Starbound (27 page)

When we were ready Zander gave the orders and we swung into action.

The latest volleys from the cruisers provided us with some cover, as the blasts would almost certainly scramble their scanning equipment for a few moments. We used that advantage to go right at the nearest of the three cruisers. Ten seconds in to our attack run, they began to react, changing their vector to try to put more distance between them and us and get closer to their companion ships. Karina's firing sequence was spot-on however, and the first blast from a fast-moving missile caught them broadside with a fifty-kiloton explosion from five ten-kiloton warheads. This was followed by a volley of a dozen single-warhead torpedoes with five-kiloton yields, enough to crack their Hoagland Field and expose the hull to direct assault. The result was satisfying enough. I couldn't tell if the cruiser had been disabled or destroyed, but it didn't matter, we had our breakout and we were on our way.

Zander cut the sub-light impellers back to .38 light at forty-five minutes from jump point space, leaving us a few minutes to spare just in case we needed a reserve. The two chasing cruisers had abandoned their third partner and were steadily closing on us, their slower acceleration curve working to our advantage. All was well for the next half hour, and I began to believe we would make it to the jump point when I had to deliver the bad news.

“Captain, the impellers are diminishing in performance. We can't maintain this speed,” I said. “The burn ratio from the ion plasma is just too great.”

“What's our lead?” Zander asked. I ran some swift numbers.

“Relatively speaking, our lead is down to six minutes at this pace,” I said.

“And how long until we reach optimal jump space?”

“Fourteen minutes, sir.”

“What's our power reserve, weapons officer?” he demanded.

“Thirty-two percent,” replied Karina. “We need twenty if we're going to be able to spool up the HD drive and still keep the Hoagland Field strong enough to survive the jump, sir.”

“So if we borrow too much power from the battery reserve to maintain our speed, we'll lose the ability to jump safely?” asked Zander.

“Correct, sir,” she said. He turned back to me, arms folded across his chest.

“What's our speed, Commander?”

“Point three-five-eight light and dropping, sir,” I said. Zander's hand went to his scarred pink chin.

“How much time would the power transfer buy us, Commander?”

I checked my calculations. “Not enough, sir. At our current use rate we'll fall four minutes short,” I said. He didn't hesitate.

“We'll do it anyway, we have no other choice. Transfer battery power to the impellers, Lieutenant Feilberg,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” she said. I went back under the hood and activated my private com to the captain.

“You do realize we'll be in full range of their weapons, missiles, torpedoes, even coil cannons, for that full four minutes?” I said.

“I understand, Commander,” he said. Then went silent.

It would be the longest four minutes of all our lives.

We came under fire immediately once we were within range of the two remaining cruisers. First with atomic missiles, single-warhead thankfully, then torpedoes, all with lesser yields than our own. But we
couldn't fire back. That would require turning and risking losing our momentum, and our goal was singular: to reach jump space and get out of the Carinthian system.

Two minutes from jump space we took a direct hit from a ten-kiloton missile on our Hoagland Field. Weakened as she was by our run of desperation, the field shut down, setting off alarms throughout the ship. The resultant surge of excess power from the shielding system being redistributed throughout our power systems overloaded our impeller drive and it cut out for its own survival, but it left us a sitting duck, drifting on our course on momentum only.

“We've lost the Hoagland Field and our ion impellers, Captain,” I reported grimly. “Only eighteen percent in power reserves. Not enough to spool up the Hoagland Drive for a jump.”

“And one more direct hit and we'll be destroyed,” stated Karina from her station. Zander stood and stiffened his back, stretching as tall as his diminutive frame would let him.

“So now we find out if their orders are to capture us or to kill us,” he said.

“The result may be one and the same,” said Karina as she stepped away from her now useless weapons station to join the captain. I stayed at my longscope. The two remaining cruisers closed to an optimal firing range, then went to station keeping, coming no closer but paralleling us.

“What are they waiting for?” asked Karina.

“Orders, probably,” said Zander.

I looked at my board one more time. The two cruisers had us in their sights, dead to rights. But then another blip appeared on my tactical display.

“Another ship coming in range, sir,” I called out. “Large displacement.”

“Imperial dreadnought?” asked Zander, alarm in his voice.

“Calculating,” I responded. “Wait, no. Too light in mass. From her signature . . . she must be a Lightship.”

“Is it
Starbound
, laddie? Did she jump in to save us?” asked Zander. I ran my numbers again, then shut down my display and came out from under the longscope.

