The conversion could probably have been done in a couple months. If the order went out after the Naxids lost Zanshaa, the conversions would start appearing about now, too late for Second Magaria. It was a desperate move, but a reasonably practical one.
Sula began calculating how many missile batteries could be crammed into a space capable of holding ten thousand citizens, like the transports she’d seen at Zanshaa.
The total was frightening.
She asked for a line to Chandra Prasad.
“Yes, my lady?” Chandra said. The camera showed her properly suited, with her helmet in place. Sula, whose helmet was not in place, suddenly felt exposed.
“Those big blips,” Sula said. “They’re large converted transports.”
Distance caused a few seconds’ delay between Sula’s words and the response.
“Yes, my lady,” Chandra said. “We’ve worked that out.”
There was the tiniest bit of condescension in her voice.Yes, we know that, don’t bother us.
“Have you worked out how many missile tubes a large transport can carry? Something like six hundred.”
A few seconds later Sula saw Chandra’s face fall.
“I doubt they carry that many,” Sula said. “For one thing, transport from the magazines would be incredibly complicated. But we shouldn’t dismiss those ships just because they started out as merchants.”
Her tone echoed Chandra’s condescension. It was the least she could do.
“I’ll tell the squadcom,” Chandra said.
Ten seconds later Michi had joined the conversation.
“Sixhundred?” she demanded. “How do you figure that?”
Sula explained. The huge hemispheric hull of a transport had a vast surface area. Each missile launcher took only so much of that surface area. Add it all up, there could be lots of launchers.
Missiles were cheap. Launchers were cheap. The offensive element was the cheapest part of a warship-the most expensive components were the engines, and merchant transports came with those already fitted.
The limitation on the total number of launchers wasn’t a factor of the surface area, but of the amount of plumbing necessary to feed the missile batteries their reloads. Missile batteries needed to be near the magazines, and both the magazines and the batteries needed heavy radiation shielding, and the heavy shielding needed structural support. Sula guessed that most of the big ships were completely empty except where missile batteries had been jury-rigged to the exterior, all on special support struts.
“Thank you for this,” Michi said. There was a little X between her brows, just beneath the bangs. “I’ll give this some thought.”
“No matter how big the ship,” Sula said, “it still takes only one missile to destroy it.”
Michi gave a weary smile. “I’ll bear that in mind, Captain.”
Michi had two days to think about the converted transports, because at the current rate of closing it would take that long for Chenforce to catch the enemy. The Naxids could always maintain distance, but they would still have to fight before they got to Naxas.
Sula knew the battle was going to happen wherever the Naxids wanted it to. If Michi had adopted her suggestion and pressed the pursuit without decelerating, she would have caught the enemy-before the reinforcement could have caught up with the Magaria survivors. She would have destroyed the Magaria contingent and then swept on to Naxas before the converted transports could have interfered.
She didn’t mourn Michi’s decision. At least Michi had reasons for what she did, not useless prejudices like Tork.
There was no reply to Michi’s demand for surrender. Sula considered this yet more evidence that Dakzad was dead. She hoped his replacement was equally old and useless.
The two days to the Battle of Naxas was filled with activity. Officers and sensor techs scrutinized displays, trying to figure which return signal meant a genuine warship and which did not. The Magaria survivors were known quantities, but the reinforcements weren’t. The nine overlarge signals were real ships, and it was decided that at least two of the others were genuine, though whether real warships or converted civilian craft, it was impossible to say. They seemed to be the size of frigates.
The analysis was all performed under heavy deceleration. Increased gravities strained bodies and slowed minds. Sula stuck one med patch after another on her neck, twitched through dreams of disconnected horror, and fueled herself with coffee and sweets.
Michi gave Chenforce another three-hour break before the engagement, a few blessed hours under low gravity for the crew to have a hot meal and a few hours to relax the knots that heavy gravities had put in their muscles.
Sula called a drill instead. She was worried that Squadron 17 might have lost its edge in the long, dull prelude to the battle.
After the drill, she was glad she’d spoiled her crews’ quiet moment, because her ships performed raggedly. She issued a series of brisk corrections, then had the crouchbacks’ meal served at their stations.
She ate coffee ice cream on her couch, caffeine and sugar combined in a single efficient delivery system, and watched the Naxids come closer.
She was ready for whatever was to come. The converted transports might have large missile batteries, but they could be killed just like any other ship.
She was still the point of the spear. She was going to trust her luck, and trust Ghost Tactics.
This would be the last battle of the war, and she would be in at the kill.
Martinez watched the Naxids coming closer and didn’t like what he was seeing.
Nine enormous missile batteries, screened by twenty-nine warships, or perhaps thirty-one. Worse, Chenforce was following them, in pursuit. When the shooting started and burning plasma began blooming between the two fleets, Chenforce would flytoward the radio-opaque screen, and the Naxids away from it. As the battle intensified, Chenforce would grow more blind just as more enemy missiles were launched.
