The Dark Wing Read online

  THE DARK WING

  BY WALTER H. HUNT

  Copyright © 2001 by Walter H. Hunt

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Edited by Brian M. Thomsen

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC 175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 0-765-34069-0 EAN 978-0-765-34069-6

  eISBN: 978-1-61824-892-3

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001041533

  First edition: December 2001

  First mass market edition: November 2002

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4

  Digital Edition by Baen Books

  http://www.baen.com

  These people have had the greatest influence upon me as this book has moved from thoughts to paper, and it is to them that it is dedicated: my parents, Earle and Clotilde Hunt, who did not live to see it reach publication; Mrs. Sandra Hawkes, a great and inspirational teacher at my high school, who truly taught me how to write; my own Bright Wing, my wife and best friend, Lisa, who has shared everything with me for half of my life; and my dear friend Susan Stone, who has championed this book from its earliest incarnation.

  Thank you all for believing in me.

  Prelude

  T-0 hours

  2 February 2311

  0342Hrs Std

  IF YOU KNOW THE ENEMY AND KNOW YOURSELF, YOU NEED NOT FEAR THE RESULT OF A HUNDRED BATTLES. IF YOU KNOW YOURSELF BUT NOT THE ENEMY, FOR EVERY VICTORY GAINED YOU WILL ALSO SUFFER A DEFEAT. IF YOU KNOW NEITHER THE ENEMY NOR YOURSELF, YOU WILL SUCCUMB IN EVERY BATTLE.

  —Sun Tzu, The Art of War, IV: 18

  The sharp-edged silhouette of the starship Lancaster was just coming into view on the shuttle's forward screen when the system-wide alarm was broadcast on the gig's main comm. Sergei Torrijos, captain of the Lancaster, had been reclining comfortably in a passenger seat, taking a few moments away from the rather boring duty of reviewing inspection logs to look at the ship—his ship.

  The midshipman piloting the craft acknowledged the alarm right away, as Sergei quickly set aside his tablet and came forward.

  "Hail the Lancaster," he ordered the pilot, slipping into the other command seat. The young midshipman did so, and a small holo in the console dissolved to a view of the bridge.

  "This is the captain. What's happening, Chan?"

  "Enemy vessels incoming, sir," replied the voice of his exec, Chan Wells. "Jump points four and five are in the thick of it. Admiral Bryant's given the scramble order, and I have a pending call for you from Commodore McMasters."

  The Lancaster had arrived insystem the day before yesterday, as a part of Admiral Coris Bryant's flag squadron. Even in peacetime, the need was great to show the flag here in the New Territories; while politicians and pundits back home talked of downsizing the military now that the zor threat was past, the Imperial Navy had strongly resisted, spending taxpayer credits on cruises that took them to places like this.

  Less than an hour ago, Sergei had himself been planetside, accompanying his squadron commander, Commodore McMasters, and the senior admiral on station on an inspection tour of the Down Base. Though it had been good to breathe real, unfiltered air and feel sunlight beating down on him, he knew that he would only be at ease when he stepped aboard the deck of his own ship.

  "What's our ETA, Ensign?"

  "Twelve minutes, sir, at present speed. With a little help from the Lancaster, I can cut that in half."

  "Do it, Chan," he said to his exec. "Jump points four and five?"

  "That's correct, sir."

  Jump points four and five: eighteen and twenty hours Right Ascension. Antares-ward.

  "Patch the commodore through to the gig. I'm on my way." The view of the bridge of the Lancaster dissolved away as the small craft began to accelerate.

  Sergei again cursed his luck for being away, but probably half the captains in the fleet were in their gigs, or in their skivvies right now. The worst fear for any ship's captain, of course, is that his vessel will come under attack while he is not even aboard. Far worse than simply being off duty, it is the gnawing concern that a commander feels whenever he is far from his own deck. That he was in a ground-to-space shuttle, in visual range of the orbiting Lancaster, rather than several hours away on the other side of the system, was some consolation.

