The warship looked about its internal systems. All was ready; any further delay would constitute prevarication. It turned itself about, facing back the way it had come. It powered up its engines slowly to accelerate gradually, sleekly away into the void. As it moved, it left the skein of space behind it seeded with mines and hyperspace-capable missiles. They might only remove a ship or two even if they were lucky, but they would slow the rest down. It ramped its speed up, to significant engine degradation in 128 hours, then 64, then 32. It held there. To go any further would be to risk immediate and catastrophic disablement.
It sped on through the dark hours of distance that to mere light were decades, glorying in its triumphant, sacrificial swiftness, radiant in its martial righteousness. It sensed the oncoming fleet ahead, like a pattern of brightly rushing comets in that envisaged space. Ninety-six ships arranged in a rough circle spread across a front thirty years of 3-D space across, half above, half below the skein. Behind them lay the traces of another wave, numerically the same size as the first but taking up twice the volume.
There had been three hundred and eighty-four ships stored at Pittance. Four waves, if each was the same size as the first. Where would it position itself if it was in command? Near but not quite actually in the centre of the third wave.
Would the command vessel guess this and so position itself somewhere else? On the outside edge of the first wave, somewhere in the second wave, right at the back, or even way on the outside, independent of the main waves of craft altogether?
Make a guess.
It looped high out across the four-dimensional range of infraspace, sweeping its sensors across the skein and readying its weapon systems. Its colossal speed was bringing the war fleet closer faster than anything it had ever seen before save in its most wildly indulged simulations. It zoomed high above them in hyperspace, still, it seemed, undetected. A pulse of sheer pleasure swept its Mind. It had never felt so good. Soon, very soon, it would die, but it would die gloriously, and its reputation pass on to the new ship born with its memories and personality, transmitted in its mind-state to the Shoot Them Later.
It fell upon the third wave of oncoming ships like a raptor upon a flock.
........ A FEW CHAPTERS LATER THE BATTLE CONTINUES .....
The Attitude Adjuster watched the attacking craft fall amongst the surrounding shield of ships; they had no time to move more than fractionally from their original positions. Their weaponry did their moving for them, focusing on the incoming target as it plunged into their midst. A scatter of brightly flaring missiles preceded the Killing Time, a hail of plasma bubbles accompanied it and CAM, AM and nanohole warheads cluster munitions burst everywhere around it like a gigantic firework, producing a giant orb of scintillations. Many of the individual motes themselves detonated in a clustering hyperspherical storm of lethal sparks, followed sequentially by another and another echelon of explosions erupting amongst the wave of ships in a layered hierarchy of destruction. The Attitude Adjuster scanned the real-time reports coming back from its war flock. One was caught by a nanohole, vanishing inside a vast burst of annihilation; another was damaged beyond immediate repair by an AM munition and dropped behind, engines crippled. Fortuitously, neither were crewed by Affronters. Most of the rest of the warheads were dealt with; the fleet’s own replies were fended, detonated or avoided by the attacker. No sign of the craft using its effectors to do more than cause interference; flittingly interrogating and probing amongst the collected mass of ships. The focus of its attention had begun near the centre of the third wave of craft and was spirally erratically outwards, occasionally flicking further out towards the other waves.
The Attitude Adjuster was puzzled. The Killing Time was a Torturer class Rapid Offensive Unit. It could be - it ought to be - devastating the fleet for these instants as it tore through it; it was capable of-
Then it realised. Of course. It was a grudge.
The Attitude Adjuster experienced a tingle of fear, merged with a kind of contempt. The Killing Time’s effector focus was a few ships away now, spiralling out towards the Attitude Adjuster. It signalled hurriedly to the five Rapid Offensive Units immediately around it. Each listened, understood and obeyed. The Killing Time’s effector focus flicked from craft to craft, still coming closer.
You fool, the Attitude Adjuster thought, almost angry at the attacking ship. It was behaving stupidly, irresponsibly. A Culture craft should not be so prideful. It had thought the venom directed at itself by the Killing Time in its signal to it back at Pittance had been bluster; cheap bravado. But it had been worse; it had been sincere. Wounded self-esteem. Upset that it personally had been subject to a ruse designed to destroy it. As though its enemies cared an iota who it was.
The Attitude Adjuster doubted this was an attack sanctioned by the Killing Time’s peers. This wasn’t war, this was peevishness; this was taking it personally when, if there was anything war could be characterised as being, it was impersonal. Idiot. It deserved to perish. It did not merit the honour it doubtless thought would accrue to it for this reckless and selfish act.
The surrounding warships completed their changes. Just in time. When the attacking ship’s effector targeted the first of those craft, the focus did not flit onto the next as it had with all the rest; instead it stayed, latching on, concentrating and strengthening. The ROU caved in alarmingly quickly; the Attitude Adjuster guessed that it was made to reconfigure its engine fields to focus them inside its Mind - there was a sort of signalled shriek an instant before communication was lost - but the exact nature of its downfall was hidden in an accompanying shower of CAM warheads which obliterated it instantaneously. A mercy; it would have been a grisly way for a ship to die.
