Raven's Peace Page 20

  Of course, given the setup of the ships around Gathering Station, his neck had a lot of practice at itching of late.

  “Turnover in an hour,” Bazzoli reported. “Arrival at our destination two hours after that. There’s a pair of Restan destroyers hanging out by the cluster we’re heading for. I’m guessing they’re our adjudicators?”

  “Either that or the Restan are going to take advantage of this opportunity to stab us in the back with a dramatically insufficient force,” Henry replied. The Restan ships were rough equivalents to the Kenmiri escorts, with missiles and heavy lasers, and while they could probably damage Rigid Candor or Raven, they’d need complete surprise to seriously threaten either ship.

  “We’re receiving a transmission from them,” Moon reported. “Looks like an entry point and a timeline. They’re suggesting that Rigid Candor push their turnover and deceleration slightly and arrive ten minutes before us.”

  “Let them go first?” Henry asked. “Makes as much sense as anything. They can get there faster.”

  “Plus, if we go first and bull our way through a debris field, we clear a path for them to follow,” Iyotake noted. “Commander Ihejirika, can you double-check this? CIC is picking up some heat trails inside the cluster that don’t link up to the destroyers.”

  “Looks like civilian shipping,” the tactical officer replied. “Mining ships that were ordered to clear out to safe the area.”

  “I’ll run that by CIC, but it makes sense,” the XO agreed. “That’s about what I figured, but I wanted a second check in case they looked like warship signatures to you.”

  “Not even close,” Ihejirika replied.

  Henry was pulling up the data and double-checking to assuage his own paranoia, and he had to agree. The signatures were at least a day and a half old and too weak to have been warships. They were too old to have been helping the Restan set up the contest, but the timeline was about right for them to have been ordered to clear the area after it had been picked.

  “Kahlmor has agreed to go first,” Moon reported. “He wants a channel to you, ser.”

  “Link him to my network,” Henry agreed.

  The channel clicked into his head, and an image of the Lord of Ten Thousand Miles appeared in front of him.

  “We are going to leave you behind here, Colonel Wong,” he said in Kem. “Rigid Candor will be first to the challenge, but I’m sure you will do more than merely follow in our trail. Good luck, Colonel.

  “May the best crew win.”

  “And good luck to your people as well, Lord of Ten Thousand Miles,” Henry replied. “May the best crew win.”

  Raven hit turnover, flipping in space to shed velocity as they headed toward the entrance point. Rigid Candor kept going for several more minutes before mirroring the motion, decelerating slightly harder to make sure she reached the designated spot ten minutes early.

  The Restan destroyers were the markers of the beginning of the course, but Raven’s sensors were starting to pick up hints of the beacons hidden inside the cluster.

  “That is a mess for sensors,” Ihejirika exclaimed. “I should be able to see the entire cluster, but the radioactivity is so bad, I can only see the outskirts.”

  “Is there a chance this is an ambush?” Henry asked. No wonder the cluster had shed mining ships after the order had been given. There were enough radioactives in those asteroids to fuel Resta’s munitions industry for at least a century.

  “There’s always a chance,” the tactical officer replied. “I’m sure I’d be picking up any actual ships inside the cluster, though, plus we’d see heat trails from their drives if they’d entered anytime in the last week or two.”

  “How sure is ‘sure’?” Henry asked. “This is what I was expecting, but I didn’t expect it to be quite that jammed.”

  “Seventy percent,” Ihejirika admitted. “Maybe seventy-five. Our hypothetical ambush would have to have known we were going to be having this contest in this particular location weeks ago, though.”

  “That would only require that the Londu and the Restan be working together,” Henry replied. “I’ve heard much worse conspiracy theories.”

  Ahead of them, Rigid Candor’s velocity dropped to zero at the entrance point. The battleship hung immobile in space, a half-kilometer-long lump of iron and technology.

