Imperfect Sword

by Jack Campbell

  At the velocities of space combat, enemy ships went from being way out there to there in what seemed the blink of an eye. If you were following standard Syndicate tactics, that wasn’t much of a problem because you were headed straight for the enemy and hopefully your automated maneuvering systems, operating far faster than a human could react, would avoid collisions as the two forces went directly head-to-head. But standard tactics led to bloody encounters as the two sides slugged away at each other.

  Black Jack had shown them a different way to fight. The trick was to make tiny changes in your vectors at a time when they could take effect but not so soon that the enemy could see it and counter your moves. If done right, it allowed your full force to hit a small portion of the enemy, inflicting a lot of damage but not suffering much in return. If done wrong, by only a tiny amount compared to the distances around them, it could result in your completely missing the enemy, or running head-on into them.

  Simple. But very complicated.

  Marphissa waited, intent on her display, as the remaining distance shrank rapidly. At two minutes before contact, she gave the order. “All units, execute maneuver using local controls. Come port zero one degrees, up point five degrees.”

  Only five seconds before contact, Marphissa sent the maneuvering order she had already prepared. “All units, full acceleration.” By the time that order was received and the ships responded, they would be past the enemy.

  In those last moments, Marphissa realized that she had miscalculated slightly. In her eagerness to ensure the firing run was not wasted, she had underestimated the final maneuver. Or perhaps Hua had slid her own formation in the same directions as Marphissa, by sheer luck doing just the right thing. Marphissa’s formation would slide through the port side of the Syndicate formation closer than Marphissa had intended, and not as high. Not a direct head-to-head encounter, but far too close to that. It gave her warships better shots at the Syndicate ships, but also gave the Syndicate more chances to hit her. Too late. Damn. Too late.

  The instant of combat came and went too fast for human senses to register, automated systems pumping out hell lances and grapeshot at targets whipping past at immense velocities.

  Manticore jolted heavily several times. The lights flickered, Marphissa’s display wavering in and out before steadying again. She waited for the surge of acceleration as the main propulsion units cut in, but felt nothing.

  “The battleship targeted us. Our shields got knocked down, and we took several hits,” Kapitan Diaz was reporting, his expression grim. “We have only partial thruster capability for maneuvering. All main propulsion is off-line.”

  No main propulsion. Manticore was nearly motionless in space and unable to change that.

  Marphissa stared at her display. The firing run had done damage to the Syndicate forces. One of the Syndicate light cruisers was drifting out of formation, powerless and heavily damaged. A spreading ball of gas and debris marked where the second targeted Syndicate light cruiser had been. In addition, one of the small Syndicate Hunter-Killers had broken in half under the impacts of several hits.

  But the Midway warships had been close enough to the Syndicate battleship for its firepower to be felt, and they had paid a price for that.

  Marphissa’s display showed red damage markers on many of her ships. The Syndicate had not concentrated their fire, so none of Midway’s ships had been knocked out completely or destroyed. But few had come through the encounter unscathed. And, in addition to Manticore, the light cruiser Harrier had lost main propulsion and was also hanging helplessly in space not far distant. The other warships were accelerating away, only just realizing that their stricken comrades had been left behind.

  The Syndicate formation had seen the same things. It was beginning to bend upward in as tight a turn as the battleship could manage, a vast curve through space that Marphissa knew would come nearly full circle. It would take more than half an hour for the enemy warships to finish that turn, but when they came back, Manticore and Harrier would be sitting ducks.

  “CAN you fix your main propulsion?” Bradamont demanded of both Marphissa and Diaz.

  “The answer is probably not,” Marphissa murmured.

  Diaz was speaking on an internal comm circuit, and now ended the call with a curse. “Leytenant Gavros is dead. Senior Specialists Kalil and Sasaki say the control circuits are shot to hell.”

  “But the main propulsion units themselves are fine? You can’t replace or fix the control circuits?” Bradamont asked again.

  “This is a Syndicate-designed ship!” Diaz erupted in frustration. “It is efficiently designed! Crew size is optimized for efficiency! Significant repairs are to be carried out at leased maintenance facilities!”

