A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (26 page)

“They put a main gun in a troop-transport,” she said, still finding it hard to credit her eyes. “Why in heavens would they do something like that?”

“Bit daft, if you ask me, ma’am,” said Silnik. He stood on the other side of the hole in the deck. “One shot from this’ll take all the output from the power toroids. We’d be dead in space afterwards.”

“One shot is all you need,” pointed out Kordelasz. He too appeared astounded by their discovery. “No one expects a tub like this to carry a main gun. You can get in close and make sure you destroy your target.”

“It’s a bit big for an assassin’s weapon,” replied Rinharte.

The marine-captain laughed. “That it is.” He looked up and grinned. “Are we going to use it?”

Rinharte was shocked. “Dear Lords, no. As Mr Silnik said, we’d be dead in space if we did. I’d like to survive the upcoming battle in one piece.”

She turned about and strode along the gangway. At its end, a small square hatch set in the forward bulkhead gave access to the bilges beneath the pinnace docks. Framed in the opening, hands to either jamb, body stretched out behind her, floated Mahzan. Rinharte was used to such sights: areas of gravity beside areas of no gravity.

“Nothing down here, ma’am,” the rated said. She let go with one hand, reached back and scratched at her rear.

She was also filthy, smeared with grease and soot. Rinharte wondered if she had been rolling in the dirt—and then wondered how that was possible in zero gravity.

“Any ideas?” asked Rinharte. They had searched the lowest deck from stern to bow looking for the rangefinder and found nothing.

“Most likely up top,” Mahzan pointed out.

“Romi has searched every square inch of the fo’c’sle. There’s nothing hidden there. Not even a telescope in the station-keeping turret.”

Mahzan shrugged, one hand still to the hatch coaming. “If it’s not down here, ma’am, it’ll be up there somewhere. We just got to look harder.”

Abruptly, the rated tucked her legs up under her and shot her feet forward. Both hands now to the coaming, she unbent and arched through the hatchway feet-first. She landed beside Rinharte, stumbled a moment, then straightened and grinned impertinently.

“I got an idea where,” she said. “Ma’am.”

She headed back down the gangway.

Rinharte strode after her. Kordelasz joined her as she passed him, as did Leading Petty Officer Silnick. Mahzan led them back into officer country, up the ramp onto the troop-deck and then to the ladder leading up the forward bulkhead. She began to climb.

“Ma’am,” she explained as she led the way, “we looked in all the places where you’d hide something, but where’s always the best hiding place?”

“I don’t know, Ms Mahzan,” Rinharte replied patiently. Those who worked in the engineering spaces were known throughout the Navy as slightly peculiar. Perhaps it was due to spending so much time around vast machines which gave out strange unknowable vibrations and radiations.

Mahzan pointed straight up. “There, ma’am,” she said. She glanced back and down past her shoulder at Rinharte. “That’s the hull up there, the ceiling is the hull. We know that, so we’d not look up there.”

“For good reason,” Rinharte pointed out. “The hull is only inches thick. There’s no room to hide a rangefinder.”

“Ah, but,” replied Mahzan mysteriously.

They had reached the top of the ladder and were now on the central catwalk which led fore to aft beneath the roof of the troop-deck. Rinharte remembered the clone which had escaped. They had chased it up to here. Once cornered, he had uttered several gnomic remarks and then deliberately killed himself on a corner of the armoury below.

And killed himself on a corner of the armoury.

The four of them reached the aft-end of the catwalk. Mahzan slapped a palm against the bulkhead.

“Know what’s on the other side of this, ma’am?” Mahzan asked.

“Engineering. Power toroids, the topologic drive.”

“Get on with it, Mahzan,” snapped Silnik.

The rated nodded. “Machinery, ma’am, aye. Lots of hiding places. The rangefinder’ll be around here somewhere.” She began rapping the metal with her knuckles, moving her fist about as if looking for a hollow panel.

Amused, Rinharte watched her. She glanced across at Kordelasz and saw that he was following Mahzan’s hunt with eagerness. Ridiculous. The entire bulkhead was inches-thick metal. A hatch would give back exactly the same sound.

