by David Weber
“We’ll keep with that course,” Gensonne told him, making it clear that the discussion was over. “It’ll take us where we need to go. Maybe not as quickly or as directly. But it’ll take us there.”
“Yes, Sir,” Imbar said, the same undercurrent of reservation in his voice.
Gensonne turned back to the tactical. The hell with him. The hell with all of them. Let them think whatever they wanted. All he cared about was getting this over with without losing any more of his ships.
“Cease acceleration: mark,” he said, watching the monitors. Odin’s acceleration dropped to zero as the impellers eased their pressure on the stress bands. He looked at the missiles, checked the tactical’s projected impact… “Pitch: mark.”
“Pitching,” Clymes confirmed. “Sidewalls in blocking position. Missile impacts in twenty seconds.”
Gensonne watched the tactical. The Manticorans weren’t as helpless as he’d first thought. He’d learned that the hard way.
But as long as he was able to anticipate their movements, all their grand strategy and clever tactics amounted to little more than useless flailing.
Because there was still no way they could win. No way at all.
* * *
“Loop complete, Captain,” Woodburn announced from Casey’s tactical station. “Looks like they left us a reception committee.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Heissman agreed. “Celia, what do you make of them?”
“They’re both destroyers,” Belokas’s voice came from CIC. “One is Hyperion class; the other isn’t coming up on our ID list.”
“Something new?” Heissman asked.
“More likely something obscure and obsolete,” Belokas said. “All their stuff seems to be surplused or secondhand.”
Heissman grunted. “Be grateful for small favors.”
Travis studied the tactical. The two enemy destroyers had formed a stack in front of them, moving backwards at presumably the speed the rest of the group had been traveling when they detached and turned to face Casey’s projected vector.
They weren’t accelerating toward Casey, as if preparing to engage. That was something. But the fact that the rest of the invasion force was still accelerating toward Manticore meant the two ships still blocked any advance Casey might try to make.
“So how do you want to play this, Alfred?” Heissman asked.
“That depends on what we’re going for,” Woodburn said. “If we just want to pin them here, then we should keep accelerating until we match their speed, then hold position, looking mean and growling a lot. If we want to try for a kill—and not get killed ourselves—we need to find an opening. As things stand, unless they’re out of autocannon rounds, throwing missiles at them is probably not going to accomplish much. Especially since they can always pitch wedge against our salvo without losing their formation.”
“Celia?”
“I’m leaning toward Alfred’s first option,” Belokas said. “We can’t realistically take them out, not with only six missiles left and two-to-one odds.”
“Agreed,” Heissman said. He cocked an eyebrow. “Unless Lieutenant Long has any suggestions?”
Travis looked at the tactical again, trying hard to think. They couldn’t just sit back here, not with the Star Kingdom in deadly danger and the rest of the Navy engaged.
But he had nothing. “No, Sir,” he admitted. “The stalking-horse gambit might work, but only if they pitch wedge for the first missile and then pitch back in time for the second. If they use autocannon, they’d probably take out both missiles.”
“And they’re unlikely to be considerate enough to pitch wedge for us,” Woodburn said. “Though we’ll keep that in reserve if it looks like either is turning back to the battle. At that point we might as well drain some of their point defenses.”
“Of course, if one or both turn back, we’ll have clear shots up their kilts,” Heissman pointed out. “And we’re likely fast enough to catch up to missile range before they can rejoin the rest of their group. Very well. Helm, match their velocity. Once we’re there, add enough so that we’re drifting toward them—not too fast, just enough to make them think we’re angling to get into missile range.”
“Accelerating, aye, Commodore.”
“And what was the rest, Alfred?” Heissman asked.
“Look mean and growl a lot?”
“Right,” Heissman said. “Let’s figure out exactly how we do that.”
* * *
“Uh-oh,” Ensign Kyell said tightly from the other side of Aries’s secondary tracking system. “They’re changing course again.”
