From Bleskoth’s perspective, however, he was flogging himself and his crew senseless in a desperate acceleration right into the muzzles of two hundred and ninety-six missile launchers. If he could keep those missile launchers firing at decoys right up until the critical moment, he had a chance of bringing off a victory.
Martinez made a note to himself that if he ever found himself defending a star system in the future, he should remember these tactics. If, that is, he could be sure there was no one like Severin to give his game away.
Hours passed. Martinez’s mind buzzed with tactics, trajectories, calculations, and occasional flashes of deep paranoia, suspicion that a Naxid, just off camera, had been holding a gun on Severin for their entire conversation. Martinez kept the computer busy calculating possible courses, accelerations, and intercepts. Michi gave the order for the whole squadron to open fire with their point-defense lasers on the decoys rushing toward them from Okiray. The range was impossibly long and the targets were doing some dodging, but perhaps it relieved the squadron’s weapons officers of any tension that might have built up during the long hours of waiting.
With the lasers still firing, Michi announced time for supper. Command ofIllustrious passed to Lieutenant Kazakov as Captain Fletcher joined Martinez and Michi at her table. White-gloved formality was preserved, but the custom of not discussing Fleet business at meals was not. Michi was determined to weigh her officers’ ideas.
“I’m concerned with what to do after we pass Okiray,” she said. “Should we head straight for Wormhole Three, or swing around toward Olimandu and a complete circuit of the system? If we make a circuit we guarantee an engagement, but delay our exit from Protipanu by days. If we head for the wormhole, we give Bleskoth the opportunity to break off the fight, or just to pursue us at a distance.”
Fletcher stirred his soup with a delicate motion of his spoon, releasing the fragrance of ginger and the fried onion that substituted for scallion. “I agree with you, my lady, that we must beat them here. A victory would be of enormous value to the government and to loyalist morale, particularly after the fall of the capital.”
“How would the government find out we’d won?” Michi asked. “We’d have to send someone back to carry the news.”
“A pinnace pilot could do the job,” Fletcher said. He turned to Martinez with a lofty look. “Perhaps we could send someone back inDaffodil, ” he said. “Less discomfort for the pilot, and we don’t lose a pinnace that way.”
“I wouldn’t recommend sending anyone back as long as there are still some of those hundred-odd Naxid decoys in the system,” Martinez said. “We don’t know how they’re programmed—any boat we send back would be defenseless against them.”
“Not if we make a complete circuit of the system,” Fletcher continued. “We’d launch the boat after we pass Aratiri, and from there it’s a straight flight to Wormhole Two.”
“With all respect to Lord Captain Fletcher,” he said, “I think we should go straight for the exit. Bleskoth isn’t putting himself through that homicidal acceleration just to let us fly away. Hewants a fight. It’s not in his character to let us get away without one.”
“His character?” Fletcher repeated. His voice was strangely dreamlike. “Are you personally acquainted with Captain Bleskoth?”
“Not personally,” Martinez said, “but I’ve looked at his record. He’s young, he’s a yachting champion, he was captain of the lighumane team. He destroyed our fleet at Felarus very effectively. Everything points toward his being an aggressive, decisive commander. Just look at the way he’s coming after us.”
Fletcher stirred his soup again. “I ask because Ido know Bleskoth. He was a lieutenant in the newQuest when I hadSwift. He wasn’t very aggressive then—he toed Renzak’s line pretty severely, and toadied the squadcom dreadfully, the way those Naxids do.”
Martinez saw the edifice he’d built begin a slip toward an abyss, and he made an effort to snatch it back. “How did he do at the yachting?” he asked, rather hopelessly.
“Middling, as I remember. I don’t really follow the yacht scores.”
An idea struck Martinez. “Who was the squadron commander?”
Fletcher tasted his soup before answering. “Fanagee.”
“Ah.” Martinez turned to Lady Michi. “Fanagee passed over a good many officers in order to put Bleskoth in command at Felarus. I think he must have been part of the conspiracy even then.”
