There was a silence from the Supreme Commander that lasted several minutes. Squadron 17 and the enemy continued to rain missiles at each other. The next squadrons astern had begun to fire as well.
Martinez waited, feeling unease in his inner ear for a moment asIllustrious went through a minor programmed course change. The warships were all swooping a bit now, dodging any theoretical beam weapons being aimed at them.
“Message from the Supreme Commander, my lord,” said Choy. A text of the message flashed onto Martinez’s display as Choy read it aloud.
“‘All ships rotate to bearing zero-two-five by zero-zero-one relative. Accelerate one point eight gravities at eleven twenty-three and one.’”
Martinez let out a long sigh of relief, then looked at the chronometer. He had a little less than one minute to complete the rotation.
The Orthodox Fleet was finally going to close with the enemy. Apparently, Tork had decided that Sula’s maneuver compromised either his dignity or his tactics or both, and he had to retrieve the situation.
“Zero gravity warning,” Martinez said. “Engines, cut engines. Pilot, rotate ship to zero-two-five by zero-zero-one relative. Stand by to accelerate on my command.”
As the ship swung, as the acceleration couch swung lightly on its runners, Martinez took the opportunity to shift again to a virtual display. His visual centers filled with the vast emptiness of space, the distant planets and Magaria’s looming sun, the two great formations of ships and decoys and the blazing curtain of antimatter bursts between the lead squadrons. The stars, an unnecessary distraction, weren’t shown. Tucked away in an unoccupied corner of the solar system was a softly glowing display that would allow him to communicate with anyone else on the ship, or call up information from any of the other displays in Command.
“Accelerate at one point eight gee on my mark,” he said. “Three, two, one, mark.”
Illustrious’s great torches lit smoothly. The metal hoops of the accelerating cage sang lightly as the weight came on. Martinez drew a long, hard breath against the gravities that were piling weights on his chest.
Ahead, Sula’s squadron was well and truly separated now, all the ships moving in an irregular, spasmodic fashion that seemed filled with random course and acceleration changes. Only an appreciation of the mathematics would show that the ships never strayed outside a mutually supporting distance, that their prearranged movement pattern allowed them to stay in secure laser communication with one another, that the formation could be shifted to concentrate offensive power on a group of enemy ships, or a single ship, or to form a protective screen around a damaged comrade.
If only Michi Chen’s squadron could adopt a similar organization.
He had every confidence that the loyalists would win the battle. The only question was the cost. Tork would grind the enemy down, using ships and crew as the grinder, but the numbers used by the new tactics were mathematical, and more flexible. Martinez wanted to tease the Naxids, surround them, baffle them, trap them like a slow-moving bear amid a pack of racing, snapping hounds. Using his tactics, the loyalists would still win, but there would be many more loyalists alive to enjoy the victory.
Tork’s stolid, workmanlike tactics offended him. Offended his intelligence, his professionalism, his sense of pride. The waste of lives offended him, and the waste of ships.
Tork might even wasteme, he thought.
He reached with his hands into virtual space, called up the comm board, then once again paged Michi. When Li answered, he asked for the squadcom.
“Stand by.”
It was a few moments before Michi appeared, miniature helmeted head and suited shoulders floating in the starless virtual space.
“Yes, Lord Captain?”
“May I suggest that we starburst, my lady?” Martinez said. “I realize the entire squadron doesn’t have the formula, but Lieutenant Prasad, plus Kazakov and the crew in Auxiliary Command, can feed them their necessary course changes, and-”
“My lord,” Michi said, her gaze stolid, “let me be plain. First, I am not about to disobey a direct order from the Supreme Commander. Second, you are not my tactical officer any more. Please confine yourself to managing the ship, and I will take care of the squadron.”
Martinez stabbed at the virtual button that ended the communication. Rage pulsed in his ears.
Michi’s words were all the more infuriating because they were true.Illustrious was his job. It really wasn’t his business to suggest tactics to the squadcom.
