Jump Pay (24 page)

Parks started to say something else, but a quick gesture from Bal Kenneck stopped him. "Hold on a second," Parks told Nimz. Then he lifted his visor.

"I just had a call from Olsen," Kenneck said. "CIC has detected a new fleet coming in-system full blast.
They're not ours.
"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The physics of interstellar travel are complex. A full development of the Loughlin-Runninghorse equations—the theoretical breakthrough that had made possible both antigravity (or projected artificial gravity fields) and hyperspace drives—can take days to run even on a network of the fastest molecular supercomputers in the galaxy. As Einstein developed upon Newton, with relativity becoming important only under extreme conditions, the Loughlin-Runninghorse expansion becomes necessary only where the equations of relativity and quantum mechanics start yielding infinities. The earlier systems remain valid, of course, within their proper domains.

It is not, however, essential to understand the mathematics of hyperspace to notice some of its practical results. Of military importance is the fact that a ship, or a fleet of ships, entering or exiting hyperspace, must do so at a certain minimal speed and at a certain minimum distance from any large concentration of matter... such as a star or a planet. Below the minimum speed (which also depends on the mass of the ship), there is simply no transition from space to hyperspace. The distortions inflicted by extraneous collections of matter can lead to more chaotic results—in both the scientific and mundane meanings of the phrase. The precise safety margin remains uncertain. In the course of the Accord-Schlinal War, that margin had been shrunk, in practice. Where once a ship would not have dared emerge from hyperspace within less than eight hours' normal space travel time from a planetary mass, four hours was now considered standard.

A daring skipper might shrink that to three-and-a-half hours.

—|—

Admiral Benjamin H. Kitchener had been sleeping when the Schlinal fleet emerged from hyperspace. "Suddenly emerged" would have been a melodramatic redundancy. The transition between normal space and hyperspace was always abrupt, in either direction. An object was either in normal space or it was in hyperspace. There was no gradual appearance as it moved from one to the other, no "ghostly" transformation. To the limits of measurability, the transition was instantaneous as the drives realigned from one medium to the other.

The admiral had been sleeping after more than sixty hours of being awake with no more than a handful of ten-minute naps. If the campaign had gone according to schedule, the troops would already have been back aboard the ships of the fleet and the fleet would have been on its way out of the system already. If.

A call from the bridge woke Kitchener. He had, at least, been sleeping in his clothes. He had done no more than peel off his shoes before collapsing across his bunk, only forty-five minutes earlier. His feet had been aching from all of the standing he had been doing. He didn't bother to put his shoes back on before hurrying to the bridge.

"Talk to me," Kitchener commanded as he entered the bridge.

Capricorn's
captain, Marley Quince, pointed at the largest monitor in the chamber. "Twelve vessels, all large," he said. "Coming on fast. They'll reach us in three hours and forty-one minutes and be in position to launch shuttles within minutes after that."

"
If
they're carrying troops," Kitchener said. "They might just be transport for the troops already there, ready to take them on for whatever the Heggies staged them here for."

"No, sir," Quince said. "Neither empty troop ships nor commercial freighters would have come out of hyperspace that close, that fast."

The admiral nodded his agreement. "Well, in any case, they couldn't have received word of our attack until they came out. That means they've had no more than a couple of minutes to start making their plans." He moved to a compsole and started keying in demands for data. "A scheduled arrival," he added.

"They'll still have their complement of space fighters and heavy weapons," Quince pointed out. "They're a threat to us."

Kitchener called CIC. "Give me a plot to intercept the incoming vessels as far out as possible. The object is to slow down any reinforcement for the Schlinal forces on planet without taking unnecessary chances with our ships."

He turned to face Quince again. "Has Dacik been notified?"

"I called him immediately after I paged you, Admiral, but I didn't have many details for him."

Kitchener studied the screen of data on the monitor in front of him. "All capital ships. We could be talking about four regiments."

Quince whistled softly. He had been following the news from the surface closely enough to know what that would do to the Accord's land forces.

