“Aye, aye, sir.”
Arikara
trembled as a salvo was fired.
“Issue a blanket order for all mercenary starships to cease acceleration and evasive manoeuvres as soon as the combat wasps
have been cleared. Failure to comply will result in naval fire.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
When the
Lady Mac
reached one hundred kilometres’ altitude Joshua withdrew all but five sensor clusters. Wyman’s fjord-etched coastline was
directly below. Three hundred kilometres overhead, the two combat-wasp swarms were firing a fusillade of kinetic missiles
and coherent radiation at each other. They clashed at a closing speed of over seventy kilometres per second. A patch of sky
burst into pure white atomic fury, bringing a transient dawn to the arctic continent’s month-long night underneath.
Eleven submunitions broke through to descend on the
Lady Macbeth
with cybernetic mayhem in their silicon brains. Two of them were one-shot gamma pulsers. They tracked the hurtling starship
as it buffeted its way through the upper atmosphere, then discharged the energy in their electron matrices with one swift
burst. The resulting gamma-ray beam lasted for a quarter of a second.
A sheath of ions had already built up around the
Lady Macbeth
’s hull, a tangerine florescence that radiated away from the forward fuselage in hypersonic ripples. But they were swiftly
lost against the incandescent streams of energized helium emerging from the fusion tubes. The stratosphere reeled from the
unrestrained tumult of the starship’s passage. Her exhaust stretched out over a hundred and fifty kilometres behind her, evanescing
into titanic electrical storms which lashed the sharp icy steppes seventy-five kilometres below with a vigour that threatened
to split the glaciers open to the bedrock. Insubstantial green and scarlet borealis spectres cavorted over the ice-encrusted
continent in a display which rivalled the bands over the Juliffe in scale.
“Breakthrough!” Warlow cried.
Systems schematics filled Joshua’s mind, laced with red symbols. The hull’s molecular-binding generators, already labouring
with the burden imposed by the ion sheath, had overloaded in half a dozen places as the gamma pulses drilled into the monobonded
silicon.
He switched back to the flight management display. The thrust from one of the fusion tubes was reducing. “Any physical violation?”
The thought of needles of blazing atmospheric gases searing in over the delicate modules and tanks at this velocity was terrifying.
Neural nanonics effused an adrenalin antidote into his bloodstream.
“Negative, it’s all energy seepage. But there’s some heavy component damage. Losing power from generator two, and I’ve got
cryogenic leakages.”
“Compensate, then, just keep us functional. We’ll be through the atmosphere in another twenty seconds.”
Sarha was already datavising a comprehensive list of instructions into the flight computer, closing pipes and tanks, isolating
damaged sub-components, pumping vaporized coolant fluid from the malfunctioning generator into emergency dump stores. Warlow
began to help her, prioritizing the power circuits.
“Three nodes are out, Joshua,” Dahybi reported.
“Irrelevant.” He took the starship down to sixty kilometres.
The nine remaining kinetic missile drones followed. They were, as Joshua said, intended for deep space operation: basically
a sensor cluster riding on top of fuel tanks and a drive unit. There was no streamlining, no outer fuselage; in a vacuum there
was no need for such refinements. All they had to do was collide with their victim, mass and velocity would obey Newton’s
equations and combine to complete the task. But now they were flying through the mesosphere, a medium implacably alien and
hostile. Ionization started to accumulate around their blunt circular sensor heads as the gas thickened, turning to long tongues
of violet and yellow flame which licked back along the body. Sensors burnt away in seconds, exposing the guidance electronics
to the radiant incoming molecules. Blinded, crippled, subject to intolerable heat and friction pressures, the kinetic drones
detonated in garish starburst splendour twenty kilometres above the
Lady Macbeth
.
The
Arikara
’s tactical situation display showed their vectors wink out almost simultaneously. “Very smart,” Meredith said grudgingly.
It took a hell of a nerve to pilot a starship like that—nerve and egomaniacal self-confidence. I doubt I would have that much
gumption.
“Stand by. Evasive manoeuvring,” Commander Kroeber said.
And Meredith had no more time to reflect on the singular antics of Joshua Calvert. Punishing gravity returned abruptly to
the flagship’s bridge. A third salvo of combat wasps leaped out of their launch-tubes.
