Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2) (14 page)

At one kilometre he cut thrust completely and spun them once more, end-over-end, then engaged bow thrust at a much more gentle negative-Gs. Still they felt unpleasant, pulling everyone forward against their straps, necks suddenly straining to keep heads upright. Erik’s main screen flashed with a new course — Shahaim’s feed for the docking intercept, calculating the direction of spin and where
Phoenix
’s armoured nose would need to nudge the wreck to stop it tumbling and engage combat grapples.

“Lieutenant Crozier, this is the LC. First contact in twenty seconds, stand by for combat dock.”

“Aye LC, Delta Platoon ready and standing by.”
In midships, forty-four armoured and pressurised marines were wrapped in their acceleration slings, waiting to pop them open and move into the main airlock. This one would not be as scary as boarding a hostile vessel where crew would likely shoot back, but even on disabled wrecks, things could go wrong. On Delta’s private frequency, Lieutenant Crozier would be warning her marines of the target’s damaged layout, and what formations to progress in.

“Priority,” Second Lieutenant Jiri announced tersely from Scan Two. “I have a jump pulse at 23-by-268. Cancel that, I have
two
jump pulses at those coordinates. Cancel that,
three
jump pulses at those coordinates. Range six seconds light. Doppler pattern indicates inbound, I repeat, pattern indicates inbound.”

“If they’re combat and have pulsed up full, they’ll be here real quick,” Shahaim added.

Crap, thought Erik. Had they seen them? Jiri’s scan feed came through on his third screen… these were jump pulses to accumulate V, the angle was all wrong for hyperspace arrival from another system. Meaning these three new targets were already here, sitting and watching, unnoticed until now. If they’d been using transponders, as all innocent civvies were supposed to do,
Phoenix
would have noticed it by now.

He hit bow thrust and halted their approach to the wreck. “Lieutenant Crozier, we are on hold for boarding. All hands standby.”

“Delta Platoon copies LC.”

“Command copies LC,”
Trace added.

“Sir?” said Jiri, a little cautiously. “I’m… the computer’s reading those pulse patterns in a combat stagger. It’s… the range intervals are twenty-one K by offset twenty-one K, degrees 339 between first and second mark. Between second-and-third mark the same pattern, only sixty-three K, degrees also 339.”

Which was a precise geometrical pattern if ever there was one, distances between all three ships at multiples of twenty-one kilometres, offset from each other’s trajectories by twenty-one degrees short of the straight three-sixty.

“Fucking sard,” Shahaim announced. “Can we take three?”

“Computer gives me no indication of ship class,” Jiri added. The best sard warships were a concern, they did not do combat carriers, but their main strike cruisers were nearly to human and chah’nas standard. In about thirty seconds, Erik knew he’d have to make a decision to stay and fight, or boost up and run.

“Be real nice to get some intel on who they are and why they’re coming after us,” Kaspowitz suggested.

“Main cannon down to thirty-one percent ammo,” Karle warned from Arms.

“Triple pulse!” Jiri shouted. “That’s all three together, that’s…”

“That’s far too big!” Geish warned at Scan One. “No way that’s sard… sir, they just boosted up like fucking alo, they’re coming…” And Erik saw the numbers screaming in red on his main screen, and hit the thrust from zero to nearly 10-Gs with no warning at all. About the bridge, crew went from intent on their screens, to plastered back against their chairs and fighting to breathe, braces engaging to keep arms locked to their chairs in useful position. Erik hit attitude thrust with little movements of his fingers on the lower, G-grip parts of the chair-arm controls, skidding them sideways in a great spray of thrust and tumbling debris out behind.

