Bolo Brigade (21 page)

Ten Gs was her limit, she knew, the line at which her vision would go and then she would black out. She kept the throttle full forward, however, and howled into the sky.

Around her, the unseen Malach ships were converging. . . .

"She's doing it!" someone on the bridge called, her voice hushed with wonder. "By God, she's doing it!"

Donal's eyes snapped open. He'd closed them momentarily, the better to imagine the sleek, black Starhawk arrowing into Wide Sky's stratosphere on the far side of the planet, some twelve thousand kilometers to the west.

"That's our window," the captain said. "All ships! Stand by to boost in ninety seconds! Engineering! Bring us to one hundred percent, standby."

"Fusion core at one hundred percent, standing by."

"Reaction mass."

"RM, check. We are ready for boost, on your mark, Captain."

"Com. Link with the other ships."

"All ships standing by, Captain. Report ready for boost."

"Navigation."

"Plot locked in, sir."

"Mooring lines."

"Mooring lines cast off. We're clear to navigate, sir."

"Clear sky."

"Flight path clear, sir. And we have a green light from the port."

"Message from Fortrose, Captain."

"Let's hear it."

"It reads, 'God speed, and good luck.' "

"How original. Acknowledge."

"Message acknowledged, Captain."

"Maneuvering thrusters."

"Maneuvering, check."

"Meteor lasers."

"Met lasers. Operational. On auto."

"Telemetry. . . ."

The checklist droned on, system and acknowledgment, a dance of professional routine. Mesmerized by the drifting points of light on the screen, Donal kept watching the secondary screen as the seconds dwindled away. Kathy's fighter was passing two hundred kilometers altitude now, well clear of Wide Sky's atmosphere and hurtling out into space.

Yes . . . she was closing on the blip representing the Malach's largest transport, as planned.
Just scare them, Kathy, then cut in full boost and get the hell out of there. You don't need to get closer than a couple of thousand klicks to scare them out of their scales, and that's all we'll need
. . . .

Someone announced the thirty-second mark . . . and then the twenty. The secondary screen showed the red dots of the Malach blockader ships now, streaming around the curve of the planet in hot pursuit of the solitary XK-4000 Starhawk. The Dino forces were definitely moving clear of the sky overhead, swarming toward the opposite hemisphere to defend against that sudden valiant, suicidal attack.

"Hang onto your breakfasts, people," Captain Arkin called. "That's five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . and punch it!"

Thunder sounded, deep beneath the ship, a growing rumble that climbed rapidly in volume, accompanied by a steady shaking as the Conestoga's enormous Argosy-B fusion drives cut in, hurling the massive craft into a rapidly darkening sky. A massive hand clamped down over Donal's chest, squeezing him back into the hard and close-fitting confines of the jumpseat. His breath came in short gasps as his weight increased; he wondered how the thousands of kids below decks were taking the brutal acceleration.

He wondered how Kathy was doing, fighting for her life twelve thousand kilometers away. . . .

* * *

Acceleration peaked at 10.2 Gs . . . a bit more than Kathy had been shooting for, but she surprised herself by somehow hanging on to the ragged, fuzzy-visioned edge of consciousness as the stars brightened and hardened and Wide Sky's night side fell away at her back. As her thrusters cut out, she felt the heart-lifting surge of zero-G.

White light, hard, actinic, and dazzling, blossomed soundlessly to her right. Some lizard fighter jock had just gotten eager and launched a hunter-killer her way, but it had detonated well short of its target. So far, none of her pursuers was close enough to pose a real threat.

But they would be soon. Her course had been calculated to punch up and through the blockade before they could react, but some few, at least, would be in orbits that gave them a decent chance of intercepting her. She checked her radar screen again, comparing it with her nav plot. Yeah . . . there were at least four Malach ships out there that would be within easy missile range in another couple of minutes. And if she changed course, there would be a handful more lizard hotshots on her tail who would be in position to cut her off.