Now Mahzan was sweeping a palm flat across the metal, as if making magic passes. There was nothing mysterious or sorcerous in engineering. Rinharte had spent time in the department as a midshipman. Yes, the theory behind chargers and the topologic drive remained unknown. But the rest of it was science, not superstition.

“Aha!” said Kordelasz.

Rinharte blinked. She had not been concentrating. She focused on Mahzan. The rated had actually discovered a hidden panel. Magic, indeed. She had it open and poked about in its interior with a screwdriver.

Moments later, a section of the bulkhead before them clicked and moved forward an inch. Mahzan grabbed it and pulled. A hatch. It swung smoothly to one side.

Revealed was a tiny cramped chamber. Circular, half of it containing machinery, with three stools before glasses and periscopes. A barbette. There were narrow viewing slits before each of the stools. At the moment, they showed only metal. The barbette must rise above the hull.

And it must rotate too—its workings were hidden among the machinery in the engine room. Once the turret had been raised, the director and spotters inside would have an excellent view of
Tempest
’s field of fire.

She wondered if the clone which had woken and escaped had known of the fire control chamber. He had climbed up here, onto the catwalk. She thought it unlikely.

“Oh well done, Mahzan,” said Kordelasz, clearly impressed.

Rinharte said, “Ms Mahzan, you’re in charge of the gun. If there’s anyone you need, ask Mr Silnik.”

The rated nodded. “Might need another in fire control, ma’am. Can’t do it with one.”

“She can have one of my wipers,” Silnik told Rinharte.

“Good. That’s settled. Tell Mate Maganda when you’ve got everything sorted.”

She turned to go and strode a few yards along the catwalk. Turning back, she looked directly at Mahzan, nodded and said, “Good work.”

She continued on her way. She shook her head in wonder.

Dear Lords. Her troop-transport had a main gun.

Forty-six moons and moonlets swung in stately procession about the Geneza system’s solitary gas giant, Piorun. They saw few visitors—some pilgrims, perhaps, heading for the Henotic holy city of Zolima on Geneza. The moons did not worry about their solitude. Nothing could disturb them.

Not even the appearance of a fleet of warships.

Ormuz looked across the conning-tower well and saw the Admiral on the Captain’s Bridge, her smooth skull turned away from him as she spoke to someone on the comms-console. He wanted to be beside her but she had made her thoughts on that quite clear. The fleet would soon be entering a potentially hostile system. She did not want him getting in her way.

So he had been banished to the Pilothouse.

He sighed and turned away. There was not much to see ahead. Or above his head, for that matter. Nothing but grey. An oppressive and formless grey which fooled the eye into thinking the mullioned glass roof was no more than an inch or two above his crown. He felt briefly tempted to put up a hand to test the truth of the illusion.

“How long?” he asked the coxswain, Mate Sharin.

“No more than five minutes, my lord.”

There was no reason for him to stay here. He could go to his cabin. Or perhaps find Varä and challenge him to sword practice. Certainly, there were other places aboard
Vengeful
where he could find something interesting to do. He strolled to the conning-tower well, put his hands to the railing and gazed down, studiously ignoring the Captain’s Bridge above him. There was little enough to see. People were busy in their departments and the gallery about the well on each deck was empty. The hissing and clattering of computational engines, the gentle lapping of conversation, the occasional barked order drifted up to him. He turned about and rested his rear against the wooden rail. Arms crossed, he watched as the Pilothouse crew made preparations to leave the toposphere…

Above him, black swept across the glass roof, washing away the grey. One by one, the stars appeared, popping into life and peppering the sky. Geneza system’s gas giant, Piorun, painted orange light across the glass like a distant sunset.

Silhouetted against Piorun’s umber bulk now floated the Admiral’s fleet—a wall of ships, from great to small, of all shapes, arrayed before the ochre gas giant.

Ormuz gazed up through the roof of
Vengeful
’s conning-tower and thought again: no,
my fleet
.

So many ships. He could not name them all, but the numbers of each class he knew. This was the first time he had seen them all, had realised quite how large was this armada the Admiral had gathered together for him.

