The Parafaith War (34 page)

He moistened his dry lips, his eyes flickering toward the blank red-tinged visual screens. Finally, he said, “Removing desensitizing.” “Receiving input.”

Three blue-tinged blips continued to close on the Willis, but all that was left of the troid was a debris cone shrouded in an energy haze.

This time, the damned troid had carried almost four dozen of the scouts, and they’d shredded most of the Coalition corvettes.

Trystin calculated, and recalculated. The Willis’s shields were strong enough for perhaps two simultaneous torps-once.

With the three scouts coming, and no one close enough to help-only the Mishima, the lzanagi, and the Morrigan had reached the launch point-Trystin was on his own. “Fire one? Two!”

He didn’t expect too much from the torps, except that the scouts would have to raise full shields, and that meant a slight loss of acceleration.

Then he cut the thrusters, and slewed the ship sideways-at a right angle to the course line-with the attitude jets.

Even before the cruiser was reoriented, he loosed two more torps, these at the flanking scouts, followed by two more. Then he pulsed the thrusters once at full power, and shut down all external radiation from the ship. Without shields, the Willis veered slowly away from her previous course line, but her primary vector remained along the high-accel route set by Trystin after the red torp launch. Trystin watched the positions of the rev scouts, hoping their energy detectors had locked on the thruster pulse.

The blue-tinged blips drew nearer, nearer. Trystin kept calculating, his breath coming faster, faster than he wanted, but there was no way the Willis could stand off three of the beefed-up revvie scouts at once, not just with screens and torps.

“Close …” James’s words came through the net, as if he were whispering. “Need them to be close … real close.” As the scouts probed, screaming toward the cruiser that had “vanished” off the energy-detection screens, Trystin released two torps, forced one hundred twenty percent of fusactor output and full accumulator loads through the thrusters for thirty seconds, then dropped the fusactor to normal, released two more torps, and jammed the shields to full with three-quarter max acceleration. “Shit…”

A dull thud followed the exclamation. Trystin ignored the possibly injured tech and checked the screens. Unless the revs were playing dead, and Trystin didn’t care so long as they didn’t combine to chase the Willis, the ploy had worked. The thrusters had sliced through one rev, and that was certain, because the detectors showed hot metal. It looked like a torp had gotten the second, and the third was making a wide turn, trying to escape the Willis.

Trystin sighed and lowered the shields to half-power, while cranking up the thrusters, and heading into a stern chase.

The rev began to slow, fractionally. Trystin shook his head.

Instead of closing beyond max torp range, he began to fire torps, one after the other, in pulsed intervals. The rev flared into energy after the seventh torp. Trystin eased the ship into a long arc back toward outer orbit control. As usual, as the attack had progressed, the damned troid had spewed forth its cargo of radar-transparent paragliders and their shielded and deadly cargoes destined to create more havoc for the hard-pressed Maran perimeter troops.

There might not be any scouts or troid left, but there had been more than thirty, at Trystin’s rough and quick count, of the ghostly gliders sent forth. He hoped the patrols off Mara could pick up most of them.

“Iron Mace two, this is Sledge Control. Interrogative status.”

“Status is green beta-armaments and propulsion.” The accumulators were hiccuping, and Trystin didn’t blame them after all the different power demands he’d thrown on the equipment. “Understand green beta.” “That’s affirmative.” “Stet, Mace two.” “Accumulators?” asked the captain. “Yes, ser.”

“I’ll take her in. You’ve been through it.” “You have it, ser.”

Trystin wasn’t damp, but soaking wet, and he pulsed the tech station. “Is there any tea or water or anything intact in the mess?”

“Not much, ser. We’re working on it.” In the background, he heard Albertini muttering. “… after that, he wants tea?”

“After that, you’re alive,” snapped Keiko at the junior tech. “We’ll send something forward, ser,” she replied to Trystin.

Trystin took a deep breath. He didn’t like what he was doing to the ship, or the crew, but it seemed as though every troid attack required more from him.

He leaned back in the couch. How much more could he give? How many more new angles could he try without turning the Willis into scrap metal or ionized gas? Keiko handed him a cup of Sustain. “Sorry, ser.” “That’s all right. Thank you.” She turned to James. “Captain?” “I’m fine.”

