"It is for some," Pahner replied. "For others, the worst part is the aftermath. Counting the cost."
He turned his own chair to face the prince, trying to decipher what was going on behind the flickering ball of the boy's faceplate.
"There's going to be a pretty high cost to this operation," he continued, carefully not allowing his tone to change. "But that happens sometimes. There are two sides to any wargame, Your Highness, and the other side is trying to win, too."
"I try very hard not to lose," Roger said quietly. "I discovered early on that I didn't care for it a bit." The external speaker was the highest quality, but the sound still echoed oddly in the little compartment.
"Neither do I, Your Highness," Pahner agreed, turning back to his command station. "Neither do I. There aren't any losers in The Empress' Own. And damned few in the Fleet."
"We just got painted, Sir." Commander Talcott's quiet tone was totally focused. "Sensors confirm that it's a Saint lidar. A Mark 46." He looked up from the tactical system. "That's standard for a Muir-class cruiser."
"Roger," Krasnitsky said. "They'll realize their mistake in a moment. Go active and open fire as soon as you have a good lock."
Sublieutenant Segedin had been poised for the order like a runner in the blocks, and his hand stabbed the active emissions button just as the launch alarm sounded.
The Saint parasite cruiser was underarmed for the engagement. Although she was large for an in-system ship, she and her sisters were nothing compared to a starship.
Since the tunnel drive was dependent on volume, not mass, starships could be made extremely large and incredibly massive. Max-hull warships were over twelve hundred meters in diameter, and all interstellar warships were plated with ChromSten collapsed matter armor. That armor normally represented a third of the total mass of a ship, but since their systems were volume dependent, it hardly mattered. They also had immense room for missiles, and the capacitors that drove their tunnel drives gave them enormous storage for their energy batteries.
But once they were inside the TD limit, they found themselves limping along on phase drive, and phase drive was mass dependent. Which meant that starships were relatively slow and awkward to maneuver.
That was where the parasites came in.
Parasite cruisers and fighters could be packed into max-hull warships in terrific numbers. Once the starships entered a system, they could send out their cruisers and fighters to engage the enemy, but the cruisers were designed to be fast and nimble, rather than heavily armored, and lacked the ChromSten of starships. But this cruiser had come well within DeGlopper's engagement range and was at the mercy of the heavier ship.
The CO of the Saint parasite quickly realized that he'd screwed up by the numbers. His initial launch started with a single missile, which had clearly been intended as a "shot across the bows," but the rest of his broadside followed swiftly. Within moments, a half-dozen missiles came scorching towards the assault ship, and the next broadside followed seconds later.
"He's firing at his launchers' maximum cycle rate, Sir!" Segedin announced, and Krasnitsky nodded. The Saint captain was firing as rapidly as he could, using a "shoot-shoot-look" tracking system. It would take nearly four and a half minutes for the missiles to cross the distance between the two ships, which meant that at his current rate of fire, he would have shot his magazines dry before the first salvo impacted. It was exactly what Krasnitsky would have done in his place, because given the difference in the sizes and power of the two opponents, the cruiser's only chance at this point was to overwhelm and destroy the heavier ship before they closed to energy range.
But that wasn't going to happen.
"All right, let's delta vee," he told Segedin. "I want a max delta towards this Saint P-O-S. Take him, Tactical!"
"Aye, Sir!"
Radar and lidar had an iron lock on the cruiser, and despite the crippling effects of Ensign Guha's sabotage, the tactical computers quickly finalized firing solutions.
DeGlopper was a four-hundred-meter-radius sphere. She was an assault ship, which meant she had to build in room for six shuttles, but that left more than enough room for missile tubes and ample magazines, and the missiles in those magazines were larger and heavier than any parasite cruiser could carry. Now all eight of her launchers began hammering fire at the Saint, and mixed in with her more dangerous missiles were jammers and antiradiation seekers.
It looked like a totally unfair fight, but DeGlopper's tactical net was far below par. Most of her missiles were under autonomous control, which meant the transport's computer AI couldn't adjust their flight profiles to maximum effect. And it also meant her point defense was far less effective than normal.
"Vampires! I have multiple vampires inbound!" There was a series of thuds as the ship's automated defenses reacted to the inbound missiles. "We have auto-flares and chaff. Some of the vampires are following the decoys!"
"And some of them aren't!" Krasnitsky snapped, watching his own plot. "Sound the collision alarm!"
Some of the Saint missiles were picked off by countermissiles and laser clusters. Others were sucked off course by active and passive decoys, and the entire first salvo was destroyed or spoofed. But one missile from the second salvo, and three missiles from the third, got through, and alarms screamed as pencils of X-ray radiation smashed into the ChromSten hull.
"Direct hit on Missile Five," Commander Talcott reported harshly. "We've lost Number Two Graser, two countermissile launchers, and twelve laser clusters." He looked up from his displays and met Krasnitsky's eyes across the bridge. "None of the damage hit any of the shuttles or came near the magazines, Sir!"
"Thank God," the captain whispered. "But still not good. Navigation, how long to beam range?"
"Two minutes," the Navigator reported, and smiled evilly. She'd successfully fooled the Saint captain for hours, playing the role of a panicked merchant skipper while he reviled her parentage, knowledge, and training. Now let him suck laser!
"Hit!" Segedin called. "At least one direct missile hit, Sir! She's streaming air!"
"Understood," Krasnitsky replied. "How are we doing on the computers?"
"Rotten, Sir!" Segedin snapped, euphoria vanished. "I had to shift resources to the defensive systems. Most of the birds are flying on their own at this point."
"Well, this will be over soon," the captain said, just as another salvo of Saint missiles came streaking in. "One way or another."
CHAPTER TEN
Roger grabbed the arms of the command chair as another concussion rocked the shuttle like a high wind.
"This," he remarked quietly, "is not fun."
"Hmmm," Pahner said noncommittally. "Check your monitors in the troop bay, Sir."
The prince found the appropriate control and tapped it, turning on the closed-circuit monitors in the troop bay. What they revealed surprised him: most of the troops were asleep, and the few who were awake were performing some sort of leisure activity.
Two had electronic game pads out and appeared to be competing in something with one another. Others were playing cards with hard decks or, apparently, reading. One even had a hard copy book out, an old and much thumbed one from the look. Roger panned around, looking for anyone he recognized, and realized that he only knew three or four names in the entire company.
Poertena was asleep, with his head thrown back and his mouth wide open. Gunnery Sergeant Jin, the dark, broad Korean platoon sergeant of Third Platoon, had a pad out and was paging slowly through something on it. Roger scrolled up the magnification on the monitors, and was surprised to see that the NCO was reading a novel. He'd somehow expected it to be a military manual, and he spun the magnification still higher, curiously, so that he could read over the sergeant's shoulder. What he got was a bit more than he'd bargained for; the sergeant was reading a fairly graphic homosexual love story. The prince snorted, then spun the monitor away and dialed back on the magnification. The sergeant's taste was the sergeant's business.