Jack Campbell - Guardian

“Yeah. Whoever is driving our ‘chartered’ heavy cruiser is doing a good job.”

The lone heavy cruiser had kept accelerating all out away from the pursuing Syndic cruisers and HuKs while twisting slightly to one side and down in order to put the oncoming missiles into the most difficult possible stern chase. Geary’s eyes went to where the Midway flotilla was swooping in from the side, aiming to intercept the heavy cruisers of the Syndic force that had gone after the lone cruiser. “They’re not faking this at all. They’re going to try to take out those Syndic warships.”

Desjani gave him a sidelong glance. “The Midway ships are outnumbered three to six in heavy cruisers. Having a few light cruisers along won’t compensate for that. If their Kommodor goes straight in, the Midway flotilla will get its butt kicked pretty hard.”

“Probably,” Geary agreed. “Let’s hope she’s smarter than that.” Something else caught his attention, the Dancer ships swinging outward from their last orbit and heading this way. “I wonder what the Dancers are thinking while they watch this.”

“If they’ve been secretly watching us as long as we suspect they have, then they’re probably thinking business as usual for those humans .”

Charban spoke in a thoughtful voice. “There must be many things they still don’t know about us. I feel certain that the Dancers are watching all we do very closely.”

By contrast, Rione sounded amused. “It would be interesting to know their interpretation of what they are seeing right now.”

Geary didn’t answer this time, his eyes once more on a time count scrolling downward. If the Syndic flotilla did not light off their main propulsion in another twenty seconds, Geary’s fleet would be certain to get within firing range before the Syndics could use the hypernet gate to escape.

“He’s not giving himself much margin for error,” Desjani commented. “Even if he— All right. Finally.” She sounded slightly disappointed.

“Main propulsion units have lit off on all Syndic warships,” Lieutenant Castries declared. “They’re accelerating at maximum.”

“They’re cutting it very close,” Desjani said. “I wonder…”

“What?” Geary asked.

“Maybe this isn’t about Boyens’s pride. Maybe he’s trying to tweak us one last time, by staying just barely out of reach and entering the gate just before we can hit him.”

“It’s still a dangerous game. If he cuts it that fine and misses by a hair, he could take a lot of hits.”

His display rippled as a string of updates appeared. “What’s this?”

“Tactical data link from the Midway flotilla,” Desjani said. “I told my systems people not to pass it through in real time but to scrub it and let periodic updates through.”

You’re letting transmissions from a flotilla of former Syndic warships through at all? Geary wondered. But he could see that those tactical links provided some useful information on the readiness state of the Midway warships as well as the single heavy cruiser fleeing the Syndics. That lone heavy cruiser was now identified as the Manticore .

The missiles fired at the Manticore had shifted their own vectors to maintain intercepts after the Manticore accelerated and maneuvered. They were still closing, but the slow relative speed with which they were overtaking Manticore made them good targets for the heavy cruiser’s armament. Geary watched as hell-lance shots slammed into the leading Syndic missiles, knocking out four. That left twenty incoming missiles, though.

Manticore ’s vector altered abruptly as the cruiser’s main propulsion cut out, then her thrusters pitched her up and over, facing back the way she had come. Hell lances from Manticore ’s forward batteries fired on the still-pursuing missiles as the heavy cruiser’s bow pointed toward them, but the ship’s movement continued away from the missiles.

I know this maneuver. The next thing to happen will be…

Manticore ’s main propulsion flared to life at maximum, now braking the heavy cruiser’s velocity. The oncoming missiles could not slow their own speed quickly enough, instead using maneuvering thrusters at maximum to try to claw around fast enough to still manage intercepts as their closing speed grew rapidly, and Manticore got closer a lot faster than the missiles had planned for.

Missile vectors swung wildly, sliding past the oncoming shape of Manticore , stresses on the missile structures causing many of the weapons to come apart in mid–vector change. The missiles that survived the radical change in course were burning their remaining fuel off trying to match Manticore ’s movement, which caused them to come to a near stop relative to Manticore . That made them perfect targets.

The six surviving missiles blew up as hell lances stabbed through them.

“You’re not supposed to try that maneuver with anything bigger than a light cruiser,” Geary commented.

“That must be prewar doctrine,” Desjani said. “I’ve done it with a battle cruiser. So has Bradamont. She must be showing those former Syndics how to really drive ships.”

With Manticore now slowing, the vectors of all the other forces near the hypernet gate were angling in toward the gate. Boyens, with his sole battleship and four light cruisers, was accelerating toward the gate at the lumbering pace which was the best a battleship could manage. Geary’s much-larger formation was bearing down on Boyens, but the projected intercept point with the Syndic flotilla was just past the gate. If Boyens kept accelerating at his current pace, he would get away just before Geary’s force closed to firing range.

The six heavy cruisers and ten HuKs that Boyens had detached to chase Kraken had come over and about and were now angling back to meet up with the battleship a few minutes prior to the entire flotilla’s reaching the gate.

And the Midway flotilla was coming in from almost the opposite side as Geary’s formation, aiming to hit the Syndic heavy cruisers before they could join with the rest of Boyens’s flotilla.

Not the simplest situation, with five different groupings of ships belonging to three different players near the gate, but far from being too complex to get his mind around. As long as the Syndics keep their vectors steady, all I really need to worry about now is whether Kommodor Marphissa is going to stage a senseless charge into a force that outnumbers her two to one. Should I—

Geary jerked in surprise as one of the Syndic light cruisers blew up. “What the hell happened?”

So surprised was everyone on the bridge that it took close to three seconds for anyone to reply.

“There have been no weapons fired at that light cruiser,” Lieutenant Yuon said.

“It just blew up?” Desjani asked sharply.

“It wasn’t hit by any weapon we could see,” Lieutenant Yuon insisted. “They’re still well out of range of us and the Midway flotilla, and none of the Syndic ships near it fired.”

“Could it be something the Midway flotilla did? A drifting mine?” Desjani questioned.

Lieutenant Castries answered. “Our sensors indicate it was an internal explosion, Captain. Not external. It couldn’t have been a mine.”

“Captain,” Lieutenant Yuon said, “we’re picking up indications consistent with a power core overload. But our systems also say there weren’t any warning indications, no signs that the power core on that ship was having problems. It just blew.”

“No hits and no indications of problems,” Desjani mused as she tapped an internal comm control. “Chief engineer, can a power core blow without sending out signs of instability that we could detect?”