Starbound Read online

  “If we’re all in agreement—”

  “One more thing, sir,” I said, interrupting. He looked at me. He was not happy at being interrupted.

  “Mr. Cochrane.”

  “Sir, the energy weapons array is down but the gravity projectors are still installed. They can run off energy from the HD drive, not the ship’s weapons system power. If we power down the energy weapons array again and de-link it from the gravity weapons, we could still use the gravity systems in the battle, if we need to,” I said.

  “Power it down again? Start the whole cycle over?” protested Dobrina.

  “That’s what I’m proposing, yes,” I said. I hated being at odds with her all the time, but I had a responsibility to give my captain every option.

  Maclintock looked around the table, then to Serosian, who remained stoic.

  “Mr. Serosian?” the Historian answered.

  “What the commander says is true. However, I caution you. These weapons are powerful and destructive, and they represent a dangerous escalation that the Imperial forces may not take kindly to.”

  Maclintock considered that, then, “Do it,” he said to me. “Make the hybrid drive preparations and power down the energy weapons array. I’ll expect your tactical plan for the torpedo engagement in thirty minutes, Mr. Cochrane.” Then he stood and we all followed suit. “Stations, everyone. Let’s not fuck this up.” Then he strode out of the room, leaving us all behind him.

  At the Jenarus Jump Space Tunnel

  My torpedo scenarios were fully loaded into both the longscope weapons interface and the captain’s tactical computer ten minutes early. I’d gone through multiple scenario tests with Serosian at the Academy, and I ended up simply picking my favorite three. They all concluded with us winning the scenario decisively, with more than thirty torpedoes to spare, minimum. We had a full complement, two hundred, of varying sizes, yields, and mission objectives. But the fact remained that no scenario was ever like a real battle, and I would be relying on my skills, experience, and yes, my intuition, in this one. The captain said nothing, but approved my scenarios without comment. He knew that Serosian and I, linked in through the longscope, were Starbound’s best opportunity for success in the coming battle.

  We slowed to battle speed when we crossed within .005 AU of the jump space tunnel, 750,000 kilometers out. We would continue to close on the nearly stationary HuKs for about another ten minutes before reaching realistic battle range. Effective speed to fight had to be much slower than speed in transit. Simply put, if you were going too fast you couldn’t engage your enemy and they couldn’t engage you. They could, however, rip you apart with simple things like scatter mines, essentially massive blocks of metal and debris put in your path, if you chose to try to slip by an enemy. I detected no dispersal of such weapons in our intended path.

  “Path looks clear ahead, Captain. HuKs are starting to move toward us at low speed in a stack formation, inverting at forty-five degrees to our ecliptic,” I reported.

  “I can read my tactical screen, Mr. Cochrane,” said Maclintock curtly. “Time to torpedo range?”

  “With their current rate of acceleration, two minutes, sir.”

  “You and Mr. Serosian have the tactical con, Commander.”

  “Aye, sir,” I replied, then switched to Serosian’s com channel. I set the scope controls to envelope me under the hood. I wanted no distractions.

  “Ready here,” I said to Serosian. He started in with his instructions without hesitating.

  “These appear to be Mark VII HuKs, developed late in the Imperial civil war, designed to be decisive in one-on-one encounters with enemy ships. They have limited AI capabilities and should follow all preprogrammed instructions. Fortunately for us, our Lightships are much more advanced than the ships of that time, one of the advantages of three centuries of technological research and development. The HuKs will undoubtedly try to split their attack at the last possible instant, take us on from two sides. My recommendation is that we try to divert them earlier than they want with a full volley of fifty-kiloton torpedoes, stepped in their launch sequence so they create a maximum possible wall of both yield and EMP,” he said.

  “Won’t they be hardened against EMP?” I asked.

  “They will, but our torpedoes have a magnetic resonance that will have a significant effect on their shield strength. Cumulatively, their shields will eventually fail and we will be facing an unguarded enemy.”

