Shell Game, page 28
part #15 of The Last Hunter Series
39
Derek was ready to attack, and Hunter rode on his flank to help handle any trouble that came their way. He wasn’t certain whether he expected there to be a big fight or for the enemy to hunker down. If it was the former, it would be interesting to see exactly how much combat actually took place since they had control codes that would disable the Locusts.
If it was the latter, then their job would have become significantly more difficult, but Amanda had the antimatter missiles that might make that something they could deal with. Honestly, it would depend on the enemy commander’s frame of mind. If they had, in fact, destroyed the ships with the two senior officers already in the system—the one that was leaving to go on patrol and the one that had been returning—then there might not actually be anyone with the command experience to know what to do, and that would be to their benefit.
They’d already put together a map of where there were clusters of enemy ships inside the asteroid belt, and the probes had even given them rough numbers of what they’d be dealing with in each. The Tardan military vessels weren’t a direct threat to either of the battleships if they could strip the Locusts away from them.
The antimatter missiles that the professor had put together had the potential to change how the Confederation conducted the war. If they could launch missiles at faster-than-light speeds, then that would leave enemies that were far too distant for regular munitions at their mercy. This could very well help in the fight when they got to Earth. The data they’d gather today might make a difference in ending the war entirely.
It might also help when it comes time to deal with the Kingdom of Kastelara. They were an unknown quantity, but he was fairly certain that they would be dealing with them at some point in the not-so-distant future. A couple of decades would pass before reports of what was going on right now reached them, and they could send a force back to the Confederation. That gave them a relatively short timeline to come up with a plan of action for a technologically superior force that might very well be far more dangerous than either the Novarites or the Tardan military.
Still, that was a problem for another day. Right now, they needed to liberate this system. Those weren’t the orders that Admiral Romanoff had given them, yet that was his goal. If things played out the way he thought they might, it would leave the remaining Tardan forces at a significant disadvantage. They should leverage that if they could because they would never have the Poseidon Group in the system in such a weak position again.
He and Amanda had spoken about how they were going to do this and mutually decided that it would be best that Aries led the charge. Even though Hunter was the admiral’s flagship, Derek would be in tactical command of the operation. He was the lure, and his wife was the hammer that was going to smash anyone who tried to get them. It seemed like an equitable split of their resources.
Using the independent quantum drive to appear just outside the jump limit, the two battleships proceeded in at full acceleration. The goal was to edge closer to the asteroid belt without trying to go directly toward it. They would end up circling the system at least once. Unless, of course, things went much more badly than he expected.
The journey took hours, and the enemy had plenty of time to figure out how they were going to respond. They’d already lost a good chunk of Locusts and probably had their suspicions about what had happened. That still wasn’t going to save them in the end if Derek had his way.
Contrary to his expectations, a significant number of Locusts did launch themselves out of the belt and head toward the two battleships. There were a couple of Tardan military ships following along closely behind but sticking back enough that they were in less danger than the Locusts they were commanding.
He supposed that was a decent midrange option to see how things worked out for them. They weren’t going to be happy with the results, but he couldn’t blame them for trying. At least one of those ships had to have a controller, and those were probably in short supply. Denying them that would be problematic for their further defense of the system.
Them sending a ship like that also meant that they had at least one more vessel capable of commanding the Locusts. If they’d only had one in their back pockets, they’d never have risked it.
They’d probably seen the ambush where the fighters had eliminated or disabled many of the other Tardan warships. That, fortunately, left very little evidence of the true capabilities of the battleships. The fact that no enemy ships had been detected in the area where the ambush occurred probably had them a little freaked out. Good.
They’d never encountered missiles like the battleship stocked. The lasers would probably be something of a surprise, but they were roughly analogous to the phased packet plasma guns that the invasion had already experienced. They were more powerful at shorter ranges, but that wasn’t going to make much of a difference.
The sheer number of lasers they had, however, would be an ugly surprise when it came time to bring them to bear. There were still more Locusts coming than the two battleships could fight using the original weapons they’d been equipped with, so the enemy had every reason to expect that as long as they kept control of their war machines, they would win this fight.
Sadly for them, expectations didn’t win battles.
“Incoming communication from Hunter, sir,” the communications officer said.
“Put it on half the screen. I want to keep my eye on the tactical overlay.”
A few moments later, the tactical overlay shifted to the left side of the screen, and his wife appeared on the other. “Looks like they’re willing to take a chance. How do you want to play this?”
“I think we’d be best off using the minimum force we can get away with. There’s no need to reveal just how overpowering our weapons are at close range unless we have to. Also, who wants to waste missiles that might be critically needed later on?”
She nodded. “Agreed. About the time the Locusts are preparing to engage, we could fire off a hundred missiles at the Tardan military vessels. Based on everything we know, that’s plenty to eliminate all of them without any risk that there will be survivors. We could probably get away with sixty or seventy, but I don’t want to be so miserly that we give them the first strike that they’re looking for.”
