“Have we heard anything more from Admiral Timbale?” Geary asked.
“Not a word. Nothing at all from Ambaru Station even though we sent them a warning as you directed. There’s a good chance those secret squirrel security goons who tried to muscle Admiral Timbale messed with the software patch.”
“Them or friends of theirs,” Geary agreed. “Following their orders. There was a word for that in a language on Old Earth. What was it . . . kadavergehorsam.”
“Ka-what?” Desjani demanded.
“It means ‘corpselike obedience,’” Geary explained. “The idea that subordinates should do exactly what they are told, unthinkingly, and only what they are told. One of the greatest strengths of humans is our ability to think, to adapt, but how many organizations have done their best to mold their people into unthinking drones?”
“Like the dark ships?” Desjani said. “The ultimate example of trying to create something that will only do what it’s told. But the software is so complicated, and so prone to glitches, and vulnerable to malware, that they’ve ended up acting on their own anyway. Hey, if those people on Ambaru have blocked the software patch because they are unthinkingly following their orders, it could mean they’ll die at the hands of something that is also supposed to be unthinkingly following orders.”
Geary nodded, his lips twisting at the ugly irony. “I’m sure if we could somehow question the dark ship AIs, they’d tell us they were only following orders.”
At forty-four minutes after his instructions had been sent, Geary finally saw movement among the screening forces. Some of the battleships swung about ponderously and began adjusting their positions in the screen to be closer to the place where the dark ships would penetrate. Most of the Alliance destroyers and light cruisers did the same.
But four squadrons of destroyers and two squadrons of light cruisers leaped out of the screen, accelerating toward the dark ships.
“Just what they’d expect,” Desjani murmured with satisfaction.
The two dark battle cruisers were running side by side. Trailing them was their sole heavy cruiser. Two dark destroyers ranged out slightly to one side, two were on the other side, and the fifth was slightly above. A far lesser tactician than Geary would have sent in escorts to try to shave off the dark ship escorts before contact with the screen. It was a predictable maneuver, and also in accordance with the doctrine Geary had learned a century ago. Doctrine he had reason to believe had also been programmed into the dark ship AIs.
He had set up this engagement, but could only watch it, still several light-minutes away and thus unable to communicate in time to control events. Everything he was seeing had already happened several minutes ago.
The Alliance light cruisers and destroyers charging toward the dark ships had drastically increased their rate of closure on the enemy. As they reached the right positions ahead of the dark ships, ranged above the track the dark ships were following, the Alliance warships pivoted and began both braking their velocity and swinging their trajectories downward to where the dark ships would pass.
Geary realized that the bridge of Dauntless had fallen silent as everyone waited to see who had outguessed whom.
“Yes!” Lieutenant Yuon whooped as the dark destroyers suddenly began accelerating at a rate no human-crewed warship could match, their main propulsion shoving them ahead of the dark battle cruisers and toward where the screen of battleships waited. “Sorry, Captain,” Yuon muttered as Desjani turned a withering glance his way for a second.
But Geary had felt the same exultation.
If his intercepting light cruisers and destroyers had been coming down to meet the advance of the battle cruisers, they would have completely missed the dark destroyers charging ahead, and instead found themselves tangling with the massively greater firepower of the dark battle cruisers.
But Geary’s orders had told his ships to bend their intercepts well short of the battle cruisers, to assume the dark destroyers would be out ahead and accelerating.
“Estimated relative velocity at contact will be two point three light speed,” Lieutenant Yuon reported in a painfully professional tone of voice as he tried to make up for his earlier outburst.
“Too fast,” Desjani grumbled. As objects accelerated to fractions of the speed of light, their visions of the universe outside them became increasingly warped by the effects of relativity. They no longer saw things where they were. Human ingenuity, always at its best when it came to working on ways to war with other humans, had managed to counter those effects somewhat. At velocities up to point two light speed, human-designed fire-control systems, sensor systems, and maneuvering systems could compensate enough for the distortion to allow hits on other ships as they flashed past at incredible velocities. Beyond that, accuracy fell off dramatically with every increase in velocity.
“That’s why I sent out twenty-seven destroyers and eleven light cruisers,” Geary said. “Even if most of their shots miss, there should be enough shots being fired to score some hits.”
Several minutes ago, the Alliance destroyers and light cruisers had raced downward past the dark ships at a high angle, their automated fire-control systems hurling out hell lances, ball bearings (still known as grapeshot) if the range was close enough, and specter missiles from the light cruisers. Automated systems had to be used because humans could not possibly aim and fire in the tiny fraction of a second during which the forces were within weapons range of each other.
The dark destroyers fired back with implacable and emotionless precision, but their fire-control systems were just as hindered by the velocity of the engagement as those of the human-crewed ships. Even though each dark destroyer carried as much armament as a human-crewed light cruiser, there were still only five of them against thirty-eight of Geary’s ships.
The Alliance squadrons plummeted away from the encounter, turning back upward but unable to alter course quickly enough to engage the dark battle cruisers and heavy cruiser that rocketed past above them. Geary watched red markers appear on some of the Alliance warships, indicating hits from the dark destroyers. But aside from two blows that had knocked out some of the weapons on the light cruiser Croise, Geary’s ships had taken only minor damage.
