Now came the moment she had both wanted and feared. Could she possibly gain Padhjan’s trust, and his captains’ trust, in the few moments available? On one side of her display, the familiar ship names came up as their beacons registered: the Reef-class heavy cruisers Mandan, Bailey’s, Seegan, and Adelie. Medium and light cruisers Rapier, Arbalest, Trebuchet, Warhammer, Scimitar…names she had learned that first year, when they’d had to recite them during PT, every ship on the books.
She had struggled to come up with a plan that used Slotter Key’s traditional strengths, but melded them with the new reality of onboard ansibles. And instead of trying it out in training—or even in a dry simulation in a conference—they were in the midst of a battle.
“You’re a welcome sight, Admiral,” Ky said. “In brief, we have roughly three hundred enemy ships insystem, combat in progress. Situation report follows on data channel. Are all your ships capable of precision microjumps up to two light-hours?” Spaceforce training concentrated on shorter distances.
“Er…no, Admiral, not really precision, at that distance.”
“We need to get your ships out far enough that we can pair them with those carrying ansibles. We operate dispersed, in pairs or clusters—”
“That’s very unorthodox—how do you control—” His face changed. “Oh. You’re used to this.”
“Yes, Admiral, I am. You should have received the situation data—”
“Yes—”
“I’m now squirting you the orders for your formations; you will be met by Space Defense ships there, with either that beacon, Moray, or Cascadia.” On her display, Vanguard II’s forward beams stabbed out at an enemy cruiser in a series of timed bursts, shields snapping shut between them. The enemy fired back, but their own shields held. “Captain Argelos, Sharra’s Gift II, will be your liaison; we’re presently engaged.”
“You’re fighting now? Which?”
“Vanguard II,” Ky said. “If your scans have cleared, I suggest you get to the coordinates on those orders immediately. Turek has plenty of ships; he can jump in thirty or forty on you at any time.”
The Mandan Reef ansible snapped off; she hoped that meant they’d jumped as she directed, but there was nothing she could do about it if they didn’t. If nothing else, the arrival of another force should shake Turek up. He had run before when he found force building against him.
She had other calls waiting—the ISC commander, Driskill, with a patch through an ansible platform and boosters, had accepted Rafe’s order, and was now willing to cooperate fully. His ships, however, were incapable of keeping up with hers in rapid maneuver, even without the lightlag problem…her original plan, to twin them with her ansible-bearing ships, would not work.
“I’ve been watching on scan,” he said. “Your jump precision and your gunnery—brilliant. We’d slow you down.”
“What about your weapons?”
“Old,” he said. “But we do have fresh munitions and plenty of them. Chairman Dunbarger got us the funds.”
“I’ll shift one of our ansible-equipped ships to you for communications,” Ky said. One of the slower, less able privateer ships would do. “If you’re within three thousand kilometers, the lightlag in communications will hardly be noticeable, so that’s your maneuver envelope. If an enemy attack formation is in range, and you can hit them in the flank, do it…but if they’re not in range, don’t go looking for them unless I say so. Now, what about Nexus Defense?”
“I’m in command of that, too. It’s all small ships, fast and agile but small. Lightly armed.”
“Small, agile, and fast is perfect,” Ky said. “But you’ll be busy. I need a separate commander for that.”
“Senior Commander Stanson. Shall I patch for you?”
“Yes,” Ky said. Moments later she was telling Stanson what she needed from him. “—And if you find any of the stealthed observers, hit them with everything you have.”
“Found the main fleet.” Yamini gave the coordinates. “I don’t think I was spotted; some of them may not realize we captured this ship at Boxtop.”
“How close are you?”
“Just out of my missile range. Inside the range for you, but it’s a long shot. If you want to land on top of them…even this bunch outnumbers you; it’ll be risky.”
“They’re resting, we’re fighting,” Ky said. “If I can distract them while Argelos pairs the Spaceforce ships with ours, it’s worth trying. Do you have a range on them? And do you know which ship is Turek’s?”
