Nathan, in turn, looked at his overall status. Blake and Sarmiento appeared to be awake, and the railgun and lasers fired intermittently, clearing the way in front of them from pieces too small for Weston to maneuver around. It seemed to be working. Their small, impossible endeavor might actually have a chance.
Nathan allowed hope to rise in his heart. Scrolling through the crew status icons, he lingered over Kris’s, burning brightly green. For a moment, he nearly keyed her icon to open a private channel, to exchange a small measure of the optimism and pride he felt with the woman he loved, but he pulled back at the last. There was still too much to be done for now. Besides she knew how he felt.
And there would always be time to tell her afterward.
“Launching polar salvoes, Captain,” Simmons said, breaking into his reverie.
“Very well,” Nathan responded. Again, unheard and unfelt, ten missiles launched from out of the port and starboard cells. In a pair of phalanxes, the missiles streaked away to disappear past the arcing, flaring horizon, each group going at diverging angles to the north.
A private comm channel blinked in the corner of his vision. Nathan keyed it and Wright spoke in his ear. “Captain, radiator loading is at 87% and climbing, but we’re operating at a lower capacity than before. We just aren’t shedding the heat.”
Nathan took a look at the radiator’s status bar, confirming the XO’s warning. “Roger that, Christopher. This was to be expected for this phase of the attack. Once we get a visual on the Cathedral, we can break for a higher orbit and get away from the drive’s heat.”
“Yes, sir, but when that happens, we’ll be producing a lot more of our own heat as well. We won’t be back to a balanced discharge rate until we get out in the black and shut down some of the hotter systems. We have to cool.”
Nathan grimaced. “We can’t, not yet. Listen, your warning is duly noted, but we do have additional radiator capacity, and if worse comes to worse, we can use the internal heat sinks.”
“That’s going to cut things pretty tight, Nathan.”
“Hey, we’re out here beyond the ass end of the solar system, by ourselves, in a still-technically-stolen ship, fighting implacable, mysterious aliens nobody even really believed in till a month or so before we left. Things have been cut tight for a long damn time.”
Wright paused, then answered, “Yes, sir. Roger that. I’ll keep an eye on it.”
“Thanks, Christopher.” The private channel icon closed and Wright was gone. Nathan focused again upon the slowly rolling sphere of plasma that filled the lower half of his view. It would be any moment now … .
There.
Explosions began to ripple across the horizon to the north of the equator. Whatever the beams they spawned were aimed at was still hidden by the fiery limn of the drive. Nathan keyed his mike back into the tactical net. “Heads up, people. Our distractions are underway. The Cathedral should be rolling into view any moment. Let’s go ahead and launch a few more while we’re still hidden. TAO, designate four more salvoes, two north, two south, five missiles each, targeting the Control Ship and the Polyp. Let’s keep them involved in their own affairs while we’re finishing off the Cathedral.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” Simmons said.
“All right. Helm, as soon as we come into view, I want to start evasive maneuvers. They aren’t going to be as effective this close in, but every little bit will help. And be prepared to roll the hull if we get targeted by lasers. We’ll do better if we don’t allow them to concentrate energy in any one spot.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Weston answered. As he did so, 20 missile icons sprang forth from their ship and disappeared around the drive to the north and the south.
Explosions continued to light up the horizon, each one higher up and closer in, as the warheads maneuvered closer to their objective. Now that the detonations were well above the blazing horizon, though, Nathan could see that not all of them were the brilliant white eruptions of lasing fusion. Some of them exploded more dimly and haphazardly, ignited by counterfire from the alien ships.
He frowned. “Shit.”
Magnified by the Sword of Liberty’s sensors, the Cathedral rose into view. Her gothic arches and ornately carved, stone-like halls were gouged and broken, venting fluids and bright gasses into the vacuum. It was not demolished as they had hoped, but it had not escaped unscathed either. As he watched, another set of warheads flashed into fusion brilliance, and their unseen x-ray lasers lanced deeply into the distant alien vessel.
The Cathedral responded in kind, casting out beams of red light made visible from the gasses and vapors pouring from her hull. Nathan glanced over to see if they intended to take out any warheads, but he lost them as Weston began the maneuvers he had ordered.
Fifteen gravities of acceleration again squeezed him down, but this time they were accompanied by violent jerks from side to side, back and forth. Anti-nausea meds and stimulants flooded his system, allowing Nathan to push the sheer physical torture to the back of his mind, and to still concentrate on the battle.
His fingers jerked as much as they were able under the crushing thrust, sending coded texts to his crew. Four more missiles blasted out from the sides of the destroyer. Nathan did the count in his head. He only had 32 more, but it had been a worthwhile expense, both to cause the damage they had thus far achieved and to test their effectiveness against the Deltan ships’ defenses. Should they fail here, that data would be of paramount importance to the ships being built back home.
Determined to give the missiles the best chance he could, but reluctant to expend any more of his dwindling supply, Nathan’s fingers twitched again, sending new commands out. Simmons and Weston received the order and took action. The violent jerks the hull underwent smoothed out somewhat and the Cathedral steadied up, directly ahead of them. The railgun locked on and went into continuous fire, sending shot after shot screaming through the narrowing void. The damage imparted by their kinetic and chemical energy might be no more than a nuisance to be endured by the immense ship, but he hoped it would be enough of a distraction that the missiles would have a greater effect.
Now aware of the new threat just risen over the drive’s horizon, the Cathedral turned its wounded attention toward the Sword of Liberty. Twin beams of laser light flashed out from the ornate arches of the spherical alien ship. Slag erupted from the destroyer’s bow, her first wounds in the battle.
High energy photons flayed at the crystalline armor covering the Sword. The armor performed as designed, channeling the heat and energy outward from the point of incidence, spreading it over a wider area in an attempt to let it dissipate harmlessly into space, but the power poured in much too fast. Plates swelled and buckled, and finally melted through as the beams continued to fire on the same section of armor.
Alarms sprang up on Nathan’s screen as the hull was breached. A wisp of gas erupted from the mostly evacuated space below the breach. Then a crew icon went red—Emil Harmon, the weapons tech monitoring the dorsal radar array, fell off the grid. Nathan winced. He keyed an urgent command to the Helm, but before he could pass along the order, Weston responded.
The Sword of Liberty began to spin along her long axis, denying the enemy weapons a single point on which to concentrate their fury. The still-firing beams went from burning holes through the armor to tracing glowing circles and arcs of semi-melted armor all around the mission hull. Hull plates swelled, but now stayed intact, dissipating the energy through the surrounding plates as originally intended. And all the while, the railgun continued to fire.