“I need to understand the capacities and limitations of each type of ship. I don’t know whether I can come up with a winning strategy, but ignorance certainly won’t get me there.”
He did not comment. She watched the arena. The two ships moved together steadily, but not on a direct course; each followed a kind of curve. “Like two gunslingers walking down the street,” Yael said.
“Why don’t they fire?” Melody inquired aloud.
“The range is too great,” Skot explained. “Each employs a form of missile, and accuracy decreases with distance. Also, even an accurate shot from too far out could be avoided or intercepted by a needle. They must come close enough to strike without giving the other ship opportunity to maneuver clear. Wasted shots are trouble; each one represents a sizable investment of material and/or energy.”
“You make it very clear,” Melody said. And inwardly, to Yaeclass="underline" “It is like two gunslingers! They need to save their ammunition for when it counts.”
“Space opera,” Yael agreed.
Then, almost simultaneously, the two ships jerked in space, or at least they seemed to shiver in the viewglobe, which probably exaggerated the effect. “They both fired,” Skot said. “But neither will score. They’re still five thousand miles apart.”
Melody translated the figure into Mintakan units. “Why, that’s the diameter of a small planet!”
Skot smiled. “You get acclimatized to spatial distances. It is close, in terms of space. Normally ships within the fleet are separated by that amount, so they don’t get in each other’s way. To hit a target one mile thick from that distance requires an accuracy of one part in five thousand, which is about all a physical projectile from a moving ship is good for. Even when the missile travels at a hundred thousand miles per hour, it takes about three minutes to cover the distance. The target ship knows about the shot in a fraction of a second, so—”
“So it has three minutes to dodge,” Melody finished. “Yes, I understand, now. Five thousand miles is the fringe of the action range. Why did they fire so early, then?”
“Well, it is very hard to track a missile, and some of them have homing devices. So it is better to destroy the missile in flight; but it takes a lot of concentration. While the target ship is preoccupied with that, the attacking ship is coming closer, improving its chances for the next shot. So the first shot is not really wasted; it may facilitate the effective followup.”
“So they keep coming closer, until one scores on the other.”
“Approximately. The difference in weapons complicates this, though.”
“I thought you said they both fired missiles.”
“The Canopian Scepter uses proximity-explosive missiles, yes; a near-miss can shake the target and perhaps disable it. But the Spican Cup uses water bombs, otherwise known as nebula envelopment. The bomb explodes into a cloud of liquid that surrounds the target ship, cutting off its light-input, fouling its broadcast mechanism, interfering with its control over its satellites, and corroding its hull. A direct hit normally doesn’t kill the crew, but it leaves the ship helpless.”
“How clever,” Melody said with a shudder. “The Wand strikes physically, and the Cup pours water. We cannot escape the Tarot relevance.”
“I assumed the Tarot was patterned after the cluster fleet,” Skot said.
Typical ignorance! He knew a tremendous amount about space tactics and armament, and nothing about Tarot.
Now the two ships were quite close together, within a thousand miles. Melody knew that was approaching point-blank range for accuracy, and cut missile-avoidance time to thirty-six seconds or less. Was that enough, for a mile-thick ship? One or the other had to go!
The Cup squirted again. Immediately the Scepter used its chemical propulsion to jump aside. “It’ll never make it!” Skot cried. “It’ll have to maintain five or six gravities to clear its own diameter in that time—and it takes more than that to escape a cloud.”
Melody was too tense to ask for further explanation. She watched as the seconds passed.
There was a puff as the vapor-cloud formed, sooner than she expected. But it was not at the Scepter. “Premature formation!” Skot exclaimed. “What a break; some Cupper will be hung for that—”
Then the Cup exploded. A sudden new cloud developed, as its life-water puffed into vapor in the vacuum of space. The ship was through; none of the Spicans within it could have survived.
“What happened!” Melody demanded. “The Drone didn’t even fire!”
“I see it now,” Skot said, awed. “Very sharp tactics! The Scepter waited for the Cup to fire, then honed one of its needle scouts in on the missile. That set it off early. The Scepter accelerated to conceal its true defense, and to cover the recoil of its own firing. So the Cup didn’t catch on, and stood still for a direct missile hit. Beautiful!”
“Yet those are home galaxy entities, the great majority of them nonhostage crew,” Melody said, shuddering again. “All horribly dead of decompression.”
“That’s war,” he said. “They knew the risk when they signed on. We face the same risk.”
But the victory was scant comfort to Melody, who was thinking again of Captain Llono and their sudden mating. A whole shipful of unique triple-sexed Spicans, gone!
“There comes the second ship,” Skot said. “A Polarian Disk.”
No time for grief! The victorious Scepter now had to face a fresh enemy. “What’s the weapon of the Disk?”
“Polarians think in terms of circularity. All ships must spin at the rate of one revolution every five and a half Solarian minutes in order to maintain gravity at the comfortable level in the officer’s section. Slower for the Disks, of course, as they have larger diameters, but the principle’s the same. “If that spin is changed—”
“All hell breaks loose!” Melody finished. “How ingenious!”
“Circular,” Skot corrected her with a smile.
Melody looked around. The six human-hosted Knyfh officers were at the consoles, looking as competent as ever. She had little idea what they were doing, but she felt reassured. She returned to the globe. “But how can one ship change the spin of another?”
“Several ways. Generally, by anchoring a missile to the hull. A missile on a long line can exert considerable torque. Several can wreak havoc. The gravity changes make things fly about, and the crew gets sick, the instruments malfunction…”
“I can imagine. Trust Polaris to think of something like that.”
The two ships came together. The Scepter, having expended two missiles in the first encounter, was far more cautious this time. “They have only six missiles,” Skot explained.
“I told you!” Yael exclaimed. “A six-shooter!”
Melody closed her eyes. “I’ve doomed my friend the Drone of Deuce to destruction, then. Even if he wins every match, when he runs out of missiles—”
“Can’t ever tell. Canopians are pretty sharp, and they have nerves like tungsten. Maybe the other ship will run out of ammunition too, and it’ll be a standoff.”
A standoff. Was there a possibility there for stopping the hostage fleet? Get them all to use up their ammunition uselessly? How?
Melody liked this situation less as she came to know it better. Yet the alternative was to throw all her ships into the fray against twice their number. To replace single slaughter by mass slaughter.
The Disk fired. The Scepter maintained course, not even firing back. “He’s trying to intercept the anchor,” Skot said. “I don’t think that stunt will work again, though.”
The Disk fired again. Now the Scepter jetted—but not evenly. Instead of moving out of the way, it began to turn end over end. “Something’s wrong!” Melody cried.