Winds of Vengeance (37 page)

There were other detonations within the danger zone, including two so close to destroyers, McDaid couldn’t imagine any of their crews had survived. He felt sick to his stomach, realizing that dozens, perhaps hundreds of his comrades had died over the past few minutes. He felt an irrational urge to turn around, to return and help somehow. But he knew there was nothing he could do for the fleet’s crews.

Nothing but avenge them.

*    *    *

“Damage control parties report fires under control, Admiral. The reactor is back at ninety-four percent output.”

“Very well.” Frette felt the relief flood over her. There had been a moment there, one where she’d been afraid
Compton
was in trouble. The detonation hadn’t been that close, well into the moderate range, but the massive blast of radiation had hit her flagship just where it hurt the most. A series of overloaded conduits had partially scragged the reactor…and started a series of fires.

But her crews had gotten everything under control, quicker than she’d imagined possible.
Compton
was combat ready. What had seemed for a short time as serious damage had proven to be no more than a few singed circuits…and now Nicki Frette stared ahead, her blood cold, ready to strike back.

Her missiles had hit the enemy hard, the first wave from the external racks detonating among the forward escort ships…and hindering their interception efforts. Almost one hundred missiles from the main salvo had penetrated the enemy defenses and exploded along their battle line. Leviathans were tough ships, and most of the damage caused was light or moderate…but one enemy battleship had been bracketed between two warheads…and it split open like an egg, disappeared a few seconds later as its antimatter containment failed.

Frette listened to the damage control reports from the fleet, her eyes flitting back and forth from one display to another as she tried to keep track of everything…the status of her ships, the damage assessments coming in on the enemy fleet, the state of repairs on
Compton
…

How did Erika do this? Or Admiral Compton…with hundreds of ships under his command?

She stared down at the neural link, pausing for a few seconds before reaching out and grabbing it. She took one last look at the main display…and then she put the headset on, and felt the ship’s AI connecting with her mind.

If this was going to be her last fight, it was going to be her greatest one too.

Chapter Thirty-One

Captain Josie Strand to her Bridge Crew

Moments Before Starfire Opened Fire

You’ve heard the stories, read the accounts. You’ve looked up at the statues, the memorials to lost heroes. You know, every one of you, the deeds done by our parents, by the Pilgrims who came before us. Now it is our turn. Honor them now through emulation. Stand by your posts and fight…like no men and women have ever fought before. Show these machines from what warriors we spawned.

To victory! To victory…or death!

Cockpit, Fighter 001

System G42

Earth Two Date 01.08.31

“Alright boys and girls…this is what we trained for, what we practiced for. Let’s make all those flight hours count. Forget the standard tactics…we’re going to do this old school, the way the pilots of the old fleet did. We’re going to go right down the throats of these bastards…and we’re going to blow them to hell!”

McDaid was staring straight ahead as he addressed his squadrons. He had all the dash, all the pure insanity of a great fighter pilot…but he was also realistic. If this battle was going to cost all his people their lives, by God they were going to make it count.

He angled his throttle, wincing as he pushed it to full thrust, altering his ship’s vector, bringing it to bear directly on the Leviathan. The Spacehawk fighter he was piloting was a vast improvement on those the pilots of the old fleet had flown. It was faster, more maneuverable…and it held not one, but two plasma torpedoes in its bomb bay. That was a punch that could make even a Leviathan take notice.

His people had ridden in on the heels of the missiles, slipping through the enemy point defense with only eight losses. That was forty of his people, and it hurt like hell, but it was far less than he’d feared. And now their comrades were ready to take their revenge.

He glanced at range on the display. Thirty thousand kilometers. The book said anything less than twenty thousand was optimum firing range…but McDaid had read the accounts of Greta Hurley’s pilots, and he had listened to Mariko Fujin speak of the tactics that had saved the fleet.

Twenty thousand kilometers is for gutless punks who have no place in a cockpit…

He was going right down this ship’s throat…and he was going to drop both torpedoes at point blank range.

The Leviathan was growing larger on the scanner as the kilometers ticked off the readout.

Twenty thousand.

He flipped a row of switches, activating the launch mechanisms. He could hear the loud clicks as the torpedoes were lowered into firing positon.

Fifteen thousand.

He pulled open a small hatch on his workstation, grabbing a lever with his hand and twisting it to the right.

“Plasma torpedoes armed and ready.” It was the voice of the fighter’s AI. He could fire at any time.

Ten thousand.

He had two gunners on his bird, and they were both manning the ship’s laser turrets, but McDaid wasn’t going to let anyone near the torpedo controls. He was going to fly the fighter to the perfect spot…and he was going to launch the two weapons himself.

Eight thousand kilometers.

Close. Too close, he thought for an instant. His hands were tingling, his body was twitching with excitement, tension.

No, not too close. Fujin closed to less than five thousand more than once…and God only knows what Greta Hurley did…

Six thousand kilometers.

He could hear his crew behind him, breathing hard. He could sense their fear. But none of them said a word.

Five thousand kilometers.

He tapped the throttle one last time, adjusting the trajectory. Then he depressed his finger on the firing stud…once…then an instant later a second time. Then he pulled the throttle hard, back and to the side.

He could see the enemy ship now, filling the screen in front of him.

We’re not going to make it…

He felt his body tense…and he knew his bird was going to crash…

And then it didn’t. His eyes darted to the screen as the fighter zipped past the Leviathan. The numbers he saw made him nauseous. His bird had cleared the enemy by less than eighty kilometers. That was a lot of distance on the ground, but in a space battle it was beyond threading a needle. If he’d tapped the throttle so much a fraction of a second later, the fighter would have smashed into its target.