"I think I'd better talk to Dacik myself," Kitchener said. "I'll do it from my cabin." He glanced down at his feet. "I seem to find myself out of uniform."

—|—

Kleffer Dacik turned away from his staff and walked a dozen paces. The general had felt blood draining from his face at the first sentence out of Captain Quince's mouth. Kitchener's confirmation and the extra details didn't make Dacik feel any better. He listened without comment to the admiral's recital. It didn't take long. Afterward, Dacik remained silent for nearly thirty seconds before he responded.

"I hope you can handle the majority of them before they get to us, Ben. Three or four regiments hit the ground, we're in big trouble. I mean
big
!"
That,
he thought,
is understatement, not hyperbole.

"We'll do what we can, Kleff, but you know what it's like," Kitchener said. "We're unlikely to do major damage to the enemy fleet. They're unlikely to do major damage to us." The thorn and the rose. Battle in space was difficult and, at least in Accord experience, rarely decisive.

Kitchener paused for so long that Dacik felt compelled to stick an "I know" into the silence.

"There is one option I think you should consider, Kleff," the admiral said then. "We've got three-and-a-half hours before the Schlinal fleet reaches us. Three-and-a-half
safe
hours. Can you evacuate before then?"

Dacik closed his eyes, squeezed them shut. Evacuate. Withdraw. Retreat. He took a deep breath and let it out. He
could
make a case for it. They had already destroyed considerable enemy war materiel, inflicted thousands of casualties, taken nearly two thousand prisoners. They had already done enough damage to cripple whatever plans the Schlinal warlords might have had for the people and supplies they had been caching on Tamkailo.

"We'd have to get the last of our people off of the ground in, what, two-and-a-half hours?" he asked.

"About that," Kitchener said. "Takes about fifty minutes to get a shuttle up and docked, especially with traffic. If the last of your people are off the ground in two-and-a-half hours, that will give us perhaps twenty minutes to start boosting out to a jump point before the Heggie fleet can get to us. With that kind of a lead, we'll be home free."

Tempting,
Dacik thought. But... "I don't think it's possible. Two hours ago, yes; maybe even ninety minutes ago. But I've got men inside the Heggie base, trapped. And the rest of the 13th is right around the base at the north end of this peninsula, too close to the enemy to get shuttles in and out safely, and there's not much chance of either ending opposition on the ground or withdrawing in two-and-a-half hours. Especially the reccers pinned down inside the enemy base."

"I still think you should consider evacuating what you can, Kleff," Kitchener said. "You have to balance the loss of a few men against the possible loss of your entire command. And my fleet."

Behind Dacik, the members of his staff stood and stared. They couldn't hear either side of the conversation. From its length, though, they could easily deduce that it wasn't good news. The general had mentioned the enemy fleet as soon as Captain Quince passed along the first report.

"No," Dacik said after more than a minute. "We don't withdraw."

"Kleff—" Kitchener started, but Dacik cut him off.

"It's not just that I don't want to abandon men to the Heggies, though that
is
part of it. The Heggies don't take prisoners. They kill anyone they capture, as far as we've ever seen. No POWs have ever come home in this war. But, still, that's only part of my reasoning." This time, he paused only very briefly. The admiral waited him out.

"You remember the briefings before we started out on this campaign," Dacik said. "A chance to stop a major Schlinal invasion... somewhere, maybe a chance to bring the war to an end. If we withdraw, the war goes on for certain. We've done a lot of damage, but there are still two or three regiments of Heggies on the ground, plus however many are coming in, and at the stores in Site Charley. If we stay, even if we end up getting wiped out, there's a good chance that we'll do enough damage to the Heggies that they won't be able to mount another offensive against the Accord anytime soon. It might end the war.
That
is what I've got to put into the balance, Ben. That's our mission here."

