Loralynn Kennakris 3: Asylum (2 page)

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

Gen. George S. Patton Jr.

The fighter ghosted up on the carrier, dark and quiet, showing only a faint ultraviolet nimbus from the leaky power plant. All around, the wreckage of battle orbited, mostly cooled by now to invisibility, but here and there floated brilliant, star-like objects: the stasis bottles that contained the antimatter fuel for hypercapable warships. These beacons for the dead would shine for decades, or if they were massive enough—like those of the fleet carrier LSS
Camperdown
and the light carrier IHS
Revanche
, both of which had exploded, with the loss of all hands—for centuries, casting their piercing blue-white light through the battlespace. Elsewhere, wounded leviathans wallowed in clouds of their own debris and crystallizing atmosphere: a thousand kilometers away to port, LSS
Blenheim
drifted, a swarm of consorts giving what aid they could while damage-control teams fought desperately to save the battleship’s life. Five hundred klicks below, the heavy cruiser LSS
Jellicoe
tumbled helplessly, awaiting the
coup de grâce
that would blow her fusion bottles and add her star to the rest. Much nearer, LSS
Ramillies
, mauled but alive, worked frantically to clear her fouled desk and recover the last of her pilots.

In the cockpit of her fighter, Ensign Loralynn Kennakris could perceive none of this. Her forward screen was a scorched ruin, most of her instruments were hash. All she had left was the beacon indicator on her T-Synth. She kept an iron hand locked on the controls, waiting until she got close enough for her maser to be heard with what was left of her battery power. The range rings ran off the edge of the T-Synth’s display, one by one, much too slowly for her taste. As the last ring grew outwards, she keyed the mic.

“
Trafalgar
, this is Viper Echo 2-4. I’ve got a problem here.”

The reply was a dim crackle over her headset. “Copy, Viper Echo 2-4. What’s your status?”

“My status is fucked.” Kris blinked at the sweat that the armored flight suit should have been taking care of. “I’m on manual. Battery’s in the red. Atmo down to twenty-seven percent.”

“Copy that, Viper Echo 2-4,” the voice replied. “Declare an emergency.”

She desperately wanted to pop the faceplate to get the sweat out of her eyes, but there wasn’t enough air left for that. “Emergency declared. Look, I need you guys to uplink a BOLO approach. I’ll fly the pip. Clear the deck for a hot landing.”

“Acknowledged. Wait one.” There was a brief pause on the other end. “Negative, Viper Echo 2-4. You’re too badly damaged. Standby for tractor tow.”

“No way!” Kris barked. “If one of your ham-fisted operators gets a beam on this crate, he’ll crack it wide open. Gimme the pip.”

“Repeat negative, Viper Echo 2-4. We’ll scramble a pick-up. Prepare to eject.”

“No can do,” Kris said wearily. “Just link me the data. I think I’ve got enough reserve to make it in.” Another excruciating pause.

“Kennakris,” said a new voice on the line, “do you have suit perforations?”

“Goddammit, I’ve got
me
perforations,” Kris snapped. “Now link me that goddamned pip before I park this thing in the bridge.
Sir
.”

“Roger that. Uplink commencing.”

The pip appeared on her T-Synth, blinking bright orange. She was too wide and still too fast. She ground her teeth hard as she pulled back on the stick. Flying the pip was always tricky—with one hand and a crippled bird it might prove impossible. A hull splinter had gone right through her left shoulder, another had broken some ribs, and while the vasoconstrictors were controlling the bleeding and the suit pharmacopeia was helping with the pain, they couldn’t give her left arm back its strength or help much with her breathing, which was short, shallow, difficult, wheezing.

That was because of the ribs, she hoped. The holes in the flight suit were self-sealing, and at twenty-seven percent atmosphere, it should still be holding pressure. But at around fifteen percent it would start leaking again—at ten, it would fail. She had no attention to spare for the environmental readouts, however; the pip was turning from orange to yellow but she wasn’t sure she had enough decel left to get it into the green.

“Huron”—she’d recognized his voice—“you still there?”

“Here, Kris.”

“Get ‘em to foam the deck. This is gonna be close.”

“Roger that.” Then: “You’re still too wide. How much you got left?”

“Dunno.”

“We can match velocity in three point seven minutes.”

Sweat stung her eyes, blurring the pip. She blinked furiously. A claxon went off, startling her. The environmentals—cabin pressure was dropping towards critical.

