A Call to Vengeance

* * *

  The minutes stretched into hours. Feyman filled the time by double-checking every system under his command, and making sure everyone else checked theirs.

  The ship that had killed so many of their friends and colleagues was going down.

  Finally, it was almost time.

  And then, on Feyman’s displays…

  “Com, I want updates from all units,” Captain Stoffel ordered. He touched a stud on his chair arm. “Engineering, this is the captain. What’s our impeller state?”

  “Holding at Readiness, Sir,” Commander Eric Becker replied. “Three minutes, and we’re hot.”

  “Good. Stand by to raise wedge in twenty-three minutes. Com? Where are those updates?”

  Feyman lifted a finger. “Captain? You need to take a look at this.”

  “This better be important, TO,” Stoffel warned as Feyman keyed the image to his station. “What exactly am I looking at?”

  “I don’t know yet, Sir,” Feyman said. “But there seems to be something else out there.”

  “What do you mean something else?” Stoffel demanded. “Something else what?”

  “Something out there just occluded a star, Sir,” Feyman said, rapidly keying his board. “I’ve just trained the heat sensors around to take a better look.”

  A momentary silence fell on the bridge as the sensors did their work.

  “Well?” Stoffel prompted.

  “Heat signatures, Captain,” Feyman said, hearing the fresh grimness in his voice. “At least two of them. Consistent with reactors at minimum power.”

  Stoffel sucked in a short breath. “Where?”

  “Same bearing as Casey, Sir, and just under five hundred thousand kilometers ahead of them. If Casey maintains its current deceleration, their vectors will merge—merge exactly—in just under eleven minutes at seven-zero-six-zero KPS and eighteen million kilometers short of Prime.”

  “Damn it all,” Stoffel said, his tone the bitter iciness of deep space. “They wanted us to see him! To see him, and not whoever the hell these other bastards are.”

  “Yes, sir,” Feyman said, rushing to crunch these new numbers. “They would have had to sneak across the hyper limit hours before Casey crossed, coming in low and slow.”

  “And then they showed us Casey, coming in hot,” Stoffel bit out, his tone as disgusted as his expression. “Showing its impellers to the entire frigging galaxy. And it damned well worked. Like trained fish we kept looking exactly where they wanted us to look.”

  Another dozen seconds passed. Feyman kept quiet. So did the rest of the bridge crew.

  Stoffel huffed out a sigh. “Well,” he growled, his eyes blazing. “For a pissant little navy from a nowhere little star system, they’re just full of clever tricks, aren’t they? Well, they’re in for a surprise. They must have better intel on Walther than I thought. We’ll have to ask the survivors how they got it.”

  “They must have gotten it after the Admiral pulled out for Danak, too,” Feyman added. “Even with a couple of their ancient battlecruisers there’s no way in hell they would tangle with us here unless they knew most of our big ships were gone.”

  “So they found out he was gone and decided to take a run at our base,” Stoffel said, nodding.

  It was crazy, of course. Feyman knew that. Crazy and gutsy both. Matching a pair of old battlecruisers with outdated equipment against the base missile platforms and the combat-capable destroyers and frigates at Walther would be iffy at the best of times, even with surprise on their side. Which, sadly for them, they no longer had.

  On the other hand…

  “If you’re right, Sir,” he said. “it’s very likely they don’t know we’re here.”

  “Exactly,” Stoffel agreed. “They also probably figure we still think Casey is alone.”

  Feyman shook his head. This was getting complicated. “So what do we do, Sir?”

  “What we don’t do is go charging out to meet them any sooner than we have to,” Stoffel grated. “We’ll keep Tarantel’s wedge down and leave them in blissful ignorance as long as we can.”

  “And Schmiede?”

  Stoffel pondered a moment. “All right—here’s the plan. For now, nobody stirs. I’ll bring up our wedge five minutes before they enter missile range—that’ll keep them ninety thousand kilometers out of Hauser’s range when they fire. It’ll only take a minute for them to cross the zone, but they’ll have to honor our threat and concentrate their initial fire on us.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” Feyman murmured.