“Fire incoming!”
Geish warned, as Scan One’s feed showed intercepting rounds tearing in at ridiculous velocity. It wasn’t possible that any sard ship should pulse that deeply into hyperspace, and come back out with this much V. Sard were mathematically brilliant but struggled to apply the maths to complicated real-world solutions like starship engines. Tavalai tech was universally superior to sard, and tavalai were often reluctant to share their best stuff with their troublesome insectoid allies. Sard ships were simply not this good, or not that any human on record had ever seen. But now Erik’s screens were showing him fifteen seconds to incoming fire intercept, at speeds that they simply wouldn’t survive if accurate…

“Arms! Full defensive spread!”
Watching the jumplines charge up, the FTL drive struggling for purchase on the gravity slope as
Phoenix
fought for position. Defensive armaments thudded to intercept incoming rounds, and still they had nothing like enough speed… scan gave him a brief glimpse of three ships’ worth of incoming fire like a hailstorm, and he threw them desperately into a corkscrew as scan broke up in interception impacts, massive flashes thermo-nuclear in scale from the sheer kinetic force of incoming V…

Jumplines flashed green and Erik pulsed… a stomach-lurching flip into a semi-alternate dimension… then back out and racing at three-times-again the previous already-high velocity, incoming and outgoing rounds now far behind but still catching up. Navcomp showed his blurred and vibrating vision the course he needed to get them on to make the next jump to Kazak… a thirty-eight degree deviation from their current course. There was simply no way he could make that course change at these velocities, he’d have to decelerate first and the moment he did that, they’d all die.

“Nav! Alternate jump coordinates now! Get me something close, we have to leave!”
The thing was,
Phoenix
simply didn’t know this region of space very well. Galaxies were big, and stars swarmed by the dozen in every direction you pointed a spaceship, but they had to be close enough to reach in a jump.
Phoenix
maxed out at about thirty lightyears — more than that was possible in one jump, but increasingly dangerous due to physics that even the people who made these engines didn’t pretend to entirely understand…

His main screen flashed with new coordinates, four degrees off their current course, and Erik angled
Phoenix
as far in that direction has he dared without sacrificing forward thrust angle. The burn increased to 11-G, beyond even
Phoenix
’s engine parameters, and warning lights flashed on the Engineering panel…

“New pulse!”
Jiri managed weakly, struggling to even formulate on uplinks in this heavy G. If he passed out, drug implants would shock him awake again.
“New pulse, three marks at…”

“I know!”
The sard had pulsed again and were racing up behind. He was going to run out of room. Four degrees, he thought as he watched the current heading edge one agonising fraction of a degree across at a time. Four lousy degrees! If he jumped too early, or without proper alignment, they’d shoot off through the galaxy missing every gravity well along the way, and never come out the other side with nothing to pull them out of hyperspace. He needed to pulse up again, to get more V to hold off the sard, but the jump lines were still charging from the last pulse, and pulsing for V right now would postpone the desperately needed jump.

“Fire pattern!”
came Geish’s uplinked voice.
“Incoming rounds, real fast!”
He was going to have to let them intercept, Erik realised. They’d have to survive five seconds of interception from the incoming hailstorm, because the arrival time, and the jump time, did not intersect.

“Arms! Everything you’ve got!”
He couldn’t dodge, he couldn’t line up the jump if he was flailing around, and evasive manoeuvres would put off the defensive gunnery anyway. Weapons thudded again, and a series of massive flashes erupted behind, and then to the sides, and then the line was creeping across, three-point-eight, three-point-nine… come on Navcomp, sync it in first time or we’re dead… four! Nav flashed green, and Erik hit pulse on full power…

A
nd they arrived
in a crash-entry, alarms shrieking as nav protested it didn’t know this system well enough to be tearing in at these speeds. But jumplines charged green almost immediately, and Erik dumped velocity with a hard shove into alternate-dimension… and back out, nav still squawking red but no longer panicked. Across the bridge, someone was heaving up their lunch.