  "Sergei, this is Ted." His commander's voice sounded hurried and tense against the backdrop of the General Quarters alarm.

  Visual caught up with sound. On the small screen, he could see the busy hive of activity on the Gustav Adolf's bridge behind Commodore Ted McMasters, his direct superior; the squadron flag was already under way. "Reporting, sir. I'll be aboard the Lancaster shortly."

  "They've broken the damn treaty, Sergei. We're looking at—" He turned to examine the pilot's board before him. "We're outnumbered two-to-one, with half the Border Fleet on maneuvers."

  "They don't have that many ships!" Sergei replied, glancing aside to see the Lancaster beginning to fill the forward screen.

  "They've got forty or fifty ships on this side of the Rift, but we just didn't think they could get them all together without us noticing. We were wrong."

  Just over five minutes later, after the Lancaster's internal traction field brought the gig onto the hanger deck, Sergei was running through his ship's corridors, ignoring the dignity of rank in his haste.

  McMasters' words echoed through his head: We were wrong. As he rode up in the lift, he thought about the implications. There had been less than twenty months of peace this time; the Government back in Sol System had granted generous terms to the zor, believing they were too weak to consider launching another attack. As it had always been, it seemed ludicrous that the zor would ignite the war anew, bringing their small dominion into conflict with a larger, more powerful Solar Empire . . . but there had been intermittent war for more than half a century.

  They had been too outnumbered, too outgunned, weakened by the victories scored by the fleet before the Treaty of Efal brought the campaign to a halt.

  We were wrong.

  The lift door opened and Sergei stepped out. "Captain on the bridge," Chan said, rising; those not engaged in duties associated with clearing dock came to attention. He waved them down and took the pilot's seat Chan handed him a 'reader, showing the ship's status.

  "All sections report," Sergei said, looking at the display.

  "Engineering cleared for action."

  "Helm onstation and ready, Captain."

  "Gunnery sections ready for action, sir."

  "Navigation ready for action." That last was a formality, since they weren't about to jump outsystem—the primary responsibility of navigation section—with the zor bearing down on them; maneuvering belonged to the helm while in normal space. The whole thing was a formality, really: Chan had ordered the ship to Beat to Quarters almost ten minutes ago and they were now ready to clear moorings, five minutes sooner than the regs said they needed.

  As they locked on to the flight path being sent from the squadron flag, Sergei watched the mass-radar blips multiply on his pilot's board. There were already more than forty enemy vessels on the screen, and more were appearing as he watched.

  Ten minutes. Mass-radar, unlike light-based radar, was instantaneous: it registered point-mass distortion of the local space, showing how large objects like planets and even smaller objects like spaceships wrapped the continuum around them as they moved. What he was watching was effectively real time, slowed only slightly by the processing of the Lancaster's computer, even though the Lancaster itself was hours
from the edge of the system, where the battle was already joined.

  They've got forty, almost fifty ships insystem in less than ten minutes, he thought. Only one way they could be that precise: if they all came from the same origination point.

  Based on their vector and momentum when they materialized, it would be trivial to calculate their starting position. "Chan—" he began to ask; but his executive officer had already considered that point, and gestured to a screen above the Ops station.

  "It's about fifteen parsecs out, just within the Antares Rift. The star field is fairly sparse, but the computer has identified three or four likely choices. It looks as if they jumped from the neighborhood of a dark sun—but I'll bet next month's salary that there's a base out there."

  When a ship appears out of jump, making the changeover from translight to sublight speeds, it carries with it the vector describing its orientation and velocity at the moment that it entered jump. The "jump echo," which consists of this vector plus a value indicating the amount of spatial disturbance generated by the jump itself, makes the calculation of the origin point a trivial exercise.

  "A base big enough to handle more than fifty ships? It would take years to build something like that, especially in secret." Sergei grasped the arm of his chair with one hand as the idea hit home. "But it'd be easier in peacetime."

  Chan looked back up at the plot, showing fifty-odd plotted entry paths, their hind ends crossing at a point deep in zor space, within the dark scar of the Antares Rift.