  “Don’t get smart,” Stoffel warned. “We may get hammered harder than I’d like, but they’ll get hurt, too. Probably pretty badly. And that’ll turn Schmiede into our reserve. When they do enter its range and it opens fire, it should be a hell of a lot harder for them to intercept its birds.”

  Feyman wrinkled his nose. He didn’t much like the plan, but it offered the best way to maximize their own firepower.

  And chance of survival.

  “So we all play like quiet little mice,” Stoffel said. “Right up to the point when we stop being mice and turn into tigers.”

  * * *

  HMS Casey’s base vector merged with the Andermani squadron’s.

  The cruiser dropped neatly into her assigned slot in Vergeltung’s screen and stopped accelerating.

  “Communications request from Admiral Basaltberg,” Ulvestad said.

  “Put him through,” Clegg ordered.

  The main display lit up with the Andermani admiral’s face. “Very well done, Captain Clegg,” he said warmly. “I’m sure they’ve realized by now what we’re up to, but I very much doubt they’ve figured out what they’re up against.”

  “I would have put it that they don’t have a hope in hell, Sir,” Clegg suggested.

  “Indeed,” Basaltberg said, smiling. “Well. Since they seem to be shy about coming out to meet us, I think we should leave them in blissful ignorance for another—” he consulted his chrono “—eleven minutes and forty-one seconds.”

  * * *

  The Manticoran force inched closer.

  Feyman scowled as he shifted his eyes back and forth between his displays, looking for something—anything—that would give him more of a clue as to what exactly was bearing down on them.

  Casey had joined the incoming formation of unknowns. That much was obvious. But the cruiser’s wedge was still the only one showing, and it was generating a substantial blind spot.

  Active sensors were useless at this range, and thermal sensors couldn’t see through an interposed impeller wedge. There were still a couple of thermal signatures showing, one each above and below Casey’s wedge, but he knew damned well there was also something on the other side of the cruiser. The blind spot it was creating was the only reason for the ship to take station directly in the center of the vertically stacked intruders.

  But what the hell was she hiding?

  There was only one possibility. Manticore had talked Haven into sending along some firepower.

  Feyman snorted under his breath. Only one possibility, and it didn’t make any sense at all. Haven and Manticore might have cooperated—once—six years ago, and he could see Haven not being pleased with unprovoked mercenary attacks on independent star nations anywhere in its vicinity.

  But there was no way in the universe that the Republic Navy would have been willing—or able—to cut loose the modern firepower to support Manticore this far from home. For starters, Casey and its friends couldn’t have come all the way from Manticore just to attack this star system. They had to have discovered its location only after they got to Silesia, so there was no way they could have convinced Haven to send along—

  “Status change!” Lieutenant Moeller snapped suddenly. “I have one, two, four…six…A minimum of six additional impeller wedges!”

  “What the hell?” Captain Stoffel demanded. “Six wedges?”

  “And there might be a seventh directly behind Casey,” Feyman said, his pulse thudding suddenly in his thr
oat as he peered at the icons on his own plot.

  Stoffel swore viciously. “Fine. What can you tell me about the ones we can see?”

  “Range is still twelve-point-seven million kilometers, Sir,” Feyman said. “Not much resolution at that range. But they’ve begun decelerating at two hundred gravities, which puts them right on top of us at zero velocity in exactly sixty minutes.”

  “Tentative class IDs on two of them, Sir,” Moeller spoke up. “Both at least heavy cruisers. CIC makes it a sixty-five-percent chance one of them is a battlecruiser.”

  “Probably couldn’t hide both of them behind a single frigging light cruiser, even at that range,” Stoffel growled. “So Manticore wants to gamble its entire navy on a throw of the dice? Fine. Let’s show them what it costs to play with the big boys.”

  * * *

  “All right, Commander Long,” Clegg said. “This is your show. Do us proud.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Travis replied. This was it. Taking a deep breath, he pressed the button.

  A pair of green telltales turned red.