  In another time and another place, the Londu would have been the UPA’s enemies. An expansionist semi-totalitarian monarchy, they made for unlikely allies at best. In the face of an expansionist polity that controlled ten thousand stars and enslaved entire races to fuel their industry, the Londu had been the lesser evil.

  Suddenly, Henry found himself questioning if he trusted them. If they were working with the Resta, luring him into close range of Rigid Candor inside an area no one in the star system could see would be a perfect trap.

  He chuckled at his own paranoia.

  “Of course, ambushing us when everyone knows that we’re in a contest with the Londu that we had the Restan organize would make both of them look bad at what’s supposed to be a diplomatic conference,” he said aloud. “I don’t think it would serve either of their goals, so we’re just borrowing trouble, aren’t we?”

  “Probably, ser,” his tactical officer conceded. There was a silent pause. “Rigid Candor has commenced the course. They are entering the cluster at point seven KPS squared at vector thirty-six by seventy-nine.”

  “All right. Track her as long as you can see her,” Henry ordered. “Feed everything you see to Bazzoli. If we have to outfly the big bastard, let’s see just what they got up to.”

  They lost track of Rigid Candor well before they reached the entry point themselves, a disturbing reminder of how radioactive the region they were going to be maneuvering in was.

  Bazzoli stopped Raven in the exact same spot that the Londu battleship had been stopped, and the bridge crew eyed the designated path with wary eyes.

  “I’m picking up beacons marking themselves as one, two, and three,” Ihejirik noted. “No debris fields or anything that Candor couldn’t have flown through. Tight turns and tight spaces, but clear flying.”

  About as even between the two ships as possible, then. It seemed fair enough so far.

  “XO, is the ship prepped for thrust?” he asked.

  “We are prepped,” Iyotake confirmed. “All loose objects are secure and crew are strapped in.”

  It wasn’t the same as putting everyone in the tanks, but it would buy them four pseudogravities of thrust. That would give Bazzoli another tenth of a KPS squared to work with.

  “Transmission from the Restan destroyer,” Moon reported.

  “On the main screen,” Henry ordered.

  “Raven, this is Lesser-Ship-Voice Nad Ahlane,” a dark-skinned Restan officer introduced herself in slightly choppy Kem. “Are you picking up the first course beacon?”

  “We are, Lesser-Ship-Voice,” Henry responded. “And at least one past that.”

  “That is positive,” she confirmed. “There are thirty-six beacons positioned in the cluster, following a course that will bring you to the gunnery area at the center, where a dozen drones await you. Points will be assessed for speed of your journey through the cluster and closeness of approach to the beacons. Points will be removed for the destruction of any beacon.

  “Once you reach the center, you have six minutes to destroy all twelve drones. Points will be assessed for accuracy in terms of both missed shots and proximity to center of mass on the drones.

  “Good luck, Colonel Wong.”

  He inclined his hands.

  “Thank you, Lesser-Ship-Voice. Are we clear to begin?” he asked.

  “The timer will begin on the activation of your engines. Carry on, Raven.”

  The channel closed and Henry smiled beatifically at his crew.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the flag has dropped. Make it happen.”

  Bazzoli had been waiting for the order. Thrust pressed Henry back into his seat as she took the battlecruiser�
��s massive engines from zero to sixty percent in under three seconds. Four large men settled onto his chest, but Raven flung herself forward.

  “First beacon contact in forty-two seconds,” Ihejirika reported, his voice not audibly impacted by the acceleration.

  “We’ll change vector seven seconds before that,” Bazzoli said aloud. “Inertia will take us within ten kilometers of the first beacon as we burn for the second.”

  Henry didn’t even nod in response. This was Bazzoli’s chance to shine, and the navigator had control of the ship. They were going to win this or lose this on her skill…and on whether or not the Restan had left any places in the course where a willingness to plow through debris would save them time.

  “Beacon one tagged,” the report came half a minute later. “Closest approach, seven point one kilometers.”

  Beacon two’s closest approach was at eleven kilometers seventy seconds later, as Raven contorted in space toward beacon three.

