"Good afternoon, Commodore IA." Admiral Ashigara regarded Hah from her eom screen, and Han watched her left hand play with her empty right cuff in the nervous gestu she'd developed since Bigelow. "We have the data from' the Aklumar recon probes.
It would seemm' the admiral permitted herself a thin smile his-comyour concerns were we]] founded. The probes report a single unit, probably a heavy cruiser, guarding the Aklumar-Cimmaron warp point. His "I see," Hah said. "But there's not one on the Lassa-Aklumar point?" "No," Ashigara said softly, and Hah knew her admiral had considered the same point she had.
It would have made a calculating sort of sense to post a second picket. The nearer watchdog would have virtually no chance of surviving any attack from 'Lassa, but her very destruction would insure a warning for the defenders of Cimmaron.
"I have decided to approve your plan, Commodore," Ashigara went on after a moment. "I will detach Ashanti and Sctthian to accompany Longbow, and your force will mae transit in two hours. The rest of the task force will follow eight hours later, in standard formation at half speed. We will remain beyond scanner range until you engage, but once you do, we are committed. Either you will destroy him before he dispatches a warning, or you will not. In either case, therefore, the task force will assume Formation Alpha and transit to Cimmaron immediately, without reconnaissance. There would be little time to evaluate the results of a probe recon even if we could send probes through without giving the warning we desire to prevent the picket from sending, so there is no point in delaying the inevitable." "I understand, sir," Han said, hoping she sounded equally "Very well, Commodore. Ashanti and Scythian will report to you shortly. Good hunting.
"Thank you, sir," Hah said, and the screen went blank.
"All stations report closed up, Captain." Lieutenant Chu was clearly more nervous over filling in for Sung than he was over the prospect of being blown to atoms, Han noted wryly.
'hank you, Lieutenant." She glanced at a side screen which held the faces of Sung and Reznick. "Are you ready, gentlemen?"
"Yes, sir," Sung said. "Data net is operational and ECM is active." "Very well. Let's go, Mister Chu." Longbow quivered as her drive engaged, and Hah felt a familiar queasiness as the grav-damping drive field warred briefly with the artificial shipboard gravity. There had to be a better way to do such things, she told herself absently, but her attention was on Battle One.
The battle-cruiser nosed into the warp point to Aklumar, and her entire hull writhed as the tidal stress of transit twisted her. It was a brief sensation, but one which could be neither forgotten nor described to anyone who hadn't felt it, and Han gritted her teeth against the sudden surge of nausea. Some people claimed not to mind warp transit, or even to enjoy it. Some people, she thought, were liars.
The tactical display shimmered as delicate, shielded equipment hiccupped to the warp stress. Then the image steadied as the computers stabilized, and she was staring at a blank screen. Within the range of Longbow's scanners, space was empty.
She felt herself relax as the emptiness registered. She'd expected it, but the confirmation was still a vast relief. NoWill all she had to do was sneak up on the ship vatching the Cimmaron junction.
"All right," she said softly, leaning back.
"I want a sharp watch. We should come into scanner range in--was she glanced at the chronometer his-comsixty-four hours and ten minutes, but ff he's decided to move, we may meet him much sooner and where we don't expect it. So stay on your toes.
He bridge crew made no reply, and she nodded in satisfaction. So far, she told herself, toying with the seal of her vac suit, so good.
"Iaere she is, sir," Lieutenant Chu said, and Han nodded as courteously as ff she hadn't already seen the small, red dot. A moment passed; then small, precise data codes flashed under the blip and it turned orange, indicating a cruiser class vessel. The red band of an enemy identification continued to pulse around it, but Longbow's computers INSUB.ECTION knestv ler now, and a quick search of the database provided her name, as well.
"She's the Swiftsure, sir," a scanner rating announced. "Thank you, de Stair," Hah said calmly, and watched the blip creep slowly across the display as her small squadron slid stealthily closer. She glanced at Battle Two, checking her own formation. Even Longbow's scanners couldn't have located Ashanti and Sctthian with certainty, if they hadn't known exactly where to look. Now it remained to be seen whether or not Swiftsure's scanners would detect them as they closed to missile range. The odds against it were astronomical, but it was possible.
"Commodore, we're coming into extreme range." It was Lieutenant Kan, her gunnery officer.
"I have a good setup." "Stand by, Mister Kan." Han watched the tactical display unblinkingly, her expressionless face hiding her flashing ttoughts as she considered. The range was long, but all three of her ships carried external loads of capital missiles, so she could fire now, banking on the fact that the motionless Swiftsure was an ideal, non-evading target.
But the scout cruisers lacked Longbow's more sophisticated fire control, so their accuracy would be poorer, and missiles were sublight weapons.
Firing at longer ranges meant longer flight times and gave Swiftsure a better chance to detect their approach in time to get a drone off. On the other hand, the closer her ships came, the more likely Swiftsure was to detect them, which made deciding exactly when to fire a nice problem in balanced imperatives.
Han felt herself tightening internally, but her bridge crew saw no sign of it. She made herself lean back in her command chair. Ten light-seconds. That was the range at which detection became almost inevitable. She glanced at the tactical display. Eleven light-seconds.