But only two of the dark destroyers had emerged from the encounter still on their trajectories toward the screening force. Two others had been knocked off course and were tumbling helplessly, maneuvering systems too badly damaged to control the ships. The fifth had tried to stagger onward after the first two, but several specter missiles fired by the Alliance light cruisers had swung through tight turns to slam into the stern of the dark ship. It vanished in a flare of light and heat, leaving an endlessly expanding ball of dust where it had been.
“Still accelerating,” Desjani commented, displaying no elation at the damage done to the hostile forces. The two surviving dark destroyers were pushing their velocity higher, which would make targeting them even harder for the Alliance warships in the screen. “What’s Armus doing?” she grumbled in a voice too low for anyone but Geary to hear.
“He’s setting them up,” Geary said. “Warspite, Vengeance, and Resolution are holding fixed orbits, so anything aiming to intercept them will have to come down a predictable path.”
“Oh.” Desjani grinned. “Sorry, sir. Battle cruiser captain here. I tend to think in terms of maneuvering.”
“Whereas Captain Armus knows battleships and thinks in term of forts and firepower,” Geary said.
If the dark ships had attempted to dodge, to simply tear through the thin screen of widely spread Alliance ships, they would almost certainly have succeeded in making it through intact. If the Alliance ships had not guessed that the dark ships intended to ram, they would have faced a difficult fire-control solution for their weapons. But the two survivors bore down on their targets, one aiming for Warspite and the second for Resolution, and the Alliance fire-control systems only n
eeded to solve for one, simple solution. The two battleships and the remaining Alliance light cruisers and destroyers near them hurled a wall of fire down the bearings along which the dark ship destroyers had to come, and the two destroyers hit those walls and disintegrated under the blows.
Coming on behind, though, were the remaining dark ships, and those were just trying to run through the screen. The two battle cruisers and the trailing heavy cruiser tore past the still-thinly-spread Alliance ships and onward, without any hits being scored on them.
Geary’s jaw tightened as he checked the maneuvering data again. His battle cruisers were still angling in toward the dark ships, but the intercept point was far ahead, past the place where the dark ships would be able to fire upon Ambaru Station.
None of the fixed defenses near Ambaru were showing any signs of alert or alarm. They were all apparently still blind to the presence of the dark ships.
All that lay between the surviving dark ships and Ambaru Station were the sixteen heavy cruisers forming the last defensive barrier.
THREE
“HOW do we stop two battle cruisers like that with sixteen heavy cruisers?” Desjani asked. “If they were typical battle cruisers, we could do it, but the dark ships are not typical.”
Geary indicated the intercept point on his display. “We don’t have to stop them. We just have to push back their time to reach Ambaru and push up the time when we get within range of the dark ships.”
“Make them maneuver off a straight shot at Ambaru?” She nodded, then tapped a symbol. “The heavy cruiser formations are under Commander Rosen. What do you know about her?”
“That she’s commander of the First Heavy Cruiser Division,” Geary said, “as well as commanding officer of the Tanko. And that in previous engagements she has shown a tendency to hit hard.”
“Then you need to realize that when you send Rosen after those dark ships, she’s not going to just dance around,” Desjani said. “She’s going to go after them and try to land some hard blows.”
“Rosen has seen the data on how heavily armed those dark battle cruisers are.”
“And she’s going to try to hit them hard,” Desjani repeated.
“I know,” Geary said. “That’s the idea.” He saw her surprise, then the dawning realization. “Because,” he went on, “I wouldn’t do that, throwing heavy cruisers against battle cruisers in a head-on fight. I’d order a feint, and a diversion. Something to fool my opponent into doing what I want, which in this case would obviously be to throw those dark ships off a direct vector toward Ambaru.”
“Even if you fool the dark ships,” Desjani cautioned, “that won’t fool their fire-control systems or prevent them targeting any heavy cruisers that close to firing range.”
“Hopefully, I’ve got a solution to that as well. You know how our fire-control systems are programmed. They prioritize targets based on threat and on the highest hit probability.” He touched his comm controls. “Commander Rosen, this is Admiral Geary. Your orders are to try to stop those dark ships. Get in close enough to hammer them. Try to knock out their main propulsion or maneuvering systems. My estimate is that they will not attempt to evade a firing run by you but will hold their vectors, assuming that you are conducting a feint. Set up your formations and attacks so that two leading heavy cruisers in each of your formations will clearly represent the highest hit probabilities for the fire-control systems on the dark ships and have those two heavy cruisers do last-second evasive maneuvers to throw off enemy targeting on them. I’m trusting your skill in this, Commander, as well as the skill of each cruiser commander. Geary, out.”
“You’re trusting in the finesse and subtlety of Sel Rosen,” Desjani grumbled. “Good luck with that.”
“She’s not going to do exactly what I would do,” Geary replied. “That may be our best hope of stopping those dark ships before they can hit Ambaru.”
