Command Decisions (Book 3 of The Empire of Bones Saga) (25 page)

“The other destroyer we caught didn’t have these. Hell, the AIs didn’t have these, according to the records on
Courageous
and the captured AI.”

“An unpleasant development, yes,” Reese said. “And another mystery. One thing that I will point out is how well made these things are.”

She examined the one closest to her again. “So?”

“Have you seen anything the AIs built that sported these kind of lines? These have curves and rounded edges. The lines of the weapons aren’t just functional; someone designed them to look menacing. That’s a human trait, to make weapons and vehicles look dangerous or fast. You could almost paint some kind of logo on the side and a mouthful of teeth up here. This was designed by human beings.”

Kelsey nodded slowly. “I can see that now. That doesn’t fit with the modifications done to this area, either. They cut the walls down and left stumps. Whoever built the outer hatch had an eye for functionality, but it’s ugly. These weapons came from somewhere else, but the AIs installed them. They retrofitted this ship to be unmanned. They control an empire full of humans. Why do this?”

“One more question to be answered.”

Jared’s face popped up on her feed. He was still dressed in his armored flight suit. “Kelsey, I’m aboard
New York
. What’s your status?”

“I’m fine. Are they holding you prisoner? If so, I can—”

“Nothing like that. Captain Kaiser has been a model host. I can leave whenever I like. I just wanted to let you know we sent a probe deeper into the other system. I want your team back on
Courageous
as soon as possible. We’re going after
Spear
.”

“We’ll pack up as soon as we can. We have some equipment we need to salvage first.”

He nodded. “I’m going back over with one of the destroyers. Follow as soon as you can. Mertz out.”

She turned to Reese. “We need one of these to take back with us. We need to know about any weak spots because we might be fighting these things before too long.”

“Perfect,” Reese muttered. “Just when you think you’ve hit rock bottom, the bad guys drill under you.” He gestured to Talbot. “Get one out. We’re taking it home with us.”

“Can I name it?” Talbot asked. “I want to name it.”

Kelsey covered her faceplate with her hands and sighed.

Chapter Twenty-Five

With the probes showing the flip point clear, Jared brought
Courageous
and
New York
over and maintained position in the flip point as their passive scanners pulled in data. There were no ships close to them under grav drive.

The probe he’d sent across earlier had made the trip to
Spear
. The damaged cruiser had only a single enemy destroyer near it. The other one was gone, perhaps returned to Boxer Station to bring more ships. Time was very short to effect a rescue.

It was now far too late to keep their presence under wraps and though the new Terran Empire was far away, a determined search would eventually find them. Breckenridge had done exactly the worst thing possible.

Courageous
had enough missiles left to take out the destroyer, but that was about it. The battlecruiser was almost empty. They would get one chance at this and they needed an edge.

“I’m going to make a high speed pass on that ship. When Kelsey gets over here, she’ll take the remaining fighter and we’ll get moving.”

Graves didn’t look convinced. “That didn’t work out so well for you last time, sir.”

“It depends on how you look at it.”

“You got lucky,” Graves corrected. “And you had to ram it with your fighter. Maybe those things are more capable in swarms, but not by themselves.”

“One took out a destroyer. That seems like a pretty good tradeoff to me. In any case, we don’t exactly have a choice. If they can get information from our people, or worse, our computers, the Empire is in deep trouble. A bunch of those destroyers could conquer us in a few months. We have to recover the prisoners and destroy that ship, no matter the cost.”

Zia turned in her chair. “
Ginnie Dare
just flipped into the system. They’ve launched the princess’ pinnace. ETA five minutes.”

“Send her down to the flight deck. She’s about to get a crash course in fighter operations.”

Graves winced. “Perhaps you might pick a different adjective. She did crash a pinnace.”

“She just happened to be on board when it crashed. She wasn’t flying it.”

“Have you seen some of the risks she takes?” Graves sighed. “I have a creeping sensation of doom.”

Jared had his fighter ready by the time Kelsey entered the flight deck. “Go get changed. Your flight suit is hanging up in the ready room. I’m doing a preflight on your bird now.”

“Shouldn’t I do that?”

“Maybe next time. Right up until the engagement, I’m going to have your fighter slaved to mine.”

It only took her a few minutes to change. The black flight suit made her look even smaller than she was. She stepped over beside him. “Do you have the manual uploaded to your implants?”

He sent it over to her. “There you go. Your bird is good to go. They have them configured for anti-ship operations, so no stunner. We each have eight anti-ship missiles. Between the two of us, we should be able to take out a destroyer. If we get lucky.

“We’ll launch, accelerate as hard as we safely can, and go ballistic. You’ll have the final control as we come in, but you should only need to fire as we fly past.”

“What do we do if more enemy ships come in?”

He smiled wryly. “We don’t ram them, if that’s what you’re asking. We pass by. Hopefully, they won’t see us.”

Jared helped her into her fighter and made sure she strapped down correctly. The ejection system was nothing to take lightly. “You access the fighter like you do your armor. The weapons target in much the same way. Flying, that’s a little more complex. You could probably manage simple course changes, but when the shooting starts, you might lose control. I’ll send last minute flight instructions to your autopilot. The only thing the computer cannot do is fire the weapons.”

“Couldn’t you do that remotely?”

He shook his head. “No. The Old Empire seemed to have firm ideas about a human in the ship firing the weapons. That’s the only reason I’m bringing you along. Let’s button up and get going. We can talk as we boost.”

They launched from the battlecruiser with no fanfare. He slaved her fighter’s controls to his and accelerated them as quickly as he dared. He’d need to reduce the acceleration as they got closer to the destroyer, but they’d have built up a lot of speed by then.

The fighters communicated on a shielded, encrypted implant link. He was able to status all of Kelsey’s systems. He could even see her through a vid feed in her console.

