Alicia gripped the arms of her command chair, face white, monitoring remotes that ripped out huge chunks of broken hull and buckled frame members to get at the damaged control runs. There was no time for neatness; Megarea was inflicting fresh and grievous wounds upon herself as she raced to make repairs which should have taken a shipyard days.
More missiles sizzled in from Verdun-but only missiles. She must have exhausted her SLAMs against Megarea's mad charge, yet her two surviving sisters hadn't, and they were closing fast. One would reach firing range within fifty minutes; the other in an hour; and Procyon still had SLAMs in plenty once she came out from behind her shield.
James Howell sat grimly silent as damage control labored. Commander Rahman had replaced the shrieking, drooling Rendlemann, but Procyon no longer had a cyber synth. No one knew how it had been done, but her AI was gone, and massive damage to the manual backups left the big dreadnought defenseless. There wouldn't even be battle screen until damage control could route around the wrecked subsystems, and even if they replaced them all, Procyon would be at little more than half normal capability without her AI.
Which meant he dared not drop his mauled flagship's shield despite a desperate temptation to do just that. Verdun and Issus had almost certainly killed those mad-men, assuming they hadn't destroyed themselves against the shield. But if they had somehow survived and fled, his people might need Procyon's SLAM batteries to stop them-except that if they'd survived and hadn't fled, a single missile salvo would rip his crippled ship apart. And so he sat still, watching his crew wrestle furiously with their repairs, and waited.
"Why the hell aren't they coming after us?" Alicia worried, watching lightning glare as Megarea's point defense dealt with incoming missiles.
"Little One," Tisiphone observed with massive restraint, "I see missiles enough, and two of their battle-cruisers are pursuing us."
"Not them-Procyon. Why doesn't she drop her shield and fry us?"
"You're complaining?" Megarea flung half a dozen missiles back at Verdun. They had little chance of penetrating the battle-cruiser's point defense at this range, but they might make her a bit more cautious. "Alley, I gave that cyber synth piece of junk a terminal migraine. Unless I miss my guess, they're scraping fried molycircs off the deck plates and wondering what the hell hit them."
"Yeah, but for how much longer?"
"How do I know? Damn it, I've got more to worry about than-"
"I know, honey. I know!" Alicia said contritely. "It's just that-"
"Just that this waiting wears upon the nerves," Tisiphone finished. "Yet think, Little One- none but the truly mad would linger within SLAM range of that dreadnought if they could flee. Hence, they must believe our drive damage genuine, which means we may yet complete our original intent."
"Unless they get their act together and kill us," Megarea muttered.
The battle-cruiser Trafalgar raced towards rendezvous with Verdun. Another twenty minutes. Just twenty, and her SLAMs would have the range.
"Okay, people," Megarea murmured. "Now just pray it holds… ."
Circuits closed. Power pulsed through jury-rigged shunts and patches, and the alpha synth began to accelerate once more. At little more than two-thirds power, but to accelerate, and Megarea turned her attention to other wounds. She could do little for slagged down weapons, but her electronic warfare systems damage was mainly superficial, and it as looked as though she might need them badly. Soon.
"Engineering estimates another fifty-five minutes to restore Fasset drive, sir," Rahman reported, "but we've restored as much basic combat capability as we can without cyber synth." "Understood. Stand by to drop the shield."
Megarea was back up to .43 C when the OKM shield's impenetrable blot disappeared from Alicia's sensors. She stiffened, checking ranges, then relaxed. The dreadnought was over twenty light-minutes astern, and it was her sublight sensors which had reported the shield's passing. Her gravitics still didn't see a thing, and that meant the dreadnought must have engineering problems of her own. Now if she'd just go on having them long enough… .
Howell watched his plot replay Issus's destruction from Verdun's sensor records in bitter silence. An alpha synth. No wonder it had done such a number on them! And it explained the lack of SLAMs, too.
But Issus had gotten a piece of it. A big piece, judging from its subsequent behavior, and he cursed his own caution for not dropping the shield sooner. Yet the critical point was that the alpha synth's speed had been drastically reduced. Even Procyon could make up velocity on it, now that her drive had been restored, and he had no choice but to do just that.
Pieces fell into place in his brain as the big ship accelerated in pursuit. That had to be the rogue drop commando-only a madwoman would have come after them alone and launched that insane attack down Procyon's throat-so Fleet didn't know a thing. A part of him was tempted to let what-was-her-name, DeVries, go, trusting to the Fleet's own shoot on sight order to dispose of her, but mad or not, she had the hard sensor data to prove her story. All she had to do was get into com range of any Fleet base or unit and pass it on.
He could not permit that, and so he dispatched his freighters to the alternate rendezvous and went in pursuit. His cruisers and remaining battle-cruisers could have overhauled sooner than Procyon, had he let them. He didn't. Lamed though that ship was, God only knew what it could still do, and Procyon could hang close enough to break into the same wormhole space and close to combat range. She still had the weapons to take even an alpha synth, and if it took time, time was something he had. On this heading, he'd overtake DeVries eleven light-years short of the nearest inhabited planet.
"Looks like we're back on track," Megarea said. The entire squadron was in pursuit, and its faster units were hanging back. They'd managed to pull out of Procyon's SLAM range before she lumbered back to life, but she'd regain it eventually, and Megarea's drive couldn't be interposed against fire from astern. Which might be just as well, given its current fragility.
"What happens when they get the range on us again?"
"Depends. We'll be into wormhole space, and I think I'll have most of my EW back on line by then. If I do, they'll have a hard time localizing us. They can't throw the kind of salvos Soisson's forts could, and SLAMs can't go supralight relative to us in wormhole space, either. I'll be able to track 'em and do some fancy footwork, and even that damned dreadnought can't carry a lot of 'em. I expect they'll choose not to waste them and hold off until they can get to missile or even beam range. That's what I'd do."
"I just hope they're as smart as you are, then."
"Me too," Megarea snorted, and Alicia nodded and shoved herself up out of her chair. "Hey! Where're you going?"
"To the head, dummy." Alicia managed a weary smile. "I'm coming off the tick, and I've got an appointment with the John."
"Uh, you might want to reconsider that."
"Sorry." Alicia swallowed a surge of nausea. "Already in process."
"Damn!" Alicia's eyebrows rose, and Megarea sighed. "Alley, we took a lot of hits. There's no pressure in the bridge access passage."
"You mean-?"
"I mean I'm working on it," the AI apologized, "but I need another hour before I can repressurize."
"Oh, crap," Alicia moaned in a stifled tone. "'Get your tractors ready, then, because-"