In Death Ground Part 2

"Argive is under attack, Sir!" she exclaimed, and an icy fist squeezed Cheltwyn's heart.

"Download the tac data to Plotting!" he barked, and spun towards Bremerton's master plot. The data flashed, and he flinched as he saw the battlecruisers appear from cloak. He stood tautly, watching the plot, and someone gasped behind him as the angry light dots of capital missiles suddenly speckled the display. The drone had launched before impact, and he had no way to know how much damage that salvo had inflicted, but it looked bad.

Lightning thoughts flickered through his brain as the ambush played itself out before him, and his lips drew back in a snarl. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds had ambushed Argive, but they must not have counted on the rest of the flotilla's presence. Six BCs could tear any survey cruiser apart... but five more cruisers, especially with two light carriers in support, could more than return the favor, "Communications! Transmit the drone download to Kersaint. Instruct Commander Hausman to make immediate transit to Indra and relay the data to Sarasota."

"Aye, aye, Sir," the com officer responded, and he wheeled to his exec.

"We're going through, Allison. Callahan will lead, then the carriers. The rest of the Huns will bring up the rear."

"Yes, Sir." The exec bent over her console, punching in orders, and Cheltwyn made himself return to his chair while Survey Flotilla 27 erupted into furious action.

The picket cruisers noted the courier drone's arrival, and, unlike Alexander Cheltwyn, they'd known it would be coming. Even before Bremerton's com officer queried its memory, a com laser had already sent another message burst streaking across the system.

TFNS Callahan raced through the warp point. Commander Chirac of the Ute had already worked up the sensor data from Argive's initial drone, and his rough calculations of the warp point's stresses made Callahan's transit far less violent than Argive's had been. It was still more than rough enough, but none of the destroyer's crew had time to waste on nausea. Their sensors were already sweeping the s.p.a.ce about the warp point for any sign of the enemy.

There was none, and Callahan's skipper fired his own drone back to announce the all-clear.

The oncoming superdreadnoughts picked up the first alien s.h.i.+p's drive signature. The enemy had reacted more swiftly than expected, and the capital s.h.i.+ps were still beyond effective engagement range. But they had no desire to engage until all the enemy vessels were into the system, anyway, and they altered course slightly, curling still further away from the system primary on a vector which would take them to the warp point well after the last enemy s.h.i.+p made transit. With the aliens' only avenue of retreat sealed, they would have no choice but to come to the superdreadnoughts on the defenders' terms, and speed would avail them nothing then.

Bremerton made transit, with San Jacinto and Sha on her heels, and Cheltwyn breathed a sigh of relief as the Hun-cla.s.s cruisers followed them through. He'd been half afraid he was heading into an ambush, but the enemy had screwed up. They must have a.s.sumed Argive was operating solo, or they never would have let the rest of the flotilla into the system unopposed.

"Instruct Commander Chirac to launch recon drones," he said. "I want a light-hour sh.e.l.l up and maintained. Then tell Commander Mangkudilaga to hold his launch for my command."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

He shoved himself firmly back in his comfortable chair. There was no point advertising his full capabilities any sooner than he had to. It was remotely possible the opposition didn't have fighters - after all, the Thebans hadn't had any sixty-odd years ago. Even if it did, his own would prove far more effective if the bad guys didn't know he had them until they- "Sir, we're picking up a loop transmission from Argive!"

"On my display!" Cheltwyn snapped, and looked down as Commodore Braun's grim face appeared on the screen beside his knee. The time display in the corner of the screen was a half-hour old, and the captain s.h.i.+vered at the thought that the man behind that face might well already be dead, but then that thought vanished as Braun spoke.

"Alex, if you receive this, turn around and get out of here," the commodore said harshly. "We've been mousetrapped. These people have commercial - repeat, commercial - drives, and they're using Argive as bait. They were waiting for us, and they're probably waiting for you. If you're not already engaged, you will be shortly, so get the h.e.l.l out. That's a direct order." Braun paused for a moment, then forced a bleak smile. "Good luck, Alex. Get my people home."