“Yes, I have a range—coordinates transmitted. There’s apparently a command cluster, and I think Turek’s ship is the one tagged Bloodblade.”
“It would be,” Ky said. “Fits his style.”
“By its mass and weapons signature, it may be one of the new Moray-built heavy cruisers,” Yamini said.
Bloodblade’s position, according to Yamini, was nestled in the middle of the enemy ships, but Turek had arranged them in an oval disk not nearly as deep as it was wide. Clusters of three to five were within a kilometer of one another, and separated by only five to ten kilometers. Ky brought her attack group of heavy cruisers in above the center, only a kilometer out. At that distance, there would be no scan lag—and no room for error.
Vanguard II emerged exactly on target; its preprogrammed weapons sequences locked on to targets and fired within a hundredth of a second, faster than human reflexes. Fourteen heavy cruisers, point-blank into the enemy ships, sustained fire that ruptured five of the enemy at once, spalling off debris that impacted shields on ships farther away. The formation loosened but only a few ships blinked out, having jumped somewhere. Past the closest ships, the outer guard, Bloodblade’s beacon showed briefly, then other ships intervened. Then the preprogrammed jump whisked them all ten light-seconds away, and none had taken damage.
“Good shooting,” Ky said. “Yamini, have you tracked Bloodblade?”
“They’re re-forming—you shook them up, but they’re still functional—there they go, fifty or sixty. All into jump at once—should be an attack force…”
“Three attack forces,” Ransome reported. “All three remaining ansible platforms. The Nexus ships are harassing them.”
Argelos had the Spaceforce ships organized by now; Ky sent them out, also in separate groups, to jump in on the attackers. Spaceforce ships, she noticed at once, caught on quickly and did what they were told. Their gunnery was outstanding compared with the privateers she’d started with. Each enemy attack group lost ships and fled before doing much damage to the platforms.
Yamini reported that Turek had dispersed his large formation. “At least three more ships blew after you jumped out; I couldn’t tell if it was debris strikes or their attempt to return fire hitting some of their own ships. Some of the uptransitions showed wobble—I think several have damage to their FTL engines. I’ll keep looking for them.”
“Found a stealthed observer,” Ransome called in. He gave the coordinates. “You want me to take it out, don’t you?” Ky had an idea.
“Let’s see if the pirate ansible onplanet can contact that ship and distract it with a demand for information—then you’d be safer coming in behind it.” She contacted Rafe and explained what she wanted. “If you have enough of their code,” she added.
“Their local agent wasn’t the brightest star in the sky,” Rafe said. “I should be able to fake something, and I do have that access code. What do you want me to tell them to do?”
“Anything that focuses their attention—tell them you heard there’s another relief force coming in, from Cascadia, say, and you just want them to know it.”
“Right. And then I’ll do a dramatic cutoff that makes them think I’ve been spotted, how’s that?”
“If you think it’s necessary,” Ky said. It was a Ransome-ish sort of idea, and she had never imagined Rafe as a Romantic.
“Craft,” Rafe said. “It’s all about craft. You do realize that your ships could be giving false data to the enemy if you had their spe
cific access codes and enough of their jargon, don’t you?”
Ky had not thought of that. “You mean, Ransome could blow their observer, then report that he’d blown one of ours?”
“His ship-chip would give him away…but only when their scan picked him up. It’s not part of the ansible’s transmission.”
“That’s a brilliant idea,” Ky said.
“In fact, I could do that from here; ansible signals are only slightly directional and in the midst of a battle with ships jumping all over the place, no one really notices if the signal comes from the ship—other than originating and access codes. Which I have.”
Fifteen minutes later, Ransome was able to ease Glorious near enough to the observer that he blew it with his first salvo. Then, using the codes Rafe had transmitted, he reported that he’d blown an intruder.
Meanwhile, Rafe began transmitting from a variety of ship-codes, copying Vanguard II so Ky’s staff would know what the enemy were being told. She herself followed the flow of battle, redirecting her forces as it shifted, a corner of her mind aware how different this was from the days when she’d blundered her way through her first fight. Layer after layer of data, complexity on complexity—never complete, never the same from instant to instant—yet she felt—she knew—she was sensing the shifts correctly, making the best decisions anyone could.
