Guardsmen Of Tomorrow Part 2

"Helm, we're feeding you transit course corrections."

"Aye, sir. Got 'em."

"Sails furled," Pardoe said. "Vessel ready in all respects for transit."

"Punch it!"

Indeterminacy dropped into the singularity, in a sense swallowing herself whole. At the last moment, the helm used the singularity's intense gravity to bend the frigate's course slightly, adjusting her heading as she dropped into utter strangeness...

... and reemerged, a fractional blink of an eye later.

A scant light-minute ahead, huge in the magnified display, Kaden hung in orange, ice-capped splendor.

Hazzard's commands crackled through the s.h.i.+pnet. "Deploy full sail! All back! Is.h.i.+, dump V into the drive fields!..."

Like the Victor at Tribaltren Station, the Indeterminacy was now barreling into the fray with far too much velocity. Much could be dumped as energy fed directly into the drive fields, expanding them across well over a hundred kilometers of empty s.p.a.ce where it could actually be applied to braking the s.h.i.+p's headlong plunge forward. Still, V could be translated into energy only so quickly. By the time they neared Kaden, they would still be moving too quickly to engage the enemy vessels.

"Mr. Is.h.i.+wara," Hazzard said. "I want you to stand by on the drive controls. We're going to pop our fields out full as we round the planet."

"The fields are already extended all the way, Captain." The larger the volume of Indeterminacy's s.p.a.ce-warping wake, the more velocity could be safely dumped.

"I know. We're going to pull an anchor drag."

He heard the pause, as loud as a shout, as the engineer digested this. "Sir..."

"Do it. Planetary encounter in... twenty-eight seconds, now."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Hazzard took a last look at the Indy's alignment with the fast-growing planet and the squadron battle ahead. This was going to be d.a.m.ned tight...

"Strike all sails," he ordered. "Smartly now! Helm... you're on thrusters, now. Hang on to her! She's going to buck!"

Swiftly, as rats and spiders swarmed through the rigging, Indeterminacy's spread of sails collapsed, folded, and vanished, furling into their storage lockers on mast and spar."All hands below!" Hazzard ordered. He didn't want to lose anyone with this maneuver... though that was a fairly forlorn hope. What he was trying to do was not exactly recommended in Yardley's Book of C-Mans.h.i.+p. "Set s.h.i.+p for close pa.s.sage!"

Constellations of points of light flowed down the rigging and masts, vanis.h.i.+ng into Indy's below-deck s.p.a.ces. Slowly, now, the yards were folding, the masts telescoping down their own lengths, truncating themselves to reduce the possibility of crippling damage from tidal effects or-don't think about the possibility!-drive field failure.

There wasn't time for a full close-pa.s.sage deployment. They were going to take some damage here, in another few seconds. The question was... how much?

As Indeterminacy had approached Kaden over the course of the past few minutes, the s.h.i.+p's display computers had been steadily recalculating magnification factors and redisplaying the view forward.

Hazzard noted with a small kick of surprise that the magnification factor was down to one, that the planet now filling his mental view ahead was as it really was outside the all-too-thin walls of Indeterminacy's hull. They were crossing the terminator now, swinging low across the white and orange curve of the world into day-side. He could sense the growing tug of gravity... though far, far too weak to capture the frigate at her current velocity of over ten percent of the speed of light itself.

Ahead, close along the equator, just south of the mo-tionlessly sprawled swirl of a tropical storm, lay the ragged, mountainous thrust of the Dalacradak Peninsula, thrusting out from the eastern coast of Alekred and into the violet-blue, cloud-dappled reaches of the Zurkeded Ocean like a Valosian scimitar, straight at the hilt, wickedly curved at the tip, Cape Zhadurg. G.o.ddess! He could see the big guns of the PDS firing up ahead, each discharge like a straight-line bolt of lightning stabbing into s.p.a.ce from the wrinkled, snow-capped barrenness of the mountains as they smoothly rolled over the horizon and into view.

"Captain?" It was cy-Tomlin, the bridge team's Starlord-in-training. "We're not supposed to fire on the Irdikads!" He sounded outraged. "Especially not their planet!"

"As you were, Mid," Pardoe said.

"I'm not about to fire on them," Hazzard explained gently. "I'm about to make a mistake..."

"Sir?"