Trystin sipped the Sustain slowly, hoping it wouldn’t hit his stomach with too much of a jolt. “Iron Mace two, closure is green.”

“Stet, Control. Holding green,” answered James, brushing limp black hair off his forehead, almost as damp as Trystin’s.

“Mace two, cleared to dock. Maintain low thrust.” “Control, this is two, beginning final approach.” The Willis crept in toward the wall of metal and composite-slowly, slowly. Thud!

Trystin winced as the Willis clunked up against the outer orbit control station.

“Relax, Trystin. That’s less than you just put the old lady through.” James flashed a boyish grin. “With all the stuff the revs are throwing at us, I need some practice somewhere.”

James magnetized the holdtights. “Lock-on. Apply mechanical holdtights and prepare for power changeover.” He began the shutdown list, and the items and replies went back and forth over the net, silently, between the captain and Trystin. “Accumulators…” “…discharged.”

After the captain announced power changeover, and the full grav of orbit control pressed Trystin into his couch, he just sat there for a time while the techs ensured full docking.

He’d thought twenty-percent losses per battle had been bad enough, but this time . , . what? Three cruisers left of eight, and a handful of corvettes. So far, there had only been a troid ship every four standard months, or there-abouts-two since his near-disastrous first troid encounter, and now they were back to where he’d started, except that .the Coalition was losing even more ships.

Finally, he stood, picked up the mug, and walked back to the mess where Albertini stared at a dented samovar. “Ser, what do you have against the samovar?”

“Nothing.” Trystin grinned. “I like tea. But the revs don’t, I guess.” “They’re crazy, all of them.” Standing in the corner, Liam Akibono took a deep swallow of double-strength Sustain.

Trystin winced at the thought of what that much Sustain would do to his guts. “You don’t agree?”

“I don’t see how your guts stay in place with that much Sustain.”

“What about the revs? Better if we could use hellburners on all their planets. We don’t want their real estate. Why can’t they leave us alone? They’re crazy, that’s for sure.”

“They can’t be totally crazy. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been so much of a threat for so long.” Trystin blotted his forehead.

“You ever met any?” Liam took another pull of Sustain. “I had to interrogate some of them when I was on the perimeter. Some were just like those in the corvettes, ready to throw anything away to kill me. Some were very thoughtful and analytical-those were the officers.” Trystin set his cup in the rack and wiped his forehead. He’d need a shower after the debrief, and it was going to be long, that he knew.

“So … the revs have a lot of idealistically crazy cannon fodder led by analytical and thoughtful officers?” asked Keiko as she reracked a chair in the mess-cabin corner.

Trystin shrugged. “That’s what I saw. I also saw a lot of new equipment and tactics.”

“Someone has to be giving it to them. They’re not that smart. No one who believes in all that crap their Prophet spouted can be that smart.” Liam refilled his mug with more Sustain.

“Lieutenant Desoll, to the quarterdeck, please. Lieutenant Akibono, you have the ship.”

Trystin got the message on the link a second or so be-. fore it hit the speakers. “Time to go. You have it.” Trystin grabbed his beret. “Yes, ser,” answered Liam.

Trystin met James at the quarterdeck. The captain even looked slightly frazzled as they walked toward the station ops center.

“I couldn’t help but hear Liam’s comments about the revs,” the captain said slowly. “Do you think we have traitors?”

Trystin took a deep breath. “I guess anything possible, but… I remember talking with a senior commander after the first big revvie assault on Mara, and she pointed out that a lot of the technology in the new rev tanks was better than what we had… .”

“I wonder if it’s being funneled to them first?” mused James.

“It wouldn’t seem likely. Those tanks were designed before I was born. They sat on a troid ship for more than twenty years. How could anyone sit on technology that long without it leaking out?” Trystin forced a laugh. “Unless half the Coalition leadership were in on it?”

“Maybe they are. Maybe they are. Then again, maybe we just think that technology is that old.”

Trystin pursed his lips. “I don’t see how they could translate to a troid ship. It’s hard enough to hit a whole stellar system. And the number of translations they’d have to make would show on the sensitive EDIs.”