  "We were set up."

  T-28 hours, 27 minutes

  31 January 2311

  2315Hrs Std

  "Where the hell did they dredge that up?" Commodore McMasters said, sotto voce, as the piped music on the orbital base's hangar deck shuddered to full volume. Like the rest of Admiral Bryant's command, they stood at stiff attention as the admiral exchanged pleasantries with the commander of Pergamum Base. It was obviously a courtesy of some sort, since even the elderly admiral—who was known to be tone-deaf, and who rarely showed emotion of any kind in public—seemed to be experiencing a sort of painful recognition; but it was no tune Sergei recognized. He raised his eyebrows and gave an almost imperceptible shrug to his commander.

  He'd been aboard ship too long, Sergei decided after taking a few moments to look around. The deck of the Pergamum orbital base was a huge container, big enough to swallow the Lancaster whole (two or three times over, he told himself, imagining three starships set nacelle-to-nacelle); it was bigger than any single compartment on any ship he'd ever been aboard, including the huge fleet-carrier Ponchartrain, on which he'd served his first tour. Its height defied description: lost in the diffuse overhead lights, he guessed it to be six or seven hundred meters away, while the breadth and width could be measured only in kilometers. Almost at the edge of his range of vision, etched sharply against the nightblack backdrop of space held back by pressure-field, he could make out a good-sized vessel—a close escort, maybe half Lancaster's size—entering through the 'lock. From this distance, it looked like a toy.

  " 'My Old Kentucky Home,' " McMasters whispered, interrupting Sergei's visual survey.

  "Sorry?"

  The last strains of the music worked their way out of the sound system. " 'My Old Kentucky Home.' For Bryant. He's from Kentucky, in North America on Terra. That's the damn song."

  "Never heard of it." It certainly wasn't popular in the Buenos Aires arcologies where he'd grown up, the last place he'd spent more than a two-day layover on his home world.

  "Old folk song. Nineteenth, twentieth century. Can't imagine how they found it. It's—"

  Whatever it was, Sergei didn't have a chance to find out, since the admiral, accompanied by the officers of the base, had finished the opening pleasantries, and was approaching to begin the extended series of introductions.

  It took long minutes for the group to reach the row where Sergei stood next to Ted McMasters, but by the time it arrived, he'd already committed the names of the chief officers onstation to memory. Sir Stefan Ewing, Lord Governor of Pergamum. Ewing was clearly a popinjay, a nobleman dressed in a Navy uniform, cut ever so slightly different from regulation; this was the privilege of an admiral, and Ewing was only a commodore, but Admiral Bryant didn't seem to find fault: nor could he, really, considering the importance of the Ewing family here in the New Territories. It irked Sergei to think that the most-forward naval base, even in peacetime, was in the hands of a noble fop who (if he remembered right) had purchased his commission.

  What the hell, he thought to himself. Wasn't the first one, won't be the last one. Smiling with military precision, he exchanged a salute and extended his hand to shake that of the Lord Governor of Pergamum.

  "Heard a lot about you, Captain," Ewing said in a growling voice, sounding as if he'd told each officer that in turn.

  "All good, I hope, my lord." Ewing rated no more than "sir," but the noble honorific was more polite, if not more correct.

  "Quite good, quite good. Lancaster, isn't it?"

  "Best ship in the fleet, my lord, if I may say so. Perhaps the commodore would like a tour."

  "We'll see what time allows, Captain."

  Ewing took another long look at him—measuring him, sizing him up—and then moved on to Cory DeWitt of the Pembroke. Admiral Bryant gave him a sharp, curious glance before moving his attention to the next officer.

  "I wonder what was that all about," Sergei said to McMasters quietly when the admiral and governor were well away.

  "Venturing a guess . . . I'd say Ewing has a position open, and he's sizing up candidates."

  "A staff officer's post?"

  "No, I doubt it—he'd expect you to chafe at giving up command for a desk. I'd guess it's something to do with the naval base. Quite an honor, I'd say."