Hazzard smiled to himself. Starlords might have all the advantages with their hardwired personal technology, but they were hampered, sometimes, by an almost desperate need to play by the rules.

Rules that, sometimes, could be bent...

"Alt.i.tude three hundred two kilometers," the helmsman reported. "Now two fifty-five kilometers. One hundred eighty-one... One hundred seven..."

"I can read the alt.i.tude data, Mr. Sotheby, thank you. Bring us up just a bit, plus zero-two."

Maneuvering thrusters, fueled by water from the s.h.i.+p's forward tank, imparted a scant few kilos of thrust, amplified by the drives. Hazzard was completely focused now on the dance of numbers- Indeterminacy'& heading, alt.i.tude, dwindling velocity...

Ahead, almost below now, the big guns kept firing, hurling pinpoints of dazzling sunlight into the tangle of star-sailing vessels ahead. Decider had just taken several more hits, as microsingularities from both the planet and the P'aaseni smashed through drive barriers, sails, and hull with equal ease, savaging armor plate, splintering bulwarks, slas.h.i.+ng through the deep-buried vitals of a dying s.h.i.+p."Captain!" Is.h.i.+wara's voice said. "We're dragging upper atmosphere. Contact with the surface in five seconds... four..."

"All hands!" Pardoe called. "Brace for impact!"

Even empty s.p.a.ce has substance, on the quantum level, the eleven-dimensional structure of emptiness sometimes called the fabric of s.p.a.ce-time, the stuff a stars.h.i.+p's drive fields grab hold of during maneuvers and acceleration. Now, though, the interface surface of Indeterminacy^ drive field was intersecting solid rock as the frigate hurtled low across the Kadenese surface. At low velocity, s.p.a.ce would bend, gravity-like, with no noticeable effect. At several percent of the speed of light, Indy's current velocity, the fringe effects of a drive field dragging through unyielding rock...

There were... effects.

Indeterminacy slowed, first of all, decelerating sharply and for free at tens of thousands of gravities, though the drive field kept the velocity change uniform and unfelt aboard... fortunately for the men and women belowdecks.

On the surface, solid rock flexed... warped... then snapped as stress points were reached and surpa.s.sed.

The interface shock wave dragged along the Dalacradak Peninsula well astern of the hurtling stars.h.i.+p, visible from s.p.a.ce as a frothy white V arrowing across land and sea alike. The south face of Gadeddej Mountain shuddered, shouldering slightly skyward, then collapsed, a thundering, booming detonation of rock avalanching into the Drudep Valley below, carrying with it the bristling array of deep-s.p.a.ce sensor antenna and wave guide towers mounted there.

The shock wave boomed across Egezhur Bay, slammed into the Drugid Cliffs, and hit the Razurig defense facility like an oncoming storm wall straight from the depths of h.e.l.l. The main gun turret, its muzzle c.o.c.ked at a point in the sky above the eastern horizon, tipped crazily, spun, then shredded under the impact of fast-moving discontinuous s.p.a.ce. The military garrison town of Krebur vanished as buildings shook themselves to pieces in the seismic quake rolling along behind the storm front. Mount Gadez, long dormant, awakened as its lava plug shattered and long-pent energies deep within the crust were catastrophically released.

The close pa.s.sage, as Indeterminacy''s wake lightly brushed the planet's surface, lasted less than three seconds. As the frigate arrowed now back into the interplanetary' depths of the Kaden system, the planet receding astern showed evidence of the ferocity of that encounter. The shock wave continued to ripple east across the Zurkeded Ocean, though with fast-fading force. Storm clouds were gathering in white-swirling fury above the peninsula, and Mount Gadez glowed in the depths of its fast-expanding cloud of dark gray volcanic ash.

And every one of the planetary defense batteries on the Dalacradak Peninsula, from Razurig to Cape Zhadurg, was silent now, lost in the pall of the gathering storm.