Othercommanders, he told himself,had followed his advice, to their benefit. Do-faq had followed his recommendations at Hone-bar, and come out of it with a bloodless victory. Michi herself, at Protipanu…well, he had been tactical officer then.
“Missile flares from the enemy squadron,” Pan reported. “Eighteen-thirty-six-forty-four missiles, my lord. Heading our way.”
Martinez returned his attention to the display. Right, he thought. Concentrate on runningIllustrious.
Concentrate on keeping himself and his ship alive.
And somehow manage this without tactics. He felt as if he were shackled to an iron cannonball while an angry mob pelted him with rocks.
“Keep tracking them,” he said. “Weapons, alert Battery One to possible counterfire.”
It would be Michi who would order any response. At this range, any missile launch was the squadcom’s business.
Orders came from the Flag Officer Station a few seconds later.Illustrious would fire five countermissiles as part of the squadron’s coordinated response.
Missiles leapt off the rails. Martinez watched as chemical rockets carried them to a safe distance so their antimatter engines could ignite, then saw the curves’ trajectories as the missiles raced toward the oncoming barrage.
The two salvos encountered each other at the approximate midpoint and caused a series of expanding radio blooms that temporarily blocked Martinez’s view of the squadron he was preparing to engage. He was able to view other enemy units, though, and they didn’t seem to be maneuvering, so he assumed his own enemy wasn’t either.
At the head of the fight, where Sula battled the enemy van, missiles were detonating in a continuous silent ripple, a ceaseless flash of brilliants against the darkness. Squadrons of decoys danced and maneuvered around the action, though without purpose-both sides had long since worked out which formations were decoys by now.
A text message from Chandra appeared on his display. “Target enemy with fifteen missiles. Immediate.”
Fifteen: that was a full battery.
“Weapons,” he said. “Battery Two to target the enemy. Fire when ready.”
“Fire fifteen from Battery Two,” Husayn replied smoothly. “Shall I fire a pinnace, my lord?”
The pinnaces were designed to race toward the enemy alongside missile barrages, to shepherd them to their targets. Martinez had worn the silver flashes of a pinnace pilot when he was a cadet, as had Sula. Pinnace pilots were dashing, and the duty was considered an entree to the fashionable world of yachting. Peers competed with one another for the few places available.
Unfortunately, the war had been hard on pinnace pilots, with casualty rates of something like ninety percent. Sula had been the only pinnace pilot to survive the First Battle of Magaria. For some reason, Peers weren’t volunteering for the duty in their usual numbers: most of the new pinnace pilots were now enlisted.
“No pinnace, Weapons,” Martinez said.
“No pinnaces, my lord.” There was a moment of silence, and then, “Missiles away, my lord. Tubes clear. All missiles running normally.”
“Tell Battery Three to stand by for counterfire,” Martinez said. Michi had used the radio blooms as cover to fire a salvo: possibly the Naxids would as well.
An idea floated into Martinez’s mind, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. The thought of the radio-opaque wall of missile bursts between him and the Naxids had combined with Husayn’s query about pinnaces to produce a fresh, bright notion t
hat glittered in his thoughts like a precious gem.
Martinez probed the idea for a moment and found that it only glittered all the more.
“Comm,” he said, “I need to speak to the pilots of Pinnaces One and Two.”
“Yes, my lord,” said Choy.
The two pilots reported in. One was a cadet and a Peer, the other a commoner and a recruit.
“I’m going to fire you in opposite directions, at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic,” he said. “I want to use you as observation platforms, to get as many angles on the action as possible. Use passive detectors only-there will be enough radar and lasers out there. Send me all information real-time, and we’ll overlay it with our picture of the battle here.”
The pilots were too well-trained to show any relief at the knowledge that Martinez was not about to send them alongside flights of missiles into the hell of antimatter bursts that awaited them.
“Yes, my lord,” they said.
The pinnaces were launched. They were packed with sensor equipment and transmitters, in order to detect openings in enemy defenses and order whole sheaves of missiles into course changes. They would do very well as spotters, able perhaps to see around the missile bursts and provide a new angle on the combat.
