Poor Man's Fight (29 page)

Range was likely in the pirates’ favor, but only marginally so.
Though
Vengeance
had excellent cannons, beam weapons could be inaccurate against spacecraft at such ranges. Anything capable of moving fast enough to make space travel practical was an inherently difficult target. Computerized evasion patterns coupled with the randomizing human factor made it even tougher. At such speeds and distances, even computers had a difficult job in timing a shot that would fly at the speed of light.

“We’re not gonna get too fancy here, guys,”
Casey explained. His voice was loud and tense, yet steady. “We’re gonna shift targets fast. They’ll expect a feint, so we’re gonna commit a couple inches farther than we should before turning. Ready… hit ‘em!”

Vengeance
carried twin main laser cannons on recessed dorsal and ventral turrets midway toward the bow of the ship. The barrels of each glowed an angry red hue a split second before firing. Her first shot missed, as did her second and third.
Vengeance
closed as
Fahd,
running somewhat perpendicular to the pirate ship, focused more on evasion than attack.

Asad
threatened
Vengeance
from behind, turning sideways to keep more guns trained upon the pirates.
Asad’s
single main cannon and a broadside of smaller batteries fired, scoring only a few minor hits deflected by
Vengeance’s
armor. A bolder attack by
Asad
would have delivered more significant damage, but the Hashemite captain hesitated. As Casey hoped, his enemy wanted to be sure of what he was dealing with before he committed.

Fahd
had guns of her own; the pirate vessel had just come into range of those weapons, though, when
Vengeance
finally scored a hit. Hull plating all across
Fahd
’s starboard side blew apart as
Vengeance
’s powerful lasers cut an ugly scar through her.

“There!”
Casey barked. “Secondary guns, fire at will. Helm, break off from
Fahd
and come about to intercept
Asad
. Jerry, fire off chaff missiles on
Fahd
and then be ready to hit
Asad
. Carl, main guns on
Asad
, now!”

More than one crewman on the bridge blinked at the seemingly contradictory orders, but obeyed.
Vengeance
wheeled sharply to starboard and “up” from her earlier plane. On the display boards, two small, fast-moving dots representing the chaff missiles moved from
Vengeance
toward
Fahd
.

The wounded destroyer’s defensive batteries opened up immediately.
They intercepted both missiles far enough out to prevent actual damage, but that was Casey’s intent. The chaff missiles burst with an electromagnetic mess upon destruction.
Vengeance
now had a sensor-disrupting cloud between herself and the damaged destroyer behind her.
Fahd
would go around or through the chaff in seconds, but such seconds mattered.

Vengeance
twisted as her main thrusters went into attack speed once more, narrowly avoiding a blast from
Asad
’s main guns. The ships fired away wildly at one another. Though they started out on nearly equal footing,
Vengeance
’s secondary guns added to the punishment as the range dropped.

Missiles shot out from
Asad
’s launchers too early.
Vengeance
’s defensive guns intercepted them as she fishtailed around to keep clear of the heavy bursts of the exploding missiles. The pirate ship shook, taking minor damage that would occupy her damage control crews, but few of the impacts went beyond what
Vengeance
was designed to take.

Keeping
Asad
bracketed between her main guns,
Vengeance
planted minor hits across the enemy’s side with her secondary lasers. Two such hits proved critical, eliminating vital defensive guns. Casey spotted the damage on his display before anyone reported it. “Jerry! Missiles!”

Asad
was only halfway through an emergency roll to present her undamaged dorsal side to
Vengeance
as the missiles closed in. Close defense guns had gotten increasingly better over recent decades, making direct hits rare; consequently, missiles were designed to blow with the largest possible blast radius. Modern missile fire was a game of getting in close enough to still count before interception. In this moment, though, only the trailing missile was shot down. The lead missile actually made it through to strike against
Asad
’s hull. Even a hundred kilometers out, the explosion would have crippled a destroyer. Instead, the missile blew its target apart entirely.

“Keep going!”
Casey yelled over the cheers of his bridge crew. “Straight through the debris. Don’t wheel about until we’re through!”

Li couldn’t help but grin as he
plowed his ship through the hot wreckage. Loud thumps and cracks could be heard across
Vengeance
as she plowed through
Asad
’s remains.
Vengeance
cleared the wreck before she began to come about.

“Fire at will on that fucker,”
Casey commanded. “Anything but missiles. Things are expensive.”

Across the ship, gunners at their stations likewise poured on fire at every opportunity.
Vengeance’s
evasive rolls and maneuvers occasionally interrupted her onslaught, bringing one gun up while turning another away, but it was all to be expected. Many of the gunners missed. More than a few of them hit.

Within moments,
Fahd
broke off from her intercept course. Her main thrusters went into full emergency FTL speed. The battered destroyer flashed away at her current heading, fleeing her tougher, unwounded opponent.

Cheers erupted across the bridge. Someone clapped
Casey on the back, which he accepted with a grin. Pirates were predators in search of easy prey, not challenges.
Vengeance
’s crew might easily have failed this test.

“Li, bring us back to the planet and put us over Khalil City again,”
Casey said. “Ops. We need a damage report. And somebody get a shuttle ready. If we’re not burning or bleeding, I’m heading down to the surface.”

“You don’t think we’ll get more incoming?” Jerry asked.

