Hegemony (19 page)

A second later, the singularity reactors failed with a fusion flash.

"My God," said Muir.

Freya was silent. Seconds passed.

There was a third series of detonations, the last of the enemy interceptors firing their warheads.

For a long handful of seconds, Freya's mind could not seem to reconcile the data she was seeing from the sensors feed.
Conquering Sun
was gone. But that was an impossibility. But that was a fact.

She wished she was in her biosim avatar, so that she could focus her mind with the ritual of a deep breath, or the sensation of pressing her hands against something. The sensors data feed showed the cloud of plasma that had been the assault-ship slowly expanding.

"Sensors," she said, "were there any escape pods? Did any of our interceptors make it?"

"Can't see it yet," said Sensors. "The... the debris and plasma are still too dense."

"Get on it. Communications, get our systems ready. Get a link to any escape pods or surviving interceptors, ASAP, and get the crews transferred aboard. Medical, stand by with neural nets for survivors."

"I'm not picking up any emergency signals. No escape pods," said Sensors, sending the "words" very softly.

For a moment Freya had hoped, somehow. But now that last burst of detonations made sense. The enemy interceptors had deployed their anti-ship warheads against any escape pods or interceptors that might have made it. Against such small targets, the anti-ship warheads were overkill, and the few survivors from the
Conquering Sun
had vanished in those last megaton-yield nuclear flashes.

Freya was silent. She had detached herself from the command data stream of
Ice Knife
, as if she were in an isolated neural net. Alone.

Ice Knife
was still burning at seven gees plus, aiming for an intercept with the enemy lance-ship. Freya had no idea what she would do. It was just empty data; vector lines and projected intercept points.

Muir was asking her something. She needed to reply, but the data did not mean anything. The facts were impossible, so she stayed silent.

It was the comm officer who brought her back.

"Captain, we're picking up a low-level radio signal."

"What? Who?" Freya tried to make herself care.

"It's an emergency beacon from an interceptor."

"One of theirs?"

"No. It's ours; one of the
Conquering Sun
's," said Comm.

"Plot it," said Freya, suddenly alert.

"It's on a high magnitude vector, outbound, at plus sixty-six by thirty-two, better than six thousand KPS relative.

"It's one of the interceptors from the
Conquering Sun
's attack wave," said Muir.

Freya said nothing for a long moment, but now there was something that began to make sense. She could imagine the vector lines, even without using the capacity of the command neural net she was inhabiting, she could see them in her mind. And suddenly the vectors in her mind showed that there was something she could do... something more than just saving the interceptor, if there was anyone in it to save.

"We need a vector," she said.

"Captain?" asked Muir.

"We need to generate a vector..."

The avatar face of Demi-Captain Obin Meryl of the Hegemonic swift-ship
Skyrunner
was grave, adding false years to his narrow bony countenance. His thick hair was silver; fashion rather than nature, but, despite its metallic gleam, it only made him look old.

"Captain Tralk, I've already said I acknowledge your rank seniority, but that does not mean I am to be excluded from consultation now!"

"Captain Meryl, we are not undertaking a consultation, I am giving you orders as ranking captain on station. I'm taking full responsibility from here." Demi-Captain Freya Tralk's voice was measured, and no trace of anger distorted her face.

The petulant fool would pick this sort of time to start an elaborate game of precedence and procedure! She forced back anger, and again addressed the other captain.

"Captain Meryl, I am not ordering an attack on the last ship. It is irrelevant whether or not it is damaged."

"God damn y-" Meryl was somewhat less composed now, but he caught himself, stopping his rising shout with almost whiplash abruptness. "Captain Tralk, that hostile just destroyed a Hegemonic assault-ship. He's almost certainly badly damaged. We have an obligation to seek vengeance, and we have a decent chance of making a successful attack run with our anti-ship warheads. That is what swift-ships are
for
."

"No, Captain Meryl. The task of swift-ships is scouting first and then attack, not attack and then scouting. Unless you can guarantee that Fleet Command or the local defense force command already has the data that we have recorded on that new Coaly weapon system, these two ships are not expendable.

"If I had a third ship, I'd send it to take this data, and you and I could try our chances with that lance-ship, but unless you have a spare swift-ship in your pocket," …
up your ass
, she wanted to shout… "we are not attacking. A single swift-ship has no chance of surviving an attack run; both our ships together have no guarantee of surviving if we attack. And I will
not
risk this data by sending both of us on an attack run."

"Then what are my orders, Captain Tralk?"

"You will put
Skyrunner
onto this vector, per my orders. Now."

"You've been vectoring us back and forth with no sense to it!" exploded Meryl.

"You may make a protest when we reach a higher authority, Captain," said Freya. "For now, this vector, now, at maximum acceleration!"

"For God's sake, what are we vectoring
to
?"

Freya Tralk, by bitter grace of fate now the single greatest authority of the Hegemony of Suns in this star system, was beginning to imagine she was actually in her biosim avatar. That was bad, she knew. She had been in the command 'net too long. A psychosomatic "headache" was a constant companion now, since she had watched the
Conquering Sun
destroyed.

At least she knew her mission now. At least
that
was clear. First was to try for the rescue of a possible survivor. It was going to take a substantial vector change to get within reliable comm-laser range of that lone interceptor, but the swift-ships could do it. Reaction mass was getting very low, but she still had enough to try for the rescue. After that, it would be time to start thinking about refueling. So long as she had enough delta-vee available to kill her vector when she made the FTL transit back to the Yuro system, she would have no trouble rendezvousing with a fuel tanker.

