Minutegirls

by George Phillies

  Meyer, Fleet Battle Tactics, New Washington War Institute Press, New Washington, 2139.

  LARGE WARSHIP BELLEROPHON

  FLEET PRIMARY COMMAND BRIDGE

  CLARKSBURG WARP POINT

  July 3, 2176, 2:18 AM FNT

  Grand Commodore Kalinin leaned back into his acceleration couch, a posture of calm masking his knotted stomach. The Grand Commodore swore that he was too busy during a battle to have any feelings. Victor Benjaminovitch had left him in command, but not expected that Pyotr Eustasovich would actually run The Big Battle. Kalinin hoped this was the Big Battle. Bringing further tranches of warships out of mothballs was going to require major expenditures of time, money, and manpower, things the SLPSDF did not have in reserve. If the next enemy fleet was six times as large as this one, there would be serious challenges -- even ignoring the possibility that the next large enemy fleet would appear in the next thirty minutes.

  So far the enemy appeared to be cooperating with Junior Vice Commodore Henderson. The enemy formation had initially formed up across 15,000 leagues of space. The better part of ten gees separated their faster from their slower ships. By the time Henderson hit them, their peculiar polyhedral formation would have stretched an additional 40,000 leagues. American ships rearward of the tail of the formation, except for the battleships, would be out of pointblank range of the formation's nose.

  As things stood, Mogadishu and Teutoberger Wald flotillas were pursuing at best speed, but falling further and further behind. That wouldn't last; the two American flotillas were both outmassed by the EU fleet, and were not-so-slowly getting pounded into ineffectuality. Between heavy albeit inaccurate fire from New York and Albemarle squadrons, a deliberate tendency of Teutoberger Wald's torpedoes to detonate to starwards of the enemy formation, several squadrons of EW cruisers, and rigidly enforced radar and lidar silence by Panama Flotilla, the EU fleet had yet to notice Commodore Henderson's massive formation bearing down on them. Surely that couldn't last; the FEU geodesic detectors ought to have triggered already.

  Virginia Squadron minus Georgia (blown up) and North Dakota (apparently reduced to a hulk) had transited the warp point’s center successfully. The enemy decision to concentrate on American ships moving toward rather than away from them had been critical in their survival. If the enemy had stayed focused on the nearest target, Virginia would have been wiped out. The display marker showing that North Carolina had executed a warp point transition must be a computer glitch, but where was North Carolina? The main fleet's six flotillas were emulating Henderson in throwing themselves at the enemy, but unless the enemy was so kind as to turn around the stern chase would gradually fall farther and farther behind the enemy formation.

  Damage icons began appearing by the icons for Henderson's ships. The enemy had been more than a bit slow on the uptake that she was approaching. They had finally noticed her. Unfortunately, the enemy had not been a bit slow to implement ship designs far superior to those of the SLPSDF. Perhaps their geodesic scan capacity was limited and had been focused on Mogadishu, most of whose 64 ships -- 53 remaining ships -- were showing substantial damage.

  "Flag to all flotillas and independent units," Kalinin said. "Based on experience at the warp point, the enemy shifts his fire from ships moving away from him to ships moving toward him. When consonant with your other plans, you are authorized to order ships approaching the destruction cycle to abandon formation and retreat. Advise Flag on success of this maneuver as appropriate." Kalinin snorted to himself. His Flotilla commanders, if they remembered the order at all, might someday have time to report on the maneuver's success, perhaps this week. And they did not have subordinates who could be tasked with such things. Victor Benjaminovitch was still telling the Joint War Committee that they should allow Flotilla leaders to have staffs, even though the flotilla was a subordinate unit. The Committee kept opposing putting more people onto ships, citing the various Battles of Charon as evidence.

