Hofer hesitated, his smile wavering. “Unfortunately, I cannot yet allow Piranha to be placed under your command. My government is still . . . debating that issue. If you’ve been instructed to place your ship under our command, that will simplify things greatly. Please let us know so we can proceed. Hofer, out.”
Vicki Shen shook her head in disbelief after she’d seen that message. “They’ve got an invasion fleet on their doorstep and they’re still playing politics? Does our side deserve to win? Because from where I sit, we look too stupid to win.”
Rob nodded, his mouth twisted unhappily. “We seem to be doing our best to lose, don’t we? We have something going for us, though. I know Tecla Salomon. I finally remembered why. She was an officer on a ship I spent time on while I was training.”
“And that’s good?”
“I think so. My memories of her are that she was good at what she did and didn’t seem interested in playing political games. It’s not too surprising that she ended up out here. Politics was the way to get ahead in Alfar’s fleet.”
“Politics is the way to get ahead in every fleet,” Shen said. “Are you considering placing Saber under Salomon’s overall command?” she added in a cautious voice.
Rob couldn’t help a bitter laugh at the question. “I can’t do that. You know I can’t. I have no authority to surrender control of this ship to someone from another star system. And while our goals match, the means we’ll be willing to employ won’t be the same. Salomon and I both want to defeat that invasion force, but she can afford to have Piranha beat to a wreck doing that and be hailed as a big hero on Kosatka. But if I don’t keep Saber in good enough shape to get back to Glenlyon and defend it, I’ll be labeled a failure and probably deservedly so.”
“They’ll never agree to putting Piranha under your command,” she added.
“No, they won’t.”
“Because they’re going to be worried that you’d sacrifice Piranha to advance Glenlyon’s interests. How are we going to win this under those conditions?” Vicki Shen asked.
“Hopefully, one of us will come up with a brilliant plan,” Rob said. “Let me know if you do. Fortunately, we still have almost a day and a half before we get near that invasion force. As we get closer to it, and Piranha, I’ll be more easily able to exchange ideas with Commander Salomon.”
The next eight hours brought them steadily closer toward a meeting with the invasion force, the long arc of Saber’s path angling upward and to one side to meet with the sweeping curve of the invaders’ vector through space.
Rob spent some of that time walking through the narrow passageways of Saber, talking to the crew, and looking over the equipment. Saber’s most powerful weapons, her pulse particle beam projectors ranged around the bow, hunched like gleaming monsters of metal and composites. In Alfar’s fleet, similar weapons were sometimes emblazoned with small images of deadly real or mythical beasts, or at least had names stenciled onto them, as if the weapons were indeed some kind of ogre or other creature. Either Earth Fleet or Commodore Hopkins hadn’t tolerated such frivolities so the only markings on these weapons were their numbers: 1, 2, and 3.
But Rob took the time to give each one a pat as the weapon crew looked on, happy to see their captain treating the device with respect. “Get us some good hits,” he told the beam projectors before nodding to the gun crews to show he respected them as well.
From inside the ship the grapeshot launchers actually looked a bit like guns. Big-Ass Shotguns, Mele Darcy called them. Firing patterns made up of solid metal ball bearings about five centimeters in diameter, the grapeshot had to score multiple hits to take down shields or inflict enough damage, making them short-range weapons just like their namesake in the days when warships had used sails on the waters of far-distant Old Earth.
He stopped by the small medical compartment, barely large enough for a desk, a single bunk, and a variety of trauma care devices whose glowing status lights provided both comfort and apprehension. “How’s it going, Doc?”
Chief Petty Officer “Doc” Austin stood respectfully and gestured to his equipment. “Ready and waiting, sir.”
When Rob had first come aboard he’d been surprised to see that the “ship’s corpsman” on Saber had completed requirements to be a fully qualified doctor but had remained a chief instead of being promoted to officer rank. “It’s simple, Captain,” Doc Austin had explained. “Regulations call for the medical support on a destroyer to be a Petty Officer First Class or a Chief. If I were to be promoted to officer rank, I’d have to be transferred to a larger ship.”
“There is no larger ship in Glenlyon’s fleet,” Rob had pointed out.
“Exactly, sir. If I was promoted to officer rank, I couldn’t stay aboard this ship, but I couldn’t go anywhere else. Rather than risk creating a paradox that might rend space and time, I decided to decline a promotion. Though,” Chief Austin had added, “I do get more respect from the crew as a chief than I would as an ensign, and the food in the chief’s mess is better than they serve the officers, so there are some benefits.”
Now Rob looked over the trauma equipment again, trying not to dwell on the fractured memories of the time when such gear had saved his life. “I’ll try not to give you any extra work, Doc.”
Austin shrugged. “Sir, back in Earth Fleet I was told that when destroyers go into a fight they either come out pretty much untouched or they get blown to hell. There aren’t a lot of minor damage situations for a combatant this size. You know how that works.”
“Yeah, I do.”
He also stopped by the mess decks, pretending to share a meal with the off-going watch even though he didn’t have much of an appetite.
