It was too savage, too quick for any human eye to sort out, or for any human mind to grasp before it was all over. Tyr’s only hope was that the twin reactors, clustered in her aft section for protection against attack from exactly this angle, were protected enough to somehow survive.…
They weren’t. The final torpedo slashed through the shattered ship—
And Tyr became an expanding ball of fire, torn metal, and broken bodies.
For a long moment no one on Odin’s bridge spoke. Gensonne shifted his eyes toward Casey, still coasting her way through the formation.
Or rather, what was left of the formation.
“Admiral?” Imbar spoke up, his voice hushed. “Casey’s coming up on Phobos. Do you want her to take a shot?”
Yes, Gensonne wanted to scream. Yes, take the shot. Kill them all.
But he couldn’t give that order. Whatever black magic Heissman had used against Tyr, there was no reason he couldn’t use it against Phobos, too. Gensonne didn’t dare risk a second ship when he didn’t have the faintest idea how Casey had killed the first. “No,” he said, the word a strangled lump of useless fury in his throat. “Order Phobos to roll wedge, and let them go.”
He stretched his neck against his tunic. Besides, his main fleet was still back there, right in the direction Casey was heading, ready to light up their wedges and move in to support what remained of the advance force. They would deal with Casey, and then they would all deal with Green One.
He looked back at the expanding dust cloud that had been Tyr. “See you in hell,” he murmured. “I’ll be the one wearing white.”
* * *
It all happened too fast for Travis to see the details. But bare seconds after Casey’s floor cut off their view, the gravitics confirmed the battlecruiser’s wedge was gone. Seconds after that, the radar and lidar spotted the edge of a violently expanding debris cloud.
The tactic had worked. The battlecruiser had been destroyed.
But that didn’t mean Casey was out of the woods yet. Travis felt himself tensing as they sped toward the com ship at the far rear of the Bogey Three formation, wondering if Casey still had one battle yet to face.
But the loss of his battlecruiser had apparently left Tamerlane shaken. Casey sped past the aft ship, catching only a glimpse of her rolled wedge.
It would be too much to say that there was a collective sigh of relief. But Travis could feel a definite lowering of tension.
Belokas broke the silence first. “What now, Sir?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Heissman said thoughtfully. “The manual has a surprising dearth of information on what to do when you’re intact and behind an enemy formation. Probably because it doesn’t happen very often.”
“I suppose we’ll have to improvise,” Woodburn said.
“I suppose we will,” Heissman agreed in that same thoughtful tone. “Let’s get a little more distance to make sure we’re out of aft laser range, then see what we can come up with.”
* * *
“Bloody hell,” Dapplelake said, his voice hushed and disbelieving. “Did that battlecruiser just—?”
“It’s gone,” Cazenestro confirmed, sounding just as disbelieving as the Defense Minister. “Or at least, its wedge is down. How in God’s name did Heissman pull that off?”
“We were hoping you could tell us that,” Edward said, a small part of the pressure on his chest easing as he gazed at the gravitics display. One of the invaders’ two most powerful warships; and Casey had just destroyed it.
“I wish I knew, Your Majesty,” Cazenestro said. “Casey’s a good ship, but I would never in a hundred years have bet her against a battlecruiser. She must have gotten in close enough for an energy torpedo launch, but God only knows how she managed that without being gutted herself in the process.”
“At least now we’ve got a much fairer fight on our hands,” Dapplelake said. “Locatelli has two battlecruisers, and they’ve only got one.”
“Except that Green One’s battlecruisers are only partly manned and armed,” Cazenestro said grimly.
“I was taking that into account,” Dapplelake said. “Just be glad he’s got as much as he does.” He inclined his head to Edward. “Thanks to you, Your Majesty.”
Edward nodded silently. And thanks to Prime Minister Burgundy and all the favors he’d burned in order to make the Navy’s rearming happen. Favors that had cost him friendships. Favors that had earned him the enhanced animosity of people like Breakwater and his faction. Favors that had in many ways made him an embarrassment or pariah even among his own supporters.
