Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Pursuit Page 16

"It would look suspicious if I didn't make a pass at you."

  "Well then," Halley continued. "We'll need some witnesses. Not a lot, but enough that when people notice we're missing, the rumor mill can fill in the facts and the crew will believe it."

  "Let's go get all grabby with each other near the turbolift bank," suggested Web helpfully.

  "The things we do for the good of the Confederation..."

  CHAPTER TEN

  Merritt ran a gauntlet down the upper hull of a huge construction ship. The monster was studded with tractor arrays, docking gantries, cranes, cargo pod hard points and observation towers. It was a perfect way to camouflage his movements, and right now he needed to stay under the radar.

  The brief dogfight near Avenger was over, the Priman fighters having been destroyed to the last. He'd chased the Primans all over the place, claiming several kills to add to his impressive collection. The rest of his Talon fighters were split between escorting Cory's remaining Intruders and flying CAP over Avenger herself. Avenger was moving, albeit at a painfully slow pace, towards a spot in the shipyard where the captain planned to make an exit once the hyperdrive was operational.

  To that end, Cory's Intruder squadron had formed up and was probing towards where the Priman cruisers were estimated to be. Merritt had taken some amount of liberty with his own orders. He was supposed to scout for the enemy and avoid detection if at all possible in order to more effectively arrange an ambush if need be. He'd elected to select as his starting point the last known location of Cory and the two wingmen she'd been with when sensor contact had been lost.

  Merritt hit his retro thrusters hard as he neared the aft portion of the construction ship. He used his maneuvering thrusters to gently nudge his fighter towards the edge of the upper hull. His active sensors were all off; passive sensors soaked up the data, information and emissions floating around, but didn't send out any scanning beams of their own. Between that and his own eyes, he'd do this the old fashioned way.

  What he saw made him cringe. In an open space within a row of old naval cruisers sat two Priman warships- a cruiser and another that his computer classified as an escort carrier. There were a handful of Priman fighters patrolling the area, and he allowed himself a grim smile because he knew why there were only a couple fighters to guard the bigger ships. There was a stream of shuttles moving between the cruiser and the escort carrier.

  The regular cruiser was damaged, though he couldn't tell by how much. The ship was slowly spinning, however, and he watched with interest as the aft came into view. He saw the engines, one of which was badly mangled. That's when Web knew that Cory had been here; the blast damage was just about right for the yield of a Quick Strike torpedo.

  Then Web saw the Reaper and knew with a stone-cold dread why Cory and her wingmen were missing. They'd tangled with the Reaper; he knew her, and knew she wouldn't have backed down even if the damn thing had parked right in her path. Her determination and drive, some of her best character traits, were also the things most likely to end up getting her taken away from him.

  He looked around, squinting and surveying the area nearby. He wished desperately that he could fire up his active sensors and run a scan for the alloys unique to Confederation military construction, but he couldn't allow himself to be detected. Still, he wasn't going to leave this area until he had some sort of information, some closure either way.

  He instead tried to imagine Cory making an attack run. If the Priman ships were sitting here, he had to assume they hadn't gone far from where they had been damaged. He looked in the direction they'd come from, out towards the edge of the tractor field that helped keep the shipyard from floating apart. If they came from there, he thought, and Cory came from this direction, he continued as he picked a likely spot, then she'd be looking at a firing run somewhere by those transports.

  He brought his systems back to low power and spun in place before backtracking down the hull of the ship. He got about halfway down when he gave the throttles a quick burst and dashed across to the next row of silent vessels. This row was slightly staggered against the first, meaning that he could cross the gap from where he was to the other side towards the transports he wanted to investigate without the Primans having a direct line of sight on him.

  The next few minutes were nerve-wracking. He needed to get back to Avenger and report what he'd seen, but not without being able to say he'd given Cory and her wingmen a fair chance at rescue or recovery.