While he could’ve just communicated via implant, he preferred speaking. “We’ve got almost three hours before we have to kill our drives. Tell me about those things you found.”

“Owlet took the one we brought back to the lab as soon as we docked. It didn’t look like something an AI put together. There were touches to the design that indicated a human created it. Curves and pure design touches. They ripped the ship up so it could house them. That was AI work.”

“So, what would they be used for? Direct combat?”

She nodded. “That’s what it looked like. Since the Old Empire didn’t like putting machines in charge of weapons, I suspect these were designed by the Rebel Empire.”

“Or the Empire really got desperate at the end. Any idea how much range or speed those things have?”

“With that small drive, I’m thinking they’re very short range. They wouldn’t survive a drop into atmosphere. They could probably go ship to ship. I bet we find something inside them to give us a clue on how the enemy uses them. Maybe boarding actions.”

“Since they didn’t see fit to put anyone aboard that ship, they would need something like that.”

Kelsey was quiet for the next few minutes. “Why do you suppose there was no crew? The AIs haven’t been shy about enslaving people. And, based on what we’ve seen, the Rebel Empire is quite capable of crewing ships for them. What’s different here?”

That question had been bothering Jared off and on since he’d heard about the situation on the destroyer. “I don’t know. If we can get our people back and escape with enough lead time, perhaps we can find out.”

“What if we can’t rescue them?”

“If we can’t rescue them, we might have to make sure they can’t tell the enemy about the Empire.”

“How? By killing them? That has to be a last ditch solution.”

He sighed. “I hope to God I don’t have to make that call. I want to rescue them and slip away. But if I were in their place, I’d want someone to take me out before I broke. Remember the Old Empire. We can’t let that happen again.”

“Even if it means killing your fellow Fleet officers and crew?”

“Welcome to making command decisions. I never dreamed I’d be in such a situation, but can you honestly tell me you’d do anything differently?”

This time the silence went on for a long time. “No. Can we destroy
Spear
with what we have on these fighters?”

“Probably.
Courageous
can take out a destroyer if we can survive the firing run. Let me set up a few simulations on your console. We can at least practice while we wait.”

It turned out he was too optimistic. He hadn’t even finished setting the first scenario up when his fighter announced a situational change. Passive scanners had picked up five new drives entering the system from the flip point leading to Boxer Station. Even if they were only destroyers, there was no way they could fight them.

“Do you see the new arrivals?” he asked.

She said something unladylike. Too much time around the marines, he figured. She looked into the vid. “What do we do?”

“I take out
Spear
. You can change course to miss them.”

“Noble, but that won’t do anyone any good. Those ships will get to
Spear
before you do. They might get some of the crew off before you’re in range.”

“Not with fighting machines like you found. People have to breathe. They’ll have to send boats over to pick up the people. The destroyer we found didn’t have any. That might buy us some time.”

“Can we tap into the feed from the probe you have watching them? That might give us a better idea of what we’re facing.”

They’d moved the probe into position to watch
Spear
and her captor. The damage to the heavy cruiser was significant. They wouldn’t be taking her out of this system anytime soon. It would take less than half an hour for the new ships to reach her.

The destroyer guarding
Spear
looked like the one they’d just captured. The probe was too far away to see any of the boarding machines going back and forth, but he had no doubt that the war machines had killed or subdued Breckenridge and his crew.

The two of them watched as the new ships closed in. It became quickly apparent that one of the ships was significantly larger than a destroyer. Bigger even than
Courageous
. His stomach churned. There was no way they could defeat something like that.

The probe finally updated with information about the new ships. The big one wasn’t a warship. It was a huge open framework with engines.

It took him only a moment to grasp its purpose. It enclosed other ships and was able to flip them. They were going to take
Spear
back to Boxer Station.

The new destroyers fanned out and took positions all around what he’d decided to call the capture ship. They weren’t actively scanning, but they were far enough out to spot the fighters if they tried to make a run on
Spear
.

All he and Kelsey could do was watch helplessly as the new ship enveloped
Spear
and started back toward the flip point after only a few minutes. The escorts trailed along behind it.

When he was close enough to the probe to signal it without the enemy intercepting the signal, Jared set it on a course to follow the ships.

Their situation couldn’t be much worse. The enemy knew someone else had flip drives. They knew at least one other ship had gotten away. They might spot the probe and destroy it, but it wouldn’t tell them something they didn’t already know.

Well, other than the fact that someone was following them.

They watched on passive scanners as all the ships entered the flip point to Harrison’s World and departed. The enemy didn’t leave a watch behind.

“Do we head back to the ship?” Kelsey asked.

“No. We stay on course until
Courageous
signals us. They might have left a probe in the flip point. I would.”

It turned out they hadn’t. Graves called them just after their probe transitioned. Jared turned their fighters around as quickly as the laws of physics allowed.
Courageous
and the two destroyers boosted forward to meet them.

Their probe came back into the system ten minutes later. Jared went over the recording of the other system as the signal came in. He saw no signs of grav drives in the system, other than the ships that had just flipped, but that meant almost nothing. Given enough range, there could be hundreds of ships moving at slower speeds.

The probe detected communications signals coming from one area of the system. A lot of them. Probably Harrison’s World. Curiously, the ships escorting
Spear
hadn’t headed for the planet. They were going toward a point in the outer system consistent with the records of Boxer Station, the Old Empire Fleet base.

The mystery deepened. Why have unmanned ships when you had a Rebel Empire planet right there?

That gave them two missions. First, they had to scout the planet and get a better idea of who and what they were dealing with. Second, they had to probe Boxer Station and find a way to rescue their people. Or, worst case, make sure the enemy got nothing from them.

Jared sighed. He had no idea how they were going to make this work. And that probably meant death for the Empire.