“Scan, watch our tail!” Erik rasped, his voice dry and hoarse. His head was pounding and he desperately needed a drink. If the sard had followed them through jump, which seemed quite possible with ships that high-powered, it seemed almost preferable to let them kill him rather than have to manoeuvre again. His heart felt exhausted from hammering so hard for so long, and he couldn’t tell how much of his current consciousness was actually the augment stims keeping the blood flowing to his brain well beyond when he’d normally be out. He pulled the drink tube at his collar, and took a long sip. “Nav, where the fuck are we?”

“It’s called Gala Eighty-Eight on the barabo charts,” said Kaspowitz. “It’s a rock, gravitational yield one-point-seven-three standard, just big enough to drag us in.” Thus explaining why there was no light in Erik’s forward scan, this wasn’t a sun at all.

“Good work on the course. I’d like a new course to Kazak if you please.”

“Copy LC, it’ll take a few moments to get Navcomp to recalc from this position.”

“Engineering, systems report please,” Erik requested. He’d thrashed the damn ship getting it this far, and wanted to know everything was okay before he tried it again.

“Copy LC,”
came Rooke’s voice.
“I’m running it now, everything looks good at first glance.”

“Major, everyone okay down there?”

“Lieutenant Crozier is pissed she missed out on another boarding credit. Other than that, all good.”
Erik usually felt some amusement at Trace’s humour. Now, nothing but cold dread.

“Arms,” he continued his roll call. “How’s the ammo looking?”

“Well we’re down to…”

“Contact!” called Geish, and Erik’s heart leaped again. “Incoming jump! It’s mid-range, it looks like it’s on the same course! Second incoming jump, looks like a formation! Third, that’s all three!”

They were too far away to be an immediate threat, Erik saw with desperate relief — at least one minute light. But it was clearly the same three sard ships that had nearly killed them back at Chonki. Evidently they hadn’t navigated the jump as accurately, and had come out of hyperspace too far away to pose an immediate threat. That they had gotten here at all on the precise same timeline as
Phoenix
confirmed what he already knew — that they were of a far higher level of technology than most sard vessels. He’d never thought he’d be commanding
Phoenix,
and be so scared of three sard ships. Usually three sard warships against
Phoenix
would be a slight advantage in
Phoenix
’s favour. Not so here.

“Okay, they’ve missed their entry,” said Erik, and dumped velocity once again — a groan across the bridge as whoever had lost their lunch failed to appreciate it. “Nav, give me a rough course while you line it up.”

“Copy LC,” said Kaspowitz, and a rough course-change appeared on Erik’s screen — a full hundred and nine degree shift.

“Bugger,” someone muttered as they saw that, and Erik slammed on the thrust at 7-Gs. It would take a good eleven minutes at this thrust, but the sard would take the same, and were too far away to make an intercept so long as Kaspowitz could get him that new course to Kazak on time.

“Phoenix this is the LC,”
Erik formulated as they burned and shook, gasping the tight little breaths that many years of heavy G experience had taught him.
“That last jump was an escape jump to an uninhabited system. We are currently ten minutes of burn time from a new course to Kazak. We are being pursued by three sard vessels of very high technology, and it will be very ill-advised to engage them. We will find better circumstances at Kazak. LC out.”

He hoped. No one aboard had ever been to Kazak, and knew only that it was another barabo frontier system with no inhabited planet and just a few moons and stations to its name. It had quite a bit of ship traffic, including some barabo military and security freelancers that the stations employed… but what security freelancer would stand a chance against whatever was chasing them?

He couldn’t even think about who they were or why, or the difference between these three sard and the first five unidentified ships who’d ambushed them at Chonki. The possibilities behind all the people who might have been trying to kill them were just too much right now, with his head full of numbers and the Gs pounding his brain to mush. The biologists said that sard didn’t handle Gs any better than humans, but then these sard hadn’t had to manoeuvre anywhere near as much as
Phoenix
had.

After eleven of the longest minutes of his life, the lines finally matched. The sard were still chasing, or scan showed that they
had
been chasing a minute ago, when the light wave reached them. It was far too far back to be a threat… but if the sard were as advanced as it seemed, there was no guarantee they couldn’t pass
Phoenix
in hyperspace and arrive at Kazak in front of them. How the hell had sard gotten such powerful ships?