Aboard the Indeterminacy, all was darkness, chaos, and confusion. Despite the insulating effects of the drive fields, the shock of the planetary close encounter had wracked and twisted the frigate, knocking vital systems off-line, including the s.h.i.+pnet itself. Hazzard blinked into a smoky darkness filled with screams and yells and the intermittent flare of small electrical fires. Circuit breakers had tripped, knocking whole s.h.i.+p sections off the power grid; in some places, power feeds had arced, melting circuits and fuses and setting fires. Damage control robots swarmed like spidery hands, weird shadows against the flames, and Hazzard caught the acrid stink of burning insulation and fire-smothering kaon gas.Terror clawed at the back of his brain, but he fought down both the panic and the urge to unstrap from his jack-rack. Either full power would be restored in a moment... or the Indeterminacy, blind and helpless, would drift into the squadron melee, a crippled target. Either way, there was nothing he could do at the moment to change things, nothing to do but wait and pray that automated DC systems would bring the s.h.i.+p back to life.

It was always the waiting that was the worst.

At least he had awakened. In s.h.i.+p-to-s.h.i.+p combat, between vessels crewed by the disembodied uploads of men and women into the machines that handled the sails and fired the guns, the danger was not so much outright death, though that possibility was real enough, as it was the possibility that the data linkages between your mind within a machine and your comatose body might be abruptly broken. In one sense, your mind did not actually leave your body; the remote spider or rigging rat crawler was no more than an extension of your sensory organs, not of your brain.

Still, too many minds were destroyed when the machinery failed, in the crippling trauma of dissociation.

When the s.h.i.+pnet had gone off-line, most of the officers and crew had reawakened on their jackracks.

Most...

Hazzard, like most c-men, dreaded insanity more than outright death.

At least this time, he'd come through okay. But next time- Light, life, motion, sensation flooded his brain, replacing the fire-shot blackness of the jackrack deck as the s.h.i.+p-net came back on-line. The damage... the damage was bad, though arguably not as bad as it could have been. Indeterminacy was in a slow tumble, falling away from Kaden's orange-and-white disk at 29,000 kph-a slow-drifting crawl by interplanetary standards. Her dorsal fore and mainmasts, her port mizzen, her starboard mizzen, main, and foremasts were gone, snapped off by the violence of their close pa.s.sage. Wreckage-the shards and tangle of splintered masts and shredded rigging-trailed alongside, threatening to fur-ther cripple the vessel as her spin fouled the remaining masts and spars.

"Get that wreckage cut away!" he yelled into the confusion of the net. "Helm! Get this tumble under control!"

Ahead, less than a hundred thousand kilometers distant now, four ornately decorated P'aaseni wars.h.i.+ps were moving into line-ahead for an intercept, the lead vessel the Gilaadessera, a seventy-five-gun s.h.i.+p of the line. Her sails spread slowly, catching the outwind of the local sun, their lead surfaces adazzle in s.h.i.+fting, light show display. It was a race now, between those oncoming wars.h.i.+ps and Indeterminacy''s damage control parties, s.h.i.+p handlers, and machines.

Hazzard glanced astern, at the slowly receding, slowly tumbling disk of the planet. "Make a signal to Kaden," he told cy-Tomlin. "Put it in all of their major dialects. Tell them... tell them, 'Sorry for the miscalculation. I guess we cut that one too close!'"

"Do you think they'll believe our brus.h.i.+ng them that way was an accident?" Pardoe asked.

Hazzard gave a mental shrug. "It gives both sides a bit of something to save face with," he replied. "And at least we stopped those d.a.m.ned guns!"

"I hope the Admiralty sees it that way, sir."

"Skek the Admiralty!" The curse was more bitter than he'd intended. "They're not here!"

Bursts of plasma from Indy's maneuvering thrusters slowed, then arrested the s.h.i.+p's spin. A large tangleof wreckage-remnants of the entire starboard mast array-broke free a moment later, imparting a slight yaw to port.

"Helm! Don't correct that!" Hazzard snapped. "Let them think we're still helpless!"

The port yaw was turning the Indy relative to the oncoming enemy line, bringing her dorsal gun deck around.

Naval tactics were dictated by the physics of s.h.i.+p handling and the nature of s.h.i.+p design. Vast arrays of sails and rigging forward and astern meant that a wars.h.i.+p's guns- all but her relatively small bow and stern chasers-faced outward, abeam. The wooden wars.h.i.+ps that had sailed the oceans of ancient Earth four thousand years before had adopted tactics quite similar to these, shaped by the cold hand of physics.

"Port roll," Hazzard ordered. "Dorsal guns, run out! Fire as you bear!"

