by B. V. Larson
I was never quite sure if he got all of that final speech. His face disintegrated into pixels and vanished. He was gone.
“He didn’t even say good-bye,” Dalton said, snickering.
“Captain Blake?” Mia said, and I appreciated she hadn’t called me “Leo” on my own bridge, “where is Alpha Fleet? I don’t see them on any of the scopes.”
“That’s because he made them up,” Samson told her gently.
Mia looked alarmed. Every human on that deck had known I was as full of crap as Fex suspected I was, but Mia had been completely taken in. That was a common result of interacting with the predatory Kher—they tended to be a little gullible. Xeno-psychs postulated that this was due to a lack of going through a phase of being prey themselves during their evolution. That theory could be right or wrong—but regardless, it was undeniable that the Ral and the Ursa were easy to fool.
Leaning toward Chang, I gave him a false smile. Underneath, I was sweating. I’d built a house of cards, and it could come crashing down at any moment.
“What are our friends doing out there, Chang?” I asked him.
“The enemy fleet is too far away to observe with certainty, sir. They appear to be flying in wedge-shaped formation, an arrangement which is both looser and larger than our own. If I had to guess as to their tactics—”
“Hold on,” I interrupted, “I’m talking about our friends. Ursahn’s ships.”
“Oh… right. I haven’t been tracking them closely. I’ve been directing all my sensors into a long-range array aimed at the approaching enemy.”
I nodded, giving him my patented false smile.
“Well then, turn those dishes toward the Ursa ships. They’re quite a bit closer—easily within range if they decide to start shooting at us, don’t you think?”
He blinked twice. “I see what you mean, Captain.”
“And another thing. I want you to make occasional transmissions in code. Direct them on tight beams ten or twenty thousand kilometers away from our position.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “What should these messages say?”
“Transmit bridge-traffic, using our lowest encryption levels. Make sure you use the term ‘Alpha Fleet’ in every dispatch. Send something out in a burst every five minutes or so.”
“They might be able to break our lowest encryption levels, sir—in fact, I would say it would just be a matter of time before they managed to do so.”
I smiled at last. It was a real smile this time. “That’s what I’m hoping for, Chang. Start transmitting, and keep doing it at random intervals.”
Chang went to work. He seemed slightly confused, but I had no doubt he would follow my orders even if he thought they were insane.
He was that kind of guy.
=59=
The battle started off slowly. That didn’t mean I was relaxed—far from it. We kept a nervous eye on the approaching enemy, and the Ursa ships floating nearby.
“Get me a line to Captain Ursahn,” I demanded for the fifth time in two minutes.
Chang shrugged helplessly. “She’s not taking any calls, Captain.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek until it started hurting.
Eventually, Dalton caught my eye.
“I’ve got that course laid in, Captain,” he said. “We can spring out of here at a moment’s notice—maybe when the fireworks start.”
Frowning, I shook my head. “If Ursahn is going to fight Fex, we’ll do it at her side. If she’s thinking about screwing us instead, we’re going to make it hurt her honor. We’re not making the first move.”
Dalton sighed and turned back to his console. He was a natural jackal, and I respected that. He’d survived a long time on quick wits and even quicker feet. But I was gambling at an even higher level. I was gambling on Ursahn. She was caught up in a moral dilemma, and she was trying to figure out what the right thing to do was. There was no point in making that decision any easier for her.
“Captain!” Chang said suddenly, “I’ve got her—private channel, or public?”
“Put it on the holoprojector—in fact, I want you to relay it all over the ship.”
He worked his board and Ursahn’s hulking image materialized in front of everyone.
“Captain Blake,” she said, “we have serious business to discuss.”
“We absolutely do,” I agreed with enthusiasm. “Do you want me to coordinate my fire with the rest of your light cruisers, or are we to fight independently? We’re not hooked up directly into your tactical feed, so I wasn’t sure which way—”
“Captain Blake,” she repeated, “I request a private audience.”
There it was. She was going to screw me, and she didn’t want to perform this shameful act in front of my entire crew.
Leaning back in my chair, I shook my head slowly.
“I don’t think so,” I told her. “If you’ve got something big to say, you can tell my entire crew. We’re all part of the Rebel Fleet, after all. We’re all one happy family now.”
Her eyes flicked over the scene. Everyone on the bridge listened with stone-faced silence. Even Mia seemed cowed.
“Very well,” she said at last, “your planet’s actions have become too onerous for us to participate in the coming conflict honorably. We’re pulling out. My flagship will open a rift and leave your star system—please don’t attempt to follow us.”
I felt a wave of sick worry. It was like my stomach was a stone, and someone had pitched it off a cliff.
“Captain Ursahn,” I said formally, “can you explain why you’re so willing to abandon allies in the face of battle?”
She blanched and squirmed. I couldn’t recall ever having seen such behavior before. “This will be no battle—it will be a slaughter. All our computer projections point that way. Therefore, our presence isn’t required.”
“Not required? We don’t have a chance without you! I thought the Ursa people were brave. I thought you never shirked in the face of a just fight.”
