The Bright Black Sea (65 page)

He gave me a sinister smile. 'Why Willy, just what
type of people do you think you're dealing with?'

'I like you, D'Lay, but I hope I'm no fool. I'm
dealing with professional killers.'

He gave me a long steady look, and shrugged. 'In your
position, you'd best hope you're right, because you're going to
need professional killers on your side.'

01

Twenty-one days out of Zilantre, fourteen days away
from Boscone, the shadowing ships began edging in. There were now
ten ships, small drift traders by the shape of their sensor data,
captured or pressed into service for the Despar Navy. They'd likely
be hastily armed with portable missile batteries mounted in their
small cargo holds. Individually, they represented no threat to
either the
Lost Star
with its enhanced anti-missile system
and St Bleyth donated missiles or D'Lay's jump fighters. And even
taken together, represented only a small threat. According to
D'Lay, anyway.

As the operational base of the jump fighters, the
Lost Star
was their target. Their tactics became evident in
their first attack. Since they're no more maneuverable than we
were, and less powerful, there was no nipping in and out. Several
of them would simply edge in closer and closer until they were in
missile range, forcing D'Lay to send out his jump boats. They'd
fire a barrage of missiles towards us and attempt to flee.

Since they never sent in more than two ships at once,
D'Lay's jump boats had no problem destroying their missiles long
before we had to deal with them, and often were able to chase and
disable the fleeing ships as well. Seeing that they were
outnumbered by the eight jump fighters, it struck me wasteful to
send them in as pairs to certain defeat.

'They've no illusions about these attacks
succeeding,' said D'Lay over the com link. 'The intent is to wear
my pilots down by these attacks. I'll need to keep several of my
fighters on patrol now, watch on watch. And as you well know,
flying jump fighters is demanding work and in combat an order of
magnitude more demanding. They're hoping that by launching these
attacks around the clock, for days on end, they'll wear my pilots
out before we get to Boscone.'

'Will they?'

'Not at this level. Still, expending ships this early
suggests either a great deal of confidence or desperation. Which it
is, only time will tell.'

'Let's hope it's desperation.'

He smiled. 'I'd like to believe we can handle either,
Captain.'

'So would I. So would I...'

02

By the end of the first day of attacks, the eight
ships had been reduced to three operational ones with the five
others driven out of range, unable to change their course due to
damage received from tangling with our jump fighters. Still, by the
following day, the three had reinforced by four more, three more
joining late. They continued to expend their ships, using two
tactics now – either edging them to fire an all out volley of
missiles and firing their main rockets to accelerate out of range
ahead, or they'd fire their main rockets to dash in towards us
behind a second and third volley of missiles. D'Lay's jump fighters
still dealt with them without our help. I had Tenry, Vynnia, Rafe
and Kie manning our-missile station around the clock, just to be
certain. All of the ships that drew the short straw to press the
attack were disabled or destroyed and could be seen on our radars,
drifting out of range, their engines damaged or as a cloud of
debris.

'They press their attacks against impossible odds
just to insure that we take every approach seriously enough to
respond in force,' explained D'Lay. 'We can sit off with a fighter
or two and defend the ship without breaking into a sweat if they
only edged in far enough to fire their missiles. When they charge,
we need to deploy at least two per ship, I really can't afford to
have your ship damaged, my dear Willy. You're very precious to us,'
he added with a weary smile.

'That's good to hear, Captain.'

I spent a lot of time on the bridge watching the
sensor displays as the attacks unfolded, hour after hour. Battles
like this are very rare in the Nine Star Nebula and unheard of in
the Unity part of it. The Unity Charter governs all the star system
planets and moons of the nebula. Commerce is tightly controlled to
insure that even the richest and most populous planet can not use
their wealth to dominate even the most backward planet, so there is
little source of conflict. Plus, the natural rebels have the drifts
to roam and conquer, so the Patrol functions mostly as a police
force keeping the bolder of the drift pirates and smugglers in the
drifts.