But that was the idea, of course, to drag as many of the Malach after her as possible. She checked range to target, then looked at the graphic trajectory plot on her CGD and gave a low chuckle. Big Mama was two thousand kilometers away, and she'd nailed her perfectly with a class-one intercept vector. The only question now was, how long should she hold this course? The longer she stayed on the intercept, the more convinced the Malach would be that she was after Big Mama, and that was good for the Conestogas at the antipodes. But the longer she held this course, the closer the lizards on an intercept with her would get . . . and the less likely it was that she was going to get out of this.

But she already knew the answer to the equation. . . .

* * *

Aghrracht the Swift-Slayer opened all four eyes. "Solitary?" she hissed. "There is only
one
?"

"Only one, Deathgiver," Sh'graat'na the Prey Wounder told her. "It is approaching at approximately three thousand
t'charucht
per
quor
. We have been scanning for support elements, assuming that this might be a diversion, but have seen nothing as yet."

Aghrracht's Second, Zhallet'llesch the Scent Finder, raised her head. "We believe the craft may be intended as
k'klaj'sh'achk
."

Aghrracht closed both hind-hands in empathic understanding. The Malach term literally meant head-crush but referred to an attack made by one member of a hunter pack against the head and jaws of some particularly large and dangerous prey. The word denoted bravery, and the willingness to sacrifice one's self so that the rest of the pack would eat.

"If she seeks death, we must help that warrior find her destiny," Aghrracht said. "Destroy her!"

"Kill and eat!" the others said in unison, hind-hands clenched.

The large command center suddenly and unaccountably felt close and warm.

Eight hundred more kilometers to Big Mama. Kathy could see the target visually now . . . a point of white light, about first magnitude, drifting slowly from her right toward her Starhawk's nose.

A warning buzzer sounded. Some lizard hotshot had just acquired a weapons radar lock.
Now it begins
. . . .

The warning tone changed pitch. "Hostile missile launch," her Starhawk's computer voice informed her with a maddening composure. "Radar lock. Impact in twenty-three seconds."

"Ordnance, radar decoy launch," she said. "Dump chaff."

She heard the thump from aft, and the AI confirmed the launch a moment later. "Radar decoy deployed," the calm voice said. "Chaff deployed. Beacon broadcasting. Impact in fifteen seconds."

Chaff, a cloud of aluminized mylar exploded aft of the Starhawk to confuse the missile's radar lock, was an ancient countermeasure, but an effective one. The decoy was also old, in principle, a fist-sized beacon that leaked signals sounding suspiciously like reflections from the Starhawk itself. Together, the two might confuse the enemy's homing missile enough to let Kathy get a bit closer.

"Missile veering to port. Impact in—"

White light flared to her left, a dazzling glare that would have been blinding had she chanced to look into that nuclear glow. She felt a prickling sensation on her skin beneath her space suit.
Damn, that was close. The lizards must be using rad-enhanced warheads, hoping for a long-distance kill.
She wondered how many roentgens she'd just absorbed.

"Hostile missile launch. Radar lock. Impact in nineteen seconds."

"You know the drill," she replied. "Ordnance, radar decoy launch. Dump chaff."

The second warhead detonated moments later in savage, blinding brilliance and perfect silence. So far, her decoys were keeping the warheads at arm's length, but she was going to be out of squawkers soon. She goosed her thrusters, accelerating hard, changing her side vector at the same time to hold her intercept with Big Mama.

The range closed, the kilometers ticking away faster now, as five more missiles arced in from astern. . . .

"She's going for the big Dino ship," the navigator said. She turned and gave Donal an unreadable look, then turned to Captain Arkin. "I don't think she intended to bluff it out at all. She's going for the kill."

"Damn," Arkin said. Acceleration continued to hammer at them, but as
Uriel
punched up through Wide Sky's stratosphere and into open space, the thrust began easing off. Unlike the sturdy little Starhawk fighter, the big Conestogas weren't built for heavy acceleration over the long haul, and a sustained boost at more than about five Gs might crack the hull or snap her spine.

Donal looked at the main screen, which showed the view ahead along
Uriel
's upward curving course. Blue sky had been giving way moment by moment, first to purple, and then to the dead black of open space. They were rising from the planet on the side opposite from the Strathan Cluster, but that would not pose a major navigational problem. They would enter hyper-L, travel for a light year or so to get clear of the Malach ships, then drop back into normal space to realign for the long run for Muir and safety.

