Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Pursuit Read online

  Right now, the Trin pirate was regaining consciousness while locked in one of them as Web, Halley and the rest looked on.

  "What are you going to do to him?" asked Captain Two-Swords from out of view of the compartment where Web and Halley had instructed him to stand. Web had just told the captain to play along and forget about the collaboration business, and they let Daemon assume the captain was simply protecting the ship's safe when he and Web had gone off earlier with the pirates. The First Officer was likewise told to keep quiet about what she knew. Web and Halley had agreed that the two senior officers were best off not knowing their ideals were at complete odds with each other, at least for the time being.

  "Use him to help save your crew," replied Web. He figured Halley had the constitution to do whatever was required, but he didn't know that he did. He knew what Loren had done to that Priman in Avenger's airlock, and gave thanks every day that he was never put in that situation. He doubted this guy was some sort of fanatic; money was probably driving his decision, and if that was the case there was very little chance he'd die for the cause. Web was also hoping that by running things right now, he wouldn't have to go that far and by the same token not make Halley have to go to that sort of extreme either.

  "Hey, you in there," Web said into the microphone grille on the hatch frame as he held the transmit button down. "Wake up; we have things to discuss."

  The Trin stood up, wobbly at first and then gaining his composure. "You're only going to have one chance to open that hatch and let me go," the pirate warned. "My crew will kill you in the most gruesome way possible."

  "Or they'll steal everything in your bunk and fight about who gets your boots after you're dead," Web countered. "Look, I don't have a lot of time to threaten you, so let's cut to the part where you answer my questions. I want to know which cargo pods you're putting back aboard are filled with explosives. And we only have a little time before you're done with the swap, so the clock's ticking."

  The pirate stiffened a bit, but his face remained impassive.

  "Yeah, we figured it out," Web replied. "Some of you are in on this little scheme. Certain pods had goodies waiting inside for you, and in return you had to replace them with cargo pods you brought on your own freighter. Send them down to the surface on Callidor, then boom. Only problem is all the damage you're going to do to people not involved in the resistance's movement. So we need to stop that from happening, and leave that sort of thing to the pros."

  "You're ready to kill me?" the pirate asked defiantly. "You can remove all the air from in here, so why would I help you if that's what you have in store for me anyway?"

  "Oh, there's no need to kill you," Web assured the man. "That's why we're here and I'm not making you walk the airlock. I don't want to have to kill you to prove I'm willing to kill you. So, that leaves us with this decon chamber. Would you prefer I go right to removing the air, though?"

  "You don't know this ship as well as you think you do," the pirate countered with an air of satisfaction. "There are a slew of safeties that'll prevent you from doing something like that. You'd need dockside root access to bypass those." The pirate looked at him, smug expression on his face.

  "No problem," Web assured him. He tapped a few commands into the control panel on the hatch frame. "Computer, confirm removal of safeties and my root access override with audio response."

  "Confirmed," stated a gravely male synthesized voice. "Root access granted."

  "I have you to thank for this, actually," Web said with a smile. "Remember when you were so desperate to get into the captain's safe that you had me grant myself admin access?" Web paused. "Surprise." He returned to tapping on the panel.

  "So, back to business. The idea is that I don't have to do any irreversible damage to you right away, which is good for you. I can start by replacing the oxygen in the atmosphere with one of the inert gases available. How about argon? That sounds like fun, right? Or, I know Trin need a lot of humidity. How about I reduce the humidity in there to zero and mummify you? I take consolation in knowing you'd do the same to me, so let's cut the garbage here and get to it."

  Web and the Trin pirate stared at each other, neither wanting to be the first one to do anything. Finally, Halley stepped into the conversation.

  "Oh, if you won't do it, I will," she grumped in an exasperated voice. "I like the argon idea myself." She began tapping on the keypad.

  "Fine, fine," the pirate muttered. "I want to keep the cargo pods we took, though."

  "You'll keep what we decide you can keep," stated Halley firmly.

  Captain Vol had dispatched two of his three cruisers into the shipyard. One of them was of the new escort carrier variant his people had been producing, an adaptation required by the Confederation's dependence on small fighter craft. His people had nothing similar in their doctrine when they'd invaded, but having to constantly defend against the small craft had forced them to produce a counter. Like the anti-fighter Reaper ships, the escort carrier was a post-invasion design meant to put a stop to the Confederation fighter menace.

  He kept his own ship outside of the tractor field as overwatch in case the Confed ship tried to make a break for it. There were enough gravity wells around that his adversary couldn't just jump to hyperspace and be gone; any direction they chose would still give him time to launch torpedoes. He wondered idly whether their desperate decision to cut all power had saved them. If it had, his cruisers would finish off the helpless vessel anyway.

  He was still a bit concerned about not letting the local Caradan navy detect him; he was under orders to not antagonize any government entity that his people had not already engaged. It wouldn't do to encourage uninvolved parties to join in the battle before his people were ready to take the war to them.

