IV
The midwatch was technically the first watch of the ship's day, though whether it felt like the earliest or the latest was largely a function on how a given crewmember's biological clock operated. Some of Casey's officers and crew actively hated it, while others were less passionate on the subject but not any happier with the duty.
Travis had no such animosities toward midwatch assignments. On the contrary, he rather enjoyed them. Midwatch was the quietest period of ship's day, with the bulk of the crew asleep back in the hab module, only essential operations running, and minimal routine maintenance scheduled.
It was the best time of day, in short, to just be quiet and think.
He certainly had plenty to think about. For the past six weeks most of his waking hours had been devoted to learning everything he could about Casey, her armaments, her capabilities, and her crew. Lieutenant Commander Alfred Woodburn, the ship's tactical officer, had ridden him hard, but unlike some of the officers back on Phoenix Woodburn was eminently fair and always seemed more interested in teaching Travis the ropes than in making himself look superior or his student look stupid.
Travis sent his gaze slowly around the bridge, at the men and women strapped into their stations, casually alert even in the quiet of absolutely nothing happening. Casey wasn't exactly home—Travis wasn't sure if any place would ever truly be home for him—but the ship and her crew had all the little quirks that he'd always imagined would exist in a home. There were a few irritating personalities aboard, and Travis had had his share of small clashes with some of them. But for the most part, the crew seemed to be compatible with each other.
The commissioned complement had even more of that same pseudo-family feeling. On the bridge, Commodore Heissman typically dispensed with the formalities that Captain Castillo had always maintained aboard Phoenix, addressing his senior officers by their first names or even nicknames, some of which Travis still hadn't puzzled out. There was an air of easy camaraderie, the kind that Travis had read about in military-themed books and had experienced to some degree back at OCS.
Still, that familiarity and camaraderie went only so far. Heissman and the other senior officers still addressed Travis formally as Lieutenant or Mr. Long, and he was of course expected to reciprocate with that same formality. Hopefully, it was just a matter of Travis being on probation, that somewhere along the line he would be accepted as a full-fledged member of Casey's family.
Unless Phoenix's same political underpinnings were roiling quietly and undetectably beneath the surface. If so, he might as well get used to being Casey's ugly duckling.
“XO on the bridge,” Lieutenant Rusk called from the sensor station.
Travis looked up from his board to see Commander Belokas float onto the bridge. “Ma'am,” he greeted her, reflexively reaching for his restraints before he could stop himself. Regulations said that when a senior officer entered the bridge all crew members were to immediately rise to attention, a standing order Captain Castillo had enforced aboard Phoenix. Commodore Heissman and Commander Belokas dispensed with that particular formality, and Travis was still getting used to it.
Briefly, he wondered if the officers and crew of Invincible had to float upright in zero-gee every time Admiral Locatelli came into any compartment, not just the bridge. He suspected they probably did.
“What can we do for you, Ma'am?” he asked as Belokas drifted across the bridge, her gaze moving back and forth between the various status monitors.
“I was wondering if there was anything new on that flicker we got from the northwest sector sixteen hours ago,” she said.
“I don't believe so, Ma'am,” Travis said, frowning as he pulled up the log. There hadn't been any mention of activity on the watch report he'd read when he'd arrived on duty an hour ago.
No wonder. The flicker Belokas was referring to was the barest bloop, something that would never even have been noticed if the rest of the universe hadn't been so quiet and Casey's crew so bored. The duty officer had put it down to a sensor echo; the sensor officer, after a thorough examination of his equipment, had suggested it was probably a hyper ghost, a phenomenon that shipboard instrumentation was unfortunately not well-equipped to pinpoint or identify. For that, a large-scale orbiting sensor array was necessary, and Manticore wasn't likely to be buying one of those monstrosities anytime soon.
But if the frown on Belokas's face was any indication, she wasn't happy with either explanation. An odd reaction, really, given that such ghosts weren't exactly unheard of out here. “There's been nothing new, Ma'am,” Travis told her. “Do you want us to run another sensor diagnostic?”
For a few seconds Belokas didn't answer, but merely continued her drift toward the command station. Travis watched her approach, his heartbeat picking up a bit. He was still somewhat new to this whole officer-in-charge thing, and he already knew how lousy he was at reading Belokas's expression and body language. Should he have run such a diagnostic already? Was she holding her peace merely because she wanted to be close enough to chew him out quietly, without the rest of the bridge crew listening in?
“More diagnostics won't tell us anything new,” she said at last, catching hold of the hand grip beside his station and bringing herself to a halt. “Let's try something else. Run me a simulation of what a soft translation about fifteen light-minutes outside the hyper limit would look like.”
“Yes, Ma'am,” Travis said, and swiveled around to his console. That possibility had already been considered, he'd seen from the report. But between the diagnostics and the hyper ghost hypothesis, that scenario had apparently been dropped. Certainly there was no record of anyone having done a simulation or even a data-curve profile.
Fortunately, it was a fairly easy job, with most of the necessary templates already stored on the ship's computer. A couple of minutes, and he was ready. “Here we go,” he said, starting the run. “I set it to cover the full range of thirteen to eighteen light-minutes. If that doesn't work, I can extend it outward—”
“Hyper footprint!” Rusk called.
For a fraction of a second Travis thought the sensor officer was talking about the simulation. Then his brain caught up with him. “Acknowledged,” he said, swiveling again and checking the sensor display. It was a translation, all right, a big, fat, noisy one.
And it was in the northwest sector, right on the same vector where the sensor bloop had registered. “We have anything on her?” he asked.
“She's reasonably big,” Rusk said, frowning at his displays. “Low-power wedge, low acceleration. Probably a freighter, possibly a passenger liner. There's something funny about her wedge, too—some sort of nonrhythmic fluctuation. Could be she's having reactor problems.”
Travis looked at Belokas, wondering if she would formally relieve him and take command. Ships didn't show up at Manticore every day, after all.
But she was just gazing silently at the displays. Waiting, apparently, for the officer of the watch to respond to the situation.
Travis squared his shoulders. “Send a request for identification and status, and inform the rest of Janus that we have a visitor,” he ordered. “Then send an alert to System Command.” He squinted at the tactical. “What is she, about ten light-minutes out?”
“Yes, Sir, just a shade under,” Rusk confirmed. “So about twenty minutes until we get a reply.”
“Unless she is having problems, in which case she's probably already screaming for help,” Belokas said. She tapped her cheek thoughtfully. “Where's Aegis at the moment?”
Aegis, the callsign for Admiral Locatelli's Green One force. “The far side of Manticore,” Travis said. “About twenty-two light minutes away from us, maybe thirteen or fourteen from the bogey. Shall I send an alert directly to Admiral Locatelli?”
“That would be a good idea,” Belokas confirmed. “If there's trouble, we're definitely closest. But depending on what's going on, he may want to reconfigure Aegis while we head out there.” Her lips compressed briefly. “And while you do all that, I also recommend calling Commodore Heissman to the bridge.”
* * *
“—and I think the reactor's mag bottle is also starting to fail,” Captain Olver's frantic voice boomed over Odin's com speaker. “My engineer says it could go at any time.”
Gensonne listened closely, trying to ignore the annoying flutter in the carefully mistuned old-fashioned radio that Olver was using to supplement his com laser, hoping the other would remember his instructions to keep his voice pleading but not whiny. People hated whiny, even upstanding naval types willing to risk their lives for those in danger. Making Naglfar look stoic and sympathetic would encourage the Manticorans listening to his distress call to charge to the rescue with a minimum of delay and, hopefully, a minimum of prudence.
