Opening Moves (73 page)

“
Captain?” Lieutenant Belasquez raised his voice. “You should see this, skipper.”

“
What is it, sensors?”

“
Thermal bleedout, sir,” Belasquez reported, also sounding a bit more distressed than usual. “And it's all over the place. Remaining IR sensors are going berserk.”

“
Location and numbers, lieutenant!”

“
Three massive fields along the edge of the gravity well... I've got an emergence on the long range tachyon sensors, sir. It's the Dominion's main force. I'm reading at least seven hundred ships, more arriving every second.”

Beaufort's head sank into his hands. They had bought time for the refugees, but it wouldn't be enough, not even for half of them. Most wouldn't make it before this vast new force intercepted them, and shortly thereafter Tanith itself would fall.

“The closest enemy fleet concentration is heading this way, sir,” Belasquez checked his console's readouts. “Even at our current speed we won't make it to the edge of the well before we're in intercept range.”

“
Can we still fight?” Beaufort asked quietly.

“
Yes, sir.” McLane's voice was hammered iron. “Laser clusters are back online. We still have nine functional missile tubes and ten railgun turrets, half of them with their accelerators at full capacity.”

“
We can't run.” Beaufort raised an eyebrow. “And we
won't
run. We have paid with our dearest to save these people for a few extra minutes. Our friends, and even people whom we thought our enemies, gave their lives for that goal. And we will not dishonor their sacrifice by running away.” He breathed deeply and focused his thoughts. “What we finally achieve in this battle is not as important as why we fought it. We may not save the lives of all the refugees, but we have saved our souls by trying. We fought well, and we fought for the right reasons, and our deaths will have some meaning. You have done everything duty required and much more, and we die with our honor intact. No captain ever had the honor to serve with a better crew or on a better ship. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

For the last time the heavy cruiser's engines burned into life. Luck might have abandoned them, but they would not accept their destiny quietly. Death would have to drag them down into the abyss. They would stare the reaper in the face and try to beat him down, because that was better than giving up. The JOHNSTON and her crew raced without fear or hesitation into battle one more time, and never returned.

“
Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

-  George Santayana, 1922 C.E.

C H A P T E R  1 7

Freighter IRON MAIDEN

Tanith, Independent Star System, Pact of Ten Suns.

“Well, that settles it then: we're fucked.”

Tarek shot a glare at Rául. “Thanks for that piece of wisdom. Now, how about you either shut your trap or come up with a way out? We need ideas and not opinions.”

None of the crew had anything to offer. None of them had truly expected the Dominion to attack the independent system. It just was too far off the front lines, and a neutral to boot! And if the Ashani making in appearance wasn't bad enough in and of itself the fact that the MAIDEN still lacked the installation of some spares and was essentially a sitting duck, clinched it. The re-calibrated warpfield generators for the Malenkov-Okudas were still off-line and untested. They might just as well fly against a solid wall at a couple thousand kilometers per second. And there was of course that little matter of about a thousand Dominion warships coming their way.

“
All right guys, lets look at this from a different angle, 'kay?” his voice galloped as he was more than aware that time was against him. “What advantages do we have?”

“
Full tank of fuel, boss,” Llyr prompted, stroking his beard. “Enough to get all the way to Earth if we had, to if she can stand the stress. But the old lady hasn't disappointed us yet.”

“
The attention the Ashani will spend on us will be pretty limited,” Annie added. “They'll be too busy attacking the planet and its defenses while trying to secure the whole system at the same time. They'll try to go for the big, juicy targets like that convoy they sliced up before...,” her voice faltered for a second. “Anyway, there's easy pickings and we're too small to be more than a target of opportunity.”

“
Plus we have no cargo, which means we're running light and fast,” Alexej mused. “That in turn means our IR signature will be lower than it usually it, and our mass footprint in the fold also would be less telling. If we ever make it there. Which we won't.”

“
Because of the parts,” Rául chimed in sourly.

“
Because of the parts,” the Eurasian pilot noted glumly. “Installing them, even with the help of that robot beast out there,” he pointed at the rented machine hovering outside the freighter's small bridge, “will take a couple of hours.”

“
Which we don't have,” Rául emphasized despite another angry glare by Tarek.

“
Can we leave without installing them, if we absolutely had to?” Llyr asked.

Alexej shook his head. “Chances we'll die trying to enter the fold are somewhere in the range of ninety percent. And once spooled up we can't do the necessary fine tuning, so even if we somehow miraculously made a transition we wouldn't be able to get back to normspace or even attune the engines to changes in the gravity fields. No, you might as well grab a gun from the locker and put a bullet in your head. Less hassle, less of a mess.” He looked down on his polished fingernails. “Point is, even if we managed to install and calibrate the parts on time – which we wouldn't,” he also shot their navigator a glance to stymie him, “I don't have the software package to run them. They're a new system and need off-the-shelf licensed programs with a physical license seal.”

Rául groaned and even Annie blinked in surprise. “Come on, Duchess: this is the 28
th
century, for crying out loud!”

“
Yeah, and we're flying a two hundred fifty meters long star ship that can go several thousand times the speed of light. I'm terribly sorry that I'm not downloading a doctored program from only God knows what gray market node to risk all our lives because it turns out to be malware – or Tuathaan porn – and not an adaptive OS!” Alexej scoffed.

