“Weapons, get a new flight of ship-killers in the vac. Charts, Scopes, line us up with a monocle and give Carnegie another beam. Double pudding if you can jam it right down the hole we just made. Get the decoys maneuvering. And somebody swat those bugs!”
“Holy shit!” the pilot cursed from his seat on the flight deck.
“SitRep!” Susan barked. The same flight data feed the shuttle’s crew had was being shunted into her own augmented reality environ, but it was diverted so drastically from the tactical maps she was used to in the CIC that she couldn’t interpret half of what it tried to tell her.
“The decoy shuttle just exploded, mum! Brace! Brace! Brace!”
Before she could respond, the pilot threw the shuttle into a high-g turn that nearly crushed her spine. An image of the shuttle’s cockpit disintegrating into fire and shrapnel as it careened into its doomed sister played across Susan’s imagination even as all the color drained away from her vision. Her suit automatically constricted around her legs and abdomen, pushing blood back into her torso and brain, struggling to keep her conscious against the onslaught of artificial gravity.
Then, as suddenly as the weight had slammed down on her, it disappeared, then reversed. The ceiling became the floor as Susan’s full weight and a lot more dug into her shoulder straps. Even under the pressure, Susan felt two distinct pulses through her crash harness. Whether they were impacts from debris or weapons fire, she couldn’t say. Not that there was much difference between a bolt and a bullet at these velocities.
“Fuck me,” Okuda bit off to Susan’s right, a sentiment she shared in its entirety.
The thrust cut off without warning again, leaving them on the float. Susan hadn’t experienced maneuvering that violent since simulated spaceflight training back in C school.
“Are we clear?” she shouted up to the cockpit.
“Clear of the decoy’s wreckage, yes mum. We’ve taken light damage to our adaptive camo.”
“Have they spotted us?”
“I think they have bigger problems.” The pilot grimaced. “Ansari just opened fire.”
“On a planetary assault carrier battle group?” Okuda asked incredulously. “Is the XO insane?”
“No, but he’s damned good and pissed. And so am I. Pilot, get us clear of their lines of fire. Has he launched missiles yet?”
“Plumes just went hot, mum. Burning for the lead cruiser. Oh hell, Ansari just scored a laser hit on the Carnegie.”
“Good, do what you can to obscure your drive plume behind our outgoing ship killers. Make your way for the frigate at full clandestine burn.”
“We’re not rendezvousing with Ansari?” Okuda asked.
Susan looked back at the hold full of her marines in full battle rattle and smiled.
“Not just yet. Who’s up for a boarding action?”
TWENTY-FIVE
“They’re firing on each other, Derstu,” Kivits said, mandibles loose, sitting at the husk alcove like he’d just been punched in the mouth.
“They’re doing what?” Thuk asked, a green leaf still dangling out of his own mouthparts.
“They’re throwing everything, light-spears, javelins; they’re not close enough for sling bolts, but…”
“Who shot first?”
“The newcomers, but not at the Ansari, at the shuttle they launched. It was destroyed, utterly. Then the Ansari lit up the dark ocean like Ancestor’s Day.”
“Transfer to the display. Go back up the timestream to the first shot.”
Kivits did so, and the tactical situation their hidden husks observed was fed into the ring of solid light around the mind cavern. It was as Kivits had said. The middle-sized ship, likely one of the Mosaic-class heavy cruisers that had been in CCDF service for twenty-five cycles now from its profile, had destroyed a shuttle with its claws. Ansari answered almost instantaneously with an all-out barrage of javelins, still in flight, and light-spears. One of which struck home on the newly declared enemy Mosaic cruiser with spectacular effect.
Thuk unexpectedly found himself pounding the armrest of his chair with a midarm in triumph at the shot, as if his own harmony had landed the blow themselves. But reality quickly settled back in. No matter if the hit was luck or skill, in the final tactical analysis, it wasn’t going to swing the balance in favor of a single ship against three aggressors, two of which out-massed and out-clawed the defender. Ansari was fighting a valiant, courageous, and utterly doomed battle against a vastly superior foe.
Exactly what he would have expected from Captain Susan. But to what end?
“What in the abyss is going on over there?” Hurg pleaded.
“Seven Sacrifices,” Kivits swore. “They’re protecting us.”
“Explain,” Thuk said.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Kivits pointed at the crushing weight of the enemy force converging on the Ansari. “They came as soon as they received that messenger husk to meet up with Susan’s ship to either capture or kill us. She refused. Now they’re going to kill her for it, then come after us. She’s purchasing time for us to escape with her ship and her life.”
“That’s a pretty big swing in your estimation of our new friends, Kivits,” Thuk admonished.
Kivits pointed a blood-claw at the Ansari’s icon, even as it swatted away incoming javelins. “I may be prejudiced, but I’m not blind, Thuk.”
“Hurg, get Lynz on the mouth immediately.”
“Lynz here,” the three-legged attendant’s voice said as if through water. He was still on the outer hull, then.
“Attendant, it’s Thuk. I need to spin a seedpod and I need to do it right now.”
“We’re sewing up the last of the coils now, Derstu.”
“Good. Finish up, to Abyss with the plating, and let me know the moment your people are in the lockouts. Thuk out.”
“We’re making our escape, then?” Kivits asked hopefully. “We can’t let Susan’s sacrifice be for nothing.”
“No,” Thuk said, wrath building in his abdomen, pushing out against his plates until it felt as if he might burst at the joints. “No,
