Chapter Thirty-Nine
Corvette J’axon’s Revenge, off R’Bak
“We’re almost out of missiles,” the tactical officer said. “Before much longer, we’ll be down to just lasers and railguns.”
“And at that point, we’ll work on a different formation,” Targ said. “Until then, keep hitting them as they approach. They’re out of missiles, too, most of them, so we don’t have to worry about that.”
“What about if they finally organize and rush us en masse?”
“Then we will maneuver away from them. Do you seriously think that bunch of dirt-pounders can catch us if we don’t want to be caught?”
“Of course not,” the tactical officer said, with a bit of hurt pride. “Still, without more missiles, this is going to take longer than it has to.”
“If nothing else,” Targ said with a chuckle, “we have plenty of fuel to escape them if we decide to leave.” He indicated a couple of Kulsian ships at the periphery of the plot. “They’re out of fuel. There’s going to be a lot of salvage for us after this battle.” He smiled. “And the longer it goes on, there will be more and more Kulsians who run out of fuel. Those ships will be easy to pick up in a few days.”
“But wouldn’t it be more efficient to finish them now?” the tactical officer asked, using one of Bowden’s favorite words. “We’ll have to chase some of them to the outer system to recover their ships.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“The reserve force isn’t doing anything, and they have full missile loads. If they came in now, it would break the spirit of the Kulsians and would finish them off more quickly.”
Targ stared at the plot for a few moments, looking for flaws in the argument. He didn’t see any. In fact, he was disappointed that he hadn’t come up with the strategy himself. He smiled. “I think you’re right. It’s time to end this.”
Corvette Taregon’s Pride, off R’Bak
“Taregon’s Pride, J’axon’s Revenge.”
Reetan’s ears perked up. He’d become absorbed in watching the battle on the plot. Some of Targ’s maneuvers were nothing short of “inspired,” and he wondered how things would have been different if Bowden was still in the fight. He didn’t see how things could have gone much better . . . and they certainly could have gone a lot worse.
“J’axon’s Revenge, Taregon’s Pride. Go ahead.”
“Hey, Reetan, how about a little help here? Some of our ships are starting to run low on missiles, and we could use some fresh ships. If you were to join us now, I think we could break the spirit of the Kulsians.”
Reetan surveyed the battle on his tactical plot. More of the Kulsians were turning around to make a run on the Hound-Dog formation, but not enough that he thought the Kulsians would actually overwhelm them. Get in some blows? Maybe . . . but the battle appeared won unless Targ did something grossly stupid. Not impossible, but unlikely, based on what Reetan had seen so far.
While he watched, another of the Kulsian corvettes dropped out of the link as it was pounded to scrap by three of the corvettes under Malanye Raptis’s control. It had gone exactly as Bowden had told them—they didn’t need to have more ships than the Kulsians, if they could use the tactical knowledge given to them by the Dornaani microsats to achieve local superiority.
It was a game of maneuver and maintaining that local superiority, and, so far, J’axon was winning it. Throwing in Reetan’s five ships wouldn’t vastly change the state of play, although he could pick off some of the ones at the back of the formation that looked like they were holding out to see which way the battle was going to go, before recommitting themselves to the attack. If things continued to go against them, they’d probably run. But, if Reetan’s reserve force swooped in from behind them, there’d be nowhere for them to run to; they would be forced to fight. To hear the SpinDogs who’d been down to the planet tell it, there was nothing that fought harder than a cornered batang.
Bowden had a saying about not sticking your private parts into a meat grinder; if he were to hit the formation from behind, he might very well be doing that, and to very little gain.
“Sorry, Targ, but it looks like you have the battle in hand. The glory for this battle is yours—as it should be. We will continue to monitor it, but for now, it doesn’t look like you need our assistance.”
“Roger, out,” Targ replied, sounding a little annoyed, and Reetan smiled. There really wasn’t much else Targ could say. He really didn’t need Reetan’s support, after all; he just wanted it to make his life easier. And, when it came right down to it, Targ would bask in the glow of the accolades at the end of the fight, a prospect that would advance his cause mightily among the SpinDog Families. Assuming he didn’t fuck it up, as Dave Fiezel warned them while doing simulators.
