And a third was heading right for her.
She gave a startled cry of protest as her heart thundered into overdrive. Without thought, she flung the pinnace around its center of gravity and opened the engine to a constant six gravities. The hull groaned as the engines fought inertia, and her suit clamped gently on her arms and legs. Only then did she send a message, via comm laser, to the firing ship, a light cruiser that was leading a division of frigates.
“This is Cadet Lady Sula ofDauntless!” she said. “You’ve opened fire on me! Deactivate your missiles!” She tried to keep hysteria out of her voice but doubted she’d succeeded.
The missiles kept on coming, closely packed in a furious acceleration that the retreating pinnace couldn’t match. More missiles flew from the squadron, aimed at anything the sensors could detect regardless of range. Whoever was acting as tactical control officer had clearly lost his head.
Sula got busy, voice and hands giving orders to her own missiles. Three of her twenty-four began to burn hard to intercept the threat. Whoever was controlling them saw the danger to his barrage and ordered the attacking missiles to spread out. She countered, ordering the rest of her missiles to speed away from the Home Fleet, then commenced an acceleration she knew would leave her senseless. As gravity took her by the throat, she could feel her heart flail in panic. She managed to get her sensors off before both she and her terror lost the fight against unconsciousness.
When her programmed acceleration was over, a vestigial memory of fear helped her to claw back from the velvet black depths of unconsciousness. Her suit gradually released her arms and legs. The radiation counter showed the aftereffects of massive explosions, and readings showed that the hull was very hot. Sula could hear the whirring of the cabin cooling system. Because she couldn’t view anything, she ordered another furious acceleration, and when she awoke again, both the radiation and heat had dropped. At this point she dared to activate some sensors, and behind her saw the vast hot bloom of an explosion that seemed to take up half of space. No missiles appeared to be following her out of the cloud, and the only missiles she could find on her display were her own.
She kept her engine going until the cloud began to dissipate, at which point she shut it down in hopes that a pinnace without acceleration wasn’t worth being fired on. She could feel patches of sweat in her armpits and crotch and between her breasts, and her heart still throbbed within her chest as if urging her to run as fast as she could.
The lead elements of the Home Fleet slowly appeared through the dissipating radiation fog. The cruiser flagship had been joined by its entire squadron in flinging out missile barrages, now toward the heavy Naxid squadron ahead. Sula didn’t think much of their chance of success, especially as the missiles were taking the long way around Barbas, following in the enemy’s wake instead of cutting the corner, which might actually have made sense.
And then another flight of missiles leaped from the rails and fired.
At Sula.Again.
Grim, determined anger sang through Sula’s nerves as she again programmed her own missiles to intercept. This time her message was broadcast to every ship in the two light squadrons, sixteen ships altogether.
“Listen, you fucking moron.”The words were forced from her diaphragm as gee forces built. “This is Lady Sula of theDauntless, and you’ve just fired on mefor the second time! ” She glared into the camera and screamed, “Do I look like afucking Naxid, you piece of rodent shit?Stop panicking, get a grip on yourself, and call off your missiles!” With one hand she thrust a vile gesture at the camera pickup. “I hope I live long enough for you to court-martial me over this, you useless bastard!”
She felt better for having vented the anger, but the missiles were still coming. She programmed a massive acceleration and turned off the sensors. As her head thudded against the padding in the back of her helmet and she felt the miniwaves drumming against her back, she clenched her teeth and fought the smothering blackness that started to creep over her mind…
Consciousness returned more slowly this time, a slow rise from an oblivion akin to death. It took Sula a while to focus on the displays even though they were projected onto her visual centers. The radiation count was high, and so was the hull temperature, but neither were as hot as after the first barrage.
Still, she was thankful for the slabs of radiation shielding that surrounded the cockpit.
When she turned on the sensors, she saw the cloud of plasma behind her, again obscuring her view of the fight. No missiles were coming at her, and she had eighteen of her own left. When the clouds finally dissipated, the light squadrons seemed to have lost interest in her: now all the ships were firing on the Naxids ahead. The area on the far side of Barbas was a continual boil as Naxid missiles met those of the loyalists.
Sula programmed her own swing around Barbas, but her wild accelerations away from the oncoming missiles had forced her out of the most efficient route. She swung wide and had to burn hard to get herself onto the line for Magaria’s sun, the next step on the loop around the system.
It had been over two hours since she transited the wormhole. She allowed herself a drink of water and ate half a ration bar. It was flavored with some chemist’s idea of strawberry, and the taste didn’t encourage her to finish the second half. She had to open the faceplate of her helmet to eat, and the cabin’s interior smelled hot, as if someone had forgotten to turn off a stove burner.
The two light squadrons, taking the inner track around Barbas, had pulled ahead of her. Behind them came Jarlath’s six huge battleships, and behind them a heavy and light cruiser division, both of which were dueling with pursuers, to judge by the missile bursts in their rear.
The light squadrons were firing less regularly now, which argued that they might have realized their munitions were not unlimited, but the space between them and Fanaghee’s squadron was still opaque with detonations, one blaze of plasma after another.
Disaster happened so quickly that Sula barely had time to register what was happening before the loyalist squadrons were engulfed in flame, a succession of colossal bursts in and among them.
Nothing came out the other side of the expanding plasma spheres. Sixteen ships had just been blown to bits.
Sula’s stunned amazement was followed by a burst of rage. She wanted to shriek, to pound a fist against the armored walls of the cockpit. But instead she forced her mind to work at what had just occurred.
It seemed that missiles had flown through the plasma screen undetected. Then she decided that wasn’t what happened. The missiles hadn’t accelerated. They were launched, burned for a short time while their signature was obscured by plasma bursts, and then just lay in wait, drifting toward the oncoming ships. If the light squadrons had seen them at all, they’d seen what appeared to be debris. The missiles let the light squadrons overrun them and then detonated.
That was how Martinez had hit Magaria’s ring, Sula remembered, let unpowered missiles drift in while no one was looking. Fanaghee had learned a trick from her enemy.
The odds were horribly against the Home Fleet now, nineteen ships against something like fifty, and Jarlath had to know it. The Battleship Squadron broke into two divisions of three ships and began massive accelerations to overtake Fanaghee, whoseMajesty supported eight heavy cruisers. Sula watched in awe as she calculated the growing velocity: everyone aboard the battleships had to be unconscious, with the computers doing the steering.