Adapt and Overcome (The Maxwell Saga) (33 page)

~ ~ ~

Abha paused the recording, thought for a moment,
then spoke into the microphone once more. “I attach vid of the conditions found in our dormitory aboard the accommodation ship, and aboard each of the assault shuttles allocated to this mission. The poor state of neatness and cleanliness is self-evident. A technical report of the deficiencies in each shuttle’s systems will be submitted under separate cover.”

She ended with the usual courtesies, saved her report and turned to First Lieutenant Labuschagne, sitting beside her at the Weapons System Operator’s console of the shuttle. He was looking at her wide-eyed. “Do you think I was too critical?” she asked.

“Er… no, in fairness, we found exactly what you reported… but you do realize what that report’s likely to do to his career, don’t you?”

“So? Are you really willing to entrust your safety, and the safety of your platoon, to an officer like that when he commands the sector next to yours on a battlefield?
If he’s that slack and slipshod during routine duties like this, what makes you think he’ll do any better when lives depend on him?”

“I take your point.” Dan sighed. “It’s going to create all sorts of fuss, because his family’s big in planetary politics; but facts are facts. I guess we’ll have to leave it to Lieutenant-Colonel Hays to decide what to do about this.”

“I think so. I’ll submit this report through the Marine training mission, rather than ask you to do it. I wouldn’t want to cause problems for you.”

“
Thanks! I really appreciate that. There’d be fallout if I did, for sure. Now, to change the subject, we’d better eat our lunch quickly before the troops try to snaffle it from us.” He offered her a ration pack.

Abha grinned as she glanced over her shoulder at the soldiers in the body of the shuttle, all of whom were finishing their lunch. “We can’t have that – if only because I’m not nice to be around when I’m really hungry!” She accepted the ration pack with a nod of thanks, opened it, and took out a hydroponically grown apple. “Hey, this looks good! The new orbital farms have really improved our rations.” She took a bite, the juice running over her lips.

Dan nodded. Through a mouthful of food he asked, “What’s next? We’ve done individual and two-on-two shuttle exercises this morning. Do you want to do some formation work with all four birds?”

She chewed and swallowed, then replied, “That’s not a bad idea. We’ll do it on the way back to the accommodation ship – we must be the best part of two million kilometers away from her by now. I also want the four WSO’s to work
with you on setting up a joint configuration for all four shuttles’ sensors and weapons. I learned a lot about that during the fight with
Blanco
last year. It can be very useful to have everyone sharing the same fire plan.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “We studied how Senior Lieutenant Maxwell set that up during our tactical exercises planetside. It was pretty impressive to think of all that in the heat of the moment, without any opportunity to plan ahead. He must be quite a guy.”

“He is – but then, I married him, so I may be just a
little
bit biased where he’s concerned.” They grinned at each other.

They were bundling up the ration packaging for disposal when a loud, urgent chime sounded from the console. They jerked upright, looking at the display even as the pilot gasped, “It’s a General Quarters alert from the mining ship!”

“What the
hell…?”
Abha didn’t even realize she’d spoken as she bent to read the words scrolling across the display. She felt a chill run through her as their import sank in, and looked at Dan. He was also staring at the display, mouth hanging open.

“Looks like we’ve got a real fight on our hands, Dan,” she said, trying to keep her voice deliberately casual despite the tremor she felt in her stomach.

“Y – yeah!” He visibly gathered himself. “They don’t have specific orders for us – they’ve just told us to intercept if possible. Any ideas? Do you want to take command?”

“No, you’re in charge. I’ll be glad to offer advice, if you like.”

“Hell, yes! I’ve never been in combat before.”

“OK. Let’s start by setting up tight-beam communications with the other three shuttles. We’ll tell them all to maintain radio silence. We mustn’t emit any signal or signature that might alert those bastards that we’re around. If they plot our position through our radio transmissions, their weapons outrange ours by so much they’ll be able to pick us off like sitting ducks.”

