Still, with just seven modest warships of her own with which to fight them, Zuri didn’t feel greatly reassured. Especially since the Oswight yacht was now stuck on the wrong side of the Waypoint. There would be no more of Iakar’s security flotilla coming to help. Not until or unless the Waypoint was cleared of hostiles.
“I think they’re dividing their fleet,” Urrl said.
Zuri furiously pounded the keys on her gee chair’s keyboard, switching the tactical wallscreen off and activating the larger holographic unit which could project three-dimensional imagery over the heads of the command module staff. Within that now-glowing space, numerous little signatures appeared: some of them blue, for friendly ships, and others bright red, for the newly arrived vessels. Urrl was right. The nine red ships were dividing up into two groups, with four of them vectoring away from the Waypoint.
“They’re going for Antagean’s detachment,” Zuri said.
“What do you want Antagean to do?” Urrl asked.
“Run,” Zuri said plainly. “It’s the only thing they can do now. Get to the clement planet. Put our forces on the ground. Even if we can’t overwhelm the Nauties in space, we can challenge them to a stand-up fight for the prize soil.”
“And the Daffodil?” Urrl asked.
“She went dark once,” Zuri replied. “Order her to go dark again. She’s not toothless, but she’s not built for battle like her sisters from the security flotilla, either. We might need her to get back across the Slipway, assuming we can punch a hole through the five ships facing us directly. They’re bigger than any of ours. Very probably better armed, and better armored. It’ll take all of us working in concert to match them.”
“Shouldn’t we try to intercept the ships vectoring on Antagean’s trio?”
“No. Antagean has a nice head start. They can see him, but they can’t close the distance very easily. Our best shot is to try to beat the five who remain, and hope there’s enough of us left to use the Waypoint again. Get word back home. Maybe even bring some more of the security flotilla over. Then we can look at tackling the four ships detailed to chase Antagean.”
Zuri hated the idea of letting Antagean’s three ships go it alone. But they had so much distance between themselves and the Waypoint now that there was no practical reason to try to send help. The vastness of space would protect Antagean, his ships, and Lady Oswight. At least until they could reach the new world, where it seemed men had once walked. And might walk again?
The logical move was to keep the armed Task Group together. If they hit quickly and hard enough, they might be able to gain the upper hand. It only took one lucky nuke hit to seriously damage a destroyer—even some of the top-of-the-line stuff that Nautilan shipyards were putting out these days. Chances were high that Zuri would lose some ships too. Especially the little scouts. But so long as it was seven to five, she at least maintained a degree of numerical advantage. And that meant enemy forces shooting at more of hers, and hers shooting at less of them.
Nothing would happen instantly. The Task Group was far enough removed from the edge of the Waypoint that it would be hours before anyone saw any action. Plenty of time for all of the crews to make ready, and for Zuri especially to disseminate the order of battle to her other ships.
Chapter 19
The Nautilan ships emerged from the Waypoint in formation: nine warships forming three sets of three ships in arrowhead configuration. Almost immediately upon their arrival in the uncharted system, General Ekk—from his gee chair in the command module of the Alliance—ordered a prompt sensor sweep. Their default assumption prior to crossing the Slipway had been that they would encounter armed Constellar resistance. And this assumption had proven correct. The Alliance quickly detected a number of other ships. Some of them appeared to be military configuration, while three of them were distinctly civilian.
“Starliners?” Kosmarch Golsubril Vex remarked, from her gee chair which flanked General Ekk’s own.
“It would appear so,” he said. “Put us on combat alert.”
Promptly, the light in the command module went from white to yellow, and a low, repetitive klaxon began to fill the air. Several command module personnel scrambled to get to their gee chairs—having been formerly floating, using grip boots or handholds—while the conventional navigator performed checks on distances to the foreign ships, and read them off to both the Alliance’s captain and General Ekk.
“They’ve split their force,” Ekk said. “But I admit I don’t understand why the three civilian craft departed the Waypoint without armed escort. That’s foolish.”
“They simply assume there’s no one deeper in the system to challenge them,” Vex remarked. “We don’t know how long they’ve been here, or how much reconnaissance they’ve managed to do. Can we be sure they don’t already have assets closer to the home star? Ships undetectable at this range?”
“No we can’t,” Ekk said. “But if I may offer an opinion, Madam Kosmarch, the makeup of their security group seems slapdash at best. Two scout-sized ships. What might pass for a destroyer, on the small side. And four conventional close-patrol ships, which are almost certainly from the security group guarding their Waypoint on their side of the Slipway.”
“Your point, General?”
“Madam, their plan is a hasty plan. They brought over everything they could bring over, as soon as it could be brought. And it still won’t be enough to save them. We outgun them in every instance, ship to ship. The upper hand is ours.”
“Unless they move more assets across the Slipway,” she said guardedly.
“If they could move more, especially en masse, they’d have done it already. Madam Kosmarch, I recommend we attack now. Finish them here. Claim the Waypoint. And that will give us time to perform a proper reconnaissance of this system, at our leisure.”
