Rogue Powers (27 page)

"What fun. Then it might be time to arrange a reception committee to greet our visitors. Communications. Get me a link to
Mountbatten.
If this doesn't work, they'll be on their own. Flight Boss, recall all fighters. Get them aboard and refueled and ready for sortie. Secure the ship for maneuvering and get me a secure laser link to commanders of the escorting fast frigates. Commander Larson. What are our visitors going to do next? Is there any lesson for us from the attack on New Finland?" Sir George asked.

"No, sir. This is nothing like what they did there."

"Your own thoughts, then."

"Well, sir," Joslyn said carefully, "if I were the Guardian admiral, I'd head straight for Britannica and use her gravity well to maneuver, and do my detecting while in orbit of the planet I'd knock out our radar stations there. Maybe I'd even do a very brief, token attack on the planet— that would force our side to respond, if it had gone off to hide. That's the one flaw in the tactic of not being there when they come after you—the planet must be defended. But
Mountbatten
and the rest of the fleet are well positioned. They could be there to interdict quickly. The Guards know the fleet will have moved, and they probably have a number of contingency plans based on where the fleet has moved to, though I can't say what those plans would be. There is one thing. How the hell are they going to get out of here? They'll have to brake in order to fight us—and then they'll have to accelerate like mad to get out of the system with us on their tails. That's a lot of fuel."

"Mmmmph. True. Very well." Sir George wanted more answers than that. "McCrae. What more have you got?"

"Quite a bit, sir. I'll be able to refine things more and more as we go on from here. We've got the target range and the temperature of the fusion lights now—those figures let us calculate the amount of power the engines are putting out. We've just gotten an optical track. That gives us a change-of-rate, and the Doppler confirms the figures. They're slowing at about one-gee. Figuring one-gee into the engine temperature tells us how much power the engines are putting out, and
that
tells us what we really need to know, the mass of the ships."

"You're quite right, that is the only thing of all that I want to know. Well?"

"Ah, yes sir. I beg your pardon. I now count fifty-five separate targets. Fifty seem to be the same mass—about twice the size of our fast frigates. Very crudely, that gives those ships a crew of about twenty to thirty, and potentially some pretty heavy armament."

"The other five ships?"

"Are a puzzler. The engine temperatures are all different, much hotter, which means the engines are running much closer to their maximum power ratings. As if much smaller engines were being used to power the larger ships— and what I can pull off the spectroscopic scanners show a lot of impurities, as if the engines are old and worn and bits of the throat nozzles are vaporizing into the fusion flame. And those five ships must have ten times the mass the others do."

Joslyn looked sharply at McCrae. "Let me have a look at those figures, Ensign."

Sir George let his younger officers fuss with the technical issues. He had some thinking of his own to do. He intended to launch the
Imp
straight at the oncoming fleet, hidden from their view by the glare and the jamming effects of their own braking thrust. It was something of a risky proposition. He could not think of any detection system that could see through the fusion glare—the League
had been trying to develop just such equipment for years. And a similar maneuver had worked against the Guards in New Finland. But they
might
have come up with something. And they
might
shut off their engines for a bit, just to do a bit of searching, right at a very awkward moment. And there was the risk of plowing the
Imp
right into the flame of an oncoming ship's thrust. But that wasn't a great danger with a steady hand at the helm. He shrugged. They didn't pay warship commanders to be overcautious.

The real danger was that the Guards knew perfectly well they were coming in blind, and would be prepared for such an attack. He had to assume they were so prepared. Very well, they would expect it. That was simply one more thing to take into account. They would not know where, or when, he would strike, or with how many ships. How many he had already decided, hours ago—the
Imp,
her fighters, and the frigates would go it alone.

When
was the issue, then. There were arguments for making a strike further out, and counter-arguments for waiting until the enemy was almost in orbit of Britannica. Sir George was inclined to strike as soon as possible, if for no other reason than to give his sailors a psychological boost, a chance to hit back. They had been waiting, sweating it out, feeling helpless and scared long enough. The sooner they were busy, the better. He turned his attention to the flag plot tank and started playing with the variables—looking for the advantages of one course over another, intercept points, closing rates, fuel usage, thrust levels. . . .

"Sir George, excuse me."

"Commander Larson," the old captain said with a start. "You have something for me?"

"Maybe, sir. I've got an idea that the five largest targets are fuel ships, expendable and possibly unmanned. We've just gotten an optical reading, light reflected off the fusion flames, and the five larger targets are
huge,
even for their mass—which suggests that they are carrying a lot of something that isn't very dense."

"Such as liquid hydrogen to top off the tanks of the rest of the fleet so everyone can make their getaways" Sir George said. "Splendid. It makes a great deal of sense. The ships come in, run their raid, refuel, and run like hell. We have nine frigates with us. We'll assign two to the attack on each tanker, and I want you to get Flight Albert out there alongside the last frigate to hit one tanker."

"Sir, there's one other thing: The tankers' engines appear to be running nearly at maximum temperature, and their spectra suggest they are old and worn. It's what I'd do. No sense using new engines on expendable ships."

"What are you suggesting?"

