The Dark Wing Read online

  "She's coming about, Captain," Chan said. Pam Fordyce was sweating over the fire-control boards at gunnery section, as two of her crew tried to calculate the field of the nearer Eclipse.

  "Good. Maybe she'll let go of Anson for a minute." The Imperial ship's defensive fields were radiating well into the white, indicating that they were close to overload. "Looks like he's taken a breach aft on the port side, at about forty degrees."

  "Copy on the breach, sir," Chan answered. "Mass-radar shows Anson as having been at the jump point when the attack started. Must have had his fields down."

  "Damn fool." It was a common-enough tactic to fly "clean," without defensive fields, to conserve power; but it wasn't recommended when an attack was likely. Well, there wasn't an attack likely, was there ? he asked himself. "Gunnery, lay down a pattern. Let's get his attention."

  "Ready to fire, sir," Pam's voice came back. The other two gunners continued to work on the field problem, and Sergei could see that she hadn't completely loosed her attention, either.

  "Fire at will."

  Six superhot spheres of energy surged from launch tubes in the Lancaster's belly and streaked across the intervening space to their target. Sergei imagined that he felt them go, though he knew intellectually that plasma torpedoes have no recoil . . . all six struck the field of the enemy Eclipse, between its aft section and roughly amidships.

  "Brace for return fire."

  But while the Eclipse had aligned itself better to receive the incoming fire, it had not changed its target, and continued to pour energy into the nearby Anson. Sergei ordered another barrage, and it, too, found its mark, while the Anson's fields began to register brighter and brighter.

  "Anson's taken damage to distributors and travelers, Captain," Chan reported. "I estimate that she's got five minutes, on the outside, unless we knock out one of the opponents. Even then . . ."

  "Helm ahead one-quarter. Comm, hail the Anson. Tell them to fold their tent now and get the hell out." He heard the hail go out, not sure if it would be received, as he watched the Eclipse-class zor vessel grow in the forward screen. They were coming into direct-fire range now.

  "Forward batteries fire at will. Pam, we need to try that field."

  "I'm trying, Skip," she said, again without turning. The Lancaster's batteries were striking accurately; the enemy was starting to glow orange and then yellow. The Anson was clearly trying to withdraw, but its normal-space drive had been damaged by the hull hit, and didn't seem to be responding.

  The Lancaster's target, though clearly starting to feel the effects of the barrage, had not sent a single erg of energy against its attacker: it continued to fire on the Anson, which was blossoming patches of deep violet across its defensive fields.

  "She's going to blow," Chan said, his voice level.

  "Comm, hail the Anson, tell them to abandon. Lancaster will provide covering fire for escape craft. Helm, close with the Anson—"

  "No time," Chan interrupted . . .

  . . . And suddenly, the forward screen polarized to white, then bright blue and violet, then shut down altogether for a few seconds. "Beginning evasive maneuvers," helm said, "on your order, Captain."

  "Do it," Sergei said immediately. The viewscreen came back on, showing the two Eclipses beginning to navigate around the expanding ball of blue-hot gas that, moments before, had been the starship Anson. Now it was just debris, a casualty of the battle.

  The Lancaster applied reverse thrust to reduce her velocity as she closed with the battle scene, but it strained her inertial dampers somewhat; also, once lost, velocity can only be regained through the expenditure of energy, and much of her power was being devoted to other systems. Thus, while the remains of the Anson dispersed, the Lancaster simply veered around her, and after Sergei noted the close position of the Odessa, he nodded in approval as his ship bore down on the two enemies.

  Eclipse-class zor starships were by no means the top of the line, and had been fighting with almost no propulsion velocity: they were drifting, maintaining position with attitude controls alone. As the Lancaster bore down on them, Sergei knew that his ship was going to be able to destroy them before they could escape, and that they must have known it, too. The Anson, a generation newer than the Lancaster, would have been more than a match for both ships if it had been uninjured.

  The zor who had just destroyed it were waiting to die now as if their mission had been completed.

