The Dragon’s Path (122 page)

There had been some discussion about not broadcasting at all.
Because Thoth was a black station, they’d be using only passive sensors. Scanning every direction with radar or ladar would light them up like a Christmas tree. It was possible that with its reactor off, the
Rocinante
could sneak up on the station without being noticed. But Fred had decided that if they were somehow spotted, it would be suspicious enough to probably warrant an immediate counterattack. So instead of playing it quiet, they’d decided to play it loud and count on confusion to help them.

With luck the Thoth Station security systems would scan them and see that they were in fact a big chunk of metal flying on an unchanging vector and lacking apparent life support, and ignore them just long enough to let them get close. From far away, the stations’ defense systems might be too much for the
Roci.
But up close, the maneuverable little ship could dart around the station and cut it to pieces. All their cover story needed to do was buy them time while the station’s security team tried to figure out what was going on.

Fred, and by extension everyone in the assault, was betting that the station wouldn’t fire until they were absolutely certain they were under attack. Protogen had gone to a lot of trouble to hide their research lab in the Belt. As soon as they launched their first missile, their anonymity was lost forever. With the war going on, monitors would pick up the fusion torch trails and wonder what was up. Firing a weapon would be Thoth Station’s last resort.

In theory.

Sitting alone inside the tiny bubble of air contained in his helmet, Holden knew that if they were wrong, he’d never even realize it. The
Roci
was flying blind. All radio contact was down. Alex had a mechanical timepiece with a glow-in-the-dark face, and a to-the-second schedule memorized. They couldn’t beat Thoth at high-tech, so they were flying as low-tech as you could get. If they’d missed their guess and the station fired on them, the
Roci
would be vaporized without warning. Holden had once dated a Buddhist who said that death was merely a different state of being, and people only feared the unknown that lay behind that transi
tion. Death without warning was preferable, as it removed all fear.

He felt he now had the counterargument.

To keep his mind busy, he ran through the plan again. When they were practically close enough to spit on Thoth station, Alex would fire up the reactor and do a braking maneuver at nearly ten g’s. The
Guy Molinari
would begin spraying radio static and laser clutter at the station to confuse its targeting package for the few moments the
Roci
would need to come around on an attack vector. The
Roci
would engage the station’s defenses, disabling anything that could hurt the
Molinari,
while the cargo ship moved in to breach the station’s hull and drop off her assault troops.

There were any number of things wrong with this plan.

If the station decided to fire early, just in case, the
Roci
could die before the fight even started. If the station’s targeting system could cut the
Molinari
’s static and laser clutter, they might begin firing while the
Roci
was still getting into position. And even if all that worked perfectly, there was still the assault team, cutting their way into the station and fighting corridor to corridor to the nerve center to take control. Even the inner planets’ best marines were terrified of breaching actions, and for good reason. Moving through unfamiliar metal hallways without cover while the enemy ambushed you at every intersection was a good way to get a lot of people killed. In training simulations back in the Earth navy, Holden had never seen the marines do better than 60 percent casualties. And these weren’t inner planet marines with years of training and state-of-the-art equipment. They were OPA cowboys with whatever gear they could scrape together at the last minute.

But even that wasn’t what really worried Holden.

What really worried him was the large, slightly-warmer-than-space area just a few dozen meters above Thoth station. The
Molinari
had spotted it and warned them before cutting them loose. Having seen the stealth ships before, no one on the
Roci
doubted that this was another one.

Fighting the station would be bad enough, even up close, where most of the station’s advantages were lost. But Holden didn’t look forward to dodging torpedo fire from a missile frigate at the same time. Alex had assured him that if they could get in close enough to the station, they could keep the frigate from firing at them for fear of damaging Thoth, and that the
Roci
’s greater maneuverability would make it more than a match for the larger and more heavily armed ship. The stealth frigates were a strategic weapon, he’d said, not a tactical one. Holden hadn’t said,
Then why do they have one here?

Holden moved to glance down at his wrist, then snorted with frustration in the pitch black of the ops deck. His suit was powered down, chronometers and lights both. The only system on in his suit was air circulation, and that was strictly mechanical. If something got fouled up with it, no little warning lights would come on; he’d just choke and die.

He glanced around the dark room and said, “Come on, how much longer?”

As if in answer, lights began flickering on through the cabin. There was a burst of static in his helmet; then Alex’s drawling voice said, “Internal comms online.”

Holden began flipping switches to bring the rest of the systems back up.

“Reactor,” he said.

“Two minutes,” Amos replied from the engine room.

“Main computer.”

“Thirty seconds to reboot,” Naomi said, and waved at him from across the ops deck. The lights had come up enough for them to see each other.

“Weps?”

Alex laughed with something like genuine glee over the comm.

“Weapons are coming online,” he said. “As soon as Naomi gives me back the targeting comp, we’ll be cocked, locked, and ready to rock.”

Hearing everyone check in after the long and silent darkness of
their approach reassured him. Being able to look across the room and see Naomi working at her tasks eased a dread he hadn’t even realized he’d been feeling.

“Targeting should be up now,” Naomi said.

“Roger that,” Alex replied. “Scopes are up. Radar, up. Ladar, up—Shit, Naomi, you seeing this?”

“I see it,” Naomi said. “Captain, getting engine signatures from the stealth ship. They’re powering up too.”

“We expected that,” Holden said. “Everyone stay on task.”

“One minute,” Amos said.

Holden turned on his console and pulled up his tactical display. In the scope, Thoth Station turned in a lazy circle while the slightly warm spot above it got hot enough to resolve a rough hull outline.

