Free Traitor's Duty by Richard Tongue Page A

countermeasures to do their stuff,” Ryder said with a nod. “Working on it now.”
     “Watch them,” Steele replied. “They’ve had plenty of time to come up with some new tricks.”
     “I’ve got this, Sub-Lieutenant,” Ryder said, working her panel. Logan looked at her, saw the beads of sweat building up on her face, and then turned to his console, bringing up the hacking subroutines.
     “I’ll handle the countermeasures, Ryder. You concentrate on the rest of the battle.”
     “Yes, sir,” she said with a grateful smile. She turned back to the missile controls, locking targets into the computer to try and give a time-on-target impact, all twelve missi le s hitting the enemy at once. Logan focused instead on the incoming Cabal warheads.
     They were a surprisingly familiar design, a United Nations vintage from about nine years ago, considerably post-war, one he knew rather well. Long ago, he'd run a deep cover operation in the research office that developed it; the head technician was very susceptible to tequila. He’d never run a ship countermeasures control before, but hacking was something he did know; he went straight to the intrusive programs, working his worms into their network, trying to wrest control.
     The first couple were all too easy; the leading missile had an error in its security programming, and he slammed it across into an adjacent target, resulting in a satisfying explosion. Immediately, the rest of the missiles spread out, lateral thrusters hurling them apart to prevent him trying that trick again. The self-destruct systems were his next target; on that mark of missile, they’d been legendarily easy to access, but he quickly realized that the Cabal had made some modifications to the design. Still, another missile turned back on itself, spiraling on its engine before exploding.
     Three left, almost half-way to their target. He smiled as he switched over to their on-board sensors, kept nice and simple as a rule. Visual lock, based on a target set by the tactical officer. Changing the target would be darn near impossible, but hacking into the image database was somewhat easier. He tapped a control, feeding an image of the Cabal battlecruiser into his system, then fired it off at the missiles, overwriting the original feed.
     As he worked, the lights dimmed for a second as Alamo fired another laser pulse, this time at the enemy ship, slicing into the hull armor. Excellent; that would provide a nice distraction while he finished his work, and a few seconds later, there were fifteen missiles heading for the enemy battlecruiser. He started to overwrite some of the security protocols, setting a few bots loose in the missile network, and looked back up at the tactical display.
     “That’s a good trick, sir,” Ryder said.
     “Enemy ship is trying to turn, sir,” Spinelli said. “Best guess is that he’s attempting to protect critical systems.”
     “Message from Gilgamesh,” Weitzman added. “Their target is heading towards the planet, and they’ve managed to restore sufficient attitude control to head back for the battle area. Estimated arrival in nine minutes.”
     “What condition are they in?”
     “Not good, sir. No hendecaspace drive, significant damage to outer hull and weapon systems.”
     “Let’s hope we can finish this one off first, then,” Logan replied. “Time to impact?”
     “First wave in ten seconds.” Ryder looked up, and said, “Second salvo ready to fire.”
     He’d missed the firing of the first salvo completely while he was working the countermeasures.
     “Give me the score as soon as we get it.”
     A few of the tracks had winked out, the Cabal security team desperately working to protect their ship, but nine still remained, entering the terminal phase of their flight, and in a split-second, they were gone, leaving nothing but damage and devastation in their wake.
     “Multiple impacts!” Ryder said. “Outgassing