The Depths of Time (5 page)

“
If that
’
s not black magic I don
’
t know what is,
”
Koffield said from behind her.
“
Brilliant work, Sayad. Later you can tell me how you did it.
”

Sayad smiled at her board.
“
Yes, sir,
”
she agreed as she routed the detection tracks to weapons.
“
I
’
ll be glad to oblige.
”
Later. Now there was far too much to do. The three new intruder tracks were on the far side of the wormhole from the
Upholder,
and doing their damnedest to get still farther away with every moment that passed. The
Upholder
was going to have a devil of a time pursuing any one of them, let alone pursuing, intercepting, and destroying all three. They would need smart tactics, and need them fast, to have any hope of blasting them all. She set to work gathering information, coaxing more data out of the pinpricks of light that were doing their best to escape.

A flare of light lit up the main screens, and Sayad was focused enough on her own work, she did not know at first what it was. Ah, of course. Fire control had locked in and blown out their second bogie. Sayad checked her displays. It was, not surprisingly, the one the weapons team had found for themselves. That left the one she had first spotted, the one bearing straight down on them. And fire control was already redirecting fire toward intruder three. She let them do their job while she did hers, and concentrated on intruders four, five, and six. The flare of the explosion had blinded her detection systems again, but this time it didn
’
t matter. Bogies four to six weren
’
t trying anything fancier than flying in a straight line.

And then, one after another, bogies one, two, and three each did something very fancy indeed. They started accelerating, putting on speed—and putting it on with a vengeance.

Sayad frowned and checked her displays. The numbers they were showing were impossible.
Accelerating
was too mild a word for what those ships were doing. They were doing hundreds, no, thousands of gees in acceleration. Even as she watched, the acceleration displays for each of them went off-scale high. No ship, not even an unpiloted ship, could possibly survive the thrust levels those ships were putting out, no matter what kind of acceleration buffers they had aboard.

And there, as she watched, one, two, three, the three bogies just—vanished. Gone. Did not show on any of her instruments. Her velocity meters showed why, and it was impossible to believe them. Light-speed. The damned intruders had accelerated all the way up to light-speed in the space of a few seconds.

And
nothing,
nowhere, could possibly travel at light-speed. That was an article of faith, an unalterable fact. That was the whole reason for the existence of the time-shaft wormholes—to serve as a creaky, awkward, difficult substitute for true light-speed and translight-speed travel. If you could go faster than light, you didn
’
t need the wormholes.

So why in the name of the devil
’
s chaos had the intruders just
used
a wormhole? And how did they jump to light-speed? And where the hell were they going? And what the hell was the
Upholder
going to do to stop them?

But then her attention refocused itself on the problem still at hand, the problem
Upholder
could still do something about. That one remaining intruder, the one just coming into range. She flipped back through all her data, through all her guess-upon-guess-upon-guess extrapolations. If she had it right, the one coming up on them right then was not only the last of the surviving six to come through the worm-hole, but was to have been the last of the sixteen in the intended schedule. Whatever the first ones out of the chute had done was what this one was
about
to do—

She slapped a hand down on the comm key.
“
Weapons! Remaining target is about to commence massive acceleration and blow right past us. Advise you fire scattershot railgun rounds across its projected course! Fire now, now, now!
”

If fire control was fast enough off the mark, they should at least be able to hit this one as it started its escape run. There was a faint
whir-thump, whir-thump, whir-thump
from somewhere belowdecks, a sound and vibration so slight she wouldn
’
t even have noticed it if she hadn
’
t been waiting for it. The railgun was firing. Sayad watched her screens and the projected course of the intruder, and the cloud of scattershot pellets expanding out from their dispersal point. They were no more than tiny balls of perfectly ordinary iron, but if fire control had done its job right, the intruder was going to pass through a cloud of several thousand such bits of iron at a minimum closing rate of ten or fifteen kilometers a second. And if the intruder started its acceleration run before it hit the cloud— well, the faster it flew, the harder it would hit.

Koffield leaned in over her and hit the comm button himself.
“
Captain to conn! Attitude X-125, Y-010, Z-220, full emergency thrust! Immediate action! Fire control! Saturation fire of scattershot across intruder
’
s projected course! All hands! Impact and hull breach alert!
”

The
Upholder
lurched crazily about on her long axis and fired her main engines. Sayad stared wide-eyed at her screens. She hadn
’
t seen it. Thank the stars Captain Koffield had. If the intruder hit the scattershot and blew up, it would likely do so a mere five or six hundred kilometers from the
Upholder’s
present position. And when a target that big hit a cloud of scattershot at high velocity, it would fill all of surrounding space with shrapnel. The ship needed to get out of there, and fast.

The acceleration compensators bucked and shuddered as they struggled to correct for the sudden shifts in velocity. The whole ship creaked and moaned as her structure took up the acceleration.

“
Defense systems!
”
the captain shouted.
“
Current status! How long can you hold a maximum electromag shield around the ship?
”
Most of the crew regarded the ship shields as more nuisance than protection. They sucked in inordinate amounts of power, jammed or degraded every detection system on board, and tended to scramble computer circuits that weren
’
t shielded with absolute perfection. Worst of all, it was impossible to fire the engines with the shields up. But if the
Upholder
was going to be practically next door to a bomb that was about to go off, Sayad was ready to put up with any degree of nuisance.