  “Can’t your senior specialists—”

  “The senior specialists aren’t trained to make repairs and aren’t supposed to make repairs! The circuits are black boxes! They’re not supposed to be fixed! All you’re supposed to do is take out the broken one and put in a working one. We have a few black box spares aboard, but we don’t have any working black boxes of the exact type we need to replace those broken black boxes.”

  Marphissa glared at Diaz. “Tell them to try! Tell Kalil and Sasaki and the other specialists in engineering that the old Syndicate rules against unauthorized repairs no longer apply. Tell them to break into those boxes and see what they can do. Break into every circuit they need to. Jury-rig, improvise, cross-connect, anything. If we are still sitting here in half an hour, this ship will be blown to hell!”

  Diaz took a deep breath. “Yes. Why not try? What’s the worst that can happen? A big explosion? We’ll die anyway if we don’t try.” He called engineering, passing on the orders. “Kommodor, I want to go down there personally. I will be back within twenty minutes, before any Syndicate ship can get to us.”

  “Permission granted. Go.” As Diaz bolted off the bridge, Marphissa glowered at her display, one hand moving as she set up another maneuver for the formation under her command that was speeding away from her. The display froze in midsolution, causing Marphissa’s guts to tighten, but then jerked back into motion.

  Pele, Gryphon, and Basilisk had finally reached the area, catching the lower edge of the opposite side of the Syndicate formation from the one Marphissa’s formation had hit. Kontos had more luck or judged the approach better, Pele hammering the Syndicate heavy cruiser on that corner until it exploded, while Gryphon and Basilisk knocked out another light cruiser.

  CEO Boucher ignored the blow, though, the Syndicate formation continuing on its path to come back to finish off Manticore and Harrier. Maybe, Marphissa thought, I shouldn’t have personally taunted Happy Hua the way I did. She sure wants me dead. But then this is Hua Boucher. She would probably want me dead regardless. “All units,” she transmitted. “Continue accelerating to point zero eight light speed, turn port zero two degrees, turn up one four seven degrees at time five zero.”

  The Syndicate formation was looping up and over, the formation inverting as it went through the circle formed by its path through space. Marphissa’s ships could turn faster, even though that was a relative term. Planetary observers would doubtless describe the turn radius as huge, but what mattered was that it was less huge than that of the Syndicate formation encumbered by a battleship. This new maneuver would bring the remaining ships in Marphissa’s flotilla back and across to sweep over the top of the Syndicate formation as it neared the summit of its loop.

  “Good thing that CEO is inexperienced,” Bradamont muttered. “With us sitting nearly dead in space, if she had simply braked and come back, that Syndicate formation would have gotten back here quicker. But instead, she’s going through that turn.”

  “It’s only buying us a few minutes,” Marphissa pointed out. “Getting that battleship stopped and going again in the opposite direction isn’t easy.” She sent a separate transmission to Kraken, the remaining heavy cruiser in her formation. “Kapitan Seney, you are to assume command of the formation as i
t engages the Syndicate flotilla again. I’ll be too far away to make any necessary last-moment adjustments in the attack. Don’t get too close. We can’t afford to lose Kraken.”

  Seney looked back at her, his eyes worried. “I understand and will comply, Kommodor. We can’t afford to lose Manticore, either.”

  “Maybe we won’t,” she said, not believing it herself. “There’s nothing you can do to stop the Syndicate flotilla from reaching us, though. If Manticore is destroyed, place yourself and the other warships under the control of Kapitan Kontos. He will be acting Kommodor, by my command, until confirmed by President Iceni.”

  “Kontos is young,” Seney said carefully.

  “We all are young, Kapitan, for what we must do. Will you comply?”

  “Yes, Kommodor. I will acknowledge Kapitan Kontos as acting Kommodor should you be unable to fill the role.” Seney brought his right fist around to tap his left breast in the Syndicate salute they still used. “For the people.”

  She straightened and returned the salute. “For the people.”

