CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.

Citizen Captain Marie Stellingetti swore as another laser head slashed at her battlecruiser's sidewall and fresh damage alarms shrilled. Kerebin had taken nine hits so far, and if none were vital, all were serious, for it would take the task force's repair ships weeks-more probably months-to handle them without proper base support.

"He's altering course again, Skipper," her tac officer reported tersely. "I don't- Jesus!" Another double broadside spat from the Manticoran destroyer, and at least half the incoming birds carried jammers and penetration aids, not warheads. They played merry h.e.l.l with Kerebin's point defense, and Stellingetti swore again as yet another laser smashed into her ship's hull.

"Graser Nine's down!" her chief engineer reported from Damage Control. "We've got heavy casualties on the mount, Citizen Captain!" There was a pause, then. "Collateral damage to Sidewall Generators Fifteen and Seventeen. We may lose Seventeen completely."

"This son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h is good, Skipper," the tac officer said.

"Yeah, and it's my fault for s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around with him this way!" Stellingetti snarled. She could make that admission, since People's Commissioner Reidel-who, in Stellingetti's considered opinion, was an unmitigated a.s.shole-was away on Achmed for a conference with Citizen Commodore Jurgens. Which meant she could at least fight her ship without worrying about being second-guessed . . . and that she could be honest with her officers.

Citizen Commander Edwards only grunted from his station at Tactical, but they both knew she was right. Their much heavier laser heads had scored at least three times on the enemy destroyer, despite her preposterously efficient point defense, and her falling acceleration indicated serious impeller damage. But missile duels with Manticorans usually worked out in the Manties' favor. Stellingetti knew that, yet she'd hoped to pick this one off without closing to energy range where a single lucky hit could have catastrophic consequences.

It wasn't working out that way. Kerebin was still winning-she was so much bigger and tougher that any other outcome was inconceivable-but while she crushed the Manty, the Manty was shooting big, nasty holes in her. And, Stellingetti conceded angrily, the d.a.m.ned merchies were running like h.e.l.l. It wouldn't save them in the end-probably-but they were scattering in all directions while their tiny escort fought its desperate, hopeless battle to cover their flight. Against a single raider, their rapidly diverging vectors would have given at least three of them an excellent chance of escaping.

But Kerebin wasn't alone. Her two nearest neighbors were already closing in, summoned by Stellingetti's initial sighting report, and they'd undoubtedly pa.s.sed the word to their neighbors, as well. The pickets were spread so wide it would take even the closest another hour to get here, but particle densities were low (for hyper-s.p.a.ce) in the Selker Rift, and that wouldn't be long enough for the merchies to disappear from Kerebin's gravitics before help arrived.

Or that was true for three of them, anyway. The one Tactical had originally a.s.sumed was a battlecruiser might just pull it off. She was generating delta vee at an amazing rate for a merchie, and Stellingetti wondered what the h.e.l.l she was. She certainly wasn't the warship CIC had initially called her. No Manty battlecruiser would run away, leaving a single destroyer to cover her flight.

No, that had to be a merchant ship, and Stellingetti felt a cold chill as a thought occurred to her. Whatever it was, it mounted excellent point defense as well as a military-grade drive, and she was abruptly glad it did. The entire picket line had been coasting towards Silesia under total EmCon at barely 40,000 KPS to allow other traffic-traveling at the maximum 44,000 KPS local conditions imposed-to overtake, when the small convoy strayed into Kerebin's sights, and Stellingetti had thrown her entire opening salvo at the "battlecruiser" on the a.s.sumption that it was her most dangerous foe. Its defenses had stopped a lot of her birds, despite its surprise, yet she'd scored at least three direct hits. If it hadn't mounted point defense, she would have blown it right out of s.p.a.ce, and if it was what she suddenly suspected it was . . .

"All right, John," she told Edwards grimly. "No more s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around. Rapid fire on all tubes." She hated burning through ammunition that way with the task force so far from resupply, but unless she swamped the destroyer's active defenses, this would take all d.a.m.ned day.

