The Lost Stars (42 page)

But she thought about it, thought about all of the men and women on those freighters, most of them unable to even see a display to know what was going on, with no means of defense, and nothing they could do but sit and wait to see if hell lances would punch holes in the ships carrying them, as well as holes in the people on those ships.

At least the warships carried what were in theory enough escape pods to carry their crews to safety if the ship was too badly damaged to save. Not their entire crews, of course, because the Syndicate had carefully calculated what percentage of damage on average would render a ship helpless and what percentage of crew members on average would be killed when that damage was sustained, then budgeted for just enough escape pods to save the average surviving percentage of the crew. It was all very scientific, including the calculations that offering escape to the surviving crew members cost less than what would be required to conscript, transport, and train new crew members to replace them.

But for all that, the crews of the warships were better off than those on the freighters. The only escape pod on each of the freighters was designed to handle the crew and perhaps a few passengers. “You are right,” she commented to Kapitan Diaz, “it cannot be easy on those freighters.”

“It's not easy on you, either, is it?” he asked.

“No,” Marphissa admitted. “There's a comfort in having someone higher in authority to turn to, having someone else who must make the decisions. Having been frustrated all of my time in the mobile forces by superiors who handled that role badly, I now have the freedom to make the decisions, to make the mistakes, all on my own. Hold
on.”

The Syndicate warships had all swung in again simultaneously, veering onto vectors aiming for the freighters. Marphissa watched the entire situation with all of her concentration, trying to spot any place where any of her warships were being outmaneuvered by the Syndicate attackers. She was barely aware of Diaz maneuvering
Manticore
to engage the light cruiser that was
Manticore
's designated target, but Marphissa was fully alert to
Manticore
's track on her display, alert to any indication that Diaz might let the light cruiser get past him. She took in every one of her ships' maneuvers that way, hoping that neither she nor one of her ship commanders would miss something.

One by one, the Syndicate warships, facing intercepts by superior firepower, broke off their runs against the freighters. They went back to positions hovering in front of and to all sides of the Midway Flotilla, roaming restlessly like wolves seeking openings to get at sheep guarded by alert watchdogs.

Over the next several hours, the Syndicate warships tried again and again at irregular intervals, sometimes all at once, other times in staggered rushes, and many times only one or two ships testing the defenders. “Sub-CEO Qui is trying to wear you down,” Bradamont said. “He's hoping that if he keeps the pressure on, sooner or later, you or one of your ship commanders will get tired enough to make a serious mistake.”

“I can do this longer than he can,” Marphissa retorted. The up patch on her arm was trickling drugs that kept her alert into her body. There would be a price to pay for that as time went on, but, for now, she felt fine.

As the hours and the Syndicate probing attacks went on and on, the Syndicate warships spread wider around the Midway ships, so that eventually they completely surrounded Marphissa's warships and freighters. The Midway warships were now defending an elongated bubble stretching along the vector that the freighters were traveling to the hypernet gate. In space, any ship could build up velocity if given time. Freighters usually didn't move too fast, because accelerating and braking cost fuel cells, and transport companies liked to minimize costs, but this time Marphissa had told them to get up to point one light speed and hold it there.

It would have been nice to get the freighters going even faster, but she had to worry about their using up too much of their fuel cells. For that matter, the frequent attacks and counterattacks under way had been a serious drain on the fuel cells of her warships.
The Syndicate warships have to be using up their fuel cells as well. How close to maximum were they when this started?

Sixteen hours into the running battle, a Syndicate light cruiser and two HuKs lunged toward the freighters along vectors that invited interception by multiple defending warships. Sub-CEO Qui was finally trying the trick that Bradamont had warned
of.

“All units, maintain focus on your designated target. Do not attempt intercepts of any other Syndicate warships unless I order
it.”

The light cruiser and HuKs held their approaches until the Midway warships targeting them were nearly within weapons range, then slewed around as fast as they could turn and darted out of range.

At twenty-five hours after the fight had started, every Syndicate warship again attacked at once. Two of Marphissa's ships, the light cruiser
Harrier
and the HuK
Vanguard
, reacted slowly this time. The other Midway HuK,
Scout
, watching that particular Syndicate HuK tore after its target so ferociously that the Syndicate vessel broke
off.

But the Syndicate HuK that should have been stopped by
Harrier
kept coming.

Marphissa's eyes flew across her display, too little time available to run intercept calculations, her instincts feeling the next right move in the second she had to decide. “
Kite
, alter course to intercept new target. Maximum acceleration authorized.”

Had she chosen right? No one was close to the Syndicate HuK, but the light cruiser
Kite
had the best chance. Kite
's commander will have to push her past the red lines on hull stress to manage an intercept. I might lose
Kite
to hull breakup and have that Syndicate HuK get through anyway.

