Free Trial by Fire - eARC by Charles E. Gannon

to respond. “Yes, Captain Corcoran?”
    “Have you been given orders?”
    “Just came through now, sir.”
    “And?”
    “And we are to commence stern-chasing the shift-carrier Prometheus immediately, sir. Silent running.”
    Trevor checked his nav plots. “Lieutenant, have you looked at what that means?”
    “I have, sir.”
    “It’s going to have us paralleling the OpFor’s approach trajectory to the Pearl—and unless we move to four gee immediately, they’re going to overtake us. As it is, if they’ve got drones, their remote units will overtake us.”
    “Big Lady’s direct orders, sir: to get you two gentlemen out of this system. So we need to make rendezvous with the Prometheus , and that trajectory is the only way to do it. But we’ll push the engines and burn to four gee.”
    “What sort of countermeasures are loaded?”
    The extended pause was not promising. “A Level Two ECM package and two point-defense fire pods.”
    “Ship-to-ship ordnance?”
    “None, sir. Sorry. We came to this party equipped to be a racecar, not a gunboat.”
    “Then put the pedal to the metal and get us the hell out of here, Lieutenant.”
    “Yes, sir. We’ll be informing the other passengers in a moment, and give them four minutes to get into and flood their acceleration compensation tanks. Then we’ll—”
    “Son, every minute you give your passengers to get comfy makes it that much more likely that you will not outrun the OpFor and that, in consequence, we will all die. Recommend you hit the accelerator in one minute and tell the biofreight they’ve got that long to strap in, wherever they can.”
    A pause. It was a nonregulation procedure suggested to a twenty-five-year-old who’d never been in a shooting war. Then, “Aye, aye, sir. Strap in.”
    The shipwide blared Hazawas’ warning overhead. Caine strapped in slowly, deliberately.
    “You okay?” Trevor was looking over at him.
    “Yeah—yeah, I guess I am.” Caine was suddenly more aware of the perverse calm he felt than any fear of personal harm. It was either a helpful precombat reflex or a pathological level of traumatic dissociation. Or maybe those were the same thing. He couldn’t believe that he was smiling, but the stretching pain in his injured lower lip confirmed it.
    Trevor was staring at him. “You sure you’re okay?”
    “Well, I’m not about to start drooling or run around shrieking, if that’s what you mean.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I mean. Okay, then. Any second n—”
    Trevor didn’t complete the word “now” because four gees of force suddenly crushed them in their couches as irresistibly as a trash compactor. Jesus Christ. How the hell do the regular crews take it?
    The force abruptly shifted to the side, like a hammer had hit the starboard side of the cutter. The lights flashed off and came back on in an environment that was once again weightless. A shuddering rumble tremored through the deck, then another two in quick succession. “What the—?”
    “I think that was combustive venting of some tankage baffles.”
    “And the first big slam?”
    “Well, either we had one hell of a malfunction or their capital ships have a hell of a lot more range than we do. And if their main weapons can disable us at their current rang—” he checked “—which is about one hundred thirty kiloklicks, then whatever they just hit us with would tear apart our biggest cruisers at normal engagement ranges. Which means that if our fleet waits to get into optimal range—”
    “—they’ll never get off a shot,” finished Caine. “They’ve got to concentrate long-range fire on a few select hulls and try to keep distance.”
    “Hard if they’re already on course for direct engagement.”
    “Yeah, but that’s for the admiral to decide. Either way, the whole fleet needs this information.”
    Trevor nodded. “Bridge.”
    Caine could hear the chaos clearly over Trevor’s collarcom. “Captain—Mr. Corcoran—please. Not now. We’ve