“Negative, Captain,” I said as their faces fell in disappointment. I went over to join them. “From her course vector she must have come the way we came, from High Station Three. It must be
Impulse II
.”

“But isn't your . . . friend, I mean Captain Kierkopf, in command of her?” asked Karina.

“She is,” I said. “But she is now a Carinthian Royal Navy officer again, and if I know her at all I know she will follow her orders and take us back to Three, if that's what she's been instructed to do.”

“I have to agree,” said Zander. “She's one of a kind, that woman.” I looked at Zander but he was focused on the tactical screen. Karina eyed me but I could say nothing to comfort her. We had given it our best shot, and we had failed her and her father.

“I'm sorry, Princess,” I said. She looked at me but said nothing. We stood together at Zander's station, watching our failure play out as the imposing figure of
Impulse II
loomed ever larger on the main visual display.

Suddenly there was a burst of light from
Impulse II
as a crackling wave of coil fire shot across open space and struck the closest cruiser. It disintegrated in flash of light, the explosion rocking our ship. A second later a similar blast hit the second cruiser, but it had been ready, its Hoagland Field absorbing the tremendous shockwave that sent it tumbling. A second later and she had righted herself, turned toward us, and fired.

A single torpedo was coming right at us. We all scrambled back to our stations.

“Do we have enough power to bring the Hoagland Field back on line?” said Zander.

“We have the power,” I said, “but not the time.” We watched as the missile streaked toward us, only seconds separating us from the impact and our likely deaths.

“Five seconds,” I said, the bridge went silent.

A lance of coil cannon fire intercepted the missile two seconds later, the explosion of energy rocking our ship beyond what our inertial dampers could bear. We all went tumbling about the deck.

But we were still alive.

When we got back to our stations we saw a surprising sight, two more Wasps guarding us. They must have come in through the jump point in the last few seconds, intercepting the incoming missile. We never saw
Imp
ulse II
destroy the second cruiser, but we knew what her fate was. I got our main display back up, and our com, but we only had visual and ship-to-ship; no tactical or telemetry was available. It took only a few seconds for us to receive the visual call from
I
mpulse II
.

The face of Captain Dobrina Kierkopf filled the bridge on our main display and all of the station display plasmas as well. It felt like there was a hundred of her on the bridge of
Benfold
.

“Captain Zander, Commander Cochrane. It appears from our scans that you are in need of resupply and repair. Can we be of assistance?” she said.

Zander stood and let out a deep sigh.

“That you can, Captain. That you can,” he said, a toothy grin crossing his scarred pink face. “A quick question though, Captain, I somehow doubt that your departure orders from the Air Marshal included destroying your own cruisers?”

“Goddamn my orders,” she said. “I swore an oath to protect the grand duke and his family long before I signed up for this job. It's just too bad that those cruiser captains disobeyed orders and tried to destroy your vessel instead of capture it, Captain Zander. Admiralty law forced me to intervene on your behalf. At least, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.”

Then she looked at me and winked, and I laughed for the first time in days.

It felt good.

Home

A
dmar Harrington had
ordered his Wasps t
hrough the jump poin
t immediately upon h
is return to Pendax.
Their arrival and t
iming was pure luck,
or fate, depending
on what you believed
. They offered to es
cort us home, to Can
dle, and we accepted
.

Dobrina was kind enough to send over a repair team to refuel and reenergize our engines and batteries before releasing us to go on to the jump point. Then she went on her way to an uncertain destiny. She said she had a loyal crew and a plan for reporting the three cruisers destroyed, confirming that we had taken one of them out in the planetesimal field. The rest I was hopeful she could make a good case for.

Still, parting with her again was difficult. Though I wasn't sure that I loved her in a way that would preclude any other romance in my life, we had a strong bond; of that there was no doubt. I hoped that she would be safe as I watched
Impulse II
go. We were at a critical tipping point in the Union's brief history, and whether it would survive this crisis was more of a question than ever.

We left the battlefield in a hurry after recharging, and once our fleet of Wasps reached jump space we made the instantaneous leap back
to Quantar without incident. That didn't mean, however, that there weren't going to be incidents aboard her. We had the reigning Grand Duke of Carinthia, our ancient adversaries, stashed away in our cargo hold in a stasis field disguised as booze. That could be problematic.