Lady Macbeth
soared out of the mesosphere, throwing off her dangerous cloak of glowing molecules. Behind her, Wyman’s ice-fields glimmered
under eerie showers of ethereal light. Combat-sensor clusters rose out of their hull recesses on short stalks, their golden-lensed
optical scanners searching round.
“We’re in the clear. Thank you, sweet Jesus.” Joshua reduced the thrust from the fusion drives until it was a merely uncomfortable
three gees. Their trajectory was taking them straight away from the planet at a high inclination. There were no combat wasps
within four thousand kilometres. I
knew
the old girl could do it. “Told you so,” he sang at the top of his voice.
“Awesome,” Ashly said, and meant it.
On the couch next to Joshua, Melvyn shook his head in dazed admiration despite the gee force.
“Thanks, Joshua,” Sarha said gently.
“My pleasure. Now, damage assessments please. Dahybi, can we jump?”
“I’ll need time to run more diagnostics. But even if we can jump it isn’t going to be far. Those three nodes were physically
wrecked by the gamma pulses. Our energy patterns will have to be recalculated. Ideally, we need to replace the nodes first.”
“We’re only carrying two spares. I’m not made of money. Dad always jumped with nodes damaged and—”
“Don’t,” Sarha pleaded. “Just for once, Joshua. Let’s deal with the present, OK?”
“Somebody’s jumped outsystem,” Melvyn said. “The grav-detector satellites registered at least two distortions while we were
performing our dodo impersonation, I think there may have been a wormhole interstice opened as well. I can’t tell for sure,
half of the satellites have dropped out.”
“There is no jamming from the voidhawks any more,” Dahybi said.
“OK, great. Warlow, Sarha, how are our systems coping?”
“Number two generator’s out,” Warlow said. “I’ve shut it down. It took the main strike from the gamma rays. Lucky really,
most of the energy was absorbed by its casing. We’ll have to dump it when we dock, it’s got a half-life longer than some geological
eras now.”
“And I’d like you to stop using the number one fusion-drive tube,” Sarha said. “The injection ionizers are damaged. Other
than that, nothing serious, we’ve got some leaks and some component glitches. But none of the life-support capsules were breached,
and our environmental-maintenance equipment is fully functional.”
“Got another jumper,” Melvyn called out.”
Joshua reduced thrust to one gee, cutting drive tube one altogether, then accessed the sensors. “Jesus, will you look at that?”
Lalonde had acquired its own ring, gloriously radiant stripes of fusion fire twining together to form a platinum amulet of
immense complexity. Over five hundred combat wasps were in flight, and thousands of submunitions wove convoluted trajectories.
Starships initiated high-gee evasive manoeuvres. Nuclear explosions blossomed.
The
Lady Macbeth
’s magnetic and electromagnetic sensors were recording impulses nearly off the scale. It was a radiative inferno.
“Two more wormhole interstices opening,” Melvyn said. “Our bitek comrades are leaving in droves.”
“I think we’ll join them,” Joshua said. Just for once in her life, Sarha might be right, he conceded. It was the now which
counted.
Lady Mac
was already two thousand kilometres in altitude, and rising steeply from the pole; he shifted their inclination again, carrying
them further north of the ecliptic and away from the conflict raging above the planet’s equatorial zones. Another three thousand
kilometres and they would be out of the influence of Lalonde’s gravity field, and free to jump. He made a mental note to travel
an additional five hundred klicks—no point in stressing the nodes, given their state. About a hundred seconds at their current
acceleration. “Dahybi, how is the patterning coming?”
“Reprogramming. Another two minutes. You really don’t want to rush me with this one, Joshua.”
“Fine, the further we are from the gravity field the better.”
“What about the mercs?” Ashly said. It wasn’t loud, but his level voice carried the bridge easily.
Joshua banished the display showing him possible jump coordinates. He turned his head and glared at the pilot. Why was there
always one awkward bastard? “We can’t! Jesus, they’re killing each other back there.”
“I promised them, Joshua. If they were alive I said I would go down and pick them up. And you said something similar in your
message.”
“We’ll come back.”