“OK.”

While Dan talked to the pilot,
Abha re-examined the parameters the mining ship had sent to them. She thought fast.
Target Bravo is about twenty-five minutes out right now, and closing fast… we’re about eighty thousand kilometers from her trajectory, so we’re going to have to close in as fast as we can. We’ll have to trust our stealth systems to hide our tiny drive signatures, and hope she has only a merchant ship’s sensors, which aren’t normally able to pick us up when we’re in stealth mode… Our missiles have a few hundred clicks powered range, but they’re slow, so we’ll have to get a lot closer than that… Will their small warheads hurt a big freighter badly enough to stop her?
As she thought, her hands were busy entering figures into the battle computer, running simulations and projections, trying to select the best approach under the circumstances.

Dan turned back to her. “OK, that’s done. I guess the next step is to decide on our plan of attack.”

“How would you go about it?”

“We’ve got only chemical-fueled missiles, which are very slow
compared to gravitic-drive weapons. We’ll have to get in real close to give them the best chance of hitting her. For that matter, we’ll need to be at point-blank range if we’re to use our plasma cannon. Trouble is, she’s moving very fast. Our fire control systems aren’t designed for spaceship velocities. I’m not sure they can do what your husband did, and spread their fire across all her vital compartments.”

“I agree.” Abha forced herself not to jump in with suggestions.
He’s been trained,
she reminded herself mentally.
Don’t do his job for him. Let him find the answers – unless he asks for advice, of course – and even then, make him figure out as much as possible for himself.

“
That being the case,” Dan continued, thinking aloud, “we’d better pick out a single point as our target, and hit it with everything we’ve got. Even if our fire control systems can’t be one hundred per cent accurate, if all our missiles and plasma cannon bolts are aimed at one vital spot, some of them should get close enough to it to hurt her.”

“Sounds good to me.
Let’s take a look.” She called up the schematic of the freighter Constandt had fitted with weapons at Finarga. “This is the information about Target Bravo we got from BuIntel.”

Dan pointed to the rear of the diagram. “That low hump on her spine, about a quarter of her length forward from the stern – what is it?”

“It looks like a bump on a log, doesn’t it?” Abha consulted the diagram’s description. “That’s the top of her reactor vessel. I’ve seen some designs like that before. They’ll have lowered it into place through a hole in the spine for ease of construction and replacement.”

“Uh-huh. What’s important is that it’ll show up on fire control radar. It gives us a point of aim for our missiles and cannon.
If her reactor goes into emergency shutdown, her gravitic drive, reaction thrusters, sensors and weapons will all be affected. None of them can operate at full power using only the stored energy in her capacitor ring – and that’s close to her reactor, so we might hit it as well. If we get lucky and her reactor blows, we won’t have to worry about her at all anymore.”

Seated next to them, the pilot asked, “But, Sir, why not try for a head-on missile strike? The kinetic energy of colliding with missiles at such a high closing speed would be devastating.”

Dan shook his head. “That’s
if
they collided, Sergeant. Don’t forget, her gravitic shield will be operating. It’s designed to deflect space debris, so it can probably deflect light weapons as well. Our missiles’ chemically fueled motors may not be powerful enough to fight it. Also, to launch them down her throat, we’ll have to be directly in front of her. That would put the missiles and our shuttles in line-of-sight of her laser cannon, which might not be very good for our health.”

“You’re right
, Sir – hey, wait a minute! What’s
she
doing?” The pilot pointed to the display, where an icon represented a small patrol craft a few million kilometers further out from the mining ship. She had gone to full acceleration, steering towards the predicted trajectory of the pirate ship.