Kite
was located above and about even with the freighters. The Syndicate HuK was climbing in from partly below and behind the two columns of freighters. If not for the velocity of the freighters themselves, forcing the Syndicate HuK onto a longer approach to catch up, there would have been no chance of stopping the attack at
all.

A single tap by Marphissa produced detailed status information on
Kite
from the light cruiser's data feed. Her thrusters firing,
Kite
was angling over and down, her main propulsion lighting off at maximum, hull-stress readings climbing.

An alert appeared next to
Kite
's symbol on Marphissa's display.
Excessive hull stress imminent. Reduce acceleration.

She negated the warning, only to have it pop up again.
Action required.

Marphissa punched the negate command this time. It appeared once more. “I thought we killed this function in the software,” she complained.

Diaz motioned to the senior watch specialist, who went to work on that.

The vector for the Syndicate HuK formed a flattened curve aiming to pass between the top and bottom columns of freighters. The arc of
Kite
's vector was swinging over, sweeping steadily toward an intersection with that of the Syndicate HuK's projected path.

Another alert appeared over
Kite
's symbol, this one blinking in red.
Excessive hull stress. Reduce acceleration immediately.

Bradamont had knelt by Marphissa's seat again. “Can
Kite
do this?”

“It's up to her commander,” Marphissa replied without looking away from her display. “Only he can judge whether
Kite
's hull can take
it.”

Excessive hull stress. Structural failure imminent. Reduce acceleration immediately.

The point where
Kite
's vector crossed that of the Syndicate HuK had crept just ahead of where the HuK would catch up with the freighters. The HuK was also accelerating for all it was worth, trying to steal the march on
Kite
, but wasn't able to equal a light cruiser's maximum effort.
That's enough, damn you!
Marphissa thought, reaching for her comm controls.

But before she could touch them
Kite
's data feed changed. “He's throttled back a little.”

Had it been enough? The warnings continued to blink their crimson message, and now
Kite
's data feed rippled as damage reports came in. “Asima,” Bradamont cautioned, sounding horrified. “If any of those stress points completely blow, that ship will disintegrate.”

This time, Marphissa reached for her override. All ships designed to Syndicate standards contained overrides that allowed a flotilla commander to take over control of that ship directly. She had once vowed that she would never do such a thing.

But it might already be too late.

BRADAMONT'S
gasp halted Marphissa's motion.

Kite
had throttled back again, this time significantly. The damage to her structure was still there, but the red-line warnings of hull stress were sliding downward toward safer territory.

Kite
whipped past the stern quarter of the last freighter in the upper column and bore down on the lone Syndicate HuK, pounding it with hell lances and the metal ball bearings known as grapeshot that became incredibly dangerous projectiles when they struck something at thousands of kilometers per second.

The Syndicate HuK, which had been pushing his own acceleration to the maximum, took those blows on a hull already under the most stress it could handle.

The HuK exploded into fragments, some large, some small, fountaining outward and forward along the vector the warship had still been accelerating upon when the vessel came apart. In an instant, the track of a single oncoming warship turned into hundreds of pieces of wreckage, racing toward the freighters as if the HuK's remnants were still trying to get in a blow even after the warship's destruction.

But because the HuK had been aiming to pass between the upper and lower lines of freighters, most of the debris went through that open area as well, passing onward harmlessly.

Some fragments did impact the last freighters, bringing to life new warnings on Marphissa's display as the damage reports flowed in automatically. The thing she feared most to see, a major hull breach on one of the freighters, did not appear in the first wave of damage reports. A scattering of new reports came in, minor hull damage and some minor systems damage, then the wave of wreckage was past.

Kite
was swinging back up and around in a vast parabola that was not nearly as stressful on her hull as the previous maneuvers had been. “Target destroyed,”
Kite
reported rather smugly. “Reverting to previous assigned target.”

Bradamont clapped Marphissa on the shoulder. “Only sixteen more hours to
go.”

“Is that all?” Marphissa got control of her voice, then called
Kite
. “Very good job. Let's all ensure no one else gets through.”

She shook her head, gazing at
Kite
's damage status. “She's going to be limited in maneuvers until we can get her into a dockyard. And she burned a lot of fuel doing that. Only sixteen hours, you said?”

“Yes,” Bradamont replied. “Are you good?”

“I'm great.”
At lying.
Her heart pumping from stress that had burned through drugs quicker than usual, Marphissa checked the status of her up patch, pulled it off, and slapped on another.

The next six hours were a nightmare of repeated lunges by the Syndicate ships and parries by Marphissa's warships. Fire was actually exchanged again twice; once when
Manticore
fired missiles at the Syndicate light cruiser that was her target, causing the light cruiser to flee, and once when two Midway HuKs maneuvered a Syndicate HuK into a sandwich, where they could get in a few hits before the Syndicate HuK twisted away.

