“We’ll know for sure when the vectors steady down,” Diaz said. But from the way he said it, Manticore’s captain didn’t expect to see good news when that happened.
Caught flat-footed by the sudden maneuvers, the nearest of Imallye’s warships, the HuK Mahadhevan, had been left behind when Manticore bolted. The HuK began pivoting to join in the chase, then abruptly stopped.
“None of Imallye’s light cruisers or HuKs are pursuing us,” Diaz said. “It looks as if Mahadhevan started to but then received orders to stay in orbit.”
“Imallye doesn’t need the HuKs or light cruisers if that battle cruiser catches us,” Marphissa said angrily. “And a prolonged chase would run through the fuel cell supply on the HuKs and leave them in trouble. She’s probably leaving the light cruisers here to keep an eye on that planet, which may not be as securely under her control as she implied.”
An alarm pulsed on Marphissa’s display, accompanied by a red flashing symbol. “Hull stress is exceeding safety parameters,” the senior specialist reported.
“Kommodor?” Diaz asked.
Marphissa took a moment to think, breathing deeply, and weighing the need to maintain the highest possible acceleration against the certain disintegration of both ship and crew if the hull or the inertial dampers failed. She nodded to Diaz. “You may reduce acceleration to stay within safe limits, Kapitan. Do not reduce it even a tiny amount below that level.”
Rather than order a specialist to do it, Diaz brought up the thrust controls on his own display and carefully lowered the output from Manticore’s main propulsion until the red symbol shaded into a cautionary yellow. “We can hold this as long as our fuel cells hold out, Kommodor.”
Both the heavy cruiser and the pursuing Vengeance had steadied out on their vectors. Manticore’s projected course was a very long, shallow curve that would bring her back to the jump point for Iwa, the time until that arrival still slowly diminishing as the heavy cruiser continued to accelerate. Behind her, Vengeance’s projected path was another shallow curve, this one aimed to intercept Manticore’s course far ahead of where both ships were now located, and far short of the jump point that would allow the heavy cruiser’s escape.
“Assuming both units continue operating main propulsion at their current rates, maneuvering systems project intercept of Manticore by Vengeance in fifteen point three hours,” the senior specialist reported in an admirably calm voice.
Marphissa tried to relax even though the acceleration leaking past the inertial dampers was still pushing her back against her seat. Her display showed the same information the specialist had reported. Her attempt to stay as far from Vengeance as possible while meeting Imallye’s demands, and her anticipation of the battle cruiser’s attack, had bought some time and space, but not nearly enough.
It wasn’t a wildly difficult problem for the automated systems to calculate. The most complex aspect of it was how much acceleration would slow as the velocity of both ships climbed ever higher. Relativity was unforgiving. As Manticore moved at ever-higher fractions of the speed of light, the warship’s mass would inexorably increase as well, making it harder for the same amount of thrust to push the ship even faster. If Manticore could somehow get close to the speed of light, the ship’s mass would grow so huge that it became impossible for any amount of thrust to keep accelerating her.
But such an effort would burn far too much of the heavy cruiser’s fuel cells, and in any event, Manticore’s velocity would be limited by another consideration. A ship could only enter jump if it were going at point two light speed or less. Manticore would have to limit her maximum velocity so that she could brake back down to point two light speed by the time she reached that jump point.
But Vengeance wasn’t planning on jumping, so the battle cruiser wasn’t worried about braking his velocity. And this was exactly the kind of situation that battle cruisers were built for, with massive main propulsion that let them accelerate faster than any other warship despite the large mass of a battle cruiser. The price for that was in far less armor than battleships, and not as many weapons as a ship that size could have carried. But battle cruisers carried plenty enough weapons to annihilate most of the warships they could chase down.
Diaz leaned close to Marphissa and spoke in a very low voice. “What is our plan, Kommodor?”
“Right now, I am praying for a miracle,” she murmured in reply. “Captain Bradamont taught me how to do that.”
Kapitan Diaz hesitated, licking his lips nervously. “Kommodor, Captain Bradamont has also instructed me. She told me that the situation is never hopeless as long as you can still move or fight.”
“I agree. But I am not seeing any alternative at this point to moving until we are caught by Vengeance, then fighting until we are destroyed. Help me find an alternative, Kapitan. We have fifteen hours until we are within range of the battle cruiser’s weapons.” Marphissa nodded to herself. “And if that happens, I intend engaging Vengeance and inflicting so much damage that Imallye’s battle cruiser will pose no threat to anyone afterward. Manticore will be destroyed, but Imallye will deeply regret the price of her victory.”
Diaz nodded as well. “Yes, Kommodor. My ship will not fail you.”
Marphissa turned her head to look at him and forced a smile. “Not your ship, nor its commander, nor its crew, have ever failed me, Kapitan Diaz, and I am certain that they never will.” She had let her voice rise in volume so the words carried, wanting the specialists to hear them as well. Word would have already spread through the ship of Manticore’s apparently helpless situation. Anything that would help morale, no matter how little, was important right now.
And Diaz deserved the public praise as well.
He flushed slightly, nodded again, then sat back and began tapping in internal comm connections. “I will speak with all of my officers and senior specialists to let them know that recommendations would be welcome.”
The next several hours passed with increasing slowness, as if relativity had already placed an iron grip of time’s rate of progression on the perceptions of those aboard Manticore. Marphissa had to use a down patch to get some sleep so she would not be exhausted when Vengeance finally caught Manticore. The rest of the time she spent running simulations of different attempts to avoid that intercept, each attempt only succeeding in bringing about the clash a little sooner. After a while, Marphissa abandoned that effort and began gaming out the battle between her heavy cruiser and Vengeance, trying to work out the best possible means of inflicting maximum damage on the battle cruiser before Manticore was destroyed. The results of those simulations were also discouraging, but she worked away at them stubbornly.
“Kommodor?”
Diaz’s voice roused Marphissa from a dark reverie of dying warships. She glanced around the bridge, noticing that everyone was quieter than usual as they contemplated the apparently inevitable, then focused back on Diaz. “Yes, Kapitan?”
“Senior Specialist Beltsios has an idea, Kommodor.”
Marphissa roused herself fully, tapping her controls to bring up a virtual window showing Beltsios. “What do you have, Senior Specialist?”