Curse of the Iris (29 page)

“Engaging,” Diocletia said over the shared channel, the acknowledgment echoed by captains up and down the line. Carlo pulled back on the control yokes, and the
Comet
rolled to starboard, bearing for the A ring and the station just outside it.

“Mr. Grigsby, we're closing to firing range,” Diocletia said. “Select targets and fire at will.”

The Ice Wolves had other ideas, however. As the Jovian ships bore down on them, they pivoted smoothly and vanished into the whirling rock and ice of the A ring.

“Good pilots,” Carlo muttered. “Shame they're traitors.”

“Into the rings, just like Huff predicted,” Mavry said, turning to nod at his father-in-law. “Hope Badawi doesn't fall for it.”

“Admiral Badawi?” one of the Jovian captains said over the shared channel. “The insurgent vessels are—”

“I see it,
Godfrid
. Continue the pursuit and flush them out—they can run, but they can't hide.”

Diocletia reached for her headset.

“They can and will hide, Admiral,” she said over the shared channel. “Some of your captains have never flown through the rings. It's very difficult to maneuver in there—besides the debris, there are magnetic anomalies that will scramble your steering.”

“And the same is true for the insurgents!” thundered Badawi. “You have your orders,
Comet
! Drive them out of the rings, and we'll finish them!”

Diocletia stared at the screen for a moment, then turned to nod at Carlo.

“You heard our commanding officer,” she said, then tapped her finger on her chin, frowning. “Tycho, open a private channel and hail the
Ironhawk
.”

“Private channel open,” Tycho said as the grooved disk of the rings grew into a wall in front of them.

“I read you, Diocletia,” Garrett said. “We're going in.”

“We'll try to stick to your three o'clock, Captain Garrett,” said Diocletia. “That's Mox's pocket cruiser in there—the
Geryon
. He has a jammer aboard. Be ready for it.”

“We will be. Good hunting,
Comet
.”

As the
Comet
passed into the maelstrom of particles that was the A ring, Diocletia leaned forward in the captain's chair, eyes locked on the main screen.

“The destroyers and privateers have entered the A ring,” Yana said. “
Hippolyta
and
Antiope
are holding outside the perimeter.”

“Stay sharp, Carlo,” Diocletia said. “I know you've flown in here before, but now there are hostiles looking to take a shot at us.”

Static bled out of the speakers, and Spotted Jack Almedy screeched a string of impressively horrible oaths.

“Maintain decorum and report,
Steadfast
,” Admiral Badawi said with a sniff.

“Pinnaces! They're all over us!”

“
Izabella
, assist the
Steadfast
,” Badawi said.

“We've lost our rudder,” said the cool, cultured voice of Captain Andrade. “The magnetic drift is interfering with our instruments.”

Before Badawi could reply, the captain of the
Ingvar
began shouting about enemy frigates.

And then the captain of the
Ingolfur
called out for aid.

Carlo swerved the
Comet
to port to avoid a tumbling cloud of icy rock, fighting the steering. Particles drummed against the privateer's hull.

Alarms began to blare.

“Proximity alert,” Vesuvia said. “Hostile craft within firing range.”

“Vesuvia, shut off that alarm!” Diocletia said. “Yana? Where are they?”

“I can't get a reading—sensors are still trying to catalog all the particles.”

A deep rumble reverberated from the speakers, and someone on the shared channel yelled out an order, his words rising into an agonized scream that was cut off.

“All craft report!” Badawi bellowed. “What's happening out there?”

“Missile launch detected,” Vesuvia said with eerie calm. “Heading is—”

Carlo slewed the frigate left, diving under a scree of ice.

“Vesuvia? Heading is
what
?” he demanded.

“Heading cannot be determined,” Vesuvia said. “Missile launch detected. Missile launch detected. Missile launch detected.”

“Dio,” Huff rumbled, “get us out of here.”

“Mr. Grigsby!” Diocletia yelled into her headset. “This is a hot zone, and we are under fire—if you can see it, shoot it. Captain Garrett?”

“We can't see a thing in here,” Garrett said anxiously. “And the anomalies are playing havoc with our steering.”

