Darklight Pirates
Chapter Fourteen

“Sir, two armed ships are approaching. They have full sensor shielding.” Lieutenant Bridget Sullivan motioned to bring up the trajectory chart on the bridge viewscreen. “What are your orders, sir?”

Donal looked up and saw the red curves showing the intersection of the two interceptors with the Shillelagh. A number embedded on his dreadnought decreased rapidly, showing how little time they had before new combat had to be faced. He settled the control helmet and began a quick inventory of crew and equipment. They had done well repairing themselves, but the battle on the planet below occupied more of his attention.

“Cletus and Leanne will be back soon.” He blanked part of Sullivan’s chart in favor of one covering a quarter of the planet’s surface below.

“Our comlink with the warbots is intermittent, sir. There’s nothing I can do to improve it.”

“I know, Lieutenant. Any update on the report from five minutes ago?”

“That was the last we heard, sir. The tanks with their heavy guns presented the warbots significant opposition. Neither ’bot had located the prisoners.”

Donal saw another part of the challenge multiply and spin away from his grasp. He closed his eyes and let his mind surge through the neural net controlling the dreadnought. He sank back, drained. A click brought the new danger to the viewscreen.

“That’s an orbiting laser cannon platform. How did they position it so fast, sir?” Sullivan moved closer to the captain’s chair. She touched a button on the arm. “They’ve opened fire on the warbots.”

“We have to decoy the laser battery. I had no idea those platforms were so maneuverable. I left such development up to Planetary Guard. They must have kept secret the capability to move so easily in orbit.”

Donal had always been more engaged with supply and commerce for the citizens, depending on his military commanders to keep the borders secure. It had been a relief when Cletus had taken over, but had Riddle kept the laser cannon mobility secret from him, too? That secrecy now placed Cletus in dire straits. He stood, removed the control helmet and laid it on the captain’s chair.

“Ten minutes until the interceptors come within firing range, sir.”

“Take the conn, Lieutenant Sullivan.”

“I’ve never been in such a situation, sir.”

“You know the tactics they’re most likely to employ. I don’t. We have to divert the lasers from the warbots--and avoid the interceptors closing on us. My foresight projection shows the Shillelagh has enough armor to take some damage, but our weapons are only on a par with the interceptors. Less, actually.” Not for the first time he cursed his orders to remove the dreadnought’s heavy laser batteries to prevent a squabble with Far Kingdom.

“That’s right, sir. Our last sitrep worries me. We lack missile capacity to make an attack on their part fail quickly.” Sullivan dropped into the captain’s chair and donned the control helmet. She stiffened, then relaxed as she melded herself with the neural net controlling the dreadnought. She blinked up her HUD and set it according to her personal preferences. Once it satisfied her, her blue eyes fixed on Donal. “What are you going to do, sir?”

“There’s a carrier in the hold. I will--”

“Permission denied, sir. I can’t risk your life.”

“I’m Programmer General. You--”

“I’m acting captain and in command, sir. Do you want to remove me?”

Donal stared at the viewscreen. The interceptors launched from the orbital station on the far side of the planet were within minutes of engaging the Shillelagh.

“Dip into the atmosphere and decoy the laser cannon firing on the warbots. Take care of the interceptors the best you can until Cletus and Leanne return.”

“You don’t ask for much, do you, sir?”

“The difficult we do first. The impossible takes a little longer.” He reached down and took the auxiliary helmet. The instant he connected, he received a microburst com from Leanne. “Pickup needed,” he grated out. “They’ll reach orbit in a few minutes. Barely. No, no they won’t. The warbots’ fuel is exhausted.” Donal piped the data from Leanne’s microburst into the ship’s computer for Sullivan to use.

The displays around the bridge began to light up. The few officers remaining worked at the most critical positions. Donal felt some confidence they would do well when he saw that the most experienced weapons officer had survived and now worked on firing solutions. Data flowed in a thousand directions, coordinating everything into the warbots’ rescue while the dreadnought dodged the interceptors.

A battery of low-power lasers fired futilely at the interceptors. Donal started to override the waste of energy, then saw the reason for the blast. It forced the interceptors to counter while their weapons were marginally effective. The Shillelagh built speed as it vectored down into a lower orbit. He ignored the hull sensors showing friction from the upper atmosphere heating the prow. The LiftShip was never intended for atmospheric maneuvering.

“Cargo bay doors open!” He cried out the command even as he sent the order using the control helmet. “Prepare to match vectors and take aboard two warbots.”

Donal ignored the interceptors changing direction to come after them. Captain Sullivan handled them as well as anyone could. He worried more how the way the laser cannon platform tried to follow the approaching warbots and blow them from the sky. They cannon faced the planet, not the Shillelagh. The slow progress of the two robots arcing up from the planet completely occupied his attention. If force of will could make them move faster, his intense concentration would have caused it.

“We’re taking fire,” Sullivan said. She worked on the virtual panels in front of her, shimmery when seen from Donal’s angle. “Those are light destroyers, sir. We can hold them at range a while longer.”

