Star Carrier (Lost Colonies Trilogy Book 3) Page 10

  “I’m not sure what you’re saying, sir.”

  “I’m saying that Halsey did more than hunt for Stroj ships. He destroyed settlements, trade ships—everything he encountered.”

  At a loss, I shook my head. “I’ve known Halsey for a decade. He’s never shown any capacity for wanton destruction.”

  “I agree, but in any case, I’ve been trying to contact him for hours. He won’t respond. Victory won’t answer anything we’re throwing at it. What’s more, their course has changed. Instead of heading into orbit over Earth, they’re now moving to intercept you at Luna.”

  “We’ve calculated the same thing, sir.”

  He nodded. “What are you doing about it?”

  I hesitated. I hardly wanted to tell him I’d been setting my marines all over my own ship in case of an internal threat, while allowing variants to build a weapon to destroy Victory, should the need arise.

  He laughed. “You don’t trust me? Good! Your instincts are sharp. You can’t trust everyone down here. Unfortunately, I won’t be in command for much longer. I’ve shared the duty on a rotating basis, and it should be mine for another month—but the politicians have seen fit to speed up the process. They’re changing the guard.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Who is going to replace you?”

  “They haven’t told me. Ever since recent events, they’ve become quite paranoid about their own commanders.”

  I knew what he was talking about. Several times, it had been revealed that our upper echelons in Star Guard had been penetrated by Stroj agents. It only made sense they would be suspicious with a new crisis brewing.

  If the Stroj had dealt us a serious blow by infiltrating the ranks of our leaders, they’d done it by making people mistrust one another. The entire culture of Star Guard had shifted over the years. Everyone looked at everyone else with suspicion.

  Each time we uncovered a Stroj agent, their technology had become superior in nature. They were disguised not just in clothing but in flesh. They were cloning our leaders and editing the clones to create nearly perfect matches. Undetectable, in most cases, until they performed their final duties.

  “What are your orders, Admiral?” I asked him.

  “These are my final standing orders: Destroy Victory. Blow her out of the sky. I don’t know who’s in command of that ship, but I’m willing to bet it’s not Admiral Halsey. At least, not the Halsey you and I once knew.”

  He watched me closely as I digested this information. I was surprised as I’d begun to suspect Admiral Perez himself wasn’t what he seemed.

  Now, in retrospect, his behavior was more understandable. He’d been just as paranoid as I was all along—how could he not be? After learning the fleet had been lost, he’d come to believe that his superior officer was dead, or worse, allied with the enemy and flying Victory toward Earth.

  That had put him in a desperate situation. As Defiant was the only ship capable of intercepting the incoming battleship, he’d had to rely on me.

  But could he trust me? Was I another plant, disloyal and hiding my true nature until a critical moment?

  I could see that his new orders were a test of sorts. If I refused to follow them and attack, he could surmise that I was indeed in league with this threat. Fortunately, I wasn’t inclined to refuse. I’d been hoping for just such an order.

  Looking up again at Admiral Perez, my mouth formed a thin, stern line.

  “Very well, sir,” I said. “I concur with your judgment. I will meet Victory in open space and defeat her.”

  “Excellent! Don’t bother to transmit the details of your attack plan down here to CENTCOM—further, if you’re required to do so by my replacement, give them false tactical data. I don’t trust anyone right now. This is too important.”

  I considered telling him what I’d seen of the variants on Victory. I almost did—but again, paranoia struck me. I didn’t know if I could trust Perez—or whoever else might be listening.

  Nodding, I agreed with his orders. We both signed off, and the channel closed.

  Leaning back in a creaking chair for a few moments, I pondered the surreal situation I now found myself in. It was unenviable in the extreme. CENTCOM might or might not be turning against me. Victory surely had.

  As far as I could determine, I was flying the only loyal capital ship Earth had left.

  -15-

  We left Luna’s orbit quietly and powered out into open space, heading toward the outer Solar System.

  “According to our predictions,” Durris said, “we’ll intercept Victory here… approximately one hundred ninety five million kilometers out from the Sun.”

  “We’ll be close to the orbit of Mars,” I said, looking over the data.

  “Yes, but far from the planet itself.”

  The plan had been approved and reviewed. We were now examining the enemy reaction. So far, there had been none. They had maintained their course and speed, heading directly toward us.

  “We’ll do battle in this region,” I said, outlining an ovoid in space some ten million kilometers across. The shape glowed into being on the planning boards after I touched the controls.

  The predictive software provided us two critical pieces of information regarding our plans. First was the timing element, which displayed as a fast-ticking digital clock floating over the ovoid. We’d reach the battleground in thirty-one hours’ time.

  The second piece of information was far less encouraging. The battle computers were predicting a grim loss, and no less than the destruction of Defiant.

  “Have you updated the scenario with the addition of the variant’s lance to our arsenal?” I asked Durris.

  “Yes... The problem is the simulation software doesn’t think we’ll make it in that close to the enemy ship. According to the computer, we’ll be destroyed several hundred thousand kilometers outside the lance’s range.”

  I stared at the screen. A few staffers circling the far side fell silent. Durris and the software were both calmly predicting our destruction.