“Phoenix, standby for jump.”
He pulsed once, accelerated to racing speed, and had time to hope that Kaspowitz had lined everything up in this alien part of space…

…
t
he shiny new
Lieutenant Commander had walked the docks of Reva Station straight off the transport from Homeworld. His uniform was pressed and neat, in contrast to the rough working blue jumpsuits and jackets of passing spacers, and black-clad marines. One blue duffel bag carried all his personals, and when he approached the berth, he saw the display reading the words
UFS Phoenix
and his heart had skipped a beat.

The marines on duty at the airlock had barely raised an eyebrow at their new LC, and informed him that the command crew were currently out to dinner, of all things, and given him the name of the restaurant where he might reach them. But they’d see his bag taken to his quarters if he’d like?

The restaurant had not been far, a walk along thriving bars and pounding music, establishments filled with marines and spacers, and no few MPs to keep an eye on things. Grizzled veterans of the Triumvirate War had barely glanced at him as he’d walked, feeling very out of place in his spotless blues, his shoes polished like twin mirrors upon the deck, single bronze leaves impossibly bright and heavy upon his shoulders where just weeks before, Lieutenant’s bars had rested.

The restaurant had been Chinese, quiet and low-key, and in a corner he’d found them, lounging like old friends around several tables they’d dragged together in a corner, nursing the single beers that station leave away from the front lines entitled you to. He’d approached, hat beneath his arm, and they’d all slowly glanced and noticed him… and his heart had nearly stopped, for here was Lieutenant Kaspowitz who had helped rewrite formation navigation practises… and there was Commander Huang with chopsticks in hand, laughing with Lieutenant Shahaim over some private joke that surely no outsider would ever comprehend… and there, dear lord, was the legendary Major Thakur herself, younger and smaller than he’d expected, first to notice the shiny new LC’s approach and oh-so-unimpressed with her dark and somber stare.

But Captain Pantillo, the even greater legend and the man whom Erik most desperately wanted to emulate in all the universe, had gotten to his feet with a broad smile and welcomed him into their little family like a long-lost uncle…

…
K
azak
, navcomp was blaring at him as he blinked his eyes wide on his main screens, brain overloading from trying to take in too much information at once.

“Good entry!” Kaspowitz was calling with calm authority. “Kazak System, deep entry, Rhea dead ahead, range seven minutes light.” Kazak was a hyperactive G-class star, too hyperactive for close-in habitable worlds, but supporting two big gas giants further out, each with multiple moons. The smaller was Rhea, where most of the development was, and the system’s largest station.

“Scan, I want proximity positions now!” With every reflex jangling in the expectation of another ambush. But exact jump entry points were impossible to predict, and that last bunch at Chonki must have just been lucky. If someone here were going to try and kill them, they’d surely get some more warning this time…

“Proximity scan shows nothing,” Geish replied. “No rocks, no hiding spots. There’s a whole bunch of insystem traffic, and FTLs coming and going from Rhea, but otherwise we look clear.”

“Well they haven’t jumped in ahead,” Shahaim observed. “Hard to believe they’d be
more
advanced than
Phoenix.
”

“After what we just saw I’ll believe anything,” Erik replied. “Everyone stay alert, they could be coming in behind us any moment. I’m not dumping V for a while yet. Coms, contact station and tell them we’re coming in hot with hostile sard ships on our tail. Confirm with them that our intentions to station are entirely peaceful.”

“Aye LC,” said Lieutenant Shilu from Coms.

T
hree hours
later
Phoenix
command was crammed into the captain’s quarters, which was barely big enough for three people to gather, and became very tight indeed with five. Joma Station’s two security vessels were approaching fast, and Erik had instructed Lieutenant Draper to keep close eye on them — tavalai-model cruisers but barabo-crewed, they didn’t seem likely to prove a threat and their captains were courteous when contacted. Joma Station was less so, their Stationmaster decidedly displeased to see them… and of course, unable to do a damn thing about it.