'A couple of Marlin class frigates would settle this
war in no time,' Tenry assured me. 'And the dear old Patrol has a
thousand of them. But you see, you can't encourage society's rebels
and anti-socials to live outside the Unity's tight control, and
extend the Unity's control into the drifts, so we generally turn a
blind eye to affairs like this. It's viewed as a bunch of
semi-barbarians stealing each other's cattle, no threat to the
Unity now or unlikely ever will be. Mind you, they don't turn a
blind eye on what's going on in the drifts on a mega-scale, but
they can and do ignore these little flare ups.'

'Is this a little affair? It seems that dozens of
drift worlds and reefs are being impacted by it. Why, we're only
here because some big chartered companies had to increase security.
You'd think they'd take their case to Unity Prime.'

Tenry shrugged, 'There are metrics used to determine
responses. I was just a humble boarding boat leader, at my peak
Patrol career, mind you, so things like that were determined far
above me.'

They're determined far above a commander too, Vynnia
assured me later.

03

Despite the continued attrition, the number of ships
we were attracting continued to grow. By the third day of their
attacks, we'd a dozen in range.

'I'm considering leading an extended raid on this
ship here,' said D'Lay, pointing to a distant blimp on our sensor
screen. 'It's been out there for the last two days and I'm thinking
it's one of the Despar frigates. It's likely the control ship,' He
paused, considering what he wanted to say.

'I'd need to take four fighters out and we'd be gone
a good six hours. That'll leave our base with only four fighters
and six pilots. The four fighters should be more than enough to
handle what we're facing today. I'm concerned, however, that by
tomorrow that might not be the case, so I'd rather not wait on this
raid. I am... wondering, however, if I could borrow your Patrol
trained pilots to give my pilots a break. So far we're facing
nothing more dangerous than a live weapon exercise in defense,
nothing challenging or very dangerous... If you don't object.'

I considered my response. Vynnia and Tenry were
trained and had been in combat, so I had faith that they'd handle
themselves cooly, and competently under fire.

'I've no objection if they volunteer to help out.
I'll ask them and send them over if they agree.' I was certain they
would, Tenry for the 'fun' of it, Vynnia because she'd see it as
her duty.

They readily agreed.

'Make no mention of this in the log, Captain,' Vynnia
said as she and Tenry suited up to go out and around the hull to
get to the mercenary base in our no. 3 hold.

'Why?'

'Well, it's not strictly either a Guild or Unity
sanctioned activity. We're on a pretty iffy course as it is. And
secondly, it might be good if we kept the
Lost Star
as
non-combatant as possible. We were chartered to carry the
mercenaries to their base in Boscone, not act as a warship. We're
now defending ourselves, but going on the offense, well, let's keep
what Ten and I are doing as off duty recreation...'

'I consider it recreation,' chimed in Tenry, earning
a glare from Vynnia.

'Point taken.'

The extended raid on the suspected Despar frigate
accomplished little. From its response, it fled, it was clear that
its power profile matched a small frigate, not a small drift tramp.
It abandoned control of the attacking ships for perhaps a watch or
two, and the attacks slackened for a while. But once out of the
extended range of the jump fighters, the attacks began again, no
doubt directions were relayed in. The fighter force came back
discouraged and exhausted.

04

If anyone had any hope that the forces of Despar were
going to run out of expendable ships, they were dashed by the time
I swung out of my hammock on day four of the siege of the
Lost
Star
after a ragged nap. We seemed to have fifteen fresh ships
in range and several more blimps at extreme range.

The attacks were now pressed with three and four
ships coming in behind swarms of missiles. We were now deploying
six fighters at the height of each attack, and intent on defending
the ship, we're rarely damaging more than a ship or two, leaving
the undamaged ones to make another pass six hours later.

