Hegemony (53 page)

He frowned. "If you want to, that is. You don't have to go. I'm not sure what your captain has in mind, but if she stays here, her odds more or less suck. If we're going to be playing courier for the Hegemony, there's no reason you can't come along."

"No," Zandy said. "You can't fit more than one more daemon aboard your ship, in the 'ceptor's neural net. If we could get all of them off, it would work, but I'm not leaving Captain Tralk and her crew to die."

"No," Nas agreed. "You're going over there to die with them instead. It's what I said before; suicide just gives the bastards you hate a reason to be happy."

"I'm not interested in suicide, Captain Killick," Zandy said. "I want you to arm this interceptor."

"Just for the sake of asking, what for?" Nas asked.

"Your swift-ship hasn't got enough firepower to make that Coaly bastard blink! But the last thing they'll expect is an interceptor launched from this ship. It's the only way you're going to be able to even
be
in the fight."

"What the fuck makes you think I want to be in this fight?" Nas said.

"Because if you don't, that lance-ship is going to kill the
Ice Knife
. I thought you wanted to get even with them," Zandy said.

"Sure. But not to the point of
my
suicide. I want revenge for my crew. Getting my crew killed is a stupid way of getting it."

"If we get the interceptor into position without the lance-ship noticing, it's not going to be suicide," Zandy said. Except maybe for me, she thought silently.

"Big fucking if. You want me to risk my life, my ship, my crew... For what? For the bounty your Captain Tralk offered? For the glory of the Hegemony of Suns? Do you think I owe something to the fucking Hegemony?"

"No. I think you owe something to your crew. And to the
Ice Knife
for helping you get away from Yuro. And I owe you for getting me out of there. And Captain Tralk owes you too... Lots of people owe lots of people. It's not 'The Hegemony.' It's people. It's personal. And you can't draw lines around who's Hegemony and who's not... not unless you like lying to yourself."

Nas looked at her, pale blue eyes burning into her. Her gray eyes were just as intense.

Attack the lance-ship? It was a crazy idea. Not actually impossible, he thought. The clever experimental weapons of the Coalition ship actually made it
more
vulnerable to the sort of attack Zandy was proposing. But still, the odds would be bad. Damn it if he wasn't thinking about it, though. He could even see how it could be done, with three weapons platforms, the interceptor being the third: attack on three different vectors, all coming together at the target... that was textbook, and rightly so. The real trick would be in setting it up... easy to mis-coordinate and come in one at a time, which would be immediately fatal against the lance-ship's firepower.

But how wasn't the issue. Why? Why should he attack the lance-ship? There was every reason not to. Just the idea of risking his life, his ship, for the fucking Hegemony of Suns, was enough to bring either laughter or rage... or both.

There was nothing keeping
Whisperknife
in the system. He was still about forty hours from being ready to initiate FTL, but there was no problem keeping away from the lance-ship. His edge in acceleration was small, but it was there, and a slower ship could not catch a faster one, barring something very clever or unexpected.

He supposed the lance-ship could try to stay on his tail, forcing him to run his drives at full power to keep away; he couldn't stabilize his singularity reactor while the plasma drive was running full out, but sooner or later, the lance-ship would fall far enough behind to give him the time to get the singularity stable enough for FTL, and then he'd be out of here, safe, uncatchable. Could the Coaly run him out of reaction mass before he got enough of a lead to let his singularity reactor restabilize?

No. It had a human crew, and he was sure his people could manage more time in their acceleration pods than a Coaly crew. Even if they matched his endurance in the 'pods, his ship's edge in acceleration would let him pull away and buy time to drift, getting ready for FTL before the lance-ship could bring him into range.

And besides, if he did owe the Hegemony something, didn't that mean he had to deliver the information he had? Right. No reason to stay and every reason to run.

Run. He had run from the Hegemony when they betrayed him. The writing on the wall had been clear enough for him. There was no point in trying to get justice at the Inquiry, not for a
demoi
like him. Nothing to do for Nas Killick except run. But not now. Captain Nas Killick of the Brotherhood swift-ship
Whisperknife
didn't run. Hah!
Bullshit
, he thought. Void-runners were all about running. Run from an escort ship, if one shows up. Run after a rich prize. Run hard to keep up, so the Brotherhood's backing syndicate didn't decide someone else would be more profitable as captain of "their" ship... their "investment."

Run from the Coalies, when they set you up to die. At least he had gotten some revenge there, gotten the Hegemony officers away safe from the Coaly ambush. But the tall man had gotten away. And now, run from the Coaly lance-ship. No other choice, really, was there?

"You fucking talk too much," Nas said, at length. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Fine," he bit out. "You want our help. You get it... Son of a
bitch
! I just can't
believe
I'm going to do this."

For another long moment Nas was silent, staring ahead. Then, "Senny, Xulios!" Nas snapped, "get to the magazines and start prepping the warheads; off-load the fission fuel off half the old warheads, and get with Ylayn to reprogram the targeting system interfaces of the other warheads. We're going to fuel and arm the fucking interceptor we collected.

"Communications! Warez, get the comm laser locked on to the
Ice Knife
. Send them a message. We're going to help take care of their lance-ship trouble for them."

"Captain?" Warez said, and Nas locked eyes with the communications man. "Yes, Captain!"

"And you," Nas said, looking back to Zandy. "If you so much as crack a smile, I swear you'll be out the fucking airlock. This isn't about helping your fucking Fleet, Zandy. Don't think for a even second that it is. This is revenge. Those Coaly fuckers tried to kill my ship, so I'm going to let you help me kill them. If that happens to be what you wanted anyway, it's no skin off my back."

