Leytenant Mack had watched as the enigma pursuit got closer and closer to his ship at a steadily increasing rate as the alien ships outaccelerated what the troop transports could manage. He had watched, because that was all he could do. His transport lacked all but a few, minor weapons, lacked armor, and had fairly weak shields for a ship of its size.
But he was still better off than the four Syndicate freighters. Mack’s two transports had surged past the freighters twenty minutes ago. The freighters, in a vain attempt to see if the enigmas would chase the transports instead of them, had angled off to the side and down. Mack had tried to think of ways to help the freighter crews, but their maneuver had taken them too far from the track of his transports. About twelve minutes after Mack’s transports had passed them, the enigma formation had swung over and overtaken the freighters one by one, annihilating each in turn. The crews of two of the freighters had tried to flee in the one escape pod available on each freighter, but the enigmas had blown both pods apart with brutal efficiency.
The enigmas, having lost only a little time, eased back onto direct intercepts with Mack’s ships.
In less than ten minutes, Mack’s transports would meet the same fate as the freighters. The Syndicate troop transports would survive perhaps half an hour longer before the enigmas reached them as well.
Even if there had been any chance of evading the alien attack, the pirate flotilla charging toward the transports would have been impossible to escape.
Despite his attempts to avoid thinking about it, Mack found himself wondering if he would get a quick death, or if the pain would last awhile before the end came. He would learn the answer soon enough.
With both the enigmas and Imallye’s formation converging on the two Midway troop transports, the aliens and the pirate’s ships were roughly even with each other, Imallye’s forces slightly higher and farther away from the star than were the enigmas who had launched from the planet. Imallye’s ships had accelerated up to point three light speed, so they had come from behind the enigmas to a position slightly ahead. The enigmas were also accelerating, but since their launch from the planet had only made it up to point two light speed.
So when Imallye’s ships suddenly altered their vectors a bit to starboard and slightly down, they rapidly closed to within range of their weapons, the relative speed between the pirate’s ships and the alien warships slightly less than point one light speed.
Leytenant Mack stared in disbelief as the battle cruisers and heavy cruisers in Imallye’s force unleashed missiles on the leading enigma warships, following quickly with hell lances and grapeshot as the range dwindled. The enigmas were firing back, but Imallye’s pass was too swift and her track too far ahead of the alien formation for most of the enigma ships to engage her warships. A half dozen of the enigma craft at the front of their formation exploded or took damage serious enough to knock them out of the fight, while Imallye’s ships took only a few hits.
In the wake of the attack the enigmas kept accelerating, continuing their pursuit of the transports, en route to a linkup with the rest of the enigma armada.
But instead of swinging out wide, Imallye shifted her ships through a tight vector change to port, using her still-superior velocity and the small differences in the course of the two formations to veer across the front of the enigma formation again.
This time five enigma ships were knocked out.
With a third of their number lost, the enigmas finally broke off, bending downward in a vast curve that was still tighter than any human warship could manage.
“A message from Vengeance,” the senior specialist gasped to Mack.
Feeling dazed, he accepted it, seeing the image of Granaile Imallye before him. Black skin suit, large knife, large hand weapon, glittering insignia, and a small smile on her lips. “I bought you some time, Iceni’s minion. Keep going and hope she can protect you from the other group of enigmas. This group won’t get past my ships.”
Mack had to swallow before he could speak. “Th-thank you, honored… honored…”
Imallye made a cutting motion with one hand. “I’m busy. Contact those Syndicate transports ahead of you and tell them I’d be happy to accept them into my forces after this fight is over. Or they can die, if that’s their preference. Out.”
Her image vanished.
Mack managed to breathe in deeply, then gestured to his senior specialist with one hand that shook as he tried to point with it. “Get me a link to those Syndicate transports.”
The specialist nodded, biting her lip. “You’re going to do what she said?”
“Am I going to do what Imallye said? Hell, yes, I am going to do what Imallye said! Anyone who disapproves is welcome to trade places with me for the last hour!”
Despite the damage that Manticore’s formation had endured so far, Bradamont felt herself smiling. Kapitan Stein on Gryphon had caught the flotilla she was fighting in a perfect firing run, angling in from one side as the Syndicate formation tried to loop upward, that had knocked out one of the light cruisers and two of the Hunter-Killers. Stein had lost one of her HuKs, damaged and out of the fight but hopefully salvageable. But over two hours ago she had hurt the Syndicate flotilla facing Gryphon’s force badly enough that it had turned and run back for the hypernet gate. “Kapitan Stein, excellent work. Continue pursuit until the Syndicate flotilla you are fighting enters the hypernet gate, then come on and join us so we can get rid of this Syndicate flotilla as well.”
It would take nearly half a day yet, but at some point Midway’s combined flotilla would nearly equal the remaining Syndicate flotilla, and from what she had already seen of the Syndicate commander, she knew she could hold him off indefinitely with that force. Or at least until the rest of Midway’s warships returned.
“Watch him,” she warned Diaz. “The commander of the flotilla we’re facing will have also seen the other flotilla fleeing and know that Gryphon will be coming to join with us. He’ll be trying harder to knock us out fast and may take some unexpected risks. Don’t give him any openings.”
Gwen Iceni rubbed her chin as she saw that another reply had come in from Imallye. Sighing, she accepted the call.
Imallye wasn’t on the bridge of her battle cruiser, but in what was obviously her stateroom, decorated with some small but ostentatious examples of the loot she must have acquired from conquered worlds. Imallye wore a smile this time. Not a friendly smile. More like the smile of a co-conspirator who didn’t trust her cohorts. “I’ll always hate you, Iceni, but I hate the Syndicate more. The Syndicate used you to get my father. They thought they could use me to help get you and other disloyal elements. I don’t know what the enigmas think, but I can see what they did, and my sources within the Syndicate told me that Black Jack suspects the enigmas think they can use humans to get other humans.”
She leaned closer, intent, her eyes searching as if they could see Iceni. “I sent agents to study you. I wanted to know who you were using, so I could use those people against you. But my agents said they couldn’t find anyone. They kept reporting that you were acting so clean that the snakes were getting very suspicious of you. My agents wondered why any Syndicate CEO would fail to use people. They didn’t realize that you might actually be feeling guilty.”
Imallye leaned back again, smiling slightly once more. “Maybe you are. Do you know why I named this ship Vengeance? To always remind myself that only mindless machines let their actions be dictated by anger and attempts at revenge. The snakes didn’t realize that, of course, though they didn’t trust me, either. It took me a long time to find every snake that the Syndicate had planted among my crews and locate every piece of malware they had sown in my ships’ systems. Your Kommodor helped with that when she employed that piece of snake malware against me since it provided me with an up-to-date example of the latest snake tricks. But I had to wait a little longer, until those governing the star systems I had allegedly conquered were ready to set in motion actual overthrows of Syndicate authority.