“Don’t be insubordinate.”
“I’m not, Captain. I’m obeying orders.”
“Whose?”
“Mr. Downing, sir. He thought it was possible that something like this might happen.”
* * *
“Target damage assessment?” demanded Nezdeh.
Tegrese’s reply sounded as though it was coming through clenched teeth. “Modest. I did not hit the presumed command and control section. Given the light debris and heavy outgassing, I project we hit a large access tube.”
“Our railgun projectiles?”
“Estimating impact in eighty seconds.”
If the Slaasriithi ship hadn’t been paralyzed by sabotage, it was doubtful that those staged composite penetrators would have hit her at all; the range was too great and the large ship’s PDF batteries were too numerous and powerful. Apparently, the Slaasriithi did not have separate high power offensive lasers, and smaller, weaker point defense batteries. In keeping with the species’ decidedly nonwarlike nature, they folded the two roles into a single system. The result was a significantly weaker offensive laser threat, but a significantly greater defensive intercept capability: more beams, with higher power, greater effective range, and lavish targeting arrays.
But right now, the Slaasriithi shift-carrier’s lasers were as cold as her power plants and her fusion drive, and they would hopefully stay that way long enough for Nezdeh to finish her off.
Something in Sehtrek’s voice told her that she might have less time to deliver a coup de grace than she wished. “Nezdeh, the first enemy ‘cannonball’ has risen above the planetary horizon.”
Right on time. She waved a hand through the distance-hazed close-up of the Slaasriithi ship in the holosphere: it disappeared. “Tactical navplot,” she ordered the computer.
The ship’s outline was replaced by a three-dimensional overview of nearby space, where a threat-coded orange ball was rising over the rim of the blue planetary sphere. On the other side of the sphere, a larger orange spindle — the stricken enemy shift-carrier — floated haplessly. As she watched, several orange pinpricks in the vicinity of approaching orange ball flickered into existence, pulsing. “Microsensor phased array?” she asked.
“Correct,” Sehtrek replied. “As small and undetectable as our own. They are almost certainly relying upon broadcast power from the planet’s many orbital solar collectors. I detect seven active sensors. They are striving for target lock.”
“That is their only reason for illuminating them,” Nezdeh muttered, assessing the distribution of the enemy sensors and the respectable rate at which the orange ball was approaching.
Tegrese’s voice was tense, eager. “Shall I target their sensors?”
Nezdeh shook her head sharply. “No.” Tegrese, at this moment you are a fool asking to play a fool’s game. “We haven’t the time to spare. Besides, we are seeing only the first tier of their detection assets. They doubtless have many replacements seeded in various orbital positions, still floating inert. Resume firing upon the Slaasriithi ship as soon as you have corrected your locational lock.”
“Which lock, Nezdeh? The one guiding our laser strikes against the bow, or for the railgun lock upon the stern?”
“Correct both, but the stern is the most critical. If we can cripple its main power plant before our saboteur’s work is undone, we can easily destroy the target, despite the size difference.” Which was why Lurker had a self-guiding tactical nuclear missile in its recessed bay; once targeting was assured and either the Slaasriithi’s PDF batteries were inert or the flight time was brief, that single hammer blow would finish the job. But the Slaasriithi’s present power loss would not be permanent, and the range was still too great. And since we have but one sure way to kill our foe…“Ulpreln, both fusion and plasma drives to full on my mark. Zurur, send word to the rest of the crew to secure themselves for sustained four-gee thrust.” She saw Ulpreln’s head start to turn. “When we activated our own dispersed array of microsensors, they had an indefinite warning, at best. But when we fired, we revealed our precise coordinates. There is no longer any advantage to hiding among the debris from the asteroid collision we caused. Tegrese, illuminate all active sensors. Ulpreln, plot the most direct course toward the target and accelerate to full.”
Ulpreln nodded, turned to his console — and the universe slammed Nezdeh back into her acceleration couch.
In the viewscreen, the last few widely spaced rocks drifting between Red Lurker and her target rushed past them. Nezdeh was sorry to see them disappear astern. The asteroids had been helpful, obscuring companions ever since the Arbitrage and her Ktoran tug had edged in toward the spinward trojan point after finishing a hasty and incomplete refueling. They had counterboosted into the midst of the drifting rocks using a retrograde approach effected solely by the Aboriginal ship’s magnetically accelerated plasma thrusters, thereby minimizing all chances of detection.
Once hidden, Brenlor had exhibited admirable patience as they determined their best ambush point and observed what little they could from that extreme distance. He even accepted that his role in the coming attack would be to remain hidden with the Arbitrage and the tug. This had happily obviated any need to underscore that Brenlor’s personal mastery was in hand-to-hand, not ship-to-ship combat. As one of the least patient of the young Evolved in his House, he had not possessed the precision and cool calculation that made for excellent ship captains. Fortunately, other matters had precluded his participation in the strike. Preserving his geneline, the closest to the progenitorial core of House Perekmeres, was first among these, followed closely by maintaining the reign of terror he had established over the Aboriginals aboard the Arbitrage. Given its size, the human ship had to remain hidden and distant from the engagement since, along with the tug, it was their only means of exiting the system, whatever might transpire.
Nezdeh’s more difficult, and tedious, problem had been to make a sufficiently stealthy and close approach to the target zone. Coasting, running off minimum batteries, and often tarrying in the shadow of one or more of the rocky fragments of the asteroid collision they had caused, Nezdeh approached their ambush point on a retrograde vector, sending a cluster of disposable microsensors on ahead. Functioning as a passive phased array, they immediately detected the orbiting, spherelike vehicles the Ktor had observed upon arriving in the system. The larger ones, which they dubbed cannonballs due to their occasional bursts of astounding five-point-five-gee acceleration, were evidently the most sophisticated of the objects and also the most likely to be defense systems. They changed their telemetry without any regular period: in short, no firing solution calculated from their orbital path remained viable for more than seven or eight hours.
The planet’s scores of smaller spheres were, presumably, communications and sensor platforms. Although the cannonballs were the greatest direct threat, these smaller spheres, as well as any undetectable devices comprising a phased array, had commanded Nezdeh’s attention. Would they scan the new, slowly diffusing spray of gargantuan boulders behind which Lurker was approaching?
But the orbital array’s passive sensor results apparently did not alarm either its live or expert system controllers: no active scan had been initiated. The collision Red Lurker had engineered resembled the sequelae of a natural event, and since none of the ejecta was heading directly toward the planet, its denizens had evidently concluded that it was unnecessary to inspect the debris more closely. Besides, in order to do so, they would have had to illuminate and thereby reveal the active sensors kept in the region for detecting enemy craft. Reassured by the Slaasriithis’ complacency, Red Lurker concluded her approach, drifting along behind the largest rock chunk that would pass within sixty thousand kilometers of the planet.