Trial by Fire - eARC by Charles E. Gannon Page A

extraction. It was like listening to an announcer doing play-by-play for a demolition derby. He had only been able to hope that, at the end of that litany of destruction and death, someone—anyone—would be left alive. That hope had been forlorn.
    So it was here, too. The missile frigate was the first hit—naturally—and her skipper evidently knew he didn’t have much time left; he salvoed his bays in the direction of the enemy’s lead ship. He unloaded sixty percent of his ordnance before Trevor’s passive sensors registered a split-second, white-hot thermal bloom where the frigate had been a moment before. Then the invaders’ drones picked off the much slower human drones and their control sloop. Finally, the remaining enemy craft tumbled so they could keep firing at the human auxiliaries which were now aft of them as they kept arrowing toward The Pearl.
    Hazawa’s somber voice broke the extended silence “We have the toroid back online, sirs.”
    Trevor rubbed his brow. “Which, ironically, makes us the most intact and capable ship in this entire sector.”
    Caine frowned. “How long do you think we should wait?”
    “Before trying to make a getaway? Depends on what I see here in the next fifteen minutes.” Trevor tapped the proximity passive sensor sweep.
    “What do we want to see?”
    “Wrong question. The right question is, what do we not want to see? Answer: we absolutely do not want to see a second wave of drones that are moving more slowly, because those could retroboost and come back for us. We don’t want their main hulls to retroboost either, or even slow down, because that means they’re willing to make sure that they’ve finished business out here, even if that delays them in their push to The Pearl. And no small craft. They’d be the worst, because whereas a big hull usually can’t loiter because it’s been tasked with key strategic objectives, smaller craft are more likely to be sent on more generalized patrol or picket missions. And that’s my biggest worry: that they leave behind a sloop or a frigate to sift through the junk that used to be our ships, trying to gather technical intelligence.”
    “How’s the rest of our side doing?”
    “I can’t tell. When Hazawa shut down power, our tight-beam gimballing servos went offline. But that’s not a big loss. I think the niceties of lascom are about to become a thing of the past.”
    “Because they’re going to be hitting The Pearl soon?”
    “Yes, which will whack the snot out of precision communications. Not that The Pearl wants to talk with us anymore, anyway. They’ll have cleared their tracking and comm arrays to maintain redundant C4I with our effective fleet elements. And we no longer qualify as such. We’re on our own, for now.”
    Caine was oddly silent. Trevor looked up, discovered that he was staring intently at the passive scan plot. “Trevor, what do you think that might be?”
    Trevor followed Caine’s extended index finger to the thermal bloom that marked the drive of the approaching alien main hull—except now it was trailed by two small pinpricks, one of which was dropping behind very rapidly.
    “That?” Trevor rubbed his eyes but could still see the decelerating pinprick. “That’s trouble.”
    * * *
    And, thirty minutes later, it still was. Caine was looking at the shining mote that was now plainly visible at the center of their view screen. “Still coming toward us?”
    “Yep. It’s ignored the wreckage of the frigate.” Something’s wrong here . Trevor tapped his collarcom. “Lieutenant, are you sure our power plant is cold?”
    Hazawa sounded more collected than he had when, twenty minutes earlier, the main attacking vessel had virtually grazed their hull at two hundred kilometers range. “Fusion is offline sir.”
    “And we’re not the only transponder in the water?”
    “No, sir. Four others in our area alone.” Hazawa’s voice rose slightly. “Sir, this small enemy craft—it’s getting