Donal’s clenched fists began to ache. He forced himself to relax and watch the slow progress. The warbots edged closer, then cargo arms grappled and brought them both in as a single unit before they reached apogee, all fuel gone, and gravity dragged them back to Ballymore. Anxious, Donal tried to contact Cletus. Nothing. Dead air. He recognized now that Leanne had locked her warbot magnetically to his son’s. Very little power radiated from Cletus’ mechanical coffin.

“Chang, report.” Donal reached up to pull off his helmet and go directly to the cargo bay, but he received a prompt answer.

“Cletus is unharmed. His warbot is severely damaged, but it protected him. We will report to the bridge as quickly as we can get free of the warbots.”

Donal saw the warbots were now enclosed in a thin mist. The outgassing might be dangerous, but the cargo hold had powerful recirculating fans that filtered poisonous fumes. The cargo master began spraying a thick foam over the warbots and caused a new cloud of thin, swirling vapor. When this was whisked away, the fronts of the warbots opened like clamshells. Donal finally sagged in relief when Cletus tumbled out and got to his feet to help Leanne from her robot.

“Sir, the nearer destroyer launched a swarm of unknown composition. Our laser fire can’t disperse it.”

Donal turned his attention back to what had become the more immediate danger. One destroyer stood off, barely within range of its lasers. The other came at the Shillelagh on a collision course.

He started to cry, “Blow it up!” but the fire control officer had plotted the firing solution perfectly. Four turrets homed in on the destroyer--and destroyed it. The beams cut through the smaller warship in four different places, then swung while still active. Huge hunks of the vessel spun off into space. One smaller piece touched the upper reaches of the atmosphere and became a new sun for a split second, then winked out.

“Prepare for impact.”

Donal had no idea who issued the warning. He grabbed the back of the captain’s chair in time to keep from being thrown high into the air when the artificial gravity failed. The impact of bits and pieces of the destroyer ricocheted off the hull and caused the entire ship to ring like a bell. Before the echo died, gravity returned. Donal fell heavily to his knees, then got up. A quick adjustment of his auxiliary helmet showed that sensors on the dreadnought’s planetward side were offline.

He understood only a small portion of the orders Sullivan issued. Damage control rose in importance, but she only set one laser to fire on the second destroyer. Then he understood. Sullivan diverted power from their armament to the engines. The Shillelagh blasted away, leaving the destroyer behind.

“We’re still in orbit, sir.”

“Break orbit immediately.” Leanne rushed ahead of Cletus onto the bridge, as perturbed as he had ever seen her. “If you continue, you will overtake the space station and allow its weapons to blow us out of space.”

“She’s right, Father. We have to get away from Ballymore until we replace out the situation below.”

“Kori?” Donal had to know.

“I’m sorry,” Cletus said. “The entire base was blasted into plasma. I don’t know how she could have survived. I’m afraid both she and Bella are gone.”

“That is not knowable,” Leanne cut in. “The prison walls were breached before the real devastation began. Your family might have escaped. There were dozens of people on foot going into the woods.”

Donal saw how stricken Cletus looked. His face was gray with strain, and his hands shook when he ran his fingers through his auburn hair now turned a soot black to get unruly locks from his eyes. No hope survived there. But Leanne was expert using the warbot sensors and might have a better take on Kori and Bella.

“You must break orbit. Now!” Leanne pointed to the viewscreen. At the planetary limb a bright speck appeared.

“That’s the station.” Donal spoke to ... no one. Sullivan had properly shunted power to the engines and already blasted to get them away from the planet.

Donal worried that the Shillelagh would launch at a tangent to their orbit, but Sullivan realized this would bring them under the station’s heavy lasers. The ship had flipped end-for-end and full thrust applied to kill not only orbital speed but vector them away opposite to the tangent that would have meant their deaths.

The destroyer behind them in orbit was taken by surprise and had a single opportunity to fire as they blasted away in the reverse direction, under full thrust.

“Let the destroyer fire on us. It has to ...” Cletus’ words trailed off as the Shillelagh drilled into space, leaving their attackers behind.

“Why did you want that? To get a fix on their position?” Donal went to his son and hugged him. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you again. In one piece and--” Donal held him at arm’s length. He stank of stale sweat and ozone and was close to perfection.

“They sprayed us with a swarm. With those on our hull eating away at our sensors, we’ll be blind and unable to communicate soon. I’d have to examine them to see if they can replicate. If they can, the swarm will coat the entire ship in a few days.”

“Can they breach the hull?” Donal tried to replace the specifications of such a weapon but failed. He took off his helmet and dropped it into its cradle behind the captain’s chair.

“Not unless they have advanced that program more than reported. But there’s no way we can clean it off without going into dry dock. That’s why I wanted the destroyer to blast us free of it.”

“The Commander in Chief is right, sir. We’re losing our sensors on the sunward side right now. The targeting sensors on the laser turret will be engulfed in a few hours, crippling our offensive capability.”

“We need to Lift,” Donal said. “What’s the nearest dry dock able to clean us?”

“The nearest dry dock with an ally in power,” added Cletus. “Can we return to Far Kingdom?”