Having decided his services were not immediately needed, he went back to monitoring the battle as he had told Targ he was going to, and as Bowden had instructed him. As Bowden had explained, Aegis was the shield of the gods, and the forces in the battle were the Aegis for their people on the habs. Every good warrior needed a shield, though, and Reetan was the shield of the forces in battle—the Aegis’s Aegis, as it were. It was his job to sit in overwatch and ensure nothing snuck up on them that would turn the battle.
He broadened out the link picture to see if anything was sneaking up on Targ by going around the planet. After a moment, he shrugged. If there was someone sneaking up on Targ, they were doing it so quietly that the satellites hadn’t noticed their presence.
As he re-centered the picture around his location, though, he twitched back in surprise. “Hey, Stellan,” he said to his tactical officer. “What are these ships?” He pointed to two groups of ships approaching the asteroids in which Outpost was hidden. Somehow, the ships had snuck around behind him—the person who was supposed to be watching for just that sort of thing. “They can’t be ours, can they?”
“No,” Stellan replied. “Ours are all engaged in the fight, except for the four with us . . . and there are more than four there.”
“I see that,” Reetan replied with a growl. Frustrated and knowing he had little time—the ships were almost to Outpost—he rewound the scenario as Bowden had shown he could do with the technology. He tracked the ships back in time to where they’d split off from the Kulsian fleet at about the time the frigate had gone charging off after Bowden.
Everyone had been so focused on the frigate, they hadn’t watched the fleet, and no one had missed them when their attention returned to the fleet for the battle to come. By that point, the task force approaching Outpost was already gone.
Reetan stared at the plot with one question in mind: Why? Why had they split off all of a sudden and gone on a direct course to Outpost? They couldn’t have known it was there, could they? While he had no idea how the Kulsians had known about Outpost, there was no reason for the ships to be headed in that direction if they hadn’t. None. A cold shiver went down his back.
Somehow—and it didn’t matter how—but somehow, the Kulsians had found Outpost. And they were on their way to destroy it.
In an instant, he knew this was the possibility of which Bowden had spoken—the one thing that would allow the Kulsians to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Their frigate was destroyed, and their fleet was soon to be nothing more than next week’s meteor showers in R’Bak’s sky, but the Kulsians were going to win, because they were going to kill all the Hound-Dogs’ leadership, including all the Lost Soldiers who were in the forward operating base, helping to manage the battle.
And, having allowed such a thing to happen, none of the locals—neither the SpinDogs nor the RockHounds—would trust each other or the Lost Soldiers . . . ever again. Things would go back to the way they were, with the Kulsians exerting their dominion over everyone in the system.
Reetan was tired of living in fear of them, and—having been given the most important task of the whole battle by Bowden—he was not going to fail in his mission.
“All ships,” Reetan called over the frequency his squadron was using. “Max thrust. Outpost is under attack, and we have to save them.”
FOB “Outpost,” spinward Trojans of R’Bak
“What the hell did Reetan just say?” Dave Fiezel asked.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Specialist Steve Wisniewski said.
“Are you listening to the Reserve Squadron comms channel?”
“No. I don’t think so, sir. There’s nothing going on with them, so I turned it off. They were just talking about stupid shit, and it was getting annoying.”
“Well, here’s something really annoying: Reetan just told them to go to max thrust because Outpost is under attack.”
“We’re not under attack. I think we’d know if we were under attack, sir.”
“Why would they think we were, then, if we are not?”
Fiezel took control of the tactical plot and re-centered it around Outpost. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath as the picture re-built.
Wisniewski was louder. “Where the hell did those guys come from?” he exclaimed, pointing at the two groups of ships making a beeline toward them.
Beyond the Kulsians and off to the side, the Reserve Squadron was streaking in, but they had a lot of space to cross, and the Kulsians were almost upon them.
“Doesn’t matter; they’re almost here!” Fiezel said. He looked around; a number of people were already looking at them due to Wisniewski’s outburst, but he raised his voice so all would hear. “Everyone! There are Kulsian raiders who are almost upon us. We have to go dark and quiet. Let everyone on the habitat know.”
Corvette Taregon’s Pride, off R’Bak
“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Reetan asked.
“Sure,” his pilot said. “How fast would you like to go screaming past them?”