  “I’ve got four and five on the scopes,” Ihejirika reported. “Feeding them to the nav console.”

  Henry was already watching everything Bazzoli did on the two-sided screen. The new icons popped up, and he suppressed a moment of frustration as he saw them. So far, all of this was clear space. The tight turns required to keep the sequence going were slightly to Raven’s advantage, but he wasn’t seeing anything that wouldn’t let Rigid Candor’s greater acceleration carry them forward faster.

  Beacons six and seven popped onto the screen as Bazzoli whipped them around beacon three at barely two kilometers. They were separated by a lengthy stretch of open space, exactly the kind of stretch that would give the Londu an advantage.

  He had to admit, though, that Bazzoli was terrifying. The sheer skill with which she danced a two-million-ton battlecruiser through the obstacles on the course was mind-boggling. Each beacon after two was tagged from less than ten kilometers away as she tried to score points for proximity.

  More beacons appeared on the screens and Raven wove her way through the course. It was, he had to admit, mostly a fair course. There was the stretch between six and seven that took Raven four minutes and had probably taken Rigid Candor half that, but the rest was the kind of tight turns and maneuvers where helm skill made all the difference.

  By the time they spotted the eye of the storm, though, he knew how things had shaken out. Rigid Candor was waiting in the clearing at the center of the cluster…and the only drones on the scanners were tagged for Raven.

  They had at least five minutes left of the course, which meant that the Londu ship had probably cleared the course at least twelve minutes or more before.

  Despite Bazzoli’s skill, Raven had clearly lost the maneuvering portion of the contest.

  “Ihejirika,” Henry said softly.

  “Yes, ser?”

  “The contest screwed us on the maneuvering, but they can’t do that on the gunnery.” He smiled coldly. “Bazzoli did a fantastic job. Match her and we’ll remind the Londu why they should be damn happy they can outrun us.”

  Raven decelerated all of the way into the clearing from the final beacon, reducing her velocity to less than a tenth of a kilometer per second by the time the drones registered her as being in the zone and sent their active signals.

  Henry mentally cataloged the drones as they came online. Four were immobile targets, sitting ducks for whatever Ihejirika chose to hit them with. Six were maneuvering at various rates, ranging from 0.1 KPS2 all the way up to one accelerating at the 10 KPS2 of a missile.

  The last two were maneuvering and were running some of the nastiest electronic countermeasures he’d seen in recent years. In his mental list of targets, those were the last ones he’d have fired at—better to remove the easy targets first, after all.

  So, of course, Ihejirika shot them first. Raven’s heavy lasers spoke before her main gun, the power-capacitor icons on the screens losing a third of their contents as the beams flashed out.

  Maneuvering or not, ECM or not, those drones died instantly to direct hits—and then Ihejirika truly set to work.

  The first grav-driver shot was a conversion round that managed to take out two of the immobile targets. The second finished the other unmoving drones off, while the lasers took out four of the dodging drones in the same time period.

  There was a moment after the second conversion round, then the lasers fired one last time.

  Twelve drones had taken two grav-driver rounds and eight laser shots…in under ninety seconds.

  “Course complete,” Ihejirika purred. “I show the clearing as complete. Just us and Rigid Candor.”

  “We are receiving an encrypted tightbeam from Candor,” Moon reported. “Really?” she asked in credulousness at what she’d just said. “We’re a thousand klicks from them and behind a nearly solid wall of uranium asteroids. Encrypted tightbeam?”

  “Link encryption protocols and send it to my network,” Henry ordered. “Let’s not critique our allies’ paranoia, people. I was expecting something like this.”

  “Colonel Wong,” the image of Kahlmor greeted him as it appeared. “Your gunners are…impressive.”

  “I believe terrifying might be the word you are looking for, Lord of Ten Thousand Miles,” the UPA Captain suggested.

  The Londu chuckled.