  He saw a series of scorch marks on the transport to his left; it probably meant that the Primans had been firing this way and perhaps the Intruders had been in this very spot. He cut his forward momentum to zero and spun slowly in place. Nothing. He spent one more precious minute waiting for something to catch his eye, but no miracles happened.

  He couldn't wait any longer; Captain Elco was no doubt wondering where he'd gone off to or if he'd been destroyed in his recon efforts.

  He spun his fighter again to the direction he'd come from. The ship seemed to move reluctantly, as if mirroring the emotions of its pilot. It didn't want to leave, either.

  As he turned his head, he saw something. A glint of light reflected off of something in the darkness. But that didn't belong. The area was in shadow; there was nothing for light to bounce off. His mind raced- was somebody trying to contact him?

  He pushed his thrusters much higher than he should have, but he was on the verge of panic. He got close to the shadowed hull of the old transport and came to a stop. He searched again, reluctant to use his own landing lights for fear of the brightness attracting attention.

  There was a knock on his canopy, and he nearly jumped right out of his flight suit, a strangled curse stuck in his throat. He turned to look and saw a figure in a vacuum suit floating alongside, a small emergency flashlight floating from a tether attached to a harness point. It was a Confed flight suit, with Warbirds patches and a nameplate sewn in place: Sosus, C. Captain.

  Merritt yelped in excitement and turned off the polarization of the canopy. It was Cory, waving slowly to him. Her faceplate reflected some of the lights from his cockpit displays, but he could see her smile inside. It was her, but the smile was sad, somehow reserved. He could imagine why; she was here alone, no other pilots in sight.

  He dialed up his comm system to the lowest setting and keyed the transmit button. "You have to stop doing this to me, Cory," was all he could manage.

  "I know," she replied in a somber tone, as if she was still gathering herself. "Patton and Steer are gone. Did we hurt the cruiser?"

  Merritt could only nod, then realized she probably couldn't tell he was doing so. "Yeah, you damaged her engines. They're both sitting dead in space one row over, one tending to the other. Let's get out of here, ok?"

  "No complaints there," she began, "but your fighter only seats one."

  Merritt was already running diagnostics on his emergency systems. With a green board, he tapped some commands and pulled a small lever. His flight suit instantly isolated itself from the umbilicals that connected him to his fighter. At the same time, he heard the latches in the canopy come undone. He reached up with both hands and pushed on the transparent armor glass and sent the canopy floating off into the darkness.

  "Come on in," he began. "You'll be safest sitting in here and we can make good speed back away from here towards Avenger."

  Cory obliged, and a few seconds later was sitting on Merritt's lap as he spun his now open-cockpit fighter around towards their ship.

  "Time to go," she said softly.

  Captain Elco sat at his command chair, plotting potential exit routes from the shipyard on his tabletop display. There were a good half-dozen serviceable ways out, but the Primans had to know that as well. And with two of the Priman cruisers in the shipyard, that meant there was a third outside, lying in wait for them. Space was big, so it wasn't as though there was no way to avoid the enemy, but his hyperdrive still wasn't online and there were only a few directions that made sense to use.

  H
e could try heading back towards Carada. That would in theory offer protection, but the Monarchy and Confederation weren't officially allies and he wasn't going to find out the hard way if they were willing to risk getting involved with the Primans just to help his ship.

  He could also take the most direct route to Confed space. To be sure, it was a long trip, almost two week's travel now that they were so far into the galactic core, but once in hyperspace it was a lot harder to track and catch an adversary.

  But he figured the Primans were thinking the same thing. The disconcerting fact was that they seemed to have been waiting for Avenger. There were just enough ships to mount an ambush; it wasn't like his ship had blundered into the vanguard of an invasion fleet. No, this had been a targeted strike at him; he felt that in his bones. If that was the case, and the Primans knew what his options were, he needed to do something they wouldn't expect.