“Which way this time?” Chomps asked, grunting out the last word as the bolt he’d been fighting with finally gave up and came loose.
“Not ours,” Kyell corrected. “Not Group Three, I mean, at least not yet. I mean the first-wave force—Group One—Tamerlane’s ships. They’ve angled…looks like a little to port.”
“Is Aegis correcting to match?” Chomps asked, peering into the guts of the tracking console and resisting the urge to curse whoever had done the incredibly sloppy job of rewiring the thing. Husovski, probably—the woman didn’t have the brains God gave celery, and believed herself well-enough connected that she didn’t need them.
But at least the problem was obvious. That loose wire floating along the edge needed to be resoldered to the hex connector right there. Easing two fingers and the soldering iron into the gap, he tacked the wire back in place.
“Not so far—wait a second,” Kyell interrupted himself. “Yeah, there they go.”
“Aegis?”
“No, Group Three.”
Once again, Chomps sat firmly on his temper. “Where exactly are they going?”
“They’re adjusting,” Kyell said. “I’m guessing they’re back on an intercept course with Group One’s new vector. Not really sure.”
Chomps poked his head over the top of the console and peered at the display. Aries’s tracking software was about as lame as it could get, and the ship didn’t have any tactical computing capability worth beans.
But as near as his own untrained eye could tell, Kyell was right. The two destroyers of Group Three were still trying to make a rendezvous with Tamerlane’s Group One.
“Looks like it,” he told Kyell. “Wish I could tell whether that was going to bring them closer to us or to Damocles.”
Kyell hissed between his teeth. “I wish I knew which one I was hoping for,” he muttered. “God, I feel like I’m going to throw up. Is going into battle always like this?”
Chomps stifled a sigh. Like he would know that.
But he didn’t say it. Kyell was scared—probably everyone aboard was scared.
Chomps couldn’t really blame them. At least he’d started life in the RMN, where everyone had at least had some basic training in battle technique, even if they never expected to use it. These poor dumb MPARS weenies didn’t even have that.
They were scared. But they were still doing their jobs.
And they were doing those jobs well. Damn well. Better than he would ever have guessed them capable of. Despite MPARS being basically fed off the Navy’s scraps—and with his new first-hand knowledge, he knew exactly the quality of scraps they were getting, Breakwater’s efforts notwithstanding—Aries was still flying, and her officers and crew still preparing to fight and probably die for the Star Kingdom.
And in perhaps the final irony, Aries’s people had shoved aside all the years’ worth of rivalry and defensive animosity and were looking to Chomps and the handful of other RMN people aboard for leadership and encouragement. After months of being looked down on by those same weenies, and admittedly looking down on them in turn, it felt like a rush of fresh air.
Now all he had to do was live long enough for all this newfound respect and camaraderie to pay out some dividends.
That was going to be the tricky part. Chomps wasn’t exactly privy to bridge chatter up here in Weapons, but as near as he could figure from the displays Damocl
es and the two MPARS ships were going to get into missile range of the enemy destroyers at approximately the same time. If anything, in fact, Aries and Taurus would probably get there a little sooner.
Which was theoretically just fine. Despite the chronic weapons shortages everywhere in the Star Kingdom, Chancellor Breakwater had managed to scare up three missiles each for his two new corvettes. Not a huge number; but then, typical destroyer defenses weren’t exactly generous to begin with and the bandits must have used at least some of their autocannon rounds in their brief encounter with Casey and the Janus force. Once the fighting started, the six missiles that Aries and Taurus had between them should make a good accounting for themselves.
The problem was that throwing those missiles was about all the corvettes could do, because if the destroyers fired back they would be up the devil’s own favorite fishing creek. Breakwater hadn’t been nearly as vigilant about the corvettes’ defenses as he had about their missiles, and Aries, at least, was running barely quarter-loads on her two autocannon. One good salvo from the enemy would drain them, and then it would be roll wedge or else get the hell out of Dodge, both of which would take Aries out of the fight.