Abha swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry even as her heart ached for the self-sacrifice of the patrol craft’s crew. “At a guess, she’s going to try to
find Target Bravo with her radar as it approaches. She can’t possibly get within range before the pirates’ missiles or lasers kill her. Oh, she’ll fire her own missiles if she gets the chance, but she probably won’t live that long. She’s trying to locate the enemy for the rest of us. Her sister ship will probably head this way as soon as her crew can get aboard and bring up her systems.”

“That’s brave, but it’s also stupid,” Dan fumed. “It’s a suicide mission!”

“What choice do they have?” she asked quietly. “If they do nothing, they’ll probably die anyway. The pirates must know they’re here – they’ll have picked up her gravitic drive signature – so they’re bound to target her. If she lives long enough to get a lucky hit, that might force Bravo to turn away. It’s not much of a chance, but it’s all they’ve got.”

“Do we have any better chance ourselves, Ma’am?” the pilot asked dubiously.

“I think so. Bravo’s own speed will help to protect us from their fire – she’ll close the range between us very fast, limiting her reaction time. Also, don’t forget that we have some of the best stealth systems in the business. I don’t think they’ll see us coming until we illuminate them with our radar.”

He sighed. “I hope you’re right, Ma’am.”

“Believe me, so do I!”

“Hear, hear!” Dan agreed fervently. “
According to the message, she’s coming in at one-tenth of light speed – that’s about thirty thousand kilometers a second. Our assault shuttles can’t match that, of course. We’ll have to get in very close to hit her as she passes, but at point-blank range at that speed, the fight will be over almost as soon as it’s begun. We can’t possibly hit her under manual control. We’ll have to program our missiles to look for that hump and hit it. We’ll fire a full twenty-round magazine from our plasma cannon at the same target as she flashes past us. Any advice on how to set up our approach and firing position?”

Abha nodded, calling up the miniature plot display on her console and pointing to it. “When she detects our fire control radar, she
’ll probably try to shoot at us. If she’s armed like Johann de Bouff’s ship, her missile tubes and laser cannon will be installed in the cargo holds in the lower part of her hull. They won’t want to waste their limited supply of missiles on small assault shuttles – they have bigger fish to fry. Besides, at such short range and high speed, their missiles won’t have time to lock on to us before they’re past and gone. Their laser cannon are the real threat; but if we position ourselves above her, the odds are pretty good that only one or two of her cannon may be in line-of-sight of us. We can also try to jam their fire-control radar, if she opens up at that patrol craft and we can identify its frequency range.”

“What if they have
visual or infra-red sensors pointed our way, Ma’am?” the pilot asked.

Abha
wished fervently that he hadn’t asked that question. She’d been worrying about such sensors herself. “That’ll be a big problem,” she admitted, “but we can’t do anything about it except to adopt a widely spaced formation, so as not to offer one big target.”

“I get it, Ma’am.”

She tried to quiet the butterflies in her stomach as she turned back to Dan. “Our missiles have a max powered range of only a few hundred clicks, and they operate at chemical rocket speeds. They’re nowhere near as fast as gravitic drive weapons. We’re going to have to launch them while Target Bravo’s still far outside our radar range, to give them time to reach her as she goes past. That means we have to use her own emissions to confirm her position, course and speed. We can track her active transmissions if she uses her radar to target that patrol craft. It’ll be even easier if she brings up her gravitic drive as well. Our small plasma cannon won’t be effective outside about thirty kilometers, even in space where there’s no atmospheric diffusion to worry about. We’ll need to get as close as possible if we hope to hit her as she passes us. Just pray she doesn’t alter course, because if she does so at that speed we’ll never be able to intercept her.”

Dan nodded. “I get it. What if her reactor blows while we’re too close? There’s no future in that!”

“You’re right, but that’s a chance we’ll have to take if we’re to have any hope of hitting her. That sort of risk is why they pay us these huge salaries.”

“Yeah,
right!
OK. Would you please tell the other shuttles what we’ve just discussed, to fill them in on the background? While you’re doing that, I’ll program a missile and cannon fire plan for all four shuttles.”