Angles of Attack (31 page)

We detach from the SRA deep-space anchorage eight hours after our initial docking approach with full deuterium and water tanks. In regular fleet operations, even a tricky refuel while under way shouldn’t take longer than an hour and a half at the most, but considering that we tapped a supply infrastructure that was never designed to interface with our ship, it was a reasonably short stop. We’re almost half a day behind on our high-speed run back to the Alliance node, but now we have the fuel to get there as fast as
Indy
can go, which is plenty hasty. If we die trying to get through, we’ll die warm, clean, and reasonably well fed.

CHAPTER 18

“Combat stations, combat stations. All hands, combat stations. This is not a drill. I repeat . . .”

I’m already in vacsuit when the combat-stations alert trills overhead. I knew it was coming, but after two weeks of deeply uneventful cruising the backwater of the inner solar system, it’s still a bit of a jolt back into reality: This is a warship, and we are hurtling toward the enemy again.

I pick up my helmet and leave the berth. As I step through the hatch, I almost collide with Dmitry and Staff Sergeant Philbrick, who are squeezing through the passage outside just as I step out.

“Here we go,” Philbrick says. His combat station is outside the CIC with his fire team in case we get boarded—a very unlikely event when going up against Lankies, but shipboard protocol is what it is. Dmitry’s spot is in the CIC pit because he has to open the door for us once again, and my spot is right beside him to make sure that’s all he does while he’s patched into
Indy
’s silicon brain.

We rush down the passageway and up the staircase to the CIC deck with measured haste. All around us,
Indy
’s crew perform the well-practiced choreography of a fleet ship getting ready for battle.

“Good luck,” Philbrick says when we get to the armored CIC hatch, and he veers off to join his fire team on the outside of the vestibule.

“You, too,” I say. If things go pear-shaped, he’ll be closer to the escape pods than the CIC crew, but there won’t be any rescue out here for any of us if it comes to that.

Colonel Campbell and Major Renner are in their usual spots in the CIC pit. Dmitry and I take our positions by the handrail. The plot on the holotable isn’t very busy. It has just three icons on it, but two of them are the signal orange of positively identified Lanky contacts.

“Bogey One, bearing two-seven-zero by positive zero-one-three, moving laterally at ten meters per second, designate Lima-20. Bogey Two, bearing two-niner-zero by negative one-five-zero, moving laterally on reciprocal heading at fifteen meters per second, designate Lima-21.” The tactical officer marks the target icons with their assigned designations.

The plot shows us fifty thousand kilometers from the Alcubierre transition point. The two Lanky ships are slowly cruising through the slice of space in front of it. We are in a wide elliptical trajectory, coasting ballistic with only our passive sensors, the exact way we have been evading the Lankies since we almost traded hull plating with them when we popped out of this transition point almost a month ago.

“They’re just crawling along,” the XO says.

“They don’t have to be fast,” Colonel Campbell replies. “They just have to be in the way. But where is the third one? We had three seed ships in front of us when we transitioned in.”

“No sign of anything but Lima-20 and 21 as far as our optical gear can look, sir.”

“Sons of bitches are damn near invisible even this close. The other guy could be fifty thousand klicks further out, and we wouldn’t even see him unless we knew exactly where to look. How the hell do they manage to hide something that big so well?”

On the optical feed, the Lanky ships are slow-moving blotches against the background of deep, dark space. Their hulls don’t reflect light the way our metal alloy hulls do. They’ve always reminded me more of bug carapaces than spaceship armor.
Indy
is stealthy because she is small and because she is crammed to the gunwales with the very latest in stealth technology. Nobody knows yet why the Lanky ships are so damn stealthy that they don’t even show up on radar, thermal imaging, or gamma-ray scopes. It’s hard to study something that will blow you full of holes when you get close enough to spot it.

“How many drones left in the racks?” Colonel Campbell asks.

“Six, sir.”

“Get four of them into the tubes and warm ’em up. I want to have eyes on this from all angles before we try and make our dash.”

The flight of stealth recon drones launches five minutes later. At this range, less than fifty thousand kilometers away, their propulsion systems only need to burn for acceleration a few seconds. They spread out from the icon marking
Indy
’s location and rush toward the Lanky ships.

“They give the slightest hint that they spotted us, we’re reversing course and going for full burn back the way we came,” Colonel Campbell says.

“Tickling the dragon’s tail.” Major Renner watches the little blue icons on the plot closing the distance with the larger orange ones. “All fun and games until the dragon turns and bites you in the ass.”