The screen blanked, then lit once more, replaying the same message, and Alex Cheltwyn's blood turned to ice. He stared at the display, willing the transmission to change, to say something else, but it simply repeated, and he closed his eyes tight.

Braun might be wrong, and if he was - and if he was still alive - Cheltwyn's s.h.i.+ps were Argive's only hope. But he might not be wrong... and as the captain's brain ran back over the data from the drone download he felt sickly certain the commodore wasn't. And if he wasn't, there were only two possible reasons his own command wasn't already under attack. Either the enemy hadn't gotten to the warp point yet... or else he was waiting for Cheltwyn to move still further in-system before he sprang the trap.

Every instinct cried out to ignore Braun's order, to go to his commodore's rescue, but the cold, pitiless light of his intellect said something else, and he drew a deep breath.

"Bring us about, Allison," he said, and his iron-hard voice was a stranger's.

The cruiser which had crept stealthily closer to TFNS Kersaint for so many hours received the transmission from its sister. The enemy had advanced into the trap; now it was time to destroy the only vessel which might get word of the ambush out.

"Skipper, I'm picking up a transmission of some sort."

"What d'you mean, 'of some sort'?" Salvatore Hausman's nerves had wound tighter and tighter as he watched the light blur on his plot. It hovered on the very edge of the standard missile envelope now, and the agonizing wait turned his voice harsh. "Is it from Captain Cheltwyn?"

"No, Sir. I can't-" Kersaint's com officer shook her head. "It doesn't seem to be saying anything, Skipper. It's just some sort of electronic noise."

"Noise?" Hausman repeated sharply.

"Yes, Sir. It's almost like it's just a carrier. If it's got any content, my computers can't recognize it."

"Source?"

"I can't say for certain, but the bearing's about right to be from Captain Cheltwyn."

"Skipper, that bogey's moving again!" Lieutenant Kantor's crisp voice pulled Hausman's attention away from the com officer, and he darted another look at his display. The light blur was moving, and whoever was in command over there had to know he was at the edge of certain detection, cloaked or not, so why... ?

The transmission. It had to be the transmission, and if the bogey was still coming in rather than revealing its presence and attempting to communicate- ***

The picket cruiser slid still closer, and then, suddenly, the alien stars.h.i.+p which had seemed so oblivious to its presence reacted. Targeting systems lashed out, locked on, and before the picket could respond, the alien opened fire.

"There he is, Skip!" Ismail Kantor snapped as his first salvo exploded. The range was long, but his pa.s.sive sensors had been given over five hours to plot the bogey's movements. His targeting solution took full advantage of that data, and his external racks and internal launchers sent a dozen missiles streaking straight for it. Nine of his birds got through, and cloaking ECM was useless against active sensors at such short range. Light codes danced and flickered in the fire control display, and then the bogey glowed with the red-circled white dot of a hostile cruiser.

"She's a CL," Kantor reported as his second salvo went out, and Hausman bared his teeth. A light cruiser was thirty percent larger than his destroyer, but cramming cloaking ECM into something that small ate deep into weapons volume. Unless the b.a.s.t.a.r.d had some sort of weapons technology the Federation had never heard of, he and Kersaint were evenly matched.

Answering fire spat back, and Hausman's vicious smile grew broader as its weight confirmed his guess.

"Launch the drone!" he barked, and his com officer sent a courier drone streaking through the warp point for the Sarasota fleet base. Whatever happened here, the Federation would know something had happened... and the Terran Federation Navy would do something about it. The corner of one eye watched the drone disappear, but his attention was on the enemy's light dot.

"Come to zero-niner-zero, zero-zero-three! Let's close the range on this b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

The shocked picket cruiser writhed under the attack. The fire's accuracy proved its target had seen it coming, known it was there, and the sheer number of missiles was a dismaying surprise. The first, stunning salvo ripped away its s.h.i.+elds, breached its hull in dozens of places, and irradiated its external missiles into useless junk. The wounded s.h.i.+p belched wreckage and air as the alien vessel sprang into motion, speeding straight for it, but it made no attempt to flee. Instead, it accelerated to meet its foe.