  I switched to my long-range visual. The two HuKs were still coming at us in their stack formation, one ahead of the other by about a hundred clicks on the same vector. I switched to close-ups and evaluated them individually. The forward one looked much like the HuK we had battled at Levant, a dark cylinder with a forward cannon array glowing a sickly green color. This ship, I decided, was a battering ram, designed to hit us hard and weaken our belly. The second ship had the same basic configuration, but with three additional coil cannons on extended stanchions at equidistant points around the cylinder. This one, it seemed to me, was the real enemy. It would follow on after the battering ram’s attack and hit us with multiple coil cannon bursts, trying to get through our Hoagland Field and shatter our hull. I was determined not to let that happen.

  I checked the clock. Forty seconds to firing range on the first HuK.

  “I believe scenario two is the closest equivalent to what we’re seeing here,” I said to Serosian.

  “Yes, I agree,” he replied. “Proceed per that scenario, but be cautious of variables. We don’t want any surprises.”

  “Affirmative,” I said. I laid out my torpedo pattern, essentially ignoring the first HuK, which would likely have no luck breaking through our field with just its coil cannon, and I detected no other weapons signatures besides about a dozen low-yield torpedoes in the ten-kiloton range.

  I played out my scenario, waiting until the forward HuK in the formation had reached about one hundred kilometers range. The second, and in my mind the more dangerous vessel, was trailing its companion now by a mere ten kilometers.

  “They’re closing formation, less than a hundred clicks out now. Firing solution locked in,” I reported to both Serosian and the captain through my com link.

  “Proceed,” came the Historian’s reply. I keyed in the launch sequence and fired five volleys of two torpedoes each, six seconds apart. The torpedoes accelerated toward the forward HuK, which began evasion maneuvers. The trailing HuK stayed on course and true. I switched to my weapons control display and instantly uploaded my preprogrammed variables to the torpedo warheads. Suddenly and in real time I watched as the two forward-most torpedoes broke off their run at the closer HuK and swerved for the second. She suddenly began evasive moves herself as her onboard AI detected the incoming threat. Then the second group of two torpedoes also broke away from their initial course and targeted the second HuK, then the third pair did the same. As the torpedoes closed on their targets they accelerated at different rates, trying to make a firing solution difficult for the enemy.

  Facing an imminent threat, the trailing HuK powered up her three stanchion-mounted coil cannons and fired, disintegrating the forward three torpedoes, but the second group of three came on untouched. The specs had told me she would need 2.5 precious seconds to reload and refire her cannons, and that was all I needed. The first torpedo hit the top stanchion on the HuK square, the resultant atomic detonation blowing the coil cannon off its mounting, even through the thing’s shielding. The follow-up pair detonated within half a kilometer of the HuK as she scrambled away, and I watched as her shields blew out completely, overloaded by the detonations. Serosian was true to his word, the torpedoes did their job. The HuK veered off but I had no doubt she’d be back. Her shielding may have been gone but she still had a pair of nasty looking coil cannon arrays that worked.

  The forward HuK was within fifty clicks now, and was facing our remaining four torpedoes in a staggered-s
pread formation. They were constantly compensating for her evasion tactics, and she was going to have a hard time avoiding them. Then I saw the HuK make her only play; she fired four counter-attack missiles at my screaming torpedoes. They impacted true enough, the small-yield defensive missiles packing just enough pop to detonate my incoming torpedoes. Still, she took a massive pulse hit, and hardened or not, her shields were gone, and she was less than ten seconds away from crashing into Starbound’s Hoagland Field. The resultant ramming attempt would dissipate her energy throughout the field and undoubtedly destroy her.

  “Brace for impact,” yelled the captain from his station. It was a precautionary measure, but any collision of this kind was likely to be far worse for our enemy than it was for us.

  My eyes flicked to all my displays as I looked for any potential trouble signs as Layton counted down to impact in the background. At this point, with the speed of the incoming HuK, evasive maneuvers by Starbound would undoubtedly be compensated for by the battle AI aboard the HuK. But it didn’t matter, we would be more than safe behind our protective Hoagland Field.

