Plague Wars 06: Comes the Destroyer (48 page)

But it was so damned big. Two and a half thousand meters across or more, a mile and a half using the old measurements, a flying mountain wrapped in armor a thousand times as strong as any steel. Each shotgun blast of fusion chewed a hole ten or twenty meters deep and wide, and there had been thousands of impacts over the last thirty hours, but simple math showed that fifty to a hundred of those would have to dig their way through in the same spot to reach into the soft core of the ship where the Meme crew must be.

Some places seemed thinner, where hundred-meter-deep craters showed the effect of fusion blasts or the heavy impact of much larger projectiles – Pilum missiles or Aardvarks perhaps. “Is there any way we can aim for those deeper craters?”

“Not yet, sir. In the last few seconds we might be able to get that kind of accuracy, but right now four out of five of our shots are not even hitting.”

Deke saw that Tsing was right. The hit probability number had climbed to twenty percent even while their ammo was down to ten. “Two minutes,” he said. “Give me the PA.”

Once he’d been patched through to the crew, Deke said, “Now hear this. Captain Deaker speaking. All hands abandon ship. I say again, all hands abandon ship using your assigned lifeboats. There is a strong possibility of a collision or catastrophic damage to this ship within the next two minutes. This is not a drill. This is a lawful order. All hands abandon ship.”

Deaker looked around at his bridge crew. “I won’t order you, but any of you want to go, please go with my blessing.”

Chuks, Tsing and Macduff stayed where they were, as he had expected. After wavering for a moment, several of the junior watchstanders unplugged tentatively.

“Go on, ladies and gentlemen. We’ll pick you up if we survive, and nothing will be said. We only need a few people to do what we must. No point in everyone dying.”

They left, and Deke was glad of it. “Helm, kick any occupied lifeboats free just before we impact. Your discretion. Make sure they get clear.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“One minute.” The hit probability climbed to twenty-five, then thirty, while the ammo dropped to five percent. “Well done, Guns. Give them the last full measure.”

“Damn straight, Skipper.”

Thirty seconds passed, and then Deke felt the shudder as the lifeboats were launched, ready or not. Now anyone aboard was committed. “Thank you all for staying,” he said, and he found he’d never meant anything more in his life. “I can’t think of better company to die in.”

The three murmured acknowledgement, but kept their minds on their duties, especially Macduff, who had closed her eyes to better see her virtual world, flying the ship with all the finesse she could summon.

“Final fire,” Tsing said as the countdown passed fifteen seconds. He mashed his finger down on the button and held it there for five seconds, ten.

Deke felt the ship shudder and slew with the tremendous force of the railgun throwing tons of mass forward, and heard Macduff curse. A line of fusion fire blossomed wiggling across the looming optical image of the Destroyer, constantly adjusted by the stabilization systems. The last five seconds the enemy became clearer and clearer, each detail sharpening with the declining distance until Deke was sure he could have picked out the features of a man standing on its surface.

Then the numbers crossed zero.

“Dammit, Tsing!” Macduff turned with tears of anger in her eyes. “You made me miss!”

“What did I do?” he asked.

“That huge last railgun blast shifted us off course. We passed right over the bastard.”

“I guess we did,” Deke broke in on the impending argument, and took a deep breath. “So we’re still here. We did all we could. Get the lifeboats back in.” He gripped his chair arms to still the adrenaline reaction, feeling somehow disappointed that he was still alive.

Fortunately the lifeboats would not be far away, having been carried along by the same momentum they had when launched.

“We lost one,” Macduff announced. “It’s gone. Must have slammed into the Destroyer. Twelve dead.”

“Oh my God.” Deke rubbed his face. “I didn’t expect that.”

“It’s war, Skipper,” she replied. “Shit happens. Not your fault. You made the best call you could. Fate swapped them for us.”

Deke did not reply, wondering if she was really so cold or if it was all an act.
I’m going to have some sleepless nights, I think, once I learn who was on that lifeboat. Would it be too selfish to hope I didn’t know them well?

