Minutegirls

by George Phillies

  "Politics is obscure," Sandra said. "The Senate and President are still at hammer and tongs. The ASN is more ready, not more mobilized. The picotronics stock market bubble appears to be fading. The Chinese border--that quieted down recently, after we found the second set of Chinese bases, the ones with the tunnels. There are occasional shooting incidents. We refused to stop broadcasting pictures of the FEU Clarksburg attacks of '74. The FEU is claiming we are violating the Azores Convention with those broadcasts, so Azores meetings are nonproductive. I gather--this has not been widely broadcast, because no one would care--but if you look at satellite reconnaissance of Europe, the Europeans are having big street demos against biosculpting and against the European attack on Alpha Centauri. My privileged sources teach me that the Suppression of Secrecy Act really works. I really don't have any inside information, so they must be right." I allow, she thought, you are not interested hearing about recent additions to the Morbius Life Guard Regiment, entree in this case based on killing Pekingese, let alone Grant being in a menage a quatre.

  LARGE WARSHIP BELLEROPHON

  FLEET PRIMARY COMMAND BRIDGE

  CLARKSBURG WARP POINT

  July 3, 2176, 2:02 AM LST

  "Breakouts!" Lieutenant Robin Smythe shouted, "Multiple. Large. Estimate 18 Doormouse, 6 Dragon." Not waiting for orders, she lifted a safety cover and stabbed at the button beneath. "Setting Beat To Quarters."

  "Fleet to Quarters!" Junior Captain Josephine Wilmot seconded. And Goddess have mercy on anyone who needed that order, she thought, because Pyotr Eustasovitch will not. It was an appalling hour of the morning. She was here because Grand Commodore Ter-Minassian and a fifth of the Fleet's crews were on a compulsory week's leave, directly ordered by the Joint War Committee. She wished Angela Quava were on the Bridge, but sleep and off-watch schedules were rigorously enforced. Fortunately on the Fleet Bridge even the Number Three Radar Officer could be assumed to be competent.

  "All ships in inner sphere to open fire," Wilmot said quietly. "Attack effectively first. No commander can go far wrong by engaging the enemy."

  "Additional breakouts," Smythe shouted. "Another 18 Doormouse, another 6 Dragon." She paused. "Searching for tracking patterns in the breakout points."

  Josephine Wilmot made a mental estimate. "This is Flag. Missile Barges, series A. Roll immediately. Missile Barges, Series B, C, D, E, F, prepare to roll. Log entry: I estimate the attacking force at six or twelve times the initial breakthough. Plus unspecified number of Dracula Class, not yet seen."

  Guido Bilodeau started at her order. The Missile Barges were a fleet-level reserve. Grand Commodore Kalinin had decidedly not wanted them released other than at his personal authorization. Soon enough the Grand Commodore would learn what Wilmot had done. That moment would be an excellent time not to be on the Bridge. He buried himself in his own datapanels, which simply confirmed Smythe's calls.

  Wilmot stared at the main display. The Virginia squadron, eight somewhat older battlecruisers in a tight combat box, occupied the northern octant of the warp point. Sunwards and southern octants, inclining to the east, were held by the Mogadishu flotilla, forty Ancestral-Victory-Class armored cruisers and twenty-four Lake Class Monitors in eight combat boxes. Squadrons covering the other octants, the twenty-four armored cruisers and dozen monitors of the understrength Teutoberger Wald flotilla, were substantially further out from the Warp Point Center, removed from the breakouts by a good 75,000 leagues. Interspersed with the combat squadrons were violet points marking a shoal of reconnaissance buoys, each rendered as indetectible as possible by modern technology.

  "Are we seeing any Corvus or the like?" Wilmot asked. The small ships were remarkably vulnerable to soliton fire.

  "No, Ma'am," Bilodeau reported. "Hostiles all have CNO cycle fusactors."

  Wilmot nodded. To her eyes, the on-point squadrons were executing their preset plans, each combat box closing on a single string of breakouts. There was one problem. There were substantially more breakouts than combat boxes. Mogadishu Flotilla had eight combat boxes, but two dozen in the right places were needed. Teutoberger Wald would also attack, but its range was a bit high for reliable results.

  "More breakouts," Smythe announced. "Another eighteen Doormouse, another six Dragon. Time between breakouts was a uniform 24.3 seconds. I now have computed breakout points for further hostile ships."

