The Desert of Stars (The Human Reach) (30 page)

Dadao
remained back to screen the beam cruiser’s
escape.
Ramage
and
Apache
quickly flanked the Chinese frigate,
and Jessica’s lasers raked her hull. She didn’t look badly damaged, but she
thrust away, down below the plane of the system.

“We’ve got half our missiles left,” Carruth said to Howell.
“Let’s hunt that beam cruiser down while we’ve got the advantage. We’ll need to
stay between her and the main furball anyway.”

This was too easy,
Neil thought.
Why do I think
that?

Remember the objective.

USS Valley Forge

Missile flechettes ripped through the main Chinese fleet,
ventilating a medium cruiser and slicing into the antimatter storage ring of a
destroyer, setting off an explosion that vaporized the ship. A light cruiser had
its nose smashed in, but it kept coming. The beam cruiser
Olympic
scored
a hit on the Chinese flagship, the heavy cruiser
Weisheng.

The Chinese coilguns opened up, all at once, timed to force
the American ships to start turns just as the enemy fleet entered effective
laser range.
Valley Forge
and the other ships returned fire, but the
Chinese numbers gave them the advantage … they had launched so many shells, and
each eliminated a lane that an American ship could occupy and bring its best
weapons and defenses to bear.

Erin watched the tactical plot, with hundreds of markers
denoting incoming rounds. The American main body was arrayed in concentric triangles,
with the flat side facing the enemy. The three light cruisers at the center, a
triangle of destroyers in the middle ring, and four frigates in a diamond at
the periphery. The enemy was spread out, also with their heaviest ships in the
center of their formation. And thousands of klicks away, both Chinese beam
cruisers were pulling back, their mission to flank the fleet unsuccessful, but
at the cost of the frigate
Chinook
and the loss of the CIC crew of the
Ramage.

But something’s not right
, Erin thought
. They’re
concentrating their coilgun fire on the small ships on the periphery, leaving
us a safe place to gather in the center. They should be trying to scatter us so
they can defeat us in detail.

What if they want us together?
She wondered if the
Chinese had some kind of superweapon that required their enemies to be
shoulder-to-shoulder.
Nuke-pumped xaser?
Those had never made it out of
the lab.
Then again, I guess a war like this could prompt some new research.
But wouldn’t we have heard something? And it looks like they really did fire
every missile they had while we were in the bombardment orbit.

“Captain Mallett, they’re trying to herd us together,” she
said.

Mallett’s eyes never left the holo at the front of the CIC,
but she nodded slightly, leaving Erin to wonder whether she had really heard
her. The largest ships entered each other’s laser ranges, and a rapid exchange
of invisible blasts followed. Shots were timed against the estimation of the
enemy’s counterlasers capability, sometimes correctly. One of
Valley Forge’s
forward cannon took a hit from the enemy flagship, and a damage control
team rushed to replace the primary mirror.

The fleets smashed together, and the battle became a
furball. Three Chinese ships surrounded the frigate
Kiowa,
their weapons
nipping her like jackals at a wounded antelope. A shell from
Valley Forge
’s
guns struck the great fusion candle on the back of the heavy cruiser
Yinghui,
and the ship could only coast, unable to thrust, at least for the moment.
The destroyer
Cayo Muerto
bled atmosphere after sustaining no less than
six laser blasts to her main cylinder from Chinese ships, but she rotated and
fired into a light cruiser that was bearing down on
San Francisco.

They still aren’t pressing every advantage
, Erin
thought.

All the patterns and ship movements came together in her
head, and she saw the enemy strategy.
I have to tell the captain, right now.
Captain Mallett had gone up to the bridge to give a pep talk to the crew
there, and she was taking a while returning. Erin turned over the guns to her
chief, unbuckled from her console chair and pushed off to the hatch to the main
shaft through the ship.

As she ascended, a gigawatt laser blast from the heavy
cruiser
Weisheng
struck
Valley Forge
on the upper amidships, and
Erin Quintana felt the breath sucked from her lungs, and she and three other
people were thrown into space.