“
Ah, ah, estimate thirty seconds, sir,
”
a nervous voice replied. Sheelton, it sounded like.
“
Twenty-five seconds with aft-enhanced deflection.
”
Aft-enhanced shields would protect the whole ship, but focus a larger fraction of that protection across the aft section, which was going to take the brunt of the impacts with the ship in its present attitude.

“
Very well.
”
Koffield paused for something less than a
heartbeat, then issued his orders.
“
Rig for aft-enhanced deflection, maximum power, and stand by to activate on
my command. Conn, prepare for emergency engine shut
down at my command. Advise me the moment engines are safed. Once that thing blows, we
’
ll kill the engines, light
the shields, and hang on. All hands, rig now for impact,
collision, and hull breach condition one. I say again rig
now for impact, collision, hull breach condition one.
”
He
shut off the intercom.

Hatches slammed shut, sunshields swung shut over view
ports, alarms hooted. Rigging for hull breach condition one
meant all hands not in pressure suits and not standing watch were supposed to dive for their suits and get into
them—but everyone on the bridge was, of course, standing
watch. None of them could be spared from their duties for
the sixty to ninety seconds it would take to pop the suits
from their lockers and get them on. No one on the bridge
moved toward the suit lockers, but Sayad was far from the only one who glanced at the closest locker and did a quick mental rehearsal of the steps needed to get her suit on.

Condition one rules said the captain could suit up or not at his own discretion. And it would be easy to argue
that a suited-up captain would be better able to maintain
effective command during a hull breach. But of course,
morale might be a problem on a bridge where the only one going for his suit was the captain.

Koffield made no move toward the suit lockers. As best
Sayad could see, he did not so much as glance in their direction. She watched her screens for what she knew was
going to happen—and felt her heart start slamming against her chest when it did.
“
Sir!
”
she called out.
“
Remaining intruder commencing acceleration run! No course change or attempt at evasive action. Intruder on collision course with scattershot.
”

“
Time to impact?
”

Sayad shook her head.
“
Velocity ramping up too fast
for solid numbers. Estimate impact on scattershot in thirty
to forty seconds.
”

“
Damn it!
”
Koffield slammed his fist against the con
sole.
“
We
’
re nowhere near clear.
”

One glance at her screens had told Sayad that much. The
Upholder
would be well under a thousand kilometers distance away from the point of impact.

Koffield checked her displays.
“
No time to figure the rates and ranges,
”
he said, half to himself and half to her.
“
We
’
re going to have to do this one by feel.
”
He flipped the switch on the intercom again.
“
This is the captain. Conn, you will perform an all-engines emergency throttle-down to zero power and safing when I call Mark One. Understood?
”

“
Orders received and understood, sir,
”
a voice from conn replied.

“
Defense systems. Activate maximum shields, aft-enhanced deflection, five seconds after I call Mark One, or five seconds after you see all engines stop or safe, or when you hear me call Mark Two. Whichever of those happens, activate shields. Repeat and confirm.
”

“
Um, ah, yes, sir.
”
Definitely Sheelton. Sayad could hear him forcing himself to get calm, get professional.
“
Go to, ah, full-surround shields, max aft-enhanced, at first of any three events: call of Mark One plus five,
or
engine stop plus five,
or
call of Mark Two. Received and understood.
”

Sayad understood the point of the complicated order. The impact was going to be almost unimaginably violent. With that much energy blasting out so close by, lots of things could easily go wrong. This way, if the intercom blew, or the repeater displays went out, or Koffield was killed before he could give the order, the shields would still come up. She was glad Koffield had ordered repeat and confirm. They all needed Sheelton to get this one right.

“
Very good, defense systems. All hands, stand by. Any impact estimate update, Sayad?
”

“
Estimate still holds. Now ten to fifteen.
”

“
Conn, defense systems,
”
Koffield called out.
“
Stand by for my commands. Let
’
s get this one right, ladies and gentlemen.
”

Koffield leaned in close, his face next to hers, and stared hard at the displays, watching the numbers change, the projections adjust, the variables shift. If he called his commands too soon, they would lose priceless seconds of escape acceleration time, and the electromagnetic shields might fail before the blast wave had expanded out past the ship. Call them too late, and the radiation and blast debris could catch them with the shields not yet activated and up to power.

“
Verbal time in seconds to and past first estimate,
”
he ordered, not taking his eyes off the patch of screen that showed the visible estimate.

“
Impact first possible in eleven seconds,
”
Sayad said
“
Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.
Fiver—It’ll take more than five seconds for the engines to stop and the shields to come on,
she thought.
He’s gambling on a late impact.
She kept up the count, keeping her voice steady, calm. Just say the words.
“
Four. Three. Two. One—
”

“
Conn, Mark One, all engines emergency stop and safe! Now, now, now!
”

But the engines were dying before he was even done speaking the word
Mark,
the ship
’
s frame shuddering and vibrating anew as the stresses rearranged themselves.