In those long-vanished sailing vessels at the dawn of history, s.h.i.+pboard guns had used charges of exploding chemical powder to impel spherical lumps of inert metal across hundreds of meters of open sea. Aboard Indeterminacy, guns used magnetic fields to launch artificially generated micro-singularities across far greater gulfs of empty s.p.a.ce. Indy's largest guns were 32s, each accelerating a thirty-two-kilogram ma.s.s, compressed to a volume rivaling that of a single proton, to a velocity of nearly twenty percent of c.

Along the checkered surface of Indeterminacy'$ dorsal gun deck, hatches swung open and the blunt, black muzzles of the singularity launchers snubbed forth. They fired, the ma.s.sive, rippling broadside slamming the frigate sideways in hammering recoil, the dead hand of Isaac Newton rocking them back in all the fury of his Third Law. Indy's drive fields absorbed much of the recoil, and the ma.s.sive shock absorbers housing each of her guns dissipated much of the rest. Still, the effect of a broadside on those aboard the vessel was one of jolting, thundering power barely contained by the drive fields.

Hazzard felt the lurch and rumble, driven to the core of his being.

Indy's first broadside struck home.

"Maintain port roll!" he called. "Starboard deck, roll out! Fire as you bear!"

A s.h.i.+p's drive field could be fluttered, distorting s.p.a.ce enough to bend laser and particle beams safely clear of the vessel... or to crumple and shred the electronics of any missile, or the fusing of an incoming explosive warhead. Microsingularities, however, smaller than an atomic nucleus and moving at velocities only slightly less than relativistic, tended to slide through a field's fringe interference effect, and the damage they wreaked on the target came not from exploding warheads, but from the simple kinetic destruction wrought by high-velocity ma.s.s.

Like the s.h.i.+pboard guns of an earlier era, Indeterminacy's singularity cannon pounded away at the lead P'aaseni s.h.i.+p, puncturing main courses, jibs, and tops'ls, slamming home into her ornately painted prow.

Where most Union wars.h.i.+p prows were broad, flattened domes, fifty meters or more across, P'aaseni vessels bore cl.u.s.ters of twelve spherical water tanks, held together by gilded frames that gave them the look of bizarre baskets of fruit. Each impact blew glittering bits of hull metal, basket loads of sc.r.a.p, and gus.h.i.+ng white plumes of escaping steam, crystallizing almost at once into frost-gleaming clouds of ice-fog.

Every stars.h.i.+p carried a small lake in its prow storage tank-water for the crew's use, for use as fuel in the fusion reactors, and reaction ma.s.s for the thrusters. Storing the water in a prow tank provided protection from particulate radiation when the s.h.i.+p was at near-c velocities.Indeterminacy'?, broadside had holed at least half of Gil-aadessera 's tanks. Water exposed to hard vacuum expanded quickly, turning to steam... then condensed almost immediately into ice crystals. In another moment, Gilaadessera was wreathed in fog as water gushed from savage rents in the storage tanks. As Indy's second broadside tore into the enemy vessel, high-speed microsingularity rounds scratched dazzling blue threads of light through the ice-fog.

More debris spilled into s.p.a.ce, mixed with the gush of frozen atmosphere. The Gilaadessera was hurt, and badly.

Indeterminacy continued her roll, bringing her port side guns to bear, loosing a third broadside with devastating accuracy. One of Gilaadessera's bowsprits and foremasts collapsed in a tangle of broken spars and whiplas.h.i.+ng, severed rigging. A moment later, the main mast on that side followed, crumpling under the deadly barrage.

But the big P'aaseni vessel was yawing now to bring her own guns to bear. Worse, the three light rates in her van were moving past her now, accelerating beyond her debris cloud, angling for a clear shot. They would pa.s.s astern of the Indeterminacy within another two minutes.

And the Indy had fired all three broadsides. It took time to reload; the power requirements for readying a singularity and launching it at the target were enormous, and a naval gun could simply not cycle faster than a shot every three or four minutes. All guns were being reloaded, but it would be another two minutes before the dorsal gun deck was ready for another broadside.

And in that time...

"For what we are about to receive," Tommis Pardoe said, speaking an ironic prayer from the days of wooden s.h.i.+ps on water oceans, "may we be truly thankful..."

"Not bad, all in all," Sotheby added. "Three broadsides, and not a shot in reply!" He sobered. "Too bad we're half crippled, though, or we could keep the dance going!"

