“It shall be done,” and the Number 1 staff officer was gone.
“I thought you told me everything you knew?”
“The drones were in my report, My Lord Admiral. I thought you knew.” And would not want me to waste your time, Sidd did not add.
Admiral Karl turned his back on his number two staff officer and the man retreated back to his bunk along the aft bulkhead of the flag bridge. Karl had read Donn’s after-action report on the Guard System battle. Now he remembered the section about the maskers and even remembered reading about the strange foxers.
If Karl was the type to be embarrassed, he might have been, at that moment in time. Instead, he let his anger grow that a man of Sidd’s rank had let this problem slip by.
Again, Karl walked around his battle board, hunting for an advantage.
Then he saw it.
“Sidd, attend me.”
Immediately, the low-born officer was at his side.
“Does not the Longknife human female like to hit ships where they are the weakest?”
“Yes, My Lord Admiral.”
“Then I think we shall hit her where she is the weakest. Number 3 Staff Officer, prepare to issue orders.”
“Yes, My Lord Admiral.”
And Karl began to speak the orders that would hit this Longknife woman the most where it was her custom to hit others.
48
Grand Admiral, Her Royal Highness Kris Longknife watched as her battle board began to change and her day began a rapid descent into hell.
“Nelly, is this right?”
“Yes, Kris,” her computer answered softly.
Kris worried her lips, considering her options while the data made its way through the necessary human buffers before the information got to the senior commanders.
Thirteen seconds later, Sensors reported, “The enemy vanguard has changed its power vectors, Admiral. They are now directing half their power toward closing with us and only half to decelerating.”
“Thank you, Sensors. Keep me appraised of any change.”
“By dropping below us, he’s going for our weak unarmored sterns,” Admiral Tosan said.
“Yes,” Kris answered, “I do think he’s aiming for the one place on our ships that we can’t armor, our rocket motors aft and the reactors immediately forward of them.”
If the rebels could get their ships below Kris’s, they could blow her ships up as quickly as balloons got popped at Johnnie’s last birthday party.
“Comm, send to Coth, ‘I’m taking the vanguard out of the line. The enemy vanguard is attempting to get below us. We’re going to do the same. You have tactical command of the other four wings. You may initiate Battle Plan Nelson at your discretion. Longknife sends.’”
“Order sent, ma’am.”
“Comm, send to Admiral Kitano, prepare orders to the vanguard to cut power to match the course adjustment of the enemy. Do not close any faster but reduce deceleration.”
“Order sent,” Comm reported.
Kris eyed her board. Kitano had sent the instructions to the vanguard, now Kris paused for only a second before ordering, “Adjust deceleration now.”
Within a second, she felt butterflies fluttering around in her stomach as she went from one gee to half that. A moment later, her body had adjusted to the change.
Kris went back to studying her battle board where it was reflected in front of her. On the screen, the two vanguards were quickly galloping ahead of the main force. The rebels were now closing on her at almost a fifty-five-degree angle. They would be in contact soon enough.
That, however, would create a situation she didn’t want. If she initiated Battle Plan Nelson against the enemy, the surprise would be lost when Coth and the main force initiated it later. No, she needed to do it all together.
“Comm, send to Coth. ‘Steer six points closer to the enemy. When you reach maximum range, maintain it.”
“Sent. He acknowledged your order.”
A moment later, all four of the loyalist wings behind Kris turned their sterns from ten degrees away from the enemy to forty-five. Now the two main forces were charging across the space between them at the same sixty-six-degree angle as the vanguard. That, and Kris’s main battle force was falling forward faster, moving into a firing position that put it in a perfect position to shoot up the rebel’s unarmored sterns.
Kris allowed herself a grin. “Let’s see how you handle that, my fine rebel friend.”
Admiral Karl had smiled as his vanguard fell away while charging fast toward the Longknife human female’s own vanguard. “Let’s see how she likes it when she has to eat what she likes to jam down other’s throats.”
Then that Longknife unchosen female cut the deceleration on her own vanguard. She didn’t edge closer to Karl’s ships as they shot toward her, but it did drop across their bows as they swept as far ahead of his force as his vanguard was now.
Karl was about to order his vanguard to adjust its course when the entire enemy main force swung around and applied the same vector to their ships as he had applied to his vanguard.
The loyalists’ four main wings were charging at his main force! Oh, and they were hot to get below him and shot out his vulnerable stern!
He snapped off an order to the four wings still in his formation to cut their deceleration in half and prepare to receive the charge. He would be ready for them.
49
Kris looked at a crazy game of chase. The enemy vanguard was chasing her. Her main force was chasing the rebel’s main force. Either way you cut the cards, the two forces were rapidly closing to within 300,000 kilometers of each other.
First, Kris ordered all ships to initiate hull spin. In olden times, ships had three to six meters of ice armor spun around their long axis. It was hoped the ice would ablate and cool the ship’s hull when a laser hit it. The spin would move the damaged part of the hull away from the laser beam and swing new, fresh ice in its place to absorb the hellish heat. However, fighting a ship while you’re being spun around as if in an amusement park ride did not help efficiency.