“Repeating: this is the personnel transport Leviathan, heading for the Haven Sector with three thousand passengers,” Olver continued. “The same power surge that damaged our forward alpha nodes and the fusion bottle's also compromised our life-support system—we're trying to fix it, but it's not looking good, and I don't know how long before it fails completely. If you have any ships in the area, for the love of God please get them out here. We're making as many gees as we can, but I don't know how much longer before we'll have to shut down the wedge completely, and we're a hell of a long way from anywhere. Whatever ships you've got—freighters, liners, ore ships—anything we can pack our people into—please send them. For the love of God, please.”
The plea broke off as one of Olver's crew came up with his own anxiously delivered and almost off-mike report on the supposed fusion bottle failure, and Gensonne keyed off the speaker. They were still a good distance out from the inner system, but it looked like the nearest Manticoran force was about ten light-minutes away, which meant a twenty-minute turnaround for any conversation.
The Manticorans' response should be interesting. In the meantime, Gensonne had plenty of other matters with which to occupy himself. “What's the status of the main force?” he called across the bridge.
“We've temporarily lost contact, Admiral,” Imbar called back. “They're definitely still behind us, but they're hard to spot with their wedges down.”
Gensonne grunted, looking across the relevant display screens. Being difficult to spot was the whole idea, of course. But knowing exactly where to look should make the task a lot simpler.
Though perhaps he was being too harsh on Imbar and the sensor team. The fourteen ships of the advance and rear forces had translated into n-space together a few hours ago, coming in softly and quietly about forty light-minutes out from Manticore-A, where they ought to have been well out of range of RMN sensors. The enormous passive arrays typical of more populous star systems would certainly have picked them up, but shipboard sensors' range was always far more limited. The invaders had sorted themselves into Gensonne's six-ship advance force and Thor's eight-ship main force, then headed toward the inner system in two waves spaced about an hour apart. A couple of hours of acceleration by both groups to build up some respectable speed, and then all fourteen ships had dropped their wedges to standby as they coasted inward. Even knowing where to look, the distant ships should barely even reflect Manticore-A's distant light.
Now, after hours of tedium, things were finally about to heat up. Far ahead, Naglfar had translated into the system—not with the same undetectable entry as the rest of the Volsung ships, but with a big, noisy translation that should have grabbed the attention of every RMN ship in the region. That sloppy entrance, along with Olver's frantic plea for help, should get the Manticoran ships falling all over themselves scrambling to come to his aid.
It would no doubt be highly entertaining to see how a Manticoran boarding party would react to finding out that a shipload of supposedly helpless civilians was actually five battalions of crack Volsung shock troops. Sadly, Gensonne would miss out on that picture. If all went according to plan, the Manticorans' first encounter with those troops wouldn't be in deep space, but at the Royal Palace in Landing City.
By then, of course, the surprise would be long gone. Still, the purpose of this exercise was capture and occupation, not entertainment. And once the RMN had been eliminated, Volsung control of the Manticoran centers of power would be a mere formality.
“Got a bearing on Naglfar, Admiral,” Imbar called. “We're on a good intercept course. We should pass it in about ninety-seven minutes.”
Gensonne checked the tac display. Ninety-seven minutes was shorter than he'd planned, but within acceptable parameters. “Have Olver increase acceleration to ninety-five gees,” he instructed Imbar. He could always have Naglfar cut back later if Gensonne needed to fine-tune the intercept. “Any movement from the Manticorans yet?”
“No, Sir,” Imbar said. “But Bogey One should just be hearing Olver's distress call now.”
“Keep an eye on them,” Gensonne ordered. “Once we know their jump-off time and acceleration, I want a quick plot of their zero-zero intercept. We need to make sure we're far enough ahead of Naglfar that they won't be able to turn tail and run once they spot us.”
Though the other little surprise Gensonne had planned should help alleviate that problem. If the destroyers Umbriel and Miranda had translated in on schedule at their own spot around the edge of the hyper limit, there was a good chance their timing and vector would help cut off any retreat the Manticorans might attempt.
“Yes, Sir,” Imbar said. “We're also picking up a second group of wedges, bearing oh-two-one by oh-one-eight. From the signature there seem to be significantly more ships there than in the first group. That probably makes them the main Bogey Two force.”
“Distance?”
“Just under fourteen light-minutes.”
Gensonne nodded in satisfaction. Llyn's most recent intel had suggested the two task forces would be positioned more or less this way relative to Manticore and Sphinx, and Gensonne had relied on that data in mapping out his attack plan. But there'd been no way to know for sure how the Manticorans would be arrayed until the Volsungs actually entered the system.
Now, with the defenders' positions confirmed, the plan was officially a lock. Assuming the Manticorans bought into Olver's story, Bogey One would rush to Naglfar's rescue and be quickly destroyed by Odin and the rest of the advance force. If Bogey Two followed and moved to engage, its ships should arrive just in time to face the entire Volsung force as Thor and the rest of the rear group caught up with Gensonne's first wave.
If Bogey One opted instead to avoid battle and run for home, the end result would still be the same, just a few hours later. Either way, Manticore was as good as taken.
Llyn would be pleased. More to the point, Llyn's boss over at Axelrod would be paying a nice contractual bonus.
Smiling tightly, Gensonne settled back and waited for the Manticorans to take the bait.
* * *
“We're making as many gees as we can,” the tense voice came from the bridge speaker, “but I don't know how much longer before we'll have to shut down the wedge completely, and we're a hell of a long way from anywhere. Whatever ships you've got—freighters, liners, ore ships—anything we can pack our people into—please send them. For the love of God, please.”
Heissman gestured, and the com officer keyed the volume back down. “XO?” the commodore invited, looking at Belokas.
“All ships showing ready,” Belokas reported.
“What's your estimate on how many passengers we can take?”
Belokas huffed out a breath. “Between all four of us, I don't think we can take more than five hundred. And that's if we pack them to the deckheads. Not exactly luxury travel.”
“Still beats suffocating in the cold,” Woodburn said with a grunt.
“That it does,” Heissman agreed. “Send a copy of their distress call to Aegis with a request for aid. They're farther out, but they've got a lot more room.”
“Assuming Leviathan can hold its bottle together long enough for Locatelli to reach them,” Belokas warned.
“Nothing we can do about that,” Woodburn said.
“So we are going to head out there?” Travis asked.
All eyes turned to him. “You have something, Lieutenant?” Heissman asked.
“Something solid?” Woodburn added. “Because hunches don't—”
He broke off at a small gesture from Heissman. “Continue,” the commodore said.
Travis braced himself. “There's just something about this that feels wrong, Sir,” he said, hoping the words didn't sound as lame to the others as they did to him. Especially since Woodburn had already warned him that no one was interested in his hunches. “The timing, the vector—same bearing as the hyper ghost—the fact that they came here instead of trying for somewhere else—”
“Their wedge is showing signs of stress,” Heissman reminded him. “And all indications are that it's a merchant or passenger liner, not a warship.”
“Sir, zero-zero intercept course is plotted and ready,” the helm reported.
“Feed to the other ships, and let's make some gravs,” Heissman said. He looked at Travis. “And order all crews to Readiness Two,” he added. “Just in case.”
* * *
“They're coming,” Imbar announced. “Vector . . .too early to tell for sure, but it looks like they're lining up for a zero-zero intercept with Naglfar.”
“Excellent,” Gensonne said with a warm glow of satisfaction. The Manticorans had fallen for it. “Do we have a fix on Umbriel and Miranda?”
“Not yet,” Imbar said. “But we're monitoring the area where they should be. Assuming they made it in all right, they should be lighting off their wedges sometime in the next couple of hours to fine-tune their own intercept with Bogey One.”