The bright trail of a missile streaked across space in front of them, plowing through a cloud of dust fragments before changing course and carving a deadly arc toward the quarterdeck.

“Carlo!” Yana yelled.

“I see it,” Carlo said. He threw the
Comet
into a hard roll to starboard, and Tycho grunted as he was thrown around in his harness, his view of the quarterdeck turning a somersault.

“Enemy frigate at three forty-five!” Garrett shouted.

The
Comet
shuddered and bounced sideways, debris pinging off her hull. Then the Hashoones were slammed forward in their seats. Tycho tasted something coppery and realized he'd bitten his tongue. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jumpsuit and spit blood onto the deck. The artificial gravity failed, and he floated up a centimeter before his harness caught him, tiny red beads drifting in front of his face. Then the gravity came back, too hard, crushing him downward and turning his vision gray. He gasped for breath as the gravity lurched, then stabilized.

“—amidships,” he could hear Vesuvia saying through the ringing in his ears. “Hull breach. Initiating damage assessment.”

Air whistled past Tycho's face, drawn down the ladderwell behind his console and out through the hole the missile had punched somewhere in the
Comet
's hull. Alarms rang out below, followed by the slam of bulkheads closing and the roar of the frigate's guns. The breeze fluttered uncertainly and stopped.

“Damage report?” Diocletia demanded.

“Hull breach contained,” Vesuvia said. “Collating data from system diagnostics.”

“
Comet
, we're taking fire from multiple angles,” Garrett said. “Turn to—”

And then the jammer hit.

Tycho's board went blank. The
Comet
skidded sideways before Carlo got the frigate back on a proper heading.

“Come on, baby, quit fighting me,” he muttered.

“Breach contained between portside gunnery stations nine and ten,” Vesuvia said. “Both stations nonresponsive.”

That meant casualties, Tycho thought—just a few meters below him, men and women had died, either incinerated by the missile's fiery impact or sucked out into the void.

“Yana, countermeasures,” Diocletia said.

“On it,” Yana said coolly. “There's interference on all bands—same profile we saw at P/2. Don't worry, I'll have us back up in a moment.”

Carlo stood the frigate on her tail and climbed to avoid a slab of striated rock—the remnant of some moonlet torn to pieces eons ago.

“Controls are really sluggish,” he said through gritted teeth.

“. . . totally blind!” one of the captains yelled over the shared channel, her voice eroded by static.

What, if anything, Admiral Badawi said in response was inaudible.

“Yana, tell the other captains how to break the jamming—maybe they'll want to listen now,” Diocletia said. “Use the shared channel.”

“Roger that,” Yana said, activating her headset. “Task force, this is the
Shadow Comet
. Boost power on your sensors' PKB band and begin an oscillation within spectral harmonics six-eight point three and seven-three point six. It'll break the jamming.”

“Obliged,
Comet
,” someone said.

Carlo struggled to lift the
Comet
above a field of glittering ice, hands frantically pumping the control yokes as the frigate fought his efforts.

“Captains, advise on countermeasures?” Yana asked.

“It's not working!” someone yelled back through the static.

“Did you set—” Yana began, but the furious voice of Admiral Badawi broke in.

“It doesn't work!” he yelled. “Captain Hashoone, get your child off the combat channels!”

Yana stared at her monitor, face gone pale.

“Yana, why are sensors still blind?” Diocletia asked.

“I don't know,” Yana said. “It's the same profile we saw at P/2! But this time the countermeasures aren't working!”

“Patience, lass,” Huff said. “Give it another minute or two.”

“We don't have another minute or two,” Diocletia snapped. “Don't just sit there—try something else!”

Carlo dodged a flurry of spinning rocks, the
Comet
's hull groaning at the stress of the maneuver.

“Sir, request permission to fall back,” said the captain of the
Ingolfur
.

“Retreat?” Badawi asked scornfully. “We
will
break this infernal jamming. Continue with the mission.”

“But sir!” one of the other captains yelled. “We're flying blind and getting torn apart!”

