The Storm-class destroyer Mammatus ended its assignment in Arcadia system and rotated back to Laconia for resupply. The transit from Arcadia to the ring space was uneventful, apart from the now-familiar annoyance that the most recent set of repeaters had been sabotaged.
The Mammatus’ transit into Laconia was very different. The moment the destroyer emerged into normal space, its sensor arrays were swamped by massive jamming from multiple sources. Half a dozen ships positioned just outside the ring gate flooded the Mammatus with radio and light. It took fewer than three seconds for the ship to reset, but by then five torpedoes—already launched and waiting for a target—were slamming into the ship. Informed by months of analysis of the captured Storm, the torpedo strikes were devastating. The Mammatus lost maneuvering thrusters along her port side and six PDC emplacements. Worse, it began venting atmosphere.
Its counterstrike was late and weakened. The enemy PDCs took out the torpedoes as soon as they were launched, and with its mobility limited and its port vulnerable, the destroyer fled. Its burn toward Laconia and the prospect of safety was the obvious strategy, and easy to foresee. Compromised as it was, it failed to register the field of stealth composite–coated debris in its path until a swarm of uranium micrometeorites peppered its already-stressed hull, peeling back a section of the plating. A maneuvering thruster misfired as the power grid tried to compensate, sending the destroyer into a spin. Despite all that, it took five more torpedoes and a constant stream of PDC fire to kill it. The Mammatus fought well and died ugly, but it died. Everyone in the system saw its last hour, even if the light delay meant they saw it far too late to act.
Lesson one: You can’t rely on reinforcements.
Days under burn stretched. Naomi slept when she could, studied the movements of the enemy and the reports of her fleet when she couldn’t. Her knees ached from being bent just slightly backward by the acceleration. It hadn’t all been in the same direction. Twice now, Alex had shifted them. Not a full flip-and-burn, but a change of vector that brought them closer to the gas giant. The Laconian destroyers in the system started a burn to match, and Naomi’s three Donnager-class battleships—the Carcassonne, the Armstrong, and the Bellerophon—had redeployed as if to make a full engagement just outside the transfer station there. And then they had all broken off, scattering, while a dozen smaller ships dove sunward to the inner planets. The Whirlwind, capable of slaughtering any of them, stayed in place, leaving the chase to the destroyers.
She’d expected the battleships to draw off the Laconian forces, but they didn’t. The destroyers followed her hunt group, pushing them to a long, arcing retreat up above the ecliptic. The destroyers turned back quickly, never venturing past the gas giant’s orbit. It wasn’t the repositioning she’d wanted, but it worked. It would do.
When the burn paused, she took a long moment before she unstrapped, just to enjoy the physical relief of a gentle half g. Walking down the hall to the galley, her legs felt shaky and her neck ached.
The others—her crew—were already there, wolfing down bowls of noodles and mushrooms, talking and laughing. They sobered when she came in. She was the adult. The commander. Who she was mattered less than what.
She didn’t mind that.
She found Alex in the cargo bay, opening an access panel. He looked like he hadn’t showered in days. Probably he hadn’t.
“Issue?” she asked.
“No. We’re good. I was just getting a little less pressure on the water feed to this thruster than I’d wanted. Thought I’d tweak it while I had the chance.”
“Good thought.”
“I was hoping we’d be getting down to the inner planets by now.”
“Early days,” she said. “There’s time.”
The Bhikaji Cama lumbered through the void, well behind the other ships. Its hold was open to the vacuum.
Two groups of ships, eight in one and fourteen in the other, fired long-range torpedoes at the transfer station. The missiles burned hard, then went ballistic. Slightly fewer than three hundred warheads screamed through the black, all aimed at the transfer station, and all timed to arrive within seconds of each other.
And all of them, of course, were intercepted. Most were killed by the transfer station’s PDCs, but a handful also fell to long-range countermissiles launched from the Whirlwind. It didn’t use its field projector, and wouldn’t. Despite its power, the range was short, and the last time one had been fired in normal space, Sol system had lost consciousness for three minutes. The Laconians didn’t want to risk their defense with a blackout.
When the last of the torpedo barrage died, the expended hunt groups looped back, burning for the Cama. There the crew put on mech suits and loaders, made their way into the cargo ship’s vast belly, and came out with fresh torpedoes and water and PDC rounds.
A week and a half into the campaign, at the time Naomi had specified, the Verity Close—sister ship to the Bhikaji Cama—made the transit into the system and bent its path to the opposite edge of the system and opened its hold.
Lesson two: We have thirteen hundred systems to resupply us. You have one.
“They’re following the Storm,” Naomi said. “I need to split you off.”
On the screen, Jillian Houston scowled. “When the time comes, and you lure that murderous bastard of a ship away from Laconia, you’re still going to have a planetary defense system trying to shoot you down. That’s at minimum. You need me to eat that flak for you.”
“If you’re with the attack group, the Whirlwind won’t budge. Not ever. I don’t like it any more than you do, but your ship used to be theirs. They know it’s the best tech in our fleet. They’re not going to take their eyes off it. They think you’re the number one threat because you are.”
Despite herself, the younger woman smiled. “They’re right about that.”
“I’m redeploying you. Move to accompany the Armstrong. When the time comes—”
“I’ll be part of the bait,” Jillian said. “I don’t love it.”
“It’s a risk. But it’s worth it.”
“Understood,” Jillian said, and dropped the connection. Naomi stretched and checked her system. Eight more minutes before the next burn. She tried to decide if she wanted to wash off or get a bulb of tea. If she didn’t pick soon, she wouldn’t have time for either.
Or maybe she could do both.
“Alex. Postpone the burn for half an hour. There’s something I want to do.”
“You bet,” Alex said.
Naomi went down to her cabin and her private shower, the map of the system in her mind. With the Storm on its own, she could reroute the Carcassonne and fifty or so of the other, smaller ships toward the transfer station. The Roci, Quinn, Cassius, and Prince of the Face would be a minor threat and could loop down sunward, using the innermost planet as a gravity assist.
There was a way that the whole process was like playing golgo. Judging her shot, how the ball would bounce and spin off the other balls, how the next person would react to that. How each decision changed the state of the table. The Bobbie that lived in the back of her head said: A challenge of intellect, technique, and skill.
Naomi saw how easy it would be to forget that the stakes were people’s lives.
When the Laconian capital was surrounded—ships answering to the underground and the Transport Union at every angle through-out the system—the barrage began. The transfer station was forgotten. Not just long-range missiles, but rocks. Cheap, deadly. Every ship in the group sending nukes and accelerated titanium rods and holds full of gravel into intersecting orbits. Some moved fast, some would take months to arrive at Laconia—which was a message in itself about how long the underground was prepared to draw out the fight. Nothing targeted major population centers, but there was no way for Laconia to know that for sure. To be safe, they had to defend everything.