“I know, man,” Alex said, then patted the kid’s knee before turning around. “No doubts.”
“Kamal?” said Bobbie’s voice in his ear, where the comm bud was inserted. Bobbie only called him Kamal when they were on an op and other ears were listening. It meant go time.
“Kamal copies from the flight deck, Cap,” he replied, sitting up straight in his couch. From the hiss of the gimbals behind him, he knew Caspar was doing the same. Even the crash couches on the Storm sounded slick.
“I need a go, no-go for deployment,” Bobbie said. “Pendulum cuts us loose on your word.”
“We are all greens up here on the flight deck, go on your command.”
“Outstanding,” Bobbie said. “Okay, kids, word came down, and here’s the op. Listen close, because I don’t have time to repeat myself.”
Alex hated flying ballistic. No drive meant he had maneuvering thrusters at most. No active sensors was like piloting with his eyes half-closed.
The Storm had a tiny radar profile for such a large ship. Something about the hull materials just absorbed or bounced off at an angle almost any radar that hit it. She could also dump all her waste heat into internal heat sinks for several hours and run liquid hydrogen through capillaries in her skin, keeping the hull temperature pretty close to zero. Unless someone was really looking for her, she’d just show up as a slightly warmer spot in space with a radar profile not much bigger than a bunk bed. Alex could remember when a destroyer with similar technology had killed his old ship the Canterbury. How terrifying it had been when a gunship seemed to materialize out of the dark of space and started firing torpedoes. Apparently that came standard now. Still, he could relate to what their intended targets were about to experience.
“One minute,” Caspar said. There was no time for sympathy.
“Copy that, one minute,” Alex replied, then switched channels over to Bobbie. “Cap, we’re go in sixty seconds. Your team ready?”
“Kids are belted in and ready for a roller-coaster ride,” she replied.
“Copy that,” Alex said, then watched the countdown timer on his screen drop toward zero. “Three… two… one… mark.”
“Mark,” Caspar said, and the Storm flared to life around them. The screens switched to active sensors and telescope shots of their target: a fat Transport Union freighter, escorted by two Laconian frigates. Behind the freighter lay Jupiter’s vast bulk.
And that was, according to Bobbie’s pre-mission brief, the reason for all the secrecy beforehand. Whether or not they could make their attack run depended on the resistance partisans on the freighter’s crew getting the signal out on the ship’s course and date of entry into the Sol system, all while working around a Laconian political officer who had been stashed on board. Because for the attack to work, it had to all happen while Jupiter blocked line of sight to Earth and the Magnetar-class battleship parked there.
It was a lot of moving parts, any one of which could have failed out at a moment’s notice, and launching the attack meant burning some spies in the union. If things hadn’t panned out, the Storm would have just climbed back into her berth on the Pendulum and flown away, her crew none the wiser and the spies on the freighter undiscovered.
But the prize was worth the risk. A ship directly from Laconia with highly sensitive cargo attached to some secret Laconian project and replacement parts for the Tempest itself. Hopefully also some of the weird fuel pellets the Laconian ships used that couldn’t be manufactured anywhere else, and which the Storm was getting dangerously low on. Ammunition for the Storm’s weapons and for the power armor suits Bobbie’s team wore. Taking the freighter meant keeping the underground’s best weapon armed and operational, possibly for years.
And—best of all—the political officer. Taking them alive would be a huge intelligence win.
If Alex could take care of two escort frigates and deliver Bobbie’s dropship to the freighter.
“They’ve spotted us,” Caspar said. No surprise there. With the Storm pinging away with active radar, she was lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Jammers on,” Alex said, and the Storm drowned the little fleet in static, cutting them off from each other and from any outside help. The three ships didn’t change course, apparently deciding the smartest move was to try to get around Jupiter. It was their best strategy. Alex would have done the same.
Which was why he’d prepared for it.
“Cap, launching you now. Make sure you come back,” Alex said, and hit the button that hurled the strike team’s high-speed breaching pod at the freighter. Bobbie and her boarding party throwing themselves at the enemy ship like pirates. While the pod burned hard toward the Transport Union ship, Alex fired two precisely angled shots from the rail gun past it and through the freighter’s drive cone. The shots covered the thousands of kilometers separating the ships in a handful of seconds, and the freighter’s drive winked out.
“Get ready, they’ll be coming for us now,” Alex told Caspar, and almost as if on cue the Storm buzzed an angry target lock warning at them.
“PDCs hot,” Caspar said. Alex was surprised at how calm his tone was. For all the sadness and fear the kid had expressed in the moments before the fight, now that the battle was on, he’d become almost machine-like. “Ready for incoming. Tubes two and four are locked.”
“We should close a bit, cut off their options,” Alex said. The two frigates were not a trivial threat, but the Storm massively outclassed them in tonnage and firepower, and he didn’t worry too much about flying straight at them fangs out and trying to end the fight quickly.
“Copy that, one and three loaded and locked if we need them.”
Acceleration pressed Alex back into his couch as he closed the gap. In the distance, Bobbie’s pod had reached the crippled freighter and was firing grapples to lock the two ships together. The frigates couldn’t talk to each other, but their crews had some emergency plans already on the books, because they split up and flew away from the freighter in opposite directions as if they’d coordinated the maneuver.
“They’re trying to get on both sides of us,” Alex said, but Caspar was already on it. He was tasking half their PDCs with one ship and half with the other. Didn’t matter if they came from both directions at once, the Storm’s flak screen could handle it.
Down at the freighter, Bobbie’s pod suddenly flared to life in a massive deceleration burn. Alex had crippled the freighter’s drive, but the ship was still hurtling along with whatever velocity it’d had before the engine went out. Bobbie’s pod was programmed to push back against that speed on a vector that would keep the freighter safely hidden behind Jupiter. Part boarding pod, part secondary, aftermarket temporary braking thruster.
“We’re on board,” Bobbie said, her voice phase shifted into a robotic screech as it cut through the static from their jamming.