He had run endless progs on several screens as to what exactly the oncoming first attack force would do. He even had an Imperial Intelligence strategic/tactical bio-fiche on the Tahn admiral in command. Some clot named Hsi, Ferrari thought, who's been piloting a bureaucracy for most of the war. Now, what did he do to get himself beached? He consulted another bio-fiche—one that, although Ferrari never knew it, had come from Sten and St. Clair's intelligence.
"The gentleman," Ferrari thought aloud, "appears to have managed to lurk up on four Imperial fleets way back when and make them unhappy. That should not mean that... mmh. Perhaps he has well-connected friends? No. Ah. Here is the tiny malfeasance. Appears to have lost control of his units during the midpoint of the battle. Incurred casualties. Mercy."
Ferrari smiled to himself So the clot did not know his midgame.
Ferrari blanked all the progs. They were all incorrect. He knew where Hsi would attack.
Admiral Hsi had planned to use the "clutter" of the Sulu systems to mask his approach on the Caltor System and Cavite itself. There was no way that even the sophisticated Imperial detectors could pick up his fleets before they attacked.
Hsi had not calculated that the reverse was also true—the Tahn detectors showed the Sulu systems as a blur of asteroids.
They did not pick out Ferrari's waiting fleets until the last few seconds. Ferrari was slightly disappointed; he had hoped that the Tahn would come in even closer before he began the battle.
But it was enough—and he ordered action.
Looked at from "above," two-dimensionally, Ferrari's fleets came laterally across the spearhead of the Tahn force—what had been known as "crossing the tee." All Imperial weapons could acquire targets, but the Tahn weapons systems were "masked" by their own formation.
Ferrari hammered in on them. The battle, at that point, went from chess to the greater subtlety of battle-axes at one meter as the Imperial fleets slaughtered Hsi.
Hsi ordered his force to break off battle, retire, and regroup.
Ferrari sent his units after them, and the battle continued, a blind melee in the emptiness between systems.
Ferrari won, quite handily. Again, only a few Tahn ships survived.
But he had made one mistake.
When he had decided to go after Hsi, he had neglected to inform Mahoney, who was trying to coordinate the battle from Cavite, of his decision. He had left a large, undefended hole in the perimeter around the Fringe Worlds. And through that hole, three E-days later, poured the Tahn's third attack force.
There were no Imperial combat fleets between it and Cavite.
Someone once said that most heroes could be explained simply as sane people deciding to do something that was completely insane.
William Bishop the Forty-third would have defined the action that won him the Galactic Cross and his second star as something that only a nut who had managed to convince himself he was not a nut would have even begun.
So far, Bishop had not had that bad a war.
He had originally been a guardsman, an infantry sergeant who had gotten his share of gongs for ducking at the appropriate moment in the appropriate place. Realizing that if he went into places where people were shooting at him, eventually they were going to connect, he had volunteered for flight training.
His intentions were to graduate and then push big ugly clot transports around the sky until his time came up, then work quietly on his own abstruse mathematical figures. The only other medal he wanted was some kind of long service without getting caught doing anything too terrible award.
He was a natural pilot.
When he had graduated as part of Sten's flight training class, he had gotten the assignment he had wanted.
But things had caught up with him.
Perhaps it was that no one could believe that a man with that many medals, who looked like that much of a commando, had no interest in seeing any more combat. Or perhaps someone with a sense of history had looked up who William Bishop the First was.
But in any event, Bishop not only had been forcibly transferred from his REMF supply wagon to an assault transport but had been given more and more promotions.
Currently he was a one-star admiral in charge of two divisions of assault craft. Worse yet, he had been hand selected to be in charge of the Cavite landings.
A man could get dead doing things like that, he had thought. Going in.
But so far, not much had happened—not much, at least to Bishop's mind. The air-to-space missiles, the Tahn tacships, and the occasional suicide attack had been discounted.
Bishop was determined that it was not that bad a war. Survive this, he thought, and all I have to make it through is the final landing on Heath.
That produced a wince and another train of thought. It was more important to wonder whether Fermat was not right, after all. In the meantime, his assault ships went in on Cavite, their support transports cross-loaded, and the handful of combat craft kept the Tahn mosquitoes away.
At that point, the alarms shrilled.
Bishop found himself on the bridge of his assault command ship, looking at the incoming reports that input and then blanked as the oncoming Tahn third attack force came in.
Bishop then realized that he was a psychopath.
His orders were most clear. "Com... close beam to Com-Escort. Commander, stand by for orders."
"Admiral, we're getting—"
"We're getting hit by the whole clottin' Tafin spaceforce. I know. I noticed. Orders, I said. I want your ships out of orbit and headed out. Now."
"Toward what?"
Bishop groaned to himself. "Do you have a breakdown on the incoming Tahn?"
"Uh... that's an affirm. We have seven BBs, several tac-ship launchers, twenty-eight cruisers... you want more, Billy?"
"Negative. That's about what I show. Orders..." He motioned to his nav officer. "Stand by for relay. Contact orbit will be for the third—no, fourth battleship in line. Relay—"
His paling navigator nodded.
"—on transmit. Activate on a ten-second tick—from now."
"Further orders. Sir?"
Bishop stared into the screen at his escort commander. "Hell, no. You need any more?"
"Guess not. You know any good prayers, Billy?"
Bishop shook his head.
And the attack began.
One armored assault command ship. One cruiser. Twelve destroyers. Eleven escort ships. And seventeen tacships.
Attacking four Tahn combat fleets.
It was insane.
It was insane.
The Tahn admiral in charge of the third attack force saw the handful of ships incoming on a collision orbit and realized that he had fallen into a trap.
No one would attack like that. Not unless, behind those absurd attackers, was the full force of the Empire.
The admiral admired the temerity of the attackers. They could, truly, be Tahn. To be willing to die merely to pin down the Tahn fleets for a few moments, moments enough for the yet-to-be-detected Imperial battleships to strike.
The admiral issued a string of orders.
Break contact and re-form. Go back, beyond the Sulu systems. We shall let the Empire strike against emptiness, then come in again from the flank.
Four Tahn fleets fled back into emptiness. For the most logical of reasons.
The admiral in question never had a chance to realize what had happened and what had not happened, because his reassembly point happened to be only light-minutes from the orbital path of Ferrari's fleets, returning from the destruction of Hsi. There were no surviving Tahn ships.
Bishop looked at the receding Tahn fleets, retracted all those last words he had been muttering, and, reflexively, looked over his shoulder.