“I’ve got drones and people all over the engines still, but it’s not good.” Henry felt as much as saw her shrug. “I suppose I have some good news.”
“I could use good news. What have you got?” Henry asked.
“Compensators are realigned and fixed,” Song told him. “The ship can’t take any subjective gees, it’s just not going to happen, but we can get back up to point five again.”
“That is good news,” Henry agreed. Irrelevant, unfortunately, since the Guardians could get up to point six KPS2, but good news. “Any ideas on reducing heat signatures or escaping this mess?”
She snorted.
“If it can be turned off, I’ve turned it off,” she told him again. “I’ve got one last trick to play, but we can’t sustain it for long.”
“That’s one more trick than I’ve got, Colonel Song,” Henry admitted. “What are we at?”
“I can shut down the radiators and hold all of our heat in the hull,” Song said. “We won’t have zero heat signature, but it’ll be low. Real low.”
“And how fast will the interior air heat up?” he asked.
“Little over a degree centigrade every two minutes,” she said. “So, we’ll have about thirty minutes, and even that is going to send people to medbay. It’s all I’ve got.”
“It might buy us some critical moments, Colonel,” Henry told her. “Get it ready for my command. Or Iyotake’s, depending.”
“Oh, it’s already ready,” Song said. “Give the word and we’ll be sweating in no time.”
“I look forward to it,” Iyotake said grimly.
“Thank you, Colonels,” Henry told them both. “I expect I’ll be talking to you both before this is over, but…before we’re down to the wire…it has been an honor to command you both. Thank you.”
There was no response from either of his senior subordinates. There was no point. They knew as well as he did what the odds were looking like.
“Ser!” Ihejirika’s voice suddenly echoed in all of their minds on the main command channel. “Bandit Three!”
Between the Drifters vaporizing three of the largest meteors to destroy the decoy shuttles and the dozen ice floes Henry’s people had blown to pieces with fusion bombs, the meteor swarm was a far more active and confusing place than it had been when they’d first arrived.
Bandit Three had been sweeping just past the debris front from one of the Charlie explosions, ignoring the harmless debris field while they searched for signs of Raven, and missed the intact meteor that had been caught up in the pattern.
The Guardian was a modular ship, built of a dozen smaller sections and over a kilometer long all told. Her energy shields were more powerful than anything else in space, capable of standing off the full firepower of a Kenmiri dreadnought.
They were not capable of stopping a five-hundred-meter spike of ice traveling at several hundred kilometers per second.
Henry’s attention was on the ship in response to Ihejirika’s report, in time to watch the shield slowly cave in and collapse under the impact. The meteor was slowed by the defensive bubble, but it was still traveling with enough force to collide with the Drifter capital ship.
For a moment, Henry even dared to hope that the confusion and chaos they’d created in the meteor swarm might have managed to destroy the Guardian by pure fluke. Then plasma flared as Bandit Three’s engines flung her away from the meteor.
She left a trail of atmosphere and debris as she moved, her shields flickering back up after a few moments, while several plasma cannon blew the meteor apart in illogical revenge.
“Three is bleeding atmosphere but appears to be functional,” Ihejirika reported. “I had a moment of hope there.”
“I think we all did,” Henry said. “Looks like she might be down a few turrets, too. Nature was definitely feeling helpful.”
“She’s adjusting course and burning for open space,” Ihejirika said. “Bandit One is maneuvering to support. In case we were feeling aggressive, I suppose.”
“I’m feeling very meek at the moment, in fact,” the captain replied. “They’re leaving?”
“Vector is for open space,” his tactical officer confirmed. “Unsure of when they’ll turn over, but they’re headed in the direction of the original summit location.”
Henry nodded grimly. They might be planning to sweep for escape pods to make up for time, but their main concern was clearly getting Three out of the meat grinder Raven had accidentally assembled.
“Don’t hold your breath, people,” he told the command channel, “but fate may have just handed us a few hours I wasn’t expecting to have.”
“Maybe not as many as it might have been, ser,” Iyotake told him, back on their private channel. “Bandit Two is still headed our way…and I make her most likely vector practically right for us.”
Henry closed everything and exhaled a long sigh as he closed both his physical and virtual eyes. Then he opened the tactical feed to confirm Iyotake’s assessment.
Bandit Two could still change their vector, but if they didn’t, the largest meteor on their course and their likely destination was Epsilon, Raven’s hiding place.
The asteroid had taken two of the Guardians out of the immediate situation, but it was only four more hours until Bandit Two arrived right on top of them.
“Well,” Henry said quietly, “then I guess it will shortly be time for O’Flannagain and I to demonstrate the UPSF’s latest starfighter technology.”
Chapter Forty-Two
“The tunnel is going to be a nightmare for everyone,” O’Flannagain said bluntly as she looked around her pilots.
Henry sat slightly off to one side from the four regular members of the squadron. He was senior to O’Flannagain, but he wasn’t so arrogant as to assume he was better at commanding a fighter wing than she was.
If nothing else, he’d never actually done it. After the initial Kenmiri invasion and the Red Wings campaign had wiped out ninety-five-plus percent of FighterDiv, he’d done one tour as a training officer and then transferred into the tactical track of SpaceDiv.
He’d seen too many pilot friends die to stay in the cockpit then.
“The area around Raven herself gives us a bit of room to maneuver,” the CAG continued. “There’s about fifteen meters of space above the cruiser. Not a lot of leeway, but more than enough for one of the Lancers, if we’re careful.
“The problem is that we had a nice neat battlecruiser-shaped hole through the ice crust…fifteen hours ago. Scans suggest it’s refrozen down to less than five meters across at the tightest point,” she said. “That should be plenty of room, but we absolutely cannot open up the path. At minimal acceleration, the GMS drives are almost invisible.
“Our lasers are not.”
“Two meters of spare leeway,” Turrigan announced with a broad grin that Henry easily recognized as forced. “What’s the problem?”
“Less than five meters,” O’Flannagain repeated. “Educate me, Turrigan, what’s the minimum bubble size for your grav-shield? The grav-shield we can’t turn off if we want GMS drives?”