Reetan growled, although he knew the pilot was right. He hadn’t really wanted an answer to the question; he was just voicing his frustration at having failed. He’d been given the most important part of the plan—according to Bowden, anyway—and he had failed. The only good thing out of Bowden’s death at the hands of the frigate—if indeed Bowden was dead—was that Reetan wouldn’t have to explain his failure to Bowden and endure his shame. Several weeks ago, he never would have thought that meeting and exceeding Bowden’s standards was a goal to be sought after, but, somehow, along the way, it had become one.
And he had failed.
No, he saw as he continued to watch the plot, he hadn’t failed yet, although he was going to have to endure a lot more personal danger—for both himself and his squadron—in order to avoid doing so. He chuckled to himself at the irony. The very thing he had railed against Bowden for—potentially throwing away the lives of RockHounds—he was now going to do intentionally. And willingly, too, when it came right down to it.
Bowden, if you could only see me now.
There were four major asteroids in the loose cluster, and their one chance was that, even though the Kulsians knew there was a habitation in the asteroids, Reetan doubted they knew exactly which asteroid it was on, so they would probably have to take a little time to figure it out. They probably wouldn’t just come in and waste missiles indiscriminately on the asteroids; they would only want to target the one with the people on it. They might even want to negotiate with them for their surrender.
If so, there was an opportunity to strike them from behind, with minimal losses to his force. Even if the Kulsians didn’t negotiate first, they still had a chance. It was far riskier to himself and his forces, but that was a chance he was willing to take.
Kulsian corvette Pillager, near R’Bak
“Did Barogar say which of the asteroids was the one with the rogue group on it?” the navigator asked.
“No,” Marksa said. “He failed to mention that before his untimely death.”
“There are four asteroids large enough to support people,” the navigator said. “How do you want me to prioritize them?”
“Well, we’re almost out of fuel, and I have no intention of joining the slaughter that’s going on. We need to take care of this as quickly as possible so we can escape to the planet before . . . whoever that is comes looking for us, too.” He pursed his lips. “The quickest way to do this is to have someone fire a missile at each of them to see what happens. I suspect that when the rogues find out that we’re here, they’ll contact us quickly to prevent us from wiping them out.”
“Do you want me to fire on them?” the tactical officer asked.
“And waste our missiles?” Marksa laughed. “Not hardly. We’ll be lucky to turn a profit at all with this fiasco, much less if we go spending missiles for no real reason other than expediency. Tell Stanax to have each of the ships in his group fire a missile at one of them.”
FOB “Outpost,” spinward Trojans of R’Bak
The room exploded into action as people ran out the door, while others used the habitat’s communications systems to warn Outpost’s inhabitants of the imminent attack. Interior pressure doors were shut, and exterior systems were checked to ensure they were off. Hangar bay doors were closed and left in vacuum in case of breach. As the Kulsians approached, there were no exterior signs that anyone was inside the asteroid.
Fiezel hoped.
The Kulsians slowed as they approached the asteroids. Fiezel had no idea how the Kulsians were aware of their presence, but they wouldn’t have sent ten ships to the area without a really good reason. Perhaps there was a snoop satellite in the area that had caught some of their comms; that might have caused this reaction. The Kulsians stopped just short of the asteroids.
“They don’t know which one we’re on,” Fiezel muttered.
“Shall we fire on them with the railgun?” the SpinDog charged with the defense of the station asked.
“No!” Fiezel exclaimed, sharper than he meant to. A hush had fallen over the operations center, and his outburst caused everyone to look at him. In a hushed whisper—more appropriate to the environment—he added, “They don’t know where we are, and we don’t want to give our position away.”
The SpinDog was a mixture of anger and frustration. He wasn’t sure of what he wanted to do, but he wanted to do something! Fiezel chuckled to himself. A couple of months ago, all the Hound-Dogs had wanted to do was run and hide. Now, when the situation actually called for hiding, they wanted to mix it up with the enemy fleet. It was funny how times—and people—changed.
When the SpinDog continued to stare at him while tapping a toe on the ground, Fiezel finally took pity on him and explained his rationale. “Reetan and his squadron are coming. Why don’t we let them do what they’re here for—our defense—rather than getting into a fight with ten armed corvettes, when all we have is a single railgun, and one that’s been modified for package delivery, not war.”
“That makes sense,” the man said.
“It does,” Fiezel said with a smile.
“God damn,” Wisniewski breathed, looking up from the plot. “They’re firing at us.”