"Aye, Skipper. Going to rapid fire now."

"Helm, come to two-six-oh, maximum accel. Close the range."

"Coming to two-six-oh, maximum accel, aye."

Kerebin swerved towards her maddeningly effective opponent, and Stellingetti watched her plot for a moment, then commed the Combat Information Center direct.

"CIC, Citizen Commander Herrick."

"Jake, this is the skipper. Have someone compare Target One's emission signature to our data on the Manties' Atlas-cla.s.s pa.s.senger liners."

"Pa.s.s-" Herrick broke off. "Christ, Skipper! If that's an Atlas, she could have up to five thousand pa.s.sengers on board, and we hit her clean at least three times!"

"Tell me about it," Stellingetti said grimly, watching her intensifying fire tear at the destroyer even as another pair of bomb-pumped lasers chewed into her own ship. "I'll be back to you, Jake. Things are getting a little hectic up here."

Margaret Fuchien slammed her fists together, eyes burning with shame as she glared down at Annabelle Ward's tactical display. Artemis' missiles might have made the difference between death and survival for Hawkwing . . . if she'd been allowed to fire them. But Commander Usher's harsh orders had been unequivocal, and he'd been right. If Artemis fired on the Peep, the Peep would certainly-and justifiably-return fire, and the unarmored liner's weapons were intended to deal with pirates of cruiser size or smaller. No one in her worst nightmares had ever antic.i.p.ated her going toe-to-toe with a Peep battlecruiser. Even if Artemis and Hawkwing won, the liner would be hammered to sc.r.a.p, and she had almost three thousand pa.s.sengers on board. Fuchien couldn't endanger those pa.s.sengers by trying to help Hawkwing, and so she was running at her best acceleration while the destroyer died to cover her flight.

Her earbug buzzed with a priority message. She punched to accept it, and her engineer's harsh voice burned in her ear.

"I've reached Main Hyper, Skipper," he said grimly. "It's a mess down here. Half the power runs are out, we've lost pressure, and we've got fourteen dead."

Fuchien closed her eyes in anguish. The Peep's initial broadside had taken all of them by surprise. She couldn't imagine what an enemy battlecruiser had been doing lying absolutely doggo here in the middle of The Rift, but it had paid off for the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. With their impellers and active sensors down, there'd been no emissions signature to warn Hawkwing-or Artemis-until they launched, and they'd obviously misread Artemis for a battlecruiser. That was all that had prevented Hawkwing's instant destruction, and Ward had done almost impossibly well to stop seventy-five percent of the incoming fire. Fuchien knew that, but the five bomb-pumped lasers which had gotten through had done grievous damage. By G.o.d's mercy none of her pa.s.sengers had been killed, but thirty of her crew were confirmed dead, she'd lost three beta nodes and two of her outsized lifeboats, and one of the hits had burned straight into Main Hyper.

"The generator?" Fuchien asked harshly, refusing to let herself think about her dead.

"Not good, Skip." Commander Cheney's voice was flat. "We lost both upper stage governors; their molycircs fried when the power runs went. The basic system's intact, but if we try to go higher than the delta bands, the harmonics'll rip us apart."

"d.a.m.n," Fuchien whispered. She opened her eyes and stabbed another look at Ward's plot. The Peep was charging the destroyer now, bearing down on her at maximum acceleration, and Hawkwing was too lamed to hold the range open. She might last another fifteen minutes; every second beyond that would require a special miracle. When she was gone, the Peeps would be coming after Artemis, and if Fuchien couldn't climb higher than the delta bands, there was no way in h.e.l.l she could outrun them. She could match them kilometer for kilometer in actual velocity, but she'd been caught in the delta bands because the accompanying freighters could go no higher. From Cheney's report, she couldn't either, now, and that was going to be fatal. Unlike her, the Peeps could still pop up into the epsilon or zeta bands, overfly her easily, then drop back down into the deltas right on top of her.