“No joy. Atmo down below twenty percent, falling.” Her breath was coming in sharp, painful pants. “Look”—a pause as she fought for air—“I’m gonna keep this vector and give it all the decel I got for the next forty-five seconds before I break right to make the approach. But you’re gonna have to slew that beast about a point.” She paused again, trying to get control of her breathing. “Can they do it?”

Carriers did not normally recover craft when under acceleration. They stayed ballistic while the pilot lined up the approach and flew it all the way in. Kris was asking them to do the exact opposite: maneuver to match her vector after her engines cut out. A fleet carrier was not a nimble object and if they were off by more than the slightest amount—

“Affirmative, Kris. Bring it home. We’ll catch.”

I hope so
.

She jammed the decel for all it was worth. The fighter shuddered and bucked, the broken bones in her shoulder ground sickeningly into each other and the pain from her ribs stabbed hot and deep.

By all the fucking gods, I hope so
.

*     *     *

Gear buckled, nose crumpled, missing its port fins, her fighter lay over on its starboard pylons, askew in a smother of crash foam. Kris popped the canopy as the fully-suited damage crews began to swarm over the little craft with hoses, lines, and rescue gear. She got out of the fighting straps with much difficulty, shooing off a crewman who impertinently tried to assist. She managed to get down the wing ladder by herself despite extreme dizziness, a crippled arm, and darkening vision, and stood on the deck, swaying. The pain was getting the better of the drugs now and it was an agony to breathe. Waiting medics brought over a float pallet and she snarled at them.

“Fuck that.”

Shouldering past, holding her arm tight across her body, she managed five steps before pitching forward in a dead faint.

*     *     *

Rear Admiral Lo Gai Sabr, commanding Task Force 34 of CEF Third Fleet, lifted his jet-black eyes from a situation display to the big main screen of the flag bridge on the battlecruiser, LSS
Athena Nike
, as
Trafalgar
completed her maneuver to recover the heavily damaged fighter.

“Is that the last of them?” Sabr growled—his inexpressive voice was a rough instrument that only seemed capable of either a laugh or growl—and motioned at the display.

“Yes, sir,” replied Captain James Donovan, his chief of staff, who was used to the admiral’s ways. Sabr was famous for being short of stature (he did not reach Donovan’s shoulder), short of temper, and for having a short way with his enemies, as well as subordinates who did not live up to his exacting standards. His roundish, compactly featured, deeply figured face, bare scalp and short curling black beard invited piratical comparisons, as did his exploits, which were numerous and fed a reputation for audacity, ruthlessness, and tactical brilliance that had reached legendary proportions. Indeed, it was stated—and believed—that during the last war, the enemy had evacuated a moon based on nothing more than the rumor of his approach. Friends and enemies alike often speculated on what his given name might mean in his native tongue—some contended it was slang for “ghost man”; others insisted on “foreign devil”—while the lower decks, after their artless and insightful manner, bestowed on him the sobriquet ‘Demon Gin’. Neither the fear nor the adulation had evident effect on his outward demeanor, and what went on in his private mind, only his tall, beautiful and equally sanguinary Antiguan wife, Commodore Yasmin Shariati (a former privateer), knew for sure.

“Fox is down on both carriers,” Donovan added, indicating that landing operations were complete.

“Status on
Jellicoe
?”

“Confirmed dark and quiet. The demolition team is awaiting final clearance.” As Sabr nodded, Captain Donovan touched his ear piece. “Tech Exploit is reporting—”

A blinking icon appeared on the main display, interrupting Donovan as the face of Commander Stacy Callahan, acting captain of LSS
Ramillies
, appeared in overlay.

“Yes, Captain?” inquired the admiral, acknowledging Callahan’s temporary position.
Ramillies
belonged to Seventh Fleet, and thus Callahan was not part of his command. But Sabr was senior to Rear Admiral Tymon Murphy, CO of Seventh Fleet’s Task Force 72, making him senior officer on station. Undiplomatic and direct to a fault, he’d nonetheless laid himself out to be agreeable with Murphy’s subordinates, now going so far as to show the glim of an uncharacteristic smile.

What Commander Callahan made of this unexpected gesture—Lo Gai smiling rarely portended anything desirable—he strove to keep out of his expression, rendering his rugged ebony face unnaturally wooden. “Main power has met ninety-five percent threshold, sir,” Callahan reported. “We’ll be able to achieve jump potential within the hour.”