Ursahn blinked and shook herself slightly. “Insults? Now? Do you feel so confident you can bully both my fleet and Admiral Fex’s task force? I’m amazed. I never thought Earth could build up so rapidly. It took us a century to construct the vessels you see before you.”
It was my turn to be confused for a moment, then I began to catch on.
“Uh… hold on. Let’s talk privately. Follow me with my sym to my office.”
When I’d taken a dozen steps, I was in my quarters. Ursahn looked ghostly, but she was still dead-serious.
“What now?” she asked. “We want no part of your abuses. Phase-ships are powerful, but no one has ever amassed so many in one—”
“Ursahn,” I interrupted, “I have a confession to make. There is no Alpha Fleet.”
She stared at me for a moment, dumbfounded. “But… what was all that about, then? Who are you transmitting secret dispatches to? We’ve located the angle and probable location of your fleet, but we can’t detect them at all. We’ve even sent out probes. Our best sensor people are confused, wondering if you’ve come up with an ingenious improvement on Imperial phasing-technology.”
I cleared my throat, feeling a little embarrassed. “Uh… right. You see, it’s like this, Ursahn: I lied. I told Fex a story, just as he accused me of. We don’t have any phase-ships out this far—not one. All the ships we do have are hugging Earth right now, except for this cruiser.”
She chewed on that one for a few seconds, and she began to pace.
“A lie…” she said at last. “A primate trick. A filthy, underhanded, treacherous…!”
“No!” I said, cutting her off. “It’s a tactic, not a shameful dishonor.”
“So is destroying a colony ship. Are you guilty of that as well?”
“Ursahn, we’re not traitors. We are mean in a fight—but we play fairly with our friends. We only lie to our enemies.”
“Hmm… I’d like to believe that, Blake. I like you, and I’ve fought at your side many times. You�
�re brave and fierce—but this kind of deceit… It’s a difficult bit of gristle for my people to swallow. I’m not even sure now whether you have an Alpha Fleet or not. I suspect that you do. Regardless, dishonor is near at hand for both of us today.”
“I understand,” I said, standing up straight. “But consider this: I’ve told you the truth, and I’ve put a seed of fear and doubt in Fex’s mind. Those two facts are all I could hope for today. If you feel you have to withdraw and leave us to fall before Fex alone, I’ll understand your choice. Farewell.”
So saying, I ended her connection. Her holographic image vanished from the deck of my ship. Effectively, I’d hung up the phone.
Was it the right move? Only time would tell.
=60=
Ursahn’s fleet didn’t withdraw. She kept to her original course, and she fed me some basic tactical instructions: we were to guard her flank, and not dishonor ourselves. That was it.
“Absolutely typical,” Dr. Abrams complained. He was haunting my command deck again, as he had nothing serious to do but wait for the battle to begin. We were about twenty minutes out from contact at our longest range, and we were braking hard.
“What do you mean, Doc?” I asked politely.
“This business of vaguery and the complete lack of a battle plan. It’s horrifying. How can these Kher expect to win conflicts without detailed strategy?”
I looked at him seriously. It was a good question, one I’d pondered myself on a number of occasions.
“Well, I think it stems from their early days. The Rebel Kher were seeded all over the local cosmos of stars in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy. Once they became spacefaring, they found so many varied cultures they couldn’t cooperate easily. In fact, they only do it at all when the Imperials fight against them.”
“This fleet consists of Ursahn’s ships and our single vessel,” he pointed out. “We aren’t running some kind of horde made up of a million babbling voices. Despite this, she’s given you very little to do.”
“She might not trust us,” Dalton said. “If we know her plans, we could use that to our advantage.”
What he was saying was true, and it troubled me. Could this be more than the typical lack of Rebel planning? Could Ursahn be relaying detailed instructions to her own ships, while keeping us in the dark? I had to admit, it was possible. Even fighter crews like my old one had gotten more detailed commands when facing the Imperials in the past.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” I told them. “She’s sticking with us. We’ve got thirty ships against Fex’s force. Sure, we’re outnumbered, but—”
“Salvo incoming!” Samson sang out.
We buckled in and reflexively hunkered down. Death could come at you very suddenly in space. The velocities were incredible. When something approached at ten thousand kilometers an hour, you didn’t always see it coming at all.
“Abrams, get below decks. Samson, ready-up damage control. Boost the shields to one hundred percent—”
“Our lead ships in the formation have sustained a hit,” Chang said, “two forward vessels at the nose of our group have been struck—they’re falling back, and fresh ships are rolling forward.”
“Are we firing yet?”
“No, but Ursahn is launching fighters.”
My teeth gritted on their own. Fex’s ships seemed to outrange us. That was bad in space combat—very bad. If you could kill an enemy before they could even shoot back, battles were pretty easy to win.
“We could launch some missiles now, sir,” Mia said. “They’d have fuel enough to reach them.”
“No, hold on. They’d only be shot down with such a long hang-time in front of a large fleet. If we fire at range at all, we’ll do it as part of a general barrage combining our birds with Ursahn’s.”
Mia didn’t complain, but she hunched over her controls intently. She was alive now, fully awake and in the fight.