"Okay, Kleff." The resignation was obvious in Kitchener's voice. "We'll make our stand here, win or lose. I'll do what I can to cut down on the odds for you. And I'll get a message drone on its way out before the Heggie fleet reaches us. Things go really bad up here, you might have to wait a couple of months for a ride home." Radio messages were limited to the speed of light in normal space. For more urgent communications over interstellar distances, small unmanned rockets equipped with hyperspace drives could be launched with documents or recordings. It would take weeks for the message to get through, but not the years that radio would have taken.

"I'll make sure my exec has transmitted the latest additions to our battle log to CIC," Dacik said. "Send that along with your message, Ben."

"Right. Good luck, Kleff."

"The same to you. I'll buy you a drink when we get back to Albion." He almost said
if
.

—|—

The nearest building of the Heggie base was only 250 meters from Echo Company. But there was a line of Heggie defenders between them, on higher ground than Echo. A series of machine gun emplacements with overlapping fields of fire was the clincher. The advance by the four companies of the 13th that had landed at the airfield had come to a complete halt.

"We're going inside," Dem Nimz told what was left of his platoon—sixteen men, not including himself. Barely more than a fourth of the number he had started with. "We'll set four small charges on the door, blow it off, then take on whatever we find on the other side. We're sure not doing anything out here but dying." He had already heard about the incoming fleet but did not share that news with his men. It was not, Lieutenant Colonel Parks had informed him, for general dissemination yet.

Dem detailed his men, watched as the explosives were placed over the hinges and latch on the door—enough to blow it completely across the kiosk. If there were any Heggies behind that door, they wouldn't be there for long. The problem would come from enemy soldiers farther down, on the stairs, or on the floor of the building.

Dem slipped a fresh magazine into his rifle. Despite all of the use he had given the weapon, he still had a couple of hundred rounds left. He had carried all of the ammunition he could. Around him, the others checked their weapons—zippers and cough guns.

"We've been here long enough to get about a half charge on our belts," Dem said. "We get on the stairs, we're going all of the way down. We hit much Heggie wire, jump. Get to the floor as quickly as you can without breaking bones."

The men all looked at the power indicators for their belts. A half charge did not mean that they would get exactly half the time or distance that they could get from a full charge. In practice, it was less, perhaps no more than a third of what a full charge would permit.

"Clip the fuses," Dem said. He took a quick but deep breath and forced it out. Ten-second fuses. The shaped charges would direct virtually all of the explosive force inward, but when the door went, there might still be debris blasted back. The reccers got as far back as they could, prone on the roof. Half had the sides of the kiosk to shelter them. That was built of stone. There was little chance of
it
going in the blast.

The four charges went off together. The metal door crumpled and blew inward. There was little smoke, more dust. A sharp report. The sound of the door crashing against the inside wall and the top of the metal stairway was lost in the ringing of ears from the initial blast.

"Go!" Dem screamed, even though his visor was down and he was shouting into his microphone. He pushed himself to his feet and into a sprint, as if he had fifty meters to cover instead of just five.

He was the first man through the doorway. He dove forward, sliding through hot debris, and came to a stop with a rifle aimed down the stairs. There were several Heggies visible at the bottom of the stairway. They were simply staring upward, not yet recovered from the surprise of the explosion. Three of those men fell to Dem's rifle before the last two men in the group dove for cover. By that time, three more reccers were at the top of the stairs spraying wire. Those last two Heggies went down hard.

Dem jumped to his feet and started down the stairs, scanning as much of the warehouse's interior as he could, shooting at any hint of movement, even when it was only his imagination. This warehouse appeared to be nearly full of supplies. That meant that there were a lot of sections of the floor, aisles between the stacks, where Heggies might be hiding, invisible to anyone on the stairs.

One of the men behind Dem tripped and sprawled forward. The man thought fast, though. Before he could start to tumble into the men on the stairs below him, he got a hand to his belt and switched it on. The gyro stabilizers righted him as he hooked the pipe that served as a railing at the side of the stairs and swung himself sideways over the bannister, then started a rapid descent to the floor of the warehouse. Farther up on the stairs, three other reccers jumped on their belts, spraying wire as they dropped.