It was pride that won the argument.
“Comm,” she said, “message to Squadron. Starburst Pattern Two. Execute at twelve eleven. Pilot, feed Pattern Two into the nav computer.”
A few minutes later the nav computer cut the engines, and Sula’s heart lifted as the ship swung in zero gravity to its new heading, the first in the sequence of bobs and weaves dictated by Pattern 2’s chaos mathematics.
When Tork’s furious message came, she took her time about answering.
“My lord!” This from Bevins, who was at the sensor station with Pan. “Starburst! Squadron Seventeen has starburst!”
Martinez enlarged the tactical display and saw Sula’s command separating from one another, engines firing at heavy accelerations. A gust of laughter burst from his throat.
Sula was surprising them all. Defying the Supreme Commander and her own sentence of death, and setting the rest of the Orthodox Fleet an example.
Admiration kindled a flame in Martinez’s breast.O Lovely! O Brilliant! Sula’s maneuver made him want to chant poetry.
He sent a text message to Chandra.Why can’t wedo that?
Chandra didn’t reply. Perhaps she was making the argument on her own.
Martinez wasn’t the only one sending messages, becauseIllustrious intercepted a message from Sula to Tork. It was a reply to a message thatIllustrious hadn’t received, since Tork’s message was sent by communications laser to Sula at the van of his fleet, andIllustrious was not in position to intercept the tight beam. But sinceIllustrious was astern of the flagship, it was in a position to catch the reply.
“Confidenceto Flag. Unable to comply.” That was the entire message.
Martinez was helpless with adoration. He was even more delighted whenIllustrious intercepted the answer to Tork’s following message.
“Confidenceto Flag. Unable to comply.” There it wasagain.
His joy faded, and a cold chill ran up Martinez’s spine as he considered what Tork might do next. He could order each individual ship back into place, bypassing Sula altogether—or he could simply order one of Sula’s subordinates to slit her throat and take command.
There was a silence from the Supreme Commander that lasted several minutes. Squadron 17 and the enemy continued to rain missiles at each other. The next squadrons astern had begun to fire as well.
Martinez waited, feeling unease in his inner ear for a moment asIllustrious went through a minor programmed course change. The warships were all swooping a bit now, dodging any theoretical beam weapons being aimed at them.
“Message from the Supreme Commander, my lord,” said Choy. A text of the message flashed onto Martinez’s display as Choy read it aloud.
“‘All ships rotate to bearing zero-two-five by zero-zero-one relative. Accelerate one point eight gravities at eleven twenty-three and one.’”
Martinez let out a long sigh of relief, then looked at the chronometer. He had a little less than one minute to complete the rotation.
The Orthodox Fleet was finally going to close with the enemy. Apparently, Tork had decided that Sula’s maneuver compromised either his dignity or his tactics or both, and he had to retrieve the situation.
“Zero gravity warning,” Martinez said. “Engines, cut engines. Pilot, rotate ship to zero-two-five by zero-zero-one relative. Stand by to accelerate on my command.”
As the ship swung, as the acceleration couch swung lightly on its runners, Martinez took the opportunity to shift again to a virtual display. His visual centers filled with the vast emptiness of space, the distant planets and Magaria’s looming sun, the two great formations of ships and decoys and the blazing curtain of antimatter bursts between the lead squadrons. The stars, an unnecessary distraction, weren’t shown. Tucked away in an unoccupied corner of the solar system was a softly glowing display that would allow him to communicate with anyone else on the ship, or call up information from any of the other displays in Command.
“Accelerate at one point eight gee on my mark,” he said. “Three, two, one, mark.”
Illustrious’s great torches lit smoothly. The metal hoops of the accelerating cage sang lightly as the weight came on. Martinez drew a long, hard breath against the gravities that were piling weights on his chest.
Ahead, Sula’s squadron was well and truly separated now, all the ships moving in an irregular, spasmodic fashion that seemed filled with random course and acceleration changes. Only an appreciation of the mathematics would show that the ships never strayed outside a mutually supporting distance, that their prearranged movement pattern allowed them to stay in secure laser communication with one another, that the formation could be shifted to concentrate offensive power on a group of enemy ships, or a single ship, or to form a protective screen around a damaged comrade.
If only Michi Chen’s squadron could adopt a similar organization.
He had every confidence that the loyalists would win the battle. The only question was the cost. Tork would grind the enemy down, using ships and crew as the grinder, but the numbers used by the new tactics were mathematical, and more flexible. Martinez wanted to tease the Naxids, surround them, baffle them, trap them like a slow-moving bear amid a pack of racing, snapping hounds. Using his tactics, the loyalists would still win, but there would be many more loyalists alive to enjoy the victory.
Tork’s stolid, workmanlike tactics offended him. Offended his intelligence, his professionalism, his sense of pride. The waste of lives offended him, and the waste of ships.
Tork might even wasteme, he thought.
He reached with his hands into virtual space, called up the comm board, then once again paged Michi. When Li answered, he asked for the squadcom.
“Stand by.”
It was a few moments before Michi appeared, miniature helmeted head and suited shoulders floating in the starless virtual space.
“Yes, Lord Captain?”
“May I suggest that we starburst, my lady?” Martinez said. “I realize the entire squadron doesn’t have the formula, but Lieutenant Prasad, plus Kazakov and the crew in Auxiliary Command, can feed them their necessary course changes, and—”
“My lord,” Michi said, her gaze stolid, “let me be plain. First, I am not about to disobey a direct order from the Supreme Commander. Second, you are not my tactical officer any more. Please confine yourself to managing the ship, and I will take care of the squadron.”
Martinez stabbed at the virtual button that ended the communication. Rage pulsed in his ears.
Michi’s words were all the more infuriating because they were true.Illustrious was his job. It really wasn’t his business to suggest tactics to the squadcom.
Othercommanders, he told himself,had followed his advice, to their benefit. Do-faq had followed his recommendations at Hone-bar, and come out of it with a bloodless victory. Michi herself, at Protipanu…well, he had been tactical officer then.
“Missile flares from the enemy squadron,” Pan reported. “Eighteen—thirty-six—forty-four missiles, my lord. Heading our way.”
Martinez returned his attention to the display. Right, he thought. Concentrate on runningIllustrious.
Concentrate on keeping himself and his ship alive.
And somehow manage this without tactics. He felt as if he were shackled to an iron cannonball while an angry mob pelted him with rocks.
“Keep tracking them,” he said. “Weapons, alert Battery One to possible counterfire.”
It would be Michi who would order any response. At this range, any missile launch was the squadcom’s business.
Orders came from the Flag Officer Station a few seconds later.Illustrious would fire five countermissiles as part of the squadron’s coordinated response.
Missiles leapt off the rails. Martinez watched as chemical rockets carried them to a safe distance so their antimatter engines could ignite, then saw the curves’ trajectories as the missiles raced toward the oncoming barrage.