The drones are on their run for thirty minutes when the Lankies change course, both seemingly at the same time.

“Lima-20 turning to bear negative ten degrees relative. Fifteen degrees. Twenty.”

The icon for Lima-20 shows the Lanky making a sweeping turn, but he’s not turning toward us or the drone that is now within a thousand kilometers off his port side. He’s turning away from us. At the same time, the icon for Lima-21 changes direction as well, going in the same direction but with hundreds of kilometers of space between them. We now have stern-aspect views of both Lanky ships.

“They’re circling the transition point,” the colonel muses. “Remember when we came in? Like sharks searching for prey.”

The data from the drones bears out the colonel’s observation. We watch as the Lanky ships execute another leg in their pattern, then change course again. Their elapsed track on the plot begins to form an elliptical racetrack pattern, with both ships at opposite ends of the ellipse from each other, and the transition point in the center of the racetrack.

“Surely they’re not that dumb,” the XO says when we’re five or six turns into the pattern.

“What’s that, Major?”

“What’s the first rule of planning and executing a patrol route?” Major Renner asks nobody in particular.

“You make patrol random,” Dmitry says. “So enemy cannot predict.”

The XO and Colonel Campbell look at Dmitry with a mix of mild surprise and amusement.

“Ten points to our Russian guest,” the XO says. “That’s precisely it. But it’s not what these guys are doing. Wait for the next turn.” She points at one of the icons on the plot.

“Lima-20 will turn to relative one-seven-five in ninety seconds. Lima-21 will turn to relative three-zero-zero five or six seconds later. Watch.”

I divide my attention between the plot and the chronometer readout on the CIC bulkhead. Sure enough, a minute and a half after the XO’s prediction, the icons change direction on the plot again, exactly the way she predicted. Major Renner picks up the marker pen from the holotable and clicks a trajectory onto the plot.

“There’s the patrol pattern, and it’s entirely predictable, down to five seconds and a kilometer or two.”

“That’s weapons-grade stupid,” the tactical officer says.

“By our standards, sure.” Colonel Campbell pans the map around and changes the scale to get a better spatial sense of the Lanky patrol pattern relative to our position. “But they’re not human. We don’t have a clue how they think. If they think. They could be acting on instinct alone. Think of the shark analogy. Does a shark have to care whether it’s predictable or not?”

“Maybe they know as little about us as we do about them,” I say.

“Maybe. Problem is, they don’t have to give a shit about figuring us out. Sharks and minnows and all that.”

Colonel Campbell taps the plot again to reset the range scale. “We’ll observe their pattern for a little while, make sure it stays constant. I want a best-time trajectory to the transition point, calculated for the precise moment when both those ships are as far away from the node as their pattern takes them. We’re going to have to loop around and burn for speed.”

“What about creating a little diversion?” the XO asks. “Just to be on the safe side.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Well, we can use the parasite fighter we have left. Load it with tactical nukes, coast it in from the far side, and stick a few megatons into the nearest Lanky.”

“We can launch, then have the bird drop stealth and run the opposite way,” the tactical officer suggests. “Maybe the Lanky will give chase. But even if not, we’ll have the background noise from a few nukes to keep their eyes off us. It’ll at least get their attention.”

“We’d be giving up the rest of our offensive fighter power to do the space-warfare equivalent of throwing a rock down an alley.” Colonel Campbell chews on his lower lip in thought. “That’s a mighty expensive distraction.”

“May be worth it just to increase the margin of error.”

The colonel mulls the idea for a few moments and then shrugs. “Let’s do it. Cheaper than losing the ship because we made the node three seconds too late.”

It takes another hour to prep and load
Indy
’s remaining parasite fighter. They are small and stealthy, and like the drones, the parasite fighters are remote-controlled from the weapons station in
Indy
’s CIC. Unlike the drones, however, they are designed for combat, to give
Indy
stealthy standoff capabilities for sneak attacks. They have ordnance bays for missiles, and while the weapons officer is prepping the ship’s guidance and targeting systems for launch, the flight deck crew loads four tactical nuclear antiship missiles onto the hardpoints.

“Bird’s prepped and ready for launch. Nuke yield is dialed in at five hundred kilotons per.”

“They’ll make a pretty light show at least,” the XO says.

“Next burn window for max clearance transition is coming up in seven minutes.” The tactical officer puts the corresponding countdown marker on the holotable display.

“Launch the fighter,” Colonel Campbell orders. “Prepare for acceleration burn and Alcubierre transition. We have one shot at this. Let’s not fuck it up.”