Convoy Duty (2 page)

“
You’re absolutely right,
Lane.”

She swept the star field, took the
glasses away, blinked, and then looked again.

His personal device buzzed in his
ears.

“
Commander Allen.” It was
Davies, down on Deck Nine, where the ship’s boats were stored and
launched.

“
Yes?”

“
I’m not a hundred percent
sure, sir. But I think I’ve got something.”

“
I’ll be right down!” He
clapped Lane on the shoulder. “Keep looking. This is probably
nothing—and there may be more than one of them out
there.”

***

“
Well, I’ll be damned.” He
keyed for the Captain. “Sir.”

“
Report!”

“
There’s something out
there. Port, stern. Pitch, nine or ten. Yaw, left fifteen or so.
Can we put all active systems on that, please, and check all
passive screens…”

“
Do it!”

Allen keyed back to his ‘private’
channel.

“
Special Duty
Squad.”

The acknowledgements came
swiftly.

“
We’ve spotted something
here.” He ordered those who might be in a position to see it to
have a look for it. “The rest of you, keep looking. We have no
guarantee this is it. We have no way of knowing how many are out
there…”

He clicked off and went back to the
Captain.

“
Sorry, sir.”

“
There’s nothing out
there. We can’t see it.” Captain Rhodes’ eyes bored into his from
the small screen. “What exactly are you seeing?”

Distinctly unhappy with
their present vulnerability and still shocked by the suddenness
of
Draco’s
destruction, now just a ball of warm haze in the rear
screens, his patience was minimal.

“
I’m taking a look now,
sir.”

Shoving the device into his pocket, he
lifted the big glasses and had a look.

“
What a devious
device…”

“
Talk to me,
Commander.”

“
Sir. Still
observing.”

Ted Cruz, the ship’s morale officer,
came running up.

He stood at the Commander’s side. He
pulled out a communicator and relayed to the bridge.

“
Okay, sir. We’re going to
try and get a picture of this thing.” Rick thought for second. “It
might be well to steer towards it…but just give me a
second.”

Cruz repeated in soft but clear
tones.

Awkwardly, Rick dropped the glasses
and looked around for the camera, hastily brought by another
crew-member on clipped orders from Allen. The crewmember Halston
suddenly bent over, panting with his hands on his knees, having run
all the way from ship’s stores.

Allen found the object in the
view-finder. It was dimly illuminated by the reflected light of a
billion stars.

He snapped as many pictures as he
could in a minute, hands shaking all the while.

“
Do either of you know how
to use one of these?”

“
Ah, yes, sir.” Halston
took the camera, still gasping for breath.

“
Keep shooting. And keep
reporting, I want a constant stream of observation. Davies. You
have your own job to do, and I suggest you do it.” Commander Allen
turned and pelted towards the bridge.

“
Yes, sir!”

The object was right with them,
shadowing the convoy. With a little luck and some proper thinking,
they might still be able to get a shot at it.

Scene Two

When he got to the bridge, it was
buzzing with tension.

“
Any idea what that weapon
was?” The Captain leaned over the tactical board, but the harried
technical rating only shook his head and kept bringing up new
tidbits of data.

It might take a while to get a proper
analysis.

“
Commander.”

“
Sir.”

“
Speak.” Rhodes was famous
for his twenty-five words or less doctrine of situational
reporting.

“
Their shape is rounded.
They must have a stinger, maybe four or five out the back to
redirect our EM. They are keeping the nose to the enemy,
sir—us.”

The convoy’s slow speed
made that much easier for the enemy.
Nike
was a prime target.

“
Go.”

“
We’ll stream pictures in
a moment.” Allen lifted his communicator and spoke as the captain
listened.

“
Here we go.” The
communications officer, Marko, pointed at the first
half-dozen.

“
How far away are
they?”

“
Assuming internal
equipment not unlike our own, ah…their ship may be half or even a
third of our size—” Allen shrugged. “Shit. Between a hundred and a
thousand kilometres. Closer to a thousand, I’m
thinking.”

“
How in the hell did they
ever get that close...” The captain’s face flushed.

There were too many unknowns for a
more accurate fix. It was a grey, fuzzy dot on a black background
with no measurable reference points in the relativistic sense.
Still, it couldn’t be very big—

“
Sir.” A rating on the
sensor board called them over. “I’ve got something—it’s fuzzy, but
it’s there, in about the right place?”

“
What do we do?” Rhodes
looked at Allen.

“
They’re not firing.” He
looked at the board in front of them, and then looked at the bigger
display at the front of the cabin, showing the convoy making way
for
55 Cancri.

“
Ah…submarine
tactics…?”

The captain’s mouth was a hard
line.

He nodded.

“
Yes…they’ll try and avoid
detection. Live to fight another day.”

His eyes stabbed Allen.

“
Analysis of the
attack.”

“
They ignored the civvies,
sir.”

The captain bit his lip. The Fleet was
small, but the Confederation’s fleet was smaller. They would love
to cut down those odds.

His eyes came back.

“
How do we get a shot at
this guy?”

Allen nodded grimly.

“
I am with you all the
way, sir.”