“That makes sense to me. We’ll both need to be on the lookout for where any follow-up signals come from. Pinning down exactly where any remaining command vessels are located has to be a priority. Is Specter covering that angle?”
“Yes. She went ahead and is already at the belt or close to it. Tina will tap into the probe network that they already have in place, and if anyone sends signals that look like they are commanding the Locusts, she’ll be able to narrow that down for us and send us the information. She’s going to send it wide-beam, but as it’s coming out from the belt, it’s not going to raise any eyebrows. Not that the Tardans have eyebrows, of course.”
He chuckled at that. “They look just fine without them. Once we’ve dealt with this particular group, we’ll come in as close as we can so that they will have to send the Locusts beyond their control limits if they want them to come after us. That means that we are effectively invulnerable since they don’t have the master control codes. We’ll go around the system, and Tina can tell us if there are any groups of enemy ships that are trying to evade us. They’re going to be watching the battleships and not looking for hidden probes. By the time this is all done, we’ll be able to handle them.”
“I sure hope everything works out as well as you think it will. Any time I plan ahead like that, there’s always a complication.”
“There’s probably going to be one here too, but we’ll just have to soldier on. If everything goes into the crapper, we’ll engage the skip drive and get out of here. That’s our ultimate inner limit. We won’t come any closer than where we conservatively believe that the skip drive will function. If we need to run, we run.”
“Our time for running is over,” she said. “Now we grab them by the throats and smash their faces in.”
He laughed. “Some things never change. Let’s make this work.”
After the communication ended, he watched as the Locusts closed on them. As they started entering extreme missile range, he knew that it was now too late for them to get away. Them being the Locusts. He watched as the distance spooled down and when the manned warships were in medium missile range, he gave the order for Hunter to fire.
The missile launch went cleanly, and it seemed to surprise the enemy. Some of the Locusts attempted to shoot down the missiles, and a few even succeeded. The number that got through was still sufficient to obliterate the Tardan warships. Once they were gone, Derek had his communications officer send stand-down orders to them. As soon as they showed they were under his control, he had them fall in on the far side of the two battleships.
If they detected a control signal coming from deeper in the system, they could send a countermanding order to override it. The Locusts were now far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to immediately jump the two battleships and the Tardans weren’t going to regain control of them.
He was somewhat surprised when there were no attempts to countermand his control over the Locusts once they began circling the system. He’d certainly have tried that at least once, but maybe they had other priorities. Heck, maybe they’d sent the only ships with the control codes out to attack him after all. That would’ve been stupid, but he supposed it was possible.
He found out that wasn’t the case as they began circling the system and luring the Locusts out. Almost immediately, someone deeper in the asteroid belt sent countermanding orders. Once Tina sent them the information about where that ship was located, he sent an order to Hunter to send a couple of antimatter missiles to that location so they could see how well they worked.
Rather than the pair of missiles that he expected, Amanda fired five. Apparently, she wanted to be absolutely certain that they didn’t miss the target. He couldn’t fault her for that, but he hated wasting the munitions.
The results were pretty darn good. Even though the blasts went off in space, there was a lot of antimatter being spread around because not all of it was detonated when the device went off. That caused a lot of secondary effects on the warships that they were targeting, and they began exploding moments later.
He called his wife back. “I’ve watched the recordings of your test firing, and this seems a little different. What did you change?”
She grinned. “Antimatter is nasty. The professor set everything up so that there was an almost total matter-antimatter annihilation. That’s as clean as anything like that can get. I had them draw off half the regular matter that was thrown into the antimatter, and that left plenty of the destructive stuff to be sloshed all over the bad guys. Also, I doubted it would be as effective as I wanted, so I upped the number of missiles. I think it was a good thing that I did because I don’t think two would’ve taken them all out otherwise.”
“It’s hard to argue with success. Let’s keep going and see what we can get.”
With that control vessel destroyed, they were able to pull all the Locusts out of this part of the belt and bring them to join their compatriots. He didn’t allow them to come anywhere near the battleships, but he wouldn’t leave them there for the enemy to gather up later.
They found one other command vessel as they went around the belt, deploying a lower number of matter-antimatter missiles to break up groups of enemy ships. It tried to send the Locusts under its control after them, but because of the distance, he was easily able to countermand those orders.
In the end, it took them a full day to circle the system twice and be absolutely certain that they’d killed every Tardan military vessel. Well, he supposed one or two of them could’ve somehow slipped away, but unless they were hiding in a hollowed-out asteroid like the prospectors were, then none of the probes that Specter had planted could detect them.
DuPont was theirs.