With Smart MetalTM the battlecruisers didn’t carry thousands of tons of ice and they did not spin the ship. Instead, the outer hull of the ship spun around the inner hull. There was a thin, top-most layer of reflective material, then a thick layer honeycombed so that cool reaction mass could flow through it. When hit, the metal opened to space and the reaction mass vented out, causing the beam to bloom and dissipate. The reaction mass close to the hit heated up. It took that extra energy into the reactors and gave it up there, where the temperature of a sun’s surface was the norm.
Still, nothing but the crystal armor could totally protect a ship from multiple lasers hits, especially from the new 24-inch lasers. The designers had gone for more energy per beam, and only added 30,000 kilometers to the range.
There was a reason why the Iteeche wanted the crystal cladding on the human ships, and why the humans did not want to share it.
With the battlecruisers as ready to protect themselves as they could, Kris eyed her battle board with eyes gone hard. It was time. She activated Battle Plan Nelson.
Locked inside her egg, she crossed her fingers. She hoped that her crews were trained well enough to pull off this unpracticed maneuver.
For the flotilla closest to the orbit of Artiecca 4, the order meant nothing. For every other flotilla in the fleet, it meant throttling back on the deceleration, and a delicate juggling of its position in the wing.
The distance between ships in a squadron stayed the same, 10,000 kilometers. That was needed to dodge and weave. However, the 15,000 kilometers between flotillas dropped precipitously to 5,000. Kris’s wing shortened by almost twenty percent.
The biggest change was in the distance between the three different columns in a wing. It dropped 30,000 kilometers to 10,000. Suddenly, the 90,000 kilometers distance from top to bottom of a wing was only 50,000.
Kris targeted the 22 flotillas of her shrunken vanguard at the top fro
nt 22 flotillas of the vanguard’s 87 ships.
Behind her, Coth had directed his forces towards just as tight a formation aimed slightly up from the center of the rebel formation. Now it became clear. He was shrinking not only the distance between flotillas, but also between wings, dropping the interval from 50,000 to a mere 10,000. A loyalist fleet that had previously spread over some 370,000 kilometers from the bottom-most flotilla of the bottom wing to the top-most flotilla of the tip wing, now extended over only 170,000 kilometers.
Furthermore, this whole concentration of firepower was aimed at the top rebel wing.
With a grin, Kris Longknife ordered the fleet to activate jammers and noise makers. Suddenly, radar became hash, and any listening devices lost all ability to discern reactors or any other noise on the electromagnetic scale.
Half the fleet’s sensors were worthless.
Next, Kris ordered the activation of maskers and deployment of foxers as they crossed the 280,000-kilometer line. First, the battlecruisers turned bow-on to the enemy fleet. Then, one image of a battlecruiser appeared to form on the side of another. Or was it the other way around? Then, a second image formed. Suddenly the three images separated and two heavy masses appeared on the delicate atomic laser, showing two 75,000 ton masses, none of them near the three visual targets.
In a matter of seconds, the only sensors that could be trusted, that could be relied upon for targeting, was the Mark 1 eyeball, be it of the two human-eyed or four Iteeche-eyed variety.
However, where before the rebels faced not quite 3,500 battlecruisers, they now were confronted with over 10,400 targets.
Between the way the loyalist ships had concentrated themselves well away from the rear and lower wing, and the multiplication of visual target, any fire plans the rebels had developed beforehand was now worthless.
Admiral Karl gaped at the battle board. A moment ago, he had taken delight in what he had done, and at the confusion he must have sown in that Longknife human female’s battle plan. Deep black abyss, but he had grinned as most of the loyalist ships charged at his main force. It didn’t even bother him that the vanguard was turning into a tangled shark fight.
He saw static for a moment on his battle board.
“What is happening?” he demanded.
“The humans and loyalists have activated their jammers and noise makers,” Captain Sidd answered. “Our radar and signal intelligence will no long work. Theirs won’t work either.”
“Why would they do that?” Karl snapped.
Then the forces opposite him began to shuffle themselves all around, and there were suddenly a lot more of them than there had been a moment ago.
“What is this?”
“They have now deployed their maskers and foxers,” Sidd said, maddeningly calm.
“We cannot let the Longknife human alien concentrate all her fire on just a few of our ships. If they close up this tight, part of our fleet won’t be in range of them. Number 1 Staff Officer, order the fleet to close up.”
“It will be done.”
“Ah, My Lord Admiral, what do you mean by close up?” Sidd asked.
“That is a stupid question. Close up the ships. Close up the ships!” Karl screamed at Number 1 Staff Officer.
“The interval between ships, or the interval between flotillas, or maybe between wings? Which do you want to shorten, My Lord Admiral?” Sidd asked softly, as a low-born staff officer should when questioning the fourth chosen son of the lord of a satrap.
However, the damage had already been done.
Orders had gone out to five wing commanders. With the enemy about to come in range, and now under orders to reorganize, each commander issued orders to his own 87 flotilla commanders, who, in their haste, may not have understood the intent of the words they received.
