junior officers and ratings who had been at their stations.
“Raise damage control,” Xochitl ordered his exo. “ Cuauhhuehueh Koris, status of the rest of your squad?”
“Only us in comm contact, Tlatocapilli.” The Jaguar Knight shook his head slowly. “I’m not getting a response from Command either.”
«Thai-sa Yoemon is dead,» reported the exo. «Autonomic systems report that Main Command has lost environmental control due to a penetrator hit. No life signs remain in the compartment.»
“Mains are down,” the Prince said aloud, replying to Koris. “Find me the secondary and let’s get moving.”
The intership comm channel was fuzzing with static, making even short-range conversations impossible. “Exo, what is this?”
«A Khaid disruptor bug has entered the ship via a penetrator. Internal communications on the regular channels will be impossible until the module is located and destroyed or damage control reroutes around the infection.»
“Find me a clear channel, then.”
The Jaguars were already moving, hustling the Prince out into the corridor. The hatchway tried to close behind them and stuck, flat streamers of black smoke oozing along the roof. A fire suppression system kicked in, flooding the hallway with foam. Xochitl wiped his faceplate clear and jogged on. The assistive mechanisms in his suit would let him run a long way without tiring.
Four decks away, Engineer Second Helsdon and two of his crew slipped pry bars behind the cover of a section of shattered comm conduit and wrenched hard. The cover tore away, revealing six meters of shredded, blackened crystal. Freezing wind, howling down the passageway from some hull rupture, pummelled their z-suits, laying down frost on every surface. Malcolm jammed a cutting tool behind the junction at his end of the conduit and popped the interface free-off to his right, the other two men were doing the same.
“Clear!” Two Jun-i hustled up, bearing a length of replacement crystal. They shoved the new conduit into place and Helsdon locked down his end, a hand-comp tucked into his elbow. A moment later, with diagnostic leads attached, he had a string of green lights on the status display. The circuit came back up with a few hiccups. “Done here,” he shouted. They’d manually switched to a little-used comm channel when the main network went down, but there was still interference. “On to the next.”
“Doubt if we have all the holes patched, Engineer,” one of the warrant officers remarked with a strained laugh.
“Yeah, only ten or twenty to go,” someone else’s voice came through the suit-to-suit line. “What now?”
“Wait one.” Helsdon grunted with exhaustion, thumbing through a succession of panes on his hand-comp, the team crowded around him, faces expectant for the next task.
The battle-steel hatchway to Secondary Command cycled open and Xochitl and his Jaguars crowded in. The Sho-sa, who had found himself commanding the dreadnaught when primary Command and Flag had gone off-line, jerked around, his face ashy.
“ Tlatocapilli, I’m glad to see you! We’ve-”
“Out of the chair,” the Mexica lord seized the lieutenant commander by the arm and dragged him away from the command console. “You’re XO now-get me damage control back on-line and report munitions inventory!”
The main threatwell was still functioning as Xochitl settled into the shockchair, taking stock of the situation. He’d been out of contact for nearly thirty minutes, but his exo jacked in to the main boards and the Prince saw the gun decks were still in operation, hammering away at the swarm of Khaiden battleships pacing the dreadnaught. The new battle-shields wavered in and out of existence, flaring bright with missile impacts.
«Forty percent coverage remaining,» exo reported. «Launchers are at sixty percent, though four port-side are jammed.»
The Asama had fallen away behind, crippled and shuddering from secondary explosions deep in her core, crew bailing out in a cluster of shuttles and evac-capsules.
Xochitl waved his hand and the threatwell reconfigured; the myriad points of Imperial distress beacons vanished, leaving only the combatants.
“Lord Prince,” the Sho-sa ventured. “We have stowage to take them aboard-”
“Leave them,” Xochitl growled, his command console flickering with alternate course plots at a blinding rate. At main navigation, the Thai-i sitting at the station had drawn back, finding his v-panes and control displays no longer responding to his touch. Suddenly the alternates dropped away and the Prince nodded to himself. “New course by my mark, full power. We need breathing room!”
Engines thundering, the decking vibrating with a deep basso roar, Tlemitl charged away from the wrecked Asama, all surviving launchers and gun nacelles concentrated on two Khaid heavy cruisers which had drawn the unlucky course to stand in the Prince’s way. Both broke off, trying to change vector as multiple shipkillers slammed into their deflectors, breaking through to sear armor and shatter their engine rings. Undaunted, the Firearrow accelerated towards the Pinhole.
Three-quarters of a million kilometers behind the swirling firefight around the super-dreadnaught, Kosho grasped the Prince’s intent immediately. The Naniwa was already accelerating to join him, having shrugged aside the last of the lighter ships, but now the Khaid battleships had reformed, relocking their point-defense and fire control. Swift as harriers, they came hard on the chase and stood directly between the battle-cruiser and the flagship. Thoughtful, Susan tapped up the channel to deck six.
“Anderssen- sana, can you get me better telemetry?”
There was no response, only intermittent static and then a “ cabin inhabitants are unavailable at this time ” message generated by shipboard comm. Face tight with dismay, Kosho switched channels.
“Damage Control, Medical. Get teams to cabin nine on deck six, immediately!”
In the ’well, her course and that of the Tlemitl were fast converging on the outer edge of the debris field from the Can. Beyond the wrecked station loomed the invisible passage of the Pinhole, though now Susan realized that even if the Scouts had found an opening-there was no surety it led anywhere save into a veil of threads which would gut her ship like a teppan -chef.
“Comm, any response from the Flag?”
The comm officer shook her head, eyes huge. “Nothing, Chu-sa. She’s still moving and fighting, but I’ve no response from any shipside system, not even on identicast.”
Does he even see we’re here? Kosho discarded the thought. “ Chu-i , you find me someone to talk to. If anyone can circumvent the Khaid jamming, the interference from the dust cloud, and the radiation blaze from so many wrecked ships, you can.”
“ Hai, Chu-sa, hai! ”
Then she turned to Holloway and Oc Chac, who were heads down over the navigational console.
“ Sho-sa, can we get a reading on that Barrier? Anything?”
The Mayan shook his head. “Sensors show a clear field, save for the omnipresent dust. Only empty space beckons beyond the shattered dead.”
“Not good enough.” Susan tapped her fingers rapidly on the edge of her shockchair. “Get me an update from the medical team on six. Now.”