Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY) (36 page)

Their backward speed had coupled with the cannon’s forward aim, one traveling a little bit under Cee, one at full Cee. Ia had forgotten that rule; that the speed of the one would slow down the speed of the other. It was probable the Salik had seen the laserfire coming this time. But despite the way her ship’s speed had slowed that packet of laser energy down to a quarter Cee at most, that blob of light still retained its full heat energy. The centerline of the mobile station was gone, leaving two slowly drifting, edge-glowing chunks, and countless tiny bits of charred, overheated debris.

Slowing the ship further, Ia adjusted their aim by a tiny bit and fired twice more. Thirty more seconds, and it was all over. Her headache ended, with only a faint echo from whatever few machines remained active on the surviving, scattered ships. There was no more manufacturing station to worry about,
and only a handful of the smaller ships had not been caught in her lines of fire.

“Private Loewen, did you get all that recorded?” Ia asked her.

“Sir, yes, sir,” Loewen confirmed from her post at the navigation seat, not bothering to look up from her work. “Shall I wrap it up for Admiral Genibes?”

“That’s th’ Captain’s policy,” Lieutenant Spyder said, speaking up from his position at the backup gunnery station. “If we wanna keep our slate blank for patrol assignments, we show ’em everythin’ we can do.”

“Sirs, we have bogeys headed our way,” Loewen stated quickly.

“Not a problem, Private.” Ia closed both lids to the main cannon lock, which automatically flicked the switch to shut the weapon off. The Sterling engines still
thump-whooshed
, but their efforts were slowing down again. “They’re too far away.”

Right hand moving to the controls, she increased their speed, this time rippling the FTL-field panels backwards, since that was the way they were pointed. Laserfire tried to catch up with them, but it was hastily aimed and couldn’t match their already high speeds. Within a minute, they were past the bubble-flash threshold and soaring backwards at speeds faster than any weapon could hope to catch.

“Congratulations on another successful attack,” she praised her crew. “Once again, we’ve barely a scratch. Don’t expect that to last.”

“Well then, yay and hurrah, whoopee, grats, and all of that joy and happiness,” Morgan retorted dryly. “But—begging pardon, Captain—what the frying
shakk
was
that
?”

She slipped them sideways a little as they built up to full FTL speed, not wanting to be on the same heading as the Salik had last seen. Ia also didn’t pretend ignorance as to what
that
he meant. “That, gentlemeioas, was our main cannon. Be advised that
any
attempt by any person other than myself to access its controls will cause an irreversible cascade in every hydrogenerator hooked up to a tank on this ship, turning it into a giant hydrobomb after just one minute—in short, attempt to crack open that security box, and you make the whole ship go very boom, very big, and very bad, with no time to get away.

“The Command Staff and the Admiral-General are extremely paranoid about this cannon falling into the wrong
hands, so don’t do it, or you’ll kill us all,” she warned her crew. “That’s why there’s a lid over the palmscanner, so you cannot even accidentally brush against it. Yeoman Yamasuka, do you feel comfortable flying this ship backwards?”

“Uh…Aye, sir,” the other woman said. “I haven’t done it since flight school, but I think I can manage it.”

“Good. Slip us 196 by 203, and hold us on course for ten more minutes,” Ia directed. “Then ease back down to sublight speeds so York can fire off the recordings packet—on our next ship, I’m going to insist on a vacuum hub for hyperrelay, so we don’t have to keep slowing down below Cee to contact Genibes. Once you’ve done that, you may turn the ship around at that point and adjust course for the KLM 88-B System. Stick to FTL speeds for now. Yeoman Yamasuka, prepare to receive the helm.”

“Aye, sir, preparing to receive the helm in te—er, make that in twenty, sir,” the dark-haired woman agreed.

Loewen spoke up as well. “Plotting a first course, vector 196 by 203, and a second course for KLM 88-B, sir.”

“…Do we at least get to know the main cannon’s specs, Captain?” Morgan asked Ia once the helm transfer had been made.

Ia shook her head, unstrapping her left hand from the thruster pad. “It’s big, it’s ugly, and it takes ten seconds to charge before it can fire. It also has a very ugly overshoot range. I’m the only person who can foresee the lining up of enough ships during a fight to make it safe to wield inside an inhabited or commonly transited star system. That’s all you need know for now.”