And to Chomps’s mild surprise, he could sense that the officers and crew of his new ship weren’t going to do that. They might be MPARS weenies, but they were also citizens of the Star Kingdom. They would do whatever they could to protect their worlds.
Which, again, didn’t mean that they couldn’t use a little reassurance. “Every battle’s different,” he told Kyell, quoting from the boot-camp list of sage military platitudes. “You just need to be as prepared as you can be…”
He trailed off. The lines on the display were changing…
“What?” Kyell asked anxiously, turning his head toward the monitor. “What is it?”
For a moment Chomps continued to gaze at the monitor. If he was reading the thing right—and there was half a chance he wasn’t—
Pressing his wrench onto the tac strip, he gave himself a shove across the compartment to the intercom. “Bridge; Forward Missiles,” he called. “Is the—?”
“What’s wrong?” the XO interrupted. “Trouble with the missiles?”
“No, Sir, no trouble,” Chomps assured him. “I need to know if the ship vectors we’re getting are true or projections.”
“They’re true, Townsend,” Captain Hardasty voice cut in. “Why?”
“Because it looks to me like Group Three have themselves in a pickle,” Chomps said. “When we reach missile range—which is, what, about ten minutes from now?”
“Twelve and a half,” Hardasty said. “And Damocles will get there about five minutes behind us. What’s your point?”
“My point, Ma’am, is that in the position they’re in, they can put their wedge or sidewalls against us and Taurus, or they can block against Damocles, but they can’t block all of us at the same time.”
There was a pause. “All right, yes, I see that,” Hardasty said slowly. “So what does that mean?”
“It means, Ma’am,” Chomps said, feeling a smile creasing his cheeks, “that we may just have an unexpected edge here. Here’s my thought…”
* * *
“She’s definitely altering course, Admiral,” Clymes said, his tone halfway between disbelief and excitement. “She’s…yes. She’s leaving the Green One formation and coming after us.”
Gensonne shook his head. Unbelievable. Yet another mistake for The Grand Poo-Bah Admiral Locatelli.
And this one was huge. Fatally huge. The whole point of splitting the Volsung forces had been to tempt the Manticoran commander into splitting his. Now, as Odin and her escorts veered away, the Manticoran had finally taken that bait.
Only he’d done it in the worst possible way. Instead of dividing his remaining seven ships into more or less equal groups, he was sending his second battlecruiser, alone and unsupported, to chase after Gensonne’s force.
Granted she would be coming up behind him, with Odin’s kilt hanging invitingly open. But it was still a foolish and desperate move.
Maybe that was all the Manticorans had left. Foolish and desperate moves.
Unfortunately for Locatelli, in this case it wasn’t just desperation. It was suicide.
Because he’d apparently forgotten that De la Roza’s ships were nearing missile range. And that they, too, could change course.
“Signal Thor,” he ordered. “Tell De la Roza that I have a barreled fish for him.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
“You really want him to divert for this?” Imbar asked quietly. “Maybe that’s what Locatelli’s going for.”
“To what end?” Gensonne scoffed. “Diverting De la Roza’s advance? Not even worth the effort.”
“I meant moving Thor off her vector,” Imbar persisted.
“Again, why?” Gensonne countered. “Besides, De la Roza won’t be changing his vector. All he needs to do is kill his acceleration, yaw about twenty degrees, and fire a couple of missiles up the battlecruiser’s kilt. Yaw back, and he’s maybe two minutes behind his current schedule. Two minutes won’t make or break anything.”
“I suppose,” Imbar said reluctantly. “The move just seems so…stupid.”
“They’re out of ideas,” Gensonne said. “This way, at least, they go out fighting instead of surrendering.”
“There is that,” Imbar agreed, still sounding doubtful.
“Captain De la Roza acknowledges, Admiral,” the Com rating called. “He says to enjoy the show.”
“We will,” Gensonne said, smiling. Three minutes from now, four at the most, and he would once again have a two-to-one battlecruiser superiority over the Manticorans.
