Last Measure of Devotion (TCOTU, Book 5) (This Corner of the Universe) (18 page)

“Not
enough time,” Vernay grumbled while looking at the system plot.  
Hawk
was 1
lm
from the station, and slightly less than that from the
freighter.

“At
present course and speed, we have about five minutes until we would cross into
weapons range,” Selvaggio noted.

“Weapons
range?” Nguyen exclaimed before looking crossly at Heskan.  “What’s this about,
Captain?”

Truesworth
looked back toward Vernay.  “But explain how they would know we’re on Hawk?”

Vernay
shrugged in futility.  “I can’t.”

“Captain
Heskan.” Tannault’s brash inflection stopped all action on the bridge.  “What
is the meaning of this?”

“Joseph,
your tone,” Covington cautioned his friend.

“No,”
Heskan stated.  “He’s right.  Captains Nguyen and Covington, may I have a word
with you in private, please?”

Tannault
bristled at being excluded but remained silent.

“Scott,
she’s your ship,” Covington said, passing command as he walked through the
crowd near the bridge’s portal.

Lieutenant
Ivers slipped off his chair and moved to the captain’s chair.  Vernay seized
the opportunity to take his place at the first officer’s station.

Heskan
hurriedly followed the two officers.  Behind his back, he heard Vernay’s
voice.  “Have you got the standata on the freighter yet, Jack?”

The
trip to privacy was a short one by design.  Once inside Covington’s quarters,
Heskan glanced between the two officers.  Finally, he said, “Yon, in order to
explain, I need to tell him the truth.”

Nguyen
paled at the declaration.  “Are you sure that’s wise, Captain?”

“I
don’t have a choi—”

“Does
this have something to do with Anelace, sir?” Covington blurted out.

Heskan
tripped over his words and looked incredulously at the young man.  Finally,
after a long pause, he asked, “How do you know that name?”  Heskan’s deathly tone
answered Covington’s question.

A despondent
Covington looked away from him.  “My God, it’s true then.  You’re… you’re all
Brevic.”  Covington mustered the strength to look back into his hero’s eyes. 
The hurt-filled expression the young officer wore hit Heskan harder than his simple
statement.  “You can’t be.  Tell me it’s not true.”

“It’s
not as black and white as you might think, Clayton,” Heskan answered quickly. 
“Things never are.”  He pointed at the “windowed” wall screen in the quarters. 
“See out there?  It might look like a colorless void from a distance but we
both know that when you choose to look beyond the first impression and move close
enough to really see those stars, they’re every color imaginable.”

Covington
was slowly shaking his head. 
Hawk’s
battle-stations alarm sounded from
the hall.

Heskan
grabbed the man by the shoulders with both hands and bore deep into his eyes. 
“Look at me, Clayton. 
See
me.”

“Break
your bonds, Monty,” Captain Sycamore ordered over the communications channel. 
The pirate captain turned and grinned fiercely at her helmsman.  “Z-plus five
thousand then rotate to face our target.”  She swiveled her captain’s chair
slightly to face her first officer.  “As soon as we’re at a safe distance, blow
the panels and raise our screen.”  Sycamore grunted with satisfaction as
Mirific’s
first officer nodded acknowledgment and set to work at his station.  The Q-ship’s
crew was ready to go and the wholly improvised operation appeared to be panning
out.

Less
than three weeks ago, Captain Kalene Sycamore had been resting comfortably planet-side
in the New London star system.  Having spent sixteen of her eighteen years sailing
as a smuggler for the Roberts Clan along the Republic-Federation border, these star
systems held the same familiarity to her as her tiny backyard while growing up on
Carme.  Back then, she split her childhood between that dry, weed-ridden yard
and the cold, drab environment of a juvenile detention center.  After emancipation
from her parents, Sycamore left Carme on the promise of riches and fame.

Awaiting
her instead was hard and dangerous work as a ship hand on a freighter that ran
drugs and other illicit cargo across borders.  She had spent her entire
adulthood performing a job that had a “life expectancy” of seven years.  After
sixteen years, Sycamore was finally promoted to relative safety, managing a
small recruitment and logistics arm in the Clan’s distribution system near the southern
border.  Arrest and incarceration were still real threats but dying of hypoxia
in the vacuum of space or of blood loss from a rival’s stiletto had been left
in her wake.  Her more probable future was another decade of service followed
by an extravagant retirement.  It was what every clan member dreamed of; she
had become a poster child for the recruitment of the next generation of pirates.

Those
dreams were catapulted forward when she received an urgent, coded message from
her patron.  The message, which spoke of great risks but even greater rewards,
contained orders for an improvised wet-mission.  The organization had acquired
a rare, lucrative contract from a government source that was a golden ticket to
any clan manager who could execute a wanted man of known whereabouts.  For a
natural risk-taker like Sycamore, it was a siren’s call she could not ignore.