“It also extracts a lot more energy out of the system than the other cannons,” Crow said. He was replaying the meters from the four brief shots on his main screen. “Not just the buildup to fire it, but in actually firing it. I only noticed how much energy it retained because the scale is so huge.”

“More energy than you know,” Ia admitted, calling up the duty roster for that hour. “The current design siphons off most of the excess heat, converts it back to energy, and pours it right back into the cannon. I can tell you that much because that part’s just an upscale version of the Starstrike cannon’s energy-feed design; it has nothing to do with how the Godstrike itself actually achieves its high caloric rating.

“That’s also one of the reasons why it takes ten seconds to fire, and why so much of the ship near the core isn’t inhabitable,” she stated, glancing at the chrono on her leftmost lower tertiary. “It looks like we’re scheduled for lunch, next. With the main galleys still locked down, how about I fix everyone some sandwiches from the bridge galley?”

“Th’ Cap’n of this ship isn’t s’posed t’ cook,” Spyder argued, reaching for his restraint straps. “
I’ll
go fix us sommat.”

“Oh, no. I’ve foreseen your cooking skills, Spyder, and they’re worse than mine,” Ia joked, unstrapping as well. “I may not be as good a cook as my biomother, but at least I won’t poison us. Besides,
everyone
pulls triple duties or more on this ship. That includes me, because I don’t ask my crew to do something I’m not willing to do myself if I have the skills and the time to do it.

“Right now, I have the time, and sandwich making is just within my skills. You have the bridge, Lieutenant. Corned beef on rye okay with everyone?” Ia asked.

A quick survey of the others showed them all nodding. Sighing, Spyder complied, shifting from his seat to hers at the back of the bridge cabin. “Aye, aye, Cap’n. Corned beef on rye’ll be fine.”

FEBRUARY 11, 2496 T.S.

SIC TRANSIT

“Sir, yes, sir,” Ia stated, shoulders square and chin level. She felt like she should’ve been standing At Attention, rather than seated at the desk in her office. “I am absolutely confident the overshoot from our lasers and the main cannon will not hit and damage anything of consequence.”

“What about those rock missiles?” Admiral Genibes asked her, leaning back in his own office chair. The entire conversation was taking place at just over a two-second delay, making it almost feel normal. “You released them at near lightspeed. They’ll continue on course until something stops them, and they’re too small to be easily noticed at that velocity.”

She had an answer for that. “Only three will cause problems,” Ia admitted. “I’ve already arranged for timed messages
to be delivered to ships in the affected areas, with exact tracking coordinates for their destruction. The rest will eventually be snagged by gravity and either smack harmlessly into other stellar bodies or burn up in various atmospheres.”

Admiral Genibes raised one of his brows at that. “Timed messages? Arranged with whom, Captain Ia? I don’t recall receiving any messages.”

This was the tread-carefully part of her report. Lying to a superior was a fatality, but she didn’t want to bruise the ego of anyone reviewing this conversation later. “With the Afaso Order, sir. The Terran military will be too busy with the war at that point to be bothered with that sort of thing.”

Genibes frowned thoughtfully at her. “You’ve sent a lot of packages over the years to the Afaso Order. Same as you’ve shipped home. If all of those packages were precognitive prophecies…when is the Space Force getting its fair share?”

“The Space Force as a whole is a competent entity, sir,” Ia told him. Again, not a lie. “You won’t need all that much from me precognitively to carry out your duties. Those few sections in need of my assistance will receive it at the appropriate time.”

“You said you’re fighting a war three hundred years into the future,” he reminded her. “But not even a Feyori half-breed will outlive its matter-based life expectancy. What about the intervening two hundred years?”

“You’ll receive a war chest of prophecies, suggestions, and directives at the appropriate time, sir,” Ia promised him.

“Why not now?” the admiral asked.

Ia restrained the urge to roll her eyes, though she did sigh. “Because there’s an entire queue of things that have to happen first, and if something gets nudged out of alignment now, I’ll have to rewrite all those prophecies to compensate for the ripple effect it’ll cause.”

“What about the first battle of the war?” Genibes asked her. “You’ve successfully proved in these four attacks that your ship would be invaluable. Where will the Salik strike first?”