  FLOTILLA COMMAND BRIDGE

  DIRIGIBLE PLANETARY DEFENSE BASE MONSTRATOR

  July 3, 2176, 2:19 AM FNT

  Damage icons speckled the Primary Tactical Display, showing Henderson's ships suddenly being taken under attack by the EU formation. "Open Fire! Open Fire!" she screamed. "All ships, illuminate and maximum rate of fire!" Hand snapped into open fist. Her objective, nearly sure to fail, had been to bring her flotilla to point plan range before firing, moving to distances sufficiently short that the EU could not evade her weapons. That closure doubled or trebled the effectiveness of American xrasers, but only if it could be obtained. They had been so close... The enemy had finally detected them. "All ships, activate IFF as per schedule. Soliton projectors standby for westward short-range volley fire." Four missile barges and eight hundred torpedos would soon be incoming from the west, thanks to an enemy who was cooperative enough to fly into the missile barges' attack runs without noticing their presence. So far the FEU had shown no signs of deploying the destroyers and light cruisers that usually masked FEU formations from unseen enemies. It was a remarkable omission. Missile barges would have a 1200 miles per second rate of closure, giving the torpedos remarkably short run times. Once fired, the torpedos would transit the entire enemy formation in little over a minute, under power all the way.

  "Approaching cascade point," Barbara Babineau said calmly. She'd spent the last ten minutes completing the details of Henderson's latest brainchild. Instead of passing entirely through the enemy fleet, out the far side, and then inverting acceleration directions, the flotilla would begin deceleration early, prolonging the period during which its ships were cleaving the enemy fleet. Undoubtedly American casualties would be higher. However, American ships were most effective against EU vessels while at pointblank range, so reversing acceleration, ships in the van somewhat earlier than the rest of the formation, would also increase EU losses.

  "Execute cascade sequence," Henderson agreed. The enemy fleet had broken nearly in two, eighteen Dragons and three dozen Doormouse lying well to the rear of other enemy ships. Her flotilla would start at the west side of the break, closer to the faster enemy ships, and then sweep through from west to east. The slower ships were roughly 30 million tons of enemy shipping, through which her 220 million tons of flotilla, albeit some of it less effective than the rest, would soon be passing. Her incoming formation could be more satisfactory, but splitting the enemy was the critical objective. Meade squadron, all monitors, would be followed in two minutes by a second rank: the two dozen mixed ships of the Vincennes, Salt Lake City, and Khabarovsk Squadrons. The third rank, another eleven squadrons, was several minutes farther back. Monstrator brought up the rear.

  At point-blank range, a seven-to-one mass ratio would be completely crushing, even neglecting that the rest of the fleet would be firing at longer range at the englobed EU units. She suspected that older sister would be disappointed: Part of the enemy fleet would escape. Her own ships would still mostly be in working order. The difficulty with older sister was that she would be equally disappointed with both outcomes, the first because it proved that your attack was imperfect, the latter because it proved at least to older sister that you hadn't pushed your own ships hard enough. It seemed unlikely that older sister would ever command something other than OPFLEET formations in War Academy simulations.

  Damage icons began to mount up. She had expected the lead squadron, a set of older Meade-Class monitors, would take the brunt of the damage. She had not expected that the enemy would shift all fire to her ships, so that Mogadishu and Teutoberger Wald flotillas were taking literally no additional damage. They had been pushed almost to their death spirals, but now had a respite. The half-dozen American flotillas accompanying Kalinin's flagship were all on ballistic acceleration, no evasion at all being necessary because the enemy was ignoring them, even though they were firing away at EU ships on which hits were less likely but hardly impossible.

  Henderson leaned back and took a deep breath. She was irreversibly committed. Ship icons might dr
ift slowly through the Main Tactical Display, but American and EU ships were now closing at nearly 400 miles per second. No matter what maneuvers were ordered, her formation would interpenetrate the enemy's, bringing ranges down to distances where every shot would be effective. If she stepped back from the action, what became apparent?

  The new EU ship designs were remarkably bland, the four visible ship classes differing primarily in size. Armaments were almost entirely uniform. A Demon was eighty times the mass of a Doormouse, so it mounted eighty or perhaps a bit less times as many xrasers, but the same xrasers were mounted on every ship, except for variations Kalinin had provisionally tagged to the ship's age. Shields repeated the pattern, though Dragons and Demon were more heavily shielded and less heavily armed, proportional to mass, than Doormice.