Gensonne nodded. Having the two destroyers arrive just in time to catch the Manticorans in a cross-fire would be helpful, but it was hardly vital to his plan. If they missed out on this first skirmish, they would be able to switch to a similar attack role when the Volsungs came up against Bogey Two.
And if they also managed to miss out on that one, they would still be useful as scouts, sweeping the area ahead of the Volsung fleet toward Manticore proper after the two defending forces had been disposed of.
One way or another, Gensonne promised himself, every ship in the assault force would earn its pay today.
* * *
Janus was still two hours away from its projected zero-zero rendezvous with Leviathan, and was making yet another course correction as the damaged liner once again adjusted her own acceleration, when Gorgon signaled the news that two more wedges had appeared in the distance.
“Shapira says it's pure luck she spotted them in the first place,” Belokas said, hovering close beside Heissman's station as they gazed together at the unexpected and, to Travis's mind, unsettling data the destroyer had sent across. “Given that our wedges were all turned that direction, and all our crews busy with the course change, I tend to agree with her.”
“Captain Shapira has a bad habit of ascribing to luck things which properly belong to training and vigilance,” Heissman said thoughtfully as he gazed at the tactical. “Make sure we log a commendation for her and her bridge crew for this one. What do you make of it?”
“They're definitely smaller than Leviathan,” Belokas said. “Could be small freighters. Definitely not ore ships or anything else that's supposed to be running around out there.”
“Or they could be small warships,” Woodburn added. “Destroyers or light cruisers. Especially—there! Now, isn't that interesting?”
Travis felt his eyes narrow. As suddenly as they'd appeared, the mysterious wedges had vanished. As if the ships had finished with whatever course change or acceleration they'd come out of hiding for and then dropped back into the covering blackness of interplanetary space.
Woodburn was obviously thinking the same thing. “They're hiding, all right,” he said grimly. “You'll also notice that they saved their maneuvers for a period when we were doing some adjustments of our own and were theoretically at our least attentive. With all due respect, Commodore, this is starting to look less like a rescue mission and more like an invasion.”
“Agreed,” Heissman said. “Mr. Long, what did you come up with on our battle inventory?”
“Not as good as it should be, Sir,” Travis said.
And instantly regretted the words. The fact that Janus wasn't running at full strength was the fault of the politicians in Parliament, not RMN Command. But his thoughtless comment could easily be construed as criticism of that leadership.
Or, worse, as a criticism of his own commander. Neither was acceptable, especially not on that commander's own bridge.
Fortunately, Heissman didn't seem to take it that way. “No argument here, Lieutenant,” he said, a bit dryly. “Continue.”
“Without the editorial comments,” Belokas added more severely.
“Yes, Ma'am,” Travis said, wincing. “My apologies. Our missile count is down to eighteen, but both fore and aft lasers are fully functional, as are the broadside energy torpedo launchers. One of our autocannon is a little iffy—cooling problems; the techs are working on it. We also have nineteen countermissiles, and all four of the launchers read green.”
“What about the other ships?” Belokas asked.
“Gorgon has eight missiles and Hercules and Gemini each have four,” Travis said. “Their point-defenses are about in the same shape and with the same capacity as ours.”
“How many of those missiles are practice rounds?” Heissman asked.
“None, Sir,” Travis said, frowning. “I didn't think I should count those.”
“They still look like real missiles, even if they can't go bang,” Heissman pointed out. “What's the count?”
“We have four, Gorgon has two, Hercules one, Gemini two,” Travis said. But if the missiles had no warheads . . . ?
The confusion must have shown on his face, because both Heissman and Woodburn favored him with small smiles. “Never underestimate the power of a bald-faced bluff, Mr. Long,” Heissman said. “At worst, a dummy missile can make an enemy waste rounds from their point-defenses. At best, its wedge can shred a hull with the best of them.”
The smile vanished. “So basically, we're underarmed, undercrewed, and even with Aegis pulling all the gees they can we're a fair ways from any reinforcement. Recommendations?”
“The safe move would be to break off,” Woodburn said reluctantly. “Our limping passenger liner could be anything up to and including a battlecruiser, and by the time we have accurate sensor data it'll be too late to get away.”
He gestured. “And then we've got those two ships playing hide-and-seek out there. We're lucky to see two visiting ships a month; and now we've suddenly got three of them on the same day? And three ships which seem to be coordinating movements?”
“So you're recommending we alert Command and break with an eye toward a rendezvous with Aegis?” Heissman asked calmly.
“I said that would be the safe move,” Woodburn corrected, just as calmly. “But we're not out here to play safe. We're out here to look for trouble, and when we find that trouble to assess and deal with it.”
“So your actual recommendation is that we fly into the mouth of the beast?” Belokas asked.
“Right square into it,” Woodburn confirmed. “But I also recommend we have Gorgon start drifting a little behind us and the corvettes. Not so fast or far that our friends out there take notice and wonder what we're up to, but far enough for her to run communications between us once we raise our sidewalls.” His lips compressed briefly. “Hopefully, she'll be able to stay clear long enough to send back a full record of whatever's about to happen.”
Travis swallowed. The implication was painfully clear. Woodburn didn't expect Casey or the two corvettes to survive the approaching encounter.
But that, too, was why Janus was out here.
“XO?” Heissman invited.
“I agree with Commander Woodburn's assessment and proposed action, Sir,” Belokas said, her voice formal.
“Very good,” Heissman said, his tone matching hers. “Alert all ships as to the situation, and have them stand ready for farther orders. Albert, draw up a proposed timeline for detaching Gorgon and shifting us into combat formation. XO, we'll stay at Readiness Two, but warn all ships that we could go to Readiness One at any time. If we've got any spare warheads aboard, have the crews start swapping them into the practice missiles.”
“Yes, Sir.” Woodburn nudged Travis. “Come on, Lieutenant. We have work to do.” He pushed off the hand grip and floated toward his station.
Travis followed, long practice enabling him to stay close to his superior without bumping into him. “A question, Sir?” he asked.
“Why Gorgon instead of one of the corvettes?”
Travis felt his lip twitch. “Yes, Sir,” he admitted. “Gorgon has more missiles, more armor, and better sidewalls. If we're heading into a fight, we could use her up here with us.”
“She also has aft autocannon,” Woodburn reminded him. “If it comes down to the last surviving ship of Janus Force making a run for it, we need to make sure it's the ship with the best chance of making it through a barrage of up-the-kilt missiles.”
Travis nodded, an odd thought flicking through his mind. Casey also had aft autocannon, and a better chance of survival even than Gorgon. If the most critical priority was to gain information on the intruder and then run, the strictly logical answer was for Casey to take the rear position instead. Depending on what kind of warship was lurking behind the crippled-liner masquerade, having Casey in the battle probably wouldn't make that much of a difference in the outcome anyway.
He wondered if the option had even entered Heissman's mind. Or Belokas's, or Woodburn's. Probably not. They were in command, and they would of course take Casey into the thick of whatever was about to happen.
Yet Travis had thought of that option.
Did that mean he was a coward?
He stole a glance at Woodburn's profile. There was a tension around the other's eyes . . .and only then did it dawn on Travis that probably none of Casey's senior officers, from Heissman on down, had ever been in actual combat. The Star Kingdom had been at peace for a long time, out here in its backwater isolation, and it was entirely possible that no one in power had ever seriously expected that to change. Certainly the faction of Parliament dedicated to gutting the fleet operated under that assumption.
Maybe Leviathan really was a damaged liner. Maybe there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for those other two here-then-gone wedges. Maybe this was just a bizarre coincidence that all of them would get together and laugh about over a drink someday.
But if it wasn't, then they were all about to see how the RMN handled a real, nonsimulated battle.
Back on Phoenix, Travis had wondered whether a taste of warfare would shake up some of the Star Kingdom's complacency. Now, it looked like they were going to find out.