  "Mogadishu," Wilmot said, "when practicable converge on Dragons. Teutoberger Wald, do not abandon your octants to assist Mogadishu." They shouldn't need to be told, Wilmot thought, and would likely get it right, but better to prod than to have a mistake roll through. The last thing the Fleet needed was a major EU formation outside the warp point englobement.

  Damage hashmarks, small red squiggles adjoining the bronze dots marking Lincoln PSDF ships and the green dots denoting hostile ships, began to appear on the main display. So far, marks were appearing more rapidly on the EU vessels than on the Lincoln PSDF defenders.

  "Status on clearing to quarters?" asked Wilmot.

  "I have a dozen ships reporting glitches in startup sequences." Lieutenant Astrid McNaughton was the most junior officer on the bridge, covering the Signals console only because the usual watch officer was in Sick Bay. Falling down a flight of stairs and breaking both legs had temporarily disabled Edgar Huang. "Tagging them on main screen. Remainder of Squadrons ready in three to five minutes. All ships have raised bow screens."

  Wilmot counted through the dozen. With more than 500 warships on station, the level of difficulty with fusactors, chaos gates, drives, and screens was not unexpected. By the time the rest of the fleet had cleared to quarters, the number of glitched ships would have risen several-fold.

  "Panama and Columbia Flotillas," Wilmot said, "Apply Earmuffs when ready." The two flotillas were the ready reserve for the warp point defenses, deployed 150,000 leagues to the East and West of the warp point in two flat walls of battle. Readiness indicators confirmed most of the vessels were clearing to Quarters in a timely way. 'Earmuffs' was the pre-planned aggressive support: the flotillas in wall of battle formation would converge on the warp point lending their very substantial firepower to the on-point squadrons. The expected formations on closing were a shallow hemisphere on each side of the warp point's ellipsoidal profile, whencefrom the whimsical formation name.

  Wilmot hoped the maneuver would execute. Historically, the Lincoln PSDF had never exercised in subunits larger than a single squadron. 500 ships amounted to nearly 70 squadrons plus miscellaneous vessels, an insane number for one officer to command. The Flotilla -- six to twelve squadrons under unified command -- was the solution. Having officers who had practiced leading Flotillas that were not independent commands would have been really helpful, but such officers did not exist. The flotilla force structure nonetheless meant that she was momentarily in command of only a dozen independent formations, not counting some dozens of State Space Guard ships that had not been seconded by their State Senates to her command. Fortunately, the less cooperative State Senates were not the wealthier ones.

  Mogadishu and Teutoberger Wald Flotillas were on station, with Panama and Columbia as immediate reserve. Teutoberger Wald was a weaker echo of Mogadishu in composition, while Panama and Columbia were every odd and sod known to man. Panama included a fifteen full squadrons, 120 megatons of warship even if Wilmot did expect some to be militarily ineffective, and the Dirigible Base Monstrator, which at 100 million tons was the second largest ship in the SLPSDF. Columbia was a half-dozen squadrons, 48 armored cruisers, most of recent vintage. Reviewing Panama's composition, Wilmot was briefly reminded of her great-great-grandmother, whose Incursion-epoch sortie on CVN Lincoln had included among its escorts two Coast Guard cutters, the rebuilt Supertanker AntiAircraft Cruiser USN Unsinkable, and the EPA Marine Mammal Acoustic Survey Vessel President Hillary Rodham Clinton. Further back from the warp point were the Albemarle, New York, Second Kabul, Isandhlwana, Algeria, and Bellerophon Flotillas, New York being BCs, Albemarle being newly-activat
ed somewhat aged battleships, and the remainder a mixture of armoured cruisers and monitors.

  Wilmot wondered how effectively the Panama Flotillas would engage. It had been sorted into squadrons based on maximum acceleration, in some cases with limited regard for consistency of design philosophy. Grand Commodore Ter-Minassian had scooped up all the more eclectically designed ships in the fleet and tossed them together, explaining 'It is of great interest to learn which weapons types are most effective against an unknown enemy.' He had not quite said 'let's learn which of these crocks are more dangerous to us than to the enemy, so they don't kill more people than need be' but the sentiment had been clear to Wilmot if not to the Joint War Committee. She suspected Senator Meyer saw through the deception and cheered it on. The advantage of all-volunteer ship's companies was that every vessel would be manned by supporters and exponents of their ship’s design.