  "Those bastards," he said quietly, to himself. As the Lancaster closed in, debris from the rapidly cooling explosion fell across the ship's path, gave up its kinetic energy, and drifted along, as if it had nowhere else to go.

  T-8 hours, 6 minutes

  1 February 2311

  2036Hrs Std

  There had been a day of briefings at the orbital base, followed by the governor's reception at his estate and then a dress-blues dinner at the Pergamum Down Officers' Club, a lavish, wood-paneled hall that had been built twenty years ago, when Pergamum was near the edge of the New Territories. It was almost as lavish as the governor's residence in the hills above.

  Now Pergamum was almost a rear-area base, with more amenities and less strategic importance—still, the Border Fleet was based here, even though most of it was out on maneuvers. The hall was far from filled that evening, and the table talk had seemed to echo too loudly into its empty spaces. It had been a relief to get away from it, as groups of officers moved off to the gaming-rooms, or outside for a breath of night air, or—as Sergei had done—to the roof garden to look at the stars.

  They left each other alone, the stargazers on the roof of the Officers' Club. Shielded from the ambient light of the capital city and the naval base, the starry panorama shone clear and bright, a strange and alien panoply, yet familiar in some undefinable way. Sergei knew, as he stood there looking up at the stars, that the world he stood on was somehow confining: that he belonged up there, aboard his ship, surrounded by the familiar fixtures that had constrained and defined his life for almost a quarter of a century. Down on the ground he felt bound, vulnerable, and didn't completely understand why.

  Antares was visible in the night sky; it lay at the topmost point of a bright crescent of stars that had been nicknamed "the Boomerang." It had taken Sergei a few minutes of fiddling with Pergamum Down's database to identify the word—it was a Terran word, referring to an ancient weapon, later a sort of toy, that could be hurled away and would, if thrown properly, return to the thrower.

  Antares, the bright red-orange star near the ecliptic, was the home star of mankind's enemy, the alien zor. He'd never met a zor in the flesh; none had ever been taken alive, and there wasn't much opportunity on the deck of a starship to step on, or over, a zor corpse. Few scholars had traveled in their space; to the average naval officer the zor were what briefings and 3-V said they were: alien, birdlike things, with beaks and wings and claws at the end of their arms and legs. They could fly, though apparently that was limited to worlds with half a g or less, and they were supposed to be lightning-quick, with—of all things—swords.

  So here they were: aliens from the point of the boomerang, ever returning: They'd fought five wars with humanity, and they'd started every one, and lost every one—each time the boundary between zor and human space got a little farther out. Once, according to captured star-charts, the entire area of space that was now the New Territories had belonged to the zor—a rough cube more than forty parsecs on a side, with Pergamum near the center, stretching inward toward Sol System from a vast area of virtually empty space called the Antares Rift. On the other side of the Rift, 150 parsecs from Sol System, was Antares, at the center of a group of eleven stars that were the home worlds of the zor. Four or five of the others could be seen in Pergamum's night sky; none of the rest were visible unaided from mankind's home world.

  Ever returning. It was a chilling thought, although it never quite left the mind of a naval officer.

  T+13 hours, 27 minutes

  2 February 2311

  170
9Hrs Std

  "Incoming from the Gustav Adolf, Skipper."

  The pilot's board showed nothing within two hundred thousand kilometers. Sergei nodded to Chan, who took the conn. "I'll take it in the ready-room."

  "Aye-aye."

  "Go ahead, sir," Sergei said, as the door slid shut. He dropped into his seat, trying to shed fatigue; he'd only taken two hours off since the last time they'd been in battle nine hours ago.

  A holo representation of McMasters appeared in the adjacent chair.

  "I can't raise the Odessa, the Segontium or the Indefatigable. The Pembroke reports heavy damage, but Cory says they can work high guard for the carriers. The Cambridge is on-station in the ionosphere of the gas giant. Everyone else seems to be all right. How are you doing?"

  "We're at eighty-five percent efficiency, sir, but we'll have shed most of the excess field energy within half an hour."

  "Good. From what I read, your sector is pretty much clear; our orders are to converge in the vicinity of the Genève; we're probably looking to fall back a bit, but the zor look to have taken huge losses."

