“They like to mass-produce,” Yolande said. A light blinked on one of her monitor screens, echoing the Weapons Officer’s. On the outer hull a long thin pod would be swiveling.
“Monitoring call,” the Sensor Officer said. “Standard garbage, messages to relatives.” She paused. “Coded blip. Recordin’ fo’ future reference.” A minute passed. “End message.”
“Fire,” Yolande said. A cold-flame feeling settled beneath her breastbone. The first attack on Alliance civilians since the Belt clashes.
The light blinked red. “Away,” the Weapons Officer said. In the pod, two charged rails slammed together. A fifty-gram slug rode the pulse of electromagnetic force, accelerated to ninety kilometers per second. “Hit.” The target would have vanished in a puff of vapor and fragments.
“No transmission from target, monitoring internal systems.”
“With all due respect to ouah colleagues of the Directorate of Security,” Yolande said, “I’m not takin’ any chances that they got the plans exactly right. We’ll cripple her first on a quick fly-by, then get within kissin’ range. Drive, prepare fo’ boost; pass at one kps relative, then decelerate an’ match at five klicks. Weapons, cut the sail loose, hole the control compartment, wreck the drive.” A plasma jet could be a nasty weapon in determined hands. “Cut the connections to the main power coil.” There were megawatts stored in that, and if it went nonsuperconducting all of it would be converted to heat—rapidly. “Then we’ll see.”
“Odd they don’ have no suicide bomb,” the assistant weapons officer said, as she and her superior worked their controls.
“Too gutless,” the man replied. “Ready to execute.”
“Drive ready to execute.”
“Make it so,” Yolande said.
The speakers roared: “PREPARE FOR ACCELERATION. ALL HANDS SECURE FOR ACCELERATION. TEN-SECOND BURN. FIVE SECONDS TO BURN. COUNTING.”
Somewhere deep within the Subotai pumps whirred. Precisely aligned railguns charged as fuel pellets were stripped from the magazines, ten-gram bundles of plutonium-239 and their reflector-absorber coatings.
“BURN.”
The pellets flicked out behind the cruiser. Her lasers struck and the coating sublimed explosively, squeezing. Fission flame loomed, flickering at ten times per second. Nozzles slammed liquid oxygen into the carbon-carbon lined hemisphere of the thrust plate to meet the fire, and the gas exploded into plasma. The superconductor field coils in the plate swept out magnetic fingers, cupping and guiding the blaze of charged particles into a sword of light and energy, stripping out power for the next pulse. The thrust plate surged forward against its magnetic buffers. And the multithousand-tonne mass of the warship moved.
“Burn normal. Flow normal at fifty-seven-percent capacity. Point-nine-eight G.”
“Comin’ up on target. Closin’. Preparin’ fo’ fire mission. Execute.”
Needles of coherent light raked across the lines that held the sail to the Pathfinder. The single-crystal sapphire filaments sublimed and parted in tiny puffs of vapor, but no change showed in the giant bedsheet of the sail; it would be hours before the vast slow pressure of the photon wind made a noticeable difference. It was otherwise with the Pathfinder itself. A dozen railgun slugs sleeted through the control chamber, and the steel-alloy outer hull rang like a tin roof under hail. The missiles punched through and out the other side without slowing perceptibly, leaving plate-sized holes; the edges shone red as air rushed past, turning to a mist of crystals that glittered in the unwavering light of the sun. Light flickered briefly within as systems shorted and arced.
Other slugs impacted the nozzle of the plasma drive, turning the titanium alloy to twisted shards. A finger of neutral particles stabbed, cut across the lines that connected the arc to the main power torus. Pathfinder tumbled.
“STAND BY FOR ZERO GRAVITY.” The subliminal thuttering roar of the drive ceased, leaving only the quiet drone of the ventilators. “STAND BY FOR MANEUVER.” Attitude jets slammed with twisting force, and the cruiser switched end for end. “STAND BY FOR ACCELERATION. EIGHTEEN-SECOND BURN. THREE SECONDS TO BURN. BURN.” Longer and harder this time; they were killing part of their initial speed and matching trajectories as well. The sound was duller, more mass going onto the thrust plate.
“Matched, closin’,” the Drive Officer said. The attitude jets fired again, briefly. “Stable in matchin’ orbit, five-point-two klicks.”
Yolande keyed the exterior visual display, switching to a magnification that put her at an apparent ten meters from the Alliance vessel. “Well done,” she said to the bridge; it looked precisely as she had specified. “Ah.” Flames were stabbing out from parts of the can-shaped transport, and the tumbling slowed and stopped. “Nice of him.” She hit the control, and the combat braces folded away from her with a sigh of hydraulics. “Number One, boardin’ party to the forward lock. Sensors?”
“She’s dead in space, apart from those attitude jets. Internal pressure normal except on the control deck; that’s vacuum. Doan’ think much damage to internal systems.”
“Weapons, connectors away.”
“Makin’ it so. Off.”
Two of her screens slaved to the Weapons station showed a rushing telemetered view of the enemy vessel, as the tiny rockets carried the connectors. Their heads held pickups and sundry other equipment; mostly, they were very powerful electromagnets. The cables themselves were no mere ropes: optical fibers, superconductor power lines, ultrapure metal and boron and carbon, armored sheathing, the whole strong enough to support many times the cruiser’s weight in a one-G field.
“Ah, human-level heat sources in the control chamber. Three, suited. Multiple elsewhere in the hull.”
“Very well,” Yolande said. “Maintain position, prepare to grapple when the target’s secured.” That was doctrine, and only sensible. The Subotai and her crew represented an unthinkable investment of the resources of the Race.
She rose, secured her boots to the floor. “Number Two, carry on. Boardin’ party, I’ll be with you shortly.”
Janet had been squealing with excitement when Cindy returned to the cabin, Iris solemn and earnestly trying to remember what she had been told about emergency drills. It was still hard to believe, how different twins were; or how complete and yet alien a personality could be at five . . .
Then they both quieted, sensing her seriousness. She zipped them quickly into their skinsuits; Fred had paid out-of-pocket for those luxuries, rather than rely on bubble cocoons, and now she blessed the extravagance as she worked her way into her own. These were civilian models, little changed from the original porous-plastic leotards the first astronauts had worn. The fabric was cool and tight against her flesh, with a little chafing at groin and armpits where the pads completed the seal. She helped her daughters on with the backpacks, then checked her own; the helmets could be left off but close to hand, for now. God forbid they should have to use them, but if they did every minute could count.
“Come on, punkins,” she said, guiding them to the pallet that occupied most of the sternside wall of their cubicle and strapping them in. “Mommy’s going to tell you a story.”
They settled in on either side of her; she had just begun to search her memory when the sound came. A monstrous ringing hail, like trip hammers in a forging mill, toning through the metal beneath and around them, like being inside a bell. The Pathfinder was seized and wrenched, the unfamiliar sensation of weight pulling at them from a dozen different directions, inside a steel shell sent bounding downhill. The locking bolts on the door shot home with a metallic clangor and even over the ringing of the hull she could hear the wailing of the alarm klaxon and the slamming of airtight doors throughout the ship. Her skin prickled.