  Another call, to Kontos. “Kapitan, if Manticore is destroyed, you are to assume command of Midway’s warships as acting Kommodor until confirmed by President Iceni. Don’t waste your time worrying about us. There’s nothing you can do to stop the Syndicate flotilla in time. Continue to focus your efforts on knocking out the battleship’s escorts, then wearing down the battleship.”

  Pele was far enough away that Kontos’s reply took several seconds. The youthful Kapitan looked stricken but determined. “I understand and will comply, Kommodor. I will not fail you or President Iceni. For the people, Kontos, out.”

  As the image of Kapitan Kontos vanished, Marphissa sighed heavily, slumping back as she stared at her display. There was nothing else that she could do right now. “What would Black Jack do, Captain Bradamont?”

  “I don’t know,” Bradamont answered, her voice low. “He did abandon ship when the situation at Grendel was hopeless.”

  “Grendel? When was that?”

  “A century ago.”

  “Hah!” It struck her as funny. “A century ago? Did they take prisoners then? I guess people did. Do you think CEO Boucher is going to? What do you think her ships will do to any escape pods they see? Escape pods full of men and women whom they consider to be traitors and rebels?” Marphissa snorted and gestured angrily. “Besides, there are only enough escape pods aboard for sixty percent of the crew.”

  “Sixty—?” Bradamont gave her a horrified look. “Why?”

  “Because the Syndicate accountants crunched the numbers. On average, a ship too badly damaged to continue to fight, one that must be abandoned, will have lost forty percent of its crew. Therefore, they only need escape pods for the surviving sixty percent.”

  “Ancestors preserve us.”

  “Well, even dead ancestors probably care more than the corporate accountants trying to save a little money when they build ships,” Marphissa said, her tone acidic. “The CEOs approved because they didn’t want workers abandoning ships that could maybe still fight. Dammit, Honore. If I had managed that firing run right—”

  “You handled that run as well as anyone,” Bradamont said. “The Syndicate formation jigged slightly in the same direction you did, probably because its automated controls were trying to center their run on you. The enemy doesn’t always do exactly what you want, and there are always uncertainties. Sometimes, you can do everything right and still get blown to hell. Sometimes, the biggest idiot survives and the smartest professional is in the wrong place when a hell lance comes through. There’s nothing we can do about that firing run now. What can we do?”

  Marphissa shook her head. “Go down fighting. That’s all that’s left to do if those specialists can’t figure out in the next few minutes how to do something that they’ve been forbidden from trying in the past.” She turned her head toward the back of the bridge. “Senior watch specialist, ensure all weapons stations remain at full readiness. We’ll see who we can take down with us.”

  “Yes, Kommodor.” The senior watch specialist bent his head for a moment, then raised it to look at her. “Kommodor, my name is Pyotor Czilla. I never wanted the CEOs to know my name. It was dangerous for them to know who you were. But I want you to know, because you were a good supervisor. The best.”

  The other watch specialists murmured agreement, causing Marphissa to wonder if she was blushing with embarrassment. “We’re not dead yet,” she reminded them all. “You might have to live with me awhile longer.”

  “Living awhile longer would not be a bad thing, Kommodor,” Czilla said. His smile was tense. “All weapons report full readiness except for hell-lance battery 2, which sustained a direct hit and was destroyed.”

  “Very well. I will designate a single target when the Syndicate flotilla gets close enough,” Marphissa told him. She finally made another call, one she had been dreading, to Harrier. “How does it look, Kapitan-Leytenant Steinhilber?”

  Kapitan-Leytenant Steinhilber was in a sealed survival suit, as were the others who could be seen on the bridge of the light cruiser. Harrier must have lost internal atmosphere.

  Steinhilber shrugged. “Main propulsion is gone, Kommodor. Shot to pieces. We’ve got the power core still running at thirty percent capacity, but it’s shaky. Half our weapons are out, life support gone, half the crew dead or wounded. We’ll hold for another twenty minutes though, enough time for the Syndicate to get back here, and we’ll go down fighting.”

