Odyssey One 5: Warrior King (13 page)

Eric turned to Commander Heath. “Coordinate with the damage-control teams. Make sure you know where they are at all times. When things get hot, we could easily lose more people to them tripping over each other than to enemy fire.”

“Yes sir. I’m on it.”

He nodded, turning his focus back to the situation at hand. “Distance to target?”

“Eight light-seconds and closing, Captain,” Sams answered instantly. “Enemy ship has initiated turnover.”

“Do we do the same, Captain?” Kinder asked, half turning in his seat.

“Negative.” Eric’s face was cold. “This bastard isn’t my first priority. We blow through.”

“Aye Captain.”

“Do we fire, sir?” Sams asked, sounding nervous.

Eric nodded slowly, eyes on the telemetry plot.

“Yes, Ensign, we do indeed.”

►►►

IBC
Piar Cohn

► “Hit, Captain!”

Aymes grimaced. “Damage assessment?”

A moment passed as the numbers were crunched and the data reflected back from the laser strike were analyzed.

The silence that followed drew out until Aymes finally had to break it himself. “Well?”

His tactical officer pushed back from the station, still staring in puzzlement at the display.

“Estimates are one in eight of expectations, sir.”

“What?” Aymes stepped forward, leaning over the man and staring at the details himself. “How is that possible? Even Oather ceramics aren’t that durable.”

“I do not know, Captain. It doesn’t fit any of our projections.”

Aymes could see that much, but like his officer, he couldn’t see any explanations. The puzzle this ship represented was growing ever larger, and frankly, this encounter was becoming more than an irritation and was well on its way to full-fledged worry.

“Continue firing, standard spread,” he ordered. “Continue as we pass. What is the deceleration rate?”

“Captain?”

“At what rate are they slowing, Altern?” Aymes asked.

“They . . . they’re not.”

“What?” Aymes demanded, turning to focus closely on the scanner station.

He checked the data on the scanner display himself and started cursing under his breath.

“Captain?” The man standing at the station pulled back from him.

“They’re intending to bypass us and go directly to the planet.” Aymes swore. “That small craft was clearly more important than I suspected.”

He considered his deduction for a moment, then set his features. “Reverse power. Get me a solution to intercept the enemy vessel with a zero-point acceleration.”

►►►

AEV
Odysseus

► “Target has flipped acceleration, Captain. They’re aiming for a zero-zero intercept . . .” Sams paused, running the calculations, but Eric beat him to it.

“In the planet’s orbit, right?” he said.

Sams looked down, then back at the captain with a surprised look. “Yes sir. How . . . ?”

“Not hard to work out, Ensign,” Eric answered. “We’ll have to adjust our course in orbit. That’ll delay us enough for them to catch up.”

“Yes sir. Sorry sir.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll learn. Experience can usually get us close enough long before computers arrive at the exact right answer.”

“Yes sir.”

“Do we have a firing solution yet?” Eric asked, looking to the tactical station.

“Yes sir. Passive lock, ninety percent solid.”

Eric blinked, somewhat bemused. A 90 percent solid lock meant that the enemy ship wasn’t even trying to evade the
Odysseus
. He supposed that he shouldn’t be surprised, given how the fighting between the Drasin and the Priminae had shaped up.

“Fire as we pass,” Eric ordered. “I want maximum time on target with fully focused and adapted lasers.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

As the light-seconds counted down, with the two ships barreling past one another, Eric waited until the last possible moment before issuing the order to fire.

At less than five light-seconds, he spoke. “Fire.”

The powerful Class IV lasers of the AEV
Odysseus
lanced out through the black, slashing into their target a hair over four seconds later. The initial burn was significant, but it wasn’t until the
Odysseus
’ computers had a second to analyze the hyperspectral signature of the molecular cloud burned off the alien ship and to send that data back to weapons that things really began to heat up.

“Laser strikes on our flanks, Captain. Main battery reflected . . . The smaller beams are a different frequency. We’re taking damage!”

