“Very good. Conn, take us forward. One gee, total delta of one-zero k.p.s.” Mirsky stood back and waited as the helm officer punched in the maneuver. Ten k.p.s. wasn’t much speed, but it would take the Lord Vanek comfortably away from its point of emergence without emitting too much drive noise, leaving room for the rest of the flotilla behind them. A lidar pulse in the depths of the halo could only signify a warship on the prowl, and it would be extremely unhealthy to stay too close to its point of origin.
In the Oort cloud of an industrialized system, even the snowballs could bite.
“Ping at nine-two-six-four!” crowed Radar Two. “Range four-point-nine M-klicks, bearing one by seven-five by three-three-two. Lots of hot one-point-four MeV gammas — they’re cooking on antimatter!”
“Acceleration?” asked Mirsky.
‘Tracking … one-point-three gees, confirmed. No change. Uh, wait—“
“Comms bulletin from the Kamchatka, sir.”
“Comms, call it.”
“Message reads, quote, under attack by enemy missile layers break. Situation serious break. Where are the BBs, break. All units please respond, ends.”
Mirsky blinked. Enemy warships? This soon? Wolf Depository was right on the New Republic’s doorstep, a mining system owned and exploited by the rich, heavily industrialized Septagon Central.
What on earth were they doing allowing alien warships—
“Second burst at nine-two-six-four,” called Radar One. “Same emission profile. Looks like we scared up a swarm!”
“Wait,” grated Mirsky. He shook himself, visibly surprised by the news. “Wait, dammit! I want to see what else is out there. Comms, do not, under any circumstances, respond to signals from the Kamchatka, or anybody who came through ahead of us without clearing it with me first. If there are enemy ships out here, we’ve got no way of knowing whether our signals have been compromised.”
“Aye aye, sir. Signal silence on all screening elements.”
“Now.” He bent his head, pondering the screen ahead. “If it is an ambush …” The gamma-ray traces lit up on the main screen, labeled icons indicating their position and vector relative to the system ahead. One-point-three gees wasn’t particularly fast, but it was enough to send cold shudders up Mirsky’s spine: it meant serious high-delta-vee propulsion systems, fusion or antimatter or quantum gravity induction, not the feeble ion drive of a robot tug. That could mean a number of things: sublight relativistic bombers, missile buses, intrasystem interceptors, whatever. The Lord Vanek would have to skim past them to get to the next jump zone. Which could give them a passing shot at over 1000 k.p.s … a speed at which it took very little, maybe a sand grain, to total a ship. If it was an ambush, it had probably nailed the entire task force cold.
“Radar,” he said, “give me a second lidar pulse, three-zero seconds. Then plot a vector intersect on those bogies, offset one-zero kiloklicks at closest pass, acceleration one-zero gees, salvo of two SEM-20s one-zero-zero kiloklicks out.”
“Aye aye, skipper.”
“Missiles armed, launch holding at minus one-zero seconds.” Commander Helsingus, stationed at Gunnery One.
“I want them to get a good look at our attack profile,” murmured the Captain. “Nice and close.” Ilya Murametz glanced at him sidelong. “Keep the boys on their toes,” Mirsky added, meeting his eye. Ilya nodded.
“Gamma burst!” called Radar Two. “Burst at one-four-seven-one. Range one-one point-two M-klicks, bearing one by seven-five by three-three-two. Looks like shooting, sir!”
“Understood.” Mirsky clasped his hands together: Murametz winced as he cracked his knuckles. “Hurry up and wait. Helm: How’s the attack course?”
“We’re prepping it now, sir.”
“Forward lidar. Looks like we are in a shooting war. And they know we’re here by now. So let’s get a good look at them.”
Comms: “Sir, new message purportedly from the Kamchatka. Message from the Aurora, too.”
“Read them.”
Mirsky nodded at the comms station, where the petty officer responsible read from a punched paper tape unreeling from the brass mouth of a dog’s head. “Kamchatka says, quote, engaged by enemy missile boats break we are shooting back break enemy warships astern painting us with target designation radar break situation desperate where are you. Ends. Aurora says, quote, no contact with enemies break Kamchatka off course stand by for orbital elements correction break what is all the shooting about. Ends.”
“Oh bloody hell.” Murametz turned red.
“Indeed,” Mirsky said drily. “The question is, whose? TacOps: what’s our status?”
‘Target acquired, sir. Range down to four-point-eight M-klicks, speed passing one-zero-zero k.p.s.
Engagement projected within two-point-four kiloseconds.“
“We have a … three-zero-zero-second margin,” said Mirsky, checking the clock display. “That should be plenty. We can get a look at the closest one without getting so close their launch base can shoot at us if it’s a missile bus. Everyone clear? Guns: I want real-time logging of those birds. Let’s see how they perform. Radar: Can you lock a spectroscope on the target?”
“At three K-klicks per second, from one-zero K-klicks away? I think so, sir, but we’ll need a big fat beacon to spot against.”
“You’ll have one.” Murametz smiled widely. “Guns: dial those birds down to point-one of a kiloton before you fire them. Standard MP-3 warheads?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Keep ‘em.”
Standing at the back of the bridge, Rachel tried not to wince. Wearing her arms inspectorate hat, she was all too familiar with the effects of americium bombs: nuclear weapons made with an isotope denser and more fissile than plutonium, more stable than californium. Just good old-fashioned fission bombs, jacketed with a high-explosive shaped charge and a lens of pre-fragmented copper needles — shrapnel that, in a vacuum engagement, would come spalling off the nuclear fireball in a highly directional cone, traveling at a high fraction of lightspeed.
The next thirty minutes passed in tense silence, broken only by terse observations from Radar One and Two. No more targets burst from hiding; there might well be others in the Kuiper belt, but none were close enough to see or be seen by the intense lidar pulses of the warship. In that time, passive sensors logged two nuclear detonations within a range of half a light-hour; someone was definitely shooting. And behind them, the telltale disturbances of six big ships emerged from jump, then powered up their combat lidar and moved out.
“Launch point in six-zero seconds,” called Helsingus. “Two hot SEM-20s on the rail.”
“Fire on schedule,” said Mirsky, straightening his back and looking directly ahead at the screen. The green arrow showing the Lord Vanek’s vector had grown until it was beginning to show the purple of relativistic distortion around its sensitive extrapolative tip: the ship was already nearing half a percent of lightspeed, a dangerous velocity. Too high a speed and it might not be able to track targets effectively: worse, it wouldn’t be able to dodge or change its vector fast, or jump safely.
“Three-zero seconds. Arming birds. Birds show green, sir.”
“I’m getting emissions from the target,” called Radar Two. “Lots of — looks like jamming, sir!”