Honor Bound

indistinguishable from the background radiation. And we’ve seen no indication that they’re equipped with gravimetic sensors, so they shouldn’t be able to pick us up that way, either.”

“Higgs, what are the chances we can get a message to Fleet HQ without them picking up on it?”

“It’s chancy, ma’am,” Higgs warned. “I think it’s about even odds one of their ships will detect it.”

Joyce Minishimi was silent for a moment, her eyes fixed on the display. Then she sighed softly. “There are only two Fleet cruisers insystem right now,” she said, half to herself, “and the Brad isn’t ready to sail yet.” She looked back to Higgs. “Send to Fleet HQ: Enemy ships are transitioning the wormhole; numbers are estimated to be in the hundreds. We are going to move to engage. End of message. Attach a copy of our current sensor scans.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Higgs acknowledged, turning back to her station.

“Lt. Witten,” the Captain said to the Helm officer, “prepare to activate the drive field and take us in toward the wormhole at one gravity. We’re going to use our drive field as a weapon until they figure out we’re there.”

“Aye, Captain,” Witten responded. “One gravity acceleration at your word.”

“Commander Gianeto,” Captain Minishimi continued, “I want you to launch every Area Denial missile we have right into the wormhole immediately, set to detonate just outside its event horizon.”

“Aye, Captain,” Gianeto was hitting the controls even as he spoke. “Launching all AD munitions now.”

On the Tactical screen, they could see the swarm of small missiles emerging from the weapons pods, accelerating away from the mass of the Decatur, one wave after another launching only seconds apart. It seemed the missiles would never stop, but finally the last were gone, leaving only the glowing stars of their drives slowly fading as they drew away.

“One hundred Area Denial Munition missiles away, ma’am,” Gianeto announced. “We’re cleaned out.”

“Mr. Witten,” she addressed the Helmsman formally, “take us in.”

* * *

“Jesus Christ that’s a lot of ships,” Lt. Wolford muttered, shaking his head as he stared at the sensor display.

“At ease on the bridge!” Commander-acting Captain, Franks reminded himself- Tandy Lee snapped. She was a dark-haired, dark-eyed young officer with cafe-aux-lait skin and soft, rounded features-and she was as tense and raw as an exposed nerve. She had even less experience than Perez, and when Franks had told her that the Captain was dead, he thought she was going to go into shock. “Commander Infante,” she said a bit too loud and harshly into the intercom pickup, “how much longer until we can activate the drives?”

“We have the fuel pods loaded, Captain,” Infante replied, unflappable, “and the new power conduits have been installed… we just have to get the shielding in place. It should just be another few minutes.”

“We have fusion detonations near the wormhole!” Wolford announced, stabbing a finger at the white globes that were popping up in the Tactical projection. Franks moved around behind the man, looking at the readout.

“Those are Area-Denial Munitions,” he said confidently. One of the many things he’d been doing in his spare time to try to make himself more qualified to be a field agent was studying the signatures of various Fleet weapons. “That has to be the Decatur attacking.” He paled as he realized what that meant, turning to face acting Captain Lee. “She’s all alone out there, Captain.”

“Lieutenant,” she ground out impatiently, clearly unhappy about having him on the bridge at all, “we are doing everything we can to get under power and help the Decatur…”

“That’s not what I mean, ma’am,” he cut her off, earning a dirty look. “If she’s engaged with the enemy, they’re going to…”

“Eysselink drive signatures detected!” Wolford exclaimed. “It’s more of those ramships, ma’am… they’re breaking away from the rest of the enemy formation and heading this way!” He swallowed hard as he glanced between Lee and the Tactical display. “There are six of them at least, from what I can read.”

“They’re going to do that,” Franks finished, letting out a sigh.

“Commander Infante!” Lee’s call was almost desperate. “Did you hear that?”