Martinez instructed Choy and Pan to coordinate the reception of the pinnaces’ transmissions and their integration into the sensor picture of the battle. During the time it took to set that up, Michi ordered one more offensive barrage and another salvo of defensive missiles against incoming enemy.
Missile bursts were raging up and down the first two-thirds of the Fleet. At the head was a continuous seething blaze, like endless rippling chains of fireworks going off. So pervasive was the radio interference that Martinez had no clear picture of what was happening there, but he sensed that Sula’s fight had reached some kind of climax.
His picture of the battle was beginning to get a little murky. Both fleets were now flying past or through the dispersing plasma spheres caused by the detonation of Sula’s missiles, and though the bursts had cooled, they were still fuzzing the sensors.
Ahead of Squadron 9, Tork’s Daimong squadron fired one volley after another. More missiles than made sense, Martinez thought. He preferred greater elegance in these matters. It was as if Tork viewed the opposing fleets as gangs of primitives armed with clubs, charging into one another and thumping away. Tork presumably took comfort in the fact that his side had more clubs.
To the rear, the loyalist squadrons were still driving toward the enemy. Tork had more ships and squadrons than the Naxids, and he had ordered his rearmost formations to double the Naxid formation, get behind it to catch the rear elements between two fires. The tactic was obvious enough, and the Naxids were clearly aware of it: their squadrons were stretching their formations to engage as many of Tork’s ships as possible without permitting a clear path through their battle order.
More missiles launched, one salvo after another, all of which were destroyed to create radio-opaque walls between the approaching ships. It was as if the enemy were disappearing into thick clouds, clouds in which enemy missiles could hide. The data fromIllustrious’ s two pinnaces began to be factored into the tactical display, and they enabled Martinez to see several missile barrages being launched from behind the radio haze, and to plot his own missile intercepts. He congratulated himself that he had given himself a slight advantage over the enemy.
Considering the number of missiles racing toward him, he was going to need it.
He spared a moment for what was happening at the head of the column. He could see nothing through the plasma murk, but the intensity of fire appeared to have dropped away. Sula’s fight, at least for the moment, was over.
“Course change, my lord,” said Choy. “From the Supreme Commander.”
Tork’s new order aimed the squadron again for the original interception point, near Magaria’s sun, and reduced acceleration to a standard gravity. Apparently, the Supreme Commander had looked into the flights of enemy missiles coming at him and figured he’d gotten close enough.
Martinez decided Tork was probably right. Unless Tork was actually going to use tactics-something the Supreme Commander seemed determined to avoid-he might as well slug it out at this range as anything.
From what Martinez could see, the rear squadrons had given up trying to double the enemy. So it was just going to be hammer-hammer-hammer until the two fleets reached the intersection point, when things would turn very interesting indeed.
Data from the pinnaces was flooding in. Martinez kept shifting between the points of view ofIllustrious and the two pinnaces, trying to spot the enemy missiles coming in, as well as approaches by which his own missiles could get nearer the enemy. He fed the data to Chandra, and at least occasionally she followed his suggestions.
The Naxid missiles came closer. Point-defense lasers and antiproton weapons lashed out. Plasma bursts were filling far too much of Martinez’s field of vision. He remembered the data from First Magaria, the way the squadron defenses held up perfectly well until suddenly they collapsed and whole formations were wiped out in seconds. He began to feel as if someone had pasted a large target symbol to his chest.
“Permission to starburst?” he sent to Chandra. It was more than time.
He received his answer in text:“Squadcom says not yet.”
Martinez clamped down on his frustration and began again the business of trying to visualize trajectories. He checked plots from the two observation pinnaces againstIllustrious’ s own spectra, plotted possible missile courses against the expanding, overlapping spheres of plasma that raged between the two fleets…and then, when he saw his opportunity, he almost gave voice to a cry of pure joy. Tork’s Daimong squadron just ahead was heavily engaged: a dense cloud of plasma from Tork’s fight was going to pass between Squadron 9 and the Naxids in five or six minutes.