He’d expected that, but Eric still winced at the announcement. He didn’t want to spoil their own strike by dancing around too much, and frankly, at the current ranges, they wouldn’t likely be able to evade much anyway. Any halfway decent prediction algorithm would nail them if the
Odysseus
implemented evasive procedures, and in exchange they’d likely lose a big chunk of their own accuracy in placing the next shot.

In the
Odyssey
, Eric would have done
anything
to keep the range open and keep moving, counting on short but fast strikes on target to end the fight in his favor. In the
Odysseus
, he was willing to engage in a toe-to-toe slugging match, betting that his armor and weapons would give him the edge.

►►►

► The
Odysseus
and
Piar Cohn
slung past one another at closing rates that actually bettered the speed of light by a significant fraction, both throwing laser fire at one another with abandon. Alarms and claxons screamed on both ships as damage-control teams raced to answer their clarion calls, and then it was over in just a few seconds.

The ships were two ancient jousters, both still mounted and both still alive, but one had certainly been taken by surprise in the pass.

The other sailed straight and true, a flicker of light dancing in its heart.

►►►

IBC
Piar Cohn

► “Damage reports, decks nine through eighteen! We’re venting atmosphere from all levels, critical armor failures! Captain, my board is jammed with reports!”

Aymes spun around, holding on to the edge of his station for support against the violent shudders still rocking his ship, eyes wide and expression disbelieving. “What hit us?”

His tactical officer was pale, shaking, and on the edge of shock, but Aymes didn’t have time to be gentle. He grabbed the man’s shoulder and jerked him around hard. “What. Hit. Us?”

“A laser, Captain.”

Aymes stared in stunned disbelief. “A laser? How powerful a laser?”

“It wasn’t the power, Captain. I don’t know what happened, but the strike only registered the same power as one of our own.”

Aymes’ hand dropped to his side, and he shook his head. “That’s impossible. No laser could penetrate our armor that easily, not without being massively more powerful than anything we’ve ever fielded.”

The poor officer at tactical had nothing to say. He knew that as well as the captain did, but they both also knew that reality trumped all else.

“Begin evasive maneuvers,” Aymes ordered, knowing that he was more than a little late. “Secure those decks, and get repair squadrons on location immediately.”

“They’re already on their way, Captain,” his altern said. “Orders dispatched.”

Aymes nodded tersely, glad of that. Initiative was generally frowned upon in Imperial service but was considered a required asset for command. Assuming they survived this encounter, of course. With the sheer extent of how badly they’d underestimated the unknown target, that was no longer a certainty.

“Are we still firing?” he demanded.

“Yes Captain.”

“Good. Continue!” he yelled. “Link with maneuvering so you can keep ahead of our evasions.”

“As you say, Captain.”

Aymes took a breath, then leaned over his communications officer’s shoulder. “Give me a patch to parasite
One
.”

“As you say, Captain. Patch open.”

“
One
, this is the captain.”

“
One
here, Captain.”

“We’re going to need cover,” Aymes said firmly.

“As you say, Captain. We live to serve.”

“We all do. In the empress’ name.”

The altern in command of parasite
One
immediately replied in same. “In the empress’ name, Captain.”

Aymes straightened up, patting the comm officer on the shoulder. “Secure comms.”

►►►

AEV
Odysseus

► “Enemy formation is shifting, Captain.”

Eric wasn’t surprised. They’d just raked the flanks of the bandit vessel with fully adapted lasers, and it was clear that they’d struck home. The analysis department was going to have a field day with the hyperspectral readings of the bandit ship’s vaporized components.

“Continue firing,” he said. “We’re going to be out of range quickly. I’d like to end this now if we can.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

The
Odysseus
rotated, keeping her primary lasers on target as the ship continued to warp space past the bandit.

“Watch it! That pocket destroyer—”

Eric flinched as the screen briefly overloaded, the small ship diving into their beam and vanishing in a brilliant explosion. While the primaries were resetting, the display swapped over to computer-generated imagery showing a plot of the vessels as they moved against the deep black of space.