No one fired on either side for the next full minute. Fex had tested his range, and he’d found he couldn’t knock out one of our ships at this distance. Ursahn, apparently, had decided to hold onto her guns and their charging pools as well.
Finally, as if someone had blown a whistle, both sides opened fire at once. We were still at long range, but it was definitely effective range.
Our computers enhanced the visuals so we could see the invisible energies as they were released. Radiations swept out and stabbed through space. At the speed of light, they played over enemy shielding, defensive reflective aerogels and even simple chaff.
Tanks chugged out reflective material that formed a fog in front of our ship, but it was carefully shaped so as to not cover our gun ports or our sensor arrays.
“Prismatic chaff in place,” Samson called out. “We can’t make any sudden course changes now, or we’ll be exposed.”
“Dalton, hold our course. Mia, wait until a target looks wounded. Try to finish it.”
Energies poured across the million kilometers wide abyss between the two opposing fleets. Each second took us closer, into a more deadly range.
“Formation point ship lost—second ship lost.”
“Firing!” Mia announced.
She’d watched them all so closely, I hadn’t even had a chance to register her target before she’d locked on and struck. An enemy ship, a battlecruiser by the look of it, collapsed inwardly and then released a gush of gas and light. Soon, it was a dark hulk tumbling in space.
“They’re going to have to dodge that!” I said, “Mia, nail one of them when they come out from behind their shielding.”
She fired again a few minutes later. My headset was bubbling with chatter. All over the vessel, secondary weapons were firing now. They’d been given a free hand to do so. Mia was only operating our main centerline battery.
“Missiles, Captain?” Mia asked again.
“Hold on. Ursahn seems to be waiting for point-blank range. We’ll do the same unless we get hit hard.”
I tried not to obsess over it, but the count wasn’t going our way. We were taking out more ships than they were, but we had fewer to begin with. Ursahn’s crews were superior to anything run by Grefs, and her vessels were well-designed—but they were outnumbered badly. We were taking down three for every two we lost, but we needed to do better than that.
“Chang,” I said, “contact Ursahn.”
“Trying… she’s opening the line. Public or private?”
“Private,” I said. “I need to talk to her privately.”
He adjusted the channel, and Ursahn was there. She looked haggard and serious.
“Blake,” she said, “I know what this is about.”
“You do?”
“Yes—you’re about to call in your Alpha Fleet, aren’t you?”
I closed my eyes. Some part of me felt ashamed for my heritage. Those of the Kher who were like Ursahn—there was something more noble about them than my own squalid species. They trusted, they believed, they felt certain a friend was a friend and lies were only the domain of the devil.
“That’s right,” I said, “but we need to do something first.”
“What? Anything. We’re losing this fight.”
“Come out from behind your shields. Go high, go low, dive around the central wedge of the enemy.”
“We’ll be destroyed…”
“Not right away. Get an angle on the enemy. Their shielding is directly in front of them. We’ll be left with electromagnetics only—but we’ll last for a time.”
“What do we do when we’re all scattered all over the field?” she demanded in exasperation.
“Fire everything you have at the hindmost ship. See him on your scopes? The one that’s hanging back with two sister ships?”
“Which one of the three—?”
“The one in the center. The largest.”
“All right Blake. I’m giving the orders—but you must tell me why I’m doing this?”
“Because that’s their flagship,” I said with absolute certainty in my v
oice and heart. “That’s Fex’s ship. We’re going to destroy it—and him.”
=61=
The maneuver seemed to catch the enemy by surprise, but that only lasted for a few seconds. They soon eagerly switched targets to what must have looked like a random swarm of fleeing vessels.
Rather than trying to hammer down the chaff between our ships and their guns, they took to firing stuttering beams at our exposed bellies and flanks. A thousand rays leapt out and many of them struck home. Three of our ships didn’t even make it to a position where they could target the enemy rear.
But when we did get out and into the clear, the exposed flagship had yet to react. So far in this fight, it hadn’t bothered to fire a single shot. To have done so would have been fruitless, as it had carefully and constantly maneuvered so as to place the bulk of the fleet between its hull and our guns.
Now, however, a dozen of our ships unloaded at once. The missiles we’d been hoarding up until now went with the beams—all of them. The result was dramatic and terrible to behold.
The two bodyguard ships slowly shifted to interpose—and they were both quickly destroyed.
“Mia, now!” I said. “Give him all you’ve got. Dalton, swing us around so we can get our big centerline guns into play.”
We did this even as we began to take hits. Devilfish shuddered and the lights dimmed.
“We’ve lost generator six,” Samson reported. “Two secondary batteries have been knocked out. Belly shielding—we’re exposed, Captain.”
“Dalton, level this ship off!” I called out. “Mia, take the shot when you get it.”
“Captain…” Chang said slowly. “A rift is forming.”
“Where?”
“Right in the middle of the enemy formation.”
Stunned, I watched the truth of his words unfold. The situation was incredible.
“He’s running,” I said, “and he doesn’t care who dies.”
We all watched the greatest single act of treachery we’d witnessed in our lives. The enemy fleet was too close to deal with a rift now. The situation was magnified since so many of the enemy were in front of the flagship, and therefore were struck by the forming rift.