USS Apache

Apache
was shadowing
Zhou Man
, still many
thousands of klicks distant from the main battle. Everyone wanted to turn to
the main fight, but doing so would give
Zhou Man
an angle to take
long-range shots into it, as well.
Apache
was better used to screen that
the beam cruiser from getting back into the fight.

“
Apache
, this is
Ramage
,” said Lieutenant
Jackson’s voice in his ear.

“Go ahead,” Howell replied.

“Sir, can you check on Zulus Two and Three? Our ‘scope
operator says they’ve changed orientation.”

Howell looked at Neil with an annoyed expression that said,
“Handle this.”

Neil nodded. “Lieutenant Jackson, this is Lieutenant Mercer,
Apache’s
intel officer. We’ll check it out.” With his console, he took
over two telescopes and pointed them at the receding frigates
Dadao
and
Maqiang.

Both had come alive, their drive flares terawatt-bright in the
scopes. They were heading away from
Apache,
unobstructed, toward the
distant transports.

“Captain Howell, we’ve got to turn over, right now! Those figs
are gunning for the herd!”

“But you said they were badly damaged and out of the fight!”

“Sir, they are hurt, but they may have been playing it worse
than was the case, or maybe they patched up some of the damage,” Neil said.
“After we moved out of range, the
Maqiang
had only one cooling fin out;
we thought the other one was busted. That alone should have made them
combat-ineffective, but it looks like they’ve got them both out now.”

Howell looked at the holo. “We don’t have a choice, do we,
Mercer?” he said quietly. To everyone, he said, “All right, let’s orient to
face the
Dadao
and thrust at a quarter-gee
.
I’ll send
Ramage
after
the
Maqiang.
”

“Sir, that will use up a lot of our remaining remass,”
Ensign Cohen warned.

“No choice,” Howell repeated. “Good thing we saved some of
our missiles. That was the right call, there, Mercer.”

As soon as
Apache
flipped,
Zhou Man
did the
same, firing its great laser into
Apache
’s hide. A cylinder of armor on
the frigate’s rear quarter melted away, but the distance was too great, and the
beam did not damage any vitals.

Neil examined the larger battle, and saw the break for the
transports was a coordinated maneuver. Two more Chinese frigates, Z
huge Nu
and
Kuancheng,
and a destroyer,
Zhengyi,
had blown past the main
engagement, and still another frigate,
Hudie Shuang Dao,
had broken from
escorting the other enemy beam cruiser,
Deng Shichang,
and raced by the
frigate
Sprague.

The beam cruiser
Olympic
was in the best position to
attack the runners from the center. She executed a rapid turn to bring her main
laser to bear and fired a tremendous blast into the nearest frigate. For a
moment, the target ship looked unhurt, and its coilgun turret threw several
shells back at the American
.
Then
Kuancheng
vanished in a
majestic, antimatter-fueled fireball.

But the
Olympic
had exposed her midsection to other
Chinese ships, which pounced. Their lasers opened a dozen puncture wounds along
the ship’s hull and cut into two of the ship’s keels. She did not explode or
shatter, but her back was broken, and she drifted away, life support working in
only a few pockets around the ship.

Other American ships also turned to fire on the other
runners, but the Chinese had anticipated the maneuver, launching coilgun shells
to prevent them from lining up to take a shot. The captain of the light cruiser
San Francisco
decided to risk damage so she could target the receding
Zhengyi,
but before she completed the pivot, a shell got through her defenses,
smashing through the neck between the ship’s arrowhead and main cylinder.

“All ships, fire remaining missiles at the runners,” Vice
Admiral Cooper sent before
San Francisco
ceased transmitting.

They saved some missiles!
Neil thought.
Maybe
Captain Howell’s message to Cooper’s flag captain got through.
The ships
New Orleans, 73 Easting, Cayo Muerto
and
Graves
all launched what remained
of their arsenals – just eighty-five missiles total. Chinese ships began
picking them off as soon as they left their tubes, but about a score lasted
long enough to burst into flechettes, a number of which tore into the Z
huge
Nu
. The flare from the frigate’s drive dimmed noticeably, and after a
moment, the ship turned over, and thrust away from the fight.

