Plague Wars 06: Comes the Destroyer (31 page)

No matter
, thought One.
We have enough crew to closely manage its functions.

He had less confidence in the overall combat situation. No one would ever call One a coward, but the tens of thousands of missiles bearing down on the two young Destroyers did not bode well. They would cause a number of casualties, and he began to regret that he had influenced Commander One to divide the original, stronger ship.

More and more Human missiles died, but still more came on. There was simply no way his rear weapons would be able to intercept them all, even with the drive at full power with its aperture widened, like a giant fusor itself.

Then, on the ship-wide network he tasted, “Prepare to spin the ship. All rear fusors to continuous fixed fire.”

For a moment One did not comprehend the order, though his well-trained pods input the molecular control sequences automatically.
Spin the ship? Fixed fire?
The only reason to spin the ship that he knew was to reverse and unblock certain flows within the body of the great beast, and fusors could hardly be expected to destroy missiles without aiming.

He followed orders, though; as clever as he thought himself to be, he knew that both the Command and the Tactical tria had far more experience, and he wasn’t about to make a fool of himself by asking why.

A moment later he praised the wisdom of his leaders as Destroyer 6223-2 began to rotate around its long axis and his fusors turned from intermittent blasting to continuous hoses of flame sweeping the surrounds with hot plasma. Combined with opening the main drive’s nozzle wide and inducing a certain deliberate wobble, they achieved near continuous coverage of the stern hemisphere, slaughtering the enemy missiles by the thousands, the tens of thousands.

One exulted in his natural Meme superiority, until he noticed the rate of his fuel expenditure. Gluttons at the best of times, now the weapons gulped fuel like ravenous slave-beasts.

A groan surged through the net, and Vango was not certain whether he joined them or just heard them. He wondered how long the Destroyer could keep up that prodigious use of fuel; it must be burning millions of tons per second. How much tritium and deuterium must it expend before it was forced to use simple hydrogen, reducing its efficiency further?

Each Pilum datalinked with its neighbors, avoiding collisions and fratricidal explosions, spreading themselves out until the last moment of attack. Some of the missiles had swung wide enough to avoid the blasting wreath of fusion plasma. Even as thousands of missiles dove into the hot sea to die, others arced in before the Destroyer and turned to attack from the front.

Vango had been watching the target Meme so closely that he missed the other one dropping back to help its fellow. As the ten thousand or so surviving Pilums closed in on one, the other ceased its acceleration and rolled to point its own nose to the back. As the rearmost Destroyer still accelerated, this had the effect of allowing it, and the fleet missiles, to catch up.

At extreme range the inverted Destroyer fired all of its forward fusors and kept firing as the distance closed. Had the living ship done so even ten or twenty seconds earlier, it might have succeeded in wiping out all of the Pilums. For whatever reason –
Meme are not infallible
, Vango reminded himself – it had delayed just long enough.

Out of more than sixty thousand missiles, a few hundred got through to within effective blast radius. Sophisticated algorithms in the missiles’ computers selected their detonation times, and they began exploding just before the fusors touched them. The enormous warheads, yielding ten megatons each, also powered bomb-pumped graser clusters that fired deadly beams of gamma rays in tight spreads toward the target.

Because the fight took place at long distance and the nose of the hindmost Destroyer faced away from the fleet, the VR display could not show Vango or anyone else much of the direct effect of the Pilums. Also, with the tremendous energies pouring from the defending ships and the exploding missiles, the whole area of the display turned milky white and showed only ghostly outlines of what the computers guessed was happening.

Representative flashes sparked in VR space, completely understating the ravening energies of the missiles’ fusion warheads. Had one of them been detonated on Earth it would have devastated everything for a hundred kilometers around. In space, though, the zone of effect did not reach so far, lacking any medium to transmit the shock and blast.

Vango hoped the graser beams would be reaching deep into the Destroyers with penetrating fingers, gamma rays slaughtering untold trillions of living cells, and perhaps actual Meme or whatever else crewed the mobile moonlets. At the same time the plasma from the naked blasts would be burning the ships’ armored skin, bubbling and crisping it like bacon in a pan. Unless the armor was too thick. No one knew for sure how strong it was.

Intel had estimated that skin to be at least five hundred meters deep, and made of a chitin-like substance infused with biologically generated ferrocrystal harder than any steel. Only a warhead detonated on its very surface would likely crack it, and that kind of timing was very, very difficult. Vango had to hope that repeated damage, the attrition of multiple blows, would weaken and slow the monster enough to catch up and finish it off.

Slowly the display cleared with the dispersing of titanic energies. Swooping in, probably as many of the fleet’s pilots were doing, Vango could see the less-damaged Destroyer maneuver to fall back behind its companion. That one showed definite deterioration around its waist, which was all the armada’s sensors could actually see. Moving his point of view around to the front of the enemy only yielded a bland, computer-generated simulation of an undamaged surface.

One effect he could see was that the injured ship had reduced thrust drastically. In fact – Vango checked the numbers – the fleet was now slowly overtaking the two. Many hours would pass before they were in direct fire range, but missiles…

Just as this thought entered Vango’s mind, the squadron commander came onto the net with instructions. “This is Two Sierra One. All right people, the general says we’re to fire one more missile each. I’m uploading instructions to coordinate them. We continue to chase in this big fleet blanket formation. Everyone maintain station on me, and wait for my mark.”

Vango acknowledged digitally rather than verbally, else the thirty-some pilots would step all over each other on the net. Datalinks were more efficient for most things, though he was happy to hear the voice chatter now and again. It made him feel less alone.