  "Remaining Missile Barge Series, maximum readiness." Wilmot ordered. Charging the boost condensers would give the barges another 20 gees, at least for one attack run, but condensers had a limited active life.

  "More breakouts," Smythe announced. "Another eighteen Doormouse, another six Dragon."

  "Flag on Bridge," announced the Bridge servile.

  "Carry on!" Grand Commodore Kalinin ordered. His grey hair sprayed in all directions, but his uniform was as sharply pressed as if it had just been processed by the cleaner servots. "Very good," he told Wilmot. He stared at the displays. "Should be another hostile breakout about..." Little flares on the screen marked the fourth set of emergences, very slightly ahead of Kalinin's estimate. "We had better...ah, you have already rolled the first set of barges. Good." Bilodeau relaxed slightly. Kalinin almost never lost his temper, but when he did his preferred method of stripping the paint was to fuse the deck underneath. Those barges rolling on Wilmot's responsibility might have taken the Grand Commodore's temper to critical mass. Additional hashmarks, and gold stars denoting destroyed enemy ships, marked where American xrasers had successfully targeted predicted breakout points.

  "I have command," Kalinin announced. "Fortunately we get to see, Captain Wilmot, whether your estimate of the attack force is right, and then we can decide if to commit the bulk of the Fleet." He turned to the younger woman. "Your guess is consistent with experience. Limited experience. But if there are six times as many of them as you predicted, they outmass us, and we -- what is that wonderful twentieth century phrase -- we 'roach out'."

  "Roach, Sir?" Wilmot asked.

  "Oh, that's right, in America there have never been cockroaches. A household insect. Size of my thumb. Only lives where kitchens are filthy -- pre-servile and pre-servot. Comes out after dark. Runs like mad when you turn on the lights, that being 'roach out'. Had them all the time in Old Russia. The phrase means we will conduct a rapid withdrawal on planetary defense positions rather than dying ineffectively in place," Kalinin explained. His deep blue eyes locked back onto the status screen.

  "Another breakout series," Smythe announced. "Same numbers as the first four. Estimate...this time they lost four Doormouse, two Dragons."

  "Compliments of the Virginia Squadron," McNaughton said. "They report they are outmassed by the enemy forces on which they are now closing. Oop. Compliments of Bellerophon, and we have a glitch in our chaos gate start sequence. Bellerophon has shield and drives, but cannot fire for...estimate is half an hour."

  Kalinin thought carefully. Virginia had been no more than 5,000 leagues north from the warp point center, so it actually had several squadrons of Doormouse appearing north of it. Already it had built up a solid 18 miles per second toward the warp point center. Reversing that would take several more minutes, after which Virginia would be trying to withdraw in the face of a EU force with superior position and acceleration. Range was pointblank for both sides, and would remain so for some time yet. Then he frowned. Bellerophon unable to fire meant that more than half the fleet's total mass would not be an active participant for some time, meaning that if Wilmot's estimate of the attackers were correct he would have a highly minimal 6-1 mass advantage over the enemy.

  "Signal Virginia," Kalinin ordered. "They are to maintain maximum acceleration toward the warp center, pass through it, pass through Decatur squadron and rejoin Decatur squadron southward of the point." He remarked to his staff: "That at least gives them some Delta Vee relative to the EU forces as they pass." He did not emphasize how ineffective Delta Vee was, nor how poor Virginia's chances were for a successful escape, regardless of their path. Backing out looked even less promising than advancing. "And transmit to Bellerophon that her soonest return to active combat would be most greatly appreciated." The flagship was not supposed to have this sort of problems, and had been given multiple independent chaos gate banks to make sure that it did not. Someone had overlooked a feature in the ship's rebuilt design.

  "Commodore?" Smythe spoke. "We're not seeing any returns. The EU ships seem to be coming through the warp point without sending message torpedoes back to report on circumstances here."

  "They may have their reasons. I can't imagine what they are. Make a note of that for the debriefing hearings," said Kalinin. "I gather we also saw none of their bitransit torpedoes, prior to the attack?"

  "None, sir," Wilmot answered.

  "Sir, permission to speak," Smythe said.