“CONTINUE WITH THE MISSION!”

“Missile launch detected,” Vesuvia said. “Proximity alert.”

“Carlo, get us out of—” Diocletia began.

A shriek of metal cut her off, and the
Comet
thrashed wildly from side to side, like a bottle of jump-pop shaken by a giant. Tycho's teeth snapped together as he was thrown violently back and forth in his harness. Then everything went black.

The first thing Tycho saw were his own hands, in his lap.

He stared at them for a moment, confused, then remembered where he was and jerked his head upright. Pain flared in his forehead above his left eye, and his fingers flew to the spot, then retreated from the lump they found there.

The quarterdeck was lit only by red emergency lighting, and it was warm. People were talking all around him, and he struggled to make sense of the noise, knowing it was important that he do so.

He forced himself to look around, the movement causing another blossom of pain in his head.

His sister was typing furiously on her console, mouth moving silently. Diocletia had one hand over her headset, staring straight ahead at the tumbling ring fragments visible through the viewscreen. Carlo was hunched over, hands on the control yokes. And Mavry was nowhere to be seen.

“Wait—I've got it!” Yana said. “Punching through the jamming now. Sensors coming back up.”

“Good,” Diocletia said. “Tell me what you see.”

“Still establishing a scan,” Yana said.

Someone muttered something behind him, and Tycho turned to see Huff on one knee, metal hand still locked to the ladder.

“Glad yer awake, lad,” Huff said. “Was worried about yeh for a moment there.”

“What happened?” Tycho asked groggily.

“Missile,” Huff growled. “Hit the stern on the starboard quarter. Melted through half the starboard linkages to the main engine. Mavry's in the fire room, tryin' to relink 'em.”

It wasn't just warm on the quarterdeck, Tycho thought blearily—it was hot. The
Comet
shuddered again, but this time the cause was her own guns—a broadside rolled from the stern to the bow, then was followed by another in the opposite direction. He realized Grigsby was ordering the crews to alternate broadsides, firing blindly into the rings around them in a desperate effort to fend off any attackers.

Huff heard it too.

“Smart lad, that Grigsby,” he said approvingly.

“Tycho, if your board's working, plot a course up and out of the rings, away from the station,” Diocletia said.

“Right,” Tycho said. “Right, Captain.”

His mother turned briefly to look back at him.

“You with us?”

“Yeah,” Tycho said, forcing himself to focus on his board. He couldn't think about what enemies might be closing in on their battered stern, or how many Comets were dead or dying belowdecks. All he could do was his job. And that was to tap into Yana's sensors, determine the
Comet
's position, and plot a course away from danger.

“I see them!” Yana said. “A frigate with a flight of pinnaces! Trying to get behind us!”

“Mr. Grigsby, sending targeting information to all gunnery stations,” Tycho said.

“Aye, we got it. And we see her now.”

“Mr. Grigsby, I'm cutting hard to port,” Carlo said, eyeing the sensor information. “Don't miss the shot.”

“Mom!” Yana said. “I see the
Ironhawk
—and she's got bandits incoming at two twenty!”

The
Comet
banked left, an ominous whine rising from somewhere deep inside the hull.

“Hope I don't blow whatever linkages are left,” Carlo muttered.

Belowdecks, the guns roared, sending tremors rolling through the deck. Cheers erupted, and Tycho knew the
Comet
's batteries had connected, ripping into one of her tormenters.

“Pinnaces are running,” Grigsby growled.

“Tyke, where's my course information?” Carlo asked.

“Still calculating,” Tycho said. The temperature continued to climb—sweat was running down his forehead now.

“Mom!” Yana yelped.

Tycho's eyes jumped to his monitor and the scan of the
Comet
's surroundings. He could see the green circle that represented the
Comet
, with another green dot off to port and slightly astern. That had to be the
Ironhawk
.

And on the other side of the
Ironhawk
, three red circles were closing fast.

“Captain Garrett!” Diocletia warned. “Watch your port side! Bandits inbound!”

“Sensors are down,” Garrett said through the static. “We're trying to climb out of the A ring, but we can barely steer.”