After a pause, the attacks resumed. Lunge. Intercept. Reposition. Attack. Defend. Re-form. Despite the drugs in her, Marphissa felt the strain of nearly constant concentration on the movements of multiple ships as two, then three more hours went by inconclusively.

An entire hour passed without more attempted attacks, the Syndicate warships positioned all around the Midway Flotilla continuing to stalk their prey but making no moves to strike.

“What's he doing?” Marphissa asked Bradamont, shocked to hear how her voice cracked when she spoke.

A watch specialist approached Marphissa, Bradamont, and Diaz with a ration bar and water for each of them. Marphissa barely looked at him, not able to risk taking her focus from her display, but nodded her thanks and tried briefly to remember how many times the watch specialists had been relieved and replaced while she, Diaz, and Marphissa had remained on duty.

She popped open the gray ration-bar wrapper with the big, block letters that shouted “Fresh! Tasty! Nutritious!” as if font size could somehow make the claims reflect the reality of a ration bar. Marphissa chewed the ration bar mechanically, discovering that probably thanks to the up patches, she couldn't sense the usual bitter aftertaste, or the usual moldy, musty flavor that was actually preferable to the aftertaste.

Bradamont finished swallowing a bite before answering, her own voice hoarse. “We always wondered if these Syndic ration bars tasted any better when they were less stale. Now I know that they don't. I don't know what Sub-CEO Qui is doing. But he's got to be getting desperate. You are less than five hours' travel time from the hypernet gate. If he's going to stop you or hurt you, he has to do it within that time.”

Marphissa nodded again. “If we can use the hypernet gate,” she whispered, putting into words what they both feared.

“He's trying awfully hard to hammer us,” Bradamont whispered back hoarsely. “If Qui knew we couldn't leave via the hypernet, he would know he had a lot more time to wear us down.”

It was odd how, even under the stress of such a long, running fight and with everything except her mental clarity impacted by the up patches, Marphissa could still feel a sense of pleasure at hearing Bradamont use the words “we” and “us.” “I think,” Marphissa said, “that he is trying to lull us. He knows how worn-out everybody on these ships is. He might be assuming that giving us an hour or two of inactivity might make us slack
off.”

“Or he could be resting his own crews,” Bradamont pointed
out.

Marphissa almost choked on another bite of ration bar, swallowed it painfully, then gasped a brief laugh. “He's a snake. Sub-CEO Qui is a snake. He won't let them rest.”

Kapitan Diaz, slumped in his own seat, nodded in agreement. “You'll get a rest when the job is done,” he quoted. “Unless you have to do it over again.”

“No work breaks until morale improves!” Marphissa added. “No, Honore, I guarantee you that Sub-CEO Qui is not giving his crews a rest. So far they have failed.
He
, their leader, has not failed,” she added sarcastically. “They have. That's the Syndicate way. He is riding them hard, making them work harder, telling them that unless they succeed, they will be punished for their failure.”

“But he'll be punished, too,” Diaz said, “especially once the Syndicate learns who we are and that we brought those Reserve Flotilla survivors back with
us.”

“Right,” Marphissa agreed, “because it can't be the fault of the CEO who sent Sub-CEO Qui on this mission, so it has to be Qui's fault.”

“There are times,” Bradamont said, “when the Alliance fleet works the same
way.”

“That's probably why you couldn't beat the Syndicate until Black Jack came back,” Diaz said. “That and because we're such tough bastards.” He laughed.

“Check your up meds, Kapitan,” Marphissa ordered him. She drank all of her water, wondering just how much more uncomfortable she would get in the hours remaining, then hit her comm controls. “All units. It is likely that Sub-CEO Qui, the snake commander, is trying to lure us into losing alertness by conducting no actions for an extended period. Remain prepared.” What sort of motivation would someone like Bradamont give? Not the standard Syndicate
fail and you will regret it
. “You have all done an exceptional job so far. A few more hours, and we will have won. For the people, Marphissa,
out.”

Another hour passed. Marphissa felt a growing sense of worry battling with the bodily fatigue the up patches couldn't completely banish.
Maybe Qui has learned that we can't use the hypernet gate. Maybe he's waiting until we get to the gate and realize we can't escape that way. He'll have a lot more time to wear us down then, and a lot more time to wait for reinforcements, while I try to keep defending these freighters using ships with worn-out crews and fuel-cell levels that are already lower than I'm comfortable with. Where the hell would I jump to? We'll never make it back to the jump point for Kalixa in one piece.

“Two hours left,” Diaz mumbled, then blinked, sat straighter, and slapped on another up patch.