“Are we going to get those bastards, sir?” one of the sailors asked. “I had friends on Claymore.”
“Yes,” Rob said. “We’re going to make them pay for that.”
Eventually, he found himself back in his stateroom, looking at the small display built into his desk, which was focused on a magnified image of the enemy force. The large passenger ship, carrying the bulk of the invasion troops, sat at the center of a hollow cylinder shape formed by the eight large freighters carrying supplies and more soldiers. The two enemy destroyers and their cutter were arrayed in a vertical triangle in front of and slightly below the cylinder, facing the approaches of both Saber and Piranha. The most powerful enemy destroyer, the Founders Class ship, was positioned at the lower corner where Saber would come in, the Sword Class warship was at the apex of the triangle facing Piranha, and the cutter sat at the third corner. The Adventurer Class cutter was still no match for either Saber or Piranha, but newer and better than the older Buccaneer Class cutter that Saber had destroyed at Jatayu.
The Scathan commander could easily shift his forces to concentrate all three ships against either Saber or Piranha as they attacked. Even if the warships from Glenlyon and Kosatka managed to work out a coordinated attack, they’d still face a slightly superior enemy force blocking their path to the freighters and passenger ship.
“What’s Earth Fleet doctrine in a case like this?” Rob asked Vicki Shen.
She shrugged unhappily. “Earth Fleet doctrine assumed that both friendly ships would be under Earth Fleet command. Beyond that, we’d either be told to concentrate on the warships, or on the freighters, and try to wear them down by repeated passes.”
Rob gave her a sidelong glance. “No offense, but that doesn’t seem very imaginative.”
Another shrug. “Space limits your options,” Vicki Shen said. “The enemy is going to see you coming from a long, long ways off. They can easily adjust their formation to meet you.”
“We can make last-moment adjustments,” Rob said.
“So can they. And if the adjustments mean we miss the intercept, passing outside effective weapons range, that’s a win for them. We have to hurt them. All they have to do is keep us from hurting them.”
Rob frowned before nodding in reluctant agreement. “What’s your advice?”
“Hit the freighters. There’s a limit to how much damage we can do on each pass, but that’s our best bet for inflicting significant damage before they reach the planet. Just doing some damage to the escorting warships won’t stop the invasion and won’t help Kosatka.”
“Do you see any way we can stop them from reaching the planet?”
“With two destroyers?” Shen shook her head.
He stood up, frustrated, and hit the nearest bulkhead. “Earth Fleet could do anything. That’s what I was told growing up, and in training. Where’s my miracle, Commander Shen?”
“Earth Fleet was better at building its reputation than it was at doing things,” Vicki Shen replied, both her voice and expression somber. “Like, here? This situation? There were checklists. And if we did everything on those checklists, it would be an official victory. It wouldn’t have mattered if the planet fell to invasion. We’d completed the checklists, and that was the only win or loss criterion that counted.”
Rob dropped back into his seat as something finally went home inside his head. “I’ve always thought in terms of us building on what Earth Fleet did, of using their methods as the foundation for our own ways of winning. But there wasn’t any real foundation, was there? Great technical skills, highly trained individuals, but no real ideas how to translate those things into victories that mattered.”
“That’s a fair assessment.”
He could see how much that admission hurt her. “Lieutenant Commander Shen, what we do is going to matter. Others are going to build on what we do even if they don’t remember we’re the ones who did it.”
She managed a tight, ironic smile in response. “Or they’re going to remember us as the examples of how not to do it.”
* * *
• • •
Ten hours later, nineteen hours until intercept with the enemy. Both sleep and inspiration remained elusive. A message arriving from Piranha proved a welcome distraction.
Captain Salomon had the look of someone who hadn’t slept well. Rob understood that and imagined he looked the same. “My guidance is unchanged. Work with you to defend Kosatka. Do not agree to any relationship subordinate to Saber. We’re still stuck being on the same side but unable to work as one.
“As I see it,” Salomon continued, “we have three basic options. One is to jointly but separately engage and try to defeat the escorting warships, then go after the troop transports. The second option would be to jointly but separately try to avoid the escorts and hit the transports. And the third would have us agreeing that one of us would engage and try to draw off the escorts while the other attacked the transports.”
Salomon paused to take a drink of coffee. “Acting jointly but separately in a tactical situation would put us at a serious disadvantage against the unified command on the enemy side. But acting singly raises the risk that one of us will be defeated, allowing the other to be the sole target of the enemy. That might still be our best option, though.
“It’s my job to stop the enemy. Therefore, I propose that Piranha engage the escorts, keeping them busy, while Saber hits the transports. If you can do enough damage to those troop ships, the invaders will have to withdraw. Even if all you do is damage some of those ships so they require a longer time to slow down when approaching the planet, it might give us enough time to get Shark operational again.”
Piranha was still far enough away that a real-time conversation was impossible, giving Rob time to think about Salomon’s proposal. “What do you guys think?” he asked Vicki Shen and Mele Darcy after replaying the message for them.
