Ballistic (The Palladium Wars), стр. 62
“They are coming back on track for a shortest-time intercept,” Bosworth reported. “They have almost a full g of acceleration advantage. We won’t be able to keep them at bay for very long.”
A message screen popped up in front of Mayler’s station, and Dunstan could see the tactical officer’s face blanch even in the semidarkness of the AIC’s red combat illumination.
“The AI has positive ID on Sultan-2,” he said. “Sir, it’s GNS Sleipnir. The Gretian gun cruiser from the internment yard.”
There was a moment of absolute silence in the AIC.
“Show me that ID assessment,” Bosworth said sharply. Mayler opened another instance of his screen and flicked it over to Bosworth’s station, then repeated the process to put another copy in front of Dunstan.
“Eighty-eight percent certainty on the hull,” Bosworth read. “The drive profile is a ninety percent match. That can’t be right. Where did they get a crew trained for that thing in three months?”
Every set of eyes in the AIC turned toward Dunstan. He knew that the eerie calm he suddenly felt was out of place for this situation. If the AI was right, and the contact bearing down on them was really GNS Sleipnir, they were about to head into a fight that would be all but impossible to win. The Gretian heavy-gun cruiser was almost twice the mass of Minotaur and far more heavily armed. And it had been designed to hunt and kill frigates and light cruisers. The Gretians had preferred to operate their ships autonomously as commerce raiders, so they had been equipped to outgun everything they could catch and outrun everything that had more firepower.
“Lieutenants, I hope you still remember the simulated scenarios you ran against that ship a few months ago,” he said to Bosworth and Mayler. “Because we’re about to need that knowledge.”
He turned his head toward the helm station.
“Boyer, get ready to hand the conn to the AI for evasive action. Fully autonomous mode.”
“Aye, sir. Preparing for AI conn, full auto,” Boyer replied. “We can’t outrun them forever, sir. Not with their acceleration advantage.”
“We don’t have to outrun them forever. We just have to keep them at range so we can let our point-defense AI chew up their ordnance. Mayler, how many gun mounts does that thing have again?”
“Six double mounts, sir. Four-and-a-half-second cycle time. One hundred and sixty rounds per minute for the full broadside.”
“Damn,” Dunstan said. Minotaur only had four single mounts, each with eight-second firing cycles, which added up to only thirty rounds per minute.
“And theirs are two hundred millimeters to our one fifties, sir. They have more broadside weight than any two of our cruisers put together.”
“They’ll want to get in close so they can tear us up with those quick-firing two hundreds,” Dunstan said. “With that rate of fire, even the AI can’t avoid everything. Not if they get inside a hundred kilometers.”
On the plot, the symbol for contact Sultan-2 had changed to the bright green, denoting a hostile Gretian warship, something he hadn’t seen on the hologram in almost five years. Minotaur was burning her drive at full power, but the Gretian cruiser was closing the gap a little with every passing moment.
Five years ago, we could have outrun them, he thought. On the spec sheet, they were faster than the Gretian cruiser. Minotaur’s maximum design acceleration had been almost twelve g when she was brand-new, but that was thirty years and many tens of thousands of reactor hours ago. Now she couldn’t break ten g even if they ignored all the safety margins and pushed everything to the limit.
“Four minutes until they are in engagement range, sir,” Bosworth said.
Dunstan looked around the AIC. Every face he saw showed the same anxiety and fear. These were the pre-battle jitters, the brain trying to process the reality of impending mortal danger. He knew the junior crew were looking to him to give them reassurance. He was only forty-six, but so many of these officers were not even half his age. To them he was the Old Man, the only member of the crew who had lived through the entire war. He was supposed to know what to do, what to say to make them feel a little less afraid. A lie wouldn’t do, but he could put an optimistic coat of paint on the grim reality.
“Bosworth, all-ship announcement,” he ordered.
“You’re on, sir,” his XO said.
“All hands, this is the commander,” Dunstan announced.
He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts.
“We are about to do something nobody has done in half a decade. We are about to engage a Gretian warship. The last Gretian warship. The only remaining ship of the fleet that killed our brothers and sisters, our friends and comrades. The fleet that we defeated, that’s now radioactive debris between Rhodia and Tethys. And once we are done with this ship, there’ll be nothing left of their fucking navy.”
He was satisfied to see a grim smile on the face of Lieutenant Mayler.
“I don’t know who stole that cruiser,” Dunstan continued. “I don’t know who’s crewing it right now. But I do know that we are better at this business than they are. We’ve been doing this for a while. And we know our ship inside and out. They haven’t even had time to get used to theirs. Everyone stand to your posts. Let’s give these people an object lesson on why the Rhodian Navy won the war. Commander out.”
He nodded at Bosworth and leaned back in his gravity couch.
“The nearest fleet unit is far away. We’re on our own. And we can’t go up against a heavy cruiser by ourselves and expect to come out in one piece,” Bosworth said in a low voice.
Dunstan shook his head with a sigh.
“No, we can’t. I think this old girl is about to fight her last battle,