Mainly, Drago kept the enemy’s big ships at arms’ length. He knew his lasers were at the maximum attenuation at 200,000 kilometers, and he accepted that. He also knew the alien were jinking more radically than he’d ever seen them do.
Again, he knew his ships were less effective, and didn’t let it bother him. He had time on his side. He eyed the frigates and cruisers as they spread out on his flanks. They were not in any formation. Rather, they seemed bent on staying as unthreatening as possible as they swung wide of Drago’s widely spaced squadrons. Still, their velocity was growing; it threatened to leave the Fourth Fleet in their dust.
Drago’s fleet was withdrawing at the same 2.7 gees as the alien battleships were advancing. After two frigates blew up, the rest of them slowed to 3.2 gees. Likewise, the aliens lost a couple of cruisers before their force fell back to 3.5 gees.
They were staying well out of range of Drago’s 22-inch lasers. Still, during the three hours he watched, they had jacked up their velocities to almost three hundred thousand klicks per hour above Drago’s speed. They’d had to use a lot of that speed to swing wide of Drago’s ships, but if they were left unchecked, they could be shooting into his rear quickly.
It was time to give priority to the fast-movers and put a stop to their run around him.
Admiral Drago had nine squadrons in his fleet. Each squadron commodore commanded seven or eight ships. If he sent one squadron to take out the force on each of his flanks, he would be dividing his forces. Never a good idea.
But the enemy had already done just that.
Okay, so how do we make this work? he asked himself.
If he ordered the squadrons to attack by squadrons, they risked taking forever to chase down all the scattered aliens, and quite a few might make it into his rear.
However, if he broke his squadrons up into two ships sections, or worse, spread them out as single ships, he risked the enemy concentrating on a few small units and destroying them.
He’d be opening himself to defeat in detail.
Then again, he could ignore the slow-moving battle force entirely, send his fleet out to nail the frigates and cruisers and, once they were taken care of, he could slow down and tackle the battle fleet at his leisure.
“Svenson, let’s give each division a sector of our perimeter and disperse by squadrons to engage the enemy’s fast-movers.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the chief of staff said. The fact that there was no discussion assured Drago that he’d made the right decision at the right time.
Five minutes later, Admiral Drago’s fleet went to 4.0 gees and split up like a flower opening, as one squadron took off to annihilate the alien fast-movers in its assigned forty degrees of the perimeter.
42
For the first hour after Drago split his fleet up into independent squadrons and launched them at the aliens’ fast-movers at 4.0 gees, the aliens kept heading for his rear, although they did edge out a bit. As the timer counted up to sixty minutes on this course, the aliens reacted.
Drago’s fleet had yet to match the velocity of the frigates, much less the cruisers. Still, the alien ships turned their tails to him and settled on the same course he was on.
“They’re running away,” Svenson said.
“No,” Drago said, “they are leading us away from the battleships. Worse, they’re scattering themselves wider. If we don’t split ourselves up to chase them, we could end up headed way to hell and gone with most of them now behind us. Momentum is a bitch.”
Svenson nodded.
“Comm, make an archive of my battle board, send it to Admiral Santiago with my regards and respectful suggestion that she might wish to send reserves to defend the jump from here into the next system. It is clear the enemy intend to draw me away from their battle fleet. I will do my best to avoid this, but they presently have me at a disadvantage.”
“I have that on its way, Admiral. Should I send further updates at hourly intervals?”
“Yes. She needs to know how this battle is developing.”
“Admiral?” Captain Svenson said.
“Yes?”
“I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but we need to divide our forces further.”
Drago eyed the screen and found that he had to agree with his chief of staff.
One hundred and twenty-seven frigates were now scattering to the four points of the compass. The cruisers had been cut down to one hundred and fifty-one. They were now traveling faster than the frigates. Their velocity was not a bit less than 150,000 kilometers an hour faster than their bigger brothers.
To chase these two hundred and seventy-eight fast-movers that were quickly spreading out even more, Admiral Drago had just sixty-six ships.
He could chase down the frigates in a couple of hours. However, all the energy he put on his ships would have to be dissipated, and their courses brought around if he wanted to catch the cruisers. That would leave him scattered and likely low on reaction mass.
There was one ice giant that his fleet could refuel from, but it would involve a detour away from the battleships.
Clearly, the enemy wanted him running around. Dare he ignore them or should he allow them the initiative?
Actually, they had the initiative. They’d shown they could bust down the door at any jump. They had guessed our tricks and knew how to trip our traps.
For a long moment, Admiral Drago contemplated his bad options. Finally, he made his decision. He hoped he was choosing the best of the worst.
“Comm, send this order to the squadron commanders. ‘Our first targets are the frigates. Take care not to put on more acceleration than you have to. If necessary, you may divide your squadron by divisions or two ship sections. Once we have destroyed the frigates, we will pursue the cruisers. After destroying the enemy fast-movers, we will reform at the gas giant and refuel. Then we will take on the battleships. Admiral Drago sends.’ Get that out immediately.”
“It is sent, sir.”
