Cluster Command: Crisis of Empire II (25 page)

The destroyers’ radar began tracking the DEs as soon as the Harmony vessels came out of the planet’s shadow. Before the DEs began to launch missiles, alarms went off on the destroyers. Their chimes called the changed situation to the attention of the whole crew, even the personnel who were most involved in targeting procedures for the ground attack.

For almost a minute, the destroyers knew they were under attack without being able to do anything about it. Each had deployed its payload of disruptor bombs in clusters harnessed to the vessels by spiderweb lattices of tubing and control cables.

The destroyers could neither attack with their own missiles, nor defend by using their secondary batteries against the incoming salvoes, until they managed to jettison the bomb clusters. Nothing the Harmony vessels could do would match the destruction a destroyer would achieve by detonating a disruptor bomb thirty meters from its hull with an unlucky “defensive” bolt.

The leading destroyer was far enough into its engagement sequence that, by rippling off its disruptors without their final course corrections, it was able to clear its secondary batteries in time to survive. The bombs vaporized in Strya’s atmosphere as harmlessly as any other bits of space junk, but the oncoming missiles vaporized as well, clawed out of space by plasma bolts and concentrated volleys from the destroyer’s barbette-mounted repulsors.

The second Apex vessel attempted to abort its run, but the bomb deployment system was checked and cross-checked with a variety of fail-safes. The design team hadn’t wanted to be responsible for the loss of a ship which attempted to recover a lattice whose disruptors were still armed. Twelve seconds after the lead destroyer was out of danger and maneuvering in Strya’s gravity well to pursue the DEs, a Harmony missile intersected the second ship. Those on the destroyer’s bridge knew they were all going to die in the next microsecond.

And they did.

###

On the bridge of the Harmony destroyer escort
Oliphant,
Ensign Laurin Murphy began whooping from her acceleration couch, “We got ’em, Captain! We got ’em!”

“Yup,” said Lieutenant Harkesh Sizbo, commanding officer of the
Oliphant.
“And if you hadn’t stole the bottle outta my couch here, I’d have something useful t’do before they get
us.”

Sizbo was seventeen years in grade if you counted from the first time he’d made senior lieutenant as a young officer on the way up fast. He’d been able to party all night, then solve tactical problems with a ruthless brilliance that astounded scoring officers as well as his fellows who’d tried to prepare in more pedestrian ways.

Sizbo was a commander awaiting promotion to captain the night he was found too drunk to rouse when Delavart rebels hit Hachima Base in a desperate attempt to get weapons. This time, there were no scoring officers for Sizbo, only a Board of Inquiry.

And the need to explain the twenty-three naval personnel killed in the disaster.

The Board broke Sizbo two grades, with a jacket notation that guaranteed he would never again be promoted. Many of Sizbo’s fellow officers—never his equals, but now his superiors—expected him to commit suicide.

And maybe they were right, but instead of a gun, Sizbo decided to finish himself with the weapon that had already killed his career. His junior officers over the years had made that more difficult, by quietly finding and flushing the bottles that Sizbo concealed on the bridge.

“But Captain,” Murphy protested, “we got one. Now—”

“Now the other one eats the both of us for breakfast!” Sizbo snapped. “Don’t they teach you little turds t’
count
at the Academy anymore?”

As Sizbo spoke, his fingers input control changes through the pressure-sensitive pad on his right armrest. In the holographic plot tank in the center of the bridge, the DEs paired courses were narrow blue lines curving toward Strya’s inner moon while the orange track of the destroyer showed it was using both the atmosphere and gravity of Strya to enhance its forced orbit back to the action.

“But there’s two—”

“And
one
bleedin’ destroyer has 60 percent greater throw weight than
both
these bleedin’ DEs together,” Sizbo interrupted with a logic as remorseless as that of a missile guidance system. “As well as a higher power-to-weight ratio and twice the initial velocity—which they will use to run us down before—”

The
Oliphant
lurched as her side thrusters kicked in with violent determination.

“Ha!” Sizbo snarled at the plot. “Foxed ye, ye bastard!” The
Oliphant’s
course jogged, while that of her sister ship, the
Porpentine,
conformed as nearly as possible. The difference between the original curve and that with the added correction was slight, but it took the DEs into the moon radar shadow just before their pursuer could achieve a missile lock.