Given
the constraints of the mission and its exceedingly short window of opportunity,
Sycamore found herself the only clan manager capable of pulling it off.  She
had immediately ordered the nearest three armed pirate ships to rendezvous with
her in New London, where an additional freighter was already urgently casting
off for the Nyx star system on her authority.

To
her disappointment and ire, only two of the armed vessels dove in-system before
she was forced to make way to Enyo to catch her objective.  Still, between the two
Q-ships and the knowledge that her target was oblivious to its impending
assault, Sycamore could not help but plan her early retirement during the
twelve-day voyage to Enyo.

Mirific
and
Salvage One-One
had
beaten their prey to Enyo with twenty-seven hours to spare.  Posing as a
freighter captain whose ship was being towed for repairs deeper inside the
Federation, she requested a berth at Enyo’s main orbital in heliocentric orbit
near the system’s third gas giant to make minor corrections to
Mirific’s
failing life support system before diving on.  While docked and awaiting her
quarry, she received word that the standard freighter she would use during her
escape had dove from Enyo to Nyx three days earlier.  With the pieces of her trap
hastily positioned, there had been little left to do but impatiently count time
for her mark, a small, corporate warship named
Hawk
.

The
cynical part of her had refused to believe the ship would actually appear.  It
had taken a near herculean effort to organize her ambush party while also
placing pieces that would give her an escape route back to the Republic. 
However, the coded directive she had received from leadership contained tantalizing
phrases such as “enduring personal gratitude of Jordan Roberts for being the
instrument of his revenge” and “renown greater than The Grinning Reaper.”  This
was truly a once in a lifetime opportunity.  It seemed almost too good to be
true.  Destroy a single starship, make it back to the Republic and live like a
queen for the rest of her life.  Promises such as these were what
she
made to recruit up-and-coming pirate captains and were, always, unkept.

It
was to her utter astonishment when
Hawk
arrived and began its four hour,
fifty-two minute cruise toward the Nyx tunnel point.  After careful
calculation, she ordered her ambush force to cast off from the main orbital one
hour, thirty-eight minutes later.  The timing would place her roughly five light-minutes
ahead of
Hawk
.  That distance would give her ample time to separate her
two ships but not enough time for the prey to catch wind of the danger and
flee.

“We’re
free, Captain.” The announcement releasing
Mirific
from
One-One’s
restraining fields brought her back to the moment.  She had never served aboard
a dedicated enforcer ship but she was not a complete stranger to ship combat.

“Maser
is nominal.  In range in fifty-one seconds,”
Mirific’s
first officer
stated coolly.  “One-One is turning with us… she’s blowing the panels hiding
her coil guns.”

Damn,
Sycamore thought in hindsight. 
I
should have told them to wait until Mirific’s maser was in range.

*  *  *

 “I
have the bridge,” Covington announced as he strode purposefully past Ivers.  His
first officer and the bridge crew were hastily donning shocksuits, retrieved from
the compartments in the backs of their chairs.

Behind
him, Captain Nguyen ordered, “Commander Tannault, Lieutenant Hall, accompany me
to auxiliary control, please.  I’ll explain on the way.”  Heskan waited for the
group to pass through the narrow portal before entering the bridge.

Beginning
the retrieval of his own shocksuit, Covington proclaimed loudly, “Captain
Heskan, I would appreciate any assistance you and your officers could give my
crew.”  The compartment in the back of his chair was open but Covington glanced
at the system plot, cursed and slammed it closed.  “Damn, there’s not time.”

Truesworth,
still standing near the sensor station, twisted and said, “The salvage vessel
broke her bonds to Mirific.”

“That’s
when Commander Vernay insisted we go to battle stations, Captain,” Ivers added. 
“I can’t say that I’m in a position to disagree with her.”

Heskan
took the four steps necessary to stand next to Covington’s chair.  A glance at
the ship’s status screen on the chair arm told him the crew was still racing to
their combat stations.  His eyes shot up to the wall screen.  “Tactical,” he ordered. 
An instant later, the large system plot on the left side of the main wall
screen was replaced with a much narrower, top-down view of
Hawk
and the
immediate space around her. 
We’re only fifteen light-seconds from them.  At
least our AIPS is going up.

On
the tactical plot, both the salvage ship and the freighter were rotating ominously
toward
Hawk
.

“Decompressions
along the salvage ship!”
Hawk’s
sensor officer warned.

On
cue, the optical displayed twin blasts of atmosphere gushing from the vessel’s
outstretched arms.  No flame or debris was expelled, only the facades designed
to conceal what was hidden behind them.

“What
is it?” Covington said as half a question, half an order.

Both
Hawk’s
sensorman and Truesworth answered in near tandem.  The first
voice was full of uncertainty; the other possessed a deep calm.