The light-lag to the
Ice Knife
was almost fifteen seconds, so there was a long pause before every reply.

"I appreciate your offer to help, Captain Killick. But under the circumstances, the most you can do is stand by to receive a copy of our data and then generate a vector to avoid the enemy lance-ship. Once your singularity is stable, execute an FTL transit out of the system and deliver the information."

Nas frowned. "Ylayn, make sure this is tight-beam and encrypted," he said. Then, to Freya, "negative, Captain Tralk. We're putting together a surprise on our end... We're going to arm the interceptor we recovered. It's intact. We're going to fuel it with fission pellets from some of our warheads to top off its own maneuver reserves, and put a few warheads on it. The we're going to vector in and let it go. Once we do that, all we need is to lure the lance-ship into an intercept vector. If we time it right, we can make attack passes from three sides at once; three-dimensional multi-axis attack, right out of the Academy text-books."

Fifteen seconds for the signal to reach the
Ice Knife
, Nas thought, and then time for Tralk to reply and for the reply to reach him...

"Captain Killick," came Tralk's reply, "I... I appreciate the thought, and though I'm not sure where you learned it, your attack is indeed right out of the Academy text-books. Which is to say, hopelessly optimistic. I'm afraid I cannot agree, much as I'd like to. The information we've recovered is worth the loss of my ship... and my crew. You will vector to avoid engagement with the lance-ship and then FTL out of this system as soon as possible. Please confirm."

"I'm not under your orders,
Captain,"
Nas replied. "I'm not interested in running away and helping your fucking Hegemony. I want payback for the Coalies trying to kill my ship, and I wouldn't mind helping you out, seeing as we've been on the same side of a scrape together. That's all. That sure as fuck doesn't make me your subordinate.

"Now, I'm going to implement my attack... with the help of your interceptor pilot, who seems to have more guts than you do, by the way. So whatever you do, I'm attacking. If you want, you take advantage of it.

"Now," Nas continued, "at this range, the odds that the enemy will detect the interceptor detaching from my ship and drifting inbound are very low. As for getting him to vector the way we want, that's not too hard either. All you have to do is stick to your current acceleration and course. He should already know you're damaged. He might have seen the explosion when your shuttle went, and he sees your acceleration is way down. Fine. That becomes one of the axis of our attack. My ship and the interceptor will generate the other two. We've got some room for error, anyway. The only trick is going to be coordinating the start of our attack runs so that it interrupts his interceptor salvo.

"This wouldn't work against a conventional lance-ship," Nas went on, "but with only three PLAs, he can't successfully engage more than one of us at a time. If we're lucky, he'll dither and try to anyway, and then we all survive. If we're less lucky, someone gets nailed, but the other two probably get him. We pull this off, and no one who hears about it will forget it.

"So what will it be, Captain Tralk? Are you going to work with me and maximize our chances of success, or are you going to play the proud Hegemonic Fleet officer who'd never stoop to cooperating with mere void-runners?"

"Fuck," came Freya's reply, sounding something between angry and amused. "I'm already working with void-runners. Did you come up with this, Captain Killick, or did Interceptor Pilot Neel?"

"Hah," Nas replied. "You'd like to hear that it was all her, wouldn't you? Well, I'll admit that she gave the idea to use the interceptor. But the rest of it is mine. Not that you'll believe me, but then again, not that I care if you believe me or not."

"I believe you," came Tralk's reply. "I'm beginning to wonder if you might not be a larger threat to the Hegemony than that lance-ship... That's a
very
cunning plan of attack, Captain Killick. I... well, no matter. I can't force your cooperation, and therefore cooperating with you gives me the best chance -only chance, really- to complete my mission. God help me, but we'll do it your way."

The Brotherhood swift-ship
Whisperknife
was vibrating with the power of its plasma drive. Zandy could feel the vibration through the acceleration and jolt sensors of her interceptor body, but the configuration was still imperfect; it was like the feeling was meant for someone else.

There wasn't the time or the equipment to get the interceptor fully imprinted and configured to her daemon. What there was would have to do. The 'ceptor's fission fuel tanks were fully loaded; thank god that the
Whisperknife
's old warheads had used standard gauge fission fuel pellets, Zandy thought. That would be her only maneuver capacity. There was no PLA available to lase for her.

There were four warheads on the 'ceptor's weapons racks; anti-ship warheads. Good ones: Hegemonic Fleet model 15-A1s, only one generation behind the 16-A3s in current Fleet use. There were still 15-A1s in Fleet service, on some of the larger ships that hadn't used up their stores.
Conquering Sun
had probably been carrying some 15-A1s in her reserve magazines, though Zandy had carried new 16-A3s in the battle against the Coaly lance-ship a few hundred hour ago.

How long had it been, exactly? Zandy wondered. The thought went nowhere. She could access the data easily, but with the time spent in the storage 'nets, she had no personal way to
feel
how much time had passed.

Never enough time, she mused. Funny how that worked. There had been too much time before, waiting uselessly while the
Whisperknife
had searched the cold outer reaches of the system for some remnant of the battle. Now there was no time left. If there had been more time, Zandy thought, she might have tried to get to know Captain Nas Killick better. The little bit she had learned about him was fascinating. But there was no time for that thought now.

She turned her thoughts back to her current situation, and the status of her interceptor. She only had four anti-ship warheads, in place of the normal six. And no anti-interceptor warheads at all. That didn't matter, she told herself. If she came anywhere near enemy 'ceptors, the whole thing wouldn't work.

Whisperknife
was burning hard, generating a vector for the enemy lance-ship. The same enemy lance-ship.
Ice Knife'
s sensor logs confirmed the signature of its plasma drive: the same ship that had killed the
Conquering Sun.