  “Glenn, I—”

  He shook his head. “It is. That’s all. It is. I’m sort of surprised I lasted this long. I should be grateful, right? I’m sorry I can’t save the crew, though. They’re a good crew, Kommodor. This is a hero ship. They should be remembered that way.” Steinhilber sounded both earnest and oddly numb, as if his emotions were so tightly controlled that all the edges were being worn off before they could be felt.

  Marphissa understood that. She herself could feel fear, anger, despair, but these were distant things, somehow separated from her by a barrier formed of resolve and a desire to not let down her comrades in these last moments. “Harrier is a hero ship,” Marphissa said. “You will be remembered.”

  “Does Manticore have any chance?”

  “We’re trying to get main propulsion going. I don’t know if we can.”

  “If you can,” Steinhilber said with sudden intensity, “then go. Do not stay with us. Go. Honor Harrier’s sacrifice by continuing the fight when you have a chance to survive and to win.”

  Marphissa nodded, blinking back tears. “We will, Kapitan-Leytenant Steinhilber. But if that does not happen, if Manticore and Harrier fight our last fight together, then we will die in good company. The best company.” She saluted with slow solemnity. “For the people.”

  “For the people,” Steinhilber echoed, returning the salute.

  That transmission over, Marphissa sat, feeling impotent in her command seat, wondering how Diaz and the specialists were doing on repairing the main propulsion controls, watching the incredibly fast movements of the nearest warships as they seemed to crawl through the immensity of space, thinking about those on Harrier who did not have even the slim hope of those aboard Manticore, and contemplating other issues that she usually tried to avoid thinking about. “Honore?”

  “Yes.” Bradamont’s reply was a hushed as Marphissa’s question.

  “Do you think there is something on the other side? After death, I mean. The Syndicate always said no, that all we had was here and now, and so we’d better do as we were told because if we spent this life being punished, or had it cut short for committing crimes against the state, that was all there was.”

  “I don’t know for certain,” Bradamont said. “I believe there is something more. No one really knows, of course. No one has ever come back after having gone all the way.”

  “What about Black Jack? He came back, didn’t he? After a hundred years?”

  “Admiral Geary insists that he didn’t die,”
Bradamont said, “and that he remembers nothing from his time frozen in survival sleep.”

  “Would he tell us the truth? If he knew?”

  Bradamont paused, frowning slightly. “I think he would. He’s said the same thing to Tanya Desjani, his wife.”

  “She was a battle cruiser commander, too, right?”

  “Still is,” Bradamont said. “Commanding officer of Dauntless. I don’t think even the living stars themselves could convince Admiral Geary to lie to her.” She sighed. “Popular belief in the Alliance is that Admiral Geary did die, that he was in the lights in jump space, among his ancestors, until the time was right. But if he doesn’t remember that, and there’s no way to prove or disprove, it comes down to whether or not you believe.”

  Marphissa nodded. The Syndicate flotilla was almost near the crest of its turn, the remaining ships of the Midway flotilla moving fast to meet it. It felt very odd to sit here watching that happen, unable to take part, knowing that the turns being made by the other ships were so huge that the light from the images she was seeing was over two minutes old. The latest exchange of fire had already taken place, but the light seeing images from the battle was still on its way here. “Is it a good place? Among the ancestors and with those stars?”

  “It’s supposed to be,” Bradamont said. “It’s supposed to be better than we can imagine. Peaceful, happy, no pain or loss.”

  “Hmm. I guess if Black Jack had been there, they might have made him forget, right? When he came back? Because otherwise, what would it be like, remembering this really great place you got kicked out of to come back here and fight and struggle and hurt again?”

  “There’s that,” Bradamont conceded. “How long do we have left before we find out for sure the hard way?”

  Marphissa pointed to her display. “This is the time until we’re in range of the Syndicate weapons. This other one is really the number that matters. If we can’t get moving by then, twelve minutes from now, we won’t be able to accelerate fast enough to avoid being caught by the Syndicate flotilla. We’ll manage to string out the time a little until they hit us, but that’s all. A moment like this is when we’re supposed to pray, right? When we really need help?”