Michi nodded. “That’s plausible.” She turned to Fletcher. “How well did you know Bleskoth?”
“I dealt with Captain Reznak regularly. Bleskoth was there fairly often, dancing attendance.”
When Naxids danced attendance they reallydanced, Martinez knew; their little bobs and twitches in the company of a superior would seem funny if they weren’t so eerie.Please ignore this unworthy person, the body language seemed to say,but while you’re ignoring me, please take note of the excellent qualities of my cringing and the sincere tone of my supplication.
Michi looked thoughtful. “We’ve got quite a lot of time yet before we need to make any decisions,” she said. “But if Bleskoth keeps up this pursuit, I’m inclined to Captain Martinez’s opinion.”
Fletcher shrugged. “As you choose, my lady. But Captain Martinez’s approach allows for the possibility that the enemy may escape. Mine does not.”
“Very true.” Michi savored her soup, clearly still considering her options. Martinez tasted his own, peeled bean curd off his teeth with his tongue, and then decided to bring forward another element of his plan.
“Whatever scheme we use, we’ll be engaging on the far side of Okiray. We’re both going to pass through Okiray’s gravity well in order to help make the turn for the next objective. But what that means”—he called up the wall display and showed a graphic of the planet with the long, flat curves that represented potential trajectories —“is that Okiray is a choke point. However dispersed the Naxid squadron is, they’ll all have very limited choices concerning where to pass the planet. So my thought is to have a lot of missiles waiting for them right here, at the choke point.” He flashed a bright cursor onto the display, at the ships’ closest approach.
Michi studied the display with interest. “They’ll see the missiles coming. They can blanket the area with their own countermissiles.”
“My lady,” Martinez said, “they neednot see the missiles coming. There are eleven decoy missiles between us and Bleskoth, all pretending to be an enemy squadron. If we launch our own missiles at them, we can provide a screen that will prevent the enemy from detecting another set of missile launches.”
Fletcher looked as if he were about to object, but Martinez, who thought he knew what the objection would be, spoke on quickly. “Our missiles are going to have to burn a good long time, first to counter our own velocity and then begin an acceleration toward the intercept point. Normally that would give the enemy plenty of time to detect them, but in this casewe can hide them behind the planet. ”
There was a moment of concentrated silence. “Tricky timing,” Fletcher observed. “Very tricky timing.”
“Yes, my lord.” Martinez’s answer was heartfelt. “Very tricky timing indeed.”
Fletcher pursed his lips and looked reflective. Michi narrowed her eyes in thought.
“Perhaps we need to flesh out this plan with a little more detail,” she said.
Two hours later, with the crew strapped in after their meals, the warning for zero gravity blasted out, and acceleration ceased. Chenforce rotated, and began a constant one-gravity deceleration in place of the acceleration they’d been maintaining to this point.
Tricky timing indeed…Martinez wanted to make sure all the elements in the tactical display, all the graphics with their little arrows of velocity and direction, were going to be pointed in the right direction at the right time.
Chenforce also fired a barrage of sixteen missiles toward the decoys coming toward them from Okiray. The squadron’s laser batteries hadn’t manage to hit a one of them, and Martinez wanted the Naxids to think that Chenforce’s deceleration was to gain a little time to study the oncoming force and to prepare to receive them in the event they turned out to be warships.
After that, Michi stood the crew down from action stations and resumed normal rotation of watches. It would be hours yet before the missiles reached their targets.
Martinez remained in his place, however, to see what happened when Bleskoth’s force detected the missile launch. The Naxids broke off their heavy acceleration and reduced to half a gee while they confirmed whether or not the missiles had been fired at them personally, or at something else. Precisely twelve minutes later, the acceleration resumed.
The telling discovery, though, was that all other Naxid elements behaved in exactly the same way. When the light from the missile flares reached them they decelerated abruptly, waited exactly twelve minutes, and then
