He secured the stylus in its gravity-proof holder and looked up to see winged children leering at him from the walls.
Three hours beforeIllustrious’ s closest approach to Okiray, Lady Michi gave a dinner for the cruiser’s officers. Alcohol was not served. Chandra Prasad was not present, being officer of the watch and in command of the ship. Martinez wondered whether Fletcher had made special provision for that.
Michi was an accomplished hostess, making certain to include everyone, even the most junior, in the conversation. Captain Lord Gomberg Fletcher, reflected multiple times in the mirror-bright asteroid material that decorated the walls, presented a series of magnificent pictures with his silver hair and patrician manner, so elegant and imposing that he seemed almost to be a host rather than a guest. Martinez, his eye on his sleeve chronometer, drank much coffee, ate whatever was put in front of him without tasting it, and said little.
At the conclusion of the dinner, Michi rose to offer a toast, raising her crystal glass of water. “To victory,” she said.
“Victory!”they all chanted, and for the first time that day Martinez felt his heart surge. Tongues of flame seemed to flicker on his skin. He was going to win this battle, and he was going to make the victory total.
“Action stations, my lords,” Michi said. “Now, if you please.”
Martinez returned to his quarters, took off his dress uniform, and used the toilet thoroughly before donning his vac suit. Helmet under his arm, he marched to the Flag Officer Station, encountering other crew on their way to their places. As they braced to let him pass he saw smiles on their faces, nods of greeting. Their absolute confidence buoyed him. He began to feel the pulse of victory surge through his veins.
Michi had not yet arrived at her station. Martinez made a point of circling the room and shaking the hands of Coen and Li and Franz, the warrant officer who monitored the status of the ship. Lady Michi arrived, saw what Martinez was doing, and made the rounds herself.
“Luck,” she said, clasping Martinez’s hand.
He looked at the brown eyes beneath the straight bangs, and smiled. “And to you, my lady.”
He webbed himself into his couch and the displays brightened around him. Forty-six minutes till their closest approach to Okiray, and six minutes till the next missiles were launched. All the squadron had already received their orders, and Martinez restrained his impulse to contact all the ships and confirm.
The six minutes ticked slowly by, and then two missiles leaped from each ship in Chenforce, and after igniting antimatter engines hurled themselves toward the eleven decoys that flew between the squadron and Bleskoth’s warships.
Martinez hunched forward and stared at the displays as anticipation hummed in his nerves. He was very interested to know if Bleskoth would behave as he had twice before, cutting his acceleration for twelve minutes whenever Chenforce fired missiles. Martinez thought that Bleskoth didn’t have any choice—his decoys were all programmed with that twelve-minute pause, and if he didn’t want to give himself away he’d have to follow suit.
Which was exactly what happened. Martinez took a deep, relieved breath. Bleskoth had just saved him the burden of recalculating a lot of trajectories at the last minute.
The ship rotated and the engines began the Okiray burn. Martinez tensed and growled and fought for breath, blackness closing in on his vision as he fought a losing war against the growing force of gravity. Eventually he passed out, and so missed the moment when the squadron’s tactical computers launched a hundred and twenty-eight missiles, all to be guided by a pair of cadets in pinnaces who—unconscious, like everyone else—were launched into space after them.
Gravity eventually ebbed, and Martinez gasped for air and clawed for his displays, trying to bring them close to his dimmed vision. Failing, he lunged forward against the reluctant webbing and slammed the rim of his helmet on the display, staring unblinkingly until the bright icons of the missiles flared into being at the darkened center of his vision. They were on their way, and were keeping the mass of the planet between themselves and the advancing enemy. Triumph blazed in his mind as Martinez sagged back into his seat.
Minutes later, the sixteen missiles fired at the eleven decoys, located most of their targets, and created a brilliantly hot screen of expanding, overlapping plasma spheres between Bleskoth and Okiray, preventing the enemy commander from seeing the last missile launch.
Bleskoth had no way of seeing the doom that was waiting for him in the planet’s shadow.
“All ships, increase deceleration to three gravities at 18:14:01,” Martinez signaled the squadron.
“Imperiousacknowledges,” Coen reported. “Illustriousacknowledges.Challenger acknowledges…all ships acknowledge, my lady.”
The force of the engines punched Martinez back into his couch. Chenforce was no longer content to wait for the Naxid pursuit: now they would increase the rate at which the two forces converged.
Minutes ticked by. The nearest Naxid decoys maneuvered like real squadrons, adjusting their velocities to that of Chenforce. Other decoys, making no pretense that they were warships, came screaming at inhuman accelerations from remote corners of the system, and would be used as weapons. Bleskoth’s squadron punched through the cooling plasma screen and for the first time saw that the loyalists were headed for Wormhole 3, not a circuit of the system, and that Chenforce was inviting a fight.
The Naxid force dropped its acceleration while it considered its options. No doubt Bleskoth wanted to clear his head and think. Martinez gave a shout of pure rage while he beamed course and speed changes to the missiles approaching Okiray, to keep them hidden from Bleskoth’s radars.
When the Naxids’ engines flared again, Martinez was ready. Another set of course changes were sent to the missiles, and then Martinez looked up at Lady Michi.
“Permission to starburst, my lady?” he asked.
She nodded. “Permission granted, lord captain.”
“All ships,” Martinez sent, “Starburst Pattern One. Execute at 18:22:01.”
Coen chanted off acknowledgments from the other captains. Acceleration abruptly ceased and sent Martinez’s stomach lurching unexpectedly into his throat.Illustrious reoriented, Martinez’s cage swinging gently with the movement, and then the acceleration resumed and his couch crashed violently in a direction that was suddenly “down.” The elements of Chenforce began to separate, moving in a seemingly random pattern determined by the bit of chaotic mathematics that Caroline Sula had built into the new Fleet maneuvers, gliding along the convex hull of a dynamical system.
Bleskoth’s squadron reoriented for its burn past Okiray. No matter what they saw Chenforce do, it was too late for them to change their intended course now.
“All ships,” Martinez sent, “fire by salvo.”
“Illustriousacknowledges.Challenger acknowledges…”
By the time a hundred and sixty missiles and another pair of pinnace pilots leaped into space and began their burn for the enemy, all Naxids were unconscious from the high gravities they were pulling on their approach to Okiray. They would have to deal with the salvo after they woke up.
And if Martinez was lucky, they wouldn’t wake up at all.
The rebel Light Squadron 5 hurled itself into Okiray’s gravity well. And the hundred and twenty-eight missiles that had been lurking in the planet’s shadow flashed forward to intercept them.
On his displays Martinez saw little but a sudden roil of angry antimatter energy, a concentrated burst of gamma rays and energetic neutrons that poured from the heart of the expanding plasma. It was clear that the Naxids’ automated laser defense systems had caught a number of the attacking missiles, and that these had probably blown up other missiles arrowing to the same targets. But surely, Martinez insisted to himself, some must have got through.