A telltale flashed, informing him the automated systems were feeding his body, pumping food down a tube in his throat and metering liquid into his veins. He could have chosen to withdraw part or all of his consciousness from the virtuality, but he decided against it. The suite of machinery dedicated to keep him alive showed all in the green. He felt no need to go back to being a little man in a big machine, when he could remain a flying bird of space.

If he lived, he might have to face a hell of VR withdrawal, but for now, he soared among the stars.

“All Two Sierra,” Dick’s voice recited once more. “Launch one missile at target two on my mark. Ready. Mark.”

Vango executed this command with the practiced ease of thousands of launches in the simulators and a few live dummy missiles. Only after he had kicked his loose did he actually think about doing it.

Around him he saw thirty-one other missiles from his squadron launch and speed away toward one of the enemy ships, and then thousands more from the other Aardvarks. Calculations read that they would catch up in about two hours assuming their targets did not go back to full burn, or six hours if they did. While Meme could outrun ships of EarthFleet, they couldn’t outrun their missiles.

However, these overtaking Pilums would be lucky to get close enough for their fusion warheads to do damage. The two Destroyers continued to stretch out the engagement time to allow them to pick off the incoming missiles. Vango knew Yeager was fighting a chess match with a limited number of pieces – ammo and ships – and playing for the end game.

He checked his own tanks of tritium-deuterium. Except for antimatter, a highly experimental technology at best, this was the most potent fuel known to man. It fused within the ferrocrystal plenum of the best engines humanity could produce, and then flung out the back through a nozzle that accelerated the resulting hot plasma to an appreciable fraction of lightspeed.

About a fifth had been used so far. The Aardvarks had arrived filled by enormous tankers before exiting the solar system. Vango knew consideration had been given to sending more tankers along, but that idea had been rejected. The relatively tiny and stealthy attack ships might be missed in the deep of space, but a bloated refueler couldn’t be cloaked. Instead, three motherships with repair and refuel capability followed more slowly, a month back. Those might be able to save pilots and ships that otherwise wouldn’t make it.

Vango ran through a quick systems check, then took a look at the Destroyers again. They appeared to be cruising under minimal acceleration, perhaps conserving fuel. By the numbers, they should not have seen the next wave of missiles launched at them, and once they did, it would take almost an hour for the fleet to see their reaction.

The two Meme seemed oddly close to each other. Vango zoomed his view in and found the enemy actually touching side to side, like two slightly deflated footballs. He keyed his mike and called his flight lead.

“Token, this is Vango. Take a close look at the Destroyers. What do you see?”

“Umm…sec…huh. Looks like two whales having relations.”

Vango laughed. Token was the son of a Baptist preacher and never let a vulgar word pass his lips. A moment later he stopped laughing. “I think you figured it out. They must be mated or docked. Why, do you think?”

“One helping the other make repairs? Refueling? Or some unknowable reason of their own.”

“Yeah.” Vango wished he could feel his body enough to chew on the inside of his cheek. “I’m uploading it with a priority tag.”

“You don’t think someone else has already noticed?”

“Somebody has to be the first. Maybe it’ll be me.”

“Bucking for promotion?”

Vango let loose a virtual sigh. “I suspect everyone who makes it out of here will get promoted.”

“Heck of a way to get a bump.”

“Hey, that was almost a curse word!”

It was Token’s turn to laugh. “The heck it was.”

Vango fell silent as he kept straining his senses, trying to figure out what the two were doing, but nothing changed so he checked on the inbound missiles. Still an hour and a half away.

“Understood. I have reported the situation,” One responded.

“What will we do? We can’t fight without fuel. We should never have divided Destroyer 6223,” whined Three.

“If not, we would still be repairing hernias and tasting excrement,” snapped One. “We still have enough to fight, and the Command tria know the situation as well as we do.” He held up a pod in a gesture of ingesting communication. “I have just received word our supplies will be replenished.”

“How –”

“From 6223,” Two snarled at the hapless Three. “That’s the only possibility. Am I correct?”

“You are,” One replied. “Three, cease your vocalizations and attend to your duties. Prepare to receive and rebalance the fuel supplies.”

“Yes, One,” Three said, trying to just concentrate on his job.

For a long, nerve-wracking time they received the precious gas, but One noticed it was all lowest-grade hydrogen. He turned a secondary eyeball in Two’s direction, then extended a pod to the other Meme’s tank to poke him.

“What?”

“They are giving us only hydrogen.”

Two got it right away. “Command trium 6223 is reserving the best fuel for themselves.”

“Perhaps they are just being prudent.”

“Perhaps they are preparing to sacrifice us,” Two said with as few transfer molecules as possible, aimed directly at One’s receptors.

“No...” One replied similarly after a moment’s pause. “Certainly 6223-2 will be made to take the brunt of the attack, but the experienced crew aboard this ship is too valuable to just throw it away. We will be taken off before we are lost.” He tried to put conviction into his words.

“Let us hope you are right.”

“What are you two conversing about?” Three interjected, snaking a pod across the floor to the place where One and Two almost touched.

“Nothing!” they replied in unison, and withdrew to their tanks, leaving Three feeling very worried indeed.

“Get back to your duties,” One added more gently. “We will survive and advance. Five of the True Race above us have been killed. Eventually tria will be consolidated and we will move up.” Now was not the time to cut away the weak link in their trium. One never knew if another might be worse. At least he knew how to browbeat Three into compliance.

One of them, the original leader he thought, drew slightly ahead and to the side, taking up a guard position better suited to intercept missiles than the last time. Once it had done so, both great ships brought their engines up to what looked like full cruise, and the closure rate dropped slightly. However, the delay had allowed the fleet’s missiles to gain velocity impossible to overcome.