The battleships… Only four but they were huge vessels. More than twice the size of
Vengeful
, with superstructures like small towns and main guns with apertures which could have swallowed whole his old data-freighter,
Divine Providence
. He did not understand how any vessel could beat them, or survive in battle against them. Of course, the Serpent had battleships of his own—more than three times as many as the Admiral, if what Ormuz had learnt in the nomosphere could be believed. The Serpent had numbers on his side both in space and on the ground.

Something distant flashed and spun.

Ormuz stepped away from the railing and put a hand to his brow. The shape grew rapidly as he watched.

It was almost upon them before the danger occurred to him. A twisted slab of metal, tumbling end over end, flashed by
Vengeful
’s conning-tower. Ormuz watched it pass quickly overhead. It was a moment before he realised it was debris.

A klaxon began to whoop.

He looked up at the Admiral but she was focused on her battle-consultant. Had she not seen it? He turned back and, through the glass panes on the forward bulkhead, he saw more metal fragments approaching at speed.

The view ahead spun as the battlecruiser rolled evasively. Ormuz reached out for the railing behind him but of course he felt no change of aspect. To him, only the view had changed attitude.

More chunks of metal flew past. What were they? The remains of warships?

But whose warships?

Commodore Livasto and his squadron had arrived in Geneza system several hours ahead of the fleet. Was this all that remained of his cruisers and destroyers?

Ormuz wanted to be up there on the Captain’s Bridge with the Admiral. He needed to know what was happening.

Vengeful
continued roll. The bow swung wide. Seconds later, something stitched a line of eye-searing light across the heavens. Ormuz blinked, but an after-image remained. He put a hand to his eyes and rubbed. The deck beneath his feet thrummed. The lights flickered and dimmed.

Another lance of brightness speared across space, this time from
Vengeful
’s bow. He could not see her target. There were ships about the battlecruiser, the nearest perhaps no more than ten miles away. At that distance, he could not identify them without a telescope. There had been vessels in similar positions when the fleet had been about Linna. It seemed reasonable to assume they were not enemy warships.

But there were enemy ships somewhere.

More main guns fired, a lattice of light imprinted over the star-speckled blackness. Something distant blossomed into red-orange life and then faded. An enemy warship? One of the fleet’s? Could it have been a troop-transport?

He scanned the battle-space about
Vengeful
, ignoring Piorun as the gas giant wheeled across his view. A warship hove into sight, rolling her hull to bring her superstructure into view. Her prow was not directed at the battlecruiser but she grew larger nonetheless. Ormuz could not identify her. From her size, he judged her to be a cruiser.

But was she one of his?

Moments later, he learnt the answer.
Vengeful
fired her main gun. The beam hit the cruiser amidships, ripping open her hull. Small explosions of flame puffed silently into brief life about the rent. The stricken warship continued to close. Now Ormuz could see shapes spilling from the damaged hull—perhaps debris, perhaps crew. He could not tell.

The cruiser fired her own main gun, directed at some other vessel out of sight. A series of lights on her superstructure dimmed… Something detonated near her stern and a drive-tube fractured and slid away as if on rails. The aft section of her superstructure vanished in a flowering of yellow and orange.

There was only silence. It was as if the cruiser peacefully and colourfully came apart.

Another section of hull came tumbling towards them. The Admiral judged the debris would miss by several hundred yards. Unconcerned, she returned her attention to the battle-consultant.

Commodore Livasto had determined the disposition of the enemy ships, and they were written on the glass before her. He had survived, although he had lost six destroyers.

“Well?” she demanded. “Mr Voyna?”

From one of the screens on the communications-console behind her, the executive officer said, “We have a firing solution, ma’am.”

She nodded in satisfaction. Another cruiser. It would have to do. “Fire when ready, Mr Falconet,” she said.

Moments later, in her peripheral vision she saw a line of actinic brightness spring into being from
Vengeful
’s prow.

The battle-consultant’s glass clattered, and the picture flickered and changed. Three enemy ships disappeared.

Come now, she thought, show your hand.

The code beside the symbols on the glass told her the name and class of each ship her fleet faced. From Ormuz’s intelligence from the nomosphere, she knew to which squadron the enemy ships had been assigned.