But too quick, thought the Attitude Adjuster; it was sure the attacker would have let the ROU - which the Killing Time had mistaken for the Attitude Adjuster - tear its intellect apart with its engines for longer if it had been totally fooled; the CAM dusting had been either a coup de grâce or a howl of frustration, perhaps both.
The Attitude Adjuster signalled to the rest of the fleet, instructing them too to impersonate itself, but even as it watched the ROU which had been attacked alongside it disappear astern in a fragmenting cage of radiations, it began to be afraid.
It had originally contacted the five nearest ships, hoping that the first one found and interrogated by the attacker’s systems would fool the Killing Time into believing it had found the one ship it was obviously seeking.
But that was stupid. It sensed the Torturer class ship’s effectors sweep over the craft on the far side of the hole in the wave of ships which the ROU’s destruction had created. Insufficient elapsed time, the Attitude Adjuster whispered to itself. The ROU being quizzed at the moment was still reconfiguring its internal systems signature to resemble that of the Attitude Adjuster. The effector sweep flicked away from it, dismissing. The Attitude Adjuster quailed.
It had made itself a target! It should have-- HERE IT CAME!
... A FEW CHAPTERS LATER THE FINAL MOMENTS ...
The Killing Time plunged intact through the third wave of ancient Culture ships; they rushed on, towards the Excession. It fended off a few more of the warheads and missiles which had been directed at it, turning a couple of the latter back upon their own ships for a few moments before they were detected and destructed. The hulk of the Attitude Adjuster fell astern behind the departing fleet, coasting and twisting and tumbling in hyperspace, still heading away from and outstripping the Killing Time as it braked and started to turn.
There was only a vestigial fourth wave; fourteen ships (they were targeting it now). Had it known there were so few in the final echelon, the Killing Time would have attacked the second wave of ships. Oh well; luck counted too. It watched the Attitude Adjuster a moment longer to ensure it really was tearing itself apart. It was.
It turned its attention to the remaining fourteen craft. On its suicide trajectory it could take them all on and stand a decent chance of destroying perhaps four of them before its luck ran out; maybe a half-dozen if it was really lucky. Or it could push away and complete its brake-turn-accelerate manoeuvre to make a second pass at the main fleet. Even if they’d be waiting for it this time, it could reckon on accounting for a good few of them. Again, in the four-to-eight range. Or it could do this.
It pulled itself round the edge of the fourteen ships in the rump of the fleet as they reconfigured their formation to meet it. Bringing up the rear they had had more warning of its attack and so had had time to adopt a suitable pattern. The Killing Time ignored the obvious challenge and temptation of flying straight into their midst and flew past and round, targeting only the outer five craft nearest it. They gave a decent account of themselves but it prevailed, dispatching two of them with engine field implosures. This was, it had always thought, a clean, decent and honourable way to die. The pair of wreckage-shells coasted onwards; the rest of the ships sped on unharmed, chasing the main fleet. Not one of the ships turned back to take it on.
The Killing Time continued to brake, oriented towards the fast vanishing war fleet and the region of the Excession. Its engine fields were gouging great livid tracks in the energy grid as it back-pedalled furiously.
It encountered the ROU which had dropped aft with engine damage, falling back towards it as the Killing Time slowed and the other craft coasted onward and struggled to repair its motive power units. The Killing Time attempted to communicate with the ROU, was fired upon, and tried to take the craft over with its effector. The ROU’s own independent automatics detected the ship’s Mind starting to give in. They tripped a destruct sequence and another hypersphere of radiation blossomed beneath the skein.
Shit, thought the Killing Time. It scanned the hyper volumes around itself.
Nothing threatening.
Well, damn me, it thought, as it slowed. I’m still alive.
This was the one outcome it hadn’t anticipated.
It ran a systems check. Totally unharmed, apart from the self-inflicted degradation to its engines. It slackened off the power, dropping back to normal maxima and watching the readouts; significant degradation from here in about a hundred hours. Not too bad. Self-repairing would take days at allengines-stop. Warhead stocks down to forty per cent; remanufacturing from first principles would take four to seven hours, depending on the exact mix it chose. Plasma chambers at ninety-six per cent efficiency; about right for the engagement system-use profile according to the relevant charts and graphs. Self-repair mechanisms champing at the bit. It looked around, concentrating on the view astern. No obvious threats; it let the self-repairers make a start on two of the four chambers. Full reconstruction time, two hundred and four seconds.
Entire engagement duration; eleven microseconds. Hmm; it had felt longer. But then that was only natural.
- Excession, various chapters.