“Multiple punctures,” Oc Chac bawled, “we’ve lost environment on decks nineteen and twenty. Four compartments compromised. I have a radiation fire in compartment eighty-one.”
“ Sho-sa, get your teams in,” Susan barked, “Pilot-get me some headway!”
Her engines intact, the Naniwa accelerated away on a sharply different vector. Kosho held her breath, watching her ship veer hideously close to the shimmering veils plotted on her ’well.
In their cabin on six, Gretchen and Hummingbird were torn through their restraints and slammed hard against the wall. Gravity fluctuated violently for a microsecond and the comps ripped free as well, smashing into the walls, displays splintering into ruin. Bloody, one arm stabbing with terrible, blinding pain, Gretchen found herself pinned against the ceiling. Alarm Klaxons screamed and the bitter smell of burning insulation flooded the air. Crushed by a giant hand, Anderssen struggled to breathe. “Crow! Crow!”
Hummingbird was pinned as well, though his head lolled limply to one side.
Four hundred thousand kilometers behind the Naniwa, the pack of Khaiden ships reacted as well, shedding velocity to make an equally abrupt course change. Three of them managed this quite smartly, matching the battle-cruiser’s relative angle. They continued to spit missiles at the Imperial ship, though their rate of fire slacked off sharply. The other five also made the turn, but too slowly. Their icons interpenetrated with the first of the veils plotted on Susan’s display and abruptly winked out.
“Score on goal,” Kosho breathed, only too aware of how close she’d come to blundering into the same fate. “Pilot, get me a new intercept to the Tlemitl!”
Aboard the Firearrow, Xochitl grimaced as one of his Jaguars cut away the mangled wreckage of his shockchair. Flag Command was filled with smoke and guttering flames from a shipkiller impact which had torn through the secondary hull. Able to move once more, the Prince crawled free, shaking off bits of burning metal and fabric. Two of his bodyguards were down, along with most of the junior officers and ratings who had been at their stations.
“Raise damage control,” Xochitl ordered his exo. “ Cuauhhuehueh Koris, status of the rest of your squad?”
“Only us in comm contact, Tlatocapilli.” The Jaguar Knight shook his head slowly. “I’m not getting a response from Command either.”
«Thai-sa Yoemon is dead,» reported the exo. «Autonomic systems report that Main Command has lost environmental control due to a penetrator hit. No life signs remain in the compartment.»
“Mains are down,” the Prince said aloud, replying to Koris. “Find me the secondary and let’s get moving.”
The intership comm channel was fuzzing with static, making even short-range conversations impossible. “Exo, what is this?”
«A Khaid disruptor bug has entered the ship via a penetrator. Internal communications on the regular channels will be impossible until the module is located and destroyed or damage control reroutes around the infection.»
“Find me a clear channel, then.”
The Jaguars were already moving, hustling the Prince out into the corridor. The hatchway tried to close behind them and stuck, flat streamers of black smoke oozing along the roof. A fire suppression system kicked in, flooding the hallway with foam. Xochitl wiped his faceplate clear and jogged on. The assistive mechanisms in his suit would let him run a long way without tiring.
Four decks away, Engineer Second Helsdon and two of his crew slipped pry bars behind the cover of a section of shattered comm conduit and wrenched hard. The cover tore away, revealing six meters of shredded, blackened crystal. Freezing wind, howling down the passageway from some hull rupture, pummelled their z-suits, laying down frost on every surface. Malcolm jammed a cutting tool behind the junction at his end of the conduit and popped the interface free-off to his right, the other two men were doing the same.
“Clear!” Two Jun-i hustled up, bearing a length of replacement crystal. They shoved the new conduit into place and Helsdon locked down his end, a hand-comp tucked into his elbow. A moment later, with diagnostic leads attached, he had a string of green lights on the status display. The circuit came back up with a few hiccups. “Done here,” he shouted. They’d manually switched to a little-used comm channel when the main network went down, but there was still interference. “On to the next.”
“Doubt if we have all the holes patched, Engineer,” one of the warrant officers remarked with a strained laugh.
“Yeah, only ten or twenty to go,” someone else’s voice came through the suit-to-suit line. “What now?”
“Wait one.” Helsdon grunted with exhaustion, thumbing through a succession of panes on his hand-comp, the team crowded around him, faces expectant for the next task.
The battle-steel hatchway to Secondary Command cycled open and Xochitl and his Jaguars crowded in. The Sho-sa, who had found himself commanding the dreadnaught when primary Command and Flag had gone off-line, jerked around, his face ashy.
“ Tlatocapilli, I’m glad to see you! We’ve-”
“Out of the chair,” the Mexica lord seized the lieutenant commander by the arm and dragged him away from the command console. “You’re XO now-get me damage control back on-line and report munitions inventory!”
The main threatwell was still functioning as Xochitl settled into the shockchair, taking stock of the situation. He’d been out of contact for nearly thirty minutes, but his exo jacked in to the main boards and the Prince saw the gun decks were still in operation, hammering away at the swarm of Khaiden battleships pacing the dreadnaught. The new battle-shields wavered in and out of existence, flaring bright with missile impacts.
«Forty percent coverage remaining,» exo reported. «Launchers are at sixty percent, though four port-side are jammed.»
The Asama had fallen away behind, crippled and shuddering from secondary explosions deep in her core, crew bailing out in a cluster of shuttles and evac-capsules.
Xochitl waved his hand and the threatwell reconfigured; the myriad points of Imperial distress beacons vanished, leaving only the combatants.
“Lord Prince,” the Sho-sa ventured. “We have stowage to take them aboard-”
“Leave them,” Xochitl growled, his command console flickering with alternate course plots at a blinding rate. At main navigation, the Thai-i sitting at the station had drawn back, finding his v-panes and control displays no longer responding to his touch. Suddenly the alternates dropped away and the Prince nodded to himself. “New course by my mark, full power. We need breathing room!”
Engines thundering, the decking vibrating with a deep basso roar, Tlemitl charged away from the wrecked Asama, all surviving launchers and gun nacelles concentrated on two Khaid heavy cruisers which had drawn the unlucky course to stand in the Prince’s way. Both broke off, trying to change vector as multiple shipkillers slammed into their deflectors, breaking through to sear armor and shatter their engine rings. Undaunted, the Firearrow accelerated towards the Pinhole.
Three-quarters of a million kilometers behind the swirling firefight around the super-dreadnaught, Kosho grasped the Prince’s intent immediately. The Naniwa was already accelerating to join him, having shrugged aside the last of the lighter ships, but now the Khaid battleships had reformed, relocking their point-defense and fire control. Swift as harriers, they came hard on the chase and stood directly between the battle-cruiser and the flagship. Thoughtful, Susan tapped up the channel to deck six.