Thrawn Ascendancy Book 3: Lesser Evil
- Автор: Зан Тимоти
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Random House
- ISBN: 9781473596580
- Жанр: Боевая фантастика
Электронная книга - «Thrawn Ascendancy Book 3: Lesser Evil». Краткое содержание книги:
Roscu hissed out a curse. He was right—even at emergency power, the Orisson was barely holding its own against the onslaught. The only thing that would save them now was a flat-out escape into hyperspace, which didn’t require any of the fancy calculations needed for an in-system jump.
The problem was that Roscu’s straight-in vector meant the Orisson was pointed directly at Ornfra. Jumping into hyperspace would almost instantly slam them into the edge of the planet’s gravity well, dropping them back into space-normal right in the middle of a crowded traffic pattern. If they didn’t kill themselves, there was a good chance they would kill someone else.
But the alien’s laser barrage was beating at the electrostatic barriers, and the aft sensors were starting to flash critical. The Orisson would never survive long enough for the pilot to finish the in-system jump calculations.
They had just one chance. “Set for hyperspace,” she ordered. “On my command, you’ll flutter the main starboard thrusters twice, then shut them down.”
“That’ll drastically drop our acceleration,” Raamas warned.
“And the thrust imbalance will skew us to starboard, opening that flank to attack,” Roscu said. “That’s why the instant the starboard thrusters shut down, you’ll also fire the starboard-bow maneuvering jets—all of them—at full power.”
“Skewing us instead to portside,” Raamas said, nodding as he understood.
“Exactly,” Roscu said. “I’m hoping they’ll see the flutters and shift their targeting in anticipation of a clear shot at our starboard flank. Once we’re clear of the gravity well edge, jump us to hyperspace.”
“Understood,” Raamas said. “Helm?”
“We’re set, Captain,” the pilot confirmed.
“Execute.”
Roscu gripped the arms of her chair tightly as the Orisson twitched twice with the thruster fluttering, then twitched one final time as the thrusters were shut down. The bow swung to portside, moving off the line leading to the distant planet—
And the stars stretched into star-flares and melded into the swirl.
Roscu huffed out a breath. They’d made it. “Secure from battle stations,” she ordered. “Commander, get me a damage report.”
“Three of the aft hull plates have warped, but not critically,” Raamas said, pulling up the status on his questis as he left the helm and crossed back toward her command chair. “Thruster Four took some damage; we probably shouldn’t run it past sixty percent until it’s been looked at. Otherwise, we seem to have made it through mostly intact.”
“Any damage to the portside hull?”
“Nothing registering,” Raamas said. “Looks like your plan caught them off guard exactly as you predicted.”
“Sometimes it’s good to go up against a competent enemy.” Roscu paused, waiting until Raamas had stopped beside her chair. “So,” she said, lowering her voice so that only he could hear her. “How exactly did they pull that off?”
“If you’ll pardon the language, Captain, that’s a damn good question,” Raamas said grimly. “There’s no way one of those ships could have followed us from Rhigal. They were still showing cold when we left.”
“Unless there was an active one lurking where we couldn’t see it.”
“In which case, how did they see our vector and know where we were headed?” Raamas countered. “If we couldn’t see them, they shouldn’t have been able to see us.” He winced. “No, wait. It’s actually worse than that, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” Roscu said, her throat tightening. The Orisson hadn’t been quite lined up on Ornfra when it left Rhigal, and had required a mid-route stop to correct its course. Even if the aliens had observed the Orisson’s departure vector, they’d have had no way of narrowing down the Clarr warship’s destination farther than between Ornfra, Sharb, Noris, and Schesa. “They couldn’t have been waiting here unless they had ships waiting at all four of our possible destinations.”
“Not a pleasant thought,” Raamas said. “If they have enough warships skulking around the Ascendancy that they can get four of them to the northeast sector ahead of us, it isn’t about Patriarch Rivlex borrowing a fleet anymore.”
“I agree,” Roscu said. “Unfortunately, the alternative isn’t any better. If Jixtus doesn’t have a lot of spare warships available—if he only maybe has one, in fact—then there’s only one other way this one could have been waiting for us.”
Raamas looked out the viewport at the undulating hyperspace sky. “If the Patriarch told them where we were going.”
Roscu nodded. “Yes.”
For a moment Raamas pondered that in silence. “So what do we do?”
“I wish I knew,” Roscu admitted. “We can’t alert the Defense Force without telling them about the fleet hidden in the Junkyard. This attack would seem to settle the question of whether the Patriarch is involved, which would mean telling them about him, too.”
“But if he’s a traitor?”
Roscu winced. She hadn’t even wanted to use that word in the secret confines of her own mind. To hear Raamas say it out loud … “We don’t know that,” she said stubbornly. “Maybe he set this up in good faith and Jixtus is just playing him.”
“I don’t see how that makes it any better.”
“It makes it better because it now means we can hold off on alerting Csilla until we’ve had time to look into this,” Roscu told him. “See if we can figure out Jixtus’s ultimate plan.”
“Stall, in other words.”
Another word Roscu hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. “We’re Clarr, Commander,” she said quietly. “We’re a family. We don’t lightly open up our flaws or mistakes for everyone to see. We don’t denigrate or accuse our Patriarch without evidence, and we absolutely don’t hand him over to others unless that evidence is stone-solid.”
“I understand,” Raamas said. “I’m just … we’re standing on an edge here, Captain. I can feel it.”
“And you’re afraid of heights?” Roscu suggested, trying for a little humor.
He gave her a small, tight smile in acknowledgment. “Terrified of them, ma’am.” The smile faded. “Especially when everything and everyone I care about is standing there with me.”
Roscu nodded. “I understand. But we’ll get through this, Commander. We will.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Raamas straightened up. “Orders, Captain?”
“We head back to Rhigal,” Roscu said. “The Dasklo shipyards can wait. It’s time we had a talk with Patriarch Rivlex.”
She stared out the viewport. “A long and very thorough talk.”
“Mid Commander Octrimo, stand by,” Ar’alani ordered, eyeing the nav display and the chrono. “Space-normal in sixty seconds.”
“Acknowledged, Admiral,” the pilot confirmed.
Beside Ar’alani, Wutroow shook her head. “Did I miss the part about the Ascendancy having an expiration date?” she muttered.
“If you did, so did I,” Ar’alani said, wincing. A standoff at Sarvchi between a pair of Chaf and Ufsa freighters. A loud argument at Shihon between an Erighal transport and a Boadil-crewed system patrol ship in which other patrol ships had had to intervene. The Tahmie and Droc on the edge of restarting their recent hostilities, only this time at Jamiron instead of Csaus.
And the Vigilant, ordered by an increasingly nervous Syndicure to get to Jamiron and deal with it.
“Do we even know what this is about?” Wutroow continued. “I read the orders and data feed twice, and I still can’t figure out what the Droc are mad about this time.”