* * *
It was time.
Gensonne ran his eyes over Odin's bridge displays one final time. He and Tyr were in their combat stack, Odin a thousand kilometers above the other battlecruiser, where the constraints of wedge and sidewalls gave give both ships optimal fields of fire for their missiles and autocannon. The two heavy cruisers, Copperhead and Adder, were in their own stack a thousand kilometers ahead and slightly above and beneath the two battlecruisers, positioned so their countermissiles could protect both of the larger warships. Fifteen hundred kilometers ahead of the cruisers and another thousand to starboard, the destroyer Ganymede guarded the starboard flank.
Ideally, Gensonne would have liked to have Phobos mirror-image Ganymede on the formation's portside flank. But with communications through sidewalls tricky at best, it was more important for Phobos to hang far back in com-relay position. In the heat of battle a communications blackout, even a brief one, could spell disaster. The only way to assure that didn't happen was to dedicate one of his ships to bounce signals back and forth through the unobstructed gaps at the other ships' kilts.
Besides, his full force was hardly necessary to complete the task at hand. In a pinch, Odin and one of Gensonne's cruisers could easily take out the four undersized Bogey One ships the Volsungs were closing on. Probably without even scratching their paint.
Just the same, Gensonne would indeed throw the full weight of his force against the Manticorans. After all, the only thing better than a painless victory was a fast painless victory.
He keyed his com. “Admiral to all ships,” he called into the microphone. “Stand by battle stations. Relay status data now.”
For a moment nothing happened. Then, in proper order, the status board indicators began to wink on. Odin showed green; Tyr showed green; Copperhead—
Gensonne felt his eyes narrow. Floating in the sea of soothing green were a pair of red lights. “Captain Imbar?”
“It's their ventral autocannon,” Imbar called from the com station. “Starboard sensor miscalibration. They're working on it.”
Gensonne mouthed a curse as he looked back at the status board, where more green was filling in around Copperhead's red lights. Should he give Copperhead a few more minutes? The Manticoran force was in deceleration mode, their kilts to the incoming Volsungs as they aimed for a zero-zero at the distant Naglfar far behind him. If Gensonne signaled Naglfar to raise its acceleration a bit, the Manticorans would presumably respond by increasing their deceleration rate, which would postpone the rapidly approaching moment when the enemy's sensors would finally pick up the warships coasting stealthily toward them.
Gensonne straightened up, feeling the uniform collar peeking out from above his vac suit's helmet ring pull briefly against his neck with the movement. Ridiculous. Even if every one of Copperhead's lights went red he still had overwhelming superiority.
Besides, the far larger Bogey Two was also burning its way toward them across the Manticoran system. Postponing the Bogey One skirmish would mean less time to reorganize and rearm before Bogey Two showed up.
Bogey One was nearly in range.
Time for them to die.
“Tell Copperhead to keep working until they get it right,” he growled to Imbar. Keying his mike again, he straightened a little more. “All ships: stand by to light up wedges.”
* * *
Heissman had sent Belokas and Woodburn off the bridge for a short break, and Travis was strapped into the tac station when the moment everyone aboard Casey had been waiting for finally came.
Only it wasn't the single ship they were expecting. It was far, far worse.
“New contact!” Rusk snapped from the sensor board, the words cutting across the low-level conversation murmuring across the bridge. “I make it six ships on intercept vector at two hundred fifteen gees. Missile range, approximately sixteen minutes.”
“All ships, increase deceleration to two kilometers per second squared and go to Readiness One,” Heissman called into his mike, the calm of his voice in sharp contrast to the sudden pounding of Travis's heart. “Mr. Long?” he added.
Surreptitiously, Travis touched the helmet of his vac suit, fastened securely beside his station. Knowing it was there made him feel marginally safer. Marginally. “Six ships confirmed for Bogey Three,” he said, his eyes flicking back and forth between the displays and the computer's analysis of the incoming data. One of the many things Woodburn had beaten into him over the past few weeks was that you never simply took the computer's word for anything when you could do your own assessment and analysis. “From wedge strength I'm guessing two battlecruisers, two heavy cruisers, and two light cruisers or destroyers. One of the latter is hanging back in com position.”
“Which pretty much confirms they're a war fleet,” Woodburn's voice came over Travis's shoulder.
Travis looked up to see the tac officer float up behind him, the other's hard gaze flicking coolly across the displays. “Yes, Sir,” Travis agreed, reaching for his restraints.
To his surprise, Woodburn waved him to stay where he was. “Any read on origination or class?” Heissman asked.
“No, Sir,” Woodburn said as he settled into a hovering position beside Travis. “But the over/under configuration of the battlecruisers and cruisers might indicate Solarian training and military doctrine.”
“Which doesn't actually tell us where they came from,” Belokas pointed out as she floated rapidly across the bridge toward her station. “A lot of militaries use Solly doctrine.”
“Maybe they'll be kind enough to tell us,” Heissman suggested. “Everyone watch and listen.” Reaching over, he keyed the com. “Unidentified ships, this is Commodore Rudolph Heissman, Royal Manticoran Navy. Kindly identify yourselves and state your business in Manticoran space.”
There was a short pause, not much longer than the fifteen seconds that the signal would take to make the round trip. Clearly, the other commander had been expecting the call and already knew what he was going to say. “Greetings, Commodore Heissman,” a deep voice boomed from the bridge speakers.
Travis looked at the com display. The face now filling the screen was light-skinned, the color of a man who seldom ventured out into the sun, with blue eyes and a mouth that had a sardonic twist to it. From the shape and angles of its creases, Travis guessed that sardonic was the mouth's most common mode. Above the face was a slightly balding carpet of pure blond hair cut in short military style. Below the face, a couple of centimeters of high-collared tunic could be seen above his vac suit.
“Black collar line, blue-gray knitted collar,” Woodburn murmured. Travis nodded, already keying the parameters into the computer for an archive search.
“My name and origin are unimportant,” the man continued, “but for convenience you may address me as Admiral Tamerlane. My business is, I regret to say, the destruction of you and your task force. I am, however, willing to discuss terms of surrender. If you're interested in pursuing that offer, you may indicate that by striking your wedges and preparing to be boarded.”
He tilted his head slightly, and as he did so one of the muted insignia on his collar came into better view. A curved comet with a star at its inner edge, Travis decided, and added it to the search criteria. “This is, naturally, a limited time offer,” Tamerlane continued. “I read you as coming into missile range in just under eighteen minutes; somewhat less, of course, if you break off your pointless attempt to escape and turn to offer battle. I'll await your answer.” He reached off-screen and his image vanished.
“Confident s.o.b.,” Heissman commented. “Anyone recognize him or his accent?”
The bridge remained silent, and out of the corners of his eyes Travis saw shaking heads. “Mr. Long?” Heissman asked.
“The uniform could be Solarian,” Travis affirmed, scanning the search results. “But a lot of Core World navies wear something similar. What we could see of the insignia looked more like something the Tahzeeb Navy uses.”
“So they're probably mercenaries,” Belokas said.
“Probably,” Woodburn agreed. “Not sure what calling himself Tamerlane means. The original was an Old Earth conqueror who ran roughshod over a good chunk of the planet a little over two thousand years ago.”
“Tamerlane was also considered a military genius,” Heissman said. “I wonder which of those two aspects he's trying to reference.”
“Either way, he's definitely the megalomaniac type,” Belokas said. “Confident, but probably not so confident that we can goad him into telling us what he has planned for Manticore after he runs us over.”
“Certainly not until he's sure we can't send anything useful back to System Command or Aegis,” Heissman agreed. “Speaking of Aegis, what's their current ETA?”