Hazzard ignored the byplay. "Helm! Bring us right fifteen degrees, down minus five," he said. "Take us in closer!" If they could swing beneath the enormous Gilaadessera's shattered prow, they could continue to pound the line battle-s.h.i.+p and perhaps find some protection from her consorts' fire.

The s.h.i.+p of the line began firing as soon as the first of the guns on her port gun deck could be brought to bear. Holes, neat punctures, appeared in Indy's portside forecourse and mains'l, which were still just in the process of deploying. A jarring shudder ran through the s.h.i.+pnet imagery as singularities slammed into the s.h.i.+p's hull, smas.h.i.+ng through her prow. Her dorsal bowsprit shattered under an impact, debris spinning back, colliding with rigging, knocking off a port main spar.

More hits, more shudders. Indeterminacy lurched to port, tumbling again. Sotheby was firing the maneuvering thrusters almost constantly now, fighting the s.h.i.+p, trying to maintain both control and way.

The frigate continued drifting ahead, her straight-line course carrying her along just slightly faster than the ponderous Gilaadessera could turn. As Indy's gun decks reported ready to fire one after the other, Hazzard ordered all decks to commence general firing.

More rounds struck home, sending deck-wrenching shudders through the Union vessel, and now some of the rounds were coming from the stem quarter, as the lead P'aaseni frigate cleared the Gilaadessera and brought her guns to bear. One of /m/y's stem cooling vanes tore free, fluttering away into night end over end. Her dorsal mizzen shuddered, twisted in its mounting, and then tore free, the shriek of shredding metal echoing through the frigate's manned s.p.a.ces, loudly enough that the sound crossed the jacking barrier and was heard by the men within the virtual environment of the s.h.i.+pnet. A scattering ofgolden sparks-tele-operated spiders bearing the minds of Indy's dorsal mizzen sail handlers-spilled into emptiness.

G.o.ddess, bring their minds back safely...

There was nothing to be done beyond the minor comfort of prayer, and no time even for that. Seven rounds slammed into the gun deck section, ripping out bulkheads, upending guns.

Ferocious and Swiff were attempting to join Indeterminacy now, though they were badly damaged.

The Swift bore only three masts now, one on each deck, while little Ferocious had only a single foremast left, thrusting out from her starboard deck with a single tops'I filled.

The remaining two enemy s.h.i.+ps appeared to be concentrating on the crippled Decider, closing with her in order to board.

"Make to Ferocious and Swift" Hazzard said. "Tell them to bear clear and make for the out-system rendezvous."

A moment later-"Ferocious and Swift both say they're too badly damaged for transit, Captain. Both say they're going to stay and fight it out."

d.a.m.n. Indeterminacy's sacrifice was going to be in vain. He'd hoped that by making the microjump, he could distract the P'aaseni forces long enough for Decider, Swift, and Ferocious, at least, to make their escape. Fire Angel, he saw, was beyond hope, her hull wrecked and glowing with savage, blue-white heat.

And it now appeared as though all three s.h.i.+ps, and Indeterminacy as well, were going to be in a similar condition within the next few minutes.

Indeterminacy loosed a long, rippling broadside from her dorsal guns, round after round slamming into the inert hulk of the huge Gilaadessera, her leaking, fog-wreathed prow now less than three hundred kilometers abeam. Indy's port-side guns were engaging the Thaspasin, a thirty-three-gun P'aaseni frigate, while her starboard guns dueled with the s.h.i.+p of the line crowded up alongside the Decider.

Another broadside struck home aboard the Union frigate.

Her port foremast was snapped in two, halfway out, and tumbled away, cordage spinning. She could barely crowd on enough sail to maintain acceleration, now, and she was in immediate danger of losing all maneuvering way.

"Captain, port lookout. I think... I think they're getting ready to board. I see boarding pods on their foredeck."

Pardoe's s.h.i.+pnet image looked at him, the man's long face drawn and tight. "It was a good run, sir. I didn't think we'd make it this far."

"I'd hoped to give the squadron a chance to escape," he said. "I guess I miscalculated after all."

He was facing that bitterest of moments in any s.h.i.+p captain's career, the moment when he knows he can fight no longer and must surrender to an overwhelmingly more powerful foe.

"Bridge! Dorsal lookout! Highs.p.a.ce entry point forming, at one-three-eight, plus two-five! We have incoming vessels!"G.o.ddess! More P'aaseni?...