  "They don't seem to care about losses, sir." Sergei described the destruction of the Anson, and a similar scene involving the remains of the Karakorum, where the Lancaster had arrived a trifle too late. "My gut feeling, sir, is that they're looking to destroy ships, and don't intend to attack the base at all."

  "Hmm." McMasters ran a hand over his unruly thatch of hair, and rubbed his neck. Eleven and a half hours had elapsed since the first scramble from Pergamum base; he looked as if he'd spent the whole time in the pilot's seat aboard the Gustav. "There might be some validity to that position, but the admiral is still assuming an attack on the base."

  "So the reserves stay inside the asteroid belt."

  "For the present, yes. We're holding the line, Sergei, and giving better than we're getting. Make for the Genève, and if you're there before I am, report to the admiral."

  "Aye-aye, sir."

  Just under two hours later they came in visual range of the admiral's fleet flagship, the Royal Oak. A quick inspection of the ship, especially its energy gradients, showed that it had seen some action; the admiral had clearly had his ship in the line of battle. The Gustav Adolf had beaten them there; altogether there were more than two dozen ships assembled, including most of McMasters' command, and what remained of two other squadrons. The zor that the Lancaster's mass-radar could detect had withdrawn as well, unwilling to approach the flagship and the firepower surrounding it.

  Relative calm prevailed as ships lumbered into new formations, radiating excess energy from their defense fields; still, Sergei could see, or detect, evidence of the battle that had raged for more than thirteen hours. Many ships—more than half—were radiating energy into the white, while more than half of them showed irregularities or deformations in their fields, indicating faulty or malfunctioning equipment. The Lancaster had lost two starboard-side travelers due to overload, but hadn't taken any direct hull hits. All in all, they were in fairly good shape.

  "Message from Captain Schaumburg for you, Skip," Anne DaNapoli said from the comm station. She'd come on watch four hours ago, and had waved off relief since then; she looked grim and tired, but probably a lot better than Sergei assumed he looked. After the communication with McMasters, he'd forced himself to grab a few more hours' bunktime, but hadn't really slept very well.

  "Open the channel. —Dolph, what can I do for you?"

  "Lancaster's luck is still with you, Sergei," Dolph Schaumburg said. "You look like you haven't seen the battle at all. Hope that luck holds out. I'm ready to take your stranded flyers aboard, anytime you're ready."

  "I haven't got orders to form up yet, so this is a fairly good time. You sure the Cambridge has enough berth space? I've got eight of them on the deck."

  "We lost a quarter of our fighters during the battle. We've got plenty of room—in fact, those flyboys better be ready to go out. My crews are dead tired, the ones that aren't in sick bay . . . or the morgue."

  Or floating in space with the rest of the debris, Sergei told himself. "I'll give the order."

  "I'll be waiting for them. Cambridge out."

  "Hangar deck," Sergei said, touching the intercom on his armrest. "This is the captain. Get those fighters launched and en route to the Cambridge. Bruce, tell them they've got fifteen minutes to get clear of the Lancaster or they'll be watching the rest of the battle from the cargo hold."

  ***

  Within half an hour the Imperial ships were formed up in a concave wedge, with the Royal Oak and the fleet-carrier Genève in the center; this configuration provided the largest concentration of firepower in the middle, and allowed the deployed ships to quickly englobe attackers if they made for the center of the formation. The Lancaster's nearest neighbors were the fleet-carrier Cambridge and McMasters' flag, the Gustav Adolf, with the Phaedra and the Harrison nearby as well.

  It was clear that the zor ships intended to engage the entire formation. Spread out loosely like a skirmish line in three dimensions, the zor vessels accelerated toward the Imperial positions, reached turnover and began to decelerate, firing almost at random as soon as they were in range. The admiral had deployed fighters out in front of the capital ships, intending to slow down the zor advance, but the enemy made no effort to get out of the way of the tiny craft, even losing a few of their own ships to lucky hits by the fighter pilots.

  By the time the zor were at engagement range, most of the fighters were berthed again. Small craft might be useful once the zor were pinned down, so Sergei's orders were to make that possible—fend off zor attacks on the fleet-carrier by engaging whatever came close.