He had seen this situation once before, as a tactical officer at Protipanu. The situations had been reversed then, and he deliberately used the missile splashes to dazzle and confuse the enemy, and to hide whole volleys of missiles.
The Naxids had not survived that battle. He’d killed ten ships in less than two hours.
He sent a message to Michi pointing out the similarities in the current situation. In response, he was yoked into an encrypted datalink with Michi and Chandra.
“Any solutions to the problem, Captain?” Michi asked.
“There are no choke points the way there were at Protipanu. The enemy had to line up to slingshot around Okiray, and we were able to swamp them with missiles as they came at us. That’s not going to happen here-there’s nothing between us and Naxas.”
A curl of auburn hair had escaped Chandra’s sensor cap and was dangling in her eyes. She grinned.
“You’re suggesting that we go in on a broader front.”
“Why not? We have the time and the distance. Tork made the mistake of feeding his squadrons in one at a time and lost more than half his force. Instead we send our three squadrons against the enemy all at the same moment. We can link our sensor data together, so that maybe we can see around those plasma clouds, and we can throw out pinnaces to extend our range. Each squadron can use the Martinez Method so as to maneuver on its own while still providing maximum protection for its own elements.”
“Thewhat method?” Michi asked.
Martinez blinked. “The Martinez Method.” When Michi failed to react, he added, “I had to call itsomething.”
Michi frowned at him. “You didn’t think to name it after your highly supportive force commander?” she asked.
Dismay filled him. Michi and Chandra began to cackle. With effort, Martinez summoned his dignity.
“Would youlike the tactics named after you, Squadron Commander? You’re already going to get credit for the victory and for winning the war.”
Michi affected to give the matter her consideration. “I suppose in
view of my impending glory I can afford to throw out a few tidbits to my juniors.” She gave a gracious wave of her gloved hand.
“The Martinez Method it is.”
Engines fell silent. Ships made minor adjustments in their trajectories. Engines flared again.
Each squadron’s deceleration was slightly different. Sula’s deceleration was the heaviest, Martinez’s the lightest, Michi’s somewhere in the middle. Their courses began to diverge.
Communications and sensor techs fed the sensor data of all Chenforce into one vast, webbed system. The technology had existed for ages, but it was complex-the computers had to compensate for the amount of time it took the signal to arrive from each ship down to the merest fragment of a second, which meant that Chenforce’s ships were continually bouncing ranging lasers off each other, and the data from these worked into the sensor feed calculations.
Chenforce didn’t starburst yet, but Chandra Prasad assigned each squadron a starburst pattern based on Sula’s formula. Each used a separate formula so the Naxids would have a harder time figuring out that the maneuvers weren’t completely random; but each squadron knew the others’ patterns, so the ships could continue to share sensor data.
“Engine flares!” Maitland’s baritone voice rang in the close confines of Command. “Engine flares at Wormhole Three!”
Sula looked at the display and saw a whole constellation of stars flying into the system, plasma tails blazing. Probably the vast majority were decoys, but there were at least three real ships, giants like the converted transports.
Whatever they were, they were too late. Even though they were accelerating at crew-killing velocities, they’d still flash past Naxas a day after the battle.
If Chenforce won, they’d have the newcomers for dessert. If the Naxids won, the newcomers would be redundant.
Michi Chen, with her furious pursuit, had succeeded after all in wrecking the Naxids’ schedule.
Chenforce raced on, Michi’s heavy squadron now in the center flanked by the two light squadrons. The Naxids responded by deploying squadrons of their own. The nine giant auxiliaries were clumped on the far side of the warships, with the smaller ships as their screen.
The warships fired, a volley of over three hundred missiles. Sula checked the chronometer: 2314.
“Message from Flag, my lady,” said Ikuhara. “Return fire at will.”
“Right,” Sula said. “Let’s make sure this is thelast battle, shall we?”
THIRTY-FIVE
Countermissiles lashed out. Antimatter fury raged in the space between the ships. More missiles were on the way.
Martinez looked at the display, the two light squadrons attached to Michi’s heavies like a pair of wings, the Naxids in a formation that countered that of the loyalists. Everyone was in the same plane, just as they’d been at Magaria.
He messaged to Chandra. “Do we really want to limit ourselves to just two dimensions?”
There was no answer till the next salvos of missiles found each other, blossoming to create a screen, and then a series of orders came from Chandra. The two light squadrons were ordered to rotate about a common axis, with Michi’s squadron joining them equidistant from the others. The squadrons were also ordered to starburst.
Martinez’s acceleration cage creaked as it swung to the new heading. He could only imagine the alarm in the minds of the Naxids as they saw Chenforce swinging into its new configuration, the three squadrons rolling around one another as the individual ships darted and flashed in alignments that had never been prescribed by any tactical manual, the ships like chaff flying before a crazed typhoon aiming at their destruction. He wondered how the Naxids could possibly react.
Let’s hope it’s with panic,he thought.
“Message from the flag,” Falana reported from the signals station. “All ships to volley in succession at fifteen-second intervals.”