“
Oi, there's nothing wrong with Tuathaan porn!” Llyr protested jokingly. The attempt at humor fell flat.

“
As long as it doesn't muck up my systems: whatever floats your... beard, buddy. Thing is, this is one of the few things we need to buy the old way: datastick copy, fake paper wrapping with one of those fake silver seals.”

“
And let me guess: it's planet side,” Llyr sighed.

“
That's where it ought to be,” the pilot shrugged.

“
Can't we just pick one up from a nearby station? One of those yards?” Annie wondered.

“
Even if they had the program we need: take a look around!” he pointed at the utter chaos visible on their sensors and outside their viewports. “Somehow I don't think selling software packages ranges high on their list of priorities right now.”

“
Then we're back to being dead,” the Tuathaan translator shrugged, his tattoos making his face look even grumpier than normal.

“
Maybe not quite yet,” Tarek's fingers drummed on his seat's armrest as he stared out into the distance of space.

“
Mind letting us in on whatever you're cooking up?” Annie asked dryly.

“
Is it going to get us out alive?” Rául inquired at exactly the same time.

Tarek smiled. “I think I've got a plan.” The freighter's captain raised an eyebrow. “It's easy: we need the software, we need a way out of here and we need the time to do all the fine-tuning and final installations, none of which we can get, right?”

The crew nodded in unison.

“
Well, isn't it self-evident? We simply wait. We put the MAIDEN on auto pilot and hide her in the shadow of one of those hundreds of planetoids out in the dust disc. We boost her up, then shut down everything, even life support, and let gravity do its thing. The Ashani won't have a clue she's out there. With all the shooting going on out there they'll just assume we've been destroyed once she drops off the plot.”

“
Okay, so they don't find the IRON MAIDEN, or our suffocated and frozen bodies after turning off life support,” Rául pointed out. “Small flaw in your plan there, boss.”

“
Not really, because we won't be on the MAIDEN, Rául. We'll be on the planet with the software and all the parts we
might
still need, hiding until the Ashani go away. Once she's in the sensor shadow of one of those rocks the repair bot will get back to work so we'll walk into a ready-made position once we head back there,” Tarek smiled. “I don't believe they'll keep a battle fleet here for long. It'll go to wreck someone else's day, and there's a good chance they'll leave the ships to weak or too stupid for the front lines to guard this place. That's when we'll make our move. We go back to the MAIDEN, upload the software, run the calibrations and hightail the hell out of here. We'll think of something.”

“
That's a crazy plan, based on assumptions and sheer hope,” Alexej shrugged. “But I got nothing. Let's do this.”

“
You want us on planet as the Ashani attack?” Llyr frowned. “You do realize that we've seen firsthand what they do to planets they take, captain? Biological warfare on a grand scale. Nukes dropped like confetti at a parade!”

“
So we sit in our shielded, airtight shuttle until it's time to go, then suit up,” Tarek responded in a tone that might just as well have been discussing what they should have for dinner tonight. “It's safer than staying up here.”

“
Well, I'm sold,” Annie offered. “A suicidal plan is still better than no plan at all, and going by the Dominion's tactics so far, there won't be a whole lot going on here in about a week or so.”

She didn't have to emphasize why. Much of the planet's population would be dead or dying by then.

“Well, I'm in, too,” Llyr agreed.

“
This is insane,” Rául threw up his hands, then sighed. “But okay. Let's go for it.”

“
All right guys,” Tarek clapped his hands. “With all the formalities settled I'd say go grab your gear and hit the shuttle bay. I wouldn't wanna be up here when the Dominion arrives, and going by the sensors that won't be too long from now.

A few minutes later the IRON MAIDEN's delta-wing shuttle pushed itself from the independent freighter's bay and fired its thrusters to bring it to Tanith. The silence inside was a strange counterpoint to the escalating madness all around them, with ships of the local defense forces trying to position themselves against the coming onslaught, while even the last merchantman had by now understood the gravity of the situation and was powering up his drives in a futile attempt to escape before the Dominion fleet had cordoned off the planet.

Tarek gave a quick glance out of the cockpit window at his trusty ship as its engines fired for a few moments on automatic to propel her deeper into the dust disc. Alexej had programed the navigation system to accelerate with slow, controlled burns and then to go dead close to its destination, only to reactivate when it received the coded signal from the returning crew. With the ice and dust of the disc all around her and plenty of other heat signatures to concentrate on, the MAIDEN would only be a tiny blip on the Ashani's long range sensors. Hopefully it would be tiny enough. With some luck they would be no wiser to its presence, and if they did spot it they would assume it was a derelict wreck. Which, Tarek reflected sourly, wasn't too far from the truth as long she lacked faster-than-light capability.

The journey from high orbit was quiet. Tarek had parked the MAIDEN comparatively far out as he and the crew had wanted to be among the first to get out of Tanith and back home. Alexej piloted the shuttle towards the growing orb of the planet, but the full attention of the crew was focused a recollection of the final minutes of the JOHNSTON and her battle against the odds. It was a scene of great pride and great sadness for the human members of the crew, and even Llyr appeared moved by the valor of the ship and its choice to fight. It had been a tough battle in which the cruiser had more than stood its ground. But now it was over and the Ashani resumed their mission.