“Stand by for going dark,” she concluded. “We’ve got an hour to prep for this. We’ll get through it, people. And these sons of bitches are never going to know what snuck past them!”
With a final nerve-wracking shiver, Rhapsody in Purple’s antimatter reactor went into cold shutdown. Kelly checked over the metrics on her repeaters and patted the arm of her chair.
“It’s all right, girl,” she murmured to her ship. “We’ll have you back awake in no time.”
Batteries and capacitors fueled the stealth ship now, keeping the lights and life support on as she drifted forward toward the dragnet coming her way.
“Angle is perfect,” Shvets announced. “We will be roughly one hundred kilometers off center. Range is one hundred ten thousand and closing at five hundred and ten kilometers per second.”
“All systems cold,” Kelly said aloud, confirming for the rest of the bridge crew what she’d just checked for herself. She hated shutting down the antimatter reactor. It was a catch-22 in a lot of ways—the antimatter reactor provided the power that contained its own horrendously dangerous fuel.
There were specific batteries and systems to continue powering that containment, but if they failed…well. If the containment on Rhapsody’s antimatter fuel tanks failed, no one aboard the stealth ship was ever going to know.
“From this close, Milhouse, confirm something for me,” Kelly murmured. “Are the gunships running antimatter or fusion engines?”
“Fusion, sir,” the tactical officer replied after a few seconds. “I guess we don’t merit the good stuff.”
“Not today, at least,” she agreed. “And not on their current standards, which I hope are getting really sticky around the use of antimatter.”
Seconds ticked by around them. The kilometers between them and the gunships vanished, and Kelly resisted the urge to close her eyes.
Even if this went wrong, the Republican warships would almost certainly attempt to take them intact. The crew of an MISS scout ship wasn’t worth much to the RIN, but the ship itself would be worth its weight in antimatter. There weren’t many areas where Protectorate tech drastically exceeded Republic tech, but the stealth systems aboard the Rhapsodies were definitely one of them.
“They’ve definitely been paying attention,” Kelly said aloud as they began their closest approach. “Someone put together the various pieces and realized we had stealth ships scouting their systems. Paranoid bastards.”
“If this is their standard reaction, that might be useful for Second Fleet to play with,” Milhouse noted. “I can see all kinds of uses for drawing a carrier out away from the main forces.”
“Me too,” Kelly agreed. It was getting hot on the bridge and she pulled on her braid absently. “Though I’m guessing the Republic has allowed for that. They can call in reinforcements instantly, after all.”
She’d been told that the Rhapsodies would be getting some of the first Protectorate-manufactured Links once they were available, but the Protectorate hadn’t finished reverse-engineering the entanglement technology yet.
Not enough to trust that the Republic couldn’t eavesdrop, anyway.
For now, the Republic continued to have a tighter command-and-control loop than the Protectorate. Kelly had hoped the war would be over after the Republic fleet had disintegrated at Legatus, but the grim competence of the gunships sweeping around her told her the truth.
Montgomery had broken the morale of the RIN that day, but the Republic had clearly found some answer to the horror of the Promethean Interface. If nothing else, she supposed, they’d probably been able to find enough people who just didn’t care what they did to Mages to keep the RIN operating.
“We’re through,” Shvets reported. “Range is now sixty-five thousand kilometers and rising. We are through.”
“Now we just need to dodge around a carrier and keep drifting on,” Kelly said brightly. “How long do you think before the gunships start sweeping the routes to Kenku and Greyhawk?”
“They’ll probably start decelerating once they hit the jump-flare zone and then settle their new courses once they’re at zero,” Shvets guessed. “Give them another two hours. We won’t have long where we’re at a range we can maneuver safely at, not if they keep up the search.”
“They’ll keep up the search,” Kelly predicted. “They know they can see us leave as clearly as they can see us arrive.” She shook her head. “Unless they give up and call it bad data, they’re going to keep hunting us until we actually leave.
“We’ll keep the reactor offline until we’re clear of the carrier,” she decided. “Hopefully, we can get at least five million klicks of clearance from all of their ships and get our velocity up.”
She grimaced.
“If I have to travel four light-minutes at less than five hundred KPS, I will, but I can think of better ways to spend three days!”
5
The two dreadnoughts were the first ships into the Nueva Bolivia System, the hammer-headed pyramids materializing in a flash of magic and blue Cherenkov radiation.
Roslyn had an observer seat on the flag bridge aboard Durendal, a recognition of the fact that a Flag Lieutenant didn’t have much to do during an actual battle except maybe fetch coffee. Her job at this point was to watch and learn.
It was at this point that it was hardest to forget that serving on an Admiral’s staff was generally considered a requirement for an officer making flag rank themselves. She was far too junior for that to be a major thought just yet, but she’d been handpicked as Alexander’s Flag Lieutenant on Damien Montgomery’s suggestion.
There was a lot of trust riding on her. Today was a day where she couldn’t do much to earn it, but it was also the kind of day where she couldn’t forget it.
“Scanning confirms no unexpected concentrations of activity,” Kulkarni reported. “Enemy battle group remains in position above Sucre. Numbers are consistent with the MISS sweeps: eleven capital ships.”
“Confirm the breakdown ASAP, Kulkarni,” Alexander ordered. “Any sign of movement from the gunships yet?”
They were barely a light-minute away from the planet, the presence of the two unescorted dreadnoughts a blatant taunt to the defenders. They weren’t in range of even the Protectorate’s new heavy-bombardment missiles, but the RIN had to know they were there.
“We’re picking up new power signatures in orbit,” a noncom reported. “A defensive constellation just came online. We’re reading twenty-four fortresses that weren’t in the intelligence report!”
“Interesting,” the Admiral observed. “They’re learning and starting to play games with our scouting flights. That must have taken some doing, though. What kind of forts are we looking at?”
“Twenty megatons apiece; they look like modified versions of their standard twenty-MT cylinder without engines and with more weapons,” Kulkarni said as the data came in. “Enough mobility to avoid unpowered missiles, I presume, but still limited to the powered range of their Excaliburs.”
“Good for us, unfortunate for them,” Alexander said. “We can ignore the fortresses for the moment. What is the rest of the fleet doing?”