He’d also have to write the letters.
A lot of officers would be writing a lot of letters in the coming days,
he thought,
assuming there were people to write home to
. “What about the rest of the squadron?”

Chuks adjusted the display back to the grand tactical scale that showed the area around Earth. Eight other cruisers accompanied
Innsbruck
in loose formation as they headed at high speed roughly in the direction of Mars. “Where’s…where’s
Calgary
?”

“Gone, sir. Either they lost their transponder, or…”

“Or they did what we tried to do. See if we can get some good delayed video of the Destroyer from off the net.” Deke drummed his fingers in impatience. A moment later a shaky image appeared, showing an enormous impact on the Destroyer. The picture clicked forward in ultra-slow motion like a slideshow, showing an expansion of the bright burst, then it cleared.

Right in the nose of the enemy was a new crater fully five hundred meters deep, a grand divot that appeared like a huge circular mouth. “Wow…that took a pretty good chunk out of it. Blackhorse…”

“A cruiser-sized chunk. Nothing left of them, sir. No way, no how.” Chuks shook his head to emphasize the point.

“Can we get back?” Deke asked, knowing the answer already. “Can we hit them again?”

“No, sir. The squadron is swinging around but it will take hours to reverse course, even if we use Mars to slingshot like they did. By that time the Destroyer will have made its run at Earth.”

“Do it anyway. You never know.” Deke slumped down in his chair. “All right. Fine work, everyone. If anyone needs relief, call your counterparts. Someone yell if you need me. I might nod off.” He closed his eyes and put his head back, suddenly so tired he could hardly hold it up.

Once the captain had drifted into a light sleep, Macduff turned around to look at him with her own eyes, instead of through the bridge cameras she usually used. She stared at him for some time, thinking about the future.

“Increase our fire frequency,” One snapped. “Anticipate!” He demonstrated by deftly picking a burst of metal projectiles out of space by firing a fusor burst into its path. “The kinetic spheres cannot dodge, so simply throw plasma into their way. When they strike it they will fuse themselves, and strike us as hard gas.”

Two and Three held their communications, too busy to reply, and they had tasted these imprecations many times already. Still, One’s berating tone actually seemed to soothe and steady them, as it was familiar. For some time they simply fired and fired again, destroying some bursts, letting others pass, missing others.

“Their attacks are insufficient,” Three declared confidently.

Two replied, “Their ships approach. The small craft have rammed us on more than one occasion. Do you think the cruisers will as well?”

“Absurd.” One thought about this a moment longer, and then realized that no matter how absurd such a thing seemed to him, reporting its possibility could only make him seem wise…if he structured his missive correctly.

“However, no matter how absurd, I shall suggest the possibility be taken into account.”

“I am always happy to contribute to your reports,” Two said.

“Of course, I will credit your contribution,” One replied.

“I had no doubt,” Two said in a doubting tone indeed.

Once he had sent off the communication package to shoot through the speedy nerve pathways of the Destroyer, One asked casually, “Do you really think they will try to ram us? There must be dozens, if not hundreds of Humans aboard each ship.”

“Thousands of them killed themselves individually in the small craft,” Two offered.

“I suppose they did. Then we must prepare for this possibility.”

Three turned his eyeball toward One. “Prepare how?”

“Watch your sector,” One snapped. After Three put his eye back on his screen, One replied, “I have some ideas, but I thought to give you two the chance to come up with effective solutions as well. Just as an exercise.” In reality, One had absolutely no idea what fusors could do against ramming ships approaching at the enormous velocities involved.

Silence filled the control compartment for some time, until Two finally said, “I have absolutely no idea.”

Three bobbed his eyeball in place as well. “Nor I.”

One vibrated with feigned exasperation. “When the time comes, perhaps I will reveal my brilliance. For now, just perform your duties.”

“The time is soon,” Two said. “They are getting very close.”