Where the pocket destroyer had been a moment earlier was nothing but a cloud of static on the generated imagery. Eric grimaced. He recognized that the static was in fact debris, dust, and expanding molecules that used to be the small ship. He wasn’t overly worried about having blown apart the craft, but that static was a near-perfect laser block.

The newly formed cloud of chaff reflected and absorbed most of the energy from the
Odysseus
’ lasers. If his ship hadn’t been on such a fast pass, Eric could have maneuvered around to get a clear shot, but the
Odysseus
was already starting to pull away from the bandit vessel. He didn’t think he was going to get that chance.

“Gutsy bastard,” Eric said, mentally tipping his cap to whoever commanded the destroyer.

He supposed that the ship was possibly a drone, but he doubted it. There was no hint in Priminae records of drones being used, and the similarity of the tech between these forces and the Priminae couldn’t be ignored.

Besides, they’d dispatched three of the destroyers after Steph and Milla, then headed several light-minutes away. Without FTL relays, that was a long delay with which to try to coordinate any sort of combat maneuvering.

No, some gutsy bastard had just taken one for his team.

“Good man,” he said, unable to keep himself from having some admiration for his opponents despite the situation. “Helm . . . put us back head-on to the planet, all flank.”

“Aye Captain. All flank.”

Eric turned and walked toward the damage-control station, wondering just how badly his own ship had been ravaged.

►►►

IBC
Piar Cohn

► “Enemy ship has ceased fire. They are accelerating away.”

Aymes considered what had just transpired as he tried to figure out what to do next.

“Analyze the data,” he said. “I want to know how such an attack just happened.”

“As you say, Captain.” His altern nodded, already issuing orders to that effect.

Everyone looked shaken, but Aymes was pleased to see that no one seemed unable to do his or her job. The Empire usually did not receive such surprises, but it did happen. He and his crew would adapt, and, in the end, they would overcome.

CHAPTER 12

Shuttle
Eagle One

►
Eagle One
twisted in space as Steph set the shuttle on an evasive path, warning alarms blaring at every station as gigawatt lasers cooked random matter around them. People thought that space was empty, but it wasn’t. Space was filled with dust, debris, gasses—all things that caught and absorbed light, superheated under the glare of laser beams, and then fluoresced in all directions to warn the scanners on the
Eagle
of the passage of the beam.

“They’re rather determined, aren’t they?” Steph asked mildly as he set the shuttle into a tight spiral, trying to stay ahead of whatever predictive systems the other side had.

Trying to avoid a laser wasn’t like dodging a bullet. Technically, you could evade a bullet from a mere few thousand meters or so. Within two hundred thousand klicks, if a laser was aimed at you, you were
hit
, not because you couldn’t possibly escape before the shot hit you, but because by the time you knew you were in the crosshairs, you’d already been lit up.

So the art of dodging a laser, in space at least, was in the anticipation.

You had to figure out what the enemy was thinking, or what their computer was programmed to do, and get there
first
.

Or, rather,
not
get there.

In Steph’s favor, the odds were actually stacked on his side. Space was a paradox, full of particles and gas and detritus but also emptier than anything else in the universe. That meant that he could put his shuttle anywhere he had the Delta-V to push it.

The enemy ship needed to pin him down to within a few dozen meters, and he had thousands upon thousands of square kilometers to run in.

In the other guy’s favor, they only needed to get lucky
once
.

One strike and it would be game over. No reset, no extra lives. They were playing for keeps. You didn’t play tag with a gigawatt laser unless you were ready to dance with demons in the afterlife.

Or had a meter or two of molecular bonded ceramic and adaptive armor between you and the laser cannon.

Neither of which were in his particular bag of tricks this time around.

“They are closing with us, Stephan . . .”

