Gorski worked with his mathematical navigational models. The computer returned numbers to him, which he rejected and reworked. Another thirty seconds went by and I became agitated, but didn’t yell at him. I really wanted to, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good.
He shook his head. “I don’t know, but I think they are heading into the spot the last cruiser hit. Maybe they figure the mine density will be lower there, as the other ship absorbed a lot of our mines before it blew up.”
I nodded unhappily. They knew what they were up against. They were already firing their gun to nail as many mines as they could. If they went into the wake of the third ship, their odds of survival were higher. Fortunately, they were going too fast to reverse course entirely, just like their sister ships. That was precisely why I’d waited until we came through the ring to deploy even a single mine. I didn’t want the Macros to have any warning. This last crew had witnessed the deaths of their brethren. This one had a clue.
As the cruiser plowed into the thinnest spot in our deadly web of mines, no one spoke. We all stared. I doubt anyone even blinked, except possibly for Sarin. I saw she had her eyes closed. We all knew how important the next minute would be.
“It’s in the field,” Gorski said.
Sarin opened her eyes again. “Two hits,” she said.
Yellow pixels vanished, replaced with glowing orange bursts that quickly faded. The last ship wasn’t flying in tail-first. She had nosed her way toward this spot, using her engines to guide her. That made her relative velocity higher. These ships also had more armor up front.
“Three hits,” Sarin said.
“She’s almost through,” Gorski said.
There was a big, secondary explosion that rocked the Macro ship. Something inside had been damaged. Kwon made a happy, grunting noise. I steeled myself, realizing that when this baby blew up, he was going to roar with joy. Possibly, I was going to get slapped again. I couldn’t blame him.
“Four hits,” Sarin said.
The ship kept coming. I had no doubt there were huge chunks blown out of its front armor, but it had held together. It was still structurally sound and moving forward.
“It’s through, sir,” Gorski said.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “It’s right in the thick of it.” I pointed to the screen. There were swarms of yellow dots all around it. I had been waiting for the big, final ka-boom.
Gorski shook his head. “The field was thin there. They have a clear shot out of it now. The third cruiser drove a hole for them.”
Kwon let out a long, wheezy sigh. He deflated like a balloon. Now I wished I’d heard his shout of victory. I’d been a fool to dread it.
I surveyed the scene. We had sixteen missiles coming at us now. They had fired high and low, avoiding the minefield. Even if they’d gone through it, the missiles might have survived due to their small size and low metallic mass. The magnetics on the mines would not have homed in on them as quickly.
The missiles were curving now, turning and changing their course to pursue us. Maybe they would run out of fuel. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to home in on us at such a great distance…or maybe they would catch us and blow our tail off.
The last cruiser was the big worry. There it was, damaged, but still flying. It came through the last yellow dots representing my mines and doggedly moved to pursue. As best we could tell, it still had its big belly turret and a full magazine of missiles. It had yet to fire a single missile.
Worst of all, this Macro crew had seen my best move. I knew they wouldn’t be so easily tricked next time.
24
I wanted to pass out in a bunk, but I didn’t have time to rest. I dug out a stim injector and loaded it. After staring at it for about ten seconds, I fired it into my neck, took a deep breath and waited. Within thirty seconds I could feel my heart pounding harder. I hated that feeling.
Moving at a bouncing trot in the low gravity field of the ship, I made my way to the breach and then crawled over the hull to the factories. We were still accelerating, but not at emergency flank speed. Our stalker was following us, but he’d slowed down after the smacking we’d given him. This didn’t really make me feel better, however. It was like being shadowed by a hungry bear in the wilderness. You knew he was waiting for a moment of weakness to strike.
I had to get the factories churning out the correct equipment now to counter the Macros when the next clash came. I didn’t know how long I had, or what would work best, but I had to take a stab at it. The incoming missiles were my number one concern. We’d rigged up a couple of point-defense laser cannons on the aft hull of Jolly Rodger, but the turrets weren’t going to stop sixteen ballistic missiles. They didn’t have the range, in fact, to stop even one of them if the missiles came in at a great enough relative velocity. It took about a second for the laser turrets to sense, aim and fire at an incoming missile. That sounded pretty good, but only if the incoming weapon gave you that second to react. If a missile was traveling at 100,000 miles an hour faster than we were, for example, it would move from being out of range to slamming into our hull in less than one second. It wouldn’t matter how many laser turrets I had at that point, none of them would fire in time to save us, not even if I built a hundred of them. That meant my turrets were an inadequate defense.
I sat in the first factory unit I came to and tried to think clearly. There were many options for production. Right now, they were churning mines, which was a safe play. We’d gone through all the Macro corpses as materials by now and were feeding them deck plates and damaged portions of the ship we didn’t need. It was odd, cannibalizing one’s own ship for weapons materials-but that was how warfare worked when using nanotech.
I was nearly done building mines, I’d decided. I had about half as many as I did last time, and that would be enough to lay a trap at the next ring…if I got that far. I needed something else now, however. A defensive weapon to stop those missiles. They were going to catch us before we made the next ring. We were crossing the Helios system to the second ring on more or less a straight path. We’d come out fairly near the gigantic red sun, but had to move out a good distance to get to the second ring which was closer to the orbit of Helios itself. I had to wonder again what the Worms thought of this battle going on in their own star system. I hoped if they got involved and took a shot at one of us they chose the right one.
I considered attempting to contact the Worms. We’d made a few attempts before, of course, but we’d never gotten through. I wasn’t surprised. I could barely manage a conversation with the Centaurs, and they were much closer in nature to humans than giant, invertebrate, dirt-eating Worms. If you don’t believe me, try feeding a goat, then try feeding an earthworm from your backyard. I bet I can predict which one will follow you home that night.
My mind whirled with stimulants and possibilities. Strangely, I still felt sleepy. I wondered if too many stims could knock a man out. Either that, or cause his heart to explode.
I came to another conclusion soon. I sensed the nanites were objecting already, filtering the drug out of my blood. My sweat smelled like evaporating hospital chemicals as they flushed my system. I decided not to take another stim dose. Maybe the nanites knew something I didn’t.
The airlock started pumping then. I looked up expectantly. For a horrible second, I expected Sandra to walk in. She often did when she knew I was overworking myself alone in a spot like this. I had to remind myself she was still a turnip in a steel box.
I grabbed up my com-link angrily. At least I could fix one problem. I got Kwon on the link. I instructed him to widen the breach and bring down all the bricks into the chambers below decks, being careful not to disrupt the inertial dampeners. We could build a nice hold right under the breach we’d dug into the cruiser like whale’s blowhole. Living on the exterior hull was dangerous and now we finally had enough time to do something about it. Even if the missiles were going to come and knock us out, it would be a day or two before the caught up.