  * * *

  Feyman’s eyes darted back and forth between his displays, his fingers tapping his board as he tried to squeeze every last bit of data he could out of Tarantel’s sensors. The incoming Manticorans had been decelerating for just over thirty-five minutes since bringing up their wedges, and would enter missile range in another eleven minutes. Tarantel’s own wedge and sidewalls would be coming up in approximately six. Feyman’s initial salvo was ready and waiting to launch, and he’d set up firing solutions on the wedge CIC had determined was definitely a battlecruiser. There was still time to alter the targeting setups, however, and he needed to be ready in case the Manticorans had another trick or two up their sleeves.

  And then, without warning, Casey shifted to port, staying in its same plane, deftly clearing a line of sight for whoever was hiding behind it, while at the same time not blocking any of the other ships’ fields of fire.

  “Casey is shifting position, Sir,” he called the warning. “Opening sight lines to something behind it—”

  “Transponder beacons!” Communications shouted suddenly. “I have transponders, and—oh my God.”

  Feyman barely heard the last three words as he stared at his own display. The transponder beacons of seven ships flashed onto his plot: SMS Hamman, SMS München, SMS Ao Qin, SMS Loreley, SMS Zhong Kui, and…

  “They’re not Manticorans.” Through the pounding of his heart he could hear his voice coming from between numbed lips. “They’re Andermani.

  “And that’s Vergeltung out there.”

  * * *

  “I imagine there are some very unhappy people over there,” Captain Clegg murmured as, all around Casey, Andermani impeller wedges and sidewalls began to come up.

  Travis nodded, his full focus on cataloguing targets. It looked like the recon drone’s data on who could and couldn’t get underway was pretty much on the money.

  Still, just because a ship couldn’t move and couldn’t raise sidewalls didn’t mean it couldn’t throw missiles before it died.

  * * *

  “I guess that settles whether or not we go out to meet them,” Stoffel snarled with an anger and viciousness Feyman had never heard from him before. “Hauser’s just going to have to suck it up, because we’re definitely going to need Schmiede’s missile platforms against that kind of firepower. I don’t like engaging from such a low base velocity, but we’ve got to bring them into Schmiede’s missile envelope.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  * * *

  “CIC makes it one active battlecruiser, two light cruisers, plus three destroyers and three frigates, Ma’am,” Travis announced. “That matches just about perfectly with the Andermani drone’s data.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Clegg replied. “Let’s hope our brilliant idea works. Because if it doesn’t those two missile platforms will more than compensate for a bunch of ships that can’t move.”

  Travis clenched his teeth. “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “Relax, TO,” the captain calmly. “I signed off on your brilliant idea because it was brilliant.”

  “Oh,” Travis said. “Ah…thank you, Ma’am.”

  “Mind you, you’ve had a few others I didn’t think quite so highly of,” she added. “But this one—well, I think this one will actually work.”

  Travis took a deep breath. “I hope so, Ma’am.”

  * * *

  “Zhong Kui’s our target,” Captain Stoffel said. The anger was gone from his voice, leaving a harsh bitterness in its place. “The destroyers and frigates will have to deal with their cruisers and destroyers. And Schmiede…”

  He trailed off, his eyes on the main plot. Eyes full of ice and hatred.

  And fear. Feyman could feel the captain’s fear.

  The same fear everyone else on the bridge was feeling.

  Including Feyman himself.

  Vergeltung changed everything. Feyman tried not to reflect on the bitter irony which had brought that ship, of every ship in the Andermani Navy, to Walther. Distantly, he wondered what the odds against that must have been.

  But those odds were meaningless today. The only thing that mattered was the cold, hard fact that Vergeltung all by herself could almost certainly have defeated every Volsung combat-capable ship in the system.

  Including Tarantel.

  Zhong Kui was a locally built variant of the Seydlitz-class battlecruisers Gustav Anderman had brought with him to the Potsdam System. It was larger, faster, and more powerful than Tarantel, but not impossibly so. With a little luck, and a superior crew, Tarantel could take it on with a good chance of coming out on top.

