“At best—we have to hold them off the planet for—”
“Hours and hours,” Heris said. “Forever, basically. We don’t know how far behind this group their main invasion force is.” Far behind, she hoped. Benignity policy usually required an attack force to report back before the supporting force arrived.
They continued their darting attacks, run after run, as much to keep the Benignity crews tired as anything else. And the enemy closed on Xavier, braking in perfect formation.
Xavier Station died in a burst of coherent radiation that fried its way through the station and on into the planet’s atmosphere, where its degrading beam wreaked havoc on communications and finally on the surface. The station reactors, as they blew, sent pulses of EMC that destroyed surface-based computers. “I wonder how many were left aboard.” Heris glanced at the speaker, one of the enlisted working the engineering boards.
“Supposedly they were all evacuated,” she said. “I hope the General Secretary got people into shelters downside. With any luck, everyone was off the station. . . .” But she knew a few wouldn’t have been—the last shuttles had been overloaded, according to Cecelia, with near riots as they left.
But planets are large, and spaceships, however large, are small in comparison. It takes time to scorch a planet so that it can be garrisoned shortly afterward—easier to flame it, but that makes it hard to install the kind of military base the Benignity was planning. Heris had counted on that, on their need to be careful, precise. Now that it was five to three—the injured assault carrier’s weapons weren’t functioning, and the weapons it carried for installation would be stowed away—she might just pull it off.
The CH ships took up equatorial orbits, spacing themselves around the planet where their scans and weapons could reach the entire surface, the two cruisers higher and the two assault carriers slightly lower. The assault carriers would soon crack their bays and start disgorging drop shuttles and equipment drones. The damaged one wouldn’t even wait for the cruisers to turn the attacks.
“Damn—I thought we made it clear where to lay the mines,” Ginese said, when the data on the orbits sharpened. “Those assault carriers are low enough—or almost—”
“Maybe they went for the lowest orbits—to catch the drop shuttles on the way down. They don’t have diddly for shielding—”
“Mmm. And they don’t have to stick to equatorial transits, either. Idiots. If they’d done what we told them—”
“Captain, there’s a big ship behind us—”
“Behind us?” An icy breath ran down her spine.
“It’s—it’s that ore carrier.” Miners. They’d had a big hull, she remembered.
“Weapons?”
“Nothing.” It seemed to wallow, even on the screens, a huge hull massing considerably more than anything but the assault carriers. Neither weapons nor screens colored its display.
“What—do they think they’re doing?” Heris asked the silence.
“Helping us?”
“With no weapons? Ha. At least, if it has no weapons, it can’t shoot us.” What had made the miners think they could fight with a bare hull, however large? And why now? Heris forced herself to ignore that enigma and went back to the battle at hand.
So far they’d been lucky. The destruction of the killer-escorts had removed the only enemy hulls that could match them in maneuvering at speed. Now, if they were to save Xavier’s population, she had to bring her ships out of hiding and engage in a slugfest. Not her kind of fight, but she saw no alternative. At least, the CH ships were also limited in their options, committed to orbital positions and unable to combine their fire as effectively.
With near-perfect precision, Vigilance and Paradox exited from microjumps in the positions Heris had selected: within a tenth of a light-second of their targets. Heris had chosen to take on one of the CH cruisers; Paradox would hit the weakened assault carrier; and Faroe, on the yacht, would seem to be a new menace to the other cruiser.
The computers fired before even Koutsoudas could have reacted. By the time the scans had steadied, they picked up the results of that salvo, even as Heris emptied another into the nearest cruiser, and sent a raft of ballistics at the ships to either side of her. Her target had suffered shield damage, and the hull flared, hot but unbroken.
“Ouch,” said Petris, as their own shields shimmered and the status lights went yellow. The cruiser had returned fire before their second salvo, and now poured a stream of LOS and ballistics both at them. Shield saturation rose steadily, then levelled off. Their scans wavered, unable to see through the blinding fury outside even at close range.
“Faroe fired something,” Koutsoudas said. “I can’t see if it hit—and he’s jumped again.” That was good news.
“Both flanks engaged,” said Ginese. One of those was the undamaged assault carrier, now clawing its way up from its lower orbit.
Then one entire board turned red, and the alarms snarled. “Portside aft, the missile—” CRUMP. A blow she felt from heel to head, as Vigilance bucked to the explosion of her own missile battery. Before Heris could say anything, Helm rolled Vigilance on its long axis, so that unbreached shields faced the cruiser that had raked them.
“Good job, Major,” Heris said. Around her, she heard the proper responses, as medical, engineering, damage control, environmental, all answered the alarms. Her concern was that damaged flank, now turned to the less-armed but still dangerous assault carrier.
She kept her eye on Weapons, but her crew needed no prodding; they were throwing everything they had at the enemy. The weapons boards shifted color constantly, as discharge and recharge alternated in the LOS circuits, as crews below reloaded missile tubes.
“Captain—portside battery’s breached—casualties—” So it was as bad as that.
“Compartment reports!” That was Milcini, doing much better than she’d expected.
The reports matched the displays Heris could see. Several LOS beams at once had degraded their shields, and then fried a hole in the hull and the warheads of missiles in storage. These had blown, ripping a larger hole in their flank. Lost with it were a third of the portside maneuvering pods. Lost, too, were the crews of the batteries on either side of the storage compartment, and a still uncertain number of casualties in neighboring compartments.
Only Koutsoudas’s boosted scan still penetrated their own screens and the maelstrom of debris and weaponry beyond them. He hunched over his board, transferring position and ship ID data to Weapons, shunting other data to other stations. He stiffened.
“We got the Dylan,” Koutsoudas said. Its trace on his screen fuzzed, then split into many smaller ones; its icon changed from red to gray. “There’s the reactor, that hot bit there.” That hot bit, which would, on its present trajectory, fry in the atmosphere on its way down, shedding a spray of active isotopes. Couldn’t be helped, and the nukes already launched were worse. Their scans blurred completely, as the last burst of Dylan’s attack hit their shields. Lights dimmed; the blowers changed speed. Then the lights came back up.
“Shields held,” someone said, unnecessarily.
The scans cleared slowly. Heris ignored them for the moment to look at the inboard status screens. The breach hadn’t progressed, and hadn’t compromised major systems. The lockoffs held, and would if not damaged further. Slowly, from the spacesuited medics and repair crew working their way aft, Heris learned more. The hole in the hull couldn’t be repaired now—perhaps not at all—but somehow some of the stored missiles had not exploded. The force of the explosion had gone outward through the hull breach, and the heat flash in the compartment hadn’t been enough to overcome the failsafes on those racked inboard. Some had broken loose, and were probably, the petty chief said, out there ready to blow up if the CH would only be so kind as to hit them. Thirty-eight were still racked, and—if they could get airlocks rigged to the nearest cross-corridor—could be transferred to the surviving batteries.