Jack of Harts 2.5: Wolfenheim Rising (13 page)

One display showed Smith’s Avengers bringing down one more cruiser, while a focused salvo of destroyer grav cannons smashed yet another cruiser into expanding debris.  The other Blackhawk squadrons focused on cruisers of their own, and if they did only minor damage like Malcolm, Murphy’s destroyers spared just enough attention to send missiles their way.  The cruisers that made up the heart of the Shang fleet writhed under the combined assault, belching armor, atmosphere, and other debris into space from the mounting number of wounds.

The Shang made tough ships, though, and even as damage codes filled the displays, Shang launchers filled space with their missiles.  More fighters disappeared or spun away after barely surviving near hits.  Murphy’s destroyers lurched as deflection grids flickered and the missiles dove in for the kill.  But as the Shang missiles smashed into them, they learned once again how resilient the
Austin
-class destroyers were.  With forward hammerheads wrapped around armored cores made of the densest alloys known to humanity, the
Austins
truly were America’s best destroyers.

Explosions wreathed the wedges, tearing weapons and outer hull plating away from the destroyers, but meters of armor behind them stopped every weapon the Shang could throw at them.  Armor melted under the assault, torn and twisted by the devastation as the destroyers charged into Hell, but they held.

But no destroyer could carry enough armor to protect herself from all angles.  A swarm of missiles arced around a hammerhead and attacked the thin hull plating protecting a destroyer’s main engines.  She lurched to the side, half of her engines ripped away, and began to drift out of formation.  Then three Shang cruisers focused fire on one destroyer, and their combined fire actually cracked the armored wedge, ripping it off at the base of the ship’s main fuselage.

A madhouse of destructive energies flashed back and forth across the space that separated the Shang and Terran forces.  Malcolm watched everything without concentrating on any of it, just observing the flickering images of chaos.  Dawn fired on their target again, and five of their gravitic cannons hit the cruiser’s deflection grid.  Another salvo of Murphy’s missiles struck the Shang cruiser and it belched fire, shedding armor and internal systems.  One more of his fighters died from a missile-hit dead center, engine pods shooting away in four directions before running out of fuel.

Another cruiser broke in half, victim of Smith’s Avengers.  A single gravitic beam smashed into a different cruiser, and flames and armor erupted into space.  A Shang destroyer blundered into a stream of missiles meant for a cruiser and came apart.  The staccato images of destruction flashed across his displays as Malcolm reacted to missiles swarms he had no time to focus on.

Then without warning, the Shang stopped firing. 
All
fire stopped, in fact, and Malcolm looked at the empty space around them in confusion.  He turned to aim a questioning look at Dawn and saw a triumphant smile on her face.

“They’re signaling their complete and utter surrender,” she reported.

Malcolm frowned and looked at the surviving warships, every single one torn open to one degree or another.  They continued maneuvering for combat, making themselves as hard to hit as possible, and he could see the telltale result of jammers still trying to confuse enemy targeting systems, but no weapons remained in space.

“Director?” Smith’s voice asked.  “What do we do?”

Malcolm looked at Dawn and she just smiled.  He pursed his lips, weighing his options.  On the one hand, he could order his people to start firing again and would not lose any sleep.  The Shang had killed enough people over the years.  On the other hand, he could accept their surrender.  Though he was not in a position to do anything with it.  Then here was Murphy.  If
she
accepted their surrender, she would have to stop following him while she secured them.  And if she didn’t, he would know what to expect from her in the future.  “Tell Commodore Murphy we’ll follow her lead.”  Dawn blinked at him in surprise, then nodded in response.  Malcolm relaxed back in his seat and waited to find out what Murphy’s decision would be.

Finally her holoform appeared on the console, standing next to Dawn, with her hands clasped behind her back.  A display showed she was broadcasting on an open frequency.  “This is Commodore Murphy, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Star Fleet,” she announced in a hard tone.  “I accept your surrender.  Stand down and prepare to be boarded.  Any resistance will be considered a violation of your surrender.  I trust I am understood.”  It was not a question, and Murphy remained in place, waiting for the Shang’s response.