“Sir, could we lead them back to our own—” Murphy began.

“Shit, there it goes,” Sizbo muttered.

“Sir?” Murphy asked. Then she saw the blips of missiles separate from the destroyer and realized what her senior had known when he saw the orange track twitch like a dog coming out of the rain. A slight change in the destroyers mass and weight distribution; of no importance unless you know you’re the target for the mass being ejected from your pursuer’s missile batteries.

“Eighteen seconds for the
Porpentine,”
Sizbo said matter of factly. “ ’Bout a hundred and forty-seven fer us, I make it.” He grimaced. “Missile Room,” he said, the words keying the artificial intelligence that routed the vessel’s communications.

“Roger.”

“Dribble ’em out, Duncan,” Sizbo said while his hand fumbled between the cushions of his acceleration couch. His bottle was still gone. “One every three seconds.”

“Sir, unless we volley all we’ve got at once, we won’t get through their—”

“Duncan,” Sizbo interrupted calmly, “we
ain’t
getting through their secondaries. Period. So stop dreamin’. But we can let ’em take out some of their own hardware while they’re stoppin’ ours. So we live a few seconds longer.”

“Roger, Sir.” The
Oliphant’s
hull rang as a single missile left its launch cradle.

“Sizbo out,” the captain said. Then, as if someone had thrown a switch in his drink-sodden mind, he said, “Shit. Shit!
Shit!”

Again, with apparent calm, “Angie was a friend a mine, y’know, kid. Much as a drunken old fart’s got friends, I mean.”

“Maybe Lieutenant Angell will abandon—” Murphy said, then stopped as the line of the
Porpentine’s
course ended in a ball of blue light that expanded and dissipated in the plot.

The
Oliphant’s
secondaries hammered briefly. The missiles they destroyed were only those latecomers which passed through where the
Porpentine
had been, but found nothing remaining which was large enough to detonate their warheads.

“Shit,” Sizbo repeated softly.

His fingers continued to play on the command console. Pearly lines and beads, alternate courses, alternate impact points, flickered their ghost lives across the plot.

The secondaries began continuous fire, while the
Oliphant’s
own occasional missiles shuddered loose like drops attempting to titrate a solution of death.

“Commo,” ordered Sizbo. “Flagship, Priority One.”

“Ready,” responded the AI when it had the
Bremerton’s
Ready to Receive signal.

“Offset Point Twelve,” Sizbo said. “Five-five-three, one-seven-nine, nine-zed-niner. All you bleedin’ got. Out.”

“I don’t understand,” Murphy cried as her eyes shifted between her CO and the plotted intersection points, finding no hope either place.

“Merikur will,” Sizbo grunted. “Or he’s another dumb bastard.” After a moment he added. “Wisht you’d left me the bottle this once, girlie.”

###

“He got the offset point wrong,” snapped the
Bremerton’s
Missile Control Officer. “That’d put them—”

“Captain Yamaguchi,” Merikur said with his eyes on the plot, “I would be grateful if you ordered a three-salvo launch to those coordinates.”

“Missiles control,” said Merikur’s flag captain. “Plotted coordinates. Battery three—launch!”

“Aye, aye, Sir!” said the missile control officer through tight lips. The first salvo rippled off within two seconds, aimed at a point in empty space. The loading cradles cycled, pulsed as another dozen missiles fired, and cycled again.

“If I may point out, Captain,” said the MCO coldly, his eyes carefully averted from General Merikur, his superior’s superior, “the target chosen is beyond the burn range of our missile. They’ll be on ballistic courses at that point, unable to maneuver even in the event that a target chooses to manifest itself.”

“They won’t need to maneuver,” said Merikur, continuing to stare at the plot.

“With all respect, Sir—” the MCO continued.

The blip of the
Oliphant
shuddered. Not a hit, not quite. One of the DEs missiles had detonated a hostile weapon within a hundred meters of the
Oliphant.
The doubled blast shook the little vessel’s hull, voiding a cloud of gas and fragments which looked, for a moment, as if the Apex missile had gotten lethally home.

“Oh,” said the MCO suddenly.

“Yeah,” agreed Merikur. “Sizbo’s running a course reciprocal to the missile plot he gave us. Captain Sizbo. That’s why he’s sure where the destroyer’s going to be.”