Two missile-armed stars.h.i.+ps charged straight towards one another, their launchers in continuous rapid fire. Kersaint was handicapped by the TFN practice of carrying no antimatter warheads in peacetime lest a fluctuating containment field blow a s.h.i.+p apart. The enemy cruiser was under no such constraint, but at least it seemed to mount only first-generation AMs, not the vastly more destructive second-generation weapons. The range flashed downward, and both s.h.i.+ps staggered as. .h.i.ts got through, but Kersaint's initial salvo had given her a crus.h.i.+ng advantage, and she exploited it savagely. A dozen more of her missiles scored direct hits, lacerating her enemy, in return for only three hits of her own, but the enemy cruiser didn't even try to break off. It came straight for her, and both s.h.i.+ps went to sprint-mode fire as the range fell to five light-seconds. The missiles shrieked in at such high velocities point defense could no longer stop them, and Salvatore Hausman snarled as his s.h.i.+p staggered again and again. But he was winning. He could take the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and then...

His eyes flared suddenly wide as the enemy cruiser altered course once more. It was only a small alteration, but- "Hard a starboard!" he shouted. "Hard a-" A savage fireball glared in the soundless depths of s.p.a.ce as two stars.h.i.+ps met head-on at a closing velocity of.17 c.

The superdreadnoughts were still at extreme missile range when the aliens suddenly stopped advancing. They paused for just an instant, then reversed course, darting back the way they'd come, and the range was too great to stop them.

But it wasn't great enough to let them escape totally unscathed. The superdreadnoughts twitched as they expelled a lethal cloud of external ordnance. A hurricane of fire sizzled towards the enemy, and even as they fired, one of the superdreadnoughts activated a com laser. If there were no mice to be trapped, there was no longer any need to preserve the cheese, and a message flashed out to other cloaked s.h.i.+ps.

A fresh alarm sounded, and Commodore Lloyd Braun looked down into his plot. More icons spangled it - dozens of them strewn across Argive's bow in lethal cl.u.s.ters of crimson. He watched identification codes blink beside them, and his mouth tightened. Not with surprise. Not even with fear. He'd known this was coming, and all he felt was a strange, singing emptiness as the proof appeared.

"I make it ten superdreadnoughts and at least twenty battlecruisers, Sir," Commander Elswick said softly, and he nodded.

"Do you think Captain Cheltwyn got out, Sir?" she asked quietly.

"I don't know, Ursula. I hope so. And he's good. Maybe he did." The commodore looked down into his plot, and his eyes flicked to the six battlecruisers still clinging to his heels. He gazed at them for a long, silent moment, then drew a deep breath.

"Somehow I don't feel much like surrendering," he said almost calmly. He looked up and caught Elswick's eye, and the commander nodded. "All right, then. We can't do much against those big b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in front, but those fellows behind us have been chasing us long enough. Perhaps it's time we let them catch us."

Ursula Elswick simply nodded, then raised her voice. "Allen, launch the Omega drones. Then purge the computers."

"Aye, aye, Sir," the com officer said quietly, and Elswick looked at her astrogator.

"Bring us about, Stu," she said. "We're going down their throats."

Chapter Two.

Storm Wind Rising

Alex Cheltwyn sat stiff and still as his display's lurid damage codes confirmed Commodore Braun's worst suspicions. His sh.e.l.l of recon drones had still been racing outward when the first salvos roared in, and only the extreme range and command datalink had saved his s.h.i.+ps from destruction. His RDs had gotten one good look at the enemy vessels, despite their cloak, before Bremerton fell back to Alpha One. No wonder the initial salvos had been so heavy... and thank G.o.d they'd concentrated on his escorting wars.h.i.+ps!