“They're still nearly two hours away,” Belokas said. “We could postpone the battle a bit by pushing our compensators right up to the red line, but it wouldn't be enough for them to get here before we have to fight.”
“What about Bogey Two?” Heissman asked.
“Nothing since their last course adjustment,” Woodburn said. “Depending on where in the plot cone they are, they'll probably reach sensor range within the next ten to twenty minutes.”
“So no allies, but probably more opponents,” Heissman said. “In that case, I see no point in delaying the inevitable.” He keyed his com. “All ships, this is the Commodore. We've been challenged to a fight, and I intend to give them the biggest damn fight they've ever been in. Gorgon, maintain current course and acceleration—your job is to get the records of what's about to happen back to Manticore. Hercules and Gemini, stand by for a coordinated one-eighty pitch turn on my mark.”
Travis frowned. “A pitch turn?” he asked quietly. Most turns he'd seen had been of the yaw variety, where the ship rotated along its vertical axis, instead of a pitch flip that sent the ship head over heels and briefly put the stronger but more sensor-opaque stress bands between the ship and the incoming threat.
“A pitch turn,” Woodburn confirmed, an edge of grim humor to his voice. “We can launch a salvo of missiles just before our wedge drops far enough to clear their line of sight, which will keep them from spotting the booster flares. By the time we've turned all the way over the missiles will be clear and ready to light off their wedges once Commodore Heissman decides which target he wants to go after first.”
Travis nodded. Casey herself had electromagnetic launchers that didn't betray themselves with such telltales, but both Hercules and Gemini had the standard boosters on their missiles, vital for getting the weapons far enough from the ship that they could safely light up their wedges. If Janus could launch without Tamerlane spotting the missiles it would give the Manticorans at least a momentary advantage.
“Pitch turn: mark,” Heissman called. “Stand by two missiles from each corvette and four from us, again on my mark.”
Travis looked over at the tac display. Casey and the two corvettes were turning in unison, their loss of acceleration sending Gorgon toward the edge of the field even as the invading formation seemed to leap forward .
And the enemy would unfortunately have plenty of time to work on closing the remaining distance. Pitch turn or yaw turn, either type of one-eighty took a good two minutes to complete.
“Missiles on my mark,” Heissman said softly, his eyes on the tac.
“Missiles ready,” Belokas confirmed. “Target?”
Heissman watched the tac another moment, then turned to Woodburn. “Suggestions, Alfred?”
“I'd go with all eight on one of the cruisers,” Woodburn said. “The way they're deployed strongly suggests the battlecruisers have opted for extra missiles instead of carrying their own countermissile loads, which would mean they're relying on the cruisers to screen for them. If we can kill one of them right out of the box, we may have a shot at doing some damage to one of the big boys.”
“I'm sure Admiral Locatelli would appreciate us softening them up a bit for him,” Belokas said dryly. “I'll go with Alfred on this one.”
Heissman looked at Travis. “Mr. Long?”
Travis looked at the tac display. Three small ships against six . . . “I'd throw four at each cruiser, Sir.”
“Reason?”
“If those are mercenaries out there, they may be running a nonuniform mix of ship types and classes,” Travis said. “Watching their defenses might give us some clues as to what types of ships they have and how to more effectively attack them. By attacking two at once, we'll get that data a bit faster.”
“Alfred?” Heissman invited.
“We'd still do better to saturate one of them,” Woodburn said. “Frankly, Sir, we're not going to get a lot of shots off in the time we have. We should concentrate on doing as much damage as possible.”
“You may be right,” Heissman agreed. “But Mr. Long is also right. Information is what we need most, both for ourselves and for Admiral Locatelli. I think it's worth the risk.” He keyed his com. “Hercules and Gemini: one missile from each of you at each of the leading cruisers. We'll throw an additional two at each one.”
He favored Travis with a small smile. “Let's see how well Admiral Tamerlane can dance.”
* * *
The three nearer Manticoran ships finished their turn—a pitch turn, interestingly enough—and with that, their throats were open to attack. “Stand by missiles,” Gensonne called. The first salvo would go to Casey, he decided. Odin's telemetry could only control six missiles at once, and while normally he would have preferred to hit the Manticoran cruiser with something a little more crushing, at this point it would be more useful to see what kind of defenses they could bring against a slightly less overwhelming attack. “Fire salvo: one through six, targeting—”
“Missiles!” Imbar snapped.
Of course missiles, was Gensonne's first reflexive thought. He'd already said to stand by missiles.
Then his brain caught up, and he jerked his head around to the sensor display.
There were missiles out there, all right: eight of them, creeping toward him with wedges down and only the relative velocities between them and the Volsungs providing them any movement at all. He opened his mouth to demand that Imbar tell him where they'd come from and why they weren't running under power—
And then, abruptly, all eight missiles lit up their wedges and leaped forward toward the Volsung force.
“Where the hell did they come from?” Imbar snarled. “They're not supposed to have electromagnetic launchers.”
“It was that damn pitch turn,” Gensonne said as he finally got it, throwing a glance at the countdown timer. One hundred and three seconds until impact. “They fired while our view of their booster flares was blocked.”
Imbar grunted. “Cute.”
“Very,” Gensonne said darkly. “But don't worry about it. “We can play cute, too.”
Only for the next hundred seconds or so, he couldn't. Forty seconds from now, sixty seconds before the incoming missiles' projected impact, Copperhead and Adder would launch a salvo of countermissiles into the path of the incoming weapons. Forty-five seconds after that, all six Volsung ships would open up with their autocannon in an effort to stop any missiles that made it through the countermissile gauntlet.
The frustrating hell of it was that for most of the missiles' run it would be impossible to tell which ship or ships they were targeting. Still, if Heissman had any brains he would be aiming this first salvo at one or both of the cruisers. A properly competent flag officer should have deduced from the Volsungs' configuration that the cruisers were the ones carrying the countermissiles, and were therefore the ones that needed to be taken out before the Manticorans could have a reasonable shot at Odin or Tyr.
Well, let them try. The cruisers were carrying full point-defense loads, and if Heissman wanted to waste his missiles battering against their defenses he was more than welcome to do so.
Except . . .
With a curse, he spun around to the status board. There, still glowing red amid the field of green, were the lights marking Copperhead's troubled ventral autocannon.
And if one of the Manticoran missiles happened to come in from the side with the bad sensor . . .
“All ships: cease acceleration on my mark,” he snarled, turning back to the tac. The two standard responses to a situation like this would be for Copperhead to either yaw to starboard to adjust for the miscalibration or else pitch up or down to interpose his wedge between the ship and the incoming missiles. Unfortunately, if the rest of the force was under acceleration at the time, both countermoves would instantly break the Volsungs' formation. The only way to maintain their relative positions would be for all six ships to kill acceleration and coast.
Of course, that would also give the Bogey One ships a breather from the doom arrowing in on them. Still, it was hard to imagine what they could do with those extra few minutes. The rear ship, the one Heissman was clearly hoping would get clear with data from the battle would gain a little distance, but it was already too little too late.
As for the other three ships, they would have to do another one-eighty if they hoped to do any more running themselves. Any such move would be relatively slow and instantly telegraphed.
No, Heissman's force wasn't going anywhere. Gensonne could afford the time to do this right. “All ships, cease acceleration: mark. Imbar?”
“All ships coasting,” Imbar reported. “Formation maintained.”
Gensonne nodded, peering at the tac display. Copperhead was already taking advantage of the lull and was starting its starboard yaw.
Hell with that. If they were going to be forced to coast anyway, there was no reason for Copperhead to waste any of its point-defense weaponry. “Von Belling, belay your yaw,” he ordered into his mike. “Pitch wedge to the incoming fire.”