40
Patrick made the trip back to his ship and picked up the equipment he needed to breach the prison level. He didn’t have a lot of explosives on hand because that wasn’t his typical modus operandi, yet he suspected whatever barriers they’d put in place would be makeshift rather than dedicated and probably vulnerable to some kind of attack. After all, this was their prison, so they had control over access under normal circumstances.
He snagged the rest of the Navy personnel and brought them back to the station with him. He had to admit that he was glad to get them off his ship. He was even happier to get Albertson off. The woman was still unconscious and would be for at least another few hours.
They’d still have to deal with her and the secret police. His personal choice and the best method of handling them was to vent the atmosphere and just let them all die, yet he was certain Lisa wouldn’t particularly agree with wholesale murder.
Their options were significantly limited, though. If he didn’t kill the secret police, they would eventually be released and go back to doing exactly what they’d done before. This was the perfect time to clean house, and he would strive to make her see reason.
One of the things that he’d learned in life was that what seemed eminently reasonable to one person was sheer madness to another. Logic could only carry you so far, and your own life experiences dictated what was considered acceptable. Of course, he was a professional assassin, so he already knew that his viewpoint was skewed. For him, the deaths of their enemies were just an appropriate step to make sure they didn’t come back to haunt them later.
When it came time to figure out the appropriate plan of action, he looked forward to seeing what Lisa and Regex decided was appropriate. They might surprise him, after all. In fact, they might have a totally different set of options that he hadn’t considered. If so, he was eager to hear them. Dealing with narrowing one’s blind spots was always something one should be open to.
Once he landed the cutter—inside their small craft bay this time—he had two of the Navy crewmen lift the unconscious Poseidon Group leader, and then the entire group headed toward where Lisa was holed up. He had the explosives and other equipment in a backpack.
He found her just as he left her, going over something on the computer. She looked at him as he came in and raised an eyebrow. “That’s a lot of explosives. What are you planning on blowing up? I don’t expect that the maintenance tubes will be that heavily barricaded.”
“There are some explosives in here, but there are also other pieces of equipment that I need to make sure that what I’m doing goes off without a hitch. There’s a drill that I can use to cut through whatever is in the way so that I can eyeball the other side with a fiber-optic camera. After all, if it’s wired to sound an alarm, it would be better to deal with that first. Hopefully, it won’t be sensitive enough to go off when I make the opening. In addition to that, I have the knockout gas and some other goodies. Did you find anything interesting while I was gone?”
She nodded. “I found the personnel list, and it details both how many guards are on the station and how many are typically on duty. Unfortunately for us, the off-duty guards stay on the prison level so they’ll be awake by this point. There have been several attempts at communication from inside, and they definitely know something is up. Whatever happens, we’ll walk into some crap.”
“Then I suppose we’d best be on our way. I suggest we split the Marines so that I can take two-thirds with me and have the rest remain here in case of an attempt to stage a breakout via the lift.”
“That works for me. If things get too hot on this end, we’ll retreat to the small craft bay and wait for you there. If we have to, we’ll leave the station to avoid them capturing your cutter. If so, we can arrange a pickup at another airlock. In fact, you know where the vacuum suits are, so if things go sour, you can meet us outside that airlock.”
“Good enough. Let’s see if we can carry this off.”
He spoke briefly with the senior Marine, and two-thirds of the team followed him to where he intended to enter the maintenance shafts. He handed out nose plugs so that if he had to use any knockout gas, they wouldn’t be liable to be affected. If he could deploy it inside the prison level without the risk of it getting back out, that would be best, but he also had a few grenades that he could use if the circumstances were appropriate.
The maintenance shafts were just as cramped as he’d expected, but that wasn’t a problem. As a spy, he learned that the places he could access things through usually ended up being difficult to transit. Keeping out of sight was the first step to being a good spy. It was always best if they never suspected you’d been there.
When he went down and was almost at the prison level, he found the maintenance shaft was indeed blocked off by a slab of metal. The key question now was, how thick was it? Tapping on it was out of the question because that would make a noise on the other side, so he might as well get right down to business and start cutting a hole through it so he could take a look for himself.
The specialty drill he was going to use was state-of-the-art. It moved slowly enough that no one would hear the bit turning, and the bit itself was designed to be harder and tougher than anything it might encounter. He was sure that there were exceptions, but no one would spend that kind of money on a barricade. The key to making this work would be to drill a hole at a slow pace and hope it wasn’t so thick that it took hours.
In fact, drilling a hole took only a couple of minutes because this was just a piece of sheet metal. It would resist being kicked apart, though probably not for long. It was good enough to keep a prisoner looking for a way out from being able to find it, but that was about it.
Once he had the drill bit extracted, he inserted a fiber optic cable and took a gander at what was on the other side. It was dark, but the camera used IR light to illuminate everything that was directly in front of the camera. He twisted the stalk around so that he could see the barrier from the other side. There were no alarms. Pathetic.