Once in Quantar space we gave thanks to our escorts, who turned and left for Pendax. At this point Zander proposed, and I agreed, that we should make straight for High Station Quantar and skip stopping at Candle. My navy duties aboard
Star
bound
were still foremost in my mind, but we had other duties to attend to first.

As we passed near Candle I sent a com packet to Maclintock, being deliberately vague about my real responsibilities but insisting to him that I still had diplomatic duties to attend to before I could return to naval duty aboard
Starbound
. He replied with a simple acknowledgment of my packet, the equivalent of a nod of assent, and with that we were off to Quantar. By now
Starb
ound
would be well under way with repairs, and this political complication didn't concern her or Captain Maclintock. I found myself again stuck with the difficulty of having to make decisions as a royal at a very high level, but seeing others from my position as a Lieutenant Commander in the Union Navy. It was a conflict I hadn't completely resolved yet.

During the traverse time my only plans were a brief dinner followed by a solid eight hours of sleep. There was no telling how much or how little I would get after arriving home, and by home I meant the North Palace at KendalFalk, not New Briz. I had no intention of telling my father about the grand duke, at least not just yet.

I begged off Zander's offer to join him at dinner and ordered straight from the galley. My food arrived promptly and not five minutes into my meal there came a chime through my privacy lock. I quickly wiped my mouth and hit the voice-only com in my sparse stateroom. To my surprise it was Princess Karina.

“May I come in?” she asked through the com. I got up and quickly opened the door.

“My pleasure,” I said, inviting her in with a sweep of the hand. She came in and sat at the small table where my meal sat steaming.

“Gods, that smells good,” she said.

“Chateaubriand,” I said. “Captain Zander will put up with nothing but the best cuisine onboard.”

“So I see.”

From the way she looked at my dinner I could see that the evening meal had been an afterthought for her. I quickly ordered her the same meal from the galley, along with a bottle of Quantar shiraz. We made small talk until it arrived ten minutes later, then we both ate rather voraciously, I thought. Once we had finished, I refilled our wineglasses and we both sat back, pleasantly full.

I looked at her for what seemed like the first time, reevaluating her under our new circumstances. She still wore her Carinthian Navy uniform, rank of lieutenant, with the appropriate Union patches. I took this to mean she intended to act for now as a military officer and not as a princess. Her hair was let down, and it was straight, smooth, long, and black. I remembered one of her father's nicknames was “The Black Duke,” and she looked every bit the part, though her pleasant face held none of the harshness of her father's. I could see that she had also freshened up with a bit of makeup. I thought she was very attractive, but in an entirely different way than what I had experienced with other women, especially Dobrina, who was taller, more lean and athletic. Karina was petite and rounder than most, although that roundness complimented her form in every way. She smiled as I finished pouring the shiraz, then we made our way to the stateroom's small sofa.

We sat on opposite sides and I cleared my throat, unsure how to start the conversation. I looked into her face. It was elegantly oval, with a pixie nose separating her large brown eyes. She smiled, and must have noticed me examining her. I looked away and took a sip of my wine before starting the conversation.

“So tell me more about your family,” I said. “We really didn't get
the time to talk socially back on Carinthia.” She took a drink herself before answering.

“Do you mean my parents and siblings, or the entire Feilberg family history?”

I laughed. “I meant your immediate family, of course,” I said. She pushed back one of the long bangs from her face and then answered.

“Well, you know all about Arin,” she said. “And I have to warn you, don't underestimate his military acumen. He has been well-trained in strategy and tactics since his youth.”

“Noted,” I said, and filed that thought away. “I was speaking more about your upbringing.”

She nodded. “My mother died when I was sixteen. I don't think my father ever got over that loss. Benn, I think, would rather be a diplomat than deal with all of this political wrangling. I, of course, had hoped for a career as a navy officer. That seems a faded dream now. I'm the youngest by five years. And you?”

“I had an older brother, Derrick,” I said. “He was killed in Union Navy service three years ago. So I'm the only one left. My mother died when I was nine. My father is just now getting remarried. I think he married my mother rather late in life and at the insistence of his parents. I never knew any of my grandparents. They had all passed away by the time I was old enough to remember them.” She got a very serious look on her face then.

“So you're practically an orphan,” she said. I thought the comment was a bit odd.

“Actually, I've never thought of it quite that way,” I said. She leaned in toward me on the sofa.

“What I meant was that I have a large extended family,” she said. “Cousins, aunts, uncles. I can never remember celebrating a birthday or a holiday alone. I guess I was very lucky. It seems like we were raised very differently.”

