Fleet Elements

by Walter Jon Williams

  “I don’t think he’s doing very well at recruiting,” Kai said. “After all, everyone on the planet knows that if they prove troublesome, we can just drop a bomb on their heads.”

  Michi raised her eyebrows. “We have that consolation, yes,” she said. “When do you anticipate making the arrests?”

  “At your command, Lady Michi,” said Kai. “But I would recommend waiting at least another day. Dai-por’s communications indicate he’s got an important courier visiting tomorrow, one we haven’t yet been able to identify. After we track that one to her destination, we can wrap up the whole ring within a matter of hours.”

  “I’ll take your recommendation, then, Lord Captain,” said Michi. “But I want your operation to go off without a hitch, do you understand?”

  Kai favored her with his benign smile. “Of course, Lady Fleetcom.”

  Michi’s eyes tracked to Sula. “Your report, then, Lady Sula?”

  Sula indicated Kai and the members of Michi’s staff who had been silently hovering around her bed. “If we could have privacy, Lady Fleetcom?”

  The others were sent from the room, and Sula began with some candid evaluations of some officers and personnel. She then mentioned her test of the Shankaracharya sensor suite, and how it had proved superior to those on Fleet vessels for detecting enemy missiles. Michi’s lips tightened as Sula explained her plan for reequipping all Restoration ships with the new hardware, but she made no comment.

  Then Sula told Michi about Lord Nishkad and the Naxid workers she’d brought onto the station and watched horror rise on Michi’s face like a pale dawn.

  “In view of the fact that I will be unable to take command of the Fourth Fleet against Lord Tork,” said Michi, “I hereby promote you to the rank of fleet commander. Congratulations—and we could really use a victory about now, so please give us one.”

  Martinez stared at the video, his nerves in something akin to a state of shock. He had anticipated that he’d receive an expanded commission following Michi’s hospital stay, but he hadn’t imagined a formal promotion, let alone full tactical control of the Restoration forces.

  Still, being a fleet commander would help in dealing with the defecting squadrons of the Home Fleet when they arrived, and maybe that’s what Michi had in mind.

  “I’m sending you a report on the current status of the Fourth Fleet,” Michi continued. “I’m also promoting Lady Sula junior fleet commander, so she’ll be able to prepare the ships here for your use against Tork, after which she’ll continue in command of Division Three.” This was said with a slight hint of distaste, as if Michi were reluctant to make the promotion. Martinez wondered how Sula had gotten up Michi’s nose.

  “I’ll remain in the dockyard to coordinate supply and support elements,” Michi continued, “and I’ll decide issues of policy. Let me know if you need anything, and I’ll do my best to provide it.” Her face relaxed, and she offered a hint of a smile. “Good luck with all this,” she said, “and make Terza proud.” The orange end-stamp filled the screen.

  The message had arrived when Martinez was in his office, doing administrative work while eating his breakfast of coffee and jellied mayfish, the dose of protein he liked in the morning. He called for Alikhan.

  “Ready my full-dress uniform,” he said. He should dress formally to send his thanks back to Harzapid. As Alikhan turned to leave, Martinez called him back.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a fleet commander’s insignia somewhere in your stores, do you?” he asked.

  Alikhan’s smile spread beneath his curling mustachios. “I believe I do, my lord,” he said.

  “Attach it to the tunic later,” Martinez said.

  To send his thanks while wearing the insignia, he thought, would be a sign of egotism and self-promotion.

  He would, he hoped, avoid all that.

  Chapter 10

  Division Two of the Restoration Fleet had worked on its plan for the Battle of Shulduc for nearly a month. They had drilled every conceivable scenario, and after Martinez and Los Angeles had joined Carmody’s squadrons on the far side of Harzapid Wormhole One, the scenarios had been as realistic as possible, with the ships maneuvering against each other in real time, the crews being subjected to real accelerations and real gee forces. To develop the weaponers’ skills, missiles were actually fired and maneuvered against each other, and point-defense systems, operating at less than lethal levels, had tried to hit the missiles on their way.