“I can handle it,” von Belling's voice came from the speaker.
“I said pitch wedge,” Gensonne snapped.
“Aye, aye, Sir,” von Belling said with thinly disguised disgust. “Pitching wedge.”
On the tactical, Copperhead changed from its yaw turn to a vertical pitch, dropping its bow to present its roof to the incoming missiles. Gensonne watched, splitting his attention between the cruiser and the incoming missiles. If von Belling's momentary bitching had left the maneuver too late, the admiral promised himself darkly, he'd better hope the Manticoran missiles got to him before Gensonne himself did.
Fortunately, it wasn't going to come to that. Copperhead turned in plenty of time, and as Odin's autocannon roared into action Gensonne watched the incoming salvo split into two groups, one set of four targeting each of the cruisers. The ones aimed at Copperhead disintegrated harmlessly against its roof, while Adder's countermissiles and autocannon made equally quick work of the other group. “Stand by for acceleration,” Gensonne ordered. Copperhead was starting its reverse pivot again, and as soon as it was back in position the Volsungs could resume their full-acceleration pursuit of the Manticorans.
Meanwhile, there was no reason Gensonne had to wait until for acceleration before he took the battle back to Heissman. “Missiles ready?” he called.
“Missiles ready,” Imbar confirmed.
“Six at the light cruiser,” Gensonne said. “Fire.”
* * *
“All missiles destroyed,” Rusk reported. “No hits.”
“Acknowledged,” Heissman said. “Alfred? What have we learned?”
“Their point-defense seems comparable to ours,” Woodburn said, peering closely at the computer analysis. “Countermissiles on the cruisers, autocannon on everyone else. Looks like pretty high quality of both. Their ECM is also good—looks like they got a soft kill on at least one of the missiles, possibly two. They also don't seem shy about spending ammo.”
“Or missiles, either,” Rusk said tightly. “Missile trace, two: thirty-five hundred gees, estimated impact time one hundred fifty-three seconds. Make that four missiles, same impact projection . . . make it six. Missile trace, six, impact one hundred forty-eight seconds.”
Travis winced. Six missiles, with all four of the Manticoran ships at only eighty percent of point-defense capacity.
Woodburn was clearly thinking along the same lines. “Commodore, I don't think we're ready to take on that many birds.”
“Agreed,” Heissman said. “But we also need to pull some data on their capabilities.”
“So we're going to take them on?” Belokas asked.
“We're going to split the difference,” Heissman corrected. “Start a portside yaw turn—not a big or fast one, just a few degrees. I want to cut the starboard sidewall across the missile formation, letting just one or two of them past the leading edge and trusting the countermissiles to take those out. That way we get a closer look at the missiles and their yield without risking having too many of them coming in for us to block.”
Travis stole a glance at Woodburn, waiting for the tac officer to point out the obvious risk: that if the incoming missiles' sidewall penetrators functioned like they were supposed to, taking four or five on Casey's sidewalls could be a quick path to disaster. Most of the time that kind of maneuver was a decent enough gamble, given the notorious unreliability of such weapons. But anytime you had that many threats things could get tricky.
Especially if Tamerlane's ships were carrying more advanced sidewall penetrators that weren't so finicky.
But Woodburn remained silent. As Travis had known he would. The commodore had already agreed that Casey's mission was to gather information that would be crucial in helping Locatelli defeat this inexplicable invasion.
The missiles crept closer. Travis watched the tac display as Belokas fine-tuned Casey's position, a vague idea starting to form at the back of his mind. If he'd seen what he thought he'd seen during the first Janus salvo . . .
He swiveled around to his plotter and ran the numbers and geometry. It would work, he decided. It would be tricky and require some fancy timing, but it might just work.
There was a throbbing hum from the launchers' capacitors as Casey sent a salvo of countermissiles blazing out into space . . . and it occurred to him that if Heissman's trick didn't work, there was a good chance he would never know it. At the speed the missiles were traveling, they would reach the edge of the countermissiles' range barely two tenths of a second before reaching Casey itself. If the defenses failed to stop the attack, or the sidewall was breached—
There was a muted double flash on the tac as two of the missiles slammed into the countermissiles and were destroyed. Travis's eyes and brain had just registered that fact when the deck abruptly jerked beneath him and the tense silence of the bridge was ripped apart by the wailing of emergency alarms.
He spun to the status board. None of the four missiles that had slammed into the starboard sidewall had penetrated, but two of them had detonated a microsecond before impact, and the resulting blast had overloaded and possibly destroyed the forward generator.
“Sidewall generator two is down!” Belokas shouted her own confirmation across the wailing alarm. “Generator four undamaged, taking up the slack.”
“Casualties,” com officer Kebiro added tensely. “Seven down, condition unknown. Corpsmen on the way; crews assessing damage.”
Travis mouthed a useless curse. Each of the two generators on each side of the ship was designed to be able to maintain the entire sidewall. But as the old saying went, two could live as cheaply as one, but only for half as long. Casey's starboard sidewall was still up, but it was running now at half power. Another double tap like that one, and it could go completely.
And the cruisers and battlecruisers out there were showing no signs of running out of missiles to tap them with.
The alarm cut off. “Alfred?” Heissman asked, as calm as ever.
“Their missiles seem comparable to ours,” Woodburn said, his own voice more strained. “Slightly better ECM, I think, but our countermissiles handled them just fine.”
“Which again suggests mercenaries rather than some system's official fleet,” Heissman said. “Certainly not any fleet connected with the Solarian League. Solly ships wouldn't be using second- or third-generation equipment.”
“That's the good news,” Woodburn said. His voice was subtly louder, Travis noted distantly, as he if was leaning over Travis's shoulder. “The bad news is that their missiles are as good as ours and they probably have a hell of a lot more of them.”
“I wonder what they're waiting for,” Rusk murmured. “This is the perfect time to launch a second wave.”
“Probably taking a moment to analyze their data,” Belokas said. “I imagine they're as eager to assess our strengths and weaknesses as we are to find theirs, and trying not to spend any more missiles than they have to. They'll certainly want to know everything they can about us before they tackle Aegis.”
“And since we can't stop them from doing that,” Heissman said calmly, “it looks like our best-hope scenario is still to slow them down long enough for Gorgon to escape with as much data as we can collect, while inflicting the maximum damage possible.”
“Between us and the corvettes we still have twenty missiles, plus seven practice ones,” Belokas said. “If we throw everything we've got, we should at least be able to take down one of those cruisers.”
“We can't control nearly that many at once,” Woodburn reminded her.
“As long as Tamerlane's ships aren't accelerating, that may not matter,” Belokas pointed out. “They'll still have to defend, and even if all we can accomplish is to drain their point defenses it'll be worth it.”
“Or we may be able to do a bit better,” Woodburn said. “Mr. Long has an idea.”
Travis twisted his head to look up at the other. “Sir?”
Woodburn pointed at the simulation Travis had been running. “Tell them,” he ordered.
Travis felt his throat tighten. Suddenly, he was back on Phoenix's bridge, offering half-baked advice to Captain Castillo.
But Heissman wasn't Castillo. And if the trick worked . . .
“I think the upper cruiser's ventral autocannon is having trouble,” he said. “If it is, then—”
“How could you possibly know that?” Belokas interrupted, frowning at him. “They never even fired them.”
“Because he was starting to turn to starboard when he shifted to rolling wedge instead,” Travis said. “That looked to me like he was getting ready to favor that side when he changed his mind.” He felt his lip twitch. “I had some experience with balky autocannon back on Phoenix, and that definitely looked like a sensor miscalibration problem.”
“Alfred?” Heissman asked.