Erik had only just handed off to second-shift, wanting to be certain they were out of jump-entry range for any incoming threat, and that Kazak System itself had no further surprises lurking. He’d given them all fifteen minutes to shower and change, which was harder for some as delta bulkhead water mains had ruptured in the manoeuvres and taken local recycling systems with it. The Systems crew were taking apart several corridors to repair the break, with Warrant Officer Krish reporting it would take most of the run into station to fix, with everyone sharing bathrooms in the meantime.

“Seems logical to me that Chonki was two separate ambushes,” said Shahaim, exhausted as they all were, sitting on Erik’s bunk alongside Kaspowitz and the nervous Second Lieutenant Karle. Erik sat on his little desk-side chair, and Trace leaned against a wall, insisting that marines didn’t need a seat. All were either eating, or just finishing a meal, save for Trace who had already finished her food having less to do after jump than the bridge crew. “The first bunch knew exactly where we’d emerge, it’s easier to guess in a transit system like Chonki where nearly everyone is turning toward Kazak… though they still got lucky. And still couldn’t finish us, so I’d guess they were poorly informed about the threat we’d pose.”

“Which suggests they don’t have much contact with humans,” Kaspowitz added. “Human freelancers or mercenaries would know exactly who we are.”

Shahaim nodded. “Their tactics appear to rule out sard, their coordination was nowhere near sard standard and lacked their numerical fetish. Tavalai don’t do mercenary stuff…”

“Much,” Kaspowitz warned.

“…and neither do barabo.”

“Much.”

Shahaim gave him the tired look of a mother in no mood to bother with unruly kids. Fortunately for Kaspowitz, Suli Shahaim was one of the most patient people Erik had ever known. “The ship layout didn’t seem to have the heavy-gravity rotation we’d expect with kaal, so anyone’s guess is as good as mine as to who they were.”

“There are Fleet reports of mixed-species freelancers out this way,” Erik told them. “The weakness of the barabo military creates a vacuum that freelancers move in to fill. The word is that a lot are outside human-sphere.”

Glances among the officers. The human-sphere was shorthand for those alien species whose space directly adjoined human space. In the past hundred and sixty years of wartime expansion, human space had increased quite a bit, and human-sphere aliens now included chah’nas, tavalai, kuhsi, alo, sard and kaal. Barabo were right on the fringe and only now being added to that list, and krim had once been on the list, before humans had removed them from all lists, for good. Hacksaws, of course, didn’t quite count as a ‘species’, and were not extinct despite everyone’s best efforts, and also lacked a contiguous region of space.

“On review, their ambush was competently executed,” Shahaim continued. “But they failed to allow for
Phoenix
’s power and mobility, and got their spacing too tight… which is always the temptation in an ambush against a larger vessel — to concentrate firepower. Which our intrepid commander immediately recognised, of course, and quickly killed one in busting out of their crossfire, forcing the others into a parallel pursuit which is always bad news against the combined firepower and mobility of a combat carrier, and allowed the LC to isolate the second target and put him into a one-on-one contest that he was always going to lose.”

“Hell yeah,” Kaspowitz affirmed, to nods and general approval from the others. “And some sterling work from Mr Karle and Ms Harris on guns.” With a whack on Karle’s arm, which pleased the young man.

Erik did not join the enthusiasm. His hesitation at the near-boarding of the wrecked ship had nearly gotten
Phoenix
and everyone aboard her killed, and he was in no mood for backslapping. No one else seemed to see it that way, but Erik knew what he’d done, even if they did not. Only Trace seemed to notice his mood, watching him sombrely.

“Which brings us to the sard,” Shahaim continued. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Their tech is never that good, as we know, and tavalai don’t share their best stuff with them.”