That, she could tell him. “Two places. The Terran and Gatsugi Motherworlds.” A quick dip into the timestreams allowed Ia to nod in confirmation. “It’ll start two weeks from now, give or take roughly a day—it varies too much to pin it down closer than that, depending on how my crew and I handle the next few prewar fights.”

He folded his arms over his grey-clad chest, arching one grey-salted brown brow. “Do you at least have a location for the
first
main push?”

“
Two
locations, Admiral. They’ll happen simultaneously,” Ia stated. “The Terran Motherworld, because we not only kicked their frogtopodic asteroids last time but have been instrumental in keeping the Blockade going. They’ve gotten around it, but not as freely as they might’ve otherwise, and we pissed off the Salik because of it. And they’ll go after the Gatsugi because they’re in the linchpin location. Damage the center of the edible Alliance members, and we can’t use the Collective’s systems and stations as safe transit hubs, let alone for gathering and resupply.

“The Salik are feeling cocky, but they’ve got the forces to be cocky. They’ll throw several fleets at the other Motherworlds, strong enough to tie up our various allies,” she added, cautioning him. “But the strongest attacks will be those two worlds. They’re also watching the movements of all our fleets, so you can’t move everyone in to protect Earth.”

“Because they’ll just shift gears and attack wherever we’re weak,” he agreed. He thought a moment, then asked, “What about pulling out a single ship here, a single ship there? And having them sit beyond the Kuiper belt a few days before?”

“That might entail several days of those crews doing nothing; I can’t guarantee exactly
when
the Salik will strike, only that they will,” Ia told him. She held up her hand in case he was about to speak, stating, “Let me check the timestreams before you make up your mind.”

It took a few seconds of real time to sort through the potential possibilities. When she had what she wanted, Ia pulled back into herself and sent a jolt of electrokinetic information into her workstation. Tapping a key, she sent it to the Admiral.

“I’ve attached a list of ship registries you can safely pull in over the next two weeks to defend Earth. It’s not many, but you shouldn’t need that many.”

“Well, no; we shouldn’t need that many more if you’ll be there,” Genibes agreed, touching a control on his own side of the comm link.

“I’m sorry, Admiral, but we won’t be there, sir.” Ia didn’t wait the two plus seconds for his head to snap up at her words. She continued briskly, explaining herself. “Earth has plenty of
defenses and doesn’t really need us, whereas the Gatsugi can ill afford to pull in ships from their various colonyworlds just to defend Beautiful-Blue. The
Hellfire
will be assisting them when the time comes.”

“That ship of yours represents a very significant investment in military research and development, Captain,” Admiral Genibes reminded her, stressing her title slightly. “It is Terran property, and should therefore be used to defend Terran property.”

“According to the Terran United Planets Charter, duly registered with the Alliance,” Ia countered, “the Terran Space Force is to render both sentientarian and military aid to its allies when and where endangered by a mutual threat. The Salik most definitely qualify as a mutual threat, Admiral—and I tell you, as a precognitive, we need the Gatsugi Motherworld to come through this first fight relatively intact.”

“Ia, as much as you—” he started to say over the two-second delay between them.

Ia kept talking, cutting him off. “Sir, if we send
only
the
Hellfire
, every other ship in the Terran fleet can do their job defending Terran and joint colonyworlds, and the Gatsugi will have all the help they need. If you tried to pull the
Hellfire
back to Earth, I’d have to insist on sending eighteen to twenty Space Force vessels to Beautiful-Blue to ensure their war-machine efforts would survive in a shape suitable for helping the rest of the Alliance in the future…including helping us Terrans. But that much movement on our part into Gatsugi space would be noticed far more by the Salik than simply reassigning a bunch of patrol routes entirely within Human space, which is something the Command Staff already does on a regular basis. The Salik will see it coming, and send more ships than our side can defend against.”

He waited four extra seconds to be sure she was done talking, then spoke. “You’ve planned all of this, haven’t you?”

Shoulders back and chin level, Ia answered At Attention. “That is what I am supposed to do, sir, as an officer, a soldier, and a precog. I am to use my abilities to ensure the maximum number of lives are preserved with the most efficient use of the resources I have available.”