Within seconds, the Shang warships ceased maneuvering and shut down their deflection grids.  The displays showing target-lock warnings went green as the Shang targeting systems turned off, and Malcolm smiled in relief.  They’d done it.

“Good,” Murphy intoned, and then her holoform turned towards Malcolm.  “Director McDonnell?” was all she said, but Malcolm smiled as a display showed her transmission shifting to private frequencies.

“Commodore Murphy,” he answered and waited for his transmission to reach her.  His holoform would be appearing on her display as soon as it arrived, relaying his words just as her holoform did to him.  He wondered what her next words would be.  Would she demand his surrender as she had in Alpha Centauri and Sunnydale?

Murphy smiled at him before speaking again.  “Thank you for your help.  I regret that I must ask you to surrender as well.”

Malcolm shook his head, but managed a questioning raised eyebrow.  “Always with you it is ‘surrender and prepare to be boarded.’  Can’t we start with something else?”

Murphy frowned at him, betraying a mix of confusion and something else he couldn’t quite identify.  “I have my orders,” she noted with a shake of her head.  “You know why I’m here, and yet you helped my squadron.  Why?”  Her holoform took on a curious look, cocking her head to the side.

“Because the Shang have killed far too many of us, and I couldn’t stand by and watch them kill any more,” Malcolm answered her question without hesitation.

Murphy nodded very slowly, deep in thought.  “You surprise me.”

“I try to,” Malcolm answered with a chuckle.  “It keeps people on their toes.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Murphy sighed and aimed a considering look at him.  “Are you going to surrender to me or keep running?”

Malcolm laughed and shook his head.  “Can I ask you a question of my own before answering that?”

Murphy examined him for several seconds, far longer than the time delay imposed by the transmission lag could explain.  “I suppose it would be rude of me to say no,” she finally said.

“What is your Christian name?”  It was an oddly formal question, long out of use in common society, but it just felt right.

“My?”  Her eyes opened wide and she stared at him for several seconds, mixed shock, worry, and confusion written on her face.  “Why?”

“You chased me across the known universe,” Malcolm said, his tone wry.  “I’m curious who would do that.”

Murphy arched an eyebrow at him.  “This is hardly the known universe.”

“I just saved your life,” Malcolm said with a shrug.  “You can grant me at least
one
grandiose statement, can’t you?”

She stared at him for another few seconds, and he caught just a whiff of disappointment in that gaze.  “Caroline,” she finally whispered, long and slow, emphasizing each syllable.

Malcolm blinked, surprised by the answer.  He’d expected Dana.  She looked so similar.  He glanced at Dawn and she brought a holodisplay to life, showing side-by-side pictures from his high school’s senior yearbook.  One was of Caroline Murphy, from the freshman class.  He still couldn’t remember her, but she had an odd ring of familiarity to him.  The other holo was of Dana Murphy, a face he most certainly
did
remember.  Underneath, a single word blinked in red.  Sisters.  And that explained why she seemed familiar.  He probably met the younger sister when Dana took him home.  They’d had a nice pool.

“I see,” Malcolm whispered, momentarily caught unawares by the memory of that pool.  They’d had good parties there, as he remembered.  But that was a long time ago, and he looked back to the Caroline Murphy who stood before him now.  “And I see why they sent you.”  She blinked and seemed prepared to contest his statement, but he rolled right on before she could ask.  He wouldn’t know what to say if she asked, and that would just make things awkward.  “Well, my name is Malcolm, and now that we’re on a first name basis, can I tell you why I’ve been running?”

She pursed her lips.  “I assumed it was because you didn’t want to be caught.”  Her tone was acerbic, but there was a color of something in it.  Familiarity.  It was like the echo of a joke he couldn’t remember.

“Point,” he said with a raised a finger and a smile.  “But not the reason I was going for.”