“She’s offering to do the heavy lifting,” Vicki Shen said. “Keeping those escorts busy would mean giving them decent shots at Piranha.”
“Yeah, I give her full credit for that. Piranha could get badly beat-up fighting single-handed against three opponents.”
Mele shook her head. “I’m guessing Piranha wouldn’t last long doing that. You know my usual advice, which actually comes from that Sun Tzu guy. Figure out what the enemy is going to expect you to do, then do something different. So, what are they going to expect? Are they going to be thinking that we’ll act as one with Piranha?”
“No,” Rob said. “Nobody out here has acted together except the bad guys. The good guys have been too busy clinging to their virtue to consider compromising enough to work together.”
“You sound a little bitter about that, sir,” Mele observed.
“I am. A lot of people have insisted on everything being just as they want, and other people end up paying the price for that purity. Including people like us and the ones we command.” Rob waved one hand toward them. “Not that either of you are to repeat a word of that to anyone. To answer your question directly, what the enemy will expect is that Piranha and Saber will operate independently, each refusing to surrender any degree of control to the other.”
“That means we know what’ll surprise them.”
It was Vicki Shen’s turn to shake her head. “That’s nice in theory, but how can we operate jointly with Piranha? There can’t be a single commander. We’re not permitted to yield command, and neither is Piranha’s commander.”
Mele looked at Rob. “You’re willing to listen to suggestions. Maybe Salomon is, too.”
“Suggestions?” Rob asked. “How can you run a battle on the basis of suggestions?”
“It’s not about me. It’s about you. Can you and Piranha’s commander agree on a specific course of action? And then agree on what to do next?”
Shen sighed. “Captain Darcy, you know what combat is like. There’s not much time for trading suggestions and negotiating a mutually agreeable middle ground.”
“You space squids have a lot more time between shots than we Marines and ground apes do,” Mele pointed out. “Commander Geary,” she added in formal tones, “can you check your ego at the air lock and find a way to dance with Piranha as your partner? Neither one of you leading, but both of you knowing what step the other one is going to take next.”
Rob gazed at Mele, thinking over her words. “Dancing. That’s an interesting way of putting it.”
“You know how renowned Marines are for our verbal skills. Show the enemy what they expect to see. They’ll believe it because they expect it. And then do a switch up at the last possible moment that would only be possible if you and Piranha were working as one.”
“That’s good,” Vicki Shen said, eyeing Mele with surprise. “If we can hit them hard enough on the first go-round, it might give us the advantage we need.”
Rob checked his desk display. The distance between Saber and Piranha was down to one and a half light hours. Which still meant a three-hour time delay to send a message and get a reply. “I’m going to have to get a lot done with a few messages. Let me think over what to try and get back to Commander Salomon. She can’t agree to do whatever I say, but maybe she’ll accept an invitation to dance.”
* * *
• • •
Aboard the Oarai Miho, Lochan Nakamura morosely eyed the tiny display image offered by the panel in his room. The jump point that offered escape toward areas as yet free of conflict was close as such things were measured in space. Several light hours away on the other side of the star system, warships were moving toward each other.
The display in his room offered minimal useful features beyond a no-frills depiction of space outside the freighter, and showing or playing books or vids. It had been ridiculously difficult to figure out how to use the “intuitive interface” to calculate movements ahead. But Lochan had finally managed to figure out that the warships would meet about five hours before the Oarai Miho jumped out of the star system. Which meant the light showing what happened would still be hours away when the freighter left. He wouldn’t even see the results of the first clash.
It di
dn’t look hopeful in any event. Two defenders against that big group of invading ships.
Carmen had sent another update, which had arrived an hour ago. Kosatka’s two occupied cities were emptying out, the citizens spreading through the vast as yet unsettled countryside to prevent their being targets for orbital bombardment. Not that anyone expected indiscriminate bombardment, but someone had done it before at Lares, and that someone might have been tied to Scatha or Apulu or Turan.
Kosatka’s militia was being rapidly expanded as volunteers flocked in. There weren’t enough weapons to arm everyone who wanted to fight. Dominic Desjani had been promoted to captain and placed in command of a company of soldiers. Carmen had admitted, with a wry look that warned him against any future “I told you so,” that she and Dominic had quickly married, so at least she’d taken his advice on that.
Lochan sat, his head in his hands, thinking of war rolling across the world he’d come to care for deeply. A world that held both Carmen and Brigit, and now Carmen’s husband as well.
At least Mele Darcy was probably safe back at Glenlyon. As safe as anyone could be these days, anyway.
But he was leaving. Leaving them all. And no matter how Lochan tried to tell himself that he was doing something critically important, that victory might ultimately rest on whether he could gain Kosatka the help it needed, he thought of others fighting and his leaving them and felt a deep emptiness inside.
Humans feared death. Lochan knew he did. All of science’s advances over the centuries had served to keep people healthier and stronger for longer, but the total life span had not budged much in millennia. As ever, humanity’s means of killing advanced more rapidly than its means of sustaining life.
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