“Yes, I suppose we were,” I said. “But I never felt deprived of love. I was always well taken care of and I had good friends growing up.”

“Girlfriends?” she said with a smirk, catching me in the middle of a sip of wine.

“Um, yes, some,” I said. “But mostly after I left school.”

“So at the Academy?”

“Well, yes, there was one there, actually, Natalie, but she was killed in the initial incident at Levant. Part of the First Contact mission with Captain Zander aboard
Impulse
,” I said.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Did you love her?”

I pondered that. “I'm not really sure. It's just another one of many difficult losses I've had to deal with in my life. I'm not sure where to place her in all that,” I said, then sighed. That was true enough. Karina reached out a hand and touched my arm, to comfort me. I let that linger. Then she pulled back and said:

“And what of Captain Dobrina Kierkopf?” Suddenly, I didn't much like this line of questioning.

“What of her?” I said, eyeing her directly. She got a pensive look on her face and then continued.

“It's obvious you have, or had, a relationship with her,” she said. “I've read the intelligence reports.”

“I see,” I said. “I thought we hid it better than that.” She shook her head.

“We Carinthians are somewhat famous for finding out secrets. I've learned myself in the last few years not to evaluate people merely as I see them, but to look beyond their outer façade and see what they're like on the inside. When I saw the report on you it all made sense, but I really didn't know until I met you. It's obvious that you have feelings for her. Your actions on Carinthia were very protective of her.”

Now this was getting a bit too close to home for my comfort, so
I decided to try to bring this line of questioning to a conclusion. “Circumstances have now changed, Princess, perhaps permanently. She is staying in the Carinthian Navy service and I am here,” I said.

“So you're available?” she said. Again she caught me in the middle of a sip of shiraz and despite my best efforts I coughed and hacked until I was red in the face. This made her laugh. When I had regained my composure she was smiling at me, but not backing away at all, either physically or emotionally, it seemed. I looked for a safe course of action through these troubled waters.

“Pardon me, Princess, but I'm a bit at a loss for words at that question,” I finally got out.

“Forgive me for putting you on the spot, but you haven't answered my question yet,” she said.

I looked at her from across the sofa. From what I had seen of her so far in our brief acquaintance she was clearly intelligent, resourceful, and deeply caring, especially about her family. I was deciding whether to add cunning to that list. I thought for a few moments and then formulated my answer.

“Forgive
me
, Princess, but I haven't really thought on that subject, what with the near civil war on Carinthia, the pending breakup of the Union, and the fact that I have your family's sovereign in stasis in the cargo hold. Perhaps this isn't the time,” I said.

“Perhaps you're right,” she quickly responded. “All of these things will be sorted out in time. I apologize for sometimes thinking too far into the future.”

“Apology accepted,” I said, then yawned. It would have been a good way to deflect the conversation if it hadn't been so spontaneous.

She smiled at me again and said, “You're tired,” then rose to leave. I got up with her. “I should let you rest.”

“Thank you, Princess. I'm sure tomorrow, and the days after, will be better times to discuss all of these matters. At least for me,” I said.

“Thank you for the dinner and the wine,” she said, then smiled and
made for the door. I followed her and opened it from the inside for her, as a courtesy. She took one step out and then turned back to me.

“I'm glad to know you, Peter Cochrane. Glad to know the kind of man you are, and that I can trust you. I have one request though. I think it would improve our relationship immensely if you would stop using my title. Please call me Karina from now on,” she said.

“I will, Prin—” I caught myself before I finished the word. Protocol was a hard habit to break. “Karina. And thank you. I enjoyed our evening.” With that she was gone out the door, and I turned back to my tiny bed, which looked like the most luxurious thing I had ever seen.

The landing at the North Palace went off without a hitch. The pad had been built there primarily for personal shuttles and the like, mostly for use by the royal family, not for military vehicles, but
Benfold's
“commercial” drop shuttle fit quite nicely on the pad.

We had come down with just the single cargo container holding the Grand Duke Henrik in stasis, plus myself, Karina and her guards, and a single pilot. High Station Quantar had requested that we stop there first, but I had countermanded that, using my royal standing as authority. It made perfect sense that a planetary royal would want to get straight to his family vacation home without stopping for unnecessary checks and protocols. It also made perfect sense that he would be carrying a cargo container full of Carinthian liquor and other delicacies.