“He could be right,” Woodburn said. “I just checked, and that aborted yaw is definitely there.”
“Assume you're right,” Heissman said. “Then what?”
“We start by assuming Tamerlane's as smart as he thinks he is,” Travis said. “If so, he'll have seen his cruiser's brief yaw and guess that we also saw it and came to the correct conclusion. If we did, he'll expect us to try to take advantage of the weakness by throwing a salvo of missiles at it.”
“At which point he'll again have to either use an iffy point-defense system or else roll wedge,” Woodburn said, reaching over Travis's shoulder to key the simulation over to the Commodore's station. “If he does the latter, we may be able to catch him by surprise.”
For a couple of heartbeats Heissman gazed at the display. Then, his lip twitched in a small smile. “Yes, I see. It's definitely a long shot. But long shots are where you go when you've got no other bets.”
He gave a brisk nod. “Set up the shot.”
* * *
“Analysis complete, Admiral,” Imbar announced as he hovered over Tac Officer Clymes's shoulder. “Similar countermissiles as ours, with about a thirteen-hundred-klick range, and similar autocannon loads.”
Gensonne scowled. So the Manticorans' countermissiles had a shade less range than the equipment aboard Copperhead and Adder.
And Casey was supposedly the most advanced ship of the Manticoran fleet. If Llyn had been right about that, then the weaponry aboard the larger Bogey Two ships burning space toward him would be even more subpar.
Yes, it could have been worse. But it could also have been a whole lot better. He'd tried like the fires of hell to talk Llyn into providing him with more cutting-edge equipment, but the damn little clerk had turned down every request. The Volsungs didn't need anything better, he'd insisted soothingly, and farthermore the Solarian League would rain down on all of them if they ever got wind of it.
Which Gensonne knew was a bald-faced lie. The Axelrod Corporation was way too powerful to worry about offending whatever bureaucrats were in charge of enforcing such regulations. Llyn simply didn't want a bunch of free-lance mercenaries running around with really advanced equipment.
But that would change. When Llyn saw how quickly and efficiently Gensonne delivered Manticore, Axelrod would surely want the Volsungs on board for whatever project was next on their list.
And Llyn could bet his rear that the subject of advanced weaponry would come up again.
“Salvo ready, Sir,” Imbar said.
“Acknowledged,” Gensonne said. The question now was whether they'd wrung out every bit of data Heissman and Casey could provide. If so, it was time to end the charade and finish them off. If not, a little additional restraint might still be called for.
“Missiles,” Clymes called into his musings. “Looks like two from each of the corvettes.”
Gensonne swiveled toward the sensor display. Sure enough, both of the smaller ships were showing the unmistakable signs of booster flares. A waste of time; but then, what else did they have to do? “Six missiles at the cruiser,” he ordered. “Fire when ready.” On the display, the missiles cleared the corvettes' wedges and lit up their own.
Two missiles from each corvette . . .but from Casey, nothing.
He frowned. Could the damage his attack had inflicted on the cruiser's sidewall have bled over into its launchers or control systems? Llyn had said that Casey was Manticoran-designed. Had the builders unintentionally incorporated a fatal flaw into its architecture? “Damage report on Casey,” he ordered.
“Their starboard sidewall is at half power,” Imbar reported, sounding puzzled. “We already went through this—”
“More flares,” Clymes cut in. “One more from each corvette.”
“Still nothing from Casey?”
“No, Sir.”
Which made no sense, unless the cruiser had genuinely lost the ability to launch its missiles. Definitely a tidbit worth knowing, especially if similar flaws had been incorporated into the Manticorans' other ship designs.
And really, it didn't much matter which of the Manticorans were shooting and which ones weren't. What mattered was that they were trying the same saturation attack they'd tried before, and it was pretty obvious where that attack was aimed. Heissman was apparently the observant type, and von Belling's half-completed yaw turn earlier had tipped off the Manticorans as to where Copperhead's weakness lay.
Which, again, was hardly a problem. “Order Copperhead to pitch wedge,” he instructed Imbar. “Adder will prepare countermissiles; all other ships, stand by autocannon.”
He listened as the acknowledgments came in, his eyes on the six wedges cutting through space toward his force at thirty-five hundred gees acceleration. A minute fifteen out, with probably forty seconds before they would either tighten their angle toward Copperhead, or widen it to target both Copperhead and Adder. At that point, Heissman would show whether he'd truly observed Copperhead's weakness or was a one-trick pony who was throwing missiles at his opponent simply because that was all he knew how to do.
Which would be pathetic, but hardly unexpected. Manticore had been at peace a long time. Far longer than was healthy for them. War was what kept men strong and smart. Peace turned them into useless drones, where the species-cleansing consequences of survival of the fittest no longer operated.
Could that be why Llyn had chosen Manticore as his target? Could it be that Axelrod were looking for undeveloped real estate and figured that no one would notice or care if a couple of fat, lazy backwater planets underwent a sudden regime change?
It sounded like a colossal waste of money. Still, Axelrod had money to burn. If they wanted to spend some of their spare cash to set up their own little kingdom, more power to them.
Copperhead had finished its pitch, its roof once again presenting its impenetrable barrier to the incoming missiles. The missiles were still holding formation, with no indication as to where they were heading. Whatever Heissman's plan, though, he must surely have accepted the inevitability of his own destruction. Best guess was that his goal was to simply keep throwing missiles in hopes of draining the Volsungs of as many resources as he could . . .
Gensonne looked at the sensor display, feeling his eyes narrow. The Manticorans had launched six missiles—Clymes had confirmed that. And six missile wedges were indeed showing on all of the bridge's displays.
But according to the sensors, all six missiles were running a little hot.
Why were they running hot?
On the tactical, a spray of countermissiles erupted from Adder's throat, blossoming into a cone of protection that would shield both itself and the battlecruisers riding a thousand kilometers behind it. Gensonne watched as the cone stretched out toward the incoming missiles—
And felt a sudden jolt of horrified adrenaline flood through him. One cone. Not the two cones this configuration was supposed to provide to shield the battlecruisers. Not with Copperhead turned roof-forward protecting itself from those Manticoran missiles.
Still nothing new from the sensors. Still nothing new on the missiles' track. But Gensonne was a warrior, with the instincts a warrior needed to survive. And his gut was screaming at him now with a certainty that all the ambiguous data in the universe couldn't counter.
Copperhead wasn't Heissman's target. Odin was.
“Full autocannon!” he snapped, his eyes darting to the tactical, wanting to order an emergency turn and knowing full well that it was too late. Six missiles showing . . . only his gut was telling him that wasn't the full number bearing down on them. Somehow, Casey had managed to launch its own contribution to the salvo, slipping them in behind and among the corvettes' missiles with just the right timing and geometry to keep them hidden until they could light off their wedges.
Odin's four autocannon were hammering out their furious roar, filling the space in front of the ship with shards of metal. Gensonne watched in helpless fury as the incoming missiles swung wide of Copperhead's wedge, passed safely through the very edge of Adder's countermissile defensive zone, and dove straight through Odin's open throat—
And with a thundering roar the ship exploded into a chaos of screaming alarms.
* * *
“Got him!” Rusk shouted, his voice hovering midway between triumph and disbelief. “One of them made it through.”
“Damage?” Heissman asked.
“Assessing now,” Woodburn said. “Lots of debris, but with something the size of a battlecruiser that could be mostly superficial.”
“Missile trace,” Belokas called. “Six on the way.”
“Countermissiles and autocannon standing by,” Woodburn confirmed.
“Assessment's coming a little cleaner,” Rusk said. “Looks like they took damage to their bow, probably enough to knock out their telemetry system. If we're lucky, it'll have neutralized at least one of their launchers and maybe their forward laser.”