  Cory waited as her small squadron formed up. She had three Talons and three Intruders so far, and the next wave was hampered by a Talon that had suffered an unexpected electrical failure on the launch cat. Even though the hangar was still completely without power, having a dead ship spotted on the catapult pad blocked everyone else behind them. Rather than wait, she had decided to roam ahead with the six ships she had and have the remaining launches hold formation on Avenger until she could get a tactical picture. Hampering those efforts was the fact that Avenger's comm systems were still offline. She had been told by a runner from the bridge that they had basic passive sensors operational, so even if Cory couldn't get a message in, Avenger could at least still see what was happening.

  "Alright," she called over her squadron comm net. "Hold tight on me; we'll start a search pattern from the direction we entered the shipyard. Warbird Squadron, remove safeties and arm your torpedoes."

  Merritt had been the first Talon to launch, and had left his other section commander in charge of gathering up the remaining fighters alongside Avenger once the launch snafu was fixed.

  Cory set in a spherical search pattern biased towards the way Avenger had come. She spared a quick look over her shoulder and saw Avenger in her distressed state. There was a huge hole, scorched and puckered where the torpedo had penetrated her aft dorsal hull and driven deep inside as it blasted through her insides. It was a sobering sight to see her home stricken down that way, still leaking the occasional spurt of oxygen and trailing a streamer of debris as she maneuvered on thrusters into the field.

  Her reverie was cut short as her own scanners announced a new contact. Among the blue neutral icons on her display, she saw two red ones. She was about to declare it a fight worth starting right now, but then she saw a flood of smaller blips on the screen. All told, an even dozen fighter craft emerged from one of the cruisers and swarmed around the formation.

  And they appeared to have just noticed Cory's ships.

  "Warbirds," she called on the net, remaining calm in voice but worried in spirit. "Heave to and fall back. We can't take on all those fighters and assault the cruisers at the same time." She needed a plan, and she needed it right now. Her mind raced as she clenched the flight
stick and throttles tightly, eyes darting to her screens, the heads-up displays and the icons projected all over her canopy. She needed to isolate the fighters in order to give her Intruders a chance to launch their paltry three light torpedoes.

  Even now, the Priman fighters were closing, and she led her combined six ships as they dashed into the denser parts of the mothballed shipyard, weaving around huge, silent vessels as she tried to come up with a plan of attack at the same time.

  Finally, she had it. Well, not the definitive attack plan she'd love to present to a War College, but it was the best she could come up with under the circumstances.

  "Merritt," she called on the combined fighter channel, "I want you to take your Talons and head off in a different direction. Just don't head to Avenger; we don't know if the rest of our fighters are out yet and we can't let those cruisers know where she is anyway. Make sure they see you. I'm going to take my Intruders and have a run at the second cruiser. The escort carrier won't have as many guns so it's less of a threat to Avenger, which means we need to go take a few bites out of the other one."

  "Can I advise you that once again I don't think you should be risking yourselves this way?" Merritt asked with a tone of resignation in his voice. Cory seemed to live a charmed life, and he worried every time they sortied that one day her risk-taking would catch up with her.

  "You can, and I appreciate it," she replied, "but there's no time to be gentle here."

  "Good luck," he said simply, and quickly repeated the command to his Talons before breaking off. He noticed the three Intruders duck behind an immense old luxury liner, its immobile bulk pitted with micrometeorite impacts as evidence of a long service life and an even longer stay in the shipyard.

  Merritt picked a direction and took off, making sure to pop into view of the pursuing fighters. He hoped he wasn't being too obvious about it, but this whole thing would be pointless if the Primans lost his trail.

  Cory held station behind an old ore carrier, her two other Intruders tucked in close. The fighters streamed past, and less than a minute later the cruisers followed, escort carrier first. Her active sensors were all in standby in the hopes of not tipping off the Primans, but her passive sensors were picking up the fire control sweeps of the enemy ships as their gunners looked for something to shoot at.

  Finally, it was time to move out. One final check of her sensors told her to not wait any longer, and she pushed the throttles forward to the normal power stops and hugged the contours of the ore carrier's hull as she sped toward a rendezvous with the trailing Priman cruiser.

  She popped over the hull and caught a visual that made her skip a breath. Sliding out of the cruiser's obviously enlarged and modified single shuttle bay was one of the feared Reaper ships. The Reaper was a corvette-sized craft designed after the invasion began to counter the experienced Confederation fighter pilots. A small ship, with a crew of only two dozen but studded with sixteen anti-aircraft batteries, it was meant to escort Priman capital ships. It depended on them for support, as well. With the huge energy demands of the AA batteries, there was no room or excess power for hyperdrive engines or anything more than basic shield generators. As such, they were required to ride along with a larger ship, most often one of the big command ships or some of the fleet auxiliaries. Apparently, that was no longer the case, as the Primans had surprised Confed again. This cruiser had apparently retrofitted its shuttle bay to just barely cram a Reaper inside. Now, inside the shipyard, it was out and active, ready to fight off any ambushes the Confed fighters might be readying for it.

  Cory was caught in a rare moment of indecision. What should she do? Current doctrine favored clearing out the Reapers before Intruder or Marauder attacks, but she didn't have time for that. Merritt was going to be furious when she made her call.