He looked at the communications
officer.

“
Inform the Demon that
they have charge. Tell them to inform Eutropius and the rest of the
convoy that we are investigating. After that, all ears on
me.”

“
Roger.”

“
Captain?”

“
Yes.”

“
I have a
suggestion.”

The idea was to sniff
around the remains of the
Draco
, an ever-expanding cloud of
wreckage big and small, spewing hot gases, a fog of cold vapors,
and streaks of smoke where higher-velocity debris had left a
trail.

“
We have to assume that
they can see from inside of that thing. However, they may be
buttoned down to some extent.” Allen quickly laid it
out.

“
Right.”

“
And then, say, we find
something interesting. We’re looking for survivors. We swing the
bow around, nice and slow…ease in as close as we dare.”

Nike’s
heavy weapons might very well be in range. It was a question
of the distance, and the location of the enemy ship. There was the
problem of that unconventional rounded shape, sitting somewhere in
the middle of that fur-ball of interstellar dust and the enemy’s
own EM-deflecting counter-measures.

“
And what do you propose
to do then, Commander?”

“
Aim manually, at the
centre of that thing, Eyeballs and open sights, Captain. Fire
everything that we got, and don’t back off—if we turn our backs on
them
now,
they’ll
fire for sure.”

The captain smiled thinly.

“
Hmn. Obviously, we can’t
do that.” His eyes fell for a moment.

He straightened up and looked around
the bridge.

“
Prepare to attack. All
weapons will bear on target. Any questions?”

A ragged cheer could be heard through
the thin bulkheads. There were no questions.

The captain went to his
seat.

“
All hands. All right,
ladies and gentlemen. Strap in for high-g maneuvering.” The order
was repeated throughout the ship.

He looked over at Commander Allen,
strapping himself into his own chair.

“
The attack is yours,
Mister Allen.”

“
Thank you, sir.” There
was a sudden, delayed grief written all over his face.

He had just lost a very
good friend on
Draco.

***

Allen had quickly briefed the bridge
party and the various weapons rooms.

The plan was to use full
countermeasures, jamming, silent running, and passive systems. They
would be going to full stealth attack mode; and as soon as all that
came active, they would launch all available weapons.

“
Wire-guided?” They were
strictly for close-in battle, an event which had never happened in
the short history of interstellar warfare.

“
Everything,
Captain.”

The bridge got quiet.

“
On my mark. Three. Two.
One. Mark.”

The hands stabbed at the icons, the
defensive electronic systems went to full output and then the
boards lit up with weapons release.

***

The trouble with missiles was the
fireball on the end. You couldn’t see a damned thing otherwise from
the flaring screens. Something happened and the bridge went
wild.

“
Shut up!” Captain Rhodes’
voice cracked like a whip.

They stared fascinated at the big
forward screen.

“
Looks like we got him,
sir.” On the ECM panel, Crewman Vogel’s voice was a hushed
whisper.

Scene Three

The enemy ship was a glowing
fireball.

What came next was shocking in its
intensity.

“
Mayday! Mayday!
Mayday!”

The communications officer looked at
Rhodes.

“
What do I do,
sir?”

“
Acknowledge.”

The young man spoke into his
microphone.

“
Mayday acknowledged.
Identify, please.”

There was a squeal of radio
interference, as the burning ship veered erratically, the venting
process throwing off vector-stability. With systems damaged, they
were having trouble controlling her. She was no longer invisible,
but a flaring match in a dark room. All weapons systems went green
with lock-on.

“
This is the Confederation
Armed Vessel Constitution. We are on fire, approaching meltdown.
Please render assistance.”

Rhodes looked at Allen.

“
Commander?”

“
Demand unconditional
surrender and order them to abandon ship.”

Rhodes looked at young Marko on the
communications board.

“
Do it.”

Signals sped back and forth as Rhodes
and Allen consulted quickly. Top priority had to go to the
convoy.

The enemy ship was done
for.

But there was also much to be gained
here.

They watched as the first
of the Constitution’s boats was launched, heading away from
Nike
in their haste to
clear the doomed vessel, now spiraling around like a balloon with
the air coming out.

The odds of the entire crew getting
out were looking worse by the half-second.

“
Marko.”

“
Sir.”

“
Contact Eutropius. Ask
Captain Malone to take charge of the scene. They are to recover
prisoners, make intelligence assessments of the hulk, if there’s
anything left by then, and then they can rendezvous with the convoy
ASAP. Destroy anything useful that can’t be taken away.”

“
Ah, yes, sir.” Marko’s
face was intense with concentration as he relayed all of that
to
Eutropius.

***

There might have been
other enemy
subs,
as everyone had taken to calling them out there, but the rest
of the trip was uneventful.

The funny thing was that it was still
exciting.

Rick Allen was just in that fuzzy
moment before true alert status. It was his first good night’s
sleep in a couple of days, and he wiggled his toes in sheer bliss.
A couple more days and they could all rest…

There was a quick rap on the
door.

“
Shit.”

Rick threw the cover aside and
shambled to the door in his underwear. On a small ship, formality
took a back seat to an emergency.