  What could that be, though? He studied his map, dragged and zoomed it around to explore all his options. It took a while, but finally, he had it. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was unexpected and would buy him and Avenger some breathing room. And if he had time to plot and scheme, he was already thinking of ways to get vengeance on his pursuers. But first thing was first; they needed to make it out of the shipyard without tangling with any of those three Primans again.

  He tapped a few spots on his desk's surface and saw the image of his Chief Engineer, Andros Fyr. "Chief," he began, "what's the status of our engines?"

  The Chief's eyes darted to a display next to his own workstation, then stared up at the ceiling as he tried to decide what he could promise. "Sublight is still at one quarter, Captain. We're making replacement parts, but the 3D printers, supply tanks, and machine shops took some damage and we're at reduced capacity. Should take a couple hours. Hyperdrive is at about half our rated speed. I wouldn't push it too hard until I can watch the patches and bypasses, but we should be good for a while."

  "Helm," Elco stated to the officer at the port forward station on the main platform. "What's the ETA to Faaria in the Mining League if we maintain half-speed in hyper?"

  The officer ran the what-ifs and replied quickly. "Just under twenty hours, Captain."

  "Think it'll hold together for twenty hours, Chief?" Elco asked into his display again.

  Chief Fyr rubbed his face with his hand as he thought about it. "That should work, Captain. We'll all be keeping an eye on things down here."

  "Thanks. Be ready soon; I don't know if I'll be able to give you much warning before we engage the hyperdrive up here." Elco cut the connection and mentally plotted a route to Faaria. They'd have to make some course changes and approach slowly in case any Priman units were in the area, but it was doable so he moved on to the next phase of his plan.

  "Weapons," he called over his shoulder as he turned to look at the 'sensor shack' aft of his command chair, "what's the status of our torpedo launchers?"

  "Still completely offline, Captain," came a guardedly neutral reply. "The aft launchers have had their feed mechanisms to the magazines destroyed by the torpedo impact. They're trying to bring some up manually, but that whole part of the ship is pretty madly mangled. We just have the torpedoes in the tubes, no ability to reload. Forward magazines are ok, but the fire control computers are completely scrambled. Last update was," he paused to check the data log scrolling across the glass next to his station, "twenty minutes ago. They were trying to wipe and reinstall the computer's software, but as of right now forward launchers are inoperative."

  "Thank you," Elco replied, gloomy again. He needed something to make the Primans respect Avenger as she left the area; Intruders with their smaller torpedoes wouldn't cut it, aside from the fact that they'd lost a third of their number just keeping Avenger's six clean on the way in. With only her starboard laser batteries functional, Avenger wasn't exactly a force to be reckoned with at the moment. Again, the gears turned.

  "Loren," Elco said into the pickup on his chair. "Can you get up here quick?"

  "On the way," was the prompt reply.

  Seconds later, the XO came trotting through the starboard escape trunk up from C3 and onto the bridge, stopping on the platform where the captain's and XO's stations were.

  "What can I do for you?" Loren asked matter-of-factly.

  "We need something to fight with," Elco admitted, then showed Loren a readout on his workstation of Avenger's meager available weaponry.

  "I saw that in C3," Loren added, "and was thinking about this." Loren chewed on his inner cheek while he tried to put the finishing touches on the plan that had been floating around, partially formed, in his mind. "We have torpedoes, but we just can't launch them. We can still control and steer them, right?" Elco merely nodded. "So, let's drop a ton of them behind us as mines. We can flip Avenger over and just use the emergency jettison function of the torpedo tubes. They'll slide out into space, but after that we could control them remotely. Then we could strap a few into one or two of our Freedom transports. Same deal; fly them remotely. I know a lot of our signals can still get scrambled by the Primans and their ECM gear, but from the reports I've seen at least one of the cruisers in here is pretty beat up and the other will be watching her closely. We might get some lucky hits in. That only leaves the one that's on overwatch outside the shipyard. All we have to do is get past her and we're on our way."

  Loren stopped for a second, then looked at Elco. "By the way, where exactly are we going once we are able to get on our way?"

