Starbound (Lightship Chronicles) Read online

  “And you can get them up to what, Lieutenant?” said Zander, using her rank. She checked her displays again.

  “Eighty-three percent in sixteen-point-five seconds,” she replied.

  “Do it, Lieutenant. You have the station,” said Zander.

  “Yes, Captain,” she said as Zander nodded the original weapons officer off the bridge. Zander and I exchanged looks, but he only lifted an eyebrow in response. Clearly, the lady was going to have her way.

  We arrived in the planetesimal field a few seconds later, and I found us a good hiding place inside a field of five slow rotating ice-rocks composed mostly of magnesium trilite. They would serve as good cover, as they scrambled magnetic sonar signals, which the cruisers likely had as standard search and destroy armament. The cruisers would have to do things the hard way, with visual probes.

  “So we’ve bought some time, but to what end?” asked Zander rhetorically. I joined him at the captain’s chair.

  “Captain, suggest we power down the Hoagland Field and the coil cannon. It will make it harder for them to detect us in this field,” I said.

  “But that will leave us defenseless,” said Karina, turning from her station and approaching us. “We have to protect the ship.” I knew what she really meant, and what she was really protecting.

  “The best way to do that is to remain undetectable, Highness,” I replied. Zander contemplated the situation.

  “And none of that gets us any closer to making the jump point. We can’t stay in here forever. If we don’t make our stand soon they’ll bring in the rest of their deep system fleet and then we’ll really be outgunned.” He stood silently for a moment, then made his decision. “Lieutenant Feilberg, power down the coil cannon. Reduce the Hoagland Field to fifty percent,” he ordered.

  “But that won’t—” I started. He cut me off.

  “It will offer us protection from anything but a direct hit, Commander,” he said. “And I owe the princess and the grand duke that much.”

  “It will leave us more detectable,” I stated.

  “I’m aware of that, Commander. And one more thing. Since you’ve both chosen to get involved in this situation on my bridge, you are now both subordinate to me and my military judgment in these matters, regardless of your rank in higher society. Do you understand?” Zander said.

  “Yes, sir,” we both responded in unison. That made me smile. I for one was happy to be working with Zander again, if only for a short time in emergency circumstances. For her part, Princess Karina, or rather Lieutenant Feilberg, seemed all too happy to be in the midst of things herself as she made her way back to her station, then glanced at me, catching my eye before returning her attention to her board.

  The cruisers showed up five minutes later.

  I was able to observe them through the longscope, the limitations of magnetic sonar not affecting us with our more advanced equipment. I wanted badly to use longscope probes to view the cruisers in real time, but that would be tempting fate too much. We were in partial stealth mode, but if they looked hard enough and they got lucky, they could find us.

  I switched my tactical display to the main viewer and stepped out from under the longscope hood. The three cruisers were performing a search pattern, but with no results. After about thirty minutes of this they backed out of the field and went to station keeping.

  “What’s this?” asked Zander.

  “Either they’re waiting for reinforcements with better scanning equipment or they’ve got something else in mind for us,” I stated.

  “Or both,” said Karina.

  We watched as they formed into a triangle formation and then suddenly, without warning, one of the cruisers launched a missile. It streaked into the planetesimal field and exploded against a rock in a nuclear fireball about sixty kilometers from us.

  “One kiloton warhead, no impact on us,” I reported from my station. The bridge stayed silent. A second cruiser launched an identical missile, then the third ship launched one. None of them were near us. We watched as they regrouped, changing formation, then repeated the pattern and shifted position again. I watched my readouts, then grew alarmed.

  “Captain, I think—”

  “They’re triangulating on us,” said Zander. “Using neutrinos in the atomic explosions to bounce off of our Hoagland Field to create a shadow effect. They may have to do it thirty times, but eventually they’ll find us. And once they do they’ll cut us to pieces, bit by bit,” he said.

  “What do we do now?” asked Karina. Zander looked to me.

  “We take our chance,” I said. “Let me launch three longscope probes to triangulate on the nearest cruiser. We make our run at her, take her out. Then we accelerate back up to full max and make our run for as long as we can.”

  “Aye, lad,” said Zander.

  “And how long is that?” asked Karina. I glanced at my display readouts.

  “Based on our fuel and power outputs, one hour forty-seven minutes, most likely,” I said to her. “Then we would have to back off to keep the drives from melting down. If we lean her out at that point and run at point-three-eight max capacity we could beat them to jump space.”

  “Could?” said Karina. “That’s not good enough to gamble my father’s life on.”

  “We’re doing that staying here, Lieutenant Feilberg,” chimed in Zander. “And the commander’s plan just might work.”

  “And if not?” demanded Karina.

  “If not we stand and fight. Smash them in the mouth with all of our missiles and torpedoes, and hope we have enough power left at the end to make the jump,” he said. “And if we don’t, then heaven help us.”

  I launched my probes, and from that data I was able to calculate that a thirty-three second thruster burst would get us out of the planetesimal field and into open space. From there Karina would have to fire a mixed volley of multiwarhead missiles and single-warhead torpedoes to take out the target cruiser. We’d have probably a sixty-second advantage if we were able to disable it. That was enough time to accelerate away from the other two cruisers and hope they didn’t get any backup help. I calculated our prospects of making it unscathed to jump space at roughly fifty-fifty.

  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?�
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  “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 Impulse 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 Impulse 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

  Admar Harrington had ordered his Wasps through the jump point immediately upon his return to Pendax. Their arrival and timing was pure luck, or fate, depending on what you believed. They offered to escort us home, to Candle, 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 Starbound 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 Starbound 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.