The barrage kept going, day after day. Rock after rock to intercept. Torpedo after torpedo to shoot down. An endless rain of threats, wearing them down hour by hour by endless hour. That was the third lesson: Playing defense means being endlessly ground down. Someday something will get through.
The Whirlwind stayed in its place, guarding the gravity well over Laconia, but the destroyers ranged farther and farther. When the enemy came too near, Naomi’s fleet scattered like children running from the police. Not everyone escaped. The Tucumcari, a rock hopper retrofitted to fight pirates in Arcadia, caught a torpedo on its drive cone and died in a ball of fire. The Nang Kwak, a private security company stealth ship two generations out of date, didn’t dodge a line of PDC fire. Disabled, it tried to surrender. The Laconian ships destroyed it instead. There were others. A handful. Each of them one too many. And every chance Naomi had to strike back at the enemy, to lure them out and end one or two of them, she let pass. It was the cardinal rule that she sent to every ship, all through the system. Laconian military that came out after them went home intact.
Because that was the final lesson she taught her enemy: It’s safe to chase after us. It’s how you’ll win.
And it was a lie.
The first sign of fresh cheese in the mousetrap was the Bellerophon changing its drive signature. The Donnager-class battleship was burning away from Laconia, heading in the rough direction of the Verity Close. Even from half the system away, the drive plume would have been visible to the naked eye, a faint but moving star.
And then, for a moment, it blinked out.
The Roci and her three escort ships were on the float, skating on the far side of the sun from Laconia. She’d led them in toward the corona until even with pumping spare water onto the ship’s skin and letting it evaporate, the built-up heat was at the edge of tolerance. Even when the temperature was in the error bars of normal use, it baked the resins and ceramic. The air smelled different, and it left Naomi and the rest of the crew jumpy and uncomfortable. But with Laconia’s fighting ships near the planet, they were in a blind spot. Out of sight.
When the Bellerophon’s drive lit back up, it was dirty. Half a minute after that, it went off again. The way an apex predator lured lesser hunters by mimicking the sound of wounded prey, the Bellerophon called out for help. And Naomi’s fleet answered. The Storm, the Armstrong, the Carcassone, and almost a quarter of the other ships started burning on courses that would meet the Bellerophon. The Bellerophon wasn’t halfway to the Verity Close, but the light delay from it to Laconia was still over seventy minutes.
A malfunctioning ship would be interesting to Duarte and his admirals. An escort fleet coming to its aid looked like something more. It looked like a mistake. And an opportunity.
“Come on,” Naomi said.
“Should I start up?” Alex asked.
“Put us at half a g,” Naomi said. Even if it didn’t work, they’d want to be out of here soon. As comms officer, Ian passed the word along to the other ships, and the Roci eased up from beneath her.
Two hours later, the Whirlwind moved. At high burn, she headed out toward the Bellerophon and the gathering escort ships. For anyone who’d seen the Tempest destroy the combined forces back in Sol, it was like seeing a shark darting toward a beach full of toddlers.
Three hours after that, several hunt groups on the other side of the heliosphere started burning in toward Laconia, and the destroyers went on intercept courses, ready for a slice of their own glory.
There was a point long before any battle came that was her window. Not just how long it would take the Whirlwind to get back, but how long it would have to decelerate before it could even start to reduce the distance to Laconia again. And the same for the destroyers. It was a window of time defined by mass and inertia, thrust, and the frailty of the human body. The time it would take even long-range torpedoes to reach them. Naomi ran the numbers, and she knew when they would see her and her little force diving in from sunward. And that it would be too late.
“Alex?”
“Ready when you are,” he said.
“Let’s go.”
The burn was punishing, and it lasted hours. The distance from the sun to Laconia was slightly less than an astronomical unit. If they’d kept the burn going the whole distance, they’d have snapped by Laconia too quickly to see it. The flip came at the halfway point, and the braking burn was just as bad. Worse, because now the planetary defenses had seen them. Torpedoes darted out toward them, and died in the web of four ships’ coordinated PDCs.