  "One of the last places they'll expect us to want to go," Elco said with a resigned grin. "The next stop on our diplomatic tour."

  "The stop that the Primans probably already know about?"

  "Yes. Yes it is," said Elco, this time with a smile. "I want them to know we're going there. And you're going to have to help me arrange a surprise once we arrive."

  "I like surprises."

  Merritt flew his Talon as cautiously as he'd ever done, first trying to keep Cory from floating off as well as trying to not give her anything else to worry about.

  She'd led a charmed life aboard Avenger, her willingness to take the risky maneuver and never-quit attitude leading to a record among the most esteemed in the fleet. The problem was, she took it hard when her wingmen didn't make it through the missions she planned and led. Today was another example. They'd all done the same thing, flown the same aggressive profile in defense of their ship, but Cory was the one that made it back. Minus her fighter, of course, but again she had to walk into the ready room alone. Merritt knew it wore her down even though pilots fought to get assigned to Avenger and her squadron.

  As they coasted into the Viper's port side hanger, Merritt noticed the ground crews were spotting a Freedom class transport at the fore of the bay. He dropped the landing gear and floated to the spot indicated by the marshaller, then gently settled it on the gear and breezed through the shutdown checklist.

  "Service with a smile," he said softly to Cory as they both unsealed their helmets. She took hers off and shook her hair, a habit that had been with her since flight school.

  "Thanks for the lift," she replied, then slowly tossed a leg over and climbed down the fuselage and onto the deck. Merritt followed quickly.

  "Want me to walk you to the flight surgeon?" he asked.

  She turned and gave him a look that started off decidedly unfriendly, something she quickly changed once she saw the expression on his face. "I'm fine," she said simply.

  "I know you are," he said easily, "but since I know you're such a rule follower and all, you know that after going EVA you need to see the ship's surgeon before you can go back out. No time like the present, right?"

  She eyed him up again, a jumble of responses and thoughts swirling through her mind. "And then you'll be happy?"

  "Happy as a pilot with a free cup of stim-caf and a big new watch," he replied.

  This time, she couldn't help but grin, just a little. "Alright, you big weirdo. But have them prep the spare Intruder for me, ok?" She walked
out holding her head a little higher than when she'd entered.

  "Sure thing." Merritt turned and walked to the status board on the ready room and quickly called up the flyable inventory aboard ship. The spare Intruder had been destroyed in the second wave of their sortie.

  Captain Vol was frustrated. When he became frustrated, he eventually got angry. And when he got angry, subordinates were occasionally demoted or suffered disciplinary measures.

  "And what of the Tring and Elexa?" he asked in a growl. The two cruisers he'd dispatched to follow Avenger should have made quick work of the crippled ship. Instead, the cruiser had been hit in the engines, sparking unexpected internal fires and malfunctions. Her sister ship and escort carrier Tring had been forced to heave to and render aid. Now even the carrier was feeling the effects of the battle; not in direct damage but in the loss of so many of her fighters. The only consolation was that the Reaper had decimated the attacking Intruders. Vol knew by now that Crusaders carried twelve of the attack fighters, and the wreckage of three of them were scattered about the shipyard. Still, there was no excuse for failing to wrap up this operation and finish the Confed ship.

  "They report that they are both underway," reported a slightly nervous communication officer. He wished Representative Ravine had been on the bridge; she had left to make a report to the Commander, but the whole crew were sorely missing her calming effect on their captain right now.

  "Tell them I'm waiting for their successful reports."

  Merritt was still in his flight suit as he dashed around his hangar trying to keep things organized. He heard a call over the ship's intercom to call the captain, so he jogged to the duty station straddling the hanger and ready room, took a seat, and activated the link.

  "Commander Exeter," he stated simply as Captain Elco's face appeared on the screen.

  "Commander," the captain began, "you've no doubt seen the crew getting a transport spotted in place?"