That would put a lot of missiles into the pattern over a period of time, create a lot of plasma splashes, and help mask Michi’s movements. The maneuvers might look all the more ominous if the Naxids only glimpsed them between roiling plasma spheres.
“Fire Pinnace One,” Martinez said. The little craft raced away, heading away from the mass of explosions between the opposing fleets. A set of sensors to peek around the corner of the antimatter curtain and see what was happening on the other side.
The Naxids took their time to respond to Michi’s maneuver, and did so simply by matching it, one Naxid squadron planting itself in the path of each Chenforce element. The enemy were still in close formations, ideal close-packed targets for swarms of loyalist missiles.
Martinez felt a course change tug at his inner ear, and along with it a rising sense of optimism. The opposing forces hadn’t yet truly engaged, but already Chenforce was in a much better position for this stage of the battle than Tork had been in Magaria.
“Missile flares, my lord!” Warrant Officer Second Class Gunderson, at the sensor station, spoke in a deliberate sonorous calm. “There seem to be…well, hundreds.”
The nine giant ships had finally fired, and the number of missiles blossoming into existence on the tactical display was truly phenomenal. Hundreds, many hundreds. Thousands, perhaps.
Martinez’s nerves began to cry a warning.
This wasn’t going to be easy as he’d thought.
“Fire Pinnace Two,” he said.
He had a feeling he was going to need more than one extra set of eyes.
Light Squadron 17 flew amid a riot of missile tracks as the weapons officers of each ship tried furiously to match the incoming missile barrage with countermissiles.
The first barrage from the converted transports had totaled around eighteen hundred missiles, which exceeded the average squadron salvo by a factor of something like fifteen. There were so many missiles that they were coming in from all angles, some flying direct, some swooping far out to drive in from the loyalists’ flanks.
That first massive barrage had been followed by a second. Then a third.
Counterfire was complicated by the fact that Chenforce was now flying through the cooling remains of plasma bursts, which was beginning to fuzz sensor readings.
Squadron 17 had fired a pair of pinnaces well away from the squadron to provide a clearer view of events, but the two fragile little boats were beyond the range at which the squadron could protect them. If a group of the enemy missiles decided to target them, there was little Sula could do to prevent it.
“Message to Flag,” Sula said. “Query: press the enemy? End message.”
There was no point in staying in this shooting gallery any longer than necessary. The sooner Chenforce could buzzsaw its way through the Magaria survivors and destroy those huge missile platforms, the better.
“Message from Flag,” Ikuhara said a few moments later. “Engage more closely. End message.”
Sula gave the necessary orders, then copied to all other ships so the sensor net could be maintained. Ships swung on their axes. Gravities began to drag at Sula’s heart.
“All ships,” she ordered, “fire full batteries in succession at fifteen-second intervals. Target nearest enemy.”
The sensor operators were working furiously with their counterparts in Auxiliary Command, and with the weapons station, to spot flights of incoming enemy missiles and take them under fire. Ahead was a vast irregular plasma wall, radio-opaque, toward which Chenforce was advancing and from which the Naxids were flying.
In the virtual display, she raced toward the plasma wall, gauging its shape and the areas where it was likely to fade and cool or brighten with new bursts of fire. She shifted the center of the squadron’s movement toward areas where there were likely to be gaps, where she could see farther.
She sent her own offensive missiles plunging through the wall at denser points, to blind enemy sensors to their presence.
She wished she had a tactical officer to absorb some of the work. Commanding the squadron andConfidence both was a job worthy of two people.
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Enemy missile bursts came closer. Point-defense lasers flickered out, seeking the missiles that wove and dodged to avoid their beams.
The converted transports unloaded another vast barrage. Sula began to taste desperation on the air.
She saw the enemy movement at the same time as Maitland’s baritone rang out.
“Starburst, my lady! The enemy’s starburst!”
The enemy force that had opposed Squadron 17 was flying apart, each ship trying to put as much distance between itself and the others as possible. Sula narrowed her eyes-uselessly, since her view was projected not on her retinas, but on her optical centers-and carefully studied their movement.
They were not moving within the free-seeming calculations of Ghost Tactics. The enemy were just dashing away from one another.
Relief sang in her bones. The enemy had seen Squadron 17 cut through Naxid formations at Second Magaria, but they either hadn’t realized that its movements weren’t random or hadn’t had a chance to do a proper analysis. They’d concluded that battles were best fought from starburst formations.
Each enemy ship was now moving and fighting on its own. Squadron 17 was still a coherent entity that flew and fought as one.
She was going to pick off the enemy one by one.
Sula chose one of the enemy ships, reached into the virtual space with one gloved hand and stabbed it with a finger. It shifted from blue to white.
“Message to Squadron,” she said. “Copy to all ships. Center formation on target vessel, beginning at”-she checked the chronometer-“twenty-four forty-nine.”
Half a minute laterConfidence swung to a new heading, its engines still blazing. Sula’s acceleration couch swung on a short arc, then returned slowly to its deadpoint.
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