  “The trouble is,” I said, going over the stages of the simulated conflict, “we’re heavily outgunned too far out. We can’t even fire back until we’re badly damaged.”

  “That’s correct, sir,” Durris said stiffly. “I was hoping… well…”

  “What?” I said, turning to him. “Now isn’t the time to be shy.”

  “It doesn’t matter. My hopes haven’t materialized.”

  “Ah,” I said, looking at him. “You were hoping CENTCOM would commit the rest of the fleet to fight at our side, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Give me the best predictions you have in that case.”

  He quickly edited the scene. More green contacts appeared, dotting space on our flanks. Every destroyer and pinnace we had flew with us in the new model.

  The ovoid now displayed an amber shade.

  “Still predicting defeat?” I asked.

  “Yes. But not with one hundred percent certainty.”

  “It does seem like a better play for Earth. But,” I said this single word loudly, “we’re not her last play. CENTCOM surely has gamed this all out as well. They’re hoping we’ll damage Victory badly. Maybe they dare to hope we’ll get lucky and destroy her, as she’s in an unknown state after clearly having been battered in your simulation.”

  “That’s right, but if they’d only give us support—”

  “No,” I said, “they won’t. They plan to hold back and marshal their final ships around Luna. They’re putting together every missile and ship they have. They’ll wait there to win or lose in a final desperate effort.”

  “Perhaps we should be standing there with them. What good will it do to lose Defiant in a hopeless struggle?”

  The staffers were now staring at us with wide eyes. They’d been largely in the dark concerning the desperate nature of our situation. Even Rumbold and Yamada had stopped working and begun listening closely.

  I didn’t care. I no longer thought it necessary or
productive to maintain a secretive air among my own command staff. If there were spies, let them hear what we had to say. There were only a few hours left in any case.

  “It may buy Earth time. If we can damage Victory—”

  Durris shook his head and threw up his hands. This was a wild display of emotion for him.

  “So what if we do slow her down? She can hold off and repair. She can roam around the outer system destroying our mining facilities at the asteroids and our labs at Mars. Earth won’t be in charge of anything other than the home world.”

  “That’s true, but there is hope,” I said. “Remember the eighth battleship? She’s been under crash construction since the fleet left. They’ve stepped up her production rate by several months. She should be able to fly with a green crew and the majority of her systems working in a week or two.”

  Durris stared at me. Slowly, he smiled.

  “Ah,” he said. “I get it at last. We’re a speed bump. We’re to die well and buy Earth a few weeks’ time.”

  “If so,” I said loudly, “it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

  Then I turned to regard my crew. My eyes met theirs one at a time. Most of them stared back determinedly. A few dropped their eyes, but no one objected.

  They knew the stakes. They hadn’t signed on to live forever in Earth’s service—well, that may have been the original intent of some. But most had known the dangers and accepted them from the outset.

  “Good,” I said, after having taken their measure. “Now, let’s see if we can devise a way to beat the odds.”

  I sat back and listened while my various officers gave me what they had. Not many suggested anything useful.

  It was the usual stuff—editing our armor to the forward section of the ship to help deflect incoming fire captivated one group. That would give us more survivability as we approached, but nothing to protect our engines after a single pass. It would be a do-or-die one-shot attack.

  There were other ideas, but all of them were lacking.

  At last, when I was about to give up hope, aid came from a most unlikely source.

  “Excuse me, Captain,” Rumbold said. “I know it’s not my place to—”

  “No, no,” I said, “speak up, man. We could use wisdom from a spacer who’s seen more years of service than the rest of us combined.”

  “Well, it’s like this, I think we need something to hide behind. Something that will stop a beam at least.”

  Durris frowned at him. “What do you suggest, oldster?”

  Rumbold didn’t ruffle up at the term oldster, although many of his peers might have been insulted.

  “I’ve been checking the scans,” he said. “There are a few rocks out here. Nothing big, mind you, but some that are in the neighborhood of a hundred meters in diameter.”

  Durris laughed. “Are you serious? Are you suggesting that we slow down, capture a rock, and throw it ahead of us in hopes it will catch some of the enemy fire? We’ll be crawling, and we’ll be more vulnerable for it.”

  Rumbold’s eyes were narrowed as he looked over the planning table. He shook his white-haired head. “Not exactly, son. I’m not suggesting we fly behind a rock—I’m suggesting we turn it into gravel. Sand is even better, if you can manage it.”

  They all stared at him. Durris opened his mouth then closed it again with an audible snap. He leaned over the table with sudden intensity.

  He worked the controls, bringing up menu after menu. Finally, a small cloud of debris appeared in front of Defiant on the simulator.

  He engaged the software engine, which did its magic, predicting likely hits and misses.

  At last, the scene changed. The ovoid had gone from yellow to blue. That meant the software thought we had a chance.

  “Forty percent?” Durris asked aloud in amazement. “That’s a thirty point jump…”

  He reached for Rumbold’s shoulder and slapped it hard. “You’ve done it, man. We’ve got to move fast, however. There’s a window for grabbing a boulder. How far away we are will change everything. We’ll end up meeting the enemy closer to Earth, at lower speeds… so many variables!”