“Good, now let’s see how this situation develops.”
43
“A stern chase is a long chase,” has probably been an axiom since boats were rowed on water. With starships accelerating at 3.2, 3.5, and 4.0 gees, it hadn’t gotten all that much quicker.
The attack on the frigates could have been over in a couple of hours. Of course, that assumed that Drago had a ship to send chasing after every one of the hundred and twenty-seven surviving frigates. Even if he scattered his ships individually, they’d each have to catch and destroy two ships.
With the battlecruisers deployed in two ship sections, each team needed to catch four frigates. Once it became clear which battle cruiser section was targeting which frigates, the aliens immediately set their courses to widen the gap.
Drago’s fleet was chasing a hell of a lot of needles in a rapidly expanding haystack.
Worse, each time a frigate was almost in range, it would flip ship and start killing its velocity even as the pursuing battlecruisers continued to accelerate. Many of Drago’s ships chose to flip ship and decelerate, too. That gave the humans more time to kill the madly dancing alien warship before it got within range of a battlecruiser.
After it became clear that the aliens could be swatted down while still well away from the battlecruisers, there was less flipping. The section commanders began to adjust their courses for their next target, even as they were destroying their present one.
Chasing down four high speed frigates each, however, tied up the Fourth Fleet for the better part of an afternoon. Only when all of them had been destroyed, could the fleet concentrate on catching the cruisers.
There were more cruisers; one hundred and fifty-one of them. Their velocity was several million kilometers per hour.
“Nav, can those cruisers slow down enough to make that jump?” Admiral Drago asked.
There was a lengthy pause as the fleet navigator did a calculation he hadn’t expected to ever make.
“Sir, I think you’ve got the right of it. They
can’t decelerate enough to hit the jump at anywhere close to 50,000 kilometers.”
Drago’s next question was for sensors. “How far down is the mass of those ships?”
“You thinking they’ve used up too much reaction mass?” Captain Svenson asked.
“I’m thinking that. The aliens aren’t averse to sending their people on suicide missions. If our reaction tanks are running low, imagine what those guys are facing.”
“Sir,” said sensors, “our mass detection gear reports that the alien cruisers are fourteen to sixteen percent less dense than they were when the Valiant checked them out when they jumped through. Considering that their ships are not made of Smart Metal, I’d be willing to say that they’re running on empty.”
“Mmm,” Drago muttered, deep in thought. He eyed the gas giant and its relationship to his ships. He studied the hurtling cruisers, their velocity vector long and growing longer by the second.
“Comm, send to fleet, ‘Our next objective is refueling at the gas giant. However, for the next hour, follow a course at 4.0 gees that will appear as much to be in pursuit of the cruisers as aimed at the giant. Let’s keep them scared and running. Admiral Drago sends’.”
“That ought to keep them burning reaction mass,” Svenson said.
“Yes, it should.”
44
Three hours later, the alien cruiser force came to the realization they had been had. They flipped ship and began decelerating like mad, but it did them no good. Most of them were out of reach of the jump, anyway.
Cruisers began to explode as their commanding Enlightened Ones realized that there was no way to either reach a planet to refuel from, nor get within range to kill the human vermin.
No one in Drago’s fleet shed a tear. They reduced their deceleration by 2.0 gees and expanded the ship out to Condition Baker. Everyone still felt like they were lugging another human around on their back, but it meant that half the crew could be released to quarters to clean up, get a good hot meal, then replace their opposite number at their battle station. Sleeping was still done in a high gee station, but at least it was more comfortable.
Admiral Drago made sure his fleet was on course to refuel at the ice giant, then took his own break. After he came back, he and the navigator went over course and acceleration options that would put them back in a position ahead of the alien battle fleet.
The Enlightened One commanding the fleet of battleships had no option. He would have to order his ships to flip and begin decelerating at a known and established time if he had any hope of achieving the jump at an acceptable velocity.
The natural laws of the universe predestined his course with an iron hand.
Admiral Drago’s Fourth Fleet could make the intercept a good twelve hours before the jump. From a safe distance, he would destroy this force. It would be more an execution than a battle.
Too bad the bastards won’t surrender.
“Comm, send an archive of my battle board and a copy of this proposed course off to Admiral Santiago with my respects. Tell her she can turn her reserves around. I’ve got this bunch dead to rights.”
“Done, sir.”
Admiral Drago studied the situation for a few long minutes. Then, satisfied he’d done all he could, he leaned back in his high gee station and got comfortable in the cushioning. At a mere 2.0 gees, it was really pleasant. He closed the hood and dimmed the internal lights to nothing. Two slow breaths, and he was out like a light.
When he awoke, his pod told him he’d slept for a solid nine hours. He converted his egg back to a chair and opened it.
“Any surprises?” he asked his chief of staff.
“It’s going the way we predicted. It’s like a train racing down a track to a nonexistent bridge.”
“That’s nice for a plan to work out the way we want it to, for a change. Now, Svenson, you stink. Go get cleaned up and get something to eat. Also, get some sleep in your own bed. I don’t want to see you for ten hours. Ten whole hours.”