  Unless . . .

  I saw it on one of my frequency monitors. A rise in hyperdimensional energy above the mean. It could only be one thing; a displacement wave, one that had been insidiously cloaked from our scanners.

  I heard Layton call five seconds to impact with the HuK.

  The next thing I felt was as though I was being sifted, like my consciousness was in multiple places at once, and my body, Gods know where. I felt and heard an audible crack in my head, as if I had given off an electrical charge. Then I came back together as one and promptly found myself laying on the deck.

  Alarm claxons reverberated throughout the bridge and undoubtedly the rest of the ship as well. I jumped up and tried to focus on my longscope displays. The intercepting HuK had been destroyed by its own HD detonation. The second was coming at us fast, her remaining two coil cannons primed to fire.

  “The Hoagland Field is down!” I heard Serosian yell in my ear. Maclintock ordered evasive maneuvers from Layton at the helm but I knew it was too late. This was a sophisticated and well-planned attack. The HD displacement wave had temporarily knocked out our Hoagland Field, and it would take the requisite 7-10 seconds to refire. That wasn’t my job though. Protecting Starbound was.

  “Torpedoes, Mr. Cochrane!” came Maclintock’s call in my ear.

  “Too close!” I responded, and I was right. Any atomic detonation at this range, with us unshielded, would do as much damage to Starbound as to the HuK. I had only one chance, and I took it. With the coil cannon array out of commission, I turned to the already-prepped gravity projector weapon, thankful Maclintock had given the go-ahead to use the system. I hit the fire icon and the system shot out a glittering silver lance of gravitons toward the enemy HuK. The beam hit her head-on as she fired her coil cannons from short range. The instantaneous exchange nudged the HuK just enough to keep her coil energy from hitting us at full force. The glancing blow ripped through Starbound’s outer skin near the science labs. No doubt there would be casualties there, but I had no time to think about that. The HuK flew past us at .00002 light, then swung around for another pass.

  “Get that field up!” I heard Maclintock yell, and a second later it was, thanks to Serosian. We were now protected from the HuK’s coil cannon fire. Her onboard AI picked up on this and she weaved and bobbed, moving evasively away from us. The captain ordered pursuit, but I had Starbound already on her track by the time it came.

  “She’s making for the jump space tunnel,” reported Serosian.

  “Weapons status, Mr. Cochrane?” asked the captain through the com. I had just let go a volley of four pursuit torpedoes.

  “We still have enough torpedoes, sir, but she’s quicker than us and pretty smart, too. That HD displacement wave trick shows a sophisticated attack plan, likely programmed specifically for encounters with Lightships,” I stated.

  “I concur,” came Serosian’s voice in my com. Dobrina chimed in with systems reports. We were fully nominal at all stations, our only lack being the coil cannons, which would have been the easiest solution to our problem. I watched as my four torpedoes ran out of fuel and began dropping off their pursuit pace.

  “We’ll need a full pursuit, Captain, full HD impellers to catch her before she enters that tunnel. My torpedoes aren’t fast enough to catch her at this range,” I reported.

  I heard Maclintock give the orders and we began to accelerate, closing the gap with the HuK, but it wasn’t enough.

  “We need more,” I said out loud.

  “Solutions?” demanded Maclintock. “That was far too close back there. I want that thing destroyed.”

  “We could use the gravity accelerator to increase the HuK’s mass and strain her systems, slow it down,” said Serosian.

  “Can you make that work, Mr. Cochrane?” asked Maclintock.

  “Aye, sir, I can,” I said. “We’ll have to shut down the Hoagland Field to use it, but that still won’t be enough to stop her from entering the jump space tunnel. She’s going too fast for that. Once inside she could jump out anywhere.”

  “And take us with her?”

  “Unlikely,” said Serosian. “The topography of jump space, with us being in normal space, would likely break any link with her. We will be within torpedo range a full thirty seconds before she enters the tunnel though.”

  “Can your torpedoes take her out before she enters the jump tunnel?” asked Maclintock. I ran my calculations.

