The Adventurer Again

ADVENTURER: T-PLUS 8 HOURS 20 MINUTES
  On the Adventurer, Ty watched the clock tick slowly by. This was the longest twenty minutes he’d ever lived through. A tickle of a thought began to brew in the back of his mind. 
  “Anderson, I’m going to look back at that Aatarr.” 
  “Ok, passive only. Keep it short. It’s on your main panel.” 
  Ty powered up the main panel. He punched in the coordinates for where the Aatarr would be. Only stars were visible. The drive flare was gone. He pondered the information and set the sensor to spread spectrum viewing to merge information not only from visible light, but from deep into the infrared and ultra-violet ends of the light spectrum. A bright dot appeared on the screen. Ty was certain it was the Aatarr and he could tell it had broken off the pursuit. He focused in on the dot and zoomed the magnification. A small cloud of sixteen flecks of barely discernible light appeared. They were on a different trajectory than the Aatarr. 
  “Missiles… stiletto’s. They’re the only ones that have a chance of getting us,” Ty said out loud.  
  Anderson came over to look at the screen. “How much of a risk are they to us?” 
  “You know what happens if they do hit us since we’ve been hit twice by them already. In our shape, another direct hit from just one will take us out.” 
  “Yikes.” 
  “Yeah, it’s a desperation shot though. That Aatarr is apparently at his limit on his engine otherwise he’d still be burning towards us. You can see how he’s broken off the pursuit.” Ty pointed at the dot that was the large ship. “See how it’s starting to move off to the left here.” 
  “What about the missiles?” 
  “What we’ve seen of stilettos is they are incredibly fast, but once the motor finishes, they’re purely ballistic weapons. Their typical flight profile however is burn, coast, burn to close, and then they orient towards the ship and fire a self-shaping penetrator at the target ship. Some of the later versions use the EMP burst that shapes the penetrator to disrupt the shields too. Nasty stuff.” 
  “How nasty?” 
  “It was such a stiletto that took out the Devonshire last month.” 
  “Ouch! A stiletto did her in?” Anderson was incredulous. 
  Ty nodded in assent. ”Yeah, she had four centimeters of energy-reinforced, ablative-doped, spun-fiber armor. Older stilettos just bounce off of the stuff, but the EMP burst weakened the reinforcement enough that the penetrator made it through the armor at nearly full speed. Our best guess is that it ruptured a containment bottle as it banged around inside the ship. By comparison, we have three millimeters of energy reinforced nano-fiber armor. If we had our energy reinforcement working, it would still get through, but it wouldn’t have enough energy to get this far into the interior of the ship.” 
  “Yeah, but we don’t have the hull energy.” 
  “It doesn’t matter really, they’re coming towards us at nearly ten percent light just to get to us. Remember that first Aatrix we took out?” 
  She nodded.  
  “That’s what will happen to us if even one penetrator touches the ship.” 
  “Ever the proverbial fountain of good news,” she said with a slight smile. 
  “Right.” 
  “So what can we do?” asked Anderson. 
  “It’s a sure thing they’ve spread those missiles out to try and cover the entire section of the trajectory where we’ll jump. To be perfectly safe, we need to change our velocity enough to move our jump point outside of that area.” 
  “How much?” 
  Ty paused a moment to do the calculation in his head, “Probably about fourteen seconds of a level one push against Jupiter from the gravity engine, is the least I’d do.” 
  Anderson paused as she did some calculations of her own in her head.  
  Ty interrupted her by adding, “The longer we delay, the greater the velocity change will need to be to get us out of harm’s way. If we wait until the terminal attack of those missiles, we’ll need to make a level three or four push.”  
  “You made your point there. What other options do we have?” 
  “Jump now or before the penetrators hit us. As it is, we’re…,” he glanced at a chronometer that was counting down to the jump point, “we’re fifteen minutes and a few seconds from jumping.” 
  “How about those missiles, have a guess on their ETA?” 
  “The commander out there knows we’re trying to get to Beta Hydri. He also knows our trajectory. So he knows where to aim the missiles because the arc of the trajectory that actually points at Beta Hydri is pretty short… maybe a hundred-fifty clicks or so long. So, his aiming solution is simple. With fifteen missiles that’s about one per ten click stretch. Those shards from the warhead are wicked fast. If they get there a couple of seconds before we do, we’ll be lucky if no more than three missiles are close enough to engage us.” 
  “Well, he fired them so he must be pretty confident they will.” 
  “I’m not so sure. He shot nearly his full complement of missiles in one volley.” 
  Anderson interrupted him, “How do you know that? How do you know all this stuff about the Alliance weaponry?” 
  Ty paused and gave her a strained look before he continued, “I’m a tactician.” He offered no further explanation. 
  “Is that all? Do they all know this stuff?” 
  “The good ones do. The only way I can anticipate what the Alliance will do is if I know what they can do.” He emphasized the “can”. “We have pretty good intelligence on their weapons. They’ve shot enough of them at us lately.” 
  “That’s for sure, you were saying?” 
  Ty picked up his comment as if nothing had happened.  
  “He broke off pursuit. My hunch is he’s got a hurt ship, yet he’s desperate to get us. The Alliance rewards failure brutally and we handed them their heads on a platter today. He knows these missiles are his best chance to get us and he’s not too confident that they will. He’s rolling the dice on at least one of them getting to us before we jump.” 
  “What do you think?” 
  “I’d know if I could get a sensor sweep. As it is, my guess is he’s betting we can’t make any course correction and he spread them all along the jump arc.” 
  “Hence, jumping early is our only real escape option?” 
  “No, changing velocity now is. It takes less energy, but there’s still a risk if we don’t make a big enough change. Our velocity change needs to be a big change, like a level two push. Anything less and we may still be in range of some of those missiles. Everyone of them that can fire, will fire if they detect they have a firing solution. Then it’s up to the accuracy of the aiming gun.” 
  “How good is that?” 
  “That’s the stilettos’ one weakness, it’s so-so. A focused EMP burst shapes and drives the penetrator. The strength of the stiletto is it gets right up in your face before it fires. Remember the burn-cruise-burn. That last burn is a fine point aiming or a sprint to close firing maneuver. So they didn’t have to make it really accurate.” 
  “And you think they had to use that secondary burn engine to even make the intercept?” 
  “I’m certain of it.” 
  “You betting the survival of this ship on that assessment?” 
  Ty paused before answering, “Yes”. 
  “If you’re wrong?” She gave him a look.  
  He couldn’t tell if it was angry or just joking. His answer was flat and matter of fact. “Then we’ll die.” 
  “Then I hope you’re right one more time.” 
  Ty chuckled before answering. “Me, too,” is all he said. “I’m programming a twenty-second level one push to get us out of that corridor.” 
  She made the computation in her head. “That’s about fifteen minutes of containment power then,” she said. 
  “I can live with that,” said Ty. He keyed in the course change and committed the change. The drive came to life for twenty seconds as it pushed them forward. 
  The two modified stilettos observed the course change, computed new intercept courses and fired their remaining engagement motor.