One, for once, had nothing to say before the Human ships flashed past. The control room shuddered and shook with a tremendous shock, and all of their screens and sensor feeds went dead.

“One of them rammed us after all, full on,” Two said. “It would have been more efficient had you explained your insights
before
the impact.”

“I…I am not certain they would have helped. After all, I can’t think of everything. But no matter. Return to your duties. We live, and Destroyer 6223 lives.” One accessed the damage control reports on the network as soon as they became available. “You see? The impact was severe, but the doubled nose armor of the skin of our old 6223-2 provided us enough protection, and the gravitic dampeners did not fail. The Empire reigns supreme.”

“The Empire reigns supreme,” the other two echoed.

“Have confidence, faithful comrades. It will all be over soon.”

“What is this anomaly?” One asked. “Another ship of the Empire?” He highlighted the distant sensory tag as it approached on an almost-converging course with Destroyer 6223.

“So it appears,” Two said, refining the image. “It looks to be a Survey craft much like the one that the Humans drove us from.”

“Perhaps it is the same one?” Three spoke up.

“Do not be absurd,” said One. “Even if they captured and exploited some of the technologies aboard, our faithful ship would not have been controllable by mere Humans. Without those of the Pure Race, or at a minimum a Blend to guide it, it would have gone rogue. They would have had to kill it. They simply do not have the knowledge to fly Meme craft.”

“Undoubtedly you are correct,” Two said. “This one is larger. Though it
is
using our old encryption codes…which are still valid.”

“Still valid?” One radiated astonishment.

“Yes. You will remember that, because we left Sentry craft hidden within the Human solar system, the codes remained valid for their use. We have received important intelligence from them.”

“Ah. Of course. I was wise to do so.”

“Yes, but…” Three stopped nervously as the others looked his direction, then went on. “Why would this ship use our old codes?”

“And why is it continuing to accelerate toward us?” Two echoed.

“Is it fleeing the Human forces?”

Two checked his console. “Not apparently. Nothing they have can catch it. Should we raise our concerns with Command?”

One made a gesture of negation. “No. They must be aware of it.”

They’d almost done it.

The Meme ship retained its velocity, but looked like a deflated football, an old pigskin that had been relegated to a chew toy for a particularly large and vicious junkyard dog. But Skull knew it had a lot of capability left, enough to devastate the planet just with a few large hypers. Hell, they didn’t even need the whole missiles. At the speed the Destroyer was going, it could just toss a few penetrators toward Earth and they would strike like Thor’s hammers, like the biggest nuclear weapon or volcanic eruption ever, at a fifth the speed of light.

Unlike the broken chunks of asteroids that would hit Earth’s atmosphere and create a dazzling light show but little else, ferrocrystal penetrators would not entirely burn up before reaching the ground. Skull estimated that a hundred-ton rod would only be half consumed by the impact fusion before it struck bedrock, and it would release enough energy to wipe out a country the size of the United States outright, in one horrible blast.

The rest of the world would just die more slowly as the air filled with dust and ash, blocking the sunlight for decades, the nuclear winter of doomsday scenarios.

That was if only one struck.

Skull believed Rae; she had told him that the Destroyer would not crash itself against the planet. Meme were too narcissistic to be self-sacrificing, especially as this was not by any stretch of the imagination a matter of their Empire’s survival. To them, humanity was just a particularly stubborn infestation of a desirable piece of territory.

But if all it would take was a few accurately-aimed ferrocrystal columns, dumb missiles dropped as the battered Destroyer swept by, Skull had to stop it. And even if by some chance the Meme couldn’t or didn’t use that tactic, he had long since resolved to wipe this thing from space, if it was the last thing he ever did.

Long ago, Skull had read
Moby Dick
. Now he saw the massive ship before him as the White Whale, and himself as Captain Ahab preparing to “shoot his heart as if from a cannon.” Melville’s imagery had been metaphorical, but Skull’s actions would make this literal.