  “Perhaps,” he conceded. “I will leave it to the umpires to decide when we deliver the data to them, but I believe this contest has been a draw. We took the maneuvering, but you have handily outshot us.”

  “And that is not why you are talking to me on an encrypted implant-to-implant channel,” Henry pointed out. “This far out, I don’t believe we could get more secure.”

  “We can,” Kahlmor said calmly. “And we must. I ask that you meet me on a shuttle between our ships, Colonel Wong. There are…discussions between us that should be private. And even here, I do not trust computers or radio to be safe.”

  “Very well,” Henry agreed.

  The Londu seemed almost taken aback.

  “I expected more argument,” he admitted.

  “I expected this,” Henry told him. “We each bring a shuttle to the exact midpoint. But we meet on my shuttle, understood?”

  “A fair request,” Kahlmor conceded. “It shall be done.”

  The channel cut and Henry shook his head.

  “XO? Get a shuttle prepped for me. I’m meeting our friend in person in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Why?” Iyotake asked. “That’s insane.”

  “No. It’s the Scion wanting to talk to the UPA without anyone else knowing the details,” Henry said grimly. “He’s sent a man he trusts, but the Scion hesitates to trust even his own crew.”

  He shook his head.

  “We pulled a draw, so we get to keep the wine,” he noted. “I would bet all of it that Ambassador Saunt is aboard that shuttle.”

  “Like I said, ser, I like wine,” his XO replied. “I’m not losing it on a sucker bet!”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Lieutenant Colonel Iyotake’s wine supply would have been safe, it turned out. Henry had agreed with his XO that it was a sucker bet, but when the two shuttles linked airlocks in the middle of the eye of the asteroid cluster, only Lord of Ten Thousand Miles Kahlmor crossed over.

  Without maneuvering, Henry was wearing mag-boots to remain locked to the shuttle deck. The Londu shuttle had artificial gravity, but the UPA’s version of the tech was too finicky to easily install in that small of a ship.

  The systems aboard the shuttle could compensate thrust to allow the craft to accelerate at half a kilometer per second squared, but they couldn’t provide gravity while the shuttle wasn’t accelerating.

  The lack clearly surprised Kahlmor, and he nearly overbalanced and fell into the ship before Henry grabbed his arm.

  “Here.” He passed the other man a pair of mag-boots.

  “You are the masters of gravity technology among the Vesheron, yet your shuttle lacks artificial gravity?” the Lord of Ten Thousand Miles repli
ed in Kem. He put on the boots regardless, and based on the ease with which he locked himself to the floor, the tall Londu man wasn’t unfamiliar with the concept.

  “Creating a basic gravity field with a device that can fit in the free space in a shuttle that has to match her mothership’s acceleration is a very different project than projecting a gravity shear with enough tidal force to deflect a laser,” Henry said. “Our gravity technology is rather…focused.”

  It also wasn’t true that the UPSF couldn’t put artificial gravity in their shuttles. They’d chosen to spend that mass and cubage elsewhere. Most of the time, after all, a shuttle was either in motion or in someone else’s gravity field.

  “And that focus has made you among the most powerful of the Vesheron,” Kahlmor replied. “Which is why I am here.”

  “I will admit, I expected Ambassador Saunt,” Henry said as he led the way into the shuttle’s main space. The crew were sealed in the cockpit and they were alone. His network was recording everything he saw and heard, as were the shuttle systems, but those were the only recordings of what was happening.

  And even the shuttle crew didn’t have access to those cameras right now. The shuttle’s passenger space was probably the most secure meeting space Henry had ever been in.

  “This is not a matter for ambassadors and diplomats,” Kahlmor told him. “This is to be between soldiers, between commanders who have fought the same enemy and know the limits of each other’s ships and crews.”

  “That sounds intimidating, Lord of Ten Thousand Miles,” Henry said calmly.

  “This is a time for clear honesty,” the Londu officer replied. “We have arranged this moment of complete security so that you and I can discuss what is to come now that the Kenmiri are no longer a factor.”