A lot of captains began to move their ships closer to the ship ahead of them, but not everyone. Some flotilla commanders began to close up with the next flotillas while their ships were busy closing up with the ship next to them, or the one behind them. It was not clear which direction the columns were traveling. They were backing down, decelerating toward Artiecca’s orbit. Their bows were pointed away. Which direction was which?
Many of the flotillas were operating with ships from different satraps. Many of the flotillas had never maneuvered together.
The execution of Admiral Karl’s order did not go smoothly. Not smoothly at all.
Sidd began wondering if that longboat was still available for his use in the launch bay. There were a few of his friends he might want to take with him.
50
Admiral Kris Longknife cringed as her fleet made a hash out of implementing Battle Plan Nelson.
As the flotillas compressed the distance between each other from fifteen thousand kilometers to five thousand, they began to stack up or stretch out. Some closed up immediately, while others took their time. The eager ones risked rushing in and eating up the five thousand kilometers that they were still supposed to keep between flotillas.
At least three flotillas ended up mixing their forward-most ships in with the aft-most ships of the next flotilla, and had to hastily back off. Some of those backing off ended up getting mixed up with the flotilla behind them.
Thank any merciful god, there were no collisions.
The more cautious flotilla admirals took their time closing up, leaving gaping holes in the battle line.
The course set by the bottom wing to move both closer to the head of the enemy line, and the top wing was a particularly wild traffic jam with some admirals having to steer their flotillas out of the line to avoid running into the one ahead.
Battle Plan Nelson might have looked like a brilliant plan on Kris’s battle board. However, with a battle force that had only been together for few months and had never attempted anything like this, it was nowhere as brilliant in execution.
Kris watched her forces try to sort themselves out as they closed the last few thousand klicks to bring them in range of the enemy.
The range finder on the battle board was rapidly counting down the remaining kilometers until the 24-inch lasers could reach out 270,000 kilometers and melt somebody.
“Kris,” Jack whispered in his egg beside Kris, “take a look at the bungle that rebel admiral has made of his battle array.”
Kris tore her eyes off of her own problems and found her jaw falling open.
The rebel commander had responded to her own Battle Plan Nelson with an on-the-fly order for his fleet to do the exact same thing. From the looks of the mess on Kris’s board, it was a total disaster.
Likely drawn from different satraps, some of the flotillas fell apart. Other flotillas jammed together, their commanders apparently thinking the order meant shorten the interval between ships as well.
Kris watched as two ships rammed each other, then another two. One of that pair exploded, taking the second ship with it. There were flotillas wandering all over the place with some pulling out of line to avoid merging into the one ahead of it.
It was at this point, that the two fleets crossed within range of each other.
“Admiral Kris Longknife here. Execute Evasion Plan 2. Execute prepared fire plan. Open fire by flotillas. Now!”
Kris’s fleet might be in some disarray, but each ship began jinking within its own 10,000 kilometers of space. A moment later, each of them flipped to bring their forward battery to bear. A split second later, over 42,000 lasers beams flashed toward the enemy line.
The vanguard fired a hair faster than the rest of the fleet. Seventy-two loyal Iteeche squadrons targeted 84 rebel ships. Rebel ships that were on a steady, predictable course. Engaged by 8 ships with 12 forward lasers each, 70 ships just vanished.
The 24-inch lasers burned through the hulls and destroyed reactor containment fields. The ships were eaten by their own power plants. In a split second, where a ship and crew had been, there was only superheated gas.
The four human flotillas engaged by divisions. They targeted 32 ships.
Every one of them died equally fast.
Under Coth’s command, his 87 flotillas engaged 348 rebel ships. Three hundred and twenty-five evaporated.
It was shocking that 427 rebel ships that had been there one second were gone five seconds later.
There was no pause to celebrate. The gunners of the forward batteries immediately began to recharge their capacitors. It would take twenty seconds for massive amounts of carefully measured and monitored power to have their laser capacitors charged and ready. Other gunners watched the temperature of the lasers and let more or less reaction mass flow around them to cool them off. Technicians checked for any sign of a malfunction in any of the myriad of systems needed to make these huge lasers perform flawlessly. Where necessary, a backup system was engaged and a new part was programed from Smart MetalTM.
Meanwhile, on the bridges, orders were being given. Almost as one, all up and down the human battle line, the ships flipped. As they had practiced so many times on the way out, the helmsman rotated the ship along it midpoint, swinging the forward battery away and bringing the aft battery of eight guns to bear.
Again, 452 ships were targeted. Again, the ships were dumbly following a course, straight and true. This time, with only two-thirds as many guns in the aft battery, more managed to escape the network of 24-inch laser beams that crisscrossed the space around them. Still, in five seconds, 328 ships were gone.
In seventeen seconds, the rebel force had lost 755 ships. More than five percent of its total strength, over 196 were from the vanguard. The rest were from the top wing.
Nelly had set up a counter on Kris’s battle board. Her force still counted 3,488. Her enemy still showed 13,229.
Kris eyed the two battle lines as her ships returned to their base course. Coth was holding his fleet just inside the 270,000-klick range of the new 24-inch lasers. While 270,000 klicks was a long reach, Kris was confident that her tightened gun cradles and improved fire control computers could handle it and that the rebel ships couldn’t.
Kris Longknife Page 26