Family Law 2: The Long Voyage of the Little Fleet (18 page)

"If the other races don't have ship to ship weapons, I'd expect them to have little or no close defense, unless they fight among themselves a great deal. And no, I want to nip off the
back
. I want somebody left who has authority to negotiate. Set up one X-head to do such a dog-leg maneuver and try to lay a beam on the back quarter of their ship. Have it do evasive action and full ECM inside twenty thousand kilometers from the target. If they can shoot it outside that range I'll be surprised and waste a missile."

"Aye, sir. It'll be set up to blow their butts off in a few minutes," Ames promised.

Gordon went back to the system plot. "Fire up the radar on the Sharp Claws and give me a half power running scan relayed here. No reason to be polite about illuminating them anymore. That should give us plenty of detail and not show them everything we have. Assume they will not decelerate to engage and show our missile envelope onscreen and the point of their course at which we launch to meet them at extreme range. Brownie, are they aimed off our position to any degree, like they have abandoned the boarding idea?"

"No sir, dead on. But they could launch straight ahead, or they might not want to telegraph what they consider their engagement range and will turn at the last minute."

"Interesting, they may have some actual concept of tactics," Gordon said.

The data box beside their icon on the screen indicated they were accelerating at 1.78G.

"They look physically strong," Lee said. "I can't believe less than two G is pushing it for them."

"I bet that's one and a half times their normal gravity," Gordon said. "People tend to pick even numbers when they set things like that. That's a safe acceleration. Why push it when we're not going anywhere? They should enter our missile envelope in a bit over three hours. Have all operations secured to maneuver an hour before. Man all combat positions fifteen minutes before. Am I missing anything?"

"You know how you had the missiles coast toward the emergent point when we engaged the destroyer at Fargone?" Thor asked.

"Yes. Does something about it apply here?"

"Maybe. Why not fire a X-head now, aimed to miss them by thirty thousand kilometers or so. Let it expend about a quarter of its fuel and coast. When they are near converging let it power back up, have a go at them from right angles to their vector. If you can program it and get the shot off soon it will coast far enough to engage them well beyond the usual range under continuous powered flight. Use the
Retribution
since they have the biggest magazines."

"Ames, Brownie, can we do that and get it off soon enough to work?"

"Shoot it now," Ames told them. "I'll write the programming and transmit it to the missile in flight. It should catch them a half hour outside our usual powered engagement range."

"Do it," Gordon ordered. The
Retribution
took the shot in about twenty seconds. Gordon didn't ask Ames if he was sure he could write the program and load it to a missile in flight. You have to trust your people sometimes. It made him nervous though. At least they would know if this worked before they had to launch another. It would be a shame to have one of the expensive missiles in flight and no target for it. In theory they could power it down and recover it. But it was a slow and delicate operation in zero G. One he wouldn't want to do in a hostile system.

"Low power scan of the Biter ship with variable frequency radar to your console," the XO on the
Sharp Claws
, Lord Byron reported."

"Interesting," Thor declared. "They are a bit bigger than us but lumpy. There are two long sections that swell from the main fuselage on either side and all kinds of crap big and small all over the hull. Or at least the side we can see a little looking almost head on."

"Are they still talking to your guys in the Ward Room?" Gordon asked Luke, who showed no desire to leave the ringside seat watching the bridge crew in action and go back to join them. Neither had they dismissed him.

Luke checked quietly. "Weird, but yes they are. The Badgers are talking to them, doing mundane word by word translation and exploring grammar a bit more. They are demonstrating things physically it would be hard and time consuming to program an avatar to do. Thank you for that," he said aside to Lee. "Two of the Bills have been back on camera, now that the Biters are away."

"They aren't asking anything about our status with the Biters?"

"Ha! They're cowardly," Lee insisted. "They aren't going to say
anything
until they see who wins."

"I'm curious. On the Sharp Claws you have Captain Frost and the XO is Lord Byron. I've almost never heard a Derf use more than a one word Human name. Is there some common bond that they both seem to admire poets?" Luke asked.

"A lot of Derf like poetry," Gordon informed him. "I do too, but I favor it in Derf. I may speak English well but it's a horrible kludged up language of bits and parts. You guys have even borrowed Derf words already. So I can't hear English poetry without being jarred out of the moment by thinking how a line has words from three languages all forced into unholy association. That's why their Chief Engineer calls himself Ho`omanawanui."

"Oh, that's interesting," Luke hesitated, looking like he wanted to ask more, but just made a note to himself on his pad. "That suggests a very orderly thought process to me."

Gordon looked at him sharply. Searching to see if it was a smart crack, Luke wasn't his favorite person on board and he had reservations about him, but he seemed to mean it.

"Now we wait," Thor pointed out in the pause. "Did somebody mention sandwiches?"

Chapter 9

On the Biters bridge the tactical officer noted the missile launch, then updated it. "It appears to have gone off course a bit and then lost power."

"No wonder they didn't use a missile on the station folk's drone if they are that shoddy," the Captain said. "They could at least have a self-destruct  capacity built into them for when they fail."

"Yes but what did they use?" the first officer asked. "Something light speed for certain."

"And short range. You could use a laser like that if it was scaled up sufficiently. It isn't very efficient. They set the distance, which the Badgers should never have allowed, in addition to permitting them an observation drone in the first place. They had no idea if it might carry weapons. Undoubtedly, they set the distance to bring the drone within range of their weapon," the Captain said.

"That vessel they released is on a jump line for a neighboring star. It makes me wonder what it is. If it's a missile it's quite large and slow, but if it's a manned vessel they can take more acceleration than we can for long periods."

"Why would it be a missile? What would they be shooting at? It's awfully small for a  manned interstellar vessel. I think it's just a big messenger drone," the Captain assured him. "They are sending word back home I'd assume."