  Kalinin was sending her a series of comparisons, emphasizing that the slower enemy ships also had weaker xrasers and less effective screens. Older models? An image came to her mind, the lizard that could lose and regrow limbs, sacrificing its tail to predators so that its body could live. That image might not be unreasonable here: why else would a competent FEU Fleet Admiral allow his formation to divide itself this way? The morale implications were...interesting. For an advance on an enemy planet, in the presence of an equal enemy force, she would certainly have held her formation together, constrained to the acceleration of the slowest ships. And if the acceleration difference had been large enough, at some point she would have left the very slowest ships to occupy the warp point through which they could retreat if hard pressed.

  "Monstrator to Flotilla. During passage up to enemy fleet, concentrate primary battery fire westward against faster enemy ships. Concentrate secondary battery fire eastward against slower enemy ships. Continue until we interpenetrate slower FEU ships, then concentrate against nearest FEU targets." Firing on the slower ships at all would force them to go to evasive maneuvers along all three axes -- if the FEU cooperated -- slowing them down farther. The faster FEU ships were more modern and valuable. Having gained pointblank range, the newer ships were worth killing first.

  Monstrator lagged well to the rear of the Panama flotilla, its feeble engines delivering barely twenty gravities, two-thirds of the acceleration many of her other ships attained. Its captain was targeting enemy Doormouse class ships, which lasted gratifying short periods of time when attacked by a vessel with 1000 times their mass.

  A thought came to her. The enemy was really being very singleminded about firing only on her ships. "Flag, this is Panama," she said. The bridge servile directed her words to the intended target. "The enemy appears to be entirely pre-occupied with my vessels. It would perhaps be possible for you to perform a rapidity transition to reposition part of your formation to westward of the enemy, giving the enemy an opportunity to fly through you." Kalinin might well not take the opportunity. That was the sort of maneuver older sister would pull. The countertactic came to mind. "Flag to Panama. Disperse ten percent of all fire across the enemy formation. The objective is to motivate the enemy not to attempt rapidity displacements of his own."

  She searched for sim precedents for the current battle, an FEU fleet that was certainly strong enough to defeat in detail part of an American fleet and was instead withdrawing. Nothing came to mind. What was the FEU objective, anyhow? They had lousy reconnaissance, but what did they expect to find on Tyler?

  Their firing patterns were obscure, too. They seemed to concentrate fire on the easiest targets. That had been very hard on the Meade squadron. Meade, Reynolds, Sickles, and Fremont had been wrecked; Benjamin Butler appeared to be a hulk, electronically dead, with no sign of drives or screens. The three surviving monitors of the squadron were now deep in the enemy formation, resorting to cutting their forward acceleration and masking themselves in thermonuclear explosions to hide their location. They were someplace near the center of a plasma cloud, but where was impossible to determine. The enemy had continued to fire on the monitors even after they had lost the ability to target them effectively, changing fire to the next inbound squadrons only when Meade's survivors swathed themselves in incandescent plasma.

  The next three squadrons -- Vincennes, Salt Lake City, and Khabarovsk -- were a hash of oddly designed warships. The core was a dozen aged armoured cruisers. Four Anti-Fighter Cruisers were blasting away with ultra-heavy soliton torpedo launchers, which had virtually no effect on enemy vessels, while launching spread after spread of torpedoes into the slower enemy ships to eastward. Three monitors with plasma torches as primary batteries awaited an enemy ship closing to the thousand leagues at which their main battery could hit a target. The trio of torpedo cruisers had at first fired ineffectively at enemy ships to the west and then changed fire to the enemy ships to eastward. The first volleys had been stopped by enemy point defenses, but as the range decreased torpedo barrages were becoming more effective. A pair of electronic warfare cruisers did appear to be blurring enemy aim; losses were mounting up rather more slowly now than they had against Meade. Nonetheless, before those squadrons finished their pass through the enemy they too would be badly damaged. She had expected Meade to take much less damage than it had. The enemy was monomaniacal about concentrating its fire at the closest threat.

  Reconnaissance cruisers and buoys were reporting nothing useful. Perhaps the enemy limited intership communications to microbursts on well-focused laser beams. Signals Intelligence, when you could never break codes, was not very useful, but the enemy seemed to use no signals. This was not at all the historical EU norm. Franco-German warships were unrestrainedly loquacious.