  Then there was Ao Qin. It was based on the Drachen-class frigate, and the Andermani navy still classified them as such, though most navies would consider them light cruisers. München was a Bremen-class. Feyman knew its type well; he’d served aboard a Bremen as a midshipman. They were missile-heavy, with no beam weapons at all, uncompromisingly designed for the long-range missile engagement. He had no profile on Hamman, but from her gravitic and electronic signature—and the fact that she was here—she had to be well armed, despite her apparent freighter hull. Probably one of the Musketier-class ships.

  But all of them—the entire force, for that matter—paled in comparison to Vergeltung. Not only did it have twice Zhong Kui’s missile armament, but also two thirds again the battlecruiser’s antimissile capability.

  Stoffel hadn’t completed his last sentence. He hadn’t had to. Everyone aboard Tarantel knew that Vergeltung was Schmiede’s only possible target. It was unlikely that even the missile platforms could throw enough armament to saturate the battleship’s defenses, especially backed up by Vergeltung’s sophisticated ECM. But if Schmiede couldn’t do it, then no one could.

  At least there wouldn’t be any more surprises. Now, it had become a face-to-face shootout, with everything depending on who shot first.

  Though as a practical matter, with a head-on approach like this there wouldn’t be much difference between who fired first and who fired second.

  Feyman’s stomach seemed to have turned into a permanent cramp, and he could feel the sweat gathering at his temples and in his armpits. He’d seen combat before, but never against an equally capable opponent, far less a more capable one.

  For the first time in his career, he finally understood how all the Volsungs’ victims must have felt.

  * * *

  “Missile range in sixty seconds,” Lieutenant Ip called from the ATO station.

  “Tracking links enabled,” Travis added. “Targeting update confirmed.” He looked up at the timer ticking down in a corner of his display. “Fifteen seconds, Ma’am.”

  “Very good, TO,” Clegg said. “Let’s roll those dice.”

  “Ten seconds. Five…four…three…two—”

  * * *

  “Sir!” ATO Moeller gasped. “Sir—Schmiede—”

  “God,” Feyman breathed, though whether it was a curse or a prayer e
ven he didn’t know.

  Two pairs of missiles had suddenly materialized less than eight thousand kilometers from Schmiede. They couldn’t be there. They just couldn’t.

  But they were, springing into existence at the very edge of Schmiede’s active radar envelope, coming in ballistic with a base velocity of 3,640 KPS. To be there, moving at that speed and factoring in the enemy’s deceleration rate, they must have been deployed eighteen minutes earlier. It was the only possible geometry.

  But there had been no booster flares from any of the incoming ships. So how—?

  Casey.

  In that single, blindingly clear instant, he knew how it had been done. He’d seen Gensonne’s reports, and heard all the rumors, but only now did he recall that, unlike any of her Andermani consorts, the Manticoran carried railgun launchers forward. Her missiles needed no boosters, gave no betraying thermal flares when they launched. Casey had simply launched four of them, drives down, and allowed them to run silently ahead of the approaching fleet. They’d coasted onward from their base velocity at launch, with no betraying impeller wedge, while Casey itself continued to decelerate, falling farther and farther behind them.

  And now, forty seconds before Schmiede could possibly fire, those four missiles’ impellers sprang to life and hurled them at their targets at an acceleration of ten thousand gravities.

  It took them just under two seconds to cover the 7.8 thousand kilometers between them and those targets. Two seconds in which the defenders could see them coming but couldn’t possibly stop them. There simply wasn’t enough tracking time, enough response time. They were inside every defensive system, and Feyman watched in impotent horror as both of Schmiede’s missile platforms disappeared in blossoms of nuclear flame.

  “Captain, I have an incoming transmission,” the com officer half-whispered into the stunned silence.

  Stoffel, his expression as stunned as Feyman felt, waved at the main com display.

  “Put it up,” he grated.

  A white-haired officer in the uniform of the Andermani Navy appeared.

  “You know who I am,” he said. His voice could have been frozen helium. His eyes somehow managed to be even colder. “You also know you will be in my engagement range in thirty seconds. If you want to live longer than the next five minutes, strike your wedges.