“Six, sir.”
“Get four of them into the tubes and warm ’em up. I want to have eyes on this from all angles before we try and make our dash.”
The flight of stealth recon drones launches five minutes later. At this range, less than fifty thousand kilometers away, their propulsion systems only need to burn for acceleration a few seconds. They spread out from the icon marking Indy’s location and rush toward the Lanky ships.
“They give the slightest hint that they spotted us, we’re reversing course and going for full burn back the way we came,” Colonel Campbell says.
“Tickling the dragon’s tail.” Major Renner watches the little blue icons on the plot closing the distance with the larger orange ones. “All fun and games until the dragon turns and bites you in the ass.”
The drones are on their run for thirty minutes when the Lankies change course, both seemingly at the same time.
“Lima-20 turning to bear negative ten degrees relative. Fifteen degrees. Twenty.”
The icon for Lima-20 shows the Lanky making a sweeping turn, but he’s not turning toward us or the drone that is now within a thousand kilometers off his port side. He’s turning away from us. At the same time, the icon for Lima-21 changes direction as well, going in the same direction but with hundreds of kilometers of space between them. We now have stern-aspect views of both Lanky ships.
“They’re circling the transition point,” the colonel muses. “Remember when we came in? Like sharks searching for prey.”
The data from the drones bears out the colonel’s observation. We watch as the Lanky ships execute another leg in their pattern, then change course again. Their elapsed track on the plot begins to form an elliptical racetrack pattern, with both ships at opposite ends of the ellipse from each other, and the transition point in the center of the racetrack.
“Surely they’re not that dumb,” the XO says when we’re five or six turns into the pattern.
“What’s that, Major?”
“What’s the first rule of planning and executing a patrol route?” Major Renner asks nobody in particular.
“You make patrol random,” Dmitry says. “So enemy cannot predict.”
The XO and Colonel Campbell look at Dmitry with a mix of mild surprise and amusement.
“Ten points to our Russian guest,” the XO says. “That’s precisely it. But it’s not what these guys are doing. Wait for the next turn.” She points at one of the icons on the plot.
“Lima-20 will turn to relative one-seven-five in ninety seconds. Lima-21 will turn to relative three-zero-zero five or six seconds later. Watch.”
I divide my attention between the plot and the chronometer readout on the CIC bulkhead. Sure enough, a minute and a half after the XO’s prediction, the icons change direction on the plot again, exactly the way she predicted. Major Renner picks up the marker pen from the holotable and clicks a trajectory onto the plot.
“There’s the patrol pattern, and it’s entirely predictable, down to five seconds and a kilometer or two.”
“That’s weapons-grade stupid,” the tactical officer says.
“By our standards, sure.” Colonel Campbell pans the map around and changes the scale to get a better spatial sense of the Lanky patrol pattern relative to our position. “But they’re not human. We don’t have a clue how they think. If they think. They could be acting on instinct alone. Think of the shark analogy. Does a shark have to care whether it’s predictable or not?”
“Maybe they know as little about us as we do about them,” I say.
“Maybe. Problem is, they don’t have to give a shit about figuring us out. Sharks and minnows and all that.”
Colonel Campbell taps the plot again to reset the range scale. “We’ll observe their pattern for a little while, make sure it stays constant. I want a best-time trajectory to the transition point, calculated for the precise moment when both those ships are as far away from the node as their pattern takes them. We’re going to have to loop around and burn for speed.”
“What about creating a little diversion?” the XO asks. “Just to be on the safe side.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Well, we can use the parasite fighter we have left. Load it with tactical nukes, coast it in from the far side, and stick a few megatons into the nearest Lanky.”
“We can launch, then have the bird drop stealth and run the opposite way,” the tactical officer suggests. “Maybe the Lanky will give chase. But even if not, we’ll have the background noise from a few nukes to keep their eyes off us. It’ll at least get their attention.”
“We’d be giving up the rest of our offensive fighter power to do the space-warfare equivalent of throwing a rock down an alley.” Colonel Campbell chews on his lower lip in thought. “That’s a mighty expensive distraction.”
“May be worth it just to increase the margin of error.”
The colonel mulls the idea for a few moments and then shrugs. “Let’s do it. Cheaper than losing the ship because we made the node three seconds too late.”
It takes another hour to prep and load Indy’s remaining parasite fighter. They are small and stealthy, and like the drones, the parasite fighters are remote-controlled from the weapons station in Indy’s CIC. Unlike the drones, however, they are designed for combat, to give Indy stealthy standoff capabilities for sneak attacks. They have ordnance bays for missiles, and while the weapons officer is prepping the ship’s guidance and targeting systems for launch, the flight deck crew loads four tactical nuclear antiship missiles onto the hardpoints.
“Bird’s prepped and ready for launch. Nuke yield is dialed in at five hundred kilotons per.”
“They’ll make a pretty light show at least,” the XO says.
“Next burn window for max clearance transition is coming up in seven minutes.” The tactical officer puts the corresponding countdown marker on the holotable display.
“Launch the fighter,” Colonel Campbell orders. “Prepare for acceleration burn and Alcubierre transition. We have one shot at this. Let’s not fuck it up.”
Indy does a sequence of short burns to extend the parabolic curve of her path and swing her around to gain speed for the transition. Then we reach the apex of our path and swing around in a wide arc to aim straight for the node, which means we are also aiming right for the spot between the two Lanky ships. The detached stealth fighter is five thousand kilometers off our starboard bow and heading straight for the closest Lanky seed ship, a mosquito taking on an elephant.
“Fifteen seconds on the burn, five-g sustained,” Major Renner announces.
“Thirty seconds to weapon release. Requesting authorization for nuclear fire mission.”