  He set off to work on his simulator. In the meantime, Rumbold and I came up with a course that would allow us to intercept the rock he’d found and work with it. We’d have to change the rock’s course, speed it up, and blast it to bits right before we reached Victory’s effective range.

  “Well done, Rumbold, old friend,” I told him an hour or so later. “You’ve pulled us all out of the fire.”

  He snorted and lowered his voice, speaking only to me.

  “They’re all like kids at Christmas,” he said. “Never seen such a pack of fools so happy to learn they’re facing only a sixty percent chance of death.”

  “You miss the key point,” I said back in a whisper. “What you’ve really given them all is hope.”

  Rumbold nodded. He at last smiled and relaxed, accepting everyone’s praise. It did my heart good to see it.

  At least my crew wouldn’t die in a state of cold despair.

  -16-

  Due to our diversion to intercept the asteroid, it was nearly forty hours later when we faced Victory.

  The battleship was huge. It was impossible to describe how unnerving her presence was. Somehow, the fact it had been built by Earthmen made it all the worse. The fact we were going to be destroyed by our own sister ship seemed positively unfair.

  In the final moments before we came within range of the big enemy guns, we had a final scare. The railgun lance wasn’t ready.

  The only workers we had who could lever the weapon out onto the hull and attach it to the power cables were the variants themselves. It wasn’t encouraging to see them slowly scuttling over our hull carrying their burden like a bizarre trio of pallbearers carrying a massive cylindrical coffin.

  “We’ll have to use exposed cables,” Rumbold complained for the hundredth time.

  “I know,” I said patiently. “There’s no help for it. We’ve got to make do with what we have.”

  “Exposed cables…” he muttered again, as if he hadn’t heard me. He shook his head slowly. “They’ll be cut sure as shit the moment the enemy burns through our gravel shield.”

  “Again, I’m well aware of this.”

  It wasn’t in my heart to reprimand Rumbold. The crew had been working to the point of near exhaustion. They’d taken only short breaks when ordered to. For all that, they seemed alert enough, if a little glassy-eyed.

  At three million kilometers out, a million outside of our enemy’s maximum range, we blasted apart the asteroid we’d flung ahead of us.

  Defiant’s primary cannons hummed, then buzzed, then sang. The asteroid came apart in slow motion. Molten chunks drifted away from the central mass—but there was no helping that.

  “She’s breaking up, Captain,” Durris said. “Just like the simulations.”

  “Keep working the central chunk, and have the point defense weapons try to guide some of the large chunks back toward the core. There are bound to be holes in this defensive screen. Keep them from growing too—”

  “Captain!” Yamada shouted suddenly. “The enemy ship is firing. Victory is firing, sir!”

  My mouth hung open and my eyes roved the screens.

  “We’re still too far out. What are they doing?”

  “Maybe they’re trying to burn the screen…” Durris suggested.

  The enemy fire lanced out and punched a hole in our improvised shielding. Yamada gasped.

  “They don’t have that kind of range,” she said. “They can’t have that kind of range!”

  The debris field we were hiding behind began to crumble. I felt like a charging spearman huddling behind an upraised shield with a crack in it.

  “Durris, take more off the hard core of the asteroid. Patch that hole.”

  “The algorithm is punched in… firing on full automatic.”

  The ship shuddered as our secondary guns sent streams of slugs toward the aste
roid shielding us. Fresh rock split and crumbled. Computer-guided aiming systems trimmed more mass from the core of the asteroid to create a larger debris field. This went smoothly, but my mind was elsewhere.

  “Durris,” I said, “how’s it possible for the enemy to have this kind of range? Earth built those cannons. We should damned well be able to plot their reach.”

  “I agree, sir,” he said, working feverishly over a screen full of calculations. He was adjusting the simulation to reflect the unexpected changes in the enemy capabilities.

  The ovoid on the screen grew. We were now well within it. The field had also changed to orange, indicating we had about a twenty percent chance of survival.

  He turned to me slowly when he was done. He had an odd look on his face.

  “Captain, come examine the raw data. I have optical probes out on our flanks flying with us. We can see the enemy hull in detail now.”

  I moved to do as he suggested. What I saw there made little sense. Victory looked… odd. Her central hull region had thinned out as far as I could see. It was as if the ship had gone on a crash diet.

  “Could she have been damaged so severely?” I asked.

  “No sir, I don’t think we’re looking at damage. In fact, I don’t think she’s been damaged at all. We made an error in our assumptions.”

  Frowning at him and the scope, I began to understand. An idea was dawning within my mind. Unfortunately, I didn’t much care for the suspicion that was growing there.

  “It’s not damage,” I said, repeating his statement. “They’ve altered the ship. The variants—they’re like the ones aboard Defiant. They haven’t been content to merely man Victory…”

  “That’s right, sir. They’ve altered her. We have no real idea what we’re facing.”

  Our exchange left me feeling sick. The math hadn’t been on our side to begin with, but at least we’d had a fighting chance. Now, I had no idea how events might unfold.

  “Can we break off?” I asked.