Infante sounded, for once, affected. “Yes, Captain… I’m powering up the drive now. My people can install the shielding on the move.” Franks winced, knowing exactly what that could mean: if they had another field intersect without the shielding in place, everyone in the engineering compartment would be fried instantly.

“Lt. Bevins,” Lee said-trying, Franks thought, to sound more confident than she felt, “plot an intercept course for the ramships and take us to 1g acceleration.”

Lt. Franks braced himself as the acceleration alarm sounded and gravity pressed his feet to the deck, a welcome feeling after days of zero gravity. He stepped over to the Captain’s station and hovered a hand over her communications console, looking a question. She sighed with exasperation but nodded.

“Commander Infante,” he called. “Did you and Bevins have time to work out that modification?”

“I believe it will work, Lt. Franks,” Infante confirmed. “The only way to know for sure is to try it.”

“What will work?” Lee demanded. “What are you talking about?”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Franks told her. “With the alert, we didn’t have time to tell you. Commander Infante was working with Lt. Bevins to try to come up with a new way to stop the ramships… other than, well, ramming them.”

`“What did you come up with, Commander?” Lee asked the engineer.

“Lt, Bevins and I made some adjustments to the gravimetic sensor emitters, Captain,” Commander Infante explained. “Theoretically, we should be able to use it to destabilize the ramships’ Eysselink drive fields, if we can get close enough.”

“How close?” She asked and then scowled and added: “Theoretically?”

“At least a hundred kilometers or so,” Infante said. “And yes, theoretically because it’s never been tried outside a research station. It’s a lucky thing I read about that study… I doubt there’s anyone else in the Fleet that would have thought of it.”

“It’s the only chance we have, Captain Lee,” Franks reminded her. “Intercepting just two of those things almost destroyed this ship and killed Captain Perez… and there are at least a half dozen of them.”

Lee hissed out a deep breath. “We’ll have to try it,” she decided. “Tactical, work up an intercept plan that will give us time on target with as many of the ramships as possible and get us on course.” She shook her head. “I just hope the Decatur can handle the rest of them…”

* * *

It felt inexpressibly good to Francis Witten, after weeks of crawling between wormholes on plasma drives, naked to whatever the enemy wanted to throw at them, to be surrounded once more by the protective sheath of the Eysselink field… even if they were accelerating directly into the midst of hundreds of enemy ships.

“Thirty seconds to the first wave of enemy ships,” Gianeto announced. “Twenty ships, mostly lighters”- converted freighters-“with about 100 kilometers between them.” His eyes darted to the right, to another section of his Tactical display, where a series of white globes was erupting like a fireworks display. “We have positive detonation from the first of the AD munitions, Captain! I’m reading several secondary explosions too… don’t know how many of them we took out. Some of them are going through the gate… they must be keeping it activated with a series of fusion triggers.”

“Mr. Witten,” Minishimi directed, “sweep through the first wave of Protectorate ships, starting with those closest to us… do as much damage as possible before they realize where we are.”

“Aye, Captain,” Witten acknowledged. “Ten seconds to impact with the first target.”

The enemy ship expanded impossibly swift on the viewscreen, growing from a barely-perceptible dot to an ungainly, bulbous collection of jury-rigged armor and weapons pods… and then expanding into a ball of glowing plasma as the drive field ripped it to shreds. Witten blinked at the explosion and then it was gone, whisked away along with that particular wave of space-time, and the next ship, almost identical in design, was coming into view. It was gone just as quickly, and Witten tried not to think about all the human lives he’d just ended.

“That’s two of them down,” he announced, touching the controls and dragging the icon of the ship into the course he desired. “Swinging around for the next pair in this wave.”

“Captain!” Gianeto interjected. “I’m picking up multiple Eysselink drive fields near the gate! It looks like five… no, six are splitting off and heading insystem at high g’s.” He glanced back at her. “There are at least two more heading straight for us.”

“How long till they intercept?” Minishimi asked, her voice calm.