“He’ll, ah . . . ” Yamaguchi suggested, “ . . . take evasive action at the last . . . ?”

“No, he won’t,” Merikur said simply. “If I know Siz—Captain Sizbo, he already knows exactly where the missiles will get through the
Oliphant’s
forcefield and secondaries. By the time she reaches the plot point he gave us, she’ll be a cloud of vapor good for nothing except screening
our
salvoes from the destroyer’s sensors.”

“She’s going,” someone on the bridge muttered, but they could all see it happening. A twitch in the line of the
Oliphant’s
course as a missile warhead injected sidethrust. Three more missiles, striking almost simultaneously after the first knocked out the DEs fire control.

Half a dozen escape capsules separated from the ravaged
Oliphant.
They had enough mass to activate the seeker heads of the remaining Apex missiles in multiple pinpricks of light that faded almost at once from the plot.

The
Bremerton’s
missiles stabbed through the gaseous remains of the DE and intersected with the
Oliphant’s
slayer. The Apex destroyer vanished utterly.

“Wow!” said the MCO.

Merikur swallowed. “Must still have had disruptors in her hold,” he said, trying to keep the catch out of his voice. Harshly he added, “Gentlemen, we have a battle to fight!”

###

Miles below, Dolang Prelder paused stolidly behind his plow to watch the ball of fire race across the sky. He didn’t know it was an Apex destroyer, didn’t know people had died defending him from it, and didn’t know the battle still raged on.

Such things were beyond his comprehension. There was harrowing to complete. Even with the stench of the dead overseers only recently gone, there would still be quotas to fill. If not theirs, then someone else’s. That’s how it had always been, and that’s how it would always be. Prelder clucked to his draft nanders and continued across the field.

###

The bridge crew cheered as the second Apex destroyer went down. Everyone except Merikur, whose mouth formed a hard straight line. The loss of two DEs and God knows how many people was nothing to cheer about. But at least they had delayed delivery of the disruptor bombs. That was something. But at the cost of killing their own. There would never be a time to cheer about that.

The surviving vessels of both squadrons had reformed. The Apex battleships cruised side by side about fifty or sixty miles apart. Any ship which ran the gauntlet between them would be caught in a lethal crossfire. The enemy cruiser matched vectors and velocity to the rear, the third point of an equilateral triangle.

The individual ships were strong, but they were too few to provide interlocking support. Harmony attacks on either flank would face only those missile and plasma batteries on a single Apex battleship. The battleships had launched twenty-four interceptors, but that wasn’t sufficient screen to blunt the thrusts Merikur’s force could make.

Merikur had split his force into two elements: one made up of the
Bremerton
and the carrier, the other consisting of the two destroyers and two troop ships.

The second element had orders to hang back, staying out of the conflict altogether if possible. The destroyers were no match for the massive battlewagons, but they should be able to protect the troop ships from enemy interceptors.

So it was up to a single cruiser and carrier to take on two ships of the line and a cruiser. Merikur knew that it looked worse than it really was. In terms of pure destructive power, his carrier was almost the equal of a battleship. She carried a hundred and fourteen operational aerospace interceptors inside her hull, each capable of killing a battleship with a lucky shot, and each a separate target for the enemy to track and worry about.

Merikur had held them back until now in an effort to conserve the fuel his interceptors drank in such enormous quantities. If launched too soon, they’d have to refuel in the middle of the battle.

Meanwhile, the missile and torpedo duel had grown worse. Each of the opposing battleships could ripple three times the throw weight of the
Bremerton.
If Merikur didn’t launch interceptors soon, the cruiser would be quickly overwhelmed.

The deck shuddered under his feet as if to emphasize that point. They’d taken a direct hit from a nuclear torpedo. The force field must have held or he’d be dead.

If two more torpedos hit simultaneously, he would be.

Turning, Merikur found Yamaguchi’s troubled eyes already on him. “Hold thirty interceptors back for fuel rotation and reserve. Launch the rest.”

“Aye, aye Sir,” Yamaguchi said, and the orders went out.

* * *

A hot launch is akin to climbing into a bullet and being fired downrange. The only difference is that ten miles after you leave a launch tube, you get to steer the bullet . . . if you’re smart enough, fast enough, and crazy enough.