He looked back at the secondary screen on the bridge dome. Nearly all of the blockading Malach warships had been drawn away from the dayside of Wide Sky and the area over Scarba and were streaming out around the planet in a mad scramble to catch Kathy's Starhawk. She was still in the lead, just barely, but the point of light marking her ship was almost touching the bright blip marking the largest Malach vessel.

Damn it, you were supposed to decoy the fighters away and then jump clear
, he thought fiercely. "Captain Arkin, can you patch me onto the commo net?"

"Sure. Ben? Give him a set."

Uriel
's communications officer passed Donal a comm set. He pulled it down over his head and adjusted the thread mike.

"Blue Hawk, Blue Hawk!" he called, touching the transmit key on the earphone. "This is Bolo." They'd not agreed on personal call signs before she'd left to board her ship, but she would know who it was.

Static hissed and crackled. He couldn't tell if the transmission was being jammed, or if Kathy simply wasn't listening.

"Blue Hawk, listen to me! You don't need to continue that attack! Break off! Break off!"

Static continued its ocean's surf roar.

"There've been a number of nuke detonations in that area in the last few moments," the comm officer told him. "Clouds of highly charged particles. She may not be receiving us, or we may not be picking up the answer."

"It's also possible that her transmitter is down," the bridge engineer suggested. "She's taken some damned close near-misses."

"Is she still maneuvering?"

"That's affirmative," the comm officer said. "She started accelerating again a few seconds ago. She's not a dead hulk."

"Not yet, anyway," Arkin said. "Too bad."

In that moment, Donal hated
Uriel
's captain . . . but then he realized that what he was hearing was not callousness, but a rather brittle practicality. Kathy had bought them their chance to get off-world, and there wasn't a thing in the universe anyone could do to help her.

It was, Donal thought, the bravest act he had ever witnessed in his life.

It was, Kathy thought, the stupidest situation she'd ever found herself in. She could see the blips marking the refugee fleet now on her CGD screen, a cluster of glowing pinpoints accelerating into space on the opposite side of Wide Sky from her current location. The Conestogas were away now, moving quickly enough into deep space that the Malach would never catch them, not when they would have to slow, reverse course, and accelerate all over again to catch them. She could leave any time.

Except that she
couldn't
, not anymore. Her diversion had worked just a little bit too well, and the scaly hounds were baying after her now with what could only be interpreted as a positive lust for her blood. If she changed course now, giving Big Mama a miss, she knew that Big Mama's guardians would continue to dog her trail, closing until they could overwhelm her passive missile defenses, or until her chaff and decoy pods were gone. And then . . .

She remembered her argument with Donal the other night. "
You don't stand a chance,
" he'd told her. "
They'll be all over your tail before you clear atmosphere
!"

"
You leave that to me, Lieutenant,
" she'd told him. "
I'll buy you the time to get clear of Wide Sky. You just get that information back to Muir, and don't let my little stunt be wasted, okay?
"

His agreement had been reluctant, won, she thought, more because her rank put her beyond his reach. That was okay. She'd known what she had to do . . . and she'd done it. The kids had gotten clear of Wide Sky, and that was what was important.

But if she cut speed now, if she hit her maneuvering thrusters and tried to change vector, that pack on her trail would be on her in no time, and she would be dead meat. She was in too deep to back out. The only thing left for her was to play this thing out to the end.

Communications were dead. That last near-miss nuke had fried her commo, even though the equipment was supposed to be shielded against hard radiation. Well, that didn't matter anyway. There was nobody around she wanted to say good-bye to.

Big Mama was a lot closer now, showing as more than a bright point of light, and her telescopic sensors were projecting an image on her number two data screen. The ship was enormous, a kilometer long at least, and broad and deep and rounded. A vessel that large could carry a hell of a lot of troops, combat vehicles, or supplies; and she reminded herself that there were seven more Malach ships out there almost as big as this one. She took another look at her pursuers on her graphic display. Yeah, they were as stirred up as a nest of Dolthan black hornets, coming at her with their throttles full open.