“I think those were the only serious ships this system’s defense force could spare,” Casey explained, waving a dismissive hand. “Anything still orbiting Ras-al-Kaimah Prime is gonna stay there to protect it, especially now. Nearest system to this one is six light years out. They have to send a messenger with an FTL drive just to raise the alarm. That’s at
least
twelve hours to get there if they send some really hot shit starship. Any response will take at least that much time to get here, bare minimum, and that’s presuming they’re sitting around on ready alert.

“Plus, they just got their asses kicked by a destroyer. They’ll probably figure we’re military, so they’
ll presume we aren’t alone. They won’t come at us piecemeal. They’ll want to get their shit together first. We’ve got at least a day and a half to fuck around here before we need to bug out. Should be plenty of time to take care of business.”

***

Samir Majid Madani, Captain of Prince Khalil’s Royal Guard, had always been a good man. He was a good son, a good father and a loving, loyal, respectful husband. His daughter, Fatima, was a doctor; her younger brother, Abdul, was a schoolteacher.

They were far from their
parents, but never far from their father’s thoughts. He crouched under the cover of a palm tree planter near the western entrance to the palace thinking mostly of the tactical situation but also, in part, of his children. He found that odd. His children were out of danger.

His wife was not. She worked in the palace as a tutor to the prince’s young children. It was not just his liege that Samir defended that day.
He defended his wife, and friends, and innocent people.

He had always been a good soldier. He
rose up from nothing to his position by merit and the grace of God. Samir remained at Prince Khalil’s side when the last of the many courtly intrigues among the royal family erupted in bloodshed. More than once, Samir alone stood between Khalil and almost certain death. Naturally he was banished along with his prince to this backwater world by a king who felt the best way to keep the peace was to put distance between his potential heirs.

Samir found it all galling. Khalil
never threatened anyone. He cared far more about astronomy and football than politics. Yet Khalil was third in line for the throne, and a decent, honorable man… and therefore a threat to his siblings.

He wondered if either of the other princes might be behind the attack. Nothing in the attackers’ make-up or their tactics bore the hallmarks of either brother.
Samir knew the attackers had at least one real warship. That much had been established when the main anti-space cannon, the only one that Prince Khalil could afford on this planet’s pitiful defense “allowance,” was demolished from space-based lasers. The clash in space only confirmed it. But everything else about the attack indicated that the enemy boasted a hodgepodge of weapons, craft and ethnicities. They attacked with a collection of small arms, civilian spacecraft and improvisation.

The last
factor made it difficult to predict what the enemy would do. The fact that the palace hadn’t been obliterated by that warship or the others in the air indicated that the attackers planned to take it intact, or mostly so. But they apparently had no armor with which to cross the kill zone.

He considered the implications of all this until he and his men began to see movement.
First came a pair of heat signatures on his optic display, quickly recognized as ground vehicles. The two cars, floating on antigrav generators, burst from the city’s alleys at high speed. “Open fire,” Khalil ordered. A barrage of lasers and bullets promptly reduced the vehicles to smoking wreckage in the middle of the kill zone. It was no challenge.

Other vehicles followed, frequently in twos and threes. Some
rolled on wheels. Others glided just above the ground. Khalil directed his men to keep up their fire, destroying one vehicle after another. Chatter over the communications channels indicated similar activity at the other sides of the palace. The captain took a moment to play back his helmet’s recording of the last few moments, looking carefully at the vehicles.

There were no drivers. He presumed as much; the enemy had to know what
awaited them. Charging into a well-fortified position in civilian vehicles was suicidal. “This is Madani at the west side,” he said into his comm channel. “I believe we face a diversionary attack here. Watch carefully for a breakout on your sides.”

He switched back to live optics. The plaza quickly became a charnel pit of cars, trucks and antigrav transports. Between the smoke, heat and debris of earlier destruction and the speed of the oncoming vehicles,
the shooting became tougher. Each vehicle was destroyed in turn, but they came closer and closer to the palace before elimination.

Over fifteen minutes
, the steady trickle of wrecks built up to quite a mess. “North wall,” Samir said, “are you seeing vehicular attacks?” He frowned when he received a negative response. It was the same for the other walls. Neither the south nor the east had much in the way of targets. They took fire from across the kill zone and fired back in response, but they saw no move across the expanse.

He realized, too late, that the effort before him
represented more than flash and distraction. Thermal imaging and straight optics were thoroughly disrupted by the smoke and flame, but radar was not so easily fooled. The cars kept coming, mostly antigravs now in order to get over the other wrecks, but smaller, slower movement followed behind. “West wall, we are about to face an infantry assault,” Samir barked. Then the first blasts of heavy small arms fire erupted from the smoke and debris.

Bullets and small rockets struck all around Samir and his men. Red flashes of lasers and green pulses of plasma blasts hit the staircases, the overhanging concrete of the palace walls and the decorative reinforced concrete planters all around them. Some
fire came from the streets; the rest came from buildings out beyond the kill zone. Soldiers positioned above ground level in the palace were quickly pinned down. Samir heard one of his men call out for a medic. Then another, and another.

Samir joined in the battle with his plasma repeater, a weapon requiring such a large generator that only powered armor allowed it to be used in a man-portable fashion. An antigrav car finally got all the way to the staircase before
exploding into a distracting mess of smoke and shattering plastic. Beyond it, Samir finally saw live targets. Enemy fighters ran from one wreck to the next, hiding behind the debris as they swarmed across the formerly open streets.