  An event rose from her memory, something slightly earlier in the battle. She posed questions to her servile, getting a remarkably long estimated analysis time. She rephrased the question. The answer popped out almost at once. Every so often, an enemy ship had had its line of sight to its current target blocked by plasma clouds. Without exception, with approximately no delay the enemy changed targets, even in cases when other enemy ships should have been able to provide adequate targeting data. Did these people talk at all to each other? The servile found the interesting event. The enemy formation did make small adjustments to respond to American moves, and larger changes in squadron formation when a ship was lost. Here an enemy ship had been destroyed, and between the rest of its squadron and the flagship had been near simultaneous torpedo explosions. The squadron needed a new formation, but the flagship was unable to transmit the orders. The enemy squadron did change formation to a tetrahedron -- but there had been an identifiable delay of many seconds, relative to other squadrons in the same predicament. She directed her servile to transmit the observation to Kalinin.

  "Centralized command and control," Henderson said to Babineau. "The FEU Starfleet has always implemented the German Beweglichkeit-Prinzip be..." She choked on her own words. Centralized control with an obvious flag had certain consequences. "Flag to Monstrator. Concentrate all batteries that bear on enemy Demon Class. Flag to third rank squadrons. Concentrate all batteries that bear on enemy Demon Class. The enemy has apparently developed a taste for micromanagement. Let's see how their micromanagers manage being prime target." The eleven squadrons in the third rank of her formation, now almost in the wall of battle formation as Kalinin had desired, shifted fire as ordered. The Demon would be hard to destroy. Hopefully decapitating the enemy fleet would be worthwhile.

  A repeater screen showed the enemy warship in question, rotating wildly as it executed its evasive maneuvers. So many weapons were targeting it that evasion was ineffective. Its screens flared, blue-violet at first, then shifting through the spectrum to blue and then green. More gradually, its screens burned the golden yellow of the Sun.

  "Fleet Flag to Panama. New York is shifting fire as per your tactic," Kalinin's voice came loud and clear. The Demon class turned orange and then ruby. Sections of its outer screen bubbled outward, ablating under the intense American fire.

  "Perhaps we have them," said Henderson. The deck shuddered under her.

  "C
ompliments of the Captain," said Babineau, "and the enemy appears to have decided that we are the new primary target." The ship jolted more dramatically.

  "Flotilla Flag to Squadrons," Henderson said, "If you are not being fired upon, shift to intermittent linear flight." She looked thoughtfully at the main tactical display.

  "My compliments to the captain, and only if absolutely necessary should we put up a plasma screen," Henderson said. "We're a solid third of the firepower hitting the Demon. And Flag to Vincennes, Salt Lake, and Khabarovsk: Shift fire to slower enemy ships to eastward. Rotate acceleration axis toward enemy ships." Let us see, Henderson thought, if the enemy still has communications through a completely stressed layer of screens.

  "Compliments of the Captain, and screens will hold this for some minutes yet. He requests Bangor and Des Moines Squadron prepare to lay a screen for us," Babineau said.

  Request granted, and transmit to affected squadrons," answered Henderson. "We must be coming up on the first torpedo barge attack."

  "About another minute," Babineau said. "Here we go. Demon class is raising a plasma sheath to screen against our attacks." The enemy ship was venting heavy-metal salts from its nose, creating a cloud of plasma that significantly attenuated incoming xraser fire. The Demon shed a blinding cometary tail. "Vincennes -- what's left of it -- is getting torpedo hits on enemy ships as formations interpenetrate. How long can the Demon maintain its sheath?"

  "Here come the torpedo barges," Henderson said. Brilliant sparks just bowward of the enemy fleet marked early detonations to blind the enemy's sensors. The torpedoes continued to receive targeting data from Monstrator. She wondered what would happen when torpedoes met enemy fleet. Closing speeds approaching 0.02c had not been anticipated when the torpedoes were designed. "My compliments to New York, and if the plasma sheath is blocking your fire, please shift fire to the rearwards enemy ships."