Survey s.h.i.+ps were intended to evade enemies, but Battle Fleet units were designed to survive the crucible of combat, and Bremerton's battlegroup command net fused all the escorts into a single, multis.h.i.+p ent.i.ty. Their offensive fire functioned in fine-meshed coordination... and so did their active defenses. The Huns were forced to rely solely on their own on-board point defense, but the escorts were able to bring the antimissile firepower of every s.h.i.+p in the net to bear on fire directed against any of them. The Survey s.h.i.+ps had taken heavy damage, despite the relatively light fire targeted on them, but his escorts had survived virtually unscathed. Not, he reflected bitterly, that there hadn't been enough wreck and ruin to go around this b.l.o.o.d.y day.

The gunslingers had covered the Survey s.h.i.+ps' retreat, waiting until all the Huns had made transit back into Alpha One before they followed. All Cheltwyn had been able to do was grit his teeth and take it while he ran, for none of his s.h.i.+pboard weapons, could even engage the enemy. His only long-range offensive power was his light carriers' strikegroups, but thirty-six fighters couldn't possibly have taken out six SDs, and he dared not linger in missile-range of capital s.h.i.+ps to recover them, anyway. Launching them would have sentenced all of their flight crews to death, and so he'd done nothing but run, and he'd never felt so useless in his entire life.

TFNS Ute, the last Survey s.h.i.+p through, had taken a dreadful pounding before she could transit, but worse was waiting when Cheltwyn returned to Alpha One and discovered what had happened to the other Survey s.h.i.+ps he was "protecting." Cheyenne had led the retreat... and run straight into the totally unexpected fire of two light cruisers. The effects of warp transit had put her defenses far below par, and the cloaked CLs' first salvos had come scorching in before she even knew they were there. Their fire had smashed her into an air-streaming hulk and killed two-thirds of her crew, and her sister Sudanese had taken almost as many hits before anyone else could a.s.sist her. Myrmidon and Tutu had at least managed to find the attackers, and, in combination with Callahan, their broadsides had been enough to destroy them, but not before Callahan had been pounded even harder than Sudanese.

Now he sat waiting, hands clenched in ivory-knuckled fists, while his com section worked frantically to sort out the bad news, and the bile of failure burned in his throat. Argive and all her people were gone. If they weren't dead already, they would be soon, and his soul would never forgive him for abandoning her. Now he had four more savagely wounded s.h.i.+ps - s.h.i.+ps he was supposed to protect - and it had been left to the exploration specialists, not their Battle Fleet escorts, to engage the enemy. He knew it wasn't his fault. Neither he nor Commodore Braun had been given any reason to suspect what was coming, and, under the circ.u.mstances, the survival of any of SF 27's units was near miraculous. He knew that... and none of it did a thing to reduce his crus.h.i.+ng sense of guilt.

"Sir?" He looked up as Commander Nauhan appeared beside him. "Cheyenne's a write-off, Skipper," she said. "She's lost all power-can't even blow her fusion plant to scuttle. We think we've gotten everyone off who's still alive, but-"

She shrugged helplessly, and Cheltwyn nodded in bitter understanding. With the cruiser's power down, dozens of people could be trapped in her ruined compartments, and there was no time for systematic rescue efforts.

"Tutu and Ute?" he asked harshly.

"Yard jobs, both of them." Nauhan met his gaze unflinchingly, and he saw the echo of his own pain in her brown eyes. "Tutu's lost her ECM, and Callahan's drive damage is even worse than theirs is. None of them can make more than half speed, Sir."

"d.a.m.n," Cheltwyn whispered. Then he shook himself. Those SDs had to be coming in pursuit, and he had no time for the luxury of grief. "All right, Isis. Tell Chirac, Sergetov, and Ellis to set their scuttling charges and abandon. We'll take them aboard Bremerton and the carriers for now and redistribute later."

"Commander Sergetov is dead, Sir," Nauhan said quietly. "Lieutenant Has.h.i.+moto's a.s.sumed command."

"Has.h.i.+moto?" Cheltwyn stared at her. Arthur Has.h.i.+moto was Tutu's a.s.sistant engineer, ninth in the chain of command. Dear G.o.d in heaven, how heavy had her casualties been?

"I don't care who's in command!" he snapped, and knew his harsh voice gave him the lie even as he spoke. "Just get them aboard!"