Nothing would make up for Tyr’s loss. But this would help.
And yes, he would indeed enjoy the show. Very much.
* * *
“Your Majesty; My Lord?” the petty officer called from the monitor station. “Vanguard and Nike report ready to sail.”
Edward felt his throat tighten. Ready to sail. Not ready to fight, or to defend themselves, or even to seriously threaten. Just ready to sail.
But that was all the Star Kingdom had.
“Your Majesty?” Cazenestro murmured from his side.
Edward braced himself. When crumbs were all you had, crumbs were what you ate. “Signal Admiral Locatelli that we’re sending them out,” he said. Technically, he knew, Locatelli should be the one making this decision, not the King and the First Lord. But Locatelli was light-minutes away, and fighting for his task force’s survival. He already had enough human lives resting in his hands. “Then give the order.”
Cazenestro nodded. “Send them out,” he called to the petty officer.
He looked at Edward. “And may God have mercy on their souls,” he added quietly.
Edward nodded soberly. “And on ours.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
To Chomps’s surprise, Hardasty agreed.
Not that agreement necessarily meant enthusiasm.
“You’d better be right about this,” she warned, three separate times. “We’re sticking our butts out on this, big time.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Chomps said. “It’ll work, Ma’am.”
Hardasty’s grunt was clearly audible over the speaker.
“It had better,” she said, for the fourth time. “And you’re sure Commander Donnelly will also get it?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Chomps said, for the fourth time.
At least he sure as hell hoped she did. Damocles was too close to the enemy destroyers for them to risk even an encrypted laser signal to clue Captain Marcello in on the plan.
But Lisa Donnelly was aboard, and Chomps knew from the Cascan incident that she was more than capable of picking up on this sort of thing.
He hoped she was paying really good attention.
“Okay,” Hardasty said. “Here we go.”
Chomps looked across the compartment at Kyell, found the other gazing back at him. Giving the ensign a smi
le and a thumb’s-up, he turned back to his console.
It certainly should work, he knew. That pirated freighter—Izbica—had been the last unusual or unfamiliar ship in Manticoran space, certainly the last such visitor preceding this invasion. Logically, it was likely the source of the most up-to-date intel Tamerlane could have received before his attack.
Chomps knew what Tamerlane was likely to know. The only question was how clever Tamerlane and his captains were.
And just as importantly, how clever they thought they were.
“Unidentified warships, this is Captain Ellen Hardasty of the Manticoran Patrol and Rescue Service ship Aries,” Hardasty’s authoritative voice came over the speaker. “You are hereby ordered—”
* * *
“—to strike your wedges and surrender,” Captain Hardasty’s harsh voice came over Damocles’s CIC speakers. “If you fail to do so, we will open fire.”
“What the hell?” Shiflett’s voice muttered beneath the words coming from the com relay.
“We have a full complement of Zulu Kickback missiles,” Hardasty continued, “and full authorization to use them. I say again: strike your wedges or be destroyed.”
Lisa caught her breath. Zulu Kickback…
Townsend?
“Someone pull up a crew listing for Aries,” she ordered. “See if Missile Tech Charles Townsend is still aboard.”
“You’ve got something, TO?” Marcello’s voice came.
“Maybe, Sir,” Lisa said. “Remember Townsend on Casca?”
“A pain in the butt who almost got himself killed,” Shiflett put in sourly.
“But who knew how to use bluffs and play to people’s perceptions,” Lisa reminded her. Her brain was spinning, sifting through Hardasty’s words and trying to figure out what Townsend’s angle was here. Was Zulu Kickback a reference to the Case Zulu live-ammo tests at Casey Rosewood, like it had been on Casca? Or was it simply there to let Lisa and Marcello know that he was playing something?
“Here it is, Ma’am,” the lieutenant at the tracking station spoke up. “Yes, Townsend is still aboard Aries.”
And, suddenly, Lisa got it. “Captain, we need to fire a missile at the destroyers,” she said. “Right away.”