D'Lay abandoned any ideas of an offense, and settled
for a dogged defense. Still, late in the day the
Lost Star
had to fire her first anti-missile missiles as the five fighters
able to deploy could not quite destroy all the incoming missiles.
Jump fighters are durable machines, but there were now one or two
that needed repairs of one sort or another at all times. And the
pilots, where in even worse shape. Tenry and Vynnia were now
serving like regulars, and I feared D'Lay would be soon asking for
more help consisting of Min and me. Molaye would go in over my dead
body. I hoped she'd not have to.

The only bright spot was that in three days, we'd be
entering that drift of thick gas and dust. This would drastically
reduce the range of everyone's sensors due to the ionization caused
by our ship's collision with it at our current velocity and that
should shut down the battle for half a day at least. It would also
mask any course change we might wish to make.

Assuming we could reach it.

Our opponents knew it was coming too, and that they'd
lose contact with us allowing us to alter our course enough to
delay further attacks for hours or days and would leave them with
only a day or two to attack us without themselves going into the
Boscone Reef, and the Boscone forces that we had to assume still
held it.

'Well, Wil, are you ready to put all that training to
good use?' asked a worn D'Lay early in the fourth watch of day 24
over the com link to my office.

'Are we that desperate?'

He shrugged. 'It would help.'

'Right. I'll be over. It can't be too much more
wearing than being the target.' I'd already realized that it had to
be done. The attacks had become increasingly frequent with four or
five ships at a time charging straight on in behind their barrages
of missiles. We were all wearing our safety space suits now with a
soft helmet hood and an emergency air supply. I'd ordered the
engine room abandoned and sealed to isolate any engine room hit and
deployed the drones alongside with the idea that perhaps they might
take a hit that would otherwise hit the ship. Everyone had a brave
face, except me. I had a worried one. What had I gotten my ship and
crew into? The only comfort was that I was convinced that D'Lay
would have commandeered us in any event, but he refused to
acknowledge that. Min was serious, but cool.

I found her at the airlock suiting up. 'You got the
call too?'

'It's the least we can do. They don't need us aboard
the ship.'

'I'm sorry I got you into this. I should have given
you better advice.'

'I'd have not taken it, so don't worry about it.'

'I hope D'Lay has something left up his sleeve. This
wasn't what he'd promised. I'm losing faith in Saint Bleyth.'

'The universe is written, Wil. We just think we're
living it. Somewhere, pages ahead, we're looking back on today as
one of those days you never forget.'

'I've a feeling I'll want to, if I have the chance.'
I was not in a very optimistic mood.

05

I'll not keep you in suspense. I survived my first
tour of duty. Since I was a hastily trained volunteer, my role was
to hang back and destroy any missiles that filtered through the
first line of defense. It was the type of work that I could safely
leave the jump fighter to do automatically and I didn't interfere
with it.

D'Lay had offered to send along a second pilot, but I
told him that'd defeat the purpose, and if he didn't trust me with
the machine, he shouldn't send me out.

'I trust the fighter. You trust it too. Don't get
fancy or foolish. Just defend your ship.'

As I mentioned, the Bleyth version of the jump
fighters had an illegally powerful artificial intelligence unit so
that as long as I let it do its thing, it defeated every ragged
missile volley that came my way. The human pilot's job is to put
the fighter in position to inflict offensive damage. Min guarded
one side of the ship and I the other. To be honest, I didn't do
much more than babysit the jump fighter. It found and destroyed the
threatening missiles and we didn't have to make the sudden and
violent maneuvers that wears the human pilot out, so my first tour
of duty, while a bit frightening in that that I didn't know what to
expect, and seemed to go on forever, while I sweated the safety of
my ship, passed largely uneventfully – incoming missiles that had
escaped the front line fighters would be detected and the jump
fighter would automatically place itself in position to fire a
screen of small anti-missile missiles which are little more that
small, very fast, and very dense projectiles with a little smart
guidance.