Five light-minutes separated the battleship screen from the heavy cruisers. The dark battle cruisers had maintained point two light speed, so it would take twenty-five minutes for them to reach the heavy cruisers. If the heavy cruisers accelerated to contact, that time would shrink, but Geary knew that Commander Rosen would be smart enough to instead bring her warships in at the battle cruisers from high angles in order to keep down the relative speed of the engagement.
The sixteen Alliance heavy cruisers were formed into two boxes, each composed of eight warships arranged in two columns, with each ship a little higher than the one ahead of it so that the formations stepped upward from front to back. One heavy cruiser formation was above and to one side of the projected track of the dark ships, while the second formation was below and to the other side. It was a classic positioning, which would allow the heavy cruisers to react effectively even if the dark ships made some major course changes to try to evade the Alliance defenders.
“She’s taking into account the maneuverability of the dark ships,” Geary noted approvingly.
“Let’s hope she’s taking into account their firepower,” Desjani said. “We’re still closing, but too slowly. We’ll be within two light-minutes of the dark ships when Rosen’s heavy cruisers hit them.”
“Still nothing from Ambaru or any of the fixed defenses?”
“Nothing, sir,” Lieutenant Yuon replied.
“If the dark ships continue down their current vectors,” Lieutenant Castries added, “we will still be thirty light-seconds distant from them and twenty minutes’ travel time from intercept when they reach Ambaru Station.”
Thirty light-seconds didn’t sound like much, unless you knew that a single light-second was the equal of three hundred thousand kilometers of distance. Nine million kilometers, the equivalent of thirty light-seconds, was hopelessly distant in terms of trying to defend Ambaru.
“Once they’ve hit Ambaru,” Castries continued, her voice professionally unemotional, “the dark ships might choose to alter vector toward the nearest jump point.”
“In which case, we will have zero chance of catching them before they reach that jump point,” Desjani said. “Rosen better slow them down, or we’ll have no chance of saving Ambaru or hitting those dark ships again.”
“Fifteen minutes until the dark ships are in weapons range of Commander Rosen’s force,” Lieutenant Yuon said.
They were so close by the time the forces rushed toward contact, only a couple of light-minutes to one side, that the images were almost real-time. As the dark ships neared them, Rosen’s heavy cruisers accelerated out of their orbits. Both formations pivoted around one of the leading heavy cruisers, as if the formations were rolling up to stand one corner, and headed toward the paths of the dark ships, the upper heavy cruiser formation diving toward contact while the lower formation climbed toward the enemy.
This time the dark ships reacted in the minutes before contact by abruptly jerking upward and to one side, toward the higher heavy cruiser formation. The dark ships plainly intended concentrating their fire on one set of Alliance heavy cruisers while avoiding the second formation.
The moment of contact was so quick that there was no hope of seeing the events happen, but Geary was also focused on what the lower formation of heavy cruisers was doing, bending their climb up and over to compensate for the change in the vectors of the dark ships. Instead of missing them completely, the lower formation hurtled past the sterns of the dark ships a few moments after the enemy battle cruisers had encountered the upper formation.
“Damn,” Desjani muttered as the results of the engagement were reported by Dauntless’s sensors and data feeds from the heavy cruisers.
As Geary had instructed, Rosen had ordered her leading heavy cruisers in each formation to evade at the last moment, shifting from targeting the dark battle cruisers to instead aim for the dark heavy cruiser trailing them. The change in vectors had been enough to throw off a lot of the dark ship fire. And the dark heavy cruiser, hit by fou
r Alliance heavy cruisers, was staggering along and sliding off to one side, trying to regain maneuvering control.
But the two enemy battle cruisers had also aimed some shots at the second row of heavy cruisers in each formation. Diamond, Bastille, Hori, and Presidio had all taken significant damage, losing weapons, shields, and in some cases parts of their propulsion and maneuvering thrusters. Personnel casualties were only estimates, but all four heavy cruisers had taken losses.
The twelve heavy cruisers hitting the dark battle cruisers had done their job, though. One of the dark battle cruisers had lost half of its propulsion and been slowed by hits. The other had been battered along one quarter but did not seem to have suffered serious damage to its propulsion or maneuverability.
“Not enough.” Geary sighed, trying to accept the fact that there was nothing more he could do, that catching a force of warships which did not want to fight was nearly impossible when all of space existed to offer escape, that the distances in space meant sometimes there was no way to get somewhere in time to make a critical difference.
“The dark battle cruiser with the damaged propulsion is having trouble regaining its velocity,” Lieutenant Yuon reported. “We can catch it before it reaches firing range of Ambaru.”
“Which leaves one battle cruiser to shoot up the station.” Geary tapped his comm controls. “Commander Rosen, use your heavy cruisers to finish off that dark heavy cruiser. Be aware that it will likely carry out a power core overload once helpless, so stay clear of the damage radius. There are light cruisers and destroyers coming your way from the screen which you are to assume control of to coordinate their attacks with your own.”
He looked at Tanya. “Let’s get that damaged dark battle cruiser. Too bad we can’t—”
“Captain?” Lieutenant Castries called, sounding baffled. “The second enemy battle cruiser is pivoting. He’s . . . braking his velocity.”
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