"Open fire, Mister Kan," she said quietly, and Longbow twitched as she flushed her external ordnance racks. The missiles lifted away, drives howling as they slammed across the vacuum between Han's squadron and her victim at sixty percent of light speed. She watched the speckled lights on her display as the missiles arrowed towards their target, and her brain concentrated on Swiftsure's blip, watching like a hawk, hoping the doomed cruiser would die unknowing. But another part of her hummed with a sort of elated grief.
The missiles bore down on Swiftsure, and Han heard a murmur of excitement around her.
Clearly their enemy had never suspected their proximity--comeven her point defense was late and firing wide. Only three missiles were stopped by her desperate, close-in defenses; the others went home eighteen seconds after launch in a cataclysmic detonation brighter than the star of Aklumar.
The dreadful fireball died, sucked away by the greedy emptiness, and Han stared at her display, her heart as cold as the void around her ship. There was nothing left. No courier drones--noto escape pods. Just, ,. nothing.
She stared at Battle One for perhaps five seconds, and somewhere deep within her was a horrified little girl. She was a warrior. This wasn't the first time she'd participated in the death of another ship and its crew. But it was the first time she'd struck down fellow Terrans from the shadows like an assassin.
She'd given them only warning enough to know death had come for them. Only enough to feel the terror.
She knew her success would save hundreds of her eom-rades when the Battle of Cimmaron began, but knowing did nothing to still her shame or the shocked sickness of triumph crawling down her nerves.
She turned her command chair to face Lieutenant Chu. ""Take position two light-seconds from the warp point on the task force approach vector, Mister Chu, then get the XO racks rearmed." Her face was serene. "We'll wait here for further orders." "Aye, aye, sir," Lieutenant Chu said.
He hesitated a moment, but his enthusiasm was too great to resist. "That was beautiful, sir.
Beautiful!" ""Thank you, Lieutenant," Hah said coolly, and her eyes met Tsing's. He regarded her steadily, his face unreadable as he reached for the pipe lying on his console. He stuffed it slowly, and Hah looked away.
"Battlegroup formed up for warp, sir." "'Thank you, Commodore Tsing." Hah drew a deep, u
nobtrusive breath, tasting the oxygen in her lungs like wine, and felt Longbow gathering her strength about her.
Her "beccutiful, deadly Longbow, ready to plunge through the maelstrom of warp, eager to engage her foes. And suddenly Han, too, was eager eager to confront her enemies openly. She allowed herself a last glance at the long, gleaming line of dots stretched out astern of her battlegroup, then touched a stud.
"Flagship." The voice in the implant behind her ear was brisk and professional, but she heard the tension blurring its edges.
"Commodore Li," she identified herself. "BG 12 ready to proceed." "Very well, Commodore." Han recognized the harsh voice of her admiral. "Execute your orders." "Aye, aye, sir. Commodore Li, out." She turned her head slightly, glancing at Commander Tomanaga and Lieutenant Reznick on her eom screen. "You heard the lady, gentleghen.
Full military, power, Commander Tomanaga." "Aye, aye, sir!" Tomanaga's face split in a sparkling grin of mingled tension and anticipation. His fingers flew over his command panel, and program codes flashed from his terminal to the datalink equipment sprawled across the electronics section. Rezniek watched them flicker across his monitor, ready to reenter them if any of his delicate circuitry, suddenly died, and Commander Sung sat beside him, feeling unutterablv useless away from his station on the bridge. His Battlegroup Twelve awoke. The individuality of its ships vanished into the 'vast, composite entity of their data net. Drives snarled, snatched awake by signals flowing from Tomanaga's computer, harnessed and channeled to Han's will, and the battlegroup hurled itself at the warp point.
Hah held her breath as the line of ships flashed towards the small, invisible portal--the tinv flaw in space which would hurl them almost two hundred light-years in a fleeting instant spent somewhere else. Oniv one ship at a time would enter that magic gateway; death was the penalty for ships which transited a warp point too close together. Two ships could emerge from warp in the same instant, in the same volume of normal space--but only for the briefest interval. Then there would be a single, very violent explosion, and neither ship would ever be seen Now BG 12 led the Terran Republican Navy's first offensive, and the battle-cruisers struck at the warp point like a steel serpent.
TRNS Bardiche vanished into the whirlpool of gravitic stress like a fiery dart, followed by Bayonet, and then it was Longbow's turn. Han drew one last breath, her mind focused down into a tight, icy knot of concentration, and Longbow leapt instantly from the calm of Aklumar into the blazing nightmare of Cimmaron.
"Incoming Fire!" Kan snapped.
"Missiles tracking port and starboard." Damn, those gunners had been fast off the mark!
Their missiles must have been launched even before they'd seen Longbow--launched on the probability that someone would be coming through from Aklumar to meet them.
Thank God Swiftsure had been less alert!
If the forts had been granted any more warning @u.
. if they'd had their energy weapons on line.