  “Uncertain, sir,” I admitted. It would be close.

  “That’s the best you can do?” demanded the captain of Serosian and me. I checked my data one more time.

  “Indeterminate outcome,” I finally said. There was a pause, then:

  “Proceed with the plan, Mr. Cochrane.”

  I did as ordered.

  Thirty seconds later and I had the gravity projector locked on to the HuK, increasing her mass and steadily slowing her as she flashed toward the jump space tunnel. My torpedoes launched as scheduled, but she was still too far away and going too fast for a likely intercept before she made the tunnel.

  We all watched as the minutes clicked by, our gravity projector not slowing the HuK enough, our torpedoes lagging behind. She entered the jump space tunnel a good five minutes ahead of Starbound.

  “Disengage the HD impeller drive,” ordered the captain to Duane Longer. Then he turned to me. “At the first sign she’s spooling up for an HD jump, disconnect the gravity projector and bring up the Hoagland Field.”

  “Aye, sir,” I said, then checked my board again. We were still out of torpedo range, but there was something else amiss. “Captain,” I said.

  “I see it,” said Serosian through the com. “We’re not closing on her anymore, captain. She’s accelerating through the tunnel like a snow sled going downhill. She’s pulling away from us, but we should be breaking contact with her at this range. The gravity projector—”

  “It’s locked,” I said. “We’re locked in with her. I just checked her and she’s blowing out neutrinos at an alarming rate, shedding her mass. The neutrinos are bonding with the gravitons in our beam. We’re essentially bonded to her, like we’re at either end of a frozen rope.”

  “Will she jump and take us with her?” asked an anxious Maclintock.

  “Negative, sir,” I said. “Unless she’s found a way to completely cloak her HD drive, she’s running cold.”

  “She’s not spooling up her HD drive, captain, she’s breaking it down, shedding her mass by depleting her HD crystal and using the neutrinos to bond with our gravity beam. It’s brilliant, and quite deadly,” said Serosian.

  “What do you mean?” asked Maclintock, obviously concerned at this turn of events. The Historian sighed.

  “Once we enter the tunnel, Captain, we will both be in jump space and our trajectory will accele
rate.”

  “Trajectory? To where?”

  “The Jenarus star, Captain. The HuK has locked with us using our own gravity weapon as a kind of rope to attach to us. Her trajectory will take us through the tunnel and into the Jenarus sun, where she will burn up, and take us with her,” Serosian finished, his voice somber and resigned.

  “Suicide mission,” I said aloud without really thinking.

  “Exactly,” said Serosian. “Sophisticated and well planned. And deadly to us.”

  And then the com line between all of us was silent, as we contemplated our impending deaths.

  The command team spent the next few minutes exploring possibilities away from the rest of the crew in the briefing room. We stood in a circle freely exchanging ideas. There appeared to be no good ones. The Hoagland Field would be burned out by the gravity projector if we tried to fire it up. Similarly an attempt to jump without the field would place us in another dimension with no protective bubble of normal space around us, which Serosian assured us would mean our destruction. We had already entered the tunnel and had less than ten minutes before we exited, at the Jenarus star. I could think of only one other possibility.

  “We could fire up the hybrid drive again, try to blow our way out of the tunnel,” I said.

  “With all the neutrinos in the gravity stream, wouldn’t that likely result in our destruction?” asked Dobrina. I nodded.

  “It would be like throwing gasoline on a fire,” I acknowledged. “But the energy from it just might be enough to break us free.”

  “With no shielding,” she said.

  “With no shielding,” I admitted.

  “How much damage would we incur?” asked Maclintock.

  “It would be significant,” said Serosian. “But before we go there, there is one other possibility.”

  Maclintock, Dobrina and I turned our attention toward him.

  “We’re listening,” said the captain.

  “I could take out the yacht, separate it from Starbound to make it a separate entity, fire up its Hoagland Field and then project that field around the ship. That would allow you to use the hybrid drive and break free of the HuK,” he said.