“I’ll get my stink off, and some chow, boss, but I’m thinking I’ll do my sleeping in a nice warm bathtub. I’m getting too old for this crap.”
Drago made a note to himself to try sleeping in a tub himself. He motored his egg over to study the main screen. It showed few cruisers left. The battleships stolidly made their way steady on their course for the jump. While he’d been busy skirmishing with their little boys, the big boys had begun to organize themselves into widely scattered lines of eight. It appeared that they were mimicking the human squadron formation. Behind them, the door knockers came along, slowly falling more behind, but not changing their course or acceleration. They, too, were forming into squadrons.
While Drago watched, the battle fleet reached their mid-course point. They did a smart flip and began decelerating toward a jump they would never reach.
45
Admiral Miyoshi eyed the feed coming in from the periscope through the jump. The alien battleships were underway, scattering into groups of fifty to sixty. They were headed for each of the three jumps out of that system.
Ninety-three frigates still floated 150,000 klicks back from the jump, their lasers ready to shoot up anything that came through. Meanwhile, mine layers were busy seeding the space around the jump with hundreds of mines.
Clearly, the aliens did not want the Second Fleet to come charging through the jump and race off after one or two of the fleeing detachments. Very likely, Admiral Miyoshi’s ships could blow two of the groups to gas.
What was missing were the cruisers. Over the last couple of days, they’d drifted off in groups of one or two, scattering to the flanks. None of them were now in view of the periscope. What they were up to was a serious concern.
With only twenty-two battlecruisers, Admiral Miyoshi was very limited in his forces. If he didn’t charge the jump pretty soon, his small force would likely be unable to catch more than one of the detachments. Weighing heavy on his thoughts was his basic order. He had to hold this jump; the aliens could not pass. If he made a mistake and lost too many ships he might not be able to hold the jump.
The present probe at the jump had material for only one more armed probe, but he ordered it generated and sent through the jump. It got only three mines before it was vaporized. Clearly the enemy frigates and cruisers still defending the jump were on high alert.
Anchored together, 180,000 kilometers back from the jump, the Second Fleet was too far back to react quickly to anything the other side did that opened up a chance for a kill. It took Admiral Miyoshi a bit more than an hour to take his battlecruisers to Condition Zed and battle stations, and move them up to the jump 20,000 kilometers from the tiny point in space they guarded. As soon as he had them moored in threesomes, he ordered another armed probe through the jump.
Again, it got only three mines before it was no more.
Worse, during the last hour, the mine layers had added another ninety mines. The minefield was getting deeper and thicker.
The question at hand was obvious. Could they wipe out enough of the mines close to the jump so that they could safely jump into the system without triggering one of them?
Another probe, another three. A third probe got four. The next probe got only two. Clearly, the enemy was on high alert.
Then a minelayer appeared from behind the jump and laid another dozen right up close to the jump to replace what had been lost. It laid the mines and then slipped back around the jump where the periscope could not see them.
Which provided a high probability of where the alien cruisers were. If they were floating 50 - 100,000 klicks back from the jump, they could do a lot of damage to the vulnerable stern of Miyoshi’s battlecruisers right after they went through the jump and before they flipped over and shot back.
“Opinion, Aki?” Admiral Miyoshi asked his chief of staff.
“Admiral Longknife sandwiched the aliens between forces both in front of and behind a jump and shot the loving crap out of them. I think that the odds are extremely high t
hat they intend to do the same to us.”
“I seem to remember a battle on old Earth where an army of cavalry charged, then fell back and tricked the enemy’s infantry into chasing them. They turned about and swept the field.”
“The battle of Hasty or Hasting,” Aki said. “Yeah. I like our position. I don’t think we’ll gain much of anything by pursuing those battlewagons and we might lose everything by risking the chase.”
“Order the fleet to pull back 50,000 kilometers and moor again. Let’s stay far enough back not to get hit by an atomic device out of that jump, but not so close we can’t react if the situation changes.”
Ten minutes later, they were safely back in anchorage.
Over the next three days, the battleships build up a tremendous velocity as they crossed the system at 2.5 gees, later reduced to two. Starting on the second day, a third of the frigates took off at 3.2 gees for the first thirteen hours, then reduced their acceleration to 2.7 gees. Twenty cruisers shot wide around the minefield in front of the jump before streaking after the battleships and frigates at 4.0 gees that fell back to 3.2 gees after one of them blew themselves to bits.
The next day, an equal number of little boys started their own withdrawal.
That day, Miyoshi began sending armed probes through the jump again. They not only shot up mines, but took a look behind the jump and transmitted a picture of what lay behind it. It did, indeed, spot cruisers back 75,000 klicks from the jump as well as mines very close behind it. It only got three mines, but the information it transmitted was worth a lot more.
The next day, twelve of the remaining twenty-three frigates started a run for their lives. Ten cruisers soon joined them.
Miyoshi sent three armed probes through, but they got a total of twelve mines between them. The enemy was still on a hair trigger.
Kris Longknife's Successor Page 22