“Not directly, sir. At current energy levels, we can’t Lift more than fifty light years. If we had time to recharge after being drained by the lasers used for the battle, we can make the four hundred light year Far Kingdom Lift.”

“How long would that recharge take, Captain?” Donal knew the answer but had to hear it from the Shillelagh’s new commander.

“More time than we have, sir. Two more destroyers are rounding the limb of the planet. Using a gravity whip, they can be on us within a few minutes.” Sullivan flashed the trajectories onto the viewscreen.

“The destroyers do not have Lift engines,” Leanne observed. “We can be gone before they are in range, even if they have missiles.”

“Missiles, aye, ma’am,” Sullivan confirmed. “From the sensors we’ve got trained on the vessels, they have nukes on their missiles.”

“If the swarm smeared all over our hull keeps chewing away at us, they’ll have us dead in space,” Donal said. “Set course for Babylon, Captain.”

“Sir?” Sullivan looked around. “Am I acting skipper?”

“Permanent rank of captain,” he said. “You’ve shown you can command. The Shillelagh is yours.”

“Father, has she ever computed a Lift? She was second officer, not even XO.” Cletus took a deep breath. “I have never computed a Lift, but I know the basics. With you helping, this might be safer if we do it. I don’t want to risk being lost in StringSpace forever.”

“Captain Sullivan, what is your experience with such navigation?” Donal stepped in front of the captain’s chair, ready to take out the auxiliary helmet. If the equations and database were intact, he could supply Cletus anything he needed, but neither of them had navigated a starship before, and never under such conditions.

The thought turned him cold inside, not being lost for millions of years if the Lift wasn’t properly computed but any major mistake--even a minor one costing them years--and he would never be able to replace Kori and Bella. His wife and daughter would have aged horrifically and been in their graves by the time the Shillelagh found its way back.

If they were alive. He let resolve take him over. They were alive. He permitted no doubt to creep into thoughts that they were not refugees in the forest and safely hidden from Weir’s forces.

“I calculated our Lift to Far Kingdom,” Sullivan said. “Captain Sorrel performed the Drop into Ballymore orbit.”

“I’m sorry to question your training, Captain.” Donal hesitated, then asked, “What were the error parameters?”

“Captain Sorrel was off by three seconds.” Sullivan stared straight ahead.

“And your error parameter?” Donal waited for her to answer and almost asked again when she blurted out her answer.

“I was three microseconds off.”

“Remarkable, Captain. Why so hesitant mentioning it?” As Donal held the auxiliary control helmet in his hand, he stared at the approaching destroyers on the viewscreen. He wanted to know.

“I used a technique he considered untried and put me on report. I don’t know if it was recorded in the ship’s log.”

“He--never mind.” Donal heard Cletus snort in disgust. His son and Sorrel had never agreed on policy or procedure. “Begin the StringSpaceLift immediately for Babylon, Captain Sullivan.”

She leaned back in the captain’s chair with the control headset in place on her shaven head. Her eyes glazed over, the viewscreen flickered, then she looked up.

“Drop completed into the Babylon system, sir.”

“Error parameter only a half second. You’re slipping, Captain.” Donal smiled, trying to keep the tone light. Under the circumstances he would have said that if she had been a month off. He hadn’t even felt the Lift or Drop transits.

“We have two vessels within our detection range,” Leanne said. “I am unfamiliar with the class. They appear larger than destroyers, smaller than a cruiser, yet their engine signatures are equivalent to a dartabout.”

“Oversized and underpowered,” Cletus said. “What do they fly here, Father?”

“Those, whatever those are. I’ve never visited this system officially, though we have regular contact through trade representatives. Babylon is a poor system producing little we can use in Burran. I remember a report asking for greater latitude in establishing relations. Ambassador Petersen? Yes, it was Petersen.”

“He’s been dead for over a year. I went to his funeral as your representative,” Cletus said. “Was a replacement sent?”

“I don’t remember, and it’s not in the Shillelagh’s database. I’ll have to tread carefully until I replace out.”

“Sir, the ships are powering up their lasers. I’ve sent a recognition signal but nothing was pinged back.”

“Attempt to contact the ships again.”

Donal fitted his helmet and sucked in his breath as his mind meshed with the ship’s neural net. Off in one corner he “saw” the attempt to forge a solid comlink proceeding. Repairs were rushed through the Shillelagh, but most attention went into repair of the external sensors and laser turrets. Neither showed any real progress. The swarm destroyed faster than RRUs repaired. He let his scan flash through the cargo bay. Both warbots were being repaired. Given a few days or even a week, both would be fully functional again.

Only he wanted them to be useful now. The exoskeletons worked against the Highlander, but they had almost bumped hull to hull. The two Babylonian ships were too distant for such boarding.

“They’re firing, sir. We’re under attack!”

Sullivan didn’t need to inform him. He saw that. He also saw that the dreadnought had no effective firepower left, thanks to the swarm blanketing their hull. The damage reports began flooding in until he felt as if his eyes would explode in his head.

The Shillelagh was dead in space and unable to repel the attack from the two ships.