He loosened his grip on the throttle, gasping for breath as the crushing gee forces abated. His eyes snapped down to the display, anxious for a damage assessment on the target.

But there was nothing there when he looked, nothing at all.

Nothing but a dissipating cloud of plasma where a First Imperium battleship had been.

*    *    *

Starfire
shook hard. Strand could hear the sounds of distant explosions, but it was all soft, far away. She didn’t need to listen…she knew exactly what was happening to her ship.

She leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, allowing the AI to push the data she needed into her mind. It was uncomfortable, but she couldn’t argue it hadn’t given her an advantage.
Starfire
had pushed forward, driving right past the enemy’s light ships…and engaging the battle line directly. She had faced off against four Leviathans, and her pinpoint fire had destroyed one…and gutted another. But
Starfire
had paid for its victories, and for her boldness. Her ship was bleeding air, spewing liquids into space to flash freeze the instant they left the torn hull. Her crew had worked wonders keeping the ship in the fight, but she knew it wouldn’t be much longer. Her main batteries were gone, a good portion of the guns nothing now but melted and twisted wreckage. And even if they had been reparable, she didn’t have the power to fire them. The reactor was down to thirty percent.

She could see the AI’s representation of laser fire lancing out from her battered ship. Three of the secondaries were still online, and at this range their fire was extremely effective. They weren’t the ship killers the main particle accelerators were, but the shots tore into one of the damaged enemy ships, each one another hit, one more bit of devastation before they were silenced for good.

“Commander Hahn, I need thrust. We’re going to close on that bastard.” Her tone was odd, distracted. It was difficult to interact with her human crew when she was wearing the neural link. But what she wanted now wasn’t anything the AI could do for her. She wanted that last bit of effort, the final bit of pure defiance her crew possessed.

“Commander Willis is down at the reactor now, Captain. He requests permission to do an emergency power surge.”

Strand heard the words, the meaning crystalizing in her mind. Willis was suggesting something crazy, a wild gamble…but she knew he was only trying to give her what she needed. If she could close, her people just might be able to take another enemy ship with them. And right now, that was worth any risk.

“Do it.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Strand could see the reactor room, another projection the AI pushed into her mind. She could feel it somehow, the extra power surging through the conduits leading out from the reaction chamber, the whole mechanism strained to the brink of catastrophic failure…but holding together. Somehow.

She could see the target ship as well, feel
Starfire
accelerating, moving toward it. She directed the AI, adjusted the navigation to bring all her surviving guns to bear.

Another twenty thousand kilometers…

She sat, holding her breath, waiting for the right moment…

And then the ship shook wildly. She felt her body slamming forward into her harness, the sharp pain as at least one of her ribs broke. She reached up and pulled the headset off, shaking her head to clear her mind.
Starfire’s
bridge was a nightmare. The main lights were out, only a dim illumination from the emergency fixtures and a small electrical fire on one of the consoles lighting the dark space.

Her people were screaming, and she could see several of them were wounded. And then her eyes settled on Hahn. He was lying on the deck next to his workstation…and she could see in an instant his head was twisted at a grotesque angle. She unstrapped herself and lunged across the deck, dropping to her hands and knees next to him, but even before she reached out, put her fingers on his neck, she knew he was dead.

And so was
Starfire
.

She knew her ship was mortally wounded. She didn’t need any reports to tell her the reactor had scragged, and she doubted there was any hope of restarting it…if Commander Willis and any of his techs were even still alive.

She’d targeted one last enemy, but it had turned out to be a ship too far. She wanted to cry, to slump down to the deck and wait for death. But even though she knew there was no hope, it wasn’t in her to give up on her people. Not if she could save them…even for a few more hours.

She tried to stand, wincing at the pain in her chest and reaching out toward her chair to stabilize herself. She leaned forward, slamming her fist down on the com unit, opening the intraship channel.

“All hands, this is the captain…” She coughed, spraying blood on the arm of her chair. “…abandon ship. All hands to the lifepods. Abandon ship.”

She felt a pain inside, worse in its way than the agony of her broken ribs.
Starfire
was her first command, and now it seemed it was also her last. She ached for her ship, and she couldn’t imagine anything worse than surviving
Starfire’s
destruction. But the training was there, and she knew she had her duty. To survive as long as she could, to get her people off the ship…even if that promised little more than a few extra moments before death.

She leaned over the chair, moving her mouth toward the com unit to repeat her command.

“All hands…abandon ship…”

*    *    *

Nicki Frette sat watching her fleet die. Her people had fought well, better than she’d dared to hope. Eight enemy Leviathans were gone, destroyed outright in the cataclysmic battle, and most of the others were damaged. But eight or nine of them were still firing…and her battle line had fallen almost silent. Only
Compton
still had operational primaries, though she knew that wasn’t likely to last much longer. The other four battleships were completely silent, or they had at most one or two secondaries still operational.

Her eyes paused on the small icon representing
Starfire
. Josie Strand’s ship had been an inspiration as it sliced into the enemy lines, taking all the punishment the enemy vessels could dish out, even as she drove to point blank range and unleashed her own particle accelerators, targeting ships McDaid’s fighters had left damaged and vulnerable.

Starfire
was dead now, a floating, lifeless wreck. No energy output, no readings at all…just a hunk of twisted metal drifting past the enemy into deep space. There were small contacts, lifepods, Frette realized. At least some of Strand’s people had survived. But Frette knew their escape would be short-lived. The enemy ships would hunt them down and destroy them. And, if through some miracle, any of them escaped detection they would face a slow death from cold and lack of oxygen.

She heard the distant whining sound, the main guns firing again…and she felt a flash of elation when another Leviathan vanished. But her satisfaction was short-lived. A few seconds later
Compton
shook hard…another hit, this one solidly amidships.