“Excellent,” Heissman said. “Fire four more missiles—let's see if we can get in before the upper cruiser realizes what happened and turns back to defense position.”
“Aye, Sir,” Travis said, checking the tracks of Tamerlane's incoming missiles and feeling a flicker of grim satisfaction. They were still almost certainly going to die, but at least they'd managed to bloody Tamerlane's nose.
The vibration of the autocannon rumbled through the bridge. “All missiles destroyed,” Woodburn announced. “Four hard kills, two soft. Our missiles are still on target.”
Travis was gazing at the enemy formation, trying to anticipate what Tamerlane would do next, when two new wedges flared into view at the edge of the display.
The mysterious ships that they'd spotted earlier had arrived.
* * *
“Telemetry transmitters out,” a strained voice came from the bridge speaker, barely audible above a cacophony of shouts and curses. “Number one laser's offline, number two's iffy, and One and Three autocannon are fried.”
“Record indicates there were ten missiles in that salvo,” Imbar snarled over the noise. “How the hell were there ten damn missiles?”
“Because Casey's got a railgun launcher, that's how,” Gensonne snarled back, a red haze of fury clouding his vision. “That's how they launched an extra four missiles without our seeing them.”
Imbar swore viciously. “That's why they looked too hot.”
“You think?” Gensonne bit out. And that damn bloody trick had now cost Odin nearly half its forward armament.
“Four more missiles on the way,” Clymes warned. “Copperhead is turning back . . . Copperhead's on it.”
“About time,” Gensonne muttered under his breath. He ran his eyes over the growing damage report, then looked up at the tactical.
Copperhead's countermissiles had just taken care of Casey's latest salvo when a pair of new wedges suddenly appeared at the edge of the tactical, leaping forward as they drove in from the battlefield's flank toward Bogey One.
The two outriding destroyers, Umbriel and Miranda, had finally arrived.
“Admiral?” Imbar called.
“I see them,” Gensonne told him, his lips curling back in a snarling smile. “Order them to fire missiles. Hell, order all ships to fire.”
He straightened his shoulders. They had enough data. They had more than enough data.
Time for Heissman and his ships to die.
“Target the ship at the rear first,” Gensonne said. “Then destroy the rest.”
* * *
And in that single, awful microsecond, everything changed.
“Missile trace!” Rusk called out grimly. “Four from Bogey Two—look to be targeting Gorgon. Bogey Three ships are also firing with . . . missile trace ten on the way.”
“He's learned everything he can and decided it's time to end it,” Heissman commented. “Time for us to do the same.”
He hit his com key. “Hercules, Gemini: split tail. Repeat, split tail. Good luck.”
Travis winced. The split tail was the officially designated last-ditch maneuver for this kind of situation. The two corvettes were to pitch wedges toward Tamerlane's main force and accelerate away in different directions, with each ship's resulting vector taking it above or beneath the enemy force, hopefully before any of the opposing ships could rotate fast enough and far enough to fire a last shot up the escapee's kilt.
It was a risky tactic at best, given the range of modern missiles and lasers. But with a second threat now on Janus's flank, it was even worse. The geometry made it impossible for the ships to position their wedges in such a way as to block against missiles coming from both directions at once.
Worse, for Casey at least, the sidewall facing Bogey Two was the one already running on a single generator. Another solid hit there and the barrier could go completely, leaving that entire flank open to unprotected attack.
On the tactical, Hercules and Gemini were pitching in opposite directions, the first corvette aiming to go over Tamerlane's force, the second aiming to go under it. Far to their rear, Travis saw that Gorgon was rolling her wedge toward the two ships of Bogey Two, her kilt still open to Tamerlane's main force.
Leaving Casey to face the enemy alone.
“Commodore?” Belokas prompted tautly.
“Hold vector,” Heissman said, his eyes shifting back and forth between the two sets of missiles converging on his force. “I want to fire off one last salvo of countermissiles, see if we can clear a couple of Bogey Three's missiles off Gorgon's tail.”
“We've also got two missiles coming in on our starboard flank,” Woodburn warned. “If we cut things too fine, we could lose it all.”
“Understood,” Heissman said. “Stand by countermissiles . . . fire. Pitch ninety degrees negative and kill acceleration.”
Out of the corner of his eye Travis saw all heads turn. “Pitch ninety degrees negative and kill acceleration, aye,” the helmsman said. “Pitching ninety degrees negative; acceleration at zero.”
“Kill acceleration?” Belokas asked quietly.
“Kill acceleration,” Heissman confirmed. “We're going to go straight through the center of their formation.” His lip twitched. “The distraction may give the corvettes a better chance of escape.”
There was a moment of silence, and Travis heard Woodburn murmur something under his breath. “Understood, Sir,” Belokas said briskly.
“Starboard missiles coming in hot,” Rusk warned. “Not sure the sidewall can take them.”
“So let's try something crazy,” Heissman said. “As soon as the missiles reach energy torpedo range, flicker the sidewall and fire two bursts along the missiles' vectors, then raise the sidewall again. Maybe we can take out at least one of them before it hits.”
Travis felt his stomach tighten. Energy torpedoes, bursts of contained plasma bled straight off the reactor, were devastating at short ranges. But they hadn't exactly been designed as missile killers.
Woodburn knew that, too. “It's a long shot,” he warned. “Especially since we might not get the sidewall up in time. We could miss completely and end up with both missiles coming right in on us.”
“Granted,” Heissman agreed. “But the option is to trust a half-power sidewall to keep them out on its own.” He smiled faintly. “And so far, our long shots have been paying out pretty well.”
“True,” Woodburn said, returning the commodore's smile. “Very good, Sir. Energy torpedoes standing by.”
On the tactical, the image that was Gorgon suddenly flared and vanished. “Gorgon's gone, Sir,” Rusk said grimly. “Lower enemy cruiser swiveling to target Gemini.”
“Computer standing ready to flicker sidewall and fire energy torpedoes,” Woodburn added.
“Acknowledged,” Heissman said. “Hand off to computer.”
“Hand off to computer, aye,” Woodburn confirmed. “Here we go . . .”
Travis felt the slight vibration of distant heavy relays as Casey blasted a barrage of torpedoes into space. They were amazingly fast weapons, nearly as fast as the beams from shipboard X-ray lasers. There was a second vibration as the second salvo followed the first—
“Sidewall back up,” Woodburn called. Travis held his breath . . .
The hope and crossed fingers were in vain. An instant later, Casey gave a violent and all-too-well-remembered jerk.
The missiles had been stopped, but the second starboard sidewall generator had been overloaded and destroyed.
“Damage?” Heissman called as the alarms once again blared across the bridge.
“Generator gone,” Belokas reported. “Secondary damage to that area. Casualties reported; no details yet.”
Travis felt a tightening in his chest. Starboard sidewall gone, fewer than half their missiles left, and heading on a ballistic trajectory straight into the center of an enemy formation.
Worse, at the distances they would be passing the other ships, they would be well within beam range. Knife-fight range . . . and with Casey's throat, kilt, and starboard flank open, Tamerlane's only decision would be which of his ships would get the honor of finishing her off.
He frowned at the tactical, his fingers keying his board. Tamerlane had already shown he was smart and reasonably cautious. He would assume Casey had lasers fore and aft, and would therefore most likely choose to send his attack in from starboard, where there were no defenses except the energy torpedoes and a much bigger cross-section of ship to target.
Casey was down to eight real missiles, but they still had four practice missiles. And with the electromagnetic launch system instead of solid boosters they ought to be able to just goose one of those missiles from a launch tube without instantly sending it blasting away.
And if they could . . .
He cleared his throat. “Commodore Heissman? I have an idea.”
* * *