The planet itself was beautiful. Blue and white as Earth, with a greenish cast at its edge that was almost pearlescent. Naomi could make out the clouds. A cyclone forming in its southern hemisphere. The jagged, black-green line of its coast where the forests stood. Naomi fought to keep them in focus. The force of the burn was deforming her eyes.
THE WHIRLWIND HAS TURNED. STARTED ITS BRAKING BURN. IS FIRING LONG RANGE.
The message was from the sensor ops. One of the new people. She checked it herself all the same and agreed. If this didn’t work now, it wouldn’t work later. This was her only shot. Fingers aching, she sent a message to Ian, suffering in the next couch over. SEND THE EVACUATION ORDER. EVERYONE GOES FOR THE GATE NOW.
She heard him grunt and took it as assent.
Alex shouted, his voice strangled by effort and the g forces pressing at them. “Rail-gun fire. Brace. For. Evade.”
The Roci bucked, lurched. At this distance, the rail-gun fire could still be dodged. The closer they came, the harder that would become. She pulled up the targeting arrays, and the beautiful blue-green sphere sprouted five red lines, as bent as tree limbs. The platforms. The targets.
TARGET ALL FIRE ON THE PLATFORMS, she typed. FIRE AT WILL.
It was too soon, but only by a little bit. And there was a chance for a lucky shot. Every second they spent in the firing arc of Laconia was another chance to die. Worse, another chance to fail.
INCOMING TORPEDOES FROM THE WHIRLWIND. ETA 140 MINUTES. Naomi deleted the message. By then, everything would be over.
“Cut the brake,” she shouted. “Do it now.”
The Roci fell onto the float and snapped around 180 degrees, ready to accelerate again. Ready to flee as soon as the enemy was finished. There would only be one run past the planet. If they missed, they lost.
The ship jerked, and Alex took them out of the path of another rail-gun round. The chatter of the PDCs ran through the flesh of the Roci like the ship was talking to itself and it was angry. Naomi’s jaw ached with the tension and fear and the joy. The small, jagged red lines grew a fraction larger.
“Captain?” Ian said. “I have something.”
“Not as helpful as you think,” Naomi snapped. “What do you have?”
“I’m not sure,” Ian said, and passed the comms controls to her monitor. It was an incoming message from the surface of Laconia, coded with an out-of-date underground encryption schema. An evac request.
Amos’ evac request.
“Alex?” she said, and the ship jumped again, slamming her left and then right again, her crash couch whipping like the seat in a carnival ride. “Alex?”
“I see it,” he shouted. He was out of breath. “What do we do?”
Chapter Forty-Five: Teresa
The Mammatus died, burning through Laconia’s gate and being dismembered by the enemy ships, two nights before her birthday. The celebration was held in one of the minor ballrooms, with the same tasteful and understated decorations she always had. Silk banners with bright designs, glass candles that she’d loved when she was eight and been saddled with ever since, flowers raised in hydroponic farms in the city proper.
Soft music played over hidden speakers, all of it by composers and performers living on Laconia. Half of the guests were politicians and cultural figures—adults who’d come mostly to say they’d been there and to see who was in favor. The other half were her peer class and their families. They were dressed in stiff formal blues, just like she was. None of them seemed happy to be there. That was fair. To them, it was like having to go to school an extra session. They were nice to her. They had to be.
The sense of strained pleasure almost made her happy. All the adults had smiles like masks. They made a show of congratulating her, as if not dying for fifteen years in a row was an achievement to be proud of. But even while they pretended to be impressed by how mature and composed she looked, their eyes were darting around the room, trying to find her father. She had to play her role, but at least so did they. No one talked about the invasion. Not even Carrie Fisk, wearing a champagne-colored gown and a fixed grin, looking like she wanted to bolt for the door. Camina Drummer wasn’t there, and Teresa wondered what had happened to her. Either she’d lost control of the Transport Union and wasn’t anyone anymore, or she’d been part of planning the invasion, in which case she was lucky if she wasn’t in the pens.