“All good things come to an end,” Mack observed as he looked at his display.
The troop transport HTTU 332, along with Midway’s other troop transport, was accelerating for all they were worth away from the planet where Rogero’s soldiers had been dropped. Mack had taken Rogero’s advice and directed both transports to chase down the vector of Midway’s warships, reasoning that even though they had no chance of catching up with the friendly forces, it was at least movement in the only direction that offered any hope of survival. A few light minutes ahead of them were the Syndicate troop transports which had fled earlier, and much closer were the Syndicate freighters, which were lumbering desperately after the transports they had once accompanied but falling farther behind with every meter covered.
The maneuvers might have worked to keep the transports and the freighters safe. Might have, except for the thirty-three enigma warships that had spat out of a massive hole that had appeared on the surface of the planet. Those warships, once clearing atmosphere, had lined up on direct intercepts with Mack’s transports, and beyond them the Syndicate freighters and transports. And, being considerably more nimble than the big transports, the enigmas were making up the distance fast.
“Should the crew abandon ship?” his senior specialist asked.
Mack sighed and spread his open hands in the age-old gesture of frustration. “You saw when they destroyed the Syndicate flotilla what they do to escape pods. We might as well die in what comfort this old ship offers.” HTTU 332 had only been manufactured a year earlier, but since the life span of troop transports during the war was usually measured in months, that made 332 an old lady by the standards everyone used.
The senior specialist rubbed two fingers of one hand on her new insignia that marked her as a Midway forces specialist rather than a Syndicate worker. “I didn’t really look forward to deciding who got to go in the escape pods,” she admitted.
“The Syndicate told us to just line the people up and have them count off from a random start point,” Mack reminded her. “Evens go, odds stay.” The Syndicate, having calculated that on average a transport ship lost half the crew before being abandoned, only provided enough escape pods for the half of the crew that was assumed to still be alive. “I was an even, once.”
“Me, too. I still remember the ones who were left behind. Didn’t want to see that again.” She checked her own display. “We’ve got less than an hour before they catch us. Those freighters up ahead have less than that. We’re going to be passing them soon.”
An alert sounded, causing the specialist to shift her attention. “The pirate’s forces have changed their vector. Instead of going after our flotilla, they’re now on a direct intercept with us as well.”
Mack shook his head at his display, watching the arcs of the paths of ships through space converging on his own ship’s projected movement. After so many near misses and so many escapes, this situation offered no hope at all. He wondered why he felt numb instead of frightened. “They’ll get here about the same time the enigmas do. We should start a pool on which side kills us.”
“What’s the payoff?” the specialist asked.
“Bonus time off, at a future date to be determined,” Mack said.
That got a tense smile from the specialist. The Syndicate liked to offer awards exactly like that, awards that often never actually got awarded. “I’ll let the crew know.”
He glanced her way, feeling the need to say something. “I’ve always treated the crew as decently as I could.”
“Yes, sir, you have, and the crew appreciates that.” She managed another rigid smile. “You never would have died at the hands of your own workers.”
“That’s something, I guess.” No one knew how many Syndicate supervisors had been killed by their own workers, but the fact that the Syndicate officially denied it ever happened was a clear indicator of how often it did take place. A minor, fixable problem would have resulted in huge crackdowns that caused at least as much trouble as the problem they were designed to fix. But a big problem that couldn’t be fixed by a crackdown had to be wished away, declared not to exist, even if the hatches to supervisors’ staterooms were armored and alarmed and the supervisors always carried hand weapons.
Mack made a show of relaxing back into his seat, trying to fool himself as well as any members of the crew who could see him as he gazed at the display where two strong forces were racing to see which would be first to get close enough to destroy his ship. He hoped whoever managed it would then be destroyed by the other side.
“Fifty-one of them,” Marphissa said, her voice bleak “With the thirty-three that popped out of that planet we now face more enigma warships than we did before that Syndicate flotilla sacrificed itself.”
“We have the battleship,” Kontos said.
“Damn Imallye. Instead of helping us, she’s helping the enigmas. Does she actually think they’ll be grateful and avoid destroying her afterward?”
“She must know better,” Kontos said. He gave Marphissa a questioning glance. “We think Imallye’s behavior is crazy. Would the enigmas? Given what they have seen of humans?”
“They probably consider it to be typical human behavior,” Marphissa said. She frowned at him. “Are you thinking that maybe Imallye is playing a deeper game than it looks? President Iceni suggested the same to me. No one knows, though, and the Imallye I talked with at Moorea seemed to be absolutely serious. I have no doubt that she would have destroyed Manticore if she had caught us.”
“Several more hours and we’ll find out for sure,” Kontos observed. “If she wipes out our transports on the way to catch us, that will make it clear that she means every word she said. Or she might bypass them and keep us guessing.”
“If she messes with us any more I swear that I will make it hurt when I kill her,” Marphissa grumbled, then refocused on the enigmas up ahead. The enigmas were coming to meet her flotilla straight on, probably intending to wipe out this force just as they had the Syndicate flotilla. It was possible that they would dodge at the last moment, though, intending to lure the two remaining human flotillas into combat with each other so they could finish off whoever survived that fight. Marphissa had no intention of permitting that. She would force a clash with the enigmas long before Imallye could come into contact, dealing with one implacable enemy at a time.
Bradamont’s plans to deal with the small Syndicate force at Midway that was bigger than her own received a rude interruption when another alert sounded.
“We have just detected the arrival of another Syndicate formation, this one at the hypernet gate,” Manticore’s senior watch specialist reported. “One heavy cruiser, two light cruisers, and five Hunter-Killers.”
“They’ve now got us outnumbered two to one,” Diaz said. He didn’t sound despairing about that. Instead, he seemed irritated at the enemy’s moves.
“I’ll have to change Kapitan Stein’s orders,” Bradamont said. She had to think before touching the proper comm controls. The Alliance always positioned that particular control here and the Syndicate always put it there. That was aggravating enough with physical controls, but especially maddening with virtual controls that the Syndicate Worlds had programmed in such a way that they couldn’t be customized.