“Not in this ship, not in a week. If we dock at a port, it’ll take a month to refit. That’s without any hassle from the navy.
They won’t be alive in two days, not down there.”
“The navy said they’d pick up any survivors.”
“You mean that same navy which right now is shooting at our former colleagues?”
“Jesus!”
“There isn’t going to be a combat wasp left in thirty minutes,” the pilot said reasonably. “Not at the rate they’re expending
them. All we have to do is sit tight for a couple of hours out here.”
Instinct pushed Joshua,
repelled
him from Lalonde and the red cloud bands. “No,” he said. “I’m sorry, Ashly, but no. This is too big for us.” The coordinate
display flipped up in his mind.
Ashly looked desperately round the bridge for an ally. His eyes found Sarha’s guilty expression.
She let out an exasperated sigh. “Joshua?”
“Now what!”
“We should jump to Murora.”
“Where?” His almanac file produced the answer, Murora was the largest gas giant in the Lalonde system. “Oh.”
“Makes sense,” she said. “There’s even an Edenist station in orbit to supervise their new habitat’s growth. We can dock there
and replace the failed nodes with our spares. Then we can jump back here in a day or so and do a fast fly-by. If we get an
answer from the mercs, and the navy doesn’t shoot us on sight, Ashly can go down to pick them up. If not, we just head straight
back to Tranquillity.”
“Dahybi, what do you think?” Joshua asked curtly. Most of his anger was directed at himself; he should have thought of Murora
as an alternative destination.
“Gets my vote,” the node specialist said. “I really don’t want to try an interstellar jump unless we absolutely have to.”
“Anybody else object? No? OK, nice idea, Sarha.” For the third time, the jump coordinate display appeared in his mind. He
computed a vector to align the
Lady Mac
on the gas giant, eight hundred and fifty-seven million kilometres distant.
Ashly blew Sarha a kiss across the bridge. She grinned back.
Lady Macbeth
’s two remaining fusion drives powered down. Ion thrusters matched her course to the Murora jump coordinate with tiny nudges.
Joshua fired a last coded message at the geostationary communications satellites, then the dish antenna and various sensor
clusters started to sink down into their jump recesses.
“Dahybi?” Joshua asked.
“I’ve programmed in the new patterns. Look at it this way, if they don’t work, we’ll never know.”
“Fucking wonderful.” He ordered the flight computer to initiate the jump.
Two kinetic missiles hammered into the frigate
Neanthe
, almost severing it in half. When the venting deuterium and glowing debris cleared,
Arikara
’s sensors observed
Neanthe
’s four life-support capsules spinning rapidly. Still intact. Kinetic missiles found two of them while a one-shot pulser discharged
eighty kilometres away, stabbing another with a beam of coherent gamma radiation.
Admiral Saldana clenched his teeth in helpless fury. The battle had rapidly escalated out of all control, or even sanity.
All the mercenary ships had fired salvos of combat wasps, there was simply no way of telling which were programmed to attack
ships (or which ships) and which were for defence.
The tactical situation computer estimated over six hundred had now been launched. But communications were poor even with the
dedicated satellites, and sensor data was degraded by the vast amount of electronic warfare signals emitted by everybody’s
combat wasps. One of the bridge ratings had said they’d be better off with a periscope.
When it came, the explosion was intense enough to outshine the combined photonic output of the six hundredplus fusion drives
whirling round above Lalonde. An unblemished radiation nimbus expanded outwards at a quarter of the speed of light, engulfing
starships, combat wasps, submunitions, and observation satellites with complete dispassion; hiding their own detonation behind
a shell of scintillating molecules. When it was five hundred kilometres in diameter it began to thin, swirling with secondary
colours like a solar soap bubble. It was three thousand kilometres ahead of the
Arikara
, yet it was potent enough to burn out every one of the sensors which the flagship had orientated on that sector of space.
“What the hell was that?” Meredith asked. The fear was there again, as always. Antimatter.
Seven gees slammed him down in his couch as the starship accelerated away from the planet and the dwindling explosion.
Clark Lowie and Rhys Hinnels reviewed the patchy tactical situation data leading up to the explosion. “It was one of their
starships which imploded, sir,” Clarke Lowie said after a minute’s consultation. “The patterning nodes were activated.”