More missiles flashed towards her ships. She ignored them. There was nothing she could do about them. They were Kan's responsibility, his and the point defense crews"; she had responsibilities of her own, and through the blur of battle chatter and the soft beeping of prioriWill warning signals she heard Tsing hammering his keyboard as he and Tomanaga and Reznick fought to restabilize the net and feed her the data she needed.
There! The display cleared suddenly, the dots of her battlegroup clear and sharp, and they were all there!
Dwarfed by the massive, crimson dots of the forts they might be, but they had all survived, and suddenly the data net had them. Missiles flashed away as their XO racks flushed.
Brilliant detonations wracked the space around the fortresses, hammering their shields like Titans, and Han heard Kan's whoop of triumph. Their missile crews had been far more alert than their point defense gunners, she thought grimly. The first massive salvo went in virtually unopposed, and one of the forts was suddenly streaming atmosphere through shattered armor and plating.
But missiles were still screaming towards BG 12, and Han saw the dots of her ships flash crazily as Skywatch's warheads crashed among them.
Longbow's datalink took control of BG 12's point defense systems, dragooning them into a tigtlt-woven network in defense of the entire battlegroup, and Hah caught a brief impression of her two escort destroyers as their missile defenses flared like volca- noes against the incoming tide of destruction.
But not all of it could be stopped.
"Signal from Bardiche, Commodore! Code Omega!" Han's eyes darted to her lead ship, the one in the spot Tomanaga had wanted for Longbow. The ancient, inverted horseshoe-symbol of death for the ships of Terra--flashed across her blip, brilliant precursor of her doom. Then her dot vanished, and Li Hah no longer commanded four battle-cruisers.
"Close the range, Commodore Tsing.
Missiles to sprint mode. Stand by to engage with hetlasers." "Good hits on target two, sir!" Lieutenant Kan's voice rang in Han's ears. He had precious little time for reports, for it zsthis panel, feeding through the datalink, which controlledthe gunnery of the entire battlegroup, but he was right. Target two was an air-streaming ruin, its re-mastning weapons no longer synchronized with its fellows.
"Two's datalink is gone, Gunnery," she said, amazed at the calm sound of her own voice.
"Drop it. Concentrate on one and three." "Aye, sir. Fire shifting now!" "Falchion's out of the net, sir!" Tsing reported sharply. ""leAlso her to withdraw," Han said, not even looking up from Battle One. Without the protection of synchronized point defense, Falchion was helpless before the hurricane of missiles slashing in upon her. Her only hope was to break off. If she could. If the forts would let her go.
Time had stopped. Han's ship lunged around her, squirming desperately through the fortresses' fire.
Half her battle-cruisers gone already, and the engagement had only begun! She heard her voice, cold as ice, belonging to a stranger as it rapped out orders, fighting for her ships' survival with every skill she had been taught, every intuition she had been given by God. And it wasn't enough. She knew it wasn't enough. Longbow lurched as another missile slammed into her shields--and another. Where was Petrovna? Where was the rest of the task force?
Surely she and her people had been fighting alone for hours!
"Falchion--Code Omega," Communications reported flatly.
"Scanners report enemy fighters launching, sir! ETA of first strike ninety, seconds!" "Abort standard missile engagement," she heard herself say. "Stand by AFHAWK'S. Take the forts with beams, Chang." "Aye, aye, sir." Longbow lurched indescribably, and Han's teeth snapped together through her tongue. She tasted blood, and dust motes hovered in the air.
"Direct hit, sir! Laser Two's gone!
Heavy casualties in Drive Three!" "Initiate damage control. Tracking, anything on BG 117" "Battleaxe is emerging now, sir!" Thank God! Help was coming. If she could just hold on-- Longbow twisted, writhing as force beams pummeled her. The shields were down, and armor and plating shattered under the assault. Han felt her ship's pain in her own flesh as the shock frame hammered her, bruising her savagely through her vac suit.
The bridge lighting flickered and flashed back up, and she heard the deadly hiss of escaping air.
"Vac suits!" She snapped down the faceplat of her own helmet. It was too much. The price they were paying was too high.
"Here come the fighters!" Han saw them on Battle One, sweeping in from port in a wave. They were too tight, showing their inexperience in the massed target they gave her gunners--but there were so many of them!
"Engage with AFHAWK'S," she said coldly.
David Reznick no longer watched his monitor. He was too busy with his servos, fighting the mounting destruction of his jury-rigged equipment.
Repair robots scuttled through forests of cables like metal beetles, bridging broken circuits, fighting the steady collapse. He was dimly aware that Commander Sung had taken over the backup monitor as he himself strove desperately against
the inevitable. The vibration was even worse than he'd feared, yet somehow he kept the net on line despite the terrible pounding.
Then it happened. He was never certain, afterwards, exactly what it felt like. One moment he was crouched over his remotes, directing his army of mechanical henchmen -comthe next a wall of fire exploded through the compartment. He heard the screams of his datalink crew, and the air was suddenly thick with the stench of burning flesh.
He slammed down his visor in blind reflex, choking and gasping as his suit scrubbers attacked the smoke, and blinked furiously against the tears, fighting to see through the flames. He got only a glimpse of his monitors, but it was enough.
There was no hope of restoring the net, and the heel of his hand slammed down on the secondary datalink.