  "Would you take it?"

  "It wouldn't be offered to me. Been across the decks a few too many times to bring much prestige to the likes of Sir Stefan Ewing. He's looking for a 'bright young man.' "

  Sergei colored slightly at the characterization, but didn't relax from attention to look at McMasters' face. He could, however, almost hear the smile. "I'm nearly forty-one, for God's sake."

  "Exactly."

  T+2 hours, 11 minutes

  2 February 2311

  0553Hrs Std

  While things got hot on the Riftward side of Pergamum volume, the Lancaster and her sister ships scrambled from dock, headed at one-seventh of the speed of light for a rendezvous outside the orbital of the asteroid belt, three-quarters of a billion kilometers away. The battle, like all conflicts viewed from deep in a gravity-well, seemed to move in slow motion; shifts and watches would change twice more before Sergei's ship reached the primary battle zone.

  Even with the tension of approaching combat, the five hours' gap between the first Beat to Quarters and the first visual contact lent an air of calm and almost normalcy on the bridge of the Lancaster; though there was still some risk that a zor captain with a severe death-wish might try to jump deep into the well to catch a human opponent unawares, the fact that it hadn't happened so far conveyed a certain sense of balance and proportion. The enemy was out there, at the edge of the system (where it was supposed to be).

  Except, of course, that until two hours ago there hadn't been an enemy, at least in the minds of the Admiralty and the Government: this visit to Pergamum had been a peacetime mission.

  The ships of the zor attacking force had materialized in normal space near two well-defined jump points outside the last planetary orbital of the Pergamum solar system. The system had been mapped originally by the zor, when it had belonged to them, and the jump points represented areas of low mass concentration and low probability of navigational hazards such as asteroids, comets or dust. In space, nothing is static, and the jump points drifted along with everything else; but these defined locations represented the safest places to materialize.

  Sergei sat uncomfortably in the pilot's chair, studying the engagement that was hours
from his present position, noting the ten blips that represented McMasters' squadron, heading as fast as they could for turnover—the point at which they would begin to decelerate toward the battle zone.

  "Squadron conference is ready for you, Skip," Anne DaNapoli said from the comm station. Sergei exchanged looks with his exec, who stood and came over to take the pilot's seat as Sergei walked off the bridge and into the ready-room.

  Around the polished conference-table, four commanders were already present in holographic form: Bert—Sir Bertram—Halvorsen of the dreadnought Mycenae; Cory DeWitt of the starship Pembroke (a ship almost the Lancaster's twin); Von Singh of the Concordance-class star-ship Harrison (an old and venerable vessel); and Adolfo Schaumburg of the squadron's carrier, the Cambridge. McMasters' place was still unoccupied at the head of the table.

  Sergei nodded to his fellow captains as he took his seat.

  At the head of the table, an image of Ted McMasters was coalescing. Within a few seconds the other four captains' images had appeared. McMasters looked around the room—where the commodore was actually sitting, aboard the Gustav Adolf, nine holos looked back.

  "As I told each of you a few hours ago," he began without preamble, "we're outnumbered out on the edge of the system. Your mass-radar analysis will have told you that it's even worse than we originally imagined: there are ninety-two enemy vessels deployed near the Riftside jump points. The zor may well have abandoned every base on this side, and maybe even some in the Home Stars, to launch this attack.

  "What was at the jump point . . . isn't there anymore." He looked down at a display in front of him, vaguely visible in holo image. "Fleet-carrier Zambezi reports losses of eighty percent of its fighter wings. It's moving under emergency power and is headed for dock, just outside the battle zone. Patrol command additionally reports the loss of several small craft, as well as the following vessels—" He touched the display and peered at it over the end of his nose. "Alma-Ata, Aldebaran, Via Appia and . . . Sun Tzu. All reported lost with all hands." This last name elicited surprised noises from everyone present; the Sun Tzu was a fifth-generation starship, one of the biggest and most heavily armed ships in the fleet, and had carried the flag of the senior admiral on station, Sir Graham DeSaia.