"That we fire the Imp's laser cannon at the tankers from long range. With a bit of luck we'll overheat the engines and blow them—"

"Leaving the tankers with no way to slow down, so they zip across the star system never to be seen again, leaving the rest of the attack fleet with no fuel to get home. Joslyn, you are a true member of the clan. Only someone with a drop of Thomas blood in her would have dreamed up something that nasty. We'll do it your way, and then play shoot-'em-up with the Guards."

The
Impervious
maneuvered for the second time, fifteen hours after the rock attack. Sir George selected a fairly sedate five-meter-per-second acceleration, a two-hour burn, and ordered a course that kept the
Imp
out of the Guardian fleet's projected flight path for as long as possible. Sir George checked his tactical display. The
Imp
would intercept the Guard fleet six hundred thousand miles out from Britannica. Assuming the buggers didn't spot them and run.

"Detection, I want to hear the moment you think they might have spotted us. Any course change, any maneuver." The
Imp
had one great advantage. She had hours to track her foes, lick her wounds, carefully plan her counterattack. The Guards would be expecting some sort of move,
but they would have only seconds to analyze the Imp's attack and respond.

"Aye, sir."

Engine shutdown. Back to zero-gee.
Impervious
and the frigates flew on.

Sir George worked at his planning. The two fleets would pass through each other at a relative speed of about one hundred and five miles a second. The tanker-ships seemed to be well to the rear of the Guardian fleet, which meant there would be marginally more time to hit them before the Guards had passed through the Imp's trajectory. Sir George ordered the ship brought about to aim her stern through the direction of flight—as soon as the
Imp
was through the Guard fleet, she would have to start matching velocity with the enemy.

The laser cannon crews were given their targets and ordered to stand by. The lasers would be effective at a range of no more than ten thousand miles—and that gave them just over a minute and a half to hit those tankers. Sir George ordered all debris and wreckage thrown overboard and dispersed as widely as possible. With a little luck, one of the Guard ships would run into something, anything. Hitting a Styrofoam cup at one hundred and five miles a second could wreck a ship.

He looked around for Joslyn—she was a comfort, one of the few people he, the captain, could talk to. Oh, yes, she had to get to the flight deck and get her crews ready. It occurred to him that there was battle on the way, and his niece was on the front lines of it. He might never see her again—and he couldn't remember her leaving just now. Well, good luck to her. The way to make her safest was to do his own job properly. But he had already done all he could. It was time to wait again. And time for another bloody cup of tea.

All eight flights of fighters sortied again, an hour before intercept. They held station on the
Imp,
ready and waiting for action. The fast frigates each deployed their three auxiliary craft. Everyone got ready.

Time moved slowly, wearing on nerves, until the moment when it began to move all too rapidly. "At effective laser range in three minutes," the weapons officer announced.

Sir George thrummed his fingers nervously on the arm of the command chair.

"Two minutes.
Impervious
and escort craft all well clear of enemy ship's fusion plumes."

Good. Now if those bastards could keep from changing course for a few minutes, the
Impervious
might not get melted down to slag.

"Sir!" McCrae called. "I have just picked up a very jammed-up radar pulse coming from the Guard fleet. They'll have spotted us now."

"How could they spot us? Is it something we don't have?" Sir George asked anxiously. If the Guards could see through a fusion plume, the League might be in very serious trouble.

"No, sir. Brute force detection, that's all. They're pumping a hell of a big pulse through the radar and seeing if anything makes it back through the plume. Useless at more than this range, and at our closing velocity they don't have time to respond and maneuver anyway. It's an impact warning system, that's all."

Good. Then you might as well crank up our active radar, Ensign, since they know we're here. Pass the refined targeting data along, obviously."

"Sir!" McCrae grinned. It had been frustrating as hell to sit on top of those monster radars for all these long hours without the chance to use them.

"One minute."

"And here we go," Sir George announced. "Put tactical on the main screen." The ship's computers drew a diagram that showed the
Imp
and her allies and antagonists. Neatly labeled dots on a screen.

"All four laser cannon trained on target one. Concentrated fire commencing—mark!"

"Detection—any effect on the tanker?"

"Temperature of target climbing rapidly. There's a brightness flare!
Something
has blown on it! Tanks, or the engines, I can't see."

"Laser crew! Shift to target two!. Fire torpedo volley at target one, track it two ways, for constant thrust and for no thrust!" Sir George called, his heart pounding with excitement. Battle well and truly joined, for the first time in his long life.

McCrae was going happily mad, watching nine kinds of monitors at once. "Range to second target much shorter;
booml
She blew already. Definitely an engine meltdown that time."

Sir George turned to the weapons officer. "Split your fire! Two cannon on target three, two on four! Torpedo volley on target two, as planned!"

"Sir!" McCrae was near a fit. "Incoming laser fire. They've ranged us."

"Intensity?"

"We can take it, and they're not holding target well. But you can bet there's more on the way. Boom
twicel
Third and fourth tankers blown!"

"Target five!"

The weapons officer shook his head. "Sorry, sir, we're already outside effective range for five."

Sir George looked again at the tactical display on the big screen. The
Impervious
had already flown clear through the opposing fleet. "Bloody hell.
That
didn't take long. I want torps chasing targets three four and five. Flight Boss. Are escorting craft at safe distance for maneuver

"Aye, sir."

Helmsman, you may commence planned maneuver on schedule."