“Uh,
starting my analysis.”

“Kinetic
weapons for sure, Captain.”

Covington
cursed a second time as he noted
Hawk
was still not fully readied for
battle.  The alert had been a complete surprise but it was taking the crew too
long to react.  “Can we strike our lights and pay the ransom?” he asked to no
one in particular.

Vernay’s
cold soprano sent chills down his back.  “They aren’t interested in ransom,
Clayton.  Welcome to war without honor.”

The
statement hung over the bridge, creating an unnatural silence, broken only by Selvaggio’s
urgent whisper to
Hawk’s
helmsman.  “You need to begin evasive maneuvers
without changing your heading.”

Hawk’s
six port thrusters fired in
unison as the brig broke inside of 10
ls
.  Each thruster generated sizeable
amounts of delta-V but altering the vector of an object the size of
Hawk
took massive effort.

Ten
light-seconds from
Hawk
,
Salvage One-One
opened fire with her
twin coil guns.  Each gun, more aptly referred to as a magnetic linear
accelerator, was comprised of six hundred and fifty powerful toroidal
electromagnetic coils.  Placed in perfect alignment, the barrels extended the
lengths of the vessel’s 210-meter repair arms.  The antiquated coil gun was far
cheaper than a rail gun and demanded considerably less energy to operate.  The
tradeoffs were the extreme space required to position enough linear coils to accelerate
a projectile to relativistic speeds and a comparatively slow rate of fire.

After
confirming a green panel,
One-One’s
weapons officer initiated the firing
sequence and a ferromagnetic shot was loaded into the first
coil. The
coil immediately energized and repelled the projectile as the second coil activated
to attract it.  The one-gram, dime-sized bullet reached the second coil, which instantly
switched to repulsion mode while the third coil activated to begin attracting
the malevolent disc farther down the barrel.  Each new cycle propelled the shot
faster and faster until, when the projectile left the 650th coil, it jetted
away from the weapon at .54
c
.  Less than a second later, another shot
gushed forth from each barrel and the pattern repeated itself five more times. 
After the seventh shot, the weapons computer automatically entered into a
diagnostics cycle that would pause the firing routine and inspect each of the barrels
for imperfections that might result in a catastrophic failure.  Five seconds
after the automated inspection sequence, both coil guns energized again and the
pirate ship fired a new burst.

During
the delay,
Hawk
sailed 2
ls
closer.  The brig, moving at a speed
of .2
c
, now had a fully charged AIPS defensive screen but was still waiting
for her crew to energize her weapons.

“Come
on, come on,” Covington softly exhorted as he monitored the ship’s status
display impatiently.  After punctuating his urgings with a curse, he looked
sheepishly at Heskan and offered, “Captain, at least take my chair.  If we take
a serious enough hit, you might be tossed about.”

The
image of Mike Riedel’s face flashed through Heskan’s mind but he waved his
hand.  “That’s your seat, Clayton.  Let’s just work hard to not be—”

“Blueshift
particles!”
Hawk’s
sensorman alerted.

Selvaggio checked the
brig’s slowly changing vector against the incoming fire and cautioned, “Hang
on.”

*  *  *

Although
Hawk’s
crew had only just witnessed the firing of the coil guns, the first
projectiles ushered from the twin barrels were a scant 3
ls
from impact. 
Five light-seconds behind those speeding rounds,
Mirific
finally entered
the fray.  Concealing panels blew from their seatings along the Q-ship’s dorsal
spine.  What once appeared as a loading crane and its control tower now revealed
its true form.

Mirific’s
single maser was one of the few
heavy weapons still legally purchasable by Brevic-sanctioned civilian armed
escorts.  Although slower firing and with less range than standard heavy
lasers, masers offered private Republic escort companies their only option for
a directed energy weapon with a range greater than 5
ls.
  While coil guns
and their more modern brethren, rail guns, could extend the reach of an armed
civilian ship to 10
ls
, both kinetic weapons were dependent on a finite
supply of ammunition and limited by shot speeds well under the speed of light. 
The latter fact ensured that an agile opponent had a fair chance to evade such
fire.  Masers offered acceptable range, roughly 8
ls
, and the highly
desirable trait of a speed-of-light “projectile.”

Mirific’s
single, dorsal maser reoriented
from its vertical position to begin tracking her target.  After fractional corrections,
it spat several bursts of energy before entering its painfully long, fifteen-second
recycle mode.  Four seconds after
Mirific’s
initial maser salvo,
One-One
added her third set of coil gun bursts to the accumulated invective hurtling
toward
Hawk
.

As
those projectiles escaped
One-One’s
barrels, the first grouping approached
Hawk’s
fully charged AIPS screen. 
During the fifteen seconds needed to reach their target, physics
asserted itself upon each of the fourteen bullets as they collided with sporadic
particles in space.