Now, finally, that sacrifice was going to be vindicated.
And then, even as Edward began rehearsing what he was going to say to Parliament and the Star Kingdom’s citizens, the gravitic display again changed.
Only this time it wasn’t the welcome disappearance of an enemy wedge. This time it was a new group of contacts suddenly appearing in the distance.
Eight of them. Coming in along the same vector as the first wave, clearly part of the same invasion force.
Heading toward Manticore.
Eight of them.
“Oh, my God,” Dapplelake murmured. “What the hell do we do now?”
Edward had no answer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Imbar was still swearing viciously under his breath. The rest of Odin’s bridge had gone deathly silent.
It was a strange silence, Gensonne noted distantly: one part disbelief, one part anger, one part determination.
At least, one part had damned well better be determination. Because this battle was far from over. Far from over.
“What the hell?” Clymes spoke up suddenly. “Admiral, the main force just lit up their wedges.”
“What?” Gensonne snarled. What the hell was right—De la Roza wasn’t supposed to fire up until Gensonne gave the order. “Get me Thor. You hear me, Captain?”
“I hear you, Admiral,” Imbar growled, his tone barely on the right side of courteous. “Working on it.”
Biting furiously against the words that wanted to come out, but which there was no point in saying—yet—Gensonne let the time-lag seconds play themselves out.
And then—
“De la Roza,” the bridge speaker boomed abruptly with the voice of Thor’s captain. “What the hell just happened there?”
“What the hell just happened there?” Gensonne shot back. “You were supposed to wait for my signal. Now Green One is going to have time to adjust their timing and strategy.”
There was another pause as the signal bounced to Thor and back—
“Excuse me, Admiral,” De la Roza said in Captain Imbar’s same barely polite tone. “I saw one of your battlecruisers go ashcan, and after the damage you took earlier I figured it was probably you. That left me in overall command, and I decided that what was left of your formation might like some extra support sooner rather than later.”
“Well, I’m not dead, and you’re not in command,” Gensonne snarled. “That was Blakely, not me. Next time, you damn well find out the lay of the land before you take action. Understood?”
Another delay— “Understood, Admiral,” De la Roza said. “What are your orders, Sir?”
Gensonne ground his teeth. He would let this slide for now, but only because they had bigger fish to fillet.
But it wasn’t over, not by a long shot. He would be having a very long discussion on proper procedure with De la Roza somewhere in the near future. And Imbar could probably use an attitude refresher, as well.
“As long as you’ve announced your presence, you might as well join the party,” he told De la Roza. “Stay on vector and keep formation.”
“Acknowledged, Sir,” De la Roza said. “You want to decrease acceleration and let us catch up to you?”
Gensonne glared at the tactical. With one of his battlecruisers gone, that was indeed the logical thing to do. It would let the two groups combine forces and bring a much more powerful formation to bear o
n the incoming Manticorans. It would certainly be the cautious thing to do.
But Gensonne hadn’t gotten where he was by playing it safe. Besides, bringing the two Volsung forces together in a single battle stack would run the risk of letting some of the Manticoran ships slip through their fire zone, and he had no wish to have even a marginally functional enemy force at his rear when he was trying to talk a planetary government into surrendering.
“Just stick with the plan,” he told De la Roza. “If I decide to make any changes, I’ll let you know. And watch out for that cruiser, Casey. You see her?”
“Yeah, we see her. What the hell did she do to Tyr, anyway?”
“God only knows,” Gensonne growled. “Just watch her. Whatever trick she’s got up her sleeve, I don’t want to lose anyone else to it.”
“Oh, we’ll watch her,” De la Roza promised darkly. “We’ll watch her real close.”