"Yes, Sir." Nauhan's reply was carefully expressionless, and he clenched his jaw.

"Bremerton will stand by Cheyenne. As soon as we've got all the survivors transferred, we'll destroy the wreck by fire."

"Yes, Sir. Understood."

"All right." Cheltwyn shoved back in his chair and made himself think. With Argive, Tutu, Cheyenne, and Ute gone, there were only two survey s.h.i.+ps left: Myrmidon and Sudanese. They were thirty percent slower than the escorts, but if the murderous b.a.s.t.a.r.ds beyond that warp point did, indeed, mount commercial drives, they were still a third again faster than the pursuing superdreadnoughts. Adding them to the battlegroup net would slow his wars.h.i.+ps, but he could still stay away from the enemy if he could get out of range in the first place, and neither of them could hope to survive on their own if they didn't get out of range. Besides, he thought bleakly, with Kersaint detached and Callahan abandoned, he had two nice, empty slots to put them in.

"Get Sudanese and Myrmidon plugged into the net," he said heavily, and Nauhan nodded.

"Yes, Sir."

Cheltwyn nodded back, then turned to his tactical officer. "What do we know, Fritz?" he demanded.

"Not much, Skipper," Lieutenant Commander Szno admitted. "From the little data I have, it looked like the Commodore was right. They do seem to mount commercial engines, thank G.o.d. That's about all I can say with any a.s.surance. I can make a few guesses based on the pattern of the engagement, but guesses are all they'll be."

"Call 'em any d.a.m.ned thing you like, but trot them out fast." Cheltwyn's mouth twitched in a bleak parody of a smile, and Szno tugged on an earlobe.

"I'd say we've got the tech edge, Skip. They were firing in three-s.h.i.+p groups, which probably means they don't have command datalink, and that should give us the advantage in any missile engagement. Or -" his smile was as bleak as his CO's "- it would if three superdreadnoughts didn't mount more internal launchers than our entire battlegroup."

"Understood. Is that the only reason you think we've got better tech?"

"No, Sir. This is more speculative, but sensors confirm they used only standard nukes and first-generation antimatter warheads."

Cheltwyn c.o.c.ked his head with a frown, then nodded. "All right," he said. "I think you're onto something there. Anything else?"

"Not really, Sir, and I'm afraid to a.s.sume a bigger edge. Just because we developed systems in a given pattern doesn't mean they've done the same thing. Remember the X-ray laser. The Thebans' general tech base was well behind ours, but we'd never even thought of that one. These people may have surprises of their own."

"Point taken," Cheltwyn grunted, and turned his head as Nauhan reappeared.

"We've gotten everyone we could find off Cheyenne, Sir, and Myrmidon and Sudanese are tied into the net. We should have the last personnel off Callahan, Tutu and Ute in another ten minutes; the small craft are docking with them now."

"Then get us underway. The boats are fast enough to overtake us, and I want as much distance as possible between us and this warp point before the bad guys come through."

"Aye, aye, Sir." Nauhan nodded to Bremerton's astrogator and the tattered survivors of Survey Flotilla 27 and its escorts began to move.

"Do you have lock on Cheyenne, Fritz?" "Aye, Skipper." Szno sounded unhappy, and Cheltwyn didn't blame him. No one liked to destroy one of his own, but they couldn't let that hulk's data or technology fall into enemy hands.

"Destroy her," he said harshly, and the tac officer pressed the firing key. There was no drive field to interdict, and the Survey cruiser's shattered wreck vanished in a sun-bright boil as a single warhead took her dead amids.h.i.+ps. Cheltwyn watched the visual display as Cheyenne died, and his bitter eyes matched the h.e.l.lish glare of her pyre. Then he made himself look away as Nauhan finished pa.s.sing his orders to the small craft evacuating the other three s.h.i.+ps. He beckoned to her and rose from his own chair to glower into the main plot.

"We'll try to run without engaging them, Isis. Fritz thinks we've got a tech advantage, but it's not enough to let us go toe-to-toe with capital s.h.i.+ps."

"Yes, Sir."