  The zor seemed to know that, too. Avoiding a head-to-head confrontation with the Lancaster, two Sunspot-class battleships, somewhat slower and heavier-armed than an Eclipse, tried to turn the corner on Sergei's ship and reach the Cambridge.

  "Fire at will," Sergei said as they closed in. The gunnery sections began to target and fire; on the pilot's board, ships were battling the zor vessels as they closed in on the larger ships, heedless of incoming fire.

  The forward viewscreen was tinged dull orange as one zor vessel concentrated fire on a small segment of the defensive field.

  "Cease fire! Helm, come about to new coordinates," Sergei ordered suddenly, and named a direction off to starboard, placing the ship so that it presented the port and underside travelers rather than the damaged starboard ones. "Ahead one-quarter." The ship began to execute the course change, and a bright yellow-white spot bloomed just ahead on the screen: the concentrated fire, aimed at "cracking" the Lancaster's defensive field and scoring a hit directly on the hull, had been dissipated by the abrupt alteration in the structure of the field caused by the maneuver.

  "Belay course change, all stop. Gunnery sections, resume fire. Pam, report on field strength."

  "Down twenty-three percent," Pam Fordyce, his gunnery chief, answered, having anticipated the question.

  "Anne, hail McMasters. Inform the commodore that the zor may be looking to make penetration attacks. Advise evasive maneuvers as necessary. I—"

  "Excuse me, sir, incoming urgent from the Genève," DaNapoli interrupted.

  "Let's hear it."

  "—all ships. Fleet flagship is under attack by a large number of enemy vessels; repeat, large number of enemy vessels. Concentrated fire on the flagship. Calling all ships, flagship needs help." The message began to repeat; Sergei held up his hand and it cut off.

  "Anne, try to raise the Royal Oak. Helm, report on the status of our two assailants."

  "The closer one is at about forty percent, Cap'n, and has lost some maneuverability. The farther one is at about sixty, but he seems to have backed off to dump some field energy. He's almost out of fire range."

  "Give him some torpedoes, and try for a penetration on the near guy."

  "Royal Oak seems to have lost comm, Captain," Anne DaNapoli interrupted. "I was able to reach Commodore McMasters, sir, and he advis
es that we should be able to close up in this part of the battle volume and reinforce."

  Sergei took a moment to look at the pilot's board. The zor force, perhaps half again as many ships as the Imperials, had begun to concentrate toward the middle of the Imperial formation, as if they were trying to englobe the flagship. Even the two enemies that had been trying to reach the Cambridge appeared to be standing off, changing their courses toward the Royal Oak.

  "Helm, new course. Get us to the flagship, ahead one-third."

  The Lancaster and the Pembroke accelerated toward the center of the Imperial deployment. As Sergei watched, the holo patterns on the pilot's board began to resolve: the attack was a clever exposition, considerably different from zor tactics in the past.

  The zor ship-captains were just as heedless of danger and overly aggressive, but their tactics had been much more subtle, aimed at keeping the peripheral ships in the Imperial formation occupied long enough to concentrate fire on the ones in the center . . . as if it had been their plan all along.

  "Pam," Sergei said into the relative quiet of the bridge, as the Lancaster began the long deceleration toward the Royal Oak's position. "See if you can isolate the flagship's condition."

  "It's hard to tell," she said at once. "There's a lot of noise . . . huh." Her fingers flew over the board, and then she seemed to replicate her movements, as if rechecking the information. She turned her chair to face Sergei. "They're radiating in the blue, sir. The Royal Oak is going to lose field power."

  Sergei's hands clenched the arms of the pilot's chair. They know. They must know. "What's our ETA?"

  "Six minutes, Cap'n. We'll be in firing range in less than two."

  "Helm, ahead one-half."

  "That'll take us well past the battle zone, sir—we won't be able to dump velocity in time."

  "We'll have to execute a tight turn. I want to be in firing range—"

  A large area of the screen became bright, expanding and licking out. Three other explosions bloomed—