Attacks…counterattacks…skirmishes between Nexus Defense’s tiny cutters and any enemy ship unlucky enough to be found far enough from help. Their weak shields made close attack suicidal, but their weapons were only accurate close in. Two of them sneaked through Turek’s guardian escorts to fire directly on Bloodblade. Once inside that cordon, the escorts could not fire without risking a hit on Bloodblade, and Turek’s own defensive fire was inhibited by the escorts’ positions. But Bloodblade’s shields held and both the cutters blew as Turek’s return fire caught them.
“That was Stanson,” Ky’s communications senior reported. “Next in line would be Woodward.” But Woodward did not answer a hail, and four more cutters immediately wove their way through murderous fire—one blown ten thousand kilometers out by one of the escorts—to attack Bloodblade. Ky shook her head. If every cutter attacked Turek’s ship at once, they could not possibly overwhelm his defenses. At most, they could distract one of his scan techs and—
Even as she thought that, she spotted what the cutters were doing now. Not merely distraction, but temptation. Tempting little fish in a barrel…tempting Turek’s weapons crews to drop the shields long enough to burn them with the stern beam. One after another, as if crazed with rage at their commander’s death, they moved in to attack Bloodblade’s stern, firing their own puny beams. Out of missiles, that would signal.
One after another died, vaporized…until Turek’s gunner, enticed by the easy kills, left the beam on long enough for one to approach at a different vector and launch a full load of missiles into Bloodblade’s unprotected stern.
“Damage!” Ky’s scan senior reported. Ky could see it herself, the telltale burst of radiation across the spectrum.
“Would be nice if it just blew,” she muttered to herself. Next to getting the kill for Vanguard II, she wanted to see Turek blown apart by anyone, and the Nexus cutters deserved it—they had lost nine in the attempt. But Bloodblade’s stern shields came back up, and whatever damage the missiles had done clearly wasn’t fatal. Well—a chance still for Vanguard II.
Turek’s clusters unraveled as Rafe’s fake transmissions, supposedly from their ansible-equipped companions, sent them to coordinates where they had only lightspeed communications until they could jump back. Ky’s force inflicted more damage than it took, but every ship lost was a larger fraction of her total force. Admiral Padhjan’s Spaceforce contingent had saved them for a time—and Ky wondered in a fleeting moment what her former Academy classmates thought of her command—but even they were wearing down.
More and more volume of space filled with deadly debris: the remains of blown and damaged ships and platforms, weapons that had missed their targets. Ky’s scan showed expanding and overlapping red zones, where only the most powerful of shields might allow a ship to go.
Still…they were gaining. She had no accurate count of Turek’s fleet now, but she felt a lessening of the pressure, a softening of the attacks, as more and more of his ships simply vanished. But even the heavy cruisers were down to less than 50 percent of their munitions load. Her own people must feel as worn as she felt.
Then the Moscoe fleet—small but fresh, and all supplied with the latest ansible improvements—jumped in just as a contingent of Mackensee ships came in on the far side of the primary.
“Admiral Vatta, this is Admiral Pollack, Moscoe Defense—sorry we were delayed—what are your orders?”
“Glad you’re here,” Ky said. Her pulse quickened; she felt a burst of renewed energy. Her mind raced, putting together the current situation with the new assets, new possibilities.
“Admiral, the Mackensee commander wants to speak with you—”
“I’ll squirt you the current integrated situation report,” Ky said to Pollack. She signaled her senior communications tech, who nodded. “I’m patching into the Mackensee commander so you’ll both get this. Please switch to channel forty-three.” All that time spent making contingency plans was about to pay off.
“Mackensee’s here? Oh—yes—” Admiral Pollack must have taken a look at the situation squirt.
Ky welcomed the Mackensee commander, Colonel Baxter, then Pollack came in on the same channel.
“You need to jump in to a one-hour lag,” she told Colonel Baxter. “We can feed you real-time data there, through ansible. How many of your ships are ansible-supplied?”