“Maybe.” James shook his head. “Maybe. What about the damned Farhkans? They could be in on it?”

“They could,” Trystin agreed. “But we’ve gotten better translation stuff from them, stuff the revs don’t have.” “They’ve got to have an angle,” mused James. They probably did, Trystin reflected, but it wasn’t technology, and that bothered him-because … what was more important than technology?

They pulled themselves up the grav tubes to beta deck and continued onward toward the debriefing room.

Two techs stood in the corridor. The one with the toolbox gestured, and Trystin absently cranked up his hearing sensitivity. “Those two - . . the devils … captain, he’s a Sasaki. Commander Frenkel shorted him… sent Frenkel to run the rev camp on south island… the other… stand a ship on end … and laugh …”

Trystin lost the words as they turned into the debriefing room. Him, laughing about what he did to the Willis? As if he had any choice. He looked around and swallowed. Twelve pilots, six from the cruisers, and six corvette pilots-out of more than nearly forty that had been at the prestrike briefing.

They called him a devil? For doing what he had to in order to stay alive? He tried not to think about it … but couldn’t there be a better way?

How? It was taking everything the Coalition had to hold the revs to what seemed to be a stalemate-at least that was what he saw from the Willis. The real situation might be worse than that, if people with connections like James were talking about traitors. Or Farhkan interference.

“How do you like being a devil?” asked James quietly as he eased into one of the briefing-room chairs.

“Oh . . ” Trystin paused. “Better a live devil than a dead angel, I guess … though I wonder sometimes.” “So do 1.” They sat waiting for Commander Atsugi

A good third of the telltales in front of Trystin winked amber, and the net crackled under the system overloads. He calculated the vectors to the oncoming revs and triggered the torp releases. “Fire one?” “Fire two!”

“Both loaders jammed, ser!” That was the response from weapons.

The oncoming revvie corvettes, five blue blips, shields locked tight together, loomed nearer in the representational screen, closing to less than a fraction of a light-minute.

The single torp from the Willis flashed harmlessly against the joined screens.

His guts jumped up in his throat as Trystin dumped all the power maintaining the ship’s grav into the shields. The accumulators began to hiccup, and power surges created static across the net, as more of the telltales flashed amber, then red.

The ventilators’ hissing died away, and the odor of burning insulation seeped from the ducts.

None of the other Coalition ships were close enough to blunt the revvie attack, and Trystin yanked the ship’s nose almost straight up, then jammed on max overload power from the fusactor and the accumulators. The fusactor lined out at one hundred twenty percent.

The rest of the telltales began to switch from amber to red, a movement that began to cascade across the board in front of Trystin.

Even with the ventilation system down and all the power shifted into the thrusters, the blue blips closed in on the Willis. The accumulators gave a last hiccuping surge, and crashed.

Abruptly, Trystin shut down all external radiation and applied full desensitization.

Cramp! The ship actually shuddered with the torp explosion, not a direct hit, but close enough, and a faint hissing grew into a low roar, and what felt like a wind swept across the cockpit.

The telltales gleamed red, those that remained operational. Then the cockpit boards began to blank out. The emergency lights on the left side of the cockpit flashed, then went black.

Crump! With the near-impact of another torp, the Willis shuddered.

Trystin’s ears popped as the atmosphere poured out of the Willis. He unstrapped and clawed his way, weightless, through the air toward the armor rack, feeling his eyes bulge as he did, trying to keep his mouth shut.

All the lights failed, and the entire cockpit went black. Trystin groped for the armor behind the pilot’s couch, trying to hold on to the couch against the air loss that threatened to rip him out of the cockpit, feeling his skin bulge, his closed eyes close to popping from his face, the air seeping from his nose, and vacuum burning down his nasal passages-He bolted upright in his bunk, gasping, sweat pouring down his face, his underwear as soaked as after an engagement.

He tried to laugh-the dream had been an engagement, a brutal one-but with the dryness in his throat, all that occurred was a rasping cough.

Slowly, slowly, he swung his bare feet onto the cold metal deck and lowered his head into his hands. “Frig … frig …” he muttered to himself. Like all violent nightmares, it had felt so real: His heart was still pounding, his mouth dry. Even his eyes felt like they had been vacuum-burned.