Milla’s voice was surprisingly steady, Steph reflected as he rolled the shuttle around another pulse of photons. If they made it back to the
Odysseus
, he decided he was going to sponsor her for advanced piloting courses. Blood as cold as the black was a major asset in a combat pilot. He didn’t know if she was going to go all the way down that route, but if she wanted it, he’d make sure she had the chance.

“I see them,” he said aloud.

The frigates were hard to miss, close and getting closer, and that presented Steph with a problem. The Marine lander shuttle he was using wasn’t built for speed, not even in space. The craft still used chemical drives, so it had decent impulse power, but its top end was limited by the reactors powering the CM generators, and those were sadly lacking.

Steph didn’t point the nose of the shuttle toward the open black. Instead, he started looking to the gas giant’s moons, hoping for a miracle.

►►►

PC Parasite
Five

► Subaltern Penae glowered at the stubborn symbol on his display.

The continuing existence of that symbol was rapidly becoming a personal insult. The pilot was good—
very
good. He was staying ahead of the best combat-prediction computers in the Empire with a consistency that was beyond frustrating.

“Continue closing the distance,” he ordered. “Do
not
let him get away.”

There seemed no particular fear of that, thankfully. The scanners indicated a relatively low technology base on the craft. Some basic space-warping ability, obviously, but that was mixed with a chemical reaction thrust. Crude beyond belief, though reasonably effective right up until the craft ran out of chemicals to burn.

He could only hope that would happen soon, otherwise Penae felt he was likely to throw something in frustration, and that would
not
look good on the field reports.

“Enemy craft is heading for the nearest moon, Subaltern.”

“I see them,” Penae said. “Stay in pursuit. Scanners, get me a composition of the moon, please.”

“Yes Subaltern,” the scanner technician answered, directing his sensors ahead of them. “Nonbreathable atmosphere, high levels of sulfur, carbon, and various oxide composites. Volcanic, likely due to the proximity to the gas giant’s gravity field. Nothing out of the ordinary for a moon in this orbit, Subaltern.”

Penae waved off the report. He knew there was nothing out of the ordinary about the satellite, but that didn’t mean there was nothing problematic about it.

“If they get into that atmosphere, we’ll have a hard time scanning through the particles thrown up by the volcanic action,” he said aloud, “and if we lose them for any length of time, they’ll be able to bolt for deep space. Give them enough of a head start and our speed advantage won’t matter one jot.”

“Subaltern, the computer can’t effectively predict them. The pilot is
clearly
using an evasion protocol, and he’s getting better at it after every pulse,” Penae’s tactical officer offered up. “They’re running better software than we are.”

Penae nodded slowly, then made a decision. “Take manual control. You try to predict them.”

“Subaltern?” the officer asked, startled.

“You have my orders. Execute them.”

“As you say, Subaltern,” the anxious officer said, reaching for the console and taking the computer partially off weapons control.

At the ranges involved, there was no way he would be able to calculate and fire the beams effectively without computer aid, of course. However, he was going to pick the shots and then let the computer complete them. That meant trying to divine where in four-dimensional space the target would be at the point the laser intersected their range.

Not the simplest of tasks, but far from the most difficult the officer had ever been assigned. The difficulty lay in the lag period between when he registered the target course and speed and when the laser he fired would actually arrive on point. Within a short enough range, missing was effectively impossible. But the enemy craft had managed to carve out a significant lead, and making an accurate prediction was more an exercise in luck and frustration than true skill.

The officer took the controls with some trepidation, but firmed up his determination as he put in his first target, initiated the firing countdown, and then started entering more.

►►►

Shuttle
Eagle One

► “We are approaching the moon rapidly,” Milla said, looking up from the radar intercept officer displays she was practically buried in.

“I see it,” Steph said as he adjusted the throttle and jigged slightly down relative to the shuttle. “Give me an entry vector. I’m never going to lose these bastards in the open black.”

“Adjust approach by three degrees, positive to the system plane,” she said. “We are going to be coming in, as you say,
hot
.”

“No choice. I’ll airbrake us in the upper atmosphere.”