The captain made herself look away from the plot as more missiles tore down on the destroyer in her wake. She couldn't let herself think about Usher and his people. It was her job to save her pa.s.sengers and her ship, to make Hawkwing's sacrifice mean something, but how-?

"Helm, take us to maximum military power," she said, and felt her officers' shock, despite their desperate circ.u.mstances, for Artemis had never maxed her drive since her trials. At maximum military power, the fail-safes were off-line, leaving zero tolerance for compensator fluctuation, and if the compensator failed, every human being aboard Artemis, including Fuchien's pa.s.sengers, would die. But- "Aye, aye, Skipper. Coming to maximum military power."

Fuchien held her breath as her helmsman redlined his impellers, but Artemis took the load like a champion. Fuchien could feel her beautiful ship strain, stretching every sinew to meet her harsh demands, and wanted to weep, for she already knew it would be too little. Yet it was the only chance she had. She couldn't climb to evade the Peeps, but if she could open the range enough, put enough distance between her and the enemy's sensors while Hawkwing delayed them, she might be able to dive far enough. If she dropped a couple of bands-or even clear back into n-s.p.a.ce-then cut her drive and all active emissions, she might avoid the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds yet.

Might.

"There go Hawkwing's forward impellers!" someone groaned, and Fuchien clenched her jaw as she tried to think of something-anything!-more she might do.

"Skipper, I'm showing another bogey!" Ward announced, and Fuchien shook herself.

"Another Peep?" she asked harshly.

"I don't think-" Ward broke off, then shook her head. "It's not a warship at all, Skipper. It's a merchantman."

"A merchantman? Where?" Ward highlighted the bogey on her plot, and Fuchien's eyes widened. It was a merchantman, closing from starboard, and it was headed straight for Artemis. Closing velocity was already over thirty thousand KPS, and the bogey was accelerating at a full two hundred gravities. But that was crazy! Even civilian sensors had to be able to pick up the detonation of laser heads at this range, and any sane merchant skipper should be running the other way as fast as her ship would go.

"Com, warn her off!" Fuchien ordered. There was no point at all in adding another ship to the Peeps' bag. The unknown freighter was still light-minutes away, and Fuchien turned to her own ship's survival rather than wait out the com delay. She punched for Cheney again.

"Sid, what's your best estimate for repairs?"

"Repairs?" Cheney laughed bitterly. "Forget it. We don't begin to have the spares for this kind of damage. It'd take a fully equipped repair ship a week just to run them up."

"All right. You say it's just the upper stage governors?"

"I think that's all," Cheney corrected. "That and the power runs. But we're still tearing things apart down here, and working in skinnies-" Fuchien could almost see his shrug.

"I need to know soonest, Sid. If we can't go up, we'll have to go down, and I need to know if the generator'll stand a crash translation."

"A crash translation?" Cheney sounded doubtful. "Skip, I can't guarantee she'll hold together through that even if I don't see anything else wrong. We took an awful spike through the control systems, and if they're not a hundred percent when you try that, we're all dead."

"We may all be dead if I don't try it," Fuchien said grimly. "Just get me the best info you can as quick as you can."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Oh, Jesus." Annabelle Ward's whisper was a prayer, and Fuchien looked up just in time to see HMS Hawkwing vanish from the display with sickening suddenness. She stared at the empty spot for a long, terrible moment, then licked her lips.

"Would we see life pod transponders at this range, Anna?" she asked very quietly.

"No, Ma'am," the tac officer replied, equally quietly. "But I doubt there are any. She went off the display too fast, and I read an awful sharp energy bloom. I think it was her fusion bottle, Skipper."

"G.o.d have mercy on them," Margaret Fuchien whispered. And now it's our turn, a small, still voice said in her brain. "All right, Anna. Do your best with point defense if they get close enough to fire on us, but for G.o.d's sake, don't shoot back at them!"

"Skipper, I can't stop a battlecruiser from blowing us apart eventually. We might last a while against just her chaser tubes, but we'll never stand more than a half-dozen full broadsides."