But there were things to do before that happened. Captain Meryl of the
Skyrunner
had wanted to attack the last lance-ship, and if she had three or four swift-ships, she might have succumbed to the temptation. Swift-ships could attack a larger ship, building up a high closing vector and deploying dozens of heavy anti-ship warheads. A swift-ship had far more firepower than an interceptor, but with an emergency maximum sustained acceleration of less than nine gees, they could not evade enemy lasers. An interceptor could change its vector so radically that, given laser blinding of enemy sensors, the tracking mechanisms that steered a hostile laser array were hard pressed to lock onto one. A swift-ship had no such defense. Its bow-shields were stronger, but its only real hope for surviving an attack was to build up a huge inbound vector and deploy a wide spread of warheads, and then to break off. If it went well, that would force a defending ship to concentrate its fire on trying to shoot down the inbound anti-ship warheads, leaving the swift-ships to escape. In the best case, some of those warheads would get through even so. But that required enough swift-ships to deploy a huge shoal of anti-ship warheads. With only two ships she would have to get too close to make an attack count and would have nowhere near enough firepower to survive the attack run. There was no way she was going to order an attack. There was something else she had to do.

From the moment that the fact of the
Conquering Sun
's destruction had finally penetrated into her stunned mind, she had seen her mission with a superb clarity that Captain Ari-Kani would have probably approved of. She had to find out about the unprecedented weapon that had killed the assault-ship, and she had to get that information away to higher authority. And now, finally, she knew how to do it.

In a way, the Coaly's use of his seemingly impossible interceptor salvo had been tactically brilliant and strategically foolish. Brilliant in the way he had lured in the high value assault-ship for destruction, even at the cost of one of the Coalition lance-ships; a very favorable exchange. Foolish in that the unsupported lance-ship could not hope to catch two well-handled swift-ships. The secret of the new weapon, at very least the fact that it existed, would be out now, unless some other secret weapon could enable the surviving lance-ship to catch her.

But her task was not merely to escape, running with a tale of woe, much like the freight-liner
Ulia's Flower
had done. She needed more information. She needed a close look at that lance-ship; close enough that Fleet Intelligence could begin to make sense of her unprecedented armament. And
that
was a task purpose-made for a swift-ship.

Her initial plan, after she had squelched a desire to make an attack run just as that idiot Meryl still wanted to do, was to send
Ice Knife
and
Skyrunner
on a vector dangerously close to the surviving lance-ship. She planned to have the two swift-ships pass on opposite sides of the enemy, limiting his ability to concentrate laser power to blind them both. If they used most of their reaction mass to build a fast vector, the odds at least one of the swift-ships surviving were not too bad... especially if the enemy was damaged.

But
Skyrunner
's captain's obstinate insistence on a retaliatory attack made that option unworkable. She could not trust him to refrain from some desperate attempt at vengeance if the lance-ship killed
Ice Knife
.

But she had to get that data. A close look might give her the secret of how a lance-ship had matched the firepower of an assault ship. It was data she had to have... data the Hegemony of Suns had to have. Because unless she missed her guess, the Hegemony and the Coalition were at war.

Commander Grantsen took
a deep breath. That was possible now that the ship was drifting with no acceleration. The command pod had released him from the prison of engulfing acceleration gel and neural interface in which he had fought the battle.

The alarms were silent now, though vid-screens in his command pod showed flashing damage warnings in a half dozen places aboard the Coalition lance-ship
Swift Liberty.

We made it, Grantsen thought. We live. Others die but we live. The
Righteous Justice
was gone. Three hundred crew, gone. Ship-commander Tanaka Laura, an old comrade, gone. Twenty-three of his own crew, gone; victims of hits that his ship had suffered. And the damned oversight officer was still alive.

But the enemy assault-ship was gone too. A Hegemonic assault-ship, one of the monarchs of their space fleet, and he had killed it. It was an amazing victory. And even though the
Righteous Justice
was gone, it was still a vindication of the new weapons system.

In a way, it was almost better that the two little swift-ships had seen it, and would report. They were too far away to see the details of his ship; they could not bring back information on
how
he had destroyed the assault-ship. But they would report the fact that he
had.
How would the Hegemony react to that? How would they guard themselves, when, as far as they knew, every Coalition lance-ship might be able to destroy an assault-ship? Something like that could hurt them, could undermine the fear with which the ghouls who ruled the Hegemony dominated the living humans under their control.

The two swift-ships were too far away too worry about, now. They had lit their drives and boosted hard on a vector that was almost reciprocal to his. He did not know why they had not simply made an FTL transit to carry the news of their defeat, but they were streaking away from him at more than two percent of the speed of light, more than twenty million kilometers away already.

As soon as damage control was done doing what they could, he would initiate an FTL transit. His ship needed more reaction mass, and time for more extensive repairs. His crew could not make good all the damage, but he suspected that the ship could be brought to better than 90% readiness, given enough time. He could do nothing here, though. As soon as those swift-ships were gone, he would have to expect another enemy force, and the fact was that while the enemy might think he had an assault-ship's firepower, at this point he would be badly endangered by a squadron of swift-ships. In another few hours, he would take the
Swift Liberty
to a pre-selected, empty system, where no Hegemony ship would bother him.