“About ten,” he said. Mackensee had sent fifty, far more than she’d expected.
“Excellent. Half your ships above the ecliptic, half below: you’re the cat by the mouse hole escaping mice want to reach. They need to see you and panic.”
“And our ships?” Pollack asked.
“Bloodblade is Turek’s ship. Built on Moray, new, only hit once that we know of, and we can’t tell how much if any damage. It’s still maneuverable. Go after that. His escort ships include another Moray-built heavy cruiser and several Bissonet-built. You should also know we have someone on their channel giving them false reports and orders.”
“A spy?”
“Sort of,” Ky said. “When Turek’s people notice you, I expect more will flee. Some may be decoys. Pursue at will, but if they jump they might be jumping back here, so don’t lose contact. His Bissonet and Moray ships—and maybe others—have that precision. However, we don’t want his fleet to escape and re-form.”
She was watching the holo simulator as she spoke, and already some of the Moray units seemed to be withdrawing, breaking off attacks to move away from the conflict zone as the Moscoe and Mackensee forces jumped in closer.
“They’re starting more general withdrawal,” Ky said to both. “Colonel Baxter, I’m switching you to channel forty-two; my comtech will be relaying any change in orders, but basically—go get ’em.”
Suddenly a burst of chatter came from the pirate channel, and the enemy ships all broke off and fled—jumping immediately if they could, wherever they were, or making abortive attempts. Scan showed the characteristic flutter of damaged FTL units or incomplete shield formation that would prevent uptransition.
Bloodblade itself did not jump; its emissions flared, died, flared again. Turek had only three escorts left—two had fled—and Ky felt a surge of savage glee. He couldn’t run, and she had plenty of firepower to deal with three enemy ships, no matter how powerful. He was hers.
“He can wait,” she said. “Get all the other cripples. Let the bastard watch his so-called empire go up in flames. And by then, some of the mess in there will have cleared out. Then I want him myself.”
Vanguard II stayed out of the chase; Moscoe Defense and Mackensee ships, the freshest, picked off the other ships in Turek’s force that could not make
jump, while Ky stretched, closed her eyes for a few seconds. She told the CCC crew to take a break; most of them stood up, stretching.
“He’s broadcasting! And Bloodblade’s changed course!”
The CCC crew were back at their stations in an instant; Ky punched in for general ansible transmission and also enlarged the scan screen for Turek’s ship.
His maroon-and-black uniform was rumpled; his eyes red-rimmed; his left eyelid twitched. He stared at the video pickup for a long moment, then spoke.
“You think you’ve won, bitch. I know you’re watching, or you’ll see this later. I don’t care. You haven’t won. I won. Your family’s dead. And you haven’t saved Nexus and anyone you care about down there. You can’t stop me now!”
He was heading for Nexus II itself, and Ky had no doubt he was heading for its capital, for ISC’s headquarters. Three of Moray’s heavy cruisers, coming in like old-fashioned planetary weapons…they could vaporize the city and surrounding territory, just as an impact of that much mass at that velocity. They could do worse, if he sent off all his remaining munitions to collide with the planet. She had to blow him before he did—if he hadn’t already.
“Argelos—Pettygrew—” They had been with her from the first; they deserved a chance at the final kill, and she knew exactly how fast they could react. Turek expected this, she was sure, expected her to come dashing in, and had something planned. But she was all admiral now, not the rash Ky of her first encounters nor the uncertain Ky of the flight from defeat…she could outthink Turek. She had been doing that all along.
She gave her orders crisply, and in moments the ships she’d chosen appeared where she’d ordered. Ahead of Bloodblade, Argelos in Sharra’s Gift II, painting a swath with his stern beam that detonated the cloud of weapons and debris Turek had sent toward the planet, then jumping a quarter second to blast Turek’s escort. Pettygrew in Bassoon, much smaller than the others engaged, drew fire from Turek’s second escort, distracting it until the Moray-crewed Bannockburn poured enough ordnance into it, and it blew messily, debris impacting Bloodblade’s shields until they flared a little.
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