* * *
“CIC reads eight contacts in Group Two,” Tactical Officer Perrow said, half turning in her station to look at Metzger. “XO is pretty sure at least one is a battlecruiser. Damn it—sorry, Ma’am. Looks like they just got Gemini.”
Metzger nodded, eyeing the empty spot on the gravitic display where the corvette’s wedge had been. The split-tail maneuver was considered a last-ditch effort precisely because it left a ship wide open to attack as the attacker passed above or below it. One of the invading ships had taken out Gemini, and Hercules’s death was probably not far away.
Casey, against all reasonable odds, had made it completely through the enemy formation intact. Metzger would bet heavily that Tamerlane’s reluctance to engage her was largely due to the loss of Group One’s second battlecruiser at Casey’s hands.
She would also bet heavily that however that trick had been pulled off, Travis Long had been involved.
Meanwhile, Aegis had their own problems. And those problems had just doubled.
“What’s ETA on Group Two?” she asked, keeping her voice steady. “Specifically, vis-à-vis Group One?”
“They’re currently about fifty minutes apart,” Perrow said. “But Group Two is coming up fast. Assuming neither group changes their acceleration, they’ll probably be no more than thirty minutes apart by the time we’re in combat range of Group One.”
“Possibly closer than that,” Locatelli said. The calmness in his voice, to Metzger’s admiration and secret resentment, didn’t sound forced at all. “Sometime in the next ten minutes we’re going to do a one-eighty and decelerate.”
Metzger felt her throat tighten. Standard military doctrine when facing two separate enemy waves was to plow through the first group, doing as much damage as possible while minimizing damage to your own forces, and then continue on to the second, with the goal of preventing the enemy from consolidating his forces. It boiled down to concentration of firepower, a strategy that dated all the way back to Old Earth’s gunpowder era.
But Aegis couldn’t do that. Locatelli was responsible for the defense of Manticore and Sphinx, and if he blew past the invaders he would leave both worlds completely open to attack with nothing to stop them but the token missile base on Thorson, Manticore’s single moon.
And so Aegis would turn and decelerate, trying to better match the invaders’ own speed, making sure to stay in their path as long as possible so as to inflict as much damage as they could.
Unfortunately, Aegis having more time to throw missiles at the enemy also meant the enemy would have that same extra time to throw missiles back. And Metzger had little doubt that even after Tamerlane’s encounter with Janus the enemy still had more armament left than Aegis could muster.
Locatelli was apparently thinking along the same lines. “CIC, what’s current data on Janus’s duel with Group One?” he called.
“It’s a little spotty, Sir,” McBride’s voice came from the bridge speaker. “The clean relay we had with them went down when they took out Gorgon, and with Casey and Hercules wedge-on to us we’re obviously not getting any fresh data from either of them. But we’re tentatively reading Janus as having thrown twenty-two missiles during the engagement. Casey may have lost another to a misfire—it was a little hard to tell.”
“Enemy damage?”
“Obviously, the battlecruiser that Casey took out,” McBride said. “I’m pretty sure the other battlecruiser also took some damage, but we can’t tell how much. The other four ships seem intact.”
“But they’ve obviously spent a lot of missiles of their own,” Metzger pointed out. “Not to mention Janus drained some of their point defenses.”
“Correct,” McBride confirmed. “But since we don’t know how many missiles or countermissiles they started out with, there’s no way of knowing how many they have left.”
And Invincible wasn’t exactly flush on missiles at the moment, either, Metzger reminded herself silently. Of the twenty-four she could theoretically carry, she had only eighteen.
There should have been two practice missiles, as well, which could at least have been used to further drain the invaders’ autocannon and countermissiles. But Locatelli had spent both of those in his exercise with Phoenix and they’d never been replaced. Distantly, she wondered if the admiral was regretting that action now.
“What about those two?” Locatelli asked, gesturing to the screen. “Janus’s designated Bogey Two. They’re destroyers?”
