He shook his head bitterly. “Tell them that we failed to prevent its escape,” he said. The Admiral would not be happy. “And then get started on rescue efforts. We have a lot of lives to save.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“I hear they lost your toy.” Captain John Raines Johnson said, as the attack wing gathered to support the Lightning. “What do you think of that?
“I don’t believe it,” Andrew said, shaking his head. If he hadn’t been on the priority list for any updated intelligence regarding the Killers, or their technology, he wouldn’t have heard about it for a few more days, or hours. The civilian scientists at Star’s End — those who had survived — would probably be clogging the communication channels to report to their universities about the missing starship. Hardly anyone would believe it at first. Starships didn’t simply operate on their own — well, human starships didn’t. Perhaps the Killers operated by different rules.
He pushed the matter out of his mind. “Leave it for the moment,” he said. Whatever happened, the attack wing had its own mission to complete. “Start the countdown; thirty seconds and counting.”
“Counting,” Captain Johnson agreed. He had a lean and hungry look on his face. He’d survived the Battle — Slaughter — of New Singapore and the chance to tear into the Killers was something he’d always wanted. The implosion bolts had their limits and the more conventional weapons only inflicted tiny amounts of damage, but they were far better than watching Killer starships advancing, shrugging off enough firepower to devastate enough star systems. “We run cover for you; you nip in, destroy their sun, and then we all go back home for victory celebrations.”
Andrew nodded. The latest reports from the observation starship and its deployed sensor drones had warned that two new Killer starships had arrived in the system, bringing the total up to forty-two, counting the damaged ships from Shiva. The undamaged starships would be targeted first, in hopes of knocking more Killer starships out of the fight, but no one knew how quickly the Killers could repair the damage to their hulls. Some scientists had speculated that it would need a repair facility, others had believed that the starships had limited self-repair capabilities — which the escape of the ship they’d captured rather proved — but no one knew for sure. Andrew had no particular interest in watching the Killers repairing themselves, and then attacking them. Damaged ships would find it harder to strike back.
And they’d have to stay and fight too, unless they wanted to lose the star system as well. Andrew knew that the Killers had vast powers and thousands of star systems, but the investment they’d put into the system they were about to destroy had to be significant, even by their standards. The loss of the system, with or without the starships, had to hurt, even if no one knew how badly. The same could probably be said for the Killers, in their hunt for human settlements; they couldn’t know how important each settlement actually was. They might hit Sparta, which would cause massive disruption, or they might hit an insignificant little black colony with only a few hundred souls. In this war, both sides were equally blind.
“Ten seconds,” Captain Johnston said. “See you on the flip side, Andrew.”
“Good hunting,” Andrew said. Johnston was right; it did feel good to be the hunter for once, rather than the hunted, or the distraction while civilians escaped the combat zone. “Kill one of them for me.”
The communications channel closed. A moment later, the icons representing a full attack wing — one that hadn’t been involved in any prior skirmishes — vanished from the display as they jumped out. Andrew rather wished that there had been time to amass more ships, but with half the Defence Force still refitting with the new weapons and the other half being sent hopping around the Community on defence missions or preparing counterattacks, it had been hard enough to scrape up a new wing. The sheer scale of the war continued to daunt him. It was hard to grasp how far the distances actually were using the Anderson Drive. Their staging area was over a hundred light years from the Killer system.
“They’re gone, sir,” Gary said. His voice was tense. “I am picking up their live feed through the relay stations.”
Andrew pursed his lips as the brief transmissions echoed through the bridge. He could see the battle on the display, with the starships zooming down at their targets and showing them with implosion bolts as soon as they entered range, ducking and weaving to avoid the return fire. The Killers were no longer ignoring them, he realised; they were wiping out all of the sensor probes within range, along with any human starship that didn’t move fast enough. A single hit was still lethal — the engineers hadn’t been able to fix that problem — and the Killers were in their element. The damaged starships could still fire… and each of their shots was still lethal. It was a very balanced contest.
“They’re pushing the Killers as hard as they can,” Gary injected, slowly. “The Killer stations are also capable of opening fire.”
“I wondered about that,” Andrew said. A human installation would have mounted weapons on a shipyard as a matter of course, but the Killers might not bother — after all, what was there that could threaten them? They’d mounted the weapons anyway and human starships died. Whatever the Killers used their installations for, they were still lethal and deadly. “Keep relaying the signal out to Sparta.”
He leaned forward as the attack wing swooped around a damaged Killer vessel, launching a spread of energy torpedoes and fake Footsoldiers into the gash in their hull, before jumping out and regrouping just out of range. The Killers reacted sharply to the apparent threat, dispatching smaller automatons that operated in space from their shipyard — if it was a shipyard — to tackle the Footsoldiers before they gained entry. That settled another question in Andrew’s mind. The Killers knew how the human race had boarded and captured one of their vessels. Tiny explosions glittered out in space as the automations closed in on the fakes, only to discover that they were keyed to explode when touched. There were always more replacement automatons.
“The automatons are not coated in hull material,” Gary said, as several automatons were picked off by the starships. “They are not designed for combat operations.”
“They’re improvising, then,” Andrew decided. He looked up at the timer. There were seven seconds to go. “Stand by to jump.”
“Coordinates set, sir,” David said. “We’re ready.”
“Jump,” Andrew ordered.
The ship shuddered slightly and then they were in the target star system. “Near-space scan,” Andrew snapped. “Have they been distracted?”
“I have no active Killer vessels within engagement range,” Gary said, after a moment. It would have been irony indeed if they had come out of Anderson Drive inside a Killer starship. It would have destroyed both ships, but the Killers would have saved their system — and never even known what they’d done. “They are currently engaged with the attack wing. I do have several installations near the star, but they appear to be without power.”
“Keep us away from them,” Andrew ordered, looking down at the display. Seventy-two starships had roared into battle; fifty-three of them were still alive, buying time for the Lightning and her crew. “David, take us down towards the star.”
The starship turned and flashed down towards the star, which grew rapidly on the viewscreen. Andrew wondered, absently, if the Killers had noticed, or realise that the attack wing was playing with them. The crews had been specifically ordered not to ram their targets, even if they wanted revenge; the Killers had to think that they could win the fight. It made Andrew sick at heart, but until some older ships could be reconfigured as ramming ships, they had to sacrifice their lives. If the Killers realised what the Lightning had in mind, they would certainly attempt to stop her, or evacuate the system themselves…