  "Warbirds!" she commanded. "Max power; run in and launch now before that Reaper goes active. This is our only shot. Regroup at Avenger's last location."

  She pushed her throttles through the soft stop at the top of their travel, demanding over-rated power from her engines. It was only allowed for five minute at a time, and after that she ran the danger of overheats, overloads, or a complete containment failure. Risk was always part of the game, she told herself.

  She boresighted on the Priman cruiser and activated her torpedo's tracking sensors. A computer-generated outline appeared around the ship on her canopy to signal that the weapon was looking at that target. She looked at the engines and hit a tab on the throttle with her ring finger, selecting that component specifically. The weapon was now locked; every second longer she held it under her Intruder it got closer, would need to use less fuel to maneuver, stood a reduced chance of being shot down, and would have less time for Priman ECM to scatter its' sensors.

  The Priman cruiser erupted in laser fire. AA turrets and even her main batteries opened up in Cory's direction. The first rapid-fire AA shots began to bracket her, and one hit splashed off her forward shields. They'd found the range quickly. She juked and dodged as best she could, but her wingmates were near and she didn't want to intrude in their firing lanes, plus if she pulled too far from the target there was the chance the torpedo would lose lock and she'd have to start over. That was not the preferred way to survive a fight.

  She'd reached optimal launch position and thumbed the launch button as she saw her port side wingman launch his torpedo also. There was a brilliant flash from her starboard side, and she spared a second to check her displays and note with regret the loss of her other wingmate, torpedo still tucked beneath the Intruder that was now a cloud of expanding vapor and debris.

  More hits smacked her forward hull, and the shields drew down enough to let a shot partly through. It sounded like somebody had hit her canopy with a mallet. Warning lights flashed and damage information scrolled down her displays, but nothing critical was offline. Her suit automatically ran a check and declared that it was still airtight in case she needed to eject. She noted that one of her autocannons was destroyed, and cringed at the thought of having to run the cruiser's hull on a firing pass with only one gun underneath.

  She pulled straight up and over, trying to put the bulk of another decommissioned Caradan ship between her and the enemy fire. At that point the volume of fire in the area increased by an order of magnitude, and she knew the Reaper was adding to the mix. She felt herself start to sweat now, insides of her flight gloves getting damp as a bead of sweat ran down her temple. She tried to blow it off by puffing her breath, but it hung there, tormenting her as she worried about the rapid-fire lasers chopping away at her ship. She saw the other Intruder catch several hits, spin in place, and then a dozen bolts converged on it at the same time and it blew apart as it was hammered out of existence by the enemy AA batteries.

  She was almost over the top of the old ship when the Reaper's fire started to find its mark. One hit on her rear shields, two, three more, and the shields were down. Fire bracketed her now; in a few seconds she'd be safely behind the old ship and have some breathing room, but until then there was nowhere for her to dodge to.

  One thunderous impact scored on her hyperdrive pod on the aft dorsal hull; some of her displays frantically flashed warnings; some winked off and went dark. Two more hits, then more, and finally her starboard wing was severed. In the vacuum of space, losing a wing was not going to cause her to crash, but the main roll thruster was out on the wingtip and her maneuverability would suffer greatly. That was not going to be an issue because a half dozen shots hit her ship again and it began to come apart around her just as she began to clear the top of the old ship she wanted to use for cover.

  Cory's world changed. There was no time to reason out the situation, analyze or even interpret all of her senses. Everything was just overwhelming; violent motions from her pinwheeling ship knocked her around in the cockpit, bright flashes from weapons fire, warning lights and horns, and the beginnings of an explosion consumed her existence. Her world closed in and reduced itself to one single thought, one crucial item
; the eject lever.

  She reached for it.

  Merritt had dodged around space leading the Priman fighters on a merry chase until he'd been contacted by the rest of Avenger's fighters, finally launched and formed up for combat. He'd decided on the spot to arrange an ambush of his own and was working his way towards the meeting point, a surprisingly sleek looking troop transport that the small but proficient Caradan navy used to land assault troops. It must have a lot of light-years on it to be parked out here, he thought idly, because the design itself was still in service.

  Those thoughts evaporated as he and his two wingmen dashed under the ship and out into an open area beyond, Priman fighters lagging just out of effective range behind him. A few seconds later, the enemy fighters emerged into the open and were immediately fired upon by the eighteen remaining fighter craft of Avenger. Even the Intruders had wanted to get in on the act, and Elco had obliged with the realization that while not meant for dogfighting, the autocannons and high speed of the Intruders made them effective interceptors.

  Several of the Priman fighters were cut to ribbons instantly, the rest breaking formation wildly to avoid the fearsome onslaught of the slugs streaming forth from the Intruders. From there, it was an old-fashioned dogfight. The odds favored the Confeds two-to-one, though Merritt ordered the Intruders to break off as soon as the Primans were on the defensive. He knew they'd want to help, but Captain Elco had made a terse broadcast over the recently-repaired comm system of Avenger to order the Intruders to regroup and prepare to attack the Priman capital ships when found.