The Kali missiles, now on their fifth generation, were monster ship-killers. The Kali V class were nearly thirty meters long by now, having grown not only in expense but in size as each generation was given newer and more sophisticated tracking, homing, ECM, and "perception" suites. Power was from AM2-the Kalis were, in fact, miniature starships. All that had not been necessary to improve from generation to generation was the pay-load. Sixty megatons was still enough to shatter any ship on any military register. Even the Forez, the Tahn battleship that remained the mightiest warship ever "launched," had been rendered hors d' combat by Kalis.
The Kali was "flown" into its target under direct control by weapons officers. The control system was helmet-mounted and used direct induction to the brain. Actual control had progressed from the old manual joystick and tiny throttle to involuntary or voluntary neural reaction from the "pilot." The Kali could also be set to use other, automatic homing systems. But those were only used under special circumstances-weapons officers were chosen for their killer instincts, second only to potential tacship pilots, and they preferred playing cheater kamikazi.
Stage One was a launch of all available Kalis.
They burst out from their launch tubes on the Victory and its destroyers at full drive for thirty seconds, and then power was shut down. The missiles lanced ahead of the Imperial squadron.
Right behind them came the Victory's tacships, under the same full power/cut power/run silent orders.
This was Stage One-Sten's hole cards.
Stage Two waited for some time, until watch officers reported alarums from the Bogazi fleet. They had "seen" the oncoming unidentified ship that was the Victory. Since they were waiting for the Suzdal, their sensors were slightly more efficient, not masked by their own drive emissions. Sten waited a couple of ship-hours, having ordered that no response be made to any challenges from either Suzdal or Bogazi, then assembled his human actors for the next part of the plan.
All Bogazi and Suzdal com channels were blanketed by the Victory's powerful transmitters.
All receiving vid screens showed:
The well-known Imperial Ambassador Sten. Standing on the bridge of a warship, in full and formal garb. He was flanked by two equally grim-faced officers, Mason and his XO, also in full dress uniform.
The broadcast was very short and to the point. Sten informed both sides they were in violation of Imperial and Altaic treaties of long standing, as well as civilization's common agreements of interplanetary rights. They were ordered to return immediately to their home worlds and make no further aggressive moves.
Failure to respond would be met with the severest measures.
The broadcast was not meant to convince, or even to threaten. It was merely a pin in the map to legitimize the real bludgeon Sten had prepared.
The one he hoped nobody figured out was made of metal foil and lathes-quite literally.
The response was as expected.
The Suzdal did not answer the cast, either from their fleets or from their home worlds. The Bogazi, slightly more sophisticated, broadcast a warning that all neutral ships should stand clear of given coordinates. Any intrusion into this area would be met with armed response. Any errors might be regretted but would be considered within the acceptable parameters of self-defense.
There was no response from the Victory.
Sten hoped this would worry both sides.
Another timetick. It would be four ship-hours until the Victory would be directly "between" the two enemies.
And they, in turn, would be in range of the Victory in five hours, and each other in twelve.
The situation was developing in an interesting manner.
"Three hours, sir. And the Bogazi fleet is now under drive."
Sten rose from the weapons couch he had asked to borrow for a nap. This was calculated bravado, intended to prove to all the young troopies that Sten was so confident that he could doze before action.
Of course, he had not slept.
What bothered him was that in the old days he actually had nodded off every three or four times he tried the ploy.
Mason came out of his day cabin. "We're ready, sir."
"Very well."
Mason came quite close to Sten. "You didn't sleep, either, did you?''
Sten's eyes widened. Was Mason actually trying to be friendly? Had that absurd reaming-out caused the admiral to make an attitude check?
Naah. Mason was just setting Sten up so, come another time, he would be the one waiting in that dark alley with the sap.
"Perhaps we might begin Stage Three," he said.
"I shall give the orders."
Stage Three was a truly monstrous bluff.
Back on Jochi, Sten had run a fast list of ways to make people unhappy. He dimly remembered one, told as a joke but also as a mind-jog, back in Mantis training. The story went that aeons earlier, a young guerrilla officer was trying to delay a military convoy. It must've been in the dark ages, because the vehicles were evidently ground-bound, and there was no mention of air cover. The convoy had armor and heavy weapons. The guerrilla officer had twenty men, only half of them armed.
The guerrilla could have thermopylaed nobly and slowed the convoy for five minutes at the cost of his entire band. Instead, he looted a nearby farmhouse. He took all of the dinnerware in the house and carefully positioned each plate, facedown, in the roadway.
Land mines. Sten had objected—the armor's commander must have been a complete clot, since it was unlikely that land mines never looked like mess tins, even in those medieval times.
After Sten had finished doing the push-ups that every military school seemed to award its trainees at regular intervals for sins ranging from breathing to buggery, the instructor had pointed out that of course the track commander would not have mistaken them for any land mines he was familiar with. They could be something new. They could be booby traps. And if they were real, and he drove over them, and started losing vehicles, it would be his butt in front of the firing squad.
So slowly, laboriously, he had to send forward clearing teams to lift each plate, determine it was a plate, and move on to the next. The guerrilla leader further slowed progress down by regular sniping, in spite of the convoy's counterfire.
"The convoy was delayed by two full E-hours, so the story goes, with no loss to the guerrilla force. Think on that, troops. Mr. Sten, you can stop doing push-ups now."
Land mines... space mines. Yes, that was it. Mines—those lethal devices that just sat waiting for a target and then blew it up or, worse, lurked until the target came within range and then went hunting—were never popular weapons. In spite of the fact they were the most efficient, least expensive killers of expensive machinery and beings known. They seemed somehow slimy to "honest" soldiers. Or, anyway, not especially glamorous.
Sten had never imagined that killing one's fellow beings was glamorous. And if he'd had one iota, Mantis Section would have burned it out of him. He had also seen how effective the Tahn use of mines had been. The Tahn operated under the valid if uncivilized principle that killing was killing and needed no particular moral justification.
The Empire's conventional military, being "honorable," knew little and cared naught about mines—therefore, anyone they armed and equipped, such as the Altaic Cluster, would be unlikely to be expert, either.
So, during the flight out from Jochi, the hangar deck of the Victory had become a carpentry shop. The lathing Sten had ordered up was wire-tied into rough hedgehog-looking configurations and wrapped with metal foil.