“You’re that confident we can take them?” Vex said.
“Yes, Madam Kosmarch, I am.”
“And the three civilian craft? They appear to be almost two days ahead of us, even thrusting at full gee. Does that not concern you?”
“They can’t shoot at us. What harm could they cause? We can pursue them later, once the Waypoint is ours.”
Vex thought about it. The tactical-command hologram suspended in the air of the command module showed the relative positions of both the foreign ships and Ekk’s triple-wedge battle squadron. The civilian starliners were far away, and getting farther. But something about them piqued her interest. Ekk had pointed out that it was foolish for the starliners to be going deep into the system without armed escort. Which meant those ships were up to something important enough to justify the risk.
“Can you tell where the civilian liners are going?” she asked.
General Ekk tapped his keyboard, and issued a few orders to some of his subordinates in the command module. After a couple of minutes, one of the junior officers reported back.
“Sir,” the woman said, “we haven’t tracked the civilian craft long enough to obtain a definitive trajectory. But based on their present course and velocity, it seems they’re on a gravity-boost course which will fling them from two of the larger, outer gas-giant worlds toward the smaller terrestrials close to the home star.”
“They’ve found something,” Vex declared.
“Madam?” Ekk said, his face confused.
“It’s the only rational explanation. Either those liners contain cargo and personnel Constellar wants to keep very far away from us, or this cargo and those personnel have to be delivered to the inner system before we can interdict. Our arrival—here—has been anticipated. Your counterpart on the Constellar side is thinking ahead of you, General. So, we will split our resources. Four ships, then five. Alliance will lead the group of four, and pursue the unarmed civilian ships to their final destination—whatever it might be.”
“But, Madam Kosmarch,” Ekk protested loudly, “even outgunning them, five of our destroyers against seven of their smaller ships stand much less of a chance of victory,
compared to all nine of us taking the entire Constellar security group in one melee.”
“No,” Vex said. “Defeating their security group, here, might be moot—if they’ve got something waiting for us closer to the sun. We’ll pursue the starliners, to whatever end. If during our pursuit we detect additional Constellar craft, we can relay that information to General Ticonner, and this can ultimately be communicated back across the Slipway if necessary. Do you doubt General Ticonner’s tactical ability to successfully engage the ‘slapdash’ Constellar effort, as you called it?”
“No, Madam Kosmarch,” Ekk said, somewhat abashed. “I have full confidence in my counterpart’s abilities.”
“Then let us waste no more time, please. Execute as I’ve instructed.”
General Ekk appeared to want to protest further. The words practically trembled on the older man’s lips. She could read the thought in his mind: she was no trained battle strategist, but it was insanity to countermand a kosmarch—even when common Nautilan sense told the man that Golsubril Vex was wrong.
She waited, unblinking, and stared at him. He could take his time. Weigh it out, as he must. When finally he said, “At your order, Madam Kosmarch,” she smiled slightly. That had taken a bit longer than she’d expected. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Ekk was capable, if not especially creative. He greatly disliked the current plan, as much as he had disliked coming across the Slipway before they had amassed what he considered to be a sufficiently large number of ships.
But she’d won that argument, and intended to keep on winning the arguments. She didn’t need people trying to be smart for her on this mission. She was plenty smart herself, assuming her subordinates provided her with quality information.
They merely had to obey.
Within minutes, Alliance had split off from the main Nautilan squadron with three other sister destroyers, flanking two to starboard and one to port. Ekk was busy on his headset, calming the fears of some of the other destroyer captains who doubtless objected to the plan as much as Ekk himself did. To the general’s credit, he didn’t lay it off on the kosmarch. Instead, he issued instructions as if the plan had been his own, so as to reassure those men and women beneath him that they could trust his judgment—even if he himself didn’t trust Vex’s.
She relaxed into her gee chair, watching the tactical hologram as her pursuit force formed up, then she felt the increase in thrust as Alliance’s captain ordered the ship up to full gee, and beyond. Going over full gee would be an uncomfortable experience, Vex knew. Even for experienced spacers. But every second counted, now. And assuming those civilian ships couldn’t match against the Alliance, Vex would gradually be able to gain ground. Perhaps enough to capture the starliners in flight? Before they reached orbit around whichever world they were in such a hurry to reach?
On that note, Vex ordered the Alliance’s sensor module activated, for as extensive a scan of the new system as could be accomplished at such great distance. They were still in the outermost part of the plane of the planetary disc, beyond even the farthest jovian world. It would take many days to get all the way to the big superjovian orbiting very near to the home sun. They ought to be able to determine what might be waiting for them upon their eventual arrival.
Meanwhile, Vex ordered General Ticonner to prepare a hasty brief, so that she could examine his adjusted plan of attack—against the Constellar security group. The DSOD ships had numbers on their side, but Ticonner had mass, as well as weapons. It would take a bit of tactical thinking to devise a plan which might split the security group enough for it to be possible to mass the five assaulting destroyers in a way that they could pick off the Constellar vessels in sequence.