“Yes, Sir,” McBride said. “Probably Luna-class. Same design as our old Protector-class.”
“And presumably of similar vintage,” Locatelli rumbled. “No idea how well-armed they still are, either.”
“Probably well enough to create some havoc, though, Sir,” Metzger pointed out. “We could detach Phoenix and Damocles to try to intercept them.”
“Yes, we could,” Locatelli agreed. “The problem is…” He nodded toward the tactical.
Metzger felt a lump form in her throat. The problem, of course, was the rest of the invasion force coming toward them. After Heissman’s split-tail, Janus was essentially out of the fight, and Aegis was woefully understrength. Detaching two destroyers to chase after Bogey Two would make the numbers even more lopsided.
But Locatelli couldn’t just let the enemy run unchallenged through the system. No matter what happened with the main invasion fleet, a pair of destroyers who reached Manticore orbit might still be enough of a threat to force King Edward and Parliament to surrender. Someone had to go after them—to harass, harry, and delay if nothing else—and Locatelli’s ships were the only ones in position to do that.
And with a sudden premonition, Metzger knew what the admiral was going to do.
He couldn’t afford to send two ships. He couldn’t afford to send zero ships.
And so, he was going to send one.
It was, on the face of it, insane. Standard battle logic was to never send one ship after two. Not just because of the disparity in missile numbers, but also because two ships could often maneuver a singleton into a position where she couldn’t defend against both at the same time.
But it was the insanity of desperation. One ship would be detached—a suicide mission, in all but name, but one that was necessary to keep the enemy away from Manticore.
The only question remaining was which ship it would be.
Damocles had the higher missile load. Military logic suggested she could harass Bogey Two longer, as well as better draining the enemies’ defenses.
Phoenix, on the other hand, was current home to Locatelli’s nephew. Family logic might suggest sending him as far from the main battle as possible.
Maybe Locatelli had already followed both logic pathways. Maybe he knew that others would follow them, too.
Or maybe he was as good and as objective a commander as his reputation implied.
“Com, signal Damocles,” he ordered. “Captain Marcello is ordered to break off and pursue Bogey Two, hereafter designated as Group Three. Primary mission is to keep them away from Manticore. If Marcello can engage and destroy, so much the better.”
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“Aye, aye,” Com replied.
“What about Phoenix?” Perrow asked.
“What about her?” Locatelli countered.
“I wondered if you wanted her to stay on forward point alone, or to move back in the formation,” Perrow said. “Possibly between Sphinx and Bellerophon.”
Where, Metzger noted, Phoenix and Ensign Locatelli would be inside the heavy cruisers’ countermissile screen. Once again, an opportunity for Locatelli to show a little quiet favoritism.
Once again, he passed on the offer. “Phoenix will stay where she is,” he said. “XO, have you worked out our optimum turnover time?”
“Yes, Sir,” McBride said. On Metzger’s tac display, the XO’s proposed maneuver came up. “Of course, that assumes they don’t tweak their own formation.”
“If they do, I’m sure you and the TO will find the right counter to it,” Locatelli said. “Captain Metzger, keep an eye on Casey. If and when she turns enough for us to send a signal, instruct Commodore Heissman that he’s to do whatever he can to harass Group Two.”
“Yes, Sir,” Metzger said. Did that include Heissman losing his ship, she wondered briefly, if it came to that?
Of course it did. That was the RMN’s job: to die for the lives and freedom of the Star Kingdom’s citizens.
Besides, most of Janus had already been lost. Most of Aegis would probably be following soon. What would the loss of one more ship really matter?
“I suppose we should officially identify ourselves,” Locatelli continued. “Com, get a laser on the battlecruiser. And then, Captain, once the conversation is over—and it’s likely to be short—prepare all ships to come around in a one-eighty. Deceleration will be set at one point eight KPS squared.”
“One point eight KPS squared, aye,” Metzger said, feeling a cold lump settle into her throat. This was it.