  “The crew handled their panic fairly well,” Alikhan had said of one early drill, and over time Los Angeles’s holejumpers had handled their panic better and better, and eventually most of the panic faded away in spite of Dalkeith’s pedestrian leadership and the first officer lying in a near coma. In terms of performance, Los Angeles lagged behind the other ships of Division Two, but the other ships’ crews had served together for years and knew each other and their ships inside out. Los Angeles would do well enough. It would not embarrass itself in action and would not offer itself as a target any more than the other ships in the division.

  Martinez knew a lot about the forthcoming Battle of Shulduc—he knew both sides’ orders of battle, the number of missile launchers on each side, and the names and histories of the captains; he knew where the battle would take place and where each element of each fleet would be in relation to one another—and he knew beyond any doubt that he would win—but when all was said and done, there was a lot he didn’t know, and all that had to do with the enemy.

  He knew that Rukmin’s two heavy squadrons had arrived at the crossroads of Toley ahead of Jeremy Foote’s light squadron, after which both forces had flipped over and begun a deceleration as fierce as the acceleration that had brought them to Toley in the first place. Instead of trying to race Foote to a destination, Rukmin was now in a race to catch him, but they were still moving toward Harzapid because they were unable to decelerate quickly enough.

  And this meant that Division Two, when it flashed through Shulduc Wormhole Three, would appear behind Rukmin, and because of the deceleration would overtake Rukmin swiftly, which meant that several things were happening at once. From the perspective of an objective observer, Foote and Rukmin were flying toward Harzapid but decelerating, where Martinez was accelerating from Harzapid to overtake them. From the perspective of Rukmin, she was accelerating to overtake Foote, who was likewise accelerating to maintain his distance. Martinez’s perspective showed him accelerating to overtake Rukmin and Foote, who were flying ahead of him as quickly as they could.

  Because the trajectory and acceleration of the various fleet elements were known, it was known that the Shulduc system would be the site of the battle. Shulduc was a system in which a number of gas giants battled for gravitational dominance, and any small rocky planets had long since lost the war and been turned to rubble. There were no habitable worlds, and the system’s only residents were the crews of the system’s wormhole relay stations.

  When Division Two emerged from Wormhole Three into the system, it was possible that Rukmin wouldn’t know they’d arrived. Martinez’s Plan One was based on this possibility, and he intended to keep Rukmin as ignorant as possible. Division Two would launch a hundred missiles and a couple dozen decoys before entering Shulduc, and then go dark before passing through the wormhole, shutting down all active sensors as well as the engines. The ships would make the transit in a particular order, at particular angles, so as to arrive in something like battle formation. There would be no missile or engine flares to alert the enemy. Even without the engines lit, Division Two and Rukmin would rush toward each other with furious speed, and with luck the first warning of Martinez’s arrival would be a hundred missiles making their final course corrections as they zeroed on a target.

  Michi Chen had asked for a battle of annihilation, and Plan One would give her one. The only problem with Plan One was that it required the enemy’s cooperation, and it assumed that Rukmin wouldn’t be scanning behind her. This seemed unlikely, given that Rukmin kn
ew perfectly well that there was a hostile fleet somewhere between Shulduc and Harzapid, and that it might appear at any moment.

  Martinez had decided to give Rukmin a distraction that might rivet her attention in a different direction. He and Foote had been in occasional communication, via missiles shot through the wormhole system to broadcast messages, which was how each knew to fine accuracy where the other was. Martinez had ordered Foote to simulate a malfunction aboard one of his ships, one that would shut down the engine. The appearance of this helpless target was designed to attract Rukmin’s attention, as would the series of maneuvers undertaken by Foote’s squadron, before to all appearances Foote would decide to rally around the crippled ship and engage in battle, right at the moment when Martinez could soar in to save him.