“Alex, that doesn’t look like the last frigate,” Holden said. “Does the
Roci
recognize it yet?”

“Not yet, Cap, but she’s workin’ on it.”

“Thirty seconds,” Amos said.

“Getting ladar searches from the station,” Naomi said. “Broadcasting chatter.”

Holden watched on his screen as Naomi tried to match the wavelength the station was using to target them, and began spraying the station with their own laser comm array to confuse the returns.

“Fifteen seconds,” Amos said.

“Okay, buckle up, kids,” Alex said. “Here comes the juice.”

Even before Alex had finished saying it, Holden felt a dozen pinpricks as his chair pumped him full of drugs to keep him alive during the coming deceleration. His skin went tight and hot, and his balls crawled up into his belly. Alex seemed to be speaking in slow motion.

“Five… four… three… two… ”

He never said
one.
Instead, a thousand pounds sat on Holden’s chest and rumbled like a laughing giant as the
Roci
’s engine slammed on the brakes at ten g’s. Holden thought he could actually
feel his lungs scraping the inside of his rib cage as his chest did its best to collapse. But the chair pulled him into a soft gel-filled embrace, and the drugs kept his heart beating and his brain processing. He didn’t black out. If the high-g maneuvering killed him, he’d be wide awake and lucid for the entire thing.

His helmet filled with the sound of gurgling and labored breathing, only some of which was his own. Amos managed part of a curse before his jaw was clamped shut. Holden couldn’t hear the
Roci
shuddering with the strain of her course change, but he could feel it through the seat. She was tough. Tougher than any of them. They’d be long dead before the ship pulled enough g’s to hurt itself.

When relief came, it came so suddenly that Holden almost vomited. The drugs in his system stopped that too. He took a deep breath and the cartilage of his sternum clicked painfully back into place.

“Check in,” he muttered. His jaw hurt.

“Comm array targeted,” Alex replied immediately. Thoth Station’s comm and targeting array was the first item on their target priority list.

“All green,” Amos said from below.

“Sir,” Naomi said, a warning in her voice.

“Shit, I see it,” Alex said.

Holden told his console to mirror Naomi’s so he could see what she was looking at. On her screen, the
Roci
had figured out why it couldn’t identify the stealth ship.

There were two ships, not one large and ungainly missile frigate that they could dance around and cut to pieces at close range. No, that would have been too easy. These were two much smaller ships parked close together to trick enemy sensors. And now they were both firing their engines and splitting up.

Okay,
Holden thought.
New plan.

“Alex, get their attention,” he said. “Can’t let them go after the
Molinari.
”

“Roger,” Alex replied. “One away.”

Holden felt the
Roci
shudder as Alex fired a torpedo at one of the two ships. The smaller ships were rapidly changing speed and vector, and the torpedo had been fired hastily and from a bad angle. It wouldn’t score a hit, but the
Roci
would be on everyone’s scope as a threat now. So that was good.

Both of the smaller ships darted away in opposite directions at full burn, spraying chaff and laser chatter behind them as they went. The torpedo wobbled in its trajectory and then limped away in a random direction.

“Naomi, Alex, any idea what we’re facing here?” Holden asked.

“
Roci
still doesn’t recognize them, sir,” Naomi said.

“New hull design,” Alex said over her. “But they’re flyin’ like fast interceptors. Guessin’ a torpedo or two on the belly, and a keel-mounted rail gun.”

Faster and more maneuverable than the
Roci,
but they’d be able to fire in only one direction.

“Alex, come around to—” Holden’s order was cut short when the
Rocinante
shuddered and jumped sideways, hurling him into the side of his restraints with rib-bruising force.

“We’re hit!” Amos and Alex yelled at the same time.

“Station shot us with some sort of heavy gauss cannon,” Naomi said.

“Damage,” Holden said.

“Went clean through us, Cap,” Amos said. “Galley and the machine shop. Got yellows on the board, but nothing that’ll kill us.”

Nothing that’ll kill us
sounded good, but Holden felt a pang for his coffeemaker.

“Alex,” Holden said. “Forget the little ships, kill that comm array.”

“Roger,” Alex replied, and the
Roci
lurched sideways as Alex changed course to begin his torpedo run on the station.

“Naomi, as soon as the first one of those fighters comes around on his attack run, give him the comm laser in the face, full strength, and start dropping chaff.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied. Maybe the laser would be enough to screw up his targeting system for a few seconds.

“Station’s openin’ up with the PDCs,” Alex said. “This’ll get a mite bumpy.”

Holden switched from mirroring Naomi’s screen to watching Alex’s. His panel filled with thousands of rapidly moving balls of light and Thoth station rotating in the background. The
Roci
’s threat computer was outlining the incoming point defense cannon fire with bright light on Alex’s HUD. It was moving impossibly fast, but at least with the system doing a bright overlay on each round, the pilot could see where the fire was coming from and which direction it was traveling. Alex reacted to this threat information with consummate skill, maneuvering away from the PDCs’ direction of fire in quick, almost random movements that forced the automated targeting of the point defense cannons to adjust constantly.

To Holden, it looked like a game. Incredibly fast blobs of light flew up from the space station in chains, like long and thin pearl necklaces. The ship moved restlessly, finding the gaps between the threads and dodging away to a new gap before the strands could react and touch her. But Holden knew that each blob of light represented a chunk of Teflon-coated tungsten steel with a depleted uranium heart, going thousands of meters per second. If Alex lost the game, they’d know it when the
Rocinante
was cut to pieces.

Holden almost jumped out of his skin when Amos spoke. “Shit, Cap, got a leak somewhere. Three port-maneuvering thrusters are losing water pressure. Going to patch it.”