Caroline sighed and shook her head.  “Then I can hardly await your explanation.”  There was a slight mocking tone this time, but still that odd familiarity that hummed on the edge. 

He put aside the part of him that wondered about that.  He had far more important things to say.  “Twenty-five,” he intoned, his voice harsh.

She frowned.  “Twenty-five?”

“Winter Contingencies,” he declared, and she looked away from him.  He understood why.  The New Washington Winter Contingency had horrified him five years before.  Now it was a statistic, the first of the twenty-five worlds that Shang bombardments sent into new ice ages.  Millions dead from bombardments, and they were just a statistic, one small number in a growing War to End All Wars.  “Another hundred worlds with no measurable industrial output,” he continued after letting her think about the devastation.  “And can you give me the name of a single colony near the Hyades Cluster that hasn’t been abandoned or conquered?”

Her face looked grim when she returned her gaze to him.  “Sunnydale.”

“Sunnydale,” he repeated with grim agreement.  It was the only remaining major Alliance colony left within striking range of the cluster.  “We can’t keep on going like this.  I know the newsies say we’ll have this wrapped up in a year.  That The Fleet assembling at Sunnydale will wipe them out.  ‘Victory is coming’ and all that tripe.”  Malcolm shook his head.  “That’s just propaganda and we know it.  One more Epsilon Reticuli and we’re done.  That’s all she wrote.”  He paused to stare at her, daring her to object.

Caroline let the silence linger for several seconds before nodding.  “OK.  Let’s say I agree with you on that.”  He could almost feel part of her deflating as she admitted her true feelings.  “For argument’s sake,” she added, but he had her.  She agreed with him.  And in her eyes he saw the proof that she knew he knew.  She shook her head to clear it.  “What does this have to do with us?  Right here.”  Her tone was sharp, defensive.

Malcolm just smiled.  “Everything.”  The woman who stood in Bosphorus was not the Commodore Murphy who had demanded his surrender at New Earth.  He supposed that almost dying could change anyone’s perspective, but he had the feeling that it hadn’t really changed her.  More like burned something away to reveal the true woman.  The Caroline that pinged memories he couldn’t place.

“We have to build colonies in their space,” he began, his tone more hurried than he wished.  “We have to fly to their stars.  We have to land on their worlds.  We have to show every Alien race out there that we can come to
them
.”  He paused for a second, willing her to understand.  Pleading with her.  “They can’t just come over, kill a few of us, and go back home, safe in the knowledge that we can’t do anything about it.  We can’t
let
them.”

Caroline gave him a half smile, but shook her head.  “So what?  You steal some money, use it to buy a fleet, and run away from everything?  How does that help us?”

Malcolm chuckled very slowly.  She’d asked the right question.  And the answer was waiting on the tip of his tongue.  “I didn’t steal the money.  An official member of the Hurst Family Council gave it to me.”  She raised an eyebrow to say just how slim that excuse was, but he raised one finger to stop her.  “You and me, we’re stuck in a family squabble, but to everyone else out there, this is so much bigger.  Charles Edward Hurst is sending us out there as a warning.  We won’t be stuck in our measly few hundred lightyears of space forever.  We’re coming.  We’re not just one colony.  We’re
every
colony!”  Malcolm paused to take a breath, knowing he was betraying a missionary’s zeal.  But he just couldn’t help it.  “We’re humanity, we’re
Earth
, going where no man has gone before.  That is the
true
heart of the Wolfenheim Project.  Both a warning and a promise.  We will not be forgotten.  We will
not
go quietly into that long night.”

Caroline pulled in a long breath, and he saw her wanting to believe.  But then she shook her head.  “I can see you’ve thought this through,” was all her voice said, but her eyes betrayed her inner turmoil.

“I’ve had
years
to think it through,” Malcolm whispered.

She smiled.  “I can’t stop you from running.”  She shrugged and shook her head.  “But I can’t ignore my orders.  And sooner or later, I
will
catch you.”