"Then their home, off that direction in that unknown part of the sky, is close enough for an automated drone to reach it, or they've left more ships waiting in that system for word of what they found here."

Neither was a comforting thought.

* * *

"I'm going to get a bite to eat, lay down a bit and be rested when the Biters get in range," Gordon announced.

"I'll take a break too," Lee said. Nobody really assigned her a set watch.

"Anybody who wants a short break, if you have somebody to cover who is not on the board as sleeping, feel free to do so," Thor told the bridge crew.

Lee got another ham and cheese sandwich and layered tomato, lettuce and cucumber slices until it was huge. She tucked mayonnaise and hot mustard between layers and surrounded it with pickles.

"It's nice having fresh salad stuff. Even if we'd had the equipment when we were with mom and dad it would have taken too much time. When we got really busy and we had other duties there would have been no time to tend it. I understand you really have to monitor it closely every day."

"Yes, having a bigger crew lets you do more. But here we sit not getting much done at all. I'd have loved to gone up closer and taken a shuttle over to the station, even if we didn't make a docking adaptor to attach a bigger ship," Gordon told her. "Just to play the tourist."

"And we're not making any money or finding things we can claim sitting here," Lee noted.

"Yes, a few of the crew have mentioned that. I've had several suggestion in private messages that we aren't a cultural mission. That we should tell them we can spend our time better elsewhere if they aren't seriously interested in trade and take off on a loop away from their stars and back towards home."

Lee looked very serious thinking about it. "That's a little premature. We haven't gotten to where we can speak with them well enough to know if they will trade with us. Maybe prod Luke a little to introduce more words specific to trading and business. I'm not sure he is focused on that. But in principle, yes, if they don't want to trade, then move on," she agreed.

"If the Biters don't want them to trade with us they may be too cowed to argue with them."

"At the station yes, but they indicated their home worlds are secure. We could suggest we do business there. If they aren't afraid to tell us where they are."

"Let's pull Luke over and run these ideas past him. Luke!" he called out. "Grab a sandwich and whatever, if you haven't, and come talk with us," Gordon ordered.

* * *

"Get up Gordon, we're near restarting the intercept on the Biters," Thor called on com.

"Any changes with them?"

"Boring straight in. If they are going to decelerate to match us at the same level they will reach the halfway point and do it pretty soon."

"I didn't think about that.  It has to take them couple minutes to flip a ship that size over unless it is a combat emergency. We should have calculated the exact  probable moment and set the missile to resume boost while they were flipping."

"Let me run the numbers, we can't be far off."

"Tell me when I get to the bridge," Gordon told him. He looked longingly at the shower. He had time for that, but not time to dry. He put on short boots and a belt and headed for the bridge. Lee heard him coming up behind her and waited for him.

"Luke asked the races on the station why they kept working at the translation when the Biters are coming to board us. And didn't they have anything to say about that, or questions?"

"Oh really?"

"They said they wanted to get as much done as possible while we are still here."

"Does that mean before they kick us out, or before the Biters kill us?"

"That was exactly my question. But Luke didn't have the nerve to ask them."

"Did you order him to?"

"I strongly suggested it. I avoid phrasing things as orders to not step on your toes," Lee said. "I know I'm an owner, but I never asked for any command authority because of my age. Even if we don't contradict each other having orders from more than one boss could get confusing."

"That fine for tactical things, But if he doesn't have the sense to take a strong suggestion from you for business dealings he may be working in hydroponics tomorrow," Gordon said, getting grouchy. "It isn't a matter of an immediate operational order from you that could conflict with me, you seem to get that. You aren't telling anybody to change course or break orbit, dealing with the natives touches on our purpose of mission which
is
your concern."

When they reached the bridge Thor waited for them to secure themselves before speaking.

"The missile should fire up and maneuver on them two minutes before they flip, if they do it exactly at the halfway point. They will be within twelve light seconds by then, so we won't get much lag on them seeing it. I don't think it's worth altering the programming at the last moment for such a small difference. And the drive will be pointed away from them. They'll have little time to respond to it."

"Maybe they won't notice it." Lee said.

"Maybe, but if
my
bridge watch missed something that important for over a minute I'd be really upset at their sloppiness," Thor told her.

"I'm going to find out what Luke has learned," Gordon told them. "Lee suggested Luke find out why the station translators consider it a possibility we may not be around long. They want to get all the data they can until we are gone. Lurk on the channel if you want," he invited.

"Luke, did the station team tell you why they were concerned our efforts at filling out the translation software might be terminated?"

"I've asked three different ways and not gotten a clear answer."

"Are you dancing around the issue instead of speaking plainly?"

"I'm trying to be somewhat circumspect, yes. I don't wish to insult them."

"Give me a direct channel with the current software enabled.
I'll
ask them, Gordon told him.

Luke looked alarmed, but could be seen reaching down and working his board.

"You are connected to their main translator. He knows you are our commander."

A Badger appeared on Gordon's screen. "I see you Commander. How may I serve?"

"I need know what you expect (go?) (happen?) when Biters here," the program captioned on the screen. Close enough Gordon figured to what he said. "You say our work on translator  (will?) end. (Why?) You see ahead (expect?) Biters send us home? Or you see Biters (kill?) us?" Gordon wasn't happy with the uncertainty about kill, so he added. "Destroy us."

The Badger started the hand wringing thing, looking down reading the question off his screen. There was just enough lag on the transit time it was irritating.

"Enough (hand wringing?). Just say (answer?) yes (true?) no (false)." Gordon told him.

"Hand wringing?" The Badger repeated.

Gordon put his true hands just in camera range and did a fair imitation.

After the lag the Badger yanked his hands apart and looked at them like traitors. He crossed arms and tucked them in his arm pits, a gesture they hadn't seen.