“What the hell was that?” Geary whispered.
Captain Desjani bared her teeth. “A null-field. It does exactly what the name says, temporarily nullifying the strong force that holds atoms together.”
“You’re joking.”
“No.” She pointed at the remains of the HuK. “Inside the null-field, atomic bonds fail. Matter simply falls apart.”
Geary stared at her, then at the display. Matter. Matter making up a ship, and matter making up its crew. Falling apart and gone. Not just dead, but vanished into nothing. “Does every ship have one of those null-fields?”
“No. Just the capital ships, and not all of them.” Desjani’s fierce grin faded. “They’re fairly new, short range, and they take a long time to recharge. I know why he fired it when he did. It was the only way to stop that HuK. But he may not get off another shot from it, and I doubt any Syndic capital ships will let him get close enough to nail them.”
“Can a shield stop those things?”
“A powerful enough one, yes.” She looked frustrated now. “Null-fields can’t be charged if you’re too deep in a significant gravity well, and the charge can only be held for a very brief time before you have to fire. As a result we haven’t been able to employ them against Syndic planetary targets, yet.”
“Planetary targets? You mean planets, don’t you?”
Frustration shifted to annoyance before Desjani cleared her expression. “Of course.”
Of course. Hitting an inhabited planet with something which would make pieces of it fall apart into component particles was just a matter of “of course.” What’s happened to these people? How can they talk regretfully about not being able to destroy worlds that way?
His attention was jerked back to Repulse. Another brace of HuKs had tried to get past her, but the Alliance ship pivoted again, with an agility at odds with her tonnage, so most of her hell-lance batteries could bear on the path of one of the HuKs. Running head-on into that concentrated barrage, the HuK’s forward shields flared and failed, letting the hell-lances ravage the length of the ship and turn it into high-velocity junk.
Captain Desjani pointed, drawing Geary’s attention to the fact that Repulse was volleying specter missiles as fast as the ship’s launchers could pump them out. The remaining HuK took out the leading specters with its defenses, but then the torpedoes began getting through, hitting the shields and then punching holes through the ship. Within moments, that ship, too, was out of the fight.
“That was most of her remaining specters, Captain Geary,” Desjani advised. “Repulse’s captain is using everything he’s got to stop the leading Syndic ships.”
Geary nodded slowly, trying not to reveal his emotions. He’s leaving precious little for dealing with the following Syndic ships. But, then, that won’t matter, will it? Not in the big scheme of things, where getting Titan out of here intact is critically important. Damn the big scheme of things and damn the Syndics.
He studied the movement vectors, getting the feel of them with those first five HuKs gone, and could see the answer. “He might’ve done it.”
“But not yet,” Desjani advised.
The next wave of HuKs met another barrage of grapeshot and hell-lances. Here and there, a specter crept through the confusion to hammer Syndic shields, but four of the five HuKs made it past. Three had been slowed appreciably, though, losing velocity to the impacts of the grapeshot and acceleration capability to damage. The fourth had clearly expended a lot of weaponry just getting safely past Repulse.
“He’s done it,” Desjani stated, her voice rising with elation. “I recommend that you tell the Titan’s escorts to hit that leading HuK with a half-dozen specters fired out of their stern launchers. The HuK won’t be able to survive that after everything it tossed out to get past Repulse, not unless it deviates from its course, and if it does that, it won’t be able to get to Titan before Titan jumps.”
“Very well. Order them to do that, if you please.” He didn’t listen as Desjani passed on the order, watching instead as more HuKs, this time with light cruisers in support, came up on Repulse and lashed the Alliance ship with fire as they dashed past. Even though the Syndic ships were moving too fast to have undistorted views of the outside universe, Repulse had taken more damage and was too badly hurt to maneuver quickly enough to avoid shots aimed at her estimated position. Repulse got off another shot from its null-field, but the light cruiser it’d been aimed at danced aside, taking only a glancing blow to its shields.
The battle was now seventy light-seconds away from Dauntless. The displays could only tell Geary what had been happening one minute and ten seconds ago, but Geary still knew exactly what it was like on the Repulse at this moment. He’d been in the same situation, though facing better odds. The expendable weaponry, the grapeshot and the specters, would be used up. The ship’s shields would be flaring almost constantly on all sides, as incoming fire drained and shredded the outer defensive layers. Then would come the occasional impact of hits on the hull as the shields suffered spot failures, like random blows from the hammer of a blind giant, before the shields failed completely. The hell-lance batteries would keep firing, falling silent individually or in clusters as they or their power supplies were shattered. And, coming faster and faster, balls of metal and spears of superheated gases would race through the hull from side to side and end to end, smashing anything and anyone in their paths.
“Repulse is launching survival pods.”
It was getting hard to tell exactly what was happening. The battle had thrown out so much junk that some of it was obscuring the view of the action. But Dauntless’s systems could still spot the beacons as survival pods were ejected from the Repulse. Dauntless’s systems automatically calculated intercept options to the survival pods, telling Geary what he’d need to do to try to pick up survivors from Repulse. He stared at the courses, seeing how they crossed through the thick of the oncoming Syndic fleet, knowing he couldn’t help the sailors in those pods now. They’d be picked up by the Syndics once the main battle was over, doomed to life in the Syndic labor camps. But I won’t forget my promise to you, Michael Geary. If it’s humanly possible, I’ll get them out of there someday.
Syndic ships were passing Repulse almost continuously now, none of them stopping to engage, but simply firing as they passed and letting their numbers overwhelm the lone Alliance ship. Heavy cruisers began sweeping by, adding their weight to the weapons pounding Repulse.
“As of seventy-five light-seconds ago, Repulse was no longer firing. All weapons appear to be disabled or destroyed.”
Geary simply nodded, not trusting himself to speak. The survival pods were still coming out occasionally, but too few of them.
“We’ve received a core-destruct initiation signal from Repulse.”
“How long until the core blows?” Geary didn’t recognize the voice at first, then realized it was his own.
“Uncertain. The same for the intensity of the overload. We don’t know how much damage the core has already taken.”
“Understood.” Repulse might already be gone, the light from the event not yet having reached Dauntless. He’d know for certain soon. Geary pulled his attention away from the battle for a moment, seeing the ships of the Alliance fleet plunging into the special area of the gravity well around this star where conditions were right to enable the transition into the jump space where other stars were only weeks or months of travel away. “Commander Cresida’s plan said ships today can make jumps at up to point one light speed.”