  "Yes," Kalinin answered slowly. Going to contradict your superior, are you? he thought. Or give me a good swift kick in the backside? Good for you! So long as you are right, or at least rational

  "For the past month, we have had daily traces of apparent breakouts and returns, in the space around the warp point," Smythe said.

  "Ghosts!" Wilmot snapped. "150,000 leagues out, outside the warp point."

  "Continue, Lieutenant Smythe," Kalinin said quietly. "I'd missed that in the daily briefings. And surprising new EU technology is, well, never really surprising except in detail."

  "One to three seeming breakouts and returns a day, all well outside the warp point volume, each coordinated with an on-point breakthrough of a torpedo that dumps extremely powerful radar pulses and instantaneously self-destructs. The alternative interpretation is that the remote breakthoughs are a hitherto-unobserved effect creating an echo of the original breakthrough metric distortion outside the warp volume," Smythe continued. "Also, these breakouts were well within the 200,000 leagues the FEU claims around each warp point.

  "I really had missed that during briefings," Kalinin said to himself.

  "Sir, after the first few reports they were dropped from briefings until we could get confirmatory evidence, say, a radar track of an object at the second breakthrough point," Smythe explained.

  "Which, I gather, never happened. Thank you for calling this to my attention, Lieutenant," Kalinin said. And what other bits of wisdom are out there, he wondered? Tomorrow's briefing, if there is a tomorrow, is going to be very different, or my name is not Pyotr Eustasovich.

  "Compliments of the Mogadishu Flotilla. They are engaging enemy forces to their front that will soon probably outmass them, and request orders on holding or withdrawing," McNaughton said.

  "Advise Mogadishu to hold," Kalinin ordered. They aren't, he thought, under that much pressure yet, the enemy still being sitting on his backside rather than advancing. "But not to commit in ways that would hinder withdrawal."

  "Another breakout series," Smythe said. "18 more Doormouses, 6 more Dragons. And six more breakouts. New breakouts are one hundred thousand repeat one hundred thousand leagues from the warp point center. Interpret new breakouts as Doormouse. And we are getting much better mass measurements this time from the extra reconnaissance cruisers--Doormouse is 108 plus or minus 15 thousand tons."

  "Interesting," Kalinin announced. "A shame, but only for them. Three of those new points are practically on top of our reserve forces. Not to mention being considerably closer to where those ghost breakouts happened." Kalinin was less calm underneath. There was a well-known scientific calculation of the size of a warp point, an
d for Clarksburg it was no larger than 60,000 leagues.

  "Complements of Panama flotilla," McNaughton echoed. "Sighted enemy. Destroyed same."

  "Signal Virginia Squadron," Kalinin said, "Ripplefire all bitransit torpedoes." We only need one to return, he noted to himself, to get some information on what is on the far side, and damn the expense. It has been weeks since any of our torpedoes returned though that point, but the purse-minders are too afraid for their budget to fire more than the never-returning one torpedo a day. The clock ticked away.

  "Further breakouts," Smythe said. "Six Doormouse at outer points. Six very large at Dragon points. I identify those as six Dracula Class. And one huge -- estimate ten million tons -- at warp point center. Tag huge provisionally as 'Demon' Class."

  "God," Kalinin whispered under his breath. "Compliments to Virginia, and try to engage the Demon on the way through." Though at a mass ratio of four to one, he thought, their chances of being effective are somewhat limited, even though the enemy is a big target.

  Simultaneously, every red dot on the main display gained an average acceleration designator.

  "That's it! They're under way. Roll missile barge series G to I!" Kalinin ordered. "EW cruiser detachments to mask barges. New York, Second Kabul flotillas to reinforce Mogadishu. Captain Wilmot, please consider my logic: they would not get underway until they are largely though the warp point, because that would divide their forces. Why they do not all transit at once I am not sure, but they don't. However, here is very nearly the force you estimated, so either this is their attack force, or this is a feint to draw us off center when their much-larger main attack fleet appears. In either case, I would rather be engaging this force than engaging nothing or engaging something five or ten times as big, so I follow them." Wilmot nodded agreement.

  The Draculas were closing on the Demon. The Dragon squadrons were in neat octahedra -- hexahedra where Dragons had been lost in transition -- forming a larger octahedron around the Demon. Eighteen Doormouse squadrons in three irregular hexagons, above, on, and below the symmetry plane formed by the Dragons, while another half-dozen Doormouse squadrons less casualties were closing up as outriders on the main formation.