Sabr allowed his smile to develop itself.
Ramillies
’ engineering and damage-control teams had indeed labored like heroes to get the big carrier hypercapable so quickly. “Well done, Commander. My compliments to Admiral Murphy, and do you know if he can spare a moment?”

“He’s in sickbay with Captain Shannon, sir.” Alex Shannon had been critically wounded when a torpedo strike destroyed most of
Ramillies
’ bridge early in the battle. He and Murphy were old friends.

“How is Captain Shannon?”

“I’m afraid it’s touch and go, sir.”

“Please keep me informed, Captain. If he regains consciousness or takes a turn for the worse, do notify me at once.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Convey my personal compliments to your people as well.”

That cracked Callahan’s stolid expression, set there by long hours of incalculable strain. “Ah—Thank you, sir.”

“Anything further?”

“No sir.”

“Very well. Flag out.” With a brief acknowledgement, the commander’s visage faded. “My gig is ready?” Sabr directed the query sideways to Donovan. If Captain Shannon’s condition became dire, he felt a strong moral obligation to see him a final time.

“We can have you there in five minutes, sir. Would you like us to close the range to
Ramillies
’?”

“Do. I would not like to be a minute late.”

As Donovan relayed the request to Shiro Watanabe,
Nike’s
captain, Sabr returned his attention to the status display and resumed paging through the screens. They felt the mild acceleration and a subtle change in the vibration of the living metal of the deck as the battlecruiser answered her helm.

“What was that you were saying about Tech Exploit reporting in?” Sabr asked conversationally.

“They report a clean sweep.
Korolev
is salvageable, but
Leuthen
and
Kuhn
aren’t even fit for scrap.”

The news was received without evident emotion, being no more than he’d expected. It would have been nice, of course, if they’d been able to salvage IHS
Leuthen
, one of Halith’s newest heavy cruisers, instead of a tin can like
Korolev
.
Kuhn
, an old
Kurgan
-class destroyer, had been barely worth more than scrap before the battle. (Why Halith had felt she was still battle-worthy was a mystery to him.) But such things were part of the fortunes of war.

Turning to consult the big omnisynth, he saw that the Halith force was continuing its retreat. Shadowing them was Battlecruiser Division 61, led by Captain Sir Phillip Lawrence in LSS
Retribution
. It took no imagination to visualize Sir Phillip looking for stragglers with his usual predatory intensity, for it was clear from his dispositions. He’d pushed his destroyer screen ahead to the outermost limit of tactical prudence, no doubt hoping to provoke the enemy into doing something rash.

Donovan saw it too, and looked inquiringly at his boss.

Sabr shook his head. Lawrence could be counted on to judge these things to within the finest of fine hairs, and in another half hour, physics would put it out of the hands of either fleet to do harm to the other. In the meantime, the Halith commander over there could see Sir Phillip straining at the leash as well as he could, and to the extent this demonstration helped to hurry him on his way, Lo Gai was all for it.

A nod from his chief of staff brought Sabr’s attention to a lit icon on the main screen even as the chime sounded. It was Rear Admiral Murphy. Murphy had been Seventh Fleet’s acting CO during the months of Vice Admiral Angharad Ross’s incapacity after the defeat at Kepler last year. Considered not to have enough time in grade to be promoted, he’d been replaced by the politically powerful Vice Admiral Franklin Tannahill. It had proven to be a divisive appointment. Admiral Devlyn Zahir, Cygnus Sector’s famously fiery commander in chief—she was the first cousin of Sabr’s spouse and the resemblance was marked—had argued vigorously for Murphy’s promotion, doing (given her impolitic nature) perhaps more harm than good. But there could be no question where Seventh Fleet’s sympathies lay, and Zahir had taken the slightly unusual step of restructuring TF 72, assigning the bulk of Seventh’s strike power to it, making Tannahill’s position almost redundant as far as offensive operations went. Tannahill, a fussy commander with a reputation for being something of a martinet, fumed at being sidelined in favor of his more aggressive subordinate but could not easily object.

During the controversy, Admiral Sabr had developed a healthy respect for Murphy’s qualities, and when TF 34 had unexpectedly happened on TF 72 already engaged with Halith’s Duke Albrecht Fleet, he’d elected to leave Murphy as officer in tactical command rather than divide the command structure in the midst of a fight. With the fight over, he still resolved to tread lightly.