The nest of vectors for the Syndicate warships, which had been unchanging for hours, suddenly altered.

“They're coming again!” Marphissa snapped. “This may be their last shot. They're going to push these firing runs. Everyone, don't let them through!”

The surviving Syndicate warships, three light cruisers and four Hunter-Killers, were coming in hard and fast. Marphissa watched them, feeling a growing, bleak certainty that this time the Syndicate warships would not avoid action no matter the odds. If they did not damage or destroy those freighters this time, they might not get another chance.

The light cruiser that was
Manticore
's target had spun to one side and climbed, then dove, to confuse
Manticore
's intercept. But Diaz kept
Manticore
glued on the light cruiser's vector, his face gray with fatigue but his eyes sharp. “All weapons,” he ordered in a voice that came out in a croak. “Engage.”

Two missiles leaped from
Manticore
as the heavy cruiser raced to an intercept that went past in less time than the blink of an eye, hell lances and grapeshot lashing out on the heels of the missiles. All around the loose perimeter of defenders, other warships were closing to contact, weapons pummeling each other.

Marphissa could only wait to see the outcomes of engagements that took place far too rapidly for human senses to register.

The light cruiser targeted by
Manticore
had tried another last-second evasive maneuver, but
Manticore
's missiles had both slammed home, inflicting massive damage amidships that had been joined by numerous hits from hell lances and grapeshot that had riddled the light cruiser's bow. All weapons and many other systems out of commission, thrown off of his intended course by the missile impacts, the Syndicate light cruiser spun away helplessly.

Behind and below the freighters, light cruisers
Harrier
,
Kite
, and
Eagle
hit another Syndicate light cruiser in successive firing passes within a few seconds of each other. In their wake, an expanding ball of dustlike debris marked all that was left of the Syndicate warship after its power core had overloaded under the blows.

One of the Syndicate HuKs also died as light cruiser
Falcon
caught it with a perfect barrage that tore apart the small, lightly armored warship.

The light cruiser targeted by
Kraken
, though, was coming up from almost dead astern, his approach prolonged by the stern chase, and saw the other two light cruisers destroyed. He broke off from his firing run, climbing above the formation, out of range of
Kraken
's weapons.

The three surviving Syndicate HuKs, all bearing wounds from clashes with Midway HuKs, also had second thoughts, tearing away to right, left, and below-ahead of the Midway formation.

Marphissa inhaled deeply, wondering how long it had been since she had breathed. “I wonder if we got
Qui.”

“He might have been on one of those light cruisers we destroyed,” Diaz said. “Or he might have been the one who decided to save his own skin.”

“He is a snake,” Marphissa agreed. She rubbed her eyes and refocused on her display. “They could still get us.” Moving carefully, she touched her comm controls. “All units, this is Kommodor Marphissa. Very well done. But we cannot relax yet. It is another forty-five minutes until we reach the gate. I am redistributing assigned targets. Make sure anyone who attacks again does not survive.”

She assigned the sole remaining Syndicate light cruiser as a target for both
Manticore
and
Kraken
, then distributed her light cruisers and HuKs to watch the three remaining Syndicate HuKs.
Are we safe? They shouldn't be able to make it to the freighters now. But I can't relax, can't assume they won't try again out of desperation. Can't relax. Don't dare relax. Not
yet.

“Kommodor?”

Marphissa blinked at the senior watch specialist who had called to her, trying to reorient thoughts that had been locked obsessively on the Syndicate flotilla. “What is
it?”

“Kommodor, our hypernet key indicates that Midway's gate is accessible.”

“It's . . .” Marphissa looked away from the Syndicate warships, seeing the hypernet gate looming massive and near.

“We're here,” Diaz said, his voice disbelieving. “We're at the gate.”

“When can we leave?” Marphissa asked. “Is the destination entered?”

“We can leave at your command, Kommodor. Midway is entered as the destination.”

She took another look at the Syndicate warships, which had begun to fall back, increasing the distance between them and the Midway Flotilla. Her own warships were still ranging out from the freighters, but were within the radius that could be set for the hypernet key. “Go. Now. All ships.”

There was no jolt to the nervous system as in entering jump space, but even if there had been, Marphissa doubted whether she would have been able to feel it. She stared at her display, where the Syndicate warships and the Indras Star System had vanished along with everything else.

Manticore
and all the other ships of the Recovery Flotilla, all the warships and every one of the freighters, were nowhere, safe in the hypernet.

She heard a strange noise and turned to look, seeing that the watch specialists were all applauding. Why? They were looking at her.
Why?

Bradamont was hauling Marphissa to her feet, though once she was up Bradamont had to lean on Marphissa as much as Marphissa leaned on her. “I told you that you could do it,” Bradamont said, her voice seeming to come through a few layers of gauze.