The floor swayed subtly as the great ship spun around on its own center of gravity to point its cluster of fusion rockets at the approaching nuclear maelstrom. The flip complete, Broadchurch put the throttle through the bulkhead. Miguel gained a few kilos until the grav generator adjusted to the acceleration.
“We’re burning,” Broadchurch said. “One hundred percent, antimatter reserve going down like a bride on her wedding night.” Despite their anxiety, or perhaps because of it, everyone in the CIC turned to give Broadchurch the side eye. “Or so I’ve heard,” they said.
“Towed array free of its cradle and spooling out, eleven kilometers a minute,” Mattu said. “It’s going to be a couple minutes before it’s far enough away from the fusion rockets to get any meaningful data. RRC primed and ready for launch.”
“It’s going to be hell aiming our counter-missiles in that soup,” Warner said.
“It’s going to be hell aiming their birds, too,” Miguel answered.
“Yes, sir.”
Mattu glanced down and queried an alert on her station. “Halcyon has acknowledged and is moving ahead into our sensor shadow.”
Miguel actually sighed in relief. He’d expected Susan to argue the point. If she was any less stubborn, she’d blow a bubble and get clear of this mess, but at least she wasn’t insisting on remaining exposed to enemy fire. Apparently, an utter deluge of nuclear missiles while sitting inside a jumped-up yacht was enough to contain even her indignation.
Miguel smiled at the thought, then noticed their CL still hunched over in a corner of the CIC, quiet as a mouse.
“Mr. Nesbit, I’d almost forgotten you were here. I’m not used to you being so discreet.”
“Just cherishing in my last few minutes of living, Commander.”
“If you’d prefer to spend them in your quarters with a good book and a stiff contraband drink, no one would think the lesser of you.”
Nesbit stood and faced the room, back straight. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stand my watch.”
Miguel huffed through his nose and smirked with genuine surprise. “As you were, CL.” Feeling a moment of sentimentality creep in, he keyed the 1MC and linked it to the mic in his chair.
“Attention, crew of the Ansari, this is Acting-Captain Azevedo. As you’re all keenly aware, several hundred megatons of wrath are about to come knocking at our hatch. We’re going to do everything we can not to let them in, but I just wanted you to know, no matter the outcome of the next twenty minutes, I’ve never been prouder about anything than I am right now to call every last one of you shipmates. One way or another, our captain is safe, she will survive, and our story will be told down through the ages. Hold fast to your stations, maintain vigilance, and we might just get to tell the story ourselves over shots and beers. Don’t give up the ship. Azevedo out.”
A cheer went up around the CIC as Miguel cut the link.
“Great speech, XO,” Warner said. “You scared off three missiles with words alone.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Susan obsessed over the tactical plot, desperately searching for something, anything she might have overlooked that could give them an extra sliver of hope against what was coming down on her and her friends and crew a thousand kilometers behind her.
Ansari would take the brunt of it, but Halcyon had to be ready for any strays that got through and reverted to targets of opportunity, and it had a much less robust CiWS system and no counter-missiles for the task. In all likelihood, Ansari was about to fall to the swarm of predators coming their way and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. Then, exposed and alone, she’d have to order her little hijacked frigate, never designed or intended for extended operations in deep space, to bubble out to God-only-knew where as a fugitive, without hope of support or resupply, onboard a ship where her allies numbered less than a dozen and the original crew was sure to try and retake their home.
If she’d ever been in a more precarious situation, it didn’t spring immediately to mind.
“Ansari just deployed their reflector cloud,” Okuda said. “Our sensors are blind to anything happening on the other side of it. We’re tied into the feed from their towed array and surviving recon platforms, for as long as they last.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. Culligan, get our countermeasures ready for launch. Charts, charge our rings and be prepared to bubble out at a moment’s notice.”
“Course, mum?” her pilot from the assault shuttle asked. Like all marine aviators, he’d been cross-trained in handling capital ships, because in combat, you just never knew who the next man up would have to be. Not that his instructors had ever guessed they were training a pirate. No, not a pirate, Susan reprimanded herself. Perez had resigned her commission the moment she ordered the shuttle she believed Susan on destroyed, whether she realized it or not, making Susan the rightful, legal ranking officer in the combat area. Her people were not pirates. They were in the right. They’d liberated the Halcyon from mutineers.
Whether a court-martial inquiry would agree was a question for a later date. Right now, she’d be grateful just to live long enough to see one.
“Our antimatter stores are down by a third. Make course for the AM factory in Grendel orbit. We can probably top off before Allen realizes where we’ve bubbled to. Maybe even offload our potential troublemakers.”
“Aye, mum.”
Unspoken was the fact off-loading their “troublemakers” would leave them below a skeleton crew for even such a small ship, but it was important to prioritize existential crises and tackle them one at a time instead of
