Twenty, with luck.
Stet.
Van frowned. A corvette had appeared out-system of the Salya. Had one of the Revs used a short jump? That was almost suicidal—except that it had worked.
Nynca changed course to put the Salya between the corvette and the Elsin.
Van went back to concentrating on the oncoming heavy cruiser, a vessel that massed twice what the Joyau did. Since both the Revenant cruiser and the Joyau were on a closure course, the CPA had dropped to less than fifteen.
For an instant, he focused on the Salya and the Revenant corvette. Nynca had launched torps, and two of the Rev’s torps had flared harmlessly against the Salya’s shields.
Another cruiser had turned out-system, but according to Van’s calculations, would not reach the Joyau for close to thirty minutes.
Van watched as the Joyau and the closer Revenant cruiser neared each other. The Revenant began to launch torps even before the two ships were within effective torp range. The first four flared away harmlessly a good emkay short of the Joyau’s shields.
Van dropped all power to the drives and gravs, and transferred it to the forward shields.
The next set of torps—four in all—impacted the shields, but not simultaneously, and the shields shivered, but remained in the green.
Because the Joyau still wasn’t close enough for what Van needed to do, he shifted power to the drives for a moment, then returned it to the shields before the cruiser’s next salvo arced toward the smaller IIS ship. Again, the Joyau’s reinforced shields held, staying in the green, if barely, as Van kept his course head-on-head with the cruiser.
The cruiser shifted course, not by much, less than five degrees, as if to avoid a collision. Van shifted his course to return to a steady bearing, decreasing range. There was less than five minutes to CPA, although it was unlikely to be a collision, given the relative velocities and speeds. Van just wanted to be close enough to use the Joyau’s nets and torps to full advantage.
The cruiser’s next salvo brought the faintest trace of amber into the Joyau’s shields.
Van checked the closure—still not near enough.
Within another minute, the two vessels would be within less than twenty klicks, flashing toward and past each other.
Van slewed the Joyau across the projected course line of the cruiser, then flexed the photon nets, released all the matter gathered there, and followed with two quick salvoes of torps, then another.
The Revenant cruiser’s shields flared bright green as the cruiser impacted the wave of matter Van had flung, then dropped to amber, but held.
Van loosed another double salvo of torps.
The cruiser’s shields held, momentarily, and in the amber, but they held. Van could see the Revenant’s EDI drive indicators flickering, and he let loose another set of torps. He hoped they’d take out the cruiser, because, until he and Eri could manually reload the spare torps in the cargo bay into the firing bays, the Joyau was down to two torps.
The cruiser’s drives flickered off, but the screens remained amber.
Van fired his last two torps, then swung the Joyau out-system.
Behind him, the cruiser’s screens collapsed, and the cruiser flared into energy.
Van checked the wider monitors.
The Salya had taken station near the Elsin, and there was no sign of the Revenant corvette, but another cruiser had turned out-system to follow the one that was only fifteen minutes from intercepting the three IIS ships.
After another five minutes, Van was close enough to pulse the Elsin.
Interrogative status?
I’ve had to improvise here, but everything’s go. Countdown beginning at sixty. Departure in thirty. Beginning countdown at sixty. Departure at thirty.
Van let out a slow breath. Affirm departure in thirty.
In thirty, affirm, came from the Salya…. thirty-six, thirty-five, thirty-four, thirty-three, thirty-two…
The transmission from the Elsin broke off. Van stiffened. The Elsin had vanished—gone jump. He scanned the EDIs, then the system screen.
Van froze, if but for an instant. The EDI screen showed—impossibly—an enormous flare surging out from Jerush—the sun itself—what looked to be a major flare.
“No…” murmured Eri from the second seat.
Van froze, if but for a milli-instant. The release of energy shown in the EDI screen was not just a massive solar wind, a comm disruption, but something with enough energy, heat, and power to broil the sunward side of Orum, or burn it to a crisp, strip the atmosphere away. The image of eight white towers melting down instantaneously flashed across his mind, followed by the screams of millions of men, women, and children, walking, talking, one moment, and then…
Convulsively, Van initiated the jumpshift—hoping that he had not been too late, and hoping that Nynca had not waited so long as Van had.
The Joyau twisted, and Van felt his guts being ripped in different directions, pulled out from inside him, even as they simultaneously were being crushed into the internal equivalent of a black hole.
Black flashes alternated with white flares, and the entire ship shuddered in the endless and yet instantaneous moment of jump.
The Joyau staggered—that was the only word that fit—out of jump. Van checked the systems, half-surprised that they had made it anywhere. The ship was somewhere on the fringes of the Perdyan system, but well out beyond normal jump emergence.
Then he just sat in the command couch, shuddering, as image after image ran through his mind, of oceans instantly boiling away, of waves of flames incinerating everything before them, before the air vanished, of the strongest buildings being flattened, just before the very ground turned to molten rock, of mountains melting down like candles in a wildfire, of seas boiling away in an instant…
While trying to cope with those images, he automatically ran diagnostics. Both jump generators were inoperative. The secondary screen generator was down. He tried to spread the photon nets, and got fifty-seven percent of maximum extension.
The Joyau was headed in-system, and Van sat stunned in the command seat, images jumbled together, images of shuttles being dashed from the skies, of orbit stations being vaporized, of all the Revenant ships in-system knowing the wave front was accelerating toward them, and those