  Rukmin would have seen the missiles going back and forth to Harzapid, so she’d know that Foote had been in contact with someone. But Martinez tried to time his replies so that they plausibly could have come from Harzapid, which might help Rukmin rest easy. Martinez hoped that the prospect of fighting the outnumbered, outgunned Foote would keep Rukmin focused on the enemy in front of her, and not what might be sneaking up behind.

  There were other plans than Plan One, but they all depended on how Rukmin reacted once she discovered the two squadrons racing up her tail, soaring behind a barrage of missiles flying at her like a swarm of fierce, lethal insects.

  On the day of the battle, Martinez was in the flag officer station well before he had to be, in his vac suit and carrying his helmet in one hand and a flask of coffee in the other. Lalita Banerjee, on duty at the signals station, stiffened as she saw him enter, the closest she could come to bracing while lying on her contoured acceleration couch. Martinez waved his coffee flask in reply as he made his way to his own acceleration couch, where he stashed his helmet in the web pocket, strapped himself in, and pulled down the displays to lock them in front of him. He stretched the elastic of his fleet commander’s key over the wrist of his vac suit then pulled it off and inserted it into the slot of one of his displays. The displays lit, and he lost himself for a time in reviewing plans for the upcoming battle, his mind filled with trajectories, accelerations, possibilities. Prince Huang and Aitor Santana entered and took their places in silence. Martinez paid them no attention until Prince Huang spoke.

  “Fifteen minutes to transition, Lord Fleetcom.”

  Martinez blinked as he returned to the small, bare room with its displays and consoles. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said. “Signals, message to division from flag: ‘Proceed as per plan. See you on the other side.’”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  Martinez took his helmet from the mesh bag and put it over his head. The scent of suit seals rose in his perceptions, and the constant murmur of the ship’s engines dimmed. He felt cool circulating air on his face.

  “My lord,” said Prince Huang. “Missiles launched from every ship in the division.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  Martinez watched on his display as the missiles raced toward the wormhole, then cut their engines just before they transited to the Shulduc system and vanished from the display. Ships and decoys began to make minor course adjustments to take them through the wormhole on the schedule, sometimes only seconds apart.

  Martinez triggered a virtual display, and a schematic universe appeared in his senses, projected on the optical centers of his brain. The virtual display was confined to ships, missiles, trajectories, and nearby astronomical objects, and it eliminated anything that might distract him from the task at hand: he saw no distant stars, the bare walls of the flag officer station faded away, and the others in the room became mere auditory presences, words only.

  Another auditory presence intruded: the warning sound for zero gravity. A few seconds later the engine rumble faded completely, and Martinez floated free in his harness.

  Ships vanished from the display as they made their transitions through the wormhole. The abstract symbol for the wormhole, a whirling spiral, came up very fast in the virtual display, then the spiral engulfed Los Angeles—and suddenly a whole new universe appeared, and arrayed before him were Rukmin’s sixteen ships, all blossoming on Martinez’s visual cortex like burning flowers, with Foote’s eight ships some distance beyond. One of Foote’s ships had ceased its acceleration, and the others were maneuvering in a somewhat confused manner.

  “We’re being painted, my lord.” Aitor Santana sounded disappointed.

  “Those may be Foote’s lasers,” Martinez said. “Wait till we see if Rukmin reacts.” But even if those were Foote’s ranging lasers painting Rukmin and incidentally lighting up Division Two as well, the echoes would still be reaching Rukmin’s sensors. Plan One depended entirely on Rukmin paying no attention to those echoes that would be appearing on her sensor screens in just a few minutes.

  Long seconds ticked by, and then Rukmin’s ships cut their engines, which told Martinez he’d been spotted. He felt a brief moment of disappointment, followed instantly by a fury of calculation.

  “Lots more lasers painting us, my lord,” said Santana.

  “Flag to division,” Martinez said. “Accelerate one gee. Commence evasive maneuvers.”

  “Accelerate one gee. Commence evasive procedure.”