Three frigates and a destroyer still running for the herd
,
Neil thought. Something occurred to him, and he looked for
Valley Forge
’s
hull number on his tactical plot. There! She was firing maneuvering rockets to
correct an uncontrolled spin, and she was falling away from the fight.

Erin! Please be all right.
He tried to scroll through
the log of automated messages all the ships sent to each other to see what
happened, but the CIC caller announced the
Dadao
was within
Apache
’s
missile envelope, and Neil had to focus his attention on the immediate threat.

It should have been a long chase, but
Dadao
wasn’t
accelerating as fast as she should have been able to: maybe there was damage to
her drive, or a remass tank.
Dadao
’s coilgun forced
Apache
to
give ground to make several dodges, but Howell saved his missiles and closed
the gap between the two ships to a few hundred kilometers.

Any closer, and we can’t be sure we can dodge every
coilgun round,
Neil knew.

“Fire control, ripple-fire all remaining missiles. Guns,
Lasers, give it to them,” Howell said.

Jessica hit the
Dadao
with quarter-second bursts,
targeting the frigate’s point defenses. The Chinese ship’s counterlasers fired but
burned uselessly against
Apache’s
armor.
Apache
’s missiles
fragmented, filling the sky with a hail of darts.
Dadao
at last dodged,
giving Jessica an opportunity to slice its belly with a 500-megawatt blast.

She had either hit the CIC or the maneuver thruster control,
because the ship kept turning and thrusting at the same time, forming a tight
circle and steering itself right into a cloud of missile flechettes.

“Captain, getting a transmission from Zulu-Three. It’s their
medical officer, says they’re surrendering and to please cease firing on them.”

Near the USS Valley Forge

Space, it turned out, smelled faintly like burning dust.
Kind
of like the first time you fire up the heater for the winter,
Erin Quintana
thought. Normally she would chide herself for such an idle thought, but
floating in her emergency bubble didn’t leave her much else to do. She had had
about four seconds of exposure before the bubble had closed around her.

Better than worrying about how many rads I’m absorbing,
or whether I’ll be rescued before I run out of air, or whether the others in
the shaft made it.

She was tired, the sort of tired you feel behind your eyes, the
strung-out weariness of a mind and body willfully pushed beyond its limits.
Only stimulants and adrenaline had kept the stupid haze of true exhaustion at
bay, but they were wearing off. She tried to watch the distant flashes to
discern what was going on in the battle. It seemed like the fight was spreading
out.
Maybe they saw the Hans trying to sneak some ships by us.

She saw two tiny flares, almost simultaneous, and wondered
what they were, and whether they represented the deaths of some friends.

USS Apache

No one in CIC had seen exactly what happened, but some
twelve thousand kilometers distant were two slowly expanding clouds of debris,
the remains of the
USS Sprague
and the Chinese frigate
Hudie Shuang
Dao.

Two more.
The wounded frigate
Ramage
was
closing on the
Maqiang. Apache
was rushing to help her, but it would be
an hour before she could help.

Ramage
and
Maqiang
met without subtlety.
Ramage
fired her repaired laser cannon into
Maqiang
, which conducted a
rapid turnover and fired her own main laser into
Ramage.

A great chunk of the American frigate’s hull tore away, and
Neil heard Lieutenant Jackson transmit, “I’m sorry. Tell them we did our best,”
and
Ramage
came apart into six large pieces and many smaller ones.

Unfettered by enemy fire,
Maqiang
thrust away.

“We can catch them, but they’ll be in range of the herd when
we do,” Ensign Cohen said, her voice barely above a whisper. “We just don’t
have the remass to get to them any sooner.”

We did our best, but it wasn’t enough,
Neil thought.
Even
if the herd scatters, they’ll be able to tag some of the big troopships.
Already,
several space trains were slowing, and their captains announced an intention to
ram any enemy ship they could get close to.
A million-to-one-shot against
warships,
Neil knew
. Thousands of troops …