“This is why we win,” Vex said to no one in particular, as Ticonner relayed several different courses of action, and asked Vex which one she preferred. She examined the little simulations on her gee chair’s flatscreen display. Running each of them in turn. Then, running them once more. And finally, a third time. With percentages for estimated success tallying on every iteration, until one of the simulations showed a higher potential percentage than any of the others.
“Attack plan two,” she finally said.
Ticonner relayed his understanding, and then Vex went back to looking at the larger tactical hologram, in which her pursuit force was getting farther and farther away from Ticonner’s engagement force.
Oddly, the Constellar security group did not appear to have reacted to this division of opponent assets.
“Is it possible they just haven’t noticed yet?” she asked.
“We’ve got the stealth disruption network powered up,” Ekk said, “to try to keep them in the dark as long as possible. Though, if they’re using their countermeasures to compete with our countermeasures, it won’t be too long before they figure out what we’re doing. Madam Kosmarch, I feel compelled to point out that if the Constellar security force ignores Ticonner’s assault squadron, and tries to interdict Alliance’s pursuit squadron instead, we’ll actually be at a disadvantage in that fight. Our four against their seven. It won’t be the kind of battle for which I can guarantee a victory. Are you ready to take that risk?”
“Of course,” Vex said, and meant it. This was hardly the time to get cold feet over a matter as mundane as personal safety. Those starliners were on to something. She could feel it. Whether Ticonner was successful, or had to retreat with a damaged and reduced force, or was even obliterated entirely, finding out what those starliners were on about would be the key to leveraging this new system—to both Vex’s and Starstate Nautilan’s advantage.
“Very well, Madam Kosmarch,” Ekk said. “I will prepare several defensive scenarios for simulation. It will be hours before anyone is shooting at our squadrons anyway. We have time to prepare.”
Chapter 20
Space battles tended to follow an asymptotic curve: very little combat for a very long while until, suddenly, everything was blowing up at once. Even ships pushed to the limit of their crews, at three gees of thrust, or more, took hours or days to intercept their intended targets. And then, engagements would be conducted across thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Cold, empty space. You could detect your enemy, and your enemy could detect you, well in advance. Missiles thus launched could be detected too. And countermissiles also launched. Precious little was ever a surprise.
Thus ship-to-ship doctrine in any Starstate war college stipulated that the successful commander was the person able to force his target to commit an error in defensive prioritization. No ship could successfully intercept and destroy missiles in every quadrant, at every range. Overwhelm a given target’s countermissile and railgun batteries with enough nukes inbound from different directions—at different speeds and distances—and you stood a good chance of landing a hit.
So, a great deal of thought and computer simulation were dedicated to anticipating these scenarios. With the hours of battle flight dedicated to running these simulations again, and again, and again, just as the hardware itself would be checked and run through its paces and firing patterns. To be sure that when the critical moment came, and a defending ship’s number was up, all of the hardware performed to expectation, and hopefully nobody aboard had to experience the deafening sound of a ship-to-ship warhead detonating against—or near—the hull.
Of course, some theorists stated that the best defense was a good offense. Waiting for the missiles to come to you was an automatically losing move. So, you sent your missiles to them before they could overwhelm your defenses. Which entailed still more readiness drills and even lengthier equipment checks. Such that the amount of time spent merely getting the ships close enough to fire on each other was actually some of the busiest in a crewperson’s life. Almost to the point of not having time to get nervous. Especially since the crew almost never saw the enemy. Not up close. If a foe was launching missiles at visual range, your situation was so critical that any hit might lethally damage both the defender and the at
tacker.
So, the visible action was carried out on a reduced scale, with wallscreen and holographic projections shrinking total distance down—and blowing actual ship sizes up—to the point each could be made intelligible for commanders, as well as command staff. All of whom would be intensely fascinated with these displays up through the moment of hostile contact, until the enemy was either destroyed outright, crippled into impotency, or fleeing for their lives.
Unless of course, it was your ship getting crippled, or fleeing.
Wyodreth Antagean had never been aboard a ship on actual battle alert. He’d certainly never anticipated doing so aboard one of his company’s own ships. Starliners were big, happy targets for even the most diminutive warships. And Antagean Starlines had, in its history, been canny enough to get its assets out of a threatened system long before the shooting started.
He and Captain Loper carefully eyed their separate displays, while the ship’s conventional pilot gradually pushed the vehicle toward one-point-five gee thrust—or approximately one and a half times the normal force of gravity, measured according to the ancient scale which had come from Earth.
Wyo felt heavy as a result. Like being on an amusement ride—the kind that did centripetal force, going in a circle—perpetually. He knew from past experience that he’d wind up with a headache soon. All of them would. Gee beyond one-point-oh meant everyone aboard was having to work that much harder to move, and each heart was having to pump blood harder too. If anyone had a preexisting cardiac condition, the ship’s surgeon—and DSOD medics—would be hearing about it soon. Especially if Wyo had to push them beyond two gees thrust. That’s when things would become truly painful.
Although, not as painful as being blown out of space by a Nautilan nuke.
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