  The point-defense lasers on smaller ships could be used offensively, but Rukmin’s heavy cruisers had far more dangerous defensive armament in the form of antiproton beams, which could blast whole chunks out of the Restoration ships if they didn’t dodge out of the beams’ path. A few seconds after Martinez’s order, Los Angeles’s engines ignited, and Martinez’s acceleration cage fell to its deadpoint, then lurched a bit, the deadpoint swinging to a new bearing. Los Angeles had begun its swooping series of evasions, and since it was currently traveling at 17.9 percent of the speed of light, each swerve left plenty of space between it and any beam weapon firing at where it used to be.

  Martinez’s inner ear registered the movement, but he kept his eyes riveted on the display. What Rukmin had just seen was Division Two’s sixteen ships plus thirty decoys, which were missiles configured to appear on radar and lidar as a warship. Rukmin’s first view of Division Two was of thirty-six vessels bearing down on her, more than twice her number and enough to assure her annihilation.

  But a few seconds’ reflection would show her that many of those blips were decoys. Encouraging, but it wouldn’t change the fact that an enemy force of unknown numbers was coming straight at her with all the confidence in the world.

  She could accelerate on her current bearing and hope to engage Foote before Martinez could intervene, but Foote could easily keep his distance. Or Rukmin could rotate her squadron and charge Martinez and hope to engage in a head-on battle of mutual annihilation.

  Martinez had plans to avoid anything resembling mutual annihilation, but what really worried him was the possibility that Rukmin would simply accelerate at a lateral angle, off into deep space. She could blast away at ten gees or more, which would force Martinez and Foote to chase her, and though Rukmin would eventually be run down and destroyed, it would draw the Restoration forces far off their intended track.

  But Rukmin was more aggressive than that. Her ships swung on a track for Wormhole Three, and her big antimatter torches ignited. At the sight Martinez heard a singing in his nerves.

  Challenge issued!

  Challenge accepted!

  Rukmin was going to go down fighting.

  “Flag to Captain Dalkeith,” Martinez said. “Fire missiles at Wormhole Stations One and Three.”

  The two wormhole stations on the far side of the battlespace were in the hands of the enemy and would report the progress of the battle to the government on Zanshaa. Martinez had tactics he preferred not to reveal to eavesdroppers, and so he would wipe out the observers before the battle reached its climax.

  The station at Wormhole Two, leading to Harzapid, had been recrewed by the Restoration and would be reporting the news of Martinez’s triumph to Harzapid.
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  Unless, of course, Rukmin chose to blow them up.

  “Dalkeith to flag,” Banerjee reported. “Missiles fired.”

  Martinez had already seen the missiles on his display, fired from their tubes on chemical rockets, then lighting their antimatter torches once they were sufficiently clear of the ship. They raced off on a looping trajectory to avoid Rukmin’s counterfire and arrowed for the stations at an acceleration that would have pulped any human passenger and that would assure the destruction of the stations before the light from the battle reached them.

  Foote, Martinez saw, had flipped his entire squadron and was charging after Rukmin at something like four and a half gee, which would ensure that he, or at least his missiles, would be in at the finish.

  But in the meantime Martinez and Rukmin were hurtling toward each other at something in excess of 14 percent of the speed of light. With the ships closing that fast, and the space between them soon to be filled with hundreds of missiles, Rukmin’s tactic of bringing on a battle of mutual annihilation seemed perfectly plausible.

  Martinez didn’t want the annihilation to be mutual, and he’d planned to avoid that.

  “Lord Fleetcom,” said Prince Huang, “recommend Plan Two commencing in six minutes. I also recommend lighting off our missiles to provide cover for the maneuver.”

  A glance at the display showed that the timing was plausible. “Very good,” Martinez said. “Signals, send to all ships in Division Two.”

  The message went out, and the engines of Division Two’s advance guard of missiles lit, and the missiles tore straight for Rukmin and her ships. A swarm of countermissiles raced from enemy batteries, and the two began to close with one another.