"I know. But their accel isn't that much higher than ours. They'll need the better part of an hour just to catch up-Hawkwing bought us that much-and as soon as Sid tells me it's safe, I'm going for a crash translation down to the beta bands. I'll risk a couple of chaser salvoes first if it takes him that long to tell me go or no-go on the maneuver."

"All right, Skipper. I'll do what I can." Ward punched commands into her console, deploying missile decoys, and then kicked three EW drones over the side. The drones were each programmed to duplicate Artemis' current, wounded impeller signature, and she sent them racing off on widely divergent courses. Their power wouldn't last long, and they were unlikely to fool the Peeps even that long, but the delay while the enemy sorted out which were which might buy Engineering a few more precious minutes.

"Skipper, that merchie's still coming on," she reported. She picked up a faint transmission and put her computers on-line to enhance it, then shook her head. "It's an Andy, Ma'am."

"What is this-a wormhole junction?" Stellingetti growled, glaring at her repeater plot. Its reduced size made things appear closer together than they actually were, and she glared at the new bogey closing on her fleeing prey. The plot was further confused by the Manty's EW drones, but Kerebin had been close enough to see them launch and CIC had managed to keep track of them as they came on-line. Knowing which were false targets allowed her to ignore them to concentrate on the real one, and the battlecruiser plunged after it. Battle damage had reduced her own acceleration by five percent, but she was smaller than her prey, and she could still pull a higher accel than the Manty could.

"Who's that coming up behind us?"

"I think that's Durandel in front, Skipper," Edwards replied. "The bearing's about right, and her accel is cranked too high for a battlecruiser. That's probably Achmed astern of her."

"Is Durandel in com range?"

"Barely, under these conditions," Stellingetti's com officer said.

"Order her to slow down and recover our search and rescue pinnaces."

"Aye, Citizen Captain."

Stellingetti didn't expect her pinnaces to recover very many Manties, but at least some life pods had blasted clear before the destroyer blew up. Those people were no longer enemies; they were only a handful of human beings lost in the middle of unthinkable immensity. If they weren't picked up right now, they never would be, and Marie Stellingetti refused to abandon anyone to that sort of death.

"Who the h.e.l.l is this newcomer, John?"

"From her impeller strength, she's another merchie," Edwards replied, "and I'm picking up an Andermani transponder."

"An Andy?" Stellingetti shook her head. "Wonderful. Just wonderful! Why would an Andy be maneuvering to match vectors with a Manticoran with a battlecruiser on its a.s.s?"

"I don't know, Skip." The tactical officer punched a query into his system and shook his head. "It's a horse race. Whoever's driving that ship is good, and she's running some heavy duty risks with a civilian drive. Target One's out-accelerating her, but she's got the angle on his track. It looks like she'll match vectors with him about the time we come into extreme missile range."

"d.a.m.n!" The citizen captain gnawed on a thumbnail and, for the first time, wished Commissioner Reidel were aboard. It wasn't like Stellingetti to evade responsibility, but if the Committee of Public Safety was going to saddle her with its d.a.m.ned spy, the son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h could at least make himself useful by telling her how to clean this mess up! Her orders required her to "use any means necessary" to prevent any Manticoran-flag vessel from escaping with word of the task force's presence, but when Citizen Admiral Giscard and People's Commissioner Pritchart wrote that order, they'd never contemplated having a pa.s.senger liner on their hands. Stellingetti's conscience would never forgive her if she killed several thousand civilians, yet her orders left no option. If the liner wouldn't stop, she had to destroy it, and her soul shriveled at the thought. No doubt Public Information would claim the ship had been armed-which it was-and that its armament and refusal to stop had made it a legitimate target. Public Information was good at blaming victims for their fate. But Stellingetti would still have to look into her mirror every day.

And what was the d.a.m.ned Andermani up to? Her orders also required her to steer clear of Andies, and even to a.s.sist them against other raiders. But if that freighter insisted on poking its nose into this, it would be sitting right there, witness to the entire incident if she blew away the liner. And what did she do then? Did she kill the Andy, too, just to finish off any witnesses who might dispute Public Information's version of what had happened out here?