Milla grimaced but said nothing to contradict him.

The shuttle was designed to take heavy atmospheric friction, so she had little doubt that they would be able to manage that. What worried her was the high particulate density in the moon’s atmosphere and what coming in hot would do to their heat shields. If they lost the ceramic plates that protected them from heat buildup, then things would get uncomfortable rather quickly.

At the moment, however, she didn’t think that Steph was likely to listen to those worries.

She could even hear his response.

You want uncomfortable heat buildup? Let’s slow down and let them hit us with a beam for a few milliseconds. That would be uncomfortable heat buildup.

Worst of all, even as she heard his voice, right down to his distinctive accent, Milla knew that he would be right.

So she just sighed and started calculating the angle of attack they would need to maximize their odds of living through what Steph was planning on doing.

“You will need a steeper angle of attack,” she said finally. “Atmosphere is thinner than standard and much lower to the surface. Watch for volcanic cones as we approach. The largest ones appear to reach beyond the edge of the atmosphere.”

“Oh, great,” Steph groused, rolling his eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Partially. Depends on how you define atmosphere. In order to achieve significant braking, you may well have to drop below the height of several prominent volcanoes that I can scan from here. They
are
active, Steph. Do not fly us through their plumes.”

“Right,” Steph said. “Seal all exterior vents, and shield all nonessential sensors. Batten down the hatches, Milla; it looks like a doozy of a storm is coming.”

Milla didn’t bother trying to parse the meaning of the last bit, instead focusing on shielding all their nonessential gear. That meant that they were about to be flying half-blind, at least for a short while, since the shielding would block the scanners while protecting the ship.

“Hang on tight,” Steph said as he nosed the shuttle into the moon and pushed the throttle forward again. “We’re going in.”

►►►

► In space, a pursuit had the appearance of little more than two ships that happened to be leisurely flying in the same general direction. There was no exciting rush of motion, no sonic booms and engine roars filling the skies. At any scale that the action was comprehensible, the action was also nonexistent.

Lasers flashed between shooter and target, nothing but an almost festive twinkling marking their passage as the beams encountered dust particulates and vaporized them in turn.

As the moon approached, however, the action began to compress rapidly.

The shuttle nosed up as it struck the atmosphere, deploying air brakes, and the surface of the moon began to rush by. A low boom echoed across the thin atmosphere as the shuttle dug in. Plumes of smoke and fire erupted below as lasers raked the surface rather than vanishing off forever into space.

The parasite frigate’s predictive computers now had an easier time of things because the shuttle’s motion was less open, but atmospheric particulate made getting a lock more difficult, forcing the Imperial crew to follow their quarry down.

Sonic booms tore through the valleys and plains below, a small one trailing the shuttle and a larger one following in the wake of the frigate as it fell deeper into the atmosphere. Lasers superheated the air into plasma, causing crackling light to dance and occasionally detonating explosive pockets of gas in the atmosphere with the force of small bombs.

The action, once languid and slow, was now furious and lethally fast.

►►►

PC Parasite
Five

► “Do
not
lose them,” Penae ordered tersely, leaning forward in his station as he glared at the screens.

The signal that marked the enemy was breaking up in the highly charged atmosphere of the volcanic moon, and the frigate was having trouble keeping the small craft in sight as the pilot threw his ship back and forth through volcanic peaks, dancing around thick plumes of smoke and dust that rendered scanners practically useless.

They
should
be right on top of the craft by this point, with their superior speed, but once again the other pilot was making them work for every
scrap
of distance they could close.

“Missiles, Subaltern?” his tactical officer asked, sounding not a little desperate.

Penae snorted. “Pointless!”

And they were. Their missiles would never track through the charged atmosphere they were flying through here, not if the parasite’s own scanners were having this much trouble. Lasers were rapidly losing effectiveness as the atmosphere and its particulates thickened, which meant that shortly the parasite crew would be limited to trying to keep the target in sight and hoping to catch the shuttle when it once more left the atmosphere.