If Squadron 9 fired now, the missiles could be launched behind the plasma bursts that were currently screening it from the enemy. The missiles would dash ahead and make the approach through the cooling plasma from Tork’s battle. The attack would arrive from an unusual angle, and the Naxids might not see it at all-or if they did, it might be glimpsed for only a few seconds as the missiles dodged from one plasma cloud to another.
Nearly stammering in his haste, Martinez informed Chandra of this opportunity. The answer was immediate: fire a full fifteen-launcher flight following his trajectory, and then launch another full barrage straight at the enemy to keep their attention occupied.
Missiles leapt from the tubes, and this time Martinez fired Pinnace 3 along with them. The pinnace pilot couldn’t accelerate with the same angry speed as the missiles, but would follow them and perhaps be able to see the enemy from a perspective useful enough to make vital last second corrections.
Another flight of missiles roared in on Squadron 9, and was destroyed by lasers and antiproton beams. Martinez felt anxiety gnaw his nerves with sharp, angry teeth. The enemy missiles were getting so close that it was difficult to launch countermissiles in time-the missiles just took too long getting clear of the ship in order to ignite their antimatter engines. He would have to depend entirely on the point-defense beams.
His head swiveled within the virtual environment as he saw ahead a horrific, violent series of flashes. The Daimong squadron vanished into overlapping blooms of plasma light. Martinez felt his heart lurch against his ribs. Very possibly Tork, his flagship, and his squadron had all been destroyed, annihilated in an instant like so many squadrons at First Magaria.
He wondered how hot the fireballs would be whenIllustrious flew into them, in just a few minutes.
Chandra’s urgent voice sounded in his ears. “All ships prepare to starburst.”
About time,he thought.
“Engines,” he told Mersenne, “cut engines. Pilot, swing to course two-four-five by zero-six-zero. Engines, prepare to accelerate at eight gravities.”
Mersenne triggered the heavy-gravity warning.
“Starburst!” Chandra cried in Martinez’s earphones. “All ships starburst!”
“Engines,” Martinez said, “fire engines.”
The onset of eight gravities was like being kicked in the stomach by a horse. The sound of the engines was the roar of a fire-breathing monster. The cruiser’s spars and hull groaned aloud.
Martinez fought for breath. The virtual world in his head began to dim, and elements in the display flickered and faded out. The cruiser’s unexpected maneuver was making it impossible for the two observation pinnaces to maintain their telemetry.
“All ships fire by salvo.” Chandra’s voice was a hoarse, throaty cry against gravity. Martinez repeated the command.
“Missiles…fired.” Husayn’s voice seemed to have chirped up about an octave-or perhaps, Martinez thought, heavy gravity was affecting his perceptions.
“My Lord!”Pan’s shout showed no strain at all from the gravity.“Missiles!”
Martinez barely saw them coming before half the virtual display flared white, and then went completely dead as every sensor on that side of the ship was burned out.
“Roll ship!” Desperate urgency filled Martinez. Without sensors, the point-defense weapons couldn’t see the enemy missiles coming at them.
The pilot rolled the ship, and the darkness of dead sensors exchanged places with the white of a fireball. The burst had already expanded beyond the ship, filling the vacuum with radio hash, and neither Martinez nor the sensors could see anything beyond. Martinez looked at the radiation indicators. Neutrons, gamma rays, and pions pulsed as missiles detonated nearby. The hull temperature was spiking.
The half of the universe that had gone black slowly turned white as sensors were automatically replaced.
An enormous radiation pulse blacked out half the sensors again. This was no mere missile going off. Something that big had to be the destruction of an entire ship with all its antimatter fuel and ammunition.
“Twelve gravities for two minutes!” Martinez shouted.
The engines thundered. Martinez screamed against the onset of gravity, at the darkness filling his mind. He clamped his jaw muscles and swallowed to force blood to his brain. His breath was harsh in his ears.
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