"Com, warn the Andy off! Tell her to stand clear, or I can't be responsible for the consequences."

"Aye, Skipper."

"Forget about any crash translations, Skipper," Sid Cheney said flatly. "We've got two bad sectors in the primary data line, the main computer's fried, and the auxiliary took its own hit from that spike. You throw a crash translation at it, and the odds are at least seventy-thirty that either the backup computer or the control runs will blow half way through."

"How long to replace the bad control sectors?" Fuchien demanded.

"Even if I replace them, we've still got the computer damage to worry about."

"I know." Fuchien was grasping at straws, because straws were all she had left. "But if we can take at least part of the uncertainty out of the equation-"

"I've got crews on it now, but it's a twelve-hour job by the manual. I'm cutting every corner I can, and I think I can make it in six, but that's not gonna be good enough, is it?"

"No, Sid," Margaret Fuchien said softly.

"Sorry, Maggie." The engineer's voice was even softer than hers. "I'll do my best."

"I know."

Fuchien forced her shoulders to straighten and drew a deep breath. Ward's EW drones hadn't fooled the pursuing Peep. They'd be into missile range in another eighteen minutes, and with an unreliable hyper generator, there was no way Artemis could translate down quickly enough to drop off the Peep's sensors.

She looked back at Ward's plot, and her brow furrowed. The Andermani was closing on her ship quickly, coming in at an angle that would match vectors in just under fifteen minutes. She wouldn't be able to pace the liner long-even with damaged beta nodes, Artemis could out accelerate any bulk carrier ever built-but at the moment their courses merged, they'd be moving at almost the same velocity. She had to admire the ship handling of whoever had pulled that off, but for the life of her, she still couldn't see any reason to do it in the first place.

"Anything from the Peeps yet?" she asked Com.

"No. Ma'am."

The reply sounded as tense as Fuchien felt, and she smiled raggedly and made herself take a turn around the command deck. There really wasn't any choice, was there? When the Peep got into missile range, all she could do was heave-to and surrender. Anything else would be madness.

"Skipper!" It was her com officer. "We're being hailed by the Andy!"

"Well, they've made rendezvous," Edwards observed. "Now what?"

"I don't know. Did she respond to our warn-off at all?"

"No, Skipper," Com replied. "Not a word."

"What the h.e.l.l is she playing at?" Stellingetti fumed. She shoved herself angrily back in her command chair and glared at her plot. Whatever the Andermani vessel's ultimate intentions, she'd just screwed Kerebin's attack options all to h.e.l.l. She was too close to the Manty. Edwards' missiles were as likely to home in on her as on the Manty at this range, and the Manty skipper knew it. He'd cut his own accel to match the Andy's, riding just ahead of her to use her for a shield, and Stellingetti gritted her teeth.

"The Andies won't like our raiding commerce this close to the Empire, Skipper," Edwards pointed out quietly. "You don't suppose this joker's trying to warn us off, do you?"

"He's in for a h.e.l.l of a surprise if he is," Stellingetti grated.

The battlecruiser continued to race closer, eating up the distance between herself and the other two ships. Far astern of her, the cruiser Durandel launched her own pinnaces to a.s.sist Kerebin's SAR efforts. They'd already picked up over eighty members of Hawkwing's crew, an amazingly high number which spoke volumes for the determination of the searching pinnaces, yet the cruiser's rescue operations had effectively taken her out of the hunt. The battlecruiser Achmed, however, had come rumbling past Durandel over forty minutes ago, with her velocity building steadily, and she still had an excellent chance to overtake Kerebin and Artemis.

Other ships of the People's Navy were also closing in, and one of them had already locked onto the Manticoran freighter Voyager and begun closing rapidly while another peeled off to pursue RMMS Palimpsest. The entire situation was wildly confused, but the Peep warships were clearly in control of it, and the distance between Kerebin and Artemis sped downward.